"Vaguely," she mumbled. Lady Polaris stole a glance at her attendants: soldiers and clerks and court officials to present the truce details. They listened curiously, but looked at ease. Yet to Polaris, the mountaintop seemed suddenly chilly. "Red-haired, as I recall, with a temper to match. Flashy, a fancy for sailors, but competent, so I tolerated her audacity and vulgarities."

"And what became of this Sysquemalyn?" creaked the king. "Might I hire her away? I plan to maintain many homes myself once my conquest is complete."

"Oh, I don't think so ... What did I do with her?" Polaris wasn't even listening to herself, only killing time to fathom this madman's desires and so exploit them. "I discharged her, I believe. No, wait. .."

"You condemned her to h.e.l.l, did you not? Her own personal h.e.l.l, copied and crafted from the nine known levels. You even stripped her skin to make her suffering more acute, her tortures unimaginable."

"Yes, I remember now. One needs to punish servants fully to keep the others from getting airs. But how did you know-"

"Condemned for a year, correct?" The dry voice picked up speed like a sword on a grinding stone. "After which time, you would fetch her out, her punishment complete? Yet how long since you imposed that sentence worse than death?"

Without thinking, Polaris stepped back. The frozen face and dead eyes of the One King looked lethal as a cobra's. She raised a hand to shuffle soldiers before her. "Your Majesty, let not emotion overtake the proceedings. We needs talk-"

"Three years! Three long years!" rasped the king. He leaned forward as it to bite Polaris. "Three years when every day, every hour and every minute was the most exquisite torture! And had Sysquemalyn not escaped, she'd languish there still! Because you didn't care to retrieve her from h.e.l.l!

You forgot her!"

Feet pattered as everyone moved. Soldiers tramped in time to bar the king from the archwizard.

Courtiers surrounded Polaris. Sailors readied the gangplanks of three ships for quick retreat. More hopped out with cutla.s.ses in hand. An admiral in silver braid ordered flags to signal the six hovering ships to land.

Yet the dozen orcs and their One King never stirred. Only now did the king sink black nails into the skin at his temples.

"You forgot Sysquemalyn, Polaris! But she did not forget you!"

With a screech, the disguised Sysquemalyn tore magical flesh from her face to reveal the bald, flinty monster she'd become. Eyes of bitter blue bulged, and the lipless slash of a mouth creaked like a bear trap. "Flashy?" Sysquemalyn shrieked. "Vulgar! I'll make you look like this!"

Polaris snapped spells while courtiers screamed, sailors bawled, and soldiers charged. Sysquemalyn raised clawed arms and brought h.e.l.l to the mountaintop.

Imperial soldiers swung clubs high to batter the fiend. Sysquemalyn gabbled a conjuration like a curse, stabbed fingers at the ground. Instantly it split, a hundred cracks radiating from her scaly feet.

From every crack oozed gallons of black muck that stank like sea mud at low tide. The vile stuff clung to the soldiers' boots, burned through leather like acid. Even steel hobnails melted under the h.e.l.lish stuff, which climbed like poisonous tentacles. As their boots leaked, the putrid gunk burned men and women's flesh like molten lead. Soldiers howled, jumped, landed in the slop so it splashed legs and hands, eating cloth and flesh. Shouts turned to screams. People saw their own bones daubed with blackness as it seared meat. Panicking, some batted at it, found their fingers rotting. Others tried to run, but tortured feet betrayed them and they splashed facedown. Ooze filled mouths, eye sockets, noses, and corroded flesh like melting candle wax.

Caught in the h.e.l.lish tide were the dozen orcs who'd guarded the One King, their lord and master.

They died writhing, seared by acid, suffering inside, knowing they'd been betrayed.

Courtiers stumbled and ran, pushing the amba.s.sador Polaris toward the flying ships. But the lady stood firm. She was horrified and outraged by this base deception. Now she remembered how Sysquemalyn had coveted her power, beauty, and position, and plotted to gain it any way possible.

How Sysquemalyn had insulted her mistress behind her back, then laughed at her own cleverness. That arrogance and presumption had driven Polaris to consign her chamberlain to h.e.l.l. But now the archwizard saw that she'd made a mistake. Better to have killed Sysquemalyn outright, than let her harness the cabalistic conjurations of h.e.l.l.

She'd remedy that mistake immediately. A fiend from h.e.l.l would hate the cold. Polaris shrilled, "By Veridon, feast on this, traitor!"

The air around the monster shimmered, thickened, and frosted, sucking moisture from the air. In seconds the spell formed a block of ice as big as a house around Sysquemalyn. Dead and dying soldiers were crushed as the ice ma.s.s solidified and settled, pressing them deeper into the black ooze.

A grinding like icebergs colliding resounded as ice cracked and refroze. The flint monster was obscured behind an ice wall until she looked like a shadow.

But the ice block didn't last long. The shadow within flitted like a fish under a frozen river. Then, from the depths, a hole bored through the ice, then flashed h.e.l.l-fire that scalded ice to steam. The weeping hole was matched by a second, then a third, until the ice block was shot through, fragile as spun gla.s.s. With a shriek, the trapped flint monster shattered the block. Chunks of ice tumbled, threw sprays of water, spun crazily. Revealed-dripping wet, dark and dangerous as a storm-lashed mountain-was Sysquemalyn.

The monster-mage unleashed more h.e.l.lfire as if hurling hatred from her heart. Snapping an arm, Sysquemalyn flung a flaming gobbet at Polaris that sizzled like a meteor. Only the archwizard's personal shield stopped it a foot from her face. Polaris even flinched as h.e.l.lfire engulfed her, and raised the temperature inside the shield enough to wilt her silver-white hair.

The pool of black ooze, now studded with bones and helmets, caught fire at Sysquemalyn's feet, snapping and gouting around her skinny waist. But a fiend who'd endured real h.e.l.lfire could ignore this pale imitation. With a curse, the monster raised her hands to spread pain and terror and death.

People had panicked at the first sign of trouble, their first impulse to quit the mountaintop. Soldiers and courtiers stampeded aboard the three landed ships. The six hovering ships, unsure how to help, dropped to pick up anyone they could. Sysquemalyn aimed to destroy them all.

Screeching, she windmilled her arm until it caught fire, convulsed in a giant fireball that burned to her armpit. With an oath, she whipped the arm and let the fireball fly. It struck the middle ship's gangway where people mashed to get in. Screams erupted as the h.e.l.lfire ignited hair, clothes, leather, and parchment. The boat caught fire, paint and wood blistering and smoking. Sailors recoiling from the heat screamed and toppled from the upper decks, some crashing their heads on stone, others falling scores of feet down the mountainside. As the fire consumed the magical ship, it lifted, a floating coffin of charred dead and dying that sagged in the air. Its stern crunched on rocks. Flaming, smoking, it tilted, then plunged over the mountainside. A rending crash bespoke death on an outcrop far below.

The fiend struck again and again. Airboats battered by flaming gobbets burned immediately.

Neither water hurled on the fires nor beaten blankets could extinguish it. Any attempt to put it out only spread it further. Two ships tried to rise but crashed. A third, burning from end to end, with flaming sailors spilling like ants, collided with its neighbor and turned that one into a torch as well.

Blinking sweat in her eyes, Lady Polaris cast about, saw only dead as attendants, and sucked wind.

Rarely had she seen such power, and never directed at her. She'd better unleash some awful spell, and soon, or she might actually be harmed. Racking her brain, she mumbled words to a spell read long ago but never uttered, even as her fingers and thumbs, inverted, formed a square to box the monster.

Sysquemalyn spun two fireb.a.l.l.s on her arms, the flames flickering eerily on her granite, mineral- shot hide. Now the monster chirped as a square of blackness appeared under her feet. No, nothingness.

A portal to a negative energy plane. It gaped under her splayed, h.o.r.n.y feet like an open trapdoor that could drop her back into h.e.l.l.

Yet Sysquemalyn had been to h.e.l.l, and the portal did nothing but rob her feet of dweomer. With a harsh croak, she shook off the fireb.a.l.l.s, and called to Polaris. "I can withstand anything, you pathetic b.i.t.c.h! Can you say the same?"

And stepping off the gaping void, she planted her foot against the hole's edge and kicked.

Lady Polaris balked as the fearsome portal skidded across the ground like a dinner plate, aimed straight at her. She barely jigged aside before the cavity sailed by, revolving slowly. Near the edge of the cliff, soldiers racing for an intact ship failed to see the rocketing threat. The portal clipped off their feet as neatly as a spinning saw blade. Men and women fell shrieking and spilling blood. Those who fell on the portal were sucked within, some disappearing, some cut in half to tumble across rocks in red chunks. Traveling on, the portal reached the cliff and winked out.

Lady Polaris stared in disbelief. Sysquemalyn gargled a laugh. "Fool! Taste this!"

Forking clawed fingers, the fiend hurled a spray like hard water at the archwizard, a whirlwind of steel like a flying buzz saw. Polaris brushed it aside, so it sped on and disappeared over a cliff. But in the meantime, Sysquemalyn invoked a spell by whistling and keening like a shrike's call.

Lady Polaris's first inkling of danger was a crinkling, crackling noise. She turned, found a crystalline structure towering over her, reaching with diamond claws. The giant insect tilted to one side like a malformed scorpion. Its body was indistinct, a moving column of jewels. Blue dots like multi-faceted eyes fixed her with sapphire brilliance: for a second, the greedy archwizard wondered if they really were sapphires. Then triple jagged, glittering claws snapped. Polaris's diamond brooch, the clasp fastening her cloak, was torn off. Her cape slithered off her shoulders and crumpled behind her.

Polaris burbled, retreating in shock. The creature had penetrated her personal shields, something an ogre's arrow couldn't pierce! The gem beast must be an elemental, an earth spirit, but not of this plane.

And coming from another plane, it could stab through her shields in this plane! And now the jewel claws weaved, bobbed, and grasped at her robe. It wanted her silver embroidery!

Bleating, Polaris staggered backward, tripped on her fallen cape, and almost fell. The elemental shifted its ma.s.sive bulk, sunlight glistening in its diamond depths, and crunched after her.

Laughing at the archwizard's discomfit, Sysquemalyn glanced at Polaris's entourage. At the cliff, the last two ships gathered frantic pa.s.sengers. One lifted with the gangplank still down and people still clinging to it. The fiend's mind was crowded by a thousand evil spells, but one amused her. With wry humor, she pointed at individuals on the escaping ship with a finger like a stone stalact.i.te.

"Befriend! Befriend! Befriend!"

Immediately, the people pointed out changed, distorted. Eyes blazed hatred, mouths gaped in a rictus, hands clenched. They ground their teeth, bit their own tongues so blood flowed. And, battle- mad, berserk, attacked everyone within reach. Drawing knives or swords, or plying their bare hands, they stabbed, slashed, tore, bit, battered. A screaming clerk grabbed his neighbor's hair and bit the man's ear off. A soldier jammed her sword through her comrade's belly, then twisted and shoved to spill his guts in a gory pile. A third stamped on the fingers of a woman clinging to the gangplank.

Broken-fingered, the woman plunged to her death. One berserker was pushed bodily over the side by three men, but the mad one yanked a victim to tumble along with him. Sysquemalyn cursed others with berserk rage, hoping one would chop or loosen ropes and so drop the sail, make the ship veer into the mountainside, but the cursed folk savaged humans, not a wooden ship. They ran punching, kicking, biting, strangling.

Finally the flint monster shrugged, balled her fist, then blew it open. A wind vortex gathered strength, engulfed the ship, knocked the hull at a steep angle so people pitched overboard, and shredded the metal foil sail. Stricken, the ship sank. But Sysquemalyn knew that safety devices might kick in and bring the ship to a safe, though ungainly landing. She needed more destruction.

Pointing fingers that chilled, she flicked them. Icicles six feet long sailed like arrows and thudded into the ship. They punctured wood and people, sheared rigging, crunched gunwales to splinters, and exploded deep inside like giant ballistae. Something broke, for the listing ship dropped from the sky like a shot goose. No safety devices spared it from hitting the desert floor.

Lady Polaris had outrun the crysmal elemental, for the thing was slow. Yet her gown was torn at the hem, slashed on one sleeve, and she was actually bleeding from a razor-slice on her shoulder. Her gorgeous hair was disheveled, spilling around her golden face, a novel sight for Sysquemalyn. The monster laughed like rocks splitting in frost. "A simple elemental, Polaris?" the monster-mage chided.

"You can't stop that? How about this? The best for last!"

Polaris panted spells, but nothing worked. Her anger was gone, washed away by terror. Never had she fought anyone so fearsome. She might even be killed! And now, cornered on this mountaintop, rattled so badly she couldn't think straight, her repeated shift spell failed too. Somehow, without anyone suspecting, even those idiot mages employed to spot traps, Sysquemalyn had ringed the mountaintop with an anti-shifting sphere such as protected floating enclaves. Polaris despaired, ready to run for the first time in her life, but couldn't! And now- She shrieked as something warm and wet slithered down her back. It tingled and burned as it touched her skin, and for a second she feared the black ooze. Then tentacles slimed her neck.

Grasping, screaming, she caught the slippery pod in both hands and yanked. The thing clung to her skin. She glimpsed it, a bright golden color, and instantly knew it. A laraken, a swamp parasite that fed on magical energy. And Polaris was charged with magic like a mythallar engine!

Sight of the parasite blotted out as a squirming tentacle covered her eyes. A tentacle tip bored into her ear like a slimy tongue. Another slid down her shorn gown, and oozed between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to fasten on the skin over her heart. The thing would suck her dry of magic and life like a golden leech.

She shrieked, voice cracking, "Get it-t o-off! Get it off!"

"You didn't say please!" crowed Sysquemalyn. The archfiend laughed so hard she almost fell. In three years of suffering h.e.l.l, she'd imagined this revenge a million times, but reality was far sweeter than any dream. To have Polaris scream and beg for mercy was utterly delicious!

From the corner of a bulging eye she caught movement. The last ship yanked its gangplank to lift off. Its commander was either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid, for he'd waited to scoop up everyone still living. Sysquemalyn fixed that.

She clapped stony hands, arched the fingers to a point, and thrust toward the ship. Before her, a dent creased rock. Like an invisible knife, the crease enlarged as it slashed stone like cheese. The phantom plow was nine feet wide when it struck the ship. Wood splintered, copper-riveted boards split and sprung loose. People were either chopped in half or pulped with bone-crushing force. Screams echoed within as the magic cleaver chopped the keel, a curve of oak fourteen inches thick, and broke the back of the ship. As the ship died, so did the magic. The shorn hull fetched on a spur of rock, then, with a grinding roar, slid down the mountainside on a path of blood before tumbling out of sight.

The fiend from h.e.l.l surveyed her work. In a black pool fragments of soldiers dissolved. The stone mountaintop was furrowed as if by giant carpenter tools, yet pools of ice water remained, and someone had drowned face down. Two burning hulks gave off greasy smoke from charred flesh. Blood, shorn limbs, dropped weapons, and splinters littered the ground. A hole showed where the elemental crysmal had burrowed away.

A frenzied squirming and mewling was the only action left. Lady Polaris lay on her back and wrestled with the laraken. Thriving on her personal dweomer, the parasite had expanded as large as a wolf, and now engulfed Polaris's torso like a giant ball of snot. Tentacles flailed for her arms and legs like some grotesque dance. Voice broken, she whimpered pitifully.

Plucking th.o.r.n.y feet from black ooze, Sysquemalyn loomed over Polaris. The archwizard's beautiful face was scratched, sweaty, sc.r.a.ped. Her hair was dirtied and dull, her eyes wild and bloodshot with fright.

"That's better," cooed the monster in a rasp like a file. "No longer high and mighty? Afraid?

Suffering? Worried about dying? Oh, believe me, Great White Cow, Greasy White Sow, Gorgeous White Mistake, there are worse things than dying. Much, much worse. Having your skin peeled from your body, for one. Would you like that?"

A claw like an iron nail lovingly touched Polaris's cheek. She recoiled, but the throbbing laraken pinned her tight. With ease, Sysquemalyn drove the nail through Polaris's cheek. The archwizard screamed, but a thumb and finger like pliers snagged her tongue, pierced it, yanked. Polaris had to spit out blood or choke.

"We could do this all day. We might yet," crooned the fiend. "But I want you whole, to feel the touch of your pet." With a snaky hand, she caressed the laraken. It perked up, sensing more mystic energy, but Sysquemalyn flicked aside a questing tentacle. "Stone skin has advantages, see? I'll tell you what's going to happen. This laraken grows by consuming your dweomer. You'll weaken to a sh.e.l.l, utterly helpless. Then the laraken will move to its next task. You see, they don't mate, but reproduce themselves when they find plentiful magic. You'll serve nicely. The laraken will open a cavity in your body, plant an egg, and wait while it hatches. It will keep you alive while the offspring grows inside you, feeding off you. Slowly. Over months, or years. Oh my, I expect it'll hurt terribly!

You'll feel yourself consumed from within! That almost pays us back, dear Lady Polaris, but come with me."

Grabbing the archwizard's white hair, Sysquemalyn dragged her to the black cavity left by the departed crysmal. She tipped Polaris and the laraken at the edge. Even in near-mindless fright, Polaris felt a bitter wind blow from the hole. The crysmal had bored back to its own plane. This drop would take her far from anything she'd ever known. Better to die-but would she die?

"This little friend will devour you," Sysquemalyn cooed, "but you needn't watch. Lie in darkness, deep in this mountain, never to see light again. And while you lie there, and shrivel, eaten alive, dream of revenge. As I did."

And the monster tipped parasite and prey over the edge.

Dazed, in shock, Polaris barely felt her head strike stone, her face rasp as they slid down the corkscrew hole. Too, the plump laraken absorbed some blows as they tumbled and rolled. Horror overtook Polaris, and she wished to find death quickly.

Yet part of her native intelligence fought back, calculating, though fear almost drowned out reason.

For Sysquemalyn had made a mistake.

By her words, the monster a.s.sumed the hole simply dropped into the mountain like a mine shaft.

But Polaris had felt the alien breeze, knew it traveled to another plane where she'd never survive. If so, there'd be an instant crossing of border to the next plane. And at the junction, the anti-shifting sphere around the mountaintop would end.

And so, despite grinding, pitching, and rolling, Polaris repeated her shifting spell over and over.

Blackness wrapped her, the laraken strangled, rocks bruised, she grew dizzy, would soon black out- -then the spell took hold.

Sunlight dazzled Lady Polaris. Or twilight, for the sun glared on the western horizon. Feebly she shielded her eyes, and found her hand free.

She was aching, and stiff with blood and slime. Sand clung to her face, clotted in blood at her punctured cheek. Her clothes were shredded, every inch of skin burned or sc.r.a.ped. Thirst throbbed as if she'd swallowed fire. Crawling, rolling over, she fought to locate herself.

Thin yellow gra.s.s clumped around, and she parted it to see. Through bloodshot eyes, she recognized a gray lump lit by dusky fire. Widowmaker Mountain belched smoke, spilled yellow-red lava down cracked sides, whirled ash into the air for miles. Sysquemalyn had turned the mountain into a blazing torch to celebrate her victory.

Polaris fell back, sucked dry of magic by battle and the laraken, but her final spell had worked.

She'd shifted and left the parasite behind. She was alive, and whole in body.

But her spirit was shattered. The twilit sky seemed too big, the land too wide, the world too large.

An overpowering ache possessed her, homesickness, the desire to snuggle in a dark apartment to eat, and drink cool wine, and rest.

Polaris, one of the highest mages the empire boasted, was surprised not to l.u.s.t for revenge.

Sysquemalyn and her h.e.l.l-sp.a.w.ned powers were too great. Let others, a conclave of great wizards, punish the fiend. Lady Polaris only wanted to get home, take a bath, eat, and rest.

Yes, she'd stay home from now on.

Chapter 17.

"Orcs!"

"Kill 'em all!"

The canny orcs chose a perfect spot for an ambush. This deep defile, almost a canyon, was the only pa.s.s through this stretch of the Barren Mountains. They'd hidden on ledges shrouded by gorse, hurled rocks onto travelers to stun and panic both horses and humans, then rushed from above like falcons.

Unfortunately, orcs didn't plan far enough ahead or post a rear guard, so as the orcs battled the travelers, Sunbright and Knucklebones, and glory-hungry dwarves, tore into the orcs.

Knucklebones ran right while the shaman dashed and c.o.c.ked Harvester of Blood over his shoulder.

A pair of orcs bludgeoned a woman, holding her hair while her children screamed. Everyone shouted in the rock-strewn canyon, but Sunbright hollered "Ra-vens!" loud enough to make the orcs turn from their victim.

The first thug died instantly. Harvester of Blood swung in a whistling arc for the orc's elbow. As Sunbright expected, the cowardly creature ducked and flinched. The heavy blade clove into the orc's scrawny forearm, and slammed its slack-jawed head. Lopped off clean, wrist and hand flipped away while Harvester bit deep the orc's temple and snapped its neck with a heart-stopping crunch. The orc dropped like a log, pulling Harvester down. Sunbright's blood boiled with a battle-high. Flexing his thick wrists, he ripped the blade free, wary because he was temporarily unarmed.

He needn't have worried. The second orc had abandoned the attack to run. Sunbright took a long step, flicked the blade, and snagged the orc's ankle with Harvester's hook. Blood spurted as razor-sharp steel cut skin and tendons. Crippled, the orc collapsed on its own cleaver. It blubbered and cried for mercy, but the barbarian took another step, planted a heavy boot on the orc's back, and stabbed straight down as if gigging fish. Harvester's keen tip cleft the orc's spine, and the creature stopped wriggling.