Homeland (18 page)

“This segment of your training is at an end,” Master Hatch’net announced on the morning of the fiftieth day. Another master, Dinin, entered the room, leading a magically suspended iron box filled with meagerly padded wooden poles of every length and design comparable to drow weapons.

“Choose the sparring pole that most resembles your own weapon of choice,” Hatch’net explained as Dinin made his way around the room. He came to his brother, and Drizzt’s eyes settled at once on his choice: two slightly curving poles about three-and-a-half feet long. Drizzt lifted them out and put them through a simple cut. Their weight and balance closely resembled the scimitars that had become so familiar to his hands.

“For the pride of Daermon N’a’shezbaernon,” Dinin whispered, then moved along.

Drizzt twirled the mock weapons again. It was time to measure the value of his sessions with Zak.

“Your class must have an order,” Hatch’net was saying as Drizzt turned his attention beyond the scope of his new weapons. “Thus the grand melee. Remember, there can be only one victor!”

Hatch’net and Dinin herded the students out of the oval chamber and out of Melee-Magthere altogether, down the tunnel between the two guardian spider statues at the back of Tier Breche. For all of the students, this was the first time they had ever been out of Menzoberranzan.

“What are the rules?” Drizzt asked Kelnozz, in line at his side.

“If a master calls you out, then you are out,” Kelnozz replied.

“The rules of engagement?” asked Drizzt.

Kelnozz cast him an incredulous glance. “Win,” he said simply, as though there could be no other answer.

A short time later they came into a fairly large cavern, the arena for the grand melee. Pointed stalactites leered down at them from the ceiling and stalagmite mounds broke the floor into a twisting maze filled with ambush holes and blind corners.

“Choose your strategies and find your starting point,” Master Hatch’net said to them. “The grand melee begins in a count of one hundred!”

The twenty-five students set off into action, some pausing to consider the landscape laid out before them, others sprinting off into the gloom of the maze.

Drizzt decided to find a narrow corridor, to ensure that he would fight off one-against-one, and he just started off in his search when he was grabbed from behind.

“A team?” Kelnozz offered.

Drizzt did not respond, unsure of the other’s fighting worth and the accepted practices of this traditional encounter.

“Others are forming into teams,” Kelnozz pressed. “Some in threes. Together we might have a chance.”

“The master said there could be only one victor,” Drizzt reasoned.

“Who better than you, if not me,” Kelnozz replied with a sly wink. “Let us defeat the others, then we can decide the issue between ourselves.”

The reasoning seemed prudent, and with Hatch’net’s count already approaching seventy-five, Drizzt had little time to ponder the possibilities. He clapped Kelnozz on the shoulder and led his new ally into the maze.

Catwalks had been constructed all around the room’s perimeter, even crossing through the center of the chamber, to give the judging masters a good view of all the action below. A dozen of them were up there now, all eagerly awaiting the first battles so that they might measure the talent of this young class.

“One hundred!” cried Hatch’net from his high perch.

Kelnozz began to move, but Drizzt stopped him, keeping him back in the narrow corridor between two long stalagmite mounds.

“Let them come to us,” Drizzt signaled in the silent hand and facial expression code. He crouched in battle readiness. “Let them fight each other to weariness. Patience is our ally!”

Kelnozz relaxed, thinking he had made a good choice in Drizzt.

Their patience was not tested severely, though, for a moment later, a tall and aggressive student burst into their defensive position, wielding a long spear-shaped pole. He came right in on Drizzt, slapping with the butt of his weapon, then spinning it over full in a brutal thrust designed for a quick kill, a strong move perfectly executed.

To Drizzt, though, it seemed the most basic of attack routines— too basic, almost, for Drizzt hardly believed that a trained student would attack another skilled fighter in such a straightforward manner. Drizzt convinced himself in time that this was indeed the chosen method of attack, and no feint, and he launched the proper parry. His scimitar poles spun counterclockwise in front of him, striking the thrusting spear in succession and driving the weapon’s tip harmlessly above the striking line of its wielder’s shoulder.

The aggressive attacker, stunned by the advanced parry, found himself open and off balance. Barely a split second later, before the attacker could even begin to recover, Drizzt’s counter poked one, then the other scimitar pole into his chest.

A soft blue light appeared on the stunned student’s face, and he and Drizzt followed its line up to see a wand-wielding master looking down at them from the catwalk.

“You are defeated,” the master said to the tall student. “Fall where you stand!”

The student shot an angry glare at Drizzt and obediently dropped to the stone.

“Come,” Drizzt said to Kelnozz, casting a glance up at the master’s revealing light. “Any others in the area will know of our position now. We must seek a new defensible area.”

Kelnozz paused a moment to watch the graceful hunting strides of his comrade. He had indeed made a good choice in selecting Drizzt, but he knew already, after only a single quick encounter, that if he and this skilled swordsman were the last two standing—a distinct possibility—he would have no chance at all of claiming victory.

Together they rushed around a blind corner, right into two opponents. Kelnozz chased after one, who fled in fright, and Drizzt faced off against the other, who wielded sword and dirk poles.

A wide smile of growing confidence crossed Drizzt’s face as his opponent took the offensive, launching routines similarly basic to those of the spear wielder that Drizzt had easily dispatched.

A few deft twists and turns of his scimitars, a few slaps on the inside edges of his opponent’s weapons, had the sword and dirk flying wide. Drizzt’s attack came right up the middle, where he executed another double-poke into his opponent’s chest.

The expected blue light appeared. “You are defeated,” came the master’s call. “Fall where you stand.”

Outraged, the stubborn student chopped viciously at Drizzt. Drizzt blocked with one weapon and snapped the other against his attacker’s wrist, sending the sword pole flying to the floor.

The attacker clenched his bruised wrist, but that was the least of his troubles. A blinding flash of lightning exploded from the observing master’s wand, catching him full in the chest and hurtling him ten feet backward to crash into a stalagmite mound. He crumpled to the floor, groaning in agony, and a line of glowing heat rose from his scorched body, which lay against the cool gray stone.

“You are defeated!” the master said again.

Drizzt started to the fallen drow’s aid, but the master issued an emphatic, “No!”

Then Kelnozz was back at Drizzt’s side. “He got away,” Kelnozz began, but he broke into a laugh when he saw the downed student. “If a master calls you out, then you are out!” Kelnozz repeated into Drizzt’s blank stare.

“Come,” Kelnozz continued. “The battle is in full now. Let us find some fun!”

Drizzt thought his companion quite cocky for one who had yet to lift his weapons. He only shrugged and followed.

Their next encounter was not so easy. They came into a double passage turning in and out of several rock formations and found themselves faced off against a group of three—nobles from leading houses, both Drizzt and Kelnozz realized.

Drizzt rushed the two on his left, both of whom wielded single swords, while Kelnozz worked to fend off the third. Drizzt had little experience against multiple opponents, but Zak had taught him the techniques of such a battle quite well. His movements were solely defensive at first, then he settled into a comfortable rhythm and allowed his opponents to tire themselves out, and to make the critical mistakes.

These were cunning foes, though, and familiar with each other’s movements. Their attacks complemented each other, slicing in at Drizzt from widely opposing angles.

“Two-hands,” Zak had once called Drizzt, and now he lived up to the title. His scimitars worked independently, yet in perfect harmony, foiling every attack.

From a nearby perch on the catwalk, Masters Hatch’net and Dinin looked on, Hatch’net more than a little impressed, and Dinin swelling with pride.

Drizzt saw the frustration mounting on his opponents’ faces, and he knew that his opportunity to strike would soon be at hand. Then they crossed up, coming in together with identical thrusts, their sword poles barely inches apart.

Drizzt spun to the side and launched a blinding uppercut slice with his left scimitar, deflecting both attacks. Then he reversed his body’s momentum, dropped to one knee, back in line with his opponents, and thrust in low with two snaps of his free right arm. His jabbing scimitar pole caught the first, and the second, squarely in the groin.

They dropped their weapons in unison, clutched their bruised parts, and slumped to their knees. Drizzt leaped up before them, trying to find the words for an apology.

Hatch’net nodded his approval at Dinin as the two masters set their lights on the two losers.

“Help me! “Kelnozz cried from beyond the dividing wall of stalagmites.

Drizzt dived into a roll through a break in the wall, came up quickly, and downed a fourth opponent, who was concealed for a backstab surprise, with a backhand chop to the chest. Drizzt stopped to consider his latest victim. He hadn’t even consciously known that the drow was there, but his aim had been perfect!

Hatch’net blew a low whistle as he shifted his light to the most recent loser’s face. “He is good!” the master breathed.

Drizzt saw Kelnozz a short distance away, practically forced down to his back by his opponent’s skilled maneuvers. Drizzt leaped between the two and deflected an attack that surely would have finished Kelnozz.

This newest opponent, wielding two sword poles, proved Drizzt’s toughest challenge yet. He came at Drizzt with complicated feints and twists, forcing him on his heels more than once.

“Berg’inyon of House Baenre,” Hatch’net whispered to Dinin. Dinin understood the significance and hoped that his young brother was up to the test.

Berg’inyon was not a disappointment to his distinguished kin. His moves came skilled and measured, and he and Drizzt danced about for many minutes with neither finding any advantage. The daring Berg’inyon then came in with the attack routine perhaps most familiar to Drizzt: the double-thrust low.

Drizzt executed the cross-down to perfection, the appropriate parry as Zaknafein had so pointedly proved to him. Never satisfied, though, Drizzt then reacted on an impulse, agilely snapping a foot up between the hilts of his crossed blades and into his opponent’s face. The stunned son of House Baenre fell back against the wall.

“I knew the parry was wrong!” Drizzt cried, already savoring the next time he would get the opportunity to foil the double-thrust low in a session against Zak.

“He is good,” Hatch’net gasped again to his glowing companion.

Dazed, Berg’inyon could not fight his way out of the disadvantage. He put a globe of darkness around himself, but Drizzt waded right in, more than willing to fight blindly.

Drizzt put the son of House Baenre through a quick series of attacks, ending with one of Drizzt’s scimitar poles against Berg’inyon’s exposed neck.

“I am defeated,” the young Baenre conceded, feeling the pole. Hearing the call, Master Hatch’net dispelled the darkness. Berg’inyon set both his weapons on the stone and slumped down, and the blue light appeared on his face.

Drizzt couldn’t hold back the widening grin. Were there any here that he could not defeat? he wondered.

Drizzt then felt an explosion on the back of his head that dropped him to his knees. He managed to look back in time to see Kelnozz walking away.

“A fool,” Hatch’net chuckled, putting his light on Drizzt, then turning his gaze upon Dinin. “A good fool.”

Dinin crossed his arms in front of his chest, his face glowing brightly now in a flush of embarrassment and anger.

Drizzt felt the cool stone against his cheek, but his only thoughts at that moment were rooted in the past, locked onto Zaknafein’s sarcastic, but painfully accurate, statement: “It is our way!”

ou deceived me,” Drizzt said to Kelnozz that night in the bar-racks. The room was black around them and no other students stirred in their cots, exhausted from the day’s fighting and from their endless duties serving the older students.

Kelnozz fully expected this encounter. He had guessed Drizzt’s naiveté early on, when Drizzt had actually queried him about the rules of engagement. An experienced drow warrior, particularly a noble, should have known better, should have understood that the only rule of his existence was the pursuit of victory. Now, Kelnozz knew, this foolish young Do’Urden would not strike at him for his earlier actions—vengeance fueled by anger was not one of Drizzt’s traits.

“Why?” Drizzt pressed, finding no answer forthcoming from the smug commoner of House Kenafin.

The volume of Drizzt’s voice caused Kelnozz to glance around nervously. They were supposed to be sleeping; if a master heard them arguing …

“What is the mystery?” Kelnozz signaled back in the hand code, the warmth of his fingers glowing clearly to Drizzt’s heat-sensing eyes. “I acted as I had to act, though I now believe I should have held off a bit longer. Perhaps, if you had defeated a few more, I might have finished higher than third in the class.”

“If we had worked together, as we had agreed, you might have won, or finished second at the least,” Drizzt signaled back, the sharp movements of his hands reflecting his anger.

“Most assuredly second,” Kelnozz replied. “I knew from the beginning that I would be no match for you. You are the finest swordsman I have ever seen.”

“Not by the masters standing,” Drizzt grumbled aloud.

“Eighth is not so low,” Kelnozz, whispered back. “Berg’inyon is only ranked tenth, and he is from the ruling house of Menzoberranzan. You should be glad that your standing is not to be envied by your classmates.” A shuffle outside the room’s door sent Kelnozz back into the silent code. “Holding a higher rank means only that I have more fighters eyeing my back as a convenient place to rest their daggers.”

Drizzt let the implications of Kelnozz’s statement slip by; he refused to consider such treachery in the Academy. “Berg’inyon was the finest fighter I saw in the grand melee,” he signaled. “He had you beaten until I interceded on your behalf.”

Kelnozz smiled the thought away. “Let Berg’inyon serve as a cook in some lowly house for all I care,” he whispered even more quietly than before—for the son of House Baenre’s bunk was only a few yards away. “He is tenth, yet I, Kelnozz of Kenafin, am third!”

“I am eighth,” said Drizzt, an uncharacteristic edge on his voice, more anger than jealousy,” but I could defeat you with any weapon.”

Kelnozz shrugged, a strangely blurring movement to onlookers seeing in the infrared spectrum. “You did not,” he signaled. “I won our encounter.”

“Encounter?” Drizzt gasped. “You deceived me, that is all!”

“Who was left standing?” Kelnozz pointedly reminded him. “Who wore the blue light of a master’s wand?”

“Honor demands that there be rules of engagement,” growled Drizzt.

“There is a rule,” Kelnozz snapped back at him. “You may do whatever you can get away with. I won our encounter, Drizzt Do’Urden, and I hold the higher rank! That is all that matters!”

In the heat of the argument, their voices had grown too loud. The door to the room swung wide, and a master stepped onto the threshold, his form vividly outlined by the hallway’s blue lights. Both students promptly rolled over and closed their eyes—and their mouths.

The finality of Kelnozz’s last statement rocked Drizzt to some prudent observations. He realized then that his friendship with Kelnozz had come to an end—and, perhaps, that he and Kelnozz had never been friends at all.

“You have seen him?” Alton asked, his fingers tapping anxiously on the small table in the highest chamber of his private quarters. Alton had set the younger students of Sorcere to work repairing the blasted place, but the scorch marks on the stone walls remained, a legacy of Alton’s fireball.

“I have,” replied Masoj. “I have heard of his skill with weapons.”

“Eighth in his class after the grand melee,” said Alton, “a fine achievement.”

“By all accounts, he has the prowess to be first,” said Masoj. “One day he will claim that title. I shall be careful around that one.”

“He will never live to claim it!” Alton promised. “House Do’Urden puts great pride in this purple-eyed youth, and thus I have decided upon Drizzt as my first target for revenge. His death will bring pain to that treacherous Matron Malice!”

Masoj saw a problem here and decided to put it to rest once and for all. “You will not harm him,” he warned Alton. “You will not even go near him.”

Alton’s tone became no less grim. “I have waited two decades—” he began.

“You can wait a few more,” Masoj snapped back. “I remind you that you accepted Matron SiNafay’s invitation into House Hun’ett. Such an alliance requires obedience. Matron SiNafay—our matron mother—has placed upon my shoulders the task of handling Drizzt Do’Urden, and I will execute her will.”

Alton rested back in his seat across the table and put what was left of his acid-torn chin into a slender palm, carefully weighing the words of his secret partner.

“Matron SiNafay has plans that will bring you all the revenge you could possibly desire,” Masoj continued. “I warn you now, Alton DeVir,” he snarled, emphasizing the surname that was not Hun’ett, “that if you begin a war with House Do’Urden, or even put them on the defensive with any act of violence unsanctioned by Matron SiNafay, you will incur the wrath of House Hun’ett. Matron SiNafay will expose you as a murderous imposter and will exact every punishment allowable by the ruling council upon your pitiful bones!”

Alton had no way to refute the threat. He was a rogue, without family beyond the adopted Hun’etts. If SiNafay turned against him, he would find no allies. “What plan does SiNafay … Matron SiNafay … have for House Do’Urden?” he asked calmly. “Tell me of my revenge so that I may survive these torturous years of waiting.”

Masoj knew that he had to act carefully at this point. His mother had not forbidden him to tell Alton of the future course of action, but if she had wanted the volatile DeVir to know, Masoj realized, she would have told him herself.

“Let us just say that House Do’Urden’s power has grown, and continues to grow, to the point where it has become a very real threat to all the great houses,” Masoj purred, loving the intrigue of positioning before a war. “Witness the fall of House DeVir, perfectly executed with no obvious trail. Many of Menzoberranzan’s nobles would rest easier if …” He let it go at that, deciding that he probably had said too much already.

By the hot glimmer in Alton’s eyes, Masoj could tell that the lure had been strong enough to buy Alton’s patience.

The Academy held many disappointments for young Drizzt, particularly in that first year, when so many of the dark realities of drow society, realities that Zaknafein had barely hinted at, remained on the edges of Drizzt’s cognizance with stubborn resilience. He weighed the masters’ lectures of hatred and mistrust in both hands, one side holding the masters’ views in the context of the lectures, the other bending those same words into the very different logic assumed by his old mentor. The truth seemed so ambiguous, so hard to define. Through all of the examination, Drizzt found that he could not escape one pervading fact: In his entire young life, the only treachery he had ever witnessed—and so often!—was at the hands of drow elves.

The physical training of the Academy, hours on end of dueling exercises and stealth techniques, was more to Drizzt’s liking. Here, with his weapons so readily in his hands, he freed himself of the disturbing questions of truth and perceived truth.

Here he excelled. If Drizzt had come into the Academy with a higher level of training and expertise than that of his classmates, the gap grew only wider as the grueling months passed. He learned to look beyond the accepted defense and attack routines put forth by the masters and create his own methods, innovations that almost always at least equaled—and usually outdid—the standard techniques.

At first, Dinin listened with increasing pride as his peers exalted in his younger brother’s fighting prowess. So glowing came the compliments that the eldest son of Matron Malice soon took on a nervous wariness. Dinin was the elderboy of House Do’Urden, a title he had gained by eliminating Nalfein. Drizzt, showing the potential to become one of the finest swordsmen in all of Menzoberranzan, was now the secondboy of the house, eyeing, perhaps, Dinin’s title.

Similarly, Drizzt’s fellow students did not miss the growing brilliance of his fighting dance. Often they viewed it too close for their liking! They looked upon Drizzt with seething jealousy, wondering if they could ever measure up against his whirling scimitars. Pragmatism was ever a strong trait in drow elves. These young students had spent the bulk of their years observing the elders of their families twisting every situation into a favorable light. Every one of them recognized the value of Drizzt Do’Urden as an ally, and thus, when the grand melee came around the next year, Drizzt was inundated with offers of partnership.

The most surprising query came from Kelnozz of House Kenafin, who had downed Drizzt through deceit the previous year. “Do we join again, this time to the very top of the class?” the haughty young fighter asked as he moved beside Drizzt down the tunnel to the prepared cavern. He moved around and stood before Drizzt easily, as if they were the best of friends, his forearms resting across the hilts of his belted weapons and an overly friendly smile spread across his face.

Drizzt could not even answer. He turned and walked away, pointedly keeping his eye over one shoulder as he left.

“Why are you so amazed?” Kelnozz pressed, stepping quickly to keep up.

Drizzt spun on him. “How could I join again with one who so deceived me?” he snarled. “I have not forgotten your trick!”

“That is the point,” Kelnozz argued. “You are more wary this year; certainly I would be a fool to attempt such a move again!”

“How else could you win?” said Drizzt. “You cannot defeat me in open battle.” His words were not a boast, just a fact that Kelnozz accepted as readily as Drizzt.