R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

“Come to me, little pirate,” the lich said in a vocal tremor that shivered Regis’s bones, and Regis nearly fainted away, and Drizzt cried out from far behind, and Bruenor, still on his knees to the halfling’s left, called out for his doomed halfling friend.

As he swooned, Regis barely registered the distortion that came into Ebonsoul’s watery voice, and it took him heartbeats to realize the visual weirdness as well, as the lich’s face seemed to elongate as if it was being pulled backward like soft dough or Sword Coast taffy.

Ebonsoul reached for him, but the moving hands seemed to be getting no nearer.

And the lich was pulled back and stretched. Ebonsoul’s expression became one of puzzlement, and the lich became a fog, as if trying to escape.

But the fog offered no escape, not this time, and it was pulled fast back the way it had come, rushing past the charging Wulfgar, past Drizzt, and out into the darkness.

Silence fell over the camp.

Guenhwyvar paced warily, turning tight circles. The four friends looked to each other, at a loss.

“Me girl,” Bruenor at last breathed.

And as if on cue, into the firelight walked Catti-brie, one hand clenched in a fist and held tight against her breast, her other hand up and out before her, holding aloft a large gemstone.

“What did you do?” Drizzt asked.

“We could not beat it,” Catti-brie answered in a whisper. “I had to.”

“She caught it!” Bruenor howled, and he scrambled to his feet. “In the gem! Oh, good girl!”

“Catti?” Drizzt asked.

She looked up at him, and seemed as if waking from a trance. She guided his gaze to the phylactery and nodded.

“That was the spell for Pwent,” Wulfgar interjected. “The spell the Harpells put in the ring.”

“What’d’ye do, girl?” Bruenor asked, suddenly near panic.

“Saved us, likely,” Drizzt answered. He turned to Catti-brie. “But what now? Back to Longsaddle?”

The woman considered the words for a long while, then shook her head. “On our way,” she answered. “The lich is caught, his soul trapped within the phylactery. Ebonsoul will bother us no more.”

“But you used the spell stored in the ring,” Bruenor and Regis said in unison.

“And I have a scroll from the Harpells replicating the magic,” Catti-brie answered.

“Ain’t yer prison full?” asked Bruenor.

“That spell is beyond you, so you said,” Drizzt added.

“I have performed it once, through the ring,” Catti-brie answered. “I will find the power again. And the phylactery … we will find another. Or we can go back, if you choose, but didn’t you say when we set the camp that we are close to Gauntlgrym’s entrance?”

“Aye, we’ll make the rocky dell soon after sunrise,” the dwarf confirmed.

Catti-brie shrugged and looked to Drizzt, and the drow took the cue to glance at each of his companions.

“To Gauntlgrym, then?” he said. “Though I fear we’ll have to destroy our old friend Thibbledorf Pwent where he resides instead of bringing him forth to accept the resurrection and true and clean death dealt by a high priest.”

By the time he had finished talking, Catti-brie stood before him, blue mist snaking out of her wide sleeves, and she reached out to him with healing magic, soothing the bruises and cuts inflicted by Ebonsoul. She made her way around the four, casting warmth and healing.

It was a night of uneasy sleep for all of them, after that horrifying encounter, but they were out before the dawn anyway, and into the rocky dell soon after, as Bruenor had predicted. With the sun still high in the sky, they entered the tunnels and began their descent into Gauntlgrym.

The Baenre entourage made its way through the tunnels of the Underdark, but not directly back to Menzoberranzan as they had planned. On the matron mother’s order, they moved out to the east, escorting Tsabrak on the first leg of his most-important mission.

The matron mother was not among the contingent when they set their daily camp, of course. Gromph had created an extradimensional mansion where the selected nobles of House Baenre could relax without threat. The illithid went to that refuge as well, and Tsabrak, too, had been given a room of his own. He was too important now to risk.

“I would have thought you more agitated,” Quenthel said to her brother Gromph, sitting with him beside a glowing wall of artwork, whose colors shifted through the spectrum in a most pleasing display. Gromph created this distraction each night, to sit and enjoy a fine wine or brandy. This was no surprise to his sister. He did the same thing in Menzoberranzan. But she was a bit surprised at how content he seemed, and how peaceful the artwork appeared.

The old wizard looked at her curiously. “I am sure that the longer you intrude in my private quarters, the more agitated I will become,” he replied and lifted his snifter of brandy in toast. “As pleases you, of course.”

“We will leave Tsabrak soon,” Quenthel announced. “He will finish this journey alone.”

“The sooner I am away from the ambitious and sniveling Xorlarrin, the better.”

“Then you are bothered,” the matron mother said with a sly smile.

“Not in the least.”

“Truly? Dear brother, does the coming rise in Tsabrak’s stature not evoke a bit of fear, at least? Might it be time for a new archmage in the City of Spiders?”

“Replaced by a Xorlarrin, whose family has departed Menzoberranzan?” Gromph said rather incredulously.

“Would the elevation of Tsabrak not serve as a strong tie between Menzoberranzan and the fledgling outpost the Xorlarrins have created?”

Gromph laughed aloud. “Ah, dear sis-Matron Mother,” he said, shaking his head as if it should be obvious. “Why should I fear this movement of Lady Lolth? Do I not have more to gain than you? Than any of the matriarchs? The Spider Queen seeks Mystra’s realm, and of Lady Lolth’s current ranks, that realm is better served by trained males, and best served by me.”

“Or by Tsabrak!” Quenthel snapped back, her clear agitation showing the old mage that his reasoning had crawled under her skin.

“The illithid’s tentacles will not find my brain,” Gromph assured her. “Nor do I wish to cast this spell. It will not be Gromph channeling Lady Lolth under the open sky of the Silver Marches, and that, I assure you, is to Gromph’s liking.”

“Were Lolth to hear that-”

“She surely will!” Gromph interrupted. “I have just told it to her primary voice upon Toril. Willingly.”

“And you do not fear her wrath?”

The archmage shrugged and took another drink. “I do as Lolth has instructed me. I do not try to hide from her, for what would be the point? She knew of my … feelings toward you when you were Quenthel-when you were merely Quenthel.”

“How you plotted with Minolin Fey, you mean,” Matron Mother Quenthel retorted. The archmage merely shrugged and didn’t even try to hide his smile.

“And Lolth did not approve,” Gromph said, “because she had other plans for you-plans that I executed upon her command. I am a loyal servant, and please, for both our sakes, do not ever confuse my apparent lack of ambition with anything more than greater ambitions I concoct on my own.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means, Matron Mother, that the Archmage of Menzoberranzan is Gromph, who has outlived all of his contemporaries. Those who think me old and near dead will find the grave before me, do not doubt, and any who try to usurp me will need more than a single spell imparted through El-Viddenvelp to do so, even if that spell is inspired by the Spider Queen.”