Realms of the Underdark a-4

by Mark Anthony

  Knowing better than to question her again, Drizzt started to bow in submission. Then, to his surprise, Vierna leaned over and whispered in his ear. "I have placed an enchantment of sharpness on the spoon, little brother, so perhaps the task will not prove quite so impossible. But I swear, if you tell Briza-or anyone-about what I have done, I will beat you until your skin slips from your flesh like a rothe-hide coat."

  Drizzt shivered at her chilling words. He did not doubt that she meant them. Before he could answer, Vierna whirled around and disappeared through a side door. Drizzt studied the spoon in his hand, his thumb testing the magically sharpened edge. Perhaps the priestesses of Lloth at Arach-Tinilith had not yet bled all the mercy out of Vierna.

  Not wishing to get caught with the enchanted object, Drizzt dashed down a stone passageway. At eleven years, he was much like other dark-elven youths- small and slender, but quick as Briza's whip. In moments, he reached the empty feast hall.

  Unlike most of the noble houses of Menzoberranzan, which were typically built within a stalactite-stalagmite pair, House Do'Urden was set into the western wall of the cavern. The feast hall delved deeper into the surrounding rock than did any other room in the house, and so was damp and prone to mold.

  Drizzt groaned in renewed dismay as he stared at the walls. The stones were covered with spongy growths of a fungus that exuded a noxious green glow. He sighed. Procrastinating would only give the fungus more time to grow. Gripping the spoon, he trudged toward one of the walls and started in on the task. Vierna had underestimated the power of her enchantment.

  As Drizzt scraped the spoon across the wall, a strip of glowing fungus darkened and shriveled, falling to the floor, where it turned to dust. Not believing his eyes, he ran the instrument over the fungus-covered wall again. A swath of smooth, black stone appeared in its wake. A grin crept across the youthful drow's face. It looked as if the task Briza had concocted for him was not going to be nearly as horrid and tedious as she had hoped.

  With buoyant energy, the young dark elf threw himself into the task. Concentrating briefly, he rose into the air, using his natural-born powers of levitation to reach the high walls and ceiling. Soon it became a game as he whirled and dived through the air, swiping at bulbous patches of fungus with the enchanted spoon. He imagined each was Briza's homely face as it shriveled and disintegrated, and soon peals of elven laughter rang out across the hall. After what seemed almost too short a time, Drizzt sank back to the floor, panting for breath and grinning. He surveyed the walls. Not a speck of fungus marred the smooth onyx surfaces.

  A scrabbling sound reached his pointed ears. Drizzt looked up to see a rat scramble out of a crack in the dark stone. The small creature scuttled across the floor of the hall, its eyes hot and red as blood, making for a hole in the opposite wall. With a fierce cry, Drizzt sprang into the air and landed in the rat's path, brandishing the glowing spoon before him. The spoon wasn't exactly a sword, but then the rat wasn't exactly a fierce monster of the Underdark. Neither fact mattered much to Drizzt.

  Sometimes, from a secret vantage point high above the main courtyard, he watched as the weapons master, Zaknafein, trained the house's three-hundred soldiers. For hours on end, Drizzt would watch them practice their weapons skills. He wasn't sure why, but a thrill coursed through his veins every time he heard the clanging of their adamantite swords, and the feral, dancelike offensive maneuvers of Zaknafein fascinated him. Drizzt was doomed to life as a page prince for five more years, but after that-if Briza hadn't managed to kill him with all her evil chores-he would become a noble proper, and it would be time to train in skills that would benefit the house. Drizzt knew that it was possible he would be sent to the towers of Sorcere in Tier Breche, to learn the dark secrets of magic. But in his heart he hoped that he would be given to Zaknafein, to study with the weapons master. He wanted to learn to dance that dangerous dance.

  Performing his best imitation of the weapons master, Drizzt stalked around the rat. The creature hissed, raising its hackles and baring yellow teeth. Drizzt lunged forward with the magically sharpened spoon. Quick as he was, the rat was quicker. It scuttled past him, running from the feast hall. With a whoop, Drizzt ran after, careening down a corridor. He gained on his enemy, then sprang forward, landing in front of it. The creature backed into a corner, hissing and spitting, eyes glowing with hate. Drizzt closed in to finish off his foe. As he had seen Zaknafein do a hundred times, he raised his weapon, then spun around to bring it down in a swift killing blow.

  He froze, halting the spoon a fraction of an inch from disaster. Sensing its opportunity, the rat dashed between Drizzt's legs and disappeared through a crack. Drizzt did not watch it go. Instead, his eyes remained riveted on the object before his face.

  A web. The silvery strands stretched like gossamer across the corner of the corridor. In the center of the web, like a plump jewel, clung a small spider. Had he not halted his swing at the last moment, his arm would have plunged right through the fragile strands. With great care, Drizzt lowered the spoon. All spiders were sacred to the goddess Lloth. To disturb one's web would have earned him a long appointment with Briza's whip. But if he had accidentally killed the arachnid…

  Drizzt let out a low breath. The punishment for killing a spider was death: quick, painful, and with no chance of reprieve.

  Despite the fatal nature of his near accident, Drizzt drew closer to the web in fascination, studying the spider in the center. "I don't understand this Lloth of yours," he murmured aloud. "Everybody seems to want her favor. My mother. My sisters. All the other noble houses. They'll do anything to get it. But they're terrified of Lloth, too. Sometimes I even think they hate her. But that only makes them worship her all the Harder. Why? Why is Lloth so important if she's so awful?" The spider only clung in silence to its web. Drizzt frowned in annoyance. "Well, I don't care what everyone else thinks," he decided. "I'm not afraid of spiders. If Lloth appears to me on the Festival of the Founding, I'll say so to her ugly face."

  Oddly heartened by this bold exclamation, he turned and strode down the hallway, back to the capricious world he knew as page prince, leaving the spider to spin its tangled webs alone in the darkness.

  Chapter Four: Into the Fire

  Zaknafein did not want this mission.

  The weapons master stood on a parapet high above the wrought-adamantite gates that guarded the entrance to House Do'Urden. Right now, the gates were only half raised, so that house nobles might levitate over them easily while goblins, gnomes, and other rabble could not. But in times of crisis the gates could be raised to cover the entire opening in the cavern's wall, so that none could pass through. Sometimes Zak wondered at the true purpose of those impervious metal bars. Perhaps they had been forged not to keep drow out of the house, but to keep them in.

  Zak glanced across the compound at the balcony, beyond which lay the private chambers of the house's nobles. He glimpsed shadowy figures within. What dark plans were Matron Malice and her daughters concocting now, he wondered?

  Just as Zak was about to turn away, a small form hopped over the balcony and half fell, half levitated to the ground below. A second later, Briza reached the railing and leaned over, shouting as she brandished her snake-headed whip at the object of her wrath. The smaller figure, however, had already vanished into the mouth of a corridor. Her face twisted with rage, Briza turned and stamped back into the interior of the upper level.

  Despite his bleak mood, a faint smile touched Zak's lips. So the young Do'Urden page prince-what was the boy's name? Drizzt? — was causing his eldest sister consternation once again. Zak would not have expected such bold character in one of Rizzen's sons. Drizzt could grow up to be a strong and willful elf one day-if all that character were not crushed out of him first, as it was bound to be. Once Zak had held similar hopes for his own daughter, Vierna, but then the masters at Arach-Tinilith had sunk their pincers into her. Every day, she became more like Malice, more caught up in the matron mother's tangled plots to win Lloth's
favor.

  Ah, Malice. Zak thought back to the years when he had been patron of House Do'Urden. For a time, he had thought that he loved Malice, and she him, until the day she had stripped him of his rank, and he had realized that all she cared about was station and the position of House Do'Urden in Lloth's Ladder. On occasion, Malice still beckoned Zak to her bedchamber, and he complied. A matron mother's orders were not to be refused. And it was not unpleasant. Still, Zak knew now that whatever feeling there was between him and Malice, it was not, and never had been, love.

  A gigantic spider hewn of dark green stone rested on the parapet behind Zak. A jade spider. Dozens of them scattered House Do'Urden to serve as a defense against any who might somehow pass the gates. Such was their enchantment that, in the presence of an intruder, a jade spider would animate and attack with swift and fatal force.

  "Why do you not assail me now, spider?" Zak hissed in a voice filled with loathing. "I am an impostor here. Can you not sense that I am your enemy?"

  But the spider remained cold stone.

  Zak felt a prickling against his neck. He did not need to glance back at the balcony to know that he was being watched. He could delay his mission no longer. A puff of warm air-heated by some deep and distant lava flow-sent his white hair streaming back from his brow. Zak stepped off the high parapet into the swirling zephyr, using his power of levitation to ride the gust of air over the gates and down to the ground below. Without looking back, he plunged into the labyrinth that was Menzoberranzan.

  After a short distance he paused, drawing the spiderjewel out of his neck-purse. He laid the small onyx spider on his outstretched palm, then spoke the word of magic Malice had taught him, which the yochlol in turn had taught her. At once the ruby embedded in the spider's abdomen winked to scarlet life. Now animate, the spider scuttled across the flesh of Zak's palm. Only by force of will did he resist the instinct to clench his hand and crush it. Legs wriggling, the spider spun in a circle, then came to a sudden halt, facing to Zak's right. That must be the way it wanted him to go. He turned and moved down a side street.

  Where the spiderjewel would lead him, Zak could only wonder. According to the yochlol, the Dagger of Menzoberra was hidden somewhere within the city. This was difficult to believe. After all, there wasn't an inch of this cavern that had not been explored by drow eyes, shaped by drow hands, and dwelt within by drow families for centuries. The Dagger's hiding place had to be remarkable for the relic to have remained lost for over five thousand years. Still, Zak had to hope that the spiderjewel would indeed take him to it. Malice had made her position clear. Whatever she felt for him still, failure this time would not be forgiven.

  At first Zak thought the ancient Dagger of Menzoberra must be hidden in Qu'ellarz'orl. The spider seemed to be leading him toward the plateau on which perched the city's most powerful houses, including that of Baenre, First House of Menzoberranzan. Zak's heart sank in his chest. If the Dagger was hidden within one of the ancient houses, he had no hope of recovering it. He could hardly knock on the gates of House Baenre and ask if he might take a look around. The only answer he was likely to get was a bolt of defensive magic hot enough to roast his heart inside his chest.

  Just as Zak neared the edge of the mushroom forest that demarcated the exclusive plateau, the spider scuttled to the left side of his hand, leading him back toward the heart of the city. Zak allowed himself a low breath of relief before continuing on.

  He had nearly reached his destination before he realized where the spiderjewel was leading him.

  Zak had reached the very center of the great cavern that housed Menzoberranzan. Coming to a halt, he lifted his eyes from the spiderjewel. The enchanted arachnid had aligned itself with a massive stone pillar that loomed before him in the eternal gloom. Narbondel.

  Of course. It made perfect sense. Of all the rock formations in the cavern, only one remained in its rough, natural state as it had for millennia, untouched by drow hands or drow magic. It was a monument to the cavern, as it had been when Menzoberra first led her people here five thousand years ago: the pillar of Narbondel. Only here might something have lain hidden so long without discovery.

  Zaknafein approached the pillar, creeping along surfaces closest in temperature to his own skin, a feat which rendered him all but invisible to heat-sensing drow eyes. It was not forbidden to draw near to Narbondel, but few ever did. The pillar was the purview of the city's archmage, whose ceremonial duty it was to ignite the magical fires that traveled up the column once per day. Zak doubted Gromph Baenre would take kindly to meddling, and the thought of being on the receiving end of an archmage's wrathful spells was not one Zak relished.

  The weapons master clung to a concealing heat shadow at the base of a stalagmite and watched with crimson eyes. The spiderjewel wriggled on his hand, as if anxious to be nearer the relic that drew it onward.

  "Patience," Zak hissed, though whether to himself or the enchanted spider he was not certain.

  Even as he watched, the last remnants of magical heat faded from the massive pillar. The stone grew cool and dark once more. This was the Black Death of Narbondel. Midnight approached. Now would be Zak's only chance. At this moment the archmage rested in his plush chambers in Sorcere, preparing himself to cast the spell of fire with which he would begin a new day. No gazes in the city would be turned toward the pillar while it was dark. He could move unseen. At least, so he hoped.

  Leaving the safety of the heat shadow, Zak crept toward Narbondel. The surface of the pillar was irregular, crazed with cracks and crevices. A small knife could be stashed in any of them. Holding out the spiderjewel, he stalked around the gigantic column, trying to determine where the relic might be hidden. The enchanted arachnid whirled in circles on his hand but did not stop, as if unable to get its bearings. Zak frowned at the spiderjewel. Then a thought struck him. He craned his neck, gazing at the top of the pillar, which scraped the ceiling of the cavern high above. Of course. That was the one direction the spider could not point. Upward.

  Zak could have levitated to the top of the pillar in mere seconds. However, using any magic released heat, making him more visible. He couldn't risk that. It would not do for any of the other noble houses to see him and grow curious concerning his actions. Gaining the Dagger would be hard enough without competition. Zak would have to reach the top of the pillar the mundane way.

  He did not pause to determine if anyone was watching him. Speed was his only hope. With swift, supple movements, Zak began scaling the surface of Narbondel. He shut his eyes, concentrating, letting touch alone guide his hands and feet to those cracks and protrusions he might use to force his body upward. Soon he was sweating with effort. He clenched his teeth and kept climbing. At last he heaved himself over a sharp edge of stone. For a moment he lay on his back, panting. Then he forced himself to his feet.

  Zaknafein stood upon the summit of Narbondel.

  A gasp escaped him. Menzoberranzan lay spread out below him like a vast web tangled beyond possibility. Pale faerie fire danced along the edges of the city's countless spires and stairways, emphasizing the darkness rather than driving it back. It was a glorious yet forbidding sight.

  "What is this beautiful nightmare we have wrought?" Zak murmured in awe to the dusky air.

  Distant specks of light caught the corner of his eye, breaking his trance. He turned to see several tiny blobs of purple magelight bobbing as they descended the long stairway from the academy of Tier Breche into the city. The archmage had left his chambers in Sorcere and was even now making his way toward Narbondel with his entourage. Zak did not have much time left.

  Reaching back into his neck-purse, he pulled out the spiderjewel once more. To his surprise, the magical creature crawled to the edge of his hand and jumped to the rough stone at his feet. The little arachnid scuttled across the top of the pillar. Zak followed the winking light of the ruby in its abdomen. Without warning, the red spark vanished. Zak swore, thinking he had lost the spiderjewel. A second later he reali
zed it had scurried into a small hole in the rock.

  Kneeling beside the hole, he slipped a hand inside. His fingers brushed a smooth knob of some sort, and it sank beneath his touch. At the same moment, a hiss of dry air rushed upward, along with the sound of stone grating on stone. A circle of rock sank into the top of the pillar and vanished, leaving an opening large enough for an elf to crawl through.

  A low laugh escaped Zak's lips. So the spiderjewel had done its work after all.

  Ready for anything, the weapons master crouched beside the opening in the pillar. He peered within, but his preternatural eyes met only cool darkness: black, and black again. There was nothing to do but go down. Zak lowered himself into the opening, and his feet met stone steps. It was a staircase. At his feet, a spark of scarlet light glinted. The spiderjewel. He scooped up the gem and slipped it back into his neck-purse.

  Alone, he descended the staircase, spiraling deeper and deeper into the heart of Narbondel. With every step, the air grew thicker, more stifling. Walls and steps alike radiated the same uniform coolness, so that all was a featureless blur to his drow eyes and he was forced to make his way by touch alone. Soon he was certain he had descended farther than the height he had climbed. He must have been below Narbondel now. Still, the staircase plunged downward, through solid rock, delving ever deeper into the bones of the world.

  Without warning the staircase ended at a sheer drop. Zak barely caught himself in time, teetering on the last step. Beyond was only emptiness and a faint blue phosphorescence, floating on the air. Blinking, Zak forced his eyes to see in the realm of light. A low path escaped his lips.

  He stood on the edge of a vast web. Thick, silky strands formed a gigantic net over a bottomless chasm. It was from the cords that the faint glow emanated.

  He glimpsed something resting at the very center of the gigantic tangle. A bundle of some sort. No, not a bundle. A cocoon. Purple light pulsed within. Something was inside. Zak had a hunch, but there was only one way to find out for certain.