R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

The air grew humid, then steamy; they could hear the sound of falling water, and an angry hissing noise in response. The tunnel wound for many paces before ending at another door, this one slightly ajar. Berellip pushed it open and led them through, spilling out into an oblong chamber.

A chamber that was alive with the power of the elements.

The chamber was cut, wall-to-wall, by a very deep pit, into which a perpetual waterfall poured from the ceiling.

“Do you feel it, Archmage?” Matron Mother Quenthel said, and she closed her eyes and moved forward, basking in the power of the primordial. With Gromph beside her, she moved to the edge of the pit and looked down at the bared power of Gauntlgrym, and even for the Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan, who knew best the beauty and grandeur of the City of Spiders, and even for the Archmage of Menzoberranzan, who had walked the planes, such a sight as this surely stole their breath.

They could not see the walls of the pit, for they were obscured by a spinning vortex of water, living water elementals forming the shaft prison for the beast far, far below. Through that spray and mist it loomed, the fire primordial, a living beast older than the dragons, older than the gods, perhaps.

It was trapped but it was not still. Nay, the bubbling lake of lava popped and spat forth its fire and magma, vomiting them upward to fall against the watery wall of the spinning vortex, the endless battle between fire and water.

The two Baenres stepped back from the ledge and turned to look upon a beaming Berellip.

“This is …” the matron mother started to say, glancing around and shaking her head as if in disgust, which stole more than a bit of Berellip’s bluster.

The matron mother stared her in the eye. “Why have you not prepared this room?”

“M-matron Mother?” Berellip stammered, hardly able to grasp the dangled concept. “The room is functional. Perfectly so. The forges …”

“Functional?” Matron Mother Quenthel snapped incredulously, and Gromph gave a little laugh. “This is not functional !” she insisted, spitting the last word as if it rang out as a tremendous insult to her sensibilities. “This is majesty! This is glory! This place, that beast, the elementals trapping it, are the reason Lolth has allowed your departure from Menzoberranzan. Do you not recognize that, priestess?”

“Yes, Matron Mother, of course.”

“Then why have you not prepared this room?” the matron mother emphatically demanded.

Berellip’s lips moved, but she said nothing, so at a loss as to even know where to begin.

Quenthel pushed past her impatiently, moving out to the center of the flat stone area and surveying the room.

“That tunnel?” she asked, pointing to a second exit from the place, just down the wall from the door through which they had entered. She could see that it was a natural tunnel, perhaps a lava tube, burned out from the stone. “Where does it lead?”

“To a back corridor, Matron Mother,” Berellip answered.

“Seal it where it joins the outer corridor,” Quenthel instructed Gromph, who nodded and started across the way.

“I will put up a wall of iron, but it may be dispelled,” he informed her.

“Seal it,” she said again. “And then the Xorlarrin craftsmen will construct more permanent walls to support your magical construct.”

“This place!” Quenthel exclaimed, and then she began to dance, slowly turning, and she began to sing, an ancient song of the founding of Menzoberranzan for the glory of the Spider Queen.

Her twirls became more enhanced and rapid, her spidery gown flowing out wide from her slender form, and from that gown dropped small spiders, living spiders, that scurried away from her as if they knew their task.

For indeed they did. The song of consecration had brought them to life from the magical garments of the Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan, and that song told them.

Gromph came back out of the tunnel a short while later, his wall constructed to seal off the far end. Quenthel continued her song and dance. Spiders ran all around the ledge and up the walls, many already trailing their filaments.

Quenthel twirled around and then stopped abruptly, dramatically, her grasping hands cupping at the front of her shoulders, at green, spider-shaped brooches she wore. She tore them free of her gown, her song becoming a powerful chant and plea to the Spider Queen, and she threw those brooches out to the floor before her, where they landed and skidded and animated.

And grew.

“This is the chapel of Q’Xorlarrin!” the matron mother declared to Berellip, and now the jade spiders were the size of ponies, then the size of horses, then the size of umber hulks. One moved to stand beside the door through which they had entered, the other to flank the tunnel Gromph had sealed.

And there they froze in place, perfectly still, guardian statues.

“Matron Mother, we are blessed by your generosity!” Berellip said and she threw herself to the floor before Quenthel Baenre.

Quenthel ignored her and once more scanned the chamber, smiling as she saw the webs coming into being, the thousand little spiders working their magic.

“There is a chamber across the pit,” Gromph informed her, and he led her gaze to the far end of the room.

“What is in there?” Quenthel demanded of Berellip.

“The lever of magic,” she answered. “It controls the water to feed the elementals to hold the primordial, so Ravel has told me.”

“A simple lever?” Quenthel asked, turning to Gromph.

“Simple to a dwarf of noble Delzoun blood, so Jarlaxle has told me,” the archmage answered. “Impossible for any others.”

“And such a dwarf might pull that lever to free the beast,” Quenthel reasoned.

“Such was nearly the destruction of Gauntlgrym,” Gromph explained, “The volcano that alerted us to this place many years ago.”

“But if a dwarf king found the hallowed Forge under the control of the drow …” Quenthel remarked.

Gromph led her down the way to stand opposite the chamber, then enacted a magical doorway, a dimensional warp, that the two of them and Methil could step across.

“A simple lever,” Quenthel said when they moved under a low archway into the antechamber.

“Let me complicate it, then,” the archmage offered. He moved back under the archway and began casting a powerful spell, calling to the water.

When he came back into the antechamber, he led a large, flowing, humanoid construct created entirely of water.

“A proper guard, against any and all who would come in here,” Gromph explained. “Except, of course, those who wear the insignia of House Baenre.”

The matron mother nodded her appreciation.

Gromph signed his fingers at his illithid companion, and the mind flayer’s tentacles began to wave and waggle around.

“Mark it?” Quenthel asked, having read his hand signal to Methil.

“When we decide to return here, would there be a better place to arrive?” Gromph replied, and Quenthel understood then that the archmage and his mind flayer had just magically attuned to this particular room for purposes of teleportation, both magical and psionic.

When that was finished, Gromph moved back under the archway and reconstructed his dimension door and followed Quenthel back to the ledge across the way.

“The Chapel of Q’Xorlarrin,” she repeated to Berellip. “And that tunnel, I think, would suit well your matron as her private quarters.”

“Yes, Matron Mother.”

“Consecrate this ground with the blood of slaves,” Quenthel instructed. “Feed the primordial beast with the flesh of our enemies.”

“Yes, Matron Mother,” Berellip eagerly replied.

So eagerly, Matron Mother Quenthel thought. On impulse, Quenthel lifted her arms out wide, tilted her head back, and closed her eyes. “Lift your scourge,” she told Berellip.