Dissolution

by Richard Lee Byers

Chapter Twenty-Three

 

  With Quenthel in the lead, the Academy descended from Tier Breche like a great waterfall. Some scholars tramped after her on the staircase, while others floated down the cliff face. A few, possessed of magic that enabled them to fly, flitted about like bats.

  "Perhaps Mistress would care to bide a moment," said Pharaun. At some point he had slipped off to his personal quarters long enough to wash his face, comb his hair, and throw on a new set of handsome clothes. He returned alone, still claiming ignorance of Gromph's whereabouts. "This is as good a spot as any to spy out the lay of the land. We're below some of the smoke but still high enough for an aerial inspection. "

  Since Gromph was still either unavailable or uninterested, the Mizzrym was - with obvious relish - acting in the archmage's stead. It was arguably an affront to House Baenre as much as the archmage, but Quenthel had given the order anyway. Until her brother returned or the crisis abated, she needed someone to speak for Sorcere, and she was sure it would upset Gromph in an amusing way to have this dandy taking his place for so important a task.

  She halted, and her minions came to a ragged, jostling stop behind her. The whip vipers reared to survey the cityscape along with her. From the corner of her eye, she saw Pharaun smile briefly as if he found the serpents' behavior comical.

  "There," said Quenthel, pointing, "in Manyfolk. It looks as if House Auvryndar may have finished exterminating their own slaves, but a mob keeps them penned within their walls. "

  "I see it, Blessed Mother," said Malaggar Faen Tlabbar from the step behind her. The First Sword of Melee-Magthere was a merry-looking, round-faced boy with a fondness for green attire and emeralds. "With your permission, that might be a good place to start. We'll lift the siege and add the Auvryndar to our own army. "

  "So be it," Quenthel said. The residents of the Academy reached the floor of the lower cavern, whereupon the instructors, particularly the warriors of the pyramid, set about the business of formingthe scholars into squads, with swordsmen and spearman protecting the spellcasters. Then they had to arrange the units into some semblance of a marching order.

  Like every princess of a great House, Quenthel had a working knowledge of military matters, and she watched the attempt to create order with a jaundiced eye.

  "I could wish for a proper army," she muttered.

  She hadn't meant for anyone tohear, but Pharaun nodded.

  "I understand your sentiments, Mistress, but they're all we have, and I'm sure that if we've trained them properly, we have a chance. " He coughed. "Against the thralls, anyway. "

  "Your meaning?"

  "The greatest danger of all is this pall of smoke. I think Syrzan, for all its cunning, miscalculated. If the mages we left upstairs don't extinguish the flames, we'll all suffocate, female and male, elf and orc alike, leaving the alhoon a necropolis to rule. Still, I suppose we must concentrate on our task and not fret about the rest. "

  "What alhoon?" she demanded.

  He hesitated. "It really is a long story, Mistress, and not crucial at this moment. "

  "I will decide what is crucial, mage," she said. "Speak. "

  Before Pharaun could begin she saw the First Sword approaching, presumably to inform her that the company was ready to set forth.

  As they started to march, she listened to the mage's tale of the undead mind flayer and its designs for Menzoberranzan. There was more, she was sure, that he was holding back, but she could always torture it out of him later.

  Along the way, the teachers and students found their way littered with mangled dark elf corpses, some headless, some partially devoured, firelight gilding their sightless eyes. The rich smell of blood competed with the acrid foulness of the smoke.

  Or course, no drow objected to the spectacle of violent death, but the ubiquity of the ravaged shapes, combined with the glare of the flames and the uncanny sight of burning stone, made it seem as if Menzoberranzan itself had become a sort of hell, and that was, for Quenthel at least, unsettling.

  The Mistress of Arach-Tinilith thought that were she a weaker person, she might have felt as if she were moving through a nightmare, or interpreted the carnage as proof positive that Lolth had turned her back on Menzoberranzan for good and all. She consoled herself with the thought that at least this time she was marching against an enemy she could see and smite.

  Periodically the scholars saw small groups of undercreatures looting, slaughtering hapless commoners, or even flinging stones and arrows at the column. The younger students sought to attack the thralls, and the teachers bellowed at them to desist. The Academy had to act as a unit and stick to a plan if it hoped to win the day.

  Malaggar raised his hand, signaling a stop.

  We're close, I think,he reported in the silent drow sign language.

  They stood in place until a flying scout, a brother of the pyramid possessed of a cloak that converted into batlike wings, swooped down and gave his report.

  Mistress,Malaggar signed,may I suggest that ten squads keep on straight, and the rest of us circle around that block of houses. We'll take the orcs from two sides.

  Very well,Quenthel replied as she surveyed her army. All of you from the head of the column to the mouth of that alley, follow me. The rest of you, go with Master Faen Tlabbar. Everyone, quietly as you can.

  Hands lifted at intervals down the column to relay the orders to those who couldn't see her.

  The company divided, then Quenthel's troops crept on, toward a clamoring mob that quite possibly outnumbered them. Fortunately, the slaveshadn't noticed the Academy's arrival, and she meant to take full advantage of their ignorance. She quickly arranged her troops in a ragged but serviceable formation, then bade them attack as one.

  Power howled and flashed, burning, blasting, and devouring masses of goblins. Darts leaped through the air to pierce orcs and bugbears. Undercreaturcs fell by the score.

  Yet after that first volley, scores remained, and they flung themselves at the scholars in a yammering frenzy. The drow hastily abandoned their crossbows for swords and spears. Hidden behind lines of warriors, mages and priestesses peered, trying to see what was going on in the midst of the savage melee so they could target their spells without harming their own comrades.

  Quenthel could have cowered behind her own rank of protectors - perhaps, as high priestess and leader, she should have - but she thought it might stiffen the spines of the first- and second-year students If she led from the front, and in any case, she wanted to kill up close and see the pain and fear in her victims' faces. Her vipers rearing and hissing, she shoved her way to the front.

  She slew several goblinolds, and dazzling yellow light flashed and crackled around her. The fire magic did her no harm - her mystical defenses held - but several of the folk around her, drow and undercreature alike, shrieked and fell.

  For a moment, everyone, every survivor in the immediate vicinity, was stunned. Then orcs scrambled forward at the gaps the blazehad created in the drow line, and scholars darted forward to fill them. No one paid any heed to the burned comrades beneath their feet, save to curse them if she tripped.

  Quenthel stepped back, letting a student warrior from House Despana take her place, then cast about, seeking the source of the burst of flame. She had a vague sense that the magic had plunged down from above, so she looked there first, at the upper stories of the buildings to either side.

  She blinked in surprise. Like true arachnids, driders were scuttling about the walls and rooflines. Many such debased creatures retained their spellcasting abilities, and one of them must have conjured the fire.

  Quenthel had no idea how the thralls and outcasts could have conspired together, nor did she have time to stop and ponder the question. She had to stop the driders before they destroyed her company from above. She levitated upward through the smoky air, meanwhile looking about for the mage who'd created the flame.

  Barbed arrows and bolts of light streaked at her fro
m all directions. She shielded her face with a fold of herpiwafwi,and the missiles rebounded or dissolved when they encountered her layers of enchanted protection. The impacts stung but did no serious damage.

  When she'd ascended to their level, she recognized certain snarling faces even with the fangs, driders whom she herself had helped to make. Perhaps it explained why they'd throw magic at her despite the inevitable damage to the mob of orcs.

  She quickly unrolled another scroll and read the trigger phrase therein. Blades appeared, floating among the driders in front of her, then began to revolve around a central point. The razor-sharp slivers of metal sped along so fast they were invisible, and their orbits curved through the bodies of their foes. The blades sliced and pierced the half-spiders without even slowing down, reducing the brutes to scraps of meat and splashes of blood.

  Quenthel laughed and started to twist around to face the driders atop the stalagmite buildings on the opposite side of the street. A length of something sticky lashed her and looped tightly about her torso, binding her free hand to her chest.

  It was webbing. She knew that some driders could spin the stuff. As they sought to reel her in,she levitated once more, resisting the pull like a fish on a line. Meanwhile, she struggled to reach another scroll despite the constriction of her arm. The vipers bit and chewed at the cable.

  Pharaun levitated into view, and sizzling white lightning leaped from his fingertips. It stabbed one drider, then leaped to the next, then another, until the twisting, dazzling power linked all the half-spiders like beads on a chain. They danced spasmodically until the magic ended, then instantly collapsed. Stinking smoke rose from the remains.

  Pharaun smiled at Quenthel and said, "I've often wondered why the goddess doesn't transform our misfits into something harmless," he said. "I suppose driders are another tool for culling the weak. "

  Ignoring his blather, Quenthel peered down to see what was transpiring on the battlefield.

  Malaggar's contingent had arrived and was tearing into the enemy's flank. At virtually the same instant, the Auvryndar threw open their gates, and, mounted on their lizards, charged forth in a sortie.

  Teeth gritted, Quenthel pulled the gummy web off her person and floated down to rejoin her troops on the ground. Contemptuous of the enemies' arrows, Pharaun continued to hang above the warriors' heads from which point it was no doubt easier to aim his magic.

  The scholars only had to fight for a few more minutes then, hammered on three sides, the mass of goblins collapsed in on itself, the implosion laying a carpet of corpses in its wake.

  Quenthel allowed her troops only a few minutes to collect themselves, then she formed them up and marched them on toward the next of the goddess only knew how many battles.

  "Out!" Greyanna shouted. "Now!"

  The canoe maker gawked at her and sputtered, "Wh-what about my stock?"

  The items in question sat about the floor of the workroom or hung cradled in straps hooked to the ceiling.

  "The goblins will destroy them," the scar-faced princess said. "Like this. " She smashed a half-finished kayak, a fragile-looking construction of curved bone ribs and hide, with a sweep of her mace. "Afterward, you'll make more, but only if you live. Now get moving, or I'll kill you myself. "

  The craftsman scrambled off his stool, and she chivvied him out the door. Up and down the street, her half dozen minions were rousting out the occupants of other manufactories and shops.

  A mob of hairy hobgoblins, all well-armed and many a head taller than the average dark elf, slouched around a corner onto the thoroughfare. They spotted the drow, bellowed their uncouth battle cries, and charged.

  After the disastrous encounter with Ryld Argith, one of the twins was dead. The other, and Relonor, lay grievously wounded, as they still did in House Mizzrym. There they would live or die without recourse to further doses of healing magic, since Miz'ri declined to squander the House's limited resources on such incompetents. Greyanna had entirely agreed.

  After taking the wounded home, Greyanna, with the questionable aid of Aunrae, had selected five new males to join her in the hunt. This time, they'd stalk Pharaun on foot, Greyanna having belatedly realized that foulwings weren't lucky for her.

  She and her band had been wandering the streets seeking word of their quarry when the rebellion erupted. Once she'd grasped the magnitude of the disturbance, she wondered if it was the raid on the Braeryn that she had engineered, that brutal attempt to flush her brother out of hiding, that had inspired the thralls to revolt. In a mad, dark way, the possibilitypleased her, but she decided not to share her hypothesis. Few would see the humor.

  Most of her thinking, however, was given over to practical considerations. She thought her hunting party could help put down the undercreatures, but only if it could combine forces with a bona fide army. Otherwise, the larger mobs would overwhelm it.

  In those first minutes of slaughter and destruction, she watched for some noble clan to ride forth from their castle and drive the goblins before them. To her consternation, none did, at least not in her immediate vicinity. Her little troop was on its own.

  Life then became an infuriating business of running and hiding from orcs of all things, of watching beasts no better than rothe destroy beauty and sophistication they couldn't even perceive. Occasionally, she and her companions slew a small group of goblinoids wandering on their own, but it meant nothing, would do nothing to arrest the dissolution of all that was finest in the world.

  Where was the Spider Queen? Perhaps she was bored with her toy Menzoberranzan, magnificent though it was. Perhaps she intended to break it to make space for a new one.

  In time, Greyanna's dodging and backtracking brought her to a street she recognized, a double row of prosperous shops - to be precise, establishments owned by tradesmen under the patronage of House Mizzrym. She herself had called hereabouts, collecting rents and fees, occasionally chastising a fool who was late paying on a loan or had otherwise displeased Matron Mother Miz'ri.

  It occurred to Greyanna that if the merchants perished, they'd contribute no more gold to Mizzrym coffers. Whereas if she conducted them to safety, she might curry some favor with her mother. Miz'ri had grown impatient with her continuing failure to kill Pharaun and had even hinted that another might carry the mantle of First Daughter with more grace.

  At the very least, preserving Mizzrym assets would feel more constructive and less frustrating than simply skulking about, and so Greyanna instructed her followers to extract the frightened traders and artisans from their homes.

  She loosed a crossbow bolt at the hobgoblins, and her soldiers did the same. Her wizard conjured a cold, towering shadow like the silhouette of a mantis, which mangled several thralls in its oversized pincers before melting out of existence. In all, at least a dozen brutes fell, but others shambled forth from the smoke and fiery glare to take their place.

  Voices of torment, she thought, how many undercreatures were there in Menzoberranzan?

  Until that day, Greyanna had never really noticed. She guessed no one else had, either.

  The hobgoblins charged.

  The Mizzrym princess shouted, "Dark wall!"

  Three of her retainers, those closest to the onrushing thralls, stooped and touched the ground, conjuring a curtain of shadow between themselves and the undercreatures, then fell back.

  One of the Mizzrym warriors herded the shopkeepers farther from the threat. The rest, Greyanna included, scrambled to form a line at a narrow place three yards behind the intangible barrier. The princess pulled a little silver vial from her belt pouch and guzzled the bitter, lukewarm contents down. She shuddered and doubled over as her muscles cramped, and the discomfort gave way to a tingling warmth.

  Hobgoblins strode from the darkness. They'd dwelled among dark elves too long for the trick to deter them more than a few seconds.

  At least the blinding veil precluded their advancing in anything resembling a coherent formation. They
screamed and charged in a gapped and formless wave, which looked murderous even so.

  The first hobgoblin to lunge at Greyanna was particularly large and, in marked contrast to his fellows,

  hairless from the shoulders up. A mistress or master had depilated the slave to prepare the canvas for a work of art, hundreds of tiny round burn scars arranged in a complex swirling pattern.

  The thrall cut at Greyanna's head. Under other circumstances, she would have retreated out of range, but that would break the line. Wishing she'd brought a shield to the revel, she lifted her mace in a high parry. The hobgoblin's broadsword rang against the stone haft of the war club and skipped off.

  At once she riposted with a strike to the flank, and the undercreature whipped his targe around to block. The blow bashed a dent in the round steel shield and knocked the hobgoblin reeling back, his slanted eyes wide with surprise. He didn't know about the potion that had lent her an ogre's strength.

  Greyanna struck to the side, slaying the slave who was menacing her neighbor, then her own bald adversary came edging back. He hovered a second, then feinted to the flank and finished with a cut to the chest. Discerning the true threat, she half-stepped inside the arc of the attack and swung at his jaw. The blow crunched home, and he toppled backward with a shattered, bloody chin and a broken neck.

  She killed two more hobgoblins, then something prodded her shin, a thrust that failed to penetrate her boot. She looked down, and it was a kobold, armed with a fireplace poker, who had apparently been scurrying about the feet of the larger slaves. Greyanna killed the reptilian imp with a roundhouse kick.

  She cast about for her next adversary. She didn't seem to have one. The fight was over, and the few surviving hobgoblins were running away.

  "Form up!" she shouted. "I want a column with the traders in the middle. Fast!"

  Once the procession was under way, Aunrae, striding along at Greyanna's side,asked, "May I know where we're going? An ally's castle?"

  "No," Greyanna replied. "I suspect we couldn't get in. We're going to hide our charges in Bauthwaf. "

  The column crept past corpses and burning stone, and as they made their way to the cavern wall, other commoners came running out of their homes to join the procession. Greyanna's first impulse was to turn away those without ties to House Mizzrym, but she thought better of it. Many of the newcomers carried swords, and she could press the dolts into martial service if needed.

  Occasionally someone collapsed, coughing feebly, poisoned by the stingingsmoke. The rest stepped over her and pressed on.

  Someone gave a thin, high cry, as if at an unexpected pain. Greyanna spun around. The goblins weren't attacking. Her client the canoe maker had simply seized his opportunity to knife another male in the back.

  "A competitor," the craftsman explained.

  The labyrinthine fortress known as the Great Mound contained a number of magically sealed areas. Unbelievably, the rebellious slave troops penetrated everywhere else. The Baenre fought the goblinoids in the stalagmite towers, across the aerial bridges that connected them, and through the tunnels beneath them, even along the balconies and skywalks of the stalactite bastions, reclaiming their domain a bloody inch at a time.

  The thralls made their final stand in the courtyard, a spacious area surrounded by a weblike iron fence. The barrier was a potent magical defense, and, as the Baenre had just discovered, of no use whatsoever if one's foe was already inside the compound.

  Triel floated down from the battlements above to take a hand in the last of the fighting. Jeggred, who'd stood beside her since the battle commenced, drifted down as well. Both mother and demidemon son wore a copious spattering of blood, none of it their own.

  In truth, Triel could have left the task of clearing the yard to her warriors, but she was enjoying herself. Partly, it was simple drow bloodlust, but she'd also found a directness, a simplicity, in slaughtering goblins that was sadly lacking in the complex task of ruling the city. For the first time since ascending to her mother's throne, she felt she knew what she was doing.

  Half a dozen minotaurs, formidable brutes she had often employed as her own personal guards, chanted, "Freedom! Freedom!" as they swung their axes or crouched to gore an enemy with their horns. Triel read the last line of runes from a scroll that, when the rebellion commenced, had contained seven spells.

  Dazzling flame blazed up from the ground beneath the minotaurs' hooves. Four of the huge beasts fell down screaming and thrashing. The other two leaped clear of the conflagration. They didn't escape harm entirely. The fire burned away patches of their shaggy fur and seared the flesh beneath, but the injuries didn't slow them down. They bellowed and charged.

  A minotaur towered over a drow of normal stature, and made Triel look like a tiny sprite. Still, she smiled as she stepped forward to meet the foe. One of the slaves focused on her and the other, on Jeggred.

  The matron mother knew a minotaur liked to overwhelm an opponent with the momentum of its initial rush. She waited until the creature was nearly on top of her, then sidestepped. He was lumbering too fast to stop or compensate, and she smashed his knee with her mace as he plunged by.

  The slave fell on his face, and she robbed him of the use of his limbs with a bone-breaking strike to the spine. Meanwhile, Jeggred simultaneously chewed on his own opponent's neck and ripped at the brute's torso, hooking the guts out.

  After that, Triel and the draegloth killed several gnolls before running out of foes. Panting, the Baenre strode to the foot of a wall and floated upward again, high enough to peer beyond the eminence of Qu'ellarz'orl to the burning city beyond. Jeggred followed.

  Earlier, when she'd first discerned that slaves throughout Menzoberranzan were rebelling, she'd used a certain magical diamond to call the males of Bregan D'aerthe from their secret lair. The sellswords were at their work.

  One neighborhood in the south of the city was thick with goblins. Even from the Great Mound, she could make out the boil of motion in the streets. Then, over the course of just a few seconds, that agitation ceased,as the creatures apparently fell dead all at once.

  It was an extraordinary feat of mass assassination, but the mercenaries had only cleared one small part of Menzoberranzan. They couldn't reclaim the entire city by themselves, if, in fact, the job could be done at all.

  Triel shouted down into the yard, to any officer within earshot, "Assemble my troops. We're marching out. "

  Jeggred couldn't speak for joy. This had already been the best night of his admittedly young life, and he was drunk on slaughter. He'd killed and killed and killed and killed again, an ecstasy that put hissport with Faeryl Zauvirr to shame.

  And his mother said it wasn't over! They were going to descend into the city to gorge on murder, and Jeggred would know a fiend's transcendent bliss. The only hard part would be remembering not to kill dark elves, just everyone else.

  He squeezed Triel's shoulder with a quivering hand, one of the smaller ones.

  Valas Hune skulked around the corner, then blinked. A keep blocked the street, where no bastion should be - then the huge thing moved.

  No, not a keep after all, but the biggest stone giant he'd ever seen. The scout knew that some Houses kept giant slaves as well as the more common goblinoids and ogres, and, gray in the firelight, with a long head and black, sunken eyes, this specimen still wore iron bracelets dangling lengths of broken chain. From somewhereit had procured a greataxe sized for a creature of its immensity, and was using it to pulp any drow it noticed scurrying about.

  Valas had gotten separated from his comrades sometime back. That was all right. He was used to traversing wild places by himself, though in truth, he'd never explored any tunnel as perilous and unpredictable as Menzoberranzan had become this night.

  He'd been killing orcs and gnolls, first with his shortbow, and, after the arrows ran out, close in with his kukris. He'd thought he was making some genuine progress until he encountered this.

  It was
a daunting sight, but someone would have to kill the big undercreatures as well as the little ones, if Menzoberranzan was to survive and Bregan D'aerthe was to be paid for its services.

  Valas touched a fingertip to a nine-pointed tin star pinned to his shirt, and murmured a word in a language of a race fewMenzoberranyr had ever even heard of. In the blink of an eye he was crouched on the stone giant's shoulder.

  The surface was smooth and rounded. He started to slip off, but, reacting like the accomplished rock climber he was, negated his weight and caught himself. He clambered within reach of the giant's neck and started hacking at the arteries within the behemoth's neck with both kukris.

  To no avail. Perched somewhat precariously, Valas couldn't use his strength and weight to full advantage, and his first stroke skipped harmlessly off the giant's rocklike hide.

  The behemoth did feel the impact, though. Its head snapped around, the chin nearly brushing Valas away. The giant glared down at him, and he struck, this time with greater success. With a crackle of lightning, the enchanted weapon split the slave's lower lip.

  Crying out in pain and anger, a deep sound Valas felt in his bones, the stone giant flinched its head away. A huge gray hand rose up to catch the drow, who scrambled forward and cut at the colossus's neck.

  Dark, thick blood leaped forth and washed Valas into space. He fell hard onto a rooftop and watched the giant stumble about, clutching at its throat. After a few steps, the huge thrall fell backward, crushing some unlucky hobgoblins that were wandering by.

  Gromph was in a vile humor as he floated up the cliff face. He'd cast light into the foot of Narbondel the same as always, and the world exploded into madness. Orcs lunged out of nowhere and attacked his guards. His own ogre litter-bearers summarily dumped his luxurious conveyance on the ground and joined in the uprising.

  The archmage had sought to strike the undercreatures dead witha spell, but nothing happened. Someone had conjured a magical dead zone around him. Either one of the orcs was a shaman powerful enough to create such an effect, or, more likely, one of the brutes had stolen a talisman from his owner.

  However they'd managed it, the beasts were charging, and the spells in Gromph's memory were just odd little rhymes, his robe and cloak, mere flimsy cloth, and his weapons, inert sticks and ornaments. Well, probably not all of them, but he wasn't reckless enough to stand and experiment while the orcs assailed him with their pilfered blades. Forfeiting his dignity, he turned and ran. The exertion made his chest throb where K'rarza'q had gored him.

  When he reached the edge of the plaza, he thought he must have exited the dead zone. He'd better have, because he could hear the grunting ogres with their long legs catching up behind him. He turned, pointed a wand, and snarled the trigger word.

  A drop of liquid shot from the tip of the rod. It struck the belly of the lead ogre and burst into a copious splash of acid.

  With his magic restored, Gromph obliterated every attacker who lacked the sense to run away. His dark elf attendants were already dead, leaving him to make his way back to Tier Breche alone.

  As it turned out, the slave rebellion was pandemic, and the trek wasn't altogether easy. He considered going to ground in some castle or house, but when he saw the flames gnawing stone, he knew he had to get back.

  Dirty, sore, and coughing, he eventually made it home, and when he rose to the top of the limestone wall, he saw something that lifted his spirits, albeit only a little.

  Eight Masters of Sorcere stood in the open air, chanting, gesturing, attempting a ritual, while an equal number of apprentices looked on. The wizards had fetched much of the proper equipment out of the tower. That was something, Gromph supposed, but the incantation was a useless mess.

  The Baenre reached out and hauled himself onto solid ground and his hands and knees, another irksome affront to his dignity.

  He rose and shouted, "Enough!"

  The teachers and students twisted around to gawk at him. The chanting died.

  "Archmage!" cried Guldor Melarn. He was supposedly without peer in the realm of elemental magic, though it couldn'tbe proved by his performance thus far that night. "We were worried about you!"

  "I'm sure," said Gromph, striding closer. "I noticed all the search parties you sent out looking for me. "

  Guldor hesitated. "Sir, the mistress of the Academy commanded - "

  "Shut up," said Gromph. He'd come close enough to see that the teachers were standing in a complex pentacle, written in red phosphorescence on the ground. "Pitiful. "

  He extended his index finger and wrote on the air. The magic words and sigils reshaped themselves.

  "My lord Archmage," said Master Godeep. "We drew this circle to extinguish the fires below. If you break it - "

  "I'm not breaking it," said Gromph, "I'm fixing it. " He turned his gaze on one of the apprentices, some commoner youth, and the dolt flinched. "Fetch me a bit of fur, an amber rod, and one of the little bronze gongs the cooks use to summon us to supper. Run!"

  "Archmage," saidGuldor, "you see we already have all the necessary foci for fire magic. " He gestured to a brazier of ruddy coals. "I'm whispering to the flames below, commanding them to dwindle. "

  "And making more smoke in the process. That's just what we need. " Gromph kicked the brazier over, scattering embers across the rock. "Your approach isn't working, elementalist. I should exile you to the Realms that See the Sun for a few decades, then you might figure out what it takes to extinguish a fire of this magnitude. "

  The male came sprinting back with the articles Gromph had requested. The Baenre whispered a word of power, and the pentacle changed from red to blue.

  "Right, then," he said to the wizards. "I assume you can tell where you're meant to stand, so do it and we'll begin. I'll say a line, you repeat it. Copy my passes if you're up to it. "

  For a properly schooled wizard, magic was generally easy. He relied on an armamentarium of spells, many devised by his predecessors, a few, perhaps, invented by himself. In either case, they were perfected spells that he thoroughly understood. He knew he could cast them properly, and what would happen when he did.

  An extemporaneous ritual was a different matter. Relying on their arcane knowledge and natural ability, a circle of mages tried to generate a new effect on the fly. Often, nothing happened. When it did, the power often turned on those who had raised it or discharged itself in some other manner contrary to their intent. Yet occasionally such a ceremony worked, and with his station, his wealth, and his homeland at stake, Gromph was resolved to make this one of those times.

  After the mages chanted for fifteen minutes, power began to whisper and sting through the air. The archmage tapped the beater to the gong, sounding a clashing, shivering tone. At once a vaster note answered and obscured the first, a booming, grinding, deafening roar. Gromph's subordinates flinched, but the Baenre smiled in satisfaction, because the noise was thunder.

  Perched high in the side cavern, the residents of Sorcere had an excellent view of what transpired next. The air at the top of the great vault, already thick with smoke, grew denser still as masses of vapor materialized. The shapeless shadows flickered like great translucent dragons with fire leaping in their bellies. Following each flash, they bellowed that godlike hammering blast, as if the flames pained them.

  Gromph knew that many of the folk in the city below had no idea what was occurring - it was possible that even some of his erudite colleagues didn't know - but whether they understood or not, clouds, lightning, and weather were paying a call on the hitherto changeless depths of the Underdark.

  As one, the clouds dropped torrents of water to fall in frigid veils. The Baenre could hear the sizzling sound as it pounded the cavern wall.

  "That's impressive," said Guldor, "but are you sure it will put out the flames? The fire's magical, after all. "

  Gromph's bruise gave him a twinge.

  "Yes, instructor," he growled, "because I'm not an incompetent from a House o
f no account. I'm a Baenre and the Archmage of Menzoberranzan . . . and I'msure. "

  Before it was over, Pharaun lost track of how many battles he and his comrades had fought. He only knew they kept winning them, through superior tactics more than anything else, and that despite their losses, their numbers kept growing, swelled by garrisons that had fought their way out of their castles.

  Occasionally the ragtag army came upon a section of the city that had already been pacified, and though he never caught so much of a glimpse of them, Pharaun knew Bregan D'aerthe was fighting in concert with his own company. It was as much a comfort as anything could be on this fierce and desperate night.

  Finally the army from Tier Breche encountered an equally impressive force under Matron Baenre's command. The two companies united and marched on Narbondellyn, where several bugbears with some degree of martial experience had striven to organize thousands of their fellow undercreatures into a force capable of withstanding their masters' wrath.

  The great stone pillar of Narbondel shone above fighting that was wild and chaotic. Miraculously, partway through, the upper reaches of the cavern began to storm, allaying Pharaun's greatest fear. An hour later, the drow swept in and annihilated the opposing force, and thus they took their homeland back.

  In the aftermath, the wizard walked through the downpour, looking this way and that. Strands of wet hair clung to his forehead, and his boots squelched. As a mage, he had to concede the storm was a glorious achievement, to say nothing of the salvation of Menzoberranzan, but it was a pity his colleagues couldn't have accomplished the same thing without wreaking havoc on everyone's appearance and chilling them to the bone.

  The Mizzrym grinned. Neither Quenthel nor Triel was anywhere around. He'd taken direction from them all night, willingly enough, but he wanted to command the finale of this extraordinary affair himself, and their absence gave him an excuse to proceed without consulting them.

  He cast about once more and spied Welverin Freth. The capable weapons master of the Nineteenth

  House, Welverin excelled at combat despite the seeming impediment of a prosthetic silver leg, and had fought in tandem with Pharaun several times during the night. Currently he washuddled in a doorway conferring with two of his lieutenants.

  "Weapons Master!" Pharaun called.

  Welverin looked up and gave him a nod. "How can I help you, Master Mizzrym?"

  "How would you like to help me kill the creature responsible for this insurrection?"

  The warrior's eyes narrowed and he said, "Is this another of your jokes?"

  "By no means. But if we're going to do this, we'd better do it quickly, before our quarry slinks away into the Underdark. I trust that you and your troops can ride aerial mounts?"

  Pharaun gestured to the giant bats, created by some enchanter, penned in a nearby latticework dome. It seemed a petty miracle they'd survived the rebellion unsuffocated and unburned.

  "Where do they keep the tack?" Welverin asked, peering at the cage.