Homeland (5 page)

Zak stretched the incessant chill out of his arms and willed the aerial servant to action. Down he plummeted on his windy bed, and he fell free the last few feet to the terrace along the top chambers of the central pillar. At once, two guards, one a female, rushed out to greet him.

They hesitated in confusion, though, trying to sort out the true form of this unremarkable gray blur—too long.

They had never heard of Zaknafein Do’Urden. They didn’t know that death was upon them.

Zak’s whip flashed out, catching and gashing the female’s throat, while his other hand walked his sword through a series of masterful thrusts and parries that put the male off balance. Zak finished both in a single, blurring movement, snapping the whip-entwined female from the terrace with a twist of his wrist and spinning a kick into the male’s face that likewise dropped him to the cavern floor.

Zak was then inside, where another guard rose up to meet him … but fell at his feet.

Zak slipped along the curving wall of the stalactite tower, his cooled body blending perfectly with the stone. Soldiers of House DeVir rushed all about him, trying to formulate some defense against the host of intruders who had already won out the lowest level of every structure and had taken two of the pillars completely.

Zak was not concerned with them. He blocked out the clanging ring of adamantine weapons, the cries of command, and the screams of death, concentrating instead on a singular sound that would lead him to his destination: a unified, frantic chant.

He found an empty corridor covered with spider carvings and running into the center of the pillar. As in House Do’Urden, this corridor ended in a large set of ornate double doors, their decorations dominated by arachnid forms. “This must be the place.” Zak muttered under his breath, fitting his hood to the top of his head.

A giant spider rushed out of its concealment to his side.

Zak dived to his belly and kicked out under the thing, spinning into a roll that plunged his sword deep into the monster’s bulbous body. Sticky fluids gushed out over the weapons master, and the spider shuddered to a quick death.

“Yes,” Zak whispered, wiping the spider juices from his face, “this must be the place.” He pulled the dead monster back into its hidden cubby and slipped in beside the thing, hoping that no one had noticed the brief struggle.

By the sounds of ringing weapons, Zak could tell that the fighting had almost reached this floor. House DeVir now seemed to have its defenses in place, though, and was finally holding its ground.

“Now, Malice,” Zak whispered, hoping that Briza, attuned to him in the meld, would sense his anxiety. “Let us not be late!”

Back in the clerical anteroom of House Do’Urden, Malice and her subordinates continued their brutal mental assault on the clerics of House DeVir. Lolth heard their prayers louder than those of their counterparts, giving the clerics of House Do’Urden the stronger spells in their mental combat. Already they had easily put their enemies into a defensive posture. One of the lesser priestesses in DeVir’s circle of eight had been crushed by Briza’s mental insinuations and now lay dead on the floor barely inches from Matron Ginafae’s feet.

But the momentum had slowed suddenly and the battle seemed to be swinging back to an even level. Matron Malice, struggling with the impending birth, could not hold her concentration, and without her voice, the spells of her unholy circle weakened.

At her mother’s side, powerful Briza clutched her mother’s hand so tightly that all the blood was squeezed from it, leaving it cool— the only cool spot on the laboring female—to the eyes of the others. Briza studied the contractions and the crowning cap of the coming child’s white hair, and calculated the time to the moment of birth. This technique of translating the pain of birth into an offensive spell attack had never been tried before, except in legend, and Briza knew that timing would be the critical factor.

She whispered into her mother’s ear, coaxing out the words of a deadly incantation.

Matron Malice echoed back the beginnings of the spell, sublimating her gasps, and transforming her rage of agony into offensive power.

“
Dinnen douward ma brechen tol,”
Briza implored.

“
Dinnen douward… maaa … brechen tol!
” Malice growled, so determined to focus through the pain that she bit through one of her thin lips.

The baby’s head appeared, more fully this time, and this time to stay.

Briza trembled and could barely remember the incantation herself. She whispered the final rune into the matron’s ear, almost fearing the consequences.

Malice gathered her breath and her courage. She could feel the tingling of the spell as clearly as the pain of the birth. To her daughters standing around the idol, staring at her in disbelief, she appeared as a red blur of heated fury, streaking sweat lines that shone as brightly as the heat of boiling water.

“
Abec
,” the matron began, feeling the pressure building to a crescendo. “
Abec
.” She felt the hot tear of her skin, the sudden slippery release as the baby’s head pushed through, the sudden ecstacy of birthing. “
Abec di’n’a’BREG DOUWARD!
” Malice screamed, pushing away all of the agony in a final explosion of magical power that knocked even the clerics of her own house from their feet.

Carried on the thrust of Matron Malice’s exultation, the dweomer thundered into the chapel of House DeVir, shattered the gemstone idol of Lolth, sundered the double doors into heaps of twisted metal, and threw Matron Ginafae and her overmatched subordinates to the floor.

Zak shook his head in disbelief as the chapel doors flew past him. “Quite a kick, Malice.” He chuckled and spun around the entryway, into the chapel. Using his infravision, he took a quick survey and head count of the lightless room’s seven living occupants, all struggling back to their feet, their robes tattered. Again shaking his head at the bared power of Matron Malice, Zak pulled his hood down over his face.

A snap of his whip was the only explanation he offered as he smashed a tiny ceramic globe at his feet. The sphere shattered, dropping out a pellet that Briza had enchanted for just such occasions, a pellet glowing with the brightness of daylight.

For eyes accustomed to blackness, tuned in to heat emanations, the intrusion of such radiance came in a blinding flash of agony. The clerics’ cries of pain only aided Zak in his systematic trek around the room, and he smiled widely under his hood every time he felt his sword bite into drow flesh.

He heard the beginnings of a spell across the way and knew that one of the DeVirs had recovered enough from the assault to be dangerous. The weapons master did not need his eyes to aim, however, and the crack of his whip took Matron Ginafae’s tongue right out of her mouth.

Briza placed the newborn on the back of the spider idol and lifted the ceremonial dagger, pausing to admire its cruel workmanship. Its hilt was a spider’s body sporting eight legs, barbed so as to appear furred, but angled down to serve as blades. Briza lifted the instrument above the baby’s chest. “Name the child,” she implored her mother. “The Spider Queen will not accept the sacrifice until the child is named!”

Matron Malice lolled her head, trying to fathom her daughter’s meaning. The matron mother had thrown everything into the moment of the spell and the birth, and she was now barely coherent.

“Name the child!” Briza commanded, anxious to feed her hungry goddess.

“It nears its end,” Dinin said to his brother when they met in a lower hall of one of the lesser pillars of House DeVir. “Rizzen is winning through to the top, and it is believed that Zaknafein’s dark work has been completed.”

“Two score of House DeVir’s soldiers have already turned allegiance to us,” Nalfein replied.

“They see the end,” laughed Dinin. “One house serves them as well as another, and in the eyes of commoners no house is worth dying for. Our task will be finished soon.”

“Too quickly for anyone to take note,” Nalfein said. “Now Do’Urden, Daermon N’a’shezbaernon, is the Ninth House of Menzoberranzan and DeVir be damned!”

“Alert!” Dinin cried suddenly, eyes widening in feigned horror as he looked over his brother’s shoulder.

Nalfein reacted immediately, spinning to face the danger at his back, only to put the true danger at his back. For even as Nalfein realized the deception, Dinin’s sword slipped into his spine. Dinin put his head to his brother’s shoulder and pressed his cheek to Nalfein’s, watching the red sparkle of heat leave his brother’s eyes.

“Too quickly for anyone to take note,” Dinin teased, echoing his brother’s earlier words.

He dropped the lifeless form to his feet. “Now Dinin is elderboy of House Do’Urden, and Nalfein be damned.”

“Drizzt,” breathed Matron Malice. “The child’s name is Drizzt!”

Briza tightened her grip on the knife and began the ritual. “Queen of Spiders, take this babe,” she began. She raised the dagger to strike. “Drizzt Do’Urden we give to you in payment for our glorious vic—”

“Wait!” called Maya from the side of the room. Her melding with her brother Nalfein had abruptly ceased. It could only mean one thing. “Nalfein is dead,” she announced. “The baby is no longer the third living son.”