"Good enough," said Gord. "Judging by the looks of it, I'd say you returned with everything you went for."

"Yes — and then some," Chert replied with a bit of a scowl, hefting the case he had carried back. "Good thing I have such a strong back, or that little straw of yours might have broken it."

"Straw?" Gord was perplexed.

Chert unfastened the straps holding the case shut and pulled forth a weapon the big barbarian had not seen before this evening. "Are you trying to tell me this isn't yours?" he asked. "If I had known that—"

"Gods!" Gord gasped in amazement. "It is my blade! But how... ?"

"It was in our gear, that's all I know," said Chert. "You must have had it well hidden until now."

"Better than you could imagine, Chert," said Gellor with a thin smile.

Gord reached out, took the scabbard, and withdrew the sword it held. The blade was keen, long, and the blackest of black in color. It was the very weapon that had been presumed lost into the hands of Gravestone — the object that had indirectly cost Barrel and Dohojar and the rest of the crew of the Silver Seeker their lives.

"How... ?" Gord asked again, this time directing his gaze to Gellor.

"I could surmise," replied the one-eyed troubador, "but the how of the matter is of no real import right now. The important thing is that the blade has been wrested from the hands of Gravestone and returned to its rightful purveyor. A good sign for the coming contest, I'd venture."

"Possibly," said Gord, reflecting on the near-miracle that had just occurred. Despite Gellor's advice, he wondered just how the sword had been taken from Gravestone — and how many of their allies might have been killed in the effort.

"So let's go after the blaster!" Chert boomed. "I can give Brool some exercise, and you can show the rest of us what that ebony sword can do."

Gord raised a hand as though trying to calm down his companion. "It is also possible, Chert, that our adversary will be even more angered and doubly dangerous now, because he has lost the item that he went to such great trouble to gain. We must be especially cautious."

Chert sighed heavily. "I know what that means," he said. "We all might as well get comfortable." He flopped down on the floor, put his head on the hard leather of the case he'd brought, and closed his eyes.

"What is he saying?" Timmil asked the group at large.

Gord replied. "We can't move as a group tonight without being spotted and Gravestone likely being alerted. We'll wait until sunup to move. He'll not be expecting us to come in broad daylight." With that, he sat down, put his feet up on a low table nearby, and likewise closed his eyes. "Get some rest, everyone. You'll need to be at your best come morning."

In a few minutes all conversation died away. Each man did his best to relax and conserve energy for the coming confrontation. Soon only the sputtering of the lamp's wick as it burned could be heard; then that was drowned out by the barbarian's rumbling snores. One of the six watched the others through slitted eyes, but not one of the five stirred in unnatural fashion. They were, it seemed, strong in mind and firm in their purpose. That pleased the watcher, for although the principal burden of this mission was squarely on his shoulders, he knew he would need the help of all of them to succeed. Thinking that, Gord turned his head a little so that when the sun came up its rays would strike his face through the slats of the shuttered little window. Then, grasping the hilt of the black sword, he let his thoughts drift, and soon he too was asleep.

Chapter 7

AT FIRST GLANCE IT SEEMED a featureless, endless plane — not that anyone would wish to even glance at it in the first place. Its putrid hue was sufficient to make all but the most hardened guts writhe with nausea, the eyes to water, the mind to seek sanity in delusions so as to escape the thought of such an abomination actually existing.

The rotten dun of the plane was far from featureless. It was shot through with veins of stuff that looked like coagulated blood, and craterlike openings dotted here and there resembled massive, open sores in which pools of pus festered. Other portions of the landscape manifested themselves suddenly. Here a wormy thing suddenly rose up, splattering the noisome stuff of the place in reeking gobbets that splattered and rained down for seconds after its upheaval. Then the maggoty monstrosity was sucked back into the corruption, the putrescence absorbing the foul lumps greedily. There first one and then another strange growths shot up. Soon a forest of the ulcerous things had been extruded, so that their angry red and slowly dripping green stood out in stark contrast to the less colorful but no less disgusting flatness from which these excrescencies had been thrust.

In addition to the assault upon the visual and the olfactory senses, so too the very sounds of this place ravaged the ears. Disgusting slobberings, vile smackings and slurpings, terrible rendings competed with a cacophony of shrieks and teeth-paining screeches, accompanied by litanies of hollow groanings and gibberings along with sounds that could only be the slow splintering of bones.

Was this the floor of the lowest hell? No, not that pleasant a place by any means. This was the three hundred sixty-sixth layer of the Abyss, a place called Ojukalazogadit by those who cared to identify it.

As the expanse pulsed and twitched and parts of it grew or shrank, were silent, or gave out their horrid sounds, it geysered forth streams of thick, steaming liquid at unexpected places and of varying colors of revolting sort and appropriate odor. Parts of it took on lives of their own, dashed madly off as if trying to escape the place on stubby, misshapen appendages, only to be swallowed by some suddenly appearing maw or be caught and torn to stinking gobbets of gore by hands that sprang from nowhere.

A monstrous thing heaved itself up from a suppurating morass, wallowed forth, and began to trample and gore the very stuff it had issued from. The place grew lesser monstrosities, things all head and Jaw tusks, hungry answers to the behemoth. In a protracted pursuit and battle, the lesser things brought the greater to bay and devoured it alive, slowly, starting by eating only those portions that were nonvital so that the monstrosity's great bellows of pain and suffering might go on longer. This was Ojukalazogadit at its most splendid.

As the tusked victors howled over their triumph, a volcano thrust itself up nearby and vomited forth a sticky, acidic fluid that was both burning hot and sentient. The viscous tentacles that were spewed out quickly found and engulfed the now gibbering things that had devoured the behemothian monstrosity alive. The searing heat and burning acid had their own sport with the things, and then the plain was again relatively undisturbed. Vapors rose from the scarred place where the eruption had occurred, but even that was soon awash in a slimy lake of ichorous secretion.

Here was a place for demon wars. No king of the Abyss, no demon prince or great lord of Evil could work his will upon the stuff of Ojukalazogadit. The plane was itself a demon of sorts. It was uncontrolled, uncontrollable, and uncaring. Content in its madness to torment and devour itself, Ojukalazogadit heaved and pulsed, changed and re-formed, and quietly enjoyed its utter madness without caring, without feeling a need for revenge — for how can something avenge what it does to itself?

Either unaware or cunning In its insanity, the plane allowed vast armies to come upon it and do battle. And, of course, those not of it who caused it hurt would certainly pay for their deeds. Whether they were still alive or already dead, many of the interlopers would feed Ojukalazogadit before it permitted the survivors — if any — to depart.