Homeland (The Legend of Drizzt #1)(43)

He paused, his face twisting into a widening, malicious smile. “Then we found the goddess!”

“Praise Lloth!” 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!”

Drizzt sat silent, absorbing every word of the talented orator’s often rehearsed speech. Drizzt was caught, as were all the new students, in Hatch’net’s hypnotic variations of inflection and rallying cr ies. Hatch’net had been the master of Lore at the Academy for more than two centuries, owning more prestige in Menzoberranzan than nearly any other male drow, and many of the females. The matrons of the ruling families understood well the value of his practiced tongue.

So it went every day, an endless stream of hate rhetoric directed against an enemy that none of the students had ever seen. The surface elves were not the only target of Hatch’net’s sniping. Dwarves, gnomes, humans, halflings, and all of the surface races-and even subterranean races such as the duergar dwarves, which the drow often traded with and fought beside- each found an unpleasant spot in the master’s ranting.

Drizzt came to understand why no weapons were permitted in the oval chamber. When he left his lesson each day, he found his hands clenched by his sides in rage, unconsciously grasping for a scimitar hilt. It was obvious from the commonplace fights among the students that others felt the same way. Always, though, the overriding factor that kept some measure of control was the master’s lie of the horrors of the outside world and the comforting bond of the students’ common heritage a heritage, the students would soon come to believe, that gave them enough enemies to battle beyond each other.

The long, draining hours in the oval chamber left little time for the students to mingle. They shared common barracks, but their extensive duties outside of Hatch’net’s lessons serving the older students and masters, preparing meals, and cleaning the building-gave them barely enough time for rest. By the end of the first week, they walked on the edge of exhaustion, a condition, Drizzt realized, that only increased the stirring effect of Master Hatch’net’s les sons.

Drizzt accepted the existence stoically, considering it far better than the six years he had served his mother and sisters as page prince. Still, there was one great disappointment to rizzt in his first weeks at Melee- Magthere. He found himself longing for his practice sessions.

He sat on the edge of his bedroll late one night, holding a scimitar up before his shining eyes, remembering those many hours engaged in battle- play with Zaknafein.

“We go to the lesson in two hours,” Kelnozz, in the next bunk, reminded him. “Get some rest.”

“I feel the edge leaving my hands,” Drizzt replied quietly. “The blade feels heavier, unbalanced.”

“The grand melee is barely ten cycles of Narbondel away,” Kelnozz said. “You will get all the practice you desire there! Fear not, whatever edge has been dulled by the days with the master of Lore will soon be regained. For the next nine years, that fine blade of yours will rarely leave your hands!”

Drizzt slid the scimitar back into its scabbard and reclined on his bunk.

As with so many aspects of his life so far-and, he was beginning to fear, with so many aspects of his future in Menzoberranzan-he had no choice but to accept the circumstances of his existence.

“This segment of your training is at an end,” Master Hatch’net announced on the morning of the fiftieth day. Another master, Dinin, entered the room, leading a magically suspended iron box filled with meagerly padded wooden poles of every length and design comparable to drow weapons.

“Choose the sparring pole that most resembles your own weapon of choice,” Hatch’net explained as Dinin made his way around the room. He came to his brother, and Drizzt’s eyes settled at once on his choice: two slightly curving poles about three-and-a-half feet long. Drizzt lifted them out and put them through a simple cut. Their weight and balance closely resembled the scimitars that had become so familiar to his hands.

“For the pride of Daermon N’a’shezbaernon,” Dinin whispered, then moved along. Drizzt twirled the mock weapons again. It was time to measure the value of his sessions with Zak.

“Your class must have an order,” Hatch’net was saying as Drizzt turned his attention beyond the scope of his new weapons. “Thus the grand melee. Remember, there can be only one victor!”

Hatch’net and Dinin herded the students out of the oval chamber and out of Melee-Magthere altogether, down the tunnel between the two guardian spider statues at the back of Tier Breche. For all of the students, this was the first time they had ever been out of Menzoberranzan.