“ ‘With abacus, by architect, by carpenter, and mason,’ ” he recited, sweeping his arm out with dramatic flourish, and at the same time tapping his House insignia to enact a spell of levitation and lift himself conveniently and prudently from the castle floor, he reiterated and elaborated his song:

With all the tools and knowledge of structural design,

“For shelter most beloved, for love of hearth and home

“To build your private castle, to whom would you consign?”

Act now, you peacock! Kimmuriel screamed in his thoughts, which only made Jarlaxle smile all the wider.

“Might I suggest that all the tools

“The mundane numbers and physical rules

“For the truly brilliant must remain

“No more than province of common fools.”

“A castle, and warmth, a true abode,

“For when one truly seeks a home,

“The wise call upon the greater souls

“Who wile their days with a nose in a tome.”

“What foolishness is this?” the guard on the stairs demanded.

“Foolishness?” Jarlaxle echoed as if wounded. “My friend, this is no such thing.” A yelp from behind him told Jarlaxle that the door guards had reached the edge of his pit and had glanced in. “Nay, this … this is Caer Gromph!”

Caer Gromph, the last two words of the incantation, rang with a different resonance than the playful mercenary’s chanting verse, for they spoke not to the audience, but to the magical cube Jarlaxle had tossed. Upon absorbing those command words, spoken in that manner, the magic of the cube awakened. The ground beneath their feet began to tremble, though of course the floating Jarlaxle remained unperturbed above it, and Castle Draygo began to shake as Caer Gromph’s roots reached into the floor, as the cube transformed into an adamantine tower, designed to resemble the stalagmite towers of the drow Houses of Menzoberranzan.

Up it rose, and widened, crushing and splintering the floor and substructure of Castle Draygo with its roots, blowing out the wall and prodding up under the balcony as its unyielding walls stretched, its adamantine tip piercing the ceiling of the grand room nearly thirty feet above the floor. The Shadovar guards lurched and tumbled under the thunder of the magical creation. One of the pair peeked over the lip of the portable hole and tumbled in, and the other soon followed as a yochlol-like tentacle reached up and aided him in his descent, accompanied by a shriek from the guard and a hearty “bwahaha” from the supposed handmaiden.

A thing of beauty was Caer Gromph. Lined with balconies and a circular stair running its length, top-to-bottom, and edged in faerie fire accents of purple, red, and blue, it seemed as much a work of abstract art as a fortress. But a fortress it was, complete with lines of arrow slits and a magical gate inside, and the moment the construct expanded, Bregan D’aerthe archers poured through the magical portal inside and to their protected posts. Before the many Shadovar had even pinpointed the source of the earthquake, crossbow quarrels flew forth from those arrow slits, coated with that insidious drow poison.

One who was not cut down by either the shaking or the volley was the guard holding Taulmaril, and indeed, because of the way the balcony had buckled, the male shade found himself protected from the hidden drow archers. Regaining his footing, he leveled the powerful bow and took deadly aim at Jarlaxle, who floated in place hovering just above the floor below and watched the swordsman on the now-tilted stairs.

He would never see the enchanted arrow coming, the archer knew, and he pulled back and let fly, the arrow flying true to the hollow in Jarlaxle’s breast.

Draygo Quick was not amused as he tumbled backward down the circular stairs of his private tower. He collected himself quickly, hearing the doors above banging open and the frantic calls of his fast-approaching acolytes.

“Lord Draygo, what is it?” one cried, coming around the bend above him.

What, indeed, Draygo Quick wondered? What had that wretched drow done to him? Done to his castle?

The old warlock spun around and ran off the way he had come with surprising agility and energy for one of his age. He had barely gotten off the tower stairs and through the door to the anteroom, though, when he was met by another of his warlock acolytes, coming the other way, his face drained of blood, his eyes wide with horror.

“A … a tower, my lord!” the man screamed.

“The tower?” Draygo asked and glanced back the way he had come.

The acolyte shook his head frantically. “A tower!” he corrected, and he hustled back through the room’s other door, opening the way for Lord Draygo to see the black adamantine wall of Caer Gromph.

“By the gods,” Draygo Quick breathed. “Invasion.”

He called his acolytes together, bade them to form as one on and around the stairs, and to defend to the death his tower and quarters. Then he sprinted off, back up the tower stair, rushing to his private rooms to put out the call to war. He burst through the door to his inner room, and there he froze, stricken with shock.

For flanking the pedestal on which rested the cage of Guenhwyvar were two most unexpected and unannounced visitors, tall humanoids with three-fingered hands and heads that resembled the bulbous ugliness of an octopus.

One turned his way, those tentacles waggling, arms waving, and a blast of psionic energy assaulted the warlock and jumbled his thoughts. He tried to fight through, instinctively enacting his mental defenses—and indeed, the inner willpower of the powerful old warlock proved superior to the attack. As he unwound the scene before him, his vision refocusing, he found a second shock, and a second accompanying psionic blast, to see his prized glowing cage break apart and Guenhwyvar, six hundred pounds of feline power, appearing atop the pedestal, which toppled under her weight. Draygo Quick surely recognized the visceral hatred in the panther’s stare, and when she sprang, the warlock thought himself doomed.

But Guenhwyvar dissipated into mist in mid-leap, and that mist swirled and blew away, taking the beleaguered panther to her Astral home at long last.

Both illithids turned on Draygo Quick, and in the hands of the second, he saw the panther figurine. Both waved their ugly tentacles his way, and both similarly disappeared, into the ether.

Draygo Quick fell back, overwhelmed and terrified, full of fear and full of rage.

From the breaking railings came the dragonnettes, from the cracking ceiling came the castle gargoyles, and from the tower, in response, came a hail of drow fireballs, lightning bolts, magic missiles, and crossbow bolts.

Down below that level, the lightning missile slammed into Jarlaxle’s chest, the sparkling explosion lighting the room in a blinding flash, and before the drow’s vision had even recovered from that glare, a second hit right beside the first.

Jarlaxle looked down at his chest, then back at the archer, now with a third arrow leveled his way.

“You shoot well,” he congratulated, and the Shadovar, clearly confused and shocked and horrified, let fly again, and again his aim was true.

And again, Jarlaxle took the hit without any apparent ill effects. Indeed, he wasn’t even paying attention at that moment, reveling in the efficiency of his army, and the macabre beauty of smoking and burning forms of tiny dragons spinning down to the floor.

In leaped the swordsman, Twinkle up high and glowing fiercely. He brought it across in a powerful sweep, slashing the distracted Jarlaxle across the face.

But not a mark, not a speck of blood, showed in the blade’s deadly wake.

“Have you ever heard of a kinetic barrier?” the drow asked innocently.

The shade howled and lifted the blade to strike again, and Jarlaxle made no move to defend. The blade struck him just an instant after he merely touched the shade guard, and in that touch, he released all of the killing energy of the three bowshots and the first scimitar strike that had been captured by the kinetic barrier Kimmuriel had enacted over him.

The shade’s face fell in half. His chest exploded, once, twice, thrice, and he flew away behind a crimson cloud of his own spraying blood.

Twinkle did strike, but with minimal force, but still Jarlaxle was much relieved to realize that Kimmuriel still had his protective barrier in place.

The drow mercenary turned to the archer, a wry grin on his face. Jarlaxle dropped his levitation, touched down, leaped away and called forth the floating spell once more, his stride lifting him toward the distant balcony.

Frantically and foolishly, the archer fired off another shot, and another, and Jarlaxle felt the energy mounting around him once more.

A Shadovar body flew up out of the pit and plopped onto the floor. The second dead door guard followed closely, and both had been wrapped by one end of a fine elven cord.

Now the corpses served as anchors and out of the portable hole pit came Athrogate, no longer in the guise of a yochlol. The ferocious dwarf got his feet under him just as the castle’s outside door banged open and more guards charged in.

“Taked ye long enough!” the dwarf roared in glee, his morningstars sweeping across to send the nearest shade flying away.

Athrogate grunted a moment later, though, and looked down as his arm, and the handcrossbow bolt impaled there.

“Hmm,” he muttered. “Durned drow.”

The air around him buzzed with more such darts whipping all around, most striking home on those Shadovar standing before him.

“Poison,” slurred the closest, and Athrogate regarded him to see a bolt sticking out of the shade’s cheek, just under the poor fool’s left eye.

The dwarf reached up and tore the bolt free of the Shadovar’s face, flipped it over, and put it in his mouth, where he sucked on it hard. Wearing an inquisitive expression, he tossed the bolt aside to the floor and swirled the venom around in his mouth, nodding his agreement with the assessment.

“Aye,” he said after he spat out the poison and a wad of spittle. “And I’m bettin’ that one hurt.”

The Shadovar fell over to the floor, fast asleep. So did several others, but a few, at least, managed to fight through the waves of drow poison. Still, the poison slowed their movements and made their blocks and parries quite sluggish, and so Athrogate, who had of course built up a complete resistance to drow sleep poison in his decades beside Jarlaxle, waded through them with wild abandon, swatting them aside with his powerful morningstars.

Behind him, the drow warriors came forth from their fortress, though none moved to join the wild and unpredictable dwarf as he gleefully executed his own brand of carnage.

“Truly?” Jarlaxle asked incredulously as the archer put up Taulmaril for a point blank shot at him. He had already absorbed three other arrows on his journey to face this shade and showed no ill-effects.

The poor shade trembled so badly that the arrow slipped off the bow.

“Just give it over,” Jarlaxle said, holding out his hand. He noted, then, that the Shadovar wore, too, a fabulous mithral shirt he had seen before. “Oh, and my friend’s shirt, as well.”

To emphasize his point, Jarlaxle turned to meet the swoop of a gargoyle, and released all of the stored kinetic energy into the creature, which verily exploded under the weight of the blow, leaving no more than a burst of tiny stones flying around to shower the balcony and the room below.