“Should we join with our allies there?” Dab’nay asked Jarlaxle. She was with him on the rooftop of a building not far from the Qu’ellarz’orl, along with Drizzt, Kimmuriel, and a few other Bregan D’aerthe soldiers. Streaming down from the plateau of the noble houses came lizard riders, wizards on spectral steeds, and kobolds, orcs, hobgoblins, even a few giants and ogres. “That is the army of Barrison Del’Armgo, surely, and they are going after House Hunzrin, to free it from the Baenre grasp.”
Jarlaxle shook his head, to Dab’nay’s dismay.
Drizzt wasn’t surprised by Jarlaxle’s refusal. Perhaps the threescore of Bregan D’aerthe could make a difference in the coming fight in the area about House Hunzrin, perhaps not. But there were hundreds of Barrison Del’Armgo soldiers and enslaved peoples heading that way, and Jarlaxle wasn’t about to commit to anything until his scouts returned.
Or at least, until his most informative scout of all, Kimmuriel, finished his spying within House Barrison Del’Armgo.
It didn’t take long.
“The Armgos are indeed intent on attacking those imprisoning House Hunzrin,” Kimmuriel informed them. “The liberation of Matron Shakti Hunzrin is foremost in the mind of Mez’Barris, so believes her palace sentry who could not resist my intrusion into her thoughts. House Barrison Del’Armgo will throw in with the Hunzrins fully, and discard Bregan D’aerthe without concern by performing the Curse of Abomination on Braelin Janquay.”
“If I can get to her, perhaps I can show her a better course,” Jarlaxle said.
“Matron Mez’Barris is clever enough to realize that so damning Braelin would forever turn Bregan D’aerthe from her,” Dab’nay argued.
“The sentry was still excitedly mulling the visit by Matron Zhindia Melarn and a pair of handmaidens,” Kimmuriel said. “It was Zhindia who made a gift of Braelin and of . . .” Kimmuriel paused and blew out a little chuckle. “And a gift of Khazid’hea for Mez’Barris’s favored grandson, Malagdorl.”
Jarlaxle knew then that parlay was out of the question. Malagdorl was the world for Mez’Barris. She would do anything for him, and such a gift! If she was playing the blade’s edge in this war before, if there had been any hope of bringing her over to the side of the Baenres, that notion now was lost.
“Send associates to the four corners of the compound of Barrison Del’Armgo,” he instructed Kimmuriel, who could spread his orders faster than any, of course. “Instruct them to cause distraction, but nothing too alarming. They are not to engage, not here. They are to keep the eyes of the remaining sentries outward only. Then they can go off to House Hunzrin and see what mischief they might make on the Armgo force that has gone there.”
“And what of Braelin?” Dab’nay asked.
“That’s our job,” Jarlaxle replied. “We two with Kimmuriel and Drizzt.”
“Braelin and the matron and others were apparently within the Barrison Del’Armgo family chapel, just beyond where I left the sentry,” Kimmuriel warned. “I did not dare enter, for fear of being detected—the place is heavily warded and Mez’Barris’s wizard, Kaitain, is clever, and is not fully ignorant of psionic power. Also, there are demons roaming within the house, and not merely dretches and manes.”
“If Braelin is in that chapel, then perhaps the ceremony to curse him has already begun,” Drizzt offered.
“Send them,” Jarlaxle repeated to Kimmuriel. “Now, and be quick. Then you are getting us into Mez’Barris’s private chamber. If she will listen, we will talk. If she will not, then we will destroy the nobles of the Second House and take Braelin back, whether or not she has performed the ceremony. Braelin has been a drider before, and Yvonnel returned him. She will do so again if it is necessary.”
Kimmuriel closed his eyes and mentally departed to inform the group leaders.
Jarlaxle turned to Drizzt. “Mez’Barris is a formidable foe. By all accounts, Kaitain would be as deserving of the title of archmage as Tsabrak, and I need not tell you of the strength of Malagdorl. When we go in there, there can be no hesitation, no attempt at mercy.”
“Which one would you ask me to kill first?” Drizzt replied, and there was no waver in his tone.
Sos’Umptu Baenre felt the power coursing through her, glorious and beautiful. She felt as if she could reach across the city and grab her idiot sister and tear her apart.
But no, she had felt the connection, the strength of Lolth herself, keenly when the Spider Queen had returned control of her now giant and drider-like body to her soon after dispatching Yvonnel to some unknown and distant dimensional prison, but the epitome of that power had come right then, and had begun diminishing almost immediately.
She had felt Lolth still with her, still inside her.
She never wanted Lolth to leave. The goddess’s presence within overwhelmed Sos’Umptu, had her shaking with ecstasy, had tears streaming down her face.
She felt her legs coming together, reshaping as she physically shrank, and there was movement inside of her that was not her own, a strange and disconcerting sensation that made her think of pregnancy—which of course brought its own tangential lines of thought, particularly since she had just dispatched a woman who had been blessed in the womb only a few years before!
A great sensation, a rush of blood within and of air through her lungs, and the first priestess was once more in her own body, the body of Sos’Umptu Baenre, a mortal drow. And the internal disturbance settled, too, for in that final transformation, a second being appeared as if materializing from the tumult within Sos’Umptu, a second drow woman now standing right beside her.
A beautiful drow woman. Too beautiful. Painfully beautiful.
It was not an emissary of Lolth, she knew. No, no.
It was the image of Lolth herself, reaching out to her from the Abyss.
Sos’Umptu fell to her knees, as did every other drow in the Fane of the Goddess.
“Many of my handmaidens have come to Menzoberranzan, my city,” Lolth said.
Sos’Umptu wanted to look upon her, but dared not lift her gaze.
“They brought me here, to you, in full confidence that you would be an acceptable and accepting host.”
“I pray you found me acceptable.”
“Indeed, Sos’Umptu Baenre. Indeed. Rise now, I command. Look upon me. Let me see the love in your eyes.”
Sos’Umptu slowly stood and even more slowly lifted her gaze.
The image reached out and put her hand on Sos’Umptu’s forehead, and it felt tangible and warm. The priestess closed her eyes and heard whispers within her mind, two words, repeated.
A name, she realized, and her eyes popped open wide.
“Summon,” Lolth instructed. “Bring forth the great fiends. Let them lead the way into the compounds of my enemies. Trample them!”
“My lady,” Sos’Umptu breathed.
“My handmaidens await me in the chapel of House Melarn.”
Sos’Umptu didn’t reply, but she did wince. Lolth had chosen her to serve as vessel. Matron Zhindia Melarn was not worthy.
“The chaos will swirl to calm,” Lolth assured her, as if reading her mind—which of course she was, Sos’Umptu understood. “When it does, all will be answered.”
“Of course, my lady Lolth, my queen, my goddess,” Sos’Umptu said.
“There are none worthier than you, child,” Lolth said. “Now to your work and finish this foolishness.”
The beautiful woman twirled about, one hand lifting over her head. She spun as if on ice, faster and faster, her arms lifting and rolling about each other, making of her a blur.
And she was gone.
Below her, on the floor, centered by her spin, a magical circle remained etched into and glowing upon the chapel floor. A circle of power, and one Sos’Umptu understood to be fitting for bringing in the great demons whose names echoed in her mind.
“It is beautiful,” Azzudonna whispered to Zaknafein when they at last entered the cavern of Menzoberranzan. Zak could hear the others of the group similarly gasping and whispering.
They had come in through a side tunnel, barely a crack in the wall wide enough to admit them single file. The area in the cavern before the entrance was littered with boulders, providing them ample cover—for now.
They were very near the Westrift—looking across it to his left, Zak could see the multicolored faerie fires outlining the Fane of the Goddess, which was quiet now. But the other way, southwest along the wall and just past the Westways, the more conventional entryways to this section of Menzoberranzan, the flashes of lightning and fireballs were clear to see.
Right in front of House Do’Urden, he knew.
“You wanted a fight,” he told the nearby Avernil, and indicated the region. “You’ll get your fight.”
“I want no fight, Zaknafein, but we are called to battle,” the high priest replied. “It is no choice. It is the demand of Eilistraee, and do not doubt that she will be there with us.”
“We will probably need at least that,” Zak said.
“I find your lack of faith disturbing,” said Avernil.
“Do you? Why?”
“I know why I am here. I know why Holy Galathae is here. I know why so many of my congregation insisted on joining, but your reasons for being in this place and in this fight are personal.”
“And no less visceral than your own, I assure you.”
“Perhaps too much so.”
“Not everyone who accompanied us from Callidae is of your church, Avernil.”
The high priest shrugged as if it did not matter. “We have already shown the power of Eilistraee revealed, and still you doubt.”
Zak studied the man hard, considering the implications of his boast, and realizing that if Avernil was feeling truly undefeatable because of his goddess that they were all in trouble. “That was on a favorable battlefield,” he reminded. “We caught our enemies by surprise because of Nvisi and Allefaero, not because of your goddess or your faith. What you see now before you is a battle of great powers joined.”
“We will go in as before, in our impregnable square,” Avernil said. “I expect that surprise will again be our ally, as those enemies will have no idea of the arrival of our group.”
As Zak began to argue, Avernil called out, “Form!” and the Callidaeans once more gathered in their square, moving out from the rocks. Zak found himself next to Galathae in the front once more, with Azzudonna across from him.
“This will not be as easy,” he warned.
“We have the goddess,” Galathae tried to assure him.
“They have one as well. And this is her home. Remember?”
Behind them, Nvisi began to make some undecipherable noise, and Zak turned to see the man with his gemstones floating before him. “Woe,” he mouthed to Allefaero, who in turn called out for Avernil.
But Avernil wouldn’t heed the call. “To war for Eilistraee!” the high priest yelled. “Go! Go!”
Galathae would not disobey, and so she started ahead, the square moving in unison behind and beside her, walking, then trotting. They drew nearer to House Do’Urden, where wizards, priests, archers, and spearmen hurled death down at the swarm of demons and drow forces assaulting the house. Fire and lightning flew all about, to the balconies, to the ground, and into the air, where a pair of scorched flying fiends came falling down, trailing smoke before splattering on the ground.
The Callidaeans drew nearer.
“On your order, Holy Galathae!” Avernil called ahead.
The priests were chanting now, spiritual weapons floating in the air beside the moving square, nearly translucent spiritual guardians swirling all about.
Not far ahead, a drow priestess turned their way, calling to her companions and pointing, clearly confused.
“Charge!” Galathae yelled, and the square roared ahead.
The front ranks of the spiritual guardians began slapping and biting at the priestess and her allies before the group of Callidaeans even physically joined the battle. Manes and dretches fell apart under the assault. The priestess threw her hands up defensively, calling out and stumbling to retreat. Beside her a pair of men fired their hand-crossbows wildly and similarly turned to run.
Allefaero’s lightning bolt laid all three low, and continued past them to blast into a group of demons beyond them as well. Those fiends, those that were not obliterated, turned and charged at the square, and more came in from the sides, then, the moment of surprise at its end.
But the spiritual guardians remained in their thick dance, assailing the charging enemies before they reached the lines. And the spiritual weapons rushed out to meet the charge, floating maces and morningstars and swords glowing bright with magical power, stabbing and battering the fiends, who struck back ineffectively—and in that pause when the demons attacked the weapons made of pure divine magic, the guardians continued to batter them.
Finally, some reached the square, the interlocked shields along the sides holding fast, spears stabbing out, and in the front rank, where no shield wall was set, the demons met instead Bluccidere and Soliardis, the spinning sword and spear of Azzudonna.
The square kept moving, leaving a trail of smoking, dissipating demons.
From the balconies of House Do’Urden came cheers, the defenders obviously recognizing that reinforcement had come, if not who those reinforcements were—and now aimed their strikes before the moving block of divine destruction, or above them to take the aerial threats from the sky.
Zak couldn’t deny the elation he felt, the comradery, the surging power—
Was this Eilistraee?
Dare he hope in belief?
“Forward, ever forward!” Galathae ordered, and she needn’t have, for behind her, the Callidaeans were singing, the priests maintaining their spells, Allefaero lashing out with mighty magic—lightning bolts of radiant energy!—at those most powerful demons coming near.
Zak dared to hope.
But then horns began to blow from the balcony of his old house, and he glanced that way to see drow pointing out beyond the fight, back toward the Westrift.
“Rothé piles,” Zak muttered when he looked that way, when he saw doom approaching.
“What is that?” he heard Azzudonna gasp. “What are those behemoths?”
“Goristro,” he mouthed, his voice barely a whisper.
Around the edge of the Westrift, turning fast for the battlefield before House Do’Urden they came, three gigantic demons, appearing like massive orange-furred minotaurs, twenty feet tall and more, and nearly as wide at their great shoulders.
They carried palanquins, a wide litter for each beast, and upon those were drow, calling down, ordering their army forward. Scrambling all about the hulking goristro came more demons, and not merely the little dretches and manes, no, but true demons: vrock and glabrezu, hezrou and nalfeshnee. Serpent-bodied marilith slithered at the sides, six arms of each waving swords glowing with Abyssal power.
And a balor, perhaps the greatest of the major demons serving the demon lords, Zak noted.
A balor.
No . . .
Two.
“A path as free of drow as you can find,” Jarlaxle instructed Kimmuriel.
“There are corridors thick with demons,” the psionicist replied. “Mostly minor fiends, but some fierce, notably glabrezu. It seems that Matron Mez’Barris favors glabrezu.”
“They probably remind her of her grandson,” Jarlaxle remarked.
“There is one narrow path that will take us near to the doors, a zigzagging affair no doubt used by the Armgos as an escape route, should it ever be necessary,” said Kimmuriel, ignoring—as he usually did—Jarlaxle’s jape.
“Full of demons?”
“Full of demons, and likely heavily trapped.”
“The fewer Armgos we kill, the more willing Mez’Barris will be to hear my words,” Jarlaxle said. “That is our course.”
“And I will lead,” Kimmuriel said. “But do keep your giant bird at the ready and not engaged in battle. I might need it.”
That brought curious stares from Drizzt and Dab’nay.
“Recall your fight with Demogorgon,” Jarlaxle reminded Drizzt.
Drizzt nodded, catching on. In that battle, which was really nothing more than a single strike, Drizzt had been shielded by a telekinetic barrier, absorbing the power, the lightning and fire and physical strikes, of most of Menzoberranzan. He had felt that power growing within him—no, not within, but all about him, sizzling and seething against the magical shield, screaming for destructive release, and threatening that release onto him if he could not hold the shield long enough, or if he could not target it at another. He had done exactly that, blasting Demogorgon in that single mighty stroke, a thousand blows combined into one.
He understood then Kimmuriel’s need for the giant bird. If they got into Mez’Barris’s chamber to parlay, and Kimmuriel was teeming with the power of such a shield, he would need release.
It would be hard to parlay with Mez’Barris Armgo if that release came in the form of an obliterated drow servant, or one of her noble clan. A magical bird that wouldn’t truly be destroyed would be the perfect object of his power.
“We go,” Jarlaxle said, grabbing Kimmuriel by the shoulder and taking Dab’nay’s hand, and she, in turn, grasped Drizzt’s forearm, the warrior with Twinkle and Icingdeath at the ready.
They became insubstantial, Kimmuriel taking them into the realm of thought and sheer willpower. The foursome drifted through the wall of House Barrison Del’Armgo’s courtyard, undetected by the soldiers and demons turning their eyes outward at the diversions of the Bregan D’aerthe forces.
To the side of the main house, they went, then through the wall at the spot determined by Kimmuriel. Still in mind alone, they crossed a corridor, another wall, a small room, another wall, and into an alcove in another hallway, and there Kimmuriel showed them back into the material realm, their wandering minds bringing their corporal forms to them.
They appeared just to the side of milling demons, and Drizzt leaped forth, scimitars spinning. He cut down a pair of dretches before they had even turned to look at him, then went up into the air with a spinning kick that drove another into a mane, both falling back and giving Drizzt a clear spot to land and rebalance, his blades going back to work almost immediately on more minor fiends stupidly coming at him.
To the side a line of demons went down under a hail of flying daggers from Jarlaxle.
The horde thinned and Drizzt pressed on, slashing and kicking, leaping past a pair with confidence that Jarlaxle was close behind and would fast dispatch them.
The first real obstacle lay ahead, a vulture-like vrock lifting wide its feathered wings and cackling like a maniacal bird.
Drizzt’s thoughts spun, sorting the battlefield, picking a course that would get him through the few dretches between him and vrock in the most favorable manner.
He was interrupted, though, caught by surprise and shock, when Kimmuriel casually strode past him. The seemingly unarmed psionicist pushed through the dretches, not even lifting his arms defensively as they clawed and bit at him.
Drizzt moved in close behind. He winced as a dretch leaped upon Kimmuriel and bit hard at his throat.
No blood appeared, no mark appeared, and Kimmuriel didn’t even stagger.
Drizzt’s memory of his experience under such a barrier—one then given by the entirety of the illithid hive mind—had him nodding.
Kimmuriel kept walking, calmly, undisturbed. He came up on the dretch, which drove its giant beak down hard atop his head, and despite those recollections, Drizzt couldn’t help but grimace.
But the beak did nothing to Kimmuriel, who responded by slapping the vrock, releasing some of the energy he had already built up.
The bird demon shrieked in pain, a bloody hole appearing in its neck.
Drizzt kept his focus, slaughtering the dretches as Kimmuriel passed them by, none even turning back to face him.
Kimmuriel walked past the vrock.
A line of daggers stabbed at the vulture.
Obviously not as unthinking as the minor fiends, the vrock shifted its attention from Kimmuriel and turned to face Drizzt.
It didn’t matter. When it tried to batter the ranger, Drizzt ducked and blocked, and when it pecked at him, fast as a viper, Drizzt was faster, dropping low as the blow came down, but with Twinkle and Icingdeath raised, arms locked. Each slid up against the side of the diving beak, guided by the flaring sides right into the eyes of the demon.
The vrock reversed at once, shrieking wildly, and Drizzt retracted and rose fast, stabbing Twinkle under the demon’s bill, stabbing Icingdeath, the frostbrand that feasted on creatures of the lower planes, deep into the monster’s belly, pushing it through to the hilt as he went up against the demon to avoid its frantically battering wings.
Drizzt bulled ahead. He could feel the resistance lessening by the step, the vrock diminishing, dying, returning to the Abyss.
More daggers flew past him to either side, keeping the minor fiends back.
Drizzt heaved the vrock to the floor and pressed on. Kimmuriel was lost to him in the throng, so many minor fiends between them.
“Catch up to Kimmuriel!” Jarlaxle pleaded from behind.
Drizzt didn’t have to be asked twice—and few of the dretches and manes were even looking at him.
He went through in full fury, cutting them apart, the biggest impediment becoming the floor, slick with demon ichor and innards.
With Dab’nay and Jarlaxle close behind, he cleared the way, for surprisingly, there were no demons in the last ten steps of the hallway. He cut down the last ranks just as Kimmuriel turned left around a sharp corner at the hallway’s end.
Drizzt started to follow, but fell back, diving low and covering when a fireball erupted around that corner, followed by a blinding blast of lightning that shot out right across the corridor, striking the wall opposite and triggering yet a third trap as the wall’s facade crumbled, a distant snap of a spring releasing a square board of dozens of spikes that ripped across the corridor on a guidewire, rushing directly in behind Kimmuriel.
With a distant grumbling of a counterweight, the board of spikes retracted slowly, winding back into place.
Drizzt, Dab’nay, and Jarlaxle held their collective breath
An unharmed Kimmuriel came strolling back around the corner. “Well,” he said, “I think they know we are here.”
Beyond the corner came the sound of sliding metal. Kimmuriel glanced over his shoulder and shrugged.
“You could have simply requested an audience, Jarlaxle,” came the voice of Matron Mez’Barris.
“This is me doing exactly that!” Jarlaxle called back. He rushed past Drizzt and Kimmuriel, Dab’nay close behind. The psionicist followed closely, Drizzt taking up the rear.
They passed through the door and into a long narrow chapel. Some twenty strides away, Matron Mez’Barris stood behind a decorated altar, the hulking Malagdorl behind and to her right, the wizard Kaitain behind and to her left. A line of priestesses, centered by First Priestess Taayrul, stood before the three steps leading up to the altar dais, and just before a low railing, thigh high and thick with webs to the floor.
The figure that held the attention of the newcomers, though, was surely Braelin, hanging upside down just behind Mez’Barris by a thick silken strand, cocooned by webbing from his feet to his neck—and within easy striking distance of the powerful Malagdorl, Drizzt noted.
Stone benches ran down both sides of the chamber from the railing to the main entry doors, just to the left of where the four companions had entered. Jarlaxle led the way to the center aisle between those bench rows, all four glancing about warily at the many statues set about the chamber, of Lolth and of spiders, and even a few of the handmaidens in their natural yochlol form.
Mez’Barris motioned for them to approach, then held up her hand to stop them, still some ten strides away.
“Even for one as brazen as you, this is absurd,” she said to Jarlaxle, who was at the end of the four on the left.
“I did not expect you to welcome me formally, as that might compromise your position with whichever side you consider allies,” he answered.
“Which side would be compromised? Those who hold true to the Spider Queen, or those who reject her? With which side does your little band of thieves and traders stand?”
“Neither and both,” Jarlaxle answered. “I have always found it more profitable to remain an outsider regarding the politics of Menzoberranzan.”
“He says that with Drizzt Do’Urden standing at his side,” Taayrul remarked.
“It isn’t political,” Jarlaxle said.
“It is beyond political, and to the very heart of who we are!” Taayrul retorted.
“Enough,” Mez’Barris insisted.
“We took care to enter through a route that put none of your family or soldiers in harm’s way. Just demons, who can easily be replaced, though it was unfortunate that there was a vrock among the ranks of the fodder.”
“Thank you for only destroying my demons,” Mez’Barris snorted as if that meant anything to her. “So here you are.”
“Indeed, and it would seem that the reason for this audience is swinging about your head, good matron.”
“This worthless murderer?” Mez’Barris scoffed. “He is only here to let you know that I have the upper hand, of course.”
“Why would you think you needed it? I come not as an enemy, but as one who can ensure that Matron Mother Mez’Barris, should that come to pass, will have a long reach to the surface world, for valuable trade.”
“Why would you think I would want it?”
Jarlaxle shrugged. “Profit?”
Mez’Barris scoffed again, only for her posture and voice to change suddenly, the woman leaning on the altar, both hands slapping hard on the polished stone surface, her eyes narrowing. “You have come, foolishly, and you will hear my demands. Your minion here will be made a drider, given to Lolth for his crimes, and I offer you one chance to stop this. Just one.”
Drizzt caught the concerned glance Jarlaxle showed to him and the others.
“Pledge your allegiance, to me and to Lolth,” the matron ordered. “And give to me Drizzt Do’Urden, whose fate will be determined by the judgment of Lolth.”
“You underestimate—” Jarlaxle began, but he stopped when Malagdorl flicked a small black bead from the altar, which sailed down at the foursome.
Drizzt reflexively dove aside, going into a roll, sheathing his scimitars and releasing Taulmaril from its belt-buckle container, and coming up between some benches with an arrow already nocked and leveled, aimed perfectly for Mez’Barris.
On the other side, Jarlaxle, too, reacted quickly, but wasn’t quite as fast out of the way as he reached back to grab the surprised Dab’nay. Something blew up from that small bead, not quite catching him, and instead throwing him backward and stumbling toward the wall.
Kimmuriel, so confident in his protective kinetic barrier, didn’t even try to avoid it, and Dab’nay barely moved.
And the two of them found themselves inside a globe, a bubble of sorts, although they seemed unharmed.
Across the way, Mez’Barris chuckled gleefully, and the others joined in a mocking chorus.
“Oh, do shoot, heretic!” the matron chided Drizzt. “Do you think me fool enough to sit here open to your barbs?”
“What are you doing?” Jarlaxle demanded. He rushed back for Dab’nay and Kimmuriel, pushing lightly on the bubble encasing them, which sent it rolling easily, tripping both up.
The wizard beside Mez’Barris held forth his hand, palm up, and rolled his fingers skyward, and the bubble floated up into the air, taking Kimmuriel and Dab’nay with it.
“I have changed the calculus, Jarlaxle,” Mez’Barris announced. “How long do you suppose Kimmuriel can hold his kinetic barrier intact?”
In response, Drizzt spun and fired Taulmaril up at the globe, but the arrow, as enchanted a missile as any bow might fire, teeming with lightning energy, just skipped off the side of the globe and straight up to blast into the chapel ceiling. The force of the initial impact sent the globe floating across, over Jarlaxle’s head, where it hit the wall across from Drizzt and rebounded, shuddering and floating and moving back toward the center.
Mez’Barris laughed all the louder. “Well,” she said, “it seems that we have been blessed by fate—or the goddess. Look at your friend, Jarlaxle, teeming, simmering, bursting—soon quite literally—with the energy he gathered in the corridor. Like a lover stopped before the moment of joy, he begs for release, but unlike a lover, he will horribly die if he cannot find it. Perhaps Kimmuriel has found some good fortune here. This was unforeseen, I admit, but so, so delicious. Will he obliterate the priestess?”
“What do you want?” Jarlaxle demanded, trying to keep looking at her, trying to not look at his dear friend trapped above him.
He pulled a rod from under his cloak, aimed it suddenly upward, and cast the command to dispel the globe.
Nothing happened, other than increased laughter from the other end of the room.
“I’ve told you what I want. You have one play, and judging from the look on the face of your friend up there, you should make it soon,” Mez’Barris teased. “You are not in control here, Jarlaxle. All of this was planned, and you followed your role in it perfectly.”
Jarlaxle was dismayed. He couldn’t deny Mez’Barris’s words—Kimmuriel was up there, growing more frantic by the moment. His face was beginning to contort as he fought to hold the kinetic barrier just a bit longer, for if he could not, then all the bites and gouging claws from the dretches and manes, the vrock’s brutal attacks, the fireball and lightning bolt and the slam of the spike plate—all of it, other than those few early strikes he had released against the vrock—would burst within him.
“Enough of this!” the matron yelled. “Swear allegiance to me, here and now. Send Drizzt to me here and now—perhaps even he will be spared if Lolth sees hope for him. You will help me defeat that idiotic Quenthel and take down the stain of House Baenre once and for all.”
“Free him and we can talk.”
“Your answer! Now!”
“Do nothing!” Kimmuriel shouted down from above.
“Oh, so he will obliterate the priestess,” Mez’Barris remarked.
“No,” Kimmuriel told her. “In the days when Lolth ruled all about me, indeed Dab’nay would already be dead.” He turned to Dab’nay and offered a smile. “You have nothing to fear from me, my friend. On my word of honor.”
“He will die, Jarlaxle,” Mez’Barris warned. “Horribly and before your eyes. And then you and your remaining friends will die. We were prepared for you, do not doubt. Decide!”
Jarlaxle started to speak, but Kimmuriel shouted down again from above, “No! Jarlaxle, no!”
He calmed and smiled down at his dear old friend.
Drizzt shot Taulmaril at the bubble yet again, because he could not stand this moment. This time, he aimed directly at it, no clip shot, taking his chances that the arrow would push through and wound or kill one of the two.
But it didn’t. It hit the side of the magical bubble and dissipated in a shower of sparks.
“What guarantee—” Jarlaxle started to say.
No, my friends, Drizzt heard in his mind, and he closed his eyes. It is all right, more than you can imagine. Drizzt understood that Kimmuriel was telepathically communicating to Jarlaxle as well, given the way the rogue had bitten off his comment.
He heard Kimmuriel say, “Cover, good woman.”
Drizzt opened his eyes and looked up, just in time to see the kinetic barrier waver, to see Kimmuriel’s eyes bulging weirdly, almost pressing out of his face. And there were flames behind them, within them! Kimmuriel’s white hair began to dance wildly, little sparks clicking off its ends.
“Jarlaxle, don’t!” he said in a garbled, stretched manner. “Don’t.”
His eyeballs flew from their sockets. Dab’nay cried out when one bounced off her, followed by a stream of brain and blood.
Kimmuriel still managed one last gurgling sound before he was blown apart to blood and gore and smoking bits of bones, flesh, and organs.
Dab’nay cried out again, screaming in shock and pain as she was blown aside by the shower of gore and the concussion of Kimmuriel’s explosion.
Drizzt lost sight of her, for the bubble was no longer translucent. It was red and black, running streams of blood and viscera.