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  A stockade of tall mushrooms ringed the place, every fifth one a shrieker, a sentient fungus named (and favored as guardians) for the shrill cries of alarm it emitted whenever a living being passed it by. Dinin kept a cautious distance, not wanting to set off one of the shriekers and knowing also that other, more deadly wards protected the fortress. Matron Malice would see to those.

  An expectant hush permeated the air of this city section. It was general knowledge hroughout Menzoberranzan that Matron Ginafae of House DeVir had fallen out of favor with Loth, the Spider Queen deity to all drow and the true source of every house’s strength. Such circumstances were never openly discussed among the drow, but everyone who knew fully expected that some family lower in the city hierarchy soon would strike out against the crippled House DeVir.

  Matron Ginafae and her family had been the last to learn of the Spider Queen’s displeasure ever was that Lloth’s devious way and Dinin could tell just by scanning the outside of House DeVir that the doomed family had not found ample time to erect proper defenses. DeVir sported nearly four hundred soldiers, many female, but those that Dinin could now see at their posts along the parapets seemed nervous and unsure.

  Dinin’s smile spread even wider when he thought of his own house, which grew in power daily under the cunning guidance of Matron Malice. With all three of his sisters rapidly approaching the status of high priestess, his brother an accomplished wizard, and his uncle Zaknafein, the finest weapon master in all of Menzoberranzan, busily training the three hundred soldiers, House Do’Urden was a complete force. And, Matron Malice, unlike Ginafae, was in the Spider Queen’s full favor.

  “Daermon N’a’shezbaernon,,” Dinin muttered under his breath, using the formal and ancestral reference to House Do’Urden. “Ninth House of Menzoberranzan!” He liked the sound of it.

  Halfway across the city, beyond the silver-glowing balcony and the arched doorway twenty feet up the cavern’s west wall, sat the principals of House Do’Urden, gathered to outline the final plans of the night’s work. On the raised dais at the back of the small audience chamber sat venerable Matron Malice, her belly swollen in the final hours of pregnancy. Flanking her in their places of honor were her three daughters, Maya, Vierna, and the eldest, Briza, a newly ordained high priestess of Lloth. Maya and Vierna appeared as younger versions of their mother, slender and deceptively small, though possessing great strength. Briza, though, hardly carried the family resemblance. She was big -huge by drow standards- and rounded in the shoulders and hips. Those who knew Briza well figured that her size was merely a circumstance of her temperament, a smaller body could not have contained the anger and brutal streak of House Do’Urden’s newest high priestess.

  “Dinin should return soon,” remarked Rizzen, the present patron of the family, “to let us know if the time is right for the assault.”

  “We go before Narbondel finds its morning glow!” Briza snapped at him in her thick but razor-sharp voice. She turned a crooked smile to her mother, seeking approval for putting the male in his place.

  “The child comes this night,” Matron Malice explained to her anxious husband. “We go no matter what news Dinin bears.”

  “It will be a boy child,” groaned Briza, making no effort to hide her disappointment, “third living son of House Do’Urden.”

  “To be sacrificed to Lloth,” put in Zaknafein, a former patron of the house who now held the important position of weapon master. The skilled drow fighter seemed quite pleased at the thought of sacrifice, as did Nalfein, the family’s eldest son, who stood at Zak’s side. Nalfein was the elderboy, and he needed no more competition beyond Dinin within the ranks of House Do’Urden .

  “In accord with custom,” Briza glowered and the red of her eyes brightened. “To aid in our victory!” Rizzen shifted uncomfortably. “Matron Malice,” he dared to speak, “you know well the difficulties of birthing. Might the pain distract you.”

  “You dare to question the matron mother?” Briza started sharply, reaching for the snake-headed whip so comfortably strapped and writhing on her belt. Matron Malice stopped her with an outstretched hand.

  “Attend to the fighting,” the matron said to Rizzen. “Let the females of the house see to the important matters of this battle.”

  Rizzen shifted again and dropped his gaze.

  Dinin came to the magically wrought fence that connected the keep within the city’s west wall with the two small stalagmite towers of House Do’Urden, and which formed the courtyard to the compound. The fence was adamantite, the hardest metal in all the world, and adorning it were a hundred weapon-wielding spider carvings, each ensorcelled with deadly glyphs and w ards. The mighty gate of House Do’Urden was the envy of many a drow house, but so soon after viewing the spectacular houses in the mushroom grove, Dinin could only find disappointment when looking upon his own abode. The compound was plain and somewhat bare, as was the section of wall, with the notable exception of the mithril-and-adamantite balcony running along the second level, by the arched doorway reserved for the nobility of the family. Each baluster of that balcony sported a thousand carvings, all of which blended into a single piece of art.

  House Do’Urden, unlike the great majority of the houses in Menzoberranzan, did not stand free within groves of stalactites and stalagmites. The bulk of the structure was within a cave, and while this setup was indisputably defensible, Dinin found himself wishing that his family could show a bit more grandeur.

  An excited soldier rushed to open the gate for the returning secondboy. Dinin swept past him without so much as a word of greeting and moved across the courtyard, conscious of the hundred and more curious glances that fell upon him. The soldiers and slaves knew that Dinin’s mission this night had something to do with the anticipated battle.

  No stairway led to the silvery balcony of House Do’Urden’s second level. This, too, was a precautionary measure designed to segregate the leaders of the house from the rabble and the slaves. Drow nobles needed no stairs, another manifestation of their innate magical abilities allowed them the power of levitation. With hardly a conscious thought to the act, Dinin drifted easily through the air and dropped onto the balcony.

  He rushed through the archway and down the house’s main central corridor, which was dimly lit in the soft hues of faerie fire, allowing for sight in the normal light spectrum but not bright enough to defeat the use of infravision. The ornate brass door at the corridor’s end marked the second boy’s destination, and he paused before it to allow his eyes to shift back to the infrared spectrum. Unlike the corridor, the room beyond the door had no light source. It was the audience hall of the high priestesses, the anteroom to House Do’Urden’s grand chapel. The drow clerical rooms, in accord with the dark rites of the Spider Queen, were not places of light.

  When he f elt he was prepared, Dinin pushed straight through the door, shoving past the two shocked female guards without hesitation and moving boldly to stand before his mother. All three of the family daughters narrowed their eyes at their brash and pretentious brother. You enter without permission! he knew they were thinking. Would that it was he who was to be sacrificed this night!

  As much as he enjoyed testing the limitations of his inferior station as a male, Dinin could not ignore the threatening glances of Vierna, Maya, and Briza. Being female, they were bigger and stronger than Dinin and had trained all of their lives in the use of wicked drow clerical powers and weapons. Dinin watched as enchanted extensions of the clerics, the dreaded snake-headed whips on his sisters’ belts, began writhing in anticipation of the punishment they would exact. The handles were adamantite and ordinary enough, but the whips’ lengths and multiple heads were living serpents. Briza’s whip, in particular, a wicked six headed device, danced and squirmed, tying itself into knots around the belt that held it. Briza was always the quickest to punish.

  Matron Malice, however, seemed pleased by Dinin’s swagger. The secondboy knew his place well enough by her measure and he followed her commands fearl
essly and without question.

  Dinin took comfort in the calmness of his mother’s face, quite the opposite of the shining white-hot faces of his three sisters. “All is ready,” he said to her. “House DeVir huddles within its fence-except for Alton, of course, foolishly attending his studies in Sorcere.”

  “You have met with the Faceless One?” Matron Malice asked.

  “The Academy was quiet this night,” Dinin replied. “Our meeting went off perfectly.”

  “He has agreed to our contract?”

  “Alton DeVir will be dealt with accordingly,,” Dinin chuckled. He then remembered the slight alteration he had made in Matron Malice’s plans, delaying Alton’s execution for the sake of his own lust for added cruelty. Dinin’s thought evoked another recollection as well: high priestesses of Lloth had an unnerving talent for reading thoughts.

  “Alton will die this night,” Dinin quickly completed the answer, assuring the others before they could probe him for more definite details.

  “Excellent,,” Briza growled. Dinin breathed a little easier.

  “To the meld,,” Matron Malice ordered.

  The four drow males moved to kneel before the matron and her daughters: Rizzen to Malice, Zaknafein to Briza, Nalfein to Maya, and Dinin to Vierna. The clerics chanted in unison, placing one hand delicately upon the forehead of their respective soldier, tuning in to his passions.

  “You know your places,” Matron Malice said when the ceremony was completed. She grimaced through the pain of another contraction. “Let our work begin.”

  Less than an hour later, Zaknafein and Briza stood together on the balcony outside the upper entrance to House Do’Urden. Below them, on the cavern floor, the second and third brigades of the family army, Rizzen’s and Nalfein’s, bustled about, fitting on heated leather straps and metal patches camouflage against a distinctive elven form to heat-seeing drow eyes.

  Dinin’s group, the initial strike force that included a hundred goblin slaves, had long since departed.

  “We will be known after this night,” Briza said. “None would have suspected that a tenth house would dare to move against one as powerful as DeVir. When the whispers ripple out after this night’s bloody work, even Baenre will take note of Daermon N’a’shezbaernon!” She leaned out over the balcony to watch as the two brigades formed into lines and started-out, silently, along separate paths that would bring them through the winding city to the mushroom grove and the five-pillared structure of House DeVir. Zaknafein eyed the back of Matron Malice’s eldest daughter, wanting nothing more than to put a dagger into her spine. As always, though, good judgment kept Zak’s practiced hand in its place.

  “Have you the articles?” Briza inquired, showing Zak considerably more respect than she had when Matron Malice sat protectively at her side. Zak was only a male, a commoner allowed to don the family name as his own because he sometimes served Matron Malice in a husbandly manner an had once been the patron of the house. Still, Briza feared to anger him. Zak was the weapon master of House Do’Urden, a tall and muscular male, stronger than most females, and those who had witnessed his fighting wrath considered him among the finest warriors of either sex in all of Menzoberranzan. Besides Briza and her mother, both high priestesses of the Spider Queen, Zaknafein, with his unrivaled swordsmanship, was House Do’Urden’s trump.

  Zak held up the black hood and opened the small pouch on his belt, revealing several tiny ceramic spheres. Briza smiled evilly and rubbed her slender hands together.

  “Matron Ginafae will not be pleased,” she whispered.

  Zak returned the smile and turned to view the departing soldiers. Nothing gave the weapon master more pleasure than killing drow elves, particularly clerics of Lloth.

  “Prepare yourself,” Briza said after a few minutes.

  Zak shook his thick hair back from his face and stood rigid, eyes tightly closed. Briza drew her wand slowly, beginning the chant that would activate the device. She tapped Zak on one shoulder, then the other, then held the wand motionless over his head.

  Zak felt the frosty sprinkles falling down on him, permeating his clothes and armor, even his flesh, until he and all of his possessions had cooled to a uniform temperature and hue. Zak hated the magical chill, it felt as he imagined death would feel but he knew that under the influence of the wand’s sprinkles he was, to the heat sensing eyes of the creatures of the Underdark, as gray as common stone, unremarkable and undetectable.

  Zak opened his eyes and shuddered, flexing his fingers to be sure they could still perform the fine-edge of his craft. He looked back to Briza, already in the midst of the second spell, the summoning. This one would take a while, so Zak leaned back against the wall and considered again the pleasant, though dangerous, task before him. How thoughtful of Matron Malice to leave all of House DeVir’s clerics to him!

  “It is done,” Briza announced after a few minutes. She led Zak’s gaze upward, to the darkness beneath the unseen ceiling of the immense cavern.

  Zak spotted Briza’s handiwork first, an approaching current of air, yellow-tinted and warmer than the normal air of the cavern. A living current of air.

  The creature, a conjuration from an elemental plane, swirled to hover just beyond the lip of the balcony, obediently awaiting its summoner’s commands.

  Zak didn’t hesitate. He leaped out into the thing’s midst, letting it hold him suspended above the floor.

  Briza offered him a final salute and motioned her servant away. “Good fighting,” she called to Zak, though he was already invisible in the air above her.

  Zak chuckled at the irony of her words as the twisting city of Menzoberranzan rolled out below him. She wanted the clerics of House DeVir dead as surely as Zak did, but for very different reasons. All complications aside, Zak would have been just as happy killing clerics of House Do’Urden.

  The weapon master took up one of his adamantite swords, a drow weapon magically crafted and unbelievably sharp with the edge of killing dweomers. “Good fighting indeed,” he whispered. If only Briza knew how good.

  Chapter 2

  The Fall of House DeVir

  Dinin noted with satisfaction that any of the meandering bugbears, or any other of the multitude of races that composed Menzoberranzan, drow included, now made great haste to scurry out of his way. This time the secondboy of House Do’Urden was not alone. Nearly sixty soldiers of the house walked in tight lines behind him. Behind these, in similar order though with far less enthusiasm for the adventure, came a hundred armed slaves of lesser races, goblins, orcs, and bugbears.

  There could be no doubt for onlookers, a drow house was on a march to war. This was not an everyday event in Menzoberranzan but neither was it unexpected. At least once every decade a house decided that its position within the city hierarchy could be improved by another house’s elimination.

  It was a risky proposition, for all of the nobles of the “victim,” house had to be disposed of quickly and quietly. If even one survived to lay an accusation upon the perpetrator, the attacking house would be eradicated by Menzoberranzan’s merciless system of “justice.”

  If the raid was executed to devious perfection, though, no recourse would be forthcoming. All of the city, even the ruling council of the top eight matron mothers, would secretly applaud the attackers for their courage and intelligence and no more would ever be said of the incident.

  Dinin took a roundabout route, not wanting to lay a direct trail between House Do’Urden and House DeVir. A half hour later, for the second time that night, he crept to the mushroom grove’s southern end, to the cluster of stalagmites that held House DeVir. His soldiers streamed out behind him eagerly, readying weapons and taking full measure of the structure before them.

  The slaves were slower in their movements. Many of them looked about for some escape, for they knew in their hearts that they were doomed in this battle. They feared the wrath of the dark elves more than death itself, though, and would not attempt to flee.

  With every exit
out of Menzoberranzan protected by devious drow magic, where could they possibly go? Every one of them had witnessed the brutal punishments the drow elves exacted on recaptured slaves. At Dinin’s command, they jumped into their positions around the mushroom fence.

  Dinin reached into his large pouch and pulled out a heated sheet of metal. He flashed the object, brightened in the infrared spectrum, three times behind him to signal the approaching brigades of Nalfein and Rizzen. Then, with his usual cockiness, Dinin spun it quickly into the air, caught it, and replaced it in the secrecy of his heat shielding pouch. On cue with the twirling signal, Dinin’s drow brigade fitted enchanted darts to their tiny hand-held crossbows and took aim on the appointed targets.

  Every fifth mushroom was a shrieker, and every dart held a magical dweomer that could silence the roar of a dragon.” ... two... three,” Dinin counted, his hand signaling the tempo since no words could be heard within the sphere of magical silence cast about his troops. He imagined the “click,” as t he drawn string on his little weapon released, loosing the dart into the nearest shrieker. So it went all around the cluster of House DeVir, the first line of alarm systematically silenced by three-dozen enchanted darts.

  Halfway across Menzoberranzan, Matron Malice, her daughters, and four of the house’s common clerics were gathered in Lloth’s unholy circle of eight. They ringed an idol of their wicked deity, a gemstone carving of a drow faced spider, and called to Lloth for aid in their struggles. Malice at at the head, propped in a chair angled for birthing. Briza and Vierna flanked her, Briza clutching her hand.

  The select group chanted in unison, combining their energies into a single offensive spell. A moment later, when Vierna, mentally linked to Dinin, understood that the first attack group was in position, the Do’Urden circle of eight sent the first insinuating waves of mental energy into the rival house.