“Every tunnel!” the Ashmadai commander cried as the whole of his group shrank back toward the entrance that had brought them into the room. The colorless forms of ghost dwarves flooded into the circular hall from every one of the exits in front of them, forming ranks with all the discipline of a living army.
“Can they touch us? Can they hurt us?” one woman asked, her teeth chattering, for indeed the room became very cold.
“They can tear you apart,” Dor’crae assured them.
“Then we fight!” the commander cried, and all around him gave a rousing battle cheer.
All except for Dor’crae, who was thinking that it might be time for him to take the form of a bat and fly away. And except for Valindra, who began to laugh wildly, loudly, and so hysterically that the cheering died away bit by bit, each Ashmadai voice going silent as a new set of eyes fell upon the lich.
“Fight them?” Valindra asked when at last she commanded the attention of all. She began to cackle again, uncontrollably it seemed. She brought forth her emaciated hand, palm up, closed her eyes, and her laughter became a chant.
The Ashmadai circled behind her, ready to run away, having seen the destructive power of her magic.
But no fireball filled the room. Instead, a scepter appeared in her hand. At a cursory glance, it looked much like those carried by the Ashmadai, and that brought more cheers. But as each of them came to view Valindra’s scepter more closely, those cheers turned to gasps.
The Ashmadai scepters, their staff-spears, were red in color when first presented, but that hue wore away with time and use, and most held weapons of uneven hue, more pink than red. But not the scepter Valindra held. It was ruby, and not just in color. It seemed to have been carved of one giant gemstone, rich red, its color so fluid and deep that several of the nearby Ashmadai held forth their arms, as if they meant to sink their fingers right into it.
Valindra grasped it powerfully and thrust it horizontally above her head, and its ends flared with a powerful red light.
“Who is your master?” she cried.
Confused, the Ashmadai glanced around at each other, some mouthing “Asmodeus,” others quietly and questioningly asking, “Valindra?”
“Who is your master!” Valindra yelled, her voice magically magnified to fill the chamber and echo about the stones, the ends of the scepter flaring again in response to her cry.
“Asmodeus!” the commander yelled back, and the others followed his lead.
“Pray to him!” Valindra ordered.
The fanatics scrambled to form a kneeling circle around the lich, and each looped his right arm over the shoulders of the person to his right, left arms reaching high for the amazing scepter. They began to chant, and their circle began to slowly rotate to the left as they crawled on the hard stone.
From a few steps back, Dor’crae watched it all with blank amazement. He knew that scepter. Szass Tam had kept it back in Thay, knowing well that it was the most treasured artifact of the Ashmadai. Dor’crae had suspected all along that Sylora Salm had brought it west with her, given that almost the entire cult of Ashmadai had come to Neverwinter Wood, and given their complete obedience to her. When Valindra had joined their ranks those years ago, Sylora’s power over the lich had only confirmed that suspicion.
Dor’crae could hardly believe that Sylora had given the scepter to Valindra, to that unstable and powerful undead creature.
Dor’crae shook those thoughts away. It was not the time. His warriors were on their knees, and the dwarves fast approached.
“Valindra!” he called to warn her, but she, too, was deep into her chanting and she seemed not to hear.
“Valindra, they come!” the vampire yelled, but again, the lich made no sign that she heard him.
The nearest ghosts took on a reddish hue as they came within the wide glow of the ruby scepter, and Dor’crae noted that they seemed to hesitate there, their faces twitching with discomfort, pain even. Smoke began to pour from the scepter’s ends, circling between Valindra and the closest dwarves, swirling across the stone floor, and sinking lower, as if reaching into the rock itself. The stone melted, liquefied, red bubbles forming and popping, releasing acrid yellow smoke into the air.
As one, the ghosts stopped and threw up their hands, shielding their eyes.
Through the floor it came, as if standing up in a shallow pond. The large head appeared first, spiked and crested with rows of jagged red bone. Hooked black horns reached out to either side and curved upward and over, where they narrowed into points facing each other. Wide eyes showed no pupils—pits of fire and nothing more, the eyes of an angry devil. A wide mouth curled back in a perpetual hiss, revealing huge canines and rows of teeth that could tear flesh from bone with ease. Taller it climbed as if scaling a ladder in the molten floor, its glorious, naked body coming forth from the lava with not a scratch or burn, its red, leathery wings spreading wide as they came free of the hole.
The whole of the creature was red, hot like the fires of all Nine Hells, its skin stretched over corded muscles and rows of bone. Black spikes lined its back in a sharp ridge narrowing at the base of its spine, where they gave way to a flashing red tail, barbed in a black tip and dripping lethal venom. The long claws of its hands, too, shone black, like polished obsidian. In its right hand, it held a gigantic mace, obsidian black and with a four-bladed head, each side a cleaver in and of itself. Smoke wafted from that weapon, and an occasional lick of flame appeared along its angry head.
Finally the fiend stepped from the bubbling pool, a huge, clawed foot scraping down upon solid stone, black claws screeching.
The beast wore only a green loincloth set with an iron skull in front, black leathery bracers tied tight around its muscular forearms, and macabre jewelry: a necklace of skulls, human sized but seeming smaller on the eight-foot-tall devil, and more skulls tied around its thrashing tail.
The Ashmadai wailed and prostrated themselves, face down, not daring to look upon the glorious devil.
It was not Asmodeus, of course, for to dare to even try to summon that one would have brought ruin upon them all. But Dor’crae’s estimation of Valindra jumped mightily at that terrible, glorious moment, and truly he felt the fool for ever doubting Sylora Salm. With the scepter, Valindra had called deep into the Nine Hells, and she had been heard.
Dor’crae was no student of devil-kin, but like anyone else who had spent time with dark wizards, he knew the primary beings of the lower planes. Valindra had been heard indeed, and she had been granted, for her efforts, the services of a pit fiend, one of the personal servants of the devil god, a duke of the Nine Hells, answerable only to the unspeakable archdevils themselves.
The beast surveyed its ghostly enemies, then half-turned to regard Valindra and the groveling Ashmadai. It reached out with its long arm toward the scepter, clawed fingers grasping for the item.
And again Dor’crae thought it was surely time for him to leave, but the pit fiend didn’t take the scepter from Valindra. Instead, it seemed to lend her its powers, to be funneled through the item.
The scepter glowed more brightly, and Dor’crae had to turn his shoulder and throw his elbow up high, bringing his cloak up to shield his face. He, too, was an undead thing. So many times had the vampire dominated unsuspecting humans, the weak willed who would give in to his demands. But he realized in that moment the horror of his former victims.
Despite himself, he was on his knees. He found that he could not look upon the pit fiend any longer, and he buried his face in his hands and bent to kiss the floor. Trembling, helpless, he could only die again right then and there. There was no escape. There was no hope.
“Dor’crae,” he heard, more in his thoughts than his ears, as Valindra reached out to him, her voice thin and far, far away.
“Dor’crae, arise,” she ordered.
The vampire dared to look up. Valindra still stood as she had, the scepter thrust up above her, its ends emitting wave after wave of energetic red light.
The pit fiend stood before her now, having let go of the artifact, and the scepter itself seemed greatly diminished, as the duke of devils seemed greatly enhanced.
Dor’crae’s pain subsided, as did his hopelessness. He dared rise to his knees, then to his feet.
“The primordial’s minions will not recognize that we also wish its release,” the vampire warned. “And there is the dragon—the red dragon from the depths below …”
Valindra smiled at him and shrugged, as all around her the Ashmadai struggled to their feet, and the vampire wondered if Valindra had called to each of them, individually and by name, and somehow all at once.
“Lead on, Beealtimatuche,” the lich said.
With the pit fiend thus leading, the procession moved past the writhing mass of prostrated dwarf ghosts, the creatures squirming in agony, and stalked out of the chamber.
The Ashmadai said nothing, but the looks on their faces spoke of awe and wonderment, and elation. But no such feelings washed through Dor’crae. He had known wizards to summon beings of the lower planes—usually minor demons or imps. He had heard of those who had dared bring forth more powerful minions, demons and devils, or elementals.
Those attempts at summoning greater servants had not typically ended well. He looked at the scepter, the source of the power for the summoning, and knew instinctively that the bulk of its stored energy had been spent in bringing forth the devil—a mighty devil that had to be tightly controlled.
Pit fiends were servants only to the archdevils themselves, and now, it seemed, a servant to Valindra Shadowmantle.
But for how long?
THE HERITAGE, THE FATE
DRIZZT LEANED AGAINST THE WALL OF A DEFENSIVE ALCOVE ALONG THE ten-foot-wide corridor. Dahlia stood across the way, in a similar alcove. They heard the pursuit and knew it to be elemental minions of the primordial. The drow glanced back the other way, where the corridor spilled into a square room, its door too broken to be used to slow the pursuing beasts.
“Hurry,” Drizzt whispered, aiming the remark at Bruenor and the others.
Bruenor had determined that that particular room held the first installation for one of the magical bowls, one of the magical connections to the tendrils of the Hosttower.
Drizzt glanced along the corridor, at the many metal placards evenly spaced along the wall, all decorated with various dwarven images, and none with an apparent clue as to which might be the correct choice. Then a noise back down the corridor brought Drizzt from his thoughts. He glanced across at Dahlia and nodded.
The woman, holding her tri-staff, eagerly grinned back at him. That grin disappeared almost at once, though, and Dahlia lifted her hand and worked her fingers through an intricate series of movements.
Your sword.
Drizzt looked down as his belted scimitar, Icingdeath, and discerned at once the cause of her concern. At the crease where the blade’s hilt sat on the scabbard, a line of blue light glowed. Icingdeath always had a bluish tint to it, and often glowed more powerfully, particularly when facing a creature of fire. The scimitar was one of the ancient frostbrands, after all, a weapon built to battle creatures of fire, a weapon hungry for fire elemental blood.
But Drizzt had never seen it glow while in its scabbard. He grasped the hilt and brought it forth just a bit, and his alcove was bathed in blue light.
He slid it back into the scabbard and took a deep breath, and told himself that it was just because of the nearness of the ultimate of fire creatures, the primordial.
He looked back at Dahlia and lifted his hand to respond, but before he did, he realized something quite amazing and unexpected: Dahlia had spoken to him in the intricate drow hand cant. Drizzt had never met anyone other than a drow who could use that sign language.
How do you know the cant? he flashed back at her.
Dahlia’s pretty face screwed up as she tried, unsuccessfully, it seemed, to follow his movements.
Slowly, Drizzt signed, You speak as a drow.
Dahlia held her hand out horizontally and waggled it back and forth, indicating that she had only a cursory knowledge of the language. She ended with a self-deprecating grin and shrug.
Drizzt was impressed anyway. Few who were not drow, who were not trained from their earliest days at the Academy, could form even the most rudimentary words in the intricately coded language.
Down in the corridor, a door banged open and Dahlia tightened against the wall, her hands wringing on her magical staff.
Drizzt slid an arrow out of his enchanted quiver and set it to Taulmaril’s string. He crouched down on one knee and peeked out into the corridor to see a host of red-skinned salamanders slithering down his way.