Knight of the Demon Queen. Barbara Hambly

hunkered down, tucked its head under one thigh, and wrapped its tail around tight until it was an impenetrable bulb of dappled pinkish leather. John leaned his back against it as if it had been a bedstead, forced himself to remain awake long enough to jot a few notes about the hunter folk who’d barred their way, then slept.

      He discovered why it is not recommended to put oneself in the position of dreaming dreams in Hell.

      Foulness, pain, blackness leading down into blackness—

      Ylferdun Deep, he thought. He had battled the dragon Morkeleb and was wounded unto death. He and Jenny and Prince Gareth had taken refuge in the darkness of the gnomes’ deserted Deep while the witch Zyerne’s followers besieged the gates. And in the heart of the Deep he’d heard whispering, the whispering of the thing that the gnomes worshiped: crypt below crypt, vaults beneath subvaults, and in the dark at the bottom of the mountain it dwelled—the Stone within the Deep.

      The Stone that drank souls.

      It was before him now. Emerging from the coarse black basalt of the ground as a whale slowly rises from the sea, smooth and bluish and without mark. A Drinking Stone, the gnomes called such a thing. Drinking life. Drinking souls.

      Dobbin was dead. John could see the consciousness of the animal trapped already in the Stone, alive and completely present, along with the half-deteriorated spirits of dozens of his kind and broken fragments of demons, beasts, men, and women …

      He could see them clearly, even as he felt his own spirit, his own life, being drawn by the thing.

      Damn it, no! he thought, and tried to drag his mind away.

      And could not.

      Damn it, he screamed against that slow-growing warmth, I will not!

      But it was like sleep too long denied, or a slow-tilting floor when it has gone too far to be climbed. His hand jerking as if with palsy he fumbled the ink bottle from his shirt, dragged loose the stopper, wondered if the Stone would trap Amayon as well.

      Evidently it didn’t, for he could hear the demon shrieking curses at him, as if from some great distance away. Then the curses stopped, and there was only a slow-growing weariness, like weight too heavy to be borne or fought. A sinew-cracking drag that could not be resisted …

      He felt the Stone’s hold break and shift, diverted to something else, and in that momentary relaxation of its power he rolled, scrambled, dragged himself across the rock and away from the thing. Small hands grabbed his wrists and pulled him farther away, and he heard Amayon call his name. “Wake up! Wake up, damn you!”

      “I’m all right.” Gasping, John looked back past the fragile, half-bared shoulder. Dobbin lay uncurled in death. A young hunter of the savages sprawled just where the Drinking Stone had been. John couldn’t make out his face—even at two feet it would have been a blur to him—but his body lay disposed calmly, without sign of struggle, his spear still grasped in his hand. Of the Stone itself there was no sign.

      “You blundering, imbecilic fool …” Amayon’s hands were as cold as marble. Odd, thought John, after the warmth of the ink bottle. Must make a note of that.

      “Would it have got you, too, then?” He scratched his hair and squinted hard at Dobbin’s carcass, beside which, if he recalled, he’d left his spectacles. He couldn’t see them—he was lucky, he reflected, that he could see the carcass—and got up to make a move in that direction, then stopped and glanced inquiringly at the demon.

      “It’s gone.” Amayon still sounded shaken to pieces. “And no, it wouldn’t have ‘got’ me, too. I just don’t fancy remaining trapped in an onyx bottle for eternity because of some bumpkin’s prudishness.”

      John edged cautiously nearer and found the light frame of wire and glass where he’d left it, unbroken in all the ruckus—the spell Jenny had long ago put on them seemed to be still in force. He put them on, then knelt beside the young hunter. At his touch the man opened his eyes, but they were blank, empty. A trickle of drool ran down through the fair beard.

      “The Stone has drunk him.”

      John looked up quickly at the voice. The tall hunter leader stood nearby, spear in hand. A woman whom John had not seen before was with him, gray haired and tough, with bitter eyes.