He settled back and tried to digest it all. His thoughts swirled about that name, Demogorgon. He had heard of the prince of demons, of course, but he knew so little about any of demonkind, other than the balor Errtu.
But still he replied, “I cannot champion you.”
“Because this place is so repellent to you?”
Drizzt had no answer.
“Is everything here evil, then, Drizzt Do’Urden?” Yvonnel asked. “Simply, irredeemably evil? Demogorgon will run mad across the city if he is not stopped. How many young Drizzts will he kill, I wonder? How many Zaknafeins?”
The mention of his father, the image of Zaknafein’s sacrifice still fresh in his thoughts, tugged at Drizzt’s sensibilities.
“Who would your morals favor in such a fight, the demon prince or the drow?”
Drizzt licked his lips.
“It is a simple question.”
“I do not wish destruction upon this place,” Drizzt admitted. “I came here only for Dahlia.”
“But now it is much more complicated, is it not?” she asked. “And perhaps you will find what you sought after all. But only if you serve as I demand. Prove to me that you are no threat to Menzoberranzan. Prove to me that in your heart, you would defend this place, your people, my people, against the ultimate evil that is Demogorgon. Is that too much to ask of Drizzt Do’Urden? Are you to be a hero only for the dwarves, then, or the humans, and not for your own race?”
She stepped back and waved her hand, and the lightning bars of the cage reappeared, Drizzt’s three companions still inside. Jarlaxle and Entreri stared at him, their expressions giving him the distinct impression that they were well aware of his conversation.
“If you cannot be a hero merely for Menzoberranzan,” Yvonnel said, “then, as you planned, be one for Dahlia, and for Artemis Entreri and Jarlaxle. Serve as my champion. Help me to defeat this demon prince, and I will let them leave, unharmed and with no future recourse against them. Upon my word.”
“For them,” Drizzt said, but Yvonnel turned on him sharply.
“And for Menzoberranzan,” she demanded. “And I will let your friends leave, alive and unharmed.”
“And with our possessions …” Jarlaxle started to say, but Yvonnel fixed him with such a glare that he bit back the thought.
Drizzt didn’t hear any of it. If the ground beneath his feet before this moment had been as quicksand, now it was water, ready to swallow him and drown him in confusion and despair. He tried to tell himself again that none of it mattered anyway, that everything was, after all, merely a grand illusion.
Catti-brie was long dead and buried, he reminded himself, as were Regis and Wulfgar, and he had witnessed Bruenor’s last breaths. Perception was not reality.
And perception could not be reality, else what purpose was left?
No matter how hard he tried to convince himself, however, a nagging doubt lingered and nibbled at his resolve. In the end it left him hanging there, overwhelmed.
CHAPTER 22
The former Archmage of Menzoberranzan was not used to feeling vulnerable, and it took him a long while to admit that there was nothing, no magic, no willpower, he could rely upon to protect himself should his mind flayer hosts decide to destroy him.
“Lower your defenses,” Kimmuriel urged him, audibly and in his mind. “The illithids have no reason to show you enmity. It was they who bid me to bring you.”
Gromph looked at Kimmuriel with great suspicion, and thought for a moment that he had foolishly accepted the invitation, and that this, after all, might be no more than a ploy to eliminate a threat to Kimmuriel, who had long been favored by the squid-headed beasts.
But Kimmuriel shook his head.
“They would take no sides in our dispute, even if I so wished,” he said. “They would know with confidence that whichever of us proved the stronger would willingly work beside them, to learn from them as they learned from me, or you.
“Lower your defenses, I beg,” he went on. “They cannot serve you here in any case, and hiding behind walls of useless wariness will only prevent you from experiencing the power of this place of ultimate knowledge.”
It made sense to Gromph, but still it took a while for him to lower his guard enough to truly experience the energy around him. He found himself sliding into telepathic debates and images he could only barely comprehend, and at one point nearly lost himself to the fallacy that there was, in the end, no material reality, that it was all a conjuration, a great shared thought experiment.
He followed Kimmuriel down a maze of ringed balconies and spiraling stairways. At the bottom of the long descent, Gromph found himself speechless, a stuttering fool in the face of a gigantic pulsing lump of flesh fully twenty feet in diameter.
Welcome, he felt in his thoughts, throughout his entire being, and as he thought to answer, he found himself mentally within that giant brain, the hive-mind, the repository of illithid knowledge, the mental eye of this thought collective.
If before the archmage was interested in psionics, now he found himself desperate for the art. Within this hive-mind lay all the components of all magic. Anything he might know, anything he might deign to know, would be in there, the secret of life itself.
“Perhaps,” Kimmuriel said, breaking him from his trance. He turned and stared at the drow, who merely shrugged.
“Come,” Kimmuriel bade him, moving to another stairway.
It was hard for Gromph to leave this place, even when Kimmuriel telepathically assured him that they would return soon enough.
Up the stairs and through a door, and the pair seemed to be walking through an invisible corridor, as if they were floating among the stars, all the colors of the universe splayed out around them, the shining lights unblocked by the ceilings of the Underdark and unblemished by the clouds of Toril.
Gromph had traveled to the Astral Plane before, but never like this, never secured in one place and untethered all at the same time. He felt as if he could simply leap from whatever platform might be beneath his feet and become one with the glory around him. And he was truly sorry when Kimmuriel led him through another substantial door, and into a solid room.
A group of illithids milled about in there, none taking note of the new arrivals. Centering the room was a large pedestal, and upon it was set a crystal ball the size of a mountain giant’s head. Illithids moved to it and placed their hands upon it, tentacles waggling, and then they would move away, those strange appendages tapping those of another mind flayer as they shared thoughts on what they had seen.
After a few heartbeats, Kimmuriel nodded and led Gromph to the crystal ball. Following Kimmuriel’s lead, the archmage placed his hands gently on the hard surface and closed his eyes, and let come what may.
“K’yorl,” he whispered a moment later. Then he gasped, “Yvonnel?”
He understood that this was his daughter, and he found himself in the exchange between Yvonnel and Kimmuriel, a line of communication facilitated by K’yorl.
Lolth’s champion is chosen and the prince of demons approaches, Yvonnel told Kimmuriel. I will call upon you and you will give to me what I asked.
I cannot speak for the hive-mind, Kimmuriel replied, and Gromph knew it wasn’t the first time he had made that disclaimer. The fear in his thoughts were evident, the stakes apparently ultimate.
You will, Yvonnel told him.
Gromph could not sort it out fully, but it seemed to him that there was a great battle about to ensue, another proxy fight for Lady Lolth.
If Demogorgon is defeated, your crime will be pushed aside, Yvonnel went on, and it took Gromph a long breath to realize that she was communicating to him then, and not to Kimmuriel. Indeed, he was somehow certain that Kimmuriel hadn’t even heard that telepathic impartation.