Night of the Hunter

CHAPTER 7

"Entreri,” Beniago told Jarlaxle in the drow’s private room in the bowels of Illusk, a room magically warded from any unwanted intrusions. “Not Drizzt, but Entreri and the others of that band.”

Jarlaxle shifted his eyepatch from his left eye to his right, humming all the while as he considered the startling report. Entreri and his band, sans Drizzt apparently, had passed Luskan, heading south. After nearly two decades of complete absence, the group had returned.

And this so close on the heels of the report from Braelin Janquay, a most reliable scout, that a woman, powerful with magic, and the curious halfling who had come through Luskan the previous autumn were apparently going by names quite familiar to Jarlaxle.

“Catti-brie and Regis,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. He remembered when the two had passed on, when Drizzt and King Bruenor had begged him to find them. Well now, perhaps, he had, but with no sign of Drizzt anywhere and with Bruenor lying dead under the rocks in distant Gauntlgrym, or so he believed.

“They’ve been dead a hundred years,” Beniago replied, though Jarlaxle had been speaking to himself and was startled by the response.

“You think it impossible?”

“Implausible,” Beniago said. “But then, I find myself astonished that Entreri and his band of five have returned. Perhaps I have grown so cynical that nothing can truly surprise me anymore, eh?”

“Cynical?” Jarlaxle replied with a chuckle. “My dear Beniago, I would argue just the opposite. Believe in miracles, or in anything else that makes your day a better journey!”

“And be ready for anything,” Beniago finished with a wry grin, one that Jarlaxle matched with a smile and a nod of his own.

“He would not come to Luskan,” Jarlaxle said. “Likely he believes that I might still be here.”

“Entreri? One would think him grateful. I can think of few fates worse than suffering eternity as a block of stone.”

Jarlaxle’s thoughts drifted back across the years, to the assault he had led on the castle of Lord Draygo Quick in the Shadowfell. He couldn’t help but laugh as he replayed that most enjoyable adventure. He and his minions had thoroughly thrashed the castle guard, as indeed Jarlaxle had thrashed the castle itself, enacting an instant fortress of adamantine right within Draygo Quick’s foyer! He could still see the expressions of the House guard.

After the rout, Jarlaxle had gone to the substructure of the castle, and there had found and rescued Artemis Entreri, Dahlia, and the monk Afafrenfere, all three turned to stone by Lord Draygo’s pet medusa.

“Perhaps the nothingness of stone was preferable to Entreri than the torment he feels in his heart and mind,” Jarlaxle heard himself saying, but absently, for his thoughts were already moving to the present, to the revelation that Entreri was up and about once more.

Jarlaxle didn’t know why he cared so much. But he did.

“Where has he gone?” the mercenary leader asked.

“Port Llast, they said, and the five are probably halfway to the place already,” Beniago answered. “Dangerous road these days, though, so we cannot-”

Jarlaxle’s laughter cut him short. “I assure you that it will take more than a band of highwaymen to stop or even delay the likes of that group,” he said, and he was already planning his own trip to Port Llast.

“Any further word from Braelin?”

Beniago shook his head. “Drizzt, do you think?”

Jarlaxle nodded, and muttered under his breath, “Let’s hope.” He looked up at Beniago, and noted the high captain’s surprise at that statement, and indeed, Jarlaxle realized that such a sentiment must seem curious indeed to those who did not understand his own long history with the Do’Urden rogue, or worse, who did not understand what Drizzt Do’Urden had secretly come to symbolize for many of Menzoberranzan’s drow, particularly drow males. Perhaps Beniago hadn’t lived in Menzoberranzan long enough to properly appreciate that point.

Interesting times seemed to be upon them, and Jarlaxle was glad that Kimmuriel was not in Luskan, or even this part of the world, at that time. Jarlaxle’s co-captain was off playing with his illithid friends at some horrid hive-mind, which offered Jarlaxle great latitude in directing Bregan D’aerthe, and in his own choice of roads.

He thought back to his raid on the castle of Lord Draygo, and could hardly believe that the attack had been his last real adventure. He looked down at his great desk, covered in parchment, in this, his private room in the Bregan D’aerthe enclave, carved out of a subterranean ruin crawling with ghosts and ghouls.

“I have become a clerk,” he said absently.

Beniago’s laugh reminded him that he was not alone.

“You take heart in my misery?” Jarlaxle asked, feigning upset.

“I laugh at the notion that mighty Jarlaxle would ever think such of himself,” replied High Captain Kurth, who was really a drow of the same House as Jarlaxle-though Beniago didn’t know that little detail about Jarlaxle’s true identity. “A clerk!”

Jarlaxle waved his hand above the piles of inventories, payroll records, and purchase requisitions.

“So give the records to Serena or one of your other consorts or associates and go out and kill something!” Beniago replied heartily.

“I hope I haven’t forgotten how to fight.”

Beniago laughed all the harder and stood to leave. “If you decide to find out, please do so with someone other than me, eh?” he said.

“Why so?” Jarlaxle replied. “Perhaps you will defeat me and take over Bregan D’aerthe in Kimmuriel’s absence.”

“I would hardly want that,” Beniago said sincerely. “And want even less to go to my grave at the end of Jarlaxle’s sword, or dagger, or wand, or other wand, or giant bird, or enchanted boot, or belt whip, or … have I missed one?”

“Many more than one,” Jarlaxle assured him.

“Go to Port Llast,” Beniago said as he moved to the door at the side of the room. This led to a small alcove and a circular stairway that began a winding path that would get take him under the harbor and back up to Closeguard Isle and the Ship Kurth compound. “You know that you must. The trade with the Xorlarrins proceeds easily, the city is under our thumb fully, and I will be here when you return, with a smile, a pot of gold, and a bevy of lovely ladies to suit your tastes!” He tipped his cap and left the room.

Jarlaxle found that he believed every word. Indeed, never had Bregan D’aerthe run so smoothly. The trade brought enormous profits, the City of Sails was fully, if discreetly, cowed, tamed, and spiderwebbed with an intricate set of new tunnels, and not a hint of trouble darkened any horizon Jarlaxle could see.

“No wonder I am bored,” he said, a lament he regretted as soon as he heard it.

“Are you indeed?” came the response from the corner behind him, spoken in the language of Menzoberranzan, and spoken in a voice he knew well, to his great dismay.

On Closeguard Isle in Luskan Harbor stood as secure a fortress as any in the city, the squat keep and tower that housed Ship Kurth. Beniago Baenre, who was known as High Captain Kurth, was the most powerful of the five high captains that ruled the city, as he would have been even if he didn’t secretly have the forces of Bregan D’aerthe supporting him, as was his predecessor even before Bregan D’aerthe had thrown in with the Ship.

Ship Kurth claimed the largest fleet in Luskan, more than twice the number of foot soldiers as the next Ship in line, and an array of allied magic-users who split their time between Closeguard Isle and the haunted remains of the Hosttower of the Arcane, on nearby Cutlass Island. The only land route to Cutlass Island, other than the secret tunnels Bregan D’aerthe had constructed beneath the water, was a bridge between Closeguard and Cutlass, and so when the wizards had come to the city seeking to reclaim the lost glories of the Arcane Brotherhood, or at least trying to recover some of the secrets and artifacts from the ruins of the Hosttower, Beniago naturally invited them into an alliance with his Ship.

With all of that might arrayed around him, and Bregan D’aerthe’s deadly mercenaries in easy reach, Beniago walked easily when he entered his thick-walled keep, and took no note that there seemed to be few others about this day, which he simply attributed to the fact that spring had at last come, and the ships and caravans were being prepared once more for their travels. The drow paused in front of a large mirror outside the door of his private chambers on the squat tower’s second floor, noticing his human disguise. “Not human,” he reminded himself aloud, for he had taken to telling people that he was actually half-elven. He had been in Luskan for decades, and had barely aged, after all, as more than a few had noticed. To keep his human guise properly aging was too much trouble, the Bregan D’aerthe wizards had told him, so he was Beniago the half-elf.

“Good enough for them,” he muttered, shaking his head. After all these years, the drow still hadn’t gotten used to his body-his gangly legs and “stretched” form, his pasty skin that turned red at the first hints of a sunbeam, and particularly his carrot-colored mop of hair.

Three keys disarmed the multitude of traps and unlocked his bedchamber door, and the high captain pushed into the room. He would have much work before him, he knew. Jarlaxle was surely going to chase Artemis Entreri to Port Llast, and Kimmuriel was not due back until late in the year, at least. With that in mind, Beniago started for his large desk, covered in parchment more so than even Jarlaxle’s had been, and with that in sight, he changed his mind and veered for the small hutch beside it, where he kept his fine and potent beverages.

It wasn’t until he started reaching for his finest bourbon that Beniago at last realized that something was amiss. He paused, his hand outstretched for the bottle, his other hand discreetly seeking the fine dagger he kept in his belt sash.

He caught the slightest of sounds behind him: a light step, a soft breath.

He drew and spun around with practiced ease and the agility of a noble drow warrior.

And his eyes widened and he stopped his thrust mid-strike, trying to cover up instead against the coordinated strikes of a swarm of snakes.

Beniago lurched and fell back, crashing against the hutch, bottles falling and shattering all around him. He tried to re-orient himself, to sort out the confusing explosions of movement. He felt the burn of poison.

He heard the crack of the whip.

He saw that these were not snakes at all, but the serpents of Lolth’s instrument.

“You dare raise a weapon against me?” the wielder of that awful instrument scolded in the language of Menzoberranzan, and the writhing swarm struck once more, the lightning speed of the vipers overwhelming poor Beniago. He felt curving fangs tearing at his cheek, and a second snake biting around his belly.

“Or has your human disguise overcome your mind at last?” the wielder yelled as Beniago desperately threw himself to the floor, thinking to scramble under his desk for some cover. “Have you forgotten your place, son of House Baenre?”

The words froze him in place

House Baenre?

“Matron Mother,” he breathed, and all thoughts of fleeing flew from him and he prostrated himself before the priestess … and tried not to squirm as the five snakes of Matron Mother Quenthel Baenre’s scourge bit at him some more.

“If you cry out, I will kill you,” she promised.

Beniago felt as if he had been thrust back in time, to his youth in Menzoberranzan, where he had known such beatings as a matter of course.

It went on until the pain and venom drove him to unconsciousness, but barely had he escaped that torment when the warm waves of healing magic washed through him, leaving him awake once more.

Just as it had been when he was a young boy: beaten to unconsciousness, healed back to the waking world, and beaten some more. He opened his eyes to find that he was sitting up in a chair, slumped but unhurt, and facing Matron Mother Quenthel, his great aunt.

“Please me,” she told him bluntly, nodding. “Yes, even though you are iblith and ugly.”

Beniago knew better than to look up at her, and staring at her feet, he saw her robes drop to the floor. “May I speak?”

“Be quick!”

“I have not worn my true form in many tendays … p-perhaps a … a year …” Beniago stammered. “I can revert …”

“No,” she commanded. “I am curious.” She walked up to him, cupped his chin with her hand, and lifted his face up so he could look into her eyes. “I have great promises for you. Do not disappoint me,” she said.

Despite the torment, despite his very well-grounded terror, Beniago knew that he would not. Eagerly, he stood up before Quenthel.

Eagerly, despite the beating she had put upon him.

Hungrily, because this was how he had been trained, with punishment as prelude to seduction, with supplication as beggary for pleasure.

“And then you will tell me,” Quenthel said, pulling him close and biting his lip.

“Tell you?”

“Everything,” she said and she shoved him down atop his desk.

Jarlaxle figured that in all of Faerûn there were probably only a score of magic-users or priestesses powerful enough to get through the multitude of magical wards he had spent years enacting around his private quarters, and maybe half that number who could do so without him being aware of the intrusion.

Unfortunately for him, one of that select group was his brother, Gromph Baenre.

“Well met,” he greeted, sliding his chair around to regard the archmage. “To what do I owe this most unexpected pleasure?”

“My generous personality.”

Jarlaxle nodded.

“How fares Luskan?”

Jarlaxle shrugged. “It is a wretched place of wretched people, so not well, I presume. But I fare well here, profitably so.”

“Fortunately so, I would say.”

“The gems and baubles flow back to Xorlarrin, as agreed, and to the coffers of House Baenre, I would expect.”

“Fortunately so … for you.”

“Is there an issue? Do tell?”

“I am sure there is. I did not come here to see you, but merely as a guide for another who is about within the city.”

“Yet here you are … fortunately, no doubt, for me.”

“For another, who is at Ship Kurth,” Gromph added, and Jarlaxle had to work hard to keep the concern from his face.

“Come to study the Hosttower’s tendrils, then? To discern the important ties to the city now called Xorlarrin?”

“No, come to speak with Beniago Baenre.”

Jarlaxle sat back and tried very hard to look unimpressed. “It is not a name he has used-”

“In a century or more,” Gromph agreed. “But, alas, Baenre is a surname he cannot escape.”

“Do you plan to speak openly, or continue in riddles?” Jarlaxle asked, starting to rise.

“Sit down,” Gromph instructed, stopping him in mid-stand.

Jarlaxle stared at the old mage for a long while, measuring the possibilities. Had it come, at last, to a battle between them, he wondered?

There were many ways in which Jarlaxle could strike at Gromph in this room, traps he could strategically spring, including no small number of disenchantments that might strip much of his brother’s magical armor away.

But no, Jarlaxle realized, his best action would be a swift retreat, and that, too, could be done with a mere tug on his earring.

“The barmaid at the inn across the river is one of your lovelies?” Gromph asked, and seemed quite pleased with himself for having discerned that information, or even that there was an inn across the river with which Jarlaxle was associated.

“A plaything,” Jarlaxle replied nonchalantly.

“Pretty, for a human. Perhaps you will bring her along.”

“Are we going somewhere?”

“Oh yes, I expect we are.”

“More riddles?”

“It is not my place to tell you.”

Jarlaxle started to respond, but bit it back, seeing the seriousness in Gromph’s expression. That last claim hadn’t been some off-handed remark; the mage had chosen his words purposely and carefully.

But who could claim a place above Gromph?

“When might I expect more guests, then?” Jarlaxle asked. “Should I prepare for a visit? Some food brought down for a proper feast of greeting, perhaps?”

“Just sit, and for once, dear brother, do shut up,” the archmage replied.

There were times, as when he had first arrived here this day with Beniago, when Jarlaxle was glad that Kimmuriel was not around Luskan. And there were times when Jarlaxle truly missed Kimmuriel Oblodra and the drow’s psionic powers, telepathically relaying information to Jarlaxle from a different perspective and a deeper understanding, or with Kimmuriel preparing to discombobulate an aggressive wizard with a blast of mind-scrambling energy, or with Kimmuriel ready and prepared to instantly send a telepathic call to all of Bregan D’aerthe’s allies.

This was one of those times.

An exhausted and battered Beniago Baenre sat in his room, contemplating the dramatic changes. Luskan was his now, and he had just become directly responsible to House Baenre for any failures!

He wondered how Jarlaxle had survived all these years with such vile witches as the matrons flitting around the edges of his domain. Jarlaxle was a master of deception, perhaps the best Beniago had ever known at that intricate craft, but how to fool a matron, let alone the matron mother, given their abilities to magically detect lies?

“I need an eyepatch,” the high captain quietly lamented.

He tried to sort out Matron Mother Quenthel’s sudden interest in Luskan, in Bregan D’aerthe, even in Entreri’s band, and by extension, in Drizzt. Likely it had to do with Tiago, since Tiago had made no secret of his desire to hunt down the rogue and claim his head as a trophy.

“Yes,” Beniago mused. Jarlaxle had gone to great lengths to keep Drizzt hidden away from Tiago-but hadn’t that come on advice from Gromph? Beniago shook his head. It all made little sense to him, except that it was clear now that a power shift had occurred in Menzoberranzan, one that had put his aunt Quenthel in absolute control. Gromph would likely not be happy.

He gave a resigned sigh, for what choice did he have in the matter? He was responsible now, and in charge.

The caveat to that level of power struck him, though, in his contemplations of his cousin Tiago. Matron Mother Quenthel had made it quite clear that when and if Tiago ventured to Luskan, Beniago was to serve him without question.

He wasn’t overly fond of his cousin. Indeed, Beniago hated Tiago, and he knew the feeling to be mutual.

It was not a good day.

“Matron Mother,” Jarlaxle said reverently, leaping out of his chair and bowing low when Quenthel Baenre unexpectedly joined Gromph in Jarlaxle’s private quarters in underground Illusk.

“Such the diplomat,” Quenthel replied sarcastically.

“The surprised diplomat,” Jarlaxle said, daring to stand straight once more. “Rarely does a Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan venture from the city. Indeed, I am shocked that you are here, and more so that you have not brought an army with you.” He paused and looked at her curiously. “You have not, have you?”

Despite her grim aspect, Quenthel laughed.

“We leave at once,” she said.

“A pity!” Jarlaxle cried. “Do promise to return.”

“We,” Quenthel said again, and she accentuated the next word as she continued, “three leave at once.”

Jarlaxle’s eyes widened; he even lifted his eyepatch to let Matron Mother Quenthel see his shocked expression more clearly. “It is a complicated place, Luskan. I have many duties to attend to and preparations-”

“Dear brother, shut up,” Matron Mother Quenthel ordered. “This pathetic city is no longer your concern. You are being recalled to Menzoberranzan.”

Jarlaxle started to respond, but for one of the few times in his life, found himself choking on the words. “Menzoberranzan?” the mercenary leader asked.

“I need soldiers. Bregan D’aerthe will suffice.”

“For?”

Matron Mother Quenthel’s hand went to her scourge, and the five snakes came to life instantly, writhing around and focusing their flicking tongues on Jarlaxle. Something was very wrong, and on a large scale, Jarlaxle knew, and particularly unsettling was the behavior of his sister.

His stupid, weakling sister.

He looked to Gromph again and the archmage returned his inquisitive expression with the slightest, but most definite of nods. Quenthel would actually whip him, he realized to his ultimate shock.

“Take us home, Archmage,” Matron Mother Quenthel ordered.

Later that same day, Jarlaxle wandered the corridors of House Do’Urden in the West Wall neighborhood of Menzoberranzan, coordinating a hundred Bregan D’aerthe foot soldiers as they scoured the place of any remaining vagabonds and secured each of the entrances.

He was glad that he had capable lieutenants around him, setting up the defenses of the House, exploring secret passages, and generally readying the place for proper inhabitation once more. Jarlaxle’s thoughts were anywhere but House Do’Urden.

He was glad when Gromph finally found him, in a quiet anteroom to the Do’Urden House chapel.

“How? Who?” he asked bluntly, both questions obviously referring to the strange and powerful creature that seemed to be inhabiting Quenthel’s body.

Gromph snorted. “It’s a long story. She handled you fairly, and with wisdom.”

“And I find that the most unsettling thing of all!” Jarlaxle replied. By Quenthel’s order, to all looking in on this, it would seem as if Bregan D’aerthe had formally been hired by House Baenre to prepare House Do’Urden; indeed, House Baenre was even paying Jarlaxle for the service.

“All will be as it has been,” Quenthel had assured him. “To all of Menzoberranzan, you are merely Jarlaxle, and your organization remains independent, and indeed that is the truth, as long as you serve me well.”

If Jarlaxle didn’t play this well, he realized, Bregan D’aerthe would be absorbed into the Baenre garrison, and everything he had spent his life building would come crumbling down around him.

“You knew it had to happen sooner or later,” Gromph said to him, as if reading his mind, which truly, at that time, would prove no difficult task. The eyepatch might prevent such magical intrusions, but it could not hide the obvious.

And Gromph was right, Jarlaxle had to admit. His life and his organization was in many ways a charade. Indeed, it survived because of that very fact, forever on the edge of disaster, forever just at the edge of the sufferance of the Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan, forever just a power play away from wrecking that sufferance.

Unless Jarlaxle wanted open war.

In the halls of a place once known as House Do’Urden, the thought crossed his mind.