consumed by that energy. As the thing was destroyed in a roar of conflicting forces, the rampant flux of energy devoured Iggwilv entirely. In one terrible roaring flash, the mother of all witches was no more.
'Aaahr That was all Leda could manage. No oath, no words could form. Something in Iggwilv's eyes at the moment of destruction, the sound of her final agony, made the dark elven girl shudder and draw back in disbelief. It was too terrible an end, even for one such as the witch had been.
Leda almost felt sympathy, remorse. Then she shook herself. No! Whatever fate had taken Iggwilv, the vile hag had brought upon herself. . What of Gord? Gellor? Leda turned, and her eyes fell upon the bard first where he was dueling with the mass of Zuggtmoy's fungoid bulk he plucking silvery strings, she manipulating her device of evil. The demoness was near to overwhelming Gellor — that was plain from the ever nearer thrusts issuing from the Cauldron of Corruption. Then Leda heard the cambion's shout of triumph and spun to see what had befallen Gord.
'Nooo!' She screamed as she saw Iuz jump and straddle the fallen champion. As she cried that denial, the dark elf sent the Theorpart flying from her hand. It spun through the air with the susurration of a thousand midge- sized imps tittering at some vast distance as if in diabolic delight.
The eerie sound of its passage made the cambion hesitate a split-second before he brought the huge sword down to pierce Gord's vitals. 'Whang!' The sound of the alien metal as it impacted upon the sword's dingy blade was so loud that the halfdemon's eardrums nearly ruptured. The force of the impact moved the point of the weapon, so that when Iuz reflexively thrust it down, the tongue of the blade sank nearly its full length into the soft compost of the grotto's floor. The cambion, thrown off balance by the shift in the sword-stroke, pitched into an off- balance somersault. 'Uuff!' was the sound Iuz made as he slammed down on his back.
Gord couldn't hear that, for he was temporarily deafened from the noise of the impact of Initiator upon the cambion's two-handed sword. The cry from Leda still sang in his mind, though. As he saw the sword come down, miss, and bury its length, the young champion knew that he had been given a last chance by the love of the little dark elf and her desperate act. Leaping erect, hardly pausing to note Iuz's distress, Gord took one step and grabbed Courflamme's diamond-and-jet banded hilt. 'Good for Evil,' he cried softly, and the sword separated in twain. A bright crystalline blade remained locked in contest with the rubine scimitar that was Awakener, but into Gord's gauntleted hand came a shining brand of nighted hue.
Seeing her love thus armed, Leda turned again to where Gellor fought against the terrible demoness. What could she accomplish against the mighty demon queen? Leda had many powerful spells upon which she could call. These were potent in terms of men, but against the force of Zuggtmoy, such dweomers would be paltry things indeed. Yet she had no other weapon with which to attack. . Leda decided to try a tactic that might work.
'Hear me utter your true name, O Zuggtmoy, Empress of Blights, and harken! You will not disregard this call, nor will you disobey my command. By the Black Votary I summon you, Zuggtmoy, and with the Bonds of Exaction do I fetter you. Hear and obey. Queen of Thallphytia, Mistress of Mycorji. You are but a demoness subject to my will. …'
Immersed as she was in the battle with the bard and his magical harp, Zuggtmoy was superficially unaware of the casting of the evocation of binding. The words that Leda was chanting but a few yards distant might well have been said a thousand leagues away, for all the demoness actually heard. Yet the words, each with its charge of dweomer, did enter the mind of the fungoid being, and as these utterances accumulated there they began to niggle away. The spell being cast was not one that could ever demand full obedience from one as powerful as she, yet Zuggtmoy was affected nonetheless.
In other circumstances, had she not been engaged in a deadly battle, for instance, Zuggtmoy might have heard and answered — to wreak unspeakable revenge upon any so foolish as to annoy her thus. But the demoness was not free, and the incantation had an impact upon her. As the long strings of words was said, and the rite progressed, the gnawing of their message finally broke through from the subconscious of her brain to that part of Zuggtmoy's mind that was occupied in the fight with Gellor.
'What? Who dares?' came the telepathic demand from the disturbed demoness. The power of that blast of mental energy was sufficient to break Leda's casting. It knocked the little dark elf down, In fact, and wounded her with its force. But the distraction of the fungi queen was enough so that Zuggtmoy faltered in her complicated series of attacks upon the one-eyed bard.
That allowed Gellor to recover lost ground. In the second or two gained thus, the troubador sent his rippling melodies forth with renewed vigor, and the doom that encroached all around him was beaten back, withered, and decayed. 'Thank you, Lady,' he whispered as he saw Leda gasp and fall. 'This will be for you,' he added as his fingers fairly flew in sweeping circles across the silver strings of the kanteel. For all Gellor knew, the dark elf had died in order to help him, and it seemed likely that the demoness would soon slay him, too. Despite that, the troubador meant to make the victory as costly and painful as possible.
Zuggtmoy's bulk actually shuddered as the music swept over it. What was inimical to her fungi was hurtful, if not fatal, to the demoness. Cursing bard and drow for the piercing torments she now suffered, Zuggtmoy set to work on her Cauldron of Corruption with redoubled effort. Pay — she would make these mortals pay and pay!
'And Evil to Evil!' Gord shouted that cry as he took the lightless portion of Courflamme and faced Iuz. The cambion was groveling, on his knees, frantically trying to haul his great sword from its sheath of loamy stuff. In his anxiety and haste, Iuz was careless about how and where he grabbed the weapon, and his long, steely-fingered hands were cut and bloody from where they had contacted the sword's keen edge.
'Now, Now!' Iuz shrieked in relief and Joy as he finally managed to stand upright, grasp the length of the two-handed sword's hilt, and again be armed to attack in his dark mind, the cambion knew that this time he would not fall. With a grimace of evil certainty, Iuz spun to where he knew his opponent was.
Gord's words were spoken at that moment. The inky metal of Courflamme fairly danced within itself as it leaped forward to sheathe itself in the red-pink body of the gross half-demon. In Courflamme shot, piercing lung, vein, artery, heart, and the cambion s hide on the other side as it had its way with the thing's body on its upward journey. Out it came, as quickly as the dead-black blade had entered, and only a sundry few of the cambion's innards were further damaged by the withdrawal. It occurred so quickly that the vaunted Lord of Pain had felt hardly a twinge.
Iuz stood still for a second, shocked as realization dawned suddenly in his brain. Then he tried to bring up the massive sword he still held in his lacerated hands. 'You. . little. . mortal fool! You can never slay.. me. . Iuz. . thus! I'll.. I'll. And then the words Iuz was tiying to speak were cut off by a gush of foul, maroon blood from deep inside his body. Even then, the spawn of Iggwilv was not through. Spewing the ichorous gore as he came, Iuz advanced like an automaton, leaden foot after leaden foot, sword trembling but rising higher for a last blow against this small human who had killed him.
'And from Evil, all Evil!' Gord shouted again. The ebon longsword darted out and took Iuz full in the throat. The cambion's eyes were mad with fear at that, for the terrible sword would drink from him all existence. Iuz tried to move, tried to avoid that last, truly finishing thrust. But there was no counterpart of Leda to save the fiend from his deserved end. Courflamme struck, and the corpse of Iuz crashed down upon the moldering floor of the grotto. Nevermore would the cambion rise from that grave.
At that, the dark length of Courflamme shot from Gord's hand and flew to merge once again with its crystalline twin. The diamondlike half had been slowly dimming, and its inner light had become sluggish as the bane of the scimitar-Theorpart worked through it. The rejoining changed that in an instant. The whole that was now Courflamme shimmered, and the interplay of light and dark with the adders of flaming scarlet hue suddenly ceased. Down fell the scimitar with a dull thud. Down fell Iuz's sword. Courflamme too dropped, but it came down point first, burying itself but a little, standing in victory above its foe. Where the curved blade of the red-hued scimitar had lain was now the convoluted metal of the relic called the Awakener. Nearby lay the Initiator which Leda had thrown to save her champion from certain death.
Gord picked up Awakener in his right hand. Initiator in his left. Ignoring the beckoning hilt of Courflamme, the champion of Balance turned to where his comrades struggled desperately against the demoness. 'Zuggtmoy!' he shouted, and Gord's voice filled the whole of the grotto with such commanding sound that a god would have trembled at it.
Startled, the demoness looked up from her deadly little kettle. What she observed through her dull eyespots made Zuggtmoy quake. The mass of her fungoid form, elephantine in proportion, disgusting in shape, shook as if convulsed. 'Stay! Spare me, and-' She had seen the corpse of Iuz, sensed the destruction of the witch, now observed the twin Theorparts pointed directly at her. In that moment Zuggtmoy knew her end was also near, and
