Homeland (The Legend of Drizzt #1)(73)

Drizzt chuckled hopelessly. A fitting punishment? He wished that he could pluck a thousand such suns from the sky and set them in every chapel in Menzoberranzan, to shine eternally.

Then Drizzt could take the light no more. He scrambled dizzily back into the cave and donned his outfit. The cleric had the orb in hand, and Drizzt again was the first through the tiny crack. When all the group rejoined in the tunnel beyond, Drizzt took his position at the point and led them back into the descending path’s deepening gloom back down into the darkness of their existence.





Chapter 21

May It Please The Goddess


“Did you please the goddess?” Matron Malice asked, her question as much a threat as an inquiry. At her side, the other females of House Do’Urden, Briza, Vierna, and Maya, looked on impassively, hiding their jealousy.

“Not a single drow was slain,” Dinin replied, his voice thick with the sweetness of drow evil. “We cut them and slashed them!” He drooled as his recounting of the elven slaughter brought back the lust of the moment. “Bit them and ripped them!”

“What of you?” the matron mother interrupted, more concerned with the consequences to her own family’s standing than with the raid’s general success.

“Five,” Dinin answered proudly. “I killed five, all of them females!”

The matron’s smile thrilled Dinin. Then Malice scowled as she turned her gaze on Drizzt. “And him?” she inquired, not expecting to be pleased with the answer. Malice did not doubt her youngest son’s prowess with weapons, but she had come to suspect that Drizzt had too much of Zaknafein’s emotional makeup to ever be an attribute in such situations.

Dinin’s smile confused her. He walked over to Drizzt and draped an arm comfortably across his brother’s shoulders.

“Drizzt got only one kill,” Dinin began, “but it was a female child.”

“Only one?” Malice growled. From the shadows off to the side, Zaknafein listened in dismay.

He wanted to shut out the elderboy Do’Urden’s damning words, but they held Zak in their grip. Of all the evils Zak had ever encountered in Menzoberranzan, this surely had to be the most disappointing. Drizzt had killed a child.

“But the way he did it!” Dinin exclaimed. “He hacked her apart; sent all of Lloth’s fury slicing into her twitching body! The Spider Queen must have treasured that kill above all the others.”

“Only one,” Matron Malice said again, her scowl hardly softening.

“He would have had two,” Dinin continued. “Shar Nadal of House Maevret stole one from his blade-another female.”

“Then Lloth will look with favor on House Maevret,” Briza reasoned.

“No,” Dinin replied. “Drizzt punished Shar Nadal for his actions. The son of House Maevret would not respond to the challenge.”

The memory stuck in Drizzt’s thoughts. He wished that Shar Nadal had come back at him, so he could have vented his rage more fully. Even that wish sent pangs of guilt coursing through Drizzt.

“Well done, my children,” Malice beamed, now satisfied that both of them had acted properly in the raid. “The Spider Queen will look upon House Do’Urden with favor for this event. She will guide us to victory over this unknown house that seeks to destroy us.”

Zaknafein left the audience hall with his eyes down and one hand nervously rubbing his sword’s hilt. Zak remembered the time he had deceived Drizzt with the light bomb, when he had Drizzt defenseless and beaten. He could have spared the young innocent from his horrid fate. He could have killed Drizzt then and there, mercifully, and released him from the inevitable circumstances of life in Menzoberranzan.

Zak paused in the long corridor and turned back to watch the chamber. Drizzt and Dinin came out then, Drizzt casting Zak a single, accusatory look and pointedly turning away down a side passage.

The gaze cut through the weapon master. “So it has come to this,” Zak murmured to himself. “The youngest warrior of House Do’Urden, so full of the hate that embodies our race, has learned to despise me for what I am.”

Zak thought again of that moment in the training gym, that fateful second when Drizzt’s life teetered on the edge of a poised sword. It indeed would have been a merciful act to kill Drizzt at that time.

With the sting of the young drow warrior’s gaze still cutting so keenly into his heart, Zak couldn’t decide whether the deed would have been more merciful to Drizzt or to himself.

“Leave us,” Matron SiNafay commanded as she swept into the small room lighted by a candle’s glow. Alton gawked a t the request; it was, after all, his personal room! Alton prudently reminded himself that SiNafay was the matron mother of the family, the absolute ruler of House Hun’ett. With a few awkward bows and apologies for his hesitation, he backed out of the room.

Masoj watched his mother cautiously as she waited for Alton to move away. From SiNafay’s agitated tone, Masoj understood the significance of her visit. Had he done something to anger his mother? Or, more likely, had Alton? When SiNafay spun back on him, her face twisted in evil glee, Masoj realized that her agitation was really excitement.

“House Do’Urden has erred!” she snarled. “It has lost the Spider Queen’s favor!”

“How?” Masoj replied. He knew that Dinin and Drizzt had returned from a successful raid, an assault that all of the city was talking about in tones of high praise.