Clothing flew wildly, bric-a-brac smashed against the wall across the room, assorted weapons spun up into the air and twirled back down, I some bouncing off Bruenor's back. The dwarf, top half buried in his private locker, felt none of it, didn't even grunt when, as he rose for a moment, the flat side of a throwing axe struck and dislodged his one-homed helmet. "It's in here!" the dwarf growled stubbornly, and a half-completed suit of chain mail whipped over his shoulder, nearly clobbering the others in the room. "By Moradin, the damned thing's got to be in here!"
"What in the Nine - " Thibbledorf Pwent began, but Bruenor's ecstatic cry cut him short.
"I knowed it!" the red-bearded dwarf proclaimed, spinning up and turning away from the dismantled chest. In his hand he held a small, heart-shaped locket on a golden chain.
Catti-brie recognized it instantly as the magical gift Lady Alustriel of Silverymoon had given Bruenor, that he might find his friends who had gone into the Southland. Inside the locket was a tiny portrait of Drizzt, and the item was attuned to the drow, would give its possessor general information about Drizzt Do'Urden's whereabouts.
"This'll lead us to the elf," Bruenor proclaimed, holding the locket up high before him.
"Then give it over, me king," said Pwent, "and let me find this strange ... friend o' yers."
"I can work it well enough," Bruenor growled in reply, replacing his one-horned helm atop his head and taking up his many-notched axe and golden shield.
"Ye're king of Mithril Hall!" Pwent protested. "Ye cannot be running off into the danger of unknown tunnels."
Catti-brie ripped off an answer before Bruenor got the chance.
"Shut yer mouth, battlerager," the young woman insisted. "Me Dad'd throw the halls to the goblins afore he'd be letting Drizzt stay in trouble!"
Cobble grabbed Pwent's shoulder (and got a nasty cut on one finger from the many-ridged armor in the process) to confirm the woman's observation and silently warn the wild battlerager not to press this point.
Bruenor wouldn't have listened to any arguments anyway. The red-bearded dwarf king, fires aglow in his dark eyes, again blasted past Pwent and Wulfgar and led the charge out of the room.
The image came into focus slowly, surrealistically, and by the time Drizzt Do'Urden fully awakened, he clearly recognized his sister Vierna, bending low to regard him.
"Purple eyes," the priestess said in the drow tongue.
A sense that he had played out this identical scene a hundred times in his youth nearly overwhelmed the trapped dark elf.
Vierna! The only member of his family that Drizzt had ever cared for, besides the dead Zaknafein, stood before him now.
She had been Drizzt's wean-mother, assigned to bring him, as a prince of House Do'Urden, into the dark ways of drow society. But thinking back to those distant memories, to times of which he had few, if any, recollections, Drizzt knew there was something different about Vierna, some underlying tenderness buried beneath the wicked robes of a priestess of the Spider Queen.
"How long has it been, my lost brother?" Vierna asked, still using the language of the dark elves. "Nearly three decades? And how far you have come, and yet so close again to where you began, and where you belong."
Drizzt steeled his gaze, but had no practical retort - not with his hands bound behind him and a dozen drow soldiers milling about the small chamber. Entreri was there, too, talking to a most curious dark elf who wore an outrageously plumed hat and a short, open-front vest that showed the rippling muscles of his slender stomach. The assassin had the magical mask tied to his belt, and Drizzt feared the mischief Entreri might cause if he were allowed to return to Mithril Hall.
"What will you think when you walk again into Menzoberranzan?" Vierna asked Drizzt, and though the question was again rhetorical, it drew his attention fully back to her.
"I will think as a prisoner thinks," Drizzt replied. "And when I am brought before Matr...before wicked Malice..."
"Matron Malice!" Vierna hissed.
"Malice," Drizzt repeat defiantly, and Vierna slapped him hard across the face. Several dark elves turned to regard the incident, then gave quiet chuckles and went back to their conversations.
Vierna, too, erupted in laughter, long and wild. She threw her head back, her flowing white tresses flipping back from her face.
Drizzt regarded her silently, having no idea of what had precipitated the explosive reaction.
"Matron Malice is dead, you fool!" Vierna said suddenly, snapping her head forward to within an inch of Drizzt's face.
Drizzt did not know how to react. He had just been told that his mother was dead, and he had no idea of how the information should affect him. He felt a sadness, distantly, but dismissed it, understanding that it came from a sense of never knowing a mother, not from the loss of Malice Do'Urden. As he settled back, digesting the news, Drizzt came to feel a calmness, an acceptance that brought not an ounce of grief. Malice was his natural parent, never his mother, and by all of Drizzt Do'Urden's estimation, her death was not a bad thing.
"You do not even know, do you?" Vierna laughed at him. "How long you have been gone, lost one!"
Drizzt cocked a curious eye, suspecting that some further, even greater, revelation was yet to be spoken.
"By your own actions House Do'Urden was destroyed, and you do not even know!" Vierna cackled hysterically.
"Destroyed?" Drizzt asked, surprised but, again, not overly concerned. In truth, the renegade drow felt no more for his own house than for any other in Menzoberranzan. In truth, Drizzt felt nothing at all.
"Matron Malice was charged with finding you," Vierna explained. "When she could not, when you slipped through her grasp, so, too, did the favor of Lloth."
"A pity," Drizzt interjected, his voice dripping with sarcasm. Vierna hit him again, harder, but he held firm to his stoic discipline and did not blink.
Vierna spun away from him, clenched her delicate but deceptively strong hands in front of her and found breath hard to come by.
"Destroyed," she said again, suddenly obviously pained, "taken down by the will of the Spider Queen. They are dead because of you," she cried, spinning back at Drizzt and pointing accusingly. "Your sisters, Briza and Maya, and your mother. All the house, Drizzt Do'Urden, dead because of you!"
Drizzt gave no outward expression, an accurate reflection of his absence of feelings, for the incredible news Vierna had just thrown at him. "And what of our brother?" he asked, more to discern information about this raiding force than for any sincere cares about Dinin's well-deserved demise.
"Why, Drizzt," Vierna said with obviously feigned confusion, "you have met him yourself. You nearly took one of his legs."
Drizzt's confusion was genuine - until Vierna finished the thought.
"One of his eight legs."
Again Drizzt managed to keep his features expressionless, but the stunning information that Dinin had become a drider certainly had caught him by surprise.
"Again the blame is yours!" Vierna snarled, and she watched him for a long moment, her smile gradually fading as he did not react.
"Zaknafein died for you!" Vierna cried suddenly, and, though Drizzt knew she had said it only to evoke a reaction, this time he could not remain calm.
"No!" he shouted back in rage, lurching forward from the floor, only to be easily pushed back to his seat.
Vierna smiled evilly, knowing she had found Drizzt's weak spot.
"Were it not for the sins of Drizzt Do'Urden, Zaknafein would live still," she prodded. "House Do'Urden would have known its highest glories and Matron Malice would sit upon the ruling council."
"Sins?" Drizzt spat back, finding his courage against the painful memories of his lost father. "Glories?" he asked. "You confuse the two."
Vierna's hand shot up as though to lash out again, but when stoic Drizzt did not flinch, she lowered it.
"In the name of your wretched deity, you revel in the evilness of the drow world," the indomitable Drizzt went on. "Zaknafein died .. . no, was murdered, in pursuit of false ideals. You cannot convince me to accept the blame. Was it Vierna who held the sacrificial dagger?"
The priestess seemed on the verge of an explosion, her eyes glowing intensely and her face flushed hot to Drizzt's heat-seeing eyes.
"He was your father, too," Drizzt said to her, and she winced in spite of her efforts to sustain her rage. It was true enough. Zaknafein had sired two, and only two, children with Malice.
"But you do not care about that," Drizzt reasoned immediately. "Zaknafein was just a male, after all, and males do not count in the world of the drow.
"But he was your father," Drizzt had to add. "And he gave more to you than you will ever accept."
"Silence!" Vierna snarled through gnashing teeth. She slapped Drizzt again, several times in rapid succession. He could feel the warmth of his own blood oozing down his face.
Drizzt remained quiet for the moment, caught in private reflections of Vierna, and of the monster she had become. She now seemed more akin to Briza, Drizzt's oldest and most vicious sister, caught up in the frenzy that the Spider Queen always seemed ready to promote. Where was the Vierna that had secretly shown mercy to young Drizzt? Where was the Vierna who went along with the dark ways, as did Zaknafein, but never seemed to fully accept what Lloth had to offer?
Where was Zaknafein's daughter?
She was dead and buried, Drizzt decided as he regarded that heat-flushed face, buried beneath the lies and the empty promises of twisted glory that perverted everything about the dark world of the drow.
"I will redeem you," Vierna said, calm again, the heat gradually leaving her delicate, beautiful face.
"More wicked ones than you have tried," Drizzt replied, misunderstanding her intent. Vierna's ensuing laughter revealed that she recognized the error of his conclusions.
"I will give you to Lloth," the priestess explained. "And I will accept, in return, more power than even ambitious Matron Malice ever hoped for. Be of cheer, my lost brother, and know that you will restore to House Do'Urden more prestige and power than it ever before knew."
"Power that will wane," Drizzt replied calmly, and his tone angered Vierna more than his insightful words. "Power that will raise the house to another precipice, so that another house, finding the favor of Lloth, might push Do'Urden down once more."
Vierna's smile widened.
"You cannot deny it," Drizzt snarled at her, and it was he who now faltered in the war of words, he who found his logic, however sound, to be inadequate. "There is no constancy, no permanence, in Menzoberranzan beyond the Spider Queen's latest whim."
"Good, my lost brother," Vierna purred.
"Lloth is a damned thing!"
Vierna nodded. "Your sacrilege cannot harm me any more," the priestess explained, her tone deathly calm, "for you are not of me anymore. You are nothing more than a houseless rogue whom Lloth has deemed suitable for sacrifice.
"So do continue to spit your curses at the Spider Queen," Vierna went on. "Do show Lloth how proper this sacrifice will be! How ironic it is, for if you repented your ways, if you came back to the truth of your heritage, then you would defeat me."
Drizzt bit his lip, realizing that he would do well to hold his silence until he better fathomed the depth of this unexpected meeting.
"Do you not understand?" Vierna asked him. "Merciful Lloth would welcome back your skilled sword, and my sacrifice would be no more. Thus would I live as an outcast, like you, a houseless rogue."
"You do not fear to tell me this?" Drizzt asked her coyly.
Vierna understood her renegade brother better than he believed. "You will not repent, foolish, honorable Drizzt Do'Urden," she replied. "You would not utter such a lie, would not proclaim your fealty to the Spider Queen, even to save your very life. What useless commodities are these ideals you hold so precious!"
Vierna slapped him one more time, for no particular reason that Drizzt could discern, and she twirled away, her hot form blurred by the shielding flow of her clerical robes. How fitting that image seemed to Drizzt, that the true outline of his sister should be hidden beneath the garments of the perverting Spider Queen.
The curious-looking drow that had been conversing with Entreri walked over to Drizzt then, his high boots clacking loudly on the stone. He gave Drizzt an almost sympathetic look, then shrugged.
"A pity," he remarked, as he produced the glowing Twinkle from under the folds of his shimmering cape.
"A pity," he said again, and he walked away, this time his boots making not a whisper of sound.
The amazed guards snapped to rigid attention when their king unexpectedly entered their chamber, accompanied by his daughter, Wulfgar, Cobble, and a strangely armored dwarf that they did not know.
"Ye heared from the drow?" Bruenor asked the guards, the dwarf king going straight for the heavy bar on the stone door as he spoke.
Their silence told Bruenor all he needed to know. "Get to General Dagna," he instructed one of the guardsmen. "Tell him to gather together a war party and get down the new tunnels!"
The dwarven guard obediently kicked up his heels and darted away.
Bruenor's four companions came beside him as the bar clanged to the stone, Wulfgar and Cobble bearing blazing torches.
"Three, then two, is the draw's signal," the remaining guard explained to Bruenor.
"Three, then two, it is," Bruenor replied, and he disappeared into the gloom, forcing the others, particularly Thibbledorf, who still did not think it a good thing that the king of Mithril Hall was even down there, to scamper quickly just to keep pace.
Cobble and even hardy Pwent glanced back and grimaced as the stone door slammed shut, while the other three, bent forward with the weight of their fears for their missing friend, did not even hear the sound.