And he felt the presence! A balor? A great one indeed—the strength of the demon resonated within him.
He reached deeper, unwittingly wounding the boundary of the Faerzress. He reached for the great power that lurked there in the shadows, just out of sight, only barely beyond his grasping thoughts. But he could stretch . . .
“Dimti’ ite spem!”
B
ruenor’s strike landed with an explosive sound, the vrock’s skull disintegrating beneath the tremendous weight of the blow. Another room, another corridor, secured.
“I’m thinking they runned off, elf,” he said to Drizzt.
The drow ranger could only shrug, for indeed, there was no sign of any other dark elves about. They had encountered a few demons—nothing bigger than the vulture-like vrock—and various groups of orcs or goblins, but all of those had seemed more interested in running away than in fighting.
And no drow.
“They are either laying a trap for us, or you are quite correct,” Drizzt answered. “The Forge is clear,” Catti-brie said, coming into the room to join her friends. “Toliver’s wizard eye entered and swept through the entirety of the area, and more than once.”
Drizzt was about to suggest that they should go and take the place, but he found he didn’t have to, for as soon as the woman’s message became clear, Bruenor ran off, growling with determination.
Within a very short while, Bruenor’s strike force burst into the allimportant Forge of Gauntlgrym, with Drizzt, Catti-brie, and the Harpells close behind. Oretheo Spikes and a brigade of Wilddwarves fanned out to one flank, Bungalow Thump taking the Gutbusters the other way. “King Emerus should be here,” Bruenor decided as soon as they determined that the room was clear of enemies. He motioned to Mallabritches, who had served her beloved King Emerus for all her life, and she ran off for the main chamber where the gravely wounded dwarf lay. “Send an eye to the primordial chamber,” Catti-brie bade Toliver, and she pointed out the side door that led to the nearby cavern. “No need,” Bruenor insisted, and he walked right to that side door, pulled it open, and started in. Drizzt, Athrogate, Ambergris, and the wizards followed close behind. “I’m bringing three gods with me."
“Why thank ye, me king,” said Athrogate.
“Not yerself, ye dolt!” Bruenor roared, and Athrogate howled with laughter.
Down the tunnel they went, full of confidence. Bruenor didn’t even hesitate as he strode into the main chamber. Near the center of the ledge on this side of the pit, past a gigantic, inanimate jade spider—one that Catti-brie focused her attention on, for she had seen these guardians attack before—Bruenor, Drizzt, and the others found quite a surprise waiting for them.
A beautiful drow woman sat upon the altar stone, seeming quite at ease—though an occasional wince betrayed the hatred that was in her heart.
Bruenor’s entourage fanned out wide, while Drizzt and Catti-brie remained close to the red-bearded dwarf’s side, Catti-brie alternating her wary glance from the drow female to that jade spider, and to another gigantic green arachnid statue standing guard across the way, near the collapsed tunnel where Catti-brie had struck down Dahlia a couple of years earlier.
“And you are the famous Drizzt Do’Urden,” the beautiful drow said, not hiding her contempt. “I congratulate you on being alive, though I doubt it will last all that long.”
All the dwarves and Harpells went deeper into their crouches then, expecting some catastrophe to erupt.
“Short when measured against the lifespan of a drow, I mean,” the matron mother clarified. “Fear not, Drizzt Do’Urden, or you, King Bruenor Battlehammer. There is no battle to be found. You have won back Gauntlgrym. My people, House Xorlarrin, are gone.”
“You are Matron Mother Zeerith Xorlarrin?” Drizzt asked.
The woman stood and bowed.
“And ye waited here to be catched?” Bruenor asked doubtfully.
“I awaited your arrival that we might come to terms,” she replied.
“Terms o’ yer surrender?”
She bowed again. “It is a simple matter,” she said. “I will leave you, the members of House Xorlarrin beside me, and we will not return . . .” She paused and smiled. “Let us use the terms of demonic banishment,” she added slyly, “for that seems fitting at this time. We will not return to challenge you for this place you call Gauntlgrym until at least a century has passed.”
“From where I’m looking, I got me a prisoner that’s worth the peace,” Bruenor replied. “For one what’s been beaten, ye’re asking a high price, even in just thinking I’m to let ye go.”
He meant every word, all knew, and why would he not? King Connerad was dead, along with many Gutbusters and hundreds of dwarves from the Silver Marches who had given their lives to drive the drow from Gauntlgrym. King Emerus lay near death, and none of the priests truly expected him to survive.
“Or might that we take yer ugly head now, eh?” Bruenor said. “Queen o’ this city . . .”
“Matron Mother,” she corrected. “Zeerith Xorlarrin.”
“What’er ye might call yerself!” Bruenor snapped at her. “Ye bringed me pain, and now ye’re askin’ me to just let ye walk away?”
“I only remained to seal the truce, to accept the terms of surrender.”
“Terms yerself ’s namin’!”
“Behold,” Zeerith said, and she turned to her left, away from the primordial pit, and waved her hand at the magical webbing. It parted obediently, revealing three forms hanging by filaments, and with swarms of ugly spiders the size of a dwarf’s fat hand ready to descend upon them, poison-dripping mandibles clattering eagerly.
Gasps arose from all about. There hung Kenneally and Tuckernuck Harpell, somehow alive. And no jaw fell lower than that of Bruenor Battlehammer, for the third prisoner hanging in that deadly trap was none other than Stokely Silverstream of Icewind Dale.
“Bah!” Bruenor snorted, and it took all of his discipline to not leap out and behead Matron Mother Zeerith Xorlarrin on the spot.
“Their bite is quite poisonous, and quite deadly, even to a dwarf,” Zeerith assured them. “And for all the delicate skin they will tear in such numbers, will they even need the poison, I wonder?”
“They die and I’m throwin’ ye into the pit,” Bruenor promised.
“Spare me your idle threats,” Zeerith replied, and she looked to Cattibrie and the Harpells and waggled her finger, warning them from thinking a small fireball might save their friends.
“I have offered the terms,” Zeerith said. “Understand that I could already be long gone from this place, and could have left behind three corpses to bring your tears.”
“Then why’d ye stay?” Bruenor demanded. This didn’t make much sense to him, particularly in light of the fact that this was a powerful drow matron mother standing in front of him. He had heard enough tales from Drizzt, and indeed, had battled these ferocious and fanatical priestesses before.
But Drizzt, who had been pulled from his unconscious state and guided into battle, figured it out then, and he said, “Jarlaxle,” without a hint of doubt in his voice.
Zeerith didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.
Bruenor turned a puzzled expression upon Drizzt, who nodded.
“Agreed, dwarf?” Zeerith asked a moment later.
“Ye come back in a hunnerd years and I’ll be here,” Bruenor replied. “And don’t ye doubt that I’ll be throwin’ ye into that pit then.”
Matron Mother Zeerith turned to the webbing again and waved her hands. The swarm of spiders retreated, and the filaments began to lower the three prisoners to the floor. Catti-brie, the Harpells, and Ambergris rushed over to catch them as they touched down and slouched limply to the floor.
When Zeerith turned back, she focused her stare upon Drizzt, and he noted quite a few swirling emotions when he locked that gaze with his own. Mostly intrigue, which confused him more than a little.
Far from the chambers of Gromph Baenre, in the region of the great Underdark known as the Faerzress, a burst of bright yellow light erupted within the stones of one wall, like the ignition of trapped gasses or the spark of life itself, or something in between.
That fire slid down to the floor and swept out from the stones, speeding in a straight line across the expanses of the Underdark. It did not turn in deference to solid walls, but burned right through, like a heavy stone falling through still water. It shot along the miles, the tens of miles, the hundreds of miles, and moments later entered the cavern of Menzoberranzan, and only the blink of an eye later, delivered its passenger into the room of the archmage.
“Show me,” Jarlaxle insisted when he found Kimmuriel staring into the crystal necklace of the set he shared with Gromph and Doum’wielle. “Have you found her, then?”
Kimmuriel looked up at him incredulously, an expression that begged the question of why he would bother trying to find Doum’wielle.
He wisely kept that to himself, though. He was spying upon not Doum’wielle, but Gromph, which was a very dangerous, even reckless thing to do. But Kimmuriel couldn’t resist. He wanted to see the Baenre’s face when K’yorl materialized in his chamber! Let him try his rudimentary understanding of psionic power against the assault she would wage!
“Not yet,” he answered, for he couldn’t let Jarlaxle know his target without tacitly admitting that he had been behind this brewing catastrophe.
“I see,” Jarlaxle replied, unconvinced, and Kimmuriel knew that Jarlaxle had seen right through his pathetic attempt to dodge. “Well, do inform me when you have located her. I wish to save the poor girl, and expect that she will prove of value.”
Had he spent the few moments to follow the logical conclusion of the exchange, Kimmuriel would have realized that Jarlaxle, when he learned of the disaster about to befall House Baenre and Menzoberranzan, would surely link it to him.
But he was simply too excited to care at that moment, and he dived back into the connecting crystals of the necklace, seeking Gromph.
He found the archmage clawing at his own eyes and screaming, falling away, Gromph’s face a mask of sheer horror.
And Kimmuriel knew exultation, and swung his view through the scrying device, determined to see his mother.
Then Kimmuriel, too, began clawing at his own eyes, falling back in abject terror, stumbling right over backward and falling to the floor— and that alone saved his sanity when the fall broke the connection to Gromph’s chambers in Sorcere.
Thrice the height of a drow, two-headed, with the bright blue and red horrible faces of a mandrill or a baboon, bipedal and two-armed—though those arms were waving tentacles, replete with suckers that could catch and hold and haul prey in to be devoured—and with a scaled and sinewy saurian body, great and powerful, the summoned beast had to squat to fit within the confines of the room.
Until it did not squat and simply crashed through the stone ceiling with hardly an inconvenience, and swept its great tail about, which ended in blades that seemed as if they would be more fitting set upon the claymore of a mountain giant, the mighty weapons easily slicing through the mushroom-wood and stones of the walls, tearing them with hardly a hesitation—despite the powerful enchantments that had been placed to fortify the walls of the tower of the archmage of Menzoberranzan. Dweomers seemed like child’s play in the face of this beast.
One baboon head screeched at the other in protest, and the other spat back, the continuing, millennia-old battle between the dueling identities of this one great beast.
That one of the most powerful wizards of the mortal realms shivered and melted, pissed in his own robes, and couldn’t find a single word to cry out for help or for mercy, didn’t impress the demon.
After all, to the Prince of Demons Gromph Baenre was of no more concern than an insect.
Jarlaxle rushed back into Kimmuriel’s chamber to find the psionicist in a near-catatonic state, trembling on the floor.
“What?” Jarlaxle insisted, truly unnerved in seeing Kimmuriel in such a state. Kimmuriel unnerved! Kimmuriel, who had lived in the hive cities of mind flayers!
Purely on a hunch, Jarlaxle took off his magical eye patch and set it upon the face of his friend, and indeed, the protective and calming powers of the item did bring some small measure of composure over Kimmuriel. Still, the psionicist stared at Jarlaxle bug-eyed, trembling so badly that Jarlaxle could hear his teeth rattling.
“What is it, my friend?” Jarlaxle implored.
“Not K’yorl,” Kimmuriel stuttered. “Gromph . . . summoned . . ."
“Gromph tried to summon your mother?” a truly perplexed Jarlaxle asked, as Kimmuriel continued to stammer and stutter the name of K’yorl.
Finally, Kimmuriel found a moment of clarity, and grabbed Jarlaxle desperately, hoisting himself up to look closely into Jarlaxle’s face.
“Gromph,” he stammered. “The archmage . . . gate . . ."
“For K’yorl?”
Kimmuriel nodded, but quickly shook his head.
“An Abyssal gate?” Jarlaxle prodded. He knew that what remained of K’yorl Odran, Matron Mother Oblodra, was rumored to be imprisoned in the lower planes in the service of a balor.
Kimmuriel nodded so excitedly that it seemed as if his head might pop off.
“Not K’yorl . . .”
Jarlaxle stared intently as Kimmuriel managed to whisper out the name, “Demogorgon.”
Demogorgon, the Prince of Demons, the most powerful creature of the Abyss, a beast even Lolth would not challenge in battle.
Jarlaxle bolted upright, letting go of Kimmuriel, who dropped back to the stone floor. The mercenary glanced all around, as if expecting some terrible catastrophe to fall upon him. He knew of Demogorgon—everyone knew of Demogorgon—and such thoughts were not misplaced.
Perhaps all of Faerûn would soon know misery.
It all seemed calm after the initial celebration in learning that the two Harpells and Stokely Silverstream were still alive.
“I will be allowed to leave in peace?” Matron Mother Zeerith asked Drizzt, and again he noted a bit of curiosity in her manner, and it left him off balance.
“I will see to it,” Drizzt said, or started to say, as a huge commotion erupted from across the primordial pit, in the small antechamber that held the lever controlling the flow of magic into this area from the under-chambers of the broken Hosttower of the Arcane in distant Luskan.
All of the others jumped to attention, turning back, weapons ready— and that included Zeerith, Drizzt noted, and she, like the rest, gasped in surprise when out of that chamber came a tall drow male dressed in the distinctive robes that even Drizzt recognized to be the garb of the Archmage of Menzoberranzan.