What power could resist then? None. Gone would be the rebellious demon lords. Balance would be broken as rotten bones snap under the iron sole of a megadaemon warrior's armored boot With one taloned hand Tharizdun would tear down the spheres of gold, the vaults of argent, the thrones of blue. The gloom of Evil would rise upward as smoke. It would cover the heavens, darken all light, and bring all under the sole rulership of Tharizdun. Infestix, as the chief worker for the cause, would surely sit at the Blackest One's right hand. He was yielding his autonomy, but it would gain him tenfold the power, a hundred times the glory!
The master of Hades crooked a skeletal finger. "Go, fetch The Diseased Ones to this place now," he grated to the putridaemon herald who hovered nearby. "Tell them to come before me fully prepared for every exigency," Infestix added in his hollow rasp. The herald knelt, banged its bronze-helmeted, zombie-faced head upon the massive stones of the floor, then crept backward from the place until well away from the hideous throne of its monarch. Then the monstrous thing leaped to its feet and ran to carry out Infestix's commands.
To each of The Diseased Ones, the greatest of daemonkind other than Infestix himself, the putridaemon repeated the orders he had been charged with. A sense of urgency was conveyed; that, and a sense of impending triumph. These had been incuicated merely through the word and will of Infestix. The dull brain of the daemon herald was a sponge, and the eight who were The Diseased Ones squeezed it with their own mental power and were excited by the results.
"The moment draws near!" exclaimed the first of the eight.
"The Master himself will lead us," the least of them murmured.
"Never fear," the greatest said with a mirthless smile to the eighth. "You will have your moment of significance. ..."
"Pardon, Lord, I fail to understand," the least intoned suspiciously.
"Heh, heh, heh! As the eighth, Brucilosu, it will be your honor to take the field as commander when the Master personally intervenes!"
"But if I fall against the demons? . . ."
"There is the seventh waiting behind you, of course. Heh, heh. . . ."
Nothing further was uttered as the eight servants of Infestix made their way to their lord's grim audience chamber.
Chapter 3
IT WAS A BLACK VORTEX filled with motes of disgusting colors. The motion of the bilious green, rotten gray, putrescent yellow, and livid violet glows as they whirled and mixed with a riot of ineffable motes of other hues, was sufficient to sicken the viewer. Intestines churned in nauseous counterpoint to the evolutions of those vile-colored little gleams as they surfaced and sank within the growing maelstrom. The sight of that, the terrible wrongness of it all, caused brains to ache, thoughts to turn inward in a desperate desire to escape. Wrenching gut joined wracked brain in denial of it all. Still the vortex grew, intensified, and became omnipresent. Then the sounds reached out, and with them came the indescribable odors. It was too much for any normal mind to bear.
"Is . . . this . . ."
"The Abyss? Yes. Exactly as pictured for me by the Hierophants," Gord said. With a great deal of effort, he managed to speak to Gellor without choking on the gorge that was rising in his throat.
Gellor swallowed hard and with crabbed fingers managed to pull his leather eye patch down to cover the enchanted gem that served as his left eye. "Your energy is greater than mine, Gord, or else your constitution is stronger. Either way, I can’t view the place through the ocular. Too much can be seen that way."
"Not likely, you old wolf!" Gord countered, squeezing his comrade's shoulder in a gesture of both sharing and reassurance. Gord, as the champion of Balance, had been imbued with a deep and lasting vitality from many supernatural sources. In all, however, the one-eyed troubador was his equal. Gellor too had received energies, been gifted with power, and granted strength beyond the ken of mortals. "I'd wager it's the perspective, not the prospect, which so disconcerts you."
That remark, meant in Jest but taken more seriously, gave Gellor pause. Gord obviously referred to their situation and status. Always in the past it had been the bard who knew more, discovered more, and was in charge. Gord had been like an apprentice, a wayward nephew, then almost a protege. Now the roles were reversed, and Gellor accompanied his young friend as a lieutenant. Gord shared information, but there were certain things Gellor was not privy to, despite that. That circumstance existed because of the responsibility the young man bore, and because Gord must bear it, not because Gord desired to surpass his friend or to dominate him. "Perhaps you do see things better than I," Gellor finally said as the spinning vortex loomed to fill the whole of their universe. "I am unused to reliance on another, albeit even a minor dependence and from a bosom companion."
"This is a fearsome thing we do," Gord said. "Who can feel anything but dread when confronting the mouth of the Abyss?"
"It is like no other plane," Gellor said with a choked voice. "You have walked in Shadow, dwelled on the sphere of the Catlord, and sojourned in aether and astrality; but this . . ."
"Don't forget I've brushed the interlinked planes of the elements, Gellor — even seen the fuicrum of positive and negative, sailed upon the vast Ocean of Thought."
The grizzled troubador nodded vigorously at that. "None of which could have prepared you for . . . this!" he nearly shouted, waving wildly to indicate the now all-encompassing expanse of the first tier of the chaotic evil sphere known as the Abyss, the realm of all demonkind. "I have in my time had to deal with the charnel vistas of Acheron, and seek certain objects in the riotous horror of Pandemonium. Not even those places prepared me for what we now must face!"
"Face? More than that, dear friend, more! We are to enter, traverse, and make this place our own,"
Gord said with a grim smile.
* * *
After being armed, armored, and equipped with all that the masters of neutrality could provide, he and the bard had simultaneously touched the intricately worked buckles of their girdles. Each buckle was imbued with those dweomers that enabled the two to traverse the infinity of places that constitutes the cosmos, the endless spheres of the multiverse. Each device was rune-worked, sigil-covered, studded, and bore a spiderweb tracery of marks in strange and rare metals. A touch and a thought; then Gord and Gellor were no longer in the realm of Rexfelis, master of all felines. One moment there was the assembly of the Lords of Balance; the next instant, Gord and his companion were elsewhere.
In the pearlescent twilight of the Aethereal Plane, Gord and Gellor fairly glowed with the strength of their internal powers, while the many magical items each bore radiated intense auras of their own. When Gellor remarked on the rather obvious locating and identifying effect coming from this emanation of dweomer, that caused Gord to consider cloaking both of them. By merely concentrating on his own amulet, a device that screened its wearer from magical locating and spying, the young champion was able to determine what needed to be done. By mentally weaving a screen of force to close in the radiations, by bending some forces and by altering others, he was able to dim the aura around them.
"How's that?" Gord had asked his companion as the two strode along the glowing gray path that their senses interpreted for them as the environment of the place. In truth, human senses, even many supernatural ones, could not properly interpret the aethereal realm as it was in actuality.
"Better," Gellor replied as he stopped and gazed first at the young thief, then at himself. "Less than beacons, now, we two, but bright still. I think we will bring attention to ourselves despite your best efforts, Gord."
Gellor's young companion shook his dark head. "Normally I would agree with you, but look at the distortion just in the near distance. See the paling of colors? The dimming of light?"
"Yes," Gellor admitted, having studied all that surrounded them for the space of many heartbeats. "There is something wrong. ..."
Gord shrugged. "Wrong? Perhaps, perhaps not. But there is something unnatural to this plane. It seems to screen us from it — it from us, too. Were Basiliv extant in the world I'd think he had managed it, but with the Demiurge passed elsewhere, I think we are being cloaked by another agency."
"So which force aids us?" Gellor asked uncertainly.
"The one of Entropy," Gord replied flatly. "And I don't believe that one interposes for our real benefit."
"So?"
"So we forge onward," the champion of neutrality said, shooting the troubador a hard smile. "I plan nothing good for such a thing as it is, either; that makes us even . . . once the greatest of evils is dealt with!"
Gellor shook his head, wondering if Gord was suddenly overcome with a hubris brought on by the infusion of power he had been granted. Yet he said nothing further and followed Gord's lead. There were whorls and streamers of various hues evident in the milky nebulousness of the aether. Where these colors were most intense they went, passing through the fringes of the elemental spheres to gain the manifold branches and loops of the Plane of Probability. In all time and none at all the two heroes traversed the elemental planes and probability's sphere and could thus pass onto the astral realm. It was as if they suddenly stepped into the center of an infinite bubble. There was nothing supporting them, yet their feet were firmly planted. Above them the cosmos grew bright and brilliant, while beneath their armored feet spread gloom of somber and ugly hues. Gellor gestured toward a well of inky darkness.
The Abyss," Gord agreed. "Let us hurry."
* * *
That is how the pair came to the insanity-provoking maelstrom that now surrounded them, moments before Gord had said they had to face and conquer the many strata of the realm of demonkind. When he heard his friend speak thus, Gellor commented, "No two can ever subjugate such a madness as this place, Gord. Not if we had every atom of energy of every deify opposed to the demons!"
That's no more than the simple truth," the young thief agreed with a smile of encouragement. "When I said we must make this place our own I meant we would venture through it, dispossess those opposed to our purposes, and bend the others to our will. Never would any but those of netherspawn dream of actually possessing this vile agglomeration of forsaken planes!"
The grizzled bard had to chuckle at that "Thinking aloud, as it were, has definite disadvantages now that both of us employ mind speech, mind search. Instant thoughts allow no modification through reflection in the course of articulation of the basic ideas. We are both being too literal, too serious."
"I get your point. This is a serious business, yet we must keep our good humor, uplifted spirit, the sense of true reality in the multiverse. If we dwell too much on the abyssal realms, both of us will surely lose perspective — even sanity."
That and more," Gellor agreed telepathically. "So what do we face here in the vestibule of demons?"
"I see this area as a no-demon's-land, more or less," Gord told the troubador aloud. He needed to hear the sound of his own voice to bring himself firmly into the reality of the Abyss as a mere portion of an infinite series of places, states, conditions and energies. "It is the common entry point to the hundreds of realms which are below, a wilderness of lurking monstrosities and roving packs of outcasts. This first tier is a place where not even the weakest of demonlings dwell; instead, it is the habitat of terrible things which guard the deeper spheres."
At that the bard turned up the leather covering of his gem-faceted ocular, viewing the surroundings carefully as if wishing to confirm his companion's words. "Faugh!" Gellor said after completing his survey. "This is a disgusting place. What can live in it?"
"Many things, methinks," Gord replied slowly, gazing off beyond Gellor's right shoulder. "In fact, here comes a welcoming party now!"
The pack that approached was indeed no puny force of scavengers vomited up from below. The demon-beasts were elephantine in size, and their aspect was a nightmare phantasmagoria. As soon as Gellor turned to view their approach, the monsters sensed discovery and rushed at the two companions in a thundering charge. Bellows, hoots, and screams of hunger, blood lust, and cruel anticipation accompanied the mad stampede.
As the bulking demon-beasts rushed toward the intruders, the bard had time to notice that there were many smaller, shadowy shapes alongside and behind the herd. Hippo-bodied things with snake necks and beaked heads lumbered alongside bearlike and mastodonian demons with equally incongruous appendages. Smaller but no less ferocious ones accompanied the great beasts, evidently planning to share in the feasting after the gigantic monsters had done the work. All that for two small people. Here brawn evidently ruled over brain.
Gellor brought forth his ivory kanteel, adjusted one of the golden pegs, and gently stroked the silver strings of the little harp. A ripple of beautiful notes washed outward, and the demon-beasts reacted as if they had been struck by a tldal wave.
When the sounds from the enchanted strings of the instrument struck, fully a dozen of the massive monsters were bowled over, while a half-hundred of the lesser scavengers were blown away, some actually torn to pieces in the process. Gord saw that, noting that already fresh bands of these creatures were being attracted to the scene by what was occurring. Down and wounded horrors were being torn and devoured by those of their fellows not so disabled.
Courflamme seemed to spring from its scabbard as the young champion drew the sword's glittering blade to confront the onrush. Somehow Gord knew that this was the correct thing to do, even though the marvelous weapon seemed a minuscule defense in the face of such an attack. The pommel of Courflamme flashed heat, then chill to his hand, and the whole sword shimmered and pulsed.
As this occurred the blade sundered itself into two portions. Gord held a bright band of silvery hue with an ebon-flamed core while its counterpart, a sword of Jet with a coruscating heart of diamond radiance, sprang forth to hover before him.