Homeland (The Legend of Drizzt #1)(57)

“Call to it,” the matron mistress instructed the naked student. Tentatively, the young cleric spread her arms out wide and whispered, “Glabrezu.”

The flames danced about the rim of the brazier. The smoke wafted into Drizzt’s face, compelling him to inhale it. His legs tingled on the edge of numbness, yet they somehow felt more sensitive, more alive, than they ever had before.

“Glabrezu,” he heard the student say again louder, and Drizzt heard, too, the roar of the flames. Brightness assaulted him, but somehow he didn’t seem to care. His gaze roamed about the room, unable to find a focus, unable to place the strange, dancing sights in accord with the ritual’s sounds.

He heard the high priestesses gasping and coaxing the student on, knowing the conjuring to be at hand. He heard the snap of the snake whip- another incentive?-and cries of

“Glabrezu!” from the student. So primal, so powerful, were these screams that they cut through Drizzt and the other males in the room with an intensity they never would have believed possible.

The flames heard the call. They roared higher and higher and began to take shape. One sight caught the vision of all in the room now-caught it and held it fully. A giant head, a goat-horned dog, appeared within the flames, apparently studying this alluring young drow student who had dared to utter its name.

Somewhere beyond the other planar form, the snake whip cracked again, and the female student repeated her call, her cry beckoning, praying.

The giant denizen of the lower planes stepped through the flames. The sheer unholy power of the creature stunned Drizzt. Glabrezu towered nine feet and seemed much more, with muscled arms ending in giant pincers instead of hands and a second set of smaller arms, normal arms, protruding from the front of its chest.

Drizzt’s instincts told him to attack the monster and rescue the female student, but when he looked around for support, he found the matron mistress and the other teachers of the school back in their ritualistic chanting, this time with an excited edge permeating their every word.

Through all the haze and the daze, the tantalizing, dizzying aroma of the smoky red incense continued its assault on reality. Drizzt trembled, teetered on a narrow ledge of control, his gathering rage fighting the scented smoke’s confusing allure. Instinctively, his hands went to the hilts of the scimitars on his belt.

Then a hand brushed against his leg. He looked down to see a mistress, reclined and asking him to join her-a scene that had suddenly become general around the chamber.

The smoke continued its assault on him. The mistress beckoned to him, her fingernails lightly scraping the skin of his leg.

Drizzt ran his fingers through his thick hair, trying to find some focal point in the dizziness. He did not like this loss of control, this mental numbness that stole the fine edge of his reflexes and alertness.

He liked even less the scene unfolding before him. The sheer wrongness of it assaulted his soul. He pulled away from the mistress’s hopeful grasp and stumbled across the room, tripping over numerous entwined forms too engaged to take note of him. He made the exit as quickly as his wobbly legs could carry him, and he rushed out of the room, pointedly closing the door behind him.

Only the screams of the female student followed him. No stone or mental barricade could block them out.

Drizzt leaned heavily against the cool stone wall, grasping at his stomach. He hadn’t even paused to consider the implications of his actions; he knew only that he had to get out of that foul room.

Vierna then was beside him, her robe opened casually in the front. Drizzt, his head clearing, began to wonder about the price of his actions. The look on his sister’s face, he noted with still more confusion, was not one of scorn.

“You prefer privacy,” she said, her hand resting easily on Drizzt’s shoulder. Vierna made no move to close her robe. “I understand,” she said.

Drizzt grabbed her arm and pulled her away. “What insanity is this?” he demanded. Vierna’s face twisted as she came to understand her brother’s true intentions in leaving the ceremony. “You refused a high priestess!” she snarled at him. “By the laws, she could kill you for your insolence.”

“I do not even know her,” Drizzt shot back. “I am expected to-.”

“You are expected to do as you are instructed!”

“I care nothing for her.”

Drizzt stammered. He found he could not hold his hands steady.

“Do you think Zaknafein cared for Matron Malice?” Vierna replied, knowing that the reference to Drizzt’s hero would surely sting him. Seeing that she had indeed wounded her brother, Vierna softened her expression and took his arm. “Come back,” she purred, “into the room. There is still time,” Drizzt’s cold glare stopped her as surely as the point of a scimitar.

“The Spider Queen is the deity of our people,” Vierna sternly reminded him. “I am one of those who speaks her will.”

“I would not be so proud of that,” Drizzt retorted, clinging to his anger against the wave of very real fear that threatened to defeat his principled stand.

Vierna slapped him hard across the face. “Go back to the ceremony!” she demanded.

“Go kiss a spider,” Drizzt replied. “And may its pincers tear your cursed tongue from your mouth.”

It was Vierna now who could not hold her hands steady. “You should take care when you speak to a high priestess,” she warned.