Disclaimer:

I was bored, so I wrote.  It's been a very long time since I last touched a keyboard for this sort of thing, so I was a bit out of practice when I first attempted.  It's probably obvious to those who have read Arthur Golden's Memoirs of the Geisha that the tone of this thing seems horribly familiar.  Don't worry; I won't give it a stupid ending.  Salvatore already has. 

Oops.  Salvatore insult #1 for the day.  Please ignore.  Insert Comment Elsewhere.

Anyway, I don't own the Forgotten Realms, TSR, the dark elves (damn), Zaknafein, duergar, Svirfneblin, Menzoberranzan and all that.  Neither do I particularly care. 

I seem to be breaking the law recently.  Just realized that Wizards of the Coast does not allow the writing of fanfiction.  Unfortunately, since I can see now way to profit from this (heh), it's non-profit and written solely for my own amusement. 

Hopefully you'd enjoy it too.  Have a nice day.

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Translator's Note

I remember when the Underdark was first deemed 'civilized' enough for us of the surface to travel in freely.  It struck me then, as the announcement was made via broad-speakers – a technological wonder currently available in every home, but then, only in every city center and in privileged areas – how incongruous the word 'civilized' was.  The Underdark, or parts of it, has been civilized far longer than my culture has been – and the intrusion of the few first tentative Rails looked like a puppy advancing on a lion.  Weyr-cats, of course, are now as commonly seen as the other humanoid species such as the dwarves and gnomes, and are also contributing to the great, inexhaustible machine that is technological progress.

Since we have an enhanced ability at dark vision, we were one of the pioneer visitors to the opened Underdark, mostly involved in the furtherance of the Rail and trade, and I – with my fascination with the elves, a race sadly nearly extinct in most of Toril – eagerly joined them.  I did not expect the legendary dark elves to frequent the great underground cities 'industrialized' by Rail – for these were mostly newer, modernized Duergar and Svirfneblin cities.  Imagine my surprise when, in the Duergar city of B'karlaq, our first stop, I saw them – three of them, to be precise!

It was like suddenly finding treasure where one had least expected to see it – I cannot describe the mix of emotions that blossomed in me, a heady rush not unlike what a kit feels when it opens its eyes for the first time near its mother and sees the world.  It has been decades since then, and my ruff is traced with silver – and though this may sound trite, that moment was one of those indelible frozen frames that stay with one all their lives. 

The first thing I noticed about them was their stunning, shadow-knit grace – they were absolutely comfortable in the darkness of the station, though every fiber of them seemed alert.  Not in the clumsy way of awareness that one has when one is surprised, but in the quietly restrained, dangerous manner of the experienced hunter.  That was what they were, anyway – hunters, of more things than one.  The red eyes of infravision fit them in such a context, where it merely seemed bizarre on other creatures. 

They wore exquisite, elaborate armor of a design that seemed both antique and modern: black enameled adamantite with menacing-looking silvery designs, yet with discreet devices added on, such as a tracker.  The most obvious indication of modernity was in their armaments – all three dark elves wore sheathed swords at the hip, but at the other hip was a holstered revolver.  Unlike the other types of elves, who firmly foreswore anything to do with most technology, let alone things to do with gunpowder, the dark elves seemed to be using it for their own deadly purposes. 

This was another aspect that set them apart from the surface elves, who drew more and more into tradition such that it, in the end, was one of the shepherds that herded them farther and farther into their ancestral grounds that some believe them lost for good.  The dark elves always know exactly where they live – in the present.  They are like cats in that respect – adaptable.

I must admit I expected them to do something suitably malicious and violent.  Blowing up the station, perhaps, or randomly killing an innocent.  One develops such stereotypes as one reads, but one must always remember that history, though it may seem to follow certain templates, is ever-changing, and never fully akin to its previous cycle.  These three – hunters – just watched, standing slightly aloof from the gawking crowd.  Occasionally, their fingers danced in their hand-code, something that, like their language, I had studied and learned.  I pride myself on having learnt most of the elven speeches save the High Tongue, and most of the dark elven words from dark elves whom had migrated to the surface.  My technique in the hand-code, my previous teacher had told me, was so ungainly that she could nearly feel its passage tearing through the air, but she did concede that it was understandable.

So I did something that eventually culminated in this work – I signaled a greeting to them, feeling as self-conscious as a kit when it performs its first skill-display.  They seemed startled in that their eyebrows rose in concert – a movement that would appear absurd in description – then one smiled, not a kind smile, and mentioned something to his companions, who chuckled in the noiseless fashion of the drow. 

Swept away by the crowd to briefings, I was kept incredibly busy for a time, having to do my share of speeches and presentations, then one day my assistant brought me a note written in an elegant hand.  The language was unmistakably drow.

I will not flatter myself by stating that I understood it when first glancing at it – the dark elven tongue is full of subtleties and double-meanings that a non-dark elf would find extremely confusing.  After painstakingly translating the message and thinking about the meaning, I could garner no less than five different ones, two of which were quite sardonically condescending.  I have no doubt that the message could have meant more than one of my deduced meanings, or none at all, but I decided to take it at its face value – an invitation to come to a certain estate in the city at a certain time.

I acceded, and met one of the most complex individuals in my varied life – Jarlaxle of the notorious Bregan D'aerthe.  The dark elf had been alive for a remarkable amount of time, from all counts, since he and his mercenary band were mentioned – not very favorably - in the memoirs of Drizzt, one of the most famous drow who had come to the surface, and Drizzt himself had walked Toril many centuries before now.  Drizzt's memoirs had made Jarlaxle and Bregan D'aerthe famous, so it behooves me not to weary the reader by describing them in detail.

Drizzt had warned of the mercenary's charm, but had not adequately described the medium of it, which was Jarlaxle's entire being.  He could make you feel like the center of the world, or an insignificant speck, merely by the expression on his face, still mostly elf-perfect, time's ravages only a certain cast to his eyes – one always covered with a ruby-red eye patch – some scars and the set of his face.  Age was most telling in his movements, slow and dignified, not quick and impetuous as a young drow.  His only comment about his longevity was an expression of belief that dark elves were far too stubborn (in actually, a more vulgar word was used) to die of natural causes. 

And he winked.

After a while I became a weekly visitor, enjoying the long, exhausting conversations, with him mainly cross-examining me on technology and life on the Surface, and I tentatively trying to pry out details of dark elven life, something he was remarkably close on if you enquired on details before The Summoning.  He was never so crass as to sharply change the subject, but would do so subtly, in such ways that you would not be able to press on without seeming unspeakably rude.

When the Company announced that they were to open Rails deeper into the Underdark – well, the requests for a visit increased.  Then, the messages were passed on via the NetWork – a now-outmoded communications device that was half-magic and half-technology.  Now, especially whenever I was very busy, he would send some long-suffering Bregan D'aerthe mercenary to tell me personally, knowing, manipulator that he was, that I couldn't actually out-argue a dark elf.

Eventually he broached the point – he'd heard that the Rails were opening into the Old Cities, and wanted to know if that was true – if so, when, how, what, who and a barrage of questions that followed tightly on the heels of my answers.  On anyone else I may have felt annoyed at being pressured, but one should just speak once with Jarlaxle and one would understand.  The occasional solicitous enquiries about whether he was tiring me with the questions – again, phrased in such a way that I could not say 'yes' outright, the look of absolute concentration on the information given… and a host of other subtleties, most of them probably feigned.  Or perhaps not – with Jarlaxle, one would never know.  He can be more inscrutable than one of my kind.

The Old City in particular that he was interested in was, unsurprisingly, Menzoberranzan. 

Perhaps I should at this point explain the term – 'Old Cities' need not refer to dark elven cities, or even Underdark ones – they just meant any city which have some historical value and which are now abandoned, or run-down.  Constructing Rails to such cities other than to wealthy, flourishing ones in some ways is a waste of resources, especially if what drove the city to ruin still existed in it – but some of the Old Cities have garnered such interest in them that many would pay to have it preserved, cleaned up and maintained, and would pay many times a normal fare (already considerable, for a visit to the Underdark in those days) to travel to see it.

As it were Jarlaxle needn't have worried, if he had – Menzoberranzan was one of those to be built to.  The city had been one of those that had emptied after the fall of the Spider Queen into oblivion, and maps to it were sketchy, at least a century old and dwarven – which meant that Menzoberranzan was simply marked as a considerably general area with the runes for 'danger' and 'drow', and with only the mines, caves, waterholes and such of a distance away marked in any detail.  Seeing an opportunity then – now I suspect him of manipulating me to this point – I made him an offer on the spot to help the Company with this task of locating the Old City. 

I suppose I should not have been surprised when he agreed, and should have been even less surprised when I heard of his terms to the Company later through my assistant when the director in B'karlaq made a formal contract with him and Bregan D'aerthe.  They were definitely considerable, and also consisted of a share in the Company, but how could we refuse? Menzoberranzan was not the only Old City Jarlaxle and Bregan D'aerthe were familiar with, after all, and Jarlaxle hinted that he might be able to negotiate the construction of stations in existing dark elven cities.

After many years of hard work, the trains were run to Menzoberranzan and other Old Cities for the first time – though of course the very first trains were to Old Duergar Cities.  Surface dwarves and Duergar had somehow reconciled over the years, and their surface cousins were as curious about such cities as the Duergar themselves – dwarves being highly preoccupied with tradition and history.  Their tradition and their history, to be precise, but I digress.  Since dwarves are a major shareholder and the main driving force in invention and the Rail, their say had much more weight than any other.

When we did get to magnificent Menzoberranzan, I glanced at Jarlaxle once out of curiosity, hoping for some unguarded moment where I could finally glean some knowledge of his feelings for his birth City, but I was disappointed.  He seemed as casual as ever as he strolled out of the carriage and looked at the forbidding emptiness of the construction around him – then his wrist flicked forward and twisted elaborately, as if in a dance.  A squeal in the darkness, and the sound of something dropping to the ground, then he turned on his heel and went back into the carriage.

Later we found that the dead creature was a Creeper – something that Nature had chosen to be mostly invisible to infravision and dark vision, human-sized and vicious.  How Jarlaxle had seen it was beyond me, but it reminded me again not to cross him.  Centuries had not blunted his skill, though later he purposely made a transparent attempt at modesty, saying that he had intended to hit its heart instead of right between its eyes.

Jarlaxle needn't have killed the creature – we would have driven it out later as the crew cleaned up the city, so it made me wonder if the gesture had some hidden meaning.  I did not want to sound intrusive by asking, so I let it go.

It could have had some relation to what happened the next time I saw him, when the preparations of the City had gone far underway, even to the extent of relighting what the Menzoberranyr called Narbondel.  We were speaking about something entirely trivial in one of the newly-prepared guest houses, and then as we were about to bid each other goodbye, he gave me a heavy, box-like package wrapped in plain cotton, bowed elaborately, and left.

Inside I found the chronicle that I have attempted to the best of my ability to reproduce in Common.  It looked plain compared to some of the other dark elven books that I had seen – written in some indelible white ink on paper-thin black plates, probably some sort of common crystal, not unusual for the dark elves, bound in steel.  The script was cramped and rough compared to Jarlaxle's elegant style, and was in places furiously scratched out, but more or less intact. 

When dated properly, I realized that it was much older than it appeared to be, having been in progress centuries before Drizzt himself was born.  It was a piece of history I found all the more intriguing when I realized that the author had not left a name – in fact, he was vague with names, preferring the use of pseudonyms to refer to things.  I had to read the book several times before I narrowed down the possibilities to one.

The next time I saw Jarlaxle, I asked him if the book had been written by Zaknafein Do'Urden, Drizzt's sire.  Jarlaxle's reply was, as usual, frustratingly enigmatic and did not answer the question – instead, raising questions of its own with its characteristic dark elven multiple meanings:

"He was never anything to anyone."

[ S'kaerik, Dancer of the Eclipse

Professor of Paranormal Natural History

University of Baldur's Gate ]