Realms of the Underdark

Chapter Eight: Her Father's Daughter

The summons from the Narbondellyn district came early the next day. This time, Gromph Baenre sent word that Liriel's belongings were to be packed up and sent after her.

The young drow received this information stoically. In truth, Liriel did not regret her removal from House Shobalar. Perhaps she did not understand the full meaning of her own Blooding ceremony, but she knew with certainly that she could no longer remain in the same complex as Xandra Shobalar.

Liriel's reception at the archmage's mansion was about what she had expected. Servants met her and showed her to her apartment-a small but lavish suite that boasted a well-equipped library of spellbooks and scrolls. Apparently her father intended for her to continue her wizardly education. But there was no sign of Gromph, and the best the servants could do for Liriel was to assure her that the archmage would send for her when she was wanted.

And so it was that the newly initiated drow spent her first darkcycle alone, the first of what she suspected would be many such days and nights. Liriel found that the solitude was painfully difficult, and that the silent hours crept by.

After several futile attempts at study, the weary girl at last took to her bed. For hours she stared at the ceiling and longed for the oblivion of slumber. But her mind was too full, and her thoughts too confused, for sleep to find her.

Oddly enough, Liriel felt less triumphant than she should have. She was alive, she had passed the test of the Blooding, she had repaid Xandra's treachery with public humiliation, she had even devised a way to keep from slaying the human wizard.

Why was it, then, that she felt his blood on her hands as surely as if she'd torn out his heart with her own fingernails? And what was this soul-deep sadness, this dark resignation? Though she had no name to give this emotion, Liriel suspected that it would ever after cast a shadow upon her blithe spirit.

The hours passed, and the distant tolling of Narbondel signaled that the darkest hour was once again upon Menzoberranzan. It was then that the summons finally came, a servant bid Liriel to dress and await the archmage in his study.

Suddenly Liriel was less than anxious to face her drow sire. What would Gromph have to say about her unorthodox approach to the Blooding hunt and ceremony? During her three days of preparation, the archmage had repeatedly expressed concern about her judgment and ambition, pronouncing her too trusting and carefree, and he had wondered at the strange bias of her character. It seemed likely to her that he would not approve.

Liriel did as she was bid and hastened to her father's sanctum. She had not long to wait before Gromph appeared, still wearing the wondrous, glittering piwafwi that held an arsenal of magical weapons, and that proclaimed his power and his high office. The archmage acknowledged her presence with a curt nod and then sat down behind his table.

"I have heard what transpired at your ceremony," he began.

"The ritual was fulfilled," Liriel said earnestly-and a trifle defensively. "I might not have shed blood, but Matron Hinkutes'nat accepted my efforts!"

"More than accepted," the archmage said dryly. "The Shobalar matron is quite impressed with you. And more importantly, so am I."

Liriel absorbed this in silence. Then, suddenly, she blurted out, "Oh, but I wish I understood why!"

Gromph lifted one brow. "You really must learn to speak with less than complete candor," he advised her. "But in this case, no harm is done. Indeed, your words only confirm what I had suspected, you acted partly by design, but partly by instinct. This is indeed gratifying."

"Then you're not angry?" Liriel ventured. When the archmage sent her an inquiring look, she added, "I thought that you would be furious upon hearing that I did not actually kill the human."

Gromph was silent a long moment. "You did something far more important: you fulfilled both the spirit and the letter of the Blooding ritual, in layers of subtle complexity that did credit to you and to your house. The human wizard is dead-that much was a needed formality. Using Xandra Shobalar as a tool was a clever twist. But washing your hands in her blood was brilliant!"

"Thank you," Liriel said, in a tone so incongruously glum that it surprised a chuckle from the archmage.

"You still do not understand. Very well, I will speak plainly. The human wizard was never your enemy, Xandra Shobalar was your enemy! You recognized that, you turned her plot against her, and you proclaimed a blood victory. And in doing so, you demonstrated that you have learned what it is to be a true drow."

"But I did not kill," Liriel said thoughtfully. "And why is it that, although I did not kill, I feel as if I had?"

"You might not have actually shed blood, but the ritual of the Blooding has done its intended work all the same," the archmage asserted.

Liriel considered this, and suddenly she knew her father's words as truth. Her innocence was gone, but pride and power, treachery, intrigue, survival, victory- all of these things she knew intimately and well.

"A true drow," she repeated in a tone that was nine parts triumph and one portion regret. She took a deep breath and looked up into Gromph's eyes-and into a mirror.

For the briefest of moments, Liriel glimpsed a flicker of poignant sorrow in the archmage's eyes, like the glint of gold shining through a deep layer of ice. It came and departed so quickly Liriel doubted that Gromph was even aware of it, after all, several centuries of cold and calculating evil lay between him and his own rite of passage. If he remembered that emotion at all, he was no longer able to reach into his soul and bring it forth. Liriel understood, and at last she had a name to give the final, missing element that defined a true drow:

Despair.

"Congratulations," the archmage said in a voice laced with unconscious irony.

"Thank you," his daughter responded in kind.