Briza put her whip away at the mention of Matron Malice.
"Your tasks." she echoed scornfully. "You are too yielding for such a chore. Male children must be disciplined they must be taught their place." Realizing that Vierna’s threat held dire consequences, the older sister turned and left. Vierna let Briza have the last word. The wean-mother looked back to Drizzt, still trying to get up to the statue. "Enough!" she ordered, recognizing that the child was tiring he could barely get his feet off the ground.
"I will do it!" Drizzt snapped back at her.
Vierna liked his determination, but not the tone of his reply. Perhaps there was some truth to Briza’s words. Vierna snapped the snake-headed whip from her belt. A little inspiration might go a long way.
Vierna sat in the chapel the next day, watching Drizzt hard at work polishing the statue of the naked female. He had levitated the full twenty feet in his first attempt this day.
Vierna could not help but be disappointed when Drizzt did not look back to her and smile at the success. She saw him now, hovering up in the air, his hands a blur as they worked the brushes. Most vividly of all, though, Vierna saw the scars on her brother’s naked back, the legacy of their «inspirational» discussion. In the infrared spectrum, the whip lines showed clearly, trails of warmth where the insulating layers of skin had been stripped away.
Vierna understood the gain in beating a child, particularly a male child. Few drow males ever raised a weapon against a female, unless under the order of some other female. "How much do we lose?" Vierna wondered aloud. "What more could one such as Drizzt become?"
When she heard the words spoken aloud, Vierna quickly brushed the blasphemous thoughts from her mind. She aspired to become a high priestess of the Spider Queen, Lolth the Merciless. Such thoughts were not in accord with the rules of her station. She cast an angry glare on her little brother, transferring her guilt, and again took out her instrument of punishment.
She would have to whip Drizzt again this day, for the sacrilegious thoughts he had inspired within her.
So the relationship continued for another five years, with Drizzt learning the basic lessons of life in drow society while endlessly cleaning the chapel of House Do’Urden. Beyond the supremacy of female drow (a lesson always accentuated by the wicked snake-headed whip), the most compelling lessons were those concerning the surface elves, the faeries. Evil empires often bound themselves in webs of hate toward fabricated enemies, and none in the history of the world were better at it than the drow. From the first day they were able to understand the spoken word, drow children were taught that whatever was wrong in their lives could be blamed on the surface elves.
Whenever the fangs of Vierna’s whip sliced into Drizzt’s back, he cried out for the death of a faerie. Conditioned hatred was rarely a rational emotion.
Part 2
The Weapon Master
Empty hours, empty days.
I find that I have few memories of that first period of my life, those first sixteen years when I labored as a servant. Minutes blended into hours, hours into days, and so on, until the whole of it seemed one long and barren moment. Several times I managed to sneak out onto the balcony of House Do’Urden and look out over the magical lights of Menzoberranzan. On all of those secret journeys, I found myself entranced by the growing, and then dissipating, heatlight of Narbondel, the timeclock pillar. Looking back on that now, on those long hours watching the glow of the wizard’s fire slowly walk its way up and then down the pillar I am amazed at the emptiness of my early days. I clearly remember my excitement, tingling excitement, each time I got out of the house and set myself into position to observe the pillar. Such a simple thing it was, yet so fulfilling compared to the rest of my existence.
Whenever I hear the crack of a whip, another memory―more a sensation than a memory actually―sends a shiver through my spine. The shocking jolt and the ensuing numbness from those snakeheaded weapons is not something that any person would soon forget. They bite under your skin, sending waves of magical energy through your body, waves that make your muscles snap and pull beyond their limits. Yet I was luckier than most. My sister Vierna was near to becoming a high priestess when she was assigned the task of rearing me and was at a period of her life where she possessed far more energy than such a job required. Perhaps, then, there was more to those first ten years under her care than I now recall. Vierna never showed the intense wickedness of our mother, or more particularly of our oldest sister Briza. Perhaps there were good times in the solitude of the house chapel it is possible that Vierna allowed a more gentle side of herself to show through to her baby brother. Maybe not. Even though I count Vierna as the kindest of my sisters, her words drip in the venom of Lolth as surely as those of any cleric in Menzoberranzan. It seems unlikely that she would risk her aspirations toward high priestesshood for the sake of a mere child, a mere male child.
Whether there were indeed joys in those years, obscured in the unrelenting assault of Menzoberranzan’s wickedness, or whether that earliest period of my life was even more painful than the years that followed―so painful that my mind hides the memories―I cannot be certain. For all my efforts, I cannot remember them.
I have more insight into the next six years, but the most prominent recollection of the days I spent serving the court of Matron Malice―aside from the secret trips outside the house―is the image of my own feet.
A page prince is never allowed to raise his gaze.
Drizzt Do’Urden
Chapter 6
‘Two-Hands’
Drizzt promptly answered the call to his matron mother’s side, not needing the whip Briza used to hurry him along. How often he had felt the sting of that dreaded weapon! Drizzt held no thoughts of revenge against his vicious oldest sister. With all of the conditioning he had received, he feared the consequences of striking her―or any female―far too much to entertain such notions.
"Do you know what this day marks?" Malice asked him as he arrived at the side of her great throne in the chapel’s darkened anteroom.
"No, Matron Mother." Drizzt answered, unconsciously keeping his gaze on his toes. A resigned sigh rose in his throat as he noticed the unending view of his own feet. There had to be more to life than blank stone and ten wiggling toes, he thought.
He slipped one foot out of his low boot and began doodling on the stone floor. Body heat left discernable tracings in the infrared spectrum, and Drizzt was quick and agile enough to complete simple drawings before the initial lines had cooled.
"Sixteen years." Matron Malice said to him. "You have breathed the air of Menzoberranzan for sixteen years. An important period of your life has passed."
Drizzt did not react, did not see any importance or significance to the declaration. His life was an unending and unchanging routine. One day, sixteen years, what difference did it make? If his mother considered important the thing he had been put through since his earliest recollections, Drizzt shuddered to think of what the next decades might hold.
He had nearly completed his picture of a round-shouldered drow―Briza―being bitten on the behind by an enormous viper.
"Look at me." Matron Malice commanded.
Drizzt felt at a loss. His natural tendency once had been to look upon a person with whom he was talking, but Briza had wasted no time in beating that instinct out of him. The place of a page prince was servitude, and the only eyes a page prince’s were worthy of meeting were those of the creatures that scurried across the stone floor―except the eyes of a spider, of course Drizzt had to avert his gaze whenever one of the eight-legged things crawled into his vision. Spiders were too good for the likes of a page prince.