“You babble!”
“She knows where you are, Archmage,” Kimmuriel warned. “Yvonnel is well aware of your location, and the circumstances around it. Even now, she speaks with Jarlaxle in the dungeons of House Baenre.”
Gromph started to argue, but that last bit of information stole his breath.
“She may call upon you, and in that event, you would be wise to heed that summons,” Kimmuriel said. “But for now …” He held out his hand to Gromph, and the archmage stared at him incredulously.
“Come,” said Kimmuriel.
“To where?” Gromph demanded. “To Yvonnel?”
“To the hive-mind,” Kimmuriel explained. “At their invitation, and this is no small honor. Witness this and you will understand your daughter, and that is knowledge I believe will serve you well in the coming days of chaos and conflict.”
“Then why would Kimmuriel offer it to me?”
“In exchange that my debt to you be repaid,” said Kimmuriel. “I wish to return to Bregan D’aerthe, and to serve as the emissary of the illithids, and here, you, too, will remain. I would not spend my days expecting retribution.”
“Retribution you earned.”
Kimmuriel shrugged. “These are strange times of unexpected occurrence, Archmage. I did not know that the invocation I helped you to sort out through the combination of magic arcane and psionic would bring Demogorgon to the Underdark, or that it would so damage the Faerzress as to give other mighty demons access to the corridors of Faerun’s underworld.
“Had I known that, surely I would have helped you to avoid that … trouble.” He shrugged again. “Come, Archmage. You will find the journey enlightening in ways you could not ever before imagine.”
Gromph tapped his fingers together again, staring at this confusing drow. The hive-mind!
From everything Gromph had ever learned regarding the mind flayers-and thanks to Methil El Viddenvelp, his knowledge of the subject was extensive-the illithid hive-mind was perhaps the greatest repository of knowledge and understanding of the multiverse in existence.
He took Kimmuriel’s hand.
The floor still had him. Even though Drizzt had come to believe once more that he still had a corporeal body, that he wasn’t dead, he couldn’t feel anything, even pain. Nor could he see. The blackness remained.
Then he heard a woman’s cry and he knew the voice.
Dahlia.
Drizzt struggled against the magical bonds that had entrapped him. With great effort, he forced his eyes open. The blackness began to lighten, ever so gradually.
He heard another cry of terror from Dahlia, then his own grunt as he tried futilely to stand. He surrendered and exhaled, only to have his chin drop to his chest, and then he realized he was standing,. He was chained to a pole with his arms outstretched to either side, held by strong cords.
Many more sounds came into focus: movement all around him; Dahlia softly weeping; another voice, Entreri’s voice, calming her.
“Iblith,” another woman said with utter contempt.
“Whenever her mind allows her some clarity, she realizes the truth of her desperate situation,” another said, speaking in the tongue of the drow, and the rhythm of the words, abrupt and harsh halts breaking up flowing lines of melody, all too clearly reminded Drizzt of the paradox of his people.
At once, the drow were beautiful and flowing, yet hard and sharp as Underdark stone. Melodic and discordant. Alluring and vile.
The blackness had become a lighter gray now as he floated back into consciousness, and now and again he noted the ghostly silhouette of a form moving past him.
“Ah, Jarlaxle, whatever am I to do with you?” one asked.
“Let us go, of course. We are of more use to you back where we belong than in the dungeons of House Baenre.”
The dungeons of House Baenre.
Those five words assaulted Drizzt’s sensibilities. He had been in this most awful place before.
His eyes focused at last, and he blinked against the sting of the torchlight. He had no idea how he had come to this terrible dungeon-he tried to remember the culmination of the fight in the Do’Urden chapel. He saw again Tiago’s head explode under the power of his enchanted arrow. He considered the trio on the balcony, three drow women, two in fine robes and one standing naked.
He blinked open his eyes again, to find one of that same group standing right in front of him, smiling disarmingly. Despite the horrors of his surroundings, despite his very real fears, Drizzt was surprised to see that he could not deny the beauty of this very young drow. Her long hair, so lustrous that it sparkled in reflections of the torchlight, shined mostly white, but all the colors of the rainbow seemed captured within that, revealing hints of those colors with the slightest turn of the head. Her eyes were a startling amber, but not uniformly. Like her hair, they teased with color-the softest pink, a hint of blue.
“I am glad you returned to us, Drizzt Do’Urden,” she said, moving closer and running her hand lightly over Drizzt’s naked chest.
There was some magic in her fingers. The sensation seemed to pull his senses nearer to his own skin somehow.
“I-I did not wish to … fight him,” Drizzt stammered, not even knowing what he could say. He was in the dungeon of House Baenre, after all, and he had just splattered the head of a Baenre noble.
“You seemed willing enough,” the woman answered.
Drizzt didn’t want to take his eyes off the young woman, but he couldn’t help but notice a second drow, one more his own age, wearing the robes of the matron mother. She stood to the side and scowled at him fiercely, appearing very much as if she wanted to torture him to death then and there.
Drizzt steeled his own gaze and locked stares with her. He didn’t care. He truly didn’t care, and that indifference revealed that he would not be intimidated.
The woman in front of him turned and glanced at the matron mother, nodding and obviously noting the glowering exchange.
“Leave us,” she instructed the matron mother.
When that older drow woman turned about and swept out of the dungeon chamber, Drizzt looked back at the young creature in front of him, his expression betraying his incredulity.
“Petty creatures, these matron mothers,” the woman said. “Do you not agree?”
“Who are you?”
“I am young and I am old,” she teased. “I am new to the City of Spiders, yet I know its memory more fully and clearly than the oldest of the old dark elves. I am bound to lead here, to rule as Matron Mother Baenre, and yet I find myself intrigued by …” She grinned and ran her finger over Drizzt’s lips. “By you. Why is that, do you suppose, Drizzt Do’Urden?”
“I am sure that I do not know.” Drizzt steadied himself with a deep breath and pulled his gaze from the young woman, staring past her defiantly.
“Are you so removed?” she asked. “Are you so above all that you have left behind?”
“Do you always speak in riddles?”
The woman laughed and snapped her fingers, and Drizzt, without any movement of his own, turned right around, though he had no sensation of movement. He was suddenly just facing the other way.
He tried to sort through that disorienting shift, but lost those questions as soon as he registered the image in front of him. There sat Entreri, who was once again in his normal, human form, along with Jarlaxle and Dahlia, the three locked in a prison of bars that crackled and sparked and was made of streaks of lightning.
“Still uninterested?” the woman teased from behind Drizzt.
Jarlaxle stood up and shrugged, as if apologetic for his failure. “Almost,” he said, motioning to Dahlia.
“Only because I allowed it,” the woman replied rather sharply.
Jarlaxle shrugged again.
The young drow stepped by Drizzt and waved her hand. “Be gone,” she said, and the glowing cage turned black and disappeared from Drizzt’s sight. No longer did he hear Dahlia’s sobs or the crackle of lightning sparks, or any other noises coming from the magical cage.