Relentless

by R. A. Salvatore

  That was critical, Dinin knew, as his confidence in their success began to soar, for House DeVir could put many more fighters on the field than House Do’Urden could muster, and this was DeVir’s home turf, with their noble priestesses and matron on the grounds.

  Dinin flashed for his forces to keep pressing, fast and hard. Do not let them breathe! Do not let them form any defense! his fingers signed to those around him, who quickly echoed the message along the line.

  Still, Dinin knew it would not be enough. Not nearly. Come on, he mouthed futilely at the silence. Again, heartbeats seemed like hours.

  Finally, wonderfully, he felt the reverberations of some powerful magic—so powerful that it made the hair on his arms and neck stand up and left his skin tingling in its passing wake. He glanced down the line to his fellow warriors, who looked confused, then to the one priestess who had come over the wall with the battle group, who was shaking so hard, her mouth hanging open, tears flowing from her eyes, that Dinin thought she might simply fall over. Tears of divine joy, Dinin understood.

  This was the birth magic his sisters had been whispering about, he realized, though he really didn’t even know what that might mean. Somehow, it seemed, vicious Malice had utilized and transformed the pain and emotions of childbirth into the weight of the ritualistic spell conjured about that unholy table of Lolth.

  The warrior looked to the compound before him, almost expecting it to crumble to dust.

  Yet nothing seemed to happen, at least not to him.

  He had to trust, so he called upon his warriors. They charged the main houses, bugbears and goblins for the main doors, able dark elves levitating to balconies and dropping ropes for their companions.

  The doors burst open, and DeVir defenders, mostly goblinkin, charged out to meet the invaders, and in an eyeblink, the front of the Do’Urden line became a tumble of swords and axes, falling bodies and falling limbs.

  Dinin grinned as he watched the battle, for the defenders seemed sluggish indeed, their every effort being more than matched by the attackers.

  Nalfein’s group arrived at the shattered gate, and magic rained in to strengthen the attack, fire and lightning blasting over the joined combatants and stretching back to the house, melting DeVir fodder and more than a few of the Do’Urden slave warriors, as well.

  Soon after, Dinin grinned again when he saw lights shining from the narrow windows of the higher chambers.

  Zaknafein had penetrated those rooms, he knew, using light bombs to confuse his enemies.

  “Ah, the beauty,” Dinin whispered, and now he heard his voice, for he was out of the silence.

  He waved his drow warriors on, and together they charged into House DeVir.

  Sometime later, his blade dripping with DeVir blood, half his brigade wounded or dead, Dinin came upon his brother in a lower hall of one of the lesser stalagmite pillars of House DeVir.

  “It nears its end,” he told Nalfein. “Rizzen is winning through to the top and it is believed that Zaknafein’s dark work has been completed.”

  Appearing so animated that he seemed silly to Dinin, Nalfein nodded and replied, “Two score of House DeVir’s soldiers have already turned allegiance to us.”

  “They see the end. One house serves them as well as another, and in the eyes of commoners, no house is worth dying for. Our task will soon be finished.” Dinin noted the movements about him and his brother. Few soldiers were in the area, all pressing to other levels and corridors. He focused on Nalfein, looking for any signs that his brother was about to begin a treacherous spell.

  “Too quickly for anyone to take note,” Nalfein said, and Dinin found irony in that. “Now Do’Urden, D’aermon N’a’chezbaernon, is the Ninth House of Menzoberranzan, and DeVir be damned!”

  “Look out!” Dinin cried suddenly, peering over Nalfein’s shoulder.

  Nalfein spun at the expected threat, and Dinin struck, and struck true, his fine sword slipping through Nalfein’s spine.

  “Too quickly for anyone to take note,” whispered Dinin, the new elderboy of House Do’Urden.

  “Name the child!” High Priestess Briza demanded, her fingers rolling on the hilt of the ceremonial dagger, its tip hovering above the chest of the newborn, her half brother, who had been lain on the back of the spider idol.

  “Drizzt,” the exhausted Matron Malice answered. “The child’s name is Drizzt!”

  Briza began her sacred chant, formally naming the babe before giving it to Lolth, but neither Maya, the youngest of the Do’Urden daughters, nor Vierna heard her, both reaching out to connect with their brothers. Nalfein and Dinin must know the child’s name before it was sacrificed, that the whole of the family could partake in the great gift to the Spider Queen.

  Drizzt, Vierna heard Dinin respond to her magical message, and she felt a strong emotive surge from him, surprisingly so.

  Maya heard nothing from Nalfein, and knew that her magical message had not reached him. Their preparations had been careful and exquisite, the bonding tight between them, but yet, nothing. There could be only one explanation for that.

  “Wait!” yelled, drawing horrified looks from both Briza and Malice. “Nalfein is dead. The baby is no longer the third living son.”

  As a discussion commenced between Maya and Briza, who still seemed eager to kill the newborn, Vierna barely heard it, her focus locked on Maya, her thoughts still on Dinin’s strange reaction. Perhaps Nalfein had been killed by a DeVir, but Vierna had her doubts.

  “Stay your hand,” Matron Malice commanded, ending the argument between Maya and Briza. “Lolth is content; our victory is won. Welcome, then, your brother, the newest member of House Do’Urden.”

  My full brother, Vierna thought, but certainly did not say. In truth, she wasn’t even sure that Zaknafein was her father—she had heard many rumors, but had never received any confirmation. Still, she was grinning now, anxious to see her new brother Drizzt grow.

  Chapter 5

  Hopes, Fears, Vulnerabilities

  He was, perhaps, the first—perhaps the only—person within Sorcere who knew that House DeVir had fallen, thanks to a Bregan D’aerthe associate he happened to run into when he was taking the Faceless One’s chamber pot out for dumping.

  “Happened to . . .”

  Masoj passed that thought through his lips a few times, knowing that it was no coincidence. Jarlaxle wanted him to know of the development.

  He was never surer of that than when he returned to his duties in his older brother’s chambers and Alton DeVir arrived to answer a summons from the powerful master. Masoj knew that a matron had been in to see the Faceless One recently, and that another nobleman had been there earlier that same day.

  So, though he was thrown back, Masoj was not really surprised when the Faceless One sent a mighty magical blast at Alton almost as soon as the older DeVir brother entered the chamber, a bolt that shattered the door and tossed poor Alton to the floor.

  It didn’t kill Alton, though, and the wounded DeVir wisely rolled and scrambled and sprinted out of the room, down the curving stair beyond.

  “Clean it up!” the frustrated Faceless One yelled at Masoj, and Gelroos swept out of the room in pursuit of his target.

  Masoj nodded and started sweeping, but as soon as Gelroos was out of sight, he moved for the door. He paused and rushed to the side, to an enchanted item he had long admired. Then out he went, in pursuit, following the taunts of the Faceless One.

  “Do not run, DeVir. You only lengthen your torment!”

  He heard some glass shatter and sighed, knowing he would have yet more to clean, and knowing, too, that glass and blood was a particularly nasty mess. That sound told him exactly where he’d find the two, however, because he knew this suite of rooms in Sorcere better than anyone alive, even Gelroos the Faceless One himself.

  “My mirror!” Masoj heard Gelroos cry, confirming his guess. “First my door, and now this, my mirror! Do you know the pains I suffered to acquire such a rare device?”

&n
bsp; Masoj had to fight hard to suppress a laugh.

  “Why did you not just stand still and let the deed be finished cleanly?” Gelroos demanded, as Masoj came to the side of the room’s entrance.

  “Why? Why would you want to kill me?” Alton desperately pleaded.

  “Because you broke my mirror!”

  Masoj slapped a hand over his mouth to shield his snort. What a grand comeback, he thought. He peeked in as the drow continued to banter, then stepped back and slowly, so slowly, pulled back the drawstring and locked it.

  When he peered back in, he understood that the conversation was about to end with absolute finality.

  “Who?” Alton cried. “What house did this? Or what conspiracy of houses brought down DeVir?”

  Masoj paused, wanting to know that answer as well.

  “Ah, you should at least be told,” Masoj’s brother taunted the poor, doomed man. “I suppose it is your right to know before you join your kin in the realm of death.”

  A dramatic pause had both Alton and Masoj leaning forward with anticipation—or, at least, Alton was trying to, Masoj noted, except that the poor fool was caught in a magical web of sticky filaments.

  Not that it mattered.

  “But you broke my mirror!” Gelroos howled. “Die stupid, stupid boy! Find your own answers!”

  The moment of truth, Masoj knew. He lifted the finely crafted, likely enchanted, two-handed heavy crossbow, leveled it, and, as Gelroos gyrated, gathering the energy of his next, killing, spell, he pulled the trigger.

  Gelroos made some deep gurgling, croaking sound, his back arching, arms flying up and wide. Then he fell facedown on the floor, twitching and dying.

  “Nice weapon, Faceless One,” Masoj noted, rolling it over in his hand. It was obviously magical, and the large quarrel that had just cut through Gelroos’s spine was very heavily poisoned—although Masoj was pretty sure that it would have killed the wizard even without that insurance.

  As he set the next quarrel in the weapon, the trapped DeVir babbling and pleading, Masoj carefully considered his next move.

  What would Jarlaxle do?

  He listened to Alton’s claims. The easiest thing would be to shoot the idiot, and thus make it appear as if the student and the master had killed each other in a heated exchange of spells and crossbow bolts.

  But was the easiest thing always the most beneficial?

  What would Jarlaxle do?

  Zaknafein had been told that Vierna was possibly his child only long after the girl had come into the world—indeed, soon after her fifth birthday. Even then, for more than a decade, Zaknafein had been led to believe that it was merely a fleeting possibility. It wasn’t until she had gone off to become a priestess of Lolth that Malice had told him the truth that he was almost certainly the father of Vierna.

  The timing was deliberate. By that point, Zaknafein knew that the young woman was lost to him, particularly since she was going to embrace the Spider Queen. She was becoming that which Zaknafein hated most of all.

  Still, he and Vierna had subsequently developed the closest relationship that Zaknafein knew with any of Malice’s female children, indeed with anyone in all of House Do’Urden other than perhaps Dinin. It was a relative standard, however, and a very low bar of measurement. As he considered it, Zak figured that his feelings toward Vierna might stay his hand if he was about to kill her.

  Or might not.

  This time, though, felt different. This time, Zaknafein entered the quiet side chamber to find Vierna sitting by the cradle, knowing that the child in the cradle, without doubt, was his.

  His son.

  “Drizzt?” he asked, for that was the name he had been told upon returning from the slaughter at House DeVir.

  Vierna nodded and moved back, inviting the weapon master to move up close. She knew, Zak realized.

  “Look at his eyes,” Vierna told him as he peered at the babe wrapped in soft furs.

  So striking! Purple eyes! Such a rarity among the drow, and these were rarer still for the intensity of the coloring, almost as if they were backlit, shining out from the hollows of Drizzt’s dark face.

  Vierna kept talking, but Zak wasn’t listening. He leaned over the cradle and stared, taking in the look and the smell of this baby, his son. A sea of emotions swirled about him, different and distinct, each rising like a wave threatening to break over him and drown him.

  Did this, his progeny, afford him some measure of immortality? Was this child lying here before him, his son, his blood, destined to carry on his name and memory long after he had gone? Zaknafein had recently passed his four hundredth birthday, middle-aged for a drow, although all knew that the back half, once a reputation (particularly a grand reputation) had been formed, proved a much more difficult span than the first. How many weapon masters or noble-born fighters or even commoners in the Braeryn wanted to challenge Zaknafein to prove their own worth? Among that number were weapon masters of great skill and strength: Dantrag Baenre of the First House, Uthegentel Armgo of the Second House, along with too many others who would love to have their names spoken as the warrior who defeated Zaknafein.

  Every day was a threat, of course. One lapse could spell the end for him, as could one bad decision by the often reckless Matron Malice.

  But now Zak had a child, one he knew about from the beginning, one he could help mold, one who would carry on when he was gone. He couldn’t deny his pride, his hopes, his soaring heart when looking upon this little one.

  Then the flip side of that spinning, sparkling coin hit him, quite unexpectedly and quite forcibly.

  Zaknafein took a deep breath to steady himself and had to brace himself on the side of the cradle for several heartbeats.

  What would happen to him if this child, this beautiful little creature named Drizzt, was taken from him? What pain might he know if his child, like so many in the city, particularly those with ambitious matrons, found the wrong end of a spear?

  Zak glanced back at Vierna, silently chastising himself for never considering such a thing regarding her. He didn’t hate her the way he hated her sisters or her mother, but he had never been very close to her. He had never been given the chance.

  Now she was a priestess of Lolth, and it disgusted hm. Lolth disgusted him. The way the goddess played her people against each other disgusted him. The sexism of drow society disgusted him. The brutality of the women who raised drow children disgusted him. All of that was almost without exception, even among the matrons who put men into positions of power, like House Barrison Del Armgo, known for its male warriors, and House Xorlarrin, whose powerful wizards were mostly male. Those matrons didn’t value men more highly, he believed. No, they simply used what they had for their own craven ambitions.

  It was all because of Lolth. And Vierna, perhaps his daughter, had given herself to Lolth. Now was she destined to train Drizzt, this son of Zaknafein, to be another subservient pawn in the grand scheme of the Lady of Chaos?

  Zaknafein wondered if there were other drow enclaves somewhere in the wide Underdark, perhaps in the wider world above, where the corrupting influences of the Spider Queen were not ever-present? How he wished he could find such a place and spirit Drizzt off to there.

  But not Vierna, he thought, and the notion unsettled him. No, she was likely too far gone, too corrupted.

  Zak realized he was wearing all his myriad emotions on his face by Vierna’s puzzled stare.

  “What is it?” she asked, her eyes roaming his face, studying him carefully.

  There were so many things Zak wanted to say to her right then.

  Regrets.

  Anger.

  Apologies.

  All of it wanted to come spouting forth, but he couldn’t sort where any of it fit, especially in this moment, with his new son looking back at him—a child that had escaped death only by good fortune and the timing of a few heartbeats, from what he had been told.

  “It is nothing,” Zaknafein replied. “I only hope that this child will g
row up to exceed Nalfein, for the glory of Matron Malice and House Do’Urden.”

  “We all hope that,” Vierna said, and she added with a sly grin, reminding Zaknafein of the parentage involved, “And we all expect that, Matron Malice most of all. Much will be asked of this secondboy.”

  Zaknafein tried not to wince at that, for he understood all too well what such expectations might entail.

  “Brilliant!” Jarlaxle said quite unexpectedly, making the mage sitting across from him glance up, a look of surprise on his face (as much as that melted face could appear surprised, Jarlaxle thought). The young man over by the door had a much stronger reaction, rolling back on his heels, eyes going wide.

  Jarlaxle made a mental note to keep a close eye on that one.

  “What do you mean?” the mage quietly asked. “I did only as I was told.”

  “You were told to take the place of Gelroos Hun’ett?” Jarlaxle asked with sarcastic surprise. He eyed the young man over by the doorway again and added, “Your brother, I believe.”

  “I . . . You speak with the voice of a fool!” the mage retorted. “A reckless fool.”

  “If you think I fear Alton DeVir, then you are mistaken.” Jarlaxle shrugged and chortled. “I did not fear Gelroos Hun’ett, so why would I fear you?”

  The Faceless One’s eyes rolled in their near-skinless sockets to regard the young apprentice, who slyly stepped back out of the room—but then returned a moment later at the end of a quartet of longswords, two wielded by each of the Bregan D’aerthe associates who had quietly and secretly entered the Faceless One’s suite in Sorcere.

  The Faceless One sucked in his breath, which made a whistling noise through the many holes in his mouth and throat.

  “Before you act, either of you, consider that no one may enter Sorcere without the knowledge and permission of Archmage Gromph,” Jarlaxle warned.

  “But be at ease,” Jarlaxle added, leaning back comfortably in his seat. “He does not know, or if Gromph does know, he doesn’t care. I am not accusing you, Alton DeVir, nor judging you in any negative way. Indeed, I above all others tend to salute such resiliency and cleverness, and yes, I do know what Gelroos had planned for you on the night of the fall of House DeVir. Like Archmage Gromph, I do not care for any of that. I care only of that which now is, not what was.”