presence known mostly by the way they stung the eyes. 'A little door, perhaps a hundred paces on. It's open.'
'You must be able to see in the dark like a gnome,' Zaranda said, coughing.
The girl smiled hugely and nodded. 'I always do well at night,' she said. 'Darkness doesn't bother me.'
Heat and brimstone made Zaranda's head spin, and her stomach sloshed with nausea. Her legs were as unsteady as dandelion stalks. Raising her boots from the black stone floor, polished to glassy smoothness by unguessable generations of feet, was like trying to lift the planet Glyph, rings and all. Her arms obeyed no less reluctantly, as though she were trying to move underwater-no, through a medium much denser than water…
'Zaranda,' Chen said, voice rising toward panic. 'I can't move!'
Zaranda forced her head around. It felt like trying to turn the head of the famed Fallen Idol, which lay in the river at the bottom of the gorge to which it gave its name.
The monster that called itself Armenides stood on the last switchback, thirty feet above. Its eyes glowed yellow. Its bull head grinned at them despite the hideous smoking gash across the left side of its face. Many of its limbs were cropped or missing, but it seemed in small danger of running out of them.
'Zaranda,' it said, 'dear Zaranda. Always more presumptuous than wise. Did you really think to pit yourself against the will of L'yafv-Afvonn? He's what lies behind that door: the One Below, the Whisperer in Darkness-the nexus of the crisis, and the origin of, storms. He is the One who rules the night; he has brought forth the darkling hordes of his own substance. He has made hideous the dreams of the miserable wretches who infest Zazesspur, and soon he shall make their realities even more so. I am as an ant beside his power and malice. And you — you are less than ants to me.'
He laughed, and the sound of his laughter filled the cavern and made the lava seethe and pop with redoubled fury. Zaranda fought to move, to fling her sword at him, or even a defiant gesture. But she could no more control her body than she could that of Elminster in his tower half a continent away. She and Chen were trapped inside the monster's will.
Shield of Innocence could not move his legs. That was all right. His arms were more than strong enough to drag him along the floor. And lying on his belly kept his viscera inside. Mostly.
The stink of brimstone tore at nostrils more sensitive than any human's. He ignored it, as he ignored the pain and growing weakness. His small blue eyes shone with the purity of his purpose.
A shape lay sprawled before him on the tiny square of stone poised above fire and blackness: Stillhawk the ranger, dead.
Shield's eyes brimmed with tears. 'O Torm,' he gasped, 'grant that I have not come too late!'
Gently he lifted the forester's head and cradled it against his ruined breast.
'Well,' Armenides said, still in that horribly cheerful voice, 'it seems I control the two of you. What shall it amuse me to do?'
Shaveli and nine or ten short-bow-armed guardsmen stood ranked on the stairs above the false Ao priest — well above, for even they feared to approach so monstrous a being. To perfect her misery, Zaranda saw Crackletongue's distinctive blaze sprouting from the Sword-Master's fist. Contact with the magic sword should have inflicted painful injury on a man as devoted to evil as the torturer. Evidently his black leather gauntlets insulated him from harm. He saw her eyes fix on him, stuck out his tongue obscenely far, and wiggled the tip.
'I know,' the fiend declared. 'I shall make you walk into the lava, one by one. Now, whom shall I do first? Ahh, but of course — the redheaded chit!'
Eyes great, face pale as bleached linen beneath her freckles, Chen turned and took a slow step toward the river of molten stone. 'Randi!' she moaned through clenched teeth.
Shield of Innocence took the bloodstained amulet from about his neck and laid it on Stillhawk's unmoving breast. 'O Torm,' he prayed, 'O True and Brave, please listen! Your dog begs you, do not let this soul slip out of the world. No one is truer and braver than he, and we have- '
He coughed up blood. 'We have not enough hands to fight the evil that waits below. I know… I have not served you long enough to earn the power to bring him back. And I won't ever, for this day I die, Lord. But please… please give him back his life, for his sake, for those poor brave women down there, for this whole world.'
Tears streamed down his cheeks. 'Good Torm, I beg you!'
A shimmer in the stinking air before him. A tiny point of radiance, intolerably bright, expanding to a miniature sun. The brilliance dazzled his light-sensitive eyes, threatened to burn them out, yet it filled his soul with warmth and peace such as he had never known.
Shield of Innocence, a voice said in his mind, who well have justified your name: you alone of mortals on this world have I addressed through all the ages, and you alone shall I so address. Torm hears you, and through Him, I hear.
My name has been taken in vain. You have chosen to redress this evil, knowing what the cost would be. So be it: your wish is granted.
The light flared, expanded, enveloped Shield so that it seemed he would be consumed by it, as by the heart of a sun. Then it went out.
The ranger opened his eyes.
'O Torm!' the orog wept. 'O Ao All-Father, I thank you!'
Stillhawk shook his head and moaned softly, Shield? he signed.
'I am here. Live now. Your strength is needed.'
You are a true paladin, the human signed. In silent song shall I honor your name forever.
Painfully, Stillhawk raised his right hand. The Grog's claw engulfed it, and they gripped each other tight. Zaranda? the ranger signed.
'Below. She needs your strength. You cannot rest yet.'
Shield-
The great orc dragged himself to the precipice edge. Below him, dizzyingly far, he saw the fiend standing triumphant upon the landing-and below that, Chen walking step by excruciating step to her own destruction.
He raised himself on his mighty arms, drew his legs beneath him, forced them to lift his bulk off the stone by sheer will. For a moment, he teetered on the verge.
'Ahh!' cried Stillhawk, unable to make his tongue-less mouth form the word no.
Shield of Innocence spread his arms and dived into emptiness.
29
'Hmm,' the monster said. 'There's something strange about this one, something I can't quite put my finger on. Oh-I forgot.' He held up a pincer and clacked it. 'No fingers anymore. Foolish me.'
Chen raised her foot and held it poised above the yellow-glowing lava. A bubble popped. Liquid rock struck the sole and sputtered there, raising a stink of burning leather.
'Care to test the waters first, my child?' the fiend asked. The girl pointed her toe like a dancer. It descended toward the lava.
'Zaranda,' the girl said, 'I'm sorry I don't have the strength to fight him-'
'No!' Zaranda screamed.
Like a vast bat, a shadow swooped down from above. The outflung arm of Shield of Innocence struck the back of Armenides's neck.
'Die, monster!' the orog roared as his hurtling mass swept the fiend from his perch. Both plunged into the lava with a splash of white-hot fluid.
The spell of compulsion broke like a glass jar smashed against a rock. Zaranda lunged forward, grabbed the back of Chen's blouse, and yanked her from the brink. As they sprawled on the stone flagging, yellow-glowing gobbets splattered the place where the girl had stood.
Zaranda picked herself up onto her knees. 'Oh, Shield,' she said. A single tear rolled from her eye.
Zaranda hugged Chen fiercely. The girl lifted her head. Her eyes flew wide. 'Randi!'
Zaranda's head snapped round. Shaveli jumped lithely down from several steps up and stalked forward.
