"Dinnen douward ma brechen tol” Briza implored.
"Dinnen douward . . . maaa . . . brechen to" Malice growled, so determined to focus through the pain that she bit through one of her thin lips.
The baby's head appeared, more fully this time, and this time to stay.
Briza trembled and could barely remember the incantation herself. She whispered the final rune into the matron's ear, almost fearing the consequences.
Malice gathered her breath and her courage. She could feel the tingling of the spell as clearly as the pain of the birth. To her daughters standing around the idol, staring at her in disbelief, she appeared as a red blur of heated fury, streaking sweat lines that shone as brightly as the heat of boiling-water.
"Abec” the matron began, feeling the pressure building to a crescendo. "Abec” She felt the hot tear of her skin, the sudden slippery release as the baby's head pushed through, the sudden ecstacy of birthing. "Abec dj'n'a'BREG DOUWARD." Malice screamed, pushing away all of the agoony in a final explosion of magical power that knocked even the clerics of her own house from their feet.
Carried on the thrust of Matron Malice's exultation, the dweomer thundered into the chapel of House DeVir, shattered the gemstone idol of Lloth, sundered the double doors into heaps of twisted metal, and threw Matron Ginafae and her overmatched subordinates to the floor.
Zak shook his head in disbelief as the chapel doors flew past him. "Quite a kick, Malice” He chuckled and spun around the entryway, into the chapel. Using his infravision, he took a quick survey and head count of the lightless room's seven living occupants, all struggling back to their feet, their robes tattered. Again shaking his head at the bared power of Matron Malice, Zak pulled his hood down over his face.
A snap of his whip was the only explanation he offered as he smashed a tiny ceramic globe at his feet. The sphere shattered, dropping out a pellet that Briza had enchanted for just such occasions, a pellet glowing with the brightness of daylight.
For eyes accustomed to blackness, tuned in to heat emanations, the intrusion of such radiance came in a blinding flash of agony. The clerics' cries of pain only aided Zak in his systematic trek around the room, and he smiled widely under his hood every time he felt his sword bite into drow flesh.
He heard the beginnings of a spell across the way and knew that one of the DeVirs had recovered enough from the assault to be dangerous. The weapon master did not need his eyes to aim, however, and the crack of his whip took Matron Ginafae's tongue right out of her mouth.
Briza placed the newborn on the back of the spider idol and lifted the ceremonial dagger, pausing to admire its cruel workmanship. Its hilt was a spider's body sporting eight legs, barbed so as to appear furred, but angled down to serve as blades. Briza lifted the instrument above the baby's chest. "Name the child” she implored her mother. "The Spi-
der Queen will not accept the sacrifice until the child is
named!"
Matron Malice lolled her head, trying to fathom her daughter's meaning. The matron mother had thrown every thing into the moment of the spell and the birth, and she was now barely coherent.
"Name the child!" Briza commanded, anxious to feed her
hungry goddess.
"It nears its end” Dinin said to his bl'othel' when they met in a lower hall of one of the lesser pillars of House DeVir. "Rizzen is winning through to the top, and it is believed that Zaknafein's dark work has been completed”
"Two score of House DeVir's soldiers have already turned allegiance to us” Nalfein replied.
"They see the end” laughed Dinin. "One house serves them as well as another, and in the eyes of commoners no house is worth dying for. Our task will be finished soon”
"Too quickly for anyone to take note” Nalfein said. "Now Do'Urden, Daermon N'a'shezbaernon, is the Ninth House of Menzoberranzan, and DeVir be damned!"
"Alert!" Dinin cried suddenly, eyes widening in feigned horror as he looked over his brother's shoulder.
Nalfein reacted immediately, spinning to face the danger at his back, only to put the true danger at his back. For even as Nalfein realized the deception, Dinin's sword slipped into his spine. Dinin put his head to his brother's shoulder and pressed his cheek to Nalfein's, watching the red sparkle of heat leave his brother's eyes.
"Tho quickly for anyone to take note” Dinin teased, echoing his brother's earlier words.
He dropped the lifeless form to his feet. "Now Dinin is elderboy of House Do'Urden, and Nalfein be damned”
"Drizzt” breathed Matron Malice. "The child's name is Drizzt!"
Briza tightened her grip on the knife and began the ritual. "Queen of Spiders, take this babe” she began. She raised the dagger to strike. "Drizzt Do'Urden we give to you in payment for our glorious vic-"
"Wait!" called Maya from the side of the room. Her melding with her brother Nalfein had abruptly ceased. It could only mean one thing. "Nalfein is dead” she announced. "The baby is no longer the third living son”
Vierna glanced curiously at her sister. At the same instant that Maya had sensed Nalfein's death, Vierna, melded with Dinin, had felt a strong emotive surge. Elation? Vierna brought a slender finger up to her pursed lips, wondering if Dinin had successfully pulled off the assassination.
Briza still held the spider-shaped knife over the babe's chest, wanting to give this one to Lloth.
"We promised the Spider Queen the third living son”
Maya warned. "And that has been given”
"But not in sacrifice” argued Briza.
Vierna shrugged, at a loss. "If Lloth accepted Nalfein, then
he has been given. To give another might evoke the Spider
Queen's anger”
"But to not give what we have promised would be worse
still!" Briza insisted.
"Then finish the deed” said Maya.
Briza clenched down tight on the dagger and began theritual again.
"Stay your hand” Matron Malice commanded, propping herself up in the chair. "Lloth is content, our victory is won. Welcome, then, your brother, the newest member of House Do'Urden”
"Just a male” Briza commented in obvious disgust, walking away from the idol and the child.
"Next time we shall do better” Matron Malice chuckled, though she wondered if there would be a next time. She approached the end of her fifth century of life, and drow elves, even young ones, were not a particularly fruitful lot. Briza had been born to Malice at the youthful age of one hundred, but in the almost four centuries since, Malice had
produced only five other children. Even this baby, Drizzt, had come as a surprise, and Malice hardly expected that she would ever conceive again.
"Enough of such contemplations” Malice whispered to herself exhausted. "There will be ample time. . “ She sank back into her chair and fell into fitful, though wickedly pleasant, dreams of heightening power.
Zaknafein walked through the central pillar of the DeVir complex, his hood in his hand and his whip and sword comfortably replaced on his belt. Every now and then a ring of battle sounded, only to be quickly ended. House Do'Urden had rolled through to victory, the tenth house had taken the fourth, and now all that remained was to remove evidence
and witnesses. One group of lesser female clerics marched through, tending to the wounded Do'Urdens and animating the corpses of those beyond their ability, so that the bodies could walk away from the crime scene. Back at the Do'Urden compound, those corpses not beyond repair would be resurrected and put back to work.
Zak turned away with a visible shudder as the clerics moved from room to room, the marching line of Do'Urden zombies growing ever longer at their backs.
As distasteful as Zaknafein found this troupe, the one that followed was even worse. The Do'Urden clerics led a contingent of soldiers through the structure, using detection spells to determine hiding places of surviving DeVirs. One stopped in the hallway just a few steps from Zak, her eyes turned inward as she felt the emanations of her spell. She held her fingers out in front of her, tracing a slow line, like some macabre divining rod, toward drow flesh.
"In there!" she declared, pointing to a panel at the base of the wall. The soldiers jumped to it like a pack of ravenous wolves and tore through the secret door. Inside a hidden cubby huddled the children of House DeVir. These were nobles, not commoners, and could not be taken alive.
Zak quickened his pace to get beyond the scene, but he heard vividly the children's helpless screams as the hungry Do'Urden soldiers finished their job. Zak found himself in a run now. He rushed around a bend in the hallway, nearly bowling over Dinin and Rizzen.
"Nalfein is dead” Rizzen declared impassively. Zak immediately turned a suspicious eye on the younger Do'Urden son.
"I killed the DeVir soldier who committed the deed” Dillin assured him, not even hiding his cocky smile.
Zak had been around for nearly four centuries, and he was certainly not ignorant of the ways of his ambitious race. The brother princes had come in defensively at the back of the lines, with a host of Do'Urden soldiers between them and the enemy. By the time they even encountered a drow that was not of their own house, the majority of the DeVirs' surviving soldiers had already switched allegiance to House Do'Urden. Zak doubted that either of the Do'Urden brothers had even seen action against a DeVir.
"The description of the carnage in the prayer room has been spread throughout the ranks” Rizzen said to the weapon master. "You performed with your usual excellence as we have come to expect”
Zak shot the patron a glare of contempt and kept on his way, down though the structure's main doors and out beyond the magical darkness and silence into Menzoberranzan's dark dawn. Rizzen was Matron Malice's present partner in a long line of partners, and no more. When Malice was finished with him, she would either relegate him back to the ranks of the common soldiery, stripping him of the name Do'Urden and all the rights that accompanied it, or she would dispose of him. Zak owed him no respect.
Zak moved out beyond the mushroom fence to the high-
est vantage point he could find, then fell to the ground. He
watched, amazed, a few moments later, when the proces-
sion of the Do'Urden army, patron and son, soldiers and
clerics, and the slow-moving line of two dozen drow zom-
bies, made its way back home. They had lost, and left be-
hind, nearly all of their slave fodder in the attack, but the
line leaving the wreckage of House DeVir was longer than
the line that had come in earlier that night. The slaves had
been replaced twofold by captured DeVir slaves, and fifty,!
or more of the DeVir common troops, showing typical drow
loyalty, had willingly joined the attackers. These traitorous'
draw would be interrogated-magically interrogated-by
the Do'Urden clerics to ensure their sincerity.
They would pass the test to a one, Zak knew. Drow elves
were creatures of survival, not of principle. The soldiers
would be given new identities and would be kept within the
privacy of the Do'Urden compound for a few months, until
the fall of House DeVir became an old and forgotten tale.
Zak did not follow immediately. Rather, he cut through
the rows of mushroom trees and found a secluded dell,
where he plopped down on a patch of mossy carpet and!
raised his gaze to the eternal darkness of the cavern's
ceiling-and the eternal darkness of his existence.
It would have been prudent for him to remain silent at
that time; he was an invader to the most powerful section of
the vast city. He thought of the possible witnesses to his
words, the same dark elves who had watched the fall of
House DeVir, who had wholeheartedly enjoyed the specta-
cle. In the face of such behavior and such carnage as this
night had seen, Zak could not contain his emotions. His la-
ment came out as a plea to some god beyond his experience.
"What place is this that is my world; what dark coil has my
spirit embodied?" he whispered the angry disclaimer that
had always been a part of him. "In light, I see my skin as
black; in darkness, it glows white in the heat of this rage
cannot dismiss.
"Would that I had the courage to depart, this place or this
life, or to stand openly against the wrongness that is the
world of these, my kin. 1b seek an existence that does not
run afoul to that which I believe, and to that which I hold
dear faith is truth.
"Zaknafein Do'Urden, I am called, yet a drow I am not, by
choice or by deed. Let them discover this being that I am,
then. Let them rain their wrath on these old shoulders al-
ready burdened by the hopelessness of Menzoberranzan”
Ignoring the consequences, the weapon master rose to his
feet and yelled, "Menzoberranzan, what hell are you?"
A moment later, when no answer echoed back out of the
quiet city, Zak flexed the remaining chill of Briza's wand
from his weary muscles. He found some comfort as he pat-
ted the whip on his belt-the instrument that had taken the
tongue from the mouth of a matron mother.
Chapter 3
The Eyes of the Child
Masoj, the young apprentice-which at this point in his
magic-using career meant that he was no more than a clean-
ing attendant-leaned on his broom and watched as Alton
DeVir moved through the door into the highest chamber of
the spire. Masoj almost felt sympathy for the student, who
had to go in and face the Faceless One.
Masoj felt excitement as well, though, knowing that the
ensuing fireworks between Alton and the faceless master
would be well worth the watching. He went back to his
sweeping, using the broom as an excuse to get farther
around the curve of the room's floor, closer to the door.
"You requested my presence, Master Faceless One” Alton
DeVir said again, keeping one hand in front of his face and
squinting to fight the brilliant glare of the room's three
lighted candles. Alton shifted uncomfortably from one foot
to the other just inside the shadowy room's door.
