by Ed Greenwood
Helpless the man hung in the air above them, masked no longer. Spread-eagled and furious, frozen in the grip of Eiminster's spells, he was running out of obscenities to spit down at them.
That seemed almost fair, because fewer and fewer questions were occurring to those below. His answers thus far-most given proudly-revealed him to be Amril Zoar, of the noble family exiled from Waterdeep long, long ago. He'd armed himself to destroy all the lords of the city with the spells and an enchanted sword he'd gained from a man who bore a silver harp badge, and he wondered how to reach them ere they gathered together to hunt him down.
For years he'd schemed and brooded until by chance his spies found a book. It turned out to be a lost tome of Ahghairon, the "Founder of Waterdeep," that detailed how to create "ring of fire" gates. These short-lived gates were but echoes of certain ancient, long-hidden portals moved into the cellars of early Waterdeep by Halaster Blackcloak. Echo gates could be created only within a short distance of the ancient portals, but-Mirt's eyes gleamed at this news-they could bypass many modern barriers and defensive enchantments. Once a master of echo gates, Amril had taken his tutor's harp badge as his own and begun slaying lords of Waterdeep.
Mirt peered up at the floating man and said grimly, “Right. Enough. Kill him. We can spell-talk to his corpse about his kin and kill them, too."
"No!" a voice rapped out from behind him. Storm's face was pale, but she strode forward as swiftly and smoothly as if she'd never felt the bite of cold steel. "I must know more of the man with the silver harp, who taught this Amril magic!"
Elminster looked up. "What happened to your tutor, and who was he?"
Amril Zoar glared down at him and said bitterly, "I never knew his name. He was killed by a knight of Waterdeep, who came seeking my father's death-and mine. He found my father's, but my tutor bought my life with his own."
Elminster let his hand fall to his side, and the spread-eagled noble sank, still spellbound and motionless, to hang a few feet off the dusty stone floor.
Mirt stepped forward in grim silence, axe in hand, and looked to Piergeiron.
The First Lord nodded. "For Waterdeep, then. For Tamaeril, and Resengar," he intoned.
The axe swept up, glittering.
A leather-clad form sprang in front of Mirt, bare hands raised. "No!" Storm protested. There were tears in her eyes. "Do not kill this man. His cause was just in his eyes-and his task nigh impossible, for one alone, I would have him for the Harpers."
Mirt frowned at her. His gaze strayed to Amril's sword, still lying in a dark pool of Storm's blood, and then back to the Bard of Shadowdale. "Why?" he asked bluntly.
"He saw his cause as just and did what he thought he had to," Storm replied. "Who are we to think ourselves better than he?"
Mitt's frown grew. Something that might have been a growl stirred deep in his throat-then, slowly, he stepped back, lowering his axe, and bowed to Storm.
"Methinks yon youngling enjoys slaying overmuch, Lady," he said darkly, "but enough. I grow sick of killings. Mind you get that book of Ahghairon's from him, though… I don't want his cousin or squire or trained dog coming through a gate beside my bed in the midst of my snoring time, one or two nights from now!"
Storm nodded. "If he cannot or will not change his ways," she said softly, "he ivill find death. At my hands."
"So be it," Piergeiron said, almost wearily. "Just take him far from Waterdeep." He looked down at what he was turning over and over in his fingers, as if seeing it for the first time. "A silver harp," he said thoughtfully. "I thought the badge of the Harpers was a silver moon and a silver harp."
"The silver moon was my mother's badge… her kin came from the city of Silverymoon," Storm said softly. "But Harpers have a better answer. Mirt?"
Mirt smiled. He put his arm around Asper and growled, "The harp is the Harper. The moon need not be part of the badge-for as the motto says: Harpers hunt by moonlight."
So we see some whispers of magic, but hardly the silver fire i seek ok anything i can seize and make use or i weary of lashing you, idiot wizard-so i'll do nothing to you, now try not to fool yourself into thinking i'll forget this and that you're getting away with something.
You'll learn differently soon enough.
Mirt found himself blinking at the ceiling, all silver in moonlight. "No!" he gasped hoarsely. "Gods, no!"
He was still dressed. The hilt of his sword was ready under his clenched hand. Amril Zoar's blade dripped with Storm's gore… He'd half forgotten the details, but they came flooding back, with a face behind them: Elminster. Or rather, what was left of Elminster.
A desperate, wavering mind, less than it had been, pleading, and in a ruined body… in a stinking stony waste under' a blood-red sky. Avernus. It had to be.
"When I'm ready to look for a place to die," Mirt told his sword as he drew it and watched the moonlight gleam along its bright length,"Hell will not be where I start. Just so long as that's clear."
With a grunt he rolled off the bed, stamped his feet to settle them in his boots, and set off down the passage. This might be one walk he didn't come back from, and he was j damned if he was going to leave before he saw-
Asper, a pale flame in the gloom, burst bare out of her bedchamber. Her hair was wild. She held a sword in one hand and boots in the other. "Thieves?" she gasped, almost falling in her haste to bar his way. "Lord work?"
"Worse than that, lass. Elminster needs me."
"Elminster? Why?"
"Because he's trapped and in torment in Hell," the Old Wolf growled. "Where I dare not go."
"No, Mirt," Asper cried. Her face went bone-white. "Not to Hell! You'll never even get near him before the devils get their talons on you, and you'll be-you'll be-"
She flung away her boots and clutched his arm. "No friend is worth dying for-when your death isn't going to help him!"
Mirt scowled at her, eyes gleaming like two old torches. He tried, and failed, to shake off her grip. Her fingers were like claws. "Aye, true enough-and with Khelben and Laeral gone off the gods alone know where, that leaves me just one weapon swift to my hand that's sharp enough to hew down devils."
Asper's face was wet with tears. "What?"
Mirt set his jaw, freed himself from her hand, and strode toward the stairs, hefting his sword. "Halaster Blackcloak. I have to find him, down in Undermountain, and-ha-convince him to fight his way into Hell and bring Elminster back here to me. Without delay, so he might just still be alive when Halaster gets there." He chuckled, a dry, terrible sound.
"Mirt, no!” Asper almost screamed. She gnawed at her knuckles and sobbed."You can't! He's mad! You-"
"— Have to," he finished her sentence for her, softly. "For-live or die this night-if I fail my best and oldest friends, what am I? And what have I lived for?"
Chapter Eleven
OLD DEVILS, NEW TRICKS
Bare, thorny branches of stunted trees stabbed like despairing fingers into the blood-red sky. Elminster Aumar sighed at them. Well, at least he could move, seeing new sights on the probably short remainder of his journey toward death. Such mobility afforded him a deep and abiding consolation, of course.
El crawled forward on raw, bleeding knees, his body bristling with greasy, green-black spines that he hoped looked half as unappetizing to devils as they looked to him. He tried not to think of the trail of gore he must be leaving. Twice now, he'd had to turn and roll over to transfix and slay maggots nipping at his feet, and he'd lost count of the times he'd retched and spewed in helpless nausea at the sights and sounds all around.
Devils were clawing and disfiguring each other overhead right now, slitting eyes and tugging out entrails with eager savagery, spattering the rocks below with thankful lack of attention. Elminster crawled on, smiling inwardly at his looks. Well, he'd been a raven-haired, silken-hipped lass when that wasn't his true shape, either, so he hadn't much cause for complaint. Not that rocks Listened to the complaints of broken archmages any more than they heeded the curses of
other beings.
The ground trembled in the throes of a violent underground explosion. El tried not to think of what death traps caverns must become at such times. Another snarling fireball crossed the sky.
Sooner or later in this tortured landscape of rock and flame and bitter fumes, where devils roamed in search of too-scarce food or traveled in ruthless patrols-in the distance, a flying phalanx of abishai swooped in unison to spear squalling nupperibos-his luck would run out.
Sooner. Even as he slipped for the thousandth time and lost his wind in a belly-landing against saw-«dged rocks, a spade-barbed tail rose in front of him. It was glossy-black and as large as his head. The body it was attached to must have been large indeed. El ground his face into the stones a moment before the razor-sharp tail cut across his head. The resounding slap set his skull ringing and drove him into a wavering upright posture. It had sliced open his scalp far enough back for his own blood not to blind him with its first drenching flood.
What a stroke of luck, indeed. With that sarcastic thought held in the forefront of his mind to keep Nergal from noticing what he was doing, El leaked a tiny amount of silver fire slowly out to stanch the bleeding. He lifted his head to see what was attacking him.
"Well," purred what could only be another outcast arch-devil. It reared up from the rocks in front of him. "What have we here?"
Three long, sinuous serpent tails rose from where they coiled around and amid rocks, to meet in an obsidian-hued body that had the shape of a lush human female torso.
From the shoulders spread bat wings, dark beneath and ruby-red on their sleek outer surfaces. A forked-tongued and horned head swayed on the end of a neck that was too long, but otherwise looked both human and attractive. Unfortunately, the fingers extending in his direction ended in hooked, hawklike talons. Each was as long as Elminster's arms.
Three barbed tails flipped up to slap the rocks in unison and propel the devil in an undulating charge. The swaying head came within a foot of Elminster's own. Ale-brown eyes with flames flickering in their depths stared hard into blue-gray, weary human ones… and beautiful red lips snaked into a smile.
"A spell-twisted human, if I'm not mistaken… transformed why? I'd best see just who you are before I cook you for dinner or remake you into a more pleasant shape for my own amuse-"
The serpent-devil stiffened and hissed, rustling her wings with a single, convulsive shudder. She sent a mind-lance into Elminster… and found Nergal.
[ruby sun, blossoming and widening, serpentine awareness questing forth]
[tentacled giant turning to face the intrusion, gathering ominous strength]
"Ho-ho, a wizard of great power… memories aplenty here, both entertainment and something I could use, if I can but find the right remembrance… but hold: Here's a taint that's somehow famili-"
Malachladra!
"Nergal!"
Die, serpent-bitch!
"Your turn to feed worms, Lord Most High of Nothing!”
[mind bolt, turned aside, raw agony, Elminster screaming as walls smash down, ceilings fall, chambers collapse… mental arrows, leaping one two three, struck aside and hurled back in bright array… El still screaming]
"Human, I am Malachlabra, Duchess of Hell and daughter of Dispater! Cleave to me, and I'll rid your mind of this tentacled brute!"
[mind bolt strikes mind bolt, great flash, long despairing shriek of agony, El writhing as fires are hurled back and it forth in his burning mind]
"Human, I… ah, your name is-Elminster! Elmins Aumar, cleave to me!”
Abishai veered away, spitting and shouting, as the serpent-devil reared up and spat ribbons of fire far across Avernus. She drove one long, cruel talon into the ungainly creature at her feet. His raw screams died into frothy barking, and even maggots shrank away from the thing of churning flesh, erupting limbs, and wetly jetting gases.
Far away, the ground shook. Malachlabra shouted in triumph. She was still laughing, raised upright into a sky she; was raking with her talons, when Nergal's reply came down upon her.
The red air shimmered, bled purple, and rolled back for an instant. It vomited huge purple spheres of roaring, trembling flame on all sides of the serpent-devil.
Then, of course, they exploded.
Convulsing talons whipped and cartwheeled past' the ropy thing that was Elminster. Stones lashed at him, and he was drenched with she-devil gore. Torn and gutted lengths of serpent danced in macabre trembling long after they'd fallen among far stones. Where Malachlabra had been there was nothing but smoking, fresh-tumbled rocks-and black and crimson slime spattered on the stones.
All at once, as Nergal's laughter thundered through Elminster's mind, the thing of teeth and odd-shaped limbs and lumpy bodies shuddered. It ceased its shape-shifting chaos. Arching and snuffling, the transformed wizard writhed on blood-spattered rocks. Maggots reared up hungrily, yellow-white and glistening with slime. El, adrift in blood-shadows of suffering, never felt their gnawing.
So you can change shape at will, little man? Well, well. another secret it's time you yeilded to me. I'll Have All of them in the end, you know-but by the freezing styx, you make it hard work, tearing every last one out of you!
[Through rivers of blood, the tentacled creature shoulders fearlessly forward. Through many dark and shattered rooms, he seeks bright memories of shapeshifting.]
Silver fire threaded out, oh-so-subtly-mere droplets where rushing floods were needed. Face twisted in pain, Elminster Aumar writhed on the ground, slapping at maggots. As Nergal's thought bored on, probing ever deeper into El, the long and fissured torso dwindled. Its limbs became human arms again.
El groaned and let a little wash of silver fire sear the maggots gnawing him. They fell away, slain instantly. He collapsed again with a groan. Let Nergal think the shape-shifting was my doing and not Malacblabra's. Anything to keep him from noticing the fire…
[A great horned head looks sharply this way and that as it presses on through a mind where red rivers recede. Tentacles trail through the gore as it paces and peers.]
"Die, evil mage!" Cruel spears thrust like tongues of flame into his back. El snarls a curse that turns into a helpless spewing of blood. Spear points transfix him. They shove him forward, between the merlons, to plunge out into emptiness and down, down toward the stinking moat.
There are ragged cheers as he plummets, but they become shouts of alarm ere he reaches the ground. That landing will come somewhere else.
The ring on his finger has done its work. His very bones are rubber! His skin itches, his body feels wet and empty and sick… and it's flowing, changing as he struggles for breath. He watches the ground and the scum-cloaked water hurl itself up to meet him….
Less than the height of a man away from smashing into that water, the black-robed body becomes a black star. The burst of dark radiance freezes for a moment. The watching crowds murmur. It drifts sideways in the breeze ere it winks out and is gone….
***
Black, stinking pools bubble with sulfurous stinks. Cruel wasps alight on the heads of submerged, spellbound captives and thrust home their long stingers, trading venom for blood. The thrashing, foaming victims drown.
A sudden whirlpool pierces those waters. It turns up gigantic ribcages black with slime, and odd-shaped, unidentified things that are flung far and wide from the muck. At the heart of that whirlpool rises a cloud of red and black. It spins swiftly at first and then more slowly, to stand at last, revealed as-
"Malachlabra, Duchess of Hell and daughter of Dispater," murmured the watching Tasnya. She banished her scrying image with a lazy wave of her hand before the.' distant serpent-devil would have a chance to feel her scrutiny. "You are such a headstrong fool. Almost as bad as Nergal."
She gave her own cleverness a crooked smile and rolled over again to bite out the throat of an erinyes. As the others whimpered and shrank away from the gore-filled bed, the imps hovering above Tasnya never paused in their work, flogging her just the way she'd comm
anded, with the little barbed whips she'd fashioned. By the Nine, but she loved pain.
***
Again you try to dupe me, human! Just now stupid do you think i am?
[silence]
Yes, you'd better keep silent, about now. Fire and blood, how have you ever found anything in this wallow-pit you call a mind? Every link has a side trail, every memory two ok three overlapping it, and you dance in front of me like a little yapping imp, thrusting one thing into my face when i seek another! When i've got your secrets at last, i'm going to take great pleasure in your slow, painful death. I'm going to tear tender organs off you and out of you that you never knew you had!
[silence tinged with weary amusement]
Yes, i know you sneer at devils for their unsubtle cruelties, little human worm, but creatures can't sneer when they're too busy screaming…. You'll discover that too! Now, i want to see more memories-so get on with it!
Steaming bowls of soup sat on the weathered kitchen table before them. Hot tankards of cider stood to one side. The two silver-haired women ignored both in favor of chuckling over the latest "Heattsteel" novel out of Sembia.
" 'Eyes flashing,' " a voice on the tremulous edge of helpless laughter announced unsteadily to the world, " 'she flung dweomers that flashed brightly at the otherworldly apparition….' "
The other woman groaned in derisive disgust and fell into helpless gales of laughter a breath behind her sister.
Storm, who held both the book and the current title of Reader Aloud to the Assembled, mastered her mirth first. Tossing long hair back out of her eyes, she eyed her sister's shaking shoulders and said gruffly, "None of that laughing, now-we've an epic to finish!"
" 'A bodice-throbbing saga of broken hearts and blazing spells!' " Sylune quoted with a fresh whoop of laughter. "Wherein boldly thrusting blades strike at the heart of evil, smiting aside chastity belts in the way!"