R. Salvatore - Archmage

Mez’Barris let a sly grin appear on her thin lips. She could do as she had hoped now, she was certain. The others, even Quenthel’s allies, desired to send a strong message to the matron mother, to back her away from this maddeningly dangerous course. Would they go so far as to covertly join with Mez’Barris in her plans to overwhelm House Do’Urden?

Yes they would, Mez’Barris believed, particularly whenever she directed another’s gaze to the matron darthiir and noted the immediate sour frown that ugly view elicited of the various matron mothers.

That abomination, the darthiir matron mother of House Do’Urden, would soon perish.

And Matron Mother Quenthel would be taught her limitations.

Lightning flashed and fires burned in the Stenchstreets, and high above near the cavern’s ceiling, and now even in the Qu’ellarz’orl.

Gromph Baenre watched the mounting fight between demons with mild disdain. He was hardly surprised-you couldn’t put such numbers of chaotic demons together in one area and not expect wild brawls of magic, tooth, and claw. And there were hundreds of demons in Menzoberranzan now, not even counting the thousands of manes the larger beasts had brought in to serve as fodder.

Gromph moved from his balcony at Sorcere back into his private chambers, for even from the high perch of that tower upon Tier Breche, the archmage couldn’t properly witness the mounting carnage.

He waved his hand over a still pool of water in a magical basin, calling forth the images.

He blew a sigh of disgust. Every street, every way, every side region of Menzoberranzan was alive with fighting, it seemed, demon against demon. A gang of glabrezu rampaged across the island housing the city’s rothé, the huge demons cutting through the Underdark cattle the way predatory fish might chomp through a swirling school of prey.

Behind the archmage, Marilith hissed with excitement, the view of the carnage teasing her murderous sensibilities. Gromph glanced back, thinking to admonish her, to keep her in line, but she looked past him and gasped once more at some new and greater event in the scrying pool, no doubt.

Gromph spun back just in time to see a swarm of chasme drop upon the glabrezu. In waded another marilith, along with a pair of larger nalfeshnee, and then a monstrous goristro.

This was Matron Mother Quenthel’s force.

“A goristro,” he muttered, shaking his head. Only certain balors and the demon lords themselves were more powerful. To summon such a creature was always a danger. To summon one and send it forth into battle even more so.

But to summon a goristro and send it out beside a trio of major demons, and with a swarm of chasme besides?

“Madness,” Gromph muttered.

The glabrezu gang fled before the superior force, splashing back across the small lake, chasme diving at them every step of the way.

Gromph shifted the image in his scrying pool to a massive brawl right outside the Barrison Del’Armgo compound. Hundreds of manes and other minor demons roiled about the boulevard, clawing each other to shreds. Here, too, chasme buzzed and bit, and larger beasts prowled the shadows and the edge of the battle, no doubt directing their disposable minions.

The pool brightened suddenly in the flash of a massive fireball, followed by a series of roiling balls of fire in the air above the fight. Flamestrikes shot down, turning manes into living candles, the humanoid demons, too stupid to know the pain of the flames engulfing them, running on to ravenous battle, until they fell, one by one, into smoking husks.

Gromph understood then the source of the magic and focused his attention on the Barrison Del’Armgo compound. There stood Mez’Barris’s wizards and priestesses, throwing forth their destructive magic into the boulevard beyond. Lightning flashed and manes died. Another fireball erupted, and flamestrikes followed.

The archmage shook his head once more.

“I wish to go and fight,” Marilith said from behind him.

“You will stay here,” he answered without even bothering to turn around. He heard her hiss then, and was surprised by it, for surely Marilith knew better than to hint at her displeasure with the commands of the one controlling her, particularly when that one was Gromph Baenre.

A wave of the archmage’s hand dismissed the images in the scrying pool, and he slowly turned to face his demonic servant. She stood there, towering twice his height, her naked, human-like upper body glistening with sweat, breasts heaving, and with swords held in all six of her hands.

“The battles are glorious,” Marilith answered. She seemed apologetic, but Gromph felt the hair on the back of his neck standing up, as if in warning.

“You are here at my call,” he said.

“Yes, Master.”

“Master. .” he echoed. “Your master. Your master while you walk the ways of Menzoberranzan. Do not question me.”

Marilith bowed her head and turned her blades down to the floor.

“If I dismiss you, you will once more be banished, to serve out your century in the Abyss,” Gromph reminded her. “Only I know the secret now of twining the two forms of magic to break the ancient covenant.”

Marilith nodded. “Yes, Master.”

“Is that what you want?”

The demon looked up at him, her face a mask of alarm. “No, Master! Tell me who to kill, I beg!”

Gromph laughed. “In time,” he promised. “In time.”

A movement outside caught his attention, and he focused on the view beyond his balcony again just in time to see a ball of flaming pitch go soaring through the air and drop from sight. He moved to the edge of the balcony and saw that it had landed among the combatants in front of Barrison Del’Armgo’s gate, though the angle of the shot showed him that it had not come from inside Mez’Barris’s compound.

Another House had come to the aid of the Second House.

Not that the Second House had needed any aid. The fight had already greatly diminished, with destroyed, smoking husks of demons thick about the street and the Barrison Del’Armgo wall untouched.

But still, some other House had thought it prudent to join in with one of its war engines.

Symbolically, Gromph realized. That catapult throw was meant to send a message more than it demonstrated any practical aid.

“Conspiracy?” the archmage asked under his breath.

As with the huge demon fight that morning, wise old Gromph Baenre was not surprised.

“Arach-Tinilith or the high priestess of House Baenre?” Yvonnel teased in her squeaky baby voice.

Long past the shock at the sight and sound of a tiny child speaking with such sophistication, Minolin Fey considered the question carefully.

“Well?” the impatient child demanded.

“What are you asking me?” Minolin Fey replied. She swallowed hard as she dared to presume. “Are you seeking my preference?”

“Would I have asked if I was not?”

“I did not think either position would. .”

“You should think more, then,” baby Yvonnel interrupted. “In either position, I will need someone capable of thinking, after all.”

She was all insults and promises, Minolin Fey thought, and surely not for the first time. All she ever got from her little girl were taunts and teases, and the latter stung more than the former, for Minolin, who was not Baenre by blood, considered the teases as no more than the cruelest taunts of all.

And yet. .

“High priestess,” she said, not daring to not answer, and thinking that her life expectancy would increase greatly if she stayed at Yvonnel’s side. If this was truly to be her choice, going out from House Baenre to the Academy would make her a prime target for those who would not accept this child as the matron mother in a time that would surely be marked by great upheaval.