It had been a moment of exhilaration and the purest power he had ever felt flowing through him.
Just an instant, a flash, a burst of cataclysmic proportions.
Sometimes the inciter of a retributive strike could avoid the devastation, could turn the power of the release into propulsion to another plane of existence, and thereafter return.
But Gromph Baenre hadn’t even tried to avoid the breaking of the staff. He welcomed it. He basked in it for just that moment before his physical coil was turned to flying ash.
And now there was silence, and blackness. Just blackness.
He reached up and felt the tangible lid, and pushed open the coffin in the room of his extra-dimensional mansion.
And then, in the clone he had prepared—and through the magics that had been revealed in ancient tomes and the collected wisdom of the Hosttower of the Arcane, and clarified and refined for him by the necromancer Ethan Sin’dalay—a younger specimen of Gromph Baenre sat up and took his first deep breath.
It had worked!
Gromph had beaten death.
And he had beaten Lolth, though he knew that was likely a temporary thing.
He decided to get back to work.
If he did it once, he could do it again.
Lord Parise Ulfbinder came into the room, apparently hearing the noise as Gromph was exiting the coffin.
“Is it?” he asked tentatively. “Did it . . . did it work?”
Gromph smiled at him. “You may join me for dinner—I am surprisingly hungry. But then I ask that you leave my home for the night. I have much to do.”
“I should continue my preparations, then?”
Gromph smiled at him. “Don’t you also want to live forever?”
“Sos’Umptu has consolidated her power,” Jarlaxle told Entreri, Dab’nay, Braelin, and Zak one morning in One-Eyed Jax, the Bregan D’aerthe tavern, as they sat having breakfast a tenday after returning to Luskan.
“You have spies already at work in the new Menzoberranzan?” Dab’nay asked in surprise.
“I have spies that span the multiverse,” was all Jarlaxle would answer to that, but his grin told them that something was going on he had not yet shared.
“Consolidating what power?” Braelin asked, though he was looking over at Azleah, who had gone to the bar to find them some good morning libations. He threw his beloved a wink and got a wide smile in return. “What is left of that city?”
“What is not?” Jarlaxle replied.
“Much of the great powers of Menzoberranzan were killed.”
Jarlaxle scoffed at the notion, and Dab’nay answered for him perfectly: “People who have found power and wealth always think they are special, that there is some divine blessing upon them, when in truth, they are imminently replaceable,” she said. “Menzoberranzan will survive, and, more than likely, thrive.”
“A strange thing for a priestess to be claiming,” Braelin noted.
“Not so strange,” said Zak, who had known Dab’nay for centuries, and had known even those centuries before that the woman truly hated Lolth and yet couldn’t understand her own power, which was supposedly coming to her through the blessing of the Demon Queen of Spiders.
“Well, no matter,” said Jarlaxle. “We have much to do.” He looked to Zak. “When are you leaving for Cal . . . for your home?”
“As soon as Azzudonna and Allefaero return from their last walk about Luskan.”
“They are considering my idea?” Jarlaxle asked. “Cattisola is being reclaimed and there will be room.”
“They’re not about to let thousands of refugees in,” Zak answered, and Jarlaxle knew that, of course.
Or at least, he knew they wouldn’t do it all at once. His proposal to High Priest Avernil had been for a gradual immigration to Callidae, allowing for full vetting of anyone accepted, and for the Callidaeans to watch over them until trust was fully gained.
He knew the rules of the Callidaeans and how seriously they took their security, but he had to try, particularly for those, like his sister Quenthel, who had given up so much and had put herself at great risk. In truth, he didn’t even know how many of those who had abandoned Menzoberranzan would want to go. Some had joined with Bregan D’aerthe, including Dinin—though Jarlaxle hadn’t told Drizzt yet—and Kyrnill Kenafin, and the refugees from House Xorlarrin. Saribel and Dab’nay had already become fast friends, and Ravel was serving as Gromph’s understudy at the Hosttower, and as liaison between Gromph and Bregan D’aerthe.
Others had dispersed to the winds, some going to Icewind Dale, despite the season, others to Baldur’s Gate, others to who knew where? Three hundred had purchased ships with the gold they had brought from home, and were learning to sail in Luskan Harbor when the weather and the winter waves permitted, intent on seeing the wide world when the season turned.
They were all finding more acceptance than they had anticipated, it seemed, and Jarlaxle took great pride in that. For he and Kimmuriel, Beniago and Braelin and all the others who had taken command of Luskan, had ruled well, had broken barriers and erased prejudice with experience.
What he found in Callidae was Jarlaxle’s happiest dream, and perhaps he would someday go there and live it, as Zak was doing.
Or maybe he could make that dream come true here.
He wasn’t kidding himself, though. The Realms were not suddenly becoming more inviting to drow or to anyone else.
Power was the only true measure of security in this world, and Jarlaxle’s power was knowledge.
“We will meet again,” Jarlaxle told Zak, as he had several times before in the process of saying his goodbyes to his oldest friend.
“We will.”
“I hope Allefaero’s magical aim is good,” Braelin said. “It’s freezing out here, I can only imagine . . .”
He stopped there, with Jarlaxle hushing him. Callidae was not to be even hinted at openly.
Jarlaxle left them, then, and went to his private room. He sat down before a table and pulled a cloth off the circular object resting in a tri-pronged stand atop it. He closed his eyes and reached out, hoping.
A familiar image appeared in the ball a long while later, and Jarlaxle breathed a sigh of relief.
“I am glad you are floating about this day,” Jarlaxle said. “You miss me.”
This day, he heard in his mind, a most familiar voice. And perhaps again, now and then.
Jarlaxle understood the unsaid part: Kimmuriel would not come to him at his beckon.
Less so, came the thought in his mind. There is so much. So much.
“And so much I still need from you.”
You will be disappointed.
“Yvonnel,” Jarlaxle begged. “Surely you felt a connection to her in life, a friendship with one worthy of your time. Sos’Umptu hinted that she wasn’t destroyed, but rather banished, thrown away to . . . somewhere.”
Then hope.
“No, more than hope,” Jarlaxle insisted. “I need help. Sos’Umptu claimed I could never find her, but she could not have known of you. You can find her, and must, I beg.”
He felt something from Kimmuriel. Perhaps some sympathy, or agreement, but it was thin.
“Sos’Umptu’s words made me think she remains alive, but imprisoned.”
What is alive, really?
“No, don’t play like that,” Jarlaxle ordered. “Perhaps this is all meaningless to you now in the glorious truth you see, but to us . . .”
Donjon, the ghost of Kimmuriel imparted through the crystal ball. She drew from the Deck.
“The Deck?”
Relay it to Gromph, he will know.
“He will know where to find her?”
He may figure out where to begin looking.
Jarlaxle let that float around in his thoughts for a few moments, then begged, “Give me more.”
There is no more.
He felt no possibility of debate in that response. And so he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, grateful that perhaps he had a starting point, at least.
“I am lesser without you, my friend,” Jarlaxle told the image. “Both practically and in my heart.”
It is the way of things.
And that was it, and the spirit of Kimmuriel departed once more. Perhaps for the last time, Jarlaxle knew, though he desperately hoped that wouldn’t be the case.
He felt a profound sense of loss, as had happened after every one of these seances.
But the sadness ebbed, replaced by memories of the grand adventures he had found beside Kimmuriel.
And replaced by the more practical matters at hand. Kimmuriel had been a huge boon to Bregan D’aerthe and to Jarlaxle in particular. The man’s talents were outside the understanding of potential enemies and business associates alike. The advantage had been invaluable.
Now he had to look for more avenues, like the one he had been cultivating in the Hosttower of the Arcane. At his request, a surprisingly amiable Gromph had agreed to extend an invitation to Nvisi of the Ulutiuns to study and practice there.
Jarlaxle hadn’t quite figured Nvisi out yet, but if that was the case with him, he knew that all others would be totally perplexed by the strange little man’s magic.
Divination was foresight.
Power was knowledge.
Advantage, Jarlaxle.
The laughter outside the Ivy Mansion reached thunderous proportions when King Bruenor Battlehammer, weighing more than he had admitted to, went airborne over the bank Pikel had fashioned along the ice slide.
The snow was deep and so the landing was soft enough, and Bruenor came up covered in snow, his beard and hair more white than orange.
Off to the side of the course, Ivan Bouldershoulder argued with Thibbledorf Pwent, telling him over and over again that his armor would ruin the ice, so if he wanted a run, he should be out of it, while down at the bottom of the slide, Regis plunked Wulfgar in the back of the head with a snowball and would have been buried by the charging man had not Penelope Harpell thrown a spell of grease before him, sending him tumbling into a snowbank before he reached the halfling.
Drizzt was next down the slide, chased by Catti-brie and Breezy, with the little girl barely able to see under the brim of the one-horned helm she had stolen from her grandfather.
It was all so simple, so gloriously play, just play.
These were the moments, Drizzt realized then, as Catti-brie had come to know on a day very similar to this one. And as with his wife, for Drizzt, it was a reminder, not an epiphany. This simple little play was what made life worth it. Not Bruenor’s gold or Jarlaxle’s network, and not some adventure or war—those were fortunate luxuries and painful necessities—but this, this simple, childish, joyful play, was what truly made it all worth it to Drizzt Do’Urden. Because this was love, this was friendship, this was family.
Winter gave way to spring, spring turned to summer, and that notion of family came shining through again one fine morning when Jarlaxle came to visit Drizzt and Catti-brie in the Ivy Mansion, bearing exciting news.
“You three,” Jarlaxle explained, his grin nearly taking in his ears. “Wulfgar and Penelope, Regis and Donnola, Bruenor, of course, and one or both of his wives.”
“What of us?” Drizzt asked.
“And myself, of course, and a few others.”
Drizzt looked to Catti-brie, both shrugging cluelessly, then turning back to Jarlaxle.
“Of course,” Catti-brie agreed with the grinning rogue, though she had no idea of what he was talking about.
“We have been invited on a grand excursion,” Jarlaxle finally explained. “On the day of the autumnal equinox, Zaknafein will battle beside Azzudonna for Biancorso in cazzcalci. We are invited to visit, to watch, and to sing with the Callidaeans by Mona Valrissa herself.”
“Pops Zak!” Breezy said, and Drizzt laughed with joy.
“Oh, by the gods,” Catti-brie lamented.
“What?” Drizzt and Jarlaxle asked in unison.
“When this one witnesses cazzcalci,” she said, looking pointedly at Drizzt, “we’ll never get him back home.”
“Maybe he’ll already be at home,” Jarlaxle offered.
“I take my home with me,” Drizzt said, ending the debate.
Catti-brie hugged him, their daughter wrapping her arms around them both, completing the circle.
The simple little joys.