Archmage (23 page)

Catti-brie looked at the ceiling breach, the first stones fallen, and now the rest of the lava pouring out upon them.

Primordial lava, living flame.

She could feel its life-force, though it was no longer part of the greater beast, and she beckoned to it, helping it keep its separate life, fanning the flames to consciousness with her call and her own will.

“Well?” Bruenor said, not understanding what his daughter was doing and wanting an answer—and rightly so, for behind that lava pour came a horde of kobolds, all hoisting grenades.

“Tell her, elf!” Bruenor shouted to Drizzt, but the drow, understanding his wife better than Bruenor ever could, merely smiled and turned a confident look back to Bruenor, even offering the dwarf a knowing wink.

“She got ’em, don’t she?” Bruenor asked, and even as he did, the pile of stones and lava in the corridor between them and the kobolds stood up and swung around to face the diminutive monsters, gladly accepting, even being strengthened by, their volley of flaming grenades.

“No, Bruenor,” Drizzt corrected, “
We’ve
got them.”

The red-bearded dwarf grinned from ear to ear—there were only a hundred of the beasts, after all.

“Ye ready for some fun, elf?” the red-bearded dwarf roared. Then he banged his axe against his shield and called upon the axe to burst into flame.

Together, the pair ran off past Catti-brie, dodging and diving to get beyond her lava pet.

Drizzt let fly with Taulmaril once, twice, and thrice, and lines of kobolds fell dead as the arrows bored through them, hardly slowing. The drow slung the bow over his shoulder, drew forth his blades, and dodged and ducked and twisted to avoid the shower of explosive, lava-filled stones.

Bruenor just brought his shield up in front of them and weathered the beating. He slowed not at all, plowing into the front ranks of kobolds with wild abandon. He almost grabbed the cracked silver horn hanging around him to summon the spirit of Pwent, but stubbornly refused to give in to the call.

Every swipe of his axe sent a kobold flying left or right, and the roaring flames on the many-notched weapon cauterized the garish wounds even as Bruenor inflicted them. He glanced to his right only once, to see the elf’s blades working almost magically, flipping over and around any kobold weapon that neared, reaching forward, prodding and sticking, driving the creatures in front of him. And whenever a kobold stumbled, Drizzt chopped it down To Bruenor’s left came the lava elemental, not even slowing as it hit the first kobold ranks, just stomping through, ignoring the feeble weapons that could in no way harm its rocky flesh.

Bruenor shield-rushed a trio of enemies, too quick for them to escape. He felt their legs angle and buckle in front of him as he pressed forward, his axe, alive with flame, cutting a line in front of him.

“Durned good weapon,” Bruenor said, shaking his head, but then he cried out and nearly dropped the enchanted battle-axe when the flame leaping from it took definitive shape, like a living winged creature above the blade, and leaped out from his weapon to engulf a kobold that had broken free in desperate retreat.

Another burst of fire ignited upon his flame-tongued battle-axe, and Bruenor gasped in astonishment before finally solving the riddle. He glanced back over his right shoulder to see Catti-brie calmly pacing him and Drizzt, walking up behind them in all confidence, her eyes half-closed, her lips moving to enact another spell, or to speak with the fire, perhaps.

Farther to the right, Drizzt cut down another kobold, and another.

“Ye’ll not get more than meself!” Bruenor shouted at him, and turned to pursue the next nearest group. He paused, though, and shouted out for his girl. From a side passage came a host of kobolds, bearing down on Catti-brie, who looked all alone and vulnerable. Bruenor swung around, but knew he was too far to help her in time.

“Me girl!” he roared.

The cry of “Me girl!” sounded behind Catti-brie, but she paid it no heed, her focus solely on the sudden and unexpected threat. In came the lead kobold, spear leveled.

With only minimal movement, Catti-brie turned aside of that thrust and as the kobold stumbled by, she chopped it on the back of the neck with her staff, sending it stumbling and tumbling. And so great was her concentration that she continued her spell and was still able to come up and turn left to face the next attacker, leaping inside its swing so that it could not bring its sword to bear.

With one hand, Catti-brie grabbed the back of its scraggly fur, yanking its snapping maw away, while she pointed with her staff tip, the sapphire flaring, and enacted her spell.

The area right in front of her, under the feet of the charging kobolds, slickened with magical grease, and the creatures suddenly were stumbling all about, flailing and falling.

And then, before Catti-brie could deal with the kobold she was grappling, she felt as if a swarm of bees had entered the fray, and indeed that proved an apt description as Athrogate and Ambergris, Fist and Fury, and Connerad Brawnanvil came pounding by, throwing kobolds aside as easily as a heavy stone could crash through a barrier of thin parchment.

The magic of Athrogate’s right-hand morningstar, coated with oil of impact, exploded with a tremendous crash and sent a kobold flying far away, while the dwarf’s other morningstar swept across to crush the skull of a second monster. Beside him, Ambergris worked with great sweeping strikes, launching kobolds into the air two at a time with her huge mace.

But neither of these great warriors, amazing as they were, could hold Catti-brie’s attention as fully as the two young female dwarves from Citadel Felbarr. Connerad rushed up to Catti-brie’s side, but he, too, said nothing, and didn’t bother to blink as he watched the deadly play of Fist and Fury.

Both carried swords, neither bothered with a shield. They came up on a pair of kobolds and one of the sisters—Catti-brie wasn’t sure which was which!—struck out to the side, distracting the kobold in front of her sister, who then rolled around and dived back down behind the legs of the kobolds.

Ahead came the first dwarf with a vicious burst, and the kobolds, reflexively retreating, tripped over the now-kneeling dwarf behind them, and that dwarf popped up fast and powerfully as they pitched over, launching them up higher into the air. She turned, her back to the kobolds, her hand extended, and her sister took it and she yanked her sister by, launching her like a living missile into the receding mob. In came the other dwarf, and side by side the Fellhammer sisters worked as one, sword left up high, sword right down low, so that the kobold between that vise couldn’t duck, couldn’t jump and couldn’t block.

The leading dwarf turned and reached, and her sister took her hand and now it was her turn to fly into the throng, laughing all the while.

And the Fellhammer sisters caught up to Bruenor, and the three moved like intimate old friends, and fought like intimate old friends, who had trained together for all of their lives.

Like a field of tall wheat in front of the sweeping scythe, the kobolds fell all around them.

Behind Catti-brie and Connerad came the rest of the dwarves, turned by Bruenor’s daring charge, shamed now and determined to punish those monsters that had chased them off.

And determined to prove themselves worthy to their king.

There was an old saying in the Realms that “not a dwarf would-could fight like a dwarf angered, but not a dwarf would-could bite like a dwarf shamed.”

So it was then, to the great pain of the kobold clan, swept away in a living tidal wave of fury.

Surrounded now by a wall of dwarves, Catti-brie focused once more on the tendrils of the primordial that coursed around her. She sensed the building, concentrated living energy back among the kobold ranks, and understood it to be bits of living flame encased in a multitude of grenades.

The woman called to those flames through her ring, beckoning to them to awaken, to grow stronger, to extend their reach and break free from their tombs.

In heartbeats, popping noises resounded among the kobold ranks, tiny primordial flames bursting from their encasement, exploding in the midst of the kobold grenadiers.

In short order, the whole of the kobold horde was in full retreat, a huge magma elemental in close pursuit, and a host of tiny flames chasing after that beast in hungry pursuit of the kobold flesh they would bite and burn.

D
ahlia ran her fingers along the smooth metal of Kozah’s Needle, trying to use the tangible feel of her weapon to bring her back to stability, to a time when she knew a better life.

Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, she believed that she had once known that better life.

She thought of running down a hill, toward a rocky gorge, a drow—a drow friend!—outdistancing her, leaping with amazing balance and grace from stone to rise to stone.

She felt the wind on her face—the wind! She felt herself tumbling, but it was not frightening, for she controlled this movement, her brilliant vault bringing her around to do battle . . .

“How many tendays?” a voice said, and for a moment, Dahlia thought it a memory, until the voice—High Priestess Saribel—spoke again. “How many tendays have you left to draw breath,
darthiir
?” she asked, and Dahlia opened her eyes to see the woman, resplendent in her spidery laced gown, all purple and black, beautiful and deadly all at once. So beautiful, so alluring. That was part of their magic, and how could Dahlia resist?

How could she think herself worthy?

“My husband is alive,” Saribel said, and Dahlia couldn’t begin to understand what that might even mean, let alone who Saribel might be talking about.

“Tiago Baenre,” Saribel said, and Dahlia wondered if that name should mean something to her.

An image of mighty Szass Tam flashed in her mind, and she nearly swooned from the overwhelming, almost divine power she felt from him, as well as the incredible malignancy—and Dahlia was sure that she should know who that was. Alarms sounded in her thoughts, echoing and winding, wrapping back under the pile of writhing worms that was her train of thought.

“Tiago has been found, alive and well with that Doum’wielle creature,” Saribel said, and she might as well have been talking in the tongue of myconids, for now even the words made no sense to Dahlia.

“When Tiago returns, we together will claim this House Do’Urden for our own. We will be fast rid of you, witch, and I will claim the title of matron mother. Matron Mother Baenre has come to trust me now, and needs not your echo on the Ruling Council, when my own voice would be so much more helpful.”

She moved closer, and Dahlia thought she should lash out at the drow, though she couldn’t figure out quite how to make her arms do that.

“We will make of you a drider, lovely Dahlia,” Saribel said, almost cooing the words, and she raised her hand to gently stroke the elf’s face. Lightly, teasingly. And how beautiful was she!

Dahlia closed her eyes, the energy of Saribel’s touch filling her body, reverberating through her as a moment of pure sensation and growing ecstasy. She heard herself breathing more heavily, lost herself in the vibrations of the touch, so soft and teasing, moving within her and multiplying.

Saribel slapped her across the face, and in a moment of clarity Dahlia thought that fitting. So beautiful, so alluring.

Yet so horribly wretched and dangerous.

“I will taunt you and torture you for a hundred years,” Saribel promised. “When my husband Tiago returns with the head of Drizzt Do’Urden, your time of comfort will end.”

Dahlia couldn’t make out much of that, but that name! Oh, that name!

Drizzt Do’Urden.

Drizzt Do’Urden!

She knew that name, knew that drow, her lover, her love!

She had felt so safe in his arms, and so wild under his touch. She had found peace there . . . Effron! He had brought her to Effron, her son, her child she thought lost . . .

A tidal wave of emotions rolled over Dahlia then, a flood of memories, all jumbled of course, but relaying so many different emotions all too clearly. She burst into tears, shoulders bobbing in sobs. They had done this. These drow had murdered Effron!

Saribel laughed at her, cackled wildly, taking great pleasure, in thinking her words had terrified the elf.

But Dahlia paid her no heed, had not even recognized many of her words, the sounds nonsensically arranged in Dahlia’s ears.

None of them mattered anyway, except for two: Drizzt. Do’Urden.

“Drizzt Do’Urden,” she silently mouthed, and she held on desperately to those sounds, to that word if it was a word, to that name if it was a name.

She knew it mattered.

Through all the winding worms within her thoughts, Dahlia became confident that she knew that the name—yes, it was name!—and that it, Drizzt Do’Urden, mattered. So she held it and repeated it as a mantra, a litany against the winding courses of a broken mind.

“What have you done?” Matron Mother Mez’Barris Armgo screamed at Matron Mother Baenre. The matron mother of the Second House trembled with rage and jumped up from her seat at the council table. “Demons! Too many to battle! Should they all come against any one House—even your own, foolish Matron Mother!—that House will surely perish!”

“Why would they come against any one House?” asked High Priestess Sos’Umptu Baenre from the back of the table.

Matron Mother Mez’Barris swung around to face Sos’Umptu, her eyes narrowing in a clear threat. She knew that Sos’Umptu had been prompted to make that response by the wretched Quenthel.

“Indeed,” Quenthel said, following up on that very point. “No one of us controls the demons. Every House has brought forth some—every House seated here has summoned a major fiend to their control.”

“Arach-Tinilith, too,” Sos’Umptu added, clearly aiming the remark at Mez’Barris. “Our many priestesses have reveled in summoning demons now, with all limitations removed.”

All around the table of the Ruling Council, the other matron mothers sucked in their breath at that. Even those Houses of Menzoberranzan most proficient in the arts of summoning, like House Melarn and House Mizzrym, could not hope to match the sheer volume of demons that Arach-Tinilith might bring forth.

Mez’Barris studied her peers, knowing that they were all only then beginning to understand the danger. This demon orgy orchestrated by Matron Mother Baenre could doom any of them, could doom all of them.

Matron Miz’ri Mizzrym rose up then and began to speak, but Quenthel cut her short.

“Sit down! Both of you!” the matron mother ordered. “Pray you, sisters, seek guidance from Lolth, and hold your foolish words, else my scourge will take the tongues from your mouths! We return Menzoberranzan to the early days of the city, when demons shared the boulevards with drow and Lady Lolth was ascendant and pleased.”

“Many drow have been murdered by the instruments of the Spider Queen,” Mez’Barris reminded her.

“We cull the weak,” Matron Mother Baenre answered without hesitation. “And we will be stronger for our vigilance and our experience. As with your weapons master, Malagdorl, who slew Marilith herself.” She paused and flashed a wicked grin, before adding, “Or so you claim.”

Mez’Barris felt her nostrils flaring, her eyes widening with pure outrage. Before she could argue, though, the chamber door opened, and in walked Archmage Gromph, and behind him, in slithered Marilith. Not a marilith, but Marilith herself, without question.

Mez’Barris sank back into her chair, her jaw hanging open.

“This is how it was in the earliest days of Menzoberranzan,” Matron Mother Baenre said calmly, matter-of-factly, for there was no need to press the embarrassment of Matron Mother Mez’Barris. “And so it shall be again. Look to your prayers, sisters. The Spider Queen is pleased, do not doubt.”

Mez’Barris slowly surveyed the table. She saw the surprise, the doubts aimed her way, certainly. She saw the trepidation, even fear, on the faces of these high priestesses who had attained such glory and power, which now, so suddenly, seemed so fragile. They were looking to her now, it seemed to Mez’Barris, and plaintively in the midst of this terrifying confusion, as if pleading with her to serve as some sort of balance to the seemingly out-of-control Matron Mother Baenre.

Matron Mother Mez’Barris covertly scanned the room and met the stares of each matron mother, save Quenthel Baenre and that filthy Dahlia creature. Even in the eyes of Matron Mother Baenre’s known allies, Mez’Barris noted some measure of that plea for help. The matron mother of the Second House took heart in that moment. In her insatiable desire to gain full control, perhaps Quenthel Baenre had gripped too tightly.

Mez’Barris let a sly grin appear on her thin lips. She could do as she had hoped now, she was certain. The others, even Quenthel’s allies, desired to send a strong message to the matron mother, to back her away from this maddeningly dangerous course. Would they go so far as to covertly join with Mez’Barris in her plans to overwhelm House Do’Urden?

Yes they would, Mez’Barris believed, particularly whenever she directed another’s gaze to the matron
darthiir
and noted the immediate sour frown that ugly view elicited of the various matron mothers.

That abomination, the
darthiir
matron mother of House Do’Urden, would soon perish.

And Matron Mother Quenthel would be taught her limitations.

Lightning flashed and fires burned in the Stenchstreets, and high above near the cavern’s ceiling, and now even in the Qu’ellarz’orl.

Gromph Baenre watched the mounting fight between demons with mild disdain. He was hardly surprised—you couldn’t put such numbers of chaotic demons together in one area and not expect wild brawls of magic, tooth, and claw. And there were hundreds of demons in Menzoberranzan now, not even counting the thousands of manes the larger beasts had brought in to serve as fodder.

Gromph moved from his balcony at Sorcere back into his private chambers, for even from the high perch of that tower upon Tier Breche, the archmage couldn’t properly witness the mounting carnage.

He waved his hand over a still pool of water in a magical basin, calling forth the images.

He blew a sigh of disgust. Every street, every way, every side region of Menzoberranzan was alive with fighting, it seemed, demon against demon. A gang of glabrezu rampaged across the island housing the city’s rothé, the huge demons cutting through the Underdark cattle the way predatory fish might chomp through a swirling school of prey.

Behind the archmage, Marilith hissed with excitement, the view of the carnage teasing her murderous sensibilities. Gromph glanced back, thinking to admonish her, to keep her in line, but she looked past him and gasped once more at some new and greater event in the scrying pool, no doubt.

Gromph spun back just in time to see a swarm of chasme drop upon the glabrezu. In waded another marilith, along with a pair of larger nalfeshnee, and then a monstrous goristro.

This was Matron Mother Quenthel’s force.

“A goristro,” he muttered, shaking his head. Only certain balors and the demon lords themselves were more powerful. To summon such a creature was always a danger. To summon one and send it forth into battle even more so.

But to summon a goristro and send it out beside a trio of major demons, and with a swarm of chasme besides?

“Madness,” Gromph muttered.

The glabrezu gang fled before the superior force, splashing back across the small lake, chasme diving at them every step of the way.

Gromph shifted the image in his scrying pool to a massive brawl right outside the Barrison Del’Armgo compound. Hundreds of manes and other minor demons roiled about the boulevard, clawing each other to shreds. Here, too, chasme buzzed and bit, and larger beasts prowled the shadows and the edge of the battle, no doubt directing their disposable minions.

The pool brightened suddenly in the flash of a massive fireball, followed by a series of roiling balls of fire in the air above the fight. Flamestrikes shot down, turning manes into living candles, the humanoid demons, too stupid to know the pain of the flames engulfing them, running on to ravenous battle, until they fell, one by one, into smoking husks.

Gromph understood then the source of the magic and focused his attention on the Barrison Del’Armgo compound. There stood Mez’Barris’s wizards and priestesses, throwing forth their destructive magic into the boulevard beyond. Lightning flashed and manes died. Another fireball erupted, and flamestrikes followed.

The archmage shook his head once more.

“I wish to go and fight,” Marilith said from behind him.

“You will stay here,” he answered without even bothering to turn around. He heard her hiss then, and was surprised by it, for surely Marilith knew better than to hint at her displeasure with the commands of the one controlling her, particularly when that one was Gromph Baenre.

A wave of the archmage’s hand dismissed the images in the scrying pool, and he slowly turned to face his demonic servant. She stood there, towering twice his height, her naked, human-like upper body glistening with sweat, breasts heaving, and with swords held in all six of her hands.

“The battles are glorious,” Marilith answered. She seemed apologetic, but Gromph felt the hair on the back of his neck standing up, as if in warning.

“You are here at my call,” he said.

“Yes, Master.”

“Master . . .” he echoed. “Your master. Your master while you walk the ways of Menzoberranzan. Do not question me.”

Marilith bowed her head and turned her blades down to the floor.

“If I dismiss you, you will once more be banished, to serve out your century in the Abyss,” Gromph reminded her. “Only I know the secret now of twining the two forms of magic to break the ancient covenant.”

Marilith nodded. “Yes, Master.”

“Is that what you want?”

The demon looked up at him, her face a mask of alarm. “No, Master! Tell me who to kill, I beg!”

Gromph laughed. “In time,” he promised. “In time.”

A movement outside caught his attention, and he focused on the view beyond his balcony again just in time to see a ball of flaming pitch go soaring through the air and drop from sight. He moved to the edge of the balcony and saw that it had landed among the combatants in front of Barrison Del’Armgo’s gate, though the angle of the shot showed him that it had not come from inside Mez’Barris’s compound.

Another House had come to the aid of the Second House.