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Clothing fleildly, bric-a-brac sainst the wall across the room, assorted weapons spun up into the air and twirled back down, I so 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 ed his one-horowled stubbornly, and a half-completed suit of chainthe others in the rooot 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 proclai away from the dismantled chest In his hand he held a solden chain

Catti-brie recognized it instantly as the iven Bruenor, that he one into the Southland Inside the locket was a tiny portrait of Drizzt, and the iteeneral information about Drizzt Do’Urden’s whereabouts

"This’ll lead us to the elf," Bruenor proclaiive it over, efriend o’ yers"

"I can work it well enough," Bruenor growled in reply, replacing his one-horned helolden 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 yerwooblins afore he’d be letting Drizzt stay in trouble!"

Cobble grabbed Pwent’s shoulder (and got a nasty cut on one finger froed armor in the process) to confirm the woer not to press this point

Bruenor wouldn’t have listened to any argulow in his dark eyes, again blasted past Pwent and Wulfgar and led the charge out of the rooe came into focus slowly, surrealistically, and by the tinized his sister Vierna, bending low to regard hiue

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 hined 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 so tenderness buried beneath the wicked robes of a priestess of the Spider Queen

"How long has it been, e of the dark elves "Nearly three decades? And how far you have coan, and where you belong"

Drizzt steeled his gaze, but had no practical retort - not with his hands bound behind hi about the s to a eously plu ical mask tied to his belt, and Drizzt feared the ht 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 aht before Matrbefore wicked Malice"

"Matron Malice!" Vierna hissed

"Malice," Drizzt repeat defiantly, and Vierna slapped hiard 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 flohite tresses flipping back fro 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 kno 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 dis that it ca a mother, not froesting the news, Drizzt caht not an ounce of grief Malice was his natural parent, never his mother, and by all of Drizzt Do’Urden’s esti

"You do not even know, do you?" Vierna laughed at hione, lost one!"

Drizzt cocked a curious eye, suspecting that soreater, 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 sarcasain, harder, but he held firm to his stoic discipline and did not blink

Vierna spun away fro hands in front of her and found breath hard to coain, 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,force than for any sincere cares about Dinin’s well-deserved dened confusion, "you have s"

Drizzt’s confusion was genuine - until Vierna finished the thought

"One of his eight legs"

Again Drizztinforht hiain the blaas 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 tie, lurching forward from the floor, only to be easily pushed back to his seat

Vierna s she had found Drizzt’s weak spot