the whispered rumors had wisely been dispersed by the sisters.
'Go back to your post,' Bladen'Kerst snarled at Berg'inyon. 'Nothing has happened!' It wasn't so much a statement as a command.
'Nothing has happened,' Berg'inyon echoed, and that became the order of the day, and a wise one, Berg'inyon immediately realized. This was Lloth herself, or some close minion. He knew this in his heart.
He knew it, and the soldiers would whisper it, but their enemies must not learn of this!
Berg'inyon scrambled across the courtyard, passed the word, the command that 'nothing had happened.' He took up a post that allowed him an overview of the chapel and was surprised to see that his ambitious sisters dared not enter, but rather paced about the main entrance nervously.
Sos'Umptu came out as well and joined their parade. No words were openly exchanged—Berg'inyon didn't even notice any flashes of the silent hand code—as Matron Baenre hustled across the courtyard. She passed by her daughters and scurried into the chapel, and the pacing outside began anew.
For Matron Baenre it was the answer to her prayers and the realization of her nightmares all at once. She knew immediately who and what it was that sat before her on the central dais. She knew, and she believed.
'If I am the offending person, then I offer myself…' she began humbly, falling to her knees as she spoke.
'
'
Yet thoughts such as that were exactly what this creature who was more than a drow had just berated her about, Matron Baenre suddenly realized. She dared look up.
'Do not place so much importance on yourself,' the avatar said calmly.
Matron Baenre allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief. Then this wasn't about her, she understood. All of this, the failure of magic and prayer, was beyond her, beyond all the mortal realms.
'K'yorl has erred,' the avatar went on, reminding Baenre that while these catastrophic events might be above her, their ramifications most certainly were not.
'She has dared to believe that she can win without your favor,' Matron Baenre reasoned, and her surprise was total when the avatar scoffed at the notion.
'She could destroy you with a thought.»
Matron Baenre shuddered and lowered her head once more.
'But she has erred on the side of caution,' the avatar went on. 'She delayed her attack, and now, when she decided that the advantage was indeed hers to hold, she has allowed a personal feud to
delay her most important strike even longer.»
'Then the powers have returned!' Baenre gasped. 'You are returned.»
'
'The Time of Troubles will end,' the avatar said a moment later, calm once more. 'And you will know what you must do when all is as it should be.»
Baenre looked up just long enough to see the avatar's narrow-eyed glare full upon her. 'Do you think I am so resourceless?' the beautiful drow asked.
A horrified expression, purely sincere, crossed Baenre's face, and she began to numbly shake her head back and forth, denying she had ever lost faith.
Again, she lay flat out, groveling, and stopped her prayers only when something hard hit the floor beside her head. She dared to look up, to find a lump of yellow stone, sulphur, lying beside her.
'You must fend off K'yorl for a short while,' the avatar explained. 'Go join the matron mothers and your eldest daughter and son in the meeting room. Stoke the flames and allow those I have enlisted to come through to your side. Together we will teach K'yorl the truth of power!'
A bright smile erupted on Baenre's face with the realization that she was not out of Lloth's favor, that her goddess had called on her to play a crucial role in this crucial hour. The fact that Lloth had all but admitted she was still rather impotent did not matter. The Spider Queen would return, and Baenre would shine again in her devious eyes.
By the time Matron Baenre mustered the courage to come off the floor, the beautiful drow had already exited the chapel. She crossed the compound without interference, walked through the fence as she had done at her arrival, and disappeared into the shadows of the city.
* * * * *
As soon as she heard the awful rumor that House Oblodra's strange psionic powers had not been too adversely affected by whatever was happening to other magic, Ghenni'tiroth Tlabbar, the
matron mother of Faen Tlabbar, Menzoberranzan's Fourth House, knew she was in dire trouble. K'yorl Odran hated the tall, slender Ghenni'tiroth above all others, for Ghenni'tiroth had made no secret of the fact that she believed Faen Tlabbar, and not Oblodra, should rank as Menzoberranzan's third house.
With almost eight hundred drow soldiers, Faen Tlabbar's number nearly doubled that of House Oblodra, and only the little understood powers of K'yorl and her minions had kept Faen Tlabbar back.
How much greater those powers loomed now, with all conventional magic rendered unpredictable at best!
Throughout it all, Ghenni'tiroth remained in the house chapel, a relatively small room near the summit of her compound's central stalagmite mound. A single candle burned upon the altar, shedding minimal light by surface standards, but serving as a beacon to the dark elves whose eyes were more accustomed to blackness. A second source of illumination came from the room's west-facing window, for even from halfway across the city, the wild glow of Narbondel could be clearly seen.
Ghenni'tiroth showed little concern for the pillar clock, other than the significance it now held as an indicator of their troubles. She was among the most fanatical of Lloth's priestesses, a drow female who had survived more than six centuries in unquestioning servitude to the Spider Queen. But she was in trouble now, and Lloth, for some reason she could not understand, would not come to her call.
She reminded herself constantly to keep fast her faith as she knelt and huddled over a platinum platter, the famed Faen Tlabbar Communing Plate. The heart of the latest sacrifice, a not-so-insignificant drow male, sat atop it, an offering to the goddess who would not answer Ghenni'tiroth's desperate prayers.
Ghenni'tiroth straightened suddenly as the heart rose from the bloody platter, came up several inches and hovered in midair.
'The sacrifice is not sufficient,' came a voice behind her, a voice she had dreaded hearing since the advent of the Time of Troubles.
She did not turn to face K'yorl Odran.
'There is war in the compound,' Ghenni'tiroth stated more than asked.
K'yorl scoffed at the notion. A wave of her hand sent the sacrificial organ flying across the room.
Ghenni'tiroth spun about, eyes wide with outrage. She started to scream out the drow word for sacrilege, but stopped, the sound caught in her throat, as another heart floated in the air, from K'yorl toward her.
'The sacrifice was not sufficient,' K'yorl said calmly. 'Use this heart, the heart of Fini'they.»
Ghenni'tiroth slumped back at the mention of the obviously dead priestess, her second in the house. Ghenni'tiroth had taken in Fini'they as her own daughter when Fini'they's family, a lower-ranking and insignificant house, had been destroyed by a rival house. Insignificant indeed had been Fini'they's house— Ghenni'tiroth could not even remember its proper name—but Fini'they had not been so. She was a powerful priestess, and ultimately loyal, even loving, to her adopted mother.
Ghenni'tiroth leaned back further, horrified, as her daughter's heart floated past and settled with a sickening wet sound on the platinum platter.
'Pray to Lloth,' K'yorl ordered.
Ghenni'tiroth did just that. Perhaps K'yorl had erred, she thought. Perhaps in death Fini'they would prove
