Patriccan acquiesced to the desire. It did not pay to make Claybore angry or upset. Patriccan motioned to those chanting the preservation spells. They backed off, their chants dropping in volume until they were barely audible.
Others moved closer, bringing with them special pastes and magically enhanced sections of living flesh. Patriccan personally placed the left leg into the raw hip socket. Sweat broke out on his forehead and ran into his eyes as the strain mounted. He blinked it free as he worked, not daring to take his hands away from the task. The paste smeared over the end of the leg allowed a perfect junction to be made. Rapid, complex spells bonded flesh to flesh.
“There is no feeling in the leg. It is dead,” said Claybore. His peevish tone spurred Patriccan and the others to greater effort. The leg began twitching spastically. “There,” said Claybore with some satisfaction. “I can even wiggle the toes. It is good.”
“The other leg,” muttered Patriccan. “Hurry with it. Hurry!” The other mages slid it along the green tile. Patriccan applied the pastes and chanted the spells.
Try as he would, he failed to make the proper connections. Nerve endings refused to weld and the leg began withering.
“Do not let it die,” warned Claybore. “One leg avails me little. I must have both.”
“Master, there is only one way to salvage this leg. Something has gone wrong. The flesh was not properly activated. I… I do not know what to do, other than to summon a demon.”
“Do it.” Claybore’s words were cold, unemotional. He and Patriccan both knew the penalty for failure. Claybore was immortal and could not die, but eternity spent in a burned or mutilated state was an eternity of damnation.
Two of the less brave mages slipped from the chamber, faces white and teeth chattering with fear. Patriccan found himself in little better condition, but knew what had to be done.
He made the hand gestures in the air and traced out fiery trails of incandescent green and purple. The spell wove into a complex mйlange of syllables hardly intelligible. The very air of the room began to hum and churn with the power of the conjuring. The demon puffed into existence, sending fly ash and sparks outward in a small cloud.
“Obey,” Patriccan said. His fingers forged a cage with bars of glowing colors; the demon struggled against the imprisoning bars. One taloned hand snaked between two bars that had been carelessly constructed and a long nail scratched down the side of Patriccan’s face. The sorcerer jerked back, anger flaring. He pointed, the tip of his finger turning white-hot. He started to send the demon back to the netherworld from which it had been summoned.
“No,” said Claybore. “Proceed. Use this one.”
“A sorry wreck you are,” observed the demon. “Not even I can piece you back together, even if I wanted. And I don’t.” The demon sat cross-legged within the cage and licked Patriccan’s blood from its talon. It made a face and spat. The gobbet struck one bar and sizzled.
Only with extreme effort did Patriccan control himself. Claybore desired a quick end to this. To conjure another demon might take more time and energy than he had. Patriccan moved the bars closer together to prevent another attempt at injuring him.
“Animate the leg. Give it the essence that burns within your veins. Give it life!” Patriccan clapped his hands and pointed. The cage edged toward Claybore’s leg. The demon tried to appear nonchalant but the spells holding it were strong. Reluctantly, the fierce green demon reached out and lightly touched Claybore’s leg.
The shriek of agony filling the chamber had not been formed by human lips. New and deeper cracks appeared in Claybore’s skull as the sorcerer endured the full anguish being meted out to him by the vindictive demon. Two of the braver mages near the back of the chamber whispered between themselves and then fell silent. Another wordless cry of pain lanced into their minds.
“He tortures me needlessly,” shrieked Claybore. “I will send him to the lowest of the Lowest Places for this. Oh, the pain, the pain! It must cease!”
Claybore thrashed about on the tiled table, hands gripping the edges for support. One arm began detaching at the shoulder; the mage found no strength within to perform the proper spell to keep it in place. Too many eons had passed since he had walked as a whole being. The parts had taken on auras of their own, grown in ways different from the torso. Claybore would have to force the arms back into place-later.
Now the mage had all he could contend with as the demon drew still another ideogram on his flesh and visited him with agony surpassing that ever borne by a living being.
“Mend the leg,” ordered Patriccan. “Do it. Do it!”
“Oh, very well. There. It is done. Poor material I had to work with, though. Damn poor.”
“I am a god,” came Claybore’s cold words. “You will rue the day you insulted me.”
“They’re all gods, to hear them talk,” muttered the demon. He crossed his legs in the other direction and polished the long talons gleaming darkly.
“Your leg, master. Is it all right?” Patriccan asked anxiously.
“It is crooked.” Claybore awkwardly slid off the table and stood on his legs. The one attached by the demon was inches shorter and bowed outward.
“Shoddy material, as I said,” spoke up the demon.
“Shoddy workmanship,” said Claybore. He placed his hands against the blazing bars of the cage and began squeezing. At first the demon only leered. Then it began to show more agitation as the bars closed in on it. Claybore continued to squeeze and the cage became ever smaller.
“Wait, stop. Don’t!” the demon pleaded. “Perhaps I erred. Your legs are the finest I have ever seen.”
Claybore’s anger was not to be contained. He continued squeezing. The cage collapsed until the demon was held in a space less than an inch across. The keenings of outrage and fear filling the room now came solely from the demon.
“You thought I jested when I said I was a god. Know this, lowborn one. I am Claybore. I rule every world along the Road. And I rule you. You!”
“Y-yes, master,” squawked the demon. “I see that now. Oh, the bars. They cut into me so cruelly! I hurt!”
“You’ll hurt for a thousand years.” Claybore conjured the world-shifting spell and exiled the demon to a distant place far from any civilized life.
“Is it cold there, master?” asked Patriccan.
“Very cold. The demon’s punishment will be extreme.”
Patriccan bowed low, smiling.
“And the punishment of the two who spoke, saying I deserved such torture…” Claybore hobbled about and directly faced the two miscreants. They dropped to their knees, pleading. From deep within Claybore’s eye sockets boiled the ruby death beams. Both mages died in fierce convulsions, their bones breaking and their inner organs rupturing in the process.
“The Kinetic Sphere?” asked Claybore. “I want it now. With it I shall again be whole.”
The parody of a human hobbled to where Patriccan opened a small cabinet. Inside lay the pinkly pulsing Kinetic Sphere, the sorcerer’s heart. His shaky hands reached out and lifted it to the yawning cavity in his chest. Claybore thrust it into his body.
“The power again flows within me,” he said. “I shall take a short rest to examine the additional powers that again having legs gives. Then,” the mage said, fleshless skull catching the light and reflecting it whitely, “then Martak shall perish.”
“Hail, master,” cried Patriccan.
Claybore almost fell as he spun about, his bandy leg betraying him. With as much haughtiness as he could muster, the re-formed sorcerer strode from the room. Only when he reached the hall did he tend to his left arm, which had again fallen from his shoulder.
He was not as powerful as he had been before Terrill had dismembered him with the help of the Resident of the Pit, but Claybore knew he was strong enough. For Inyx and Krek and Brinke and even Lan Martak.
“What is he doing?” Lan Martak worried at the lack of contact. “We cannot make the scrying spell work. He must be maneuvering into a position of power.”
“My couriers report at least four worlds along the Road where his grey-clad legions have made their final bids
