Maestro

by R. A. Salvatore

  “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.

  CHAPTER 19

  Lolth’s Champion

  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.

  Kiriy slapped her again, harder, just to hear her groan, and the sound brought a smile to the eldest daughter of Matron Mother Zeerith Xorlarrin.

  The smile went away instantly, though, when the door burst in, and no glyphs exploded, and two drow males crashed into the room.

  “How dare you!” Kiriy shouted, leaping up and drawing her whip.

  “My dear Kiriy, High Priestess, do you not recognize me?” Jarlaxle asked, and he tapped his finger to his temple and dispelled the illusion and became again the mercenary leader.

  The priestess gasped. “What are you doing here?” Kiriy drew a dagger and placed it against the back of Dahlia’s neck, and the elf groaned.

  Jarlaxle held his hands out wide, innocently. “I serve House Do’Urden,” he replied. “And so, apparently, I serve you.”

  “Then be out on the balcony and repel the stone heads, and be quick!” Kiriy ordered, or started to order, for Jarlaxle’s companion took a different tack than the mercenary leader.

  Entreri pulled off his mask, becoming a human once more, and threw it aside.

  “Iblith!” the priestess gasped, her dagger arm coming out for Entreri.

  And he exploded into motion, charging ahead, his sword arcing out in front of him and creating a wall of floating black ash.

  Kiriy thrust her scourge forward, the snake heads hungrily striking through the ash wall as she began to cast a spell. Confident the immediate way was clear, and that her spell was ready, she burst through the opaque barrier, ready to destroy the foolish human.

  But Entreri wasn’t there.

  “She is Xorlarrin!” she heard Jarlaxle cry, aiming it past her, and only then did the priestess begin to understand the truth of Artemis Entreri, a recognition that lasted only the eye-blink it took Charon’s Claw to slash against her back.

  Kiriy was fully armored, both with exquisite drow mail woven into her robes and with her own considerable defensive magic. No normal sword could have gotten through that wall.

  But Charon’s Claw was no normal sword.

  No enchanted blade could have delivered a serious blow.

  But Charon’s Claw was no mere enchanted blade.

  Kiriy Xorlarrin staggered forward under the weight of the strike. She rolled, grimacing in pain, but ready to battle.

  And there was Entreri, in her face, sword spinning and weaving, and his other hand, gripping a dagger, flashing all around.

  Kiriy had raised her scourge and commanded the snakes to strike, twice, before she realized that not a serpent head remained.

  She cried out and fell back, moving the dagger to defend.

  But in came the red blade, striking all around, always just ahead of her defensive turns or blocks, always finding a strong angle. Just when she at last thought she had caught up to the human, he rolled behind her block and she felt the bite of a dagger in her ribs.

  “Oh, not that!” she heard Jarlaxle say, and to her relief, briefly, she thought she had found reprieve.

  But then the red blade came across, brutally, perfectly, and Kiriy’s head flipped up into the air.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Jarlaxle said from the bed, where he was examining Dahlia and had taken her staff in hand.

  “I have had enough of drow priestesses,” Entreri replied.

  “She is the eldest daughter of Matron Mother Zeerith.”

  “Was,” Entreri corrected.

  “Why must you make my life so difficult?”

  “To have me walking beside you is a privilege,” Entreri replied, wiping his sword on Kiriy’s headless body. “I want you to earn every step.”

  Jarlaxle surrendered with a sigh, his gaze going to Kiriy’s head, which had landed upright, her eyes still open. “I should craft a human disguise,” the mercenary mused. “They always underestimate you.”

  “So you do.”

  Jarlaxle began to reply, stopped and blinked, then started again, and stopped again when Dahlia stirred beside him. She met his disarming smile with a left hook, screamed, and leaped upon him.

  Artemis Entreri was there in a heartbeat, before his dropped weapons even hit the floor. He grabbed at Dahlia as Jarlaxle fell away from her, finally tackling her to the bed. She kept up the struggle, punching and clawing, and even tried to bite Entreri.

  Entreri sat up and pulled her up to her knees. He lined up her face in front of his own, gripping her arms tightly, pinning them down and holding her back.

  “Dahlia!” he said.

  She smashed her forehead into his face.

  Entreri pushed her back a bit more and spat blood. “Dahlia! Dahlia, do you not know me?”

  The elf stared at him, wide-eyed, her face contorting into a mask of the sheerest confusion.

  “Dahlia!”

  She seemed about to say something, but seemed confused too, and shook her head in denial.

  “Dahlia,” Entreri said softly, and he felt all the strength go out of the elf. She simply collapsed, falling forward into his waiting hug, and there he held her tightly, whispering to her, promising her that he would get her out of this place.

  “No, truly,” Jarlaxle said from over the headless body of Kiriy Xorlarrin. “You really didn’t have to do that.”

  “I didn’t have to, but it felt good,” Entreri said, holding Dahlia close.

  Jarlaxle started to reply, but shrugged instead. He took up Dahlia’s wondrous staff, quickly examined it, then broke it down and tucked it into his pouch.

  “We must be away,” Jarlaxle said, and Entreri wasn’t about to argue.

  “Indeed,” a woman’s voice replied, and there stood Matron Mother Quenthel Baenre, where a wall had been just a moment before. The disfigured illithid stood beside her, the pair flanked by Sos’Umptu and Minolin Fey. A cadre of the Baenre garrison hovered about, close behind, protecting the matron mother and the Archmage of Menzoberranzan, Tsabrak Xorlarrin, who maintained the passwall. Before Jarlaxle or Entreri could react, the room’s door banged open, and another battle group appeared, this one led by Weapons Master Andzrel Baenre.

  Jarlaxle glanced at Entreri and shook his head.

  The Baenres had come prepared.

  “We saved Matron Mother Darthiir, your voice on the council,” Jarlaxle said when he noted Quenthel Baenre’s disgusted expression as she looked upon the headless corpse at her feet.

  “For just that reason, I am sure,” the matron mother sarcastically replied.

  ON THE BALCONY of the House chapel, Yvonnel, K’yorl, Yiccardaria, and Tiago looked down upon Drizzt Do’Urden.

  He didn’t know they were there. His vision and thoughts were caught in the web of a clairvoyance enchantment that had sent him back through the decades. Drizzt gasped and stumbled to the altar, trembling, his knees giving out beneath him, but he crawled on, reaching desperately.

  “He is a confused and tormented s
oul,” Yvonnel explained. “He witnesses now a moment that brings him great pain, and great doubt. He has no footing now, no confidence in his principles or his code of honor. He is a pitiable thing.”

  “He is a heretic,” Tiago corrected, sword in hand and buckler unwinding into a larger shield. “An abomination, and soon to be a gift to Lady Lolth.”

  “When you are told,” Yiccardaria said in no uncertain terms, and even stubborn Tiago had to back off a bit at the command of a yochlol.

  “Your bravery is commendable, if your temerity is not. Do you underestimate this warrior, Tiago? Do you place no value on the brilliance he has attained?”

  “I have battled him before,” the young upstart weapons master replied.

  And so Drizzt knows what to expect from you and your unusual weapons, Yvonnel thought, but did not say. She did smile, though, and offered a rather evil chuckle that should have warned Tiago somewhat—if he wasn’t so cocksure of his own expertise.

  “He does seem a pitiful thing,” Yvonnel said instead, nodding down at the seemingly broken drow, who knelt by the empty altar and held onto it for support. “There will be little glory in killing him when his eyes and his thoughts are caught in the past. The headsman is not regarded as a hero for his actions on the gallows.”

  Tiago stared at her, clearly confused, trying to form some rebuttal and looking very much as if he suddenly believed that his trophy had been stolen from his grasp yet again.

  “But that will not be the case,” said Yvonnel. “The enchantment upon Drizzt is mine own. I can dismiss it easily. Do not doubt that he will find focus when you go down there against him.”

  Tiago visibly relaxed.

  “Do you deny any aid when you are in combat with Drizzt?” Yiccardaria asked.

  “I do not understand.”

  “Shall I incapacitate Drizzt Do’Urden if you are losing?” Yvonnel explained. “Or heal your wounds if he scores first blood?”

  The young weapons master seemed unsure, eyes darting from Yvonnel to Yiccardaria.

  Yvonnel took great pleasure in his obvious unease, and nearly laughed aloud when he licked his lips. He was measuring his own confidence against his desired glory. If he agreed to the help, his glory would be diminished.