As they rushed back to the east, the Callidaean square met only minor resistance—mostly chasmes and other flying fiends swooping down at them or dropping rocks or even drow bodies from above. However, by the time they got back near the Westrift, they had gained the attention of the right flank of the newest demonic horde. Avernil called for renewed shields of magical guardians and weapons, and ordered the ranks tightened.
A group of demons peeled away, charging for them. Zak thought they would have a chance here, except that centering the demon gang was a goristro, huge and powerful and in full charge. It alone could scatter the square with its seven tons of demonic muscle, flesh, and bone. Standing upright, the behemoth was nearly five times Zak’s height, but now it came forward in loping strides on all fours, like some cross between a gigantic rothé bull and a monstrous cave bear.
The litter on its shoulders turned on hinges as it went to all fours, keeping the three drow within upright. Priestesses of the Fane, Zak knew, and they were already casting spells—no doubt, defensive spells to ensure that the goristro would not be slowed or diverted.
“What type of fiend?” Galathae asked him, as Avernil and the others called for the Callidaeans to hold strong, and to slow their pace defensively.
“Goristro.”
“Of the Abyss?”
“Yes. What are you thinking?”
“Tighten the rank behind me,” Galathae instructed. “When I banish it, I will need you to keep the others from overwhelming me.”
“The priestesses . . .” Zak started to warn, but the paladin charged ahead.
“Get them moving!” she called back.
Zak was washed by a great moment of doubt. He knew that he should trust Galathae—she had earned that and more in their previous fight together. But he feared that she, like the others, had underestimated their foes, had seen their victory in the ambush outside the city as validation that their goddess would bring them through.
This was one of the most powerful of demonkind, below just the Abyssal lords themselves. And it had come from the Fane of the Goddess, the heart of Lolth within Menzoberranzan, and so likely summoned by the powerful Sos’Umptu Baenre, who ruled the Fane—perhaps that was even her among the three in the litter!
His hesitation cost him any choice in the matter, though, for Galathae was in a full sprint, Bluccidere bobbing beside her.
“Hurry! Hurry! To Galathae!” he cried.
“Holy Galathae!” came the refrain behind him, and the Callidaeans picked up their pace, though they surely could not match Galathae’s speed while holding their formation, or probably not, Zak saw, for she was running with the eager wings of her devotion lifting her feet.
“Hold on, good lady,” Zak whispered under his breath many times in those next few moments, sending silent pleas and prayers to the brave paladin leading the way.
He saw the blue-white mist forming around her, with her trailing it like smoke as she ran. She was calling forth the banishment, he knew, as she had done with the eye tyrant. Except, as she had explained it to him, since this goristro wasn’t of this plane, the banishment would not be a temporary reprieve. She would send this fiend away for a century.
The monstrous beast gained speed, leaving the other demons behind and closing fast on Galathae. Bolts of energy and fire reached down at her from the priestesses in the litter.
Galathae ran through them.
The paladin was chanting loudly now, falling fully into the trance of Eilistraee, as Zak had witnessed before. He took heart in knowing that even if those spells were inflicting damage, Galathae wasn’t feeling any pain.
Her song to the Dark Maiden rang loud and clear and seemed to be bolstering him and everyone around him, like the warmth he had felt from her mere presence when the eye tyrant had thrown its devastating rays at him. Her discipline, power, and inspiration were simply amazing to him, and for that one moment, Zaknafein thought there was nothing this wholehearted follower of Eilistraee could not do. She was a tiny thing indeed, charging into the bulk of the goristro, but she seemed so much more formidable and solid, somehow.
They came together, this strong aevendrow woman and the gigantic demon, with a great blinding flash of blue-white light.
The first thing Zak saw as his eyes adjusted was that the goristro was gone, simply gone, and his heart soared.
But so, too, was Galathae soaring, flying back through the air to tumble down hard to the ground halfway between the charging square and the point of impact.
Zak and Azzudonna sprinted ahead, calling desperately for their friend, who struggled to roll to her back, and trembled as she inched Bluccidere up and across her chest. Then she went still, so very still.
The demons were still coming on, but Zak slid to his knees beside the broken paladin, and indeed she was broken, her hips clearly out of joint, bone showing through one thigh, blood pouring from her nose and mouth and from a dozen other wounds.
“Hold on!” Zak begged her. “Call your healing spell. Galathae!”
She stared at him with eyes that would not blink. She raised her arms, her sword, toward Zaknafein.
“Take it,” he heard, though he wasn’t sure if he actually heard it with his ears or if it was just something echoing in his mind.
“Galathae, no, the priests are coming.”
“Take the sword.” This time it was Azzudonna telling him, and in a voice quaking and broken by sniffles.
Zak dropped his ice blade and grasped the hilt of Bluccidere, but not to take it from Galathae, just to support its weight in her trembling arms.
Her arms dropped immediately, though, falling limp across her shattered chest.
“Avernil!” Zak yelled.
“Behind you!” Azzudonna warned.
Zak leapt up and spun about, Bluccidere in his left and calling forth Soliardis in his right hand to meet the charge of a birdlike demon.
Rage filled him as he thought of his friend lying so still behind him. Anger drove his blades in a fast and devastating double-sweep, a backhand with Bluccidere sweeping across, with a forehand slash of Soliardis coming right behind it.
He pushed past the gashed and stumbling vrock and charged ahead, full of rage—and full of something else, he only then understood.
He felt something from the sword of Galathae, something comforting and assuring, telling him that everything was all right. Hardly even thinking of the movement, Zak flipped his blades, putting Bluccidere into his power hand, his right hand.
He called to no goddess, but he, too, fell into a trance, leaping and spinning, slashing and stabbing, running about guided only by whatever enemy was nearest.
Whenever he struck, he didn’t pause to follow up, but just kept moving along to the next target, gathering wounded demons in his wake.
He could feel their hatred, but so too their pain as Bluccidere bit hard into demon flesh and the radiance of Soliardis ate at them. Sun and ice. Opposites, and yet with the same effect.
Focused on him, that chasing mass of fiends seemed not to even notice that they were running now within the radius of the spiritual guardians of Avernil’s priests, that they were being stung and battered with every stride.
Zak turned on the nearest, a frog-like thing, and cut it down with a series of slashes that removed an arm and nearly its head, even though it had no true neck to sever.
Only then did he come back to the moment at hand fully, as if coming out of a trance lent to him by the spirit of Galathae. He glanced once at her, now being lifted by some Callidaeans, and he knew by the stillness of her body as they did that she was truly gone.
Galathae had given her life to remove the goristro from the field, and now the Callidaeans honored that by finishing this group that had come against them.
When their enemies were dispatched, Avernil called to re-form the square, and for Zaknafein to once again lead it front and center.
Zak looked down at Bluccidere, overwhelmed by it all.
“A paladin presented you her sword as her dying wish,” Azzudonna said to him, rushing back to his side. “Wield it well!”
“I am no paladin!”
“Bluccidere chose you, Galathae chose you, else the sword would not now let you hold it,” said Azzudonna. “That is a holy blade.”
“I am not a disciple of Eilistraee!”
“Who can say? Who can know what is in the heart of Zaknafein?”
“You do.”
Azzudonna smiled through her tears. “You declare your beliefs with your actions, not mere words, my love,” she said. “Bluccidere knows your heart, as did Galathae, as do I. Now, on we go, to fight, to die, if that is to be.”
“Go!” Avernil shouted from behind, and Zak’s glance forward explained the desperation in the priest’s voice.
For now, many enemies, demon and drow and even the enslaved peoples of Menzoberranzan, were rushing their way, with chasmes flying overhead.
Zak ran on, leading the way, but the enemy line was too far ahead, he knew, and he and the Callidaeans would not break free.
Then he took heart, for they were not alone.
The banners of Baenre showed as those forces ran in retreat, and fought through the nearest enemies to join with the Callidaeans.
“To the Bazaar and south to House Baenre!” Zak called to them as they neared.
“Zaknafein?” came a call of obvious surprise, and Zak recognized the leader of the allied force as Weapon Master Andzrel Baenre.
“Well met!” he called out.
“We shall see,” Andzrel replied.
And so began the long and perilous run of the joined forces—Baenre, Blaspheme, and Callidaean—with more than a mile to go along the winding ways before they reached the gates of House Baenre.
Zak was a veteran of many battles, but even if he were not, the answer before him was obvious: many would not make it.
Entreri led the way through House Melarn, moving far enough ahead of Gromph and Catti-brie to quietly dispatch any wandering guards before his two companions came into view, and relaying back news of larger Melarni forces in side corridors and rooms.
Gromph tapped every door they passed with his staff, placing upon them a magical lock. “Speak the name of the giantess at the Hosttower and the doors will open for you,” he whispered to Catti-brie. “Do not, and you will have to batter the door down to get through.”
The wizard and Catti-brie came around a corner to find a Melarni woman lying on the floor. Beyond her was an open doorway, and beyond that stood Entreri, signaling to them that the side room was occupied and large.
Gromph cast a spell, creating a disembodied eyeball floating in the air before him. It seemed solid at first, but then faded to become translucent, and even though they watched its initial movements, the other two could barely track it as Gromph sent it ahead to peer into the room’s open door.
The wizard closed his eyes for a moment, then gave a shrug that seemed almost bored, almost as if he thought this a trivial matter as he moved near to the door. Casting again, he created a small ball of flame in his hand. He tossed it into the room, enacted a simple cantrip to bring the door swinging shut, then walked past, tapping the door with his staff to seal it and noting not at all the shudder from within as his fireball exploded, nor the licks of flames that came from around the door in its frame, from underneath the opening at the bottom with such intensity that they singed his boots.
There came some agonized screaming from within, the fires devouring drow. Catti-brie and Entreri exchanged looks, even the assassin clearly taken aback by the sheer brutality and mercilessness of Gromph.
But that was how it had to be, Catti-brie understood, nodding to Entreri, her expression grim. They weren’t here to parlay—the time for that seemed long past.
Clearly unperturbed, Gromph motioned for Entreri to hurry on his way and guide them to Matron Zhindia.
Entreri showed Gromph his dagger once more. “I will find her,” he promised. “And I will convince her that she should speak with you.” He nodded back toward the sealed door. “How do you know that all in there are de . . . no longer a threat?”
Gromph chortled.
“Stupid question,” Catti-brie noted.
“Apparently,” said Entreri. “We are nearing the side of the compound which houses the noble family. Let us hope Zhindia is at home.”
“Your task is her alone now,” Gromph reminded him, and once more, the wizard covered Entreri with a cloak of invisibility. “Ignore any guards you can quietly pass. Stay as well concealed as you can manage even with the enchantment I have placed upon you,” Gromph warned. “No simple spell of invisibility will get you through the corridors about the chambers of one as strong and cunning as Zhindia Melarn.”
“I’m aware,” Entreri said, and with a shake of his head at the patronizing archmage, off he went, into the shadows, the other two moving more cautiously and quite conspicuously behind.
As he crept along, he thought of how Gromph could have made them both invisible as well, as could Catti-brie, for that matter, and for a moment, Entreri was confused.
Then he nodded as he came to understand. His companions weren’t shying from any fights from this point on. They would welcome the attention so that he could get to Zhindia while her minions were otherwise engaged with them. Whether that mattered wasn’t clear—Gromph’s plan still seemed unlikely to him. Would one as zealous as Matron Zhindia Melarn simply throw aside that loyalty to Lolth and surrender her lofty ambitions?
The assassin felt his dagger hilt and wondered if the deception would be enough.
Yes, Zhindia knew what it had done to her daughter. And it made sense to surmise that it would do her no good to hang on to her loyalty to Lolth if she was going to be sent beyond the Spider Queen’s grasp into the void of obliteration.
Except, of course, that was an empty threat, and that gave Enteri pause.
What other choice did they have, though? And maybe the subterfuge would work. The mere fact that Gromph was so determined to try ignited a thousand more questions in the assassin’s mind, but those were questions for another day, for now the present demanded his every attention.
No matter what, he thought, he’d have a knife to the matron’s neck, and even if he didn’t destroy her soul, he could spill her blood.
He found that his memory of the house layout was correct, as he passed by many more sentries in short order, too alert and too close together for him to surreptitiously clear the way for his two partners.
That wasn’t his job, though. And besides, Gromph and Catti-brie hardly needed him to deal with some minor house guards.
He came upon a door he recognized, and knew beyond it lay Zhindia’s war room. He recalled a fight in there from his last visit to House Melarn, and pictured the layout and large table.
He cracked open the door and peered in, then pulled away immediately to find that the table was ringed not by Melarni priestesses, but by ugly demonic creatures. Yochlols, he knew, the Handmaidens of Lolth.
He peeked in once more.
Zhindia wasn’t there.
He listened to the chatter of the demons, though he didn’t know their language well enough to decipher much.
He peeked in once more when he heard a woman’s voice addressing the yochlols, and in common Drow, a language Entreri knew well.
“Matron Zhindia will join you shortly,” the priestess told them. “She remains in her private quarters in preparation.”
How convenient, Entreri thought, but he wasn’t about to question his luck. Unless the layout of the house had been changed, he knew the way.
He neared Zhindia’s door soon after, but stopped and ducked to the side when the two guards before it perked up suddenly. They hadn’t seen him, though, he realized a moment later, when the jolting report of a lightning bolt echoed somewhere behind him.
Gromph and Catti-brie, he understood—just as he understood they didn’t know about the handmaidens!
One of the guards pushed open Zhindia’s door and called inside. A sharp response came from within and the guard fell back, then gathered up her peer and the two ran off to join the fight, drawing their swords as they went.
Entreri knew that he had to trust his friends—even with the yochlols, should those demons even join the fight, he had to believe that Gromph and Catti-brie could handle it.
His job lay before him.
He went to the door and glanced in.
Zhindia was at her desk across the way, her back to him.
Silent as death, Artemis Entreri entered her chamber.
Catti-brie and Gromph crouched on opposite sides of an intersection of two corridors. Behind them, the Melarni guards had scattered under the thunder of a Gromph lightning bolt, but there remained commotion down there and they both knew that they would soon be assailed from behind once again.
Catti-brie worked hard, delving into her spell repertoire to put as many wards and fortifications as she could upon herself and on her partner, as he, too, worked.
Before them, the resistance was heavier, with priestesses and a pair of wizards returning magical destruction. A fireball went off right above and between the two, filling the corridors about them.
Catti-brie’s skin reddened under the heat, but her spells fended the brunt of the blast. She renewed them, as Gromph returned the fireball in kind, only with one many times more powerful.
Screams from ahead in the corridor told Catti-brie that their enemies were not as well warded.
“Keep moving forward,” Gromph instructed, putting action to his words and stepping into the main corridor, inviting her to fall in right behind him.
A hail of crossbow bolts and javelins flew at him, but he had enacted a magical shield and that first volley of missiles was fully blocked.
A lightning bolt followed, sizzling down the hallway, a swarm of missiles of magical energy on the lightning’s heels.
But Gromph held up his staff and the lightning bolt struck its tip and was absorbed. The missiles, too, went into that powerful item, as if it simply ate them—only to regurgitate them, flinging them back down the corridor the way they had come. One unfortunate guard took that moment to stand and level his crossbow.
The swarm blew him from his feet—literally. Catti-brie tried not to grimace at the sight of a pair of boots left standing where the guard once was.
“Keep moving,” Gromph said.
Zhindia seemed in no hurry to join the yochlols, nor was she showing any urgency in this room, even though the report of the lightning strikes could be heard not so far away. She sat in meditation, seemingly, her back to the door, hands folded before her, at a desk in front of a mirror.
Entreri looked for some clue that he had been seen when he entered the room. He was invisible, yes, but was Zhindia aware of him? Of anything?
It didn’t really matter. His companions were waging a fight down there, one he could stop fast by arriving with this particular prisoner.
Her eyes were closed, he noted from the reflection in the mirror as he slowly and silently approached.
Then he was there, at her side, with a sudden rush, and he drew out his dagger and put it against her throat, coming visible as he nicked her, just a bit.
Zhindia’s eyes popped open wide and she made a little hissing sound.
“You dare to enter my chamber? To threaten me, the Chosen of Lolth?”
“Now you are my chosen. And I choose to do with you whatever I will.”
“You believe you can do anything to me?”
“I do. You do not recognize me, it seems,” Entreri whispered to her, moving his lips right beside her ear. He saw himself in the mirror and admired the job he had done in disguising himself as a drow.
“Do you recognize this, perhaps?” He called forth the magic of the jeweled dagger, drawing a bit of her life force through its vampiric blade. The blade could still do that much, even though its soul-destroying curse had been removed.
Zhindia stiffened in her chair. She had felt the former and clearly did not know about the latter.
“Yes, look at it closely, Zhindia Melarn,” Entreri whispered. “You have seen this dagger before. It took from you your daughter. It took your daughter from Lolth.”
“What do you want? Are you mad? The tortures that await—”
“Shut up,” Entreri said, and he scraped the blade against her skin. “You think you can possibly be in a god’s favor when you don’t even exist? What good is the service you’ve shown to Lolth if you are forever taken from her? You understand that, don’t you?”
“I don’t know that there have been many human driders.”
“You can avoid the fate,” Entreri said, ignoring her threat, or at least, making it seem like he was ignoring her threat—he had to admit he was a little impressed at the drow’s bravado. “We want this war ended and you can do that. And if you do that, I will not take from you your soul.”
“Is that why you have come to this house with Gromph Baenre and Catti-brie Do’Urden, Artemis Entreri?” she replied calmly. “To threaten my eternal soul?”
He started to respond, but got caught by the notion that she not only knew his name, but the names of his companions. He asked the question with his expression in the mirror.
“And with a dagger that is no longer even capable of such a feat.”
And Zhindia, who was much more than Zhindia Melarn, gave him his answer. She didn’t change position, but she grew, suddenly and violently, sprouting eight legs from her two, gaining in size to dwarf the man, her sheer increase in bulk sending him flying backward.
Entreri hopped back to his feet and reached for his sword.
But he knew . . .
He knew the futility of any weapon—cursed or not—in this chamber, and he reached instead for the door, bursting out of the room with the avatar of Lolth close behind.
The two of them fell into a beautiful and harmonious rhythm, Gromph filling the corridor behind with fireball after fireball, knowing that the doors had all been magically sealed, and thus offering the attackers few places to hide from the biting flames. To the right—as he was on the right-hand side of the intersection—he favored lightning bolts, launching a devastating and blinding flash when an enemy appeared.
And before him, where the corridor widened considerably into an interior courtyard before the section housing the nobles, and the defenders had cover in the form of strategic barricades and unsealed doors, Gromph chased them with psychic attacks, from which they could not hide.
For Catti-brie, the course of spells depended more on the actions of the enemy. Whenever an attack of some various elemental magic came in, she countered with protections. Her healing spells flew constantly, minor ones, to keep both herself and her companion free of pain so that they could better concentrate on the task at hand.
When a priestess leaped out in the left-hand corridor, not too far from Catti-brie, she stole the spell right from the woman’s mouth with a countering chant, then hit her hard with a jolt of wind that sent her flying backward.
She turned her attention back to healing and protective spells when a fireball exploded above the intersection, then felt her hair fly wildly from the tingling of a lightning bolt that began right beside her, one thrown from Gromph down the hall at the priestess she had been battling.
When the flames cleared, Catti-brie looked that way to see the priestess crumbled and smoking before the charred door at the end of that corridor.
I believe we two could level half the city! she heard in her mind, and she glanced over to see a wink from the archmage.
Their coordination was so instinctive, so seamless, that Catti-brie wasn’t sure she doubted him.
She dared to hope.
And that hope only grew when the corridors about their position quieted.
“Entreri?” she whispered across the hall to Gromph, who stood ready but was not in the act of spellcasting.
She looked down the hall beyond the wizard, then back behind them both, and then forward again, toward the region known to house the Melarni nobles. Their enemies were still all about, she noted, but not a whisper could be heard.
Ahead and to the right, a door opened, and a parade of yochlols came through.
“Gromph?” Catti-brie whispered with some urgency, and heard in her head in response, Hold . . . Entreri is persuasive. Yochlols are not formidable in battle.
“But where is he?” she asked, and the wizard shook his head. She wanted to trust in Entreri’s abilities—she had seen them personally over the course of many years and knew that there was none better at the art of assassination than Artemis Entreri.
Still, the hairs on the back of her neck were standing up. Had he neutralized House Melarn?
Unlike the quiet entrance of the handmaidens, a door across the courtyard before them to the left burst open suddenly, and Artemis Entreri came running through, darting left and right and diving repeatedly as if expecting a rain of missiles.
He headed straight for Gromph and Catti-brie, yelling, “Run!”
But the word elongated, stretched weirdly as Artemis Entreri stretched weirdly, caught by some shadowy arms that confused Catti-brie for just a moment—until she saw the giant drider that was obviously much more than a drider coming through the same door, bursting the jamb and the wall about it as it simply plowed through with godlike power.
Or with goddess-like power.
And her hope faded to nothing.