Come Endless Darkness (31 page)

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 along 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.

"Never call me that again, toadstool slut!"

"Be nice," the crone-mother admonished without force. "We three are an inseparable group now. Give me your Theorpart, dear Iuz, and mother will make the two a great tool for your power—"

"Tush! Don't interfere now, Wilva. The key must be given to me for the initial joining." Zuggtmoy shifted shape as she spoke, becoming a beautiful and seductive human as she conversed. "So I will accept your offering now, Iuz," the demon queen said in her now-sultry voice.

Iuz shook his head. "If we are conjoined, then we must act so, my lovely consorts!"

"What?" Iggwilv demanded somewhat irritably, even as she too shifted form to appear as a brightly clad and gorgeous young woman.

"How is that?" The beauty that was now Zuggtmoy demanded almost simultaneously.

"Each must hold forth that portion of the tripartite relic which she has, just as I do now," the cambion said smoothly, smilingly, as he extended his right arm and held the oddly shaped portion he possessed in such a manner so that it pointed toward the chitinous surface of the place. "Now you two must do likewise, and so doing we will gently bring the three together so as to form a whole!"

Zuggtmoy hesitated, looking at Iuz, then at Iggwilv. The ancient witch was likewise uncertain. She stared at her offspring, then looked at the fungi queen. The two exchanged glances, each suspicious, doubting the cambion, questioning each other as well. As if by some silent mutual conGord, both then turned to stare at Iuz. He stood as before, still amiable, a faint smile upon his huge face.

"Come, come! This act is to make us the unquestioned masters of all, the most powerful beings in the multiverse. Our wills alone have sufficed to keep the relic disjoined, to maintain the bindings upon Tharizdun.... See? I freely speak that turd's name without fear! It is we three who will rule, not he!"

Zuggtmoy hesitated, then nodded, and slowly extended her Theorpart. "Come on, Iggwilv, you too!" Her tone was harsh.

"Oh, very well," said the witch. "Here is—"

"Ieeuuzzz!"

The ferocious, rising shout that the cambion let out made both of his tensely extending arms twitch reflexively. Iuz had instantly dropped his portion of the relic when the other two had been held forth, and his long arms shot forth to seize the extended artifacts of the evil one's prisoning. The long fingers of his hands clamped with an iron grip, and the muscular arms jerked back with lightning speed. The horrified eyes of both Iggwilv and Zuggtmoy saw events as if in slow motion as the cambion brought his twin prizes to him, then lifted both overhead in exultation.

All of this time Gord had watched without attempting anything. He was uncertain if he was invisible, undetectable, to the trio. When Iuz tore the two keys from the grasp of his supposed co-masters of all, a shout of horror rose unbidden from the young champion's chest and was out of his mouth in a rush. His cry went unheard, however, for even as it vented forth, the three were themselves screaming at the top of their lungs.

"Nooo!" Zuggtmoy bellowed, trying to shift shape again.

"Wait!" Iggwilv screamed, hoping to gain time.

"Mine! You are mine!" Iuz shouted in triumph as he placed a massive, clawed foot upon the last portion of the relic. As he did so, the cambion used the other two together, bringing left and right parallel, portions touching.

"Dry dust!" he thundered, aiming the weird pair directly at his mother. Iggwilv blew away in the breeze, a little whirl of powder.

"Empty air!" he shouted, as he turned and leveled the twin Theorparts at the half-female, half-fungoid thing that was Zuggtmoy. The demoness vaporized, and the little haze of smoke she had been was instantly gone, too.

Iuz pranced and capered at that. "I am King! I am All! None can stand before Me! All, all, all is Mine!"

Gord was rooted to the spot. He watched as Iuz bent, scooped up the final portion of the dreaded artifact, and without hesitation fitted it into the other parts to form a whole. This cannot be...." Gord managed to whisper. As if in answer to that, thunder rolled in the distance somewhere. Thunder?

"Thunder?" The question in Gord's mind was echoed by the mouth of Iuz. The cambion left off his cavorting and stared at the horizon. It retained its pale, varicolored strata, yet the rumbling came from there. It was like thunder, but it was continuous. Iuz stared, immobile.

"It draws closer," the huge demon said at last. "Who dares to disturb the Master of the Multiverse?" Iuz finally demanded in a voice almost equal to the thunder itself.

There was no answer. The plane itself contracted, though, and the rolling boom of thunder grew louder still. There was no doubt in Gord's mind. The source of the noise was closer still. He could move now, but there was nowhere to go. Even as those thoughts raced through the young champion's mind, the place shrank still more. Now it had definite boundaries, perceivable dimensions. It was a rectangle of miles in depth, leagues in breadth. Still huge, but contracting, diminishing. Iuz raged and thundered in reply to the booming of the plane itself, and when they so contested. Gord saw the dimensions of the chitinous layer grow smaller and smaller until he and the cambion occupied a space no larger than a few hundred paces deep and thrice that across. Then the noise stopped, as did the shrinking, when a thin plume or dark smoke appeared against the pearlescent horizon.

Iuz noted the column of smoke and strode toward it. "Who dares to intrude upon Me?" he demanded. "What entity is so bold as to defy the wishes of Iuz?"

There was no reply. The smoke thickened, grew taller, and from its uppermost portion gleamed motes of bright amethyst hue, a purple fire within the dense, dark cloud, perhaps. The cambion was nonplussed but determined. "I sense your presence," he shouted, standing not fifty paces from the stuff. "I grow tired of this game," the half-demon added. Casually he lifted the awful form of the ancient relic he held and pointed It at the smoke. "Now, thing of folly, you see the might of lust"

A biasing beam of violet light sprang from the art! fact, stabbing into the cloud. The dark smoke seemed unaffected by it. In fact, the smoke fractured the ray, splitting it in twain, and the twin beams thus created seemed to stoke the purple glow within the cloud of smoke. Now there were two gaps in the blackness, and from them burned the amethyst light. Holes like eyes, light as of lambent orbs within those sockets.

"I... Nooot" It was the cambion's turn to shriek denial, to try to flinch back to escape what he saw.

"Oh, yes!" laughed a gigantic voice of pure evil.

The top of the dark column had formed itself Into a head. The bright amethyst fires were Tharizdun's own eyes, of course. The being's vast maw was a purple-black deeper than endless night, a lipless mouth with teeth and tusks and fangs in site and profusion beyond belief. Hide as black as Graz'zt's own midnight skin, as hairless as a newborn babe's skin, as hideout as the leathery coverings of the gates of doom. Every unspeakable evil, each blemish of the world's ugliness covered Tharizdun — at least all of the terrible being that was now visible to Gord's horrified gaze... and to the eyes of the shrinking cambion.

"Greatest of Great Evils," Iuz whimpered, "forgive your worthless spawn, Iuz. I beg you to accept my homage, this... this artifact which is truly yours." As he spoke that, Iuz held forth the tripartite instrument. This time, however, he made no attempt to wield its power against the half-formed lord of the netherspheres.

Tharizdun chuckled and drew a deep breath. The relic of his binding, the hoped-for eternity of unending slumber, crumbled into bits, the pieces themselves into flakes. Those in turn became motes, and all vanished into the flaring nostrils of the most vile one.

"Better, little demon, much better." Tharizdun said in a whispery voice. "Now come! Kiss the hand which will rule you!"

The cambion almost flew out of his own bloodhued skin at the command. Then Iuz managed a shaking, trembling bow, and literally leaped to obey. He flew toward the ever more complete being of evil incarnate, saying, "I am your slave. Most Wicked. I am yours to do with as you will."

"Very commendable, Iuz," Tharizdun boomed. The cambion now stood close to him, very close. Tharizdun reached out. Iuz was a rabbit before the paw of a tiger; nonetheless he stood steady and actually kissed the massive hand of the ruler of the depths. "I accept your homage," Tharizdun whispered.

He then spoke further in a voice that rose to a thundering volume again. "I likewise accept your slavery, and now grace your unworthy existence with an act of my own — the first in eons."

"Unto me, Utmost Darkness?"

"Unto you, Iuz-that-was." With a deep laughter that was totally an expression of malign hatred and ineffable wickedness, Tharizdun took the cambion into his monstrous right hand and lifted him high. "Observe the view as your Master sees it," Tharizdun bellowed, still with a voice brimming with evil mirth. Then the terrible god tossed the cambion up, caught him again, and squeezed. A piercing shriek came from Iuz as his bones were splintered, organs ruptured. Pinkish ichor started to flow from his orifices — eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth, everywhere.

Tharizdun's talonlike nails sank deeper into his victim's flesh as he looked down with satisfaction at his handiwork. "Yes, slave, I choose your death now, rather than wait for betrayal and rebellion at a later time." Then the glowing eyes of pure purple looked up from the corpse of Iuz clutched in his hand and out across the chitinous plane. "Now for you, little champion.... Muoohhahahahahal"

Gord had soiled himself in far less threatening circumstances — years before, at a time when he was little and helpless. Yet he thought of that time now, and he felt as powerless as "Gutless Gord" had felt in the grasp of the bully-boy called Snaggle. His knees sagged, his spirit quailed. Gord had found revenge against the ones who had made his childhood a nightmare of fear, hunger, and self-disgust. His reason told him that no such evening of the score would ever occur hereafter. "If that be the case," Gord managed to say to himself aloud, "then why not go as a wolf rather than a rabbit?"

"Go? You will go nowhere!" Tharizdun had heard.

The amethyst eyes bathed Gord with a wash of brightness. "You think to fight against Me. You will attempt to, even though I can break you in one hand as I did the bloated spawn of Iggwilv and Graz'zt! That is stupid. I will kill you easily, if you try."

Gord lowered the tip of his sword, uncertain. It had taken all of his strength, his resolve, to point it at the terrible creature of darkness. Tharizdun was taking time to speak to him, and that made the young man pause.

"Good! Well you might ponder, wonder, consider. I will crush you in an instant if you think to fight against Me. I will accommodate your talents if you serve. Think you that I love or trust the vile dregs of the netherworld who fawn upon Me? Never! They are a race of liars and backbiters, each seeking to usurp My headship. If you swear oath to Me, Gord, accept Me as your King, then I will make you the Lord of Arms of My Kingdom, and that is All... Everything. You will repress all the others, be a Viceroy, have everything I do not desire personally."

* * *

"He is a deceiver, Gord."

"What? Oh.... Tharizdun is false?"

"That, too."

"Of course, but I—"

"You what? Listen? Consider?"

"No. I seek to not fulfill my obligation."

"That one slew me, Gord."

"I think otherwise. Tharizdun has been chained and helpless till this moment."