Boundless

by R. A. Salvatore

  Not about to miss the opportunity, Dahlia snapped her tri-staff into the face of Barlgura, even taking out a long fang with one crack. When the two tumbled aside, she brought the staff back in and began that spinning motion once more to build up a powerful charge of lightning, then sealed it together into a singular quarterstaff once more. Her broken left arm throbbed with agony, but she couldn’t let it slow her. Not now.

  Up came Barlgura, dragging the glabrezu with it, both massive hands clasped upon the pincer about its throat. Corded muscles bulging under the strain, Barlgura pulled that pincer open, and kept pulling, snapping the base of the claw and drawing a shriek from the glabrezu.

  The fight was going to be over soon, so Dahlia struck hard and true, driving the butt of her staff right into the face of Barlgura, then brilliantly twisting the staff down to loop it under the heavy necklace of her adversary, where she released all of the energy, a lightning bolt that snapped the demon’s head back from the sheer force and blew apart the metal chain holding the phylactery ruby, leaving Barlgura momentarily dazed.

  The ruby flew aside and Inkeri Margaster reflexively grabbed control of the stunned demon creature, the hulking form shifting suddenly to that of the human woman, albeit briefly.

  But long enough for the flailing glabrezu to whip its arm with the broken claw up and across, one blade of the pincer slashing across the woman’s already-torn throat.

  Inkeri and Barlgura started to shift back to the demonic form, but too late, and the beast fell to the side, the head nearly severed, caught halfway between human and demon.

  The glabrezu leaped about to face Dahlia, but both the demon and the elf jumped back and paused when the little red-haired girl walked up between them.

  “Give me your necklace, Mummy,” she said sweetly.

  The glabrezu shuddered, the two beings within fighting for control.

  The little girl climbed right up and, with surprisingly dexterous and clever fingers, removed the silver chain hung with the milky-blue moonstone.

  The glabrezu shuddered, the little girl fell back, stumbling to the floor, then came up beside Dahlia, who started to shy in fear—until she noticed a second little girl still standing in the doorway, smiling.

  The little girl beside her held up the phylactery.

  “Kill it, Mummy,” she whispered.

  The demon form shrank, became Alvilda, then the glabrezu again, then Alvilda once more, and in that moment, the moonstone on the silver chain suddenly sparkled, receiving the spirit.

  Alvilda Margaster fell back.

  The little girl beside Dahlia became Regis once more. He immediately went to his magical pouch, pulling forth a jar filled with some dark liquid. Off came the cap and he dropped the phylactery in, then quickly replaced and sealed the top.

  Dahlia moved to finish Alvilda, but Regis grabbed her by the arm. “No!”

  “You cannot—”

  “No, I beg,” the halfling said. “She’s no threat.” He pulled at Dahlia’s arm with all his strength, holding her back.

  Dahlia growled. “What about her?” she asked, nodding to the door and the child. Out in the hallway, they heard sounds—house guards, no doubt.

  “They’re all afraid of the child, but it won’t last,” Regis reasoned. “Come on! Run!”

  Regis jumped over to the fallen cocoon. Scared but out of options, he bent low and rolled it up onto his shoulder, then moved on shaky legs toward the room’s large window, which overlooked the house’s main door, one story below.

  Dahlia helped him as much as she could manage through the pain, and when they got to the window, she didn’t wait to search for a latch, just poked Kozah’s Needle through it and released whatever remaining lightning it could offer, enough to shatter the window into a spiderweb design, glass raining on the cobblestones below.

  That brought a howl from the corridor beyond the room. “The front door!” more than one voice yelled.

  Regis quick-stepped forward to the sill and kept shoving. “Forgive me,” he whispered, and he let the cocoon tumble out, then rolled over the sill behind it, wincing when he heard the sickening splat below.

  A frantic Dahlia came down behind him, cursing and promising great pain, but the cocoon remained intact.

  “The coach! Quickly!” Regis told her.

  He began to hoist the cocoon once more. “Oh, but you’re going to pay me back,” he mumbled, thinking of the dangerous man inside. “If you’re still alive.”

  Strangely, he actually hoped that Artemis Entreri was still alive—more than he had ever imagined he would hope for such a thing.

  Dahlia drove up, leaped down from the bench, and pulled open the door of the fancy carriage, then helped Regis bundle Entreri inside. Regis beat her back up to the bench and snapped the reins, the team surging down the cobblestoned drive as the front door banged open and the shouts began behind them.

  Falling . . . falling . . . fallingfallingfalling!

  No sound, no moving, no anything, nothingnothingnothing. Pain. Just pain. But justthebitesjustthebites. Whyjustthebites? Stingsandbites. Crawling little legs and stings.

  Calmcalmcalm . . . calm . . . relax.

  Whydothestingsstillhurt?

  Calmcalm . . . calm. Think.

  Pain!

  Alvilda Margaster sat on the floor against an overturned chair, trembling and crying.

  “Don’t be afraid, Mummy,” Sharon said, and Alvilda glanced over at her, then gasped.

  Her little girl had gray eyes again!

  But back behind Sharon was yet another doppelganger, the same little girl, red locks bouncing, skipping out the door.

  “Don’t be afraid, Mummy,” Sharon assured her. “She is my friend.”

  “She is a monster,” a shocked Alvilda responded.

  “No, Mummy. She teaches me. She shows me. She is my friend.”

  Alvilda stared at her, dumbfounded, horrified.

  “Like you told me for Uncle Brevindon.”

  “Uncle Brevindon?”

  “Yes, Mummy.”

  “That he was . . .” Alvilda paused in shock, thinking of what she had heard at Sharon’s bedroom door. “That she is your mentor?” Alvilda asked, remembering the mumbling.

  “Yes!” Sharon announced. “She shows me when I’m good or bad. I want to be good, Mummy.”

  “Mentor . . . tormentor,” Alvilda whispered under her breath, dumbstruck and confused. She looked to the door, her jaw hanging open.

  Regis drove the carriage more slowly along the streets of Waterdeep, trying not to draw attention. The Margasters had been left far behind.

  Where to go? the halfling wondered. Should he take the cocooned Entreri to the Waterdeep lords? Which lords? Who in this city could he trust?

  “Yasgur?” Regis asked as they turned down a main boulevard, the city gates in sight.

  “I am with you,” they both heard, a child’s voice wafting on the night breeze. Regis stood, Dahlia turned and rose, and both looked back over the carriage roof. In the distance, they caught sight of a small curly-haired girl in a flowing white gown floating down the road.

  Dahlia fell, gasping, clutching at her arm, but obviously more disturbed by shock than by pain. “The whip, the whip,” she implored her companion.

  “She won’t hurt us,” Regis said, but he was more surprised than Dahlia by the confidence in his words. Still, he believed it, and he hesitated.

  Frustrated by his slow response and with a growl against the pain, Dahlia tugged the reins from his hands, held them loosely in the hand of her broken arm, then pulled the whip from the halfling’s grasp and applied it liberally to the two black horses pulling the coach.

  Away they rambled, out of Waterdeep and along the north road.

  “Give them over,” Regis implored her. “You cannot with your arm.”

  Dahlia stared at him incredulously and threateningly, but in truth, she was in no condition to argue. Pained, distressed, the elf woman surrendered the reins, then sank back against th
e bench seat and fought hard to slow her breathing. She clasped her good hand over her broken arm to try to keep it steady as the carriage bounced along.

  She still managed to chastise Regis every time he let the team slow.

  Pain . . . bitingstinging.

  Crawling. On me in me.

  Pain! Calm.

  Pain. Calm.

  Calmcalmcalmcalmcalm. Aplacetohideaplacedeep . . . calm.

  Fallaway, away, leave . . . go . . .

  Chapter 26

  Down Below

  “Matron Zhindia Melarn will win,” Sos’Umptu Baenre told her sister, Matron Mother Quenthel Baenre, on the morning of the day when the Ruling Council was set to convene.

  “A guess or a certainty?”

  “Gromph sees it,” Sos’Umptu reported. “He disabled the magical portals of Gauntlgrym because he knows. The powers arrayed against King Bruenor and Luskan are too formidable, and Matron Zhindia is accompanied by a pair of handmaidens and a pair of retrievers.”

  The matron mother sighed and nodded, those last tidbits already known to her. “Matron Zhindia will win, House Melarn will know all glory, and they will return here at the head of a demon army.”

  “You think she would dare threaten House Baenre?” Quenthel tried to speak confidently, tried to show incredulity at the mere mention of such a thing. She felt as if she had fallen short of that mark, though, and when she looked at Sos’Umptu, she saw that her sister shared her doubts. Sos’Umptu was one of the most powerful drow in Menzoberranzan. She was the high priestess of the Fane of the Goddess, a public cathedral she had created that was exerting more and more influence among the commoners and lesser houses of the city. She remained the mistress of Arach-Tinilith, the drow academy for priestesses, and was still first priestess of House Baenre, at least until Quenthel could finish grooming her daughter Myrineyl to assume the position. And Sos’Umptu sat on the Ruling Council as the Ninth Seat, an unprecedented move by the matron mother to pack the Council in her favor.

  “I do not think that she will have to,” Sos’Umptu replied. “Her heroics on the surface and in Gauntlgrym will move her house above all of our allies, and her obvious blessing by Lady Lolth may cause them to reconsider their alliances. The order in Menzoberranzan will be shaken to its core, even more so because the heretics Drizzt and Zaknafein were allowed to walk free from your own dungeons.”

  “They were freed on the word of Yvonnel,” Matron Mother Quenthel reminded her. She regretted the words as soon as she had spoken them, for they made her seem small indeed, diminished. How could anyone walk free of the dungeons of House Baenre without Quenthel’s command, after all?

  “And where is she now?” Sos’Umptu asked with a shrug. “Hardly relevant.”

  “So what would you propose?”

  “Join in Matron Zhindia’s campaign,” said Sos’Umptu.

  Matron Mother Baenre felt very insignificant, so suddenly. How quickly could the tides turn in the City of Spiders! Just a few months before, after the fall of Demogorgon at the city’s gates, House Baenre had seemed more secure than ever in its perch atop the hierarchy. House Melarn, ever a thorn, had been battered and moved down the ranks. Quenthel had orchestrated the Ruling Council to keep her closest allies in positions of great power, and had even reconstituted House Xorlarrin under Matron Zeerith, giving her an ally as powerful as the city’s Second House, Barrison Del’Armgo, and Matron Mez’Barris, perhaps her only true rival.

  Despite all of that, though, Matron Mother Quenthel Baenre understood her vulnerability here. This great house, the ruling house of Menzoberranzan for millennia, was in a dangerous generational transition now. All of Matron Mother Yvonnel Baenre’s female children were gone except for Quenthel and Sos’Umptu. And of the two remaining sons of the great Yvonnel, Gromph, though perhaps an ally, was no longer even of the city, and Jarlaxle hadn’t ever really been a part of House Baenre in the first place.

  When she looked across the room at the only other person present, Quenthel was reminded of this fact quite poignantly, for there stood Minolin Fey Baenre, a weakling priestess who was only a member of this court because she had carried the child of Gromph.

  For several years now, Matron Mother Quenthel had known that she had to bide her time until the many promising young Baenre nobles could more fully step into their roles. Thus she had weakened the Faerzress to bring demon hordes into Menzoberranzan, deflecting any potential power grabs by rival houses. Thus she had funded the Fane of the Goddess and elevated Sos’Umptu to a position of great power. Thus she had reconstructed House Do’Urden into a reincarnation of House Xorlarrin, returning her most important ally, Matron Zeerith, who hated Matron Mez’Barris profoundly.

  Would that rivalry even hold, though, if Zhindia Melarn returned to Menzoberranzan after such a tremendous victory on the surface, with the heretics given to Lolth, Gauntlgrym conquered (after King Bruenor had taken it from Zeerith Xorlarrin in the failed attempt by Matron Mother Quenthel to have the Xorlarrins secure the complex for use as a satellite city to Menzoberranzan, no less), and with a horde of demon allies?

  “Should we summon Gromph?” Sos’Umptu offered.

  “No,” the matron mother retorted without hesitation. “If he has surrendered to Matron Zhindia, then he cannot be trusted.”

  Mistress Sos’Umptu nodded obediently, then, despite her legendary composure, winced noticeably when Quenthel added, “Not that I ever trusted our murderous brother anyway.”

  Gromph, after all, had tried to assassinate Quenthel on more than one occasion when their sister Triel had sat on the house throne as Matron Mother Baenre.

  “No,” Quenthel said again, nodding, for many things were becoming clear to her. “No, you,” she said, motioning to Minolin Fey, “go to House Barrison Del’Armgo and inform Matron Mez’Barris that I would speak with her privately this day, before the Council sits.”

  Sos’Umptu and Minolin Fey exchanged skeptical looks.

  “We will march,” Matron Mother Quenthel told them. “We will all march.” To Minolin Fey, she said bluntly, “Go!” and the woman scampered out of the room.

  “What are you thinking, Matron Mother?” Sos’Umptu dared to ask when the sisters were alone.

  “Long ago, our mother, the great Yvonnel the Eternal, the first and greatest Matron Mother Baenre, intervened in a relatively minor affair involving the attempted assassination of a weapon master of a relatively minor house by the matron of another supposedly minor house.”

  Sos’Umptu showed no recollection.

  “You were not included in the discussion or the planning,” Quenthel said to her. “It was all left to Gromph, Triel, and myself. The weapon master we saved was Zaknafein Do’Urden. The plotting assassin was no other than Matron Soulez Armgo, mother of Matron Mez’Barris.”

  “I still do not understand.”

  “A strange coincidence, given where we are now, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “You think it more than that?” Sos’Umptu replied, her doubts clear. “You think it all fated? All of it? With such foresight as to know that Zaknafein would sire the heretic Drizzt? That is—”

  “No,” Matron Mother Quenthel interrupted. “But perhaps it was done with some knowledge that the spark resided in Zaknafein before Drizzt, perhaps.”

  Sos’Umptu was shaking her head.

  “Matron Mother Yvonnel’s prayers to Lolth led us to that place that long-ago night to interfere with the Armgo plans. I know this, intimately.”

  Sos’Umptu bowed her head respectfully then, catching the reminder that Quenthel had been given the memories of Matron Mother Yvonnel Baenre. Not told the memories or even shown the memories—an illithid had imparted them into Quenthel’s mind and so they were her memories as surely as they had been Yvonnel’s.

  “Or perhaps it is merely coincidence,” Matron Mother Quenthel admitted. “But still, to see where this has led us with Zaknafein and with Matron Mez’Barris is quite remarkable.”

  “We are neither a populou
s nation nor a large city,” Sos’Umptu reminded her. “What may seem like coincidence may be no more than simple proximity.”

  “You counsel wisely, as always,” the matron mother said. “Still, here we are. We cannot allow Matron Zhindia to win and return triumphant in unshared glory.”

  “So House Baenre will march?”

  “Menzoberranzan will march,” the matron mother corrected. “In all her power.”

  The barbarian bit down on the cloth-wrapped strip of metal, making no sound but a growl as the dark elf priestess squeezed hard against the scarred line, balls of white pus popping forth between her pinching fingers. Wulfgar’s shoulder, neck, and arm muscles corded and flexed to their limits.

  Dab’nay quickly cast a spell, sending purifying healing into the opened wound. Then she backed up, one hand on Wulfgar’s shoulder as she helped ease him forward so that he could properly vomit into the bucket she had put before him.

  For all his size and strength, Wulfgar suddenly seemed very frail, and his oily spit subsequent to his puking came with growls of complete frustration.

  “I am doing all that I can for you,” Dab’nay snapped at him.

  He nodded, then vomited again.

  “And only because Kimmuriel ordered me to do so,” she added.

  Wulfgar spent a moment composing himself, clearing his mouth and making sure that there was no more vomit on its way. “Just get me to the Hosttower, I beg, and to the portal, that I might rejoin my friends in Gauntlgrym.”

  “You cannot,” Dab’nay told him.

  The door opened and Beniago entered the room. “The portals are closed,” he said, and it was clear that he had been listening. He motioned to Dab’nay, who gladly took her leave.

  “Then Gromph will send me.”

  “He will not. It was he who closed the portals. He has declared the neutrality of the Hosttower in this fight.”

  “Then another wizard!” Wulfgar said with as much strength as he could muster.

  “None will oblige you,” Beniago told him. “The Hosttower is neutral.”