“The mask,” Drizzt said, confirming Jarlaxle’s fears. “How do we know it is truly Artemis Entreri beneath Agatha’s Mask?”
“Because I gave it to him and watched him put it on,” Jarlaxle replied in a deadpan, incredulous tone.
“A major demon would be clever enough to continue Entreri’s exact ruse if it got its claws on that magic mask,” reasoned Drizzt.
Entreri pulled off the mask and reverted to his normal form immediately. “And a major demon would be clever enough to deflect attention in such a manner as you just did,” he said, aiming the remark at Drizzt, who seemed very much his adversary at that point.
“I have magical truesight,” Jarlaxle interrupted and when both turned to regard him, he tapped his heavily enchanted eye patch. “Though Agatha’s Mask could fool me. Its magic is ancient and powerful, no polymorph enchantment a demon might wage would deceive me. Even one cast by a major demon.”
“And a demon lord?” asked Drizzt, who seemed unable to let this go.
“Aye,” the equally suspicious Entreri echoed.
Jarlaxle stared at Drizzt and held up his arms as if in surrender. “It is Artemis Entreri,” he said to the ranger. He turned to the assassin. “Put the mask back on, and leave it on. And it is Drizzt Do’Urden before you and no demon imposter. What foolishness has possessed you? Both of you?”
“We are dealing with powerful denizens of the lower planes,” Entreri said, and he became a drow once more. “What you call foolishness, I deem caution.”
“And if you had killed each other? What then?”
“Then it would all be, perhaps, as it was ever supposed to be,” Entreri said with deadly seriousness. He looked at Drizzt as he issued the threat.
“If the last thing I do before I cease to draw breath in this life is to end the life of Artemis Entreri, then I know I will leave this world a better place than I found it,” Drizzt returned.
Jarlaxle kept his hands out to the side, too flustered to even realize his arms were out there. This seemed to him a throwback to days long past—hadn’t Drizzt and Entreri gone far beyond this foolishness? They had traveled together for many years, indeed had done incredible things together, in Port Llast, particularly.
Now, for no reason Jarlaxle could discern, they were ready, eager even, to kill each other.
“Demogorgon,” Jarlaxle whispered under his breath. Wasn’t one of the greatest weapons of the Prince of Demons his ability to drive men mad? That unsettling thought nagged at Jarlaxle and had him looking over his shoulder more than once, as if expecting the gargantuan Demogorgon to come crashing through the hall at any moment.
The way was clear—both ways now that the remaining pack of demons had been properly dispatched. To the side, the great flightless bird pecked at the smoking corpse of the balgura.
Jarlaxle wearily rubbed his face and considered the warnings Faelas had given him regarding Menzoberranzan. None of this was going as he had expected. Every step seemed to bring new challenges—would he even be able to take his rest this day with the possibility that he would awaken to the sounds of Drizzt and Entreri engaged in mortal combat?
“I know not what has brought to you both these … suspicions,” he said. “Is there so little trust to be had between we three?”
Drizzt and Entreri scowled at each other.
“Then we should turn back for Gauntlgrym,” said Jarlaxle.
“Aye, and be rid of this one,” Entreri said with a nod at Drizzt. “We shouldn’t have brought him in the first place.”
Jarlaxle sighed and held his thoughts silent. If Drizzt had not agreed to come along, he wouldn’t have made this journey. He didn’t care enough about the elf Dahlia to risk so much. And though he, or at least Bregan D’aerthe, was indebted to Artemis Entreri for his loss of another lover, another woman, a half-elf named Calihye, Jarlaxle had no intention of risking his life repaying that debt.
What Jarlaxle couldn’t tell Entreri was that this journey really wasn’t about Dahlia. He meant to rescue her, and hoped Kimmuriel would find some way to unwind the writhing snakes in her mind. That would aid Jarlaxle in his greater aims, and indeed, had served him as a catalyst for convincing Drizzt to come in the first place. But Dahlia’s fate was not paramount.
Jarlaxle was bringing Drizzt to Menzoberranzan to exploit a growing rift among his people, a rising scream of protest from the males of Menzoberranzan that they would not forever be held as vassals to the matriarchs. For more than a century, Jarlaxle and so many others had looked to Drizzt as the one who found freedom, the one who denied the ways of Lolth and escaped, and indeed thrived. Even Gromph couldn’t help but nod approvingly—if secretly—when he thought of Drizzt Do’Urden. That was why Gromph had chosen to clandestinely use Drizzt’s body as the conduit for his great dispelling magic to boil away the Darkening that Tsabrak Xorlarrin, acting on the will of Lolth, had created above the Silver Marches.
Drizzt was Jarlaxle’s chance to exploit the rift in Menzoberranzan, and Matron Mother Zeerith Xorlarrin’s chance to regain her stature in the city.
The arrival of Drizzt—to pull Dahlia from the ridiculous reincarnation of House Do’Urden, to poke his finger in the eye of Matron Mother Quenthel Baenre, to send great waves through the city—was Jarlaxle’s countering wave against the rising tide of zealotry growing in Menzoberranzan. Unyielding fealty to the strictest edicts of Lady Lolth would push all the males of Menzoberranzan far back down the ladder of ascension, and would indeed threaten even Bregan D’aerthe. Jarlaxle had worked too hard and too long to let that happen.
But ah, what now? he wondered, looking at his companions. Their mission suddenly seemed ill-fated. He had gone into it unsure, and indeed with some of his advisers and even Gromph warning him that there was too little certainty and too much to lose. And now, in the few days since they had marched from Luskan’s Undercity, they had learned that their destination had been virtually shut down, even to magical intrusions. They had found corridors full of demons, and now this, some strangeness that had infected his companions in a most dangerous way.
“We will return Drizzt to King Bruenor’s court, and then we will return to, and remain in, Luskan,” Jarlaxle said.
Entreri’s face contorted with a clear undercurrent of growing rage. “You promised me this,” he said in a quiet and deadly voice. “You owe me this.”
“We cannot do this without Drizzt,” Jarlaxle said, and convincingly despite the secretive other half of the equation,. He, Drizzt, and Entreri were gaining something special here, and they all knew it. Their work together in fending off the demon hordes was no minor matter—he and Entreri simply couldn’t replace Drizzt with someone else and go their merry way.
“I give not a damn about Drizzt,” Entreri growled back at him.
“Then you give not a damn about Dahlia,” Jarlaxle said. “Without him, we cannot get near to her.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then we return the way we came.”
“No!”
The two stared at each other, Entreri hatefully, Jarlaxle curiously.
“We go on,” said Drizzt, and both turned to him. He looked Jarlaxle in the eye. “Or I do, alone. Dahlia is down there. She was my companion, my friend. I cannot abandon her in her time of desperation.”
“Will you take a second wife, then?” Entreri asked.
“She would be better off as my slave than as consort to the demon masked in the body of Artemis Entreri,” Drizzt snapped back, and both drew their blades once more.
“One strike!” Jarlaxle warned, stepping between them. “One blade against blade, one wound from either of you upon the other, even in the midst of battle, even by accident, and our quest is ended.” He looked to each, staring sternly until the blades went down then went away.
“When Dahlia is returned to the World Above, I give you leave to murder each other, if that is your choice.”
SHE HEARD THE whistle, a strange sound indeed, that reverberated like the beacon
of a lighthouse in K’yorl’s mind, and so, too, in Yvonnel’s.
What was this sensation?
And then Yvonnel’s heart leaped. They had done it! K’yorl had sent her thoughts out from the stoup and across the planes to contact Kimmuriel. And there, in the hive-mind of the illithids, she had found her son.
That elation turned to doubt, though, when Kimmuriel recoiled in anger.
Kimmuriel chastised his mother for causing him to deliver to Gromph Baenre the fabric of the spell the deceived archmage had used to bring Demogorgon to the Underdark, and in doing so, thinning the boundary of the Faerzress itself.
Yvonnel couldn’t sort it out for a long while, but as K’yorl responded to Kimmuriel, it became clear: Lolth had done this. In the Abyss, in a balor’s lair, the Spider Queen in K’yorl’s form had used Kimmuriel to deceive Gromph. And now Kimmuriel was in hiding from the dangerous Gromph. Yvonnel could feel Kimmuriel’s hatred and could sense his desire for vengeance against his mother. And even K’yorl’s doubts and confusion would have no sway here in convincing Kimmuriel that she had not done this to him.
Yvonnel felt the battered woman’s deep regret. The former Matron Mother of House Oblodra desperately wanted to set things straight with her son—not out of any love for Kimmuriel, of course, but simply out of worry over her own legacy. What a curse her name would become, perhaps even centuries after her demise, when all the drow believed it was she who broke the boundary of the Faerzress and loosed the demon lords upon the Underdark. And there was nothing K’yorl could do about it.
Kimmuriel shut them out then, so suddenly and forcefully that Yvonnel was thrust from the melding, and her eyes blinked open back in the Room of Divination. She suppressed her panic, and her instinct to slap K’yorl, too, out of her trance. Instead she focused on the image in the scrying bowl, nodding as she realized that K’yorl was no longer in the hive-mind, that her consciousness was flying fast along the corridors of the Underdark—backtracking the call of the whistle, perhaps.
The image flickered and formed, then went away again, repeating the process several times.
And the last image caught Yvonnel’s attention and took her breath away.
But the stoup waters cleared, and K’yorl groaned and opened her eyes, the connection broken.
“Where are they?” Yvonnel Baenre demanded, the bared power of her voice forcing K’yorl from her thoughts and into the present. K’yorl stared at her adversary, and even sneered.
“Where are they?” Yvonnel repeated. “Tell me or I will fetch the illithid Methil and bid him wrest the information from your thoughts. In that event, he will leave some foul presents behind, I promise.”
K’yorl tried to maintain her glare, but Yvonnel’s expression made it clear that she was not bluffing. The illithid Methil El Viddenvelp would implant deep suggestions, even memories, to terrorize K’yorl, leaving her helpless to distinguish reality from nightmare.
“Kimmuriel is not certain …”
“Of their exact location,” Yvonnel finished for her. “Where are they? And who are they? Jarlaxle, I know, but the others …
“Drizzt Do’Urden,” K’yorl blurted and Yvonnel’s breath left her once more.
“Where?” she demanded with what little voice she could muster.
“You ask …”
“Last opportunity,” Yvonnel said with a low and threatening growl.
K’yorl stuttered no more. “Jarlaxle and his companions are in the Underdark, a few days out from Menzoberranzan.”
Yvonnel pulled her hand from the magical stoup, but commanded the enchanted Baenre tool to hold K’yorl in place. Glowering all the way, the young and dangerous Baenre walked up to stare K’yorl in the face, her eyes barely an inch away.
“You do not need to make me your enemy,” she said with surprising tenderness. “I understand that you hate me—no, more than that, I understand that you hate House Baenre above all others. That is well and good and likely deserved. And I do not care.”
She paused and cupped K’yorl’s chin in her hand. “Why are they coming?”
K’yorl’s responding expression was one of pure incredulity. “For House Do’Urden,” Yvonnel said. “To rescue the elf called Dahlia.”
K’yorl managed a small nod of affirmation.
“This is marvelous, do you not see?” Yvonnel asked, and she spun away, laughing. She stopped quickly and spun back on K’yorl. “Jarlaxle is hiding Gromph from Matron Mother Quenthel?”
K’yorl nodded, her expression showing her belief she was surely doomed now.
“Bold!” said Yvonnel. “And brave—Jarlaxle comes personally to see to this. Marvelous!”
K’yorl stared at her incredulously, having no way to sort out the glee, unexpected for such a dangerous situation.
“And we have a better way to spy!” Yvonnel said.
K’yorl’s jaw drooped open and she shook her head, clearly at a loss.
Yvonnel understood that dumbfounded look. To K’yorl Odran, this Yvonnel Baenre standing in front of her was a reflection of, perhaps a reincarnation of, or indeed perhaps even one and the same with, the Yvonnel Baenre she had known before.
She did not understand that this mere child before her was so much more.
“Splendid!” Yvonnel cried out, rushing back around the stoup and sinking her hands once more into the rim, to again contact the hands of K’yorl Odran.
“Go, now,” Yvonnel instructed, and when K’yorl did not immediately respond, she added, “To Jarlaxle! At once!”
She paused a moment, then reconsidered. “No, to Kimmuriel,” she instructed. “To him, but do not contact him.”
“The illithids …” K’yorl meekly protested.
“Go!”
In moments, they were across the planes once more, though as soon as they neared the spot where Kimmuriel stood, his delicate hands massaging the brain of the great hive-mind, Yvonnel telepathically instructed K’yorl away. Follow the path again to Jarlaxle.
Perhaps they could have gotten out there straightaway from the Room of Divination, but Yvonnel had wanted something else, ever so briefly. She had felt the power surrounding Kimmuriel on their initial pass, emanating at the edges of her consciousness. The hive-mind.
Glorious power!
Oh, but she would experience that someday, she promised herself as her thoughts and K’yorl’s wound back to Toril, and back to along the winding corridors of the Underdark. In a heartbeat, though Yvonnel was not even aware of her own heartbeat at that amazing moment, she found herself looking at the mercenary leader, Jarlaxle.
Her uncle.
The purple eyes of one of his companions caught her and held her. From the memories of the Eternal, this new Yvonnel knew this was Drizzt Do’Urden, the ultimate heretic, and also, in the greatest of ironies, the beloved tool of Lolth. And they were heading, blindly, to Menzoberranzan.
Yvonnel could hardly contain her joy.
She telepathically bade K’yorl to flicker through Drizzt’s thoughts, then to the third, unknown companion.
There, she got an amazing surprise, to learn that this was no drow but a human in perfect drow disguise. A human … weak-minded, susceptible.
Yvonnel sensed Jarlaxle’s unease—the wary mercenary suspected that something was amiss.
At her bidding, K’yorl went back into the thoughts of the disguised human, and there they stayed, hidden from Jarlaxle and Drizzt, and even from the unwitting human host. As they had done with Minolin Fey in the corridor in an earlier session, they now looked out through the eyes of Artemis Entreri.
A short while later, Yvonnel emerged alone from the Room of Divination. Minolin Fey waited outside. The priestess glanced past her into the room, looking curiously at the unmoving K’yorl, who remained at the stoup, her hands melded with the stone.
“She is held, mind and body,” Yvonnel explained. “You will go to her often and magically sustain her.”
“Mistress?”
“It could be days, tendays ev
en. I’ll not have her die of thirst.”
Minolin Fey seemed not to understand.
“If K’yorl Odran perishes, or becomes too weak to continue her task, I will return you to Errtu in the Abyss in her stead.”
Minolin Fey’s widening eyes told Yvonnel that she had heard that command clearly.
“And inform Matron Mother Quenthel and all the others that no one is to enter this room,” Yvonnel added. “Any who disobey will face my wrath, and it will not be a pleasant thing.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
Yvonnel swung around and walked away to the echoes of her favorite words. She wasn’t quite sure what she had done, or how. Through some combination of her own divine magic and the powers of the scrying room, she had magically held K’yorl. That alone was nothing special of course, but in this case, it had accomplished much more. K’yorl was locked in place, in body and in thought. She saw the world through the eyes of Artemis Entreri, though neither of them knew it.
And Yvonnel, too, could access that vision simply by looking into the waters of the stoup. She had magically created the perfect spy in the adventuring trio’s midst: one of their own. And in the process, she had turned K’yorl Odran into what amounted to a living crystal ball.
What a fabulous day it had been! They were coming. Drizzt Do’Urden was delivering himself to her in Menzoberranzan.
“I KNOW NOT what to make of it!” Jarlaxle said to Matron Mother Zeerith the next morning, when he had slipped away from the other two to meet the woman in an appointed place, less than a day’s march from the gates of Menzoberranzan.
“Have you called to Kimmuriel?”
“Finally, he answered,” Jarlaxle said, holding up the small silver whistle he kept on a chain, one Kimmuriel had psionically attuned to his thoughts so he could hear it across miles, even across the planes of existence. “I had thought him lost to me.”
“He is in the hive-mind of an illithid colony,” Zeerith reminded him.
“He will be of little help on our mission,” Jarlaxle explained. “None, actually, until we are back in Luskan, where he will try to unravel Dahlia’s insanity. He will not venture into the Underdark.”
Maestro Page 21
