“That lichen,” he said, looking up from the picture in the book to a patch of mossy green fungus at the base of the room’s wall. “You go and scout and keep Guenhwyvar as relay. If you find any more of the lichen, gather it.”
“For?”
“Many things, and probably many more I haven’t yet discovered,” Regis answered. He reached into one pocket and pulled forth a vial filled with a bluish liquid. “And here,” he said, offering it to Drizzt.
The drow took it, looking at his halfling friend curiously.
“A potion of healing,” Regis explained. “Good to have until Catti-brie is back, at least.”
Drizzt nodded and started away.
“Fire protection,” Regis said suddenly, turning him back. “The lichen, I mean. I think I can use it to finish a potion of fire protection, and if I’m to be marching beside Catti-brie, that is something I desire! She seems to favor the flame!”
Drizzt smiled and nodded, his hand going to Icingdeath, which similarly protected him, and his thoughts going to the ring he had given to Catti-brie that afforded her the same. He was thinking about the longer term implications, fitting pieces of the greater puzzle together to find even more harmony and power within the group.
He glanced one last time at Regis, who had buried his nose in his alchemy book and who was, obviously, musing along the same lines.
“Allow me,” Wulfgar said.
Bruenor, still holding the skull, looked at him and hesitated.
“Please,” Wulfgar added.
“Are ye sad that ye weren’t there to bury yer Da the first time?” Bruenor asked with a wry smile as he handed the skull over.
“Just respect,” Wulfgar explained. “Respect owed to you.” He knelt beside the cairn and gently moved aside the stones.
“It is … sobering,” Catti-brie said, standing back with Bruenor. She draped her arm across the dwarf’s sturdy shoulders. “I wonder how I will feel when I return to Mithral Hall and look upon my own grave.”
“Sobering?” Bruenor replied with a snort. “Feeling more like I could use me a bit o’ the gutbuster!” He put his arm around his daughter’s waist and pulled her closer.
Wulfgar put the femurs back in place first, then tenderly placed the skull. Before he replaced the stones, he stood at the foot of the grave, where Catti-brie and Bruenor joined him. As the woman consecrated the grave, Wulfgar and Bruenor lowered their eyes.
It proved a cathartic moment for this unusual family. They did not bury their past there, just their past differences, Wulfgar most of all.
When Catti-brie finished her chant, he pulled the woman close in a tight hug. “Ever have I loved you,” he said, but there was no tension there in his voice or between them. “And now I am glad to be back beside you, both of you.”
“I didn’t think you’d leave Iruladoon to return to Toril,” Catti-brie said.
“Nor did I,” Wulfgar replied. “Curiously, I have not regretted my choice for a moment of the last twenty-one years. This is my adventure, my journey, my place.”
“Will you tell me about your wife and children in time?” Catti-brie asked, and Wulfgar smiled wide and nodded eagerly.
“Two lives,” he said as if he could not believe his good fortune. “Or three, as I consider the two sides of my previous existence.”
“Nah, just the one,” Bruenor decided. He stepped away from his children to the grave and kicked at one of the stones. He looked back at the pair, nodding as if in epiphany.
“What’s in here’s what’s countin’,” he said, poking a stubby finger against his chest, over his heart. “Not what’s in there,” he finished, pointing to the cairn.
The other two, who had passed through death, who also wore their second mortal bodies, could not argue that fine point.
CHAPTER 16
RESILIENCE
THE DIMINUTIVE TIEFLING WARLOCK STRODE ANGRILY ALONG THE devastated section of Port Llast, his dead arm swinging behind him, his bone staff tucked up under his other arm. Often he used that staff for support, but not now, not with his blood on fire with anger.
They had taken his mother, if she was even still alive.
They had destroyed his band of companions, his band of friends. Some of the citizens had seen Afafrenfere down and dead. Some had seen Artemis Entreri dragged away. And Amber, too, poor Amber, hoisted upside down by her feet and jostled around like a plaything at the end of an enormous drider’s ugly arm.
And Dahlia had been beaten—Effron had seen that with his own eyes. When the lightning net had descended, so had Effron descended, reverting to wraith form and slipping into a crack between the cobblestones, rushing down and along the ground, then up between the planks of a nearby building. Fortunately, he had gone to the opposite side of the avenue from where Dahlia’s magical weapon had redirected the lightning web energy, and how proud the young warlock had been to witness his mother enacting such a mighty blast as that!
But he had witnessed the savage retribution of the male drider as well, and even in his two-dimensional form, the tiefling warlock felt his breath leaving him as that monster battered Dahlia about the head, laying her low.
And now she was gone. They were all gone, and Effron found himself alone.
He thought of the Shadowfell and Draygo Quick, once his mentor in what was once his home, but dismissed the thought with an angry shake of his head and a mutter of curses that had the many citizens moving about the disaster area looking at him curiously, as if he had surely lost his mind.
They were not far off in their estimation of his emotional stability, he realized as he took note of them.
Effron was indeed nearly insane with anger and frustration, and sheer hopelessness. He was alone now, two decades removed from his time—was Draygo Quick even still alive? And how far had the Shadowfell receded from the shores of Toril? Effron doubted he could even shadowstep back to that dark place, but he doubted even more that he wanted to.
Likely, he was an outlaw there, and would not survive for long.
He came up before the smoldering rubble of Stonecutter’s Solace, the inn a complete ruin from the magical fires and thunderous lightning of the dark elves’ assault. Many had died in there; almost a dozen bodies had been pulled out at last count.
All around him, the folk of Port Llast vowed that they would rebuild.
These were hardy folk, resilient and stubborn, and their words gave Effron some comfort.
He could go his way now, he realized, free to roam as he saw fit, free to build a new life. He was a warlock of no small power, after all, and powerfully outfitted. With the bone staff he had taken from the skull lord in the Shadowfell, he could raise an army of undead to do his bidding, if it came to that.
“On my own,” he said aloud, trying to bolster his own resolve.
But the words rang hollow, and their echoes were not welcomed in his thoughts, he found to his surprise.
“No,” he said. “No.”
He would go and find his mother. It would take him years, perhaps, but that was his place now, that was his guiding mission. He would find Dahlia and hopefully the others of their band, and he would destroy their captors.
Or he would die trying.
That last thought surprised him, but mostly because that last thought did not bother him. If he died trying to save Dahlia, then so be it.
“So be it,” he said aloud.
“So be what?” asked a man near to him, and he turned to see that fellow and a companion regarding him curiously. “First the damned sea devils, now the drow! Is Port Llast cursed, do you think?”
The twisted warlock brought his staff out before him and tapped it hard against the cobblestones, feeling its resonating power, feeling his own inner strength.
“The world is a dangerous place,” Effron said. “And that danger comes in all manners and enemies. Would you go to Waterdeep to be cut down by a highwayman’s knife in an alleyway? Would you go to Baldur’s Gate and be dragged off on a slaver’s boat
? Or would you build again, here in Port Llast, and be ready next time should these drow dogs return?”
“Well said, young one,” the man’s companion said with a courteous bow.
Effron nodded and walked away.
Yes, he decided, he would go and rescue his mother.
But of course, he had no idea where to start.
“You do not seem overly bothered by this turn of events,” Jarlaxle castigated Kimmuriel when the psionicist at last arrived to his call in the empty back chambers of House Do’Urden.
The psionicist shrugged as if it hardly mattered. “Did you not expect that this would happen someday?”
“I expected that things would continue to progress, and splendidly, as they were.”
“And you were miserable,” Kimmuriel replied. “A most miserable clerk.”
Jarlaxle was starting to answer before Kimmuriel had even finished, but he bit back his response as he more fully realized the prescience of the psionicist’s remarks.
“Even that was better than this,” he said in exasperation instead. “Show some respect, Houseless rogue, for you are in the presence of the Captain of the Guard of Daermon N’a’shezbaernon, more commonly known as House Do’Urden. Impressive, yes?”
“I am brimming with humility,” Kimmuriel dryly replied.
“The returning army of House Baenre will enter the city this day,” Jarlaxle explained. “And dear Matron Mother Quenthel has acquired a most interesting pair.”
“The son of House Barrison Del’Armgo and his half-darthiir daughter, yes,” Kimmuriel agreed.
Jarlaxle looked at him, shook his head, and blew an exasperated sigh. Just once he would like to surprise Kimmuriel with some bit of information!
“She will use this retrieved Armgo to strengthen the bond between House Baenre and Matron Mez’Barris Armgo, no doubt. Or she will find a way to twist the young Armgo’s situation to her advantage over Mez’Barris. Either way, she is determined to strengthen her hold on the whole of the city.”
“Matron Mother Quenthel has grown,” Kimmuriel remarked.
“Yes, she has grown tremendously somehow—through the use of an illithid, I believe, though my information is far from complete. Gromph drags Methil El-Viddenvelp along behind him.”
“Matron Mez’Barris hates Matron Mother Quenthel profoundly,” Kimmuriel replied, and he did not seem surprised by Jarlaxle’s information. “As much as she hates anyone alive.”
“She is a matron of a powerful House,” Jarlaxle reminded. “Her personal vendetta matters not. She will choose pragmatism over anger.”
Kimmuriel nodded, hardly disagreeing. “There is one who hates the Matron Mother of House Baenre even more,” he remarked. “One who long ago abandoned any thought of anything other than revenge.”
Jarlaxle looked at him curiously.
“My mother,” Kimmuriel explained.
“K’yorl? She fell into the Claw—”
“She was taken from House Oblodra before the wrath of Lolth destroyed the structure and given to a great demon as a slave.”
Jarlaxle’s expression did not change—this was all new information to him.
“Errtu the balor,” Kimmuriel explained. “K’yorl Odran is its plaything, but she cares not. All that enters her mind for these many decades is her hatred of Matron Mother Yvonnel Baenre and Yvonnel’s children, including the new matron mother. She is single-minded, I assure you.”
“You speak as if you have met with her.”
“In my own manner,” Kimmuriel admitted. “There is more to this tale. Matron Mez’Barris entered into a conspiracy to release K’yorl upon the city, upon House Baenre, specifically. Archmage Gromph was part of that conspiracy, along with a high priestess of another House.”
“Minolin Fey, no doubt,” Jarlaxle reasoned. He considered the current situation and realized that the matron mother had severed that conspiracy rather neatly. He looked at Kimmuriel, still confused about how his compatriot could be in the know regarding so much interesting subterfuge of the spider’s web that was Menzoberranzan, but then, suddenly, it all sorted out to him, and very neatly.
“So, Methil El-Viddenvelp is not as damaged as he seems to be,” Jarlaxle said with a wry grin. “Not so damaged that the mind flayer cannot contact its hive-mind, perhaps.”
Kimmuriel nodded in deference to the fine reasoning.
“So Quenthel is now more akin to Yvonnel, and far more formidable,” Jarlaxle remarked. “And I am the captain of the Do’Urden garrison.” He shook his head and snickered at the sound of that, repeating, “The Do’Urden garrison.”
“Soon to be a noble House, seated on the council, no doubt,” Kimmuriel reasoned.
“Replacing Xorlarrin, I expect,” said Jarlaxle.
“And what is the place of Bregan D’aerthe in all of this?” asked Kimmuriel, but Jarlaxle could tell from the psionicist’s expression and demeanor that he already had the answer, whatever Jarlaxle might offer.
“We will find our opportunity, and our way,” Jarlaxle assured him. “There is a war coming—somewhere. There can be no other explanation for the machinations of the matron mother. She brings all others close now, and holds them fast as her collective thrall.”
“She thickens her armor indeed,” Kimmuriel agreed.
“There will be seams in that armor,” Jarlaxle stated rather determinedly before he could catch himself.
Kimmuriel offered a wry smile at his outburst.
“I did not build Bregan D’aerthe to see it turned into a faction of the House Baenre garrison,” Jarlaxle explained. He hesitated then, thinking that he would be wise to temper his words. But as he considered it, it didn’t really matter, for Kimmuriel could read his thoughts as easily as listen to his words, even if the magical eyepatch prevented psionic intrusion. So flustered was Jarlaxle at that time that he was wearing his emotions openly.
“I will do as the matron mother commanded, for now,” he told his co-leader. “But this is a temporary arrangement. I did not escape this wretched hole in the ground only to be pulled back in at the whim of my foolish sis—of the matron mother.”
“Sister,” Kimmuriel added. “And no, this is not a desirable detour for Bregan D’aerthe.”
“So let us find the seams in my dear sister’s armor,” Jarlaxle offered.
“Mez’Barris Armgo already has discerned one,” Kimmuriel replied.
“K’yorl?”
“Indeed. It was a Baenre, Tiago, who last slew and thus banished Errtu, and the balor will hold no love for that House.”
Jarlaxle’s smile widened so much that the psionicist apparently felt compelled to add, “Patience.”
But of course, Jarlaxle thought, but did not say. He wanted Luskan back. He wanted Bregan D’aerthe back.
He wanted to see the stars once more.
And so he would, even if it had to be over his sister Quenthel’s dead body.
CHAPTER 17
THE ORDER WITHIN THE CHAOS
THE EIGHT RULING MATRONS OF MENZOBERRANZAN GATHERED AROUND the spider-shaped table in the secret council chamber, with Matron Mother Quenthel Baenre and Matron Mez’Barris Armgo taking their seats at the ends of the longest arms of the arachnid.
Between them sat an empty chair, one that seven of the ruling matrons expected would be filled in short order.
But Matron Mother Quenthel knew better.
This council had been long-awaited, and indeed had been delayed longer than many had expected. Nearly all of House Xorlarrin was gone from the city now, and a few of the ruling matrons were surprised to see Zeerith Q’Xorlarrin in attendance and seated in the chair of the Third House to the right of Matron Mother Quenthel. Rumors had filtered throughout the city that Zeerith had already departed.
No matter, though, they all whispered, for surely this was the day of Zeerith’s formal withdrawal from the Ruling Council and House Xorlarrin’s formal withdrawal from Menzoberranzan. Their settlement in the dwarven complex once known as Gauntlgrym was goi
ng splendidly, by all accounts. Several Houses had already set up trading arrangements with the Xorlarrins, and indeed, some fine armor and weapons had already begun to flow back to Menzoberranzan, crafted in the primordial forge.
After the many obligatory prayers to the Spider Queen, led by High Priestess Sos’Umptu Baenre, Matron Mother Quenthel called the chamber to order.
Surprisingly, though, Sos’Umptu did not depart, as was the custom. She moved to the chair between the matron mother and Matron Mez’Barris and calmly sat down, a movement that clearly did not sit well with the Matron of House Barrison Del’Armgo, who squirmed in her seat and openly glowered at the Baenre high priestess, and then at Matron Mother Quenthel as well.
“You know why we are gathered,” the matron mother began. “Matron Zeerith Q’Xorlarrin’s expedition to the rediscovered dwarven mines has been quite successful and fruitful. By the will of Lolth, and as previously discussed in this very hall, it is time for us to rebuild that which was lost in the decades of tumult, in the War of the Spider Queen and the devastations of the Spellplague.”
She looked to Zeerith and bade her to speak.
“The city of Q’Xorlarrin is prepared,” the old matron said as she stood. “We secure the halls and the magical Forge of the dwarves is fired once more, its flames the hot breath of a captured primordial.”
The declaration, though it was not news to anyone in the room, of course, brought a round of applause.
“Q’Xorlarrin is not an independent entity,” Matron Mother Quenthel interrupted, stifling those cheers and drawing surprised glances from a few of the others, though the still-standing Matron Zeerith’s expression did not change. All of this had been long-ago decided, in private, between the two, the others soon realized.
“You have your city, as you desired, Matron Zeerith,” the matron mother explained. “And your autonomy—to a point.”
Matron Mother Quenthel patted her hand in the air, bidding Zeerith to sit down, and when she had, the matron mother continued, “Q’Xorlarrin is a sister to Menzoberranzan, and will pay a tithe, mostly in the form of armor and weapons, machines of war, and the like. In its daily routines, Q’Xorlarrin is Matron Zeerith’s own to rule, as she sees fit. But know this, my old rival, my old friend, my old enemy: In a time of need, Menzoberranzan will call upon you, and you will answer as we desire. In a time of war, your soldiers will march to the call, and under the banner of Menzoberranzan, and under the command of the Baenre garrison. Your prayers to Lady Lolth will confirm these truths. Are we agreed?”