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 the 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, vulturelike 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
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.