Extinction - Lisa Smedman [30]
The captain bowed and said, "As you order, Matron Mother."
As the captain hurried away, Triel chewed her lip, praying she'd made the right decision.
Where in the Nine Hells was Gromph when House Baenre needed him most?
Chapter Eight
Glass.
Curved glass.
And outside it…
Gray stone.
Tunnel walls.
Close.
Outside curved glass.
Gromph Baenre, Archmage of Menzoberranzan, stared, unblinking, at the rough stone that lay just outside the wall of his prison. He was trapped inside curved glass. In utter silence. Inside a hollow sphere that lay on the floor of an unknown tunnel. Unable to move, unable to breathe, only sluggishly able to think.
He stared at his own reflection, distorted by the concave surface of the glass. His face was coarse but unlined despite his seven centuries, thanks to the amulet of eternal youth pinned to his piwafwi.
His silver-white hair floated loosely around his head, unaffected by the gravity that existed only outside the sphere. His eyes were open and unblinking.
Growing weary of his own face, he stared at the tunnel walls instead, noticing a bright vein of quartz. Noticing how wide it was, how large the crystals.
Time passed.
A while later-ten cycles, a year?-Gromph felt something tickle his mind. An awareness. A presence. Turning his mind toward it, Gromph sought it out. Struggling like an exhausted man trying to lift his head, he concentrated his will.
Kyorli?
Nothing.
More time passed.
He stared at the vein of quartz, picking out a crystal within it. By concentrating on its facets-blurred though they were by the concave glass in front of his eyes-he could focus his thoughts.
What he knew was that he was inside a sphere of glass, the product of an imprisoning spell.
A spell cast by the lichdrow Dyrr.
He was far beneath the city, in an unknown tunnel, encased in a spell that prevented even divination magic from finding him.
Trapped.
More time passed. As it trickled by, Gromph tried to open his mouth, to force his eyelids to blink, to twitch his fingers.
Nothing.
Had he been able to draw a breath, he would have sighed. But even had he been able to move and speak-to cast a spell-it wouldn't have helped. The spell the lichdrow had cast on him was a powerful one, and Gromph knew it well. The only way it could be reversed was if a counterspell of equal power was cast on the sphere. And that spell could only be cast from outside the sphere, by someone else. If that wasn't difficult enough, the spell would only work if it was cast in the same location that the original imprisonment spell had been cast.
Gromph recoiled from the irony of it. He was the Archmage of Menzoberranzan, the most powerful wizard in all of the City of Spiders, privy to the arcane workings of more spells than most mages dared dream of. Yet even if he had been able to cast a wish spell, it wouldn't have done him any good.
After another length of measureless time had gone by, Gromph felt the tickle in his mind return. It felt closer, more insistent.
As before, it took an excruciating effort for Gromph to concentrate his will.
Kyorli? he sent. Help!
The mind-tickle disappeared. Had his body been capable of it, Gromph's shoulders would have slumped.
All at once the world spun in a crazy arc. The vein of quartz disappeared and Gromph found the position of his head and feet reversed-though in his state, up and down were concepts that had little meaning. He round himself staring into the eyes or an enormous brown rat twice the size of the sphere, its face distorted by the curvature of the glass. Pink paws rested lightly on the top of the sphere, and whiskers twitched as the rat sniffed the cold glass.
After a sluggish moment, Gromph realized his error in perception. The rat wasn't enormous, the sphere was tiny. The spell had shrunk him to less than rat size. His