“What have you done?” Jarlaxle screamed at Mez’Barris, the mercenary leader trembling visibly, shaking his head weirdly as if in utter denial, as his dear friend and co-leader of Bregan D’aerthe had become a giant splatter and nothing more within the bubble floating above him.
Mez’Barris’s laughter nearly drowned out the gasping and sobbing of Dab’nay, who was also inside that gore-filled orb, though no one could see her clearly any longer.
“What have I done?” Mez’Barris replied. “What have you done, Jarlaxle? Siding with heretics!”
“Bregan D’aerthe did not choose—”
“Stop this ridiculous charade! You did! You chose!” Mez’Barris screamed at him. “And now the last of those fool Oblodrans is dead, and soon so shall you be.”
Drizzt aimed his bow at Mez’Barris and called to Dab’nay.
“Throw down your weapons and kneel,” Mez’Barris calmly ordered. She thrust a scepter up above her head and a curtain of black smoke fell from the ceiling all about the room, covering every wall and every door. Wisps of flames and sparks of lightning showed within its shadows. “There is no way out.”
“No surrender,” Drizzt heard Jarlaxle mutter, and it was all he needed to hear. He could feel the tingling energy of the curtain and the heat of the flames within, but he agreed with Jarlaxle.
To the death.
He let fly his arrow, straight for Mez’Barris, but it struck an invisible wall of magical force right before it reached the altar area, again dissipating into a shower of harmless sparks.
The line of priestesses standing before Mez’Barris began casting.
Kaitain lifted his hands to throw his magic.
Matron Mez’Barris began to chant and wave the scepter, and the huge statues, spiders and images of Lolth, lining the chapel walls began to awaken.
There were too many. He and Jarlaxle were too few. They couldn’t win.
Still, Drizzt called upon his innermost disciplines, became the Hunter—no, something more—became that combination of the feral warrior and the disciplined monk, as Grandmaster Kane had taught him.
It wouldn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. Not against this.
They couldn’t win.
They would fight, though. Drizzt just hoped that he would die cleanly, and that perhaps he could take Malagdorl or Mez’Barris with him. He wouldn’t even look at the statues, no, for those were house guardian constructs and would not go out in the wider battle. His duty now was to inflict as much damage on their living enemies as possible.
The worst thing would be to be captured—that would give them great strength.
He would not let that happen.
To the death, then, and let it be with the knowledge that Catti-brie and Brie, and everyone he loved, would be better off for his effort.
“The house lies mostly within the wall and can be defended,” Zak told Avernil, who rushed up to him as soon as the horde of powerful demons came into view. “The defenders on the balcony see us and know that we share a common foe.”
Ahdin Duine overheard the two. “I will go!” she said, and on Avernil’s nod, and before Zak could protest, the young woman sprinted off, calling for Galathae to give her a blessing.
A beam of light flew out from Bluccidere to Ahdin Duine and she seemed lighter in her step, and faster. Following in her wake, the square began an organized and calm approach, and Zak was glad that they had at last taken his advice.
To remain out here against the force fast approaching was to be destroyed.
His hopes grew when a group of the defenders of House Do’Urden began throwing their magic at a pack of demons moving to block Ahdin Duine, reducing their numbers considerably with missiles of magical energy and a streaking lightning bolt, followed by a fireball carefully placed so that its flames would not reach the running woman.
A pair of minor fiends managed to escape the carnage and moved before Ahdin Duine to intercept her, but the athletic aevendrow jumped, planted, and leaped over them with a twisting somersault.
Despite the danger, Zak chuckled in admiration, and remembered his match in the half barrel of frozen grapes against this formidable young warrior.
“She will join Biancorso,” Azzudonna whispered to him. “Perhaps take the spot I had planned for you.”
Zak smiled all the wider.
Ahdin Duine’s path to the gates of House Do’Urden was open now; she had free rein to announce the allies.
Until something changed.
More defenders appeared on the balcony. Zak noted some arguing up there, with one man throwing up his hands in seeming disgust and turning away.
The newcomers took up the fight.
A trio of lightning bolts and a swarm of magical missiles swept down from the balcony . . .
All aimed at Ahdin Duine.
She fell from sight as more enemies crowded into the path she had taken, but the last thing Zak saw of the young woman was her lying flat on the ground, bouncing limply as the storm of lightning that scorched her and the ground all about her continued.
“They think us enemies!” one priest yelled from behind the front lines.
Azzudonna and Ayeeda cried out in angry denial.
Galathae turned a scowl at Zak, who had no answers. Had he misread the battle here entirely?
No, that could not be.
“Where now?” the paladin demanded of him.
Zak didn’t immediately answer, entranced by the continuing shift in the battle. Across the way, forces he thought allies, carrying the banners of House Baenre, had also turned for House Do’Urden with the arrival of the new and more powerful demonic horde.
Except now they, too, were being assailed from above, from the balconies of the house they had been defending.
“What is happening?” Avernil demanded of Zak, who had no real answers.
“Our enemies have taken House Do’Urden,” he said unconvincingly.
“Where for us, then?” he was asked once again.
Zak felt the eyes of all upon him, with enemies drawing near. They were short on time and options—they had come in thinking to join allies in House Do’Urden, and with no fallback. He tried to recall everything Jarlaxle had told him about the fight—which houses were allied and which enemies—and everything he once knew of Menzoberranzan.
“The Qu’ellarz’orl,” Zak blurted, pointing to the southeast. “House Baenre. Back to the rift and east alongside it and all the way to the marketplace.”
“House Baenre is our ally?” Azzudonna asked.
“If they’re not, the battle is already lost. Be quick now!”
The square reversed, moving across the open ground as they backtracked. They had a few moments of reprieve, out of range of the enemies on House Do’Urden’s balconies, and with only a few demons to dispatch, but it wouldn’t last, Zak knew. Before they reached the end of the Westrift, they would have to punch through the end of the line of the new and more powerful demons that had come onto the battlefield.
He glanced back once, across the way, to see the Baenres and their allies also fleeing from the ground before House Do’Urden.
Something had happened in there only very recently, he realized, and it was nothing good for their cause.
“We have brought friends,” Yiccardaria announced to Matron Zhindia.
Zhindia stared at the handmaiden and at Eskavidne, who stood at Yiccardaria’s side, but she hardly registered the words, as she hardly registered the six other yochlols standing behind the pair.
“Ah, sister, she felt the presence,” Eskavidne said.
“Was it . . . ?” Zhindia breathlessly asked.
“Do you doubt?” Yiccardaria said, and there was a threat in her tone.
“Of course not . . . I mean, I only doubted that Lolth would think us so worthy as to grace us—”
“Enough,” said Yiccardaria. “The Lady is coming here and you are blessed to be the host. We have much to do. Your plans to show Matron Zeerith the truth of her betrayal and the promise of what House Xorlarrin could again become have worked out so very well. Matron Zeerith rejects the call of the heretics now. She has turned her wizards and priestesses upon the Baenre and Blaspheme forces outside of her house and they are fleeing across the city to hide in their hole, an unstoppable army on their heels. The Lady would congratulate you personally.”
As she spoke, Eskavidne moved back to the other yochlols and they formed a circle, all seven chanting a common refrain.
Zhindia felt her legs go weak. “Then victory is at hand,” she said.
“Did you ever doubt it?” Yiccardaria asked from the circle as she joined in the summoning.
“Quickly, we must be gone,” Ravel said to Dinin when he and Saribel entered the lowest chamber of House Do’Urden. The wizard ran to the center of the room, took a deep and steadying breath, and began opening the gate to the room that led to the tunnels below.
“Are we certain of this?” Saribel asked him, stopping him. “There will be no return.”
Ravel paused in his casting. “You sounded quite sure of yourself when we confronted Tsabrak,” Ravel replied.
“But now it is so very real.”
“It’s always been real,” Ravel said, but also nodded—he felt the same way. “If we stay, Dinin is doomed and all that we hoped for is lost, likely forevermore.”
Both turned to regard the former elderboy of House Do’Urden, who just stood there, unblinking, having moved not at all from where he was when they had entered the room.
“Dinin?” Saribel asked, to no response.
The two stared at him in confusion, until Tsabrak walked into the room.
“I thought we agreed,” Ravel said.
“I will allow you to make your own choice, stupid as it is,” Tsabrak replied. “I sense that Lolth wishes it this way so she can know the true hearts of those who follow her. She will not be angry with me for letting you go, but him?” He pointed to Dinin. “That is a different matter.”
“He gets to choose,” Saribel argued.
“I will make of him a perfect gift,” Tsabrak said. “If my allowing you to leave is discovered, then this will be my bargain.”
“No,” Saribel said. “You cannot have him.”
“You cannot stop me.”
“Perhaps the two of us cannot,” Ravel said.
“But we can,” said another wizard, entering the room with several of his peers and a trio of priestesses.
Tsabrak stared at the crew for a long while. “A full mutiny when Matron Zeerith needs you most of all?”
“Matron Zeerith’s fate is for the Lolthians to decide,” Saribel said. “She surrendered to them and their ways.”
“But her house will be weaker!”
“Why would she care if she had the blessing of Lolth?” came Ravel’s biting response. “Free Dinin Do’Urden of your spell and let us be on our way.”
Tsabrak again glanced all around, as if weighing his odds. He knew these wizards and priestesses, and even a small group of warriors who arrived only then.
“Tell Matron Zeerith that you tried to stop us but could not,” Saribel offered.
“Or fall now in a blaze of Lolthian glory,” Ravel added, drawing a hateful glare from the archmage.
“Be careful your tongue, boy,” Tsabrak warned.
Ravel smiled, but was wise enough to let it go at that. He aspired to one day be as strong as Tsabrak and he wasn’t ready to take that one on.
“Go and report us, if it will . . .” Saribel started to say, but Tsabrak was already gone, once again in a puff of smoke.
The enchantment on Dinin broke, leaving him confused, but not about to argue when Ravel opened the gate to the lower chamber beyond House Do’Urden. The troupe set off fast through the tunnels, discussing whether their course should be House Baenre or Lake Donigarten.
“You felt it?” Matron Mother Quenthel Baenre asked Myrineyl and Minolin Fey, who walked the parapets of the great house beside her. Far in the distance to the north and west, they could see the flashes and hear the resounding thunder.
“The vibrations of the thunder? Yes, of course,” Minolin Fey replied, and Myrineyl nodded.
Quenthel stared at them in confusion. Of course they had felt the reports of the spell battles raging near House Do’Urden, but in light of that other sensation, that most dire and overwhelming realization that the avatar of Lady Lolth had come to Menzoberranzan, how could they think those thunderous booms even mattered?
Because they had not felt it, Quenthel realized. It had been a message from Lolth, a telepathic announcement to the Matron Mother. To the other matrons, as well, she wondered, or just to her? Had it been a warning perhaps for her to get the City of Spiders back into the fold?
Quenthel didn’t know what to make of it, or what to think—except she knew without hesitation that she would not heed whatever call Lolth might be sending.
“Where is Yvonnel?” she asked her companions.
The two looked to each other and shrugged. “With Jarlaxle, I had thought,” Minolin Fey replied.
“And where is Jarlaxle?”
This time, the other two could only shake their heads.
“Find him,” Quenthel ordered. “Find Yvonnel. I must speak with her immediately.”
“I will go,” Myrineyl offered and trotted off.
“Set every wizard and priestess who is not otherwise engaged to the task as well,” Quenthel called after her.
Quenthel knew that what she had felt was surely the presence of Lolth. That the others hadn’t sensed it was perhaps important, perhaps not, but one thing she was fairly certain of: if Lolth was sending her a message, or offering intimidation, she was likely doing the same to Yvonnel.
“Relay word to our guarding force to bring all of House Hunzrin here, through the tunnels,” Quenthel added.
“Here?” asked a surprised Minolin Fey.
“Prisoners,” Quenthel explained. “Send word far and wide to collect prisoners. As many as we can.”
Minolin Fey stared at her for just a few moments. “You think we will need to bargain our way out of this,” she said, her tone making it clear that it was an accusation.
Quenthel offered a little smile that was meant to be reassuring, but Minolin Fey’s scowl did not diminish.
“You did not feel it,” Quenthel offered.
“The battle?”
“Her,” explained Quenthel, to a puzzled expression.
“Her,” she said again, more insistently.
“I don’t . . .”
Then she caught on, her eyes going wide.
“Prisoners,” Quenthel said. “As many as we can take, and bring them here, fully under our control.”
This time, Minolin Fey didn’t question.
Drizzt worked his shots along the wall, one end to the other in a continuing stream, searching for an opening, for some way to get at the Del’Armgo nobles. Blue sparks flew from every impact.
“The statues,” Jarlaxle warned, and Drizzt had no choice but to drop the bow and draw his blades.
Jarlaxle looked over at him and shook his head—he had no tricks to play. There was no way out.
Sitting on her throne behind the invisible wall, Matron Mez’Barris looked like a satisfied cat, and Drizzt wondered if she was purring.
“Uthegen . . .” she started to say, but caught herself and giggled with what seemed a bit of embarrassment. “Malagdorl,” she corrected, “will kill you now, Drizzt Do’Urden.”
He doubted she would allow a fair fight, but however he was slain, she’d make sure her beloved Malagdorl would get all the credit, no doubt.
“Go and kill him, my hero,” she said to the large man beside her, and she glanced back at the wizard Kaitain, who nodded.
Malagdorl lifted his arms high and issued a great war cry, Khazid’hea in one hand, that black adamantine trident in the other.
Jarlaxle sent a blob of goo at him from his wand, but it hit the magical wall and could not even find a hold there, sliding down.
“At least kill him,” Jarlaxle said to Drizzt, who had every intention of doing just that.
Malagdorl dropped Khazid’hea to the floor, simply let it go. If that action surprised Drizzt, what was even more shocking was when, arms still above his head, he grasped the trident with both hands, then spun down and around, driving the tines right into the face of Matron Mez’Barris!
So sudden and lethal was the blow that she didn’t even gurgle, just sat locked in place right there with one tine below her chin into her neck, a second through her cheek beside the base of her nose, and the third through the side of her forehead.
With an extended growl, Malagdorl twisted the weapon shaft, the tines tearing flesh and breaking bone.
The top of Mez’Barris’s head flopped over.
The brutal warrior then spun about, whipping his weapon around and launching the missile that was dead Mez’Barris into her daughter and the nearest priestesses lined before the throne. He scooped the scepter from the seat where it had fallen, pointed it at the invisible wall, then flung it ahead—to Jarlaxle, for there was no longer the wall of magical force to stop it!
Then Malagdorl grabbed up Khazid’hea once more and leaped for the stunned priestesses.
Taayrul disappeared in the flash of a recall, clearly wanting no part of this. Behind the throne, an overwhelmed Kaitain, too, wanted nothing to do with this disastrous turn.
And those remaining priestesses, without a magical egress available, scrambled and cried for mercy as Malagdorl fell over them.
Those who did get away from the rampaging man were cut down by Taulmaril.
Drizzt couldn’t understand what he was seeing, but he wasn’t about to pause and question the inexplicable turn of fate. He turned to shoot the nearest statue, but held up, for it was no longer moving. He turned back to Jarlaxle, holding the scepter up above his head and smiling widely.
“It is Kimmuriel,” Jarlaxle explained, a bit of wonder in his voice.
Above them, the bubble burst and Dab’nay tumbled down amid the shower of Kimmuriel’s remains.
Before them, the last of the priestesses tried to flee, but Malagdorl was there, cutting them apart with Khazid’hea. And when one neared the rear door, she could not leave, as the magical curtain remained.
A thrown trident skewered her, snapping her backbone. An arrow from Taulmaril finished her as she slumped.
Then it was suddenly quiet, eerily so.
Dab’nay began to sob. She tried to stand, but slipped in the remains of Kimmuriel and fell hard.
Drizzt was by her side, helping her up, while Jarlaxle cut Braelin down from his web bindings. Braelin couldn’t begin to stand, but the giant drow warrior walked over and hoisted him easily over his shoulder.
“I cannot hold this much longer,” Malagdorl said, and it was obviously Kimmuriel forcing the words out of the mouth of his living marionette.
“We’re still trapped,” Drizzt said, but as he did, Jarlaxle lifted the scepter and whispered something and the magical curtain fell.
And Jarlaxle’s smile widened as he turned to the statues.
“We have new allies.”