R. Salvatore: Archmage

Nor was Quenthel overly concerned over the reported death of Tos’un Armgo, a deserter rogue who was never much in Matron Mother Mez’Barris Armgo’s favor anyway, and never anything more than a minor noble in House Barrison Del’Armgo.

The combination of those things, though, along with the death of a white dragon and the destruction of Lady Lolth’s Darkening, could lead to all sorts of trouble. She worried that Matron Mother Mez’Barris would throw in with Houses Hunzrin and Melarn, and so House Baenre would face all three in defending Q’Xorlarrin. If so, then surely the Seventh House of Menzoberranzan, House Vandree, would side with the conspirators.

Matron Mother Baenre believed that the rest of the Ruling Council was on her side, but would they pledge allegiance to her openly, with warriors, priests, and wizards?

And these were drow Houses, after all, known for reliability only in the fact that they could not be considered reliable. These bonds were not alliances as much as they were compacts of convenience, and Quenthel had turned the thumbscrews down hard on the other matron mothers, both in her actions in the Silver Marches and in the reestablishment of House Do’Urden-and, of course, in appointing a darthiir , a surface elf, as the matron mother of that Eighth House.

Matron Mother Baenre had pushed them all to the edge, had slapped them all in the face, to demonstrate her superiority and thus put them in line. And it had worked thus far, but now, in the aftermath of the fall of the Silver Marches to the previous powers there, would be the critical time.

“But it was always to be like this,” she told herself, pushing aside the defeat of the Darkening and the death of a white dragon-and the defeat of Tiamat’s ultimate plan.

Quenthel nodded and closed her eyes. She was Matron Mother Baenre. Lolth was still with her, she believed. And she felt it then, warmly.

She had tugged the whole of Menzoberranzan into her iron grip, as Lolth had demanded of her.

But how to keep them there in this dangerous and uncertain time?

Quenthel closed her eyes and fell deep into meditation, deep into the memories she now held that were not her own. The memories of her mother, Yvonnel the Eternal, that had been telepathically imparted to her by the squirming tentacles of the mind flayer who had served as her mother’s closest advisor, those were the memories she considered now.

She saw Menzoberranzan, then, in a light as never before. The great cavern housing the city appeared more natural, far less shaped by drow craftsmen, far less highlighted by drow illumination, like the faerie fire outlining the great houses or the glow of Narbondel, the heat-clock.

She knew that she was seeing the earliest days of the city, tumultuous, yet only built and settled in pockets.

In this atmosphere had House Baenre become ascendant. In this time of potential had House Baenre realized it most of all.

She saw the drow.

She saw the demons.

So many demons! Scores of them, from the worthless manes, the fodder of the Abyss, to the great glabrezu, marilith, nalfeshnee, and even mighty balors. They wandered the streets, rampaging, feasting, engaging in orgies with the drow, engaging in battles with the drow, engaging in whatever impulse crossed their chaotic and destructive desires.

There was chaos, truly!

But it was superficial, Matron Mother Baenre realized, like a series of bar fights in a city full of overlords and armies.

And that superficial chaos was enough. The demons caused enough grief, enough trouble, enough chaos, to keep the lesser Houses fully occupied. They could not align and plot against ascendant House Baenre with demons literally knocking on their doors.

Matron Mother Baenre watched in amusement as her borrowed memories revealed a balor in battle with a band of insectoid chasme.

The demons were no threat to the greater Houses of the city, even then, in Menzoberranzan’s fledgling days. Never could they coordinate enough within their own ranks to pose any significant threat to the order of Menzoberranzan, an order being imposed by House Baenre and House Fey-Branche.

But the demons, so thick about the city, had surely kept the lesser matron mothers busy with thoughts of self-preservation. Those lesser Houses were too busy securing their own fences and structures to contemplate invading others.

Matron Mother Baenre blinked open her red eyes and considered the glorious revelations.

“Chaos begets order,” she whispered.

Yvonnel the Eternal’s memories had shown Quenthel the way.

“No, she said more loudly, shaking her head, for surely this diabolical possibility had been divinely inspired. “Lady Lolth has shown me the way.”

His sly taunting of his sister did little to improve Gromph’s bitter mood. Even if he toppled her, even if he destroyed every matron mother and high priestess in the city, what would he accomplish?

He was a male, nothing more, and even when Lady Lolth had turned to the Weave, to a domain he had come to dominate more than any dark elf in centuries-in millennia, in perhaps the entire history of the race- Lolth’s gratitude had not reached to him, nor his fellow male wizards.

Sorcere, the drow school of arcane magic, the academy under the control of Gromph, had counted among its students almost exclusively male drow, with only a few notable exceptions of priestesses looking to enhance their magical repertoire by adding arcane spells to their divinely inspired magic. Yet as soon as the Weave had become a web, as soon as it appeared that Lady Lolth would steal the domain of the goddess Mystra, the noble Houses had flooded Sorcere with their daughters as students.

The matron mothers, with Lolth’s blessing, would not suffer the males of Menzoberranzan their position atop the ranks of Lolth’s arcane disciples.

Would Gromph’s ultimate title of archmage have proven secure? But Lolth had lost her bid for the Weave, so Gromph had learned, though the details were not yet known to him. The Weave was no longer in her spidery claws and the city and school would return to normal, perhaps. Gromph would remain the archmage, and, he now even more poignantly understood, would remain a “mere male” in Menzoberranzan.

Or perhaps not, he mused as he pushed through the door of his private chambers, to see Minolin Fey seated on the great-backed chair, their tiny child Yvonnel suckling at the high priestess’s breast.

“Your presence is long overdue,” the infant said in a gurgling, watery voice. Baby Yvonnel turned her head to stare hard at the archmage, her threatening visage only slightly diminished by the spit and mother’s milk dribbling out the side of her tiny mouth.

Her eyes! Those eyes!

Gromph remembered that look so well. With that one petulant expression, Yvonnel his child had thrown him back a thousand years and more, to the court of Yvonnel his mother.

“Where is Methil?” the infant demanded, referring to the ugly illithid who had imparted the memories and knowledge of Yvonnel the Eternal, Gromph’s mother, the longest-serving matron mother Menzoberranzan had ever known, into the malleable mind of this tiny creature before she had even been birthed. “I told you to bring Methil.”

“Methil will soon arrive,” Gromph assured her. “I was with the matron mother.”

That brought a bit of a growl from the child, one that sounded almost feral.

Gromph courteously bowed before his baby.

The side door to the chamber banged open then and in slid a handmaiden, an ugly yochlol, resembling a huge, half-melted gray candle with waving tentacles.

“The illithid has arrived for your lesson, Yvonnel,” the demon creature said in a bubbly, muddy voice that still somehow managed to hold the sharp edge of a shriek. The handmaiden slid over to the child, leaving a trail of muddy goo, its tentacles reaching for the babe though it was still several feet from Minolin Fey-who was all too happy, even eager, to surrender the baby.