"Evil union." Drizzt muttered, looking away.
"There is a gain." Vierna replied, quickly back in control of her temper.
Drizzt cast an accusing glance her way. "Have you had a similar experience?"
"I am a high priestess." was her simple reply. Darkness hovered all about Drizzt, outrage so intense that he nearly swooned. "Did it please you?" he spat.
"It brought me power." Vierna growled back. "You cannot understand the value."
"What did it cost you?"
Vierna’s slap nearly knocked Drizzt from his feet. "Come with me." she said, grabbing the front of his robe. "There is a place I want to show to you."
They moved out from Arach-Tinilith and across the Academy’s courtyard. Drizzt hesitated when they reached the pillars that marked the entrance to Tier Breche.
"I cannot pass between these." he reminded his sister. "I am not yet graduated from Melee-Magthere."
"A formality." Vierna replied, not slowing her pace at all. "I am a mistress of Arach-Tinilith, I have the power to graduate you."
Drizzt wasn’t certain of the truth of Vierna’s claim, but she was indeed a mistress of Arach- Tinilith. As much as Drizzt feared the edicts of the Academy, he didn’t want to anger Vierna again.
He followed her down the wide stone stairs and out into the meandering roadways of the city proper.
"Home?" he dared to ask after a short while.
"Not yet." came the curt reply. Drizzt didn’t press the point any further.
They veered off to the eastern end of the great cavern, across from the wall that held House Do’Urden, and came to the entrances of three small tunnels, all guarded by glowing statues of giant scorpions. Vierna paused for just a moment to consider which was the correct course, then led on again, down the smallest of the tunnels.
The minutes became an hour, and still they walked. The passage widened and soon led them into a twisting catacomb of crisscrossing corridors. Drizzt quickly lost track of the path behind them as they made their way through, but Vierna followed a predetermined course that she knew well.
Then, beyond a low archway, the floor suddenly dropped away and they found themselves on a narrow ledge overlooking a wide chasm. Drizzt looked at his sister curiously but held his question when he saw that she was deep in the concentration. She uttered a few simple commands, then tapped herself and Drizzt on the forehead.
"Come." she instructed, and she and Drizzt stepped off the ledge and levitated down to the chasm floor.
A thin mist, from some unseen hot pool or tar pit, hugged the stone. Drizzt could sense the danger here, and the evil.
A brooding wickedness hung in the air as tangibly as the mist.
"Do not fear." Vierna signaled to him. "I have put a spell of masking upon us. They cannot see us."
"They?" Drizzt’s hands asked, but even as he motioned in the code, he heard a scuttling off to the side. He followed Vierna’s gaze down to a distant boulder and the wretched thing perched upon it.
At first, Drizzt thought it was a drow elf, and from the waist up, it was indeed, though bloated and pale. Its lower body, though, resembled a spider, with eight arachnid legs to support its frame. The creature held a bow ready in its hands but seemed confused, as though it could not discern what had entered its lair.
Vierna was pleased by the disgust on her brother’s face as he viewed the thing. "Look upon it well, younger brother." she signaled. "Behold the fate of those who anger the Spider Queen."
"What is it?" Drizzt signaled back quickly.
"A drider." Vierna whispered in his ear. Then, back in the silent code, she added, "Lolth is not a merciful deity."
Drizzt watched, mesmerized, as the drider shifted its position on the boulder, searching for the intruders. Drizzt couldn’t tell if it was a male or female, so bloated was its torso, but he knew that it didn’t matter. The creature was not a natural creation and would leave no descendants behind, whatever its gender. It was a tormented body, nothing more, hating itself, in all probability, more than everything else around it.
"I am merciful." Vierna continued silently, though she knew her brother’s attention was fully on the drider. She rested back flat against the stone wall.
Drizzt spun on her, suddenly realizing her intent. Then Vierna sank into the stone. "Goodbye, little brother." came her final call. "This is a better fate than you deserve."
"No!" Drizzt growled, and he clawed at the empty wall until an arrow sliced into his leg. The scimitars flashed out in his hands as he spun back to face the danger. The drider took aim for a second shot.
Drizzt meant to dive to the side, to the protection of another boulder, but his wounded leg immediately fell numb and useless. Poison.
Drizzt just got one blade up in time to deflect the second arrow, and he dropped to one knee to clutch at his wound.
He could feel the cold poison making its way through his limb, but he stubbornly snapped off the arrow shaft and turned his attention back to the attacker. He would have to worry about the wound later, would have to hope that he could tend to it in time. Right now, his only concern was to get out of the chasm.
He turned to flee, to seek a sheltered spot where he could levitate back up to the ledge, but he found himself face-to-face with another drider.
An axe sliced by his shoulder, barely missing its mark.
Drizzt blocked the return blow and launched his second scimitar into a thrust, which the drider stopped with a second axe.
Drizzt was composed now, and was confident that he could defeat this foe, even with one leg limiting his mobility, until an arrow cracked into his back.
Drizzt lurched forward under the weight of the blow, but managed to parry another attack from the drider before him. Drizzt dropped to his knees and fell face-down.
When the axe-wielding drider, thinking Drizzt dead, started toward him, Drizzt kicked into a roll that put him squarely under the creature’s bulbous belly. He plunged his scimitar up with all his strength, then curled back under the deluge of spidery fluids.
The wounded drider tried to scurry away but fell to the side, its insides draining out onto the stone floor. Still, Drizzt had no hope. His arms, too, were numb now, and when the other wretched creature descended upon him, he could not hope to fight it off. He struggled to cling to consciousness, searching for some way out, battling to the bitter end. His eyelids became heavy…
Then Drizzt felt a hand grab his robe, and he was roughly lifted to his feet and slammed against the stone wall.
He opened his eyes to see his sister’s face.
"He lives." Drizzt heard her say. "We must get him back quickly and tend to his wounds."
Another figure moved in front of him.
"I thought this the best way." Vierna apologized.
"We cannot afford to lose him." came an unemotional reply. Drizzt recognized the voice from his past. He fought through the blur and forced his eyes to focus.
"Malice." he whispered. "Mother."
Her enraged punch brought him into a clearer mind-set.
"Matron Malice!" she growled, her angry scowl only an inch from Drizzt’s face. "Do not ever forget that!"
To Drizzt, her coldness rivaled the poison’s, and his relief at seeing her faded away as quickly as it had flooded through him.
"You must learn your place!" Malice roared, reiterating the command that had haunted Drizzt all of his young life.
"Hear my words." she demanded, and Drizzt heard them keenly. "Vierna brought you to this place to have you killed. She showed you mercy." Malice cast a disappointed glance at her daughter.
"I understand the will of the Spider Queen better than she." the matron continued, her spittle spraying Drizzt with every word. "If ever you speak ill of Lolth, our goddess, again, I will take you back to this place myself! But not to kill you that would be too easy." She jerked Drizzt’s head to the side so that he could look upon the grotesque remains of the drider he had killed.