“Archmage,” Ravel breathed. He had been trying to help the injured and confused Tiago up from the floor, but now let his friend fall and backed away deferentially-terror often resembled deference. Gromph didn’t bother to look at him. His eyes stayed locked on Doum’wielle, who was splayed on the floor, her fine sword not far from her. She looked back at the archmage, and she felt, and seemed to all around, so tiny and small. For some reason Jarlaxle couldn’t understand-surely she didn’t intend to try to stand against Gromph! — her hand crept out for that lost blade.
Gromph lifted his hand and began to circle it in the air in front of him. “That is a Baenre blade!” he warned her, his voice booming with grand magical enhancement-so grand that even the near-comatose Dahlia started in surprise and looked at him.
Gromph thrust his hand forward at Doum’wielle, launching his spell past her, and another vortex appeared, a sidelong tornado on the room’s far wall. And this one seemed lighter in the eye, bright and sunlit, perhaps, but there was a coldness associated with that light.
“A Baenre blade!” Gromph roared just as Doum’wielle foolishly reached for Khazid’hea. The sword flew from the floor to Gromph’s waiting hand. Doum’wielle stared at him, terrified and lost. . so lost! But there was no mercy to be found in the amber flame of Gromph Baenre’s eyes.
“You do not belong here, iblith,” Archmage Gromph declared. A great howl of wind sounded, shaking the room, focusing on Doum’wielle. Her eyes went wide with terror, she clawed at the floor so desperately that she tore her fingers, and left more than one fingernail behind when the wind finally caught her and lifted her, and flipped her, somersaulting, into the vortex.
Jarlaxle winced and whispered, “Poor girl.”
The vortex spun faster and faster, its diameter shrinking, the storm’s eye becoming a dot. Then it was gone, as if collapsing in upon itself, leaving only the blank wall there in House Do’Urden’s audience chamber. “Tend to your husband, foolish priestess,” Gromph told Saribel. “And know that if he dies, you will quickly follow him to the grave.”
“The upper levels are lost,” Hoshtar said with finality. “Even were you to throw every drow, every spell, every slave up above, it would be to no avail. They are mighty, led by capable warriors and with clever generals in support. And they are securing every footstep of ground they gain. My Matron Mother, they’ll not be easily dislodged.”“Nor easily stopped,” Matron Mother Zeerith said, staring at the spy.
Hoshtar merely shrugged, not about to deny the obvious truth. “How long can we fend them off?” Matron Mother Zeerith asked. “Their journey to the lower city will be difficult,” the spy answered.
“The drop to the main entry cavern of the lower levels is considerable and the stairway cannot be raised, of course. The stair is down, folded and secured, and will remain so. I expect that the dwarves will employ magic to get them down to the lower level, but doing so will give us ample opportunity to sting at them with arrows and magic.”“Considerable magic,” Tsabrak promised from the side, and Matron
Mother Zeerith nodded in appreciation.
“There are other ways to access the lower levels,” Matron Mother Zeerith reminded him.
Hoshtar nodded. “All narrow and easily defended.”
“See to that defense.”
“My Matron Mother,” said Hoshtar, bowing, and he rushed from the room. “They will find their way down here,” Tsabrak said when he and the matron mother were alone. “Do not underestimate the resilience and cleverness of dwarves. Matron Mother Yvonnel did so a century ago and the price she paid was her very life.”
“I understand the danger,” Matron Mother Zeerith assured him, her voice dead, defeated.
“You have no choice,” said Tsabrak.
“You ask me to beg Matron Mother Baenre.”
Tsabrak didn’t bother to answer.
“Facilitate the conversation,” Matron Mother Zeerith instructed, and Tsabrak nodded and moved to a scrying pool.
Soon after, the image of Matron Mother Baenre appeared in the still waters, and Matron Mother Zeerith moved into her view.
Jarlaxle and Kimmuriel followed Gromph across the city to his tower abode in Sorcere. All along the way, Gromph continued to point out the damage the demons had caused, including one scene where several drow bodies lay strewn along a side street, torn apart, limbs asunder, as if clipped by the pincers of a glabrezu.
“Bregan D’aerthe might soon expect a command from the matron mother to clean up the streets,” Gromph told them when they entered his private chambers. “Of bodies, or rampaging demons?” Jarlaxle asked, seeming unamused. “Both, I would expect,” said the archmage.
“Bregan D’aerthe is not a-” Kimmuriel started to protest. “Bregan D’aerthe is whatever the matron mother tells you it is,”
Gromph interrupted. “Have we not already seen as much?” he added, looking to Jarlaxle. “House guards, perhaps?”
Jarlaxle remained unamused.
Gromph got a curious expression on his face then, seeming somewhat surprised. He reached down to his belt, putting a hand on the hilt of the Baenre sword he had just taken from Doum’wielle Armgo.
“It calls to me,” he explained, drawing the fine-edged blade and holding it up in front of his eyes.
“Are you its new wielder, then?” asked Jarlaxle, who of course was no stranger to Khazid’hea.
“Hmm,” Gromph mused. “Perhaps I am.” His expression turned skeptical, and quite amused then. “Or perhaps not, if the sword has any say in the matter.”
“Khazid’hea is not pleased to be held by a wizard,” Jarlaxle surmised. “The blade wants to taste blood.”
“What Khazid’hea wants is irrelevant,” Gromph replied.
The archmage started then, as if hit by some unseen force, wincing like someone who had been flicked by a finger under the nose, or some other stinging but harmless disrespect.
“It would seem that the sword does not agree,” put in Kimmuriel.
Jarlaxle looked at Kimmuriel and noted that he had his eyes closed. He was intercepting the telepathic protests the sword was launching at Gromph, Jarlaxle realized.
“Truly?” Gromph said with a snort, and he was clearly talking to the sword then, as he lifted it higher in front of his sparkling eyes. He studied the pommel, shaped so beautifully into the likeness of a curled and sleeping pegasus. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “That will not do.”
Gromph pressed the pommel against his forehead, closed his eyes and scrunched up his face.
Jarlaxle looked to Kimmuriel, who glanced back and nodded, clearly impressed-impressed by the psionic assault that Gromph was leveling at Khazid’hea.
And Jarlaxle, too, was impressed, as he watched the pommel of Khazid’hea shift and change, going black, then adding red speckles. Jarlaxle barely contained a laugh as he considered it more closely. Gromph had turned the pommel of mighty Khazid’hea into the likeness of a mushroom!
The archmage moved the sword back to arm’s length, gave a nod at his handiwork, and said, “Better.”
“Not very appropriate for a Baenre blade,” Kimmuriel remarked. “But a proper insult to such a crude instrument as a sword.”
“And so I doubt that Khazid’hea will try to impose its will upon you again,” Jarlaxle remarked.
“It is a minor item,” said Gromph. With a look from the sword to the mercenary leader, he casually tossed the sword to Jarlaxle, who caught it easily.
“It is a Baenre blade,” Gromph explained. “And you are a Baenre. And a Baenre warrior, at that. Fitting that you carry the sword, if you are strong enough of will to control it.”
Jarlaxle returned an amused, if somewhat bored stare at the open challenge. He could hear the frustration of Khazid’hea in his thoughts, but only if he concentrated on the very distant murmur, and blocking it out entirely was no more a challenge for him than it had been for Gromph. Even without his magical eye patch, which prevented psionic intrusions and commands, Jarlaxle held no fear whatsoever regarding the sword’s willpower and ego against his own.