Relentless

by R. A. Salvatore

  “It is good to see you, clever gnome,” Iccara said when Symvyn rushed up to them.

  “Where is it?” Priestess Du’Quelve demanded, not hiding her anger.

  The gnome fumbled about his belt at his right hip to produce a small pouch, then reached behind, under his cloak, and pulled off two more. He presented the three to the priestesses.

  Du’Quelve snatched one and pulled it open, reaching in and pulling forth a small handful of green-and-black ore. She looked to Iccara, who had taken the other two. “Which is a bag of holding?” she demanded.

  Iccara opened each bag and reached in, then shook her head.

  “I’ve no such item,” Symvyn told them. “It would be a lot easier if I did!”

  “Then where is the rest of my ore?” Du’Quelve demanded.

  “I . . . I did my best,” Symvyn said, rocking nervously from foot to foot. “The ore’s not light, and ye cannot expect me to carry a large sack out of Dun Arandur, as the burrow warden’s gone to naming the camp. They’re watching, don’t doubt. Watching who comes in and who goes out.”

  “I do not care!” Du’Quelve shouted at him. “You haven’t enough here to make a gauntlet.”

  “A bit at a time,” Symvyn said, backing away with every word.

  “How much time do you think we have, foolish gnome? Do you expect us to stay out here in the Underdark for tendays while you ferry a handful at a time?”

  “Three handfuls,” Symvyn said, and he swallowed hard when he saw the look his snide remark invoked on the face of the drow priestess!

  “Enough, Priestess Du’Quelve,” Iccara said. “The gnome is frightened and not without reason.”

  Du’Quelve threw up her arms and turned aside, muttering under her breath.

  “We do need you to do better,” Iccara told Symvyn.

  “They count the ore,” he replied, pleadingly. “Not exact, but Belwar’s knowing how much is there, and so will know how much ain’t! They catch me and it’s all done here.”

  “Perhaps he is right,” Iccara said.

  Du’Quelve spun about, her red eyes wide.

  “Perhaps we should change our tactics, then, and not rely on Matron Mother Baenre’s reaction to a shining suit of arandur,” Iccara explained.

  Du’Quelve looked at her curiously for a few heartbeats, then let a smile spread wide as she nodded.

  Symvyn watched it all, still not catching on.

  “Tell us the location of all the defensive wards,” Iccara said to Symvyn.

  The gnome felt his face fall as his jaw went slack. “That weren’t our deal!”

  “This is our new deal,” Iccara said insistently.

  “That weren’t our deal!” Symvyn said again, more loudly, and he found it hard to get the words past his lips, as if his voice suddenly wasn’t his own.

  “This is our new deal,” Iccara said again, this time calmly.

  It all came clear to Symvyn then, the answer to his dilemmas, both with the priestesses here and with the dangers of Belwar back in Dun Arandur.

  “This is our new deal,” Iccara said a third time.

  “This is our new deal,” Symvyn recited, the statement at first surprising him, but then settling on him as his obvious preference.

  He saw Du’Quelve and Iccara exchange smiles then and knew that he had done the right thing.

  He was glad to please these new friends who so valued him.

  Jarlaxle bent low and peered under the stones, watching the ooze as it slipped through a small crack in the wall, disappearing from sight.

  “Amazing,” he said. He stood and turned and looked to Zaknafein and Kimmuriel.

  “There is more afoot here,” Kimmuriel warned, echoing Zak’s sentiments.

  “This . . . thing is gone?” Jarlaxle asked.

  “It is confused,” answered the psionicist. “It will be confused for a long time. I do not anticipate it will bother us again.”

  “And if it does, you will be ready?”

  Kimmuriel just stared at him.

  “Come on, the corner is not far ahead,” Zak told them. He started away, but paused and looked back to the stones. “You are sure that thing didn’t know we were coming?”

  “How certain can I be about an ooze, or whatever it was?” Kimmuriel replied. “I sensed it. I attacked it. I won.”

  “But if it somehow signaled ahead to our possible enemies—”

  “Why do you even think it is connected to any of that?” Kimmuriel asked, as if the question was obvious and Zak’s conclusions not.

  “We think the gnome is dominated. You sensed the creature, ooze, whatever, because of its mental energies. The connection seems evident.”

  “Only because you dismiss coincidence, which is what I would expect from a warrior.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidence.”

  “As I just said.”

  “Whatever the case,” Jarlaxle intervened, before it could go any further. “Perhaps this creature is some kind of mind plague and is infecting the svirfnebli independent of the Hunzrins. Perhaps it is not connected, and merely came to this place because it sensed other magical or psionic activity. It does not matter—and our time here is short. Let us learn what we may.”

  Zak and Kimmuriel continued to exchange stares for a bit longer; then Zak turned and moved off, traveling along corridors he recognized from his first visit here. His pace was quick, not just because of his familiarity, but because of the formidability of his two companions. He did slow as he neared the rubble he recognized as the pile from which he had witnessed the first gnome and drow encounter, however, for he heard voices up ahead.

  The three came to the corner. Jarlaxle peered around, then pulled back and took out a strange-looking, funnel-shaped device. He put the narrow end in his ear and leaned out, the flared end toward the speakers.

  Priestess Du’Quelve Hunzrin, his signaled to his companions. His expression changed as he continued to listen, a look of concern coming over him.

  The gnome is betraying his people fully, he signed. I think the Hunzrins mean to attack them.

  Alone? Kimmuriel’s hand asked.

  He is dominated. Fully, Zak interjected.

  Jarlaxle looked to Kimmuriel. Free him.

  Kimmuriel nodded and took a step toward the corner, but Zaknafein then said, aloud, “We should be gone!”

  The other two looked at him in horror, shocked that he would break their silence, but they understood when they followed Zak’s gaze back the way they had come, to see a trio of drow warriors and a priestess—a priestess who appeared quite naked—running toward them, though still some distance away.

  “Scatter, find your way,” Jarlaxle said, and ran off, turning down the nearest side passage, Kimmuriel at his heels.

  Zaknafein, though, had a different idea, and instead of following, he went around the bend, full speed, leaping, whip in hand.

  The deep gnome cried out in surprise, and the two drow priestesses spun on him, their shock quickly turning to anger and to action, Du’Quelve Hunzrin lifting her scourge, the other waggling her fingers.

  Zak raced past the deep gnome, and Du’Quelve moved to intercept him, the living snakes of her three-headed whip lifting and coiling to strike.

  But Zak struck first, his bullwhip reaching out tantalizingly toward the scourge and the priestess holding in. A sudden snap of his wrist brought the tip snapping across, and Zak called on the deeper powers of the weapon, drawing a line of fire across the air right before the scourge.

  Already in motion, the snakes struck, one, then the second, and two snake heads fell free, severed as they crossed the planar tear.

  Priestess Du’Quelve cried out in horror—to a drow priestess, nothing was more sacred than her scourge—and that made Zak smile.

  Zaknafein never slowed, though, running by the pair, expecting to be hit hard by some spell of the second priestess. It came as another blast of mental power, an attempt once more to dominate him, to break him immediately to her will.r />
  So much like the first time, and in that moment, Zak was certain that this one and the ooze back there were somehow connected.

  He fought through it, staggering a bit, and was quick to throw himself around the next corner—almost running into a pair of Hunzrin soldiers who were waiting for him!

  “A naked priestess,” Jarlaxle quietly muttered, surprised and shocked by the revelation. For, indeed, he knew what that meant. She was naked because she had been a slithering pile of black ooze only a short while before.

  “She,” he quipped, for what did gender really mean to such a being? One thing he did know: “she” was a handmaiden of Lolth, a yochlol, and very likely so was the other non-Hunzrin priestess who had come out to deal with the deep gnomes, to dominate this poor fellow.

  He sprinted along a fairly straight and even corridor, coming past an opening with a slight turn to ensure that no enemies were hiding within that alcove. He skidded to a stop, noting no enemy but a friend.

  Kimmuriel waved him into the alcove, though how the strange drow had ever gotten to this point before him, Jarlaxle could only guess. He seemed to do that a lot regarding Kimmuriel.

  “They’re not far behind,” he whispered.

  “Far enough,” Kimmuriel replied. “You know the truth now, of course.”

  “Handmaidens.”

  “Yochlol, indeed. And two of them, at least. What is this business? Why does Lolth intervene on behalf of House Hunzrin?”

  “We don’t know that it’s Lolth,” Jarlaxle replied.

  “Two handmaidens,” Kimmuriel said dryly, as close to sarcasm as the emotionless drow could manage.

  “Two handmaidens who are causing trouble. They do so because they enjoy it,” Jarlaxle argued, though his conviction was thin enough for Kimmuriel to notice without even trying to telepathically worm into Jarlaxle’s thoughts.

  Was House Hunzrin in the favor of the Spider Queen? Was Lolth herself orchestrating this bold move by the Hunzrins, and if so, what did that signal to Bregan D’aerthe?

  Jarlaxle didn’t like the possibilities here. He had worked for centuries to scrape out some measure of respect and power within the matriarchal society, for himself and for those many drow who associated with Bregan D’aerthe. But they were mostly just men, after all—Jarlaxle could count the number of women in the mercenary band on one hand, with fingers to spare.

  Had Lolth finally grown weary of allowing such an elevation of a band of men?

  He considered Matron Mother Baenre’s reaction, and there, too, he didn’t like the possibilities. She would not be happy if Bregan D’aerthe—which was, after all, a willing extension of her power—wound up greatly diminished by the Hunzrin maneuver.

  Jarlaxle peered out from the alcove, feeling very uncertain.

  We can’t let them succeed here, he signed to his companion.

  You would risk stifling handmaidens of Lolth? Kimmuriel replied, his hands moving rather awkwardly.

  Despite their predicament, Jarlaxle almost laughed aloud at the childlike movements—if fingers could stutter, Kimmuriel’s had just done so! Rarely did the psionicist resort to the silent hand code of the drow. Usually, he would simply communicate silently with telepathic messages.

  Not with Jarlaxle and his eyepatch, though. And he wasn’t about to take it off for ease of conversation, for they knew that more than one psionicist was about, and the others seemed not to be allies.

  Jarlaxle considered the question for a bit. “Yes,” he whispered. “If they are here on behalf of Lolth, then so be it. The Hunzrins will not win this market.”

  He peered around the corner again, then pulled back quickly. They are coming, his fingers relayed to Kimmuriel.

  Kimmuriel extended his hand to Jarlaxle, who looked at it for some moments before finally taking it. He knew what was coming, and he hated it.

  Oh, how he hated it.

  He heard the voices of the approaching enemies, nearer and nearer, but then they were suddenly far away, and the world about him became a hazy blur. The distinct lines of the glowworms crawling about the corridor caused a distant fuzzy blue-white glow.

  Kimmuriel stepped past him, moving into the stone, pulling Jarlaxle right behind.

  Small spaces didn’t bother Jarlaxle. He had on more than one occasion spent an entire day hiding in his portable hole, a lightless extradimensional compartment. But this wasn’t a small space. He and Kimmuriel were moving through solid stone, sliding insubstantially through it.

  This wasn’t a small space.

  This was no space at all.

  And no direction at all, to Jarlaxle’s sensibilities. Were they even still moving? Now fully within the stone wall, he had no frame of reference, had no visual cue that they weren’t simply standing still, and with no resistance, no air movement, no tactile feeling underfoot or anywhere else, Jarlaxle could only hope that this strange friend of his had a better idea of it all than he.

  They exited the stone into the same corridor Jarlaxle had just traversed, but now behind the pursuing drow. They became substantial so abruptly that Jarlaxle almost tumbled over.

  “I did not expect you would wish a fight,” Kimmuriel remarked.

  “If there was one, I would have been alone,” Jarlaxle replied, and the psionicist didn’t disagree.

  “I would not battle a handmaiden except in defense,” Kimmuriel confirmed. “I am of House Oblodra and would not bring Lolth’s disfavor upon my family.”

  “I wouldn’t ask you to.”

  “Are you not?”

  Jarlaxle looked at him, trying to figure out their next move and realizing as the obvious choice came to him that Kimmuriel already had.

  “Free the traitor gnome from the grasp of the yochlol,” Jarlaxle bade him.

  Kimmuriel stared at him.

  “Can you?”

  Still the psionicist stared, then finally nodded.

  Jarlaxle led the way back to the corner.

  The Hunzrin priestess was still there, flanked by Hunzrin guards, facing the gnome, who looked perfectly terrified and miserable.

  The yochlol priestess who had been beside Du’Quelve, however, was nowhere to be seen.

  The two crept nearer, listening to Du’Quelve scolding the gnome.

  “It is none of your concern. A band of thieves who will be put down as they deserve. I will have the locations of every ward, every glyph, every guard.”

  “That was not . . . our . . . deal,” the poor gnome replied, his voice faltering, his legs wobbling with weakness as he tried to argue.

  Do it! Jarlaxle implored Kimmuriel, snapping the communication off emphatically.

  If there are repercussions . . . Kimmuriel warned.

  I will assume responsibility, before Matron Mother Baenre herself. I order you to do this in her name.

  Jarlaxle could hardly believe he had just said that! If these yochlol were here bestowing the blessing of Lolth on House Hunzrin, he might have well doomed himself and Bregan D’aerthe.

  He shook that thought aside and resisted the urge to spit on the ground. What did it matter? If he did nothing, Bregan D’aerthe was surely diminished, perhaps forevermore, doomed by this bold Hunzrin move. Jarlaxle’s sanctioned activities would be relegated to the cavern of Menzoberranzan, a place Jarlaxle was coming to view as stifling as the stones he and Kimmuriel had just floated through, and any unsanctioned activities beyond the cavern would as likely get him killed.

  Do it! he said again with his fingers.

  He watched the svirfneblin then, who suddenly went quiet, cutting short his answer, and so again suffering the berating of Du’Quelve Hunzrin.

  The fellow hopped from foot to foot, exactly as before, but his face twitched, his expression shifting, his eyes widening.

  Well played, Jarlaxle silently congratulated Kimmuriel. We will meet again in the Clawrift below your house.

  Jarlaxle tipped his wide-brimmed hat to Kimmuriel, then took the hat from his head and pulled forth a small piece of black cloth.<
br />
  Kimmuriel nodded and smiled and melted away into the stone.

  Now Jarlaxle had to anticipate the coming events, and he didn’t like the possibilities. He had to try, at least, but he feared the little fellow surely doomed.

  He crept across the corridor, silent as a shadow, then rushed down a side passage, one that he knew ran parallel to the one from which the gnome had come. Some way along, he threw the black cloth, the portable hole, against the wall, and crawled through it into the other corridor, then pulled the hole through behind him, turning it again into a seemingly normal circle of fabric.

  Such a wondrous item!

  Jarlaxle padded along the tunnel, nearing the confrontation, drawing a wand.

  Too close to put his whip to use, Zaknafein had to face three swords and a dagger of his two drow opponents with only a single sword. A lesser warrior, an average drow warrior, would have been overwhelmed or at least driven back into the room with Priestess Du’Quelve.

  Not Zaknafein Do’Urden, however. By all that the drow taught at Melee-Magthere, he should have played full defense, dropping the whip, drawing his second sword, and fighting a quick turn-and-retreat technique to buy him some breathing room.

  Instead, he blocked the lead sword of the drow to his left, then the stab of the drow to his right with a quick cut and backhand. He dodged the second sword from the left, accepting a stinging clip on his left hip, then ducked the thrown dagger, lifting his sword arm to deflect the spinning weapon before it came around to its point—and again, took a stinging cut, this one on his forearm.

  Those two hits, though, gave him a step backward, and when the opponents moved to pursue, they met not the sword of Zak but the whip. In that small space, he expertly set it into motion, snapping it in short order left and right in the air before him. The cracking sounds alone gave his opponents pause, and more than that, the whip left tiny tears before the material and fire planes of existence, with dribs of fire falling from the sky.

  He never hit either of the drow before him with the whip—that wasn’t the point.