R.A. Salvatore - Maestro

On a sudden impulse, Catti-brie took out the onyx figurine of Guenhwyvar and called for the panther. She wanted Guenhwyvar to see this place, to know this place.

The gray mist became a black panther. Guenhwyvar went off her guard almost immediately, and Catti-brie was glad. The gentleness of this garden refuge she had created could not be denied-not even by the blood that had been spilled here. The sense of peace permeated the air and filled her nostrils, and so filled Guenhwyvar’s, too.

“Let me tell you a story, Guen,” Catti-brie said, sitting down among the flowers. “Of a little girl named Ruqiah and the wonderful friends she once knew.”

Guenhwyvar seemed to understand-of course she did!-and she settled in front of the woman, lying down and stretching, but never taking her large eyes or her attention from Catti-brie.

Sometime later, Catti-brie moved out from the rocks, and climbed atop a large one to afford herself a look over the land.

Shade Enclave, the grand floating city she had once called home, was no more-not up in the sky to the north, at least-indeed, not up in the sky at all. The magic had been stolen by the advent of the Sundering, and the great city and the floating stone upon which it sat had fallen from the sky to crash upon the ground.

Thousands had died in that cataclysm, so Kipper had told her-after Jarlaxle had explained it all to him, apparently. The carnage had been tremendous, both for those living in the floating city and those living on the ground in its shadow.

But they had not all died, and so up there, amid the broken stones and fallen towers, an enclave of Netherese remained, and thrived anew.

“Lord Parise Ulfbinder,” Catti-brie quietly muttered, and not for the first time, as she strove to commit that name to memory, or to search her own memories to try to recall anything she might have learned of the great man in her days in Shade Enclave.

He was alive, so Jarlaxle had relayed through Kipper, and it was up to Catti-brie to convince him to journey beside her back to Luskan.

A strong wind blew down from the north, carrying stinging sand. Catti-brie pulled her black cloak tighter about her as a shield. Then she pulled it tighter still, so much so that its magic began to tingle all around her, as she and the cloak became as one.

The woman-turned-crow leaped off and spread her wings, the strong winds lifting her higher and higher.

She beat her wings and bucked the headwinds, making her way to what remained of Shade Enclave, and looking, too, for something else, for somewhere else.

For a home more dear.

Whois this maestro, this puppet master, pulling the strings of so many marionettes?

Including my own!

Jarlaxle’s maneuvers reach far into the shadows and involve great powers-and these are merely the plots of which I am aware. No doubt he reaches much farther still, to the darkest shadows of Menzoberranzan, to the heart of dragonkind, to the hive-mind of the illithids, to places I can only imagine, or dream rather, in my worst nightmares.

Who is he to wrangle together my wife, the Harpells, a thousand dwarves, and the Archmage of Menzoberranzan in an effort to resurrect a structure of such ancient power?

Who is he to secretly control the city of Luskan, through great deception and great hidden power?

Who is he to goad me and Artemis Entreri to Menzoberranzan, to rescue Dahlia, to assault House Do’Urden and thus invoke the wrath of the Matron Mother of the City of Spiders?

Who is he to convince Matron Mother Zeerith of House Xorlarrin to surrender Gauntlgrym to Bruenor?

Who is he to bring dragons onto the field of battle in the Silver Marches?

Who is this maestro, turning the wheels of Faerun, playing the music of fate to the ears of all who would listen?

I call him a friend and yet I cannot begin to decipher the truth of this most interesting and dangerous drow. He moves armies with silent commands, coerces alliances with promises of mutual benefit, and engages the most unlikely companions into willing adventures that seem suicidal.

He elicits a measure of trust that goes beyond reason-and indeed, often runs headlong against reason.

And yet, here I am, walking the ways of the Underdark beside Jarlaxle and Artemis Entreri, bound for the city of my birth, where I am perhaps the greatest fugitive from Lolth’s damning injustice. If I am caught in Menzoberranzan, I will never see Catti-brie or Bruenor or the sunlit world again. If Matron Mother Baenre finds me, she will turn my two legs into eight and torment me as a drider for the rest of my wretched life. If Tiago and his allies discover me, he will surely deliver my head to the matron mother.

And here I walk, willingly, to that possible fate.

I cannot deny my debt to Jarlaxle. Would we have won in the Silver Marches had he not arrived with Brother Afafrenfere, Ambergris, and the dragon sisters? Perhaps, but the cost would have been much greater.

Would Bruenor have won out in Gauntlgrym had Jarlaxle not convinced Matron Mother Zeerith to flee? Likely, yes, but again only with horrific cost.

Could we rebuild the Hosttower of the Arcane, and thus preserve the magic that fuels Gauntlgrym’s forges, and indeed, contain the violence that would blast the complex to rubble, without the efforts of Jarlaxle and his band of rogue dark elves? I find that very unlikely. Perhaps Catti-brie, Gromph, and the others will not succeed now in this momentous endeavor, but at least now, because of Jarlaxle, we have a chance.

None of us, not even Gromph, can deny our debt to the maestro.

I must admit, to myself if no one else, that there is more driving me now than that simple debt I know I owe to Jarlaxle. I feel a responsibility to Dahlia to at least try to help her in her desperate need, particularly when Jarlaxle, ever the clever one, assures me that we can somehow manage this rescue. And so, too, do I feel that responsibility to Artemis Entreri. Perhaps I will never call him “friend,” but I believe that if the situation was reversed, that if it was Catti-brie trapped down there, he would venture with me to rescue her.

Why in the Nine Hells would I believe that?

I have no answer, but there it remains.

Jarlaxle has hinted, too, that all of this is connected to a higher goal, from the defeat of the drow and their orc minions in the Silver Marches to the taking of Gauntlgrym to the surrender of Matron Mother Zeerith to the rebuilding of the Hosttower to the rescue of Dahlia.

Bruenor’s Gauntlgrym is Jarlaxle’s buffer to Luskan, allowing him a refuge for male drow, and one housing the former Archmage of Menzoberranzan in a tower to rival the power of Sorcere. Jarlaxle’s treachery against Matron Mother Baenre in the Silver Marches facilitated not only a rebuke of the high priestesses of Menzoberranzan, but a stinging rebuke of the Spider Queen herself. And so, too, will the web of Matron Mother Baenre be unwound when Dahlia is taken from her grasp.

And Jarlaxle uses me-he has admitted as much-as a beacon to those drow males oppressed by the suffocating discrimination of the female disciples of Lady Lolth. I escaped, and thrived-that is my heresy.

Matron Mother Baenre proved that point all too well when she reconstituted House Do’Urden, and tried to use that banner to destroy my reputation among the people who had come to accept me in the Silver Marches. I am not arrogant enough to believe that I was the only reason for Menzoberranzan’s assault on the Silver Marches, but in so absurdly trying to stamp my name and my coat of arms upon the invasion, the drow priestess tipped Lolth’s hand for all to see.