me into my own private hell for a year, that I might suffer for my disobedience. And how long ago was that, dear 'Mas?'
'Wh-What?' the mage stuttered. He couldn't look away, hypnotized like a bird before a serpent. 'Uh, it was a-a year-'
'It wasn't!' the monster shrieked. The banshee wail stabbed into Candlemas's brain. 'A year passed! And another! And a third! Years longer than my sentence, when every day, every minute was a seething torment of agony! Polaris forgot me!'
'But, but how-'
'I escaped! I grew this hide you see. I formed a whole skin from the rock walls that were my prison. I clad myself in stone, unpierceable, unstoppable. I became this hideous creature to escape the world of fiends, to enter the world of men, to get my revenge!'
'But you were-'
'Beautiful?' the flint monster thundered. 'Ravishing! Gorgeous! Lusted after by men, envied by women! And look at me now!'
Candlemas remembered.
While he had been steward, responsible for the outbuildings and lands around Castle Delia, inside was another official, the castle chamberlain, responsible for the kitchens, dining halls, wine cellars, guest rooms, and great hall. A vibrant, brilliant, dashing mage with a cascade of beautiful red hair and glowing skin, a woman in love with herself, and the image in her mirror. A woman grown bored with her duties, who'd picked fights with Candlemas, plagued him at his work, and finally trapped him into ever-more dangerous and foolish bets, with the barbarian Sunbright as their pawn.
And all the while, the chamberlain had plotted to steal the seat of Lady Polaris, until the white-haired archwizard's iron hand clamped down, peeled the living skin from her chamberlain's flesh, and she cast her servant into hell-to be forgotten.
And driven insane…
'Sysquemalyn, I…' Candlemas moaned. He didn't know whether to plead, or offer pity, or run for his life. 'Sys, you must understand. I didn't know Polaris kept you locked there. I've been away from Castle Delia. I left years ago, and never looked back. I assumed Polaris-'
'You assumed wrong!' The hellspawn reared against the summer sky and hooked hands like eagle talons over him as she screamed, 'You didn't care! And for that, you die!'
The pudgy mage just barely threw up Valdick's forcecage before sizzling chain lightning, some variant of Volhm's chaining, exploded around him. Electric bolts scorched the air, charging it with ozone. They struck Candlemas's shield so hard he was rocked to his knees, felt the charred earth blistering hot under him, felt the temperature rise within the cage by hundreds of degrees. He'd cook unless he dispelled the forcecage, but Sysquemalyn-she might as well be Shar, the Lady of Loss and Anger-loomed and waited. And prepared another spell, for she shrieked from a gash of a mouth like a cleft in broken rock.
'Like that, dear 'Mas? Wait until I set your bones afire to burn within you! Wait until I boil your eyes in their sockets, till I curdle your brain! You'll live three years of my pain in the longest seconds of your short life!'
Candlemas scrambled to his feet, and banged his head on an invisible section of forcecage. It was so hot it seared his bald pate and made him yelp. Yet he realized part of the cage was missing. She'd actually unconjured his spell!
Wondering at her awesome power, he stumbled backward over scorched earth, found wheat burning everywhere from the lightning. Smoke roiled to the sky at all hands. Vaguely he hoped his rust-cure spell, his precious work of three long years, escaped the havoc.
Then he prayed he'd escape alive. Sysquemalyn pouted and blew out cheeks like split rocks.
A stinking cloud of yellow-green gas enveloped Candlemas. Instantly he retched on the poison. His head wanted to explode for sneezing, his eyes watered, he gasped and gagged and choked for air. He flapped his arms, shambled left and right, but the cloud followed him like a harpy. Then he was breathing it, and vomiting at the same time, and choking on his vomit. He burned, for the cloud contained acid. His scalp and hands and nose and ears prickled, grew stippled with blood. To open his eyes would blind him. Already he felt pinpoints of acid in his eyes like the claws of tiny imps.
In his darkness came a grating laugh, 'Like the smell? I lived with it for months at a time, when the air in hell was too foul to breath or burn! Taste it! Enjoy it!'
The mage's blundering feet left soil, squished in mud, and with tearful gratitude he splashed into the stream that cut the valley. Bathing his aching face and bleary eyeballs, he tried desperately to think of a spell-any spell-to drive Sysquemalyn away, or else cover his escape. A levitation spell might float him out of range, or a shadow door let him wriggle away. Even Undine's door, with no idea of his destination, would be enough. Perhaps he had a chance. He didn't hear her insane laughter.
Heat belched all around him. Brimstone bubbled just under his nose. He was afire. His smock ignited, as did the skin on his elbows and knees. He screamed at the sudden pain, and forced his eyes open to see this new attack, to get away.
The water was gone. Instead, the creek bed roiled with black, sticky tar. Huge gas pockets burped sulfur. Things charred and long dead floated on the surface. The tar was near boiling, and Candlemas was elbow- and hock-deep in it. It stuck to his face and neck, and burned where it touched. He wailed with fright and agony as he plucked himself free and grabbed for the shore.
The monster Sysquemalyn was there to meet him. He grabbed gummy grass near her craggy, twisted feet. 'Hot, dear 'Mas?' the monster cooed. 'Let me cool you.'
A hand like a knot of thorns closed on his arm. He tried to yank free, but could not. The flint hand was powerful as a chain yoked to oxen, and it dragged him on tarry elbows and knees across burnt grass and ashes. At first Candlemas felt nothing, though the hand smoked on his upper arm. Then he saw it was not smoke, but ice mist. Frost dusted his bicep, then ice. The chill spread down his arm until it was numb. Steam rose where ice met hot tar, with Candlemas's flesh trapped between. He struggled to get his feet under him, to rise, but the monster dragged him like an anchor. When she let go, he collapsed onto the dirt path between smoldering crops. The whole sky was black now, or so it seemed to his seared eyeballs under tar-heavy brows.
'Sys, please…'
'No pleases, please,' mocked the monster. She loomed against the sky like a lightning-killed pine. 'Nothing can save you. You know you'll die, don't you? But not soon, not fast. A little at a time.' She lifted her splayed foot and stamped down hard.
Candlemas couldn't move his numbed arm, and the foot crashed down like a boulder off a mountain. He heard fingers break and twist, felt the stamping vibration through the ground more than through his shoulder, which burned as if afire. Writhing, kicking gluey feet to roll away, he glanced at his arm and shuddered, almost sick. The flesh was not just chilled, it was frozen solid, dead forever. Broken in a dozen places, held together by skin.
'I bit your arm off once, remember?' From the scratchy throat issued-almost-the soft cooing wheedle the beautiful Sysquemalyn had employed years before, 'Had it torn off by a yellow fiend, actually. That jolt will seem the gentlest caress after a day or two.'
'Please,' Candlemas wept with pain, 'please, Sys. What do you want?'
'Want?' A mad shriek again. The claws flew high over the bald shining head. 'Death, in all its forms, to all my foes!'
With a wildcat wail she stabbed down, fingertips sparkling. Candlemas was hoicked into the air, pulled in five directions as if by wild horses, and spun wildly. The world became a blur with dozens of flint monsters craning over him keening a death chant. He felt blood surge in his head, saw his vision cloud, saw blood squirt from his sundered arm. When Sysquemalyn suddenly shrieked a halt, the mage stopped so quickly his legs broke. Waves of pain and nausea rolled over, and suffocated him.
More frightening, Sysquemalyn vacillated between sane and insane, shrieking one minute, cooing the next as if playing her own games. She might torture him for days, heal him as needed, then continue. For years, even, her thirst for revenge unquenched.
A coo, 'That's three limbs. What do to with the fourth? Smite the skin with exploding boils, perhaps?'
Hanging in mid-air, three limbs distorted, Candlemas knew he couldn't escape. He could only live and take it. To fight was useless.
