Elminster in hell - Ed Greenwood [121]
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.
Hail elminster, archmage of shadowdale, he thought mockingly.
Hail Nergal, Lord of Hell, came the mocking reply.
Rage flared like bright fire in the tentacled archdevil, but he wrestled it grimly down and slipped deeper into the human's mind as gently as if he was a lover come to caress, and not a ravager come to seize and destroy.
Let us begin again, little pig of a human.
[mind lash, pain, savage diabolic grin, rending bright images, hurling, burrowing, clawing aside more]
Aha! What have we here?
[images surging]
The chancellor's eyes were black