Daughter of the Drow (2 page)

Gromph watched her, intrigued. The child’s face was set in fierce concentration as she painstakingly scrawled some wavering, curly lines onto the parchment. After a few moments she turned, with a triumphant smile, to the wizard.

He leaned closer, and his eyes flashed incredulously from the parchment to the spellbook and back. The child had sketched one of the magic symbols! True, it was crudely drawn, but she had not only seen it, she had remembered it from a glance. That was a remarkable feat for any elf, at any age.

On a whim, Gromph decided to test the child. He held out his palm and conjured a small ball that glowed with blue faerie fire. The little drow laughed and clapped her hands. He tossed the toy across the desk toward her, and she deftly caught it.

“Throw it back,” he said.

The child laughed again, clearly delighted to have found a playmate. Then, with a lighting-fast change of mood, she drew back her arm for the throw and gritted her teeth, preparing to give the effort her all.

Gromph silently bid the magic to dissipate. The blue light winked out.

And the next moment, the ball hurtled back toward him, almost too fast for him to catch. Only now the light was golden.

“The color of my eyes,” said the little girl, with a smile that promised heartache to drow males in years to come.

The archmage noted this, and marked its value. He then turned his attention to the golden ball in his hand. So, the child could already conjure faerie fire. This was an innate talent of the fey drow, but seldom did it manifest so early. What else, he wondered, could she do?

Gromph tossed the ball again, this time lobbing it high up toward the domed ceiling. Hands outstretched, the precocious child soared up toward the glowing toy, levitating with an ease that stole the archmage’s breath. She snatched the ball out of the air, and her triumphant laughter echoed through the study as she floated lightly back to his side. At that moment, Gromph made one of the few impulsive decisions of his long life.

“What is your name, child?”

“Liriel Vandree,” she returned promptly. Gromph shook his head. “No longer. You must forget House Vandree, for you are none of theirs.”

He traced a deft, magical pattern in the air with the fingers of one hand. In response, a ripple passed through the solid rock of the far wall. Stone flowed into the room like a wisp of smoke. The dark cloud writhed and twisted, finally tugging free of the wall. In an instant it compressed and sculpted itself into an elf-sized golem. The living statue sank to one knee before its drow master and awaited its orders.

The child’s mother will be leaving this house. See to it, and have her family informed that she met with an unfortunate accident on her way to the Bazaar.”

The stone servant rose, bowed again, and then disappeared into the wall as easily as a wraith might pass through a fog bank. A moment later, the scream of an elven female came from a nearby chamber—a scream that began in terror and ended in a liquid gurgle.

Gromph leaned forward and blew out the candle, for darkness best revealed the character of the drow. All light fled the room, and the wizard’s eyes changed from amber to brilliant red as his vision slipped into the heat-reading spectrum. He fastened a stern gaze upon the child.

“You are Liriel Baenre, my daughter and a noble of the first house of Menzoberranzan,” he announced.

The archmage studied the child’s reaction. The crimson glow of warmth drained from her face, and her tiny, pale-knuckled hands gripped the edge of the desk for support. It was clear the little drew understood all that had just occurred. Her expression remained stoic, however, and her voice was firm when she repeated her new name.

Gromph nodded approvingly. Liriel had accepted the reality of her situation—she could hardly do otherwise and survive—yet the rage and frustration of an untamed spirit burned bright in her eyes.

This was his daughter, indeed.

Ignoring the muted cries of pain coming from the I far side of the tower chamber, Nisatyre parted the ^1 heavy curtains and gazed down at the marketet place. The dark elf’seyes, black and unreadable in the faint light of the chamber, swept with a measured, calculating gaze over the scene below.

The Bazaar was one of the busiest places in all of Menzoberranzan, and as heavily guarded as any matron’s stronghold-Today even more soldiers than usual were in evidence, keeping the peace with brutal efficiency. As captain of the merchant band Dragon’s Hoard, Nisstyre usually appreciated the diligence with which the marketplace was patrolled; it protected local business and made trade such as his possible. Today, however, Nisstyre’s sharp eyes also saw opportunity of another kind.

The drow merchant’s lips curved as he watched a pair of guards drag away the body of a Calishite peddlar. The human’s offense had been slight: he had been a little too vehement in his bartering, and his drow customer had settled the matter with a poisoned dagger. Usually Menzoberranzan’s shoppers welcomed such bargaining as the sport that it was. Today, however, the volatile drow were like dry tinder awaiting the slightest spark.

Tb the casual observer, the bustle of the marketplace might appear normal enough. Certain goods were selling extremely well; in fact, demand for staple foods, weapons, and spell components was almost frantic. Nisstyre had seen market days like this many times before, usually up on the surface, when folk settled in for a particularly brutal winter or an expected siege. To his eyes, Menzoberranzan’s drow were clearly preparing for something. Nisstyre doubted they knew what this something might be, but he recognized their unease and he intended to exploit it.

The Fox, his contacts on the surface world called him, and Nisstyre delighted in the name. He rather resembled that feral animal, with his sharp-featured black face, elegantly pointed ears, and unusual mane of coppery hair. He possessed his namesake’s cunning in full measure. Unlike most drow, Nisstyre carried no weapons and indeed was rather unskilled in their use. His weapons were his mind—which was as agile and treacherous as the sword of a drow warrior—and his magic.

Once, many years ago, Nisstyre had lived in Ched Nasad, a city much like Menzoberranzan. Although he’d been a mage of considerable promise, the matriarchal society and the tyranny of Lloth had put limits on his ambitions—limits he did not intend to accept. He left the city and discovered a talent for trading; soon he had fought his way to the head of his own merchant band. His far-flung trade interests brought him wealth, but not the power he craved. That had come as a divine gift, and the divinity in question was Vhaeraun, drow god of thievery and intrigue. Nisstyre had embraced his god’s directive—to establish a drow presence and power on the surface world—with all his heart. For once Has kingdom was established, he, Nisstyre, planned to serve Vhaeraun as a king. But first his—and Vhaeraun’s—Subjects must be recruited from the ranks of the discon-Jented drow.

In these days, discontent was rampant. Nisstyre’s many informers, and his own sharp eyes, told him that. The drow of Menzoberranzan were still staggering from the disruption of magic during the Time of Troubles, and from their defeat at the hands of Mithril Hall’s dwarves. They had gone to war, full of confidence in Matron Baenre and her Lloth-inspired vision of conquest and glory. And they had failed utterly, driven back into the ground by a ragtag alliance of dwarves, gnomes, and humans—lesser beings all—and by the cruel light of dawn. In the aftermath of defeat, the stunned drow felt betrayed, adrift, and deeply afraid. The powers that had ruled them so mercilessly had also kept the city secure from the dangers of the wild Underdark.

But what remained of these ruling powers? The ancient Matron Baenre, who had led the city for centuries, had erred in pursuing a surface war and had paid for this error with her life. Several of the most powerful houses were in turmoil. Under normal conditions, most of the city’s drow cared little which eight houses sat on the Ruling Council. Now, however, the coming struggle for power threatened them all. Many feared the weakened and distracted city was vulnerable to attack, perhaps by the nearby illithid community, or perhaps by another drow city.

In Nisstyre’s opinion, these fears were not groundless. Fully half of Menzoberranzan’s twenty thousand drow had marched upon Mithril Hall, and no one knew for certain how many had returned. Few houses gave an accurate accounting of their private forces at any time, and no one wished to admit to diminished strength during this time of turmoil.

It was no secret that several of the city’s strongest weapon masters—the generals of the individual house armies—were dead or missing. Nor were the losses limited to the city’s professional soldiers. Hundreds of common folk had served as foot soldiers, and only a few dozen had returned to take up their labors. Magnifying this problem was the tremendous loss of life among the races who served Menzoberranzan’s drow as slaves. Kobolds, minotaurs, and goblinkin had been drafted as battle fodder, and they had fallen by the thousand to the axes of Mithril Hall’s dwarves and to the swords and arrows of their allies. The tasks these slaves once performed were now left undone.

Other cultures might pool labor and talents to fill the void, but such was beyond the sensibilities of the proud drow. Status was all, and no one was willing to set aside hard-won position for the common good. Menzoberranzan’s drow could not unite to win the war, and they would not band together in its aftermath.

And therein, Nisstyre mused, lay his problem, as well. These dark elves could be motivated only by promise of personal gain. Status, power: these were the lures needed to coax the proud drow into the light. Although life was hard in the Underdark, and Menzoberranzan was facing a new and frightening level of chaos, most drow saw no other option. All the surface world offered was defeat, disgrace, and the searing horror that was the sun.

With a deep sigh, the merchant let the curtain fall and turned away to observe a spectacle of a very different nature. A drow male, a commoner of middle years and unremarkable appearance, sat bound with chains to a heavy stone chair. Around him crackled a sphere of faint greenish light, and over him loomed a black-clad drow male who stood, chanting, with eyes closed and hands outstretched. Clerical magic flowed from each of the dark elf’sfingers, sizzling like dark lightning into the chained drow. The prisoner writhed in anguish as his tormentor—a priest of Vhaeraun, patron of thieves—plundered his memories and stole his secrets.

Finally the priest nodded, satisfied. The globe of light dissipated with a faint pop, and the prisoner sagged against his chains, moaning softly in a mixture of pain and relief.

Strange treatment, perhaps, for a trusted informer, but Nisstyre had little choice. The price of misplaced trust was high. In Menzoberranzan, anyone suspected of worshiping any god but Lloth was summarily put to death. Those who followed other gods, or none at all, were wise to keep their opinions to themselves.

Yet now, with their city in turmoil and their most basic assumptions suspect, there were a few drow who dared whisper the name of Vhaeraun, and who dreamed of a life free of Menzoberranzan’s limitations. These drow Nisstyre was quietly seeking out. Some were like this tortured elf, whose hatred of matriarchal rule was so bitter that he would willingly endure anything to see it end. But most drow required more: something that could eradicate bitter memories and offer opportunities for power and status far beyond anything they now enjoyed.

In time, Nisstyre vowed, he would find what was needed to sway the drow of Menzoberranzan to his cause. After all, the Dragon’s Hoard was famous for procuring anything, without regard for the cost.

Menzoberranzan was not the only land struggling with conflict and war. Far away, in a rugged land of hills and forests in the fareastern reaches of Faerun, the people of Rashemen knew their own time of turmoil. Magic—the force that ruled and protected their land—had recently gone treacherously awry. Ancient gods and long-dead heroes had walked the land, and a nation of dreamers had been tormented by strange nightmares and waking frenzies. Most dangerous of all, the mystic defenses crafted by the magic of the ruling Witches had faltered, and the eyes of many enemies turned once again upon Rashemen.

Of all Rashemen’s warriors, perhaps none had felt this disruption so much as Fyodor. He was a young man, a pleasant fellow who had shown a steady hand at the swordsmith’s forge and a steady nerve in battle. He was a hard worker, but by all reports a bit of a dreamer even by Rashemi standards. Fyodor was as quick with a song or a story as any traveling bard, and his deep, resonant bass voice often rang out over the sound of a clanging hammer as he worked. Like most of his people, he appreciated the simple joys of life and he accepted its hardships with resigned calm. His gentle nature and ready smile seemed ill-matched with his fearsome reputation; Rashemen was renowned for the might and fury of her berserker warriors, among whom Fyodor was a champion.

Rashemen’s famed warriors used a little-known magic ritual to bring on their battle rages. By some quirk of fate, a stray bit of this magic broke free and lodged itself in young Fyodor. He had become a natural berserker, able to enter an incredible battle frenzy at will. At first his new skill had been hailed as a godsend, and when the Tuigan horde swept in from the eastern steppes Fyodor stood beside his berserker brothers and fought with unmatched ferocity.

All would have been well, but for another lingering memory of the time of twisted magic. Fyodor, the dreamer, continued to be haunted by the nightmares that had plagued so many Rashemi during the Time of Troubles. He told no one of this, for many of his people—simple peasants for the most part—had deeply ingrained superstitions about dreams and saw in every ale-induced night vision detailed meanings, portents of doom. Fyodor believed he knew what dreams were, and what they were not.

Tonight, however, he was not so sure. He’d emerged from a nightmare to find himself sitting bolt upright on his pallet, his heart racing and his body drenched with cold sweat. Fyodor tried without success to return to sleep, for he would face the Tuigan again tomorrow and would need all his strength. He had fought today and fought well—or so he had been told. His comrades had tipped their flasks to him and boasted of the number of barbarians who had fallen to Fyodor*s black sword. Fyodor himself did not remember much of the battle. He remembered less each time he fought, and that disturbed him. Perhaps that was why this nightmare haunted him so.