Wheezing, rubbing his raw throat, Sunbright glimpsed Sysquemalyn and Candlemas standing together a dozen feet off, eyes closed, right hands raised and touching. He thought that queer behavior for a battleground, but supposed it to be some secret mental communication between wizards. And so it proved, for within a few seconds they jumped apart and clapped their hands together.
Meanwhile, a studded imp clawed at Greenwillow. Lurching, still gulping rank air, Sunbright fended it back with the point of Harvester…
… and a studded arm snugged around his throat. Another imp had seen a weak spot and copied the first. Black wings fluttered as the raven, swooping in from on high, bated the imp's face, without effect.
Throttled, fishhook-sharp barbs lodged against his throat, the barbarian fought panic as he kicked away from one imp to drive back the other. But the hold on his neck only tightened, until he thought the spikes would puncture the underside of his jaw. Greenwillow screamed once, then higher, near panic. Kicking and jumping to keep close and relieve the pressure, Sunbright snapped Harvester over his head, trying to slash the fiend's face. A bony-encrusted arm as hard as a barnacled bollard beat Harvester aside. Desperate, the barbarian switched positions and shoved the sword down between his own legs, praying he could chop a leg from the imp. But he only succeeded in slicing himself.
He wouldn't escape this choke hold.
"By M'dhal's sansevil!" roared a voice. "Protect this man, the living from the dead!"
With a tearing wrench, the imp was ripped loose from Sunbright and bowled backward. The barbarian fell, choking, rubbing blood from his shorn throat. Greenwillow, also bleeding in a dozen places, crawled toward them. Vaguely, Sunbright had the sense that some magic had knocked the fiends back. And through a red haze, he noticed an invisible circle surrounding them, as if a tornado had erupted, blowing away their enemies but sparing them.
Protecting them was Candlemas, who didn't look like a funny fat man anymore, for his upraised hands crackled, and lightning coursed down both sides of his body, so that his beard bristled and his clothes were as fuzzed as a scared cat's back. He bellowed again, not to the barbarian and elf, but to the gods and sources of magic. "Karsus, grant me strength! Foul things, feel the bite of Tolodine's killing wind!"
Instantly, a howling, shrieking, keening, whirling song of death ripped the air, left them breathless, made the pit fiend in the distance howl in rage. Lemures, imps, skeletal warriors, all were churned, battered, shoved hither and thither. Some blew one way, some the other, so they collided and collapsed and thumped together, as if sixteen errant winds fought to wipe them from the earth. Fiends tumbled like grass before a hurricane. But up on the bluff, the pit fiend was conjuring too. A red mist was rising around it and blowing contrary to all the winds to envelop them. The fiends it touched were tinged red as if dipped in blood. Sunbright didn't care to imagine what it would do to the living.
But before the awful red wind could reach them, Sysquemalyn shrieked, "By Quantol! By Smolyn! By Gwynn the Vampire and Hersent's Sigil! Trebbe, heed me! I command you-move us!" And she clapped her hands like a god.
Cavern, monsters, smoke, pit fiend. Before Sunbright's eyes, all vanished.
Within an eye-blink, the barbarian was sprawled on a dirt floor surrounded by dirt walls. There were only humans and the elf here, no fiends in sight.
He scrambled to his feet, instinctively making sure of his grip on Harvester, then groaned as he cast about.
"That was no escape! This is hopeless!"
Chapter 16
Sunbright waved his free hand and sword.
"This is still the Nine Hells! I was trapped in here before! These tunnels change as soon as you turn your back! There's no escape this way!"
"Hush, fool!" Sysquemalyn was up, though shaky-legged, and she pulled at Candlemas's sleeve to rouse him. The podgy mage rolled clumsily, as if drunk. "This is as far as I could gate us!"
"What's wrong with him?" Greenwillow gave up wiping blood from her wounds and helped. Her clothes were more red than green and black.
"He suffers from conjuring in a foreign land," the red-haired mage snapped. She looked tired and wretched, her eyes sunken and encircled, her proud red hair lank and lifeless. "We're too far from the reservoir of dweomer amassed by our patron, Lady Polaris." It was a sign of her desperation that she eschewed any insults for the lady. "We're drawing magic from afar. The local magic is corrupt, the wrong color… Never mind! Why explain to ignorant groundlings? Help me move this bucket of lard."
Groaning, the halt helping the lame, human and elf got Candlemas to his feet. The bedraggled raven, its tail feathers charred along the ends, limped and hopped along, as exhausted as its master. Sunbright levered his shoulder under the mage's arm. Sysquemalyn left them to it, then snapped fire on her fingers to better light their way. "Follow me. I think I can get us out. I built this place, after all."
"No, dear, you didn't." Candlemas was awake and coherent. Despite his fatigue, he argued with his old rival. "The pit fiend said no, and it ought to know. You simply plagiarized-"
"Belt up, Candy-Ass!" snapped the mage. "All right, if I didn't exactly build it, at least I know what I stole and where it leads!"
But waving her flaming hand around, she hesitated, searching both ways. In one direction the tunnel curved up to a hump, then probably dropped. The other direction curved, so she led that way. But when they'd plodded a hundred feet, the dirt floor dropped away abruptly.
Looking backward, they saw that the tunnel now curved up as steep as a chimney. Greenwillow sighed. "I was in a place that shifted every minute too."
Sunbright still propped a sagging Candlemas on his shoulder. "Perhaps we should rest here," the barbarian suggested.
"Aye," groaned the mage. And collapsed.
All together, like four children frightened in the woods, they huddled against one cold wall of the tunnel, feet stretched straight out in front of them. Sunbright propped Harvester across his lap, ready to fight if need be, but he had to fight his own urge to nod off. To keep busy, he dug a whetstone from a pouch and honed his blade. The edge was as dull as a butter knife from chopping bodies as if they were cordwood. Too, he straightened his clothing and tackle as best he could, but everything was so crusted and stiff with dried blood it was like one great mass. Oddly, he still wore his bearskin vest, and his body stank sharply within it, but despite the heat he couldn't divest himself of it, for he needed its scant protection as armor.
Greenwillow tested her sword's edge, found it to be as sharp as ever, so she only scrubbed the blood and ichor from it. She croaked, "Can either of you mighty mages conjure us some water?" The very word made Sunbright's throat constrict as if he'd swallowed desert sand. He'd had a waterskin once, long ago, but had lost it somewhere.
"One definition of hell is eternal thirst," groaned Candlemas. "But I'll see if I can locate any."
Holding his head in both hands, the tired mage muttered under his breath. Sunbright heard the name "Zahn" repeated. But nothing happened, and after a while Candlemas sat back against the wall. "There's none to be found. I'll have to transmute some."
"That'll cost us dearly," put in Sysquemalyn.
"If we're to squabble, we'll need wet tongues." Even tired, the bearded man could joke about their foolish rivalry. "Now… Mistress Elf, if I might borrow your breastplate?"
Wondering, Greenwillow loosened the straps to shuck her black boiled-leather armor. The act brought a whiff of her natural fragrance to Sunbright. Like himself, he knew she was sweaty and rank as a hard-ridden mare, but he drank in her scent as if she smelled of wild flowers.