Pharaun and Jeggred were alone atop the rise.
The draegloth’s eyes burned into Pharaun. His wide chest rose and fell like a bellows, and his bare teeth dripped saliva. Even from five paces, Pharaun caught a whiff of Jeggred’s vile breath and winced.
“You are an effete fool,” the draegloth said. “And our business is unfinished. I will feast on your heart before all is said and done.”
Without fear, Pharaun stalked up to the hulking draegloth, the words to a spell that would strip all the skin from Jeggred’s body ready in his mind.
“No doubt it will improve your breath,” he said.
With that, he walked past the draegloth.
He could feel Jeggred’s eyes burning holes in his back. He also could feel the baleful stare of the eight satellites in the sky above.
At a dignified hurry, he moved nearer to Quenthel and Danifae. Jeggred followed, his breath and heavy tread audible five paces behind Pharaun.
When he reached Quenthel’s side, he asked, “Now that we are here, where exactly are we to go?”
Quenthel looked into the sky, to the glowing river of souls that shone like the gem-encrusted ceiling of Menzoberranzan’s cavern. “We follow the souls to Lolth,” she answered.
“And?” he dared.
Quenthel stopped and faced him, anger in her face. The serpents of her whip flicked their tongues.
“And?” she asked.
Pharaun lowered his gaze but asked, “And what, Mistress? Lolth calls her Yor’thae but what is the Yor’thae to do?”
For a moment, Quenthel said nothing. Pharaun looked up and found that her gaze was no longer on him.
“Mistress?” he prompted.
She came back to herself. “That is not a matter for a mere male,” she said.
Pharaun bowed, his mind racing. He wondered if even Quenthel knew what it was that the Yor’thae was to do, what it was that was happening to Lolth. The possibility that she did not troubled him.
Quenthel offered nothing further, and they began again to walk.
Pharaun looked behind him and met Danifae’s gaze. She licked her lips, smiled, and pulled up the hood of her cloak.
chapter
four
Around Gromph, hundreds of fires crackled and burned. Black smoke poured into the air, casting the bazaar in a surreal haze. Abandoned shops and booths lay in charred heaps of rubble. The blackened, petrified forms of drow merchants—turned to stone by the touch of the lichdrow Dyrr, shapechanged into the form of a blackstone gigant—lay scattered about like castings. Some of the petrified drow had run like candle wax in the heat of the Staff of Power’s explosion; they would never be restored to flesh. Gromph gave their fate no further thought.
Wide, deep scorings from the gigant’s thrashings marred the otherwise smooth floor of the bazaar.
Still dazed from the destruction of the staff, Gromph sat in a heap on the cool stone floor with his legs stretched out before him. Smoke leaked from his clothes. His mind moved sluggishly; his senses felt dull.
But not so dull that he was not conscious of his pain. A lot of pain.
Much of his body was burned. He felt as though a million needles were stabbing his skin, as though he had bathed in acid. His once-severed leg still had not fully reattached and sent shooting pains up his thigh and hip. His non-magical clothes—thankfully, not much of his attire—had melted into his flesh, turning his skin into an amalgam of burned meat and cloth. He could imagine how the exposed flesh of his face must look. He was surprised he could still see. He must have closed his eyes—his captured Agrach Dyrr eyes—before the explosion.
He held two charred sticks in his hands. He stared at them, dumbfounded as to their purpose. In appearance, they reminded him of his forearms—thin and burned almost beyond recognition. It took a moment for him to realize what they were: the remnants of the Staff of Power.
With a wince, he uncurled his ruined fingers from the wood and let the pieces of the staff clatter to the ground.
Seeing no movement in the bazaar except Nauzhror, who squatted beside him and clucked nervously, Gromph thought for an absurd moment that the staff’s destruction might have annihilated everyone else in Menzoberranzan.
The stupidity of the thought made him smile, and he instantly regretted even that small movement. The charred skin of his lips cracked, causing him an excruciating stab of pain. Warm fluid seeped from the wound and into his mouth. He gave expression to the pain only with a soft hiss.
Gromph was no stranger to pain. If he could endure his own rat familiar eating out his eyes and a giant centipede severing his leg, he could abide a few burns.
“Archmage?” Nauzhror asked. “Shall I assist you?”
The rotund Master of Sorcere put forth a hand as though to touch Gromph’s arm.
“Don’t touch me, fool!” Gromph hissed through the charred ruin of his face. More blood leaked into his mouth. Pus ran from burst blisters.
Nauzhror recoiled so fast he nearly toppled over. “I-I meant only to aid you, Archmage,” he stammered.
Gromph sighed, regretting his harsh tone. It was unlike him to let his emotions rule his words. Besides, the beginning of a plan for dealing with what remained of the lichdrow was taking shape in his mind. And with Pharaun away on the mission to the Demonweb Pits, he would need Nauzhror.
“Of course, Nauzhror,” Gromph said. “We must let the ring do its work for a moment more.”
“Yes, Archmage,” answered Nauzhror.
Gromph knew that the magical ring he wore would heal his flesh. The process was painful, itchy, and slow, but it was as inexorable as the rise of light up Narbondel’s shaft. No doubt Gromph could have benefited from a healing spell—which his sisters could again cast, it seemed—but it galled him too much that Triel had already saved him once. The lichdrow had beaten Gromph, turned him to stone, and he would have died or remained a statue forever but for his sister’s intervention.
No, he could not ask her or any of the Baenre priestesses for healing or any other aid. Lolth’s grace once more abided in them. Things would soon return to normal, and Gromph wished to be no more beholden to the priestesses of the Spider Queen than was absolutely necessary. He knew too well the price. Instead, he would endure a few more moments of agony while the ring regenerated his flesh.
I am pleased that you survived, Archmage, said Prath in his head. The telepathy spell was still working, it appeared.
I share your pleasure, Prath, Gromph answered. Now be silent.
Gromph’s head ached, and he no more wanted the apprentice’s voice rattling around in his head than he did a dagger in his eye.
In only a few moments, his skin was itching all over. He resisted the urge to scratch only with difficulty. After a few more moments, dead flesh started to fall from his body and new, healthy skin grew in its place.
“Archmage?” asked Nauzhror.
“A few more moments,” Gromph answered through clenched teeth.
He watched, wincing with pain, as clumps of blistered skin fell from his body and traced his silhouette on the ground. Gromph imagined himself as one of Lolth’s spiders, molting its old form and pulling a larger, stronger body from the dead shell. The battle with the lichdrow had taxed him, but ultimately it had not beaten him.
Of course, he reminded himself, the battle was not quite over.
When he felt ready, when most of his dead skin had sloughed away into a grotesque pile on the bazaar’s floor, he extended his still-tender hand to Nauzhror.
“Here, help me rise.”
Nauzhror took Gromph’s hand in his own and pulled him to his feet.
Gromph held still for a moment, gathering himself, testing his regenerated leg, controlling the last vestiges of the pain.
Nauzhror hovered near him, as attentive as a midwife but not touching him.
“I’m quite capable of remaining on my feet,” Gromph said but was not sure that he was.
“Of course, Archmage,” Nauzhror answered bu
t stayed close.
Gromph took a deep breath and let his shaking legs grow steady. Through his stolen Dyrr eyes, he surveyed the wreckage around him, surveyed the whole of the city.
Except for the smoking ruin of the bazaar, the center of the city remained unaffected by the siege. The great spire of Narbondel still glowed, tolling another day in the life of Menzoberranzan the Mighty. Gromph could not remember if he had lit it or if another had.
He cocked his head and asked Nauzhror, “Did I light Narbondel this cycle?
“Archmage?” Nauzhror asked.
“Never mind,” Gromph said.
Only the fact of Menzoberranzan’s empty thoroughfares testified to the fact that the city was embattled. The ordinarily thronged streets were as still as a tomb. The Menzoberranyr had confined most of the fighting to the tunnels of the Dark Dominion, the Donigarten, and Tier Breche. The city’s center remained untouched by any battle except that between Gromph and the lichdrow.
But that battle had nearly leveled the bazaar.
Gromph turned and looked across the cavern to the great stairway that led to Tier Breche. There on that high rise stood the spine of Menzoberranzan’s power, the triad of institutions that had kept it strong and vital for millennia: Arach-Tinilith, Sorcere, and Melee-Magthere.
Flashes, explosions, and smoke illuminated the schools in silhouette. The siege of the duergar from the north continued unabated. Gromph knew that each of the schools was scarred and burned by stonefire bombs, but he knew too that each stood.
And soon, the duergar would find the spells of Lolth’s priestesses bolstering the defenses, strengthening the counterattacks, and rejuvenating the fallen.
“The duergar are stubborn,” said Nauzhror, following his gaze.
“More likely, they are ignorant of Lolth’s return,” Gromph replied. “But ignorant or stubborn, they soon will be dead.”
In Gromph’s mind, the battle for the city was already won. The siege of Menzoberranzan soon would end. He allowed himself a moment’s satisfaction. He had done the part allotted him, and his city would live.
“Agreed,” Nauzhror said. “It is only a matter of time, now.”
Gromph turned and looked to the other side of the cavern, where rose the high plateau of Qu’ellarz’orl. If Sorcere, ArachTinilith, and Melee-Magthere were Menzoberranzan’s spine, the great Houses of Qu’ellarz’orl were the city’s heart.
House after House lined the plateau, with House Baenre dominating by far in both size and power. Squatting in House Baenre’s shadow along the rise, barely visible from such a distance, were the fortresses of the city’s other great houses— Mizzrym, Xorlarrin, Faen Tlabbar, even Agrach Dyrr.
Gromph’s eyes narrowed when they fell upon the stalactite wall of the traitor House. Occasional flashes of power and explosions of magical energy lit the Dyrr fortress. The siege by the Xorlarrin mages continued. Gromph imagined that it would for some time. With Yasraena and her underpriestesses once more wielding Lolth’s power, the siege could take a long while.
“The Xorlarrin are also stubborn,” Gromph observed.
“And greedy,” Nauzhror said. “With House Agrach Dyrr defeated and removed from the Ruling Council . . .” He trailed off.
Gromph nodded. When Agrach Dyrr fell, no doubt House Xorlarrin hoped to take its place on the Council. Nauzhror observed, “The fall of House Dyrr too is only a matter of time.”
Gromph nodded again and said, “But I cannot wait.”
Within House Agrach Dyrr, he believed, was the lichdrow’s phylactery, the receptacle of the lichdrow’s immortal essence. Gromph had to find and destroy it if he was to fully and finally destroy the lichdrow. Otherwise, the surviving essence of the undead wizard, embodied in the phylactery and driven by Dyrr’s undying will, would bring itself back together and reincorporate a body within a matter of threescore hours. Were that to occur, the battle between the lichdrow and Gromph would begin anew.
And Gromph no longer had a Staff of Power to sacrifice in order to win.
Another fireball exploded along the parapet of Agrach Dyrr’s wall.
“What are you thinking now, Yasraena?” he asked softly.
Gromph knew that the Matron Mother of House Agrach Dyrr already would have learned of the lichdrow’s fall; likely she was scrying Gromph even then.
Like Gromph, Yasraena would know that the lichdrow was not fully dead until and unless his phylactery was destroyed.
“Did he confide its location to you, Matron Mother?” he whispered.
“Archmage?” Nauzhror asked.
Gromph ignored Nauzhror. He thought it unlikely that the lichdrow would have shared the location of his phylactery with Yasraena. He imagined that the relationship between the lichdrow and the Matron Mother would have been a tense one, not unlike that between Gromph and his sister Triel. Likely, Yasraena no more knew the location of the lichdrow’s phylactery than did Gromph. But like Gromph, Yasraena would look first to her own House, the most likely hiding place.
She already would be looking for it, Gromph knew. He had little time. He would have to find a way through the defensive wards of one of Menzoberranzan’s great Houses while it was under siege and while its Matron Mother and her underpriestesses—all once more armed with spells from Lolth—would be awaiting him.
He almost laughed. Almost.
“Come, Nauzhror,” Gromph said. “We return to my sanctum. The war for the city is won, but there is a battle or two yet to be fought.”
Prath, he sent to the young Baenre apprentice. Meet us in my offices.
Yasraena stood over the marble scrying basin and watched the image of Gromph Baenre waver and fade as he and his fellow mage teleported away from the ruined bazaar. There was no sign of the lichdrow. The undead wizard’s body had been utterly destroyed.
But not his soul, she reminded herself, not his essence, and that reminder gave her hope.
Though her heart pounded in her chest, Yasraena kept her expression outwardly calm. With the lichdrow . . . absent, she was the true and only head of House Agrach Dyrr. It would not do to show alarm.
Two of her four daughters, Larikal and Esvena, the Third and Fourth Daughters of the House and each a lesser priestess of Lolth, stood to either side of her. Her First and Second Daughters were occupied supervising the defenses of the House against the besieging Xorlarrin forces, so it fell to Larikal and Esvena to gather intelligence and spy on the House’s enemies. Both were taller than Yasraena, and Larikal bordered on heavyset, though neither was as strongly built as their mother. But both had inherited Yasraena’s ambition. Both were as eager as any drow priestess to kill their way to the top of their House.
Three males too stood in the chamber, on the other side of the basin. All were graduates of Sorcere and apprentices of the lichdrow. They seemed stunned that their undead master had been defeated. Slack hands hung limply from the sleeves of their piwafwis. Yasraena saw fear in their stances, uncertainty in their hooded red eyes. It disgusted her but she expected little better from males.
“The Archmage has retreated to his sanctum,” said Larikal. “He is beyond our ability to scry.”
Yasraena vented her frustration on her daughter. “You state the obvious as though it were profound. Be silent unless you have something useful to say, fool.”
Larikal’s thin-lipped mouth hardened in anger but her crimson eyes found the floor. The male wizards shifted uneasily, shared surreptitious glances. Yasraena gripped her tentacle rod so tightly in her hand it made her fingers ache. She would have strangled the lichdrow herself, had he stood before her.
Look where his plotting had gotten her House!
She stared at the dark water of the stone basin and tried to think.
The battle for the city was over, or would be soon. When the great Houses mustered their priestesses—priestesses again capable of casting spells—the tide of battle would turn rapidly. The duergar and tanarukks would be routed. Her House would stand alone against the combined might of
all of Menzoberranzan.
Despite the dire situation, Yasraena held onto hope. After all, House Agrach Dyrr had single handedly annihilated several noble Houses in recent centuries, both under her stewardship and that of her sister Auro’pol, the previous Matron Mother. The Dyrr knew how to fight.
For a heartbeat, she entertained other options.
She could flee the city, but where would she go? Would she become a Houseless vagabond, wandering the Underdark or the outer planes with her hands out? The thought appalled her. She was the Matron Mother of House Agrach Dyrr, one of the great Houses of Menzoberranzan, not some beggar!
No, she would live or die with her House. She would withstand the siege, find a way to make her House useful to another great House, and ultimately arrange a truce. House Agrach Dyrr would be forced to step down from the Ruling Council, of course, and would have to endure a few centuries of ignominy, but she and it would survive. That was her only goal. The House would climb back onto the council in time.
But to realize her hope, she needed the lichdrow. Without him, the House would not withstand the siege much longer. She knew that the undead wizard would reincorporate in only a matter of hours so long as his phylactery remained safe.
Unfortunately, no one seemed to know exactly where the phylactery might be. Her own divinations had been unable to locate it, though she assumed it to be somewhere in House Agrach Dyrr—the lichdrow spent virtually all of his existence within the House. He would not have secreted the phylactery anywhere else. Yasraena knew that Gromph Baenre would make the same assumption and would come for it. She had to find it first, or at least prevent Gromph Baenre from finding it at all. To do the latter, she needed to know what Gromph Baenre was doing at all times.
In the past, her daughters’ and the House’s wizards’ scrying spells had been unable to pierce the wards around Gromph Baenre’s sanctum within Sorcere, despite frequent attempts. But they had to find a way to do it, and so they would. Yasraena needed to know when the Archmage was coming.
She looked across the basin to Geremis, the aging, bald apprentice to the lichdrow. At that moment, his hairless head irritated her beyond measure.
R. A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Extinction, Annihilation, Resurrection Page 71