One stride, two strides, three strides later and the apparent distance was revealed to be an illusion, or some boundary between the planes. The mount stood tall, shining in the daylight, pacing right beside Drizzt.
He went up to his seat, and as Artemis Entreri offered his hand to Yvonnel, who climbed up beside him, Drizzt did likewise to Grandmaster Kane.
The monk shook his head. “I will meet you at Chalmer’s house,” he said. “I know the place and would like to do some scouting first.”
“Our mounts will not tire and we will ride through the night,” Drizzt replied.
“You will not arrive long before me,” Kane promised, and he offered the drow a wink.
Drizzt nodded. He had seen too many inexplicable feats from this man to argue the point.
Off they went, riding hard to the northeast, keeping the higher peaks of the Galena Mountains to their left. They bent around to due north as the mountains curved, and soon found the road. With the morning sun, nearly a hundred miles behind them, they came to an intersection of several roads, though most were little more than trails. In that many-corners area, they found a cluster of houses, exactly as the halfling had described.
Drizzt was at Pikel’s bedside before the guests in the common room had even begun their breakfasts.
The dwarf’s face was ashen. He somehow opened one eye, just a bit, and even managed to whisper “Drizzit Dudden” and grin, though the effort made him slip away a bit more.
“Do something!” Drizzt bade Yvonnel, who stood with Entreri at the door.
“Would you have me commune with Lady Lolth?” the priestess asked skeptically, holding her hands out wide. “She’ll not grant me any spells of consequence at this time.”
“You have nothing?”
“Minor spells onl—”
“Use them!” Drizzt cried. “All of them, any of them!”
Yvonnel nodded and moved to Pikel’s side. Just in examining the dwarf, she understood that she could offer nothing more than the temporary relief of those minor spells that required no intervention from the goddess or her handmaidens.
She looked closer at the dwarf’s wounds. Somewhere deep in her memories, deep in the memories of Yvonnel the Eternal, she recognized this wound. She had seen it before, she was certain, though she couldn’t quite place it.
But she understood the nature of it.
She cast a few minor healing spells, which seemed to make the poor, battered dwarf relax a bit.
“Perhaps I can do more than I believed,” she told Drizzt. “This wound is rooted in magic, and, like much of the Abyssal powers, is as much arcane as it is divine.”
She cast again, a different sort of chant, a magic-user’s cadence and not that of a priestess.
Pikel breathed easier and opened his eyes.
“Drizzit Dudden,” he said more clearly, and with a genuine smile.
Drizzt and Yvonnel changed places once more, with Yvonnel whispering into his ear as they passed, “It is temporary. He will likely be dead before this day is passed and there is nothing I can do.”
Drizzt absorbed the words without letting his smile break completely, and he knelt beside Pikel and took the dwarf’s hand.
“Woofgar,” Pikel said, shaking his head.
“Woofgar?”
“Woofgar! Woofgar, and Regis,” Pikel said.
“Wulfgar?” Drizzt cried, and he turned to the others.
“Shh,” said Pikel, and he began to cough.
“Give me some time with him,” Drizzt bade the others, and they left the room, closing the door to let Drizzt hear Pikel’s tale.
DRIZZT EMERGED FROM the room hours later, shaking his head at the startling revelations. He recounted what he had learned to Yvonnel, Entreri, and Kane, who, not surprisingly, was there as well.
It was a short story of a complex of dwarves who could become giants and a demonic winged woman who stole the identity of the Queen of Damara and now had “Woofgar” entrapped behind the glass of some magical mirror deep in the bowels of the mines.
“That’s all?” Entreri asked.
He nodded.
“You were in there the entire morning!” Entreri protested.
“Have you ever had a conversation with Pikel Bouldershoulder?” Drizzt asked sharply, and his lavender eyes flared with some inner anger, or inner pain, that warded any further questions.
The ranger sighed, and he could hardly believe that he had found his old friend in this time and place, as Pikel’s life neared its end, and he could believe even less that he had lost another dear friend, poor Regis, once again.
But then one more detail of Pikel’s rambling did occur to Drizzt. “He said there were dark elves in the dwarven—or giant, or whatever they are—caves.”
“Drow?” Yvonnel echoed, and that notion resonated with many possibilities for her. “Did he say who?” she asked, leaning forward.
“He got a fleeting glance, no more. They were priestesses of substantial rank, though, I believe. Pikel described the gown of one, and if his memory is correct, it is nothing I would expect any but a noble daughter to wear.”
Yvonnel nodded. It was beginning to come together for her then, particularly given the claim of demonic possession taking the queen.
“What can you tell me about this Queen of Damara?” she asked Kane.
“Queen Concettina,” he answered. “There is quite a bit of talk about her on the roads about Helgabal.”
“When?” Entreri asked skeptically.
“Last night, when I was there,” said Kane, and Drizzt was not surprised.
“That’s a hundred miles to the east,” Entreri protested, but Kane just nodded.
“King Yarin has mustered his army,” the great monk went on, “though they know not where to go. The rumors say that Queen Concettina was stolen by a conspiracy, one involving a demon, a barbarian from Icewind Dale, and a halfling from Aglarond.”
A slight breeze would have knocked Drizzt over.
“Do you know the history of King Yarin’s wives?” Kane asked, and when none replied, the monk told them the tales of Drielle and those who had come before her, of the king’s embarrassments and the executions and the statues in his gardens wearing pigeons as heads. He finished by explaining that Pikel had worked in those very gardens and went back to the conspiracy that was being whispered in the area of Helgabal regarding the conspirators.
“The halfling and the barbarian, a demon and a dwarf named Bouldershoulder,” Kane finished, and he and the others turned as one to the door of Pikel’s room.
“Then they will come for him,” Entreri reasoned.
“No,” Drizzt explained, for Pikel had expressed some related fears to him. “Not Pikel, but his brother, Ivan, who is likely in the king’s dungeons even now, if not already executed.”
“Go and give the king’s army direction,” Yvonnel told Kane.
“I have to go straightaway to the caves,” Drizzt said, “or I would go with you to speak for Ivan Bouldershoulder, as fine a dwarf as I’ve ever known.”
Kane’s expression told Drizzt that he understood the subtle undercurrents of that remark, and that gave Drizzt hope. It would take more than a dungeon door and a few jailers to hold back Grandmaster Kane.
“To the caves, then!” said Entreri, and he looked at his ranger friend and offered a grim and determined nod.
“I have a few other things I must attend, for all our sake, though expect that I will meet you there,” Yvonnel told the pair.
“Take some rest and some food before you leave,” Kane bade them, but he didn’t heed his own advice before he rushed out of Chalmer’s hospitable house and ran off so fast down the eastern road toward Helgabal, Drizzt doubted that Andahar could have kept pace with him.
“WE’RE GOING TO go get Wulfgar,” Drizzt assured Pikel a short while later, after a brief respite. “And we won’t forget Ivan, I promise.”
“Me brudder,” Pikel whispered, his voice very thin, and his grip—Drizzt held
his hand—weak.
“Rest easy, my friend,” Drizzt said, patting his hand. He looked back through the opened doorway, where Yvonnel waited. She had promised to use every healing spell she could muster on Pikel again now that she, too, had found a bit of rest.
In the common room, Drizzt ate a small meal with Entreri as the two plotted their course, figuring that if the information Pikel had given Drizzt was accurate, and Kane’s directions correct, they could find these caves before nightfall.
Yvonnel returned from Pikel’s bedside soon after, gave a little nod at the pair, and moved to a side room the innkeeper had offered, fetching a waiting pitcher of water from the bar as she passed.
“Divination,” Entreri explained, and Drizzt nodded.
“I expect that she knows something, or many things, that we do not,” the drow answered.
“There is a lot happening,” Entreri replied, and he gathered up his weapon belt and strapped it around his waist as he headed for the door, obsidian figurine in hand.
A few moments later, the pair thundered along the road to the north, toward the foothills.
“Revenge for the dwarf,” Entreri told Drizzt when their pace slowed and a narrow trail climbed, exactly as Pikel had described it to Drizzt.
“And for Regis,” Drizzt replied. “One you know well.”
Entreri could only shrug, for there was little he wanted to say regarding the halfling friend of Drizzt Do’Urden. In another life, Regis had lost a finger to the blade of Artemis Entreri, and that wound had reappeared on his new body, curiously.
“You would have liked him, had you found the chance to know him better,” Drizzt told the man. “There was so much more to Re … Rumblebelly, than most could ever see.”
“And Wulfgar?”
“Aye, certainly so.”
“Then let’s get him out of the looking glass, and go get the dwarf’s brother away from the king,” Entreri said. “I find that I am liking this King Yarin less and less with each tale of him I hear.”
“From all I can tell, you are not alone.”
LATER THAT SAME day, as night began to fall, Yvonnel paced the room anxiously after several failed scrying attempts. She was looking for a demon, but gained little assistance from the Spider Queen or her minions.
Yvonnel told herself that that lack of cooperation had less to do with her current status with Lolth and more to do with Lolth’s wise decision to keep herself away from the demon princes and lords and queens she had loosed upon the Prime Material Plane.
After regaining her composure, she returned to the bowl of water and cast again her spell of clairvoyance.
Through the powers of the pool, her vision went to the Galena Mountains, her magic following the same trail the dwarf had described to Drizzt. She had already seen the entrance to this complex, guarded by giants and dwarves, but had become lost in the maze within, with no sense of demonic energy to guide her.
So this time she entered and called upon the enchantment to guide her to not the demon in possession of Queen Concettina’s body but to the Hunzrin drow.
She could only hope that they were still around.
And so they were, though far, far along the tunnels to the north, gathered in a room and plotting over some maps laid out on a table. She recognized Charri, First Priestess of the mercantile House, and another she thought to be Denderida, a well-known scout. The other three women in the room were clearly of lesser stature.
Yvonnel listened in on their conversation and nodded knowingly as they plotted about distributing beautiful jewelry to the surface to unsuspecting kings and queens, jewelry most poisonous to the wearer for in its gems and baubles would lurk a demon, ready to take control, as Malcanthet had done to the Queen of Damara.
Yvonnel fell back from the bowl.
“Malcanthet,” she whispered, nodding, for that had been her fear when Drizzt had recounted the dwarf’s tale. Yvonnel the Eternal certainly knew the Succubus Queen, and her memories of the extensive power of that Abyssal denizen were not lost on the new Yvonnel.
She had suspected that it was this particular demon when Drizzt spoke of the magical, life-trapping mirror. In days long past, Malcanthet had entered such a bargain with the lich Acererak to fill one of these most vile toys with souls and return it to Acererak’s tomb.
Malcanthet was a known consort of Demogorgon, and so it followed logically that she must not have been far from Menzoberranzan when the corporeal manifestation of the Prince of Demons had been obliterated. And the Hunzrins had ushered her safely away, so it would seem.
Or perhaps, not so safely.
Yvonnel produced a scroll from her bag and unrolled it on the table beside the bowl. She remembered Gromph’s refusal to teleport her to Damara to find Drizzt, when he had reminded her of the risk of teleporting to an area little known and unprepared and had insisted that no risk was too small for him to accept it for the sake of Drizzt Do’Urden.
Yvonnel looked back from the teleport parchment to the bowl. Transporting herself magically to an underground location, particularly one she knew only through brief scrying, was more difficult by far, for if she came in too high or too low, the stone would take her.
Coming back to corporeal form inside a stone wasn’t a pleasant way to die.
For a moment, she couldn’t believe that she was even contemplating this dangerous spell for the sake of the heretic Do’Urden.
But that was for just a moment, and with a growl of determination, Yvonnel went into the arcane chant, felt the energy building all around her, and stared into the bowl, examining the image of her destination.
She stepped out of the spell, to the shock of five drow women, right between Charri Hunzrin and Denderida.
“Does Matron Mother Quenthel know that you have brought a demon queen from the Underdark and to the surface of Faerûn?” she asked pointedly before the shock of her arrival could even begin to be appreciated.
Charri Hunzrin’s eyes widened and she fell back as Yvonnel pressed forward, the dangerous young Baenre’s face barely an inch from the startled gaze of the Hunzrin priestess.
The priestess stuttered and Yvonnel leaned in closer, her eyes flaring in direct threat.
“Lady Baenre,” another of the Hunzrin clan began to protest, and Yvonnel snapped her head around and silenced the impudent child with a withering glare.
That break allowed Charri Hunzrin to compose herself enough to remark, “Our designs on transporting demons to the World Above via the gemstone phylacteries was known to the Ruling Council.”
“Including the Succubus Queen?” a skeptical Yvonnel asked.
Charri fumbled unsuccessfully for an answer.
“Would not Lady Lolth desire such a thing?” Denderida offered. “It is the spread of chaos and the removal of a threat to Menzoberranzan in one swoop, for surely Malcanthet was not pleased with the destruction of Demogorgon.”
“She told you this?” Yvonnel asked, letting her gaze drop over the scout.
Denderida shrugged, but Charri added, “It is a reasonable assumption.”
“Or perhaps she was afraid,” Yvonnel said, turning back, but now remaining far enough away to let the conversation continue without the overwhelming intimidation. “And perhaps with reason.”
“Surely if we could defeat Demogorgon …” Charri began, but Yvonnel cut her short.
“There were other powers lurking in the tunnels of the Underdark more frightening to Malcanthet than the drow,” she said. “And what reason would we have to wage war on the Succubus Queen, who has long been an ally of the greatest noble Houses?”
The way she said it created concern in those around her. Had they stolen away a potential Baenre ally in a time of dangerous upheaval without informing the matron mother?
Charri Hunzrin swallowed hard.
“We meant only to foster chaos,” she said.
“And to profit from it,” Yvonnel added.
“Is that not our edict?”
“Perhaps, but now
your edict has crossed my path, and I am not amused,” Yvonnel said. “Tell me, how will you put your demon back in her cage?”
Charri, Denderida, and the others all looked around nervously. There was no way they could do that, of course. The five of them combined, perhaps even with the reputed powers of the daughter of Gromph bolstering them, would be no match for Malcanthet.
“We cannot,” Charri admitted weakly.
“But you will,” Yvonnel declared, and she began to mutter under her breath.
“But Lady Baenre, that is impossible!” one of the lesser priestesses said, right on cue.
Yvonnel finished her spell, and cast her hand out at the young priestess, who was barely more than a child. The magic fell over her, and she shrieked.
Then she croaked—where she had stood squatted a bullfrog that began turning this way and that in utter confusion.
“You will do exactly as I instruct,” Yvonnel warned Charri, turning to encompass Denderida and the others with her threat as well. “If you misspeak a single word, a single syllable, a single inflection, then I will destroy you, and all of House Hunzrin as well.”
She focused on Charri. “Are we in agreement?”
The woman swallowed hard, but didn’t immediately answer, so Yvonnel stepped to the side and stomped on the bullfrog with her boot, splattering it on the stone floor.
“You doubt me?” she asked the gasping Hunzrins. “Would you like to call to a handmaiden of Lolth, Priestess Charri, and ask her for a spell of resurrection for your young lady?”
“I cared nothing for her,” Charri answered unconvincingly.
“Are you afraid to try?” asked Yvonnel. “Because if you do, when Lolth does not answer your call, you will know you are doomed.”
Charri Hunzrin seemed as if she might simply fall to the floor.
“You are fortunate, for I have a plan to correct your errors,” said Yvonnel. “And if you execute this plan as I instruct—exactly as I instruct—then you will find the power to restore your … friend. And you will know that you are back in the favor of Lolth, and can rest easy that the secret of what you have done here will not go to the matron mother or the Ruling Council or any others who might take great exception to the transportation of a demon queen from the city without permission.”