Rise of the King

by R. A. Salvatore

  Now came the return of War Chief Hartusk, so claimed the pennants flying over the dark force marching to Dark Arrow Keep, and for a long while after those banners had been sighted, the orcs argued about whether or not to even open the gates for Hartusk, for the war chief who had defied Lorgru’s expressed commands and took an army into the field.

  Inside the grand circular main building, the would-be King of Many-Arrows was not amused.

  “Do not open the gates,” Lorgru commanded his lieutenants.

  “Then they will be torn asunder,” Ravel Xorlarrin calmly replied.

  Lorgru slammed his hands down on the arms of his throne and started to rise.

  “Hartusk returns with a legion of giants,” Ravel explained. “And how do you think he crossed back through the Glimmerwood and across the Surbrin with such speed?”

  “Drow trickery, no doubt.”

  Ravel shook his head, smiling wickedly.

  At that very moment, one of Lorgru’s loyal underlings burst into the chamber unannounced, a severe breach of conduct.

  “What is it?” the would-be king demanded.

  “My … king,” the orc stammered and gasped, trying to catch his breath. “They have … dragons. Hartusk has returned with dragons!”

  Gasps erupted around the chamber, and Lorgru fell back into his throne, his expression blank, his jaw hanging open.

  An ear-splitting shriek rolled down from high above and reverberated around the room.

  “Dragons,” Ravel teased. “And giants. Oh, and drow … have I mentioned that Menzoberranzan has thrown her not-insignificant resources behind Hartusk?”

  “I will have you killed!”

  “You cannot begin to kill me,” Ravel confidently replied before the would-be king had finished the sentence. “I can be gone with a snap of my fingers, but why would I? Nay, I would fill this room with flames and burn you down on your throne. Be reasonable, son of Obould. Your time has passed. Your line is no more. Your people reject the way of … of farmers. They will taste the blood of humans and dwarves.”

  He led Lorgru’s gaze around the room, where, undeniably, so many of the throne guards were licking their lips with an eager gleam in their yellow, bloodshot eyes.

  Lorgru stood up defiantly and drew his sword. “Then let us, you and I, be done with it.” he said.

  Ravel laughed at him. “My dear Lorgru, are you so certain of your way that you are ready to meet Gruumsh?” the drow wizard replied easily. “You see, I am told by the priestesses of Lolth that Gruumsh is not pleased. The line of Obould has gone too far. To send an elf queen back to her forest, and after she had murdered orcs of your kingdom, indeed, of your own patrol?”

  It was Lorgru’s weak heel, clearly, and he slipped back into his throne.

  “Is your tale done then, Lorgru? Or have you more to write?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I offer you a way out,” Ravel explained. He brought forth a wand, pointed it at the side of the throne and uttered a command word. A doorway appeared, black and swirling at first, but gradually clearing to reveal within its multi-dimensional frame a small encampment somewhere high in some rocky mountains.

  “The Spine of the World,” the drow explained. “Through this door, you find exile, though permanent or temporary is yours to decide. Perhaps you will come to see a better way—a more appropriate extension of the vision of Obould that century ago. One that is more fitting with the realities of Luruar beneath the dark sky.”

  “Hartusk will fail,” Lorgru declared.

  “Perhaps he will,” Ravel said with a bow. “And in that case, my people will look to you to return and bring some calmness and order to Many-Arrows. As I said, is your tale fully told, or not? If you wish to meet with Gruumsh, then I can oblige—and if not I, well, Hartusk has returned with powerful allies, as you now understand.”

  “My guards,” Lorgru said. “My …”

  “Take them,” Ravel interrupted. “The door to freedom is open. But be quick, for it will not linger long after I am gone. And now, I fear, I am gone.”

  He clapped his hands together and disappeared, simply vanishing.

  But not of his own doing, despite his bravado and acting. Gromph and the illithid Methil had been watching, ready to pluck Ravel from the room.

  “Well played,” Gromph said in congratulations when Ravel materialized in a small chamber in the tunnels beneath Dark Arrow Keep. On the wall before the archmage, a tall mirror showed the scene Ravel had left behind. Lorgru and his guards jostled and argued, many peering repeatedly into the magical doorway to the mountains Ravel had created.

  Finally, Lorgru instructed one to go through the door. The orc went hesitantly at first, dipping his leg through, then disappearing.

  The smiles on those watching from the throne room showed that they saw their scout and that he seemed quite all right.

  A great horn blew.

  “Hartusk enters Dark Arrow Keep,” Ravel said.

  Gromph nodded, then smiled when Lorgru sent more of his guards through the door, and called many females to his side as he, too, went through.

  “Dismiss the doorway,” Gromph instructed, even though more orcs were moving for the magical portal. “Hartusk should enjoy the taste of some blood for his fine service.”

  “What of Lorgru?” Ravel asked. “Should Tiago and I commandeer the dragons and destroy him in the mountains?”

  “Let Lorgru live—he is of no matter at this time,” the archmage replied. “Perhaps we will find use for him in the future, perhaps not.”

  Ravel nodded and stared at the archmage, who rested back in his chair, watching the mirror with great amusement.

  Soon enough, Hartusk and his burly guards stormed in, the war chief carrying a spear with the head of King Bromm of Citadel Adbar spiked upon it.

  Many of Lorgru’s remaining loyalists fell to their knees and cheered Hartusk. Those that hesitated were dragged down and torn apart.

  Gromph Baenre seemed to enjoy that part, Ravel noted with a shudder. After the murdering had ended, Ravel started to speak, but Gromph silenced him with an upraised hand, and following that, Ravel noted the scene in the mirror, with Hartusk approaching the throne.

  “And so Hartusk becomes king,” he said.

  “No,” Gromph quietly replied.

  And indeed, Hartusk lifted his great double-bladed axe as he approached the throne, and proceeded to smash it to pieces.

  “No king,” Gromph predicted.

  The ferocious orc reduced the great throne of Many-Arrows to kindling in short order.

  “Warlord Hartusk!” the orc’s minions cheered.

  In a chamber far below, viewing the scene through the magical mirror, a most satisfied Gromph Baenre turned to Ravel Xorlarrin, nodded, and said, “Much better.”

  MATRON MOTHER DARTHIIR

  FILTHY BEASTS,” SARIBEL XORLARRIN REMARKED WITH A CRINKLED face and disgusted expression. She heaved a great sigh and brushed some maggot-like larval creature from the sleeve of her fine gown.

  The drow band had expelled some orcs from a cluster of crude houses just north of Dark Arrow Keep, though for the cultured drow nobles, the word “houses” hardly seemed to describe these hovels. They were no more than piled stones along this wall or that, with a living tree serving as an anchor for another wall, and nothing more than the curving side of a hill completing the structure. Ragged skins and hides closed in the walls and roof, crudely pinned together with splintered sticks.

  Saribel chortled again and looked up at the drooping hide serving as a ceiling for this part of the domicile, guessing correctly that the maggot had fallen from there. Caked in dried blood, this was from some recent kill, peeled off the dead or dying creature and just thrown up to patch the ceiling without the orc even bothering to clean it.

  “Curse these wretched orc beasts,” she said, not even trying to hide her disgust from the orc female in the room, who had been kept on as a servant. “When we are done with them, I’m sure
I will enjoy feeding a score of them to the dragons.”

  The orc female wisely kept her eyes lowered to the dirt floor as she moved past the powerful priestess, and didn’t dare utter a sound of protest or surprise.

  “We are here for the Spider Queen,” one of her attending priestesses reminded. “I would suffer being devoured by maggots for the pleasure of Lolth.”

  “I can easily arrange that,” the angry Saribel replied. There was no hint in her voice that she was joking, and when the attending lesser priestess inevitably backed away, she found little support from the other two drow females in the room.

  They each moved out from her on either side as if expecting Saribel to cast a devastating spell over the impudent young priestess at that very moment.

  Indeed, so did the young priestess, as she revealed when she jumped nearly out of her shoes as the hide flap serving as the hovel’s door flew aside and Gromph Baenre swept into the room, nearly tripping over the orc slave as she skulked about. With a snarl, Gromph hit her with a simple spell, a gust of wind, a spell any minor mage could cast.

  But not like this. Not with the power of the Archmage of Menzoberranzan behind the burst. It caught the poor orc like a tornado, sweeping her up and spinning her sidelong, hurling her straight back from Gromph to crash into the unfortunate attendant priestess on that side of the room. Both tumbled down in a tangled heap, but Gromph paid them no heed at all.

  “Gather your husband, and be quick,” Gromph snarled at Saribel. “You are recalled.”

  “Recalled?” Saribel replied before she could find the good sense to just do as the archmage had ordered. “The war is only just begun. The armies have barely left Dark Arrow Keep.”

  Gromph looked at her with what seemed to be a mixture of disgust and pity, and it was clearly not an expression Saribel enjoyed.

  “Shall I inform Matron Mother Baenre that you choose otherwise?” the archmage said evenly.

  Saribel swallowed hard. “Tiago is—”

  “Over with the legion from Shining White,” Gromph interrupted. “He fancies himself a dragon rider, it would seem.”

  “He handled the great beast with—”

  “Oh, shut up,” Gromph told the insufferable witch.

  Saribel’s eyes widened and she even inadvertently reached for her snake whip. Yes, he was the Archmage of Menzoberranzan, but she was a high priestess, a noble female, and he should not address her with such irreverence, particularly not in front of her attendants.

  “I will create the portal on a count of eight-legs-ten,” he said calmly, using a common drow time reference. A count of “eight-legs” to the drow meant counting to eight, then seven, then six, and all the way back to one, for a total of thirty-six. Eight-legs-ten, therefore, meant a count of three-hundred-sixty, or a span of one-tenth of an hour.

  “Join me if you will,” the archmage went on. “If not, I will give your condolences to the Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan, who rules the House of Saribel Baenre.”

  The reminder of her new surname—for against drow custom, it had been Saribel and not Tiago who had changed her name and House, of course—had Saribel stammering for an answer.

  “One,” said Gromph, and the cold reminder of the dripping hourglass had four priestesses, scrambling.

  They rushed past Gromph and pushed through the door in such a tangled way that they tore the hide down from the ceiling post above it.

  “Idiot,” Gromph muttered under his breath, silently cursing his sister for allowing Tiago to bring the bumbling Xorlarrin waif into their esteemed House.

  He was glad, then, that it wouldn’t be for long—not outwardly, at least.

  He wished he could just leave the both of them here, for while he was anxious to return to Menzoberranzan and his studies, he knew that the arrival of these two impertinent children would spark outrage and intrigue in the drow city.

  Now it was Gromph’s turn to sigh, for there was nothing he could do. Matron Mother Baenre had spoken.

  This couple was needed for the coming-out party, to take their place in Quenthel’s grand scheme.

  Matron Mother Mez’Barris Armgo of Menzoberranzan’s Second House impatiently took her seat at the end of one of the two longest legs of the arachnid-shaped table.

  She saw the chair placed to her right, between her seat and that of Matron Mother Baenre, and she knew that the conniving Quenthel was up to something foul.

  Five other matron mothers sat behind the lesser six limbs of the table, with only the seat of the Eighth House left open. The seat for House Do’Urden, so Matron Mother Baenre had told them at the last gathering of the Ruling Council.

  High Priestess Sos’Umptu Baenre entered the chamber, and Mez’Barris noted the nods of the lesser matron mothers. They thought she was still named as Matron Mother Do’Urden, Mez’Barris realized, and indeed, only Mez’Barris did not gasp or widen her eyes when Sos’Umptu moved not to the grand seat for the Eighth House but to the unremarkable chair set between Baenre and Del’Armgo.

  Stone-faced, the disciplined Baenre priestess betrayed nothing with her expression. If she had been demoted, House Do’Urden taken from her rule, then she seemed not at all unhappy about it.

  Mez’Barris turned her stare to the Matron Mother Zhindia Melarn of the Sixth House, who was not so clever at disguising her emotions. Among the most fanatical of the matron mothers in her service to the Spider Queen, Zhindia was surely no shrinking myconid, as the old saying went.

  Matron Mother Melarn stared at Sos’Umptu with open contempt. Surely Zhindia among all the ruling matron mothers had been the most angered by Matron Mother Baenre’s decision to recreate House Do’Urden and place it at the eighth rank in the city, thus affording the chosen matron mother a seat on the Ruling Council—one that would serve as an echo to Matron Mother Baenre, all of the other six knew.

  For ambitious Zhindia, it had been a terrible blow. She had wanted House Duskryn elevated one rank and placed as the Eighth House when House Xorlarrin had departed the city for their new sister city. It wasn’t that Zhindia held any fondness for House Duskryn, Mez’Barris knew. Quite the contrary. Indeed, Zhindia had plotted with House Hunzrin, the most powerful of the city’s families not on the Ruling Council, to make short work of House Duskryn.

  But now it was House Do’Urden in that coveted spot, and the matron mother had made no secret of House Baenre’s open alliance with the newly reconstituted Do’Urdens—and indeed, Sos’Umptu, Matron Mother Baenre’s sister, had been installed as the Matron Mother of House Do’Urden, albeit temporarily.

  Clearly that time had come to an end, as Sos’Umptu had taken the unusual seat away from the Council Chamber.

  “High Priestess,” Matron Mother Zhindia dared to remark, “or shall I call you Matron Mother?”

  Dedicated and disciplined Sos’Umptu, of course, did not respond.

  Mez’Barris somehow kept the smile off her face as she noted Zhindia’s tightening lips—had Matron Mother Quenthel Baenre been too clever? House Melarn, filled with fearless devotees to the Spider Queen, was not to be taken lightly, nor was House Hunzrin, with whom the normally reclusive Melarni had only just begun to formulate a loose alliance.

  Yes, Zhindia Melarn was itching for a fight, Mez’Barris could see; Zhindia remained outraged that House Baenre had swept clean the corridors of the vacated House Do’Urden, which Zhindia had been secretly using to harbor her private elite warriors, including several driders.

  One insult after another, Mez’Barris noted. The boldness of Quenthel appalled her, but she couldn’t deny her surprise and even admiration for the matron mother. Mez’Barris Armgo had known Quenthel Baenre for centuries, and never thought this one had such tricks and courage within her.

  Matron Mother Baenre as last entered the room, pulling her spidery lace robes close about her as she strode confidently—defiantly even—to her chair at the head of the table. She was tall and undeniably beautiful, among the most physically striking of all the matron mothers. That, co
mbined with her position as the first matron mother of the city, had all in the room, even her allies, looking at her with a great measure of envy.

  Mez’Barris knew that keenly as she looked upon the faces of the matron mothers of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Houses, supposedly allies of House Baenre.

  All Mez’Barris had to do was find some way to exploit that deep-seated hatred …

  Matron Mother Baenre brought the meeting to order and bade Sos’Umptu to lead them in prayer. When it was finished, Sos’Umptu quietly sat back down in her chair, which brought more than a few curious looks her way.

  “Why is she there?” Zhindia Melarn finally asked.

  “She is a High Priestess of Lolth, who leads the Fane of the Goddess,” Matron Mother Baenre replied.

  “She is the Matron Mother of House Do’Urden, you mean,” Zhindia replied, and she turned to the empty chair diagonally across the spider-shaped table from Matron Mother Baenre, the least seat among the Ruling Council.

  “No more,” Matron Mother Baenre corrected. “The Matron Mother of House Do’Urden has been revealed to me, to be formally introduced this day.”

  “Then why is Sos’Umptu Baenre in this chamber?” Zhindia Melarn pressed. Rarely would any of the matron mothers so push Matron Mother Baenre, but Zhindia, fanatically devout and a strict traditionalist, showed no signs of backing down. She leaned forward in her seat, elbows on the table, her expression as sharp as a jade spider’s fang.

  “Revealed to you?” Matron Mother Mez’Barris asked to deflect the confrontation. As anxious as she might be to see others turning against the miserable Quenthel Baenre, she was more interested in having all of the facts laid bare.

  “In Q’Xorlarrin,” the matron mother explained.

  “The Xorlarrins are no more of Menzoberranzan,” Zhindia argued, and Matron Mother Baenre shot her an incredulous and dismissive look.

  “The truth would be revealed to us, so I was assured, and so it has been,” Matron Mother Baenre calmly replied to Mez’Barris. She turned a sharp look over Zhindia and added, “And the Matron Mother of House Do’Urden is no Xorlarrin.”