Relentless

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Why would you even need to ask?”

  “You don’t love me, Zaknafein. You cannot. In fact, in some place deep in your heart, I know that you must abhor me.”

  “The war between our families was a lifetime and more ago,” Zak answered. “And neither of us precipitated it anyway, and only did what we had to do to survive, as is the way for almost everyone in this fallen place.”

  “Not the war!” Dab’nay said. “How could you possibly love me when I am a priestess of she you most reject and despise? A priestess! For all of my failings, I gave my oath to Lolth.”

  Zak shrugged, playing those words around in his thoughts. He couldn’t deny the literal truth of them, but those facts meant nothing to him. He imagined a fight between Bregan D’aerthe and House Do’Urden that would lead him into a chamber where Dab’nay cast her spells—he remembered his assault on House DeVir!

  But no, he could never attack this one. She was a priestess of Lolth, but she wasn’t, not really, not in her heart and not in his.

  “We are here because we’re safe here, because we understand each other—maybe even better than we understand ourselves,” Zak said.

  “A horde of driders could burst through that door and kill both heretics at the same time,” Dab’nay answered. “Safe?”

  “Emotionally,” Zak said. He rolled onto his side to face her directly and brought one hand up to gently stroke her soft cheek. “We are here because this is where we don’t need to lie.”

  “About?”

  “Everything. Maybe when we’re here, as when we’re working with Jarlaxle’s crew, we have found a refuge from our own lives, which are nothing more than lies.”

  Zak welcomed the intensity on Dab’nay’s face as he said that. She was hearing his every word. This was important to her, as it was to him.

  “That’s how they do it, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Bring us into their webs. Bring you into the clergy of a goddess who is not in your heart.”

  Dab’nay’s lips moved a bit as if she was trying to formulate a response, but she just shook her head, a signal to Zak to go on. He was extemporizing here, mentally improvising—this was no long-thought-out theory coming from him now. Certainly it was a subject he had often considered, but suddenly, there was clarity.

  “They speak a lie and even though we don’t believe them, they speak a line of hate—against the elves above or the deep gnomes or another drow house—and even though we don’t agree with them, we don’t speak out,” Zak said. He was considering his own early days at Melee-Magthere, and thinking of his son, his poor son, caught there now. “I wonder how many in the crowd of listeners would agree with us—but no, we will never know. Because we all take the only course open to us, the road that leads away from exclusion and worse.”

  “The road to life as a drider,” Dab’nay agreed.

  “The road of self-preservation. And so we nod, perhaps laugh at their terrible mocking jokes at those others we must hate, and even though we do not believe their lies, or even though we see the cruelty in their jokes and threats and venom, we nod, or at best, remain silent. Thus are we complicit. We have followed them into the ditch they are digging, grain by grain, and we become numb to it. The lies and venom become no more than words to our thoughts, mundane, no longer shocking, and without meaning—but only without meaning to our conscious thoughts. For then they dig deeper, they lie louder, they hate more, and this, too, we accept, and now the lesser lies and venom seem reasonable by comparison.”

  Dab’nay’s face screwed up in confusion and she shook her head, and Zak got the distinct impression he was losing her.

  It didn’t matter, though. He was talking to himself and not to her at this point, as finally he began to unravel a strand of that most awful web.

  “And so we begin to lie, and so we become complicit,” he realized. “And so the hole deepens around us, walls from which we cannot escape. And then the deeds—we kill for them. Maybe a goblin or a kobold or some other insignificant being. Something less than. Something not a person. It matters not. All that matters is that we have struck a blow in support of their deceit, and so we are more complicit still.

  “They lie louder, and they hate more. And the lies and hate and deeds that were not lesser become more so—the path is only one way. Deeper. We dig beside them. We are lost in their hole.”

  Dab’nay’s breathing was raspy then, giving Zaknafein a strong feeling that the woman wished she had never asked the seemingly simple question in the first place.

  “I see it so clearly now,” Zak finished. “I cannot believe that I did not understand it before, or perhaps I was too invested in not admitting my own complicity in this evilness.”

  He didn’t miss that Dab’nay was leaning away from him. He stared into her eyes, shaking his head just a bit, trying to somehow signal to her that it was so plain now, and had been said aloud, and that in and of itself was freeing. So very freeing!

  “You say that you wish to get back into Bregan D’aerthe,” Dab’nay said finally.

  Zak just looked at her curiously.

  “Jarlaxle will never allow you reentry with such words as these, spoken openly,” Dab’nay explained. “He has too much to lose. He is too close to powers that would utterly destroy anyone who dared speak such blasphemy.”

  “This isn’t about Jarlaxle,” Zak replied. “It is about us. We two. This is why we are here, in this place, intertwined. This is the truth and that, in this place, is our freedom. Do you not see it?”

  Dab’nay thought on that for a long while, then meekly nodded her head, and Zak wasn’t sure he believed her.

  He said no more, though, just rolled onto his back once more and lifted one arm over his eyes, wanting no more glowworm-incited introspection. After a while, Dab’nay nestled against him, and the two drifted off into slumber.

  They would get together many times over the next few years, but never again would Zaknafein speak of such things to Dab’nay. Eventually, he came to understand that he had unsettled her greatly with his declaration of truth, and as the years wore on, the visits became less frequent.

  “Do not do it,” Dab’nay told Jarlaxle, surprising him.

  “A decade and a half,” Jarlaxle said, for indeed that much time had now passed since Zaknafein’s fight with the yochlol. “It was a long time ago.”

  “A long time to a goblin, a lesser time to us, a speck of time to a handmaiden,” Dab’nay said. “I know you miss him. So do I, but he is not worth it to Bregan D’aerthe.”

  “I would have thought you pleased at the news that I am considering his reinstatement.”

  “I am. But I’m also not blind to the realities of why he isn’t part of Bregan D’aerthe, as you seem to be. Why now?”

  “Because his son nears the end of his decade at Melee-Magthere, and young Drizzt has built, by all accounts, a most magnificent reputation for himself.”

  “Matron Malice will be willing to part with her consort, so you believe,” Dab’nay reasoned.

  “She will have a lesser need for him. She’ll want her son as weapon master as soon as he is able.”

  “She’ll want both as she plots her rise to the Ruling Council,” Dab’nay said bluntly.

  Jarlaxle shrugged. “He will not be expelled from House Do’Urden, but he’ll not be needed as much as he is now.”

  “Do not do it,” Dab’nay told him again. “You don’t understand. He is incorrigible. There is no redemption for Zaknafein in the eyes of Lolth, whether or not her handmaiden has forgiven the incident. I don’t tell you this lightly, and I wish it were different—how I wish that! But Zaknafein will bring disfavor to us, of the highest order. You cannot control him and he will never, ever accept Lolth or her edicts.”

  “Nor does Kimmuriel, and he has become an important part of our work,” Jarlaxle argued.

  “There is more to House Oblodra than we know, regarding their relationship with the Spider Queen,” Dab’nay a
rgued. “Who can know what they really think or believe? All we can know is that Matron K’yorl Odran sits in the third rank on the Ruling Council. We can safely assume that she has the blessing of Lady Lolth. Zaknafein does not, and never will, and worse, wouldn’t accept it if it was offered.”

  Jarlaxle leaned back in his seat and eyed Dab’nay head to toe. “What is this about? A lover scorned?”

  Dab’nay laughed at that absurdity. “It is about me enjoying the quietness of my respite within Bregan D’aerthe, and so wanting to preserve Bregan D’aerthe,” she answered honestly. “Zaknafein has opened his heart to me, and it is not one that will accept Lolth—”

  “The same could be said of many of my associates,” Jarlaxle interrupted, but Dab’nay went on undeterred.

  “He will never accept Lolth,” she repeated, “nor excuse the behavior of those who do. Go and learn for yourself if my observation is not enough for you, Jarlaxle. You survive by knowing, and this that I tell you is easy enough for a high priestess to magically discern. You know many who would do you this favor, no doubt.”

  With that, Dab’nay took her leave, having said her piece, but as she departed, she was already considering where she might run if Jarlaxle did indeed allow Zaknafein back into the mercenary band. Would she betray her lover? Would she betray Jarlaxle, who had helped to spare her after the defeat of House Tr’arach?

  “Yes,” she told herself before she had even left the Clawrift.

  She hated herself for saying it, for thinking it, even, but Dab’nay was above all else a survivor.

  She had to be.

  She understood what awaited her in the afterlife, and she was not ready to face the Demon Queen of Spiders and her court.

  Not yet.

  Chapter 20

  The Roll of Years

  “Extract him,” Dab’nay begged Jarlaxle. “Get him out of there. Drizzt is back at Matron Malice’s side—she will part with Zak for the proper coin.”

  “You told me only tendays ago that Zaknafein was as happy as you had ever known him,” Jarlaxle argued, caught off guard by the request. “His son, his protégé, is returned from the academy with all honors, with whispers that he will grow beyond even the prowess of his father.”

  “And now he is morose,” Dab’nay said. “For now he knows that Drizzt is drow, truly drow, wet in the blood of darthiir.”

  Jarlaxle heaved a great sigh and shook his head. Darthiir. An elf. The details of the war party surface raid were out.

  The year was young, Dalereckoning 1329, the Year of the Lost Helm, but already it was proving more eventful than the past decade.

  As with many of the swirling rumors and whispers in Menzoberranzan these past decades, the center of that swirl was D’aermon N’a’chezbaernon, House Do’Urden, the Ninth House of Menzoberranzan. Matron Malice’s treasured son Drizzt had returned to her home after completing his training at Melee-Magthere. It was little surprise to many, and none at all to Jarlaxle, that Drizzt, the son of Zaknafein, had dominated his class and was already being compared to his father, who was considered one of the top three weapon masters in all of Menzoberranzan, if not the greatest of them all.

  So many other whispers had Jarlaxle heard, as well. That was why he had urged Dab’nay to increase her trysts with Zaknafein, which had been few and far between of late.

  “The raid,” Dab’nay explained, and Jarlaxle made himself appear surprised—always better to hear varying voices even regarding the same tale, and always better still if the source thought she was breaking the news.

  “Dinin Do’Urden led the war party to the surface and there they found the elves at their frivolous play, exactly as Matron Mother Baenre had predicted,” Dab’nay explained.

  “Dinin led well, I am sure,” Jarlaxle said, feigning his ignorance, understating both what he had heard of the excursion and the complete success it had achieved, to the glory of both Do’Urden sons. It had been a complete success in the eyes of the Ruling Council, and no doubt in the eyes of the Spider Queen.

  To Jarlaxle, it had been just another atrocity in millennia of atrocities, another waste of life and energy for ethereal ends that had never made any sense to him. Why kill someone when you can sell things to her? Or learn things from her?

  “House Do’Urden basks in the favor of the Spider Queen,” Dab’nay said. “Zaknafein has never been pleased with such favor.”

  “True enough,” Jarlaxle admitted, for it was an undeniable assertion. The weapon master, after all, always took such glee in murdering priestesses of Lolth.

  “And now it shines on his son,” Dab’nay went on. “It would seem that Drizzt is not so much like Zaknafein in that regard. More like his zealot mother, perhaps. His blades were wet with blood and I have heard no words of remorse.”

  “That wouldn’t please Zak,” Jarlaxle said, more to himself than to Dab’nay, who nodded. “And so you think Matron Malice would be willing to elevate Drizzt to serve as Do’Urden Weapon Master, and be rid of Zaknafein?”

  “If she does not, it will not end well for Zak or for Drizzt. Of that, I am sure.”

  Jarlaxle considered that for a while, yet again finding it hard to disagree. When Dab’nay had claimed that Zak was morose, Jarlaxle had thought her exaggerating—Jarlaxle had seen Zak at his highs and lows for centuries, and if anything, the man had become more balanced of late, resigned and carving out what little peace of mind he could find in his studies and training.

  And hopes for his son.

  Jarlaxle knew more about the surface raid than Dab’nay, of course, and more than Zaknafein, likely. Without Zak’s knowledge, but with more than a passing interest, Jarlaxle had planted a scout from his band among that war party: Nav Rayan Dyrr.

  Jarlaxle knew all about Dinin’s exploits.

  Jarlaxle knew that Drizzt had killed a helpless elven child.

  Apparently Zak knew, too.

  “Go back to him this night,” Jarlaxle instructed. “Go to him often now, as many nights as you can manage. Comfort him. Coax his thoughts.”

  “I do not wish to spy on Zaknafein.”

  “Any spying you are doing, any information you are bringing back to me, is for his sake, not mine,” Jarlaxle told her. “Once, long ago, Zaknafein Simfray spared you. Now you can possibly return that debt, and do so in a way that brings comfort to a man you just described to me as morose.”

  Dab’nay considered that for a few moments, then nodded.

  “So soon?” Jarlaxle asked Beniago when the Baenre informed him that Dinin and Drizzt were out again on a raiding party, and only months after the surface raid. This time, they were hunting a group of adventurous svirfnebli who had ventured too near to Menzoberranzan for the comfort of the Ruling Council.

  Jarlaxle shook his head and blew out a sigh, thinking a lot more than he was speaking. The target of this new raid had thrown Jarlaxle’s thoughts back to that day more than fifteen years before, his last great adventure with Zak.

  The rogue gave a snort, half chortle, half chuckle. Helpless chuckle. Now Zak’s son would possibly kill the same deep gnome Jarlaxle, Zaknafein, and Kimmuriel had gone to such great lengths to save.

  Sometimes it seemed to Jarlaxle as if nothing really mattered at all. He was mostly an optimist—look at all that he had survived, after all! Moments like this, when he could only sigh, almost always led to that one source: Lolth, the great sword hanging over the heads of every drow in Menzoberranzan and neighboring Ched Nesad. What might a drow city without the influence of the goddess look like, Jarlaxle often wondered.

  He hoped that he would live long enough to find out—silently hoped, of course.

  He turned back to the matters at hand. This new mission would do little to brighten Zak’s mood, Jarlaxle realized, and according to Dab’nay, the weapon master’s mood hadn’t improved much since her visit with Zak that same day he had learned of Drizzt’s murderous actions against the surface elves. But while that mood hadn’t improved, it had shifted, according to Dab’nay. She
wasn’t calling him morose any longer.

  Now she spoke of a simmer, one building to an explosion.

  Jarlaxle silently cursed himself for not taking Dab’nay’s advice those months before and attempting to purchase Zak from House Do’Urden.

  “I am surprised that Matron Malice is being so cavalier with her sons,” Jarlaxle said. “Deep gnomes are no easy opponents. Even victory here will likely prove costly.”

  “She may lose Dinin, but I have come to believe that she thinks the younger son blessed and protected by the Spider Queen,” Beniago replied. “This young Drizzt is as fine a warrior as Melee-Magthere has ever graduated, true, but that means nothing unless it is proven often in battle. My cousin Dantrag was not the highest-ranked in his class. It took him a decade of battles, many battles, before his true skill became obvious. Uthegentel Armgo was a hulking beast, of course, overwhelming the other students, but few expected him to survive his first years after Melee-Magthere. There had been others like him, so promising, and then, so dead.”

  “And that is the point,” Jarlaxle said. “Those first months and years after the academy are often the most dangerous. Yes, they can build a great reputation, but if a weapon master is to die in battle it is usually when he is very young or when he grows old and slow. Either way, it always happens in his last year, yes?”

  Beniago chuckled at that.

  “Matron Malice has so much riding on the promise of Drizzt,” Jarlaxle explained. “He is her second weapon master—he and his father will prove an enormous advantage to her in her quest to sit on the Ruling Council. She likely already has Lolth’s favor from the successful surface raid, so yes, it surprises me that she would risk them, particularly Drizzt, again so quickly.”

  “Surprises?” Beniago said slyly.

  “Intrigues me,” Jarlaxle corrected.

  “Do you suspect that she is plotting her next move?” Beniago asked. “Perhaps she is eager to bring Lolth’s favor to a crescendo to aid in her ambitions.”

  Jarlaxle grinned and cocked his head, sizing up his Bregan D’aerthe soldier. “So now you have decided to do some spying for House Baenre?” he asked slyly.