Quenthel commanded the loyalty of the hulking Jeggred, a draegloth of her own House Baenre. The draegloth was half-demon, half-drow, the son of Quenthel’s elder sister and some unnamed denizen of the Abyss. Jeggred towered over the other drow, a four-armed creature of bestial aspect who held a murderous violence in check at all times. His face was drow-like, and he walked upright, but a gleaming silver pelt covered his dark skin at chest, shoulders, and loins, and his claws were as long and as sharp as daggers. Halisstra didn’t fear Jeggred, as the draegloth was Quenthel’s creature and would not lay a finger on her without his mistress’s express command. He might be the instrument of Halisstra’s death, if Quenthel chose to order it, but there was no point in regarding him as anything other than Quenthel’s weapon.
The wizard Pharaun intrigued Halisstra greatly. The study of arcane lore was something that, like swordplay, was traditionally left to males. A powerful wizard merited a certain amount of respect despite the fact that he was male. In fact, Halisstra knew of more than one instance in which the matron mother of an important house ruled only with the consent of the powerful male wizards of the family, a situation that had always struck her as perverse and dangerous. Pharaun acted as if he commanded that kind of power and influence. Oh, he deferred to Quenthel quickly enough, but never without a sardonic smile or an insincere remark, and at times his disrespectful carriage verged on outright rebellion. That meant that he was either a complete fool—hardly likely, since he’d been hand-picked in Menzoberranzan for the dangerous journey to Ched Nasad—or he was powerful enough to hold his own against the natural tyranny of a noble female like Quenthel. Pharaun struck Halisstra as a potentially critical ally against Quenthel, if it turned out that she and Quenthel could not reach an understanding.
It seemed to Halisstra that Ryld Argith was to Pharaun what Jeggred was to Quenthel. A powerfully built weapons master whose stature matched Halisstra’s own, Ryld was a fighter of tremendous skill. Halisstra had seen that for herself in the escape from Ched Nasad. Like most males, he maintained a properly deferential demeanor in Quenthel’s presence. That was a good sign to Halisstra. Ryld might easily transfer loyalties to another woman of high birth in a pinch. She couldn’t count on Ryld turning against either Pharaun or Quenthel, but pure drow were less steadfast in their loyalties than the average draegloth. . . . The last and the least of the party from Menzoberranzan was the scout, Valas Hune. A small, furtive male, he said little and observed much. Halisstra had seen his type before. Useful enough in the sort of tasks they excelled at, they wanted nothing to do with the machinations of priestesses and matriarchs and did all they could to stay well clear of the politics of the great Houses. At the moment, Valas was crouched over a small pile of dry brush, working to start a fire.
“Is there any chance we will be pursued?” Ryld said into the icy wind.
“I doubt it,” Quenthel muttered. “The whole House fell after we used the portal. How could we be followed?”
“It is not impossible, dear Quenthel,” Pharaun replied. “A competent wizard might be able to discern where the portal led to, even though it was destroyed. He might even be able to repair the portal sufficiently to make use of it. I suppose it depends on how badly we are missed in Ched Nasad.” He glanced up at Halisstra and asked, “What about it, my lady? Don’t you think it likely that your kinfolk will hold us to blame for the unfortunate events of the last few hours? Won’t they go to great lengths to exact vengeance upon us?”
Halisstra looked at him. The question made no sense to her. Who could possibly be left to fix blame for the duergar attack on the party of Menzoberranyr? House Melarn had fallen, and House Nasadra as well. She became aware of a great weariness in her body, a leaden feeling in her heart and a fog in her mind, and she allowed herself to sink to the sand across from the others.
“Anyone still in Ched Nasad has greater things to concern herself with than your whereabouts,” she managed.
“I think the lady has put you in your place, Pharaun,” Ryld said, laughing.
“The world and all within it do not revolve around you, you know.”
Pharaun accepted the jibe with a sardonic grin and a gesture of self-deprecation.
“Just as well,” he said lightly. He turned to Valas, who patiently struck sparks at his pile of brush. “Are you sure that’s wise? That fire will be visible from quite a distance.”
“It’s not much later than midnight, unless 1 miss my guess,” the scout replied without looking up from his task. “If you think it’s cold now, wait until the hours before dawn. We need fire, regardless of the risk.”
“How do you know how late it is,” Quenthel asked, “or how cold it’ll get?”
Valas struck a spark and quickly crouched to shelter it from the wind. In a few moments, the brush crackled and burned brightly. The scout fed it carefully with more brush.
“You see the pattern of stars to the south?” he said. “Six of them that look a little like a crown? I hose are winter stars. They rise early and set late this time of year. You’ll note that they’re near the zenith.”
“You’ve traveled on the surface before,” Quenthel observed.
“Yes, Mistress,” Valas said, but did not elaborate.
“If it’s the middle of the night, what is that glow in the sky?” she asked.
“Surely that must be the dawn.”
“A late moonrise.”
“It’s not the sun coming up? It’s so bright!”
Valas looked up, smiled coldly, and said, “If that was the sun, Mistress, the stars would be fading from half the sky. Trust me, it’s the moon. If we stay here, you’ll come to know the sun soon enough.”
Quenthel fell silent, perhaps chagrined by her mistake. Halisstra didn’t hold it against her—she had made the same mistake herself.
“That raises an excellent question,” said Pharaun. “Presumably, we do not wish to stay here for very long. So, then, what shall we do?”
He looked deliberately at Quenthel Baenre, challenging her with his question. Quenthel didn’t rise to the bait. She gazed off at the silver glow in the east, as if she hadn’t heard the question. Moon shadows faint as ghosts began to grow from weathered walls and crumbling columns, so dim that only the eyes of drow accustomed to the gloom of the Underdark could perceive them. Quenthel reached down to the sand beside her and let a handful run between her fingers, watching the way the wind swept away the silver stream. For the first time, it occurred to Halisstra that Quenthel and the other Menzoberranyr might feel something of the same weariness, the same desolation, that lay over her own heart, not because they felt her loss, but because they understood that they had witnessed a loss, a great and terrible one.
The silence stretched out for a long time, until Pharaun shifted and opened his mouth as if to speak again. Quenthel spoke before he could, her voice cold and scornful.
“What shall we do, Pharaun? We shall do whatever I decide we should do. We are exhausted and wounded, and I have no magic to restore our strength and heal our wounds.” She grimaced, and let the rest of the sand slip through her fingers.
“For now, rest. I will determine our course of action tomorrow.”
Hundreds of miles from the desert ruins, another dark elf stood in another ruined city.
This was a drow city, a jutting bulwark of black stone that thrust out from the wall of a vast, lightless chasm. In arrangement it had once been something like a mighty fortress built upon a great rocky hilltop, only turned on its side to glower out over an empty space where foul winds from the unplumbed abyss below howled up into unseen caverns above. Though its turrets and spires leaned boldly out over a horrifying precipice, the place did not seem frail or precarious in any sense. Its massive pier of rock was one of the bones of the world, a thick spar rooted so securely in the chasm wall that nothing short of the unmaking of Toril would tear it loose.