Homeland (7 page)

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 Lolth 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 jerked out 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, was 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.

In Menzoberranzan, thinking such gossip about a high priestess, whether or not it was true, got you painfully executed.

Her mother’s eyes narrowed, and Vierna thought she had been discovered. “He is yours to prepare,” Matron Malice said to her.

“Maya is younger,” Vierna dared to protest. “I could attain the level of high priestess in but a few years if I may keep to my studies.”

“Or never,” the matron sternly reminded her. “Take the child to the chapel proper. Wean him to words and teach him all that he will need to know to properly serve as a page prince of House Do’Urden.”

“I will see to him,” Briza offered, one hand subconsciously slipping to her snake-headed whip. “I do so enjoy teaching males their place in our world.”

Malice glared at her. “You are a high priestess. You have other duties more important than word-weaning a male child.” Then to Vierna, she said, “The babe is yours; do not disappoint me in this! The lessons you teach Drizzt will reinforce your own understanding of our ways. This exercise at ‘mothering’ will aid you in your quest to become a high priestess.” She let Vierna take a moment to view the task in a more positive light, then her tone became unmistakably threatening once again. “It may aid you, but it surely can destroy you!”

Vierna sighed but kept her thoughts silent. The chore that Matron Malice had dropped on her shoulders would consume the bulk of her time for at least ten years. Vierna didn’t like the prospects, she and this purple-eyed child together for ten long years. The alternative, however, the wrath of Matron Malice Do’Urden, seemed a worse thing by far.

Alton blew another web from his mouth. “You are just a boy, an apprentice,” he stammered. “Why would you—?”

“Kill him?” Masoj finished the thought. “Not to save you, if that is your hope.” He spat down at the Faceless One’s body. “Look at me, a prince of the sixth house, a cleaning steward for that wretched—”

“Hun’ett,” Alton cut in. “House Hun’ett is the sixth house.”

The younger drow put a finger to pursed lips. “Wait,” he remarked with a widening smile, an evil smile of sarcasm. “We are the fifth house now, I suppose, with DeVir wiped out.”

“Not yet!” Alton growled.

“Momentarily,” Masoj assured him, fingering the crossbow quarrel.

Alton slumped even farther back in the web. To be killed by a master was bad enough, but the indignity of being shot down by a boy….

“I suppose I should thank you,” Masoj said. “I had planned to kill that one for many tendays.”

“Why?” Alton pressed his new assailant. “You would dare to kill a master of Sorcere simply because your family put you in servitude to him?”

“Because he would snub me!” Masoj yelled. “Four years I have slaved for him, that back end of a carrion crawler. Cleaned his boots. Prepared salve for his disgusting face! Was it ever enough? Not for that one.” He spat at the corpse again and continued, talking more to himself than to the trapped student. “Nobles aspiring to wizardry have the advantage of being trained as apprentices before they reach the proper age for entry into Sorcere.”

“Of course,” Alton said. “I myself trained under—”

“He meant to keep me out of Sorcere!” Masoj rambled, ignoring Alton altogether. “He would have forced me into Melee-Magthere, the fighters’ school, instead. The fighters’ school! My twenty-fifth birthday is only two tendays away.” Masoj looked up, as though he suddenly remembered that he was not alone in the room.

“I knew I must kill him,” he continued, now speaking directly to Alton. “Then you come along and make it all so convenient. A student and master killing each other in a fight? It has happened before. Who would question it? I suppose, then, that I should thank you, Alton DeVir of No House Worth Mentioning,” Masoj chided with a low, sweeping bow. “Before I kill you, I mean.”

“Wait!” cried Alton. “Kill me to what gain?”

“Alibi.”

“But you have your alibi, and we can make it better!”

“Explain,” said Masoj, who, admittedly, was in no particular hurry. The Faceless One was a high-level wizard; the webs weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

“Free me,” Alton said earnestly.

“Can you be as stupid as the Faceless One proclaimed you?”

Alton took the insult stoically—the kid had the crossbow. “Free me so that I may assume the Faceless One’s identity,” he explained. “The death of a master arouses suspicion, but if no master is believed dead …”

“And what of this?” Masoj asked, kicking the corpse.

“Burn it,” said Alton, his desperate plan coming fully into focus. “Let it be Alton DeVir. House DeVir is no more, so there will be no retaliation, no questions.”

Masoj seemed skeptical.

“The Faceless One was practically a hermit,” Alton reasoned. “And I am near to graduation; certainly I can handle the simple chores of basic teaching after thirty years of study.”

“And what is my gain?”

Alton gawked, nearly burying himself in webbing, as if the answer were obvious. “A master in Sorcere to call mentor. One who can ease your way through your years of study.”

“And one who can dispose of a witness at his earliest convenience,” Masoj added slyly.

“And what then would be my gain?” Alton shot back. “To anger House Hun’ett, fifth in all the city, and I with no family at my back? No, young Masoj, I am not as stupid as the Faceless One named me.”

Masoj ticked a long and pointed fingernail against his teeth and considered the possibilities. An ally among the masters of Sorcere? This held possibilities.

Another thought popped into Masoj’s mind, and he pulled open the cabinet to Alton’s side and began rummaging through the contents. Alton flinched when he heard some ceramic and glass containers crashing together, thinking of the components, possibly even completed potions, that might be lost by the apprentice’s carelessness. Perhaps Melee-Magthere would be a better choice for this one, he thought.