So the three had welcomed the glorious garden place and tarried for long days and nights. Gellor had been asked by his young friend if there was one he would share the idyll with, but the bard had shaken his head. "I have no true love now, and no one I would care for, would become close to and want to share with. Not at this time, not with what looms before us all too soon."
Leda had quickly changed the subject, hating the reminder of duty and impending doom. Yet Gellor had pressed. "There is but a scant period available for such holiday as this. How long may this place serve?"
"Don't chivvy, Gellor," Gord had said with rebuke. "I am the one upon whom the greatest portion of the burden rests, and I am bound by duty and oath as firmly as you. There is sufficient space for us to mend mind and body both, for here the sand of the hourglass runs more slowly than old honey on a winter's night."
In truth the place had seemed timeless. Leda had used her own powers to heal herself and her two companions, for all of them had been much battered and cut in the course of their conflicts in demonium. That process was finished quickly. Their recovery of inner strength and wholeness of spirit had taken longer, and perhaps some of that damage would never be properly repaired. The matter of Vuron was immediately in Leda's mind.
It had been the albino who had created her from the deeply evil form of Eclavdra. Being twin and child both, Leda had needed nurturing, and it was Vuron who had done that. Demon or not, he had allowed Leda to become something other than a pliable imitation of Eclavdra. He had insisted she adhere to certain tenets, but at the same time allowed her freedom to form and hold other values, mores and ethical concepts, some as foreign to demonkind and evil as were love, kindness, and compassion.
But despite her memories of Vuron's superficially kind treatment of her, she ultimately agreed with Gord. He had grasped the truth, that the albino's seeming care and uncharacteristic generosity were in reality of most malign root. Vuron wished only to advance his lord and master's cause, to push Graz'zt ever upward in greatness and follow close on the ebon demonking's heels as he went. Eclavdra was destructive in her association, always seeking her own ends, ready to betray any other to further herself. Leda, as influenced by exposure to the world and in particular her intimacy with Gord, was a far better instrument for Vuron's purposes. Leda would not be selfish and traitorous, and Vuron would always be there to remind the clone how she became a true person.
"Yet he did often speak truth," Leda had said. "He protected me!"
That could be explained easily, and Gord did so, pointing out that truth often served better than lies, that even demons could use it. Protection was likewise a matter of ensuring his own position, favor, and power too.
In all, though, the nightmare of having to kill the one who had fostered her would always be somewhere deep inside. Even if it ceased haunting her soon enough, it remained buried still.
Gord didn't speak of his own inner wounds. The dark power of the artifact ate away at him, and Courflamme was only a partial restorative in that regard, for the sword too bore malign as well as good energies within its bicolored length.
There was the attraction that had flowed between him and the demon princess Elazalag. Why? He tried to rationalize this by her similarity to Leda in color and form, albeit she was far taller. Six fingers? Who could notice that? Completely evil? Of course, but the influence of the Theorparts urged continually the total adoption of that anyway. In any case, he had never seriously considered a liaison, let alone corulershlp of an Abyssal empire. Yet the fact that the ideas had even played briefly across his mind was sufficient burden to his spirit.
The joys that filled him when the power flowed from the great relic, the exultation at slaying those enemies who dared oppose him, the leaping fires of triumph as foes fled and heads bowed. To command such force, receive homage and absolute obedience, to rule as lord over . . . what? And under whom? Under?? It was an insidious whispering always there at the back of his mind. "The great darkness has need of one who has proven able beyond all others, devil, daemon, mortal, and more. You need but accept one overlord, one master, and then as many as you wish will serve you. How many masters command you now? How many serve?"
Always the probing continued. Sometimes it was less complicated, simple and direct. "You grow weary, tired. Use the power of us to place yourself beyond all care and caring," the whisper seemed to say. "Let go your burdens, find peace and rest, join those gone before and reunite with your mother, father. Is there purpose to life? Any life at all? Soon it will end anyway. Is there need to endure the interim? What few joys will be sacrificed, how many pains and troubles never known? Give up. Let it pass into nothingness. There is no need to deal with it all, and the unknown beyond might hold promise undreamed of. No one alone should carry so great a burden. . . ."
"IT IS WHAT MAKES ME WHAT I AM!"
Leda was startled at the sudden outburst. "What? I didn't hear what you said, my sweet," she stammered, for she too had been lost in a reverie.
"Nothing. ... I said nothing which is of import, dearest little dreamer," he responded, seeing the faraway look slowly vanishing from her amethyst eyes. "Sometimes a man has to remind himself of why he is as he is."
Partially comprehending the moment, Leda snuggled into his arms, saying, "And a woman, too, must reflect and consider. Now, man, neither you nor the woman you hold need do so."
"How's that?"
"Better things are at hand," she informed him, and placed his two hands in places that were not conducive to intellectualizing. "For you and me," Leda asserted, getting her own hold on Gord. "This is our last night in paradise. We must make it paradisaic."
Gord did his utmost to comply ....
* * *
There was a great stone thrust up like a miniature cliff not far from the little house. It was of the stuff of stars, perhaps. Certainly, it was of material unakin to anything normal to mankind — perhaps it was from the heart of some long-dead sun somewhere in the multiverse. A small shard from its face, a piece that Leda could wrap her fingers around, was so weighty that it required all of her strength to lift.
"What must the whole of this thing weigh? What could it rest on? Its mass should sink it as a lead weight in water, even were there granite below it!"
"Leda, I have no idea of the foundations below this place, nor any inkling of the material which supports this massive boulder. It is one more of the mysteries of. . . here," Gord responded.
"Hands should suffice," Gellor said laconically, going to the face of the stone outcropping. There was no visible outline, but as the bard watched, his friend stood beside him and placed his palms against the dense material. A small door appeared, swinging inward at Gord's touch.
"I'll return in a moment," the young champion said, then ducked low and went into the little passage that led inside the rock inside there was a vault.
It was a vault of the sort that might have been fashioned by primordial smiths of dwarvenkind. Thick slabs of metal, the sort that was called lodestone, formed a vast coffer with no handle, hinge or lock it too swung open at Gord's touch. Inside was a third strongbox and a fourth as well. The third was made of adamantite, its incredibly hard metal so smooth that it felt silken under his fingertips. Lastly was a long box of old silver, worked with glyphs of a sort no man had ever seen, and inlaid with sigils of orichaicum to ward against the force of the netherbeings. The whole was a repository of the Theorparts, of course. No other prize known would warrant such precautions.
The place had been there when the three came into the pocket-sized paradise. Gord hadn't been told to expect it. He had known it was there immediately, however, and had borne the two portions of the artifact straight to it and encased them inside. Now, as he lifted out first one, then the other, a heavy dread filled his chest and made his heart labor. The two fused and the one alone were separate still, each wrapped round with golden cloth bearing more of the glyphs. Those wrappings had to be undone too, for Gord felt he had to leave them here. In the heart of the strange rock.