Toofless looked around at his kin, and for a moment, Ivan was uncertain as to how this might go. He even wondered if he was about to have a fight on his hands.
But Toofless turned back to him, offered a smile that signified nothing, and dipped a bow.
CONCETTINA COVERED up as soon as Yarin was finished with her. There was no sensitivity, no love, no connection at all between them. It was just an act for a purpose, and that purpose, Concettina feared, would never be fulfilled. Not by this man, at least.
She didn’t, couldn’t, even watch him dress, and couldn’t suppress her whimper as she tried to hide her revulsion for this man who was her husband.
“Are you coming to court?” Yarin asked sharply. He was dressed and noted that his wife hadn’t even left her bed. He sneered at her and snickered rudely.
“No,” he decided, “you stay here. Better for me to be out of your sight so that I am not continually reminded of your failure.”
He moved to the door and threw it wide. “You two!” he called to the guards in the hallway. “None in!” He turned back to regard Concettina and added hatefully, “And none out.”
“But I would go to the gardens,” the queen meekly argued, but King Yarin screamed before she had finished.
“You will stay in this room until you fulfill the purpose of a wife’s bed!”
He slammed the door as he exited, and Concettina pulled the blankets up over her face, terrified and ashamed.
SOON AFTER, IVAN handed a coffer over to King Yarin, who slowly opened it, never taking his eyes off the filthy dwarf visitors as he did.
Until it was open enough for him to see the necklaces, of course. Both beautiful and set with fabulous and expensive stones, they caught his greedy eye.
“A gift, me kingie, for yerself and yer queen,” Toofless explained.
On a nod from Red Mazzie, the court wizard who had already cast spells upon the items to determine if they were magical and perhaps malevolent, and another nod from Junquis Dularemay, the court priest who had cast divine spells to detect any poison on the items, King Yarin lifted the larger of the two and eyed it carefully. He smiled, the weight of the ostentatious piece convincing him that the thick chain was indeed pure gold.
“Ye’ll wook good,” Toofless assured King Yarin, who wasn’t even regarding him then but was instead looking to Dreylil Andrus. Andrus motioned to a guard to join him and rushed to the king, then took the necklace from King Yarin, hesitating not at all before slipping it over the head of the lower-ranking soldier.
“The king’s bauble and not yer own!” Toofless protested.
Captain Andrus eyed him dangerously and unfastened the necklace then reached for the opened coffer. There were dangerous necklaces on Toril, of course, which defied spells of detection and divination, one in particular that appeared normal by every indication until it was put on the head of an unsuspecting victim. Then it would constrict and choke until the victim was properly dead, before returning to its “normal” state.
Such necklaces of strangulation were not discerning items, however, and since the soldier was still alive and the necklace had come off without incident, this particular necklace was clearly not trapped in that manner.
Nor was the other, they discovered, when Dreylil Andrus removed it from the soldier and dismissed the man back to his station. There were other cursed necklaces about the Realms, though, and some were not simply a trap to be sprung, offering more malevolence and more intelligence in their dastardly plans.
On orders, Andrus fastened the large gold chain around King Yarin’s neck, and on a cue from the captain of the guard, all in attendance began clapping enthusiastically.
King Yarin adjusted the jewelry and nodded, seeming impressed.
“Clan Bigger Damarans now?” Toofless asked.
“Well on your way, I would say,” King Yarin replied. “What else have you brought?”
Toofless looked around and seemed on the edge of panic. The other dwarves shrugged and scratched their heads.
And King Yarin laughed, and all joined in, even the dwarves, when they figured out that he was simply teasing them.
“Yes, my loyal subjects, you can consider yourselves in the good graces of the king,” Yarin told them. “Return regularly, and with proper tithing, and you shall remain so.”
“Bwoodstone?” Toofless asked hopefully.
“Yes, please!” King Yarin replied. He turned to Dreylil Andrus. “Give them a writ to stay in some inn on the south side—beyond the wall, if you please,” he commanded. “And bid them a fair journey home, with their carts resupplied.”
He waved the dwarves away, and they were all too happy to comply. Toofless dropped his hand in his pocket as he exited, rubbing it over the empty phylactery, the gem identical to the one set on the smaller silver-chained necklace.
He didn’t know exactly what was going to happen, but he figured it would prove to be great fun.
MALCANTHET HAD ALMOST used that brief moment when she was in contact with the soldier to break free—how she longed to be free of this wretched little prison she had helped the drow House Hunzrin concoct for her. The clever dark elves of Menzoberranzan, deceitful Lolth’s wretched children all, had devised a way to banish the Abyssal demons even with the damaged barrier of the Faerzress.
No, not banish, but ensnare into gemstone phylacteries, which they were then trading all over Toril.
Worse, the clever dark elves had destroyed Demogorgon, who was one of her very few allies in the Abyss, and that against many powerful enemies including Graz’zt, whom she knew to be out and about in the Underdark.
But the succubus was not without her own considerable wiles and wit, and she had found unlikely allies in this House Hunzrin, a lower-ranking but very powerful mercantile House, and one that despised the current matron mother and her allies—those same allies who had destroyed Demogorgon.
And so Matron Mother Shakti Hunzrin had helped Malcanthet escape the Underdark, and now First Priestess Charri had delivered her to a place where Graz’zt would not find her—and where she could wreak some lovely chaos and lovelier murder.
“Patience,” Malcanthet, the Queen of the Succubi, told herself. In her brief time around the soldier’s neck, she had been able to scour his thoughts enough to know that he was a bit of a simpleton, and only a minor player, and also that he was testing the necklace at the behest of a king.
“Yes, a king,” Malcanthet purred in her extra-dimensional prison. “A king with a queen?”
HE DIDN’T KNOCK, and burst through the door suddenly and with great force, surprising poor Concettina so completely that she let out a scream before realizing it to be King Yarin come calling.
“You startled me!” she protested.
He moved right up to her and shoved her down on the bed and began stripping his clothing, revealing a gaudy necklace of gold and gems. “Not another word from you or you’ll feel the sting of my hand,” he warned, lisping slightly and so letting on that he had found his way to his liquor cabinet before venturing to her room.
She stared at the necklace, not daring to ask where he had come by it.
“You like it, yes?” Yarin asked, and Concettina simply nodded, lying with the motion, for surely she thought the ostentatious thing quite ugly.
“Fitting for a king, yes?”
She nodded again.
“And I am a king!” he declared. “The King of Damara! And do you know what else is fitting for a king, woman?”
Afraid, Concettina meekly shook her head. She noted some guards in the hall. Yarin, though he was quite naked and tearing at her clothes with licentious intent, hadn’t even bothered to close the door behind him.
“An heir!” he yelled. “And you’re to give me one. And soon! Know that my patience is at its end, foolish girl.”
He threw himself on top of her, forcing her arms down by her side, and Concettina just closed her eyes and tried not to cry. She didn’t know if the guards had shut the door, or if they
were just out there, watching.
She couldn’t even summon the strength to care.
CHAPTER 15
Creation
PROCEED,” THE WIZARD CALLED FROM ACROSS THE CHASM.
Bruenor looked back from the anteroom to Gromph and the others, all gathered by the pit, most deep into spellcasting. He wished that Catti-brie was among the group—he wanted to hear the command from her so he could have some confidence that it was indeed time for this momentous occasion.
Bruenor closed his eyes and recalled his last visit to the Throne of the Dwarven Gods. He had relayed these plans, though of course he had no way of knowing if that call crossed the planes of existence to the ears of Moradin, Dumathoin, and Clangeddin.
But the throne hadn’t launched him across the room, to crash into the wall, as it had at other times when its godly audience wasn’t happy with the dwarf king’s heart.
“They cannot hold their dweomers forever, foolish dwarf!” Gromph bellowed, and it occurred to Bruenor that there might be a bit of magical suggestion in that command. Before he even paused to consider it, he yanked the lever controlling the water elementals.
Bruenor held his breath and the rush of water from the ceiling halted. Almost immediately after that, the primordial rumbled and the cavern floor trembled.
Bruenor couldn’t see into the pit from his vantage point, and he didn’t dare leave the lever—indeed, he wouldn’t let go of the thing, ready to tug it back and release a renewed rain of water elementals upon the fire primordial. He saw Gromph, though. The wizard was smiling widely, his eyes glowing in reflection of the bubbling orange lava far below.
The primordial belched, a burst of magma lifting from the pit and into the waiting tendril. Then it vomited, releasing mighty preternatural energy. A line of molten power shot up from the pit and into the opened tendril above.
Bruenor thought this whole thing foolish. He had let free the beast! All of Gauntlgrym would be consumed!
He grabbed the lever harder and started to tug.
“Not yet!” Gromph screamed, and the dwarf was shocked to find the archmage standing beside him.
“No, no,” Gromph said more calmly. “Look, King Bruenor! Witness the power! Even a dwarf should appreciate the glory of this moment!”
He coaxed Bruenor forward, and the dwarf felt the blast of hot air keenly when he came to the edge of the anteroom. His eyes stung, his beard singed even, but he didn’t care. He stood there transfixed, amazed by the bared power of this godlike being before him.
A line of lava sprayed up from the pit, hot and thick and rushing into the tendril, filling it and rushing to Luskan.
Many heartbeats later, he heard Gromph counting—a most poignant reminder. His trance broken, though still awestricken, Bruenor stumbled back to the lever.
Bruenor didn’t know the drow language enough to follow the count, but finally Gromph looked up at him, held up all ten fingers, and began the last countdown. Bruenor readied the lever to flood in more elementals and trap the beast in its pit once more.
CATTI-BRIE AND JARLAXLE stood beside the hole in the ground amidst the rubble of the old Hosttower, staring in at the mound of ruins and limestone and gemstones the dwarves had collected and dumped into the pit. Behind the pair, thousands looked on, many half-turned and stepping in place, setting their legs as if readying to flee.
And why wouldn’t they be? Catti-brie was summoning a volcano here, a fire primordial, the same beast that had obliterated the city of Neverwinter a few decades earlier and killed thousands.
The tons of piled stone in the pit bounced then, ever so slightly, and Catti-brie jumped an equal amount.
Jarlaxle tightened his grip around her shoulders, and she glanced at him and could tell that he wasn’t much more comfortable than she.
The rubble bounced again and a fountain of lava shot up from the hole, straight into the air to fall back down upon itself. And the pile in the pit began to roll and to rise, and the distinct edges of the stones and broken bits of the former Hosttower began to soften and blend then fold over each other. Bubbles of lava burst and sent a terrible stench into the air.
But Catti-brie just pulled her shawl over her face to lessen the smell, and neither she nor Jarlaxle, who seemed unbothered by the stench, turned away.
The whole ball of slag rose up from the hole and seemed to stretch and grow. It started thin, but then widened quickly, forming what looked like the base of a gigantic tree. It continued to grow upward from there, taller than the onlookers, ten feet and more. A large bubble appeared on the side facing Jarlaxle and Catti-brie, and they cautiously backed away a few steps.
It burst as they had feared, but didn’t splatter. Instead, a massive branch began growing straight out from the hole in the trunk, then began to turn upward.
Then the eruption was over, and the new creation, fifteen feet of hollow trunk and a single massive hollow branch extending only a few feet out from the main trunk, poured smoke from both openings. The new material, this super-heated, primordial-infused limestone, glittered in the daylight almost as if it was a wet, polished stone.
On the field all around Jarlaxle and Catti-brie, the onlookers began to cheer and gasp. What they had just witnessed seemed almost holy, a preternatural creation, perfect and godlike. Stones growing as mountains must have grown, so many eons before.
Unlike the others, though, Catti-brie just pulled her shawl tighter around her and expressed no joy.
“It is a powerful beginning,” Jarlaxle said, coming up and putting his arm around her. “It is all that we had hoped and more. Your insights have been proven correct.”
Catti-brie nodded slightly, but her expression did not soften.
“This is your moment of greatest triumph,” Jarlaxle said, “but he is not here to share it with you.”
Catti-brie looked at him. She didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to. Her expression said all that was needed.
Everything in the world seemed to be going right, and toward a beautiful and peaceful goal, but Drizzt wasn’t there with her, and might not return for years, or decades, or ever. Catti-brie had the desperate feeling that their story together was now, at last, fully told.
Jarlaxle wanted to comfort her, but he held silent, knowing that anything he said would reveal the truth that he couldn’t disagree with her grim assessment.
YVONNEL BAENRE WASN’T even aware of the fact that her jaw was hanging open. She stared into the water of the scrying pool, dumbfounded, overwhelmed by the beauty and power of what she witnessed within.
“Gromph … beautiful Gromph,” she whispered
Her father led a team of mighty wizards and priests in the calculated and controlled release of the fire primordial.
When the water elementals fell from the channels in the ceiling once more, sealing the great beast back in its pit, Yvonnel waved her hand over the scrying pool and changed the image to the scene in Luskan where her uncle Jarlaxle and the human woman Catti-brie stood in front of their creation.
Her breath was stolen yet again, Yvonnel could only shake her head as she considered the scope of what these people were attempting. The trunk and first sprouting limb of a massive, wondrous tower, full of magic and full of … life …
Dare she think that?
Was it even possible?
That was exactly what Yvonnel’s heart and mind were telling her, that this tower was more than a simple construction of unliving materials. It resembled the husk of a once-great tree, but she sensed something more, something alive. Whether that was rooted in the process of growing the tower or in the tower itself, or even in both, she could not tell.
All she knew was that her heart sang to her, its melodies certain that she was witnessing something … divine.
It took her a long while to tear herself away from the scrying stoup and stumble out of the room, and a long while after that to fully regain her sensibilities.
She called Minolin Fey to her side and together they went to see Ma
tron Mother Quenthel.
“When is the last time you have spoken with Gromph?” Yvonnel demanded, dispensing with etiquette. “Or Jarlaxle? Have you heard from the rogue of late?”
“No, neither,” Quenthel replied. “Not since you allowed Jarlaxle to leave the city with the rogue Do’Urden and the others. I thought it better to remain removed from them.”
“From me, you mean,” said Yvonnel, and Quenthel didn’t deny it.
“What else do you know?” Yvonnel demanded. “Of the city and of that which is happening outside of Menzoberranzan?”
Quenthel held up her hands as if in surrender. That was quite a wide-reaching request, after all.
“Are any moving against us, or against House Do’Urden?” Yvonnel demanded.
Quenthel shook her head. “Matron Mother Zeerith is in place in House Do’Urden. She has brought in all of the former House Xorlarrin charges. She doesn’t even need our soldiers in her compound any longer. Only Barrison Del’Armgo could threaten her alone, and Matron Mother Mez’Barris would not dare such a move at this tentative time.”
“Allow Matron Mother Zeerith to regain her old House name—it is not fitting to have any entity named House Do’Urden, in any case,” Yvonnel said. “They were properly obliterated, leave them so.”
“But is not Drizzt the Champion of Menzoberranzan?” a confused Quenthel asked, eliciting a growl from Yvonnel.
“Better for all that he is simply forgotten,” Yvonnel explained.
Quenthel nodded.
“Move the reconstituted House Xorlarrin up the hierarchy,” Yvonnel continued. “Demote House Melarn to Eighth House and elevate House Vandree above them, so that Vandree may retain its current rank as Seventh House. It is fitting that Matron Mother Zhindia Melarn be punished for her attempt on House Do’Urden, and this shuffling will stifle any protests forthcoming from House Vandree.”
Quenthel considered the ordering for a moment, then nodded.