Homeland (The Legend of Drizzt #1)(72)

“Stay down,” he whispered in the child’s ear. Drizzt knew that she could not understand his language, but he tried to keep his tone comforting enough for her to guess at the deception. He could only hope he had done an adequate job a moment later, when Dinin and several others came over to him.

“Well done!” Dinin said exuberantly, trembling with sheer excitement. “A score of the orc-bait dead and not a one of us even injured! The matrons of Menzoberranzan will be pleased indeed, though we’ll get no plunder from this pitiful lot!” He looked down at the pile at Drizzt’s feet, then clapped his brother on the shoulder.

“Did they think they could get away?” Dinin roared. Drizzt fought hard to sublimate his disgust, but Dinin was so entranced by the bloodbath that he wouldn’t have noticed anyway.

“Not with you here!” Dinin continued.”Two kills for Drizzt!”

“One kill!” protested another, stepping beside Dinin. Drizzt set his hands firmly on the hilts of his weapons and gathered up his courage. If this approaching drow had guessed the deception, Drizzt would fight to save the elven child. He would kill his companions, even his brother, to save the little girl with the sparkling eyes-until he himself was slain. At least then Drizzt would not have to witness their slaughter of the child.

Luckily, the problem never came up. “Drizzt got the child,” the drow said to Dinin, “but I got the elder female. I put my sword right through her back before your brother ever brought his scimitars to bear!”

It came as a reflex, an unconscious strike against the evil all about him. Drizzt didn’t even realize the act as it happened, but a moment later, he saw the boasting drow lying on his back, clutching at his face and groaning in agony. Only then did Drizzt notice the burning pain in his hand, and he looked down to see his knuckles, and the scimitar hilt they clutched, spattered with blood.

“What are you about?” Dinin demanded. Thinking quickly, Drizzt did not even reply to his brother.

He looked past Dinin, to the squirming form on the ground, and transferred all the rage in his heart into a curse that the others would accept and respect. “If ever you steal a kill from me again,” he spat, sincerity dripping from his false words, “I will replace the head lost from its shoulders with your own!”

Drizzt knew that the elven child at his feet, though doing her best, had begun a slight shudder of sobbing, and he decided not to press his luck. “Come, then,” he growled. “Let us leave this place. The stench of the surface world fills my mouth with bile!”

He stormed away, and the others, laughing, picked up their dazed comrade and followed.

“Finally,” Dinin whispered as he watched his brother’s tense strides. “Finally you have learned what it is to be a drow warrior!”

Dinin, in his blindness, would never understand the irony of his words. “We have one more duty before we return home,” the cleric explained to the group when it reached the cave’s entrance. She alone knew of the raid’s second purpose. “The matrons of Menzoberranzan have bid us to witness the ultimate horror of the surface world, that we might warn our kindred.”

Our kindred? Drizzt mused, his thoughts black with sarcasm. As far as he could see, the raiders had already witnessed the horror of the surface world: themselves!

“There!” Dinin cried, pointing to the eastern horizon. The tiniest shading of light limned the dark outline of distant mountains.

A surface dweller would not even have noticed it, but the dark elves saw it clearly, and all of them, even Drizzt, recoiled instinctively.

“It is beautiful,” Drizzt dared to remark after taking a moment to consider the spectacle. Dinin’s glare came at him icy cold, but no colder than the look the cleric cast Drizzt’s way. “Remove your cloaks and equipment, even your armor,” she instructed .the group. “Quickly. Place them within the shadows of the cave so that they will not be affected by the light.”

When the task was completed, the cleric led them out into the growing light. “Watch,” was her grim command.

The eastern sky assumed a hue of purplish pink, then pink altogether, its brightening causing the dark elves to squint uncomfortably. Drizzt wanted to deny the event, to put it into the same pile of anger that denied the master of Lore’s words concerning the surface elves.

Then it happened; the top rim of the sun crested the eastern horizon. The surface world awakened to its warmth, its life-giving energy. Those same rays assaulted the drow elves’ eyes with the fury of fire, tearing into orbs unaccustomed to such sights.

“Watch!” the cleric cried at them. “Witness the depth of the horror!” One by one, the raiders cried out in pain and fell into the cave’s darkness, until Drizzt stood alone beside the cleric in the growing daylight. Truly the light assaulted Drizzt as keenly as it had his kin, but he basked in it, accepting it as his purgatory, exposing him for all to view while its stinging fires cleansed his soul.

“Come,” the cleric said to him at length, not understanding his actions. “We have borne witness. We may now return to our homeland.”

“Homeland?” Drizzt replied, subdued.

“Menzoberranzan!” the cleric cried, thinking the male confused beyond reason. “Come, before the inferno burns the skin from your bones. Let our surface cousins suffer the flames, a fitting punishment for their evil hearts!”