But hardly unarmed.
The astonished Tiago stared at the sharp end of an arrow, and Drizzt held a bow-from where it had come, Tiago could not begin to guess in that flash of recognition, that singular terrifying instant before Taulmaril was released and a bright flash of burning whiteness consumed the Baenre warrior’s thoughts.
Tiago Baenre’s head simply exploded.
“Baubles,” Drizzt said dryly, and flashed his left arm across to use the bow to block the swinging sword, though Vidrinath came across with no strength behind the swing. “Fairly earned and wisely mastered.”
Catti-Brie was laughing and shaking her head at the simplicity of it all when she pulled her face out of the white-hot flame. With a puff of breath and a word, she blew out the flame, extinguishing her spell.
“What’d’ye know, girl?” Athrogate asked.
“Limestone,” she said, holding up the shard.
“Too hard,” Athrogate replied. “Marble, then, but aye, too brittle!”
“Crystalline,” Ambergris added.
“What do you know?” Gromph demanded.
“No wizard built this tower,” she said to the great drow. “And no priest, and no dwarf, and no dragon, and no giant,” she added, looking in turn at Ambergris, Athrogate, the dragon sisters, and Caecilia. “Though all helped, do not doubt.”
“Now you speak in riddles?” an agitated Gromph remarked.
“Though all helped, and all were surely needed,” Catti-brie said. “To contain the magic.”
“Say it plainly, woman,” an obviously intrigued Lord Parise begged. The scholar Shadovar leaned forward, pulled toward Catti-brie.
“The Hosttower of the Arcane was built by the primordial beast that resides in Gauntlgrym,” she answered with all confidence. She had seen. In the intense heat, the shard had revealed itself, and through the intense fire and through her Ring of Elemental Command, Catti-brie had peered into the realm of fire once more, and had heard the echo of the primordial’s memory.
A hundred confused, mostly disapproving scowls came back at her.
“The roots were first, bit by bit, the tree grown later,” the woman explained, to even more confused stares.
“Grown?” Lord Parise and Caecilia asked in unison, and Catti-brie nodded.
“As if t’were alive?” Ambergris asked, and Catti-brie nodded.
“Then we canno’ rebuild it and Gauntlgrym’s doomed,” Athrogate said logically.
“Yes, we can,” said the smiling Catti-brie, looking right at Gromph. “Yes, we can.”
By the time Tiago’s sword hit the floor, Drizzt already had his second arrow away, this one shooting up at the trio on the balcony.
The woman in the middle of the group smiled even as the enchanted missile sped for her face. Her wards caused it to explode into a shower of harmless, multi-colored sparks long before it got near enough to hit her.
So Drizzt would send a steady stream, he decided, but before he had the next arrow on the bowstring, he was in utter blackness.
Instinctively, and quite used to such an occurrence, he dived into a roll. So experienced was he with the drow darkness that he knew precisely how many rolls he would need to get out the side of it, figuring it had been centered on him.
And so he came around to his knees ready to shoot.
But was still in total darkness.
He fired anyway, knowing the general direction, but only one shot. He had to be moving quickly.
And so he was rolling again, over and over, and each one seemed slower to him, and he couldn’t understand that. The floor felt less solid-it was as if he rolled in bubbling tar, as though he were sinking into it. It caught him and held him and tried to flow up over him.
It was just darkness then, and Drizzt wasn’t even rolling, just flopping slightly, his shoulder coming off the floor but sagging back down, broken and caught.
CHAPTER 21
Gromph Baenre was in a foul mood-more foul than usual, even. The witch had taken the lead from him with her knowledge of fire and of the primordial.
He sat in his grand chair, behind his grand desk, staring at the tent flap through which Caecilia had just departed.
Even she had fallen for Catti-brie’s lies.
And the Shadovar Lord Parise, too, with whom Gromph had spoken right before Caecilia had come to call. It made no sense to him. How could anyone believe Catti-brie’s lies? How could any of these learned scholars for a moment think it a good idea to let a primordial of fire free of its cage, even a bit?
And worse, the former archmage mused, why would anyone believe a simple human above the words of Gromph?
He tapped the tips of his fingers together, as he did when deep in thought, and tried to organize a new strategy regarding the dragon sisters. They might be his last hope to stop Catti-brie. The foolish Harpells would blindly follow her, and if the dwarves were to be persuaded, it wouldn’t be from anything he might say.
Into Gromph’s thoughts, then, came a plea, and it took the archmage a while to sort it out.
I wish to speak with you directly, Archmage.
When he at last identified the source of the communication Gromph’s eyes went wide, and his lips curled down in a most wicked scowl.
“Come in!” he said and telepathically imparted at the same time. “Oh do!”
“Know that I come at the behest of the hive-mind,” a voice replied, both in Gromph’s head, and in his room, and he watched as Kimmuriel appeared in view, stepping through the distance-bending magic of psionics.
“I am connected to them even now, Archmage, and they will look unfavorably upon you should you try to foolishly take out your vengeance upon me,” Kimmuriel warned. “They are quite involved now in the wake of the summoning of Demogorgon and the breaking of the boundaries of the Faerzress.”
How Gromph wanted to lash out and obliterate this impudent fool. Ever since he had completed the incantation, to find the Prince of Demons materializing in his chamber in Sorcere, Gromph had known that Kimmuriel had waged the ultimate deception upon him, and had ruined his name and reputation. And now here Kimmuriel stood, in Gromph’s own room, vulnerable.
Or perhaps not.
Gromph bit back the invective bubbling in his throat and the spell he wanted to utter to obliterate Kimmuriel. He had no desire to anger the illithid hive-mind. There wasn’t much in the multiverse that frightened Archmage Gromph Baenre, but angering a hive-mind wasn’t something he ever wanted to experience.
“How dare you come to this place?” he said.
“You requested an emissary from the hive-mind to aid in the work on the Hosttower.”
“But you?” an incredulous Gromph cried.
Kimmuriel shrugged. “The choice is theirs, not mine. I am bid to be here, by your side, and so I am.”
“Perhaps the illithids wished to see you destroyed, then.”
Kimmuriel sighed. “I was equally deceived, Archmage,” he said with a respectful bow.
“Were you now?” Gromph answered, full of doubt.
“Yes, and by Lady Lolth herself. It was she who deigned to weaken the Faerzress, so that she could expel the demon lords from the Abyss and gain control of the plane.”
Gromph cocked an eyebrow at that, his expression both incredulous, and despite his best intentions and great discipline, intrigued.
“Yvonnel has risen,” Kimmuriel said, and Gromph’s expression shifted more to confusion.
“Your daughter,” the psionicist clarified. “She has taken control of the levers of power of Menzoberranzan.”
“She is a baby!”
“No more,” Kimmuriel replied. “Never in her mind, with the memories of Yvonnel the Eternal, and now, through wizardry, neither in body.”
“Quenthel is no more the matron mother?”
“In name only. Yvonnel has cowed the Melarni and crowned the Champion of Lolth-a most unlikely champion-to prepare for the destruction of the beast you summoned to the Underdark.”