and his face was sprayed with rancid spittle. Black blood spurted about the fletch of the arrow-and more spurted about the second and third arrows shot from below, each shaft burying itself deeply. But something else issued from the beast, like motes into the air. Gnarl’s mind clouded, his limbs suddenly heavy from the spores, his thoughts veering wildly.
Thrashing in the air, the vrock squeezed him brutally, vindictive in its death throes, so he could hardly breathe-and then it gasped and its grip relaxed. He was slipping free, falling, plummeting toward the dusty floor of the chamber. He seemed to fall in slow motion.
He lost sight of the expiring demon as he crashed through the rust-eaten iron of the floor and into the subchamber beneath.
6.
Sitting up on the dusty floor of the subchamber, Gnarl heard the demons stalking through the darkness toward him, but he found that he didn’t much care. A seductive numbness was upon him-the effects of the spores of madness. Lunatic thoughts flashed through his mind, tumbling his senses in hellish ecstasy; it was as if the Elemental Chaos occupied his skull. As laughing faces of fire lit his brain he found he could scarcely move; it was as if his arms and legs each weighed hundreds of pounds. Why not just lie here, and get it over with? It might be interesting to be torn to pieces.
Yes, why not? And he watched the skulking silhouettes of the approaching demons, recognizing them from his uncle’s grimoire; evistro, newly awakened by his intrusion. How long had they waited in dormancy here? He supposed someone had placed them to guard against the activation of the Glorysade device. He found it all very interesting, in an abstract sort of way.
Hunched over, clutching the air with their oversized, pawlike hands spread wide for tearing, the seven evistro approached him. They were hairless, thickly muscular crimson demons, their tooth-lined maws as oversized as their hands and three-toed feet. The grimoire had said the carnage demons usually came in larger numbers, swarming and rending-unless some wizard sent a group of them on a specific mission. It seemed that Sernos wasn’t the only sorcery worker concerned with Glorysade.
The seven demons encircled him, a couple of strides away, their mouths gaping in great slavering grimaces. Gnarl was captivated. Fascinating creatures, he thought. Wonder what it’ll be like to be eaten alive? Missed my chance with the vrock.
He heard Miriam in the chamber above, shouting at Rorik. “The vrock has struck him with spore madness! He’s paralyzed, he’s not in his right mind! We have to, Rorik!”
“But it stinks of demons down there! I hate demons!”
But just as the evistro reached for Gnarl, Rorik leaped down into the subchamber, swinging his hammer handle-braining one of the demons before he’d even touched the floor. The demon flailed, falling back, and the others retreated a few steps, squalling in confusion. An arrow whickered into the subchamber from above, and then another, and two demons fell writhing. But the other five slashed at Rorik with their clawed paws. He swung the handle of his hammer furiously, using it as a club to drive them back. He’s quite a little dynamo, thought Gnarl, sitting on the floor. It can’t go on, though. They’ll overwhelm him soon and we’ll both be eaten. How their jaws drip with saliva… intriguing.
Then he was aware that someone had dropped down behind him, was pressing a small circle of cold to the back of his neck, over his spine. A cleansing fire flashed through him, then a wave of nausea, swept away by a surge of energy. Miriam had used her healing gem to save him.
His head clearing, Gnarl jumped to his feet and plucked the glass ball from his cloak pocket, even as Miriam loosed two of her three remaining arrows. The demons were circling them, leaping, slashing-and her arrows missed their marks, striking one in the shoulder. The wounded demon screamed in fury and snapped at the dwarf, who was nearer. Rorik dashed some of its teeth out with his club.
Gnarl exposed the glass globe-and almost dropped it in his startlement as he saw the grisly face staring out at him: a lich vestige. The lich’s skullish face pressed eagerly against the curve of the little glass sphere, distorted and leering. “Release me!” hissed the diabolic face, bony jaws gnashing, empty eye sockets shining, “so that I may destroy all!”
He swallowed. “Kill only demons, in the name of Vecna!” he ordered.
It sighed in disappointment. “Very well. Only demons… if you insist!”
The demons chose that moment to rush-but Gnarl threw the glass ball at their feet. It burst, and they scattered before the bleak effulgence that blossomed out of it. Porphyros, the gaunt, skull-faced spirit warrior, expanded from the shards and leaped at them with extended claws, ripping into the demons, gibbering happily as it tore them to pieces.
“Come on!” Rorik shouted. “Let’s get out of here before it turns on us!”
Head still swimming from the departing effects of the spores, Gnarl followed Rorik and Miriam through a narrow passage, onto a descending ramp of rusted iron. The warlock’s words drifted in Gnarl’s mind. Once inside, if you win so far-descend!
They descended the ramp between pitted metal walls, traipsing down a gentle slope that clanged softly with their tread. On they went, the passageway lit by the same unnatural light as the surface. Gnarl found himself imagining how he would build his castle in Glorysade-seven spires, perhaps, each a different color, inlaid with semiprecious metals. A fountain-no, seven fountains! Would he have a seraglio? But stealing a glance at Miriam, he thought perhaps he wouldn’t want one.
“I like this less with each step we take,” Rorik grumbled. “And that vrock, the evistro, so closely placed, waiting almost.”
“I had the same thought,” Gnarl admitted. “Someone arrayed them to protect this device-and Sernos gave me no real warning.”
“You were a fool to blunder into this!” Rorik declared.
Gnarl shrugged. “My uncle said my destiny was connected with Glorysade. I always thought he meant a good destiny. So here I am. But now… I’m not so sure.”
“We’re committed,” Miriam said, shrugging. “Looks like a doorway ahead.”
They stepped through a door frame into a low-ceilinged chamber cut into the naked gray stone that underpinned the Plains of Rust. The walls were granite, but the ceiling was rusted iron.
In the middle of the chamber was a glinting dome about seven feet high, sixty in diameter, not quite a perfect circle, made of unblemished silvery metal. In its curving side was an open doorway. Excited by its shiny metallic promise, Rorik scurried eagerly through the low door-he didn’t have to stoop, as Gnarl and Miriam did.
Inside, rising up from a silvery floor, they found a large, glistening artifact shaped outwardly like a polyhedron, some of its panels transparent; it was almost big enough to fill the roughly circular chamber, leaving just a little space to move around its edges. On one facet, partway up, was an opening, within which several curious knobs and studs crackled with miniature bursts of lightning.
“Marvelous!” Rorik exclaimed. “These shapes seem formed to match the many-tool.” He had the magical utensil in his hand, and he tinkered within the device, muttering to himself in a grumbling voice. “Yes, the hexagonal knob asks to be turned this way; the next one requires that I reverse the tool, turning it the opposite way… I seem to hear a whispering suggestion that I press the cool-energy glim”-here he activated one of the magical jewels in the tool, pressing the blue crystal with his thumb, making it shine with a mystical emerald light-“and that would seem to call out for… Yes! And now if I turn this…”
Gnarl felt an odd mix of elation and anxiety at the possibility of Glorysade. Why indeed had the vrock and the evistro been set to guard the interior of the rusty tower? What did he know of Sernos, really?
“Wait, Rorik,” Miriam said worriedly. “Aren’t you being a bit hasty? Who is telling you how to use the tool? Don’t you wonder? Perhaps…”
But it was done: Rorik stepped back as the artifact was fully activated. Clockworks and magical energies intersected, revolving within it, linking and shifting, armatures rotating.
And suddenly the floor beneath their feet shook. They were knocked flat by the shuddering, Rorik clutching the many-tool, all three of them sprawling on the floor of the little dome-shaped chamber, their teeth clattering with
