by Ed Greenwood
Am I going to see some magic, human? Are you going to live?
[silence]
bah. Show me the rest. [growl]
Standing in her own familiar spell chamber, naked and filthy, bereft of apprentice and much magic, Laeral of Loudwater smiled wryly.
"Of Art gain great sight, wise beyond any mage," the verse had run. It had spoken truth; she'd gained great sight, indeed-of what unchecked power and fanatical mastery of Art did to archmages.
Laeral sighed and carelessly tossed her bundle (what was left of her robes, tied as a sack around the scraps of magic she'd scavenged) across the room.
Right now, the most important goal of her life lay downstairs, at the bottom of her garden: the stream where she could wash off the dust, din, bone splinters, and the gods-alone-knew-what-else was caked all over her, stuck to Thalon's gluelike anmdoon sauce.
Laeral went down the stairs to the landing where her cloaks hung. She brushed past them to a littered desk whose pigeonholes held dusty scrolls written years before. She took out one she'd never expected to need and read it as she went slowly down another flight of stairs to the garden door.
The scroll melted away between her fingertips, and the dancing lights it conjured gave Laeral light enough to bathe by. She whispered the word that unlocked the door and went out into the night with a decanter of wine to wash away the oily sauce. Cradling it she dove headlong into the stream.
She'd have to find another apprentice tomorrow… where was that list Orliph of the Harpers had left her? There'd been a good dozen names on it, some of them interesting.
Oh, yes. She snapped her fingers, and out of the night sky above her a scroll arrowed down, unfolded itself gracefully above her nose, and angled itself to catch the radiance of the gently drifting globes of light around her.
Laeral scrubbed and stretched in the cool water, making small murmuring sounds of contentment as the stickiness left her. Tossing back her wet hair, she peered at the list.
Cold fear made its slow way up her spine, crawling like one of the bony claws of the archmage's tower. The list had held almost twenty names, she was sure. Now there was only one, written in flowing, darkly bold and fresh script: "Thalon."
Laeral curled her lip. Enough. That throne was going to have to go. Tomorrow.
Hah. You deny me once more. The promise of magic, spells waved before me-and then, no doing and crafting and viewing. Enough of other folk. You taught magic to many, and I know mystra watched over your doing so more than once.
Let 'us see what she saw….
[images drifting, then flashing up and aside, flung away in the drive to go deeper…]
***
The abishai squatted on the sharp-spiked rocks that ringed the hollow, guarding the whorlspell.This one had not whirled and spit for long.The banners on their spears, proclaiming this hollow the territory of Great Tiamat the Many-Headed, were still new. Most of the abishai faced outward, glaring across the smoking ridges in a search for the trouble they knew would come. Only a few of the largest, eldest redhides amongst them looked inward, at the spinning chaos of the whorlspell.
The "eyes of Hell," some called them.They were, in truth, more like blindly snatching claws, scooping up creatures, gems, things of magic, water, or whatever the devil slain in the spell casting had desired most. Whorlspells grabbed things from far worlds and spewed them into Hell. They fed Avernus and gave it a constant source of entertainment- and problems. Magics unheard-of and undefended against came through all too often, and betimes creatures that could slay as easily as they were slain…
This one had been sporadically spewing forth bleating, wild-eyed sheep and wet, shining fish ever since its discovery. The former were easily neck-wrung ere they could scramble away, though the guardians let the occasional one run about for a little sport. This wasn't going to be one of those whorls that spewed forth crumbling stone, all manner of strange decaying things, and lots of magic that had to be warily watched.
Some of the redhides almost desired a little danger. Even gutting sheep in ever-more cruel ways loses its delight after a while.
They were not expecting the whorl to spit a bright comet of blue-white flame into the air-still less, at the head of it, a human female with eyes like two black coals and hair like silver flame.
The Simbul knew her wands-sticks of wood, after all, amid the searing smoke and wandering fireballs of Avernus-wouldn't last long. She snatched and fired, snatched and fired, in a bright spellweb that left each weapon floating and spitting death after she'd let go of it to snatch another. Abishai exploded into shreds and gobbets before the guardians of the whorl knew what it had brought them. Their slayer was away, flying low across the trembling, rocky ground in a conjured shroud of smoke. Behind her, abishai remains began to spatter back down on the rocks amid the flaming remnants of a few banners.
El! My love, where are you?
[wordless reply, warning of being devil-ridden, diabolic awareness catching fire and sweeping around to look, contact broken]
Somewhere in that direction! Stealth was for others. Even the Simbul would find the whelmed armies of Hell a little warm for her liking. After all, she was but an ember blown from the inferno that was Mystra, and even the Lady had been forced to retreat. Strike swift and hard was both the Simbul's best road and the one that suited her.
Balls of flame flashed and arced in the distance, bright sparks against a red and starless sky. Something that might have been a dragon fluttered clumsily down behind one peak as she shot a glance in its direction.
The ground fell away into a vast, sharp-walled chasm. Into that gorge, spinagons flew as last as their tattered wings could bear them, fleeing a hunting pack of black abishai.
Sinuous tails snaked, wings beat, and talons snatched. The Simbul crashed through the heart of them without slowing, blasting anything in her path into writhing, cartwheeling agony. The wake of seared and sizzling fiends was promptly torn apart by other devils.
The vinegar tang of abishai bodies and the sulfurous reek of devil-blood were strong around her as she stormed up and over a line of clawlike crags. larger devils stood on a pinnacle above the tortured land-tall and terrible baatezu with their folded bat-wings arching high above diem. They took wing as they saw her, grinning and hooting in anticipation. The mightiest of them surged to make the first and most satisfying strike against her.
The Witch-Queen never slowed, racing on as the pit fiend soared to meet her. Its great wings blotted out the sky ahead.
Its mighty arms spread, and its fangs bared in delighted laughter. She hurled a spell in front of her-a bright burst of lightning that raked its chest like the tails of a whip- and let it bellow mirth at her feeble magic.
It was still laughing when the claws of her will tore it apart, flinging its jawbone into the face of one startled cor-nugon and its skull into the snarling maw of another.
"I'd love to stay" the Simbul snarled to the winds as she plunged on, the hot blood of her foe settling on her in a stinging cloud, "but I'm busy just now. Perhaps another time… soon."
She sent forth another mind-touch… and found both her beloved and the dark fury of an archdevil awaiting her. She broke the contact before his mind bolt could do more than leap toward her. Twisting in the air, the Simbul flung herself over on her back in a sharp turn that would bring her to where Elminster was being held.
If she tore through the smoking stink of Hell just a little faster, she might even reach him in time…
***
not good!
Nergal broke his hold on Elminster's mind, leaving his captive to blink and whimper in the sudden din and reek of Avernus. He lifted his head to peer across the blood-red sky.
"She comes" he snarled, "and Orochal didn't even slow her. What manner of woman d'you lie with, wizard, that she can tear apart pit fiends without even slowing?"
The wormlike thing that was Elminster made no reply but a wet, bubbling moan. Nergal glared down at it for a moment, and then b
ack up at a small darkness that was streaking across the sky, racing nearer… and nearer….
Cursing, Nergal lifted taloned hands and wove a spell mighty enough to leave him trembling-or rather, several spells spun together. It cost him a lot of his strength and something precious that he'd been saving for a long time-a sphere of fused rock crystal that held a drop of blood from a certain other devil.
Yet Nergal was smiling through the brimstone burst. His magic snatched him away to another comer of Avernus. At the same time it plucked Elminster Auraar elsewhere, into the very lap of the devil whose blood he'd been keeping safe.
Two breaths later, the Simbul came down through the sky like an Avernan fireball, spitting lightning before her onto the bare rocks where her foe had been.
They triggered a blast that should have slain her-and did hurl her back across the sky.
She smiled grimly through that battering. She knew El's captor had hurled her beloved in one direction while taking himself to safety in another. She little cared. The scaly skin of this archdevil or that was of no interest to her. Avenging torment was a task for another day. She was here to bring the Old Mage home.
Her mind seeking was fleeting, this time-he was over there. Powering herself out of her tumble, heedless of the magic she spent in doing so, the Witch-Queen of Aglarond turned in the air and raced off in another direction.
All over Avernus, devils dropped whatever they were doing and scrambled to get a look at this new entertainment.
***
Tasnya arched over her bed of blood. She was a dark and sinuous thing of many spine-studded breasts. The abishai that wrestled her screamed as her long, curving spines transfixed them. The sound rose in a keening music that made drinking their blood all the more pleasant.
"Well, well'Tasnya purred,"what have we here?"
The helpless thing that Nergal had been amusing himself with arrived suddenly. It was but a passing distraction. She spell-swept it aside to smash bloodily against distant rocks. Nergal no doubt had laid spying or explosive magic on the thing.
Moments later, a bolt of otherworldly fire with a furious archmage in it streaked across the sky.
Tasnya of the Torments rolled over. Writhing, screaming abishai covered her like a grotesque, blood-dripping cloak. She lifted a lazy hand to trace a spell that called on the blood around her, sending forth bloodfire in a hungry arm.
It swept up to snatch the onrushing human-and it tightened into a coiling, shrinking spiral.
The Simbul swerved to avoid it-and then swerved again.
Tasnya smiled like a hungry wolf and sent a careful spell right at the intruder's face.
It met and shocked back from a spell coming the other way. Lightning clawed.The ground shook. Bloodfire lances flew in all directions, impaling abishai and Nergal's pet.
Tasnya lifted an eyebrow and sat up smoothly in the gore. She awaited her foe with lengthening, spearlike spines. No spell could get through her own curtain of magic.The bloodfire wrapped her foe in a shrinking cone that would keep her from getting away. As their spells wrestled, it would be Tasnya "s Hell-spawned body against the frail, onrushing human.
"Breast to breast, bite to bite, claw to claw," she murmured eagerly, anticipating much amusement-and a lot of magic-soon to come.
The very air roared as the Simbul of Aglarond came racing down at the waiting, gloating archdevil. Spell after spell snarled and contended around her, caught up in the archdevil's own awakening magic. Flames of wet, glistening blood roared around her, rising into a tunnel, forcing her down, down toward waiting spines….
Whispering frantically, the fiirious sorceress did the only thing she could. Heedless of torn nails and bleeding fingers, she unbuckled and unsnapped and tore off armor for all she was worth. Metal sang and shrieked off metal as she spell-thrust greaves and plates and all in front of her, into a shifting shield. A grinding chaos of curved metal hurtled toward waiting spines, glowing with the spells the Simbul was still hissing when the crash came.
The sorceress screamed.A spine as thick as she burst up through the crashing steel and laid open her side. Nude and blood-drenched, she crashed into rock after hard rock after harder boulder. She bounced and rolled with clenched teeth. The last of her spells collapsed, and the burning blood sent by her foe ate its sizzling way into the rocks all around her.
Behind her, the archdevil had stopped screaming. There was nothing left of it but flames in a pool of scorched gore. The sticky, blackened hollow of bone and stone was still being hacked at by the pieces of armor she'd animated into a score of slicing, chopping, stabbing blades. Vicious steel rang tirelessly on unfeeling stone.
"Gone elsewhere to rise again, if it knew spellcraft that strong," the Simbul muttered, ignoring the pain of her burns. Elminster would doubtless need the amulets at her throat and beneath her breasts far more than she did, if he-
— was anywhere to be seen.There was nothing on the rocks where he'd been but a dark splash of blood. Maggots squirmed eagerly to roll in it.
The Simbul sighed. "See Hell in an afternoon, and make sure lots of folk remember your visit."
Wearily, the boldest flying devils began to circle in the distance where they could see the battlefield.
The Simbul spun a spell that would bring her armor of tirelessly hacking blades back to her. Perhaps she could hang them around her, in a forest of moving, hostile steel, and fly on awaiting her turn to embrace foes.
On the other hand, she was in no hurry to end up as a blackened pool of blood enlivened by a few flames. The Simbul looked around at the harsh peaks and the bat-winged devils perching in long lines atop them.
"Asmodeus," she told the empty air, "perhaps we could bargain. You give me the man I came for-alive, untainted, and unharmed-and I'll slaughter whichever dozen arch-devils you'd like removed from the scene. Have we a deal?"
The sound that raced through the rocks under her bare and bloody feet seemed a thunderous snort of amusement. When it reached the peaks around her, the hundreds of devils took wing in frightened unison, flapping frantically away in all directions.
Alone in Hell, the Simbul gathered her magic and her garments once more about her. "Well," she muttered with a shrug, as she knelt to pick up a twisted shard of armor plate,"if you should change your mind…"
***
Ho! Ho! Quite a lady lover you've got there, little worm.
I'u. Give you to another unfriend of mine soon.. Just as soon as i get well down into these juicy memories here….
[scream] hah! Not so much fun taunting me now, eh? Am i finally getting close to something you'd rather i not have? Dear, dear…
[roaring bellows of diabolic laughter]
Chapter Eighteen
HELL RISING
The spinagon toppled off the ridge, its head an empty, burnt husk. Smoke streamed from the sockets that had held its eyes. Nergal wanted no trail left back to him, and the work of his coerced spy was done.
It had watched the pit fiend that was not a pit fiend race past like a dark fireball-wings folded behind it, unused.The Simbul cared about hiding her armor of whirling blades but did not care that there was something odd about the shape she'd assumed. If wandering abishai drew back from attacking the pit fiend that was somehow not a pit fiend, that was enough.
She was on her way to strike at the outcast devil Harhoring-who had unwittingly received the unwilling bundle that was Elminster. Nergal had forced his mind-captive into the shape of an old, scorched devil's thighbone, to better hide the wizard in the huge bone pit that Harhoring called home. The future Lord of All Hell hadn't wanted the Lord of Bones noticing the gift while he was still linked to Elminster's mind.
Snarling, Nergal wondered not for the first time just why he was wasting his time trying to glean useful memories from the wizard. Again he'd been shown useless kindnesses to nobodies, not the secrets of wielding great magic. Did the human have an endless supply of useless remembrances?
Just how long could one mortal keep
a devil dancing?
Thrice, now, Nergal had tried to drive hard toward a memory-any memory-of Elminster actually casting a spell, teaching or being taught magic, or storing or hiding anything enchanted. The human's mind had crumbled, yes, collapsing as it should before his fury… and yet, somehow, when he ceased charging, confident he'd finally seized on something-he found himself empty-handed once more. How did the human do it? He was puny in body, had no hidden magic except the silver fire lurking somewhere inside him, had been torn apart and healed any number of times now, and involuntarily transformed even more often- Still he fought, subtly, deep in the very mind that Nergal was tramping around. Every memory yielded was lost to the man-yet he joked, he made sarcastic comments… he was still sane.
Sane at least as far as an archdevil could tell about a human-
Fires take all, he was not going to give up. After all this work, to end up with nothing. He was going to take this Elminster's mind apart memory by memory, for all the wearying years this old wizard had managed to live, and he was going to find that magic. Magic to make Nergal a lord of Hell at last.
Let the Simbul slay his rivals, one after another, while a fresh mindworm burrowed into her beloved. She'd be going to a lot of work to rescue a drooling husk.
Nergal cast the spell carefully, letting the old one crumble only an instant before he began. He must unerringly find Elminster again without alerting either the human sorceress or Harhoring.
He drew in a deep sigh of relief when the familiar vaulted darkness loomed in his mind once more. He was back inside Elminster's mind… and never noticed that his host had used silver fire in a wild frenzy of healing, in the brief time he'd not been riding the wizard's mind. At least physically, El was whole-if weak and weary- once more.