other way!'
Veteran of a hundred battles, Greenwillow understood instinctively. Bracing with her knees, she put her slim muscles behind the bright edge of the keen blade. Sunbright plied his heavy hand-forged blade-fine quality, but no match for elven true-steel-to yank away from the elf's cut.
Neat as sawing a tree, the imp came apart in the center. The same brassy stink gushed out as its top half toppled behind its rear end. The tall horns struck sparks from the stone floor.
Yet three more imps crowded in, smashing lemures aside to kill the human and elf. Sunbright stifled a groan of exhaustion and despair. Already, his hands and arms and legs were trembling. Blood ran down his forearms and dripped to the ashy ground. More wet redness ran down his shirt from his aching neck where spikes had gouged a furrow in his shoulder. He was torn in a dozen other places, and Greenwillow, always pale, was almost as white as the bony creatures around them. Worn to the nub, they'd surely lose when these charging imps reached them.
Yet he fought on as an imp darted forward to grab him. Showing intelligence, this creature reached in low and tried to snag its target's ankle to pull it out from under him. The barbarian slammed Harvester straight down like a crowbar into the armored, studded arm. But perhaps the imp had considered that. By the ghastly red light and infernal smoke, Sunbright saw the free hand snatch at him-and found that Harvester was fetched up in the thing's other arm. The blade was suffering the same as its master, and even the hook's inside edge, usually as keen as a fish knife, had worn dull. As Sunbright tugged to rip the edge through tough leather, the studded hand closed on his calf and yanked.
The world whirled as Sunbright flipped and crashed on his back. Only his thick topknot saved his head, but he received a solid crack. And even before he could shake his head to clear it, the armored fiend jumped on him.
The barbarian's breath shot from his lungs as giant, heavy studded feet thumped his chest. He smelled a whiff of dust and musty-bear odor as his vest was crushed to him. He fought for air as the imp wrapped two leathery hands around his throat and squeezed and pulled. The thing even smelled of hot leather, like horsehide gloves hung near a fire to dry. It was a question whether he'd be choked or have his head torn off. Flailing with his right hand, he managed only to whap Harvester against the beast's thick hide. He couldn't get purchase to strike. The world went dark and spinning, and he knew his time was running out.
In a desperate burst of fury, he curled and convulsed into a ball, managing to hook a foot in the fiend's crotch. It had no genitals to break, but the toehold would do. Straining until he thought his heart and head would burst, Sunbright braced his back and kicked straight up.
He was lucky, he knew, for the imp had been overbalanced. His throat and chin suffered as the leathery hands were dragged off forcibly. Then the imp toppled onto its head, half-wedged in a crack, and Sunbright could painfully crawl away-not that there was any safety to crawl to.
Wheezing, rubbing his raw throat, Sunbright glimpsed Sysquemalyn and Candlemas standing together a dozen feet off, eyes closed, right hands raised and touching. He thought that queer behavior for a battleground, but supposed it to be some secret mental communication between wizards. And so it proved, for within a few seconds they jumped apart and clapped their hands together.
Meanwhile, a studded imp clawed at Greenwillow. Lurching, still gulping rank air, Sunbright fended it back with the point of Harvester…
… and a studded arm snugged around his throat. Another imp had seen a weak spot and copied the first. Black wings fluttered as the raven, swooping in from on high, bated the imp's face, without effect.
Throttled, fishhook-sharp barbs lodged against his throat, the barbarian fought panic as he kicked away from one imp to drive back the other. But the hold on his neck only tightened, until he thought the spikes would puncture the underside of his jaw. Greenwillow screamed once, then higher, near panic. Kicking and jumping to keep close and relieve the pressure, Sunbright snapped Harvester over his head, trying to slash the fiend's face. A bony- encrusted arm as hard as a barnacled bollard beat Harvester aside. Desperate, the barbarian switched positions and shoved the sword down between his own legs, praying he could chop a leg from the imp. But he only succeeded in slicing himself.
He wouldn't escape this choke hold.
'By M'dhal's sansevil!' roared a voice. 'Protect this man, the living from the dead!'
With a tearing wrench, the imp was ripped loose from Sunbright and bowled backward. The barbarian fell, choking, rubbing blood from his shorn throat. Greenwillow, also bleeding in a dozen places, crawled toward them. Vaguely, Sunbright had the sense that some magic had knocked the fiends back. And through a red haze, he noticed an invisible circle surrounding them, as if a tornado had erupted, blowing away their enemies but sparing them.
Protecting them was Candlemas, who didn't look like a funny fat man anymore, for his upraised hands crackled, and lightning coursed down both sides of his body, so that his beard bristled and his clothes were as fuzzed as a scared cat's back. He bellowed again, not to the barbarian and elf, but to the gods and sources of magic. 'Karsus, grant me strength! Foul things, feel the bite of Tolodine's killing wind!'
Instantly, a howling, shrieking, keening, whirling song of death ripped the air, left them breathless, made the pit fiend in the distance howl in rage. Lemures, imps, skeletal warriors, all were churned, battered, shoved hither and thither. Some blew one way, some the other, so they collided and collapsed and thumped together, as if sixteen errant winds fought to wipe them from the earth. Fiends tumbled like grass before a hurricane. But up on the bluff, the pit fiend was conjuring too. A red mist was rising around it and blowing contrary to all the winds to envelop them. The fiends it touched were tinged red as if dipped in blood. Sunbright didn't care to imagine what it would do to the living.
But before the awful red wind could reach them, Sysquemalyn shrieked, 'By Quantol! By Smolyn! By Gwynn the Vampire and Hersent's Sigil! Trebbe, heed me! I command you-move us!' And she clapped her hands like a god.
Cavern, monsters, smoke, pit fiend. Before Sunbright's eyes, all vanished.
Within an eye-blink, the barbarian was sprawled on a dirt floor surrounded by dirt walls. There were only humans and the elf here, no fiends in sight.
He scrambled to his feet, instinctively making sure of his grip on Harvester, then groaned as he cast about.
'That was no escape! This is hopeless!'
Chapter 16
Sunbright waved his free hand and sword.
'This is still the Nine Hells! I was trapped in here before! These tunnels change as soon as you turn your back! There's no escape this way!'
'Hush, fool!' Sysquemalyn was up, though shaky-legged, and she pulled at Candlemas's sleeve to rouse him. The podgy mage rolled clumsily, as if drunk. 'This is as far as I could gate us!'
'What's wrong with him?' Greenwillow gave up wiping blood from her wounds and helped. Her clothes were more red than green and black.
'He suffers from conjuring in a foreign land,' the red-haired mage snapped. She looked tired and wretched, her eyes sunken and encircled, her proud red hair lank and lifeless. 'We're too far from the reservoir of dweomer amassed by our patron, Lady Polaris.' It was a sign of her desperation that she eschewed any insults for the lady. 'We're drawing magic from afar. The local magic is corrupt, the wrong color… Never mind! Why explain to ignorant groundlings? Help me move this bucket of lard.'
Groaning, the halt helping the lame, human and elf got Candlemas to his feet. The bedraggled raven, its tail feathers charred along the ends, limped and hopped along, as exhausted as its master. Sunbright levered his shoulder under the mage's arm. Sysquemalyn left them to it, then snapped fire on her fingers to better light their way. 'Follow me. I think I can get us out. I built this place, after all.'
'No, dear, you didn't.' Candlemas was awake and coherent. Despite his fatigue, he argued with his old rival. 'The pit fiend said no, and it ought to know. You simply plagiarized-'
'Belt up, Candy-Ass!' snapped the mage. 'All right, if I didn't exactly build it, at least I know what I stole and where it leads!'
