The smugness of her expression and tone brought Matron Mother Mez’Barris full circle. “You have not explained the presence of High Priestess Sos’Umptu,” she said, just hoping to take some of that arrogance away.
Matron Mother Baenre straightened in her seat. “Today I renounce my position as Mistress of Arach-Tinilith,” she said, and that had the other six matron mothers sitting up and taking notice indeed. Quenthel’s sister Triel had broken tradition by keeping that title even after ascending to lead House Baenre, and Quenthel, after succeeding Triel, had helped secure this dual power as the new tradition. That she would willingly abdicate it, that she would give up such power, seemed truly astounding.
The others began whispering and exchanging looks all around, but Mez’Barris sat back in her chair and spent the moment considering the possibilities. Unlike many of the others, Mez’Barris wasn’t as bothered by Triel Baenre’s power grab, nor with Quenthel Baenre’s insistence on keeping the dual titles. To Mez’Barris’s reasoning, Mistress of Arach-Tinilith was more a ceremonial title than anything else, since the power structures within that web of intrigue shifted continually. And to have Matron Mother Baenre, this one or the previous, with her attention diverted away from the Ruling Council, could only be a good thing.
Perhaps Quenthel had realized the same.
“And your sister …” Matron Mother Zhindia started.
“High Priestess Sos’Umptu Baenre,” the matron mother quickly corrected. “Mistress of the Fane of the Goddess, First Priestess of House Baenre, Matron Mother of House Do’Urden until this very day.”
“Your sister,” Zhindia insisted.
“Sister of the Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan, then,” Baenre agreed, turning the notion right around. “Another impressive title, would you agree?”
Zhindia’s eyes flared threateningly, but she fell back in her seat.
“So you ask the council to vote on this appointment of Sos’Umptu Baenre to serve as Mistress of Arach-Tinilith?” Matron Mother Byrtyn Fey of House Fey-Branche, the Fifth House of Menzoberranzan.
Mez’Barris sat up and took note of that remark, and realized that it had been rehearsed. Quenthel had arranged for Byrtyn to introduce the formal notion, knowing full well that she had already secured the votes of all the others, excluding Zhindia, of course, and Mez’Barris.
“More than that,” Matron Mother Vadalma Tlabbar added. “Matron Mother Baenre is, I believe, asking us to vote for a seat on the council for High Priestess Sos’Umptu, who has served Lolth so well by creating the Fane of the Goddess.”
Gasps could be heard in the council chamber, but only from Zhindia Melarn and Mez’Barris herself.
So there it was, Mez’Barris realized, the complete domination of the Ruling Council by Quenthel Baenre. And now so much more was coming clear to her. Zeerith Xorlarrin, were she still on the council and still within the city, would never have agreed to such a move as Vadalma had just, by design, brought forth. Zeerith and Mez’Barris would have defeated such a proposal before it could have ever been brought forth. Eight was the number of the Spider Queen, not nine.
But Vadalma Tlabbar, now seated as Matron Mother of the Third House, was in debt to House Baenre. More than a century before, House Faen Tlabbar had been attacked by the upstart Oblodrans, and Matron Mother Yvonnel Baenre, Quenthel’s mother, had utterly destroyed the Oblodrans.
And now, to add to that debt, Quenthel had conveniently rid the city of the Xorlarrins—and to her benefit in that regard, as well—thus elevating House Faen Tlabbar to the coveted position of Third House, and, in the same move, had removed Faen Tlabbar’s greatest rival, the Xorlarrins.
Only a short while back, Mez’Barris had heard rumors of a quiet alliance developing between House Faen Tlabbar and House Melarn, perhaps the two most fanatically devout Houses in the city.
No more, though, clearly, and the anger was not well-hidden on the face of Zhindia Melarn.
Quenthel Baenre’s victory was complete. Quenthel would win the appointment of Sos’Umptu to lead Arach-Tinilith, and by extension, the Academy, and would put a ninth chair on the Ruling Council for her sister.
Could she have done anything more to prove to Mez’Barris Armgo and Zhindia Melarn that resistance was futile?
Matron Mother Mez’Barris got an answer to that question soon after the vote confirming the ninth council seat, when Mistress Sos’Umptu, in her last act as Matron Mother of House Do’Urden, introduced her replacement, leading a surface elf named Dahlia into the chamber for confirmation.
A surface elf!
Matron Mother Darthiir Do’Urden.
The magical gate at the appointed spot in the black bowels of House Do’Urden flickered to life, and with a glance over his shoulder, the Bregan D’aerthe warrior quietly slipped through, traveling back to Luskan.
This time, though, the door remained open just a bit longer, and a pair of dark elves came through the other way.
“It is strange,” Beniago said as Kimmuriel closed the gate, “but I am less comfortable in this, my natural form, than in the guise of a human.”
Kimmuriel Oblodra gave him a sidelong glance, but otherwise did not respond. He was sure that Beniago Baenre’s discomfort could not begin to compare with his own, for he did not like returning to this city—ever.
Kimmuriel’s House and family had been obliterated by Matron Mother Yvonnel Baenre in the Time of Troubles, and while the cerebral Kimmuriel had no affection for, and therefore no resentment regarding, the loss of his family, he knew that in this place, he could never find security, or be left in peace to his studies. If discovered by any of the powers that be, he would be used either as an offering to Lolth or a bargaining piece in some subterfuge between rival Houses.
He found neither proposition very appealing.
“We should have brought Jarlaxle to Luskan to meet with us,” Beniago offered as they moved into the more inhabited sections of the newly-formed House, many curious stares falling over them from dark elves who were not of their mercenary band.
“Jarlaxle is being watched closely. His absence would be noted.”
He is sending through a mercenary every day, Beniago protested, using the drow sign language so that he was not heard. And replacing veterans with Houseless rogues he is pulling from the dregs of the city.
Kimmuriel returned an incredulous look, silently asking why anyone would even care, and Beniago backed away from the argument.
They found Jarlaxle soon after, in a fabulously decorated room he had taken as his own. He looked up from the flesh of the young female he was bedding, his face brightening at the sight of his partner and their top lieutenant.
That hopeful smile became a look of concern quickly, however, for what issue could coax Kimmuriel to return to Menzoberranzan? Nothing good, likely.
Jarlaxle leaped up from the mass of pillows and limbs on the bed—enough limbs showing among the pillows for Kimmuriel and Beniago to realize that there was more than one other drow buried under there.
“Another room?” Kimmuriel both asked and ordered as Jarlaxle pulled on his trousers and then, still naked from the waist up, plopped atop his head his gigantic wide-brimmed hat with its garish diatryma feather.
“For you?” Jarlaxle replied. “Anything.” And he led them from the bed, where the pillows continued to roll and bounce around, to a small door that led into a more formal study, and one that Jarlaxle had turned into an office.
Kimmuriel entered last, psionically waving behind him to slam the door shut. “There is news from the surface—from the higher Underdark, actually—that I thought might be of interest to you,” the psionicist said.
“Important news, I would surmise, to bring the two of you here,” Jarlaxle replied, fishing through the drawers of his desk until he at last found a blousy white shirt he could pull on. “News that will draw me from the boredom of this place, I pray.”
“You did not appear very bored,” Beniago quipped, glancing back at the door.
Jarlaxle shrugged. “Even that in too great abundance …” he lamented.
“You will want to leave,” Kimmuriel assured him, “though how you might facilitate that is your concern, not mine.” He looked to Beniago and bade him to explain.
“Drizzt Do’Urden has returned,” Beniago began. “And with his great friends of old. They paid a visit to Q’Xorlarrin to free Artemis Entreri from the clutches of Matron Mother Zeerith’s children.”
Despite his discipline and determination to never tip his hand, Jarlaxle was already leaning forward, his mouth agape.
Beniago continued, divulging all that he had learned of the capture of Entreri and the others, and the daring rescue by Drizzt and his friends, including the murder of Berellip Xorlarrin. He had just relayed the fate of Dahlia, dead under a cave-in, when there came a knock on the door.
Jarlaxle motioned the others to a far corner, behind a screen and bade the knocker to enter. In walked one of Bregan D’aerthe’s most promising young scouts, Braelin Janquay. He followed Jarlaxle’s gaze and nod, then hesitated when he noted the unexpected visitors coming out from around the dressing screen.
“High Captain?” he asked, for rarely had he seen Beniago in his natural drow state.
“I’ve not the time for formalities,” Kimmuriel intervened. “What do you want?”
The Bregan D’aerthe scout swallowed hard and reported. “The city is in uproar. Matron Mother Baenre has announced her choice to serve as the Matron Mother of House Do’Urden.”
“I will prefer it, in any case, if it gets that wretched Sos’Umptu out of this House,” Jarlaxle quipped.
“Darthiir,” Braelin said, using the drow word for their hated surface elven cousins, and the clever grin disappeared from Jarlaxle’s face. “Matron Mother Darthiir Do’Urden, an elf,” Braelin clarified, and paused and locked eyes with Jarlaxle as he explained further, “An elf named Dahlia.”
Few things could render Jarlaxle speechless. He was quite old, and had lived a life of twists and turns beyond what most drow families would know throughout several generations.
This, though, had him quietly sliding down into his chair behind his desk, his mind whirling as he tried to sort out the implications of any of this. He looked to Kimmuriel more than once, but the stoic psionicist offered nothing.
After many moments of uncomfortable silence, for Jarlaxle, who had history with Dahlia, could not begin to figure out what this might mean for him, the mercenary leader turned to Kimmuriel once more. Hadn’t Kimmuriel and Beniago just told him that Dahlia had been slain? So many questions bounced around in Jarlaxle’s thoughts at that confusing moment, but one notion overrode them all.
“I must be away from this place,” he decided.
“As if my day could get worse,” Jarlaxle lamented a short while later, when Tiago Baenre and Saribel stormed into House Do’Urden.
“Oh, it will,” the brash young warrior assured him.
“Should I bother to ask what that might mean? Or are you just in a foul mood of your own because Gromph pulled you from a battlefield where you could impress yourself by killing weaklings?”
It took a moment for Tiago to unwind that remark, but when he did, his eyes narrowed and his sword hand went to the hilt of his fabulous weapon. He even jerked Jarlaxle’s way just a bit, attempting to elicit a flinch from the mercenary leader.
Jarlaxle stifled a yawn.
“You do not even realize that your day is past, do you?” Tiago said. “A new era has dawned on Toril and a new generation of great drow will rise, led by me.”
“And yet, here you are, by the power of the oldest drow in the city and to the call of the matron mother,” Jarlaxle replied. “A weapons master in a House that barely finds a seat on the Ruling Council. Your claim of greatness rings hollow.”
Tiago’s eyes narrowed again and his jaw clenched, and Jarlaxle knew that the violent upstart was fantasizing about killing him then.
“Fear not, however,” Jarlaxle goaded, “for one day, should House Do’Urden fail, perhaps I will find a place for you in my band. But then, perhaps not.”
He turned to go, but Tiago made a strange little sound that pulled him back around, to see the young warrior’s face shifting through a range of emotions, from anger to confusion to a look of dread.
Yes, Jarlaxle knew, his fantasy was playing out in his thoughts, an imagined duel with Jarlaxle. And now, poor Tiago was seeing his own death at Jarlaxle’s hands.
Archmage Gromph Baenre came into the room then, jolting Tiago back into the present. The archmage stared at the brash young weapons master briefly, noting his unsettled look, then turned an accusing eye on Jarlaxle, who held his hands up innocently.
“How long am I to be imprisoned here?” Tiago demanded.
“An odd choice of words for a weapons master of a noble House,” Gromph replied.
“Weapons master?” Tiago echoed incredulously. “I should be leading the armies in the Silver Marches to glorious victory. And only then, after the glory, should I take my rightful place as Weapons Master of House Baenre.”
“Matron Mother Quenthel favors Andzrel for that position in House Baenre, it would seem,” Jarlaxle quipped, for no better reason that to anger Tiago.
To his credit, Tiago didn’t even glance the mercenary’s way.
“I should not have come,” Tiago insisted.
“I didn’t give you a choice,” said Gromph.
Now it was Gromph’s turn to see the threatening stare of the impudent whelp. Yes, Jarlaxle was enjoying this, particularly the way Tiago soon shrank back.
A withering smile spread across Gromph’s face, like a crack in the facing of a glacier right before a pile of cold death buried the helpless witness.
Tiago swallowed hard.
“That war was mine to win,” he declared.
“That war is only your concern if the matron mother says it is your concern,” Gromph calmly corrected. “You duty is here now, and so here you are.”
“I have ridden a dragon!” Tiago protested.
“I have eaten a dragon,” Gromph replied.
I have slept with a dragon—two! Jarlaxle thought, but did not say, though he couldn’t avoid a grin at the pleasant memory of the wonderful copper dragon sisters, Tazmikella and Ilnezhara.
He thought he was about to witness a pleasant memory right then, too, for Gromph was surely about to put Tiago in his place, but then, to his surprise and to the surprise of Gromph, the harsh words came from another source.
“Stand down and shut up,” Saribel said to Tiago, pushing in front of him and jabbing her finger into his chest.
He stared at her incredulously, beautifully so.
“First you insult Jarlaxle of Bregan D’aerthe and now dare question the archmage?” she yelled in his face. “Learn your place, fool, or I will be a widow by my own hand.”
Tiago continued to stare at her with the most dumbfounded expression. “You?” he managed to stutter.
Saribel laughed at him. “Oh indeed, you held the upper hand, and so you enjoyed it,” she said. “For the sake of my family, and for respect of House Baenre, I granted you that.”
“Granted?” he asked, and he looked to Gromph for support.
But none came.
“I am Baenre now, have you forgotten?” Saribel said. “I am named as the High Priestess of House Do’Urden, but also a noble priestess of the families of Baenre and Xorlarrin. And you? You are just a male.”
Gromph smiled and Jarlaxle laughed aloud.
Saribel snapped a glare over the mercenary. “As are you,” she warned.
“Oh, do not make that mistake,” Gromph quietly told her, and she wisely focused her ire back on Tiago. She held up her left hand, the hand he had clasped in their ceremony of marriage.
“I am Baenre,” she said. “Of your own making. Were you to undo that, then Tiago and not Saribel would be cast aside by the First House.”
Tiago looked to Gromph, who merely shrugged.
&nbs
p; “She has a point,” Jarlaxle had to remark.
“And now you are both Do’Urden,” the archmage reminded. “Brought here to prepare the House for the coming of the new matron mother. If you are done wasting my time, do be on about your duties.”
“You need to get me out of here,” Jarlaxle told Gromph as soon as the happy couple left the room.
“Because of your history with Dahlia?” he asked.
“More than that,” Jarlaxle replied. “There are great happenings in the world above. Bregan D’aerthe …”
“Is capably led by your companion Kimmuriel,” Gromph interrupted, and he nodded at the grand tapestry hanging on the far wall, behind which “secretly” stood the psionicist.
“These are matters politic, of which Kimmuriel has little interest or understanding,” Jarlaxle replied, and he was not surprised that Gromph knew of Kimmuriel’s presence, even though Kimmuriel was psionically hidden as well as out of physical sight. Jarlaxle had long ago stopped being surprised by the things his older brother knew.
“Archmage,” Jarlaxle pleaded, “do you see the possible gains here?”
“Gains for which I care little.”
“Even gains to the city?”
“Especially to the city.”
It was true enough, Jarlaxle knew. All Gromph wanted was to be left alone … or perhaps …
“You enjoy the presence of Methil,” Jarlaxle said. “You are glad that the illithid is returned to us.”
“He is a useful tool.”
Jarlaxle was shaking his head, staring slyly at his brother. “No, it is more than that,” he said. “You have conquered the mysteries of Mystra’s Weave—are there any spells left to learn which might interest you?”
“You should not refer to the web of magic in such a way in Lolth’s city,” Gromph reminded dryly. “Not at this time.”
Jarlaxle nodded, conceding the point, for the Spider Queen, was, after all, trying to steal the domain of magic.