R. Salvatore - Archmage

“She’s talking to it,” Kipper explained.

“In fits and starts and nothing much more,” Catti-brie added before Kipper had even finished. She wanted no misperceptions, and no false hope. There might be ways in which she could turn her connection to the primordial and to the Elemental Plane of Fire into a benefit in these battles, as she had done with the kobolds, but it was nothing she wished the dwarves to factor into their planning, for indeed it was nothing Cattibrie would even dare depend upon.

She did hold out some hopes, though. The magma elemental the primordial had spat up to her on the ledge in the drow altar room had aided her in turning the battle against Dahlia and the great construct spiders the drow had set out as guards.

“Most help I can be would be looking to the flame, looking into the flame, and looking through the flame to get us a glimpse of what’s what in the lower levels,” she said. “If other chances come up, like blowing up some kobold bombs, I’ll be using them, don’t ye doubt.”

That seemed to satisfy Bruenor and the gathered dwarves, who nodded their appreciation one after the other.

Catti-brie was glad of that, and glad to leave it at that. She didn’t want to get their hopes up. There was a tentative nature to all of this, and a level of power she knew she could never control if it found a way to break free. Most of all, her communion with the primordial had taught her respect for the primal being-it seemed to her as strong as a god! More than helping her, it wanted to escape, to erupt again in all its magnificent and destructive glory.

And Catti-brie knew something else, without the slightest bit of doubt: the magic of the Hosttower of the Arcane was truly failing, and if that erosion could not be stopped, even reversed, the reign of the dwarves in Gauntlgrym, should they retake the complex, would be short indeed, and would end explosively.

Kobolds,” Tsabrak told Matron Mother Zeerith when he returned to her in her private chambers, just off Q’Zorlarrin’s forge room. “Chased from the upper chambers.”“Yet the kobolds knew we were here,” Zeerith said ominously.

“And still they came,” Tsabrak agreed. “Some prostrated themselves on the floor and begged us to make of them slaves.”

“The dwarves are formidable.”

“It is an army,” the archmage of Q’Xorlarrin stated. “An army. Not an expeditionary force. An army that could press Menzoberranzan, for a bit at least.”

“An army that will overrun us?” Matron Mother Zeerith asked. “We are formidable with wizards, but it appears that the dwarves have brought more than a few of their own,” Tsabrak replied.

“Matron Mother Baenre knows.”

“These are the dwarves of the citadels of the Silver Marches, where Baenre waged war. Of course she knows.”

“She is waiting for me to call for help.”

The Archmage of Q’Xorlarrin nodded.

“To grovel,” Matron Mother Zeerith said. She lowered her face and closed her eyes, considering her play. Things had not gone well for her in the last couple years. She had lost Brack’thal, her Elderboy, as well as her powerful daughter Berellip, to a party come to rescue the captives brought to her fledgling city by the impetuous and impossible Tiago Baenre. She had lost Saribel and Ravel, her other two children, to House Do’Urden where they now served as nobles. Perhaps Saribel would rise to the level of matron mother there in time, as she was married to Tiago, but as of now, neither of the powerful Xorlarrin nobles were available to Zeerith. And she needed them.

“Has Kiriy returned from her communion?” she asked without opening her eyes.

“Not yet. I expect she has much to inquire about with the Spider Queen.”

Now Zeerith did open her eyes, and she lifted an unappreciative glare at Tsabrak, hardly in the mood for his quips. His shrug reminded her, though, that his position had become more tentative than her own. Tsabrak had channeled the word of Lolth, enacting the Darkening over the Silver Marches. But that Darkening was no more, and Tsabrak and Zeerith could only take that as a sign that the Spider Queen’s defeat in her quest to attain the Weave had left her reeling and retreating from arcane magic.

And that very thing, arcane magic, had been Q’Xorlarrin’s play!

This House, more than any other in Menzoberranzan or any other drow city, stood to gain the most in the event that Lolth continued to turn her attention to the Weave and the domain of Mystra. The Xorlarrin family had long embraced wizardry, and had elevated the male wizards to stations equal to the roles of the female priestesses-privately, of course.

But were they now falling out of favor with Lolth, Matron Mother Zeerith had to wonder? Was it an accident that the dwarf army now appeared in the upper chambers of their fledgling city?

“What word from Faelas and Jaemas?” she asked, referring to the two Xorlarrin nobles who had continued to serve as Masters of Sorcere back in Menzoberranzan and had not yet been called to Q’Xorlarrin.

“The same word. Demons roam the city. All of the Houses are bringing them forth, and in great numbers. Archmage Gromph has recalled Marilith, though she was reportedly recently slain by the weapons master of House Barrison Del’Armgo and should have remained banished.” Tsabrak shook his head, having no answers. “It is all chaos.”

“The matron mother tightens her grip,” Zeerith surmised. “And with Lolth’s favor, so it would seem, if her brother wizard can so warp the ancient rules as to recall defeated demons.”

“You have to call to her,” Tsabrak dared to say.

“To Lolth, or to Quenthel Baenre?”

“Yes,” Tsabrak answered.

Matron Mother Zeerith sighed and nodded, offering the wizard a sympathetic shrug. He had recently held onto hopes for a great ascension, for himself and for his family, in the new domain of the Spider Queen.

“Should we summon demons of our own?” Tsabrak asked. “Is this the way of the dark elves now?”

Zeerith shook her head. She would do no such thing until Kiriy brought her answers. If Lolth was done with the Weave and House Xorlarrin’s aspirations had been crushed, and so Lolth would not now favor the Xorlarrin family or their fledgling city, filling their corridors with demons might facilitate their own doom.

“Has there been any word from Hoshtar?”

“Nothing to help us,” Tsabrak answered. “The last he determined was that Jarlaxle had managed to slip away from House Do’Urden, along with most of his trusted minions, replacing them with new recruits to Bregan D’aerthe. He is likely on the surface, though the possibilities range from coast to coast with that one. Kimmuriel, though. .”

“Not Kimmuriel!” Matron Mother Zeerith replied. “I’ll not deal with that one-I would rather crawl on the floor in front of Matron Mother Baenre herself and beg her to take our city as her own.”

“I understand your reluctance.”

“He fornicates with illithids,” Zeerith spat. “With his mind, if not his body. To trust Kimmuriel is to trust a creature we cannot begin to decipher. Why Jarlaxle elevated him to lead Bregan D’aerthe, I will never understand.”

“Perhaps Jarlaxle believes that he understands Kimmuriel.”

“Then Jarlaxle fools himself.”

Tsabrak accepted that outwardly with a nod, though Zeerith knew that he-and that she, for that matter-did not honestly believe that the too-clever Jarlaxle ever fooled himself.

“Find Jarlaxle, my friend,” Matron Mother Zeerith said. “In the end, he may prove our only salvation. Only he possesses intimate knowledge of our enemies in the upper halls. . and of those back in Menzoberranzan. He is the broker.”