“What?” was all the shocked Drizzt could say.
“A buckle-knife,” Jarlaxle replied. It was a weapon somewhat common among the rogues of Toril, a belt buckle that transformed into a deadly knife.
“A buckle-bow, you mean,” said Entreri.
Drizzt couldn’t resist. He drew an arrow from his quiver, set it to the string of Taulmaril and let fly, the missile drawing a silver line down the corridor before exploding in a torrent of sparks against the far wall, where the passageway bent to the side.
The report of the blast echoed, and in those rocky grumbles came the shriek of demons.
“Well played,” Artemis Entreri remarked. “Perhaps you might shoot the next one straight up above us, to collapse the tunnel upon our heads and save the demons you alerted the trouble of rending us apart.”
“Or perhaps I will simply shoot you so that I am less inclined to so readily accept death,” Drizzt returned, and he sprinted off ahead to meet the charge.
Unused to being insulted, Entreri looked to Jarlaxle for support, but the mercenary just drew Khazid’hea and a wand, offered a wink, and came back with, “He has a point.”
THE ROOM OF Divination in House Baenre was among the most marvelous of constructs in all of Menzoberranzan. In this dark city knowledge was power. Mirrors lined three walls, the fourth being the massive mithral door, which gleamed almost as reflectively as the mirrors. The apparatuses holding the mirrors were set several strides from each other all along the way, but were bolted to metal poles running floor to ceiling, and not to the wall. Each apparatus held three mirrors, set on iron hangers, edge-to-edge-to-edge, forming a tall, narrow triangle.
In the center of the room sat a stoup of white marble, a round bench encircling it. Dark, still water filled the bowl. Deep blue sapphires were set in its thick rim, the angle of their reflection making the water within seem wider, as if it continued far under the rim, beyond sight, beyond the bench.
In a manner, it did.
Yvonnel gracefully stepped over the bench and sat facing the water. She motioned for K’yorl to sit opposite her.
The battered prisoner, so long tortured in the Abyss, hesitated.
With a sigh, Yvonnel waved to Minolin Fey, and the priestess forcefully pushed K’yorl into place on the bench.
“Put your hands up here on the rim,” Yvonnel told the psionicist, and when K’yorl hesitated, Minolin Fey moved to strike her.
“No!” Yvonnel scolded the priestess.
Minolin Fey fell back a step in shock.
“No,” Yvonnel said more calmly. “No, there is no need. K’yorl will come to understand. Leave us.”
“She is dangerous, Mistress,” Minolin Fey replied, using the title Yvonnel had instructed them all to use now, for Quenthel remained, to outside eyes at least, as Matron Mother of House Baenre.
“Do not be a fool,” Yvonnel said with a laugh. She looked into K’yorl Odran’s eyes, her grin disappearing, her own eyes flaring with threat. “You do not wish to be cast back into Errtu’s pit.”
The psionicist gave a little whimper at that.
“Now,” Yvonnel said slowly and evenly, “place your hands on the rim.”
The woman did as instructed. Yvonnel nodded at Minolin Fey to dismiss her, and the priestess hurried away.
“I do not wish to punish you—ever,” Yvonnel explained to K’yorl when they were alone. “I will not ask much of you, but what I ask, I demand. Obey my commands and you will find no further torture. You may even purchase your freedom, once we are truly in agreement, mind and soul.”
The psionicist barely looked up and seemed not to register the soothing words or the dangled carrot. She had heard it all before, Yvonnel assumed, and likely a thousand times during her time in the Abyss. Unlike Errtu, though, Yvonnel meant it, and she would convince K’yorl soon enough. After all, the psionicist was going to be in her thoughts, where deception was nearly impossible.
“Together we are going to find Kimmuriel,” Yvonnel explained.
She put her hands on top of K’yorl’s and uttered a command word. The rim of the bowl became less than solid, and the hands sank into the white marble, melded with the stoup. Yvonnel felt K’yorl’s terrified tug, but she wouldn’t let go. She had placed enhancements of strength upon herself in anticipation of exactly this, and the psionicist might as well have been tugging against a giant.
All around them, the mirrored apparatuses began to turn. The torches lighting the room went out and were replaced by a bluish glow emanating from the sapphires set in the rim of the stoup.
“You know Kimmuriel,” Yvonnel whispered. “Find him again, but this time through the divination of the scrying pool. Let your mind magic flow into it, but do not send forth your thoughts to Kimmuriel unaccompanied by this scrying magic! Now, send forth your thoughts, K’yorl, Matron Mother of House Oblodra.” She felt the psionicist tense up at the mention of the doomed House, and Yvonnel knew that reference would soon enough come to be her greatest weapon.
It took a long, long while—out in the cavern, the light of Narbondel diminished by half—but finally, Yvonnel felt her own thoughts going forth, following K’yorl’s psionic call. They were joined by the magic of the stoup, their minds in perfect harmony, and Yvonnel could hardly contain her delight at that realization. The stoup had been built for Baenre priestesses, of course, so they could join in ritual scrying. Quenthel and Sos’Umptu both had insisted that Yvonnel’s plan would not work here, that the stoup would not accept K’yorl’s mind magic.
But they were wrong.
Through K’yorl’s thoughts, Yvonnel could see the cavern in the waters of the stoup and reflected at every angle in the mirrors. She felt K’yorl’s regrets then, particularly when they neared the Clawrift, wherein House Oblodra had been cast.
It proved to be too much for the fallen matron mother, and her mind-sight failed, casting her and Yvonnel back into the room.
The water cleared to still darkness.
The lights brightened, the torches reignited.
Yvonnel sat staring at K’yorl, their hands still joined within the marble.
K’yorl tried to recoil. She had failed and expected punishment, Yvonnel clearly saw.
“Wonderful!” the daughter of Gromph congratulated. “In one attempt, your vision fled the boundaries of this room! Did you feel it, Matron Mother K’yorl? The freedom?”
Gradually, the other woman’s expression began to change; Yvonnel could feel her hands relaxing.
“I did not expect that you would get out of the room on our first session,” Yvonnel explained. “Next time we will go farther.” She pulled her hands out of the stoup, taking K’yorl’s with her, and the rim appeared undisturbed.
“We will find him,” Yvonnel said confidently.
Kimmuriel? she heard in her thoughts, the first time K’yorl had communicated directly to her.
“Yes. Yes, and soon,” Yvonnel promised—promised K’yorl and herself.
“ARE WE TO be fighting these beasts all the way to Menzoberranzan?” Entreri demanded two days later, when the trio had found yet another cluster of Abyssal beasts. The assassin slipped a quick side-step to avoid the overhead swing of a gigantic hammer, then stepped in quickly, Charon’s Claw easily and beautifully sliding into the balgura’s thick chest. The magnificent sword slowed when the blade hit a thick rib, the blade too fine to be chipped or snagged. Entreri’s sigh revealed his pleasure at the power of the weapon. He hated this sword profoundly, but he could not deny its utility and craftsmanship.
Balgura blood flowed along the trough in the red blade, pouring over the demon’s torso.
Entreri didn’t merely retract the weapon. So confident was he in the power of Charon’s Claw, he tore it out to the side, through skin and bone, leaving the dying demon nearly cut in half.
And this was a balgura, massively thick and heavy-boned.
“Do you truly believe I mean to walk all that way?” Jarlaxle replied with a laugh, and he too put his new
ly acquired sword to use. Khazid’hea decapitated one manes as Jarlaxle began his slash, bringing the vorpal blade across to cut deeply into a second enemy. “Your lack of faith disappoints me.”
“When you’re done talking …” Drizzt said from the side of the small oval chamber, where he held the door against the press of several demons, a mixed group of thick-limbed balgura, manes, and some other fiends Drizzt did not know: slender and with tentacle-like arms that they effectively used as stinging whips. Those tentacles, coming at him from behind a wall of allies, kept him moving and threatened to drive him back, which he did not want. He had the incoming monsters bottlenecked at the narrow entryway. One step back and the beasts would fan out to either side and the chamber would become a wild melee.
Drizzt ducked a snapping tentacle, but moved forward from a crouch, his scimitars working furiously to poke at a balgura, one, two, three, as he tried to drive the brute into a retreat.
But then it was Drizzt who was backstepping, and covering his head with his cloak. Out of nowhere, it seemed, a whipping wind came up, and stinging sleet pelted down all around him.
“Magic!” he warned, thinking it a trick of the demons, and unaware at that moment that they were taking the brunt of the ice storm.
“Left!” Jarlaxle called, and Drizzt slid that way—and just in time.
A glob of viscous goo from Jarlaxle’s wand shot past him. It struck the floor right at the feet of the closest demons, but it didn’t hold securely there. The floor was already a sheet of ice. The glob did stick to the front demons, though, who stumbled in futile attempts to maintain their balance. The momentum of the glob sent them skidding back into their allies.
A second glob came forth, hitting the ice again right in front of the first row of enemies and sliding in with great weight and force, taking the whole ball of demons back to the far wall of the corridor, where they struggled against the goo, stuck together as one.
Drizzt slid away his blades and let his left hand come to the belt buckle, his right to the small quiver, pulling forth Taulmaril and setting an arrow so fluidly that an observer might still be wondering where the scimitars went. The chamber and corridor filled with streaks of silver as the drow let fly. Drizzt’s barrage pummeled the helpless demons as they rent and tore at the unyielding magical globs, and at each other. They were, after all, demons.
The ice storm had ended, and Drizzt battered the group in relative comfort, explosive arrows pounding home, every shot boring into demon flesh. But a sudden buzzing in the air was his only warning, before a swarm of horrid demons soared past the trapped group: chasme, like great houseflies with the head and face of a bloated human.
Drizzt managed to alter the angle of his bow enough to shoot the first of the flying demons from the air, but the second dived upon him, and a host of others were close behind, entering the chamber.
Or trying to.
A wall of ice appeared in that opening. It resounded with the impact of the third of the chasme, which collided with it full force. It shook again and again as the others crashed in behind.
The one in the room had Drizzt diving for the floor though, his bow flung aside and desperately going for his scimitars. Before he ever drew them, barely an eye-blink of time, he found he didn’t need them. A red blade swept down in front of him, tearing the edge off the chasme’s fly-like wings. As the demon spun and crashed, the great Netherese sword slashed in again, scraping the grotesque human face right off.
Entreri didn’t remain in place to accept Drizzt’s thanks, leaping away for the wall of ice. He stabbed Charon’s Claw through one of the spider-web cracks, the shriek of a chasme telling them all that he had struck true.
“Well played,” Drizzt congratulated Jarlaxle, thinking it he who had brought forth the ice storm and the wall.
But Jarlaxle shook his head and shrugged, his smile wide.
He turned away from Drizzt, and from Entreri, who was stabbing through the ice wall yet again, scoring another hit on a second of the flying beasts.
“Quite the hero,” Jarlaxle said, addressing another dark elf who had come into the small chamber, though from where, Drizzt could not guess. He seemed about Drizzt’s age and wore the robes of a wizard and the House emblem of Xorlarrin. A small silver chain closed the collar of his fabulous piwafwi, showing him to be a master of Sorcere, the drow school of magic.
“Be quick with your spell and remove us from this place,” Jarlaxle instructed.
“Yes, do,” Entreri added, speaking perfect drow, and looking very much like a Menzoberranyr soldier behind the magical disguise of Agatha’s Mask.
A quick look at the assassin revealed the source of the urgency in Entreri’s voice. The ice wall was cracking more and more, pressed by the vicious and unyielding demons behind it.
“I cannot,” the newcomer replied to Jarlaxle.
“Help our friend hold the door,” Jarlaxle said to Drizzt, his tone for the first time less than calm. The mercenary pulled the newcomer aside and conversed silently in the hand code of the drow, shielding his fingers from Drizzt and Entreri.
Drizzt and Entreri met the onslaught side-by-side as the ice wall crumbled bit by bit and the demons pressed in. With Entreri beside him, Drizzt gave the beasts more leeway into the room. The pair were not afraid of being flanked.
Drizzt double-stabbed a balgura right in front of him, but quickly retracted the blades. He knew Entreri was coming by him, right to left. Drizzt rolled behind that rush, back to the right, coming in cleanly at a tentacle-armed demon distracted by Entreri’s sudden departure, its confusion leaving Drizzt an opening he would not miss.
Icingdeath he buried nearly to the hilt into the fiend, the magic of the sword hungrily eating the demon’s Abyssal force.
Twinkle Drizzt brought to the side, prodding the elbow of the balgura he’d just stabbed, preventing the brute from coming forward with its overhead chop. The demon let go with that hand, thinking to complete its attack with just one hand on the heavy hammer, but its other arm fell off—Charon’s Claw swept across, above the crumbling demon Entreri had already dispatched.
Now they had room to maneuver again, and Entreri went forward, closing the bottleneck, and Drizzt fell back and gathered up Taulmaril once more. His first shot went over Entreri and the beast he battled, blasting another chasme from the sky. He called to his companion, directing Entreri’s movements to provide openings through which the Heartseeker’s deadly barrage could continue.
Soon enough, all that remained were the least of the demons, the zombie-like manes, and Drizzt brought his bow across, the item shrinking once more and becoming diamond as he set it in place on the mithral buckle. He drew his blades, and waded through the archway beside Entreri, out into the adjacent corridor and right into the midst of the mob of manes. Grasping, clawed hands never got near either of the two sword-masters, their speed and coordination too much for these least of demonkind to comprehend, let alone fight.
But in the midst of that slaughter, the companions noted a greater presence coming fast to the fray, a pack of gigantic and hulking four-armed, dog-faced glabrezu, each with two arms ending in giant pincers that could cut a drow in half. These beasts knew no fear and hunted as cleverly as a pack of wolves. Their claws snapped eagerly.
Drizzt and Entreri gasped and fell back, to be confronted by a shouting Jarlaxle. As one, they turned to protest, to tell Jarlaxle that they could not hold the door.
But their protests were lost in their throats. A third drow had joined Jarlaxle and the Xorlarrin wizard.
THE DIVINERS ESCAPED the room more easily this time, their hands joined in the stoup, their thoughts entwined through the magic of the room and the powers of K’yorl’s discipline.
Yvonnel guided her differently this time, not out into the cavern but just into the hallway adjacent to the Room of Divination, where sat Minolin Fey, awaiting Yvonnel’s word. They hovered over the priestess, who was clearly oblivious to them. She was quietly singing, humming mostly, and to
Yvonnel’s delight, she could hear Minolin Fey quite clearly. The scrying was strong, both clairvoyance and clairaudience, washing away Yvonnel’s fears that the injection of psionics would hurt the divine magic.
Yvonnel wondered how much the psionics might heighten the experience.
To her, Yvonnel imparted to K’yorl. Into her!
Together, they went to the seated priestess—close enough for Yvonnel to see the small flecks of black around the iris of Minolin Fey’s red eyes. And closer still, so that one of the priestess’s eyes filled Yvonnel’s vision.
Then it shifted and they were looking across the hallway. Yvonnel’s thoughts became so badly disoriented that it took the powerful drow many moments to realize that the shift had been more than a turn of their disembodied consciousness. They were seeing as she was seeing, and when she looked to the side, so did they.
Yvonnel tried to read the priestess’s thoughts, and when that failed, she implored K’yorl to do so.
But that, too, failed, as did any messages or suggestions either of the two tried to impart upon Minolin Fey.
They still saw the outside corridor through her eyes, and better still, she seemed fully unaware of it. Intellectually, Minolin Fey was no Yvonnel, but she was a priestess of Lolth of some renown and achievement. And still she was oblivious to the scrying.
They lingered there for a long time, a very long time, until Yvonnel became convinced that there was no limit here, that they could have remained in Minolin Fey’s head, seeing through her eyes for as long as they wished—and that Minolin Fey would never become wise to it.
Back in the Room of Divination, Yvonnel pulled her hands from the stoup and sighed profoundly.
“Maintain the connection to Minolin Fey!” she ordered. K’yorl hadn’t yet returned. “See though her eyes!”
On impulse, Yvonnel rushed out of the room to the waiting priestess.
“What is it, Mistress?” a startled Minolin Fey asked.