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"You cannot deny your affinity to Evil, Leda. There is much of Eclavdra in you, too much ever to be other than kindred of the Abyss. Once again, forget the petty hopes and desires of mankind and take your place amongst the great ones of demonium."

"I give you my answer thus!" Leda said harshly, hacking down with the sword.

A lightless shield interposed between Courflamme and the thin demonlord. "You can't harm me with that blade, you foolish little girl!" Vuron said with confident rebuke. "I helped to make its very essence and gave it back to the puny manling you now cleave to. Now I give you a last chance. Surrender the sword; better still, turn it against Gord! Do one or the other, else I will end your life." As he made the threat, Vuron suddenly produced a weapon from behind the Theorpart-shield. The albino demon wielded a Javelinlike spear, almost an extension of his stick-thin arm, and Vuron plied it as quickly as an adder. He emphasized his words with a thrust which darted toward Leda's eyes.

The shock of the sword contacting the Theorpartshield numbed Leda's arm. The dark force of the artifact drew energy from Courflamme and from her as well. Many more such contacts, and the power of her weapon would be gone, its dark half drained by the vampiric hunger of the Theorpart. Gord had used the black power of the weapon to contest with the like force of the Theorpart when facing Iuz. Could she manage something like that? Leda knew that such was her only hope now, for Vuron was striking to kill.

"No balance in shield and spear against Courflamme," she called, speaking to the blade she now bore. "Give me Balance!" Courflamme split in twain at that, placing a diamond-bright sword in her left hand, its negative counterpart of inky hue in the girl's right.

"What trick do you try now, ingrate? The doubling of your sword will be of no avail," Vuron called as he stabbed quickly again. This time he did his utmost to sink the barb-edged spearpoint into Leda's exposed jugular. The division of Courflamme into halves worried the albino demonlord. He was rightly confident that the evil force of the sword was not baneful to him. It was made, In part, by his own forging. Why he had done that bothered him. It had seemed a mere whim, inculcating the evil force that blighted the ancient sword so as to make it even more deadly a weapon than it had formerly been. Now he wondered if it had been some bleak fate that compelled the action. Those fleeting thoughts didn't distract him in the least. Complex and multilevel thinking was, after all, Vuron's forte.

"Ah-hah!" the albino started to vaunt as he saw his long point strike home. Then he was leaping back, drawing his arm in desperate haste, for the stab had but cut a red line on the glistening sable of Leda's neck, and she, in turn, struck back.

The cut burned, but Leda was unaffected by that. The black blade in her right hand shot straight out, sinking its point into the Theorpart-shield. It held fast, and sword and relic seemed to lock together in a hateful contest of strength. The sword could never win such a battle, for it was but a half of the full force of what it was. The effect was great, however, for it held fast the defense that Vuron had relied upon. Neither sword nor shield could be moved during the interchange of malign stroke and counterstroke of force that then occurred. At the same instant, Leda used the crystalline brand held in her left hand to sweep up and around in an arcing blow aimed at Vuron's outthrust arm. "Death to you, Vuron," Leda shouted.

He was very fast, but the bright edge of Courflamme's crystal half caught Vuron's forearm. "Eeeeyaa!" The cry of pain was drawn as a high and terrible piping from the thin demonlord's chest. Leathery, even as hard as the alabaster it resembled, was Vuron's appendage. But not even steel could have resisted the edge of the diamond-bright blade as it swept up. The stuff cut into Vuron's arm, and he drew it backward at the same moment, thus prolonging the exposure of demonhide to enchanted edge. Vuron's arm was sliced from elbow to wrist. The spear dropped from his now useless hand. He knew it was all finished then, that the wound had done more than destroy his right arm.

"I am sorry ... so sorry, Vuron. If ever your kind could make claim to nobility, you were the only one who could do so with justice," Leda said, almost sobbing as she saw what her attack had accomplished.

"Weakling! Tarry in your work, and I'll have your skull yet," the albino demon snarled back. Even as he spoke, Vuron worked frantically to change the useless shield into some form of weapon to use against her. But the dark portion of Courflamme held leechlike to the Theorpart, and this made the arcane relic's response to Vuron's willed commands sluggish. He regretted speaking then, for Leda steeled herself and struck again. Vuron tried to hide his whiteness beneath the cover of the slowly metamorphosing Theorpart, but his body was too long, arms and legs too gangling.

"Gods!" screamed Leda, seeing the bright sword slice away the pale flesh of the demon's body, leaving a terrible and bloody rawness where skin and flesh were gone from ribside.

"Finish me now, or by the Abyss I'll flay and eat your flesh as you watch!" The agonized shriek came spilling forth as did the life-stuff of the demonlord. It was no idle threat, either. Vuron had now accomplished the change, and Unbinder was an iron-fanged thing whose ever-growing jaws were about to close upon Leda's legs.

Without hesitation, and purged of remorse too, the little elven girl took hold of Courflamme's broad hilt with both hands, allowing the useless portion of the sword to fall free, for its work with the Theorpart was finished. "To the void with you!" she shouted as she swung, and the sword severed the demon's left arm. "Now, and now! And NOW!!" Three exclamations, three hacking blows with Courflamme. Vuron's headless and dismembered corpse littered the battleground there in demonium, and the albino lord of the Abyss was no more.

Leda shook and sobbed. "You were but a demon, a vile demon after all," she blurted. Then she stood leaning upon the shining portion of the longsword as if surveying her handiwork but her eyes were unseeing.

Gellor had not been idle meanwhile. The troubador had rushed to Gord's side and defended his comrade from the press of huge demons who would have thrown themselves upon the small man and torn him to shreds. The work was hot at first, as the initial press came for them. Gellor's blade rang against strange armors and stranger weapons as he dueled with one after another of the creatures. Oddly, it was an ancient and clumsy thing, a hook-bladed khopesh, that nearly did for him. The demon wielding it was Lord Apepi.

"Hew harr mine!" the cobra-headed thing had hissed as the khopesh tore Gellor's sword from his grip and sent it tumbling away.

"Only if you can fight better than you talk" the troubador had rejoined, pulling free his dagger as he did so and taking a defensive stance. The demon was the last facing him, and Gellor silently thanked all the deities who assisted fools as he crouched before the unwavering stare of Apepi. Poison spittle and fangs as well as sword threatened him. The dag he held was useless except to parry attacks, and even that had to be done with utmost care, or the massive weight of the khopesh would snap the weapon or toss it away. Gellor tried to move crabwlse toward where his sword lay.

"Phaat!" Apepi expelled a gob of venom between the one-eyed baid and his weapon. "No, maan. Thaat whill sspoll my enjoymenss," the cobra mouth articulated in its hissing, clumsy parody of speech.

The predicament his comrade faced was evident to Gord. The young champion had laid about him with the twin relics as the wave of enraged demonlords had swept upon him. As if acting of their own volition, the melded Theorparts had shifted form. First as a massive bardiche they had gone, cutting and hewing away the whole front rank of the attackers. Back the thing had come, now a many-spiked morning star from whose iron head shot daggers of crackling energy. Then it was a staff Gord clutched, and out of that black length had poured forth a stream of even blacker lances of force that pierced many a demonlord and ended all existence then and there. After that initial onslaught, Gord had been forced to fight a series of indIvidual combats against the few great demons who still remained. Then the last one's will had broken, and Gord was at last able to come to Gellor's aid.