Elminster in Hell

by Ed Greenwood

  Harhoring favored the arriving foe with a toothy smile liberally adorned with raw, bloody dragon—and unleashed his first spell.

  Talons of acid sliced the air. The dripping latticework of death sizzled and spat as the foe struck it. A few scraps of armor, it seemed, caught the energy. They dwindled and tumbled as the acid ate through them.

  The onrushing foe seemed a human woman, clad more in her own hair than in anything else. That hair was long, as willful as the tentacles of a hunting squid. Those tresses held wands and rings and other items of magic … and even aimed them!

  Harhoring’s second magic slammed into her. The spell created stars of long thorns bristling in all directions, then caused them to explode, hurling their deadly shrapnel. The nearly bare woman writhed in her own blood, studded with dozens of javelinlike thorns, and fell through the air.…

  Fires of the Pit! She was going to plunge into the still-steaming guts of the dragon! What if she lived and fought on—what would survive of Harhoring’s meal?

  With some alarm, but also with savage glee, the Horned One cast a bloodhook spell and pulled hard. The spell would snatch the human female—torn open and writhing in her death-agonies—to his feet.

  The hook plunged home. The woman threw back her head. Cords of straining flesh stood out in her throat. She screamed her pain at the blood-red sky. Then she seemed to leap across the space between them. Somewhere along the way, her helpless parabola became a pounce. Her face grew a grin to match Harhoring’s own.

  Magic flashed and flowed around the human sorceress as the two damned creatures came together. In sudden alarm, the Horned One belatedly conjured burning talons to augment the razor sharpness of his own.

  They were just swirling into existence as the foe smashed into his chest, her own hands glowing fiercely.

  Harhoring knew worse pain than anything he’d felt since the hand of Asmodeus himself. Red, shrieking agony! The Lord of Bones roared as his foe pierced him, and helplessly, convulsively, shoved her away to free himself—thereby winning greater pain.

  The woman’s spell had briefly turned her hands into metal fauchard forks, each with a long point that stabbed deep into the goat-devil. A cruel hook below tore the gash wider. Her points drove deep—one piercing right through the devil’s body.

  Shuddering and flailing, Harhoring spat flaming blood on her and wept more flames as he thrust her away. He pulled himself off her blades with frenzied, convulsive strength.

  Coolly she caught both hooks around his exposed intestines as she went. She fell away to one side, and the fury of his shove carried her on past the screaming devil. Her hold on her foe’s guts jerked Harhoring sharply around.

  Squalling, the horned devil fell from the pinnacle, sprawling onto sharp rocks. Steaming innards tore themselves out of him in the fall. The curseworms reared and writhed in hungry agitation around his midriff.

  Thrashing on the rocks in arching, broken agony, the Horned One cursed the hand of Asmodeus, which prevented outcasts from summoning any devil to them and their service. By all the blood in Avernus, he needed aid now!

  With twin shimmerings, the woman’s hands dwindled back to human form. She wrapped a loop of glistening devil guts around one forearm and began weaving another spell with her free hand.

  Harhoring wallowed on the rocks, trying to get upright despite the burning pain of broken bones. He needed to spin a desperate magic of his own.

  HARHORING OFFERS LITTLE CHALLENGE, IT SEEMS. HMMM. I’D THOUGHT HIM ONE OF THE STRONGEST AMONG US OUTCASTS.

  COME, LITTLE WIZARD? IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO SEE ANOTHER CORNER OF AVERNUS.

  [mindworm fades to quiescence, casting commences, magic rising dark and strong]

  Blue-white fire raced along the goat-devil’s guts, snarling on its swift journey from the grim and trembling human sorceress to the fallen, thrashing devil.

  “Where is he, devil?” the Simbul snapped. Death reached for the Lord of Bones. “What have you done with my man?”

  Puzzlement joined rage in the horned devil’s eyes. It leveled a shuddering arm to point at her and unleash a last, desperate magic. The harsh word it said next was the beginning of an incantation, not an answer … but then her blood spell reached Harhoring.

  The explosion tore the horned devil apart, huge shoulders and all, drenching rocks all around. The Simbul stood, coated in dark ichor. Gore spattered down in a grisly rain that drowned out the sound of her sigh. The trace had faded. She was alone once more. Elminster was gone again, snatched away elsewhere in Avernus.

  “Someone wants a lot of devils slain,” she said aloud, wearily. “Surely there are more efficient ways of doing that than throwing a lone human mage at them. Even this one.”

  She looked down at her blood-drenched limbs. A few tiny fragments of armor were still whirling around them. The Simbul shook her head. With a careful spell she transformed the shards into dark wings. The slower way would have to suffice for the rest of this manhunt if her dwindling magic was to see her through another fray.

  “Time for Hell to tremble a little more,” she murmured and leaped into the blood-red sky.

  * * * * *

  Fiery eyes narrowed. “Saw you that?” a harsh voice rumbled.

  “Aye,” the nearest pit fiend said. “Another incursion that’s more than it seems. No human sorceress should have been able to slay Orochal, let alone Tasnya the wanton and as deadly a hunter as Harhoring. Three gone to the flames where none should have fallen.”

  “Indeed. Whelm our troops. Let there be fire in Avernus—and this human intruder writhing and pleading on my cooking-spit in its midst.”

  “At your dread command,” the pit fiend said, bowing its head. It took wing in ungainly, flapping haste. Good sport was not so common in Hell as to be willingly missed.

  * * * * *

  A ball of flames gouted up from a brazier, with a roar as sudden and sharp as a gong. Horned heads turned.

  “Saw you?” asked a deep voice that made the floor tremble with its force, and the listeners with their fear.

  “Aye, Dread Lord,” they hissed, more or less in chorus, reluctant and anxious.

  “To arms,” the voice said simply. “Fail me not.”

  Flames rolled up from the brazier more fiercely than ever before. There was a sudden tumult as devils scrambled to leave that trembling place.

  * * * * *

  WELL, WELL. YOUR WITCH-QUEEN HAS SNARED MORE THAN A LITTLE ATTENTION IN HELL AMONG THE DEEP AND POWERFUL. HOSTS WHELMED, MIGHTY MAGIC TAKEN OUT OF HIDING, NERGAL HAPPY …

  Pet humans once more of service, hmm?

  CLEVERNESS, CLEVERNESS! ALWAYS I’M TREATED TO ELMINSTER BEING WITTY, ELMINSTER MAKING MOCKING PRONOUNCEMENTS, ELMINSTER SAVING THE DAY WITH A SNEER FOR THE DOLTS HE DEALS WITH! I COULD WRENCH YOU TO BLOODY PULP IN AN INSTANT, FLAMES TAKE YOU!

  And yet ye don’t. Why?

  BECAUSE NO OTHER DEVIL IN HELL HAS A HUMAN IN HIS HANDS WHO PERSONALLY SERVES A GODDESS AND HOLDS ANY TRIFLING MEASURE OF HER POWER. SOME DEVILS CAJOLE OR THREATEN OR INFLUENCE MORALS OUTSIDE HELL, BUT YOU’RE MINE, BODY AND MIND? OBVIOUSLY POWERFUL AND WISE, AND POTENTIALLY VERY USEFUL.

  AND YET I CAN’T MANAGE TO LEARN ANYTHING USEFUL FROM YOU. YET.

  And—?

  AND I WON’T WAIT MUCH LONGER. YOU WILL YIELD TO ME, OR DIE AS HORRIBLY AS I CAN CONTRIVE.

  THAT IS, IF MALACHLABRA DOESN’T GET YOU FIRST.

  [unvoiced human query, mental eyebrow raised]

  OH, YES. SHE SURVIVED OUR LITTLE BATTLE OVER YOU, IT SEEMS, BUT HAS GOING INTO HIDING FOR FEAR OF NERGAL THE MIGHTY … SO IT’S ONLY FITTING THAT I GO TO HER. OR RATHER, SEND HER TWO LITTLE GIFTS. YOU AND YOUR AVENGING LADY LOVE.

  [rising bellow of diabolic laughter]

  Nineteen

  RAGE IN HELL

  The chaos of stagnant pools and jagged rocks around the pool of blood was alive with crawling maggots. Those rocks were also home to something else, something broken and shapeless, scorched dark, something that mi
ght have answered to the name Elminster if it had possessed a jaw to do so. He dared heal himself only very slowly. Maggots sucked and gnawed at him hungrily where he lay, motionless in the deep shadows.

  The dark thing splashing in the pool hadn’t noticed Elminster’s arrival. She was too busy spinning a spell of her own.

  It was a hovering sphere of bright, shifting glows and little chimings. In its depths, dark shapes quavered and broke, roiling like smoke.

  Its crafter hissed in annoyance. She frowned, feeding it more power through her long, hooked talons. “Work for Malachlabra,” she breathed fiercely, peering into the depths. “Show me the human wizard—not my own cavern!”

  A rumbling sound echoed down stony passages to the pool. Anger kindled like red flames in ale-brown eyes. Malachlabra lifted her head and stared hard down the passage she’d used to reach this secret place.… The passage was strewn with the gnawed bones of the dragon who’d dared to think it owned a fine lair here.

  The sound faded and came not again. With a growl the daughter of Dispater rolled over in the smoking blood of the pool and reclined on her belly, idly slapping the gore into little waves with her three serpent tails. She stared even more intently into the depths of her spell-spun sphere.

  Shadows swirled in the heart of the sphere. Once more it shaped jagged rocks and steaming blood-water, with a long, sinuous obsidian form lying at ease in the pool, peering into—

  The magic burst in a shower of sparks, as all such weavings do when turned to look directly upon themselves. Malachlabra, Duchess of Hell and daughter of Dispater, reared back with a snarl.

  “Are my spells so feeble? Or is there something here, twisting my magic? The sphere of seeing has always worked before!”

  Bat wings flared once as she stretched restlessly. Sleek obsidian flesh reared up from the hot blood of the pool. The thick red liquid dripped from high breasts, and ran down the curves where serpent-tails met in a wide pelvis. Malachlabra had the body of a lush human female, though for a woman, her snakelike, undulating neck would have been grotesquely long. The two horns curving up from her temples looked anything but human. Her forked tongue flickered thoughtfully between her lips, darting forth to taste the air, as she thought about how to get back at Nergal.

  Nergal the brute, stupid and always trusting overmuch in his power and cleverness. Nergal the spy, always slyly watching the doings of others, so as to pounce on this and manipulate that, thinking himself the rightful successor to Dread Asmodeus himself! Well, she’d—

  The thing that came rushing at Malachlabra out of the mouth of the passage gave no warning. It was barely a tail length away when it flared into a dozen bright blue bolts of ravening magic.

  The serpent devil had no time to try to see what had cast those bolts. They shocked into her, spreading their own cold, cutting pain. Spell-plucked rocks smashed into her from behind, driving her down into the pool and drowning her sight.

  Desperately she lashed the air with all her tails, slapping hard at unseen nothing, and was rewarded with a heavy, thudding impact.

  Fires of Nessus, but the pain was intense! Shaking, Malachlabra surfaced with talons at the ready, seeking—

  Anything but what she saw: a human sorceress with crude bat wings crumpled around her, standing amid the bloody rocks. Her hands racing in intricate gestures. “I feel him!” the woman hissed, her eyes blazing. “What have you done with him, devil?”

  This intruder did not wait for a reply. The spell she’d spun burst into another volley of blue bolts that sprang into the she-devil.

  Screaming amid white fire, Malachlabra twisted and arched. She fought to weave magic of her own and sobbed with unaccustomed pain by the time it worked—snatching her elsewhere.

  In midgasp she was back on the smoking, spinagon-swarming surface of Avernus, not far from the cavern she’d just fled. Shuddering, she thrust aside hate and pain and tried to think how best to smite this astonishing foe. How had a human even reached her—?

  The third volley of magic missiles left the serpent-devil on her face on the rocks, clinging to life and awareness through a red haze.

  “We weren’t done yet, devil,” she heard the human say angrily from behind her. “Or at least I wasn’t.”

  The blade that pierced the base of Malachlabra’s skull was very cold and hard. It slid through her and out her nose before she could even shriek, pinning her jaws half-open, and struck a spark off a stone in front of her.

  Summoning all her will and power, the devil threw her awareness into that spark and rode it away.…

  “Die, devil!” Alassra Silverhand hissed.

  The Simbul’s spell sword melted out of her hands, leaving its own fiery pain behind. She flung herself back as flames roared up in a thunderous column, shaking the stony ground. Heat forced the Simbul a few hasty paces farther away.

  The serpent-devil’s limp body withered and writhed at its heart. It shrank and faded away.

  Another column of fire burst into being behind her, melting the tip of one of her wings. The Simbul gasped at the pain. She whirled to face this new peril and hastily murmured the words that would make her wings pass out of existence.

  “Look up, human, before you die,” came a cold command.

  For once, the queen of Aglarond obeyed.

  A pit fiend larger than any she’d ever seen before hung in the red air high above her, flanked by two others. In the distance, flights of erinyes were flapping nearer. A series of smoking explosions occurred on rocks all around as summoned barbed devils appeared. They strode, grinning cruelty at her as they advanced. One of them seemed in distress, convulsing and growing as it came. Its legs lengthened into three serpent tails. Its body became taller and more shapely.…

  Another column of flame burst into being and roared skyward, ringing the Simbul. Over the lip of the dell in which she stood, a pale, glistening army appeared: a moaning wave of goggle-eyed, shapeless fleshy things. Lemures, the mindless, maggot-like living refuse of Hell. Terror was written on their empty faces, but their eyes held only darkness. They reached with misshapen arms toward her. Whips cracked over them, and abishai overseers peered eagerly at the lone human in the midst of the flames.

  Slowly, the Simbul’s wings sighed into nothingness. She went to her knees on the hard rocks, crossing her wrists in the gesture of surrender into slavery.

  “Well, well,” the pit fiend said softly, “this is going to be easier than I’d thought. Stay just as you are, human, while I chain you.”

  Minute sparks burst into being between the Simbul’s wrists, where the metal scales embedded in her skin touched. She’d transformed her bracers into them after destroying Tasnya, and thrust the last few powers of her scorched garments into them. Now it was time to call on their true powers, one of the mightiest magics she’d ever crafted.

  The eyes of the queen of Aglarond narrowed. Her magic was dwindling fast, and there were too many foes here to fight. It was time to use the Blood Ring.

  She shuddered, her eyes locked pleadingly on the gloating gaze of the pit fiend that descended to her. It lazily shook out the links of a barbed chain crusted in old blood. The Simbul’s will bore down on distant creatures … and her magic took them.

  There was suddenly something in the air in front of the pit fiend. Something spherical and floating that sported a wide, smiling, many-toothed maw, a central eye that was wide with rage and fear, and above this, like a wriggling crown, a writhing forest of eyestalks. The pit fiend stared in amazement, then sneered at what had to be a desperate illusion. No beholders roam free for long in Hell. Many eyes trained their gazes on the winged fiend.

  “Very clever, human!” it jeered—just before the eye tyrant’s magics reached it. The pit fiend struggled in midair for a moment, caught in those gazes. It stiffened, turning dark … and began the slow, stony fall to a shattered death on the rocks below.

  It had been only one of many foes. Lemures tumbled and slithered down into the dell. Hamatula stalked to the
gaps in the flames. Fiends filled the air.

  Other creatures suddenly appeared beside the kneeling sorceress. Two human mages looked around in astonishment and mounting terror and snatched wands from their belts. Neither seemed to see each other or the Simbul, only devils, devils everywhere.

  In their midst, the sorceress closed her eyes and bade the beholder strike at the other two pit fiends before she bent all her will to calling one other creatures. Yes: the dragon …

  It had taken decades of daring and careful acting and pain to craft the Blood Ring. Every creature linked to it had to have some of her blood within it, lingering in some cyst or scar tissue or body fat, thrust there by the Simbul during bloody battle. If she survived this foray into Hell, it might take her centuries to rebuild the ring. Of course, that was a large “if” just now.…

  Erinyes swooped down thickly. Ravaedrin of the Zhentarim whimpered aloud at the sight. Desperately he shouted a spell that made one of the columns of flame into a geyser of acid. It sprayed in a great plume, dying in a single burst that hissed deafeningly down onto screaming devils.

  On the other side of the Simbul, Kaladras Yarlamm of the Red Wizards saw the effects, though not who’d caused them. He abandoned the lightning that he was lashing a fiend with, to do the same to the flames nearest him. Some of the hamatula were only a few strides away, and he’d have to—

  Die, screaming, as pit fiend magic sent him staggering into the reach of a barbed devil. It casually tore out his throat and face with one sweep of its talons.

  A moment later, a pit fiend burst apart overhead under the magic of the beholder whose eyestalks it was savaging. It vanished too in a swirling cloud of gore and stabbing daggers and shrill shrieks.

  The last pit fiend, still writhing from the lightning the Red Wizard had fed it, wheeled in the air and fixed its baleful gaze on the woman kneeling at the heart of the battle. She was the cause of all this tumult in Hell. She was the one they’d been commanded to bring back in chains—or as bloody, dripping fragments. The pit fiend Garauder favored the latter. He sent himself into a dive that would end at her throat.