Exile: The Legend of Drizzt (3 page)

Out in the courtyard, beyond the cavern complex, nearly five hundred soldiers of House Hun’ett—fully a hundred more than the house reportedly possessed—followed the blast of a lightning bolt through House Do’Urden’s adamantite gates. The three hundred fifty soldiers of the Do’Urden household swarmed out of the shaped stalagmite mounds that served as their quarters to meet the attack.

Outnumbered but trained by Zaknafein, the Do’Urden troops formed into proper defensive positions, shielding their wizards and clerics so that they might cast their spells.

An entire contingent of Hun’ett soldiers, empowered with enchantments of flying, swooped down the cavern wall that housed the royal chambers of House Do’Urden. Tiny hand-held crossbows clicked and thinned the ranks of the aerial force with deadly, poison-tipped darts. The aerial invaders’ surprise had been achieved, though, and the Do’Urden troops were quickly put into a precarious position.

“Hun’ett has not the favor of Lolth!” Malice screamed. “It would not dare to openly attack!” She flinched at the refuting, thunderous sounds of another, and then still another, bolt of lightning.

“Oh?” Briza snapped.

Malice cast her daughter a threatening glare but didn’t have time to continue the argument. The normal method of attack by a drow house would involve the rush of soldiers combined with a mental barrage by the house’s highest-ranking clerics. Malice, though, felt no mental attack, which told her beyond any doubt that it was indeed House Hun’ett that had come to her gates. The clerics of Hun’ett, out of the Spider Queen’s favor, apparently could not use their Lolth-given powers to launch the mental assault. If they had, Malice and her daughters, also out of the Spider Queen’s favor, could not have hoped to counter.

“Why would they dare to attack?” Malice wondered aloud.

Briza understood her mother’s reasoning. “They are bold indeed,” she said, “to hope that their soldiers alone can eliminate every member of our house.” Everyone in the room, every drow in Menzoberranzan, understood the brutal, absolute punishments exacted upon any house that failed to eradicate another house. Such attacks were not frowned upon, but getting caught at the deed most certainly was.

Rizzen, the present patron of House Do’Urden, came into the anteroom then, his face grim. “We are outnumbered and out-positioned,” he said. “Our defeat will be swift, I fear.”

Malice would not accept the news. She struck Rizzen with a blow that knocked the patron halfway across the floor, then she spun on Jarlaxle. “You must summon your band!” Malice cried at the mercenary. “Quickly!”

“Matron,” Jarlaxle stuttered, obviously at a loss. “Bregan D’aerthe is a secretive group. We do not engage in open warfare.
To do so could invoke the wrath of the ruling council!”

“I will pay you whatever you desire,” the desperate matron mother promised.

“But the cost—”

“Whatever you desire!” Malice snarled again. “Such action—” Jarlaxle began.

Again, Malice did not let him finish his argument. “Save my house, mercenary,” she growled. “Your profits will be great, but I warn you, the cost of your failure will be far greater!”

Jarlaxle did not appreciate being threatened, especially by a lame matron mother whose entire world was fast crumbling around her. But in the mercenary’s ears the sweet ring of the word “profits” outweighed the threat a thousand times over. After ten straight years of exorbitant rewards in the Do’Urden-Hun’ett conflict, Jarlaxle did not doubt Malice’s willingness or ability to pay as promised, nor did he doubt that this deal would prove even more lucrative than the agreement he had struck with Matron SiNafay Hun’ett earlier that same tenday.

“As you wish,” he said to Matron Malice with a bow and a sweep of his garish hat. “I will see what I can do.” A wink at Dinin set the elderboy on his heels as he exited the room.

When the two got out on the balcony overlooking the Do’Urden compound, they saw that the situation was even more desperate than Rizzen had described. The soldiers of House Do’Urden—those still alive—were trapped in and around one of the huge stalagmite mounds anchoring the front gate.

One of Hun’ett’s flying soldiers dropped onto the balcony at the sight of a Do’Urden noble, but Dinin dispatched the intruder with a single, blurring attack routine.

“Well done,” Jarlaxle commented, giving Dinin an approving nod. He moved to pat the elderboy Do’Urden on the shoulder, but Dinin slipped out of reach.

“We have other business,” he pointedly reminded Jarlaxle. “Call your troops, and quickly, else I fear that House Hun’ett will win the day.”

“Be at ease, my friend Dinin,” Jarlaxle laughed. He pulled a small whistle from around his neck and blew into it. Dinin heard not a sound, for the instrument was magically tuned exclusively for the ears of members of Bregan D’aerthe.

The elderboy Do’Urden watched in amazement as Jarlaxle calmly puffed out a specific cadence, then he watched in even greater amazement as more than a hundred of House Hun’ett’s soldiers turned against their comrades.

Bregan D’aerthe owed allegiance only to Bregan D’aerthe.

“They could not attack us,” Malice said stubbornly, pacing about the chamber. “The Spider Queen would not aid them in their venture.”

“They are winning without the Spider Queen’s aid,” Rizzen reminded her, prudently ducking into the room’s farthest corner even as he spoke the unwanted words.

“You said that they would never attack!” Briza growled at her mother. “Even as you explained why we could not dare to attack them!” Briza remembered that conversation vividly, for it was she who had suggested the open attack on House Hun’ett. Malice had scolded her harshly and publicly, and now Briza meant to return the humiliation. Her voice dripped of angry sarcasm as she aimed each word at her mother. “Could it be that Matron Malice Do’Urden has erred?”

Malice’s reply came in the form of a glare that wavered somewhere between rage and terror. Briza returned the threatening look without ambiguity and suddenly the matron mother of
House Do’Urden did not feel so very invincible and sure of her actions. She started forward nervously a moment later when Maya, the youngest of the Do’Urden daughters, entered the room.

“They have breached the house!” Briza cried, assuming the worst. She grabbed at her snake-headed whip. “And we have not even begun our preparations for defense!”

“No!” Maya quickly corrected. “No enemies have crossed the balcony. The battle has turned against House Hun’ett!”

“As I knew it would,” Malice observed, pulling herself straight and speaking pointedly at Briza. “Foolish is the house that moves without the favor of Lolth!” Despite her proclamation, though, Malice guessed that more than the judgment of the Spider Queen had come into play out in the courtyard. Her reasoning led her inescapably to Jarlaxle and his untrustworthy band of rogues.

Jarlaxle stepped off the balcony and used his innate drow abilities to levitate down to the cavern floor. Seeing no need to involve himself in a battle that was obviously under control, Dinin rested back and watched the mercenary go, considering all that had just transpired. Jarlaxle had played both sides off against the other, and once again the mercenary and his band had been the only true winners. Bregan D’aerthe was undeniably unscrupulous, but Dinin had to admit, undeniably effective.

Dinin found that he liked the renegade.

“The accusation has been properly delivered to Matron Baenre?” Malice asked Briza when the light of Narbondel, the magically heated stalagmite mound that served as the time clock
of Menzoberranzan, began its steady climb, marking the dawn of the next day.

“The ruling house expected the visit,” Briza replied with a smirk. “All of the city whispers of the attack, and of how House Do’Urden repelled the invaders of House Hun’ett.”

Malice futilely tried to hide her vain smile. She enjoyed the attention and the glory that she knew would be lavished upon her house.

“The ruling council will be convened this very day,” Briza went on. “No doubt to the dismay of Matron SiNafay Hun’ett and her doomed children.”

Malice nodded her agreement. To eradicate a rival house in Menzoberranzan was a perfectly acceptable practice among the drow. But to fail in the attempt, to leave even one witness of noble blood alive to make an accusation, invited the judgment of the ruling council, a wrath that wrought absolute destruction in its wake.

A knock turned them both toward the room’s ornate door.

“You are summoned, Matron,” Rizzen said as he entered. “Matron Baenre has sent a chariot for you.”

Malice and Briza exchanged hopeful but nervous glances. When punishment fell upon House Hun’ett, House Do’Urden would move into the eighth rank of the city hierarchy, a most desirable position. Only the matron mothers of the top eight houses were accorded a seat on the city’s ruling council.

“Already?” Briza asked her mother.

Malice only shrugged in reply and followed Rizzen out of the room and down to the house’s balcony. Rizzen offered her a hand of assistance, which she promptly and stubbornly slapped away. Her pride apparent with every move, Malice stepped over the railing and floated down to the courtyard, where the bulk of her remaining soldiery was gathered. The floating, blue-glowing disk
bearing the insignia of House Baenre hovered just outside the blasted adamantite gate of the Do’Urden compound.

Malice proudly strode through the gathered crowd; dark elves fell over each other trying to get out of her way. This was her day, she decided, the day she achieved the seat on the ruling council, the position she so greatly deserved.

“Matron Mother, I will accompany you through the city,” offered Dinin, standing at the gate.

“You will remain here with the rest of the family,” Malice corrected. “The summons is for me alone.”

“How can you know?” Dinin questioned, but he realized he had overstepped his rank as soon as the words had left his mouth.

By the time Malice turned her reprimanding glare toward him, he had already disappeared into the mob of soldiers.

“Proper respect,” Malice muttered under her breath, and she instructed the nearest soldiers to remove a section of the propped and tied gate. With a final, victorious glance at her subjects, Malice stepped out and took a seat on the floating disk.