"Better to prepare a ground of our choosing, Gord, and await the coming of our enemies to a place where we know — one not spilling over with adversaries," Gellor advised with no attempt to hide the anger and scorn in his voice. The bard was plainly critical of both of the beings.
Gord was uncertain. He looked at Leda, Gellor, then at Lady Tolerance and Proctor Chronos. "What my friends say is very apt reasoning. The demons would gladly rend us to bits for loosing Tharizdun, let alone slaying many of them beforehand. Having a choice of battleground is also much to the advantage of the defender, I think. What say you to that?"
"No besieged place can withstand the assaults of an enemy who grows ever stronger while the defense is worn away little by little. To wait for Tharizdun to come to you is to accept death — death for you, all life, and the multiverse, too," the Mistress of Probabilities said to the three.
"You must listen to Lady Tolerance," Chronos lectured. "She is but stating facts. The strategy we have devised for you has not just a chance, it has the only chance possible.
"True, demons are scorpions and adders, striking any near without cause — unreasoningly. Yet will Tolerance and I lend you our powers in this regard. There will be no chance to strike, not time to find opportunity — provided you use the situation to advantage. The masters of demonium will see you as an aid to their cause, and they and the rest fear the might of Courflamme and the troubador's kanteel too. Furthermore, the rings will make your auras most awesome to all netherbeings. So if you Journey there immediately, locate Tharizdun, and confront him without hesitation, there is the possibility of your triumphing. Do not linger, seek no assistance from any, even if some mighty demonking offers it!"
"And if we fail?"
"Then you will die then and there — or elsewhere, as the case may be," the giant-sized ruler of time said with finality. "You now have our counsel, the benefit of our plan, and the assurance of our help," he concluded. Proctor Chronos folded his arms and stood unspeaking.
"Well, my dear heroes?" coaxed Lady Tolerance.
After a long pause, Gord spoke. "We will attempt it," he said, knowing he could speak for all three. "How may we return to the Abyss most quickly?"
"We anticipated Just such a willingness," Lady Tolerance said with a smile. "Chronos and I have bent both time and probability to allow for your insertion into the dual fabric of both at a moment which is only marginally removed from this one. You are as ready and able as ever three heroes were, so now you need only depart. Go straight there to the stratum of the demon world which !s called Ojukalazogadit."
"Our mode of transport?"
Chronos spoke again. "Ah, that is what I forgot. Those bands you wear on your fingers will keep you three together and safe. The dark force of your sword. Champion, has ample power to transfer you from this sphere to that of the demons without need to traverse the many planes and dimensions which intervene. You will be swept there on the optional stream which measures time in the nether planes."
"Show us how to wade into the current this moment," Gord said with a fatalism that indicated much. "Scant hope is better than none, and we are beggars before the table of the rich, it would seem."
"Stand there and do thus," Tolerance instructed. "You think so badly of us both, I know, but it is all we can do . . . and more."
If she said anything else, the three didn't hear, for they were gone.
Chapter 21
NIGHTMARE BATTLES of the sort that was raging were no longer strange to them, but all three shuddered on being suddenly precipitated onto the horrible field nonetheless. Leda, most inured of them all to the vileness of the Abyss, was as shaken as either Gord or Gellor, more so perhaps.
"I had hoped never to have to see this realm again, should I live to be a hundred centuries old," the elven girl murmured with clenched Jaw as she stared around her.
"At least we gain the respect promised by . . . our half-hearted allies," the bard said, noting the chitinous excretion that Ojukalazogadit had suddenly created between them and itself immediately on their arrival. The demon-brute would not have their feet touch its being.
There was also a movement of nearby demonwarriors, a jostling to get well clear of the three figures who had suddenly materialized near their lines. "They act as sheep when wolves come near."
"Such sheep!" Leda managed to jest.
"And what wolves we make," Gord added wryly. "The fighting here is of usual sort for this place — tens of thousands of disgusting creatures howling and screaming and tearing each other to pieces. Nowhere do I see signs of the leaders engaged in more esoteric struggles. We must find Graz'zt and the other powerful ones here. Surely if Tharizdun is anywhere on this layer, he will be intent on facing his chief enemies."
"Dare we venture at large on Ojukalazogadit?"
"Dare we stand as bumps, girl?" Gellor said with a hard laugh. "This brute seems loath to have aught of our force touch its expanse. Perhaps it will make a pathway of cobbles for us to march over."
"Or try to swallow us whole," Leda countered, and neither she nor the others smiled.
There came a distant braying of great horns, and a thunderous series of noises indicating opposing dweomers at play. At that moment the surface of the demon-brute heaved as an ocean does during a storm, the waves of the motion rolling away in the direction of the sound. "Look!" Gord exclaimed. "The very land seems to rise up to fight against the invading swarm of Tharizdun's armies."
"Ojukalazogadit, not land," Leda corrected. But she had to agree that it was much as if ground had formed itself to repel invaders. In the distance the brute had fashioned a volcanolike protrusion. From the cone could be seen something erupting and flowing downward as would lava. It poured only in the direction of the ringing besiegers.
"We go that way," Gord said. He stepped off the shelled surface to the lIvid stuff of Ojukalazogadit's immense body. While the demon-brute didn't attack, it did not ignore them either. Various forms of barriers to the touch of them were thrown up to its surface by the thing — horn, hide, shell, chitin, bark. All randomly, each in varying degree of thickness and extent.
They proceeded along, a bowshot to the rear of the colliding masses of demons and their foes. The roar and screech of battle was deafening and demoralizing too. "Think on your ring, dear Gord," Leda encouraged when she saw his steps beginning to flag. "There is stuff therein to counter the horrors we must endure here." She was very much correct. Gord had been relying only on his own determination and the force of his sword. Courflamme was of mixed power, and the evil in it was drawn to the battle. The struggle was beginning to affect the young champion, for in his mind he could not help considering the effect of the deadly blade upon attacker and defender both.
The demon-brute was creating swamplike sinks near, and from these malodorous fens clambered things of slime and ooze. Some of their fellow demons they suffocated and otherwise slew as they went, but these bits of the greater brute formed a wall that fell upon the packed ranks of fiends and maelvis about to break through the relatively few demon-warriors left alive there. The surviving attackers fell back in panic. Soon enough some greater ones of Tharizdun's slaves would drive them back to fight again. Distant voicano and fetld marsh-monsters notwithstanding. Ojukalazogadit was comparatively inactive. Was the continual combat wearing away at even so huge a thing as the demon-brute? Gellor gave voice to the question they were all thinking about, not really expecting a reply.