Night of the Hunter

CHAPTER 21

"Where is your pet?” Quenthel asked Gromph when she found him in his private quarters in House Baenre.

The archmage chuckled at the characterization of the illithid. “Methil remains in Q’Xorlarrin.”

Quenthel took her seat opposite him, and she seemed far from pleased at the news. “Still?” she asked sourly.

“I can recall him at any time,” Gromph explained. “And he is constantly in my mind, communicating. Physical distance matters little to an illithid.”

“Tsabrak is off to the east,” the matron mother said. “Matron Zeerith has not yet departed for Q’Xorlarrin. I do not trust her daughter Berellip …”

“Berellip is of no concern. To me, to you, or to Methil, surely.”

“Then why have you left the mind flayer behind?”

“We found … an instrument,” Gromph explained, a grin undeniably spreading across his face.

Matron Mother Quenthel looked at him curiously, and seemed not pleased by his cryptic response. “An instrument?”

Gromph nodded. “So it would seem.”

“An instrument to further the aims of the Spider Queen?”

“Or one that was already used in that capacity,” said Gromph.

“Do tell,” Quenthel remarked.

“This is yet another of many moving parts,” Gromph replied. “Perhaps. Or perhaps not. It is astounding, is it not, how so many things have come full circle, to land back before us at this critical time?”

The matron mother seemed initially as if she would shriek in rage at the continuing evasiveness of the archmage, but Quenthel, instead of bluntly verbally lashing out, paused and tilted her head.

She was honestly considering the words, Gromph recognized, and he saw that as further evidence of the progress his once immature and weakling sister continued to make. Methil’s work implanting Yvonnel’s memories continued to amaze.

“The son of Barrison Del’Armgo returned to us at precisely this time,” Gromph explained, “and bearing the sword of our slain brother, no less! Slain by the hand of the same heretic who once murdered you.”

Quenthel’s eyes narrowed, but she was not angry with him, Gromph knew.

“The same rogue who brought the recent scream from Lady Lolth, and to whom you have now properly and cleverly reacted by reconstituting his damned House.”

“A rogue known to Jarlaxle,” Quenthel agreed. “Who is surely now caught in the web of Drizzt.”

“You will force alliance from Matron Mez’Barris through manipulation of Tos’un, no doubt, as you glue the bondage of Matron Zeerith through Tsabrak and Saribel. And really, is there anything more facilitating than war to bring all of the Houses into line?”

“And now another instrument, so you say,” Quenthel prompted.

“So many seeming coincidences!” Gromph replied with dramatic flair. “That Jarlaxle brought to me the head of our dead mother, and that Methil El-Viddenvelp returned to haunt the caverns just outside of our home, that he and Yvonnel the Eternal could so aid us in this time of great upheaval. Are these fortuitous and random events? Or have the gods, or has Lady Lolth, so cleverly planned for this time of the Sundering?”

“It is enough to make you wish that you were more devout, I expect,” Matron Mother Quenthel said slyly.

Gromph laughed. “Devout enough, it would seem, given my current role in the Spider Queen’s spinning web.”

Quenthel conceded that point with a nod. “And now another instrument, so you say,” she prompted again, a bit less patiently this time.

“Perhaps.”

“Do tell.”

Gromph stared at her for a few moments, then shook his head. “When I am certain,” he answered, and Quenthel scowled.

“There are too many moving parts in this great clockwork,” the archmage explained. “You need not bother with this other potential cogwheel at this time.”

“It is not your place to determine what I should or should not bother with,” the matron mother warned.

But Gromph merely smiled. “My play parallels your own,” he informed her, “as it was in the tunnels outside the city, when I took you to Methil. Go and pray, I beg, and you will see that my decision serves Lady Lolth best. You have a dangerous rival to coerce to your side, a House to reconstruct and a war to prepare, do you not? If this instrument I have found is deemed suitable for your needs, then I will reveal it to you, and indeed, trouble you with it. If not, then better that you are not distracted.”

“You hide this from me for my own good?”

“I hide nothing. I will not distract you until I am sure that the distraction is worthy of your time and thought.”

He watched his sister closely as he spoke the words, thinking of how Quenthel would handle such a retort as compared to the expected reaction he would have received from Yvonnel.

And indeed, Quenthel seemed to be working her way through an internal struggle at that moment, though she did well to keep her expression calm. Her long pause was telling, though.

“A parallel play to a common goal, then,” she said at length, and rose to leave. “You will inform me when the illithid returns.”

Gromph nodded and his sister-no, he couldn’t think of her as such at that moment, for indeed, she had answered as wise Yvonnel would have-and the Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan left his chamber.

The intrusion of the tentacles did not disgust her as much, her revulsion diminishing with each session-sessions that were fast becoming commonplace, though Dahlia truly had little notion of the passing of time.

She knew this place, she thought, as memories of the swirling sounds of the water elementals and the subtle thrum of the fire primordial in the pit before her brought her back to the days of Sylora Salm and the destruction of Neverwinter.

She couldn’t quite sort it out.

She knew the chamber was different, too, and she noted the many drow craftsmen and goblin workers rushing around, carrying metal. A ladder? A railing?

Directly before her came a grinding sound of stone sliding on stone as the many goblin workers fitted the marble top of …

Of what? A sarcophagus? An altar? A sacrificial table, perhaps? It was a smooth black stone, she noted, shot with red veins, like blood.

Yes, like blood.

Fleeting images, many of Dahlia’s memories, some of things she did not understand, crossed her mind as the room before her faded away, and she could not honestly recognize what the illithid was taking from her, or what it was offering to her.

It was all a blur, and the throbbing pain of Methil’s work could not be denied.

She heard herself screaming, but that, too, seemed distant, as if she was hearing the screams of some other woman in some other room being violated to the core of her very identity.

She tried to thrash around, but the spiders had done their work well and the filaments held her in place, standing there, arms out wide as if staked.

Helpless.

At some point, she lost consciousness, overwhelmed by the intrusion, the horror, the confusion.

“There!” Regis said triumphantly, holding forth a small piece of pottery he had created, like a tiny soup bowl.

Wulfgar stared at the item for a few moments, then let his gaze drift past it to the elaborate set-up of smoking vials, metal tubing, and a small fire pit. Then he looked to Regis, his expression blank.

“Magnificent, is it not?” the halfling teased.

“It is not,” Wulfgar remarked. “I have seen old women fire clay with half the trouble, to create bowls one might actually use.”

“Ah, because you do not understand. This is no ordinary pot.”

“Perhaps for a chipmunk.”

Regis sighed and returned the stare, and Wulfgar merely shrugged. Sitting at the side of the small room, Catti-brie gave a little chuckle, enjoying their banter.

“Come and see,” Regis bade her.

“See what?” Wulfgar asked him. “All this effort for a chipmunk bowl?”

“On what item did you place your enchantment of light?” the halfling asked when Catti-brie had come over. After the goblin fight, the woman had lit up the area with a great light spell, and kept it with them now, in this room, allowing Regis to more easily practice his alchemy.

“My ring,” she explained, holding up her hand to show the ruby band Drizzt had given to her.

“Place it on the table,” Regis instructed, and Catti-brie pulled off the band and set it down.

“Notice that the light is not blocked by the table,” Regis explained. The others knew that, of course, but they reflexively looked down at the floor beneath the table. There was a bit of a shadow, but not much, for such was the dweomer of magical light spells that they didn’t actually emanate from the target source, but rather, they encompassed an area.

“Of course,” Catti-brie said.

Regis’s smile went wide at that prompt and he upended the small bowl and placed it over the ring. The room was still lit, but the bowl remained dark, clearly blocking the magical light.

“Like the hood of a lantern!” Regis announced.

Catti-brie was nodding, obviously trying to sort through the implications and possibilities, though Wulfgar seemed at a loss.

“How did you do that?” Catti-brie asked.

“The lichen,” Regis explained. “I noticed when harvesting it that it emanated its own light, of course, but was not translucent to the light, any light, even yours. I’ve read about this,” he explained and nodded to his alchemy book, “but I didn’t think I could properly distill the essence.”

“A trick, but to what end?” asked Wulfgar.

Smiling even wider, Regis scooped up a second tiny ceramic bowl, then gathered the first and the ring it held and put the two together, forming a ball. The room darkened a bit, but the magic still leaked through the seam of the two joined cups. Regis moved to a tray at his still, and dipped his finger in some of the material that had not yet hardened. He held up his finger for the others to see, showing them the dark brown stain of the material there, then ran it along the seam between the halves of the ball, smearing it with his concoction.

The room darkened immediately, and would have been pitch black except for the small flame of the still and a bit of greenish-white light from the glowing lichen along the edge of the room.

“You blocked the light,” Wulfgar remarked, his tone showing him to be thoroughly unimpressed.

“No,” Catti-brie corrected, her voice filled with awe. “You blocked the magic.”

“Yes,” Regis replied.

“What does that mean?” Wulfgar asked at the same time.

“When I wore that ring, if I put my hand under the folds of my robes, the light around us would not have diminished,” Catti-brie explained. “It would take a thick wall of dense material to truly defeat magical light, yet Regis has done it with a small piece of ceramic.”

In the dim light, Regis noted Wulfgar’s conciliatory shrug, but the barbarian still wasn’t quite catching on here as to how powerful a tool Regis had just crafted, as was obvious when Wulfgar pointedly asked, “To what end?”

“The ceramic is brittle,” Regis explained. “What do you think might happen if I threw the ball against the stone floor, or wall?”

Wulfgar paused for a few heartbeats, then laughed. “I think our enemies would be surprised.”

“Particularly drow enemies,” Regis remarked, “who prefer the darkness.”

“What ho!” came a cry as the door banged open and torchlight flooded the room. Under that orange flicker loomed the shadowy and scowling face of Bruenor Battlehammer, battle-axe up and ready for a fight.

“Bruenor!” Regis and Catti-brie called together to calm him.

“We thought you were in trouble,” came a whispered explanation in the voice of Drizzt who was, somehow, standing right among the trio.

And all three nearly jumped out of their boots.

“The absence of light,” Drizzt explained. “I thought the drow had come and countered your spell.”

Regis crushed the ceramic ball in his hand and the room brightened immediately.

“Our halfling friend has created valuable tools for us as we travel deeper,” Catti-brie explained, taking the ring back from Regis and slipping it on her hand.

“Several, I hope,” Regis agreed. “If you can cast the spells.”

“Tomorrow,” Catti-brie promised.

“And antivenin,” Regis added, moving to his still. “I have become quite adept at making it since I brew poisons for my hand crossbow and often prick my fingers on the darts. I cannot tell you how many times I have fallen into a deep slumber when I should have been working!”

“Aye, and he’s thinkin’ we’re to be surprised by that,” Bruenor dryly replied.

Regis gave him a smirk, then held up one of a handful of glass vials, each filled with a milky liquid. “Specifically to counter the drow poison,” he explained. “If we draw near to them, drink one of these and you should fend the insidious sleep of their hand crossbow quarrels for half the day.”

“Good,” Drizzt congratulated. “And we will draw near to them, I expect. Bruenor and I went all the way to the great stair-it is down, but that should not prove too great a challenge.” He glanced to Catti-brie, who returned his look with an assuring nod.

“The better news is that the room below was empty,” Drizzt went on. “Gauntlgrym is not as thick with drow as we feared, it would seem.”

“But if that is so, then perhaps they have gone with their prisoners,” Wulfgar remarked.

“Let us take our rest and take it quickly,” Drizzt said, and he didn’t add, but they all knew and feared that they might be traveling deeper into the Underdark in pursuit of the dark elves.

Dahlia awakened many hours later to discover that she was lying once more before the three hanging cages in the hot Forge. She glanced over at dead Brother Afafrenfere, and felt only a fleeting moment of pity.

She turned her head to regard Artemis Entreri, hanging limply within his cage, his face pressed against the bar. Was he, too, dead? A stab of fear struck her.

Yes, fear, and that instinctive reaction reminded Dahlia of who she was, triggered the identity she had known as her own. With great effort, she forced herself to a sitting position, and she sighed in relief as Entreri opened his eyes to consider her.

But like her pity for the monk, it was a fleeting blip of consciousness, for other thoughts crowded in at her then, and a sly smile came over her as she thought about how delicious it would be to gather up a hot poker and stick Entreri with it.

That image jolted her and her smile disappeared, replaced by a scowl that was not aimed at Entreri, but at herself. She felt overbalanced, overwhelmed, as if her true thoughts were a single worm in a pile of slithering nightcrawlers, all crowding in to gain supremacy in her thoughts.

“Dahlia?” Entreri asked in a voice that was too firm for one who had been left hanging for this long-but that was too fine a point for battered Dahlia to register.

“Have you gained their confidence, then?” Entreri asked, and motioned to Dahlia’s legs, neither of which was chained to a metal ball any longer.

But Dahlia had no idea what he might be referring to.

“They are not many now,” Entreri whispered.

“You believe you can escape?” Dahlia said back at him with a little smirk.

“We,” he corrected.

“No, we cannot,” she stated simply.

“It’s worth the chance,” he prodded. “Better they catch us and kill us than …” He paused and looked up, then leaned in tight, like dead weight pressing limply against the bars.

The mithral door leading to the primordial chamber opened and Priestess Berellip entered the Forge, her focus immediately falling on Dahlia, and thus, on him. She moved up to the drow craftsman at the Great Forge of Gauntlgrym and struck up a conversation, but she kept glancing over at Entreri and Dahlia.

“We have to try,” Entreri whispered to the elf woman, though he never changed his position.

But Dahlia shrugged, unable to wrap her thoughts around his suggestion, unable to even comprehend such a thing as leaving.

She understood what he was saying, and one worm among the pile of nightcrawlers in her mind thought his advice to be correct. That one worm became harder and harder to find in the teeming mass, though, as the intrusions of illithid conjured other memories, painted other images, and offered other temptations.

Dahlia laughed and simply turned away.

Sometime later, Berellip Xorlarrin and Yerrininae stood by the sacrificial altar in the primordial chamber-turned-chapel, their backs to the pit, staring at the wall before them, which was now so thick with flowing veils of webbing that the stones could no longer be seen.

To either side of that web-wall stood the large jade spiders, the web anchors, the sentries of the two exits, one beside the corridor to the Forge, the other beside the now-closed tunnel that would serve as Matron Zeerith’s private chambers.

The entry of that second tunnel could not even be seen now, so blocked was it by thick webbing.

Berellip glanced to her left, past Zeerith’s chamber, and to the walkway that had been rebuilt to the anteroom across the primordial pit. Water poured down around it from the continuing magic that secured the primordial, and steam rose up from below, so that she could only catch glimpses of the glistening metal.

The priestess turned a bit more, straining her neck, looking across the way to that anteroom where Methil El-Viddenvelp meditated and where a large water elemental guarded the lever-and likely guarded, too, the illithid, since both creatures were allied with Gromph Baenre.

“Ravel will soon turn for home,” Berellip told the drider, changing the subject in her thoughts because she didn’t want to remind herself too often that the conniving Baenres had such ready access to this most holy place.

“Successful in his hunt?”

Berellip’s pause had the angry drider narrowing his eyes threateningly. “Tiago Baenre’s obsession with the rogue has cost me greatly,” he reminded.

“This is not about you, aberration,” a strange voice, watery but undeniably female, answered, and both Berellip and Yerrininae turned fast at the unexpected sound to see the webs in front of Matron Zeerith’s chambers turning around as if unwinding, like Tiago’s rotating shield, except that their movement drew the circular strands together at the web’s perimeter, opening a portal through which walked a most beautiful and quite naked drow female.

“If you speak again, I will cast you into the primordial’s maw,” the drow woman warned.

And Yerrininae obeyed, because he knew, as did Berellip, that this was no mere drow but a handmaiden of Lolth, a yochlol come unbidden to their House chapel.

Berellip fell to her knees, dropped her face into her palms, and began to pray. The huge drider beside her squatted so that his bulbous spider body went flat to the floor, and he similarly lowered his gaze. He did not pray, though. Driders were not allowed to pray.

“Rise,” the handmaiden commanded Berellip, and she did, and quickly, and awkwardly and she felt quite the fool as she nearly pitched over the edge of the stone altar in front of her.

The handmaiden made no note of it, and wasn’t even looking at her, she realized as she noted the beautiful drow turning all about, nodding slowly and approvingly it seemed.

“Where is the staff?” she asked, turning back around to face the priestess.

Berellip looked at her in puzzlement.

“The darthiir’s weapon,” the handmaiden clarified impatiently.

“I-in my chambers,” Berellip stammered, truly at a loss, for how could the handmaiden know about that curious quarterstaff?

The handmaiden nodded and slowly turned around in a movement that reminded Berellip that the creature’s true form more resembled a half-melted, legless candle than this exquisite woman standing before her. The handmaiden lifted one arm out toward the antechamber across the chasm, though it was not visible through the fog and raining water.

“It is time,” she said, her voice drifting around, filling the room, and she walked back to the tunnel-like room, through the opening in the web, which immediately began to rotate once more, the other way this time, sealing the entrance behind her.

Fetch, came the notion in Berellip’s head, and in the drider’s as well, and both knew what it meant, strangely, and both were moving, and swiftly, before the mind flayer had even crossed the bridge to the main chapel.

Dahlia thrashed in her sleep, groaning and tearing at the few clothes she still wore. Her shirt hung in tatters, the smooth and white skin of her legs showed in many places through the tears in her pants, and she had lost her boots-or her tormentors had taken them from her.

Entreri watched it all with true sympathy, sharing Dahlia’s pain-or trying to, for he could not imagine what horrors the dark elves might be inflicting upon her to elicit the distant and profound screams he had heard her cry.

He was going to have to leave her, he realized.

No, he was going to have to kill her, for her own sake. He had been given only meager scraps to eat, and his strength would not hold for much longer. He couldn’t wait, and he could not hope to get through to Dahlia. He would escape, that very day when the forges burned low.

He looked at Dahlia, realizing how hard it would be to take her life no matter the justification, no matter that it was for her benefit.

A loud banging sound drew his attention away from the sleeping elf woman, to the small door in the middle of the room, the entryway to the primordial chamber. A group of drow worked there, goblins rushing to and fro to their calls, putting the finishing touches on a new archway they had fashioned to further strengthen the mithral door.

One drow crafter, a priestess, Entreri believed, had sculpted a drider-like relief that was now being applied to the smooth door. The black adamantine stood out in stark contrast to the shining silvery mithral.

The mark of the drow on the home of the dwarves.

A moment later, the female and others rushed aside as the door banged open, and Entreri watched with hatred as the huge spidery legs of the great drider led Yerrininae’s way out of the tunnel. He came through stooped low, so tall was he and so out of place in a tunnel made for dwarves, and when he straightened up in the Forge, it seemed to Entreri like a demon raising up from the Abyss.

A great, black abomination of a demon, both beautiful and ugly.

With Ambergris’s mace set easily over one shoulder, Yerrininae came straight for Entreri’s cage, and the assassin tried to appear unconscious, but also braced himself, expecting a rude greeting. One eye barely opened, Entreri noted Berellip also rushing from the tunnel, running across the Forge toward her private quarters.

“Wake up, little darthiir,” Yerrininae said when he loomed over Dahlia, and he announced his arrival by using Entreri and his cage like a bell.

Fighting for breath as he spun, the assassin was sure that the hit had broken more than one rib.

He came winding around and saw Yerrininae reaching down to hoist Dahlia by her braided hair.

He came around again to see Dahlia half-standing, lurched over awkwardly, kept up only by the drider’s grasp on her hair.

He came around a third time to see Dahlia struggling, grabbing at the drider’s hand, trying to pull free. As he continued his spin away, Entreri heard the woman gasp in pain, and saw her straighten as Yerrininae brutally yanked her upright.

He came around once again just as Dahlia went flying to the floor as the hulking beast backhanded her across the face.

“No!” Entreri cried out despite himself.

A mace stabbed against the cage, stopping the spin.

“It lives!” the drider said, clearly elated.

The crushing blow of the heavy mace stole Entreri’s breath, and before he could begin to collect his thoughts, Yerrininae hit him again.

The goblins cheered, and the drider pounded home another devastating strike.

The drow in the Forge stopped their work and similarly began to prod the drider on.

Entreri felt the metal cage cave in against his leg, which also buckled under the weight of the next agonizing blow.

The dark elves cheered, the goblins howled with sadistic glee.

“Drider!” came a cry, a voice that seemed so distant that Entreri couldn’t begin to comprehend it.

The cheering stopped immediately, the only sound the fire of the furnaces and the creaking of the chain holding Entreri’s wildly swinging cage.

But the assassin didn’t hear any of that, nor did he register Dahlia’s cry as Yerrininae yanked her up to her feet once more and dragged her across the room.

A long while later, Entreri’s senses returned. He tasted blood. He felt burning pain when he tried to draw breath, and knew that one of his legs would hardly support him.

He couldn’t hope to escape now, he came to realize.

And Dahlia was gone, and unless they returned her to the floor in front of him, he couldn’t hope to end her misery, either.

Dahlia stood tall, with her arms straight out to the side and with a thousand spiders crawling all around her.

She knew this all too well.

But something was different this time, Dahlia sensed, though she couldn’t quite sort it out. She could feel the filaments winding around her, binding her to the web wall behind her, holding up her outstretched arms.

Those arms were straighter than before, perfectly outright, and she could not bend them at all. That was the difference. The drow had put a pole across her shoulders.

No, not a pole, Dahlia then realized, to her shock. It was Kozah’s Needle, her staff.

They had armed her!

For a moment, she thought that a grave mistake by her captors, thought that she could tear free of the webs and attack this Xorlarrin priestess standing before her.

But no, she could not, she then came to understand, as the strands pulled against her, pulled her to her tip-toes, then lifted her off the ground altogether.

She hung there, swaying.

The spiders continued their work, covering her with webs.

The illithid approached her, tentacles waggling.

Her screams began anew.

A long while later, she hung limply and knew no more.

She is yours now, Methil El-Viddenvelp telepathically imparted to Berellip. He methodically turned and walked off to the side, to the walkway that would take him to the antechamber across the gorge. A fitting ornament to complete your chapel, Methil’s watery voice said in Berellip’s mind, and in the minds of all the others in the room.

A wry grin spread on Berellip’s face as the spiders continued their work, cocooning Dahlia. They busily crawled across her face, weaving their filament strands.

Dahlia opened her blue eyes, wide with shock. Under the mask, her face contorted in a hopeless, muffled scream.

Berellip stared at her unblinking. It would not do to laugh aloud, the priestess understood as the solemn ceremony neared its end. With a look to the great jade spiders on either end, Berellip sharply clapped her hands, and those magical arachnids began drawing in the strands, which reached up and looped over an unseen beam amidst the cobwebs, and the cocooned Dahlia began to lift higher.

She went up at a slight angle, leaning forward as she came against the web wall.

Against and into the web wall she went, just an outline then.

Just an ornament in the Q’Xorlarrin chapel, a tortured and imprisoned darthiir forever to look down at the sacrificial altar.

“In this place, eternally in death, may you witness the sacrifice of many of your foul kind,” Berellip prayed.

Dahlia couldn’t hear her.

Dahlia couldn’t hear anything.