Catti-brie knew Ebonsoul was coming.
She called to her goddess and brought forth a brilliant light all around her, then saw the incoming rush of fog and lifted her hands to meet it, thumbs touching, fingers fanned horizontally, greeting the reforming Ebonsoul with a fan of flames.
But the lich hissed through the magical fire and swatted Catti-brie aside, sending her into a roll. She came around with a spell on her lips, but was relieved when Wulfgar’s hammer took Ebonsoul on the side of the head, staggering him. The huge barbarian charged in behind the throw, Bruenor and Regis close behind. And on came Drizzt from across the camp, blades rolling eagerly.
Ebonsoul was fog, then reformed, and Wulfgar went flying even as he caught his returned hammer.
Then to fog again went the lich, in a frenzy now, becoming corporeal in front of Regis, and dematerializing almost immediately as the halfling dived away and Bruenor turned in.
Lightning crackled around Catti-brie’s fingers, but she didn’t dare let loose the stroke of magic, for the lich was all around, near one companion, then another.
She thought she had a shot, but Ebonsoul swirled into fog once more and swept around a startled Bruenor, becoming solid behind the dwarf.
Bruenor grunted and rushed at Catti-brie as a clawed hand raked his back, and a thrust open hand crunched into the back of his neck and sent him flying forward and to the ground.
Catti-brie dismissed her spell, the crackling lightning dissipating around her. She searched her thoughts and recounted her spells and focused her attention at last upon a ring on her finger.
Drizzt came at the lich, blades whirling. But faster still was Ebonsoul, just a fog again, then reforming out to the side.
Drizzt turned to pursue, but found a stroke of black lightning instead, slamming him in the chest and throwing him backward, eating at his very life force. He still watched Ebonsoul, the lich becoming fog, the fog exploding all around as Guenhwyvar leaped through harmlessly.
Back and forth went the fog, darting all around the encampment, the lich reforming and striking, going away once more to strike again at a different target.
The four friends and Guenhwyvar tried to formulate some defensive posture, but Regis went flying, and then Wulfgar grunted and was driven to his knees, and Guenhwyvar roared in frustration again and again, always a heartbeat too late to the spot to rake at the undead monster.
And the companions were taking serious hits now, bruised and battered and bloody, and their occasional hits on the frenzied lich seemed to show little effect.
“Elf, take me left!” Bruenor ordered, right as Ebonsoul appeared behind him and whacked him across the head as he tried to turn, staggering him to the side.
Drizzt rushed in, magical anklets speeding him, but he had to turn aside, indeed dive aside, to avoid getting swatted by an outraged Wulfgar, who swung mightily at the lich. But alas, Ebonsoul was already gone.
They couldn’t match the speed and power of this one, Drizzt knew. They all knew it, and it seemed more likely that they’d inadvertently kill each other before ever landing any solid blows on the monster. Out in the darkness, Drizzt heard Catti-brie chanting in an arcane language he did not know.
“Scatter!” Regis ordered. “We cannot beat him!”
But Drizzt didn’t run, and he went at the fog, meeting Ebonsoul as the lich became corporeal, attacking furiously if futilely, but determined to keep the creature occupied, determined to give Catti-brie the time she needed.
“Drizzt, no!” he heard Regis cry out, and the words distorted in Drizzt’s ears as he pitched through the air, swatted hard by Ebonsoul.
The fog pursued.
The lich returned right in front of the flight of Wulfgar’s hammer, a desperate throw that would only narrowly miss Drizzt. Guenhwyvar soared in beside Aegis-fang, but again Ebonsoul became fog, hammer and panther flying through, and the fog rushed for Regis then, and the blood drained from the halfling’s face as Ebonsoul came up fearlessly before him, and surely the halfling saw his doom in the monster’s fiery eyes.
He stabbed out with his rapier desperately and repeatedly, and knew he was doing little damage, his pointed blade barely digging in. Ebonsoul ignored it, not even bothering to dematerialize, but instead determinedly reaching his clawed hands for the halfling thief.
“Come to me, little pirate,” the lich said in a vocal tremor that shivered Regis’s bones, and Regis nearly fainted away, and Drizzt cried out from far behind, and Bruenor, still on his knees to the halfling’s left, called out for his doomed halfling friend.
As he swooned, Regis barely registered the distortion that came into Ebonsoul’s watery voice, and it took him heartbeats to realize the visual weirdness as well, as the lich’s face seemed to elongate as if it was being pulled backward like soft dough or Sword Coast taffy.
Ebonsoul reached for him, but the moving hands seemed to be getting no nearer.
And the lich was pulled back and stretched. Ebonsoul’s expression became one of puzzlement, and the lich became a fog, as if trying to escape.
But the fog offered no escape, not this time, and it was pulled fast back the way it had come, rushing past the charging Wulfgar, past Drizzt, and out into the darkness.
Silence fell over the camp.
Guenhwyvar paced warily, turning tight circles. The four friends looked to each other, at a loss.
“Me girl,” Bruenor at last breathed.
And as if on cue, into the firelight walked Catti-brie, one hand clenched in a fist and held tight against her breast, her other hand up and out before her, holding aloft a large gemstone.
“What did you do?” Drizzt asked.
“We could not beat it,” Catti-brie answered in a whisper. “I had to.”
“She caught it!” Bruenor howled, and he scrambled to his feet. “In the gem! Oh, good girl!”
“Catti?” Drizzt asked.
She looked up at him, and seemed as if waking from a trance. She guided his gaze to the phylactery and nodded.
“That was the spell for Pwent,” Wulfgar interjected. “The spell the Harpells put in the ring.”
“What’d’ye do, girl?” Bruenor asked, suddenly near panic.
“Saved us, likely,” Drizzt answered. He turned to Catti-brie. “But what now? Back to Longsaddle?”
The woman considered the words for a long while, then shook her head. “On our way,” she answered. “The lich is caught, his soul trapped within the phylactery. Ebonsoul will bother us no more.”
“But you used the spell stored in the ring,” Bruenor and Regis said in unison.
“And I have a scroll from the Harpells replicating the magic,” Catti-brie answered.
“Ain’t yer prison full?” asked Bruenor.
“That spell is beyond you, so you said,” Drizzt added.
“I have performed it once, through the ring,” Catti-brie answered. “I will find the power again. And the phylactery … we will find another. Or we can go back, if you choose, but didn’t you say when we set the camp that we are close to Gauntlgrym’s entrance?”
“Aye, we’ll make the rocky dell soon after sunrise,” the dwarf confirmed.
Catti-brie shrugged and looked to Drizzt, and the drow took the cue to glance at each of his companions.
“To Gauntlgrym, then?” he said. “Though I fear we’ll have to destroy our old friend Thibbledorf Pwent where he resides instead of bringing him forth to accept the resurrection and true and clean death dealt by a high priest.”
By the time he had finished talking, Catti-brie stood before him, blue mist snaking out of her wide sleeves, and she reached out to him with healing magic, soothing the bruises and cuts inflicted by Ebonsoul. She made her way around the four, casting warmth and healing.
It was a night of uneasy sleep for all of them, after that horrifying encounter, but they were out before the dawn anyway, and into the rocky dell soon after, as Bruenor had predicted. With the sun still high in the sky, they entered the tunnels and began
their descent into Gauntlgrym.
CHAPTER 14
SO MANY MOVING PARTS
THE BAENRE ENTOURAGE MADE ITS WAY THROUGH THE TUNNELS OF the Underdark, but not directly back to Menzoberranzan as they had planned. On the matron mother’s order, they moved out to the east, escorting Tsabrak on the first leg of his most-important mission.
The matron mother was not among the contingent when they set their daily camp, of course. Gromph had created an extradimensional mansion where the selected nobles of House Baenre could relax without threat. The illithid went to that refuge as well, and Tsabrak, too, had been given a room of his own. He was too important now to risk.
“I would have thought you more agitated,” Quenthel said to her brother Gromph, sitting with him beside a glowing wall of artwork, whose colors shifted through the spectrum in a most pleasing display. Gromph created this distraction each night, to sit and enjoy a fine wine or brandy. This was no surprise to his sister. He did the same thing in Menzoberranzan. But she was a bit surprised at how content he seemed, and how peaceful the artwork appeared.
The old wizard looked at her curiously. “I am sure that the longer you intrude in my private quarters, the more agitated I will become,” he replied and lifted his snifter of brandy in toast. “As pleases you, of course.”
“We will leave Tsabrak soon,” Quenthel announced. “He will finish this journey alone.”
“The sooner I am away from the ambitious and sniveling Xorlarrin, the better.”
“Then you are bothered,” the matron mother said with a sly smile.
“Not in the least.”
“Truly? Dear brother, does the coming rise in Tsabrak’s stature not evoke a bit of fear, at least? Might it be time for a new archmage in the City of Spiders?”
“Replaced by a Xorlarrin, whose family has departed Menzoberranzan?” Gromph said rather incredulously.
“Would the elevation of Tsabrak not serve as a strong tie between Menzoberranzan and the fledgling outpost the Xorlarrins have created?”
Gromph laughed aloud. “Ah, dear sis—Matron Mother,” he said, shaking his head as if it should be obvious. “Why should I fear this movement of Lady Lolth? Do I not have more to gain than you? Than any of the matriarchs? The Spider Queen seeks Mystra’s realm, and of Lady Lolth’s current ranks, that realm is better served by trained males, and best served by me.”
“Or by Tsabrak!” Quenthel snapped back, her clear agitation showing the old mage that his reasoning had crawled under her skin.
“The illithid’s tentacles will not find my brain,” Gromph assured her. “Nor do I wish to cast this spell. It will not be Gromph channeling Lady Lolth under the open sky of the Silver Marches, and that, I assure you, is to Gromph’s liking.”
“Were Lolth to hear that—”
“She surely will!” Gromph interrupted. “I have just told it to her primary voice upon Toril. Willingly.”
“And you do not fear her wrath?”
The archmage shrugged and took another drink. “I do as Lolth has instructed me. I do not try to hide from her, for what would be the point? She knew of my … feelings toward you when you were Quenthel—when you were merely Quenthel.”
“How you plotted with Minolin Fey, you mean,” Matron Mother Quenthel retorted. The archmage merely shrugged and didn’t even try to hide his smile.
“And Lolth did not approve,” Gromph said, “because she had other plans for you—plans that I executed upon her command. I am a loyal servant, and please, for both our sakes, do not ever confuse my apparent lack of ambition with anything more than greater ambitions I concoct on my own.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means, Matron Mother, that the Archmage of Menzoberranzan is Gromph, who has outlived all of his contemporaries. Those who think me old and near dead will find the grave before me, do not doubt, and any who try to usurp me will need more than a single spell imparted through El-Viddenvelp to do so, even if that spell is inspired by the Spider Queen.”
The way he emphasized the illithid gave Matron Mother Quenthel pause. “Methil is your creature, so you believe.”
“Prove me wrong.”
“Methil was Yvonnel’s advisor.”
“The illithid is no longer controllable enough to serve in such a role.”
“But he serves you?”
The archmage tipped his glass at his sister and made no move to disavow her of that notion.
“And Gromph serves the matron mother,” she said with determination.
“Of course.”
Matron Mother Quenthel left the archmage’s chamber soon after, feeling a bit unsteady on her feet. Gromph’s insistence that he had more to gain than she did echoed in her thoughts. She went to her own room and sat in the darkness, seeking the memories of her dead mother, seeking the insight she would need.
Quenthel Baenre had never recognized the relationship between the genders in Menzoberranzan as anything more than mistress and servant, and so Gromph’s straightforwardness and cavalier, even imperious attitude threw her off-balance. But in the secrets of Yvonnel, the current Matron Mother Baenre again found her answers, and through those memories, Quenthel came to understand that, for many males and certainly Gromph, that matriarchal arrangement was less severe and formal than she had been raised to believe.
The Spider Queen valued her priestesses above all, there could be no doubt, and for the majority of Menzoberranzan’s males, life was as it appeared. But there were exceptions: the Xorlarrin male wizards, the Barrison Del’Armgo warriors, Gromph Baenre, even Jarlaxle.
These individuals and groups simply did not fit the paradigm.
The matron mother came out of her meditation amused by the irony. With her increased stature and knowledge and power had come as well, that very night, a measure of sincere humility.
The archmage, her brother, was yet another of her weapons, and he was a weapon to be treasured … and respected.
He wasn’t strong enough to stand by the time his captors collected him from his cage. They dragged him from the Forge to a side chamber bedecked in tapestries, rugs, and plush pillows. High Priestess Berellip Xorlarrin lounged there in luxury.
The two drow males unceremoniously dropped Entreri face-down on the floor, bowed to the priestess, and quickly departed, closing the door behind them.
When he realized that he was alone with the priestess, Artemis Entreri wondered if he could summon just enough strength to get his fingers around her throat.
“So we meet again, and again in my city,” Berellip said to him.
He just lay there, unmoving.
“Get up!’ she ordered, and when he did not move, the priestess threw a jug of water his way. It hit the floor before him and shattered, showering him with ceramic shards and splashing him with magically cold water. Despite his stubbornness, Entreri couldn’t help but lick up a bit of that nourishing liquid. How good it felt on his parched lips and throat! His captors had been giving him food and water, but just enough to keep him alive.
The drow were so good at this cruel game.
Berellip’s next move came as more of a surprise to the assassin, as she walked over to him and put her hand on his head, chanting quietly. A wave of magical energy rolled over him, bringing warmth and nourishment. He felt the strength returning to his limbs and the clarity returning to his mind.
“Get up,” she said again, quietly and more threateningly this time.
Entreri propped himself on his elbows, then rolled back to a kneeling position, his joints stiff from standing motionless while propped in the metal cage, aching with every movement.
“A clever lie you told when last we met,” Berellip said.
Entreri stared at her unblinking.
“Bregan D’aerthe, you said,” she reminded him. “But it was not true.”
“I spent many years beside Jarlaxle,” Entreri said, his voice cracking and barely getting past his broken lips.
“Jarlaxle is irrelevant,” Berel
lip said, and with a tone of authority that had Entreri thinking she knew something he did not.
“You remain alive for one reason—or perhaps for two,” she went on. “The choice is yours.”
“I am teeming with options,” he whispered with sarcasm.
“One of your band was missing,” Berellip said. “Where is he?”
“The dwarf is a woman, not a man,” Entreri answered innocently.
“Not her!” the priestess snapped back, and she slapped Entreri across the face. “Where is he?”
Entreri held up his hands and wore a puzzled expression. “Two dead, two in cages, the dwarf absent.”
“The sixth of your troupe.”
“We are five.”
“The drow,” Berellip said. “Where is Drizzt Do’Urden?”
“Him again?” Entreri quipped.
“It is the last time I will ask you, while you live, I assure you,” she replied. “But do not doubt that I can inquire of your corpse!”
“He is long dead,” Entreri answered, “in a crevice in a glacier, far to the north. A decade and more now …”
The way he had answered, so casually and without any hesitation, clearly put the priestess off her guard. Her shoulders sagged a bit and she fell back a step.
“You dare lie to me?” she asked, her hand going to her snake-headed whip. She tried to sound confident, but her initial reaction had already surrendered her inner feelings, and the perceptive Entreri knew that his lie had struck her profoundly.
“You will tell us everything we wish to know,” Berellip said.
“About Drizzt Do’Urden? Why would I not? I was never fond of the fool.”
“Yet you saved him with your lie when last we met!”
“I saved myself,” Entreri replied. His voice was growing a bit stronger now. “Would you expect anything less? And my tale was effective, you must admit, because only around the edges was it false. You knew me as Jarlaxle’s companion, back in Menzoberranzan …”
“Are you half-elf? What magic keeps you alive? That was more than a hundred years ago, yet you appear as a human of perhaps forty years.”