Zak continued, pointing to the south, "opens into my private
chambers. You do not ever want me to find you in there.
The other one leads to the tactics room, reserved for times
of war. When-if-you ever prove yourself to my satisfac-
tion, I might invite you to join me there. That day is years
away, so consider this single magnificent hall-" he swept
his arm out in a wide arc-"your home”
Drizzt looked around, not overly thrilled. He had dared to
hope that he had left this kind of treatment behind him with
his page prince days. This setup, though, brought him back
even to before his six years of servitude in the house, back
to that decade when he had been locked away in the family
chapel with Vierna. This room wasn't even as large as the
chapel, and was too tight for the likings of the spirited
young drow. His next question came out as a growl.
"Where do I sleep?"
"Your home” Zak answered matter-of-factly.
"Where do I take meals?"
"Your home”
Drizzt's eyes narrowed to slits and his face flushed in
glowing heat. "Where do I . . “ he began stubbornly, deter-
mined to foil the weapon master's logic.
"Your home” Zak replied in the same measured and
weighted timbre before Drizzt could finish the thought.
Drizzt planted his feet firmly and crossed his arms over
his chest. "It sounds messy” he growled.
"It had better not be” Zak growled back.
"Then what is the purpose?" Drizzt began. "You pull me
away from my mother-"
"You will address her as Matron Malice” Zak warned. "You
will always address her as Matron Malice”
"From my mother-"
Zak's next interruption came not with words but with the
swing of a curled fist.
Drizzt awoke about twenty minutes later.
"First lesson” Zak explained, casually leaning against the
wall a few feet away. "For your own good. You will always
address her as Matron Malice”
Drizzt rolled to his side and tried to prop himself up on his
elbow but found his head reeling as soon as it left the black-
rugged floor. Zak grabbed him and hoisted him up.
"Not as easy as catching coins” the weapon master re-
marked.
"What?"
"Parrying a blow”
"What blow?"
"Just agree, you stubborn child”
"Secondboy!" Drizzt corrected, his voice again a growl,
and his arms defiantly back over his chest.
Zak's fist curled at his side, a not-tao-subtle point that
Drizzt did not miss. "Do you need another nap?" the
weapon master asked calmly.
"Secondboys can be children” Drizzt wisely conceded.
Zak shook his head in disbelief. This was going to be inter-
esting. "You may find your time here enjoyable” he said,
leading Drizzt over to a long, thick, and colorfully (though
most of the colors were somber) decorated curtain. "But
only if you can learn some control over that wagging tongue
of yours” A sharp tug sent the curtain floating down, re-
vealing the most magnificent weapons rack the young drow
(and many older drow as well) had ever seen. Polearms of
many sorts, swords, axes, hammers, and every other kind
of weapon Drizzt could imagine-and a whole bunch he'd
never imagine-sat in an elaborate array.
"Examine them” Zak told him. "lake your time and your
pleasure. Learn which ones sit best in your hands, follow
most obediently the commands of your will. By the time we
have finished, you will know everyone of them as a trusted
companion”
Wide-eyed, Drizzt wandered along the rack, viewing the
whole place and the potential of the whole experience in a
completely different light. For his entire young life, sixteen
years, his greatest enemy had been boredom. Now, it ap-
peared, Drizzt had found weapons to fight that enemy.
Zak headed for the daor to his private chamber, thinking
it better that Dmzt be alone in those first awkward mo-
ments of handling new weapons.
The weapon master stopped, though, when he reached
his door and looked back to the young Do'Urden. Drizzt
swung a long and heavy halberd, a polearm more than
twice his height, in a slow arc. For all of Drizzt's attempts to
keep the weapon under control, its momentum spun his
tiny frame right to the ground.
Zak heard hims~lf chuckle, but his laughter only re-
minded him of the grim reality of his duty. He would train
Drizzt, as he had trained a thousand young dark elves be-
fore him, to be a warrior, preparing him for the trials of the
Academy and life in dangerous Menzoberranzan. He would
train Drizzt to be a killer.
How against this one's nature that mantle seemed!
thought Zak. Smiles came too easily to Drizzt; the thought of
him running a sword through the heart of another living be-
ing revolted Zaknafein. That was the way of the drow,
though, a way that Zak had been unable to resist for all of
his four centuries of life. Pulling his stare from the spectacle
of Drizzt at play, Zak moved into his chamber and shut the
door.
"Are they all like that?" he asked into his nearly empty
room. "Do all drow children possess such innocence, such
simple, untainted smiles that cannot survive the ugliness of
our world?" Zak started for the small desk to the side of the
room, meaning to lift the darkening shade off the contin-
ually glowing ceramic globe that served as the chamber's
light source. He changed his mind as that image of Drizzt's
delight with the weapons refused to diminish, and he
headed instead for the large bed across from the door.
"Or are you unique, Drizzt Do'Urden?" he continued ashe
fell onto the cushioned bed. "And if you are so different,
what, then, is the cause? The blood, my blood, that courses
through your veins? Or the years you spent with your
wean-mother?"
Zak threw an arm across his eyes and considered the
many questions. Drizzt was different from the norm, he de-
cided at length, but he didn't know whether he should
thank Vierna-or himself.
After a while, sleep took him. But it brought the weapon
master little comfort. A familiar dream visited him} a vivid
memory that would never fade.
Zaknafein heard again the screams of the children of
House DeVir as the Do'Urden soldiers-soldiers he himself
had trained-slashed at them.
"This one is different!" Zak cried, leaping up from his bed.
He wiped the cold sweat from his face.
"This one is different” He had to believe that.
Chapter 7
Dark Secrets
"Do you truly mean to try?" Masoj asked, his voice conde-
scending and filled with disbelief.
Alton turned his hideous glare on the student.
"Direct your anger elsewhere, Faceless One” Masoj said,
averting his gaze from his mentor's scarred visage. "I am not
the cause of your frustration. The question was valid”
"For more than a decade, you have been a student of the
magical arts” Alton replied. "Still you fear to explore the
nether world at the side of a master of Sorcere”
"I would have no fear beside a true master” Masoj dared
to whisper.
Alton ignored the comment, as he had with so many oth-
ers he had accepted from the apprenticing Hun'ett over the
last sixteen years. Masoj was Alton's only tie to the outside
world, and while Masoj had a powerful family, Alton had
only Masoj.
They moved through the door into the uppermost cham-
ber of Alton's four-room complex. A single candle burned
there, its light diminished by an abundance of dark-colored
tapestries and the black hue of the room's stone and rugs.
Alton slid onto his stool at the back of the small, circular ta-
ble, and placed a heavy book down before him.
"It is a spell better left for clerics” Masoj protested, sitting
down across from the faceless master. "Wizards command
the lower planes; the dead are for the clerics alone”
Alton looked around curiously, then turned a frown up at
Masoj, the master's grotesque features enhanced by the
dancing candlelight. "It seems that I have no cleric at my
call” the Faceless One explained sarcastically. "Would you
rather I try for another denizen of the Nine Hells?"
Masoj rocked back in his chair and shook his head help-
lessly and emphatically. Alton had a point. A year before,
the Faceless One had sought answers to his questions by en-
listing the aid of an ice devil. The volatile thing froze the
room until it shone black in the infrared spectrum and
smashed a matron mother's treasure horde worth of al-
chemical equipment. If Masoj hadn't summoned his magical
cat to distract the ice devil, neither he nor Alton would have
gotten out of the room alive.
"Very well, then” Masoj said unconvincingly, crossing his
arms in front of him on the table. "Conjure your spirit and
find your answers”
Alton did not miss the involuntary shudder belied by the
ripple in Masoj's robes. He glared at the student for a mo-
ment, then went back to his preparations.
As Alton neared the time of casting/ Masoj's hand instinc-
tively went into his pocket, to the onyx figurine of the hunt-
ing cat he had acquired on the day Alton had assumed the
Faceless One's identity. The little statue was enchanted with
a powerful dweomer that enabled its possessor to summon
a mighty panther to his side. Masoj had used the cat spar-
ingly, not yet fully understanding the dweomer's limitations
and potential dangers. "Only in times of need” Masoj re-
minded himself quietly when he felt the item in his hand.
Why was it that those times kept occurring when he was
with Alton? the apprentice wondered.
Despite his bravado, this time Alton privately shared Ma-
soj's trepidation. Spirits of the dead were not as destructive
as denizens of the lower planes, but they could be equally
cruel and subtler in their torments.
Alton needed his answer, though. For more than a decade
and a half he had sought his information through conven-
tional channels, enquiring of masters and students-in a
roundabout manner, of course-of the details concerning
the fall of House DeVir. Many knew the rumors of that
eventful night; some even detailed the battle methods used
by the victorious house.
None, though, would name that perpetrating house. In
Menzoberranzan, one did not utter anything resembling an
accusation, even if the belief was commonly shared, with-
out enough undeniable proof to spur the ruling council into
a unified action against the accused. If a house botched a
raid and was discovered, the wrath of all Menzoberranzan
would descend upon it until the family name had been ex-
tinguished. But in the case of a successfully executed attack,
such as the one that felled House DeVir, an accuser was the
one most likely to wind up at the wrong end of a snake-
headed whip.
Public embarrassment, perhaps more than any guidelines
of honor, turned the wheels of justice in the city of drow.
Alton now sought other means for the solution to his
quest. First he had tried the lower planes, the ice devil, to di-
sastrous effect. Now Alton had in his possession an item that
could end his frustrations: a tome penned by a wizard of the
surface world. In the drow hierarchy, only the clerics of
Lloth dealt with the realm of the dead, but in other societies,
wizards also dabbled into the spirit world. Alton had found
the book in the library of Sorcere and had managed to
translate enough of it, he believed, to make a spiritual con-
tact.
He wrung his hands together, gingerly opened the book to
the marked page, and scanned the incantation one final
time. "Are you ready?" he asked Masoj.
"No”
Alton ignored the student's unending sarcasm and placed
his hands flat on the table. He slowly sunk into his deepest
meditative trance.
" Fey innad . . “ He paused and cleared his throat at the
slip. Masoj, though he hadn't closely examined the spell, rec-
ognized the mistake.
"Fey innunad de-min. . “ Another pause.
"Lloth be with us” Masoj groaned under his breath.
Alton's eyes popped wide, and he glared at the student. " A
translation” he growled. "From the strange language of a
human wizard!"
"Gibberish” Masoj retorted.
"I have in front of me the private spellbook of a wizard
from the surface world” Alton said evenly. "An archmage,
according to the scribbling of the orcan thief who stole it
and sold it to our agents” He composed himself again and
shook his hairless head, trying to return to the depths of his
trance.
"A simple, stupid orc managed to steal a spellbook from an
archmage” Masoj whispered rhetorically, letting the ab-
surdity of the statement speak for itself.
"The wizard was dead!" Alton roared. "The book is au-
thentic! "
"Who translated it?" Masoj replied calmly.
Alton refused to listen to any more arguments. Ignoring
the smug look on Masoj's face, he began again.
"Fey mnunad de-mill de-suI de-kef”
Masoj faded out and tried to rehearse a lesson from one of
his classes, hoping that his sobs of laughter wouldn't disturb
Alton. He didn't believe for a moment that Alton's attempt
would prove successful, but he didn't want to screw up the
fool's line of babbling again and have to suffer through the
ridiculous incantation all the way from the beginning still
another time.
A short time later, when Masoj heard Alton's excited whis-
per, "Matron Ginafae?" he quickly focused his attention
back on the events at hand.
Sure enough, an unusual ball of green-hued smoke ap-
peared over the candle's flame and gradually took a more
