Dance of Demons by Gary Gygax Page B

saw the thing, a swirled sphere of blacks and almost-blacks with a glaring spot of hateful fire growing in its center, pulse and shimmer in her hands. It came to him in a flash. Leda was about to loose some bolt of energy upon him. Why? Had she become a true spawn of the Abyss? A soulless demon?
    Never! Then it was something else that brought the dark elf to the brink of slaying him. That she cared for him radiated plainly from her. The cause was certain, then. She was suspicious, thought that he was an impostor. These things took but a splitsecond to enter and leave his consciousness. He realized that Leda was unable to penetrate the dweomers he had surrounded himself with, and the force of Courflamme too served to shield his actual nature, would not allow penetration of his being. Without hesitation, Gord let the sword slip from his hand. "Now," he said with open palms and love filling him, "seek again for Gord of Greyhawk."
    "It cannot be!"
    "But it Is, Leda! Don't you see me truly now?"
    The beautiful features of the dark elf were drawn into a frown. "Yes. The energy of that weapon masked much — it hid your power! Never did the Gord I knew and loved have such ..."
    Gord noted the uncertainty, seeing too the tiredness that Leda could not hide, the strain etched on her face. Not least from her stressful journey, she too had recently undergone much. In answer to her statement, though, the young champion said only, "I have changed and experienced change in the last year, but I am still who I was."
    Leda shook her head, making her long, platinum tresses ripple. "Perhaps you are actually who you claim to be; but you are not the same one I left, for you now have within you .. ."
    "An inescapable charge and a desire to succeed. Let that suffice," Gord interjected. "This is no fit place for us to be reunited, yet I am loath to move elsewhere until we speak further," he said to her, giving her a look and a smile that said far more than words could. Gord stooped to retrieve Courflamme as he moved closer.
    The orb came up into a defensive position in a flash. "Stay back!" Leda commanded, uncertainty still plain in her tone. "Leave that blade where it lies for the time, and tell me who now approaches!"
    He turned toward where Gellor labored to join them. The bard was moving as if he were knee-deep to water, but his pace was strong and certain. "That is my boon companion, Gellor, a troubador of Nyrond," Gord said to the drow priestess with a reassuring warmth. "He and I are both bound by the same oath to fight and defeat those who would loose the Ultimate Darkness on the multiverse."
    "Stay, then, and we shall await his arrival," Leda told the young man firmly. She liked the distorted space no more than Gord, but determination made it bearable. Leda was torn between suspicious fear and the desire to throw herself into Gord's arms. She controlled herself with a conscious effort, willing her knees not to tremble. The feelings that had been just below the surface washed across her in a surge.
    How much she had given up in parting from him there that day in the Flanaess, consigning herself to dwell in the horrid reaches of the Abyss, the sacrifice, the emptiness and the pain and all the rest she had endured came near to sweeping over the little dark elven woman. She had been strong, determined, able to endure the imprisonment because she thought it permanent, forever. Now her lost love, Gord, was here ... or was he? There was still the possibility that it was a trick — some ruse devised by the filthy cambion, Iuz. And even if it was actually Gord, was he the same Gord? Did he still love her as she adored him? And if all were as she hoped, how long would it be before the malice of this place, the evil weavings of demons and devils, parted them again? She swayed, and the light around her seemed to dim.
    "Leda?" Gord said, holding her slender, mall-clad form to him as if she were an infant. Without warning Leda had suddenly fainted, and he