"01 - Daughter of the Drow - Elaine Cunningham 1.0.palmdoc.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Starlight And Shadows)

years—years the faltering city could not spare.
"You know the problems Menzoberranzan faces as well as I do," Gromph continued
softly. "If the city falls into anarchy, we wizards may well be her best chance
of survival. We must stand ready to assume power."
Or to seize it.
These words were also left unspoken, but every drow in the room heard them, and
marked them well.
Chapter Two
DAUGHTERS OF BAENRE
Baenre is dead. Reign long, Matron Triel."
These words had been spoken many times, with varying degrees of sincerity,
throughout the day as one by one the nobles, soldiers, and commoners of House
Baenre filed past the fearsome black throne—a sentient wonder in whose gleaming
depths writhed the spirits of Baenre victims—to pledge fealty to their new
matron.
Triel Baenre herself was not an imposing sight. She was well under five feet
tall, her body as slim and straight as a child's. By the standards of drow
elves, she was not particularly attractive. Her white hair was long and thin,
braided tightly and wrapped around her small head like a crown. She was clad
simply: a long hauberk of elven chain mail draped over the simple black robe of
a priestess. Yet Triel did not require the conventional trappings of royalty.
She was one of the highest-ranked priestesses of Lloth in the city, and in the
full favor of her goddess. The young matron exuded power and confidence, and she
greeted each of her subjects with a regal nod.
In truth, Triel was not as comfortable with her new role as she appeared to be.
Seated upon her mother's throne, she felt aa if she were a child playacting. By
the blood of Lloth, she swore silently, her feet did not even touch the floor! A
minor indignity, perhaps, but to Triel's troubled mind her dangling feet seemed
to be an omen, a sign she was not equal to the task before her.
Triel knew that, by any measures known to her, she should have been ecstatically
happy with her elevation. She was now matron mother of Menzoberranzan's first
house. Triel was no stranger to power—as matron mistress of the clerical school
Arach-Tinilith, she held a position of great honor—but she had never truly
aspired to her late mother's throne. The former matron had reigned for so many
centuries she had seemed eternal. Even her given name had been lost to memory.
To generations of drow, Triel's mother was Baenre, was Menzoberranzan. Thus each
repetition of "Baenre is dead" echoed through Triel's mind like a portent of
doom, until she felt she must scream aloud or go mad.
But at last the ceremony ended, and Triel was left alone to face the task of
rebuilding the shattered household. It was a formidable challenge. A house's
strength lay in its priestesses, and far too many had fallen in her mother's
war. Many of the former matron's daughters—and their daughters in turn—had gone
on to form houses of their own. In theory, these minor houses were allies of
House Baenre, but their primary concern was spinning their own webs of power and
intrigue.
In addition to its lack of priestesses, the first house was without a weapon
master. Triel's brother Berg*inyon had gone missing during the war. As leader of
the mighty lizard riders, he had led the attack on Mithril Hall's
surface-dwelling allies, and he had never returned to his family home. Many drow
had fallen in the terror and confusion that followed dawn, and it was not