Although he noted the sudden switch in tone, Tharizdun was actually pleased to hear the Lord of Entropy refer to matters in such a manner. "It has been but a short time since I broke free of the restraints. In that time all of the ordered portions of the lower spheres have submitted, and so only the spheres of demonkind remain to be subjugated. In a few days, I think, as men reckon time, I will have a stream of demon lords here to give homage. let us say another week. Then I will gather my hounds and hunt the champion and his rabbits!"
Thoroughness was what Entropy admired, was what he used when reducing action to inaction, the quick to eternal stillness, hot activity to sterile chill. "What hounds, Tharizdun? I am not so knowledgeable in affairs of this sort as you might suppose."
The greatest of Evil laughed wickedly at the recollection. "Ah, yes, dull entity, those were days, that fell age when I roamed far and wide with my pack of yeth! Did you know that mortals have it written in their myth? The truth of it is brightened, but it sends primordial shivers of fear down their weak spines nonetheless. In the face of the unyielding opposition of the Lords of Light I ventured forth with my hounds, and we fed wildly on flesh, blood, spirit, and soul too. now my hounds will be greater!"
"What do you mean?"
"From daemonkind I will form one, and it will obey perfectly. from the furnaces of the hells will I fashion another, and that devil-mastiff will search relentlessly. From the depths of demonium will my savage yeth be made, the hound to attack without reason. To these great ones will I add the rest — every malign form of life will be represented in the pack."
"Such as?"
"Unliving golems from netherchaos, the great goblins of Acheron, chimeras, dreggals, maelvis, netherhags, all!"
The stuff of the entity deepened, and a portion glowed in interest. "Be so kind as to show me. Master of Malevolence."
Pleased at the tone and the title, Tharizdun clapped his hands and gave a call. As the shrieking wail, a sound like that of a child dying in agony perhaps, rose and then dwindled there came a distant baying in reply. The air in the huge chamber grew smoky, as if a cloud from a fire were forming. Then out of the reeking vapors burst a pack of monstrous dogs, black, and whose lolling tongues drooped from heads that were unmatched to the canine bodies that bore them. There was one with the head of a terrible hag of nightmare, another with the grinning visage of a vampire, and beside those two were so varied an array of hideous countenances that any demonking would have been pleased to claim the lot as his own.
"Leap, Mephisto!" A devil-headed hound sprang obediently. "Now, Thrax, get that one!" and as Tharizdun gave the command he pointed at a brute whose pumpkin-round head showed it to be a megagoblin. Ferociously but efficiently, the yeth called Thrax used its daemon teeth to shred the lesser hound.
"You waste your force."
"Bah! The joy of seeing that is well worth the little effort required to shape another of the goblin sort." He turned his back on the entity and called his lead dogs. "To me, Mephisto and Thrax!" The yeth came slinking, growling, hellish hatred in their lambent stares. Tharizdun beat both, but he did so only perfunctorily, so no injury was done. "Be quicker to obey, or next time it will be worse for you! now return and quiet the pack." The two huge hounds bounded away, savaging the smaller ones immediately. There was a great yowling and snarling for a brief span; then the whole of the group of yeth hounds was as silent as death.
"You see them? those are the ones to hunt out the foes, oh yes! As soon as I have the third, the demon-hound. I think it shall be named graz. Do you find that amusing, lord of inertia?"
"Very amusing," the entity responded without any enthusiasm, let alone humor. "As it is of urgent requirement, the third of your greater yeth, I shall gather my presence in Pandemonium and the Abyss. The recaicitrant will be burdened by me, and your conquest thus hastened."
"If you so choose, but I think not that it adds to any agreement between us or that these will be a debt to repay?"
"Trouble yourself not at all on that score, archfiend. The compact we have is all that I desire. Consider this a willing effort, my special gift in honor of your return to power, Tharizdun."
As suddenly as the Lord of Entropy had come, its presence was no longer there in Tharizdun's hall. The darkest one of Evil was relieved, for as much as he hated to admit it, the entity made him uneasy, and Entropy's presence wore on his nerves, sapped his vitality somehow. "You will be no welcome visitor soon, thing," Tharizdun snarled softly as he pondered the role of the master of stasis. Once in full mastery of the cosmos, the archfiend would seek and find ways to dispatch Entropy, or at worst exile the entity from the vicinity of wherever Tharizdun happened to be. Perhaps the negative forces of the anti-cosmos were the answer, one given unwittingly to him by the stupid inactive one himself. That would be delightful and ironic. How would such a thing die? Slowly, no doubt, but probably without sufficient emotion to make the spectacle worthwhile. In this case, Tharizdun reckoned, the end would be worth it even lacking the sport.
That brought him to the matter of his adversary, Gord. It had required all of his skill at dissembling, acting and lying too to keep the truth of things from the Lord of Entropy. Tharizdun pondered, recalling clearly his rash act No ally, and certainly none of the slaves, must ever know of that act of weakness. Because of the lack of that last, essential portion of what he had been, Tharizdun knew himself to be both stronger than before and yet at the same time less potent. That was why he waited to complete his pack of yeth hounds, why he still sought the assistance of the master of inertia. Not only did the archfiend need to recover the skull and consume it, he had to wait to accomplish that after dealing with a deadly adversary prepared by every force that opposed him from time immemorial, honed since his last defeat.
"Even the demons gave to that opposition," Tharizdun snarled, "and such a price they will pay for that! That accursed sword wields energies drawn from ail aspects op my own domain; thus it b a weapon even I must he wary of. Yet no tool is better than the one using it, and I have the rede of the little knave who has been bequeathed with the mantle of Balance's power. Too flawed, you fools!" The last he shouted into the empty silences of his immeasurable hall there on the plane of Hades, and none heard.
He might have been a useful servant of Tharizdun's. That the darkest noted in studying the sordid history of the one called Gord. Well, there was no turning him around now, and his disgusting principles warped the drow priestess too, so that the clone grew apart from its true form. Ah, were but Eclavdra the one assisting the champion, she would have stung him as a scorpion! The many scenes involving Gord, Leda, Gellor too, all had been replayed by the archfiend as he wielded his arcane dweomers.
"I know my enemies now," he reassured himself. The troubador had always been tainted with wealsome ethic, beliefs that were weak and unselfish. That one could be forgotten,despite his nasty little harp. Gellor and Leda, supernormal now, but hardly above human capability if stripped of magical bolstering. Imbued or otherwise, he could handle the pair easily enough.
In combination with Gord, the matter became more problematic. Especially since the three now bore the tokens left for just such purpose by the elders of Light. Were they separable? If so, then it would be a swatting of butterflies. Put such happy prospects aside, though. What strength did the three mortals, with their rings, constitute?