She shrugged. "At any rate, the trial period for your successor is drawing to a close, and he has not found the spell he needs. He is apt to be replaced by another just as bad, unless . . .

Unless Parry resumed the Office! He alone of the former Incarnations of Evil could do that, because he had not yet yielded his life and become a damned soul.

Niobe left her thought unfinished, knowing that he understood. But she had a qualification. "Yet a person needs to be in an appropriate situation to assume an office. If he were, for example, lost or mute, he would be unable to step in before the office sought the greatest evil it could find. It seems that the Office of Evil may be either grasped by the one who seeks it or will drift to the most evil. The applicant who is closest to the one who releases the Office has the first chance. Therefore it is important that an aspirant not be incapacitated at the key moment."

She was right. The Office had to be grasped at the moment it became available, or it would be lost. He had Lilah's guidance the first time, so had seized it without quite knowing the significance. He could not do so from the incommunicado confines of this dungeon.

"So I have brought a thread to lead you out," Niobe said after a pause, to let him think it through. She stretched out an invisible line. "Follow it, and-"

"Ha! Caught you, old bag!" the Incarnation cried, appearing between them. "I may be finished, but he'll never profit by it!" He struck at her with a flaming pitchfork.

Niobe became the spider, and the spider vanished. She was an Incarnation, but this was Hell, and she could not oppose the Incarnation of this domain.

"And now you, pinhead!" the Incarnation cried, turning on Parry. "You'll never get out!"

Magic flared, and Parry was carried away, helpless. The Incarnation had not learned the demon-banishing spell, but he had evidently picked up some of the lesser magic. Parry drifted through swirling smoke for what seemed like an eternity before coming to rest in a stifling environment.

He seemed to be in an aspect of chaos. Apparently the Incarnation had discovered how to incorporate a bit of the Void in Hell, and buried him in it. He knew Parry could not escape it. The Incarnation was evil and ugly, but he had a certain cunning about his own survival.

The thread had been lost. The Incarnation had struck at the key moment, allowing Parry the torture of dawning hope irredeemably destroyed. He would never find his way out in time now!

Yet it was not a total loss. Though he would not resume his office, he had the comfort of the knowledge that the other Incarnations had a change of heart about him, and that Niobe herself accepted his status as husband to Orb.