Archmage

PROLOGUE

The hulking demon snorted fire with every great breath, clawed hands twitching, eager to grab at the great flaming whip set in a loop on his hip. This was Balor, the mightiest of his kind, massive and powerful, with great leathery wings, a whip of fire, a sword of lightning, and a keen understanding of battle. The demons that took his name and form were known as the generals of the Abyss, used by the demon lords to guide their armies in the never-ending wars that scarred the smoky and dismal plane.

Balor was itchy now, wanting his weapons but not daring to reach for them. The creature in front of him, half spider, half beautiful drow, had not come here to request his service as a general.

Far from it, it seemed.

“You wish to strike out at me?” the Spider Queen remarked, her eight arachnid legs clattering on the stones as she moved around the beast. Behind her lay a wake of lesser demons-shredded manes, balguras pummeled into piles of mush, shadow demons robbed of their life energy that lay there as smoking clouds of insentient darkness.

“Why have you come to me, Lolth?” Balor asked. “Why have you destroyed my minions? I am not at war, with you or any, and am not now in service to any.”

The Spider Queen twisted her drow torso to regard the carnage she had inflicted. “Perhaps I was bored,” she answered casually. “No matter.”

Balor issued a little growl, but kept his composure. He knew that it-that all of this-was something more, something more dangerous. Lolth had been in the company of the balor Errtu extensively of late, and Errtu was Balor’s greatest rival.

“You have not answered my question,” Lolth remarked. “Do you wish to strike out at me?”

Balor couldn’t deny the eager twitching of his clawed hands. He had served all of the demon lords over the centuries, of course, but Lolth was his least favorite. She was something more than the other Abyssal lords, a goddess relying on the prayers and fealty of some puny mortal race on the Prime Material Plane, beings Balor would use as. . food. Her eyes, spider or drow-or whatever other form she chose to take-were not focused here in the Abyss, but were ever elsewhere. Like her ambitions.

“Do it,” Lolth teased.

Another growl escaped Balor’s lips, and how he wanted to comply.

“Ah, but you cannot,” Lolth went on. “Because I can unmake you with a word, or make of you something else, something less.”

Balor’s nostrils flared, fires coming forth. She was not bluffing, of course. She was a demon queen and on this plane, the Abyss, her power over creatures such as Balor was absolute. On another plane of existence, perhaps Balor would strike out at her-and how delicious that would be! — but in the Abyss, he could not.

“I will not unmake you,” Lolth promised. “I will not obliterate you. I am curious, beast of fire. Long have I wondered about the sting of your whip. How sharp the flames? They can melt the skin from a manes, but how would they fare against the hide of a goddess? I do not fear your fire, Balor.”

The demon did not make a move.

“I will not unmake you,” Lolth stated flatly. “You are the favored of Baphomet and Kostchtchie, and as much as I might enjoy the spectacle of mighty Balor reduced to inglorious irrelevance, you are not worth the bother to which such an act would give rise.”

The words spun in Balor’s thoughts. Baphomet had indeed used him, and recently, to command his legions, and Kostchtchie, the Prince of Wrath, had always called upon Balor first and foremost. But what was this about? Why would Lolth even be here, in Balor’s castle?

“I played no role in the failure of Tiamat’s rise,” the demon told her, wondering if that might be the reason for her visit. There were rumors that Lolth was trying to help the minions of the great catastrophe, Tiamat, in resurrecting her castle and body in the Prime Material Plane, a tremendous effort by the dragons of that plane that had, so said the rumors, spectacularly failed. “I would be glad to be rid of the witch.”

“I have made no accusation,” Lolth said slyly.

“Then why?” a frustrated Balor roared, fire flying like spittle from his great maw. “Why are you here, Demon Queen of Spiders? Why do you taunt me?”

“When has Balor considered a challenge to be a taunt?"

“A challenge? Or a goading-a prelude to an excuse!”

“Strike me!”

“No!”

“Then I shall unmake you!” Lolth’s eyes flared with sinister promise.

Before he could even consider the movement, Balor had his sword in hand, lightning spraying from its tip, and his whip in his other hand, the length of it becoming a living flame.

Lolth reared up, her four front legs coming off the stone to wave in the air, her arms up high, her face a mask of ferocity, mouth opening impossibly wide in a great hiss.

Balor raised his whip arm, the fiery line rolling up high above his shoulder. It felt as if he had dunked that arm under water. Something grabbed at it and slowed it.

A new smell joined in the sulfuric haze of the Abyss, a sharp, burning hiss, and Balor did not have to turn to know that a great conflagration blazed behind him. With a defiant roar, the beast yanked his arm free and sent his whip cracking out in front of him, snapping out at Lolth.

Her legs blocked, the fiery instrument scored her hide with an angry tear and blister. But the Spider Queen’s cry was more of joy than pain, or, more likely, it was both.

On she came, lightning flashing from every drow fingertip, four spider legs kicking out to batter at Balor.

And more, the demon realized. The air around him filled with floating webs, Lolth’s webbing, and every filament, it seemed, carried a spider, ravenous and biting.

The whip cracked again. Balor thrust forth his sword, the blade extending with a great blast of lightning, one that had Lolth backstepping from the sheer weight of it.

But on she came again, bolt after sharp bolt lashing out from her fingertips, stabbing at Balor. Her eyes flared with fire and she vomited acid and poison, spraying it all over Balor.

His whip arm went back again. This time, the webbing grabbed at it more fully, like a smoking wall moving at Lolth’s command, rolling forward to enwrap him. He opened wide his wings, trying to burst free, but he couldn’t. The wall closed nearly around him, and millions of spiders leaped upon him, biting at his flesh.

He thrust forth his sword and felt it bite into Lolth’s flesh, but she screamed again as if in ecstasy. And when Balor went to retract the blade, he could not.

He glanced down to see the Spider Queen holding the blade in her grasping hand.

Holding the blade!

In desperation, he threw forth another blast of lightning through the blade, perhaps the greatest he had ever evoked, and he saw it enter Lolth’s hand, saw it fly from the blade to the gaping wound the blade had gashed. And Lolth took it, accepted it fully into her great frame, and from her free hand came a shock of lightning that seemed her own and Balor’s combined, slamming into Balor and driving him back.

He wrenched free his sword, and now he did hear pain in Lolth’s cry as her hand came with the sword. But any joy that realization might garner proved short-lived as he felt the pillow-like softness behind him. The wall of webbing grabbed at him. His thrashing only brought it closer around him.

Hatefully, Balor looked at Lolth, at her smile, even though she was holding up her arm, spraying blood, ending in a torn and fingerless stump.

She vomited onto him again, her poisonous spittle covering him, burning at him. She bade her webbing to complete its roll around Balor. Her million spiders eagerly released their filaments, redoubling their efforts to bite at him.

Balor’s whip flashed out and connected with nothing, the swing smothered by the too-thick blanket of webbing and spiders.

All sense of balance left him. He could not move, could feel nothing but the poison of Lolth and the tiny bites of her unrelenting minions.

And he knew of the most insidious part of that poison. In her venom Lolth carried confusion, an unrelenting dizziness that defeated any attempt at magical defense or escape as surely as a globe of invulnerability.

Balor was caught, fully enwrapped, hanging upside down, displayed like a trophy.

And still Lolth’s spiders bit at him, and they would, he heard her promise, for a decade.

Matron Mother Quenthel Baenre’s red eyes flared, belying her otherwise outwardly calm demeanor. Gromph marveled at her control, given the image he had just presented to her in the scrying bowl. Her great achievement on the surface in the Silver Marches, the Darkening, was no more. The sun was shining across the Silver Marches and the orcs were running for their holes in the mountains.

“Bregan D’aerthe’s spies indicate that Drizzt Do’Urden facilitated the dissolution of Tsabrak’s dweomer,” Gromph remarked, just to twist the blade a little bit. Gromph knew very well what had happened to the magical Darkening, for he had been there when the spell had been defeated. For he, using an unwitting Drizzt as the conduit, had been the one to dissolve the magic. “Drizzt’s human wife, another Chosen of Mielikki by all accounts, looked on with tears of joy. Lady Lolth has lost the battle for the Weave, and now, too, she has been bested in the Silver Marches.”

“Beware your tongue, brother,” Matron Mother Baenre warned in a very deadly tone. Her eyes narrowed, accentuating their sharp edges to give her angular features a harsh attitude.

“True, and well advised, Matron Mother,” Gromph said, and he gave a polite bow. “I should have said that Lady Lolth’s proxies were defeated by those of Mielikki. The failure is-”

“Not ours,” the matron mother interrupted sharply. “We left. We had accomplished all that we had set out to accomplish. Our time there was done, our gains left to the idiot orcs, whom we knew would lose them in short order. That is not our concern, and never was.”

“Surely it is Matron Mother Zeerith’s concern, and the concern of her fledgling city,” said the archmage. “Tsabrak Xorlarrin’s channeling of Lady Lolth’s power was bested by a heretic rogue who is not even skilled in the Art. And her family and city has suffered greatly in this campaign. By my count, near to a hundred and twenty dark elves were killed in the Silver Marches War, and more than four out of five of those were drow of Q’Xorlarrin.”

“She will request our help, of course,” Matron Mother Baenre said, as if that was a good thing.

But Gromph wasn’t letting Quenthel off the hook that easily. “Your own position is compromised.”

The matron mother sat up straight at that, her red eyes flaring dangerously yet again.

“Lady Lolth will not blame you,” Gromph was quick to explain. “But the other matron mothers. . you have tightened your noose around their necks. Tos’un Armgo is dead, his iblith daughter missing. Matron Mother Mez’Barris has lost her one fingerhold to the Eighth House of Menzoberranzan, and so she will view the reconstituted House Do’Urden with great suspicion and dismay.”

“I will allow her to appoint another noble of Barrison Del’Armgo to serve in the hierarchy of House Do’Urden.”

“She will refuse.”

The matron mother clearly wanted to argue the point, and just as clearly had no valid argument with which to do so.

“House Hunzrin hates House Xorlarrin,” Gromph reminded. “And more important, hates the concept of Q’Xorlarrin, a city that threatens their trade dominance. And House Melarn hates. . well, everything. If those fanatical Melarni priestesses come to believe that Tsabrak Xorlarrin’s failure and House Xorlarrin’s losses indicate the displeasure of Lady Lolth, they will surely join in with House Hunzrin to. .” He let his voice trail off and heaved a great sigh. “Well, will they perhaps, shall we say, conclude the experiment of a sister city so near the surface in no uncertain terms?”

His coyness didn’t seem to impress his sister, but he didn’t want it to. He just wanted to anger Quenthel, to stick verbal pins into her, to force her hand.

To force a mistake.

“Do you think I am unaware of these threats, Archmage?” the matron mother said coolly, back in complete control. “Or do you believe me incapable of properly seeing to them? Your lack of confidence is both touching and insulting. Perhaps you would be wise to consider that dueling truth.”

Gromph bowed again and bid farewell. He had almost reached the room’s exit when he glanced back over his shoulder and said, “And do not forget the loss of a dragon. Or that Tiamat’s disciples were defeated in their quest to return their dragon mother to the Prime Material Plane.”

Matron Mother Baenre twitched, despite her resolve. The chromatic dragons-reds, blues, whites, greens, and blacks-had plotted to horde such a treasure that they would bring their goddess Tiamat and her grand castle back to the Prime Material Plane, to unleash unspeakable devastation across the lands.

But they had failed, and in the attempt, Matron Mother Baenre’s own actions had brought about the downfall of a white dragon, Aurbangras, son of the great Arauthator-who had been chased back to his mountain home.

Lady Lolth had apparently approved of the chromatic dragons and their plans for Tiamat. Through the matron mother, she had called for the enlistment of the white dragons, and had insisted that Arauthator and his son be given huge amounts of treasure in return for their services.

And now that, too, had failed.

Gromph nodded and did well to hide his satisfaction at Quenthel’s clear discomfort. He left her chamber then, but did not depart House Baenre, for there was another matter needing his full and urgent attention.

He moved for his own private quarters, a suite of rooms where he rarely resided, but one that served as home to House Baenre’s newest high priestess, Minolin Fey Baenre, who was Gromph Baenre’s wife and the mother of his all-important baby daughter.

The moment Gromph was out of the room, Matron Mother Quenthel Baenre checked her magical wards and guards against scrying, then unleashed a tirade of invective and magical power that left two of her servants writhing on the floor in agony and a third one dead.

Matron Mother Zeerith had already contacted her, begging help and information, for she feared exactly the alliance-Hunzrin and Melarn-of which Gromph had just warned. Her House and city of Q’Xorlarrin were truly depleted. The list of the compromised and the dead was impressive, with two nobles, the wizard Ravel and High Priestess Saribel, serving in House Do’Urden; her daughter, High Priestess Berellip, murdered very recently by Drizzt and his friends; her house weapons master, the great Jaerthe, slain on some ridiculous venture to the frozen wilderness known as Icewind Dale; and a hundred of her warriors and wizards killed in the Silver Marches.

The troubles of Matron Mother Zeerith were not, in and of themselves, a bad thing for Matron Mother Baenre. She had never intended Q’Xorlarrin to be anything more than a satellite of House Baenre, after all, despite the pronouncements of it as a “sister city” to Menzoberranzan. Q’Xorlarrin, combined with Bregan D’aerthe, would serve as House Baenre’s way of competing with House Hunzrin for trade with the surface dwellers. That was the only seam in Baenre’s armor, the only advantage the other Houses could use against the mighty First House of Menzoberranzan.

Nor was Quenthel overly concerned over the reported death of Tos’un Armgo, a deserter rogue who was never much in Matron Mother Mez’Barris Armgo’s favor anyway, and never anything more than a minor noble in House Barrison Del’Armgo.

The combination of those things, though, along with the death of a white dragon and the destruction of Lady Lolth’s Darkening, could lead to all sorts of trouble. She worried that Matron Mother Mez’Barris would throw in with Houses Hunzrin and Melarn, and so House Baenre would face all three in defending Q’Xorlarrin. If so, then surely the Seventh House of Menzoberranzan, House Vandree, would side with the conspirators.

Matron Mother Baenre believed that the rest of the Ruling Council was on her side, but would they pledge allegiance to her openly, with warriors, priests, and wizards?

And these were drow Houses, after all, known for reliability only in the fact that they could not be considered reliable. These bonds were not alliances as much as they were compacts of convenience, and Quenthel had turned the thumbscrews down hard on the other matron mothers, both in her actions in the Silver Marches and in the reestablishment of House Do’Urden-and, of course, in appointing a darthiir, a surface elf, as the matron mother of that Eighth House.

Matron Mother Baenre had pushed them all to the edge, had slapped them all in the face, to demonstrate her superiority and thus put them in line. And it had worked thus far, but now, in the aftermath of the fall of the Silver Marches to the previous powers there, would be the critical time.

“But it was always to be like this,” she told herself, pushing aside the defeat of the Darkening and the death of a white dragon-and the defeat of Tiamat’s ultimate plan.

Quenthel nodded and closed her eyes. She was Matron Mother Baenre. Lolth was still with her, she believed. And she felt it then, warmly.

She had tugged the whole of Menzoberranzan into her iron grip, as Lolth had demanded of her.

But how to keep them there in this dangerous and uncertain time?

Quenthel closed her eyes and fell deep into meditation, deep into the memories she now held that were not her own. The memories of her mother, Yvonnel the Eternal, that had been telepathically imparted to her by the squirming tentacles of the mind flayer who had served as her mother’s closest advisor, those were the memories she considered now.

She saw Menzoberranzan, then, in a light as never before. The great cavern housing the city appeared more natural, far less shaped by drow craftsmen, far less highlighted by drow illumination, like the faerie fire outlining the great houses or the glow of Narbondel, the heat-clock.

She knew that she was seeing the earliest days of the city, tumultuous, yet only built and settled in pockets.

In this atmosphere had House Baenre become ascendant. In this time of potential had House Baenre realized it most of all.

She saw the drow.

She saw the demons.

So many demons! Scores of them, from the worthless manes, the fodder of the Abyss, to the great glabrezu, marilith, nalfeshnee, and even mighty balors. They wandered the streets, rampaging, feasting, engaging in orgies with the drow, engaging in battles with the drow, engaging in whatever impulse crossed their chaotic and destructive desires.

There was chaos, truly!

But it was superficial, Matron Mother Baenre realized, like a series of bar fights in a city full of overlords and armies.

And that superficial chaos was enough. The demons caused enough grief, enough trouble, enough chaos, to keep the lesser Houses fully occupied. They could not align and plot against ascendant House Baenre with demons literally knocking on their doors.

Matron Mother Baenre watched in amusement as her borrowed memories revealed a balor in battle with a band of insectoid chasme.

The demons were no threat to the greater Houses of the city, even then, in Menzoberranzan’s fledgling days. Never could they coordinate enough within their own ranks to pose any significant threat to the order of Menzoberranzan, an order being imposed by House Baenre and House Fey-Branche.

But the demons, so thick about the city, had surely kept the lesser matron mothers busy with thoughts of self-preservation. Those lesser Houses were too busy securing their own fences and structures to contemplate invading others.

Matron Mother Baenre blinked open her red eyes and considered the glorious revelations.

“Chaos begets order,” she whispered.

Yvonnel the Eternal’s memories had shown Quenthel the way.

“No, she said more loudly, shaking her head, for surely this diabolical possibility had been divinely inspired. “Lady Lolth has shown me the way.”

His sly taunting of his sister did little to improve Gromph’s bitter mood. Even if he toppled her, even if he destroyed every matron mother and high priestess in the city, what would he accomplish?

He was a male, nothing more, and even when Lady Lolth had turned to the Weave, to a domain he had come to dominate more than any dark elf in centuries-in millennia, in perhaps the entire history of the race- Lolth’s gratitude had not reached to him, nor his fellow male wizards.

Sorcere, the drow school of arcane magic, the academy under the control of Gromph, had counted among its students almost exclusively male drow, with only a few notable exceptions of priestesses looking to enhance their magical repertoire by adding arcane spells to their divinely inspired magic. Yet as soon as the Weave had become a web, as soon as it appeared that Lady Lolth would steal the domain of the goddess Mystra, the noble Houses had flooded Sorcere with their daughters as students.

The matron mothers, with Lolth’s blessing, would not suffer the males of Menzoberranzan their position atop the ranks of Lolth’s arcane disciples.

Would Gromph’s ultimate title of archmage have proven secure? But Lolth had lost her bid for the Weave, so Gromph had learned, though the details were not yet known to him. The Weave was no longer in her spidery claws and the city and school would return to normal, perhaps. Gromph would remain the archmage, and, he now even more poignantly understood, would remain a “mere male” in Menzoberranzan.

Or perhaps not, he mused as he pushed through the door of his private chambers, to see Minolin Fey seated on the great-backed chair, their tiny child Yvonnel suckling at the high priestess’s breast.

“Your presence is long overdue,” the infant said in a gurgling, watery voice. Baby Yvonnel turned her head to stare hard at the archmage, her threatening visage only slightly diminished by the spit and mother’s milk dribbling out the side of her tiny mouth.

Her eyes! Those eyes!

Gromph remembered that look so well. With that one petulant expression, Yvonnel his child had thrown him back a thousand years and more, to the court of Yvonnel his mother.

“Where is Methil?” the infant demanded, referring to the ugly illithid who had imparted the memories and knowledge of Yvonnel the Eternal, Gromph’s mother, the longest-serving matron mother Menzoberranzan had ever known, into the malleable mind of this tiny creature before she had even been birthed. “I told you to bring Methil.”

“Methil will soon arrive,” Gromph assured her. “I was with the matron mother.”

That brought a bit of a growl from the child, one that sounded almost feral.

Gromph courteously bowed before his baby.

The side door to the chamber banged open then and in slid a handmaiden, an ugly yochlol, resembling a huge, half-melted gray candle with waving tentacles.

“The illithid has arrived for your lesson, Yvonnel,” the demon creature said in a bubbly, muddy voice that still somehow managed to hold the sharp edge of a shriek. The handmaiden slid over to the child, leaving a trail of muddy goo, its tentacles reaching for the babe though it was still several feet from Minolin Fey-who was all too happy, even eager, to surrender the baby.

Out of the room glided the yochlol, one tentacle dragging back to clasp the door and slam it shut.

Minolin Fey slumped back in the high-backed great chair, not even bothering to straighten her gown to cover her exposed, leaking breast. Her breathing was quite raspy, Gromph noted, and more than once she glanced at the closed door with an expression that seemed to be clearly approaching panic.

“She is beautiful, is she not?” Gromph asked, and when the high priestess snapped a surprised glare at him, he added, “Our child.”

Minolin Fey swallowed hard, and Gromph laughed at her. Whatever her feelings, Minolin would not dare harm Yvonnel. She would do as she was told, as Lolth’s avatar had instructed, because in her heart, Minolin Fey was truly a coward. Even in their previous plotting to overthrow Matron Mother Quenthel-before the end of the Spellplague, before the Darkening, before Methil had imbued Quenthel with the memories of Yvonnel much as the illithid had done with the child in Minolin’s womb-Minolin had slithered in the shadows. She had remained in the background, prodding others into the forefront to hunt for K’yorl Oblodra in the Abyss, and whispering to those other Houses that would bear the brunt of Matron Mother Baenre’s wrath if the plot unfolded badly.

“You do not understand!” Minolin Fey snapped at him in a voice as shrill as any she had ever dared use with Gromph Baenre.

“I?”

“To have your body so invaded. .” the high priestess said, lowering her gaze and looking thoroughly, pathetically broken. “Those illithid tentacles, invading my flesh, probing me,” she said, her tone hinting that she was barely able to speak the words. “You cannot know, husband.”

She dared look up, to find Gromph glaring at her.

“You know nothing of what I know or do not know, Minolin of House Fey-Branche.” His reference to her lesser House, instead of naming her as a Baenre, was a clear and sharp reminder.

“You are not a woman,” Minolin Fey said quietly. “There is nothing more. . personal.”

“I am not a woman,” Gromph echoed. “A fact of which I am reminded every day of my life.”

“The child. .” Minolin Fey said with a disgusted shake of her head.

“Will become Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan,” Gromph stated.

“In fifty years? A century?”

“We shall see.” Gromph turned on his heel and started for the door.

“There remains K’yorl,” Minolin Fey dared remark before he reached the exit, referring to their previous plans to be rid of Quenthel.

Gromph stopped and stood staring at the door for a few heartbeats. Then he snapped about, eyes and nostrils flaring. “This is not Quenthel any longer, who serves as Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan,” he warned. “Not simply Quenthel, at least. She knows as Yvonnel knew, and as our child Yvonnel is coming to know.”

“Knows. .?”

“The history of our people, the living truth of the ways of the Spider Queen, the myriad plots and contortions of the many, many Houses that have come before. You would do well to remember that, Minolin Fey. Our union has served me well.” He glanced at the door where the yochlol and the baby Yvonnel had gone. “But if you conspire and connive, and so invoke the wrath of Quenthel-of Matron Mother Baenre-then know that I will not protect you. Indeed, know that I will destroy you, in service to my beloved sister.”

Minolin Fey could not match his gaze and lowered her face.

“Treat our child well, my wife,” Gromph warned. “As if your very life depended on doing so.”

“She demeans me,” Minolin Fey muttered under her breath as Gromph turned once more to leave. And again the archmage spun on his heel.

“What?”

“The child,” the high priestess explained.

“The child demeans you?”

The high priestess nodded, and Gromph chuckled once more.

“You understand who that child has become?” Gromph asked rhetorically. “Beside her, you deserve to be demeaned, and mocked.

“But fear not,” Gromph added. “Perhaps if you treat her well, and feed her well with your breasts, she will not utterly obliterate you with a Lolth-given spell.”

Still chuckling, though not really feeling any better than when he had entered the room, the archmage departed.

Sometime later that day, Gromph became aware of a major demon, a gigantic canine-faced four-armed glabrezu, wandering the ways of Menzoberranzan near House Baenre. After that, a courier from the matron mother arrived and informed him that more demons would follow, and he was not to destroy or banish them except in defense of his very life.

The archmage’s expression grew sourer still.

Seated at the right foreleg of the spider-shaped council table, Matron Mother Mez’Barris Armgo trembled visibly after High Priestess Sos’Umptu Baenre announced that their scouts had located a very-muchalive Tiago Do’Urden, thus finishing the full recounting of the results of the Silver Marches War-full, except for the not-so-minor detail that the sun had returned to that region of the World Above, the Darkening spell dismissed, and the fact that her words about Tiago were untrue, issued only to annoy Matron Mother Mez’Barris Armgo of the Second House.“Issues, Matron Mother Mez’Barris?” the matron mother asked when

Sos’Umptu moved back around to the far side of the table and took her seat, the Ruling Council’s new Ninth Seat, between the matron mothers of House Vandree and House Do’Urden.

“Too many to recount in the hours we have, perhaps,” the matron mother of House Barrison Del’Armgo retorted.

“Then the most recent, if you please.”

“Did you not hear your own sister’s words?”

Matron Mother Baenre shrugged dismissively.

“Drow nobles were killed,” Mez’Barris said.

“Drow nobles are often killed,” Matron Miz’ri Mizzrym of the Fourth House obediently pointed out. Miz’ri had become little more than an echo for the whispers Matron Mother Baenre did not wish to speak aloud. As she looked from Miz’ri to the matron mothers Vadalma Tlabbar and Byrtyn Fey, she was reminded of the tightening and dangerous alliance between House Baenre and the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Houses of Menzoberranzan.

Mez’Barris had to unwind that alliance if she was ever to be out from under the squirming shadow of the wretched Quenthel Baenre. She turned her stare over Miz’ri once more and added a sly and knowing grin, pointedly letting her gaze drop to the ornate necklace of gemstones Miz’ri had worn to council this day. Rumors about the city claimed that House Mizzrym was dealing with enemies of Menzoberranzan, including the deep gnomes of Blingdenstone, and that, of course, would explain the precious gemstones around Miz’ri’s neck.

Perhaps that was Baenre’s hold over Matron Mother Miz’ri, Mez’Barris mused. It was no secret that House Mizzrym was trying to build a trade market beyond Menzoberranzan to rival that of the ever-dangerous House Hunzrin, and perhaps the matron mother was granting Miz’ri dispensation to bargain with enemies, even the hated deep gnomes, with impunity.

It was just a hunch, but one worth investigating and perhaps exploiting.

“It is curious, though, that with the discovery of a living Tiago, of the Do’Urden nobles who went to war, only two were killed,” Mez’Barris remarked. “And those two of the same family line.”

“Are we to believe now that you ever truly claimed the darthiir half-breed daughter of Tos’un as a true member of House Barrison Del’Armgo?” asked Dahlia-Matron Darthiir Do’Urden-and the whole of the Ruling Council, with the exception of the two Baenres, gasped in unison, not so much at the bluntness of the remark but that the wretched elf who all, even the allies of House Baenre, knew to be no more than a second echo for Matron Mother Baenre’s votes, had spoken the open accusation.

Seated beside Dahlia, High Priestess Sos’Umptu Baenre smiled unabashedly, as if she cared not at all that the puppet master’s strings were visible to the audience.

“Tos’un Armgo died honorably,” Matron Mother Baenre boldly pronounced, abruptly deflecting the conversation before it could be reduced to an open show of sides. “He rode Aurbangras, son of Arauthator, into battle even as Tiago flew Arauthator beside him. There, above the battlefield, they met the enemies of the white dragons, a pair of copper wyrms, in great combat. If there are any implications to your remark, Matron Mother Mez’Barris, perhaps you should first consider that neither I nor any others of Menzoberranzan hold sway over dragons, particularly not those of the metallic persuasion.”

“And Doum’wielle?” Matron Mother Mez’Barris retorted, and she was sorry she had blurted that from the moment it had left her mouth, particularly given the words of Matron Darthiir Do’Urden.

Seven of the nine members of the Ruling Council openly laughed at Mez’Barris’s remark. Only Zhindia Melarn of the Sixth House sat grimfaced, suspecting, no doubt, the same thing as Matron Mother Mez’Barris: It was no accident or simple matter of fate that neither Tos’un Armgo or his daughter Doum’wielle had returned from the surface campaign, or that now, apparently, all of the others-Tiago of House Baenre, Ravel of House Xorlarrin, and Saribel of both those Houses-would once more serve as nobles of the reconstituted House Do’Urden in Menzoberranzan.

Any thoughts Mez’Barris might have entertained of holding any influence in the Do’Urden compound were now clearly dashed.

The city was Matron Mother Baenre’s.

For now.

Mez’Barris glanced at Zhindia Melarn. She had never held any love for the fanatical Melarni priestesses, but it seemed to her that they were destined to ally now, given the unabashed and continuing power grab by Matron Mother Baenre.

She turned her gaze to Miz’ri Mizzrym, whose alliance with House Baenre was surely tentative. Miz’ri walked the fine line between rival merchant groups and House Baenre, who were reaching out for surface trade through both the rogue band Bregan D’aerthe and the new city of Q’Xorlarrin, which was fast becoming little more than an outpost of House Baenre.

But House Hunzrin, far more powerful than their rank on the Ruling Council might suggest, would not be pleased-and indeed were outraged that the matron mother had reestablished House Do’Urden from thin air, thus blocking the logical ascension of the other Houses with House Xorlarrin’s departure from the city-and Bregan D’aerthe was less controllable and predictable than any of the matron mothers ever dared openly admit.

Yes, there were cracks in Matron Mother Baenre’s designs, particularly now that the Spider Queen had failed in her bid for the Weave. And by all accounts Q’Xorlarrin had suffered greatly in the war. While this would surely send the sniveling Matron Mother Zeerith closer to Matron Mother Baenre’s side, would House Baenre be able to afford to send Zeerith the soldiers she might need to defend a concentrated assault by several drow Houses?

That suspicion was somewhat confirmed a moment later, when Matron Mother Byrtyn Fey, at best a very recent convert to Matron Mother Baenre’s circle of allies, unexpectedly changed the subject.

“Why did we not foresee the coming of the metallic wyrms?” she asked the matron mother, her tone not sounding critical, but her question surely biting. “The enlistment of Arauthator and Aurbangras to our cause, the joining of our cause to that of the goddess Tiamat, was a blessed thing. The execution of that alliance and the fall of Aurbangras, however, was not.”

“Matron Mother, surely you understand that the will and actions of dragons. .” Matron Mother Baenre started to reply.

“Yes, of course,” Byrtyn Fey interrupted-interrupted! — and with impunity she kept going. “But our own forces were in full recall to Menzoberranzan when Aurbangras was killed by the copper wyrms. Surely that fact will not serve Lolth well in her dealings with the goddess Tiamat.”

“The grandson of Dantrag Baenre was astride one of those white dragons in the last battle,” a clearly perturbed Matron Mother Baenre replied with an open sneer.

“One of only a handful of our people remaining in the Silver Marches,” Byrtyn argued. “Had our army been on the field below-”

“The outcome of the dragon fight would not have changed,” Matron Mother Baenre snapped.

“But the Spider Queen’s position before Tiamat would have been strengthened. Do not run from errors, Matron Mother. Let us perhaps examine together how we might have better served Lady Lolth.”

And there it was, Mez’Barris knew. She could barely contain her giggle. The words “examine together” when uttered by any matron mother to another matron mother, particularly at the table of the Ruling Council, were an accusation of failure far more than they were an offer of coordination. Those words stood among the oldest of drow verbal daggers. Drow matron mothers never “examined together” anything, other than the corpse of a third matron mother they had temporarily allied against and deposed.

The whole of the Council Chamber moved on edge, then, Mez’Barris noted to her delight, and even the wretched Quenthel seemed shaken, more like the old, ridiculous, and weak Quenthel Baenre whom Mez’Barris had known before this recent and inexplicable transformation had come over her.

Quenthel’s nervousness lasted only a heartbeat, though, and she settled back comfortably and managed an amused look at Byrtyn Fey, like a silky cat looking into a rat hole with a promise that the occupant would not avoid the dinner table for long.

The room’s door banged open then and a pair of towering creatures, humanoid and massively muscular but with a dog’s face and a goat’s horns, and an extra set of arms sporting giant pincers that could scissor a drow in half, stormed into the chamber.

Behind them came a slithering, naga-like creature, its lower body that of a serpent and upper body that of a shapely, naked woman, except with six arms all sporting axes or swords of various cruel design.

The matron mothers all started, some even rising, some beginning spells-except for the matron mother and Sos’Umptu, and of course, the impotent puppet, Darthiir Do’Urden.

Mez’Barris quickly calmed at the sight of the demons, the two glabrezu and the greater female, whom she recognized as either Marilith or Aishapra-this type of powerful demon looked too much alike for her to be certain.

“They are here with the blessings of Lolth,” Sos’Umptu explained.

“Forgive my intrusion,” said the female demon, and Mez’Barris knew from the voice that it was indeed Marilith, the greatest of her kind. Mez’Barris recalled then, as well, that yes, it was Marilith whose left breast was considerably larger than her right for some symbolic reason that no drow had ever discerned. Demons of this power could easily rectify such physical deformities if they so chose. Mez’Barris knew, too, from the female demon’s tone and personality, that the vile and dangerous creature cared nothing for forgiveness, nor would ever offer any.

“I learned of your council and wanted to see how many of the ruling matron mothers were still known to me,” Marilith went on. “It has been more than a century. . a fleeting time, no doubt, but I care so little for drow that my memories of you are not forefront in my thoughts.”

Screeches, like those of great birds, echoed out in the hall behind her and her glabrezu guards, and strange creatures that seemed half-human and half-vulture-vrocks, they were called, hulking and vicious, and standing nearly as tall as the ten-foot glabrezu-stalked into view along with a couple of clearly and understandably nervous dark elf sentries.

“Still, it’s good to be back,” Marilith said. She slithered around in a wide arc and departed, her hulking glabrezu guards close behind.

As the door shut, the matron mothers heard the agonized, horrified scream of a drow, and all suspected that one fewer sentry now guarded the sacred Council Chamber.

Demons were like that.

PART ONE

THE QUALITY OF VENGEANCE

Never have I so clearly come to know that that which I do not know, I do not know.

I did not expect to rise into the air in the middle of that field, in the middle of the dwarf army. When beams of light burst from my fingertips, from my feet, from my chest, from my eyes, they came without conscious thought-I was nothing more than a conduit. And I watched as surprised as any around as those light beams shot into the sky and melted the roiling blackness that had darkened the land.

When I sank back down from the unexpected levitation, back to the ground amongst my friends, I saw tears of joy all about me. Dwarves and humans, halflings and elves alike, fell to the ground on their knees, paying homage to Mielikki, thanking her for destroying the darkness that had engulfed the Silver Marches, their land, their home.

No one shed more tears of joy than Catti-brie, Chosen of Mielikki, returned to my side by the grace of the goddess, and now, clearly, finding some resolution to the trials for which she and my other friends were returned to the realm of the living.

Catti-brie had oft speculated that her battle with Dahlia in the primordial chamber of Gauntlgrym had been no more than a proxy fight between Mielikki and Lolth, but of course, she could not be certain. But now this spectacle of my body being used in so dramatic a manner to defeat the darkness, the Darkening, of the Spider Queen, could not be questioned, so she believed. So they all believed.

But yet, I do not know.

I remain unconvinced!

I was the conduit of Mielikki, so they say, so it would seem, for I am

no magic-user and surely know of no such dweomer as the one that escaped my mortal coil. Surely something, some power, found its way through me, and surely it seems logical to ascribe that power to Mielikki.

And so, following that logic, I was touched by the hand of a goddess. Is it my own intrinsic skepticism then, my continual need to follow

evidence, which prevents me from simply accepting this as true? For it simply did not seem to me to be that which they claim, but then, what might being so touched by a goddess actually feel like, I wonder?

This is my continuing dilemma, surely, my nagging agnosticism, my willingness to accept that I do not know and perhaps cannot know, coupled with my determination that such knowledge or lack thereof has no bearing-has to have no bearing-on how I conduct myself. I found Mielikki as a name to fit that which was already in my heart. When I learned of the goddess, of her tenets and ways, I found a melody consistent with the song of my own ethical beliefs and my own sense of community, with people and with nature about me.

It seemed a comfortable fit.

But never had I been able to truly separate the two, that which is in my heart and some extra-natural or supernatural other, whether ascribing that name to some higher level of existence or to, yes, a god indeed.

To me, Mielikki became a name to best describe that conscience within, and the code of existence that fits most smoothly. I did not find the need to search further, for the truth of Mielikki’s existence or her place in the pantheon, or even the relationship of the one true god-or gods and goddesses, as the case may be-to the mortal beings roaming Faerûn, or more pointedly, to my own life. Ever has my chosen way come from within, not without, and truly, that is how I prefer it!

I did not know of the existence of, or the rumor of the existence of, some being named Mielikki when I walked out of Menzoberranzan. I knew only of Lolth, the Demon Queen of Spiders, and knew, too, that that which was in my heart could never reconcile to the demands of that evil creature. Often have I feared that had I remained in Menzoberranzan, I might have become akin to Artemis Entreri, and there is truth in that fear in regards to the hopelessness and apathy I see, or once saw, in the man. But long ago, I dismissed the possibility that I would have become like him in action, whatever my despair.

Even in the domain of the Demon Queen of Spiders, even surrounded by the vile acts and unacceptable nurture of my kin, I could not have gone against that which was in my heart. My internal god of conscience would not have allowed it. I would have been left a broken man, I do not doubt, but not, but never, a callous destroyer of others.

No, I say.

And so I came to the surface world and I found a name for my conscience, Mielikki, and I found others who shared my mores and tenets, and I was at spiritual peace.

Catti-brie’s declaration regarding the irredeemable nature of evil of goblinkin and giantkind shook that tranquility, as surely as her tone-and that of Bruenor-shook my more earthly sensibilities. I knew in that moment that I was likely at odds with a pronouncement my beloved wife claimed had come straight from the goddess. I have tried to rationalize it and tried to accept it, and yet. .

Discordance remains.

And now this. I was lifted into the air, my body used as a conduit, the result presenting light where there was once only darkness. It was good. Good-there is no other way to describe the change that Mielikki, if it was Mielikki-but how could it not have been Mielikki? — created through our magical communion.

Does not this godlike presence, then, command me to subjugate that which I believe to be just and right within my heart to the supposed command Mielikki relayed to me through Catti-brie? Am I not now, in the face of such powerful evidence, bound to dismiss my belief and accept the truth of the goddess’s claim? When next I happen upon a nest of goblins, even if they are acting peaceably and bothering no one, am I therefore bound to battle within their home and slaughter them, every one, including children, including babies?

No, I say.

Because I cannot. I cannot dismiss that which is in my heart and conscience. I am a creature of intelligence and reason. I know what actions please me and put me at ease, and which pain me. I will kill a goblin in battle without regret, but I am no murderer, and will not be.

And that is my pain, and my burden. For if I am to accept Mielikki as my goddess, the circle cannot square, the yawning gulf of disagreement cannot be bridged.

Who are these gods we serve, this pantheon of the Realms, so rich and powerful and varied? If there is a universal truth, how then are there so many realizations of that truth, many similar, but each with rituals or specific demands to separate one from the other, sometimes by minute degree, sometimes by diametric opposition?

How can this be?

Yet there is universal truth, I believe-perhaps this is my one core belief! — and if that is so, then are not the majority of the pantheon claiming themselves as gods and goddesses truly frauds?

Or are they, as Bruenor had come to believe in the early years of his second life, cruel puppeteers and we their playthings?

It is all so confusing and all so tantalizingly close, but ever beyond the reach of mortal comprehension, I fear.

And so I am left again with that which is in my heart, and if Mielikki cannot accept that of me, then she chose the wrong conduit, and I named the wrong god.

Because despite what Catti-brie insisted, and what Bruenor came to declare with eager fire, I will continue to judge on the content of character and not the shape or color of a mortal coil. My heart demands no less of me, my spiritual peace must be held as the utmost goal.

With confidence do I declare that the edge of my scimitar will sooner find my own neck before it will cut the throat of a goblin child, or any child.

— Drizzt Do’Urden