Extinction

Chapter Twenty-six

Gromph strode up to the captain who stood surveying the silent battlefield, arms folded across his blackened mithral plate mail. Andzrel's eyes held a satisfied glint as he took in the shattered mushroom forest and the tanarukk corpses that littered the ground like felled stems.

"Drag the bodies back to the corrals," the Baenre weapons master told the soldiers who were inspecting the fallen tanarukks. "We can feed them to the lizards."

As he spoke, he cleaned blood from his sword with a scrap of cloth. He inspected his blade, smiled, then shoved it back into the scabbard at his hip.

"I wouldn't put that away just yet," Gromph said. "You'll be needing it."

Andzrel turned, a surprised look on his face.

"Archmage!" he gasped. "Where in the Abyss have you been?"

"Not quite as deep as the Abyss, but close enough," the archmage quipped. "I'll tell you all about it later." He glanced around. "How do things fare here?"

"Everything is under control," Andzrel reported. He gestured at the mouth of a tu

"Quiet, for the moment," Gromph answered. "The enemy has also been driven back on that front and the approach well sealed. I expect the duergar will eventually rally, recombine with other units somewhere out in the tu

"Something other than corpse disposal?"

Gromph nodded.

Andzrel gri

The archmage glanced at one of the bodies that lay nearby. Part orc, part demon, the tanarukk was a stocky monstrosity covered in patches of coarse hair and scabby-looking scales. A long jaw jutted out from under its abbreviated snout, and the tusks that curled over its upper lip were chipped and yellow. Its low, sloped forehead gave it a stupid appearance?accentuated by the flat glaze of death in its dull red eyes.

"I need to get through the enemy lines," Gromph began. "And I'll need an escort. A soldier, rather than a mage." He nudged the dead tanarukk with his foot. "Tell me, Andzrel, have you ever been polymorphed?"

"Once," Andzrel answered. "Years ago, into a lizard. As a joke, by a prideful upstart who thought that saddling me up and riding me would teach me my place. After I took a bite out of him, he didn't think it was so amusing anymore and changed me back."

Gromph smiled. He remembered well the day that Nauzhror had limped into Sorcere, demanding a cushion because he was unable to sit down. A "riding accident" he'd called it?until one of the other students had used a spell to peer through his robe and had spotted the bite wound on the buttocks. The pompous young Nauzhror had been the butt of many a joke after that.

"I'll try not to give you cause to use your tusks on me," Gromph told Andzrel with mock gravity.

The tanarukk soldiers retreated in disarray through the tu

Two tanarukks shuffled along behind the rest, taking care to keep apart from the jostling masses, neither giving provocation nor accepting it. One had a more pronounced forehead than his fellows and bristle-stiff patches of white hair. The other was broader across the shoulders and clad in chain mail that seemed slightly stiff. The blade of the battle-axe he carried was streaked with blood. The white-haired one seemed to have lost his weapon and carried a small scrap of fur?a trophy scalp, to all appearances?in one hand. He drew his companion to the side of the tu

"He's down this way," Gromph said. "Or at least he was a moment ago. I've lost him again."

"Where does he keep disappearing to?" Andzrel asked, irritated.

The stoop-shouldered posture of his tanarukk body was giving him a backache. He longed to get this mission over with and be back in drow form. And his tanarukk body stank. Gromph had no such problems, however. He'd used a glamer to change his appearance. If he'd polymorphed himself, the material components he needed to work his spells?like that scrap of bloodhound fur, for example?would have been changed into items more suitable to a tanarukk.

Or at least, that's what the archmage had told Andzrel. The Baenre weapons master suspected, however, that Gromph just didn't want to endure the stink of tanarukk sweat on his own skin.

"I don't know what Nimor's up to," Gromph answered. "Reporting to his masters, perhaps. But he keeps returning to this spot. It must be one he knows well."

Slipping away from the other tanarukks, the pair squeezed through the narrow tu

"We've got an urgent message for the drow Nimor," Gromph said, adopting the low. grunting voice of a tanarukk.

"Oh yeah?" The duergar snorted. "So does every other bloody tanarukk in Vhok's useless excuse for an army. Well, Lord Nimor's not here."

Gromph ignored the taunt. He sniffed loudly as he sca

"He's here," the disguised archmage said. "I can smell him."

"No he's not," the duergar replied with a frown. "Get back to your ranks."

Andzrel balled a fist with knuckles that were ridged with scales and raised it under the duergar's nose.

"We know he's in there," he growled. "Let us by."

The duergar suddenly grew larger and broader?until he was half again as tall as Andzrel's tanarukk form. He squeezed the handle of his axe, causing a shimmer of magical energy to pulse through it.

"Don't make me use this," the giant gray dwarf warned.

"Nimor will want to hear this message," Gromph insisted. "Tell him it's from the spy he sent into Menzoberranzan."

"What spy?"

"Sluuguth," the other tanarukk said.

The duergar's face paled to a lighter shade of gray, and he said, "Oh … the illithid."

Gromph frowned.

"Sluuguth doesn't like it when his messengers get delayed," he growled. He pulled a length of silver chain from his pocket. From the end of it hung an oval of jade. "He told us to bring this to Nimor as quickly as we could," he said. "He said it's important."

At last, the duergar nodded. Shrinking back down to his usual size, he stepped aside.

"Go on in," he told Gromph, but he held up a hand as Andzrel tried to follow, and added, "But you have to leave your weapon outside."

Gromph and Andzrel exchanged a look. That was going to be a problem. As soon as Andzrel's «battle-axe» left his hands it would no longer be affected by the polymorph spell and would turn back into a drow sword.

"I can deliver the message on my own," Gromph told Andzrel. "You wait out here. . until I'm done."

Andzrel nodded.

Gromph entered the cavern. Once inside, he could see that the space was more of a natural chimney, with a high ceiling. Up near the top was a ledge on which Nimor squatted, eyes closed, apparently in Reverie. He was in an unusual pose, with his arms drawn against his chest and his fists touching his shoulders, which were hunched. His posture reminded Gromph of a sleeping bat turned

Wondering if Nimor, too, was cloaked in an illusion, Gromph reached into a pocket for the small stone jar he carried there. He was just about to scoop out a little of the paste it held when Nimor's eyes opened. They immediately locked on the oval of jade hat spun gently at the end of the chain in Gromph's hand. The magic in the amulet was still potent?though the jade spider it had once commanded had been reduced to a heap of rubble, at Gromph's orders, before he and Andzrel set out into the Dark Dominion.