"Drizzt Do’Urden of Daermon N’a’shezbaernon, House Do’Urden, Ninth House of Menzoberranzan," Drizzt replied automatically, exactly as Matron Malice had instructed him.
"A noble," remarked Kelnozz, understanding the significance of Drizzt bearing the same surname as his house. Kelnozz dropped into a low bow. "I am honored by your presence."
Drizzt was starting to like this place already. With the treatment he normally received at home, he hardly thought of himself as a noble. Any self-important notions that might have occurred to him at Kelnozz’s gracious greeting were dispelled a moment later, though, when the masters came out.
Drizzt saw his brother, Dinin, among them but pretended―as Dinin had warned him to―not “to notice, nor to expect any special treatment.” Drizzt rushed inside Melee-Magthere along with the rest of the students when the whips began to snap and the masters started shouting of the dire consequences if they tarried. They were herded down a few side corridors and into an oval room.
"Sit or stand as you will!" one of the masters growled. Noticing two of the students whispering off to the side, the master took his whip out and―crack―took one of the offenders off his feet.
Drizzt couldn’t believe how quickly the room then came to order.
"I am Hatch’net," the master began in a resounding voice, "the master of Lore. This room will be your hall of instruction for fifty cycles of Narbondel." He looked around at the adorned belts on every figure. "You will bring no weapons to this place!"
Hatch’net paced the perimeter of the room, making certain that every eye followed his movements attentively. "You are drow." he snapped suddenly. "Do you understand what that means? Do you know where you come from, and the history of our people? Menzoberranzan was not always our home, nor was any other cavern of the Underdark. Once we walked the surface of the world." He spun suddenly and came up right in Drizzt’s face.
"Do you know of the surface?" Master Hatch’net snarled.
Drizzt recoiled and shook his head.
"An awful place." Hatch’net continued, turning back to the whole of the group. "Each day, as the glow begins its rise in Narbondel, a great ball of fire rises into the open sky above, bringing hours of a light greater than the punishing spells of the priestesses of Lolth!" He held his arms outstretched, with his eyes turned upward, and an unbelievable grimace spread across his face.
Students gasps rose up all about him.
"Even in the night, when the ball of fire has gone below the far rim of the world," Hatch’net continued, weaving his words as if he were telling a horror tale, "one cannot escape the uncounted terrors of the surface. Reminders of what the next day will bring, dots of light―and sometimes a lesser ball of silvery fire―mar the sky’s blessed darkness."
"Once our people walked the surface of the world," he repeated his tone now one of lament, "in ages long past, even longer than the lines of the great houses. In that distant age, we walked beside the pale-skinned elves, the faeries!"
"It cannot be true!" one student cried from the side.
Hatch’net looked at him earnestly, considering whether more would be gained by beating the student for his unasked for interruption or by allowing the group to participate. "It is!" he replied, choosing the latter course. "We thought the faeries, our friends, we called them kin! We could not know, in our innocence, that they were the embodiments of deceit and evil. We could not know that they would turn on us suddenly and drive us from them, slaughtering our children and the eldest of our race! Without mercy the evil faeries pursued us across the surface world. Always we asked for peace, and always we were answered by swords and killing arrows!"
He paused, his face twisting into a widening, malicious smile. "Then we found the goddess!"
"Praise Lolth!" came one anonymous cry. Again Hatch’net let the slip of tongue go by unpunished, knowing that every accenting comment only drew his audience deeper into his web of rhetoric.
"Indeed." the master replied. "All praise to the Spider Queen. It was she who took our orphaned race to her side and helped us fight off our enemies. It was she who guided the forematrons of our race to the paradise of the Underdark. It is she," he roared, a clenched fist rising into the air, "who now gives us the strength and the magic to pay back our enemies."
"We are the drow!" Hatch’net cried. "You are the drow, never again to be downtrodden, rulers of all you desire, conquerors of lands you choose to inhabit!"
"The surface?" came a question.
"The surface?" echoed Hatch’net with a laugh. "Who would want to return to that vile place? Let the faeries have it! Let them burn under the fires of the open sky! We claim the Underdark, where we can feel the core of the world thrumming under our feet, and where the stones of the walls show the heat of the world’s power!"
Drizzt sat silent, absorbing every word of the talented orator’s often-rehearsed speech. Drizzt was caught, as were all the new students, in Hatch’net’s hypnotic variations of inflection and rallying cries. Hatch’net had been the master of Lore at the Academy for more than two centuries, owning more prestige in Menzoberranzan than nearly any other male drow, and many of the females. The matrons of the ruling families understood well the value of his practiced tongue.
So it went every day, an endless stream of hate rhetoric directed against an enemy that none of the students had ever seen. The surface elves were not the only target of Hatch’net’s sniping. Dwarves, gnomes, humans, halflings, and all of the surface races and even subterranean races such as the duergar dwarves, which the drow often traded with and fought beside, each found an unpleasant spot in the master’s ranting.
Drizzt came to understand why no weapons were permitted in the oval chamber. When he left his lesson each day, he found his hands clenched by his sides in rage, unconsciously grasping for a scimitar hilt. It was obvious from the commonplace fights among the students that others felt the same way. Always, though, the overriding factor that kept some measure of control was the master’s lie of the horrors of the outside world and the comforting bond of the students’ common heritage, a heritage, the students would soon come to believe, that gave them enough enemies to battle beyond each other.
The long, draining hours in the oval chamber left little time for the students to mingle. They shared common barracks, but their extensive duties outside of Hatch’net’s lessons―serving the older students and masters, preparing meals, and cleaning the building―gave them barely enough time for rest. By the end of the first week, they walked on the edge of exhaustion, a condition, Drizzt realized, that only increased the stirring effect of Master Hatch’net’s lessons.
Drizzt accepted the existence stoically, considering it far better than the six years he had served his mother and sisters as page prince. Still, there was one great disappointment to Drizzt in his first weeks at Melee-Magthere. He found himself longing for his practice sessions.
He sat on the edge of his bedroll late one night, holding a scimitar up before his shining eyes, remembering those many hours engaged in battle-play with Zaknafein.
"We go to the lesson in two hours," Kelnozz, in the next bunk, reminded him. "Get some rest."
"I feel the edge leaving my hands," Drizzt replied quietly."The blade feels heavier, unbalanced."
"The grand melee is barely ten cycles of Narbondel away," Kelnozz said. "You will get all the practice you desire there! Fear not, whatever edge has been dulled by the days with the master of Lore will soon be regained. For the next nine years, that fine blade of yours will rarely leave your hands!"
Drizzt slid the scimitar back into its scabbard and reclined on his bunk. As with so many aspects of his life so far―and, he was beginning to fear, with so many aspects of his future in Menzoberranzan―he had no choice but to accept the circumstances of his existence.