Maestro

CHAPTER 18

A trio of warriors dropped upon the battle raging on the balcony of House Do’Urden.

They had been up on the wall, levitating and pulling themselves along until they were above the balcony. And there they had waited, sorting out the combatants, determining Do’Urden defenders from the invading Hunzrin warriors. Hands flashed the silent drow code, the three coming to agreement and tactics.

Down they went, landing in the midst of the Hunzrin line, exploding into coordinated motion before the enemy drow even realized they were there. A blurring dance of four masterful swords, a jeweled dagger, and a stream of magical daggers fed into Jarlaxle’s free hand by his enchanted bracer soon broke the center of that Hunzrin line so brutally, so efficiently, that the remaining invaders wanted no part of this whirling cyclone of death.

More went over the balcony railing than continued to fight, and with the Do’Urden garrison pressing from the room beyond, Jarlaxle and his companions soon confronted the House defenders, a group that clearly didn’t know what to make of them.

“Step aside, you fools!” Jarlaxle insisted, and he dropped his magical disguise and revealed himself. “Your salvation has arrived!”

Gasps and cheers followed the trio through the anteroom, and many of the garrison moved to follow.

“This is your post,” Entreri said, turning back on them and pointing to the balcony. “The enemy will likely return! Do not let them through this door!”

They ran through the second anteroom, and into the winding corridor within the house proper, and there the trio almost crashed into Faelas Xorlarrin.

“The Xorlarrins and Tiago should be soon to this place,” Faelas warned the Bregan D’aerthe leader. “I received a magical whisper from Jaemas that they had just dispatched Melarni driders.” He pointed down to the right and motioned for them to be away quickly.

Jarlaxle nodded and patted the wizard on the shoulder, starting away, Entreri close behind.

“Tiago?” Drizzt asked, his lips curling into a snarl.

“Pray go,” Faelas said, shaking his head. “And be quick!”

But Drizzt didn’t move, and his hands tightened on the handles of his bloody scimitars.

“Not now!” Jarlaxle scolded, moving back a step.

Entreri took it even farther, leaping back to grab Drizzt by the arm. “Dahlia!” he said, and he pulled Drizzt along.

Drizzt went, but kept glancing back, hoping they would be too slow and Tiago Baenre would catch up to them.

They found few guards and no enemies along the crisscrossing corridors, and through many chambers.

“We can wind about the chapel and approach from the rear of the compound,” Jarlaxle explained.

“This way,” corrected Drizzt, and he kicked through a side door opposite of Jarlaxle’s instruction. He moved with purpose and with confidence. It was all coming back to him, and he felt as if he had never left this place, his first home.

He could almost hear his sister Vierna’s voice as he stormed through the familiar rooms, and down a secret passageway that even Jarlaxle had not yet discovered. The passageway was small and tight, one that child Drizzt had often run along to frustrate his violent sisters.

Vierna thought it an amusing game.

Briza would beat him for it.

At one point, Drizzt almost broke off along a side passage, one that would put them farther from their goal. It led to a training room where the ghosts of the past haunted Drizzt still.

“Why have you stopped?” Entreri demanded. “Are you lost?”

“Double-cross down,” Drizzt whispered, though it didn’t seem as if he had heard Entreri at all.

With a sigh, Drizzt pressed on.

They came into a larger room, the war room of House Do’Urden, the room in which a lavender-eyed child had been born to Matron Mother Malice …

The sound of battle from somewhere beyond the walls kept Drizzt focused then. Across the way, separated by small partitions, loomed three doorways. But which led to the battle, they could not immediately determine. Drizzt broke off to the door on the far right of the opposite wall, Entreri to the left, and Jarlaxle to the center, and while the latter two pressed their ears to their respective doors, Drizzt didn’t even wait, and simply kicked his open, eager for a fight.

His next step failed him, though. There in front of him stood a most beautiful drow, a woman whose beauty gave him pause.

He couldn’t tell dream from reality then. The woman became Catti-brie-she was Catti-brie!

“My love, they have captured me,” she said. “Help me …” She reached out.

Before he could even register the strangeness of the moment, the entranced Drizzt slid Icingdeath away and reached for his beloved with his empty hand.

But the woman laughed at him, and became a drow again-the most beautiful drow he could imagine-and the hand he reached to take became a serpent, floating in the air.

Floating and biting, so fast!

A shock, like lightning, cascaded through Drizzt’s body. He tightened his other hand upon Twinkle, trying to use that tangible item to keep him from melting to the floor. He stumbled backward, beyond the partition, but he wasn’t even aware of his surroundings at that moment.

Except for the drow woman. That one he saw clearly, smiling, beckoning, inviting him to a journey he wanted to take. She stepped backward down the corridor beyond the opened door and her form wavered. As it did, Drizzt saw past her.

He saw Vierna. She knelt and sobbed, clutching at her chest, at a bloody wound.

“Drizzt?” Jarlaxle called, but Drizzt did not hear. He sheathed his other blade and leaped forward through the door, running for Vierna, rushing to his sobbing sister, whom he had slain.

“By the Gods,” Entreri growled when he noted Drizzt’s charge. He started that way, joining Jarlaxle’s pursuit of their confused companion, but both stopped, both lifted an arm to bar the other, and both fell back suddenly when a strange wave of energy rocked the war room and a violet glow, a great ray that went from the opened doorway to the opposite wall, appeared in front of them.

“What?” Entreri demanded, and tentatively started forward.

“Do not!’ Jarlaxle warned. “Prismatic!”

“What?” Entreri asked again, turning to face the mercenary.

Jarlaxle shook his head, his face a mask of fear-and that alone kept Entreri back. The mercenary rushed to grab one of the room’s chairs, then sent it skidding into the purple glow.

The chair’s form waved, as if a ripple of water were suddenly above it, and then it vanished, and was simply gone.

“Prismatic magic,” Jarlaxle said, barely able to get the words out. “Purple … a plane shift.”

“Drizzt has traveled to another plane?”

“Demons,” Jarlaxle reminded him, and both of them could only assume that their friend had been lost to the Abyss.

“Come and be quick,” Jarlaxle said. “To Dahlia … then we must be out of this place.”

“Drizzt!” Entreri growled, motioning to the glow.

“We cannot help him. Not here. Not now.”

Jarlaxle steadied himself and led the way out the central door.

Entreri followed, but more hesitantly, glancing back with every step. “Drizzt?” he whispered, and the word pained him more than he would have ever believed, or admitted.

Drizzt hadn’t felt the purple ray. He was beyond it, into the corridor, before Yvonnel enacted the magic.

Drizzt didn’t know of it, and didn’t look back. He was with Vierna then, his sister kneeling and crying. She reached up a bloody hand and grasped his arm.

“Dinin, the drider,” she whispered, and Drizzt flinched at the reminder of his doomed brother.

“How are you here?” he asked.

She seemed not to hear him.

“Atone!” she warned. “We are given a chance, all of us! Our fates are not sealed. The river of time moves all around, and flows back upon itself.”

“This is madness!”

“Madness? Or a dream? Your dream, your perception, your creation. You destroyed us, my young brother. Oh, worthless honor! And you would kill me. And I loved you.”

“No,” Drizzt cried, falling to his knees in front of her and holding her closer-and trying to stem the flowing blood with his hands. “No!”

“You cannot save me with your hands,” she whispered. “Swim upstream, brother. Unwind your heresy. Accept your fate …”

And she slumped to the floor, face down in front of him, and he knew she was dead before he looked into her lifeless eyes.

But was she? Was anyone truly dead?

“I died on Kelvin’s Cairn,” he whispered, certain that this, all of this, was a grand deception. Still, there had to be a strand of truth somewhere in the midst of these illusions and warped designs.

Was it Vierna?

Was this all, after all, a backflow of the river of time itself?

That was not more irrational than the appearance of his dead friends, after all.

“Have I chosen wrong?”

Drizzt rose to his feet and stumbled along the corridor, muttering to himself, trying to make sense of the nonsense, trying to see truth when all around him was surely a lie. He thought of Wulfgar, and replayed the lesson.

“Errtu ate those children in front of Wulfgar, and murdered Catti-brie … the demon created reality within a beautiful deception, then destroyed that desired reality right in front of the helpless victim,” Drizzt whispered. “It broke him, and so it breaks me.”

He stumbled against the wall and needed it for support, else he would have surely crumbled to the ground and lay helpless.

“… every unguarded moment … the awful truth of my life. Dead on Kelvin’s Cairn. Lolth found me and took me.”

He stumbled along again, kicked through another door. “A century-I saw them die! I am a fool!” He imitated Bruenor’s voice, “I found it, elf!”

Then he growled and drew his blades and went into a dance, swinging with ferocious control, striking at imaginary foes.

“No miracle, nay! A deception! Not the blessing of Mielikki, nay! This is the curse of Lolth, the grand deception!”

“What is deception?” a sharp female voice intoned. “Idiot child.”

Drizzt swung around, scimitars at the ready, and there he froze in place, held by overwhelming and debilitating shock.

There stood Matron Mother Malice Do’Urden, his mother, the woman who had used the moment of his birth to send powerful magical energy into her war on a rival House. The woman, his mother, who should have loved him, but had never shown him any interest at all except what he might do to improve the status and situation of herself and her House.

She stood there, staring down at him imperiously, and Drizzt felt small indeed.

“What is not?” he answered, trying to summon enough anger so that he could turn away from her penetrating and judging stare.

“Perhaps nothing,” she said. “You call it deception, but is it not merely altered reality?”

“What do you know of it? Of anything?”

“I know what you ruined, and in pursuit of futility!” Malice answered. “And to what end, my idiot child? What have you gained that puts you here in this place, in this time, in utter despair? Do you claim victory between your tears?”

“No!” His cry was one of denial, a rejection of her and of this place, of his life, of his unavoidable fate. In truth, though, and Drizzt knew it, that denial was also a correct answer to her last question.

There was no victory here, just a cruel joke, the deception of a demon.

“You’ll not shatter my heart,” he said to her. “I accept the death of my friends. I will find instead the Hunter. I deny you and deny your pain!”

He pointed a scimitar at her, his face a mask of outrage, summoning the courage to charge at this demon figure and put an end to her.

“My friend will be silence,” he said, striding at her. “I will be left with nothing, but that will be enough!”

“Only because you are too stupid to see the opportunity presented before you,” Malice replied, and Drizzt stopped his approach and looked at her warily.

“To what end?” Malice asked.

Drizzt blinked, not quite catching on. It was his own private question, reflected back at him.

“Knowing now that perception and reality are so intimately twined, so I ask you again, to what end?” Malice asked, only slightly altering the question that had been burning in Drizzt’s own thoughts-as if she had read his mind.

“You ruined me,” Malice went on. “Your brother was twisted to abomination, your sister murdered by your own hand, your House thrown to ruin. All that I built-”

“It was you!” Drizzt accused, pointing at her with his blade.

“You can unwind it,” said Malice. “The river flows backward. This is your moment and your choice.”

“I made my choice! To the Abyss with …”

“Zaknafein?” Malice asked, and the word nearly knocked Drizzt from his feet. “That is the moment before you, my idiot son. Come and witness my dagger sliding into his chest …”

Drizzt cried out, an indecipherable roar of outrage, and leaped forward, Icingdeath coming across viciously to cut Matron Mother Malice apart. But the blade went right through her less than corporeal form, and Drizzt nearly fell, overbalanced by the swing that caught only empty air.

Malice’s laughter echoed down the hall, mocking his worthless passion. He saw her image departing then, sliding through the right-hand wall farther along.

“You have broken him,” K’yorl Odran said with a giggle, watching Drizzt dancing about, swinging wildly and screaming at himself in the corridor in front of her.

“He is sick with the Abyssal emanations of the Faerzress,” Yvonnel answered, seeming quite intrigued by it all. “He has lost the firmament of truth, of reality. He walks in dreams and nightmares.”

Yvonnel’s expression turned curious then, partly amused and partly pitying this lost heretic.

“Lost,” she whispered.

“And so open to suggestion?” K’yorl asked.

“The chapel,” Yvonnel whispered, and K’yorl reflected that thought in the mind of the distant Drizzt Do’Urden.

“Now, follow,” Yvonnel instructed her slave. “We must be quick.”

“Drizzt has entered the city and is coming for her,” Kiriy said, pointing frantically at Dahlia, who lay unconscious on the bed.

“And so you threw driders into our midst?” Ravel questioned with a disbelieving, even derisive, snort.

“I needed to keep you away.”

“So that you could kill her and claim the throne of House Do’Urden,” Saribel said accusingly.

“Yes!” Kiriy retorted. “Yes, as Matron Mother Zeerith determined. By word of Matron Mother Baenre,” she added quickly, seeing Tiago’s sudden scowl.

“This abominable darthiir you mean to murder is the matron mother’s creation,” Tiago said.

“And she has outlived her usefulness to House Baenre,” Kiriy replied, too smoothly for the others to determine whether or not she was improvising. “House Xorlarrin returns, and we are many times more valuable to the matron mother than this … this creature. Or this mock House that invites the scorn of all other Houses in Menzoberranzan.”

“And so you mean to correct that,” Ravel asked skeptically, “in the midst of a war?”

“It will settle the war!” Kiriy insisted. “When Dahlia … Darthiir, is dead, the Melarni will no longer ally with House Hunzrin. They care not for Hunzrin trade. The abomination sitting upon the Ruling Council is their only reason for waging war on House Do’Urden, as they view Matron Mother Darthiir as an insult to Lady Lolth herself. When she is no more, the Melarni will be appeased, and without them, the stone heads will flee. They alone are no match for the garrison of this House. The House will be ours, as will the seat on the Ruling Council.”

“Those things are ours now,” a doubtful Ravel reminded her. “They will be yours, you mean.”

“Do’Urden, not Xorlarrin! And they have come for her!” Kiriy said. “She must die, either way.”

Tiago drew Vidrinath.

“No!” Saribel insisted. “If Darthiir is slain, Kiriy becomes matron mother!”

“Kiriy, who just attacked us,” Ravel added.

“Matron Mother Baenre demands it,” Kiriy declared, aiming her words at Tiago, relying on his allegiance to Baenre. “Darthiir must not be taken by the heretic Drizzt.”

Tiago glanced back and forth from Kiriy to the others, his hand wringing the pommel of Vidrinath, the glassteel blade’s tiny stars sparkling in the low candlelight of the room.

“Your story is babble!” Saribel accused.

“How dare you speak to me in that manner?” Kiriy retorted.

“Because your tale is nonsense,” Ravel shot back. “If Matron Mother Baenre so desired what you claim, she would have sent the Baenre legions and chased off the Hunzrin and Melarni.”

“She does not wish to expose herself. There is no need. We know not the disposition of House Barrison Del’Armgo in this matter.”

“None of us wish to see this abomination remain alive,” Tiago put in, and he moved for Dahlia.

“She is your bait for Drizzt,” Jaemas remarked, freezing the young Baenre in his tracks. “If what First Priestess Kiriy says is truth.”

“It is not!” Ravel insisted.

“Not all, perhaps,” Jaemas agreed. “But a lie is all the stronger with truth embedded, is it not?”

“You dare call me a liar?” Kiriy said, and her wizard cousin bowed and respectfully shrank back. But he added, “If you kill her, the heretic Drizzt will leave.” He knew who traveled with Drizzt, of course, and understood Jarlaxle’s intent. “And the head of Drizzt Do’Urden is a prize that will announce the glory of the rebirth of House Xorlarrin like no other, while the head of Darthiir Do’Urden is nothing more than another iblith trophy, whose name will be forgotten before the turn of the approaching century.”

Close enough to strike Dahlia dead, Tiago locked stares with Jaemas.

“Kill her,” Kiriy insisted. “Or we will all be dead before Drizzt Do’Urden even arrives.”

“Do not,” said a newcomer, striding in confidently through the door. The others all turned to regard the young drow woman.

“How dare you?” Kiriy retorted, eyes wide with outrage and snake-headed scourge in hand.

“Melarni?” Saribel added with a snarl.

“I should kill you for even suggesting such a thing,” the woman answered.

Kiriy started to scold again, but the newcomer cut her short.

“I am Baenre,” Yvonnel said. “New to the First House, and yet I have lived there all my life.”

“A commoner servant newly inducted …?” Saribel started to ask, but Kiriy’s gasp cut her short, and indeed, was so desperate that all turned to regard her.

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.