Maestro

CHAPTER 22

The former Archmage of Menzoberranzan was not used to feeling vulnerable, and it took him a long while to admit that there was nothing, no magic, no willpower, he could rely upon to protect himself should his mind flayer hosts decide to destroy him.

“Lower your defenses,” Kimmuriel urged him, audibly and in his mind. “The illithids have no reason to show you enmity. It was they who bid me to bring you.”

Gromph looked at Kimmuriel with great suspicion, and thought for a moment that he had foolishly accepted the invitation, and that this, after all, might be no more than a ploy to eliminate a threat to Kimmuriel, who had long been favored by the squid-headed beasts.

But Kimmuriel shook his head.

“They would take no sides in our dispute, even if I so wished,” he said. “They would know with confidence that whichever of us proved the stronger would willingly work beside them, to learn from them as they learned from me, or you.

“Lower your defenses, I beg,” he went on. “They cannot serve you here in any case, and hiding behind walls of useless wariness will only prevent you from experiencing the power of this place of ultimate knowledge.”

It made sense to Gromph, but still it took a while for him to lower his guard enough to truly experience the energy around him. He found himself sliding into telepathic debates and images he could only barely comprehend, and at one point nearly lost himself to the fallacy that there was, in the end, no material reality, that it was all a conjuration, a great shared thought experiment.

He followed Kimmuriel down a maze of ringed balconies and spiraling stairways. At the bottom of the long descent, Gromph found himself speechless, a stuttering fool in the face of a gigantic pulsing lump of flesh fully twenty feet in diameter.

Welcome, he felt in his thoughts, throughout his entire being, and as he thought to answer, he found himself mentally within that giant brain, the hive-mind, the repository of illithid knowledge, the mental eye of this thought collective.

If before the archmage was interested in psionics, now he found himself desperate for the art. Within this hive-mind lay all the components of all magic. Anything he might know, anything he might deign to know, would be in there, the secret of life itself.

“Perhaps,” Kimmuriel said, breaking him from his trance. He turned and stared at the drow, who merely shrugged.

“Come,” Kimmuriel bade him, moving to another stairway.

It was hard for Gromph to leave this place, even when Kimmuriel telepathically assured him that they would return soon enough.

Up the stairs and through a door, and the pair seemed to be walking through an invisible corridor, as if they were floating among the stars, all the colors of the universe splayed out around them, the shining lights unblocked by the ceilings of the Underdark and unblemished by the clouds of Toril.

Gromph had traveled to the Astral Plane before, but never like this, never secured in one place and untethered all at the same time. He felt as if he could simply leap from whatever platform might be beneath his feet and become one with the glory around him. And he was truly sorry when Kimmuriel led him through another substantial door, and into a solid room.

A group of illithids milled about in there, none taking note of the new arrivals. Centering the room was a large pedestal, and upon it was set a crystal ball the size of a mountain giant’s head. Illithids moved to it and placed their hands upon it, tentacles waggling, and then they would move away, those strange appendages tapping those of another mind flayer as they shared thoughts on what they had seen.

After a few heartbeats, Kimmuriel nodded and led Gromph to the crystal ball. Following Kimmuriel’s lead, the archmage placed his hands gently on the hard surface and closed his eyes, and let come what may.

“K’yorl,” he whispered a moment later. Then he gasped, “Yvonnel?”

He understood that this was his daughter, and he found himself in the exchange between Yvonnel and Kimmuriel, a line of communication facilitated by K’yorl.

Lolth’s champion is chosen and the prince of demons approaches, Yvonnel told Kimmuriel. I will call upon you and you will give to me what I asked.

I cannot speak for the hive-mind, Kimmuriel replied, and Gromph knew it wasn’t the first time he had made that disclaimer. The fear in his thoughts were evident, the stakes apparently ultimate.

You will, Yvonnel told him.

Gromph could not sort it out fully, but it seemed to him that there was a great battle about to ensue, another proxy fight for Lady Lolth.

If Demogorgon is defeated, your crime will be pushed aside, Yvonnel went on, and it took Gromph a long breath to realize that she was communicating to him then, and not to Kimmuriel. Indeed, he was somehow certain that Kimmuriel hadn’t even heard that telepathic impartation.

We will speak in the future, Yvonnel promised, and the communication was cut off. Gromph fell back from the crystal ball, staring at Kimmuriel, blinking at him, trying futilely to hide his awe.

“Your matron mother?” he asked of the son of House Oblodra.

“Through her, your daughter found me. And now she demands of me.”

Gromph let that notion settle for a bit, then merely shrugged, painted on a rather smug expression, and replied, “She is Baenre, after all.”

“And now she demands of us,” Kimmuriel clarified, and Gromph winced, just a bit.

Drizzt walked along the corridors of the Masterways, silently and in darkness. He had all his gear with him, along with a brooch the strange young woman named Yvonnel had pinned upon him-one that would offer him some protection, so she said, and also that would allow her to observe his progress.

He had spent much of his time out of Menzoberranzan that day considering Yvonnel. He still couldn’t sort it out-was she yet another person reborn in the time of the Sundering? Or was he lost wandering the looping corridors of time, living in existence past and present, and so she was truly Yvonnel the Eternal?

Or perhaps she was just another Baenre named Yvonnel.

Or perhaps he had gone truly insane, or the world around him ever had been and only now was he coming to understand the awful truth that nothing really mattered at all.

It had taken the ranger many twists and turns in the corridor to dismiss those questions and doubts, and to focus on the task at hand, repeatedly reminding himself that he had to take each moment at face value and appropriately respond, at least until he had come to some measure of certainty regarding all of this.

Right now, that meant finding this creature, Demogorgon, so that his companions could be freed. Whether they were actually his companions was a question for another, less urgent, moment.

A new pouch hung on Drizzt’s belt, another gift from the young Baenre, though he knew not what it contained. She had specifically instructed him not to even look into it unless and until he desperately needed it. Similarly, his scimitars remained in their sheaths. He carried a Y-shaped wand, a divination device attuned to the most powerful of demonkind.

Strangely, and ominously, Drizzt had encountered no minor demons as of yet, though the corridors had been thick with them not long ago, by all reports. He continued at a swift pace, putting Menzoberranzan far behind-so far that he wondered if he could simply throw aside the brooch and keep on walking right out of the Underdark.

But no. He had given his word, and the three in the cell in the dungeon of House Baenre needed him.

Down one long and narrow corridor, the divining wand tingled in his hand. Drizzt paused and sniffed the air, and from the slight air currents, he sensed that the corridor would widen not too far ahead.

Drizzt fell into himself, finding his center, finding that ultimately calm being, that pure warrior he had so often summoned in his days wandering these same tunnels.

Your foe is ahead … in a great cavern, he heard in his thoughts, and recognized it to be Yvonnel.

The Hunter grabbed the brooch and thought to throw it aside.

But no, he decided, though he steeled his thoughts, wishing no more intrusions.

He crept ahead in the near-total darkness, the illuminating lichen barely casting his shadow as he passed. He quick-stepped to the edge of the cavern, and there paused. It was brighter inside, the perimeter of the place lined with glowing lichen, and with glow worms crawling about the walls and ceiling, their blue light appearing almost like the night sky atop Kelvin’s Cairn.

The Hunter remembered that place, faintly, but did not let his thoughts slide back across time and space. He reached for his own belt pouch, then grimaced as he realized that Guenhwyvar was not with him, that he had left his faithful feline companion with Catti-brie in Luskan.

Except that it really wasn’t Catti-brie …

Drizzt dismissed that thought. He had no time for that now, no time for any doubts or distractions. He considered the large cavern and its far wall and high ceiling, sorting the pattern of the many stalagmite mounds and stalactites hanging from on high.

The Hunter entered, rushing to a nearby mound, slipping around it to sprint to the base of another.

He heard the beast before he saw it, a great scraping sound of claws on stone, followed by a snuffling and grunting chorus.

“Smells!” screeched a voice, like the shriek of a giant ape.

“Hunger!” another, deeper voice answered.

And then the Hunter saw it, and for all his discipline, for all his experience, for all the many battles he had waged, his knees went weak beneath him. Looking upon this monster, this prince of demons, could drive even a great drow mad.

But Drizzt was not alone. Yvonnel was there in his spinning thoughts, fighting the urges, driving them aside, and so he found the pure concentration of the Hunter again, and so he looked upon the beast as it scraped its way across the cavern, giant raptor claws digging trenches in the stone floor, serpent-like tentacle arms waving from its shoulders, rolling and occasionally snapping about a stalagmite mound.

The beast stood five times his height and more. Its two heads seemed that of a great, gigantic ape, with frightening orange fur shining even in the meager light, and large black eyes that looked down from on high with a lamplight gaze that mocked the Hunter’s attempt to hide.

He drew his scimitars and stepped out.

He looked at the weapons, then back at the beast, and shook his head in disbelief.

He heard Yvonnel in his thoughts but shut her out, dismissively thinking her an idiot, and himself worse. Why was he out here, and what in all the world was he supposed to do against this … walking catastrophe?

He looked at Twinkle and Icingdeath again, the two blades that had served him so well for more than a century.

He slid them away.

A flip of his hand across his belt buckle brought him Taulmaril-the Hunter had no intention of getting anywhere near this prince of demons.

And so he was off, running and diving, sliding to his knees and letting fly, the silver trails of his magical arrows so dense the cavern looked like it held a thunderstorm. He knew his line of arrows were scoring hit after hit-how could he miss something the sheer size of this beast, after all?-but if they were doing anything at all to Demogorgon, the demon didn’t show it.

Or at least, they weren’t doing any visible harm to the beast. They certainly seemed to be angering it.

The ape-heads screeched and shrieked and the beast rushed for him, those long, snake-like arms whipping and chipping stone with their godly strength.

All the Hunter had was his speed and his diminutive stature, and so he sped across the mounds, diving, rolling, shooting, desperate to stay ahead. To get clipped even once by this nightmarish behemoth was to be utterly destroyed.

He looked for wounds on the pursuing beast and noted none. He listened for some hint that he was wounding the monster, but there was only screeching rage and hunger in Demogorgon’s pursuing cries. How many shots would it take to harm the beast? How many to kill it? A thousand? Ten thousand?

He would need a thousand thousand, and more!

He wanted to scream at Yvonnel. He wanted to grab her and yell in her face at the sheer stupidity of this quest. But he couldn’t.

He could only run.

On one dive and roll, Drizzt skimmed the side of a large mound just as Demogorgon’s snapping tentacle skipped across it, shattering stone and jolting the whole cavern with a thunderous tremor.

Drizzt scrambled to back away and fell, and grimaced against the sting as he felt Yvonnel’s pouch against his hip.

He rolled to his back, his legs pumping to slide him across the floor. He lost his breath when he saw Demogorgon’s two heads staring down at him from over the stalagmite, saw the other tentacle rolling up over the gigantic shoulder to snap down upon him.

With every ounce of training and strength and agility he could find, Drizzt twisted his weight back the other way, every muscle in his back and legs straining to pull him up to his feet, to stand and to pitch forward at the creature even as the mighty tentacle smashed against the floor and cracked the stone right behind him.

His magical anklets propelled him into a dead run. He dived as he passed the stalagmite mound, only so that he could shoot an arrow straight up between Demogorgon’s heads. The Hunter rolled right back to his feet, never slowing, and as those two ape heads turned to face each other and the line of silver lightning that shot up between them, he went right between the beast’s massive legs.

He dodged past the tail, which, too, could swing as a devastating, stone-crushing whip and which chased him and cracked against another mound as he passed.

He heard the creature turn in pursuit. He heard a stalagmite explode under the weight of a monstrous kick, and those shrieks reverberated so profoundly that the Hunter was certain he would get shaken to the ground.

Somehow he got around the next mound, darted past another after that, and then found his way blocked, as all the floor in front of him simply turned to lava.

Drizzt turned and looked to either side, but no, that, too, was cut off, the stone melting in front of his eyes, becoming angry red and flowing all around. Demogorgon closed, the ape heads screeching and laughing.

At the last moment, he realized he wasn’t feeling any sensation of warmth at all, though lava was all around him. He looked at Icingdeath, considering its fire shield, but no, this was too complete.

“Clever,” the Hunter whispered, and he turned and sprinted through the illusionary molten stone.

Demogorgon’s cries turned angrier, turned into hoots and howls that nearly deafened the fleeing ranger. Even with his magical anklets, he couldn’t outrun the beast, so he moved in a zigzagging pattern, using every stalagmite mound he could find as a barrier against those deadly tentacles.

He thought he had gained some distance, but he came around one large mound and Demogorgon was simply there, bending low to the ground, toothy maws ready to suck him in and chew him to bits.

Had the creature teleported to this spot?

Had Drizzt’s concentration not been perfect, had this been any other than the Hunter, the battle would have come to a sudden end. But even in that moment of desperate shock, the Hunter reacted, bringing up Taulmaril and sending off two arrows, perfectly aimed, one for each ape face.

Even mighty Demogorgon had to react to that, and as the creature jolted upright, Drizzt dived again between its legs. Now only his great agility and those magical anklets saved him, allowing him to skip and slide out to the side as the clever monster simply dropped to its butt, trying to crush him beneath.

On the Hunter ran, gaining some distance, but turning every blind corner warily, expecting that the monster might lay in wait. He heard the mounds exploding behind him again as the prince of demons crashed through them, and he feared that soon enough this cavern would be devoid of the barriers he needed.

Now, out of options, the desperate drow dropped his hand into the pouch Yvonnel had given him and pulled out several small spider statues.

“You could have told me what to do with these,” he muttered as he ran desperately, and with no choice, he simply spun and threw them back behind him, in the path of the pursuing demon prince.

The Hunter had run many steps before he even realized that the sudden tumult behind him spoke of more than just Demogorgon. Still, expecting to be crushed at any moment, he dived around another mound of stone before daring to glance back.

A handful of gigantic jade spiders crawled about the mounds in front of the demon, which shrieked and cracked at them with its tentacles.

Drizzt’s hope couldn’t hold, though. The spiders seemed more like statues, simply standing there as one tentacle strike after another cracked upon them.

“Fight it!” Drizzt yelled in frustration, and to his surprise, he found that the animated spiders heeded his call, all scrabbling for the demon prince. And so began the most titanic battle Drizzt had ever witnessed, as five jade spiders scrambled about the stalagmite mounds and the great Demogorgon, their massive mandibles snapping tirelessly.

Webbing flew at the demon prince. One spider shot a strand up to a stalactite and lifted itself right off the ground, climbing the web to the tapering stone and there grabbing on to bite at Demogorgon’s face.

Nodding as one spider construct after another leaped upon the ugly beast, Drizzt put up Taulmaril, seeking the best targets, perhaps the eyes. For a heartbeat, he thought he had turned the tide and would prevail.

He didn’t truly understand his enemy.

With a sudden and powerful shrug that sent the whole of the cavern into an earthquake roll, Demogorgon threw off the constructs.

When he recovered his balance, Drizzt couldn’t even find the strength to lift his bow, could only watch in awe and humility as Demogorgon’s tentacles each snapped up to enwrap a huge stalactite.

The beast pulled them free and swung them as immense clubs, batting the jade spiders aside.

Down came one stone club, right atop a spider, and the arachnid construct shattered into a million bits, the shrapnel blasting past Drizzt and forcing him over in a desperate crouch. He staggered back to his feet with a dozen cuts and a dozen more bruises, and he could not see out of one eye.

Another spider exploded. A third went flying across the cavern.

Drizzt looked at Taulmaril, and a great despair washed over him that he could not turn the bow upon himself.

He noted that he was near where he had entered the cavern then, and only that insight saved him. He put his magical anklets to good use.

And fled.

He ran down the long corridor and into another, hoping that the small size would block pursuit and having no will to ever confront that monster again, whatever the cost or gain.

He heard the continuing roar of battle behind him, the shrieks of the spiders failing with each ground-shaking explosion.

And then the corridor began to tremble with such violence that Drizzt could barely hold his balance, and the howls of pursuit deafened him once more.

Demogorgon was coming, tearing through the stone walls and ceiling as easily as if it was a shark swimming through water.

And Drizzt ran, his heart thumping in his chest. He had never really been afraid of death, but he was terrified now.

Did he even know the way?

Did he even know where he meant to go?

He came to a fork in the corridor, slowing, unsure, but one of the two passageways in front of him lit up suddenly, magically, and he chose that one. At every intersection now, a path lit in front of him, showing him the way, and he came to trust in those lights-surely the work of Yvonnel or her minions-when he recognized some of the passages and knew that he was well on his way back to Menzoberranzan.

He was leading Demogorgon back to the drow city!

Drizzt shook his head. He couldn’t do that. For all his desperation, for all the certainty of his own death, for all his anger toward his people and that place, he simply could not inflict such a catastrophe upon the dark elves of Menzoberranzan.

At the next intersection, he chose the darker path.

No, you fool! Yvonnel screamed in his head, and he skidded to a halt.

You beautiful fool! he heard in his thoughts. Yvonnel had come to realize his plan, his sacrifice for the good of the drow, and she approved.

Take Demogorgon here, Champion of Lolth, to Menzoberranzan. Her people are ready!

Drizzt didn’t know what to think or believe at that moment. He sensed no anger from the voice in his head, though, and surely Yvonnel knew that her enchanted spiders had been obliterated.

He sped down the lighted tunnel instead, and noted as he turned into it that the priestess or her cohorts who were lighting the way for him were not shutting down those beacons in front of Demogorgon.

Perhaps they were ready.

He turned the last corner and saw the massive gates the drow had erected to fortify their defenses at the entrance from the Masterways. Those gates sat closed, but a small door at the bottom, large enough for Drizzt to slip through, did open at his approach.

Any hesitation Drizzt might have held blew away when he heard Demogorgon close behind him again.

He saw no other drow as he sprinted along the narrow tunnel through the thick gates, but that changed when Drizzt Do’Urden ran again into Menzoberranzan.

The whole of the city was there, it seemed, fanned out in a wide semicircle around and upon every building and every mound. House banners flew all around, propelled into wild and boastful flapping by magical spells.

Overwhelmed by the sight, Drizzt couldn’t help but slow, scanning for House Baenre, which was easy to find, and for Yvonnel, who was not to be found.

The gates behind him exploded then, great stones flying all around, sure to bury Drizzt where he stood.

But a hand reached out to him and grabbed him by the front of his armored tunic, and he was yanked into the air so forcefully he almost left one boot behind.

Space distorted around him, elongating in his mind-warping flight. He landed in a skid, barely stopping at the feet of Yvonnel and the matron mother, and came up to his knees to find himself face-to-face with the broken old hag that Yvonnel dragged around like a pet dog. They were at the center of the drow semicircle, atop a tall, flat-topped stalagmite mound.

Already the explosions of battle began behind him, and Drizzt glanced back to see a blinding display of magical power, lightning bolts and fireballs fully obscuring the form of the great prince of demons, as if every wizard and priestess in Menzoberranzan was hurling every bit of destructive magic at the fiend all at once.

“Constructs!” the matron mother cried, her voice magically amplified to echo all around the great cavern.

“Get up,” Yvonnel said to Drizzt, and he did. He glanced back to see a swarm of jade spiders rushing for the gates, and other unthinking instruments of war-iron golems, stone golems, animated gargoyles-charging right behind them.

“You fled,” Yvonnel accused.

“I … you said …”

She held up a sword in front of him, its glassteel blade slightly curving, and holding a universe of twinkling stars within.

He stood up and took Vidrinath.

Yvonnel’s pet also stood and clasped her hand over Drizzt’s. He looked at the old and clearly battered drow with confusion, then back to Yvonnel.

Gromph heard Yvonnel’s call at the same moment as Kimmuriel. And like Kimmuriel, the archmage understood that here lay his forgiveness, in this one great task. He looked at Kimmuriel, who nodded and led the way down the stairs swiftly to the hive-mind, where a host of illithids had gathered.

Gromph followed him to the fleshy brain, and, following the other’s lead, Gromph bent in and gently placed his hand on the communal brain of the illithid community.

So many illithids followed suit, and Gromph felt himself drawn into their collective thoughts, swirling about and becoming so powerfully one, singular in purpose.

And he giggled-he could not help it-as he felt the power coursing through him, through his mind, and he tried to help and strengthen it, though he understood that he was a miniscule psionicist next to these practiced giants.

He thought of Yvonnel’s promise of forgiveness, and knew that he hardly cared.

He needed no coaxing.

Not for this.

“Your glorious moment,” Yvonnel whispered to the woman. The young drow raised her hand, holding now a jewel-encrusted orb, and smashed it between the feet of the couple holding Vidrinath up high.

A great wind sent them flying, floating out from Yvonnel and the matron mother.

Drizzt could see them standing there, staring back, but only for a moment.

Only until every priest, every wizard, every archer in the city of Menzoberranzan let loose their most powerfully destructive spells and bolts at him and this aged and battered woman.

“No,” Dahlia gasped in a rare moment of perfect clarity. She came forward in the magical cage, which Yvonnel had placed on a rooftop not so far away so that the three prisoners could witness the spectacle.

“After all that trouble, they simply use him to lure in the beast and then sacrifice him to gain favor with their wretched demon goddess,” Entreri spat with disgust.

But Jarlaxle shook his head, grinning. He knew better. He had seen this trick before, only on a scale miniscule compared to this grand display.

“Do you remember, long ago, before the Spellplague even, your last true fight against Drizzt, in the tower I constructed for just that occasion?” Jarlaxle asked.

Entreri looked at him curiously, then turned his eyes again to the conflagration and explosions filling the air in front of the entry from the Masterways, fully obscuring Drizzt in fire and lightning and swarms of missiles.

He winced as a great spinning web of lightning flew forth and fell over that spot, and exploded in brilliance that stole his vision.

“It cannot be,” he breathed.

“I have come to doubt nothing anymore,” Jarlaxle said.

Drizzt held onto Vidrinath for all his life, that focal point was the only thing that lay between him and utter insanity as a thousand spells exploded around him. He didn’t know what to think or why he was alive or how he could be anything more than splattered dead across the floor. Lightning bolts rained upon him. Fireballs roiled over one another or filled the air, flame strikes slashing down amid them, spinning their flames into somersaulting dances in front of his eyes. A meteor swarm pounded around him, compliments of the new Archmage of Menzoberranzan. A thousand arrows struck him, and bounced off of him.

But their killing energy did not bounce away. It spread about the drow, caught by the great kinetic barrier an illithid hive-mind had raised around him.

He trembled under the press of power, under the containment of more energy, more destruction than he had ever before witnessed, all at once. The bared power of Menzoberranzan, the thousands of dark elves, the minions of Lolth, acting in unison, sending all their hate and power at him.

And then it was over and Drizzt was back on the roof, and the old drow woman holding his hand smiled at him, her eyes wide and wild. She let go, and shrieked and gasped and simply exploded, but so fully that she became nothingness, her final expression a bright burst of ultimate ecstasy.

She was gone, and Drizzt stood there, holding Vidrinath, trembling under the power, increasingly uncomfortable as it demanded release.

Across from him stood Yvonnel. To the side, and not so far away, the matron mother scowled both at Drizzt and at the other woman.

And behind them, Demogorgon approached.

“Now is your moment, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Yvonnel said. “Now you prove yourself. There is the Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan, Quenthel Baenre.” She pointed at Quenthel, whose eyes went wide indeed.

“You feel your power,” Yvonnel said. “One strike and she will be obliterated, and you will have dealt a great blow against Lolth and against this city.”

She paused and bowed. “Now is your moment.”

Drizzt stared at the matron mother, stupefied, and trembling so hard he could barely stand. He could feel the power-of every spell and every arrow-beginning to eat through the strange shield that held it at bay.

Heartbeats, no longer than mere heartbeats, and he would be obliterated, like the woman who had served as a conduit, who had let go of his hand.

He saw the fear in the matron mother’s eyes. She knew she was doomed.

And he didn’t know … anything.

He looked down and drew out Icingdeath with his free hand. He fell within himself and became, again, the Hunter.

This was his moment.

He heard the approach behind him-how could he not?

Slowly, Drizzt’s eyes scanned upward. He saw the robes of the unusual young drow. He followed up her shapely body to that pretty neck and rainbow hair, to that beautiful face, staring back at him and smiling knowingly.

So close, but not afraid.

Because she knew.

This was his moment.

Drizzt roared and spun, his blades going high. And he ran-how he ran!-and he leaped with all his strength and all his might, falling, flying from on high at the approaching prince of demons.

And Demogorgon screamed, and all the city screamed, and Drizzt plummeted between the biting ape-heads, too close for the winding tentacles to deflect him, and he drove his blades down together in a singular, magnificent strike, plunging them into the massive chest of the gigantic demon beast.

And the destructive power of every arrow and every spell coursed through him in that strike, and he felt the monster melting beneath him. He continued to fall, right through the giant body of the beast, never slowing until he plunged into the stone floor.

Tons of blood and guts and shattered bone and two giant, orange-haired ape heads, tumbled atop him.