Homeland (The Legend of Drizzt #1)(92)

Drizzt leaned against the wall for support, understanding firsthand the frustration that h ad racked his father for many centuries. Drizzt did not want to be like Zaknafein, living only to kill, existing in a protective sphere of violence, but what choices lay before him? Leave the city?

Zak had balked when Drizzt asked him why he had not left.

“Where would I go?” Drizzt whispered now, echoing Zak’s words. His father had proclaimed them trapped, and so it seemed to Drizzt.

“Where would I go?” he asked again. “Travel the Underdark, where our people are so despised and a single drow would become target for everything he passed? Or to the surface, perhaps, and let that ball of fire in the sky burn out my eyes so that I may not witness my own death when the elven folk descend upon me?”

The logic of the reasoning trapped Drizzt as it had trapped Zak. Where could a drow elf go? Nowhere in all the Realms would an elf of dark skin be accepted.

Was the choice then to kill? To kill drow? Drizzt rolled over against the wall, his physical movement an unconscious act, for his mind whirled down the maze of h is future. It took him a moment to realize that his back was against something other than stone.

He tried to leap away, alert again now that his surroundings were not as they should be. When he pushed out, his feet came up from the ground and he landed back in his original position. Frantically, before he took the time to consider his predicament, Drizzt reached behind his neck with both hands.

They, too, stuck fast to the translucent cord that held him. Drizzt knew his folly then, and all the tugging in the world would not free his hands from the line of the tangler of the Underdark, a cave fisher.

“Fool!” he scolded himself as he felt himself lifted from the ground. He should have suspected this, should have been more careful alone in the caverns. But to reach out barehanded! He looked down at the hilts of his scimitars, useless in their sheaths.

The cave fisher reeled him in, pulled him up the long wall toward its waiting maw.

Masoj Hun’ett smiled smugly to himself as he watched Drizzt depart the city. Time was running short for him, and Matron SiNafay would not be pleased if he failed again in his mission to destroy the secondboy of House Do’Urden. Now; Masoj’s patience had apparently paid off, for Drizzt had come out alone, had left the city! There were no witnesses. It was too easy.

Eagerly the wizard pulled the onyx figurine from his pouch and dropped it to the ground. “Guenhwyvar!” he called as loudly as he dared, glancing around at the nearest Istalagmite house for signs of activity.

The dark s moke appeared and transformed a moment later into Masoj’s magical panther. Masoj rubbed his hands together, thinking himself marvelous for having concocted such a devious and ironic end to the heroics of Drizzt Do’Urden

“I have a job for you,” he told the cat, “one that you’ll not enjoy!”

Guenhwyvar slumped casually and yawned as though the wizard’s words were hardly a revelation.

“Your point companion has gone out on patrol,” Masoj explained as he pointed down the tunnel, “by himself. It’s too dangerous.”

Guenhwyvar stood back up, suddenly very interested. “Drizzt should not be out there alone,” Masoj continued. “He could get killed.” The evil inflections of his voice told the panther his intent before he ever spoke the words.

“Go to him, my pet,” Masoj purred. “Find him out there in the gloom and kill him!” He studied Guenhwyvar’s reaction, measured the horror he had laid on the cat. Guenhwyvar stood rigid, as unmoving as the statue used to summon it.

“Go!” Masoj ordered. “You cannot resist your master’s commands! I am your master, unthinking beast! You seem to forget that fact too often!”

Guenhwyvar resisted for a long moment, a heroic act in itself, but the magic’s urges, the incessant pull of the master’s command, outweighed any instinctive feelings the great panther might have had. Reluctantly at first, but then pulled by the primordial desires of the hunt, Guenhwyvar sped off between the enchanted statues guarding the tunnel and easily found Drizzt’s scent.

Alton DeVir slumped back behind the largest of the stalagmite mounds, disappointed at Masoj’s tactics. Masoj would let the cat do his work for him; Alton would not even witness Drizzt Do’Urden’s death!

Alton fingered the powerful wand that Matron SiNafay had given to him when he set out after Masoj that night. It seemed that the item would play no role in Drizzt’s demise.

Alton took comfort in the item, knowing that he would have ample opportunity to put it to proper use against the remainder of House Do’Urden.

Drizzt fought for the first half of his ascent, kicking and spinning, ducking his shoulders under any outcrop he passed in a futile effort to hold back the pull of the cave fisher. He knew from the outset, though, against those warrior instincts that refused to surrender, that he had no chance to halt the incessant pull.

Halfway up, one shoulder bloodied, the other bruised, and with the floor nearly thirty feet below him, Drizzt resigned himself to his fate. If he would find a chance against the crablike monster that waited at the top of the line, it would be in the last instant of the ascent. For now, he could only watch and wait.

Perhaps death was not so bad an alternative to the life he would find among the drow, trapped within the evil framework of their dark society. Even Zaknafein, so strong and powerful and wise with age, had never been able to come to terms with his existence in Menzoberranzan; what chance did Drizzt have?