"When I battled the elemental." Drizzt explained, spitting out the last word as a curse upon Zaknafein. He cast an angry glare at the weapon master and continued, "Masoj Hun’ett struck me down with a bolt of lightning."
"He may have been shooting for the monster." Vierna insisted. "Masoj insisted that it was he who killed the elemental, but the high priestess of the patrol denied his claim."
"Masoj waited." Drizzt replied. "He did nothing until I began to gain the advantage over the monster. Then he loosed his magic, as much at me as at the elemental. I think he hoped to destroy us both."
"House Hun’ett." Matron Malice whispered.
"Fifth House." Briza remarked, "under Matron SiNafay."
"So that is our enemy." said Malice.
"Perhaps not." said Dinin, wondering even as he spoke the words why he hadn’t left well enough alone. To disprove the theory only invited more whipping.
Matron Malice did not like his hesitation as he reconsidered the argument. "Explain!" she commanded.
"Masoj Hun’ett was angry at being excluded from the surface raid." said Dinin. "We left him in the city, only to witness our triumphant return." Dinin fixed his eyes straight on his brother. "Masoj has ever been jealous of Drizzt and all the glories that my brother has found, rightly or wrongly. Many are jealous of Drizzt and would see him dead."
Drizzt shifted uncomfortably in his seat, knowing the last words to be an open threat. He glanced over to Zaknafein and marked the weapon master’s smug smile.
"Are you certain of your words?" Malice said to Drizzt, shaking him from his private thoughts.
"There is the cat." Dinin interrupted, "Masoj Hun’ett’s magical pet, though it holds closer to Drizzt’s side than to the wizard’s."
"Guenhwyvar walks the point beside me." Drizzt protested, "a position that you ordered."
"Masoj does not like it." Dinin retorted. Perhaps that is why you put the cat there, Drizzt thought, but he kept the words to himself. Was he seeing conspiracies in coincidence? Or was his world so truly filled with devious schemes and silent struggles for power?
"Are you certain of your words?" Malice asked Drizzt again, pulling him from his pondering.
"Masoj Hun’ett tried to kill me." he asserted. "I do not know his reasons, but his intent I do not doubt!"
"House Hun’ett, then." Briza remarked, "a mighty foe."
"We must learn of them." Malice said. "Dispatch the scouts! I will know the count of House Hun’ett’s soldiers, its wizards, and, particularly, its clerics."
"If we are wrong." Dinin said. "If House Hun’ett is not the conspiring house…"
"We are not wrong!" Malice screamed at him.
"The yochlol said that one of us knows the identity of our enemy." reasoned Vierna. "All we have is Drizzt’s tale of Masoj."
"Unless you are hiding something." Matron Malice growled at Dinin, a threat so cold and wicked that it stole the blood from the elderboy’s face.
Dinin shook his head emphatically and slumped back, having nothing more to add to the conversation.
"Prepare a communion." Malice said to Briza, "Let us learn of Matron SiNafay’s standing with the Spider Queen."
Drizzt watched incredulously as the preparations began at a frantic pace, each command from Matron Malice following a practiced defensive course. It wasn’t the precision of Drizzt’s family’s battle planning that amazed him, he would expect nothing less from this group. It was the eager gleam in every eye.
Chapter 25
The Weapon Masters
"Impudent!" growled the yochlol. The fire in the brazier puffed, and the creature again stood behind Malice, again draped dangerous tentacles over the matron mother. "You dare to summon me again?"
Malice and her daughters glanced around, on the edge of panic. They knew that the mighty being was not toying with them, the handmaiden truly was enraged this time.
"House Do’Urden pleased the Spider Queen, it is true." the yochlol answered their unspoken thoughts, "but that one act does not dispel the displeasure your family brought upon Lolth in the recent past. Do not think that all is forgiven, Matron Malice Do’Urden!"
How small and vulnerable Matron Malice felt now! Her power paled in the face of the wrath of one of Lolth’s personal servants.
"Displeasure?" she dared to whisper. "How has my family brought displeasure to the Spider Queen? By what act?"
The handmaiden’s laughter erupted in a spout of flames and flying spiders, but the high priestesses held their positions. They accepted the heat and the crawling things as part of their penance.
"I have told you before, Matron Malice Do’Urden." The yochlol snarled with its droopy mouth, "and I shall tell you one final time. The Spider Queen does not reply to questions whose answers are already known!" In a blast of explosive energy that sent the four females of House Do’Urden tumbling to the floor, the handmaiden was gone.
Briza was the first to recover. She prudently rushed over to the brazier and smothered the remaining flames, thus closing the gate to the Abyss, the yochlol’s home plane.
"Who?" screamed Malice, the powerful matriarch once again. "Who in my family has invoked the wrath of Lolth?"
Malice appeared small again then, as the implications of the yochlol’s warning became all too clear. House Do’Urden was about to go to war with a powerful family. Without Lolth’s favor, House Do’Urden likely would cease to exist.
"We must find the perpetrator." Malice instructed her daughters, certain that none of them was involved. They were high priestesses, one and all. If any of them had done some misdeed in the eyes of the Spider Queen, the summoned yochlol surely would have exacted punishment on the spot. By itself, the handmaiden could have leveled House Do’Urden.
Briza pulled the snake whip from her belt. "I will get the information we require!" she promised.
"No!" said Matron Malice. "We must not reveal our search. Be it a soldier or a member of House Do’Urden, the guilty one is trained and hardened against pain. We cannot hope that torture will pull the confession from his lips not when he knows the consequences of his actions. We must discover the cause of Lolth’s displeasure immediately and properly punish the criminal. The Spider Queen must stand behind us in our struggles!"
"How, then, are we to discern the perpetrator?" the eldest daughter complained, reluctantly replacing the snake whip on her belt.
"Vierna and Maya, leave us." Matron Malice instructed. "Say nothing of these revelations and do nothing to hint at our purpose."
The two younger daughters bowed and scurried away, not happy with their secondary roles but unable to do anything about them.
"First we will look." Malice said to Briza. "We will see if we can learn of the guilty one from afar."
Briza understood. "The scrying bowl." she said. She rushed from the anteroom and into the chapel proper. In the central altar she found the valuable item, a wide golden bowl laced throughout with black pearls. Hands trembling, Briza placed the bowl atop the altar and reached into the most sacred of the many compartments. This was the holding bin for the prized possession of House Do’Urden, a great onyx chalice.
Malice then joined Briza in the chapel proper and took the chalice from her. Moving to the large font at the entrance to the great room, Malice dipped the chalice into a sticky fluid, the unholy water of her religion. She then chanted, "Spiderae aught icor ven." The ritual complete, Malice moved back to the altar and poured the unholy water into the golden bowl.