"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 straight 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.