Annihilation

by Athans, Philip

  Halisstra swallowed in a parched throat and said, “Does he live? Has Ryld won?”

  Danifae shrugged again.

  “You can get me back to him,” Halisstra said. “Using these gates of yours, you can send me to his side.”

  “Where Jeggred would shred you as well and eat you both in alternating bites,” said the former servant, “or, you can move forward as opposed to backward.”

  “Forward? Backward? What is that supposed to mean?”

  “The way I see it, Mistress Halisstra,” Danifae said, “you have two choices: Go to your lover’s side and die there, or go back to the surface temple and your new sisters in Eilistraee.”

  Halisstra let out a breath and looked the ravishing dark elf up and down. Danifae smiled back, though the expression looked more like a sneer.

  “They’re leaving,” Danifae pressed, “and they’re leaving soon. If you go back to the temple where I first contacted you, if you tell them that Quenthel and her crew are on their way to the Demonweb Pits in search of Lolth herself, the Eilistraeeans might have enough time to help.”

  “To help? To help whom?” whispered Halisstra, then more loudly: “I should go back to the Eilistraeeans and tell them that we can follow Quenthel and the others to the Demonweb Pits. Would you stand by and watch that and not warn them … and not warn Lolth?”

  “I’m still a servant,” said Danifae. “I can’t make the decision for you or ask you to trust me. I can give you no promises, no assurances, no guarantees about anything. For that, you’ll have to look to your goddess. Either way, I can send you wherever you want to go.”

  She saw it. Only a flash, but there was the unmistakable look that had wrapped within it uncertainty, fear, embarrassment, and more. Danifae was jealous in a very immature way that Halisstra was once again serving a deity who would answer the prayers of her faithful while Danifae still clung to the memory of a dead goddess.

  “I have a choice?” Halisstra asked, slowly shaking her head.

  “I can send you where you want to go,” Danifae repeated. “Tell me if you want to go back to your temple to organize the priestesses there, or—”

  “Organize?” Halisstra interrupted.

  Danifae was irritated, and Halisstra was momentarily taken aback by the reaction.

  “Surely Eilistraee grants them spells still,” Danifae said. “They will be able to travel the planes without a ship of chaos. Eilistraee should be able to take you right to them.”

  Halisstra watched her former servant’s face change again—saw that fear return.

  “Or,” Danifae said, her voice deep and even, “you can go try to help your weapons master against the draegloth and die.”

  Halisstra closed her eyes and thought, occasionally stopping to wonder at the fact that she was thinking about it at all.

  “My heart,” Halisstra confided in Danifae, “wants me to go to Ryld, but my head tells me that my new sisters will want to know what you’ve told me and that they’ll want to go to the Demonweb Pits.”

  “The time you have to gather them,” warned Danifae, “is drawing increasingly short.”

  Halisstra clamped her mouth shut while her throat tightened.

  “Choose,” Danifae pressed.

  “The Velarswood,” Halisstra blurted out. A tear glimmered in the faerie light and traced a path down her deep black cheek. “Take me to the priestesses.”

  Danifae smiled, nodded, and pointed toward a purple-glowing gate.

  The two of them stared at each other while a few heartbeats went by. Danifae’s eyes darted back and forth between Halisstra’s as if they were reading something written across her pupils. Halisstra saw the hope in Danifae’s eyes.

  “How bad is it?” Halisstra asked, her voice almost a whisper. “What has she sunk to?”

  “She?” Danifae asked. “Quenthel?”

  Halisstra nodded.

  “She can go lower,” the former battle-captive said. “Come with me,” Halisstra said.

  Danifae stood silently for a long time before she said, “You know I can’t. They won’t leave without Jeggred, and I have to bring him back.”

  Halisstra nodded and said, “After he’s murdered Ryld.”

  Danifae nodded and looked at the floor.

  “We’ll see each other again, Danifae,” Halisstra said. “Of that I’m certain.”

  “As am I, Mistress,” Danifae replied. “We will meet again in the shadow of the Spider Queen.”

  “Eilistraee will be watching us both all the way,” Halisstra said as she crossed to the waiting portal. “She will be watching us both.”

  Danifae nodded, and Halisstra stepped into the gate, abandoning Ryld to the draegloth, Danifae to the Mistress of Arach-Tinilith, and herself to the priestesses of the Velarswood.

  “You seem as surprised as I am,” Gromph said to the lichdrow, “that your friend Nimor has sprouted wings.”

  Dyrr didn’t answer, but his ember-red eyes drifted slowly to the winged assassin.

  “Duergar,” Gromph went on, “a cambion and his tanarukks, and a drow assassin. Oh, but the drow assassin isn’t even a drow. You’ve allied yourself with everything but another dark elf. Well, you haven’t been a dark elf yourself for a very long time either, have you, Dyrr?”

  If the lich was offended or affected in any way, he didn’t show it.

  “He could be allied with a drow, though,” Nimor said. “We both could.”

  “You actually think I’m going to join you?” Gromph asked. “No,” Nimor answered, “of course not, but I have to ask.”

  “If I do,” Gromph persisted, “will you kill the lich?”

  Dyrr raised an eyebrow, obviously interested to hear Nimor’s answer.

  “To have the Archmage of Menzoberranzan himself turn on his own city,” Nimor said, “betray his own House, and overthrow the matriarchy with a wave of his hand? Would I kill the lichdrow? Certainly. I would kill him without the slightest moment’s hesitation.”

  That brought a smile to Dyrr’s face, and Gromph couldn’t help but share it.

  Nimor looked at the lichdrow, bowed, and said, “I would try, at least.”

  The lich returned the bow.

  “You’re not going to do any of those things, are you?” Nimor asked Gromph. “You won’t turn your back on Menzoberranzan, House Baenre, the matriarchy, or even Lolth, who has turned her back on you.”

  “That’s all?” Gromph asked. “That’s all you plan to say to try to turn me? Ask a question then answer it yourself? Why are you here?”

  “Don’t answer that, Nimor,” the lichdrow commanded, his tone as imperious as ever. “He’s drawing tales out of you. He wants time to try to get away or to plan his attack.”

  “Or,” Gromph cut in, “he may simply be curious. I know why my old friend Dyrr wants to kill me, and I can guess at the motivations of the duergar, the tanarukks, the illithids, and whatever else crawls out of the crevices and slime pools of the Dark Dominion, drawn to the stench of weakness. You, though, Nimor, are half drow and half dragon, aren’t you? Why you? Why here? Why me?”

  “Why you?” Dyrr said, his voice dripping with scorn. “You have power, you simpleton. You have position. That makes you a target on a good day—and this isn’t a good day for Menzoberranzan.”

  Gromph ignored the lich and said to Nimor, “My sister said the assassin she captured named you as an agent of the Jaezred Chaulssin.”

  Nimor nodded and said, “I am the Anointed Blade.” Gromph didn’t know what that meant but gave no indication of that to Nimor or Dyrr.

  “Ghost stories come true,” Gromph said.

  “Our reputation precedes us,” replied Nimor.

  “Chaulssin has been in ruin for a long time,” said Gromph.

  “Her assassins survive,” Dyrr said.

  His dragon half, Nauzhror said into Gromph’s mind, has been identified, Archmage. He is half-drow, half-shadow dragon. More than one generation, perhaps. An incipient species.

  “We
have placed ourselves in city after city,” Nimor said, “all across the Underdark. We’ve been waiting.”

  “And breeding,” Gromph said, “with shadow dragons?”

  Nimor’s smile told Gromph how right Nauzhror had been.

  “It’s over,” Dyrr said, and Gromph found it difficult to deny the finality in his voice. “All of it.”

  “Not yet,” Gromph replied, and he started to cast a spell.

  Nimor beat his batlike wings and shot up into the darkness. Dyrr followed, more slowly, wrapping himself in additional protective spells.

  Gromph finished his spell and held his hands together. A line of blackness appeared between his palms and stretched to the length of a long sword blade. The line was perfectly two-dimensional, a rift in the structure of the planes.

  Lifting into the air, the Archmage of Menzoberranzan threw his hands apart, and the blade followed him up. Using the force of his will, Gromph set the planar blade flying in front of him. Choosing a target was simple.

  Nimor has to die first, Prath suggested, though it was unnecessary. The extent of his true abilities is the only unknown.

  Gromph set the blade hurtling at the half-dragon assassin. Nimor flew as fast as anything Gromph had ever seen fly, but the blade moved faster. It cut into the assassin, and Nimor convulsed in pain. What makes a blade sharp is the thinness of its edge. The blade that Gromph conjured didn’t actually have any thickness at all. Being perfectly thin, it was perfectly sharp. Anything that Nimor might have had on him to protect him from weapons would be of no consequence.

  Blood pattered down over the floor of the Bazaar, and Nimor roared. The sound rattled Gromph’s eardrums, though he didn’t hesitate to send the black blade at the assassin again—but it disappeared.

  Gromph whirled in midair to face the lichdrow. Dyrr held his staff in both hands. Gromph assumed he’d used some aspect of the weapon’s magic to dispel the blade Disappointing, Nauzhror commented. That was an impressive spell. And effective.

  Nimor wasn’t flying quite as fast, and he was still bleeding. Gromph had to keep his attention shifting back and forth between the assassin, the lich, and his own next spell, so he didn’t actually see Nimor heal himself, but he did—enough to keep himself alive.

  Gromph was nearly finished with his next incantation when Nimor blew darkness at him—it was the only way the wizard could think to describe it. The assassin drew in a breath and exhaled a cone-shaped wave of roiling blackness. Gromph tried to drop away from the darkness, but he couldn’t. The twisting void washed over the archmage. It was as if all the warmth were drawn out of him. He shivered, and his breath stopped in his throat. His spell was ruined, cut off in mid-word, the Weave energy unraveling.

  Part of the layers of defensive magic that he and the Masters of Sorcere had cloaked him in protected Gromph from the full extent of the freezing darkness’s power. If not, Gromph would have shriveled to a dead husk.

  “I was right,” Gromph said to Nimor, trying not to gasp. “It was a shadow dragon, wasn’t it?”

  “More than one shadow dragon, Archmage,” Nimor replied—and Gromph thought the assassin was trying not to gasp himself, “and more than one drow.”

  The half-dragon assassin drew a needle-thin rapier that glowed blue-white in the gloom of the abandoned Bazaar.

  Caution, Archmage, Prath warned.

  Gromph winced at the idiocy of his inexperienced nephew. The archmage was always ready for anything—though he wasn’t fast enough to dodge out of the way of the rapier as it slashed across his chest.

  Nimor had disappeared from where he’d been hovering, several paces away and appeared right next to Gromph and a little above—perfectly in a blind spot. All of that had happened in the precise same instant.

  The assassin was gone again just as fast.

  The slash in Gromph’s chest burned, the wound crisp and jagged. He looked down at the cut. Frost lined the wound, and the blood that oozed from it was cold when it touched his skin. Gromph shivered.

  Something hit Gromph from behind, and he grunted and doubled over when the air was smashed out of his lungs. It was a painful second or two before he was able to draw in another breath. Dyrr had hit him with something—a spell or a weapon—from behind.

  The spell didn’t pass through all of your defenses, Archmage, Nauzhror told him. If it had, you would have been disintegrated.

  “Good for me,” Gromph muttered under his breath, then he spoke the command word that brought the defensive globe from the staff.

  Circled again in protective magic, Gromph turned in the air, trying to catch sight of at least one of his foes. He saw Nimor flying at him with that freezing rapier poised for another slash. Behind the assassin and off to one side, the lichdrow was moving his free hand through the air, his fingers leaving streaks of crackling white light behind them.

  Pain blazing in his chest and back, Gromph twisted in the air when a cone of twinkling white light shot forth from the lichdrow’s extended hands, threatening to engulf him in a blast of freezing air and cutting ice.

  The archmage managed to twist out of the way of the spell, but he lost sight of the assassin in the process. Gromph braced himself for another icy slash from the rapier, but it didn’t come.

  The assassin had to dodge the cone of cold as well, Master, Prath said.

  Gromph took advantage of the respite and drew two slim, platinum-bladed throwing daggers from a sheath in his right boot. Even as he drew the knives up along the length of his body, he spoke the words of a spell that would enchant the weapons to a greater keenness. The spell would make them fly truer as well, and farther, and he was sure they would pierce at least some of his target’s magical defenses.

  Gromph got his arm up to throw and finished the spell. When he turned to find his target, the pain was gone. The ring was working still, healing him almost as fast as the assassin and the lich could wound him.

  A fraction of a heartbeat before Gromph could throw his ensorcelled daggers, Nimor appeared next to him again. The rapier made a shrill whistling sound as it whipped through the air, drawing a frosted white line across Gromph’s right side. The pain was extraordinary, and Gromph’s fingers twitched along with most of the other muscles of his body. He almost dropped the two daggers but didn’t.

  He’s gone, said Prath.

  Gromph had expected that.

  I think it might be the ring, Nauzhror said.

  The ring? Gromph sent back.

  That allows him to slip from one place to another in an instant, Nauzhror explained.

  Gromph had expected to fight Dyrr alone and had expected to fight him spell to spell. The archmage had to admit, at least to himself, that he was unprepared for hand-to-hand combat and that in that regard at least, Nimor was likely superior.

  He put those thoughts out of his mind when he heard Dyrr casting another spell. He turned to look at the lich.

  Dyrr had a strange look in his eyes, as if something was going to happen, but he wasn’t sure exactly what. Gromph didn’t like that look at all.

  He’s summoning something, Nauzhror said.

  By the time the last syllable of Nauzhror’s warning sounded in Gromph’s head, the lich’s spell had done its work. Lurching out of thin air, a set of insectoid legs slammed down onto the rock floor of the Bazaar—then another set, and another and another and another. The insect’s head was wider than Gromph was tall, maybe even twice as wide. On either side of its grotesque mouth was a curved, jagged-edged pincer. Two bulbous, multifaceted eyes scanned the abandoned expanse of the marketplace as the rest of the huge beast drew itself out of the Weave.

  It was a centipede the size of a whole caravan of pack lizards, and behind it, Dyrr was laughing, and Nimor was flying at Gromph again.

  One at a time, the archmage told himself.

  He worked another spell on the pair of enchanted throwing daggers. The centipede lurched at Gromph, but it was moving slowly, still unsure of its surroundings and the extent of the lich�
�s control over it. That gave Gromph time to finish the spell and throw the daggers. He didn’t bother to aim. He tossed them in Nimor’s general direction and let the spell do the rest. The daggers whirled through the air, their paths twisting around each other in a perfect beeline for the winged assassin.

  With impressive agility, Nimor slipped sideways in the air in an attempt to avoid the daggers, but once set on their course, nothing so simple would deter them. The assassin had to twist in the air again, swatting at the blades with his rapier. The flash of steel—Nimor’s thin blade and both daggers—became a whirling blur around the assassin.

  Well played, Master, Prath commented. That should keep him occupied.

  Again ignoring his nephew, Gromph called on the levitating power of his staff to launch himself straight up in the air. The centipede’s hideous sideways jaws crashed together an inch below the soles of his boots, and it immediately drew back for a second lunging attack. Gromph, hoping he was well above the monstrous insect, twisted and rolled in the air, his eyes taking in every detail of the Bazaar and the surrounding stalagmites as he went.

  The archmage stopped, hanging in the air between the confused centipede and the hovering lich.

  “You don’t like my new pet?” the lichdrow taunted. “All he wants is to give you a little kiss.”

  “I don’t—” Gromph started, but the air was pushed from his chest once again when Dyrr, his staff held in front of him, used its power to thrust Gromph away.

  The archmage could feel the giant insect behind him, looming like a stalactite fortress. Dyrr drew himself up higher in the air and the repulsion pushed Gromph down and away—directly into the centipede’s greedy jaws.

  The right spell came to Gromph’s mind in an instant, and he wasted some extra energy to cast it quickly. The effect was one he’d felt hundreds of times, but he’d always hated it. His body felt as if it were drawing itself thin. He shivered despite himself and had to force himself to keep his eyes open when his vision blurred a little and the world around him became both distorted and somehow brighter, sharper.