Indeed, time was favoring the daemon. Soon the thousands of his soldiers around them would break through and fall upon Gord and his companions. If Initiator didn't kill them before then, the sheer weight of hundreds of enraged demons and netherbeings would.
Suddenly Gord felt a warm tingling as if the sword were sending energy to him, and at that instant he closed with a rush. The pole arm that was Initiator shot out, Infestix meaning to use it either to skewer the foolish little human or to hold him at bay with its projections. Losing no momentum, Gord darted to one side and dashed in toward the daemon, past the end of the weapon. Infestix tried frantically to pull the long weapon back in.
Trying to shorten a hold on a shaft ten feet long, even for a being as tall and strong as Infestix, is slow work compared to the charge of a swordsman. Gord's right arm moved out, Courflamme's point darted from right to left, downward. Glittering sparks coruscated from contact of Theorpart and sword. There followed a piercing scream, a sound that could only be likened to ancient metal being torn apart within the confines of some sepuichral cavern.
Initiator fell to the demon sward of iyondagur, changed in the blink of an eye into its true form.
Beside the misshapen piece of alien stuff writhed the severed fingers of the right hand of Infestix.
It took Gord a moment to comprehend what had happened. By then it was too late. He finally understood and galvanized his actions into a further attack but the master of daemonkind was gone. Howling in pain and fury, Infestix had fled back to his own stronghold in the pits of Hades. The Theorpart remained where it lay. With a quick shrug of regret, the young champion stooped and picked the thing up with his left hand, still grasping Courflamme firmly in his right. He took another moment to touch the wormy digits with the sword's tip. The frantically moving things popped as would fat slugs in a fire as the point pierced them, one by one.
'Now, then,' Gord said with a satisfied grunt after the last was destroyed. 'I think it is time to see about the refuse the daemon-fop has left behind.'
He took a look to the left and then the right, saw the nearness of disaster, and acted. Springing first to where Leda was, Gord fell upon the most threatening enemy first, cleaving the hulking plagadaemon from crown to crotch with a single blow from Courflamme. The thud of the monster hitting the ground made Leda turn in alarm. 'It's all right, girl,' Gord managed to blurt, spearing a second plagante on his sword with a long thrust immediately thereafter. 'Just guard my back and I'll deal with the rest now.'
With near shock, Leda noted that Gord held the Theorpart that had been Infestix's in his left hand as he plied the sword against the last nearby foe. The others of Infestix's horde had stopped short their rush, and the monsters were now milling uncertainly, seeking direction. 'Thanks, my love,' she panted during the respite. 'I can manage a bit more, though. Should I hit them with another blast from the Eye?'
'Save your strength,' Gord told her. 'They will realize soon enough that they have no more master and relic to protect them. Then there will be rough work and slaughter, for the Abat-dolor will fall on them, and there will be a stampede. We must not get caught in that! Come now, let's aid Gellor.'
Running close by his side, Leda accompanied Gord to where the troubador was fighting some halfhundred paces distant, nearly out of sight behind a windrow of dead daemons and maelvis whose hacked and ruined bodies showed evidence of weapon-work Although exhausted, she managed to summon enough vitality from somewhere inside her to command the Eye a last time. From the sphere came things of opaline hue, bouncing ovoids that arced and rebounded as they landed in scores among the lines of enemies coming toward them. Each teardrop of the stuff left a strand behind as it bounced, and whenever one of those strands contacted a daemon it splattered into a mesh of viscous, gluey lines.
After several impacts, each bouncing spheroid slowed and formed a puddle upon striking down for the final time. The substance of each ovoid must have been much compressed, for each puddle formed by one was a yard or more in diameter. The stuff was also deadly. Whether leathery, horn, scaled or spiked, the substance seemed to cut into the flesh of the demons and daemons as if each puddle encountered was made of molten lava. 'Gods!' Leda uttered in a near whisper. 'What is this thing — and me — capable of?'
'Sufficient to stop the foe dead in their tracks,' Gellor said drily but with appreciation. 'Much longer, and the three of us would have been but two.'
Gord shook his head. 'Put the Eye away now, please,' he told the dark elf, with a squeeze of thanks to her arm. 'You have done more than your share, and to attempt more work will try you beyond knowing. I fear. The Eye now grows stronger by drawing on the Theorpart, Courflamme's energy too. That I like not at all. Something seems to meddle with all here. . but what?'
'Where is the master of daemons?' Gellor asked, peering around at the disorganized masses of daemons now skulking at some distance from the three.
'Back in his pit, minus his rotted right hand,' Gord replied with a grim smile of satisfaction.. 'We can vaunt over the fallen enemy later. Let's get ourselves back into the lines of the Abat-dolor there, and give Elazalag the good news — and the Eye of Deception.'
'You shan't! Not really? That was just a ruse, wasn't it?'
'No, Leda. I spoke forthrightly and with truth. These demonfolk have carried out their portion of the bargain, and now we shall deliver ours.'
'What if they are planning treachery?' the drow priestess said angrily. 'What of your fine honesty then?'
'In that event, my dear Leda, we will serve up to them the same dish that Infestix and his horde Just found so unpalatable. We three can devastate the greatest of the Abat-dolor in a twinkling, then use the power of Theorpart, sword, and Eye too, for that matter, to be elsewhere.'
They were almost to the place where the ebonhued demon army stood in wonder, trying to decide just what to do now that their more numerous foes had suddenly left off fighting and pulled back to stand in confusion opposite the Abat-dolor. Of course there were those shouting for a charge, but Elazalag and her nobles were keeping the masses of warriors in control awaiting the approaching humans.
'These ones will try no trickery, I trow,' Gellor ventured. 'I detect more than a little awe radiating from the princess, there, and Herald Nisroch too.'
It was so. 'You bested the greatest of daemons!' Elazalag uttered with amazement. 'I saw mighty Infestix yowl off to his own realm as does a cur when it loses its tail to the jaws of another dog.'
'He will eventually regrow it — his fingers, I mean. I took them, and his relic too, in the contest,' Gord asserted.
This one would be a mighty champion of the Abyss, my Princess,' Nisroch said, meaning it to be sotto voce, but booming it regardless because of his massive lungs and resonant voice. 'With that one as your consort, my Princess, the Abat-dolor would control all demonlum before — '
'Enough!' commanded the tall demoness, but immediately after silencing her herald Elazalag cast a sidelong and speculative glance in Gord's direction. Tell me. Champion, have you ever considered — '
'He has not, nor will he ever!' Leda interrupted with a firm, cold voice. Grabbing Gord's arm possessively as she spoke, the little dark elf then gazed unflinchingly at the feral eyes of Princess Elazalag. Without turning, Leda addressed the young man. 'Give her the Eye of Deception, Gord. Then I think it Is high time for us to be on our way from here.'
The anticlimactic tension of this tableau was too much for Gord to bear. He laughed a full, clean laugh, the mirth rolling from his stomach up through his chest and spilling out from his mouth in staccato bursts. At the same time, though, he placed his right arm around the mailed shoulders of the beautiful drow who clung to him possessively and hugged her closer. 'You, lady of mine, are most certainly correct. There is still much to accomplish and but scant time to do it in. May I have the artifact, please?'
Leda passed the container that held it into his hand, and Gord released his arm from its hold around her. Formally, with a slight bow, Gord proffered the sigil-strewn bag with the Eye of Deception within to the tall, six- fingered demoness who was sovereign ruler of the nine clans of Abat-dolor on iyondagur.
'Princess Elazalag, I present to you the gift which was promised in our bargain. The Eye of Deception is of the Abyss and has been held by the Abat-dolor for centuries, I am told. The artifact was only beyond the ken of demonkind for a brief time, but I offer my apologies for even so brief a hiatus. Please take it and use it as you will on behalf of the Abat-dolor, for that is as it should be.'
It didn't seem incongruous to Gord to speak thus. The demoness and her kin were very much like humans. Yes, their repute placed them as some of the most vicious of all demons, but that was in keeping with their near- humanity. Evil they were, undoubtedly so, but not always — and, when pressed, what race of mankind was not also
