With buoyant energy, the young dark elf threw himself into the task. Concentrating briefly, he rose into the air, using his natural-born powers of levitation to reach the high walls and ceiling. Soon it became a game as he whirled and dived through the air, swiping at bulbous patches of fungus with the enchanted spoon. He imagined each was Briza's homely face as it shriveled and disintegrated, and soon peals of elven laughter rang out across the hall. After what seemed almost too short a time, Drizzt sank back to the floor, panting for breath and grinning. He surveyed the walls. Not a speck of fungus marred the smooth onyx surfaces.

A scrabbling sound reached his pointed ears. Drizzt looked up to see a rat scramble out of a crack in the dark stone. The small creature scuttled across the floor of the hall, its eyes hot and red as blood, making for a hole in the opposite wall. With a fierce cry, Drizzt sprang into the air and landed in the rat's path, brandishing the glowing spoon before him. The spoon wasn't exactly a sword, but then the rat wasn't exactly a fierce monster of the Underdark. Neither fact mattered much to Drizzt.

Sometimes, from a secret vantage point high above the main courtyard, he watched as the weapons master, Zaknafein, trained the house's three-hundred soldiers. For hours on end, Drizzt would watch them practice their weapons skills. He wasn't sure why, but a thrill coursed through his veins every time he heard the clanging of their adamantite swords, and the feral, dancelike offensive maneuvers of Zaknafein fascinated him. Drizzt was doomed to life as a page prince for five more years, but after that-if Briza hadn't managed to kill him with all her evil chores-he would become a noble proper, and it would be time to train in skills that would benefit the house. Drizzt knew that it was possible he would be sent to the towers of Sorcere in Tier Breche, to learn the dark secrets of magic. But in his heart he hoped that he would be given to Zaknafein, to study with the weapons master. He wanted to learn to dance that dangerous dance.

Performing his best imitation of the weapons master, Drizzt stalked around the rat. The creature hissed, raising its hackles and baring yellow teeth. Drizzt lunged forward with the magically sharpened spoon. Quick as he was, the rat was quicker. It scuttled past him, running from the feast hall. With a whoop, Drizzt ran after, careening down a corridor. He gained on his enemy, then sprang forward, landing in front of it. The creature backed into a corner, hissing and spitting, eyes glowing with hate. Drizzt closed in to finish off his foe. As he had seen Zaknafein do a hundred times, he raised his weapon, then spun around to bring it down in a swift killing blow.

He froze, halting the spoon a fraction of an inch from disaster. Sensing its opportunity, the rat dashed between Drizzt's legs and disappeared through a crack. Drizzt did not watch it go. Instead, his eyes remained riveted on the object before his face.

A web. The silvery strands stretched like gossamer across the corner of the corridor. In the center of the web, like a plump jewel, clung a small spider. Had he not halted his swing at the last moment, his arm would have plunged right through the fragile strands. With great care, Drizzt lowered the spoon. All spiders were sacred to the goddess Lloth. To disturb one's web would have earned him a long appointment with Briza's whip. But if he had accidentally killed the arachnid…

Drizzt let out a low breath. The punishment for killing a spider was death: quick, painful, and with no chance of reprieve.

Despite the fatal nature of his near accident, Drizzt drew closer to the web in fascination, studying the spider in the center. "I don't understand this Lloth of yours," he murmured aloud. "Everybody seems to want her favor. My mother. My sisters. All the other noble houses. They'll do anything to get it. But they're terrified of Lloth, too. Sometimes I even think they hate her. But that only makes them worship her all the Harder. Why? Why is Lloth so important if she's so awful?" The spider only clung in silence to its web. Drizzt frowned in annoyance. "Well, I don't care what everyone else thinks," he decided. "I'm not afraid of spiders. If Lloth appears to me on the Festival of the Founding, I'll say so to her ugly face."

Oddly heartened by this bold exclamation, he turned and strode down the hallway, back to the capricious world he knew as page prince, leaving the spider to spin its tangled webs alone in the darkness.

Chapter Four: Into the Fire

Zaknafein did not want this mission.

The weapons master stood on a parapet high above the wrought-adamantite gates that guarded the entrance to House Do'Urden. Right now, the gates were only half raised, so that house nobles might levitate over them easily while goblins, gnomes, and other rabble could not. But in times of crisis the gates could be raised to cover the entire opening in the cavern's wall, so that none could pass through. Sometimes Zak wondered at the true purpose of those impervious metal bars. Perhaps they had been forged not to keep drow out of the house, but to keep them in.

Zak glanced across the compound at the balcony, beyond which lay the private chambers of the house's nobles. He glimpsed shadowy figures within. What dark plans were Matron Malice and her daughters concocting now, he wondered?

Just as Zak was about to turn away, a small form hopped over the balcony and half fell, half levitated to the ground below. A second later, Briza reached the railing and leaned over, shouting as she brandished her snake-headed whip at the object of her wrath. The smaller figure, however, had already vanished into the mouth of a corridor. Her face twisted with rage, Briza turned and stamped back into the interior of the upper level.

Despite his bleak mood, a faint smile touched Zak's lips. So the young Do'Urden page prince-what was the boy's name? Drizzt?-was causing his eldest sister consternation once again. Zak would not have expected such bold character in one of Rizzen's sons. Drizzt could grow up to be a strong and willful elf one day-if all that character were not crushed out of him first, as it was bound to be. Once Zak had held similar hopes for his own daughter, Vierna, but then the masters at Arach-Tinilith had sunk their pincers into her. Every day, she became more like Malice, more caught up in the matron mother's tangled plots to win Lloth's favor.

Ah, Malice. Zak thought back to the years when he had been patron of House Do'Urden. For a time, he had thought that he loved Malice, and she him, until the day she had stripped him of his rank, and he had realized that all she cared about was station and the position of House Do'Urden in Lloth's Ladder. On occasion, Malice still beckoned Zak to her bedchamber, and he complied. A matron mother's orders were not to be refused. And it was not unpleasant. Still, Zak knew now that whatever feeling there was between him and Malice, it was not, and never had been, love.

A gigantic spider hewn of dark green stone rested on the parapet behind Zak. A jade spider. Dozens of them scattered House Do'Urden to serve as a defense against any who might somehow pass the gates. Such was their enchantment that, in the presence of an intruder, a jade spider would animate and attack with swift and fatal force.

"Why do you not assail me now, spider?" Zak hissed in a voice filled with loathing. "I am an impostor here. Can you not sense that I am your enemy?"

But the spider remained cold stone.

Zak felt a prickling against his neck. He did not need to glance back at the balcony to know that he was being watched. He could delay his mission no longer. A puff of warm air-heated by some deep and distant lava flow-sent his white hair streaming back from his brow. Zak stepped off the high parapet into the swirling zephyr, using his power of levitation to ride the gust of air over the gates and down to the ground below. Without looking back, he plunged into the labyrinth that was Menzoberranzan.