Robert Salvatore - Homeland

Perhaps it was a teleportation door to another section of the city, perhaps a simple door to a room beyond. Or perhaps, Alton dared to imagine in those few desperate seconds, this was some interplanar gate that would bring him into a strange and unknown plane of existence!

He felt the tingling excitement of adventure pulling him on as he neared the wondrous thing, then he felt only the impact, the shattering glass, and the unyielding stone wall behind it.

Perhaps it was just a mirror.

"Look at his eyes," Vierna whispered to Maya as they examined the newest member of House Do’Urden.

Truly the babe’s eyes were remarkable. Although the child had been out of the womb for less than an hour, the pupils of his orbs darted back and forth inquisitively. While they showed the expected radiating glow of eyes seeing into the infrared spectrum, the familiar redness was tinted by a shade of blue, giving them a violet hue.

"Blind?" wondered Maya. "Perhaps this one will be given to the Spider Queen still."

Briza looked back to them anxiously. Dark elves did not allow children showing any physical deficiency to live.

"Not blind." replied Vierna, passing her hand over the child and casting an angry glare at both of her eager sisters. "He follows my fingers."

Maya saw that Vierna spoke the truth. She leaned closer to the babe, studying his face and strange eyes. "What do you see, Drizzt Do’Urden?" she asked softly, not in an act of gentleness toward the babe, but so that she would not disturb her mother, resting in the chair at the head of the spider idol.

"What do you see that the rest of us cannot?"

Glass crunched under Alton, digging deeper wounds as he shifted his weight in an effort to rise to his feet. What would it matter? he thought. "My mirror!" he heard the Faceless One groan, and he looked up to see the outraged master towering over him.

How huge he seemed to Alton! How great and powerful, fully blocking the candlelight from this little alcove between the cabinets, his form enhanced tenfold to the eyes of the helpless victim by the mere implications of his presence.

Alton then felt a gooey substance floating down around him, detached webbing finding a sticky hold on the cabinets, on the wall, and on Alton. The young DeVir tried to leap up and roll away, but the Faceless One’s spell already held him fast, trapped him as a dirgit fly would be trapped in the strands of a spider’s home.

"First my door." the Faceless One growled at him, "and now this, my mirror! Do you know the pains I suffered to acquire such a rare device?"

Alton turned his head from side to side, not in answer, but to free at least his face from the binding substance.

"Why did you not just stand still and let the deed be finished cleanly?" the Faceless One roared, thoroughly disgusted.

"Why?" Alton lisped, spitting some of the webbing from his thin lips. "Why would you want to kill me?"

"Because you broke my mirror!" the Faceless One shot back.

It didn’t make any sense, of course―the mirror had only been shattered after the initial attack―but to the master, Alton supposed, it didn’t have to make sense. Alton knew his cause to be hopeless, but he continued on in his efforts to dissuade his opponent.

"You know of my house, of House DeVir." he said, indignant, "fourth in the city. Matron Ginafae will not be pleased. A high priestess has ways to learn the truth of such situations!"

"House DeVir?" The Faceless One laughed. Perhaps the torments that Dinin Do’Urden had requested would be in line after all. Alton had broken his mirror!

"Fourth house!" Alton spat.

"Foolish youth." the Faceless One cackled. "House DeVir is no more, not fourth, not fifty-fourth, nothing."

Alton slumped, though the webbing did its best to hold his body erect. What could the master be babbling about?

"They all are dead." the Faceless One taunted. "Matron Ginafae sees Lolth more clearly this day." Alton’s expression of horror pleased the disfigured master. "All dead." he snarled one more time. "Except for poor Alton, who lives on to hear of his family’s misfortune. That oversight shall be remedied now!" The Faceless One raised his hands to cast a spell.

"Who?" Alton cried.

The Faceless One paused and seemed not to understand.

"What house did this?" the doomed student clarified. "Or what conspiracy of houses brought down DeVir?"

"Ah, you should be told." replied the Faceless One, obviously enjoying the situation. "I suppose it is your right to know before you join your kin in the realm of death." A smile widened across the opening where his lips once had been.

"But you broke my mirror!" the master growled. "Die stupid, stupid boy! Find your own answers!"

The Faceless One’s chest jerked out suddenly and he shuddered in convulsions, babbling curses in a tongue far beyond the terrified student’s comprehension. What vile spell did this disfigured master have prepared for him, so wretched that its chant sounded in an arcane language foreign to learned Alton’s ears, so unspeakably evil that its semantics jerked on the very edge of its caster’s control? The Faceless One then fell forward to the floor and expired.

Stunned, Alton followed the line of the master’s hood down to his back―to the tail of a protruding dart. Alton watched the poisoned thing as it continued to shudder from the body’s impact, then he turned his scan upward to the center of the room, where the young cleaning attendant stood calmly.

"Nice weapon, Faceless One!" Masoj beamed, rolling a two-handed, crafted crossbow over in his hands. He threw a wicked smile at Alton and fitted another dart.

Matron Malice hoisted herself out of her chair and willed herself to her feet. "Out of the way!" she snapped at her daughters.

Maya and Vierna scooted away from the spider idol and the baby. "See his eyes, Matron Mother." Vierna dared to remark. "They are so unusual."

Matron Malice studied the child. Everything seemed in place, and a good thing, too, for Nalfein, elderboy of House Do’Urden, was dead, and this boy, Drizzt, would have a difficult job replacing the valuable son.

"His eyes." Vierna said again.

The matron shot her a venomous look but bent low to see what the fuss was about.

"Purple?" Malice said, startled. Never had she heard of such a thing.

"He is not blind" Maya was quick to put in, seeing the disdain spreading across her mother’s face.

"Fetch the candle." Matron Malice ordered. "Let us see how these eyes appear in the world of light."

Maya and Vierna reflexively headed for the sacred cabinet, but Briza cut them off. "Only a high priestess may touch the holy items," she reminded them in a tone that carried the weight of a threat. She spun around haughtily, reached into the cabinet, and produced a single half-used red candle. The clerics hid their eyes and Matron Malice put a prudent hand over the baby’s face as Briza lit the sacred candle. It produced only a tiny flame, but to drow eyes it came as a brilliant intrusion.

"Bring it," said Matron Malice after several moments of adjusting. Briza moved the candle near Drizzt, and Malice gradually slid her hand away.

"He does not cry." Briza remarked, amazed that the babe could quietly accept such a stinging light.

"Purple again" whispered the matron, paying no heed to her daughter’s rambling. "In both worlds, the child’s eyes show as purple."

Vierna gasped audibly when she looked again upon her tiny brother and his striking lavender orbs.

"He is your brother." Matron Malice reminded her, viewing Vierna’s gasp as a hint of what might come. "When he grows older and those eyes pierce you so, remember, on your life, that he is your brother."

Vierna turned away, almost blurting a reply she would have regretted making. Matron Malice’s exploits with nearly every male soldier of the Do’Urden house―and many others that the seductive matron managed to sneak away from other houses―were almost legendary in Menzoberranzan. Who was she to be spouting reminders of prudent and proper behavior? Vierna bit her lip and hoped that neither Briza nor Malice had been reading her thoughts at that moment.