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asn't

eager to confront this new intruder,  certainly not without the support of herpersonal guards. Y

et she was mistress in  these  halls,  and it  was  unthinkable to

turn tail and let an invader make free with her domain.

Besides, if she fled, the cursed thing would probably track her anyway.Leaving her fallen patrol with their  useless magical treasures strewn about

them on the floor, she strode toward the noise. She shouted

to attend her                      for other underlings ,  but no one responded.

history of Lolth as it had occurred aIn a minute or so, she entered a long nd as it was prophesiedgallery, where wall carvings told the : her seduction of Corellon Larethian, chief deity of the  contemptible elves of the W

o

their union and her first attempt to overt             rld Above, form and her descent into the Abyss,  her conquest of thhrow him, her discovery of her spider e Demonweb and her

adoption of the drow as her gods and ascendancy over all creation.chosen people, and her future triumph over all other

color and shape—humanoid, quadruped, blA silhouette appeared in the arched entry ob, worm, cluster of spikes—from one at the far end of the hall. It changed instant to the next. Somehow perceiving  Quenthel, it let out a cry

.  Its voice

sounded like a wavering, cacophonous jumble of every noise she'd ever heard and some she hadn't. Within the first discordant howl she caught the shrill note of

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a flute, the grunt of a rothe, a baby crying, water splashing, and fire crackling. moment, she was less concerned for her safetyQuenthel recognized the demon for the profound threat it was, but for a or fired with a fighter'sshe was surprised. Poison surely suggested              rage than  was plainly an embodiment of chaos.     an assassin, yet the demon before her  color around it. Quenthel reached into thThe spirit started down the gallery, and the walls bulged, flowed, and changed brought out a scroll, then something hit  her hard in the back of the neck.e leather bag hanging from her belt and

*  *  *

Ryld peered about the room. Judging from the sunken arena in the center  of  thefloor, the ruinous place had, in another era,  served as a drinkirude establishments where dark elves of  every station went tong pit—one of those forget about caste and grace for a few hours, guzzle raw spirone another in contests that were often   it, and watch undercreatures slaughter comical aspect.            set up in such a way as to give them a
In other words, it would have been a  crude sort of place by the standards ofelegant Menzoberranzan, but it had grown cruder since the goblinoids had taken it over

.  Scores if not hundreds of  them packed into the space, and the mingled stink of their unwashed bodies,  each race  malodorous  in  its  own particular fashion, was sickening. The  loud gabbling in  their  various  harsh  and guttural  languages was  nearly  as  unpleasant.  It  all  but  drowned  out  therhythmic thuds that filtered through the ceiling, but of course the shaggy gnoll drummer on the roof wasn'tguide others still in transit.      playing for the folk already inside but to

To  Ryld'soutside the Braeryn. He observed plain but surprise, a fair number of  the creatures assembling there hailed from relatively clean and intact garments suggestive of Eastmyrbrands—the stigmata of thralls who',  and even liveries, steel collars, shackles, whip marks, and d sneaked away from their mistresses'affluent households. Obviously, those who'd come from beyond the district couldn't have heard the drum through the magical buffers. Some runner must have carried word to them.

Still magically disguised as ores, though not the same ones who'd tricked thetwo bugbears, the masters of Tier Breche had squeezed into a corner to watchwhatever would transpire.Certain no one would hear him over the  ambient din, Ryld leaned his head close to Pharaun's and said, "I think it's just a party "

.

"Do you see them celebrating?" Pharaun replied. His new porcine face had abroken nose and tusk. "No, not as such. They'd  be considerably moreboisterous. They're waiting for something, and eagerly, too. Observe thosefemale goblins chattering and passing their bottle back and forth." Pharaun nodded toward a trio of filthy,  bandy-legged creatures with flat faces  and the gathering breaks up, we may want to sloping brows. "They're aquiver with anticseek solace for our frustrations in their ipation. If they're still as giddy after hairy

Certain his friend was joking, R, misshapen arms."     yld snorted . . . then realized he wasn't  quitesure after all.

"You'

"A true scholar always seeks new experd have relations with a goblin!"   iences. Besides, what's  the point of

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being a dark elf, a lord of the Underdarthe utmost?"             k, if you don't exploit  the slave  races  to

"Hmm.  I admit they might be no worse  than one of those priestesses who

demand you grovel and do exactly as you're—"

"Hush!"

The drum  had stopped.

"Som

R  ething's happening," Pharaun added.yld saw that his friend was correct.  A stir ran through the crowd and the

started to shout, "Prophet! Prophet! Prophet!"               yThe m

aster of Melee-Magthere didn't  know what he expected to see next,

but it certainly wasn'tupper body appeared above the heads of the crowd. Perhaps he' the figure in the nondescript cloak and hood whose d  climbed up

on  a  bench  or  table,  or  maybe  he'd  simply  levitated,  for  this

beloved of the lower orders, appeared to be a handsome d    "Prophet,"  plainly row male.The Prophet let his followers chant and  shout for a mi

raised his slender hands and gradually they subsided. Pharaun leaned cnute or so, then he lose toR

y"It'ld again.s possible the fellow's not really  one of us," the wizard said. "He'

s

wrapped in a glamour somewhat like ours, but his spell maperceive him  in a favorable light. I imagine the goblins see himkes every observer

as a goblin, the gnolls, as one of their own, and so forth."

"What's inside the illusion?"

"I don't know. The enchantment is peculiar.  I've never encountered anythin

quite like it. I can't  see through it, but  I suspect we'          gre about to learn hisintentions."

His voice sparked another round of cheering, and he waited for it to run i"My brothers and sisters," the Prophet said.               ts

course.

"My brothers and sisters," he repeated. "Since the founding of this city, theMenzoberranyr have held our peoples  in bondage or in conditions e

qualldegraded. They work us until we die of  exhaustion. They torture and kill u   y

s  on  a

whim. They condemn  us to starve, sicken, and live in squalor ".

The audience growled its agreement."You witness our misery everywhere you look," the hooded orator conti

nued.

"Y

older than five or six, trying to pickesterday, I walked through Manyfolk. up a scrap of mI saw a hobgoblin girl-child, surely no ushroom  from  the street. With her teeth! Her hands wouldn't serve. Som

e  drow had magically fused

them  together behind her back so she

The crowd snarled in outrage, even though their races comwould live and die a cripple and a freak."monly engaged intortures equally cruel, albeit far less varied and im

"I walked through Narbondellyn," the Prophet  said. "I saw an ore, paraaginative.       lyzed in

some  manner,  lying on the ground. A dark elf slit his chest, spread the flaps  of

skin, cut some  ribs with a saw,  and whistled his riding lizard over to feed on the

still-living thrall's  organs.  The drow told  a  companion that  he  gave  the  reptile

one  such  meal  every  tenday  to  make  it  a  faster  racer."

The audience howled its wrath. One female  ore, transported with fury, gashed

her cheeks and brow with a piece of broken glass.The Prophet's litany of atrocities ran on  and on, and R

yld gradually felt a

strange emotion overtaking him.  He knew it couldn'           lf experienced that ridiculous condition—but perhaps it was a kind of shamt be guilt—no dark e

e, a

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disgust at the sheer waste and childishness manifest in Menzoberranzan's abuseof its undercreatures and a desire to  rectify the situation if he

could.

serve the pleasure of the drowThe feeling was irrational, of course.  The goblins and their kin existed only to another          , and if you ruined one, you just caught or bought

.  The weapons master gave his head

Pharaun.                 a shake, clearing it, then turned to

Even through his ore mask, the wizard's amusem"Resolved to m               ent was apparent.

end your wicked ways?"

"I gather you feel the influence, too," said Ryld. "What's happening?""The Prophet has m

agic buttressing his or

figuration I don't quite understand."      atory,  again, in a sort of con-"Right, but what'

s  the point of all this bellyaching?'

"I assume  he'll get around to telling us.'

The speaker continued in the same  veinthe brink of hysteria.           a while longer,  goading the crowd to

At last he cried, "But it does not have to be that way!'The undercreatures howled, and for a m

oment, until he pushed the feelings

away, Ryld felt his ma"W        gically induced disgust blaze up into savage bloodlust.drow

to be our slaves! We can be avenged! Repay every injury a thousand fold! Cast down thee'll wrap ourselves in silks and cloth-of-gold and make them