R.A. Salvatore - Maestro

Kimmuriel started that way, but paused when he realized that Gromph wasn’t following him.

“You go,” the archmage said. “I’ve another I wish to speak with, and I know where to find her.”

He swept across the room then, veering left and never even looking back where the other architects of the new Hosttower had gathered.

A pair of dwarves stood blocking the door in front of him.

“Get out of my way,” he told them.

“He the one?” one asked the other.

“Aye, the stubborn one,” said the other, and they parted.

At the other end of the tunnel loomed the primordial chamber, and there, as expected, Gromph found Catti-brie. She stood at the edge of the pit, staring across at the area that held, beneath the cooled magma, the antechamber and the key lever.

Beside the woman lay several metal beams and cut stones, the ingredients for constructing a new bridge to the antechamber.

“You have wasted no time,” Gromph said.

“We have little to waste.” She didn’t seem surprised by his entrance, nor did she bother looking over at him as he approached.

“It seems that you have convinced the others.”

“They have decided nothing.”

“Good, then I will …”

Now Catti-brie did turn on him, her eyes narrowed, her face a mask of determination. “I will do this with or without them, and with or without you.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes, indeed.”

Once again, Drizzt awakened deep within himself, settled deeply into darkness. He wasn’t standing this time, he realized when the pain in his stretched joints began to register.

“At last,” he heard, the voice of a drow woman.

“You should have just left him for dead,” said another, whom he recognized as Matron Mother Quenthel.

“Oh shut up,” said the first, Yvonnel.

Drizzt felt something upon his belly then, square and solid. It was jostled about and he felt the bottom pulled out, then small feet and tiny claws moving back and forth excitedly. He opened his eyes, blinking repeatedly as he adjusted to the dim light of the room-of the dungeon, yet again, in House Baenre.

He groaned, in pain. While he wasn’t standing, neither was he actually lying down. He was on a rack, suspended by his ankles and wrists. He worked his shoulders, trying vainly to relieve some of the tension on his elbows, but the ties were simply too tight and his efforts only brought him more pain.

He did manage to lift his head a bit to see Yvonnel, Quenthel standing behind her, and to see the small box Yvonnel had placed upon his naked belly.

The bottomless one that held a rat.

“Ah, good, you have returned to us at last,” Yvonnel said to him and she moved up and leaned on the crank, and the rack pulled a tiny bit more.

Drizzt grimaced against the pain.

“I have your friends here,” she said happily. “Would you like to see?”

Drizzt closed his eyes and tried to send his thoughts far away.

“This is so much like the wheel of history returning to the same place anew, don’t you think?” Yvonnel said, and Drizzt was sure that he had no idea what she was babbling about. “As your actions doomed your father before, so now, one of your friends.”

Drizzt’s eyes popped open wide and he glared at her.

“But I will let you pick,” she said. “Which of your friends will satisfy my sacrifice? The human? He is an angry one, always so full of scowls. You’d be doing him a favor.”

“Damn you.”

“Of course,” she said. “Or the elf. She is quite crazy. She probably won’t even understand. Or shall I kill Jarlaxle? You would at least be repaying me, I expect, since that one is drow, and valuable to me. Do you have that in you, heretic, to turn my request against me?”

“You gave me your word,” Drizzt gasped, and his words came out unevenly-Yvonnel played with the wheel throughout his sentence.

“And so two will leave, and the third … I will make it an easy death. A simple beheading.”

“Damn you,” Drizzt said again, and he settled back and closed his eyes.

“Choose,” Yvonnel instructed.

He didn’t answer.

But then she was there, right above him, one knee up on his chest and pressing down, increasing his pain. He opened his eyes to find her face very near his own, and with one hand raised.

“I admire your bravery,” she said, and snapped her fingers. In her palm a small ball of fire flared to life.

Yvonnel kept her smile very close as she reached her hand down lower, and lit the rat box.

“You will choose,” she whispered.

Drizzt felt the creature scrambling within the box, the front claws digging against his flesh.

“Choose!” Yvonnel demanded.

“Take me!” Entreri shouted. “Let him go and take me, you witch.”

Drizzt opened his eyes and strained to see in the direction of the voice, and there was the cage of lightning, Entreri up near the bars, Jarlaxle beside him with a hand on his shoulder.

Yvonnel had turned away to regard them, too, and she began to laugh. “Shut up!” she commanded. When Entreri began to yell at her, she waved her hand and the cage faded away, and so, too, did his protests.

Yvonnel was back at Drizzt’s face, so close. “Choose,” she whispered.

He shook his head, growling and grinding his teeth against the pain of the rack and the claws of the terrified rat.

“It is all a lie anyway, Drizzt Do’Urden, as you know,” she said. “So why does it matter?” She leaned on his chest and his elbows and knees felt as if they would simply explode. “Why does anything matter more than stopping the pain? Pick a friend.”

“No!”

“Pick a friend!” she said more insistently.

The rat bit him hard and began to burrow.

“No!”

“Why? It is all a lie.”

“No.”

“It is! So choose.”

“No!”

“Then tell me, Drizzt Do’Urden,” she said, her voice going softer. “Before you die, tell me why. It is all a lie, so why will you not choose?”

Drizzt opened his eyes and looked into Yvonnel’s colorful amber orbs, fighting to maintain control as the rat burrowed.

“Because I am not a lie,” he insisted through gritted teeth.

Yvonnel fell back from him, the pressure of the rack easing, at least. She stared at him for a long heartbeat, her expression one of confusion, perhaps, or of disbelief.

“Get those three out of here,” she turned and told Quenthel, then spun back to stare at Drizzt, shaking her head with a crooked smile, as if she had just learned something.

She slapped the burning box and the rat off of him and cast a spell with a wave of her hand that pulled the locking pin from the rack crank. Drizzt fell heavily to his back, where he lay gasping, too broken to even pull his arms down.

Yvonnel fell over him once again, her face close.

“They are free, all three,” she whispered. She kissed him, and in that kiss was a spell of healing and of slumber. “Sleep well, hero,” she added as Drizzt faded back into welcomed blackness.

“Do what?” Gromph demanded. “Do you mean to clear that chamber and free the primordial?”

Catti-brie didn’t blink.

“You have forgotten Neverwinter?”

Again, no answer.

“You do not understand the power of this creature.”

“But I do.”

“Yet you mean to free it!”

“In a controlled-”

“You cannot control such a beast as this, fool!”

Catti-brie grinned. “Come,” she bade him.

He looked at her curiously, puzzled.

“I will allow you into my thoughts,” she explained, “where once you were comfortable. I will show you.”

Gromph made no move for a long while, then narrowed his amber eyes and projected his thoughts into the waiting mind of Catti-brie.