Elminster in hell - Ed Greenwood [151]
"That's why I do it," the Masked One replied with a chuckle."Three breaths, my right haunch! You should have been up off there at least two breaths ago!"
The courtiers and envoys ranged along the walls leaned closer so as not to miss a moment or nuance of merriment.
Phaeldara rose, tall and elegant, and said plaintively to Evenyl, who sat on a lounge floating nearby, "Was ever a woman so wronged?"
The fourth sometime-regent looked up with an innocent smile and held up her hand with fingers spread to use for counting items off. "Oh, let me think.There was-"
A flash and rumble shook the throne room. The regals whirled around as courtiers gasped and murmured along the walls. They all fell silent at what they saw.
The Witch-Queen of Aglarond stood in the center of the chamber, as naked as the day she was born-naked, battered, and entwined.
Her hair swirled and writhed around her shoulders as if it were alive as she glared around the room. Her eyes were two dark and deadly stars. If wearing nothing but smears of soot and dung and blood bothered her, she showed no sign of it.
Her arms were around the waist of a bony, bearded, filth-covered old man with stumps where his forearms should have been. He was sagging, bent over limply like a child's broken doll; it was clear only her grip kept him from falling. Firmly she caught hold of his hair and laid his head back over her shoulder. Then she smiled down the room into the astonished faces of the regals.
"To coin a phrase," the Witch-Queen of Aglarond said dryly, "We're back."
As if in reply, explosions of black-tinged fire burst into roiling existence behind her, amid shrieks from the watching courtiers. A brimstone reek filled the room. Grinning devils strode forth from the flames, long-horned and bat-winged, tusked and terrible. Their talons stretched out to snatch the Simbul and the man in her arms.
"Geryon, Overduke of Hell, sends us," one of them said smugly, "to fetch you back to your deaths-in long, long torment!"
The Simbul whispered a word. Lightning raged from the tiles under the devils' hooves to the ceiling high above and back again.There were faint cries-then nothing but empty tiles and the oily smoke of diabolic bodies collapsing.
The Witch-Queen smiled through those remnants.
Another rank of devils emerged from the flames. They wore rather smaller smiles.
"Did you really believe seizing me in my own lair was going to be easy? Here I stand not alone."
A tongue of blue-white flame leaped up from her empty hand. Behind her the regals, with set, determined faces, held out their own hands to cup more feeble blue flames.
"Neither, witch," said a courtier loudly, lifting his own hand and letting swirling magic fill it,"do they!"
"Aye," said another, farther down the hall, throwing aside his cloak. "For Thay!"
"Yes," came a third voice, hard and cold. "Let the queen and Aglarond fall together, for the greater glory of Thay!"
Eyes blazing, an old courtier snatched a dagger from his belt and thrust it into the throat of the revealed Red Wizard beside him.The room erupted in shouts and spells.
The doors by the throne burst open. Thaergar of the Doors strode in with a bright new sword drawn. He stared open-mouthed at the tumult, then snatched and hurled a dagger from his belt-straight back out the door at the alarm gong.
He charged forward, raising his blade. Red flames burst out of the air in front of him, hurling him to the floor. He glared up at that dark magic in time to see a huge, ruby-red devil stride out of it, fork in one hand and barbed whip in the other, to loom over Phaeldara, foremost of the regals.
"Pretty meat," it gloated, reaching for her.
Thaergar of the Doors and Phaeldara stared at the pit fiend, the Red Wizards and charging devils beyond, and deadly magics singing and snarling everywhere.
"Oh, dung" they gasped in unintentional unison.
***
The air above a table commenced