The press of attackers outside of House Do’Urden was more than Saribel or Ravel had ever seen.
“They could breach,” Saribel had told her brother. “We should begin positioning traps and glyphs and defensive squads in the lower corridors. If we cannot stop them, we make them pay in blood for every corridor. As they push forward, we retreat to the tunnels to House Baenre.”
Ravel had nodded his agreement. If the fleeing defenders dispelled the teleport from their lowest chamber to those tunnels, their enemies would not know how to follow them. He rushed away to pass the word to some of his fellow wizards to begin setting up the glyphs.
More Blaspheme and Baenre troops had arrived on the scene, the fighting becoming ever more furious. But still, the enemy forces, mostly demons, continued to pour into the square, continued to press inexorably toward the house.
More magical destruction rained down from the balconies, but the defenders, priest and wizard alike, were exhausting their spells, Ravel and Saribel had understood, and it would not be enough to keep the horde back this time.
But then, from the northeast, there had come another force onto the field, a square of threescore combatants marching in perfect formation, the air about them swirling with spiritual guardians, the area before them teeming with spiritual weapons, floating and striking.
“Who are they?” a nearby priestess asked, the question on everyone’s mind.
“Priestesses, clearly,” said another. “The guardians, the weapons . . .”
Ravel cast a spell of farseeing to view the new force more clearly. He was taken aback by how steadily they were moving through the demonic hordes swarming in at them, the minor and lesser fiends being torn apart by the spell before they ever reached the ranks!
Priestesses indeed, he thought, and then he saw the truth.
“No,” he said to those around him. “Priests. Drow priests, and some priestesses.” He saw the man calling out orders. “Led by a man.”
“Bregan D’aerthe, then,” someone said, but Ravel shook his head. Bregan D’aerthe had a few clerics, but not this many, and almost all the clerics in Jarlaxle’s band were women.
Then Ravel saw a man he surely recognized in the front rank.
“Zaknafein Do’Urden,” he whispered.
“Then Bregan D’aerthe,” said Saribel, repeating the earlier sentiment, but Ravel continued shaking his head.
“These are followers of Eilistraee.”
Gasps echoed all around them.
“Powerful allies,” Saribel said.
“The battle is not lost yet,” Ravel replied, almost to himself. “Renew your fury!” he called to the others on the balcony. “Hold them back! Allies are joining our cause!”
“We have to tell Matron Zeerith,” Saribel told him, and she started away, Ravel close behind.
“Lolth’s Web,” Gromph announced, looking up from another canyon that rose into the city, a small narrow finger of the great chasm known as the Mistrift. So narrow was the passage that the three had to dismiss their magical mounts. Above them and just to the side stood the stalactite cluster Gromph had named.
Catti-brie had seen it before, but from afar. From this angle, it reminded her of icicles hanging off the roof gutters at the Ivy Mansion, with dozens and dozens of stalactites pointing down from the cavern roof like the rows of teeth of some ancient dragon.
“House Melarn is within those stalactites,” the wizard went on. “Up near the cavern roof, mostly, and then within the roof.”
“Only commoners and prisoners are in the chambers above the ceiling,” Entreri said. “The throne room, the chapels, the war rooms, all are within the down-pointing spires.”
Gromph nodded. “I have never been inside, nor did I ever desire to be. Matron Zhindia and her predecessors have always been zealous wretches.”
“You are here as our guide,” Catti-brie remarked to Entreri.
“More than that,” Gromph corrected. “You know why I went to the trouble of bringing you,” he said to the assassin.
Entreri drew out his jeweled dagger.
“Nothing terrifies Matron Zhindia Melarn more than that weapon,” Gromph explained. “Her daughter was slain with it, and whatever remained of her spirit or mind, if anything, was beyond any hope of resurrection, was even beyond the reach of Lolth. Perhaps she was simply obliterated, erased from the multiverse—it matters not. What matters is that such a fate is something Matron Zhindia greatly fears.”
“With good cause, surely,” Catti-brie agreed. She looked to Entreri. “But the magic of the dagger is no more, so you said. When you threw it through the web strung by Yvonnel and Quenthel, that curse was stolen.”
“It was,” Entreri confirmed. “Else I would have fed the blade to the primordial in Gauntlgrym.”
“But Zhindia doesn’t know that,” Gromph said. “When she feels that dagger at her throat, it is likely she will bargain, and that bargain may save the lives of thousands here. That, Catti-brie, and not as a simple guide, is why I went to the trouble of bringing Artemis Entreri along.”
The woman nodded and somewhat contained her shudder.
“And you understand why I took the trouble to bring you?” Gromph asked Catti-brie.
“I thought you just liked my company,” she replied, shaking her head and trying to ignore the condescending insult. Why wouldn’t Gromph want her here, after all, for her own powers, both divine and arcane, were truly considerable? She was a chosen of Mielikki.
“You are here to make sure that I stay alive,” Gromph told her. “For all that you might well contribute, your most important task is to heal my wounds and keep me in position to do war.”
Catti-brie wanted to say something sharp in reply, but she simply nodded. It made sense, she had to admit. This was Gromph’s homeland, the city, the enemy, he knew so well, and hopefully one he knew how to defeat.
“You have kept that priestly teleport spell, that trick of recalling you and others back to your home, prepared?”
“For the second time, yes. But understand that I came here to do this task with you and then to join with my husband in his fight. I have no intention of putting myself back into the Ivy Mansion without accomplishing those things.”
“And you can take him along with you if you go?”
“As long as he is beside me, of course. And you as well.”
“I understand your desire to remain, but hear me well, Catti-brie: If I tell you to go, then do not question me. Just go. Both of you. I will only tell you once if the situation so demands, and any delay will certainly cost you your lives. I am not exaggerating or misleading you here in any way. If I tell you to go, be gone.” He snapped his fingers in the air and repeated, “Be gone.”
“And you?” she asked.
“I told you not to question me. If I say for you to be gone, you both get out with your spell. Are we agreed?”
“Yes,” Entreri replied without hesitation, but Catti-brie hedged.
“There is only one answer,” Gromph said to Catti-brie.
She stared at him hard, but nodded.
“I will cloak us with invisibility,” Gromph explained and began casting. “I will see you, still, but you will not see me or each other.”
And then the three vanished.
Gromph took Entreri’s hand, then reached for Catti-brie’s, but she pulled it away as he tried to grasp it.
“Proving you aren’t always right, I see you quite clearly,” she told him. A little reminder that she, too, could perform these wizardly dweomers.
“And can you fly?” he returned, and she answered by leaping away, rising up along the chasm wall. With the barest hint of a smile at her pique, Gromph gave the gift of flight to Entreri and himself and guided the assassin up into the air.
“Land on one of the platforms to the southern end,” Entreri advised. “The noble chambers are in the north, but the south is far less guarded.”
They did just that, coming to a balcony where a single sentry stood guard, leaning against the wall and hardly paying attention.
Entreri dispatched him, coming visible as he struck.
In they went.
“We are rallying!” Saribel called out as she burst into the private chapel, where Zeerith sat with Tsabrak.
“Disciples of the Dark Maiden have come,” Ravel added, rushing in behind his sister. “They are charging through the demon forces, sending them back to the lower planes!”
The two skidded to a stop, still several strides from the seats, where Matron Zeerith turned a sudden scowl upon them.
“They are not all who have come to Menzoberranzan,” Archmage Tsabrak replied. He motioned to a mirror laid upon the table between him and Zeerith and waited for the two nobles to get up to where they could look at the images its powers of divination had revealed. “A force of greater demons has come forth from the Fane of the Goddess. Behold, goristro and balors, and all manner of Abyssal carnage.”
“How do you think the petty little children of the Dark Maiden will fare against this?” Zeerith hissed at them. “And these great fiends are not all that has come. She is here.”
“She?” Ravel asked, but when Saribel sucked in her breath suddenly, he understood that Matron Zeerith was referring to Lolth.
“They will surely breach the house,” Tsabrak told them. “No magic will hold our doors against the charge of a goristro.”
Zeerith nodded.
“Then we flee,” Ravel said. “Now. We run to the tunnels and flee to House Baenre.”
“To what end?” Tsabrak scolded, waving his hand at the scrying mirror. “Do you think even House Baenre can stand against that?”
“Did you not hear him? Lolth is here in the city,” Zeerith said. “She is calling to the matrons. I can hear her whispers, as can the others, I am sure.”
“Then we fight them as long as we can here, and if we cannot hold, we run for the tunnels—to Lake Donigarten if not to House Baenre, and out the Mantle and into the deep Underdark,” Ravel stammered. “We cannot go back, Matron. We cannot!”
“He may be right, I fear,” Tsabrak said, taking the comment in an entirely different direction. “We have played the losing side, perhaps too much.”
Both Ravel and Saribel expected Zeerith to scold the wizard for such impertinence, but to their surprise and horror, she was simply nodding.
“We must act for forgiveness and not just beg,” the matron said after a short pause. “Go, you two, back to the wall. Goad the minions of the Dark Maiden to our sanctuary, and when they near, you, all of you, all of our wizards and priestesses and archers, lay them low. Slaughter them at our gates as an act of contrition to the Spider Queen. Go, and be quick!”
Saribel gasped again, and Ravel shook his head in disbelief. “We saw them,” he argued. “The Baenres. Yvonnel and Matron Mother Quenthel! We saw what they did on the overworld. We heard their tale of Menzoberranzan and the true memories—”
Tsabrak clapped his hands together and a burst of lightning slammed Ravel to the ground, taking the words from his mouth as he sat there with his jaw trembling and his hair flying wildly.
“Not another word from you, fool boy,” Zeerith scolded. “It is over. It was a delusion, a folly, a great deception, and we fell for it and now must find our way back. The Baenres are doomed. The order of Menzoberranzan will be forever changed, and we can only hope that our actions now bring penance—Matron Zhindia has sent this force against us to remind us, not to destroy us.”
“You cannot believe that,” Saribel dared to say.
“I told you two to go, so go! Now, and be quick. Slaughter the minions of the Dark Maiden. Kill any Blaspheme and any Baenres that try to join their ranks as they flee the rout that will ensue beyond our walls. And when Matron Zhindia arrives, as she surely will, invite her in and do so with your head properly bowed. Now, go!”
Saribel turned and rushed away, pausing to reach down and help her brother back to his feet, then tugging him along out of the chapel.
“This is madness,” Ravel said, his teeth still chattering from the lightning hit.
“We knew it could happen,” Saribel said.
“I’m not going back to it,” Ravel insisted. “I cannot. I can’t go back to that.”
“And with Zhindia Melarn as Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan,” Saribel said, not disagreeing.
“I can’t,” Ravel muttered.
Saribel leaned in close to him and whispered, “Tell your friends. Gather them and I will gather mine, if they will come.”
“If they will come where?”
“To the tunnels. To gather Dinin Do’Urden and be gone from this place as we just said—to House Baenre, or to Donigarten and out into the open Underdark if we must.”
“If Baenre loses, we will be out in the Underdark alone,” Ravel said, as if just realizing the truth of the course.
“Are we not already alone? But we don’t need to be for long. We will go to Gauntlgrym and King Bruenor,” Saribel decided.
“They will hunt us.”
“Are we not already hunted?” she asked, once again turning it back on her brother. “Aren’t we just the playthings of those above us right now? So we go below them . . . or so they would think.”
“And if the dwarves reject our entreaties?”
“Jarlaxle will have us,” Saribel insisted. “He will have Dinin.”
“Jarlaxle will return to Lolth’s bosom or he and his band of idiots will not survive,” came a third voice, up ahead, and Archmage Tsabrak turned the corner in the hallway before them.
Ravel and Saribel turned concerned looks to each other.
“I know what you plan,” Tsabrak stated bluntly.
The two just stared at him.
“I could stop you,” the Archmage of Menzoberranzan said, and neither of the two doubted it.
“Are you telling us to turn around?” Ravel asked.
“We don’t want to go back to that,” Saribel added.
“You prefer a horrible death? Or an existence in here or in the Abyss as a drider to Lolth?”
“Does it have to come to that? Have we no personal freedom, no choice in the matter at all?” Saribel said, her voice taking on a vicious edge.
Tsabrak scoffed at her. “How long have you lived here? Freedom? You are free to do the best you can, based on your loyalty to Lolth and your inner strengths. On your physical, magical, and intellectual prowess. And, of course, your gender. That you, a noble priestess of a powerful house, daughter to one of the ruling matrons of Menzoberranzan, should—”
“Suppose that is not what I want?” Saribel interrupted. “Perhaps my heart does not condone that which I see all about me.”
“Then I would tell you to blink a few times and look again. That it is a matter of survival, not of conscience.”
“Is there a point to one without the other?” Ravel interjected.
“Yes!” Tsabrak snapped back. “Ah yes, the ideal of community and empathy, and lifting all others. Idiocy, I say! From the moment you left Matron Zeerith’s womb, you have been alone, both of you. You come into this life alone, you survive alone, and you die alone.”
“Unless you have Lolth’s blessing,” Saribel added snidely and with a harder stare at the wizard.
“Lolth’s blessing?” Tsabrak nearly choked on that, revealing much to both Saribel and Ravel. “That is a matter for the afterlife, and a great boost in power in the City of Spiders. But you are not wrapped up in a hug of eight legs. She does not walk beside you or guard your sleep. You are alone. You do the best you can. You survive.”
“Maybe that’s exactly what we’re trying to do,” Ravel replied.
“To House Baenre? Doomed! Out of the city? Nothing but misery and death.”
“Drizzt Do’Urden would differ,” Ravel retorted.
“Drizzt Do’Urden survives only because he gives great pleasure to Lolth with his subversive antics. He fosters her play. I say again, House Baenre is doomed, and so will you both be if I let you continue along this path.”
“Maybe,” Saribel replied. “But let it at least be our path to choose.”
“If it’s doom, then so be it,” Ravel agreed. “I would clear my heart at the price of my life.”
“Eternal doom?” Tsabrak said to them.
“I don’t believe that,” Ravel said.
“Nor I,” Saribel agreed. “And if I was hearing you right, I’m not sure you do, either. Please, let us choose our own way and suffer the consequences as we may.”
“I won’t go back to what was before,” Ravel steadfastly added.
Tsabrak gave a helpless little laugh. “Matron Zeerith would never forgive me—”
“Would she forgive you killing us?” Ravel interrupted. “Because that is the only way for you to stop us.”
Tsabrak snorted and shook his head.
“We never had this conversation,” Saribel offered.
“You have no idea of the power you are going against, of the goddess whose memory is longer than those claimed by Yvonnel and Quenthel when they performed the great heresy.”
“Matron Mother Quenthel,” Ravel corrected as if he had caught Tsabrak in a major breach of Lolthian demands.
But the wizard scoffed again. “For what? Another day? For another hour?”
Ravel wanted to answer, but he found nothing to retort.
“And you,” Tsabrak said pointedly to Saribel with another snort of disgust. “You are in line to lead this family. Matron Zeerith is old . . . ancient. You are her prize child, first priestess, destined to rule House Xorlarrin—which is what we will be again.”
“If I am leading House Xorlarrin, or Do’Urden, or whatever name they next assign to our family, then know that House Xorlarrin will never find the blessing of Lolth. She is no longer in my heart, Archmage Tsabrak. I have seen the truth.”
“The truth?”
“I believe it to be that, yes. I have seen it and embraced it. It is not a matter of convenience to me, you see, not like it appears to be to Matron Zeerith, or to you. It is a matter of conscience, of principle. Of choice and of freedom. I have made my choice with all my heart. I cannot change that for my own personal gain, nor even for the welfare of House Xorlarrin, nor can I hide that from Lolth. I reject her, and to stop us, you must kill us. It is that simple.”
Tsabrak sighed heavily and stared at the two for a long while in silence. Then he shook his head. “You children think of staying alive as ‘convenience.’”
“We think as we think, not as Lolth would have us think.”
The wizard snorted.
“We never had this conversation,” Saribel said again.
The archmage glared at them, as if trying to instill some final lesson, then snapped his fingers and disappeared.
Both Saribel and Ravel heaved a sigh of relief. Tsabrak would have had little trouble in killing both of them, if he had so chosen, or even in simply catching them in some magical net and dragging them back before Matron Zeerith, their treachery revealed.
“Message your friends, and quickly, and I will do the same,” Saribel said a few heartbeats later. “We run straight for the lower rooms, gather Dinin Do’Urden, and use the gate into the deeper tunnels.”
Ravel just stood there, shaking his head and staring at where Tsabrak had been.
“Now,” Saribel implored him.
“I don’t understand,” Ravel answered.
“Understand what?”
“Tsabrak hates Lolth, or at least, certainly does not revere and love her. You heard him.”
“That surprises you? It is, as he said, for him a mere matter of survival. He is hardly the only one of great power who believes that. Even Matron Zeer . . . even our mother. Do you think her turnabout here is of the heart or of the mind?”
“But she is . . . a she!” Ravel replied. “As are you. The power here is yours to take and hold. Tsabrak has reached the limit of anything he could ever hope for, and still he remains beneath every matron of every house, every high priestess, even. Why would he stay in a society that forever makes of him a lesser class of drow simply because he is a man?”
“His power and his luxury come from the order of the matriarchy,” Saribel explained.
“To this level only.”
“To this level he might not have achieved without the structures now in place in the city.”
“I see no sense in it.”
“And yet, it is almost universal in the societies of Faerun, to some extent. It is present in many of the human kingdoms, certainly in the dwarven kingdoms. There is always some reason given by those in power to validate their position, and there are always many who glom on to that reason for the sake of their own advancement, however limited it might be within the order set by those in power. It is the way of things, I fear, and if we somehow get out of this alive, and to the surface, you will see it, my brother. Powerful people use whatever they can to eliminate competition throughout every institution they control. Never forget that.
“Go and gather those who choose to flee. Send your messages and make your way to the lower dining hall, where we will meet shortly, and from there to Dinin and to the gate to the lower tunnels.”
“And from there?”
“From there, we decide.”