Jaemas nodded and led the way, respectfully bowing as he passed the trio of newcomers.
“Go and direct the battle, young priestess,” Yvonnel instructed Saribel. “Prove that you are worthy, and with confidence of your just reward.”
Saribel paused just long enough to glare at her sister, then glance at Tiago and, finally, at the unconscious Dahlia.
Tiago started after her.
“Not you, Tiago Baenre,” Yiccardaria told him. “Priestess Kiriy spoke truly. Drizzt Do’Urden is here in House Do’Urden. Long has the Spider Queen waited for this moment. Are you ready to champion Lady Lolth?”
“For the glory of Lolth,” Tiago replied.
“And of Tiago?” Yvonnel asked, and Tiago nodded, not catching the sly undertones of her mockery.
“And you remain here, with this one, and woe to you if any harm comes to her,” Yvonnel told Kiriy. “I name you as Darthiir’s guardian.”
“Guardian?” Kiriy stuttered, hardly able to form the word. “She is abomination!”
“You presume so very much,” Yiccardaria the yochlol answered before Yvonnel could reply. “How will your pride carry you, I wonder, when you are kneeling before the Spider Queen, stammering to explain your insubordination?”
His thoughts were a jumble of his fevered imagination intermingled with the ghostly resonance of this place, House Do’Urden. His home.
That was the magic of Yvonnel’s poisonous snake, casting Drizzt into a trance that transcended the barrier of death and of time itself. And so he walked among the dead who had made this place, and now, in the chapel, saw the moment of his ultimate horror as it had occurred.
There lay Zaknafein, his father, tightly bound upon the spider-shaped altar, stripped of his shirt.
There stood Vierna, staring down at Zak, trying to hide her sympathy.
And there stood Maya, the youngest of the Do’Urden daughters. Maya! Drizzt had rarely thought of her through the passing decades. Ever had she seemed to him to be at a crossroads, her ambition assailing her compassion, and always winning that struggle. She seemed cruelly content now.
Drizzt glided across the floor. He called to Zak, to Vierna, too, but they seemed not to hear him.
As he neared the altar, though, he heard them.
“A pity,” Vierna said, and the sound of her voice brought him back more fully to this place. So many times had he taken comfort in that voice, recognizing always the truth in Vierna’s heart even against the lies she was forced to speak.
“House Do’Urden must give much to repay Drizzt’s foolish deed.”
With those words from Vierna, Drizzt’s thoughts careened to another time and another place, but only briefly, only enough to see the scared eyes of an elf child peeking out at him from under the body of her dead mother.
Drizzt crossed his arms over his chest and rubbed at the coldness that had come over him.
“You ruined me,” he heard Malice scold again. “Your brother was twisted to abomination, your sister murdered by your own hand, your House thrown to ruin.”
And then Drizzt understood, all of it. On a surface raid, he had saved an elf child from the drow murderers. That was the action Malice said he could unwind.
The cruel irony of it all struck him and he rubbed his forearms more forcefully, but the cold would not relent. He had killed that elf child, decades later, in self-defense. She had lost her reason to bitterness and had made Drizzt the focal point of her unyielding rage at the murder of her people, of her mother, lying atop her.
Had he struck her down on that starlit field …
“Cry not,” he heard Zaknafein say, drawing him back to the scene playing out in front of him, and thinking, hoping, that his father was speaking to him.
But no, he saw, his father looked to Vierna, and added, “My daughter.”
Drizzt could hardly find his breath. He knew, of course, that Vierna was fully his sister, the only one of his siblings who shared his father. He had said as much to her in their last, desperate fight, when Drizzt had killed her.
When he had slain his sister.
He felt the tears coming from his eyes.
He saw Matron Mother Malice again, then, now in her ceremonial robes. And Briza, evil Briza, walking beside her, chanting.
That dagger in Malice’s hands, shaped like a spider, with small side blades, spider eyes on the hilt-how often had the child Drizzt polished that ceremonial, sacrificial dagger?
Drizzt rushed at her, wanted to chase her away, wanting to deny the coming sacrifice, the murder of his beloved father. But he was the ghost here, it seemed, more than they. He could make no tangible contact, and his screams of denial were not heard.
Or were they, he wondered when he stumbled to the side, to see Malice’s dagger hand hovering so near to Zaknafein’s exposed flesh. And Zaknafein turned his head, and seemed to be looking at Drizzt, and whispered something Drizzt could not hear.
The dagger stabbed at Zaknafein’s heart.
The dagger stabbed at Drizzt’s heart.
CHAPTER 19
Another uninvited guest,” Kiriy muttered to the still-unconscious Dahlia when she heard approaching footsteps in the hallway outside the door. She wasn’t worried, and even hoped that it might be this Drizzt Do’Urden creature. She was confident in the glyphs she had placed upon the entryway.
“Come, dear,” she said, slapping Dahlia’s cheek. “Come awake now and greet our visitors.”
Dahlia did groan a bit, the first signs that the sleeping poison was finally beginning to wear away-though Kiriy figured it would be several hours yet before she awakened.
Kiriy slapped her again, harder, just to hear her groan, and the sound brought a smile to the eldest daughter of Matron Mother Zeerith Xorlarrin.
The smile went away instantly, though, when the door burst in, and no glyphs exploded, and two drow males crashed into the room.
“How dare you!” Kiriy shouted, leaping up and drawing her whip.
“My dear Kiriy, High Priestess, do you not recognize me?” Jarlaxle asked, and he tapped his finger to his temple and dispelled the illusion and became again the mercenary leader.
The priestess gasped. “What are you doing here?” Kiriy drew a dagger and placed it against the back of Dahlia’s neck, and the elf groaned.
Jarlaxle held his hands out wide, innocently. “I serve House Do’Urden,” he replied. “And so, apparently, I serve you.”
“Then be out on the balcony and repel the stone heads, and be quick!” Kiriy ordered, or started to order, for Jarlaxle’s companion took a different tack than the mercenary leader.
Entreri pulled off his mask, becoming a human once more, and threw it aside.
“Iblith!” the priestess gasped, her dagger arm coming out for Entreri.
And he exploded into motion, charging ahead, his sword arcing out in front of him and creating a wall of floating black ash.
Kiriy thrust her scourge forward, the snake heads hungrily striking through the ash wall as she began to cast a spell. Confident the immediate way was clear, and that her spell was ready, she burst through the opaque barrier, ready to destroy the foolish human.
But Entreri wasn’t there.
“She is Xorlarrin!” she heard Jarlaxle cry, aiming it past her, and only then did the priestess begin to understand the truth of Artemis Entreri, a recognition that lasted only the eye-blink it took Charon’s Claw to slash against her back.
Kiriy was fully armored, both with exquisite drow mail woven into her robes and with her own considerable defensive magic. No normal sword could have gotten through that wall.
But Charon’s Claw was no normal sword.
No enchanted blade could have delivered a serious blow.
But Charon’s Claw was no mere enchanted blade.
Kiriy Xorlarrin staggered forward under the weight of the strike. She rolled, grimacing in pain, but ready to battle.