The Dark Elf Trilogy | Page 8

had seemed such an ominous guard earlier that night. Now they just
watched helplessly.
Dinin recognized the measured but growing anticipation in the soldiers around
him, their drow battle-lust was barely contained. Every now and then came a
killing flash as one of the slaves stumbled over a warding glyph, but the
secondboy and the other drow only laughed at the spectacle.
The lesser races were the expendable "fodder" of House Do'Urden's army.
The only purpose in bringing the goblinoids to House DeVir was to trigger the
deadly traps and defenses along the perimeter, to lead the way for the drow
elves, the true soldiers.
The fence was now opened and secrecy was thrown away. House DeVir's
soldiers met the invading slaves head on within the compound. Dinin barely had
his hand up to begin the attack command when his sixty anxious drow warriors
jumped up and charged, their faces twisted in
wicked glee and their weapons waving menacingly.
They halted their approach on cue, though, remembering one final task set out to
them. Every drow, noble or commoner, possessed certain magical abilities.
Bringing forth a globe of darkness, as Dinin had done to the bugbears in the
street earlier that night, came easily to even the lowliest of the dark elves. So it
went now, with sixty Do'Urden soldiers blotting out the perimeter of House DeVir
above the mushroom fence in ball after ball of blackness.
For all of their stealth and precautions, House Do'Urden knew that many eyes
were watching the raid. Witnesses were not too much of a problem, they could
not, or would not, care enough to identify the attacking house. But custom and
rules demanded that certain attempts at secrecy be
enacted, the etiquette of drow warfare. In the blink of a red glowing drow eye,
House DeVir became, to the rest of the city, a dark blot on Menzoberranzan's
landscape.
Rizzen came up behind his youngest son. "Well done�� he signaled in the intricate
finger language of the drow. Nalfein is in through the back��
"An easy victory�� the cocky Dinin signaled back, "if Matron Ginafae and her
clerics are held at bay��
"Trust in Matron Malice�� was Rizzen's response. He clapped his son's shoulder
and followed his troops in through the breached mushroom fence.
High above the cluster of House DeVir, Zaknafein rested comfortably in the
current-arms of Briza's aerial servant, watching the drama unfold. From this
vantage, Zak could see within the ring of darkness and could hear within the ring
of magical silence. Dinin's troops, the first drow soldiers in, had met resistance at
every door and were being beaten badly.
Nalfein and his brigade, the troops of House Do'Urden most practiced in the
ways of wizardry, came through the fence at the rear of the complex. Lightning
strikes and magical balls of acid thundered into the courtyard at the base of the
DeVir structures, cutting down Do'Urden fodder and
DeVir defenses alike.
In the front courtyard, Rizzen and Dinin commanded the finest fighters of House
Do'Urden. The blessings of Lloth were with his house, Zak could see when the
battle was fully joined, for the strikes of the soldiers of House Do'Urden came
faster than those of their enemies, and their aim
proved more deadly. In minutes, the battle had been taken fully inside the five
pillars.
Zak stretched the incessant chill out of his arms and willed the aerial servant to
action. Down he plummeted on his windy bed, and then 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 agenst 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
adamantite 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