Elminster in Hell

A leather-clad form sprang in front of Mirt, bare hands raised. "No!" Storm protested. There were tears in her eyes. "Do not kill this man. His cause was just in his eyes-and his task nigh impossible, for one alone, I would have him for the Harpers."

Mirt frowned at her. His gaze strayed to Amril's sword, still lying in a dark pool of Storm's blood, and then back to the Bard of Shadowdale. "Why?" he asked bluntly.

"He saw his cause as just and did what he thought he had to," Storm replied. "Who are we to think ourselves better than he?"

Mitt's frown grew. Something that might have been a growl stirred deep in his throat-then, slowly, he stepped back, lowering his axe, and bowed to Storm.

"Methinks yon youngling enjoys slaying overmuch, Lady," he said darkly, "but enough. I grow sick of killings. Mind you get that book of Ahghairon's from him, though... I don't want his cousin or squire or trained dog coming through a gate beside my bed in the midst of my snoring time, one or two nights from now!"

Storm nodded. "If he ca

"So be it," Piergeiron said, almost wearily. "Just take him far from Waterdeep." He looked down at what he was turning over and over in his fingers, as if seeing it for the first time. "A silver harp," he said thoughtfully. "I thought the badge of the Harpers was a silver moon and a silver harp."

"The silver moon was my mother's badge... her kin came from the city of Silverymoon," Storm said softly. "But Harpers have a better answer. Mirt?"

Mirt smiled. He put his arm around Asper and growled, "The harp is the Harper. The moon need not be part of the badge-for as the motto says: Harpers hunt by moonlight."

So we see some whispers of magic, but hardly the silver fire i seek ok anything i can seize and make use or i weary of lashing you, idiot wizard-so i'll do nothing to you, now try not to fool yourself into thinking i'll forget this and that you're getting away with something.

You'll learn differently soon enough.

Mirt found himself blinking at the ceiling, all silver in moonlight. "No!" he gasped hoarsely. "Gods, no!"

He was still dressed. The hilt of his sword was ready under his clenched hand. Amril Zoar's blade dripped with Storm's gore... He'd half forgotten the details, but they came flooding back, with a face behind them: Elminster. Or rather, what was left of Elminster.

A desperate, wavering mind, less than it had been, pleading, and in a ruined body... in a stinking stony waste under' a blood-red sky. Avernus. It had to be.

"When I'm ready to look for a place to die," Mirt told his sword as he drew it and watched the moonlight gleam along its bright length ,"Hell will not be where I start. Just so long as that's clear."

With a grunt he rolled off the bed, stamped his feet to settle them in his boots, and set off down the passage. This might be one walk he didn't come back from, and he was j damned if he was going to leave before he saw-

Asper, a pale flame in the gloom, burst bare out of her bedchamber. Her hair was wild. She held a sword in one hand and boots in the other. "Thieves?" she gasped, almost falling in her haste to bar his way. "Lord work?"

"Worse than that, lass. Elminster needs me."

"Elminster? Why?"

"Because he's trapped and in torment in Hell," the Old Wolf growled. "Where I dare not go."

"No, Mirt," Asper cried. Her face went bone-white. "Not to Hell! You'll never even get near him before the devils get their talons on you, and you'll be-you'll be-"

She flung away her boots and clutched his arm. "No friend is worth dying for-when your death isn't going to help him!"

Mirt scowled at her, eyes gleaming like two old torches. He tried, and failed, to shake off her grip. Her fingers were like claws. "Aye, true enough-and with Khelben and Laeral gone off the gods alone know where, that leaves me just one weapon swift to my hand that's sharp enough to hew down devils."

Asper's face was wet with tears. "What?"

Mirt set his jaw, freed himself from her hand, and strode toward the stairs, hefting his sword. "Halaster Blackcloak. I have to find him, down in Undermountain, and-ha-convince him to fight his way into Hell and bring Elminster back here to me. Without delay, so he might just still be alive when Halaster gets there." He chuckled, a dry, terrible sound.

"Mirt, no!” Asper almost screamed. She gnawed at her knuckles and sobbed."You can't! He's mad! You-"

"-Have to," he finished her sentence for her, softly. "For-live or die this night-if I fail my best and oldest friends, what am I? And what have I lived for?"

Chapter Eleven

OLD DEVILS, NEW TRICKS

Bare, thorny branches of stunted trees stabbed like despairing fingers into the blood-red sky. Elminster Aumar sighed at them. Well, at least he could move, seeing new sights on the probably short remainder of his journey toward death. Such mobility afforded him a deep and abiding consolation, of course.

El crawled forward on raw, bleeding knees, his body bristling with greasy, green-black spines that he hoped looked half as unappetizing to devils as they looked to him. He tried not to think of the trail of gore he must be leaving. Twice now, he'd had to turn and roll over to transfix and slay maggots nipping at his feet, and he'd lost count of the times he'd retched and spewed in helpless nausea at the sights and sounds all around.

Devils were clawing and disfiguring each other overhead right now, slitting eyes and tugging out entrails with eager savagery, spattering the rocks below with thankful lack of attention. Elminster crawled on, smiling inwardly at his looks. Well, he'd been a raven-haired, silken-hipped lass when that wasn't his true shape, either, so he hadn't much cause for complaint. Not that rocks Listened to the complaints of broken archmages any more than they heeded the curses of other beings.

The ground trembled in the throes of a violent underground explosion. El tried not to think of what death traps caverns must become at such times. Another snarling fireball crossed the sky.

Sooner or later in this tortured landscape of rock and flame and bitter fumes, where devils roamed in search of too-scarce food or traveled in ruthless patrols-in the distance, a flying phalanx of abishai swooped in unison to spear squalling nupperibos-his luck would run out.

Sooner. Even as he slipped for the thousandth time and lost his wind in a belly-landing against saw-«dged rocks, a spade-barbed tail rose in front of him. It was glossy-black and as large as his head. The body it was attached to must have been large indeed. El ground his face into the stones a moment before the razor-sharp tail cut across his head. The resounding slap set his skull ringing and drove him into a wavering upright posture. It had sliced open his scalp far enough back for his own blood not to blind him with its first drenching flood.

What a stroke of luck, indeed. With that sarcastic thought held in the forefront of his mind to keep Nergal from noticing what he was doing, El leaked a tiny amount of silver fire slowly out to stanch the bleeding. He lifted his head to see what was attacking him.

"Well," purred what could only be another outcast arch-devil. It reared up from the rocks in front of him. "What have we here?"

Three long, sinuous serpent tails rose from where they coiled around and amid rocks, to meet in an obsidian-hued body that had the shape of a lush human female torso.

From the shoulders spread bat wings, dark beneath and ruby-red on their sleek outer surfaces. A forked-tongued and horned head swayed on the end of a neck that was too long, but otherwise looked both human and attractive. Unfortunately, the fingers extending in his direction ended in hooked, hawklike talons. Each was as long as Elminster's arms.