Hero by R. A. Salvatore
“You haven’t answered my question,” Jarlaxle said.
“I am here because I am curious.”
“About?”
“All of this,” Yvonnel admitted, glancing back at the growing Hosttower. “I have watched you from House Baenre, of course, and am amazed at the beauty of this creation.”
“If Menzoberranzan has any designs on the Hosttower, or on Luskan, they should be made aware that it would mean full-scale war.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Simply a truth,” Jarlaxle replied. “King Bruenor—”
“You call him a king!” Yvonnel said mockingly.
“Bruenor,” Jarlaxle began again, “will not interfere with Luskan in my hands, nor with the Hosttower under the purview of Gromph. It is a deal to which we have all agreed. But if Menzoberranzan were to come in force to take the city, then you would find all of the Delzoun dwarves allied against you, and likely with the Lords of Waterdeep standing beside them.”
“Why do you include me in your threat?” Yvonnel asked innocently. “Have I not already told you that I have forsaken House Baenre and thus, Menzoberranzan? Perhaps for all time? I am more interested in what you are doing here, and in your merry band of rogues. My dear uncle, am I not welcome?”
Jarlaxle glanced at the other two, and there was no missing the concern on each of their faces.
“The hierarchy established here would not please you,” Gromph asserted.
“And no, I will not surrender my place, nor will Kimmuriel,” Jarlaxle said.
“I would ask no such thing,” Yvonnel replied. “I am a guest in your home, and eager to learn.”
“You have more knowledge in your memories than all three of us combined,” Gromph said, and he seemed more than a little upset.
Yvonnel shrugged. “About many things. But there is much I also wish to learn.” She paused and adopted a coy look, focusing it on Jarlaxle. “And perhaps much I can teach.”
He stared back at her, unblinking.
“You survived your journey through the Underdark unscathed?” she asked Jarlaxle.
He nodded. “I seem to be in fine mind and health, yes.”
“Unlike Drizzt, who was … afflicted.”
Jarlaxle’s face grew tight.
“I should like to see him,” Yvonnel said.
“He is not here.”
The woman winced. “I should like to see him,” she said again.
“You cannot.”
She started to reply, but Jarlaxle seemed to gain his strength then, and shook his head against her forthcoming words. “Drizzt is in a place unreachable by any.”
“In his own mind,” she said.
“And in body, now, too. As it must be.”
Yvonnel took a long moment to compose herself, and she was surprised to discover how much this revelation was bothering her.
“You cured him?” she asked.
“We cannot,” Kimmuriel answered, and then added, “you cannot.”
“Tell me!” Yvonnel insisted. “Tell me everything! I must know what you have learned of his affliction, and of how you know that you cannot cure him—and I cannot, either, as you insist.”
“My spells did not work against the Abyssal Plague,” Gromph said, jumping up from his chair. “That is my only contribution to this subject.” He moved to the door. “I have far more important things to consider than the fate of a fool rogue, who should have long ago been destroyed.”
“He doesn’t understand,” Yvonnel said, shaking her head, when the archmage had gone.
“What do you know?” Jarlaxle asked.
“You first,” the woman said, taking Gromph’s seat. “Tell me. Tell me everything you know about Drizzt’s malady, and everything you have tried to help him. Both of you, I beg.”
Kimmuriel and Jarlaxle exchanged confused glances again.
“Why?” Jarlaxle asked.
“You first,” the woman insisted, and the look on her face reflected the urgency inside.
The mercenary leaders looked to each other again, and Jarlaxle shrugged.
“Please,” Yvonnel said, “tell me.”
And so they did. They explained to Yvonnel all the efforts of the priests, the wizards, and of Kimmuriel with his psionics, to bring peace to the beleaguered drow, ending with Kimmuriel’s insistence that any cure for Drizzt had to come from within Drizzt.
“And now he is gone,” she said when they had finished. “Why?”
Again, the pair looked to each other.
“I am not going to hunt him down and kill him!” Yvonnel shouted at Jarlaxle. “If I had wanted Drizzt dead, I could have done so, easily, and you above all others know that.”
“True enough,” Jarlaxle admitted. He sighed and looked over at Kimmuriel, who seemed less than thrilled with being in the same room with the namesake of the woman who had destroyed his House. After a few telling winces, Kimmuriel nodded his agreement, and so Jarlaxle told Yvonnel of their latest plan, of their fleeting hope that Drizzt might find some level of inner peace through the efforts of a great Grandmaster of Flowers and an order of trained and disciplined aesthetics.
She took it all in, considering every angle, searching the memories of Matron Mother Yvonnel the Eternal for some hints.
At long last, she smiled and stared at Jarlaxle.
“You are wrong about Drizzt,” Yvonnel stated flatly.
A long while of uncomfortable silence passed.
“Are you not even curious of how you are wrong?” she asked.
“You had him in your dungeon,” Jarlaxle reminded her. “If we are wrong about him, then why did you let him go?”
“Not in that way!” Yvonnel replied. “You are wrong …” She looked at Kimmuriel and corrected herself, “Or more to the point, you, Kimmuriel Oblodra, are wrong, about how Drizzt’s malady might be repaired.”
Again, and obviously despite his best intentions, Jarlaxle was leaning forward, tipping his hand about how much he really cared.
“You have insisted that Drizzt’s cure must come from within, from him,” Yvonnel explained.
“There is no magic, nor suggestion —” Kimmuriel started to answer.
“The magic of the Abyssal Plague is real and persistent,” Yvonnel said. “Drizzt is ill, and he cannot simply will himself to not be ill, no matter how profound and enlightened these monks believe themselves to be.”
“Grandmaster Kane has transcended his mortal coil all together,” Jarlaxle told her.
“I do not know this man.”
“He is the Grandmaster of Flowers of the Order of the Yellow Rose in Damara,” Jarlaxle explained. “He is human, yet I battled him a century ago, long before the advent of the Spellplague. A century, perhaps two, and still he lives, and can, to this day, defeat almost any opponent in martial combat. His body is merely a conduit through which his spirit interacts with the material world, or so it is said. And having witnessed the great magic of his will, I cannot disagree with that assessment.”
“He found a place of perfect thought?” Yvonnel asked.
“Perfect focus,” Kimmuriel corrected. “He is no illithid.”
“Still,” the woman countered. “And this Kane, he did so because his mind was clear and his thoughts rational. To find the perfect focus, he needed to find the perfect harmony within. His achievement of that perfect harmony led him to this transcendence—but can you hope the same for Drizzt? Truly? When he is so lost?”
“Kane will help Drizzt find his way to that place,” Jarlaxle insisted, an edge of desperation in his voice.
“How?” Yvonnel laughed at him and at the nodding Kimmuriel. “How?”
“Drizzt’s malady is his inability to see the truth, and so he imagines falsity everywhere,” Kimmuriel explained.
“You already said that.”
“Then how am I to use my mind intrusions to unwind such a misconception of reality when there is no trust to be found? How, when my very healing attempts seem to Drizzt the most deceitful
Yvonnel folded her hands and assumed a pensive pose. “If I find the answer, will you help me to execute it?” she asked.
“He will,” said Jarlaxle before Kimmuriel could even agree.
That wasn’t enough for Yvonnel, though and she looked to Kimmuriel, who, after a quick sneer at Jarlaxle, nodded his agreement.
“I would speak with my uncle alone now,” she said, and Kimmuriel was more than happy to leave, not even bothering to say goodbye before striding out of the room.
“This is an unexpected day,” Jarlaxle said when Kimmuriel was gone.
“I put a curse on him,” Yvonnel admitted.
“On Kimmuriel?”
“On Drizzt,” Yvonnel replied, and Jarlaxle fell back in his seat, gripping the arms of his chair as though he meant to leap up and attack her.
She didn’t blink.
“Not the Abyssal Plague,” she clarified. “That is as you presume.”
“Then what? When?”
“When he left House Baenre, my curse followed him. When he returned to and first looked upon Catti-brie, he saw her as a demon,” Yvonnel explained. “It was not all my doing, of course. As you know, Drizzt has lost all sense of trust. So I teased his delusion to bring him to the point to which he was already inevitably heading. He was supposed to kill her, and in doing so, he would utterly destroy himself. A fitting finish for one who has so defied the Spider Queen, and a remedy approved by Lady Lolth herself.”
Jarlaxle brought his hands up in front of him, and he was fighting hard not to twitch, Yvonnel recognized. He had just told her where to find Drizzt, after all.
“He didn’t do it,” Yvonnel said.
“Catti-brie fended—”
“No, he didn’t do it,” she said again. “The woman was caught by surprise and should have, could have, been summarily executed. But he didn’t do it. There is no reasonable explanation for why he didn’t do it, for how he avoided the trap I set for him, but there it is. He didn’t do it.”
“You sound impressed.”
She nodded. “And intrigued.”
“And so you have come to finish—”
“No!” she stated with such surety that it startled even her.
Jarlaxle stared at her intently.
“No,” she said again, quietly. “I have come without malice and with no desire for retribution.”
“Because he resisted that which he should not have resisted,” Jarlaxle said, and then he was nodding, catching on.
“Then there is hope,” Jarlaxle reasoned. “Then within there remains a piece of Drizzt, a piece of who he was, an anchor to hold him from the pressing tides.”
“No, he will not find his own way out of his malady.”
“You just said—”
“That he did not strike down Catti-brie is quite amazing,” she admitted. “And yes, it reveals an inner strength and heart that gives me pause. But that does not mean that the persistent whispers of the delusion will be held at bay.”
“He thinks the whole world, his entire reality, is a grand deception designed solely to tear his heart asunder,” Jarlaxle asserted.
“The persistent whispers of delusion,” Yvonnel repeated.
“And so it follows that if he realizes that his delusion is absurd …” Jarlaxle started to argue.
“That clarity cannot hold.”
“Grandmaster Kane will show him the deepest understanding of his body and mind.”
“And the whispers will continue, evermore.”
“He will recognize their lies!”
“No.”
“You speak foolishness.”
“Your mind is clear and so you expect the same of Drizzt,” Yvonnel told him. “Such a typical misunderstanding. He is broken. Something within him is damaged. You can no more expect Drizzt to clearly unwind his twisting thoughts than you could expect a man with shattered legs to run. Just because you cannot see the injury does not mean that it isn’t there. Nor is it one that can be cured by force of will, any more than simple determination could mend shattered bones.”
Jarlaxle shook his head, trying vainly to deny it all.
“It is an insidious malady,” Yvonnel went on with confidence. “A constant barrage of doubt and fear, playing cleverly against all his hopes and dreams.” She gave a little almost helpless laugh. “It is not unlike the teachings of Lolth, and how the matron mothers hold the entire city of drow under their spell. Only these particular matron mothers of deception are within Drizzt’s head, and they will not relent, and he cannot win, for unlike his earliest days in Menzoberranzan, this time, Drizzt Do’Urden has no place to run.”
Jarlaxle clearly wanted to argue but at long last his shoulders slumped. “To think that this is the fate of Drizzt Do’Urden …” he said with great lament.
“You admire him,” Yvonnel reasoned.
Jarlaxle didn’t argue the point.
“And now you are disappointed in his weakness,” Yvonnel added.
“No,” the mercenary insisted.
“Yes!” Yvonnel shot right back. “You do not like that truth, but your anger at it does not make of it a falsehood. Drizzt is the child who disappointed you, the hero who, this time, did not meet your measure.”
Jarlaxle tried to respond, but in the end, he could only lift his hands in surrender.
“Because you cannot understand what is in Drizzt’s thoughts,” Yvonnel explained. “How could you, when your reason will not flee you? This is the frustration, and yes, the anger, whether you deny it or not. If he just tries harder to hold his smile and keep his thoughts aright, then all should be well, because with you, who are not afflicted, that would be the obvious outcome.”
“What would you have me say?” a defeated Jarlaxle asked. “What would you have me do?”
“Drizzt will need our help—mine and Kimmuriel’s at the least,” Yvonnel explained as the door opened and Artemis Entreri appeared. He gasped at the sight of Yvonnel Baenre.
Yvonnel continued, undeterred, “Perhaps his work with the monks will bring Drizzt to a point of trust enough for him to accept that help, and in that moment—and it will be a fleeting moment, I fear—we must be prepared and we must be quick. That is his—that is our—only hope.”
She looked at Entreri then, matching his glare with one of equal intensity. She had long before come to the conclusion that she had lost the best chance to cure Drizzt of his Abyssal malady in that moment—that moment of naked truth—when he had confronted the demon he thought to be Catti-brie. In that moment, watching him through her scrying stoup, Yvonnel had seen the drow thoroughly, utterly, desperately defeated and with nothing left to lose.
That moment was an opportunity, she had thought then, and believed still. She looked at Entreri and tried to recall all the history between this man and Drizzt Do’Urden. Her knowledge was quite extensive, for Artemis Entreri had been in Menzoberranzan those many decades before, when Drizzt had first returned to the city and Yvonnel the Eternal had been the matron mother.
Yvonnel let her stare linger on the human assassin, and she nodded, for perhaps she had an idea.
PART 3
The Unlikeliest Hero
THERE ARE MOMENTS EVERY DAY—MORE NOW, I ADMIT—WHERE I FEEL that I am a fool for my fears, nay my certitude, that this is all a conspiracy of nightmare. Moments of seeming clarity when the preposterousness of all that has happened—the return of Catti-brie and all my friends, the long life of Artemis Entreri—pales beside the preposterousness of my nightmare, for the lengths to which Lolth has gone to destroy me seem beyond all reason.
But then I remember that I have so insulted the Spider Queen that there would be no journey too great for her to properly pay me back.
And I remember, too, the machinations to which Errtu subjected Wulfgar in an effort to cruelly devastate him.
This journey, though, seems grander and on a scale many times larger, for now I am halfway across Faerûn, in my mind at least, to a place I
There is much to admire in the Monastery of the Yellow Rose. The brothers and sisters here are among the most dedicated practitioners I have ever seen. Their adherence to their code and rituals rivals the fanaticism of the Gutbusters or the dedication of the weapons masters of Menzoberranzan. It is a delight to behold, with so many practicing in harmony and building upon each other’s gains with such honest contentment—even though the gains of another, Afafrenfere, for example, might well threaten the station of oneself.
Mistress Savahn celebrates Afafrenfere’s march up the hierarchical ladder of the Order of the Yellow Rose. She had told me, with joy in her eyes and lightness in her voice, that she has never witnessed such an extraordinary advance of body and spirit as that which Afafrenfere has displayed. Yet he will soon challenge her for her station, and should she lose that fight, she will step down a rung on the order’s hierarchical ladder.
I asked her about this, and her answer rang true to my heart: if he could beat her, then he deserved the accolades and the station, and she would have to work harder to retrieve her current place. Afafrenfere’s ascent, therefore, would ultimately make her better.
She has found the truth of competition, that there is no better challenge to be found than one a person can make with herself, that the personal competition outweighs any other, and by great magnitude. Simply, the rise of a rival challenges each of us to do better and be better, and that is to be celebrated, not feared or prevented.
This is the opposite of the philosophy prevalent in Menzoberranzan. Indeed, the drow determination to hold back others, even through murder, that the powerful can hold their gains, lies at the heart of that which drove me from the city, for it is a philosophy wholly immoral and limiting.
Here, in the Monastery of the Yellow Rose, it seems that I have found the exact opposite of that empty paranoia. I feel as I felt when I encountered Montolio and learned of Mielikki, except that this time, I see in community practice that which I hold in my heart.
And it is a beautiful thing.
Too beautiful.
As is Kane, the Grandmaster of Flowers, a man who through the deepest meditation and dedication has become something more than a being of the Material Plane. He is at once weightless and translucent, existing in a place of spirit more than anyone I have ever known, and at the same time, weighted and full of solidity. I have come to believe that he could have defeated me at any point in our sparring match, and that he only took his time so that he could gain my full measure by revealing to me that there was a long road of physical perfection yet before me should I choose to walk it.