“One what’s gotten out o’ tougher spots than that,” Athrogate insisted.
“Bluster as you will,” said the drow. “Behind your voice, you know that I speak truly. Gauntlgrym was doomed except that Matron Mother Quenthel chose a different path.”
“Even if ye’re speakin’ true, I’ve seen enough o’ Menzoberranzan to know that some things don’t last,” Bruenor remarked.
“Aye!” Athrogate agreed, hopping up from his seat and thumping his palms down flat on the table so that he could lean forward toward the two drow priestesses. “So what’s to say that ye didn’t play the clever ones, eh? Ye play yer tricks out there and Matron Quenthel—”
“Matron Mother,” Saribel corrected, and Athrogate snorted.
“And she gets rid of that crazy Melarni witch—aye, I know all about that one. Heared about me friend’s visit to her that should’ve put her away then and there and forevermore, excepting that yer Lolth don’t much like to lose. So ye get rid o’ her and ye put the Second House, Armgo or whate’er, in its place, and now ye come marching back altogether and put our own works against us.”
“There could be no better opportunity to take Gauntlgrym than that we found when we came to your lower gate,” Minolin Fey argued.
“Tweren’t Lolth,” Thibbledorf Pwent unexpectedly interrupted.
All looked at him curiously, Bruenor most of all. Athrogate’s words here had been prearranged, of course, by Bruenor, who had tasked him with challenging the emissaries hard and long. Pwent didn’t have a role, least of all at this critical moment. And while it annoyed the king for his plan to be disrupted, he was curious about what Pwent had to say.
“I watched it,” Pwent said solemnly. “I watched them eight-legged abominations rushing through for all their lives—aye, even if it cost them their lives. They didn’t care. They had a chance of freedom and they leaped in with both . . . err, eight feet. And tweren’t Lolth, me King,” he told Bruenor, shaking his hairy head. “I felt it when I threw meself through that web. Tweren’t evil, tweren’t Lolth.”
Athrogate, clearly flummoxed, looked to Bruenor for some direction here.
“She is a deceiver,” the dwarf king reminded Thibbledorf Pwent.
Pwent considered it, but shook his head, unconvinced, and muttered, “Tweren’t Lolth,” under his breath.
“Your general describes a remarkable and intricate scheme,” Minolin Fey said to Bruenor, “when a straightforward attack on Gauntlgrym would have secured the prize.”
“Ain’t that the way o’ the drow, then?” Bruenor asked.
Minolin Fey leaned back in her seat, as did Saribel, the two exchanging grim looks. “Do we have your answer, then?” Minolin Fey asked.
“No,” Bruenor replied. “Ye have me word that me and mine’ll talk of it, and get ye an answer. Ye’re asking a lot, priestess.”
“There is a lot at stake,” Minolin Fey came back. “More for us than for you.”
“Not sure o’ that, and that’s me problem.” Bruenor nodded toward the room’s double doors and the sentries stationed there opened them wide.
The drow priestesses rose and bowed, then went out with their dwarf escorts.
As soon as the doors were closed, the chatter began, a great argument between Pwent and Athrogate, with Ivan Bouldershoulder trying to play intermediary. Fist and Fury sat and whispered together, the sisters shaking their heads with every word as if they were too confused by it all to agree with anyone.
Even Regis and Donnola came down on opposite sides, with Regis advising them to throw in with House Baenre, to fight for a future of the northern Sword Coast that meant something more for all the folk, and Donnola, who had spent most of her life in a guild of thieves and assassins in a faraway land, shaking her head in strong disagreement with his every word and interrupting him with countering arguments whenever he paused to draw breath.
Above the din, Bruenor looked to Catti-brie. “He couldn’t even be bothered to come to this?” he said.
“He’s with Brie.”
“Don’t ye go there,” Bruenor scolded her. “I’m dealin’ with his people here, and his voice’d be worth hearing.”
“What would ye have me tell ye, then, Da?” the woman said, reverting to her dwarven brogue—because her words always carried more weight with him when spoken in that dialect, Bruenor suspected. “Might that it’s Brie, might that it’s his meetin’ with the Spider Queen in the tunnel in Damara, might that it’s his time with Grandmaster Kane. Might be his time spread out across the lands, not dead, but aye, not alive. He’s not the same man, Da. He’s seeing things in ways I’ve not witnessed.”
Bruenor had heard it all before, and he, too, had seen this change in Drizzt. It wasn’t a melancholy, but more a passivity, and that in a time when Bruenor most needed the ranger in a fighting spirit! He looked at Catti-brie sharply, but forced away his sneer, not ready to have this fight at this time.
“When’s Jarlaxle back?” Bruenor asked.
“He was in the east with Dab’nay, is all I’m knowing,” Catti-brie replied. “Might be back already.”
Bruenor huffed, then slammed his hands on the sturdy table, commanding attention. “I’m off to eat and to fill me beard with the foam of a shaken gutbuster. Ye’re all here and stayin’, and fightin’ it out, and when I come back, I’ll be hearing one voice.”
“We’ve got a chance to change the world,” Regis said.
“And I’ve got the task of telling more of my people that we’re going to bury their sisters and brothers and parents and children,” Donnola countered. “When have we known the drow to keep a treaty or keep any peace?”
Regis sat back and didn’t reply.
“Bah!” Bruenor boomed. “One voice.”
And he stormed out of the room.
“But it’ll be the voice o’ the last one standin’, I’m guessing,” Athrogate muttered.
“You should get Drizzt,” Queen Tannabritches told Catti-brie.
“Aye,” her sister agreed. “He should be here.”
Catti-brie wasn’t so sure of that. Not now.
“Ye didn’t speak yer mind,” Bruenor said to Catti-brie when she entered the small room where he sat with a beer. His helm, the Crown of Gauntlgrym, battered and with one horn broken away, rested on the table beside his drink.
Catti-brie sat down across from him.
“Pull me one, eh?” she said when he didn’t move.
With a laugh, Bruenor lifted his shield, called upon the magic, and pulled out a perfect glass of golden beer, two-thirds liquid and capped with a perfect head of foam.
Catti-brie scooped it up, drained half of it, and forced a burp to make a dwarf da proud.
“That loosen yer lips?” Bruenor asked.
“If I had something to say, I’d’ve said it in there.”
“Ask yer god or something.”
“She’s no dwarf god. Probably not even fond o’ dwarf gods, or them that follow them.”
“Bah! She bringed me back, eh?”
“To join in the fight to save Drizzt from Lolth,” Catti-brie said. “Now we got others going to war on Lolth, so it seems.”
“So ye’re thinkin’ I should help ’em?”
“So I’m thinkin’, so it seems,” Catti-brie repeated.
“So ye don’t trust ’em.”
Catti-brie finished the beer and motioned for another. “Strange, me da, but I do. I seen enough o’ Jarlaxle and Zaknafein and Braelin Janquay and Beniago—even o’ Gromph Baenre!—to tell me that there’s good reason to think Yvonnel and Quenthel mean what they say and that it’s not all a ruse to kill us with our own weapons. Many in that city loathe Lolth, so to speak.”
“Could’ve fooled me, given the three wars that come fast to me thoughts.”
Catti-brie nodded and scooped up the second beer. “Where’re they to go, Da? Lolth’s got the matrons, the matrons’ve got the nobles, the nobles’ve got all others. Ye speak against Lolth in the City o’ Spiders, ye di
e. Or worse, aye?”
“Driders,” Bruenor muttered.
“Drizzt wasn’t th’only one, Da,” she said. “He was just th’only one brave enough, or stupid enough, or angry enough, or whate’er it was enough, to walk out into the Underdark and somehow survive to find another life and way. Ye know this. Ye’re trading with Luskan, and Luskan is Bregan D’aerthe’s.”
“This is different,” Bruenor said.
“It is,” Catti-brie agreed. “And that’s why I didn’t speak me mind, because I’m not really knowing me mind.”
“Well then,” Bruenor decided, and he slammed his palms down on the table and stood up quickly, the chair sliding out behind him.
“And now ye know yer own?” Catti-brie asked.
“Nope.”
“Then what?”
“Might that I’ll cut the baby in half,” he said with a wink. He called to the guards and told them to fetch the drow priestesses, then finished his beer with a great swallow, gathered up his distinctive crown and wonderful buckler, and led his daughter back to the throne room.
A bedraggled and thoroughly frustrated Catti-brie entered her chambers much later to find her husband dancing with their little girl. Or maybe they were training.
Drizzt did a broad jump.
Brie hopped, both feet off the ground. She touched down lightly and sprang again, and a third time, which put her up beside her father.
“You,” Drizzt said.
Brie laughed. She jumped up as high as she could and turned in midair. She got about a quarter of the way around before she ran out of air beneath her, thumping down and holding her balance.
Drizzt leaped up gracefully and spun about, a full spin, landing and dropping into a squat that put his face right before that of his giggling daughter.
“You!” she said.
Up sprang Drizzt, executing a backflip that landed him on his feet, but only momentarily, as he plopped down on his butt before Brie with a surprised look on his face.
Brie laughed and went up as if to jump, but didn’t leave the ground at all, and instead just fell back to a sitting position facing her father.
The two broke out in laughter.
“Boom!” said Drizzt.
“Boo boo!” said Brie.
Catti-brie rushed over and slid on the floor to stop beside the two, bringing a squeal of happiness and a big hug from Brie, and a warm smile from this man she loved.
“You’re up so late,” she said to Brie. “Up and playing with Da.” She smirked at Drizzt as she said that.
“She had a fine supper,” Drizzt said. “She wanted to stay awake to get a kiss and a story from her mum.”
“Come then, my little love,” Catti-brie whispered to the girl. She pulled herself up to her feet, one arm wrapped around her daughter, and carried the child into a circular side chamber they had set up as Brie’s bedroom, complete with brilliantly carved reliefs of war-pig guards running about the base of the wall, some on four legs, some on two, some dancing, most laughing.
Drizzt nodded as he watched them go, then crossed the floor to what remained of his own dinner, growing cold on the table. For all of Catti-brie’s love in that encounter, he hadn’t missed the indications that she was mentally and physically drained. Bruenor was leaning on her—of course he was—and the tensions swirling about Mithral Hall couldn’t be denied.
They had averted disaster, but very possibly only for the present.
Perhaps he should have gone to the meeting with the representatives from House Baenre, as Bruenor had asked and Catti-brie had begged. To him, though, it had seemed like a continuation of a cycle that could not be broken—what a stunning intellectual paradox transcendence had inflicted upon him! While he recognized and understood the importance of the contentious meetings now being fought out in Bruenor’s audience hall, he was having a difficult time even feeling that urgency.
Transcendence had pushed him to a place where he viewed all of this as temporary, and so had twisted his priorities to such an extent that . . .
That he had ignored a meeting his friends and his wife had begged him to attend.
He knew that he was out of balance, in the same way that he knew that he was hungry, but couldn’t quite find the energy to move his fork to lift the food to his mouth with any real purpose.
This was a melancholy he had not expected.
He was still absently picking at his meal, lost in that conflict of perspective, when Catti-brie exited Brie’s room and closed the wooden door behind her.
“Are you hungry?” Drizzt asked.
“Bruenor saw to it before I left him,” she answered.
“And what was the decision?”
Catti-brie stopped in her approach, put her hands on her hips, and sighed. “Bruenor set the smiths to work. A hundred suits of heavy chain sized for elves and two hundred fine and slender swords.”
“Then they convinced him that their war is imminent,” Drizzt presumed, but his voice faltered when he noted that Catti-brie was shaking her head.
“He’s giving the Baenres nothing as of now,” she said. “But if they convince him, he’s promised that what they want will be ready for the journey to Menzoberranzan. He cut the baby in half, so he decided.”
Drizzt considered it for a moment, then nodded. “Delaying,” he reasoned. “Perhaps that’s his best choice. I hope he holds no illusions of waiting out the drow. They’ll play their hand on their own terms and times.”
“He knows,” Catti-brie assured Drizzt. “He’s hoping to find some better answers from some better spies before he arms those who have come against him on three occasions.”
“Jarlaxle?” Drizzt said with a laugh.
“Or Kimmuriel. Or Gromph. There are possibilities here.”
Drizzt considered it and gave a little nod.
“You should have been there,” Catti-brie said, her voice growing sharper.
Drizzt shrugged. “I have no insights about Menzoberranzan that I haven’t already shared, and I know little of the priestesses who came as Baenre’s ambassadors.”
“You know Yvonnel.”
“I know some things about her, but nothing I would trust with the lives of my friends. I find her quite beyond my understanding.”
“You know more about Menzoberranzan than anyone in Gauntlgrym other than those two visiting priestesses. Just the way they looked at you across the table might have provided some hints as to their veracity, or the depth of their commitment. That war they’re insisting will soon begin was in truth begun by you on the day you walked out of Menzoberranzan.”
She stopped short and Drizzt realized that she had noted his wince.
“What?” Catti-brie asked, clearly caught off guard by the reaction. “Is that it? Do you think this a bad thing?”
“I think that there will be slaughter unlike anything we can imagine,” he answered quietly. “More than twenty thousand drow in a holy civil war? Armies of demons in support? The whole of the cavern will be painted in gore.”
Catti-brie’s sympathetic expression didn’t last and she gave a little snort. “Sounds like what we would have faced right here, and baby Brie, too, if Yvonnel and Quenthel Baenre had taken the easier path and joined with Zhindia Melarn.”
“But we didn’t. Do you not care that more than half the city will likely be murdered, or worse?”
“Should I?” she replied, rather unconvincing in her indifference.
“Perhaps not,” he sarcastically countered. “They are just drow, after all, and thus deserving of their doom.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, Drizzt wanted them back.
Catti-brie glared at him.
“Don’t you ever say that to me,” Catti-brie quietly replied. “I do not deserve that from you.”
“No,” he agreed, and took a deep breath. “I didn’t mean it for you. But that is the common feeling among those who live on the surface and know the drow by reputation alone. And that is what Bruenor is working against when he
has to decide whether or not to help.”
“The drow have attacked him in his home.”
“His home? For how long has it been his home?”
“Wha . . .” She lost her voice and just shook her head in obvious shock.
“What I have seen across centuries, my love, is the judgment of impact without any consideration of the intent. And not just for the drow and by the drow.”
“Drizzt?”
“I am guilty of it as well,” he admitted. “We all do it, foolishly, and extrapolate grand truths about our enemies that bring us to places where our disagreements cannot be reconciled.”
“They also attacked Mithral Hall,” Catti-brie reminded him.
“And Bruenor attacked Q’Xorlarrin,” Drizzt countered.
“Q’Xorlarrin?” the flustered woman stuttered. “Gauntlgrym?”
“So he calls it.”
“This is the ancient homeland of the Delzoun dwarves.”
“And probably a place called home by a hundred other groups in the thousand years before Bruenor rediscovered it.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“I’ve never been more serious,” Drizzt answered firmly. “When I walk among the humans, I am drow, and so many think me evil. And yes, the folk of Menzoberranzan have done some evil things, and wars between them and the cultures of the surface world are real and plentiful.”
“And raids that kill families of elves and humans and dwarves?” Catti-brie said.
“Do you think a group of drow would fare any better if they met a superior force of elves, or humans, or dwarves, in a high cavern of the Underdark? Do you think that superior force of elves would stop and ask that drow family their intent or purpose?”
Now it was Catti-brie’s turn not to answer.
“How might the duergar feel about Bruenor and his kin evicting them from Mithral Hall all those years ago?”
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