Homeland (The Legend of Drizzt #1)(60)

Two years was not such a long time in the centuries of life a drow elf might know, but to Drizzt, more than the decade of absence now separated him from this place.

Maya joined them in the great corridor leading to the chapel anteroom. “Greetings, Prince Drizzt,” she said, and Drizzt couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or not. “We have heard of the honors you achieved at Melee- Magthere. Your skill did House Do’Urden proud,” In spite of her words, Maya could not hide a derisive chuckle as she finished the thought. “Glad, I am, that you did not become drider food.”

Drizzt’s glare stole the smile from her face. Maya and Briza exchanged concerned glances. They knew of the punishment Vierna had put upon their younger brother, and of the vicious scolding he had received at the hands of Matron Malice. They each cautiously rested a hand on their snake whips, not knowing how foolish their dangerous young brother might have become.

It was not Matron Malice or Drizzt’s sisters that now had Drizzt measuring every step before he took it. He knew where he stood with his mother and knew what he had to do to keep her appeased. There was another member of the family, though, that evoked both confusion and anger in Drizzt. Of all his kin, only Zaknafein pretended to be what he was not. As Drizzt made his way to the chapel, he glanced anxiously down every side passage, wondering when Zak would make his appearance.

“How long before you leave for patrol?” Maya asked, pulling Drizzt from his contemplations. “Thro days,” Drizzt replied absently, his eyes still darting from shadow to shadow. Then he was at the anteroom door, with no sign of Zak. Perhaps the weapon master was within, standing beside Malice.

“We know of your indiscretions; Briza snapped, suddenly cold, as she placed her hand on the latch to the anteroom’s door. Drizzt was not surprised by her outburst. He was beginning to expect such explosions from the high priestesses of the Spider Queen.

“Why could you not just enjoy the pleasures of the ceremony?” Maya added. “We are fortunate that the mistresses and the matron of the Academy were too involved in their own excitement to note your movements. You would have brought shame upon our entire house!”

“You might have placed Matron Malice in Lloth’s disfavor; Briza was quick to add.

The best thing I could ever do for her, Drizzt thought. He quickly dismissed the notion, remembering Briza’s uncanny proficiency at reading minds.

“Let us hope he did not,” Maya said grimly to her sister. “The tides of war hang thick in the air?’

“I have learned my place,” Drizzt assured them. He bowed low. “Forgive me, my sisters, and know that the truth of the drow world is fast opening before my young eyes. Never will I disappoint House Do’Urden in such a way again!” So pleased were his sisters at the proclamation that the ambiguity of Drizzt’s words slipped right past them. Then Drizzt, not wanting to push his luck too far, also slipped past them, making his way through the door, noting with relief that Zaknafein was not in attendance.

“All praises to the Spider Queen!” Briza yelled after him.

Drizzt paused and turned to meet her gaze. He bowed low a second time. “As it should be,” he muttered. Creeping behind the small group, Zak had studied Drizzt’s every move, trying to measure the toll a decade at the Academy had exacted on the young fighter.

Gone now was the customary smile that lit Drizzt’s face. Gone, too, Zak supposed, was the innocence that had kept this one apart from the rest of Menzoberranzan.

Zak leaned back heavily against the wall in a side passage. He had caught only portions of the conversation at the anteroom door. Most clearly he had heard Drizzt’s heartfelt accord with Briza’s honoring of Lloth.

“What have I done?” the weapon master asked himself. He looked back around the bend in the main corridor, but the door to the anteroom had already closed.

“Truly, when I look upon the drow -the drow warrior- that was my most treasured, I shame for my cowardice,” Zak lamented. “What has Drizzt lost that I might have saved?”

He drew his smooth sword from its scabbard, his sensitive fingers running the length of the razor edge. “A finer blade you would be had you tasted the blood of Drizzt Do’Urden, to deny this world, our world, another soul for its taking, to free that one from the unending torments of life!” He lowered the weapon’s tip to the floor.

“But I am a coward,” he said. “I have failed in the one act that could have brought meaning to my pitiful existence. The secondboy of House Do’Urden lives, it would appear, but Drizzt Do’Urden, my ‘Two-hands, is long dead,” Zak looked back to the emptiness where Drizzt had been standing, the weapon master’s expression suddenly a grimace.

“Yet this pretender lives. A drow warrior.”

Zak’s weapon clanged to the stone floor and his head slumped down to be caught by the embrace of his open palms, the only shield Zaknafein Do’Urden had ever found. Drizzt spent the next day at rest, mostly in his room, trying to keep out of the way of the other members of his immediate family. Malice had dismissed him without a word in their initial meeting, but Drizzt did not want to confront her again. Likewise, he had little to say to Briza and Maya, fearing t hat sooner or later they would begin to understand the true connotations of his continuing stream of blasphemous responses. Most of all, though, Drizzt did not want to see Zaknafein, the mentor he had once thought of as his salvation against the realities around him, the one glowing light in the darkness that was Menzoberranzan.