then halted, he ran his hands over himself to make sure everything had returned to its correct size — he briefly wondered if he could enlarge just selected parts of his body as well, which might help him finally get some chicks — and then looked around.

There was only one torch here, fighting hard against the dank air; the wide room was mostly sunk in shadows. A few clumps of muddy straw lay on the floor; out of them, like Easter eggs in plastic grass nests, peeped skulls and other bits of human bone.

Pogo could tell a bad scene when he saw one. “Whooo,” he said respectfully. “Torture chamber. Grim, man.”

As if in response, something rattled in the shadows at the far side of the chamber. Pogo squinted, but could see nothing. He slid the torch out of the bracket and moved closer. The feeling of being summoned was stronger than before, although in no way unpleasant. His heart heat faster as he saw a shape against the wall... a human shape. Jimi, the Man himself, the Electric Gypsy — it must be! He had summoned Pogo Cashman across time and space and all kinds of other shit. He had... he had...

He had the wrong color skin, for one thing.

The man hanging in chains against the stone wall was white — not just Caucasian, but without pigment, as white as Casper the Friendly Ghost. Even his long hair was as colorless as milk or new snow. He did wear a strange, rockstar- ish assortment of rags and tatters, but his eyes, staring from darkened sockets, were ruby red. It was not Hendrix at all, Pogo realized. It was...

“...Johnny Winter?”

The pale man blinked. “Arioch. You have come at last.”

He didn’t sound like Johnny Winter, Pogo reflected. The blues guitarist was from Texas, and this guy sounded more like Peter Cushing or one of those other guys in the old Hammer horror movies. But he wasn’t speaking English, either, which was the weirdest thing. Pogo could understand him perfectly well, but a part of his brain could hear words that not only weren’t English, they didn’t even sound human.

“Do not torment me with silence, my lord!” the whiteTaced man cried. “I am willing to strike a bargain for my freedom. I will happily give you the blood and souls of those who have prisoned me here, for a start.”

Pogo goggled, still confused by the dual-language trick.

“Arioch!” The pale man struggled helplessly against his chains, then slumped. “Ah, I see you are in a playful mood. The length of time you took to respond and the bizarre shape you have assumed should have warned me. Please, Lord of the Seven Darks, I have abided by our bargain, even at such times as you have turned it against me. Free me now or leave me to suffer, if you please.”

“Ummm,” Pogo began. “Uh, I’m not... whoever you think I am. I’m Pogo Cashman. From Reseda, California. And I’m pretty high. Does that make any sense?”

Elric was beginning to believe that this might not be Arioch after all. Even the Hell-duke’s unpredictable humors did not usually extend so far. This strange, shabby creature must then be either some further trick by Elric’s tormentors, or a soul come unmoored from its own sphere which had drifted into this one, perhaps because of his summoning. Certainly the fact that Elric could understand the language the stranger called Pogokhashman spoke, while knowing simultaneously that it was no human tongue he had ever encountered, showed that something was amiss.

“Whatever you are, do you come to torment oft-tormented Elric? Or, if you are no enemy, can you free me?”

The young man eyed the heavy iron manacles on the albino’s wrists and frowned. “Wow, I don’t think so, man. Sorry. Bummer.”

The meaning was clear, though some of the terms were obscure. “Then find something heavy enough to crush my skull and release me from this misery,” breathed the Melnibonean. “I am rapidly growing weaker, and since apparently I am unable to summon aid, I will be helpless at the hands of one who has not the right to touch the shadow of a Dragon Emperor, much less toy with one for his amusement.” And as he thought about Badichar Chon’s grinning, gap-toothed face, a red wave of hatred rolled over him; he rocked in his manacles, hissing. “Better I should leave him only my corpse. An empty victory for him, and there is little in this life I will miss.”

The stranger stared back at him, more than a bit alarmed. He brushed a none- too-clean hank of hair from his eyes. “You want me to... kill you? Um... is there anything else I could do for you instead? Make you a snack? Get you something to drink?” He looked around as though expecting the Priest-King to have supplied his dungeon with springs of fresh water.

The albino wondered again whether the idiot apparition might not be a further cruelty from his captor, but if it were, it smacked of a subtlety the Chon had not exhibited previously. He struggled to maintain his flagging patience. “If you cannot free me, friend, then leave me to suffer in peace. Thrice-cursed Badichar Chon has taken Stormbringer, and without the strength it gives to me, my own treacherous body will soon accomplish the executioner’s work without assistance.”

“Storm...?”

“Stormbringer. My dark twin, my pet demon. My sword.”

The strange youth nodded. “Got it. Your sword. Y’know, this is pretty weird, this whole set-up. Like a J.R.R. Tolkien calendar or something. Are there hobbits here, too?”

Elric shook his head, surfeited with nonsense. “Go now. One who has sat upon the Dragon Throne prefers to suffer in private. It would be a kindness.”

“Would it help if I got this sword for you?”

The albino’s laugh was sharp and painful. “Help? Perhaps. But the Chon would be unlikely to give it to you, and the two-score killers of his Topaz Guard might have something to say on the subject of your taking it.”

“Hey, everything flows, man. Just try to stay cool.”

The youth turned and walked back toward the front of the cell. Elric’s dimming sight could not follow him into the shadows there, but he did not hear the door open. Even in his pain and long-simmering fury, he had a moment’s pause. Still, whether the stranger was a demon, a hallucination, or truly some hapless traveler lured between the spheres by Elric’s desperate summons, the Melnibonean doubted he would see him again.

Curiouser and curiouser. Who said that?

Pogo grew back to his normal height on the far side of the door. This was certainly the strangest trip he had ever taken, and it wasn’t getting any more normal as it progressed. Still, he had told the pale man he’d fetch his sword, and who knew how long it would be until the acid started to wear off? Better get on it.

He chose a corridor direction from the somewhat limited menu and set off. The stone passageway wound along for quite a distance, featureless but for the occasional torch. Pogo was embarrassed by the meagemess of his own imagination.

Sammy went on a spaceship that time when we did the four-way Windowpane, with all those blue insects flying it and giant donut creatures and everything. ‘Course, he reads more science fiction than I do — all those guys with the funny names like Moorcock and Phil Dick. Sounds like they should be writing stroke-books instead.

Still, if his imagination hadn’t particularly extended itself in terms of dungeon decor, he was impressed by the relentless real-ness of the experience. The air was unquestionably dank, and what his desert boots were squelching through definitely looked, smelled, and sounded like the foulest of mud. And that Elric guy, with his built-in mime make-up, had been pretty convincing too.

The corridor opened at last into a stairwell, which alleviated the boredom somewhat. Pogo climbed for what seemed no little time. He was still terribly disappointed that it had not been Jimi Hendrix who had summoned him. He had been so certain....

A few more steps brought him to a landing which opened out in several directions, and for the first time he could hear sounds other than his own crepe- soled footfalls. He picked one of the arched doorways at random. Within moments he found himself surrounded by people, rather a shocking amount of them — perhaps he had undercredited his own powers of creativity — all bustling about, all dressed like they were trying out for The Thief of Baghdad or some other Saturday morning movie of his youth. Shaven-headed, mustachioed men hurried past, bearing rolled carpets on their shoulders. Small groups of women, veiled to a disappointing degree, whispered to each other as they walked close to the walls. In one large room that opened off the hallway, dozens of sweating, flour-covered people seemed to be cooking a fantastically large meal. The din was incredible.

None of them seemed to pay much attention to Pogo. He was not invisible — no one bumped him and several actively avoided him — but nobody allowed themselves more than a swift glance before continuing briskly with whatever task consumed their attention. He forced a few to stop so he could ask them the whereabouts of a magic sword, but they gave him no reply, sliding away like cheerleaders avoiding a drunken loser at a party.

As Pogo walked on, the hallway widened and became more lavishly decorated, the walls scribed with flowing patterns of blossoming trees and flying birds. He saw fewer and fewer people until, after he had walked what he estimated was about twice the distance from his house to Xavier Cugat High School, he found himself in a section of the vast palace — or whatever it was — that was empty. Except for him. And the whispering.

He followed the rustling noise farther down the corridor, peeking into open rooms on either side; all were abandoned and deserted, though they looked as though they were in regular use. At last he found himself at the doorway of a large chamber that was in use. It was from here the whispering came.

In the center of a huge, high-roofed room stood a stone dais. Atop the dais, mumbling and hissing amongst themselves, stood half-a-dozen bearded men in robes of dramatic colors and wild design, each garment different, as though the men were in some sort of fashion competition. They were standing in a ragged circle, intently examining a black sword which lay atop the stone like a frozen snake.

All around the dais, facing outward, stood several dozen grim-faced men in gleaming armor studded with brown jewels, each with a long, nasty-looking spear in one hand and a curving, equally nasty-looking sword scabbarded at his waist.

Those must be the guard-guys Elric was talking about, he reasoned. _And that sword those other dudes are looking at must be Stormbanger, or whatever it is.

His good-acid-trip confidence began to pale a little. Surely even if they couldn’t really hurt him — it was only a hallucination, after all — getting whacked with all those sharp things could turn the trip into a real bummer, and possibly even make him feel kind of queasy for a couple of days after he came down.