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i_read_what2022-02-14 12:34 am
kalinara) wrote in i_read_what2022-02-14 12:34 am
Homeland - Chapter Twenty-One
So last time, we saw a surface raid. It was a surprisingly intense chapter. Now, we see what comes next.
The chapter starts with Dinin reporting to the women of House Do'Urden. They asked if he's pleased the goddess. He believes so: no drow was slain, and Dinin himself had killed five people: all of them female.
Malice asks after Drizzt, and this is interesting:
Dinin’s smile confused her. He walked over to Drizzt and draped an arm comfortably across his brother’s shoulders. “Drizzt got only one kill,” Dinin began, “but it was a female child.”
“Only one?” Malice growled.
From the shadows off to the side, Zaknafein listened in dismay. He wanted to shut out the elderboy Do’Urden’s damning words, but they held Zak in their grip. Of all the evils Zak had ever encountered in Menzoberranzan, this surely had to be the most disappointing. Drizzt had killed a child.
“But the way he did it!” Dinin exclaimed. “He hacked her apart; sent all of Lolth’s fury slicing into her twitching body! The Spider Queen must have treasured that kill above all the others.”
Dinin's pride in his brother fascinates me a little. Dinin is introduced as a man willing to kill his older brother for power, and while there is the occasional moment where he side-eyes his younger brother, for the most part, he seems satisfied when Drizzt succeeds.
He even defends Drizzt, when Malice again scowls at "only one", Dinin points out that Drizzt would have had two had someone else not stolen his kill. He doesn't have to point that out. It's no skin off his back if Malice is annoyed at her younger son. There's nothing that reflects badly on Dinin there.
It doesn't make Dinin a good person of course, but I appreciate complexity.
There's also a lovely bit of drow culture: they assume that the kill-steal will bring Lolth's favor onto the stealer's house, EXCEPT that when Drizzt punished the guy, he hadn't fought back. So the favor is theirs instead.
And of course, we see Zak's despairing drama. He does seem to cycle a lot, when it comes to Drizzt, immediately assuming the worst at any possibility. But to be fair, I'm not sure how sane I'd be if I had to live in this society for a couple of hundred years.
And of course, we get some ridiculous romcom-esque misudnerstanding:
Zak paused in the long corridor and turned back to watch the chamber. Drizzt and Dinin came out then, Drizzt casting Zak a single, accusatory look and pointedly turning away down a side passage.
The gaze cut through the weapons master. “So it has come to this,” Zak murmured to himself. “The youngest warrior of House Do’Urden, so full of the hate that embodies our race, has learned to despise me for what I am.”
Zak thought again of that moment in the training gym, that fateful second when Drizzt’s life teetered on the edge of a poised sword. It indeed would have been a merciful act to kill Drizzt at that time.
With the sting of the young drow warrior’s gaze still cutting so keenly into his heart, Zak couldn’t decide whether the deed would have been more merciful to Drizzt or to himself.
Drizzt, of course, is angry because Zaknafein attacked him out of nowhere. Zaknafein is both anxious and paranoid, because he's spent his life (badly) hiding his true affiliations. They're both idiots, really.
--
We scene shift to SiNafay, Masoj and Alton. She's got good news. House Do'Urden has, unbeknownst to them, lost Lolth's favor. Masoj is perplexed as to how that could have happened. But I like it. A Goddess SHOULD be at least a little omniscient, right? Drizzt fucked up.
Well, of course he didn't. Drizzt did what he could at the time. He saved a life. I won't pretend that's a bad thing even for a joke. But Lolth isn't going to like that.
So this is an opportunity to act against the House. And they've decided that Drizzt, the favored son, should be their first loss. Masoj is dispatched. If Dinin gets in the way, Masoj can kill him too. (This is presented as a gift for Masoj's obedience. He is thrilled.)
--
We shift scene again, to Drizzt and Zaknafein. Both believe the other is evil. Both are fucking idiots. Like this:
“So the heroes are summoned,” chuckled Zak.
Drizzt did not immediately respond. Was there sarcasm in Zak’s voice? Jealousy, perhaps, that Drizzt and Dinin were allowed to go out to fight, while Zak had to remain within the House Do’Urden’s confines to fulfill his role as the family’s fighting instructor? Was Zak’s hunger for blood so great that he could not accept the duties thrust upon them all? Zak had trained Drizzt and Dinin, had he not? And hundreds of others; he’d transformed them into living weapons, into murderers.
“How long will you be out?” Zak pressed, more interested in Drizzt’s whereabouts.
Drizzt shrugged. “A tenday at the longest.”
“And?”
“Home.”
“That is good,” said Zak. “I will be pleased to see you back within the walls of House Do’Urden.” Drizzt didn’t believe a word of it.
It's sad, in retrospect, because I know how little time they have left.
It's also funny, because amidst the misunderstanding, they're not wrong when they think the other one wants to kill them. Zak invites Drizzt to a match in the gym. And it's well...more of the same:
“The gym, perhaps?” asked Zak. “You and l, as it once was.”
Impossible! Drizzt wanted to shout. Never again would it be as it once was. Drizzt held those thoughts to himself and nodded his assent. “I would enjoy that,” he replied, secretly wondering how much satisfaction he would gain by cutting Zaknafein down. Drizzt knew the truth of his people now, and knew that he was powerless to change anything. Maybe he could make a change in his private life, though. Maybe by destroying Zaknafein, his greatest disappointment, Drizzt could remove himself from the wrongness around him.
“As would I,” Zak said, the friendliness of his tone hiding his private thoughts—thoughts identical to Drizzt’s.
“In a tenday, then,” Drizzt said, and he pulled away, unable to continue the encounter with the drow who once had been his dearest friend, and who, Drizzt had come to learn, was truly as devious and evil as the rest of his kin.
I mock, but really, it's a good set up. Neither character really has any reason to believe better of the other. Zak protected Drizzt as much as he could, but he's been wearing his mask for hundreds of years. It's perfectly understandable that Drizzt can't see through it. And Drizzt represented a faint hope of something better for Zak, and he can't see past the idea that it's been crushed.
It's tragedy, not stupidity, but I'm not good with genuine emotion, so I'm going to mock them anyway.
--
Back to SiNafay and Alton, the latter is begging for the opportunity to go after Drizzt. She denies him, and taunts him a bit for the foolish attempted he'd made before. But she does reassure that he'll get the opportunity to kill a few high priestesses before.
--
The chapter ends with mirrored scenes: Drizzt in bed, thinking about what his siblings told him about Zak's prowess and joy in slaughtering drow. He thinks about the elven child's horror at the death of her mother, and wonders if he, or another drow would have felt the same about his own mother. Or if she'd have cared if he or Dinin had died. (No, to both.)
He thinks about how he'll kill Zaknafein in ten days.
Zaknafein is sharpening his sword, thinking about how a clean blow will "rid himself of his own failures". He regrets having not done it a decade ago, thinking that he might have spared Drizzt the pain that the Academy brought him, which changed him so very much. (It's a nice parallel that Zaknafein and Vierna both consider killing Drizzt young a mercy.)
Now of course, he thinks Drizzt is out of reach. Such dramatic idiots...
The chapter starts with Dinin reporting to the women of House Do'Urden. They asked if he's pleased the goddess. He believes so: no drow was slain, and Dinin himself had killed five people: all of them female.
Malice asks after Drizzt, and this is interesting:
Dinin’s smile confused her. He walked over to Drizzt and draped an arm comfortably across his brother’s shoulders. “Drizzt got only one kill,” Dinin began, “but it was a female child.”
“Only one?” Malice growled.
From the shadows off to the side, Zaknafein listened in dismay. He wanted to shut out the elderboy Do’Urden’s damning words, but they held Zak in their grip. Of all the evils Zak had ever encountered in Menzoberranzan, this surely had to be the most disappointing. Drizzt had killed a child.
“But the way he did it!” Dinin exclaimed. “He hacked her apart; sent all of Lolth’s fury slicing into her twitching body! The Spider Queen must have treasured that kill above all the others.”
Dinin's pride in his brother fascinates me a little. Dinin is introduced as a man willing to kill his older brother for power, and while there is the occasional moment where he side-eyes his younger brother, for the most part, he seems satisfied when Drizzt succeeds.
He even defends Drizzt, when Malice again scowls at "only one", Dinin points out that Drizzt would have had two had someone else not stolen his kill. He doesn't have to point that out. It's no skin off his back if Malice is annoyed at her younger son. There's nothing that reflects badly on Dinin there.
It doesn't make Dinin a good person of course, but I appreciate complexity.
There's also a lovely bit of drow culture: they assume that the kill-steal will bring Lolth's favor onto the stealer's house, EXCEPT that when Drizzt punished the guy, he hadn't fought back. So the favor is theirs instead.
And of course, we see Zak's despairing drama. He does seem to cycle a lot, when it comes to Drizzt, immediately assuming the worst at any possibility. But to be fair, I'm not sure how sane I'd be if I had to live in this society for a couple of hundred years.
And of course, we get some ridiculous romcom-esque misudnerstanding:
Zak paused in the long corridor and turned back to watch the chamber. Drizzt and Dinin came out then, Drizzt casting Zak a single, accusatory look and pointedly turning away down a side passage.
The gaze cut through the weapons master. “So it has come to this,” Zak murmured to himself. “The youngest warrior of House Do’Urden, so full of the hate that embodies our race, has learned to despise me for what I am.”
Zak thought again of that moment in the training gym, that fateful second when Drizzt’s life teetered on the edge of a poised sword. It indeed would have been a merciful act to kill Drizzt at that time.
With the sting of the young drow warrior’s gaze still cutting so keenly into his heart, Zak couldn’t decide whether the deed would have been more merciful to Drizzt or to himself.
Drizzt, of course, is angry because Zaknafein attacked him out of nowhere. Zaknafein is both anxious and paranoid, because he's spent his life (badly) hiding his true affiliations. They're both idiots, really.
--
We scene shift to SiNafay, Masoj and Alton. She's got good news. House Do'Urden has, unbeknownst to them, lost Lolth's favor. Masoj is perplexed as to how that could have happened. But I like it. A Goddess SHOULD be at least a little omniscient, right? Drizzt fucked up.
Well, of course he didn't. Drizzt did what he could at the time. He saved a life. I won't pretend that's a bad thing even for a joke. But Lolth isn't going to like that.
So this is an opportunity to act against the House. And they've decided that Drizzt, the favored son, should be their first loss. Masoj is dispatched. If Dinin gets in the way, Masoj can kill him too. (This is presented as a gift for Masoj's obedience. He is thrilled.)
--
We shift scene again, to Drizzt and Zaknafein. Both believe the other is evil. Both are fucking idiots. Like this:
“So the heroes are summoned,” chuckled Zak.
Drizzt did not immediately respond. Was there sarcasm in Zak’s voice? Jealousy, perhaps, that Drizzt and Dinin were allowed to go out to fight, while Zak had to remain within the House Do’Urden’s confines to fulfill his role as the family’s fighting instructor? Was Zak’s hunger for blood so great that he could not accept the duties thrust upon them all? Zak had trained Drizzt and Dinin, had he not? And hundreds of others; he’d transformed them into living weapons, into murderers.
“How long will you be out?” Zak pressed, more interested in Drizzt’s whereabouts.
Drizzt shrugged. “A tenday at the longest.”
“And?”
“Home.”
“That is good,” said Zak. “I will be pleased to see you back within the walls of House Do’Urden.” Drizzt didn’t believe a word of it.
It's sad, in retrospect, because I know how little time they have left.
It's also funny, because amidst the misunderstanding, they're not wrong when they think the other one wants to kill them. Zak invites Drizzt to a match in the gym. And it's well...more of the same:
“The gym, perhaps?” asked Zak. “You and l, as it once was.”
Impossible! Drizzt wanted to shout. Never again would it be as it once was. Drizzt held those thoughts to himself and nodded his assent. “I would enjoy that,” he replied, secretly wondering how much satisfaction he would gain by cutting Zaknafein down. Drizzt knew the truth of his people now, and knew that he was powerless to change anything. Maybe he could make a change in his private life, though. Maybe by destroying Zaknafein, his greatest disappointment, Drizzt could remove himself from the wrongness around him.
“As would I,” Zak said, the friendliness of his tone hiding his private thoughts—thoughts identical to Drizzt’s.
“In a tenday, then,” Drizzt said, and he pulled away, unable to continue the encounter with the drow who once had been his dearest friend, and who, Drizzt had come to learn, was truly as devious and evil as the rest of his kin.
I mock, but really, it's a good set up. Neither character really has any reason to believe better of the other. Zak protected Drizzt as much as he could, but he's been wearing his mask for hundreds of years. It's perfectly understandable that Drizzt can't see through it. And Drizzt represented a faint hope of something better for Zak, and he can't see past the idea that it's been crushed.
It's tragedy, not stupidity, but I'm not good with genuine emotion, so I'm going to mock them anyway.
--
Back to SiNafay and Alton, the latter is begging for the opportunity to go after Drizzt. She denies him, and taunts him a bit for the foolish attempted he'd made before. But she does reassure that he'll get the opportunity to kill a few high priestesses before.
--
The chapter ends with mirrored scenes: Drizzt in bed, thinking about what his siblings told him about Zak's prowess and joy in slaughtering drow. He thinks about the elven child's horror at the death of her mother, and wonders if he, or another drow would have felt the same about his own mother. Or if she'd have cared if he or Dinin had died. (No, to both.)
He thinks about how he'll kill Zaknafein in ten days.
Zaknafein is sharpening his sword, thinking about how a clean blow will "rid himself of his own failures". He regrets having not done it a decade ago, thinking that he might have spared Drizzt the pain that the Academy brought him, which changed him so very much. (It's a nice parallel that Zaknafein and Vierna both consider killing Drizzt young a mercy.)
Now of course, he thinks Drizzt is out of reach. Such dramatic idiots...