How small and vulnerable Matron Malice felt now! Her power paled in the face of the wrath of one of Lolth’s personal servants.
"Displeasure?" she dared to whisper. "How has my family brought displeasure to the Spider Queen? By what act?"
The handmaiden’s laughter erupted in a spout of flames and flying spiders, but the high priestesses held their positions. They accepted the heat and the crawling things as part of their penance.
"I have told you before, Matron Malice Do’Urden." The yochlol snarled with its droopy mouth, "and I shall tell you one final time. The Spider Queen does not reply to questions whose answers are already known!" In a blast of explosive energy that sent the four females of House Do’Urden tumbling to the floor, the handmaiden was gone.
Briza was the first to recover. She prudently rushed over to the brazier and smothered the remaining flames, thus closing the gate to the Abyss, the yochlol’s home plane.
"Who?" screamed Malice, the powerful matriarch once again. "Who in my family has invoked the wrath of Lolth?"
Malice appeared small again then, as the implications of the yochlol’s warning became all too clear. House Do’Urden was about to go to war with a powerful family. Without Lolth’s favor, House Do’Urden likely would cease to exist.
"We must find the perpetrator." Malice instructed her daughters, certain that none of them was involved. They were high priestesses, one and all. If any of them had done some misdeed in the eyes of the Spider Queen, the summoned yochlol surely would have exacted punishment on the spot. By itself, the handmaiden could have leveled House Do’Urden.
Briza pulled the snake whip from her belt. "I will get the information we require!" she promised.
"No!" said Matron Malice. "We must not reveal our search. Be it a soldier or a member of House Do’Urden, the guilty one is trained and hardened against pain. We cannot hope that torture will pull the confession from his lips not when he knows the consequences of his actions. We must discover the cause of Lolth’s displeasure immediately and properly punish the criminal. The Spider Queen must stand behind us in our struggles!"
"How, then, are we to discern the perpetrator?" the eldest daughter complained, reluctantly replacing the snake whip on her belt.
"Vierna and Maya, leave us." Matron Malice instructed. "Say nothing of these revelations and do nothing to hint at our purpose."
The two younger daughters bowed and scurried away, not happy with their secondary roles but unable to do anything about them.
"First we will look." Malice said to Briza. "We will see if we can learn of the guilty one from afar."
Briza understood. "The scrying bowl." she said. She rushed from the anteroom and into the chapel proper. In the central altar she found the valuable item, a wide golden bowl laced throughout with black pearls. Hands trembling, Briza placed the bowl atop the altar and reached into the most sacred of the many compartments. This was the holding bin for the prized possession of House Do’Urden, a great onyx chalice.
Malice then joined Briza in the chapel proper and took the chalice from her. Moving to the large font at the entrance to the great room, Malice dipped the chalice into a sticky fluid, the unholy water of her religion. She then chanted, "Spiderae aught icor ven." The ritual complete, Malice moved back to the altar and poured the unholy water into the golden bowl.
She and Briza sat down to watch.
Drizzt stepped onto the floor of Zaknafein’s training gym for the first time in more than a decade and felt as if he had come home. He’d spent the best years of his young life here, almost wholly here. For all the disappointments he had encountered since―and no doubt would continue to experience throughout his life―Drizzt would never forget that brief sparkle of innocence, that joy, he had known when he was a student in Zaknafein’s gym.
Zaknafein entered and walked over to face his former student. Drizzt saw nothing familiar or comforting in the weapon master’s face. A perpetual scowl now replaced the once common smile. It was an angry demeanor that hated everything around it, perhaps Drizzt most of all. Or had Zaknafein always worn such a grimace? Drizzt had to wonder. Had nostalgia glossed over Drizzt’s memories of those years of early training? Was this mentor, who had so often warmed Drizzt’s heart with a lighthearted chuckle, actually the cold, lurking monster that Drizzt now saw before him?
"Which has changed, Zaknafein." Drizzt asked aloud, "you, my memories, or my perceptions?"
Zak seemed not even to hear the whispered question.
"Ah, the young hero has returned." he said, "the warrior with exploits beyond his years."
"Why do you mock me?" Drizzt protested.
"He who killed the hook horrors." Zak continued. His swords were out in his hands now, and Drizzt responded by drawing his scimitars. There was no need to ask the rules of engagement in this contest, or the choice of weapons.
Drizzt knew, had known before he had ever come here, that there would be no rules this time. The weapons would be their weapons of preference, the blades that each of them had used to kill so many foes.
"He who killed the earth elemental." Zak snarled derisively. He launched a measured attack, a simple lunge with one blade. Drizzt batted it aside without even thinking of the parry.
Sudden fires erupted in Zak’s eyes, as if the first contact had sundered all the emotional bonds that had tempered his thrust. "He who killed the girl child of the surface elves!" he cried, an accusation and no compliment. Now came the second attack, vicious and powerful, an arcing swipe descending at Drizzt’s head. "Who cut her apart to appease his own thirst for blood!"
Zak’s words knocked Drizzt off his guard emotionally, wrapped his heart in confusion like some devious mental whip. Drizzt was a seasoned warrior, though, and his reflexes did not register the emotional distraction. A scimitar came up to catch the descending sword and deflected it harmlessly aside.
"Murderer!" Zak snarled openly. "Did you enjoy the dying child’s screams?" He came at Drizzt in a furious whirl, swords dipping and diving, slicing at every angle.
Drizzt, enraged by the hypocrite’s accusations, matched the fury, screaming out for no better reason than to hear the anger of his own voice.
Any watching the battle would have found no breath in the next few blurring moments. Never had the Underdark witnessed such a vicious fight as when these two masters of the blade each attacked the demon possessing the other, and himself.
Adamantite sparked and nicked, droplets of blood spattered both the combatants, though neither felt any pain, and neither knew if he’d injured the other.
Drizzt came with a two-blade sidelong swipe that drove Zak’s swords out wide. Zak followed the motion quickly, turned a complete circle, and slammed back into Drizzt’s thrusting scimitars with enough force to knock the young warrior from his feet. Drizzt fell into a roll and came back up to meet his charging adversary.
A thought came over him.
Drizzt came up high, too high, and Zak drove him back on his heels. Drizzt knew what would soon be coming, he invited it openly. Zak kept Drizzt’s weapons high through several combined maneuvers. He then went with the move that had defeated Drizzt in the past, expecting that the best Drizzt could attain would be equal footing, double-thrust low.
Drizzt executed the appropriate cross-down parry, as he had to, and Zak tensed, waiting for his eager opponent to try to improve the move. "Child killer!" he growled, goading on Drizzt. He didn’t know that Drizzt had found the solution.
With all the anger he had ever known, all the disappointments of his young life gathering within his foot, Drizzt focused on Zak. That smug face, feigning smiles and drooling for blood. Between the hilts, between the eyes, Drizzt kicked, blowing out every ounce of rage in a single blow.