was only moderately tall, perhaps six and one-half feet. Hardly the stature of a colossal demon or devil! He was fair-complected, goldenhaired, almost beautiful in a godlike way. The boy had indeed been a true reflection of the mature evil.
'Your sudden maturation is noteworthy,' Gord said easily to Tharizdun as the being came closer. Gord would dispel any notion of being made uneasy by the deliberately dread-laden tread used in coming to where Gord waited. 'Years of growth in but minutes!'
Tharizdun laughed. It was so purely evil a sound that it made horripilations on the scalps of those who heard it. The dark fiend regretted that he was unable to observe its effect properly, for the small man was coifed and helmeted, sword drawn and ready. He brought his left hand from behind his back, sending something bowling along the metal-sheathed floor toward the booted feet of the champion of Balance. 'Quite mistaken, Gord,' Tharizdun said with assurance. 'These is the proof of your error.'
The thing bounced off the metal-shod toes of his boots. Hearing Tharizdun speak his name didn't bother Gord in the least. What the dark being sent rolling across the floor was another matter. It was the boy's skull, with part of its flesh still attached, so that fair hair and torn flesh competed for attention as it tumbled, and as it came it left a goiy trail of spatters. 'Gods!' the young champion expostulated. 'You-'
'I did,' Tharizdun said, punctuating the pride of acknowledgment of his foulness with laugh and phantasm. There, between him and the young man who would oppose him, the Ultlmate Netherbeing recreated exactly what he had done with the boy. 'I'll have that skull back from you,' the vile creature added, 'so as to make the merging of it complete. I thought you would find some amusement, however, in the foretaste of your own fate, the fate of your comrades too.'
The partially eaten head came wobbling around and stopped so that its empty eye sockets seemed fixed upon him. Gord was appalled, but the horror served to reinforce his determination to resist the foul archfiend to the end. 'You shall not pass,' Gord said with an iron-hard voice. 'You are lord of nothing save this tower, maggot, unless you best me!'
'Maggot? Very descriptive … of yourself!' Tharizdun said with unhurried air. 'I see you have a blade in hand which my first foes devised. how did you ever manage to reassemble it? I am amazed,' the abomination said with amusement evident in his tone. 'I quaffed its baneful dweomers and then scattered the bright, sending the sword into separate halves so that it could never again be whole.'
'What was is of no matter. It is here now, and whole, ready to send your rotten soul into an eternity from which there will be no reawakening!'
'How very forceful! I fairly tremble at the prospect of engaging such a mighty weapon,' Tharizdun mocked, his handsome features wreathed in a vile smirk 'still, what choice have I?'
Why, none at all when facing such a stout and puissant foe.' He seemed unable to contain himself any longer. The chamber resounded to peals of his hideous loathsome laughter as Tharizdun gave vent to his derision.
Gord took the opportunity to strike, leaping in and thrusting at the being's chest, meaning to pierce Tharizdun's heart. The lunge was met in an instant by the ringing impact of a broad-headed axe. The great weapon had flashed into existence at the moment of his lunge, and Gord saw by the way Tharizdun spun the double-bitted thing that the evil being was a master with the axe. 'Fast, maggot, and clever,' Gord called as he withdrew quickly from the engagement. At a position Just before the entrance to Tharizdun's prison he stopped. The axe would be hampered by the lintel above the portal, by the narrowness of it too. 'Come on to where I stand, then, for you must exit, mustn't you?'
It was annoying. He had thought that perhaps he could finish the contest quickly. The one whom Balance had groomed for champion was too able for such, Tharizdun reminded himself; he should have expected that. It was also irritating that the small fellow understood so well his need to get free of the metal confines of the cell. Until Tharizdun was totally free of it, able to leech strength from the spheres of Evil, it was impossible for him to bring his total powers into play. Such a one-to-one test was not at all to Tharizdun's liking. It was a demand he could not escape.
'You seek unfair advantage,' he called to his adversary, 'But I also have a two-part weapon!'
That was said to distract Gord for the instant necessary for Tharizdun to alter the form of his battleaxe. The thing shimmered and dIvided. From the fission came two smaller weapons, each axe bearing but a single head, with each haft appropriately shortened as well. The relatively compressed space of the doorway would pose no great problems for such tools of slaughter. Tharizdun advanced with assurance.
Gord could not so dIvide Courflamme. The light was needed to reinforce the dark when its blade had to confront the greatest wickedness ever known. For a heartbeat he regretted giving Leda his dagger, wishing he had it to serve as main gauche against the two small axes Tharizdun now spun and played as he advanced. Realizing that advantage had been turned to disadvantage, Gord rushed, using Courflamme's length and speed to make a deadly web before him. He had to regain a position at or just inside the entry, or else the battle was lost, whether or not Tharizdun actually slew him. The sword's tip showered forth scintillations of white fire, and from that light Tharizdun drew back for an instant 'We have balance again,' Gord rasped, standing fast now in the portal.
'Ah, but you again seek unfair advantage,' the malign being snarled. 'You used those coruscations of empyreal matter to bund me. but I now counter with my own forces, for you have allowed such!'
That was true. Gord had involuntarily willed the light to ensure that he regained his blocking position. Now he regretted the increasing scope of their combat By drawing force from elsewhere, Gord had opened an opposite channel for his foe. Tharizdun would not neglect to utilize that. 'You will need all the help you can summon, maggot!' Then he regretted that as well.
From the two axes streamed things resembling blind, bloated slugs. They plopped upon the unyielding floor unharmed, then crawled in masses of disgusting, purplish-hued gropings, sucker-mouths working hungrily as they came. 'You speak to me of maggot! Now see what I bring you.'
Although not certain what one of the things would do if it found its way inside his armor, Gord was sure that agony and poison were the least of the effects. Each pass of one of the dark axes showered another score of the grubs, and a wave of the thumb-sized things would soon lap the floor at his feet. Yet he could not retreat from them, and to use Courflamme would be to invite destruction from the two whirling axes. If he used yet further force from outside this plane, then the master of wickedness could do the same, perhaps even establish a conduit that would flood Gord in its evil strength. He had to do something quickly, or else there would be no chance. It came to him in a flash of inspiration. 'The ring!'
'What did you say?' Tharizdun demanded, hissing in hatred.
'I have the ring!' As he shouted that full into the vile creature's face, Gord thought of the blue band and its bright stone. From the sapphire came a glow, an orb of brightness that grew and solidified into a phoenix. The iridescent brightness of the creature's plumage was that of pure fire, and as would any bird, the blazing phoenix set upon the slugs. 'They serve to make its hues more beautiful, no?' he called to the scowling Tharizdun, moving into an attacking stance as he spoke.
The phoenix was growing, its fire becoming incandescent as it devoured the things of Evil so quickly that Tharizdun knew there was no chance of bringing in enough for the grublike monstrosities to get past its darting beak of flame. Besides, the accursed object that Gord utilized might well send forth another of the birds if need be. He had been annoyed before, but now Tharizdun's breast was burning with rage as hot as the fiery phoenix before him. His adversary had evoked power that the dark deity could not counter, whose presence gave him no equal or greater advantage.
'Whelp! You think me bested thus? It is idiocy!' He turned and moved so quickly as to seem a blur. Then, from a comfortable seat on the stairway opposite the door, Tharizdun mocked, 'I must escape these chambers, it is true; but I have been in durance herein for centuries, youngling. You are mortal — or mostly so. I will wait here. you will grow weary, impatient. You will fall into sleep, or else you will come into the room to face me. either way, I can wait, for the result is foregone in its conclusion.' The twin axes again shimmered and became one. 'The great war axe will dIvide you as it does itself.'
Part of what he heard was irrefutable, but Gord considered another tack to which his foe seemed to be oblivious. 'Gellor! Leda! Use your minds to send me the force held within your rings.' he urged telepathically.
Within a moment there was a surge of energy flowing into his brain, through his body. Into the sapphire ring on his hand. 'Let the space here reflect the compassion in your heart, Tharizdun,' Gord called out. The dark stones
