As the shackles spun toward Gord, he countered with a downward thrust of his sword, which interposed the blade between the chains and his legs. Gord saw the demonurgist begin immediately upon another casting. Although the conjured metal of the shackle was already visibly corroding where it touched Blackheartseeker, the impatient adventurer didn't wait for the chains to fall away from this erosion. With a flick he had his long dagger out and drawn across the stuff. The magic broke and the shackles fell into bits of rust.
"Now, my tall and gangly fellow," he called to Gravestone to distract the priest-wizard from his ritual, "we have some business to finish between us."
Just then Gellor called out. "Gord, help me free Chert!" The bard's sword and the hillman's battleaxe were on the dais near the storklike demonurgist, but Gord had no time to assist the troubador by grabbing the weapons.
"Here." he shouted, sending his dagger spinning toward the one eyed hero. "This will do the work!" Then he leaped ahead and cut viciously at Gravestone's neck. Suddenly a forest of mottled tentacles sprang up between Gord and his foe. Their purple and maroon blotches were poisonous looking, and the fanged sucker-mouths that adorned these wildly waxing appendages threatened to fasten to him and tear the young champion apart.
His sword cut down upon these tentacles instead of upon Gravestone. The light less black blade sliced the things away easily, though. In a few strokes all were severed, and Gord had only slight damage from the things, although the one place he had been well struck burned and ached from the toxic secretions of the tentacle.
It was working. Even though the cursed little thief had managed to win free of each spell, virtually unscathed from any damage in a dweomer's content. Gravestone was gaining time. Now I'll deal with the reinforcements he hopes to gain, the demonurgist thought as he wove a powerful vortex that spun from his own little universe into another place nearby along the flow of evil. Out from that place came a stream of hideous things — dumalduns, members of the disgusting race native to the plane of Tarterus.
A dozen at most had come gibbering and howling into the place when the vortex vanished. In the time it had taken for the disgusting monsters to arrive upon Gravestone's quasi-sphere. Gord managed to seize and hurl Chert's great axe and Gellor's sword belt, with longsword and dagger thereon, in the general direction of where his friends were.
Then, almost in the same motion, the young champion had used a precious Item he possessed another of the bentsons he had received before setting forth on this mission. It was a Talisman of Balance, a dweomered sign that took years to fashion and fill with the proper enchantments. Gord stood upright, grasped the little token in the shape of a scales, and sent it high into the air. As the talisman came to the apex of its flight. Gord said the word of activation. Another vortex shot forth, and as it manifested itself the one created by the demonurgist's spell was negated. Down through the new vortex came a single being. The dunialdun were unaware or uncaring, but Gravestone grew pale at the approach of the single one summoned by the talisman.
The one-eyed troubador managed to snare his belt from the air, and in a trice Gellor held sword and dagger ready to face the rush of the nightmare creatures who were gleefully bounding and capering to ward him and his two chained comrades. Chert was almost free, his battleaxe within reach as the brawny hillman plied Gold's dagger to cut through the last of the bonds that held him.
Gellor began a heroic chant, a ballad reciting the deeds of great warriors who had faced and fought the most evil of foes, even at the cost of their lives. As he sang the brave words. Gellor was not otherwise idle. He met the rush of the first dumaldun with dagger point and sword edge, and the monster recoiled with a yowling cry of pain from the wounds inflicted by the enchanted steel of those blades.
As the second of the apelike dumalduns appeared from the vortex and bounded forth to do battle. Chert finished his work and stood free. One muscular arm scooped up a long length of chain while the barbarian grabbed Brool's leather-wrapped haft. Thus armed, Chert straddled the still-comatose form of Greenleaf and waited for the monster's assault. The dumaldun was there almost instantly.
The monster that charged toward the hillman was gorillalike, while the one Gellor had repulsed was a baboonlike thing. Others now appearing resembled orangutans, grizzled old chimpanzees, gibbons, mandrills, and other sorts of hideous monkeys. Each dumaldun was huge and strong, with long fangs and poisonous nails.
Stupid, lusting for blood, and maniacal by any standards, these denizens of the sphere of vile purple were indeed the perfect tool to accomplish the demonurgist's aim. Although his might had summoned far more than a dozen, that number would have been quite sufficient to dispose of Gellor, Chert, and the unconscious druid. With Gord's help they might have a chance of defeating the creatures, but that meant Gravestone would be left unmolested, free to work still more evil with his spells and magic.
The distorted visage of the gorilla dumaldun came open in a howling challenge, splitting wide to reveal a mouth big enough to encompass a man's entire skull, teeth long and sharp enough to crush bone, tusks of length so great as to meet where the teeth splintered a fang-pierced cranium.
The monster was indeed planning just that, but the hillman's battleaxe struck first. Brool sent its angry buzz all around as its deadly curve came upward at an angle. Barely grazing the dumaldun's paunch, it nevertheless left a foot long cut that was only a nail's breadth short of disemboweling. Then it clipped the lower quarter of the yawning mandible and sheared it oil. The dumaldun rushed on still, grabbed Chert, and sank its remaining lower tusk and upper fangs into the hillman's shoulder. Despite his dweomered leather and magical mail, those terrible teeth penetrated flesh.
The baboon-thing fighting the bard was likewise at close quarters. Recovering from the pain of its initial wounds, the dumaldun crouched and ran into the fray again, coming on all fours as would a dog. Then the bestial thing leapt. Dagger and sword met that attack, but the dumaldun came on heedless of the steel thrust into its throat, the long blade of Gellor's sword shining with gory wetness where it protruded from beneath its shoulder blade. The baboon-thing bowled the waiting man over and tore with nails and fangs at the frail human body. Gellor's helmet was knocked off, and his head struck the floor. A thousand stars sprang into the troubador's vision, then all was dark.
At that same moment. Chert loosed his hold on his axe and used his big hands to seize the jaws of the dumaldun. With a titanic effort that made the barbarian's muscles bunch and his veins to seem like snakes writhing across those rugged mounds of power. Chert pried the massive jaws open. Teeth were forced from flesh, then apart farther still. There was a loud crack, and the monster's Jaw dangled limply, held in place by rags of its filthy hide.
"Son of a diseased dungheap!" Chert bawled as he grabbed the monstrous dumaldun, lifted it over his head, and hurled it into the faces of the next two demoniacal things as they came at him. The corpse sent the pair back and down, but the effort was too much for the barbarian. Head spinning, muscles uncontrolled. Chert toppled backward at the mercy of whatever beast came upon him next.
Gravestone had seen Gord's action, noted the sudden cessation of his evil gateway to Tarterus, and for the tenth time cursed mentally the young champion who opposed him. There was no time for the luxury of a true and proper curse, though. Besides, the priest-wizard thought, the efficacy of such against one so filled with supernatural powers would be questionable at best. What was needed to best the little thief were strong spells and malign forces. Gravestone still had a considerable arsenal of both. Another weapon must be brought into play now, instantly.