Elminster in Hell Read online

  My, but he was popular. Avernus must furnish poor entertainment, for a lone human wizard to attract such interest.

  Well, no. He set aside proud thoughts. It was undoubtedly the rift that was drawing the devils aloft.

  El saw more bat wings tumbling helplessly across the sky, caught by more lightning bolts from the torrents of force where world met world and clawed at each other.

  Another bolt rushed at him, and Elminster was ready. Spreading his hands, with magics crawling between them in a blue-white chain, he plunged into its raging heart. With a wordless shout, he drank in power until it rose hot and choking within him. He was forced to rear up out of its flow and into the ruby sky again, gasping and trembling.

  He’d been driven back only a little way this time, and his limbs were blazing bright with energies. In the distance, winged devils tried to drink in the power of the bolt as he had done but plunged to their dooms as the bolts consumed them in brief gouts of red flame.

  A dragon saw him and wheeled from its sport of tearing apart tharguth and devouring them. It came thundering down at him like a great wall of scaled flesh. It spat fire, the ravening flames that did so little to devils but could cook and doom a mortal man.

  Elminster swooped and drank in that dragon fire, setting his teeth and grimly riding out the fierce but brief pain, quelling its heat with his own gathered magic.

  Gasping, he prevailed. The Old Mage was full almost to bursting now. His body trembled with the effort of holding such force. He was no longer its vessel but its heart, wrestling with its surges and flows merely to move as he desired to and not be torn apart by its raging.

  Or by draconic jaws. The great red dragon, thrice the size of any he’d seen on Toril—even old Larauthtor, who’d filled the sky like a moving mountain—swooped, fangs gaping.

  Elminster threw his hands behind him and let tiny jets of flame spurt from his fingers, hurling him up, forward, and away—beyond the reach of even a frantically twisting wyrm.

  It clawed wildly at the air in its haste to turn. Snapping its jaws vainly at him, the dragon flapped its great wings so hard that the air cracked like thunder. Caught in a trio of rift bolts, the wyrm stiffened, scales melting into smoke. It was too racked with pain even to scream as it died. Its eyes burst into flame and smoke that trailed from dark sockets and loosely flapping jaws. The wyrm fell away into the jagged darkness below.

  None of this was getting Elminster back to the task of healing the widening rift, looming like a weeping eye in the sky of Avernus. Elminster called up a half-remembered snatch of a bawdy song as he banked on wings of his own spell flames. He raced, singing merrily but badly, to meet his doom.

  Bolts stabbed out to meet him. He spun chains of snarling magic around them and dragged them around in roaring, sky-shaking arcs. They plunged back toward their source—a racing flood in which he joined. Falling headlong into the blinding brightness, he thrust his hands out before him.

  All sound died away in the echoing roar. Elminster became a racing dart among mighty flows of force. They rolled ponderously past him, a great chaos of surges that battered and tore at him, threatening to whirl him away into bone-shattered, bloody pulp.

  When searing force burnt away his fingertips, he sent forth spellfire to cleave it and master it, plunging on to the roiling edge where Toril began. He plucked and swooped and wove, surfing surging torrents of force to knit the blue sky together again.

  Devils screamed as they were torn apart or blasted to shreds somewhere behind him. Elminster scarcely heard them. He gazed hungrily at the world he must wall himself away from to save. He looked longingly down at Shadowdale, a little green gem far below, ere he flung himself across the sky, stitching its ragged edge in his wake with teeth-jarring, surging force.

  “The bards could never find words for this,” he gasped. Red sky and blue slipped and slid and battled for supremacy overhead. He raced along the raging line. Sickening force slammed through him like the sword that had once plunged down his throat and out his backside in one icy moment.…

  Long ago, that had been, and with rather less hanging in the balance. A memory among far too many, always beckoning him for a wander among their shadows. The offers were more enticing as Elminster grew ever more tired—and weariness rode his shoulders like a heavy, clinging cloak these days.…

  Suddenly he was done. Energies veered away to complete what he’d begun, reshaping what had been shattered and cloaking bright Toril from his view. The roar of the sky died, and he was falling, a dwindling star, into the deep ruby gloom of Avernus.

  He’d done it. Dazed and exhausted, he knew that much. Toril was saved and his own doom sealed.

  “Have my thanks, Great Elminster,” he told himself with dark humor, toasting himself with an imaginary goblet as black fangs of rock rushed up to meet him. “Fair Faerûn has seen thy greatest victory—though none know it, or care. Welcome to the waiting dunghill.”

  With the last of his weary will, Elminster made himself into a lump of stone and hurled to one side, so that his fall would become a plunge deep into what was probably the Lake of Blood. Let its warm and fetid waters take his fall. The rotting flesh that cloaked its bed would hide him. Perhaps he could lie unnoticed there, until he had strength enough again to—

  After such a fall, even a stone hits water as hard as a smith’s hammer. His brutal shattering of the surface would have made Elminster gasp—if he’d had anything to gasp with. Warmth bubbled past as he sank, tumbling in the warm, wet depths, slowing now as …

  Something dark and snakelike coiled out of the red depths and snatched him. The tentacle lashed around him with the searing bite of a drover’s whip … and then he was being dragged back up again.

  Well, in the Hells it was hardly to be expected that there’d be any rest for the wicked. So—let the torment begin. Mystra preserve and forfend. Please.

  He was up out of the blood-water now, dripping. Unfamiliar magic raged around him, darting into him in little numbing jabs. He was changing, forced under its goads, flowing and unfolding and becoming … himself again, a human with arms and legs and—eyes.

  Eyes that swam even as grunts and rending groans and a shrieking symphony of squeals told him he was growing ears. Then all at once, the world spun and shook and came to a halt, amid shocking clarity.

  Elminster was standing on warm, sharp rock, and his feet were bare. He had feet, and legs … and his own old, gaunt body, even to the beard. He was standing in a little hollow in a great waste of rock, with foul streams of gas curling around him, burning his legs as they sighed past. Atop the rocks, bare, thorny branches of stunted trees stabbed like despairing fingers up into the blood-red sky. The ground trembled. From somewhere near at hand a flame shot up, raged briefly amid scorched rocks, and fell away out of sight again.

  El became aware that something was standing in the deep shadow at the far end of the cleft. It strode forward, stepping around many teeth of rock. Flame-yellow eyes met his with the force of a striking serpent and held him in thrall as their owner advanced leisurely, giving Elminster a smile that was a long way from pleasant—and at the same time promised many things.

  An eyebrow lifted, mirroring curving horns above, and a softly hissing voice asked almost gently, “Don’t know me, little cringing wizard? I favor a more splendid shape, these days!”

  Magic curled around Elminster’s throat, choking any answer he might have wanted to make, and the devil’s smile widened. “Like my gentle talons spell? Nothing to touch the great and mighty magics you’re wont to hurl, of course, but it serves me … aye, it serves.”

  The horn-headed devil turned its head and smiled, those flame-yellow eyes still transfixing Elminster like the tines of a gigantic fork. “Still know me not, Old Mage? You must be tired.”

  Elminster gazed at the burly devil, wondering just when he’d become, in this unholy creature’s eyes at least, any sort of expert on the diabolical.

  His captor was a naked humanoid whose ski
n was seal-smooth and mottled gray, shot through with hues of brown and darker gray … very like the shadowed stones of Avernus that rose around them both.

  A few scales glinted on the fiend’s neck and ankles. Its humanlike head sported two curving horns. What had seemed at first glance to be a cloak drawn around the devil could now be clearly seen as a necklace of tentacles. One shot forth to curl around Elminster’s bare shoulders, thrusting like a vengeful eel through tatters of drifting vapor—a good thirty feet or more—as the eyes that held Elminster’s became a little redder.

  “Know, then,” the devil said with grotesque formality, sketching a little bow—and forcing, with his tentacle, the dazed and exhausted Old Mage to match it—“that you are the guest of Nergal, most mighty of the outcast lords of Hell.” His smile broadened, and his eyes were now as red as old coals. “You may greet me.”

  El struggled to speak, finding his throat dry and stiff. Nergal’s smile became a smug, crooked thing. “Body a mite rebellious, great wizard? How sad. You will already have noted that my poor and paltry magics have served to return you to your true shape, and you’ve already felt my gentle talons. They ensure that any magic you cast or unleash is drained to strengthen my bonds upon you—oh, you may see them not, but bound you are, and shall be for as long as it’s my pleasure to keep you so. You’re wrapped in spell bindings linked to my mind; you’ll never escape me unnoticed.”

  Nergal’s lips curled in a sneer as he added, “None have broken my mind yet, Elminster, though you’re welcome to try. Attaining freedom is a laudable goal for any sentient being.”

  The ground trembled again, and a flame shot up over their heads, searing a squalling imp. Nergal’s smile broadened as he withdrew his tentacle—and the shuddering of the rocks beneath Elminster’s baking feet made him stagger and almost fall.

  “Laudable,” the devil added gloatingly, “but nigh impossible. You see, I’ve spent much time observing your exploits, Old Weirdbeard—and I have uses for you. Oh, yes.”

  The archdevil’s tentacles were suddenly writhing above his shoulders, like the limbs of an excited and gigantic spider.

  “You will, of course, attempt to escape, perhaps even to harm me. Such failures will make little difference to your torment—and they will be failures.”

  Tentacles stretched forth almost lazily, and a diabolical smile widened.

  “You see: You’re in my cozy little dale now, wizard.”

  And wearing that same welcoming smile, Nergal reached out with a tentacle and tore Elminster’s right arm off.

  Two

  A DEVIL’S WARM MERCY

  Nothing is more important than pain. Nothing. It sears and gnaws life itself, commanding all attention, thrusting even archmages into moaning despair.

  This particular archmage was only dimly aware of anything more than his pain. Elminster knew he was staggering, trying vainly to clutch at his torn and burning shoulder as tentacles slapped and spun him with lazy glee. Gradually, he became aware of more. The tortured rocks of Avernus stood on all sides, stabbing up into the blood-red sky like the black fingers of corpses. Someone nearby was screaming—a raw, hoarse, and endless cry, a siren of agony amid Nergal’s gusty laughter.

  Sharp stones laid open El’s feet. He barely felt that pain through the agony stabbing through him, leaving him sick and weak. Slowly, he realized something more. The screaming was coming from him.

  “Sanity,” the archdevil remarked casually, “lasts longer when some vocalization is permitted. It may be an overvalued condition in most expendable slaves, but I need yours to persist awhile longer. Sing, then.”

  Tentacles wriggled and plowed under human skin, burrowing.…

  El stiffened, trying somehow to scream even harder as talons of pain transfixed him. His cry died as he choked and strangled on the blood that an outraged stomach spat forth.

  “Not even a dagger drawn in defiance?” Nergal mocked. “Not one cantrip, cast to try to make me belch? Such great magecraft!”

  El sagged to his knees, only to find that the tentacles around his legs kept him half-upright, sprawled limp and broken in midair well above the rocks. Tentacles tightened anew, and El’s remaining arm snapped in three places.

  Jagged bones jutted forth as El’s arm was twisted crazily—bones that came at the Old Mage’s swimming eyes like blood-drenched daggers as his captor forced El’s limbs this way and that, playfully.

  “Not even one feeble, flailing spell? Not a ring awakened against me?” The devil’s taunt was accompanied by more sickening pain as the rings on El’s remaining hand were wrenched off—along with the fingers that bore them. “You disappoint me, famous wizard. I expected more. Much more.”

  Retching, El never saw the tentacle that smashed his nose into bloody shards, or the one that slid across his chest, slicing open the skin like a razor. Suckers latched onto certain winking things of magic that Mystra had left in his flesh, centuries ago. They flared blindingly and made the devil hiss in pain and fear ere the tentacles hurled them away.

  A blast shook the rocks under El’s feet, and then another. Nergal laughed with something that might have been relief.

  “Trinkets under your skin—my, what a valued slave you’ve been. I should be flattered, entertaining such importance. Even if it is old and feeble, and knock-naked, scarcely worth the effort of tormenting. Quivering like a lemure—and about as much sport.”

  Tentacles shook Elminster, and red eyes blazed. “Look at me, human—and heed!” Nergal bellowed. “I’m your doom, and worse. You’re going to be my claw to tear open Faerûn, once I’ve prepared you properly. There’re just a few more things to do first. I’ll tear out all but a tuft of that beard, to leave me something to haul you around by, and tear away that which makes you a man—”

  El screamed higher and harder, helplessly.

  “Nergal am I, old fool, and a rightful Prince of Hell. So heed my words. I’ve few enough visitors who can appreciate proud speeches, so you’re going to listen to my every word. My spells will keep you aware, no matter how much pain besets you—and I’ve had enough of your keening, faster than I’d thought I would. Wherefore, be still.”

  Elminster suddenly found himself silent, though his throat still rippled in midshriek, and his body trembled with its aching effort to spew forth blood.

  Nergal gave him a merry smile. “That’s better,” the archdevil cooed, as if addressing a favorite child. He drew himself up, tentacles rising above him in a soaring, peacock flourish, and spoke like a king declaiming proudly from his throne:

  “Outcast and exiled here, I am yet the mightiest of all—aye, o’ermatching even Tiamat the Many-Mawed—who call Avernus home. Too proud and too accomplished to serve the Reigning Serpent, but too mighty to be slain. Dispater is no greater than I, nor Baalzebul … and therefore I am useful. Some day, Asmodeus might have need of me.”

  Tentacles caressingly lifted their broken burden. Human skin fell away in strips as Nergal drew what was left of Elminster close, so their eyes stared into each other across a very small distance.

  “And on that day,” the gleeful outcast devil added in lower tones, “it will be my distinct pleasure to defy the lord of Nessus in his hour of need. Defy him with power enough to shatter his throne, and over his shrieking bones bring war to Hell. And you, little cringing human, shall be my way to some of the weapons I’ll need.”

  Tentacles tightened, and El spat blood involuntarily.

  “I—ugh! Uh! Aagh!” was all he managed to say, struggling for breath through the blood choking him. Then the moments allowed him were over. Silence settled icily over his throat again.

  “I’m glad you agree so eagerly,” Nergal purred. “Hearken and learn, little tool. I’m but one of those, both great and wretched, who lurk in the shadows of Avernus awaiting the day we all know will come. Archdevils may be slain, but it’s not easy to destroy us forever. The lord of Nessus must burn away some of his power to bring about such a doom. He’s done it, yes—but only
in punishment for the most deadly doing that could be launched against him: archdevil lying with archdevil to have offspring they hide from Asmodeus, to bring to Hell an archdevil the Lord Below knew not.”

  Tentacles thrust Elminster down firmly on a spine of rock. Unyielding sharpness jabbed into raw flesh. Staring at the blood-drenched sky, El arched and writhed in silently screaming agony. A tentacle thoughtfully lifted his head so that he could look along his body … and see the bloody spire of rock standing amid a glistening welter of his organs. He stared at it, too racked with pain to cling to his frayed memory of Mystra’s face.

  Nergal loomed over his captive and explained almost merrily, as if telling a fancy tale to a child reluctant to drift off to sleep, “Lucifuge was but a puling thing when Asmodeus devoured him—literally, growing his teeth into fangs to do it. I saw.”

  Slithering tentacles plucked the Old Mage from the rock—gods, the tearing pain!—and held him aloft in front of Nergal’s face once more. The archdevil’s eyes were a bright flame-red now.

  “He gave Lucifer and Batna the final doom for having that child,” Nergal added excitedly, “executing them as Baalzebul, fiercest of Lucifer’s foes, watched. Baalzebul he plucked from his palace and snatched across the Hells to hold in thrall—just to show us all that he could burn a prince and princess of Hell to nothing whilst he racked another prince, despite their struggles, all three. He gave Malbolge to Baalzebul purely to torment Lucifer in his last moments—and tore it away again later, to elevate another to the greatness that should have been mine!”

  Nergal’s voice rose into a roar, and brutal tentacles shook Elminster like a rag doll. “That will be mine, and only a small part of what’s mine, in time to come.” The archdevil’s voice lost its rage as he added, “Sooner, now, than before you fell into my hands.”

  A many-toothed smile broadened. “I should thank Mystra. Years she meddled with you, shaping you into a meddler in turn … all to make you useful to me. You see, old Elminster, you’re going to be important after all. What do you say to that?”