The Irrune were pulling the two Minxes out of the pit. Lumm and the big warrior leaned into the hammer, the haft of which now arched like a bow from the pressure.
“What was it?” said Heliz, taunting the spell-caster, his words gasping. His chest was tight and his leg throbbing, but he needed to keep Gothal’s attention on him and not the others. “Which of the insults got under your skin? Pudknocking bastard? Toading shitesucker? Misbegotten foulsnatch ? Which one is most accurate?”
Heliz gave a false laugh. “I know—small-codded frograper! That was it, correct?”
The gray man snarled inhuman words, and Heliz took three steps backward. The table in front of him disappeared, taking a platter of ceramic mugs into the abyss.
There was nothing else between him and the gray spell-caster. The cluttered tavern floor had been cleared by suddenly appearing, suddenly disappearing chasms. The women were almost out of the first pit. The force trying to close it had bent the haft of the hammer almost double.
Heliz needed a weapon. Anything would do. He remembered the heavy bronze tablet in his breast pocket. He smiled and casually reached his hand into the pocket over his heart—
His fingers closed on empty space.
The linguist looked around furiously. The bronze tablet must have fallen from his pocket in all the dancing around. It could be anywhere by now, including at the bottom of one of the vanished pits.
Gothal the Gray smiled. Sweat streamed down the side of the bureaucrat’s face in broad rivulets. Whatever magic he was using strained him. His face was in a rictus grin, but he knew he had Heliz trapped.
Heliz started to say, “Before you do anything rash …”
The gray man opened his mouth to conjure, but for a second nothing came out. Then a trickle of blood appeared at one corner of his mouth, and his eyes went glassy and as gray as the rest of him.
Then, slowly, Gothal started to deflate, his knees going and his body falling backward. He twisted as he fell, and Heliz saw a thin S’danzo knife sticking out between his shoulder blades. He gripped the golden spheroid tightly as he collapsed—
And toppled over the edge of the first and last pit. He descended into hell.
Lumm let out a warning shout and the haft of the bung-hammer finally snapped under the eldritch pressure. Pieces of kiln-dried wood shot across the common room and imbedded themselves in the far wall. The head of the hammer was lost with the gray mage when the hole snapped shut. The entire floor roiled like an oil-filled wineskin, and then stabilized again.
Heliz let out a sigh, this time of relief, and dropped down onto a chair. Unfortunately, the chair he thought was there wasn’t, and he fell, ass over shoulders against the wall, and knocked himself out cold.
Much of the room had been restored, minus a few tables and chairs, when Heliz came to. The images of the Minxes’ faces, one wide and bovine, the other thin and vulpine, swam in front him.
He raised a hand to swat them off like bats, and they retreated a few steps. Lumm was nearby, as was the young S’danzo. Heliz still could not discern the youth’s gender, but he/she seemed greatly shaken by the events.
Lumm the staver gave a weary smile and said, “How did you know?”
“I didn’t,” said the linguist weakly. “I figured that if it was a one-time thing, there would be no hope for her. Things like that do happen around here, you know. But if it were something that could happen again, there would be three types of people who would still be here. The first were those who hadn’t seen it and wanted to see if it would happen.” He looked at the youth and received a hesitant nod in return.
“The second were people who thought they had the answers.” Heliz waved a hand toward the warriors, who had already opened the bar and were celebrating. “That lot picked up the story about the curse early, helping to clear everyone out But then they liked being experts so much, they hung around to tell anyone they could. The third group that would hang about …”
“Would be those responsible,” said Lumm.
Heliz nodded. “I think it was a magical amulet or something. Foreign, probably from Yenized, though it used an older language. Needed a phrase to activate it Such a device would be like a spell but with one word missing. When the word was in place, it opened the hole. A hole into another place, warmer, but not nearly as warm as the various hells are supposed to be. The little one angered him, so he opened a pit under her. Then he had to do it a second time to the big one to keep his story intact. He was waiting for everyone to leave so he could open the hole and probably pull them out, hungry and tired and maybe unconscious. You knew him?” Heliz asked the women.
Little Minx gave a shrug. Big Minx shook her head. Lumm said, “So the amulet was like a key?”
Heliz ran a hand along his head, trying to dispel the fuzziness in his mind. “If it was, we’ve locked the key in with him. That means he’s going to get hungry and thirsty and unconscious fairly quickly, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Least of all him.”
“Then you knew it was him,” said Lumm.
“I knew that your Irrune warrior could not think up something like this on his own,” said the linguist. “His eyes moved toward the gray man when I pressed him for details. And I knew that Gothal was hiding something—he wrote exactly what I told him, but his handwriting was much more careful than what he had scrawled on the floor. But other than that, no, I was just throwing accusations around and hoping that something hit.”
To Big Minx he added, “Sorry to have put you in danger.” Heliz knew he didn’t mean it and thought she knew it as well.
Big Minx held out something. “This is yours, right?” she said. “Onoe the kitchen girl found it.”
It was the bronze tablet. It was an execration text, heaping curse upon curse to the wicked in five languages. Yet none of the curses were as colorful as those the Minxes had used earlier. And one of the scripts he hadn’t quite recognized looked very much like these curving runes on the Gray Mage’s amulet …
Heliz allowed himself a smile. At least something worthwhile came out of dueling with a sorcerer in the Vulgar Unicorn.
“More good news,” said Lumm. “The young ladies are most appreciative of what we did, what you did, for them.”
The two women were back, flanking the linguist.
“We have a place,” said Little Minx, leaning forward.
“Belonged to a friend,” said Big Minx, leaning forward as well.
“He had to leave town,” said Little Minx, giggling.
“We could use a man around,” said Big Minx, smirking.
“And you’re welcome to stay as well,” said Little Minx, brushing against one side.
“You might be cute to have around,” said Big Minx, brushing against the other.
“If you put a little muscle on,” said Little Minx, pressing tighter.
“And started dressing like a real man,” said Big Minx, pressing tighter still.
Crushed between the two women, Heliz thought, I’m in hell. But given a choice, it is one of the more pleasant hells.
The Ghost in the Phoenix
Diana L. Paxson and Ian Grey
Something is rustling … wood grinds … impending pressure weighs on the air. A girl sits in her bed, knuckles white as she clutches worn sheets to her chest.
“Taran?” she whispers, as shadows shift about the room.
On the wall a mask of a face is smiling, white as ivory, painted hair twining to either side. Its eyes cast desperately about the room and perspiration beads its brow. But still—it smiles. The girl wraps the blankets around herself more tightly.