The Rod of Seven Parts

by Douglas Niles

  Badswell and Saysi gagged from the toxic stench, but the half-ogre managed to cling to his axe, slashing it toward the nearest raklupis as the monster advanced. Choking, still blinded by my own tears, I stumbled along the edge of the battlement in helpless retreat. Only the half-ogre kept us alive. Even as he choked and gasped, he managed to hold the snapping, snarling raklupis a step or two away.

  "This way!" urged Arquestan. At last my vision cleared, and I saw Saysi scrambling to the battlement, then springing into the compartment of the whirlwind chariot.

  Globes of light circled and floated there, but at least one of the hounds—Bayar, I saw—had resumed her animal form. The jowly dog, ears flapping, barked furiously from the compartment of the wind duke's platform.

  Arquestan leapt with catlike grace, landing on the rim of the tower. Four globes, loyal hounds, circled his head as he reached low, scrambling for my sword. Miska himself grabbed with his giant-sized arm and snatched up the potent weapon, holding the mighty blade like a dagger in one of his monstrous hands. With an almost casual stab, he plunged it through Arquestan's chest, piercing the wendeam's mighty heart, driving the wind duke back against the rampart. With a groan, then a sigh of ultimate sadness, the outcast from the valley of Aaqa slumped to a sitting position before slowly toppling to the side.

  Numbly I watched, giving way to a dull sensation of utter hopelessness. I heard a sound nearby and knew that Saysi was crying; it seemed the greatest tragedy of my life that I couldn't go over and make her feel better.

  Badswell finally connected with the lunging raklupis, splitting the creature's skull with a powerful blow of the axe. I heard a clattering of metal, saw that Miska had cast aside the Vaati Blade. Both wolf heads howled in triumph, the sound like the maelstrom of a hurricane, while the human face sneered with wicked anticipation.

  Now the wolf-spider snapped up the webbing, with the Rod of Seven Parts clasped tightly in the coiled strands. Holding the black shaft in the strands of silk, Miska uttered a laugh of cold, utter cruelty. With a powerful cast, he flicked it outward and up, hurling the artifact like a spear.

  The black shaft struck the cocoon of law with a force that reverberated through the air, driving the breath from my lungs, sending Badswell reeling backward to the floor. The rod stuck through the filmy barrier, then slipped slowly down to tear a long hole in the cocoon. I saw the vaporous barrier part, a wide rip running down the length of the gauzy cloud. Saysi, now alone with Bayar in the compartment of the whirlwind, drifted away from the keep—and toward the vaporous barrier.

  With one last, sneering laugh, the wolf-spider lowered his head and leapt for the gap in the cocoon. Howling in glee as he escaped the bonds that had contained him for centuries, he pounced upward. A shriek of savage, furious joy echoed through the air, lingering in the depths of Pandemonium for long moments after Miska disappeared.

  CHAPTER 23

  PURSUIT THROUGH

  PANDEMONIUM

  "Kip! Badswell! Get over here!" Saysi rode the wind duke's whirlwind, poised in space just a short distance off the rampart. The urgency in her voice was amplified by Bayar's frantic barking.

  Reaching the parapet near her approach, I bent down to pick up my sword. The golden blade was marred for the first time, bright red with Arquestan's blood, and I stared at the weapon with something like horror. Only Saysi's shrill cry, repeated, broke through the numbing haze of catastrophe. I climbed to the edge of the battlement in numb, reflexive response as the half-ogre lumbered quickly after me.

  Hesitating only a moment, I cast one backward glance, seeing Arquestan slumped in a wide pool of blood. His proud, black head lay tilted to the side, his eyes staring sightlessly. I didn't want to believe it, but there could be no doubt that he was dead. Of the four hounds, still in their dancing-globe state, two had been rent by raklupis, while the other two continued to bob and weave against their enemies, striking out with an occasional burst of bright sparks.

  "Jump—right now!" Saysi sounded close to panic. "More spyder-fiends right behind you!"

  Numerous tanar'ri, including several sleek raklupis, spilled in a tangle of arachnoid legs and wolfish heads from the broken doorway. More of the spidery horrors popped into view, teleporting onto the stone altar or suddenly appearing in different places on the circular battle platform. In a single instant, no fewer than two dozen of the howling creatures arrived, every one of them scuttling furiously toward Badswell and me.

  Without another moment's hesitation, I flung myself into space, springing with all the strength in my legs to span the gulf of space and land in the compartment of the airborne chariot. Next Badswell flung himself outward, reaching with his big hands toward the edge of the cyclone. Though no less powerful than I, the half-ogre's weight proved a detriment, and his leap carried him barely to the edge of the whirlwind. His broad hands grabbed the edge of the chariot's compartment, but the solid rim was rounded and slippery, providing a very poor grip. He started to slip backward, huffing in frustration, until I seized both of his wrists, slamming against the side of the compartment as I took the full force of the half-ogre's weight. Grunting, straining, I gasped out a prayer to Patrikon, pleading for the strength to save my hulking friend.

  Saysi ran to my side, throwing her slight form into the effort as Badswell kicked against the sides of the whirlwind, gaining a little purchase in the softly yielding surface of air. Slowly we lifted him until, with a groan of exhaustion, he propped his elbows over the lip of the compartment. In another moment, we pulled him in, the three of us collapsing on the deck.

  Looking up, I realized that we had drifted some distance away from the battlement, where spyder-fiends now teemed in great numbers. Wolf jaws snapped and howled as the creatures surged back and forth, commanded by the cool, confident voices of the raklupis. Some of the tanar'ri turned to savage each other, while others clawed and climbed over their neighbors, howling and baying at us. A few dangled webs from the high rampart, scuttling down the wall, swinging outward in vain attempts to attack the whirlwind.

  One big lycosyd tried to leap after us, but the monster plunged to its doom well short of our swirling chariot. I thought it fortunate that, for the time being at least, none of the raklupis showed an inclination to change shape into some winged form and fly to the attack. Then we passed through the gash in the cocoon of law and were safe from the immediate dangers of tanar'ri.

  I turned to Saysi, and for the first time noticed the shaft of black she clutched in both of her hands. "The Rod of Seven Parts... but how...?"

  My words trailed off, my jaw slack with astonishment.

  "When Miska tore through the cocoon, it was still falling downward. The whirlwind drifted over there. I certainly wasn't controlling it, but it was as if there were some kind of attraction. We were floating right there when it came past, and I just reached out and pulled it from the cocoon," she said, as if it had been as simple as retrieving an apple falling from a tree. "It seems to give me the power to control Arquestan's whirlwind."

  At the mention of the wind duke's name, I groaned and looked back toward the fortress, which slowly receded into the distance.

  "He's dead, isn't he?" she asked quietly.

  "As dead as Parnish. By the gods, what a disaster!"

  "That's not the worst of it," she said, turning a steely look into the depths of Pandemonium.

  "I know," I replied, clutching the hilt of my sword with white-knuckled intensity. The stain of the wind duke's blood marred the golden perfection of the blade, but I had no desire to wipe it away. Instead, I raised the weapon, pointing into the distance of Pandemonium. "It's Miska. He's loose, freed from his prison."

  "What kin we do?" Badswell asked, recovering his breath enough to stand beside us.

  "We've got to go after him." Saysi and I spoke together, exactly the same words.

  "Where'd he go?" The half-ogre posed the next, eminently logical question.

  Slumping in dejection, Saysi turned tear-filled eyes toward the
vast extent of Pandemonium's tunnel, the immense landscape spiraling away for an incomprehensible distance. "I don't know," she admitted. "He... he disappeared, became invisible or teleported or something. But where?"

  The catastrophe was eminently clear to all of us: Miska's campaign of chaos could be unleashed against a hundred worlds as soon as he could raise an army of tanar'ri. The Queen of Chaos, no doubt, would be only too willing to help him raise his legions.

  Abruptly Bayar rose to prop her forepaws on the rim of the circular compartment. The hound faced into the tangled depths of Pandemonium, whining urgently.

  "D'you think she's tellin' us?" Badswell wondered.

  Turning her mournful eyes to me, Bayar stared with a clear plea.

  "I think so—at least, I hope so." I spoke tentatively, but a feeling had begun to grow within me. Still holding that mighty sword, I squinted into the distance, trying to penetrate a mass of haze and chaos. There could be a trail there, a faint spoor lingering unseen, but perhaps marking a course of travel through the twisting coils and passages of this nightmare plane. We could only hope that this loyal hound could sense that ephemeral path, guiding us to a final confrontation with our immortal enemy.

  "Let's try it." I pointed with the Vaati Blade, feeling more and more certain of Bayar's sense of direction. "Miska went that way. See if you can make us follow him."

  Without further questions, Saysi inclined the Rod of Seven Parts, and the whirlwind quickly spiraled away from the fortress prison of the wolf-spider.

  Swiftly the airy chariot built speed, until we soared faster than I could comprehend, shooting like a bolt of lightning through the winding tunnels of this abysmal plane. Abruptly we were surrounded by fog, the ether between the planes roaring with thunderous sound and spiraling, kaleidoscopic chaos. Bayar stood still, her quivering snout clearly fixed on a direction, and Saysi followed that indication.

  With shocking quickness, we broke from the fog, emerging into a pit so vast that its very scope defied our understanding. Bayar again urged us forward, her jowly muzzle extending over the rim of the chariot. She regarded the depths of this bizarre and frightening place, guiding us with determined gentle whines.

  Distant walls plunged downward, past wide shelves of chaotic land masses. In a haze of volcanic eruption and surging, blood-red seas, I got the sense that each of these broad ledges was a world in itself, a nightmarish region in the vast chasm that could only be the Abyss. Well I remembered Saysi's description, read to me in Parnish Fegher's library, about this nightmarish confluence of chaotic power. Impossibly vast in scope, the place reminded me of the night sky, an array of fiery specks unreachably distant from where I stood.

  "I know we're on the right track," I declared, my hand on the hound's flank. "This way." Bayar's tail thumped steadily in affirmation.

  We watched mutely as volcanoes erupted a thousand miles away, stared in horrified silence as rivers of molten fire blotted out a vast landscape. Another realm held a sea of great size, surging liquid the crimson red of fresh blood. Those "waters" spilled into a vast maelstrom near the heart, a sucking whirlpool that looked as though it might swallow the moon or sun with little effort.

  The priestess, following the gaze of the hound, guided us past these bizarre, doomed environments, angling toward a broad ledge on the wall of the Abyss, a place that dipped lower in the center than its outer rim to form a flat-bottomed bowl as big across as any continent. Air thick with the stench of rot and decay rose from this vast depression, coiling around us, stroking our skin with tendrils of festering horror.

  "The Steaming Fen," Saysi declared as we plunged lower, beginning to discern far below a landscape of foul, rotting vegetation intermixed by sea-sized swaths of stagnant water and brackish mud flats. Still lower we dived, and now we saw movement as great serpentine shapes writhed through the muck, rolling in huge slimy coils.

  I counted several of these great beasts, gradually observing that they all seemed to be swimming in the same direction—the direction toward which the hound guided us.

  "What's that up ahead?" Saysi asked, her whisper dry with awe—or horror.

  I saw it immediately, but at first couldn't answer her question. A great shape rose into the steaming, polluted sky, piled high on a broad base, climbing in shapeless deformity toward the blackened vault overhead.

  "Mountain?" suggested Badswell.

  "I don't think so." I began to discern tendencies in the vast shape—certainly nothing so orderly as a pattern or design, but nevertheless a vague symmetry and purpose to its creation. Some of the appendages angling outward from the massif resembled towers, twisted and malformed spires that jutted into space. A number of these were vertical, but others stuck out at oblique angles, and at least two that I could see were virtually horizontal.

  As we zoomed closer, I detected movement on the fetid island surrounding the massive mound. At first it looked as though the ground itself crept like oozing mud, but I realized that the effect was caused by living creatures, thousands of them, all gathering toward the lofty pyramid.

  "It's a fortress—as big as a mountain, yes, but it has been created by someone or something." In the back of my mind, a suspicion was growing, but I hesitated to utter the name. More of the great serpentine shapes coiled through the muck of the fen. I saw huge fins, like the dorsals of deadly, colossal sharks. These leviathans also swam toward the mountainous fortress.

  The spiraling whirlwind of our chariot drew closer still, and I saw gaping holes, black tunnel mouths that dotted the entire surface of the massive structure. We began to get a true appreciation of the place's actual size, and it was easy to see why Badswell had guessed it to be a mountain. Trying to judge perspective in the dim light and smoldering air, I guessed the fortress to be as high as the greatest peaks I had ever seen. Now it filled the horizon before us, yet still sprawled far to either side. The foundation was so broad that the overall slope of the bloblike mass was only a gradual, pyramidal incline. The tunnel entrances nearer the ground were choked by the throngs of creatures compelled, drawn forward, by some summons unseen and unheard by us.

  "The horde of chaos," I muttered in awe. "An army that could destroy any world."

  "Look—flyers," Bads said tersely, waving his axe.

  Our course suddenly brought us into the midst of a flock of broad-winged horrors. Antlers bristled from the staglike heads of these creatures, but the monsters flew on the wings of great condors or vultures.

  "Perytons—the heart-seekers!" Saysi declared in confirmation of my own guess. I raised the sword, eyeing the chaotic stag-birds warily. Fortunately none of them seemed to take any interest in our cyclonic conveyance.

  Saysi dipped the rod, slowing the speed of our chariot and carrying us on a diving course below the flight of the gathering flock. Certainly the perytons had seen us, yet so single-minded was their response to the summons from that great fortress that not one of them veered to attack.

  "An army gathers," deduced Saysi, mirroring my suspicions. "An army of chaos, ready to swarm across the planes at Miska's bidding."

  "Their general freed, they gather for vengeance," I agreed, the picture clear in my mind. Unless the wolf-spider could be stopped, the scope of potential destruction was unthinkable. No doubt the queen could open numerous gates such as the tunnels of white light that had guided her spyder-fiends on their attacks in search of the rod. Now, with the numbers gathered below and the commanding evil of Miska to lead them, teeming hordes would erupt from those interplanar gates, laying waste to any place they chose to assault.

  "We kill him first?" Badswell suggested dourly.

  "It's our only chance," I agreed, though the very idea made my stomach heave.

  "How do we do it?" questioned the half-ogre.

  "I don't know. Even Parnish and Arquestan couldn't stop him," Saysi answered before I could reply. It was clear from the tone of her voice that Saysi's determination didn't translate into optimism. "He killed them both, just like that." S
he snapped her fingers for emphasis, the sound precise and jarring in this vault of chaos.

  "We have the rod and my sword. We'll have to get close, strike fast," I suggested, with an encouraging look at the priestess. "And leave the rest in the hands of Patrikon."

  Bayar huffed softly, staring fixedly at the mighty edifice. Sniffing, with ears upraised, panting frantically, she turned urgent, pleading eyes to the three of us, willing us to understand.

  "He's there in that palace somewhere," I confirmed with certainty. It was as though Arquestan stood behind me, a hand on my shoulder, his soothing voice strong and confident in my ear. "We've got to go inside."

  "What about those black holes?" Saysi suggested. "Some on the higher towers don't seem to have any activity going on around them."

  I watched as the perytons dived. Each of the antlered vultures tucked its wings, arrowing toward a yawning opening on the upper surface of the mountainous fortress. A trailing heart-seeker lowered its head, goring the black spikes of its antlers into the wing of the leader, drawing a shriek of pain and a cloud of feathers. As the stricken peryton tumbled from the sky, the treacherous follower assumed the primary spot, uttering a shrill cry of triumph as it swept into the vast dark entrance.

  Other winged monsters shared the smoky sky with us, many of them arrowing for the same passageway the perytons had entered. Hag-headed harpies, keening their deceptively beautiful songs, swirled and squabbled, one by one vanishing into the depths of the palace. Dragons of black and white and green flew individually into the lightless maw, soaring out of sight, gathering to the commands of their queen.

  The hound of law woofed and whined, looking toward the summit of the vast mound. Saysi steered, and Bayar's thumping tail indicated the dog's approval.

  "There's one tunnel up near the top—nobody's gone there yet," Badswell observed, pointing to a dark, yawning pit near the summit of the massif.