Elminster in hell - Ed Greenwood [141]
The fiends standing with Geryon were just beginning to relax when a sudden flood of blue-white lightning washed over the melee. Devils erupted in struggling agony. They took wing in a flurry of agonized flaps, roars, and groans- only to be transfixed by bolt after bolt of leaping lightning. In seconds, two dozen devils fell.
"Who-?"a pit fiend gasped.
"Find out "Geryon snapped. "Perstur, Agamur!"
Obediently, those pit fiends surged into the sky. They flew with swift swoops rather than a straight run toward this new, half-seen foe. A lightning cloud hid whomever it was from view. The cloud reached forth crackling fingers to lift the arching, howling, broken body of the human mage tenderly into the air. White light blossomed around Halaster Blackcloak, flaring to a brilliance that made all of them turn their heads away. When it faded, the floating wizard was gone.
"Could it be that goddess again?" one of the pit fiends y rumbled disbelievingly.
The lightning cloud retreated a little, and Qarlegon's force advanced warily to encircle it. Whoever or whatever this newcomer was, it was now cloaked in an upright oval of blue fire. It didn't seem to want to be encircled.
"That's a shape I've seen Mystra of Toril use," the old, scarred pit fiend growled.
Thrice the nimbus winked or leaped backward, out of the forming ring of devils. Thrice they inexorably moved to encircle it again, backing it up the hillside to where pinnacles swept up like blades into the blood-red sky and a little gorge ran up to a cave mouth.
"That's the lair that used to be Barbathra's, yes?" a pit fiend asked.
The old, scarred fiend and Geryon nodded in unison. It was the Wild Beast who added, "Yarsabras uses it now."
As if the Overduke's words had been a cue, the hound-headed outcast devil he'd named burst from the cave with his many claws extended. His talons formed a wall of glittering blades.
The mysterious intruder ducked suddenly, with a smooth grace that reminded the watching fiends of elven dancers.
Yarsabras sailed on helplessly into the line of advancing devils, to crash and flail and be flailed. At the best of times, loyal hornheads had little love for outcasts-and this was assuredly not the best of times.
The fire-shrouded intruder bobbed upright again to send lightning crackling and spitting among the advancing devils.
"That's a she," the old pit fiend said suddenly, catching a glimpse of hands raised to weave a spell.
Geryon nodded. "Your eyes were ever keen, Grimvold," he said approvingly. "Goddess or mortal?"
The scarred old pit fiend frowned. "Mortal, I think. She stays low, where the divine tend to tower high and look down."
The Wild Beast nodded again.
"Strange," another of the pit fiends watching from the height said suddenly."Earlier she struck to slay-bolts that transfixed individual loyals, of her choosing. Now she tries to hold Qarlegon's flight at bay. Why?"
There were puzzled nods and frowns.
Someone asked,"Could she be opening a gate?"
"That's why we're here," Geryon told them calmly."If I give the order, we're all to call in all we can, and whelm a host, to seize and destroy any such portal."
"No!"Grimvold snarled suddenly. He wove a spell right at the Overduke's elbow.
Several pit fiends shrank away, expecting Geryon to lash out with deadly force to punish this impertinence. The Wild Beast did nothing.
The scarred old fiend shouted, his farspeaking spell making his voice oddly echoing and distant, "Qarlegon! Move your loyals! Move toward the gorge-now! Move or die!"
"What by all the fires of Nessus-?" one pit fiend cried angrily. "Who do you think you are, Old Scarred-Horns?"
"Why?" another asked simply, as the pit fiends below looked up in bewilderment. Qarlegon rose over them, peering quizzically.
"Look you all" Grimvold said grimly, jerking a talon at the horizon. "That."
They scarce had time to look before it whirled out of the sky at them-or rather, at the devils massed on the hillside.