His great hat shifted, then seemed to rise a bit of its own accord. Jarlaxle solved the mystery for the other two by reaching up and pulling off the hat, letting a mop of white hair fall down over his shoulders. Thick and styled, one side was cut in layers, the other hanging over the shaved side of Jarlaxle’s head.
Jarlaxle slapped his hat against his thigh and the magical thing seemed to fold in upon itself, becoming small enough for Jarlaxle to easily slide it into his pocket.
“I’m sure we’re better off in disguise,” the mercenary explained with a wink-or maybe it was a blink. His eye patch remained in place. He dropped the ring back into his pouch, replaced it with some other magical ring, and motioned for the others to follow.
The trio met up with an agent of Matron Mother Zeerith’s in the next chamber, a broken cavern of slanted walls and natural chimneys. Nowhere was the ground even, a situation made worse by the blood and goo that covered the stones.
“You should have arrived sooner,” remarked Palaenmas, a young warrior of House Xorlarrin. “We could have used the extra swords.”
“I am surprised to find you by the Wanderways,” Jarlaxle replied, referring to a group of tunnels leading off of the most remote eastern reaches of Menzoberranzan.
“The Masterways are closed, both magically and physically,” Palaenmas explained, the Masterways being the main routes in and out of Menzoberranzan. “Only a fool would test the glyphs and wards the priestesses and wizards have placed in those corridors.”
“And no doubt they are tested daily,” said Jarlaxle.
“Constantly,” Palaenmas replied. “The corridors are filled with the stench of demon corpses. War parties venture forth every hour to place new wards. But the foolish beasts keep coming, and so they die before they get near to Menzoberranzan.” He looked around at the trio. “It is a testament to your skill and cunning that you even made it to this point. You will find your path easier now.”
Somehow the three travelers doubted that.
Palaenmas nodded for them to follow and led them back to the main patrol group, explaining them as refugees from a separate failed patrol.
Their timing had been perfect. The group was already on the way back to the city, and was only a few turns and chambers from the straight, well-defended passageway leading into Araunilcaurak.
The troupe went through the checkpoints and newly constructed gates without incident and was dismissed as soon as they entered the great cavern. They began dispersing just inside to the various ways of Menzoberranzan.
Jarlaxle paused there, holding his two companions back, and so Drizzt took a moment to reorient himself to the city. To the left of them, the rothe cattle lowed and grazed on the small island in the midst of the lake named Donigarten. Mushroom groves and fungi farms filled the area in front of them, with small cottages and large storehouses built low on the stones. The nearest of the houses of the city proper began several hundred feet down to the right, in the Braeryn, the slum region known as the Stenchstreets. Farther along the cavern wall loomed the Clawrift, Drizzt recalled, and beyond that the Masterways and then Tier Breche, the raised antechamber that held the drow Academy.
He looked directly across from the entryway, to the southwest and the structures of the greatest noble Houses on the higher plateau known as the Qu’ellarz’orl. The lights of the city captured his vision, the perpetual blue and purple and green faerie fire that artistically highlighted every stalactite and stalagmite, the beautiful decorations that made Menzoberranzan so much more than Araunilcaurak.
He continued his scan, his eye roving to the north, caught and held by the glow of Narbondel, the great pillar that gave this cavern its name. By the height of the glow of that gigantic pillar, Drizzt had once set the regimen of his days.
Narbondel was discipline within chaos, was the constant within the swirl, was the symbol of the hour, the day, the eternity of the drow.
“We’ll go to the Stenchstreets,” Jarlaxle said when the three were isolated enough just inside the city gates. “I’ll find my information there …” He paused, his voice trailing off as he noted Drizzt.
The ranger stood there, transfixed, staring at the great column.
But Drizzt’s thoughts, revealed in his wistful and unresponsive gaze, were far, far away.
Braelin had never imagined the possibility of such pain, the burn unrelenting and so much worse than anything he had known from the scourge of his matron mother or the hateful magic of some high priestess.
He could not believe this. It would not relent. He was certain he would soon be driven completely insane by the sheer, brutal agony of it all. He watched helplessly, shackled and held above the floor by his bloody wrists, as his right leg bloated and swelled. Braelin could not imagine greater pain, but that didn’t matter as the bones in his leg split in half, skin and muscles tearing.
They would split again, so promised the chants of the Melarni priestesses dancing around him, their vile magic coagulating in Braelin’s tormented form. One leg would become four, then the other would complete his arachnid lower torso.
He should have passed out long before, but that, too, was part of the magic of the demon priestesses, keeping him alert to witness his brutal and agonizing transformation.
Braelin screamed-oh, how he screamed! He screamed until he could not draw enough breath to make any more noise. His head lolled from side to side, his arms twitched, but had little strength remaining to cause more than a ripple of movement from his trembling body.
“It doesn’t get better,” one of them or all of them said-Braelin was too far removed from reality to know which. In any case, the words reverberated in his thoughts, ominous portents as the pain continued on and on.
“You will feel this for a century,” another voice told him.
“Unrelenting.”
“The curse of the drider.”
Even in the midst of mind-swirling agony, Braelin understood that the vicious priestesses were enjoying this torture.
But then it stopped, though it took Braelin a long, long while to understand that it had. The sound of metal he heard above him was the key sliding into the shackles.
He dropped hard to the floor, his leg exploding in a wave of new agony as it touched ground.
“Heal him,” Braelin heard, distantly, and somehow he recognized that particular voice, the sharp intonations of Matron Mother Zhindia Melarn.
Soon after, the first wave of warm healing washed over him, and Braelin fell into a deep slumber.
“You are certain of this?” Matron Mother Zhindia asked Kiriy Xorlarrin. “Jarlaxle, here in the city?”
“It was confirmed by my envoy,” Kiriy assured her, “a Xorlarrin who escorted Jarlaxle and two others in through the eastern gate, as Matron Mother Zeerith had instructed.”
“To Baenre’s call?”
“No,” Kiriy replied with confidence. “The matron mother does not know of Jarlaxle’s arrival-he is not here at her command. This is his own mission, to his own ends.”
“And those are?”
“I do not know. But it is surely of importance for Jarlaxle to venture here at this time, through tunnels filled with demons.”
“Matron Mother Darthiir,” Zhindia said, nodding.
“Matron Mother Zeerith does wish to make a play for House Do’Urden,” said Kiriy. “If Jarlaxle seeks the iblith Dahlia, then Matron Mother Zeerith would certainly welcome and facilitate the move. It would leave a void, one to be filled by a Xorlarrin, no doubt.”
“By High Priestess Kiriy Xorlarrin, who has not forgotten the ways of the Lady of Chaos.”
Kiriy smiled.
“I do not think Matron Mother Zeerith will be happy with the fruition of her plans,” the Matron Mother of House Melarn remarked. “She does not understand her eldest daughter.”