When the meteors entered the area in which Gromph had affected gravity, their courses radically changed. They went everywhere, scattering, dipping, curving, colliding with each other, some even curving back at Dyrr.
One of the burning projectiles struck Gromph a glancing blow, sending him spinning as he fell. Pain blazed in his side, and without thinking he cast a spell. With only a few words and a quick gesture, Gromph's skin tightened, stretched—painfully—and took on the gleam, and the hardness, of cold black iron.
Very good, Master, the voice … it was Nauzhror. . said.
Gromph watched one of the meteors come right at him. He might have twisted out of the way, but he didn't care. The rock hit him square in the chest, exploding in a shower of yellow-orange sparks and sending a deafening clang rippling away from him in the air. He started to spin in a different direction and began to wonder why he hadn't hit the ceiling. As he whirled around he saw Dyrr slip through a dark hole in the sky that was rimmed with purple light like faerie fire. The lichdrow was passing through a dimension door of his own to avoid the meteors that had come careening back at him.
Spinning, falling, Gromph saw the jagged, stalagmite-cluttered ceiling racing toward him, closer and closer—only inches from oblivion, from the sweet release of death—
— and the spell effect ended.
Gromph hadn't made it permanent after all. Gravity went back to its normal place, and once again Gromph hung in midair for a second—less than a second maybe—his stomach feeling as if it were rotating in his belly. He started to fall again but toward the floor—toward the Clawrift, toward the light, toward the gate, toward wherever it was that Dyrr was trying to send him.
Gromph didn't care. He'd go, then. He'd go anywhere as long as he could get out of Menzoberranzan, where every stone, every stalactite and stalagmite, every glow of faerie fire, reminded him of his failure and despair.
Archmage,Nauzhror said. Gromph. . no.
Closing his eyes against the blinding sunlight, Gromph fell through the gate. Squinting, able only to see a vague play of shadow and light, he watched the gate close behind him. He was enveloped, enclosed in blinding light.
He hit the ground hard enough to break a leg, more than a few ribs, his left arm, and very nearly his neck. Quivering from pain and shock, blinded by the relentless sunlight, Gromph lay in a heap on a bed of what felt like some kind of moss. Blood roared in his ears, which were still ringing from the whine of the meteors and the rush of wind. Something in his chest popped, and his leg twitched out from under him, rolling him over onto his back.
Gromph put a hand over his face and realized that his broken arm was obeying his commands with only a little pain. His leg was numb and tingling, and he could actually feel his ribs popping back into place.
The ring, he thought again.
He almost wanted to laugh. It was his own fault after all, for insisting on wearing that cursed ring. He'd wanted to save his own life when he'd put it on, and it hadn't occurred to him then that all it would end up doing was keeping him alive in whatever blazing hell Dyrr had banished him to.
Gromph blinked his eyes open and found that he could actually see. The light was still uncomfortably bright, but something had moved between the brightest part of it and himself. The archmage blinked again, rubbed his eyes, and struggled to sit up. His face was still wet with tears, and he was breathing hard—panting like a slave at hard labor.
"Are you keerjaan?" a voice asked.
Gromph held out a hand, fending off the voice, and blinked some more.
It was all at once that he realized the thing that had come between him and the source of the light was a creature of some kind, and it was speaking to him.
"Am I. .?" the archmage started to answer.
He paused, rubbed his eyes, and found himself concentrating on a spell he'd long ago made permanent. It was a spell that allowed him to understand and be understood by anyone.
"Are you all right?" the strange creature asked, and Gromph understood.
He looked up and saw that he was surrounded by tiny, drowlike creatures—drowlike in that they were roughly the same shape, with two arms, two legs, and a head. There the similarity ended. The creatures that surrounded him had pale skin that was almost pink. Their hair was curly and an unsightly shade of brown-orange. Their skin was spattered with tiny brown spots. Plastered on their faces were the most childlike expressions of delighted curiosity. They hovered around him in a circle, several feet off the plant-covered ground, each of them borne aloft on a set of short feathered wings of the most garish colors.
Most of them were naked, though some wore robes of flowing white silk, and a couple wore breeches and fine silk blouses. They were no more than three feet tall.
"By all the howling expanse of the Abyss, Dyrr," Gromph murmured, curling his legs under him and resting his face in his hands, "where have you dropped me?"
Words began to pop into his mind like soap bubbles bursting:
Halflings.
Spells.
Crushing …
Crushing despair.
"Damn you," Gromph breathed, his body relaxing, his eyes drying, his mood lifting as if by magic.
It wasn't magic that was lifting it, he realized. It was magic that sank it in the first pace.
"Well played, traitor," Gromph said, looking up into the bright blue sky of the. . where was he? The World Above?
"Who are you talking to?" one of the winged halflings asked, tipping its head to one side like a confused pack lizard.
"Where am I?" Gromph asked the strange creature.
The archmage, not waiting for an answer, stood, brushing soot, dust, and pieces of the odd, needle-like plant life from his piwafwi. He leaned on his staff, but thanks to the ring he was feeling stronger with each breath.
"You don't know where you are?" one of the winged halflings—a female—asked.
"Tell me where I am, or I'll kill you and ask someone else," Gromph growled.
The halflings reacted, maybe with fear—Gromph couldn't be sure. They bobbed up and down and quivered.
"Are you a cambion?" one of them asked.
"I am a drow," Gromph replied, "and I asked you a question."
The winged halflings all looked at each other. Some smiled, some nodded—some smiled andnodded.
"How did you get here?" the female asked.
"I asked you a question," Gromph repeated.
The female smiled at him, and Gromph had to squint from the brightness of her perfect white teeth.
"How could you come here from. . where did you come from?" one of the males said.
"I am from Menzoberranzan," replied Gromph.
"Where's that?" asked another of the males.
"The Underdark," Gromph said, his crushing despair gone, being replaced by burning impatience. "Faerun. . Toril?"
"Faerun," one of the males gasped. The others looked at him and he said, "I was from there. From Luiren. Faerun is a continent, and Toril is a world. On the Prime."
The other winged halflings nodded and shrugged.
"So," the one who'd asked the question before repeated, "how could you come here from Menzoberranzan, the Underdark, Faerun, Toril, and not know where you are?"
"You're not even on the Prime anymore, drow," said the halfling who'd claimed to be from Faerun. Gromph could see contempt starting to manifest in that halfling's beady brown eyes. "You've come to the Green Fields, and you don't belong here."
"That's all right," Gromph said. "I'm not staying."
Looking over the vast landscape of gently rolling hills covered in a blanket of the tiny green, needle-like plants and punctuated with a scattering of rainbow-colored blossoms like delicate, paper-thin mushrooms, Gromph almost sank into despair again.