Come Endless Darkness
Page 24
"This is not at all like climbing up normal steps," the barbarian said with consternation. His size relative to Gord was now back to normal. He towered over the dark-haired young man, head and shoulders, and his body was that of a Hercules. He was pulling, though, and Gord was not.
When Gord allowed another rest. Gellor asked, "How are we being drained so? Aren't we slipping past the demonurgist's traps?"
"Slipping? No, not hardly. I am struggling to keep this way open, using my force to bend his, as a bar pries and levers a greater weight. We must move on soon."
"Why are we tiring so?"
"That, good druid, is because I am using your strengths as well as my own to manage this all."
Whether or not there was protest from his comrades about to be voiced at that revelation. Gord would never know. They were all about to speak when the pale stone of the staircase, the bench, and the walls that seemed to support all began to turn dull yellow and crack. The demonurgist is trying to wrest his energy back!" With that shout of warning, the champion leaped to his feet and sought to re-form the alabaster stair by concentration. His three friends stood close at hand, likewise concentrating on the reality Gord desired. The stone went to dull brown and began to crumble away despite this.
As the stuff fell away beneath their feet, Chert lunged sideways. He had spotted a new plane there, a place of possible refuge from endless plummeting, if not safety from danger of other sort. "Grab Curley!" he roared to Gellor as Chert himself clamped his hand around the bard's left arm and pulled him toward the opening that led off into somewhere.
Gellor managed to snag the druid's short cloak, so Greenleaf too was pulled off toward the refuge. There was a rumbling crash, and the whole of the alabaster stairway fell. Its now blackish walls cracked and slipped down, slowly at first but then quickly dropping off into a nothingness that seemed to terminate on broken rocks a mile below. Gord was plunging downward with the discolored stuff of the stairway.
"Save him!" the hillman shouted desperately.
"I can't!" the druid screamed. He thought desperately, and Gellor was tugging out something from his girdle to likewise attempt some rescue, when the opening snapped shut. Chert, Greenleaf, and the one-eyed troubador were simply standing on a strangely illuminated platform. It was a place of uncertain substance and indeterminable distances.
"What happened?" Chert managed to ask.
"We escaped. Gord didn't," Gellor told him flatly.
The druid broke into the conversation with a bitter tone. "We were already at the top when we rested. Look!"
There, in the distance, they saw Timmil and Allton in combat with a pair of terrible demons, while the hated Gravestone reclined in comfort on a divan, enjoying the battle in ease and comfort.
"Rot that stork-legged bastard's eyes!" Chert had Brool ready and was striding toward the demonurgist as he spoke. "He'll find out how true men avenge their friends!"
"No, Chert, wait! We must help Allton and Timmil first, then deal with that spider."
The barbarian half turned. "Somebody's got to keep the bugger occupied, and I'll vote for me." He glared at the druid as if daring Greenleaf to dispute his words.
"You and Curley hurry to our friends' need," Gellor said firmly. "Hew the demons down! I'll counter Gravestone's dweomers with my music — I can work much with it for a little time, even against one as powerful as the demonurgist. But as soon as possible, come to my aid. This will be no easy task!"
For a moment the big hillman hesitated, torn between his desire to hack the priest-wizard to pieces and the logic of what the bard said. "All right." he growled. "You keep the filthy scum in check for a few minutes, then we'll come to help you finish the business. Come on, Curley. We've got a couple of lousy demons to deal with."
Greenleaf would have laughed at those words, only his throat was somehow constricted and no laugh would come. Deal with a pair of demons? Chert made it sound like a hawking after hares! More likely it would be doom for them or Gellor. No, probably doom for them all. Without Gord they didn't have much chance. Still, the plan Gellor had sketched was the only one that had any hope at all.
"I'm coming. Chert," the druid managed to say, hurrying and puffing as he trotted after the barbarian. "Slow up a bit, for we should fall upon the enemy together as a force!"
As the two dashed off to assist in the fight against the demons. Gellor drew forth his slender little harp, placing a ring upon his right forefinger as he gently touched the silver and gold strings of the kanteel. With care he sang a song whose verses had immediate effect. The one-eyed man was suddenly beside the demonurgist, and the latter was just as quickly immersed in black rituals of magic to counter the dweomer of the music Gellor played and sang. The denizens of the netherspheres who had been surrounding Gravestone vanished at the first of the troubador's notes. The two were alone in their contest.
Shabriri happened to be the closer of the two ancient demons to Chert, so Brool sang its song for the multi-eyed demon's discomfiture. Chert came running, swinging the massive battleaxe at waist height as he rushed into the fray. Its edge took Shabriri's scaled calf, laying it open. Ichor flowed, and the demon snarled at the stinging pain. It was far from a telling blow, but the hillman saved Timmil's life by his sudden onslaught. Shabriri had been about to finish the priest. Now the great elder demon had another foe to contend with. As Shabriri turned and battled with the wild giant. Timmil crawled off a little way and tried to gather strength to resume the fight. He was weak, nearly dead, but the old cleric was not ready to surrender to the mercy of a demon!
It was much the same with the druid's reinforcement of Allton. The lion-maned mage had nearly exhausted his spells, and was in sore straits when Greenleaf arrived to do battle with Pazuzeus. The enchanted staff that the druid wielded and his store of dweomers sufficed to save Allton from death, but the archmage was in no position to take advantage of the arrival of help by pressing his own attack. As Green-leaf contested with the huge demon. Allton retreated out of harm's way for a moment and sought remedies for his ebbing strength.
There was a series of terrible exchanges between demon and druid. The latter dealt great harm to Pazuzeus, no question. Allton saw the ancient one of demoniacal evil reel and writhe from spell and staff as Curley Greenleaf fought valiantly against the fiend. Even after all that the mighty demon had undergone before, however, his power was too great for the druid. Inexorably, the might of Pazuzeus was wearing down Greenleaf. Allton had to rejoin the battle and even the odds. Only a short step from the gates of death himself, the wizard set his face in a determined line and came forward again. Just then, the demon struck Greenleaf with some spell or force that caused the druid to scream and fall senseless.
Nearby. Chert was faring but little better in his light with the huge Shabriri. Seared, battered, bleeding from many wounds, the barbarian still stood firm and struck. Brool's kiss had left the demon a gory reminder from leg to torso, but no blow from the edge of the enchanted axe had been telling. Hurt, weakened, but by no means on the verge of defeat, Shabriri was devising his final stratagem, the attack with which he would slay the barbarian who dared stand and fight against him, when Timmil reentered the melee.
"Demon!" The priest's voice was an unnatural boom. Shabriri spun toward the challenge, startled and surprised. The cleric's staff was cast aside, its force exhausted, but Timmil grasped his amulet of faith, and the pure metal of the symbol glowed with a radiance that nearly blinded the demon.
"Back to the dark netherworld forever!" Timmil commanded as he advanced. "Never return, spawn of the elderdregs!"
Shabriri took a small step backward, more in uncertainty than fear. The cleric was no longer powerful enough to exorcise him, that the demon knew with certainty. Then his long-nailed foot slipped just a little on the blood his raking talons had drawn from Chert's body. Shabriri directed his multi-eyed gaze down to the floor for a second. The demon had no intention of slipping and falling, of being laid prone and vulnerable.
As if in a ritualized ceremony, a tragedy with a prescribed conclusion, Allton was engaged in a desperate act even as the old antagonist of demonkind sacrificed himself to exile Shabriri. The mage had no great spells left, no power in his castings, no repository of energy with which to continue on against Pazuzeus — except one. His staff still contained some strength, and Allton now used it to smite his demoniacal foe. As he struck, he recited the syllables of release, of unleashing, of direction. Each had its purpose, one to channel dweomer one way, another to send energy another, a third to free power, a fourth to change forces in some fashion.
Four and more Allton cried aloud as he struck. Each took effect. The staff was a tuner, a receiver and transmitter of energies as well as a store for such forces. It resonated, opened channels, sent forth rays, drew power, and it did so all in an instant of time.
"Cease, foo—" was all Pazuzeus managed to bellow before the ancient construction of wood and metal and magical bindings malfunctioned. The event occurred just as its wielder knew it would. Too many energies flew from it, too many currents were drawn into its confines — far, far beyond the capacity of its strength.
A tiny rupture between its forces and the negative flow of the anti- world occurred. The fabric of the multiverse mended itself quickly enough. Only a brief spurt of the dark energy came out to meet the raging blazes of power from other places. But even as the demon tried to shout, to delay, even to beg a truce, the dark and light blended and devoured each other. Only a little of the bright disappeared, enough to balance the negative — but the great force of that brief transfer of energy blew the ancient staff to nothingness. The eruption of power from that explosion devoured demon and mage alike in a pink-white flash that sent Curley Greenleaf farther along the path toward death's looming gates.
The condemnation of Shabriri to the depths of wherever he sprang from, Timmil's sacrifice, and that of Allton at nearly the same time, made Gellor falter in his contest. The demonurgist blinked too, but he recovered more quickly. He sent forth a wave of unmaking, a power stolen from the archmage Mordenkainen. Its force disjoined the song of his enemy, scattered its dweomer, broke the strings of the kanteel the troubador held. The rebounding of the bard's own casting stunned him, and Gellor was laid low instantly.
"Five in the pot," Gravestone said with a sneer. "One more to make the dish better still, and then my feast is done!"
Chapter 15
THE SHARK-TOOTHED ROCKS rushed to meet his body, to impale his helpless flesh upon their waiting points. But Gord simply willed it otherwise, and it was. He fell no longer; rather he strode along a dun road in a wild land of twisted trees and formless evils.
Was this another of the demonurgist's creations? Perhaps... but there was a subtle difference here. Wherever he looked Gord could see clearly, as if mighty beams of light sprang from his eyes, and nothing could escape his gaze here.
"I would the road were smooth," he muttered. At his command the surface under the soles of his high boots became as a polished floor of marble.
"Let me ride a mighty destrier," he thought, and suddenly the young champion was astride the broad back of a stallion. Despite different saddle and barding, Gord knew the animal instantly. "Blue Murder! Valiant steed of younger days, how came you here?" The stallion whickered and shook its head at the words as if relating his surprise at finding himself as Gord's mount in this strange realm.
"Gellor! Timmil! Greenleaf!" he then called out. "Chert! Allton! To me, all five!" That demand brought nothing at all save a graying of the horizon toward which Blue Murder now carried him. The place was not totally his — or, at least, things beyond its confines could not be called here by its forces. No matter. Gord would discover the nature of it soon, deal with it, and find his companions. "I will discover the guardian of this plane," he said.
The road was now a shimmering pathway with no end. It ran unsupported through space. Fields of stars were everywhere. Some glowed near, revealing their spheres in pure violet, white, green, deep red. Some twinkled so distantly as to seem but a single mote, but Gord's magical sight revealed them as whole galaxies of suns burning in a remoteness so vast as to make the heart falter in its beating.
The sudden change had affected his steed as well. Blue Murder was even bigger, more magnificent, and wore the twin horns of a dragon- horse, a ki-lin whose hooves sent trailing sparks of silver and gold behind as they struck the surface of the strange pathway.
"Swiftly, swiftly!" Gord urged, and his mount responded. The stars began to fly past, as if they were comets with fiery tails. Now to either hand, below, and above the champion of Balance could discern other places. By hue or scent, and some even by actual vision into their expanses, Gord saw the whole multitude of the many-sphered cosmos whip past. Elements, probabilities, ether, the yawning hells, bright planes of splendor and exaltation, dim places of disorder and chaos. There was the all-present realm of the Shadowking, above it the broad vault of the pure astral plane, and far, far beneath the scintillating trail the ki-lin left were the dreaded sinks of Hades, the nadir of all the manifold netherspheres. "No dark glow emanates therefrom. Blue Murder," the young champion shouted. "Onward!"
Myriad shades of verdant green, hues associated with green, too, from deep olive to citrine to pale aqua, spun now beneath him as the dragon-horse galloped. Tiny wedges and broad archways displayed the various means of entry to the multitude of hidden and arcane places. Whether partial plane, demisphere, or quasi-dimension, each such place was visible to the young champion as the ki-lin raced along the multiversal highway. Gord shook his head and turned away. There was an infinity of these places, but not one held what he desired. Blue Murder, if the strange mount was indeed that great stallion in a transformed body, was now bearing him toward an opalescent roadway, a flowing path that intersected with the ribbon upon which they had traveled so strangely.
"What is this you take me to?" Gord demanded.
The ki-lin made no sound whatsoever in reply, only redoubling its efforts so that the suns and stars blurred and disappeared. Abruptly the steed gave a strange, mournful call and leaped into the river of opaline light. Then the young champion who bestrode it knew that he was within the very flow of time itself.
"No," he commanded the steed. "You must battle the current! Go backward!"
The ki-lin shook its horned head and continued on. After only a few heartbeats, they were thundering up a metal-like bank and out of the glowing stuff with its myriads of scenes and standing stock still upon a flat and featureless expanse of what could only be purple chitin. The horizon was a knife-edge in the ultimate distance, the sky made of strata of pale, grayish stuff, each layer tinged with a faintly different hue.
Gord urged his steed on. The beast must know the place where the guardian of all this was. "I still seek to confront the one who will enable me to pass beyond," the young man said to the dragon-horse. "Whether Blue Murder or some imitation, you have obeyed so far; now fulfill your obligation!" At that the mount simply vanished, and Gord fell with a crash onto the unyielding stuff beneath.
The sudden precipitation dazed him, but in a second or two Gord was recovered and standing erect. He did so in time to see that the horizon was coming closer... no, the plane was contracting! All was shrinking, drawing toward the center — the place where he himself stood. This was disconcerting, threatening. Gord sensed a looming presence, a lurking evil that would manifest itself at any moment.
Crouched slightly, sword now drawn and ready, the champion of Balance waited. A faint wind blew, hardly stronger than a zephyr, yet its force was sufficient to tug at Gord's body and nearly drive him a
long before its path. He looked down at himself and saw that he was transparent. "Oh, shit, no! I can't be dreaming!" Gord pinched himself. His fingers encountered firm flesh and hurt as they closed and nipped. "Yowch! No, this is something other than a dream, I think...."
Now he could no longer see himself at all, not even Blackheartseeker as he held the dull ebon of its long blade before him. "Why?" he whispered the question as he peered nervously around.
Voices. Behind him stood the demon queen Zuggtmoy in her most hideous form. Conversing with that horror was an ancient and equally loathsome crone. It could be none other than Iggwilv, the mother of witches.
Each held a darkly luminous object with her pride and arrogance plainly displayed. There was a slight disturbance, a darker place in the air between them, and each moved slightly so as to make the distance that separated them greater. In that instant another form appeared suddenly. It was the naked, red-hued form of the cambion demigod Iuz. Demi-god? No longer, it seemed. Iuz was fully a head taller than the demoness, and his bulk was as great. The cambion had grown larger, more powerful, and more assured. He too held a luminous object in his hands, and his huge mouth opened to show the rows of pointed teeth that filled it as he fully materialized.
"Welcome, my son," the greatest of hags croaked.
"Greetings, Lord of Pain," Zuggtmoy breathed in her dank, fungoid voice.
"Ho! Ho! Ho!" Iuz boomed his mirth, allowing it to roll and play into the distances of the plane. This is the place you have chosen, is it?"
"Yes, dear boy," the cambion's horrible mother said gleefully. "It is a place where none but ourselves can reach. Not even that corpse-lover Infestix can disturb us here," she simpered, looking to the fungus heap that was Zuggtmoy as if seeking approval.
The fungi demoness didn't disappoint Iggwilv. "A most clever notion, don't you agree, Iuz, my pet?"
She might have said more, but the cambion spoke rudely in interjection.