“I don’t believe you.”
“Then we return the way we came.”
“No!”
The two stared at each other, Entreri hatefully, Jarlaxle curiously.
“We go on,” said Drizzt, and both turned to him. He looked Jarlaxle in the eye. “Or I do, alone. Dahlia is down there. She was my companion, my friend. I cannot abandon her in her time of desperation.”
“Will you take a second wife, then?” Entreri asked.
“She would be better off as my slave than as consort to the demon masked in the body of Artemis Entreri,” Drizzt snapped back, and both drew their blades once more.
“One strike!” Jarlaxle warned, stepping between them. “One blade against blade, one wound from either of you upon the other, even in the midst of battle, even by accident, and our quest is ended.” He looked to each, staring sternly until the blades went down then went away.
“When Dahlia is returned to the World Above, I give you leave to murder each other, if that is your choice.”
She heard the whistle, a strange sound indeed, that reverberated like the beacon of a lighthouse in K’yorl’s mind, and so, too, in Yvonnel’s.
What was this sensation?
And then Yvonnel’s heart leaped. They had done it! K’yorl had sent her thoughts out from the stoup and across the planes to contact Kimmuriel. And there, in the hive-mind of the illithids, she had found her son.
That elation turned to doubt, though, when Kimmuriel recoiled in anger.
Kimmuriel chastised his mother for causing him to deliver to Gromph Baenre the fabric of the spell the deceived archmage had used to bring Demogorgon to the Underdark, and in doing so, thinning the boundary of the Faerzress itself.
Yvonnel couldn’t sort it out for a long while, but as K’yorl responded to Kimmuriel, it became clear: Lolth had done this. In the Abyss, in a balor’s lair, the Spider Queen in K’yorl’s form had used Kimmuriel to deceive Gromph. And now Kimmuriel was in hiding from the dangerous Gromph. Yvonnel could feel Kimmuriel’s hatred and could sense his desire for vengeance against his mother. And even K’yorl’s doubts and confusion would have no sway here in convincing Kimmuriel that she had not done this to him.
Yvonnel felt the battered woman’s deep regret. The former Matron Mother of House Oblodra desperately wanted to set things straight with her son-not out of any love for Kimmuriel, of course, but simply out of worry over her own legacy. What a curse her name would become, perhaps even centuries after her demise, when all the drow believed it was she who broke the boundary of the Faerzress and loosed the demon lords upon the Underdark. And there was nothing K’yorl could do about it.
Kimmuriel shut them out then, so suddenly and forcefully that Yvonnel was thrust from the melding, and her eyes blinked open back in the Room of Divination. She suppressed her panic, and her instinct to slap K’yorl, too, out of her trance. Instead she focused on the image in the scrying bowl, nodding as she realized that K’yorl was no longer in the hive-mind, that her consciousness was flying fast along the corridors of the Underdark-backtracking the call of the whistle, perhaps.
The image flickered and formed, then went away again, repeating the process several times.
And the last image caught Yvonnel’s attention and took her breath away.
But the stoup waters cleared, and K’yorl groaned and opened her eyes, the connection broken.
“Where are they?” Yvonnel Baenre demanded, the bared power of her voice forcing K’yorl from her thoughts and into the present. K’yorl stared at her adversary, and even sneered.
“Where are they?” Yvonnel repeated. “Tell me or I will fetch the illithid Methil and bid him wrest the information from your thoughts. In that event, he will leave some foul presents behind, I promise.”
K’yorl tried to maintain her glare, but Yvonnel’s expression made it clear that she was not bluffing. The illithid Methil El Viddenvelp would implant deep suggestions, even memories, to terrorize K’yorl, leaving her helpless to distinguish reality from nightmare.
“Kimmuriel is not certain …”
“Of their exact location,” Yvonnel finished for her. “Where are they? And who are they? Jarlaxle, I know, but the others …
“Drizzt Do’Urden,” K’yorl blurted and Yvonnel’s breath left her once more.
“Where?” she demanded with what little voice she could muster.
“You ask …”
“Last opportunity,” Yvonnel said with a low and threatening growl.
K’yorl stuttered no more. “Jarlaxle and his companions are in the Underdark, a few days out from Menzoberranzan.”
Yvonnel pulled her hand from the magical stoup, but commanded the enchanted Baenre tool to hold K’yorl in place. Glowering all the way, the young and dangerous Baenre walked up to stare K’yorl in the face, her eyes barely an inch away.
“You do not need to make me your enemy,” she said with surprising tenderness. “I understand that you hate me-no, more than that, I understand that you hate House Baenre above all others. That is well and good and likely deserved. And I do not care.”
She paused and cupped K’yorl’s chin in her hand. “Why are they coming?”
K’yorl’s responding expression was one of pure incredulity. “For House Do’Urden,” Yvonnel said. “To rescue the elf called Dahlia.”
K’yorl managed a small nod of affirmation.
“This is marvelous, do you not see?” Yvonnel asked, and she spun away, laughing. She stopped quickly and spun back on K’yorl. “Jarlaxle is hiding Gromph from Matron Mother Quenthel?”
K’yorl nodded, her expression showing her belief she was surely doomed now.
“Bold!” said Yvonnel. “And brave-Jarlaxle comes personally to see to this. Marvelous!”
K’yorl stared at her incredulously, having no way to sort out the glee, unexpected for such a dangerous situation.
“And we have a better way to spy!” Yvonnel said.
K’yorl’s jaw drooped open and she shook her head, clearly at a loss.
Yvonnel understood that dumbfounded look. To K’yorl Odran, this Yvonnel Baenre standing in front of her was a reflection of, perhaps a reincarnation of, or indeed perhaps even one and the same with, the Yvonnel Baenre she had known before.
She did not understand that this mere child before her was so much more.
“Splendid!” Yvonnel cried out, rushing back around the stoup and sinking her hands once more into the rim, to again contact the hands of K’yorl Odran.
“Go, now,” Yvonnel instructed, and when K’yorl did not immediately respond, she added, “To Jarlaxle! At once!”
She paused a moment, then reconsidered. “No, to Kimmuriel,” she instructed. “To him, but do not contact him.”
“The illithids …” K’yorl meekly protested.
“Go!”
In moments, they were across the planes once more, though as soon as they neared the spot where Kimmuriel stood, his delicate hands massaging the brain of the great hive-mind, Yvonnel telepathically instructed K’yorl away. Follow the path again to Jarlaxle.
Perhaps they could have gotten out there straightaway from the Room of Divination, but Yvonnel had wanted something else, ever so briefly. She had felt the power surrounding Kimmuriel on their initial pass, emanating at the edges of her consciousness. The hive-mind.
Glorious power!
Oh, but she would experience that someday, she promised herself as her thoughts and K’yorl’s wound back to Toril, and back to along the winding corridors of the Underdark. In a heartbeat, though Yvonnel was not even aware of her own heartbeat at that amazing moment, she found herself looking at the mercenary leader, Jarlaxle.
Her uncle.
The purple eyes of one of his companions caught her and held her. From the memories of the Eternal, this new Yvonnel knew this was Drizzt Do’Urden, the ultimate heretic, and also, in the greatest of ironies, the beloved tool of Lolth. And they were heading, blindly, to Menzoberranzan.
Yvonnel could hardly contain her joy.