Dance of Demons

Chapter 6

It was as birth, only the passage was doubly painful now. Separation and self-reliance were immediately ahead. The whole of the cold and unforgiving experience of life was graven in steel. No escape. Certain end. Did an infant wall in premonition? Certainly it knew of its loss in some way, but never so starkly as this.

Inside the Soulless Sounding could be found all things and no things. The saddest, most melancholy of dreams — of all those loved and gone, loved and lost. Each parting was final. impossibly ended, yet seen and experienced again in such a way as to negate it while knowing that it remained. No matter — soon enough there would be no memory whatsoever … or would that alone remain forever. .?

Gord and Gellor were alone, helpless, lost in a gloom that clouded the senses. There was no haven to be found, no escape in the dreadful night. The things that dwelled always therein were not so deprived. They moved and stalked, coming ever closer, hungering.

The portal was a hole dug into the frozen ground, a place just long and wide enough to contain a bier.

Seen from above, the depth seemed such that its contents were but four feet below. It was a coffin with a lid of pure crystal. Inside was a corpse upon which till manner of worms and foul things battened, but the ghastly visage of the thing smiled a terrible grin of welcome to the viewer.

Being in the passage was like falling forever, with the surety of a terrible impact of equal duration. The sickening weightlessness reached its absolute maximum, an ecstasy of terror from which there was no escape. Even as the free falling sent its delightful sensations and its nausea through the entire being, the prospect of crushing impact at the infinitely distant end was there, compacting, rupturing, breaking internally.

"What do demons perceive when in this place?"

"Think not on that," Gord advised his companion when Gellor uttered that question. The same thought had indeed come to the young champion's mind as he experienced the horrors of traversing the Soulless Sounding. "No matter what, only the greatest can survive the ordeal."

"Small wonder," the bard growled, shaking his grizzled head to clear the awful things filling his brain. "This journey is one I vow never to make again!"

Gord understood all too well. It seemed as if they had wandered in a delirium for ages. Between breaths, whole decades passed. Was that delusion? Who could say for certain in such a twisted continuum as this? Was there a reality here? Or was everything drawn only from the minds of those who were so foolish as to enter the Soulless Sounding? No matter. The visitors walked, crawled, ran, fell, crept flew.

In any manner they could, they moved, seeking the place they instinctively knew was that which would lead them to their goal.

Gord was reflecting thus when an apparition made him start and tremble. "This accursed place now seeks to steal the last of my sanity," he muttered loudly enough for his companion to overhear. "Would that she were really so near!"

"She?" the troubador asked, even though he knew that his friend had not meant for him to hear. Then he, too, saw. "I too see a drow clad in demon armor coming nigh. Beware that vision, Gord! The thing she bears has an aura of deepest malevolence."

"It is no drow bearing evil," Gord countered. "I have conjured up in my mind the dream of Leda — she who meant all to me, the one who gave her soul to prevent the incursion of all darkness." As he said those words, Gord's mind brought back scenes of the beautiful dark elf as they first met long ago on Oerth. He saw again the search for the Theorpart in the dusty wastes of the Ashen Desert, saw her save his life, then condemn herself to an eternity of misery by going with Vuron to the depths of demonium.

Gellor received those pictures from his friend, felt the emotions that wrapped them. "I am sorry, Gord, very sorry to intrude," the troubador said with a husky voice. "You fairly blast your thoughts out, and I have no choice but to share. ."

"What matter? There is nothing left any more."

"But she is here!"

"Here? No — not unless the whole of the Abyss is here, unless eternal service to Graz'zt is here!"

"Stop bloring as a sheep, and attend my words, Gord! If you and I see the same thing, then it is no dementia brought about by the sickness of this place. We are seeing what is!"

At that, Gord stopped his depressed rantings and stared. Seeming to float, making swimming motions, before them was indeed Leda — or one who was her clone, as she had been of Eclavdra. The drow priestess was alternately near and far, whether from distortion of sight or actual distance in the Soulless Sounding. She bore a strange bag, the thing that the bard had remarked fairly shone of blazing evil force. Perhaps it was that very thing that enabled Leda, or whoever the drow female was, to move so swiftly through the strange, sick space.

Six thousand six hundred and sixty regions there were in the Abyss, all found in the six hundred sixtysix tiers that formed the chaotic sphere of demonium. Of the whole of this black netherplane, fully six hundred of the layers could be reached via the Soulless Sounding. The uppermost tiers and the farthest regions of the Abyss, those most removed from the middle and upper planes, were distant from the distorted tube that pierced space. The greater portion, though, fully eighty percent of the whole, could be reached by a relatively brief journey through the terrible passage called the Soulless Sounding. Of course, only the very strongest of beings could survive for more than a few minutes within its distorted, mind-twisting confines.

The dark elf whom Gord and Gellor observed was now moving with astonishing rapidity, evidently heading for the same destination as the two of them sought, a distant place marked by iridescent striatums reminiscent of black opal and ancient silver hammered into six great horseshoe-shaped arches.

"She will escape us!" Gord exclaimed, noting that the drow was traveling at a far faster rate than he and his companion were. "Come on, hurry!"

Gellor made a valiant effort, but soon realized that he was quite unable to keep up with Gord. "You go ahead as fast as you can," he panted. "I'll follow and catch up with you when you reach that one and stop her."

With hardly a backward glance, Gord assented and rushed ahead. In order to speed his progress he drew forth Courflamme, knowing that its power would be much multiplied once the weapon was out of its scabbard and consciously applied to his movement. "Now, sword," he whispered to the strange blade of sooty metal and bright crystal. "Carry me with all speed to where that dark elf is!"

It was as if the weapon understood. Gord felt a flow of energy from his fingers, through hand and arm, to the very tips of his toes. At the same moment he also felt as if the blade were leeching force from him. Now almost one entity, sword and swordsman shot ahead as quickly as if Gord were astride a sleek courser, and the distance between him and the dark elf melted away by the second.

As the gap closed to what seemed no more than a spear-cast, the pursued drow sensed that someone or something followed and spun around, drawing something from the rune-emblazoned bag as she turned. "Away!" she commanded, her face a hard mask of power and demoniacal threat. Then her lovely lilac eyes opened wide, the rest of what she was about to say was forgotten, and instead her face softened into wonderment as she cried, "Gord? Gord? Is it really you?"

He wanted to call the same question back asking the vision before him if she were the real, true Leda. Instead, Gord restrained the urge, forced himself to stand fast. "I am Gord," he said firmly, even as the young champion drew upon all of his powers to study and analyze the one who stood before his gaze. It was no illusion, no creature masked by dark dweomer, no shapeshifter or sham.

Leda was now doing the same thing. The man who appeared to her to be Gord, her forever lost love, responded coolly, stood aloof and staring when she called to him. Drawing upon the energy within the Eye of Deception, and using it with her own abilities, Leda scanned the one who said he was indeed Gord. She saw only the surface of him, that and a leaping aura of mixed bright and dark. She could penetrate no deeper, even with the strength of the Abyssal artifact aiding her sight. Wary, withdrawing slightly now, Leda responded, "Are you? Are you so?"

Satisfied, Gord in turn stepped closer to Leda, a smile of joy beginning to spread across his face, gray eyes brimming with happiness. "Leda. ."

"Stay still, you!" the dark elven priestess demanded, focusing the iris of the Eye upon him. "I think you are some other one masquerading as the favored of Rexfelis."

"No, Leda, no! It is truly I. Look at me, read my aura, test my statements to see if there is any falsehood in them."

Rather than admit her inability to do so, for display of weakness was tantamount to death anywhere in the Abyss, especially here in the Soulless Sounding, Leda dissembled, pretending to test him as he had suggested, even as she secretly watched the approach of another who was struggling through the thick stuff of the place trying to Join the two. It would take several minutes, perhaps longer, for that one to arrive. There was little time to spare. She would make one more inquiry before using the artifact to blast the impostor from existence. "I see. . yes," she said to the might-be-Gord slowly, screening her mind carefully as she spoke. "But what is the diamond and jet force which springs forth around you? That is not the aura of Gord of Grimalkin."

"Gord of what?" The strangeness of what Leda spoke set his mind racing. He saw the thing, a swirled sphere of blacks and almost-blacks with a glaring spot of hateful fire growing in its center, pulse and shimmer in her hands. It came to him in a flash. Leda was about to loose some bolt of energy upon him. Why? Had she become a true spawn of the Abyss? A soulless demon?

Never! Then it was something else that brought the dark elf to the brink of slaying him. That she cared for him radiated plainly from her. The cause was certain, then. She was suspicious, thought that he was an impostor. These things took but a splitsecond to enter and leave his consciousness. He realized that Leda was unable to penetrate the dweomers he had surrounded himself with, and the force of Courflamme too served to shield his actual nature, would not allow penetration of his being. Without hesitation, Gord let the sword slip from his hand. "Now," he said with open palms and love filling him, "seek again for Gord of Greyhawk."

"It cannot be!"

"But it Is, Leda! Don't you see me truly now?"

The beautiful features of the dark elf were drawn into a frown. "Yes. The energy of that weapon masked much — it hid your power! Never did the Gord I knew and loved have such …"

Gord noted the uncertainty, seeing too the tiredness that Leda could not hide, the strain etched on her face. Not least from her stressful journey, she too had recently undergone much. In answer to her statement, though, the young champion said only, "I have changed and experienced change in the last year, but I am still who I was."

Leda shook her head, making her long, platinum tresses ripple. "Perhaps you are actually who you claim to be; but you are not the same one I left, for you now have within you.. "

"An inescapable charge and a desire to succeed. Let that suffice," Gord interjected. "This is no fit place for us to be reunited, yet I am loath to move elsewhere until we speak further," he said to her, giving her a look and a smile that said far more than words could. Gord stooped to retrieve Courflamme as he moved closer.

The orb came up into a defensive position in a flash. "Stay back!" Leda commanded, uncertainty still plain in her tone. "Leave that blade where it lies for the time, and tell me who now approaches!"

He turned toward where Gellor labored to join them. The bard was moving as if he were knee-deep to water, but his pace was strong and certain. "That is my boon companion, Gellor, a troubador of Nyrond," Gord said to the drow priestess with a reassuring warmth. "He and I are both bound by the same oath to fight and defeat those who would loose the Ultimate Darkness on the multiverse."

"Stay, then, and we shall await his arrival," Leda told the young man firmly. She liked the distorted space no more than Gord, but determination made it bearable. Leda was torn between suspicious fear and the desire to throw herself into Gord's arms. She controlled herself with a conscious effort, willing her knees not to tremble. The feelings that had been just below the surface washed across her in a surge.

How much she had given up in parting from him there that day in the Flanaess, consigning herself to dwell in the horrid reaches of the Abyss, the sacrifice, the emptiness and the pain and all the rest she had endured came near to sweeping over the little dark elven woman. She had been strong, determined, able to endure the imprisonment because she thought it permanent, forever. Now her lost love, Gord, was here … or was he? There was still the possibility that it was a trick — some ruse devised by the filthy cambion, Iuz. And even if it was actually Gord, was he the same Gord? Did he still love her as she adored him? And if all were as she hoped, how long would it be before the malice of this place, the evil weavings of demons and devils, parted them again? She swayed, and the light around her seemed to dim.

"Leda?" Gord said, holding her slender, mall-clad form to him as if she were an infant. Without warning Leda had suddenly fainted, and he had had to move as quick as a cat to catch the thing she had held and to keep her from falling to the caustic stuff that was the all-in-all of the Soulless Sounding. "Are you hurt??

"The Eye. ." she managed to whisper, clutching feebly at it where it lay in Gord's left hand.

"It is safe. You can have it back as soon as you're recovered sufficiently to hold it. Never mind the damned thing!" Gord said crossly. "It's not important. You are!"

The strength of his arm, the sound of his voice, comforted Leda. At last she was sure it was Gord. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him quickly, then fell back, sobbing.

"Ah, hush. . hush, now," Gord said soothingly, rocking the slight form as he spoke. Although couldn't know for certain just why she was so wracked, the emotion filling Gord was enough to enable him to share the pain and joy of the moment, to understand and be tender. "There will be no separation again — ever. Not as long as I live and you live, Leda my one love." He gently stroked her cheek caressed her hair as he soothed her, and Leda's crying diminished slowly.

Leda regained her composure but didn't move unnecessarily, content to have Gord hold her. Drawing herself as close as their armor would allow, and clasping him around his neck again, the dark elven girl asked, "But how came you to be in this forsaken place?"

"I am pouring out my heart in love to her, and this hard-hearted drow can only interrogate me in return," Gord responded with mock severity but not a little hurt.

"Forgive me, dearest one," Leda said, giving him a little kiss. "You see, I am consigned to this horrid sphere, but not you! I thought never to see you again, let alone to find you wandering through this accursed sink they call the Soulless Sounding. . " Then something else struck her. "How is it that you traverse this place? That you can survive in it is miraculous!"

Smiling, Gord returned her kiss with more fervor than was suggested by the situation. Finally he stopped and answered her queries. "The charge I have been given enables it, Leda. I have grown stronger, been imbued with power, too. Gellor and I now trek the Abyss — even the whole of the netherworlds if need be — to accomplish our purpose!"

"Which is …?"

Before Gord could say anything to that, the oneeyed bard arrived. "I don't mean to intrude," he harrumphed with a suppressed smile, "yet I fear I must. For one thing, I can't take much more of this place — I should have thought both of you would feel the same, too! For another, we stand exposed to any others who might also be plying this disgusting channel, and any capable of traversing it pose some threat to us. . So, Gord, this is none other than the Leda you have so often spoken of?" the grizzled veteran added suavely, approval in his glance as he smiled fully at the ebon-skinned elven priestess.

"And you must be none other then Gellor, a name Gord spoke often during our adventures together," Leda responded as she released her hold on Gord and stood erect. She was now composed and fully able. "I agree that we should tarry here no longer, although I think that none likely to pass would dare to trouble us," she concluded with confidence in her tone and bearing.

"Well, no need for me to make introductions," Gord said. "Here," he added, proffering the sphere to Leda as he reached for his own sword. "I think this is the object which makes you feel so invulnerable here. As for me, I'll feel easier holding Courflamme."

"That is a great and puissant relic of demonkind!"

Gellor gasped as his attention was drawn to the smoky-hued globe.

"Most observant, troubador," Leda responded, slipping the object into its protective covering. "The ocular you use in place of your natural eye. ."

"Enables me to see much. That, and the other abilities I have recently gained, tell me that what you have there can be nothing other than the infamous Eye of Deceptionf"

Gord turned and stared at the slight priestess as she held the rune-worked bag. "Is what he says true? Do you have the greatest prize of Graz'zt there?"

"That is my affair," she snapped back. "What business of yours might it be if it were?" Then she was struck by the suddenness of their meeting, the change in Gord's aura and manner, the steel evident in his resolve to do whatever he was in the nethersphere to do. Perhaps she had been mistaken. People changed — even dark elven people, she had to admit to herself. Was his being here nothing more than another sort of trick after all? "You are Gord, but what is your real reason for being here?" Leda asked with measured words. "Have you come merely after this?"

"So many questions, so much doubt," Gord said sadly. "I am here to do but one thing. I am to locate each of the Theorparts, take them, and join the three fractions into a whole again." He saw the stunned look on Leda's face, but he forged on regardless. "It is wonderful to be with you again. I want you to come with Gellor and me in this quest Should you decline, ask instead that I go to some other place with you, I would have to refuse. Not because you are not the most precious thing to me, sweet love. The whole of the cosmos rests upon my poor, inadequate abilities. The ancient artifact of Evil must be conjoined, Tharizdun must be loosed, and I — we, perhaps — must face the vilest one and defeat him."

"Oh, Gord …" Leda's large eyes were huge in wonder and fear at his words. "Such a thing.. such is not possible. We're too small. . too weak Why, the greatest of evils could crush the three of us in one hand," she whispered, as if afraid that Tharizdun would hear her speak and come then and there.

"Think again, girl." Gord's tone was harsh, the words sharp. "Recall your failure to recognize me. I am no puny opponent, this blade no mere toad-sticker. There is but one being alive to contend with Tharizdun. I am told it's me, and I choose to accept that at its face. Now, Leda, will you join me — Gellor and me?"

"We could use that thing's magic well, I think" the bard told her by way of encouragement, "and your assistance, too."

"But. . my duties. I said to Vuron that I'd hasten with the Eye so that it could be used in defense — Graz'zt is ringed by his foes!" Leda concluded almost hysterically.

Gord was filled with a fury that made his eyes fierce and his veins stand out. "Vuron? I'll skewer him on this point as if he were a toad and this a sticker!" he snapped in a rising voice. "As for Graz'zt, I give not a fart in the breeze for him and all that is his. Should he get in the way of my path, I'll slay him too, demonking or no — perhaps I should make a point of doing that now!" He turned away, spat, then turned back and glared at Leda. "Do you serve demons still? If so, then begone!"

"Wait!" the level-headed Gellor said.

Leda was already turning back. At Gord's harsh statements, she had spun on one little heel and started away. Then she thought better of it. She was hurt that he could think so of her, speak so degradingly. "You are jealous!" she cried.

"Jealous? I'll show you what that means. Give me that cursed bag with Graz'zt's little toy in it! Hand it to me now! I'll personally take it to him. He'll get that, and more, from me."

"Easy, my young friend," Gellor counseled, grabbing Gord by his arm to keep him from brandishing Courflamme. "You might take off my head — or hers — with such wild gesticulations of that razor-edged brand of yours." Gord subsided a bit at that. "Better," the one-eyed troubador said soothingly, "much better. Give the lass a chance to catch her breath, take this all in. She came to this bedamned place for as good a cause as that which we now seek to fulfill. If Leda has some difficulty in so sudden a change, allow her Just a bit to make the adjustment, Gord. My rede is that this pretty little drow loves only one thing more than doing what's right — and that one thing's you."

Gord looked uncertainly from Gellor's face to Leda's. "I.. " he started, then trailed off. "You. ."

"So articulate," Leda said, smiling up at him. Gord was barely five and a half feet tall in his boots, but Leda was a scant five feet tall. Nevertheless, she felt as tall as he at the moment. "So powerful and manly in his ire," she continued. Now Leda felt better, for she understood Gord's actions fully. "I am swept off my poor feet, sir. Pray, do allow me to accompany you on this fell quest."

"Now you leave off, lass." Gellor said. Although the dark elf was no doubt a highly capable person, one skilled in the use of words, magics, and weaponplay too, the troubador felt easy enough speaking to her thus. He took an instant liking to Leda, trusted her, and felt almost as if she were a daughter, though Gellor had never had any children that he knew of. "Don't play with the poor fool so. He is a great and Just champion, a foe to be reckoned with. He's poor at this sort of thing, though, and you have him at a great disadvantage at this moment. Just be gentle now," he admonished.

"Hmmm," Leda answered, looking from Gord's flushed and stony face to the lined, weathered features of the bard. "You are a good man and wise," Leda said to Gellor seriously. "I take your meaning." She looked back at Gord and smiled. "I am sorry, dear one. I got carried away by the press, the suddenness of all this, just as you did. Of course I will be with you, stand by your side. What more could I ask?"

Gord relaxed visibly, and his grim look changed to one of happiness. "Come on then, Leda! Let's get out of this place — though I suspect wherever else we land will be scarcely less oppressive. We seek out the nearest part of the evil relic."

"What of Graz'zt? He isn't so bad as those who fight against him. He has been fair to me."

"Don't start with that again," the young champion nearly snarled, taking Leda by one small hand and dragging her along. "Where is the place which will lead us to him? I'll wrest the first of the Theorparts from his weird paws!"

Knowing argument was fruitless, Leda simply pointed. "There, along that twisting passage there," she said to Gord. "Even I can sense the proximity of a Theorpart that way."

"She speaks true," Gellor said when he noted Gord hesitating. "The closest of the three portions lies but a little way off there."

"It is not held by Graz'zt," Gord protested.

"What matter? One is like another, and we are here to get the triple key quickly and from whatever hand should try to hold each part Graz'zt's or any other, it matters naught." With that the troubador set off on his own, not waiting for further discussion.

Leda moved to Gord's side. "Come on, my champion. We can't leave our companion to face the enemy by himself." Gord grunted in a disconsolate manner but moved along the way Gellor was following. Leda spoke no further, allowing them to travel the short distance in silence. She wanted to turn back to carry the Eye of Deception back to Graz'zt where he waited in his massive palace. But she couldn't — she knew that. If she did, Gord would follow her to Mezzafgraduun. There would be a terrible fight. Graz'zt would lose, even with the Eye and a thousand demons to assist him, of that Leda felt sure. Somehow Gord and Gellor would triumph, but they would be sorely hurt in the process.

All of that couldn't be allowed to happen. Still, Graz'zt needed the Eye. He would lose the Theorpart soon enough, but the Eye …. Perhaps the other two Theorparts, If Gord and Gellor could obtain them, would draw the third one from his possession. Then he would survive. With the Eye of Deception at his command, Graz'zt would scatter his diverse opponents, all of them bereft of any power to match that which the ebon demonking would wield through the Eye. Gone would be his dream of an empire commanding the netherrealms and stretching into many material planes and probabilities, true. But he would still have his existence.

Why did she care about the massive demon monarch? No time to consider that fully now. Suffice to let it go as merely a case of Graz'zt being a lesser evil than most of the other dwellers in the Abyss. Vuron as well, but in a different way. The demonking was, after all, the patron of her race, as dark of complexion as Leda herself and all drow, and he had made her a noble of his court, treated her well, been. . Never mind.

What would Eclavdra have done had she survived instead of she, Leda, a mere clone, triumphing through the aid of Vuron? It was a fair question, she thought, for Eclavdra was another self, one dead and still living within Leda too. Eclavdra would have tried to make Graz'zt her pawn; and at this juncture she would have done exactly as Leda was doing, only for far different motives. No — that wasn't exactly true. Eclavdra would not have desired to return the Eye of Deception to the demonking. She would have desired it for herself, to keep the evil thing and utilize its powers to further her own ends.

"Where will we emerge?" Gellor asked. Interrupting Leda's reverie. The bard was staring at the murky place that was the gateway to a tier of the Abyss. It led to no great strata, only to a large and wild layer, but a place of much importance nonetheless.

"Beyond lies iyondagur, three hundred ninety-ninth tier of the Abyss," Leda said woodenly. "It is a place of nine regions, and it accesses not only the levels above and below it"

"I know," Gord said, drawing from the inner knowledge that had been imbued in his mind by the great ones of Balance. "Iyondagur leads also to the three hundred and sixty-sixth stratum of demonsrealm."

"What sort of place is this, Leda?" Gellor asked as the three stood at the brink of the portal. "Gord and I have implanted knowledge of much of the sphere, but fine details are not available. I sense that the Theorpart nearby is the Initiator, and that it is strongly held by both demons and daemons. ."

"Iyondagur's nine regions are held by the Abat-dolor, bard," the dark elf told him readily enough. "They are independent ones, the nine clans of pain, and bow to no master other than their own."

"Who commands them?" asked Gord with an urgency that he couldn't conceal. It was, after all a tight spot they were in. Despite confidence, great inner powers, armor, weapons, the task at hand was monumental. To wrest a Theorpart from its wielder was sufficient to make any great champion blench. When tens of thousands of hostile demon guards were added to the equation, the task became something on the order of incredible impossibility. Impossible and incredible, that is, until one factored in the rest of the disparate components. Courflamme's true powers were still unknown, but Gord thought that they were sufficient to overmatch a single Theorpart. They had already proved that a thousand great demon-brutes and demon-beasts could not overwhelm them. Gellor's magic from the kanteel and the work of his own sword were sufficient to withstand assault — for a time, at least.

Now fortune had thrown Leda and the Eye of Deception into the equation. By herself, the gorgeous little drow priestess was the equal of most demons. Perhaps even one of the princes might demur at facing Leda in single combat, Gord mused. She too had grown stronger during the time they had been in separate worlds. Just as he was unreadable when he held Courflamme, so too was Leda. Perhaps it was an effect of the Eye; he wasn't sure. Gord only knew that her innermost force was shielded from any probing, and that shielding was strong — very, very strong! If Leda would employ the artifact she held on their behalf, perhaps the three of them could actually manage to openly confront an entire horde of demonkind and defeat them all. Perhaps. … It was a big "if", and Gord preferred to add to the weight of their force in as many ways as possible to ensure success immediately. Faltering and failure initially would mean the enemy would have warning, time to prepare, and heart to resist more strongly.

"The Abat-dolor have nine lords over them," Leda said without looking directly at Gord. "There is also a great one who rules the nine. . "

"The Abat-dolor?" Gellor asked. "I cannot recall ever learning of such demons as that race."

"Graz'zt is one," Leda finally admitted.