Dissolution

Laughter echoed through the candlelit corridors of Arach-Tinilith. Quenthel frowned. She'd been expecting something to happen, eagerly anticipating it, in fact. What she wasn't expecting was an explosion of mirth, and she couldn't guess what it meant.



She strode forward, and her patrol followed behind. They seemed edgy, but not quite as reluctant as they had the night before. The fate of Drisinil, Molvayas, and the rest of the plotters had convinced the survivors that Quenthel still enjoyed the favor of Lolth, at least to the same dubious extent as the rest of the stricken clergy.



The laughter rang on and on until at last the searchers found the source. Hunched over, her shoulders shaking, a novice knelt before one of the smaller altars of the goddess. Steady despite the paroxysms of glee, her index finger painted lines of graceful calligraphy on the floor. Quenthel couldn't make out what the girl was using for pigment until she lifted her hand to her face like an artist dipping a brush in a paint pot. She'd gouged her eyes out, another seeming handicap that didn't impair her writing.



The mistress stepped close enough to inspect the lines of blood. For all her erudition, she couldn't read the characters, hut she could feel the power in them. They pulled at her and repelled her at the same time, as if they might yank her spirit, or a piece of it, out of her body.



She wrenched her eyes away from the symbols and swung her whip. The vipers cracked into the eyeless female's back, their venomous fangs tore into her, and she collapsed, dead or merely insensible. Quenthel didn't particularly care which.



"What was she writing, Mistress?" Jyslin asked.



"I don't know," Quenthel admitted, smearing the glyphs with her toe,"something in one of the secret tongues of the Abyss. Scribing it may have been a way of casting a spell, so I made sure she wouldn't finish."



"What was wrong with her?" Minolin asked.



Quenthel was still surprised that the Fey-Branche had not, as expected, turned out to be one of the traitors.



"I don't know that, either," said the Mistress of Arach-Tinilith. She actually did have an idea, but wasn't sure of it yet. "Let's move on."



Fifteen minutes later, a runner, dispatched from a squad stationed in the third leg of the spider, found Quenthel to report that one of her comrades had gone mad. Quenthel went to see for herself, half expecting more gouged eyes and bloody writing.



But the new dementia took a somewhat different form. The victim had taken shelter, if that was the right word for it, in a small library devoted, for the most part, to musty treatises on warfare in all its aspects. She sat on the floor in the corner defined by two tall sandstone bookshelves, rocking and whimpering to herself.



Quenthel stooped, jammed her fist under the girl's chin and forced up her head.



"Rilrae Zolond! What ails you? What happened?"



Rilrae's face was blank and seemingly devoid of comprehension. Tears flowed down her checks. She smelled of mucus, and the breath snuffled in her nose. She didn't answer Quenthel's question, just made a feeble, ineffectual effort to turn her face away.



The mistress sighed and let her go. She'd seen cases like Rilrae before, generally in some dungeon or torture chamber. The junior priestess had experienced something sufficiently unpleasant to drive her deep inside her own mind. Had Quenthel stillpossessed her Lolth-granted powers, or been carrying the proper equipment, she might have been able to shake Rilrae out of her delirium, but as matters stood, the useless creature wouldn't be providing any information. Annoyed, the mistress nearly vented her frustration by giving Rilrae a stroke from her whip, but she didn't want to appear rattled or upset in the eyes of her followers.



She led the patrol on and eventually found a suicide sprawled in the corridor with froth on her lips and an empty poison bottle still clutched in her hand.



One of the second-year students reeled from a doorway a few yards farther down. Glaring and twitching, she unrolled a parchment, possibly one Quenthel herself had dispensed from the temple armory, and began shouting the words. The Baenre recognized the trigger phrase of a spell intended to summon a certain type of plague demon.



She snatched out her hand crossbow and pulled the trigger. Others did the same. The flurry of poisoned darts punctured the scroll and the novice as well. She fell onto her back, cracking her head against the calcite floor. The spell, still a syllable or two from activation, dissipated its power in a harmless sizzle of red light.



Quenthel reflected that a pattern was becoming clear. Some power struck a female and more or less drove her mad. She then separated herself from her companions, either making an excuse or just running off, the better to manifest her lunacy in one bizarre behavior or another.



It was odd that the girls' companions never even noticed the attack occurring, odd, too, that the demon assaulted only one member of a group and not all - or that it attacked any, given that the previous intruders had only attacked those lesser priestesses who attempted to hinder them.



The unseen demon's search pattern was equally peculiar. The location and sequences of its attacks seemed to indicate that the being was bouncing erratically around from one end of the temple to the other.



"Mistress," said Yngoth, "I know what's happening."



"As do I," Quenthel said. "I've merely been confirming it." She turned to Minolin. "Fey-Branche."



"Yes?" Minolin asked.



"You're in command of these others. You will all evacuate the temple. Get the sane people out, and the mad ones, too, but only if you can do it quickly."



The Fey-Branche princess blinked. "Mistress, we believe in your authority," she said. "We're not afraid to stand with you."



"I'm touched," Quenthel sneered, "but this isn't a test. I want you to go."



"Exalted Mother," Jyslin said, "what's happening? Which demon invaded the temple tonight? The assassin? Did it poison our sisters to make them go insane?"



"No," the Baenre said, "not in the way you mean."



"Then - "



"Go!" Quenthel raged. "Minolin, I told you to take them out of here."



"Yes, Mistress!"



The Fey-Branche hastily formed them up and led them away. The corridor seemed very quiet once they'd disappeared.



"Mistress," said Hsiv, "was it wise to send them away?"



"You question my judgment?" Quenthel asked.



The viper flinched. "No!"



"You sought to protect me, so I'll let it go. This time. I dismissed the girls because they can't help me, and I'd like to have some underlings left when this nonsense is over."



"They might have guarded you from another would-be mortal killer."



"We can hope that if Minolin gets everyone out, there won't be any more. Besides, why in the name of the Demonweb did I createyou?"



Greenish candlelight rippling on black scales, Yngoth reared and twisted around to look Quenthel in the face.



"Mistress," the viper hissed, "we are rebuked. We'll keep watch. What will you do?"



"Wait, and prepare myself."



She found a classroom possessed of a reasonably comfortable instructor's chair, the high limestone back carved into the stylized shape of a stubby-legged spider. She sat down, laid the whip at her feet, removed a thin shaft of polished white bone from her pouch, and set it in her lap, holding it at either end.



Closing her eyes, she commenced a breathing exercise. Within a heartbeat or two, she slipped into a meditative trance. She thought she would need the utmost clarity to contend with the night's demon, because Jyslin had guessed wrong. The intruder didn't encapsulate the art of the assassin, nor the spirit of the drowrace, for that matter. It embodied the concept of evil.



The traitor elves of the World Above professed to hate evil. In reality, Quenthel thought, they feared what they didn't understand. Thanks to the tutelage of Lolth, the drow did, and having understood it, they embraced it.



For evil, like chaos, was one of the fundamental forces of Creation, manifest in both the macrocosm of the wide world and the microcosm of the individual soul. As chaos gave rise to possibility and imagination, so evil engendered strength and will. It made sentient beings aspire to wealth and power. It enabled them to subjugate, kill, rob, and deceive. It allowed them to do whatever was required to better themselves with never a crippling flicker of remorse.



Thus, evil was responsible for the existence of civilization and for every great deed any hero had ever performed. Without it, the peoples of the world would live like animals. It was amazing that so many races, blinded by false religions and philosophies, had lost sight of this self-evident truth. In contrast, the dark elves had based a society on it, and that was one of the points of superiority that served to exalt them above all other races.



Paradoxically, though, a touch of the pure black heart of this darkest of all powers could be deadly, just as the highest expression of comforting warmth was the fire that consumed. Even folk who spent their lives in the adoration of evil generally had no real comprehension of the endless burning sea of it raging below and beyond the material world, and that was just as well. Even a fleeting glimpse could convey secrets too huge and fearsome for the average mind. Its touch could annihilate sanity and even identity. The threat was sufficiently grave that the majority of spellcasters hesitated to regard the force directly. They preferred to treat with evil at one remove, by dealing with the devils and undead that embodied it.



But it appeared that Quenthel's unknown enemy was the exception. He'd dipped right into the virulent fountainhead and drawn forth a power that dwelled therein.



That demon was presently intangible, a creature of pure mind. That was why it seemed to move and act so erratically; it was passing not through physical space, a medium in which it didn't exist, but from consciousness to consciousness, head to head. And simply through that intimate contact it poisoned its hosts, even if it didn't particularly intend to. It suffused them with a darkness too big and too powerful for their little minds to sustain. It was searching for Quenthel all the while, to show her the most profound malevolence of all.



She prayed she could endure the venom for just a second, until she worked the Xorlarrin's magic. She'd have to. Since the demon was invisible and insubstantial, she wouldn't know it hadn't come close enough for the talisman to affect until she felt it infesting herself.



To make sure she would indeed detect it, she sank ever deeper into her trance. She became acutely conscious of the rise and fall of her chest and the air hissing in and out of her lungs. The steady thud of her heartbeat and the surge of blood through her arteries. The pressure of her buttocks and spine against the chair. The feeblest of drafts caressing and cooling her left profile. The vipers shifting restlessly, brushing her feet and ankles, the touch perceptible even through her boots.



Yet none of the sensations was of any particular significance. They presented themselves so vividly only because she'd entered a state of utter dispassionate quietude, and thus receptivity. A condition in which she would be equally cognizant of events within her mind and soul.



She recalled acquiring this capacity when she herself was a novice in Arach-Tinilith. She'd learned every divine art easily. It had been one of the signs that Lolth had chosen her for greatness. But relatively speaking, this particular mastery had come harder than most. According to Vlondril, unwrinkled but showing signs of madness even then, it had been because Quenthel was of too dynamic a character. She had no instinct for passivity.



Abruptly the Baenre realized her thoughts were nudging her out of the desired state. Vlondril had also said that was always the way. The mind didn't like to hush. It wanted to babble. Quenthel took another deep, slow breath, exhaled it through her mouth, and expelled that importunate inner voice along with it.



Time passed. She had no idea how much time, nor, immersed in the meditation, did she care. The temple was utterly silent, which surely meant that most everyone had exited, or perhaps, in one or two instances, perished.



Gradually it dawned on Quenthel that her trance wasn't quite perfect. The dead quiet, proof that all instruction, prayers, and rituals had ceased, irked her just a little, and she doubted she could purge that final hint of emotion. She cared too much about her role of Mistress of Arach-Tinilith. She'd come to the Academy intent on making it granderand more effective than ever before. Thus would she honor Lolth and demonstrate her fitness to one day rule the entire city. Instead, she'd presided over an extended disaster, regular functions disrupted, residents battered or even dead.



It galled her to think how many of her sister nobles would blame her, but she knew it wasn't her fault. It was in large measure the fault of the teachers and students themselves. Most who had perished earned their destruction by dint of their idiotic little mutiny, and actually, that was as it should be. The traitors had violated the precepts of Lolth.



Indeed, when Quenthel thought about it, the real misfortune might be that weaklings like Jyslin and Minolin were still alive. They were cowards and whiners, unfit, but they'd survive merely because the manifestation of evil hadn't passed their way, and because the Baenre herselfhad sent them to safety. Perhaps that had been a mistake.



Quenthel realized she was ruminating once more. With an effort of will she arrested the internal monologue. For a few seconds.



But as Vlondril had taught her, it was devilishly hard to attain passivity by straining for it. Besides, Quenthel was pondering important matters, new insights that would guide her steps in the days to come.



If preserving even the most worthless specimens of her flock constituted an error, at least it was one she could rectify. She'd already slaughtered the mutineers. How easy, then, it would be to butcher those who lacked even the spirit to rebel. She imagined herself stalking among her underlings, peering into their eyes, swinging the whip whenever she discerned inadequacy. The trance state facilitated visualization, and the fantasy was as vivid as life. She smelled the blood and felt it splatter her face. The muscles of her whip arm clenched and relaxed.



Quenthel could killeveryone if necessary. She'd enjoy it, and perhaps when the clergy was pure and strong again, Lolth would condescend to speak.



If not, that might mean that all Menzoberranzan required cleansing, beginning with the First House. Quenthel would usurp pathetic, indecisive Triel's throne - not in a hundred years butnow, and preparation be damned. Then, the very next day, she and her kin would wage a war of extermination on the thousands who served the goddess and her chosen prophet with false hearts or insufficient zeal.



How glorious it would be, and it could begin as soon as she ferreted out the first weakling. Her fingers closed on the haft of her whip, or rather they tried and in so doing reminded her that she was in reality holding the thin bone wand.



She'd forgotten all about the magical artifact and the demon as well, and she could only think of one explanation. Despite hervigilance, the spirit had managed to possess her without her realizing it.



For without its influence, those thoughts would never have occurred to her. Destroy her own followers? Try to murder Triel without the vaguest semblance of a strategy, and fight virtually every other House in the city at once?



It wasn't the prospect of wholesale bloodshed that dismayed her - war and torture were her birthright and often her delight - but this was evil without sense, a delirium that would surely destroy her and conceivably even House Baenre along with her.



Yet did it matter? She sensed the ecstasy implicit in letting go. If she permitted it, the demon would exalt her, and even if she perished an hour later, what difference would it make? She'd find more joy in that brief span that in centuries of mundane life.



For what seemed a long while, she wavered, uncertain whether to manipulate the wand or cast it aside, take up her whip, and go hunting. In the end, one consideration enabled her to choose the former. No matter how sweet the temptation to become a pure and transcendent being, doing so would be to surrender to the will of her phantom enemy, allowing the faceless spellcaster to dominate, transform, and ultimately destroy her. Quenthel Baenre could not embrace defeat. Instead, she snapped the length of bone in two.



An instant later, she felt an extraordinary lightness and clarity in her head, a sign that the demon had departed, as, in fact, her eyes confirmed. Vaguely visible at last, a misshapen shadow without a source, the entity floated in front of her, then, without turning or shifting any of its amorphous limbs, receded quick as a bow shot. It was tiny, a dot, and gone.



Quenthel felt a pang of loss, but it only lasted a moment. Then she smiled.



Gromph sat before one of the enchanted windows in his hidden chamber. He'd crossed his feet atop a hassock and held a crystal goblet of black wine in his hand. He'd thrown the strangely carved ivory casements wide and supposed he must look like the soul of ease awaiting some pleasant entertainment.



Well, that was the hope, but despite himself the Archmage of Menzoberranzan was growing used to disappointment.



He hadn't made any progress in finding the runaway males. His divinations were so oblique and contradictory as to be useless. Apparently some able spellcaster had forestalled his efforts. His genuine spies had turned up nothing, indeed, had managed to get themselves strangled in Eastmyr by parties unknown. The only satisfaction, if one could call it that, was that his decoy was still on the loose, still occupying the priestesses' attention. Why Pharaun Mizzrym had deemed it expedient to slaughter a patrol from the Academy, though, was more than Gromph could comprehend.



The Baenre wizard hadn't yet managed to kill Quenthel, either. For the past few nights, he'd dispatched his conjured minions, then settled before the window to watch them do his bidding. Impossibly, even stripped of her magic, his sister had disposed of the first three spirits and the traitors he'd inspired as well. Like some bungler in a farce, Gromph had only managed to account for a few lesser clerics with whom he had no quarrel, who would otherwise have gone on to contribute to the strength of Menzoberranzan and the House that controlled it. It was maddening!



This night, he prayed, would be different. Quenthel had turned out to be competent at disposing of spirits wearing some semblance of material form, but surely she would prove more vulnerable to an assailant that slipped imperceptibly into her mind.



The enchanted window afforded Gromph a view of the interior of Arach-Tinilith as if he were but a few feet away. He watched his sister and her squad encounter wretches whom the spirit had already overwhelmed with the infusion of an evil more profound than any mortal, even a dark elf, could readily bear. He looked for some sign that Quenthel was growing afraid. The indication would be subtle if she let it slip at all, but perhaps a brother would spot it.



He didn't, and eventually Quenthel ordered her minions to evacuate the building and sat down to meditate.



The archmage frowned. Evidently the imperious bitch had figured out what was going on and had in a sense responded appropriately. But it shouldn't matter,he'd withstood contact with the ultimate essence of evil, but he was the greatest wizard in the world and had taken precautions. Quenthel enjoyed neither advantage.



In time, a sublime cruelty twisted her features. Gromph exclaimed in triumph, for the netherspirit plainly had her in its grasp. Evidently she wasn't going to drop dead of an aneurysm or commit suicide, but no matter: she was doomed. Her personality erased, consumed by the compulsion to degrade and destroy, she was bound to provoke someone into killing her.



Then she broke the skinny white wand in two, unleashing a magic that thrust the netherspirit out of her. Gromph, for all his knowledge, had never seen anything quite like it. Taking on just a hint of palpable form, his agent fled the scene.



The Baenre wizard bolted up in his chair and threw his goblet, smashing it against the wall. He cursed foully, and the malignancy in his words, hammering through the black lotus-scented air, made the greenish flames of the everlasting candles gutter.



Struggling for composure, he told himself it didn't matter. He'd get her eventually. He'd throw entity after entity at her until . . .



But what had happened to the netherspirit? Constrained by Gromph's command, it should have kept attacking until either it toppled the pillars of Quenthel's reason or she destroyed it. Instead, it had run away.



The mistress's unfamiliar magic had broken the binding - so much was clear - but where had the creaturegone? Back to its own world? Probably, but something - a slight acceleration of his heartbeat or a subtle prickling on the back of his neck, perhaps - made Gromph want to check.



The casement responded to his will. Framed in that rectangular space, the netherspirit, still visible, perhaps as tangible as smoke, half flew, half bounded down one of the labyrinthine corridors of Sorcere. A defensive ward activated, piercing the intruder with crisscrossing shafts of yellow light, but it tore itself free and charged on. A blue-gowned master peered out the door of his sanctum, spotted the wraith, started to conjure, and the intruder stopped him with a sweep of a shadowy paw. The blow didn't rock the wizard backward or leave a mark, but he fell like a block of stone.



Gromph surmised his erstwhile agent was coming after him. Either it was angry over its forced servitude, or Quenthel had done more than merely dissolve his control. She'd wrested it away from him and turned the entity into her own assassin.



Either way, the spirit represented a threat, and unfortunately, Gromph himself didn't know its full capabilities. Still, he had no real reason for concern. His magic was more than a match for any such entity, especially in his stronghold.



He watched the netherspirit flow through the black marble door of his office like water through a sieve. It scrambled over the white bone desk and headed straight for the hidden access to his sanctum. Magic crackled purple and blue around it, but it burst through. It hurtled up the shaft.



Gromph smiled. He had the creature where he wanted it, for he'd created the passage with defense in mind. Simply by focusing his will, he destroyed it.



The shaft wasn't made of matter. Still, a metallic crashing and grinding sounded through the hole in the middle of the floor as the artificial space folded in on itself. If the rebellious spirit screamed, its voice was lost among the din.



Gromph would have enjoyed hearing it squeal, but the important thing was that it was gone. Most likely, the collapse had crushed it to nothing, but even if not, it had surely ejected it, maimed and disoriented, in some remote halfworld. The crisis was over, and the archmage was left only with the annoyance of transporting himself in and out of his hideaway via spell until such time as he invested the six hours necessary to recreate the passage.



However, just to maintain the habit of caution that had balked a thousand enemies, he turned back to the window, then scowled.



The space still framed the spirit, and as far as Gromph could see, the shadowy thing was unharmed. Darting and wheeling through curtains of pale phosphorescence, it was casting about in the bent spaces surrounding the stronghold.



Gromph didn't see how the creature could find him. Nothing could locate a refuge hidden in a haze of scrambled time, not without the tenant in some way guiding it in. Nonetheless, the wizard hurried into one of the protective golden pentacles adorning the marble floor.



An instant later, a different window burst inward, the casements flying from their hinges. The spirit flowed through, in the process resuming the form it had worn before Gromph transformed it into the semblance of a kind of demon. It somewhat resembled a wingless dragon with long, taurine horns sweeping from its head, which also possessed a single globular eye. The archmage couldn't actually see the orb - it was one with the inky shadow of the spirit's body - but he could feel its baleful regard.



Slightly anxious and uncertain, and all the angrier for it, Gromph shouted, "K'rarza'q! I named, summoned, and boundyou, and I am your master. By the Prince Who Dreams in the Heart of the Void and by the Word of Naratyr, I command you to kneel!"



The netherspirit released a humid stink that somehow conveyed the essence of scornful laughter, then it bounded forward.



Very well, Gromph thought, have it your way.



He thrust the curved blade of his ritual dagger into his belly.



As he'd expected, the creature floundered in agony, but only for an instant. Anguish erupted in the archmage's own stomach. He yanked the athame out of his flesh an instant before it would have dealt him an actual wound.



K'rarza'q lunged. Ignoring the residual pain in his gut, Gromph recited a brief incantation and thrust out his arm. The air rang like a bell, and a little red ball of fire shot from his hand. It struck the creature and . . . nothing. The missile winked out of existence.



The entity reached the edge of the pentacle. A barrier of azure light sprang up and vanished with a tortured whine as the spirit drove though. The creature dipped its head and jerked it upward, ramming the tip of one of its horns into Gromph's chest.



The spirit was entirely solid. If not for the Robes of the Archmage and his other protections, the long blade of shadow stuff would surely have impaled Gromph. As it was, it picked him up and tossed him across the room. In midair, he strained to throw off the numbing shock and activate the powers of levitation in his House insignia.



The power woke with a sort of sickening pang, but wake it did. He floated down as light as a wisp of spider silk, avoiding what might have been a bone-shattering fall.



As soon as he got his feet under him, he snatched a polished wooden wand from its sheath on his left hip, pointed it, and murmured the trigger word. A bubble of pungent brown acid swelled on the end, then hurtled at the spirit. It plunged into the being's cyclopean mask, but apparently without inflicting any harm.



The spirit charged. Gromph stood in place until his foe was nearly on top of him, then he spoke a single word. A minor teleportation shifted him instantaneously to the other end of the circular room, behind his attacker's back.



K'rarza'q skidded to a halt and cast about in confusion. Gromph had bought himself a second, no more. He quickly dropped the wand of acid, snatched a spiral-cut staff of polished carnelian from its place on a rack of wizard's tools, lifted if over his head, and began to chant. The rod possessed special virtues



against beings from other levels of reality. Perhaps with it in his hand, he could finally drive a spell through his foe's defenses.



The netherspirit heardhis voice, turned, and hurtled toward him. This time it charged without moving its limbs, simply shifting over the distance with terrifying speed. Preserving the cadence and intonation as only a master wizard could, Gromph picked up the pace of his incantation. He very much wanted to finish before the creature closed with him again.



He succeeded, though only barely. K'rarza'q was nearly within arm's reach when the magic blazed into existence. A lance of dazzling glare plunged into the netherspirit's eye.



The reeking creature dropped to the floor, its substance unraveling into shapeless clumps and tatters. Gromph smiled, and a dozen strands of spirit-stuff reared up at himlike the vipers in his cursed sister's whip.



The archmage gripped the scarlet staff with both hands, just as a Master of Melee-Magthere had taught him centuries before, during the six months every student mage was obliged to spend in the warriors' pyramid.Wielding the implement like a common spear, he thrust one end of it into what seemed to be K'rarzaq's ragged, squirming core.



The netherspirit burst into inert flecks of gray-black slime. Gromph's protective enchantments prevented any of the splatter from fouling his own person.



He felt a certain satisfaction at his victory, but it withered quickly because he hadn't killed the object of his hatred, merely preserved himself from the result of another failed attempt, and in the process discovered he'd utterly failed to comprehend Quenthel's resources and capacities.



What was that bone wand? Where had it come from, and how did it work? Had it merely broken his own control, or had it summarily placed his minion under his enemy's dominance?



He glumly concluded that until he knew more, it would be foolish to continue attacking a foe seemingly capable of turning his own potent wizardry against him.



So he'd break off hostilities.



And, he thought, with a sudden pang of uneasiness, hope his sister didn't guess who'd engineered her recent perils.