by Филип Этанс
The alu-fiend closed her eyes and concentrated on Kaanyr Vhok. She let her consciousness travel through the Astral and back to the cold, hard Underdark. There she found her lover's mind and dropped a message into it.
Something is happening with the Demonweb Pits, she sent. It's a plane unto itself now, and the gates are open. Lolth welcomes home the dead. She lives.
That was all she could say, and she hoped it would be warning enough. Aliisza could have shifted back to the Underdark in an instant and been by her lover's side, but she didn't. She wanted to stay where she was, though she didn't know why.
Nimor had given up trying to claw Gromph. Instead, he started to work on forcing the archmage to attack him, but the drow wouldn't oblige. The feeling Nimor had that Gromph somehow knew what he was thinking—maybe before he even thought it—grew stronger and stronger and made Nimor start to second-guess himself. It was no way to fight.
Nimor stepped back and so did Gromph. The assassin could see Dyrr slowly circling them both from a safe—some would say cowardly—distance. The assassin was about to speak when a familiar nettling buzzed in his skull.
Aliisza is in the Demonweb Pits, the voice of Kaanyr Vhok sounded in his head. Something is happening, and it will be bad for us all. I'm not waiting to find out how bad.
For the first time in a very, very long time, Nimor's blood ran cold.
Gromph twitched, almost gasped, and Nimor couldn't help but look at him. Their eyes locked, and an instant of understanding passed between them. Nimor stepped back, and Gromph nodded. The archmage still kept the ghostly battle-axe in front of him but didn't advance. He breathed heavily, sweat running down the sides of his face and matting his snow-white hair to his forehead.
Again, Nimor was about to speak, and again he was interrupted.
"What are you doing?" the lichdrow demanded. "Kill him!"
Nimor let a long, steady breath hiss out through clenched teeth. It was bad enough that a key component of his alliance was abandoning the cause, worse still that Lolth was somehow, for some reason he might never understand, choosing that moment to finally return—or do something that scared Kaanyr Vhok, anyway, and the cambion wasn't the type to scare easily. All that, an opponent he should have been able to dispatch with nary a thought but who was able to out-think and outfight him at every turn, and the damned lich was barking orders at him.
Dyrr began shouting again, but Nimor didn't understand what he was saying.
"I can't—" the Anointed Blade started to say then stopped when he realized that the lich was casting a spell.
Gromph heard him too. With one hand still holding the axe in front of him, the archmage tapped his staff on the pockmarked floor of the smoldering Bazaar and was instantly enveloped in a globe of shimmering energy. No sooner did the globe appear than Dyrr finished his muttering, and the sound of the lich's voice was replaced by a low, echoing buzz.
Nimor, eyes still locked on Gromph's, blinked. The archmage glanced over at the lich, and one side of his mouth curled up into the beginning of a smile. Nimor had to look, and he knew that Gromph had no intention of attacking him anyway.
The buzzing sound grew louder, escalating to an almost deafening roar. Nimor saw what looked like a cloud of black smoke winding through the air at him, and it was a few seconds before he realized it wasn't smoke. The cloud wasn't a cloud at all, but a swarm of tiny insects—perhaps tens, even hundreds of millions of them.
The swarm descended over Gromph, but they didn't penetrate the globe that surrounded the archmage. Nimor had to assume they were being directed by Dyrr, so when the insects turned on him, he took it personally.
Before the first of them could land on him, sting him, bite him, or do whatever they were meant to do to him, Nimor stepped into the Shadow Fringe. The act was second nature to him. He was there in the Bazaar, then he wasn't. The swarm became a shadow, the Bazaar a dull world, barely corporeal, drenched in blackness.
Nimor looked at his claws. His mind was strangely blank, his mood impossibly serene.
"Is that it?" he said aloud into the unhearing shadows. "Have I lost?"
He closed his eyes and thought of the lich. . and stepped back into the solid world right behind him.
Nimor grabbed the spindly undead mage from behind and beat his wings hard to pull him up and away from the floor of the Bazaar. The lich stiffened and drew in a breath—perhaps to cast a spell—but was wise enough to stop when Nimor pressed one razor-sharp talon into the lich's desiccated throat.
"You might not bleed, lich," Nimor whispered into the lichdrow's ear, "but if your head comes away from your neck. ."
"What are you doing?" Dyrr asked, his voice a thin, reedy hiss. "You could kill him. Our moment is at hand, and you turn on me? Me?"
"You?" Nimor sneered. "Yes, you. I should kill you now, but then you're already dead, aren't you, lich? All you did was waste my time, and now the Spider Queen is rattling in her cage, and our time together is spent."
"What?" Dyrr asked, honestly confused. "What are you saying?"
"Not that you deserve to know it before I let Gromph Baenre kill you," Nimor replied, "but it's over."
"No!" the lich shouted.
Nimor grunted when something pushed hard against his chest His hand came away from the lich's throat, and he was forced backward, driven through the air by some unfathomable force. Despite any attempt to fly, Nimor was repulsed.
The assassin spared a glance down at Gromph, who had put away his stolen duergar battle-axe and was looking up at them, laughing.
Nimor laughed too. Why not?
"We failed, lich," Nimor called to Dyrr, "but at least for me there will be another chance."
"Wefailed?" the lich wailed. "We? No, you wretched son of a wyrm, you failed. You'll go back to the Shadow with your dragon's tail between your legs, repeating your feeble excuses to yourself over and over again. Blame me if you wish, Nimor, but I'm still here. Live or die, I'll still be here, in Menzoberranzan, fighting."
"Perhaps," Nimor said, the first waves of a profound exhaustion beginning to soften his tired muscles, "but not for long."
The lich screamed his name, but Nimor didn't hear the first echo before he drifted into the Shadow Fringe and was gone from Menzoberranzan forever.
Chapter Twenty-four
Inside the temple walls was a city twenty times the size of Menzoberranzan. Like the walls and the surrounding plazas, the city was a battered, war-ravaged ruin that looked to Pharaun as if it had been abandoned for a thousand years or more.
The architecture throughout mimicked all manner of dark elven dwellings, from the calcified webs of Ched Nasad to the hollowed-out stalagmites of Menzoberranzan. The only thing the structures had in common was that they were all at least partially collapsed and they were devoid of life.
Valas appeared behind the mage as he always did, as if by magic. Pharaun didn't bother trying to pretend the scout's sudden appearance hadn't startled him. The time for keeping up appearances and jockeying for position in the party had come and gone.
Valas nodded once to the Master of Sorcere and said, "There's more metal the deeper in we go."
Pharaun found himself shaking his head, unsure at first what the scout was trying to tell him. He looked around more closely and saw that Valas was right. Though they had seen jagged, twisted chunks of rusted iron and scorched steel in the plaza outside, the deeper into the temple they walked, the more they all had to step around larger and larger pieces.
Valas stopped and reached out to touch a gently curving wall of steel three times the scout's height.
"It looks like it was ripped off of a larger piece," the scout said. "I've never seen this much steel."
Pharaun nodded, examining the relic from a distance.
"It looks like a piece of a giant's suit of armor," the wizard commented, "a giant bigger than any you might find on the World Above, but this is the Abyss, Valas. There could be such a creature here."
"Or a god," the scout rep
lied.
"Selvetarm was that big," Danifae said. Both the males turned to look at her, surprised that she'd stopped to join the conversation. The former battle-captive had been walking in silence with the draegloth never far from her side, apparently unfazed by her surroundings. "So was Vhaeraun."
Valas nodded and said, "There are other pieces, though, and there are things that don't look like armor."
"The mechanical bits," Pharaun interjected. "I've noticed those too."
"Mechanical bits?" the young priestess asked.
Pharaun continued walking as he said, "The odd moving part. I've seen hinges and things that seem to act almost like a joint, like a shoulder or knee joint in a drow's body but with wires or other contraptions in place of muscles."
"Now that you mention it," Valas said, "some of them did look like legs or arms."
"Who cares?" the draegloth grumbled. "Are you two really wasting your time examining the garbage? Do you have no understanding of what's happened here?"
"I think we have at least a rudimentary understanding of what's gone on here, Jeggred, yes," Pharaun said. "By 'examining the garbage, as you so eloquently put it, we might gain some understanding beyond the point where it can still be described as rudimentary. Alas, that's not a state of mind with which you tend to be familiar with yourself, but those of us with higher—"
The air was forced out of Pharaun's lungs in a single painful grunt. The draegloth was on top of him, smashing him into a crumbling pile of bricks that had once been part of a soaring cathedral. The wizard brought to mind a spell that didn't require speech but stopped himself from casting it when Danifae's voice echoed across the temple grounds.
"Jeggred," she commanded, "leave it."
It was a command someone might give a pet rat distracted by a cave beetle. As the draegloth withdrew and Pharaun struggled to his feet, he wondered which was a greater insult, Jeggred smashing him to the ground or Danifae's rude remark. The Master of Sorcere brushed off his piwafwi, did his best with the wild mop his hair had become, and cleared his throat.
"Ah, Jeggred, my boy," the wizard said, letting the sarcasm drip freely, "was it something I said?"
"Next time you talk to me like that, mage," he draegloth growled, "your heart will follow Ryld Argith's through my bowels."
Pharaun tried not to laugh and said, "Charming as always."
"Come, Jeggred," Danifae said, waving the draegloth into step behind her.
Pharaun finished assembling himself, and as he was about to move on he stopped and turned, having caught someone looking at him from the corner of his eye. Quenthel Baenre stood partially blocked by another huge, jagged hunk of steel. The look the wizard saw on her face was ice cold, and if they had been back in Menzoberranzan it would surely have presaged Danifae's death.
After the echoes from Dyrr's last, barely-coherent shout finally died away, came a moment of almost complete silence. The lich hung in the still air, trembling with rage. Gromph took a moment to survey the ruined Bazaar.
The fires had burned themselves out, and the smoke slowly dissipated. Dozens of stalls, tents, and carts were ruined—burned or shattered. Great cracks and pits had been dug into the stone floor, which was scorched in large swaths of dusty black.
A few whispered words drifted across the otherwise quiet space, and Gromph saw a few inquisitive—and unwise—drow beginning to wander into the edges of the ruined marketplace. They had sensed that the duel had come to an end, but Gromph knew how wrong they were. Something, and it wasn't only Gromph's ability to outthink him, had scared Nimor off, had given the Anointed Blade the impression that he had lost.
Why did Nimor abandon the fight, Archmage? Nauzhror asked. What does he know?
Find out, Gromph ordered then turned his attention to Dyrr.
"We can finish this now, if you like," Gromph said.
The lich took a deep, shuddering breath and shook his head.
"It's as it should be," the archmage added.
"I suppose it is, my young friend," the lich answered, his voice steady. "You, the highest ranking wizard in Menzoberranzan, and me, the most powerful. It's only symmetrical that we eventually face each other. Power abhors that sort of imbalance."
"I don't know," Gromph answered with a shrug. "I don't consider balance. I worship a demon. I serve chaos."
Dyrr's answer was to begin casting a spell. Gromph stepped back and used his staff to levitate, hopping a dozen feet up into the air and hovering there. He looked down and could see a small group of drow—fifteen or twenty and mostly older males—begin sifting through the ruined stalls. They must have been the merchants themselves, finally unable to stay away, not knowing the fate of their livelihoods.
Gromph thought to warn them off but didn't. He didn't want to.
Dyrr finished his spell, and at first it looked as if the lich burst. He grew, ballooning up to twice, then three, then four times his normal size and bigger. He changed in every conceivable physical way and dropped from the air with a resounding crash that made the merchants scatter back past the edges of the Bazaar. Gromph watched the bystanders gape in awe and fear at what Dyrr had become.
It's a gigant, Nauzhror said. A blackstone gigant.
Gromph sighed. He knew what it was that Dyrr had turned himself into.
Under normal circumstances, a blackstone gigant was a construct, created by priestesses of any number of dark faiths to be used as servants, guardians, assassins, or instruments of war. Carved from solid blocks of stone, they were formidable creatures that could destroy a whole city if left unchecked. What Dyrr had done was change his form from his normally thin, aged drow frame to the form of a gigant. In the process he had become, for all intents and purposes, that new creature.
The gigant was easily forty feet long from the top of its massive, drowlike head to the tip of its curling, wormlike tail. It had four sets of long arms with drowlike hands big enough to close over Gromph entirely, though the hands were oddly twisted with three multi-jointed fingers ending in black talons not unlike Nimor's. The lich had opted to retain his black coloration, but the creature's eyes blazed a bright blue. Shafts of light extended from them, cutting through the haze of smoke that still hung in the air. It opened its mouth and revealed fangs the size of short swords, set in rows. Slime dripped from its twisted lower lip. It was in constant motion, twitching and squirming like a maggot. The weight of it dragged ragged scars in the floor, and the sound of grinding, cracking stone overwhelmed all other sounds.
The creature started to destroy everything it could reach, and it could reach a lot. What merchants' stalls were still intact and unburned were ground to splinters under the colossal beast's raw tonnage. The once curious merchants ran for their lives, but as the gigant writhed across the Bazaar, it rolled over one fleeing drow after another. When it rolled on to reveal them once again, instead of the mass of unrecognizable paste Gromph expected to see, there was left behind an array of what looked at first like statues. The petrified forms of a score of drow lay perfectly still, scattered across the ruined Bazaar. The touch of the gigant had turned them to stone.
Its fit of destructive rage finished, the gigant turned its attention to Gromph. The shafts of light from its eyes fell on the archmage, illuminating him where he hovered a dozen yards above the floor of the Bazaar.
Gromph cast a spell as the gigant came at him, gnashing its massive fangs and petrifying a handful more of the careless drow merchants. The spell made Gromph difficult to see. His form became cloudy, indistinct, and he dropped quickly to the ground. The boots he was wearing would help him run faster than any drow. Difficult to see and moving fast, Gromph managed to stay out of the raging gigant's way.
"Can you hear me, Dyrr?" Gromph called out.
The lich didn't answer. Gromph wasn't sure if he could in his current state. The gigant growled and gnashed its teeth and came at him again. Gromph literally ran in circles in an effort to contain the dangerous beast in the Bazaar. Any living thing it touched t
urned to stone, and too many Menzoberranyr had perished already. If the siege truly was coming to an end, it was time for the wasteful killing to stop too.
"Dyrr, answer me," Gromph tried again, but again there was no response.
Instead, the gigant glanced down at the petrified drow left in its wake. When the beam of light from its eyes played on their stone forms, the rock-hard drow lurched into motion. The petrified merchants drew themselves up, staggering slowly like zombies, and each one turned its head up to regard the gigant as if listening for orders. Dust fell from them in gently wafting clouds.
The gigant hissed at each of them, and as it did so one after another of the animated statues turned to face Gromph and began to stagger slowly toward him.
Gromph could move many times faster than the petrified drow, but there were a lot of them: a dozen, then more, and he knew that eventually he would have to do something about the blackstone gigant and its cadre of animated statues in the heart of Menzoberranzan.
The lich isn't answering you, Master, Nauzhror said. Perhaps he can't. Perhaps he's more gigant now than lich.
What does that mean? Prath asked.
It means, Gromph answered, that what a lich might be normally capable of, normally resistant to, may no longer apply.
Like what? Prath asked.
Gromph and Nauzhror projected the same word at precisely the same time: Necromancy,
"That's impossible," Valas said. "It's the size of a castle."
Pharaun shrugged, nodding, looking up at the enormous wreck.
"Bigger," the Master of Sorcere replied, "but it walked."
The wreck was once a sphere of polished steel three hundred feet or more in diameter. It lay amid the ruins of half a dozen smaller stone and web buildings, one side of it gone completely. On the whole it resembled a discarded eggshell, but in fact it had once been a walking fortress. Pharaun tried to imagine the sight of the thing intact, standing on legs that were left bent and torn underneath its bulk.
"Some kind of clockwork contraption," Valas persisted, "that big … It would have to have been built by a. ."