The magic burst in a shower of sparks, as all such weav-ings do when turned to look directly upon themselves. Malachlabra, Duchess of Hell and daughter of Dispater, reared back with a snarl.

"Are my spells so feeble? Or is there something here, twisting my magic? The sphere of seeing has always worked before!"

Bat wings flared once as she stretched restlessly. Sleek | obsidian flesh reared up from the hot blood of the pool. The thick red liquid dripped from high breasts, and ran down the curves where serpent-tails met in a wide pelvis. Malachlabra had the body of a lush human female, "| though for a woman, her snakelike, undulating neck would have been grotesquely long. The two horns curving up from her temples looked anything but human. Her forked tongue flickered thoughtfully between her lips, darting forth to taste the air, as she thought about how to get back at Nergal.

Nergal the brute, stupid and always trusting overmuch in his power and cleverness. Nergal the spy, always slyly watching the doings of others, so as to pounce on this and manipulate that, thinking himself the rightful successor to Dread Asmodeus himself! Well, she'd-

The thing that came rushing at Malachlabra out of the mouth of the passage gave no warning. It was barely a tail length away when it flared into a dozen bright blue bolts of ravening magic.

The serpent devil had no time to try to see what had cast those bolts. They shocked into her, spreading their own cold, cutting pain. Spell-plucked rocks smashed into her from behind, driving her down into the pool and drowning her sight.

Desperately she lashed the air with all her tails, slapping hard at unseen nothing, and was rewarded with a heavy, thudding impact.

Fires of Nessus, but the pain was intense! Shaking, Malachlabra surfaced with talons at the ready, seeking-

Anything but what she saw: a human sorceress with crude bat wings crumpled around her, standing amid the bloody rocks. Her hands racing in intricate gestures." I feel him!" the woman hissed, her eyes blazing."What have you done with him, devil?"

This intruder did not wait for a reply. The spell she'd spun burst into another volley of blue bolts that sprang into the she-devil.

Screaming amid white fire, Malachlabra twisted and arched. She fought to weave magic of her own and sobbed with unaccustomed pain by the time it worked-snatching her elsewhere.

In midgasp she was back on the smoking, spinagon-swarming surface of Avernus, not far from the cavern she'd just fled. Shuddering, she thrust aside hate and pain and tried to think how best to smite this astonishing foe. How had a human even reached her-?

The third volley of magic missiles left the serpent-devil on her face on the rocks, clinging to life and awareness through a red haze.

"We weren't done yet, devil," she heard the human say angrily from behind her. "Or at least I wasn't."

The blade that pierced the base of Malachlabra's skull -j was very cold and hard. It slid through her and out her fj nose before she could even shriek, pinning her jaws half- | open, and struck a spark off a stone in front of her.

Summoning all her will and power, the devil threw her J awareness into that spark and rode it away,...

"Die, devil!" Alassra Silverhand hissed.

The Simbul's spell sword melted out of her hands, leaving its own fiery pain behind. She flung herself back asij flames roared up in a thunderous column, shaking the • stony ground. Heat forced the Simbul a few hasty paces :1 farther away.

The serpent-devil's limp body withered and writhed at its heart. It shrank and faded away.

Another column of fire burst into being behind her, Jj melting the tip of one of her wings.The Simbul gasped at the pain. She whirled to face this new peril and hastily murmured the words that would make her wings pass | out of existence.

"Look up, human, before you die," came a cold command.

For once, the queen of Aglarond obeyed.

A pit fiend larger than any she'd ever seen before hung in the red air high above her, flanked by two others. In the distance, flights of erinyes were flapping nearer. A series of smoking explosions occurred on rocks all around as summoned barbed devils appeared. They strode, grinning cruelty at her as they advanced. One of.J them seemed in distress, convulsing and growing as it came. Its legs lengthened into three serpent tails. Its body 'J became taller and more shapely....

Another column of flame burst into being and roared skyward, ringing the Simbul. Over the lip of the dell in which she stood, a pale, glistening army appeared: a moaning wave of goggle-eyed, shapeless fleshy things, Lemures, the mindless, maggot-like living refuse of Hell. Terror was written on their empty faces, but their eyes held only darkness. They reached with misshapen arms toward her. Whips cracked over them, and abishai overseers peered eagerly at the lone human in the midst of the flames.

Slowly, the Simbul's wings sighed into nothingness. She went to her knees on the hard rocks, crossing her wrists in the gesture of surrender into slavery.

"Well, well," the pit fiend said softly,"this is going to be easier than I'd thought. Stay just as you are, human, while I chain you."

Minute sparks burst into being between the Simbul's wrists, where the metal scales embedded in her skin touched. She'd transformed her bracers into them after destroying Tasnya, and thrust the last few powers of her scorched garments into them. Now it was time to call on their true powers, one of the mightiest magics she'd ever crafted.

The eyes of the queen of Aglarond narrowed. Her magic was dwindling fast, and there were too many foes here to fight. It was time to use the Blood Ring.

She shuddered, her eyes locked pleadingly on the gloating gaze of the pit fiend that descended to her. It lazily shook out the links of a barbed chain crusted in old blood. The Simbul's will bore down on distant creatures... and her magic took them.

There was suddenly something in the air in front of the pit fiend. Something spherical and floating that sported a wide, smiling, many-toothed maw, a central eye that was wide with rage and fear, and.above this, like a wriggling crown, a writhing forest of eyestalks.The pit fiend stared in amazement, then sneered at what had to be a desperate illusion. No beholders roam free for long in Hell. Many eyes trained their gazes on the winged fiend.

"Very clever, human!" it jeered-just before the eye tyrant's magics reached it.The pit fiend struggled in midair ' j for a moment, caught in those gazes. It stiffened, turning dark... and began the slow, stony fall to a shattered death ' J on the rocks below.

It had been only one of many foes. Lemures tumbled and slithered down into the dell. Hamatula stalked to the gaps in the flames. Fiends filled the air.

Other creatures suddenly appeared beside the kneeling sorceress. Two human mages looked around in astonishment and mounting terror and snatched wands from their belts. Neither seemed to see each other or the Simbul, only | devils, devils everywhere.

In their midst, the sorceress closed her eyes and bade the beholder strike at the other two pit fiends before she bent all her will to calling one other creatures. Yes: the dragon...

It had taken decades of daring and careful acting and pain to craft the Blood Ring. Every creature linked to it had to have some of her blood within it, lingering in some cyst ^;| or scar tissue or body fat, thrust there by the Simbul during bloody battle. If she survived this foray into Hell, it might take her centuries to rebuild the ring. Of course, that was a large "if" just now....

Erinyes swooped down thickly. Ravaedrin of the Zhen- | tarim whimpered aloud at the sight. Desperately he shouted a spell that made one of the columns of flame into a geyser of acid. It sprayed in a great plume, dying in a single burst that hissed deafeningly down onto screaming devils.