by Gary Gygax
"Spinning vortex now created. Barrier magics all abated." Gravestone chanted as he spread black powder before him and moved his hands Just so. A tiny whirlwind suddenly sprang up, and the sooty stuff was turned into a miniature tornado, a vortex that moved toward the unsuspecting man who was now in the act of delivering the final blow to the figure of ghastly, violet-hued force. "Here to Hades now instated, Doompit passage generated!"
The second stanza was completed. Only two to go, but the champion was staring directly at him. The demonurgist felt cold beads of sweat spring from his brow. He knew it was not from the effort of casting the dark dweomer of the spell, but from the stark terror that came directly from the blade that would soon threaten him again. The single touch of it, the slight wound Gravestone had suffered in the fleshy part of his upper arm, had sent an agonizing wrench through him. The metal of the longsword seemed to tug at his heart as it was pulled from Gravestone's flesh when the demonurgist leaped back from its touch. To die by that weapon was to die forever!
Gord saw his foe clearly as the thing of netherforce collapsed and sputtered into nothingness, dispelling the illusory Gravestone within it as it did so. The priest-wizard was intoning a spell. Although the young adventurer had no idea as to the nature of the dweomer that was being called for by the ritual, Gord understood all too well that nothing cast by Gravestone would be weak or not calculated to cause total calamity to his person or goal. Gord had to remain quick and capable so the demonurgist could be slain. Perhaps the magic was one of escape for Gravestone. Either way, it made no difference. The binding had to be interrupted, the spell's completion unattained. The tall man's mouth began to move faster, his arms and hands making passes that seemed to occur in lightninglike sequences. Gord leaped into motion himself then, dashing across the chamber.
The words the demonurgist now shouted in a rapid stream were indecipherable to Gord. He was intent only upon one thing. Blackheartseeker must strike the chanting spell-binder before that vile mouth of Gravestone's managed to utter the final syllable of his evil evocation. Only a half-dozen more steps, and the blade of his sword would be buried in the demonurgist's foul chest.
Then Gord stumbled over a small object. A crystal flask, knocked from a table in his struggle with the varihued beast of nether-force, had rolled into the young champions path. It was a thing of enchanted substance, so it hadn't broken from the fall, nor would it break beneath anything so puny as the foot of a man. It rolled under the pressure, and Gord's foot went with its roll.
Gravestone had but one more quatrain to recite and his antagonist would be consigned alive to Hades! How he would delight in seeing it, in actually traversing the planes himself in order to enjoy the sight of the one called Gord trapped and tortured for an eternity in the nether-pits! The last words were on Gravestone's lips even now, but it looked as though the lightless metal of the dreaded longsword would strike before they could speak their fulfilling sounds.
He rushed along as quickly as he dared — faster, perhaps, than any other mage could have managed. Yet the first couplet was just completed when Gord was but a handful of paces distant and coming for him like a rushing wind. At that moment Gord fell, and it was all the demonurgist could do to contain his joy, repress his wild laughter. That would have spoiled his work as surely as the thrust of the sword would have. Instead, Gravestone paused and drew a deep breath. It was a very minor interruption, one that would in no way disturb the casting. There were but two lines to recite, sixteen beats to toll in measured form. When that little was accomplished, the Doompit would seize the Champion of Balance and consume him.
The first of the dire sounds issued from Gravestone's mouth, one of sixteen needed. A deep voice sang back, two beats for his one, and at a disturbing pitch. The demonurgist turned his eyes sideways at this disturbance.
One of the small fellow's companions was at the chamber's exit. It was a man Gravestone recognized, a singer of magics, the troubador called Gellor. That too was laughable. The priest-wizard would have enjoyed a contest one on one with the stupid minstrel, but not now. He fixed his thoughts and chanted forth another pair of the sounds needed to complete his casting. Gellor countered with more lyrics of his own, louder still, and coming closer as he sang. Gravestone was uneasy, but not worried. His chief antagonist was still on hands and knees, trying to recover the sword that he needed to harm Gravestone. The demonurgist knew that he could complete the thirteen beats still remaining before Gord was up and again at his throat.
With evil delight spread upon his features, the tall demonurgist raised his arms high, booming triumphantly the completion of the line, and the five syllables flowed as a mountain freshet down its steep course. Then Gravestone commenced the completion of the binding. The sounds poured forth, but he had to slow them, to articulate each with greatest care.
The bard was now bellowing a counter-ballad to the demonurgist's rhyme, and the dweomer of that singing made it exacting work to accomplish. Now the last sounds were forming, but the priest-wizard was forced to enunciate each with excruciating slowness. To mispronounce might merely negate the power of the spell, but it could as easily open the vortex for Gravestone himself. An entrance thus before Infestix would be far from pleasant. Failure was never tolerated, of course....
It was a nightmare in a world where Gord's every motion was taken as if he were underwater. The fall was not serious, except that Blackheartseeker slipped from his hand as it occurred. Then, as if he and the weapon were opposite poles of a magnet, his hand couldn't seem to properly grip it as he tried to regain his feet and strike the demonurgist. It was a matter of trying to accomplish too many actions at once. Gord's hands were sweating, his nerves frayed, his body battered and wounded, his brain filled with desperation.
The sudden sound of Gellor's voice as it sang forth in counter to the dark spell of the priest-wizard brought Gord to his senses. Even as the troubador's singing hindered Gravestone in his incantation, the ballad forced the Champion of Balance to pause a split-second, get a firm grip on his sword hilt, then come erect and attack.
Had Gord possessed his dagger then, he would have hurled it at the demonurgist, trusting that the blade would suffice to break the binding that the demonurgist was surely about to finish. That would have been a fatal mistake, for the dweomer of that weapon was by no means potent enough for the task. Not being thus armed, though, and seeing that the distance was too great to close with a single step and long lunge, Gord decided that his only hope was the sword.
He shifted his grip on the hilt and threw the weapon as if it were a javelin. The long blade made that very difficult — the balance was all wrong — but there was little space between Gord and the chanting demonurgist. Of the incantation, but a single word remained to be uttered to create the Doompit when the edge of the lightless blade struck Gravestone.
The sword's point didn't sink into his throat, where Gord had aimed when he hurled the weapon. In fact, the sword was already turning and no longer flew true when it touched the priest-wizard. Gravestone, in completion of his spell, was just in the act of bringing both of his arms down, fingers to point at the exact place where the opening of the spell's vortex was to appear, when Blackheartseeker's edge contacted his flesh. Only a little of the flesh was touched; three fingers, to be exact. The descending fingers of Gravestone's right hand met the flying blade of the sword almost gently. The weapon fled past them, hardly checked, rang against the wall, and fell to the floor with a clang. Nearby lay the three blood-spilling fingers that had been severed very cleanly by the sword.
Gravestone's scream ended the casting with a single syllable wanting.
Gellor shouted in exultation when he saw what occurred, his ballad also interrupted by the sight of Gord's thrown sword.
Still feeling as if he were immersed in a great depth of water. Gord sprang toward the demonurgist. He reached his foe in three bounds and grabbed the tall man by the throat, bearing the fellow down with the savagery of his bare-handed assault.
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"At last, you devil!" Gord was beating the bushy-haired head upon the hard stone floor as he tried his best to force his thumbs into Gravestone's flesh. "I"— thump —"know" — thud —"what" — bash —"you"-bump — "did" — thunk — "to..."
He got no farther. Despite the choke-hold. Gravestone managed to mutter a word, and suddenly Gord was trying to strangle a huge, amoeboid thing. His hands sank deep into its soft surface, and the acid of the monster's stuff burned them with searing pain.
Gord extracted his injured members and rolled and somersaulted away. The amoehoid thing that was Gravestone came after him. It was too slow to catch him, but it prevented Gord from getting to his sword.
It was a stand-off that the demonurgist would eventually have won, except that Gellor was there to intervene. Even as his comrade sought to flank the monster and get to the sword that the shapeless blob of acidic stuff guarded, the bard struck.
"You like swords, do you? Then try this one!" Gellor cried as he stabbed his blade into the formless blob. The amoeboid writhed and retreated from the attack. Gellor had no such weapon as Gord's, but the troubador's sword was of potent enchantment nonetheless. Had the priest-wizard been in his true form, it would have failed to do the slightest injury to him, so puissant were the evil protections that Gravestone had woven around his body. In this shape, however, it had effect. No mere slicing or stabbing would have harmed the amoeba either, but Gellor's blade exuded a chilling cold. The thing drew back instantly from that freezing brand, but the troubador kept up his assault. "Or this? Or this? Or this one?"
It was almost impossible for the demonurgist to think clearly or quickly in the form of the amoeba he had taken. The pain from the sword sent him back and back with involuntary motions. Then somehow he recalled there was more than one reason for his choice of becoming this amoeboid monstrosity. There was an escape route that this form could take and no man follow! Gravestone-amoeba flowed toward the place where there was relief from the pain of the gelid metal — only when he- it tried to do that, the icy spear of metal was in the way. The hurt and anger became too much. Gravestone would take no more.
"Gord! Your weapon, quick!"
When the bard yelled that, Gord leaped over the jellylike mass of the amoeba. It had stopped its flow and was gathering itself for some renewed attack perhaps, but there was space and opportunity. His leap carried the young man onto the little space that existed between the monster and the wall. Blackheartseeker lay there, and the amoeba's sudden inactivity and contraction gave him the opportunity to reach the sword. "Look out, Gellor!" Gord called as he picked up his sword and turned to look at the thing he was about to strike with its deadly blade.
The change took only seconds — a split-second from the compaction as amoeba to his human shape again. Gravestone uttered a minor spell even as he had tongue and mouth to do so once again. The oneeyed scum who had been tormenting him with his icy-bladed sword was moving to strike, even as the smaller man was hefting his black-hued weapon and readying to do the same.
Neither succeeded in their aim, for suddenly there were six of the demonurgist where one had been, and the half-dozen forms immediately began to disappear and blink back into existence in a random fashion all over the place. Gravestone was now replicated and alternately moving off and onto the vibratory plane he had created. Before the two foemen could discover which of the six was the real priest-wizard, Gravestone would be far enough distant to do what he had to. Better to be alive without all than die with possessions intact. The demonurgist was desperate now. He would bring into existence a Hellsfire, an inferno of flames and raining lava in the center of this chamber. Of course, when that occurred Gravestone would be beyond the furnace-heat of his dweomer.
"The egress! Guard the passage out!" Gord shouted that to his comrade, for he saw that the blinking in and out by the half-dozen Gravestones was not as random as it might seem. Two of the figures seemed to appear constantly behind Gellor, moving a little closer to the lone exit each time they became visible again. Taking no chances, the champion of the struggle against Tharizdun dashed toward that place himself, striking a could-be-Gravestone with his ebon sword as he went. The figure popped as the metal edge cut through it.
Gellor, too, was quickly moving. He didn't stop at the mouth of the corridor, though; he continued on until he was a few paces along the passage. Then the troubador turned and faced the way he had come. A Gravestone figure suddenly appeared just a yard away. Out darted the steel tongue of his blade. The image vanished without blood. Now only four of the replications of the demonurgist remained.
As he winked back and forth from another nondimensional space to this quasi-plane, the priest-wizard was busily concocting other surprises for his foes. He was in control of his movements, while the duplicate, insubstantial forms were moving randomly. The figure that was Gravestone, along with a special mirror image that behaved as he did, moved steadily closer to the place of safety, the passageway out.
The demonurgist was already speaking the words to trigger a new dweomer when Gellor blocked the passage. That made no difference to Gravestone at all. He was summoning his most prized staff to himself. That he would now use to combat the bard when the time came. He willed a duplicate into the corridor then and spoke the last syllable. The replica vanished into nothingness just as the staff appeared in the priest- wizard's hands.
It was as Gord had assumed — the figure of Gravestone just beside the mouth of the passage was indeed the true one. The sudden appearance of the twisted and ancient piece of wood in that one's hand, while the three others jumped in and out of sight with no such accoutrement, confirmed the young champion's assumption. When the staff came into the demonurgist's possession, Gord was halfway across the chamber and closing as rapidly as he could travel in the cluttered place. It was clear that Gravestone planned something to deal with both of his adversaries. Logically, that meant some calamitous spell being cast into the chamber that housed Gord while the demonurgist dealt more personally with Gellor. There was no question in the young man's mind as to his foe's stark terror when facing Blackheartseeker's blade. "He comes!" Gord yelled at full cry, trusting that his companion would act.
He had no need for concern. When the false Gravestone vanished at the touch of his sword, Gellor knew that the true one would come quickly. Because he was also a veteran, the troubador also understood that the priest-wizard would attempt to arrive unexpectedly. Thinking thus, the one-eyed bard spun and prepared for Gravestone's manifestation. Gellor said a silent prayer as he did so. Gord had better be close, for the troubador was leaving his back totally exposed to the enemy should Gravestone try to transport himself beyond Gellor's position in the narrow hallway.
It was almost correct. He had considered doing just that, but the bard would have been in the way of the Hellsfire that Gravestone meant to send into his sanctum. Because he could control his movements between the two places his spell enabled him to exist in, the demonurgist simply remained on his own plane and physically stepped around the corner into the corridor. There was Gellor in the act of turning his back. It was all that the priest-wizard wished for. Almost casually, Gravestone tossed the twisted staff onto the man's unsuspecting back.
The thing had many, many powers bound into its ancient form. One dweomer it possessed was that of becoming a snake. This it did, thickening and growing longer even as it struck the bard. The crushing coils of the reptile-staff circled Gellor's head and neck, even as a skeletal head tried to sink venom-dripping fangs into its prey. That was sufficient for the demonurgist. He faced the chamber, uttered three terrible words, and released the pent-up power of his anger into the place in a thunderous explosion and inferno of flame.
As the Hellsfire erupted in the vaulted room, Gord was leaping for the exit. The explosion of magical energy blew him squarely into the startled Gravestone. Gord's hair was aflame, the leather of his jack charred, but the awful blast had not slain him as Gravestone had supposed. The young champion was blown s
traight into Gravestone's arms. He knocked the storklike man down with a tangle of arms and legs.
Gord was injured, stunned, but the demonurgist was merely shaken. Gravestone untangled himself and stood erect. One step, a leap, and he'd be clear of the bard where he struggled with the constricting coils of the snake. Let the staff go, too. He would escape and cause the whole of his created plane to annihilate itself. Such an act would drain his power to nothingness, but life was foremost now. In a few years he could recover his force, and in that space Tharizdun would come. Gravestone's sacrifice would be amply rewarded!
There were whumps and bangs rising above the sound of the inferno of molten lava and burning gases that had been evoked by the Hellsfire spell. The many strange things filling the laboratory and store for magical experimentation and implementation were reacting violently to the heat and fire. The gangling demonurgist was in the act of turning, crouched to spring over Gellor where the latter lay wrestling with the python-adder that the staff had become. Gord heard the sounds of the lesser explosions, the crackle of burning tomes, and even had time to wonder what terrible thing would arise from such a strange conflagration, as he observed Gravestone's action. Then the bent man straightened his legs, leaping, his tattered cloak soaring out and up as if the priest-wizard were truly a winged storkman.
Too late," Gord whispered to himself as he too sprang, coming up and leaping after the demonurgist in a single, smooth motion. As fluid as a coiled snake striking at a fluttering sparrow he attacked, and the lightless length of the sword's blade ran up and in, traveling through Gravestone's kidney, lung and heart in a thrust that the demonurgist had no chance of avoiding. Too late by half!" he added as the fellow's limp body crashed down upon the unyielding stones of the maze's floor. Gord jerked the blade free, and Blackheartseeker seemed to dance in his hand as he held it upward in victory.