Maestro (25 page)

He glanced around as he neared the table, then sat opposite Drizzt, to Jarlaxle’s left. He stared at Jarlaxle only briefly, then leaned to the edge of the table, his hands beneath. He started signing, but stopped and cautiously glanced around once more.

Then his fingers began their dance, the chatter of the drow, and the words he formed told Jarlaxle that all was well and that the way was clear to House Do’Urden. He explained that Dahlia was seated as expected, paralyzed by her jumbled thoughts in the audience chamber. No one knew of Jarlaxle’s entrance into the city, so said Braelin’s waggling fingers, and no other House was moving against Do’Urden. All was as it should be, as they had hoped it would be, and this was the perfect time to execute their devious plan.

Braelin glanced around again and struggled to stand. All three noted it and glanced at his leg.

“Injured in a patrol,” Braelin replied to Jarlaxle’s concerned look. “It is well on the mend.”

When he was gone, Jarlaxle looked to the others and nodded.

At the same moment, in House Baenre’s Room of Divination, the daughter of Gromph Baenre considered the image in the stoup water and laughed heartily. She grasped K’yorl’s hands tightly and forced herself more deeply into the powerful psionicist’s mind. This cistern was serving her well.

At the same moment, Matron Mother Zhindia Melarn told Kiriy Xorlarrin, “Prepare now for the defense of House Do’Urden,” “You will help?”

“They are only three,” Zhindia replied, but with a sly tone that didn’t offer any definitive answer to the question.

“Then let us kill them where they sit and be done with it,” Kiriy replied. “Catching Jarlaxle of Bregan D’aerthe as he tries to rescue the damned Matron Mother Darthiir will greatly shake dear Quenthel’s confidence and position,” Matron Mother Zhindia said.

“And so, too, will this moment of Jarlaxle’s treachery offer us the opportunity to be done with House Do’Urden,” Zhindia went on. “The news of Bregan D’aerthe conspiring overtly against House Baenre will embolden Matron Mother Mez’Barris Armgo to take the steps at long last to put House Baenre back into its proper place and destroy the tyrannical and wrongheaded rule of Matron Mother Quenthel.”

She cast a knowing glance at Iltztrav, the Melarni House Wizard who had facilitated the clairvoyance and clairaudience spells so they could witness Braelin’s deception. Then she added, “Particularly so when Jarlaxle’s companion is revealed.”

She turned back to Kiriy, who was staring at her with confusion and intrigue.

“You did not notice?” Zhindia asked.

Kiriy shook her head ever so slightly.

“The one across from Braelin,” Zhindia explained. “The one with the purple eyes.”

Kiriy Xorlarrin lost her breath and rocked as she stood there. “Drizzt Do’Urden,” she mouthed.

“In Menzoberranzan,” a grinning Zhindia replied, “on his way to House Do’Urden, where we will indeed send assistance to you to ensure his capture.”

Kiriy’s heart was beating so furiously she feared she might faint and fall to the floor.

“Of course we will help—oh, more than help!” Matron Mother Zhindia said. She turned to her wizard. “Alert Shakti Hunzrin. Tell her that the time is upon us.” Then to her daughter, “First Priestess Kyrnill, prepare the war room.”

“So quickly,” an overwhelmed Kiriy remarked.

“We are prepared,” Zhindia replied. Her smile was awful at that moment, but she added a bit of warmth to it as she promised the future Matron Mother of House Do’Urden, “I will arrange for you to be at Council when I present Drizzt Do’Urden to the ruling matron mothers.

You will be there when I throw him at the feet of Matron Mother Quenthel and name him as the murderer of Matron Mother Darthiir.

When I declare that the great Lady Lolth used this traitor Drizzt to her own advantage as assassin of the abomination Quenthel foolishly seated on the Ruling Council.

“Then, my dear High Priestess Kiriy, Menzoberranzan will know true chaos and upheaval, as is demanded,” the zealous Matron Mother Zhindia Melarn explained, savoring every last word.

“And House Do’Urden will be mine, and a new alliance will bring Baenre to its knees,” Kiriy finished.

I
have heard powerful men with imperial designs claim that reality is what they choose it to be. That they make their own reality, and so decide the reality for those in their way, and while others are trying to decipher what is truth, they move on to the next conquest, the next creation, the next deception of malleable reality.

That is all I could call it—a grand illusion, a lie wrapped as truth, and so declared as truth by the controlling puppet masters of the powerful.

I rejected—and still do, to great extent—the notion. If there is no truth, then it seems to me that there is no basis of reality itself. If perception is reality, then reality is a warped and malleable thing, and to what point, I must ask?

Are we all gods within our own minds?

To entertain the notion is to invite the purest chaos, I fear—but then, is it not to also offer the purest harmony?

I choose to be happy, and happiness is indeed a choice. Every day I can rise from my Reverie and gnash my teeth at what I do not have. Or I can smile contentedly in appreciation of what I do possess. To this level, then, I must agree with the hubristic conqueror. In this emotional level, perception can indeed be the reality of one’s feelings, and properly corralling that perception might well be the key to happiness and contentment. I know many poor men who are happy, and many rich men full of discontent. The failings of the heart—pride, envy, greed, and even lust, if such will result in pain for another—are choices as well, to be accepted or denied. Acceptance will lead to discontent, and so these are, in the words of many texts of many cultures and races, considered among the deadliest of sins.

But aside from the false justifications of the conqueror and the choices of honest perception, is there another level of contortion where perception and reality cross? Where perception, perhaps, is so powerful and so distorted that it masks reality itself, that it replaces reality itself? And in such a state, is there a puppet master who can shatter perception as easily as a powerful smith might punch his sledge through thin glass?

This is my fear, my terror. My nightmare!

All the world beneath my feet shifts as the sands of a desert, and what those sands might conceal . . .

Were it not for Wulfgar, I would not now recognize what has been cast upon me. When he fell those many years ago in Mithral Hall, beneath a cave collapse in the tentacle arms of a yochlol, Wulfgar was taken to the Abyss, and there enslaved by the demon named Errtu.

Wulfgar told me of his trials, and of the worst of the tortures— the very worst, torment beyond any possible physical pain. With his demonic magic, Errtu gave to the battered and beaten-down Wulfgar a new reality, a grand illusion that he was free, that he was married to Catti-brie, that together they had produced fine children.

And then Errtu ate those children in front of Wulfgar’s eyes, and murdered Catti-brie. This is the very essence of diabolical torture, the very epitome of evil. The demon created reality within a beautiful deception, and destroyed that reality right in front of the helpless victim.

All Wulfgar could do was scream and tear at his own ears and eyes as the sights and sounds ripped open his heart.

It broke him. When rescue finally came, when Wulfgar once more walked in the shared reality of Faerûn among his friends, those dreams did come. The deception of Errtu remained, and waited for him in every unguarded moment and drove him to the bottle and to the edge of absolute despair.

I know of this from Wulfgar, and so I am better prepared. Now I recognize the awful truth of my life.

I do not know how far back this grand diabolical game began upon my own sensibilities, but to that dark night at the top of Kelvin’s Cairn, at least.

Perhaps I died there.

Perhaps there Lolth found me and took me.

And so the deception, and when I step back from it, I am amazed at how blind and foolish I could have been! I am stunned at how easily what I so desperately wanted to be true was made true in my mind! I am humbled at how easily I was fooled!

A century has passed. I saw the deaths of Catti-brie and Regis in Mithral Hall. I know that Wulfgar grew old and died in Icewind Dale. I held a dying Bruenor in my own arms in Gauntlgrym.

“I found it, elf,” the dwarf said to me, and so Bruenor Battlehammer died content, his life fulfilled, his seat at Moradin’s table assured.

They were all gone. I saw it. I lived it. I grieved it.

But no, they are all here! Miraculously so!

And Artemis Entreri, too, walked through the century. A human of middle age when the Spellplague began, and yet here he is a century removed, a human of middle age once more, or still—I cannot be certain and it does not matter.

Because it isn’t real.

Too many!

I am told that the Companions of the Hall returned because of the blessing of Mielikki, and that Entreri survived because of a curse and a sword, and oh, how I wanted and want to believe those coincidences and miraculous circumstances! And so my desire is my undoing. It tore the shield from in front of my heart. This is not the blessing of Mielikki.

This is the curse of Lolth.

The grand deception!

She has made my reality to lighten my heart, so that she can shatter my reality, and in so doing, shatter, too, the heart of Drizzt Do’Urden.

I see it now—how could I have been such a fool?—but seeing it will not protect me. Expecting it will not shield my heart. Not yet.

I must act quickly, else Lolth will break me this time, I know. When all of this is shown to be the conjured dream of a scheming demon goddess, Drizzt Do’Urden will die of heartbreak.

Unless I can rebuild that shield, strip by hardened strip. I must accept again the death of my friends, of my beloved Catti-brie. I must return my heart to that calloused place, accept that pain and the grief and the emptiness.

Alas, but even should I succeed, to what end, I must ask? When this grand illusion is destroyed, with what am I left?

And knowing now that perception and reality are so intimately twined, then I ask again, to what end?

—Drizzt Do’Urden

S
tone heads!” Ravel cried. He held up his hands, at a complete loss. Those were Hunzrin soldiers Kiriy had set into position along the House Do’Urden perimeter, and House Hunzrin was no ally of House Xorlarrin. Their rivalry had grown particularly cold since Matron Mother Zeerith had established Q’Xorlarrin, a city set to facilitate trade with the surface and thus rob Matron Mother Shakti Hunzrin of her most important resource, her House’s great commerce.

“Just soldiers,” First Priestess Kiriy Xorlarrin calmly corrected her younger brother. “House Do’Urden is in need of soldiers, and so I have collected some.”

“Without asking,” Saribel said, but a threatening look from Kiriy quieted her.

“Should I beg permission from mad Matron Mother Darthiir, who doesn’t even know her own name?” Kiriy spat in retort.

Off to the side, Tiago started to chuckle, but he held his hands up, desiring no fight, when both Kiriy and Saribel cast him threatening sidelong glares.

The arrogant Baenre brat was rather enjoying this sibling spat. And she expected that he’d soon enjoy it much, much more—right up until he was killed.

“You are not alone here,” Ravel dared say to the First Priestess of House Xorlarrin. “And not without allies who know better the lay of Menzoberranzan and of House Do’Urden at this time . . .”

“Silence, male!” Kiriy snapped at him, reaching for her whip. Ravel was so shocked his eyes seemed as if they would simply roll out of his face. Jaemas and Saribel, too, gasped. That was not a common phrase, tone, or attitude in the House of Matron Mother Zeerith Xorlarrin. The ever-angry Berellip had used that tone often, and Berellip was dead.

“Yes,” Kiriy said to the dumbfounded stares coming back at her. “The times have changed. Lady Lolth demands it of us.”

“Matron Mother Zeerith . . .” Saribel started to say.

“Is not here,” Kiriy finished for her. “But I am. Kiriy, High Priestess, First Priestess, Eldest Daughter of Xorlarrin.”

“Yes, and your elder, the male Tsabrak, is Archmage of Menzoberranzan,” Tiago Baenre put in then, a not subtle reminder that Matron Mother Baenre had installed the Xorlarrin wizard into that post, and by extension, a not subtle reminder that Matron Mother Baenre had created House Do’Urden, as well.

“House Hunzrin is no friend of the Baenres,” Ravel dared to add.

“And allied with Matron Mother Mez’Barris Armgo and the Second House, by all accounts,” Tiago added.

Kiriy started to respond, but bit it back and just chuckled instead.

“Send them away,” Ravel demanded. “The mere presence of the stupid stone heads will anger Matron Mother Baenre.”

Kiriy continued to chuckle. “And worse,” she admitted, “there are rumors that House Hunzrin has allied with House Melarn.”

The other three Xorlarrins and Tiago all glanced at each other, taken aback by those words, given that Kiriy had let soldiers of House Hunzrin right into their compound. Had she brought in these soldiers as a ruse, then, to steal some of Shakti’s soldiers so that they could be sacrificed by House Do’Urden? Was it something else, some underlying pact that none of them knew about?

“Rumors,” Kiriy said with a laugh. She reached into a pouch and pulled forth a trio of small spiders, or so they seemed. She dropped them to the ground, the others staring in confusion, their eyes gradually widening as they realized that these were not spiders.

“Rumors,” Kiriy said again, and she turned and swept out of the room. At that same moment, even as all four in the room began to protest, the arachnid creatures grew, blossoming to full size.

The four drow remaining in the Do’Urden audience chamber found themselves engaged with Melarni driders.

“Be wary, and with your hands near your weapons,” Jarlaxle told his companions. He rose from the table and moved quickly to the bar, arriving there at almost the same time as Braelin exited the common room. “Did you catch the conversation?” Entreri asked Drizzt, referring to the hand exchange Jarlaxle and Braelin had shared under the table.

Drizzt shook his head. “It’s been a long time since I’ve conversed at any length in that manner.”

“Something about the way to House Do’Urden being open,” Entreri said, leaning in close. “But if that is the case, then why the warning?”

Entreri’s nod signaled to Drizzt that the mercenary was returning.

“I have secured us a room,” Jarlaxle announced. “Come, we must rest quickly and make our plans.”

The other two exchanged curious looks. Their plan, after all, was to come into the city and go straight to House Do’Urden, the reasoning being that the less time they spent in this land of drow, the better. Certainly if any of them were recognized, their mission would become much more difficult.

Drizzt started to ask a question, but Jarlaxle gave him a curt little head shake as he swung around and started for the staircase, the other two in tow. There weren’t many rooms upstairs. Indeed, the place hardly seemed to be an inn, and when Jarlaxle pushed through the door, they came into a comfortably furnished room with a pair of decorative swords hanging above a stocked hearth, cushy chairs set in front of it.

Jarlaxle swung back and pulled the hesitating Drizzt into the room before he quickly shut and bolted the door. The lower class of inns as one might find on the Stenchstreets didn’t typically have doors that could be locked from the inside.

“What is this place?” Drizzt asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jarlaxle replied, starting across the room.

Drizzt moved to respond, but Entreri intervened, grabbing Jarlaxle by the arm.

“Enough,” he said. “We follow you willingly, but enough of the secrets.”

“There is no time,” Jarlaxle said, and he tried to pull away.

“You waste more time by arguing,” Entreri replied, and did not let go.

“This is the tavern owner’s personal quarters, and I paid him handsomely to allow us a short respite, and only that. We are not staying,” Jarlaxle explained. He moved to the back wall. He ran his hands along the planks of mushroom stalk, tapping and listening carefully.

“Then why?” Entreri asked, or started to. Jarlaxle held up his hand to quiet the man.

The mercenary leader produced his great hat from his tiny belt pouch, slapped it open against his leg, then reached inside and pulled forth a black disc of some satiny material. He spun it on his finger a couple of times, elongating it, then tossed it against the base of the wall, opening a portable hole in the structure, and revealing a secret tunnel beyond.

“Quickly,” he instructed motioning into the tunnel. “This will afford us the time we need.”

Drizzt went in, followed by Entreri. Jarlaxle came through last, removing the portable hole as he entered, and the wall was just a wall once more.

The corridor stretched down a ramp, padded to silence footfalls, doubled back on itself, and continued to descend. They moved below the floor level, and lower still, beneath the tavern’s wine cellar and into the sewers of the city.

When they all dropped down into that smelly corridor, Entreri once more grabbed Jarlaxle and held him back.

“Now explain.”

“There is no way out of that room save through magic—and any use of teleportation magic within the city would be detected. There are wards set everywhere,” the mercenary replied. “If enemies come against us, they will not know how we managed to leave that room—and the tavernkeeper will honestly tell them that he set us up for capture.”

“What enemies?” Entreri asked.

“Who knows we are here?” Drizzt added.

“I will explain in time, but on the move,” said Jarlaxle. “We have an opportunity here, but only if we are clever and only if we are quick!”

He rushed off, the others keeping pace. Despite the maze of sewers, Jarlaxle seemed quite confident in their course. Drizzt wasn’t surprised. There was little Jarlaxle didn’t know, after all, like the secret passageway in this particular building beyond the owner’s room. Drizzt had no doubt that if enemies did come looking for the trio, the most surprised person upon discovering that they weren’t in the room would be the tavernkeeper himself.

They emerged aboveground far from the tavern, indeed far from the Stenchstreets, and much farther along the West Wall district of the city, where sat House Do’Urden.

There it was, the high balcony entrance off to their left, and Drizzt could only take a deep breath to steady himself at the sight of his former home. So many memories came rushing back to him then, of Vierna and Briza, of Matron Mother Malice.

Of Zaknafein.

Given what he knew now, given the grand deception awaiting his return to the surface, what did it matter, after all?

What did anything matter?

The truth he now knew mocked his precious morals and principles.

He looked around at his companions and felt a keen urge to draw his blades and slay Entreri then and there. Be done with him.

Damn him!

Entreri was part of the lie that Drizzt had lived, and a focal point of the foolish optimism that had carried Drizzt through his days. Why did he ever think he could redeem this murderer? This petty assassin? This wretched and heartless beast?

Drizzt caught himself, shook the thought away, and only then realized that he had drawn Icingdeath halfway from its sheath.

And Jarlaxle was speaking, to both Drizzt and Entreri.

“Braelin told you the way to House Do’Urden was clear,” Entreri replied to whatever it was Jarlaxle had said.

“No,” said Jarlaxle, and he started away toward the West Wall, but to the right and not in the direction of House Do’Urden.

“I saw it with my own eyes,” Entreri protested, hustling to keep up.

“Where are we going?” Drizzt asked.

“Be wary of pursuit,” Jarlaxle warned. “House Hunzrin’s war party was trying to intercept us, and so steal the glory.”

“Steal the glory?” Entreri asked. “The glory of catching us?”

“From whom?” Drizzt asked, finally catching up.

And when he did, rounding a corner to come face up with the cavern’s wall, Drizzt’s breath caught in his throat. There in front of him stood one of the most distinct and strangely beautiful structures in Menzoberranzan, indeed, as beautiful as any building Drizzt had ever seen. Graceful and intricate webbing climbed up the wall, with great bridges of spiderwebs flying back and forth around it. Faerie fire was marvelously placed among those shining strands to accent the grace and feeling of movement the wall of webbing evinced.

“To steal the glory from their allies,” Jarlaxle explained, “House Melarn.”

Drizzt noted Entreri’s curious and unsettled expression.

“To any outside observer, my dear and trusted Braelin told us the clear way to our goal,” Jarlaxle explained. “And he also told me that House Hunzrin had refused to ally with House Melarn against the matron mother, and so House Melarn had forsaken any immediate plans to deal with Dahlia and the abomination of House Do’Urden. He also told me that the arrival of First Priestess Kiriy Xorlarrin had shaken the resolve of any waiting enemies. Her loyalty to Matron Mother Zeerith and Zeerith’s loyalty to Matron Mother Baenre has made both Baenre and Do’Urden untouchable.”

Now Drizzt’s expression was no less unsettled than Entreri’s, and Entreri echoed Drizzt’s thoughts perfectly when he asked, “Then why are we here, instead of House Do’Urden?”

“Because Braelin prefaced his report with this,” Jarlaxle explained, and he held up his left hand and scraped his thumb over the back of his index finger. “Which means that everything he subsequently told me was exactly opposite of the truth. And he picked his words most carefully.”

The other two digested that for a moment in light of Jarlaxle’s report. Hunzrin and Melarn had joined in common cause and were going after House Do’Urden and Dahlia—and right now. And they knew of the trio’s arrival in the city.

“But then why are we here?” Drizzt asked.

“Because their eyes are elsewhere.”

Jarlaxle turned to Entreri. He took a mirror out of his bottomless pouch and held it up in front of the assassin.

“Matron Mother Shakti Hunzrin,” he explained, and Entreri’s drow reflection shifted to become the image of the Matron Mother of House Hunzrin. “Use the mask to replicate this visage. The deception will be unsolvable, for the magic of Agatha’s Mask cannot be detected.”

“You want me to—”

“Turn yourself into Shakti Hunzrin, and be quick about it,” Jarlaxle ordered. “We have an audience with Matron Mother Zhindia Melarn.”

“I need you to be better,” Yvonnel told K’yorl, sitting across the stoup from the psionicist, their hands joined in the magical meld. “Stronger.” She felt K’yorl fall deeper into the magic of the holy water, felt her and followed her as the woman let go of her thoughts and sent them into and through the basin. They spun and twined and were one again when they escaped the room, Yvonnel and K’yorl sharing the vision of their disembodied consciousness.

Now Yvonnel reached deeper, and instead of focusing her thoughts on the external images flying about them, on a sudden impulse, she turned inward, into K’yorl. At first, there was only darkness, and she could feel her partner resisting.

She prodded with thoughts and promises of peace and comfort, of pleasure and not pain. So long had this woman been battered and tortured, so brutal had been her fall.

K’yorl wanted to resist, but Yvonnel wouldn’t let go—and she even let K’yorl into her own thoughts to witness, naked, her sincerity. Yvonnel had no desire or reason to torture K’yorl. It would offer her no benefit and give her no pleasure.

Her offer, her promise, was real, and K’yorl came to believe that, Yvonnel knew, when those barriers began to thin and wash away.

And a grand revelation followed when Yvonnel began to understand this strange magic of the mind so much better. She didn’t expect that she would learn psionics in this way, but the beauty of this melding was that Yvonnel realized she didn’t have to.

She had a weapon. K’yorl was her weapon, and she could use the woman as readily as she might trigger a wand or fire a bow.

She scoured the woman’s thoughts, asking questions and finding answers. What powers might be available to her? What strange spells could she cast through the melding, through the instrument that was K’yorl?