Homeland (The Legend of Drizzt #1)(19)
“Foolish male!” Vierna scolded. “1ry again! 1ry a thousand times if you must!” She reached for the snake-headed whip on her belt. “If you fail ...”
Drizzt looked away from her, cursing himself. His own elation had caused the spell to falter. He knew that he could do it now, though, and he was not afraid of being beaten. He concentrated again on the sculpture and let the magical energy gather within his body.
Vierna, too, knew that Drizzt would eventually succeed. His mind was keen, as sharp as any Vierna had ever known, including those of the other females of House Do’Urden. The child was stubborn, too; Drizzt would not let the magic defeat him. She knew he would stand under the sculpture until he fainted from hunger if need be.
Vierna watched him go through a series of small successes and failures, the last one dropping Drizzt from a height of nearly ten feet. Vierna flinched, wondering if he was seriously hurt. Drizzt, whatever his wounds, did not even cry out but moved back into position and started concentrating allover again.
“He is young for that,” came a comment from behind Vierna. She turned in her seat to see Briza standing over there, a customary scowl on the older sister’s face.
“Perhaps,” Vierna replied, “but I’ll not know until I let him try.”
“Whip him when he fails,” Briza suggested, pulling her cruel six-headed instrument from her belt. She gave the whip a loving look-as if it were some sort of pet-and let a snake’s head writhe about her neck and face. “Inspiration.”
“Put it away,” Vierna retorted. “Drizzt is mine to rear, and I need no help from you!”
“You should watch how you speak to a high priestess,,” Briza warned, and all of the snake heads, extensions of her thoughts, turned menacingly toward Vierna.
“As Matron Malice will watch how you interfere with my tasks,” Vierna was quick to reply. Briza put her whip away at the mention of Matron Malice.
“Your tasks,” she echoed scornfully. “You are too yielding for such a chore. Male children must be disciplined; they must be taught their place.”
Realizing that Vierna’s threat held dir consequences, the older sister turned and left. Vierna let Briza have the last word. The wean-mother looked back to Drizzt, still trying to get up to the statue. “Enough!” she ordered, recognizing that the child was tiring; he could barely get his feet off the ground.
“I will do it!” Drizzt snapped back at her.
Vierna liked his determination, but not the tone of his reply. Perhaps there was some truth to Briza’s words. Vierna snapped the snake-headed whip from her belt. A little inspiration might go a long way.
Vierna sat in the chapel the next day, watching Drizzt hard at work polishing the statue of the naked female. He had levitated the full twenty feet in his first attempt this day.
Vierna could not help but be disappointed when Drizzt did not look back to her and smile at the success. She saw him now, hovering up in the air, his hands a blur as they worked the brushes. Most vividly of all, though, Vierna saw the scars on her brother’s naked back, the legacy of their “inspirational,” discussion. In the infrared spectrum, the whip lines showed clearly, trails of warmth where the insulating layers of skin had been stripped away.
Vierna understood the gain in beating a child, particularly a male child. Few drow males ever raised a weapon against a female, unless under the order of some other female. “How much do we lose?” Vierna wondered aloud. “What more could one such as Drizzt become?”
When she heard the words spoken aloud, Vierna quickly brushed the blasphemous thoughts from her mind. She aspired to become a high priestess of the Spider Queen, Lloth the Merciless. Such thoughts were not in accord with the rules of her station. She cast an angry glare on her little brother, transferring her g uilt, and again took out her instrument of punishment.
She would have to whip Drizzt again this day, for the sacrilegious thoughts he had inspired within her. So the relationship continued for another five years, with Drizzt learning the basic lessons of life in drow society while endlessly cleaning the chapel of House Do’Urden. Beyond the supremacy of female drow (a lesson always accentuated by the wicked snake-headed whip), the most compelling lessons were those concerning the surface elves, the faeries. Evil empires often bound themselves in webs of hate toward fabricated enemies, and none in the history of the world were better at it than the drow. From the first day they were able to understand the spoken word, drow children were taught that whatever as wrong in their lives could be blamed on the surface elves.
Whenever the fangs of Vierna’s whip sliced into Drizzt’s back, he cried out for the death of a faerie. Conditioned hatred was rarely a rational emotion.
Part 2
The Weapon Master
Empty hours, empty days. I find that I have few memories of that first period of my life, those first sixteen years when I labored as a servant. Minutes blended into hours, hours into days, and so on, until the whole of it seemed one long and barren moment. Several times I managed to sneak out onto the balcony of House Do’Urden and look out over the magical lights of Menzoberranzan. On all of those secret journeys, I found myself entranced by the growing, and then dissipating, heat-light of Narbondel, the time-clock pillar. Looking back on that now, on those long hours watching the glow of the wizard’s fire slowly walk its way up and then down the pillar; I am amazed at the emptiness of my early days.