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whispered in silent sarcasm to the red-glowing gargoyles on the high walls. The statues 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 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 Lolth 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 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,