This pleasant feeling was lost completely when the giant thunderhead came into view over the horizon. Below it, illuminated by flickering lightning, was a vast and barren mountain capped by a black stone citadel. He was heading straight for it.
Tasslehoff said a word he'd once heard an angry barbarian use. He liked adventures, but there were limits. As if piqued by his comment, a second later the ring teleported him to within a mile of the mountain itself.
Kender know no fear, but they know a bad thing when they see it. Judging the thunderstorm, mountain, and citadel to be such bad things, Tasslehoff scrambled over rocks and debris in a mad attempt to flee. The ring flashed again, and he reappeared within fifty feet of the pitiless walls of the castle.
"No, no! Stop!" he yelled as he tried to bash the ring with a fist-sized stone. "Whoa! Let's go back to the ocean! I don't wanna g-"
A green flash in his cell cut the kender off in mid thought. A spider eyeing Tasslehoff from the safety of the cell's darkened ceiling coiled its legs in surprise. It was now the cell's only occupant.
At first Tasslehoff thought he had teleported into a cave. The flash blinded him as usual, and when the effects wore off, he was still unable to see a thing in the darkness. By feeling about with his hands, he could tell he was in a narrow, square tunnel only three feet high. He crawled slowly in a random direction, testing the floor for traps or deep pits (of which there seemed to be none). Soon he saw a faint light ahead and quickly made for it.
A small, barred opening resembling a window was set in the wall to his right; carefully, he peered through it. Beyond the opening was a vast carved chamber, perhaps a hundred feet across and half as high as it was wide. The window was set two-thirds of the way up from the floor. Logic told Tasslehoff that he was in some sort of ventilation shaft; he had noticed a gentle air current while crawling along but had paid it no heed.
Within the chamber, light flickered from dozens of firepots laid out in a broad circular pattern on the floor. As he stared at the pattern, Tasslehoff realized it was a conjuration circle, such as wizards used to call up spirits from the invisible worlds. Faint traceries of colored chalk faded into the shifting darkness around the motionless flames below.
With a start, Tasslehoff saw that the room was occupied. Far below, striding quietly to the edge of the circle of firepots, was a dark-robed figure. It took but a moment for Tasslehoff to realize that it was the Magus. He briefly considered hiding, but his curiosity got the better of him, so he pressed closer to the bars.
The Magus stopped ten feet from the edge of the circle, within a smaller chalk-drawn circle beside it. For a time he appeared to contemplate the flames before him. Ruddy light played over his drawn face, white like a ghost's; his dark eyes drank in light, reflecting none.
Slowly, the Magus raised his arms and called out to the circle of fire in a language the kender had never before heard spoken. At first the flames crackled and jumped; but as the Magus continuedspeaking, the fires dimmed and lowered until they were almost in visible. The air grew colder, and Tasslehoff shivered, rubbing his arms for warmth.
Tasslehoff's attention was suddenly drawn to the center of the conjuring circle. Red streaks appeared in crisscross patterns on the floor, within the design of the firepots, as if the floor were breaking apart over red lava. A dull haze clouded the chamber, and the firepots burned more brightly. A strange roaring like a great ocean wave coming in to the shore filled the room by degrees, growing to a thunder that made the very rock tremble. Tasslehoff gripped the bars before him, wondering if an earthquake had been conjured by the sorcerer's powers.
Far below, the Magus called out three words. After each word, light and flame burst from the center of the conjuring circle. Each flash stung the kender's eyes, but he could not look away from the sight. Yellow magma glowed with superheated radiance within the circle, dimming the light from the firepots around it. A wave of heat reddened Tasslehoff's face and arms where the furs he wore did not cover him. The Magus did not seem affected by the heat at all.
One last time the dark figure called out, speaking a single name. Tasslehoff thought his heart would stop when he heard and recognized it. The thundering roar vanished instantly, and an eerie silence filled the air for the space of six heartbeats.
With a screaming whistle, the lava in the circle vanishedentirely and was replaced by darkness streaked with an eye burning violet light, resembling an impossible opening into the night sky. Tasslehoff was straining to see into the pit when a thing of titanic size arose from it, out of the night-pit and into the room.
Tasslehoff had heard rumors about the thing that stood before him, but he had never truly believed them until now. The thing towered over the Magus, three times the height of a man. Two great tentacles dangled from its shoulders in place of normal arms, and two heads maned with black fur rested where one head should be. Scales glittered over its skin, and in the light of the firepots the kender saw its feet were clawed like those of a bird of prey. Slime and oil fell from it, the droplets smoking when they struck the stony floor.
The heads gazed down upon the Magus. Inhuman mouths spoke, their rasping voices out of time with one another by a fraction of a moment.
"Again," the voices said, "you call me from the Abyss to defile my presence with your own. You summon my divine person to fulfill your petty desires, and you tempt my everlasting wrath. Sorely, I wish to have vengeance on this world for giving you birth, you who toy with the Prince of Demons like a slave. I thirst for your soul like a dying man for water."
"I did not summon you to hear your problems," responded the Magus in a cracked, thin voice. "Bound you are to me, bound by the circle. You shall hear me out."
With screams that made Tasslehoff jerk from the bars and cover his ears, the thing's heads shot down at the Magus-and were thrown back by unseen forces that sparked and flashed like lightning. The thing's tentacles writhed and flailed the air like titans' whips.
"Aaahieee!!! Wretch! To speak to me so! Ten thousand times you are cursed should these bonds fade! Ten thousand times will I break you in my coils, until your dark soul rots!" For several minutes the demon roared out its rage. The Magus stood before it, unmoved and silent.
In time the thing ceased to cry out. Its breathing became a slow, ragged thunder.
"Speak," said the heads venomously.
"There is an adventurer in my fortress," said the Magus, "who wears a green-stoned ring. The ring will not leave his hand and defies magical attempts to remove it. It teleported the adventurer into my citadel when it was not his intention to do so. What ring is this? How do I remove it? What are its powers?"
The thing twisted its necks. "You summon me to identify a ring?"
"Indeed," said the Magus, and waited.
The twin heads dipped closer to the Magus. "Describe the largest stone."
"An emerald the size of my thumb, rectangular cut with six tiers and no flaws. The face is engraved with a hexagonal sign, with a smaller hexagon set within and another in that one."
Silence filled the darkened room; even the thing's writhing arms were stilled. After a pause, the thing stood upright. Its heads turned about independently of each other. Tasslehoff shrank back against the opposite wall of the tunnel as a head turned his way.
The head stopped when it looked into the barred window of the airshaft. Red fires arose in its eyes and ran through Tasslehoff like spears.
Tasslehoff Burrfoot had never known fear, though he had seen sights that made hardened men shake with terror. When the eyes of the thing were upon him, he shook without breathing, his soul filled with a new emotion.