“Perhaps Lady Lolth is as tired of the Baenres as so many of the other matrons,” Zeerith stated openly, a remark that would have started wars in years past.
“I will have none of this,” Sos’Umptu decided then. “This is heresy. I am no apostate. Will you fight me, sister?” she asked Quenthel.
Quenthel shook her head. “I ask only that you give us some time to sort through this.”
“Until Matron Zhindia arrives. No longer.”
Quenthel nodded. “I must pray.”
“You must remember,” Kimmuriel said, and now all scowled at him, except, he noted, for Yvonnel.
“To the beginning,” Yvonnel said.
“The darkness is deepened very gradually,” Kimmuriel offered. “Perhaps by looking back to the—shall we say, lighter and more innocent times?—will you see the starkness of where we are now compared to where we once were.”
“Before we lost our sense of conscience that such a simple thing as a matter of right and wrong mattered?” Sos’Umptu asked Yvonnel, her voice dripping with sarcasm and threat.
“I beg you to remember in sequence,” Kimmuriel remarked. “Consider the time frame, action by action.”
“We know the sequence of the memories that were given to us by the illithid, Methil El Viddenvelp,” a clearly frustrated and angry Matron Mother Quenthel assured him.
“The sequential effect, then,” Kimmuriel clarified. “Remember how Yvonnel the Eternal felt with her first kill. Remember how she felt with her hundredth.”
“As the infection grew?” Yvonnel asked.
Kimmuriel couldn’t tell if she was asking honestly or if she, too, was stepping back from the cliff to which he had led them. He was surprised to find a strange sense of calmness spreading within him. His vengeance against House Baenre was no more—he felt as if he had properly repaid not them, but the infection that was Lolth, simply by revealing the truth of the malevolent fiend.
Truth is the best antidote—especially for those who had lived in the dark for so long.
His fate was in their hands. He knew it would not be easy to flee this place, and that he could not escape the power arrayed before him unless, perhaps, the hive mind offered him sanctuary . . .
Yes, that would be his only hope, for this was far beyond Jarlaxle!
Strangely, however, Kimmuriel didn’t want to flee, whatever his fate.
He felt free, felt as if he had at long last escaped already.
“Everything will be decided in the next moments,” Entreri whispered to his two companions inside the extradimensional chamber.
“And if it goes against us?” Dahlia warned. “If Yvonnel sides with those who wish to support the Melarn force, then your trust in her has doomed us. We have no escape, nowhere to run or hide.”
“She will not betray us, whatever her choice,” said Entreri.
Dahlia argued, “She will! Because she knows that her, that their goddess will know! I never before thought you a fool.”
“Have faith in her,” Wulfgar suggested, drawing a sharp glare from Dahlia.
“On my life?” she shot back. “Why would I do such a thing?”
Wulfgar looked to Entreri, but that man, too, had no answer.
“We should be gone,” Dahlia insisted. “Now!” She started for the window to the material world.
“No,” Entreri answered, stopping her short.
“We’re going to die, and horribly.”
“It’s a chance I’m willing to take.”
“And if I’m not?”
He said nothing.
“Why?” Dahlia asked. She looked at Wulfgar with disgust, then back to Entreri. “For them? For your friends?”
Entreri chewed his lip but was nodding his head.
“I knew in the end you would choose them,” Dahlia said.
“Choose? Why am I to choose at all?”
“Better that Drizzt had died on the hill that day we parted,” Dahlia said, her voice a clarion of pure frustration.
Entreri noted Wulfgar’s scowl. “You said that was unintentional,” he said to Dahlia. “An accident.”
“It was, but so what?” she answered. “Had Drizzt died, I would have shrugged. He deserved it.”
Entreri held silent, staring at this woman.
“I came for you when you were in need,” Dahlia said. “I went into House Margaster for you.”
He nodded.
“Now you would choose them?”
“Now I ask that we both choose our allies,” Entreri replied.
“Your friends?”
“Friends to Dahlia, too.”
“I’m not going to die for them,” she answered, and moved to the window. “Are you coming with me?”
Entreri stared at her for a long moment, then shook his head. He started to explain but held his tongue, for Dahlia didn’t wait, dropping the rope and moving through the window.
Wulfgar sighed deeply, then turned to Entreri and offered a nod of approval.
Entreri offered nothing in return.
“Sequential effect,” Yvonnel said quietly to Quenthel after the two had gone off to contemplate and, mostly, search their memories, the oldest memories given to them by the experiences of Matron Mother Yvonnel the Eternal.
Quenthel could hardly believe the revelations. Instead of experiencing the events, and more importantly the darkening feelings, that had led them to this point, she had gone back to those earliest memories, and the emotions accompanying them—hope, joy, freedom—and played them against the deepest darkness, the more recent experiences.
The contrast was too stark to be ignored. Looking at the emotions, the actions, the mind-set, of Matron Mother Yvonnel the Eternal in the latter years of her life had revealed to both Quenthel and Yvonnel a distinctly different way of looking at the world around her.
“How did this happen?” Quenthel asked. “How did we get here?”
“One lie, one bad act at a time,” Yvonnel answered, reflecting Kimmuriel’s earlier remarks to them.
“We must tell our people,” said Quenthel.
“And they will not believe us.”
“We must . . .” Quenthel started to argue, but she couldn’t help but agree with the logic here.
“Sequential effect, he called it,” said Yvonnel.
“And now I understand. My mother—and I could have called her that in the early days, I know now—from those early days did not resemble the Matron Mother Baenre that I knew. Even through her memories, through the emotions within those memories, you can feel it. So subtle, a hairsbreadth at a time, this deepening darkness of Lolth.”
“The people we need to convince are already fully within that darkness,” Yvonnel reminded. “They are comfortable in the shade.”
“What do we do?”
“I do not know, but I do know that I will not fight against the dwarves of Gauntlgrym. Nor will I capture Zaknafein for the pleasure of Lolth.”
The Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan stared at her for a short while, then replied, “Nor will I. Nor will House Baenre.”
When the two left the back chamber of the cave, they found the others waiting for them, with Sos’Umptu and Kimmuriel nearest.
“Enlightening,” Yvonnel said, mostly to Kimmuriel.
“I have prayed as well,” Sos’Umptu said.
“But I have no hope that you have come to the same conclusions,” Yvonnel said.
That brought a profound scowl to the face of devout Sos’Umptu. “Then you have been deceived by a trickster,” she said.
“No,” Yvonnel said, but at the same time, Quenthel offered to Sos’Umptu, “Perhaps. Either way, we will soon enough learn the truth. And I understand that you cannot remove that which is in your heart now to examine the past, as we have been blessed to do. All I ask of you is that you bear witness as we all learn who is right and who is wrong.”
“You expect passivity in the face of sacrilege?” Sos’Umptu retorted. “I am a mistress of Arach-Tinilith, a high priestess of
Lolth, the first priestess of House Baenre, the mistress of the Fane of the Quarvelsharess. I . . .”
“And I am the Matron Mother,” Quenthel said. “Of House Baenre and of Menzoberranzan, who leads the Ruling Council and serves as voice of Lolth in the City of Spiders.”
“Then act like it,” Sos’Umptu replied, squaring her shoulders.
“Do you even know what that means?”
“I know that Matron Zhindia Melarn has been offered great gifts to carry out her war,” Sos’Umptu said. “You ask me to take the lies of a mind-magic trickster above that which I can see clearly?”
“Call a handmaiden, then, that we might all speak with her,” said Quenthel.
“Call Bolifaena,” Kimmuriel offered.
“Shut up,” Sos’Umptu growled at him. “Count your luck that Matron Mother Quenthel is here and that you have found a way to temporarily confuse her, Oblodran, else your legs would be splitting four ways each at this very moment.”
Kimmuriel fell silent.
To the two women, Sos’Umptu railed, “I do not need guidance. Lady Lolth has given Matron Zhindia the driders.”
“Sos’Umptu will pledge fealty to House Melarn, then?” Yvonnel said.
“Of course not!”
“As with the driders, how do we know it was Lolth?” Quenthel asked. “Are there not other demon lords who are quite angered at Menzoberranzan right now? Particularly angered at House Baenre?”
“Demon lords known to be adept with retrievers,” said Yvonnel.
“Retrievers who bear the image of Lolth!” Sos’Umptu reminded.
“So much better the ruse, then.”
“Matron Mother, this is easily tested,” Yvonnel said. “What if we undo that which we believe was not done by Lolth?”
“Fight the driders?” a concerned Sos’Umptu asked.
“No, better than that.”
Yvonnel’s smile gave it away, and Sos’Umptu didn’t need to be a psionicist to figure out what Yvonnel was hinting at, an action that represented the highest attempt at sacrilege to date.
“You cannot,” she said with a long snarl.
“No, they cannot,” Kimmuriel agreed. “What you are thinking could not be done by one not in the favor of Lolth unless one was more powerful than Lolth.”
That brought gasps from all three, and Sos’Umptu would hear no more of it. She drew forth her scourge, lifting it, the living serpents rising to strike at the psionicist. As one they struck . . . but not at Kimmuriel.
Dominated by the psionicist, the living snakes bit at Sos’Umptu, tearing the flesh of her face and neck, filling her with their deadly venom.
Shrieking, horrified, the priestess threw down her weapon, though it took her several slaps to finally extract the last of the serpents from their fanged grip. She stumbled back then, shocked, trying to cast a spell.
Both Quenthel and Yvonnel did it for her, sending magic to seal her wounds, to neutralize the poison. Sos’Umptu continued to stumble.
“I did that,” Quenthel announced, shocking everyone, and Kimmuriel most profoundly.
Sos’Umptu gave a sound that none had heard before, a strange, squealing, disbelieving protest, then ran off. In her wake, the other priestesses and matrons moved closer to confer with the Matron Mother.
Yvonnel glared at Kimmuriel, and the Matron Mother seemed ready to strike him down, despite her lie that she, not he, had turned the serpents.
“More proof that what I have shown you is correct,” Kimmuriel explained before the others arrived.
Quenthel expression didn’t soften. “Trickster?” she asked. “If so, you will come to wish that I had let First Priestess Sos’Umptu turn you into a drider, I promise.”
“Did I not just do what you intend to try, on a much smaller scale?” Kimmuriel asked her. He nodded to the scourge writhing on the ground. “A creation of Lolth shown not to be as we believed? How is it even possible?”
The two, and those joining them now, had no answer.
“Because I know the truth,” Kimmuriel explained. “And when the goddess is not a goddess at all, that truth is freedom and that truth is power. She is an infection.”
The Baenres exchanged looks.
“Can we?” Quenthel quietly asked Yvonnel.
“I think so.”
Quenthel lowered her gaze, sighing repeatedly, shrugging helplessly. They had to try, but surely it seemed an impossible task.
“Gather House Baenre,” she instructed Minolin Fey Baenre.
“It is war, then, drow against drow,” reasoned Matron Zeerith.
“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Yvonnel offered. “But if it is, where are you?”
Zeerith spent a moment thinking, then agreed. “Gather House Xor . . . Do’Urden,” she told Priestess Saribel.
“And House Fey-Branche,” Matron Byrtyn Fey agreed.
“This will be the end of everything we ever believed,” Quenthel warned her niece.
“But is it everything Yvonnel the Eternal ever believed?” Yvonnel answered. “Or is it simply the end of what she came to accept?”
Quenthel, who had the same memories, and now, with Kimmuriel’s prodding, could access them clearly, finally, resignedly, nodded.
When all the drow of the three houses were gathered in a large clearing before the cave, Matron Mother Quenthel told the priestesses and wizards to follow the lead of her and Yvonnel. After some discussion, the two powerful women decided on a pair of sturdy oaks, pillars about the entrance to a main trail heading to the west, where Matron Zhindia’s forces gathered.
The two fell into a spellcasting trance, accessing the memories of Yvonnel. This dweomer had been done before, long before, they both remembered. But done singularly, with special dispensation, and certainly never on such a scale as they intended—never anything nearly on the scale they needed.
They began to weave a web, translucent filaments flying out from their waggling fingers, stretching tree to tree.
The other priestesses tried to help, as did the wizards, but there was no known ritual for such a creation as this, and ultimately, it failed, the webbing falling apart.
Stubbornly, Quenthel and Yvonnel pressed on.
“The magic is not strong enough,” a defeated Quenthel said at last, her shoulders slumping.
“We have not chosen wrong,” Yvonnel insisted.
“That thought will comfort me as I am murdered, or worse,” Quenthel replied.
All around them, the dark elves whispered and milled about and worried.
The earth beneath their feet shook then, a tremendous rumble and roll, the largest grumble yet from Maegera—so great a quake that Yvonnel looked to the mountaintop, expecting the volcano to explode.
When it did not, the woman found herself focused on that place, the mountain, and on the events transpiring in Gauntlgrym beneath it.
“Pray, stand strong,” she told Quenthel. “I have an inspiration.”
“Tell,” Quenthel said.
Yvonnel shook her head. “I will return shortly. Stand strong. Hold this ground.”
Chapter 28
The Magic of Creation
He was battered and bruised and bloody, but he knew that he had suffered far less than many of his companions here in the great antechamber or Gauntlgrym. The exhausted King Bruenor refused all aid, as did his queens, no less beaten up than he.
He needed rest, though, after a long day of fighting, but he took it at the wall, or what was left of it, out by the tram station across the pond. From there, he would direct his forces. They had secured the front half of the cavern, including three important choke points, but their enemies were pressing them once more. Too many dwarves were hurt and exhausted to take the fight to the demons, but the area they had gained was defensible, affording them some respite, that they might gather their strength, and more importantly, that they might get a couple of the stalagmite artillery stations, and stalactite archer and scout posts back in operation.
From a strictly military pe
rspective, it had gone better than they could have hoped, but the task before them remained truly daunting, and now time seemed to be running short. For the ground was rumbling again already, the primordial threatening to break free.
Even clearing the remaining demons from this cavern was going to take too long, Bruenor feared.
But he pressed on. What choice did he have?
He rallied his dwarves, ever loyal, every one more than willing to die for Clan Battlehammer, for their king and queens, for their Delzoun heritage, and for the belief that their actions would advance the cause they thought of as good, the cause of the dwarves of Faerun.
At any point in which the situation was stabilized, Bruenor ignored the clerics calling for him to rest and went to the wounded, walking their lines, encouraging the priests to do more, to find every last gasp of magical energy they would muster.
Then he went back into the throne room to pay respect to the dead, every one, and thanked them, and kissed their cold, bloody cheeks.
On one such journey, King Bruenor was met by a cleric they called Penny.
“O, me king Bruenor, ye must be comin’,” she said, gasping for breath, for she had run a long way to find him. “The babe’s comin’, don’t ye doubt!”
Bruenor took a deep breath and tried to consider the moment, The child of his daughter, his beloved Catti-brie. The child of Catti-brie and his dearest, now lost friend. He gave a helpless chuckle, telling himself that he had to win here, or at least find a way to break out. He wasn’t afraid to die—he already had once!—but the child of Drizzt and Catti-brie?
That one, Bruenor decided then and there, was not going to die before it got the chance to live up to the incredible promise of its lineage.
“Take me,” he told Penny, but they had barely started when Bruenor stopped and changed his mind. “I’ll go to her. Yerself’s to find Zaknafein. Seen him out by the tram not long ago. Ye find him and ye tell him and ye bring him!”
“Aye, me king,” she said, and ran off.
“And Rumblebelly!” Bruenor yelled after her. “Don’t ye forget Rumblebelly!”
Bruenor ran off, too, but not before running to the Throne of the Dwarven Gods and hopping into it once more.
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