“You know Kimmuriel,” Yvonnel whispered. “Find him again, but this time through the divination of the scrying pool. Let your mind magic flow into it, but do not send forth your thoughts to Kimmuriel unaccompanied by this scrying magic! Now, send forth your thoughts, K’yorl, Matron Mother of House Oblodra.” She felt the psionicist tense up at the mention of the doomed House, and Yvonnel knew that reference would soon enough come to be her greatest weapon.
It took a long, long while-out in the cavern, the light of Narbondel diminished by half-but finally, Yvonnel felt her own thoughts going forth, following K’yorl’s psionic call. They were joined by the magic of the stoup, their minds in perfect harmony, and Yvonnel could hardly contain her delight at that realization. The stoup had been built for Baenre priestesses, of course, so they could join in ritual scrying. Quenthel and Sos’Umptu both had insisted that Yvonnel’s plan would not work here, that the stoup would not accept K’yorl’s mind magic.
But they were wrong.
Through K’yorl’s thoughts, Yvonnel could see the cavern in the waters of the stoup and reflected at every angle in the mirrors. She felt K’yorl’s regrets then, particularly when they neared the Clawrift, wherein House Oblodra had been cast.
It proved to be too much for the fallen matron mother, and her mind-sight failed, casting her and Yvonnel back into the room.
The water cleared to still darkness.
The lights brightened, the torches reignited.
Yvonnel sat staring at K’yorl, their hands still joined within the marble.
K’yorl tried to recoil. She had failed and expected punishment, Yvonnel clearly saw.
“Wonderful!” the daughter of Gromph congratulated. “In one attempt, your vision fled the boundaries of this room! Did you feel it, Matron Mother K’yorl? The freedom?”
Gradually, the other woman’s expression began to change; Yvonnel could feel her hands relaxing.
“I did not expect that you would get out of the room on our first session,” Yvonnel explained. “Next time we will go farther.” She pulled her hands out of the stoup, taking K’yorl’s with her, and the rim appeared undisturbed.
“We will find him,” Yvonnel said confidently.
Kimmuriel? she heard in her thoughts, the first time K’yorl had communicated directly to her.
“Yes. Yes, and soon,” Yvonnel promised-promised K’yorl and herself.
“Are we to be fighting these beasts all the way to Menzoberranzan?” Entreri demanded two days later, when the trio had found yet another cluster of Abyssal beasts. The assassin slipped a quick side-step to avoid the overhead swing of a gigantic hammer, then stepped in quickly, Charon’s Claw easily and beautifully sliding into the balgura’s thick chest. The magnificent sword slowed when the blade hit a thick rib, the blade too fine to be chipped or snagged. Entreri’s sigh revealed his pleasure at the power of the weapon. He hated this sword profoundly, but he could not deny its utility and craftsmanship.
Balgura blood flowed along the trough in the red blade, pouring over the demon’s torso.
Entreri didn’t merely retract the weapon. So confident was he in the power of Charon’s Claw, he tore it out to the side, through skin and bone, leaving the dying demon nearly cut in half.
And this was a balgura, massively thick and heavy-boned.
“Do you truly believe I mean to walk all that way?” Jarlaxle replied with a laugh, and he too put his newly acquired sword to use. Khazid’hea decapitated one manes as Jarlaxle began his slash, bringing the vorpal blade across to cut deeply into a second enemy. “Your lack of faith disappoints me.”
“When you’re done talking …” Drizzt said from the side of the small oval chamber, where he held the door against the press of several demons, a mixed group of thick-limbed balgura, manes, and some other fiends Drizzt did not know: slender and with tentacle-like arms that they effectively used as stinging whips. Those tentacles, coming at him from behind a wall of allies, kept him moving and threatened to drive him back, which he did not want. He had the incoming monsters bottlenecked at the narrow entryway. One step back and the beasts would fan out to either side and the chamber would become a wild melee.
Drizzt ducked a snapping tentacle, but moved forward from a crouch, his scimitars working furiously to poke at a balgura, one, two, three, as he tried to drive the brute into a retreat.
But then it was Drizzt who was backstepping, and covering his head with his cloak. Out of nowhere, it seemed, a whipping wind came up, and stinging sleet pelted down all around him.
“Magic!” he warned, thinking it a trick of the demons, and unaware at that moment that they were taking the brunt of the ice storm.
“Left!” Jarlaxle called, and Drizzt slid that way-and just in time.
A glob of viscous goo from Jarlaxle’s wand shot past him. It struck the floor right at the feet of the closest demons, but it didn’t hold securely there. The floor was already a sheet of ice. The glob did stick to the front demons, though, who stumbled in futile attempts to maintain their balance. The momentum of the glob sent them skidding back into their allies.
A second glob came forth, hitting the ice again right in front of the first row of enemies and sliding in with great weight and force, taking the whole ball of demons back to the far wall of the corridor, where they struggled against the goo, stuck together as one.
Drizzt slid away his blades and let his left hand come to the belt buckle, his right to the small quiver, pulling forth Taulmaril and setting an arrow so fluidly that an observer might still be wondering where the scimitars went. The chamber and corridor filled with streaks of silver as the drow let fly. Drizzt’s barrage pummeled the helpless demons as they rent and tore at the unyielding magical globs, and at each other. They were, after all, demons.
The ice storm had ended, and Drizzt battered the group in relative comfort, explosive arrows pounding home, every shot boring into demon flesh. But a sudden buzzing in the air was his only warning, before a swarm of horrid demons soared past the trapped group: chasme, like great houseflies with the head and face of a bloated human.
Drizzt managed to alter the angle of his bow enough to shoot the first of the flying demons from the air, but the second dived upon him, and a host of others were close behind, entering the chamber.
Or trying to.
A wall of ice appeared in that opening. It resounded with the impact of the third of the chasme, which collided with it full force. It shook again and again as the others crashed in behind.
The one in the room had Drizzt diving for the floor though, his bow flung aside and desperately going for his scimitars. Before he ever drew them, barely an eye-blink of time, he found he didn’t need them. A red blade swept down in front of him, tearing the edge off the chasme’s fly-like wings. As the demon spun and crashed, the great Netherese sword slashed in again, scraping the grotesque human face right off.
Entreri didn’t remain in place to accept Drizzt’s thanks, leaping away for the wall of ice. He stabbed Charon’s Claw through one of the spider-web cracks, the shriek of a chasme telling them all that he had struck true.
“Well played,” Drizzt congratulated Jarlaxle, thinking it he who had brought forth the ice storm and the wall.
But Jarlaxle shook his head and shrugged, his smile wide.
He turned away from Drizzt, and from Entreri, who was stabbing through the ice wall yet again, scoring another hit on a second of the flying beasts.
“Quite the hero,” Jarlaxle said, addressing another dark elf who had come into the small chamber, though from where, Drizzt could not guess. He seemed about Drizzt’s age and wore the robes of a wizard and the House emblem of Xorlarrin. A small silver chain closed the collar of his fabulous piwafwi, showing him to be a master of Sorcere, the drow school of magic.