Robert Salvatore - The Legacy

The female, shorter than Jarlaxle but carrying herself with an undeniable strength, snarled at the mercenary, her contempt obvious.

"My dear Triel," Jarlaxle cooed.

"Hold your tongue," Triel Baenre warned, "or I will tear it out and give it to you, that you might hold it in your hand."

Jarlaxle shrugged and wisely shifted the conversation back to the business at hand. "Vierna believes your claim," he remarked.

"Vierna is desperate," Triel Baenre replied.

"She would have gone after Drizzt on the simple promise that you would take her into your family," the mercenary reasoned, "but to bait her with delusions of replacing Matron Baenre…"

"The greater the prize, the greater Vierna's motivation," Triel replied calmly. "It is important to my mother that Drizzt Do'Urden be given to Lloth. Let the fool Do'Urden priestess think what she will."

"Agreed," Jarlaxle said with a nod. "Has House Baenre prepared the escort?"

"A score and a half will slip out beside the fighters of Bregan D'aerthe," Triel replied. "They are only males," she added derisively, "and expendable." The first daughter of House Baenre cocked her head curiously as she continued to regard the wily mercenary.

"You will accompany Vierna personally with your chosen soldiers?" Triel asked. "To coordinate the two groups?"

Jarlaxle clapped his slender hands together. "I am a part of this," he answered firmly.

"To my displeasure," the Baenre daughter snarled. She uttered a single word and, with a flash, disappeared.

"Your mother loves me, dear Triel," Jarlaxle said to the emptiness, as if the Matron Mistress of the Academy were still beside him. "I would not miss this," the mercenary continued, thinking out loud. By Jarlaxle's estimation, the hunt for Drizzt could be only a good thing. He might lose a few soldiers, but they were replaceable. If Drizzt was indeed brought to sacrifice, Lloth would be pleased, Matron Baenre would be pleased, and Jarlaxle would find a way to be rewarded for his efforts. After all, on a simpler level, Drizzt Do'Urden, as a traitorous renegade, carried a high bounty on his head.

Jarlaxle chuckled wickedly, reveling in the beauty of it all. If Drizzt managed somehow to elude them, then Vierna would take the fall, and the mercenary would continue on, untouched by it all.

There was another possibility that Jarlaxle, removed from the immediate situation and wise in the ways of the drow, recognized, and if, by some remote chance, it came to pass, he again would be in a position to profit greatly, simply from his favorable relationship with Vierna. Triel had promised Vierna an unbelievable prize because Lloth had instructed her, and her mother, to do so. What would happen if Vierna fulfilled her part of the agreement? the mercenary wondered. What ironies did conniving Lloth have in store for House Baenre?

Surely Vierna Do'Urden seemed insane for believing Triel's empty promises, but Jarlaxle knew well that many of Menzoberranzan's most powerful drow, Matron Baenre included, had seemed, at one time in their lives, equally crazy.

Vierna pressed through the opaque doorway to Jarlaxle's private chambers later that day, her crazed expression revealing the anxiety for the coming events.

Jarlaxle heard a commotion in the outer corridor, but Vierna merely continued to smile knowingly. The mercenary rocked back in his comfortable chair, tapping his

fingers together in front of him and trying to discern what surprise the Do'Urden priestess had prepared for him this time.

"We will need an extra soldier to complement our party," Vierna ordered.

"It can be arranged/ Jarlaxle replied, beginning to catch on. "But why? Will Dinin not be accompanying us?"

Vierna's eyes flashed. "He will," she said, "but my brother's role in the hunt has changed."

Jarlaxle didn't flinch, just continued to sit back and tap his fingers.

"Dinin did not believe in Lloth's destiny," Vierna explained, casually taking a seat on the edge of Jarlaxle's desk. "He did not wish to accompany me in this critical mission. The Spider Queen has demanded this of us!" She hopped back to the floor, suddenly ferocious, and stepped back toward the opaque door.

Jarlaxle made no move, except to flex the fingers on his dagger-throwing hand, as Vierna's tirade continued. The priestess swept about the small room, praying to Lloth, cursing those who would not fall to their knees before the goddess, and cursing her brothers, Drizzt and Dinin.

Then Vierna calmed again suddenly, and smiled wickedly. "Lloth demands fealty," she said accusingly.

"Of course," replied the unshakable mercenary.

"Justice is for a priestess to deal."

"Of course."

Vierna's eyes flashed-Jarlaxle quietly tensed, fearing that the unsteady female would lash out at him for some unknown reason. She instead went back to the door and called loudly for her brother.

Jarlaxle saw the unremarkable, veiled silhouette beyond the portal, saw the opaque material bend and stretch as Dinin started in from the other side.

A huge spider leg slipped into the room, then another, then a third. The mutated torso came through next, Dinin's unclothed and bloated body transmuted from the waist down into the lower torso of a giant black spider. His once fair face now seemed a dead thing, swollen and expressionless, his eyes showing no luster.

The mercenary fought hard to keep his breathing steady. He removed his great hat and ran a hand over his bald, sweating head.

The disfigured creature moved into the room fully and stood obediently behind Vierna, the priestess smiling at the mercenary's obvious discomfort.

"The quest is critical," Vierna explained. "Lloth will not tolerate dissent."

If Jarlaxle had held any doubts about the Spider Queen's involvement with Vierna's quest, they were gone now.

Vierna had exacted the ultimate punishment of drow society on troublesome Dinin, something only a high priestess in the highest favor of Lloth could ever accomplish. She had replaced Dinin's graceful drow body with this grotesque and mutated arachnid form, had replaced Dinin's fierce independence with a malevolent demeanor that she could bend to her every whim.

There is no word in the draw language for love. The closest word I can think of is ssinssrigg, but that is a term better equated with physical lust or selfish greed. The concept of love exists in the hearts of some draw, of course, but true love, a selfless desire often requiring personal sacrifice, has no place in a world of such bitter and dangerous rivalries.

The only sacrifices in draw culture are gifts to Lloth, and those are surely notselfless, since the giver hopes, prays, for something greater in return.

Still, the concept of love was not new to me when I left the Underdark. I loved Zaknafein. I loved both Belwar and Clacker. Indeed, it was the capacity, the need, for love that ultimately drove me from Menzoberranzan. Is there in all the wide world a concept more fleeting, more elusive? Many people of all the races seem simply not to understand love, burden its beauteous simplicity with preconceived notions and unrealistic expectations. How ironic that I, walking from the darkness of loveless Menzoberranzan, can better grasp the concept than many of those who have lived with it, or at least with the very real possibility of it, for all of their lives.

Some things a renegade draw will not take for granted.

My few journeys to Silverymoon in these past weeks have invited good-hearted jestsfrom my friends. "Suren the elf has his eyes fixed on another wedding!" Bruenor has often crooned, regarding my relationship with Alustriel, the Lady of Silvery-moon. I accept the taunts in light of the sincere warmth and hopes behind them, and have not dashed those hopes by explaining to my dear friends that their notions are misguided.