As he continued to dwell on what he did not know, was not sure of, Gravestone thought again of the black sword — the blade of evil that he had appropriated so effortlessly from the foolish sailors. He had not desired the sword for his own use, but had reasoned that if he possessed it, then it could not be used against him or his minions. He did not consider it an especially powerful weapon, but keeping it out of play would be one more bit of insurance that his master plan would succeed.
But then, mysteriously, the blade had disappeared from the place in his quarters where he had secreted it. He had cursed his error in not hiding it more carefully, but his anger at the loss was overridden by bewilderment and uncertainty. If the sword was so coveted, then why was it left unguarded aboard an ordinary sailing ship? How could it have been stolen from him without his knowledge that the act was taking place? Why could he not detect its whereabouts now, as he had been able to do prior to claiming it the first time? Doubt and foreboding nagged at him, even as he told himself that the weapon was not worth worrying about. That last observation was almost certainly true, but Gravestone was never comfortable when there was something he was not sure about.
So too was he unsure of some of his henchmen. Sigildark was a potent enough wizard, but a fool is always a fool. The haughty cleric Staphloccus, drawn from Nerull's own precincts here in Greyhawk, was likewise a wretched instrument. In a showdown, Gravestone had no doubt that the priest would sell his master for his own life... given the opportunity. That, the lean man thought darkly, would not be an option given to the cleric any more than to Sigildark — because behind them and the others in the front lines he would station Pazuzeus and Shabriri.
Yes... those two were more trustworthy, even if they were more powerful than his human assistants. They would serve well as a means of keeping Sigildark and Staphloccus from retreating or turning coat, and would be a dependable second line of defense if needed. Only at the actual moment of confrontation, however, would he bring up his lieutenants to buttress the ranks. And after the battle, the humans would have to be expunged. No trace of them could remain anywhere in the multiverse, for they would otherwise try to avenge themselves against Gravestone for his treachery.
One day soon the Great Evil would know what Gravestone had done, of course, and no doubt would approve. What Gravestone did, how he worked, and those who were eliminated in the process were matters of no real import, merely stepping stones. Let the whole of the surviving worlds bow to dark Tharizdun! Honor also to his right hand, Gravestone, binder of demons, successor to Infestix as Emperor of the Nether Realms, Loyal Servant of the Evernlghted....
Those thoughts made him smile, a sly and wicked leer of triumph. It was easy for Gravestone to boost his confidence, assuage his doubts. All he had to do, as he did now, was think of the glorious future in store and how the present situation would lead inexorably to that end. Chaos reigned totally in the Abyss, and the united forces of the Nine Hells and the pits of Hades roamed nearly at will elsewhere. Whatever the green-hued forces of Balance sent to threaten his own position could be nothing compared to those Gravestone had already vanquished, those denizens of the vilest depths he had bound into thralldom. Every space on the tableau was guarded, each opening or escape route covered.
"Master," a voice said hesitantly, breaking the priest-wizard's reverie. "Master, a new group of applicants awaits your pleasure." The announcement came from a tiny daemon in the form of a cockroach, one of dozens of inobtrusive sentinels Gravestone used to patrol the quarters he kept within the city.
Scowling at the interruption. Gravestone sent forth a wave of energy. It washed out and down from Gravestone's magical sanctuary to spread itself imperceptibly over the anteroom in his building in Grey-hawk, where those answering his call for mercenary service were kept waiting. This was a group of six, a mixed lot. He read the general mood of the group as hatefulness verging on chaos. They were cowardly and unprincipled, but could be made to serve well. Men of few resources; a vague, diffused aura of magic
— perhaps a weak spell-binder among them, plus a few ill-enchanted items. Minds of shallow sort wondering what pay and how little risk. Typical dregs....
"I have no need to interview that lot," Gravestone snapped at the nervous little daemon that had interrupted him. "Go to Sigildark. Have him send Felgosh, Staphloccus, and Wilorne ahead to put our guests at ease. Then Sigildark himself should enter and enspell the group into reliable service."
"Yes, master," the nether-thing murmured, hastily withdrawing from the priest-wizard's sanctuary against material threat. Once beyond the null-place, it giggled and ground its mandibles together. "Oh, yes
— yes, indeed,
master.
I will be happy to inform the wise and potent Sigildark of your wishes,
master."
It ceased its capering then and appeared in the heavily guarded chamber of the mage to whom it had been sent.
The daemon was sure that soon it would be free, for it had read in the six newcomers a demoniacal intent, it was sure. It seemed that some dweomer prevented detection of their powers by the usual means, but this did not stop Ilenz the daemon-guard from learning about them. The creature, upon intercepting the group, had skittered up one of the human's legs and used its cockroach's feelers to touch the weapon hanging from the man's belt. Actually, its extremities contacted only the scabbard — but that alone was sufficient to blast the little daemon into senselessness for a short time. It fell, stunned, and only a crack in the flags prevented it from being crushed by a heel.
The human's blade was thick with the greatest demon-force Ilenz had ever encountered. The daemon knew that Gravestone's time had come. If evil displaced evil, Ilenz cared not. He would be free.
* * *
The moment that Sigildark stepped into the chamber where the group stood, he knew that there was trouble afoot. Fool or no, the mage sensed the wrong-ness instantly. As quick as the six were, Sigildark was quicker. He spoke a single syllable and in the space of a rapid heartbeat had stepped from one dimension, through another, and was elsewhere. Unfortunately for the pale-eyed mage, his dweomercraefting left a faint tracery behind.
"Enemies!" The warning cry came from one of the sell-swords who guarded the thick-walled old building that was Gravestone's headquarters. He had been a couple of steps behind Sigildark when the mage entered the anteroom. He didn't know why the spellbinder suddenly disappeared, but whatever the reason it probably did not bode well — and the strangers must be responsible. As the man shouted to alert his fellow guards, he pulled a small axe out of his belt and hurled it. That was his second mistake. If he had simply slipped back outside the room when Sigildark used his magic to flee, the man would have survived.
Chert darted toward the hatchet as it flew toward Timmil's head and plucked it from the air. In the blink of an eye it was returning whence it had come, and the mercenary warrior who had hurled it took its wide blade full in the chest. Leather parted, chain-mail links were severed or forced apart by the terrible strength of the hillman's throwing arm. Even as the wounded man gasped and staggered back. Chert had taken up Brool, and the massive blade quickly finished the work of its little counterpart. Reinforcements arrived in time to see the fellow's headless body topple in their path.
Timmil, busy casting a divination to determine where the mage had gone, hardly noticed that sequence of events. Next to him Allton was likewise engaged in tracing the magic lingering in the room and seeing if he could identify it and where it might lead; thus, the four associates of the wizard and cleric faced Gravestone's household guards and the other three foes already present without the aid of spells for the time being. Discounting the dead man, nineteen other warriors were now quartered in the complex. Only four others were armed and on duty this morning, however, and these were the audience for the death scene of the first casualty of the melee.
Being hard-bitten men, these four went into the antechamber with ready blades. The men were confident of their own ability and the power of the three other agents of the tall, thin priest-wizard who were in the room with the half-dozen intruders. The mercenary soldiers considered the enemy as good as dead.
Considering their three fellow hirelings, it was understandable that the sell-swords felt confident. Bastro Felgosh was a mage of some power, able to wield magics of considerable strength, to summon elementals and conjure forth emanations of death to fell any who dared to oppose him. With Felgosh was the cleric of Nerull who called himself Staphloccus. Not quite as fell a spell-worker as the mage, the cleric was nevertheless able to paralyze with a word, or rot with a touch, those who angered him or threatened his master. Last, although by no measure the least, of the trio was Wilorne the assassin, called "Snapspine" or "Backbreaker" by the few close associates who knew and feared the ruthlessness of that murderer.
Felgosh, furious that he had not detected the nature of the six men before Sigildark had — and certainly fearing the consequences of that one's anger when he returned — had immediately begun calling forth his killing magic when the warning was signaled. Gellor, his eyepatch raised to expose the glittering ocular gem that empowered him with enchanted sight, opposed the dweomercraefter who was bent on bringing magical death to the six.
As if guided by some unseen divinity, Curley Greenleaf had moved so that he stood directly before Staphloccus. The dark priest raised up his vile symbol of death, that disgusting thing sacred to Nerull, and worked to lay low the druid before him. A word to fix the baldheaded fool immobile, Staphloccus thought, and then...
Chert, his mighty battleaxe singing as if it was a swarm of angry bees, waded into the four warriors who had rushed to attack. They cleared the headless corpse that was in their path and then came on to sink their swords into the lone man who dared stand in their way. He was a near-giant, but there were four sharp blades to make him fall hard.
When the commotion began, Wilorne immediately dived under a long table that Gordoned off the left quarter of the place. Then he rolled and came up on the flank of one of the intruders. Wilorne had meant to get at the spell-caster there, but a small, quick fellow got between him and his intended victim first. Grinning humorlessly, showing a pair of canines he was proud of, the assassin attacked the small one with precise strokes calculated to slay with utmost efficiency. His hook swung out on its thin chain. It would imbed itself in flesh and wound it, or merely entangle in a garment. No matter; then the strength that had earned him his epithets would be used to Jerk his adversary down, to him, or off balance at worst. Wilorne's narrow, small sword was darting into play to follow up whichever of the three possibilities eventuated.
The troubador began to shout out a lusty battle song as he waded into confrontation with the bulging-eyed dweomercraefler. Felgosh, accomplished in hand-to-hand combat such as this, was disconcerted not at all. Neither the chanted song nor the long sword that the strange opponent bore seemed threatening. Felgosh wore a magically protected garment, a robe that made him seem to be in one place when he was actually a cubit behind that place. Furthermore, the spell-binder had an enchanted collar stitched to that garment by daemon talons. The cloth seemed supple but was as hard as iron when touched by enemy attack. Last, Felgosh held in his left hand a fiend-gifted blade, a thick-bladed knife with the name "Agonizer" worked in nether-runes on the cleaverlike shank. A mere cut was sufficient to begin sending an adversary into paroxysms of pain as the evil power of the weapon sent fiery agony through the bloodstream of the wounded victim.
"Devil-serving varlet, you'll bleed scarlet!
"Call for netherforce, ride upon demon-horse, soon you'll be wailing!
"Now you feel sharp, clean steel!
"Back you'll reel!
"Down you'll kneel!
"Searching for your head, but it's gone sailing!"
That near-doggerel that Gellor voiced was a simple rhyming chant he had made up long ago to use as a war song as he fought in the thick of melee. At each point of pause in the verse he struck, the tempo giving him a rhythm for his movements and blows. Because he sung it with vigor and loud voice, it likewise lent power to those of his comrades also engaged in combat nearby.
The one-eyed troubador was only just beginning, however, and he knew that he had to be quick with the work before him. The mage with the egglike eyeballs who opposed him was near to completing a black spell that would bring terrible harm to all of them. This dweomer was from the deepest pits of the lower spheres, a magic that would draw out the very life forces of all six of them, even if it was not strong enough to slay anyone outright.
"... varlet!" Gellor shouted, and his longsword shot out. Felgosh didn't even bother to make a move to avoid the thrust, nor did the mage attempt to parry the attack with his heavy knife. He knew that he would remain beyond the length of the steel brand, thanks to the magic of his garment. Before the foe could make a next stroke, his summoning of energy would be finished, and his enemy would be gasping and howling as the negative power sucked life from his body....
"Eeeyaack!" Felgosh's scream of pain ended the casting short of its completion. Gellor had followed through with his thrust, ending it not in front of the mage but at his actual location.
I see you true, dogturd, Gellor thought even as he spat out the word "scarlet!" and freed the sword's point from the mage's thigh. At "netherforce" he parried a frantic slash from the spell-binder's knife and then slashed the fellow's chest in time to "demon-horse," but that attack only cut cloth, for the enchantment of the robe saved the mage from worse. Felgosh's eyes widened slightly, and he allowed himself a thin smile of satisfaction. The other man's point might be able to penetrate his enchanted robes, but he was still protected against slashing cuts; all he had to do was avoid any more thrusts until he could muster up another killing spell....