Gromph brought a memory-image of the lichdrow into his mind's eye and held it there then did his best to convey that image into the globe. It would find the lichdrow, unless Dyrr expended some energy in avoiding it.
Gromph put his hand down, and several of the more ambitious masters started casting again—muttering incantations and tracing invisible patterns in the air—as if they'd been sitting there holding the thought.
There, Gromph thought as an image coalesced in the crystal ball of the lichdrow striding confidently across a reception hall in House Agrach Dyrr. There you are.
Gromph recognized the hall. He had been there himself on several occasions, back before things started to dissolve and Houses Agrach Dyrr and Baenre were close allies and business associates. He kept his attention on Dyrr. As he watched the lichdrow barking orders to his House guards and other armed drow, Gromph cast a spell of his own.
"Good afternoon, Dyrr," Gromph told the image in the crystal ball. "It will be the Clawrift. I know I don't have to tell you to come alone. I know you're always ready."
Gromph didn't wait for a response. He nodded to his masters and closed his eyes.
"We will be watching, Archmage," said Grendan, "and we'll be in constant contact."
"It would be irresponsible of me," Nauzhror said, "not to ask one more time if I might take your place in—"
"It would be irresponsible of me to hide behind my students," Gromph said. "Besides, Cousin, you were archmage for a little while, and by all accounts you liked it."
"I did, Archmage," Nauzhror admitted, "very much so."
'Well, if you hope to live long enough to be archmage again, you will await me here."
The lichdrow Dyrr dismissed his guards and proceeded via dimension door to the sitting room. There he found Yasraena and Nimor, who were occupied with trying not to speak to each other. Both seemed relieved when the lich stepped from the transdimensional doorway and into the room.
"It is time then?" Nimor asked.
Yasraena drew in a deep breath and held it, her eyes fixed on the lich.
"He awaits me at the Clawrift," Dyrr replied.
The matron mother exhaled slowly, and Nimor nodded.
"As good a place as any," the assassin said. "A hole in the ground … no sense damaging the merchandise we're paying so dearly to acquire."
"If by 'merchandise, " Yasraena hissed, "you mean Menzoberranzan the Mighty, you—"
"Yasraena," Dyrr interrupted, his voice like ice.
The matron mother pressed her teeth together and turned away from Nimor, who stifled a laugh.
"I am prepared, as always," Dyrr said to them both, "and I will leave at once."
Yasraena turned to Nimor and said, "Go with him."
The assassin raised an eyebrow, and Dyrr—if he had any blood he would have felt it boil.
"Surely," the lichdrow said to Yasraena, "you don't mean to imply that I might not achieve the necessary victory on my own. Surely you don't. . worry over my safety."
He locked his gaze on the young matron mother's eyes and held her there until she went gray, blinked, and turned away.
"You know that all of House Agrach Dyrr has the utmost confidence in you," she said, her voice low, stretched thin. She turned to look Nimor up and down. "But this is no time for personal vendettas. We have aligned ourselves with this. . whatever he is. Why not use him?"
Nimor smiled, and Dyrr was reminded of the carnivorous lizards that inhabited the wilds of the Underdark.
"You wouldn't know where to begin to use me," the assassin said.
Dyrr simply shrugged off the meaningless exchange. He began to cast a series of protective spells on himself, ignoring a few more tiresome minutes of Yasraena and Nimor's verbal scuffling. Dyrr blinked after having cast on himself a spell that would make unseen things visible to him. Nimor looked different but in ways that seemed incongruous, even impossible. The drow assassin was no drow, as Dyrr had known for some time, but for the first time Dyrr could see something that might have been wings.
The lichdrow let that matter fall to the side in favor of a series of carefully crafted contingencies. After all, Dyrr himself wasn't exactly a drow anymore either. If Nimor was something else than a drow, so be it—as long as the dark assassin remained useful.
Something that Yasraena said made Dyrr stop in the middle of an incantation.
"Will House Agrach Dyrr be evacuated from Menzoberranzan," she asked Nimor, "should things not go the lichdrow's way?"
Dyrr struck her. The slap echoed in the Spartan sitting room, and Yasraena fell in an undignified heap onto the worg-carpeted floor. The lich took some of her life-force with the slap—only a taste, but enough to turn her gray and leave her gasping for breath. She looked up at him from the floor with wide, terrified eyes.
Matron mother indeed, Dyrr thought.
Nimor made no move and barely even seemed to take notice. Finally, he looked down at Yasraena as she began to struggle to her feet.
"If the lichdrow gives his leave," said the assassin, "I would like to answer that question."
The cold gleam in Nimor's eyes was enough to convince Dyrr that the assassin would give the right answer. The lichdrow nodded.
"House Agrach Dyrr," Nimor said to Yasraena, who had managed to get to her feet though her knees shook, "lives or dies in Menzoberranzan."
Yasraena nodded, rubbing her face with trembling hands, and Dyrr caught Nimor's attention.
"Precisely, my friend," the lichdrow said, "as do you."
Nimor stepped toward him, squaring his shoulders. It could never have crossed the lichdrow's mind for a second to back down, and he didn't.
"If I believe you are soon to fall," Nimor said to Dyrr, "I will rescue you."
Dyrr wanted in that moment to kill Nimor Imphraezl, but he didn't. Instead, he laughed. He was still laughing as he teleported away.
The Clawrift, a natural rent in the bedrock, cut into the northern sections of Menzoberranzan east of Tier Breche. Gromph stood at the very edge of it, looking down into the blackness. Even his newly acquired, much younger eyes were incapable of seeing the bottom. Sorcere was behind him. In front of him, across the wide chasm, was the City of Spiders. The stalagmites and stalactites that had been carved into homes and places of business for the drow were aglow with faerie fire. He could see House Baenre all the way on the other side of the cavern and the odd flash of light that marked the continuing siege of House Agrach Dyrr.
The lichdrow appeared in midair over the mile-deep chasm and hung there, a dozen yards away or more. He appeared facing Gromph as if he knew exactly where the archmage would be.
"Ah, my young friend," the lichdrow called, his voice floating over the space between them and echoing into the Clawrift itself, "there you are."
"As promised," Gromph replied, bringing a string of spells to mind.
"So it has come to this, then?" Dyrr asked.
"The two of us," replied Gromph, "fighting to the death?"
The lich laughed, and Gromph knew the sound would have sent lesser drow running.
"Why, Dyrr?" the archmage asked, not really expecting an answer.
The lichdrow turned his palms up and lifted his arms to his sides, looking around, gesturing toward the city.
"What better reason," asked Dyrr, "than the City of Spiders herself? From here, the Underdark, and from there, the World Above."