“Sister,” Ravel intervened, and Berellip, Brack’thal, and Tiago all turned to regard him curiously. “Spare him, I beg of you.”

It seemed like every creature in the room held its breath.

“He is valuable. His work here has been beyond reproach,” Ravel explained to Berellip’s stunned expression.

“Such weakness,” she whispered back, hardly believing her ears. “You would show mercy?”

“Only if Brack’thal declares allegiance to me,” Ravel stated, and he struck a superior pose, towering over his kneeling brother. “Only if this is ended, by decree, by surrender, and I am named here and now the Elderboy of House Xorlarrin, with Brack’thal afforded all rights as Secondboy.”

“I would rather die,” Brack’thal replied.

“Would you rather sprout six extra legs?” Tiago remarked.

“Would you?” Ravel asked, referring to Brack’thal’s claim and not Tiago’s threat. “Then your claim of your powers returning rings hollow in your own ears.”

He said it loudly, so that all around could hear, so that those spellspinners he knew had recently come to consider siding with Brack’thal would hear.

Berellip silently congratulated Ravel. He had played this perfectly, for either way, Brack’thal was caught. If he didn’t agree and was thus killed, he would be admitting that his claims were false, and so Ravel would secure the spellspinners in his entourage once more. And if he did agree, he would be bound by his words. It was not often that drow males flipped their titles, as Ravel had demanded, but it was not unprecedented, and such a pact was surely binding. If Brack’thal agreed, any future action he took against Ravel would be construed as an affront to House Xorlarrin, invoking the wrath of Matron Zeerith.

“Well?” Berellip prompted.

“So be it,” the defeated mage replied, lowering his gaze.

Ravel was to his side in an eye-blink, grabbing him under the shoulder and hoisting him to his feet. “You are a noble of House Xorlarrin,” the young spellspinner quietly said.

Brack’thal stared at him hatefully.

“Go back to the tunnels with your pet,” Ravel ordered. “Continue your important work.”

The mage was more than happy to comply, and he hustled away, and as Berellip and Ravel swept the room with their stares, drow and goblins and bugbears fell all over each other to get back to their tasks.

“Follow,” Berellip demanded of the two males beside her. She led them into the chambers she had taken as her own, and closed the door behind them as they entered, before grabbing Ravel by the arm and spinning him around.

“I have had enough of your subterfuge,” she said.

“I am drow,” he replied with a grin.

Berellip didn’t blink.

“This is ended,” Ravel told her. “And know that I am as weary of looking over my shoulder for you as you are for me.” He turned for the door and Berellip shifted to block his egress.

Now Ravel didn’t blink, and after a few heartbeats, Berellip let him leave.

“He is always full of surprises, that one,” Tiago remarked.

“And you support him.”

“Matron Zeerith supports him,” Tiago corrected. “And Matron Mother Quenthel does so, out of respect for your mother.” When Berellip didn’t immediately reply, Tiago added, “This is ended, and know that I am the weariest of all.”

He stepped past Berellip for the door.

“Mercy,” Berellip said with a disgusted chortle. “He granted Brack’thal mercy, and mercy undeserved.”

“Do not think him weak,” was all that Tiago bothered to reply as he left the room. He glanced back as he stepped through the door. “All of this intrigue has excited me,” he informed her. “I will return to you in short order.”

“And if I refuse?”

“You’re a priestess of Lolth,” Tiago said with a bow. “If you refuse, I will leave.”

“And if I do not refuse, you will be indebted to me,” Berellip said, and Tiago could see the traps being set behind her glowing red eyes. He thought about it for just a moment, then nodded, and with a knowing smile bowed again and was gone.

For indeed, Tiago understood the task Berellip had in mind. Ravel had shown uncharacteristic mercy. Now that she knew of her younger sister’s treachery, Berellip would not.

The Baenre noble caught up to Ravel just beyond the forge area, the young spellspinner sitting by a small table lifting a glass of Slow Spout, a Duergan brew so named because after it swirled around inside the imbiber for some time, it inevitably put the fool on his hands and knees, “spouting” it back up. The thick and bitter ale was more commonly shared among the goblins and kobolds of Menzoberranzan than among the drow, whose tastes and sensibilities were more usually attuned to the finer liqueurs, like Feywine or brandy.

There was no doubt that Slow Spout could accomplish the task, though, if that task was to dull the senses.

“A strange choice of celebratory drink,” Tiago remarked, holding his hand out to refuse Ravel’s offer of a cup. So as not to be rude, the young Baenre drew a small flask from under his coat, unscrewed the top, and took a small swig.

“Why did I let him live?” Ravel asked before Tiago could.

“That is the question most formed by drow fingers at this time, yes,” Tiago replied.

Ravel looked aside, his expression very somber and very sober, despite the libations.

Tiago caught the significance of that look and suppressed the burning urge to prompt the spellspinner as his own curiosity began to bubble.

“Brack’thal’s claims,” Ravel said, shaking his head.

“What of them?”

Ravel looked his Baenre friend directly in the eye. “He was not wrong.”

Tiago tried hard not to reveal his shock, but still he fell back a step.

“I feel it,” Ravel explained.

Tiago shook his head, too emphatically, perhaps. “There is some trick at play here with Brack’thal, some secret item or one old spell returned. His work with the elementals . . .”

“Impressive work,” Ravel said.

“And you’re fooled by it.”

Ravel took another gulp of Slow Spout. “Let us hope that is the case,” the spellspinner said, and he sounded less than convinced.

Chapter 18: A Companion's Trust

Herzgo Alegni stepped through the shadow gate, arriving in a small chamber built into a stalactite hanging above a vast underground cavern. It had been only two days since the disastrous fight in the forest, but the tiefling warlord was feeling much better. He had used Draygo Quick’s failure to force the withered old warlock into redoubling the efforts to heal him, and to give him more reinforcements.

Herzgo Alegni knew they couldn’t fail again. Not now. Not here. Too much was at stake, and this time, failure would mean the end of his coveted sword and the end of his reputation.

Effron was already in the portal chamber, staring out a small window beside the chamber’s one exit, an open door leading to a landing and a circular stair that ran around the rock mound.

Alegni walked up beside the twisted warlock and pushed him aside. Effron stuck his face into the window opening and tried to hide his surprise.

There before Alegni, across a dark underground pool, loomed the front wall of the ancient dwarven complex of Gauntlgrym, like the façade of a surface fortress, but tucked into the back of the cavern, the castle wall coming up right near to the ceiling. There were parapets up there, Alegni could see; that wall, this whole cavern, including the stalactite in which he stood, had been prepared for defense of the complex.

“Directly below,” Effron said, and Alegni leaned out and looked down, to see another landing just below his position, an ancient war engine set upon it.

“Ballista?” he asked, not quite sure of what he was viewing. It looked like a great mounted crossbow, a ballista, except that it was covered on top with a large fanlike box. A pair of Shadovar moved around down there, working on the contraption.

“An unusual design,” Effron explained. “They are set all around the cavern. Balogoth the historian called them volley guns.”

Alegni looked back from Effron to the ballista, and held up his hand as Effron started to explain what he had meant by that title. For there was no need—the name alone described the purpose of that fanlike box all too well.

“Will it throw?” he called down to the Shadovar on the ledge below.

The pair looked up and fell back a step at the unexpected sight of their warlord.

“Will it throw?” Alegni demanded again when neither answered.

“We do not know, my Lord Alegni,” one replied. “We have replaced the bowstring, but the arms are so ancient, they likely have little tension left in them.”

“Attempt it.”

The two looked at each other, then scrambled to a crate lying nearby—one they had brought from the Shadowfell—and began pulling forth long arrows. One by one, they loaded the fanlike box, sliding the bolts in from behind. Then one shade grabbed the huge crank and slowly pulled back the string.

The throw arms creaked in protest.

“It won’t work,” Effron said, but Alegni didn’t even bother to glance back to look at him.

When the crank was set, the second shade took hold of a lever. This one didn’t move easily, and it took him a long while of trying before he looked to his companion helplessly, and obviously desperately afraid.

They wouldn’t want to fail their warlord, Herzgo Alegni understood, and he liked that show of fear.

After much tinkering, with one shade even crawling under the edge of the box and digging at the wooden catches with a small blade, they finally managed to ease the cartridge into place.

Herzgo Alegni held back a mocking chuckle when they fired the ballista, for only one side, one throwing arm, moved with the release. Out the front came the arrows, barely thrown, more falling off to tumble straight down than actually flying free. And those that did come forth barely cleared the stalactite—the shades could have hand-thrown them farther.

Down below on the cavern floor came a couple of curses and shouts of protest.

“The wood is too old,” Effron said.

“I know that,” Alegni replied. “It is an interesting design.”

“In their day, the many ballistae set in these towers could have filled the air with swarms of arrows,” Effron explained. “It is a design worth copying, I believe, as does Balogoth, who is hard at work in diagramming the crossbows and those curious hoppers.”

Herzgo Alegni swept his gaze around the cavern. “We do not have enough soldiers,” he surmised. “It is too large, and too filled with cover. They will slip through our ranks.”

“There is only one door, as far as we can determine,” Effron replied.

Alegni looked to the vast wall and the single opening in its center. Rails came through that door and a couple of carts, ore carts likely, lay discarded in the sand before the cavern pool.

“As far as we can determine,” he echoed. “Dahlia and her drow companion have been here before, have been inside the complex. If there are other entries, they will know of them.”