wards of varyingpower, sub-networks guarding this or that room or building. Most of them were unconnected to the larger grid of defenses.
He held onto the image while he took one hand from the crystal and drained the rest of his mushroom wine. Prath looked around the office, found the bottle on a nearby table. He retrieved it, returned, and refilled the chalice.
Gromph moved through and around each of the wards in turn. He could have dispelled them easily enough, but eventually that would have been discovered. For those he could not work through, he dispelled them, but after examining the building or room to his satisfaction, he replaced the ward with a similar one of his own casting.
"No tracks," Prath said.
"No tracks," Gromph agreed. Not yet, anyway.
Presumably, the magic shielding the lichdrow's phylactery was masked from his scrying eye. He would "see" it only when he bumped up against it. Accordingly, he could locate the phylactery only through the process of eliminationeventually, he would attempt to view an area that appeared open to scrying but which he would not, in fact, be able to scry. That would be where the phylactery was located.
Of course it was also possible that the phylactery was not in the stalagmite fortress at all. If so, Gromph would never locate it before the lichdrow reincorporated. The thought gave him pause. He put it out of his mind.
Methodically, he moved his scrying eye through each of the buildings of House Agrach Dyrr, one room at a time.
Nauzhror crowded his head closer over the image until a look from Gromph backed him off.
"Apologies, Archmage," Nauzhror muttered.
Gromph moved the image through dining halls, shrines, training rooms, bedrooms, laboratories, slave quarters, kitchens, amphitheatres, always seeking an invisible w all that would block his scrying eye. Troops, mages, and priestesses hurried through the halls. He could not hear them, though their expressions showed their agitation. He did not let his scrying eye linger long on any one person, lest they sense the divination.
Sweat from his forehead dripped onto the scrying crystal, blurring the image. Prath wiped it away with the sleeve of his piwafwi.
Gromph moved the image down another hallway, past another group of "Larikal," he said, recognizing the short-haired, uncomely Third Daughter of House Agrach Dyrr. She led a group of three male mages that Gromph recognized as graduates of Sorcere. He let the image linger on the group for a time. His spell showed that each of them bore a variety of magical items wands, rings, cloak pins, brooches, a staff in Larikal's hand.
"Geremis, Viis, and Araag," Nauzhror said, naming the wizards. "Sub par students, the lot of them." Gromph nodded and kept the scrying eye with them, keeping a mental count in his head; he moved the image off of each person before he reached twenty.
Larikal barked orders, but Gromph could not read their lips. The mages moved from room to room, hallway to hallway, casting spells and concentrating for a time. Gromph kept the scrying eye just above and behind them, each in turn. Though he could not hear the words uttered by the mages, he studied their gestures.
"What are they doing?" Prath asked.
"Casting divinations," Gromph said, a fraction of a heartbeat before Nauzhror said the same thing. "Powerful divinations," Nauzhror added, watching as Geremis finished his gesticulating and put a hand to his brow in concentration.
Realization struck Gromph. "They are looking for the phylactery," he said. "They must be."
All of them understood the implication Yasraena did not have the phylactery in her possession, and she too thought it was hidden somewhere in the House.
"A good sign," Nauzhror said.
Gromph nodded. He needed to hurry.
Seeing nothing else of import, he moved the scrying eye away from Larikal and her pet wizards and continued to move through the Agrach Dyrr complex. The process was time-consuming but he endured. He took the time to study each room with care, to cast additional divinations designed to root out the lichdrow's masking spells. Again and again he found nothing, nothing but a desperate drow House under siege and fighting for its life.
"Could the phylactery not be in the fortress?" Nauzhror finally asked, after hours of fruitless searching. Gromph didn't even bother to look up. "Silence," he commanded.
It had to be there. The lichdrow would not have allowed the phylactery to be far from him. The risk was too great.
Gromph continued the search. Hescoured each building thoroughly. In an isolated portion of the complex, he found the lichdrow's alchemical laboratory, library, and