“It would be better if no one died in the Oozing Myconid this night,” she told her young suitor, sweetly, but with all the weight of a priestess of Lolth’s voice behind it.
Jarlaxle moved along, smiling at the thought of playing with Dab’nay that night—something he had not done in a long while—and pleased that his Bregan D’aerthe associate had so clearly read the actual meaning in his cryptic hand signals.
Not for the first time and not for the last, Jarlaxle was glad of his decision that century ago to spare Dab’nay Tr’arach.
He looked down at his drink, sad that he had to cradle this one. He couldn’t afford to dull his senses at that time.
“You could have brought one for me,” Zaknafein said when he arrived at the table, the weapon master once more slurring his words, even wobbling a bit as he spoke them.
“You don’t look like you need one, my friend,” Jarlaxle replied. “Especially while in a dangerous place like this.”
Zaknafein snorted and pulled himself up to his feet, then started for the bar. He stumbled, though, and went a couple of steps to the side, bumping into another patron.
That patron’s companion took immediate offense.
A blade flashed—indeed, flashed more than anyone expected as a sudden, brilliant light appeared, drawing groans and shouts from stunned, blinded, and angry dark elves.
Even before countering darkness spells turned the light back to its normal dimness, Jarlaxle (who had, of course, thrown the ceramic pellet with the enchanted light stone into the midst) launched a second such ball and was on to his third trick, calling forth a minor spell from a ring he wore on his right hand.
In the eyeblink before a dozen drow darkness spells overwhelmed the magical light and filled that whole section of the tavern with darkness, Jarlaxle saw that the attacking patron, Duvon, had both swords in hand. Duvon thrust one straight ahead while bringing the second down from on high, powerfully, aiming for the hollow in Zaknafein’s neck.
Zaknafein, drawing only then, sent his left-hand blade across and out, taking the thrusting blade with it, while his right rose up horizontally to execute the second block—a brilliant and beautifully fast double draw that had Jarlaxle almost laughing out loud, both in admiration for Zaknafein, and at himself for even fearing that his weapon master friend might actually be inebriated.
That laugh didn’t hold as the light blinked to absolute blackness, though, for the weight of Duvon’s blow drove Zaknafein’s sword down and even wobbled the weapon master’s knees.
Something was wrong.
Dab’nay kept her focus on the spellcasting in the blinking light. She tried to put aside her fears that Jarlaxle knew more than he should, and her even greater fears that she would fail him now and pay for it, severely, later on.
By the time of the second, more complete darkness, her powerful wave of healing had launched, falling over the combatants—and not a moment too soon, as both cried out as if stabbed!
And more cries followed, these mostly of protest, accompanied by angry shouting and the screeching sound as a blade slipped across metal.
Dab’nay neared panic. She started a second mass healing spell, thinking to throw it in the general direction of the fighters and hope it landed appropriately. Before she could, though, the light returned, a normal light for the tavern, and now Dab’nay scrambled to take it all in.
She was surprised to see that a block of magical webs filled the area where the fight had started, with three drow, including the first to strike, fully caught, and with Zaknafein at the near edge, working to tear himself free.
Many other blades were showing in the tavern then, however, a semicircle of drow with swords drawn and leveled at the combatants. Dab’nay considered them, and recognized them, and quickly relaxed. They were all Bregan D’aerthe fighters, and into the center of their formation walked Jarlaxle.
“Enough!” the mercenary leader demanded. “There will be no blood shed in this place this night.”
“Too late,” Zaknafein muttered back at him. “This is not your fight.”
“How dare you stop this?” said the other combatant, clearing his mouth of the webs but not moving too forcefully to otherwise break free.
“Delay it,” Jarlaxle corrected. “You will have your fight, fairly, in the alley behind this very establishment, three nights hence. Are we agreed?”
“Now, tomorrow, the next day, or any other,” Zaknafein said.
“Agreed,” said the other.
“To first blood or last blood?” Jarlaxle asked.
“Last,” both replied.
Dab’nay sucked in her breath. Someone important in her life would likely die in three days.
Now she just had to figure out which corpse would be of most benefit to her.
Or perhaps not, she thought, when Jarlaxle declared, “Wrong. To surrender, and the humiliation that comes with it.
“That is worse than death.”
Chapter 3
Those Strange Oblodran Creatures
Jarlaxle found himself at a loss as he tried to figure out who might have instigated the conflict the previous night. The first question in such situations was always, of course, along the lines of “Who would benefit?”
But in Menzoberranzan, where everyone was always looking for some way to gain, such a question only rarely narrowed the list of suspects. In this case, Jarlaxle’s list included some of his most important associates, a distinguished matron of one of the oldest and most respected ruling houses in the city, and even the principals involved in the fight—both of them.
He wasn’t going to solve this before the contest, but getting to the bottom of it might be the only way for him to keep two valued associates alive.
“I would ask what you are thinking, but if I wanted to know, I would already be in your thoughts,” came a voice that brought the mercenary leader from his contemplations. He turned to view a diminutive drow, a tiny woman who terrified Jarlaxle perhaps more than any other drow in the city, including the great and powerful Matron Mother Baenre herself.
“Greetings, Matron K’yorl,” he responded, trying to collect himself—and trying to steel himself against the strange mental intrusions for which K’yorl and her House Oblodra were famous. They were psionicists, mind wizards, not unlike the terrifying race of illithids (which were, quite appropriately, also known as mind flayers). Secretly, Oblodra was the most hated house in the city, Jarlaxle knew, but no one would dare go against them, not even House Baenre.
K’yorl grinned—she always wore that superior smirk!
“I warned you when I allowed you to build your complex here in the Clawrift that I would visit,” she said, something she always brought up on those occasions when she simply showed up in the mostly natural corridors of the Bregan D’aerthe home.
“Collecting kobold servants?” Jarlaxle asked.
“Perhaps.”
“Seeking my services, then,” Jarlaxle stated, regaining a bit of his swagger.
“Not as long as you wear that eyepatch,” the matron bluntly stated. “I do business with no one who hides his thoughts from me.”
“We’ve done business before, great lady.”
K’yorl grinned again and Jarlaxle felt a compulsion to remove his eyepatch. His hand reflexively lifted and he almost did it, catching himself only at the last moment.
Her laughter mocked him. The too-clever matron was finding her way through his magical defenses, he knew.
“Fear not, Jarlaxle Baenre,” she said, and the mercenary winced at having his proper surname whispered aloud. Few knew the truth of Jarlaxle’s heritage, or that the sacrifice of Matron Mother Baenre’s thirdborn son, which tradition dictated, had been a farce, foiled by the strange magical mind powers of this very same K’yorl Odran.
“I find you useful, and quite a valuable plaything,” K’yorl continued. “You have nothing to fear from me as long as you remain outside of the goings-on in Menzoberranzan. Jarlaxle knows everything that is happening
in the city, so they say, and that includes knowing when to keep himself out of business that does not concern him.”
“I do try, Matron.”
“When I can confirm that with your thoughts and not merely your words, I will believe you.”
Jarlaxle held up his hands and shrugged. “Soon, then?”
“Sooner than you believe,” K’yorl replied.
Jarlaxle flashed his own smile, that wide grin conveying too much joy and light for the dark shadows of Menzoberranzan.
“I must be away,” K’yorl said. “I came for other reasons, but thought it would be impolite to not pay a visit to the—patron?—of this cavernous household.”
You came to prove that you could walk through my room’s newest defenses, Jarlaxle thought, but did not say, and he hoped his eyepatch had blocked her from “hearing” that.
K’yorl’s form began to flicker weirdly, but Jarlaxle had seen this before and was not surprised. Then she was simply gone, disappeared, and Jarlaxle wondered if she had actually been standing before him or not. With any other drow, he might have shifted his magical eyepatch to the other eye, that it would grant him an enchantment of true-seeing, but he didn’t dare remove his protections from psionic intrusion with K’yorl about.
As if he didn’t have enough to think about already, now he had to try to discern why Matron Oblodra had come here this day.
He had a suspicion, one that led him to believe that K’yorl might not be the only member of House Oblodra to have come down into the Clawrift from the house above.
“I can anticipate your every desire,” Quavylene Oblodra, K’yorl’s oldest and most important daughter, told Arathis Hune as she lay atop him, the pair bathed in sweat. “I know just what you want. I know just how you feel, and so I can feel that way with you. That is why I like to share your bed.”
She then answered before Arathis Hune could ask the question that came to him, “Because you are so careful and guarded. It must be exhausting to hide from everyone. But with me you cannot hide, and so your pleasure comes forth like a giant lake being released from pressing cavern walls. It is a ride I do so enjoy.”
With the revelation that the woman, who was skilled in the divine magic of Lolth and also in the ways of Oblodran mind magic, was in his thoughts, Arathis Hune determinedly sought a mental distraction. He settled on something that he had always wondered about anyway.
“Because we do,” Quavylene answered his unspoken question. “Odran and Oblodran are the same surname, from a common source. Some, like the matron, use Odran, which was the name before our family formally accepted the Spider Queen as our deity, because that brags of her near indifference to the religious order of the city and the Spider Queen herself.”
“You are the first priestess of House Oblodra,” Arathis Hune reasoned. “A priestess of Lolth. So Odran would not do for that role?”
“Yes. Perhaps when I am the matron, I will change my name to Odran.”
“You are a priestess, a first priestess of a major house, yet do not seem so devout,” he dared to say. “Doesn’t that anger Lolth?”
Quavylene smiled and kissed him on his bare chest. “Oblodra is not a young house, and Matron K’yorl Odran, certainly no devout priestess of the Spider Queen, has ruled it for two centuries. None doubt that we will soon climb to a seat on the Ruling Council. The only question remaining is which house we will replace. Lady Lolth approves of us and the doubt and chaos we can bring to her city, it would seem.”
Arathis Hune couldn’t disagree with that. He loved sharing Quavylene’s bed, but couldn’t deny that she always had him nervous and off balance. How could she not when she was so often in his very thoughts?
Yet, this strange mind magic might prove very useful to him someday, perhaps soon. And, as he had noted, there were delightful perks.
Quavylene smiled as he thought about both things, and he didn’t need to be a psionicist to recognize that she was entertaining a similar possibility that the arrangement could prove even more mutually beneficial.
“The field is ready?” Jarlaxle asked Arathis Hune as the pair exited the Clawrift later that day.
“The betting has already begun.”
Jarlaxle nodded. “Spread as much gold as you can, but quietly and in small bits. Let us not draw too much attention.”
“On?”
Jarlaxle skidded to a stop and whirled on his companion, his face reflecting his shock.
“The blood in that tavern skirmish, before the healing wave closed the wounds, was Zaknafein’s,” Arathis Hune reminded him.
“It was not a severe wound—a clipped hand from a near-perfect parry and nothing more.”
“Blood is blood.”
“On Zaknafein,” Jarlaxle said, to which Arathis Hune simply shrugged. “You know the identity of his opponent, yes?” Jarlaxle asked.
“I think him more than a street rogue.”
“Yes. Perhaps one sent to get in a fight with Zaknafein.”
Arathis Hune nodded—the thought had indeed crossed his mind. Zaknafein was well known in the Braeryn and few would dare challenge the weapon master unbidden.
“It was our former associate, Duvon Tr’arach,” Jarlaxle told him.
“The weapon master of House Fey-Branche? Why would Matron Byrtyn . . . ?” He stopped as the answer came to him. Matron Byrtyn would certainly be happy with wounding the ambitious and climbing House Do’Urden, and really, even a hundred years later, did Duvon Tr’arach need a reason to try to kill the man who had almost single-handedly brought his family to ruin?
“He is more formidable than I remember,” he said.
“Fine armor, fine weapons, fine training, and powerful enchantments will do that,” Jarlaxle answered dryly.
“How did he know that Zaknafein would be in the tavern that particular night?”
“A good question. Who sent word of the arrival of our dear friend?”
“Dab’nay?”
“Maybe. But Zaknafein was a bit off his game that night,” said Jarlaxle. “A bit too much fungus in his drink, I believe.”
“So Harbondair?”
“Both?”
“And others, perhaps?” Arathis Hune said in a sly tone, hinting that he might suspect that Jarlaxle might suspect . . . him.
But Jarlaxle shrugged as if it did not matter. “It is the City of Spiders,” Jarlaxle said. “Creatures who are known to kill after mating. Creatures who capture and torture victims to slow death. If Zaknafein cannot keep his guard appropriately high, he will be killed. For all of us, I say. That is the way.”
Arathis Hune conceded the point.
“I am off to visit a matron,” Jarlaxle went on. “You will go to the Oozing Myconid to check on the proceedings and begin shuffling the wagers? Keep it under two hundred gold pieces this night, and no wager more than five at a time.”
“And a third of that more visibly wagered on the opponent?” Arathis Hune knew well the tactic. Quiet bets on the one Jarlaxle believed would win, louder bets on the presumed loser.
Arathis Hune mused that perhaps he would take some of those louder bets himself. He had too much to gain here to let this fortunate turn of events slip past—he had quietly built up enough associates to secretly filter the countering money anonymously. Even from Jarlaxle. For all of Jarlaxle’s scheming, there would be a lot of gold wagered on Zaknafein Do’Urden in a battle against an unknown opponent, and perhaps even more among those who had figured out that the drow in question was Avinvesa Fey-Branche, formerly Duvon Tr’arach.
In a fair fight, the wager would be obvious.
This, however, would not be a fair fight.
Arathis Hune decided to make it less fair still. The opportunity to garner a small treasure shined too brightly, and even better, perhaps Arathis would be rid of Zaknafein once and for all.
Someone had tried to poison Zaknafein in the Oozing Myconid, not to kill him, but to slow him so that Duvon could do the deed. That had failed—of course it had failed! And it wa
s a stupid attempt in the first place. Zaknafein was a true master of his craft as a warrior. How many hundreds of times had he poisoned himself in order to render his body immune to such parlor tricks?
No, poison wouldn’t work on Zaknafein, nor would spells thrown secretly into the ring to defeat him.
But Arathis Hune thought of Quavylene Oblodra and wondered if he might have found an undetectable and effective way through the weapon master’s precautions.
Chapter 4
Perfecting the Edges
The importance of these sudden movements kept Zaknafein practicing them over and over, a hundred times a day, every day. They were so simple, usually, and straightforward, and the gains in speed on the second turn so miniscule that many fighters paid only cursory attention.
But Zaknafein knew better. The fights sung by the bards were almost always drawn-out affairs, with great leaping pirouettes and counters to counters to counters, but the truth of staying alive was simpler, though perhaps unworthy of long verse: most fights were won or lost on the draw.
So he practiced.
He sent a small disk of a carved mushroom stalk spinning up in the air before him, relaxing himself fully as it lifted, closing his eyes until he heard the random flip hit the floor in front of him.
He opened his eyes. He looked. He found the image facing up on the disk, the left hand, so he moved suddenly, hands across his belly to grab the hilts of his swords at his hips, right forearm over left—it had to be that way to defeat the incoming attacker, as identified by the coin, and focus on countering her first, not the associate to the left.
Out came the swords in an eyeblink, rising and cutting across in a double-backhand parry. He turned his right wrist as that sword came across, bringing it vertical in its sweep, then shortening the cut, while the left went across perfectly horizontally, with full follow-through and even a step with the left foot in that direction. That left slash was designed to fend off any associates on the attack, the right was a shortened parry to deflect the thrusting attack aside and lead into a sudden reversal and thrust designed to kill.
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