Baldur's gate II_ throne of Bhaal - Drew Karpyshyn [75]
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With the climbing claws strapped to her hands, Sendai scaled the smooth marble walls of Amkethran's monastery as easily as most women would ascend a gently sloping set of steps. At the top she crouched low and scampered along the edge of wall, oblivious to the thirty-foot drop on either side.
She moved without a sound, silent as a shadow. The courtyard below was bathed in darkness, but the drow's eyes were able to study the layout of the buildings and the placement of the guards.
Several of Balthazar's monks were standing at full attention near the base of a tall tower in the center of the compound. Had her target been a drow matriarch, Sendai would instantly have dismissed the tower as too obvious. That was how the drow mind worked. The guards would be mere bait to lure her into the structure that would then collapse and kill them all. She knew surface dwellers were simple folk, that they were not devious enough to set such a trap. Or perhaps they merely lacked the will to sacrifice dozens of their own followers' lives to catch an assassin.
Whatever the explanation, Sendai could not help but feel her talents were wasted and unappreciated by these pale-skinned amateurs. Back in Ched Nassad, the Underdark city of her birth, the professional assassin had been respected and feared for her talents-not vilified and scorned.
As she studied the movements and positions of the guards, plotting how she would slip past them and into the tower, Sendai couldn't quell the anger stirred up by the recollections of her homeland. Anger for all she had lost.
A daughter in the minor noble house of Kenafin, she had been born with the character traits of most drow females: She was ambitious, ruthless, sadistic. Sendai was also wise enough to see that her chances of political advancement were slim. She lacked the devotion to Lolth required of a priestess. So she had chosen a different path to make her name, though one perfectly acceptable in drow culture.
It hadn't taken long before Sendai's considerable skills in discreetly eliminating her foes and rivals drew the attention of Ched Nassad's more powerful matriarchs. Just barely past her twentieth year, she had already become the darling of the ruling mothers. Each sought to use her for their own purposes. They tried to entice her loyalty with offers of power, slaves, and wealth. In typical drow fashion, Sendai had managed to play the dangerous game of serving no one house in particular, maximizing her opportunities-and her enemies.
Sendai, young as she was by drow standards, had already become a master of the political game. She managed to avoid the pitfalls, forming alliances when necessary and breaking them when it proved advantageous. In Ched Nassad the name of the assassin Sendai was often whispered as a rising star, worthy of both fear and respect.
The priestesses had ruined it all. The Spider Queen was a jealous god, she would brook no rivals in her domination of drow society. Knowing this, Sendai had kept her father's identity secret. Any of her close family who could have exposed her had already tasted the edge of her poisoned blade, including her mother.
In the Underdark secrets are many, and none can stay buried for long. Somehow the Temple learned of her tainted Bhaalspawn blood, and the priestesses came to take her to their interrogation chambers to test her loyalty. Sendai had experienced torture in her young life-it was almost inevitable given the nature of drow society. But she was not about to submit herself to the unimaginable sufferings of the Matron Mothers. Not when their interrogations would likely end with the decision that the offspring of Bhaal was too dangerous to live among them.
So Sendai had fled. She spent a year as a fugitive, moving from Ched Nassad to Menzoberranzan to Ust Natha, seeking some corner of the Underdark where she might find refuge from the priestesses' pursuit. The web of the Spider Queen wove its reach through every city and noble house of drow society, and finally Sendai had been forced to flee the Underdark,