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  Zaknafein Do’Urden I am called, yet a drow I am not, by choice or by deed. Let them discover this being that I am, then. Let them rain their wrath on these old shoulders already burdened by the hopelessness of Menzoberranzan.

  Menzoberranzan, what hell are you?

  Zaknafein Do’Urden

  Homeland

  Chapter 1

  So Many Moving Parts

  The Year of the Black Hound

  Dalereckoning 1296

  She didn’t like walking these particular boulevards of Menzoberranzan known as the Braeryn, or Stenchstreets. Here lurked the houseless drow rogues, castoffs and refugees from houses sacked. Here lurked the fallen priestesses and the dangerous bastard children of this house or that, doomed to a life of poverty.

  Mostly, at least. For Matron Malice of House Do’Urden also knew that here lurked the members of Bregan D’aerthe, a band of mercenaries that had grown quite powerful and wealthy within the city structure. Rogues, all, but useful rogues to the house matrons who knew how to take advantage of their services.

  From Zaknafein, her consort and house weapon master, Malice had contacted Jarlaxle, the leader of Bregan D’aerthe, and received the name of the person she intended to visit this day, the person for whom she was walking the Stenchstreets of Menzoberranzan.

  It was quite a sacrifice, and the matron had already made up her mind that this person had better tell her that which she wanted to hear, or she would leave the man dead on the floor of his hovel.

  Malice was quite relieved when she at last spotted the house in question. She wasn’t afraid of this part of her journey, just disgusted, and wanted to conclude her business and return to her house as soon as possible.

  She moved to the door, glanced about for the escorts who were shadowing her, and nodded for them to lock down the area. Then she cast a spell, then a second, both at the door, then added a third and a fourth upon herself to protect from any trickery.

  A fifth spell blew open the door, and Matron Malice strode through into the small room beyond, to the shocked expression of the robed man on one side of the table within, and a look of absolute terror on the face of the woman sitting across from him.

  “I am not done here!” the man protested.

  Malice looked from him to the crystal ball set on a base in the middle of the small, circular table. She could just barely make out the distorted shapes of an image floating within it.

  A wave of her hand cleared the ball.

  “You are now,” she said.

  The woman then protested, “I paid well for my time!”

  Malice’s glare stole her voice at the end of the sentence. The matron took a good look at the woman. She was younger than Malice, but not by much, and though she was shapely and seemed to think herself quite attractive and alluring given the cut of her dress, her face and bare arms showed the scars and bruises of one living in the darkness of the Stenchstreets.

  “You wear no house emblem, child,” she said. “To which matron do you belong?”

  “Why would I tell you?”

  “Because if you do not, then I know that you belong to no house, so if I kill you, no one will care.”

  “Woman!” protested the robed man, and he stood to face the intruder. He was old and withered, wearing more than a few scars on his face, and his threadbare old robes hung loosely on his too-thin shoulders.

  “Priestess,” she corrected.

  “Priestess,” he said, his tone a bit less indignant.

  “High Priestess,” Malice corrected.

  “High Priestess,” the old drow corrected, voice thinner.

  “Matron,” Malice corrected, playing her hand openly, and the drow male seemed to shrink.

  He cleared his throat. “I am not accustomed to uninvited guests,” he said calmly. “You startled me.”

  “And you, dear,” Malice said, turning her gaze on the woman. “Are you ready to boast of a house? Though of course you know that if you name one and are proven a liar, the punishment will grow you eight legs instead of just losing the two you seem to cherish.”

  The woman shifted at that, pulling down the top fold of her slit dress to better cover her legs.

  “You are of no house,” Malice said when the clearly terrified woman stuttered over some indecipherable mumble. “Go outside and wait for me,” Malice instructed. “Perhaps better things await you in your future.” She glanced back at the robed man. “Is that what you saw in the crystal ball for her?”

  The drow appeared truly flummoxed.

  “It is, yes?” Malice added, throwing the weight of a spell of suggestion behind the question.

  “Yes,” the man blurted. “Yes, yes, of course. I was about to tell her . . .”

  “Go,” Malice told the woman, and she wisely scrambled from the chair and darted outside.

  Never taking her gaze off the man, Malice walked over to the vacated chair and moved to sit. She glanced at the fabric, though, and the many stains upon it.

  A wave of her hand sent it flying aside. A quick incantation produced a floating disk of blue light where the chair had been, and upon that, Matron Malice sat. She motioned to the other chair, but got only a concerned and confused stare in return.

  “You are Pau’Kros, once of a house that shall no longer be named?” Malice said.

  “I am of House Oblodra.”

  “No, you’re not. Not yet, though you hope they will one day take you in. Or should I say, you hope they will not see that you are not truly a master of the magic of the mind, but rather a mundane wizard with one extraordinary gift.”

  The man cleared his throat, but there was more nervousness than indignity in the sound.

  “Sit down, Pau’Kros,” Malice ordered. “I am your most important customer.”

  “How? I do not understand,” the man replied awkwardly, but he did take his seat, which seemed to Malice a clear signal of surrender.

  “Jarlaxle told me of you,” Malice explained.

  The old drow man blew a sigh. “He could have arranged . . .”

  “I do not need him to arrange anything. I am here, you are here, and I require a service.” She shifted on the floating disk and crossed her legs comfortably, wanting to show this fool that she was confident of her ability to obliterate him with a word. “Who am I?” she asked, and she placed her snake-headed scourge on the table, the living serpents writhing and hissing, their fangs dripping deadly venom.

  Pau’Kros took a deep breath, then cautiously leaned forward and began mumbling, staring into the crystal ball, which immediately clouded.

  “Tell me, seer, who I am, and tell me why I am here,” said Malice.

  He continued to stare and continued to chant for a long while. Malice couldn’t make out many of the words, but she understood the arcane inflection of a mage well enough—which played into what Jarlaxle had told her of the man. This drow, Pau’Kros, had graduated from Sorcere, the drow academy for wizards, and had been well regarded until he had fallen out of favor with the mighty Gromph Baenre, an event coinciding with the utter destruction of his family house. Since that long-ago day, he had made his meager living on the Stenchstreets, telling fortunes, and he had been doing it for so long, according to Jarlaxle, he had actually become quite adept at it.

  And more than that, Pau’Kros survived because he knew how to keep the secrets of his clients.

  “Matron Do’Urden,” he said a few moments later, obvious respect in his voice. “I have heard of you. I am honored that you sought my services.”

  “Prove you are worth it.”

  The man licked his lips and cleared his throat and went back to concentrating on the crystal ball. Never averting his gaze, he reached into a pocket and produced a quartet of small bones, which he tossed on the left side of the ball. Then he reached in again and drew forth four more, tossing them to the right side, which drew more hissing threats from the snakes of the scourge.

  Despite herself, Malice admired the man’s concentration as he glanced lef
t, then right, where he managed to ignore the deadly serpents and focus on his thrown divinatory relics.

  “Yes,” he said, and a thin smile creased his face. “Yes, great Matron Malice, you are with child.”

  “I knew that,” she stated flatly. She lied. She had only suspected a pregnancy, but that wasn’t the most important question here, of course.

  “Tell me the sire,” she ordered.

  Pau’Kros swallowed hard and seemed off-balance, and of course, he should be. Telling a matron she was pregnant was almost always a blessed thing, of course, but telling her that her child was from a man not her preference could get someone horribly murdered, or worse.

  “The sire,” Malice said again, flatly. “Tell me the father of this child. Look in your ball and name the man. You know of me and so you know my reputation—one proudly earned, I assure you. I can narrow it down to four possibilities. You will tell me which man it is.”

  The man began to sweat. His pleading to the crystal ball became a bit more uneven and edgy, his nerves sounding clearly with every arcane syllable.

  But then he stopped suddenly, staring. For a moment, he seemed confused, but then the grin returned and his expression showed an epiphany.

  “I know this man,” he said, and Malice realized that he was talking to himself. As she considered that remark, and this location, hope began to swell within her.

  “Who is the father?” she demanded.

  “He was of House Simfray,” the seer dared to reply, for House Simfray was no more and it was not considered wise for someone, particularly a lowly male, to speak the name of that which did not exist.

  “Zaknafein,” he quickly corrected. “Zaknafein Do’Urden is the fath—”

  He fell forward, staring more deeply into the ball, and from the backside, Malice could tell that the images were changing quickly, that the seer was gaining insight and knowledge. She didn’t dare interrupt, not then.

  A long while later, the seer gave a gasp and fell back in his seat, seeming fully spent, his robes clinging to his emaciated form, his face lathered in sweat.

  “Yes, Matron Malice, your hopes are realized,” he said confidently.

  Malice was impressed, though she wasn’t about to show it.

  “As with your daughter, Priestess Vierna, this is a child of Zaknafein,” the seer told her.

  “You know him.”

  “I knew of him,” Pau’Kros admitted. “Though that was many decades ago. I am glad that you are pleased with this news.”

  “It would not take a seer to see that. Who would not be thrilled at the thought of another daughter sired by the great weapon master?”

  Pau’Kros nodded, but his expression turned to one of curiosity. “I did not say it would be a daughter,” he remarked.

  “You did not have to. Zaknafein is too great a lover and sire to bring forth a mere male,” Malice asserted, but seeing Pau’Kros’s scowl, added, “You doubt the blessings of Lolth?”

  “Of course not,” he blurted. “I would not even waste your time to look further to confirm that which you already know!”

  Matron Malice didn’t rise to leave. She just willed her floating disk toward the door, waved it open, and glided out into the street.

  There stood the woman from the table, shifting nervously from foot to foot, wearing a look fluctuating between hopefulness and trepidation.

  “What do you want?” Malice growled at her.

  “You told me to wait outside for you,” the woman replied.

  “Are you good at following orders?”

  “Yes . . . matron,” she said.

  “Then you will make a fine slave at my house,” said Malice, and she looked to the shadows past the woman and gave a slight nod.

  “Yes, Matron . . . What? A slave? I am no—”

  Her sentence ended there as a fine sword slid through her, back to front, the tip exiting her flesh just below her left breast, bits of her heart upon it.

  “You are no witness, either,” Malice told her as she fell down dead.

  She and her entourage returned to the West Wall and House Do’Urden.

  “You did well, then,” Jarlaxle told Pau’Kros a bit later, the flamboyant mercenary leader taking a seat at the divining table—though he had long before warned the seer never to try a divination regarding him.

  “She killed—”

  “Madeflava was dying anyway,” Jarlaxle interrupted. “You knew that, she knew that. It is a pity, yes, but it was a better end than the yellow mold growing in her lungs would have offered.”

  Pau’Kros dropped his old face into his thin hands.

  “What is the problem?” Jarlaxle bade him. “You told her what she wanted to know. She left quite happy.”

  “Happy enough to murder someone,” came the sarcastic response.

  “An act which no doubt made that one even happier,” Jarlaxle replied, with a laugh that sounded quite helpless, because it was.

  Pau’Kros sighed and buried his face again.

  “She won’t kill you, you old fool,” Jarlaxle said. “She would have done so already. You told her what she wanted to hear. The worst that will happen is that you will have to suffer her presence again sometime in the future if Zaknafein shoots true once more.”

  “I told her what she wanted to hear,” Pau’Kros agreed. “But I did not tell her all that I saw.”

  Jarlaxle perked up at that.

  “It is not a daughter growing in her belly,” the old seer explained. “It is a son.”

  “You lied to her?”

  Pau’Kros shook his head vehemently. “She did not even bother to ask. She was so sure. She will not be pleased. Not at all.”

  “Then it is a son,” Jarlaxle said with a shrug, as if it did not matter.

  “Matron Malice already has two, does she not? Nalfein and Dinin?”

  It was Jarlaxle’s turn to blow a heavy sigh, one that continued to grow heavier as he played the scenario through. No, indeed, Matron Malice would not be pleased, and even less so in her knowledge that this doomed child was the progeny of Zaknafein.

  Jarlaxle took his leave then and made his meandering way to the Oozing Myconid, the finest tavern in the Stenchstreets—particularly since Jarlaxle had purchased a controlling interest in the place some fifty years earlier. He wasn’t surprised to find Zaknafein there—his scouts had already reported as much to him, after all. The weapon master sat at his usual table in the back right-hand corner of the common room.

  “Ah, what brings you out on this fine night?” Jarlaxle asked as he approached, motioning to the bar for some more drinks.

  “Same thing that brings me anywhere,” Zaknafein replied. “Wherever I am, I can find happiness in knowing that there are a hundred other places in this city I’d rather not be.”

  Jarlaxle stared at him for a long moment. “I’m trying to determine if I should be complimented.”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  That brought a laugh from Jarlaxle. “In any case, it is good to see you again. We went years without so much as a greeting, and what now, the fourth time in the last two tendays?”

  “Malice has been extraordinarily wretched of late,” Zaknafein replied, and took a long swig of his drink.

  Jarlaxle almost said something that would have tipped his hand, but he bit it back.

  “The witch is pregnant,” Zaknafein declared.

  Jarlaxle started in surprise—not from the news, of course, but from how fast the news had traveled. Had Matron Malice even returned to House Do’Urden from her visit with the seer?

  Jarlaxle stammered over a response, finally settling on, “Is it yours?”

  “Are you hinting that my wife is unfaithful?” Zaknafein said with a scowl.

  Jarlaxle laughed, as did Zaknafein when he couldn’t hold the angry facade any longer. Matron Malice’s sexual excursions remained a matter of public record—and awe—after all.

  “I’m almost certain that I’m the father,” Zaknafein said.

 
“Because you’re just better than the others?” Jarlaxle teased.

  “Quality, yes,” Zaknafein replied. “But also the matter of quantity. The witch hasn’t let me sleep in weeks. I can always tell when she’s getting ready to sack another house.”

  Jarlaxle nodded. Just as her appetite was well-known, so it was no secret among those in the know that House Do’Urden was setting its sights on House DeVir, and no one was more in the know than Jarlaxle of Bregan D’aerthe.

  “You were happier with this news the last time, with the first one,” Jarlaxle observed.

  Zaknafein held up his free hand helplessly as he took another swallow of his drink.

  The new round arrived then, and Jarlaxle took his own and quickly waved the serving man away.

  “You do not feel that pride any longer when you look upon Vierna?” he dared to ask. “She seems rather exceptional, as priestesses go.”

  “Yes and no,” Zaknafein admitted. “I could have expected no more from any daughter I sired in the house of Malice Do’Urden than Vierna has offered. I am no fool. I know this, and knew it from the moment I first saw my child, and saw that my child was a girl. I think she has done well, but I’m not going to deny the pain of seeing my child, my daughter, become a devotee of that wretched Lolth.”

  “What choice did she have?”

  “What chance did she have?” Zaknafein corrected. He gave a little resigned chuckle. “It is interesting, and it caught me by surprise, I admit, this purpose of parenthood, these bonds beyond the expected.”

  “What do you mean?” Jarlaxle asked, surprised to hear Zaknafein speaking so openly.

  “The purpose—all of it,” Zaknafein replied. “Of this existence. I mean, on a most basic level, I fear death, and I think that true of everyone but the most addled in their god beliefs. I long for personal immortality, of course. Don’t you?”

  “I don’t know that I’d . . . I mean, that would be a long time, yes?”

  “So you lie to yourself that you will one day welcome that last close of your eyes?” Zaknafein snorted. “The Jarlaxle I know will try to talk Death itself out of that bargain.”