“They are fanatical disciples of the Spider Queen,” she both heard and felt K’yorl reply.
So Yvonnel tried the same. She forced her mouth to speak her response, but kept her eyes and sensibilities out there, approaching House Melarn. “As are we all,” she said and thought, and she heard her voice in the background, and she sensed that her sudden mastery of this dual-experience had caught K’yorl off her guard. “Yet some will win, and some will lose. Too often do we attribute such outcomes to the favor of Lady Lolth.”
“You do not believe in such a thing?”
“I believe that Lady Lolth favors those who are most expedient and clever among us. You should hope for that truth, K’yorl Odran. In it, you might find your salvation.”
Whatever threat she had sensed from K’yorl was gone then, vanished in the possibility of redemption, of salvation.
She put her focus back to the situation at House Melarn, where Jarlaxle, Drizzt, and Entreri were approaching some wary House guards.
Using K’yorl’s powers, her psionic bow, Yvonnel imparted suggestions of uneasiness and fear into those guards, who were clearly already intimidated—and why not, with Matron Mother Shakti fast approaching? “To Matron Mother Zhindia, at once!” Jarlaxle ordered the intimidated Melarni guards.
“We will announce . . .” one soldier started to reply, but Jarlaxle was ready for that, and even as the warrior started talking, Jarlaxle started casting through a ring he wore on his left hand. He gestured and the guard melted into a slug on the ground at the base of the webbing.
“To Matron Mother Zhindia!” Jarlaxle told the remaining soldier, and the mercenary squashed the slug with a grinding heel.
Drizzt tried not to wince. He understood the stakes, of course, but the sheer brutality of Menzoberranzan had caught him off guard.
And the deaths were only just beginning.
Drizzt scrambled to keep up, the surviving guard leading them quickly along the swinging web bridges. As they went, Jarlaxle emphatically and repeatedly signed to him, and to Entreri:
Do not hesitate!
Near the top of the webbed front, high from the cavern floor, the group went into the complex, which was organized much like a conch shell, with circling corridors winding tighter to the center, surrounded by small chambers all the way.
Many dark elves noted their passage, with several dropping into polite bows at the sight of the Matron Mother of House Hunzrin.
Jarlaxle had guessed right, Drizzt realized. Shakti had been here before, likely recently, and much was afoot now regarding the joint attack on House Do’Urden—how else to explain the deference being shown here, and the hustle to the audience chamber of the Melarn compound?
At last, down one last side passage, they came to a pair of large bronze doors, decorated with jewels and detailed sculptures of Lolth and driders and spiderwebs.
“It is heavily warded,” the leading Melarni guard explained, pausing, but Jarlaxle had an orb in hand—whence it came, Drizzt did not know— and pushed right past the guard. He hurled the orb into the door, where it exploded into a puff of spinning, shining bits of some silvery material, all of which seemed attracted to the door. It settled there and began to pop with tiny explosions.
And Jarlaxle, still appearing as a Hunzrin priestess, just stormed ahead, and pushed right through the doors.
Entreri, as Matron Mother Shakti, went with him. The guard started to protest, but only started. Drizzt took him down by slamming Twinkle’s pommel into the back of the man’s neck, dropping him to the floor.
Beyond the doors, the room’s curving walls formed an oval, longer than it was wide. A second identical set of doors stood closed directly across from them. Torches burned along the curving side walls, the flickering lights dancing across tapestries depicting the many glories of the Spider Queen.
A circular table supported by eight external spider-like legs stood in the middle of the floor, a priestess standing in each gap between the appendages. A large decorated golden bowl was set in the middle of the table, still water reflecting the torchlight.
A scrying bowl, Drizzt realized, and in the instant he considered it, he could guess easily enough that these priestesses were looking at House Do’Urden.
It didn’t, couldn’t, hold his attention for more than that instant, however. As he crossed the threshold into the room, Jarlaxle raised his clenched fist and enacted some magic, and the doors swung shut behind Drizzt with a resounding slam.
At that same moment, the priestess farthest from them, on the far side of the table, screamed in protest. “Matron Mother Shakti, you dare disturb us!”
But Entreri didn’t hesitate to answer the woman, who was obviously Matron Mother Zhindia. He drew his blades and leaped ahead—Jarlaxle had told them not to hesitate!—and the nearest Melarni priestess fell dead before she even realized she was being attacked.
A twist of Drizzt’s wrist on his belt buckle brought Taulmaril to his hand, an arrow going to it and flying away, and the priestess next to Entreri’s victim gasped and folded over the table, neither her wards nor her enchanted robes sufficient to defeat the power of Drizzt’s lightning missile.
“Down!” Jarlaxle yelled, and Entreri dived to the side and Drizzt went to one knee, setting another arrow.
Jarlaxle reached inside the front of his blousy white shirt and brought forth a large red gem, which he hurled into the midst of the gathering of priestesses, bouncing it right under the table, where it exploded into a devastating fireball.
In the flames, Drizzt could still pick out a second target. Away went his next arrow, and another priestess tumbled.
As the flames abated, Entreri went forward—and it was Entreri now. He tore the mask from his face, reverting to his human form. He leaped into the midst of a pair of priestesses, standing along the right hand side of the table, both of them with wisps of smoke rising from their gowns, both of them clearly shaken, but also beginning their spellcasting.
Charon’s Claw and that deadly jeweled dagger went to work, though, and the two Melarni priestesses became too concerned with diving away to continue their spells.
A third arrow led Drizzt’s way to the table, but his intended target, the matron mother directly across the way, already had a powerful ward in place. The arrow exploded in a firework burst of multicolored lights before it could reach its mark. Drizzt hardly noticed. He dropped his bow and drew out his blades, leaping over to the table’s left hand side.
But the moment of surprise was over. If these had been common drow, all eight in the room would have been slain in short order, dead before they could begin to react. But these were priestesses of the Spider Queen, zealots all, including the Matron Mother of House Melarn and the first priestess of the powerful House.
Three were down, one by Entreri’s blades, two by Drizzt’s arrows. A fourth had been wounded in Entreri’s charge, but still fought, and a fifth was on the floor, having dived from the assassin’s charge, and there she knelt, fingers gesturing.
Behind them, the doors exploded open once more, compelled by a countering spell from Matron Mother Zhindia, and Drizzt heard the charge of Melarni reinforcements.
And he and his companions had nowhere to run.
I
am so pleased that you extended the invitation to include the wizards of Longsaddle,” Penelope Harpell said to Catti-brie. The two worked in an open tent near the reconstruction of the trunk of the Hosttower of the Arcane. Dwarves bustled all around, bringing in chunks of the fallen tower, cataloguing them and bringing them to another huge tent where the puzzle was being placed back together. Fortunately, thus far at least, it seemed as if the parts nearer the place of destruction were the lower pieces of the tower.
“Your input here, as in Gauntlgrym, has helped so much and given me strength,” Catti-brie replied. She paused then and looked out at the hustle off to the side, where some dwarves were arguing, hands on hips, with Lady Avelyere. Yes, Catti-brie thought, Penelope’s presence did lend her strength, as did the person of Lady Avelyere. Despite their unorthodox, unbalanced relationship, Catti-brie couldn’t deny her affection for the sorcerer.
Avelyere looked truly flustered as the dwarves bounced and waved and pointed all around her. She glanced at Catti-brie and Penelope, who was now also watching, and gave a helpless sigh and shrug.
The two women shared a laugh at that.
“Her work has been tremendous,” Penelope remarked, turning back to the maps of the North, Luskan to Neverwinter, they had spread upon the table. They had drawn the location of Gauntlgrym on one copy, and Catti-brie had traced in lines to represent the tendrils of the Hosttower that carried the water and the elemental power to the primordial pit.
“Your insight seems plausible,” Penelope admitted, nodding. Catti-brie had raised the possibility that they could detect those underground tendrils by following the lines of forest between the two locations. “Particularly the willows! Is there anything in all the world that chases water more determinedly than a willow?”
“As determinedly as a dragon chases gold,” Catti-brie replied. “Or a dwarf chases ale,” Penelope added with a smile.
“Or Penelope chases men,” Catti-brie remarked, stealing the mirth, for a moment at least, as Penelope looked up at her curiously.
“I mean no offense.”
“You have found a unique manner of proving that.”
“Am I wrong about you and Wulfgar?”
“Does it bother you?” Penelope asked.
“No,” Catti-brie replied. “Truly, no. I apologize. Let us pretend that I never made the remark. Like an elf chases stars, I should have said.”
“Why?”
Catti-brie looked at her closely.
“Why, then?” Penelope reiterated. “I do believe that you meant no offense, and so I take none, but your words were no slip of the tongue. They came from somewhere, yes?”
“Curiosity,” Catti-brie admitted.
“You already know of the tryst between me and Wulfgar.”
“And he wasn’t the first.”
“The first?” Penelope laughed. “Oh, by the gods no!”
“Even though you are married.”
“Oh,” Penelope said, catching on. “Yes, well, my marriage is a different arrangement than you have perhaps encountered before. There is nothing deceptive about my . . . adventures, however I choose to find and enjoy them.”
“And Dowell?” Catti-brie asked, referring to her husband, a most gracious man and friend to Catti-brie in the years she had spent at the Ivy Mansion.
“His life is exciting, too, I assure you.”
“Then what about love?”
Catti-brie appreciated the sincerity in the sympathetic, but surely not superior look Penelope offered.
“I choose to separate the adventure of new relationships and the deep and abiding love I share with Dowell,” the Harpell explained. “I will live once. My healthy years of adulthood will span perhaps fifty, perhaps longer if I am careful, or if an enemy does not kill me, or if I can find some magic to extend my time.”
“There is such magic. Would you use it?”
“Of course!”
“Many would not,” Catti-brie said, and it was certainly true enough. Potions of longevity and the like were not nearly as commonplace as Penelope’s attitude would indicate, nor were spells of resurrection.
“Many expect a better existence beyond this life we know.”
“There is,” Catti-brie replied with some certainty.
“And I do not diminish or doubt your beliefs,” said Penelope. “For me, this is what I know, and I choose to enjoy it—in every way I can. I find joy in meeting new people, and in exploring more deeply with those I meet and come to like.”
“With the men, you mean.”
Penelope shrugged and grinned, letting Catti-brie know that perhaps that didn’t matter quite as much as she supposed.
“For carnal pleasures,” Catti-brie clarified.
Penelope shrugged. “Sometimes.”
“As with Wulfgar.”
“They are called pleasures for a reason, my friend.”
Catti-brie started to respond, but Penelope cut her short with an upraised hand. “Perhaps now I should be taking offense?” she asked. “Or is your obvious frustration with me now an honest inquisition or, as it seems, a judgment?”
“No,” Catti-brie stammered, at a loss. She had lived into her forties in her previous life, and now again for more than two decades. She had faced mighty enemies—dragons and demons, even—and had fought as a proxy for Mielikki in a great struggle with the goddess Lolth. She had passed through death. She had been afforded the insights of divine beings.
How could this uneasiness that had come over her be placing in her into such a spot of judgment and emotional distress?
“I do not try to judge,” she explained after taking a deep breath to center herself. “I am simply trying to unders . . .”
She paused as movement to the side caught her attention and drew her eye to Archmage Gromph, who was crossing by Lady Avelyere and the dwarves. She couldn’t help but note the haughty dark elf, seeming so far above their petty quibbling. Or at least, her initial reaction began that way, though it soon shifted to her insight that yes, indeed, Gromph did appear so far above that pettiness, seeming so much above those other mere mortals.
Seeming to her almost godlike.
Many heartbeats passed by unnoticed to Catti-brie. Gromph turned and flashed her a smile and his amber eyes would not let her go.
“He is attractive, isn’t he?” Penelope asked, the woman’s voice jarring her from her near-trance. “And powerful.” There was no denying the admiration in Penelope’s tone, and for a moment, it occurred to Cattibrie that Penelope might wish to lie with Gromph. And for a moment, Catti-brie wanted to slap her.
“So amazingly proficient with the Art,” Penelope continued. “It is hard not to be taken with him.”
It took a few moments for that last remark to truly sink in, but when it did, it shook Catti-brie and she snapped her head around to view Penelope.
Penelope wasn’t looking at Gromph, as she had expected, but at Cattibrie, and with a knowing grin.
“He was the Archmage of Menzoberranzan,” Catti-brie blurted, “serving Lolth and the vile matron mothers.”
“Yes, dangerous,” Penelope said, never blinking, and Catti-brie got the distinct feeling that the woman was mocking her.
Despite that, Catti-brie found herself staring at Gromph once more, and in her thoughts, she imagined herself amorously entwined with the archmage. She tried to shake that vision away, but it held on stubbornly, and when she managed to turn her eyes outward, there was Gromph, smiling at her from afar.
“It is hard not to be taken with him,” Penelope Harpell said again.
“I am not!” Catti-brie protested, never turning around. “He is evil. Who knows how many innocents have fallen to his evocations?”
“Are you telling me, or yourself?” Penelope asked.
Now Catti-brie did spin back again on Penelope, though in no small part because Gromph turned away and walked farther from her, his eyes going to something else. She stared hard at the Harpell woman, trying to find some stinging retort. She wanted to lash out, but as she realized that truth, she turned it inward.
Penelope’s words had struck her because she was having a hard time denying them.
“There is nothing wrong with wondering,” the woman told her.
“Or with acting out on that wonder, if I were like you,” Catti-brie replied, and she wanted to retract the words as soon as she uttered them.
Penelope shrugged—if she took offense, she didn’t show it. “If that is your way,” she answered. With a smile and a wink, Penelope shifted her gaze past Catti-brie and over to the distant Gromph. “I would spend a long tenday with him,” she said, “as long as we had enough food.”
Catti-brie felt herself blushing.
“Life is an adventure,” Penelope said. “A beautiful adventure.”
Gromph watched the two women retreat from the open tent, the Harpell wizard moving to join Lady Avelyere, and Catti-brie heading for the bridge to Closeguard Isle. She’d cross, almost certainly, and then on to the mainland, to replace her maps and search for others in the repository Bregan D’aerthe had set up to hold the scrolls and tomes found in Illusk and elsewhere.
Gromph’s stare followed the intriguing woman across that first bridge, and all the way past the tower of High Captain Kurth, who, coincidentally, was even then approaching Gromph from the other direction.
“Well met, Archmage,” Beniago said, still in his respectful bow when Gromph turned to regard him.
“You look ridiculous,” Gromph replied, shaking his head in open disgust at the Baenre drow’s human facade, with that flaming red hair. “It is a useful tool, nothing more.”
“You are a Baenre,” Gromph scolded. “At what point does the embarrassment of your disguise outweigh the small utility it provides?” “When Jarlaxle tells me so, I expect.”
The reminder of Beniago’s true allegiance drew a slight grimace from Gromph, but the point was well made.
“What use is it at this point, in any case?” Gromph asked. “Most of the city knows the truth of House Kurth, and knows that the drow are in control. There is nothing they can do about it, and likely nothing they would want to do about it. We are as much their armor as their potential enemies.” Beniago shrugged, somewhat dismissively. “Perhaps the deception is to deter eyes outside the City of Sails. Waterdhavian lords, drow matron mothers . . .”
“Tiago knew the truth of you, as did the Xorlarrins,” Gromph said.
“And so, too, Matron Mother Baenre. Who, then, are you deceiving, other than yourself?”
“You would have to ask Jarlaxle,” said Beniago.
“Your loyalty is commendable, I suppose.”
“It was earned, many times over, and all in Bregan D’aerthe would agree, Archmage. Jarlaxle need not rule with threats, but merely by asking.
All in Bregan D’aerthe would fight for him and die for him.” Gromph looked very carefully at the drow in human disguise, recognizing that there was a message there beyond the words, a not-so-subtle warning, perhaps.
“She is beautiful, is she not?” Beniago asked unexpectedly, gesturing with his chin in the direction of Closeguard Isle. “For a human woman, I mean.”
Gromph glanced back, then back at Beniago, his expression caught halfway between confusion and an incredulous grin.
“The wife of Drizzt,” Beniago clarified, his reference to the rogue Do’Urden making much more than the woman’s identity clear in Gromph’s mind.
“And Jarlaxle would not take kindly were I to bed her, is that your point?” Gromph asked bluntly.
Beniago put on an innocent aspect, even held up his hands as if at a loss. But Gromph knew better, and he laughed aloud then, amused that he was being threatened by such a creature as this pitiful red-haired human imposter standing in front of him.
“Jarlaxle will take as I demand, whatever I may give to him,” Gromph replied, too calmly. “Ah, yes, the wife of Drizzt. I hadn’t thought of pretty Catti-brie in those terms before—but bedding an
iblith
? Absurd! That is the stuff of Jarlaxle, whose tastes allow for. . .” He paused and laughed again, gesturing to indicate Beniago, and more pointedly Beniago’s disguise, as he finished with a derisive snort, “This.”
“There is much to Jarlaxle’s world that you do not understand,” Beniago warned. “And since this is now your world as well, perhaps you should.” “And perhaps you would be wise to beware your indiscipline.” Beniago bowed again. “I only wish to inform, Archmage.” “Yes, of course,” said Gromph, and he looked back to Closeguard Isle and beyond, and began stroking his chin and making small humming sounds, as if considering something.
“Catti-brie,” he said. “Pretty Catti-brie.” He turned back to Beniago, his face now bright. “I had not thought of her in those terms, High Captain. But now perhaps I shall. Perhaps it will be worth my time to bed her, just to witness Jarlaxle’s reaction.”
“And Drizzt’s?” Beniago managed to say, and his wince gave Gromph great pleasure, confirming that he had put the fool on his heels. “Who?” Gromph said with a snicker, and walked away.
“I was teasing you, and I should not have,” Penelope Harpell said to Catti-brie later that night, the two alone sitting on the edge of the bed in Catti-brie’s tent, with Penelope brushing Catti-brie’s thick auburn hair. “Your emotions were honest, and in sharing them, you trusted me with something beyond such childish—”
“I gave you reason,” Catti-brie interrupted. “I should not have judged you. I simply do not understand.”
“Perhaps you place a higher value on such acts than I,” said Penelope.
Catti-brie grabbed the brush so she wouldn’t get scratched by it as she turned to stare earnestly at the woman. “You diminish yourself?” she asked.
“Oh, no,” Penelope clarified. “It is not a contest. I place no value on placing such a value, if you get my meaning.”
“So you mock me my morals?”
“Of course not!”
“You claim that I place great value upon it, and then dismiss that value as useless.”
“I do not!” Penelope declared in no uncertain terms. “It is your way, and I respect that.”
“How can you, if to you the act of lovemaking is so trite?”
“I never said that.”
“It is surely implied!”
Penelope sat back and nodded, staring openly at Catti-brie all the while as if she was honestly trying to understand, or perhaps to explain herself better. “Is it the act itself on which you place the value?”