Resurrection (19 page)

"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.

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 living 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 Spicier 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.

She looked up to the altar, hoping for a sign of Lolth's favor. Nothing. The light from a single holy candle flickered on the polished body of the majestic widow sculpture that stood behind the altar-in reality, a guardian golem. The statue stared down at her with eight emotionless eyes.

In the distance, Yasraena heard an occasional shout from the forces arrayed atop her fortress's walls. Hours before, thunderous explosions had shaken the complex, booming along the walls. Yasraena found the relative quiet ominous. She knew the Xorlarrin forces had pulled back well beyond the moat bridge to plot a strategy for another assault. Tension sat thick in the air. She saw it in the eyes of her troops, her mages, her daughters. The next Xorlarrin attack would be more forceful than the last. She was confident that House Agrach Dyrr would hold it off, but what of the one after that or after that? What would occur when a second House joined Xorlarrin? A third?

Her House had only days left to live, unless she found the phylactery and arranged a peace. Or returned the lichdrow to life and thus bolstered, demanded a peace.

So far, Larikal and the huffing oaf Geremis had been unable to locate the phylactery, yet Yasraena was convinced that it was within the stalagmite fortress. The lichdrow had seldom moved outside its walls. He would not have secreted the vessel for his soul anywhere but within the manor.

She called upon the power of the amulet at her breast and projected to Larikal,
My patience grows thin.

She sensed her daughter's anger through the connection afforded by their amulets.

The search continues, Matron Mother. The lichdrow was no mere conjurer. He has hidden his treasure well.

Yasraena let venom leak into her mental voice.
Do not offer me excuses,
she said.
Offer me the phylactery or I will offer your life to the Spider Queen.

Yes, Matron Mother,
answered Larikal, and the connection went quiet.

Yasraena's threat was sincere. She had killed progeny before to make a point. She would do so again, if necessary.

From behind, she heard the beat of footsteps on the temple's portico. She rose and turned just as Esvena sprinted through the open double doors and into the temple. The links of her adamantine mail tinkled like slave's bells. She held her helm in her hand, and her face was flushed.

A hundred possibilities flew through Yasraena's mind, none of them good. Her grip on her tentacle rod tightened.

"Esvena?" she asked, and her voice echoed through in the vaulted temple.

"Matron Mother," Esvena huffed and ran up the aisle between the pews. She offered a hurried supplication to Lolth before broaching the apse and bowing before Yasraena.

Esvena's otherwise plain face was as animated as Yasraena had ever seen it.

"We have him, Mother!" she said and stood, smiling.

Esvena did not need to say whom she meant by "him." A thrill went through Yasraena, and she grabbed her taller daughter by the shoulders.

"Lolth has answered our prayers," she said. "Show me."

Together, mother and daughter hurried from the temple, past exhausted troops and sunken-eyed wizards, though empty halls and chambers, until they reached the vaulted scrying chamber and its stone basin.

The two homely male wizards, both in dark
piwafwis,
awaited them there. One of them-the one Yasraena previously had choked for smiling-greeted them with a bowed head and lowered eyes. He did not smile, instead eyeing Yasraena's tentacle rod with dread. The other male stood over the scrying basin, his furrowed brow covered in sweat, his hands held over the still water, palms downward.

Without acknowledging the male, Yasraena pushed past her daughter and hurried to the edge of the waist-high basin. Esvena followed in her wake.

A wavering image showed itself in the waters. Gromph Baenre sat at a huge desk of bone, his gaze fixed intently on an unusual crystal set before him. Yasraena took the crystal to be a scrying device, though it showed only a gray mist at the moment.

Across from the archmage sat another wizard, a fat Master of Sorcere whose name Yasraena did not know. From time to time, they exchanged words. They appeared frustrated and tired.

"This is very good," Yasraena said to the room. "Very good, indeed."

She knew that she still had time to locate the lichdrow's phylactery. The archmage remained at Sorcere. Perhaps his spell duel with the lichdrow had drained him so much that he would not make an attempt on the House at all.

"The work was long, Matron Mother," said the male she had choked. "The archmage's wards were powerful. But we persisted."

"You saved yourself a painful death," Yasraena said. After a pause, she added, "Well done."

The male almost smiled, but one look at Yasraena's tentacle rod kept the corners of his mouth from rising.

The wizard went on, "Notice the gray mist present in the archmage's scrying crystal, Matron Mother. If the archmage is attempting to scry House Agrach Dyrr through that crystal, as we suppose, the mistiness indicates that he has not yet breached our anti-scrying wards."

She nodded. The lichdrow had well warded the fortress, better, apparently, than the archmage had warded his own chambers.

Yasraena saw that the archmage and the Master of Sorcere were speaking intently. From their body language, Yasraena thought that Gromph too easily tolerated impudence in his inferiors.

"Why can we not hear what they are they saying?" she asked the room.

Silence answered her. She looked up, and Esvena barked, "Answer the Matron Mother!"