Maestro (36 page)

“Whatever you please.”

“You don’t believe that. You cannot believe that. I asked you a question.”

Drizzt looked away.

“If you do not care, I will bring them in here, lay them before you, and cut them up into little pieces,” Yvonnel said. “Is that what you want?”

Drizzt refused to look at her, refused to give her the satisfaction of an answer.

“Or I could let them go.”

“You will never do that,” Drizzt replied, still not looking at her.

But then she moved up to him again, grabbed him by the chin, and forced his head around. Her stare held him as surely as had her hand, and she ran her fingers over his flesh, igniting little fires in their wake. She was so close, her breath sweet on his face, her eyes stealing his soul, it seemed, and holding his stare.

“Love me,” she whispered.

Drizzt sucked in his breath and fought to turn his gaze away.

“Love me and I will let them go.”

“You won’t.”

“I shall! They are nothing. You are the prize.”

“No,” Drizzt said, and closed his eyes.

She grabbed him and kissed him hard, forcing her tongue into his mouth. He felt such a sensation of power and intensity he couldn’t even gasp.

She stepped back and laughed—and slapped him again, nearly knocking him unconscious.

“Love me and I will let your companions live!”

“No . . . I cannot.”

“You can.”

“I cannot!”

“Then show me fealty.”

“I cannot.”

“Even for the sake of the three you claim to love?” Yvonnel asked. “You would let them die?”

“You offer me no choice, because what you ask is not a choice.”

“I am the Chosen of Lolth and you are the Champion of Lolth.”

“No, never!”

“Yes, Drizzt Do’Urden. There is no choice in that matter for you. Love me! Show me fealty.”

“I cannot,” Drizzt replied, but his tone was broken, less defiant. He sighed and moaned and fell limp against his bonds.

Again Yvonnel grabbed him by the chin and made him look her in the eye, but it was a gentle touch now. “Who is your god?” she asked quietly, and he felt her sympathy and believed it sincere.

“What would you have me say?”

“Just the truth.”

“Mielikki was the closest I found.”

“You name Mielikki as your goddess?”

Drizzt found himself sinking into emotional quicksand. It wasn’t even as if he was speaking to this strange drow woman at that point, but more that he was being forced to admit the truth to himself, honestly, emotionally stripped.

“She was the closest, a name that I put upon what was within my heart. But even of that I have become unsure. So, no, I do not.”

“You claim no god?”

Drizzt shrugged.

“You will not even say it, will you? Do you claim that you are your own god then, miserable mortal?”

Drizzt steadied himself and found some solid ground then. “I claim that what is right is in my heart,” he answered. “That I do not need to be told right from wrong, and if I am weak, and when I am weak, then I know that I have chosen wrongly. And that error is my failing, and not that of any external god.”

The woman’s demeanor shifted visibly then, and her smile returned.

“Then be weak,” she said, moving forward to kiss him.

He turned away.

But she grabbed him again. He could not resist that strength, and she kissed him again. With her lips and with her tongue came that intensity, a hot fire all around his body, to the very edge of pain, promising excruciating agony and unbearable ecstasy all at once.

But it never quite got there.

“You wish your friends to live,” Yvonnel said, pulling back. “In truth, I would take little pleasure in killing them. They showed great courage in coming here for Dahlia, and I must admit that I admire such daring, even if I believe it stupid.”

“Not stupid,” Drizzt said through gritted teeth.

“Truly?”

“No, it cannot be, else what is the point?”

“What point?”

“Of anything. Of life itself. What is the point of anything without honor and loyalty and friendship and love?”

He knew her smile to be sincere then, and she nodded slightly, as if digesting and considering his words. That surprised him.

“Perhaps there is something to your claim,” she admitted. “But I cannot simply allow your friends to leave, of course. Nor you, though murdering you would be much like throwing blood on the most beautiful of paintings.”

“You would prove a most fitting matron mother to do exactly that,” Drizzt replied.

Yvonnel slapped her hand over her mouth to catch her own laughter. “Oh, the spirit!” she said. “You beautiful, stupid drow.”

Drizzt stared at her hard.

“I offer you a deal.”

“I cannot show you fealty.”

She held up her hand to stop him short so she could clarify. “A great prince of demons has been loosed upon the Underdark. The beast loiters in the tunnels nearby, and will soon enough return to Menzoberranzan. You will serve as my champion and as my instrument.”

“Instrument?”

“Defeat Demogorgon and I will let your friends leave, without injury, without pursuit, without any future retribution. I will even return to them all of their belongings, and that is no small hoard of treasure, you well know from your time with Jarlaxle. All of it, including the rescued Dahlia, without future retribution. Free and successful in their mission.”

“I am to believe . . .”

“Upon my word,” she said, moving very near and staring him in the eye. Drizzt tried, but could not disbelieve her in that moment.

He settled back and tried to digest it all. His thoughts swirled about that name, Demogorgon. He had heard of the prince of demons, of course, but he knew so little about any of demonkind, other than the balor Errtu.

But still he replied, “I cannot champion you.”

“Because this place is so repellent to you?”

Drizzt had no answer.

“Is everything here evil, then, Drizzt Do’Urden?” Yvonnel asked. “Simply, irredeemably evil? Demogorgon will run mad across the city if he is not stopped. How many young Drizzts will he kill, I wonder? How many Zaknafeins?”

The mention of his father, the image of Zaknafein’s sacrifice still fresh in his thoughts, tugged at Drizzt’s sensibilities.

“Who would your morals favor in such a fight, the demon prince or the drow?”

Drizzt licked his lips.

“It is a simple question.”

“I do not wish destruction upon this place,” Drizzt admitted. “I came here only for Dahlia.”

“But now it is much more complicated, is it not?” she asked. “And perhaps you will find what you sought after all. But only if you serve as I demand. Prove to me that you are no threat to Menzoberranzan. Prove to me that in your heart, you would defend this place, your people, my people, against the ultimate evil that is Demogorgon. Is that too much to ask of Drizzt Do’Urden? Are you to be a hero only for the dwarves, then, or the humans, and not for your own race?”

She stepped back and waved her hand, and the lightning bars of the cage reappeared, Drizzt’s three companions still inside. Jarlaxle and Entreri stared at him, their expressions giving him the distinct impression that they were well aware of his conversation.

“If you cannot be a hero merely for Menzoberranzan,” Yvonnel said, “then, as you planned, be one for Dahlia, and for Artemis Entreri and Jarlaxle. Serve as my champion. Help me to defeat this demon prince, and I will let them leave, unharmed and with no future recourse against them. Upon my word.”

“For them,” Drizzt said, but Yvonnel turned on him sharply.

“And for Menzoberranzan,” she demanded. “And I will let your friends leave, alive and unharmed.”

“And with our possessions . . .” Jarlaxle started to say, but Yvonnel fixed him with such a glare that he bit back the thought.

Drizzt didn’t hear any of it. If the ground beneath his feet before this moment had been as quicksand, now it was water, ready to swallow him and drown him in confusion and despair. He tried to tell himself again that none of it mattered anyway, that everything was, after all, merely a grand illusion.

Catti-brie was long dead and buried, he reminded himself, as were Regis and Wulfgar, and he had witnessed Bruenor’s last breaths. Perception was not reality.

And perception could not be reality, else what purpose was left?

No matter how hard he tried to convince himself, however, a nagging doubt lingered and nibbled at his resolve. In the end it left him hanging there, overwhelmed.

T
he former Archmage of Menzoberranzan was not used to feeling vulnerable, and it took him a long while to admit that there was nothing, no magic, no willpower, he could rely upon to protect himself should his mind flayer hosts decide to destroy him.

“Lower your defenses,” Kimmuriel urged him, audibly and in his mind. “The illithids have no reason to show you enmity. It was they who bid me to bring you.”

Gromph looked at Kimmuriel with great suspicion, and thought for a moment that he had foolishly accepted the invitation, and that this, after all, might be no more than a ploy to eliminate a threat to Kimmuriel, who had long been favored by the squid-headed beasts.

But Kimmuriel shook his head.

“They would take no sides in our dispute, even if I so wished,” he said. “They would know with confidence that whichever of us proved the stronger would willingly work beside them, to learn from them as they learned from me, or you.

“Lower your defenses, I beg,” he went on. “They cannot serve you here in any case, and hiding behind walls of useless wariness will only prevent you from experiencing the power of this place of ultimate knowledge.”

It made sense to Gromph, but still it took a while for him to lower his guard enough to truly experience the energy around him. He found himself sliding into telepathic debates and images he could only barely comprehend, and at one point nearly lost himself to the fallacy that there was, in the end, no material reality, that it was all a conjuration, a great shared thought experiment.

He followed Kimmuriel down a maze of ringed balconies and spiraling stairways. At the bottom of the long descent, Gromph found himself speechless, a stuttering fool in the face of a gigantic pulsing lump of flesh fully twenty feet in diameter.

Welcome,
he felt in his thoughts, throughout his entire being, and as he thought to answer, he found himself mentally within that giant brain, the hive-mind, the repository of illithid knowledge, the mental eye of this thought collective.

If before the archmage was interested in psionics, now he found himself desperate for the art. Within this hive-mind lay all the components of all magic. Anything he might know, anything he might deign to know, would be in there, the secret of life itself.

“Perhaps,” Kimmuriel said, breaking him from his trance. He turned and stared at the drow, who merely shrugged.

“Come,” Kimmuriel bade him, moving to another stairway.

It was hard for Gromph to leave this place, even when Kimmuriel telepathically assured him that they would return soon enough.

Up the stairs and through a door, and the pair seemed to be walking through an invisible corridor, as if they were floating among the stars, all the colors of the universe splayed out around them, the shining lights unblocked by the ceilings of the Underdark and unblemished by the clouds of Toril.

Gromph had traveled to the Astral Plane before, but never like this, never secured in one place and untethered all at the same time. He felt as if he could simply leap from whatever platform might be beneath his feet and become one with the glory around him. And he was truly sorry when Kimmuriel led him through another substantial door, and into a solid room.

A group of illithids milled about in there, none taking note of the new arrivals. Centering the room was a large pedestal, and upon it was set a crystal ball the size of a mountain giant’s head. Illithids moved to it and placed their hands upon it, tentacles waggling, and then they would move away, those strange appendages tapping those of another mind flayer as they shared thoughts on what they had seen.

After a few heartbeats, Kimmuriel nodded and led Gromph to the crystal ball. Following Kimmuriel’s lead, the archmage placed his hands gently on the hard surface and closed his eyes, and let come what may.

“K’yorl,” he whispered a moment later. Then he gasped, “Yvonnel?”

He understood that this was his daughter, and he found himself in the exchange between Yvonnel and Kimmuriel, a line of communication facilitated by K’yorl.

Lolth’s champion is chosen and the prince of demons approaches,
Yvonnel told Kimmuriel.
I will call upon you and you will give to me what I asked.

I cannot speak for the hive-mind,
Kimmuriel replied, and Gromph knew it wasn’t the first time he had made that disclaimer. The fear in his thoughts were evident, the stakes apparently ultimate.

You will,
Yvonnel told him.

Gromph could not sort it out fully, but it seemed to him that there was a great battle about to ensue, another proxy fight for Lady Lolth.

If Demogorgon is defeated, your crime will be pushed aside,
Yvonnel went on, and it took Gromph a long breath to realize that she was communicating to him then, and not to Kimmuriel. Indeed, he was somehow certain that Kimmuriel hadn’t even heard that telepathic impartation.

We will speak in the future,
Yvonnel promised, and the communication was cut off. Gromph fell back from the crystal ball, staring at Kimmuriel, blinking at him, trying futilely to hide his awe.

“Your matron mother?” he asked of the son of House Oblodra.

“Through her, your daughter found me. And now she demands of me.”

Gromph let that notion settle for a bit, then merely shrugged, painted on a rather smug expression, and replied, “She is Baenre, after all.”

“And now she demands of us,” Kimmuriel clarified, and Gromph winced, just a bit.

Drizzt walked along the corridors of the Masterways, silently and in darkness. He had all his gear with him, along with a brooch the strange young woman named Yvonnel had pinned upon him—one that would offer him some protection, so she said, and also that would allow her to observe his progress.

He had spent much of his time out of Menzoberranzan that day considering Yvonnel. He still couldn’t sort it out—was she yet another person reborn in the time of the Sundering? Or was he lost wandering the looping corridors of time, living in existence past and present, and so she was truly Yvonnel the Eternal?

Or perhaps she was just another Baenre named Yvonnel. Or perhaps he had gone truly insane, or the world around him ever had been and only now was he coming to understand the awful truth that nothing really mattered at all.

It had taken the ranger many twists and turns in the corridor to dismiss those questions and doubts, and to focus on the task at hand, repeatedly reminding himself that he had to take each moment at face value and appropriately respond, at least until he had come to some measure of certainty regarding all of this.

Right now, that meant finding this creature, Demogorgon, so that his companions could be freed. Whether they were actually his companions was a question for another, less urgent, moment.

A new pouch hung on Drizzt’s belt, another gift from the young Baenre, though he knew not what it contained. She had specifically instructed him not to even look into it unless and until he desperately needed it. Similarly, his scimitars remained in their sheaths. He carried a Y-shaped wand, a divination device attuned to the most powerful of demonkind.

Strangely, and ominously, Drizzt had encountered no minor demons as of yet, though the corridors had been thick with them not long ago, by all reports. He continued at a swift pace, putting Menzoberranzan far behind—so far that he wondered if he could simply throw aside the brooch and keep on walking right out of the Underdark.

But no. He had given his word, and the three in the cell in the dungeon of House Baenre needed him.

Down one long and narrow corridor, the divining wand tingled in his hand. Drizzt paused and sniffed the air, and from the slight air currents, he sensed that the corridor would widen not too far ahead.

Drizzt fell into himself, finding his center, finding that ultimately calm being, that pure warrior he had so often summoned in his days wandering these same tunnels.

Your foe is ahead . . . in a great cavern,
he heard in his thoughts, and recognized it to be Yvonnel.

The Hunter grabbed the brooch and thought to throw it aside.

But no, he decided, though he steeled his thoughts, wishing no more intrusions.

He crept ahead in the near-total darkness, the illuminating lichen barely casting his shadow as he passed. He quick-stepped to the edge of the cavern, and there paused. It was brighter inside, the perimeter of the place lined with glowing lichen, and with glow worms crawling about the walls and ceiling, their blue light appearing almost like the night sky atop Kelvin’s Cairn.

The Hunter remembered that place, faintly, but did not let his thoughts slide back across time and space. He reached for his own belt pouch, then grimaced as he realized that Guenhwyvar was not with him, that he had left his faithful feline companion with Catti-brie in Luskan.

Except that it really wasn’t Catti-brie . . .

Drizzt dismissed that thought. He had no time for that now, no time for any doubts or distractions. He considered the large cavern and its far wall and high ceiling, sorting the pattern of the many stalagmite mounds and stalactites hanging from on high.

The Hunter entered, rushing to a nearby mound, slipping around it to sprint to the base of another.

He heard the beast before he saw it, a great scraping sound of claws on stone, followed by a snuffling and grunting chorus.

“Smells!” screeched a voice, like the shriek of a giant ape.

“Hunger!” another, deeper voice answered.

And then the Hunter saw it, and for all his discipline, for all his experience, for all the many battles he had waged, his knees went weak beneath him. Looking upon this monster, this prince of demons, could drive even a great drow mad.

But Drizzt was not alone. Yvonnel was there in his spinning thoughts, fighting the urges, driving them aside, and so he found the pure concentration of the Hunter again, and so he looked upon the beast as it scraped its way across the cavern, giant raptor claws digging trenches in the stone floor, serpent-like tentacle arms waving from its shoulders, rolling and occasionally snapping about a stalagmite mound.

The beast stood five times his height and more. Its two heads seemed that of a great, gigantic ape, with frightening orange fur shining even in the meager light, and large black eyes that looked down from on high with a lamplight gaze that mocked the Hunter’s attempt to hide.

He drew his scimitars and stepped out.

He looked at the weapons, then back at the beast, and shook his head in disbelief.

He heard Yvonnel in his thoughts but shut her out, dismissively thinking her an idiot, and himself worse. Why was he out here, and what in all the world was he supposed to do against this . . . walking catastrophe?

He looked at Twinkle and Icingdeath again, the two blades that had served him so well for more than a century.

He slid them away.

A flip of his hand across his belt buckle brought him Taulmaril—the Hunter had no intention of getting anywhere near this prince of demons.

And so he was off, running and diving, sliding to his knees and letting fly, the silver trails of his magical arrows so dense the cavern looked like it held a thunderstorm. He knew his line of arrows were scoring hit after hit— how could he miss something the sheer size of this beast, after all?—but if they were doing anything at all to Demogorgon, the demon didn’t show it.

Or at least, they weren’t doing any visible harm to the beast. They certainly seemed to be angering it.

The ape-heads screeched and shrieked and the beast rushed for him, those long, snake-like arms whipping and chipping stone with their godly strength.

All the Hunter had was his speed and his diminutive stature, and so he sped across the mounds, diving, rolling, shooting, desperate to stay ahead. To get clipped even once by this nightmarish behemoth was to be utterly destroyed.

He looked for wounds on the pursuing beast and noted none. He listened for some hint that he was wounding the monster, but there was only screeching rage and hunger in Demogorgon’s pursuing cries. How many shots would it take to harm the beast? How many to kill it? A thousand? Ten thousand?

He would need a thousand thousand, and more!

He wanted to scream at Yvonnel. He wanted to grab her and yell in her face at the sheer stupidity of this quest. But he couldn’t.

He could only run.

On one dive and roll, Drizzt skimmed the side of a large mound just as Demogorgon’s snapping tentacle skipped across it, shattering stone and jolting the whole cavern with a thunderous tremor.

Drizzt scrambled to back away and fell, and grimaced against the sting as he felt Yvonnel’s pouch against his hip.

He rolled to his back, his legs pumping to slide him across the floor. He lost his breath when he saw Demogorgon’s two heads staring down at him from over the stalagmite, saw the other tentacle rolling up over the gigantic shoulder to snap down upon him.

With every ounce of training and strength and agility he could find, Drizzt twisted his weight back the other way, every muscle in his back and legs straining to pull him up to his feet, to stand and to pitch forward at the creature even as the mighty tentacle smashed against the floor and cracked the stone right behind him.

His magical anklets propelled him into a dead run. He dived as he passed the stalagmite mound, only so that he could shoot an arrow straight up between Demogorgon’s heads. The Hunter rolled right back to his feet, never slowing, and as those two ape heads turned to face each other and the line of silver lightning that shot up between them, he went right between the beast’s massive legs.

He dodged past the tail, which, too, could swing as a devastating, stone-crushing whip and which chased him and cracked against another mound as he passed.

He heard the creature turn in pursuit. He heard a stalagmite explode under the weight of a monstrous kick, and those shrieks reverberated so profoundly that the Hunter was certain he would get shaken to the ground.

Somehow he got around the next mound, darted past another after that, and then found his way blocked, as all the floor in front of him simply turned to lava.