Relentless

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Perhaps you would do well to understand that which was determines that which is,” said the new Faceless One, formally Alton DeVir, who had obviously burned off his own face after disposing of Gelroos Hun’ett’s body. He sat up straighter, trying desperately, Jarlaxle knew, to hold on to some level of danger and mystique. He was trying to command the situation, something Jarlaxle found quite amusing.

  “And you think it all resourcefulness, or cleverness, or simply chance?” Jarlaxle asked. “You do not think that Matron Mother Baenre knows of, and allowed, the death of the old wretch? Poor young man, there are so many parts of the world of which you do not know—but I warn you to know this one thing above all, always: you do well to stay in the favor of Matron Mother Baenre.”

  “As do you?” Alton half growled, half wheezed back at him.

  “Always. I am no fool,” came the easy reply.

  “Yet you come here and threaten me?”

  “Of course not. I come here to advise you, and advise you wisely. And so I will again. Do not let your anger move you to rash action. House DeVir is dead. Alton lives.” He glanced at the other and added, “And Masoj lives. The City of Spiders goes along.”

  With that, Jarlaxle tipped his wide-brimmed hat and rose, motioning to his minions and following them out of the room, but not without pausing to cast a smile and a nod of admiration in the direction of young Masoj Hun’ett, one designed to let the young man and the mage seated at the table know that he, Jarlaxle, knew much more about what had happened than he should.

  So many drow had found similar surprises regarding Jarlaxle, over this secret or that.

  Knowledge was power, particularly in Menzoberranzan.

  Jarlaxle was undeniably powerful, and growing more so all the time.

  Chapter 6

  Simply by His Presence

  Zaknafein’s step was lighter than usual that day in the second month of Dalereckoning 1304 as he made his way through House Do’Urden. He hadn’t been inside the main chambers in many days, as Malice had been keeping him busy with this task or that.

  It had surprised him how much being away had made him miss Drizzt.

  Oh, how Zak had rushed through those last tasks thrown at him, including traveling to the island of Donigarten to select a proper rothé for a house celebration meal, and going to Arach-Tinilith to deliver a long paper prepared by Maya Do’Urden explaining the names and preferences—food, drink, sexual, and execution—of the more common handmaidens Lolth had been sending to Menzoberranzan to answer the calls of high priestesses of late.

  Zaknafein had been as surprised by this task as the priestess who had opened the door of Arach-Tinilith, a startlement that had fast dissolved into a profound scowl. Men were not very welcomed at Arach-Tinilith, though a handful of matrons sometimes used men as couriers to the school just to show that they were important enough to thumb their noses at the unspoken rules.

  Zaknafein had spent a long two hours inside Arach-Tinilith, snake-headed scourges writhing all about him, angry glares from every priestess who saw him. His reputation preceded him—all in this school knew that the weapon master of House Do’Urden seemed to take special enjoyment in killing priestesses, high priestesses, even matrons.

  Yes, Malice had sent him there to dare someone, anyone, to strike at him. He was her bait, her proof that she was too important to anger. He didn’t much like being used as such, of course, but as soon as he was dismissed by Sos’Umptu Baenre, one of the more powerful mistresses of Arach-Tinilith, he had sprinted from the place and left behind any ill feelings before his foot touched the cobblestones outside the spider-shaped structure’s front door.

  Then he had collected the House Do’Urden commoner, sitting outside on the steps of Tier Breche, and together they had run with all speed to the cavern’s main exit, where Zak presented his exit pass to the guards. Out into the Underdark they went, silent as death, swift as a descending sword, going to fetch Dinin with all speed, leaving the commoner as Dinin’s replacement. Zaknafein had been briefed on the route of Dinin’s patrol group, and knew these nearby caverns quite well. Still, it took them three full days to find the patrol, and it would take two more to get back to Menzoberranzan’s gate.

  Zaknafein pushed Dinin to make it back in a day and a half, answering every complaint from the elderboy with a scowl that brooked no debate.

  When Dinin at last came to sort out the reason for the rush, he actually laughed at Zaknafein.

  “Drow men don’t celebrate birthdays,” he reminded.

  “He is a boy, not a man.”

  “He is not a girl. He does not matter.”

  That remark had Zaknafein spinning about to face the elderboy, anger flashing in his red eyes.

  “Would you care to say that again?” Zak asked in a low, even voice.

  “Do you deny it?”

  “He matters to me.”

  Dinin paused and wisely nodded, and when Zaknafein turned around, muttered, “Would that any of the rest of us had.”

  That retort had stopped Zaknafein in his tracks. For a moment, he felt regret, guilt. But only for a moment, only until he considered the source, a clear reminder that this one was not being genuine, that this one was never genuine. In this instance, Dinin was trying to gain some minor advantage. The ploy showed Zak just how threatened Dinin must feel by his young brother, a lad who had not even yet passed his seventh birthday.

  “I have trained you to the best of my abilities,” he replied, not bothering to look back. “If you are still inadequate, that is because of your own limitations, not mine.”

  “Or perhaps because of the breeding?” Dinin offered, and now Zak did stop and spin about once more. “That is the incitement of this rush, is it not? Tomorrow is Drizzt’s seventh birthday.”

  “Why do you even remember it, if it is not important?”

  “Because the other celebration is important, and will be mentioned by Matron Malice, for that is also the seventh anniversary of my ascension to elderboy of House Do’Urden.”

  Zaknafein had to nod—that anniversary, not Drizzt’s birthday, was why he had been sent out to personally select a rothè cow for the family meal. Not Dinin’s ascension, of course, but because this was the anniversary of House Do’Urden’s move to become the Ninth House of Menzoberranzan.

  “A most fortunate coincidence, you will agree?” Dinin asked.

  Zaknafein shrugged as if it did not matter, but his nonchalance wasn’t buying him anything, he understood from Dinin’s grin.

  “I hurry because we must be there, and be presentable, in time for the celebration,” he said finally.

  “The least of the three events, no doubt.”

  The unending sarcasm of this one! Yet, Zaknafein couldn’t argue with any of Dinin’s reasoning, and he found that he didn’t want to. So he merely laughed and shrugged again.

  “You are observant,” he said. “Your mind is keen, your thoughts ever-forward. Matron Malice is fortunate to have you as her elderboy. She knows it, too.”

  Dinin seemed caught off guard by that—of course he was! When had Zaknafein ever complimented him?

  “You think I care nothing for you, but that is not true,” Zaknafein told him, and with some sincerity. “You are in my charge—I am trusted to prepare you, to ever prepare you . . .”

  “Along with every other warrior of House Do’Urden.”

  “Not nearly to the same level.”

  “True enough. But it is out of fear of Matron Malice, not love of elderboy Dinin.”

  “Perhaps a bit,” Zaknafein admitted. “But I am not your enemy. I have never been your enemy, and unless you give me reason, I will never be your enemy. I am the one who dismisses the whispers, elderboy.”

  Zaknafein played those last two lines over in his head now as he trotted through House Do’Urden. He had accomplished much in those tunnels beside Dinin. He had gained a measure of the elderboy’s trust, perhaps, but more than that, those last two lines had left Dinin no room to wriggle.


  Because “the whispers” was a reference that had struck Dinin profoundly. Zaknafein knew the truth of Nalfein’s demise, and Dinin needed Zaknafein to keep dismissing the rumors of that truth.

  Yes, Zaknafein didn’t have to worry that Dinin might look for advantage at Drizzt’s expense.

  So he had properly relayed his message to Dinin, and now he was back in House Do’Urden, nearing the chapel, nearing his son.

  Happy for the first time in days.

  Then he heard the whimper, then the growl, a young boy’s groan between tightly clenched teeth.

  Zaknafein peeked in, and he sucked in his breath when he saw Drizzt. The boy sat on the side of the room, on the floor, stripped to the waist and with his left hand reaching back over his right shoulder, fingers gingerly touching a new wound there, the two punctures of a viper’s strike, dots of blood visible.

  That wasn’t all. This new wound was surrounded by scars all too familiar to Zaknafein and all males in Menzoberranzan. Scars made by the fangs of the vipers when the priestess struck with her scourge, then dragged it along the victim’s back. This latest strike showed no trails of the dragging fangs, but the one beside it surely did.

  “It is not so bad,” he heard Vierna say, as he moved to the door of the chapel. “Only Silaas bit you and her bite is more pain than damage.”

  Then her tone changed abruptly. “Quit looking at me!” Vierna demanded, and lifted her scourge threateningly. “Do you want more?”

  “Why?” came the boy’s answer, one full of innocence and pain and confusion.

  Zaknafein noted the movement as Vierna rocked back on her heels.

  “You must learn, idiot child,” she said. “You must learn your place and hone your abilities. You can do well, for a mere boy, a mere man, in this city. But if you do not learn your place—if you do not hold it strong in your heart, then know that you will suffer a most cruel fate.”

  “Like being whipped by those wicked vipers?” Drizzt asked, and Zaknafein’s eyes widened, his heart caught somewhere between swelling pride and a terrible fear that Drizzt would meet a swift end if he could not learn to curb his own venom!

  Vierna snorted. “Hardly. You cannot imagine the pleasure the matron will take in tormenting you, or the end result of her torture. If you are lucky, you will die.”

  “Do all women take pleasure in such pain?”

  The question came from a place of innocence, Zak understood, as did Vierna, apparently, for instead of lifting her whip, she fell farther back upon her heels.

  “If I don’t teach you, you will be horribly punished,” she said at length. “Better me than another.”

  Zak believed it. He had heard mumblings about and from Vierna about her weanmother status overseeing the growth of Drizzt. She would likely have become a high priestess by now if her studies hadn’t been interrupted by the unexpected survival of this child.

  Zak snuck in for a better view.

  His grimace deepened when those scars came more clearly into view—his boy’s back had been truly dug.

  But not by Vierna, Zaknafein realized, for the wound showed several parallel sets of scars. Vierna wasn’t yet a high priestess—that she carried a snake-headed scourge at all was unusual. Hers had only two writhing snakes.

  The one that had made the marks on Drizzt had many more. Zaknafein nodded, recognizing the mark of a certain Do’Urden.

  His hand went to his sword pommel, murder in his red eyes. He took a deep breath.

  “He earned it, I trust,” Zak said lightly, standing straight and walking past the pews openly, as if he hadn’t been trying to sneak in or conceal himself at all.

  Vierna, clearly uneasy, jumped at the sound of his voice. She spun on Zaknafein, her expression roiling through a series of emotions, ending with a look of superiority, the priestess scowl that Zak knew so well. A look that seemed to say, of course Drizzt had earned it, if for no other reason than his gender.

  She couldn’t hold it, though, and Zaknafein silently hoped that was because of her lack of conviction. As far as he could tell, in the seven years Vierna had been tutoring Drizzt as his weanmother, she had been far less cruel than most others he had known in such a role.

  “His mind wanders,” Vierna said to Zak, and scolded Drizzt at the same time, turning her disapproving scowl upon him. She looked up to a statue set in the wall above the boy. “He can reach it. I’ve seen him float up there to polish the whole of it in one levitation. But his thoughts are elsewhere, always elsewhere.”

  “I polished it yesterday,” Drizzt complained, and Vierna’s eyes and nostrils flared.

  “And you will polish it again, and now,” Zaknafein said, before she could scold him. “It is important. This is your place. The reward is tomorrow, young Do’Urden.”

  “But the punishment is immediate,” Vierna warned, one of the snakes on her scourge hissing, the other slithering up and around her arm.

  Sighing, Drizzt gathered up his shirt, beginning his levitation before he had even pulled it over his head, enacting the dweomer so fully with his own innate magical abilities that he didn’t even need to wait to touch the house emblem pinned to the garment.

  As he floated up, Zak turned to Vierna with a smile.

  “Par tu’o ammea ulu vos jalv del lil orthae’scour lueth jalm del lil belbolcahal,” Zaknafein said in a singsong manner, an old drow saying usually reserved for girls: “This one seems to need less of the holy lash and more of the cake.”

  Vierna’s nostrils flared again.

  He had gone too far, perhaps, Zaknafein understood, and he quickly dismissed himself and moved away, not wanting to make things any worse for Drizzt, certainly.

  He went to his own chambers to change from his trail-weathered clothes, then to Matron Malice’s palatial suite to announce his return. He was surprised when the female guards led him into the private chambers to find most of the house nobles there beside Malice: Briza, Maya, Patron Rizzen, Dinin.

  Zaknafein gauged the mood quickly, and it was not one expected on the eve of a grand celebration.

  Almost as soon as he was announced by the guards—who then departed—Priestess Vierna entered the room.

  The timing, Zak suspected, was not coincidental.

  “I have done all the tasks you assigned me, Matron,” Zaknafein said with a bow.

  “Not secretly enough,” the woman replied, drawing a curious look from Zak, for Malice hadn’t mentioned any secrecy to him when she had sent him forth. Indeed, how might one be secret when procuring special rothé from the tenders on the island? How might one be secret when going out among a drow patrol and replacing a noble warrior with a house commoner?

  How might one be secret to the other houses of Menzoberranzan when delivering an essay to Arach-Tinilith? Every major house in the city, every middling house in the city, kept eyes on that structure above all others!

  “There is too much whispering,” Matron Malice announced, standing dramatically and waving her arm out to encompass all the nobles in the room. “There will be no celebration tomorrow. No belbolcahal.”

  That brought a series of groans and murmurs from the others, one that seemed a bit too practiced to Zaknafein. Beside him, Vierna shifted uncomfortably, and she wilted beneath his gaze when he more carefully regarded her.

  “We cannot have the Ruling Council see us celebrating on the anniversary of House DeVir’s demise,” Matron Malice went on. “There is too much whispering about complicity at this time, perhaps signaling too much whispering among members of this very house.”

  Zak noted that her gaze kept lingering on him as she spoke, and it was all he could do to suppress a laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. Everyone in Menzoberranzan knew what had happened to House DeVir.

  Everyone.

  But then Zak realized that she wasn’t talking about whispers regarding House DeVir’s fall. No, she was playing one of her games—one aimed at him. She turned to her eldest daughter, the ever-vicious Briza, and nodded.

/>   “He is still in the chapel?” Briza asked, moving swiftly for the door, hand falling to the handle of her six-headed scourge.

  Vierna muttered an affirmation.

  “What did you do?” Zaknafein quietly demanded of Vierna.

  “What did you do?” Matron Malice corrected him, sharply. “What did you dare to do?”

  “I . . . did nothing,” a flummoxed Zak replied.

  “The boy will be given to you for training when it is time,” Malice said to him. “Until then, he is not your matter, not your student, none of your business. The breaking of a child is the domain of the weanmother alone, except for others I sometimes call into play.”

  As she finished, the room’s door shut hard, Briza departing.

  Zaknafein lowered his head, both to appear humble and to hide his building rage.

  This wasn’t any training technique for Drizzt, he knew, even though his son was about to be whipped severely. No, this was Malice training him, reminding him, after all, that he was just a man, a very small man in a matriarchal world.

  Jarlaxle was stopped in his tracks when he went into the Oozing Myconid that same night. He had just returned from a private and secret meeting with Mistress Sos’Umptu, where the topic of House Do’Urden and an unexpected visit from Zaknafein (who was known to the Baenres as an old associate of Jarlaxle) had come up. Thus, he was still thinking of his old friend when he returned to his tavern, only to find none other than Zaknafein Do’Urden sitting there at his old corner table along the back wall.

  Jarlaxle closed his uncovered eye and stared at the weapon master through the magic of his eyepatch, hardly believing that his friend, whom he had not seen in several years, was sitting at his old table, hunched over his drink, looking so much like the same Zaknafein Simfray who had first come into this place.