James Ward - Pool of Twilight

"No!" Slayer screamed. "This cannot be!"

Sirana watched as the sparks adhered to Slayer's skin. They covered the fiend, consumed it.

"But I am a prince of fiends!"

The abishai writhed like a skewered lizard, its entire form burning with magic, its body lost in the maelstrom of sparks. The tornadolike magic whirled faster and faster. Then Slayer began to shrink, melting into the rune on the floor. One last wail of fury echoed around the chamber, then the tornado was sucked down into the rune that had spawned it.

The magical symbol shimmered with power. Sirana did not hesitate. She knelt down, pressing her forehead against the rune.

Searing heat shot through her skull, but before she could scream it faded to a dull, almost pleasant tingling. Sirana stood, new power surging through her veins. The rune on the floor had vanished, but a mirror image of the symbol glowed momentarily on her pale forehead. Then it, too, faded. All the power that had been Slayer's was now hers to command.

She stretched luxuriously, then sank onto a velvet covered chaise, reveling in her victory over the abishai. A month ago such a conquest would have been beyond her abilities. But not now. Every day she grew stronger. Her destiny beckoned.

True, The Oracle of Strife had been destroyed, but the riddle of the hammer's hiding place had apparently been solved, or the clerics of Tyr would never have allowed the book to go up in flames. Sirana would find other ways of obtaining her prize. It would be simple enough to find the hammer by following those sent to fetch it, and Sirana's otherworldly spies had already informed her that the son of two of her father's killers would be among them.

She tossed her head back and laughed, a high, trilling sound that echoed off the cold stone walls. She was a highly creative fiend, after all. She was certain she would think of something.

Raising her hand, she gently stroked a braided ring fashioned from the coarse hair of some monster. "Hoag, I summon you. Come to me."

Instantly, a creature materialized high above her. The hamatula, a baatezu of the Nine Hells, was a tall, long-limbed fiend covered from head to claw with cruelly barbed spikes. The hamatula were cousins of the abishai and erinyes, but after her experience with Slayer, Sirana found that she preferred the cruel and crafty hamatula to the brutish and arrogant abishai. Hoag had served her well in the past. She should have thought to summon this particular fiend earlier.

"Sirana," the fiend growled with pleasure. "How wonderful it is to be summoned by a wizard of your eminence once again."

It bowed low, its long, spindly limbs strangely graceful. Its exquisitely sharp talons brushed the stone floor, tracing fine lines in the hard stone. "What task may I perform for you, mistress?"

"I need you to help me with a little plot I've concocted, Hoag," Sirana said liltingly. She ran a finger lightly along one of the hamatula's razor-edged barbs. "Of course, I can't have you walking around the city of Phlan looking like this."

The sorceress waved her hand. Shadows drifted down to swirl about the hamatula. When the shadows dispersed, the spider-limbed fiend was gone, and in its place stood a tall knight of noble bearing clad in ornate armor of midnight black. He bore a sable shield without device or crest. His face was concealed behind the visor of his helm.

"That's better." Sirana, deep in thought, chewed her lower lip delicately. "Of course, a good knight needs a proper steed." She waved her hand again. This time the shadows coalesced to form a glossy, jet-black charger. Its scarlet nostrils flared as it snorted, tossing its shadowy mane.

"Now, listen carefully at what you are to do, Hoag."

The tall knight nodded his head. "It is with the greatest pleasure that I serve, my dark lady."

Sirana was resting in her chamber after sending Hoag off on his errand, lost in daydreams of power and vengeance and on the verge of drifting into an exquisite slumber.

Suddenly, she felt hostile energy attack the intricate tapestry of warding enchantments she had woven around her spellcasting chamber. Her smoldering eyes flew open, and she leaped to her feet.

I will not be ignored!

The voice seemed to roar in her mind, ancient and powerful. It came to her across a vast distance, but Sirana reeled beneath its thunderous force all the same.

Release me, wizard!

She could feel the enchantments that cocooned her chamber waver. Fear clutched at her heart, and she cursed herself inwardly. She should have been expecting some onslaught.

Release me now!

A terrible blast of pure energy shredded the last of the chamber's defenses, knocking Sirana to her knees. Fighting panic, she did her best to absorb the virulent forces. To her amazement, she found the will to resist.

She staggered to her feet. This morning such an attack would have burnt her to cinders. She must have usurped more power from Slayer than she had imagined. Her far-off foe would not get another chance to strike. Closing her eyes, she launched a barrage of her own against her unseen assailant. She was rewarded by a howl of pain that she heard mentally. That would buy her a little time.

With a single word of magic, Sirana propelled her spirit from her body. She had learned to travel astrally from her mother, and nowadays did it as if it were second nature. She seemed to rise up through the ceiling, then high into the sky above, all the while trailing a twisted silver thread that kept her spirit in contact with the corporeal form that remained behind in her subterranean chamber.

The land rushed by in a blur beneath her. In moments, she approached a line of high, knife-edged peaks: the Dragonspine Mountains. She plunged down into a chasm of darkness. In less than an eyeblink, her spirit journey ended.

Sirana snapped her astral fingers. Light flared into existence all around her, revealing a huge cavern. She stood at the edge of what appeared to be an underground lake. Its surface was a dull, steely color, its waters strangely thick and turgid. But then, this was no ordinary pool. It was a pool of twilight, a source of powerful and forbidding magic.

"Why have you dared to attack me?" Sirana demanded.

Something stirred beneath the leaden waters of the pool.

The guardian.

You promised that you would free me if I granted you power! A wheedling note had entered into the guardian's voice. I have kept my end of the bargain, wizard. Now your turn has come. Release me!

Sirana considered her reply carefully. She didn't have the slightest idea what the true nature was of the creature trapped within the pool, but she did know that it was treacherous and deadly. It had nearly slain her the day she had finally located the pool after years of searching. Yet Sirana was nothing if not cunning. She had adopted a sympathetic tone with the guardian of the pool, that day months ago. Lonely after centuries of isolation, the guardian had listened to her soothing promises. She had struck a bargain with the creature. If the guardian infused her with magical energy from the pool, making her the most powerful wizard in Faerun, she would endeavor to free it from its watery prison.

Of course, Sirana had absolutely no intention of fulfilling her side of the bargain. The only way to free the guardian, she had learned, would be to trade places with it, and she was hardly going to condemn herself to such a fate once she had gained the hammer. No, she was destined to become a goddess! But the guardian need not know that. It must believe that she intended to liberate it. Otherwise, the guardian would never consent to help her carry out her grandiose ambitions.

"Of course we have an agreement," Sirana said finally, choosing her words carefully. "I have not forgotten that, even if you have."