R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

“The goddess uses him.” Quenthel nodded.

She was not smiling, though, Gromph noted, and given the memories, the core of Yvonnel, which Methil had imparted to his sister, the archmage doubted that he would ever see her smile again, unless it was from the pleasure of exacting pain upon another.

He noted his sister’s pensive pose, so similar to the one his mother often used to wear, and one he had never before seen from the inferior Quenthel.

“Why tempt him?” she asked. “With so many other greater needs arising all about us, why now?”

A good question, the archmage thought, and one he had discussed at length with Minolin Fey just the previous tenday. The Spider Queen was expanding her power now-in the realm of the gods, not among mere mortals-so why would she bother with a rogue drow of such little real importance or consequence?

“That is a matter for priestesses, not wizards,” he replied.

Quenthel narrowed her eyes for she understood now, of course, the direction of Lolth’s designs, a course that surely elevated Gromph and his wizardly ilk. “And you have spoken to priestesses … one in particular,” she reminded him. “And about this very topic.”

Gromph sat up straighter behind his desk, matching his sister’s intense stare with careful scrutiny of his own. “My dear sister-” he started.

“Never call me that again,” she interrupted, her voice even and confident and clearly threatening.

“Matron Mother Quenthel,” he corrected.

Gromph brought his hands up to tap-tap his fingers before his pursed lips, his typical posture when digesting some rather startling possibilities. He knew that he was looking at a being much greater than the one he had led out of Menzoberranzan only a short while before. Methil El-Viddenvelp had infused Quenthel with so many of the memories of Matron Mother Yvonnel Baenre, with their dead mother’s understanding of Lolth, and, it would seem, with more than a little of their dead mother’s personality as well. He had known this would be a possibility-bringing Quenthel out to receive the collected insights of an illithid had been an exercise to fortify her in this time of Lady Lolth’s need. She was the Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan, and so ruled supreme in the city, but in truth, all who knew the inner workings of House Baenre understood that Gromph, the eldest, the most veteran, the most wizened, had been working his will behind the scenes.

It had always been a risk that taking Quenthel to Methil would empower her enough to change that dynamic.

“The gods are in turmoil, so said Mistress Minolin Fey,” he answered, lowering his hands, though surely not lowering his gaze. “The realignment is well under way, in many different corners.”

“The Spider Queen has bigger concerns.”

“Why are you asking me, and not her? You are the Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan …”

“Do not deign to tell me who I am or how I am to act,” Matron Mother Quenthel replied. “I would not bother Lolth for answers that others can provide, nor trouble her handmaidens in unweaving the web that I might learn what others in my city already know.”

“Do you think personal pettiness is above the gods?” Gromph asked bluntly.

Then came a smile, surprising him. A wry and knowing grin, an evil one that the Elderboy of House Baenre knew well, though he had not seen it in well over a century.

“Then the insolent rogue remains inconsequential,” Matron Mother Quenthel reasoned. “A thorn to be used against a rival goddess, turned to the glorious darkness for no practical reason than to pain the witch Mielikki.”

“Or turned into failure yet again for the Spider Queen, and thus the scream of pain you heard that began your most recent journey.”

“In heart and soul, the rogue Do’Urden betrayed Lady Lolth yet again.”

As when the rogue Do’Urden killed you, Gromph thought, but did not say, though he might as well have said it, he realized, for his grin had surely betrayed the notion.

“Mielikki won that minor battle for the heart of Drizzt Do’Urden.” Gromph nodded as he spoke, looking away from his sister. Indeed, he was looking into the past, trying to figure out how his mother might have handled such news. How might Quenthel ultimately weigh against that standard, he wondered?

“Shall I go and exterminate the rogue Do’Urden?” the archmage asked.

Matron Mother Quenthel fixed him with an incredulous, almost pitying stare, and Gromph had his answer. The mind flayer had given her so much! For of course, that was the correct answer, the answer Gromph would have given, the answer Yvonnel would have given, the answer Lolth needed from Matron Mother Quenthel of the City of Spiders.

Possessed of this information regarding the source of Lady Lolth’s scream before her encounter with the illithid, petty Quenthel would have already sent Gromph and a dozen other assassins on their way to exterminate the puny rogue of House Do’Urden, a useless endeavor that would reap nothing but a momentary flash of vengeful joy, soon to be lost in the knowledge that the rogue was then with his goddess, and that goddess was not Lolth, and that Lolth was not sated … and then, with such a simple matter of the finality of death, the goddess could never be.

“To take with the sword is easy,” Matron Mother Quenthel stated. “To take with the heart is desirable.”

“And yet the goddess could not take his heart.”

Quenthel smiled again-no, Gromph couldn’t think of her as Quenthel any longer, he realized. Matron Mother Quenthel smiled again, an awful, wicked, delicious, inspiring smile.

“What we cannot take, we break,” Matron Mother Quenthel quietly observed.

Yes, Gromph knew, he had relegated himself to subservient status once more, in more than official rank. All of the years he had nurtured Minolin Fey, his student in the ways of intrigue, his puppet in his plans of dominion over his pathetic sister, his lover-all of that would likely unwind now that Quenthel had looked so intimately into the mind of Yvonnel.

Yvonnel the Eternal, he thought, remembering the moniker he had often heard attached to his powerful mother, one that had seemed a cruel joke when the axe of the dwarf king had so sundered Yvonnel’s withered old skull. But perhaps that moniker had been more than a passing reference after all. Perhaps, through Methil’s waggling tentacles, “eternal” remained a fitting description.

And Gromph had just given that “eternal” insight to his sister.

As Lady Lolth had demanded of him.

So be it.

“Tomorrow is the Festival of the Founding,” Matron Mother Quenthel said.

Gromph stared at her incredulously, but only at first, only until he reminded himself that this was not merely Quenthel seated across from him. Then his look turned to suspicion. After all, when had House Baenre observed the festival in any but the most cursory, and even cynical, way? The twentieth of Ches, the third month, was heralded as the anniversary of Menzoberranzan’s founding, and on that day, the collective defensive crouch of the city relaxed into a profound communal sigh. House gates were less guarded, indeed even opened, for passersby, for Lolth was known, occasionally, to appear in some avatar form in the city, and a blessing it was upon the whole of the city in that case.

To House Baenre, so much closer to the goddess, and with so much more to lose by letting down its guard, the Festival of the Founding had, in the days of Yvonnel (the Sable Years, they were called in Menzoberranzan), been a mere formality, rarely mentioned, lightly observed, and used by the House-through Bregan D’aerthe spies, typically-to gain information on the defenses and weaknesses of those other noble Houses.

“Matron Byrtyn Fey has extended …” Matron Mother Quenthel paused and gave a wicked little laugh, then corrected, “Matron Byrtyn will extend a most gracious invitation for us to dine in her worthy home, and we will accept, of course, as the Founding requires of us.”