The Glass Prison (31 page)

Fortunately, the spiritual weapon that Chauntea had granted her still beat on Chare’en’s body, aiding Vheod in his fight. The fact that her god’s magic worked even in the face of such terrible power served to strengthen Melann’s faith in her patron. She had no idea what she would do or think if it had failed.

Melann reached the staff and grasped it. Though it was wooden, it felt cool and smooth, like silver. The staff had been carved with four flat sides, each with etched runes filled with silver inlay. The ends were each capped in silver, all of it shining as if the object were brand new. In its texture and balance it was light and somehow pleasant to hold.

A cry of pain made her spin on her heel, looking back toward Vheod. Chare’en had managed to grasp the cambion in the tendrils of his many-tailed whip. Blood flowed from numerous wounds inflicted by the barbs and spines on the whips. As Vheod struggled to free himself, Chare’en laughed and burst into infernal flames.

Or at least, that was what Melann thought at first. Instead, she saw after her eyes adjusted to the unpleasant light of the piercing flames, that the tanar’ri had somehow immolated himself, sheathing his body in flames that seemed to inflict no pain on him whatsoever. The fire lapped at Chare’en’s flesh like waves of water, and as he continued to laugh the balor pulled Vheod closer and closer to him and to the conjured fires of chaos and evil.

Melann bounded toward this scene as Vheod still strained at the coils of the whip that trapped him. She raised the staff, gripping it in both hands, and charged Chare’en with it as if it were a spear. The heat of the fire forced her back. She couldn’t get close enough even to strike. With a mighty yank, Chare’en drew Vheod into the flames and held him close in a fiery, life-quenching embrace.

“No, please, don’t,” she protested in vain. “Vheod! I love you!”

She wasn’t sure until now, but it was true. Vheod’s nobility, strength, and passion were greater than anyone she’d ever met. Now, it would seem, he would be taken away from her before she could ever tell him, for the roar of the flames drowned out her words.

To her surprise Vheod still struggled in the grasp of the fiend. While the flames obviously burned him, he withstood the heat with a greater fortitude than she would have believed possible. His Abyssal heritage must give him such strength, she reasoned, but could it be enough? She was near exhaustion and thought if she could only reach Vheod, she might possibly be able to call on the power of Chauntea once more to heal him, but then she would be of no further use.

She charged forward again and was again repelled by the flames. The twisted laughter of Chare’en still filled the room. It drew her attention, however, to the orrery-like rotating device spinning almost silently in the room. She had seen it earlier strike the demon and almost knock him down. She’d also seen the face within the metal that appeared when it struck him. Perhaps she could get it to strike again—but if she did, it would strike Vheod as well.

Melann ran back to the center of the room. The base of the device was an immobile tripod of metal that
surrounded the now-open glass prison. The top of the tripod, where the three supports joined, held a spinning disk from which curved metal supports extended at various lengths into the chamber. At the end of each was one of the metallic, three-dimensional shapes that whirled in circles. Some moved up and down as well as around. Most were joined to other shapes by further metal supports, so that the entire superstructure moved as one—around, up and down, with many of the individual parts spinning on their own.

Melann tucked the staff into her belt at her back and began to climb up one of the legs of the giant tripod. The support was about as thick as she was, and so by wrapping her arms and legs around it she was able to quickly inch her way up the outer surface of the leg. Near the top, she reached up and grabbed onto the disk that turned horizontally. She was surprised by the force that tore her from the leg. As she held on with all her might, she whirled around on the spinning disk.

Pulling herself up on top of the disk, she found she could stand on it and maintain her balance between the various supports that sprouted forth and connected to the rest of the structure. The whole thing obviously functioned by magic, for she found nothing resembling a mundane mechanism at the center of the device to turn the disk. She reasoned that perhaps the device was some sort of magical generator that powered the prison to hold Chare’en. No other explanation for its existence seemed to make sense. Experimentally, she leaned against one of the supports and began to shake it using her weight. To her surprise, she was able to cause the entire device to waver slightly.

As she turned, Melann saw Chare’en and Vheod. Again to her surprise, she saw that Chare’en had
dropped Vheod to the floor, where the cambion writhed in burned agony—but he was alive! Chare’en reeled backward, but Melann had no idea why. She turned past them and no longer could get a good view of what happened.

By the time the device circled her around, Melann could see that Chare’en clutched at something sticking in his left eye. As the fiend staggered backward he roared in pain. With his movement, however, Melann saw past him to the doorway.

Whitlock stood between the open bronze doors, a crossbow weakly dangling in his hand. As she passed around past the scene again, Melann determined that her brother would almost certainly drop at any moment. She had to do something—now was her chance.

Once again, despite the growing dizziness she felt from the rapid rotation, Melann grasped one of the supports and began attempting to shake it. Throwing her weight into it, she caused the device to shudder and shake. With each moment, it grew more violent. The shapes, one by one, stopped spinning on their own. Each formed a humanlike face in the metal surface, each turned toward her. As they rotated around the central axis, shifting up and down, near and far and throughout the room, the faces all moaned with voices of metal fatigue: “
No
!”

She ignored them. Melann didn’t stop.

“We maintain the prison of the balor, Chare’en. We were placed here by Braendysh. It is our duty for all time to ensure he does not escape …” the voices continued.

“You failed, whatever you are,” Melann whispered as she shook the support. “It’s my turn now.”

As the support wobbled more and more dramatically, the voices moaned and protested more.
Meanwhile, she saw Chare’en remove the crossbow bolt from his eye and toss it to the ground. Black and green fluid poured from the wound, but already the flow began to ebb. Suddenly, two of the metal shapes clashed together as the device swayed and shook, and the different moving parts began to turn out of sync. The whole structure careened out of control. Supports began to bend and tear apart.

Melann’s eyes grew wide. “What have I done?” she shouted, though only she could hear herself.

The floor was fifteen feet below her at least, but she had to get off the device, and quickly. She stood on the disk, retaining her balance, when a powerful shudder echoed through the chamber. As she’d hoped, a part of the magical generator slammed into Chare’en. The tanar’ri was carried across and around the room a fair distance. Unfortunately, the same shock sent Melann tumbling off the disk to the ground below.

She landed with a crack, and the arm that she reflexively put out to cushion the long fall snapped like a tree branch. Pain shot through her body as she rolled along the floor.

Long, agonizing moments passed while Melann couldn’t bring herself even to open her eyes. In her self-imposed darkness, she could hear the once nearly silent device screaming like a thing in pain. Another moment passed before she realized that she screamed in pain right along with it.

Somehow she dragged herself to her feet, clutching her broken arm. She thought it likely that she might have broken a rib or two, judging from the pain in her chest. Luckily, her legs seemed relatively unharmed, and she was able to stumble to what she believed was where Vheod lay, which fortunately was near Whitlock and the exit.

Melann got lucky, or perhaps Chauntea continued to watch over her, for after only a few dozen short, stumbling steps she came to Vheod. She looked down, and what she saw made her no longer feel quite so much pain herself. Vheod’s clothing—apparently as well as the straps of his breastplate—had burned away, leaving him with little covering his bloody, black flesh. He was horribly burned, and he curled up like a dying animal.

Collapsing near him, Melann called one last time on the Mother of All, asking her to heal Vheod with the goddess’s life-giving touch. Melann’s good hand radiated golden energy, and where she passed her fingers, Vheod’s burned flesh healed. Using this divine power, Melann was able to heal a great portion of his wounds. He sighed with the pleasure of reduced pain and began to writhe. His body had thrown him into a state of shock, but he recovered with a start.

Looking up, Vheod’s eyes widened in surprise. “Abyssal hosts!” he cursed. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

Melann managed to follow his gaze and saw that the device spun entirely out of control now, the parts bending, snapping, and crashing into each other. His wounds at least partially healed, Vheod had strength enough to help Melann to her feet. Grasping his arm tightly around her, he brought both of them toward the only exit from the chamber.

A hemispherical portion of the device crashed next to them, a horrified metal face screaming in frustration. The still rotating generator dragged the hemisphere along the ground toward them, sparks flying about it. Vheod managed to pull them both out of the way, and they reached the door.

Whitlock lay at their feet, once again bleeding dangerously. Before Melann could even think about
tending to him, a tremendous cacophony of metal and screams came from behind them. The entire device—tons on tons of metal—crashed to the floor in a single, unbelievable blow. Even through the crash they could hear the voice of Chare’en from across the chamber.

“
No
!” the tanar’ri cried.

The voices of the magical device suddenly cried in unison “It is our duty for all time to ensure he does not escape!”

The silence that followed seemed as abrupt as the crash. Dust roiled in the air as Melann and Vheod stared into the room where their foe had stood. Now they could only see bent and broken metal.

It was over.

Melann fell to her knees and with her unbroken arm tore away the remainder of Whitlock’s shirt. Tearing the cloth into strips, she began to bind the reopened wound in his abdomen. She rolled his heavy body over to get around to his back, then brought the strip around again and again. A few bits of metal still bent under their own weight creating a small creaking sound.

Vheod stood over her, still staring into the chamber. In the brief instant that she looked at his face, it held only one emotion: disbelief. She turned back to Whitlock. A few more bits of metal clanked against each other or the stone floor as the debris settled.

“No,” Vheod whispered.

Melann looked up from her work. She’d almost finished tending to her brother’s wound. In the far side of the room, in the little light they had she saw some of the pieces of metal still settling. They moved and shuddered. The movement grew more intense—not less. It was not settling.

It was not over.

Chare’en rose up from the shards of metal and the debris that had brought him down. Blood and bile-oozing gashes cut long streaks through his red, glistening skin. One of his horns was broken, and his fleshy wings were tattered and probably near useless. His sword and whip were nowhere to be seen.

He laughed. His low, evil chuckle echoed through the room. “Braendysh created that cursed contraption. It was filled with the spirits of those he claimed I had wrongly slain. They spent these last eons willingly exacting their vengeance on me by keeping me prisoner. They have been set free, but so have I. You cannot kill me. It is not within your power.”

Shadows appeared to gather around them. Melann could swear that the darkness grew and moved in the air surrounding her, her brother, and Vheod. Only now did she notice that Vheod still clutched Whitlock’s sword in his bloody hand.

“While I yet live,” he whispered, “I have the power to do anything I desire. I control my limits, not you.” Blood ran down his face, but Vheod ignored it. His hair was burned and caked with blood, and his nearly naked body glistened with sweat in the dying light. “Now it is time to end this.”

“I can help insure it’s the ending that you want,” a lush voice from behind them said.

The Ravenwitch stood in the corridor, surrounded by her black-feathered servants.

The growing darkness had in fact been the ravens filling the small room that gave way to the prison chamber. Vheod looked at the Ravenwitch over his shoulder. “I don’t have time for you now, witch.”

The Ravenwitch flowed toward him like black water given life. A long cloak of black feathers rippled behind her, as did her long, ebony tresses. She smiled a thin, tight smile but didn’t reply. As Vheod and Melann watched, she stopped at Orrag’s body and knelt beside it. Pulling his shirt away from his neck, she pulled out an amulet on a chain. It glittered with gold and some small sorcerous symbols.

Taking it from the half-orc’s corpse, she handed it to Vheod. “If anyone concerned was in possession of this amulet, it would be this one. He’d been planning for this day for some time, and while not exactly a tower of intellect, he had a sort of craftiness that suggested he would plan ahead.”

Vheod took the amulet and turned back to the chamber. Chare’en slowly advanced through the debris and dust, breathing heavily.

“But what is it?” Vheod asked with an intensity burning in his eyes.

“Braendysh needed something to defeat Chare’en,” she told him. “This protected him and enabled his
victory against the demon so long ago.”

“Why are you helping us now?” Melann asked, her voice betraying all her suspicions.

“I am helping myself, not you.” She looked over Vheod’s shoulder into the room and a look of mixed fascination and horror crossed her countenance. “Surely we can discuss this some other time.”