Dissolution

by Byers, Richard Lee

  Half a dozen minotaurs, formidable brutes she had often employed as her own personal guards, chanted, “Freedom! Freedom!” as they swung their axes or crouched to gore an enemy with their horns. Triel read the last line of runes from a scroll that, when the rebellion commenced, had contained seven spells.

  Dazzling flame blazed up from the ground beneath the minotaurs’ hooves. Four of the huge beasts fell down screaming and thrashing. The other two leaped clear of the conflagration. They didn’t escape harm entirely. The fire burned away patches of their shaggy fur and seared the flesh beneath, but the injuries didn’t slow them down. They bellowed and charged.

  A minotaur towered over a drow of normal stature, and made Triel look like a tiny sprite. Still, she smiled as she stepped forward to meet the foe. One of the slaves focused on her and the other, on Jeggred.

  The matron mother knew a minotaur liked to overwhelm an opponent with the momentum of its initial rush. She waited until the creature was nearly on top of her, then sidestepped. He was lumbering too fast to stop or compensate, and she smashed his knee with her mace as he plunged by.

  The slave fell on his face, and she robbed him of the use of his limbs with a bone-breaking strike to the spine. Meanwhile, Jeggred simultaneously chewed on his own opponent’s neck and ripped at the brute’s torso, hooking the guts out.

  After that, Triel and the draegloth killed several gnolls before running out of foes. Panting, the Baenre strode to the foot of a wall and floated upward again, high enough to peer beyond the eminence of Qu’ellarz’orl to the burning city beyond. Jeggred followed.

  Earlier, when she’d first discerned that slaves throughout Menzoberranzan were rebelling, she’d used a certain magical diamond to call the males of Bregan D’aerthe from their secret lair. The sellswords were at their work.

  One neighborhood in the south of the city was thick with goblins. Even from the Great Mound, she could make out the boil of motion in the streets. Then, over the course of just a few seconds, that agitation ceased, as the creatures apparently fell dead all at once.

  It was an extraordinary feat of mass assassination, but the mercenaries had only cleared one small part of Menzoberranzan. They couldn’t reclaim the entire city by themselves, if, in fact, the job could be done at all.

  Triel shouted down into the yard, to any officer within earshot, “Assemble my troops. We’re marching out.”

  Jeggred couldn’t speak for joy. This had already been the best night of his admittedly young life, and he was drunk on slaughter. He’d killed and killed and killed and killed again, an ecstasy that put his sport with Faeryl Zauvirr to shame.

  And his mother said it wasn’t over! They were going to descend into the city to gorge on murder, and Jeggred would know a fiend’s transcendent bliss. The only hard part would be remembering not to kill dark elves, just everyone else.

  He squeezed Triel’s shoulder with a quivering hand, one of the smaller ones.

  Valas Hune skulked around the corner, then blinked. A keep blocked the street, where no bastion should be—then the huge thing moved.

  No, not a keep after all, but the biggest stone giant he’d ever seen. The scout knew that some Houses kept giant slaves as well as the more common goblinoids and ogres, and, gray in the firelight, with a long head and black, sunken eyes, this specimen still wore iron bracelets dangling lengths of broken chain. From somewhere it had procured a greataxe sized for a creature of its immensity, and was using it to pulp any drow it noticed scurrying about.

  Valas had gotten separated from his comrades sometime back. That was all right. He was used to traversing wild places by himself, though in truth, he’d never explored any tunnel as perilous and unpredictable as Menzoberranzan had become this night.

  He’d been killing orcs and gnolls, first with his shortbow, and, after the arrows ran out, close in with his kukris. He’d thought he was making some genuine progress until he encountered this.

  It was a daunting sight, but someone would have to kill the big undercreatures as well as the little ones, if Menzoberranzan was to survive and Bregan D’aerthe was to be paid for its services.

  Valas touched a fingertip to a nine-pointed tin star pinned to his shirt, and murmured a word in a language of a race few Menzoberranyr had ever even heard of. In the blink of an eye he was crouched on the stone giant’s shoulder.

  The surface was smooth and rounded. He started to slip off, but, reacting like the accomplished rock climber he was, negated his weight and caught himself. He clambered within reach of the giant’s neck and started hacking at the arteries within the behemoth’s neck with both kukris.

  To no avail. Perched somewhat precariously, Valas couldn’t use his strength and weight to full advantage, and his first stroke skipped harmlessly off the giant’s rocklike hide.

  The behemoth did feel the impact, though. Its head snapped around, the chin nearly brushing Valas away. The giant glared down at him, and he struck, this time with greater success. With a crackle of lightning, the enchanted weapon split the slave’s lower lip.

  Crying out in pain and anger, a deep sound Valas felt in his bones, the stone giant flinched its head away. A huge gray hand rose up to catch the drow, who scrambled forward and cut at the colossus’s neck.

  Dark, thick blood leaped forth and washed Valas into space. He fell hard onto a rooftop and watched the giant stumble about, clutching at its throat. After a few steps, the huge thrall fell backward, crushing some unlucky hobgoblins that were wandering by.

  Gromph was in a vile humor as he floated up the cliff face. He’d cast light into the foot of Narbondel the same as always, and the world exploded into madness. Orcs lunged out of nowhere and attacked his guards. His own ogre litter-bearers summarily dumped his luxurious conveyance on the ground and joined in the uprising.

  The archmage had sought to strike the undercreatures dead with a spell, but nothing happened. Someone had conjured a magical dead zone around him. Either one of the orcs was a shaman powerful enough to create such an effect, or, more likely, one of the brutes had stolen a talisman from his owner.

  However they’d managed it, the beasts were charging, and the spells in Gromph’s memory were just odd little rhymes, his robe and cloak, mere flimsy cloth, and his weapons, inert sticks and ornaments. Well, probably not all of them, but he wasn’t reckless enough to stand and experiment while the orcs assailed him with their pilfered blades. Forfeiting his dignity, he turned and ran. The exertion made his chest throb where K’rarza’q had gored him.

  When he reached the edge of the plaza, he thought he must have exited the dead zone. He’d better have, because he could hear the grunting ogres with their long legs catching up behind him. He turned, pointed a wand, and snarled the trigger word.

  A drop of liquid shot from the tip of the rod. It struck the belly of the lead ogre and burst into a copious splash of acid.

  With his magic restored, Gromph obliterated every attacker who lacked the sense to run away. His dark elf attendants were already dead, leaving him to make his way back to Tier Breche alone.

  As it turned out, the slave rebellion was pandemic, and the trek wasn’t altogether easy. He considered going to ground in some castle or house, but when he saw the flames gnawing stone, he knew he had to get back.

  Dirty, sore, and coughing, he eventually made it home, and when he rose to the top of the limestone wall, he saw something that lifted his spirits, albeit only a little.

  Eight Masters of Sorcere stood in the open air, chanting, gesturing, attempting a ritual, while an equal number of apprentices looked on. The wizards had fetched much of the proper equipment out of the tower. That was something, Gromph supposed, but the incantation was a useless mess.

  The Baenre reached out and hauled himself onto solid ground and his hands and knees, another irksome affront to his dignity.

  He rose and shouted, “Enough!”

  The teachers and students twisted around to gawk at him. The chanting died.

  “Archmag
e!” cried Guldor Melarn. He was supposedly without peer in the realm of elemental magic, though it couldn’t be proved by his performance thus far that night. “We were worried about you!”

  “I’m sure,” said Gromph, striding closer. “I noticed all the search parties you sent out looking for me.”

  Guldor hesitated. “Sir, the mistress of the Academy commanded—”

  “Shut up,” said Gromph. He’d come close enough to see that the teachers were standing in a complex pentacle, written in red phosphorescence on the ground. “Pitiful.”

  He extended his index finger and wrote on the air. The magic words and sigils reshaped themselves.

  “My lord Archmage,” said Master Godeep. “We drew this circle to extinguish the fires below. If you break it—”

  “I’m not breaking it,” said Gromph, “I’m fixing it.” He turned his gaze on one of the apprentices, some commoner youth, and the dolt flinched. “Fetch me a bit of fur, an amber rod, and one of the little bronze gongs the cooks use to summon us to supper. Run?”

  “Archmage,” said Guldor, “you see we already have all the necessary foci for fire magic.” He gestured to a brazier of ruddy coals. “I’m whispering to the flames below, commanding them to dwindle.”

  “And making more smoke in the process. That’s just what we need.” Gromph kicked the brazier over, scattering embers across the rock. “Your approach isn’t working, elementalist. I should exile you to the Realms that See the Sun for a few decades, then you might figure out what it takes to extinguish a fire of this magnitude.”

  The male came sprinting back with the articles Gromph had requested. The Baenre whispered a word of power, and the pentacle changed from red to blue.

  “Right, then,” he said to the wizards. “I assume you can tell where you’re meant to stand, so do it and we’ll begin. I’ll say a line, you repeat it. Copy my passes if you’re up to it.”

  For a properly schooled wizard, magic was generally easy. He relied on an armamentarium of spells, many devised by his predecessors, a few, perhaps, invented by himself. In either case, they were perfected spells that he thoroughly understood. He knew he could cast them properly, and what would happen when he did.

  An extemporaneous ritual was a different matter. Relying on their arcane knowledge and natural ability, a circle of mages tried to generate a new effect on the fly. Often, nothing happened. When it did, the power often turned on those who had raised it or discharged itself in some other manner contrary to their intent. Yet occasionally such a ceremony worked, and with his station, his wealth, and his homeland at stake, Gromph was resolved to make this one of those times.

  After the mages chanted for fifteen minutes, power began to whisper and sting through the air. The archmage tapped the beater to the gong, sounding a clashing, shivering tone. At once a vaster note answered and obscured the first, a booming, grinding, deafening roar. Gromph’s subordinates flinched, but the Baenre smiled in satisfaction, because the noise was thunder.

  Perched high in the side cavern, the residents of Sorcere had an excellent view of what transpired next. The air at the top of the great vault, already thick with smoke, grew denser still as masses of vapor materialized. The shapeless shadows flickered like great translucent dragons with fire leaping in their bellies. Following each flash, they bellowed that godlike hammering blast, as if the flames pained them.

  Gromph knew that many of the folk in the city below had no idea what was occurring—it was possible that even some of his erudite colleagues didn’t know—but whether they understood or not, clouds, lightning, and weather were paying a call on the hitherto changeless depths of the Underdark.

  As one, the clouds dropped torrents of water to fall in frigid veils. The Baenre could hear the sizzling sound as it pounded the cavern wall.

  “That’s impressive,” said Guldor, “but are you sure it will put out the flames? The fire’s magical, after all.”

  Gromph’s bruise gave him a twinge.

  “Yes, instructor,” he growled, “because I’m not an incompetent from a House of no account. I’m a Baenre and the Archmage of Menzoberranzan … and I’m sure.”

  Before it was over, Pharaun lost track of how many battles he and his comrades had fought. He only knew they kept winning them, through superior tactics more than anything else, and that despite their losses, their numbers kept growing, swelled by garrisons that had fought their way out of their castles.

  Occasionally the ragtag army came upon a section of the city that had already been pacified, and though he never caught so much of a glimpse of them, Pharaun knew Bregan D’aerthe was fighting in concert with his own company. It was as much a comfort as anything could be on this fierce and desperate night.

  Finally the army from Tier Breche encountered an equally impressive force under Matron Baenre’s command. The two companies united and marched on Narbondellyn, where several bugbears with some degree of martial experience had striven to organize thousands of their fellow undercreatures into a force capable of withstanding their masters’ wrath.

  The great stone pillar of Narbondel shone above fighting that was wild and chaotic. Miraculously, partway through, the upper reaches of the cavern began to storm, allaying Pharaun’s greatest fear. An hour later, the drow swept in and annihilated the opposing force, and thus they took their homeland back.

  In the aftermath, the wizard walked through the downpour, looking this way and that. Strands of wet hair clung to his forehead, and his boots squelched. As a mage, he had to concede the storm was a glorious achievement, to say nothing of the salvation of Menzoberranzan, but it was a pity his colleagues couldn’t have accomplished the same thing without wreaking havoc on everyone’s appearance and chilling them to the bone.

  The Mizzrym grinned. Neither Quenthel nor Triel was anywhere around. He’d taken direction from them all night, willingly enough, but he wanted to command the finale of this extraordinary affair himself, and their absence gave him an excuse to proceed without consulting them.

  He cast about once more and spied Welverin Freth. The capable weapons master of the Nineteenth House, Welverin excelled at combat despite the seeming impediment of a prosthetic silver leg, and had fought in tandem with Pharaun several times during the night. Currently he was huddled in a doorway conferring with two of his lieutenants.

  “Weapons Master!” Pharaun called.

  Welverin looked up and gave him a nod. “How can I help you, Master Mizzrym?”

  “How would you like to help me kill the creature responsible for this insurrection?”

  The warrior’s eyes narrowed and he said, “Is this another of your jokes?”

  “By no means. But if we’re going to do this, we’d better do it quickly, before our quarry slinks away into the Underdark. I trust that you and your troops can ride aerial mounts?”

  Pharaun gestured to the giant bats, created by some enchanter, penned in a nearby latticework dome. It seemed a petty miracle they’d survived the rebellion unsuffocated and unburned.

  “Where do they keep the tack?” Welverin asked, peering at the cage.

  chapter

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Water dripping from the hem of his cloak, Pharaun found that the layout of the renegades’ fortress wasn’t quite so perplexing when he wasn’t dodging hunters and suffering the brain-jangling aftereffects of a psionic assault. The empty, echoing rooms and corridors still seemed just as ominous, however, just as fitting an abode for wraiths and maledictions.

  The Mizzrym watched Welverin and the other warriors of House Freth to see if the place was unsettling them. It didn’t look like it. Perhaps they were too brave. Or perhaps the fresh, butchered corpses littering the floor turned their thoughts from shadowy terrors to the commonplace violence that was their profession.

  They found the bodies, often cut in two or more pieces, lying here and there about the castle. Pharaun was astonished at the quantity. Apparently poor wounded Ryld had had a nice long homicidal run of it before the consp
irators slew him. Perhaps it had even required Syrzan to do the job.

  In retrospect, Pharaun wondered why the alhoon hadn’t joined the search for the escaped prisoners right from the start. Maybe giving the Call had temporarily depleted its strength.

  The Master of Sorcere led the soldiers into a long, spacious hall with a large dais at the far end. there, no doubt, a matron mother had held court and also dined, judging by the benches and trestle tables stacked in an alcove. Carved and painted spiders crawled everywhere, a sort of mask, Pharaun supposed, given that the former tenants of the keep had petitioned other deities in private. Sheets of genuine spiderweb veiled the artwork.

  Welverin said, “Look.”

  Pharaun turned his head, then caught his breath in surprise. Ryld Argith had just stepped from the mouth of a servants’ passage midway up the left-hand wall.

  The weapons master’s strides were even and sure despite his wounded leg. He was noticeably thinner, as if his body was burning fuel at a prodigious rate, and somehow he’d recovered Splitter.

  The soldiers aimed their crossbows.

  “No!” Pharaun said. Not yet, anyway.

  Ryld pivoted toward the newcomers and stalked forward. His eyes were intent yet somehow empty, his face, expressionless, and he seemed indifferent to the weapons leveled at his burly frame. One warrior muttered uneasily, as if he’d mistaken the Master of Melee-Magthere for a ghost. Pharaun knew better; he recognized a deep trance when he saw one. Evidently his friend had utilized some esoteric martial discipline to keep himself alive.

  “Ryld!” Pharaun said. “Well met! I knew you could defeat Houndaer and the rest of those buffoons. Otherwise I never would have left you.”

  The lie sounded thin even to the liar.