With barely a thought, the Demiurge's sight widened and deepened. He discerned a trail of angry purple, a weaving of dark powers left as one of the enemy fled. There! A sick and perverted ladderway in the noplace of extradimensional existence. Only one such as the priest-mage called Gravestone could construct such a place. The purple pathway led to the foundation of the twisted tiers, then deepened.
I will see the reality, Basiliv thought firmly. Again his vision shifted, and he saw the wizard Sigildark and the netherfiend Krung. They fought with malign fury and died before the mental gaze of the Demiurge. The six were well, unharmed. Most of their energy quite untapped. The sword! Basiliv thought hastily. Its aura is black, yet there is a veining of verdigris wound through its fabric.
He was shocked at the terrible power of the weapon Gord possessed. He had formerly received no hint of the sword's potential. None save Vuron the demon lord could have alloyed such malign prowess into the magical metal of the weapon, but even that great demon was quite helpless compared to the force of the blade. Was it our gifting? Basiliv asked himself. Entropy? Gord's own inner forces? None of those possibilities fit. Another unknown, another nagging question. Later.... For now, all that mattered was that it served Balance.
His view of things Jumped back to the representational. The six had divided into two groups. Allton and Timmil were bypassing the mazetrap. This was occurring even as Krung was expunged and Sigildark sent gibbering away to his fate in the pits. Why? How could those two be so foolish?! In their desire to confront their evil foe, both the mage and high priest had separated from their acknowledged leader, the champion of their very cause, to strike Gravestone immediately. The rashness was unbelievable, especially considering that the priest-wizard undoubtedly had both reinforcements and a bolt-hole. Perhaps the two thought they could prevent Gravestone from summoning the dire beings who were undoubtedly at his beck in the lower planes: cleric to ward off the rising evil, spell-worker to hold fast the adversary and prevent his flight. With Greenleaf, Chert, Gellor, and Gord coming immediately behind, such tactics would be superior.
The projections that were the chessmen of the envisioned board moved. A dual-piece of intermediate value confronted a towering figure of pulsing violet hue. The purple was more potent, but to strike would expose it to the duality of the other. Standoff... for a time. What of the others?
He was part of a weird, four-sided construct. It was a piece of unguessable force, but it moved only slowly. One square at a time it wound its way laboriously up the hideous squares of the distorted helix, the ladder of spaces that eventually culminated in the place where the devoted wizard and priest held off the evil priest-wizard. There was another, far easier route for the four-fronted chessman to follow, only its power of movement was inadequate to follow the simple, untrapped checker of upward-soaring cubes. Instead it moved and fought along the hundred steps of the deadly helix. Basiliv watched in horrified fascination as the Gord-Chert-Gellor-Curley Greenleaf figure went on, space after space, slowly, fighting the form or foe at each step, moving haltingly toward the lair-board so far above.
Wrenching himself from the spectacle, the Demiurge concentrated on the ultimate goal that Gord struggled toward. Gravestone's image appeared, seen as from a bird's-eye view of a bowshot above. He stood at the apex of a triangle formed by himself and his antagonists, Timmil on the right with a potent staff held ready, Allton at the other corner, likewise armed. The two who held Gravestone at bay had so many protections and tokens of power that even the great evil one was uneasy, it seemed. He neither struck at one or the other, only stood still and slowly moved a long wand, or a slender rod, first left, then right, and back again.
Was this to ward against the two? No! Some new presence was gathering behind Gravestone, slowly, becoming more palpable with each slow, measured sweep of the priest-wizard's malign wand.
Where were the others? Basiliv thought frantically.
Gord was plodding upward still. The four had just overcome a place of living metal where iron spheres and steel cubes sought to crush nonmetallic life with savage ferocity. Next was a wilderness of alkali, then a primal jungle-swamp filled with monstrous dinosaurs. Somehow the four managed to win past and gain the place of the efreet; and despite the evil nature of those denizens of the City of Brass, the foursome prevailed again.
A monstrous efreeti transported them past the next fell space, a square wherein things of negative force waited to leech life from them, onto a formless void where not even the Demiurge could guess what awaited.
But then... "I understand!" Basiliv spoke aloud, not caring if he disturbed the others. They too must know. The revelation was sudden, and the shock was sufficient to make Basiliv curse.
"How could I have been so stupid?" Now the others were staring at him. He'd tell them in a moment. Two things first. Quickly concentrating on Gravestone again, Basiliv saw the shape of what formed behind.
"As I feared!" Shifting instantly to Gord, the Demiurge then viewed the formless expanse where the four were now held. Yes. It was as he thought. There was a... Never mind thinking it! He had to communicate directly with the champion.
"Gord!" The name, thought and shouted at the same time, was sent with all the energy the Demiurge could muster. "Gord! You are— "
"That is quite enough of that," a dry voice said, an interruption heard only in the Demiurge's brain just before...
Basiliv's mind went blank.
Chapter 13
"WE NEEDN'T BE ENEMIES, YOU KNOW."
The words were addressed to him only, so Allton responded. "That is true, daemon-kisser," he mocked. "You or I will die, and thus we will no longer oppose each other."
"That is the solution toward which we now steer, I grant," Gravestone said without rancor or threat. "There is another answer, though. A better solution for you and your associate." As he said that. Gravestone allowed his eyes to slide easily, head turning slowly, to include Timmil in the offer.
"Another?"
"Cease the bantering now," Timmil barked to the mage. "He is as sly as any archdevil and as vile as Nerull!"
"Yes, another, better way," Gravestone responded to Allton even as his stare stayed fixed on the high priest. "Join me. You are a spell-worker of great puissance. Become my lieutenant. Your priestly friend here says that Nerull is vile; still, I think you know otherwise, for you seek the balance, do you not?"
"The lord of the pits is reviled!" Allton shot it out without having to consider.
"True," Timmil affirmed in support.
"False, quite false," averred the priest-wizard. "Is death wrong? How is there balance against the riotous spawning of life without quiet death? And light — would it not gladly sear your eyes constantly were it not for sweet darkness?"
"Sophistries!" the priest barked.
The words of Balance," Allton admitted.
The Weal would suppress Balance were it able. Long and long it has oppressed us of the nether-spheres. We strive now against those above — not you, not Nature. How could we know our own if our actual aim was to destroy all save those who served the same master?"
The mage found a grain of something in what Gravestone uttered. Nodding slowly, Allton began, "But all know that Tharizdun—"
"Beware again, Allton!" Timmil interrupted. "He lies with scant truths!"