"Don't start that — think! Where can we find refuge? Time is fleeting!"
It seemed possible. "What about the place where we encountered Chronos? Or the dwelling of Lady Temperance?"
Gellor pondered for a few heartbeats. "The channels of time's stream are too convoluted and meandering for the two of us to manage. Why isn't Proctor Chronos here? He could easily rescue us, blast him!" The words solved nothing, and the master of temporal things did not come to the scene.
"And Probability?"
"You already know the answer to that, girl," the troubador said as if pronouncing a curse. "Her pathways are worse than Time's. Never could we bear Gord through the mazes of randomness and chance." Gellor urged Leda to consider all. "There must be some place. . .."
"Gord spent some period adventuring to the Land of Shadow," Leda said at last. "I was never there with him, nor actually in the realm myself, but— "
"But what? Why mention it then?"
"Let me finish. Gellor! My memories are strong — because Eclavdra has been in the place, though I have not. It is our only hope — unless you have never been there."
Now it was the troubador's turn to pause and consider. He had walked in Shadowland, but only on the verges of the sphere. Could he somehow manage despite that? "It's worth a try, Leda. Give me a bit more time to reflect, though, for it has been long since I trod the margins of that strange realm."
"We have no time!" Leda cried. The commotion around was growing more intense. The last of the demons was even now being slaughtered, and the very surface of Ojukalazogadit was beginning to heave as the demon brute suffered its final agonies under the oppression of Entropy. Worst of all, the great chorus of bestial shrieks from Tharizdun's followers indicated that he was performing some last degradation upon his victim. Graz'zt was finished. They were next! "Look! Already the yeth begin to snuffle and search to locate us. We must get away."
"Very well. I will attempt my best. Hold tight to Gord's hand and think on Shadow!"
Somehow Leda managed to shut out the riot of noise that swept over them. Blocking out the horrible scene was easy. All she needed to do to accomplish that was to shut her eyes. Then Leda managed to deaden her auditory input, so that her mind was a sea of calm and quietude. Only then could she begin to construct the images needed to transport herself and her love to the hoped-for safety of shadow. Slowly but firmly, the dark elven priestess built in her mind a picture of the plane of shadows, its strange light, its ever-shifting landscapes, just as Eclavdra remembered them from a time before Leda existed. It was a strange thing, one that she hated to do. Reaching back into memories of the drow woman from whom she had sprung caused Leda sharp pangs of identity. The crisis passed only because she was do determined. The personality that had been Eclavdra was there, strong, waiting to reawaken, perhaps. Leda would never allow that. Drawing from the old memories made the task of retaining Leda in lieu of Eclavdra a very difficult one, but she managed.
Gellor too had problems. He could easily suppress all outside stimuli. It was fixing upon the necessary images that caused the bard difficulty. Imperfect recall meant broken images, partial reconstruction of a scene necessary for their movement from the Abyss to . . . elsewhere. That stated the quandary well.
Imperfect reconstruction in his mind might result in failure to escape demonium and the hand of Tharizdun. Closing his mind to the picture of the archfiend reaching for them even as he thought of that occurring, Gellor began to speak to himself in his mind of the lands of shadow.
There is a pervading dimness there. I see the blacks of Shadowrealm starkly, for each is different from the other. I see the grays too, defined by the hard gloss of jet and the soft. Inky fronds of vegetation. The pearl and the dove are there, and hidden in all are hints of hues we know on Oerth, but they are different, and there are new colors too. Mobile is the land, and unless it is scrutinized closely, it will slip away as a shadow does, for it is shadow. The milky crescent of Mool rises above, dark eddies of shadowstreams reflect opaline glimmerings of that luminary. Now I walk along in the shifting stuff of shadow, going between this sphere and all others. ..."
"Gellor! Gellorl Please hurry, Gellor! I am on the verge of being away, but Gord's weight drags. You must help me bear him along!"
"Hush, girl," the troubador whispered, barely interrupting his deep meditation. "I know that we have only seconds left, but I am doing all I can. Stay with me now, and don't speak again. We'll make it ..." And then he allowed his speech to fall off into silence once more as he resumed concentration.
The ground trembled under her, but Leda blotted that out Whether it was the demon-brute, advancing enemies, or the tread of Tharizdun himself coming near, it made no difference. She had only one hope. Leda returned her thoughts to the realm of insubstantial play of light and dark going ever deeper so as to obtain the land of pure shadow.
It was very hard for Gellor to go past the point where Leda had gone so easily. Shadow exists in many spheres, strongly on the material one, of course. It was from there that Gellor had to step. The nighttime's world comes closest to opening a portal between human realms and the plane of true insubtantiality called Shadowland. The thick shadows of a forested midnight are as a gate to Shadowland, one that can open if the bright rays from the heavens above are just right. Gellor envisioned the light of Luna and Celene making patches of contradiction to the darker stuff of shadow, while the twinkle of a billion far suns made starshine come to thicken the mixture of light and dark Grays grew stronger, with sooty blacknesses opening beneath the canopies above.
He stepped along the penumbrate paths thus built, and at the last moment of the ascendant moons' soarings passed through the slender gateway. It was as if he had to squeeze through a very narrow opening, and that space was closing, constraining, hurting. Gellor wrenched himself beyond, then pulled. Something pushed, and the burden followed the narrow passageway with a rush. "Made it," he gasped, falling over in fatigue.
"We did!" Leda cried with joy. "We made it. troubador, and so did Gord!"
Gellor gave a short chuckle at that, pulling himself into a sitting position from where he had collapsed on the grassy sward of Shadowland. "Now we can see to our comrade. ..."
"Yes, that we must do quickly," Leda said with concern clouding her former elation. "He is the champion. and he must be fit to face the enemy when the next confrontation takes place."
The wealsome forces of the rings will serve, I think." Gellor ventured. "We need to help Gord regain his senses, and then we three can bind the powers of the Spheres of Light to mending whatever hurt was done by the evil of the Eye of Deception."
The attack by Graz'zt was so stupid!" Leda said, for she couldn't control her anger at and disbelief of Graz'zt s sudden assault. "Had that filth not been so cowardly as to assail Gord from behind, Tharizdun would have been defeated and — "
"That all goes without articulation, girl. Think no more on it. Demons are what they are. Graz'zt was bent on destruction of us all for our humiliation of him — because he is a demon and we are otherwise. As a scorpion might, the demon king struck heedless of the resulting damage his sting would bring upon his own head."
Leda spat as if to curse Graz'zt. "He deserves his fate at the hands of the archfiend!"
"True. We are not so deserving, yet I fear that the act of the mad demon has brought foul doom to us three and the cosmos too."
"Gord is living. He fought Tharizdun twice, and each time he would have bested the enemy save that the archfiend had some outside agency rescue him. He is champion, my Gord. He can win a third meeting!"
Gellor had been examining his friend gently as they spoke. The second duel was a near thing, Leda. Tharizdun had gained much power. Now he will be complete, and he will have his yeth. I am gravely concerned."