Annihilation wotsq-5

by Филип Этанс

  We can help you choose your moment, Nauzhror said.

  I know, Gromph answered, but there are always. . variables.

  The archmage stopped running, turned, and began his casting.

  The gigant looked down at him, bathing Gromph in the light from its mad blue eyes.Gromph was sure he had time. The animated, petrified drow were too far away and moving too slowly to be of any concern, and the gigant had been slapping its tail around the Bazaar at random, as if Dyrr had little control over his new body. Gromph trusted in that.

  He was wrong.

  One set of trigger words from completing the spell, the enormous black tail of the blackstone gigant rolled over him. Gromph felt the words stop in his throat and felt his joints stiffen then nothing.

  Triel stood and looked from scrying device to scrying device, trying to sort out what she was hearing. The magically transmitted voices of a hundred mages, priestesses, and warriors filled the air in an incoherent tangle of confusion and undisguised bliss. The doors of the scrying chamber burst open, and a priestess whom Triel recognized but whose name she couldn't instantly recall staggered into the room. Tears streamed down her black cheeks, and her mouth worked in silent, incoherent attempts to put into words what she, Triel, Wilara, and every other servant of the Queen of the Demonweb Pits all across the endless expanse of the multiverse had experienced.

  The matron mother's attention fell on one image: Gromph, petrified.

  He had lost. The lich, in its freakish monster form, had turned the Archmage of Menzoberranzan to stone.

  Triel felt her jaw tighten then she stood for a moment, letting the anger wash through her.

  "Is this a sign?" she asked the Spider Queen.

  Lolth didn't answer, but Triel knew she could if she wanted to.

  "It's a sign," the matron mother whispered.

  Triel pressed her fingertips together, bent her neck in a slight bow, and willed herself to the Bazaar. There was a momentary feeling of upside down weightlessness, a black void, then she was standing in a deep crack in the stone floor of her city's marketplace. The blackstone gigant reared up high above her, apparently having sensed her passage through the dimensions from House Baenre to the Bazaar. The creature opened its mouth to roar at her, but Triel spoke a few words, and it froze. The great, thrashing tail came to a sudden stop. It was as if time itself had taken a moment's pause. Smoke still rose around her, and the animated stone drow lumbered on.

  "This has gone on long enough, lich," Triel said, "all of it. I will have no more dead drow, no more of my city ruined, no more challenges to my power or to the power of Lolth."

  Triel doubted the lichdrow could understand her. He seemed to have been subsumed by his adopted form, but she said it to everyone she knew was listening in, from House Baenre, Arach-Tinilith, Sorcere, and perhaps beyond the city into the command tents of her enemies.

  She called directly upon Lolth, beseeching the restored goddess for her most potent spell, asking for nothing less than a miracle.

  Lolth didn't answer in a drow's voice as she had in the past. There were no words, only a feeling, a swelling of power, a rush of blood in the matron mother's ears.

  Triel sank to her knees amid a scattering of rough gravel and broken glass and pressed her forehead to the cool ground. She didn't express her desires in words. She didn't have to. What she was working was a wave of emotion, of feeling, of pure fear.

  The terror of Lolth herself blasted out in all directions at once, in an expanding circle of fear with Triel at its center. All across the City of Spiders, drow stopped in their tracks, fell to their knees, or lay prone. Some leaned against walls or collapsed on stairs, but all of them knew the purest fear, the fear of a goddess, the fear of the eternal, the fear of chaos, the fear of darkness, the fear of the unknown, the fear of the certain, the fear of treason, and a thousand other horrors that brought the city to a full stop.

  The blackstone gigant trembled and broke apart. Triel, still kneeling below it, didn't dodge the falling black boulders, the pieces of the titanic construct, which disappeared before they hit the ground. Within seconds all that was left of the rampaging creature was the lichdrow, stunned, reeling, kneeling on the crumbling floor of the Bazaar a few paces in front of the matron mother. The animated statues stopped moving and stood frozen in place.

  The wave of fear moved onward, past the walls of the city's vault and into the crowded approaches to the Underdark beyond. It passed through the duergar lines, overtook the retreating tanarukks, and blindsided the scattered illithid spies. It affected all of them in different ways, but it affected all of them. By the time it was done—and it didn't take long—there was no question, anywhere, that Lolth was back.

  Triel stood and surveyed the damage. She looked down at Dyrr and knew she could simply step over to him and kill him with a thought—or at least a dagger blade across his undead throat—but she didn't. Killing the lich was someone else's job.

  The matron mother stepped to the rigid, calcified form of her brother. The expression frozen on his face was one of anger. Triel smiled at that.

  "Ah, Gromph," she said. "You couldn't do it alone after all, could you? There are limits to your power as there are limits to mine, but together …"

  Triel embraced the petrified form of her brother, wrapping her arms around his back as she whispered a prayer to Lolth.

  Warmth came first, then softness, then a breath, then movement, and Gromph's knees collapsed. Triel held him up, and he grasped her around the waist, his head lolling on her shoulder as he drew in a series of ragged, phlegmy breaths. When his legs came back under him, Triel released him and stepped back. Their eyes met, and Gromph opened his mouth to speak.

  "No," Triel said, stopping him. She glanced at the quickly recovering Dyrr, and her brother's eyes followed hers. "Finish what you started."

  He opened his mouth to speak again, but Triel turned her back on him. She could hear his feet shifting on the loose gravel and glass, and she knew he was facing his enemy.

  Triel walked away.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Anger, hatred, and exhaustion passed between the archmage and the lichdrow. They were done with each other. Both only wanted to finish it. They stood a dozen paces apart, eyes locked. Dyrr began to cast a spell, and Gromph surrounded himself in another globe.

  Gromph began to cast a spell too, and the lichdrow kept casting. He was doing something complex. He meant to finish it indeed.

  Before Gromph could finish his spell—one meant to burn the already wounded lich once more—Dyrr whispered something the archmage couldn't quite hear, and the spell took effect. The skull sapphire burned red-hot against Gromph's forehead, and he reached up to throw it off him—but it disintegrated before he could touch it. The dust that fell over the archmage's face was dull gray and powerless. There would be no more protection from the skull sapphire and no more stored necromancies. Gromph knew it had taken a wish to destroy it.

  His own spell ruined, Gromph brought another to mind and said, "Well, everyone's using the big spells today, aren't we?"

  The lich ignored the jibe and started casting a spell the same time Gromph did. It was the archmage's that finished first: another minor divination spent to create a blast of arcane fire. The preternatural flames poured over the lich, who threw his arms over his face to block them but to no avail. Dyrr's dry flesh crisped and curled, and the lich staggered in pain.

  When the fire burned out, the lich lurched forward, red eyes bulging, his ever-present mask burned away, his face twisted in hatred and agony. Gromph could feel that despite the arcane fire Dyrr had finished his own spell.

  Cold coursed through Gromph's body, and he shook—and Gromph was getting painfully tired of shaking, shivering, and quivering—but the lich wasn't through with him yet. He could feel the warmth, the life itself, being drawn from him. He staggered backward, barely managing to stay on his feet.

  "I'll drain you dry, Gromph," the lich grumbled, his voice raspy and
haggard. "You'll die with me, with my House, and my cause."

  The lich began to cast again, and Gromph recognized the peculiar cadence and structure that revealed the incantation as a powerful necromancy. Gromph knew many ways to kill, but he also knew that Dyrr probably knew more.

  The archmage's hand tightened on his staff, and his arm jerked. A dull pain and a hard pressure settled in his chest, and when he tried to take a breath, no air came to him. His knees finally buckled, and he fell. Gromph forced air into his lungs, but barely a whisper made it in. Dark shadows began to coalesce at the edges of his vision, and his ears went numb with a roaring rush of blood as his body fought in vain to keep his brain alive. The ring was of no help. The lich wasn't wounding him, he was killing him soul-first.

  Gromph tried to speak, to utter the words of a spell that might save him, but he couldn't. Dyrr stepped closer, moving to stand over him. Gromph barely managed to turn his head to look up at the gloating lich. The archmage had other means of escape but couldn't force himself to activate any of them. He could feel Nauzhror and Prath trying to speak into his head, but their words never fully formed. Gromph feared that his body was already dead.

  He tightened his grip on the staff, and his arm jerked again—the staff.

  Gromph forced every ounce of will he had left into pulling his other hand beneath him. He felt his fingers wrap around the staff.

  "Fight it, Gromph," the lich growled at him. "Suffer before you die."

  "Arrogant—" Gromph coughed out, surprising himself with his ability to speak, even if it was only that one word.

  "What was that?" the lich asked, taunting him. "The last words of Gromph Baenre?"

  "Not. ." the archmage gasped.

  Gromph's arms tensed, his hands tight around the staff of power—an item so prized hundreds had died just to possess it for a day.

  ". . quite," Gromph finished, and he broke the staff.

  The ancient wood snapped in response less to the force of Gromph's arms and hands than to his will. The staff broke because Gromph wanted it to break.

  Dyrr had time to take in a breath, Gromph had time to smile, then the world around them both became a raging hell of fire, heat, pain, and death. Gromph couldn't see the lich blasted to pieces. He was too busy worrying that the same had happened to him. He closed his eyes, but the light still burned them. He felt his flesh peel away in parts, sizzle, and crisp.

  It was over as fast as it started.

  Gromph Baenre drew in a breath and laughed through waves of burning agony. The ring started to bring him back to life a cell at a time and he lay there, waiting.

  "You've done it," Nauzhror said, and it took a few murmuring heartbeats for Gromph to realize he'd heard the Master of Sorcere's voice with his ears and not his mind. "The lichdrow is dead."

  Gromph coughed and dragged himself up to a sitting position. Nauzhror squatted next to him. The rotund wizard began examining the archmage's wounds.

  "Dead?" Gromph said then coughed again.

  "The cost was high, and not only the staff of power," Nauzhror said, "but he's been utterly destroyed."

  Gromph shook his head, disappointed with Nauzhror. The lich's physical form was blasted to flinders when the staff unleashed all its power in one final burst, but a lich was more than a body.

  "Dead?" the archmage said. "Not quite yet."

  Nimor Imphraezl stepped out of the Shadow Fringe and into the ruins of Ched Nasad. High above him, clinging to the remains of a calcified web street, was perched a massive shadow dragon, an ancient wyrm magnificent in the terror it inspired in all who gazed upon it.

  It was a dragon Nimor recognized instantly. It was the dragon Nimor had gone there to see.

  Stretching his own aching, exhausted, wounded wings—wings that were puny in comparison to the great shadow wyrm's—Nimor lifted himself up off the rubble-strewn floor of the cavern and into the air below the dragon. If the wyrm took any notice of him, it gave no sign. Instead, it continued as it had been, directing the clearing of the rubble in the preparation for the rebuilding of Ched Nasad. It was a huge task, even for the dragon.

  Nimor coasted to a slow, respectful stop on the web strand next to the dragon and bowed, holding the posture until the dragon acknowledged his presence. He was still bowing when the enormous shadow wyrm shrank into the form of an aging drow with thinning hair but a solid, muscular form, dressed in fine silks and linens from all corners of the World Above, every stitch as black as the assassin's heart.

  "Stand," the transformed dragon said, "and heed me."

  Nimor straightened, looked the drow-formed dragon in the eyes, and said, "I am less than satisfied with the results at Menzoberranzan, Revered Grandfather."

  The dragon-drow returned Nimor's look and held it until Nimor had to look away. The assassin heard footsteps approaching but didn't turn around to look. Nimor knew whose they were.

  "Nimor," someone said. "Welcome to Ched Nasad."

  Nimor pretended to look around at the still smoldering ruins.

  "Of course," the source of the second set of footsteps said, "it will look quite different when we're finished."

  "I clearly remember your promise," the transformed dragon said. "Do you?"

  "Of course, Revered Grandfather," Nimor replied, head held high, showing no outward sign of weakness.

  Patron Grandfather Mauzzkyl drew a deep breath in through his nose then slowly said, "You promised to cleanse Menzoberranzan of the stench of Lolth. Have you done that? Is that why you're here?"

  Nimor didn't nod, shake his head, or sigh—nothing to make it seem to the patron fathers that he was guilty of anything. The two patron fathers who had approached him from behind stepped around him on either side and stood before Nimor flanking the once majestic wyrm.

  "No," Nimor said.

  "I have come from the City of Wyrmshadows," the patron grandfather went on, "to aid Patron Father Zammzt in the reconstruction of Ched Nasad. Is that why you've come from Menzoberranzan? To aid in the cleanup?"

  "No, Revered Grandfather," Nimor replied.

  "Tell your tale to Patron Father Tomphael and Patron Father Zammzt," Mauzzkyl said, his voice cold and final.

  Nimor closed his eyes and said, "I answer to—"

  "Tomphael," Mauzzkyl said. "You will speak to me through Tomphael from this day until I order otherwise."

  Nimor had no time to argue, but that was the last thing he intended to do. Instead he watched, barely breathing as Patron Grandfather Mauzzkyl turned his back then transformed again into a dragon. The great wyrm stepped off the edge of the shattered web and disappeared into the gloom of the ruined city.

  "Tell me what you came here to say," Patron Father Tomphael said.

  Nimor looked Tomphael in the face but saw no anger, pity, or contempt. Nimor had fallen in the ranks of the Jaezred Chaulssin, and he'd done it just like that.

  "Something has changed," Nimor said.

  "Lolth has returned," Tomphael finished.

  Nimor nodded and said, "Or she will soon. Very soon. The lichdrow failed, and the tide is turning in Menzoberranzan. I thought we'd have more time."

  "Dyrr is dead?" Tomphael asked.

  Nimor nodded.

  "And the cambion?"

  "Alive," said Nimor, "but already withdrawing. He had an agent in the Abyss who gave a strange report. I still don't know what happened to the spider goddess, where she's been, or why she fell silent, but she has managed to pinch the Demonweb Pits off of the Abyss."

  Tomphael raised an eyebrow, and he and Zammzt shared a glance.

  "So," Tomphael said, "your tanarukks are deserting. What of the duergar?"

  "Horgar still lives, and when I left him he was still fighting," Nimor said. "However, with the priestesses again able to commune with their goddess and the tanarukks marching home, the gray dwarves won't stand a chance."

  "Menzoberranzan," Zammzt said, "is the greatest prize. It was always the one thing most out of reach. We have had successes in other c
ities. The Queen of the Demonweb Pits was gone long enough."

  "Was she?" Nimor asked.

  "Look around you," Zammzt replied. "Once this was a drow trade city, openly obedient to the priestesses. Now it is a blank slate, and even as we speak it is being transformed."

  "The other patron fathers and I," Tomphael said, "under Patron Father Zammzt's expert guidance, will be concentrating our energies here."

  "As you always intended?" Nimor concluded.

  Tomphael sighed and said, "I know you've always considered me a coward, Nimor, but you were wrong. Only the fool misses the difference between the coward and the pragmatist."

  "Only the young seek glory over success," said Zammzt.

  "I could have won in Menzoberranzan," Nimor argued.

  "Perhaps," said Tomphael. "If you had, this conversation would have taken a very different tone. It was your opportunity to surprise us, Nimor. That is what you failed to do—surprise us. Our plans did not depend on the City of Spiders being delivered to us on a silver platter, nor did they assume that Lolth was never going to return from wherever it is she's been. We had this one opportunity, and we took all there was to take. There will be other opportunities to take more."

  "Other opportunities. . " Nimor repeated, rolling the words over on his tongue.

  "You could be Anointed Blade again, Nimor," Tomphael said.

  Nimor nodded, bowed, and said, "I will return to the City of Wyrmshadows. . with your leave, Patron Father."

  Tomphael nodded, and Nimor turned and stepped into Shadow.

  Pharaun hadn't felt so good in so long, he'd almost forgotten what it was like to be healthy. The priestesses, perhaps reveling in the return of their spells, were almost continuously chanting healing prayers. They conjured a banquet and clean, cool water. They healed every wound and soothed aching muscles.

  Stretching, feeling too good to bother with Reverie, Pharaun stood and watched Quenthel and Danifae work on Jeggred. Again, likely because they couldn't resist using the spells that had been denied them so long, the two females worked together. As they sat cross-legged on either side of a nervous, reclining Jeggred, Pharaun sensed flashes of the old physical relationship the two priestesses had shared not too long ago. There was the accidental touch that turned into a lingering caress, the heavy-lidded eye contact past the draegloth's wild white mane, and the occasional play of a tongue along parted lips as the words to a series of complex healings taxed even their spell-rejuvenated throats.