Maestro (16 page)

A second glob came forth, hitting the ice again right in front of the first row of enemies and sliding in with great weight and force, taking the whole ball of demons back to the far wall of the corridor, where they struggled against the goo, stuck together as one.

Drizzt slid away his blades and let his left hand come to the belt buckle, his right to the small quiver, pulling forth Taulmaril and setting an arrow so fluidly that an observer might still be wondering where the scimitars went. The chamber and corridor filled with streaks of silver as the drow let fly. Drizzt’s barrage pummeled the helpless demons as they rent and tore at the unyielding magical globs, and at each other. They were, after all, demons.

The ice storm had ended, and Drizzt battered the group in relative comfort, explosive arrows pounding home, every shot boring into demon flesh. But a sudden buzzing in the air was his only warning, before a swarm of horrid demons soared past the trapped group: chasme, like great houseflies with the head and face of a bloated human.

Drizzt managed to alter the angle of his bow enough to shoot the first of the flying demons from the air, but the second dived upon him, and a host of others were close behind, entering the chamber.

Or trying to.

A wall of ice appeared in that opening. It resounded with the impact of the third of the chasme, which collided with it full force. It shook again and again as the others crashed in behind.

The one in the room had Drizzt diving for the floor though, his bow flung aside and desperately going for his scimitars. Before he ever drew them, barely an eye-blink of time, he found he didn’t need them. A red blade swept down in front of him, tearing the edge off the chasme’s flylike wings. As the demon spun and crashed, the great Netherese sword slashed in again, scraping the grotesque human face right off.

Entreri didn’t remain in place to accept Drizzt’s thanks, leaping away for the wall of ice. He stabbed Charon’s Claw through one of the spiderweb cracks, the shriek of a chasme telling them all that he had struck true.

“Well played,” Drizzt congratulated Jarlaxle, thinking it he who had brought forth the ice storm and the wall.

But Jarlaxle shook his head and shrugged, his smile wide.

He turned away from Drizzt, and from Entreri, who was stabbing through the ice wall yet again, scoring another hit on a second of the flying beasts.

“Quite the hero,” Jarlaxle said, addressing another dark elf who had come into the small chamber, though from where, Drizzt could not guess. He seemed about Drizzt’s age and wore the robes of a wizard and the House emblem of Xorlarrin. A small silver chain closed the collar of his fabulous
piwafwi
, showing him to be a master of Sorcere, the drow school of magic.

“Be quick with your spell and remove us from this place,” Jarlaxle instructed.

“Yes, do,” Entreri added, speaking perfect drow, and looking very much like a Menzoberranyr soldier behind the magical disguise of Agatha’s Mask.

A quick look at the assassin revealed the source of the urgency in Entreri’s voice. The ice wall was cracking more and more, pressed by the vicious and unyielding demons behind it.

“I cannot,” the newcomer replied to Jarlaxle.

“Help our friend hold the door,” Jarlaxle said to Drizzt, his tone for the first time less than calm. The mercenary pulled the newcomer aside and conversed silently in the hand code of the drow, shielding his fingers from Drizzt and Entreri.

Drizzt and Entreri met the onslaught side-by-side as the ice wall crumbled bit by bit and the demons pressed in. With Entreri beside him, Drizzt gave the beasts more leeway into the room. The pair were not afraid of being flanked.

Drizzt double-stabbed a balgura right in front of him, but quickly retracted the blades. He knew Entreri was coming by him, right to left. Drizzt rolled behind that rush, back to the right, coming in cleanly at a tentacle-armed demon distracted by Entreri’s sudden departure, its confusion leaving Drizzt an opening he would not miss.

Icingdeath he buried nearly to the hilt into the fiend, the magic of the sword hungrily eating the demon’s Abyssal force.

Twinkle Drizzt brought to the side, prodding the elbow of the balgura he’d just stabbed, preventing the brute from coming forward with its overhead chop. The demon let go with that hand, thinking to complete its attack with just one hand on the heavy hammer, but its other arm fell off—Charon’s Claw swept across, above the crumbling demon Entreri had already dispatched.

Now they had room to maneuver again, and Entreri went forward, closing the bottleneck, and Drizzt fell back and gathered up Taulmaril once more. His first shot went over Entreri and the beast he battled, blasting another chasme from the sky. He called to his companion, directing Entreri’s movements to provide openings through which the Heartseeker’s deadly barrage could continue.

Soon enough, all that remained were the least of the demons, the zombie-like manes, and Drizzt brought his bow across, the item shrinking once more and becoming diamond as he set it in place on the mithral buckle. He drew his blades, and waded through the archway beside Entreri, out into the adjacent corridor and right into the midst of the mob of manes. Grasping, clawed hands never got near either of the two sword-masters, their speed and coordination too much for these least of demonkind to comprehend, let alone fight.

But in the midst of that slaughter, the companions noted a greater presence coming fast to the fray, a pack of gigantic and hulking fourarmed, dog-faced glabrezu, each with two arms ending in giant pincers that could cut a drow in half. These beasts knew no fear and hunted as cleverly as a pack of wolves. Their claws snapped eagerly.

Drizzt and Entreri gasped and fell back, to be confronted by a shouting Jarlaxle. As one, they turned to protest, to tell Jarlaxle that they could not hold the door.

But their protests were lost in their throats. A third drow had joined Jarlaxle and the Xorlarrin wizard.

The diviners escaped the room more easily this time, their hands joined in the stoup, their thoughts entwined through the magic of the room and the powers of K’yorl’s discipline.

Yvonnel guided her differently this time, not out into the cavern but just into the hallway adjacent to the Room of Divination, where sat Minolin Fey, awaiting Yvonnel’s word. They hovered over the priestess, who was clearly oblivious to them. She was quietly singing, humming mostly, and to Yvonnel’s delight, she could hear Minolin Fey quite clearly. The scrying was strong, both clairvoyance and clairaudience, washing away Yvonnel’s fears that the injection of psionics would hurt the divine magic.

Yvonnel wondered how much the psionics might heighten the experience.

To her,
Yvonnel imparted to K’yorl.
Into her!

Together, they went to the seated priestess—close enough for Yvonnel to see the small flecks of black around the iris of Minolin Fey’s red eyes. And closer still, so that one of the priestess’s eyes filled Yvonnel’s vision.

Then it shifted and they were looking across the hallway. Yvonnel’s thoughts became so badly disoriented that it took the powerful drow many moments to realize that the shift had been more than a turn of their disembodied consciousness. They were seeing as she was seeing, and when she looked to the side, so did they.

Yvonnel tried to read the priestess’s thoughts, and when that failed, she implored K’yorl to do so.

But that, too, failed, as did any messages or suggestions either of the two tried to impart upon Minolin Fey.

They still saw the outside corridor through her eyes, and better still, she seemed fully unaware of it. Intellectually, Minolin Fey was no Yvonnel, but she was a priestess of Lolth of some renown and achievement. And still she was oblivious to the scrying.

They lingered there for a long time, a very long time, until Yvonnel became convinced that there was no limit here, that they could have remained in Minolin Fey’s head, seeing through her eyes for as long as they wished—and that Minolin Fey would never become wise to it.

Back in the Room of Divination, Yvonnel pulled her hands from the stoup and sighed profoundly.

“Maintain the connection to Minolin Fey!” she ordered. K’yorl hadn’t yet returned. “See though her eyes!”

On impulse, Yvonnel rushed out of the room to the waiting priestess.

“What is it, Mistress?” a startled Minolin Fey asked.

Yvonnel merely smiled. Minolin Fey remained oblivious to the intrusion, and K’yorl remained in there, seeing and hearing Yvonnel exactly as clearly as was Minolin Fey.

Yes, Yvonnel thought, this will do.

“Down!” Jarlaxle warned, and in the heartbeat it took Drizzt and Entreri to recognize the second newcomer, who was in the midst of casting, they surely did as they were told.

The lightning bolt went above them as they flattened themselves on the floor. They felt its radiating heat as it flashed into the hall, through the glabrezu, and into the far wall. The report jolted the stones so profoundly that both Drizzt and Entreri were able to regain their footing without even calling upon their own muscles to propel them upward. They spun around, blades ready.

But as the smoke cleared, the way in front of them was empty of enemies. Entirely empty.

Though they did see the glabrezu’s feet, still side by side in the hall, smoke rising from severed ankles.

“Archmage,” Entreri whispered, and Drizzt, too stunned by the display to find his voice, could only nod his agreement.

After a quick glance along the corridor to ensure that no more demons were about, the pair sheathed their weapons and Drizzt replaced his “buckle bow.” Together they returned to join Jarlaxle and the two wizards.

“You cannot,” Faelas Xorlarrin was saying to the mercenary leader when they arrived. “The matron mothers have sealed the city from magical intrusion. You cannot magically teleport into the city, or near to the city, or even use a simple dimensional door to breach one of the cavern’s outer walls. Nor will clairvoyance or clairaudience afford you any insights. Under the inspired guidance of Matron Mother Baenre, they have been most complete and effective in controlling the flow of such spells.”

“But you are here and mean to return,” Jarlaxle replied.

“I was instructed by Sos’Umptu Baenre, Mistress of Arach-Tinilith and High Priestess of the Fane of the Goddess to report to Luskan with news of the changing rules in Menzoberranzan. If you or any of Bregan D’aerthe intend to magically return to Menzoberranzan, Jarlaxle, you must do so with the express permission of Matron Mother Baenre.” He glanced at the other two. “She would not give such permission for these companions of yours whom she does not know, I am certain.”

“Oh, she would know one of them,” Gromph remarked, “and would welcome him with open fangs.”

Jarlaxle threw a smirk Gromph’s way, then shook his head and said to the archmage, “She suspects that I am in some way connected to your disappearance. No matter, then.”

“The way is magically sealed,” Faelas reiterated.

“There is always a seam in even the finest armor, even in the armoring spells the greatest wizard might conjure,” Jarlaxle returned, grinning at Faelas, then turning to encompass Gromph as well.

But Gromph paid him no heed, Drizzt noted, and was instead staring hard at the fifth drow of the group, Artemis Entreri, and with the rare hint of puzzlement gnawing at the edges of his expression.

“You cannot detect the truth, can you?” an obviously-pleased Jarlaxle asked the archmage, clearly catching on to the same thing Drizzt had noted.

“That is your human toy?” Gromph asked.

Entreri snickered, but not too loudly, and none, not even Jarlaxle, were about to correct Gromph.

“I wish I could decipher the magic of Agatha’s Mask,” Jarlaxle lamented. “So many grand old artifacts we have seen. Ah, but to have known the greatest days of Faerûn’s magic.”

“We are rebuilding the Hosttower,” Gromph reminded him. “Do you believe that I cannot unravel the magic of that simple mask should I try?”

“I ask that you wait until I am done with it,” Entreri remarked.

“If you ever address me again, I will turn you into a frog and step on you,” Gromph promised, his voice as steady and sure as anything Drizzt had ever heard.

Drizzt looked to his often too-proud companion and noted an almost involuntary twitch of Entreri’s fingers. Surely the assassin wondered if he might get out his deadly dagger or that awful sword and put one or both to use on Gromph before the archmage could cast a spell.

“Faelas speaks the truth,” Gromph confirmed. “The matron mothers and high priestesses have joined together in grand communal rituals, weaving their powers into a shield that has magically sealed off Menzoberranzan. They know that Demogorgon is about—or was—and his magical powers cannot be underestimated.”

“The mere sight of him can drive a man to tear out his own eyes, I have been told,” Jarlaxle replied, and he was staring at Gromph’s eyes as he spoke. Drizzt nearly gasped when he looked closely at the archmage, to see the scratches that confirmed Jarlaxle had referenced the actions of Gromph himself.

Drizzt didn’t know much about Demogorgon, though it was a name that he, like every adult of every sentient race on the face of Toril, had surely heard. Looking at Gromph, perhaps the most powerful wizard he had ever met, a wizard worthy of being spoken of in the same breath as the great Elminster himself, Drizzt suddenly realized just how profoundly he preferred to keep it that way.

“Even with the wards of the matron mothers, surely Gromph can break through the barrier and get us into the city,” Jarlaxle said.

“No,” Faelas answered, his subsequent sharp intake of breath and his expression clearly revealing that he had blurted it out before realizing that he was insulting the Archmage of Menzoberranzan . . . who was standing right beside him. “At the very least, such an intrusion would alert the matron mothers that Archmage Gromph was involved,” he quickly added. “In that event, you would be compromised.”

Jarlaxle sighed and seemed at a loss, though only for a moment, of course. He was, after all, Jarlaxle. “Kimmuriel,” he said with a wry grin.