'Due west,' he said to Cale.
'Due west,' Cale shouted down to Evrel, who relayed it to Ashin.
Demon Binder was soon underway.
An hour later, Jak and Cale stood at the prow, staring ahead at empty sea. There was no sign of the slaadi's ship. Cale turned and looked behind them. Traitor's Isle was lost to the darkness.
'Not fast enough,' he muttered.
'Let's remedy that,' Jak said. The little man removed his holy symbol from his belt pouch and spoke the words to a spell. Cale recognized it as the spell with which the little man previously had summoned the water elemental.
When he spoke the final word, Jak leaned out over the prow and waited. In moments, two watery pillars as tall as Cale rose from the sea, keeping perfect pace with the speed of the ship.
Jak ordered them, 'Help speed the ship and your service will be short.'
The elementals swayed in response, offered susurrous replies, and vanished below the waves.
Moments later, the ship noticeably gained speed.
'Well done,' Cale said.
Jak nodded, cast the spell again, and again. By the time he was done, half a dozen water elementals had hold of Demon Binder's hull and were driving her through the sea.
Evrel and the crew could not stop grinning.
'We could catch a gull on the wing at this pace,' the captain shouted to Cale and Jak.
Cale did not smile. He wanted only to catch two slaadi and an assassin, and he wanted to catch them his way.
Vhostym listened with satisfaction as shouts of alarm sounded from atop the tower. Clouds of toxic green fumes capped the crenellations. Men screamed and died. Two of the roof guards jumped to their deaths rather than endure the painful death spasms brought on by the gas.
Before the doors, the ball of potential energy that Vhostym had left spinning at the feet of the guards exploded. A spider web of lightning shot out in all directions. Bolts knifed into the guards, blew them from their feet, burned their flesh, stopped their hearts. All of them died quickly, with arcs of lightning dancing over their still-jerking corpses.
Alarm bells rang from within the tower.
Still invisible-for Vhostym's invisibility did not end when he attacked, as most such illusions did-he spoke the command word to bypass his own wards and flew through the drawbridge and double door into the entry foyer.
Ten bewildered soldiers stood crowded within, weapons bare. Two tried to lower the drawbridge and open the double doors to the outside but Vhostym's spell held the portals closed.
'Sealed,' one of them shouted back to a bearded sergeant.
The sergeant cursed.
'Get the priests,' he said to another.
Before the soldier could leave the foyer, Vhostym seized the far doors with his mind and slammed them shut. He waved his staff and placed a seal on the door that would keep it closed.
The soldiers, their fearful faces highlighted in the green glow of the dimensional lock, whirled around.
'Something is in here,' one of them said.
'Here? What do you mean here?' asked another, a young soldier with a thin beard.
Panic was setting in.
'Hold your ground in the Dark Sun's name,' the sergeant said, but Vhostym could hear the fear in his voice too. 'Lis, try the door again.'
Vhostym floated into a corner of the room and softly incanted a spell. A wave of invisible energy went forth from his outstretched hands. The magic hit the soldiers, one, then another, another, until all of them went rigid, immobilized by the power of the magic.
They were nothing more than statues of flesh waiting to die.
Shouts sounded from the other side of the closed double doors. Something slammed fruitlessly against the sealed door. Vhostym heard an invocation-one of the priests attempting to counter his locking spell. The attempt failed, of course.
A sudden wave of pain wracked Vhostym's body, sent a charge through his bones. Not an enemy's spell, but his disease. He hissed with pain.
Not now, he thought, and waited what seemed like an eternity for it to pass. When it did, he put it out of his mind and withdrew a small leather bag and a wax candle from his component pouch. He lit the candle with a mental command, tossed the bag to the floor amidst the immobilized soldiers, and cast a powerful summoning. The candle flame turned black as he spoke the words. He completed the summoning by pronouncing the name of the gelugon devil he was calling. 'Emerge, Kostikus.'
The candle flared out in his hand and the leather bag squirmed, expanded, opened like the mouth of a beast. The bag's opening became a gate, a portal to the Hells. Screams emerged from it, the agonized wails of tortured souls.
'What is happening in there?!' shouted a voice from behind the door.
The bag's mouth grew until it was as large as one of the tower's doors. A silhouette filled the opening.
Kostikus stepped forth.
At his appearance, ice crystallized on the floor and walls of the room. Warded and incorporeal, Vhostym did not feel the cold radiated by the fiend.
The ice devil towered so high he had to duck to step out of the gate. His head nearly touched the ceiling of the room. Skin the color of old parchment wrapped a hairless head that looked like an exposed skull. Bow legs and overlong arms jutted from a thin, humanoid frame. The devil was naked. In one hand it held a spear as long as Vhostym was tall.
Vhostym knew that devils could see invisible creatures. Kostikus looked around the room until his gaze settled on Vhostym. The black holes of the creature's eyes flashed recognition. And fear. Vhostym could have annihilated the powerful devil within moments and Kostikus knew it.
'How may I serve?' Kostikus asked, nodding his head in a bow. The devil's voice sounded brittle and his respiration formed clouds in the air.
Vhostym indicated the immobilized soldiers and projected, Kill all of these where they stand and return to your Hell.
Vhostym did not want to waste time killing each of the soldiers himself. Besides, he took no pleasure in killing. For him, murder was a purely utilitarian exercise. He needed the tower empty and he wanted no survivors with loose tongues spreading the tale of its destruction.
The devil seemed surprised at the simplicity of the request but asked no further questions. Presently the towering fiend set to his work. His spear pierced the flesh and organs of one of the soldiers, then another. The devil laughed as he killed-a high pitched sound like the squeal of a delighted child.
More shouts from behind the door, then silence.
Vhostym turned his back to the gleeful fiend and cast another spell, summoning to his side a sphere of nothingness an arm's span in diameter. The void sphere would disintegrate whatever it touched. Another spell summoned a magical eye that, like Vhostym's incorporeal body, could travel through solid objects and project his vision whither it went.
Vhostym sent the eye, invisible to all but him, through the sealed door and into the room beyond. He transferred his vision to the sensor and saw the stairway and main corridor on the other side of the doors crowded with defenders. Few were fully armed or armored, and many still wore nightclothes. They must have poured out of their bedrooms at the sound of the alarm. Perhaps two score soldiers, three of the temple's priests, and two wizards waited there. All of them stood ready, the priests in front with their silver holy symbols in one hand and their blades in the other. Magical wards, visible as distortions in the air, shielded both of the wizards, who flanked the priests. Both held wands at the ready.
They were hoping to ambush Vhostym the moment he walked through the door.
Vhostym turned his sight from the sensor back to his body. With the devil still impaling soldiers behind him,
