Annihilation

by Athans, Philip

  Gromph was the third most powerful dark elf in Menzoberranzan, and Lolth be damned, he liked it that way.

  “He will likely be wearing a robe of black silk,” the Master of Sorcere continued, “that will allow him to conjure a barrier of whirling blades.”

  Well, he might like to be second, but still …

  “The crown,” the Master of Sorcere finished, “is more than simply a crass affectation. It can store and reflect back offensive spells.”

  So it was that Gromph Baenre sat on the floor of a very small, very dark, and very secret room in the deepest heart of Sorcere, surrounded by a circle of mages who were the most powerful in the city—among the most powerful spellcasters in all the Underdark. The other mages, Masters of Sorcere all, whispered or chanted and waved or gesticulated, and tossed into the air or pinched between fingers all manner of tokens, totems, focuses, and components. They showered the archmage with protective magic, doing it at so fast a pace they’d stopped even bothering to tell him what they were casting on him. Gromph had few doubts that by the time they were done, he’d be immune to everything. Surely no one would be able to harm him—no one but a spellcaster of greater power than the Masters.

  And it was precisely such an opponent that Gromph meant to face.

  “I should go with you, Archmage,” Nauzhror Baenre said, his voice conveying a lack of real desire in that regard.

  “If any of you say anything like that,” Gromph replied, “even once more, I will …”

  He let the threat go unfinished. He wouldn’t do anything, and they all knew it, but out of respect for the archmage, none of them suggested going with him again. They were all smart enough to know that Gromph meant to face an enemy who, all things being equal, was the most dangerous being in Menzoberranzan. The lichdrow was a spellcaster of extraordinary, sometimes almost godlike, power. Of course they didn’t really want to face him in the way that Gromph meant to: toe to toe in a spell duel that would surely find its place in drow history.

  That duel was something only the archmage could fight. In Menzoberranzan, it had come down to that: male against male, wizard against wizard, First House against Second, establishment against revolutionary, stability against change, civilization against … chaos?

  Exactly, Gromph thought—though he would never say it out loud. Order against chaos, and it was Gromph who fought for order, for law, in the name of one of the purest embodiments of chaos in the multiverse: Lolth, a goddess with the heart of a demon.

  “Strange,” the archmage murmured aloud, “how things work out.”

  “Indeed, Archmage,” Nauzhror answered as if he was reading Gromph’s mind—and perhaps he was. “It is strange indeed.”

  The two Baenre wizards shared a smile, then Gromph closed his eyes and let the others continue their casting. The protective and contingency spells were draped over him one after the other. Sometimes Gromph could feel an itching, warmth, a cool breeze, or a vibration, and sometimes he would feel nothing at all.

  “Have you decided where to face him?” Grendan asked, pausing briefly between defensive spells, Gromph shook his head.

  “Somewhere out of the city?” Nauzhror suggested. “Behind the duergar lines?”

  Gromph shook his head again.

  “At the very least,” said Nauzhror, “let us send guards to secure the arena … wherever it might be … before you arrive. They could remain hidden and come into play against the lichdrow only if necessary.”

  “No,” said Gromph. “I said I will go alone, and I will go alone.”

  “But Archmage—” Nauzhror started to protest.

  “What, precisely, do you think a House guard could do for me against the lichdrow Dyrr?” Gromph asked. “He would dry them up and smoke them in his pipe—precisely as I will do to any soldier Dyrr decides to bring with him. Dyrr will face me on my terms because he has to. He has to beat me, and he has to do it in front of all Menzoberranzan. If not, he will always be second, even if he manages to defeat House Baenre.”

  The masters continued with their spells, leaving only Nauzhror and Grendan still considering more than the magical practicalities of the duel at hand.

  “Donigarten, then,” suggested Grendan.

  “No,” Gromph said, then paused while another spell made him shudder briefly. “No.”

  He looked up at Nauzhror, who raised an eyebrow, waiting.

  “The Clawrift, I think,” Gromph said—deciding the second before he actually said it.

  “An excellent choice, Archmage,” Nauzhror said. “Away from any property of value and away from most of the finer drow of Menzoberranzan, of whom we have so few to spare on the best day.”

  A younger student entered and quickly set a small crystal ball on a short golden stand on the floor in front of the archmage. Gromph made no effort to acknowledge the student who was even then racing from the room.

  He looked deeply into the crystal ball, holding up a hand to still the barrage of protective castings. The crystal grew cloudy, then flashes of light flickered in the roiling clouds inside the once perfectly clear globe.

  Gromph brought a memory-image of the lichdrow into his mind’s eye and held it there then did his best to convey that image into the globe. It would find the lichdrow, unless Dyrr expended some energy in avoiding it.

  Gromph put his hand down, and several of the more ambitious masters started casting again—muttering incantations and tracing invisible patterns in the air—as if they’d been sitting there holding the thought.

  There, Gromph thought as an image coalesced in the crystal ball of the lichdrow striding confidently across a reception hall in House Agrach Dyrr. There you are.

  Gromph recognized the hall. He had been there himself on several occasions, back before things started to dissolve and Houses Agrach Dyrr and Baenre were close allies and business associates. He kept his attention on Dyrr. As he watched the lichdrow barking orders to his House guards and other armed drow, Gromph cast a spell of his own.

  “Good afternoon, Dyrr,” Gromph told the image in the crystal ball. “It will be the Clawrift. I know I don’t have to tell you to come alone. I know you’re always ready.”

  Gromph didn’t wait for a response. He nodded to his masters and closed his eyes.

  “We will be watching, Archmage,” said Grendan, “and we’ll be in constant contact.”

  “It would be irresponsible of me,” Nauzhror said, “not to ask one more time if I might take your place in—”

  “It would be irresponsible of me to hide behind my students,” Gromph said. “Besides, Cousin, you were archmage for a little while, and by all accounts you liked it.”

  “I did, Archmage,” Nauzhror admitted, “very much so.”

  “Well, if you hope to live long enough to be archmage again, you will await me here.”

  The lichdrow Dyrr dismissed his guards and proceeded via dimension door to the sitting room. There he found Yasraena and Nimor, who were occupied with trying not to speak to each other. Both seemed relieved when the lich stepped from the transdimensional doorway and into the room.

  “It is time then?” Nimor asked.

  Yasraena drew in a deep breath and held it, her eyes fixed on the lich.

  “He awaits me at the Clawrift,” Dyrr replied.

  The matron mother exhaled slowly, and Nimor nodded.

  “As good a place as any,” the assassin said. “A hole in the ground … no sense damaging the merchandise we’re paying so dearly to acquire.”

  “If by ‘merchandise,’” Yasraena hissed, “you mean Menzoberranzan the Mighty, you—”

  “Yasraena,” Dyrr interrupted, his voice like ice.

  The matron mother pressed her teeth together and turned away from Nimor, who stifled a laugh.

  “I am prepared, as always,” Dyrr said to them both, “and I will leave at once.”

  Yasraena turned to Nimor and said, “Go with him.”

  The assassin raised an eyebrow, and Dyrr—if he had any blood he wou
ld have felt it boil.

  “Surely,” the lichdrow said to Yasraena, “you don’t mean to imply that I might not achieve the necessary victory on my own. Surely you don’t … worry over my safety.”

  He locked his gaze on the young matron mother’s eyes and held her there until she went gray, blinked, and turned away.

  “You know that all of House Agrach Dyrr has the utmost confidence in you,” she said, her voice low, stretched thin. She turned to look Nimor up and down. “But this is no time for personal vendettas. We have aligned ourselves with this … whatever he is. Why not use him?”

  Nimor smiled, and Dyrr was reminded of the carnivorous lizards that inhabited the wilds of the Underdark.

  “You wouldn’t know where to begin to use me,” the assassin said.

  Dyrr simply shrugged off the meaningless exchange. He began to cast a series of protective spells on himself, ignoring a few more tiresome minutes of Yasraena and Nimor’s verbal scuffling. Dyrr blinked after having cast on himself a spell that would make unseen things visible to him. Nimor looked different but in ways that seemed incongruous, even impossible. The drow assassin was no drow, as Dyrr had know for some time, but for the first time Dyrr could see something that might have been wings.

  The lichdrow let that matter fall to the side in favor of a series of carefully crafted contingencies. After all, Dyrr himself wasn’t exactly a drow anymore either. If Nimor was something else than a drow, so be it—as long as the dark assassin remained useful.

  Something that Yasraena said made Dyrr stop in the middle of an incantation.

  “Will House Agrach Dyrr be evacuated from Menzoberranzan,” she asked Nimor, “should things not go the lichdrow’s way?”

  Dyrr struck her. The slap echoed in the Spartan sitting room, and Yasraena fell in an undignified heap onto the worg-carpeted floor. The lich took some of her life-force with the slap—only a taste, but enough to turn her gray and leave her gasping for breath. She looked up at him from the floor with wide, terrified eyes.

  Matron mother indeed, Dyrr thought.

  Nimor made no move and barely even seemed to take notice. Finally, he looked down at Yasraena as she began to struggle to her feet.

  “If the lichdrow gives his leave,” said the assassin, “I would like to answer that question.”

  The cold gleam in Nimor’s eyes was enough to convince Dyrr that the assassin would give the right answer. The lichdrow nodded.

  “House Agrach Dyrr,” Nimor said to Yasraena, who had managed to get to her feet though her knees shook, “lives or dies in Menzoberranzan.”

  Yasraena nodded, rubbing her face with trembling hands, and Dyrr caught Nimor’s attention.

  “Precisely, my friend,” the lichdrow said, “as do you.”

  Nimor stepped toward him, squaring his shoulders. It could never have crossed the lichdrow’s mind for a second to back down, and he didn’t.

  “If I believe you are soon to fall,” Nimor said to Dyrr, “I will rescue you.”

  Dyrr wanted in that moment to kill Nimor Imphraezl, but he didn’t. Instead, he laughed. He was still laughing as he teleported away.

  The Clawrift, a natural rent in the bedrock, cut into the northern sections of Menzoberranzan east of Tier Breche. Gromph stood at the very edge of it, looking down into the blackness. Even his newly acquired, much younger eyes were incapable of seeing the bottom. Sorcere was behind him. In front of him, across the wide chasm, was the City of Spiders. The stalagmites and stalactites that had been carved into homes and places of business for the drow were aglow with faerie fire. He could see House Baenre all the way on the other side of the cavern and the odd flash of light that marked the continuing siege of House Agrach Dyrr.

  The lichdrow appeared in midair over the mile-deep chasm and hung there, a dozen yards away or more. He appeared facing Gromph as if he knew exactly where the archmage would be.

  “Ah, my young friend,” the lichdrow called, his voice floating over the space between them and echoing into the Clawrift itself, “there you are.”

  “As promised,” Gromph replied, bringing a string of spells to mind.

  “So it has come to this, then?” Dyrr asked.

  “The two of us,” replied Gromph, “fighting to the death?”

  The lich laughed, and Gromph knew the sound would have sent lesser drow running.

  “Why, Dyrr?” the archmage asked, not really expecting an answer.

  The lichdrow turned his palms up and lifted his arms to his sides, looking around, gesturing toward the city.

  “What better reason,” asked Dyrr, “than the City of Spiders herself? From here, the Underdark, and from there, the World Above.”

  It was Gromph’s turn to laugh.

  “That’s it then?” the archmage asked. “Mastery of all the world? Isn’t that a bit of a cliché, lich? Even for you?”

  The lichdrow shrugged and replied, “My existence knows no bounds, Gromph, so why should my ambition?”

  “A simple enough answer, I suppose,” Gromph said, “to a simple question.”

  “Shall we get on with it, then?”

  “Yes,” Gromph replied, “I suppose we had better.”

  They began slowly, both feeling each other out with minor divinations. Gromph could feel himself being explored even as he explored the lich. Nauzhror’s voice, and Grendan and Prath’s, whispered in his mind. Defenses were noted, items and clothing assessed for enchantment, notes compared. Gromph had brought a staff with him and was surprised to see that Dyrr had one too. He hadn’t expected Dyrr to bring a staff.

  Fire, Nauzhror told him after a tense few minutes of study. The most effective weapon against the undead wizard from the traitor House will be fire.

  That’s it, Gromph thought. Dyrr had made his one mistake.

  “You’re going to surprise me today,” the lich called to Gromph, “aren’t you, my dear archmage?”

  “The only two things I’m completely sure of, Dyrr,” Gromph replied, “is that we will surprise each other today and I will destroy you.”

  They started casting at the same time. Gromph was an experienced enough diviner to know that like himself, the lichdrow had cast his last defensive incantation.

  The spells burst into being from the Weave at the same instant. A freezing wind blew from the lichdrow, carrying with it thousands of razor-sharp splinters of ice. That shredding storm met Gromph’s fireball over the black depths of the Clawrift. The fire blew out even as it melted the ice. The two effects ate each other before either came close to touching their intended targets.

  Well, Gromph told himself with a sigh, this is going to take a while.

  Things were quiet but tense on the ship of chaos. Pharaun tried not to look at Quenthel. He couldn’t help but notice that she seemed unable to take Reverie. Her shoulders were stiff, and her viper-headed scourge never left her hand. The snakes writhed constantly, sliding the sides of their arrowlike heads against the priestess’s warm black skin. The uridezu was surreptitiously eyeing her.

  Pharaun found that curious. He was the one who had bound the demon, yet Raashub was more concerned with Quenthel. True, the Baenre priestess was still nominally “in charge” of the expedition, but her leadership had always been more ceremonial—at least in Pharaun’s mind.

  The Master of Sorcere couldn’t quite organize his thoughts on the matter—not just then anyway—but the demon was looking at her oddly.

  He sighed and stared out across the black water of the Lake of Shadows again. He placed his hand on the rail then removed it when he felt the warm pulse of blood running through it. The ship barely moved in the dead calm of the black lake, but still Pharaun felt as if he needed to hold onto something. His hand found the twisted gray-yellow rigging—looking for all the world like a length of intestine—but he couldn’t hold that much longer either.

  The demonic ship didn’t quite figure into Pharaun’s esthetic. The wizard brushed the hair from his eyes and tried not to think about what he must look
like. He hadn’t bathed in far too long—hygiene had become secondary for them all, and they were rapidly beginning to stink. Jeggred was the worst of them all on a good day, but the wizard found himself avoiding Quenthel as well. Still, the thought of bathing in the cold, dark waters of the Lake of Shadows held no appeal. Pharaun could well imagine what might be living in that lake’s depths, and he didn’t want to offer himself up like a worm on a hook.

  The ship creaked and groaned but not too much. Only rarely did there come the echo of a splash or drip or other small disturbance from the water. Pharaun was beginning to think it was the silence itself that he found so unnerving.

  Something hit him in the back of the head hard enough to drive him facefirst into the bonework deck.

  Surprised as much by the fact that he’d been taken by surprise, Pharaun lay blinking for a few seconds—enough time for whatever had hit him to grab him by the ankle. His foot instantly went numb, then whatever it was lifted him bodily off the deck. Still not quite having regained his wits—Pharaun hadn’t realized at first that he’d been hit that hard—the Master of Sorcere found himself being spun in the air by the ankle. As he was whirled through the air, he caught glimpses of what was happening.

  A party of uridezu were boarding the ship, crawling over the rail dripping with lake water and maggots. Their gray skin glistening and their pink tails twitching, the rat demons attacked in force, though Pharaun couldn’t get an accurate count of them while being spun around by the ankle by another uridezu.

  The wizard knew that he’d been right, that the first uridezu Raashub had gated in was meant to test them.

  The demon let go, and Pharaun was sent pinwheeling through the air. He watched the rail pass beneath him, and when he was over open water he cast a spell while still in midair. By the time he hit the surface in a sprawling, stinging splash, Pharaun could breathe water.

  The wizard didn’t waste any time. Swimming and using the levitating powers of his brooch to help pull him downward, Pharaun dived deeper and deeper into the pitch-black water. The lake was cold enough to make him tense and stiff, but he still swam as fast as he could. All around him were the shadows of living things. There were fish, he hoped, and snakes, he feared, and other things—things crawling on the bottom.