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.
"This segment of your training is at an end," Master Hatch’net announced on the morning of the fiftieth day. Another master, Dinin, entered the room, leading a magically suspended iron box filled with meagerly padded wooden poles of every length and design comparable to drow weapons.
"Choose the sparring pole that most resembles your own weapon of choice," Hatch’net explained as Dinin made his way around the room. He came to his brother, and Drizzt’s eyes settled at once on his choice, two slightly curving poles about three-and-a-half feet long. Drizzt lifted them out and put them through a simple cut. Their weight and balance closely resembled the scimitars that had become so familiar to his hands.
"For the pride of Daermon N’a’shezbaernon," Dinin whispered, then moved along.
Drizzt twirled the mock weapons again. It was time to measure the value of his sessions with Zak.
"Your class must have an order," Hatch’net was saying as Drizzt turned his attention beyond the scope of his new weapons. "Thus the grand melee. Remember, there can be only one victor!"
Hatch’net and Dinin herded the students out of the oval chamber and out of Melee-Magthere altogether, down the tunnel between the two guardian spider statues at the back of Tier Breche. For all of the students, this was the first time they had ever been out of Menzoberranzan.
"What are the rules?", Drizzt asked Kelnozz, in line at his side.
"If a master calls you out, then you are out," Kelnozz replied.
"The rules of engagement?" asked Drizzt. Kelnozz cast him an incredulous glance. "Win." he said simply, as though there could be no other answer.
A short time later they came into a fairly large cavern, the arena for the grand melee. Pointed stalactites leered down at them from the ceiling and stalagmite mounds broke the floor into a twisting maze filled with ambush holes and blind corners.
"Choose your strategies and find your starting point," Master Hatch’net said to them. "The grand melee begins in a count of one hundred!"
The twenty-five students set off into action, some pausing to consider the landscape laid out before them, others sprinting off into the gloom of the maze.
Drizzt decided to find a narrow corridor, to ensure that he would fight off one-against-one and he just started off in his search when he was grabbed from behind.
"A team?" Kelnozz offered.
Drizzt did not respond, unsure of the other’s fighting worth and the accepted practices of this traditional encounter.
"Others are forming into teams," Kelnozz pressed. "Some in threes. Together we might have a chance."
"The master said there could be only one victor," Drizzt reasoned.
"Who better than you, if not me." Kelnozz replied with a sly wink. "Let us defeat the others, then we can decide the issue between ourselves."
The reasoning seemed prudent, and with Hatch’net’s count already approaching seventy-five, Drizzt had little time to ponder the possibilities. He clapped Kelnozz on the shoulder and led his new ally into the maze.
Catwalks had been constructed all around the room’s perimeter; even crossing through the center of the chamber, to give the judging masters a good view of all the action below. A dozen of them were up there now, all eagerly awaiting the first battles so that they might measure the talent of this young class.
"One hundred!" cried Hatch’net from his high perch. Kelnozz began to move, but Drizzt stopped him, keeping him back in the narrow corridor between two long stalagmite mounds.
"Let them come to us." Drizzt signaled in the silent hand and facial expression code. He crouched in battle readiness. "Let them fight each other to weariness. Patience is our ally!"
Kelnozz relaxed, thinking he had made a good choice in Drizzt.
Their patience was not tested severely, though, for a moment later, a tall and aggressive student burst into their defensive position, wielding a long spear-shaped pole. He came right in on Drizzt, slapping with the butt of his weapon, then spinning it over full in a brutal thrust designed for a quick kill, a strong move perfectly executed.
Drizzt thought it seemed the most basic of attack routines, too basic, almost, for Drizzt hardly believed that a trained student would attack another skilled fighter in such a straightforward manner. Drizzt convinced himself in time that this was indeed the chosen method of attack, and no feint, and he launched the proper parry. His scimitar poles spun counterclockwise in front of him, striking the thrusting spear in succession and driving the weapon’s tip harmlessly above the striking line of its wielder’s shoulder.
The aggressive attacker, stunned by the advanced parry, found himself open and off balance. Barely a split second later, before the attacker could even begin to recover, Drizzt’s counter poked one, then the other scimitar pole into his chest.
A soft blue light appeared on the stunned student’s face, and he and Drizzt followed its line up to see a wand-wielding master looking down at them from the catwalk.
"You are defeated," the master said to the tall student. "Fall where you stand!"
The student shot an angry glare at Drizzt and obediently dropped to the stone.
"Come," Drizzt said to Kelnozz, casting a glance up at the master’s revealing light. "Any others in the area will know of our position now. We must seek a new defensible area."
Kelnozz paused a moment to watch the graceful hunting strides of his comrade. He had indeed made a good choice in selecting Drizzt, but he knew already, after only a single quick encounter, that if he and this skilled swordsman were the last two standing, a distinct possibility, he would have no chance at all of claiming victory.
Together they rushed around a blind corner, right into two opponents. Kelnozz chased after one, who fled in fright, and Drizzt faced off against the other, who wielded sword and dirk poles.
A wide smile of growing confidence crossed Drizzt’s face as his opponent took the offensive, launching routines similarly basic to those of the spear wielder that Drizzt had easily dispatched.
A few deft twists and turns of his scimitars, a few slaps on the inside edges of his opponent’s weapons, had the sword and dirk flying wide. Drizzt’s attack came right up the middle, where he executed another double-poke into his opponent’s chest.