Mark Anthony: Realms of the Underdark

He froze, halting the spoon a fraction of an inch from disaster. Sensing its opportunity, the rat dashed between Drizzt's legs and disappeared through a crack. Drizzt did not watch it go. Instead, his eyes remained riveted on the object before his face.

A web. The silvery strands stretched like gossamer across the corner of the corridor. In the center of the web, like a plump jewel, clung a small spider. Had he not halted his swing at the last moment, his arm would have plunged right through the fragile strands. With great care, Drizzt lowered the spoon. All spiders were sacred to the goddess Lloth. To disturb one's web would have earned him a long appointment with Briza's whip. But if he had accidentally killed the arachnid…

Drizzt let out a low breath. The punishment for killing a spider was death: quick, painful, and with no chance of reprieve.

Despite the fatal nature of his near accident, Drizzt drew closer to the web in fascination, studying the spider in the center. "I don't understand this Lloth of yours," he murmured aloud. "Everybody seems to want her favor. My mother. My sisters. All the other noble houses. They'll do anything to get it. But they're terrified of Lloth, too. Sometimes I even think they hate her. But that only makes them worship her all the Harder. Why? Why is Lloth so important if she's so awful?" The spider only clung in silence to its web. Drizzt frowned in annoyance. "Well, I don't care what everyone else thinks," he decided. "I'm not afraid of spiders. If Lloth appears to me on the Festival of the Founding, I'll say so to her ugly face."

Oddly heartened by this bold exclamation, he turned and strode down the hallway, back to the capricious world he knew as page prince, leaving the spider to spin its tangled webs alone in the darkness.

Zaknafein did not want this mission.

The weapons master stood on a parapet high above the wrought-adamantite gates that guarded the entrance to House Do'Urden. Right now, the gates were only half raised, so that house nobles might levitate over them easily while goblins, gnomes, and other rabble could not. But in times of crisis the gates could be raised to cover the entire opening in the cavern's wall, so that none could pass through. Sometimes Zak wondered at the true purpose of those impervious metal bars. Perhaps they had been forged not to keep drow out of the house, but to keep them in.

Zak glanced across the compound at the balcony, beyond which lay the private chambers of the house's nobles. He glimpsed shadowy figures within. What dark plans were Matron Malice and her daughters concocting now, he wondered?

Just as Zak was about to turn away, a small form hopped over the balcony and half fell, half levitated to the ground below. A second later, Briza reached the railing and leaned over, shouting as she brandished her snake-headed whip at the object of her wrath. The smaller figure, however, had already vanished into the mouth of a corridor. Her face twisted with rage, Briza turned and stamped back into the interior of the upper level.

Despite his bleak mood, a faint smile touched Zak's lips. So the young Do'Urden page prince-what was the boy's name? Drizzt? — was causing his eldest sister consternation once again. Zak would not have expected such bold character in one of Rizzen's sons. Drizzt could grow up to be a strong and willful elf one day-if all that character were not crushed out of him first, as it was bound to be. Once Zak had held similar hopes for his own daughter, Vierna, but then the masters at Arach-Tinilith had sunk their pincers into her. Every day, she became more like Malice, more caught up in the matron mother's tangled plots to win Lloth's favor.

Ah, Malice. Zak thought back to the years when he had been patron of House Do'Urden. For a time, he had thought that he loved Malice, and she him, until the day she had stripped him of his rank, and he had realized that all she cared about was station and the position of House Do'Urden in Lloth's Ladder. On occasion, Malice still beckoned Zak to her bedchamber, and he complied. A matron mother's orders were not to be refused. And it was not unpleasant. Still, Zak knew now that whatever feeling there was between him and Malice, it was not, and never had been, love.

A gigantic spider hewn of dark green stone rested on the parapet behind Zak. A jade spider. Dozens of them scattered House Do'Urden to serve as a defense against any who might somehow pass the gates. Such was their enchantment that, in the presence of an intruder, a jade spider would animate and attack with swift and fatal force.

"Why do you not assail me now, spider?" Zak hissed in a voice filled with loathing. "I am an impostor here. Can you not sense that I am your enemy?"

But the spider remained cold stone.

Zak felt a prickling against his neck. He did not need to glance back at the balcony to know that he was being watched. He could delay his mission no longer. A puff of warm air-heated by some deep and distant lava flow-sent his white hair streaming back from his brow. Zak stepped off the high parapet into the swirling zephyr, using his power of levitation to ride the gust of air over the gates and down to the ground below. Without looking back, he plunged into the labyrinth that was Menzoberranzan.

After a short distance he paused, drawing the spiderjewel out of his neck-purse. He laid the small onyx spider on his outstretched palm, then spoke the word of magic Malice had taught him, which the yochlol in turn had taught her. At once the ruby embedded in the spider's abdomen winked to scarlet life. Now animate, the spider scuttled across the flesh of Zak's palm. Only by force of will did he resist the instinct to clench his hand and crush it. Legs wriggling, the spider spun in a circle, then came to a sudden halt, facing to Zak's right. That must be the way it wanted him to go. He turned and moved down a side street.

Where the spiderjewel would lead him, Zak could only wonder. According to the yochlol, the Dagger of Menzoberra was hidden somewhere within the city. This was difficult to believe. After all, there wasn't an inch of this cavern that had not been explored by drow eyes, shaped by drow hands, and dwelt within by drow families for centuries. The Dagger's hiding place had to be remarkable for the relic to have remained lost for over five thousand years. Still, Zak had to hope that the spiderjewel would indeed take him to it. Malice had made her position clear. Whatever she felt for him still, failure this time would not be forgiven.

At first Zak thought the ancient Dagger of Menzoberra must be hidden in Qu'ellarz'orl. The spider seemed to be leading him toward the plateau on which perched the city's most powerful houses, including that of Baenre, First House of Menzoberranzan. Zak's heart sank in his chest. If the Dagger was hidden within one of the ancient houses, he had no hope of recovering it. He could hardly knock on the gates of House Baenre and ask if he might take a look around. The only answer he was likely to get was a bolt of defensive magic hot enough to roast his heart inside his chest.

Just as Zak neared the edge of the mushroom forest that demarcated the exclusive plateau, the spider scuttled to the left side of his hand, leading him back toward the heart of the city. Zak allowed himself a low breath of relief before continuing on.

He had nearly reached his destination before he realized where the spiderjewel was leading him.

Zak had reached the very center of the great cavern that housed Menzoberranzan. Coming to a halt, he lifted his eyes from the spiderjewel. The enchanted arachnid had aligned itself with a massive stone pillar that loomed before him in the eternal gloom. Narbondel.

Of course. It made perfect sense. Of all the rock formations in the cavern, only one remained in its rough, natural state as it had for millennia, untouched by drow hands or drow magic. It was a monument to the cavern, as it had been when Menzoberra first led her people here five thousand years ago: the pillar of Narbondel. Only here might something have lain hidden so long without discovery.