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Sos'Umptu knelt on the floor in front of the statue and began to polish the stone.
The work was menial labor, and most drow females would find it demeaning to even let their priestess robes touch the floor, much less while doing physical labor. Sos'Umptu was a high priestess of Lloth and one of the more powerful ones in the city. She was the third born daughter of Matron Baenre, matron mother of the first house of Menzoberranzan, a city of dark elves, the most feared race in the underdark.
It was traditional to have male children clean the statues and altars of a drow house's chapel, but Sos'Umptu disagreed with that philosophy. Her house had been the first in the city for longer than almost anyone could remember. That title and power was a result of one thing: Matron Baenre's devotion to Lloth, the Spider Queen. To fall out of Lloth's favor was a kin to a death sentence in drow society. No individual, or even house, no matter how strong and powerful, could remain for long outside of Lloth's favor.
If being outside of Lloth's favor was death, being in it was life. It was a contradiction of sorts, for Lloth was the Goddess of Chaos, harbinger of death and destruction. To stand before her was to know fear, and no wizard or priest, no matter how powerful could stand before her for more than a second unless it be her will. Common sense said that life had its best chance for survival as far away from this evil deity as possible, but the drow thought differently. They lived not only near Lloth, but within her, and she with them.
Nowhere else in all of Menzoberranzan was this union more apparent than within the Baenre compound. While most houses in Menzoberranzan considered themselves lucky to secure only half a dozen stalagmite mounds in which to live, House Baenre boasted twenty stalagmites that were spread out over half a mile in length and half again as wide. The huge compound hugged the perimeter of the roughly circular cavern that contained all of Menzoberranzan, giving it a huge defensive bonus.
It was not likely any drow family would ever be so foolish as to attack the first house of Menzoberranzan, but if they did, the only way to get to the compound was through the magical fence that surrounded it. The silver webbed fence was said to have been a gift from Lloth upon House Baenre's assent to the first house. The strands of the web fence were as thick as a drow's arm and would hold fast any living thing that was so unfortunate as to touch it. No amount of force would ever remove a limb once stuck to the fence, unless that force was capable of separating the secured limb from the rest of the doomed body.
If the strength of Menzoberranzan could best be symbolized by the Baenre compound, the strength of House Baenre could best be symbolized by their chapel. The chapel was the oldest and largest of its kind in the entire city. Even the main chapel at Arach-Tinilith, the school for drow priestesses, paled in comparison. The chapel at Arach-Tinilith might be slightly larger, but only out of necessity and not towards the glory of Lloth. The Baenre Chapel could seat 2,000 drow, a tenth of the entire city. The chapel was adorned with statues and idols along the perimeter of the huge circular chamber. Farie lights and magical holograms decorated every inch of the domed ceiling.
In the center of the chapel stood the altar. House Baenre boasted ten high priestesses and all could easily stand around the altar with plenty of room to spare. Matron Baenre's youngest daughter was just a year from bringing the number of high priestesses to eleven, and Matron Baenre had plans for more. Above the altar, filling the huge void under the center of the vaulted dome was the most spectacular part of the chapel. Gromph Baenre was the second born child of Baenre and the house's chief wizard. Under the command of his matron mother, Gromph had spent a full decade preparing the huge illusion that hung in the air above the altar. The image was that of a beautiful drow female continually changing into a spider and back again. On the credit of this work alone, Gromph was well on his way to becoming the Archmage of all of Menzoberranzan.
The chapel was the pinnacle of Baenre's strength and the symbol of Lloth's continual presence with the house. Sos'Umptu had been blessed with the responsibility of tending to this chapel. The third daughter of House Baenre had little time for anything but her work within the chapel, but on the occasions when she left the compound to see to matters elsewhere in the city, she was astonished by the other houses' treatment of their chapels.
She had found that it was not only common to have male children tend to the cleaning of the chapels, but it was considered the standard. Males had no place before Lloth. Sos'Umptu understood this, as did Matron Baenre. Males were not allowed within the chapel during the House's weekly rituals, unless they were the object of that ritual. Sos'Umptu cast an eye toward the central altar, smiling. More than a few males had been given to Lloth on that altar, and many more would receive the honor in the future.
To have a male be responsible for the cleanliness of a Lloth given chapel was so repulsive to Sos'Umptu, that if it was not sacrilege, the priestess did not know what was. Sos'Umptu took pride in her work and had never once asked for help. She knew the importance of this chapel to her house, and that the strength of her house was solely the result of their dedication to Lloth.
The sound of quick steps behind her brought Sos'Umptu to attention. She stood quickly and turned. Matron Baenre was walking toward her. The old matron mother was no longer the beautiful drow female she had once been centuries before. Wrinkled lines of age crisscrossed her face like the complicated weavings of a spider web. There was still incredible strength in the old drow, and she was easily the most feared of all drow females, but her physical appearance was not appealing.
Thus, it was a rare occurrence to see the old matron smile. Her face was weighed down with age, a perpetual frown filling the space where her mouth had been. This being the case, Sos'Umptu was used to her mother's sour expressions, but the look on her face now as Matron Baenre walked toward her sent a deep shiver down her spine. Something was terribly wrong.
"Gather your sisters and bring them to my private chamber." Baenre spoke with no emotion and, having said what was needed, spun back around to leave.
"But Matron Mother," Sos'Umptu, called out. Baenre turned to face her daughter. "What is wrong? What has happened?"
Baenre was silent for a short while, trying to build up the nerve to say what she had been contemplating for the past few days. "I'm afraid your worst fears have come true. We have fallen out of Lloth's favor." With that, Matron Baenre turned once again, walked out of the chapel, and left behind a very shocked and confused Sos'Umptu.
***
Matron Baenre's private chambers were not the normal place for such a meeting. Her chambers were not large enough to hold all of her daughters; therefore, Sos'Umptu had to try and discern her mother's wishes. She had decided to only bring her two older sisters, Triel and Bladen'Kerst. All three stood outside of their matron mother's private chambers, their minds racing through all the possibilities of the news that had been given to them.
Triel was the most concerned by it. Her life for the past 400 years had been one of patience and devotion. As she dedicated her life to Lloth and Matron Baenre, she was silently waiting for her chance to rule the house. Baenre should have died centuries ago, but she seemed only to grow stronger as the years went by. Instead, Triel could feel herself getting older. She was the eldest Baenre daughter, and the horror that her mother might out live her, denying her of her Lloth given birthright was something that plagued her constantly.
Now, if what Sos'Umptu had told them was correct, they had fallen outside of Lloth's favor and the greatness that Triel hoped to inherit would crumble before she even had a chance to claim it as her own. Already she began to harbor plans to kill her ancient mother. If they had indeed fallen out of favor, then no one could be to blame but the matron mother herself. Lloth would smile upon Triel if she were able to rid the offending drow female and replace her.
Bladen'Kerst was not as concerned as she was furious. She did not hold any illusions about ever ruling House Baenre. Though she was second daughter, third born after Gromph, and it was not uncommon for the first daughter and matron mother to kill themselves in a power struggle, Bladen'Kerst did not entertain such thoughts. Instead, she enjoyed the power and prestige given her by Lloth. She considered herself to be the fist by which Matron Baenre ruled the house, and in fact, the entire city. She was Baenre's executioner. Though not the most powerful daughter within the house, she was the most feared.
If they had fallen out Lloth's favor, all of that power would be taken from her, and Bladen'Kerst would lose her authority. She was cruel beyond the definition of the word. She thought of herself as having a direct link with her chaotically evil deity, and if that link was in jeopardy now, woe to the guilty party that had made it so.
Sos'Umptu did not know what to think. At first she feared that she was the cause. She was the daughter responsible for maintaining the chapel, the symbol of Baenre's union with Lloth. If that union had been broken, it could only be the result of the chapel's imperfections. She tried to take comfort in the fact that she could not think of anything she had done wrong, but she realized that it was often the will of Lloth to keep the fallen house in the dark as to what the problem was.
The three daughters stood outside of Matron Baenre's private chambers waiting patiently. They knew that no one was allowed to open the door without Matron Baenre's permission. The matron mother had sent for them, but to make an improper assumption at this point would prove fatal.
After several long minutes, the door opened, and the three priestesses entered. Baenre was seated on her private throne. It was not as ornate as the one that sat in her main audience chamber, but its simple luxury was still more than most other matron mothers had.
"We have fallen out of favor, my daughters," Baenre said solemnly, still giving no hint as to the reason.
"How do you know this?" Triel asked. "None of us have sensed anything." She looked at her sisters and they all shook their heads. "In fact, just last week you gave birth for the second time in two decades. We have never been more in Lloth's favor."
"Both males," Baenre said.
Triel had to work hard to restrain the sigh of relief that coursed through her body. They were not out favor with Lloth as much their mother was unsatisfied with her performance.
"After your brother Gromph, I gave birth to nine females in a row-"
"An unheard of feat," Sos'Umptu interjected.
Baenre disregarded the comment. "And now I have given birth to two sons in a row."
"Dantrag is to enter the academy this year," Triel spoke up, "and by all accounts, he will be at the head of his class. This new child, though only a week old, by all accounts is in perfect health and will no doubt grow into a powerful warrior."
"But he is a male!" Baenre shrieked, silencing her daughters. She had thought about this for a long time and would not be convinced otherwise. "I had given birth to nine females in a row. Lloth was with me and we flourished. Then the secondboy of our house, Dantrag, was born. I knew I had to give birth to a male eventually, and our current weapon master is failing with age. But a third son?! What use do I have for a third son?! I have a wizard and will soon have a noble born weapon master. Both will be the best at what they do for they are from my loins, but what use do I have for a third son?!"
"But Matron," Sos'Umptu pleaded, "two children within twenty years, and the last three within a hundred."
"What better way for Lloth to show her displeasure with me than to give me a fertile womb only for it to produce nothing but males."
"I would hardly call three out of thirteen nothing but males, Mother," Triel said.
"Silence! You will not convince me otherwise. I have spent many hours in meditation, and I can get no response from Lloth as to the reason for giving birth to two sons in a row."
"You are not to blame, Mother," Bladen'Kerst spoke for the first time, "it is the poisoned seed of your patron. Tell me his name, and I will send him to Lloth so he might answer to the Spider Queen in person."
The patron of Baenre was not known among her daughters only because it had changed so frequently over the centuries, that no one could keep track anymore. Bladen'Kerst had been the one who had killed the male who had been unfortunate enough to sire Dantrag, ending her streak of nine daughters in a row, and looked forward to any chance to kill more males.
"Lloth has him already," Baenre said with conviction. For once she had taken it upon herself to carry out the deed.
"What would you have us do?" Triel asked. She did not really believe, as did her mother, that House Baenre was out of Lloth's favor, but whatever ceremony or sacrifice Matron Baenre had in mind to rectify the situation would definitely involve her and several of the other daughters.
"I will lay with another male tonight," Baenre said.
"But mother," Sos'Umptu pleaded, "your womb has not fully healed. Conceiving this soon after birth is impossible."
"With Lloth nothing is impossible!" Baenre scolded back.
None of the sisters deemed it wise to bring up the point that according to her, they were not with Lloth anymore. They all understood what was going on. This was a matter of personal pride.
"You will take my useless third son and sacrifice him tonight as I conduct my own ceremony. If Lloth accepts this gift, she will grant me another child. She will bless me with another female."
None of the daughters dared to refute this claim. "If we are to give this child to Lloth, he will need to be named," Triel spoke up. Probably Baenre's disgust with her third son could best be shown in the fact that a week after birth, she had still not deemed the child worthy of a name. "Call him Iblith."
Triel looked shocked at this, wondering how Lloth would view a sacrifice of excrement. She and her two sisters bowed slightly, accepting the task given them and walked out of Baenre's private chambers, allowing the matron mother to prepare herself for that night.
***
"I am telling you that you are mistaken. High priestesses do not wander off outside of the city without at lea-" Trenian Del'Axle stopped signing the intricate drow hand code as his brother turned his back on him. Trenian picked up a small pebble and tossed it at his brother's back.
Krol Del'Axle, the older of the two noble sons, spun around sharply as he felt the small stone bounce of his back and heard it skitter on the cave floor. The sound was little more than a whisper, the sound of a beetle crawling across stone, but in the underdark, it was a beacon.
"There is no way that you saw Baenre Priestesses coming out he-" Trenian started again in sign, but Krol stopped him short with a violent gesture.
"I know what I saw," he replied. "If you make anymore announcements as to our position I will kill you. Do you want to be discovered following three high priestesses? Our lives would be over before we knew we were found."
Trenian began to argue to the point that he did not really believe they were following high priestesses, least of all from House Baenre, but his brother had already turned back around. If even the youngest Baenre daughter had business within the city, she would be escorted by no less than a dozen of the first house's finest soldiers. Yet here, if Trenian was to believe his brother, were three Baenre High Priestesses far outside of the city all by themselves.
Trenian and Krol were members of the fourth house of Menzoberranzan, though for all intents and purposes, they might as well have been the twentieth house. After Baenre, the rest did not seem to matter much. The second and third houses, Barrison Del'Armgo and Oblodra respectively, were slowly gaining strength, but were still a long way off.
Matron Reinela Del'Axle realized that as the matron mother of the fourth house of Menzoberranzan, her position was not a stable one. Drow of the ranking houses often looked at those of the lesser houses thinking they were weak and stupid. Reinela realized they were really the smart ones for not getting involved at all. Now that House Del'Axle was involved, Reinela was going to do her best to make sure she kept up with the rest of the pack.
After House Oblodra, the next four houses were very even in strength. Del'Axle had more high priestesses than all but Baenre, and that fact alone had placed them where they were. Still, the three house directly above them, DeVir, Faen Tlabbar, and Hun'ett could at any time decide they wanted to improve their standing.
Matron Reinela had instructed her house to keep their eyes open for opportunities to increase the strength of their position within the city. When Krol had spotted the three highest-ranking daughters in House Baenre leaving the compound by themselves, he recognized it as one such opportunity. Krol had no delusions of being able dispose of the three high priestesses and did not even want to contemplate what they would do to him and his brother if they were caught. He simply wanted to gain information as to what the first house was up to.
Krol led his younger brother through the dark tunnels that skirted the main cavern of Menzoberranzan as they tried to cut off the three Baenre daughters. Krol had gone to get his younger brother when he saw the three females leaving the Baenre compound and head east out of the main city. He was sure he knew where they were heading and hoped to cut them off.
As the two drow nobles rounded the next outcropping, they spotted the Baenre High Priestesses. "I told you," Krol flashed his hands.
"What are they carrying?" Trenian asked.
Krol had not seen the small bundle when he had first spied the females, but now he could see the eldest daughter holding something prominently in her arms as the two behind her chanted quietly. Krol continued to watch intently, staring closely at the bundle when he saw a flash of heat in the infrared that represented an infant's arm.
"It's a child," Krol whispered, too amazed at what they had discovered to use the silent hand code. "Rumors say that Matron Baenre gave birth last week. It was a male."
"Hakia-Corus," Trenian mumbled, referring to the drow custom of sacrificing the third born son. He spoke the word with disgust, as most males despised the ritual. Trenian despised it more than most, for like the Baenre child that Triel carried, he too was a third born son. While it was a drow custom, and a sacred one at that, it had lost favor in recent times.
The houses in Menzoberranzan were too competitive right now and no house could afford the luxury of sacrificing a noble, even if it was only a male. It was only ever done now if the house in question was in great need. Baenre did not need anything. To Krol and Trenian, this act was just a flagrant display of power by the first house. That they could just throw away a noble child, especial a child from Matron Baenre, was sickening. Even though this child was a male, there were plenty of houses that would give up several children just to get their hands on it.
A sudden thought went through Krol's mind. "Let's take it."
"What?" Trenian could not believe what he was hearing. "Those are high priestesses from House Baenre. Are you crazy?"
Krol leveled an evil glare at his brother. "Perhaps I can give them a substitute sacrifice. I'm sure one third son is as good as another." Trenian swallowed hard and remained silent. "Do you even know where they are headed?"
Trenian had been so caught up in his disbelief about who they were following, that he had not really focussed any attention on where they were going. They were well east of Menzoberranzan and just on the edge of the regular patrols. "The spider colony."
Krol nodded. There were several spider colonies within a day's journey of Menzoberranzan, but this one was the closest. "If we can steal the child after they have given it to the spiders and disrupt the sacrifice, we might be able to bring disfavor on House Baenre."
Trenian did not want to speak out against his brother again, but he had his doubts about this. Krol read his brother's facial expressions well and understood his concern. "Trust me on this one. I've got a plan."
***
Triel led Bladen'Kerst and Sos'Umptu to the edge of a large crack in the cave floor. It was too small to be called a chasm, really, but it was too deep to see the bottom in the limited light of the underdark. The crease started here and led into the side of a stone wall. It grew in width and height, creating a very irregular tunnel until it opened up on the other side of the wall into a large cavern. That was where the queen spider resided.
This was the spider colony. Inside the cavern was sacred ground where no drow in their right mind would set foot. The queen spider was reported to be over six feet long with legs that measured at least that in length. She outweighed any three drow elves and had enough venom in her sacs to kill at least half the city of Menzoberranzan.
The three priestesses walked up to the edge of the fissure and stopped. The two younger sisters increased the volume of their chants. Down below, inside the dark recesses of the small chasm, the skittering of spiders could be heard. Bladen'Kerst and Sos'Umptu further increased the volume of their chants.
Soon dark, spindly legs began to creep over the edge of the crease. The legs pulled the bodies of four giant spiders up over the lip. Each spider was three feet in length and easily that tall. Their pincers moved in rhythm with their legs as they approached the priestesses.
Triel cast a glance back at her sisters as the spiders drew closer, no sign of compliance with their dark request. The two younger females began to call out fervently now, pleading with Lloth to hear them and accept their gift. Slowly, the spiders stopped their approach and began to sway slightly, in tune with the rhythm of the evil priestesses' song.
Triel knelt before the sedated spiders, carefully unwrapping her baby brother from the ceremonial blankets she had carried him in. Within moments, Iblith Baenre lay naked on the cold stone of the cavern. He was unconscious, deep in a trance that Triel had placed upon him. The eldest Baenre daughter stood up and backed away, allowing the spiders access to their gift.
The arachnids moved slowly, still under the control of the two high priestesses. They examined the child's condition and accepted the trance Triel had placed on him. If there had been no trance, the spiders would have injected their own numbing agents. That would have likely killed the child, or would have at least made him less than aware at the time of death, something that Baenre was adamantly against.
Accepting the child as he was, two of the four spiders slowly began to wrap him in a cocoon. They cradled the child between them with four of their sixteen legs as they spun the cocoon around him. The process took less than a minute, and the young Baenre was completely secured, save his head. The largest of the four spiders then cradled the small package to its abdomen with two of its legs and led the other three spiders back into the crease.
"They will take him to the queen?" Sos'Umptu spoke, more of a comment than a question.
"Lloth heard us," Triel responded. "They will do as we have instructed."
"What about the act itself?" Bladen'Kerst asked. Her sadistic nature was not happy with this means ofsacrifice. She had looked forward to driving her dagger into her brother's chest. Then when she found out they were going to feed the child to the spiders, she had looked forward to watching the queen suck the lifeblood out of little Iblith.
Triel had chosen this method over the more direct one because it more closely matched what Matron Baenre was doing at this moment. The matron mother's sexual exploits were well known among the members of house Baenre. Screams could be heard throughout the night on occasion. Trying to link the death of her brother with the climax of her mother would have proven impossible. Plus, Triel did not think she would have been able to live through the experience. Matron Baenre went through as many mates as she did, not because she was dissatisfied with them, but because they rarely survived the process.
When spiders mate, the female is the dominant one, and in the end, she eats the male. Triel did not want to know what her mother did behind her locked chamber door. She was confident that her mother would find a way to link up with this queen spider, and as the spider was sucking baby Iblith Baenre dry, Matron Baenre would be doing likewise.
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