Homeland (The Legend of Drizzt #1)(29)

Zak was able to smile at situations that didn’t necessarily bring pain to anyone. He was the first drow Drizzt had met who was apparently content with his station in life. Zak was the first drow Drizzt had ever heard laugh.

“A good try,” the weapon master conceded of Drizzt’s failed counter.

“In a real battle, I would have been dead,” Drizzt replied.

“Surely,” said Zak, “but that is why we train. Your plan was masterful, your timing perfect. Only the situation was wrong. Still, I will say it was a good try!’

“You expected it,” said the student.

Zak smiled and nodded. “That is, perhaps, because I had seen the maneuver attempted by another student!”

“Against you?” Drizzt asked, feeling a little less special now that he knew his battle insights were not so unique.

“Hardly,” Zak replied with a wink. “I watched the counter fail from the same angle as you, to the same result!”

Drizzt’s face brightened again. “We think alike,” he commented.

“We do,” said Zak, “but my knowledge has been increased by four centuries of experience, while you have not even lived through a score of years. Trust me, my eager student. The cross-down is the correct parry!”

“Perhaps,” Drizzt replied.

Zak hid a smile. “When you find a better counter, we shall try it. But until then, trust my word. I have trained more soldiers than I can count, all the army of House Do’Urden and ten times that number when I served as a master in Melee-Magthere. I taught Rizzen, all of your sisters, and both of your brothers!’

“Both?”

“I …” Zak paused and shot a curious glance at Drizzt. “I see,” he said after a moment. “They never bothered to tell you!” Zak wondered if it was his place to tell Drizzt the truth. He doubted that Matron Malice would care either way; she probably hadn’t told Drizzt simply because she hadn’t considered the story of Nalfein’s death worth telling.

“Yes, both!” Zak decided to explain. “You had two brothers when you were born: Dinin, whom you know, and an o lder one, Nalfein, a wizard of considerable power. Nalfein was killed in battle on the very night you drew your first breath!’

“Against dwarves or vicious gnomes?” Drizzt squeaked, as wide-eyed as a child begging for a frightening bedtime story. “Was he defending the city from evil conquerors or rogue monsters?”

Zak had a hard time reconciling the warped perceptions of Drizzt’s innocent beliefs. “Bury the young in lies,” he lamented under his breath, but to Drizzt he answered, “No.”

“Then against some opponent more foul?” Drizzt pressed. “Wicked elves from the surface?”

“He died at the hands of a drow!” Zak snapped in frustration, stealing the eagerness from Drizzt’s shining eyes. Drizzt slumped back to consider the possibilities, and Zak could hardly bear watch the confusion that twisted his young face.

“War with another city?” Drizzt asked somberly. “I did not know...”

Zak let it go at that. He turned and moved silently toward his private chamber. Let Malice or one of her lackeys destroy Drizzt’s innocent logic.

Behind him, Drizzt held his next line of questions in check, understanding that the conversation, and the lesson, was at an end. Understanding, too, that something important had just transpired.

The weapon master battled Drizzt through long hours as the days blended into weeks, and the weeks into months. Time became unimportant; they fought until exhaustion overwhelmed them, and went back to the training floor again as soon as they were able.

By the third year, at the age of nineteen, Drizzt was able to hold out for hours against the weapon master, even taking the offensive in many of their contests.

Zak enjoyed these days. For the first time in many years, he had met one with the potential to become his fighting equal. For the first time that Zak could ever remember, laughter often accompanied the clash of adamantite weapons in the training room.

He watched Drizzt grow tall and straight, attentive, eager, and intelligent. The masters of the Academy would be hard put just to hold a stalemate against Drizzt, even in his first year!

That thought thrilled the weapon master only as long as it took him to remember the principles of the Academy, the precepts of drow life, and what they would do to his wonderful student. How they would steal that smile from Drizzt’s lavender eyes.

A pointed reminder of that drow world outside the practice room visited them one day in the person of Matron Malice.

“Address her with proper respect,” Zak warned Drizzt when Maya announced the matron mother’s entrance. The weapon master prudently moved out a few steps to greet the head of House Do’Urden privately.

“My greetings, Matron,” he said with a low bow. “To what do I owe the honor of your presence?”

Matron Malice laughed at him, seeing through his facade. “So much time do you and my son spend in here,” she said. “I came to witness the benefit to the boy.”

“He is a fine fighter,” Zak assured her. “He will have to be,” Malice muttered. “He goes to the Academy in only a year.”

Zak narrowed his eyes at her doubting words and growled, “The Academy has never seen a finer swordsman.”

The matron walked away from him to stand before Drizzt. “I doubt not your prowess with the blade,” she said to Drizzt, though she shot a sly gaze back at Zak as she spoke the words. “You have the proper blood. There are other qualities that make up a drow warrior-qualities of the heart. The attitude of a warrior!”