Dance of Demons (20 page)

The ivory kanteel was potent, a match for the vile device Zuggtmoy employed. In time, though, demon strength would prevail over that of mortal sort, albeit Gellor was heroic and imbued with strength and power of supernatural kind. His adversary was, after all, one of the six greatest demons in the whole sphere of demonium.

The troubador played with determined desperation. Zuggtmoy merely kept her endless series of assaults flying from the Cauldron, biding her time with assured expectation, almost enjoying the contest. Wondering if blinding smut might prevail, the demoness triggered a whirlwind cone of the stuff from the device. Notes as bright and hot as the summer sun at high noon frizzled the dark cloud into nothingness, but the stain of the smut's demise lay only inches from the bard's booted feet. Soon, soon . . .

"Turncoat bitch!" Iggwilv spat. Leda faced the ancient witch with no expression, and that calmness disconcerted Iggwilv. "Use the Initiator on that sorry little man," the hag commanded, pointing her wand at Gord as he nimbly danced around Iuz, "and I'll see to it that you rule with us!"

Eclavdra's memories saved her. From deep inside her brain, Leda heard the warning. "That is the Baton d'Agrue, and its malign workings are not direct." Even with the alert, the terror and shaking that stole over her from crown to sole came before Leda could use her Theorpart to defend herself, let alone attack the witch. The little dark elf reeled back legs nearly beyond her control, hands trembling so badly that she almost lost her hold on the misshapen metal of the evil relic that was her only hope against Iggwilv.

"Hee, hee, hee!" the eldest witch cackled. The sound was more grotesque because it issued from the ravishingly beautiful, if depraved-looking, face of a young woman, the favorite alter-form of Iggwilv. "You didn't know that this twisty little stick never works where it's pointed, did you? Hee. hee!"

She waved the convoluted wand here and there, muttering as she did so. Vile terrors oozed forth, collected at the witch's feet, then began to creep and crawl toward the palsied girl. "Now for my piece de resistance!' she cried, and the wand began to vomit horrifying matter that fed the things that came toward her victim relentlessly.

It required all of her will, but Leda managed to shake off the panic that turned muscle to jelly, mind to gibbering lunacy. Her little fingers closed fast on Initiator, and the chill shock of its dark energies ran through Leda. The force coalesced in her brain, and from there she sent forth a wave of loathing.

The monstrous collection of gruesome things that was itself now an entity was struck by the force as a tidal wave strikes exposed shore. Back, up, over its many-formed body it went, splattering bits of itself and the noisome matter that fed it in gobbets of nauseating spray. Iggwilv was caught unprepared for such a turn, and although she dissolved her work as quickly as she could, the remains spattered her, burned her with their acidity, even as the disintegrating main body of the stuff struck the witch. It bowled her over and then was gone.

"No, you degenerate old crone," Leda hissed as she stood straight and held forth the Theorpart as steadily as an artist might hold a brush to a masterful canvas. "Let the two of us see just how potent are the forces we command."

Gord dared not allow Courflamme to impact upon the ruby-hued scimitar formed from the might of the Awakener. The relic could not be destroyed, save perhaps by Tharizdun himself. Gord now understood, from his experience with Infestix, that great as was the strength of the artifact of Balance, It could not withstand even a third of the evil relic, not in such direct manner. Courflamme's powers were greater than the Theorpart's own, but in a different form.

Rather than trying to sever the whiplike tentacles that lashed forth at him, Gord caused a mesh of crystal and soot-black weave to spring into being in the air between himself and the cambion. The deep red of the snakelike stuff struck the web of white and black LIvid carmine devoured strand after strand of the mesh, but as fast as it did so, more grew. Soon the whip was enmeshed, woven fast into a growing web.

But just as Gord was feeling positive, Iuz struck again. One instant, the half-demon's sword was held fast by the interplay of forces; the next, Iuz was striking at Gord with his own enchanted two-handed sword. The dirty-hued blade hit hard, sheared through the shadow plate, and snapped the silvery links of elfin mall beneath. The force drove Gord down, sprawling, his grip on Courflamme broken. The sword of Balance, however, remained where it was, horizontal, floating four feet above the muck of the grotto's floor, locked in its own duel with the scimitar-Theorpart. Disarmed, bruised, bleeding, only half conscious, Gord rolled and scrabbled, trying to get away.

Iuz had simply loosed his hold on Awakener, leaving it to contest with the enmeshing energies from the weapon of Balance. The cambion had his own sword, a long blade of demoniac forging, and this he used to spring his sudden onslaught upon his small adversary. Its blow was meant to cut the man in two at the waist. It gave Iuz only a moment's pause when the stroke failed to do as it had been meant. Then, with a bellow of killing lust and delight at what was to occur, Iuz leaped to straddle his fallen foe. "The thrust which strikes true!" the half-demon shouted with glee and excitement as he held the two-handed sword like a dagger, striking down to pierce Gord through his guts and pin him like a bug.

Some distance away, Iggwilv screeched in pain and rage. The terrible matter from the Baton d'Agrue had eaten away most of her silken garments, singed away her hair, blistered and pocked her flesh. Never had such a thing happened to her! Still voicing her awful ululations, the eldest of witches sprang to meet the hated drow. She would jam the wand down Leda's throat and choke her to death with its torrential emission of energy.

Instead of the dark elven priestess, however, Iggwilv leaped upon something else altogether. Seeing what her enemy intended, Leda used the Theorpart to form a barrier to intercept the charge of the infuriated witch. The power of Initiator was such that it went beyond a mere screen. The malign evil of the artifact brought forth a rack of iron spikes. The myriad needles of the thing caught the beautiful form that was that assumed by Iggwilv and turned it into a red ruin. Now the howling from the crone's throat was only of pain.

The agony made Iggwilv forget all about her former desires. Now all she wished was surcease of torment, and escape. Without thinking, Iggwilv thrust with both of her hands, desperately trying to pull her painwracked body from the terrible daggers that pierced it She had quite forgotten the Baton d'Agrue. Her mindless struggle brought the twisted wand into hard contact with what was essentially the force of the Theorpart. The baton was broken, consumed by that energy. As the thing was destroyed in a roar of conflicting forces, the rampant flux of energy devoured Iggwilv entirely. In one terrible roaring flash, the mother of all witches was no more.

"Aaahr That was all Leda could manage. No oath, no words could form. Something in Iggwilv's eyes at the moment of destruction, the sound of her final agony, made the dark elven girl shudder and draw back in disbelief. It was too terrible an end, even for one such as the witch had been.

Leda almost felt sympathy, remorse. Then she shook herself. No! Whatever fate had taken Iggwilv, the vile hag had brought upon herself. . . . What of Gord? Gellor? Leda turned, and her eyes fell upon the bard first where he was dueling with the mass of Zuggtmoy's fungoid bulk he plucking silvery strings, she manipulating her device of evil. The demoness was near to overwhelming Gellor — that was plain from the ever nearer thrusts issuing from the Cauldron of Corruption. Then Leda heard the cambion's shout of triumph and spun to see what had befallen Gord.

"Nooo!" She screamed as she saw Iuz jump and straddle the fallen champion. As she cried that denial, the dark elf sent the Theorpart flying from her hand. It spun through the air with the susurration of a thousand midge-sized imps tittering at some vast distance as if in diabolic delight.

The eerie sound of its passage made the cambion hesitate a split-second before he brought the huge sword down to pierce Gord's vitals. "Whang!" The sound of the alien metal as it impacted upon the sword's dingy blade was so loud that the halfdemon's eardrums nearly ruptured. The force of the impact moved the point of the weapon, so that when Iuz reflexively thrust it down, the tongue of the blade sank nearly its full length into the soft compost of the grotto's floor. The cambion, thrown off balance by the shift in the sword-stroke, pitched into an off-balance somersault. "Uuff!" was the sound Iuz made as he slammed down on his back.

Gord couldn't hear that, for he was temporarily deafened from the noise of the impact of Initiator upon the cambion's two-handed sword. The cry from Leda still sang in his mind, though. As he saw the sword come down, miss, and bury its length, the young champion knew that he had been given a last chance by the love of the little dark elf and her desperate act. Leaping erect, hardly pausing to note Iuz's distress, Gord took one step and grabbed Courflamme's diamond-and-jet banded hilt. "Good for Evil," he cried softly, and the sword separated in twain. A bright crystalline blade remained locked in contest with the rubine scimitar that was Awakener, but into Gord's gauntleted hand came a shining brand of nighted hue.

Seeing her love thus armed, Leda turned again to where Gellor fought against the terrible demoness. What could she accomplish against the mighty demon queen? Leda had many powerful spells upon which she could call. These were potent in terms of men, but against the force of Zuggtmoy, such dweomers would be paltry things indeed. Yet she had no other weapon with which to attack. . . . Leda decided to try a tactic that might work.

"Hear me utter your true name, O Zuggtmoy, Empress of Blights, and harken! You will not disregard this call, nor will you disobey my command. By the Black Votary I summon you, Zuggtmoy, and with the Bonds of Exaction do I fetter you. Hear and obey. Queen of Thallphytia, Mistress of Mycorji. You are but a demoness subject to my will. ..."

Immersed as she was in the battle with the bard and his magical harp, Zuggtmoy was superficially unaware of the casting of the evocation of binding. The words that Leda was chanting but a few yards distant might well have been said a thousand leagues away, for all the demoness actually heard. Yet the words, each with its charge of dweomer, did enter the mind of the fungoid being, and as these utterances accumulated there they began to niggle away. The spell being cast was not one that could ever demand full obedience from one as powerful as she, yet Zuggtmoy was affected nonetheless.

In other circumstances, had she not been engaged in a deadly battle, for instance, Zuggtmoy might have heard and answered — to wreak unspeakable revenge upon any so foolish as to annoy her thus. But the demoness was not free, and the incantation had an impact upon her. As the long strings of words was said, and the rite progressed, the gnawing of their message finally broke through from the subconscious of her brain to that part of Zuggtmoy's mind that was occupied in the fight with Gellor.

"What? Who dares?" came the telepathic demand from the disturbed demoness. The power of that blast of mental energy was sufficient to break Leda's casting. It knocked the little dark elf down, In fact, and wounded her with its force. But the distraction of the fungi queen was enough so that Zuggtmoy faltered in her complicated series of attacks upon the one-eyed bard.

That allowed Gellor to recover lost ground. In the second or two gained thus, the troubador sent his rippling melodies forth with renewed vigor, and the doom that encroached all around him was beaten back, withered, and decayed. "Thank you, Lady," he whispered as he saw Leda gasp and fall. "This will be for you," he added as his fingers fairly flew in sweeping circles across the silver strings of the kanteel. For all Gellor knew, the dark elf had died in order to help him, and it seemed likely that the demoness would soon slay him, too. Despite that, the troubador meant to make the victory as costly and painful as possible.

Zuggtmoy's bulk actually shuddered as the music swept over it. What was inimical to her fungi was hurtful, if not fatal, to the demoness. Cursing bard and drow for the piercing torments she now suffered, Zuggtmoy set to work on her Cauldron of Corruption with redoubled effort. Pay — she would make these mortals pay and pay!

"And Evil to Evil!" Gord shouted that cry as he took the lightless portion of Courflamme and faced Iuz. The cambion was groveling, on his knees, frantically trying to haul his great sword from its sheath of loamy stuff. In his anxiety and haste, Iuz was careless about how and where he grabbed the weapon, and his long, steely-fingered hands were cut and bloody from where they had contacted the sword's keen edge.

"Now, Now!" Iuz shrieked in relief and Joy as he finally managed to stand upright, grasp the length of the two-handed sword's hilt, and again be armed to attack in his dark mind, the cambion knew that this time he would not fall. With a grimace of evil certainty, Iuz spun to where he knew his opponent was.

Gord's words were spoken at that moment. The inky metal of Courflamme fairly danced within itself as it leaped forward to sheathe itself in the red-pink body of the gross half-demon. In Courflamme shot, piercing lung, vein, artery, heart, and the cambion s hide on the other side as it had its way with the thing's body on its upward journey. Out it came, as quickly as the dead-black blade had entered, and only a sundry few of the cambion's innards were further damaged by the withdrawal. It occurred so quickly that the vaunted Lord of Pain had felt hardly a twinge.

Iuz stood still for a second, shocked as realization dawned suddenly in his brain. Then he tried to bring up the massive sword he still held in his lacerated hands. "You . . . little . . . mortal fool! You can never slay .. . me . . . Iuz . . . thus! I'll. .. I'll. . And then the words Iuz was tiying to speak were cut off by a gush of foul, maroon blood from deep inside his body. Even then, the spawn of Iggwilv was not through. Spewing the ichorous gore as he came, Iuz advanced like an automaton, leaden foot after leaden foot, sword trembling but rising higher for a last blow against this small human who had killed him.