Archmage (6 page)

Bruenor started to argue, but the halfling’s words turned that into a sputter, then a laugh.

And so they ate and so they drank, and many cheers and flagons of ale were lifted into the night air, and many promises that they would see each other again, in Gauntlgrym likely. This was no good-bye, they all declared, but merely a temporary parting of the ways.

How many have made those often futile promises?

“Are we disturbing your private gathering?” came an unexpected voice. Jarlaxle walked into the firelight, flanked by the sisters Tazmikella and Ilnezhara.

“We’ve room for more,” Drizzt said quickly, before Bruenor could protest. He slid along the log he had taken as a bench, making room for the newcomers.

“A drink?” Drizzt asked, looking to Bruenor, who scowled for a heartbeat, but produced another flagon.

Ilnezhara handed the first flagon along to Jarlaxle and explained, “I prefer blood,” as Bruenor reached behind his shield once more. The dwarf stopped and stared at her.

“You walk openly among the dwarves and others,” Drizzt said quietly to Jarlaxle.

“The war is over and so I have come to try to mend relations between the races, ostensibly,” the drow mercenary replied and took a sip of the ale. “Though, of course, I am here as a spy for Matron Mother Baenre, to whom I will, of course, provide a complete accounting.”

Wulfgar bristled and Bruenor hopped up at that declaration.

To which Jarlaxle merely shrugged and smiled, and looked to Drizzt. “My use of ‘of course’ two times in one sentence did not properly relay my sarcasm?”

“It’s been a long year,” Drizzt replied.

“Ah,” Jarlaxle agreed. “Well, good dwarf and man-giant, do be at ease,” he said. “I will tell Menzoberranzan nothing more than that which they already know. The dwarves won, the orcs fled, the human kingdom will be built anew, and for all of our—of
their
—efforts, this war Menzoberranzan prodded onto the Silver Marches has done little more than strengthen the bonds of the alliance of Luruar.”

“That’s what ye’re meaning to tell ’em, eh?” asked Bruenor.

“Aye,” Jarlaxle answered. “In exchange for a small favor.”

Bruenor straightened at that, and cast a sour look Drizzt’s way, but Drizzt held up his hand, begging the dwarf for patience.

“I have two associates, both known to you, who are intrigued at the prospect of your intended reclamation of Gauntlgrym,” the drow explained.

“Them two?” Bruenor asked, pointing to the sisters.

“Try not to be so foolish,” Tazmikella said.

“Good dwarf, we are already long bored,” Ilnezhara agreed.

“Not them,” Jarlaxle explained, “but dwarves, including the newest member of Bregan D’aerthe. Both have asked for a leave, that they might march beside you to your homeland, and given all that they have done, I would be a terrible leader and a worse friend to refuse them.” He lifted his hand and motioned, and into the firelight hopped Ambergris and Athrogate, holding hands and grinning hopefully.

“Ye want me to take these two?” Bruenor asked.

“Powerful allies,” Jarlaxle said.

Bruenor seemed at a loss. He looked from the drow to the dwarves to Drizzt, then back and forth again. “Aye, I can’no deny the truth o’ that."

“I been granted back me old home o’ Felbarr,” said Athrogate.

“And meself can return to Adbar and all’s forgiven,” added Amber Gristle O’Maul, of the Adbar O’Mauls. “And we’re owing ye all for that.”

“Aye, and we’d rather be takin’ the road aside ye,” Athrogate said. “Fore’er more.”

“And what of yourself?” Drizzt asked Jarlaxle.

The mercenary shrugged. “I’ve to report to the matron mother, of course, and then I have another road before me.”

“He’s off to find Effron, don’t ye know?” Ambergris interjected. “Aye, to find the poor boy and give him a hug for meself.”

“Do we have an agreement?” Jarlaxle asked.

“And if I’m sayin’ no?” Bruenor asked.

“Then I will report the same tale to the matron mother, but you will have lost a pair of fine and powerful companions.”

Bruenor looked to Drizzt. “What says yerself, elf?”

“In a fight, those are two dwarves I would want on my side.”

“Good enough, then, and glad to have ye,” Bruenor said to the pair, who grinned all the wider, bowed, and moved back out into the darkness between the campfires.

“And now I must be off,” Jarlaxle said, draining his flagon, tipping his cap, and rising. “Farewell and not good-bye, for I’ve no doubt that our roads will cross again, my friends.” He started to bow, but Tazmikella grabbed him by the sleeve and with frightening ease pulled him back down to sit beside her. She began whispering in his ear, and pointed across the firelight to Wulfgar.

Jarlaxle laughed.

The big man scowled.

“My friend here is wondering if you are in need of a fine bed this night,” Jarlaxle said.

The stunned Wulfgar seemed at a loss, muttering “umm” repeatedly.

“She’s a dragon, boy,” Bruenor said to him.

“Why does everyone keep saying that as if it is a bad thing?” Jarlaxle asked. He looked to Wulfgar and grinned slyly. “Enticing, yes?”

But Regis answered before Wulfgar could. “Aleina is not far, and she is expecting you,” he reminded, and the growing smirk disappeared from the big man’s face.

“I . . . with sincere gratitude . . .” Wulfgar stammered, but the sisters laughed at him and stood up, hoisting Jarlaxle between them and tugging him away.

“I will have to suffer greater trials for your absence,” Jarlaxle said with feigned regret. He tried to bow again, but was off the ground, lifted over the log, and easily slung over Ilnezhara’s shoulder.

“Alas,” he said with great lament, and he awkwardly managed to tip his outrageous hat.

“Dragons . . .” Catti-brie said incredulously, and she looked to Wulfgar and shook her head with disgust.

“It does present an intriguing . . .” Drizzt kidded, and he ducked fast from Catti-brie’s good-natured slap.

To Wulfgar, though, there remained a look of clear interest as he watched the trio depart. He considered the beautiful sisters and what he, surprisingly, found to be an intriguing offer. And he looked, too, at Jarlaxle, envying the carefree, self-serving drow.

Had Jarlaxle found what Wulfgar sought?

Horns blew and the cadence of a drumbeat was matched perfectly by the thousand dwarves of Citadel Felbarr, stomping across the Surbrin Bridge, escorted away by the cheering of their Battlehammer kin.

Bruenor as they watched Emerus Warcrown depart.

“He’s a good man, is me friend Emerus,” Bruenor replied solemnly.

“He’ll be generous when we meet at the year’s turn. Many who’re marchin’ beside us, elf, will be from Citadel Felbarr, don’t ye doubt."

“I don’t,” Drizzt agreed.

Another horn blew, this one to the south, and Drizzt noted that Bruenor swallowed hard at this one, the muster call from the Knights in Silver.

Drizzt, too, breathed a long sigh.

“Me girl’s with ’em,” Bruenor remarked. “Let’s go and say our goodbyes . . .” His voice trailed off and the sturdy dwarf bit back a chortle.

He looked up at Drizzt and nodded, and the two started off. They found Catti-brie with Wulfgar and Regis a few moments later, Aleina and Brother Afafrenfere standing off to the side, waiting patiently. Bruenor began pulling flagons of ale out from behind his shield the moment he arrived, handing them around to the other four, then lifting his own up high.

“To the Companions of the Hall,” the dwarf said in a strong and loud voice—loud enough so that many nearby turned to regard the gathering of the five friends. “If ne’er we’re to meet again, then know in yer hearts that few’ve knowed a friendship as deep.”

Regis winced at that, and it seemed to Drizzt as if he was on the verge of breaking, perhaps renouncing his intended journey to Aglarond. “We’ll meet again,” Drizzt said to assure them all, particularly the halfling, though in truth, he doubted his own words.

“Aye, in this world or the next,” Catti-brie confidently added. Drizzt noted that this time both Wulfgar and Regis winced. He understood.

They toasted and drank, toasted some more and drank some more, though the horns to muster were growing more frequent and more urgent in the south. Finally Aleina Brightlance walked over. “We are off,” she told Wulfgar and Regis.

Hugs and kisses, and the five left, all with tears in their eyes. When he hugged Drizzt, Regis whispered, “I have to go” into the drow’s ear, as if asking permission.

“I know,” the drow said.

And so they did, moving down the riverbank to the south with the soldiers of Silverymoon and Everlund, leaving Drizzt and Catti-brie and Bruenor to contemplate their long road ahead without the pair.

M
atron Mother Zeerith Xorlarrin joined hands with her mighty nephew, the wizard Tsabrak, and began her spellcasting. Similarly, the wizard launched into his own casting, the two twining their magical energies into a unique spell, both arcane and divine.

Across the altar in the primordial chamber of Q’Xorlarrin, High Priestess Kiriy, Zeerith’s oldest daughter, held her breath in anticipation. She had never seen this ritual performed before, though she was well versed in necromancy.

“Dwardermey,” Tsabrak whispered a long while later, evoking the name of one of the fallen drow in the Silver Marches.

“Dwardermey,” Matron Mother Zeerith echoed, and they both repeated the call many times.

The body came from inside the stone block altar itself, facial features forming within the stone, and growing, rising. Then it was separate from the altar, the body of a slain dark elf, torn by swords and axes. “Kiriy!” Matron Mother Zeerith said sharply, and the high priestess realized that she was taking too long. She put aside her astonishment and launched into a simple spell to animate the dead.

A few moments later, the corpse of Dwardermey Xorlarrin sat up on the altar, then stiffly shifted to the side, legs hanging over the altar slab. High Priestess Kiriy looked to Matron Mother Zeerith, who nodded, and so Kiriy commanded the zombie to stand and walk. The unthinking zombie did walk, directly away from the high priestess, as ordered. It did not pause when it reached the lip of the primordial’s pit. It made not a sound when it pitched over the edge, tumbling through the swirl of the trapped water elementals to land on the lava skin of the godlike beast. The primordial drew Dwardermey in.

Tsabrak blew a great sigh. “This will take us tendays,” he said. “I am exhausted already, as are you.”

“We must,” Matron Mother Zeerith replied. “In this duty, we will salvage the goodwill of the Spider Queen.”

High Priestess Kiriy held her tongue, unsure that the exercise of summoning the corpses from the distant battlefield and properly disposing of them would do any such thing. But they had to try, she knew, for she understood as her mother understood: Lady Lolth was not pleased with their failures in the Silver Marches.

Perhaps that was why the dark elves killed in that war were so disproportionately Xorlarrin warriors.

So now they would perform their tedious duty, in the hopes that they would garner some measure of forgiveness or clemency from the merciless Spider Queen. Such a task would consume them for hours each day, and was no inexpensive feat. Tsabrak had to destroy a valuable gemstone for each summoning.

Perhaps it would be easier, Kiriy thought—but surely did not say—if Matron Mother Zeerith simply sent Tsabrak to the Silver Marches to physically reclaim the fallen dark elves of Q’Xorlarrin.

But of course, her mother would never do such a thing. Tsabrak was Zeerith’s lover now, her partner, and she had secretly elevated him to a position of power nearly equal to her own. And that, Kiriy feared—but again dared not speak aloud—might be the truth behind Lady Lolth’s disapproval.

A fireball stole the darkness in a far corner of the great cavern that housed Menzoberranzan. It was something more than a wizard’s blast, Gromph knew, as he watched from his window at the drow academy of Sorcere.

Cries drifted across the cavern, echoing. A battle raged, drow against demon, likely, or just as likely, demon against demon.

The Abyssal beasts were thick about Menzoberranzan now, these ugly creatures of destruction and chaos, wandering freely, untended, uncontrolled. Gromph had lost two students caught in a skirmish with a glabrezu over in the district called the Stenchstreets—the body of one apprentice wizard had been sent to him in two equal-sized boxes.

The gates of every house in the city were closed, sealed, every sentry on a nervous edge, every matron mother plotting and fretting in turn, wondering if she might turn a demon to her advantage or fearing that a horde of the beasts would descend upon her House and obliterate it. They could find no pattern to alleviate their fears. These were demons, changing direction at a whim, destroying simply for the joy of destroying.

A low growl escaped the archmage’s lips. What idiocy was this? What demons, literal and figurative, was his arrogant sister unleashing upon the city of Menzoberranzan?

He heard a knock on his door but ignored it. More bad news, likely: another student torn apart by a glabrezu’s giant pincers, a lesser House invaded, perhaps.

Another knock sounded, this one more insistent, and when Gromph didn’t respond, he heard, to his absolute astonishment, the door creaking open.

“You are fortunate that I did not enable my wards,” he said dryly, never turning. “Else you would be a red puddle from which a wounded frog would hop.”

“Truly, husband?” came the surprising reply, the voice of Minolin Fey. “Perhaps in that event you would find me more attractive.”

“What are you doing here?” Gromph demanded, and still he did not bother to turn to face the priestess.

“The matron mother is quite pleased with herself,” Minolin Fey replied. “The other matron mothers are too busy securing their gates to think about colluding against her.”

“Perhaps if she just burned down House Baenre, she would have even less to worry about,” Gromph sardonically replied.

He took a deep breath and finally turned a serious expression upon the high priestess. “How many has she summoned?”

“Who can know?” Minolin Fey replied. “Now the demons are summoning each other. The matron mother might as well have thrown fifty scurvy rats into a nest, the beasts reproduce so efficiently. Except that even scurvy rats have a few tendays of helpless infancy. The summoned demons are quite mature and capable of havoc from the moment they emerge through the dimensional gate.”

“Why are you here?” Gromph asked again.

“The true matron mother does not sit on the throne of House Baenre,” Minolin Fey dared to whisper.

“What are you suggesting?”

Minolin Fey swallowed hard and struggled for a reply.

Gromph knew well. Not so long before, Minolin Fey and some others, including Gromph on the periphery of their treachery, had conspired to bring down Quenthel’s reign. They had found a weakness, a seam in the matron mother’s armor, and one dating back to the Time of Troubles. In that chaos, as the gods returned to prominence in Faerûn and the divine powers were restored, Matron Mother Yvonnel the Eternal, Gromph’s mother and the ruler of Menzoberranzan for longer than the memories of the oldest drow, had channeled the unbridled power of the Spider Queen. Lolth’s magnificence had flowed through her as she utterly destroyed House Oblodra—the compound and almost all of the noble family. The Oblodrans had sought the quietness of the gods, of Lolth in particular, to seek great advantage, for they were an order of psionicists, whose magic was not dependent upon such divine beings.

A very few Oblodrans escaped the wrath of Matron Mother Yvonnel, the wrath of Lady Lolth—only Kimmuriel was now known to Gromph—but all of the other notables had been slaughtered in the catastrophe, except for one. Death would have been too easy for K’yorl Odran, the Matron of House Oblodra. No, Yvonnel had not killed that one, but had spared her and sent her to the Abyss, to the eternal torment of a great balor named Errtu. When Minolin Fey and her fellow conspirators had learned of this, they had hatched a plan to rescue the vicious and strangely powerful K’yorl, with her illithid-like psionic abilities. They would turn her upon the then-weakened House Baenre and the pitiful Matron Mother Quenthel, who would never survive such an unexpected onslaught.

“Surely the Spider Queen cannot be pleased by these actions,” Minolin Fey pleaded. “And surely, Lady Lolth knows that the better choice, the better matron mother . . .”

“Bite back your words or I will remove your tongue,” Gromph warned her.

Minolin Fey blanched and fell back against the door, knowing well from his tone that he was not speaking idly. The archmage’s eyes flared with frustration and rage, and he sneered and growled again.

But then he sighed, the moment passing.

“She is not merely Quenthel any longer,” Gromph calmly explained. “She is not weak, nor is House Baenre.”

“We can do it through proxies,” Minolin Fey started to add, but Gromph cut her short with a glare that froze the blood in her veins.

“Never speak of K’yorl again,” Gromph warned. “Are you so foolish to miss the small matter that the matron mother now has an illithid at her disposal? Methil El-Viddenvelp serves my sister as he once served my mother.”

“As he has served your child,” Minolin Fey reminded him.

“Do not presume to understand anything about Methil. And I say again, for the last time, never speak of K’yorl again.”

“As you demand, Archmage,” the high priestess said, deferentially—and wisely—lowering her gaze to the floor.

“Get back to House Baenre and our child,” Gromph ordered. “You dare leave her unprotected in this time when demons haunt the ways of Menzoberranzan?”

Minolin Fey didn’t look up and didn’t answer, other than to slowly retreat back out the door, never turning her back to the archmage.

Gromph took little satisfaction in hearing her footsteps and the rustle of her robes rushing down the hall. Despite his outward anger, Gromph knew that her fear of Quenthel’s growing power was correct.

The old archmage looked back out the window, shaking his head. Quenthel had been brilliant in so locking down the city—perhaps that was what galled him most of all.

And Gromph had erred, he knew. He had come to hope that Yvonnel, his child, possessed of his mother’s memories and soon enough to be crowned as Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan, would serve as his ladder to ascension against the dark realities of Lolth’s failure to secure the Weave, and the Spider Queen’s apparent indifference to him even had she succeeded.

Soon enough, Quenthel would have Matron Mother Zeerith begging her to keep the city of Q’Xorlarrin as a Baenre satellite, and now, with the constant demonic threat lurking in every shadow, any movement by House Barrison Del’Armgo, House Melarn, House Hunzrin, or any others, had surely been halted.

“Brilliant,” he admitted, staring out at the city as another demonic fireball erupted.

He glanced back at the door, at where Minolin Fey had been. Perhaps it was time for him to go and speak with the Matron of House Fey-Branche, Minolin’s mother Byrtyn.

One of the former conspirators. The one who had found K’yorl Odran.

A gray and ugly fog blew in, sometimes thin and blurring the giant mushroom stalks into ghostly figures, other times so thick as to block Kimmuriel’s vision for more than a few feet in every direction. A great stench was carried on that steaming wind and fog, the aroma of rot and death, of burning flesh and hearty vomit.

Kimmuriel was too disciplined to let that bother him. So many who came here to this wretched plane of existence grew distracted by the grotesque sights and smells, and that distraction often led to violent ends.

The drow walked steadily, his eyes and his mind’s eye probing all around him. He would not be caught off guard.

He could hear her now, calling to him as she had done when he was a child—not with her physical voice, but psionically.

Kimmuriel Oblodra tried to hold his calm. He came in sight of her, of K’yorl, his mother, then, as she leaned against a mushroom stalk, looking every bit the same as she had on that awful day more than a century before, when Matron Mother Baenre had wrenched the whole of House Oblodra up by its stony roots and dropped it into the Clawrift, the great chasm that split the cavern that housed Menzoberranzan.

K’yorl had gone over with that tumbling stalagmite house, and Kimmuriel had thought her dead.

That notion hadn’t bothered him too greatly, though. He had already all but left House Oblodra to join Jarlaxle’s mercenary band, and he was not one to be bothered too greatly by such destructive and useless emotions as grief.

Or elation, he pointedly told himself as he once again looked upon his mother.

Gromph had sent him to Byrtyn Fey and she had directed him here, to the Abyss, to the throne of the great balor Errtu.

To K’yorl Odran, Errtu’s slave.

“My son, you are all that remains,” K’yorl greeted.

“It would seem that you, too—”

“No,” K’yorl interrupted. “I am dead in every way that matters. The Prime Material Plane is beyond me now, my mortal coil no more than an illusion, a manifestation here to keep Errtu amused.” She paused and shot him the slyest of looks as she added, “For now.”

Kimmuriel couldn’t miss the seething anger in her voice and behind her fiery eyes—orbs that had not lost a bit of their luster in the century and more of her imprisonment. After all these decades, the fiery and vicious K’yorl had not cooled.

“Matron Mother Yvonnel Baenre is long dead,” he said, to try to calm her.

“Cursed House Baenre just replaces her, one after another, but House Oblodra, our House, all that we had built, is no more!”

“You erred in the Time of Troubles,” Kimmuriel bluntly replied. “You reached too high and when the divine powers returned, you were punished for your hubris. We all were.”

“But you survived.”

Kimmuriel shrugged, as if it hardly mattered.

“And what have you done to repay Baenre?” K’yorl demanded sharply.

“I?” Kimmuriel replied incredulously. “I have served myself, as I please, when I please, how I please.”

“With Jarlaxle.”

“Yes.”

“Jarlaxle
Baenre
,” K’yorl said pointedly, for she was one of the few who knew the truth of that strange, Houseless mercenary.

“It is not a name he uses.”

“He serves House Baenre.”

“Hardly. Jarlaxle serves Jarlaxle.”

K’yorl nodded, digesting it all.

“It is time to pay them back,” she said at length. “Quenthel is a weakling, and she is vulnerable.”

“She has tightened her noose on the city.”

“And when it loosens? A dragon is dead, the Darkening has been defeated, and the fledgling city of Matron Mother Zeerith hangs by a single strand of a spider’s web.”