Four and more Allton cried aloud as he struck. Each took effect. The staff was a tuner, a receiver and transmitter of energies as well as a store for such forces. It resonated, opened channels, sent forth rays, drew power, and it did so all in an instant of time.
"Cease, foo—" was all Pazuzeus managed to bellow before the ancient construction of wood and metal and magical bindings malfunctioned. The event occurred just as its wielder knew it would. Too many energies flew from it, too many currents were drawn into its confines — far, far beyond the capacity of its strength.
A tiny rupture between its forces and the negative flow of the anti-world occurred. The fabric of the multiverse mended itself quickly enough. Only a brief spurt of the dark energy came out to meet the raging blazes of power from other places. But even as the demon tried to shout, to delay, even to beg a truce, the dark and light blended and devoured each other. Only a little of the bright disappeared, enough to balance the negative — but the great force of that brief transfer of energy blew the ancient staff to nothingness. The eruption of power from that explosion devoured demon and mage alike in a pink-white flash that sent Curley Greenleaf farther along the path toward death's looming gates.
The condemnation of Shabriri to the depths of wherever he sprang from, Timmil's sacrifice, and that of Allton at nearly the same time, made Gellor falter in his contest. The demonurgist blinked too, but he recovered more quickly. He sent forth a wave of unmaking, a power stolen from the archmage Mordenkainen. Its force disjoined the song of his enemy, scattered its dweomer, broke the strings of the kanteel the troubador held. The rebounding of the bard's own casting stunned him, and Gellor was laid low instantly.
"Five in the pot," Gravestone said with a sneer. "One more to make the dish better still, and then my feast is done!"
Chapter 15
THE SHARK-TOOTHED ROCKS rushed to meet his body, to impale his helpless flesh upon their waiting points. But Gord simply willed it otherwise, and it was. He fell no longer; rather he strode along a dun road in a wild land of twisted trees and formless evils.
Was this another of the demonurgist's creations? Perhaps... but there was a subtle difference here. Wherever he looked Gord could see clearly, as if mighty beams of light sprang from his eyes, and nothing could escape his gaze here.
"I would the road were smooth," he muttered. At his command the surface under the soles of his high boots became as a polished floor of marble.
"Let me ride a mighty destrier," he thought, and suddenly the young champion was astride the broad back of a stallion. Despite different saddle and barding, Gord knew the animal instantly. "Blue Murder! Valiant steed of younger days, how came you here?" The stallion whickered and shook its head at the words as if relating his surprise at finding himself as Gord's mount in this strange realm.
"Gellor! Timmil! Greenleaf!" he then called out. "Chert! Allton! To me, all five!" That demand brought nothing at all save a graying of the horizon toward which Blue Murder now carried him. The place was not totally his — or, at least, things beyond its confines could not be called here by its forces. No matter. Gord would discover the nature of it soon, deal with it, and find his companions. "I will discover the guardian of this plane," he said.
The road was now a shimmering pathway with no end. It ran unsupported through space. Fields of stars were everywhere. Some glowed near, revealing their spheres in pure violet, white, green, deep red. Some twinkled so distantly as to seem but a single mote, but Gord's magical sight revealed them as whole galaxies of suns burning in a remoteness so vast as to make the heart falter in its beating.
The sudden change had affected his steed as well. Blue Murder was even bigger, more magnificent, and wore the twin horns of a dragon-horse, a ki-lin whose hooves sent trailing sparks of silver and gold behind as they struck the surface of the strange pathway.
"Swiftly, swiftly!" Gord urged, and his mount responded. The stars began to fly past, as if they were comets with fiery tails. Now to either hand, below, and above the champion of Balance could discern other places. By hue or scent, and some even by actual vision into their expanses, Gord saw the whole multitude of the many-sphered cosmos whip past. Elements, probabilities, ether, the yawning hells, bright planes of splendor and exaltation, dim places of disorder and chaos. There was the all-present realm of the Shadowking, above it the broad vault of the pure astral plane, and far, far beneath the scintillating trail the ki-lin left were the dreaded sinks of Hades, the nadir of all the manifold netherspheres. "No dark glow emanates therefrom. Blue Murder," the young champion shouted. "Onward!"
Myriad shades of verdant green, hues associated with green, too, from deep olive to citrine to pale aqua, spun now beneath him as the dragon-horse galloped. Tiny wedges and broad archways displayed the various means of entry to the multitude of hidden and arcane places. Whether partial plane, demisphere, or quasi-dimension, each such place was visible to the young champion as the ki-lin raced along the multiversal highway. Gord shook his head and turned away. There was an infinity of these places, but not one held what he desired. Blue Murder, if the strange mount was indeed that great stallion in a transformed body, was now bearing him toward an opalescent roadway, a flowing path that intersected with the ribbon upon which they had traveled so strangely.
"What is this you take me to?" Gord demanded.
The ki-lin made no sound whatsoever in reply, only redoubling its efforts so that the suns and stars blurred and disappeared. Abruptly the steed gave a strange, mournful call and leaped into the river of opaline light. Then the young champion who bestrode it knew that he was within the very flow of time itself.
"No," he commanded the steed. "You must battle the current! Go backward!"
The ki-lin shook its horned head and continued on. After only a few heartbeats, they were thundering up a metal-like bank and out of the glowing stuff with its myriads of scenes and standing stock still upon a flat and featureless expanse of what could only be purple chitin. The horizon was a knife-edge in the ultimate distance, the sky made of strata of pale, grayish stuff, each layer tinged with a faintly different hue.
Gord urged his steed on. The beast must know the place where the guardian of all this was. "I still seek to confront the one who will enable me to pass beyond," the young man said to the dragon-horse. "Whether Blue Murder or some imitation, you have obeyed so far; now fulfill your obligation!" At that the mount simply vanished, and Gord fell with a crash onto the unyielding stuff beneath.
The sudden precipitation dazed him, but in a second or two Gord was recovered and standing erect. He did so in time to see that the horizon was coming closer... no, the plane was contracting! All was shrinking, drawing toward the center — the place where he himself stood. This was disconcerting, threatening. Gord sensed a looming presence, a lurking evil that would manifest itself at any moment.
Crouched slightly, sword now drawn and ready, the champion of Balance waited. A faint wind blew, hardly stronger than a zephyr, yet its force was sufficient to tug at Gord's body and nearly drive him along before its path. He looked down at himself and saw that he was transparent. "Oh, shit, no! I can't be dreaming!" Gord pinched himself. His fingers encountered firm flesh and hurt as they closed and nipped. "Yowch! No, this is something other than a dream, I think...."