Robert Salvatore: Exile

Dinin, too, hardly even registered the shock of it all. He saw Drizzt for just a split second, then his eyes crisscrossed, following the descending arc of a scimitar’s rushing hilt. Dinin went down heavily, with the smooth stone of the floor pressing against his cheek, a sensation to which Dinin was oblivious.

Even as one hand did its work on Dinin, Drizzt’s other hand shot a scimitar tip close to Briza’s throat, meaning to force her surrender. Briza was not as surprised as Dinin, though, and she always kept a hand close to her whip. She danced back from Drizzt’s attack, and six snake heads shot up into the air, coiled and searching for an opening. Drizzt turned full to face her, weaving his scimitars into defensive patterns to keep the stinging vipers at bay. He remembered the bite of those dreaded whips; like every drow male, he had been taught it many times during his childhood.

“Brother Drizzt,” Briza said loudly, hoping the patrol would hear her and understand the call back to her side. “Lower your weapons. It does not have to be like this.”

The sound of familiar words, of drow words, overwhelmed Drizzt. How good it was to hear them again, to remember that he was more than a single-minded hunter, that his life was more than mere survival.

“Lower your weapons,” Briza said again, more pointedly.

“Wh-why are you here?” Drizzt stammered at her.

“For you, of course, my brother,” Briza replied, too kindly. “The war with House Hun’ett is, at long last, ended. It is time for you to come home.”

A part of Drizzt wanted to believe her, wanted to forget those facts of drow life that had forced him out of the city of his birth. A part of Drizzt wanted to drop the scimitars to the stone and return to the shelter―and the companionship―of his former life. Briza’s smile was so inviting.

Briza recognized his weakening resolve. “Come home, dear Drizzt,” she purred, her words holding the bindings of a minor magical spell. “You are needed. You are the weapon master of House Do’Urden now.”

The sudden change in Drizzt’s expression told Briza that she had erred. Zaknafein, Drizzt’s mentor and dearest friend, had been the weapon master of House Do’Urden, and Zaknafein had been sacrificed to the Spider Queen. Drizzt would never forget that fact.

Indeed, Drizzt remembered much more than the comforts of home at that moment. He remembered even more clearly the wrongs of his past life, the wickedness that his principles simply could not tolerate.

“You should not have come,” Drizzt said, his voice sounding like a growl. “You must never come this way again!”

“Dear brother,” Briza replied, more to buy time than to correct her obvious error. She stood still, her face frozen in that double-edged smile of hers.

Drizzt looked behind Briza’s lips, which were thick and full by drow standards. The priestess spoke no words, but Drizzt could clearly see that her mouth was moving behind that frozen smile.

A spell!

Briza had always been skilled at such deceptions...”Go home!” Drizzt cried at her, and he launched an attack.

Briza ducked away from the blow easily enough, for it was not meant to strike, only to disrupt her spellcasting.

“Damn you, Drizzt the rogue,” she spat, all pretense of friendship gone. “Lower your weapons at once, on pain of death!” Her snake-whip came up in open threat.

Drizzt set his feet wide apart. Fires burned in his lavender eyes as the hunter within him rose to meet the challenge.

Briza hesitated, taken aback by the sudden ferocity brewing in her brother. This was no ordinary drow warrior standing before her, she knew beyond doubt. Drizzt had become something more than that, something more formidable.

But Briza was a high priestess of Lloth, near the top of the drow hierarchy. She would not be frightened away by a mere male.

“Surrender!” she demanded. Drizzt couldn’t even decipher her words, for the hunter standing against Briza was no longer Drizzt Do’Urden. The savage, primal warrior that memories of dead Zaknafein had invoked was impervious to words and lies.

Briza’s arm pumped, and the whip’s six viper heads whirled in, twisting and weaving of their own volition to gain the best angles of attack.

The hunter’s scimitars responded in an indistinguishable blur. Briza couldn’t begin to follow their lightning-quick motions, and when her attack routine was ended, she knew only that none of the snake-heads had found a mark, but that only five of the heads remained attached to the whip.

Now in rage that nearly matched her opponent’s, Briza charged in, flailing away with her damaged weapon. Snakes and scimitars and slender drow limbs intertwined in a deadly ballet.

A head bit into the hunter’s leg, sending a burst of cold pain coursing through his veins. A scimitar defeated another deceptive attack, splitting a head down the middle, right between the fangs.

Another head bit into the hunter. Another head fell free to the stone.

The opponents separated, taking measure of each other. Briza’s breath came hard after the few furious minutes, but the hunter’s chest moved easily and rhythmically. Briza had not been struck, but Drizzt had taken two hits.

The hunter had learned long ago to ignore pain, though. He stood ready to continue, and Briza, her whip now sporting only three heads, stubbornly came in on him. She hesitated for a split-second when she noticed Dinin still prone on the floor but with his senses apparently returning. Might her brother rise to her aid?

Dinin squirmed and tried to stand but found no strength in his legs to lift him.

“Damn you,” Briza growled, her venom aimed at Dinin, or at Drizzt―it didn’t matter. Calling on the power of her Spider Queen deity, the high priestess of Lloth lashed out with all of her strength.

Three snake heads dropped to the floor after a single cross of the hunter’s blades.

“Damn you!” Briza screamed again, this time pointedly at Drizzt. She grasped the mace from her belt and swung a vicious overhand chop at her defiant brother’s head.

Crossed scimitars caught the clumsy blow long before it found its mark, and the hunter’s foot came up and kicked once, twice, and then a third time into Briza’s face before it went back to the floor.

Briza staggered backward, blood in her eyes and running freely from her nose. She made out the lines of her brother’s form beyond the blurring heat of her own blood, and she launched a desperate, wide-arcing hook.

The hunter set one scimitar to parry the mace, turning its blade so that Briza’s hand ran down its cruel edge even as the mace swept wide of its mark. Briza screamed in agony and dropped her weapon.

The mace fell to the floor beside two of her fingers. Dinin was up then, behind Drizzt, with his sword in his hand. Using all of her discipline, Briza kept her eyes locked on Drizzt, holding his attention. If she could distract him long enough…

The hunter sensed the danger and spun on Dinin.

All that Dinin saw in his brother’s lavender eyes was his own death. He threw his sword to the ground and crossed his arms over his chest in surrender.

The hunter issued a growling command, hardly intelligible, but Dinin fathomed its meaning well enough, and he ran away as fast as his legs could carry him.

Briza started to slip around, meaning to follow Dinin, but a scimitar blade cut her off, locking under her chin and forcing her head so far back that all she could see was the dark stone of the ceiling.

Pain burned in the hunter’s limbs, pain inflicted by this one and her evil whip. Now the hunter meant to end the pain and the threat. This was his domain!

Briza uttered a final prayer to Lloth as she felt the razor-sharp edge begin its cut. But then, in the instant of a black blur, she was free. She looked down to see Drizzt pinned to the floor by a huge black panther. Not taking the time to ask questions, Briza sped off down the tunnel after Dinin.