“Sank their ship, though,” said Bonnie Charlee. “Margaster ship, I’m thinkin’, and a fine one. So fine. Now . . .” She shrugged and nodded her chin off to the side, and out there in the darkness, Wulfgar could make out the low-riding hull of an overturned ship.
“They took the Heirloom, though, so might’ve been better if ye hadn’t sunk their boat.”
“Where’s Calico Grimm?”
Bonnie Charlee shook her head.
“He is not our concern,” Kimmuriel interjected. “We are for Luskan, with all haste. Sit and take up the oars, Wulfgar.”
“He canna’!” said Bonnie Charlee.
Wulfgar fell as much as bent down to the bench seat, and he winced against the pull and pain as his arms went out to either side to grip the oars. He paused then, feeling something very uncomfortable, as if Kimmuriel was trying to get into his mind and possess him. Purely on instinct, he fought back with all his willpower.
Let me in, fool, Kimmuriel’s thoughts said to him. You’ll not row in such pain.
Wulfgar didn’t know what to make of that, though despite his stubbornness and pride, he couldn’t disagree with the drow’s remark. In that moment of doubt, Kimmuriel slipped into his mind, and before Wulfgar could expel him, the big man found sudden relief, all of the pain simply dissolving.
“What?” he asked aloud.
“The pain is in your mind,” Kimmuriel said.
“In my back!” he corrected.
“Your wound is still there,” the drow answered. “Do you feel it?”
That gave Wulfgar pause.
“The abyssal poison is still there, and yes, it will kill you if we cannot find you some help. Do you still feel it?”
He didn’t. Like the burning pain that had been in his back, like the numbness in his arms, the poison seemed to him to be no more. Somehow, Kimmuriel had blocked it all.
“Row!” Kimmuriel scolded him.
Wulfgar took up the oars and gave a great pull, the small boat leaping away across the dark water.
Bonnie Charlee crawled over and sat down before him. “Sorry about yer hammer,” she said. “We saw ye caught in the rigging of the broken mast, but yer weapon fell away to th’ocean floor.”
Wulfgar returned her concern with a comforting smile, and more comforting than that, the barbarian lifted one of his large hands and whispered the name of his warrior god. Bonnie Charlee fell back, and nearly over, when Aegis-fang appeared in the man’s hand.
“Well now, there’s a trick,” she gasped.
“It speaks to the skill of the maker,” Kimmuriel said.
Wulfgar looked to the drow curiously, for that was as close to a compliment as he had ever heard from Kimmuriel—and one to a dwarf, no less, to Bruenor, who had crafted the weapon for Wulfgar those years and years before.
“Now, if you would be so wise as to put the weapon down and take up the oar instead, perhaps we will survive this night,” Kimmuriel added. “And do take care when you put it down so that you do not drive it through the hull.”
Wulfgar offered a sour look at the ever-insulting drow, then took up the oars with fervor, growling with every powerful stroke. The small boat raced past the wreckage of many ships, past many men and women in the water clinging to flotsam and jetsam.
“If you stop for one, we’ll be overrun,” Kimmuriel told Wulfgar and Bonnie Charlee. “The water is not that cold and they will survive the night. Their only chance is for us to get to Luskan and send out ships.”
The drow was correct, Wulfgar knew, but rowing past stranded sailors (though he knew not which side most of these folks had been fighting for) pained him deeply. He grew less concerned soon after, though, when, at a gasp from Bonnie Charlee, who sat facing him and therefore looking forward past him, he slowed and glanced over his shoulder.
An orange glow brightened the eastern horizon, and it wasn’t the dawn.
“It would seem that our enemies are wasting no time,” Kimmuriel said from the front of the boat.
Wulfgar bore down and pulled harder, each great row lifting the prow from the water. The tide had turned and was heading back in, so again, they had following seas. Still, they had a long way yet to go, and after a while, even mighty Wulfgar needed to rest. He lifted the oars and swung about on the bench to view the city, close enough now that he could make out the general outlines of some of the taller structures.
A good portion of Luskan was in flames, and the armada of enemy ships sat near in the harbor, catapults and wizards letting fly flaming pitch and magical fireballs.
“Well, what do we do now?” Wulfgar asked.
“Is the city even fighting back?” wondered Bonnie Charlee.
“Some are, some aren’t, no doubt,” Wulfgar replied. “It’s Luskan, after all.” He looked straight at Kimmuriel as he added, “Though I’d venture that the supposed leaders of the city are risking themselves in battle.”
Kimmuriel didn’t answer, not even an arch of a thin white eyebrow.
Wulfgar hated him.
A separate response came to Wulfgar’s doubts a moment later, though, in the form of a huge explosion near the northern edge of the city’s silhouette, a vast fireball stealing the night, then rolling up like a living mushroom, spewing smoke and roiling flames. Bright flashes of lightning followed quickly, sharp and punctuating, as if the rising fireball itself were some strange and magical thunderstorm.
When that ball rolled higher, illuminating the distinct structure below it, the three on the boat knew exactly the source, however, with bolts of destruction flying from the branching arms of the Hosttower of the Arcane, thundering down to the field below to obliterate the invading forces.
“Your warhammer may kill a demon or a gnoll,” Kimmuriel remarked. “How many do you think Gromph and his fellow wizards are melting right now before our eyes?”
Wulfgar didn’t turn away from the spectacle to bother looking at the strange drow.
“Make for the mouth of the River Mirar,” Kimmuriel said.
“The Hosttower?” asked Bonnie Charlee.
“No. The Dragon Reach and Closeguard Island.”
“It’s overrun, no doubt,” the woman replied.
Kimmuriel shook his head. “Doubtful. There is no easy way into Ship Kurth. Not at this time.”
“Easier than the Hosttower,” Wulfgar argued.
“Our enemies now know that,” Kimmuriel said. “But they would not have, and they would have continued across the bridge to the second island and the magnificent Hosttower, obviously the prize structure of the city.”
“You assume much,” said Wulfgar. “And if you are wrong . . .”
“There are ways into Ship Kurth” was all that Kimmuriel would offer as an explanation. “Do as I command.”
Bonnie Charlee started to argue with the psionicist, but Wulfgar quickly raised a hand to stop her. Kimmuriel didn’t need them, he knew. The drow could magically walk away from this boat, and could sink it as he left. Or, even worse, he could get into Bonnie Charlee’s mind and convince her to dive overboard and swim as far under the water as she could, and there take a deep breath.
Wulfgar didn’t know Kimmuriel very well, but well enough, he thought, to believe that the drow would have no qualms at all about doing exactly that—to Bonnie Charlee, at least, though the barbarian figured that his own friendship with Drizzt, and so with Jarlaxle, might stay the psionicist’s devilishness from him.
His reasoning didn’t convince him, though. Not with this one.
Wulfgar obediently put his oars into the water and pulled for a spot just to the right of the Hosttower, the channel called the Dragon Reach.
Gromph Baenre took a deep breath, blowing out the exertion of releasing what might have been his greatest fireball of all. He pondered that as he looked to the field about the Hosttower, littered with the smoking remains of the pirate horde—demons, gnolls, humans, goblins, even ogres. An impressive force, though stupid and ill-guided. They had crossed right past Ship Kurth, t
he seat of power of Luskan, to attack the Hosttower.
And now they were dead, or soon to be, every one.
Gromph considered his fireball, enhanced by his growing proficiency in the magic of psionics. Kimmuriel and the mind flayers had given him access to deeper concentration, and that purer focus was leading to some very impressive spells indeed. Never had the great Gromph imagined that his arcane powers could improve any further!
Still, he remained somewhat humbled. He had felt the power of the illithid hive mind flowing through him not so long ago, a force so magnificent that it had held in check the combined martial and magical power of all of Menzoberranzan. Then he had helped direct that barrage into a singular strike, through the body of Drizzt Do’Urden, to obliterate the physical manifestation of Demogorgon, the Prince of Demons.
Such power! True and pure! Gromph wanted to feel that again, and next time, he wanted to be the one creating it.
A lightning bolt flashed down from just above him, from his favorite nondrow Hosttower associate, the cloud giantess Caecilia. That lovely behemoth had surprised Gromph repeatedly since the beginnings of this new order of mages, and now again. She had claimed that her magic was all divination, illusion, and harmless conjuring. But when Gromph glanced down at the newest hole on the field, where her lightning bolt had struck—a deep scar, and one lined by a trio of corpses of minor demons who had almost made it to the base of the gigantic, treelike structure—he was positive she was much more powerful than she had let on.
More lightning rained down from above, many of the Hosttower’s wizards vying to kill the last remaining enemies on the field. Gromph glanced to the southeast, across the city, to see the fires and the continuing battles. He moved to a crystal ball set on a pedestal. The magic of the scrying device carried to every chamber in the Hosttower, allowing Gromph to communicate with any of his associates or with all at once, as he did now. “Enough,” he told them. “Many more will soon come against us, I expect. Conserve your power. Caecilia, I would speak with you.”
He ended the magic without waiting for a response. He answered the knock on his door without question, expecting the cloud giantess. Instead, he found a Netherese man wearing a look of great concern.
“I did not summon you,” he told Lord Parise, another of the Hosttower’s associates.
“Summon?” the former leader of the Shade Enclave in the Netherese Empire asked in confusion. “No . . . I must speak with you.”
“You have finished your studies regarding the gate?” Gromph asked him, hoping it to be the case. He and his wizards had one more duty to perform under their agreement with Jarlaxle and King Bruenor: to complete the magical portals tying Gauntlgrym with the three dwarven strongholds of the Silver Marches.
“I was interrupted,” Lord Parise replied, but as he began to elaborate, he was interrupted again as Caecilia came bounding down the stairs in the central trunk and turned into the entry hallway to Gromph’s personal wing.
Gromph smiled as he regarded her. She used spells to keep herself small enough to easily navigate the corridors of the Hosttower, but though the dweomers shortened her, they did so in a distorted manner, reducing her height much more than her girth, so that she looked like a blue-skinned halfling viewed through a curved window that made all of her features thicker. Still, the effect wasn’t all that unpleasant, Gromph thought, and besides, of all the wizards at the Hosttower, Caecilia was the finest—other than Gromph himself, of course.
She also knew her place, and remained back when she noticed Gromph conversing with the Netherese lord.
“You were saying?” Gromph prompted.
“I told you that I had found some runes on the portal’s top piece, tiny but definite,” Lord Parise explained. “I was down there trying to make some sense of them yet again—they’re not in old Dwarvish, I now know—but before I could properly decipher them, I found a visitor.”
“A visitor?”
“At the portal.”
“From Gauntlgrym,” the archmage reasoned, since that was the only open magical connection to the portal beneath the Hosttower.
But Parise shook his head. “Not one who came through the portal, no.”
Gromph arched an eyebrow at that. No one was supposed to be anywhere near that Hosttower portal without Gromph’s express permission, which he had not given to anyone. He considered the possibilities, then said, “Catti-brie?”
Again Parise shook his head. “You should come with me, Archmage. She was quite insistent that she speak with you, and you alone.”
“‘She’?”
“From your homeland, I am sure.”
Gromph sighed at that. He thought at first that it must be his daughter, Yvonnel, but Parise knew Yvonnel, so why would he be so obviously unnerved? Had one of Gromph Baenre’s sisters come to speak with him? And why there, at the portal?
He pushed past Parise, heading for the spiral stair. “Follow,” he instructed both the Netherese lord and the cloud giantess, and down he led, more angry than intrigued.
That anger turned to something different, though, when he passed through the last doors to the small side room holding the magical teleportation device.
“You should move more quickly,” Matron Zhindia Melarn greeted him.
It took all of Gromph’s willpower to stay an assault, with words or perhaps even a spell. What was this creature doing here at this time? And she was not alone, flanked by a trio of other drow women. One he thought her first priestess, who had previously been a matron of her own house, Kenafin. The other two were Hunzrins, including First Priestess Charri. This was no minor entourage.
“You might have noticed that I and my associates were a bit busy.”
“Indeed,” answered Zhindia. “And I will forgive you for so incinerating my forces. The demons will gate in new ones in short order.”
“Your forces?”
“Of course.”
“You play dangerous games. This is Bregan D’aerthe’s city, with the blessings of Matron Mother Baenre.”
Matron Zhindia sighed and snapped her fingers, and two more drow women suddenly appeared beside her, noticeably naked and quite beautiful. Too beautiful, and that, along with their absence of clothing, allowed Gromph to recognize them for what they were: Eskavidne and Yiccardaria, handmaidens of Lolth.
“You see, Archmage, I would argue that Bregan D’aerthe is the one playing dangerous games, along with your sister, the matron mother. Jarlaxle and his rogues—pray tell me that you have not joined with that wretched troupe—have the blessing of Matron Mother Baenre, but I, you see, have a greater imprimatur still.”
“What do you want?” Gromph asked sharply, using anger to cover his nervousness here, and he was indeed uneasy. He loathed Matron Zhindia above all others, mostly because she was always so ill-tempered. But now, with the formidable power standing before him, he saw she was here with the blessing of the Spider Queen, and his distaste was being quickly replaced by a touch of fear.
“I am not holding you responsible for the misdeeds of your sister or of Jarlaxle,” Matron Zhindia said.
Fear was in turn replaced with loathing. But Gromph held his tongue, though he could hardly believe that this fool was speaking so of the matron mother of Menzoberranzan. Even for Zhindia, such a remark was remarkable.
She went on. “And I will not allow my minions to cross the second bridge again to assault your . . . whatever this ugly thing might be.”
“Because you have seen what will happen to them.”
Matron Zhindia laughed at him. “Because this is not your fight,” she corrected. “You are not even of Menzoberranzan anymore. Consider that your good fortune. So I allow you to remain out of it, wholly so. Let Lolth decide who shall reign, the current matron mother, or the one who delivered to her Drizzt Do’Urden and Zaknafein.”
Gromph chortled loudly. “All of this over those two insects? Madness.”
“But not your madness,” Zhindia very sharply replied, poking a finger Gr
omph’s way, “as long as you prove that it is not.”
“What does that—”
“Shut down the teleportation portals,” Matron Zhindia demanded. “Close this one, and do not let the dwarves connect to their other fortresses.”
Gromph balked.
“You can do it from here, from this Hosttower, which is tied to the primordial that powers the magical gates,” Zhindia insisted.
“He can,” said Yiccardaria before Gromph could deny it.
“That is my offer, this one time only,” Zhindia told him. “Shut down the portals, go into your tower, and let this play out. When I am victorious, and I shall be, there will be no repercussions against you and your”—she glanced past him to the grayish-skinned human and the cloud giant—“wizardly order.”
Gromph narrowed his eyes and stared hard.
“Decide, Archmage,” Matron Zhindia insisted.
Gromph glanced back at his fellow wizards. His thoughts spun as he tried to make sense of any of this. He realized, though, that he was not being asked to choose between Matron Mother Baenre and Matron Zhindia. Not yet. Not with this particular task.
If he did as she asked, then surely Jarlaxle would be unhappy with him, and King Bruenor would be truly outraged, but even if their side won, what would Gromph care? They wouldn’t war with him, particularly since he would still hold the key to the entrapment of the fire primordial.
But if he didn’t do as they asked and Matron Zhindia proved victorious . . .
Gromph turned back to Matron Zhindia, then looked to the handmaidens. “Lolth will demand her word be kept?” he asked.
Both laughed, for it was quite an absurd question, given the ways of the Lady of Chaos.
“She will not be displeased with you, certainly,” Matron Zhindia answered for them.
Gromph thought it over for another few moments, then nodded his agreement.
Chapter 21
Bad Spideys
Just looking at it, Drizzt knew that he could not defeat this monstrous spider creature. He had delayed his retreat from it, certain that his bow, a weapon that had never failed him, would stop or at least slow this beast. The arrows had shown no effect at all, however, and in his shock, the drow ranger had erred, had underestimated the giant arachnid’s speed, and now it had him.
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