Archmage

by R. A. Salvatore

  “What do you know of the Faerzress?” K’yorl asked.

  “What every drow of Menzoberranzan is taught at the Academy,” said Kimmuriel. The Faerzress was a region of the Underdark teeming with magical energy—the very stones of the region glowed with the power of magic, both the Weave and the extraplanar energies of the lower planes. Through the emanations of the Faerzress, the drow gained their innate magical abilities, and their innate resistance to magic. With the permeating glow of the Faerzress, drow smiths fashioned their fabulous weapons and armor. As the sun nurtured the surface world with its warmth and life energy, so the Faerzress fed the darkness of the Underdark.

  “I will give you a spell,” K’yorl said, and closed her eyes. “Open your mind.”

  Kimmuriel similarly closed his eyes and focused on receiving—and studying—K’yorl’s psionic impartation. He didn’t know all the words, for it was an arcane chant and not a psionic pattern.

  “Give that to Gromph during your sessions,” she bade him. “Bit by bit, inflection by inflection. Let him find the strength to battle his sister and foil her plans, and so we will pay back House Baenre.”

  Kimmuriel opened his eyes to stare at her intently.

  “Would it so pain you to see House Baenre punished and Menzoberranzan thrust back into chaos?” she asked. “Would not Bregan D’aerthe profit from such … tribulations?”

  “And you would find a deep sense of sweet revenge?”

  “Do you expect me to deny it?” K’yorl asked.

  “No.”

  “And would you not share in your mother’s satisfaction?”

  Kimmuriel said nothing.

  “Then we are agreed?” K’yorl asked.

  “When next Methil summons me to Gromph’s chamber to continue our work, I will offer him a view of what he might do to counter the matron mother. And, too, I will begin showing him a more powerful gate to the Abyss.”

  “He will light the Faerzress with the power of that spell, and oh, but his surprise will delight you, my noble son.”

  Despite himself, Kimmuriel grinned. He nodded and bowed deferentially to the mighty Errtu, then bent time and space and was once more back in Faerûn, in a tavern called One-Eyed Jax, in the port city of Luskan.

  “WHAT IS WRONG?” Matron Mother Zeerith asked when Tsabrak walked into her private chamber—unannounced and without knocking. She could see the look on her most powerful ally’s face, though, and so she knew he had not shown the disrespect out of anything more than abject misery.

  “Tsabrak?” she demanded as he moved over and numbly sat down on a chair across from her.

  “I looked in on the Silver Marches,” he said, his voice a defeated monotone. “I went to see if I could confirm the areas where our other warriors likely fell. It would make the corpse summoning easier, of course, if we knew …” His voice trailed off.

  “What do you know?” Matron Mother Zeerith asked, moving forward, sliding from her chair and across the floor to kneel before the seated mage, one hand on his knee, the other holding him by the chin, forcing him to look into her eyes.

  “It’s gone,” he said.

  Matron Mother Zeerith’s face screwed up with confusion as she tried to decipher that. “ ‘It’s’? What is gone?”

  “The dweomer.”

  “The dweomer?” she echoed, but suddenly it hit her and her eyes widened.

  “The gift Lady Lolth imparted through my physical form,” Tsabrak confirmed. “The Darkening, Matron, it is gone.”

  “Gone? The sky over the Silver Marches is cleared?”

  “The sun shines brightly,” the despondent wizard replied.

  “How can this be?” Matron Mother Zeerith looked all around. She rolled away from Tsabrak and up to her feet to begin pacing, muttering to herself. The implications were staggering. The Darkening had been channeled through Tsabrak, through a representative of House Xorlarrin, who had become the archmage of Q’Xorlarrin. Tsabrak was a powerful wizard—none would doubt that—but Zeerith wanted him spoken of in the same hushed tones normally reserved for Gromph Baenre alone.

  The Darkening was the achievement that afforded him that possibility. The Darkening had elevated him in the eyes of all the drow. Few in Menzoberranzan would utter the name of Tsabrak Xorlarrin without the title of archmage attached.

  But now it was gone.

  Would the others see this as a sign that Tsabrak had lost the favor of Lolth, Matron Mother Zeerith wondered? Would they extend that criticism to House Xorlarrin, to Q’Xorlarrin?

  “I felt the power,” she heard Tsabrak muttering to himself, and she turned back to regard him. He sat in the chair, eyes downcast, shaking his head slowly.

  “True power,” he said. “The goddess flowed through me in beauteous power. She would take the Weave and make of it the Web. The new age would be heralded in, and I, Tsabrak, would lead that new age.”

  “You alone?” Matron Mother Zeerith asked sharply, and Tsabrak looked up at her.

  “House Xorlarrin,” he quickly corrected himself. “Who better? We have the most wizards. We—you!—have ever exalted in them, in us, in me, and have given to the males of your family hope unknown among the others of Menzoberranzan. I was positioned—”

  “We were positioned!” Matron Mother Zeerith interrupted.

  Tsabrak nodded. “But it is gone, Matron Mother. The skies are bright once more. And there were whispers …”

  He lowered his gaze once more and looked as if he might break down.

  “What did you hear, Tsabrak?” Matron Mother Zeerith demanded. “When you walked among the folk of the Silver Marches, what did you hear?”

  “Mielikki, the goddess,” he whispered. “It is said that she countered my magic, and did so through the body of the heretic Drizzt Do’Urden.” He looked up as Matron Mother Zeerith gasped.

  “I have failed the Spider Queen,” Tsabrak said. “You should give me to the primordial.”

  Matron Mother Zeerith dismissed that with a snort, and waved away Tsabrak’s words. “If you truly failed the Spider Queen, we would make of you a drider, fool.”

  “Then do so!”

  “Shut up!” she ordered. She rushed back at Tsabrak and skidded down to put her face right near his. “You did not fail. The magic failed, expired, or was defeated. We cannot know which. How draining was it for the Spider Queen to hold back the light of the sun on the World Above? Perhaps she intended the Darkening for only a certain period of time, and when our people withdrew, what was to be gained by holding strong to it?”

  “It pains me to think that our beloved goddess has suffered yet another defeat …”

  “Enough of such foolishness,” Matron Mother Zeerith warned.

  “And one with which I was so intimately involved,” the wizard said.

  “We do not even know that it was a defeat,” Matron Mother Zeerith reminded him. “We will continue our work in bringing home our fallen and properly disposing of them. We will give due thanks to the Spider Queen with our every action. We cannot know her thoughts, and so we act with only good intentions to her, our Lady of Chaos.”

  Tsabrak stared for a long time, but gradually began to nod. “Thank you,” he said. “My shock—”

  “Say no more about it,” Matron Mother Zeerith interrupted. She pulled his head close against her and stroked his short, thick mop of white hair, comforting him, cooing softly in his ear, reassuring him.

  But inside, Matron Mother Zeerith was anything but calm or reassured. Tsabrak’s dismay was clear, and surely a straight line from it to the now-failed Darkening gave him reason to worry.

  For Matron Mother Zeerith, though, that fear was multiplied a hundredfold. She was until recently the Matron Mother of the Third House of Menzoberranzan, Lolth’s own city. She was a high priestess of Lolth, but she was not much like her peers, not the Baenres or the fanatical Melarni. Matron Mother Zeerith did not adhere to the hierarchy so common in Menzoberranzan. House Xorlarrin’s power came from the men of the House, not t
he women, from the wizards and not the priestesses.

  It had been Matron Mother Zeerith’s hunch that this would be the new paradigm, and she thought her instincts correct when Lolth made a try for the goddess Mystra’s Weave. She thought her efforts well rewarded when Tsabrak, not Gromph Baenre, had been chosen to enact the Darkening.

  In the new paradigm, would any House hold higher favor with Lady Lolth than House Xorlarrin? Would not her new city become the glorious enclave of Lolth, and so Menzoberranzan would be the satellite?

  But now the Darkening was no more.

  And Q’Xorlarrin was burying scores of dead.

  Zeerith had suffered great losses in her entourage, in her family.

  Lolth was angry, Zeerith believed. Would she focus that anger on Q’Xorlarrin, on Tsabrak, on Zeerith herself?

  She continued to stroke Tsabrak’s hair for a long while, drawing as much comfort as she was giving, for what that was worth.

  Matron Mother Zeerith, who understood well the wrath of the Spider Queen, feared that it wasn’t worth much.

  ERRTU CHUCKLED, A wet and throaty noise that sounded as if it was soon to be accompanied by fountaining gouts of vomit.

  “You are a beautiful one,” he said to the small figure standing in front of him.

  Off to the side, out of the swirling, fetid mists, came a hulking, vulture-like vrock, a battered drow form writhing in one of its powerful clawed hands. On a nod from the other drow female, a doppelganger to this very captive, the vrock dropped its battered prisoner and bird-hopped away into the shadows.

  That drow, prone in the muck, managed to turn her filthy head to regard the other, the one that looked exactly like her.

  But looked like her for only for a moment longer, as the imposter K’yorl burst free of that restrictive drow form to become once more a creature with the lower torso and legs of a gigantic spider, and the shapely upper body and painfully beautiful face of the most exquisite drow of all.

  She held up her right hand, nodding contentedly at the small digits that had already regrown to replace the ones Balor’s lightning sword had taken from her.

  K’yorl whined and buried her face in the muck before the deadly brilliance of Lady Lolth.

  “Your physical beauty is exceeded only by the beauty of your cunning, Goddess,” Errtu said, grinning widely.

  “When Gromph weakens the barrier, Menzoberranzan will know chaos as never before,” Lolth replied.

  “And you will rid yourself of the pesky demon lords, and when they have abandoned the Abyss to play in the Underdark of Toril, you will build your army,” said Errtu.

  “Beware your tongue, Errtu,” Lolth warned. “Your betters lurk in the fog.”

  The mighty balor grunted, but nodded.

  “We had all thought you defeated, Spider Queen,” Errtu said. “When you lost the Weave, and then watched as Tiamat’s plans, too, were foiled, we wondered, truly, if perhaps you would recede.”

  “In reminding me, do you gain pleasure, Errtu?” Lolth asked. “For I should remind you that were I to destroy you here in this place, your home, you would truly be obliterated, never to return.”

  “But it is a great compliment that I offer,” said the balor. “For you have not receded, skulking into the shadows, and truly, great Lady of Spiders, great Goddess of Chaos, this ambition and plan are your greatest scheme of all.”

  “And you stand to gain,” she reminded him. He nodded, growled wickedly, and smiled hopefully. “Did I not promise you that Balor would be removed? That you could thrive in his absence?”

  “Unending ambition, great Lady of Chaos,” said Errtu, who was clearly elated by the developments. “It is how we survive the boredom of passing millennia, is it not?”

  “And yet, if you climb to the highest point you will ever know, it will leave you merely at the lowest point I have ever known,” Lolth said, a most vicious reminder of their relative stations.

  Errtu scowled.

  “Do not kill this one,” Lolth instructed. She waved her hand and a powerful roll of energy lifted K’yorl from the floor and sent her flipping and spinning through the air. “I might need her again.”

  “Kill her?” Errtu asked as if the very thought was preposterous. “Torturing her brings me great pleasure, Lady of Pleasure and Pain!”

  “I feel the same way about balors,” Lolth remarked, and she was simply gone in a puff of acrid black smoke. “And do take care that she cannot use her psionic trumpets to warn Demogorgon or Graz’zt, or any of the other demon lords.”

  Errtu sat on his throne and tapped his clawed fingernails together in front of his flame-filled eyes.

  So much to hate.

  That was his nourishment.

  CHAPTER 3

  Unusual Ascension

  ME THINKING’S NOT CHANGED. FOUR THOUSAND’RE NEEDED,” Bruenor explained late that year of 1485 DR. Outside, winter was on in full, but in Mithral Hall, all seemed cozier than it had in many a year. The tunnels to Felbarr and Adbar were secured, and couriers moved between the three dwarven fortresses on a regular basis, with every new dispatch bringing news of growing excitement for the march to Gauntlgrym. The threat of the orcs felt far removed now.

  “Might be more than that,” King Connerad remarked. “Harnoth’s had his griping, but Oretheo Spikes’s been there, every hour, whisperin’ in his ear. Now the young king’s thinking that Adbar’s best served by bringing the biggest force to Gauntlgrym.”

  “Might be that he’s got his eyes on the throne,” General Dagnabbet chimed in.

  “That ain’t for happenin’,” said Bruenor. “But let the hungry young one think what he’s thinkin’ if it’s getting me the warriors I need.”

  “If Gauntlgrym’s all ye say, then might be harder to keep the three citadels o’ the Silver Marches open and manned,” King Connerad said, with something in his tone that gave Bruenor pause—and not for the first time over these tendays of anticipation. Bruenor looked to Drizzt, who nodded, obviously catching the other king’s demeanor as well.

  “So when’re ye meanin’ to speak it clear, me friend?” Bruenor asked pointedly.

  Connerad looked at him with puzzlement.

  “I’m knowin’ yer heart, young Brawnanvil,” said Bruenor. “As I knowed yer Da’s, as I’m knowing me own.”

  By that point, all eyes were squarely focused on the young King Connerad.

  “Ye ain’t gettin’ Gauntlgrym’s throne,” said Bruenor.

  “Not wantin’ it,” Connerad replied.

  “But …” Drizzt prompted.

  Connerad sighed, snorted, and said nothing.

  “But ye’re wantin’ to go,” said Bruenor.

  Connerad snorted again, as if the mere suggestion was preposterous. But Bruenor never blinked, and his probing expression would not let go of Connerad.

  “Aye,” the young king finally admitted.

  “Ye got Mithral Hall,” Bruenor replied. “We been through it, lad. I ain’t for taking that from ye.”

  “Been all me life here in the Hall,” said Connerad, and with that, Bruenor nodded his agreement.

  “With half that life havin’ yer arse on the throne,” said Bruenor. “Weighin’ on ye, is it? Aye, I know, lad.”

  “Weighed on yer own arse when ye left,” said Dagnabbet, and there was an unmistakable edge in her voice that gave Bruenor, and some others, pause.

  “Suren that ye’re not for thinking that King Bruenor owed the hall more,” Connerad scolded the general.

  “Never said that,” she replied.

  “Then what?”

  “Aye,” Bruenor agreed. “What?”

  General Dagnabbet swallowed hard, her deep breaths showing that she was at a crossroads and trying to find her heart. “Was me grandfather that chased the gray dwarfs from Mithral Hall,” she said. “Was me grandfather and me Da that readied the throne for King Bruenor’s return from Calimport, and was them that served well aside ye.”

  “Aye, as was me own Da,” Connerad Brawna
nvil said. “Served King Bruenor and the king afore him.”

  “Aye, and yer legacy’s no greater than me own,” General Dagnabbet blurted, drawing gasps from everyone else.

  “Careful lass, he’s yer king,” Bungalow Thump warned.

  “Me king who’s wantin’ to leave, he just said,” Dagnabbet pressed. “As yerself’s leaving to serve as Bruenor’s shield.”

  Off to the side, Catti-brie chuckled, and when Bruenor looked from Dagnabbet to his adopted daughter, he noted Catti-brie nodding in approval to Dagnabbet.

  “What’re ye sayin’, girl?” Bruenor demanded of the young but capable general. “Just speak it!”

  “Me own claim on Mithral Hall’s throne’s no less than Connerad’s, except that ye gived the throne to his Da, Banak,” she said bluntly. Bungalow Thump wailed, but Connerad calmed him with an upraised hand. “And I’m not doubtin’ yer pick o’ Banak, as me own Da and Grandda were dead under the stones.”

  “But?” Drizzt prompted again.

  “But me friend’s not thinkin’ Mithral Hall’s needing a steward on her throne when I’m aside ye on the road to Gauntlgrym, King Bruenor,” Connerad explained. “She’s thinkin’ Mithral Hall’s needin’ a queen.”

  Bruenor stared hard at General Dagnabbet, who matched his look without blinking, not backing away a finger’s breadth from the accusation.

  “Throne’s not me own to give,” he said at length, and both turned to Connerad.

  “Queen Dagnabbet?” the young Brawnanvil mused aloud, and he chuckled and nodded. He and Dagnabbet had been dear friends for all their lives, military nobility in Mithral Hall’s proud ranks. He turned to Bruenor. “She’s speakin’ truly,” he admitted. “None’re more distinguished, none more deservin’. If me own father’d had been killed to death in the Obould war, who’d Bruenor’ve chosen, meself or Dagnabbet?”

  Bruenor shrugged, not willing to go there.

  “If ye’d choosed meself, then me friend Dagnabbet would serve ye well, as she’s served me well,” said Connerad. “And if ye’d choosed to make a Queen Dagnabbet, then know she’d’ve had no more loyal friend and general than meself.”