Elminster in Hell

Chapter Nineteen

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 might 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, motion-" less 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 j more intently into the depths of her spell-spun sphere.

Shadows swirled in the heart of the sphere. Once more I 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 weav-ings 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 — j was very cold and hard. It slid through her and out her fj 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 J 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 asij flames roared up in a thunderous column, shaking the stony ground. Heat forced the Simbul a few hasty paces:1 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, Jj 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.J them seemed in distress, convulsing and growing as it came. Its legs lengthened into three serpent tails. Its body 'J 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 ' j for a moment, caught in those gazes. It stiffened, turning dark… and began the slow, stony fall to a shattered death ' J 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 Zhen- | tarim 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.

He never saw the dragon that appeared in the air behind him. It spread jaws and clamped down, sharp fangs shearing away all of Garauder's hates and schemes in blood-drenched oblivion.

Gasping wearily, the Simbul rode the dragon with her will. She bade it smash through the erinyes thrice, then land and roll crushingly over the wounded, shrieking survivors. A hamatula staggered sightlessly past. Lemures squelched and died under the rolling dragon.

The Witch-Queen of Aglarond took stock of her tattered remnants of magic. She was too weak to fight on and survive.

Mystra defend thee, El.

There was no reply to her thought but a pain-laced, feeble flickering-flashing out, just for a moment, from behind a dark, fell awareness. She knew that mind-touch.

Despite herself, tears rose and broke over Alassra Silver-hand's iron will.

"Elminster!" she shouted through tears of pain and rage. "Hold on, love! I'll be back!"

The spell that would spin her back out of Avernus took hold. Mystra's strength cleft a road where the spells of mere mages could not.

With her last magic, the Simbul snatched the dragon and the surviving wizard back out of Hell. She returned them whence she'd brought them.They did not deserve to die here, trapped and in torment. They did not deserve Elminster's fate.

Hah! So much for her loyalty-and your hope! Your little bitch-queen's gone, fled away back to the lands of bright day, leaving her little elminster here in torment.

You're going to break, mage.

You're going to show me everything you know and remember, and beg me for the release of death. You're going to plead for my mercy, plead in vain, knowing always that negal is your doom!

[wild, diabolic laughter]

In the meantime, human, show me some magic-something worthwhile-or i'll eat a limb or two off you right now, keeping you aware and in full pain throughout! Show me!

Aye, but this will be a long showing.Ye must be patient and see all, so as to understand whatye're seeing….

Yes, yes. I understand all too well that again and again you've tricked and cheated me, promising great revelations of where magic is hidden and how to cast this or unleash that… Only to show me all sorts of romance and moral preaching and other useless dross. Give me magic, and live- cheat me again, and die. Simple enough?

Indeed. Let us begin, then, when night comes to Tamaeril.

Whenever. Just choose the right road for once, mage: your most recent meaningful meeting with Mystra, remember. It's your last chance.

[images spiraling, flashing up to spread glory before the mind's eye]

The little pattern of twinkling lights shifted to hang beside his right cheek. "I confess you make me more than a little uncomfortable, Elminster," Mystra said.

"I can tell," the Old Mage said, not slowing in his magical flight. "Please, Lady, set aside all hesitancy. Have no worry for my emotions-speak freely. Ye cannot offend me."

The rushing lights drifted a little nearer and seemed to sigh. "Well, then. You are the lover of she who held this name and power before me. She intended you to be my guide and teacher, and you have been. Admirably. The proud, willful, and empty-headed Midnight is no more."

The lights were all around his head now, brushing his skin with what felt like dozens of soft, swift caresses. 'Yet-you trouble me, awe me… frighten me. Repel me, a little. I've little desire to shape a body and join with you, as she often did. I've done it, yes, but behind the thrill is the feeling of her watching me and judging. Your watching me and judging. Elminster, old and wise in her service and with her memories.

"The old ways awaken a restlessness in me. The Weave stirs, and other magic crawls around and within Toril. I am not the old Mystra. I am… humbled by what you have done for me and for she who came before me-and when you seem in danger, she awakes within me, and I desire you and rush to protect you and hold you more precious than all others. I want you always to be my trusted servant-more than that, my friend. Yet I can see how twisted you've become in the service of Mystra, down the centuries. Trust in you comes hard to me. It would be easier, I think, if I stripped away all of the great secrets you hold, all the memories of my power. No one else could learn them from you in time to come, and I'd not feel you were judging me disapprovingly. I–I must do this."

There was silence for a moment, but for the wind whistling past. She spoke again, as anxious as a mother who knows her words wound a favored child. "How does hearing this make you feel?"

Elminster stared into the night sky ahead of him and said, "A little sad. Relieved more than that. Not angry, nor unwilling. I swore to serve Mystra long, long ago when I could have become king in Athalantar. I am nothing if I break my oath. I have had centuries more to taste and smell and see and do than most humans, and regret none of it. If your need or even whim snuffs out my existence in a moment, or changes me to a stone to spend the centuries to come, I am content. If taking memories gladdens you, it pleases me to yield them. I will do whatever you desire, eagerly, and with love."

He smiled. "So do your best to me, Lady. You always have."

He'd never heard a swarm of enchanted motes of light weep before, but then, most wizards never do.