attendance whispered reverently, his voice hissing off the distant walls in a thousand echoes that Gromph doubted he would have heard if he still had his eyesight.
The archmage willed Kyorli to turn her head to face the wizards, and he was satisfied to see that they were dressed and equipped as he had commanded. During his time away from Menzoberranzan, thanks to the traitorous lichdrow Dyrr, certain elements within the Academy had revealed themselves. It had taken Gromph less time that he feared but more time than he'd wished to reassert himself at Sorcere. Triel had, to Gromph's surprise, actually done well in maintaining the House's hold over the school of wizards, but still there were traitors to kill and conspirators to bring back into the fold. All that had delayed his efforts to regain his eyesight. No more.
"All is prepared," the whispering mage-his own distant nephew, Prath Baenre-said.
Prath was young, still barely an apprentice, and though Gromph couldn't see the two dark elves' faces since Kyorli insisted on occasionally scratching her own hindquarters with her sharp front teeth, he was sure that the other-a Master of Sorcere named Jaemas Xorlarrin-was looking at the younger drow with impatience. Baenre or no, Sorcere had its hierarchies.
"Master Xorlarrin," Gromph said, making his own feelings on the necessity of that hierarchy clear, "as is obvious, I have some trouble seeing. I will require simple answers to some simple questions. You will stand at my left. The boy will step aside until called."
"As you wish," the Xorlarrin mage replied.
The rat left off her scratching when Gromph snapped hisfingers. He watched through the rat's eyes as Kyorli scampered up his leg, to his hand, up his arm, and sat, twitching and sniffing, on the archmage's shoulder. Seeing himself through the rat's eyes unsettled Gromph, and feeling the rat's feet on him-both senses detached from each other-was something the archmage was determined not to experience again.
Gromph stepped toward the bound dark elves, sharply aware of the Xorlarrin mage following close behind him. As they came closer, a shadowy form revealed itself-another drow standing inside the circle of captives. It was Zillak, one of the archmage's most trusted assassins.
"Is the boy prepared with the sigils?" Gromph asked.
He was answered by a faint clang of metal and the sound of scurrying steps that finally slid to a halt.
"Yes, Archmage," Jaemas Xorlarrin replied.
Gromph stepped close to one of the bound dark elves. All ten of them were cousins-the wicked sons of House Agrach Dyrr and traitors to Menzoberranzan every last one. Gromph had asked for the youngest, the strongest, the ablest of them to be spared.
"Dyrr," the archmage said, doing his best to fix his sightless eyes on the captive's face.
The prisoner squirmed a little at the sound of his family's name. Gromph wondered if the boy felt the shame his traitorous House had inflicted on every last one of his kin.
"I . . ." the prisoner muttered. "I know why I'm here, Baenre. You can do your worst to me, and I will not betray my House."
Gromph laughed. It felt good. He hadn't had a good laugh in a long time, and with the siege of Menzoberranzan only digging in, with no word of Lolth or break in her Silence, he didn't think he'd be laughing much in the days, tendays, months, or even years ahead.
"Thank you," the archmage said to the boy. He caught the edge of the captive's confused, surprised expression as Kyorli began again to worry at her itchy hip. "I don't care what you might have to say about your doomed House. You will answer only one question . . . what is that sigil?"
There was a silence Gromph took as confusion.
"The sign," the archmage said, letting impatience sound in his voice. "The sigil my young nephew is holding up in front of you."
As ordered, Prath had taken up a position some yards away, against the wall of the giant chamber, and was holding up a small placard maybe six inches on each side. Painted onto its surface was a simple, easily recognizable rune-one any drow would recognize as marking a way to shelter, a place of safety in the wilds of the Underdark.
"I could compel you to read it, fool," the archmage drawled into the prisoner's hesitation. "Tell me what it is, and let us move on."
"It's . . ." the captive said, squinting. "Is it the symbol of Lolth?"
Gromph sighed and said, "Almost."
The archmage mentally nudged the rat on his shoulder and