Death of the Dragon - Ed Greenwood [37]
Vangerdahast cast his twenty-third spell.
"… Iron One has spoken," said the goblin. The voice was that of Otka, the female whom Vangerdahast had seen giving orders in the Grodd Palace. "Now is the time. To the Wolf Woods you go!"
Otka flung her arm up the stairs and stepped aside. The first company started up the stairs three abreast, leaving Vangerdahast to curse the waste of his magic. Even the dimmest of Azoun's high nobles would not have needed magic to guess the meaning of such a short speech.
Seeing no reason to wait in line-even in the city of the Grodd, royal wizards were entitled to their privileges-Vangerdahast stepped out of his hiding place and launched himself over the heads of the goblins. He landed three-quarters of the way up the tower, on a platform fully thirty feet above the leading company, and started up the cockeyed stairs. He ascended rapidly but cautiously, being careful not to stomp or slap his soles on the stair treads or make any other noise that would alert the goblins to his invisible presence. Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do to keep the scaffold from shaking and swaying beneath his weight. The Grodd had many strengths-especially for goblins-but construction was not one of them.
Upon reaching the next landing, Vangerdahast looked up and saw the stairs ascending into pitch darkness. The wizard climbed to within arm's reach of it, then looked down and decided to cast one last spell before departing the goblin city. He pulled a small handful of sulfur and bat guano from his cloak and began to roll it into a sticky ball-then saw the glowing eyes of a ghazneth watching him from the mouth of a goblin tunnel.
One pearly eye vanished and reappeared. Vangerdahast stopped rolling his fingers. The thing had winked at him. Forgetting about the spell components in his hand, the wizard bounded up the last few steps in a dead sprint-and crashed headlong into the cavern's spongy ceiling.
The surface parted and yielded ever so slightly, then suddenly stiffened and forced his head downward, so that he found himself staring at the goblins below. The ball of sulfur slipped from his fingers half-combined and plummeted groundward. He feared for an instant that he would follow, but the ceiling held him fast, spread-eagled forty feet above the legion.
Vangerdahast lost sight of the sulfur ball, then heard a dull ping and saw a goblin centurion drop to a surprised squat. The soldier pulled his helmet off and craned his neck to look-of all directions for a goblin to look-up.
Even then, Vangerdahast thought he might remain undetected. He was, after all, forty feet in the air, invisible, and camouflaged in a black weathercloak, but the goblin's eyes grew round and white… and vanished into pitch darkness.
The wizard dared to hope he was being drawn through the ceiling into the Wolf Woods-known in his own day as Cormyr-when a high little voice began to chitter far below, and the scaffold began to groan and sway beneath the trammeling of little boots. Vangerdahast realized that the spongy barrier holding him fast was also drawing the magic from his spells. He could no longer see in the dark, nor-in all likelihood-fly.
Vangerdahast glanced toward the tunnel where he had seen the pearly eyes and found nothing but darkness. Having no doubts about what the thing would do next, he reached for his weathercloak's escape pocket and found his arm stuck fast to the ceiling. Shrill goblin voices began to chitter below, not more than ten feet away.
Knowing he could never teleport out of the cavern-he had tried it a dozen times before and never found himself anywhere but the immense goblin city-Vangerdahast elected to try something simpler. He closed his eyes and spoke the incantation of a blink spell.
There was a fizzle and a hiss, then a dozen tiny hands clutching him from below, tugging at his lapels and jerking the throat clasp