It was lucky for Gord that the Theorpart-weapon was an unwieldy instrument. Had it been shorter, Infestix might have been able to deal the coup de grace then and there. By the time the daemon could bring the head of the weapon around and up to strike, though, his adversary had recovered enough to roll aside when the weighty axe blades came down. Infestix levered the thing up and into position immediately, but that allowed Gord time to clamber back into a crouch, and now he held the rejoined Courflamme before him. "Good, but not great, corpselover," he taunted.

What had Just transpired had given the daemon confidence, and Infestix readied his next attack with a leering look of anticipatory delight on his cadaverous visage. He had been unsure of exactly what would happen when he willed Initiator into a weapon. But the Theorpart had responded instantly, and the instrument he now grasped at the ready was a strange and devastating thing of death. As he moved it, became more accustomed to it, Infestix found it light, responsive, almost alive. This time he would be quicker, more exact, and the heart of the human opposing him would be his to devour.

It was all Leda could manage to keep the Eye of Deception functioning. The press of vile daemons around her and her comrades was growing greater as the creatures rushed to the defense of their master. As fast as she could cut them down with the Eye, more were taking the places of the slain. Because of this, she was unable to assist Gord; she couldn't even see or sense what was happening to him. In truth,

Leda could not have helped even had she been aware of his dire predicament One moment of distraction and the little dark elven priestess would have been buried under a wave of attacking fiends.

Much the same was happening to the right, where Gellor stood fast. The troubador had laid low a thousand of those monsters subject to the magic of the kanteel. Now all those still able to press toward him were of the sort immune to the harp's dweomers. With the gifts of the Catlord adorning his hands and feet, Gellor placed the kanteel safely in its case, then drew his own longsword. Wielding his blade and wearing the claws of a tiger, the one-eyed bard tore into the score of netherbeings still advancing. Locked in his own awful melee, he too was unaware of Gord's condition.

The flanged head of the pole arm came flashing down toward Gord's head. Gord thought to use Courflamme to deflect the blow, but instead the sword literally dragged him aside. The blades of the weapon tore lightly at his armor, but this time there was no shock nor was there any pain or damage from the glancing blow. The tip of it was deadly, probably the blades as well, and the weight of its mace head was probably enough to either pierce or break his shadow armor.

All that was bad enough — but worse, Courflamme could not be made to engage the weapon. Could the single Theorpart be so much greater than the greatest token of Balance? That seemed impossible. So, perhaps instead of striking at the blade-end, he should try something else. . . . Gord moved lightly, rapidly, circling to cause his foe to have to turn his body to keep the clumsy pole arm moving and spinning.

"I have patience," Infestix laughed, his voice a horrid hooting. "The wait will make your end all the sweeter." Indeed, time was favoring the daemon. Soon the thousands of his soldiers around them would break through and fall upon Gord and his companions. If Initiator didn't kill them before then, the sheer weight of hundreds of enraged demons and netherbeings would.

Suddenly Gord felt a warm tingling as if the sword were sending energy to him, and at that instant he closed with a rush. The pole arm that was Initiator shot out, Infestix meaning to use it either to skewer the foolish little human or to hold him at bay with its projections. Losing no momentum, Gord darted to one side and dashed in toward the daemon, past the end of the weapon. Infestix tried frantically to pull the long weapon back in.

Trying to shorten a hold on a shaft ten feet long, even for a being as tall and strong as Infestix, is slow work compared to the charge of a swordsman. Gord's right arm moved out, Courflamme's point darted from right to left, downward. Glittering sparks coruscated from contact of Theorpart and sword. There followed a piercing scream, a sound that could only be likened to ancient metal being torn apart within the confines of some sepuichral cavern.

Initiator fell to the demon sward of iyondagur, changed in the blink of an eye into its true form.

Beside the misshapen piece of alien stuff writhed the severed fingers of the right hand of Infestix.

It took Gord a moment to comprehend what had happened. By then it was too late. He finally understood and galvanized his actions into a further attack but the master of daemonkind was gone. Howling in pain and fury, Infestix had fled back to his own stronghold in the pits of Hades. The Theorpart remained where it lay. With a quick shrug of regret, the young champion stooped and picked the thing up with his left hand, still grasping Courflamme firmly in his right. He took another moment to touch the wormy digits with the sword's tip. The frantically moving things popped as would fat slugs in a fire as the point pierced them, one by one.

"Now, then," Gord said with a satisfied grunt after the last was destroyed. "I think it is time to see about the refuse the daemon-fop has left behind."

He took a look to the left and then the right, saw the nearness of disaster, and acted. Springing first to where Leda was, Gord fell upon the most threatening enemy first, cleaving the hulking plagadaemon from crown to crotch with a single blow from Courflamme. The thud of the monster hitting the ground made Leda turn in alarm. "It's all right, girl," Gord managed to blurt, spearing a second plagante on his sword with a long thrust immediately thereafter. "Just guard my back and I'll deal with the rest now."

With near shock, Leda noted that Gord held the Theorpart that had been Infestix's in his left hand as he plied the sword against the last nearby foe. The others of Infestix's horde had stopped short their rush, and the monsters were now milling uncertainly, seeking direction. "Thanks, my love," she panted during the respite. "I can manage a bit more, though. Should I hit them with another blast from the Eye?"

"Save your strength," Gord told her. "They will realize soon enough that they have no more master and relic to protect them. Then there will be rough work and slaughter, for the Abat-dolor will fall on them, and there will be a stampede. We must not get caught in that! Come now, let's aid Gellor."

Running close by his side, Leda accompanied Gord to where the troubador was fighting some halfhundred paces distant, nearly out of sight behind a windrow of dead daemons and maelvis whose hacked and ruined bodies showed evidence of weapon-work Although exhausted, she managed to summon enough vitality from somewhere inside her to command the Eye a last time. From the sphere came things of opaline hue, bouncing ovoids that arced and rebounded as they landed in scores among the lines of enemies coming toward them. Each teardrop of the stuff left a strand behind as it bounced, and whenever one of those strands contacted a daemon it splattered into a mesh of viscous, gluey lines.

After several impacts, each bouncing spheroid slowed and formed a puddle upon striking down for the final time. The substance of each ovoid must have been much compressed, for each puddle formed by one was a yard or more in diameter. The stuff was also deadly. Whether leathery, horn, scaled or spiked, the substance seemed to cut into the flesh of the demons and daemons as if each puddle encountered was made of molten lava. "Gods!" Leda uttered in a near whisper. "What is this thing — and me — capable of?"