Relentless

by R. A. Salvatore

  “You have been there!”

  “Only once and only briefly, simply to try the portal when it first became active. So, yes, I know the portal room.”

  “Enough to teleport there.”

  Penelope paused and offered no agreement. “I saw it only briefly, and saw keenly its low ceiling and cramped walls—certainly it is not a place favorable for such an attempt.”

  “The gates are similar to a permanent circle, are they not?”

  “Are they?”

  Catti-brie wanted to answer in the affirmative, but she could not, because she did not know.

  “Please, we have to try,” Catti-brie pleaded. “If I get to Gauntlgrym, there is much I might be able to do.”

  “How? The Hosttower controls—”

  “The primordial is the power,” Catti-brie reminded her. “The Hosttower merely harnesses the being. I can speak with it.”

  “To what end? A primordial is a being that is far beyond our comprehension. Its desires are not ours, and so far removed from ours that you cannot even relate to them.”

  “We have to try,” Catti-brie said again.

  “You would risk your child?”

  The question rocked Catti-brie.

  “Send me,” said Afafrenfere.

  “I cannot ‘send’ anyone,” said Penelope. “The mage must accompany.”

  “Then go with me,” Afafrenfere said. “If familiarity with the targeted area of your spell is the key for success, then go and familiarize yourself.”

  “There remains that first journey,” Catti-brie reminded the agitated monk.

  “Courage is needed,” he returned.

  “No, he is right,” Penelope agreed. “We cannot shy from pursuing any hope, however slight, in desperate times. I will find Kipper. He is much stronger in this magic. We will go to Gauntlgrym together and prepare a circle, then return quickly.” She paused, another cloud drifting across her expression. “If we are able, I mean. If the portal room remains free of the demon attackers. We know not if any or if all of Gauntlgrym has fallen.”

  “Take me, as well,” said Afafrenfere. “If we appear in a place of danger, I will protect you while you get us out of there.”

  “I cannot ask . . .” Catti-brie started to argue, but the monk was hearing none of it.

  “You cannot,” he said, “because there is nothing to ask of me. This is my choice. Come,” he told Penelope, “let us be quick. The crumbling world will not wait for heroes who pause.”

  Chapter 12

  The Deep Pool of Singular Memory

  Beniago sat on the front of his desk in Illusk, long and slender arms crossed over his chest. Kimmuriel sat in the corner behind him and to his left, the psionicist insisting on an observational role and giving the meeting over fully to Beniago, who had been high captain for some time and knew the city as well as any in Bregan D’aerthe.

  Everyone seated on the benches in front of Beniago was drow, with the exceptions of Wulfgar and Bonnie Charlee. Kimmuriel had insisted on Wulfgar’s attendance, and Bonnie Charlee had been filling a valuable role, as she, even after the encounter with the gnolls in the alleyway, could most easily slip about the streets of the city, blending in and spying.

  One by one, the scouts had delivered their information, leaving the most important for last: Braelin Janquay. He was tying all the information together, and in a way that seemed to offer little hope for Bregan D’aerthe’s continued presence in the City of Sails.

  “Their numbers are overwhelming,” Braelin continued. “It would seem as if all four of the other high captains have indeed pledged full fealty to Brevindon. Luskan is a city of similar size to Menzoberranzan, and with all four of those ships in alliance with the invaders, we could not hope to defeat them even if every other person in Luskan supported us.”

  “And few will,” added another drow scout.

  “It shows the fickleness of humans, short-living and without honor,” said Dab’nay.

  “What it shows is a city suspicious of change,” Wulfgar interjected, suffering the scowls of many others, who had made it very clear they didn’t want him, or Bonnie Charlee, in the room. “You offered them change, and they were only just beginning to see it,” he told Beniago, and turned as he spoke to make sure that Kimmuriel heard him clearly, as well. “No doubt that change would prove beneficial for all in Luskan in time, but it also meant the weakening of many, particularly the strongest and most vicious. You demanded—perhaps not demanded, but coaxed—that they surrender their lifestyle. Not every pirate murders and steals because he has a future of few options. Some do it simply because they enjoy it. They prefer a life of grand adventure without moral boundaries, even if it means, almost certainly, that they, too, will find a most unpleasant and early death.”

  “And you label us the evil race,” Dab’nay said.

  “Is Menzoberranzan really any different?” Braelin Janquay asked her. “Do you doubt the joy many priestesses feel when using the scourge?”

  “We are far afield of our issue here,” Beniago remarked.

  “When you retake Luskan, if you do, you would do well to determine the redeemable citizens from the others,” Wulfgar finished.

  Beniago looked to him, offered a quick nod, then turned back to Braelin.

  “Our best hope is the chaos of the gnolls,” Braelin went on. “Even Brevindon Margaster cannot fully control them, and their crimes against the folk of Luskan mount.”

  “And what do we know of Brevindon?” Beniago asked.

  “He’s a demon in him,” Bonnie Charlee answered. “A real one, red-skinned and wicked, and with a swirly sword that’ll cut ye in half.”

  “Aye,” Braelin agreed. “That demon, too, may prove to be unwittingly helping us. Brevindon is behaving ferociously, hanging people by the dozen, and soon not a family in Luskan will not know someone who has died at the end of one of his ropes. The people will fear him, the other captains will bow to him, but soon enough, most will hold less love for Brevindon than they ever harbored for us.”

  “But he’s not the only demon in Luskan, and he has a considerable mercenary force that will never betray him, including the gnolls,” said Dab’nay.

  Others started to respond, but Beniago held up his hand, silencing them as he considered the information—none of which was truly new to anyone in the room.

  “Archmage Gromph will not be persuaded,” he told them after a long pause, “and there is little we can do without suffering too many losses—Bregan D’aerthe is not a war party. I had hoped to find a role for us under the new leadership in Luskan, but given the power behind Brevindon, which we now know to be Matron Zhindia Melarn, that will never be.

  “No, we have to win here, and win soon, while Matron Zhindia remains busy in the south. Continue nibbling on the edges, but let’s focus more attention to agitating the gnolls against those most loyal to High Captain Brevindon Margaster. Push him and pressure him to greater cruelty until we can determine the best way to fully strike.”

  He ended with a look to Kimmuriel, who remained impassive and gave no indication of agreement or disagreement.

  These were the times when Kimmuriel Oblodra wondered if there was such a thing as natural reincarnation, or if, perhaps, the spirit of a sentient being could be injected into an inappropriate corporeal form—both Yvonnel and Quenthel Baenre as possible examples, perhaps. Back in his own “place,” Kimmuriel could count his friends on a single finger—if Jarlaxle even was his friend. Certainly the unusual rogue was the closest to counting as one.

  Perhaps Gromph Baenre, perhaps Beniago Kurth, perhaps Braelin Janquay. These were his associates, and with them he had established some measure of trust at least, and with Gromph, he also held a grudging respect, probably more so than Kimmuriel offered any other drow or any member of any other race on Faerun.

  But friends? If he had a friend on Toril, it would be Jarlaxle. And yes, he knew, that was stretching the definition.

  But here, in this place, nothing was
measured in that manner. In this place, Kimmuriel Oblodra didn’t exist, other than to be a single colligation in the one being that was the whole of illithid society. Here in the hive mind, his fingers caressing the great pulsing brain, the edifice of connection and oneness, thoughts and memories became interchangeable and mingled. Study in the hive mind was merely a matter of searching what had become your own expansive knowledge and memories rather than hearing or reading the words of a separate being.

  Kimmuriel often lamented that he should have been born an illithid.

  The hive mind knew this truth within the drow’s heart, of course, which explained why he was so welcomed here. One could not easily hide insincerity in this place. One could not easily hide anything from the illithids.

  A large part of the individual that was Kimmuriel wanted to just stay here. Let Luskan and Bregan D’aerthe be the concerns of another. He could remain at the hive mind and caress knowledge itself, bask in pure thought, revel in memories as visceral as if he had walked those pathways in the lonely and singular drow form he had been forced to wear.

  Arguments came back at him from so many other corners of the hive mind, though. He was unique here, or nearly so. Only this synapse of the hive mind, this being named Kimmuriel, that existed in that drow reality in that world of Faerun, could bring in such expansive experiences and knowledge of that place.

  He would be limiting the hive mind and thus limiting himself if he lost the balance between recipient and source.

  So he accepted it for the time being and focused his thoughts as he searched.

  Demons . . . possession . . . phylactery . . .

  The knowledge was extensive, of course, since demons had been milling about existence since the beginning of time itself and, given their potential for destruction and damage, had ever been of concern to the illithid hive mind.

  He wasn’t learning.

  He was remembering, and that was much more powerful and rich.

  The memories sorted, the drow lightened his hand from the central brain of the community, ready to remove it and depart.

  Be well, be open, he heard in his head, the telepathic voices of so many illithids who had joined with him this day to share their memories. They were one, intimately, in this last moment before the mental unjoining, and so distinct were their communal voices that he could silently and almost instantly thank them, each and every one. He noted most especially Pescatawav, the current most endeared to the central brain, a position that rotated among the hive, and one that Kimmuriel, as an outsider, would never know.

  He noted one other, for some reason, as he lifted his hand from the central brain and broke the connection. Something about the way the mind flayer named Ouwoonivisc had imparted the thought struck him . . . differently.

  “This plan will not succeed,” Kimmuriel told Beniago and the others when they gathered again in Illusk. Beniago’s scouts and provocateurs had been out and about in the city for a tenday, causing trouble, riling up gnolls, riling up the people of Luskan against the gnolls. Even whispering dire warnings to the ambassadors of the high captains.

  There had been some fights but few fatalities, and little progress in weakening the hold of High Captain Brevindon. Indeed, the Waterdhavian noble had now fully staffed and armed Ship Margaster. The whole island was fast becoming a fortress, and that show of strength would keep the pirates, both invader and citizen, in line. And so Kimmuriel was reconsidering, and being pushed toward his more daring conflict.

  “Then what is left to us?” Beniago asked. “Does Bregan D’aerthe desert Luskan? Perhaps we leave a minor gang behind to monitor and find ways to bring in some profit, at least. Or should we go back to Gromph and beg him to reconsider his retreat from this fight?”

  “Or at least convince him to reopen the portals to Gauntlgrym?” Braelin added. “King Bruenor will not allow the new events in Luskan to stand. If he can at last open the portals to the Silver Marches, he will have three more dwarven armies at his command.”

  “The gates are closed, and Gromph is too self-serving to reconsider his actions. The retrievers and the sudden gains of the Melarni have convinced him that Lolth is on their side, and he’s too wise to invoke the anger of the Spider Queen,” Kimmuriel calmly explained.

  “But we’re not, apparently,” Wulfgar dared to say, chuckling—but he was not joined in that mirth by any in the room.

  “We have underestimated Brevindon Margaster, or more particularly, this demon Asbeel, who resides within the man,” Kimmuriel explained. “He is formidable—they are formidable, and they came here as prepared for the aftermath as they were for the initial victory. Port Llast, too, is in their thrall.”

  “So we leave,” Beniago reasoned.

  “No,” came Kimmuriel’s simple answer.

  “Then what?” Beniago and Braelin asked together.

  Kimmuriel looked to the side, to Wulfgar, who nodded knowingly.

  “We destroy them,” the barbarian said. “We send this fiend Asbeel back to the pits of the lower planes, where it belongs.”

  The looks of the drow commanders lingered on Wulfgar for a bit before shifting back to Kimmuriel, who was still staring at Wulfgar.

  “He knows how to do it,” Wulfgar told them all.

  Kimmuriel almost managed a smile at that. He wished he was as sure as the barbarian on that matter. Something was bothering Kimmuriel, nagging at him. He felt as if he was missing an important fact. There was a memory floating about just beyond his reach, or several memories that were related somehow in a manner that would give him answers.

  “I won’t miss this time,” Wulfgar promised them all.

  You should not have missed last time, Kimmuriel thought but did not say, or project telepathically.

  His next thought following that unusual notion—why did he care?—was that he had thought it out of frustration.

  But no, he now realized. He had gone to great lengths to protect Wulfgar in that fight on Brevindon Margaster’s ship, far out at sea. He had protected the barbarian with a kinetic barrier, giving Wulfgar tremendous power in one swing to reflect all of the energy Kimmuriel’s shield had given him. Kimmuriel had done that knowing that Wulfgar, so skilled and powerful, would end the demon within his opponent or would at least shatter Brevindon’s physical body. Asbeel was proud and thought himself invincible. His fighting was aggressive, reckless, arrogant.

  Wulfgar couldn’t miss.

  But he had.

  How was that possible?

  Chapter 13

  Convergence

  They came in with a flash and a puff of smoke, some extra flair old Kipper Harpell had put into his teleportation spells simply for dramatic effect. This time, it almost cost him and those traveling with him dearly, for when they arrived in the small portal room in Gauntlgrym, they found two ranks of battle dwarves with loaded heavy crossbows staring at them, and a side-slinger catapult on the wall, straining to let loose its lethal payload.

  “Bows up!” cried Bjarke Lager, the battle group commander, as soon as the smoke had cleared and Catti-brie was fully revealed. Half the dwarves had their weapons there already, having recognized the woman as a true friend of Clan Battlehammer. Every dwarf in Gauntlgrym, every dwarf in Mithral Hall, every dwarf in Citadel Adbar and Citadel Felbarr knew well the adopted daughter of King Bruenor Battlehammer.

  “My lady Catti-brie! It is good you have come,” Bjarke said, rushing up to the foursome. “But I’m hopin’ ye brought a way out if ye’re needin’ it!”

  “Not for needin’ it, good master dwarf,” the woman replied, so easily slipping into the rhythm and brogue of the dwarves, a way of speaking she had drowned in since her youngest days. It was an unconscious reversion, but a common one and one that brought a smile to her face, for Catti-brie always felt that dwarven brogue, part lyrical, part guttural, was fitting with battle so near. Every word struck like a bolstering slap on the back and conjured images of toasts to great heroes of old who had stood against mighty foes and p
revailed. “What I’m needin’ is the sight o’ me husband and me da.”

  “Aye, but King Bruenor’s a popular one today,” Bjarke said.

  Catti-brie considered that and looked at him curiously, but didn’t press further as the dwarf continued.

  “We got to go the secret back ways. Main corridors’re full o’ fighting. Might be a bit tight with yerself carrying a . . . load.”

  “Just lead, me friend, and be quick, eh?”

  “Eh,” Bjarke agreed. “Bruenor’ll be in the forge room, or the place what keeps the beast, not to doubt. Come along.”

  He nodded to the dwarf nearest the right-hand wall, and that fellow hopped over and pressed on specific spots on the seemingly unremarkable stone. A section of the wall dropped away, revealing a narrow but clean and well-worked corridor.

  “Pull a torch!” Bjarke called.

  “No need,” said Penelope Harpell, and with a wave of her hand, she conjured a magical light, placing it on the tip of Bjarke’s pointy helm.

  “Wizards,” the dwarf muttered, and started away. “We see any demon critters and ye be fast in putting out that light.”

  “Faster than you could douse a torch,” Penelope assured him.

  “Wizards,” Bjarke muttered again.

  The six, for a second dwarf took up the rear of the line, rambled along at a fine pace through winding narrow passages. To Catti-brie and the other visitors, the whole of the place seemed a vast maze, with too many turns and forks and intersections of passages that all looked the same, but Bjarke knew exactly where he was going and soon enough had the group at the end of a corridor, facing what seemed like simple stone except for a metal push bar on one side, with a chain hanging beside it.

  Bjarke pulled the chain, and they heard a bell on the other side of the door. The dwarf paused for a count of three, then pulled the chain rapidly, once and again. After a brief moment, he pushed on the bar and the door silently swung open into a wide chamber.