Outside Halisstra’s rooms, the halls were quiet. No one had yet been sent to hunt for her, it appeared, for which the priestess was silently thankful. Once away from her private quarters, Halisstra began to breathe a little easier. No one would question two House guards moving through the halls.
That’s when the two of them came around a bend in the hallway and spied three strange drow, two of them bruised and bleeding, creeping through the gloom. They were definitely not members of the household, but it took Halisstra another moment or two before she realized they were the three Menzoberranyr.
“Damn,” one of them said, reaching inside his piwafwi as the other two brandished weapons and advanced warily.
chapter
twelve
Matron Mother Zauvirr wasn’t merely angry. Angry was for subordinates who knew to hold their tongues in the presence of their superiors despite their feelings. Angry was for those times when you had to slap a child because it didn’t know any better. No, angry wasn’t nearly strong enough a word to describe what Ssipriina was feeling. Someone was going to pay for this foolishness. Someone was going to die.
She stormed through the hallways of her own House Zauvirr, having slipped out of Drisinil’s manor during the confusion and magically transported herself back home. There was something she wanted to get, something she needed, though she hadn’t expected to, when the day started. She almost hoped that someone would cross her path as she marched along, that someone would make the mistake of accosting her, of interrupting her train of thought for some idiotic and perfectly pointless reason. She really hoped they would . . . it would be fun, in a distracting sort of way, to watch some hapless male bleed out as she ripped him up. She was furious enough to do it with her bare hands.
A guard would do nicely, she thought. Any foolish boy who even looks at me.
All of her planning, wasted. All of the careful manipulation, the bribes, the theft, the smuggling of valuables and troops, even the fortuitous arrival of the damnable Menzoberranyr and her clever scheme to fit them into the plan was for naught. Someone had blundered, and she would have his head.
I had them in the palm of my hand, Ssipriina thought. They were ready to anoint me. Even after that ridiculous story the wizard made up.
That obvious attempt to derail her plans wouldn’t have stopped her. No one would have believed him, even after her foolish daughter reacted. Ssipriina thought Faeryl had sounded like the petulant child that she still was.
I should never have brought her in on this.
Ssipriina realized her mind was wandering. It was the fury, keeping her from thinking straight.
Faeryl I can deal with later. There’s nothing to be done except to fight and win, but it would have been so much easier if the gray dwarves had remained out of sight. Who told them to move out?
As the matron mother arrived at her rooms, she decided that ferreting out the guilty party would also have to wait until later. Her full attention was needed elsewhere. She was about to spring something on the entire city. Something very special. Ssipriina grinned when she imagined it.
Faeryl stumbled and fell against the corridor wall when House Melarn first began to shake.
The servants were screaming, and from somewhere she heard, “Mistresses! It’s duergar! Hundreds of them, surrounding us . . . they’re attacking!”
A second shock wave rumbled through the House. “They burn the stones themselves, Mothers. The city is burning!”
With a sinking feeling, Faeryl knew it for the truth. She had lived through this experience before, though it had been in the bowels of House Baenre, chained to a column. Even so, she remembered the rumbles from above, felt the vibrations in the ground. When she had been freed by Triel Baenre and invited to join the mission to Ched Nasad, she had gotten all the details of the insurrection in the streets of Menzoberranzan from others. Their descriptions of the jugs of fire, the fire that burned stone itself, were vivid. She could only imagine what it would feel like on a web street of Ched Nasad.
Faeryl groaned. Her mother’s plan was falling apart. The duergar weren’t supposed to appear unless the negotiations with the other matron mothers went badly. Despite that idiot Pharaun’s asinine claim of her involvement in the conspiracy, the situation was far from out of hand.
Mother pulled the trigger too soon, the ambassador decided. She must have gotten cold feet and didn’t bother to tell me. How typical.
Shaking her head, Faeryl scrambled up to her feet again as the room was enveloped in a thick, murky fog. She knew who was most likely behind it. As much as she wanted to slice Pharaun into a thousand tiny pieces, there was too much confusion.
Besides, the ambassador grudgingly admitted, he and his boys are not to be trifled with. I’ll let mother’s wizards take care of them. I’ve got to get rid of Quenthel and that loathsome beast.
Faeryl felt her way along the wall, stumbling as yet another blast rocked House Melarn. The mist cleared, and she could hear the sounds of combat on the far side of the room. She resisted the temptation to look, as much as she hoped to catch a glimpse of the wizard’s demise. Instead, she managed to make her way to a door just as several dozen House soldiers came in, jostling her aside in their efforts to defend the audience chamber.
“Fools!” Faeryl hissed at them.
Almost shaking with rage, she departed the audience chamber and hurried toward the lower levels. She passed few other drow in the corridors, all of them looking confused. None of them seemed to know the origin of the disturbances, and at one point the ambassador overheard at least three priestesses discussing an earthquake as they passed her, going the opposite direction.
Faeryl didn’t care to explain to them what was really happening. It was not her House. Turning a final corner, the ambassador hurried into the torture chamber where she had left Quenthel and Jeggred. They were not there. The room was not empty, however. One of the House torturemasters was methodically straightening tools that had been upset with the booming thumps from outside.
“Where are they?” Faeryl demanded, gesturing to the rack where Quenthel had been restrained.
The torturemaster turned and looked at her vacantly, not understanding.
Growling in exasperation, the ambassador repeated herself.
The other drow looked at her, then comprehension lit his features.
“Oh, they’re not here,” he said.
Faeryl rolled her eyes and said, “I can see that, you foolish boy. Where are they?”
“That ugly drow, Zammzt, ordered them taken to a cell,” the torturemaster replied. “I saw to it personally.”
Another severe blast rocked the room, and tools were scattered everywhere. Faeryl managed to grab hold of the column where Jeggred had been chained for support, but the other drow was not so lucky. He went down in a pile—and even more unfortunately, one of the many braziers of hot coals tipped over onto him, showering him with burning cinders. Screaming, the drow scrambled away from the embers, but he was already a conflagration, his clothes ignited and smoking as he flailed helplessly about.
Faeryl bit her lip in irritation.
Now, why do you suppose he would have moved them, and to where? she thought, turning to leave.
She decided she’d have to ask someone to show her, and she departed.
Pharaun faltered for only a moment at the sight of the two drow priestesses before him. One, quite simply, was beautiful. The other, while lacking the graceful curves and fluid motion of the first, was obviously nobly born and not unpleasant to look at, either. Then, getting a closer look, the wizard recognized her. She was the drow who had been in chains in the audience chamber only moments before. In fact, he realized, she still wore the manacles she’d been shackled with, though the connecting chain between them had been severed. Neither of the females looked happy to see him, Ryld, or Valas.
“Damn,” Pharaun muttered, returning to his senses.
He reached inside his piwafwi, fumbling quickly for the wand he’d u
sed to dispatch the drow soldiers not too long before. In front of him, Ryld went on guard, raising Splitter into an aggressive position as he advanced warily. Valas slipped to the opposite side of the hallway, automatically fanning out with Ryld to come at the adversaries from either flank.
The lovely creature who’d first caught the mage’s eye hissed in vexation and brought a morning star out in front of her. She had a buckler on her other arm held to the side where Valas was closing.
“It’s them!” she snarled, taking up a position in front of the other drow as though to defend her.
Both dark elves seemed quite capable of taking care of themselves, and Pharaun noted the finely tooled chain mail each of them wore. The one to the rear actually sported the House Melarn insignia on hers, and the wizard guessed she must be one of the dead matron mother’s daughters.
Pharaun had his wand out, but before he could invoke the trigger words to use the thing, Ryld stepped in and launched a short series of strikes at the dark elf in front of him, who managed with some difficulty to parry the attacks with both her weapon and her buckler. The Master of Sorcere knew that Ryld was not really pressing his attack yet. The weapons master was attempting to size up the skill of his competition with a few well-placed feints before closing in to finish the job efficiently.
Valas continued to creep in from her other side, and she backstepped more than once to prevent the scout from getting behind her. Pharaun aimed the wand and prepared to recite the activation phrase, when the other drow, the daughter of House Melarn, spoke up, causing him to falter.
“Hold, Danifae.”
The drow in front retreated another couple steps, but she did not drop her guard.
“We have no quarrel with you,” the still-unnamed Melarn said. “I know you don’t have reason to trust us, but we’re not the enemy . . . They are.”
She gestured upward, to the floors above.
Ryld took a threatening step forward then he too stopped and held his guard. Valas was watching both sides with glittering eyes, kukris at the ready.
“How convenient,” Pharaun said, smiling coldly. “The imperiled daughter, implicated in her mother’s treason and with no friends, making a peace offering. At least until we let down our guard, right? Then you turn us over to Matron Mother Zauvirr, claim you captured us, and hope she lets you off the hook.”
“I could easily say the same about you, but I won’t,” the Melarn daughter replied. Without taking her eyes off Pharaun, she added, “Danifae, I said stand down!”
Pharaun raised an eyebrow at her tone of command. Danifae nodded in acquiescence, stepping farther back until she was side by side with her mistress.
“Well, you’re right about that,” Pharaun said. “We don’t have any reason to believe you. If you’re on the outs with Mistress Zauvirr, what are you doing down here, all decked out in your finest armor?”
“We’re trying to save our own skins,” the daughter said, a bit more testily than Pharaun thought necessary, considering she was trying to broker some sort of truce, albeit temporary. “I think we both might have been played by Ssipriina Zauvirr. If you come with us, help us, we might be able to get you information that will help prove it.”
“Lower your weapons to the ground,” Ryld said, “and we’ll consider listening to you.”
“I think not,” the daughter countered. “At least, not until we have some assurances that you won’t attack us the moment we do. I don’t know for sure that you weren’t in league with my mother.”
Ryld snarled, raising Splitter and advancing again. Valas was doing likewise, still looking to maneuver around to the priestesses’ left side.
“Ryld, Valas, wait,” Pharaun called out quietly.
He had no doubt that the two warriors could dispatch the drow females with relatively little difficulty, as long as the wizard was backing them up with a careful selection of spells, but he was intrigued. Ryld cast a quick glance back over his shoulder at the wizard then shrugged and held his ground.
“I can assure you that we have never met your mother and had no dealings with her, ever. That wild tale in the audience chamber above was merely a contrivance to stall for time—ruffle everyone’s feathers, so to speak. You seem to know who we are,” Pharaun said, addressing the daughter of House Melarn, “but we are at a disadvantage. Who are you, and what is this information you are planning to use to buy our trust?”
In a flash of bluish light, Valas was stepping through a dimensional doorway, and as the one named Danifae turned to face the point where the scout had been standing only a heartbeat earlier, the Bregan D’aerthe scout was behind her, one hand gripping her wrist tightly where she held her morning star, the other hand holding a kukri at the line where her jawbone faded into her graceful neck. Though she was several inches taller than the scout, Valas was easily able to keep her overbalanced by shifting his hip under hers and levering her up off her feet.
Danifae’s eyes bulged wide as she realized she’d been outmaneuvered, and she flailed about helplessly for a moment or two until she grasped that the blade was at her neck, at which point she froze.
“Lay them down,” Ryld said to both drow females, gesturing to their weapons with his greatsword. “To the floor, nice and quietly.”
The Melarn daughter gasped in surprise at Valas’s maneuver, narrowed her eyes, and took half a step toward her companion. When she realized she was outmatched, she sighed and settled her mace to the floor at her feet. Danifae sagged a bit in Valas’s grasp and relinquished her weapon to the other female, who set that down as well.
“Excellent!” Pharaun said as Ryld kicked the two weapons safely away. “That wasn’t so bad, now was it?”
“You could have trusted us,” the daughter spat. “We gave you no reason not to.”
Pharaun laughed out loud. Ryld stifled a chuckle of his own, and Valas, who released Danifae but kept his kukri carefully placed in the small of her back, was grinning behind her.
“You are a dark elf,” the wizard said finally, regaining his composure. “That alone is enough for me not to trust you, but beyond that, if you think we’re going to trust anyone in this cursed city, you’re the biggest fool I’ve met in a while. Yet, I am not completely uninterested in negotiating, so you may still get a chance to redeem yourself. You can start by answering my questions. Who are you, and what is the nature of this information?”
The Melarn daughter grimaced but finally answered, “I am Halisstra Melarn, as you have surmised by now, I’m sure. This is Danifae, my personal servant. What I meant was, your friend the high priestess and her demon companion aren’t dead.”
Pharaun felt his eyes bulge at this revelation. He heard both Ryld and Valas breathe in sharply.
“Really,” the mage said, trying to sound offhand as he regained his composure, “and how would you know that?”
“Because I’ve seen them,” Danifae, still locked in Valas’s grip, answered.
“Apparently,” Halisstra said, “Ssipriina Zauvirr simply told everyone that the priestess was dead so that there would be no demands for her side of the story. They probably should have killed them, but I guess Faeryl had other plans for her.”
At the mention of the ambassador, Pharaun tilted his head.
“You know Faeryl Zauvirr?” he asked.
“Yes,” Halisstra replied, “I know her. We grew up together. Since our Houses have—or rather, had—a business relationship, her mother and mine spent quite a bit of time together. She might very well be with the Baenre priestess right now. I suspect she’s torturing them both.”
“Is that so?” Pharaun asked.
Ryld, who still had his greatsword trained on the two females, snorted, “Why does that not surprise me?”
“I wonder how the esteemed high priestess managed to get herself caught in the first place?” Pharaun pondered aloud.
“It was an ambush,” Halisstra said. “When they were at a Black Claw Mercantile storehouse. Faeryl was in on it, I guess. Her mot
her met them there with a host of guards who subdued the high priestess and the demon that was with them. They claim they had to kill my mother, who was trying to escape, though now I wonder if she truly is dead.”
“Well now,” Pharaun said, even more intrigued than before, “some things are beginning to make more sense. Now I know why Faeryl was being so agreeable during the trip here. She wanted Quenthel to go to the storehouse. It was their plan to take Quenthel all along.”
“Not just Quenthel, but all of you,” said Halisstra. “I’m guessing she intended to capture all of you at once, but when you didn’t appear at the storehouse with the others she had to amend her plan. She’d be quite pleased, I’m sure, if you were all dead.”
“Yes,” the mage said wryly, “we were informed of that very fact not an hour ago. Needless to say, we weren’t too keen on the idea, ourselves.”
“So where’s Mistress Baenre?” Ryld demanded. “We’re going to find her and leave. You can help us or join everyone else who’s gotten in our way thus far.”
Halisstra looked appraisingly at the warrior.
“What is it you expect to accomplish by finding her?” she asked.
“We’re going to get her out of here, and we’re going to go find—”
“Weapons Master Argith,” Pharaun interrupted, pulling the warrior to the side where they could talk privately. “I’m not sure that’s really the wisest course of action. We need to get out of here before the whole House falls down, don’t you agree?”
“And leave the Mistress of the Academy here?” Ryld countered. “We should try to find her.”
Pharaun looked questioningly at his companion and asked, “Why in the Underdark would we do that?”
Ryld’s eyes flashed in anger.
“You may be eager to be rid of her, wizard,” he said, “but I am not.”
“Oh?” Pharaun replied, growing hot himself. “If I didn’t know better, I would think you were sweet on the high priestess. Have you forgotten so soon her disdain for you?”
R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen: Dissolution, Insurrection, Condemnation Page 59