“At least Matron Vadalma Tlabbar will not abandon us, no matter the outcome here,” Sos’Umptu said. “She rebuffed Matron Zhindia on this very quest, and thus does she know that ever-vicious Matron Zhindia will show her no mercy if she claims victory.”
“Nor will House Fey-Branche abandon us,” Myrineyl added. “Matron Byrtyn knows that without House Baenre, her seat on the Ruling Council would be given to another—almost surely to House Hunzrin if Matron Zhindia—”
“Do you think they matter?” Matron Mother Quenthel cut her short. “Either of them? If Matron Zhindia leaves here as the ultimate victor, she will find powerful allies, including Matron Mez’Barris.”
“Matron Zeerith is no friend to the Melarni, or to the Armgos,” said Myrineyl.
“But both Matrons Zeerith and Mez’Barris understand well that their ambitions are forever stunted as long as House Baenre rules,” Sos’Umptu said.
“And that has been the truth since the days when Menzoberranzan was very young, and Baenre’s reign will not end when I am Matron Mother,” Quenthel declared.
The other two nodded.
“Matron Zhindia cannot win here,” Quenthel decided.
“Then we take the dwarven stronghold before she can get through?” asked Myrineyl.
“Maybe not,” the matron mother replied, thinking aloud, falling into the memories of Yvonnel the Eternal once more to find some answers.
“An army of driders, gifted from the Abyss?” Sos’Umptu replied doubtfully. “Two retrievers given to her by the handmaidens of Lolth?”
“Do you think you know the will of Lolth?” Matron Mother Quenthel asked slyly.
That gave Sos’Umptu pause, but Myrineyl, so much less experienced, asked, “Isn’t it obvious?”
With a look to the matron mother, which elicited a nod from Quenthel, Sos’Umptu offered to young Myrineyl the most basic understanding of the truth of the Lolthian drow: “The only thing that is ever obvious from the Demon Queen of Spiders is, that which is obvious is not.”
Chapter 11
Around the Edges of Darkness
The large gate of Thornhold was opened just a bit and was stuck, but there was still a wide enough gap for the companions to slip through one at a time.
“The spider broke the gate,” Regis reasoned from the bend in the great hinge, for what else might have done such damage? “It’s still in here,” he warned. “I don’t want to see that thing up close.”
“None of us do,” Yvonnel told him, but she was looking more at Entreri as she spoke.
When he glanced at the assassin, Regis understood Yvonnel’s apparent concern, for the man was wobbling with every step, muttering under his breath, and seeming as if he might fall over at any moment.
“It is, or was, a retriever, as I have told you,” Yvonnel went on. “If it remains, then its focus is solely on Drizzt Do’Urden. It is no threat to us unless we get between it and Drizzt. For the sake of your friend, I hope it is still in there, still hunting.”
“And then we kill it?” Regis asked.
Yvonnel snorted at that preposterous thought. “In that case, we try to find Drizzt first, and we help him get far ahead of the monster.” She blew out a long sigh. “I should have done that on the road when we met up with him, but I hadn’t the spells prepared. Nor would it have been a safe prospect, as the retriever would go for him, wherever I put him, and would destroy everything in its path even if it had to cut a trench across half of Toril.”
“Sounds lovely,” Dahlia muttered. She skipped over to Entreri and bolstered him.
Yvonnel nodded and led the way, fearlessly going through the narrow opening into the courtyard. She peeked her head back out. “The spider is gone.”
“In the building,” Athrogate offered. “The tunnels here’re bigger than ye think.”
Yvonnel, her face grim, shook her head, and when the others came through, they understood, for there in the middle of the courtyard was a huge, bubbling mass of black ooze, the now too familiar remains of a demon’s departure from this plane of existence.
Not a sound beyond their own footsteps followed the friends to that bubbling goo. The place was dead, the silence profound. They just knew it.
A closer look at the demonic detritus confirmed Yvonnel’s claims, for the scar was decidedly spider-shaped, with the eight legs distinctly visible. In front of the beastly remains, the ground was torn, as if hit by a ray of some sort, and there were clearly footprints—humanoid footprints, bare feet—leading into it. And there, too, the tattered remains of clothing and boots the friends knew well.
“Drizzt,” Regis mumbled, his voice breaking.
“Is he dead, then?” Dahlia asked, and she too seemed shaky.
Quietly, tears rolled down the halfling’s cheeks. Athrogate looked stunned, his earlier grief seemingly multiplied by the thought of Drizzt’s departure. And Artemis—still shaken from his tortuous cocoon—bowed his head as he put his arm around Dahlia.
Yvonnel realized then how profoundly this rogue dark elf had touched so many people—so many disparate people, with different values and core beliefs. Even Artemis Entreri! It hadn’t mattered whether they were openly goodly and kind folks, like Regis, or those with far more sinister backgrounds, or those, like Athrogate, caught somewhere in the middle. All of them wobbled now, and Regis fell to his knees and buried his face in his hands.
The connection to this drow went beyond mere friendship, Yvonnel recognized, and understood, because what Drizzt had given to them over the years could not be measured so simply as that—indeed, the word “friend” seemed empty in the face of this. What Drizzt had given them was universal, and across races—halfling, elf, human, dwarf, and drow, too, she knew, for in watching Regis fighting bravely and failing against his overwhelming pain, Yvonnel saw the foreshadowing of Jarlaxle’s response. Above all else, Drizzt had given to those around him honesty and heart, and he had tried, ever tried, to do what he believed was right.
The legacy of that touched Yvonnel profoundly in that moment, and she, too, who hardly knew the unusual drow ranger, choked back tears, overwhelmed by the display of true loss playing out before her, particularly that of Regis, the gentle halfling who had faced Sharon with a smile.
Her heart was warmed by it all, for this seemed a display of justice to her—honest grief, generous grief, offered without any expectation of personal gain.
She thought Menzoberranzan a cold and heartless place indeed.
“It’s a big place,” Athrogate said again, shaking himself with a bit of hope. He stepped over and hoisted Regis back onto his feet. “Come on then, Rumblebelly. We’re not givin’ up, and find your faith in Drizzt, what. I ain’t seein’ no blood, and ain’t for doubting that durned elf. Not what we do. We fight. We fight until we can’no’ fight no more.”
“Don’t be the fool,” Dahlia scolded, too harshly, Yvonnel thought.
“Ready to turn and cry and run at first sign, are ye?”
“He’s gone.”
“Y’ain’t knowing any such thing!”
“Then why did the retriever leave?” Dahlia asked.
“Might be that the drow killed it to death in battle!” Athrogate insisted.
“A retriever?” Yvonnel asked gently, shaking her head.
“Don’t ye never doubt the boy,” Athrogate said. “Seen him kill bigger’n that.”
Regis perked up at that. He took a deep breath, sniffled once to clear his nose, and squared his shoulders.
“Go and look, then,” Yvonnel told the two. “Call out if you find anything.” She tried to be encouraging, for these dearest of friends to Drizzt deserved no less, but she heard her own voice and understood the unmistakable thickness of the resignation there.
Athrogate and Regis started for the blasted door of the keep. Dahlia, after helping Entreri sit down on the ground, rushed to join them.
“You have had better tendays,” Yvonnel said to Entreri, walking over to join him.
“Just pain
,” he said. “The whole time I was in there, and lingering now. I couldn’t get used to it. Unspeakable pain, unrelenting and undiminishing.”
Yvonnel nodded and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Take my dagger and thrust it into my heart,” he asked her. “Draw out my soul itself, send me to oblivion, I beg, for if that is what eternity has planned for me, I would rather be nothingness.”
“You think your book written.”
“I just read it. It doesn’t end well.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way, Artemis Entreri,” Yvonnel assured him. “Those were only the chapters you’ve already lived. There are pages still yet to be filled.”
“What do you know?” he asked doubtfully.
“I know that if your fate was sealed, if your story fully told, Sharon would have had no reason to let you return.”
“Maybe just to torment me more with the knowledge of what was to come.”
“No, that is not her calling. Even though she was out of place these last days, such meaningless teasing is not her role in the multiverse.”
“Her role?”
“Her role within the heart of every reasoning being. She is the facilitator of judgment, but not the judge. There is no enjoyment for her either way, the good or the bad. There is no preference.”
“Then who is the judge?” Entreri asked. “Some god I never acknowledged? Some great superior being who makes of us pawns in his own strange game?”
“You are your own judge,” Yvonnel explained, “in places within your heart, soul, and memory where you cannot hide. You know this. Above all others, in those dark and private places, you know what you deserve.”
Entreri’s snort was caught somewhere between derision and resignation. “Did Drizzt deserve his fate?” he asked.
“We don’t know what fate that is.”
“Don’t we?” Entreri asked, nodding toward the spider-shaped goo.
“In the afterlife,” Yvonnel replied. “Are we speaking of divine justice or of the foibles of mortal beings? I doubt they are much the same. Every day, many get things they do not deserve, good and bad. Every day. A thousand times every day.”
She paused and spent a few moments just studying the man. He had been through so much—his pain was obvious. His face was scrunched up in a mask of anger, but there were tears in his eyes as well.
“You cared for him,” she said.
“It’s complicated.”
“Is it? Or do you make it complicated to cover your own . . . ego?”
Entreri looked up at her, his expression dismissive, but only for a moment. “Looking at Drizzt was like looking into a mirror, but one with different lighting. His skin was dark, mine light. But his soul . . .” He paused and laughed helplessly. “He once said, so I was told, that in looking at me, at what I had become, he feared that it was what he might have become. There are no cocoons of stinging wasps awaiting Drizzt Do’Urden, I am sure.”
“And is that why you lament your history?”
“No,” he answered sharply before she had even finished the sentence. “No,” he repeated more softly. “I regret a lot, but because of what I have done to others, my own fate be damned . . . if it is damned.”
“Well, then, perhaps, Artemis Entreri, Drizzt showed you what you hoped to become, in some ways, at least.”
She patted him on the shoulder and stood up, turning about. She closed her eyes and cast a spell of detection, seeking the radiations of magic. She was surprised when she did indeed sense something of interest, and she followed the feeling into the keep.
The place, too, felt dead to her, and she saw down one hall the bodies of slain dwarves. Broken walls and widened doorways showed her that Drizzt had led the retriever into this complex, forcing the demon construct to do some of the cleansing that was much needed here.
She heard the voices of her friends down a different hall, moving away from her, but nothing seemed amiss. She went back fully into her spell and it guided her to a wall, which at first confused her. When she got very close, she noted a crack in the stone and managed to wriggle her finger in, feeling about and then pulling out a silver chain upon which was set a whistle shaped like a unicorn.
“Andahar,” she said, and for the first time she too found her voice cracking. Even in his last moments, Drizzt had thought of another, of this magical mount, and so he had stowed his chain out of the way.
She started to pocket it, but changed her mind when she heard the others approaching, and instead put it back into the crevice.
“For you when you return, Drizzt Do’Urden,” she whispered, though she knew that to be all but impossible.
She went back outside to Entreri and waited for the others to arrive.
“Nothing,” Athrogate said.
“There’s a lower level,” Dahlia added, casting a glare at the dwarf. “He would not go down there, nor would he allow us to.”
“Shut yer face, girl,” Athrogate said.
“Drizzt might be down there,” Regis argued.
“He is not,” Yvonnel said with finality. “I have used my magic. Drizzt is not here. He is gone.”
“Just . . . gone?” Athrogate said.
“Taken to the Abyss?” Dahlia asked.
“Then we go to the Abyss and get him,” Athrogate said.
“Aye!” Regis agreed.
Yvonnel held up her hand to silence them all. She looked at Regis, at his eagerness to run to the Abyss in pursuit of his lost friend. She doubted she could dissuade him, even if she could properly relate the hopelessness of such a venture. He needed this, she realized. He needed to feel like he was doing something, anything, to try to bring back that rogue drow.
Yvonnel had thought she had a good measure of Drizzt’s impact, but now she understood she had underestimated him, even though she had known there was something special about him, about the honest life he had lived. She wondered if anyone would ever so lament her passing, would ever wear a mask of determination and pain as she saw now on the face of Regis.
“In time,” she said at length. “We will learn what we may, and enlist the proper and powerful allies. I have been there to the Abyss, or have memories of my namesake’s ventures in the swirling smoke, at least. It is not a place one goes with any hope of returning.”
“But you have been there,” Regis argued. “Or your namesake had, as you just said.”
“As the guest of a demon queen, not as her enemy.”
“You think Lolth herself has taken Drizzt?”
“It would take a being near her equal to grant a retriever—nay, two retrievers.”
“We’re not going to get him back,” Dahlia whispered.
“Maybe you’re not, but I am,” Regis snapped at her, an uncharacteristic edge to his voice.
Dahlia returned a hard glare, while Entreri and Athrogate expressed pity for the despondent halfling.
“I’m right, though,” Dahlia said. “We’re not going to get him back.”
They all turned to Yvonnel for some response.
She wanted to offer the one they needed to hear—three of them, at least, for she could not quite gauge Dahlia. She was surprised at how much she wanted to do that. But in the end, she found she couldn’t deceive them, and she knew the truth.
“No,” she agreed. “We’re not.”
“Gromph will not answer,” Penelope Harpell told Catti-brie.
The younger woman sighed, her concern mounting. Her belly was large now, the child very active as her pregnancy neared its end. She wanted to find Drizzt more than anything in the world, to be with her husband, her baby’s father, when she gave birth to their child.
Our child.
But where was he? For all Catti-brie’s magical attempts, for all the messages Penelope had dispatched, for all the efforts of the other Harpells—truly her friends—she had no word at all of Drizzt.
“Gromph Baenre has an answer, though,” Catti-brie reasoned. “The gates are not working, and that almost certainly co
mes right from the roots of the Hosttower of the Arcane.”
“Or Mithral Hall itself,” Penelope said, wincing in anticipation that her words would surely worry Catti-brie.
“Have you sent a message to the dwarves?”
“That is more difficult. Our scrying has shown us that the area about Mithral Hall is overrun. Demon hordes and drow.”
“Is not Luskan also overrun?” Catti-brie reminded her. “The fleet . . .”
“The Hosttower is distinct and very receptive to magical messages,” Penelope replied. “The dwarves are deep in their hole, and likely engaged in fierce battle.”
“We need to open the gateways,” Catti-brie said determinedly. “And we need, most of all, to learn if their collapse portends something more dire. And we must be fast in our research, for if the Hosttower has weakened its magical energy to Gauntlgrym, the primordial might shake itself free once more. The last time that happened, Neverwinter City was obliterated.”
“I will go to Gromph,” Penelope announced.
“You don’t even know if the Hosttower remains intact, or under his control.”
“Someone has to find out.”
Catti-brie took Penelope by the arm. “I can’no’ lose you,” she quietly said. “I know not what I’ve already lost.”
“Old Kipper will take me there, and we’ll both have spells ready to remove ourselves quickly, if necessary. I promise.”
Catti-brie nodded and let go of Penelope’s arm—and Penelope swung about to wrap the very pregnant woman in a tight hug. “I’ll find Drizzt,” she whispered in Catti-brie’s ear. “I promise.”
Catti-brie flashed her a smile when she pulled back and turned for the door, but it was a strained one to be sure. She was here, preparing to give birth, and it seemed as if all the world about her had gone crazy.
She had never felt so helpless in her life, not even when she had been a prisoner of Artemis Entreri those many years before, being dragged across Faerun in pursuit of Regis.
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