Rey hurriedly rehearsed the words of the old spell, trying to be certain he
recalled them correctly. He stepped back out into the hallway and faced the
oncoming horde. The Whites could not see per se, but they were aware of him
through their augmented senses of hearing and smell.
They charged, full tilt, screaming. The bats flew right behind the wave of
running Whites.
Rey spoke aloud the words of the ancient spell, gesturing at the ceiling of
the corridor as he did so.
Suddenly the tunnel was filled with the roar of uncounted tons of rock
breaking loose from the age-old ceiling. The noise of the avalanche was
followed immediately by the screams of those below. The roof did not entirely
collapse, nor did the rocks that fell do so all at once, but the position of
the attackers made it quite impossible for them to escape the cascade of rocks
that showered down upon them. Despite the dampness, dust and grit flew. Moans
arose from the shattered victims, those still capable of mounting speech. Red
splashed and coated the walls. It was a hard rain indeed.
When the last rock dropped, what remained was a corridor now somewhat
shallower on the bottom and deeper at the top than before. The new floor was
that much higher for the bodies under the former ceiling. Two or three Whites
had avoided the trap, and several bats flew around in dazed circles, but the
attack was broken.
Rey grinned, pleased with himself… until he saw the first rank of worms and
cyclopes
begin climbing over the rockfall. Set and all the
demi-demons!
The fire that had burned the pile of clothing had begun to die down when
from it there
came
a
pop
!
Elashi, Lalo, and Tull all turned at the sudden sound and stared at the
fading light of the smoldering clothing.
“What was that?” Tull asked.
Elashi shook her head.
Lalo said, “That vial you tossed into the clothing. I think perhaps the
fire has opened it.”
No sooner had Lalo said this than a poisonous-looking black vapor arose from
the dying fire. The tendrils of black appeared to be unaffected by the fire’s
heat—and it looked nothing at all like normal smoke. As the three watched, the
curling black swirled up and began to move toward them, pulsing as if to some
unheard rhythm.
“Uh-oh,” Tull said. “I like the look of this not at
all.”
“What can we do?” The wizard has threatened to blast us if we move
from this chamber,” Elashi said.
“Better the demon we know than one we do not,” Lalo told her,
nodding at the malignant vapor undulating slowly toward them. “Besides, it
sounds to me as if the wizard might have his hands occupied at the
moment.”
Neither Tull nor Elashi chose to argue with Lalo’s assessment of the
situation. The black cloud was growing in size; already it blotted out half of
the chamber.
The three scrambled for the doorway.
Conan moved along the corridor next to Wikkell and Deek. Ahead, the ceiling
had just fallen in with a sound like constant thunder, burying the advance
ranks of Whites and bats. The wizard was not without his defenses, so it
seemed. The Cimmerian sheathed his sword in order to better clamber over the
uneven piles of rock now blanketing the floor.
The witch who was a flying reptile approached the scene of carnage and
flapped down to perch on a shelf high above it all.
My, my.
That Bastard most assuredly had his problems. Could the magicked beast have
performed the action, it would have grinned. Chuntha decided that she could
tarry here for a bit and watch. It seemed that the wizard was finally about to
get his just due, and this was too good a show to miss.
Rey’s skills had fallen into disuse over the years, but there had been a
time when he was as adept a spellcaster as any. He dredged up old curses and
conjurations from his long past, searching for one that would put a decisive
end to this attack. There was a demon-call he had used once, oh, three or four
hundred years ago. As he recalled, the demon had been both large and fearsome,
with a hideous visage. Yes, he would set the demon upon the blasted worms and
traitorous
cyclopes
and see how they enjoyed that!
Could he but recall the words of the damned spell in time
…
Tull, Elashi, and Lalo ran into the antechamber and skidded to a halt. The
wizard was not to be seen.
“Outside, he must be outside, in the corridor,” Elashi said,
pointing at the door.
“We cannot go out there,” Tull said.
“Well, no doubt the black vapor behind us will stop at the open doorway
through which we have just passed,” Lalo said, his voice heavy with irony.
Elashi shook her head. Lalo was right. What were they going to do?
Chuntha’s observation post gave her a good view of the proceedings below;
That Bastard, give him credit, had more than a few things left up his sleeve.
The witch watched with respect as the air began to swirl inside the hastily
sketched pentagram on the floor in front of the entrance to the wizard’s
chambers. Calling up something, he was, and she doubted that such an act would
do the attacking rebels any good whatsoever.
Wait—what was that?—no,
who
was that? Conan! Climbing over the
fallen rock, in company with the
cyclopes
and worms.
For a moment Chuntha’s rage was such that she nearly took to the air,
intending to dive down and rend the cursed barbarian into tattered and bloody
flesh.
But no.
Wait a moment and see what the wizard
works, she thought. No point in being foolish.
The reason Rey had chosen the location of his chambers originally from all
the thousands available was simple enough: the magic permeating the old rock
here hung thick and potent. A spell that might exhaust some other location
might hardly take a small fraction of the energies resident in this particular
area. So it was that the wizard had sufficient force to conjur the demon.
Within the bounds of the pentagram, the air twirled and became a flashing
display of purple and yellow, much like a liquid bruise upon the atmosphere.
Came a loud clap of noise and suddenly the demon, one of Set’s lesser
messengers, named Tunk,
appeared
in an eye-smiting
flare of light. Tunk was easily twice the size of the largest cyclops, thrice
the weight in his earthly form, and bristling with dagger-sized black claws on
hands and feet. His mouth—and there was no doubt of his maleness to anyone with
even the smallest of vision—his mouth opened in a grimace that be came a roar.
Teeth like a boar’s tusks flashed in the light of Tunk’s arrival, and the sound
he made might be likened to that of iron plates banged and scraped together
with great force.
Tunk’s appearance put a halt to the advancing horde of worms and
cyclopes
as quickly as if those worthies had reached the end
of a stout tether.
“Go and kill them, all of them!” Rey ordered. “I call upon
you with your true name Tunk, and demand that you obey.”
Tunk, of course, had no choice; still, his rage at being jerked away from a
most interesting encounter with a demoness in Gehanna was such that killing
something would have come easily enough without an order. The demon leaped from
the pentagram toward the startled worms and
cyclopes
.
Wikkell sucked in a deep breath as he saw the monstrous apparition bound
from where it appeared in front of the wizard. It was coming right at him, it
seemed, and the small form of Conan perched atop a new-made hill in between did
little to give the cyclops confidence that he would survive for long once that
thing
arrived. Panic flowed through Wikkell, and he scrabbled in his belt for a
weapon, any weapon, he might use to defend himself.
Conan must have been as startled and frightened as he, the cyclops thought,
and yet the man, less than a third the size of the onrushing demon, drew his
sword and raised it.
Amazing, that this puny human would dare to stand with what amounted to a
small sliver of iron against such a behemoth. Doomed, and yet standing his
ground Conan was, and no one could see such a thing and not feel admiration
against the amazement that anyone could be
so
foolish as
to hope to prevail.
The thing reached the base of the rocky slope upon which Conan stood and
began its ascent.
The problem was that after it crushed Conan, Wikkell and Deek were next in
line.
The black vapor lapped at the edges of the inner chamber’s doorway behind
the three people,
then
slowly began to ooze across the
floor like some cold and thick liquid.
Tull, Elashi, and Lalo moved across the antechamber away from the blackness,
toward the exit. Now they could see the wizard outside, directing some hellish
monster’s attack against a gathering of worms and
cyclopes
and—yes!—Conan!
Not that he had a chance against the thing that rushed toward him. The giant
beast made Conan look tiny, perched as he was atop a hill of rock, sword
raised. The monster screamed in a roaring gong of a voice as it charged.
Rey smiled in triumph. Best
this
,
fools!
he
thought as Tunk sprinted toward Conan and his doomed
friends.
Chuntha watched, trying to remain detached, she could not help feeling the
excitement as the demon prepared to destroy Conan and the rebels. This would be
most bloody… and most amusing.
“D-d-do s-s-something!”
Deek scraped.
Wikkell came up with the graystone jar full of pale powder they had stolen
from the wizard’s chambers. No good—wait! Perhaps it might help.
Instantly Wikkell saw that he would have but one chance, and that one slim.
The timing must be perfect; a mistake would be instantly fatal. Then again, it
was not as if there were a number of choices left to him. Better a small chance
than none at all.
“Conan!” Wikkell yelled. “When I yell again, leap to the
side!”
“What?” Conan did not turn, but kept his gaze upon the thing
bounding up the side of the hill at him.
“Just do it! I have a plan!”
Conan considered his options. He might inflict a nasty wound upon that
thing
coming at him, but he had little hope of slaying it outright before it swiped
at him with one of those clawed hands or feet and disemboweled him. If Wikkell
had a plan, Conan was not averse to trying it. He could always die swinging his
blade later, if it came to that.
“Aye!”
Conan yelled. He bent his knees
further.
Rey watched as his enthralled demon sprang up the hillside. Another leap and
he would be upon Conan, and good riddance—!
“Now, Conan, now!” the cyclops behind the Cimmerian yelled.
Was not that Wikkell, his old assistant? Rey wondered. I thought him dead…
As he watched, Conan leaped agilely to one side, tumbling and falling on the
loose rock as he landed, out of the demon’s path. Well, no matter. Tunk could
attend to Conan after he slew the
cyclopes
and the
worms.
Wikkell swung his arm, as if casting something. What was he doing? Rey could
not see anything, no… wait, something glittered in the green light, some kind
of dust.
The cyclops leaped to one side and the worm next to him slithered the
opposite way just as Tunk landed on the spot where Conan had only recently
been.
Tunk’s feet shot out from under him and he fell upon his back, hard. As
heavy as Tunk was, he should have hit the rock and stuck, but instead, he
skipped over the ground as a cast stone does over water—once, twice—and on the
second bounce, flew into the air a good span high. The demon sailed like a bird
for a moment; unfortunately for him, Tunk was not a creature of the air in his
current form, and his flight became less birdlike and more like a boulder.
The demon hit the ground past the base of the slope after having gone
perhaps fifty paces through the air, dropping an easy four spans.
Rey felt the earth shake beneath him when Tunk slammed into the cave’s
floor. Such a fall would have killed any man who ever lived, and most likely
anything else born of nature as well. Even a demon could not withstand such an
impact without damage, as long as he wore solid flesh.
But Tunk
was
a demon, and while his recovery would have been
painful, he would have risen from the fall in a moment or two, shaken but more
enraged than ever, except that the force of the impact shook loose a few of the
more solidly entrenched roof rocks that had resisted the wizard’s earlier
release spell.
Two house-sized boulders fell. The first landed squarely upon Tunk’s prone
form, driving him into the rock as a man drives a tent peg with a large mallet.
The second boulder, somewhat larger than the first, came down upon the big
rock, and thus drove it into the floor, shattering the top of the first and the
bottom of the second. What was thus formed looked much like a rather fat
mushroom when the dust settled.
There were limits even to a demon’s power, Rey knew. Tunk was not going to
be digging out from under that any time soon, if ever.
The wizard looked and saw Conan rising to his feet, sword in hand. Best to
retreat to his chambers, Rey thought, to consider his next move. And now!
The black miasma had swirled to fill nearly
all of the
antechamber. Elashi, Tull, and Lalo crouched at the doorway watching the
darkness come toward them. Lalo said, “We have to get out of here, at
once!”
With that, the three of them turned and sprang for the exit—just as the
wizard leaped at the portal from the other side. The four collided and fell
sprawling.