Homeland (16 page)

“He is a drow fighter,” Malice replied, her tone still controlled. “He must go to the Academy. It is our way.”

Zak looked around helplessly. He hated this place, the chapel anteroom, with its sculptures of the Spider Queen leering down at him from every angle, and with Malice sitting—towering—above him from her seat of power.

Zak shook the images away and regained his courage, reminding himself that this time he had something worth arguing about.

“Do not send him!” he growled. “They will ruin him!”

Matron Malice’s hands clenched down on the rock arms of her great chair.

“Already Drizzt is more skilled than half of those in the Academy,” Zak continued quickly, before the matron’s anger burst forth. “Allow me two more years, and I will make him the finest swordsman in all of Menzoberranzan!”

Malice eased back on her seat. From what she had seen of her son’s progress, she could not deny the possibilities of Zak’s claim. “He goes,” she said calmly. “There is more to the making of a drow warrior than skill with weapons. Drizzt has other lessons he must learn.”

“Lessons of treachery?” Zak spat, too angry to care about the consequences. Drizzt had told him what Malice and her evil daughters had done that day, and Zak was wise enough to understand their actions. Their “lesson” had nearly broken the boy, and had, perhaps, forever stolen from Drizzt the ideals he held so dear. Drizzt would find his morals and principles harder to cling to now that the pedestal of purity had been knocked out from under him.

“Watch your tongue, Zaknafein,” Matron Malice warned.

“I fight with passion!” the weapons master snapped. “That is why I win. Your son, too, fights with passion—do not let the conforming ways of the Academy take that from him!”

“Leave us,” Malice instructed her daughters. Maya bowed and rushed out through the door. Briza followed more slowly, pausing to cast a suspicious eye upon Zak.

Zak didn’t return the glare, but he entertained a fantasy concerning his sword and Briza’s smug smile.

“Zaknafein,” Malice began, again coming forward in her chair. “I have tolerated your blasphemous beliefs through these many years because of your skill with weapons. You have taught my soldiers well, and your love of killing drow, particularly clerics of the Spider Queen, has aided the ascent of House Do’Urden. I am not, and have not been, ungrateful.

“But I warn you now, one final time, that Drizzt is my son, not his sire’s! He will go to the Academy and learn what he must to take his place as a prince of House Do’Urden. If you interfere with what must be, Zaknafein, I will no longer turn my eyes from your actions! Your heart will be given to Lolth.”

Zak stamped his heels on the floor and snapped a short bow of his head, then spun about and departed, trying to find some option in this dark and hopeless picture.

As he made his way through the main corridor, he again heard in his mind the screams of the dying children of House DeVir, children who never got the chance to witness the evils of the drow Academy. Perhaps they were better off dead.

ak slid one of his swords from its scabbard and admired the weapon’s wondrous detail. This sword, as with most of the drow weapons, had been forged by the gray dwarves, then traded to Menzoberranzan. The duergar workmanship was exquisite, but it was the work done on the weapon after the dark elves had acquired it that made it so very special. None of the races of the surface or Underdark could outdo the dark elves in the art of enchanting weapons. Imbued with the strange emanations of the Underdark, the magical power unique to the lightless world, and blessed by the unholy clerics of Lolth, no blade ever sat in a wielder’s hand more ready to kill.

Other races, mostly dwarves and surface elves, also took pride in their crafted weapons. Fine swords and mighty hammers hung over mantles as showpieces, always with a bard nearby to spout the accompanying legend that most often began, “In the days of yore …”

Drow weapons were different, never showpieces. They were locked in the necessities of the present, never in reminiscences, and their purpose remained unchanged for as long as they held an edge fine enough for battle—fine enough to kill.

Zak brought the blade up before his eyes. In his hands, the sword had become more than an instrument of battle. It was an extension of his rage, his answer to an existence he could not accept.

It was his answer, too, perhaps, to another problem that seemed to have no resolution.

He walked into the training hall, where Drizzt was hard at work spinning attack routines against a practice dummy. Zak paused to watch the young drow at practice, wondering if Drizzt would ever again consider the dance of weapons a form of play. How the scimitars flowed in Drizzt’s hands! Interweaving with uncanny precision, each blade seemed to anticipate the other’s moves and whirred about in perfect complement.

This young drow might soon be an unrivaled fighter, a master beyond Zaknafein himself.

“Can you survive?” Zak whispered. “Have you the heart of a drow warrior?” Zak hoped that the answer would be an emphatic “no,” but either way, Drizzt was surely doomed.

Zak looked down at his sword again and knew what he must do. He slid its sister blade from its sheath and started a determined walk toward Drizzt.

Drizzt saw him coming and turned at the ready. “A final fight before I leave for the Academy?” He laughed.

Zak paused to take note of Drizzt’s smile. A facade? Or had the young drow really forgiven himself for his actions against Maya’s champion. It did not matter, Zak reminded himself. Even if Drizzt had recovered from his mother’s torments, the Academy would destroy him. The weapons master said nothing; he just came on in a flurry of cuts and stabs that put Drizzt immediately on the defensive. Drizzt took it in stride, not yet realizing that this final encounter with his mentor was much more than their customary sparring.

“I will remember everything you taught me,” Drizzt promised, dodging a cut and launching a fierce counter of his own. “I will carve my name in the halls of Melee-Magthere and make you proud.”

The scowl on Zak’s face surprised Drizzt, and the young drow grew even more confused when the weapons master’s next attack sent a sword knifing straight at his heart. Drizzt leaped aside, slapping at the blade in sheer desperation, and narrowly avoided impalement.

“Are you so very sure of yourself?” Zak growled, stubbornly pursuing Drizzt.

Drizzt set himself as their blades met in ringing fury. “I am a fighter,” he declared. “A drow warrior!”

“You are a dancer!” Zak shot back in a derisive tone. He slammed his sword onto Drizzt’s blocking scimitar so savagely that the young drow’s arm tingled.

“An imposter!” Zak cried. “A pretender to a title you cannot begin to understand!”

Drizzt went on the offensive. Fires burned in his lavender eyes and new strength guided his scimitars’ sure cuts.

But Zak was relentless. He fended the attacks and continued his lesson. “Do you know the emotions of murder?” he spat. “Have you reconciled yourself to the act you committed?”

Drizzt’s only answers were a frustrated growl and a renewed attack.

“Ah, the pleasure of plunging your sword into the bosom of a high priestess,” Zak taunted. “To see the light of warmth leave her body while her lips utter silent curses in your face! Or have you ever heard the screams of dying children?”

Drizzt let up his attack, but Zak would not allow a break. The weapons master came back on the offensive, each thrust aimed for a vital area.

“How loud, those screams,” Zak continued. “They echo over the centuries in your mind; they chase you down the paths of your entire life.”

Zak halted the action so that Drizzt might weigh his every word.

“You have never heard them, have you, dancer?” The weapons master stretched his arms out wide, an invitation. “Come, then, and claim your second kill,” he said, tapping his stomach. “In the belly, where the pain is greatest, so that my screams may echo in your mind. Prove to me that you are the drow warrior you claim to be.”

The tips of Drizzt’s scimitars slowly made their way to the stone floor. He wore no smile now.

“You hesitate,” Zak laughed at him. “This is your chance to make your name. A single thrust, and you will send a reputation into the Academy before you. Other students, even masters, will whisper your name as you pass. ‘Drizzt Do’Urden,’ they will say. ‘The boy who slew the most honored weapons master in all of Menzoberranzan!’ Is this not what you desire?”

“Damn you,” Drizzt spat back, but still he made no move to attack.

“Drow warrior?” Zak chided him. “Do not be so quick to claim a title you cannot begin to understand!”

Drizzt came on then, in a fury he had never before known. His purpose was not to kill, but to defeat his teacher, to steal the taunts from Zak’s mouth with a fighting display too impressive to be derided.

Drizzt was brilliant. He followed every move with three others and worked Zak low and high, inside and out wide. Zak found his heels under him more often than the balls of his feet, too involved was he in staying away from his student’s relentless thrusts to even think of taking the offensive. He allowed Drizzt to continue the initiative for many minutes, dreading its conclusion, the outcome he had already decided to be the most preferable.

Zak then found that he could stand the delay no longer. He sent one sword out in a lazy thrust, and Drizzt promptly slapped the weapon out of his hand.

Even as the young drow came on in anticipation of victory, Zak slipped his empty hand into a pouch and grabbed a magical little ceramic ball—one of those that so often had aided him in battle.

“Not this time, Zaknafein!” Drizzt proclaimed, keeping his attacks under control, remembering well the many occasions that Zak reversed feigned disadvantage into clear advantage.

Zak fingered the ball, unable to come to terms with what he must do.

Drizzt walked him through an attack sequence, then another, measuring the advantage he had gained in stealing a weapon. Confident of his position, Drizzt came in low and hard with a single thrust.

Though Zak was distracted at the time, he still managed to block the attack with his remaining sword. Drizzt’s other scimitar slashed down on top of the sword, pinning its tip to the floor. In the same lightning movement, Drizzt slipped his first blade free of Zak’s parry and brought it up and around, stopping the thrust barely an inch from Zak’s throat.

“I have you!” the young drow cried.

Zak’s answer came in an explosion of light beyond anything Drizzt had ever imagined.

Zak had prudently closed his eyes, but Drizzt, surprised, could not accept the sudden change. His head burned in agony, and he reeled backward, trying to get away from the light, away from the weapons master.

Keeping his eyes tightly shut, Zak had already divorced himself from the need of vision. He let his keen ears guide him now, and Drizzt, shuffling and stumbling, was an easy target to discern. In a single motion, the whip came off Zak’s belt and he lashed out, catching Drizzt around the ankles and dropping him to the floor.

Methodically, the weapons master came on, dreading every step but knowing his chosen course of action to be correct.

Drizzt realized that he was being stalked, but he could not understand the motive. The light had stunned him, but he was more surprised by Zak’s continuation of the battle. Drizzt set himself, unable to escape the trap, and tried to think his way around his loss of sight. He had to feel the flow of battle, to hear the sounds of his attacker and anticipate each coming strike.

He brought his scimitars up just in time to block a sword chop that would have split his skull.

Zak hadn’t expected the parry. He recoiled and came in from a different angle. Again he was foiled.

Now more curious than wanting to kill Drizzt, the weapons master went through a series of attacks, sending his sword into motions that would have sliced through the defenses of many who could see him.

Blinded, Drizzt fought him off, putting a scimitar in line with each new thrust.

“Treachery!” Drizzt yelled, painful residual explosions from the bright light still bursting inside his head. He blocked another attack and tried to regain his footing, realizing that he had little chance of continuing to fend off the weapons master from a prone position.

The pain of the stinging light was too great, though, and Drizzt, light was too great losing one scimitar in the process. He spun over wildly, knowing that Zak was closing in.

The other scimitar was knocked from his hand.

“Treachery,” Drizzt growled again. “Do you so hate to lose?”

“Do you not understand?” Zak yelled back at him. “To lose is to die! You may win a thousand fights, but you can only lose one!” He put his sword in line with Drizzt’s throat. It would be a single clean blow. He knew that he should do it, mercifully, before the masters of the Academy got hold of his charge.

Zak sent his sword spinning across the room, and he reached out with his empty hands, grabbed Drizzt by the front of his shirt, and hoisted him to his feet.

They stood face-to-face, neither seeing the other very well in the blinding glare, and neither able to break the tense silence. After a long and breathless moment, the dweomer of the enchanted pebble faded and the room became more comfortable. Truly, the two dark elves looked upon each other in a different light.

“A trick of Lolth’s clerics,” Zak explained. “Always they keep such a spell of light at the ready” A strained smile crossed his face as he tried to ease Drizzt’s anger. “Though I daresay that I have turned such light against clerics, even high priestesses, more than a few times.”

“Treachery,” Drizzt spat a third time.

“It is our way,” Zak replied. “You will learn.”

“It is your way,” snarled Drizzt. “You grin when you speak of murdering clerics of the Spider Queen. Do you so enjoy killing? Killing drow?”

Zak could not find an answer to the accusing question. Drizzt’s words hurt him profoundly because they rang of truth, and because Zak had come to view his penchant for killing clerics of Lolth as a cowardly response to his own unanswerable frustrations.

“You would have killed me,” Drizzt said bluntly.

“But I did not,” Zak retorted. “And now you live to go to the Academy—to take a dagger in the back because you are blind to the realities of our world, because you refuse to acknowledge what your people are.

“Or you will become one of them,” Zak growled. “Either way, the Drizzt Do’Urden I have known will surely die.”

Drizzt’s face twisted, and he couldn’t even find the words to dispute the possibilities Zak was spitting at him. He felt the blood drain from his face, though his heart raged. He walked away, letting his glare linger on Zak for many steps.

“Go, then, Drizzt Do’Urden!” Zak cried after him. “Go to the Academy and bask in the glory of your prowess. Remember, though, the consequences of such skills. Always there are consequences!”

Zak retreated to the security of his private chamber. The door to the room closed behind the weapons master with such a sound of finality that it spun Zak back to face its empty stone.

“Go, then, Drizzt Do’Urden,” he whispered in quiet lament. “Go to the Academy and learn who you really are.”