In a moment the young champion of Balance was again standing, and then he had his feet off the stone table and upon the line. "Ill walk," he said cheerfully. "The rest of you can swing across like apes!" He laughed and walked boldly along the horsehair strand as if it were a broad pathway. The rope barely sagged, and Gord had no difficulty in attaining the far point. There he paused as his toe encountered the crystalline finger, and with his hands he explored the area before stepping onto it. "It is smooth and slick, just as you thought, Gellor. Come ahead, now, and I'll assist arrivals," Gord called, moving carefully onto the rectangular surface that was about the size of a monk's cot.
Gellor assisted first Chert, then the plump druid to a position where each could swing out and move hand-over-hand the ten feet that separated the two places. Despite the dangers of the bottomless void and the slippery landing spot, both adventurers managed the challenge quickly and without mishap. Gellor then crossed, and when Chert felt his hand the barbarian pulled him up as an adult lifts an infant, just as he had assisted Greenleaf. Gord spoke to the rope again, and soon the whole length of it was tightly coiled and hidden within his broad belt once more. The four then turned slowly, guided by the bard, wondering what would be next.... And suddenly they could see again!
The instant return of sight made them all dizzy, even Gellor, for the clash of normal vision and enchanted seeing through his gem eye was disconcerting. The four reeled but managed to maintain their footing. Ahead was nothing more than what appeared to be another ordinary, if magically suspended, stairstep spiraling upward. "No hesitation — onward!" Gord said, and took the next stride quickly with the others Just behind.
Within the space of a couple of steps, no longer were they treading on a stone stair slab. The quartet was in the midst of a dense, Junglelike thicket. They stood in a tiny clearing amid a tangle of thorns, briars, knife-edged vines, nail-grass, and spike-bushes. Everywhere were needles, hooks, barbs, and razor-sharp edges. "Perhaps this is an illusion," Chert said hopefully. The vegetation moved, and as it did so metalllc glitterings reflected from thorns and leaves.
"No illusion," Greenleaf said with assurance. "I hate to contradict you, hillman, but this is actual foliage, growth both evil and filled with sorcerous vitality. Now, though, I just might be of some real use!" With that, the druid began his spellworking, calling upon nature and the elements, living things and their departed essences, too, in the process. Grudgingly, and with sinister rustlings and a malign susurration making a constant undertone, creepers crept back, vines untangled and withdrew, grass parted, branches bent.
A narrow, serpentlne path formed. "Move along quickly!" Curley said. "I'm not convinced I can hold the way open for long." The strain in his voice was sufficient impetus to cause them to do as he said. Neither the finest enchanted armor nor the most puissant of magical protections could keep anyone safe from the hundreds of sharp and piercing things here. Two twists, ten long strides, and they came to a flat-topped boulder up thrust from the prickling growth that hedged them in.
"Link arms, comrades." Gord said. "Who knows what will befall us next?"
As they climbed atop the boulder, they saw before them a world of old red, a rust-hued plane of metal with no beginning and no end. Hung from the lowering sky of vivid maroon were monstrous iron bells, great cylinders of stained metal suspended no more than a dozen yards above their heads. Almost immediately the bells began to sway in different directions. Although they were hung on nothingness, although there were no ropes to control their movements, the rusted bells swung slowly but in ever-broadening arcs.
"Run like hellbats!" Chert shouted. "Those gods-damned clappers will soon set up such a din as to deafen us — drive us into madness!" The barbarian was right. He had also seen something that none of his friends had noticed. Away in the distance was a bell of more titanic proportions than the rest, and its metal was of greenish color, the verdigris typical of corroded bronze. "There!" was all he said, and he pointed as he shouted it. Then Chert sprang ahead and ran.
Quick as they were to pound along after him, Gord. Gellor, and Curley were immediately a dozen strides behind. The bells began to sound at that instant. Like massive iron maces, their clappers worked, moving in a motion opposite the swaying of the monstrous cylinders that contained them. The world seemed to shake and reverberate as the titanic throats of rusted metal sent forth their bellowing sounds.
"Badongggg, balonggg, kahronggg!" Even these initial noises, ringing not full-toned from a forceful striking of clapper on bell, were sufficient to shake the adventurers deep in their chests and make their heads swim. The resonance was dreadful, the noise growing. There was no hope of speech, no means to communicate unless they stopped to signal to each other. Stopping would mean losing time, and that could prove fatal if they were thereby exposed to the reverberations for too long.
"GAHDONGG! BRRONGG! DOOONGG!!" The bells were now tilting wildly, the strikers hammering the rusted metal with force sufficient to crush anything except metal like themselves as they hit. The noise was so terrific as to nearly drive the four down to their knees. Gord could have sprinted past, leaving his slower comrades behind. Instead, he kept pace with Greenleaf, helping the rotund half-elf along as they ran.
The triple-sized bronze bell was now only a few yards away, and Chert was visible standing under it. Gord was seeing double, his head ached, and his knees were weak. He wanted to stop and scream over and over, keeping time with the iron tolling of the maddening things that sounded overhead. But he fought off the urge, gritted his teeth, and pulled Curley Greenleaf along faster.
Suddenly they were in an island of silence, of bliss. Chert's mouth was moving, but no sounds were coming out. Gord opened his own mouth to tell the big hillman so; then he realized that he could barely hear himself speak, even though the booming clangor of the monstrous bells wasn't penetrating this space under the bronze one.
Directly under the center of the green-hued cylinder was a platform suspended in air — apparently another of the steps that they had to ascend. Gellor moved toward it, but Gord pulled the troubador back. "Wait," he signaled, and did the same twice more to show both Chert and the druid that it applied to them as well. Then the young adventurer pointed to his ears, allowed his tongue to droop out of his mouth in a symbol of fatigue, and visibly relaxed, slump-shouldered. With that, he sat down beneath the bronze bell, took out his skin of wine, and grabbed meat, cheese and biscuits from his pouch. Nodding and looking relieved, the other three seated themselves as well. They ate and then stretched out and rested briefly.
Gord came out of a doze. His eyes fell upon the cloud of bells beyond. They were motionless. The ringing has stopped," he said absently aloud.
"So it has," Curley said in reply. Then he stretched and tried to make himself a little more comfortable on the iron floor.
"I heard you speak!" The exclamation was from Chert.
The deafness was only temporary, then, as I thought," the one-eyed bard observed softly. Time to press on again, Gord?"
"Yes. Who can tell how long we've been here? Not long, I think, but..."
The four managed to step in unison onto the next stair. A sea of roaring flame shot up around them. Again it was the druid who solved the dilemma. It took but a brief time for Greenleaf to summon forth a monumentally great fire elemental from the inferno around them. Such a creature as that was quite usual for the druid, although in all of his scores of years Curley had never seen one so large as that which appeared at his conjuration now. The druid and the elemental exchanged pleasantries. Then Curley asked, "Can you transport us through this fiery place?"
"No!" came the crackling basso of the fire elemental's reply. That would have been the end of it, except for the special rapport that existed between the nature priest and the denizens of the elemental spheres. "Yet you can pass by yourselves safely enough, druid."
"How so?" Greenleaf asked, peering at the leaping tongues of fire.
"I will make a cool path," the elemental responded. "Where would you go?"
There!" said Gord, gesturing toward a spot where pale smoke streamed upward. It was the only place of its kind to be seen in the inferno. That is the place we must attain!"
Curley nodded and looked at the elemental. The towering creature said and did nothing. "Oh, yes, of course, I was the one who summoned you, wasn't I?" the druid asked rhetorically. He was truly flustered by the immensity of the being of fire. "We would pass from here to the smoke yonder, majestic one," Greenleaf said loudly to the elemental. "Please assist me!"
"It is done!" the fire elemental boomed. Then it turned and swept away toward the column of smoke. Behind it was a path of cinders, for where it went the creature's raging heat and flame consumed the very fires that surrounded it.
"Not too close, now," Curley warned as he stepped off the safety of the rectangle they had been upon and followed the elemental. He hunched and hurried, for searing curtains of flame were on either hand and the cinders beneath were very hot. The others followed with alacrity, and although they sweated and felt flushed, they came to no harm. The elemental ahead circled the place where the smoke arose, waved a cherry-red, flame-tongued member, and then sank into nothingness again amid the flames. Behind them the fires were creeping onto the pathway, so the four sprinted to where the column of gray smoke shot upward. There was no fire generating it, so they took their chances and plunged into the stuff.
Their coughing became choking and painful rasping almost at once. Passing from the inferno of flame, the four had entered a place of insubstantial vapors and rolling fogs. Sickly pastel hues of mist and cloud; yellow, green, brownish, hideous blue. "Gas!" Gellor managed to cough the warning. "Poison!"
It was again the druid who saved them. With a few quick passes and a litany of chanting, Greenleaf managed to complete a spell despite the lung-wracking, skin-burning vapors that crawled and swirled around the four. In the moment of completion, a curtain of flames shot up. Its hot flames encircled them, burning away the toxic clouds near, creating a growing updraft that cleared the area it inscribed. "Which direction shall I move it?" Curley asked as the wall of glowing fire did its work and normal speech was again possible.
Gord signaled to Chert and, with a spring, landed atop the great shoulders of the tall hillman. Chert then held his hands so Gord could place the sole of each boot in one of his large palms. Without seeming effort. Chert raised his arms to extend fully above his head. The young thief and gymnast now balanced with his head no less than thirteen feet above the ground Chert stood on. "I see pure white there," Gord called, pointing to indicate the direction desired. "All other places are naught but colored vapors of ghastly hues. I think the white is our egress!"
Gellor marked the direction, then Gord was down and likewise pointing.
The druid began to move, causing the fiery curtain that surrounded them to progress with him. It was slow traveling, for the four had to carefully maintain the line that would take them to the small place where they could escape the terrible poisons of this trap. By staying in line, one as near the rear, two in the middle, and one as far ahead as the heat of the fire allowed, the distance was covered. The sheet of flames washed over another of the big rectangles that were the manifestations of the steps leading to the suspended platform that was the lair of their enemy. Gravestone.
There," said Gellor, who was then in the lead. "On to the next welcome!"
"How many more, I wonder?" Greenleaf grumbled as he jumped onto the surface where his companions were standing. The poison gases and the dancing wall of fire vanished at that instant.
The biting wind of this next environment nearly knocked them off their feet. The ground was solid ice. Tiny particles of the frozen stuff filled the air as well. The howling wind whipped them laterally across the frozen, limitless expanse of the place. The ice crystals stung where they touched flesh, imbedded themselves in any fold or crevice where the wind drove them. Soon the four adventurers would be encased in the stuff, icemen frozen into cold death. The temperature was so low that it hurt them to open their eyes. Here was a trap most cunning and deadly. They had to move to stay warm, to locate the step that was their only escape from icy death. Yet the sheet ice made movement slow and perilous, the jagged hunks of upthrust ice turning the place into a maze.
Shivering from cold, their teeth chattering, they searched with their aching eyes, looking in ever-expanding circles for some clue to the portal of escape. "Shall I use more of my power to conjure fire?" Curley Greenleaf chattered. "We could warm ourselves a bit, then spread out to search for the hidden stairstep."
Chert instantly assented to the suggestion, and Gellor was uncertain, but Gord vetoed it. "Only as a last resort should more of your spells be used, Curley. We won't separate in any event! We must stay within sight of one another, and we should be moving now, too." The words were reasonable, Gord's assessment accurate and requiring no further explanation. His comrades nodded, and the four returned to scanning, peering.
"Any clue?" Gord shouted over the shrieking gale.
That question drew only negative responses — and then another shout blared forth: Gellor had slipped and fallen on the iron-hard ice. Curley thought the bard's cry was one of pain and distress, and in a flash the druid was hastening to the fellow's side by making skating movements with his frozen-stiff boots, using the staff's spearhead to balance and pole In the process. "How badly are you hurt?" he called.
"Hurt? Hurt?" The bard was actually laughing, so hard that tears were forming... and freezing to his cheeks! "It is ironic!" Gellor bellowed over the wind. "Come here! Look!" He pointed to a silver-white sheathed fang of old, black ice that was nearby.