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.”
Dinin came for his brother early the next morning. Drizzt slowly left the training room, looking back over his shoulder every few steps to see if Zak would come out and attack him again or bid him farewell.
He knew in his heart that Zak would not.
Drizzt had thought them friends, had believed that the bond he and Zaknafein had sown went far beyond the simple lessons and swordplay. The young drow had no answers to the many questions spinning in his mind, and the person who had been his teacher for the last five years had nothing left to offer him.
“The heat grows in Narbondel,” Dinin remarked when they stepped out onto the balcony. “We must not be late for your first day in the Academy.”
Drizzt looked out into the myriad colors and shapes that composed Menzoberranzan. “What is this place?” he whispered, realizing how little he knew of his homeland beyond the walls of his own house. Zak’s words—Zak’s rage—pressed in on Drizzt as he stood there, reminding him of his ignorance and hinting at a dark path ahead.
“This is the world,” Dinin replied, though Drizzt’s question had been rhetorical. “Do not worry, Secondboy,” he laughed, moving up onto the railing. “You will learn of Menzoberranzan in the Academy. You will learn who you are and who your people are.”
The declaration unsettled Drizzt. Perhaps—remembering his last bitter encounter with the drow he had most trusted—that knowledge was exactly what he was afraid of.
He shrugged in resignation and followed Dinin over the balcony in a magical descent to the compound floor: the first steps down that dark path.
Another set of eyes watched intently as Dinin and Drizzt started out from House Do’Urden.
Alton DeVir sat quietly against the side of a gigantic mushroom, as he had every day for the last tenday, staring at the Do’Urden complex.
Daermon N’a’shezbaernon, Ninth House of Menzoberranzan. The house that had murdered his matron, his sisters and brothers, and all there ever was of House DeVir … except for Alton.
Alton thought back to the days of House DeVir, when Matron Ginafae had gathered the family members together so that they might discuss their aspirations. Alton, just a student when House DeVir fell, now had a greater insight to those times. Twenty years had brought a wealth of experience.
Ginafae had been the youngest matron among the ruling families, and her potential had seemed unlimited. Then she had aided a gnomish patrol, had used her Lolth-given powers to hinder the drow elves that ambushed the little people in the caverns ou
tside Menzoberranzan—all because Ginafae desired the death of a single member of that attacking drow party, a wizard son of the city’s third house, the house labeled as House DeVir’s next victim.
The Spider Queen took exception to Ginafae’s choice of weapons; deep gnomes were the dark elves’ worst enemy in the whole of the Underdark. With Ginafae fallen out of Lolth’s favor, House DeVir had been doomed.
Alton had spent twenty years trying to learn of his enemies, trying to discover which drow family had taken advantage of his mother’s mistake and had slaughtered his kin. Twenty long years, and his adopted matron, SiNafay Hun’ett, had ended his quest as abruptly as it had begun.
Now, as Alton sat watching the guilty house, he knew only one thing for certain: twenty years had done nothing to diminish his rage.
THE ACADEMY
he Academy.
It is the propagation of the lies that bind drow society together, the ultimate perpetration of falsehoods repeated so many times that they ring true against any contrary evidence. The lessons young drow are taught of truth and justice are so blatantly refuted by everyday life in wicked Menzoberranzan that it is hard to understand how any could believe them. Still they do.
Even now, decades removed, the thought of the place frightens me, not for any physical pain or the ever-present sense of possible death—I have trod down many roads equally dangerous in that way. The Academy of Menzoberranzan frightens me when I think of the survivors, the graduates, existing— reveling—within the evil fabrications that shape their world.
They live with the belief that anything is acceptable if you can get away with it, that self-gratification is the most important aspect of existence, and that power comes only to she or he who is strong enough and cunning enough to snatch it from the failing hands of those who no longer deserve it. Compassion has no place in Menzoberranzan, and yet it is compassion, not fear, that brings harmony to most races. It is harmony, working toward shared goals, that precedes greatness.
Lies engulf the drow in fear and mistrust, refute friendship at the tip of a Lolth-blessed sword The hatred and ambition fostered by these amoral tenets are the doom of my people, a weakness that they perceive as strength. The result is a paralyzing, paranoid existence that the drow call the edge of readiness.
I do not know how I survived the Academy, how I discovered the falsehoods early enough to use them in contrast, and thus strengthen, those ideals I most cherish.
It was Zaknafein, I must believe, my teacher. Through the experiences of Zak’s long years, which embittered him and cost him so much, I came to hear the screams: the screams of protest against murderous treachery; the screams of rage from the leaders of drow society, the high priestesses of the Spider Queen, echoing down the paths of my mind, ever to hold a place within my mind. The screams of dying children.
—Drizzt Do’Urden
earing the outfit of a noble son, and with a dagger concealed in one boot—a suggestion from Dinin—Drizzt ascended the wide stone stairway that led to Tier Breche, the Academy of the drow. Drizzt reached the top and moved between the giant pillars, under the impassive gazes of two guards, last-year students of Melee-Magthere.
Two dozen other young drow milled about the Academy compound, but Drizzt hardly noticed them. Three structures dominated his vision and his thoughts. To his left stood the pointed stalagmite tower of Sorcere, the school of wizardry. Drizzt would spend the first sixth months of his tenth and last year of study in there.
Before him, at the back of the level, loomed the most impressive structure, Arach-Tinilith, the school of Lolth, carved from the stone into the likeness of a giant spider. By drow reckoning, this was the Academy’s most important building and thus was normally reserved for females. Male students were housed within Arach-Tinilith only during their last six months of study.
While Sorcere and Arach-Tinilith were the more graceful structures, the most important building for Drizzt at that tentative moment lined the wall to his right. The pyramidal structure of Melee-Magthere, the school of fighters. This building would be Drizzt’s home for the next nine years. His companions, he now realized, were those other dark elves in the compound—fighters, like himself, about to begin their formal training. The class, at twenty-five, was unusually large for the school of fighters.
Even more unusual, several of the novice students were nobles. Drizzt wondered how his skills would measure up against theirs, how his sessions with Zaknafein compared to the battles these others had no doubt fought with the weapons masters of their respective families.
Those thoughts inevitably led Drizzt back to his last encounter with his mentor. He quickly dismissed the memories of that unpleasant duel, and, more pointedly, the disturbing questions Zak’s observations had forced him to consider. There was no place for such doubts on this occasion. Melee-Magthere loomed before him, the greatest test and the greatest lesson of his young life.
“My greetings,” came a voice behind him. Drizzt turned to face a fellow novice, who wore a sword and dirk uncomfortably on his belt and who appeared even more nervous than Drizzt—a comforting sight.
“Kelnozz of House Kenafin, fifteenth house,” the novice said.
“Drizzt Do’Urden of Daermon N’a’shezbaernon, House Do’Urden, Ninth House of Menzoberranzan,” Drizzt replied automatically, exactly as Matron Malice had instructed him.
“A noble,” remarked Kelnozz, understanding the significance of Drizzt bearing the same surname as his house. Kelnozz dropped into a low bow. “I am honored by your presence.”
Drizzt was starting to like this place already. With the treatment he normally received at home, he hardly thought of himself as a noble. Any self-important notions that might have occurred to him at Kelnozz’s gracious greeting were dispelled a moment later, though, when the masters came out.
Drizzt saw his brother, Dinin, among them but pretended—as Dinin had warned him to—not to notice, nor to expect any special treatment. Drizzt rushed inside Melee-Magthere along with the rest of the students when the whips began to snap and the masters started shouting of the dire consequences if they tarried. They were herded down a few side corridors and into an oval room.
“Sit or stand as you will!” one of the masters growled. Noticing two of the students whispering off to the side, the master took his whip out and—crack!—took one of the offenders off his feet.
Drizzt couldn’t believe how quickly the room then came to order.
“I am Hatch’net,” the master began in a resounding voice, “the master of Lore. This room will be your hall of instruction for fifty cycles of Narbondel.” He looked around at the adorned belts on every figure. “You will bring no weapons to this place!”
Hatch’net paced the perimeter of the room, making certain that every eye followed his movements attentively. “You are drow,” he snapped suddenly. “Do you understand what that means? Do you know where you come from, and the history of our people? Menzoberranzan was not always our home, nor was any other cavern of the Underdark. Once we walked the surface of the world.” He spun suddenly and came up right in Drizzt’s face.
“Do you know of the surface?” Master Hatch’net snarled.
Drizzt recoiled and shook his head.
“An awful place,” Hatch’net continued, turning back to the whole of the group. “Each day, as the glow begins its rise in Narbondel, a great ball of fire rises into the open sky above, bringing hours of a light greater than the punishing spells of the priestesses of Lolth!” He held his arms outstretched, with his eyes turned upward, and an unbelievable grimace spread across his face.
Students’ gasps rose up all about him.
“Even in the night, when the ball of fire has gone below the far rim of the world,” Hatch’net continued, weaving his words as if he were telling a horror tale, “one cannot escape the uncounted terrors of the surface. Reminders of what the next day will bring, dots of light—and sometimes a lesser ball of silvery fire—mar the sky’s blessed darkness.
&
nbsp; “Once our people walked the surface of the world,” he repeated, his tone now one of lament, “in ages long past, even longer than the lines of the great houses. In that distant age, we walked beside the pale-skinned elves, the faeries!”
“It cannot be true!” one student cried from the side.
Hatch’net looked at him earnestly, considering whether more would be gained by beating the student for his unasked-for interruption or by allowing the group to participate. “It is!” he replied, choosing the latter course. “We thought the faeries our friends; we called them kin! We could not know, in our innocence, that they were the embodiments of deceit and evil. We could not know that they would turn on us suddenly and drive us from them, slaughtering our children and the eldest of our race!
“Without mercy the evil faeries pursued us across the surface world. Always we asked for peace, and always we were answered by swords and killing arrows!”
He paused, his face twisting into a widening, malicious smile. “Then we found the goddess!”
“Praise Lolth!” came one anonymous cry. Again Hatch’net let the slip of tongue go by unpunished, knowing that every accenting comment only drew his audience deeper into his web of rhetoric.
“Indeed,” the master replied. “All praise to the Spider Queen. It was she who took our orphaned race to her side and helped us fight off our enemies. It was she who guided the fore-matrons of our race to the paradise of the Underdark. It is she,” he roared, a clenched fist rising into the air, “who now gives us the strength and the magic to pay back our enemies.
“We are the drow!” Hatch’net cried. “You are the drow, never again to be downtrodden, rulers of all you desire, conquerors of lands you choose to inhabit!”
“The surface?” came a question.
“The surface?” echoed Hatch’net with a laugh. “Who would want to return to that vile place? Let the faeries have it! Let them burn under the fires of the open sky! We claim the Underdark, where we can feel the core of the world thrumming under our feet, and where the stones of the walls show the heat of the world’s power!”