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  Jarlaxle lifted his glass in a toast to that thought.

  “So yes, I would desire immortality, and hope there is an existence beyond this one,” said Zaknafein. “I am surprised, though, to learn that through my children, I find some relief against my fears. They are a form of immortality. I never thought of it like that until the day I first saw Vierna.”

  “That’s a good thing.”

  “It is a scary thing!” Zaknafein replied. “To see your child, Jarlaxle, is to know vulnerability. Is to know that there is something in the world that leaves you truly vulnerable, that there is this person more important to you than you, and that if anything terrible happened to her, it would be a hundred times more painful than if it had happened to you.

  “I fear death. I don’t want to die. This I know. But I know, too, that I would throw myself before a spear aimed for my child. Even one who has become a priestess of the Spider Queen!”

  “So you are pleased that Matron Malice is again with child?” Jarlaxle asked. “Your child?”

  Zaknafein seemed perplexed when faced with the stark question. He gave what seemed a shrug, then finished his drink and slid his chair back from the table.

  “I have to be back in the house,” he said, rising. “We have much to do.”

  “Before the war.”

  “There is no war,” Zaknafein protested. “What a silly notion. House Do’Urden has no ambitions, of course, that would go against the edicts of the city’s Ruling Council. But we must prepare ourselves in case something terrible befalls one of the houses ranked above us.”

  “Of course,” Jarlaxle agreed, and he smiled at Zaknafein’s reminder of how truly demented the laws of Menzoberranzan were. There was nothing wrong with wiping out a rival house, of course. The only wrong would be getting caught in the act. That, the getting caught, and not the act itself, was what the ruling matrons could not abide.

  He watched Zaknafein all the way out of the bar, then sat back and digested the unusually candid conversation with the typically reserved man. He knew that House Do’Urden was mere months from their attack on House DeVir, and so he likely wouldn’t see his friend again for many months, perhaps years.

  And it was an interesting feeling, noticing how much that saddened him.

  That’s why he so savored these moments sitting across from Zaknafein, for the man was ever full of surprising depth and insight.

  Jarlaxle appreciated that, but it weighed on him now. Zaknafein would sire a boy this time, and since this would be the third son of House Do’Urden, the devout Matron Malice would surely give the child to the Spider Queen, quickly and mercilessly.

  Particularly given this conversation, Jarlaxle feared that such an act would utterly devastate his old friend.

  Matron Malice didn’t like this place. Not at all. Too many males haunted the winding corridors and sweeping stairs, or kneeled before the vast shelves of scrolls and old tomes.

  And not just any males. These were the most powerful men in Menzoberranzan, including more than a few—notably Archmage Gromph, the eldest son of Matron Mother Baenre herself—who could likely destroy Malice in a fight. Even more disconcerting, Matron Malice did not belong in this place and very few knew she was here, and these potential adversaries, the great drow wizards of Sorcere, could surely dispose of a body!

  I am right here, came a soothing voice—no, not a voice, but rather a telepathic message that resonated within her. It has been arranged. You are here at the suffrage of Archmage Gromph and none would dare move against you.

  Matron Malice hated allowing that wretched Jarlaxle creature and his even more wretched Oblodran psionicist friend into her thoughts, but she couldn’t deny that Jarlaxle’s magical message was anything but comforting.

  The woman winced at that internal admission and concentrated even more fiercely on expelling Jarlaxle from her thoughts. If he was in there talking to her, then he could also be in there feeling her emotions as if they were his own.

  She did not want him to recognize her trepidation. She was the Matron of House Do’Urden, a rising and powerful drow house, after all.

  Malice came to a strange and narrow wooden door, one that would have seemed more fitting in the tower of an elven wizard in some ancient forest aboveground. Its knotted boards rose to shoulder height, then rounded and curved upward into somewhat of a point. The matron cast a spell of warding, then another of magical detection. Before she finished the second, the door swung inward, revealing a small landing and a dark descending stair.

  Be well, Matron Malice, said the voice in her head. I will await your return.

  He couldn’t go down there with her, at least not magically, Malice thought, for this portal was set with a powerful spell of disenchantment.

  The woman took a steadying breath and strode forward onto the landing. She grasped the smooth and rounded railing, the unfamiliar touch of wood, surface wood, well burnished. The railing creaked, as did the stairs when she began her descent. Down and around they wound, far below the multitowered structure of Sorcere. She was in blackness, then, so that even with her keen drow vision, she could not see the wall beside her or the stairs before her.

  She went on, not even attempting to cast a magical light. She didn’t need it. She was a matron of a rising and powerful house, she told herself resolutely. No male would dare strike at her.

  She didn’t count her steps, but she knew it was more than a hundred later when she spotted a distant light far below. A single candle, it seemed.

  Spiderwebs brushed her face, but that neither startled nor scared Matron Malice. Indeed, the presence of spiders comforted her. These were allies of Lolth, the Spider Queen, and Matron Malice was in the favor of the goddess.

  She picked up her pace, managing a smile when she felt a spider run off a web and skitter down her cheek.

  Lolth was with her.

  It occurred to her that the mere presence of these blessed little creatures was an admission of fealty by this mage she had come to visit.

  She came off the last step onto a wider floor. It was still dark, but not black, with the candle burning in its sconce on a table set off to the side. As she neared, she noted a chair waiting for her on the right side of the table, and a seated figure off to the left, not near the table, but against the natural stone wall a few feet from the setting.

  Malice understood. She took her seat.

  “Greetings. I am honored,” the hunched robed figure said. He kept his head bowed, his great cowl pulled below his face.

  “Look at me,” Malice ordered, for she was curious. It had been a long time since she had seen this man, looking down at him, straddling him after a torrid tryst.

  “No, Matron, it is better that I do not.”

  “How am I to properly prepare the unguent if I do not even fully understand the depth of the affliction?”

  “It is not an affliction,” the man said, his voice growing tight with anger.

  Malice thought to reiterate her command more forcefully—she was a matron and he a mere male—but she held back. This wizard, Gelroos Hun’ett, was an accomplished master in Sorcere, a powerful wizard, though one who was, apparently, somewhat reckless. His specialty was in creating new spells, combining magical effects to make the whole greater than the sum of the individual dweomers. Many of the spells taught at Sorcere were the result of the work of Gelroos, though anonymously, by order of the archmage.

  Such dabbling was not without reward, but also not without great risk, and on one occasion decades before, Gelroos’s magical combination had backfired, quite literally, taking the flesh from his face, which was, by all accounts Malice had heard, little more than a mix of bone and green goo.

  Now she wanted to see it—even more so because the wizard was clearly uncomfortable showing her. Seeing it would give her an edge here, perhaps, by putting Gelroos into a measure of discomfort, and Matron Malice was never one to forgo a possible advantage.

  “Look at me,” she ordered. Normally, she wou
ld have strengthened such a demand with a magical spell, but such an enchantment would likely have little effect on the formidable wizard. And if she made the magical attempt, he would probably detect it.

  “I have that which you seek,” Gelroos answered instead, a quite effective deflection. “I have associates at Arach-Tinilith, and what the priestesses have shown me, along with that which I hold here in my own library, informs me that the long-ago rumors you heard were not without merit.”

  “So it can be done,” Malice said, leaning forward. She reminded herself not to give up on viewing this disfigured creature, but that seemed like a distant desire in that moment.

  “It can be done and it is not so difficult a task,” the mage answered. “I believe that it would be a more popular and common occurrence if it was more widely understood, and of course, if it did not hold dire implications for the child.”

  “Such as?”

  Gelroos shrugged, a weird and unbalanced motion in his heavy robes and with his scrawny shoulders, and did look up then. Matron Malice fell back in her chair in surprise and horror.

  Nothing she had heard of his disfigurement could have prepared her for the reality of Gelroos Hun’ett, the Faceless One. The descriptions had been honest, though, for his face was a collage of bone edges, stretched and desiccated skin, lipless and gumless mouth, and a drooping triangular hole where his nose used to be. He didn’t seem to have any eyelids, either, appearing like a corpse long decaying, except for the notable splotches of green goo, some looking like the wax refuge of a melted candle, other bits seeming almost foamy and more fluid.

  Her last recollection of the man flashed in Malice’s thoughts. He had never been overly handsome by drow standards, but pretty enough. But now . . .

  “It is an auspicious beginning to life,” Gelroos answered.

  Malice shook away her surprise. She took a deep breath, which merely gave her a blast of the rotting aroma of the wizard’s face, and tried to respond, though she had completely lost the conversation.

  “You asked of the implications to the child,” he reminded her. “It would be an auspicious beginning.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course,” she stammered. “But is it more than that? Is there a curse? A lasting stain?”

  The Faceless One shrugged again. “I have seen nothing to indicate so, but then, most of the children born in the ritual have been sons, third sons, and so . . .”

  He let it hang there and Malice needed no explanation. A third son in a drow house was traditionally given to Lolth.

  “Perhaps that is the curse of birth magic,” Gelroos then added. “The curse to the house that a son was born, not a preferred daughter, and a most deadly curse to the child very soon after.”

  “Tell me more of it,” Malice pressed. “Quickly.”

  “There are wizards who routinely inflict pain upon themselves in the moments of casting, using that sting to sharpen their focus and thus produce the most powerful spell they can manage.”

  “This is just about the pain of childbirth?” Malice asked incredulously. Yes, of course it hurt, but that alone couldn’t possibly explain the potential power of the birthing magic ritual!

  “There is more to birth than pain,” Gelroos replied. “It is an experience unlike any other, one that encompasses both the body—both bodies, mother’s and child’s!—and the mind, heart, and spirit. The corporeal and ethereal. It is a moment of great vulnerability, but also one of great reception, and in that open state, the mother seems to collect all the magical energies about her, almost as if she is bringing the magical energy of those spellcasters around her into her own dweomer.”

  “How is that possible?”

  Gelroos shook his head. “I am a mere male, Matron Malice. I cannot fully understand the experience of giving birth.” He lifted up a skinny hand, holding a scroll tube, and moved it across to the woman.

  “You have read it?” Malice asked, taking the item.

  “There would be no reason,” Gelroos said with a wheezing chuckle. “This is one spell that is truly beyond my means. Also, my priestess associates forbade me from even glancing at the spell, and instructed me to relay to you, though they know not your identity, that great secrecy is demanded. Copy nothing of the dweomer. Forget it as you cast it, and speak little of it. Let the rumors swirl, as mystery is no threat.”

  Malice rolled the scroll tube in her hand, feeling the weight of his words. She had used birth magic before, but only in a minor way and certainly nothing akin to this. Even on that occasion, though, a simple spell of poison to aid her ascent, she had felt possibilities more profound. Joining other priestesses in the ritual? She felt as if she could hardly breathe, as if she was holding in her hand the power of a goddess.

  “Clearly,” Gelroos continued, “this kind of power could be seen as a threat to the matrons of the Ruling Council. This is no mere dweomer, Matron Malice. Do not underestimate the magical destructive power you will discover in the heightened moments of childbirth. And, I warn you as one who wishes you well, do not seek to exploit or abuse that power beyond our agreement here. The Ruling Council and the priestesses of Arach-Tinilith will be paying attention, and the combined weight of what would fall upon House Do’Urden in the event . . . well . . .”

  He left it there with another shrug.

  “I may need your protection,” the young man, barely more than a boy, explained to Jarlaxle, the two sitting in the Oozing Myconid late one quiet night.

  “You are the noble son of a ruling house. What could I possibly offer?”

  The man, Masoj, sighed and shook his head at the ridiculous remark. Even he, who had rarely been out of his house before being sent to serve his older sibling as a slave in Sorcere at the drow academy, was worldly enough to understand the growing power of Bregan D’aerthe. The band had the complete endorsement and protection of House Baenre!

  Even without that, Jarlaxle had created enough quiet alliances and assembled enough firepower to make the band of rogues formidable on its own. Jarlaxle knew it, and knew that Masoj knew it, so his feigned humility could elicit no more than a groan from the young man.

  “Why do you think you would need the protection of Bregan D’aerthe?” Jarlaxle asked finally.

  “What you ask me to do could get me sacrificed, or turned into a drider.”

  “Ask? I have asked nothing of you,” Jarlaxle reminded. “You came to me with a request and a bag of gold coins.”

  “And you refused my contract!”

  “I told you that such things are better taken care of within a family. Else, one risks war, and wars are messy and costly. But I did not ask you to do anything.”

  “You hinted that I might find more allies if I succeeded.”

  “How so?” Jarlaxle asked.

  Masoj started to answer, but bit his lip and tried to honestly recount his previous meeting with this most enigmatic drow. When he had gone to Jarlaxle hoping to pay for an assassination, the clever rogue had merely explained that such things were better handled within the house, both for the reason Jarlaxle had just reiterated and also because then the assassin had, in no small way, proven himself worthy of the resulting rise in stature.

  Masoj wanted Jarlaxle to do this. He was afraid, rightfully so, for his much older brother was quite powerful in the ways of arcane magic. At one point, powerful enough to be considered a possible future challenger to Gromph Baenre as archmage of the Menzoberranzan. All of that promise had fallen away in the flash of a spell gone horribly, irreversibly wrong.

  “I will tell you this much,” Jarlaxle said, leaning forward in his seat, his hand coming over the table and sitting there, palm up, fingers beckoning.

  “How much?” Masoj asked.

  “All of it.”

  “No.”

  “Then I leave, and warn you to take great care in your next schemes, and great care in pointing any fingers or words toward me or this place.”

  “It had better be worth the price,” Masoj mumbled, pulling out the smal
l bag of gold and dropping it onto Jarlaxle’s still-waiting palm.

  “Events are soon to unfold that may show you your opportunity, both to do that which you wish and to get away with it,” Jarlaxle replied. “Pay very close heed to the student who serves as your brother’s primary assistant.” As soon as he finished the sentence, Jarlaxle was up and away, not looking back.

  Masoj cocked his head curiously as he watched the mercenary depart. “Alton?” he whispered under his breath.

  At first, he felt cheated, but he put that notion aside. Jarlaxle’s reputation was not to be dismissed. The rogue’s cryptic words were known to move houses to war. The young apprentice, who thought himself a slave, drained his drink and left the Oozing Myconid soon after, determined to pay very close attention indeed.

  “Why would you get involved in this?” Dab’nay, the only priestess—and one of the very few women in Bregan D’aerthe—asked Jarlaxle when the young man had left the tavern.

  Jarlaxle dropped the pouch of gold on the bar. “No risk and some coin to show for it,” he replied.

  “You can have all the coin you want without getting involved in the family squabbles of a ruling house,” Dab’nay reminded.

  “There may be gain here. The target is surely no friend to us, and if the whelp is successful, I’ll know a secret he can ill afford to have whispered. And the whelp will no longer be a whelp, will he? He will be the elderboy of a powerful ruling house.”

  “Still, that target is no minor player, nor is Matron SiNafay or the house she rules.”

  “The house that speaks ill of us at every meeting of the Ruling Council?” Jarlaxle reminded.

  Dab’nay settled back and spent a while digesting that obvious exaggeration, if not outright lie. House Hun’ett would not dare speak ill of Bregan D’aerthe in the presence of Matron Mother Baenre, and had even dealt with the mercenary band on more than one occasion to mutual benefit.