Part II
The Chronicler
The surface world is no stranger to sinister plots made by this coven or that. It is certainly nothing new to the world at large that a demon or two should come trudging across the Material Plane for whatever master plan it has in mind. I am not the least bit frantic about the news brought to my ears by this devil-nymph, as I am fully aware that the tongues of demons and their spawns are to be only partially heeded, if ever at all.
So I travel back to the land of my birth, leaving behind the troubles of the surface world and entering an even darker hell. The moon elves may be plagued by a lycanthropic curse that now spreads its fingers toward the cities, but my own people are practically extinct in the world below. I have seen glimpses of the wars they have fought in my Reveries, just as I have witnessed a valuable tome that has never before come to my attention.
My father has secretly penned a volume of the chronicles of our people, spanning from the early stages of his life to the years prior to his execution at the foul hands of Lloth's priestesses. I intend to retrieve that book, even if it means I have to fight an army of pit fiends before I ever reach the Academy! For that is where my vision places the item: in the archives of Melee-Magthere.
Like my father before me, I was at the top of my class there. I have always believed I was a bit more unique in my way of thinking than my father. But I suppose there are fewer differences between us than I originally estimated.
--Drizzt Do'Urden
* * * * *
Chapter Four: In the Beginning
My story begins not in the city of Menzoberranzan, as some still believe to this day. On a remote island surrounded by Lake Donigarten, my father and I spent the first two decades of my life in blissful solitude. Even now, I can hear the voice of my father reminding me always to carry my weapons once he had instructed me on how and when to use them. The fact that we were denizens of the Underdark, of course, meant that I would have to use my weapons frequently enough.
My father, Zindel, was unquestionably one of the toughest instructors in the art of combat I've ever had the pleasure of training with. I learned rapidly under his instruction, having the proper motivation through the stories he told of how wicked our own people were in general, particularly those who claimed undying fealty to the Spider Queen. My mother was said to have been destroyed because of a complete lack of faith in Lloth. Hence my father's ire was rivaled by few drow he'd ever met in battle.
It wasn't until the First House of Menzoberranzan accidentally discovered our humble abode that Zindel met his match. The blades of one Dantrag Baenre, to be exact, were the murderous tools responsible for my father's demise. On that day, I found a new level of rage. Dantrag, the weapon master of House Baenre, was leading a drow patrol by boat into the deeper caverns when he spotted me and my father feeding a herd of rothe near the bank.
When the rothe scattered, we realized there was no place to run. Jumping into the lake would've been foolish, considering the kind of monsters lurking therein. For I have seen the trails in the water left by enormous creatures with draconic fins, which peek every so often above the surface of the water, only to resubmerge an instant later. So it was that I stood and fought, even when the patrol leader's henchmen came ashore and surrounded me within a ring of drow-made steel. I was taken captive into the slave markets between Menzoberranzan and Ched Nasad. For some reason, Dantrag believed I would die a far more deserving death as a slave to some Matron Mother, or perhaps to an aboleth or a mind flayer, than he could ever dish out himself.
Personally, I thought the weapon master a coward. Even for one so young at the time, I was hardly impressed with that one's fighting technique. Something about it just struck me as far too mundane. All of his routines came as though he'd studied them in a book, with no room for improvising. He was a prisoner of his own speed, not to mention pride! In fact, if it hadn't been for his followers that day, I seriously believe that Dantrag would have fallen to my blades. As it stood, I became a slave for sale for approximately three months before I was purchased by the coins of a bullish drow priestess named Briza Do'Urden.
* * * * *
Drizzt arched a slender white brow at this revelation, as he sat in the candlelit chamber within the Academy. It had been no simple task circumventing the various races and monsters who now roamed the ruins that was once beautiful, deadly Menzoberranzan. Now that he was inside, and had found the tome precisely where his vision had revealed, he found himself totally immersed in the smooth, flowing script of Zaknafein Do'Urden.
Dantrag? Drizzt pondered. How in the Nine Hells had Dantrag managed to kill the father and teacher of Zaknafein? And what was this madness about Briza, Drizzt's oldest and most hated sister, buying Zaknafein from the slave market? Drizzt scowled fiercely, but forced himself to read on in spite of his growing anger.
