Siege of Darkness: The Legend of Drizzt, Book IX by R. A. Salvatore

Author:R. A. Salvatore
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780786954094
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2009-06-16T00:00:00+00:00

Locked in a room in the highest level of the tallest stalagmite mound within the Oblodran compound, K’yorl Odran heard Baenre’s call, heard it clearly. Her hands gripped tight on her throne’s carved marble arms. She squeezed her eyes shut, as she ordered herself to concentrate.

Now, above any other time, K’yorl needed her powers, and now, for the first time, she could not access them! Something was terribly wrong, she knew, and though she believed that Lolth must somehow be behind this, she sensed, as many of the Spider Queen’s priestesses had sensed when the Time of Troubles had begun, that this trouble was beyond even Lolth.

The problems had begun soon after K’yorl had been chased back to her house by the loosed tanar’ri. She and her daughters had gathered to formulate an attack plan to drive off the fiends. As always with the efficient Oblodran meetings, the group shared its thoughts telepathically, the equivalent of holding several understandable conversations at once.

The defense plan was coming together well—K’yorl grew confident that the tanar’ri would be sent back to their own plane of existence, and when that was accomplished, she and her family could go and properly punish Matron Baenre and the others. Then something terrible had happened. One of the tanar’ri had thrown forth a blast of lightning, a searing, blinding bolt that sent a crack running along the outer wall of the Oblodran compound. That in itself was not so bad; the compound, like all the Houses of Menzoberranzan, could take a tremendous amount of punishment, but what the blast, what the return of magical powers, signified, was disastrous to the Oblodrans.

At that same moment, the telepathic conversation had abruptly ended, and try as they may, the nobles of the doomed House could not begin it anew.

K’yorl was as intelligent as any drow in Menzoberranzan. Her powers of concentration were unparalleled. She felt the psionic strength within her mind, the powers that allowed her to walk through walls or yank the beating heart from an enemy’s chest. They were there, deep in her mind, but she could not bring them forth. She continued to blame herself, her lack of concentration in the face of disaster. She even punched herself on the side of the head, as if that physical jarring would knock out some magical manifestation.

Her efforts were futile. As the Time of Troubles had come to its end, as the tapestry of magic in the Realms had rewoven, many rippling side-effects had occurred. Throughout the Realms, dead magic zones had appeared, areas where no spells would function, or, even worse, where no spells would function as intended. Another of those side-effects involved psionic powers, the magiclike powers of the mind. The strength was still there, as K’yorl sensed, but bringing forth that strength required a different mental route than before.

The illithids, as Methil had informed Matron Baenre, had already discerned that route, and their powers were functioning nearly as completely as before. But they were an entire race of psionicists, and a race possessed of communal intelligence.

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