Iron Tongue

" Then do it. The spiders seem sated for the moment, but I have no wish to press my luck." Noratumi tilted his head in the direction of Murrk and several other spiders. Lan had to agree. The alliance worked well at this instant. But the next?

He went to the nearest wagon and crouched by the rear axle, examining it. Running his hand over the work- worn wooden rod sent shivers of anticipation into his body. This was the first chance he had to consciously think about his conjuring before doing it. The black, eerie, empty dragons he had sent against Claybore had come without the slightest thought on his part. But this required effort.

Lan closed his eyes and let the dancing mote deep within him rise up. It bobbed and darted about, grew closer, took on texture. He teased it with his mind, captivated it with chants, bound it with his magic. The almost- alive ball of energy swung to and fro, then vanished from his inner sight. In the span of a heartbeat, it returned, herding a tiny demon with massive arms and wrists. The demon screamed its protests, but the mote suffocated all words.

Silently, Lan pointed. Fire leaked from his fingertips; the demon understood. With a sour expression, the diminutive horror from the Lower Places jumped up to sit, legs swinging, from the axle. It bent its head to keep from bumping against the loaded wagon bed.

The young mage made a turning motion with his hands. The demon squawked loudly enough to be heard over the damping spell cast by the light mote.

" Master, give me a break! That is not possible. My arms will tire. My hands cannot grip without slipping. There' ll be blisters. I' ll hurt myself! I have a hernia!"

" Do it," Lan said coldly.

" Oh, all right. I' ll try. But if this doesn' t work like you think it ought to, don' t say I didn' t tell you so." The demon bent double and wrenched at the axle. The entire wagon creaked and groaned and began to slowly move uphill, even with the brake firmly in place.

" Noratumi, get the team a' pulling. I' ve bound a demon to the back wheels to give you a boost up the hills. Be careful going downhill. The creature is likely to keep twisting." Lan glanced under the wagon and saw that the demon had intended doing just such mischief. Thwarted, it had to think up other misdeeds. Capturing a demon was relatively simple; binding it to exactly his will was another matter.

As soon as Noratumi began the wagon on its trip back to Wurnna, Lan summoned another and still another demon. The last one appeared different. The first two had been purple with distinct red tints in the piglike eyes. Not so this one. Bright green, its eyes glowed a baleful amber that reminded Lan of the mechanicals he had encountered on other worlds. This creature was totally supernatural- but its nature troubled him. Not only did the beast not complain at its imprisonment, it willingly began working, doing twice the work of the other captive demons.

" Inyx," Lan said in a low voice, " be especially watchful of the last wagon. The demon works too hard."

" Without urging? That is something to worry over." She remembered her own brief encounters with motive power demons. All had complained bitterly, begging for release from cruel masters, and all were more than anxious to be slackers at their work.

Lan Martak trudged along with Inyx and Krek, scouting ahead and guarding the flanks as the caravan of wagons lumbered through the mountain passes. The spiders watched them leave their valley without so much as a wave of a hairy leg. Lan fancied that he recognized Webmaster Murrk high in the webs, but Krek informed him he was mistaken.

All day they rattled and rolled along a rocky path scarcely the width of the wagons. Only at the end of the second day did Lan begin to think there might be a chance for success. The secret passageway Iron Tongue had promised turned out to be a tunnel drilled directly through the mountain to the west of Wurnna. Lan sent his energy mote ahead scouting for any sign of Claybore or his troopers. The route remained clear of both physical and magical impediments.

The third wagon rattled into the narrow passage, following the other two. Lan and Inyx brought up the rear.

" We' re so close. I have a premonition of disaster."

" Precognition?" the woman asked.

" Nothing so firm. Just an uneasy feeling. The trip from the mine has been too easy."

" Too easy?" Inyx flared. " We fought for every inch. Even with your demons, getting those tons of power stone ore up the mountains was anything but easy."

" I meant that Claybore hasn' t bothered us. With Bron obliterated, he has troops to spare. He can comb these mountains. If he wants. Why hasn' t there even been a small magical probe?"

" The battle might have drained him more than we thought."

Lan Martak didn' t believe that for an instant. With his newfound energies, he also gained insight into Claybore' s powers. The sorcerer did not share mortals' weaknesses. He had different flaws; tiring easily was not one of them. Like Lan, he drew on powers transcending the ordinary.

" The gap opens!" came the echoing cry from the far end of the tunnel. " We' re almost there. Wurnna is in sight!"

" Now comes the hard part," Lan said. Barely had the words left his mouth when the green demon on the last wagon let out a grunt of supreme exertion.

" Lan?" Inyx wasn' t sure what was happening. The mage knew instantly and began strengthening his binding spells. But the damage had been done. The demon had exerted its full power to send its wagon rocketing ahead. The heavy ore wagon ran over its lead horses, crushing them with wild whinnies of pain, then picked up speed on a slight downhill stretch and smashed full- bore into the second wagon.

The tunnel filled with power stone and choking clouds of dust. All within the tunnel would suffocate before reaching the safety of Wurnna.

" A full frontal assault. That will do it," the woman said with finality. Alberto Silvain looked at his companion and started to speak, then thought better of it. Kiska k' Adesina had changed during the course of the siege of Wurnna. The half- crazed glare in her eyes had intensified to become that of a person totally insane. Silvain had tried to reason with her on finer points of military tactics, to no avail. She had Martak and his spider trapped within the city- all she cared about was her revenge.

" That will not do it," came Claybore' s emotionless voice. The officers turned to see mechanical legs scissoring back and forth to bring the torso and head into their map room. The eye sockets in the fleshless skull glowed a cherry red. Silvain straightened, anticipating a sudden lance of death. None came.

He relaxed slightly. This battle did not go as he anticipated and he did not want Claybore blaming him. To shift the accusations of culpability he needed a lever. His opportunity might come soon with Kiska less and less able to reason rationally.

" Master, your will is all," cried a now docile k' Adesina. The wildness remained in her eyes but it was tempered with: what? Silvain tried to understand what went on in the woman' s mind. That brain was a capable one. He had firsthand evidence of it in her planning for the conquest of Bron, but other things fluttered and distracted her, things not reasonable or even sensible.

" Of course it is," snapped the skull, jaws clacking in a mockery of human speech. " I have just annihilated one of their parties as they tried to sneak into Wurnna." The words came slower, more carefully chosen. Silvain' s attention perked up. The dismembered sorcerer did not tell all. Who had been destroyed? Martak? The spider? Would Claybore be openly boastful if he had eliminated those two major impediments to his regaining his body?

Silvain decided that, had Claybore been victorious over the young mage, he would never mention it in front of Kiska k' Adesina. He knew of her psychopathic need for personally killing the man and monster who had slain her husband. To blunt such a valuable instrument as k' Adesina was out of the question.