R. Salvatore - Archmage

Across the altar in the primordial chamber of Q’Xorlarrin, High Priestess Kiriy, Zeerith’s oldest daughter, held her breath in anticipation. She had never seen this ritual performed before, though she was well versed in necromancy.

“Dwardermey,” Tsabrak whispered a long while later, evoking the name of one of the fallen drow in the Silver Marches.

“Dwardermey,” Matron Mother Zeerith echoed, and they both repeated the call many times.

The body came from inside the stone block altar itself, facial features forming within the stone, and growing, rising. Then it was separate from the altar, the body of a slain dark elf, torn by swords and axes. “Kiriy!” Matron Mother Zeerith said sharply, and the high priestess realized that she was taking too long. She put aside her astonishment and launched into a simple spell to animate the dead.

A few moments later, the corpse of Dwardermey Xorlarrin sat up on the altar, then stiffly shifted to the side, legs hanging over the altar slab. High Priestess Kiriy looked to Matron Mother Zeerith, who nodded, and so Kiriy commanded the zombie to stand and walk. The unthinking zombie did walk, directly away from the high priestess, as ordered. It did not pause when it reached the lip of the primordial’s pit. It made not a sound when it pitched over the edge, tumbling through the swirl of the trapped water elementals to land on the lava skin of the godlike beast. The primordial drew Dwardermey in.

Tsabrak blew a great sigh. “This will take us tendays,” he said. “I am exhausted already, as are you.”

“We must,” Matron Mother Zeerith replied. “In this duty, we will salvage the goodwill of the Spider Queen.”

High Priestess Kiriy held her tongue, unsure that the exercise of summoning the corpses from the distant battlefield and properly disposing of them would do any such thing. But they had to try, she knew, for she understood as her mother understood: Lady Lolth was not pleased with their failures in the Silver Marches.

Perhaps that was why the dark elves killed in that war were so disproportionately Xorlarrin warriors.

So now they would perform their tedious duty, in the hopes that they would garner some measure of forgiveness or clemency from the merciless Spider Queen. Such a task would consume them for hours each day, and was no inexpensive feat. Tsabrak had to destroy a valuable gemstone for each summoning.

Perhaps it would be easier, Kiriy thought-but surely did not say-if Matron Mother Zeerith simply sent Tsabrak to the Silver Marches to physically reclaim the fallen dark elves of Q’Xorlarrin.

But of course, her mother would never do such a thing. Tsabrak was Zeerith’s lover now, her partner, and she had secretly elevated him to a position of power nearly equal to her own. And that, Kiriy feared-but again dared not speak aloud-might be the truth behind Lady Lolth’s disapproval.

A fireball stole the darkness in a far corner of the great cavern that housed Menzoberranzan. It was something more than a wizard’s blast, Gromph knew, as he watched from his window at the drow academy of Sorcere.

Cries drifted across the cavern, echoing. A battle raged, drow against demon, likely, or just as likely, demon against demon.

The Abyssal beasts were thick about Menzoberranzan now, these ugly creatures of destruction and chaos, wandering freely, untended, uncontrolled. Gromph had lost two students caught in a skirmish with a glabrezu over in the district called the Stenchstreets-the body of one apprentice wizard had been sent to him in two equal-sized boxes.

The gates of every house in the city were closed, sealed, every sentry on a nervous edge, every matron mother plotting and fretting in turn, wondering if she might turn a demon to her advantage or fearing that a horde of the beasts would descend upon her House and obliterate it. They could find no pattern to alleviate their fears. These were demons, changing direction at a whim, destroying simply for the joy of destroying.

A low growl escaped the archmage’s lips. What idiocy was this? What demons, literal and figurative, was his arrogant sister unleashing upon the city of Menzoberranzan?

He heard a knock on his door but ignored it. More bad news, likely: another student torn apart by a glabrezu’s giant pincers, a lesser House invaded, perhaps.

Another knock sounded, this one more insistent, and when Gromph didn’t respond, he heard, to his absolute astonishment, the door creaking open.

“You are fortunate that I did not enable my wards,” he said dryly, never turning. “Else you would be a red puddle from which a wounded frog would hop.”

“Truly, husband?” came the surprising reply, the voice of Minolin Fey. “Perhaps in that event you would find me more attractive.”

“What are you doing here?” Gromph demanded, and still he did not bother to turn to face the priestess.

“The matron mother is quite pleased with herself,” Minolin Fey replied. “The other matron mothers are too busy securing their gates to think about colluding against her.”

“Perhaps if she just burned down House Baenre, she would have even less to worry about,” Gromph sardonically replied.

He took a deep breath and finally turned a serious expression upon the high priestess. “How many has she summoned?”

“Who can know?” Minolin Fey replied. “Now the demons are summoning each other. The matron mother might as well have thrown fifty scurvy rats into a nest, the beasts reproduce so efficiently. Except that even scurvy rats have a few tendays of helpless infancy. The summoned demons are quite mature and capable of havoc from the moment they emerge through the dimensional gate.”

“Why are you here?” Gromph asked again.

“The true matron mother does not sit on the throne of House Baenre,” Minolin Fey dared to whisper.

“What are you suggesting?”

Minolin Fey swallowed hard and struggled for a reply.

Gromph knew well. Not so long before, Minolin Fey and some others, including Gromph on the periphery of their treachery, had conspired to bring down Quenthel’s reign. They had found a weakness, a seam in the matron mother’s armor, and one dating back to the Time of Troubles. In that chaos, as the gods returned to prominence in Faerûn and the divine powers were restored, Matron Mother Yvonnel the Eternal, Gromph’s mother and the ruler of Menzoberranzan for longer than the memories of the oldest drow, had channeled the unbridled power of the Spider Queen. Lolth’s magnificence had flowed through her as she utterly destroyed House Oblodra-the compound and almost all of the noble family. The Oblodrans had sought the quietness of the gods, of Lolth in particular, to seek great advantage, for they were an order of psionicists, whose magic was not dependent upon such divine beings.

A very few Oblodrans escaped the wrath of Matron Mother Yvonnel, the wrath of Lady Lolth-only Kimmuriel was now known to Gromph-but all of the other notables had been slaughtered in the catastrophe, except for one. Death would have been too easy for K’yorl Odran, the Matron of House Oblodra. No, Yvonnel had not killed that one, but had spared her and sent her to the Abyss, to the eternal torment of a great balor named Errtu. When Minolin Fey and her fellow conspirators had learned of this, they had hatched a plan to rescue the vicious and strangely powerful K’yorl, with her illithid-like psionic abilities. They would turn her upon the then-weakened House Baenre and the pitiful Matron Mother Quenthel, who would never survive such an unexpected onslaught.

“Surely the Spider Queen cannot be pleased by these actions,” Minolin Fey pleaded. “And surely, Lady Lolth knows that the better choice, the better matron mother. .”

“Bite back your words or I will remove your tongue,” Gromph warned her.