"And what became of this Sysquemalyn?" creaked the king. "Might I hire her away? I plan to maintain many homes myself once my conquest is complete."

"Oh, I don't think so… What did I do with her?" Polaris wasn't even listening to herself, only killing time to fathom this madman's desires and so exploit them. "I discharged her, I believe. No, wait…"

"You condemned her to hell, did you not? Her own personal hell, copied and crafted from the nine known levels. You even stripped her skin to make her suffering more acute, her tortures unimaginable."

"Yes, I remember now. One needs to punish servants fully to keep the others from getting airs. But how did you know-"

"Condemned for a year, correct?" The dry voice picked up speed like a sword on a grinding stone. "After which time, you would fetch her out, her punishment complete? Yet how long since you imposed that sentence worse than death?"

Without thinking, Polaris stepped back. The frozen face and dead eyes of the One King looked lethal as a cobra's. She raised a hand to shuffle soldiers before her. "Your Majesty, let not emotion overtake the proceedings. We needs talk-"

"Three years! Three long years!" rasped the king. He leaned forward as it to bite Polaris. "Three years when every day, every hour and every minute was the most exquisite torture! And had Sysquemalyn not escaped, she'd languish there still! Because you didn't care to retrieve her from hell! You forgot her!"

Feet pattered as everyone moved. Soldiers tramped in time to bar the king from the archwizard. Courtiers surrounded Polaris. Sailors readied the gangplanks of three ships for quick retreat. More hopped out with cutlasses in hand. An admiral in silver braid ordered flags to signal the six hovering ships to land.

Yet the dozen orcs and their One King never stirred. Only now did the king sink black nails into the skin at his temples.

"You forgot Sysquemalyn, Polaris! But she did not forget you!"

With a screech, the disguised Sysquemalyn tore magical flesh from her face to reveal the bald, flinty monster she'd become. Eyes of bitter blue bulged, and the lipless slash of a mouth creaked like a bear trap. "Flashy?" Sysquemalyn shrieked. "Vulgar! I'll make you look like this!"

Polaris snapped spells while courtiers screamed, sailors bawled, and soldiers charged. Sysquemalyn raised clawed arms and brought hell to the mountaintop.

Imperial soldiers swung clubs high to batter the fiend. Sysquemalyn gabbled a conjuration like a curse, stabbed fingers at the ground. Instantly it split, a hundred cracks radiating from her scaly feet. From every crack oozed gallons of black muck that stank like sea mud at low tide. The vile stuff clung to the soldiers' boots, burned through leather like acid. Even steel hobnails melted under the hellish stuff, which climbed like poisonous tentacles. As their boots leaked, the putrid gunk burned men and women's flesh like molten lead. Soldiers howled, jumped, landed in the slop so it splashed legs and hands, eating cloth and flesh. Shouts turned to screams. People saw their own bones daubed with blackness as it seared meat. Panicking, some batted at it, found their fingers rotting. Others tried to run, but tortured feet betrayed them and they splashed facedown. Ooze filled mouths, eye sockets, noses, and corroded flesh like melting candle wax.

Caught in the hellish tide were the dozen orcs who'd guarded the One King, their lord and master. They died writhing, seared by acid, suffering inside, knowing they'd been betrayed.

Courtiers stumbled and ran, pushing the ambassador Polaris toward the flying ships. But the lady stood firm. She was horrified and outraged by this base deception. Now she remembered how Sysquemalyn had coveted her power, beauty, and position, and plotted to gain it any way possible. How Sysquemalyn had insulted her mistress behind her back, then laughed at her own cleverness. That arrogance and presumption had driven Polaris to consign her chamberlain to hell. But now the archwizard saw that she'd made a mistake. Better to have killed Sysquemalyn outright, than let her harness the cabalistic conjurations of hell.

She'd remedy that mistake immediately. A fiend from hell would hate the cold. Polaris shrilled, "By Veridon, feast on this, traitor!"

The air around the monster shimmered, thickened, and frosted, sucking moisture from the air. In seconds the spell formed a block of ice as big as a house around Sysquemalyn. Dead and dying soldiers were crushed as the ice mass solidified and settled, pressing them deeper into the black ooze. A grinding like icebergs colliding resounded as ice cracked and refroze. The flint monster was obscured behind an ice wall until she looked like a shadow.

But the ice block didn't last long. The shadow within flitted like a fish under a frozen river. Then, from the depths, a hole bored through the ice, then flashed hell-fire that scalded ice to steam. The weeping hole was matched by a second, then a third, until the ice block was shot through, fragile as spun glass. With a shriek, the trapped flint monster shattered the block. Chunks of ice tumbled, threw sprays of water, spun crazily. Revealed-dripping wet, dark and dangerous as a storm-lashed mountain-was Sysquemalyn.

The monster-mage unleashed more hellfire as if hurling hatred from her heart. Snapping an arm, Sysquemalyn flung a flaming gobbet at Polaris that sizzled like a meteor. Only the archwizard's personal shield stopped it a foot from her face. Polaris even flinched as hellfire engulfed her, and raised the temperature inside the shield enough to wilt her silver-white hair.

The pool of black ooze, now studded with bones and helmets, caught fire at Sysquemalyn's feet, snapping and gouting around her skinny waist. But a fiend who'd endured real hellfire could ignore this pale imitation. With a curse, the monster raised her hands to spread pain and terror and death.

People had panicked at the first sign of trouble, their first impulse to quit the mountaintop. Soldiers and courtiers stampeded aboard the three landed ships. The six hovering ships, unsure how to help, dropped to pick up anyone they could. Sysquemalyn aimed to destroy them all.

Screeching, she windmilled her arm until it caught fire, convulsed in a giant fireball that burned to her armpit. With an oath, she whipped the arm and let the fireball fly. It struck the middle ship's gangway where people mashed to get in. Screams erupted as the hellfire ignited hair, clothes, leather, and parchment. The boat caught fire, paint and wood blistering and smoking. Sailors recoiling from the heat screamed and toppled from the upper decks, some crashing their heads on stone, others falling scores of feet down the mountainside. As the fire consumed the magical ship, it lifted, a floating coffin of charred dead and dying that sagged in the air. Its stern crunched on rocks. Flaming, smoking, it tilted, then plunged over the mountainside. A rending crash bespoke death on an outcrop far below.

The fiend struck again and again. Airboats battered by flaming gobbets burned immediately. Neither water hurled on the fires nor beaten blankets could extinguish it. Any attempt to put it out only spread it further. Two ships tried to rise but crashed. A third, burning from end to end, with flaming sailors spilling like ants, collided with its neighbor and turned that one into a torch as well.

Blinking sweat in her eyes, Lady Polaris cast about, saw only dead as attendants, and sucked wind. Rarely had she seen such power, and never directed at her. She'd better unleash some awful spell, and soon, or she might actually be harmed. Racking her brain, she mumbled words to a spell read long ago but never uttered, even as her fingers and thumbs, inverted, formed a square to box the monster.

Sysquemalyn spun two fireballs on her arms, the flames flickering eerily on her granite, mineral-shot hide. Now the monster chirped as a square of blackness appeared under her feet. No, nothingness. A portal to a negative energy plane. It gaped under her splayed, horny feet like an open trapdoor that could drop her back into hell.