Resurrection

which thankfully didn't include the enchanted robe in which he carried his essential spell components-and his exposed flesh burned and blistered as the mist sloughed away flesh. The stone of the floor and surrounding pews smoked and pitted. An acrid stink filled the air as the cloud dissipated.

Gromph gritted his teeth against the pain, leaped over an acid-slicked pew, and struck another leg from the golem. Another.

The golem answered with a flurry of claw strikes that drove Gromph backward and dispelled all of his images.

Blood and pus leaked from Gromph's skin. His breath came fast and heavy. The pain was slowing him. If the golem was like others of its kind, he knew it would be able to use its acid breath again after only a short time. It had but to gather more of the caustic substance within its enchanted body, and the archmage doubted he would survive a second coating of the stuff.

Gromph had to destroy it first.

He parried another claw strike, reared his axe back and-

A blow from the golem hit him squarely in the chest. Only the magical shield of force and conjured armor kept the impact from splitting him open. Still, the force of the blow sent him careening backward. He stumbled, flailing, and tripped over the broken remnants of a bench.

Gromph fell on his back.

The spider lurched at him, crushing the broken bench. Its mandibles opened wide. Its pedipalps reached for him. Gromph swung his axe furiously from his back, rolled, and tried to regain his feet. A claw descended for his throat, but the shield of force turned it, though the force knocked him down again.

He scooted backward, found his feet, and swung his axe defensively. The golem pressed him,

drew in close and snapped its jaws. The bite snagged Gromph's cloak and pulled him off balance.

A claw strike knocked him to all fours, and he nearly dropped his axe.

Gromph reared up and struck a glancing blow on the golem's head, just above its eye cluster.

Flecks of jet flew and the golem backed off, pedipalps waving menacingly. Gromph regained his feet and backed off a bit too.

Breathing heavily, Gromph knew that he could not waste time. Soon, the golem would be able to use its acid breath again. Soon, Yasraena and her wizards would find a way into the temple.

The vein of the master ward stuck out of the spider's abdomen like some grotesque entrail. At the end of it, Gromph knew, within the golem's body, was the phylactery. He had to press the attack.

He backed off toward the altar, axe held defensively. The spider followed, clambering over broken and acid-scarred pews.

Gromph feigned a stumble and the spider pounced. The archmage dived aside, regained his feet in an instant, and unleashed a vicious downward slash that severed one of the golem's legs at the shoulder.

The golem struck at Gromph with another leg as it tried to turn to face him-the blow opened the archmage's thigh-but Gromph bounded between two of its remaining legs and chopped furiously. Chunks of the golem flew into the air as it clambered around.

Another blow struck Gromph, cracking ribs and driving the breath from his lungs, but he dared not stop his attack. His ankle caught under the golem and snapped.

Stars exploded in his vision. Agony raced up his leg. Shouting, spraying spit, he continued his onslaught. His axe rose and fell, rose and fell. Pieces of the golem lay scattered about the temple like so much Darklake flotsam.

After an indeterminate time, Gromph became aware that the spider golem was not moving.

Fueled with spell-induced ferocity, he chopped at it several more times before he was sated.

When he came back to himself, the pain nearly caused him to lose consciousness. The bulk of the golem lay before him, cracked and broken. Its bulk pi

scattered amidst the broken benches.

Another boom sounded against the temple's double doors, fairly shaking the whole of the structure. Yasraena and her wizards had not yet been able to breach Gromph's holding spell.

They would try the windows next.

Gently, hissing at the pain, he pried up the golem's body with the duergar axe and slid his foot free. Bone ground against bone, and the pain caused Gromph to vomit the mushrooms he had eaten in his office earlier. He did not look at the break. His ring was working to heal his wounds,

but too slowly. He reached into his robe-its magic had protected it from the acidic breath of the golem-and extracted two healing potions, both ordinarily serving as material components to his spells. He tore their seal with his teeth and drank the warm fluid down, one after the other.

His ankle reknit and the gash in his thigh and shoulder closed. Even most of the acid burns healed.

He sighed, tested his ankle, found it fine, and climbed atop the golem's body. There, he found his footing and straddled the point at which the rope of the master ward vanished into the golem's body. He raised the axe high and started to chop.

With each swing he grew more and more eager and the light from the phylactery's dweomer grew brighter and brighter in his sight.

After half-a-score swings, the axe blows revealed a hollow within the spider golem's thorax.

Gromph stopped, sweating, and stared.

There, floating in the air, intertwined with the vein of the master ward, was a shimmering,

fist-sized sphere of red.

The sphere turned yellow. Then green. Then violet.

Gromph watched the globe cycle through seven colors before begi

In a distant way, he knew the globe for what it was-a prismatic sphere. The colors lay atop each other, alternating spheres within spheres, like the layers of a flakefungus. The lichdrow must have found a way to make a prismatic sphere permanent. He had placed his phylactery within it and placed the whole within a specially constructed golem.

Gromph knew how to bring down a prismatic sphere. Certain spells defeated certain colors.

Touching certain colors without dispelling them resulted in harm or death. He would have to defeat all of the colors to get at the phylactery within.

It would take time. Time he did not have. Besides, he had another problem.

The transformative spell that had turned him into a warrior had temporarily modified his mind, closing the door on that part of him that interacted with and drew on the Weave. He knew that he could cast spells, but the knowledge that allowed him to link with the Weave was gone,

temporarily crowded out by the knowledge imparted to him by the transmutation spell.

He could not end the spell early. It had to run its course. Only after it had would he be able to bring down the sphere.

Above him, a portion of the conjured stone wall before one of the temple's windows shattered,

destroyed by some spell cast by one of Yasraena's wizards. The stone rained down on the temple floor.

Gromph had only the wall of force between him and the forces of House Dyrr.

He was almost out of time.

A scrabbling sound turned him around. What he saw caused a pit to form in his stomach.

Each of the pieces he had chopped from the golem-the legs, the chunk of thorax, the claw, the piece of abdomen-cracked and split. Eight legs of jet sprouted from the cracks, a pair of mandibles. The threescore chunks of golem that Gromph had left scattered around the temple had been reanimated as buds of the main golem. The battle was not over.

For the tenth time in the last hour, Gromph cursed the lichdrow.

Danifae looked through the tiny, unglassed window of her garret in the Braeryn. Narbondel glowed red two-thirds of the way up its shaft. It was late in the day.

Danifae had lost track of time. For her, one day seemed much like another, one hour bled into the next.