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  The halfling took it, and nearly fell over from the weight of it.

  “And, Mr. Brister-Biggus,” Wulfgar went on, “do you know what else King Bruenor gave to me?”

  “What else might that be?” the curious and off-balance—in more ways than just physical!—halfling asked. He turned a bit aside so that Wulfgar couldn’t easily grab the warhammer from him—though of course, Wulfgar didn’t need to do any such thing.

  “Gutbuster,” Wulfgar replied. “Aye, plenty of Gutbuster.” He noted some knowing nods at his mention of the famous dwarven brew. “And so you should know that your whiskey, fine as it is, won’t be pushing me loopy, and won’t be getting my tongue to wag.”

  The party seemed to stop then, and a dozen sets of eyes regarded him suspiciously.

  “But you’ll need no libations for such an event, for I’ve a thousand grand tales to tell you, and so I will, happily so. I am a friend of Spider—of Regis, though my father, King Bruenor, always called him Rumblebelly.”

  “Are you saying that the one who came with you is not our Spider?” Brister-Biggus asked suspiciously, and Wulfgar heard the hedgerows rustling as halfling guards ran for the mansion, to warn Donnola, no doubt.

  “Of course he is, but there’s so much more. So much more. We’ve traveled half of Faerûn to find you, to find Spider’s love, and so do not ever fear that my warhammer—” he paused and summoned the weapon to his grasp again—“will ever be lifted in anger against any fellow or lady of Morada Topolino.”

  He sat back down, grabbed the halfling lass, and lifted her back onto his lap. Then he began to sing the halfling song, “Any friend of Spider …” but then fell to humming, having already forgotten the words. He kept humming as the others took up the tune, and only paused to belt back another glass of whiskey, and another after that.

  “So tell us a tale, then!” one of the other halflings cried.

  “For a kiss!” Wulfgar said to the lass on his lap, and when she obliged, he said more seriously, his crystal blue eyes flashing dangerously, “Have any of you ever met a white dragon in its lair? I have, and I killed it, too!”

  “You’ve killed a dragon?” one asked skeptically.

  “A young man like you?” another agreed with the doubter.

  “I was younger when I did, too,” Wulfgar said, leaving out the part that it was in another life. “And oh, but Icingdeath of Icewind Dale wasn’t glad to see me and Drizzt Do’Urden, my ranger companion.”

  Now he had their full attention, and he noted that several nodded at the mention of the rather famous ranger.

  “Aye, my drow companion,” Wulfgar declared. That description of his friend brought a gasp from the halfling on his lap and several others, who had apparently never heard of Drizzt.

  “Do you want to know how I killed the dragon?” he asked, leaning forward, his voice barely a whisper.

  All the heads bobbed, and a chorus of “aye” came from the hedgerows.

  Wulfgar smiled, for he had a tale to tell, indeed and one that should score him a few more gulps of that fine whiskey, at least.

  REGIS PACED IN the small but handsome drawing room where Wigglefingers had left him. He had no doubt that the wizard hadn’t gone far, and was likely magically spying upon him even then, casting one divination spell after another to fully grasp the truth of Spider returned.

  Finally, after what seemed like enough time to drop the midday sun behind the western horizon, a side door swung magically open. Regis hesitated, not sure if he was being invited into another room or …

  There she was. Donnola Topolino appeared at the opened door. She stood there, frozen, and seemed to wobble, as if her legs would fail her, and that prompted Regis to rush for her.

  “Spider,” she whispered, and tears welled in her beautiful eyes, and Regis, too, sniffled more than once over the dozen steps it took him to get to her, to at long last, get to her!

  He wanted to leap against her, but he wasn’t sure if he should, and so he slowed in those last steps.

  Donnola flew at him, burying him in a hug, smothering him in a hundred fast kisses. Regis didn’t resist and let himself fall to the ground with his beloved atop him.

  “Spider,” she said between kisses. “Spider, I knew it! I knew! You would not stay away, you would never stay away!”

  “I promised you,” he whispered. “I will never break my promises to you.”

  His last words came out muffled, smothered by the long and lasting kiss Donnola put upon him, and it seemed to Regis, all at once, that he had never been gone from her arms, and also that he had been away forever and too long!

  “I waited for you,” she whispered. “I knew you would return.”

  Regis grinned and nodded, but a look of panic came over Donnola’s face.

  “How long?” she asked. “How long will you stay?”

  Regis put his face very near to hers and stared deeply into her eyes. “Forever,” he promised. “Forever.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Sava Pieces

  THERE ARE MANY TRUTHS AT THIS TIME,” THE YOUNG DROW woman told her much-older aunts.

  “And many are rooted in heresy,” Sos’Umptu Baenre replied, her tone very near to scolding the young but mighty Yvonnel. Beside her, Quenthel Baenre, still Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan in title if not in actuality, shifted nervously, and even glanced at her devout sister with a look of warning.

  They had just witnessed Yvonnel orchestrate one of the most incredible displays of power any drow in Menzoberranzan had ever seen, even those like Quenthel and Sos’Umptu, who had watched their mother tear the entire structure of House Oblodra from the roots of the cavern and dump it and the apostate drow family into the Clawrift. But this release of pure might both magical and mundane, this spear of all the combined power of Menzoberranzan, transferred through the living form of Drizzt Do’Urden, had exceeded even that tremendous feat by Matron Mother Yvonnel Baenre, an explosion so mighty and focused that it had reduced Demogorgon, a near god, the Prince of Demons, to a swirling puddle of bubbling goo.

  “Who is to decide such a judgment?” Yvonnel asked Sos’Umptu. “You?”

  “There is a Ruling Council …”

  Yvonnel’s mocking laughter cut her short. “You would convene a council now, after House Melarn just openly attacked another ruling House, and did so with the obvious blessing and encouragement of House Barrison Del’Armgo, among others? What good do you expect will come of that?”

  “It is protocol.”

  Yvonnel laughed again and shook her head and looked directly at Matron Mother Quenthel. “Do not convene a council,” she commanded.

  “You wish for Archmage Gromph to be forgiven,” Sos’Umptu said before Quenthel could respond.

  Yvonnel flashed her a dangerous look—a look that Quenthel had seen before, and indeed, had seen right before Yvonnel had shown Quenthel the truth of her powers, in a most profound and painful way. But Sos’Umptu, ever the stubborn and assured priestess, pressed on.

  “Gromph brought Demogorgon to this place.”

  “He was deceived,” Yvonnel replied.

  “There is no excuse—”

  “Deceived by Lady Lolth,” Yvonnel finished, and that, at last, seemed to silence Sos’Umptu, and Quenthel was glad of that.

  “I know this,” Yvonnel explained, “from my commune with the witch K’yorl. In the smoke of the Abyss, Lady Lolth took K’yorl’s corporeal form and impressed upon Kimmuriel, K’yorl’s son, the secrets for weakening the Faerzress and summoning Demogorgon. On the Spider Queen’s instructions, Kimmuriel was then tasked with deceiving Archmage Gromph, and so he did, and so Gromph, in summoning Demogorgon, fulfilled Lady Lolth’s will. Nothing less, nothing more. Are we to punish him for that?”

  The Baenre sisters exchanged glances, both appearing quite uncomfortable at that troubling moment.

  “Lady Lolth wished Demogorgon upon us?” Sos’Umptu asked, her voice halting.

  “With faith that we would win, then,” Q
uenthel stated as if she needed her words to be true. “We served her in defeating the beast!”

  “Who can know Lolth’s desires or designs?” Yvonnel asked. “Truly?”

  “It is not our place,” Sos’Umptu agreed.

  “You would have me reinstate Gromph as Archmage of Menzoberranzan?” Quenthel asked.

  Yvonnel laughed. “Of course not! Having Tsabrak Xorlarrin there better serves House Baenre at this time, particularly with the request of Matron Mother Zeerith to be returned to the city in full. Zeerith Xorlarrin will owe us a great deal, and her son is easily manipulated.” She shrugged and snorted. “Is Gromph even controllable?”

  Quenthel wanted to, and indeed almost did, shout out, “Are you?” but she bit it back, knowing the answer and fearing the consequences of even asking the question.

  She didn’t bite it back quickly enough, apparently. Yvonnel flashed her a crooked, knowing smile.

  “I hold an interest in keeping House Baenre at the top of Menzoberranzan’s hierarchy,” Yvonnel then stated, and that caught both older Baenres as a most curious remark.

  “That is the only reason I tell you this about Gromph, and counsel you to welcome him back,” the young upstart went on. “He is a powerful ally, and would prove a ferocious enemy, of course. So that is a tendril best secured.”

  Despite her too-obvious disgust with Yvonnel, Sos’Umptu couldn’t help but nod in agreement, but to Quenthel, the issue with Gromph suddenly seemed secondary to another revelation in Yvonnel’s remarks.

  “You counsel?” she dared to ask.

  Yvonnel offered her a nod. “You are the matron mother, are you not?”

  Quenthel stared at Yvonnel long and hard, fully expecting a sudden reversal.

  “And what are you then, Yvonnel, daughter of Gromph?” Sos’Umptu asked, rather carefully.

  “A fine question,” Yvonnel replied. “And one I must inquire of myself.”

  With a shrug, she turned and left the audience chamber, and left her two aunts staring ahead, confused and afraid.

  “Her power lies in keeping us off our balance,” Quenthel quietly remarked, to which her sister had no response.

  YVONNEL WALKED ALONE with her thoughts into the scrying room of House Baenre. She moved up to the cistern and ran her hand along its smooth rim, recalling the feeling of bliss she had known when she had sunk her hands into the stone, to find K’yorl Odran’s hands waiting.

  She missed K’yorl, and had felt regret when K’yorl had been consumed by the power of the kinetic barrier she had transmitted from the hive mind of the illithids onto the body of Drizzt Do’Urden.

  In many ways, Yvonnel had come to conclude that K’yorl Odran, this apostate psionicist, was in truth a greater being than the priestesses of the Spider Queen, that her thoughts and actions served a higher purpose and potential than a life of offering crude and cruel satisfaction and amusement to the Demon Queen of Spiders. Yvonnel had found a place of freedom in the tortured mind of K’yorl that no matron mother would ever know.

  She thought of Jarlaxle then, her uncle, and of that most unusual drow ranger, whom she had named as Lolth’s Champion—indeed, she laughed at the mere notion of that absurd title bestowed upon Drizzt Do’Urden.

  “Who are you, Drizzt Do’Urden?” she asked aloud, looking into the still water.

  If K’yorl was there, Yvonnel might have forced a divination, flying to the surface to spy once more on the rogue.

  Menzoberranzan was hers to take. She would be legend, a feared demigod among the dark elves, her every whim served.

  She thought of Jarlaxle, of his assertions regarding Drizzt Do’Urden. How ridiculous they had seemed! That last conversation with the mercenary leader replayed in her thoughts, when Jarlaxle had simply accused her of something she had not consciously considered.

  So how, then, was Jarlaxle right?

  So why, then, did Yvonnel actually envy Drizzt Do’Urden?

  YVONNEL’S DEEP REVERIE was interrupted the next morning by the pathetic Minolin Fey, a creature Yvonnel was coming to despise more and more with each sighting. If Minolin Fey hadn’t been her mother, Yvonnel would surely have murdered her long ago.

  “Matron Mother Zeerith has come to meet with First Priestess Sos’Umptu and Matron Mother Quenthel,” Minolin Fey explained carefully, reciting all the titles—which seemed to be shifting—with apparent trepidation.

  Yvonnel responded with a puzzled look, as if to ask why she should care.

  “Saribel and Ravel Xorlarrin have also been summoned,” Minolin Fey went on quickly, as if she realized she needed to intrigue, or at least amuse, the volatile Yvonnel. “It is said that Matron Mother Zeerith will claim the throne of House Do’Urden, after all, and with her children serving as her court, along with many soldiers from House Baenre.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Yvonnel bluntly asked.

  “I was instructed—”

  “You are always instructed!” Yvonnel snapped at her. “Your entire existence is one long journey of following instruction, one long demand, one long service to duty, one long movement out of fear. How can you awaken each day content in the knowledge that you are so pathetic?”

  The woman didn’t even bristle.

  She didn’t dare bristle!

  Yvonnel laughed and shook her head.

  “What would you have me do?” Minolin Fey asked quietly, almost reverently, and she lowered her eyes.

  Yvonnel grabbed her roughly by the chin and forced her head up, forced her mother to look her in the eye.

  “You are my mother,” Yvonnel stated. “I have not forgotten that, nor do I discount it, as so many seem so eager to do in the curious drow definition of family.”

  Despite her fear, Minolin Fey’s eyes widened at those most unexpected words.

  “What would I have you do?” Yvonnel echoed, shaking her head in disbelief. “I would have you do what you would do of your own desires, for once in your miserable life.” She let go of Minolin Fey’s chin and stepped back abruptly, her stare seizing the woman as surely as her hand had. “It is always what the matron mother demands, or what Priestess Sos’Umptu—were I to kill one dark elf, it would be her—demands. And before that, of course, it was whatever Matron Mother Byrtyn would demand. Even Gromph, my—”

  “Archmage Gromph,” Minolin Fey reflexively corrected, and Yvonnel wanted to scream at the woman’s complete conditioning to protocol.

  “Even Gromph,” she said pointedly. “Whatever he demanded of you, yes?”

  The older priestess couldn’t help herself, apparently, and she looked away.

  “Is there ever anything you might demand?” Yvonnel asked in a softer tone. “Ever?”

  Minolin Fey looked back at her, and now Yvonnel saw resolve there, and anger—clearly she had struck upon something to which Minolin Fey was quite sensitive.

  “I have underlings,” the priestess said. “Many. And they perform as they are told, or they are punished.”

  “In service to the Spider Queen?”

  “That is the way of Lolth.”

  A disgusted Yvonnel shook her head, turned, and walked away. “You have delivered your message,” she said. “So be gone.”

  The obedient Minolin Fey left the room.

  Yvonnel flopped down into her chair, one leg up over the side, her head thrown back as she digested the information. Matron Mother Zeerith returning to the city and perhaps to the head of a house was no small thing. If she were placed on the Ruling Council as the replacement of Dahlia as Matron Mother of House Do’Urden, then House Baenre would have secured a powerful ally indeed.

  The Second House of Menzoberranzan wouldn’t like that. Nor would the Melarni zealots. They hated House Xorlarrin, with its sacrilegious elevation of males to positions of high responsibility. Matron Mother Zeerith was often quietly derided as a baridame, a derogatory term bandied by dark elf women against others who seemed too deferential to the males.

  “Ah!” Yvonnel cried out, and she tugged t
he pillow out from under her and threw it across the room, simply because she needed to throw something across the room.

  Scolding herself for reflexively deluding herself into caring about these developments, which were neither monumental nor particularly worth a moment of her time, Yvonnel pulled on her grand ceremonial gown and left her chambers. She didn’t go straight to the audience chamber, though, but paused once more in the scrying room.

  Again she ran her hand across the smooth stoup. Again, she found herself thinking of K’yorl Odran. She was surprised to admit that she missed the woman. Oh, truly, K’yorl was a wretch who would have had to be destroyed sooner or later, but in their time together, in this room particularly, K’yorl’s strange powers had shown Yvonnel a lot of the world outside Menzoberranzan.

  Yvonnel couldn’t help but smile at the irony. This was the City of Spiders, the city devoted to the Lady of Chaos, yet it was arguably the most ordered and stable place in the Underdark. Oh yes, the drow created intrigue and upset the edges often, but most often in places outside the city, as with the War of the Silver Marches. Here, there was the constant preening and scheming for power, the occasional assassination, the occasional House war.

  But when the blood dried, it was just Menzoberranzan again, with House Baenre sitting at the head of the Ruling Council—a gaggle of nine now, counting Sos’Umptu—which had remained remarkably stable over the decades.

  Yvonnel thought of K’yorl, then of Jarlaxle, and the mental image of her flamboyant uncle brought a grin to her face.

  She thought of Drizzt Do’Urden, and fantasized about the life he must live. The contrast to Minolin Fey was too stark for her to ignore. Who demanded anything of Drizzt Do’Urden, other than his own heart?

  Yvonnel set out for the audience chamber. She found Sos’Umptu huddled with Quenthel at the throne. Both glanced at her as she approached, and neither seemed happy to see her. She took special note of Quenthel, and it occurred to her that Quenthel was gaining back her footing, might even be plotting with Sos’Umptu and others to secure her hold on the title of matron mother.