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  He moved for his own private quarters, a suite of rooms where he rarely resided, but one that served as home to House Baenre’s newest high priestess, Minolin Fey Baenre, who was Gromph Baenre’s wife and the mother of his all-important baby daughter.

  THE MOMENT GROMPH was out of the room, Matron Mother Quenthel Baenre checked her magical wards and guards against scrying, then unleashed a tirade of invective and magical power that left two of her servants writhing on the floor in agony and a third one dead.

  Matron Mother Zeerith had already contacted her, begging help and information, for she feared exactly the alliance—Hunzrin and Melarn—of which Gromph had just warned. Her House and city of Q’Xorlarrin were truly depleted. The list of the compromised and the dead was impressive, with two nobles, the wizard Ravel and High Priestess Saribel, serving in House Do’Urden; her daughter, High Priestess Berellip, murdered very recently by Drizzt and his friends; her house weapons master, the great Jaerthe, slain on some ridiculous venture to the frozen wilderness known as Icewind Dale; and a hundred of her warriors and wizards killed in the Silver Marches.

  The troubles of Matron Mother Zeerith were not, in and of themselves, a bad thing for Matron Mother Baenre. She had never intended Q’Xorlarrin to be anything more than a satellite of House Baenre, after all, despite the pronouncements of it as a “sister city” to Menzoberranzan. Q’Xorlarrin, combined with Bregan D’aerthe, would serve as House Baenre’s way of competing with House Hunzrin for trade with the surface dwellers. That was the only seam in Baenre’s armor, the only advantage the other Houses could use against the mighty First House of Menzoberranzan.

  Nor was Quenthel overly concerned over the reported death of Tos’un Armgo, a deserter rogue who was never much in Matron Mother Mez’Barris Armgo’s favor anyway, and never anything more than a minor noble in House Barrison Del’Armgo.

  The combination of those things, though, along with the death of a white dragon and the destruction of Lady Lolth’s Darkening, could lead to all sorts of trouble. She worried that Matron Mother Mez’Barris would throw in with Houses Hunzrin and Melarn, and so House Baenre would face all three in defending Q’Xorlarrin. If so, then surely the Seventh House of Menzoberranzan, House Vandree, would side with the conspirators.

  Matron Mother Baenre believed that the rest of the Ruling Council was on her side, but would they pledge allegiance to her openly, with warriors, priests, and wizards?

  And these were drow Houses, after all, known for reliability only in the fact that they could not be considered reliable. These bonds were not alliances as much as they were compacts of convenience, and Quenthel had turned the thumbscrews down hard on the other matron mothers, both in her actions in the Silver Marches and in the reestablishment of House Do’Urden—and, of course, in appointing a darthiir, a surface elf, as the matron mother of that Eighth House.

  Matron Mother Baenre had pushed them all to the edge, had slapped them all in the face, to demonstrate her superiority and thus put them in line. And it had worked thus far, but now, in the aftermath of the fall of the Silver Marches to the previous powers there, would be the critical time.

  “But it was always to be like this,” she told herself, pushing aside the defeat of the Darkening and the death of a white dragon—and the defeat of Tiamat’s ultimate plan.

  Quenthel nodded and closed her eyes. She was Matron Mother Baenre. Lolth was still with her, she believed. And she felt it then, warmly.

  She had tugged the whole of Menzoberranzan into her iron grip, as Lolth had demanded of her.

  But how to keep them there in this dangerous and uncertain time?

  Quenthel closed her eyes and fell deep into meditation, deep into the memories she now held that were not her own. The memories of her mother, Yvonnel the Eternal, that had been telepathically imparted to her by the squirming tentacles of the mind flayer who had served as her mother’s closest advisor, those were the memories she considered now.

  She saw Menzoberranzan, then, in a light as never before. The great cavern housing the city appeared more natural, far less shaped by drow craftsmen, far less highlighted by drow illumination, like the faerie fire outlining the great houses or the glow of Narbondel, the heat-clock.

  She knew that she was seeing the earliest days of the city, tumultuous, yet only built and settled in pockets.

  In this atmosphere had House Baenre become ascendant. In this time of potential had House Baenre realized it most of all.

  She saw the drow.

  She saw the demons.

  So many demons! Scores of them, from the worthless manes, the fodder of the Abyss, to the great glabrezu, marilith, nalfeshnee, and even mighty balors. They wandered the streets, rampaging, feasting, engaging in orgies with the drow, engaging in battles with the drow, engaging in whatever impulse crossed their chaotic and destructive desires.

  There was chaos, truly!

  But it was superficial, Matron Mother Baenre realized, like a series of bar fights in a city full of overlords and armies.

  And that superficial chaos was enough. The demons caused enough grief, enough trouble, enough chaos, to keep the lesser Houses fully occupied. They could not align and plot against ascendant House Baenre with demons literally knocking on their doors.

  Matron Mother Baenre watched in amusement as her borrowed memories revealed a balor in battle with a band of insectoid chasme.

  The demons were no threat to the greater Houses of the city, even then, in Menzoberranzan’s fledgling days. Never could they coordinate enough within their own ranks to pose any significant threat to the order of Menzoberranzan, an order being imposed by House Baenre and House Fey-Branche.

  But the demons, so thick about the city, had surely kept the lesser matron mothers busy with thoughts of self-preservation. Those lesser Houses were too busy securing their own fences and structures to contemplate invading others.

  Matron Mother Baenre blinked open her red eyes and considered the glorious revelations.

  “Chaos begets order,” she whispered.

  Yvonnel the Eternal’s memories had shown Quenthel the way.

  “No, she said more loudly, shaking her head, for surely this diabolical possibility had been divinely inspired. “Lady Lolth has shown me the way.”

  HIS SLY TAUNTING of his sister did little to improve Gromph’s bitter mood. Even if he toppled her, even if he destroyed every matron mother and high priestess in the city, what would he accomplish?

  He was a male, nothing more, and even when Lady Lolth had turned to the Weave, to a domain he had come to dominate more than any dark elf in centuries—in millennia, in perhaps the entire history of the race—Lolth’s gratitude had not reached to him, nor his fellow male wizards.

  Sorcere, the drow school of arcane magic, the academy under the control of Gromph, had counted among its students almost exclusively male drow, with only a few notable exceptions of priestesses looking to enhance their magical repertoire by adding arcane spells to their divinely inspired magic. Yet as soon as the Weave had become a web, as soon as it appeared that Lady Lolth would steal the domain of the goddess Mystra, the noble Houses had flooded Sorcere with their daughters as students.

  The matron mothers, with Lolth’s blessing, would not suffer the males of Menzoberranzan their position atop the ranks of Lolth’s arcane disciples.

  Would Gromph’s ultimate title of archmage have proven secure?

  But Lolth had lost her bid for the Weave, so Gromph had learned, though the details were not yet known to him. The Weave was no longer in her spidery claws and the city and school would return to normal, perhaps. Gromph would remain the archmage, and, he now even more poignantly understood, would remain a “mere male” in Menzoberranzan.

  Or perhaps not, he mused as he pushed through the door of his private chambers, to see Minolin Fey seated on the great-backed chair, their tiny child Yvonnel suckling at the high priestess’s breast.

  “Your presence is long overdue,” the infant said in a gurgling, wa
tery voice. Baby Yvonnel turned her head to stare hard at the archmage, her threatening visage only slightly diminished by the spit and mother’s milk dribbling out the side of her tiny mouth.

  Her eyes! Those eyes!

  Gromph remembered that look so well. With that one petulant expression, Yvonnel his child had thrown him back a thousand years and more, to the court of Yvonnel his mother.

  “Where is Methil?” the infant demanded, referring to the ugly illithid who had imparted the memories and knowledge of Yvonnel the Eternal, Gromph’s mother, the longest-serving matron mother Menzoberranzan had ever known, into the malleable mind of this tiny creature before she had even been birthed. “I told you to bring Methil.”

  “Methil will soon arrive,” Gromph assured her. “I was with the matron mother.”

  That brought a bit of a growl from the child, one that sounded almost feral.

  Gromph courteously bowed before his baby.

  The side door to the chamber banged open then and in slid a handmaiden, an ugly yochlol, resembling a huge, half-melted gray candle with waving tentacles.

  “The illithid has arrived for your lesson, Yvonnel,” the demon creature said in a bubbly, muddy voice that still somehow managed to hold the sharp edge of a shriek. The handmaiden slid over to the child, leaving a trail of muddy goo, its tentacles reaching for the babe though it was still several feet from Minolin Fey—who was all too happy, even eager, to surrender the baby.

  Out of the room glided the yochlol, one tentacle dragging back to clasp the door and slam it shut.

  Minolin Fey slumped back in the high-backed great chair, not even bothering to straighten her gown to cover her exposed, leaking breast. Her breathing was quite raspy, Gromph noted, and more than once she glanced at the closed door with an expression that seemed to be clearly approaching panic.

  “She is beautiful, is she not?” Gromph asked, and when the high priestess snapped a surprised glare at him, he added, “Our child.”

  Minolin Fey swallowed hard, and Gromph laughed at her. Whatever her feelings, Minolin would not dare harm Yvonnel. She would do as she was told, as Lolth’s avatar had instructed, because in her heart, Minolin Fey was truly a coward. Even in their previous plotting to overthrow Matron Mother Quenthel—before the end of the Spellplague, before the Darkening, before Methil had imbued Quenthel with the memories of Yvonnel much as the illithid had done with the child in Minolin’s womb—Minolin had slithered in the shadows. She had remained in the background, prodding others into the forefront to hunt for K’yorl Oblodra in the Abyss, and whispering to those other Houses that would bear the brunt of Matron Mother Baenre’s wrath if the plot unfolded badly.

  “You do not understand!” Minolin Fey snapped at him in a voice as shrill as any she had ever dared use with Gromph Baenre.

  “I?”

  “To have your body so invaded …” the high priestess said, lowering her gaze and looking thoroughly, pathetically broken. “Those illithid tentacles, invading my flesh, probing me,” she said, her tone hinting that she was barely able to speak the words. “You cannot know, husband.”

  She dared look up, to find Gromph glaring at her.

  “You know nothing of what I know or do not know, Minolin of House Fey-Branche.” His reference to her lesser House, instead of naming her as a Baenre, was a clear and sharp reminder.

  “You are not a woman,” Minolin Fey said quietly. “There is nothing more … personal.”

  “I am not a woman,” Gromph echoed. “A fact of which I am reminded every day of my life.”

  “The child …” Minolin Fey said with a disgusted shake of her head.

  “Will become Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan,” Gromph stated.

  “In fifty years? A century?”

  “We shall see.” Gromph turned on his heel and started for the door.

  “There remains K’yorl,” Minolin Fey dared remark before he reached the exit, referring to their previous plans to be rid of Quenthel.

  Gromph stopped and stood staring at the door for a few heartbeats. Then he snapped about, eyes and nostrils flaring. “This is not Quenthel any longer, who serves as Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan,” he warned. “Not simply Quenthel, at least. She knows as Yvonnel knew, and as our child Yvonnel is coming to know.”

  “Knows …?”

  “The history of our people, the living truth of the ways of the Spider Queen, the myriad plots and contortions of the many, many Houses that have come before. You would do well to remember that, Minolin Fey. Our union has served me well.” He glanced at the door where the yochlol and the baby Yvonnel had gone. “But if you conspire and connive, and so invoke the wrath of Quenthel—of Matron Mother Baenre—then know that I will not protect you. Indeed, know that I will destroy you, in service to my beloved sister.”

  Minolin Fey could not match his gaze and lowered her face.

  “Treat our child well, my wife,” Gromph warned. “As if your very life depended on doing so.”

  “She demeans me,” Minolin Fey muttered under her breath as Gromph turned once more to leave. And again the archmage spun on his heel.

  “What?”

  “The child,” the high priestess explained.

  “The child demeans you?”

  The high priestess nodded, and Gromph chuckled once more.

  “You understand who that child has become?” Gromph asked rhetorically. “Beside her, you deserve to be demeaned, and mocked.

  “But fear not,” Gromph added. “Perhaps if you treat her well, and feed her well with your breasts, she will not utterly obliterate you with a Lolth-given spell.”

  Still chuckling, though not really feeling any better than when he had entered the room, the archmage departed.

  Sometime later that day, Gromph became aware of a major demon, a gigantic canine-faced four-armed glabrezu, wandering the ways of Menzoberranzan near House Baenre. After that, a courier from the matron mother arrived and informed him that more demons would follow, and he was not to destroy or banish them except in defense of his very life.

  The archmage’s expression grew sourer still.

  SEATED AT THE right foreleg of the spider-shaped council table, Matron Mother Mez’Barris Armgo trembled visibly after High Priestess Sos’Umptu Baenre announced that their scouts had located a very-much-alive Tiago Do’Urden, thus finishing the full recounting of the results of the Silver Marches War—full, except for the not-so-minor detail that the sun had returned to that region of the World Above, the Darkening spell dismissed, and the fact that her words about Tiago were untrue, issued only to annoy Matron Mother Mez’Barris Armgo of the Second House.

  “Issues, Matron Mother Mez’Barris?” the matron mother asked when Sos’Umptu moved back around to the far side of the table and took her seat, the Ruling Council’s new Ninth Seat, between the matron mothers of House Vandree and House Do’Urden.

  “Too many to recount in the hours we have, perhaps,” the matron mother of House Barrison Del’Armgo retorted.

  “Then the most recent, if you please.”

  “Did you not hear your own sister’s words?”

  Matron Mother Baenre shrugged dismissively.

  “Drow nobles were killed,” Mez’Barris said.

  “Drow nobles are often killed,” Matron Miz’ri Mizzrym of the Fourth House obediently pointed out. Miz’ri had become little more than an echo for the whispers Matron Mother Baenre did not wish to speak aloud. As she looked from Miz’ri to the matron mothers Vadalma Tlabbar and Byrtyn Fey, she was reminded of the tightening and dangerous alliance between House Baenre and the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Houses of Menzoberranzan.

  Mez’Barris had to unwind that alliance if she was ever to be out from under the squirming shadow of the wretched Quenthel Baenre. She turned her stare over Miz’ri once more and added a sly and knowing grin, pointedly letting her gaze drop to the ornate necklace of gemstones Miz’ri had worn to council this day. Rumors about the city claimed that House Mizzrym was dealing with enemies of
Menzoberranzan, including the deep gnomes of Blingdenstone, and that, of course, would explain the precious gemstones around Miz’ri’s neck.

  Perhaps that was Baenre’s hold over Matron Mother Miz’ri, Mez’Barris mused. It was no secret that House Mizzrym was trying to build a trade market beyond Menzoberranzan to rival that of the ever-dangerous House Hunzrin, and perhaps the matron mother was granting Miz’ri dispensation to bargain with enemies, even the hated deep gnomes, with impunity.

  It was just a hunch, but one worth investigating and perhaps exploiting.

  “It is curious, though, that with the discovery of a living Tiago, of the Do’Urden nobles who went to war, only two were killed,” Mez’Barris remarked. “And those two of the same family line.”

  “Are we to believe now that you ever truly claimed the darthiir half-breed daughter of Tos’un as a true member of House Barrison Del’Armgo?” asked Dahlia—Matron Darthiir Do’Urden—and the whole of the Ruling Council, with the exception of the two Baenres, gasped in unison, not so much at the bluntness of the remark but that the wretched elf who all, even the allies of House Baenre, knew to be no more than a second echo for Matron Mother Baenre’s votes, had spoken the open accusation.

  Seated beside Dahlia, High Priestess Sos’Umptu Baenre smiled unabashedly, as if she cared not at all that the puppet master’s strings were visible to the audience.

  “Tos’un Armgo died honorably,” Matron Mother Baenre boldly pronounced, abruptly deflecting the conversation before it could be reduced to an open show of sides. “He rode Aurbangras, son of Arauthator, into battle even as Tiago flew Arauthator beside him. There, above the battlefield, they met the enemies of the white dragons, a pair of copper wyrms, in great combat. If there are any implications to your remark, Matron Mother Mez’Barris, perhaps you should first consider that neither I nor any others of Menzoberranzan hold sway over dragons, particularly not those of the metallic persuasion.”

  “And Doum’wielle?” Matron Mother Mez’Barris retorted, and she was sorry she had blurted that from the moment it had left her mouth, particularly given the words of Matron Darthiir Do’Urden.