"First lesson." Zak explained, casually leaning against the wall a few feet away. "For your own good. You will always address her as Matron Malice."

Drizzt rolled to his side and tried to prop himself up on his elbow but found his head reeling as soon as it left the black-rugged floor. Zak grabbed him and hoisted him up.

"Not as easy as catching coins." the weapon master remarked.

"What?"

"Parrying a blow."

"What blow?"

"Just agree, you stubborn child."

"Secondboy!" Drizzt corrected, his voice again a growl and his arms defiantly back over his chest.

Zak’s fist curled at his side, a not too subtle point that Drizzt did not miss. "Do you need another nap?" the weapon master asked calmly.

"Secondboys can be children." Drizzt wisely conceded.

Zak shook his head in disbelief. This was going to be interesting. "You may find your time here enjoyable," he said, leading Drizzt over to a long, thick, and colorfully (though most of the colors were somber) decorated curtain. "But only if you can learn some control over that wagging tongue of yours." A sharp tug sent the curtain floating down, revealing the most magnificent weapons rack the young drow (and many older drow as well) had ever seen. Polearms of many sorts, swords, axes, hammers, and every other kind of weapon Drizzt could imagine―and a whole bunch he’d never imagine―sat in an elaborate array.

"Examine them." Zak told him. "Take your time and your pleasure. Learn which ones sit best in your hands, follow most obediently the commands of your will. By the time we have finished, you will know everyone of them as a trusted companion."

Wide-eyed, Drizzt wandered along the rack, viewing the whole place and the potential of the whole experience in a completely different light. For his entire young life, sixteen years, his greatest enemy had been boredom. Now, it appeared, Drizzt had found weapons to fight that enemy.

Zak headed for the door to his private chamber, thinking it better that Drizzt be alone in those first awkward moments of handling new weapons.

The weapon master stopped, though, when he reached his door and looked back to the young Do’Urden. Drizzt swung a long and heavy halberd, a polearm more than twice his height, in a slow arc. For all of Drizzt’s attempts to keep the weapon under control, its momentum spun his tiny frame right to the ground.

Zak heard himself chuckle, but his laughter only reminded him of the grim reality of his duty. He would train Drizzt, as he had trained a thousand young dark elves before him, to be a warrior, preparing him for the trials of the Academy and life in dangerous Menzoberranzan. He would train Drizzt to be a killer.

"How against this one’s nature that mantle seemed!" thought Zak. Smiles came too easily to Drizzt, the thought of him running a sword through the heart of another living being revolted Zaknafein. That was the way of the drow, though, a way that Zak had been unable to resist for all of his four centuries of life. Pulling his stare from the spectacle of Drizzt at play, Zak moved into his chamber and shut the door.

"Are they all like that?" he asked into his nearly empty room. "Do all drow children possess such innocence, such simple, untainted smiles that cannot survive the ugliness of our world?" Zak started for the small desk to the side of the room, meaning to lift the darkening shade off the continually glowing ceramic globe that served as the chamber’s light source. He changed his mind as that image of Drizzt’s delight with the weapons refused to diminish, and he headed instead for the large bed across from the door.

"Or are you unique, Drizzt Do’Urden?" he continued as he fell onto the cushioned bed. "And if you are so different, what, then, is the cause? The blood, my blood, that courses through your veins? Or the years you spent with your wean-mother?"

Zak threw an arm across his eyes and considered the many questions. Drizzt was different from the norm, he decided at length, but he didn’t know whether he should thank Vierna or himself.

After a while, sleep took him. But it brought the weapon master little comfort. A familiar dream visited him a vivid memory that would never fade.

Zaknafein heard again the screams of the children of House DeVir as the Do’Urden soldiers―soldiers he himself had trained―slashed at them.

"This one is different!" Zak cried, leaping up from his bed.

He wiped the cold sweat from his face.

"This one is different." He had to believe that.

"Do you truly mean to try?" Masoj asked, his voice condescending and filled with disbelief.

Alton turned his hideous glare on the student.

"Direct your anger elsewhere, Faceless One." Masoj said, averting his gaze from his mentor’s scarred visage. "I am not the cause of your frustration. The question was valid."

"For more than a decade, you have been a student of the magical arts." Alton replied. "Still you fear to explore the nether world at the side of a master of Sorcere."

"I would have no fear beside a true master." Masoj dared to whisper.

Alton ignored the comment, as he had with so many others he had accepted from the apprenticing Hun’ett over the last sixteen years. Masoj was Alton’s only tie to the outside world, and while Masoj had a powerful family, Alton had only Masoj.

They moved through the door into the uppermost chamber of Alton’s four-room complex. A single candle burned there, its light diminished by an abundance of dark-colored tapestries and the black hue of the room’s stone and rugs. Alton slid onto his stool at the back of the small, circular table, and placed a heavy book down before him.

"It is a spell better left for clerics." Masoj protested, sitting down across from the faceless master. "Wizards command the lower planes, the dead are for the clerics alone."

Alton looked around curiously then turned a frown up at Masoj, the master’s grotesque features enhanced by the dancing candlelight. "It seems that I have no cleric at my call," the Faceless One explained sarcastically. "Would you rather I try for another denizen of the Nine Hells?"

Masoj rocked back in his chair and shook his head helplessly and emphatically. Alton had a point. A year before, the Faceless One had sought answers to his questions by enlisting the aid of an ice devil. The volatile thing froze the room until it shone black in the infrared spectrum and smashed a matron mother’s treasure horde worth of alchemical equipment. If Masoj hadn’t summoned his magical cat to distract the ice devil, neither he nor Alton would have gotten out of the room alive.

"Very well, then." Masoj said unconvincingly, crossing his arms in front of him on the table. "Conjure your spirit and find your answers."

Alton did not miss the involuntary shudder belied by the ripple in Masoj’s robes. He glared at the student for a moment, then went back to his preparations.

As Alton neared the time of casting Masoj’s hand instinctively went into his pocket, to the onyx figurine of the hunting cat he had acquired on the day Alton had assumed the Faceless One’s identity. The little statue was enchanted with a powerful dweomer that enabled its possessor to summon a mighty panther to his side. Masoj had used the cat sparingly, not yet fully understanding the dweomer’s limitations and potential dangers. "Only in times of need." Masoj reminded himself quietly when he felt the item in his hand. Why was it that those times kept occurring when he was with Alton? the apprentice wondered.

Despite his bravado, this time Alton privately shared Masoj’s trepidation. Spirits of the dead were not as destructive as denizens of the lower planes, but they could be equally cruel and subtler in their torments.

Alton needed his answer, though. For more than a decade and a half he had sought his information through conventional channels, enquiring of masters and students―in a roundabout manner, of course―of the details concerning the fall of House DeVir. Many knew the rumors of that eventful night; some even detailed the battle methods used by the victorious house.