Maestro (37 page)

Drizzt turned and looked to either side, but no, that, too, was cut off, the stone melting in front of his eyes, becoming angry red and flowing all around. Demogorgon closed, the ape heads screeching and laughing.

At the last moment, he realized he wasn’t feeling any sensation of warmth at all, though lava was all around him. He looked at Icingdeath, considering its fire shield, but no, this was too complete.

“Clever,” the Hunter whispered, and he turned and sprinted through the illusionary molten stone.

Demogorgon’s cries turned angrier, turned into hoots and howls that nearly deafened the fleeing ranger. Even with his magical anklets, he couldn’t outrun the beast, so he moved in a zigzagging pattern, using every stalagmite mound he could find as a barrier against those deadly tentacles.

He thought he had gained some distance, but he came around one large mound and Demogorgon was simply there, bending low to the ground, toothy maws ready to suck him in and chew him to bits.

Had the creature teleported to this spot?

Had Drizzt’s concentration not been perfect, had this been any other than the Hunter, the battle would have come to a sudden end. But even in that moment of desperate shock, the Hunter reacted, bringing up Taulmaril and sending off two arrows, perfectly aimed, one for each ape face.

Even mighty Demogorgon had to react to that, and as the creature jolted upright, Drizzt dived again between its legs. Now only his great agility and those magical anklets saved him, allowing him to skip and slide out to the side as the clever monster simply dropped to its butt, trying to crush him beneath.

On the Hunter ran, gaining some distance, but turning every blind corner warily, expecting that the monster might lay in wait. He heard the mounds exploding behind him again as the prince of demons crashed through them, and he feared that soon enough this cavern would be devoid of the barriers he needed.

Now, out of options, the desperate drow dropped his hand into the pouch Yvonnel had given him and pulled out several small spider statues.

“You could have told me what to do with these,” he muttered as he ran desperately, and with no choice, he simply spun and threw them back behind him, in the path of the pursuing demon prince.

The Hunter had run many steps before he even realized that the sudden tumult behind him spoke of more than just Demogorgon. Still, expecting to be crushed at any moment, he dived around another mound of stone before daring to glance back.

A handful of gigantic jade spiders crawled about the mounds in front of the demon, which shrieked and cracked at them with its tentacles.

Drizzt’s hope couldn’t hold, though. The spiders seemed more like statues, simply standing there as one tentacle strike after another cracked upon them.

“Fight it!” Drizzt yelled in frustration, and to his surprise, he found that the animated spiders heeded his call, all scrabbling for the demon prince. And so began the most titanic battle Drizzt had ever witnessed, as five jade spiders scrambled about the stalagmite mounds and the great Demogorgon, their massive mandibles snapping tirelessly.

Webbing flew at the demon prince. One spider shot a strand up to a stalactite and lifted itself right off the ground, climbing the web to the tapering stone and there grabbing on to bite at Demogorgon’s face.

Nodding as one spider construct after another leaped upon the ugly beast, Drizzt put up Taulmaril, seeking the best targets, perhaps the eyes. For a heartbeat, he thought he had turned the tide and would prevail.

He didn’t truly understand his enemy.

With a sudden and powerful shrug that sent the whole of the cavern into an earthquake roll, Demogorgon threw off the constructs.

When he recovered his balance, Drizzt couldn’t even find the strength to lift his bow, could only watch in awe and humility as Demogorgon’s tentacles each snapped up to enwrap a huge stalactite.

The beast pulled them free and swung them as immense clubs, batting the jade spiders aside.

Down came one stone club, right atop a spider, and the arachnid construct shattered into a million bits, the shrapnel blasting past Drizzt and forcing him over in a desperate crouch. He staggered back to his feet with a dozen cuts and a dozen more bruises, and he could not see out of one eye.

Another spider exploded. A third went flying across the cavern.

Drizzt looked at Taulmaril, and a great despair washed over him that he could not turn the bow upon himself.

He noted that he was near where he had entered the cavern then, and only that insight saved him. He put his magical anklets to good use.

And fled.

He ran down the long corridor and into another, hoping that the small size would block pursuit and having no will to ever confront that monster again, whatever the cost or gain.

He heard the continuing roar of battle behind him, the shrieks of the spiders failing with each ground-shaking explosion.

And then the corridor began to tremble with such violence that Drizzt could barely hold his balance, and the howls of pursuit deafened him once more.

Demogorgon was coming, tearing through the stone walls and ceiling as easily as if it was a shark swimming through water.

And Drizzt ran, his heart thumping in his chest. He had never really been afraid of death, but he was terrified now.

Did he even know the way?

Did he even know where he meant to go?

He came to a fork in the corridor, slowing, unsure, but one of the two passageways in front of him lit up suddenly, magically, and he chose that one. At every intersection now, a path lit in front of him, showing him the way, and he came to trust in those lights—surely the work of Yvonnel or her minions—when he recognized some of the passages and knew that he was well on his way back to Menzoberranzan.

He was leading Demogorgon back to the drow city!

Drizzt shook his head. He couldn’t do that. For all his desperation, for all the certainty of his own death, for all his anger toward his people and that place, he simply could not inflict such a catastrophe upon the dark elves of Menzoberranzan.

At the next intersection, he chose the darker path.

No, you fool!
Yvonnel screamed in his head, and he skidded to a halt.

You beautiful fool!
he heard in his thoughts. Yvonnel had come to realize his plan, his sacrifice for the good of the drow, and she approved.

Take Demogorgon here, Champion of Lolth, to Menzoberranzan. Her people are ready!

Drizzt didn’t know what to think or believe at that moment. He sensed no anger from the voice in his head, though, and surely Yvonnel knew that her enchanted spiders had been obliterated.

He sped down the lighted tunnel instead, and noted as he turned into it that the priestess or her cohorts who were lighting the way for him were not shutting down those beacons in front of Demogorgon.

Perhaps they were ready.

He turned the last corner and saw the massive gates the drow had erected to fortify their defenses at the entrance from the Masterways. Those gates sat closed, but a small door at the bottom, large enough for Drizzt to slip through, did open at his approach.

Any hesitation Drizzt might have held blew away when he heard Demogorgon close behind him again.

He saw no other drow as he sprinted along the narrow tunnel through the thick gates, but that changed when Drizzt Do’Urden ran again into Menzoberranzan.

The whole of the city was there, it seemed, fanned out in a wide semicircle around and upon every building and every mound. House banners flew all around, propelled into wild and boastful flapping by magical spells.

Overwhelmed by the sight, Drizzt couldn’t help but slow, scanning for House Baenre, which was easy to find, and for Yvonnel, who was not to be found.

The gates behind him exploded then, great stones flying all around, sure to bury Drizzt where he stood.

But a hand reached out to him and grabbed him by the front of his armored tunic, and he was yanked into the air so forcefully he almost left one boot behind.

Space distorted around him, elongating in his mind-warping flight. He landed in a skid, barely stopping at the feet of Yvonnel and the matron mother, and came up to his knees to find himself face-to-face with the broken old hag that Yvonnel dragged around like a pet dog. They were at the center of the drow semicircle, atop a tall, flat-topped stalagmite mound.

Already the explosions of battle began behind him, and Drizzt glanced back to see a blinding display of magical power, lightning bolts and fireballs fully obscuring the form of the great prince of demons, as if every wizard and priestess in Menzoberranzan was hurling every bit of destructive magic at the fiend all at once.

“Constructs!” the matron mother cried, her voice magically amplified to echo all around the great cavern.

“Get up,” Yvonnel said to Drizzt, and he did. He glanced back to see a swarm of jade spiders rushing for the gates, and other unthinking instruments of war—iron golems, stone golems, animated gargoyles—charging right behind them.

“You fled,” Yvonnel accused.

“I . . . you said . . .”

She held up a sword in front of him, its glassteel blade slightly curving, and holding a universe of twinkling stars within.

He stood up and took Vidrinath.

Yvonnel’s pet also stood and clasped her hand over Drizzt’s. He looked at the old and clearly battered drow with confusion, then back to Yvonnel.

Gromph heard Yvonnel’s call at the same moment as Kimmuriel. And like Kimmuriel, the archmage understood that here lay his forgiveness, in this one great task. He looked at Kimmuriel, who nodded and led the way down the stairs swiftly to the hive-mind, where a host of illithids had gathered.

Gromph followed him to the fleshy brain, and, following the other’s lead, Gromph bent in and gently placed his hand on the communal brain of the illithid community.

So many illithids followed suit, and Gromph felt himself drawn into their collective thoughts, swirling about and becoming so powerfully one, singular in purpose.

And he giggled—he could not help it—as he felt the power coursing through him, through his mind, and he tried to help and strengthen it, though he understood that he was a miniscule psionicist next to these practiced giants.

He thought of Yvonnel’s promise of forgiveness, and knew that he hardly cared.

He needed no coaxing.

Not for this.

“Your glorious moment,” Yvonnel whispered to the woman. The young drow raised her hand, holding now a jewel-encrusted orb, and smashed it between the feet of the couple holding Vidrinath up high.

A great wind sent them flying, floating out from Yvonnel and the matron mother.

Drizzt could see them standing there, staring back, but only for a moment.

Only until every priest, every wizard, every archer in the city of Menzoberranzan let loose their most powerfully destructive spells and bolts at him and this aged and battered woman.

“No,” Dahlia gasped in a rare moment of perfect clarity. She came forward in the magical cage, which Yvonnel had placed on a rooftop not so far away so that the three prisoners could witness the spectacle.

“After all that trouble, they simply use him to lure in the beast and then sacrifice him to gain favor with their wretched demon goddess,” Entreri spat with disgust.

But Jarlaxle shook his head, grinning. He knew better. He had seen this trick before, only on a scale miniscule compared to this grand display.

“Do you remember, long ago, before the Spellplague even, your last true fight against Drizzt, in the tower I constructed for just that occasion?” Jarlaxle asked.

Entreri looked at him curiously, then turned his eyes again to the conflagration and explosions filling the air in front of the entry from the Masterways, fully obscuring Drizzt in fire and lightning and swarms of missiles.

He winced as a great spinning web of lightning flew forth and fell over that spot, and exploded in brilliance that stole his vision.

“It cannot be,” he breathed.

“I have come to doubt nothing anymore,” Jarlaxle said.

Drizzt held onto Vidrinath for all his life, that focal point was the only thing that lay between him and utter insanity as a thousand spells exploded around him. He didn’t know what to think or why he was alive or how he could be anything more than splattered dead across the floor. Lightning bolts rained upon him. Fireballs roiled over one another or filled the air, flame strikes slashing down amid them, spinning their flames into somersaulting dances in front of his eyes. A meteor swarm pounded around him, compliments of the new Archmage of Menzoberranzan. A thousand arrows struck him, and bounced off of him.

But their killing energy did not bounce away. It spread about the drow, caught by the great kinetic barrier an illithid hive-mind had raised around him.

He trembled under the press of power, under the containment of more energy, more destruction than he had ever before witnessed, all at once. The bared power of Menzoberranzan, the thousands of dark elves, the minions of Lolth, acting in unison, sending all their hate and power at him.

And then it was over and Drizzt was back on the roof, and the old drow woman holding his hand smiled at him, her eyes wide and wild. She let go, and shrieked and gasped and simply exploded, but so fully that she became nothingness, her final expression a bright burst of ultimate ecstasy.

She was gone, and Drizzt stood there, holding Vidrinath, trembling under the power, increasingly uncomfortable as it demanded release.

Across from him stood Yvonnel. To the side, and not so far away, the matron mother scowled both at Drizzt and at the other woman.

And behind them, Demogorgon approached.

“Now is your moment, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Yvonnel said. “Now you prove yourself. There is the Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan, Quenthel Baenre.” She pointed at Quenthel, whose eyes went wide indeed.

“You feel your power,” Yvonnel said. “One strike and she will be obliterated, and you will have dealt a great blow against Lolth and against this city.” She paused and bowed. “Now is your moment.”