Annihilation (12 page)

“Lolth has abandoned us,” the lichdrow said.

He stood at the entrance to the temple. A hundred yards in front of him, his granddaughter kneeled before the black altar and stared silently up at an enormous, stylized representation of the goddess. The idol weighed several tons and had been shaped by divine magic out of a thousand of the most precious materials the Underdark had to offer.

“We have abandoned her,” Yasraena replied.

Their voices carried through the huge chamber.

The lichdrow floated toward her, his toes almost touching the marble floor. She didn’t turn around.

“Well,” he said, “what could she expect?”

The matron mother let the joke hang there without comment.

“The bridge holds,” Dyrr reported, sounding almost bored. “Word from agents within Sorcere is that Vorion was captured but was later killed. I’m still finding out if he broke.”

“Vorion …” the matron mother breathed.

She had taken Vorion as her consort only a few years before.

“My condolences,” the lichdrow said.

“He had a few admirable qualities,” the matron mother replied.
“Ah well, at least he died in defense of the House.”

Dyrr tired of the subject, so he changed it.

“Gromph has regained his sight.”

Yasraena nodded and said, “He’ll be coming for us.”

“He’ll be coming for me,” the lichdrow corrected.

The matron mother sighed. She must have known he was right. The priestess, bereft of her connection to Lolth, was still a force to be reckoned with. She was experienced, cruel, strong, and she had access to the House’s stores of magical items, artifacts, and scrolls, but against the Archmage of Menzoberranzan, she would be little more than a nuisance. If Gromph was coming, he was coming for the lichdrow, and if Agrach Dyrr was to survive, it would be the lichdrow who would have to save it.

“I don’t suppose you can count on your new friends,” the matron mother said.

“My ‘new friends’ have problems of their own,” Dyrr replied. “They lay siege to the city, but Baenre and the others Houses have done a surprisingly good job of holding the entrances to the Dark Dominion.”

“They have us bottled in our palace like rats in a trap,” said the matron mother.

Dyrr laughed, the sound muffled and strained from under his mask. The lichdrow almost never allowed anyone to see his face. Yasraena was one of the few to whom he would reveal himself, but even then, not often. Though she wasn’t looking at him, he maintained the affectation of leaning on his staff. The outward illusion of advanced age and physical weakness had become second nature to him, and he’d begun to maintain that attitude even when no one was looking. His body, free of the demands of life for a millennia, was as responsive as it had been the day he died and was resurrected.

“Don’t begin to believe our own ruse, granddaughter,” Dyrr
said. “Not everything has gone strictly to plan, but all is far from lost, and we are far from trapped. We were meant to be in the city, and here we are. The two of us are in our own temple, unmolested. We have lost troops and the odd consort and cousin, but we live, and our assets are largely intact. Our ‘new friends’ as you call them, have the city hard under siege, and many of the Houses refuse to join the fight—join it in any real way, at least. All we have to do is keep pressing, keep pressing, keep pressing, and we will win the day. I grant you that it is an inconvenience that Gromph escaped my little snare. I do wonder how he managed it. But I assure you it will be the last time I underestimate the Archmage of Menzoberranzan.”

“Did you underestimate him,” she asked, “or did he beat you?”

There was a moment of silence between them as Yasraena stared up at the idol of Lolth, and Dyrr waited in mute protest.

“This assassin….” she said at last.

“Nimor,” Dyrr provided.

“I know you don’t trust him,” she said.

“Of course not,” the lichdrow replied with a dry chuckle. “He is committed to his cause, though.”

“And that cause?” asked the matron mother. “The downfall of Menzoberranzan? The destruction of the matriarchy? The wholesale abandonment of the worship of Lolth?”

“Lolth is gone, Yasraena,” Dyrr said. “The matriarchy has functioned, but as with all things past it too may not survive the Spider Queen’s demise. The city, of course, will endure. It will endure under my steady, immortal hand.”

“Yours,” she asked, “or Nimor’s?”

“Mine,” the lichdrow replied with perfect finality.

“He should be in the city,” Yasraena added before there could be too significant a pause. “Nimor and his duergar friends should be here. Every day that goes by, Baenre and Xorlarrin wear us
down. Little by little, granted, but little by little for long enough and …”

She let the thought hang there, and Dyrr only shrugged in response.

“If you expected to do this without Gromph on their side,” Yasraena asked, “what now that he’s back?”

“As I said,” the lichdrow replied, “I will kill him. He will come for me, and I will be ready. When the time comes, I will meet him.”

“Alone?” she asked, concern plain in her voice. The lichdrow didn’t answer. Neither of them moved, and the temple was silent for a long time.

He had come for a little food and a few minor incidentals. They could drink the water from the Lake of Shadows but could use a few more skins to carry it in. Under normal circumstances nothing could be easier for someone as well traveled as Valas Hune.

Normal circumstances.

The words had lost all meaning.

“Hey,” the gnoll grumbled, hefting its heavy war-axe so Valas could see it. “You wait line, drow.”

Valas looked the gnoll in the eyes, but it didn’t back down.

“Everybody wait line,” the guard growled.

Valas took a deep breath, left his hands at his side, and said, “Is Firritz here?”

The gnoll blinked at him, surprised.

Valas could feel other eyes on him. Drow, duergar, and representatives of a few more lesser races looked his way. Though they would be angry, impatient at having to wait in line while Valas presumed to bypass it, none of them spoke.

“Firritz,” Valas repeated. “Is he here?”

“How you …?” the gnoll muttered, eyes like slits. “How you know Firritz?”

Valas waited for the gnoll to understand that he wasn’t going to say any more. It took seven heartbeats.

With a glance at the increasingly restless line, the gnoll said, “Follow.”

Valas didn’t smile, speak, or look at the others. He followed the gnoll in silence the full length of the line then through a mildewed curtain into a very large room with an uncomfortably low ceiling. The space was so crowded with sacks and crates and barrels that in the first few seconds after entering, Valas saw at least one of everything he’d come for.

A single, stooped old drow sat at a table in the center of the storehouse. A dozen different types of coins were arranged in neat stacks on the table in front of him. The gnoll nodded toward him, and Valas stepped closer to the merchant.

“Firritz,” the scout said, his voice echoing.

The old drow didn’t turn to look at him. Instead, he slowly counted a stack of gold coins then wrote the total on a piece of parchment on the table in front of him. Valas waited.

Perhaps ten minutes went by, and in that time the gnoll left the room and came back three times. Each time he came back, he seemed a bit more perplexed. Valas hadn’t moved a muscle.

Finally, when the gnoll had left the room again, Firritz looked up from his counting and glanced at Valas.

“That’s about how long you would have waited in line,” the old drow said, his voice reedy and forced. “Now, what can I do for you?”

“Remember that you kept Bregan D’aerthe waiting,” Valas said. “Don’t threaten me, Valas Hune,” Firritz said. “Menzo’s reputation has become a bit less impressive of late. Gray dwarves, I
heard. Why aren’t you there to defend the motherland?”

“I go where the coin leads me,” said the scout. “Just like you.”

“The coin doesn’t lead to Menzoberranzan anymore, does it?”

“Bregan D’aerthe’s credit is still good here,” Valas said. “I need supplies.”

“Credit?” said Firritz. “That word implies that your master at some point intends to pay his debt. I run up a tab, more and more, year after year, and see nothing for it. Maybe things have changed enough that that isn’t necessary anymore, eh?”

“Take a deep breath,” Valas said.

The old drow looked up at him. They stayed like that for a bit, but finally Firritz drew in a deep breath then exhaled slowly.

“That’s what you see for it,” Valas finished, “and it’s necessary I get a few supplies.”

Firritz frowned and said, “Nothing magical. Everyone’s been buying up the magic bits—and for twice, even thrice the market value.”

“I need food,” the scout replied, “waterskins, a few odds and ends.”

“You have a pack lizard?”

“No,” Valas said with a smile and a tip of his head, “so I’ll need something to carry it in. Something magical.”

Firritz swept his arm across the table, scattering the coins onto the floor with a thousand echoing clatters.

“Food, Firritz,” Valas said. “Time has become an issue for me.”

Danifae could feel the Binding, and she could feel Halisstra. No matter how many thousands of feet of rock separated them, they were connected.

Danifae’s skin crawled.

The farther from the center of the city she walked, the higher the mix of non-drow she passed on the streets. It was with no little relief, and after enduring lewd remarks from a trio of hobgoblins that she came to her destination.

She had never been to Sschindylryn before and had never seen that one particular structure, but she had gone straight to it. She’d made no wrong turns and asked for no directions.

Danifae stood in front of a complex jumble of mud bricks and flagstones arranged into what looked like some kind of hive or termite hill. Over the wide door—wide enough to accommodate a
pack lizard and a decent-sized wagon—hung a slab of black stone into which was carved an elaborate sigil. The symbol contained unmistakable traces of the Yauntyrr crest but somehow turned in on itself, imploded, perverted.

Danifae reminded herself that no matter what happened, House Yauntyrr was gone. The integrity of its heraldry was of no concern to her, nor, she was sure, to anyone else.

She stepped inside.

Zinnirit’s gatehouse, not unlike the larger gatehouse they’d entered the city through, was mostly open space on the street level. There looked to be room for another floor or even two above—likely Zinnirit’s private residence—but the heart of the establishment was in that single cavernous chamber.

There were three gates, each a circle of elaborately interconnected stones easily thirty feet in diameter. No seething magical light pulsed through them. All three were inactive, dark.

“Zinnirit!” Danifae called.

Her voice echoed in the empty space. There was no immediate reply. Danifae had lost track of time quite a while before, and as she called the former House Mage’s name again, she realized she might have dropped in on the wizard in the middle of his Reverie.

She didn’t care.

“Zinnirit!”

A quiet, slow shuffling of feet answered Danifae’s third entreaty. The sound was unmistakable but difficult to trace in the huge, echoing space. Despite the echoes, Danifae got the distinct impression that there was more than one set of feet. She couldn’t count exactly how many—maybe half a dozen—and they were getting closer.

Danifae drew her morningstar and set it swinging at her right side.

“Zinnirit,” she called. “Show yourself, you old fool.”

Again, the only answer was that same echoing set of shuffling footsteps.

A shadow bobbed back and forth at the edge of her peripheral vision from deeper into the gatehouse. Danifae reacted with a thought, calling without question or hesitation on an ability bred into all highborn drow.

Five figures blazed to life with shimmering purple light. The faerie fire ringed their bodies and outlined them against the dull gloom behind them. The figures slowly shambled toward her and took no notice of the faerie fire.