She had a spell of invisibility on her, and another to allow her to fly, but many times, Yvonnel wanted to drop both and assail the covens of Lolthian priestesses who were filling the streets near the West Wall of Menzoberranzan with demons.
The fight was imminent. Not a skirmish or a testing play of back-and-forth assaults, no.
She reminded herself repeatedly of her limited options and power here. She was a powerful force, true, beyond perhaps any other drow in Menzoberranzan, but she was, after all, a single person against thousands. While she might take out one of these summoning areas with an open fight, her efforts in such an assault would make little difference in the war compared to the potential of the desperate plan she now followed.
Still, she flew past her destination, just to get a look at the fighting in the street before House Do’Urden.
It had gone from a skirmish to a larger battle now, with allies pouring in on both sides. Lightning and fireballs, sleet storms and ribbons of energy to take chasmes and other flying fiends from the sky, flew from the Do’Urden balconies.
Yvonnel took heart that the house was well defended. Zhindia’s losses in getting into that easily defended place would be considerable, if she managed it at all.
No, Zhindia and her allies would manage it eventually, Yvonnel knew. Yvonnel’s side was full of mortal drow, while the ranks of their enemies were thick with demons drawn from a near-inexhaustible supply in the smoke of the Abyss.
Attrition would wear Yvonnel’s allies thin.
Which made her mission all the more urgent. She soared past House Do’Urden, crossed the Westrift, then flew over House Duskryn, landing before the long pavilion leading into the Fane of the Goddess and coming visible as soon as she touched down. Then she walked, calmly and deliberately, for the chapel ruled by her aunt, almost daring the guards, drow and jade spider alike, to try to stop her as she moved ahead.
She heard the whispers, those of surprise and those calling for someone to act, but none moved against her.
The great and ornate doors swung open as Yvonnel ascended the stairs to them, though no drow sentries pulled them—it was Sos’Umptu letting her know that she had already been recognized and announced, no doubt.
She steeled herself and strode right through the entryway, only briefly glancing at the larger constructs, the towering jade spiders standing guard to either side. They swayed when she entered, undulating up and down, as if eager to spring and tear her apart.
Through the relatively narrow entry corridor, she entered the main chapel, a beautiful large chamber in the shape of a spider’s body, and with eight legs leading out to a ring of smaller chapels. Several jade spider constructs stood about the place, randomly, it seemed, and motionless, though Yvonnel knew they could be called to animation and action quite easily.
Many eyes turned her way as she entered—not spider eyes, but those of priestesses. She tried to read their expressions, but saw too many emotions there, from awe to seething hatred, to get any sense of intent.
“Where is the First Priestess of the Fane?” she asked the nearest, who just continued to stare at her.
Her answer came in the scuffling noises from the rear of the chamber, and she looked up to see Sos’Umptu entering from a hallway, flanked by large driders. Something more, something like a cloud of shadow, was behind them, but it was shrouded in darkness and she could not make it out. It stayed just out of the room as Sos’Umptu led the driders to stand before the visitor.
“The courage of a heretic to enter this sacred place,” Sos’Umptu said, shaking her head. “Or is it simply stupidity?”
“Or am I truly a heretic?” Yvonnel answered.
Sos’Umptu stared at her incredulously. “Perhaps you have forgotten what you did on the surface. I have not.”
“I have forgotten nothing.”
“Your theft of the driders was sacrilege,” Sos’Umptu said. “Your irreverence to the goddess in that web you wove, and beyond that, the ridiculous tale you spun, was equally heretical and blasphemous.”
“The power to weave that web came from where? And the notion to do so was based in the tale you decry as heresy, one that was given to me by Lolth herself in the memories of Matron Mother Yvonnel the Eternal. As were given to Quenthel.”
“The false history of Menzoberranzan!”
“The memories of your mother, who ruled this city for millennia and was there at the founding,” Yvonnel countered. “Memories given to us by the order of Lolth.”
“It was Gromph and that El Viddenvelp illithid creature who gave Matron Mother Quenthel the memories in the hope of making her more formidable, a more acceptable Matron Mother, after the demise of Matron Mother Triel. Gromph, not Lolth, was behind this infusion, so who can speak to the veracity?”
As she tried to concoct her response, Yvonnel took some hope in the fact that Sos’Umptu had used the formal title of Quenthel, with no disrespect evident in her tone.
“I can,” Yvonnel replied. “It was Lolth’s doing that I was blessed with the memories. The very avatar of Lolth went to the Festival of the Founding and made sure that I would garner the same attention, did she not?”
“Irrelevant. We are reasoning beings of free will. Our choices are not predicated or predicted by any of the gods.”
“Are we?” asked Yvonnel. “Then why is the action on the surface so . . .”
“Blasphemous?” Sos’Umptu cut in. “You were given a great gift, yet you used it to undermine the very being that demanded your divine ascension. You, Yvonnel Baenre, should have taken the seat of Matron Mother, and done so to the glory of Lolth. You, from the moment you learned to manipulate your physical being to become a woman, a full woman, a high priestess of more than noble birth—of divine birth. The throne of Menzoberranzan was yours! And then again through circumstance, it was yours to take, Yvonnel the foolish. When you led the way to destroying Demogorgon in this very city, doing such great service to our beloved Lady Lolth, none, not even Matron Mother Quenthel, would have stood against your ascent to the title of Matron Mother and the first seat on the Ruling Council.”
“I led the destruction of Demogorgon to save the lives of drow, not in any service to Lolth.”
“And that was your error, and that was your disaster!”
Yvonnel had never seen Sos’Umptu so animated, so excited and clearly enraged. Even in the memories of Yvonnel the Eternal, such outward emotion and venom were not to be found regarding this particular Baenre daughter.
“Why have you come to this place?” Sos’Umptu demanded.
“To find a better way. If we cannot deflect this war, the streets of Menzoberranzan will run with the blood of drow.”
“As the streets of Gauntlgrym might have run thick with the blood of our enemies, but for you.”
“We can find a better course.”
“What better course?”
“Parlay. Compromise. Perhaps those who reject Lolth could leave . . .”
“You speak nonsense because you know you are doomed.”
The driders flanking Sos’Umptu produced long spears. All about the chamber, the priestesses took cover and began chanting, while the jade spiders began to encircle Yvonnel, Sos’Umptu, and the driders—even those two giant constructs from the entry hall.
“Do you think I fear you, priestess?” Yvonnel asked.
All of the doors of the chapel chamber slammed closed, except for the one through which Sos’Umptu and her entourage had entered.
“They are magically sealed as well, Yvonnel the Heretic,” Sos’Umptu told her. “You cannot use your spells to be gone from this place, and you cannot open the doors. I did not dare hope that you would be so stupid as to walk into my lair, yet here you are.”
“I do not intend to leave,” Yvonnel returned. “I ask again, is there not another way?”
That ball of smoky darkness behind the First Priestess of the Fane flowed forward to either side of Sos’Umptu, like shadowy hands seeking to embrace her. She didn’t move her feet, but she receded as those shadows closed in around her, gliding back from Yvonnel as if the shadowy ball was drawing her into that hug.
And then Sos’Umptu was gone, lost within the roiling and shadowy gray fog.
The driders leveled their spears. The priestesses cast their spells. The jade spiders charged.
Shaking her head in sadness and disappointment, for she had expected much more from the intelligent and level-headed Sos’Umptu, Yvonnel held forth a small glass bead, enacting her spell and creating a globe of protective magic about her.
Several balls of flame appeared in the air above her head and sent down lines of fire, but the magic couldn’t penetrate the globe, the flames flaring and spreading about it, but coming nowhere close to Yvonnel.
One Yvonnel became four, with three mirror images of herself dancing about her, acting as she acted to confuse her enemies. The powerful woman, versed in the arts arcane and divine, knew that she had to strike and strike hard, for her globe of invulnerability would not last long, nor would it stop those monsters moving to physically attack her.
Lightning flew from her fingers, blasting at the spider constructs, then at the driders. She threw a fireball back by the entrance, engulfing the huge jade spiders and more than a few of the priestesses, who screamed out in agony.
Yvonnel became a whirlwind, spraying missiles of magical energy. The enemies were upon her, and with a puff of smoke, she was gone, stepping through a dimensional door to the far side of the room.
And there she threw her most destructive spell of all, filling almost the entire chapel with a swarm of falling, flaming meteors, crashing down, smashing jade spiders, pummeling the driders and the drow.
“Where are you, Sos’Umptu?” she cried.
The meteors stopped.
The chanting of the priestesses stopped.
The spiders seemed no longer animated.
The wounded driders put up their weapons and shambled to the sides of the hall.
The fires extinguished.
The whole room was suddenly calm and quiet.
Yvonnel looked all about, confused. What had happened to her spell? How could anyone steal that powerful storm of magma from her?
The shadowy cloud drifted down from the ceiling to the center of the chapel, and there dissipated to reveal Sos’Umptu once more.
“Do you even begin to understand the power of this enemy you have made?” she taunted, and her voice sounded different, unworldly, multitoned and echoing.
“Do you intend to fight me, Sos’Umptu?” Yvonnel returned. “Or to send more of these minions in your place.”
“I?” Sos’Umptu asked innocently, and threw her head back and laughed, though it seemed more than a single woman laughing, seemed as if the other priestesses and the driders, the jade spiders and even the chapel itself were laughing at her and mocking her.
The cloud of shadows formed about Sos’Umptu once more, and the woman began to float upward.
No, Yvonnel realized. She wasn’t floating.
She was growing.
And the shadows went away, revealing Sos’Umptu as a drider!
But she kept growing, and no, she was not a drider, for she was beautiful, not bloated in abomination. Too beautiful to look upon. Beautiful and terrible all at once, and huge, dwarfing the driders about her, bigger even than the jade spider constructs that had come in from the entry.
And Yvonnel understood and knew she was doomed.
“Behold!” the creature that had been Sos’Umptu demanded. “I am the avatar of Lolth. Kneel to me. Beg for my mercy.”
Yvonnel couldn’t catch her breath. She didn’t doubt the claim. Sos’Umptu, the First Priestess of the Fane of the Quarvelsharess, had brought in the Spider Queen, had given herself, her mortal body, to Lolth.
“Kneel!” she demanded again, and when Yvonnel did not, Sos’Umptu thrust forth her hands and spewed lines of webbing that enwrapped Yvonnel’s feet and legs, cocooning her all the way up to her waist and holding her fast to the floor where she stood.
She tried to counter with a spell, but her words came out as nothing but gibberish and her head throbbed with stunning pain and noise.
Eight legs clacking on the hard floor, the giant godlike being approached.
“What am I to do with you, Yvonnel the Twice Blessed?” she teased. “All of the gifts that I gave to you. Such a waste. All of the glory I gave to you in your fight with Demogorgon. You would be Yvonnel the Eternal once more, reborn, to lead again. But no, you threw it away. And for what?”
Yvonnel found that she could speak once more. “You gave me much, but nothing quite as valuable as the truth,” she defiantly roared. “And in that truth, you gave to me compassion, and hope. Was that my mistake, or yours?”
“I do not make mistakes.”
“Your minions will die by the thousands here in this war.”
The giant being shrugged. “Mortals die. It is what they do. And how they die is my pleasure and my power. How will you die, Yvonnel?”
The woman squared her shoulders and said, “I will not go to Lolth in death.”
“Who can say?”
“I just did.”
The giant laughed. “Killing you now would be so easy. Taking you in my arms and going back to the Abyss would be so easy. Perhaps too easy. You know the many names that I am given, of course. Speak them.”
“Lolth,” said Yvonnel.
“Continue.”
“Lolth,” said the stubborn woman, and the giant laughed again.
“Lady Lolth,” the avatar corrected. “The Demon Queen of Spiders. Queen of the Demonweb Pits, the Mother of Lusts. You have heard all of these?”
Yvonnel didn’t respond.
“And the truest,” the avatar continued, “the Weaver of Chaos. I do so enjoy the unpredictability of the world. To roll the stones down the uneven mountain and watch their bounces and deflections. What would Yvonnel do with the knowledge I gave to her? With the opportunities that were placed before her? The excitement of watching you choose! The joy!”
Yvonnel shook her head, not sure if this creature before her was diabolical or rational at that moment.
“It did not matter,” the avatar said to her. “Do you not understand? Your actions? The ‘truths’ you learned? They did not matter.”
“Then what does matter?”
“My pleasure. My chaos. My power. Me. Just me.”
“Then what future?”
“Who cares?” The avatar laughed at her, and it was sincere, she knew.
“You care enough to bless the matrons,” she said.
“Do I?”
“You care enough to start wars—in the Silver Marches, in Gauntlgrym, in your own City of Spiders!”
“The ultimate chaos. War.”
“Then why are you angry with me? With my actions on the surface and the theft of the Blaspheme? What could cause more chaos in the world than what I’ve done?”
She laughed even louder and that answer told Yvonnel the truth. Lolth wasn’t angry with her. Anger would imply that Lolth cared.
“What am I to do with you?” the avatar said.
“You will never have me, foul beast.”
“I already have you.”
“You will never have my heart.”
“But I will have fun nonetheless.” She held forth her hand and an item appeared upon it. At first, Yvonnel thought it a spell book, a large and decorated one like her own, or even greater, like the one Gromph carried. But no, the avatar reached over with her other hand and removed from it a lid, for it was a box, not a book.
Lolth’s avatar dropped the cover to the floor and began to flick her hand back and forth over the box, and with each pass, a white plate of some unknown material flew forth at Yvonnel and began spinning, like some type of throwing star.
These were no missiles sent to strike her, however, but rectangular plates that came near to her and began flying about her, rotating as they went.
Again and again, they flew forth, a dozen and more. Perhaps two dozen, Yvonnel thought, for they were flying circles about her too fast for her to properly count.
“Twenty-two,” the avatar said, as if reading her mind. “And each with a fate. Some good. Some damning. Some that will bring you greater power—perhaps enough to turn the tide of this war.”
“You lie!”
“I do not lie. You know that I do not. You may find wealth in one of these cards. You might find items of great magic. You might find allies of great power, or enemies beyond you. You might find curses or blessings, your greatest wishes, your greatest fears.”
“What games do you play?”
“I’m not playing this game—you are.”
“What is the game, though?”
“One that entertains me.”
“Fiend.”
“Your lack of gratitude disappoints me, Yvonnel Baenre. I could simply kill you. You know this. I could take you to the Abyss and imprison you forever, make of you a drider and let my handmaidens torture you for eternity. You know this. And yet, I offer you this chance, and it is real, on my word.”
“Your word,” came the sarcastic reply.
“Twenty-two cards flying about you in chaotic swirl. For a being of your power, half—perhaps more than half—will prove beneficial to you, perhaps greatly beneficial. And even of those that are cursed, if you survive, you will be set free. You see, you must pick one—until you do, those strands of my web will hold you right there where you stand, and within them, you know that you have no ability to cast your magic. So there you will stand. Forever, if I choose, or until I decide to simply take you to my home and play with you. All you have to do is pick.”
“Why am I to believe you?”
“Do tell me, dear, what other options do you see? One ivory card, just one. One chance to escape a dilemma you cannot otherwise overcome. One.”
Yvonnel tried to sort it all out, searched her memories for this magic before her—had Yvonnel the Eternal ever encountered such an item as this deck of cards?
“Now or never!” the avatar demanded.
Yvonnel reached forth, trying to pick as the cards swirled about her, trying to find some pattern, some clue.
But there was none.
She plucked one of the ivory plates, and an image appeared upon it while she held it in her hands.
She saw a door, a barred door, like a jail cell. And a symbol, like one from a card of a Talis deck, a single black, upside-down-heart shape.
The avatar laughed and the webs unraveled and fell to the floor.
And Yvonnel’s every bit of clothing, every bit of jewelry, everything in her pockets, everything upon her that was not her, fell to the floor.
For Yvonnel was gone, gone from this plane of existence.
Simply gone.