doing anything other than looking. The chasme continued to whine at the heaviness of his load.
As the mountains loomed closer and closer, Pharaun caught Quenthel looking back, not at him but at the horizon line. Pharaun turned to watch it too, expecting to see the light of the rising sun once again summon forth Lolth's children for the Teeming.
The sun peeked over the edge of the world, casting its dim red light across the landscape. To
Pharaun's surprise, nothing happened.
The light oozed over the rocks, holes, and pits, but no spiders came forth to greet it.
It appeared that the Teeming was over. Strange, that so great a degree of violence could erupt and end with such suddenness. Pharaun had a peculiar sense that the Demonweb Pits was holding its breath, waiting for something.
When he turned back around, he found Quenthel staring at him. With exaggerated gestures,
she signed, Be prepared when we land. But do nothing except at my command.
Pharaun nodded in understanding. The time for the confrontation had come at last.
He let himself lag a bit behind the chasme. There, he began surreptitiously to cast defensive spells that had no outward visible effect-he did not want some aura or emanation to alert Danifae and Jeggred to Quenthel's intent. He sprinkled diamond dust over his flesh and turned his skin as strong as stone. He whispered sequential incantations that made his body resistant to fire,
lightning, and acid.
The Master of Sorcere could not contain a smile as they flew. When they reached the mountains, Quenthel would kill Danifae, and Pharaun would kill Jeggred.
It is about time, he thought.
Halisstra, Feliane, and Uluyara streaked through the air, riding the wind. They flew amidst the river of souls, though Halisstra did not look any of the glowing spirits in the face. She was afraid she might encounter someone else she had known.
The mountains were visible ahead, a titanic wall of sheer stone. They looked like the fangs of an unimaginably huge beast. The flow of souls angled downward, heading toward the bottom of one of the mountains.
Behind them, the sun rose over the horizon. Halisstra looked earthward, expecting to see another day of violence, but it appeared as if the only violence that would happen on the
Demonweb Pits that day would happen between drow.
Far ahead, Halisstra caught sight of two large forms descending toward the base of the tallest of mountains-demons, she saw.
Quenthel Baenre was there, she knew. So was Danifae.
Her heart began to race.
The souls swirled around the demons as they descended toward a hole in the mountains that could only be the Pass of the Soulreaver.
Halisstra and her fellow priestesses sped onward, slowly gaining.
Flying in shadow form near Menzoberranzan's stalactite-dotted ceiling, Gromph reached
House Agrach Dyrr. Looking down, he saw that little had changed from when he had scried the fortress an hour or so before.
Agrach Dyrr's defenders still paced the tall, stalagmite walls, peering down through their fortifications at the attackers. The violet-plumed helms of the officers and the blades of the soldiers' polearms and swords bobbed along behind the crenellations. Banners with House
Agrach Dyrr's heraldry festooned the walls, charred but largely whole. Scores of orc and bugbear crossbowmen bolstered the drow forces.
Gromph could not smell the battlefield due to his incorporeality, but he could see the clouds of black smoke gathered near the cavern's roof and could imagine the stink.
On the plateau before the stalagmite castle gathered the massed forces of House Xorlarrin.
The army numbered perhaps eight hundred all told and encircled the complex at a distance of a long crossbow shot from the moat-filled chasm. Gromph noted the makeup of the Xorlarrin soldiery: half a score drow wizards, a few hundred drow warriors, two score war-spiders, and numerous platoons of lesser creatures, all of whom stood assembled and ready. Several siege engines fashioned of magically hardened crystal and iron stood amidst the ranks.
All was quiet. The Xorlarrin appeared willing to wait for reinforcements before making another attempt on Agrach Dyrr. Gromph was mildly surprised. He knew Matron Mother Zeerith to be as ambitious for her House as any matron mother. He would have expected her to hoard the glory of Dyrr's capture all to herself. Yasraena must have been mounting an impressive defense to so temper Xorlarrin ambition.
Gromph floated down and saw scores of bodies and body parts floating in the water-filled chasm that surrounded the manse's walls. A few toothy reptiles-giant aquatic lizards, no doubt-
swam in the moat and fed on the remains. Gromph saw that the dead ogres and their battering ram, which he had seen while scrying the House, no longer lay before the adamantine doors. No doubt some Agrach Dyrr necromancer had animated their corpses and turned them back against the Xorlarrin.
Until he had evaluated the fortress's network of wards up close, Gromph dared go no closer than the line delineated by the moat. With a minor effort of will, he activated the permanent dweomer on his eyes that allowed him to see magical emanations.
House Agrach Dyrr lit up like the sun of the Green Fields, the ridiculous 'halfling heaven' to where the lichdrow had banished him during their spell duel. Gromph had expected as much, but seeing the wards of House Agrach Dyrr through the muted lens of his scrying glass had been something different than seeing the blazing spiderweb of defenses in person. Unlike the rest of the physical world, which appeared to his transformed eyes only in shades of gray, the wards blazed red and blue. Their power reached across the planes and would affect even incorporeal creatures.
More out of pride than necessity, Gromph decided that he would walk through the front doors, just to spite Yasraena. In truth, it did not matter where he made his assault. The wards and defenses were shaped as spheres, concentric circles of power, not walls. They covered every avenue of approach. He would face everything that protected the House whether he attempted the adamantine doors or the lizard stable wall.
He sat cross-legged on a large rock, near the far end of the adamantine bridge. He was perched almost exactly halfway between House Agrach Dyrr and the besieging Xorlarrin army.
He was pleased to see that his presence went unnoted by both the Dyrr and Xorlarrin forces. He knew that the mages among them would have various divinations in effect, including some that would allow them to see invisible creatures. Gromph's nondetection ward must have thwarted them. The victory still brought him only small pleasure.
As a preliminary measure, he withdrew his ocular and held the milky gem to his eye. Though incorporeal, the magic of the ocular continued to work. Looking through the lens of the gem,
Gromph saw things as they truly were-undisguised by illusion, disguise, or shapeshifting magic.
The ocular's power could have been thwarted by spells like those which protected Gromph, but such protections were atypical.
He eyed the complex and saw nothing out of the ordinary except that two putative male drow officers were actually polymorphed demons. Gromph's magical lens showed their actual form,
that of towering, muscular, bipedal, vulturelike creatures with hateful red eyes and large feathered wings.
Vrocks, Gromph knew. Yasraena must have bought the services of a pair of the fiends.
Gromph pocketed the ocular and softly spoke the words to a spell that modified his magic sensing vision so that it excluded from its effect the anti-scrying wards and the spells that offered
House Dyrr structural reinforcement. For his purposes, those spells were irrelevant. He was interested only in those wards that would prevent his physical intrusion into the complex and those that would kill or capture him once he was within.
When the modification took effect, perhaps half of the lines of power vanished, though the fortress still glowed brightly, encased in a net of red lines. Spell traps lurked within the network,
