1102 DR: The last page of a book, the beginning of a new story
City of Menzoberranzan, Upperdark, North of Faerûn
The room was almost soundproof, thanks to the thick stone walls, but the cries of war and death from outside could still be heard. Hell must have broken loose out there.
Tanith'ey screamed, a cry of anger, determination and pain. Inside that room, she was fighting her own battle. Lying on a stone bed, with two very nervous female soldiers for only company, Tanith'ey gritted her teeth, took a deep breath and pushed with all her strength, screaming again. The birth was not going as she had hoped, she had been in labor for too long.
"Almost done, Princess." A soldier encouraged her, urging her to complete her task ... or to hurry up? Tanith'ey looked at her with hatred, trying to memorize her face so that she could kill her when it was all over. If it would be over.
The noise of fighting seemed to get closer and closer, against all logic. They shouldn't have been inside already. They shouldn't have done it at all. The Menz'brez House palace should have been impregnable, it should have ...
With a last effort, Tanith'ey managed to expel from her body the creature that had made her suffer so much in the last few hours.
"A female!" The soldier exclaimed, then with great care lifted the child to cleanse her of the blood. "Maybe that's a good sign, Princess. Maybe Lady Lloth has granted us her favor again!"
Tanith'ey took the baby girl who was being placed in her arms, and looked at her for a brief moment. She was so beautiful. A pity that her life would have been so short. She did not know how to answer her servant's statement, but when she looked up to speak to her, she saw a mad spark of hope shine in the eyes of the two female soldiers. Suddenly, with disarming clarity, Tanith'ey realized that the two drow needed to believe it. She decided not to dissuade them from their hope, but deep down he knew things were different. When she tried to use her innate powers to reach out to the Spider Queen, as she had learned to do since childhood, she only encountered a wall of rejection and glowing rage. Lady Lloth is angry with my family, and I am the cause of it all, she thought, but she was careful not to say it. Tanith'ey was exhausted, in pain, and felt her labor was not over yet. The last thing she wanted was to lose the feeble loyalty of her soldiers.
"Princess, we have to go now. We have to escape." One of the two females moved towards the noble to help her up.
Tanith'ey was about to object, ordering them to stay because she wasn't done yet; but before she could say anything, a knife pierced the nape of the nearest guard, poking out from under her delicate chin. The other drow reached for her whip and sword, ready to fight the invisible opponent, but was knocked to the ground by a powerful blast of magical electricity.
As the soldier died silently on the floor, the invisible enemy spoke.
"A daughter. Well done, Tanith'ey. It seems your worries were in vain. Who knows, maybe this whole war could have been avoided. "
The noble knew that voice well. It was Kazran, the House's wizard. He should have been their ally!
"Kazran, I'm not done yet. There is another child! " She said urgently, seemingly not caring at all about her vulnerable position in front of someone who had just killed her guards.
The drow was visible again, just in time for Tanith'ey to see his expression change from amusement to worry.
"You don't have time, Tanith'ey. They're already here."
"How can they already be here?!" She cried out in despair, as she tried to push, again, to give birth to that creature who did not want to go out.
"Because I let them in." He answered in a perfectly neutral tone.
Tanith'ey gasped. For a moment she forgot everything, even the pain of labor.
"I'm sorry, Tanith'ey. I needed a diversion to do what you asked me to do."
The young drow looked at him in shock, speechless. At that moment she felt the full weight of the naivety of his seventy years on her. Then, from the amazement and pain of the betrayal, she felt a wave of anger arise. Anger enveloped her like a blessing, easing the pain and fear.
"I asked you to take our baby and bring it away if it was a boy. I didn't ask you to help ... or even organize! ... a rebellion against my House!" She screamed, interspersing the protests with screams of pain and deep breaths. That damned child had to make up their mind to be born! Without realizing it, she was spasmodically clutching her first child, who had started crying.
"Don't you understand, my princess?" Kazran went to her side and stroked her white hair with one hand, while with the other he went to caress her hand. "Just your overly indulgent feelings have drawn the Spider Queen's grudge upon your House. Your family tradition dictates that all males not allowed to be born are killed, and you have disobeyed, even if only with intent."
"It seemed to me that you agreed with me!" She chilled him.
"What I want doesn't matter. I am a male, and not even a relative of yours, I am just a servant. You are a noble! As soon as other powerful Houses realized you had lost Lolth's favor, they teamed up to destroy you. House Menz'brez is the Second of Menzoberranzan ... a position envied by many. I didn't organize the attack. I just made arrangements for personal gain if I helped them get in."
Tanith'ey wanted to shout at him that he was a treacherous snake, that she hated him, that she cursed him and his children... but the truth was that he was a drow, and so was she, and they both knew exactly how their world worked.
"You are a noble, and you are a priestess who lost the favor of the Spider Queen, so you will die. Like your mother and your sisters." He noted. There was no cruelty in his tone, only resignation.
She nodded. She knew, of course. The sounds of battle were getting closer and closer.
"Do what you promised, then. Take the children."
He raised an eyebrow in perplexity, and she felt she hated him again, more than before.
"The female must die." The wizard objected, shrugging. "And if you have another one inside, male or female, you don't have time to give birth."
"No!" She denied, forcefully, indeed, stubbornly. "You took your own advantage in this matter. Now keep your lousy word. Get our children out of here."
Kazran looked into her eyes, fascinated in spite of himself by her tenacity. Her sisters had pathetically begged for their life. He looked at the young female exhausted from childbirth and desperate for her imminent death, and had the feeling that she was the strongest person in that mansion.
"I'll have to get them out." He surrendered, pulling another dagger from his stash.
The princess nodded. She would have died anyway.
"I love you, Tanith'ey" he murmured, before proceeding with the incision.
She looked at the knife, feeling the grip of panic again now that the time had come.
"I will love you again if you take the female away too," she murmured, trying one last time to convince her former lover. But a moment later she was dead, and she never knew if he granted her request or not.
Kazran took the baby girl before she slipped out of her mother's grasp, and placed her carefully at the foot of the corpse. Then he somehow managed to extract the other one as well. A male. Tanith'ey had been right to worry, after all.
Kazran was not the House wizard for nothing. Cadet son of a minor noble family, he had made his way through the ranks of the city demonstrating a great predisposition for the arcane arts. He had been claimed by the Second House on merit alone, a position coveted by many as House Menz'brez was notorious for having no sons to employ.
And now an unplanned male has survived, thought the wizard, lifting in his arms the child who was son of the youngest princess of the House. The baby was crying and covered in blood, but he didn't have time to calm him down or clean him. He had prepared an escape plan, of course, and in his mind he was already preparing the spell. He took one last look at his dead lover, lying on the birth bed, and felt a hint of sadness somewhere in his hardened heart. Tanith'ey had been the only female to treat him with any decency, because she was stupid and young and she had fallen in love with him. He drove these thoughts from his mind. Tanith'ey was dead, so it was as if she never existed. Then his gaze fell on the little girl.
I will love you again if you take the female away too.
Tanith'ey's voice rang in his mind, once again, one last time.
With a sigh, cursing his stupidity, Kazran picked up the little girl too.
Moments later the drow with the two babies in his arms disappeared from the birthing room, just before the invaders managed to break through the door with a burst of magical energy.
Kazran teleported to an inn room in the most exotic part of the market. This was one of the districts most snubbed by the nobles of Menzoberranzan, because it was the only one where human merchants, duergar, and other races who dared to trade with drow were allowed to enter.
The wizard placed the children on his bed and used some elementary spells to clean them up and put them to sleep. He couldn't take their crying a second longer.
Kazran left the room and went down the stairs, calmly. A few days earlier he had taken up residence, obviously under a false name, in that inn without praise or blame. It was still a dump by the standards of a noble, but he had chosen it according to a precise criterion: the innkeeper, a young half-drow, had given birth a few months ago.
"You!" He called, as soon as he could find her. "Do you have enough milk for two more babies?"
The innkeeper looked at him in amazement, taken aback by the sudden request.
"Two more? I don't... I don't know, maybe, but I'll have to give mine some rothé milk." She reasoned, referring to the animals that in the Deep Dark were raised as cows.
"Then do it." He ordered unceremoniously, putting a gold coin in her hand. "I'll pay you well for the trouble... and for your silence."
The woman turned the coin over in her palm, then nodded. If the drow intended to pay her in gold, she might as well abandon her baby in a rothé pasture with a kiss and a wish of good luck. "I'll come as soon as I can. Give me ten minutes."
Kazran returned to his room. The children were still sleeping, side by side. The male had found one of the female's hands and held it in a small fist. Kazran watched them for some very long minutes, feeling a strange sensation in his chest. They were so... he would have said cute, but he didn't have a word to define them. He decided to fall back on weak.
But look how soundly they sleep. He thought, with a bitter smile. It is as if they belonged to the same rank. As if one of the two was not destined to die, or to become a simple servant of his sister.
I'll have to give them a name. Finally he decided. A name that remains unknown to everyone. Names have power. I have to decide their Real Name or else someone else will and it will be in the public domain.
The wizard loosened the grip of their hands and gently lifted the boy, who moved in his sleep but did not wake up.
"In the name of the blood that binds us, my son..." he realized how strange it was to call someone a son, "I, Kazran, declare that your name is Dhaunryn."
The name had a meaning: literally infested blood or the one who has the plague in his blood. It was a good name for a child who had caused the death of his mother, a child who had a millennial curse in his blood that his family had jealously nurtured. Genetic purity was the reason why males could not be born who were not carefully planned. If Kazran had thought about it, he would have realized that it was the House's crazy idea of purity, not Tanith'ey's natural maternal feelings, that had caused the downfall of that family. But he was a drow, raised in a ruthless city, and would not have been capable of such reasoning.
He put down little Dhaunryn and this time picked up the baby girl. If he had mixed feelings for the male, for the female he was certain that he felt absolutely nothing. She was a stranger, an alien and superfluous creature, and he had never wanted a daughter. He would have left her to her fate if her young mother hadn't begged so poignantly.
"In the name of the blood that binds us, my daughter, I, Kazran, declare that your name is Cri'nthrye." He decided briefly, then placed her back on the blanket next to her little brother.
The little girl sighed in her sleep, peacefully unaware that her father had called her the one who causes tears.
The innkeeper arrived a few minutes later to bring milk and clean swaddling clothes for the babies. Kazran decided that he would delegate the most trivial tasks to her. He had to take care of finding connections, someone to dump the two babies to, possibly very far from each other. The female in particular should not have grown up under the suffocating cloak of the Lolth cult, or her true ancestry would have been revealed all too soon. She had to leave Menzoberranzan immediately.
Kazran began to make plans in his mind, thinking of who he knew and whom he could bribe, as he let his gaze wander over the innkeeper nursing the babies. She was pretty, he noted. She looked more like a drow than a human woman, and her submissive demeanor excited him. It was a pleasant side to her that she belonged to an inferior race, which precluded her access to the priestly caste and social power that all female drow had. He glanced down at her luscious breasts, and found himself thinking that, if she would be nice to him, perhaps he might as well waste a spell to make her forget those days ... instead of killing her as he had originally planned.
Ah, Kazran, old sport. You're softening up.