Dance of Demons (17 page)

"Excellent! One fewer to claim a chance at a Theorpart," noted Iuz, and that was a statement that none of the remaining demons challenged.

"Twenty-seven only," said Iggwilv, counting the number standing. "Do you bow to the greater number's wishes, or will you leave the assemblage?"

The ones who had favored hunting down Gord, Eclavdra, and Gellor were by no means ready to leave. They all sat down without undue commotion, and the leaders then began to make their plans to crush Graz'zt. Although he now had only a one-front war to fight, what with Demogorgon's desertion of the struggle, there was now more arrayed against Graz'zt than ever before. "He no longer has the power of the Eye of Deception, either," noted Szhublox.

"Unless that bag, Elazalag, decides to throw in with him," quipped Iggwilv. "She is almost human, and that worries me," the witch continued with a serious note in her voice. "The clans under her rule might be sufficient, what with the Eye, to enable that oversized dog-turd to conduct a long defense. Perhaps we should have . .."

"What is that you mumble about?" Iuz made the demand an insult as well.

"Tend to the strategies," she countered. "I'll be heard loud enough when I so wish!" Yet something nagged at the back of iggwllv's mind. Did she allow her own hatred for Graz'zt to cloud her judgment? Impossible! But . . . "Now, Iuz, I think we must consider the division of the hordes into battles, and which of these great demonlords will be in charge of them!"

Chapter 10

THE TRANSITION FROM COLD and windswept rock desert to the steamy verdure of Mezzafgraduun was sudden. There was no demarcation, no clue that they were about to leave the inhospitable barren of an unnamed tier of the Abyss and find themselves suddenly traversing the jungle frontier of Graz'zt's own domain.

The three had actually entered the Soulless Sounding where its portal stood in the midst of Elazalag's massive castle. They did so unceremoniously, without any leave-taking whatsoever. They simply strode into the place while the ebon-hued warriors watched closely but stayed well clear of such ones as they were now known to be. They were in the ghastly passage one moment and out of it the very next, barely treading the insubstantial and shifting stuff of the Sounding.

Leda took them to the gate that was at hand, but it entered a deep and wild region of the Abyss. Six thousand kinds of beasts existed in demonium, six hundred brutes, things worse by far than the bestial fauna of the place. She knew this place, for it was one where the demonlords hunted for sport. It was wild. harsh, and sparsely populated. The things that did inhabit the region were vast, ferocious, deadly. Unlike the swarming menagerie that had greeted Gord and Gellor on their arrival upon the uppermost portion of demonium, the brutes of this region were silent killers who stalked prey in stealth with relentless determination.

Often the hunters from elsewhere became the hunted here, and lesser demons were prone to become morsels in the belly of one or another of the lurking things, as their demonlord masters laughed and despoiled at the amusement thus provided, each safe in armor, armed with beast-slaying weapons, ringed round by their huntsdemons holding sawedged pikes in nervous grips.

Gellor held his ivory harp ready, fingers poised to pluck the silver wires and send out fear and death to the predatory things that slunk just out of sight. Leda now bore the Theorpart, knowing the use of such a thing from her experience with Graz'zt's own great relic. But Gord was not willing to risk her use of the terrible relic that was called Initiator. He attuned Courflamme to the Theorpart, drawing dark force from it into his sword. Leda wielded the relic still, and its force was greater than that channeled by the Eye of Deception, but thanks to Gord's efforts she was not in peril of becoming a mere zombie possessed by the terrible instrument.

The three sped across the cold wastes, moving with strides which would have left the swiftest courser behind, yet moving without exertion as if they merely strolled at a leisurely pace through a pleasant parkland. Even at such a rate of travel, a few of the hunters of the tier managed to stay on their trail as hounds would track a stag.

"Our blood is to such monsters as gold is to a miser's eyes," Leda said in response to the bard's query about the phenomenon. "The scent of it will draw beast and brute from leagues distant to get at us."

"Mezzafgraduun knows no such monsters?"

"No, Gord. The swamps and tangles of the jungle which rings the place have many ferocious things within, but none so fearsome as the brutes here."

Gord actually grinned. "I know you told me that before, and it isn't that I doubted you. I just had to have your second assurance after seeing this desert. It is exactly what I had hoped for."

"An icy waste of rock and nightmare scrub populated with such creatures as would make dragons flee gibbering in fear? I confess my absolute amazement," Gellor said in a tone of disgust. "My nerves are as taut as the strings of the kanteel."

"How long will such things survive in a warmer clime, lady?" Gord asked the beautiful little dark elf, ignoring Gellor.

"There are a dozen or so beasts in the demonking"s menagerie — even a monstrous demon-brute was caged therein for a short time. Graz'zt used it in his games, though."

"Then let us be on the safe side and try to round up a dozen or two of the worst sort we can," Gord said, grinning again with boyish glee.

"You wouldn't. . . ." Gellor said with an expression of dawning understanding spreading across his face.

The gray eyes sparkled back at the bard. "Oh, but I would. We will, to be exact. You, my dear old troubador, will stand ready to put down any recalcitrant brute with the dweomer of your harp. Leda, you will use the Theorpart to draw them to us quickly but with whatever humility and fear such things can experience and retain within their minds, dim as they might be. I, In turn, will see to it that they remain tractable and nonaggressive to us. Courflamme will be sufficient, I am sure!"

"And then?" Gellor asked with near sarcasm. The scheme sounded preposterous, considering what sort of monsters Gord had in mind.

"Yes, Gord. Are you sure—"

"You two must trust me on this. We must make an entrance upon Mezzafgraduun, and gam the palace of Graz'zt thereafter. We have no guards, no army, nothing to demonstrate our might. Yes, I do believe we could accomplish the journey without mishap, and after we cut down a few thousand of the demonking's own, he might be willing to hear what we have to propose to him. But that would be a poor way to begin a delicate negotiation. Graz'zt would be smarting from the loss of face and the loss of his soldiers, and the loss of the Eye would then burn as a midsummer sun on the brow of a serf."

Gord gestured around, taking in the whole sweeping harshness of the fell wild. "From this barren we will bring an escort of creatures which the great amongst demonkind hold deadly and fierce. So many will we bend to our will that the loss of a few from combats in the jungles of Mezzafgraduun, and from whatever heat and pestilences will be there as well, will not detract from the spectacle of our appearance before the capitol of the ebon monarch." He paused, looking at his old comrade first, then at Leda.

"Why do you look at me so?" she asked.

"To gain your confidence — only I keep forgetting just how breathtakingly lovely you are, so my eyes lingered overlong."

Drow elves are of black complexion, a hue as glossy and ebon as alabaster is shining white. At his words Leda flushed, and her ebon cheeks were brightened as if suddenly highlighted by fiery opalescence. "Stop that! You make me feel as if I am a giddy child, and in this place you need a far different sort of companion."

"Do stop the billing and cooing, you two. If this craze-brained scheme is to work, we must get to it — and mind our asses in the process! See — there crouches something now, come to devour us all as you flirt!"

* * *

The particular horror the bard had pointed to fell to a saurian behemoth in a duel of mutual destruction immediately after the strange procession entered the ringing rain forest of Mezzafgraduun proper. It was fortunate for the three that all of the demonbrutes they had by now subdued and forced to form their train were swift, for the great stratum was immense in its dimensions. At the astounding rate of fifty leagues per day the three crossed forest and swamp, and still it took them a sennight to pass from there to the sooty-grassed savanna beyond.

It was fortunate as well that they had little need for rest, let alone actual sleep. Some of the things in tow were as cunning as they were ravenous and deadly. Two demon-brutes were executed in turn for their insistent attempts to savage and devour the humans. Three of the monsters succumbed in the sweltering heat of the grassland; another was killed in a fight with a pack of myriapod carnivores with shovel-toothed mouths set in wolverinelike heads. Thus, by sheer chance, they passed through the thousand miles of jungles and arrived upon the central plateau of the demonking with exactly a dozen of the huge things still alive and full of ferocity.

The plateau was populated by many demons. As soon as the humans and their caravan of horrors left the obscuring foliage, word flashed through the place. When they had come within a hundred miles of Graz'zt's own citadel, the three were met by an army of demons, the ebon demonking himself at their head.

Graz'zt, just as all other mighty ones of the netherspheres, was cognizant of the humans' intrusion, of Infestix's fate, and of the transfer of the Theorpart the daemon had held to the hands of another. Again as with all others, though, the great Graz'zt had been unable to determine exactly what was occurring, where the Theorpart was located, and why things transpired as they did.

The defeat of Infestix had resulted in the hurried departure of Demogorgon with his hordes. That had been a boon, no doubt. Certain minor nobles had again sided with him, and thus Graz'zt found the ranks of his defending armies replenished and almost solid again. Then again, Vuron's return, with Nergel and Palvlag and the remnants of their force, gave the demonking both added power and a reserve. Scouts and mobile companies only were needed to cover the borders of his empire away from the lines where Iuz and the allied demon lords attacked. Graz'zt was fighting a one-front war again.

He had dismissed Vastyi the Toadmaster to return to Oerth and harry the realm of Iuz there. Kostchichie and his battalions of demon-ogres and demon-giants now commanded the left front, Yeenoghu the right, and Vuron the central force — that last despite the albino's disgrace at having lost the Eye of Deception.

Oh, yes! Graz'zt knew full well the treachery of the drow Eclavdra — no, her name was Leda! He had forced the truth out of Vuron. It had been a near thing for the albino. Graz'zt had considered executing his steward, and in fact imprisonment and torture had been commenced when the shift in power sent tremors through the Abyss as would an earthquake. The force at Graz'zt's disposal had been cut by almost a third, but the power of his foes had been reduced by half. On a strict reckoning of arcane energies, the demonking now had parity with the attackers, although the innate powers of his foes, and their numbers in massed soldiers, still heavily favored them.

"What would you have me do with you, faithless dog?" he had demanded of the battered Vuron.

"Free me to serve you, my King," the stick-thin albino had rasped. "Even thus, Lord, I sense that there is new hope arising for you. The . . . the . . . object I allowed to be stolen from you is not in the hands of an antagonist!"

"No, you pale fool? It now rests in Elazalag's possession on iyondagur!" Graz'zt paused and watched Vuron as he informed the demonlord of that. He and the ruler of the sundered nine clans of the Abat-dolor were bitter enemies. "What would you suggest I do about that?"

Vuron hesitated only for the space of a heartbeat or two, then spoke through his dry and half-crushed throat. "Make peace with Princess Elazalag, my King. Offer to reunite all the lands of your race, tell her you wish her to rule beside you as queen. Promise anything, do anything. She will bring not only the return of your object of power. Lord — Elazalag will come with her wild warbands of Abat-dolor warriors, the hippokeres squadrons. With such force at your disposal, I can — you can — stop your enemies in their tracks, even launch a counterstroke into the marches of Shubgottla____ "

He ceased speaking, for the dark demon was laughing. "Ah! Wouldn't that petal-skinned Baphomet snort and bellow in rage and fear at the devastation of his own lands?" Graz'zt said with a hearty voice. "You never cease to amaze me, Vuron. You are made of stuff not found elsewhere in demonium, I think Even while in extremis, you plan and advise as if seated at my right hand on a padded chair of honor. You counsel reconciliation with she who is your worst enemy!"

"That is so, my Liege."

"Free him!" Graz'zt commanded. The skuda guardian nearby moved on scorpion legs to obey, and in a minute the albino stood on his feet again, reeling but alive. "I have not fully exacted punishment for your failure yet Steward," the demonking said stonily. "You are too useful for me to kill just now, however. You will return to the front, assume command of the center, and defend my realm with your life."

"Yes, King Graz'zt," Vuron croaked with as much vitality as he could muster.

"And I will take your suggestions too respecting Elazalag. If they prove sound, then she and my Eye will soon be here. I will thank you then, but she might well demand your head as her price for coming."

"So be it. I will serve as you command."

* * *

Now the albino worked at the defense, his personal emissaries called upon the court of iyondagur, and Graz'zt stood facing the human niggling who had dared to enter the Abyss and steal a Theorpart. With the demonking were his best and most efficient regiments. Ten thousand strong, the guard, with twice that number just out of sight to either hand, marching at quick-step to encircle the brash interlopers. Graz'zt himself held Unbinder.

That figured out to ten thousand soldiers to handle the dozen brutes in the tram, and ten thousand each for the troubador with his deadly kanteel and the drow who carried a strangely drained Initiator. Graz'zt and Unbinder would manage the little man and his sword. That made the ebon-hued demon feel energized. The Theorpart to counter the magics of the human, his own inky blade to kiss the one wielded by this so-called champion. Doomscreamer was twice the length and ten times the weight of the puny blade the little fellow bore so jauntily.