Extinction

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 thoughts still sluggish, he at last noticed the kink at the end of the rat's hairless tail.

Kyorli! Help me. Take me home.

Go? the rat replied, more of a feeling than a word.

Yes, go. To the city. Go.

The world spun crazily by. Gromph could see stone walls spinning past, could see them bump crazily up and down as the sphere, propelled by Kyorli's nose and paws, rolled along the uneven floor of the tunnel.

No, not a tunnel but a tiny fissure in the rock. No more than a rat-sized crack.

The walls continued to spin past. For a moment, the world opened up into looming darkness as Kyorli rolled the sphere across the floor of an enormous cavern. In the distance, Gromph saw a flash of lavender light: the visible spectrum of a faerzress. Then the patch of magical radiation was behind them, swallowed by darkness.

The sphere rattled on, Gromph suspended unmoving at its center, enclosed in absolute silence.

A short time later, the sphere bounced to a stop against a wall.

What's wrong? Gromph asked.

Kyorli's paws scrabbled against the sphere, turning it. Gromph found himself looking up at the wall of the cavern, where?several paces overhead?the tunnel continued through a wide crack.

Up! Kyorli "said." City.

The rat scurried up the wall, then down it again. Gromph's world tilted wildly as paws scrabbled uselessly against the outside of the sphere, spinning it around. After a moment, Kyorli scrambled back up the wall, entering the tunnel briefly, then came down again.

Gromph realized he'd been overestimating his familiar. Kyorli was only a rat?with no more than a rat's intelligence.

Try a different way, he suggested.

Kyorli stared at him, whiskers twitching. Then, bobbing her head in a rat's equivalent of a nod, she began moving the sphere again. Gromph found himself rolled back down the tunnel they'd just come along, across the cavern with the glowing faerzress, and down another tunnel.

When the sphere stopped rolling again, Gromph found himself staring at a river. Only a dozen paces wide but swiftly flowing. Gromph's hopes rose as he recognized it. He'd traveled through that tunnel once before, years past. The waterway was one of the subterranean tributaries of the River Surbrin. It eventually flowed into Donigarten, the lake that was Menzoberranzan's water supply.

But it flowed through an airless tunnel. If Kyorli tried to folow the sphere, she would drown. She could roll the sphere into the river and let the water carry Gromph to the city, but by the time she found her own way back to Menzoberranzan, the sphere might have been carried out of the lake again, down into the river's lower reaches. Gromph might wind up in an even worse position than before.

He considered the problem, though slowly. His thoughts were still a near-stagnant puddle. After several long moments, during which Kyorli disappeared from sight and reappeared again half a dozen times, a thought came to him.

The faerzress. The magical energies emitted by a faerzress were unstable, unpredictable in their effect. They might do strange things to Gromph, even kill him. But perhaps, if luck was with him, they might first mutate the effects of the spell that bound him.

Take me back to the cavern. The one with the glow.