Hero Page 11

  A thought flashed in Yvonnel’s mind that she might have to again properly—and painfully—instruct Quenthel on the order of things in House Baenre.

  But she brushed the notion aside.

  “It would seem that I have interrupted you,” she said.

  “We would have expected you much earlier this morning,” Sos’Umptu replied. “There are many troubling events in the wake of the fall of Demogorgon.”

  “There are always ‘troubling events.’ It is our way. It is how we get up each day and find meaning, such as it is, in our existence.”

  A curious expression did not prevent Sos’Umptu from continuing, “We were discussing House Melarn.”

  “Why?”

  That simple question brought curious looks at Yvonnel, then Sos’Umptu asked, “What would you counsel regarding Matron Mother Zhindia Melarn?”

  “I would counsel that she is not worth your counsel.”

  “She sits on the Ruling Council!” Quenthel stated, rather excitedly.

  “You sit on the Ruling Council,” Yvonnel retorted. “Both of you! And Zeerith, too, when you name her as Matron Mother of House Do’Urden.”

  “They will move to demote House Do’Urden and allow House Duskryn to ascend to the Eighth Rank and a seat at the Ruling Council,” Sos’Umptu explained.

  “Then tell them no.”

  “It is not so simple a matter—” Quenthel started to reply.

  “Zhindia Melarn just lost a war against the very House you expect her to try to demote. Demote her House instead and move Do’Urden above her.”

  “You would have us try to humble Matron Mother Zhindia Melarn?” Sos’Umptu asked.

  “It is already done,” Yvonnel replied, secretly recalling the delicious fight where Jarlaxle, Drizzt, and the human named Entreri had decimated the ranks of Zhindia’s priestesses, and had nearly killed Zhindia as well. “In the fight with House Do’Urden, she and I spoke at length,” was all she bothered to tell the two older Baenres at that time. “Zhindia’s anger festers, as it always will, but she knows now her error. I showed her.”

  “What did you do?” Sos’Umptu asked, as if fearing to hear the answer, and Quenthel also wore a nervous expression.

  Yvonnel laughed yet again, only this time, she ended with a most heartfelt and primal scream. “You are toys!” she scolded. “All of you. You are pieces on a sava board, willingly walking from square to square.”

  Her entire demeanor and expression shifted then, insultingly, mockingly, to one of apparent bemusement.

  “Pet rats,” she said to them, “placed upon an upright and turning wheel to exercise, running up, up, up, but never really climbing.”

  “We are servants of the Spider Queen,” Sos’Umptu protested, finding her voice more clearly in defense of her station, obviously determined that her devotion would not be mocked.

  “And so?”

  “How can you ask such a thing?” Quenthel asked before she could stop herself, while beside her, Sos’Umptu quietly mumbled, “Blasphemy.”

  “More akin to boredom,” Yvonnel corrected. “And incredulity at your blindness. Lolth just sent Demogorgon into your midst! Lolth instructed you, Quenthel, to fill the streets with demons. The War of the Silver Marches … who gave Tsabrak the power to darken the skies?”

  “You know the answer,” Sos’Umptu said, even as Quenthel mouthed “Lolth.”

  “And now you connive in a desperate try for order,” Yvonnel replied with open disdain. “Tell Matron Mother Zhindia her place—tell her and do not ask her. And that place is below House Do’Urden, which now becomes, under Matron Mother Zeerith’s command, the Seventh House of Menzoberranzan.”

  “Is that what Matron Mother Yvonnel will, or would, do?” Quenthel asked.

  “Matron Mother Yvonnel would surely kill herself if she had to listen to the gossiping nonsense of you two,” Yvonnel replied, and she waved her hand as she spun and departed the audience chamber.

  “There is more!” Sos’Umptu called after her, but Yvonnel just lifted her hand and waved dismissively again.

  For them, there was more. For her, there was nothing more—nothing, here in Menzoberranzan.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Magnificent Heretic

  IN A QUIET CORNER OF THE HEAVILY FORTIFIED ENTRY CAVERN OF Gauntlgrym, Drizzt Do’Urden danced.

  He had stripped off most of his clothing, all but a loincloth, and he enjoyed the complete freedom of movement, encumbered only by the magical anklets he wore and the weight of his scimitars in his hands, Icingdeath and the newly created starlit blade, part Twinkle and part Vidrinath. Typically, he had carried Icingdeath in his right hand, his dominant fighting hand, but that had lasted barely five steps into his practice dance this day. He couldn’t deny it: this new weapon, the one Catti-brie had forged, was the superior blade, its cut smoother, its blade stronger, its edge keener. Surely if he was fighting a creature of fire or the lower planes, he would favor Icingdeath, but in most fights, this starlit scimitar would lead the way.

  “Vidrinath,” he decided, bringing it in close to study the tiny flecks of starlight contained within the curving glassteel blade. “Lullaby.”

  He ran his finger across the fine edge, almost daring it to cut him, to inject into him the sleeping poison that gave the drow-made weapon its name.

  Drizzt went back into his dance, the scimitars flowing one over the other, then cutting half-circles in front of him as he turned with perfect balance and performed a sweeping defense against an imaginary foe. He closed his eyes, conjuring a mind’s-eye swarm of enemies coming before him, playing out the fight, moving to counter every strike, to block, to parry, to riposte.

  He was into the dance fully then, and free at last from the nagging doubts he held about … everything.

  Here, in this practice, the only thing that mattered to Drizzt was his perception, his imagination, the muscle memory of his physical movements. Here, he need not worry about the reality around him, or the grand delusion he feared. This was honest and straightforward—there were no lies to be told, no false images to trouble. Here, it was just physical and emotional escape.

  And so he danced, sweeping the blades in perfect synchrony and harmony, leaving no openings, taking every offensive opportunity to slay an imaginary foe.

  Not far away, a trio of dwarf sentries, Mirabarran boys, watched him, nodding admiringly. They had heard the many tales of Drizzt’s battle prowess, and one of the group had even witnessed it in the lower chambers, when Drizzt had taken on the demon Marilith and won.

  “Bah, but me axe’d push them blades aside and cut him low,” one red-bearded fellow boasted.

  “Ha, but no,” said a second, a dwarf woman, eyeing the sinewy and muscular Drizzt with more admiration than for just his fighting movements.

  “He’d turn ye into bits small enough for the spit,” agreed a third.

  The first was about to respond, but he gasped instead when the distant drow turned suddenly, double-stabbing his blades then kicking up between them, his leg fully extended as if he had just driven his heel into the face of a nearby opponent.

  Down went the leg, then back up again, but this time continuing, leading the drow in a backward flip and turn that had him stabbing his blades out the opposite way in the blink of an astonished dwarf’s eye.

  “We’d all be on the spit,” the female dwarf remarked breathlessly.

  “Ain’t no wonder why King Bruenor kept him along, now, is it?” the third agreed.

  “I hear there’s a flock o’ giants sneaking into the north passage,” came another voice, a woman’s voice, and the three dwarves nearly jumped out of their boots, spinning around to see a grinning Catti-brie.

  “What?” they all said together, and the newcomer grinned wider.

  “Beggin’ yer pardon, Missus Drizzt,” said the female sentry, and she blushed to be caught spying on the nearly naked drow.

  Catti-brie winked and the dwarves hustled away, leaving the woman to watch her husban
d’s continuing battle dance.

  Catti-brie’s entertainment turned to a bit of concern as she came to understand the intensity of Drizzt’s practice. Sweat glistened across his nearly naked body in the low light of the cavern lichen and glow worms, and his breathing was heavier than she normally noted in these morning sessions.

  She could see the troubled cloud on his face. Even from this distance, Catti-brie could feel the uneasiness in her husband.

  It had been this way since his return from Menzoberranzan.

  HE WAS FREE now, fully into the play, his arms working furiously, his legs ever turning, keeping his weight continually on the balls of his feet, his balance perfect. He rushed out to the side and dispatched an imaginary enemy, then leaped and spun a circle kick above the defense of an orc in his mind’s eye, landing in a run back to the original spot, where he re-engaged the duo he had left before they even realized he wasn’t there.

  He launched a dozen sudden stabs—high, low, low, high, blade-to-blade—and there was only one remaining, and out of that fourth stab came a turn back around, Icingdeath leading at the perfect angle to decapitate the solitary orc enemy.

  The orc blocked, but it didn’t matter. The lead scimitar had been the ruse and the trailing Vidrinath took the beast in the lungs and laid it low.

  Drizzt saluted and spun the blades to his sides, points down to the cavern floor.

  He heard the slow clapping before he opened his eyes to see Catti-brie standing in front of him, respectfully and cautiously distant, smiling warmly.

  “What monsters have ye slain this day, me love?” she asked.

  Drizzt winced, caught off guard by a sudden, angry thought, but then he shrugged.

  Catti-brie approached, her smile—that lying smile!—leading her to him.

  “I didn’t think ye’d leave the bed so early this morn,” she said as her hands came up to rub his sweaty arms.

  “Where is your staff?” he asked. “You should not be out here unarmed.”

  “The place is thick with dwarves,” she replied. “And I have me Drizzt to protect me.” She brought the back of her hand up to stroke his cheek, but he pulled away before her knuckles touched his flesh.

  “And why’re ye thinking I’m needing protection?” Catti-brie asked, a bit more sharply, and he should have known that his recoil wounded her.

  But Drizzt was too concerned with his own swirling thoughts.

  Catti-brie stepped back and held her arms out wide.

  Drizzt couldn’t really answer her expression, be it one of deception or an honest response to his own vivid delusions. He collected his clothes, donning them swiftly and sheathing his weapons.

  “I did not mean to interrupt you,” Catti-brie said when he started off across the cavern. She hustled to pace him. “I do like to watch you at your dance. Once we danced together.”

  Drizzt swallowed hard. Of course he remembered those long-ago days when the two of them had learned to fight side-by-side in perfect harmony. Such fine days.

  Or just another lie?

  “I should have waited—” she started to say.

  “No,” Drizzt interrupted. “No, I was finished in any case. I should have told you where I was going, but I did not wish to wake you.”

  Catti-brie watched him closely but said no more. They were well back into the complex proper, across the Throne Room and into the passageway leading to their private chambers, when Drizzt added, “I should not have sneaked away.”

  The woman’s sidelong glance, so full of incredulity, showed him the hollowness of his apology—and in truth, he didn’t even know what he was apologizing for, nor had she asked for any such thing. She could see his unease, and it occurred to him that such a revelation as the competing emotions in his mind might then prove dangerous.

  They went in silence to their room Drizzt moved right to the weapon rack but hesitated, his hand hovering over his belt buckle, yet another item Catti-brie had crafted for him.

  It would fail him now if he needed it, he thought.

  “I must go back to Luskan,” the woman behind him said.

  He turned and regarded her curiously.

  “We’re almost set to free the primordial, just a bit,” Catti-brie explained. “And so I’ll need go to Luskan and make sure that the dwarves there are filling the hollow trunk with the correct stone.”

  Drizzt shrugged, clearly at a loss.

  “Bruenor telled ye what we were doing, eh?”

  “Growing a tower,” Drizzt replied, thinking the whole thing preposterous.

  “Aye, we pack the material and let the primordial into the connecting tendrils. The beast’ll turn it to magma and so it’ll grow and harden anew.”

  “A tower?” the drow asked, not even trying to conceal his doubts.

  “A bit, no more, for we’ll be doing this a year or ten.”

  “Adding stone and bidding the primordial to shape it.”

  Catti-brie nodded and Drizzt shook his head.

  “It’s how they did it,” the woman said.

  “Millennia ago?”

  “Aye.”

  Drizzt’s snort was clearly derisive, and he noted the woman’s wince. She came over to him, though, and draped her arms over his shoulders. “It will be wondrous,” she whispered. “And beautiful. Primal creation, like the gods’—”

  “We are not gods,” he said sternly. “Do you think yourself a god? Are you Mielikki now, shaping the world to your purpose?”

  “What?” Catti-brie’s face screwed up a bit at that, but she held on and painted on a look that seemed more sympathetic than anything else.

  “To tell me that all orcs are evil and that I should slaughter babies to satiate your bloodlust?” Drizzt asked, and he honestly had no idea where that accusation had come from.

  “Are we back to that?” Catti-brie asked, stepping back, but only for a moment. “Please, not now,” she said, coming forward yet again.

  He shied from her touch, but she persisted and cornered him, cupping his chin with one hand, stroking his cheek with the other. “Not now,” she quietly repeated. “We have found a time of peace, for the first time in many tendays. The road of adventure before us is of our choosing now, and not to a dark place and not to a war. Come with me to Luskan.”

  Drizzt didn’t answer. Something was wrong here. He just knew it, just knew somehow that something was very wrong.

  “It’s time for us, me love,” she said softly. “Not for Jarlaxle and not for Bruenor. For us, meself and yerself. And all we e’er wanted. We can create beauty now.”

  “The tower?” Drizzt asked doubtfully.

  “Aye, and more beautiful still.” Her crooked grin gave it away. She was talking about children, about the two of them finally starting a family. And why not? It did seem as if the conflicts around them were still, for now at least. Why wouldn’t she want and suggest such a thing?

  Except that Drizzt then understood the truth.

  The floor shifted under his feet.

  This was eerily similar to Errtu’s plot designed to destroy Wulfgar. This was the diabolical lie to drive Drizzt to madness, the prelude to watching some great fiend devour everything he treasured in front of his helpless eyes.

  She would make love with him and she would bear a child, and that child would be eaten—a demon’s feast!

  And everything that was Drizzt Do’Urden would die—everything that was Drizzt Do’Urden except for the physical shell left behind to forever feel the agony!

  IN THE SCRYING room in House Baenre, Yvonnel watched the scene unfold. This was her trigger, the suggestion that she had placed upon Drizzt Do’Urden.

  She had felt the tingle of magical warning when Catti-brie hinted of a family to Drizzt, and that sensation had sent her running to this place, to bring forth the image of the ranger.

  And now she saw Vidrinath drawn, so expertly, so smoothly, so swiftly, that Catti-brie clearly hadn’t even noticed!

  Yvonnel held her breath and shook her head, so
suddenly unsure, so suddenly full of regret.

  “IS IT ERRTU?” Drizzt demanded.

  Catti-brie stepped back, her eyes widening as she finally noted Vidrinath in Drizzt’s hand.

  “Errtu?” Drizzt asked again. “Tell me!”

  “Drizzt?”

  “Or Demogorgon, come to repay me?” the drow asked, advancing as Catti-brie retreated.

  “Drizzt …”

  “Or you, foul Lolth?”

  Up came the blade, level and sliding for Catti-brie’s throat.

  “Do you think to fool me? Do you think—” he shouted as he struck.

  Catti-brie gasped and dived away as the blade nicked her neck, drawing blood, and it was only that bright blood that saved her, that at last stayed Drizzt’s hand.

  He couldn’t bear it. He knew this wasn’t Catti-brie, that it was some demonic deception, likely some demon itself in most diabolical disguise.

  But he couldn’t stab her. He could not bring harm to this image, this deception, this beautiful, wonderful creature he had come to love more dearly than his own life itself.

  He couldn’t.

  “Damn you, Lolth!” Drizzt cried, spinning away. “Be done! Be done!”

  He turned completely around to face Catti-brie once more, and the sight of her halted his spinning thoughts, her blue eyes opened wide in shock, her nostrils flared in anger, her arms waving.

  Drizzt leaped at her, but she had the lead then and her spell caught him in mid-stride and sent him flying back against the wall, a great wind pressing him there.

  He covered himself in magical darkness. He didn’t want the woman to see him in his shame and defeat.

  But the darkness was dispelled and there hovered Catti-brie, floating off the ground now, and there crouched Guenhwyvar beside her, ears flattened, eyes locked upon Drizzt, telling him that if he moved against Catti-brie, he’d catch the panther first.

  “What is wrong with you?” Catti-brie demanded, reaching up to her throat, and retracting bloody fingers. “How dare …”

  “Just be done with it,” Drizzt replied. He slumped against the wall in total despair.