R.A. Salvatore - Maestro

She stood staring at the intruder, eyes wide, and it seemed as if she kept forgetting to draw breath. Matron Mother Zeerith had warned her about this one, this daughter of Gromph and Minolin Fey, who should be a toddler.

“Your mother told you,” Yvonnel said. “Good.”

“I have lived in House Baenre my entire life,” Tiago argued. “I would know …”

“If the daughter of Gromph had grown up?” Yvonnel teased, and he too fell back a step.

As did all the others when another drow woman, this one naked, entered the room holding a leash that produced a moment later yet another. This drow woman looked ancient and haggard, crawling at the end of the leash. The naked woman transformed suddenly-though fortunately briefly-revealing her true tentacled form as a handmaiden of Lolth.

“I am Baenre, the Eternal Baenre,” Yvonnel announced, and with K’yorl’s help, she telepathically imparted to both Saribel and Kiriy, You wish to lead this House. I can make that happen, or I can prevent it.

“The war is already over,” she announced aloud. “In outcome, at least. There are more to die, and mostly Hunzrin fools. Matron Mother Melarn has abandoned their cause. The driders are already in flight from this compound. House Hunzrin is the snake’s body, but the serpent has no head.”

She let her grin fall over each of them in turn. “Unless some in this room see through the snake’s eyes,” she said slyly.

Ravel, Saribel, and Tiago all glanced Kiriy’s way, as did Jaemas, though he did well to keep from swallowing hard.

“Never were we allied with House Melarn,” Ravel insisted. “We are Do’Urden, defending from an unprovoked-”

“Indeed,” Yvonnel said, in a tone that didn’t display confidence in that claim. “Then go defend your House, Do’Urden nobles. Go!” She waved Ravel and Jaemas out. “You, wizards, clear and secure the balconies.”

The two looked at each other helplessly, unsure of what they should do, even with a handmaiden in the room-if it was a handmaiden.

“Lolth is watching,” Yiccardaria said in that unmistakable gurgling voice.

Jaemas nodded and led the way, respectfully bowing as he passed the trio of newcomers.

“Go and direct the battle, young priestess,” Yvonnel instructed Saribel. “Prove that you are worthy, and with confidence of your just reward.”

Saribel paused just long enough to glare at her sister, then glance at Tiago and, finally, at the unconscious Dahlia.

Tiago started after her.

“Not you, Tiago Baenre,” Yiccardaria told him. “Priestess Kiriy spoke truly. Drizzt Do’Urden is here in House Do’Urden. Long has the Spider Queen waited for this moment. Are you ready to champion Lady Lolth?”

“For the glory of Lolth,” Tiago replied.

“And of Tiago?” Yvonnel asked, and Tiago nodded, not catching the sly undertones of her mockery.

“And you remain here, with this one, and woe to you if any harm comes to her,” Yvonnel told Kiriy. “I name you as Darthiir’s guardian.”

“Guardian?” Kiriy stuttered, hardly able to form the word. “She is abomination!”

“You presume so very much,” Yiccardaria the yochlol answered before Yvonnel could reply. “How will your pride carry you, I wonder, when you are kneeling before the Spider Queen, stammering to explain your insubordination?”

His thoughts were a jumble of his fevered imagination intermingled with the ghostly resonance of this place, House Do’Urden. His home.

That was the magic of Yvonnel’s poisonous snake, casting Drizzt into a trance that transcended the barrier of death and of time itself. And so he walked among the dead who had made this place, and now, in the chapel, saw the moment of his ultimate horror as it had occurred.

There lay Zaknafein, his father, tightly bound upon the spider-shaped altar, stripped of his shirt.

There stood Vierna, staring down at Zak, trying to hide her sympathy.

And there stood Maya, the youngest of the Do’Urden daughters. Maya! Drizzt had rarely thought of her through the passing decades. Ever had she seemed to him to be at a crossroads, her ambition assailing her compassion, and always winning that struggle. She seemed cruelly content now.

Drizzt glided across the floor. He called to Zak, to Vierna, too, but they seemed not to hear him.

As he neared the altar, though, he heard them.

“A pity,” Vierna said, and the sound of her voice brought him back more fully to this place. So many times had he taken comfort in that voice, recognizing always the truth in Vierna’s heart even against the lies she was forced to speak.

“House Do’Urden must give much to repay Drizzt’s foolish deed.”

With those words from Vierna, Drizzt’s thoughts careened to another time and another place, but only briefly, only enough to see the scared eyes of an elf child peeking out at him from under the body of her dead mother.

Drizzt crossed his arms over his chest and rubbed at the coldness that had come over him.

“You ruined me,” he heard Malice scold again. “Your brother was twisted to abomination, your sister murdered by your own hand, your House thrown to ruin.”

And then Drizzt understood, all of it. On a surface raid, he had saved an elf child from the drow murderers. That was the action Malice said he could unwind.

The cruel irony of it all struck him and he rubbed his forearms more forcefully, but the cold would not relent. He had killed that elf child, decades later, in self-defense. She had lost her reason to bitterness and had made Drizzt the focal point of her unyielding rage at the murder of her people, of her mother, lying atop her.

Had he struck her down on that starlit field …

“Cry not,” he heard Zaknafein say, drawing him back to the scene playing out in front of him, and thinking, hoping, that his father was speaking to him.

But no, he saw, his father looked to Vierna, and added, “My daughter.”

Drizzt could hardly find his breath. He knew, of course, that Vierna was fully his sister, the only one of his siblings who shared his father. He had said as much to her in their last, desperate fight, when Drizzt had killed her.

When he had slain his sister.

He felt the tears coming from his eyes.

He saw Matron Mother Malice again, then, now in her ceremonial robes. And Briza, evil Briza, walking beside her, chanting.

That dagger in Malice’s hands, shaped like a spider, with small side blades, spider eyes on the hilt-how often had the child Drizzt polished that ceremonial, sacrificial dagger?

Drizzt rushed at her, wanted to chase her away, wanting to deny the coming sacrifice, the murder of his beloved father. But he was the ghost here, it seemed, more than they. He could make no tangible contact, and his screams of denial were not heard.

Or were they, he wondered when he stumbled to the side, to see Malice’s dagger hand hovering so near to Zaknafein’s exposed flesh. And Zaknafein turned his head, and seemed to be looking at Drizzt, and whispered something Drizzt could not hear.

The dagger stabbed at Zaknafein’s heart.

The dagger stabbed at Drizzt’s heart.

Another uninvited guest,” Kiriy muttered to the still-unconscious Dahlia when she heard approaching footsteps in the hallway outside the door. She wasn’t worried, and even hoped that it might be this Drizzt Do’Urden creature. She was confident in the glyphs she had placed upon the entryway.

“Come, dear,” she said, slapping Dahlia’s cheek. “Come awake now and greet our visitors.”

Dahlia did groan a bit, the first signs that the sleeping poison was finally beginning to wear away-though Kiriy figured it would be several hours yet before she awakened.