The next stratum was worse, for the stair-portal shot them into the space between galaxies, and the heatless, airless void would have slain them in an instant except for the presence of the champion of Balance. The power vested in him was such that all of them were sent to the next entrapped step in the instant after the malign dweomer left by Gravestone precipitated them into the freezing, suffocating void where they were meant to die.
Time to rest." Gord said with tiredness and strain filling his voice.
"This is a far less lethal area than any we have encountered so far," Gellor said as he surveyed the surroundings. "At least on the face of it...." What they saw was simply a strange landscape, a plain of infinite dimensions. It was covered with flights of stairs.
"We all need some strong, prayerful treatment to rid our bodies of the pestilences of that miasmal fen," the druid said firmly. "Some of us bear wounds and other hurts which would do with some treatment and healing. As we take our ease here a time, I'll see to that," Curley told them.
Gord was given preferential care because he alone was the Balance's hope. Then Greenleaf cared for himself, just in case some unperceived disease was affecting him. Chert had fallen asleep immediately, as was his wont whenever the opportunity permitted. The troubador had spent some time scrutinizing the surroundings, but soon he too was dozing. "Seeing those sluggards makes me sleepy, too," Gord yawned in Curley's general direction. "After you've done your best for Gellor and Chert, wake me up."
"I'll wake him myself," Gellor mumbled. "I'm not really asleep. I watch with one eye open."
Gord chuckled at the joke, and Curley laughed, too. "That's fine, dear woods-running minstrel," he commented. "After curing myself, I will need at least a catnap and some time to meditate. Rouse yon hulk, or Gord, if you need fresh eyes to watch, but disturb me not." Gellor nodded affirmation, and Gord was already asleep, so the druid stretched out on the soft, semi-yielding terrain and was soon mimicking Chert's snores.
When the druid regained consciousness, there was no way to tell how long he had slept. He saw that all of the others were still asleep when he awoke, but seemingly nothing untoward had occurred during their unguarded period, so Curley simply shrugged the incident off and began his period of prayer and concentration. It would be no real trick for him to maintain watch with a corner of his mind as he managed the rest of what he had to do, especially when he felt so sure and comfortable.
"How goes it?" The comment startled the druid, for he hadn't noticed the young thief awaken and move to stand beside him. Gord saw the surprise and smiled. "You were deep in your meditations, comrade, so I moved softly. I'm myself surprised to find the only one alert is you, though. Usually, grizzled-beard there would be prodding us all before this."
"Hmmm... You have something there, Gord. I am nearly ready for renewed effort." Greenleaf shook his head, then corrected himself. "I haven't managed to restore my greater powers. Perhaps It hasn't been so long a napping as we supposed."
"No.... My instinct tells me we have slept very long," Gord countered. "Hey! Useless sentry and would-be guard! Wake up!" As he spoke, the young adventurer moved over to where Gellor slept and toed him gently and cautiously. There was no telling what reaction he would have upon awakening. Gellor stirred and sat up slowly. He looked tired still, and his movements were sluggish.
"Sorry," he said. "I'm a bit muzzy with sleep yet." With a lot of stretching and eye-blinking, the bard finally stood and joined Gord.
Waking the barbarian hillman was a more difficult task, but finally Gord and Gellor managed it in tandem. "Let me rest just a bit longer," Chert said. He was only half-conscious. "These damned traps have worn me out! Besides, there's no hurry. The stair we need is the smallest we can see from here, and time has no meaning here. We can snooze as long as we wish and then get away easily."
"Rubbish," Gellor shot back. "What makes you say all that?"
"It was my dream — as clear as glass from Hardby, too. I'll wager my life it was a true sending."
"That you will, should you attempt to stay here longer." Gord said with a sarcasm-laden voice. "Nothing which Gravestone prepares is true in any sense save evil and death!" He dragged on the hillman to get him into a sitting position, and with the help of Gellor eventually managed it. Then he shouted, "Come here, druid, and use your hands and words to heal these two deserving heroes. As soon as that is done, we must find out how to escape this slumber-filled nothing. It is a most perilous place which will lull us all into death's bed."
Gord was correct, of course. Lethargy, weakness, and a growing need to sleep, sleep, sleep forever were imbued into the substance of the quasi-real space that the fourteenth stair had brought them to.
As they went toward the flights of steps that sprang like strange growths from the slightly yielding surface of the ground, each found it harder and harder to place one foot in front of the other.
The environment would possibly have proved fatal, except that Gord correctly gambled that one portion of Chert's dream was true. They had to choose one stairway and head for it, wasting no time, so Gord thought and hoped that the stairway Chert referred to was the actual one. He was right, and they barely made it to the new plateau before succumbing to deathly lethargy.
Draughts from an enchanted flask that the bard supplied gave the four sufficient strength and refreshment of vigor to deal with a place that was like a giant plane of fly paper, populated by flying horrors ready to saw off choice bits of any creature stuck down and unable to defend itself. Chillingly, they had to step up on just such an unfortunate creature in order to be magically moved to the next test.
The residual strength from the elixir that Gellor had shared round, plus his own signing too, gave the four the ability to resist the terrible pain that pervaded the next area — agony borne by the sights, sounds, smells, and very touch of the place. Where the torment was worst, there too the stair for escaping it.
"Upon my life, Gord." Chert spat, "never was a sheer ice cliff before and an angry cave bear behind half so fun as the entertainments you have always managed for us!" He said that as they came floundering down a slime-coated slope toward a precipice.
"If you and Gellor hadn't botched up and lost—" he began to retort, then stopped wasting his breath to do something about their dire situation. Tumbling and somersaulting to the lead of the group, the young adventurer plied his enchanted dagger to dig in and make a firm place to hold to. Greenleaf, immediately behind, slid past, while Chert caught onto Gord's belt and Gellor grabbed Chert's leg. In desperation the druid used one of his least powerful spells and succeeded. The dweomer caused the slime to stiffen and grow, and the stuff caught Curley and held him fast just as he was on the brink of destruction.
Eventually they found the way to free themselves from the slime world, but wound up in a place where gigantic gears with grinding teeth of spiked surfaces threatened to pulp them all. This is a nightmare of some mad technologist," was all Gord could manage. Chert pointed out the way, and then he set the example by grabbing fast to one of the free-rolling spiked wheels and rode it upward to where a small ledge was visible. It was the wrong one, and getting down was trickier than getting up, but after managing it they found the correct ledgestep and were gone from the clockwork plane.
There followed an acid world, a place of animated metal shapes of geometric form and malign purpose, a desert of alkaline sort, a quasi-plane where they had to hop from tooth to tooth of a giant mouth as it clashed open and shut trying to swallow the four. From there to a globe of prehistoric sort that teemed with dinosaurian monsters they went, and thereafter to a brazen city filled with fiery denizens. Of course, Curley Greenleaf handled the City of Brass and the efreet well enough. In fact, the sultan of those elemental beings actually directed the party to a place where there was a portal that bypassed many of the stair-traps that Gravestone had devised. The four adventurers used it to ascend the helix to a point twice as far along as that of their previous progress.
But on that fiftieth plane the druid suddenly found himself face to face with the avatar of Infestix known as Nerull. Chert saw the devil-duke Amon. The troubador confronted the netherlord, Hafdoligor Kaathbaen, master of the undead realm. And Gord stood before none other than Tharizdun himself!
Here at last, it seemed, was the final challenge for each of them. How would they react? How would they fare? They all reacted the same, but not in their usual way. Instead of leaping to the attack or poising themselves for defense, each of the four simply stood, motionless and uncaring. They were filled not with courage and spirit, but with the heaviest, most oppressive despair that any of them had ever known.
Chapter 12
"LEAVE ME." Infestix uttered in his worm ridden voice. The various daemons and netherworld things that served the great lord hastened to obey. "Let none enter until I personally command." he added as the last of his servitors was departing. That ghastly daemon, one of the Diseased Ones, bowed low and firmly closed the ancient door behind itself.
Infestix was now alone in the chamber, a minor audience room he favored because its location allowed him to access so many places easily. The master of the netherplanes sprawled back on the wide chair. His form shifted to that of Nerull, the skeletal god of death, and in his hands appeared the terrible scythe wielded by that deity. Then the terrible figure bounded up from the seat as quickly and nimbly as it he were a young man full of vigor and life rather than a bony monster eons old and laden with plagues. Infestix laughed a booming, iron throated laugh, as in his Nerull avatar he swung the scythe in great arcs around the chamber, the rusted, blood-stained blade singing a death song that was most pleasant to the being as he danced thus and laughed in pleasure.
"The planets come slowly into alignment, and all signs and portents are favorable," Nerull caroled loudly. There were none to hear, of course. He shared the news with nobody, for none save he would soon ascend to be the Chosen of Tharizdun. No master of devils, no chief of any other power in the whole of the netherworlds had come close to accomplishing all that Infestix-Nerull had managed.
Now the culmination of all he had worked for and labored to produce was at hand. With an abrupt cessation of motion. Nerull stopped his cavorting. The terrible being swished his long-edged instrument through the air. There, where it had passed. Oerth and the Flanaess appeared at his feet.
"Let me see the struggle." he ordered. From east to west tiny lines of figures sprang up, fighting and killing in a replay of events of the last few weeks. The soldiery of the Great Kingdom fought on all fronts, slaying and being slain by the knights and footmen of Nyrond, Almor, and the League of the Iron Knot. The forces of Iuz and his allies hammered south, east, west and in turn were hit and driven. Scarlet Brotherhood legions marched, battled, and bled. Baklunish hosts fought nomads and wild kinsmen, as dwarves and elves defended valiantly against the unending hordes of humanolds swarming out from the Pomarj. Everywhere there was destruction, hunger, suffering. Nerull laughed the rust-throated laugh of death again, and as he passed his scythe over the little depiction, all save the dead vanished. Those. In their thousands, arose and marched in ordered formation at their master's will. In fact, many of those dead would come to Hades and those other netherspheres serving Infestix and become new soldiers still fighting for the dark cause of Tharizdun.
"It is perfect," the daemon hissed as he allowed the phantom figures to vanish. "Neither law nor chaos attains ascendancy now. What war ever brought weal?" he added with a sardonic chuckle. "I am readying all for you, Great Master of Evil," Nerull shouted, and a faint pulsing in the dim atmosphere seemed to indicate that the bound lord of all darkness heard and strained to come forth again.
"See, Lord Tharizdun!" the nether-king shouted as he again cut a path through the thick air of the chamber with his scythe. There appeared scenes of the war being fought in the netherspheres. Demons great and small fought with their own ilk and against the minions of the Nine Hells and Hades, too. Three amethyst lights, tiny and bright as stars, showed where the Theorparts were, each a key, a third of the relic that would free Tharizdun.
Infestix-Nerull noted absently the smaller, black gleam where the Eye of Deception gathered chaotic power for its demoniacal wielder, and even smaller motes of rubine hue, orange fire, deep jet. Those were merely indications of the many great weapons being used, artifacts of evil force employed by the warring factions. Together, perhaps, the rest would surpass the power of the Eye wielded by Graz'zt, and it, with the other weapons of the Abyss, might just surpass a single Theorpart.
"My Lord of All Evil," Infestix-Nerull said more softly, "see how the three parts draw ever closer to each other? Soon, soon!" But there was no further indication that a channel remained to that no-space where the dreaded Tharizdun was imprisoned, so the daemon dissolved the scene with another swish of the groaning blade.
Thinking carefully to himself, Nerull pondered the situation. The keys were so close, yet they remained disjoined, separate, and contentious. "The one-who-stands-between still lives!" The words were loud, iron-toned, rust-dead damnations echoing in the fetid atmosphere as the sound rebounded from the walls of livid purple, skipped off the polished porphyry floor, beat against the dull plum-tinged dome that capped the place as the lid of a sarcophagus. "Where?" Infestix-Nerull demanded, giving the great scythe a twitch that sent it slashing with the sound of a thousand death moans.
There appeared before him his own scrying room. The Diseased Ones were not there, of course. All of them were guarding the door to the chamber he was in. In the vast basin was the situation envisioned as a chess game. The daemon concentrated on the vision of a vision, and the squares ran, shifted, changed. From a vast survey of planar scope it contracted, shifting to a different scale. Yet the field was still multiplaned. Transparent level upon ghostly level it formed. First came the golden brown and pale tan of the material world. Its hue and conformation showed it to be Oerth. There the board shed a fading emerald light, and the violet garments that covered the array of slain pawns and minor pieces there told a tale that brought fury to the daemon's visage. Ghastly lilac light shot from the hollows where violet specks writhed like worms. The beams swept the phantom field, and the depiction of the chess board sank, so that Nerull's gaze was now fixed on a weird and distorted field. "Better," he hissed in his metallic voice. "Much better, little human."