Homeland (20 page)

Berg’inyon Baenre rushed over to see if the victim was indeed his youngest sister.

“Not of my house,” he said with obvious relief after a quick inspection. He then laughed as further examination revealed a few other details about the corpse. “Not even a princess!” he declared.

Drizzt watched it all curiously, noting the impassive, callous attitude of his companions most of all.

Another student confirmed Berg’inyon’s observation. “A boy child!” he spouted. “But of what house?”

Master Hatch’net moved over to the tiny body and reached down to take the purse from around the child’s neck. He emptied its contents into his hand, revealing the emblem of a lesser house.

“A lost waif,” he laughed to his students, tossing the empty purse back to the ground and pocketing its contents,” of no consequence.”

“A fine fight,” Dinin was quick to add, “with only one loss. Go back to Menzoberranzan proud of the work you have accomplished this day.”

Drizzt slapped the blades of his scimitars together in a resounding ring of protest.

Master Hatch’net ignored him. “Form up and head back,” he told the others. “You all performed well this day.” He then glared at Drizzt, stopping the angry student in his tracks.

“Except for you!” Hatch’net snarled. “I cannot ignore the fact that you downed two of the beasts and helped with a third,” Hatch’net scolded, “but you endangered the rest of us with your foolish bravado!”

“I warned of the sentries—” Drizzt stuttered.

“Damn your warning!” shouted the master. “You went off without command! You ignored the accepted methods of battle! You led us in here blindly! Look at the corpse of your fallen companion!” Hatch’net raged, pointing to the dead student in the corridor. “His blood is on your hands!”

“I meant to save the child,” Drizzt argued.

“We all meant to save the child!” retorted Hatch’net.

Drizzt was not so certain. What would a child be doing out in these corridors all alone? How convenient that a group of hook horrors, a rarely seen beast in the region of Menzoberranzan, just happened by to provide training for this “practice patrol.” Too convenient, Drizzt knew, considering that the passages farther from the city teemed with the true patrols of seasoned warriors, wizards, and even clerics.

“You knew what was around the bend in the tunnel,” Drizzt said evenly, his eyes narrowing at the master.

The slap of a blade across the wound on his back made Drizzt lurch in pain, and he nearly lost his footing. He turned to find Dinin glaring down at him.

“Keep your foolish words unspoken,” Dinin warned in a harsh whisper, “or I will cut out your tongue.”

“The child was a plant,” Drizzt insisted when he was alone with his brother in Dinin’s room.

Dinin’s response was a stinging smack across the face.

“They sacrificed him for the purpose of the drill,” growled the unrelenting younger Do’Urden.

Dinin launched a second punch, but Drizzt caught it in mid-swing. “You know the truth of my words,” Drizzt said. “You knew about it all along.”

“Learn your place, Secondboy,” Dinin replied in open threat, “in the Academy and in the family.” He pulled away from his brother.

“To the Nine Hells with the Academy!” Drizzt spat at Dinin’s face. “If the family holds similar …” He noticed that Dinin’s hands now held sword and dirk.

Drizzt jumped back, his own scimitars coming out at the ready. “I have no desire to fight you, my brother,” he said. “Know well that if you attack, I will defend. Only one of us will walk out of here.”

Dinin considered his next move carefully. If he attacked and won, the threat to his position in the family would be at an end. Certainly no one, not even Matron Malice, would question the punishment he levied against his impertinent younger brother. Dinin had seen Drizzt in battle, though. Two hook horrors! Even Zaknafein would be hard pressed to attain such a victory. Still, Dinin knew that if he did not carry through with his threat, if he let Drizzt face him down, he might give Drizzt confidence in their future struggles, possibly inciting the treachery he had always expected from the secondboy.

“What is this, then?” came a voice from the room’s door way. The brothers turned to see their sister Vierna, a mistress of Arach-Tinilith. “Put your weapons away,” she scolded. “House Do’Urden cannot afford such infighting now!”

Realizing that he had been let off the hook, Dinin readily complied with the demands, and Drizzt did likewise.

“Consider yourselves fortunate,” said Vierna, “for I’ll not tell Matron Malice of this stupidity. She would not be merciful, I promise you.”

“Why have you come unannounced to Melee-Magthere?” asked the elderboy, perturbed by his sister’s attitude. He, too, was a master of the Academy, even if he was only a male, and deserved some respect.

Vierna glanced up and down the hallway, then closed the door behind her. “To warn my brothers,” she explained quietly. “There are rumors of vengeance against our house.”

“By what family?” Dinin pressed. Drizzt just stood back in confused silence and let the two continue. “For what deed?”

“For the elimination of House DeVir, I would presume,” replied Vierna. “Little is known; the rumors are vague. I wanted to warn you both, though, so that you might keep your guard especially high in the coming months.”

“House DeVir fell many years ago,” said Dinin. “What penalty could still be enacted?”

Vierna shrugged. “They are just rumors,” she said. “Rumors to be listened to!”

“We have been accused of a wrongful deed?” Drizzt asked. “Surely our family must call out this false accuser.”

Vierna and Dinin exchanged smiles. “Wrongful?” Vierna laughed.

Drizzt’s expression revealed his confusion.

“On the very night you were born,” Dinin explained, “House DeVir ceased to exist. An excellent attack, thank you.”

“House Do’Urden?” gasped Drizzt, unable to come to terms with the startling news. Of course, Drizzt knew of such battles, but he had held out hope that his own family was above that sort of murderous action.

“One of the finest eliminations ever carried out,” Vierna boasted. “Not a witness left alive.”

“You … our family … murdered another family?”

“Watch your words, Secondboy,” Dinin warned. “The deed was perfectly executed. In the eyes of Menzoberranzan, therefore, it never happened.”

“But House DeVir ceased to exist,” said Drizzt.

“To a child,” said Dinin with a laugh.

A thousand possibilities assaulted Drizzt at that awful moment, a thousand pressing questions that he needed answered. One in particular stood out vividly, welling like a lump of bile in his throat.

“Where was Zaknafein that night?” he asked.

“In the chapel of House DeVir’s clerics, of course,” replied Vierna “Zaknafein plays his part in such business so very well.”

Drizzt rocked back on his heels, hardly able to believe what he was hearing. He knew that Zak had killed drow before, had killed clerics of Lolth before, but Drizzt had always assumed that the weapons master had acted out of necessity, in self-defense.

“You should show more respect to your brother,” Vierna scolded him. “To draw weapons against Dinin! You owe him your life!”

“You know?” Dinin chuckled, casting Vierna a curious glance.

“You and I were melded that night,” Vierna reminded him. “Of course I know.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Drizzt, almost afraid to hear the reply.

“You were to be the third-born male in the family,” Vierna explained, “the third living son.”

“I have heard of my brother Nal—” The name stuck in Drizzt’s throat as he began to understand. All he had ever been able to learn of Nalfein was that he had been killed by another drow.

“You will learn in your studies at Arach-Tinilith that third living sons are customarily sacrificed to Lolth,” Vierna continued. “So were you promised. On the night that you were born, the night that House Do’Urden battled House DeVir, Dinin made his ascent to the position of elderboy.” She cast a sly glance at her brother, standing with his arms proudly crossed over his chest.

“I can speak of it now,” Vierna smiled at Dinin, who nodded his head in accord. “It happened too long ago for any punishment to be brought against Dinin.”

“What are you talking about?” Drizzt demanded. Panic hovered all about him. “What did Dinin do?”

“He put his sword into Nalfein’s back,” Vierna said calmly.

Drizzt swam on the edge of nausea. Sacrifice? Murder? The annihilation of a family, even the children? What were his siblings talking about?

“Show respect to your brother!” Vierna demanded. “You owe him your life.”

“I warn the both of you,” she purred, her ominous glare shaking Drizzt and knocking Dinin from his confident pedestal. “House Do’Urden may be on a course of war. If either of you strike out against the other, you will bring the wrath of all your sisters and Matron Malice—four high priestesses—down upon your worthless soul!” Confident that her threat carried sufficient weight, she turned and left the room.

“I will go,” Drizzt whispered, wanting only to skulk away to a dark corner.

“You will go when you are dismissed!” Dinin scolded. “Remember your place, Drizzt Do’Urden, in the Academy and in the family.”

“As you remembered yours with Nalfein?”

“The battle against DeVir was won,” Dinin replied, taking no offense. “The act brought no peril to the family.”

Another wave of disgust swept over Drizzt. He felt as if the floor were climbing up to swallow him, and he almost hoped that it would.

“It is a difficult world we inhabit,” Dinin said.

“We make it so,” Drizzt retorted. He wanted to continue further, to implicate the Spider Queen and the whole amoral religion that would sanction such destructive and treacherous actions. Drizzt wisely held his tongue, though. Dinin wanted him dead; he under-stood that now. Drizzt understood as well that if he gave his scheming brother the opportunity to turn the females of the family against him, Dinin surely would.

“You must learn,” Dinin said, again in a controlled tone, “to accept the realities of your surroundings. You must learn to recognize your enemies and defeat them.”

“By whatever means are available,” Drizzt concluded.

“The mark of a true warrior!” Dinin replied with a wicked laugh.

“Are our enemies drow elves?”

“We are drow warriors!” Dinin declared sternly. “We do what we must to survive,”

“As you did, on the night of my birth,” Drizzt reasoned, though at this point, there was no remaining trace of outrage in his resigned tone. “You were cunning enough to get away cleanly with the deed.”

Dinin’s reply, though expected, stung the younger drow profoundly.

“It never happened.”

am Drizzt—”

“I know who you are,” replied the student mage, Drizzt’s appointed tutor in Sorcere. “Your reputation precedes you. Most in all the Academy have heard of you and of your prowess with weapons.”

Drizzt bowed low, a bit embarrassed.

“That skill will be of little use to you here,” the mage went on. “I am to tutor you in the wizardly arts, the dark side of magic, we call them. This is a test of your mind and your heart; meager metal weapons will play no part. Magic is the true power of our people!”

Drizzt accepted the berating without reply. He knew that the traits this young mage was boasting of were also necessary qualities of a true fighter. Physical attributes played only a minor role in Drizzt’s style of battle. Strong will and calculated maneuvers, everything the mage apparently believed only wizards could handle, won the duels that Drizzt fought.

“I will show you many marvels in the next few months,” the mage went on, “artifacts beyond your belief and spells of a power beyond your experience!”

“May I know your name?” Drizzt asked, trying to sound somewhat impressed by the student’s continued stream of self-glorification. Drizzt had already learned quite a lot about wizardry from Zaknafein, mostly of the weaknesses inherent in the profession. Because of magic’s usefulness in situations other than battle, drow wizards were accorded a high position in the society, second to the clerics of Lolth. It was a wizard, after all, who lighted the glowing Narbondel, timeclock of the city, and wizards who lighted faerie fires on the sculptures of the decorated houses.

Zaknafein had little respect for wizards. They could kill quickly and from a distance, he had warned Drizzt, but if one could get in close to them, they had little defense against a sword.

“Masoj,” replied the mage. “Masoj Hun’ett of House Hun’ett, beginning my thirtieth and final year of study. Soon I will be recognized as a full wizard of Menzoberranzan, with all of the privileges accorded my station.”

“Greetings, then, Masoj Hun’ett,” Drizzt replied. “I, too, have but a year remaining in my training at the Academy, for a fighter spends only ten years.”

“A lesser talent,” Masoj was quick to remark. “Wizards study thirty years before they are even considered practiced enough to go out and perform their craft.”

Again Drizzt accepted the insult graciously. He wanted to get this phase of his instruction over with, then finish out the year and be rid of the Academy altogether.

Drizzt found his six months under Masoj’s tutelage actually the best of his stay at the Academy. Not that he came to care for Masoj; the budding wizard constantly sought ways to remind Drizzt of fighters’ inferiority. Drizzt sensed a competition between himself and Masoj, almost as if the mage were setting him up for some future conflict. The young fighter shrugged his way through it, as he always had, and tried to get as much out of the lessons as he could.

Drizzt found that he was quite proficient in the ways of magic. Every drow, the fighters included, possessed a degree of magical talent and certain innate abilities. Even drow children could conjure a globe of darkness or edge their opponents in a glowing outline of harmless colored flames. Drizzt handled these tasks easily, and in a few tendays, he could manage several cantrips and a few lesser spells.

With the innate magical talents of the dark elves also came a resistance to magical attacks, and that is where Zaknafein had recognized the wizards’ greatest weakness. A wizard could cast his most powerful spell to perfection, but if his intended victim was a drow elf, the wizard may well have found no results for his efforts. The surety of a well-aimed sword thrust always impressed Zaknafein, and Drizzt, after witnessing the drawbacks of drow magic during those first tendays with Masoj, began to appreciate the course of training he had been given.

He still found great enjoyment in many of the things Masoj showed him, particularly the enchanted items housed in the tower of Sorcere. Drizzt held wands and staves of incredible power and went through several attack routines with a sword so heavily enchanted that his hands tingled from its touch.

Masoj, too, watched Drizzt carefully through it all, studying the young warrior’s every move, searching for some weakness that he might exploit if House Hun’ett and House Do’Urden ever did fall into the expected conflict. Several times, Masoj saw an opportunity to eliminate Drizzt, and he felt in his heart that it would be a prudent move. Matron SiNafay’s instructions to him, though, had been explicit and unbending.

Masoj’s mother had secretly arranged for him to be Drizzt’s tutor. This was not an unusual situation; instruction for fighters during their six months in Sorcere was always handled one-on-one by higher-level Sorcere students. When she had told Masoj of the setup, SiNafay quickly reminded him that his sessions with the young Do’Urden remained no more than a scouting mission. He was not to do anything that might even hint of the planned conflict between the two houses. Masoj was not fool enough to disobey.

Still, there was one other wizard lurking in the shadows, who was so desperate that even the warnings of the matron mother did little to deter him.

“My student, Masoj, has informed me of your fine progress,” Alton DeVir said to Drizzt one day.

“Thank you, Master Faceless One,” Drizzt replied hesitantly, more than a little intimidated that a master of Sorcere had invited him to a private audience.

“How do you perceive magic, young warrior?” Alton asked. “Has Masoj impressed you?”

Drizzt didn’t know how to respond. Truly, magic had not impressed him as a profession, but he did not want to insult a master of the craft. “I find the art beyond my abilities,” he said tactfully. “For others, it seems a powerful course, but I believe my talents are more closely linked to the sword.”

“Could your weapons defeat one of magical power?” Alton snarled. He quickly bit back the sneer, trying not to tip off his intent.

Drizzt shrugged. “Each has its place in battle,” he replied. “Who could say which is the mightier? As with every combat, it would depend upon the individuals engaged.”

“Well, what of yourself?” Alton teased. “First in your class, I have heard, year after year. The masters of Melee-Magthere speak highly of your talents.”

Again Drizzt found himself flushed with embarrassment. More than that, though, he was curious as to why a master and student of Sorcere seemed to know so much about him.

“Could you stand against one of magical powers?” asked Alton. “Against a master of Sorcere, perhaps?”

“I do not—” Drizzt began, but Alton was too enmeshed in his own ranting to hear him.

“Let us learn!” the Faceless One cried. He drew out a thin wand and promptly loosed a bolt of lightning at Drizzt.

Drizzt was down into a dive before the wand even discharged. The lightning bolt sundered the door to Alton’s highest chamber and bounced about the adjourning room, breaking items and scorching the walls.

Drizzt came rolling back to his feet at the side of the room, his scimitars drawn and ready. He still was unsure of this master’s intent.

“How many can you dodge?” Alton teased, waving the wand in a threatening circle. “What of the other spells I have at my disposal— those that attack the mind, not the body?”

Drizzt tried to understand the purpose of this lesson and the part he was meant to play in it. Was he supposed to attack this master?

“These are not practice blades,” he warned, holding his weapons out toward Alton.

Another bolt roared in, forcing Drizzt to dodge back to his original position. “Does this seem like practice to you, foolish Do’Urden?” Alton growled. “Do you know who I am?”

Alton’s time of revenge had come—damn the orders of Matron SiNafay!

Just as Alton was about to reveal the truth to Drizzt, a dark form slammed into the master’s back, knocking him to the floor. He tried to squirm away but found himself helplessly pinned by a huge black panther.

Drizzt lowered the tips of his blades; he was at a loss to understand any of this.

“Enough, Guenhwyvar!” came a call from behind Alton. Looking past the fallen master and the cat, Drizzt saw Masoj enter the room.

The panther sprang away from Alton obediently and moved to rejoin its master. It paused on its way, to consider Drizzt, who stood ready in the middle of the room.

So enchanted was Drizzt with the beast, the graceful flow of its rippling muscles and the intelligence in its saucer eyes, that he paid little attention to the master who had just attacked him, though Alton, unhurt, was back to his feet and obviously upset.

“My pet,” Masoj explained. Drizzt watched in amazement as Masoj dismissed the cat back to its own plane of existence by sending its corporeal form back into the magical onyx statuette he held in his hand.

“Where did you get such a companion?” Drizzt asked.

“Never underestimate the powers of magic,” Masoj replied, dropping the figurine into a deep pocket. His beaming smile became a scowl as he looked to Alton.

Drizzt, too, glanced at the faceless master. That a student had dared to attack a master seemed impossibly odd to the young fighter. This situation grew more puzzling each minute.

Alton knew that he had overstepped his bounds, and that he would have to pay a high price for his foolishness if he could not find some way out of this predicament.

“Have you learned your lesson this day?” Masoj asked Drizzt, though Alton realized that the question was also directed his way.

Drizzt shook his head. “I am not certain of the point of all this,” he answered honestly.

“A display of the weakness of magic,” Masoj explained, trying to disguise the truth of the encounter, “to show you the disadvantage caused by the necessary intensity of a casting wizard; to show you the vulnerability of a mage obsessed—” he eyed Alton directly at this point—“with spellcasting. The complete vulnerability when a wizard’s intended prey becomes his overriding concern.”

Drizzt recognized the lie for what it was, but he could not understand the motives behind this day’s events. Why would a master of Sorcere attack him so? Why would Masoj, still just a student, risk so much to come to his defense?

“Let us bother the master no more,” Masoj said, hoping to deflect Drizzt’s curiosity further. “Come with me now to our practice hall. I will show you more of Guenhwyvar, my magical pet.”