And Jarlaxle was speaking, to both Drizzt and Entreri.
“Braelin told you the way to House Do’Urden was clear,” Entreri replied to whatever it was Jarlaxle had said.
“No,” said Jarlaxle, and he started away toward the West Wall, but to the right and not in the direction of House Do’Urden.
“I saw it with my own eyes,” Entreri protested, hustling to keep up.
“Where are we going?” Drizzt asked.
“Be wary of pursuit,” Jarlaxle warned. “House Hunzrin’s war party was trying to intercept us, and so steal the glory.”
“Steal the glory?” Entreri asked. “The glory of catching us?”
“From whom?” Drizzt asked, finally catching up.
And when he did, rounding a corner to come face up with the cavern’s wall, Drizzt’s breath caught in his throat. There in front of him stood one of the most distinct and strangely beautiful structures in Menzoberranzan, indeed, as beautiful as any building Drizzt had ever seen. Graceful and intricate webbing climbed up the wall, with great bridges of spiderwebs flying back and forth around it. Faerie fire was marvelously placed among those shining strands to accent the grace and feeling of movement the wall of webbing evinced.
“To steal the glory from their allies,” Jarlaxle explained, “House Melarn.”
Drizzt noted Entreri’s curious and unsettled expression.
“To any outside observer, my dear and trusted Braelin told us the clear way to our goal,” Jarlaxle explained. “And he also told me that House Hunzrin had refused to ally with House Melarn against the matron mother, and so House Melarn had forsaken any immediate plans to deal with Dahlia and the abomination of House Do’Urden. He also told me that the arrival of First Priestess Kiriy Xorlarrin had shaken the resolve of any waiting enemies. Her loyalty to Matron Mother Zeerith and Zeerith’s loyalty to Matron Mother Baenre has made both Baenre and Do’Urden untouchable.”
Now Drizzt’s expression was no less unsettled than Entreri’s, and Entreri echoed Drizzt’s thoughts perfectly when he asked, “Then why are we here, instead of House Do’Urden?”
“Because Braelin prefaced his report with this,” Jarlaxle explained, and he held up his left hand and scraped his thumb over the back of his index finger. “Which means that everything he subsequently told me was exactly opposite of the truth. And he picked his words most carefully.”
The other two digested that for a moment in light of Jarlaxle’s report. Hunzrin and Melarn had joined in common cause and were going after House Do’Urden and Dahlia-and right now. And they knew of the trio’s arrival in the city.
“But then why are we here?” Drizzt asked.
“Because their eyes are elsewhere.”
Jarlaxle turned to Entreri. He took a mirror out of his bottomless pouch and held it up in front of the assassin.
“Matron Mother Shakti Hunzrin,” he explained, and Entreri’s drow reflection shifted to become the image of the Matron Mother of House Hunzrin. “Use the mask to replicate this visage. The deception will be unsolvable, for the magic of Agatha’s Mask cannot be detected.”
“You want me to-”
“Turn yourself into Shakti Hunzrin, and be quick about it,” Jarlaxle ordered. “We have an audience with Matron Mother Zhindia Melarn.”
“I need you to be better,” Yvonnel told K’yorl, sitting across the stoup from the psionicist, their hands joined in the magical meld. “Stronger.”
She felt K’yorl fall deeper into the magic of the holy water, felt her and followed her as the woman let go of her thoughts and sent them into and through the basin. They spun and twined and were one again when they escaped the room, Yvonnel and K’yorl sharing the vision of their disembodied consciousness.
Now Yvonnel reached deeper, and instead of focusing her thoughts on the external images flying about them, on a sudden impulse, she turned inward, into K’yorl. At first, there was only darkness, and she could feel her partner resisting.
She prodded with thoughts and promises of peace and comfort, of pleasure and not pain. So long had this woman been battered and tortured, so brutal had been her fall.
K’yorl wanted to resist, but Yvonnel wouldn’t let go-and she even let K’yorl into her own thoughts to witness, naked, her sincerity. Yvonnel had no desire or reason to torture K’yorl. It would offer her no benefit and give her no pleasure.
Her offer, her promise, was real, and K’yorl came to believe that, Yvonnel knew, when those barriers began to thin and wash away.
And a grand revelation followed when Yvonnel began to understand this strange magic of the mind so much better. She didn’t expect that she would learn psionics in this way, but the beauty of this melding was that Yvonnel realized she didn’t have to.
She had a weapon. K’yorl was her weapon, and she could use the woman as readily as she might trigger a wand or fire a bow.
She scoured the woman’s thoughts, asking questions and finding answers. What powers might be available to her? What strange spells could she cast through the melding, through the instrument that was K’yorl?
She eased her thoughts back to their surroundings. Their blended consciousness had escaped the Room of Divination once more, now moving about the corridors surrounding the room, which were mostly empty, as Yvonnel had demanded.
They witnessed Minolin Fey in a side chamber, lighting the many candles on a crystal candelabra, performing a common ceremony of meditation.
Yvonnel telepathically whispered to K’yorl Odran, setting her mental fingers to the bowstring.
K’yorl hesitated only briefly, only until Yvonnel assured her that her future was not back in the pit of the balor Errtu.
The joined women loosed the psionic arrow.
Minolin Fey’s thoughts scrambled under the invisible barrage. Her words slurred and became nonsensical. Her hands fumbled, the candle falling to the floor at her feet.
The poor woman muttered, stammered, stuttered, garbled gibberish spilling forth.
The flames caught the bottom of her robe.
She didn’t even notice.
Yvonnel gasped with delight.
“Stop!” Yvonnel at last instructed K’yorl, and the two let go their mental clamp.
Minolin Fey nearly pitched over headlong, gasping back to her sensibilities. Still, it took her a few heartbeats to realize that she was on fire, and then she screamed, batting at her robes.
Yvonnel reached into her own magic, casting a simple spell to create water, thinking to douse her mother.
But no, she found. She couldn’t do that. She couldn’t find any avenue to use her magic through the scrying stoup. Perhaps she would need to invite other Baenre priestesses to join her in ritual, as gatherings of priestesses did when waging war on another House, as the Melarni were likely soon doing, or perhaps even then doing, to House Do’Urden.
She focused outward again. Minolin Fey had shed the gown and stumbled away. She leaned heavily against the wall, trembling hands reaching for the burns on one shin. Yvonnel appreciated her mother’s calm as Minolin Fey cast anew, a healing spell to repair the burns.
As soon as that was completed, the priestess glanced around the side chamber, out of embarrassment or confusion, or perhaps fear. There was a wariness in her darting eyes, Yvonnel noted, as if she sensed something.
So, we are not fully invisible, Yvonnel thought, and she felt K’yorl agree.
Still, what a wonderful weapon!
Yvonnel guided the blended consciousness back to the Room of Divination, then pulled her hands from the stoup and clapped them excitedly.
“Oh, you are wonderful!” she told K’yorl when the woman blinked open her eyes. “The power of your mind is glorious! That you are able to extend it out through the divination, to so fully disembody our thoughts from our bodies … Glorious.”
“I … I …” K’yorl stammered, not seeming to quite have a handle on all of this.