Pool of Twilight

by James M. Ward

  A band of hammer-wielding clerics tried to battle their way toward the huge abishai fiend, but they were repulsed by a phalanx of ebony swordsmen. The creature spread its sable wings. Harsh words of magic tumbled from its forked tongue. For a heartbeat Slayer’s warriors were wreathed by a faint crimson light. Then each of them plunged into the melee with renewed ferocity. The clerics of Tyr defended valiantly, but they were outnumbered and tiring. Inch by inch, the dark warriors began to push the disciples of Tyr back toward the temple.

  With an ominous sucking sound, the spinagons detached themselves from the wall. Now that the gaps were no longer needed, they were free to join the battle. Slayer hissed foully to two of the fiends, and the pair began threading their way through the melee—directly toward Kern.

  “They intend to capture the Hammerseeker!” Kern heard someone cry.

  The fiends brought out a net lined with heavy lead weights, and Kern tried to lunge out of the way, hoping he would be able to move fast enough to escape entanglement.

  Then the fiends stopped abruptly, staring in confusion. So did the young warrior. Suddenly there were a half-dozen Kerns standing in the courtyard, each identical to the other, all looking equally dumbfounded. The fiends hesitated, not certain which was the real Hammerseeker. When they finally cast the net over one, the image vanished in a puff of smoke.

  Kern didn’t waste the second chance.

  “Scatter!” he shouted to his mirror images. He dashed through the throng as five replicates of him did likewise. Luckily, the fiends chased after one of the fakes. Kern breathed a sigh of relief, casting a look of gratitude in Listle’s direction. The elven mage was deep in concentration, preparing another spell.

  “Fall back!” Anton’s baritone boomed out over the courtyard. “To the temple!”

  Fending off blows as he went, Kern retreated up the steps of the temple and into the columned portico. Sir Rialad was the last one inside the protective aura Tarl and several other clerics had cast to guard the entrance. A score of ebony-clad warriors dashed toward the temple, but when they reached the steps, they were instantly immolated by crackling fire. In moments, nothing was left of them but charred husks.

  Slayer hurled a ball of jet-black magic against the aura. The dark magic was dissipated harmlessly, but the blue glow dimmed alarmingly for a moment. When it shone forth again, it was not as bright as before.

  “I’m afraid the protections won’t hold for long,” Tarl said grimly. “That fiend must be a powerful sorcerer.”

  “Then we’ll have to rely on our hammers,” Sir Rialad said bravely. “We cannot let it capture The Oracle of Strife.”

  Another dusky sphere struck the shimmering ward that guarded the entrance. The aura wavered, then disintegrated in a shower of azure sparks. With cries of blood-lust, the armored warriors surged up the temple’s steps, their black swords clashing in a deadly cacophony with the hammers of the clerics of Tyr.

  Kern saw the abishai, Slayer, wade through the fray. As it drew closer to the temple the fiend brought out a golden ring and slipped it over a clawed finger. Suddenly the abishai blinked out of sight. Kern drew in a hissing breath. How could they fight an enemy they couldn’t see?

  The nine spinagons joined the fray, and the battle took a dire turn. The clerics of the temple were fighters of courage and skill, but the otherworldly fiends had tipped the odds.

  Kern watched in horror as Sister Briatha, the cleric who had blessed him before the battle, died screaming, impaled on the recurved talons of one of the spinagons. The monster shook off the woman’s limp form, advancing on Kern, who barely fended off its cruel swipes with the whistling arc of his hammer. The clerics around him were in similar predicaments. Either the warriors or fiends alone they might have been able to handle, but both … Kern didn’t allow himself to finish the gloomy thought. He gritted his teeth, sweat pouring from his brow, as he swung his hammer again and again.

  “I think it’s time to do something about those fiends,” Listle said to nobody in particular. She called the words of a spell to mind, then murmured an arcane incantation. Suddenly a tiny, brilliant point of light appeared in her hand. She lifted her palm, and the sparkle of magical light fluttered through the air like a bumblebee toward its target. It was such an innocuous sight that the spinagon did not even notice it until the light buzzed around the fiend’s head and flew inside its pointed ear.

  Suddenly, the spinagon’s eyes went wide. It let out a terrible, gurgling scream, and lashed out with its claws, striking at some unseen enemy.

  Listle allowed herself a smile of satisfaction at the deadly spell she had cast. Though the battle was entirely in the fiend’s imagination, the consequences would be very real and quite fatal.

  In its frenzy, the fiend did not see the ebony warriors—its own allies—who died screaming under its clawed feet. Soon another of the fiends began to shriek in terror, lashing out wildly with its talons. The others soon followed suit. In seconds, all nine spinagons were whirling about the courtyard, slicing onyx-armored warriors to ribbons with their blind flailings.

  Listle stared in surprise. She hadn’t expected her spell to affect all of them! She was no expert on the art of summoning—illusion was her preferred school of magic—but she remembered that a group of fiends called into the world through a single spell were inextricably linked. She hadn’t realized how deep that nexus ran. Not that she felt like complaining.

  The fiends turned on each other, and in less than a minute all of them were dead. They’d torn each other to pieces trying to combat foes that didn’t really exist.

  “And some people think illusionists aren’t worth anything in battle,” Listle said with a sniff.

  The remaining black-armored warriors were quickly dispatched by the clerics. Disheartened by the grisly spectacle of the dying fiends and by the apparent desertion of their leader, Slayer, the last warriors did not put up much of a fight.

  But the threat was not over.

  “A foe in the temple!” came a shout from within. Recognizing the voice as Tarl’s, Kern and Listle rushed into the temple behind Anton and Rialad. Inside, they found the blind cleric guarding the table that held the magically warded Oracle of Strife and swinging his hammer at a foe only he could see. Two clerics lay dead before him, victims of the invisible enemy.

  “Show yourself, coward!” Tarl growled. “Your enchantments won’t hide you from me.”

  Suddenly a shadow form materialized before the white-haired cleric. It was the huge abishai, Slayer.

  “Out of my way, weakling cleric of Tyr,” the fiend snarled. “The Oracle is mine.”

  “On my honor, you are wrong on that count,” Sir Rialad cried, leaping forward. With a snarl, Slayer conjured a crimson ball of flame, hurling it at the brave paladin. It burst against Rialad’s breastplate, covering him with searing fire. Howling as his flesh began to singe and wither, Sir Rialad sank to his knees.

  Kern moved to counterattack, but a fierce look from Slayer stopped him in his tracks.

  “One step closer, and this fool cleric is the next to go up in flames.” The fiend was pointing a gleaming talon at Tarl. The white-haired cleric abruptly froze, unable to move, magically bound by chains no one could see.

  Kern halted, unsure what to do.

  “The Oracle is mine,” Slayer hissed, reaching out for the tome.

  “By Tyr, you will not have it!” a hoarse voice croaked.

  Sir Rialad, his flesh dark and cracked, lurched forward and fell onto the table, clutching The Oracle of Strife to his still-burning chest. Crimson fire licked at the ancient parchment, then flared, consuming book and paladin together in a gout of flame.

  Slayer screamed in outrage and spun around, only to be blocked by Kern’s hammer. The paladin-aspirant stood protectively in front of his father.

  “You’ve lost, fiend,” Kern growled, amazed at the steel he heard in his own voice.

  “You don’t know who you’re dealing with, cub!” the fiend shrieked, beatin
g its leathery wings.

  “I don’t care who—or what—you are!” Kern shouted. For a moment he forgot that he was only a paladin-aspirant. With a fierce battle cry, he swung his hammer in a bone-crushing arc.

  The fiend reached out and grabbed the weapon, jerking Kern’s arms to a halt. The young man tried to yank the hammer free, but all his strength was nothing against the monster.

  “You think you have won, but you are mistaken, Hammerseeker,” the fiend hissed. “You have gained a little time, that is all. One day soon, my mistress will own you. Of that you can be certain.”

  Slayer’s hand glowed a blistering red. The head of Kern’s battlehammer shone white-hot in the fiend’s grip, then melted. Molten fire splashed against Kern’s gauntlets as he quickly dropped the hammer’s haft.

  The monstrous abishai spoke a guttural word of magic. There was a clap of thunder, and the fiend vanished in a cloud of thick, foul-smelling smoke. Gradually the acrid haze dissipated. The monster called Slayer was gone.

  “I don’t know, Kern,” Listle said wryly, “but something tells me you didn’t make any friends today.”

  4

  Perilous Summonings

  “Why, by all the bloodiest gods, must I always endure such fools around me?”

  A bolt of magic streaked from Sirana’s fingertips. It ricocheted wildly around her circular spellcasting chamber, deep in the subterranean warrens of the thieves’ guild, pulverizing priceless sculptures and blasting antique furniture to ashes before finally dissipating against the porphyry walls.

  “How could they lose?” Sirana shrieked, her hands clenched into fists. But no human being could answer her. The last three thieves who had entered her chamber were now scuttling around the floor in the form of cockroaches, doing their best to avoid being crushed by her boot heels. “How could they have lost to a band of doddering holy men? All that blasted abishai had to do was bring back an old book and a foolish boy!”

  Sirana caught a glimpse of her reflection in a mirror of polished bronze. She liked what she saw—a tall, shapely woman with dark hair and smoldering eyes, clad in a thin white shift belted by a heavy braid of gold. Yes, she thought, even in her rage she looked supremely beautiful. She enjoyed this human form she had taken. Not a hint of her fiendish heritage showed beneath the sultry, feminine exterior.

  She sank into an ornately carved chair—one of the few items in the room that had escaped her magical wrath—and bit delicately on a knuckle. It was time to put rage aside and calculate a new course of action. Revenge was best planned with a cool head. Sirana knew that well. After all, she had made revenge her specialty.

  It was obvious that a direct attack on the clerics of Tyr would not avail her. She had spent months taking over Phlan’s thieves’ guild, perverting it to suit her purposes. Then she had summoned Slayer to be her servant. Slayer was a baatezu abishai, a magical creature of fearsome power, but he had failed miserably. No matter the armored horde of thieves and the pack of feral spinagons she had sent to help him.

  She picked up a small black-lacquered box from a table beside the chair. It was her most precious possession, a gift from her beloved mother on the day Sirana had murdered the old crone. It was a box full of magical memories. Carefully, Sirana opened the lid. Gradually an image began to form in the darkness within.

  An image of a lofty tower, hewn of crimson stone.

  Though Sirana had never gazed upon the tower with her own eyes, it was nonetheless a familiar sight to her. The tower had belonged to her father, Lord Marcus, a powerful Red Wizard from the eastern land of Thay. Once it had been a citadel of awesome power built above a legendary pool of darkness. Marcus had managed to imprison the entire city of Phlan in a cavern underneath the tower, intending to drain the life-forces of the citizens in order to transform himself into a demigod.

  “But it was all for nothing,” Sirana whispered mournfully. “If only I could have been there to help.”

  She watched as history replayed in the images of the black box. She saw the defilers come to the tower: a ranger, a sorceress, a barbarian who could assume the form of a great cat, and finally the one who always sent a shiver of fear through her—a skeletal paladin, his empty eye sockets glowing with horrible, holy blue light. The undead paladin had been the cause of her father’s demise, and for that she despised him most of all. The paladin had turned to dust at the end of the battle, so he was beyond the reach of revenge. But the others were not.

  She watched as the tiny tower inside the black box began to topple and fall. She watched as the invaders fled the scene of destruction. For long moments, the images were still. Nothing moved. Then Sirana could glimpse her mother, the beautiful, fiendish erinyes who had served the human, Lord Marcus, crawl from the ruins, bleeding, wings twisted and broken, yet alive.

  The erinyes had given birth to Sirana not long after the defeat at the red tower. Because of her half-fiendish blood, Sirana had grown quickly. Early on, her mother had sown the seeds of enmity in Sirana’s heart, teaching her everything about the powers of darkness that might be useful one day to hunt those who had killed Marcus and injured the erinyes. When Sirana was nine, she had tested her daughter’s progress in a magical duel. In the course of the battle, Sirana had slain her mother, gaining the erinyes’s power for her own. Neither regretted the outcome of the duel. Even as she lay dying, the erinyes had presented the memory box to Sirana and made her take a vow of vengeance.

  For years, Sirana had bided her time, waiting for the perfect moment to enact her revenge. And then a wondrous opportunity had presented itself. She discovered a fantastic new source of power that made her stronger than she had ever dared to hope. A plan unfurled in her mind. Not only would she kill those who had slain her father, she would also regain the precious Hammer of Tyr the city held so dear. Without the hammer, Phlan would never be healed of the vice and corruption that had come to plague it since the hammer was lost. Then she would ransom the hammer to one of the many dark gods who despised Tyr. In exchange for the relic, she would demand to become a demigod, just as Marcus himself, her father, had once dreamed. Her vengeance, and her destiny, would be complete.

  The iron door of her spellcasting chamber flew open with a boom, shattering her pleasant reverie. She scowled, snapping shut the memory box. A cruel light shone in her dark eyes. Yes, she would have her revenge, and she would become a deity. This minor setback at the temple meant nothing at all. But first she had some tedious business to take care of.

  “We have dealt the imbecile clerics of Tyr a blow they will not soon forget, Sirana!” a voice thundered.

  Slayer. The abishai strutted into her chamber, displaying dagger-sharp fangs. Several roaches scuttled about in terror. Unlike Slayer, they possessed an inkling of what was going to happen.

  The massive fiend stood before Sirana’s chair, breath reeking, the veins in its membranous wings pulsing with black blood.

  “It was a glorious battle,” Slayer snarled arrogantly. “The morons of Tyr will never stand another assault.”

  “Is that so?” Sirana crooned. “And what do we have left to assault them with, Slayer? An army of cockroaches?” She flung a small crimson ball of energy at one of the insects crawling by. When the smoke cleared, all that remained was a scorched spot on the stone floor.

  Slayer shrugged massive shoulders. “They couldn’t prove any worse in battle than your spinagons, mistress. Not that your army of thieves was much better. Despite their ineptitude, I almost got my hands on The Oracle of Strife. Then a blasted paladin I had set ablaze had the gall to collapse on the book. It was ashes before I could blink. Your idiot spinagons should have stopped him, but they had all perished at the hands of an elven illusionist.” The fiend’s scarlet eyes glowed hotly. “You didn’t tell me there would be a mage in the temple, mistress. Tch, tch! You should be grateful I am still alive to serve you.”

  A smile coiled itself about Sirana’s lips like a small ruby serpent. “Indeed, abishai, I am exceedingly grateful. An
d I feel I should grant you a reward for your accomplishments.”

  She lifted a hand. Slayer’s eyes flared suspiciously. Black flames encircled the fiend’s body. Layer after layer of magical protections wove themselves about the abishai. The fiend glared at its mistress smugly. It had nothing to fear from the half-breed daughter of a lowly erinyes.

  “You dare to raise a hand against me?” Slayer snarled. Drool flew from the abishai’s maw, pitting the stone floor where it splattered. “I am a prince among fiends. Your mother’s kind are insects to me, and your father’s most powerful spells could not so much have scratched my defenses. You summoned me into this world, Sirana, but do not for a moment believe that you will be able to hurt me.”

  Sirana feigned an impressed look. “I have misjudged you, great abishai,” she simpered. She fell to her knees before the fiend’s clawed feet, bowing her head submissively. “Truly I am not worthy of being called mistress by one so mighty as yourself.”

  Slayer let out a deep, rumbling laugh. “Well, this is more appropriate, erinyes-spawn.”

  Abruptly Sirana stood up, a vicious smile on her beautiful face. Slayer stared at her, too late noticing the rune she had drawn upon the floor while she knelt.

  The rune spewed forth a white-hot funnel of sparks.

  “What is this?” the abishai hissed as the sparks covered its body. The fiend tried to bat them away, but the sparks seared its scaly flesh with pain wherever they touched. Black flames flared to protect Slayer, but the sparks sent by Sirana spun faster and faster. The abishai’s aura of protection shattered.

  “No!” Slayer screamed. “This cannot be!”

  Sirana watched as the sparks adhered to Slayer’s skin. They covered the fiend, consumed it.

  “But I am a prince of fiends!”

  The abishai writhed like a skewered lizard, its entire form burning with magic, its body lost in the maelstrom of sparks. The tornadolike magic whirled faster and faster. Then Slayer began to shrink, melting into the rune on the floor. One last wall of fury echoed around the chamber, then the tornado was sucked down into the rune that had spawned it.