Chapter 18
Snow and Ice
Kimmuriel, treating the idea of walking to the Clawrift with disdain, merely portalled the lot of you there with calculated indifference. Once in the extraplanar office, Rai'gy turned to regard Winter, who busied herself by clearing Jarlaxle's table, then sat down in one of the stuffed chairs experimentally – though not the mercenary leader's.
"Are you sure you wish to do this?" he asked, for the fifth time.
"I keep my word. Unless you have a better idea?" Winter snuggled down into her seat, apparently found it comfortable enough, then stood up and drove half of Irr'liancrea into the table near the side closest to her. No one protested.
"Nav..."
"There we go, then." Winter sat down again, then paused. "I will, of course, shield Bregan D'aerthe and certain other...areas of the city. Call back all the soldiers, if you will, or I will not be responsible."
"That was not what concerns me. Winter, the last you tried this, you nearly died." Rai'gy snapped.
"Let us hope this time does not take that long, then." Winter replied calmly. "Kimmuriel, can you keep an eye on House Baenre? When it looks like they would release Jarlaxle, get some medical aid here." The unspoken phrases: Because Lloth-rituals involving healing just may conveniently not work. And I may not be in a good enough shape to heal him myself.
Kimmuriel looked puzzled but nodded.
"We'd help," Veldrin said. "I think we know what you are about to do..."
"Good luck," Ssussun nodded.
"Oh, and Rai'gy?" Winter began, eyeing the twins.
"Yes?" Rai'gy asked.
"Keep an eye on these two. They may be quite dangerous if they wish to be." Winter said dryly. "Veldrin and Ssussun...considering the structure of Bregan D'aerthe, I hope you would amuse yourselves safely."
"Oh, we will," Veldrin said cheerfully. "Do not worry. You can do it."
"Thank you." Winter acknowledged, patted you, put her hands on the armrests, then closed her eyes, as if falling asleep. Irr'liancrea pulsed more brightly, then settled into a steady rhythm.
Nothing else appeared to happen, and you thought about the general non-flashiness of Winter's magic as opposed to those by street magicians or that in cheap tales.
"What is supposed to happen?" Kimmuriel asked finally, impatiently. Winter appeared not to hear – indeed, she now seemed frozen into a statue, her breathing dangerously slow, but even, in time with Irr'liancrea's pulses.
"Go outside and you'd find out," Rai'gy stalked in a tight circle. "Lloth. The last time she held out for nine...Narbondel cycles she took six months to recover properly. Six months!"
"Ah, but now she is stronger," Veldrin said confidently.
"Still..."
"I know," Ssussun comforted.
"What is supposed to happen?" Kimmuriel repeated.
"Open a window over a random place in Menzoberranzan." Rai'gy suggested absently. "Though it should take a few hours for the full effect to start, so going outside would be better as a demonstration."
"Then we go," Kimmuriel said decisively, grasping hold of Rai'gy's shoulder and half-dragging him out of the office. The twins followed, chattering to themselves, and you did as well.
Outside you looked over an immense chasm, the Clawrift. Peering down into the darkness, you could not see the bottom of the deep, sheer-sided drop. Nothing else seemed to be different – except that the temperature was much, much lower and seemed to be dropping steadily. The elves' and the twins' breath made white clouds of condensation in the chilly air.
"Is this it?" Kimmuriel said, eyes wide, rubbing his cold hands together absently. "This will rescue Jarlaxle?"
"Wait till it starts snowing," Rai'gy said sourly. "I know not what other...plan Winter is going to use with this...but I suspect it would be the same as the last. Let us go back in."
"Snow?" Kimmuriel repeated the alien word, blankly.
"You will find out."
**
Back at the first office you had entered, Rai'gy frowned slightly as the twins approached the captains. In a remarkably short time, all of them were chatting happily.
He glanced at you – you shrugged the best you could, and his mouth twitched slightly as if in humor.
Finally Berg'inyon voiced the underlying question, "What exactly is Velve...that is, Winter about to do?"
"First she would freeze up the city, then the...blizzards will start," Rai'gy said sourly. "Ah. Can one of you spread the message that all soldiers undercover in Menzoberranzan Houses are to return at once to the closest Bregan D'aerthe post. We can only hope that this does not last long enough for the situation to become overcrowded."
Rand'eran nodded and left.
"Freeze?" Tilarjen mused. "That may be one thing that Menzoberranzan is not prepared for."
"We can only hope it works." Tantras'nen said mildly.
"Oh, it will," Veldrin said with endearingly careless confidence.
"How will this...bring about Jarlaxle's release?" Berg'inyon inquired.
"Trust Winter," Ssussun shrugged.
"Can we?" Kimmuriel said, bluntly.
Rai'gy nodded. "She will keep her word."
"And you are not so different," Kimmuriel responded. "Rai'gy, at any moment you are about to collapse. Go and rest."
"Watch your own words," Tantras'nen smiled. Indeed, both Kimmuriel and Rai'gy looked very, very weary. They too, left the office, presumably to get a bit of rest.
You glanced at the twins, whom were skillfully dividing attention between the three remaining ex-weapon masters. Shaking your head, you padded out of the room. Perhaps there was some place here you could sleep...or perhaps you could try Rai'gy's place. He did not seem like a bad sort.
The corridors were familiar to you, and you remembered old times here with clarity, some good and some bad...but you did not truly miss it, like you hardly ever missed Irinelaeran any longer except when on some unpleasant escapade with Winter.
Winter...you wondered why she had used this apparently self-destructive method in the past. Six months to recover was a long time, though perhaps not too long to your...original species. What sort of trouble had she gotten into that needed this rather drastic measure to pry her out of?
Whatever it was, possibly only Rai'gy knew now, and he probably would not tell you even if you knew how to ask him in a way that he would understand.
**
As Winter had said, Bregan D'aerthe headquarters and posts kept their normal temperature, while that of the outside continued to plummet. Rai'gy, Kimmuriel and the captains weighed potential loss of the lives of soldiers over the potential loss of trust from the Houses they had infiltrated, then called all outpost soldiers back.
In an hour or so after you had rested there was an excited buzz in the building, and you saw that around every window there seemed to be a small knot of gesticulating and pointing soldiers.
With some shoving and nudging you managed to get to the closest window. It was shut, the glass slightly grimy, but you could see the outside perfectly clearly.
White dots appeared to be falling down from somewhere above, as if from the ceiling of the great cavern, teased past the window by an unnatural breeze. The word 'snow' was repeated often, and with some hoisting you managed to raise yourself high enough to look down at the street.
Most of the snow was, so far, still melting or turning into a muddy slush on the ground, but it was still falling, and apparently getting ever so gradually heavier.
From here, it looked more pretty than dangerous, and you wondered how Winter thought this could stop a city, having never seen snow before.
You retreated out of the room, greeted by a few soldiers, and wondered if you should find the twins. Deciding that by now they had probably come up with ways to amuse themselves, you went to wander around Bregan D'aerthe.
When you had re-inspected most of the rooms and was growing steadily bored with the entire business, you returned to one room which you knew had a window.
By now the soldiers, also bored by watching the snow fall, and started to play cards with themselves or similar gambling games on most available spaces. Rai'gy, Kimmuriel and the captains had brought Bregan D'aerthe to a grinding halt at a suggestion from Winter, and you thought of trust.
It was definitely snowing more heavily outside now, vision nearly obscured by the apparently continuous translucent white pouring that was blown around by the wind that whistled and shrieked and rattled impotently at the windows. Oddly, or perhaps not so strangely, even though the walls were comparatively thin, no hint of a chill entered the building.
You raised yourself up on the windowsill and glanced around. Of the street outside you could only see white. White seemed to cover every surface now, like a pristine blanket...very deadly, perhaps, to those who had been caught in the blizzard, even those indoors without heating, and you understood.
Even Narbondel seemed to be fighting a losing battle. From here its infrared signs flickered madly on and off, like a candle flame about to be smothered.
And...strange! You could see shapes, moving on the ice.
Pressing your nose to the glass, you finally made out irregular shapes – a rothe-like one there, a humanoid-like one here, bulky, crude, and as if made of ice, shambling through the blizzard as if it was not there. And if you tried to focus on them through the screaming wind, you seemed to hear guttural, primitive roars.
The soldiers appeared to have noticed them for some time already – they called the creatures L'snow phindaren, the snow monsters, but seemed untroubled by them.
You wondered vaguely what Winter had done.
Watching the shambling, apparently aimless movements of the creatures for a while, you decided to go and find Kimmuriel or Rai'gy. Perhaps they would be scrying.
**
They were.
Kimmuriel, in his chamber, stood next to Rai'gy before several 'windows'. Two of these continually shifted views over Menzoberranzan, which appeared to be nearly covered in snow, except for certain shanty towns. One was of Winter, still in the exact position in which you had left her, a serene, if slightly strained smile on her face.
One was over a huge compound, also ice-covered, the courtyard empty of activity. It had a strange fence that looked like a massively woven spiderweb, and this you guessed to be the infamous House Baenre.
There appeared to be a larger concentration of the snow phindaren here, shambling about, getting stuck on the web-fence, forming inside the compound...
"Is it working?" Kimmuriel was asking Rai'gy.
"I have no idea," Rai'gy said, looking more rumpled than usual but more recovered after his rest.
"You have no idea?" Kimmuriel repeated in disbelief.
"I only saw the later parts of this...trick," Rai'gy explained. "I do not know if it would work again."
"Why did she use this before?" Kimmuriel mused.
"Capture by her own House," Rai'gy glanced at the windows over Menzoberranzan. "This...tricked them enough to throw her out in the snow. Watch House Baenre. Sooner or later what she calls the Snow King will turn up with his demands. All her own imagination, of course."
"And this...Reima will not suspect?"
"Unless he knows of her. Or even if he did suspect, I do not think he knows of that extraplanar dimension. No doubt he will try to find her on this dimension first. Perhaps Irr'liancrea can take care of it." Rai'gy sounded doubtful.
You knew that if that Reima were to try to confront Winter in the...extraplanar dimension, the twins would try their best to help, and so felt better than Rai'gy looked.
"How will this harm her?" Kimmuriel asked.
Rai'gy shrugged. "She never fully explained to me what would happen. But from what I believe, she manages to merge her...spirit into that of a true winter season on the surface, and bring it here, and control it. She will be very weary for a long time after this – and very cold, because after she stops controlling this winter and takes her spirit back into her body, it is still touched with frost. She may catch...I believe she called the word 'hypothermia' or worse. As I had mentioned before, she nearly died several times the last she tried this."
"And Winter's...abbilen? Ssussun and Veldrin?" Kimmuriel murmured.
"They have power," Rai'gy said simply. "And apparently they may be one of the reasons why Reima is here."
"Then Bregan D'aerthe..."
"L'ogglin d'ussta ogglin zhah ussta abbil, *" Rai'gy quoted.
"Ol xal tlu ji...but they make me uncomfortable." Kimmuriel muttered. "They are from the Abyss."
"So is Lloth our Goddess," Rai'gy chided.
"If Lloth were to appear here in front of me, I would also be uncomfortable," Kimmuriel chuckled, then glanced at you as you went to curl up in a corner of the room. "Another of her abbilen?"
Rai'gy shrugged, dismissing you as another of Winter's eccentricities. You did not know whether to feel relieved or annoyed.
**
At least the twins remembered enough to feed you, you thought, at their table in the large canteen in the building. Predictably they did have several admirers of common soldiers, which backed off respectfully when the captains Rand'eran and Berg'inyon appeared. The other two captains had been sectioned off to other main Bregan D'aerthe buildings.
You finished quickly and padded off to do something else other than watch the twins continue their 'play'. At least they seemed unconcerned.
**
Two cycles of Narbondel later, and the snow was waist-deep, a soldier reported to Rai'gy. The two of them still sat at Kimmuriel's chambers scrying, with the occasional dishes of food pressed on them.
"See," Rai'gy pointed at the 'window' overlooking Baenre.
"The 'Snow King' you had been speaking of?" Kimmuriel said, after a while.
"A figment of her imagination," Rai'gy nodded, but you sensed admiration in his voice. It took a lot of will power to animate so many objects.
You strained to look, and saw a figure sitting on what appeared to be a high-backed, elaborate throne in Baenre's courtyard. Kimmuriel changed the view closer, and the figure became clearer. It was a humanoid-like creature, but massively built, as large as minotaur, with a strict, forbidding face wreathed with a luxuriant beard. From his temples sprang large antlers not unlike that of rakshalk, Underdark elk, though of course scaled much smaller. The giant elk stood nearly twice as tall from the shoulder as any elf.
He was speaking to a small blue disc.
"Communication disc," Rai'gy murmured. "To Baenre, I would think?"
Kimmuriel appeared to do nothing, but abruptly sound filled the room, as if all of you were inside the Baenre compound.
"...and demand Baenre immediately give up Jarlaxle to the ice." The Snow King's voice was harsh and soft at the same time, snow and ice, along with a certain whistling hissing undertone like a winter's wind. He spoke in slightly hesitant, broken drow, which was nearly painful to listen to.
A voice seemed to come from the disc. "Until Jarlaxle bequeaths the ownership of the artifact known as Crenshinibon to me, you cannot have him."
"Triel Baenre," Kimmuriel identified.
Bequeath...
"So that was why they wanted him," Rai'gy said.
"If I understood Winter's abbilen, did they not say that Reima wanted to destroy the shards?" Kimmuriel looked puzzled.
"Who knows what he...or it wants to do," Rai'gy rubbed a cramp in his shoulder blades thoughtfully.
"Then I will bury Menzoberranzan in snow and ice," the Snow King said with deadly calm, as if this was perfectly easy. "I am familiar with the drow ways. Your tortures are extreme – he may die, or find a way to kill himself. And the only one whom will have the privilege of killing Jarlaxle must be myself. I wish to be revenged on him. Many years he has been safe enough, so I have had time to build up my revenge, but you hurry matters, Matron, and it appears that I must act."
The voice from the disc was angry now. "You can not wait?"
"I am not used to waiting."
"Nav, then, and light take you!"
"Then see Menzoberranzan freeze to its death. When your people die and join my army of ice, in my vengeance I shall freeze all drow cities one by one, until your entire race is extinct." Again, said with deadly calm.
"I do not believe you can do this."
"Then watch." The Snow King extended his hand and grasped the disc, crushing it. When he opened his palm again, it was gone.
Kimmuriel turned off the sound and whistled. "I did not know one could banish a Matron's speak-disc."
"You have not known Winter for very long," Rai'gy continued to rub his shoulder.
"This may work...or they may hasten and up their efforts to force Jarlaxle to hand over ownership of Crenshinibon..."
Rai'gy closed his eyes and did not reply.
As you watched the windows, you saw that outside, the blizzards seemed to be worsening noticeably.
**
A short while after the start of the third Narbondel cycle, Narbondel itself stopped working. The ArchMage, apparently, could not start the fire – the tower had been clogged with snow and frozen over with ice.
The city slowly began to freeze to death.
"She did not go this quickly the last time," Rai'gy remarked. Jarlaxle's inner circle sat in Kimmuriel's chambers, watching the windows.
"How many dead?" Berg'inyon murmured.
Kimmuriel shrugged. "Many from the noble houses, especially the smaller and poorer ones, and not only slaves."
"Triel has to give in soon," Rand'eran predicted. "It does not look like this Reima is helping to shield House Baenre from the cold." Snow covered the massive building, as if crushing it under its weight.
"Good," Tilarjen murmured under his breath. "Let Baenre freeze."
**
Near the end of the third cycle, Tantras'nen spotted movement on the top of one of Baenre's balconies, and called attention to it. Kimmuriel arrived via portal, and enlarged the view, also allowing sound.
Six on the balcony, Triel Baenre, four guards, and a limp, bloody mess just identifiable as a drow. Berg'inyon hissed.
"...take him!" Triel was saying, and two guards caught hold of the drow's shoulders, two others of his ankles, and heaved him over the railing.
"Iblith!" Tilarjen snarled. The height would kill him, if it was Jarlaxle.
"Watch," Rai'gy said tightly.
An enormous, fish-like mouth broke from the snow below, as if the snow itself was only water, large enough to swallow a few of Baenre's towers. It rose with astonishing speed, then closed neatly over the falling figure entirely, before falling back into the snow.
You noticed that the Snow King made a curt bow in Triel's direction, then disappeared. The blizzards stopped, and the monsters too turned into mere interestingly-shaped snow statues.
"Quickly!" Rai'gy pointed to Winter's window, but Kimmuriel had already opened a portal. All of you rushed through, to see another sort of dimension door, the flat planar type, opening a few feet over Jarlaxle's desk.
Kimmuriel was shouting for medical aid outside the door, but the rest of you watched with silent fascination, the blue colors swirling as if mixed by an unseen hand.
Then the bloody figure of Jarlaxle landed gently on his side facing Winter on the desk, singed, broken, skin still melting in some patches due to some sort of acid, fingers a raw red mess, some of his nails pulled out, his eyes closed and blackened, welts on his back as if from whips. He wore a dirty loincloth stained with his own blood and worse. Only his harshly ragged breathing would have made you believe that the tortured remains were still alive.
You trotted to Winter's side and looked at her, and felt horrified. Her skin was frosted over, and there seemed to be some sort of faint blue light flowing into her from Irr'liancrea. You could feel the intense cold radiating from it.
What was the sword doing?
But she opened her eyes, slowly, and rubbed off the thin coating of ice on her eyelashes, and slowly smiled, wearily, but with grim triumph.
Unbelievably, Jarlaxle raised his head to regard Winter, and they watched each other for a short, uncomfortable moment.
Then Winter's smile widened. "By Morikan, you look like hell."
--
Language:
L'ogglin d'ussta ogglin zhah ussta abbil: The enemy of my enemy is my friend