picked up the emanations of infrared and ultraviolet radiation without reliance on the ring's dweomer.
In front of him, revealed starkly in the weird combination of light waves Gord perceived, was the spellbinder who had cried the warning and fled. The fellow's face was a mask of shock and fear at Gord's sudden appearance. That was understandable, for the young champion had his black longsword in hand and death in his eyes as he forced his way free of the interplanar portal.
'Geeyah!' Sigildark voiced the sound involuntarily as his startled nervous system took over. At the same instant he literally jumped backward, thus avoiding the long thrust that the suddenly appearing enemy attempted.
'No use, you fu-' Gord shouted as he sprang to the attack.
'Hee, hee, heeee!' piped the terrible soprano voice of the netherfiend Krung as the creature struck Gord from behind with a ham-sized, horny fist with enough power behind it to fell a bull.
It was the launching of his attack that saved Gord from having his skull caved in or neck broken. The netherfiend's blow caught him as he was moving away from it. Thus, the force of the terrible fist spent much of its power in driving the young thief ahead. He fell sprawling, face abraded by the rough material that floored the place, stunned and unmoving.
'Tunun,' Krung said as it saw the smear of blood on the floor. The misshapen form bent, its neck extending obscenely, tongue rasping over the lithic slabs as the thing bent to lap the blood and then devour the still, human body. The tableau was sufficiently amusing to cause Sigildark to devote his attention to it, for the evil mage had an insatiable desire to see just how the netherfiend would consume the fallen man.
'Sluuslupp,' went Krung's foot-long tongue as it writhed out and back. It was just being extruded again when the creature jerked back, head withdrawing, mouth agape, muscles bunching. 'Eee… yeiii!' The high-pitched scream nearly deafened Sigildark.
'I thought that might attract your attention,' Gellor said with steely satisfaction as he withdrew his sword from the fiend's backside. Krung was spinning, giving voice to a whining snarl, talons flashing, fangs bared. The bard moved counter to the spin, while Curley Greenleaf, just behind him, brought his magical spear into play. Behind them. Chert had just emerged from the gateway, and Timmil's head was seemingly floating disembodied in the air as he started to come through. Allton was but seconds from also arriving. 'Now. Curley!' Gellor shouted as he struck at a flailing arm from his crouch.
The druid uttered the magical word that brought forth the slender spearhead from his staff as he drove the thick pole toward the netherftend's head. Green-leaf was aiming for the red-rimmed, pain-and-rage-filled eyes of the monster. One of its clawed hands, a member as broad as a plank and tipped with iron-hard talons inches long, interposed. Krung saw the staff-butt and thought to snap it like a twig. Instead, the enchanted steel that shot from it pierced the monster's flesh as if it was leather under a cobbler's knife.
'Yaahg!' This time the netherfiend's cry was softer, for Its brain was overloaded with pain. Gellor's sword had sliced deep, hacking its other arm so that it was open to the bone. The fiend was wounded terribly. Both arms and its intestines were injured. These humans were not the soft and easy prey Krung was accustomed to. There was but one answer: flee! In a short time, natural processes would begin to heal his hurts, the awful pains would recede, and then Krung would return, but with certain things of power… and with help of other sort as well.
Now, however, the netherfiend knew that it must make the dirty human mage who had summoned it to this torture release it to return to the pits. Krung tore its hand free of the spear point, leaped sideways, and then bounded in a shambling gait to where Sigildark was crouched over the still form of the stunned young adventurer.
'Loose my binding now, man!' the shrill voice of the daemon-thing piped. 'Quickly — else I'll tear out your eyes!' To emphasize the threat. Krung reached for Sigildark's face with its ichor-dripping left hand that bore the puncture from Greenleafs stall-spear. Of course. Krung would not have harmed the mage — at least not until after he had freed the netherfiend from bondage of service there in Gravestone's null-space. Pain and fear made the fiend careless, however, and Krung's talons raked Sigildark's cheek even as the spell-binder shrank back from the threat.
The slaying of the helpless Gord forgotten. Sigildark reacted as anyone of like malice would. 'Rot you, dog's turd!' the sorcerer snarled, thinking that surely the netherfiend had gone totally out of control. 'Here's how you'll be freed!' And so saying, Sigildark shot forth a series of five glowing darts of burning force from his extended hand. These missiles of fell energy struck Krung squarely upon its broad, deformed chest and caused the creature to jerk upright and dance and howl in awful agony.
Sigildark was both amazed and pleased. He had not expected quite so profound a reaction to his magic, for the attack had been of only moderate power against so powerful a denizen of the netherworld. Often, in fact, such dweomers as he had employed were of no use at all, for the aural shield of nether-things negated many such assaults. Krung gyrated, and in so doing showed Sigildark the true reason for its incredible reaction. Even as the spell-caster had struck the netherfiend with his evoked energy bolts, one of the invaders had simultaneously fallen upon the creature from the rear. Krung's back was laid open to the black-boned spine.
It took only an instant for Sigildark to assess the situation. There were two spell-workers ignoring the melee. Both were seeking a means of ascending to where Gravestone lurked. Good! That one should have to bear his share of the peril, Sigildark thought. Of the remainder, one was knocked senseless, and three others now confronted the black-hearted mage. The one with a glittering, false eye was about to strike Krung again. That one had been responsible for the netherfiend's ghastly back wound. Close to him, a rotund fellow of half-elven sort was jabbing with a narrow-bladed spear; thus, both were likely to be engaged in combating the fiend for a bit of time yet.
That left only one opponent for Sigildark. He was a tall and brawny warrior armed with a massive battle-axe. No doubt a barbarian of some sort — one long on muscle and short on brains, but dangerous as a wild animal!
Truce, comrade!' the wizard shouted to the advancing axeman. 'The daemon is our mutual enemy.' The statements were loaded with a heavy dweomer of persuasiveness. Let the fool but join the attack upon the netherfiend, and he, Sigildark, would strike the lot with such a casting as would fry them all and send them to their doom!
Chert was brought up abruptly by the call. He shook his head, hesitated a split-second, then replied, 'Aye, I ken your meaning, mage!' Without further ado, the giant hefted his axe and fell upon the embattled Krung, Brool buzzing and then striking home with a meaty thud as punctuation to its drone.
Left unmolested, Sigildark fairly crooned in glee as he began conjuring the spell that would strike his foes dead with an awful blast of fire and force. The bard engaged against the daemon was singing some sort of magical verse, and the pale dweomer was causing Krung to be hacked to bits. Song, spell, combat — none of that disturbed Sigildark in his own casting. A parchment 'hand' filled with the material of the spell he was working flew into the air as he gestured. Only a few more syllables now, and the thing would be done.
Many magicians could bring forth fireballs, but Sigildark's evil spell wrought a clinging, purplish flame coupled with a gaseous explosion that was of far greater bane to those within its fell radius. Even opponents as powerful, as mightily protected by enchantments and magical equipage, as the three locked in melee with Krung would have no chance to survive the thunderfire he was about to bring down upon them. Krung would be slain too, of course, but that was of no import.
After the thunderfire had struck, he would take time for one quick slash across the throat of the one the netherfiend had stunned, and then Sigildark would creep up behind the pair of dolts who sought their demise at Gravestone's hand. One corner of the dark wizard's mind wondered about the possibility of those two managing to kill the priest-wizard. Most unlikely. Another corner of Sigildark's mind nagged him about something else, but the spell was too close to completion, so the mage simply shoved the worrying voice back. It would have been better for him to have not done so.
'Death!' Gord shouted, a second before he plied both his longsword and his terrible dagger against the spell-caster's unsuspecting back. Normally, the young thief would have struck silently. But in order to disrupt the magic that Sigildark was in the midst of working, in order to do his utmost to prevent the dweomer from striking his three friends, Gord cried aloud just as he attacked.
The great shout did break Sigildark's concentration, but the brief warning it gave him did not enable the evil wizard to avoid being struck by the enchanted blades thrust into him. The sooty length of Blackheartseeker failed to find Sigildark's wicked heart, however. It glanced off a rib and cut a fiery track along the dweomercraefter's side instead. The long dagger did much better, sinking well into his lower back.
'Ahhh! No!' The screech came unbidden from his lips, as the dark wizard felt pain far worse than the
