R.A. Salvatore - Maestro

Drizzt couldn’t resist. He drew an arrow from his quiver, set it to the string of Taulmaril and let fly, the missile drawing a silver line down the corridor before exploding in a torrent of sparks against the far wall, where the passageway bent to the side.

The report of the blast echoed, and in those rocky grumbles came the shriek of demons.

“Well played,” Artemis Entreri remarked. “Perhaps you might shoot the next one straight up above us, to collapse the tunnel upon our heads and save the demons you alerted the trouble of rending us apart.”

“Or perhaps I will simply shoot you so that I am less inclined to so readily accept death,” Drizzt returned, and he sprinted off ahead to meet the charge.

Unused to being insulted, Entreri looked to Jarlaxle for support, but the mercenary just drew Khazid’hea and a wand, offered a wink, and came back with, “He has a point.”

The room of Divination in House Baenre was among the most marvelous of constructs in all of Menzoberranzan. In this dark city knowledge was power. Mirrors lined three walls, the fourth being the massive mithral door, which gleamed almost as reflectively as the mirrors. The apparatuses holding the mirrors were set several strides from each other all along the way, but were bolted to metal poles running floor to ceiling, and not to the wall. Each apparatus held three mirrors, set on iron hangers, edge-to-edge-to-edge, forming a tall, narrow triangle.

In the center of the room sat a stoup of white marble, a round bench encircling it. Dark, still water filled the bowl. Deep blue sapphires were set in its thick rim, the angle of their reflection making the water within seem wider, as if it continued far under the rim, beyond sight, beyond the bench.

In a manner, it did.

Yvonnel gracefully stepped over the bench and sat facing the water. She motioned for K’yorl to sit opposite her.

The battered prisoner, so long tortured in the Abyss, hesitated.

With a sigh, Yvonnel waved to Minolin Fey, and the priestess forcefully pushed K’yorl into place on the bench.

“Put your hands up here on the rim,” Yvonnel told the psionicist, and when K’yorl hesitated, Minolin Fey moved to strike her.

“No!” Yvonnel scolded the priestess.

Minolin Fey fell back a step in shock.

“No,” Yvonnel said more calmly. “No, there is no need. K’yorl will come to understand. Leave us.”

“She is dangerous, Mistress,” Minolin Fey replied, using the title Yvonnel had instructed them all to use now, for Quenthel remained, to outside eyes at least, as Matron Mother of House Baenre.

“Do not be a fool,” Yvonnel said with a laugh. She looked into K’yorl Odran’s eyes, her grin disappearing, her own eyes flaring with threat. “You do not wish to be cast back into Errtu’s pit.”

The psionicist gave a little whimper at that.

“Now,” Yvonnel said slowly and evenly, “place your hands on the rim.”

The woman did as instructed. Yvonnel nodded at Minolin Fey to dismiss her, and the priestess hurried away.

“I do not wish to punish you-ever,” Yvonnel explained to K’yorl when they were alone. “I will not ask much of you, but what I ask, I demand. Obey my commands and you will find no further torture. You may even purchase your freedom, once we are truly in agreement, mind and soul.”

The psionicist barely looked up and seemed not to register the soothing words or the dangled carrot. She had heard it all before, Yvonnel assumed, and likely a thousand times during her time in the Abyss. Unlike Errtu, though, Yvonnel meant it, and she would convince K’yorl soon enough. After all, the psionicist was going to be in her thoughts, where deception was nearly impossible.

“Together we are going to find Kimmuriel,” Yvonnel explained.

She put her hands on top of K’yorl’s and uttered a command word. The rim of the bowl became less than solid, and the hands sank into the white marble, melded with the stoup. Yvonnel felt K’yorl’s terrified tug, but she wouldn’t let go. She had placed enhancements of strength upon herself in anticipation of exactly this, and the psionicist might as well have been tugging against a giant.

All around them, the mirrored apparatuses began to turn. The torches lighting the room went out and were replaced by a bluish glow emanating from the sapphires set in the rim of the stoup.

“You know Kimmuriel,” Yvonnel whispered. “Find him again, but this time through the divination of the scrying pool. Let your mind magic flow into it, but do not send forth your thoughts to Kimmuriel unaccompanied by this scrying magic! Now, send forth your thoughts, K’yorl, Matron Mother of House Oblodra.” She felt the psionicist tense up at the mention of the doomed House, and Yvonnel knew that reference would soon enough come to be her greatest weapon.

It took a long, long while-out in the cavern, the light of Narbondel diminished by half-but finally, Yvonnel felt her own thoughts going forth, following K’yorl’s psionic call. They were joined by the magic of the stoup, their minds in perfect harmony, and Yvonnel could hardly contain her delight at that realization. The stoup had been built for Baenre priestesses, of course, so they could join in ritual scrying. Quenthel and Sos’Umptu both had insisted that Yvonnel’s plan would not work here, that the stoup would not accept K’yorl’s mind magic.

But they were wrong.

Through K’yorl’s thoughts, Yvonnel could see the cavern in the waters of the stoup and reflected at every angle in the mirrors. She felt K’yorl’s regrets then, particularly when they neared the Clawrift, wherein House Oblodra had been cast.

It proved to be too much for the fallen matron mother, and her mind-sight failed, casting her and Yvonnel back into the room.

The water cleared to still darkness.

The lights brightened, the torches reignited.

Yvonnel sat staring at K’yorl, their hands still joined within the marble.

K’yorl tried to recoil. She had failed and expected punishment, Yvonnel clearly saw.

“Wonderful!” the daughter of Gromph congratulated. “In one attempt, your vision fled the boundaries of this room! Did you feel it, Matron Mother K’yorl? The freedom?”

Gradually, the other woman’s expression began to change; Yvonnel could feel her hands relaxing.

“I did not expect that you would get out of the room on our first session,” Yvonnel explained. “Next time we will go farther.” She pulled her hands out of the stoup, taking K’yorl’s with her, and the rim appeared undisturbed.

“We will find him,” Yvonnel said confidently.

Kimmuriel? she heard in her thoughts, the first time K’yorl had communicated directly to her.

“Yes. Yes, and soon,” Yvonnel promised-promised K’yorl and herself.

“Are we to be fighting these beasts all the way to Menzoberranzan?” Entreri demanded two days later, when the trio had found yet another cluster of Abyssal beasts. The assassin slipped a quick side-step to avoid the overhead swing of a gigantic hammer, then stepped in quickly, Charon’s Claw easily and beautifully sliding into the balgura’s thick chest. The magnificent sword slowed when the blade hit a thick rib, the blade too fine to be chipped or snagged. Entreri’s sigh revealed his pleasure at the power of the weapon. He hated this sword profoundly, but he could not deny its utility and craftsmanship.

Balgura blood flowed along the trough in the red blade, pouring over the demon’s torso.

Entreri didn’t merely retract the weapon. So confident was he in the power of Charon’s Claw, he tore it out to the side, through skin and bone, leaving the dying demon nearly cut in half.

And this was a balgura, massively thick and heavy-boned.

“Do you truly believe I mean to walk all that way?” Jarlaxle replied with a laugh, and he too put his newly acquired sword to use. Khazid’hea decapitated one manes as Jarlaxle began his slash, bringing the vorpal blade across to cut deeply into a second enemy. “Your lack of faith disappoints me.”