Azash shrank back as Bhelliom’s glow intensified, and the idol’s burning eyes bulged with terror. Sparhawk saw that an immortal suddenly faced with the possibility of His own death is peculiarly defenceless. The idea alone erased all other thought, and Azash could only react at the simplest, most childish level. He lashed out, blindly hurling elemental fire at the black-armoured Pandion threatening His very existence. The shock was enormous as that incandescent green flame struck the equally brilliant blue flame of Bhelliom. The blue wavered, then solidified. The green shrank back, then pushed again at Sparhawk.

And there they locked, Bhelliom and Azash, each exerting irresistible force to protect its very existence. Neither of them would – or could – relent. Sparhawk had the unpleasant conviction that he might very well stand in this one place for all eternity with the jewel half-extended as Azash and Bhelliom remained locked in their struggle.

It came from behind him, spinning and whirring through the air with a sound almost like bird-wings. It passed over his head and clanged against the idol’s stone chest, exploding forth a great shower of sparks. It was Bevier’s hook-pointed lochaber axe. Berit, unthinking perhaps, had thrown the lochaber at the idol – a foolish gesture of puny defiance.

But it worked.

The idol flinched involuntarily from something which could not possibly hurt it, and its force, its fire, momentarily vanished. Sparhawk lunged forward with Bhelliom clutched in his left hand, thrusting it like a spear-point at the burn-scar low on the idol’s belly. His hand went numb in the violent shock of contact.

The sound was deafening. Sparhawk was sure that it shook the entire world.

He bent his head and locked his muscles, pushing Bhelliom harder and harder against the shiny scar of Azash’s emasculation. The God shrieked in agony. ‘YE HAVE FAILED ME!’ He howled, and writhing, tentacle-like arms whipped out from either side of the idol’s body to seize Otha – and Annias.

‘Oh, my God!’ the Primate of Cimmura shrieked, not to Azash, but to the God of his childhood. ‘Save me! Protect me! Forgive –’ His voice rose to an inarticulate screech as the tentacle tightened about him.

There was no finesse in the punishment inflicted upon the Emperor of Zemoch and the Primate of Cimmura. Maddened by pain and fear and a hunger to lash out at those He considered responsible, Azash reacted like an infuriated child. Other arms lashed out to seize the shrieking pair, and then, with cruel slowness, the undulating arms began to turn in opposite directions in that motion used by a washerwoman to wring out a dripping rag. Blood and worse spurted out from between the God’s eel-like fingers as He inexorably wrung the lives of Otha and Annias from their writhing bodies.

Sickened, Sparhawk closed his eyes – but he could not close his ears. The shrieking grew worse, rising to strangled squeals at the very upper edge of hearing.