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and capable of havoc from the moment they emerge through the dimensional gate.”
    “Why are you here?” Gromph asked again.
    “The true matron mother does not sit on the throne of House Baenre,” Minolin Fey dared to whisper.
    “What are you suggesting?”
    Minolin Fey swallowed hard and struggled for a reply.
    Gromph knew well. Not so long before, Minolin Fey and some others, including Gromph on the periphery of their treachery, had conspired to bring down Quenthel’s reign. They had found a weakness, a seam in the matron mother’s armor, and one dating back to the Time of Troubles. In that chaos, as the gods returned to prominence in Faerûn and the divine powers were restored, Matron Mother Yvonnel the Eternal, Gromph’s mother and the ruler of Menzoberranzan for longer than the memories of the oldest drow, had channeled the unbridled power of the Spider Queen. Lolth’s magnificence had flowed through her as she utterly destroyed House Oblodra—the compound and almost all of the noble family. The Oblodrans had sought the quietness of the gods, of Lolth in particular, to seek great advantage, for they were an order of psionicists, whose magic was not dependent upon such divine beings.
    A very few Oblodrans escaped the wrath of Matron Mother Yvonnel, the wrath of Lady Lolth—only Kimmuriel was now known to Gromph—but all of the other notables had been slaughtered in the catastrophe, except for one. Death would have been too easy for K’yorl Odran, the Matron of House Oblodra. No, Yvonnel had not killed that one, but had spared her and sent her to the Abyss, to the eternal torment of a great balor named Errtu. When Minolin Fey and her fellow conspirators had learned of this, they had hatched a plan to rescue the vicious and strangely powerful K’yorl, with her illithid-like psionic abilities. They would turn her upon the then-weakened House Baenre and the pitiful Matron Mother Quenthel, who would never survive such an unexpected onslaught.
    “Surely the Spider Queen cannot be pleased by these actions,” Minolin Fey pleaded. “And surely, Lady Lolth knows that the better choice, the better matron mother . . .”
    “Bite back your words or I will remove your tongue,” Gromph warned her.
    Minolin Fey blanched and fell back against the door, knowing well from his tone that he was not speaking idly. The archmage’s eyes flared with frustration and rage, and he sneered and growled again.
    But then he sighed, the moment passing.
    “She is not merely Quenthel any longer,” Gromph calmly explained. “She is not weak, nor is House Baenre.”
    “We can do it through proxies,” Minolin Fey started to add, but Gromph cut her short with a glare that froze the blood in her veins.
    “Never speak of K’yorl again,” Gromph warned. “Are you so foolish to miss the small matter that the matron mother now has an illithid at her disposal? Methil El-Viddenvelp serves my sister as he once served my mother.”
    “As he has served your child,” Minolin Fey reminded him.
    “Do not presume to understand anything about Methil. And I say again, for the last time, never speak of K’yorl again.”
    “As you demand, Archmage,” the high priestess said, deferentially—and wisely—lowering her gaze to the floor.
    “Get back to House Baenre and our child,” Gromph ordered. “You dare leave her unprotected in this time when demons haunt the ways of Menzoberranzan?”
    Minolin Fey didn’t look up and didn’t answer, other than to slowly retreat back out the door, never turning her back to the archmage.
    Gromph took little satisfaction in hearing her footsteps and the rustle of her robes rushing down the hall. Despite his outward anger, Gromph knew that her fear of Quenthel’s growing power was correct.
    The old archmage looked back out the window, shaking his head. Quenthel had been brilliant in so locking down the city—perhaps that was what galled him most of all.
    And Gromph had erred, he knew. He had come to hope