Relentless

by R. A. Salvatore

  “So what do we do now?” Wulfgar asked when she was done.

  Kimmuriel cast a sidelong glance at him.

  “I would go to find King Bruenor,” Wulfgar decided. “If the drow are going to go to war against one another, that isn’t my concern.”

  “They’ll slaughter everyone you hold dear before they do so,” Kimmuriel assured him. “Is that your concern?”

  Wulfgar didn’t shrink back from the unnerving diminutive drow.

  “Let us go. Matron Mother Baenre awaits,” Kimmuriel said, hardly intimidated. He started away, but Dab’nay and Braelin exchanged looks and did not follow.

  Kimmuriel turned back to regard them. “Yes, I understand,” he told them, then specifically to Dab’nay, he added, “I saw your plans in the midst of your storytelling. You wish to go and hide, to see how it all plays out.”

  “I won’t deny it,” Dab’nay said.

  “Denying with words does not override clear thoughts.”

  “I know not what you expect of me, but I’ll not serve myself up to Matron Mother Baenre or to Matron Zhindia Melarn,” Dab’nay resolutely replied.

  “And you would not have carried out my orders had I been killed or detained in my journeys,” Kimmuriel bluntly stated.

  “No,” Braelin answered before Dab’nay could.

  Kimmuriel considered that for a moment, then nodded. “In light of what you divined, that is perhaps the best choice for you, I admit. Go, then. Scurry to a dark hole and hide. This will be decided quickly, I expect, and if not, then you will at least know better the drawn lines.”

  “And if Matron Mother Baenre prevails, then so will Bregan D’aerthe,” Dab’nay said. “In that event, what for us?”

  “Jarlaxle values you both.”

  “But you will tell him of our cowardice here?” Braelin asked.

  “I will tell him that you behaved exactly as Jarlaxle would behave in your place,” Kimmuriel answered.

  Dab’nay and Braelin exchanged looks that were both surprised and relieved.

  “Oh, he has done similar before, I assure you,” Kimmuriel told them. “Many times. It is how he survives. It is how we all survive.” He ended with a snort and quietly added, “Perhaps to our everlasting damnation.”

  With a shrug, Kimmuriel turned, bidding Wulfgar to follow, and started away.

  “Kimmuriel,” Braelin called after he had gone a few steps, turning him back once more.

  “I wish you well in this journey, and not just for my own good fortune,” Braelin told him.

  For all of us, then, Kimmuriel telepathically imparted to both Braelin and Dab’nay.

  Chapter 27

  Malevolent Infection

  “Why are we out here?” Dahlia whispered to Entreri. Along with Yvonnel and Pwent, the two lay atop the ridge of a wooded hillock, looking down at the vast gathering of drow. Nearest them was the largest contingent, one bearing the banners of House Baenre—banners well-known to Entreri, who had once found himself in the dungeons of that most powerful drow house.

  “There is too much at stake,” Entreri whispered back. “Maybe we can find a way to help.”

  “Against that?” Dahlia asked incredulously. She held her hand out, sweeping it over the vast army of deadly drow.

  “What would you have me do?”

  “Waterdeep,” she answered. “Let us go back and spread the word of the happenings here. Rouse the lords against this invasion. That might be Gauntlgrym’s only hope.”

  Entreri held up his hand to silence her, shaking his head and turning his attention to their two companions.

  Pwent was very near to Yvonnel, who seemed unconcerned about the presence of the vampire.

  “Kill me, then,” the dwarf pleaded. “But cure me o’ this curse, I beg. Yerself’s the most powerful, so I been told. Avatar o’ Lolth herself. Surely . . .”

  “I have told you already, Thibbledorf Pwent,” Yvonnel interrupted. “There is no known cure for your affliction. If there were, I’d find it for you, I promise. But no, there is none.”

  “Then kill me to death for real.”

  “You told me that you were able to sit in the Throne of the Dwarven Gods,” Yvonnel replied. “Does that offer you no hope?”

  “I was thinking that I’d found a way to control it,” the dwarf admitted. “Might that I had. Aye, but this curse, lady, this curse . . . It won’t e’er leave me, and the hunger returns. I might hold it back a hunnerd times, but the hunnerd-an’-one’ll have me puttin’ me teeth into the neck o’ Copperhead.”

  “There is a great fight before your king Bruenor,” Yvonnel reminded him. “You will sate your hunger on his enemies.”

  “For now,” the despondent dwarf said.

  “And when it is done, if you feel the same, I will end your . . . affliction.”

  “What then for poor Pwent?” Pwent asked.

  “You won’t be blamed,” Artemis Entreri interjected. “I’ve seen. Losing to your curse isn’t malevolence. You will find, in the end, that only those things in which you can truly blame yourself will wound you.”

  “What happened to you?” Dahlia whispered into Entreri’s ear, and her tone wasn’t of concern, but more of distaste.

  Entreri looked at her and shrugged helplessly.

  “Stay about and find your place, Thibbledorf Pwent,” Yvonnel told him. “Be gone from us now. If you cannot find your way, if you think I am wrong in presenting the duty before you, then attack King Bruenor’s enemies. There are many hundred drow before us capable of bringing your end. But I say again, this is not the time for that. We have a war to fight, I fear.”

  After Pwent took his leave, becoming a large bat and flying off, Yvonnel led the other two down the slope, moving ever closer to the banners of House Baenre. Dahlia grew more uneasy with every step, and kept tugging on Entreri’s sleeve, motioning to him with her head whenever he looked at her that they should be long away from this area.

  Finally, drawing very near to the drow camp, Entreri slowed.

  “Do you mean to present us before the Matron Mother?” he whispered to Yvonnel.

  “I want you to bear witness,” she explained. “I know not what I will find there, or that my aunt will allow me to leave. In that case, you must inform King Bruenor.” She paused, then pulled of a ring and handed it to the assassin. “And return this to Catti-brie, I beg.”

  “If they won’t let you leave, what makes you believe that we will get out?” Dahlia snapped at her.

  Yvonnel smiled at the intended slight, for that of course is what it was: a clear intimation that Dahlia expected that Yvonnel would betray her and Artemis to save herself. Yvonnel stood up tall and looked all around. “I believe we are close enough now,” she explained, not answering Dahlia, then produced a pair of small circular stones disks. She held one up to her lips and whispered into it, and the sound came out of the second one.

  “These are akin to sending stones, or more appropriately, clairaudience stones,” she explained. “Much more limited by distance, but more complete while the magic I have placed in them holds. It will not be long, but you should hear enough of the conversation to understand what King Bruenor needs to know.”

  “While we sit here and wait for them to catch us?” came Dahlia’s next sarcastic question.

  Yvonnel shook her head helplessly and took out a length of rope. She whispered the mystical sequence to enact a spell and tossed the end of the rope upward, where it stuck in midair as if attached to some invisible grapnel. Yvonnel stepped back and motioned for them to ascend.

  Entreri was familiar with the spell and so leaped upon the rope and scrambled up. When he reached the top, he pulled himself into Yvonnel’s extradimensional creation.

  How strange he looked from below, as if he were passing into nothingness, vanishing inch by inch as his form slipped from the material plane into the extra dimension.

  Dahlia had lived most of her life among the Red Wizards of Thay. She was not surprised, or much comforted, but she,
too, went up and entered the pocket dimension, pulling the rope up behind her to further conceal the place.

  Yvonnel didn’t even wait for her to get up there before she ran off. She had limited time for her sending stone dweomer to hold.

  More than that, the drow woman was truly terrified now. She knew that the moment before her was critical, and to more than her own safety. Everything rested on this.

  Mostly, though, she just wanted to get it over with, because she knew that she would lose her nerve altogether if she did not.

  It would be so much easier and personally beneficial for her to just go along with whatever Quenthel was doing.

  “We can still get away,” Dahlia told Entreri, the two sitting in the bland extradimensional chamber. “Yvonnel won’t stop us. She probably won’t even blame us. And the vampire dwarf will care not, unless he intends to bite us.”

  “We’ve already had this discussion,” Entreri sourly replied.

  “No, we haven’t had a discussion. You’ve just kept pressing on, as if it’s not madness for us to be here. Look at them!” Dahlia said. She noted that Entreri was tightly grasping the stone disk Yvonnel had given him, as if trying to muffle their conversation.

  “You don’t trust her, either,” Dahlia said, nodding to his hand. “She told you it was clairaudience, but you fear that she lied and is spying on us.”

  “Trust doesn’t come easy to me,” the assassin replied.

  “Exactly my point. Look at them. A vast army, any three of which would likely be enough to defeat us. We sit here within a league of not one, but two monstrous forces, both of which could, and likely would, destroy us if they found us. This is madness, all of it, and it is our madness to participate in it. You cannot believe that we will truly make a difference here.”

  “You’re probably correct in that.”

  “Then let us be gone!”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I cannot. I’m not leaving them.”

  “Them? Your friends?” Her tone with that last word was hardly complimentary.

  Entreri stared at her in disappointment.

  “What about me?” Dahlia insisted. “I stood beside you. I went to the end of the world to save you! Right into House Margaster. I faced down demons and those stinging wasps. All for you. Doesn’t that matter?”

  “So did Regis,” Entreri replied, stealing her bluster. He added, “Don’t doubt my gratitude—”

  “Maybe it’s not that that I’m doubting.”

  “My love?”

  “Do you even know what the word means? I wish to be out of this hopeless predicament. If you loved me . . .”

  “Loyalty, then?”

  “Yes!”

  “What about my loyalty to them? To Regis for helping you every step. To Catti-brie . . .”

  “To Drizzt, you mean.”

  “Him, too, even if he is dead.”

  Dahlia fell suddenly silent, and Entreri couldn’t read the look on her face. But it frightened him.

  They heard calls then through the clairaudience stone. Yvonnel had arrived at the drow perimeter, demanding to be brought before Matron Mother Quenthel’s court.

  Entreri moved his hand and took a deep breath.

  Dahlia turned away from him and looked out the small window to the material plane afforded by such spells as this rope trick. She started almost immediately, seeing movement in the trees.

  She reached back and touched Entreri’s leg, and he moved up fast, noticing the movement as well.

  Then noting two forms, two men, drow and human, walking through the trees.

  He knew them both, quite well. He moved for the window. Dahlia grabbed him by the arm.

  “Do not,” she said.

  “That’s Wulfgar.”

  “And Kimmuriel,” Dahlia said. “A drow. A most dangerous drow in the face of a drow army.”

  That did give Entreri pause, but just for a moment. Then he shook his head and pulled away from her, tossing the rope out from the window and sliding down to the ground, literally appearing in midair before Kimmuriel and Wulfgar.

  Entreri went back up that rope soon after, Wulfgar climbing up behind him, while Kimmuriel, informed by Entreri of Yvonnel’s actions, continued on to meet with the Matron Mother.

  Entreri and Wulfgar did not find a happy Dahlia waiting for them.

  “Great—now Kimmuriel knows where we are,” she said. “Perhaps it is time for us to be gone.”

  Entreri gave her a skeptical look.

  “Listen,” she said, holding forth the clairaudience disk. “Yvonnel has only just arrived, and now they are discussing an alliance with Matron Zhindia.”

  Entreri’s jaw dropped open, as he had no response to that.

  Nor did Wulfgar.

  “We must be out of here, and quickly,” Dahlia said. “Far, far away.”

  “It seems our only course,” Matron Mother Quenthel told Yvonnel when the latter unexpectedly joined the ranks of the Baenre priestesses, who were joined by the priestesses of House Do’Urden and House Fey-Branche in a shallow cave protecting them from the infernal ball in the sky.

  “Do you think that even with her driders, Matron Zhindia can defeat the combined power of Menzoberranzan?” Yvonnel asked. “Or even defeat House Baenre alone?”

  “Do you believe we will have the combined power of Menzoberranzan?” Sos’Umptu countered, and her looks toward Yvonnel told the younger drow that Sos’Umptu wasn’t much enamored of her at this time, and that she was most certainly advising Quenthel strongly on this. “Or that House Baenre would survive such a conflict strong enough to fend Matron Mez’Barris in the aftermath?”

  Yvonnel had no answer. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps Matron Zhindia was in Lolth’s highest favor and the only chance for House Baenre to survive this dangerous time was to admit such and join in the glory of Zhindia’s conquest.

  So much of Yvonnel’s reasoning argued against this, however, both because of the confusion given the previous actions regarding the destruction of Demogorgon, and the Spider Queen’s own treatment of Drizzt, face-to-face. It didn’t make sense. Not much was making sense to her at that critical moment. She felt lost, as if something wasn’t right.

  More than even that logic and those feelings, though, Yvonnel’s heart screamed against the move. She had come to know Drizzt and his friends. They did not deserve this. But the drow in her sneered at this moral conscience, decrying her weaknesses, and she honestly considered giving in and betraying these new friends she had known.

  Because what other path lay before her?

  What was she missing?

  “We did Lolth’s bidding in filling Menzoberranzan with demons,” she reminded her aunt after some pause. “We did Lolth’s great service in destroying the physical form of great Demogorgon. House Baenre led that, and against Matron Zhindia and House Melarn’s desires and actions.” She looked to Matron Zeerith Xorlarrin Do’Urden for support here, as their actions against the Melarni had been when Zhindia had dared to attack the fledgling House Do’Urden. “Why would Lolth abandon us now, after all that has so recently transpired?”

  “Perhaps because we failed her test,” Sos’Umptu answered. “She showed us Zaknafein, stolen from her grasp, and showed us that Drizzt would not succumb to her will. The test was to gather them and destroy them, obviously, as Matron Zhindia saw, and as we foolishly ignored.”

  “You do not know that,” said Yvonnel.

  “And you don’t know it’s not true,” Sos’Umptu snapped. “What I do know is that Matron Zhindia and not Matron Mother Baenre was gifted with two retrievers to do the task, and now with a drider army to finish it all, and likely to finish us.”

  Again, it was hard to argue that point.

  Again, to Yvonnel, it made no sense.

  Or maybe, she feared, her heart made her want to believe that it made no sense, and so that was all she could see.

  A commotion outside the cave interrupted the conversation, and th
en all eyes widened indeed as a dark elf, well known mostly because of his unusual talents and associations, was hauled into the cave by several Baenre guards.

  “Well met,” Kimmuriel greeted them, when the guards dropped him from their grasp. He twisted himself to straighten his robes and added, “Again,” as he noted Yvonnel.

  “What are you doing here?” Sos’Umptu demanded at the same time Quenthel asked, “Where is Jarlaxle?”

  “Inside Gauntlgrym, I expect,” Kimmuriel answered the Matron Mother. “I have not seen him in some time.”

  “Then, yes,” Quenthel asked, “why are you here?”

  “I have information I thought you might find valuable,” Kimmuriel answered. “Both about this current situation you face, and about something far more important. You are right to fear Matron Zhindia and even those about you. Matron Mez’Barris’s First Priestess Taayrul only now returns from her meeting with Matron Zhindia, pledging alliance and, it would seem, even fealty to the Matron of House Melarn.”

  That brought sneers and muttered curses, but none seemed surprised, of course. Ever could House Baenre count on the treachery of Matron Mez’Barris Armgo.

  “Our options seem thin,” said Quenthel.

  “Less than thin,” Sos’Umptu answered. “Nonexistent. Joined with the second house, and no doubt many others, armed with demons and an army of gifted driders returned to life to serve her, Matron Zhindia’s ascension is assured. We must accept the will of Lolth.”

  “You ask us to surrender the position House Baenre has held for millennia? To give up all that our Matron Mother Yvonnel the Eternal spent centuries building?”

  “Give it up or have it taken from us, with no chance of future recourse,” Sos’Umptu calmly replied.

  Matron Zeerith sucked in her breath audibly, her old lips flapping in a great harrumph. Her own fate was at stake here, surely, as Zhindia Melarn positively hated her and had long accused her of heresy because of her elevation of men in her family.