But stopping, too, the press of battle against Silverymoon’s intact, well-defended walls. And halting any march to Everlund. Hartusk wanted to go anyway, despite the storms; and the frost giants, unbothered by the winter, were ready to march. But the drow had firmly warned him against the move, indeed, had forbidden it.
The ferocious Hartusk had planned to march anyway, but then, unexpectedly, the leader of the giants reinforcing his line, a twenty-foot behemoth named Rolloki, reputedly the eldest brother of Thrym, who was god to the frost giants, had pulled back his support for continuing the campaign through the deepening snows.
Rolloki, with Beorjan and Rugmark, the other huge giants who claimed to be of the god’s family, sided with the dark elves on every issue. Given their near-deity status as brothers of Thrym, Fimmel Orelson, Jarl of Shining White and leader of the frost giant legions, would not go against them.
It all came back to the drow and their cautious designs.
Hartusk’s grumbles became growls as he neared Nesmé’s blasted gate, giants standing to either side of the broken doors, orcs lining the wall and looking down at him and looking past him to the magnificent aerial mount that had brought him here from Hartusk Keep in the east.
The giants snapped to attention as he neared, and that measure of respect from the behemoths did improve the ferocious orc warlord’s mood a little bit at least.
Between them went Hartusk, ignoring the cheers that began in the guard towers and along the wall, watching the warriors who gathered in the city courtyard to formally greet him.
An orc leaped out in front of him as he crossed the threshold into the city.
“May I announce your glorious presence, Warlord, to Duke Tiago?” the guard inquired.
Hartusk stopped abruptly and stared at the orc, a formidable sort and one apparently of high rank in the Nesmé garrison if the armor he wore was any indication of station.
“To who?” Hartusk asked.
“To Duke Ti—” the orc started to answer, his words choked off as Hartusk grabbed him by the throat and easily lifted him up to his tiptoes.
“Duke?” Hartusk scoffed, mocking the notion.
The trapped orc moved his mouth as if to respond, but little sound came forth past the crushing grip of mighty Hartusk.
The war chief looked around at the many onlookers. “Duke?” he asked, making it clear that the whole notion of Tiago’s self-assumed title was perfectly ridiculous, and with such amazing ease, such power, he tossed the choking orc back and to the ground.
“Do you think I need an introduction?” Hartusk asked his seated victim.
The orc shook his head so fiercely that his lips flapped noisily.
Hartusk growled again and pressed on, the crowd parting in front of him like water before a great ship’s prow. Without a word of acknowledgment to the guards at the large building Tiago and the other drow had taken as their castle, Hartusk pushed through the door.
Those gathered in the foyer and small room beyond, orc and drow alike, gasped in unison when they noted the identity of the brusque newcomer, and they prudently fell aside, many of the orcs falling to their knees as their glorious leader swept through.
The two drow guarding the next set of ornate doors wisely also moved aside. One reached back to grab the door handle, to swing the door open for the great orc, but she pulled her hand back quickly as Hartusk simply bashed through, both doors flying wide.
Those in the room, the appointed audience chamber of Duke Tiago Do’Urden of Nesmé, started and turned, except for the five drow at the other end of the long, narrow room. There sat Tiago, casually draping a leg over the arm of his wooden chair, the priestess Saribel, his wife, sitting beside him. That half-drow, half-moon elf creature attended to the priestess, along with her limping and broken-down father.
Ravel was there, too, Hartusk noted—and he trusted that drow wizard least of all.
Hartusk stood in the doorway for a long while, letting the others in the room, more drow than orcs, absorb the sight of his magnificence. And he let his stare linger, long and hard, on the five at the other end: the drow nobles who served as the mouthpieces of Menzoberranzan’s efforts in the Silver Marches.
The orc warlord wasn’t surprised to see them all here together. He had specifically ordered Tiago that they should not all be together in this time of winter’s lull, when desperate and dangerous enemies would seek ways to strike out from their besieged cities and citadels. It seemed natural that the impudent drow would ignore his commands.
He made his way slowly across the room, taking satisfaction as dark elf and orc alike eased back from his imposing march.
“Warlord, it is good to see you,” Tiago said. His words rang superficially in Hartusk’s sharp mind. “Do gather a flagon—a keg, I say!—and let us drink through winter’s long night.”
“And find whatever other pleasures as we might,” Saribel added—Duchess Saribel, Hartusk presumed, though he had not heard her referred to in that manner.
“Where is your dragon, drow?” he asked.
“Where he should be,” Tiago cryptically replied. “Where I asked him to be, and of no concern to you, surely.”
The brutish orc narrowed his yellow, bloodshot eyes.
“Warlord, be at ease,” Tiago said to him.
“Do you mock me?” the orc asked, and at that, all in the room and in the anteroom tensed, every drow and every orc taking stock of the other race, in case it should quickly come to blows.
“My, but he seems quite upset,” Ravel Xorlarrin remarked, moving over to stand directly behind Tiago’s chair, and never taking his eyes off the warlord.
“He is bored, nothing more,” Tiago said. “He wants blood!” He braced his hands on the arms of his makeshift throne and jumped up to his feet. “Yes, Hartusk?”
He came forward. He moved close—close enough to bite.
“Does the winter settle uneasily about your strong arms, Warlord?” Tiago asked. He grinned slyly, as did the others around the royal dais—except the surface elf, Hartusk noted, that ever-scowling little creature who never seemed to take her hand from the hilt of her fine sword. She wore an expression that bore no humor, as if she was always expecting a battle to break out.
Hartusk supposed that such a demeanor was the only way she could possibly survive in the midst of this viper’s nest of treachery. Hartusk needed the drow, of course. They had been central to his coup against the children of Obould, and surely pivotal in the death of King Obould.
Obould wouldn’t lead the minions of Many-Arrows to war. The drow, like Hartusk, wanted war, and so their marriage of blood had been consummated.
Their marriage of Obould’s blood.
That didn’t mean the warlord of Many-Arrows didn’t profoundly hate the dark-skinned devils—every one.
He looked hard at the young half-elf, half-drow then, challenging her with his stare as one dog might do to another. He didn’t blink and neither did she, but yes, she clutched that sword ever more tightly.
Hartusk began to smile, lewdly. And it went on, and all around took notice.
“Ah, a budding romance,” the wizard Ravel remarked.
“He is iblith!” Saribel cried, using the drow word for offal—a word Hartusk knew.
“She is darthiir!” Ravel countered, the drow word for surface elves and an insult far worse than iblith.
The dark elves all laughed at Doum’wielle’s expense, even her father, though Hartusk noted that the one named Tos’un did cast a clearly uncomfortable sidelong glance her way.
“Arauthator should fly beside his son, dropping boulders on Silverymoon,” Hartusk said finally, breaking the gaze. “The minions of Alustriel are miserable in their hole, and we should make them more miserable!”
“A useless exercise that alleviates the boredom for Silverymoon’s vast array of wizards,” Tiago immediately countered.
“Press them!”
“Bore them!” Tiago shot back, and Hartusk narrowed his eyes agai
n and gave a growl. “Silverymoon is not like Nesmé, nor even Sundabar, Warlord. She is a city thick with magic-users. We threw stones at her—have you forgotten?”
The orc didn’t blink.
“Her wizards caught them with their spells and guided them down harmlessly,” Tiago reminded. “You were there, upon Aurbangras, beside me and my dragon mount. You know the truth of it.”
“We will drop the stones in the night, in the dark,” Hartusk argued. “The wizards will not see—”
“We cannot even ride the wyrms at night,” Tiago interrupted with a laugh—and how Hartusk’s eyes flared at that. “It is too cold for drow skin, and orc skin, up high in the winter night sky.”
“Then send the dragons alone!” Hartusk roared.
Tiago sat back in his chair and tapped his fingers together in front of his face, staring past the waggling digits at the obstinate orc. “Leave us,” he said quietly to Saribel and the others. “Clear the room.”
“It is not your place to dismiss my guards … Duke of Nesmé,” Hartusk warned, verily spitting Tiago’s assumed title.
“Keep them in place as you will, then,” Tiago replied with a dismissive laugh.
The drow and Doum’wielle filtered away from the royal dais, collecting all of the other drow, a pair of giants, and several orcs and goblins in their wake as they exited the room. Hartusk continued to stare at Tiago for a while, but then nodded to the remaining orcs, his personal entourage, bidding them to leave. As the last exited, Tos’un, at the entrance, closed the door.
“We would do well to ease our demands upon the dragons,” Tiago said when they were alone—seemingly alone. They both knew that Tiago’s wizard companion had probably already enacted spells to spy on their private discussion.
“We would do well to sack Silverymoon and take our fight to Everlund.”
Tiago gave another of his annoying chuckles. “Indeed, and none would desire that more than I. But I warn you, the dragons are not to be exploited. Arauthator is older than any other in this campaign, and the Old White Death earns his name honestly.”
“He was brought in to serve,” the orc insisted.
“And there you err,” said Tiago. “Arauthator does not serve—not the orcs of Many-Arrows, not the giants of Shining White, and not the drow of Menzoberranzan. He is a dragon, ancient and huge and ultimately deadly.”
“Your wizard brought him to us,” Hartusk insisted.
“My wizard?” Tiago asked dramatically, and Hartusk nearly choked on that thought.
“The old one of your city.”
“Gromph, yes, who is older than Arauthator, and perhaps the only power of Menzoberranzan who could defeat the dragon in combat. But Gromph is not here, Warlord. He is home in the City of Spiders, and home he will stay.”
“Recall him,” Hartusk insisted.
“Better that he stay,” said Tiago. “Were we to ask Gromph to command the dragon, to threaten the dragon, he would take the far easier course and destroy us both, I assure you.”
Hartusk growled yet again.
“Let the dragons have their winter play,” Tiago advised. “Good Warlord, patience!”
“Damn your waiting!”
“Patience,” Tiago insisted. “Our enemies are going nowhere—unless they try to break free of the prisons their cities and citadels have become. We have the granaries of Sundabar, a supply line stretching back to the drow city of Q’Xorlarrin, and freedom to roam the land and hunt as we please. The winter is but an inconvenience to us, but to our enemies … ah, Warlord, to our enemies, it is a time of thin rations and misery, and that is the beauty, is it not?”
“Silverymoon is full of priests and wizards,” Hartusk reminded him.
“Yes, Silverymoon will survive the winter well. Everlund, too, no doubt. But the dwarves, Warlord, buried in their holes …”
“They spend all of every winter in their holes. What foolishness is this?”
“Yes, but they trade throughout the winter with Silverymoon and Sundabar,” Tiago explained. “Alas, but they’ll find no easy routes for that now! The tunnels below run thick with my people, to say nothing of goblins and orcs. The dwarves have grown fat on trade, and now they have no trade. The dwarves know how to forage the Underdark for food, but now their range is limited. They will not enjoy this winter, I assure you. As the year turns to 1485, and the winter deepens through Hammer and Alturiak, the ringing of their hammers will be replaced by the growling of their bellies, do not doubt.”
“Your people have planned well.”
“We always do.”
“They are a tougher lot than you believe.”
“I do not doubt their resourcefulness or their resolve,” Tiago said with a wry grin. “But not even a dwarf can eat stone, my orc friend. Let them wither and die in their holes—perhaps they will begin to eat their dead as the old and the young succumb.”
“A pleasing thought,” Hartusk admitted.
“Or perhaps they will try to break free of their prisons. Any of them. Understand, my friend, that if but one of those three fortresses falls, the other two will be in a sore predicament. Adbar makes the weapons, Felbarr is the link between the three, and Mithral Hall …” He paused there, and now it was his turn to growl a little bit, though it sounded more like the purr of a cat about to leap upon a field mouse.
“What of Mithral Hall?”
“That is the prize,” Tiago said, but he didn’t elaborate.
Tiago cared nothing for Hartusk’s war—Matron Mother Quenthel had already recalled some of the principles of her little excursion up here on the surface. Gromph was back home, and Tsabrak, too, had returned to the side of Matron Mother Zeerith Xorlarrin in her fledgling city to the west. Tiago didn’t expect that he and the other “Do’Urdens” would remain much longer.
But long enough, he was determined, to see the end of the heretic named Drizzt, the rogue who had fled into Mithral Hall with his pathetic friends of this wretched World Above. Tiago would flush him out, or use everything at his disposal—the fodder goblinkin and giantkind, the dragons, and the drow—to knock down the doors of Mithral Hall.
“Patience,” he said again to the orc warlord, but in fact, it was his own patience that was wearing thin.
“I do so wish that Tiago would lop the ugly fool’s head off and be done with it,” Ravel Xorlarrin said to Saribel, Tos’un, and Doum’wielle when they were out of Tiago’s audience chamber and alone in a side room.
“Tiago will do as Menzoberranzan decides,” Saribel answered her brother sternly. “And I do not believe that would include decapitating the army Matron Mother Quenthel has put at our disposal.”
Both Tos’un and Ravel looked at the high priestess curiously at that remark.
“My dear sister, you do seem to be embracing this Baenre stature you have found,” the wizard sarcastically remarked.
“ ‘This Baenre stature’?” she dryly replied.
“You were always the obedient one,” said Ravel. “And not even to Matron Mother Zeerith alone. When Berellip spoke, Saribel listened!”
The drow priestess narrowed her gaze, but Ravel nearly laughed aloud at that.
“Quiet and demure Saribel,” he teased. When her hand went to the snake-headed whip she carried on her belt, he added, “Slow with the whip, but true to her calling.”
“Berellip is dead,” she replied. “Perhaps she would not be were it not for Tiago’s obsession with the rogue named Drizzt.”
“You openly blame your husband?”
Now it was Saribel’s turn to laugh. “Perhaps I credit him. It does not matter. House Xorlarrin has determined a different course now.”
“Different from yours, you mean,” said Ravel.
“And yours. Or have you already forgotten? You thought you would be the archmage of this new great city of the Xorlarrins. You were the one who led us to the ruins of Gauntlgrym, of course. But the designs did not play that way, did they? Nay, it was Tsabrak who was deemed more worthy than you, Tsabr
ak who was blessed with the power of Lolth to enact the Darkening. Tsabrak, not Ravel. Matron Mother Zeerith fought for Tsabrak in her dealings with Matron Mother Quenthel, and the matron mother conceded him the position of Archmage of Q’Xorlarrin. Him. Tsabrak, not you.”
Ravel conceded that point with a bow.
“Does it disappoint you, dear brother?”
“I prefer Menzoberranzan,” Ravel admitted, and he smiled cleverly as he added, “I prefer the halls of House Do’Urden.”
That elicited a surprised stare from Saribel.
“Are you not pleased with your new station, Sister?” Ravel asked.
“I am a priestess in House Baenre, the High Priestess of House Do’Urden, and have a promising young noble, a weapons master, grandson of the great Dantrag Baenre, as my husband. Just a few short months ago, I was the younger sister of Berellip Xorlarrin, and little more.”
“Even with the advent of Q’Xorlarrin?” Ravel pressed.
“Oh, indeed did I hope that I would find a place—perhaps I would rule Matron Mother Zeerith’s academy, if she bothers to build one.”
“If Matron Mother Quenthel allows her to build one, you mean,” Tos’un unexpectedly intervened, and both Xorlarrins turned to him with a look bordering on shock. There it was, spoken openly, the truth about the supposedly independent city of Q’Xorlarrin, forever destined to be a satellite of Menzoberranzan, existing forever under the suffrage of whomever sat at the head of the spider-shaped table of Menzoberranzan’s Ruling Council—which meant, almost certainly, forever under the gaze of a Baenre.
“And now you are a Baenre,” Ravel remarked.
“No, I am a Do’Urden,” Saribel corrected. “The High Priestess of the Eighth House of Menzoberranzan. And my husband is the weapons master, and you, dear brother, are the House Wizard.”
“But our loyalty is truly to House Baenre, then, is it not?” Ravel asked. “House Do’Urden surely survives because of the demands and protection of the matron mother.”
Saribel nodded, and both of them glanced at Tos’un as they agreed on Ravel’s point.
Tos’un was not Xorlarrin, nor Baenre. Tos’un was of House Barrison Del’Armgo, the Second House of Menzoberranzan, the principle rival of House Baenre.