Bal-Simba bowed his mighty head and frowned into the crystal. Then he snapped his head up and slapped his palm on his thigh with a crack like a pistol shot.
“A circle!” he bellowed to the assembled Mighty. “Quickly to me! I must have a circle!”
Magic constricted around Wiz like a vise. As quickly as he erected a barrier against the onrushing spells, it was torn away and magic wound ever tighter around him. Again and again Atros thrust with his staff and Wiz was driven back toward the door of the cell where Moira and the two wounded guardsmen cowered, blinded and deafened by the effects of the duel and choked by the dust and magic thick in the air.
Suddenly Atros took his staff in both hands, raised it high over his head and brought it down with a vicious chopping motion. Wiz raised his staff to ward it off, but he was driven to his knees by the force of the blow. Blindly he raised his staff and gestured again. But the stroke was weak and ill-judged and Atros thrust it aside contemptuously. He stepped forward again and raised his staff for a final, killing spell.
From the cell door a blazing ball flew over Wiz’s head and straight at Atros’s face. The wizard dropped his staff and flinched aside from the burning sphere. He gestured and it swerved off to splatter in a flaming gout on the tunnel wall behind him.
Atros looked over Wiz and saw Moira standing in the door with her eyes blazing and her hands extended clawlike.
“Witch!” he said contemptuously and made a shooing motion with both hands. Moira screamed and flew back into the cell as if pushed by an unseen hand. Then the skin-clad giant stooped to pick up his staff. Inside the cell an explosion blasted out. A choking cloud of dirt billowed from the shattered door and a reddish light like a new-kindled fire burned within. Atros frowned and made a warding move with his staff. Wiz shook his head and climbed half to his feet.
Within the cell, obscured by the dust and lighted by the fire behind, a huge misshapen thing moved. Atros took a step back and a firmer grasp on his staff. What new sort of demon was this?
The light grew brighter as the fire took hold of the straw. Through the smoke and reddish backlight the thing resolved itself into a vaguely man-like figure. It groped through the smoke and dust, narrowing and resolving as it moved toward the door as though coalescing into something solid. Atros shifted uneasily. There was something familiar about that figure . . .
Then it came through the door and out of the smoke. “So,” it rumbled in a familiar voice. “A bear chasing a sparrow, eh? Not very edifying Atros. Not very edifying at all.”
“Bal-Simba!” Atros spat the name like a curse.
“Bal-Simba indeed,” the great wizard agreed. He was disheveled and his hair and skin were powdered gray with dirt and dust, but his teeth showed white as milk and sharp as daggers as he smiled. “A worthier opponent than yon sparrow, mayhap?
“Sparrow,” Bal-Simba said without taking his eyes off the southern wizard, “please put out the fire in the cell. Atros and I have wizards’ business to discuss.”
“We discuss it on my ground, Northerner,” Atros said with an evil smile.
“Oh, I think no one’s ground.” Bal-Simba’s smile was no less evil. “Your protective spells are neutralized, your brother wizards are, ah, occupied elsewhere and Toth-Set-Ra is dead.” He raised his eyebrows. “What? You did not know? Demon trouble I believe. Troublesome things, demons. Almost as much trouble as sparrows.”
Their eyes locked and neither moved while Wiz scrambled on his hands and knees behind Bal-Simba’s trunk-like legs and through the cell door. Moira was waiting and they clung together like frightened children, heedless of the smoldering straw.
Finally Atros snarled and thrust his staff at the black giant. Wiz saw the air between them twist and contort into a half-sensed shape that flew straight at Bal-Simba’s chest. Bal-Simba turned his staff sideways and the thing disappeared in a shimmer of air.