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?"
Chapter 18
BASILIV AND THE MANY LORDS who formed the Great Council of the Balance were gathered together in a special place. It was a hushed conclave.
The Demiurge was silent. Basiliv had not spoken or given any sign that he was aware of what was happening around him since... something... had struck him down while he had been scrying on the champion's activity and trying to warn Gord of something. Now all the other powers were met and watching as well as they could. What they observed was abstract, cloudy, the events of uncertain occurrence in a temporal sense but positive in their finality.
The two contending pieces, the livid lilac of the demonurgist and the emerald light of Gord, had shifted shape repeatedly as they maneuvered across the checkered field of battle. Parts sloughed off and decayed before the watching eyes of the assemblage. The fall of the two elder demons brought a somber cheer to their throats; then the death images of the heroes reasserted the muffled silence over all once again. Allton. Chert, Greenleaf, Timmil.... The names were as the sound of a bell tolling a dirge.
All were shocked to see the glaring lapis of a solar appear to contend with the enlarged foe. Had Basiliv been able, the Demiurge would have explained that he had worked the dweomer that summoned the mighty being to Gord's assistance. The loss of the dumaldun addition to Gravestone's figure, and the fiery black ring suddenly added to the champion piece, made the group sit up and wonder. Yet they were powerless to intercede, to take part in any form at all. It was a duel to the death between the mortal manifestation of those who supported Tharizdun and that body of heroes who sought to thwart the arising of the great one of evil. Board and men in place, neither side could now make moves for its benefit. This game was strictly played out under the volition of the pieces themselves.
When the final duel began the figures of the antagonists blurred. The power each possessed, the result of their combat, could not be discerned. Then the board itself began to melt and crumble. The Lords of Balance broke the scrying immediately.
* * *
In his depths, Infestix, too, watched the struggle. Because of the critical nature of this confrontation, the daemon monarch was again alone. None of the other mighty ones of the netherworld were privy to what Infestix watched. Neither devils nor demons had any piece in this portion of the game. They had no direct channel to the event, and the great magics surrounding it easily screened out any attempt to penetrate and observe. It made the daemon's dark spirit exult to know that even Gravestone was unaware of being so observed. The priest-wizard was too powerful, too ambitious. Infestix would always watch his every move henceforward.
When Shabriri and Pazuzeus appeared at Gravestone's beck and call, the master of the pits grew paler still with his fury. He was almost gleeful when those fell beings were blasted, but then the horrible form of the solar sprang onto the board. Almost gleeful; the emotion was repressed by the growing doubt Infestix felt. If the adversary, a mere once-thief, could bring such things as solar beings into the battle, what outcome could be expected otherwise?
Still, the daemon allowed with grudging admiration for his human lieutenant. Gravestone had managed to bind the two elder demons to himself without alerting Infestix to the fact. The priest-wizard might Just have other secret powers to spring on the enemy. Gravestone could be annihilated for all the daemon monarch cared. The demonurgist meant nothing — less than nothing — to Infestix. He must not fall to the one of the Balance, though. Never! That would create a new force for the enemy, place them one step closer to success in their desire to prevent the rising of EMI, the return of Tharizdun. Let Gravestone deal with Gord; then he, Infestix, would squash the overweening little priest-wizard as his final act before freeing the great dark soul.
Parts of each force fell away. The daemon was happy to observe the losses to Balance, uneasy when he saw the damage being inflicted on the compound figure that was his own right hand, his chosen force there. Although he was unaware that his foes too watched, Infestix observed and saw in finer detail than they did. First came the utter destruction of much of his lieutenant's power. Then the innermost citadel was blasted and the whole field of play, the terrible place Gravestone had created, began to disintegrate. With a vile oath, the master of the nether-pits forced the scrying into closer, sharper image. He would see the outcome down to the last!
Just then a dark veil seemed to drop, and the daemon was left unseeing. Infestix was powerless to prevent that from happening — as helpless as Basiliv had been just a short time before.
* * *
In the place of no-time and no-space where Tharizdun stirred, there was a ripple. The nothingness wavered. The dark form of the greatest of evil convulsed. Then it sat upright with a sound that was like the rattling of ethereal chains of adamantite.
* * *
Observe the observers.... The thought made the entity laugh. Ordered steps bringing chaos. Good and evil now locked in melee, now ignoring one another. Balance, those tiresome little neutrals seeking vainly to triumph. Well, perhaps...
Then the entity laughed silently again to itself. It had succeeded with interference so subtle as to be undetectable until now. And what matter if it had been revealed? The steps taken were so clever and potent that none could ever discover that the players of the game were themselves made pawns of itself... until it was too late. The contest would play itself out to the conclusion, but that end was predestined now, a forced game above a game, and the entity was the sole master of both struggles. Soon, there would be no need for subterfuges such as this. Soon all would be as was inevitable.
Chapter 19
"NO, I AM SOUND."
That reply from Geilor was all Gord needed to hear. Then get up, and let's get out of here," he urged, grabbing the bard by one hand and pulling to help him stand.
The entire place was shaking. It wasn't much more than a gentle swaying now, but a few moments earlier it had been only a barely imperceptible trembling. Thanks," Geilor said as the two men ran along the dark passage that led up and out of the labyrinth. "But how in the blazing brass buckets of the hells are we going to get free of this place? I think it's beginning to crumble!"
The same stairs we came up," Gord panted in reply, "must be the link that son of a bitch maintained between this place and his headquarters in Greyhawk."
"You're not certain."
"Uh-uh," Gord grunted the admission. "What's the difference? You were right. The whole plane is falling apart now that the dirty demonkisser has gone down."
"Okay," the bard said and let it go. He was in no shape to waste further breath, not after the pounding he had taken. Gellor looked at Gord, seeing his comrade was in rough shape, too. Then the one-eyed troubador grinned. "We just booted that bastard's ass into the pits!"
"You got it," Gord said tersely. Then he grinned back. His face was lined, older-looking than it had been before all of this started. But at that moment he looked almost boyish again.
Gellor had tracked Gord to the demonurgist's lair. That hadn't been hard, for the champion of Balance had scratched marks all along his route — the instinctive procedures of a master thief. The two followed these same signs now, and they reversed their route as quickly as they could. The deep purples and violent lavenders of the dead priest-wizard's domain were paling. The stuff of the quasi-plane was cracking, flaking, crumbling around the edges. "How much longer?" Gellor shouted as they pounded toward the dais area.
It was getting difficult to run. The whole little universe was now shaking violently with an increasing swing. It took concentration to maintain balance and force one running foot to come down ahead of the other so as not to tumble and sprawl. "Not long enough to worry about. There's the staircase — can you manage Chert?"
"I'll manage," Gellor shot back. "You just take care of Curley."
Just then the whole of the floating disc tilted. The troubador was thrown against Gord, and both men tumbled uncontrollably toward the canted edge. With a wild surge of effort, the small champion forced his body to roll in the direction of the spiral steps. Gellor was already heading that direction after caroming off his comrade. The one-eyed man grabbed the metal of the staircase, Gord snagged Gellor's belt, and the platform they had been upon a heartbeat before fell into nothingness, crumbling away as it plunged into an ever-widening chasm of nullity. Gellor pulled his friend up beside him on the uppermost step. "What now?"
"Down those stairs like the wind, Gellor, and keep your mind set upon the wonders of Greyhawk!"
Scenes of various sort flashed past as the two bounded downward. The spiral was now beginning to twist and rock just as the disc had done before. That it still stood at all was mute evidence of its existence on more than the one plane that the demonurgist had made for his lair. Thirteen stairs down, and then they were standing in a tower room.
"We made it," Gellor panted.
"Chert and Greenleaf didn't," Gord growled. His face was drawn and tight.
The bard placed a fatherly arm around Gord's shoulders. "We all knew there was a chance of that when we took this mission, Gord. Look," he said, turning his comrade toward one of the diamond-paned windows. "There's the city. You're alive to fight on.... I'm here to help however I can. The man who killed your parents, the chief agent of the enemy on all Oerth, is dead, slain by your own hand, Gord. And you're alive to take the fight to Tharizdun himself, perhaps!"
"But four of us are gone...."
"They died to enable the battle to continue. It was a worthwhile sacrifice, my friend. Without you, all of us are doomed! Don't belittle their deaths by maudlin words — they died as heroes."
That made him realize the futility of his feelings and expressions. "Of course, Gellor. Your level head and firm advice make you a friend, indeed. Let's get out of this filthy place — it belonged to that rotten shitpile Gravestone. I find it a cesspool."