“He is going to get himself killed,” Kaitain Armgo dared to reply.
Matron Mez’Barris glared at the wizard.
“I do not wish this!” Kaitain was quick to add. “But Malagdorl is determined to get to this Blaspheme leader whatever the risk.”
“Which is why I appointed you to stay with him and magically extract him if there is a need,” Mez’Barris responded.
“As I did in the first fight against the Do’Urden compound,” the wizard hesitantly answered, knowing that he was on delicate ground here with Mez’Barris, who considered Malagdorl the reincarnation of her lover, Uthegentel Del’Armgo, who had been her patron and the father of her five daughters. Malagdorl was huge like Uthegentel, full of fury and muscle. And now he looked very much like that slain warrior of old, for Mez’Barris had given him Uthegentel’s black armor and adamantine trident, and had styled his white hair in a row of crown spikes and filled his face with pins and rings. There had been much whispering about the Barrison Del’Armgo compound when Mez’Barris had made her adoration for the young man so obvious and taken him in so close to her, but of course, all of it was flattering to Mez’Barris and to her new consort, or whatever it was that Malagdorl, her grandson, had become.
“You took him from his victory, so Malagdorl says,” Mez’Barris teased. “He would have finished with the Blaspheme witch then and there.”
Behind the matron, Taayrul Armgo, her daughter and First Priestess of the house, nodded and smiled.
But Kaitain wasn’t being baited into such an argument. Matron Mez’Barris knew well that he had saved Malagdorl that day, for this leader of the Blaspheme force of former Abyssal driders had found assistance in that fight and was surely going to defeat Malagdorl. Malagdorl knew it, too, though the overly proud warrior would never admit it.
“Mal’a’voselle Amvas Tol is no easy opponent,” Kaitain said instead. “I have no doubts that your grandson . . .” He hesitated there, just because he enjoyed seeing Mez’Barris’s face tighten in simmering anger.
“He is the weapon master of House Barrison Del’Armgo,” she said through gritted teeth, and Kaitain suddenly rethought his taunting game. “You will refer to him in no other manner of familiarity.”
“My pardon, my matron,” Kaitain said with a bow.
“Continue . . . carefully.”
“She is formidable,” Kaitain explained. “As strong as any drow in Menzoberranzan, other than Malagdorl. She fights with the skill of a weapon master.”
“And she would have killed Malagdorl? The pride of our house?”
“Not alone, no. Of course not. But in the tide of that battle, she found allies, where he did not.”
“Even though Kaitain was there with him,” Taayrul said from behind Mez’Barris.
“I was opening the portal to take us home, as I had been instructed,” Kaitain said without hesitation, and without surprise that Mez’Barris’s nasty daughter would take that thread to its absurd and insulting end. “The force Matron Zhindia sent to battle the Do’Urdens that day was not meant to win, but to make our enemy show their hand. And they did, and that hand was the Blaspheme. How much we did learn of them!”
He noted Taayrul snorting and rolling her eyes.
“But your matron had been explicit to me in her instructions,” Kaitain went on, now aiming his words at the First Priestess. “We were there to observe, not to engage, and to remain outside the fray for matters as political as practical. My duty was to return us safely home, Malagdorl most especially, and so I did. In his fight with Mal’a’voselle, another had joined against him, a skilled warrior whom I believe to have been none other than the prize now captured and kept by Matron Zhindia, Dinin Do’Urden. This ally came in unexpectedly and had Malagdorl at a sudden disadvantage. I could not allow the risk.”
“You did the right thing that day,” Mez’Barris finally admitted. “But if Dinin, or whoever it was, had not joined the battle?”
“Mal’a’voselle Amvas Tol would be another name in Malagdorl’s long list of vanquished foes, of course.”
It wasn’t what Kaitain expected when Mez’Barris leaned in and asked sincerely and quietly, “He can beat her?”
“He can beat anyone,” Kaitain replied.
Mez’Barris nodded. “Then get him out to the West Wall. Matron Zhindia will be putting more pressure on that foolish Matron Zeerith, who rules House Do’Urden, as we try to weaken her alliance with the Baenres. The fighting will be constant in that region, and no doubt, the Blaspheme will join. Find a way, I charge you. Get Malagdorl his battle with this ugly woman from another millennium, and let him get his victory.
“And you,” she said, glancing over her shoulder to regard her daughter. “You will go with them and make sure that Malagdorl is not too seriously injured. But hear me, both of you: Our weapon master’s win will be honorable. He will kill this Mal’a’voselle creature of his own accord. Just do not allow her friends to intervene this time.”
Kaitain locked stares with Taayrul, who was as unhappy with having to go along as he was in having her, but bowed deeply and said, “Of course, Matron. Your every word is my command.”
“They’ll not relent,” Saribel told Matron Zeerith inside the House Do’Urden compound.
Her brother, Ravel, added with heavy sarcasm, “Matron Zhindia is trying to show us a better path.”
Saribel snapped a glare over to the wizard. She didn’t disagree with Ravel, but sometimes such things were better left unspoken.
“They have not breached the compound at all?” Matron Zeerith asked her two children.
“No,” answered Saribel. “But on more than one occasion, I believe they could have.”
“As I said . . .” Ravel began, but quieted when another scowl came at him from his sister.
“You are rested,” said Zeerith. “Now go and rally our forces. The Baenres will come to sweep clear our porch as soon as they have finished the newest demon wave in the Braeryn.”
“Should we not hold priority over the fighting in the Braeryn?” Ravel asked.
“Perhaps Matron Mother Quenthel holds more faith in us than you do,” Zeerith said to him. The matron was perturbed and on edge, and Ravel read that clearly enough to finally shut his mouth and keep it shut.
“Your magic is needed—now go,” Zeerith finished with a wave of her hand, and the two left the audience chamber.
“You do not disagree with me, yet you hush me like a child,” Ravel complained to Saribel when they were out alone in the corridor. “Zhindia is clearly trying to persuade us to abandon our alliance with the Baenres. Do you not think our mother should understand this?”
“Matron Zeerith,” Saribel corrected, for such a term of familiarity as Ravel had used should not be spoken aloud where anyone might overhear, “is more than seven centuries old and has witnessed many wars in this city. She knows the way of things and doesn’t need us troubling her with such repetitive information.”
“Zhindia—”
“Matron Zhindia,” Saribel angrily corrected.
“If we are fighting with the Baenre heretics, then why?” a frustrated Ravel returned, holding his hands up in the air as if he wanted to claw at something, anything, in anger. “The incessant knee-bending is exactly the indoctrination of Lolth, is it not? The constant reminder of our place in a hierarchy that allows us to even exist only under their suffrage?”
“We do not know the disposition of anything as of now. Better for you and for me to continue our proper practices.”
“Our proper Lolthian practices, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“Because you expect Matron Zhindia to make an offer to Matron Zeerith, and are not certain which way our mothe . . . Matron Zeerith will go.”
“Her responsibility is to our house, first and foremost.”
“That is the Lolthian way,” Ravel said, dripping sarcasm on every syllable.
“It is the practical way,” Saribel said with her jaws clenched. She glanced all around, then pulled her brother into a small room and shut the door. “However Matron Zeerith decides, she must know we’re with her.”
“Are we?”
“For now, yes. When the blood dries, then we will choose.”
“I have already chosen.”
“As have I. What I say to you here matters not, because Lolth surely knows that my heart has abandoned her.”
“Yet you still find divine power to cast.”
Saribel shrugged. “The priestesses of the Lolthian houses have seen their powers increase, but those of us battling the order of Menzoberranzan have seen little decrease. It is an enigma.”
“It is Lolth toying with us, with all of us,” Ravel remarked. “Using us for her ecstasy in chaos. Is it any different than the many suggestions that she prizes Drizzt Do’Urden, the greatest heretic of our age?”
“He was, perhaps, but now is not. What Yvonnel and Matron Mother Quenthel—”
“Matron Mother,” Ravel echoed with a laugh.
Saribel sighed in surrender. “What those two did on the field above is truly the greatest heresy imaginable.”
“For all we know, Lolth gave them that inspiration and power.”
“Why?”
“For this very civil war we now wage!”
“Your cynicism is—”
“Entirely justified, given the experiences of my life. You ask me to be Lolthian, and this line of thinking is exactly that.”
Saribel wanted to answer, obviously.
But just as obviously, she could not deny the claim.
The former drider they called Voselly, a huge and powerful woman returned from the grave she had found in the earliest days of Menzoberranzan, rallied her forces around her and led the charge headlong into the ranks of House Melarn and their allies. Working a sword in her right hand, a short spear in her left, the powerful and violent warrior ducked low and covered and ran right through an enemy fireball, then leaped and crashed in boots-first to scatter the lesser enemy fighters trying to secure a shield wall before her.
Like people possessed, behind her came the soldiers. Her soldiers, for Matron Mother Quenthel, on advice from Yvonnel, had named Voselly as commander of the Blaspheme. And what a powerful force it was! Returned from the grave, these drow had felt the ultimate torture of Lolth, serving as abominable driders in the Abyss itself, and for almost every one, that experience had not engendered fear, but simply rage, a wall of pure anger that now fell over the Melarni forces and their allies.
A person fearing death had no chance in battle against one who had come through the worst that death could bring.
The Blaspheme drove the attackers back from the area before House Do’Urden, back past the Westrift and toward the Mistrift and Narbondel, felling four enemies for every Blaspheme returned to the grave.
Out of House Do’Urden came Ravel and Saribel, leading wizards and priests to bolster the rear lines, to heal the wounded, and to create defenses if the attack was pushed back.
As they expected would happen, for they had seen this play before.
As the rage of the Blaspheme played out, the counterattack began, and this time, few drow were in the enemy ranks, and those who were served more as coordinators and witnesses to the events as the new force supporting Zhindia Melarn and the Lolthians—an army of demons—flew down from the cavern’s ceiling or came forth from the Mistrift to meet the Blaspheme charge.
“The major demons,” Ravel reminded the wizards coming forth from House Do’Urden. “Destroy those who can bring in allies from the Abyss. Banish them for a hundred years!”
The Blaspheme held the line for a while, but inevitably had to turn and flee—through the protective circles the wizards and priests had constructed to slow the demonic charge. The wizards and clerics were now focusing their magical energy skyward, hurling fire and lightning and storms of sleet to defeat the flying chasmes.
Ravel and two others scoured the skies looking for greater fiends, and whenever one was located, they cast ribbons of energy to entrap it and force it down to the ground.
And there, Voselly and her forces fearlessly fell over the demon and destroyed it.
But more came forth, and with the Lolthian drow behind them in support, defeating even the protective magic circles and countering the spells of cover. Voselly’s force, now with the defenders of House Do’Urden, were forced back to their compound.
Another bloody day of stalemate and attrition, leaving both sides to assess their losses and those of their enemies once more.
“We’re killing more of them than they are of us,” Ravel insisted to his dour mother, Matron Zeerith, when the West Wall region of Menzoberranzan was at last quiet once more.
“There are many more of them than there are of us,” Zeerith replied.
“At least seven major demons will not return,” Saribel added, to bolster her brother’s optimism.
“Do you think we can drain the Abyss of demons, child?” Zeerith scolded.
“Then where are the Baenres?” Ravel angrily answered, causing many in the throne room to bristle at his tone.
He had only said what so many of them were thinking, of course. Being so near to House Melarn and to the Fane of the Goddess, House Do’Urden was under particular stress, after all, with these battles occurring almost daily now.
Zeerith glared at her son.
“The Braeryn has been quieted by all reports,” Ravel pressed on. “The Baenres won a great fight there and now seem in control.”
“That is hardly the case,” Tsabrak Xorlarrin insisted.
That one’s voice carried great weight. Tsabrak was the most powerful wizard in the family, so powerful and influential that he had refused to change his name to Do’Urden and Matron Zeerith had supported him in his decision. For he was the current archmage of Menzoberranzan and perhaps the most powerful wizard in the entire city. And notably, rarely was he seen outside House Do’Urden engaging the enemies.
Not so long ago, Tsabrak had been the tool of Lolth in enacting the great Darkening over the surface lands known as the Silver Marches, in what was perhaps one of the most powerful displays of magical power in recent memory.
His allegiance here was tentative and critical, both Ravel and Saribel understood. Even Zeerith didn’t dare to go against him at this time. That Tsabrak was here at all in these crucial moments was encouraging, but, if the nobles of the house weren’t careful, it might also prove temporary.
“First, it was not the Baenres fighting there,” Tsabrak continued. “It was that rogue Jarlaxle and his mercenaries. Second, yes, the Braeryn is quiet for now, but that is because Matron Zhindia has shifted her forces west to battle this very house, among other reasons, and far to the east, trying to break the Baenre grasp over Donigarten and the food supplies.”
“Among other reasons?” Saribel asked.
“To support High Priestess Sos’Umptu in the Fane of the Goddess,” Zeerith answered for Tsabrak.
“It makes sense,” Tsabrak added. “Sos’Umptu remains a Baenre, of course, but she has already openly defied her heretical sister and family by offering refuge to those loyal to Lolth. There are even whispers that it was she who performed the Curse of Abomination on doomed Byrtyn Fey.”
“She would not do that,” Saribel argued, holding on to the hope that the wicked action against one of the oldest houses in the city, second only to House Baenre itself, had caused many of Zhindia’s allies to rethink their loyalties.
“Anything is possible,” said Zeerith, at the same time as Tsabrak corrected Saribel by reminding her of Zhindia’s title.
“Possible, and more likely than you clearly wish to believe,” Tsabrak added.
Ravel and Saribel left the throne room soon after, ordered to go and check on the perimeter defenses.
“Tsabrak does not engender confidence,” Saribel noted as the two made their way through an empty corridor.
“Perhaps that is the very reason he has come to us,” Ravel replied. “He is serving as the Archmage of Menzoberranzan, a title he has coveted for most of his life.”
“And one given him by Matron Mother Quenthel.”
“For us, for the Baenres, to win, it is likely that Gromph will have to return. Tsabrak is a proud and accomplished wizard, and there is no doubt that he blusters more since the events of the Darkening, but he would not wish to compete against Gromph Baenre if Gromph agreed to return to his position at Sorcere—certainly not if that meant an open challenge.”
“I’m just surprised by the timing of it all, and by Matron Zeerith’s dour mood and Archmage Tsabrak’s pessimism,” Saribel said. “He corrected us about the Braeryn without even noting that it was likely a better thing that it wasn’t House Baenre itself, but was Bregan D’aerthe, that won the fight on the streets against Zhindia’s demons.”
“I notice that Tsabrak still called her Matron Zhindia,” Ravel said as if that held some importance.
“He moves along the walkway between two houses, Melarn and Baenre,” Saribel explained. “Tsabrak is veteran enough to understand that this whole war might be nothing more than a test by Lolth for all of us, and that the situation in Menzoberranzan might quickly revert to what it was before the events on the surface. In which case, were he to move too far in either direction, he would likely lose his position as archmage.”
Ravel shook his head, buying none of that. “Too much has happened since Yvonnel and the Matron Mother stole the driders from Zhindia and reverted them to their drow bodies. Had that not occurred, we would be in full control of Gauntlgrym by now, with King Bruenor defeated and Drizzt almost certainly served up as sacrifice to the Spider Queen. I agree that we must always assume that things are not what they seem in Menzoberranzan, but you cannot still be thinking that there is some greater deception at play here than we understand.”
“Understand,” Saribel quietly murmured. “Isn’t that the point? What do we really understand about anything?”
“This is no test of loyalty,” Ravel replied. “This is a fight, almost certainly a fight to the death.”
“And to the damnation.”
“Only if we lose. I do not intend to lose.”
“You should tell that to our cousin Tsabrak, the Archmage of Menzoberranzan.”
“Matron Zeerith should be telling that to Tsabrak right now,” Ravel curtly answered.
“Unless she is beginning to agree with him,” said Saribel, and there ended the conversation as the siblings neared the end of the corridor, where several guards, Xorlarrin and Blaspheme, had been stationed.