K'yorl, to cry out to Lloth in one final, desperate prayer, but found her words garbled as an invisible hand grasped tightly on her throat, cutting off her air.
Ghenni'tiroth jerked again, violently, and again, and more cracking sounds came from her chest, from intense pressure within her torso. She rocked backward and would have fallen to the floor except that K'yorl's will held her slender form fast.
"I am sorry Fini'they was not enough to bring in your impotent Spider Queen," K'yorl taunted, brazenly blasphemous.
Ghenni'tiroth's eyes bulged and seemed as if they would pop from their sockets. Her back arched weirdly, agonizingly, and gurgling sounds continued to stream from her throat. She tore at the flesh of her own neck, trying to grasp the unseen hand, but only drew lines of her own bright blood.
Then there came a final crackle, a loud snapping, and Ghenni'tiroth resisted no more. The pressure was gone from her throat, for what good that did her. K'yorl's unseen hand grabbed her hair and yanked her head forward so that she looked down at the unusual bulge in her chest, beside her left breast.
Ghenni'tiroth's eyes widened in horror as her robes parted and her skin erupted. A great gout of blood and gore poured from the wound, and Ghenni'tiroth fell limply, lying sidelong to the platinum plate.
She watched the last beat of her own heart on that sacrificial platter.
"Perhaps Lloth will hear this call," K'yorl remarked, but Ghenni'tiroth could no longer understand the words.
K'yorl went to the body and retrieved the potion bottle that Ghenni'tiroth carried, that all House Faen Tlabbar females carried. The mixture, a concoction that forced passionate servitude of drow males, was a potent one-or would be, if conventional magic returned. This bottle was likely the most potent, and K'yorl marked it well for a certain mercenary leader.
K'yorl went to the wall and claimed Scrag-tooth as her own.
To the victor...
With a final look to the dead matron mother, K'yorl called on her psionic powers and became less than substantial, became a ghost that could walk through the walls and past the guards of the well-defended compound. Her smile was supreme, as was her confidence, but as Lloth's avatar had told Baenre, Odran had indeed erred. She had followed a personal vengeance, had struck out first against a lesser foe.
Even as K'yorl drifted past the structures of House Faen Tlabbar, gloating over the death of her most hated enemy, Matrons Baenre and Mez'Barris Armgo, along with Triel and Gromph Baenre and the matron mothers of Menzoberranzan's fifth through eighth houses, were gathered in a private chamber at the back of the Qu'ellarz'orl, the raised plateau within the huge cavern that held some of the more important drow houses, including House Baenre. The eight of them huddled, each to a leg, about the spider-shaped brazier set upon the small room's single table. Each had brought their most valuable of flammable items, and Matron Baenre carried the lump of sulphur that the avatar had given her.
None of them mentioned, but all of them knew, that this might be their only chance.
Chapter 11 TRUMP
Normally it pleased Jarlaxle to be in the middle of such a conflict, to be the object of wooing tactics by both sides in a dispute. This time, though, Jarlaxle was uneasy with the position. He didn't like dealing with K'yorl Odran on any account, as friends, and especially not as enemies, and he was uneasy with House Baenre being so desperately involved in any struggle. Jarlaxle simply had too much invested with Matron Baenre. The wary mercenary leader usually didn't count on anything, but he had fully expected House Baenre to rule in Menzoberranzan until at least the end of his life, as it had ruled since the beginning of his life and for millennia before that.
It wasn't that Jarlaxle held any special feelings toward the city's first house. It was just that Baenre offered him an anchor point, a measure of permanence in the continually shifting power struggles of Menzoberranzan.
It would last forever, so he had thought, but after talking with K'yorl-how he hated that one!-Jarlaxle wasn't so sure.
K'yorl wanted to enlist him, most likely wanted Bregan D'aerthe to serve as her connection with the world beyond Menzoberranzan.
They could do that, and do it well, but Jarlaxle doubted that he, who always had a private agenda, could remain in K'yorl's favor for long. At some point, sooner or later, she would read the truth in his mind, and she would dispatch and replace