Dance of Demons

Chapter 8

"The black ones gather against us, Most Foul."

"Dolt! Do you think I am blind? Stupid!"

The captain of the dreggal scouts stood trembling before Infestix, not daring to speak further.

"Well? Do you?"

"No — never. Most-"

Infestix shot forth his hand without warning, tapping the spidery dreggal on its spiky cranium with one gray, skeletal finger. The filthy-looking nail pierced the thing's head. The dreggal quivered, Its skin writhed as growths sprang forth from it, and then putrescence took it, and the former captain was an oozing pool of slimy decay at the daemon's feet. "I am not inclined to deal otherwise with incompetence," Infestix announced.

"It is fitting," agreed the group of Diseased Ones nearby.

"The Abat-dolor will not bend their necks to Us?" asked Infestix.

Brucilosu, currently the highest of the eight, didn't hesitate in responding to the query. "No, Master of Death, the fools resist for some reason. Why, I cannot guess, for they hate Graz'zt and- "

"It is because of some outside interference," Infestix snapped. The great daemon was pleased, despite the circumstances, for the chance to shame the highest of his lieutenants. Any one of them would supplant him in an instant if that were considered possible. Fair enough, then — he, Infestix, would see to it that each of them was cut down when any opportunity presented itself. This time it was Brucilosu's turn. "Some force of Balance is nearby, and that force bears with it a pair of trifling powers. This is what incited the black ones to resistance — and that will mean their immediate extinction, for I will bring Unbinder to bear upon them! Go now, all of you. Marshal the hordes for battle. We will roll over these little Abat-dolor. It must be done quickly. Do you hear? I want victory quickly!"

The eight daemons scurried off to see to the disposition of the four corps that comprised the horde which Infestix had brought to iyondagur. As soon as he had redressed things against Vuron, the Master of Hades could see that Graz'zt's toad would retreat to yet another defensive position. It would be like that for too long a time — series after series of attack battle, withdrawal to yet another defensive position. Eventually the stupid demons under Demogorgon would grind the albino's force to powder. But by then, Iuz and his assorted freaks would possibly have cracked the main lines defending Mezzafgraduun, overwhelmed Graz'zt, and stolen the Theorpart — which was rightfully the prize of Infestix.

In the moment he thought out that line of possibility, the lord of daemons had determined to commit everything he could muster with no further delay. Infestix gathered his strongest assistants, brought Initiator's energies into play, and opened first one channel, then another, to the planes of the netherworld beyond the Abyssal tiers.

Dumalduns, daemons, and cacodaemons by the tens of thousands were thus swept into his ranks. Dreggals, even maelvis, were suddenly teeming there on the somber plain from which Vuron had but recently retreated. Then Demogorgon, Mandrillagon, and their demonlords felt new confidence. With a million fresh soldiers to send into the fray, the stupid monsters went willingly away to batter against the thin lines of defense. Oh yes! The demon fighters and netherworld soldiers would attack and die by the tens of thousands despite their vast superiority in numbers.

Hie albino turd still held a Theorpart, Infestix knew, although the Eye of Deception was elsewhere — exactly where, he could not discern. That bothered him but a little, for the thing was inconsequential compared to Initiator or either of its matching parts. What counted was pressure and swiftness of action.

The bi-headed folly would press upon Vuron, push the pale slug back and back. Would Vuron then draw troops from Graz'zt? No, that was not likely. The result could only be a drain of the defenders under Vuron, a weakening so great that there would be but a corps or two left. As for Demogorgon? He and his baboon-faced brother would be leading mere squads soon. A hundred or two hundred thousand should suffice to form the anvil to Infestix's hammer. Infestix would break off a flying force, an army of no great size compared to the masses usual to warfare in the Abyss. It would be most potent, though. Hand-picked by himself Fast fearsome, and fueled by Infestix's own will and the force of the Theorpart. If the Abat-dolor were compliant and accepted his yoke, so much the better, for they would add more fodder to his horde. If not, a hundred thousand of the six-fingers would pose no obstacle to his march — not with the power of the relic's fraction in his hand.

Infestix knew that Vuron was fiddling with time in order to make good his flight. The ape-heads were too thick to understand the tactic, but not Infestix. In fact, he realized, two forces might benefit from the pastime, because Greater Mezzafgraduun's parts were interlinked with other places, especially iyondagur. So, with the force of two Theorparts working toward the mutability of the flow, chronology was altered to assist both the albino and Infestix.

Even as the wild throng thundered and broke upon defenses that Vuron had been able to prepare especially for Demogorgon's assault, so too did the master of daemons cross the intervening places to arrive in the heart of the lands of the Abat-dolor. With or without those demons, Infestix would then enter Mezzafgraduun prime, behind the thin shell of defense that Vuron attempted, behind the ring of resistance Graz'zt forged against Orcus and his minions, the dupes of Iuz and his lot. Before the weight of troops could be shifted, Vuron would be crushed between the hard place of Demogorgon and the rock of Infestix. Two Theorparts welded into one, and the demon armies were fatally compromised.

"King of Extinction …" It was a fawning legate of the maelvis legions that comprised the center of the army. Infestix turned from his contemplation, nodding slightly. "The enemy are deploying before our advance — only a few divisions. Great Master, no more than a hundred thousand."

"As I expected. Attack them!"

"Ah …" the centurion hesitated, then decided to huny to get it out. "There is a knot of foreign forces in the midst of the Abat-dolor host, my King. There is too a banner. …"

"Out with it, clod! What are you saying?"

"I am informed by your Diseased Ones, Mighty Lord, that it is the standard of the … Demiurge. ?"

"What? Basiliv? So! That is the one who Balance has finally chosen!"

Infestix paused. That explained much. As the aural readings of neutrality shifted and flowed, it had become more and more difficult to discover exactly what the meddling nothings were up to, who was bearing their accumulated force. For a time it had seemed as if some little part-human, a former thief and too-frequent thorn-prick known as Gord, was to wear the mantle of champion. Then all sign of the Demiurge had vanished from the field. Could Basiliv have managed that? Perhaps. . But did that entity fit the prophecy? Could Basiliv be the one destined to oppose Tharizdun? Very doubtful, and thus so much the better for Evil! The wise ones" of Balance had blundered!

"Tell me, maelvi, what powers does the Demiurge bear with him?"

"That is beyond me, King of Extinction," the creature gulped, "but the Lord Brucilosu did say you must be told that the Demiurge displays four dweomers of the elements — auras which are potent."

Infestix sneered. He knew well enough the tokens of the energy of the elemental spheres. In their proper places, each might be considered the equal of Graz'zt's vaunted Eye of Deception, perhaps. Here, the four together would be hardly greater than the Eye, and the latter's strength was but a tithe of the Theorpart he wielded. "Start the assault now! Inform my commanders that I will personally advance and deal with the Demiurge once the Abat-dolor scum are pinned."

"Yes, King," the maelvi cried, and sped away as quickly as he could. It was always a terrible thing to be the messenger to Infestix, and the quicker he was away, the less the probability of his being slain by the dreaded daemon.

Under the circumstances, it was perhaps understandable that the centurion didn't relate the Diseased Ones' warning — that their observations were somewhat clouded, and that the emanations might indicate some form of distortion, a trick That sort of intelligence often spelled death for the one relating it, and despite its malign and hateful nature, the maelvi prized its horrid existence above all else.

Abat-dolor cavalry posted on the wings prevented Infestix's horde from immediately encircling and surrounding the main body. The riders were mounted on hippokeres and vargrlneens. Though few in number, that made them formidable enough that it required some considerable time to drive them off. As the core of dreggals smashed into the demons' center, the other units in Infestix's horde closed and fixed the Abat-dolor where they were. His own demon warriors followed the dreggals, while the other troops moved to encompass the outnumbered resistance. After watching the slaughter for a span, the lord of the netherspheres decided it was time to deal with the situation. His personal guards, the plagante, swept forth with their master in their midst.

"I see you there, Basiliv. You carry the Quadrate Pillars of. ." Infestix suddenly broke off his mental challenge, allowing the telepathic shout to die in midsentence. What had been the image of the Demiurge had suddenly shifted to another. Not a stone's throw distant, and coming through his guards as if they were mere phantoms, was another one altogether.

Infestix knew that one well enough. It was the spawn of Rexfelis, the adventurer named Gord. In his hand was the sword that had sent Gravestone, the daemon's chief human agent, into oblivion — only the blade was worse now than it had been. Infestix could plainly see destruction dancing from its length in tongues of diamond and jet Flanking the small man were a drow female, in whose hands rested the Eye of Deception, and a man with a kanteel of druldic dweomer. The instrument was of nature, and its harmonies inimical to the netherlife. In its own right it was as potent a thing as the Eye was; yet neither of those things, nor the ones who bore them, caused the greatest of daemons concern. It was the small one with the long sword. .'.

"You recognize me, worm-fornicator?"

"You should have been expunged as a babe!" Infestix snarled.

"You tried, didn't you? Too bad your tools were so inept, eh? If you had come against me personally, as you did later, then things would have been different."

The crash and roar of the battle seemed distant, dim. Even the melee at hand was taking place as if it were happening underwater. Motion was slow, sound muffled. Waves of silvery music swept forth from the troubador's little harp in patterns that Infestix could discern with a glance. They impacted upon his daemon guards, the demons and dreggals around them, and the notes pierced and slashed the netherbeings as if they were arrows and blades. Darts of energy spat forth from the Eye of Deception too, and where the maroon rays played, more destruction came to his protectors. Infestix realized that the banter from his foe had been nothing but a distraction to allow the closing of the distance that had separated them.

"A clever ruse, you little weasel," Infestix grated. "So much the easier for me to send you to scream for mercy in my domain!" With that, the daemon brought up the malformed thing that was Initiator, the Theorpart, and willed an opening between it and the antispheres. From that channel would come the stuff of total nihility, and upon his adversary would it raven. The material form of the small human would be destroyed, but the soul he would reserve for his own amusement "Now eat death, man ling!" The Theorpart sent forth its lightless stream, but Infestix saw something other than what he expected, something that horrified the master of horrors.

The sword in Gord's hand suddenly shimmered and became two. A crystal blade sprang free from the dark and soared above as a faicon. The jet-black portion simply stretched forth to greet the beam of negativity, drink it, and devour the stuff of nihility. As if some leech feeding, the weapon drew the lightless stuff into its length, became greater, and began to glow with a radiance unknown even to the eyes of the greatest daemon.

"Courflamme thanks you for the refreshment," Gord said with a chuckle as he came, now almost within sword's point of the surprised Infestix.

Something warned the daemon not to try his attack any further. Instead, Infestix brought the Theorpart up to a defensive position over his maggoty head. There was a tinkling screech, and the glowing diamond-length of the crystalline portion of his adversary's strange sword went flying off as a quarrel skitters away after striking granite.

"Aha! Now half of your brand's potency is shattered, would-be champion," Infestix gloated. "Half a sword, half a man. That is but a half-fart's duration in a wind. Now let us see the defense against this!" As he shouted that to Gord, the daemon used Initiator to bring down a roaring column of pure energy upon the place his foe stood. Fractured, showing a crazing throughout its length, the diamond-bright blade still interposed itself between the stuff of consuming force. As its ebon twin had done, so too the crystal sword negated the energy — and at the same time that it absorbed the eye-searing brightness of the blast, the brand's damage was wiped away.

But not all of the energy could be stopped. Gord was bathed in a small part of the force. His being was assaulted, atoms assailed and nearly sundered. It took all of the distillation of powers granted to him to save himself from being blown to nothingness in an explosion that would have devastated iyondagur for a league around. Gord managed, but the drain was enough to bring him to his knees, eyes and ears trickling blood, nose streaming the crimson stuff.

Seeing his adversary in such a condition, Infestix leaped forward to slay Gord personally. The two halves of Courflamme saved him from simple slaughter at that moment Dark and bright blades leaped out, posing twin threats to the daemon, and the fiend Jumped back as quickly as he had sprung, defending himself with the Theorpart. Neither the jet nor the diamond portions of the sword would come near to Initiator, so the defense was effective.

"It is but a matter of time," hissed the daemon master in his moldery voice.

"But not as you assume," Gord countered. He used his last remaining force to restore his body, stand erect and ready himself to fight.

Infestix caused the Theorpart to metamorphose in his hand. It changed from a twisted thing of no particular purpose into a weird sort of pole arm. There was a haft with thin, axelike blades radiating from its head, and lower, leaflike tines with solid spurs at their base. As a spetum or ranseur, the daemon's weapon could catch and snap a sword blade in these latter projections. At its terminus was a foot-long spike. The thing was an axe-mace on the end of a short pike, with holding and disarming capability included. It would be very effective, too, if used at the right distance by a very strong wielder against an incautious opponent.

"No?" Infestix mocked. "Let us see how you manage play with me now, manling! You fight the master now, not the petty servant as you did when you bested Gravestone."

The daemon thrust the weapon at Gord, spun its length with his long arms, then slashed in a horizontal arc. Gord weaved away from the stabbing attack, then had to dance backward as quickly as he could from the long sweep of the glittering edges of the thing. The touch of its pointed end sent showers of fiery sparks flying from the shadow armor that protected his chest, and that brief kiss knocked the young champion off his feet.

It was lucky for Gord that the Theorpart-weapon was an unwieldy instrument. Had it been shorter, Infestix might have been able to deal the coup de grace then and there. By the time the daemon could bring the head of the weapon around and up to strike, though, his adversary had recovered enough to roll aside when the weighty axe blades came down. Infestix levered the thing up and into position immediately, but that allowed Gord time to clamber back into a crouch, and now he held the rejoined Courflamme before him. "Good, but not great, corpselover," he taunted.

What had Just transpired had given the daemon confidence, and Infestix readied his next attack with a leering look of anticipatory delight on his cadaverous visage. He had been unsure of exactly what would happen when he willed Initiator into a weapon. But the Theorpart had responded instantly, and the instrument he now grasped at the ready was a strange and devastating thing of death. As he moved it, became more accustomed to it, Infestix found it light, responsive, almost alive. This time he would be quicker, more exact, and the heart of the human opposing him would be his to devour.

It was all Leda could manage to keep the Eye of Deception functioning. The press of vile daemons around her and her comrades was growing greater as the creatures rushed to the defense of their master. As fast as she could cut them down with the Eye, more were taking the places of the slain. Because of this, she was unable to assist Gord; she couldn't even see or sense what was happening to him. In truth,

Leda could not have helped even had she been aware of his dire predicament One moment of distraction and the little dark elven priestess would have been buried under a wave of attacking fiends.

Much the same was happening to the right, where Gellor stood fast. The troubador had laid low a thousand of those monsters subject to the magic of the kanteel. Now all those still able to press toward him were of the sort immune to the harp's dweomers. With the gifts of the Catlord adorning his hands and feet, Gellor placed the kanteel safely in its case, then drew his own longsword. Wielding his blade and wearing the claws of a tiger, the one-eyed bard tore into the score of netherbeings still advancing. Locked in his own awful melee, he too was unaware of Gord's condition.

The flanged head of the pole arm came flashing down toward Gord's head. Gord thought to use Courflamme to deflect the blow, but instead the sword literally dragged him aside. The blades of the weapon tore lightly at his armor, but this time there was no shock nor was there any pain or damage from the glancing blow. The tip of it was deadly, probably the blades as well, and the weight of its mace head was probably enough to either pierce or break his shadow armor.

All that was bad enough — but worse, Courflamme could not be made to engage the weapon. Could the single Theorpart be so much greater than the greatest token of Balance? That seemed impossible. So, perhaps instead of striking at the blade-end, he should try something else. . Gord moved lightly, rapidly, circling to cause his foe to have to turn his body to keep the clumsy pole arm moving and spinning.

"I have patience," Infestix laughed, his voice a horrid hooting. "The wait will make your end all the sweeter." Indeed, time was favoring the daemon. Soon the thousands of his soldiers around them would break through and fall upon Gord and his companions. If Initiator didn't kill them before then, the sheer weight of hundreds of enraged demons and netherbeings would.

Suddenly Gord felt a warm tingling as if the sword were sending energy to him, and at that instant he closed with a rush. The pole arm that was Initiator shot out, Infestix meaning to use it either to skewer the foolish little human or to hold him at bay with its projections. Losing no momentum, Gord darted to one side and dashed in toward the daemon, past the end of the weapon. Infestix tried frantically to pull the long weapon back in.

Trying to shorten a hold on a shaft ten feet long, even for a being as tall and strong as Infestix, is slow work compared to the charge of a swordsman. Gord's right arm moved out, Courflamme's point darted from right to left, downward. Glittering sparks coruscated from contact of Theorpart and sword. There followed a piercing scream, a sound that could only be likened to ancient metal being torn apart within the confines of some sepuichral cavern.

Initiator fell to the demon sward of iyondagur, changed in the blink of an eye into its true form.

Beside the misshapen piece of alien stuff writhed the severed fingers of the right hand of Infestix.

It took Gord a moment to comprehend what had happened. By then it was too late. He finally understood and galvanized his actions into a further attack but the master of daemonkind was gone. Howling in pain and fury, Infestix had fled back to his own stronghold in the pits of Hades. The Theorpart remained where it lay. With a quick shrug of regret, the young champion stooped and picked the thing up with his left hand, still grasping Courflamme firmly in his right. He took another moment to touch the wormy digits with the sword's tip. The frantically moving things popped as would fat slugs in a fire as the point pierced them, one by one.

"Now, then," Gord said with a satisfied grunt after the last was destroyed. "I think it is time to see about the refuse the daemon-fop has left behind."

He took a look to the left and then the right, saw the nearness of disaster, and acted. Springing first to where Leda was, Gord fell upon the most threatening enemy first, cleaving the hulking plagadaemon from crown to crotch with a single blow from Courflamme. The thud of the monster hitting the ground made Leda turn in alarm. "It's all right, girl," Gord managed to blurt, spearing a second plagante on his sword with a long thrust immediately thereafter. "Just guard my back and I'll deal with the rest now."

With near shock, Leda noted that Gord held the Theorpart that had been Infestix's in his left hand as he plied the sword against the last nearby foe. The others of Infestix's horde had stopped short their rush, and the monsters were now milling uncertainly, seeking direction. "Thanks, my love," she panted during the respite. "I can manage a bit more, though. Should I hit them with another blast from the Eye?"

"Save your strength," Gord told her. "They will realize soon enough that they have no more master and relic to protect them. Then there will be rough work and slaughter, for the Abat-dolor will fall on them, and there will be a stampede. We must not get caught in that! Come now, let's aid Gellor."

Running close by his side, Leda accompanied Gord to where the troubador was fighting some halfhundred paces distant, nearly out of sight behind a windrow of dead daemons and maelvis whose hacked and ruined bodies showed evidence of weapon-work Although exhausted, she managed to summon enough vitality from somewhere inside her to command the Eye a last time. From the sphere came things of opaline hue, bouncing ovoids that arced and rebounded as they landed in scores among the lines of enemies coming toward them. Each teardrop of the stuff left a strand behind as it bounced, and whenever one of those strands contacted a daemon it splattered into a mesh of viscous, gluey lines.

After several impacts, each bouncing spheroid slowed and formed a puddle upon striking down for the final time. The substance of each ovoid must have been much compressed, for each puddle formed by one was a yard or more in diameter. The stuff was also deadly. Whether leathery, horn, scaled or spiked, the substance seemed to cut into the flesh of the demons and daemons as if each puddle encountered was made of molten lava. "Gods!" Leda uttered in a near whisper. "What is this thing — and me — capable of?"

"Sufficient to stop the foe dead in their tracks," Gellor said drily but with appreciation. "Much longer, and the three of us would have been but two."

Gord shook his head. "Put the Eye away now, please," he told the dark elf, with a squeeze of thanks to her arm. "You have done more than your share, and to attempt more work will try you beyond knowing. I fear. The Eye now grows stronger by drawing on the Theorpart, Courflamme's energy too. That I like not at all. Something seems to meddle with all here. . but what?"

"Where is the master of daemons?" Gellor asked, peering around at the disorganized masses of daemons now skulking at some distance from the three.

"Back in his pit, minus his rotted right hand," Gord replied with a grim smile of satisfaction.. "We can vaunt over the fallen enemy later. Let's get ourselves back into the lines of the Abat-dolor there, and give Elazalag the good news — and the Eye of Deception."

"You shan't! Not really? That was just a ruse, wasn't it?"

"No, Leda. I spoke forthrightly and with truth. These demonfolk have carried out their portion of the bargain, and now we shall deliver ours."

"What if they are planning treachery?" the drow priestess said angrily. "What of your fine honesty then?"

"In that event, my dear Leda, we will serve up to them the same dish that Infestix and his horde Just found so unpalatable. We three can devastate the greatest of the Abat-dolor in a twinkling, then use the power of Theorpart, sword, and Eye too, for that matter, to be elsewhere."

They were almost to the place where the ebonhued demon army stood in wonder, trying to decide just what to do now that their more numerous foes had suddenly left off fighting and pulled back to stand in confusion opposite the Abat-dolor. Of course there were those shouting for a charge, but Elazalag and her nobles were keeping the masses of warriors in control awaiting the approaching humans.

"These ones will try no trickery, I trow," Gellor ventured. "I detect more than a little awe radiating from the princess, there, and Herald Nisroch too."

It was so. "You bested the greatest of daemons!" Elazalag uttered with amazement. "I saw mighty Infestix yowl off to his own realm as does a cur when it loses its tail to the jaws of another dog."

"He will eventually regrow it — his fingers, I mean. I took them, and his relic too, in the contest," Gord asserted.

This one would be a mighty champion of the Abyss, my Princess," Nisroch said, meaning it to be sotto voce, but booming it regardless because of his massive lungs and resonant voice. "With that one as your consort, my Princess, the Abat-dolor would control all demonlum before — "

"Enough!" commanded the tall demoness, but immediately after silencing her herald Elazalag cast a sidelong and speculative glance in Gord's direction. Tell me. Champion, have you ever considered — "

"He has not, nor will he ever!" Leda interrupted with a firm, cold voice. Grabbing Gord's arm possessively as she spoke, the little dark elf then gazed unflinchingly at the feral eyes of Princess Elazalag. Without turning, Leda addressed the young man. "Give her the Eye of Deception, Gord. Then I think it Is high time for us to be on our way from here."

The anticlimactic tension of this tableau was too much for Gord to bear. He laughed a full, clean laugh, the mirth rolling from his stomach up through his chest and spilling out from his mouth in staccato bursts. At the same time, though, he placed his right arm around the mailed shoulders of the beautiful drow who clung to him possessively and hugged her closer. "You, lady of mine, are most certainly correct. There is still much to accomplish and but scant time to do it in. May I have the artifact, please?"

Leda passed the container that held it into his hand, and Gord released his arm from its hold around her. Formally, with a slight bow, Gord proffered the sigil-strewn bag with the Eye of Deception within to the tall, six-fingered demoness who was sovereign ruler of the nine clans of Abat-dolor on iyondagur.

"Princess Elazalag, I present to you the gift which was promised in our bargain. The Eye of Deception is of the Abyss and has been held by the Abat-dolor for centuries, I am told. The artifact was only beyond the ken of demonkind for a brief time, but I offer my apologies for even so brief a hiatus. Please take it and use it as you will on behalf of the Abat-dolor, for that is as it should be."

It didn't seem incongruous to Gord to speak thus. The demoness and her kin were very much like humans. Yes, their repute placed them as some of the most vicious of all demons, but that was in keeping with their near-humanity. Evil they were, undoubtedly so, but not always — and, when pressed, what race of mankind was not also vicious and homicidal?

The demoness reached out and took the thing from him, acting with a little more haste than was called for, but such anxiety was understandable too. Elazalag was thinking of how this would redress the balance between iyondagur and Mezzafgraduun, between herself and the demonking Graz'zt. "With this I shall reunite all of the Abat-dolor," she said loudly, so that all the demons in earshot might hear and exult. "I shall extend our lands and bring woe to all those enemies who harassed and belittled the Abat-dolor when we were weak!"

"I doubt you'll need it to finish off the rabble left behind by Infestix when he fled," Gord said as he saw the trickle of movement toward the rear by the disorganized and frightened enemy, showing the beginnings of panic and rout. "They are leaderless and will soon be in full flight. On the other hand, negotiations with Graz'zt will be most interesting, Princess, and I think you will-"

His further thoughts were drowned out by a growing roar. The ranks of the Abat-dolor warriors were alive with triumph as the word was passed among them. Their princess had recovered the Eye, and the daemon was chased from their land. Victory! Cheers and shouts rolled along their front, outward, company by company, then back inward again.

Nisroch looked at his sovereign, and Elazalag nodded. The herald brought the princess's chariot up, and as soon as she was within it, Nisroch's voice bellowed out above the shouts and cheers: "Forward! Kill the enemy!"

That was all it took. The command was taken up by a thousand throats, then a hundred thousand, or so it seemed to the humans, who were nearly deafened by the din. With a continuing roar, the whole mass of the ebon-hued demon army rolled forward at a run. Elazalag with her hippokeres-drawn chariot, flanked by a score of cavalry on either hand, led the charge.

The riders on the wings forged ahead of the formation, making the advance into a crescent of death. It struck the fleeing horde of invaders as if it were a tidal wave, and fully a quarter of the foe were slain by that first impact.

"Let us leave this field," Gord said, turning from the slaughter that was now commencing in earnest. "I mind not seeing such as those meet their end, for it is meet. What happens afterward is something I care not to contemplate, let alone witness."

"Something you said before, Gord," Gellor mentioned as they began walking from the place toward the castle that sprawled some miles away.

"What's that, old friend?"

"The Eye — you said it was drawing power from Courflamme, and from the Theorpart, too."

"Only because of our thoughts and emotions, only because of the proximity and the rapport which had built as each of us fought the enemy."

"The burning spheres were a nonesuch, Gord," Leda said, including the bard by a quick glance in his direction. "What did you think of them, Gellor?"

"Sufficient to devastate whole battalions with a single discharge," he responded.

"It was your thought which brought them forth, Leda," Gord told the dark elven priestess. "That device is a potent one. It is of great evil, but the force can be turned to other ends … on occasion."

"Doesn't your own sword bind the powers of the netherspheres, Gord?"

"Yes, Leda, It does that; but it also holds, separately but in conjunction, the might of the spheres of Light. Balance binds all, and enables the forces to be used in equilibrium. The manifold energies of the Eye of Deception can produce terrible results. They are always of Evil. Who can say what can be performed with that great relic? In the end, its employment always benefits the Abyss.

"The sword, though, has no truly dark side, not any longer. Courflamme is the artifact of primordial neutrality. It exists to enable the cosmos to continue as it is, each of the disparate forces within it keeping the others in check. Perhaps it is the doom of Tharizdun, or perhaps the cosmos must change. It is not written anywhere that things will always be as they are."

"We take the Soulless Sounding again, Gord?" The troubador asked that as the three came within a bowshot of the grim walls of Elazalag's castle.

"We must make it seem that way, at least," the young champion of Balance answered. "It is now readily apparent to our enemies what we are about. There will be rejoicing amongst the great demonlords, of course, for now only they among the forces of Evil possess Theorparts. After the celebration, they will begin to scheme and plan how to gain the one I hold. With that will come a further realization, and then understanding will be our greatest threat."

"Don't be so enigmatic, youngster," Gellor said to him. "Let's have the whole of your thoughts. We're in this right alongside you, aren't we?"

"For now, anyway," Gord concurred. "Who can say what will transpire once the first part of the quest is concluded and the final portion commences?"

"Gord!"

"All right, all right. Once the rulers of this place understand that I have one Theorpart, and that I took it with relative ease, It will strike those with the other two that I am the cat, they the rats, and not vice versa." Gord looked at each of his companions in turn. "Consider this: We had the aid of the Abat-dolor to assure success. Perhaps we had to have such aid, although we might have succeeded with stealth and surprise. No matter now, we have the thing from Infestix, and that one is out of play for a time. At best, the foes will possibly assume that in yielding up the Eye of Deception we have made ourselves sufficiently weaker; then they will remain vulnerable."

"But we have Initiator now, and its strength is twice that of the Eye," Leda said with concern. "That cannot escape even dolts such as Szhublox!"

"Not indefinitely. . " Gellor commented, considering the lord of demonium.

"It is least likely that they will band together and make common cause to resist us," Gord said with a solemnity unusual to him. "But we must not dismiss the possibility entirely. With two Theorparts, they would equal our own force, and they have countless demon warriors to call upon to guard them too. If father and son, Graz'zt and Iuz, should somehow set aside their differences for the moment, we would never wrest the two remaining parts from their grasp — not in time, anyway."

"Then we must keep the two factions warring," murmured the troubador, stroking his cheek reflectively. "Yet doing so might be difficult."

"Only if we attack one without offering nonhostility to the other," Leda told Gellor. "Graz'zt is the one with whom we must treat, so that is where we will go next."

"That is so, but neither Elazalag nor any other must know that until we have had opportunity to convince the demonking that he must accept us as his allies."

"We will dupe him, then, and when the second Theorpart is in your hands turn both against him?"

"No, Leda, not quite. We will have to mislead Graz'zt, and in the end it might well be necessary to force him to yield Unbinder to me. The thing can bring him only destruction in the end. Tharizdun will have Graz'zt's life amongst the first the Ultimate One slaughters in his new empire of Evil. Demon and deva, no matter. Both sorts are inimical to what that one plans for the multiverse. It could be that the demonking must be killed by us in order to gain the last portion of the key of doom, but at least Graz'zt will have a chance this way. If he manages to hold the Theorpart from us, another will gain it, or the three will unite on their own. Then destruction is a certainty for him and all demons above the dimmest mentalities."

"That is logical. I accept your reasoning," Leda said. "Something you said makes me wonder, though. Why haven't the fractions knitted themselves into the whole again? Once done, Tharizdun is loosed, no matter the hands that the key might temporarily rest in isn't that so?"

Gord nodded. "I cannot answer that. Think, too, of the other mysteries. Basiliv is gone from us — did you know that? No force seems able to gain the upper hand anywhere. . "

"The Demiurge is slain?" Leda looked pale. "Only one of stature beyond the gods could accomplish that! Even so small a thing as my ability to draw forth the energies of the Eye, to employ it with ever-greater success and not be drained to a shell by its inherent evilness. … I saw Vuron look puzzled by that. It seems as if we have some mighty unseen foe laboring against us, another equally invisible ally assisting the cause."

"Then we will break the deadlock and in that process I think the recondite will become manifest. Our success will unveil both foe and friend alike."

"We go to Graz'zt, then?" Gellor asked as the three strode into the nearly empty bailey of the Abat-dolor stronghold.

"Not via the Soulless Sounding, I'll wager," Leda asserted, looking at the gray-eyed man who had once been no more than a thief and swordsman raising devilment in Greyhawk City. "Gord will have some other means. . "

He smiled at them both, but said nothing.