Road of the Patriarch ts-3

by Robert Anthony Salvatore

  "It is typical of humans, is it not?" the psionicist answered. "To throw a lover through a glass window, then seek her out in remorse? Our way is much more straightforward and honest, I think. No drow matron would expel a male and let him live."

  "With notable exception."

  "Notable," Kimmuriel agreed. "Of course, in the instance to which you refer, Matron Baenre had little choice in the matter. Is it true that the Secondboy of House Baenre was the one commanded to rid the House of the cursed Jarlaxle, who lay on the altar without a mark despite the repeated stabbing of the mighty matron mother herself?"

  "You know the tale," Jarlaxle replied.

  "Yes, but I would like to hear it as often as you would deign to tell it. To see your mother's face twisted in exquisite frustration and horror when her blade would not bite into the infant! And then to see her expression of the sheerest terror, and that of Triel as well, when Secondboy Doquaio whisked you from the slab! He must have looked much like that bloody creature in Artemis's room when the infant Jarlaxle unwittingly released the captured energy into him."

  Kimmuriel took hope at Jarlaxle's chuckle, an indication, perhaps, that he had deflected the conversation from Calihye.

  "And of course, then Jarlaxle was no longer the third son, and no longer a fitting sacrifice," he rambled on.

  "I haven't seen Kimmuriel bantering this much since you wagged your hands in trying to alleviate a cramp in your forearm," Jarlaxle said, and the psionicist's lips went tight.

  "She was gone from the alley," Jarlaxle said. "She didn't crawl far, for the blood trail ended—and rather abruptly, and right near a place where the blood had pooled. She was sitting there, against the wall, of course, before she was taken away."

  "Lady Calihye has made powerful enemies, and powerful friends," said Kimmuriel. "Perhaps it is a good thing that Artemis Entreri is leaving the realm, and quickly."

  "And she has made friends of convenience," Jarlaxle remarked, staring his associate right in the eye. "Who will turn on her, no doubt, at the slightest hint of betrayal."

  Kimmuriel didn't deny it.

  "This place is worth the trouble of Bregan D'aerthe," Jarlaxle went on. "There is much to be found here, such as the bloodstone, a mineral we cannot easily procure in the Underdark. With Knellict serving our… your cause, you will find easy access to it and other valuables."

  "You have explained it all, many times."

  Jarlaxle clapped Kimmuriel on the shoulder, and the stiff psionicist just stared at him with awkward curiosity. Kimmuriel did intend to use Calihye and Knellict to create a network in the Bloodstone Lands, but in truth it was more for the preservation of Jarlaxle's reputation than for any monetary gains or increase of power the psionicist expected to make. Jarlaxle's reputation couldn't withstand another disaster like the one in Calimport, so close on the heels of that debacle, Kimmuriel believed, and the last thing he wanted was for Bregan D'aerthe to turn away from Jarlaxle. For Jarlaxle would one day return to Menzoberranzan and resume his mantle of leadership. Bregan D'aerthe needed that in order to keep Matron Mother Triel Baenre at proper distance and in proper humor, and more than that, Kimmuriel needed it. His pursuits of the purely intellectual were not served well by the responsibilities of maintaining Jarlaxle's band. He longed for the day when Jarlaxle returned and he could turn his attention more fully to the illithids and the mysteries of their expansive mental powers.

  And turn his attention away from the concerns of the mercenary band, and away from protecting the increasingly renegade Jarlaxle.

  "I know that you doubt," Jarlaxle said, again as if reading his mind, which the psionicist knew to be impossible. Kimmuriel was far too mentally shielded for any such intrusions. "And I am glad that you do, for else who would force me to question my every twist and turn?"

  "Your own common sense?"

  Jarlaxle laughed aloud. "My vision is correct," he insisted.

  "Menzoberranzan demands our attention at all times."

  Jarlaxle nodded. "But the day will come when the contacts we—the contacts you secure on the surface will prove invaluable to the matron mothers."

  "What do you know?"

  "I know that the world is in flux," said Jarlaxle. "Entreri and I were attacked by a Netherese shade, and he made it quite clear that he was not alone. If the shadows fall across the World Above, the matron mothers will not wish to remain oblivious.

  "Furthermore, my friend, there is growing here on the surface a following of Eilistraee. Drizzt Do'Urden is hardly unique among surface drow, and he is finding more acceptance among the surface dwellers."

  "Your former House—"

  "I was never of their House," Jarlaxle corrected.

  "House Baenre," said Kimmuriel, "will not go against Drizzt again, nor would they find any followers if they so decided. There are even priestesses postulating that Drizzt is secretly in the favor of Lolth."

  "They said the same of me after the failed sacrifice."

  "The evidence was strong."

  "And I have never bended knee for the spider bitch. Nor has Drizzt Do'Urden. I am certain that if he learned that he was in Lady Lolth's favor, it would torment him more than a festering wound ever could."

  "More the reason for the goddess to so favor him, then."

  Jarlaxle merely shrugged at the inescapable logic. Such was the irony of following a deity dedicated to chaos.

  "But I do not speak of Drizzt in any case," said Jarlaxle. "I find it unlikely that the Spider Queen will tolerate the worshipers of Eilistraee much longer, and when that day of reckoning befalls the dancing fools, their judgment may well be served by the Houses of Menzoberranzan. Bregan D'aerthe will prove invaluable at that time, of course."

  "Even if it is centuries hence."

  "Patience has sustained me," said Jarlaxle. "And our endeavors will be profitable in the meantime. In human parlance, that is known as a win-win."

  "Humans often think they are winning until the moment they are thrown through the glass window."

  Jarlaxle surrendered with another laugh and with the full understanding, Kimmuriel knew, that Bregan D'aerthe would indeed exploit the contacts made here in this rugged land of Damara and Vaasa.

  Kimmuriel looked past Jarlaxle to the open field and nodded, and the other drow turned around.

  "Your dragons approach," said Kimmuriel.

  Jarlaxle turned back to him and extended his hand. "Then farewell."

  Kimmuriel didn't shake the hand, and so Jarlaxle moved it to his belt pouch to show his lieutenant that he was carrying the item, as they had agreed. Kimmuriel nodded at that, and one hand came out from under his dark robes, bearing a small coffer that held three small vials.

  Jarlaxle's eyes gleamed when he viewed them. "I have opened his heart, and now I will open his mind," he said.

  "For reasons that no sane drow could ever fathom."

  "Sane is boring."

  Kimmuriel snorted derisively as Jarlaxle took the potions. "His mother, his childhood… these are the questions that will open Entreri's mind to you," the psionicist said, and as he retracted the empty coffer, he brought forth his other hand from under the folds of his robes, bearing Idalia's flute.

  "The residual memories lingering within the flute showed you this?" asked Jarlaxle.

  "You asked me to inspect it, and so I did. You asked me for the potions, and so they are yours."

  Jarlaxle, smiling widely, took the flute.

  "And now we are gone, Jarlaxle," said Kimmuriel. "I'll not heed your call again until our next arranged meeting."

  "A long time hence."

  "Rightly so—I've grown far too weary of this blinding surface world, and spent not enough energy heeding the needs of Bregan D'aerthe in Menzoberranzan. It is a city of chaos and constant change, and my former master taught me well that Bregan D'aerthe must change with it, or before it, even."

  "Your former master was brilliant, I am told."

  "So he often says."

  Jarlaxle had rar
ely laughed as much in the presence of the dry-witted psionicist. "I am certain that I will find the band well tended when I return to Menzoberranzan," he said.

  "Of course. And when will that be?"

  Jarlaxle glanced back toward Entreri, who stood with Athrogate before Ilnezhara and Tazmikella. "A human's lifetime, perhaps."

  "Or the remainder of this one's?"

  "Or that. But recall that he was infused with the stuff of shadow. It could be a longer time than you believe." He looked back at Kimmuriel and offered a wink. "But I will indeed return."

  "Don't bring the dwarf."

  Yet another burst of laughter escaped Jarlaxle's lips, and Kimmuriel tightened his expression even more. Jarlaxle seemed almost giddy to him, and it was not a sight he enjoyed.

  "Why, Kimmuriel, you lack imagination!" Jarlaxle declared dramatically. "Do you not see that Athrogate would be a fine gift for my sister, whichever one rules House Baenre, when I return?"

  Kimmuriel didn't smile at all, and at that, Jarlaxle only laughed even louder.

  * * * * *

  "Well, I ain't much for wizard teleportin'," Athrogate was grumbling when Jarlaxle joined the foursome at the boulder tumble in the small field. The dwarf blew a stray strand of black hair from his mouth and crossed his burly arms over his chest. For added effect, he stomped one foot, which set his morningstar heads bouncing at the ends of their respective chains, one over each shoulder as the weapons were crossed on his back. "Knew a halfling once joined a mage such. A skinny old wizard in need of a crutch. And his eyes weren't so good to the price o' their bones, for he shot a bit low and landed both in the stones! Bwahaha!"

  Athrogate snapped off his knee-slapping laughter almost as soon as it began, re-crossed his arms and returned a scowl at Jarlaxle. "And I'm meanin' in the stones."

  The drow looked to Entreri, who just stood there shaking his head and showing no interest in tipping the dwarf off to the reality of their impending journey. He turned to the dragon sisters, who seemed quite amused by it all.

  "You think they have come to teleport us?" Jarlaxle asked. "You forget your flight across the tavern's common room."

  "Ain't forgetting nothing," said the dwarf. "Wizard tricks… bah! They ain't to throw us across the damn sea. Though hell of a landing that might be!"

  "Wizard?" the oblivious Entreri asked, for he had not witnessed the flying dwarf. "You think they mean to teleport us?"

  "Well they ain't about to carry me, with skinny girl arms and skinny girl knees! Bwahaha!"

  "Well maybe instead they'll tie you to a tree," rhymed Entreri, drawing curious, surprised stares from all the others. "Bend it to the ground and let it fly free. Launching you high to the clouds in the sky, and when you come falling we all hope you'll die."

  Athrogate's lips moved as he digested the words by repeating them, and Entreri, his brow furrowed, for he was far from joking, wisely moved a hand to his sword hilt as if expecting the dwarf to launch himself forward.

  But Athrogate exploded into laughter instead of into action. "Bwahaha! Hey, I'm stealin' that!"

  "An appropriate price," Ilnezhara said. "Can we be on with this? I've a shop to attend in the morning."

  "Of course, milady," Jarlaxle said with one of his characteristic, hat-sweeping bows. "But we must prepare our oblivious friend—"

  "No, I don't think we shall," said Ilnezhara, and her voice changed abruptly in timbre and volume, cutting Jarlaxle short and sending Athrogate's jaw to his chest.

  "I care not what he might say, and less that he runs away!" Ilnezhara roared, and the boulders shook from the strength of her voice.

  Her jaws elongated, as if the sheer power of the words had pulled it forward, and a pair of copper-colored horns prodded through her golden hair and stretched upward. As she half-turned, a heavy tail thumped onto the ground and began to lengthen, as her torso stretched and twisted, bones popping into place.

  "You thought we'd ride in a wagon," Entreri teased the mercifully speechless dwarf. "But instead we're flying a…" He paused and waved his hand to prompt the poet dwarf. "Yes, as I expected," Entreri remarked when no words came forth.

  "Uh-uh," said Athrogate, his hands out in front of him and waving, and he began backing away.

  Hardly noticed at the side, Jarlaxle produced a thin wand and pointed it at Entreri, then Athrogate, then himself, each time speaking the command word to enact its magic.

  "Ah, but to soar to the clouds!" Jarlaxle said, and he moved around Ilnezhara. "May I mount you, good lady?" he teased, and Ilnezhara, her transformation continuing, her body elongating, roared in reply. Jarlaxle scrambled astride her scaly back just before two great leathery wings erupted from behind her shoulders, snapping out mightily to their full extension.

  "Dragon," Athrogate muttered.

  "You missed the cue, sorry," Entreri said to him, his voice mirthless though he enjoyed the spectacle of a befuddled Athrogate.

  "Dragon," sputtered Athrogate. "It's a dragon. She's a wyrm… a dragon… a dragon."

  "May I eat the dwarf?" Ilnezhara asked Jarlaxle as soon as her transformation was complete. She stood on four legs, a mighty copper dragon. "I will need sustenance for the journey."

  Jarlaxle leaned forward and whispered into her ear, and her serpentine neck snapped her head out toward Athrogate, who blanched and nearly fainted. Ilnezhara hit him with a burst of her windy breath, a magical cone of «heavy» air. Suddenly Athrogate seemed to be moving much more slowly, and he turned as if running through deep mud.

  But Ilnezhara had no such bonds on her, and she reared and leaped forward, a single snapping beat of her wings lifting her and her rider drow from the ground. They shot past Entreri, who fell away, and Tazmikella, who seemed to take pleasure in the sudden buffet of wind.

  Athrogate dived aside—or was beginning to—when Ilnezhara passed over him, and her claw grabbed him hard and yanked him along. In a blink of the stunned and terrified dwarf's eye, he found himself fifty feet off the ground and climbing fast.

  "I will miss you, Artemis Entreri," Tazmikella said when the two were alone on the field. "I grew fond of you, though I never came to trust you." She gave a little grin as her face started to twist and distort. "Perhaps there is something to this element of danger that my sister so enjoys."

  Entreri wanted to remind her that she was a dragon, but it occurred to him that insulting such a creature might not be the smartest thing he ever did. As Tazmikella moved more fully into her transformation, he slipped around her side and onto her back, thinking to emulate Jarlaxle instead of Athrogate.

  In a few moments, they were airborne, the wind whipping around them, the world spinning below in a dizzying blur. Entreri and Athrogate didn't know it, but Jarlaxle's use of the wand saved them from the killing bite of the winter wind. As the dragons climbed higher into the cold sky, the trio of lesser creatures would have frozen to death had it not been for the protective enchantment.

  Artemis Entreri didn't notice any of that. His cape buffeted out behind him and the world below moved past at dizzying speed. Shortly into the flight, he could see the northern shore of the Moonsea.

  Still the dragons climbed, so that any observers on the ground would think them nothing more than a bird. A short while later, to Entreri's surprise, they went out over the sea, and the sisters executed a right turn, veering west-southwest. They flew through the night and landed on a small island just before the break of dawn.

  Entreri scrambled down from Tazmikella.

  "Rest," the dragon instructed. "We will be up again at nightfall, to finish crossing the sea. We will set you down north of Cormyr, and there your road is your own."

  Entreri noted the approach of Jarlaxle and Athrogate—mostly from the sputtering and grumbling of the obviously thoroughly shaken dwarf.

  "Ought to hit 'em both," he mumbled. "Treatin' a dwarf like that. Just ain't polite."

  Entreri could only hope that his threat was more than mere words. The spectacle of Tazmikella's giant maw closi
ng over Athrogate was one the assassin surely would enjoy, but he let the pleasant image go and kept his attention on the dragon.

  "I have coin," he said. "Some, at least." He gave a look to Jarlaxle. "I would ask that you take me farther along that course, to the southwest."

  Jarlaxle came up beside him then, and offered him a curious glance. "Cormyr is a fine diversion," he said.

  "I wish you well there, in that case," said Entreri, and Jarlaxle backed a step and blinked as if he had been slapped. "I've neither the time nor the desire."

  "How far would you wish to go?" Tazmikella asked, keeping her dragon voice as quiet as she could so that it did not carry across the open water.

  "As far as you will take me. My road is to Memnon, on the southern Sword Coast."

  "That is a long way," remarked Ilnezhara.

  Entreri looked to Jarlaxle. "Whatever my share is, give it to them."

  "Share of what?" the drow replied. "We lost."

  Entreri narrowed his eyes.

  "I can arrange some payment," Jarlaxle said to the dragons. "How much will you require? Or perhaps there are other things for which you would barter. We can discuss it later."

  The dragons exchanged wary looks, which struck Entreri as very strange, since they were, after all, dragons.

  Except at that moment, Ilnezhara reverted to her human form, and bade her sister to do likewise. "In case the island has visitors," the blond-haired woman explained, though Tazmikella's look as she came out of her natural form showed that she understood Ilnezhara's ulterior motives all too well, particularly when Ilnezhara shot Jarlaxle a rather lewd wink.

  "That, too, of course," said Jarlaxle. "Though I feel as if I should pay you even more."

  "You should," said Ilnezhara.

  Entreri's sigh showed that he had heard about enough of that nonsense. "Will you fly me?"

  "Not all the way to Memnon, no," Tazmikella replied. "I've made enemies in the southern deserts that I do not wish to encounter. But we will see how far the winds will carry us."

  "And what of you?" Ilnezhara asked Jarlaxle.

  "And meself?" Athrogate asked hopefully.