Dance of Demons (32 page)

He was right Tharizdun knew that. Great, powerful, the darkest force of wickedness known — that was true, but such did not speak to Tharizdun's indIvidual prowess with ordinary weapons. In his prime, the dark being could destroy minds, shatter spirits, and utilize dweomers as no other could. Were he whole and filled with eldritch powers drawn from the nadir of the cosmos, Tharizdun could have bested the champion of Balance by drawing upon arcane forces to counterbalance Gord's skill and the power of Courflamme. At this moment, however, the difference in relative capacities in melee was beginning to tell. As Gord struck and moved and spoke, the ancient malevolence could manage no reply. The dark being was wondering only when the voice that had promised assistance would deliver the succor. That Gord was aware of the entity and seemed unconcerned troubled Tharizdun. Was this to be the finish? Impossible! After all the time, centuries of sleep filled with dreams of return and red revenge, nightmares of powerlessness, and the sweet foretaste of reawakening power, he could not be stopped here on the threshold of opportunity! Because the small man kept a distance, the darkest of evils again transformed his weapon into the great war axe.

"
If you desire a fencing lesson, mortal fool, you shall have one
!" Tharizdun finally said, crying with boldness he did not feel. The ploy was simply to give a bit more time for Lord Entropy to lend his aid.

Unknown to Gord, the formless thing was indeed at work on behalf of the Ultimate One of Darkness. Entropy had immediately transferred itself to the chamber above where the dweomers of Light were at work on the metal that imprisoned Tharizdun. The entity settled itself carefully, and for a minute or two all of the multiverse save the small portion of nowhen and nowhere in which Tharizdun's prison existed was relieved of the burden of Entropy's weight. The entity condensed all of itself there, and on a single small area too. No substance, physical, mental, spiritual, is infinite in its form and existence. Where Entropy rested, and the adamantite felt the effect that ten billion years would bring. Suddenly the blue metal became nothing. There was a hole in the cage; an escape route now existed. "Come up to me, Tharizdun," Lord Entropy said telepathically.

Gord heard that message. He redoubled his efforts, but the massive axe kept him back far enough to enable the greatest one of Evil to back his way to the stairway. "Coward!" the young champion shouted as Tharizdun bounded up the steps.

"
Fool
!" Tharizdun shouted back. Then he saw the opening with its amorphous darkness that was the entity and leaped through to the freedom beyond.

I will return soon, Gord the Cursed, to hunt you down and finish you. yours will be the slowest and most painful of deaths imaginable! do watt for me
. . .

It was a mental message, of course, that last. It came as Tharizdun went winging across the spheres. Not certain whether his foe would hear or not, Gord responded staunchly. "Be sure to do that, maggot, for I'll expect a better fight when next we meet."

Chapter 18

IT HAD BEEN ALL THEY COULD MANAGE to remain where they stood. Either their own abilities or the power of the rings would normally have enabled Gellor and Leda to ascertain what was happening within the castle's great tower, but neither method availed. Just as the troubador grew so restless that he was about to disobey Gord and return to the interior of the fortress, his mind received his friend's urgent plea for energy:

". . . send me the force held within your rings," Gord had telepathically demanded.

Even as Gellor concentrated, willing the energy that lay in the golden circlet to flow to Gord, the bard looked toward Leda. The dark elfs lovely face was also etched with furrows of concentration. She too had heard the message and was complying.

Neither was certain just what forces were contained in their respective rings, or how best to supply the dweomered energy to their comrade, but each did the utmost to serve as a conduit. Suddenly there was a visible flashing, a ray of force that sprang from each ring. These rays combined and shot into the castle's ever -darker mass with a sound like a triumphant chorus of celestial voices.

"I feel weak," Leda said, swaying on her feet.

Gellor supported the little elven girl with his arm. "It was the power of the rings," he said. "We succeeded in giving Gord whatever was held fast by these bands. Let us hope it was sufficient, for now I am as drained as you, Leda. I couldn't hold a sword now to defend myself against a stripling hobgoblin."

Though the enervation brought both sudden feebleness, the recovery came as quickly. In the space of a hundred heartbeats the two went from near debilitation to vigorousness again; and with the renewal of strength came a sense of new power and capacity.

"We succeeded!" Leda cried triumphantly. "Now we must return to Gord's side."

Gellor was again trying to pierce the veils that surrounded the grim citadel. The growing evil hampered that, and the sheathing of adamantite precluded penetration of the place in which the troubador knew his young comrade now fought Tharizdun. "Wait, Leda. Just wait a little yet. If there is no signal from him soon . ." Just then there was a sudden darkening and heaviness quite unlike the slow insinuation of malign nature that the evil archfiend had caused in his reawakening. Gellor broke off to ask, "What invidious force is this?"

Leda couldn't mistake the presence. "It is the Lord of Entropy! He has come to undo our work. . . ."

"No need to be despondent, girl! Gord's quest is shared by us all, now. Don't we have three rings? Does he not obtain our help? Ask for our power?"

"Yes, but he now fights alone against two enemies."

"You said 'our' work and that is plainly true. We three fight together. Gord now faces Tharizdun and the entity alone because that is what he commanded. What course now, though? Can you sense any clue, Leda?"

She paused, concentrating. "No. There is . . . nothing. I say that if we believe the situation altered, doubt Gord's capacity to handle it, we must perforce disobey his instructions. Let's rejoin him now!"

The troubador hesitated, weighing the prospects. "Wait. We must wait just a little yet."

"You wait if you wish, old man," Leda cried. "I can't stand here another moment while Gord fights those two all alone!"

He watched the dark elf step back into the fortress, torn between his own desire to follow her and what Gord had said. Then there came an all-pervasive laughter, as evil a sound of glee as the energy from the rings had been righteous. "Leda! Come back! The archfiend is free!" Shouting this, Gellor ran inside himself, seeking her inside the castle's now lightless confines. There came a sudden glow from just ahead, as if a wizard had cast enchanted light to counter the gloom. As if in response, soft illumination came from him too, the glow as golden as the light ahead was silvery. "Leda!" he cried again. "At least wait for me!"

"Hurry, then! I know the way to the keep," Leda shouted back Then she paused until the amberglowing Gellor was near. "There, down that hallway," the dark elven priestess said. "We must follow that to the corridor to the vaulted chamber beyond. The staircase — "

"Yes, yes. I recall," Gellor said puffing a little from the exertion and excitement. "I'll take the lead, for I have a sword. Stay close!" He and Leda had not gone half of the hall's distance, however, when an azure light filled its far end.

"What are you two doing in here?" Gord demanded as he ran toward the two. "This whole place is about to crumble. Rim for your lives!" He was up with than in an instant, shoving at their backs in order to speed them onward. "Out — we have to get out!"

Great hunks of sooty stone were raining down around the three as they shot out of the castle, gasping for breath. The bridgeway across the chasm was beginning to show signs of disintegration too, so there was no respite. They ran on, making their way across the perilously swaying span as the central tower rumbled into a thunderous crescendo of collapse. From that epicenter the destruction proceeded, until the outer curtain walls of the citadel began to fall into ruin. They had just cleared the bridge when it cracked and splintered, dropping away soundlessly into the bottomless space it had arched over. The once-bright quicksilver was now pitchy and brittle stuff of unguessable sort, it seemed, as they dragged each other onward, finally managing to clear the tall outwork as it too crashed into rubble.

They fell gasping at a place where the tumbling blocks of obsidian-hued stone rolled near as would breakers at the ocean's shore, their place Just beyond the farthest danger. "What happened?" Leda managed to get out. Then she looked at her love. "You're not badly hurt, are you?"

"The bastard! It was Entropy. He somehow managed to breach the prison. Tharizdun escaped then — just as I had him!"

"You were outfighting the Ultimate Evil?" Gellor's disbelief was very much in evidence despite the rasping voice that their recent flight forced from him.

"He is the Champion," Leda sniffed.

"He is right, Leda. Listen to the wisdom of our friend," Gord responded after drawing several deep breaths. "Never again will there be such an opportunity as I had just then. Tharizdun was newly awakened, muddled, only half what he will soon be. I could have — would have! — sent him into the void forever more had not the Lord of Entropy interfered."

"What will we do?"

"Gather our own resources and prepare for a second battle. There is no other option. If we sought to avoid it, Tharizdun would certainly come to seek us out. No, there is but one thing to do. Ready and then find that maggot before he has the opportunity to become fully prepared."

Gellor nodded somberly. "I must agree. It is the only course we have. How long before the darkest is able to draw into his being the full might of the netherspheres?"

"The demons will resist!" Leda interjected.

"Aye, that they will. Tharizdun will go into the pits of Hades first, absorb the powers there, then do likewise in the infernal regions. Demonium will be his last stop in the lower worlds, that is certain." Gord took a moment to quaff a small amount of elixir from a little flask he had drawn from his belt pouch. He offered it to his comrades, and both Leda and Gellor sipped. "Refreshing, isn't it? It is something which the wizard aichemist Keogh gave to me. ..." He shook his head, dispelling whatever thoughts of the Lords of Balance were surfacing. "To the problem at hand. If all of the demons in the Abyss unite to combat Tharizdun, they could not hold out a moon's cycle. Never will those contentious ones join forces, so it will be less than a month. Then Tharizdun will have the force of demonic dweomer, too."

"You mean in a fortnight or so, the dreaded Evil will be fully revitalized?"

"No, Gellor. In fact, until he manages to slay me, the maggot will never gain his full strength!"

Leda was mystified at such an assertion. "What makes you say that, Gord? I too know a little of Tharizdun. and there is no abridgement of his evil because of the existence of a champion to oppose him."

Gord smiled a hard, mirthless grin. It was almost as if he were a panther growling at some other creature that dared to come too close. "The grublord was kind enough to give me a bit of his potential," he grated.

"Please be more specific, my young friend," the bard said softly. "We are part of this fight, no?"

"Yes." Gord agreed simply. Then he drew the bag that had been strapped over his shoulder and laid it down before them. Undoing the thongs that tied it shut, Gord reached in and pulled forth the skull by its flaxen hair. "Tharizdun neglected to consume the boy fully in his vampiric, cannibalistic feast. Until he gams this head from me and devours it, the darkest of maggots will not have full use of his own brain!"

His friends listened in horrified fascination as Gord proceeded to describe to them what Tharizdun had done and recreated for the view of his adversary. "He hoped to make me impotent by such a ghastly display. But I was able to resist, and then it was too late — he could find no opportunity to regain the grisly trophy he had flung at me." The Lords of Light, Gord said, must have made the boy as one would create a clone when Tharizdun was bound fast. That made Leda shudder. "No true reproduction of the darkest, though. The boy was an aging imp. He was the receptacle of those thoughts and forces that could not be submerged in comatose slumber when the greatest of the malevolent was confined." Of course, he surmised, the child-Tharizdun was neither smart nor strong enough to attempt any loosening of the bonds that held him and his progenitor fast in the castle's tower. "He was merely a boy who epitomized evil in childish form."

"Then what would have occurred had Tharizdun not . . . not done as he did?" asked the elven girl in revulsion.

"Perhaps the boy would then have had the nourishment to mature, to become a true twin of Tharizdun, but neither would have been as strong as the original, even assuming that two such beings could agree to work in concert. The boy was Tharizdun only in the sense that it was a thing which held a portion of the darkest one's powers. Now had I slain Tharizdun and the boy survived, then perhaps ..."

"We would have more time," Gellor ventured, "but the same end result"

"That seems plausible. But the actuality is otherwise, and we have a dual problem too. The Lord of Entropy now allies with the darkest."

There can only be one reason for that," Leda said angrily. "By that means the entity will hasten the end of all. Is there nothing which we can do to counter the alliance?"

"Surely. Gord, the deepest wickedness will never agree to share with the Lord of Entropy?" the bard observed. The alliance cannot survive a week."

"A sennight of eons. Gellor. Tharizdun lacks the faculty to reason properly in some narrow areas. Remember that Entropy will have no Joy in oppressing, not the least desire to rule Evil. The entity will only require certain actions on Tharizdun's part, mere triflings which will probably please the darkest. A slaughter here, destruction there, an end to some opposing drives — joy, hope, creativity. Then will the final steps move more swiftly. Tharizdun will rule supreme, but Lord Entropy will lurk ever closer, and soon thereafter will stillness come over endless nothing, and the realm of Entropy will be complete. Tharizdun's force will expire in a whimpering at the last."