Maestro Read Free Page A

beast had torn down the gates and walls of several houses, including two of the ranking Houses with matron mothers sitting on the Ruling Council.
    And Demogorgon had dug a trench, for no apparent reason other than he could, halfway across the city and back—to this very exit into the wilds of the Underdark.
    Many drow had been slain on the beast’s journey, Demogorgon’s massive tentacles whipping out to grasp unfortunate dark elves, wrenching them in to be devoured or hurling them halfway across the city to splatter into a stalagmite or stalactite. Many others had clawed their own eyes out, driven mad by the gaze of the godlike demon.
    All because of Gromph.
    Quenthel could barely contain her growl.
    “There were greater demons than the manes and balgura out in the caverns,”
    Sos’Umptu informed her, something Quenthel had already suspected. “Your priestesses spied them?”
    “Lurking beyond the circular cavern, yes.”
    “Named beasts?”
    Sos’Umptu nodded. “Beasts recognized, yes.”
    “And?”
    “The spells of banishment failed,” Sos’Umptu admitted. Quenthel stopped her march and stared hard at the priestess.
    Sos’Umptu could only shrug.
    “You should have been out there among the priestesses,” Quenthel said, her voice betraying great concern.
    “There were many high priestesses positioned in that cavern,”
    Sos’Umptu replied with her typical lack of discernable emotion. “Their spells are as potent as my own. Though they knew the demonic names, they could not banish the beasts.”
    “They erred in identifying—”
    “No,” Sos’Umptu dared to interrupt. “It is as we feared, Matron Mother. The barrier of the Faerzress itself has been harmed. The demons cannot be banished.”
    Quenthel turned away, staring instead at the looming compound of House Baenre, her face showing that she was trying to process this startling and dangerous news.
    “But we can kill them,” Sos’Umptu offered. “When we return to your chambers, I will bring forth a magical divination of the circular cavern where the battle was primarily waged. You will see, Matron Mother. The beasts are piled many deep—empty, destroyed husks.”
    Quenthel looked at her incredulously.
    “We won!” Sos’Umptu said, and she did a fair job of acting as though she cared. “A glorious victory! Few of our children of Menzoberranzan were wounded, fewer still killed, and the demon horde is piled high in death.” Quenthel’s expression became very slightly more incredulous. “A thousand Abyssal creatures dead, do you think?” Quenthel asked. “Perhaps twice that,” Sos’Umptu replied.
    “My dear Sos’Umptu, they are demons. Do you think the Abyss will run out?”
    An exhausted Minolin Fey walked into the nursery in her private quarters at House Baenre. She faltered immediately and nearly fell over, seeing a young woman standing over Yvonnel’s small bed “Who . . . ?” she started to ask, but stopped, her eyes going wide, as the woman—likely not yet twenty years of age—turned and flashed her a perfectly smug and wicked smile.
    “You do not approve, Mother?” the girl, who was indeed Yvonnel, asked. “How?”
    “It is a simple spell, though an old one,” Yvonnel explained. “A version of a haste dweomer employed by wizards in the days before the Spellplague, before the Time of Troubles, even. A wonderful spell, speeding the movements and attacks of the recipient, but one that came with the unfortunate—or in this case, fortunate—side effect of aging the recipient as if a year had passed.”
    Minolin Fey was only half-listening to the explanation. She was caught by the sheer beauty of this creature in front of her. Sheer beauty, she knew, beyond anything she could have imagined. Painful beauty; to look upon Yvonnel was to despair because one could not be so beautiful as she. Her skin glowed with smoothness, like satin and steel woven as one, delicate yet impossibly strong. Her soft touch could ignite every