"What's happening to me?" he said, his speech thick and sloppy. "What have you done to me, bitch?"

He tried to shove her off him but the drug had already taken hold. His strength was gone, and hemanaged only to paw at her shoulders. In moments, he was fully paralyzed and could only stare up at her in horror.

She eyed him coldly, still smiling, and began her incantation. Her voice called upon Lolth, offering the male's death for her amusement. When she finished her prayer, she put her hands on his throat and throttled him.

He died with bulging eyes and a wet gurgle.

"You are the weak," she whispered in his ear. "And I am the spider."

Chapter Seventeen

Halisstra stepped into the Pass of the Soulreaver and felt her body stretch through time and space. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to keep moving forward. Vomit raced up her throat, but she fought it down.

A narrow path stretched before her and behind her. Sheer walls rose to either side. A mist cloaked her ankles.

The mist screamed at her and hissed.

She clutched the Crescent Blade. She was not alone and she knew it.

"Come out," she said, her voice low and dangerous.

Ahead, the mist swirled and formed into a vast serpent whose body stretched behind it to infinity. Black, empty eyes stared into Halisstra's soul and pinioned her in place. The serpent opened its mouth and hissed.

The sound turned Halisstra's legs to water.

Deep within the serpent writhed the tiny, partially consumed essences of millions of failed souls. Their screams, rich with despair, fat with terror, bombarded Halisstra. She struggled to stand her ground. She saw her own fate in them-she too was a failed soul-but instead of causing her despair, it raised her anger.

"Face me," she said and did not know whether she was talking to the creature or to someone else.

The serpent hissed again and slithered sinuously forward. The souls wailed their pain and terror with each movement of the creature.

Halisstra stared at the glowing souls and wondered for a moment if Ryld was trapped within the creature. She decided that she did not care and moved forward.

She roared, lifted the Crescent Blade, and charged, meeting the serpent's advance with one of her own.

The miniature golems swarmed forward at Gromph. The transmutation that allowed him to fight prevented him from casting any spells to stop them, and he refused to abandon his station over the prismatic sphere atop the main body of the golem.

The smaller constructs scrabbled and leaped up the body of the golem to get a Gromph, thirty of them, forty. The archmage roared and brandished his axe.

A spider golem landed on his back, then another, and both bit into his flesh. Others clambered up his legs to beat at his chest. His armor spells deflected some but not all of their bites, and he grunted with pain over and over again.

He grabbed one of the creatures by a leg, threw it atop the body of the golem, and chopped it with his axe. He chopped another, and another, all the while waiting for the transformative spell to abate so that he could focus on the real issue-the prismatic sphere.

To his horror, the miniature golems that he struck split into smaller fragments and within a five count sprouted eight legs each and came at him again.

He cursed, swung at more of the spiders, again and again. Each time he struck, the small constructs burst into pieces, and each piece itself became another, smaller spider golem. Killing one made five more.

He was surrounded by a roiling swarm of constructs. They came at him from all sides, a swarm of fearless, remorseless killers. Eventually, he stopped chopping at them with his axe and instead tried to throw or push them off of the main body of the golem. But he could do only so much and in moments was covered in them, their weight so heavy that he could hardly move.

He tried to trigger the levitation power of his House Baenre brooch but the weight of the golems crawling over him was too much. He could not get airborne.

Their fangs and claws ripped through his defensive spells and into his flesh. He screamed with rage, pain, and frustration. His ring struggled to heal the wounds inflicted by the spiders, but there were too many.

For every spider that he jerked from his body or threw down from atop the golem, another three took its place. He shook them from his hands, pried them from his face, pulled them from his legs. Agony lit him.

He roared as he fought. If not for the regenerative magic of his ring, he would have been dead.

With the suddenness of a whipdagger strike, his transformative spell ended.

Knowledge returned to him in a rush. Physical strength drained out of him, and he sagged under the burden of the golems. His understanding of combat-swings, feints, and footwork-faded out of his memory like a half-remembered dream. His normal understanding of the Weave-the necessary gestures, component admixtures, the language of the arcane-refilled his mind.

Gromph was himself again, and he was in agony. A hundred holes pockmarked his flesh. Blood soakedhis robe. In theory he could again cast spells, but the pain was too much.

Thinking fast, he did the only thing he could. He leaped from atop the golem and hit the ground in a roll.

The impact jarred many of the spiders loose. With fewer attached to him, he triggered the levitation magic inherent in his brooch and went airborne.

He shook free the remaining spiders and hung in the air, gasping and breathing, dripping blood.

Below him, a thousand eyes stared upward, tiny mandibles clicking, tiny pedipalps waving. His broach allowed him only vertical movement, so he took a feather-a spell component difficult for him to procure in the Underdark-and spoke the words to a spell of flying. When he finished, he floated to his right.

As one, the swarm of spiders followed him, eyes turned upward. An idea occurred to him- A sizzling sound from above and behind turned Gromph around. Green veins of magical energy arced along his wall of force. The Dyrr wizards were attempting to dispel it but their first attempt had failed.

Gromph had to move fast. He flew farther to his right, drawing the swarm of golems away from the body of their destroyed parent. He took from his robe a finger-shaped lodestone, one end of which was covered in iron shavings.

Hovering above the swarm of golems, he incanted the words to a powerful transmutation. When he finished the casting, the shavings moved from one end of the lodestone to the other and within a cylindrical area that ran from floor to ceiling and included Gromph and all of the spider golems, up became down.

Under the effect of his flying spell, Gromph simply adjusted his internal bearings, flipped over, and remained hovering in the air. The golems, however, fell up toward the ceiling, just as if they had stepped off a cliff. Gromph dodged them as they fell past. Two latched onto him, but he shook them free, and they too fell upward. All of them crashed into the ceiling, but it damaged them little.

With the entire swarm treating the ceiling as if it was the floor, Gromph spoke the words to another wall of force and ringed the area of effect in which he had reversed gravity. The golems would not be able to walk out of the affected area of his spell and fall to the floor. They were hedged in.

Gromph allowed himself no time to enjoy his victory. He flew down, flipped again when he left the affected area of his spell, landed atop the body of the parent golem, and looked down at the prismatic sphere, at the twine of the master ward that fed into it. He could have used one of his more powerful spells to disjoin the magic but doing so would negate all magic within the temple, triggering the master ward, freeing the golems, forcing his soul back into his body, and negating his walls of force.

Instead, he would cancel the sphere with the methodical application of specific spells. Each of the seven colors of the sphere was negated by casting a certain spell on the sphere when the appropriately colored layer appeared.

In his mind, Gromph thought through the spells he would need to eliminate the sphere's layers. Some of them would require material components. He reached into his robes and withdrew the materials he would need: a tiny cone of glass, his lodestone, and a pinch of dried mushroom spores.

He stared at the prismatic sphere as it cycled through its colors. He had to down the colors in sequence, starting with red and moving to violet. The master ward complicated things potentially, but Gromph had no more time to worry about it.

He readied his spells.

The sphere showed red. Gromph incanted a couplet, put the glass cone to his lips, and exhaled a cone of freezing cold that slicked the floor in ice. The prismatic sphere froze in the ice. Gromph tapped it with his finger, and the red layer shattered and disappeared, revealing the orange layer.

Another assault on the wall of force. The angry clicking of the golem swarm from above. Gromph ignored both.

He spoke another series of arcane words and summoned a powerful gust of wind. The magic of the spell whipped his hair into his face and tore the orange layer from the sphere, where it dissipated into nothingness. The yellow layer was revealed.

He picked up his lodestone, gathered some of the dust from the floor, and spoke the words to the same spell that he had used to disintegrate Geremis. The spell annihilated the yellow layer, exposing the green.

Gromph heard voices from outside the window. The screech of something powerful and predatory.

Yasraena must have brought the vrocks, he thought, recalling the shapechanged demons that had stood on the walls.

He picked up the mushroom spores and spoke aloud the words to a spell that ordinarily would have opened a hole through solid walls. Instead, the magic opened a tiny hole in the green layer, which rapidly expanded until the layer was consumed. The blue layer lay open to him.

Almost there.

The vrocks screeched again.He whispered the words to a simple evocation, pointed his finger, and discharged a bolt of magical energy. It struck the blue layer and consumed it, revealing a scarlet layer.

He was nearly done.

Behind and above him, another assault on his wall of force brought it down. A shower of sparks announced its fall. A victorious cry sounded from outside the window. Gromph could not halt his attack on the sphere to erect another defense.

Looking at the next layer, he closed his eyes and pronounced the words to the next spell. When it took effect, light as bright as the sun in the World Above illuminated the temple. Gromph's eyes watered even through his closed lids.

Shouts of dismay sounded from outside the window. House Dyrr's forces no more liked light than did Gromph.

Darkness spells quickly countered the light, but the spell's work was done. The light had burned away the scarlet layer. Only one remained-violet.

Gromph uttered the words to the spell he had used so many times over recent hours, the spell that dispelled other magic. When he pronounced the final syllable, the violet layer disappeared.

He held his breath.

There, exposed but for the twisting embrace of the master ward, lay the lichdrow's phylactery. It glowed so brightly in his magic-attuned vision that he had to again blink away tears.

The phylactery looked like nothing more than a sparkling, fist-sized beljuril, a hard green gemstone. Tiny runes covered it.

Within it, Gromph knew, was the lichdrow's essence.

Gromph hefted the duergar axe. Not only would a blow from the axe destroy the gem, it would drink the lichdrow's soul, such as it was. The thought pleased Gromph.

Behind him, the vrocks streaked through the window and into the temple. Gromph spared a look back.

The demons had assumed their natural form: that of muscular, giant, bipedal vultures. Vicious talons ended their legs, and large, tearing beaks jutted from their twisted faces. The beat of their enormous wings carried the stench of carrion.

"She is here!" they shouted back out the window, and Gromph heard exclamations of excitement from outside the temple.

Yasraena appeared in the window, levitating high and stepping onto the sill. For a moment, she stared down with a confused expression at the ruined temple and Gromph-he still wore the body of her daughter-but her expression quickly changed to one of rage.

She guessed who he was.

"Archmage!" she screamed.

Gromph shot her a smile and raised the axe high.

The vrocks flew toward him as fast as arrows, mouths open wide and shrieking. Yasraena voiced the words to a spell.

"Good-bye, Dyrr," he said, and drove the axe into the beljuril.

The gem shattered into countless glittering fragments, emitting a foul puff of smoke. A vague, distant howl sounded somewhere deep in Gromph's mind, and the axe shook in his hands. The lichdrow's soul rushed into the metal. It glowed, vibrated, and displaced the previous souls that the axe had claimed. A score or more spirits exploded from the axe head, exclaimed with joy at their freedom, and vanished into the aether. Henceforth, the axe would house only the lichdrow.

"No!" Yasraena screamed and lost the thread of her spell.

The vein of the master ward turned a burning orange.

Before Gromph could reason out the meaning of the change in the master ward, before he could turn to face the onrushing vrocks, a tremor shook the temple, shook all of House Agrach Dyrr. The force of it knocked Gromph off of the remains of the golem, and the vrocks shrieked past him overhead.

Speaking as quickly as he could, Gromph uttered the incantation to one of his most powerful spells.

Time stopped for everyone but Gromph.

Silence fell. Motion ceased.

The vrocks hung frozen in mid-air, mouths agape. Yasraena stood in the window, frozen in the middle of another casting.

Gromph studied the vein of the master ward. A bubble of power distorted its otherwise straight line, just where it passed through the temple doors.

It took Gromph a moment to determine what had happened. He cast a series of divinations to confirm his suspicions. When he saw the results, he almost laughed.The lichdrow's defenses never ended. And it appeared he would have his revenge, after all.

The master ward had reset the wards behind Gromph not to prevent a second intruder from entering but to provide a power source for its real purpose. The destruction of the phylactery had triggered the lichdrow's final spell, a cyclic reaction that fed on the reset wards.

Power would race back along the vein of the master ward, absorbing the energy of all of the wards in its path. When it reached the start of the spell network, it would rebound back to its place of origin-the location of the phylactery, the temple-bringing with it all of the pent-up power of the absorbed wards.

The explosion would be enormous, perhaps large enough to level the entire stalagmite fortress complex of House Agrach Dyrr.

Gromph could not flee. The dimensional lock prevented magical travel, and he could never get out on foot in time.

The lichdrow had ensured that he would not go alone into oblivion.

"Well done," Gromph said to the axe, though he knew the lichdrow could not hear him.

The archmage smiled at the symmetry. He had destroyed the lichdrow's body by breaking and exploding his staff of power. The lichdrow would destroy Gromph's body by breaking and exploding all of House Agrach Dyrr.

There was nothing else for it. Gromph's timestop spell was about to end. He decided that he would rather die in his own body than that of some Dyrr priestess. He decided too that he would die amused. The battle of spells and wits, of moves and countermoves, had been as good as any sava game he'd ever played.

He spoke the words to a minor transmutation and transformed Larikal's body to look more like his own-shorter, slimmer, with shorter hair and sharper features. The likeness was rough but probably good enough.

Despite his timestop spell, he sensed the master ward collecting power.

With an exercise of will, he returned his soul to the ocular, forcing Larikal back into her own form. Once inside the gem, he quickly moved back into his own shrunken, invisible body. He came back to himself outside the temple, small and unseen, awaiting his death.

Yasraena blinked in surprise but managed to hold onto the thread of her spell. For a moment, Gromph Baenre had appeared cloaked in an illusion as her daughter Larikal, but the illusion had expired, and the Archmage of Menzoberranzan stood revealed.