Starlight Enclave Read online

  Startled by the returned image, the same image, the same sensation of simple cessation of . . . everything, the drow fell back a trio of steps, then looked at the blade for just a moment before placing it down on the table before him.

  “You seem shaken,” came an unexpected voice across the small and dimly lit chamber. Kimmuriel glanced over to see his host, Gromph Baenre, the archmage of Luskan’s Hosttower of the Arcane. “I am not quite used to such a sight as that.”

  “I do not fully grasp the enchantment on this weapon,” Kimmuriel explained.

  “It is a minor dweomer in the grand scheme of Mystra’s Weave and Lolth’s Web, surely,” Gromph answered. “The sword seeks bloodletting, and will manipulate its wielder to that end.”

  Kimmuriel was shaking his head through the explanation. “It is more than that,” he answered. “It is . . . pride. This enchanted sword, above all, wishes to be the instrument of the greatest wielder.”

  “For more blood.”

  “I think it more than that.”

  “And this quibble has Kimmuriel Oblodra, who dines with illithids—what do they eat, after all? And how do they eat it?” Gromph paused and shuddered as if his train of thought had been derailed by the image he had conjured in his mind. “You dine with illithids and are flummoxed by a mere sentient weapon? I could more greatly enchant a dozen such blades within a month, if that will keep you so entranced and pleased.”

  “It is not Khazid’hea,” Kimmuriel explained. “It is the connection to those the sword has truly dominated.”

  Gromph’s flippant expression changed at that explanation and he walked over.

  “It senses Catti-brie,” Kimmuriel explained. “When I am holding it, and when I force myself into it, I can feel that which she is feeling. Or perhaps it is what she was once feeling. I cannot be sure.”

  “Now, that could be interesting,” Gromph said with a wicked smile, and Kimmuriel glared at him. “She is human, and so weak,” Gromph needled against that disparaging stare.

  “Not just Catti-brie,” Kimmuriel said. “Another, too. Elven and drow.”

  Gromph arched an eyebrow.

  “Doum’wielle Armgo,” Kimmuriel explained.

  “Not that wretched creature,” the archmage replied with a heavy sigh. “She lives?” He snorted and sighed again, shaking his head.

  “If you had wanted her dead, why did you merely banish her? Why didn’t you just do it yourself, then and there?”

  “Because that would not have been painful enough.”

  “Your anger seems misplaced.” Kimmuriel reached for Khazid’hea again, lifting it before his eyes. “I believe she was more victim than perpetrator in whatever it was that elicits such rage from you.”

  “She was half elf and half drow,” Gromph dryly replied. “That is sin enough.”

  Kimmuriel shrugged and let it go. Gromph was making some progress these last months in Luskan. He was beginning to see the wider picture here, with a civil war quietly simmering throughout Menzoberranzan as his sisters and House Baenre did battle with much of the city, aided by a force now being called the Blaspheme: nearly eight hundred resurrected drow, returned to their previous forms after centuries of servitude in the Abyss as horrid driders. Menzoberranzan was on the verge of a war for its heart and soul, and it appeared that the devotees of Lolth were in a losing position, though the fight would likely last years if not decades.

  “She lives, though?” Gromph asked, taking Kimmuriel from his thoughts.

  “I don’t know,” Kimmuriel answered after considering it for a few moments. “So it would seem, unless these are the final memories of Doum’wielle somehow stored within Khazid’hea. Still, I do not believe that to be the case, so likely, yes, she lives.”

  “Who else does this sword sense?”

  “There are others, but they are faint. Perhaps they held the sword long ago, or it never gained such control over them as it clearly held over Catti-brie and Doum’wielle, or . . .”

  “Or the others are dead now.”

  Kimmuriel nodded. He understood that Khazid’hea was an old, old creation, and figured that it had likely been held by many hands over the centuries, and that it had surely dominated most of them. No, those who had been overcome by Khazid’hea and were now dead were not lurking here in the sensations of the sword.

  Gromph gave a laugh.

  “What is it?” Kimmuriel asked.

  “Catti-brie,” the archmage explained. “The sword fully dominated Catti-brie.”

  “That was long ago, when she was barely more than a girl.”

  “I know,” said Gromph. “I find it humorous, of course, for now, were she to grasp that blade and Khazid’hea tried to dominate her, she would laugh it away. She would likely twist that sentience so far about itself that it would never unwind.”

  “You just said she was human, and thus weak,” Kimmuriel reminded him, and he grinned at the cloud that passed across Gromph’s amber eyes. The truth of Catti-brie clearly pained the wizard. She was not supposed to be as powerful as she obviously was. She was human, just human, and yet she was no minor warrior, no minor priestess, and no minor wizard. Gromph hated admitting it—even to himself, it seemed—but he truly respected her.

  “Where is the Armgo whelp, then?” Gromph asked, unsurprisingly shifting the conversation away from the source of his present consternation.

  Kimmuriel shrugged. “I do not know. Only that it was bright, the sun shining on white snow. And cold . . . so very cold.”

  “I threw her into the far north,” said Gromph. “That she has survived at all is surprising. Was that your thought when I entered?”

  “She was terrified,” Kimmuriel said. “She was afraid and perhaps in the moment of death.”

  “The north is full of large animals, I am told.” Gromph’s voice trailed off as Kimmuriel began to shake his head.

  “She was not running from animals,” he explained.

  Gromph stared at him curiously.

  “It was a memory,” Kimmuriel said then, and he was talking as much to himself as to his host. “Likely one from the same time period when her father was killed in the dragon duel above Mithral Hall.”

  Gromph started to respond, but bit it back and just nodded and departed.

  Gromph knew that he didn’t believe his last explanation, Kimmuriel realized. Still shaken, Kimmuriel wasn’t sure what he believed.

  He placed Khazid’hea back on the table.

  Maybe it was time to give the sword back to Jarlaxle.

  “Is it your hope guiding your suspicion?” Dab’nay said to Jarlaxle. They walked along the merry streets of Silverymoon, the most enchanting surface city Jarlaxle had ever seen. There weren’t many drow here, but neither were the two Bregan D’aerthe rogues unique in the place, and no suspicious eyes followed them as they made their way toward the bridge that would take them over the River Rauvin to Northbank, the older half of this city that straddled the large river. From the bridge they would go to the north gate, for their business here had concluded and Jarlaxle was anxious to get on with the second part of their information-gathering quest.

  He was going to miss this place, though, and he told himself resolutely that he would one day return for a leisurely visit.

  “Why would you ask me that?” he asked the priestess. “You heard the old elf.”

  “The very old elf,” Dab’nay corrected. She tapped the side of her head and gave an expression and a shake that showed she wasn’t very impressed with that one’s mental faculties.

  “Yes, we were fortunate to hear the whispers regarding Freewindle when we did.”

  “Or perhaps it was already too late.”

  Jarlaxle stopped and turned to the woman. “Why are you playing the role of such a naysayer?”

  “He said it was just a dream.”

  “He said that perhaps it was just a dream.”

  “And you hold on to that because you don’t want to believe that it was just a dream.”

&nbs
p; “I believe his story more than he does, it would seem.”

  “You know what I mean,” Dab’nay replied. “Freewindle was confused, clearly. He is old, ancient, and the tale he told was that of a young elf. Centuries ago, Jarlaxle. How many memories can you recall of your earliest days—without the help of Kimmuriel or his squid-headed friends, I mean?”

  “I can recall the ones that mattered. And perhaps many of those, too, seem more of a dream to me.”

  “Or perhaps it was just a dream with Freewindle. Even if not, how much did he say to us that is of any value, other than the notion that such a place exists?”

  Jarlaxle considered that for a while, a smile growing as he heard in his mind the shaky voice of the old elf describing the city of drow. Not Menzoberranzan, not Ched Nasad, not in the Underdark at all.

  And one not devoted to the Demon Queen of Spiders.

  “Perhaps it’s nothing,” Jarlaxle agreed. “Just a dream.”

  “You don’t need to do that,” Dab’nay said.

  Jarlaxle glanced over at her, to see her nodding and a bit choked up. She wanted it to be more than a dream as much as he, he realized.

  “Come,” he said. “If we hurry, we can make the castle and the southernmost boughs of the Moonwood before nightfall. If we’re lucky, we’ll conclude our business here in the next couple of days and we can ride back to Mithral Hall and fly the stone portals to Luskan.”

  “And then?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. But you won’t be coming with me if there is a second journey.”

  Dab’nay stiffened.

  “I need you in Luskan,” Jarlaxle explained. “I need eyes on the happenings in Menzoberranzan, and I prefer it to be a priestess who can keep the score and measure regarding the power of Lolth. Whatever may come of this trip or a second one, the fate of Bregan D’aerthe itself rests on us picking the correct side when the war begins.”

  “I think we already have,” Dab’nay said. “Are we not friends to the two heretics? Lady Lolth is not merciful.”

  “But no one knows the truth behind her machinations. Not even you, a priestess who garners her divine spells from a goddess she loathes.”

  They left Silverymoon soon after, using their obsidian figurines to summon magical hellsteeds that ran tirelessly along the road to the northwest, toward the castle of Lord Harthos Zymorven, who had offered the information about Freewindle to a Bregan D’aerthe associate in exchange for a new breastplate, forged in Gauntlgrym, which Jarlaxle had delivered two days previous.

  “You ask me to tell you of something that destroyed my life,” the elf quietly replied.

  “Lady Sinnafein, I mean no harm,” Jarlaxle assured her. He silently reminded himself that the Lady of the Moonwood had done him a great favor, traveling many hours at the request of Lord Harthos in order to meet with Jarlaxle here in the forest, not five miles from Zymorven Hall, which was still visible on the hill in the distance. “Quite the opposite.”

  “My daughter meant no harm, either, but that sword of which you inquire led her to great harm. Now you wish me to help point you in the direction of that vile item? You would make me a party to more misery?”

  “Khazid’hea—” Jarlaxle began.

  “Speak not that name!” Sinnafein sharply retorted, and the mercenary rocked back in his chair. Behind him, outside the beautiful tree dwelling that had been put up the previous night in this southernmost stretch of the Moonwood, he heard the elven guards stirring. He turned to look at them, even flashed them a wink, then swung back to find Sinnafein waving them away.

  “The sword exists whether we know its location or not,” he said. “It may even now be in the hands of one who cannot control it.”

  “It cannot be controlled.”

  “You know better than that,” Jarlaxle said. “Were it in the hands of Drizzt, would you fear it?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is just a magical toy, lady. It is no demon, though its hunger is demonic—”

  “It is imbued with a demon spirit,” the Lady of the Moonwood interrupted.

  “No, lady,” Jarlaxle calmly replied. “I understand that from your perspective that may seem so, but you may have heard of the war along the northern Sword Coast, in Gauntlgrym and Luskan, in the Crags and Port Llast, even touching into Waterdeep. That war was one precipitated by true demon-possessed jewelry, which in turn possessed those who wore the jewels. Khazid— your pardon, the sword, is not demon possessed. It is simply hungry, and will play upon a wielder who cannot control that hunger in whatever manner it can find to sate its bloodlust.”

  Lady Sinnafein put a smile on her angular and beautiful elven face that set Jarlaxle back in his chair yet again.

  “You don’t know, do you?” she asked.

  Jarlaxle shrugged and cocked his head, trying to make out the source of her grin—one unexpected given the discussion of a great tragedy for her, and one that revealed to him that she did indeed know something he did not begin to fathom.

  “You know of the war that was fought in the Silver Marches, dwarf against the orc Kingdom of Many-Arrows before your friend King Bruenor went to reclaim Gauntlgrym in the east?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you know how it started? How it really started?”

  Jarlaxle’s thoughts swirled as he tried to recall all the events of that conflict, one that seemed quite straightforward, after all, since it involved dwarves and orcs doing battle.

  Sinnafein called to the elves standing outside her chamber. “Pray, bring us some food,” she told them. “My friend Jarlaxle and I will be in here for a long time, I expect.”

  She relaxed back in her chair, and Jarlaxle could see from her eyes that she was trying to sort through what had been a great tragedy in her life. He knew only part of the story: that her daughter, Doum’wielle, had run off from the Moonwood elves, and that Doum’wielle and her father had returned to Menzoberranzan.

  “You know Tos’un Armgo?” she asked.

  “For many years. Before he left Menzoberranzan. House Barrison Del’Armgo is one of the most formidable, second in the city.”

  “Our sages were studying the sword and gave it back to Tos’un in the early days when he came to live with us here in the Moonwood,” Sinnafein said. “He had it under full control, we believed. Of course I believed that! There were many things I believed about Tos’un, and now I know only that I know nothing where he is concerned. Maybe it was the sword, or perhaps I simply did not understand the foul truth of that man.”

  “Because he was drow?” Jarlaxle whispered, and regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth—certainly the elf, Lady Sinnafein, didn’t deserve that.

  “I fell in love with him because of who I believed him to be, not because of his background,” Sinnafein returned rather sharply. “And I was betrayed by him because of who he was, or perhaps because of that vile sword, and not because he was drow. Do you think so little of me that—”

  “Lady, my pardon,” Jarlaxle said. “I was out of my proper place. I have lived a lifetime of unacceptance because of my heritage, or worse, of feigned acceptance by those who wish to prove something of themselves to the world by accepting one of my heritage.” Jarlaxle shook his head and gave a self-deprecating smile. Rarely was he so careless as to say those quiet thoughts out loud.

  To his surprise, Sinnafein laughed, and he knew as soon as he looked up at her that she was not mocking him or his feelings. Rather, she was nodding.

  “You sound like Tos’un,” she replied. “The good man I married. The good father to my children. Not the Tos’un who . . .” She paused and took a deep breath, her tone, indeed her whole aspect, changing.

  “If Tos’un had control of the sword, our children did not,” she explained. “When Tos’un told them that one of them would inherit the blade, it began a contest between them, an escalating battle promoted strongly by my son, Teirflin. Too strongly. It became an obsession with him that he would win the sword. Somehow an
d sometime in the ensuing days, the sword and not my husband chose its wielder, and corrupted my Little Doe, quickly and fully. Doum’wielle killed her brother with that sword, then ran off. Tos’un and I tracked and pursued her into the orc kingdom, and there, beset by a horde, Tos’un betrayed me.

  “You noted that I did not stand when you entered,” she said. “It was no disrespect to you, friend of Drizzt. Nay, the simple act of standing pains me now, for in that dark moment those years ago, Tos’un crippled me and left me for the orcs, while he ran off down a tunnel—back to the Underdark, I later learned, and with Doum’wielle by his side. I cannot tell you how I felt when I learned that he had died riding a white dragon in a battle above Mithral Hall. I cannot tell you because I still am not sure how I feel. I do not believe he was an evil man when we married, but rather that the sword corrupted him.” She looked plaintively at Jarlaxle. “But of that, I can no longer be certain.”

  “Perhaps it was a bit of both,” Jarlaxle offered. “But no doubt the sword had a role in Tos’un’s fall.

  “The orcs found me quite helpless, as Tos’un intended, but they did not kill me,” Sinnafein explained. “Despite the fighting all along the chase that ended with my capture, they did not torture me, either. They did not harm me in any way. They gave me back to my people, a ploy by the orc Lorgru, heir of Many-Arrows, to continue the vision of King Obould of a peaceful alliance in the region. For this action, one the zealots considered a great betrayal of their wicked god, Lorgru was chased away and Many-Arrows went to war. So you see, Jarlaxle, the War of the Silver Marches was, in no small way, caused by that very sword you now seek.”

  “I do not seek the sword, Lady Sinnafein,” Jarlaxle admitted. He rose a bit from his chair and slowly drew a blade, laying it on the table before a startled Sinnafein.

  Sinnafein did rise then, and couldn’t catch her breath for many moments, for the blade was unmistakable to her, with its keen edge and a barely perceptible line of red light, almost like the formulation of a mist of desired blood.

  The elf’s expression changed when she shifted her gaze to the pommel, shaped like a great black cat, a displacer beast, its twin tentacles arching back to front to form a basket about the grip.