Maestro (15 page)

“What is it?” he asked, taking it and studying the carving more closely. “It resembles the Heartseeker.”

“A memento,” Catti-brie replied. “You will give it to Drizzt?”

The mercenary nodded.

“On your word?”

Another nod, and a reassuring smile. “May Mielikki walk with you these difficult days and guide your steps toward what is best for you, for your father, and . . .”

“And for you,” she finished.

Jarlaxle laughed, stepped forward, and kissed her on the cheek.

“Yes,” he admitted. “And is it not a wondrous thing that all of our interests are so perfectly aligned? We are, it would seem, of like heart!”

He tipped his hat again and strode out of the tent, making a straight line for the bridge to Closeguard Isle, which would bring him to another bridge to the mainland and the entryway to Illusk and the deeper Underdark, where Drizzt and Entreri waited.

Soon after, Catti-brie stood in a familiar garden, sheltered by rocks from the great brown plain of Netheril.

She lingered some time there, feeling the soft petals of the plants, rubbing her hand along the smooth back of the same young cypress tree that had given her the limb for the staff she now carried. She couldn’t come to this place without being transported back in time, to her earliest days in this second life she now enjoyed. This was her secret garden, her secret refuge, the place where young Ruqiah had come to understand that Mielikki was with her still, and that the goddess would help her on her difficult journey.

On a sudden impulse, Catti-brie took out the onyx figurine of Guenhwyvar and called for the panther. She wanted Guenhwyvar to see this place, to know this place.

The gray mist became a black panther. Guenhwyvar went off her guard almost immediately, and Catti-brie was glad. The gentleness of this garden refuge she had created could not be denied—not even by the blood that had been spilled here. The sense of peace permeated the air and filled her nostrils, and so filled Guenhwyvar’s, too.

“Let me tell you a story, Guen,” Catti-brie said, sitting down among the flowers. “Of a little girl named Ruqiah and the wonderful friends she once knew.”

Guenhwyvar seemed to understand—of course she did!—and she settled in front of the woman, lying down and stretching, but never taking her large eyes or her attention from Catti-brie.

Sometime later, Catti-brie moved out from the rocks, and climbed atop a large one to afford herself a look over the land.

Shade Enclave, the grand floating city she had once called home, was no more—not up in the sky to the north, at least—indeed, not up in the sky at all. The magic had been stolen by the advent of the Sundering, and the great city and the floating stone upon which it sat had fallen from the sky to crash upon the ground.

Thousands had died in that cataclysm, so Kipper had told her—after Jarlaxle had explained it all to him, apparently. The carnage had been tremendous, both for those living in the floating city and those living on the ground in its shadow.

But they had not all died, and so up there, amid the broken stones and fallen towers, an enclave of Netherese remained, and thrived anew.

“Lord Parise Ulfbinder,” Catti-brie quietly muttered, and not for the first time, as she strove to commit that name to memory, or to search her own memories to try to recall anything she might have learned of the great man in her days in Shade Enclave.

He was alive, so Jarlaxle had relayed through Kipper, and it was up to Catti-brie to convince him to journey beside her back to Luskan.

A strong wind blew down from the north, carrying stinging sand. Catti-brie pulled her black cloak tighter about her as a shield. Then she pulled it tighter still, so much so that its magic began to tingle all around her, as she and the cloak became as one.

The woman-turned-crow leaped off and spread her wings, the strong winds lifting her higher and higher.

She beat her wings and bucked the headwinds, making her way to what remained of Shade Enclave, and looking, too, for something else, for somewhere else.

For a home more dear.

W
ho is this maestro, this puppet master, pulling the strings of so many marionettes?

Including my own!

Jarlaxle’s maneuvers reach far into the shadows and involve great powers—and these are merely the plots of which I am aware. No doubt he reaches much farther still, to the darkest shadows of Menzoberranzan, to the heart of dragonkind, to the hive-mind of the illithids, to places I can only imagine, or dream rather, in my worst nightmares.

Who is he to wrangle together my wife, the Harpells, a thousand dwarves, and the Archmage of Menzoberranzan in an effort to resurrect a structure of such ancient power?

Who is he to secretly control the city of Luskan, through great deception and great hidden power?

Who is he to goad me and Artemis Entreri to Menzoberranzan, to rescue Dahlia, to assault House Do’Urden and thus invoke the wrath of the Matron Mother of the City of Spiders?

Who is he to convince Matron Mother Zeerith of House Xorlarrin to surrender Gauntlgrym to Bruenor?

Who is he to bring dragons onto the field of battle in the Silver Marches?

Who is this maestro, turning the wheels of Faerûn, playing the music of fate to the ears of all who would listen?

I call him a friend and yet I cannot begin to decipher the truth of this most interesting and dangerous drow. He moves armies with silent commands, coerces alliances with promises of mutual benefit, and engages the most unlikely companions into willing adventures that seem suicidal.

He elicits a measure of trust that goes beyond reason—and indeed, often runs headlong against reason.

And yet, here I am, walking the ways of the Underdark beside Jarlaxle and Artemis Entreri, bound for the city of my birth, where I am perhaps the greatest fugitive from Lolth’s damning injustice. If I am caught in Menzoberranzan, I will never see Catti-brie or Bruenor or the sunlit world again. If Matron Mother Baenre finds me, she will turn my two legs into eight and torment me as a drider for the rest of my wretched life. If Tiago and his allies discover me, he will surely deliver my head to the matron mother.

And here I walk, willingly, to that possible fate.

I cannot deny my debt to Jarlaxle. Would we have won in the Silver Marches had he not arrived with Brother Afafrenfere, Ambergris, and the dragon sisters? Perhaps, but the cost would have been much greater.

Would Bruenor have won out in Gauntlgrym had Jarlaxle not convinced Matron Mother Zeerith to flee? Likely, yes, but again only with horrific cost.

Could we rebuild the Hosttower of the Arcane, and thus preserve the magic that fuels Gauntlgrym’s forges, and indeed, contain the violence that would blast the complex to rubble, without the efforts of Jarlaxle and his band of rogue dark elves? I find that very unlikely. Perhaps Catti-brie, Gromph, and the others will not succeed now in this momentous endeavor, but at least now, because of Jarlaxle, we have a chance.

None of us, not even Gromph, can deny our debt to the maestro.

I must admit, to myself if no one else, that there is more driving me now than that simple debt I know I owe to Jarlaxle. I feel a responsibility to Dahlia to at least try to help her in her desperate need, particularly when Jarlaxle, ever the clever one, assures me that we can somehow manage this rescue. And so, too, do I feel that responsibility to Artemis Entreri. Perhaps I will never call him “friend,” but I believe that if the situation was reversed, that if it was Catti-brie trapped down there, he would venture with me to rescue her.

Why in the Nine Hells would I believe that?

I have no answer, but there it remains.

Jarlaxle has hinted, too, that all of this is connected to a higher goal, from the defeat of the drow and their orc minions in the Silver Marches to the taking of Gauntlgrym to the surrender of Matron Mother Zeerith to the rebuilding of the Hosttower to the rescue of Dahlia.

Bruenor’s Gauntlgrym is Jarlaxle’s buffer to Luskan, allowing him a refuge for male drow, and one housing the former Archmage of Menzoberranzan in a tower to rival the power of Sorcere. Jarlaxle’s treachery against Matron Mother Baenre in the Silver Marches facilitated not only a rebuke of the high priestesses of Menzoberranzan, but a stinging rebuke of the Spider Queen herself. And so, too, will the web of Matron Mother Baenre be unwound when Dahlia is taken from her grasp.

And Jarlaxle uses me—he has admitted as much—as a beacon to those drow males oppressed by the suffocating discrimination of the female disciples of Lady Lolth. I escaped, and thrived—that is my heresy.

Matron Mother Baenre proved that point all too well when she reconstituted House Do’Urden, and tried to use that banner to destroy my reputation among the people who had come to accept me in the Silver Marches. I am not arrogant enough to believe that I was the only reason for Menzoberranzan’s assault on the Silver Marches, but in so absurdly trying to stamp my name and my coat of arms upon the invasion, the drow priestess tipped Lolth’s hand for all to see.

And in that hand is the revelation that Jarlaxle’s maneuvers frighten the powers that rule in Menzoberranzan.

And in that fear, I cannot help but see hope.

Even aside from all that, from the debt to friends and companions and the greater aspirations of an optimistic Jarlaxle, if I cannot admit that there is something else, something more, luring me to continue this journey, then I am lying to myself most of all. Yes, I deny Menzoberranzan as my home, and hold no desire to live there whatsoever. Nor am I returning, as I so foolishly did once before, to surrender to the darkness. Perhaps, though, I will explore that darkness to see if light is to be found, for I cannot so easily eliminate the memories of the decades I spent in the City of Spiders. In Menzoberranzan, I was trained to fight and was taught the ways of the drow, and it is precisely the rejection of those mores and tenets that have made me who I am today.

Menzoberranzan shaped me, mostly by showing me what I did not want and could not accept.

Does that not put upon me a debt to my people, to the Viernas and the Zaknafeins who might now reside under the suffocating abominations of the Spider Queen?

My sister Vierna was not evil, and Zaknafein, my father, was possessed of a heart similar to my own.

How many more of similar weal, I wonder, huddle in the shadows because they believe there is no escape? How many conform to the expectations of that cruel society because they believe that there is no other way possible for them? How many feel the bite of the snake-whips, or look upon the miserable driders, and so perform as expected?

Is it possible that my very existence, that my unusual journey, can bring even a bit of change to that paradigm? Jarlaxle believes so. He has not told me this bluntly, but as I piece together the strands of the web he is building, from Gromph in Luskan to Matron Mother Zeerith—whom he assures me is unlike the other matron mothers in this important regard—I can only conclude that this is his play.

Given that, given Jarlaxle’s machinations, is it possible?

I know not, but am I not duty-bound by those same principles and ethics that guide my every step, to at least try?

And am I not, for the sake of my own reflection, duty-bound to confront these ghosts that so shaped me and to learn from that honest look in the mirror of my earliest days?

How might I truly understand my life’s purpose, I wonder, if I cannot honestly confront who and what placed me upon this road I walk?

—Drizzt Do’Urden

K
’yorl, the former Matron Mother of House Oblodra, had lost track of the decades she’d spent in the Abyss as a slave to Errtu. She had endured torture beyond what any mortal could expect to survive. In many ways, it had broken her. Physically, she could barely stand. Emotionally, she existed on the edge of disaster, cowering at every movement, trembling at every sound. She was not K’yorl Odran as K’yorl Odran had been, but a hollowed-out creature, thoroughly battered. Still, there was enough left of her to occasionally see beyond her safe hiding places and recognize those around her. Amazingly, her decades of training in the psionic disciplines had allowed her to keep some portion of who she once was locked in safe rooms she had carved out in the corners of her mind.

This creature, this young drow priestess, was far more than her match. K’yorl knew that beyond doubt, felt she knew this little beast who called herself Yvonnel, and had a hard time distinguishing her from the Yvonnel Baenre K’yorl had known and hated.

This one looked so different, though, and was far too young. The psionic K’yorl knew beyond any doubt that this was no illusion. Was it another drow, or had the old matron mother found a way to revitalize herself?

An illithid, its head grossly misshapen—even more than usual—stood by the door at all times. The creature maintained boundaries in K’yorl’s mind, preventing her from gaining a solid mental foothold on reality while constantly trying to get into her thoughts. She had to be ever vigilant against that, and then hope that her vigilance would be enough to keep the mental intruder at bay.

K’yorl Odran was free of the Abyss for now, for the first time in more than a century, perhaps, but she remained in a cage.

Caged by this one impossibly beautiful young drow woman who called herself Yvonnel—the name of K’yorl’s most hated adversary, hated more than even Errtu. Yvonnel, the matron mother who had ruined K’yorl’s life and had torn asunder the stone roots of House Oblodra, dropping the structure, and most of K’yorl’s family, into the chasm known as the Clawrift. Whether this was the same Baenre or someone new, K’yorl already hated the witch.

And she knew, beyond any doubt, that there was nothing she could do about it. If Yvonnel made a mistake, K’yorl could strike . . . but this one didn’t make mistakes.

“I know not,” Jarlaxle replied, holding the black leather belt out to Drizzt. “She fashioned it.”

“You would have me believe that you were presented with a magical item and did not bother to try it?” Drizzt said as he took the belt.

“I do not even know if it is magical,” Jarlaxle replied, and now it was Artemis Entreri’s turn to offer his doubts, in the form of a chortle.

“Well,” said Jarlaxle, “it has to do with that bow of yours, I expect, and I have no interest in bows. Most inefficient weapons, when a lightning bolt or fireball would better serve.”

“Says the knife thrower,” Entreri remarked.

Drizzt was only half-listening by that point. He set the belt about his waist, fastening it with the remarkable diamond-decorated mithral buckle. He felt somewhat stronger immediately, just a bit—and fortified, as if he had strapped on some armor. But there was more, he realized, focusing his thoughts upon it. This might be one of the many magical items that conveyed its powers to the user’s thoughts.

If it even was magical, he realized when nothing else came to mind, and he wondered if his earlier sensations of strength and armor were merely his own expectations manifesting. Perhaps Catti-brie had fashioned this simply as a measure of goodwill for allowing her to regain possession of Taulmaril the Heartseeker.

Still nothing came to him. He adjusted the fit of the belt and fiddled with the curious cylindrical pouch at his hip, thinking it might serve as a sheath for a small wand. His hands went to the buckle, and he turned it up to consider the diamond gemstone image set upon it, a perfect likeness of the Heartseeker. He noted then that the buckle was double-layered, mithral upon mithral.

“Twist the top sheet,” Entreri instructed—he too had noted the layers.

Drizzt grasped just the top plating and gave a slight turn, and the glittering gemstone design popped free, but it was not a tiny diamond item he held in his hand.

It was Taulmaril!

He felt the weight suddenly on his hip and understood before he even looked that the quiver had expanded as well, had become again the Quiver of Anariel, which would magically feed him arrows.

“Clever woman,” Jarlaxle commented. “You’ll better navigate some of the tighter tunnels without that longbow sticking up from your shoulder.”

“What?” was all the shocked Drizzt could say.

“A buckle-knife,” Jarlaxle replied. It was a weapon somewhat common among the rogues of Toril, a belt buckle that transformed into a deadly knife.

“A buckle-bow, you mean,” said Entreri.

Drizzt couldn’t resist. He drew an arrow from his quiver, set it to the string of Taulmaril and let fly, the missile drawing a silver line down the corridor before exploding in a torrent of sparks against the far wall, where the passageway bent to the side.

The report of the blast echoed, and in those rocky grumbles came the shriek of demons.

“Well played,” Artemis Entreri remarked. “Perhaps you might shoot the next one straight up above us, to collapse the tunnel upon our heads and save the demons you alerted the trouble of rending us apart.”

“Or perhaps I will simply shoot you so that I am less inclined to so readily accept death,” Drizzt returned, and he sprinted off ahead to meet the charge.

Unused to being insulted, Entreri looked to Jarlaxle for support, but the mercenary just drew Khazid’hea and a wand, offered a wink, and came back with, “He has a point.”

The Room of Divination in House Baenre was among the most marvelous of constructs in all of Menzoberranzan. In this dark city knowledge was power. Mirrors lined three walls, the fourth being the massive mithral door, which gleamed almost as reflectively as the mirrors. The apparatuses holding the mirrors were set several strides from each other all along the way, but were bolted to metal poles running floor to ceiling, and not to the wall. Each apparatus held three mirrors, set on iron hangers, edgeto-edge-to-edge, forming a tall, narrow triangle.

In the center of the room sat a stoup of white marble, a round bench encircling it. Dark, still water filled the bowl. Deep blue sapphires were set in its thick rim, the angle of their reflection making the water within seem wider, as if it continued far under the rim, beyond sight, beyond the bench.

In a manner, it did.

Yvonnel gracefully stepped over the bench and sat facing the water.

She motioned for K’yorl to sit opposite her.

The battered prisoner, so long tortured in the Abyss, hesitated. With a sigh, Yvonnel waved to Minolin Fey, and the priestess forcefully pushed K’yorl into place on the bench.

“Put your hands up here on the rim,” Yvonnel told the psionicist, and when K’yorl hesitated, Minolin Fey moved to strike her.

“No!” Yvonnel scolded the priestess.

Minolin Fey fell back a step in shock.

“No,” Yvonnel said more calmly. “No, there is no need. K’yorl will come to understand. Leave us.”

“She is dangerous, Mistress,” Minolin Fey replied, using the title Yvonnel had instructed them all to use now, for Quenthel remained, to outside eyes at least, as Matron Mother of House Baenre.

“Do not be a fool,” Yvonnel said with a laugh. She looked into K’yorl Odran’s eyes, her grin disappearing, her own eyes flaring with threat. “You do not wish to be cast back into Errtu’s pit.”

The psionicist gave a little whimper at that.

“Now,” Yvonnel said slowly and evenly, “place your hands on the rim.”

The woman did as instructed. Yvonnel nodded at Minolin Fey to dismiss her, and the priestess hurried away.

“I do not wish to punish you—ever,” Yvonnel explained to K’yorl when they were alone. “I will not ask much of you, but what I ask, I demand. Obey my commands and you will find no further torture. You may even purchase your freedom, once we are truly in agreement, mind and soul.”

The psionicist barely looked up and seemed not to register the soothing words or the dangled carrot. She had heard it all before, Yvonnel assumed, and likely a thousand times during her time in the Abyss. Unlike Errtu, though, Yvonnel meant it, and she would convince K’yorl soon enough. After all, the psionicist was going to be in her thoughts, where deception was nearly impossible.

“Together we are going to find Kimmuriel,” Yvonnel explained.

She put her hands on top of K’yorl’s and uttered a command word. The rim of the bowl became less than solid, and the hands sank into the white marble, melded with the stoup. Yvonnel felt K’yorl’s terrified tug, but she wouldn’t let go. She had placed enhancements of strength upon herself in anticipation of exactly this, and the psionicist might as well have been tugging against a giant.

All around them, the mirrored apparatuses began to turn. The torches lighting the room went out and were replaced by a bluish glow emanating from the sapphires set in the rim of the stoup.

“You know Kimmuriel,” Yvonnel whispered. “Find him again, but this time through the divination of the scrying pool. Let your mind magic flow into it, but do not send forth your thoughts to Kimmuriel unaccompanied by this scrying magic! Now, send forth your thoughts, K’yorl, Matron Mother of House Oblodra.” She felt the psionicist tense up at the mention of the doomed House, and Yvonnel knew that reference would soon enough come to be her greatest weapon.

It took a long, long while—out in the cavern, the light of Narbondel diminished by half—but finally, Yvonnel felt her own thoughts going forth, following K’yorl’s psionic call. They were joined by the magic of the stoup, their minds in perfect harmony, and Yvonnel could hardly contain her delight at that realization. The stoup had been built for Baenre priestesses, of course, so they could join in ritual scrying. Quenthel and Sos’Umptu both had insisted that Yvonnel’s plan would not work here, that the stoup would not accept K’yorl’s mind magic.

But they were wrong.

Through K’yorl’s thoughts, Yvonnel could see the cavern in the waters of the stoup and reflected at every angle in the mirrors. She felt K’yorl’s regrets then, particularly when they neared the Clawrift, wherein House Oblodra had been cast.

It proved to be too much for the fallen matron mother, and her mindsight failed, casting her and Yvonnel back into the room.

The water cleared to still darkness.

The lights brightened, the torches reignited.

Yvonnel sat staring at K’yorl, their hands still joined within the marble.

K’yorl tried to recoil. She had failed and expected punishment, Yvonnel clearly saw.

“Wonderful!” the daughter of Gromph congratulated. “In one attempt, your vision fled the boundaries of this room! Did you feel it, Matron Mother K’yorl? The freedom?”

Gradually, the other woman’s expression began to change; Yvonnel could feel her hands relaxing.

“I did not expect that you would get out of the room on our first session,” Yvonnel explained. “Next time we will go farther.” She pulled her hands out of the stoup, taking K’yorl’s with her, and the rim appeared undisturbed.

“We will find him,” Yvonnel said confidently.

Kimmuriel?
she heard in her thoughts, the first time K’yorl had communicated directly to her.

“Yes. Yes, and soon,” Yvonnel promised—promised K’yorl and herself.

“Ar e we to be fighting these beasts all the way to Menzoberranzan?” Entreri demanded two days later, when the trio had found yet another cluster of Abyssal beasts. The assassin slipped a quick side-step to avoid the overhead swing of a gigantic hammer, then stepped in quickly, Charon’s Claw easily and beautifully sliding into the balgura’s thick chest. The magnificent sword slowed when the blade hit a thick rib, the blade too fine to be chipped or snagged. Entreri’s sigh revealed his pleasure at the power of the weapon. He hated this sword profoundly, but he could not deny its utility and craftsmanship.

Balgura blood flowed along the trough in the red blade, pouring over the demon’s torso.

Entreri didn’t merely retract the weapon. So confident was he in the power of Charon’s Claw, he tore it out to the side, through skin and bone, leaving the dying demon nearly cut in half.

And this was a balgura, massively thick and heavy-boned.

“Do you truly believe I mean to walk all that way?” Jarlaxle replied with a laugh, and he too put his newly acquired sword to use. Khazid’hea decapitated one manes as Jarlaxle began his slash, bringing the vorpal blade across to cut deeply into a second enemy. “Your lack of faith disappoints me.”

“When you’re done talking . . .” Drizzt said from the side of the small oval chamber, where he held the door against the press of several demons, a mixed group of thick-limbed balgura, manes, and some other fiends Drizzt did not know: slender and with tentacle-like arms that they effectively used as stinging whips. Those tentacles, coming at him from behind a wall of allies, kept him moving and threatened to drive him back, which he did not want. He had the incoming monsters bottlenecked at the narrow entryway. One step back and the beasts would fan out to either side and the chamber would become a wild melee.

Drizzt ducked a snapping tentacle, but moved forward from a crouch, his scimitars working furiously to poke at a balgura, one, two, three, as he tried to drive the brute into a retreat.

But then it was Drizzt who was backstepping, and covering his head with his cloak. Out of nowhere, it seemed, a whipping wind came up, and stinging sleet pelted down all around him.

“Magic!” he warned, thinking it a trick of the demons, and unaware at that moment that they were taking the brunt of the ice storm.

“Left!” Jarlaxle called, and Drizzt slid that way—and just in time.

A glob of viscous goo from Jarlaxle’s wand shot past him. It struck the floor right at the feet of the closest demons, but it didn’t hold securely there. The floor was already a sheet of ice. The glob did stick to the front demons, though, who stumbled in futile attempts to maintain their balance. The momentum of the glob sent them skidding back into their allies.