“You should rest first, Archmage,” Nauzhror said, reading his expression and knowing what would come next.
Gromph picked up his chalice and gulped another mouthful of wine. Enough. He did not want a light head when he assaulted House Agrach Dyrr.
“There is no time,” he said. “Yasraena or her daughters may happen upon the phylactery. It will be easier to take out of the golem than it will be to take from Matron Mother Dyrr’s hands.”
Nauzhror could not help but nod agreement with that. He asked, “When, then?”
“Within the hour,” Gromph replied and blew out a tired sigh.
Prath and Nauzhror digested that. Gromph closed his eyes and tried to still the pounding in his head.
“The wards will be challenging,” Prath said at last.
Nauzhror backhanded Prath across his mouth and snapped, “The archmage is aware of the challenges, apprentice.”
The rebuke drew blood. Prath sank back in his chair, daubing his broken lip. His eyes burned, but he said nothing. Gromph was pleased to see the anger in Prath’s face.
Gromph was aware of the challenges. He had just seen them; they all had.
An intricate network of wards, an altogether different layer of protections at least as complex as those he had just bypassed, would attempt to prevent his physical entrance into the fortress. The combined power of all of the mages of House Xorlarrin had so far been unable to breach those wards. Gromph was no mere Xorlarrin wizard, of course, but neither was the second layer of wards likely to prove as easy to bypass as the antiscrying protections.
And triggering a ward while he was physically present put him at risk for injury and death, not merely detection. He remembered well the glaring red glow of the spell traps. “Shall I accompany you, Archmage? asked Nauzhror.
“No,” Gromph replied, and massaged his temples. “I have other plans for you two. You, Nauzhror, are to stay within my offices and help me attempt to scry House Agrach Dyrr.”
Nauzhror’s fat face pinched in a question. “Help you scry? You did exactly that. What do you mean?”
Gromph eyed Prath, who also looked confused.
“I mean,” Gromph said, “that I will be in two places at once, Master Nauzhror.”
Gromph let his words hang in the air without further explanation. After only a moment, realization showed on Nauzhror’s face.
“Prath will remain here in your guise,” the Master of Sorcere said.
“Yes,” Gromph affirmed. “And I in his, at least for a time. You will remain here too, Nauzhror, as though assisting me with my divinations.”
Prath’s expression showed understanding but also a question. “Why the ruse, Archmage?” he asked. “Yasraena and her mages cannot scry into your office. No one can.”
“No,” Gromph agreed, “but no doubt she is trying. She knows I must move against her House, and she will want to know when I am coming. We will mislead her. You and I will change forms to appear as the other. I will decrease the power of the wards around my office enough to allow Yasraena and her wizards to finally get through. When she does, she will see Gromph and Nauzhror attempting to scry House Agrach Dyrr, as though in preparation for an attack yet to come. The actual attack, however, will already have begun.”
Nauzhror smiled.
“Very clever, Archmage,” he said. “Might it not be easier, however, for me to take your form?”
Gromph had expected as much from Nauzhror. He eyed the master coolly and said, “I think not. And be careful, Nauzhror, lest I find your eagerness to sit in my chair unseemly.”
Nauzhror’s eyes found the floor. “I meant no presumption, Archmage,” he explained. “I merely thought that I might be better able to mimic you than would an apprentice.”
Gromph decided to let the matter rest. He had made his point to Nauzhror. “Prath will serve. Besides, having you, a Master of Sorcere, assisting me will further the deception.”
Nauzhror accepted that with a submissive nod.
The archmage rose from his chair and said, “Time is short. Let us begin.”
With that, Gromph removed his magical robes and the most well-known of his magical trinkets, including the ring worn only by the Archmage of Menzoberranzan. Nauzhror watched the ring slip from Gromph’s finger with poorly disguised hunger.
Prath too rose and stripped himself of clothes and gear.
Presently, Gromph stood in the overlarge piwafwi, robes, and other accoutrements of an apprentice wizard, and Prath was in those of the Archmage of Menzoberranzan.
“They may fit you someday,” he said to Prath.
The apprentice blanched. “Mine do not fit you,” he said, embarrassed.
Gromph almost laughed, thinking of how he must look. He had not been so humbly attired in centuries.
He looked to Nauzhror, indicated Prath, and said, “Master Nauzhror.”
Nauzhror nodded and spoke the words to a minor glamor. When he finished the incantation, an illusionary image of Prath took shape beside the actual apprentice, a magical portrait to serve as a frame of reference.
“An excellent likeness,” Prath observed.
Gromph agreed. He opened a lower drawer of his desk and withdrew a scroll scribed with one of his most powerful spells. To Prath, he said, “Apprentice, should you err in the casting of this spell, it could have most unfortunate results.”
The archmage would have cast the spell on Prath himself, but the magic could affect only the caster. Prath would have to do it himself.
Gromph continued, “After completing the incantation, look upon me and will yourself to take my form. The spell will do the rest.”
Prath took the scroll in a hand that, to his credit, did not shake. He unfurled the parchment, studied the words, looked once more at Gromph and Nauzhror, and at their nods, began to cast.
Gromph listened with care to the apprentice’s pronunciation of the words. To Gromph’s satisfaction, Prath read with confidence. When Prath pronounced the last word, the scroll crumbled in his grasp and his body started to change.
“The sensation is not painful,” Prath said, his voice already changing.
Prath’s body thinned, his eyes sank deeper into their orbits, his hair grew longer, and his eyes changed from his own crimson to Gromph’s blood red. Prath studied Gromph’s features as the magic wrought its change, mentally shaping the transmutation. The magic of the spell filled in the necessary details and after only ten heartbeats, Gromph was looking upon his double.
“Well done,” Gromph said to Prath.
The apprentice beamed.
“In my uppermost right inner pocket is a jade circlet,” Gromph said to Prath, nodding at his robe. “Give it to me.”
Gromph would need the component to cast the same spell on himself, not from a scroll, but from his memory.
Prath reached into the pocket of the archmage’s robes, found the circlet, and handed it to Gromph.
Gromph placed it on his head, and spoke the words and made the gestures that would allow him to assume any form he wished. When the magic took effect, a tingle ran through his flesh. His skin grew malleable and at the same time somehow thickened, like wax.
Using the illusionary image of Prath as a model, Gromph caused the magic to morph his body and features into those of Prath. Gromph felt no pain throughout, merely a strange sense of his flesh flowing. When he felt his body solidify, he knew the transformation was complete. The spell’s magic would continue for several hours, during which Gromph could call upon the spell to transform him into virtually any shape he desired.
“It is done, Archmage,” Nauzhror said, studying him. “The likeness is nearly exact.”
Nauzhror dispelled the illusory image of Prath.
Gromph nodded. To Prath, he said, “The remainder of my components, apprentice.”
Prath mumbled acquiescence, reached into the magical pockets of Gromph’s robe, pulled esoterica out of the extra-dimensional spaces in the pockets of Gromph’s robes, and set it all on the desktop. Among the it
ems was the soul-stealing duergar axe. Shadows swirled along its head, suggesting faces, implying screams.
Gromph took the multitude of components and secreted them in his robes. He took the axe too, and hung it from his belt. It felt heavy at his waist, but he had no extradimensional pocket in Prath’s robes in which to carry its weight.
He reached into another drawer in his desk and withdrew several potions, a scroll, and a milky-colored ocular on a silver chain—looking through the ocular would allow Gromph to see through certain types of illusions. He also removed several wands, all of them of bone, all of them capped with the petrified eye of a keen-eyed slave. Having cast so many of his own spells, he would need the ocular’s and the wands’ powers to supplement his repertory.
When he had everything he needed and had organized it to his satisfaction, he looked to Prath and gestured at his highbacked, bone chair.
“Take your seat, ur—Archmage,” he said with a smile.
With obvious reluctance, Prath stepped around the desk and sank into Gromph’s chair.
“No hesitation, and no reluctance,” Gromph admonished him. “Yasraena will see it. Until I return, you are the Archmage of Menzoberranzan.”
Prath looked Gromph in the face, set his jaw, and nodded.
Gromph then had only one thing more to do.
Though Nauzhror and Prath were both Baenre, Gromph knew better than to rely on familial ties to assure obedience. He needed to instill fear. Once he entered House Agrach Dyrr, he would be vulnerable to an easy betrayal. Nauzhror, and perhaps even Prath, would be tempted to do so unless Gromph made the cost of failure higher than the benefit of success. A simple lie would do.
“Other than you two, I have shared this plan via a sending with only Master Mizzrym,” Gromph said. “In the event that I fail, I have ensured that Pharaun will alert Matron Mother Triel and investigate the causes of the failure very carefully.”
Neither Nauzhror nor Prath uttered a word. Gromph’s message was clear—betrayal would be punished, and harshly, even if Gromph was dead.
Nauzhror said, “Yasraena will never be aware of the deception.”
“Good fortune, Archmage,” Prath said.
“Maintain the illusion until I return or you know me to have failed,” Gromph ordered.
Both nodded.
Satisfied, Gromph spoke words of power and used them to weaken the more powerful wards that surrounded his office. Yasraena’s wizards soon would find their way in.
Swallowing his pride, he bowed to his “superiors” as would any young apprentice.
“Masters,” he said and backed out of the office.
The shapechanging spell would continue in effect for only about two hours. He would have to do everything that needed done within that time.
The real work was about to begin.
chapter
nine
Still in the shape of Prath, Gromph exited his offices and moved through the vaulted halls of Sorcere. The tapestry-festooned corridors stood mostly empty. Almost all of Sorcere’s masters and apprentices were occupied in finishing off the surprisingly stubborn duergar forces in the northern tunnels. Gromph did encounter one master, Havel Duskryn.
As he passed, Gromph bowed and said, “Master Duskryn.”
“Prath Baenre,” the tall, thin Master replied, rubbing his weak jaw and obviously too involved in whatever troubled him to query “Prath” about his business.
Gromph hurried through hallways lined with paintings, sculpture, and framed magical writings until he reached the apprentices’ wing of the complex. There, he encountered two of the new class of apprentices searching for a tome in the apprentices’ library. Neither spoke to Gromph, and he made his way to Prath’s austere quarters.
Like all apprentices, Prath lived alone out of a stone-walled room five paces on a side. His sparse furnishings consisted of an uncomfortable looking sleeping pallet and a small zurkhwood desk and chair. Books, papers, ink, a glowball, and three inkrods were neatly organized upon the desktop. Prath was surprisingly fastidious. Gromph’s own chambers as an apprentice had always been in disarray.
Gromph walked through Prath’s doorway and pulled the door closed behind him. The moment the latch caught, a magic mouth whispered, “Welcome back, Master Prath.”
Gromph smiled. An apprentice could be flogged for casting spells frivolously, though the masters usually turned a blind eye to the practice. In truth, using spells for pranks and entertainment made an apprentice’s otherwise harsh existence a bit more bearable. It also encouraged creative thinking in the use of spells. When Gromph had been an apprentice, he had kept an invisible wine service in a corner of his quarters, complete with an unseen servant to pour it at his command. Smuggling the wine into Sorcere had been a difficult challenge. Prath’s violation looked minor compared to Gromph’s.
Gromph slid into the chair behind the desk and leafed through Prath’s papers. He saw from the notes and formulae written there that the apprentice was in the process of learning a series of progressively more complicated augmenting transmutations. Gromph spent a moment reading over Prath’s observations.
He decided first that Prath had potential; he decided second that it was time to get on with his work. He had several preparatory spells to cast. He pushed the papers aside.
Gromph’s own magical robe had extradimensional pockets that organized their contents according to his mental urgings. Prath’s robe contained no such enchantment, and Gromph found sorting through his spell components an unfamiliar chore. Still, he took it in good spirit, found the various items he would require, and cast.
He first sprinkled a pinch of diamond dust over his head and whispered the words to a protective spell that would ward his person from detection. The spell was not as powerful a shield against scrying as a stationary screen, but it would serve to defeat most scrying attempts.
Next, in preparation for the spell traps he would encounter in the fortress of House Agrach Dyrr, he cast a series of wards that protected his flesh for several hours against negative energy, fire, lightning, cold, and acid. If the spell traps did more damage than his wards could absorb, his magical ring eventually would regenerate it, provided the damage did not kill him outright. Not even his ring could bring back the dead.
Third, he withdrew from his pocket a tiny vial of glassteel containing a dollop of quicksilver. After pricking the tip of his finger on the edge of the duergar axe at his belt, he squeezed a few drops of his blood into the vial. He then smeared the tips of his fingers with the admixture and incanted the words to one of his most powerful spells, a dweomer that would whisk him back to his offices should certain contingencies—contingencies that he would have to articulate as part of the casting—occur.
His fingers traced glowing lines in the air as he recited the incantation. Presently, the spell was completed but for the articulation of the contingent triggers. The magic of the spell sizzled around him, awaiting his words. He thought for a moment about the nature of the spell traps he would face then whispered the triggers aloud:
“Should my body be rendered involuntarily immobile or be materially consumed by magical energy of any kind, should my soul be trapped or otherwise imprisoned, should my mind become enfeebled or otherwise unable to function.”
The spell soaked into him, there to await a triggering event. Gromph had only another step or two to take before he moved against House Agrach Dyrr.
Moving his hands through another intricate gesture, he spoke the words to a spell that rendered him invisible. With another whisper, he modified the magic to cause the invisibility effect to last a full day rather than its normal duration of but an hour or two.
Finally, he called upon the ongoing transmutation that allowed him to change his shape and mentally selected the form of an incorporeal, undead creature: a literal shadow. The magic seized him, and his body grew dark, shadowy, and insubstantial. His flesh grew light but his soul grew heavy. He was suffused with dark energies. Prath disappeared; a livi
ng shadow replaced him.
Gromph felt his existence stretched across multiple realities. He felt solid to himself, as did all of his equipment, but his “flesh” tingled, and most of his senses felt dull. He could not hear or smell and the loss of sensation disconcerted him. Too, he could not touch anything on the physical world, at least not in the way he was used to. He was solid; the world was shadow. He perceived the touch of physical objects more as a distant pressure change than a tactile sensation. He “sat” in Prath’s chair only as matter of will, not because of the physical properties of the chair. He could have passed through it had he wished. The archmage perceived no colors—only varying shades of gray—but his visual acuity grew sharper. Solid objects looked solid, the lines between them as sharp as a razor. He knew that he could walk on the air as easily as on the ground. He knew too that he could still cast spells in his shadow form. His equipment and components had transformed with him, so they were solid to him.
He was ready.
Literally sheathed in an armor of protective magic, Gromph floated up from Prath’s chair and rose through the stone ceiling above him. Passing through the solid stone of the ceiling blinded him while he was within it, but he simply kept willing himself upward until he passed through it. The wards in Sorcere’s structure did not impede his progress. Gromph had cast most of them and knew the gestures and words—his voice sounded hollow when he spoke—to bypass them safely.
Soon, he was in the air above the school, with a breathtaking view of all of Tier Breche: the spider-shaped, curving walls of Arach-Tinilith, the stout pyramid of Melee-Magthere, the soaring spires of Sorcere. Smoke rose from the tunnels to the north and explosions, and shouts still rang through the area. He took only a moment to enjoy the view before he turned and flew south along the cavern’s ceiling, moving amidst the stalactite spear points that hung from the cavern’s roof.
He passed over the bazaar, where he had fought the lichdrow, over the Braeryn, and headed directly toward Qu’ellarz’orl and besieged House Agrach Dyrr.
On her knees before the altar of Lolth in the otherwise empty temple, Yasraena prayed to the Spider Queen, not for deliverance—Lolth despised such weakness—but for opportunity. She knew that unless something changed, and soon, the siege of her House must eventually succeed. She needed to locate the phylactery and decide whether she would honor her bargain with Triel. The damned thing could have been under her very feet and she would not have known it. She cursed the lichdrow for the thousandth time, and cursed herself for allowing her House to pursue schemes concocted by a male.
R. A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Extinction, Annihilation, Resurrection Page 83
