Were it not for him, though, the dwarves of Icewind Dale would not likely have ever accepted a lost and wandering dark elf into their homes as kin.
Unless there was another like Bruenor who first happened upon me on the slopes of Kelvin’s Cairn. I cannot dismiss that possibility, for within every people, every culture, there exists the rainbow span of qualities, prejudices, compassion, kindness, and cruelty.
It is an absurd belief of the humans that the drow are simply evil—oh, many drow have earned that reputation, to be sure! But so have many humans. They make war on each other as commonly as drow houses battle in the shadows, and on a scale so great that one battle might leave more broken victims, including those who have no part in the fight, than exist in the entire city of Menzoberranzan. I have witnessed Prisoner’s Carnival, where the magistrates torture fellow humans with as much skill and glee as any whip-wielding priestess of Lolth. I have seen the elves of the surface turn refugees away from their shelter, leaving them to the mercy of those pursuing them. Even the often carefree halflings are not exempt from the darker shades of the heart.
Yet for all of this, I remain confident of a better tomorrow. Bruenor and the other dwarven kings and queens do not hold their people clenched within as tight a fist as their predecessors did. Regis and Donnola do not rule Bleeding Vines, no. They are called the lord and lady of the village, but they are more the overseers of the business of the place, and, amazingly, they serve at the sufferance of their villagers. For Donnola has changed the tradition of the Topolino clan. And now the people of Bleeding Vines have been given a great gift: their voice.
Because that’s what tradition does: it robs an individual of their voice. It eschews the solo and focuses solely on the chorus—and woe betide the singer who goes against the conductor!
No, Bleeding Vines is more of an orchestra, each instrument having its say but playing in harmony, creating a whole. If the people there choose others to lead, then Donnola and Regis will step aside.
This is the tomorrow I hope for, because, I believe, only in a culture where the demands of all the people are heard can the needs of the people be met.
This is the sound of tomorrow, and so tomorrow will be better than today.
—Drizzt Do’Urden
Chapter 14
If Only
The Year of the False Bargain
Dalereckoning 1118
Dab’nay stirred from her deep slumber, rolling about in the thick, warm furs. She didn’t open her eyes, because she wanted to focus entirely on the softness and comfort. She knew where she was, on a quiet ledge on Menzoberranzan’s eastern wall, a safe place where few drow happened by, mostly because the area was thick with the stench of monster slaves. There were goblins here, and kobolds, but they remained down below in their filthy hovels, and none would dare climb up to challenge a priestess and a weapon master.
So here, ironically, Dab’nay and her lover could find moments of reprieve.
At last she stretched and opened her eyes, and as they adjusted to the low light on this darker end of Menzoberranzan, she made out the silhouette of Zaknafein, sitting on the edge, legs dangling over, taking in the view of the city. She crawled up behind him and draped her arms around his neck and shoulders.
“It is beautiful, yes,” she said. Far away, nearly a mile and a half, the giant pillar of Narbondel showed the early-morning glow, a slight orange-red hue amid a sea of faerie-fire-decorated stalagmites and stalactites, mostly blue and purple, but with every color of the spectrum represented. All of the giant cavern seemed a living, breathing thing, the lights shifting hue and intensity to fit the aesthetic demands of each house’s demanding matron. The greater houses up on the Qu’ellarz’orl carried the most magnificent designs within their accent lights.
Such a serene facade for the always tumultuous City of Spiders, the city dedicated to the Lady of Chaos. It occurred to Dab’nay that anyone who entered the great cavern from this end without understanding the drow would look upon Menzoberranzan with a first impression that would likely get them murdered or enslaved.
Exactly as the matrons wanted it.
Never before had Dab’nay considered that the appearance might be tactical and not simply pretty dressing. But now, here, it all made sense.
“It should be beautiful,” Zaknafein replied, rather sourly.
“Think of the power concentrated there, among those lights and shadows,” Dab’nay said, snuggling a bit closer. “Who but the gods and great lords of the lower planes could come against us and survive?”
“The power to build whatever we choose,” Zaknafein agreed, “except that we are so busy killing each other that we dare not look beyond our own walls. Walls that we have built against each other more than any outsiders.”
“‘So busy killing each other,’” Dab’nay slyly echoed, smirking. “Something that Zaknafein is quite adept at doing, I seem to recall.”
The weapon master shrugged and glanced back at the woman. “If not, then I would be long dead. And does it matter? If I didn’t kill them, I’m sure they could find others to offer their blades for the task.”
“How many others feel the same, I wonder?” Dab’nay asked.
“Not enough,” he said. “And so it perpetuates until, perhaps, we kill enough of each other to allow some other people to come in and pay us back for our viciousness.”
“Our viciousness? It was their viciousness that put us here in the first place!”
Zaknafein’s little responding laugh was so full of resignation that it gave Dab’nay pause.
“It was Corellon Larethian who betrayed us,” Dab’nay reminded him. “Corellon, who is god to the elves of the surface worlds, who gave us to Lolth—gave us, as if we were rothé cattle.”
“Yet you love Lolth,” Zaknafein retorted.
Dab’nay knew that her hesitation was likely quite telling, but she was truly taken aback and couldn’t react fast enough. “Love” was not the word she would use to describe her feelings for the Spider Queen. She feared Lolth and understood her duty to Lolth, and so she was devoted to Lolth, because to be otherwise in Menzoberranzan was to be abandoned and likely soon dead.
“Do not most people of all races love their goddesses?” she asked, trying to find some way around this uncomfortable line of discussion, particularly with one as blunt and cynical as Zaknafein Do’Urden.
“Do they? Or do they love having their fear of death assuaged?”
“Devotion is more than fear,” she insisted.
“It can be, but with the notion of gods and an afterlife, I expect it most usually is not,” Zaknafein answered. “The fear of death is too pervasive, as is the fear of never again seeing those we love.” He gave another of his helpless chuckles, dripping with resignation and venom. “But then, we are so afraid that we don’t dare love, do we?”
Dab’nay buried her face in Zaknafein’s hair and did not answer. Not with words, anyway, but he felt her sobs, surely, and that should be sufficient.
“We’re all trapped,” he whispered—to the city and to himself, she knew, and not specifically to her. “We have been ruled by fear for so long that we are afraid of being afraid.”
“Lolth taught us that we are superior,” Dab’nay did say then, because she was indeed afraid at that moment, afraid that even such a conversation as this would throw her from the favor of the Spider Queen. A priestess without that favor—even one without official title anymore—would be vulnerable indeed. “Would you rather we grovel beneath the evil elves, or crouch in the mines of smelly dwarves, or beg for acceptance from the short-lived, stupid humans?”
“No, of course not,” he replied, and Dab’nay thought she heard a hint of sarcasm creeping in. “Better that we hold fast to a grievance that has been passed down through generations, about an incident that may or may not have actually occurred and perhaps or perhaps not in the manner in which we’ve been taught.”
“Blasphemy,” she whispered in stern warning.
“Is it, though? Would it be against the edicts of the Spider Queen for Matron Mother Baenre or any other matron to so tilt the very history of the elven races to her own benefit?” Zaknafein answered.
It was a question that Dab’nay had privately considered many times, and one that she expected almost every other drow had asked of herself or himself many times.
“Prisoners,” Zaknafein whispered. “All of us, in jails of our own making.”
“Is life so bad for you, Zaknafein?” she asked, and she squeezed him tighter and nuzzled his neck. “To think so now, at this particular moment . . . well, truly, you wound me.”
That brought a smile from him, she was glad to see. Both fell silent then and just stared at the dancing and glowing faerie fires of Menzoberranzan, enjoying the beautiful stillness.
Even though they knew it a lie.
Only a couple of days later, Zaknafein ducked down a dark alleyway in the Braeryn. He thought himself a fool for coming here, on word from Dab’nay alone, and figured that he was walking to his doom.
But the prize was simply too great to ignore.
At the end of a straight avenue between two structures, he moved cautiously around a stalagmite that formed the right-hand corner of the alley bend, and peered ahead. This second juncture was also empty, with the path varying in width but not enough to create any hidden alcoves. Zaknafein didn’t know this place, but he had already circled the buildings and stalagmites forming this alley network and was confident that if the prize was waiting, it would be around that second bend.
He crept down silent as death. He peered around.
Arathis Hune stood only ten strides away, leaning on the alley’s back wall, a doorway to his left for a quick exit.
Zaknafein could turn this into an ambush, he knew, considering the man’s posture. Arathis Hune wasn’t holding weapons. He was expecting someone, but not Zaknafein. No, he was expecting Dab’nay, and so he had no reason to be overly on his guard.
If he came around in a full charge, Zaknafein would hold all the initiative, and he was superior to Arathis Hune and so would likely end the fight before it could ever truly begin.
But Zaknafein shook his head and walked around instead, openly, his weapons sheathed, to face his foe.
Arathis Hune’s expression revealed his surprise. He came up off the wall to stand straight, hands going to his sides.
“What are you doing here?”
“You were expecting someone else?” Zaknafein replied.
“Or I was expecting no one at all.”
“You come here to ponder the meaning of life?”
Arathis Hune scowled at him.
“Or perhaps to consider the deceit that guides your every move? The treachery that fills your heart? The inability to determine friend from foe?”
Zaknafein kept walking as he spoke, finishing within three strides of the man.
“What spittle falls from your lips, Zaknafein?” Arathis Hune demanded.
“You deny it?”
“Probably,” Arathis Hune answered with a snicker. “What am I denying?”
“My fight with Duvon Tr’arach,” said Zaknafein, “was not fairly waged.”
“Wagered? The betting was open and, for many of us, quite profitable.”
“Waged,” Zaknafein reiterated. “Duvon cheated, or someone cheated for him.”
“Not very well, then,” the man returned dryly.
“From what I have heard, Arathis Hune did not fare so well in his betting,” Zaknafein said.
“Ask Jarlaxle about the bags of gold I returned to him.”
“Jarlaxle’s gold. What of your own?”
“Why would that be of concern to Zaknafein?”
“Because someone cheated on behalf of Duvon.”
“Are you accusing me?”
“I am.”
“You know the workings of Menzoberranzan, weapon master, and so I urge you now, as your friend, to caution. One does not make such accusations without—”
“Do not think to act my better and teach me the ways of our people. I’m well aware of what I say. But know this: I am making the accusation only to you, openly and alone, standing right here before you.”
“An accusation I deny.”
“Of course you do, but it is my experience that most cheaters are also liars.”
Arathis Hune snickered. “A hundred eyes were on that fight. What might I have done—”
“Quavylene Oblodra,” Zaknafein interrupted.
Arathis Hune’s expression changed rather dramatically at that moment and he suddenly seemed quite uninterested in replying.
Both realized there was nothing left to say.
Both drow drew out their weapons, two swords for Zaknafein, a sword and a long dirk for Arathis Hune.
Zaknafein started forward quickly, bringing up his opponent’s blades. He cut fast to the right and leaped up onto the alley’s side wall, then immediately sprang back the other way in a sidelong somersault, landing with solid footing and soft legs that bent to absorb the weight of the landing and to redirect him forward to finish the charge he had started.
Now, though, Arathis Hune wasn’t quite as square with him, having followed the break to the side with both his eyes and posture.
He had to cross-block with his sword, coming across right-to-left to intercept the downward chop of Zaknafein’s right-hand blade, then making a slight turn to catch Zaknafein’s sword before sliding fast and hard back the other way.
He surprised the weapon master then, though, by not completing the returning block with that sword against Zaknafein’s second, thrusting blade. Instead, Arathis Hune ran his right hand under the engaged swords, his dagger neatly catching Zaknafein’s sword, which he turned inward and across as he turned his hips the other way.
Arathis Hune had escaped the initial engagement, and now ran two strides to leap up against the rear wall of the alley, angling so that his second spring brought him to the wall to Zaknafein’s left, and there angling so that his third leap, adding a tight somersault, landed him beside the spot, but now to the side, and ready to take the initiative.
Except Zaknafein wasn’t there.
For as Arathis Hune had begun his retreat, Zaknafein had instantly measured the likely angles and jumps he had planned, and so Zaknafein had rushed and jumped out to the right-hand wall, up high, catching a ledge, springing again even higher from that point, tossing his right-hand sword up high while catching the top of the door frame with his right hand to begin a swing that sent him against the back wall to rebound high and into a backward somersault.
He noted Arathis Hune’s progress as he executed that move and tucked his legs to properly time his own landing.
He came down an eyeblink after Arathis Hune, appearing suddenly before the puzzled man. Zaknafein caught his descending sword up high even as his left-hand blade worked fast to properly align his opponent’s blocking sword and dagger, keeping them too low for a deflection of the higher strike.
Just like that, Zaknafein had him.
“The Do’Urden weapon master could have gained a great advantage by charging straight in instead of engaging his enemy with banter,” Matron Soulez Armgo told her visitor. The two women stared into a scrying pool of still water to watch the events unfolding in the prescribed alleyway.
“Zaknafein would not do that,” Dab’nay Tr’arach replied to the powerful matron. She shifted nervously, wondering, and not for the first time, if she had made a terrible mistake here. “He is too honorable.”
“Too stupid, you mean. He will not survive for long. Matron Malice has undeniably caught herself a fine fighter, but unless he becomes a great killer, he’ll just be another rotting corpse soon.”
Dab’nay started to reply, but caught herself and just nodded. She tried not to wince and thus betray her emotions toward Zaknafein, but inside, the woman’s stomach was twisting with anxiety. It was more pain than she had imagined possible when she had taken the deal offered her by Matron Soulez
and had quietly arranged this fight.
She focused on the images revealed in the magical pool, then, watching her magnificent lover in a great struggle with an able opponent for the second time in a tenday.
As great as Zaknafein had been against Duvon, now, with more room and fewer observers about, she saw him in all his glory, leaping, spinning, landing in line for the next attack. She began to breathe a bit easier, growing confident that Arathis Hune could not defeat Zaknafein.
But then the image, unexpectedly, blinked out to blackness.
Zaknafein went for the kill, his caught sword aimed perfectly for the assassin’s skull.
But then Zaknafein got hit—he felt as if a large rothé had kicked him. His sensibilities flew from him, his thoughts scrambling and flying off in shocked tangents. He tried to bring his swords up defensively, only to realize that he wasn’t even holding the weapons anymore.
The realization hit him starkly, as he understood then that he was hopelessly, helplessly vulnerable. He stumbled aside, toward the back wall of the alley, but couldn’t even control his muscles enough to hold his balance, and down he crumpled, expecting Arathis Hune to come up over him and cut him apart.
Only after he had settled, seated against that wall, did he realize that his opponent, too, had been hit. Arathis Hune was facing the alley entrance, taking staggered steps, trying to hold his footing, but futilely, for he toppled hard to the stone.
Zaknafein heard the sharp thump as Arathis Hune’s face hit the cavern floor. He could make no sense of that, of any of it, until he glanced past Arathis Hune to see a familiar figure walking calmly down the alleyway.
Jarlaxle bent before Arathis Hune and retrieved the man’s weapons, then tossed them back the other way down the alley. Then Jarlaxle took Zaknafein’s swords, rolling them about in his hands, holding them at the ready.
Zaknafein was still groggy, still trying to get his sensibilities in line with the events unfolding before him, whatever they might be.
Boundless Page 21
