Archmage Read Free

though, along with the death of a white dragon and the destruction of Lady Lolth’s Darkening, could lead to all sorts of trouble. She worried that Matron Mother Mez’Barris would throw in with Houses Hunzrin and Melarn, and so House Baenre would face all three in defending Q’Xorlarrin. If so, then surely the Seventh House of Menzoberranzan, House Vandree, would side with the conspirators.
    Matron Mother Baenre believed that the rest of the Ruling Council was on her side, but would they pledge allegiance to her openly, with warriors, priests, and wizards?
    And these were drow Houses, after all, known for reliability only in the fact that they could not be considered reliable. These bonds were not alliances as much as they were compacts of convenience, and Quenthel had turned the thumbscrews down hard on the other matron mothers, both in her actions in the Silver Marches and in the reestablishment of House Do’Urden—and, of course, in appointing a darthiir , a surface elf, as the matron mother of that Eighth House.
    Matron Mother Baenre had pushed them all to the edge, had slapped them all in the face, to demonstrate her superiority and thus put them in line. And it had worked thus far, but now, in the aftermath of the fall of the Silver Marches to the previous powers there, would be the critical time.
    “But it was always to be like this,” she told herself, pushing aside the defeat of the Darkening and the death of a white dragon—and the defeat of Tiamat’s ultimate plan.
    Quenthel nodded and closed her eyes. She was Matron Mother Baenre. Lolth was still with her, she believed. And she felt it then, warmly.
    She had tugged the whole of Menzoberranzan into her iron grip, as Lolth had demanded of her.
    But how to keep them there in this dangerous and uncertain time?
    Quenthel closed her eyes and fell deep into meditation, deep into the memories she now held that were not her own. The memories of her mother, Yvonnel the Eternal, that had been telepathically imparted to her by the squirming tentacles of the mind flayer who had served as her mother’s closest advisor, those were the memories she considered now.
    She saw Menzoberranzan, then, in a light as never before. The great cavern housing the city appeared more natural, far less shaped by drow craftsmen, far less highlighted by drow illumination, like the faerie fire outlining the great houses or the glow of Narbondel, the heat-clock.
    She knew that she was seeing the earliest days of the city, tumultuous, yet only built and settled in pockets.
    In this atmosphere had House Baenre become ascendant. In this time of potential had House Baenre realized it most of all.
    She saw the drow.
    She saw the demons.
    So many demons! Scores of them, from the worthless manes, the fodder of the Abyss, to the great glabrezu, marilith, nalfeshnee, and even mighty balors. They wandered the streets, rampaging, feasting, engaging in orgies with the drow, engaging in battles with the drow, engaging in whatever impulse crossed their chaotic and destructive desires.
    There was chaos, truly!
    But it was superficial, Matron Mother Baenre realized, like a series of bar fights in a city full of overlords and armies.
    And that superficial chaos was enough. The demons caused enough grief, enough trouble, enough chaos, to keep the lesser Houses fully occupied. They could not align and plot against ascendant House Baenre with demons literally knocking on their doors.
    Matron Mother Baenre watched in amusement as her borrowed memories revealed a balor in battle with a band of insectoid chasme.
    The demons were no threat to the greater Houses of the city, even then, in Menzoberranzan’s fledgling days. Never could they coordinate enough within their own ranks to pose any significant threat to the order of Menzoberranzan, an order being imposed by House Baenre and House Fey-Branche.
    But the demons, so thick about the city, had surely kept the lesser matron mothers busy with thoughts of