slowly vanishing from her amethyst eyes. 'Sometimes a man has to remind himself of why he is as he is.'
Partially comprehending the moment, Leda snuggled into his arms, saying, 'And a woman, too, must reflect and consider. Now, man, neither you nor the woman you hold need do so.'
'How's that?'
'Better things are at hand,' she informed him, and placed his two hands in places that were not conducive to intellectualizing. 'For you and me,' Leda asserted, getting her own hold on Gord. 'This is our last night in paradise. We must make it paradisaic.'
Gord did his utmost to comply ….
There was a great stone thrust up like a miniature cliff not far from the little house. It was of the stuff of stars, perhaps. Certainly, it was of material unakin to anything normal to mankind — perhaps it was from the heart of some long-dead sun somewhere in the multiverse. A small shard from its face, a piece that Leda could wrap her fingers around, was so weighty that it required all of her strength to lift.
'What must the whole of this thing weigh? What could it rest on? Its mass should sink it as a lead weight in water, even were there granite below it!'
'Leda, I have no idea of the foundations below this place, nor any inkling of the material which supports this massive boulder. It is one more of the mysteries of. . here,' Gord responded.
'Hands should suffice,' Gellor said laconically, going to the face of the stone outcropping. There was no visible outline, but as the bard watched, his friend stood beside him and placed his palms against the dense material. A small door appeared, swinging inward at Gord's touch.
'I'll return in a moment,' the young champion said, then ducked low and went into the little passage that led inside the rock inside there was a vault.
It was a vault of the sort that might have been fashioned by primordial smiths of dwarvenkind. Thick slabs of metal, the sort that was called lodestone, formed a vast coffer with no handle, hinge or lock it too swung open at Gord's touch. Inside was a third strongbox and a fourth as well. The third was made of adamantite, its incredibly hard metal so smooth that it felt silken under his fingertips. Lastly was a long box of old silver, worked with glyphs of a sort no man had ever seen, and inlaid with sigils of orichaicum to ward against the force of the netherbeings. The whole was a repository of the Theorparts, of course. No other prize known would warrant such precautions.
The place had been there when the three came into the pocket-sized paradise. Gord hadn't been told to expect it. He had known it was there immediately, however, and had borne the two portions of the artifact straight to it and encased them inside. Now, as he lifted out first one, then the other, a heavy dread filled his chest and made his heart labor. The two fused and the one alone were separate still, each wrapped round with golden cloth bearing more of the glyphs. Those wrappings had to be undone too, for Gord felt he had to leave them here. In the heart of the strange rock.
With the single Theorpart in his left hand, the dual in his right, Gord emerged from the luminous darkness of the strange space. 'I am ready to go on,' he said without ceremony.
'We do look most fierce and warlike,' Leda said, trying to lighten the sudden despondency that seemed to rise to overwhelm them all. 'It is a fine thing, Gellor, that you chose not to dally with some bit of fluff, else never would our panoply have been so sound again.'
Gellor actually smiled at that. He had reason to be proud, for the shadow armor given to them, their elfin mail, and Leda's plate mail of drow manufacture too, had suffered splitting and puncture. The great wonder- workers, the mages of Kaalvahlla, were said to have wrought many miracles with their magic kanteels. Gellor, being a troubador, knowing the lore of bards and the sagas of skalds too, had taken the damaged stuff and set to work with his ivory harp during Gord and Leda's long absences. It had taken a little while, but eventually he had succeeded.
'Watch,' he had said casually one evening. Then Gellor had taken up his kanteel and sung, playing an intricate melody as he vocalized. The links of elven smithcraft had fairly stood up and danced to that tune. They moved together, intertwined, knitted themselves into the life-protecting mesh that they had once before formed. 'The dweomer worked into their metal is as whole as the mall,' he had told his wondering audience when they had commented excitedly on his newfound skill. 'That is the last portion not already mended. Tomorrow I shall attempt the greater complexity of Leda's black armor, and if I succeed there, the shadow plate should yield to my playing.'
Perhaps Gellor's prodding for the three of them to be going on was in part based on the completion of the final challenge. His singing and strains from the kanteel as accompaniment had brought the shadowstuff into wholeness on the evening prior to yesterday. Now each of them was again fully clad in armor of the stoutest stuff, metal and magical in combination.
Gellor smiled at that, for he was justly proud. 'Yes, just so,' he agreed. 'Fierce and warlike we are too.'
'Let's not stress that too much, my friends,' Gord said. He had no desire to dampen the rising spirits of the two, but felt obliged to remind them of the grimness which lay ahead. 'It is to Tharizdun's donjon prison that we now trek Perhaps this stuff will be of service on the journey, but when it is time to confront the foulest of the netherspheres we had better not trust our lives to even such armor as this. One who is able to bring oppression to the multiverse is beyond such protection as the best of armors affords.'
'Perhaps that is so,' Leda said with a small voice.
'We shall see!' Gellor said stoutly and with ringing fortitude.
'Very well, then. The three heroes set forth to beard the greatest of devil-demons in his very den!' Gord shouted, picking up Gellor's mood.
They linked arms with a ring of metal, for even shadow armor has a faint, plangent tone that it gives forth when struck by magical metals. Then Gord used the Theorparts another time, and the three seeking Tharizdun vanished … or perhaps they stayed in place and the pastoral sphere vanished from around them; the effect was the same. A deep reverberation grew from the sound of their armored members striking, and that belling sound accompanied them hence.
Chapter 15
From the faint echoes of a deep gong to the melodious pealing of carillons of golden bells. No, not Just golden ones — bronze and silver too lent their music to the symphony of sound. With the music came a million million bright suns and stars, and each moved in stately time to some ringing counterpart, an incredible fugue and dance. 'We traverse the Celestial Sphere.' Gord's thoughts were awed. Speech, even if possible, seemed somehow improper in a place such as this, and the others took his lead.
'Glad I am that our quarry is not buried in the deepest layer of the netherrealms,' the bard mused. 'For never have I experienced such sights and sounds as these!'
'Shooting stars!' Leda pointed to a veritable swarm of comets. They turned and came toward us. Gord..?'
'I am uncertain of anything here, Leda. Perhaps they simply perform their prescribed measures — or possibly …' Gord's thoughts trailed off as he saw other sparks grow into like things, comets on blazing tails that Joined the swarm and came flashing across the velvety blackness toward where they soared.
Gellor was definite in his assessment. Those stars shoot to interpose themselves between us and our destination. Do we have the means to pass such a blockade, or must we make a hasty detour?'
'They come so quickly, Gord. We must do something now, else the choice will not be ours to make,' Leda noted. 'What do we three puny mortals have to oppose such incandescent might?'
Gord caused them to cease their movement through space. 'We live and breathe in this airless and heatless sphere,' he told his companions with assurance. 'We move at will, and it is toward our final goal. I think that none can stop us, be it comet or otherwise.' He watched the score or more of blazing things approach ever nearer. 'Let's wait and see what force actually ventures out to greet us.' The revelation of that was not long in coming.
The comets shot near, the approach made more strange by the silence. No air existed in the place, of course,
