"That is also a lie, Tharizdun. I mean to stay here, and I will best you at whatever you attempt."
"No you won't, no you won't, no you won't!" The lad stamped his feet and tears sprang to his eyes as he threw the tantrum. "I'll hold my breath and explode!" The boy proceeded to do that, turning red as he puffed out his cheeks.
Leda was stunned. "This is the dreaded master of darkness?"
"He very nearly defeated Gord at that chess game," Gellor cautioned.
"So he is a genius at gaming, but that doesn't make him—"
"Please say no more, Leda, Gellor. I would send you out of this place, but I need your strength, so stay here but be silent. Keep the rings on too, for I now understand what they are and do."
Tharizdun let the air out of his cheeks with a razzing sound. "Is that so? I don't think you know half as much as you think you do, fatherless whelp of a tomcat!" The boyish sparkle in Tharizdun's eyes was now a glow of deep malice that any demon would be proud of.
"I keep my own counsel, little toad," Gord countered. "What you think and what I understand might well be at variance. Are there more games you would play at?"
"How about these?" Tharizdun shouted, and as he spoke he flung a handful of darts at Gord's face, springing to his feet as he did so.
Gord's suspicion and quick reflexes saved him. The darts were acid-filled and poison-tipped both. Blind or kill, a single one could probably do either or both. He ducked aside, and all six missed their mark Tharizdun was up and away during the distraction, however. Gellor saw him heading for the ladder and started to intervene. "Don't move!" Gord yelled. "Let him go!"
Tharizdun swarmed up the ladder, the trap door opening automatically at his approach, banging shut as his heels disappeared. "The dark disc of stone above houses his mature form," Gord informed the two who stood wondering. "Back down to the lower portion of this place, quickly!"
"Why couldn't we see his guise? Note his malice?"
"Neither you, Leda nor you, old friend, need be ashamed. His power is so immense that no normal dweomer can pierce any veil he chooses to place to hide his workings. Still, he is not omnipotent, and you two have means to counter his evil, just as the sword and ring I wear give me power to resist."
"What hope have we?" the troubador asked.
"You both have rings. The three were forged in the empyreal realms, and each bound a portion of Tharizdun's evil force into the Theorparts. The power of his nature is loosed now, but the Good which fought against it remains in our three rings." By then the three had come to the lower of the adamantitelined rooms that had been the monster's prison for so long.
"He nearly gulled me," Gellor said sadly.
"I too," Leda told the bard. "Feel not a simpleton."
"Should we go out and shut him fast again?"
"Make for the outside," Gord said. "There is no longer any means of holding Tharizdun anywhere, but I shall stand where this door once locked him in. I'll bar his passage until you two are free of his fortress."
With great reluctance, Leda and Gellor complied. In a minute they were out of sight, heading to the base of the great keep and on beyond the confines of the fortress. Gord remained motionless, waiting. Soon there was a low moaning sound that seemed to come from the very stones of the castle, and the air grew rank and heavy. Then a flush suffused the blocks of marble and pale limestone. Red streamed forth from the walls, running from high on the walls downward, dripping from ceiling overhead to spot and pool the floor. Soon the whole of the place was milky white no longer but an ugly, red-violet that darkened and grew muddy as the process continued.
With the change of hue there came the sound of a heavy tread, and Gord knew that Tharizdun himself approached for confrontation.
Chapter 17
AT LAST! How many tens of thousands of centuries had he been kept in bondage? Many. Far, far too many! While his true self had been bound in slumber, his mind drugged and powerless through the force of arcane dweomers, all that he had worked for and accomplished had been undone!
No. That wasn't exact. His puling enemies had been inept. The Lords of Light had attempted to destroy his work, but they had merely succeeded in making Evil factious — as weak as they were, those noble masters of Weal. Tharizdun smiled a smile of pure malice. Weaklings of any sort would be expunged from the cosmos soon.
The child-Tharizdun stood expectantly before him now. The boy was a creation of the Lords of Light, a place to house that part of himself that they could not submerge in their magical toils.
"Father!" the boy-Tharizdun shouted. "They escape, they escape!" he cried, fairly dancing in his excitement and fury. "Those three wear the rings!"
The true Master of Malevolence was sitting bolt upright in the stony cavity that had been his crypt for the centuries. Tharizdun was not yet fully himself.
There was a weakness evident inside, and only one answer at hand.
"Come here, my child," he said to boy. The youthful little one obeyed reluctantly, his face still a twisted mask of impotent fury. "Show me how to stop them," he commanded. That order was ignored, and a heartbeat later Tharizdun seized the child and dragged him into the sarcophagus.
"You are unnatural," the Darkest of Abominations growled as the boy started to resist. "No! I am Tharizdun! Let me—" he screamed, seeing the red lust and awful fate that the being purposed for him. His last sentence was cut short by the teeth of his unnatural sire. Long, vampiric fangs closed on the jugular of the kicking child.
"
Ahhh. That is better
," Tharizdun said with deep satisfaction as he drained the life from what had been his only consciousness for eons. Tossing aside the limp and lifeless body, Tharizdun sprang from the black crypt as lightly as a dancer. "
You dared to presume
!" the terrible being said, looking down at the pale and bloodless form that was a replica of himself — or would have been, had Tharizdun ever been a child. "
Just because you housed a modicum of me, little jackal, that is not the same as being me! But you still have a use, for I am not yet fully satisfied
."
Then the ghastly thing grabbed up the corpse and proceeded to enjoy a cannibal feast. Tharizdun's mouth grew broad, jaws lengthened, and teeth grew to suit his desire. With snarl and slobber, he dined on flesh and bone. In but a few minutes nothing but the boy's skull remained.
Then the newly arisen emperor of the malign closed his burning eyes, seeking the ones who had freed him at last. There was no gratitude. In fact, Tharizdun would have felt none had the three been dedicated servants of his cause. All too well did Tharizdun know the prophecy of one who might resist his supreme reign over the cosmos, and just as well did the Master of Evil know that the man with gray eyes was that adversary.
"
I see you
," Tharizdun said. In his mind were pictures of the whole of the castle, the land around, even more beyond. He concentrated only on the immediate surroundings, though, for he had first to eliminate all traces of the champion and the heroes who dared accompany him. Only then would it be time to bring to bear his might and subjugate all.
"
I see you
!" and as the thought arose in Tharizdun's brain it was transmitted to the minds of the three rash humans below. "
You two will stay there at the portal
," the archfiend communicated in his chilling thought, "
and as soon as your little would-be champion has been dealt with I will come for you
." The message was meant to dishearten, frighten, and disturb his foes. Tharizdun could have attempted to accomplish all through sheer mental assaults alone, but there was something compelling him to seek out the one named Gord and master him.
"You can never rule the multiverse," came the sharp words, "Tharizdun! Not until you can best me!"
With a snap that was clear to his antagonist, Tharizdun shut his mind. The force of the challenge was much greater than the dark being had imagined it could be. The opponent was a worthy one. That was not at all to Tharizdun's liking. How could one small half-human be more powerful than any of the deities he had faced and defeated long ago? Then only a great coalition of his enemies had been successful in overthrowing Tharizdun.
"
I do not underestimate the adversary
," he said aloud softly. Arrogance and disdain were natural to the ultimate Evildoer, but now he would temper his pride and self-assurance. Testing the foe came first, discovery of patterns, weaknesses, and strengths too. Afterward, Tharizdun would strike, crush, and annihilate! He turned and stepped down, landing on the floor of the lower chamber with a dull thudding noise. Striding heavily, so that each step was like the distant thunder of doom, the Master of Malevolence went down to meet his awaiting opponent Gord was surprised when he finally saw the true Tharizdun. The being appeared as would a normal man. Tharizdun was only moderately tall, perhaps six and one-half feet. Hardly the stature of a colossal demon or devil! He was fair-complected, goldenhaired, almost beautiful in a godlike way. The boy had indeed been a true reflection of the mature evil.
"Your sudden maturation is noteworthy," Gord said easily to Tharizdun as the being came closer. Gord would dispel any notion of being made uneasy by the deliberately dread-laden tread used in coming to where Gord waited. "Years of growth in but minutes!"
Tharizdun laughed. It was so purely evil a sound that it made horripilations on the scalps of those who heard it. The dark fiend regretted that he was unable to observe its effect properly, for the small man was coifed and helmeted, sword drawn and ready. He brought his left hand from behind his back, sending something bowling along the metal-sheathed floor toward the booted feet of the champion of Balance. "
Quite mistaken, Gord
," Tharizdun said with assurance. "
These is the proof of your error
."
The thing bounced off the metal-shod toes of his boots. Hearing Tharizdun speak his name didn't bother Gord in the least. What the dark being sent rolling across the floor was another matter. It was the boy's skull, with part of its flesh still attached, so that fair hair and torn flesh competed for attention as it tumbled, and as it came it left a goiy trail of spatters. "Gods!" the young champion expostulated. "You-"
"
I did
," Tharizdun said, punctuating the pride of acknowledgment of his foulness with laugh and phantasm. There, between him and the young man who would oppose him, the Ultlmate Netherbeing recreated exactly what he had done with the boy. "
I'll have that skull back from you
," the vile creature added, "
so as to make the merging of it complete. I thought you would find some amusement, however, in the foretaste of your own fate, the fate of your comrades too
."
The partially eaten head came wobbling around and stopped so that its empty eye sockets seemed fixed upon him. Gord was appalled, but the horror served to reinforce his determination to resist the foul archfiend to the end. "You shall not pass," Gord said with an iron-hard voice. "You are lord of nothing save this tower, maggot, unless you best me!"
"
Maggot? Very descriptive ... of yourself
!" Tharizdun said with unhurried air. "
I see you have a blade in hand which my first foes devised. how did you ever manage to reassemble it? I am amazed
," the abomination said with amusement evident in his tone. "
I quaffed its baneful dweomers and then scattered the bright, sending the sword into separate halves so that it could never again be whole
."
"What was is of no matter. It is here now, and whole, ready to send your rotten soul into an eternity from which there will be no reawakening!"
"
How very forceful! I fairly tremble at the prospect of engaging such a mighty weapon
," Tharizdun mocked, his handsome features wreathed in a vile smirk "
still, what choice have I
?"
Why, none at all when facing such a stout and puissant foe." He seemed unable to contain himself any longer. The chamber resounded to peals of his hideous loathsome laughter as Tharizdun gave vent to his derision.
Gord took the opportunity to strike, leaping in and thrusting at the being's chest, meaning to pierce Tharizdun's heart. The lunge was met in an instant by the ringing impact of a broad-headed axe. The great weapon had flashed into existence at the moment of his lunge, and Gord saw by the way Tharizdun spun the double-bitted thing that the evil being was a master with the axe. "Fast, maggot, and clever," Gord called as he withdrew quickly from the engagement. At a position Just before the entrance to Tharizdun's prison he stopped. The axe would be hampered by the lintel above the portal, by the narrowness of it too. "Come on to where I stand, then, for you must exit, mustn't you?"
It was annoying. He had thought that perhaps he could finish the contest quickly. The one whom Balance had groomed for champion was too able for such, Tharizdun reminded himself; he should have expected that. It was also irritating that the small fellow understood so well his need to get free of the metal confines of the cell. Until Tharizdun was totally free of it, able to leech strength from the spheres of Evil, it was impossible for him to bring his total powers into play. Such a one-to-one test was not at all to Tharizdun's liking. It was a demand he could not escape.
"
You seek unfair advantage
," he called to his adversary, "
But I also have a two-part weapon
!"
That was said to distract Gord for the instant necessary for Tharizdun to alter the form of his battleaxe. The thing shimmered and dIvided. From the fission came two smaller weapons, each axe bearing but a single head, with each haft appropriately shortened as well. The relatively compressed space of the doorway would pose no great problems for such tools of slaughter. Tharizdun advanced with assurance.