Homeland (The Legend of Drizzt #1)(16)

Zak nearly snickered at Malice’s choice of words. “Matron Malice Do’Urden,” came a magical voice from the disk, “Matron Baenre offers her greetings. Too long has it been since last you two have sat in audience.”

“Never,” Malice signaled to Zak. “Then take me to House Baenre!” Malice demanded. “I do not wish to waste my time conversing with a magical mouth!” Apparently, Matron Baenre had anticipated Malice’s impatience, for without another word, the disk floated back out of the Do’Urden com. pound.

Zak shut the gate as it left, then quickly signaled his soldiers into motion. Malice did not want any open company, but the Do’Urden spy network would covertly track every movement of the Baenre sled, to the very gates of the ruling house’s grand compound.

Malice’s guess about an escort was correct. As soon as the disk swept down from the pathway to the Do’Urden compound, twenty soldiers of House Baenre, all female, moved out from concealment along the sides of the boulevard. They formed a defensive diamond around the guest matron mother. The guard at each point of the formation wore black robes emblazoned on the back with large purple-and-red spider design-the robes of a high priestess.

“Baenre’s own daughters,” Malice mused, for only the daughters of a noble could attain such a rank. How careful the First Matron Mother had been to ensure Malice’s safety on the trip!

Slaves and drow commoners tripped over themselves in a frantic effort to get far out of the way of the approaching entourage as the group made its way through the curving streets toward the mushroom grove. The soldiers of House Baenre alone wore their house insignia in open view, and no one wanted to invoke the anger of Matron Baenre in any way.

Malice just rolled her eyes in disbelief and hoped that she might know such power before she died.

She rolled her eyes again a few minutes later, when the group approached the ruling house. House Baenre encompassed twenty tall and majestic stalagmites, all interconnected with gracefully sweeping and arching bridges and parapets. Magic and faerie fire glowed from a thousand separate sculptures and a hundred regally adorned guardsmen paced about in perfect formations.

Even more striking were the inverse structures, the thirty smaller stalactites of House Baenre. They hung down from the ceiling of the cavern, their roots lost in the high darkness. Some of them connected tip-to-tip with the stalagmite mounds, while others hung freely like poised spears. Ringing balconies, curving up like the edging of a screw, had been built along the length of all of these, glowing with an overabundance of magic and highlighted design.

Magic, too, was the fence that connected the bases of the outer stalagmites, encircling the whole of the compound. It was a giant web, silver against the general blue of the rest of the outer compound. Some said it had been a gift from Lloth herself, with iron-strong strands as thick as a drow elf’s arm.

A nything touching Baenre’s fence, even the sharpest of drow weapons, would simply stick fast until the matron mother willed the fence to let it free.

Malice and her escorts moved straight toward a symmetrical and circular section of this fence, between the tallest of the outer towers. As they neared, the gate spiraled and wound out, leaving a gap large enough for the caravan to step through.

Malice sat through it all, trying to appear unimpressed. Hundreds of curious soldiers watched the procession as it made its way to the central structure of House Baenre, the great purple-glowing chapel dome. The common soldiers left the entourage, leaving only the four high priestesses to: escort Matron Malice inside.

The sights beyond the great doors to the chapel did not disappoint her. A central altar dominated the place with a row of benches spiraling out in several dozen circuits to the perimeter of the great hall.

A thousand drow could sit there with room to stretch. Statues and idols too numerous to count stood all about the place, glowing in a quiet black light. In the air high above the altar loomed a gigantic glowing image, a red-and-black illusion that slowly and continually shifted between the forms of a spider and a beautiful drow female.

“A work of Gomph, my principal wizard,” Matron Baenre explained from her perch on the altar, guessing that Malice, like everyone else who ever came to Chapel Baenre, was awestruck by the sight. “Even wizards have their place.”

“As long as they remember their place,” Malice replied, slipping down from the now stationary disk.

“Agreed,” said Matron Baenre. “Males can get so presumptuous at times, especially wizards! Still, I wish that I had Gomph at my side more often these days. He has been appointed Archmage of Menzoberranzan, you know, and seems always at work on Narbondel or some other such tasks.”

Malice just nodded and held her tongue. Of course, she knew that Baenre’s son was the city’s chief wizard. Everybody knew. Everybody knew, too, that Baenre’s daughter Triel was the Matron Mistress of the Academy, a position of honor in Menzoberranzan second only to the title of matron mother of an individual family. Malice had little doubt that Matron Baenre would somehow work that fact into the conversation before too long.

Before Malice took a step toward the stairs to the altar, her newest escort stepped out from the shadows. Malice scowled openly when she saw the thing, a creature known as an illithid, a mind flayer. It stood about six feet tall, fully a foot taller than Malice, most of the difference being the result of the creature’s enormous head. Glistening with slime, he head resembled an octopus with pupil-less, milky white eyes.