Exile (frde-2)

by Robert Anthony Salvatore

  As a group, the illithids spun toward them and charged.

  “Get the other door!” Belwar cried. Drizzt had grabbed the figurine and was already moving in that direction. The iron portals slammed shut and Drizzt worked to replace the locking bar. Several clasps on the outside of the door had been broken under the burrow-warden’s ferocious assault, and the bar was bent, but Drizzt managed to set it in place securely enough to at least slow the illithids.

  “The other slaves are trapped,” Drizzt remarked.

  “Goblins and gray dwarves mostly,” Belwar replied.

  “And Clacker?”

  Belwar threw his arms out helplessly.

  “I pity them all,” groaned Drizzt, sincerely horrified at the prospect. “Nothing in all the world can torture more than the mental clutches of mind flayers.”

  “Aye, dark elf.” whispered Belwar.

  The illithids slammed into the doors, and Drizzt pushed back, further securing the lock.

  “Where do we go?” Belwar asked behind him, and when Drizzt turned and surveyed the long and narrow cavern, he certainly understood the burrow-warden’s confusion. They spotted at least a dozen exits, but between them and every one rushed a crowd of terrified slaves or a group of illithids. Behind them came another heavy thud, and the doors creaked open several inches.

  “Just go!” Drizzt shouted, pushing Belwar along. They charged down a wide stairway, then out across the broken floor, picking a route that would get them as far from the stone castle as possible.

  “‘Ware danger on all sides!” Belwar cried. “Slave and flayer alike!”

  “Let them beware!” Drizzt retorted, his scimitars leading the way. He slammed a goblin down with the hilt of one blade as it stumbled into his way, and a moment later, sliced the tentacles from the face of an illithid as it began to suck the brain from a recaptured duergar.

  Then another former slave, a bigger one, jumped in front of Drizzt. The drow rushed it headlong, but this time he stayed his scimitars.

  “Clacker!” Belwar yelled behind Drizzt.

  “B-b-back of… the…cavern,” the hook horror panted, its grumbled words barely decipherable. “The b-b-best exit.”

  “Lead on,” Belwar replied excitedly, his hopes returning. Nothing would stand against the three of them united. When the burrow-warden started after his giant hook horror friend, however, he noticed that Drizzt wasn’t following. At first Belwar feared that a mind blast had caught the drow, but when he returned to Drizzt’s side, he realized otherwise.

  Atop another of the many wide stairways that ran through the many-tiered cavern, a single slender figure moved through a group of slaves and illithids alike.

  “By the gods,” Belwar muttered in disbelief, for the devastating movements of this single figure truly frightened the deep gnome.

  The precise cuts and deft twists of the twin swords were not at all frightening to Drizzt Do’Urden. Indeed, to the young dark elf, they rang with a familiarity that brought an old ache to his heart. He looked at Belwar blankly and spoke the name of the single warrior who could fit those maneuvers, the only name that could accompany such magnificent swordplay.

  “Zaknafein.”

  Chapter 20.

  Father, My Father

  How many lies had Matron Malice told him? What truth could Drizzt ever find in the web of deceptions that marked drow society? His father had not been sacrificed to the Spider Queen! Zaknafein was here, fighting before him, wielding his swords as finely as Drizzt had ever seen.

  “What is it?” Belwar demanded.

  “The drow warrior,” Drizzt was barely able to whisper.

  “From your city, dark elf?” Belwar asked. “Sent after you?”

  “From Menzoberranzan,” Drizzt replied. Belwar waited for more information, but Drizzt was too enthralled by Zak’s appearance to go into much detail.

  “We must go,” the burrow-warden said at length.

  “Quickly,” agreed Clacker, returning to his friends. The hook horror’s voice sounded more controlled now, as though the mere appearance of Clacker’s friends had aided his pech side in its continuing internal struggle. “The mind flayers are organizing defenses. Many slaves are down.”

  Drizzt spun out of the reach of Belwar’s pick-hand. “No,” he said firmly. “I’ll not leave him!”

  “Magga cammara, dark elf!” Belwar shouted at him. “Who is it?”

  “Zaknafein Do’Urden,” Drizzt yelled back, more than matching the burrow-warden’s rising ire. Drizzt’s volume dropped considerably as he finished the thought, though, and he nearly choked on the words, “My father.”

  By the time Belwar and Clacker exchanged disbelieving stares, Drizzt was gone, running to and then up the wide stairway. Atop it, the spirit-wraith stood among a mound of victims, mind flayers and slaves alike, who had found the great misfortune of getting in his way. Farther along the higher tier, several illithids had taken flight from the undead monster.

  Zaknafein started to pursue them, for they were running toward the stone castle, following the course the spirit-wraith had determined from the beginning. A thousand magical alarms sounded within the spirit-wraith, though, and abruptly turned him back to the stair.

  Drizzt was coming. Zin-carla’s moment of fulfillment, the purpose of Zaknafein’s animation, at last had arrived!

  “Weapon master!” Drizzt cried, springing up lightly to stand by his father’s side. The younger drow bubbled with elation, not realizing the truth of the monster standing before him. When Drizzt got near Zak, though, he sensed that something was wrong. Perhaps it was the strange light in the spirit-wraith’s eyes that slowed Drizzt’s rush. Perhaps it was the fact that Zaknafein did not return his joyful call.

  A moment later, it was the downward slice of a sword.

  Drizzt somehow managed to get a blocking scimitar up in time. Confused, he still believed that Zaknafein simply had not recognized him.

  “Father!” he shouted. “I am Drizzt!”

  One sword dived ahead, while the second started in a wide slice, then rushed suddenly toward Drizzt’s side. Matching the spirit-wraith’s speed, Drizzt came down with one scimitar to parry the first attack and sliced across with the other to foil the second.

  “Who are you?” Drizzt demanded desperately, furiously.

  A flurry of blows came straight in. Drizzt worked frantically to keep them at bay, but then Zaknafein came across with a backhand and managed to sweep both of Drizzt’s blades out to the same side. The spirit-wraith’s second sword followed closely, a cut aimed straight at Drizzt’s heart, one that Drizzt could not possibly block.

  Back down at the bottom of the stairway, Belwar and Clacker cried out, thinking their friend doomed.

  Zaknafein’s moment of victory was stolen from him, though, by the instincts of the hunter. Drizzt sprang to the side ahead of the plunging blade, then twisted and ducked under Zaknafein’s deadly cut. The sword nicked him under his jawbone, leaving a painful gash. When Drizzt completed his roll and found his footing despite the angles of the stair, he showed no sign of acknowledging the injury. When Drizzt again faced his father’s imposter, simmering fires burned in his lavender eyes.

  Drizzt’s agility amazed even his friends, who had seen him before in battle. Zaknafein rushed out immediately after completing his swing, but Drizzt was up and ready before the spirit-wraith caught up to him.

  “Who are you?” Drizzt demanded again. This time his voice was deathly calm. “What are you?”

  The spirit-wraith snarled and charged recklessly. Believing beyond any doubt that this was not Zaknafein, Drizzt did not miss the opening. He rushed back toward his original position, knocked a sword aside, and slipped a scimitar through as he passed his charging adversary. Drizzt’s blade cut through the fine mesh armor and dug deeply into Zaknafein’s lung, a wound that would have stopped any mortal opponent.

  But Zaknafein did not stop. The spirit-wraith did not draw breath and did not feel pain. Zak turned back on Drizzt an
d flashed a smile so evil that it would have made Matron Malice stand up and applaud.

  Back now on the top step of the stairway, Drizzt stood wide-eyed in amazement. He saw the gruesome wound and saw, against all possibility, Zaknafein steadily advancing, not even flinching.

  “Get away,” Belwar cried from the bottom of the stairs. An ogre rushed at the deep gnome, but Clacker intercepted and immediately crushed the thing’s head in a claw.

  “We must leave,” Clacker said to Belwar, the clarity of his voice turning the burrow-warden on his heel.

  Belwar could see it clearly in the hook horror’s eyes; in that critical moment, Clacker was more a pech than he had been since before the wizard’s polymorph spell. “The stones tell me of illithids gathering within the castle,” Clacker explained, and the deep gnome was not surprised that Clacker had heard the voices of the stones. “The illithids will rush out soon,” Clacker continued, “to the certain demise of every slave left in the cavern!”

  Belwar did not doubt a word of it, but to the svirfneblin, loyalty far outweighed personal safety. “We cannot leave the drow,” he replied through clenched teeth.

  Clacker nodded in full agreement and charged out to chase away a group of gray dwarves that had come too close.

  “Run, dark elf!” Belwar cried. “We have no time!” Drizzt didn’t hear his svirfneblin friend. He focused on the approaching weapon master, the monster impersonating his father, even as Zaknafein focused on him. Of all the many evils perpetrated by Matron Malice, none, by Drizzt’s estimation, were greater than this abomination. Malice somehow had perverted the one thing in Drizzt’s world that had given him pleasure. Drizzt had believed Zaknafein dead, and that thought was painful enough.

  But now this.

  It was more than the young drow could bear. He wanted to fight this monster with all his heart and soul, and the spirit-wraith, created for no other reason than this very battle, wholly concurred.

  Neither noticed the illithid descending from the darkness above, farther back on the platform, behind Zaknafein.

  “Come, monster of Matron Malice,” Drizzt growled, sliding his weapons together. “Come and feel my blades.”

  Zaknafein paused only a few steps away and flashed his wicked smile again. The swords came up and the spirit-wraith took another step.

  Fwoop!

  The illithid’s blast rolled over both of them. Zaknafein remained unaffected, but Drizzt caught the force fully. Darkness rolled over him, his eyelids drooped with undeniable weight. He heard his scimitars fall to the stone, but he was beyond any other comprehension. Zaknafein snarled in gleeful victory, banged his swords together, and stepped toward the falling drow.

  Belwar screamed, but it was Clacker’s monstrous cry of protest that sounded loudest, rising above the din of the battle-filled cavern. Everything Clacker had ever known as a pech rushed back to him when he saw the drow who had befriended him fall, doomed. That pech identity surged back more keenly, perhaps, than Clacker had even known in his former life.

  Zaknafein lunged, seeing his helpless victim in range, but then smashed headfirst into a stone wall that had appeared from nothingness. The spirit-wraith bounced back, his eyes wide in frustration. He clawed at the wall and pounded on it, but it was quite real and sturdy. The stone blocked Zaknafein fully from the stairway and his intended prey.

  Back down the stairway, Belwar turned his stunned gaze on Clacker. The svirfneblin had heard that some pech could conjure such stone walls. “Did you…?” the burrow-warden gasped.

  The pech in a hook horror’s body did not pause long enough to answer. Clacker leaped the stairs four at a stride and gently hoisted Drizzt in his huge arms. He even thought to retrieve the drow’s scimitars, then came pounding back down the flight.

  “Run.” Clacker commanded the burrow-warden. “For all of your life, run, Belwar Dissengulp!”

  The deep gnome, scratching his head with his pickaxe-hand, did indeed run. Clacker cleared a wide path to the cavern’s rear exit―none dared stand before his enraged charge―and the burrow-warden, with his short svirfneblin legs, one of which was sprained, had a difficult time keeping up.

  Back up the stairs, behind the wall, Zaknafein could only assume that the floating illithid, the same one that had blasted Drizzt, had blocked his charge. Zaknafein whirled about on the monster and screamed in sheer hatred.

  Fwoop! Another blast came.

  Zaknafein leaped up and sliced off both of the illithid’s feet with a single stroke. The illithid levitated higher, sending mental cries of anguish and distress to its companions.

  Zaknafein couldn’t reach the thing, and with other illithids rushing in from every angle, the spirit-wraith didn’t have time to enact his own levitation spell. Zaknafein blamed this illithid for his failure; he would not let it escape. He hurled a sword as precisely as any spear.

  The illithid looked down at Zaknafein in disbelief, then to the blade buried half to the hilt in its chest and knew that its life was at an end.

  Mind flayers rushed toward Zaknafein, firing their stunning blasts as they came. The spirit-wraith had only one sword remaining, but he smashed his opponents down anyway, venting his frustrations on their ugly octopus heads.

  Drizzt had escaped… for now.

  Chapter 21.

  Lost and Found

  “Praise Lloth,” Matron Malice stammered, sensing the distant elation of her spirit-wraith. “He has Drizzt!” The matron mother snapped her gaze to one side, then the other, and her three daughters backed away at the sheer power of the emotions contorting her visage.

  “Zaknafein has found your brother!”

  Maya and Vierna smiled at each other, glad that this whole ordeal might finally be coming to a conclusion. Since the enactment of Zin-carla, the normal and necessary routines of House Do’Urden had virtually ceased, and every day their nervous mother had turned further and further inward, absorbed by the spirit-wraith’s hunt.

  Across the anteroom, Briza’s smile would have shown a different light to any who took the time to notice, an almost disappointed light.

  Fortunately for the first-born daughter, Matron Malice was too absorbed by distant events to take note. The matron mother fell deeper into her meditative trance, savoring every morsel of rage the spirit-wraith threw out, in the knowledge that her blasphemous son was on the receiving end of that anger. Malice’s breathing came in excited gasps as Zaknafein and Drizzt played through their sword fight, then the matron mother nearly lost her breath altogether.

  Something had stopped Zaknafein.

  “No!” Malice screamed, leaping out of her decorated throne. She glanced around, looking for someone to strike or something to throw. “No!” she cried again. “It cannot be!”

  “Drizzt has escaped?” Briza asked, trying to keep the smugness out of her voice. Malice’s subsequent glare told Briza that her tone might have revealed too much of her thoughts.

  “Is the spirit-wraith destroyed?” Maya cried in sincere distress.

  “Not destroyed,” Malice replied, an obvious tremor in her usually firm voice. “But once more, your brother runs free!”

  “Zin-carla has not yet failed,” Vierna reasoned, trying to console her excited mother.

  “The spirit-wraith is very close,” Maya added, picking up Vierna’s cue.

  Malice dropped back into her seat and wiped the sweat out of her eyes. “Leave me,” she commanded her daughters, not wanting them to observe her in such a sorry state. Zin-carla was stealing her life away, Malice knew, for every thought, every hope, of her existence hinged on the spirit-wraith’s success.

  When the others had gone, Malice lit a candle and took out a tiny, precious mirror. What a wretched thing she had become in the last few weeks. She had hardly eaten, and deep lines of worry creased her formerly glass-smooth, ebony skin. By appearances, Matron Malice had aged more in the last few weeks than in the century before that.

  “I will become as Matron Baenre,” she whispered in disgust, “
withered and ugly.” For perhaps the very first time in her long life, Malice began to wonder of the value of her continual quest for power and the merciless Spider Queen’s favor. The thoughts disappeared as quickly as they had come, though. Matron Malice had gone too far for such silly regrets. By her strength and devotion, Malice had taken her house to the status of a ruling family and had secured a seat for herself on the prestigious ruling council.

  She remained on the verge of despair, though, nearly broken by the strains of the last years. Again she wiped the sweat from her eyes and looked into the little mirror.

  What a wretched thing she had become.

  Drizzt had done this to her, she reminded herself. Her youngest son’s actions had angered the Spider Queen; his sacrilege had put Malice on the edge of doom.

  “Get him, my spirit-wraith,” Malice whispered with a sneer. At that moment of anger, she hardly cared what future the Spider Queen would layout for her.

  More than anything else in all the world, Matron Malice Do’Urden wanted Drizzt dead.

  They ran through the winding tunnels blindly, hoping that no monsters would rear up suddenly before them. With the danger so very real at their backs, the three companions could not afford the usual caution.

  Hours passed and still they ran. Belwar, older than his friends and with little legs working two strides for every one of Drizzt’s and three strides for each of Clacker’s, tired first, but that didn’t slow the group. Clacker hoisted the burrow-warden onto a shoulder and ran on.

  How many miles they had covered they could not know when they at last broke for their first rest. Drizzt, silent and melancholy through all the trek, took up a guard position at the entrance to the small alcove they had chosen as a temporary camp. Recognizing his drow friend’s deep pain, Belwar moved over to offer comfort.

  “Not what you expected, dark elf?” the burrow-warden asked softly. With no answer forthcoming, but with Drizzt obviously needing to talk, Belwar pressed on. “The drow in the cavern you knew. Did you claim that he was your father?”