Running with blood, Jus shook his head and parried a lethal lunge aimed straight at his eye. He blocked the blow one-handed, ramming the heel of his fist up into the erinyes’ chin. His enemy rocked, and the Justicar’sblack sword whipped to tear great slashes across her hide.
The erinyes’ wounds closed instantly, each one diminishingthe haze of stolen energy. As she stabbed at him, Jus roared and made a killing thrust, ramming his sword into the devil’s heart. He viciously twisted the bladelike a corkscrew, and the erinyes screeched in torment on his hook. She ripped free, the black life-force from the sword hissing into the wound. The energy flickered out and died. Only half-healed, the erinyes’ breast ran with blood.
Panting, the erinyes bared her fangs. She clutched her wound and slowly backed away. With a malicious hiss, she flicked up her hand. A brilliant flash of magic flooded from a ring upon the creature’s hand.
Nine identical erinyes suddenly made a circle about the Justicar, all of them running sideways in a hellish carousel. Nine mouths laughed, and nine Blackrazors whirled. She sped around and around the Justicar, Blackrazor glittering in a stream of deadly stars.
Surrounded by screaming death, the Justicar stood his ground and tried to pick his enemy amongst the ring of illusions.
“Cinders, which one is she?”
Can’t tell! The hell hound twitched, trying to focus onthe swirling images. Moves too fast!
The erinyes laughed like a woman winning trophies at a fair.
“Time to die, Justicar!” A peal of mirth rose into the air.“I’ll get you! And your little dog too!”
From the corridor, Escalla tried to drag herself forward.
“Jus! Jus, hold her off! I’m coming!” The little faerie triedto drag herself forward, her bandages wet with blood. “Jus, I’m coming!”
The ring of devils raced faster and faster, coming closer to the Justicar. The erinyes gave a cry of joy-then halted as she saw the Justicarbow his head and close his eyes.
Freezing in place, the erinyes stared in amazement. The ranger stood with his blade on guard, his stance spread, and his breathing deliberately slow and calm. With his eyes closed, he left himself open to attack. The devil-woman faltered in surprise, then gave a wild, triumphant cry. She swirled like a mad dancer, and then the entire ring of images lunged inward for the kill, nine soul-swords raised to smash the human to the ground.
Cinders’ ears twitched. Moving with vicious speed, Juswhipped his blade up behind his back and caught the real Blackrazor as it came scything at his spine. The man spun, his sword blurring forward in a lunge. With a horrific sound, it rammed into the monster’s flesh and nine erinyes imagesscreamed in horror as they were run through the heart.
Eight images flashed and disappeared, leaving the Justicar’senemy impaled on his blade. The Justicar twisted his sword, ripped it free, then brought the weapon down in one enormous blow. He hacked the screaming devil in two, his blade scything down to clang against the stone floor. With blood exploding from her flesh, the erinyes fell in two twitching halves, her last scream echoing as Blackrazor fell impotent against the ground.
Breathing hard, Jus slowly lowered his sword. Blood ran from his back, waist, arms, and thighs. He knelt and wiped his blade clean in his dead foe’s hair, then grimly slammed the blade back in its sheath.
Back in the corridor, Escalla panted with pain. Her eyes fell on the glittering rubbish left behind in the erinyes’ retreat. Amidst therubies that had fallen from the erinyes’ waist, there lay a potion flask.Escalla uncorked the thing, sniffed at it, then drank. She threw the empty bottle away, then felt Polk scuttling forward to lift her to her feet. The teamster carried her into the monster room, where both he and the faerie stared at the Justicar standing amidst the horrific remains of his foe.
Polk gaped at the ranger, thoroughly amazed.
“You did it.” Surveying the damage, the teamster set his capback on his head. “Son, you can swordfight! I never saw nothing like it in mylife!”
Jus felt at the blood running from his wounds and gave an irritated scowl.
“I told you: If they can hit back, you’re doing somethingwrong.”
He reached for the faerie. Escalla clenched a bloody hand against her bandages and reached out to climb into the Justicar’s arms. She shook her head in disbelief as she gazed about the room.
“Then that’s it. We did it! That’s all three weapons found.”The faerie blinked in a daze. “We beat White Plume Mountain.”
With a roar of laughter, a voice flooded into the room from above.
“All three weapons! Well done, little insects. Well doneindeed!”
A crash of magic flooded the room, and an unseen fist clamped about Escalla and the Justicar. Polk screeched and tried to jab the trident at something, only to stagger and fall as a spell put him to sleep.
A huge image hovered above the monster pen-a human facepainted in complex patterns of black and white. The librarian of Trigol laughed and squeezed his victims inside a gigantic magic fist, lifting them slowly into the air.
“Two survivors. Or is it three?” The librarian shouted out aspell. A glowing circular portal opened, and two of his assistants stepped through to lift Polk up from the floor. “Come along, then! It’s high time weshowed you exactly why you are here!”
The fallen magical weapons were collected and brought into the magic gate. An instant later, Jus and Escalla were drawn through into the glowing hole and the entire universe seemed to explode with light.
22
In a vast chasm lit by blood-red light, the molten heart ofWhite Plume Mountain roared. High above, the chasm soared into a ceiling vaulted by the world’s own bones. Hundreds of feet down below, a huge lake of magmaroiled. From this molten blood of the earth, five giant columns of transparent crystal soared upward, thrusting aloft a platform high in the air. Fields of force shielded the platform from the raw heat of the lava, the planes shimmering as energy ebbed and flowed into the air.
Power crackled from the crystal columns, arcing like lightning bolts against the chasm walls. The heads of the columns emerged through the platform floor, each one forming one point of a gigantic pentagram painted in congealed human blood. Power arced from the columns and into pathways gouged into the floor. The chasm shuddered and echoed to the forces gathering deep inside the mountain’s bowels.
All the power, all the force, fed into a single, brilliant point. The center of the giant pentagram held a long, open trough of clear glass. Inside the trough, a human skeleton lay wreathed with power. Tendrils of flesh were creeping ever so slowly to wrap the bones. At each point of the pentagram, a heavy stone table equipped with manacles gleamed evilly in the light. Branches of power crept from the pentagram to lick over the dangling chains before pulsing and flowing back to the trough with its obscene skeleton.
The transparent platform of force hung above the lava lake. Suspended above the magma, the floor shimmered in the lightning light. Trapped inside a small hemisphere with invisible walls, the Justicar stirred slowly and painfully awake, his head still thudding from the agony of a stun spell.
The prisons ceiling was too low. Jus had to hunch over to fit his head beneath the surface of the invisible dome. The big man discovered Escalla and Polk lying at his feet. He gently picked up the faerie-small, frail,and swathed in bloody bandages-and cradled her in his arms as he took stock ofthe scene outside his cage.
A tangled pile of equipment lay carelessly beside the pentagram. Two black swords, one shimmering slightly from the pinpoint lights of a myriad of stars, joined a trident and a hammer. Thrown about, almost as an afterthought, were their backpacks and the erinyes’ magic rope. Cinders laydraped upside down over it all like a throw rug, the light in his eyes gleaming slyly. Jus met the hell hound’s gaze, nodded, and felt the cunning hound hissslightly in reply.