One of the former conspirators. The one who had found K’yorl Odran.
A gray and ugly fog blew in, sometimes thin and blurring the giant mushroom stalks into ghostly figures, other times so thick as to block Kimmuriel’s vision for more than a few feet in every direction. A great stench was carried on that steaming wind and fog, the aroma of rot and death, of burning flesh and hearty vomit.
Kimmuriel was too disciplined to let that bother him. So many who came here to this wretched plane of existence grew distracted by the grotesque sights and smells, and that distraction often led to violent ends.
The drow walked steadily, his eyes and his mind’s eye probing all around him. He would not be caught off guard.
He could hear her now, calling to him as she had done when he was a child-not with her physical voice, but psionically.
Kimmuriel Oblodra tried to hold his calm. He came in sight of her, of K’yorl, his mother, then, as she leaned against a mushroom stalk, looking every bit the same as she had on that awful day more than a century before, when Matron Mother Baenre had wrenched the whole of House Oblodra up by its stony roots and dropped it into the Clawrift, the great chasm that split the cavern that housed Menzoberranzan.
K’yorl had gone over with that tumbling stalagmite house, and Kimmuriel had thought her dead.
That notion hadn’t bothered him too greatly, though. He had already all but left House Oblodra to join Jarlaxle’s mercenary band, and he was not one to be bothered too greatly by such destructive and useless emotions as grief.
Or elation, he pointedly told himself as he once again looked upon his mother.
Gromph had sent him to Byrtyn Fey and she had directed him here, to the Abyss, to the throne of the great balor Errtu.
To K’yorl Odran, Errtu’s slave.
“My son, you are all that remains,” K’yorl greeted.
“It would seem that you, too-”
“No,” K’yorl interrupted. “I am dead in every way that matters. The Prime Material Plane is beyond me now, my mortal coil no more than an illusion, a manifestation here to keep Errtu amused.” She paused and shot him the slyest of looks as she added, “For now.”
Kimmuriel couldn’t miss the seething anger in her voice and behind her fiery eyes-orbs that had not lost a bit of their luster in the century and more of her imprisonment. After all these decades, the fiery and vicious K’yorl had not cooled.
“Matron Mother Yvonnel Baenre is long dead,” he said, to try to calm her.
“Cursed House Baenre just replaces her, one after another, but House Oblodra, our House, all that we had built, is no more!”
“You erred in the Time of Troubles,” Kimmuriel bluntly replied. “You reached too high and when the divine powers returned, you were punished for your hubris. We all were.”
“But you survived.”
Kimmuriel shrugged, as if it hardly mattered.
“And what have you done to repay Baenre?” K’yorl demanded sharply.
“I?” Kimmuriel replied incredulously. “I have served myself, as I please, when I please, how I please.”
“With Jarlaxle.”
“Yes.”
“Jarlaxle Baenre,” K’yorl said pointedly, for she was one of the few who knew the truth of that strange, Houseless mercenary.
“It is not a name he uses.”
“He serves House Baenre.”
“Hardly. Jarlaxle serves Jarlaxle.”
K’yorl nodded, digesting it all.
“It is time to pay them back,” she said at length. “Quenthel is a weakling, and she is vulnerable.”
“She has tightened her noose on the city.”
“And when it loosens? A dragon is dead, the Darkening has been defeated, and the fledgling city of Matron Mother Zeerith hangs by a single strand of a spider’s web.”
“I am surprised that you are so informed of the-”
“I have nothing but time,” K’yorl interrupted. “And Errtu torments me by showing me the turning of Menzoberranzan without me.”
“Then you know that Matron Mother Baenre will see to Matron Mother Zeerith’s troubles as well.”
“With demons.”
“You know much for a slave in the Abyss,” Kimmuriel said again, even allowing a bit of sarcasm into his normally impassive tone.
“I know much because I am in the Abyss! Errtu does not fear me, surely, and so he does not fear letting me know of Menzoberranzan.”
“Demons, yes,” said Kimmuriel.
K’yorl gave a little laugh, a wicked one indeed. “You must be my conduit, Kimmuriel. You must exact the punishment House Baenre rightly deserves.”
Kimmuriel dismissed that foolish notion even as the matron mother spoke it. He wasn’t about to go against Matron Mother Baenre and her vast array of powerful friends. Still, he heard and sympathized with every word. He hated Quenthel Baenre. Despite any logical protestations to the contrary, a simmering rage burned within Kimmuriel Oblodra for all that he had lost, for all that House Baenre had taken from him. He watched again in his memories the tumbling structure of House Oblodra, pitching over the side of the Clawrift, so many dark elves, his family, tumbling into oblivion.
For a long while, for many years, Kimmuriel had hated House Baenre. When first he had learned of Jarlaxle’s heritage, he had even considered murdering the mercenary.
That was a long time ago, of course, but now, hearing K’yorl, Kimmuriel realized that he hadn’t dismissed those feelings of rage quite as thoroughly as he had believed.
“I do not expect you to expose yourself to suspicion,” K’yorl said, as if reading his thoughts-and she probably was, he reminded himself, throwing up more mental guards.
“You ask me to serve as your instrument, your assassin against House Baenre, but do so without wishing me to expose myself to their wrath?” he asked skeptically.
“Not my instrument, but my conduit to my instrument,” K’yorl said with a crooked and knowing little smile, one that took Kimmuriel back across the centuries, one that he had known well in his youth.
“A mighty Baenre studies under you, I am told,” K’yorl said.
It was beginning to bother Kimmuriel more than a little just how much K’yorl was being told.
“The archmage, no less,” she said.
Kimmuriel remained impassive-there was no need to confirm anything, apparently.
“And how does Gromph Baenre feel about his sister the matron mother filling the streets of Menzoberranzan with demons?”
“He thinks it a brilliant ploy to insulate the matron mother from the wrath of the Ruling Council over her. . choices.”
“But how does he feel? Is he pleased by his sister Quenthel’s dangerous ploy?”
“You clearly know the answer.”
“He hates her. They all do,” K’yorl said. “She imposes order on a city of chaos. It will not stand.”
“I will not stop it.”
“Not directly.”
“I do not enjoy cryptic conversations, Matron Mother,” Kimmuriel said, and what he really didn’t enjoy-and he knew that this drow in front of him understood it well-was not being able to read her thoughts. Kimmuriel was used to holding a huge advantage in such conversations, with all but the mind flayers and Jarlaxle, for he could read the meaning behind every word with a simple glance into the flittering thoughts as the words were spoken.
“Fan the flames in the archmage’s humors,” K’yorl explained. “Subtly suggest a way for him to strike back at his sister. Let him battle demon with demon.”
“You ask me to implant a suggestion into the mind of the archmage to summon demons of his own? Into the mind of Gromph Baenre?” Kimmuriel didn’t try to hide his doubts. Those dark elves expecting and hoping for a long life simply didn’t do such things.
“It will be no difficult task. Gromph’s thoughts already flow in that direction.”
Movement to the side caught Kimmuriel’s attention, and he noted a massive, leather-winged beast moving toward them, one he knew to be the mighty balor Errtu. The creature moved close enough to tower over Kimmuriel, and sniffed the air a few times before plopping down in a mushroom fashioned into a throne just off to the side, one Kimmuriel hadn’t even noticed before-had Errtu brought it with him?