Лиза Смедман - Extinction

A whistling sound drew Gromph’s attention. He glanced to the side just in time to see an enormous clay pot arc up toward Sorcere and strike the side of the stalagmite, several dozen paces away. It broke against the stone, splashing liquid fire in all directions. The fire poured down the stone, burning everything in its wake: stone walls, a decorative arch of wrought iron above the balcony, and the balcony itself.

Figures on the balcony scurried away from the rush of flame—one of them a little too slowly. As some of the stuff poured down onto his piwafwi, his agonized screams filled the air. They were cut off a moment later when the wrought-iron arch, weakened by the fire, collapsed with a loud squeal of metal. Above the spot where it had been mounted, the wall continued to burn, and the flames soon ate a hole through the stone.

Gromph stared in the direction from which the pot of fire had come, at the protective barrier the duergar had erected. It stood just in front of the tunnel that gave access to Tier Breche from the Dark Dominion. The barrier appeared to be made of square-hewn lengths of fungus stem, stacked horizontally on top of each other, but had obviously been magically strengthened. The lightning bolts that one of the mages on a balcony above fired down into them did little more than chip off tiny pieces of the fungus, and the hailstones raining down from the ice storm another mage had caused to materialize in the air just above the barrier were melting before they struck it.

Yet another mage of Sorcere sent a cloud of acid billowing down at the barrier. The yellowish vapor swept over the fungus-log blockade and continued on down the tunnel beyond it. The barrier remained intact, however, and clay pots continued to sail into the air from the catapults behind it, whistling through the air to blast the walls of Sorcere with alchemical flame.

It didn’t look as though Arach-Tinilith was faring any better than Sorcere. The walls of the spider-shaped temple were also dotted with gouts of white-hot flame, and the ground in front of the building was strewn with corpses. Many were squat and bald—duergar—but many more were drow. Dark elf soldiers had given their lives in defense of the cavern. Of the priestesses, there was no sign. Like their goddess, they had retreated behind walls of stone, leaving others to do the fighting.

Farther back in the cavern, the third building of the Academy—the pyramid-shaped warrior training school Melee-Magthere—remained unscathed. The catapults could not reach that far, it seemed.

Norulle leaned over the balcony, directing his wand at the enemy. Pea-sized gobs of fire erupted from its tip, enlarging as they streaked toward the siege fortifications below. By the time they struck the fungus-log walls, they were several paces in diameter. Yet even though each exploded with a roar that was audible even over the chaos of battle, the walls remained firm,

Gromph’s eyes narrowed. The seeming invulnerability of the wall he could understand—the duergar must have carried the lightweight, fungus-stem logs with them in preparation for their siege, then used a spell to turn them to stone once they were in place. What he could not understand was why the duergar behind the walls were still able to work their catapults despite the searing heat of Norulle’s fireballs and the cloud of acidic vapor that had swept over them.

He watched as one of the senior students appeared suddenly on the field of battle below, just in front of the duergar barrier, and cast a spell Gromph himself taught—the great shout. A wave of noise crashed against the duergar positions, causing the logs that made up the fortification to visibly tremble.

But still the attack did not fatter. Arrows erupted from slits in the wall, one of them striking the student through the belly just as he teleported away.

“Master,” Prath shouted over the ringing in Gromph’s ears, catching Gromph’s attention at last. “Should we perhaps send a swarm of vermin against them? Insects—or perhaps rats?”

Gromph was about to ridicule that suggestion, but stopped.

“ ‘Out of the mouths of novices’,” he instead quoted, following the familiar saying with a chuckle.

Prath stared at him in confusion, a spark of hope in his eye.

“Was that the right spell to suggest, Master?”

“No,” Gromph answered, “but it’s given me an idea. Continue the fight—and keep your head down.”

Stepping back into the corridor down which he’d hurried a short time before, Gromph closed his eyes. It took only a moment to locate Kyorli. Pouring his awareness into his familiar, Gromph could feel legs swiftly running and whiskers twitching as they sniffed the stone across which the rat was running.

Kyorli, the archmage sent. Where are you?

Running. Running quick to Sorcere! But the way is blocked.

Gromph was able, with a bit or concentration, to see through the rat’s eyes. Kyorli was running through a tunnel, weaving through a forest of moving feet. The feet belonged to duergar, who were working in pairs, dragging away the bodies of their fellow soldiers. Two duergar, carrying the corpse or a slain companion, ran into a side tunnel.

Kyorli, Gromph commanded. That tunnel. Look inside.

Kyorli scurried to the tunnel mouth and peered in. Seeing through her eyes, Gromph saw what he’d expected: a duergar wearing a gray, hooded mantle and carrying a staff set with an egg-sized gem with a deep crack running down its center, symbol of the god Laduguer. The cleric stood in front of a dozen bodies that had been heaped on the floor of the tunnel, waving his staff over them as he cast a spell. A moment later the bodies began to stir. As one, the dead soldiers—animated with a gruesome semblance of life—rose to their feet and filed out of the tunnel.

Follow them, Gromph ordered, Watch where they go.

Kyorli did, from a safe distance. The undead duergar marched in a jerking line toward the mouth of the main tunnel. Reaching it, they cook up positions behind the siege wail, oblivious to yet another cloud of acidic vapor that boiled down from the cavern above, blistering their undead skin.

Gromph had to admit the duergar were clever. With Lolth’s priestesses bereft of their magic there was no one to turn an undead army back—or seize control of it. Once the magical fire had done its work they would march, unmolested, on Sorcere, Melee-Magthere, and Arach-Tinilith—then Menzoberranzan proper. And the only mage powerful enough to stop them was imprisoned far beneath the city—or so their commanders thought.

The view through Kyorli’s eyes shifted suddenly as the rat was forced to scurry out of the path of a running soldier.

That will do, Gromph told his familiar. Find yourself a place to hide. You’ll be able to join me in Sorcere soon enough.

Returning his awareness to his own body, Gromph strode with confidence to the balcony. He pulled from his pocket a small piece of engraved bone, and held out his palm to the two students who turned toward him.

“I need a small piece of raw meat,” he told them.

Norulle glanced around. “But Master, there is none here,” he said.

Prath met Gromph’s eye and slowly nodded. Drawing a dagger that had been hidden up a sleeve of his piwafwi, he placed his left hand on the rail of the balcony and sliced off the fleshy tip of his little finger. Picking up the bloody piece—and ignoring the grimace of his fellow student—he offered it to Gromph with his good hand.

Gromph smiled.

“Well done, apprentice,” he told the boy. “You’ll go far. What House are you, by the way?”

Prath smiled through his pain, clenching the stub of his severed finger against his palm to staunch the blood, and answered, “House Baenre, Master.”

“Ah.” Gromph had never met the lad before—he must have been a child of the lowest of the noble ranks.