Robert Salvatore: Exile

“I… cannot,” the spirit-wraith replied. “Flee from this place, Drizzt. Flee to the very…ends of the world! Malice will never forgive. She…will never stop―”

The spirit-wraith leaped forward, and Drizzt had no choice but to draw his weapons. But Zaknafein jerked suddenly before he got within reach of Drizzt.

“For us!” Zak cried in startling clarity, a call that pealed like a trumpet of victory in the green-glowing chamber and echoed across the miles to Matron Malice’s heart like the final toll of a drum signaling the onset of doom. Zaknafein had wrested control again, for just a fleeting instant―one that allowed the charging spirit-wraith to veer off the walkway.

Matron Malice could not even scream her denial. A thousand explosions pounded her brain when Zaknafein went into the acid lake, a thousand realizations of impending and unavoidable disaster. She leaped from her stone throne, her slender hands twisting and clenching in the air as though she were trying to find something tangible to grasp, something that wasn’t there.

Her breath rasped in labored gasps and wordless snarls issued from her gulping mouth. After a moment in which she could not calm herself, Malice heard one sound more clearly than the din of her own contortions. Behind her came the slight hiss of the small, wicked snake heads of a high priestess’s whip.

Malice spun about, and there stood Briza, her face grimly and determinedly set and her whip’s six living snake heads waving in the air.

“I had hoped that my time of ascension would be many years away,” the eldest daughter said calmly. “But you are weak, Malice, too weak to hold House Do’Urden together in the trials that will follow our―your―failure.”

Malice wanted to laugh in the face of her daughter’s foolishness; snake-headed whips were personal gifts from the Spider Queen and could not be used against matron mothers. For some reason, though, Malice could not find the courage or conviction to refute her daughter at that moment. She watched, mesmerized, as Briza’s arm slowly reared back and then shot forward.

The six snake heads uncoiled toward Malice. It was impossible! It went against all tenets of Lloth’s doctrine! The fanged heads came on eagerly and dived into Malice’s flesh with all the Spider Queen’s fury behind them. Searing agony coursed through Malice’s body, jolting and racking her and leaving an icy numbness in its wake.

Malice teetered on the brink of consciousness, trying to hold firmly against her daughter, trying to show Briza the futility and stupidity of continuing the attack.

The snake whip snapped again and the floor rushed up to swallow Malice. Briza muttered something, Malice heard, some curse or chant to the Spider Queen.

Then came a third crack, and Malice knew nothing more. She was dead before the fifth strike, but Briza pounded on for many minutes, venting her fury to let the Spider Queen be assured that House Do’Urden truly had forsaken its failing matron mother.

By the time Dinin, unexpectedly and unannounced, burst into the room, Briza had settled comfortably into the stone throne. The elderboy glanced over at his mother’s battered body, then back to Briza, his head shaking in disbelief, and a wide, knowing grin splayed across his face.

“What have you done, sis―Matron Briza?” Dinin asked, catching his slip of the tongue before Briza could react to it.

“Zin-carla has failed.” Briza growled as she glared at him. “Lloth would no longer accept Malice.”

Dinin’s laughter, which seemed founded in sarcasm, cut to the marrow of Briza’s bones. Her eyes narrowed further and she let Dinin see her hand clearly as it moved down to the hilt of her whip.

“You have chosen the perfect moment for ascension,” the elderboy explained calmly, apparently not at all worried that Briza would punish him. “We are under attack.”

“Fey-Branche?” Briza cried, springing excitedly from her seat. Five minutes in the throne as matron mother, and already Briza faced her first test. She would prove herself to the Spider Queen and redeem House Do’Urden from much of the damage that Malice’s failures had caused.

“No, sister.” Dinin said quickly, without pretense. “Not House Fey-Branche.”

Her brother’s cool response put Briza back in the throne and twisted her grin of excitement into a grimace of pure dread.

“Baenre,” Dinin, too, no longer smiled.

Vierna and Maya looked out from House Do’Urden’s balcony to the approaching forces beyond the adamantite gate. The sisters did not know their enemy, as Dinin had, but they understood from the sheer size of the force that some great house was involved. Still, House Do’Urden boasted two hundred fifty soldiers, many trained by Zaknafein himself. With two hundred more well-trained and well-armed troops on loan from Matron Baenre, both Vierna and Maya figured that their chances were not so bad. They quickly outlined defense strategies, and Maya swung one leg over the balcony railing, meaning to descend to the courtyard and relay the plans to her captains.

Of course, when she and Vierna suddenly realized that they had two hundred enemies already within their gates―enemies they had accepted on loan from Matron Baenre―their plans meant little.

Maya still straddled the railing when the first Baenre soldiers came up on the balcony. Vierna drew her whip and cried for Maya to do the same. But Maya was not moving, and Vierna, on closer inspection, noticed several tiny darts protruding from her sister’s body.

Vierna’s own snake-headed whip turned on her then, its fangs slicing across her delicate face. Vierna understood at once that House Do’Urden’s downfall had been decreed by Lloth herself. “Zin-carla,” Vierna mumbled, realizing the source of the disaster. Blood blurred her vision and a wave of dizziness overtook her as darkness closed in all about her.

“This cannot be!” Briza cried. “House Baenre attacks? Lloth has not given me―”

“We had our chance!” Dinin yelled at her. “Zaknafein was our chance―” Dinin looked to his mother’s torn body “―and the wraith has failed, I would assume.”

Briza growled and lashed out with her whip. Dinin expected the strike, though―he knew Briza so very well―and he darted beyond the weapon’s range. Briza took a step toward him.

“Does your anger require more enemies?” Dinin asked, swords in hand. “Go out to the balcony, dear sister, where you will find a thousand awaiting you!”

Briza cried out in frustration but turned away from Dinin and rushed from the room, hoping to salvage something out of this terrible predicament.

Dinin did not follow. He stooped over Matron Malice and looked one final time into the eyes of the tyrant who had ruled his entire life. Malice had been a powerful figure, confident and wicked, but how fragile her rule had proved, broken by the antics of a renegade child.

Dinin heard a commotion out in the corridor, then the anteroom door swung open again. The elderboy did not have to look to know that enemies were in the room. He continued to stare at his dead mother, knowing that he soon would share the same fate.

The expected blow did not fall, however, and, several agonizing moments later, Dinin dared to glance back over his shoulder.

Jarlaxle sat comfortably on the stone throne.

“You are not surprised?” the mercenary asked, noting that Dinin’s expression did not change.

“Bregan D’aerthe was among the Baenre troops, perhaps all of the Baenre troops,” Dinin said casually. He covertly glanced around the room at the dozen or so soldiers who had followed Jarlaxle in. If only he could get to the mercenary leader before they killed him! Dinin thought. Watching the death of the treacherous Jarlaxle might bring some measure of satisfaction to this whole disaster.