"I am old, Malice."
"Matron Malice!" Briza protested, but Zak put a look on her so cold that she lowered her snake whip before she had even begun to put it to use.
"Older still will I become if Drizzt is put to his death."
"I do not desire this either." Malice agreed, but Zak recognized her lie. She didn’t care about Drizzt, or about anything else, beyond gaining the Spider Queen’s favor.
"Yet I see no alternative. Drizzt has angered Lolth, and she must be appeased before our war."
Zak began to understand. This meeting wasn’t about Drizzt at all. "Take me in the boy’s stead." he said.
Malice’s narrow grin could not hide her feigned surprise.
This was what she had desired from the very beginning.
"You are a proven fighter." the matron argued. "Your value, as you yourself have already admitted, cannot be underestimated. To sacrifice you to the Spider Queen would appease her, but what void will be left in House Do’Urden in the wake of your passing?"
"A void that Drizzt can fill." Zak replied. He secretly hoped that Drizzt, unlike he, would find some escape from it all, some way around Matron Malice’s evil plots.
"You are certain of this?"
"He is my equal in battle." Zak assured her. "He will grow stronger, too, beyond what Zaknafein has ever attained."
"You are willing to do this for him?" Malice sneered, eager drool edging her mouth.
"You know that I am." Zak replied.
"Ever the fool." Malice put in.
"To your dismay." Zak continued, undaunted, "you know that Drizzt would do the same for me."
"He is young." Malice purred. "He will be taught better."
"As you taught me?" snapped Zak.
Malice’s victorious grin became a grimace. "I warn you, Zaknafein," she growled in all her vile rage. "If you do anything to disrupt the ceremony to appease the Spider Queen, if, in the end of your wasted life, you choose to anger me one final time, I will give Drizzt to Briza. She and her torturous toys will give him to Lolth!"
Unafraid, Zak held his head high. "I have offered myself, Malice." he spat. "Have your fun while you may. In the end, Zaknafein will be at peace. Matron Malice Do’Urden will ever be at war!"
Shaking in anger, the moment of triumph stolen by a few simple words, Malice could only whisper, "Take him!"
Zak offered no resistance as Vierna and Maya tied him to the spider-shaped altar in the chapel. He watched Vierna mostly, seeing an edge of sympathy rimming her quiet eyes. She, too, might have been like him, but whatever hope he had for that possibility had been buried long ago under the relentless preaching of the Spider Queen.
"You are sad." Zak remarked to her.
Vierna straightened and tugged tightly on one of Zak’s bonds, causing him to grimace in pain. "A pity." she replied as coldly as she could. "House Do’Urden must give much to repay Drizzt’s foolish deed. I would have enjoyed watching the two of you together in battle."
"House Hun’ett would not have enjoyed the sight." Zak replied with a wink. "Cry not… my daughter." Vierna slapped him across the face. "Take your lies to your grave!"
"Deny it as you choose, Vierna." was all that Zak cared to reply.
Vierna and Maya backed away from the altar. Vierna fought to hold her scowl and Maya bit back an amused chuckle, as Matron Malice and Briza entered the room. The matron mother wore her greatest ceremonial robe, black and weblike, clinging and floating about her all at once, and Briza carried a sacred coffer.
Zak paid them no heed as they began their ritual, chanting for the Spider Queen, offering their hopes for appeasement. Zak had his own hopes at that moment.
"Beat them all." he whispered under his breath. "Do more than survive, my son, as I have survived. Live! Be true to the callings in your heart."
Braziers roared to life, the room glowed. Zak felt the heat, knew that contact to that darker plane had been achieved.
"Take this…" he heard Matron Malice chant, but he put the words out of his thoughts and continued the final prayers of his life.
The spider-shaped dagger hovered over his chest. Malice clenched the instrument in her bony hands, the sheen of her sweat-soaked skin catching the orange reflection of the fires in a surrealistic glow.
Surreal, like the transition from life to death.
Chapter 28
Rightful Owner
How long had it been? An hour? Two? Masoj paced the length of the gap between the two stalagmite mounds just a few feet from the entrance to the tunnel that Drizzt, and then Guenhwyvar, had taken. "The cat should have returned by now." the wizard grumbled, at the end of his patience.
Relief flooded through his face a moment later, when Guenhwyvar’s great black head peered around the edge of the tunnel, behind one of the displacer beast statue guardians. The fur around the cat’s maw was conspicuously wet with fresh blood.
"It is done?" Masoj asked, barely able to contain a shout of elation. "Drizzt Do’Urden is dead?"
"Hardly." came the reply. Drizzt, for all his idealism, had to admit a tinge of pleasure as a cloud of dread cooled the elated fires in the sinister wizard’s cheeks.
"What is this, Guenhwyvar?" Masoj demanded. "Do as I bid you! Kill him now!"
Guenhwyvar stared blankly at Masoj, then lay at Drizzt’s feet.
"You admit your attempt on my life?" Drizzt asked.
Masoj measured the distance to his adversary, ten feet. He might be able to get off one spell. Perhaps. Masoj had seen Drizzt move, quick and sure, and had little desire to chance the attack if he could find another way out of this predicament. Drizzt had not yet drawn a weapon, though the young warrior’s hands rested easily across the hilts of his deadly blades.
"I understand." Drizzt continued calmly. "House Hun’ett and House Do’Urden are to battle."
"How did you know?" Masoj blurted without thinking, too shocked by the revelation to consider that Drizzt might merely be goading him into a larger admission.
"I know much but care little." Drizzt replied. "House Hun’ett wishes to wage war against my family. For what reason, I cannot guess."
"For the vengeance of House DeVir!" came a reply from a different direction.
Alton, standing on the side of a stalagmite mound, looked down at Drizzt.
A smile spread over Masoj’s face. The odds had so quickly changed.
"House Hun’ett cares not at all for House DeVir." Drizzt replied, still composed in the face of this new development. "I have learned enough of the ways of our people to know that the fate of one house is not the concern of another."
"But it is my concern!" Alton cried, and he threw back the cowl of his hood, revealing the hideous face, scarred by acid for the sake of a disguise. "I am Alton DeVir, lone survivor of House DeVir! House Do’Urden will die for its crimes against my family, starting with you."
"I was not even born when the battle took place." Drizzt protested.
"Of little consequence!" Alton snarled. "You are a Do’Urden, a filthy Do’Urden. That is all that matters." Masoj tossed the onyx figurine to the ground. "Guenhwyvar!" he commanded. "Be gone!"
The cat looked over its shoulder to Drizzt, who nodded his approval.
"Be gone!" Masoj cried again. "I am your master! You cannot disobey me!"
"You do not own the cat." Drizzt said calmly.
"Who does, then?" Masoj snapped. "You?"
"Guenhwyvar." Drizzt replied. "Only Guenhwyvar. I would think that a wizard would have a better understanding of the magic around him."
With a low growl that might have been a mocking laugh, Guenhwyvar loped across the stone to the figurine and dissipated into smoky nothingness.
The cat walked down the length of the planar tunnel, toward its home in the Astral Plane. Ever before had Guenhwyvar been anxious to make this journey, to escape the foul commands of its drow masters. This time, though, the cat hesitated with every stride, looking back over its shoulder to the dot of darkness that was Menzoberranzan.