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Shakti took a deep breath and began to walk away. She would circle around and approach the house from the back. If all went well, her tiny spy would admit her to the Baenre girl's castle, and she would search the place quickly, before its owner returned.

A sound came from behind her, a high piping cry that sounded like the squeaks of a wounded scurry rat. Shakti froze, and swore. The tiny door had been trapped, after all.

She spun around and glared furiously at the small figure staggering toward her. She snatched up the drow male and held him close to her eyes. Protruding from his body was a dart, such as those the drow used in their tiny crossbows. Considering his current size, the male might as well have been impaled upon a three-foot spear. And he'd been gut-shot, one of the more painful and lingering deaths.

Shakti swore again, and her eyes darted to the street. A patrol of lizard-mounted drow approached, making their silent rounds of the city.

"You were worried about lizards," she hissed at the tiny male. "Yet if you were to live long enough, you would be grateful you met this one."

With those words, she tossed the drow soldier in the path of a passing lizard mount. The creature's long, slender tongue whipped out and curled around the unexpected morsel. Back it snapped, so quickly that the lizard's rider did not notice what his mount had eaten.

Once again Shakti retraced her steps to the Hunzrin complex. Now that she knew the nature of the traps guarding the door, she would send in another servant, one far more valuable than a male soldier.

Less than an hour later, Shakti stepped triumphantly through Liriel's back door. She regarded the creature who had let her in with a mixture of pride and revulsion. Its face was a hideous parody of a drow visage. Dark blue in color, with long pointed ears that looked almost like horns, the head could well have belonged to some creature of the Abyss. But its body was that of a thick snake, nearly ten feet in length and covered with dark blue scales. The creature's swaying tail ended in a barbed, poisonous tip. This was a dark naga, one of the rarest creatures of the Underdark and a valued ally of House Hunzrin.

"Pay Ssasser now," hissed the naga in an airy, whistling voice. He bared his fangs in a grin of anticipation, and his long pronged tongue flicked out. "Ssasser's servitude to Hunzrin family over."

That was not the terms of our agreement. When I have Liriel Baenre under my power, you will be free," Shakti reminded him.

The creature scowled, and then it brought forth a tremendous belch. Its thin lips pursed and it spat a small dart at Shakti's feet. This did Ssasser swallow, when through the door Ssasser came. A good trap, it was. If Ssasser knew not about the magic trip-wire, dead might Ssasser be."

Shakti kicked the dart aside. Among the dark naga's many talents was the ability to swallow virtually anything without harm. Weapons, poisons, spellbooks—all were safely stowed in the internal organ that allowed the naga to carry whatever it needed. Granted, catching a crossbow-fired dart was a bit out of the ordinary, but the naga had clearly been up to the challenge.

"Cost Ssasser, it did, the spell of invisibility," the dark naga hinted.

"And you will have another, at no additional charge," the priestess promised. Above all its other weapons, the naga was prized for its magical ability. The high cost of developing its natural magic often forced the nagas into servitude. This creature was in debt too deeply to buy its way free of the Hunzrin family anytime soon, so Shakti felt she could be generous.

She bade the snake-thing return to House Hunzrin, and then began the search of the castle. Liriel's home was, as Shakti expected, a virtual den of dissolution. Since the Hunzrin priestess had little interest in luxuries, she gave most of the house scant attention. The one room she want-ed was the study.

And in it, she found what she sought. Books were rare and expensive, but Liriel had more than her fair share of them. Most, beautifully bound in rare leathers and embossed with elegant drow runes, were neatly organized on shelves. Shakti gave these no more than a glance. She was more interested in the crude, battered books that seemed to be scattered everywhere.

Books were stacked on the study table, piled against the wall, tossed about on the floor. And such books! Many of them were about humans and human magic—subjects strictly forbidden in Menzoberranzan.

Elated with this discovery, Shakti hugged one of the damning volumes to her cbest. Drow had died for lesser offenses, and the possession of these books was enough to bring serious trouble even to a member of House Baenre. But that was not quite enough for Shakti; she wanted to know why Liriel sought this information about the surface world.

No one took such risks motivated only by intellectual curiosity. Was House Baenre planning another strike against the surface? Or perhaps seeking an alliance with a group of humans? If either of these things proved true, the city would almost certainly rise up in rebellion.

Shakti tossed the book aside and reached for another. Instantly she froze as loose pages fluttered from the discarded book.

The priestess stooped and picked up a page. It was fine vellum parchment, covered with small, elegantly formed drow script. Even without light, the nearsighted priestess could read the page, for it was written in everdark ink, the rare, glowing ink used only by the most powerful and prosperous of drow wizards.

As she read, her excitement grew. These were Liriel Baenre's notes, written in her own hand! Shakti scanned page after page, and the emerging picture surpassed her darkest dreams of vengeance.

Liriel Baenre had found a way to take her innate drow powers to the surface. She'd found an amulet, a human artifact of some sort, that granted her this power.

The pages fluttered unheeded from Shakti's hands as the importance of this discovery struck home. She read in these handwritten pages Liriel Baenre's death warrant. Most of the city's drow would cheerfully kill to possess such magic. And then what might happen? For good or ill, such a thing could change Menzoberranzan forever.

But how, wondered Shakti, had Liriel done such a thing? Eagerly the priestess took up one book after another. Finally, tucked between the pages of a particularly battered volume, she found what she sought: a handwritten bill signed only with a faint, familiar design. Shakti recognized the mark of the Dragon's Hoard.

A wild grin twisted Shakti's face. She knew the merchant band well. In fact, she had recently acquired a new rothe stud from the Dragon's Hoard, a white ram whose compact size and unusually fine fleece marked him as the property of House Zinard, a family of the drow city Ched Nasad. The rothe was stolen, of course, for the Zinards would never part with such a valuable animal.

It was whispered around Menzoberranzan that contraband goods of almost any kind could be had from the

Dragon's Hoard. The merchant band protected the many secrets of its clients, but surely Shakti could find a way to make one of the merchants talk. She was as talented at torture as any drow in Menzoberranzan. Oaths of secrecy, even fear of death at Captain Nisstyre's hands, would mean little to the unfortunate male who fell into her hands.

Before the bell rang to summon Lloth's faithful to chapel, Shakti had extracted some fascinating information from her chosen captive. The merchant had known nothing about Liriel Baenre, but he'd spoken eloquently on the subject of his employer.

Nisstyre, it seemed, was not just any merchant captain. He was a wizard trained in the schools of Ched Nasad, who had fled the city many decades past rather than submit to the mind-searching test of loyalty to Lloth. Shakti thought she might know why.

In his last, agonized moments, the tortured drow had confessed that he himself was a follower of Vhaeraun, the drow god of intrigue and thievery. It seemed unlikely the servant would dare to follow such a god without the knowledge and consent of his master. This gave Shakti a powerful weapon to use against Nisstyre, but oddly enough the female was not inclined to wield it.

The concept of a rival deity fascinated her. She had never entertained such thoughts, knowing it was her lot to become a priestess of Lloth. She had always resented this, but had never seen another way.

Now, for the first time in her life, Shakti began to move past discontent toward ambition. The city teetered on the brink of anarchy. What better time than this to break the power of Lloth's priestesses? And what better tool than a rival deity? If this Vhaeraun had a powerful, hidden following in the city, perhaps she could find something that would persuade them into open warfare against the faltering matriarchy. Even more delightful, a proven connection between Vhaeraun's followers and House Baenre could very well topple the threatened first house. Liriel would not survive such a conflict, of course, but even that delightful prospect paled before the larger picture emerging in Shakti's mind.

Anarchy was all well and good, and necessary to bring about sweeping change in Menzoberranzan society, but someone would have to bring the city back to order. Shakti was supremely confident of her management skills, but she also realized that no one person, no one faction, was strong enough to regain control. Her family controlled much of the city's food supply, and that was a powerful tool. She would also need strong allies and ties to the world outside the city. Who better to provide both than a powerful merchant captain who was also a wizard?

And for that matter, who better to snatch Menzoberranzan from the hand of Lloth but Vhaeraun, the drow god of thievery!

The female nodded slowly. Sometime very soon she would pay a visit to this Nisstyre.

Chapter Fifteen

COUNCILS AND CONSPIRACIES

Each day at Arach-Tinilith ended in the Academy chapel, in a session of prayer and praise to the goddess of the drow. Although the services took many forms, they were always eerie, impressive affairs. The chapel itself inspired awe, carved as it was from a single mass of black stone. Circles of seats surrounded a central platform, each row higher than the last so all could see the dark altar. Eight curving beams buttressed the circular room and met at the top of the domed chamber, becoming part of an enormous sculpture of a spider with the head of a beautiful drow female: a favored form of the Spider Queen. Raerie fire outlined the gigantic spider and cast shadows across the sea of dark faces below.

All of Arach-Tinilith gathered there, from the matron mistress to the lowliest novice priestess, and the rhythmic chanting of hundreds of dark-elven voices echoed throughout the high-domed chamber. And of all the voices raised, perhaps the most iervent belonged to Shakti Hunzrin, who had tucked within the folds of her robes papers that could not fail to destroy her hated rival.

The chanting gathered speed and power as the time for the dark ritual grew near. One of the older students slowly approached the altar, carrying before her a silver tray. On it lay a drow heart, still throbbing with life newly taken. It was the heart of a male, which was usually considered a lesser sacrifice, but this night the ritual had a special power. This night the sacrifice fulfilled one of Lloth's most brutal requirements.

Devotion to the Spider Queen was all-important, superseding any personal loyalty. Lloth was especially offended by the possibility that one of her priestesses might become too fond of a lowly male. So from time to time, a priestess was commanded to slay her lover, a matron to sacrifice her house patron, a mother to offer up the sire of her children. Knowing this, the drow had learned to be wary of giving and receiving affection; the penalty was too cruel for all involved. But as the young priestess approached the altar, the hard set of her face and the blood on her delicate hands proved she had been equal to the task.

The priestess lifted the tray high, and the thunderous chant rose to a single, keening note. In voices as haunting and high-pitched as elven flutes, the drow females began to sing a ritual song of summoning. Matron Triel Baenre stepped forward, robed in the somber black of a high priestess. Her voice, magically enhanced to match the power of the assembled singers, chanted a low-pitched prayer in weird counterpoint to the song.

Tonight the song and the chant were largely a formality, for Lloth rarely spoke now except to the most powerful of her priestesses. It was whispered in Menzoberranzan that the loss of so many priestesses in the war and in the struggle for position that continued to this day had diminished the very power of the goddess. In times past—before the Time of Trouble, before the disastrous war—ceremonies such as this were often rewarded with some manifestation of Lloth's approval: a new spell, the creation of a magical item, the summoning of a scurrying rush of spiders, even an appearance of one of the goddess's minions. On rare occasions, the avatar of Lloth herself appeared to her faithful. But it seemed as if those times had passed.

Suddenly the faerie fire died, plunging the chamber into utter blackness. The song and the chant fell silent, and every eye was fixed in fearful fascination upon the faint glow dawning in the very heart of the chapel.

In the midst of the room, where the altar had been but a moment before, stood a huge, hideous creature. Its formless body resembled a mound of half-melted wax, and large bulbous eyes shone with baleful red light as it glared out at the assembly.

A mixture of elation and dread gripped Lloth's faithful. This was a yochlol, a creature from the lower planes and a handmaiden of the Spider Queen. For good or ill, the yochlol's appearance meant Lloth's eyes were upon them.

"Anarchy."

The yochlol's voice was faint and airy, a mere wisp of ^ sound, yet every ear in the room heard the single word of 4 warning.

The creature's body shifted and flowed, and an armlike appendage shot toward the student priestess and knocked the silver tray from her still-uplifted arms. The sacrificed heart flew across the room to land in the lap of an aged priestess. In the utter silence the sound of the tray hitting the stone floor was a ringing portent of doom.

The yochlol oozed forward and snatched up the heart from the old priestess's bloodstained lap. It held the sacrifice aloft.

"Another life taken," the creature hissed. "Do you think this carnage pleases Lloth?"

Triel Baenre stepped forward and sank into a respectful bow. "For centuries untold, this has been the custom of the drow, by the command of Lloth. Teach us where we have erred."