Back in his own body outside of Agrach Dyrr's temple, Gromph dispelled the dweomer that had reduced him to a fraction of his size. Still invisible, he watched the mighty stalagmite fortress begin to shake itself apart. Buildings cracked from their foundations to their roofs. The great stalagmite and adamantine walls vibrated. Dyrr soldiers scurried frantically along the walls for the stairways, sprinted across the grounds or leaped from the walls and levitated to earth.

Gromph would have laughed but for his own impending death. He might have tried to fly into the air and away from the fortress, if he had not left his spell components in his robe on Larikal and if he had thought it would allow him to escape. He did not think it would.

The explosion would be too big. There was no outrunning it.

With his dweomer-sensitive eyesight, he watched the pulse of power run along the master ward and saw it extinguish the lesser wards and draw their power into itself. It was a beast, devouring all of the magical power in House Agrach Dyrr's intricate defensive structure. In moments, it would vomit it all out in an explosion that would shake Menzoberranzan's cavern.

The gathering energies caused Gromph's ears to pop.

The wave of power reached the outer wards on the gate and walls, gathered them in, and rebounded back, moving fast.

Roofs collapsed on the buildings around the archmage. Drow screamed. Priestesses shouted unheeded orders.

Another great tremor shook the temple behind him, and the central dome collapsed in a shower of crashing stone and glass. Gromph presumed that Yasraena, Larikal, and the vrocks died under its weight.

Fitting, he thought, that in the end Lolth had crushed the traitors.

Gromph stepped off the portico and away from the temple. He wondered distantly if the Xorlarrin forces would be caught in the blast. Certainly enough power seemed to be gathering. The energy from all of the wards would power the explosion. It would consolidate at the trigger, in the center of the collapsed temple, and explode outward from there. Gromph thought it possible that all of House Agrach Dyrr would be destroyed.

He looked toward the gates and saw the wave surging back-a great, glowing wall of arcane power.

The ground rippled before it.

An idea fluttered around the back of Gromph's mind. The wave was gathering and extinguishing all of the wards as it moved.

All of them.

Even the dimensional lock?

His heartbeat accelerated.

Could the lichdrow have made such a mistake?

Gromph thought it might be possible. He studied the surviving wards as the wave of power drew nearer.

The dimensional lock was still in place and he could not tell if the master ward would draw on even it. If so ...

If so, Gromph might be able to time a final spell just right. Fortunately, the spell he would use required no material component.He waited . . . waited.

The wave of power surged along the master ward and passed him, knocking him from his feet.

There! The wave subsumed the dimensional lock and hit the ruined temple. The whole structure glowed, pulsed a blinding white.

Gromph shouted the words to his spell as rapidly as he could without risking a mispronunciation.

Blinding beams of energy shot from the temple in all directions. An explosion was imminent.

He hurried through the spell. A word. Another. Another.

The temple burned as bright as the sun of the World Above as it exploded in a unequalled blast of magical energy. Gromph did not complete his spell.

Pain seared his body, a brief moment of agony unlike anything he had ever felt, and Gromph Baenre knew pain.

Then it was over.

Chapter Nineteen

On the Plains of Soulfire, the mezzoloths shifted into battle formations. The nycaloths flew above the host, axes in hand. The ultroloth pulled out a second rod, likely to bring down Pharaun's wall of force.

Jeggred stood at the top of the path that led down to the plains, growling with rage.

"Get rid of this wall, wizard!" the draegloth roared, veins and tendons visible under his leathery skin.

Beside Pharaun, the priestesses voiced spells of summoning. Quenthel didn't bother with a summoning circle. Neither did Danifae. Each cradled her holy symbol to her breast and called on Lolth for aid. Their voices rose into the darkened sky, boomed over the blasted plains.

And the Spider Queen answered.

Quenthel called out a name. The word hit Pharaun like a physical blow, skipped off his brain, and was lost to his memory.

A roll of thunder boomed. Quenthel repeated the name.

Above them, the sky opened. An enormous shadow filled the hole, winged and awful.

Pharaun knew it for it was, but he could scarcely believe his eyes.

A klurichir. One of the most powerful demons in the Abyss. Quenthel had taken a great risk in summoning it. She was either very confident or very desperate.

Except for the lonely sound of Danifae's voice, silence fell over the Plains of Soulfire. Even Jeggred quieted. A nervous shuffle ran through the yugoloth army. The nycaloths hurriedly flew back down to stand with their troops. Pharaun caught the magically augmented telepathic projection of the ultroloth.

Stand your ground, he ordered, and the yugoloths obeyed.

The klurichir circled downward, growing larger with each pass. A roar escaped it, and the sound shook the mountains.

It alit on the mountainside, just outside of the invisible wall of Pharaun's sphere of force.

The klurichir's powerfully muscled body, covered in coarse grayish skin and hair that looked more like quills, stood four times the height of Jeggred. The membranous red wings that sprouted from its back extended out to twice that and cast the entire ledge in shadow. Its short legs looked as thick and sturdy as stone columns. Four powerful arms, all of them in constant, twitchy motion, erupted from a torso that was little more than a gobbling, cavernous mouth that could have swallowed two ogres whole. An insectoid pincer on each side of the mouth spasmed hungrily. A flood of incompressible prattle and drool leaked from between its rows of grinding teeth.

Pharaun thought the babbling would drive him mad. He vomited down the front of his piwafwi. He couldn't help it.

The mammoth head that sat atop the demon's torso looked vaguely orclike, though more bestial. A second, smaller mouth opened in the face, below a pair of black eyes. In one of its hands, the demon held a rune-inscribed axe as long as Jeggred was tall.

The bass voice that emerged from the mouth in the klurichir's face nearly knocked Pharaun down with its power. The huge mouth in its torso continued to gobble and drool while the other mouth spoke.

"You should not have summoned me, child priestess," the demon said, the implicit threat in its words all the more terrifying because it was unspoken.

To her credit, Quenthel's body did not shake, though Pharaun knew that not even Quenthel Baenre could match the klurichir in power.

For a moment, Quenthel seemed at a loss for words.

At last she said, "Ten thousand souls are yours if you but perform a single service for me."

Both mouths erupted in laughter.

"Ten thousand souls are a pittance to me," the klurichir answered. Its wings beat in agitation, sending a hail of scree into the air.

"Name your price," Quenthel said, blinking in the gust.

Pharaun could hardly believe what he had heard. Even Jeggred gasped.

Quenthel had offered one of the Abyss's most powerful demons whatever it wished.

The demon too seemed stunned. For a moment, its huge mouth ceased its senseless gobbling. A giant tongue emerged from the mouth and licked its lips.

"Your desperation intrigues me," it said. "Name your service and I will consider it. For payment, I shall have such other, fleshly payment as I may see fit."

Quenthel did not quail, and Pharaun could not believe it.

"Done," she said, and gestured down at the plains. "Assist us in destroying the yugoloth army below."The demon grinned, gobbled, and took wing, soaring high into the sky. Quenthel watched it go, smiling, breathing heavily, sweating.

Danifae's voice sounded behind him, reminding him that she too was summoning aid.

As the former battle-captive finished her casting, her voice rose, imploring Lolth for assistance. When she finished, she turned to face the mountain. At first nothing happened.

Then the mountainside began to seethe.

Millions of spiders, billions, boiled forth from every crack, crag, hole, and opening. The sound of their legs and pincers was like a rainstorm, almost worse than the gobbling of the klurichir.

Danifae shouted something that Pharaun could not make out above the hissing din, and the spiders crawled together, massed, clustered. Churning sickeningly, they piled themselves into a swarm as large as the klurichir. The swarm took the rough shape of a giant spider.

Danifae swept her arm out wide and gestured down toward the yugoloths.

As one, billions of arachnids boiled down the mountainside.

"Now, Master Mizzrym!" Quenthel shouted to Pharaun.

"Lower the wall of force!" Danifae ordered.

Pharaun did exactly that and immediately took wing.

Jeggred tore down the mountainside, roaring with rage. Quenthel and Danifae followed at a run. The klurichir roared, raining drool on the Plains of Soulfire, and descended downward. The arachnid swarm boiled toward the yugoloths.

To their credit, the yugoloths responded quickly. They were a practiced force.

Though they often were loath to do it due to the price, Pharaun knew that extraplanar creatures had the ability to summon others of their kind, usually due to some pre-existing cooperative arrangement. The mezzoloths and nycaloths were no exception. A hum of arcane syllables wafted up from below, and more and more mezzoloths and a handful more nycaloths teleported in with a soft sizzling sound and the stink of vomit. An army of five hundred became an army of eight hundred in a three count.

The nycaloths hurriedly deployed the new troops, trying to prepare for the klurichir's attack, Jeggred's charge, and the swarm's rush.

The ultroloth rose into the sky, his presence there offering a clear challenge to Pharaun. Half a score nycaloths rose with him.

The klurichir roared, the yugoloths clicked and shouted, the swarm hissed and boiled.

The battle was joined.

Jeggred pelted down the narrow path, heedless of the long fall to either side, heedless of the army that awaited him at the bottom. His clawed feet dug furrows in the stone with each stride. Rage burned in him.

He could already taste blood and flesh. He roared for joy.

Below him, two score mezzoloths awaited his charge, glaives at the ready. Several of them gestured, calling upon their innate magical abilities, and clouds of stinking green gas formed before him.

He ran through the killing fog without a pause, inhaling the foul fumes, feeling the sting on his flesh. He ignored the discomfort on his skin and in his lungs and charged on.

Some of the mezzoloths in the second rank summoned balls of fire to their palms and threw them at him as he ran. Most missed and exploded harmlessly on the rocks or in the air, but even those that struck him had no effect on his flesh. He was demonspawn after all. Low intensity fires could not harm him.

He threw back his head and roared again.

Another explosion nearly knocked him from his feet. He dug his fighting arms into the rock to keep his balance and ran on.

A shadow fell on him, but he did not spare a glance up. The giant demon summoned by his aunt soared overhead, toward the rear of the mezzoloths.

Jeggred was twenty strides from the first of the creatures. Fifteen. Ten. He looked into their compound eyes, brought his fighting arms up to rend. Five. He could hear their clicks, the ring of their armor.

He leaped high off the path and landed into their midst. His momentum carried him into two of the mezzoloths' glaives, and both sank deeply into his skin.

He barely felt the pain, even as his blood began to flow.

He let fury take him over fully. His claws rose and fell, slashed and tore. Sometimes he struck carapace, sometimes he struck nothing. He had arms in his mouth, bodies, heads. Anything that came within his reach was bitten, rent, torn. Yugoloth blood dribbled down his chin.

Glaives slammed into him but he did not care. Balls of flame exploded against his skin and he still did not care. He felt his blood flowing down his back, his chest, his arms. He was swarmed with mezzoloths. Heroared and killed, roared and killed.

Impenetrable darkness suddenly sheathed him. Blind, he continued to rake and slash at anything within reach. He didn't know if the mezzoloths could see within the darkness, and he did not care. He slashed and killed even as he began to grow weaker.

Pharaun watched Jeggred tear down the narrow path and leap into a mass of waiting mezzoloths. The draegloth vanished under an avalanche of black bodies, and Pharaun gave him no further thought.

The klurichir set down toward the rear of the yugoloth army and cut a great swath through their number with its axe. Nycaloths and mezzoloths swarmed it, axes and glaives thumping into its flesh. Its roar rang across the battlefield.

The spider swarm poured down the mountain like an avalanche and crashed into the front of the yugoloth lines. The mezzoloths responded with clouds of green killing gas, which left piles of spiders dead, but the swarm churned forward, devouring everything in its path.

The ultroloth floated over the battle toward Pharaun, perhaps a long crossbow shot distant. Eight nycaloths accompanied the powerful ultroloth, four to either side. Each of the nycaloths called upon an innate magical power and caused multiple mirror images of themselves to form around them. Eight became over thirty, and Pharaun could not tell which was real and which an illusion.

Half of the nycaloths beat their wings, brandished their enchanted axes, and flew for Pharaun. The ultroloth followed them, holding a sword in one hand and two crystal rods in the other. The other nycaloths veered aside and flew toward the ledge, toward the priestesses.

"Beware, Mistress!" Pharaun shouted down to Quenthel.