Boundless

by R. A. Salvatore

  Out came four swords from the two in front to meet him, while the third, still back a few steps, yelled, “No! No! Zaknafein!”

  The two in front stabbed their nearest blades in unison, each sweeping across with the other in perfect harmony, a tremendous and practiced defense that would have killed or at least halted almost any drow warrior.

  Their opponent did not fit that description.

  He slid down low to his knees, engaging their thrusts with uplifting blades that brought those two swords up high enough to intercept their slashes.

  And up the attacker popped to his feet, his blades angling perfectly, each coming to a stop with its tip under the chin of its respective target, drawing blood, lifting the drow to their toes.

  “Your weapons on the ground or your blood on the ground,” the attacker said. “I care not which.”

  Four swords clanged to the stone.

  “Idiots,” said the drow behind them, the noble secondboy of House Do’Urden. Then to the attacker, he added, “Are you quite done with your play, weapon master?”

  Zaknafein stared at Dinin from between the two trapped soldiers. With an amused grin, he turned his wrists, sending the pair staggering backward, extending the superficial wounds, and as he let them disengage, he held out the side of his piwafwi, showing the hanging darts.

  “You might have just stopped down the hall,” Dinin Do’Urden said dryly.

  “I do not live my life on uncertainties like ‘might have,’” Zaknafein replied.

  “You did not recognize us?”

  “Oh, of course I did. That doesn’t mean I trust you.”

  Dinin blew a sigh. “The house is almost clear,” he said to change the subject. The four Do’Urdens and a host of others had come into House Ben’Zarafez, a weak house whose high ranking was based on inertia from its long-ago glory days, along with the way its matron had wisely sidestepped any ascending houses who desired to pass her by. That desperate situation had come to an end when the same matron, Decliz Ben’Zarafez, had secretly plotted to hire on a host of mercenaries, a pitiful attempt to try to sneak some true power back into her overranked house.

  The fallout had been swift and severe, leaving House Ben’Zarafez without its mercenaries and with its external spy networks destroyed.

  Leaving House Ben’Zarafez an easy target for Matron Malice.

  Perhaps a war had not been necessary, since Matron Decliz, wounded as she was, would have certainly allowed House Do’Urden to step above her house in rank, but this had apparently proven too tempting an opportunity for Malice to show her power for her to accept any such agreement.

  Besides, she had told the Do’Urden attack force, this would be good training for the certain wars against more imposing houses, like House DeVir, coming up in short order.

  Here they were, then, sweeping through the middle levels of the central and largest stalagmite of the three mounds that comprised the main structures of House Ben’Zarafez, finding minimal resistance and rolling over it with not a single loss of a Do’Urden soldier yet reported.

  “The house was almost clear before we came into it,” Zaknafein quipped in reply, and truly, he expected that they would have found more resistance if they had attacked the Oozing Myconid than they had encountered here.

  “We are nearly to Matron Decliz’s chamber,” said Dinin.

  Zaknafein hardly heard him, as he was focusing on the warrior to his right, who held his hand up to his throat to stem the bleeding and glared at Zaknafein with open contempt.

  “Well, strike then if you wish,” Zaknafein said to the man.

  The look of hatred turned to one of fear. “Weapon master, no, of course not,” the warrior said, falling back a step and holding his hands up submissively.

  “If you ever deign to look at me again in that manner, then strike and strike to kill,” Zaknafein warned him. “Because if you don’t kill me, I will kill you.”

  The terrified soldier seemed as if he would simply topple over.

  When Zaknafein looked back to Dinin, he found the young noble staring at him incredulously, shocked even. So was the other soldier, farther to the left. When he thought about it, Zaknafein understood the surprise, for his words to the poor soldier had been quite harsh and extreme, no doubt.

  Uncharacteristically so.

  But so be it, he decided. This unpleasant business had left a most foul taste in his mouth.

  “Matron Decliz has been severely weakened,” he told Dinin. “Her defenses will be minimal, no doubt.” He wanted to tell Dinin to take his two soldiers and go get her, and he almost did so. But the thought of Matron Malice’s reaction to such a thing was not a pleasant one. She didn’t want her young son going into battle against any house matron, of course. She had tasked Zaknafein with that role specifically—that was part of the reason she had paid so dearly to bring him into her house, and that was also the message she wanted to filter out into the streets after events such as this, to build the reputation of Zaknafein and thus build the status of House Do’Urden.

  Zaknafein certainly didn’t mind the task, either. Killing priestesses of Lolth remained one of his few joys in life.

  But alas, he knew that Matron Decliz wouldn’t be alone.

  “Follow on a count of two hundred,” he told Dinin, and he moved back down the hallway to the stairs that would bring him to the highest level of the hollowed-out stalagmite mound.

  He had already discerned and disarmed the two traps on the curving staircase, so now Zaknafein sprinted up, taking three steps at a time. He came to a landing set with a heavy door.

  He brought the monocle Matron Malice had given him up to his eye and carefully scrutinized the edges and the lock. Finding no trap, he lifted his hand and whispered a command word into an onyx ring.

  He heard the tumblers clicking, but the door did not open. Zaknafein shook his head and snorted, thinking that Matron Decliz was just delaying the inevitable.

  Into the ring he uttered a different command, this time sending forth a wave of dispelling energy to defeat the magical hold on the portal. Then he issued the first command again, expending the last of the three spells Malice had put into this ring, another dweomer to open portals. This time, the door flew open, revealing a curving hallway.

  Zaknafein didn’t hesitate; sprinting along, he went up on the wall around the bend, coming back down to the floor with a spinning and tumbling maneuver that had him flinging himself onward, straight at the two guards standing before the matron’s chambers.

  He could see the fear on their faces, could see the hesitation as they lifted their swords in what they knew would be the last moments of their lives.

  For even if they defeated this invader, they understood that a host was following close behind.

  Zaknafein darted left to fully engage the one on that side, throwing his right sword back the other way to pick off a thrust by the other. The guard before him used a thrust-and-slash combination that he easily blocked, ducked, then blocked again, and on that interception of the second thrust, Zaknafein turned his blade over that of the Ben’Zarafez soldier, then up and over again, and around a third time, each circling move twisting the soldier’s arm a bit more as the overmatched drow tried desperately to disengage.

  For the blade of Zaknafein moved too quickly for that guard to pace it, and so, predictably, the soldier tried to simply back away.

  But Zaknafein’s right hand picked off another stab from the other soldier, went up to intercept and defeat a downward slash, and whipped across underneath that blade to send the man falling away to the wall, leaving the weapon master free to advance in concert with the first soldier’s retreat.

  The man was against the matron’s door then, and out of room to continue his retreat. He tried to maneuver as Zaknafein bore in with sudden ferocity, but Zaknafein had him cornered, and every movement of that guard’s sword was met with a ringing rebuttal.

  Zaknafein pounded him relentlessly, numbing his arms under the weight of his blows.
In those first furious instants, the weapon master saw at least three opportunities to slip a blade past the awkward and desperate defenses and kill the Ben’Zarafez soldier, but he didn’t take them.

  Out from the wall came the other soldier, swords leading.

  Zaknafein noted his every move.

  Down and across went the weapon master, to his knees and turning underneath the stabbing swords of the guard to the right. This one, too, he could have gutted, but no, instead he came up inside the man’s reach and still turning, going right around to come out of the spin by driving his pommel hard into the poor guard’s face, snapping the man’s head to the side. Over he tumbled, facedown to the floor.

  Zaknafein was back the other way before the unconscious man hit the stone.

  His blades worked in a blur, picking off every thrust and cut, and indeed, hitting the man’s swords two or three times for every parry, overwhelming him with sheer speed.

  The poor guard just threw his swords aside and his hands up high. He fell to his knees, begging for mercy.

  Zaknafein gave him what he wanted . . . of a sort. He kicked him in the face, knocking his head back against the wall, and he, too, slumped down. He wasn’t unconscious, like his companion, but neither was he about to get up anytime soon.

  Zaknafein kicked in the door.

  This was the throne room of the house, the inner sanctum, the place of House Ben’Zarafez’s greatest power. Yet so depleted was the house that there sat Matron Decliz, alone and clearly frightened. She was not surrounded by other priestesses or nobles of the house. It was just her.

  And she made no move to strike at him with spells or her snake-headed scourge, which lay lifeless on the table before her.

  Zaknafein glanced out to the sides and behind, ensuring that the two guards were not about to jump into the fight anytime soon. Satisfied that they were finished, he moved cautiously into the room to the table opposite the matron.

  “You are that Zaknafein creature, no doubt,” she said.

  He didn’t answer, moving cautiously, looking all about for traps or hidden doors, trying to sense other people in the room who might be waiting invisibly for him to let down his guard.

  “Long ago, I could have petitioned the Ruling Council to strip my house of its rank,” Matron Decliz said, and she gave a resigned shrug when Zaknafein focused again on her. “Every ascendant house learned the truth easily enough, after all.”

  “What truth is that, Matron?”

  “That House Ben’Zarafez is little more than an illusion.”

  “And thus you simply allowed them to pass above you, accepting the demotion.”

  She nodded. “I knew it was only a matter of time before one too desirous of a victory would deny the ruse and put an end to House Ben’Zarafez. I even came to predict that it would be Matron Malice—that one is ever hungry, from all that I have learned of her.”

  Zaknafein kept his expression impassive. He wasn’t about to give away anything here.

  “Where are your children, Matron Decliz?” he asked.

  “There are only two.”

  “I know. Why are they not with you?”

  “I removed them from the house. I took away their surname.” She offered a pathetic little shrug, but one that touched Zaknafein. She cared enough about her children to remove them to safety? Such actions were hardly commonplace in Menzoberranzan.

  “And your priestesses?”

  “None remain. There is only me.”

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  She chortled. “I expect you to kill me. That is why you are here, yes?”

  “Take up your weapon. Gather your spells.”

  The matron stood up and glanced at her scourge, but left it lying on the table as she stepped away from her seat.

  Zaknafein’s thoughts swirled here. He considered Dab’nay—might Jarlaxle be interested in gathering up another priestess, and perhaps a few soldiers as well?

  “Raise your swords, weapon master,” Matron Decliz told him.

  “You ask for a merciful death?”

  She laughed at him, harshly, mockingly. “It is time for me to go to Lady Lolth,” she said, and Zaknafein found his sympathy fast flying. “It is a journey I eagerly accept. If you wish to torture before the killing blow, then do your worst, filthy male. The Spider Queen favors me. I have prayed.”

  “Then why is your house so pathetic and falling?”

  “Lolth appreciates how long beyond our time House Ben’Zarafez has managed to survive,” the matron explained. “She appreciates my cunning. She has told me this through her handmaidens.”

  “Such devotion,” Zaknafein replied sarcastically.

  “Is there any other purpose?”

  “Yet you removed your children,” the weapon master countered in an effort to dissolve her ridiculous claims.

  But Matron Decliz laughed at him all the louder. “I gave them to Lolth, idiot,” she said.

  That was the last word Matron Decliz Ben’Zarafez would ever utter, for before another could leave her mouth, before she could even gasp in surprise, Zaknafein was there, right before her, his sword expertly taking out her throat.

  He stared at that bloody sword when the woman crumpled to the floor before him. She hadn’t even enacted any defensive spells. The cut had been so easy!

  He shook his head, trying to make sense of all this. What god would expect such things from devout followers? What god would ask for the sacrifice of the children? And Zaknafein knew that Matron Decliz’s son was only a decade old.

  Sounds from the hall spun him around, to find that horrible witch Briza playing with the two guards he had downed. She had one up against the wall, the poor man trying to cover himself as her scourge, its barbs a pair of living, venomous snakes, hissed and bit at him. The other guard kept trying to rise, but Briza kicked and laughed at him, stomping him flat to the floor.

  The rest of the house was almost certainly cleared by then, Zaknafein knew, and he knew, too, that Briza would torture these two through the night. And then she would kill them—there would be no reprieve for any of House Ben’Zarafez, no bartering for slavery, no selling them to Jarlaxle for Bregan D’aerthe. In the name of Lolth, none of House Ben’Zarafez would survive this night.

  That was the rule in Menzoberranzan for a house going to war against another: there could be no witnesses, because no witnesses meant there had been no war in the first place.

  But neither could Zaknafein stomach the taunting serpents of Priestess Briza. The poor victim’s wails of agony assaulted the weapon master’s heart. His own misplaced sense of mercy toward the two had precipitated this predictable situation.

  Zaknafein moved to the doorway. “Matron Decliz is not quite dead, I believe,” he said to Briza. Her red eyes sparkled and she verily ran past him, eager to claim the greatest prize of all.

  No sooner had she stepped into the room than Zaknafein took her place in the hall. He stared at the three priestesses who had accompanied Briza, warning them back with his scowl, then put his swords to sudden and violent work with expert precision, ending the torment of the doomed Ben’Zarafez guards.

  The priestesses gasped, one yelped, and behind him in the room, Briza spun about to glare at him, offering an almost feral growl. Zaknafein turned slowly and matched that stare, unblinking.

  Briza swung back around and leaped ahead, guessing his ploy, he knew. The pool of blood had widened around the body of Matron Decliz, with the woman quite obviously dead before Briza had gone to her. The first priestess of House Do’Urden stormed back to the door, scourge in hand.

  “She is dead,” she stated.

  “Ah, I thought she had a bit of life left,” Zaknafein replied with a purposely unconvincing shrug.

  Briza stared at him hard, then glanced to the guard slumped against the wall, then to the one on the floor, both gone from this life.

  “You play dangerous games, weapon master,” she whispered, as if she believed that lowering her voice w
ould somehow unnerve the man.

  Zaknafein tried not to smile. In that moment of outrage, he hoped she would make a move at him, and resolved that if she did, he’d kill her and be done with it, then kill the three priestesses of her entourage for good measure. Because they did this, all of them. All of the priestesses who listened to the murderous call of the Spider Queen, that most horrible goddess. The house guards hadn’t deserved death, let alone torture—this was not a war.

  No, it was murder, and now he was a murderer, a killer fighting for no noble cause, no higher purpose, and not out of necessity to protect himself or any loved one.

  Zaknafein had trained for all of his life to be a warrior, a great warrior.

  He didn’t feel like one in that dark moment.

  Two hours later, Zaknafein sat at his table at the Oozing Myconid, cradling a very potent drink. He knew that he would be punished by Malice when he returned to House Do’Urden, something he should have done immediately after House Ben’Zarafez was declared dead by Briza.

  So be it.

  He needed the reprieve offered by this place, a filthy little tavern with terrible food and worse liquor, but one outside the rules of the wicked matrons and their horrid goddess. Upon arriving, though, he found his relief short-lived, as he was met by word of the impending return of a particular agent of Bregan D’aerthe.

  He lingered longer than he had intended, into the early morning hours, when finally Jarlaxle entered the tavern.

  “Matron Malice will be pleased,” the mercenary leader said, taking a seat opposite Zaknafein. “I heard that your victory was without cost.”

  Zaknafein could hardly agree with that sentiment, but he didn’t bother replying.

  “Why are you here?” Jarlaxle pressed. “Won’t she wish to secure her house fully, fearing some retribution after such a raid?”

  Zaknafein lifted his glass in a toast. “Here’s hoping that the whole lot of them gets murdered,” he said, and he gulped down the contents.

  Jarlaxle’s expression reflected sincere concern, but still, Zaknafein thought it might be grand to punch him right then.