Homeland Read online

  “The description of the carnage in the prayer room has been spread throughout the ranks,” Rizzen said to the weapon master. “You performed with your usual excellence as we have come to expect.”

  Zak shot the patron a glare of contempt and kept on his way, down though the structure’s main doors and out beyond the magical darkness and silence into Menzoberranzan’s dark dawn. Rizzen was Matron Malice’s present partner in a long line of partners, and no more. When Malice was finished with him, she would either relegate him back to the ranks of the common soldiery, stripping him of the name Do’Urden and all the rights that accompanied it, or she would dispose of him. Zak owed him no respect.

  Zak moved out beyond the mushroom fence to the highest vantage point he could find, then fell to the ground. He watched, amazed, a few moments later, when the procession of the Do’Urden army, patron and son, soldiers and clerics, and the slow-moving line of two dozen drow zombies, made its way back home. They had lost, and left behind, nearly all of their slave fodder in the attack, but the line leaving the wreckage of House DeVir was longer than the line that had come in earlier that night. The slaves had been replaced twofold by captured DeVir slaves, and fifty or more of the DeVir common troops, showing typical drow loyalty, had willingly joined the attackers.

  These traitorous’ draw would be interrogated-magically interrogated-by the Do’Urden clerics to ensure their sincerity.

  They would pass the test to a one, Zak knew. Drow elves were creatures of survival, not of principle. The soldiers would be given new identities and would be kept within the privacy of the Do’Urden compound for a few months, until the fall of House DeVir became an old and forgotten tale.

  Zak did not follow immediately. Rather, he cut through the rows of mushroom trees and found a secluded dell, where he plopped down on a patch of mossy carpet and raised his gaze to the eternal darkness of the cavern’s ceiling and the eternal darkness of his existence.

  It would have been prudent for him to remain silent at that time; he was an invader to the most powerful section of the vast city. He thought of the possible witnesses to his words, the same dark elves who had watched the fall of House DeVir, who had wholeheartedly enjoyed the spectacle. In the face of such behavior and such carnage as this night had seen, Zak could not contain his emotions. His lament came out as a plea to some god beyond his experience.

  “What place is this that is my world; what dark coil has my spirit embodied?” he whispered the angry disclaimer that had always been a part of him. “In light, I see my skin as black; in darkness, it g lows white in the heat of this rage cannot dismiss.

  “Would that I had the courage to depart, this place or this life, or to stand openly against the wrongness that is the world of these, my kin. To seek an existence that does not run afoul to that which I believe, and to that which I hold dear faith is truth.

  “Zaknafein Do’Urden, I am called, yet a drow I am not, by choice or by deed. Let them discover this being that I am, then. Let them rain their wrath on these old shoulders already burdened by the hopelessness of Menzoberranzan.”

  Ignoring the consequences, the weapon master rose to his feet and yelled, “Menzoberranzan, what hell are you?”

  A moment later, when no answer echoed back out of the quiet city, Zak flexed the remaining chill of Briza’s wand fromhis weary muscles. He found some comfort as he patted the whip on his belt-the instrument that had taken the tongue from the mouth of a matron mother.

  Chapter 3

  The Eyes of the Child

  Masoj, the young apprentice-which at this point in his magic-using career meant that he was no more than a cleaning attendant-leaned on his broom and watched as Alton DeVir moved through the door into the highest chamber of the spire. Masoj almost felt sympathy for the student, who had to go in and face the Faceless One.

  Masoj felt excitement as well, though, knowing that the ensuing fireworks between Alton and the faceless master would be well worth the watching. He went back to his sweeping, using the broom as an excuse to get farther around the curve of the room’s floor, closer to the door.

  “You requested my presence, Master Faceless One,” Alton DeVir said again, keeping one hand in front of his face and squinting to fight the brilliant glare of the room’s three lighted candles.

  Alton shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other just inside the shadowy room’s door.

  Hunched across the way, the Faceless One kept his back to the young DeVir. Better to be done with this cleanly, the master reminded himself. He knew, though, that the spell he was now preparing would kill Alton efore the student could learn his family’s fate, before the Faceless One could fully complete Dinin Do’Urden’s final instructions.

  Too much was at stake.

  Better to be done with this cleanly.

  “You...” Alton began again, but he prudently held his words and tried to sort out the situation before him. How unusual to be summoned to the private chambers of a master of the Academy before the day’s lessons had even begun.

  When he had first received the summons, Alton feared that he had somehow failed one of his lessons. That could be a fatal mistake in Sorcere. Alton was close to graduation, but the disdain of a single master could put an end to that.

  He had done quite well in his lessons with the Faceless One, had even believed that this mysterious master favored him. Could this call be simply a courtesy of congratulations on his impending graduation? Unlikely, Alton realized against his hopes. Masters of the drow Academy did not often congratulate students.

  Alton then heard quiet chanting and noticed that the master was in the midst of spellcasting. Something cried out as very wrong to him now; something about this whole situation did not fit the strict ways of the Academy. Alton set his feet firmly and tensed his muscles, following the advice of the motto that had been drilled into the thoughts of every student at the Academy, the precept that kept drow elves alive in a society so devoted to chaos: Be prepared.

  The doors exploded before him, showering the room with stone splinters and throwing Masoj back against the wall. He felt the show well worth both the inconvenience and the new bruise on his shoulder when Alton DeVir scrambled out of the room. The student’s back and left arm trailed wisps of smoke, and the most exquisite expression of terror and pain that Masoj had ever seen was etched on the DeVir noble’s face.

  Alton stumbled to the floor and kicked into a roll, desperate to put some ground between himself and the murderous master. He made it down and around the descending arc of the room’s floor and through the door that led into the next lower chamber just as the Faceless One made his appearance at the sundered door.

  The master stopped to spit a curse at his misfire, and to consider the best way to replace his door. “Clean it up!” he snapped at Masoj, who was again leaning casually with his hands atop his broomstick and his chin atop his hands.

  Masoj obediently dropped his head and started sweeping the stone splinters. He looked up as the Faceless One stalked past, however, and cautiously started after the master. Alton couldn’t possibly escape, and this show would be too good to miss.

  The third room, the Faceless One’s private library, was the brightest of the four in the spire, with dozens of candles burning on each wall.

  “Damn this light!” Alton spat, stumbling his way down through the dizzying blur to the door that led to the Faceless One’s entry hall, the lowest room of the master’s quarters. If he could get down from this spire and outside of the tower to the courtyard of the Academy, he might be able to turn the momentum against the master.

  Alton’s world remained the darkness of Menzoberranzan, but the Faceless One, who had spent so many decades in the candlelight of Sorcere, had grown accustomed to using his eyes to see shades of light, not heat.

  The entry hall was cluttered with chairs and chests, but only one candle burned there, and Alton could see clearly enough to dodge or leap any obstacles. He rushed to the door and grabbed the heavy latch. It t
urned easily enough, but when Alton tried to shoulder through, the door did not budge and a burst of sparkling blue energy threw him back to the floor.

  “Curse this place,” Alton spat. The portal was magically held. He knew a spell to open such enchanted doors but doubted whether his magic would be strong enough to dispel the castings of a master. In his haste and fear, the words of the dweomer floated through

  Alton’s thoughts in an undecipherable jumble.

  “Do not run, DeVir,” came the Faceless One’s call from the previous chamber. “You only lengthen your torment!”

  “A curse upon you, too,” Alton replied under his breath. Alton forgot about the stupid spell; it would never come to him in time. He glanced around the room for an option.

  His eyes found something unusual halfway up the side wall, in an opening between two large cabinets. Alton scrambled back a few steps to get a better angle but found himself caught within the range of the candlelight, within the deceptive field where his eyes registered both heat and light.

  He could only discern that this section of the wall showed a uniform glow in the heat spectrum and that its hue was subtly different from the stone of the walls. Another doorway? Alton could only hope his guess to be right. He rushed back to the center of the room, stood directly across from the object, and forced his eyes away from the infrared spectrum, fully back into the world of light.

  As his eyes adjusted, what came into view both startled and confused the young DeVir. He saw no doorway, nor any opening with another chamber behind it. What he looked upon was a reflection of himself, and a portion of the room he now stood in. Alton had never, in his fifty-five years of life, witnessed such a spectacle, but he had heard the masters of Sorcere speak of these devices. It was a mirror.

  A movement in the u pper doorway of the chamber reminded Alton that the Faceless One was almost upon him. He couldn’t hesitate to ponder his options. He put his head down and charged the mirror.

  Perhaps it was a teleportation door to another section of the city, perhaps a simple door to a room beyond. Or perhaps, Alton dared to imagine in those few desperate seconds, this was some inter-planar gate that would bring him into a strange and unknown plane of existence!

  He felt the tingling excitement of adventure pulling him on as he neared the wondrous thing-then he felt only the impact, the shattering glass, and the unyielding stone wall behind it.

  Perhaps it was just a mirror.

  “Look at his eyes,” Vierna whispered to Maya as they examined the newest member of House Do’Urden.

  Truly the babe’s eyes were remarkable. Although the child had been out of the womb for less than an hour, the pupils of his orbs darted back and forth inquisitively. While they showed the expected radiating glow of eyes seeing into the infrared spectrum, the familiar redness was tinted by a shade of blue, giving them a violet hue.

  “Blind?” wondered Maya. “Perhaps this one will be given to the Spider Queen still,” Briza looked back to them anxiously. Dark elves did not allow children showing any physical deficiency to live.

  “Not blind,” replied Vierna, passing her hand over the child and casting an angry glare at both of her eager sisters. “He follows my fingers.”

  Maya saw that Vierna spoke the truth. She leaned closer to the babe, studying his face and strange eyes. “What do you see, Drizzt Do’Urden?” she asked softly, not in an act of gentleness toward the babe, but so that she would not disturb her mother, resting in the chair at the head of the spider idol.

  “What do you see that the rest of us cannot?” Glass crunched under

  Alton, digging deeper wounds as he shifted his weight in an effort to rise to his feet. What would it matter? he thought. “My mirror!” he heard the Faceless One groan, and he looked up to see the outraged master towering over him.

  How huge he seemed to Alton! How great and powerful, fully blocking the candlelight from this little alcove between the cabinets, his form enhanced tenfold to the eyes of the helpless victim by the mere implications of his presence.

  Alton then felt a gooey substance floating down around him, detached webbing finding a sticky hold on the cabinets, on the wall, and on Alton.

  The young DeVir tried to leap up and roll away, but the Faceless One’s spell already held him fast, trapped him as a dirgit fly would be trapped in the strands of a spider’s home.

  “First my door,” the Faceless One growled at him, “and now this, my mirror! Do you know the pains I suffered to acquire such a rare device?”

  Alton turned his head from side to side, not in answer, but to free at least his face from the binding substance.

  “Why did you not just stand still and let the deed be finished cleanly?” the Faceless One roared, thoroughly disgusted..

  “Why?” Alton lisped, spitting some of the webbing from his thin lips. “Why would you want to kill me?”

  “Because you broke my mirror!” the Faceless One shot back. It didn’t make any sense, of course the mirror had only been shattered after the initial attack-but to the master, Alton supposed, it didn’t have to make sense. Alton knew his cause to be hopeless, but he continued on in his efforts to dissuade his opponent.

  “You know of my house, of House DeVir,” he said, indignant, “fourth in the city. Matron Ginafae will not be pleased. A high priestess has ways to learn the truth of such situations!”

  “House DeVir?”

  The Faceless One laughed. Perhaps the torments that Dinin Do’Urden had requested would be in line after all. Alton had broken his mirror!

  “Fourth house!” Alton spat. “Foolish youth,” the Faceless One cackled. “House DeVir is no more-not fourth, not fifty-fourth, nothing.”

  Alton slumped, though the webbing did its best to hold his body erect. What could the master be babbling about?

  “They all are dead,” the Faceless One taunted. “Matron Ginafae sees Lloth more clearly this day,” Alton’s expression of horror pleased the disfigured master. “All dead,” he snarled one more time. “Except for poor Alton, who lives on to hear of his family’s misfortune. That oversight shall be remedied now!” The Faceless One raised his hands to cast a spell.

  “Who?” Alton cried. The Faceless One paused and seemed not to understand.

  “What house did this?” the doomed student clarified. “Or what conspiracy of houses brought down DeVir?”

  “Ah, you should be told,” replied the Faceless One, obviously enjoying the situation. “I suppose it is your right to know before you join your kin in the realm of death.” A smile widened across the opening where his lips once had been.

  “But you broke my mirror!” the master growled. “Die stupid, stupid boy! Find your own answers!”

  The Faceless One’s chest jerkedout suddenly, and he shuddered in convulsions, babbling curses in a tongue far beyond the terrified student’s comprehension. What vile spell did this disfigured master have prepared for him, so wretched that its chant sounded in an arcane language foreign to learned Alton’s ears, so unspeakably evil that its semantics jerked on the very edge of its caster’s control? The Faceless One then fell forward to the floor and expired.

  Stunned, Alton followed the line of the master’s hood down to his back to the tail of a protruding dart. Alton watched the poisoned thing as it continued to shudder from the body’s impact, then he turned his scan upward to the center of the room, where the young cleaning attendant stood calmly.

  “Nice weapon, Faceless One!” Masoj beamed, rolling a two-handed, crafted crossbow over in his hands. He threw a wicked smile at Alton and fitted another dart.

  Matron Malice hoisted herself out of her chair and willed herself to her feet. “Out of the way!” she snapped at her daughters.

  Maya and Vierna scooted away from the spider idol and the baby. “See his eyes, Matron Mother,” Vierna dared to remark. “They are so unusual.”

  Matron Malice studied the child. Everything seemed in place, and a good thing, too, for Nalfein, elderboy of House Do’Urden, wa
s dead, and this boy, Drizzt, would have a difficult job replacing the valuable son.

  “His eyes,” Vierna said again. The matron shot her a venomous look but bent low to see what the fuss was about.

  “Purple?” Malice said, startled. Never had she heard of such a thing. “He is not blind,” Maya was quick to put in, seeing the disdain spreading across her mother’s face. “Fetch the candle,” Matron Malice ordered. “Let us see how these eyes appear in the world of light.”

  Maya and Vierna reflexively headed for the sacred cabinet, but Briza cut them off. “Only a high priestess may touch the holy items,” she reminded them in a tone that carried the weight of a threat. She spun around haughtily, reached into the cabinet, and produced a single half-used red candle. The clerics hid their eyes and Matron Malice put a prudent hand over the baby’s face as Briza lit the sacred candle. It produced only a tiny flame, but to drow eyes it came as a brilliant intrusion.

  “Bring it,” said Matron Malice after several moments of adjusting.

  Briza moved the candle near Drizzt, and Malice gradually slid her hand away.

  “He does not cry,” Briza remarked, amazed that the babe could quietly accept such a stinging light.

  “Purple again,” whispered the matron, paying no heed to her daughter’s rambling. “In both worlds, the child’s eyes show as purple.”

  Vierna gasped audibly when she looked again upon her tiny brother and his striking lavender orbs.

  “He is your brother,” Matron Malice reminded her, viewing Vierna’s gasp as a hint of what might come. “When he grows older and those eyes pierce you so, remember, on your life, that he is your brother.”

  Vierna turned away, almost blurting a reply she would have regretted making. Matron Malice’s exploits with nearly every male soldier of the Do’Urden house and many others that the seductive matron managed to sneak away from other houses-were almost legendary in Menzoberranzan. Who was she to be spouting reminders of prudent and proper behavior? Vierna bit her lip and hoped that neither Briza nor Malice had been reading her thoughts at that moment.