Maestro (39 page)

“It will all be forgotten, I assure you, if you kill Drizzt Do’Urden,” Jarlaxle warned.

Yvonnel scowled at him and waved him away.

A tenday later, back in Luskan, Beniago stood with Gromph near the ruins of the old Hosttower.

“Jarlaxle will return on the morrow,” he informed the archmage. “Catti-brie has entered the southern gate.”

Gromph looked at the drow in human disguise.

“She will be here presently, I expect.”

The archmage turned back to the ruins.

“You could be rid of her,” Beniago offered, and Gromph arched his eyebrows at that surprising remark.

“Jarlaxle would not like it, but would he ever know?” Beniago asked when Gromph looked back at him again.

Gromph wasn’t angry, of course. Beniago’s words were perfectly consistent with everything about drow society and tradition—even within Bregan D’aerthe. But the archmage chuckled and shook his head. “Go back to your tower, High Captain,” he said, mocking Beniago’s silly station. “Let the artists work.”

Even as Beniago started away, Gromph noted Catti-brie’s approach, the woman riding upon her unicorn across the bridge from Closeguard Island.

In watching her, and now in appreciating the truth of this human woman, Gromph for the first time in his life was surprised to admit that he was jealous of a mere warrior.

She rode Andahar up to him, and slid from the saddle to stand in front of him.

“May I help you, Lady?” he asked, but didn’t look at her.

“I forgive you,” she said, surprising him.

“What?”

“I forgive you,” she repeated. “For your telepathic intrusions. I understand now that you were not even there in my thoughts, and that it was only a suggestion placed for me to find.”

“And to enjoy.”

Catti-brie’s expression went cold.

“Then I am no rapist,” Gromph smugly replied to that look.

“You are a scoundrel and a fraud,” the woman said. “But I expected as much from the outset. I forgive you because now I trust that you will not hold me in lust, in body, in mind, or in hatred.”

“Interesting,” Gromph admitted. “I did not think you cared.”

“For you? No, I care for those you might harm. And I care most of all for those for whom you may do well. Can you do that, Archmage Gromph Baenre of Menzoberranzan? Can you just this once look beyond your own needs and desires and act for the benefit of others?”

“I am here, am I not?”

“Because you have to be, or because you want to be?”

Gromph gave a little laugh. “Good lady, let us finish this and make the new Hosttower of the Arcane more grand than the first.”

“It will be,” Catti-brie said with a nod, and then she offered a returned grin and added, “Just stay out of my thoughts.”

It was merely an off-hand remark, a bit of levity among the continual tension, but to Catti-brie’s obvious surprise, Gromph swung to face her, his expression very serious, and dipped a long, low bow. When he came back up in front of her, he said, in all seriousness, “Good lady. Catti-brie. I am Gromph Baenre of Menzoberranzan. Many times have I bowed to women—to do otherwise was to feel the bite of a snake-headed scourge. I say to you now, in all honesty, in all of my long life, that this is the first time I have offered a bow to a woman because I believe she deserved it.”

Catti-brie fell back a step, for a moment seeming at a loss. “Am I to swoon now?” she asked with an unsettled laugh.

“If I thought you would, I never would have bowed.”

And the great archmage turned back to the ruins and did not watch Catti-brie depart.

Drizzt sat on a comfortable divan. He wore fine, soft robes, and the meal in front of him would have satisfied Athrogate.

He had seen the dungeons of House Baenre, and now he witnessed the luxuries—though surely he felt this equally unnerving and exhausting.

“You could be a king,” said Yvonnel, who sat across from him, her legs up and tucked, the slit in her comfortable gown revealing much of her shapely legs. “Do you even understand the possibilities before you?”

Drizzt looked across the room, where Matron Mother Quenthel, Sos’Umptu Baenre, and another priestess Yvonnel had introduced as her mother, sat staring at him. He could feel their hatred—almost as much for Yvonnel as for himself.

“Your companions are back on the surface now, nearing the city of Luskan,” Yvonnel said. “That should make you happy.”

Drizzt shrugged.

“Do you wish to join them?”

“Yes,” he answered.

“You miss your friends and your home?”

He shrugged again.

Yvonnel laughed at him. “But did you not just come home? Are you not home now, among the drow, where you belong?”

“I came only to rescue Dahlia.”

“Whom you do not even believe is Dahlia, correct? Because it is all a lie?”

Drizzt looked away, because he really did not have any answer to that. He still felt as if he were standing on quicksand, as if perception and reality were twined in terrible ways.

“Did you not come home?” Yvonnel pressed.

“This is not my home.”

“I could make of you a king of Menzoberranzan!”

Drizzt shook his head.

“You could remake this city in your image. You are the champion of Lolth—all of the Houses witnessed your leap into the beast Demogorgon. You, Drizzt, destroyed that fiend and so we are saved.”

“I was your arrow, nothing more.”

“But they do not fully appreciate that, do they?”

“But I do. And this is not my home. Menzoberranzan can never be my home.”

Yvonnel relaxed a little more in her chair, her expression one of amusement. “Do you have a home? One that matters? Isn’t it all a lie?”

Drizzt shrugged.

“You are an insufferable one,” Yvonnel said. “And so I have changed my mind.” She motioned to the guards, who rushed out, returning with armloads of equipment, all of which Drizzt surely recognized. He looked on without even trying to hide his interest as Twinkle and Icingdeath fell upon the floor, and the belt Catti-brie had made for him, Taulmaril magically secured in the buckle.

And there, too, were Vidrinath and Orbbcress, along with Tiago’s fabulously enchanted armor.

“To the victor,” Yvonnel remarked.

Drizzt was looking past her, though, to see the profound scowls of Quenthel and Sos’Umptu, with the other, Minolin Fey, looking at the two with great concern. Yvonnel was playing her games as much for their benefit—or annoyance—as for his own.

“Take it, all of it,” Yvonnel said. “And I will have Archmage Tsabrak send you to this place you call home. You are a fool to abandon so much. So much pleasure, and so much power.”

Drizzt stared hard at her.

“If nothing matters, if it is all a wretched and twisted dream, then why not enjoy it?” she said.

When Drizzt didn’t reply, she laughed and said, “Get out.”

And so he did.

“How dare you?” Matron Mother Quenthel found the courage to argue when Drizzt was gone, his gear—and Tiago’s—in hand.

“Should I have killed him, do you suppose?”

“Of course!” Sos’Umptu answered.

“Horribly!” Quenthel added.

“Would that destroy him, do you think?”

“He would be dead, or worse—a drider, as is fitting,” Sos’Umptu replied.

“Better that!” Quenthel agreed. “You should have murdered him, yes, and painfully, over years.”

“You cannot destroy Drizzt Do’Urden by destroying his body,” Yvonnel explained. “He had long since moved beyond his corporeal form to become a creature of the heart and soul and not the flesh. His cries of pain would thrill you more than they would wound him, because he would hold his purpose and his truth. You cannot take that from him by torturing him.”

“Then kill all who are dear to him, before his very eyes!” Matron Mother Baenre declared.

But Yvonnel simply shrugged. “To what end? Even then, we would only affirm the truth in Drizzt’s heart. That heart would break at the sight of his beloved friends murdered, of course, but it would be a temporary victory. Breaking his heart is not the same as breaking his will.”

“So you simply allow him to leave?” asked Sos’Umptu.

Yvonnel laughed, so wickedly, so knowingly, so sinisterly, that it sent a chill through the spines of the older women.

“Drizzt is not the Chosen of Mielikki,” Yvonnel explained. “He is the Chosen only of what is in his heart, which he once accepted as the name of the goddess Mielikki. His faith lies in what he deigns truth, not a specific deity, and if there is a god for him, he believes he will find that god by following what he knows to be right and true. His apathy for the existence of a named truth, a god, will not chase him from his chosen course.”

The two Baenre high priestesses glanced at each other uncertainly.

“His human wife’s faith is less complicated. Catti-brie is a Chosen of Mielikki, willingly so,” Yvonnel continued.

Sos’Umptu and Quenthel looked at each other again and shrugged, neither understanding.

“Trust the lingering curse of Faerzress madness,” Yvonnel explained. “When Drizzt truly believes that he is deceived yet again, when he sees before him the ultimate ruse, he will reject it utterly and with explosive outrage.”

“And?” the matron mother prompted.

Yvonnel turned a most awful grin over the women. “How destroyed do you suppose Drizzt Do’Urden will be when he comes to understand that in killing the lie, he has struck dead his beloved Catti-brie?”

The level of conniving evil had the Baenre sisters standing dumbstruck.

“I would find that more gratifying than merely torturing the fool,” Yvonnel asserted, and she grimaced as she considered Jarlaxle’s assertion that she could not break Drizzt, determined to prove him wrong. “Wouldn’t you?”