action. Those fleeting thoughts didn't distract him in the least. Complex and multilevel thinking was, after all, Vuron's forte.
'Ah-hah!' the albino started to vaunt as he saw his long point strike home. Then he was leaping back, drawing his arm in desperate haste, for the stab had but cut a red line on the glistening sable of Leda's neck, and she, in turn, struck back.
The cut burned, but Leda was unaffected by that. The black blade in her right hand shot straight out, sinking its point into the Theorpart-shield. It held fast, and sword and relic seemed to lock together in a hateful contest of strength. The sword could never win such a battle, for it was but a half of the full force of what it was. The effect was great, however, for it held fast the defense that Vuron had relied upon. Neither sword nor shield could be moved during the interchange of malign stroke and counterstroke of force that then occurred. At the same instant, Leda used the crystalline brand held in her left hand to sweep up and around in an arcing blow aimed at Vuron's outthrust arm. 'Death to you, Vuron,' Leda shouted.
He was very fast, but the bright edge of Courflamme's crystal half caught Vuron's forearm. 'Eeeeyaa!' The cry of pain was drawn as a high and terrible piping from the thin demonlord's chest. Leathery, even as hard as the alabaster it resembled, was Vuron's appendage. But not even steel could have resisted the edge of the diamond- bright blade as it swept up. The stuff cut into Vuron's arm, and he drew it backward at the same moment, thus prolonging the exposure of demonhide to enchanted edge. Vuron's arm was sliced from elbow to wrist. The spear dropped from his now useless hand. He knew it was all finished then, that the wound had done more than destroy his right arm.
'I am sorry … so sorry, Vuron. If ever your kind could make claim to nobility, you were the only one who could do so with justice,' Leda said, almost sobbing as she saw what her attack had accomplished.
'Weakling! Tarry in your work, and I'll have your skull yet,' the albino demon snarled back. Even as he spoke, Vuron worked frantically to change the useless shield into some form of weapon to use against her. But the dark portion of Courflamme held leechlike to the Theorpart, and this made the arcane relic's response to Vuron's willed commands sluggish. He regretted speaking then, for Leda steeled herself and struck again. Vuron tried to hide his whiteness beneath the cover of the slowly metamorphosing Theorpart, but his body was too long, arms and legs too gangling.
'Gods!' screamed Leda, seeing the bright sword slice away the pale flesh of the demon's body, leaving a terrible and bloody rawness where skin and flesh were gone from ribside.
'Finish me now, or by the Abyss I'll flay and eat your flesh as you watch!' The agonized shriek came spilling forth as did the life-stuff of the demonlord. It was no idle threat, either. Vuron had now accomplished the change, and Unbinder was an iron-fanged thing whose ever-growing jaws were about to close upon Leda's legs.
Without hesitation, and purged of remorse too, the little elven girl took hold of Courflamme's broad hilt with both hands, allowing the useless portion of the sword to fall free, for its work with the Theorpart was finished. 'To the void with you!' she shouted as she swung, and the sword severed the demon's left arm. 'Now, and now! And NOW!!' Three exclamations, three hacking blows with Courflamme. Vuron's headless and dismembered corpse littered the battleground there in demonium, and the albino lord of the Abyss was no more.
Leda shook and sobbed. 'You were but a demon, a vile demon after all,' she blurted. Then she stood leaning upon the shining portion of the longsword as if surveying her handiwork but her eyes were unseeing.
Gellor had not been idle meanwhile. The troubador had rushed to Gord's side and defended his comrade from the press of huge demons who would have thrown themselves upon the small man and torn him to shreds. The work was hot at first, as the initial press came for them. Gellor's blade rang against strange armors and stranger weapons as he dueled with one after another of the creatures. Oddly, it was an ancient and clumsy thing, a hook- bladed khopesh, that nearly did for him. The demon wielding it was Lord Apepi.
'Hew harr mine!' the cobra-headed thing had hissed as the khopesh tore Gellor's sword from his grip and sent it tumbling away.
'Only if you can fight better than you talk' the troubador had rejoined, pulling free his dagger as he did so and taking a defensive stance. The demon was the last facing him, and Gellor silently thanked all the deities who assisted fools as he crouched before the unwavering stare of Apepi. Poison spittle and fangs as well as sword threatened him. The dag he held was useless except to parry attacks, and even that had to be done with utmost care, or the massive weight of the khopesh would snap the weapon or toss it away. Gellor tried to move crabwlse toward where his sword lay.
'Phaat!' Apepi expelled a gob of venom between the one-eyed baid and his weapon. 'No, maan. Thaat whill sspoll my enjoymenss,' the cobra mouth articulated in its hissing, clumsy parody of speech.
The predicament his comrade faced was evident to Gord. The young champion had laid about him with the twin relics as the wave of enraged demonlords had swept upon him. As if acting of their own volition, the melded Theorparts had shifted form. First as a massive bardiche they had gone, cutting and hewing away the whole front rank of the attackers. Back the thing had come, now a many-spiked morning star from whose iron head shot daggers of crackling energy. Then it was a staff Gord clutched, and out of that black length had poured forth a stream of even blacker lances of force that pierced many a demonlord and ended all existence then and there. After that initial onslaught, Gord had been forced to fight a series of indIvidual combats against the few great demons who still remained. Then the last one's will had broken, and Gord was at last able to come to Gellor's aid.
'Whaat?' the snake-headed Apepi hissed angrily as Gord interposed himself. 'No fairnesss in thisss fight?'
'Of course,' Gord almost laughed in reply as he snapped his wrist. The length of the two Theorparts, now a steely whip, wrapped around the heavy khopesh. 'I fairly despise you, and I fairly finish it so!' He tugged, and the hook-topped sword flew from the demon prince's grasp. 'Now you may pick it up and fight again with my comrade, who is now getting his own weapon — or you can run!'
Both men laughed as the cobra-demon fled from the field by means of its own inner powers, a force that recalled the demon safely to his own stronghold elsewhere in the Abyss. 'And now?' asked the troubador, surveying the littered field.
'We get Leda and the Unbinder, and be away from this pestilential place,' Gord said.
'A plan worthy of Balance's finest, Gord,' Gellor agreed. 'Yonder Graz'zt is attempting to rally the disheartened horde he marshalled here, and his consort is urging compliance with the Eye of Deception.'
'There could be more slaughter, but that would avail us nothing. Our goal is Tharizdun, and that goal is at hand.'
The statement sobered Gellor. 'Yes. … I had almost forgotten that Let's get on with it, then.'
The two tired men moved quickly despite their fatigue. 'Good work Leda! I see you have managed your share of the enemy, too,' Gellor said to the silent girl.
'Never mind that.' Gord reprimanded, seeing that Leda was in near shock from what she had had to do. He took the sword gently, sheathing it, then placed his arm around her protectively, as a father might comfort a child. 'It has been hard, I know, dearest one. You must pull yourself together now, for unless we leave here immediately there will be yet more and ghastlier fighting to manage.'
'He. . he. . Vuron! It was if I had to slay my own father!'
Gord steered her to a little distance away, a place where he could use the powers of the Theorparts to shift them from the nethersphere of demons to another, even worse, place. Time later to tell Leda that the albino had brought her into existence from Eclavdra for his own evil purposes. Not even one as strong as Leda could deal with so much now. 'Gellor, seize Unbinder and bring it along.'
'What of me?' a slow voice spoke. 'Will you tarry to see if your newfound might can deal with me?'
'No,' Gord said without bothering to look 'You, Lord Entropy, have no part in my current plans. Seep off to where you belong.' The entity was gone when the three departed the Abyss a moment later.
Chapter 14
They laughed like little children when the vast, dark cloud that had come so suddenly deluged all beneath it with large raindrops that fell as thick as the soft grass beneath their feet. Giggling and dancing, as naked and innocent as two babes, they ran for the shelter of a broad, leafy bower formed naturally by the palms nearby. Yet
