Come Endless Darkness

Chapter 17

Could a Solar lie? Gord asked himself that as he realized there was no longer a trail for him to follow.

No, that wasn't exactly line. Actually, there were endless trails leading everywhere and nowhere. The slime path left by the fleeing demonurgist covered each and every route in the whole of the maze. "Let me think," he said slowly, and pondered what the being from the higher spheres had said. " '… Follow the reek of corruption…' " But there were dark trails of the slime visible everywhere!

"… Follow the reek…" That was it! He was relying on his eyes, not on the literal words of the Instruction. The slime was a secondary trail. The solar had actually told Gord to use the odor of the demonurgist's evil to track him down. Let me see what I can do to correct my stupidity, the young champion thought as he sniffed the air.

"I am a fool!" he muttered. For what seemed an eternity he had been wandering up and down the dark byways and broad halls of the labyrinth trying vainly to discover which of the plain paths was actually the essence of Gravestone's passage. Now, his nose revealed what the truth was. A sharp, acrid stench was obvious. Its reck was stronger in some places than in others. Eventually, by carefully sniffing out his way, Gord would be able to trace the priest-wizard to his lair here. "Doubly a fool, and I have not much time left!" he chided himself.

Instead of using his human nose, Gord shifted from two-legged to four-legged form, and where a short, slender man had stood a moment before there now crouched a huge black leopard. It crouched in order to get the scent from the hard floor.

The olfactory power of Gord as a panther was more than ten times greater than that of Gord as a human. Gord-panther now swung his head this way and that, sniffing the flagstonelike floor, testing the still air. Then the great cat rose and padded up a passage, back down, and across a place where three other corridors met. Although he was unaware of it, the chamber was dweomered to expand to massive proportions, to have four, six, or a score or more adits, but there was no force to spring the evil magic. The champion in leopard form had a far easier task than ever the one who devised the labyrinth imagined. Soon enough Gord-panther's nose had the strongest scent, and he leaped ahead, following the noisomeness that was the sign of the demonurgist's passing, with increasing speed.

There was a turn here, a doubling back there. No matter. The duplications of Gravestone's trail were each weaker. The immediate mirrorings were very close, of course. That made the tracking more difficult, but the replications from replications grew progressively weaker, stale in their evil stench, as it were. The task was hard but by no means impossible. As if following footprints plainly set in smooth sand, the black leopard that was Gord traced the frantic passage of the demonurgist, and eventually came to the place where it ended in stone, plain blocks no different from the thousands of others that formed the walls of the place.

With a low panther-sound still rumbling from his chest and along his throat, Gord became human once again. "A cat to suss you out, demon-clasper; a thief to find your hidey-hole," he said softly as his hands felt and eyes observed the place. There was more to it, of course. Gord thought the rest to himself: A swordsman to fight you; a sword to take your heart. Dwell upon that later. Now he had to discover the way to enter Gravestone's lair.

There was a portal here, surely. It was hidden by natural craft and dweomercraeft both. It would be similarly closed fast by bolts of steel, bands of wizardwork. Gord felt for his dagger, then recalled he had left it with Gellor in his haste to pursue Gravestone. Knowing that no skill of his own could ever open the secret door, the gray-eyed thief put aside that strategy and drew Blackheartseeker from its scabbard.

"Come, sword, show me the power you have in your metal!" he growled softly. Blackheartseeker trembled slightly in his grasp, and a red-black glow seemed to come from the heart of the long blade whose tip was centered on the portal. "Your completion lies beyond, but I cannot get you to what you must have without help!" As Gord urged the weapon to release its might, however, the glowing waned; yet the vibration of it seemed to increase. Uncertain, the young champion held his arm steady, sword tip still and unswerving from in front of the barred door that must surely lead to his quarry.

Heartbeat after heartbeat he stood thus until a full minute passed. Gord was almost ready to abandon this tack and try some desperate device when the whole length of the sword leaped convulsively and the portal it pointed at sprang into sharp relief as violet energy played over the entire place it was. The violet darkened, intensified, turned to a sullen plum hue. As the length of Blackheartseeker recoiled, the purple energy covering the secret entrance flowed together, coalescing into a burning amethyst ball of force that Jumped as if a bolt of lightning to kiss the swords tip and vanish. The flow of evil force made him reel, his head spinning, his stomach twisting, but somehow Gord managed to retain his grip on the hilt of the weapon.

"Now open the way," he said softly, still shaken and uncertain. The stone before him ran down and flowed out as would dry sand. Weird and twisted forms of metal fell from the air, no longer supported by the stuff that had been granitellke only a second before. Vile rune of brass, evil sigil of frozen quicksilver fell soundlessly into the soft, powdery stuff that mounded out to near where he stood. So too dropped steel bars and iron bindings, bronze and gold workings of all sorts. In that raid came some faint clangings and dull clinks, so thick were the pieces upon the little hill of powdered stone.

Blackheartseeker no longer trembled. It was stable again, and all along its length was the lightlessness seen as black to mortal eyes. "You have done it!" Gord exclaimed in fierce joy. "Now I'll do my best to fulfill my part of this bargain!"

A short, narrow passage was revealed beyond the destroyed gate. There was a dim illumination coming from its end, and Gord could hear a murmuring sound. It could be none other than Gravestone's voice chanting some evil litany of dark magic, as the demonurgist sought to gather strength for renewed combat. Not hesitating further, the young champion stole along the little hallway leading to the inner sanctum of the priest-wizard. The time of vengeance was come finally and at last.

Gravestone stepped into the open end of the narrow passageway just as his foe was slipping along it toward him. When the demonurgist beheld a form moving into his supposedly inviolate lair, the fellow started and cried aloud in shock. "Out!" At the same instant he pointed a wand and moved it so as to cause the instrument to shoot forth a stream of searing fire.

"In!" Gord countered to the priest-wizard's denial, and charged ahead, Blackheartseeker lancelike before his rush. The fiery wash of magical power shot forth then, crackling and leaping as its tongues sought to consume all in their path. Gord was seared, his flesh blistering under the intense heat of the burning discharge. Still he came on. In fact, the dull ebon of the longsword held in his hand seemed to cool and lessen the flames of the demonurgist's wand, and the power of the blade washed back to cool and soothe its wielder as well. There were scorches and red burns to be sure, but the effect of the burning gout of energy was far less than it seemed.

The steely shaft aimed at him forced Gravestone to leap back and get away before he could send another withering spray of flames from his wand. He was readying it for another attempt nonetheless even as he retreated in haste. His adversary followed too closely. The ebon blade darted out as if a serpent's tongue, and the wand was broken, one piece still held in the priest-wizard's hand, the other portion spinning away. "Devils take you!" Gravestone shouted, throwing the useless stump of it at Gord and then using his greater powers to evade the next blow that the young swordsman aimed at him.

The terrible dread was filling him again. The sword that seemed to fill the whole room was a weapon against which Gravestone had few defenses. He utilized all of them, though, in order to escape death. Between the demonurgist and his foe sprang up a huge and bestial form. It was almost as high as the vaulted ceiling of the chamber and as broad as a span of oxen. It was formed of darkly shining colors, transparent layers of color describing the creation's dimensions. Evil orange was its outermost hue, and beneath that thick sheen was another of vile gray light. Then there followed a diabolical red, a clear black fire, an ugly maroon, and a ghastly purple. Innermost, and of a disgusting incandescence that hurt the eyes to look upon it, was the violet sheen of the deepest nether-pits of evil. It was as if the priest-wizard had formed seven nether-beasts, each slightly smaller than the foregoing, each inside the other, and then himself gotten inside the whole to animate and empower the hideous agglomeration into assuming unnatural life.

"Hide, rat, but you can no longer escape into some rathole!" Gord shouted angrily.

"Hide?" the multilayered, evilly hued monster surrounding Gravestone bellowed. "This for hiding!" and it struck a terrible blow.

Gord cut at the creation at the same moment. Sparks of brilliant orange shot from where the dark blade touched it, but the thing hit its target nonetheless. Gord was knocked back, sprawling, blood streaming from his nose. "Your hide!" Gord managed to say, rolling aside from a massive foot that was trying to stomp on him. "I mean to have it!" And as he said that, the young thief was upright again and his lightless brand hacked a second time at the strange glowing agglomeration of nether-hues.

Now a torrent of fiery orange flowed from the thing, and it gave vent to a scream as the stuff of its outermost shell poured out upon the floor. "A mere trifle," a sinister voice mocked as the scream died away into nothingness with the last flicker of orange light. The sound was putrescent, as hideous as the deep gray outline that was now the outermost part of the varicolored creation of evil.

Again the monstrous form struck, this time a pair of swift blows. Gord dodged the first and met the second with the keen edge of Blackheartseeker. Dead gray flickered, globs of luminosity were sent flying. "A mere trifle," Gord mocked, stepping in as the thing tried to move back to get a better swing at him. Staying close, darting and weaving, the champion of Balance stabbed and stabbed again at the corpselike color of the form; and each blow he struck made the gray lessen in intensity, thin, dim as its stuff was sent oozing forth and away. "Yet it seems effective," he added as the gray went out and the hell-red was clearly visible.

Inside the construction of evil power, Gravestone was still safe, but he was weakening with each loss suffered. There were yet five layers of protective force shielding him, and serving as weapons too. But the loss of the two was severe, not to be discounted. He would have to redouble his efforts to slay his opponent immediately.

Because he was who he was, the task was far from an impossible one for Gravestone. Many spell-binders had the means to produce multilayered spheres to protect themselves with. A few of the most evilly adept could form beasts of energy to encase themselves in and serve as extensions of themselves.

The demonurgist, however, went far beyond either of these accomplishments. This many-colored beast of force was drawn from all of the netherspheres, fought as well as any great devil or demon, and protected its creator behind seven barriers of malign energy. It had a life of its own, too, and Gravestone could lend the quasi-thing his own powers to employ. Touch of rotting death," the priest-wizard said softly. The disgusting crimson of the right hand of the beast that encased Gravestone glittered with a darker sheen from the power thus bestowed. Mage's spell and cleric's power both were known to the blacksouled demonurgist. By transferring either to his construct, Gravestone could utilize his fell energies beyond the confines of the many-hued beast. Then he feinted with the thing's left, and as his foeman moved to avoid the blow, the deadly right hand came flashing forth to deliver its killing charge of dweomer.

It almost worked. The huge fingers brushed Gord, and the death contained in each digit hurt him to the center of his being. Yet by instinct and long training the champion managed to leap back just far enough to prevent Gravestone's tactic from having its full intended effect.

Using the sword to shield him from another such trick, Gord circled and drew several deep breaths, trying to regain lost energy. He knew that the demonurgist desired a melee at this long range, where he could watch Gord and strike more efficiently at him, but there was no choice. If he went closer, the touch of the beast would be fatal, for the energy that generated the scarlet color was a force that would burn flesh and destroy bone if it came in solid contact.

The groping, pawlike extremities of Gravestone's agglomeration swiped wildly at Gord. He danced, ducked, and slashed with Blackheartseeker as he avoided the attacks and regained strength. The pain subsided to a dull aching. That he could put aside with effort of will. Now it was time to take the offensive again. Gravestone made a clumsy rush with his beastlike thing, and the longsword slashed into the glowing maroon with cut after cut upon the defenseless flank and back of the nether fiend.

"Howoou!" The hell-red layer seemed to give vent to the sound from every portion of itself, not just the near-featureless head and hint of a mouth it possessed. Then the light was gone, replaced by the glitter of abyssal ebon.

His sword seemed to leap for joy as the black sheen sprang clearly forth. With volition that seemed to come from itself, Blackheartseeker plunged its tip into the darkness and drank. The jet instantly lost its lustrousness; then it was gone, vanishing without sound of protest. There were now but three layers of the construct left to protect the demonurgist, but Gord had to retreat without striking a further blow as the thing of maroon light spun and attempted to sweep him into an embrace. It was but ten or so feet tall now, and narrower too, but it moved with greater speed.

"Come, champion. Stand and fight your enemy." Gravestone used "champion" as a dirty word, and scorn dripped from his voice as he taunted Gord.

It was easy to ignore such a ploy. Instead of paying the slightest heed to those words, or the many that followed, Gord played cat-and-mouse with the priest-wizard. Sometimes the multihued beast was the cat, and then Gord darted and fled. But then he would see an opening, seize an opportunity presented, and ply his brand against the maroon light of the thing's fifth layer. All too soon for the demonurgist the maroon-hued force was bled off, the purple spent, and still his adversary stood ready, dreaded sword in hand.

No human, no quasi-deity or heir to the mastery of one of the planes of creation, could do this. Gravestone knew then that he had made still another error. Gnashing his teeth in fury, the demonurgist allowed the thing he had created to lumber as it would in search of its elusive foe. Gravestone was busy with a dweomer of his special creation, one as fell as that used to make the thing that shielded him now… but not for much longer. By rapid voicing of unnatural sounds, and with little movement save for a strange twisting of fingers and slight shuffling steps that seemed to be nothing save the footwork of attack, the priest-wizard created a replica of himself within the hideous violet beast. At the same instant his actual form was transported to an alcove, a place screened by an arras, so that his opponent would suspect no such trick.

Safe for the moment, Gravestone placed a dweomer upon himself. It was a powerful working of priestly sort that would enable him to see unerringly the play of forces that made up Gord the champion and were employed by him in fighting the demonurgist. Now I have you! he thought to himself.

"Now I have you!" the violet-colored thing of transluscent energy echoed in a booming voice. Ready in the upper levels of Gravestone's consciousness were spells of thundering fire, blazing lightnings, extradimensional pits, spiked walls of pure evil power, and utterances to jolt time into temporary cessation, twist distances into confusion, and alter the course of actuality. Before he dared to employ any of the dweomers. Gravestone knew one fact. He had to determine exactly what strengths the champion possessed, see where his weaknesses were. Silently chanting the ritual of revealing, and with vision able to discern aura and energy, the priest-wizard moved to a place where he could peep out from behind the hanging and view the battle.

The blundering moves of the evilly glowing energy-thing alerted Gord to a change the instant that Gravestone left it, leaving behind an illusory figure of himself. Although he wasn't positive of what had transpired, Gord understood that the demonurgist was no longer housed within the shell of the beast he had formed. When he slipped to a position that enabled him to strike it unimpeded, and the monstrous thing bellowed "I have you!" the champion of the fight against Tharizdun and his evil minions understood what had occurred. Ignoring the creature, he rushed to the only place where Gravestone could be concealed, flattening himself against the wall beside the arras. The semi-intelligent energy beast blundered here and there, seeking its adversary, and Gord waited. The monster's noises were sufficient to make it seem as if it was still in combat with him.

Magical sight and supernatural sense gave Gravestone just sufficient warning. He was leaping back from his intended spying even as the keen-edged sword shot out to pierce his chest. Gravestone's recoil was as fast as an adder's, Gord's stabbing lunge as quick as the strike of a leopard's paw. The demonurgist was wounded, but only an inch of Blackheartseeker penetrated his flesh; then the evil spell-binder was back and free of the metal, gasping and cursing.

It was still the opportune moment for Gord. One more thrust and the storkllke worker of mischief and murder would be dead. The moment was taken from Gord by the violet energy-beast.

"Whump!" The sound of it striking him seemed soft enough, but the evil power that flowed from the thing into Gord knocked him away. He was driven into the arras and tangled up in its folds. The monstrous thing stepped ponderously forward and struck again. Gord kicked up, and the fallen fabric of the arras bellied upward. The thing struck that, and the force of its blow went on to impact upon the stone where his adversary had been but a heartbeat earlier. Half-dazed, weakened, but still able to fight, Gord was tumbling and rolling to get beyond range of another immediate attack by the monster. It hurt, but he continued the gymnastic display by springing upright and crouching en garde. The sickly lavender of the thing's form moved to close the distance between them. It was what Gord wanted, for that movement placed Gravestone's construct between Gord and the priest-wizard.

"I should have known better than to leave an enemy behind me," the young man said with feigned sadness as he readied for the assault. It came quickly. The beast struck a sweeping blow, almost as if it sought to sweep Gord's feet out from under him with its long, evilly shimmering arm. Blackheartseeker's edge was there, but Gord was not. As the thing's thick arm swept forth, the sword's cutting edge struck a backhand blow that passed cleanly through the dark violet force. The featureless head of the beast went back and its voice howled from the opening that might have been a mouth. It now had but a single arm, and where the right one had been there came drops of dirty violet color, little drippings of energy that dissipated into nothingness as they struck the floor.

"Sing loudly for me, pitspawn," Gord cried as he leaped in and cut again at the beast. The longsword sliced through the violet force as if it wasn't even there, and the creature crashed down, its substance bleeding away in dark flashes of impotent evil. The beast was no more, but Gravestone was ready.

The demonurgist saw plainly what he faced. There was an aura surrounding his adversary that caused the priest-wizard to shudder. So deep its colors, so brilliant their glowings, so varied their spectrum as to show no weakness. Here indeed were the hands of all the most potent foes of Tharizdun who formed the Balance. Gifted power of supernatural splendor encased Gord in a halo that brought fear into Gravestone. That dread was nothing compared to what he felt when he looked at the lightless sword. Its power was of evil, but an evil distorted and made over to serve the opposite force. It was an instrument made of malign energy to destroy evil!

Mistake after mistake…. The majority of Gravestone's spells had been selected to have effect upon an opponent aligned to the ethical outlook of the upper spheres, thus in harmony with certain patterns and subject to set counter-frequencies. The appearance of the solar had caused the priest-wizard to make false assumptions and base his strategy of attack thereon.

It was also an error not to have considered the possibility, however remote, of having to deal with an enemy loose within his sanctum sanctorum. Gravestone could not now utilize the powerful spells based on fire, lightning and the like because to bring up such dweomers here would destroy centuries of work, an age of collected arcana, and who knows how many valuable magical repositories such as wands, scrolls, and apparati for demonurgy. As his foe fought with the construct. Gravestone wracked his brain for the single most effective attack he could now employ against the Champion of the Balance. In seconds, minutes at best, the last force of the spell-beast would be drained, and then the priest-wizard had to be ready with some sending that would stop the man who wielded that terrible, dull-black sword. The weapon he could not destroy, but the one who wielded it was an altogether different matter.

"Entrance to the Pits of Hades," Gravestone began to chant, making the formal, ritual gestures as he did so. His hands were filled with the correct materials to activate the gateway. All that was necessary for the priest-wizard to do was send them forth at the proper intervals as the incantation progressed. He was evoking his Doompit, a dweomer that would plunge Gord bodily into the depths of the nether spheres' lowest plane.

"Now conjoined with Gravestone's playground," he sang, fitting words to suit the circumstances. Meter was important, as was rhyme and constancy of the chant. "Force of Nerull death and disease, keep it fast and make it stay bound," the demonurgist continued, trying not to rush the spell but unable to keep his eyes from the melee. There were four stanzas needed to effect the junction and open the tunnel-like portal under the victim's feet, a one-way chute straight to the nether-pits. Just as Gravestone finished his first quatrain, the dark-bladed sword struck the beast's arm and destroyed it. But he still had time!

"Spinning vortex now created. Barrier magics all abated." Gravestone chanted as he spread black powder before him and moved his hands Just so. A tiny whirlwind suddenly sprang up, and the sooty stuff was turned into a miniature tornado, a vortex that moved toward the unsuspecting man who was now in the act of delivering the final blow to the figure of ghastly, violet-hued force. "Here to Hades now instated, Doompit passage generated!"

The second stanza was completed. Only two to go, but the champion was staring directly at him. The demonurgist felt cold beads of sweat spring from his brow. He knew it was not from the effort of casting the dark dweomer of the spell, but from the stark terror that came directly from the blade that would soon threaten him again. The single touch of it, the slight wound Gravestone had suffered in the fleshy part of his upper arm, had sent an agonizing wrench through him. The metal of the longsword seemed to tug at his heart as it was pulled from Gravestone's flesh when the demonurgist leaped back from its touch. To die by that weapon was to die forever!

Gord saw his foe clearly as the thing of netherforce collapsed and sputtered into nothingness, dispelling the illusory Gravestone within it as it did so. The priest-wizard was intoning a spell. Although the young adventurer had no idea as to the nature of the dweomer that was being called for by the ritual, Gord understood all too well that nothing cast by Gravestone would be weak or not calculated to cause total calamity to his person or goal. Gord had to remain quick and capable so the demonurgist could be slain. Perhaps the magic was one of escape for Gravestone. Either way, it made no difference. The binding had to be interrupted, the spell's completion unattained. The tall man's mouth began to move faster, his arms and hands making passes that seemed to occur in lightninglike sequences. Gord leaped into motion himself then, dashing across the chamber.

The words the demonurgist now shouted in a rapid stream were indecipherable to Gord. He was intent only upon one thing. Blackheartseeker must strike the chanting spell-binder before that vile mouth of Gravestone's managed to utter the final syllable of his evil evocation. Only a half-dozen more steps, and the blade of his sword would be buried in the demonurgist's foul chest.

Then Gord stumbled over a small object. A crystal flask, knocked from a table in his struggle with the varihued beast of nether-force, had rolled into the young champions path. It was a thing of enchanted substance, so it hadn't broken from the fall, nor would it break beneath anything so puny as the foot of a man. It rolled under the pressure, and Gord's foot went with its roll.

Gravestone had but one more quatrain to recite and his antagonist would be consigned alive to Hades! How he would delight in seeing it, in actually traversing the planes himself in order to enjoy the sight of the one called Gord trapped and tortured for an eternity in the nether-pits! The last words were on Gravestone's lips even now, but it looked as though the lightless metal of the dreaded longsword would strike before they could speak their fulfilling sounds.

He rushed along as quickly as he dared — faster, perhaps, than any other mage could have managed. Yet the first couplet was just completed when Gord was but a handful of paces distant and coming for him like a rushing wind. At that moment Gord fell, and it was all the demonurgist could do to contain his joy, repress his wild laughter. That would have spoiled his work as surely as the thrust of the sword would have. Instead, Gravestone paused and drew a deep breath. It was a very minor interruption, one that would in no way disturb the casting. There were but two lines to recite, sixteen beats to toll in measured form. When that little was accomplished, the Doompit would seize the Champion of Balance and consume him.

The first of the dire sounds issued from Gravestone's mouth, one of sixteen needed. A deep voice sang back, two beats for his one, and at a disturbing pitch. The demonurgist turned his eyes sideways at this disturbance.

One of the small fellow's companions was at the chamber's exit. It was a man Gravestone recognized, a singer of magics, the troubador called Gellor. That too was laughable. The priest-wizard would have enjoyed a contest one on one with the stupid minstrel, but not now. He fixed his thoughts and chanted forth another pair of the sounds needed to complete his casting. Gellor countered with more lyrics of his own, louder still, and coming closer as he sang. Gravestone was uneasy, but not worried. His chief antagonist was still on hands and knees, trying to recover the sword that he needed to harm Gravestone. The demonurgist knew that he could complete the thirteen beats still remaining before Gord was up and again at his throat.

With evil delight spread upon his features, the tall demonurgist raised his arms high, booming triumphantly the completion of the line, and the five syllables flowed as a mountain freshet down its steep course. Then Gravestone commenced the completion of the binding. The sounds poured forth, but he had to slow them, to articulate each with greatest care.

The bard was now bellowing a counter-ballad to the demonurgist's rhyme, and the dweomer of that singing made it exacting work to accomplish. Now the last sounds were forming, but the priest-wizard was forced to enunciate each with excruciating slowness. To mispronounce might merely negate the power of the spell, but it could as easily open the vortex for Gravestone himself. An entrance thus before Infestix would be far from pleasant. Failure was never tolerated, of course….

It was a nightmare in a world where Gord's every motion was taken as if he were underwater. The fall was not serious, except that Blackheartseeker slipped from his hand as it occurred. Then, as if he and the weapon were opposite poles of a magnet, his hand couldn't seem to properly grip it as he tried to regain his feet and strike the demonurgist. It was a matter of trying to accomplish too many actions at once. Gord's hands were sweating, his nerves frayed, his body battered and wounded, his brain filled with desperation.

The sudden sound of Gellor's voice as it sang forth in counter to the dark spell of the priest-wizard brought Gord to his senses. Even as the troubador's singing hindered Gravestone in his incantation, the ballad forced the Champion of Balance to pause a split-second, get a firm grip on his sword hilt, then come erect and attack.

Had Gord possessed his dagger then, he would have hurled it at the demonurgist, trusting that the blade would suffice to break the binding that the demonurgist was surely about to finish. That would have been a fatal mistake, for the dweomer of that weapon was by no means potent enough for the task. Not being thus armed, though, and seeing that the distance was too great to close with a single step and long lunge, Gord decided that his only hope was the sword.

He shifted his grip on the hilt and threw the weapon as if it were a javelin. The long blade made that very difficult — the balance was all wrong — but there was little space between Gord and the chanting demonurgist. Of the incantation, but a single word remained to be uttered to create the Doompit when the edge of the lightless blade struck Gravestone.

The sword's point didn't sink into his throat, where Gord had aimed when he hurled the weapon. In fact, the sword was already turning and no longer flew true when it touched the priest-wizard. Gravestone, in completion of his spell, was just in the act of bringing both of his arms down, fingers to point at the exact place where the opening of the spell's vortex was to appear, when Blackheartseeker's edge contacted his flesh. Only a little of the flesh was touched; three fingers, to be exact. The descending fingers of Gravestone's right hand met the flying blade of the sword almost gently. The weapon fled past them, hardly checked, rang against the wall, and fell to the floor with a clang. Nearby lay the three blood-spilling fingers that had been severed very cleanly by the sword.

Gravestone's scream ended the casting with a single syllable wanting.

Gellor shouted in exultation when he saw what occurred, his ballad also interrupted by the sight of Gord's thrown sword.

Still feeling as if he were immersed in a great depth of water. Gord sprang toward the demonurgist. He reached his foe in three bounds and grabbed the tall man by the throat, bearing the fellow down with the savagery of his bare-handed assault.

"At last, you devil!" Gord was beating the bushy-haired head upon the hard stone floor as he tried his best to force his thumbs into Gravestone's flesh. "I"- thump — "know" — thud — "what" — bash — "you"-bump — "did" — thunk — "to…"

He got no farther. Despite the choke-hold. Gravestone managed to mutter a word, and suddenly Gord was trying to strangle a huge, amoeboid thing. His hands sank deep into its soft surface, and the acid of the monster's stuff burned them with searing pain.

Gord extracted his injured members and rolled and somersaulted away. The amoehoid thing that was Gravestone came after him. It was too slow to catch him, but it prevented Gord from getting to his sword.

It was a stand-off that the demonurgist would eventually have won, except that Gellor was there to intervene. Even as his comrade sought to flank the monster and get to the sword that the shapeless blob of acidic stuff guarded, the bard struck.

"You like swords, do you? Then try this one!" Gellor cried as he stabbed his blade into the formless blob. The amoeboid writhed and retreated from the attack. Gellor had no such weapon as Gord's, but the troubador's sword was of potent enchantment nonetheless. Had the priest-wizard been in his true form, it would have failed to do the slightest injury to him, so puissant were the evil protections that Gravestone had woven around his body. In this shape, however, it had effect. No mere slicing or stabbing would have harmed the amoeba either, but Gellor's blade exuded a chilling cold. The thing drew back instantly from that freezing brand, but the troubador kept up his assault. "Or this? Or this? Or this one?"

It was almost impossible for the demonurgist to think clearly or quickly in the form of the amoeba he had taken. The pain from the sword sent him back and back with involuntary motions. Then somehow he recalled there was more than one reason for his choice of becoming this amoeboid monstrosity. There was an escape route that this form could take and no man follow! Gravestone-amoeba flowed toward the place where there was relief from the pain of the gelid metal — only when he-it tried to do that, the icy spear of metal was in the way. The hurt and anger became too much. Gravestone would take no more.

"Gord! Your weapon, quick!"

When the bard yelled that, Gord leaped over the jellylike mass of the amoeba. It had stopped its flow and was gathering itself for some renewed attack perhaps, but there was space and opportunity. His leap carried the young man onto the little space that existed between the monster and the wall. Blackheartseeker lay there, and the amoeba's sudden inactivity and contraction gave him the opportunity to reach the sword. "Look out, Gellor!" Gord called as he picked up his sword and turned to look at the thing he was about to strike with its deadly blade.

The change took only seconds — a split-second from the compaction as amoeba to his human shape again. Gravestone uttered a minor spell even as he had tongue and mouth to do so once again. The oneeyed scum who had been tormenting him with his icy-bladed sword was moving to strike, even as the smaller man was hefting his black-hued weapon and readying to do the same.

Neither succeeded in their aim, for suddenly there were six of the demonurgist where one had been, and the half-dozen forms immediately began to disappear and blink back into existence in a random fashion all over the place. Gravestone was now replicated and alternately moving off and onto the vibratory plane he had created. Before the two foemen could discover which of the six was the real priest-wizard, Gravestone would be far enough distant to do what he had to. Better to be alive without all than die with possessions intact. The demonurgist was desperate now. He would bring into existence a Hellsfire, an inferno of flames and raining lava in the center of this chamber. Of course, when that occurred Gravestone would be beyond the furnace-heat of his dweomer.

"The egress! Guard the passage out!" Gord shouted that to his comrade, for he saw that the blinking in and out by the half-dozen Gravestones was not as random as it might seem. Two of the figures seemed to appear constantly behind Gellor, moving a little closer to the lone exit each time they became visible again. Taking no chances, the champion of the struggle against Tharizdun dashed toward that place himself, striking a could-be-Gravestone with his ebon sword as he went. The figure popped as the metal edge cut through it.

Gellor, too, was quickly moving. He didn't stop at the mouth of the corridor, though; he continued on until he was a few paces along the passage. Then the troubador turned and faced the way he had come. A Gravestone figure suddenly appeared just a yard away. Out darted the steel tongue of his blade. The image vanished without blood. Now only four of the replications of the demonurgist remained.

As he winked back and forth from another nondimensional space to this quasi-plane, the priest-wizard was busily concocting other surprises for his foes. He was in control of his movements, while the duplicate, insubstantial forms were moving randomly. The figure that was Gravestone, along with a special mirror image that behaved as he did, moved steadily closer to the place of safety, the passageway out.

The demonurgist was already speaking the words to trigger a new dweomer when Gellor blocked the passage. That made no difference to Gravestone at all. He was summoning his most prized staff to himself. That he would now use to combat the bard when the time came. He willed a duplicate into the corridor then and spoke the last syllable. The replica vanished into nothingness just as the staff appeared in the priest-wizard's hands.

It was as Gord had assumed — the figure of Gravestone just beside the mouth of the passage was indeed the true one. The sudden appearance of the twisted and ancient piece of wood in that one's hand, while the three others jumped in and out of sight with no such accoutrement, confirmed the young champion's assumption. When the staff came into the demonurgist's possession, Gord was halfway across the chamber and closing as rapidly as he could travel in the cluttered place. It was clear that Gravestone planned something to deal with both of his adversaries. Logically, that meant some calamitous spell being cast into the chamber that housed Gord while the demonurgist dealt more personally with Gellor. There was no question in the young man's mind as to his foe's stark terror when facing Blackheartseeker's blade. "He comes!" Gord yelled at full cry, trusting that his companion would act.

He had no need for concern. When the false Gravestone vanished at the touch of his sword, Gellor knew that the true one would come quickly. Because he was also a veteran, the troubador also understood that the priest-wizard would attempt to arrive unexpectedly. Thinking thus, the one-eyed bard spun and prepared for Gravestone's manifestation. Gellor said a silent prayer as he did so. Gord had better be close, for the troubador was leaving his back totally exposed to the enemy should Gravestone try to transport himself beyond Gellor's position in the narrow hallway.

It was almost correct. He had considered doing just that, but the bard would have been in the way of the Hellsfire that Gravestone meant to send into his sanctum. Because he could control his movements between the two places his spell enabled him to exist in, the demonurgist simply remained on his own plane and physically stepped around the corner into the corridor. There was Gellor in the act of turning his back. It was all that the priest-wizard wished for. Almost casually, Gravestone tossed the twisted staff onto the man's unsuspecting back.

The thing had many, many powers bound into its ancient form. One dweomer it possessed was that of becoming a snake. This it did, thickening and growing longer even as it struck the bard. The crushing coils of the reptile-staff circled Gellor's head and neck, even as a skeletal head tried to sink venom-dripping fangs into its prey. That was sufficient for the demonurgist. He faced the chamber, uttered three terrible words, and released the pent-up power of his anger into the place in a thunderous explosion and inferno of flame.

As the Hellsfire erupted in the vaulted room, Gord was leaping for the exit. The explosion of magical energy blew him squarely into the startled Gravestone. Gord's hair was aflame, the leather of his jack charred, but the awful blast had not slain him as Gravestone had supposed. The young champion was blown straight into Gravestone's arms. He knocked the storklike man down with a tangle of arms and legs.

Gord was injured, stunned, but the demonurgist was merely shaken. Gravestone untangled himself and stood erect. One step, a leap, and he'd be clear of the bard where he struggled with the constricting coils of the snake. Let the staff go, too. He would escape and cause the whole of his created plane to annihilate itself. Such an act would drain his power to nothingness, but life was foremost now. In a few years he could recover his force, and in that space Tharizdun would come. Gravestone's sacrifice would be amply rewarded!

There were whumps and bangs rising above the sound of the inferno of molten lava and burning gases that had been evoked by the Hellsfire spell. The many strange things filling the laboratory and store for magical experimentation and implementation were reacting violently to the heat and fire. The gangling demonurgist was in the act of turning, crouched to spring over Gellor where the latter lay wrestling with the python-adder that the staff had become. Gord heard the sounds of the lesser explosions, the crackle of burning tomes, and even had time to wonder what terrible thing would arise from such a strange conflagration, as he observed Gravestone's action. Then the bent man straightened his legs, leaping, his tattered cloak soaring out and up as if the priest-wizard were truly a winged storkman.

Too late," Gord whispered to himself as he too sprang, coming up and leaping after the demonurgist in a single, smooth motion. As fluid as a coiled snake striking at a fluttering sparrow he attacked, and the lightless length of the sword's blade ran up and in, traveling through Gravestone's kidney, lung and heart in a thrust that the demonurgist had no chance of avoiding. Too late by half!" he added as the fellow's limp body crashed down upon the unyielding stones of the maze's floor. Gord jerked the blade free, and Blackheartseeker seemed to dance in his hand as he held it upward in victory.

"Ahhh, no…. Please, no!" It was a gasp from Gravestone. Such a thrust as he had suffered would have slain an ancient dragon instantly, but the demonurgist was imbued with unnatural life. "Make your… your sword… give me back my… life," Gravestone coughed as dark blood trickled from the corner of his cruel mouth.

The sword seemed to tremble in Gord's hand again, but this time not in exultation. In that instant Gord understood that perhaps he had the power to make Blackheartseeker return whatever force it had drained from the dying man, to give Gravestone back his evil vitality. "I… I beg you!" the demonurgist wheezed. Gord moved the gory tip of the sword to a place before the man's eyes as Gravestone lay his face slightly turned to one side, allowing his lips to move, voice to speak. "Oh, yes…." he murmured as he saw the blade.

Gord laughed, spat loudly, and jerked the long-sword away. "Die now, you unnatural abomination, and may you rot forever in Hades!"

Blackheartseeker shone with deep ebon splendor as Gord turned and gave succor to his comrade. One slash and the skeletal adder's head was parted from the thick python body. Another cut and the coils were in two lengths.

"Gellor!" he cried as he yanked the man free from the writhing segments. "Are you bitten?"