Extinction (War of the Spider Queen #4) 6

Gromph strode up to the captain who stood surveying the silent battlefield, arms folded across his blackened mithral plate mail. Andzrel's eyes held a satisfied glint as he took in the shattered mush-room forest and the tanarukk corpses that littered the ground like felled stems.

"Drag the bodies back to the corrals," the Baenre weapons master told the soldiers who were inspecting the fallen tanarukks. "We can feed them to the lizards."

As he spoke, he cleaned blood from his sword with a scrap of cloth. He inspected his blade, smiled, then shoved it back into the scabbard at his hip.

"I wouldn't put that away just yet," Gromph said. "You'll be needing it."

Andzrel turned, a surprised look on his face.

"Archmage!" he gasped. "Where in the Abyss have you been?"

"Not quite as deep as the Abyss, but close enough," the archmage quipped. "I'll tell you all about it later." He glanced around. "How do things fare here?"

"Everything is under control," Andzrel reported. He gestured at the mouth of a tunnel in the wall of the great cavern. In front of it was a heap of tanarukk dead. "We've driven the enemy back into the Dark Dominions. They're pulling back from the city, regrouping. And Tier Breche?"

"Quiet, for the moment," Gromph answered. "The enemy has also been driven back on that front and the approach well sealed. I expect the duergar will eventually rally, recombine with other units somewhere out in the tunnels, and resume their siege elsewhere. Before they have a chance to do that, however, I need your help with something."

"Something other than corpse disposal?"

Gromph nodded.

Andzrel grinned and said, "Name it."

The archmage glanced at one of the bodies that lay nearby. Part orc, part demon, thetanarukk was a stocky monstrosity covered inpatches of coarse hair and scabby-looking scales. A long jaw juttedout from under its abbreviated snout, and the tusks that curled over its upper lip were chipped and yellow. Its low, sloped forehead gave it a stupid appearance - accentuated by the flat glaze of death in its dull red eyes.

"I need to get through the enemy lines," Gromph began. "And I'll need an escort. A soldier, rather than a mage." He nudged the dead tanarukk with his foot. "Tell me, Andzrel, have you ever been polymorphed?"

"Once," Andzrel answered. "Years ago, into a lizard. As a joke, by a prideful upstart who thought that saddling me up and riding me would teach me my place. After I took a bite out of him, he didn't think it was so amusing anymore and changed me back."

Gromph smiled. He remembered well the day that Nauzhror had limped into Sorcere, demanding a cushion because he was unable to sit down. A "riding accident" he'd called it - until one of the other students had used a spell to peer through his robe and had spotted the bite wound on the buttocks. The pompous young Nauzhror had been the butt of many a joke after that.

"I'll try not to give you cause to use your tusks on me," Gromph told Andzrel with mock gravity.

The tanarukk soldiers retreated in disarray through the tunnels, snarling and nipping at each other whenever a narrowing of the walls caused a bottleneck. The air was filled with the clank of weapons and armor, the tang or blood from the wounded who had been rudely shoved aside and abandoned to die  - and with the shouts of the sergeants who tried to bring order to the chaos.

Two tanarukksshuffled along behind the rest, taking care to keep apart from the jostling masses, neither giving provocation nor accepting it. One had a more pronounced forehead than his fellows and bristle-stiff patches of white hair. The other was broader across the shoulders and clad in chain mail that seemed slightly stiff. The blade of the battle-axe he carried was streaked with blood. The white-haired one seemed to have lost his weapon and carried a small scrap of fur - a trophy scalp, to all appearances - in one hand. He drew his companion to the side of the tunnel, out of the way of the marching hordes, then whispered a spell while twisting the fur in his hand. He nodded at a narrow fissure to their left.

"He's down this way," Gromph said. "Or at least he was a moment ago. I've lost him again."

"Where does he keep disappearing to?" Andzrel asked, irritated.

The stoop-shouldered posture of his tanarukk body was giving him a backache. He longed to get this mission over with and be back in drow form. And his tanarukk bodystank. Gromph had no such problems, however. He'd used a glamer to change his appearance. If he'd polymorphed himself, the material components he needed to work his spells - like that scrap of bloodhound fur, for example - would have been changed into items more suitable to a tanarukk.

Or at least, that's what the archmage had told Andzrel. The Baenre weapons master suspected, however, that Gromph just didn't want to endure the stink of tanarukk sweat on his own skin.

"I don't know what Nimor's up to," Gromph answered. "Report-ing to his masters, perhaps. But he keeps returning to this spot. It must be one he knows well."

Slipping away from the other tanarukks, the pair squeezed through the narrow tunnel. It extended horizontally for some distance, then sloped up to a small cavern, one whose entrance was guarded by a duergar. The gray dwarf lifted his axe as the pair approached.

"We've got an urgent message for the drow Nimor," Gromph said, adopting the low. grunting voice of a tanarukk.

"Oh yeah?" The duergar snorted. "So does every other bloody tanarukk in Vhok's useless excuse for an army. Well, Lord Nimor's not here."

Gromph ignored the taunt. He sniffed loudly as he scanned the apparently empty cavern.

"He's here," the disguised archmage said. "I can smell him."

"No he's not," the duergar replied with a frown. "Get back to your ranks."

Andzrel balled a fist with knuckles that were ridged with scales and raised it under the duergar's nose.

"We know he's in there," he growled. "Let us by."

The duergar suddenly grew larger and broader - until he was half again as tall as Andzrel's tanarukk form. He squeezed the handle of his axe, causing a shimmer of magical energy to pulse through it.

"Don't make me use this," the giant gray dwarf warned.

"Nimor will want to hear this message," Gromph insisted. "Tell him it's from the spy he sent into Menzoberranzan."

"What spy?"

"Sluuguth," the other tanarukk said.

The duergar's face paled to a lighter shade of gray, and he said, "Oh ... the illithid."

Gromph frowned.

"Sluuguth doesn't like it when his messengers get delayed," he growled. He pulled a length of silver chain from his pocket. From the end of it hung an oval of jade. "He told us to bring this to Nimor as quickly as we could," he said. "He said it's important."

At last, the duergar nodded. Shrinking back down to his usual size, he stepped aside.

"Go on in," he told Gromph, but he held up a hand as Andzrel tried to follow, and added, "But you have to leave your weapon outside."

Gromph and Andzrel exchanged a look. That was going to be a problem. As soon as Andzrel's "battle-axe" left his hands it would no longer be affected by the polymorph spell and would turn back into a drow sword.

"I can deliver the message on my own," Gromph told Andzrel. "You wait out here . . . until I'm done."

Andzrel nodded.

Gromph entered the cavern. Once inside, he could see that the space was more of a natural chimney, with a high ceiling. Up near the top was a ledge on which Nimor squatted, eyes closed, appar-ently in Reverie. He was in an unusual pose, with his arms drawn against his chest and his fists touching his shoulders, which were hunched. His posture reminded Gromph of a sleeping bat turned

Wondering if Nimor, too, was cloaked in an illusion, Gromph reached into a pocket for the small stone jar he carried there. He was just about to scoop out a little of the paste it held when Nimor's eyes opened. They immediately locked on the oval of jade that spun gently at the end of the chain in Gromph's hand. The magic in the amulet was still potent - though the jade spider it had once command-ed had been reduced to a heap of rubble, at Gromph's orders, before he and Andzrel set out into the Dark Dominion.

Nimor stepped off the ledge, levitating down to where Gromph stood.

Gromph withdrew his hand from his pocket, abandoning the spell he'd been about to cast. There was no time for true seeing, he had to be ready to mount a magical defense if one was required.

"Where did you get that, soldier?" Nimor demanded as he landed lightly on the floor next to Gromph.

Gromph smiled to himself. The illusion was holding.

"From Sluuguth," he answered, holding up the jade spider amulet.

At the same time he reached into a pocket and carefully grasped the item it contained - the prism - by the end that protruded from the oiled sheath he'd constructed for it. He'd made some magical alterations to the prism before embarking on his quest to find Nimor, weaving new spells into the magic the device already contained.

"Sluuguth got busy and couldn't bring the amulet himself, so he sent me," Gromph continued.

Nimor started to reach for the silver chain, then stopped.

He eyed Gromph warily and asked, "Busy with what?"

"That wizard that Lord Dyrr captured - the one from House Baenre. He escaped from the sphere."

"Gromph?" Nimor waved a hand dismissively. "Old news. Gromph's dead now."

Gromph shook his head vigorously and said, "No, he's not. Sluu-guth says he's up to something that could hurt our army . . . some spell."

"Where is he?" Nimor demanded.

Gromph scratched the bristles on the top of his head and frowned. Fortunately he didn't need any help looking stupid with the illusion of a tanarukk cloaking him.

"Who? Sluuguth ... or Gromph?"

Nimor's eyes narrowed in irritation, and he said, "Gromph."

"Oh . . . yeah. Sluuguth said to show you this," Gromph an-swered, as if just remembering.

As he spoke, he slid his hand from his pocket. The prism he held came out of its oiled sheath with a jerk and emerged from the pocket without any of the sovereign glue that coated it sticking to the fabric.

So far, Gromph thought, so good.

Nimor glanced at the prism.

"What's that?" he asked.

Gromph's gamble was still holding up. Like most drow, Nimor was unfamiliar with the magical items of the World Above.

"It's a scrying device," he told Nimor. "You can see Gromph in it."

Nimor folded his arms across his chest and said, "You look into it. Tell me where he is."

"All right," Gromph said with a shrug.

Again, all was going according to plan. He'd factored the drow's suspicious nature into his plans.He stared into the prism, angling it this way and that.

"Can't see anything," he said. Then he suddenly held it still. "Oh, there he is ... but is Gromph the skeleton or the drow with the rat on his shoulder?"

Nimor reached for the prism and said, "Let me see that."

The moment had come. As Nimor's fingers touched the prism, Gromph let go of the end he held and droppedhis illusion, reveal-ing himself.

At the same time, he shouted, "Andzrel! Now!"

Behind him, Gromph heard a thud and a grunt - the sound of the duergar guarding the door being felled by Andzrel's weapon. An instant later, as a wide-eyed Nimor backed away, flicking one hand to try to rid it of the prism that was stuck to it with magical glue and drawing his rapier with the other hand, Andzrel burst into the cavern, battle-axe held high. Unused to his tanarukk form, he swung it awkwardly, but even so his charge looked formidable.

Nimor, seeing that he was cornered, did exactly what Gromph had expected him to. He shadow walked.

But even as Nimor began to slip into the Plane of Shadow, a smirk on his lips, the contingency spell Gromph had woven into the prism was triggered. It, in turn, triggered the prism's tertiary power, causing the prism to flare with a blinding flash of light. For an in-stant, it was as if the sun of the World Above had been teleported into the cavern, bathing its walls in the most intense light Gromph had ever experienced. Nimor screamed - a howl of anguish and a bellow of rage in one. Then both the light and the sound of Nimor's voice winked out.

Gromph heard theswoosh of a blade through the air and the clang of metal against stone as Andzrel's battle-axe split the air where Nimor had been standing. Unable to see, trying to blink away the aftereffects of the brilliant flash, Gromph patted the air around him with his hands. His outstretched hands encountered only air. Nimor seemed to have completed his "escape" into the Shadow Plane.

"Andzrel!" Gromph called. "Can you see? Where's Nimor?"

Someone moved closer to him. A gnarled hand touched his arm.

"I can't see very well." Andzrel's voice came from right next to Gromph. "But my darkvision's starting to come back. Nimor's gone. What about you?"

Gromph's eyes were streaming with tears. He seemed to be hav-ing trouble seeing Andzrel - seeing anything.

"I'm . . . still blind. That flash of light seems to have had a greater effect on me than it did you - perhaps because the magic protecting Nimor recognized the spell inside the prism as mine and turned it back on me directly. No matter. It should be a simple matter to re-store my sight,"

Gromph touched a finger to each eye and cast a spell that should have dispelled his blindness - but though he felt the tingle of magic under his eyelids, his darkvision did not return. He was as unable to see in the dark cavern as any creature from the Sur-face Realms.

And that worried him. With Lolth's priestesses unable to contact their goddess, finding a restorative spell would be difficult.

"So where is Nimor now?" Andzrel asked.

"In the Plane of Shadow," Gromph answered. "And you know what that means."

"Actually, no, I don't," Andzrel answered. "My apologies, Archmage."

Gromph chuckled and said, "It means he's stuck there. In order to complete his shadow walk, Nimor needs either a patch of shadow - if you're in the World Above - or darkness to step into. Adeep patch of darkness. That's something he isn't going to find any time soon, with a prism stuck to his hand that glows with the light of the sun."

"Well that's one piece gone from thesavagame," Andzrel said in a satisfied voice. "What's next?"

"Back to Menzoberranzan," Gromph said. "You lead, and I'll follow."

Gromph stood at the base of Narbondel, one hand on the natu-ral pillar's cold stone. It loomed large in Kyorli's eyes. The rat peered up at the darkened pillar from her perch on Gromph's shoulder, whiskers tickling his ear. Behind him, Gromph could hear Nauzhror muttering to himself. The younger wizard had relinquished the archmage's robes to Gromph with great reluctance and had insisted on being present at the lighting ritual. Like a spider, he sensed that Gromph had a weakness - even though he hadn't discovered what it was yet.

Turning to face the pillar, Gromph lifted both hands above his head. As he chanted the words to his spell he felt a familiar, tingling rush of power flow into his hands. When the magic reached its zenith, he slapped both of them against Narbondel, directing the magic into it. The cold stone warmed under his palms and a faint crackling filled the air. Like flames climbing a burning curtain, the magical heat and light slowly began to rise through Narbondel. Gromph couldn't see it with his own eyes, but through Kyorli's he saw a mut-ed version of it, a circle of light emitting sparks of every color from deepest red to brightest purple, rising slowly against black stone. A beautiful sight - and one that would inspire hope in those who yet held the enemy at bay in the Dark Dominion, when they returned from the tunnels.

By memory, Gromph turned in the direction of House Agrach Dyrr.

"Can you see that, lichdrow?" he whispered. "I've escaped your imprisonment. Soon, I'll be coming for you."

Later, Gromph sat in his private office in Sorcere, drumming his fingers on the desk in front of him. Kyorli sat on his shoulder; Gromph still needed the rat's eyes in order to see. He had consumed a potion that should have restored his eyesight fully, but all he could see was a series of shadows and blurs. Had it been a combination of his own permanency spell and the magic that protected Nimor that had wreaked such destruction? With time and research, he would know the answers - but with two armies still hovering on the out-skirts of Menzoberranzan, time was a luxury he didn't have.

A tickling at the back of his neck alerted him to the fact that someone was watching him - something that should have been im-possible within the magically warded walls of his office. It seemed to be coming from the axe he'd hung on the wall - the one his forgot-ten illithid visitor had left. For a moment, Gromph wondered it the observer was one of the souls trapped within it, but when he bade Kyorli to turn and take a look, he saw no movement, no face in the axe blade.

As the archmage turned away from the axe, a familiar voice whispered at him from out of the thin air  - the voice of the one drow Gromph had ensured would be able to penetrate the wards of his office...

Going to Lake of Shadows,Pharaun's voice whispered in his mind.Aboleth said ship of chaos is sunk there with uridezu. Will sail ship to Abyss and appeal to Lolth directly.

At twenty-five words, the message was precisely at the limit of the sending spell Pharaun had used to contact Gromph. The archmage sat in silence, contemplating his reply. It needed to be equally brief. . . and informative.

"Your mission is more urgent now. WeneedLolth. Duergar and tanarukks besiege Menzoberranzan. Lichdrow Dyrr is a traitor." Gromph paused, then added in a wry voice, "An uridezu? I wish you luck."

The sense of being watched vanished, leaving Gromph sitting alone in his office. Slowly, he shook his head, wondering if that would be the last time he'd ever hear from Pharaun.