Homeland (The Legend of Drizzt #1)(23)

“One room,” Zak corrected. “But two more doors,” Drizzt reasoned, looking out across the room. “With no locks.”

“Ah,” Zak corrected, “their locks are made of common sense,” Drizzt was beginning to get the picture. “That door,” Zak continued, pointing to the south, “opens into my private chambers. You do not ever want me to find you in there. The other one leads to the tactics room, reserved for times of war. When-if-you ever prove yourself to my satisfaction, I might invite you to join me there. That day is years away, so consider this single magnificent hall-,” he swept his arm out in a wide arc-“your home.”

Drizzt looked around, not overly thrilled. He had dared to hope that he had left this kind of treatment behind him with his page prince days. This setup, though, brought him back even to before his six years of servitude in the house, back to that decade when he had been locked away in the family chapel with Vierna. This room wasn’t even as large as the chapel, and was too tight for the likings of the spirited young drow. His next question came out as a growl.

“Where do I sleep?”

“Your home,” Zak answered matter-of-factly.

“Where do I take meals?”

“Your home.”

Drizzt’s eyes narrowed to slits and his face flushed in glowing heat.

“Where do I ...” he began stubbornly, determined to foil the weapon master’s logic.

“Your home,” Zak replied in the same measured and weighted timbre before Drizzt could finish the thought. Drizzt planted his feet firmly and crossed his arms over his chest. “It sounds messy,” he growled.

“It had better not be,” Zak growled back.

“Then what is the purpose?” Drizzt began. “You pull me away from my mother-.”

“You will address her as Matron Malice,” Zak warned. “You will always address her as Matron Malice.”

“From my mother-”

Zak’s next interruption came not with words but with the swing of a curled fist.

Drizzt awoke about twenty minutes later. “First lesson,” Zak explained, casually leaning against the wall a few feet away. “For your own good. You will always address her as Matron Malice.”

Drizzt rolled to his side and tried to prop himself up on his elbow but found his head reeling as soon as it left the black rugged floor. Zak grabbed him and hoisted him up.

“Not as easy as catching coins,” the weapon master remarked.

“What?”

“Parrying a blow.”

“What blow?”

“Just agree, you stubborn child.”

“Secondboy!” Drizzt corrected, his voice again a growl, and his arms defiantly back over his chest. Zak’s fist curled at his side, a not too-subtle point that Drizzt did not miss. “Do you need another nap?” the weapon master asked calmly.

“Secondboys can be children,” Drizzt wisely conceded.

Zak shook his head in disbelief. This was going to be interesting. “You may find your time here enjoyable,” he said, leading Drizzt over to a long, thick, and colorfully (though most of the colors were somber) decorated curtain. “But only if you can learn some control over that wagging tongue of yours.” A sharp tug sent the curtain floating down, revealing the most magnificent weapons rack the young drow (and many older drow as well) had ever seen. Polearms of many sorts, swords, axes, hammers, and every other kind of weapon Drizzt could imagine-and a w hole bunch he’d never imagine sat in an elaborate array.

“Examine them,” Zak told him. “take your time and your pleasure. Learn which ones sit best in your hands, follow most obediently the commands of your will. By the time we have finished, you will know everyone of them as a trusted companion.”

Wide-eyed, Drizzt wandered along the rack, viewing the whole place and the potential of the whole experience in a completely different light. For his entire young life, sixteen years, his greatest enemy had been boredom. Now, it appeared, Drizzt had found weapons to fight that enemy.

Zak headed for the d oor to his private chamber, thinking it better that Drizzt be alone in those first awkward moments of handling new weapons.

The weapon master stopped, though, when he reached his door and looked back to the young Do’Urden. Drizzt swung a long and heavy halberd, a polearm more than twice his height, in a slow arc. For all of Drizzt’s attempts to keep the weapon under control, its momentum spun his tiny frame right to the ground.

Zak heard himself chuckle, but his laughter only reminded him of the grim reality of his duty. He would train Drizzt, as he had trained a thousand young dark elves before him, to be a warrior, preparing him for the trials of the Academy and life in dangerous Menzoberranzan. He would train Drizzt to be a killer.

How against this one’s nature that mantle seemed! thought Zak. Smiles came too easily to Drizzt; the thought of him running a sword through the heart of another living being revolted Zaknafein. That was the way of the drow, though, a way that Zak had been unable to resist for all of his four centuries of life. Pulling his stare from the spectacle of Drizzt at play, Zak moved into his chamber and shut the door.

“Are they all like that?” he asked into his nearly empty room. “Do all drow children possess such innocence, such simple, untainted smiles that cannot survive the ugliness of our world?” Zak started for the small desk to the side of the room, meaning to lift the darkening shade off the continually glowing ceramic globe that served as the chamber’s light source. He changed his mind as that image of Drizzt’s delight with the weapons refused to diminish, and he headed instead for the large bed across from the door.