Relentless

by R. A. Salvatore

  The mercenary leader moved to the bar and collected a drink of his own, then waved off unimportant questions from his minions and made his way directly to Zaknafein’s table, dropping into a seat across from the weapon master as comfortably as he might slip on his old shoes.

  “To old times,” he said, lifting his glass in toast.

  Zaknafein stared at him cautiously for just a moment, then nodded and lifted his glass, clinking it against Jarlaxle’s.

  “I am quite pleased—dare I say honored?—that you have returned to my most humble establishment,” Jarlaxle said.

  “You can say it, but I won’t believe it,” Zaknafein answered, bringing a wide grin to Jarlaxle’s face.

  “You see right through me, alas.”

  “Like a skinny gelatinous cube.”

  This time, Zak led the toast.

  “Yet you remain as opaque as black pudding to me,” Jarlaxle said as they clinked glasses again.

  “No one who has ever known Jarlaxle would believe such a thing, but that is the charm of your lies. Everyone knows you’re lying, but most spend too much time trying to find a purpose in the falsehoods. I know you better than that, Jarlaxle. I know that the charm is the point, nothing more—usually.”

  “And you can tell the difference and discern those times when there is more?”

  “Of course.”

  “I have heard such things before.”

  “From who?”

  “No one who lived long enough for you to know them, or who died honorably enough for me to tell you about them.”

  Zaknafein considered that for just a moment, then shrugged and took another drink.

  “It is good to see you again,” Jarlaxle said after a few moments—moments during which Zaknafein’s eyes drifted to the side absently. Something was bothering him.

  “I need your help,” Zak said, turning his gaze intensely upon the mercenary leader.

  Jarlaxle didn’t reply.

  “I know,” Zak said. “I have avoided you for years, and here I am, coming to you when my own situation demands it of me. I understand—”

  “You are my friend,” Jarlaxle interrupted. “There are not many who I can proclaim possess that label. If you need my help and did not come to me, then I would be offended.”

  Zaknafein nodded. “Get me out of here.”

  “Out of?”

  “The city. I need you to get me out of the city.”

  “In hiding? Do you plan to run away from Menzoberranzan?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. I would just leave now, but not forever. For the first time, I have a more compelling reason than my own weakness to stay.”

  “The secondboy,” Jarlaxle reasoned, and Zaknafein nodded.

  “Then why leave?” the mercenary leader asked.

  “For him, the secondboy, my son Drizzt,” Zak explained. “Malice uses . . .”

  “Matron Malice,” Jarlaxle sternly corrected, and when Zak froze in a surprised stare, Jarlaxle couldn’t hold the joke and gave a laugh. “Do tell, my friend. What is that vile witch doing now?”

  “She uses Drizzt to punish me and control me—by punishing him most severely,” Zak explained. “There is little I can do to help him in the next few years—I can barely get near to him, and when I do, Malice often shows me just how foolish I was to interfere with her designs.”

  “So you would leave the child to Malice for the sake of the child?”

  “As foolish as that sounds, I cannot do anything but leave the child to Malice, and in those moments of weakness when I think otherwise, I am fast reminded, at Drizzt’s expense.”

  “It is no small thing that you ask,” Jarlaxle said after considering Zak’s request for a short while. “Malice will not easily let you go, and woe to Drizzt, I fear, if you just run out.”

  “Nay, I cannot just run out. I want you to arrange it, and in a manner where Malice cannot refuse.”

  Jarlaxle sat back and rubbed his face. He had only one extra-Menzoberranzan mission on his docket, and that involved a very complicated and dangerous situation, one that could blow back badly on a house associated with anyone involved on Bregan D’aerthe’s side.

  Otherwise, this particular mission would fit Zaknafein’s wishes perfectly . . .

  “What do you know of House Hunzrin?” Jarlaxle asked.

  “Hunzrin?” Zak asked with obvious surprise. “The stone heads? I was just on Donigarten, securing a rothé from a daughter of House Hunzrin. A minor house, yes? One no one would mention, except for their stewardship of the fields and cattle of Donigarten.”

  “Not so minor, and that perception will change,” Jarlaxle assured him. “They control most of the city’s farms.”

  “But they are weak.”

  “In the city, yes, but they have tendrils, ones that must be tended and occasionally clipped. Understand, they are in the favor of Lolth, and more than that, in the favor of the eight houses of the Ruling Council. All eight. Even Oblodra.”

  “This sounds like an assassination,” Zaknafein said. “You ask me to kill someone in exchange for your actions to get me out of the city? Well, if it is a priestess of Lolth, I agree.”

  “Would that it were that easy!” Jarlaxle replied. “No, this will involve much more than that, both in danger and in cleverness. I hesitate.”

  “Because I am neither dangerous nor clever?” Zaknafein asked with a snort.

  “Oh, you are both, perhaps more than almost any person I have ever known who was not born to great power. But there are implications here beyond you. Implications to House Do’Urden, unless we are very careful.”

  “We are always very careful.”

  “I fear that I may have to recount a story about the two of us running across the webbing balconies of Ched Nesad.”

  “There were three of us,” Zaknafein reminded, and Jarlaxle winced at the reference to Arathis Hune, who had once been the mercenary leader’s closest ally and principal advisor. “In that, too,” Zak continued, “I was careful and clever, and very dangerous. Mortally so.”

  “Indeed. I’m still working on things—there is much for me to consider, and much groundwork to be laid,” Jarlaxle explained. “When can you return to me?”

  “It will be tendays, at least, I expect, before I can again sneak out from House Do’Urden.”

  “Good. I will need that time and perhaps more to properly sort through this possibility.”

  “And if it is not possible?”

  “Then I will find another way to help you remove yourself from Menzoberranzan for an extended . . . respite,” Jarlaxle promised.

  Zaknafein nodded, then finished his drink with one great gulp and rose from his seat. With only a slight nod to his old friend, the weapon master left the tavern for House Do’Urden.

  “You heard?” Jarlaxle asked priestess Dab’nay, who came up to the table as soon as Zaknafein was gone.

  “Only the end. You think to involve Zaknafein in our dealings with House Hunzrin? He is closely associated with a prominent house,” she warned. “You could well start a war.”

  “I always profit in war,” Jarlaxle glibly replied.

  “How great your profit if Zaknafein is killed?” Dab’nay asked. “How great your guilt if he is not but his child is?”

  “Not so great,” Jarlaxle admitted. “And that is why we must be clever. Can you tell me that you would be distressed to have Zaknafein by your side again when you venture into the wilds of the Underdark?”

  Dab’nay’s answer came as a smile, one she let linger for several heartbeats before asking, “You think Matron Malice will let him go?”

  “That is the easy part,” Jarlaxle replied. “What may happen when he is gone is far more challenging.”

  Hearing his own words as he spoke them sent the mercenary leaning back in contemplation. Did he really want to go this far this early in the solidification of Bregan D’aerthe as a powerful force in Menzoberranzan? By including Zak, he was indeed risking inciting a house war, and one t
hat could be traced back to him. Worse, Jarlaxle knew well that if things went badly out in the tunnels of the Underdark, it was very likely his entire expeditionary team would be obliterated by the Hunzrins.

  That would include Zak, no matter his skill.

  Was it a chance Jarlaxle was willing to take?

  The passing of the days was interminable for Zaknafein as he went about his duties in House Do’Urden. As far as he knew, Matron Malice hadn’t learned of his secret venture out to the Stenchstreets to visit Jarlaxle—or at least, she hadn’t punished Drizzt for it and had said nothing to Zak.

  Now the weapon master spent his time almost exclusively on the first level, the commoner level, of House Do’Urden, working tirelessly with the house guards in coordinating their watches and perfecting their fighting formations. He only floated up to the second floor on occasional nights, and only then when Malice summoned him to her bed.

  He didn’t want to do anything to incur the matron’s wrath at that time, now that she had a way to truly wound him.

  The vulnerability. Yes, that. Zaknafein could never have imagined such a feeling of helplessness and profound emotional pain. He thought of the many hours he had spent with the babe in those first days after the fall of House DeVir, of the bond he’d formed with Drizzt.

  Now he suspected that those visits, too, had been granted by Malice for exactly this end. Even though her own heart was blackened by the shadow of Lady Lolth, she understood the vulnerability of parenthood. She considered it a weakness, no doubt, and she had likely suspected all along that Zaknafein was possessed of such weakness.

  And she was correct. Zak understood that so clearly now.

  For the first time in his life, he was terrified of her. For the first time, he knew that she could truly break him. Always, she could murder him, torture him, even turn him into a drider. Stubborn Zaknafein could accept those risks.

  But now . . . now, Malice could do all that to Zak’s child.

  She could break him.

  He was working with a score of warriors out at the lizard stable in the far back end of the first level when the courier rushed in, anxious and out of breath from hustling.

  “Zaknafein, Weapon Master!” she gasped when he saw Zak.

  Every step she took in her run to Zak thumped in his heart as if someone were beating it with a drumstick.

  The young woman skidded to an abrupt stop, nearly crashing into him despite her exceptional drow agility, and thrust a parchment out at him.

  “To the throne room with you, at once, by order of Matron Malice!” she blurted.

  “I am in the middle of—”

  “At once!” the woman yelled at him. “I am to accept no excuse, by order of Matron Malice. There is no excuse! At once!”

  Zak pulled the parchment from her hand, reading it as he departed, then throwing it aside when he saw that it was nothing more than a signed note from Malice telling him to appear at once, without a hint of the reason.

  He feared he knew the reason. He feared for Drizzt.

  He tried very hard to keep his stride solid and assured as he crossed the room toward the dais, where Malice sat, flanked by her three daughters. He took some comfort in the fact that not one of them, not even Briza, seemed happy at that moment, as they surely would have been—particularly Briza—if there was a brutal punishment soon to come.

  He focused on Vierna for the last few strides, but her expression was impassive, almost bored.

  “You have been rarely seen of late,” Malice said to him, as he moved before the stairs to the throne and bowed appropriately.

  “I have not left the house.”

  “You have spent little time among the nobles.”

  “We have not been to war in seven years,” Zak explained. “I fear that those less . . . devout among us have lost their way in any fighting beyond singular combat. These are lessons that must be renewed, and so I—”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Malice dismissed the notion. “I am sure that we will be well served by your efforts. But you are the weapon master, and your duties are far beyond moving the pawns into formation.”

  “I am available to the elderboy or to any of the nobles if they wish private training.”

  “Enough with your talk of training, you insipid fool,” Matron Malice scolded. “You are one of the prime faces of House Do’Urden. Your most important role is to please me, at my whim. Beyond that, you are to present to Menzoberranzan at large, and not just to those within, the strength of our house.”

  “You would have me go out into the city?”

  “Not to the Stenchstreets, if that is what you are hinting,” the matron was quick to reply. “No, but there are other opportunities that arise from time to time that I expect you to embrace, and so to shine brilliantly upon the Ninth House of Menzoberranzan.”

  “At your service, always, great Matron Malice,” he said with another bow.

  “Such an opportunity has been offered to us this day,” Malice explained. “Matron Baenre has sent a note to me of an expedition departing the city very soon, aiming at sacking a fledgling city of filthy svirfneblin. We have gnomes to conquer, and I expect your personal victories to exceed any of the others.”

  “Of course, Matron Malice,” Zak replied, keeping his head bowed, for he was trying to work through this news. Was this Jarlaxle’s expedition under cover? Or was there really a deep gnome band nearby that needed to be conquered?

  “Arrive at the north gate when Narbondel’s light has climbed the height of a single woman. Report to . . .” She paused and read the name on a parchment she held. “Report to city scout Beniago Kurth of the First House, who will lead the group.”

  Zaknafein quietly breathed a huge sigh of relief. Beniago Kurth was indeed a nobleman of that most powerful house, but he was also one of the most important diplomats and scouts in Jarlaxle’s Bregan D’aerthe.

  Zaknafein had found his escape.

  Part 2

  Entrenchment and Enlightenment

  I am caught off-balance, and in a way more painful than any disadvantage I’ve ever known, even in combat. Unlike in combat, I fear that the recovery will prove much more difficult and will take me many tendays, or months, or years, or lifetimes.

  If I can ever find my way through to a place of acceptance with my son and those he considers his dearest friends—indeed, those he values more than he values me. That last thought is not a complaint, certainly, for these are the friends he has surrounded himself with for the majority of his life, the companions who have journeyed beside him on many adventures and stood beside him in many fights—legendary battles, from what Jarlaxle has told me.

  So there is no jealousy here, nor bitterness about his relationship with these others.

  Besides, my current predicament is my own fault. I know this, but admitting it even to myself is painful.

  I hear the words coming out of my mouth, the reflexive jokes and jabs, and it is not until I see the expressions coming back at me, and then, sometimes, the angry words, that I realize that I have offended.

  I am nearly two hundred years removed from the world of the living. Perhaps it is the different time, but more than that, I am in a place the likes of which I never knew in my former life.

  My former life was that of a dark elf, a Lolthian drow. I never lived beyond Menzoberranzan and spent the entirety of my half millennium there, with only the exceptions of missions, all but two exclusively in the Underdark, and almost all either patrolling the perimeter corridors around the cavern that holds my city home, or to other drow cities in the thrall of the Spider Queen, usually Ched Nesad.

  I saw a few humans, a few dozen dwarves, and only a handful of elves in that past life, and I did not mistreat them, and encouraged others, as much as I could without forfeiting my life, to similarly show mercy.

  I thought that was correct of me, was something to hang a mantle of pride upon. How big of Zaknafein not to torture or murder a dwarf simply for being a dwarf!

  I
did not recognize my own prejudice, attributing my quieter, honest feelings to the simple matter of “that is the way of things.”

  It did not even occur to me that in applauding my own kindness, there was, too, an unspoken condescension. Unspoken, but I cannot honestly say unintended. For while I recognized the value of the human or dwarf or elf or halfling or gnome as a person and not as a goblinoid monster—and while I tried, in my brief interactions, to judge that non-drow person by her beliefs and what was in her heart, by her words or behavior—the judgment I expressed was conscious alone.

  It wasn’t in my heart.

  Whether it was simply my upbringing, the community about me, the “way of things” hidden from my determination to prove otherwise, the truth was, I thought that I, as drow, was superior. I couldn’t admit it to myself—perhaps I didn’t consciously know this truth—but I imposed upon those other races limitations of expectation of their abilities, physical and mental.

  I see it now, see it clearly, particularly when confronted with the reality that my son has married a human and that she carries within her womb a child both drow and human!

  I recognize within me my own feelings of prejudice, but that does not mean they will be easily expunged.

  No. I see that truth every time a prod, a jab, a mock slips past my tongue, one diminishing to the many non-drow around me, or one somehow designed to remind those few drow around me of the “way of things.”

  Now I know. The “way of things” is the most stubborn and debilitating demon of all.

  Zaknafein Do’Urden

  Chapter 7

  The Eight Hundred

  The Year of Dwarvenkind Reborn

  Dalereckoning 1488

  “We have a gift for you,” Yiccardaria the yochlol told Matron Zhindia Melarn, who had camped with her forces in the destroyed halfling village that had been known as Bleeding Vines.

  “You seem to need it,” giggled Eskavidne, another of the handmaidens of the Spider Queen. The two could not have been more obvious. They had come not in their natural form, which resembled a slumping, half-melted candle of dripping mud, but walking as beautiful drow women—fully and unashamedly naked. To them, so they had explained to Zhindia when she had once complained of their distracting presence, wearing the mantle of a drow was no more than putting on the costume of an animal, so why would they bother with pretty clothes when the form itself was so much more aesthetically pleasing?