Exile: The Legend of Drizzt Read Free

elves wore their thick white hair as a mantle of their station, each cut designed to reveal rank and house affiliation.Jarlaxle the rogue wore no hair at all, and from Briza’s angle, his clean-shaven head appeared as a ball of pressed onyx.
    Jarlaxle laughed quietly at the continuing disapproval of the eldest Do’Urden daughter and turned back toward Matron Malice, his ample jewelry tinkling and his hard and shiny boots clumping with every step. Briza took note of this as well, for she knew that those boots, and that jewelry, only seemed to make noise when Jarlaxle wished them to do so.
    “It is done?” Matron Malice asked before the mercenary could even begin to offer a proper greeting.
    “My dear Matron Malice,” Jarlaxle replied with a pained sigh, knowing that he could get away with the informalities in light of his grand news. “Did you doubt me? Surely I am wounded to my heart.”
    Malice leaped from her throne, her fist clenched in victory. “Dipree Hun’ett is dead!” she proclaimed. “The first noble victim of the war!”
    “You forget Masoj Hun’ett,” remarked Briza, “slain by Drizzt ten years ago. And Zaknafein Do’Urden,” Briza had to add, against her better judgment, “killed by your own hand.”
    “Zaknafein was not noble by birth,” Malice sneered at her impertinent daughter. Briza’s words stung Malice nonetheless. Malice had decided to sacrifice Zaknafein in Drizzt’s stead against Briza’s recommendations.
    Jarlaxle cleared his throat to deflect the growing tension. The mercenary knew that he had to finish his business and be out of House Do’Urden as quickly as possible. Already he knew—though the Do’Urdens did not—that the appointed hour drew near. “There is the matter of my payment,” he reminded Malice.
    “Dinin will see to it,” Malice replied with a wave of her hand, not turning her eyes from her daughter’s pernicious stare.
    “I will take my leave,” Jarlaxle said, nodding to the elderboy.
    Before the mercenary had taken his first step toward the door, Vierna, Malice’s second daughter, burst into the room, her face glowing brightly in the infrared spectrum, heated with obvious excitement.
    “Damn,” Jarlaxle whispered under his breath. “What is it?” Matron Malice demanded. “House Hun’ett,” Vierna cried. “Soldiers in the compound! We are under attack!”

    Out in the courtyard, beyond the cavern complex, nearly five hundred soldiers of House Hun’ett—fully a hundred more than the house reportedly possessed—followed the blast of a lightning bolt through House Do’Urden’s adamantite gates. The three hundred fifty soldiers of the Do’Urden household swarmed out of the shaped stalagmite mounds that served as their quarters to meet the attack.
    Outnumbered but trained by Zaknafein, the Do’Urden troops formed into proper defensive positions, shielding their wizards and clerics so that they might cast their spells.
    An entire contingent of Hun’ett soldiers, empowered with enchantments of flying, swooped down the cavern wall that housed the royal chambers of House Do’Urden. Tiny hand-held crossbows clicked and thinned the ranks of the aerial force with deadly, poison-tipped darts. The aerial invaders’ surprise had been achieved, though, and the Do’Urden troops were quickly put into a precarious position.

    “Hun’ett has not the favor of Lolth!” Malice screamed. “It would not dare to openly attack!” She flinched at the refuting, thunderous sounds of another, and then still another, bolt of lightning.
    “Oh?” Briza snapped.
    Malice cast her daughter a threatening glare but didn’t have time to continue the argument. The normal method of attack by a drow house would involve the rush of soldiers combined with a mental barrage by the house’s highest-ranking clerics. Malice, though, felt no mental attack, which told her beyond any doubt that it was indeed House Hun’ett that had come to her gates. The clerics of Hun’ett,