Dissolution

Chapter Nineteen

The Underdark was boundless, its mysteries infinite, and despite centuries of following wherever his curiosity led, Pharaun had never seen an illlthid city. Save for a dearth of inhabitants, he thought he'd just stepped into one.
Artisans had carved the walls and columns of the vault into spongiform masses like brain tissue, then covered the convolutions with lines of graven runes. Pools of warm fluid dotted the floor. Redolent of salt, the ponds crawled and throbbed with a mental force that even a non-psionic intelligence dimly sensed as a whisper of alien, incomprehensible thought at the back of the mind.
Pharaun recognized that the cavern was in some sense an illusion, but that didn't make it any less interesting. He would have liked nothing better than to explore every nook and cranny. It was an inclination rooted in a profound sense of well-being, a blithe unconcern no more genuine than the landscape, but seductive all the same. He would have to fight it.
He turned, saw Syrzan standing a few feet away, and cast darts of force, a spell requiring only words of power and a flourish of the hands. Halfway to their target, the streaking shafts of azure radiance stopped dead in the air, fell to the ground, and turned into limbless things like leeches or tadpoles, which, squealing telepathically, slithered toward the nearest pool.
"Your spells won't work here," said Syrzan in the Prophet's rich, compelling tones.
"I suspected as much, but I had to try. Are we inside your mind?"
"More or less."
Syrzan strolled closer. Off to the side, liquid splashed and plopped as the tadpoles wallowed.
"We're conversing in my special haven," the undead mind flayer said, "but we're also still in the heretic's chapel. In that reality I'm rebuking Houndaer for fetching you after I told him it was dangerous, and you're insensible."
"Fascinating," Pharaun said, "and I suppose you spirited me into the dream for a private tete-a-tete."
"Essentially," the alhoon said. Even in this phantasmal domain, it smelled faintly of decaying fish. "This is actually a form of mind-reading. You wont be able to lie."
The Master of Sorcere chuckled. "Some people would say that so handicapped, I won't be able to speak at all."
The mages began stroll along side by side. The atmosphere felt quite congenial.
"How is it," Syrzan asked, "that you came looking for my associates and me?"
Pharaun explained. He didn't see how it could do any harm.
When he was finished, the illithilich said, "You couldn't wield my particular sort of power."
"I understand that now. You enthrall the undercreatures through a deft combination of wizardry and mind flayer arts, and I lack the innate capacity to master the latter. What's more, you conspirators know nothing about the priestesses' difficulties." Pharaun cocked his head. "Or perhaps you do, Master Lich."
"No," said Syrzan, its mouth tentacles coiling and twisting. "Like the others, I know what's happened but not why."
"So none of what I sought was ever here for the finding." Pharaun laughed and said, "My sister Sabal once told me that a clever drow's wits can lead him into follies no dunce would dare to undertake . . . but that's blood down the gutter. What of you? What in the wide world prompted a creature such as yourself to throw in with a band of Menzoberranyr malcontents?"
"You seek information you can use against me."
"Well, partly . . ." Pharaun had to pause for a second when a wave of psionic force from one of the larger pools dizzied him and threatened to wash his own thoughts away. "In the unlikely event I'm ever afforded the chance. Mostly, though, I'm just curious. You're a mage. Surely we share that trait even if little else."
Syrzan shrugged, the narrow shoulders beneath its faded robes hitching higher than would a drow's.
"Well," the alhoon said, "I suppose it can do no harm to enlighten you, and it's been a long while since I've had the opportunity to converse with a colleague of genuine ability. Not that you're my equal - no elf or dwarf could ever be - but you're several cuts above any of Houndaer's allies."
"Your kind words overwhelm me."
The two wizards stepped onto a bridge, a crooked limestone span arching over one of the briny pools.
"Dark elves will abide a lich," the alhoon said, a brooding note entering its musical and almost certainly artificial voice. "Illithids won't. By and large, they hate the idea of sorcery, a foreign discipline as potent as the psionic skills that constitute our birthright. Still, they'll tolerate a limited number ofmortal mages, those of us drawn to wizardry despite the stigma, for the advantages we bring. But the thought of undying wizards enduring for millennia, amassing arcane power the while, terrifies them."
"So on the day you achieved your immortality," Pharaun said, "you forsook yourhomeland forever, or at least until the day when you could conquer it."
The two mages stopped at the highest point on the bridge and looked out over an expanse of warm, briny fluid. Pharaun noticed that the stuff rippled and flowed sluggishly, as if it was thicker than water.
"Indeed," Syrzan said. "I hoped to manage my departure circumspectly, but somehow the folk of Oryndoll sensed my metamorphosis. For decades, they hunted me like an animal, and I existed like one in the wilds of the Underdark. Those times were hard. Even the undead crave the comforts of civilization.
Finally Oryndoll forgot me or gave up on me. That was an improvement, but still I had no home."
"I've heard," said Pharaun, "that one or two secret enclaves of illithiliches exist. Didn't you search for one?"
"I searched for ninety years and found one," Syrzan replied, sounding slightly miffed that its prisoner had jumped ahead in the story. "For a time, I dwelled therein but I quarreled with the eldest alhoons, who considered themselves the leaders of the rest. I conducted certain investigations they had, in their ignorance and timidity, forbidden."
The Master of Sorcere laughed and said, "If you can't find it in your heart - assuming an illithilich retains the organ - to consider us equals, you must at least concede we're kindred spirits. You weren't angling for the Sarthos demon, were you?"
"No," said Syrzan curtly. "Suffice it to say that if not for some bad luck, I would have usurped the place of the eldest lich of all, but as matters fell out, I had to flee into the wilderness, a solitary wanderer once more."
"Surely you found someone to enslave."
Pharaun noticed the air in the dream cavern had grown cooler. Perhaps it was responding to its maker's somber reflections.
"I found small encampments," Syrzan said. "A family of goblins here, a dozen troglodytes there. I used them, used them up, each in its turn, but no little hole infested with a handful of brutes could give me what I truly craved. I yearned for a teeming city, full of splendors and luxuries, over which I would rule, and from which I could conquer an empire. But the taking of such exceeded even my powers."
"Or mine," Pharaun said, "hard as that is to credit. So, lusting for what you couldn't have, you spied on the cities of the Underdark, didn't you, or one of them, anyway. You kept your eye on Menzoberranzan."
"Yes," Syrzan said, "I've watched your people for a long while. I discovered the cabal of renegade males some forty years ago. More recently, I observed the priestesses' debility; no mere dark elves could hide such an enormous change from an observer with my talents. I remembered the would-be rebels and arranged for them to make the same discovery, then I emerged from the shadows and offered them my services."
"Why?" Pharaun asked. "Your collaborators are drow, and you're, if you'll pardon my bluntness, a member of an inferior species. Jumped up vermin, really. You don't expect Houndaer and the boys to honor a pact with you once the prize is won? Dark elves don't even keep faith with one another."
"Fortunately, the prize won't be won for decades, and during those years, I'll be subtly working to impose my will on my associates. Long before they assume the rulership of the city, I'll be ruling them."
"I see. The fools have given you your opening, and now that which you could never conquer from the outside you'll subjugate from within, extending the web of compulsion farther and farther, one assumes, until all Menzoberranyr are mind-slaves marching to your drum."
"Obviously, you understand the fundamentals of illithid society," said Syrzan. "You probably also know that we prefer to dine on the brains of lesser sentients and that we share your own race's fondness for torture. Still, some of your folk will fare all right. I can't eat or flayeveryone, can I?"
"Not unless you want to wind up a king of ghosts and silence. And where, may I ask, do these stone-burning fire bombs come from?"
"Menzoberranzan isn't the only drow city possessed of ambitious males," the illithilich said.
Pharaun was momentarily speechless. Another drow city -  
"Now, it's your turn to satisfy my curiosity," Syrzan said, interrupting the drow's reverie.
"I live for the opportunity."
"When Houndaer and the others explained our scheme, did you sincerely consider joining us?"
Pharaun grinned and said, "For about a quarter of a second."
"Why did you reject the idea? You're no more faithful or less ambitious than any other drow."
"Or illithid, I'll hazard. Why then did I remain firm in my resolve to betray you to Gromph?" The slender dark elf spread his hands. "So many reasons. For one, I'm a notable wizard, if I do say so myself, and in Menzoberranzan we mages have our own tacit hierarchy. In recent years, I've channeled my aspirations into that. Should I rise to the top, it will make me a personage nearly as exalted as a high priestess."
Syrzan flipped its tentacles, a gesture that conveyed impatience, and a flake of skin fell off. Unlike the slimy hide of living mind flayers, the lich's flesh was cracked and dry.
"The renegades are trying to place themselvesabove the females," the undead creature said.
"I understand that, but I doubt it'll work out the way they plan, or even the wayyouplan."
"You believe the priestesses are too formidable, even divested of their spells?"
"Oh, they're powerful. They may well extinguish this little cabal. Yet for the moment, I'm more concerned about the undercreatures. Do you realize how many goblins there are, how fervently they hated useven before you maddened them, or how dangerous your stone-consuming fire is? It could be that after they riot, we won't have a Menzoberranzan left for anyone to rule."
"Nonsense. The orcs will have their hour, and your people will butcher them."
Pharaun sighed. "That's what folk keep telling me. I wish your consensus comforted me, but it doesn't. That's one of the drawbacks of knowing yourself shrewder than everybody else."
"I assure you, the orcs cannot prevail."
"At the very least, they'll destroy some of the lovely architecture the founders sculpted from the living rock, and they'll set a defiant example for future generations of thralls. Your scheme will harm not merely the priestesses but Menzoberranzan itself, and I disapprove of that. It's sloppy and inept. Only a fool mars the very treasure he's striving to acquire."
A sneer in its tone, Syrzan said, "I wouldn't have taken you for a patriot."
"Odd, isn't it? I'll tell you something even stranger. In my way, I'm also a devout child of Lolth. Oh, its never kept me from pursuing my own ends - even past the point of murdering a priestess or two - but though I strive for personal preeminence, I would never seek to topple the entire social order she established. I certainly wouldn't conspire to place net chosen people and city under the rule of a lesser creature."
"Even gods die, drow. Perhaps Lolth is no more. If Menzoberranzan is indeed the mortal realm she loves best, why else would she abandon you?"
"A test? Apunishment? A whim? Who can say? But I doubt the Spider Queen is dead. I saw her once, and I don't just mean the manifestation who visited Menzoberranzan during the Time of Troubles. I've gazed upon the Dark Mother in the full majesty of her divinity, and I can't imagine that anything could ever lay her low."
"You have looked upon the Spider Queen?"
"I thought you might be interested in that," said the mage. "It wasn't long after I graduated from Sorcere, returned home to serve my mother, and sided with my sister Sabal against her twin Greyanna. One night, a delegation of priestesses came to our stalactite castle. Triel Baenre herself led the expedition - she was Mistress of Arach-Tinilith in those days - and she'd brought along dignitaries from Houses Xorlarrin, Agrach Dyrr, Barrison Del'Armgo, and other families of note. It was a momentous occasion, especially for me, because all these great ladies had come to arrest me.
"I never did find out if Greyanna instigated the affair. It was the kind of thing she would have done, but it needn't have been her. You'll scarcely credit it, but in those days, I was considered an insolent, uppity scapegrace, a far cry from the meek and modest gentleman you see before you today. A good many clerics may have suspected me of irreverence."
"This is what happened to Tsabrak," Syrzan said. "The priestesses arrested him, turned him into a drider, and drove him forth."
"Sometimes they mete out punishments even fouler," Pharaun said, "but first they examine you to determine your true sentiments. I hoped my mother would intervene. She was one of the great Matrons of Menzoberranzan, and I'd scored a number of coups for House Mizzrym, but she never said a word. Perhaps she believed me a traitor in the making or was reluctant to disagree with the Baenre. Maybe she simply found my predicament amusing. Miz'ri's like that.
"Be that as it may, the priestesses threw me in a dungeon and put me to the question, employing whips and other toys. Somehow I managed to resist the urge to make a spurious confession merely to stop the pain. A fellow wizard cast a mind-reading spell, only to slap up against the defenses most mages erect to protect their thoughts. I imagine an illithid would have smashed right through, but he was unequal to the challenge."
"Then you passed the test?" Syrzan asked.
"Alas, no," Pharaun laughed. "The examiners deemed the results inconclusive and accordingly asked a higher power to make the determination. They laid me on an obsidian altar, performed a dancing, keening, self-mutilatingritual together, and the torture chamber faded away. You'd think I would have been glad of it, wouldn't you, but my new surroundings were no less ominous."
Pharaun's captors had ignored his silver ring, obviously thinking it mere jewelry, if they noticed it at all.
As soon as he'd looked at Syrzan, he'd discovered its magic operated even within the confines of the lich's phantasmal creation. He forced an idea into his subconscious and continued to prattle.
"The priestesses had drugged me to prevent my resisting their attentions, then used me with considerable brutality. It took me awhile just to lift my battered head and look around. When I did, I perceived that I lay atop an enormous object with the shape of a staff or length of cord made of a substance that gave ever so slightly but was as strong as adamantine nonetheless. Otherwise, it would have disintegrated under its own weight. Far ahead, my perch fused at right angles with another such object, which connected with still others, the pattern spreading out to form, I suddenly realized, a spiderweb of insane complexity, huge enough to make a world. If it was attached to anything, the anchor points were too distant for me to see. Perhaps it just went on and on forever."
"The Demonweb," Syrzan said.
Pharaun surreptitiously examined his captor's talismans, using the magic in the silver ring, trying to figure out which one would allow an illithid to send a psionic "Call" to every orc and goblin in Menzoberranzan.
"Very good," the mage said. "I see you were paying attention when your teachers discoursed on the sundry planes of existence. I was indeed exiled to that layer of the Abyss where Lolth holds sway. I remembered hearing that the strands of the web were hollow and that much of the life of the place existed inside. Well, I certainly couldn't see any source of food or water on the outside, let alone a portal to take me home, so, still dazed and sick from the clerics' attentions, I started crawling and searching for a means of entry.
"Eventually, I might have found one, but I ran out of time. The strand I was traversing began to tremble. I peered about and saw her scuttling toward me."
"Lolth?" Syrzan asked.
"Who else? Her priestesses say she travels her domain in a mobile iron fortress, but she must have left it behind that day. I beheld the goddess herself in the guise of a spider as huge as the Great Mound of the Baenre. She's appeared to others in the same shape only smaller, but she was colossal when she came for me.
"I was terrified, but what was one to do about it? Run? Fight? Either effort would have been equally absurd. I exercised the only sensible option. I huddled atop the thread and covered my eyes.
"Alas, she denied me the comforts of blindness. Her will took hold of me and forced me to look up. She was looming over me, staring down with a circle of luminous ruby orbs.
"I felt as if her gaze was not merely piercing but dissolving me. The sensation was intolerable, I wanted to die, and in a way, she granted my wish.
"Her legs were immense, but they tapered to points at the ends, and, moving with adainty precision, she used thetwo front-most members to dissect me. Did the process kill me? I don't know. By all rights, it should have, but if I lost my life, my spirit lingered in my divided flesh, still suffering the horror and pain.
"My soul was conscious, too, of its own destruction. Somehow, as the Spider Queen picked apart my flesh and bones, she was filleting my mind and spirit as well. It irks me that I can't describe how it felt. I hail from a race of torturers and spellcasters, but I still lack the vocabulary. Suffice it to say, it wasn't pleasant.
"In the end, every aspect of my self lay in pieces before her - for inspection, I realize now, though I was in too much agony and dread to work it out at the time. When she'd looked her fill, she put me back together."
Still careful not to betray himself, keeping his mind focused on the story, Pharaun decided it was the triangle that would power the alhoon's Call. The question then was what to do about it. The real brooch hung on the chest of Syrian's physical body, back in the material world. The one insidehis mind was a sort of echo. An analogue. Would depriving Syrzan of it accomplish anything?
Pharaun continued, "Do you think she reconnected every subtle juncture of my intellect and spirit exactly as they'd been before? Over the course of the next few years, I invested a fair amount of time brooding over that particular question, but it's unanswerable, so let it not detain us.
"After the Mother of Lusts cobbled me together, she tossed me back to my native reality, back onto the altar, in fact, thus indicating she found me acceptable. I imagine the clerics were disappointed. I've never known an inquisitor to rejoice in a suspect's acquittal.
"Perhaps they took a bit of solace in the discovery that I'd gone altogether mad. They carted me back to my family, who strapped me to a bed and debated whether it wouldn't be more convenient all around to smother me with a pillow, Sabal was my advocate and guard. She couldn't afford to lose her staunchest ally.
"Let's skip over all the raving and hallucinations, shall we? Eventually my wits returned, and as I reflected on my experiences in the Abyss, I realized that while Lolth was infinitely dreadful and malign, she was transcendently beautiful as well. I'd simply been too distraught to recognize it at the time."
The magic of both the ring and the brooch had accompanied the dreamers into the dream. Otherwise, Pharaun wouldn't be able to see the triangle glowing. So perhaps if he disposed of the talisman in this place, its counterpart in mundane reality would lose its enchantments.
Possibly not, also, but the Master of Sorcere felt he had to take a chance. He doubted he'd get another.
"Certainly she exemplified that supreme power to which all dark elves, particularly we wizards, aspire," the drow rambled on. "I felt inspired that she was our patron. She's worthy of us, as we are worthy of her."
"She impressed you," Syrzan said, its mouth tentacles wriggling, "as even the pettiest deity can overawe a mortal. Still, you're a scholar of the mysteries. You should know there are powers greater than Lolth, entities who, if they saw fit - "
Pharaun snatched the triangular ivory brooch off the undead mind flayer's soiled and shabby robe and slammed it down on the convoluted parapet at the edge of the bridge. The ornament didn't break. In desperation, he pulled back his arm to throw it. Perhaps the illithilich would have difficulty retrieving it from the murky pool below.
A cold, rough hand grabbed him by the collar and wrenched him down. He was powerless to resist. In the reality Syrzan had created for itself, it was as strong as a titan.
The lich ripped the brooch from Pharaun's grasp and thrust it into a pocket. It clutched the dark elf with both hands, leaned its head close, and wrapped its dry, flaking mouth tentacles over the mage's skull.
Pharaun knew this was how mind flayers fed. They wormed their members into whatever orifices were most convenient and yanked out their victim's brain.
He wondered what would happen when Syrzan subjected his dream self to such treatment. Would his physical body perish, or would it survive as a living but mindless shell?
"Didn't you like my story?" Pharaun gasped. The lich's grip was squeezing the breath out of him. "You seemed quite engrossed. That was why I dared to hope I could catch you by surprise."
"You put your hands on me! I do not permit that!"
The mellifluous voice of the Prophet was roughening into an ugly combination of hisses and buzzes. The tentacles squeezed tighter.
"Technically, these aren't my hands," Pharaun said. Goddess, it felt as if his skull was going to shatter! "Since this is all imaginary."
"You will tell me how you knew which charm to grab."
"My ring. It allows me to see and interpret patterns of magical force. No wizard should be without one."
"You were a fool to try to thwart me here in my private world. Don't you understand that inside this construct, I'm agod?"
"I'm dead regardless," replied Pharaun, "and when a drow knows his life is forfeit, he bends his thoughts to revenge."
"But you're mistaken." Syrzan loosened the grip of the tentacles and said, "I'm not going to kill you. That would be wasteful. As you observed, myobjective is to enslave all Menzoberranzan. Certainly you, with all your talents, will make a useful thrall. Had you not manhandled me, your bondage might have been relatively light, for I enjoy the society of other mages. Now I'm afraid you aren't going to enjoy it in the slightest."
Pain ripped through Pharaun's head. He screamed.