Starlight Enclave

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Was he wrong?”

  “No,” Kimmuriel admitted, still matter-of-factly, and if he was surprised or even humbled by the experience, he wasn’t showing it. “I told you, he was much more than I would ever expect of any human.”

  “So, he let you in there and he gave to you his memories of transcending the physical form.”

  “And now I understand better. But of course, there remain limitations on that understanding, because such an act may or may not be a permanent state of being.”

  “There’s only one way to find out the truth,” Drizzt admitted.

  “I am in no hurry to leave this life.”

  Drizzt didn’t question that, for he felt much the same way. His transcendence fleeing the retriever had given him great comfort and hope in what might come next, but he knew that he could not know the permanence of that experience. He could not dismiss the notion that it had been no more than a trick his mind had played on him to ease the transition as his spirit diminished to nothingness.

  “We are leaving in the morning,” Kimmuriel told him.

  “In a hurry to be away from this place, then?”

  Kimmuriel smiled. “Would you choose to ride with us? The winter winds will come on fast and we’ll be fortunate to beat the snows to Luskan.”

  Drizzt considered it for just a moment, then shook his head. “I have no business back there at this time. I’ll stay with Brie—this is a good place for her. Catti-brie will come for me when she returns, I am sure, and I would like her to spend some time here as well. The discussions are stimulating, even enlightening. It is always good to speak of that we cannot fully know, to gain the hints from others who similarly ponder.”

  “As I found my discussions with you,” Kimmuriel said.

  “Why?”

  Kimmuriel looked at him curiously—a rare expression from the drow who could so easily slip secretly into the thoughts of another person. But he hadn’t on this journey, Drizzt knew. Not to Drizzt—at least since Drizzt had asked him not to. Not even once.

  “Why everything?” Drizzt clarified. “You are suddenly so concerned with the gods and the afterlife. I’ve never known of such questioning from you.”

  “I never thought of them before. Not truly and deeply. The gods seemed inconsequential to me in a spiritual sense, and more a matter of pragmatic survival, particularly in Menzoberranzan. As to the rest, with possible centuries of life left before me, contemplation of the meaning of death seemed . . . remote. And probably pointless, after all.”

  “But now?”

  “As I said, I never bothered to deeply think of it before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before I aided Yvonnel and Matron Mother Quenthel in their search of Matron Mother Yvonnel’s living memories,” Kimmuriel admitted, which was what Drizzt expected and hoped to hear.

  “What did you learn?”

  “That in the end there is no place to hide.”

  “Perhaps there is nothing there in the end from which you’d wish to hide.”

  Kimmuriel nodded and smiled, but kept the conversation moving forward. “No divine justice?” he asked. “Is an afterlife a matter of the choices we make, then? Do they decide? Those are the questions facing my kin, our kin, on a grander scale now, Drizzt Do’Urden. Those are the choices stark before them in the city of our birth. They are going to war against each other, do not doubt.”

  “I don’t doubt it. What I doubt is whether the answers you seek will do anything about that.”

  “I think they will. And even if not, I seek these answers for my own sake. Consider it, Drizzt Do’Urden; why do you seem to so easily spurn religion itself?”

  “‘Spurn’ is a strong word.”

  “Even when you found Mielikki, you did so only conditionally,” Kimmuriel reminded him. “You have admitted as much repeatedly. You placed yourself, your conscience, above her.”

  Drizzt started to argue the point, but paused and considered his fights with Catti-brie over the true nature of orcs and goblins.

  “Is that not spurning religion?” Kimmuriel asked as if reading his thoughts. Drizzt realized, though, that Kimmuriel didn’t need any mental intrusions to know what he was thinking at this time.

  “I cannot deny it,” he said.

  “What is religion, Drizzt Do’Urden?”

  “That seems a wide question.”

  “What is it based upon?” Kimmuriel asked.

  “Morals. A code . . .”

  Kimmuriel scoffed. “To hear morals ascribed to Lolth is unexpected.”

  “Lolth is a false religion.”

  “And Mielikki? Who tells you to wantonly kill goblinkin, whom you believe might not be inherently evil?”

  “That . . .” Drizzt stopped before he started, caught in the psionicist’s trap.

  “What is religion based upon?” Kimmuriel asked again, sharply.

  “Fear,” said Drizzt.

  “See? We agree. It is based upon the fear of death and what might or might not come afterward. Take that away, and churches would be no more than mediators of commonwealth, if that. The gods of Toril promise power or riches or sublime comfort, even unbridled sexual gratification, in exchange for worship. They command us with threat or with pleasure, but only because we fear that we have so much to lose elsewise.”

  “That’s why you came out here,” Drizzt said. “To be truly free.”

  “Yes,” said Kimmuriel. “I have lived for centuries, hiding away in the hive mind or in a library, trying to make sense of that which, ultimately, I cannot, for these destinations can only be answered when the road is finally traveled. But now I believe that I have come to the limit of my potential understanding of this unknowable matter until that final journey.”

  “And so you have escaped the fear.”

  “I have. Gone now is the coercive power of the gods, the terror of their warnings, the allure of their promises. Now I can see the world as it truly is before me, and make my decisions as best serves my own sensibility.”

  “Like with the coming events in Menzoberranzan. Kimmuriel knows which side he will fight with, then?”

  “I do, if I choose to fight at all. I am just trying to decide if it is worth the effort.”

  That notion initially struck Drizzt oddly. If Kimmuriel knew which side was right and which wrong, did it really matter if the notion of some eternal reward lay in the balance?

  Really, though, Drizzt now understood that he believed the same. Yes, he tried to do good in the world and for the sake of the world, for the sake of community and those he loved. But if he didn’t believe in something beyond this life, would he be so quick to sacrifice his remaining moments of consciousness, of existence itself, for just those external rewards?

  Yes, he would, he knew, and had thus lived his life, even surrounded by the doubts and the fears.

  “It is worth the effort,” he asserted to the psionicist standing before him, an intellectual who lived too much in the realm of the mind and not enough in the realm of the heart.

  “I know you believe that.”

  Drizzt held up his hands, not about to deny it.

  “And I hope you are right. And that’s why I ask the questions I do. Who knows, my friend, perhaps we will soon stand side by side on the streets of Menzoberranzan, doing mortal battle against those who decide to remain in the thrall of the Spider Queen.”

  “In that event, can I count on Kimmuriel to stand with me no matter the odds?”

  “You ask a lot,” Kimmuriel replied, but then he flashed a rare smile and went back inside the monastery.

  Yes, Drizzt mused, he was glad that Kimmuriel and the others had come out to join him on this journey.

  That night, after Brie had gone to sleep, Drizzt wandered out onto the back porch of the monastery and into the darkened yard so that he could bask in the starlight. His talk with Kimmuriel had given him hope, both for the psionicist and for his people and their coming great struggle. There were many drow of similar heart to
his own, he knew without doubt. The vast majority of them, likely. They had been smothered by a demon goddess, but now the veil of darkness had been pulled back.

  Would he go to Menzoberranzan for the fight that was surely to come? A big part of him wanted no involvement with any of this. Not now. He wanted to focus on his family. On their future, together. For so long, he had battled for the good of the wider world and now, perhaps, he was due his rest.

  But this current situation was the crystallization of that which he had most wanted in all the struggles of his life. This could be his greatest contribution to his kin and his homeland. It could secure that future he hoped for.

  Or it could be his death. And all for a cause that had little chance. Lolth would not let Menzoberranzan go without a terrific and terrible fight.

  He lay on the leafy ground and let the millions of spots of light in the sky lift him up among them, as he had done so many times before.

  Some time later, he headed back into the monastery. He stopped by Brie’s room to check on her, then made his way to the small meditation chapel reserved for the masters, where he expected he’d find Grandmaster Kane. It was a simple place, with four benches set along the rim of a shallow pit, the whole of it open to the sky. At the bottom was a garden, mostly grass, but with a few flowers bringing color about its edges. The middle of it was an X formed of white stones of various shapes and sizes.

  Kane was staring at that X, sitting up on a bench, his legs tightly crossed beneath him.

  “They are leaving in the morning,” Drizzt told him, and he nodded. “Kimmuriel is quite grateful to you.”

  “He seeks answers.”

  “He feels that he has learned a lot.”

  “He seeks answers to questions that cannot be answered in this life.”

  “He understands that,” Drizzt assured the Grandmaster.

  “I know. What he seeks most of all is a place where his understanding of the physical truths about him coincides with the hopes for the next part of the journey within him. If I gave him some valuable insights into his own heart, or some comfort against his fears, then I have done a good thing.”

  “Again, you have my thanks for agreeing to speak with him.”

  “I owe you the thanks, Drizzt,” Kane replied. “You have granted me the opportunity to do a good deed in the world, and that is no small thing.” Kane went back to staring at the stones set below.

  “Will you leave with them?” the monk asked a few heartbeats later.

  “I hope to stay longer.”

  “You can stay forever, of course. This is your home if you ever wish it to be.”

  Drizzt gave a quick bow of respect, although Kane wasn’t looking at him.

  “Have Jarlaxle’s associates heard from him? From Catti-brie?”

  “No,” Drizzt answered. “Which surprises me, I admit.”

  “And worries you.”

  “It does.”

  “You know not how far they went? The northernmost north?”

  Drizzt held up his hands.

  “If so,” Kane continued, “then they might find that magic is not quite the same up there.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  “I’ve been to the northern reaches of the Great Glacier. Even beyond them. I was with Olwen Forest-friend on that occasion, a ranger of great reputation and power, and a disciple of Mielikki. His magical spells didn’t work as powerfully up there, I recall, and even Treefeller, Olwen’s axe, felt unwieldy to him. Perhaps it was just the cold wind chattering his teeth and numbing his fingers.”

  “But you don’t believe that,” Drizzt surmised.

  “It was different up there, as it is in the Underdark. If they are in the farthest north, then they might be discovering that old things do not work as they believed, and might well discover many new things in their place.”

  He went back to staring at the X of stones then, and Drizzt did, too, falling within himself. He didn’t find Kane’s words comforting. Magic was the crux of Catti-brie’s power, after all.

  Kane did not seem to notice when he chuckled a moment later, as he reminded himself that what he was going through now was something he had put his beloved Catti-brie through on more than one occasion over the last couple of years. How she had stayed within her wits when he had gone to the deep Underdark, he did not know!

  Trust her, he reminded himself. Trust in her. Catti-brie was among the most resourceful and powerful individuals he had ever known. And she was with Jarlaxle, who befriended dragons and toyed with kings.

  And with them, too, were Zaknafein and Entreri, and Drizzt didn’t doubt their loyalty to him, to Catti-brie, to the Companions of the Hall. Or their skill as warriors.

  She is okay, he told himself, repeating it like a mantra as he fell deeper within himself through the peaceful image of the white stones, lit by the stars and a half-moon hanging in the sky above, shining a bit brighter than the dark garden that held them.

  Chapter 13

  Eleint the Fading

  “It would make a fine traveling companion,” Catti-brie argued when her suggestion had been met with head shakes and grumbles. She had awakened to find that she was a bit colder than she had been the night before. She conjured their breakfast magically, creating enough food to keep the bellies of ten large dwarves from growling the whole of the day.

  But it should have been half again that amount.

  “A companion that would turn on us the moment you let down your guard,” Jarlaxle countered.

  “I won’t, and it won’t be a powerful beast, in any case. Just a minor elemental to cut a path before us, to melt the ice that might take our feet out from under us.” And to help keep the chill out of the air, she thought, but did not add.

  Jarlaxle turned his gaze to Zak and Entreri, the weapon master responding with a shrug, Entreri hardly seeming to care either way, except to say, “Even with your damned ring, this cold wind is rooting in my bones.”

  Jarlaxle held up his hands in surrender. “All right, then,” he agreed, and he motioned for Zak to move to the open ground between them and the small lake at the base of the towering glacier.

  With a shrug, the weapon master complied, drawing the empty sword hilt from his belt. He fidgeted with it in his hand, closed his eyes, and called upon its power, flicking his wrist and bringing forth not the blade of light, but the whip of flame.

  He rolled its length in the air before him, studying it for a few moments, then looked to his companions. “A large tear?” he asked, and not for the first time.

  “The best you can manage,” Catti-brie replied.

  Over his head rolled the whip, and Zak snapped it hard before him, drawing a bright line in the air, dripping fire. He looked to Catti-brie, though, showing her a frown.

  Catti-brie understood his consternation, for she, too, had recognized that the whip wasn’t quite as formidable as it had previously seemed. Like her healing spell the previous night or the conjured meal, the whip’s fires seemed somehow lesser, diminished.

  “Let that one vanish,” Zak prompted. “Tell me when you’re ready, and I’ll cut it deeper.”

  “Do it,” Catti-brie replied, walking up beside him.

  He rolled the whip out before him, cracking it in the air once, twice, thrice in rapid succession, each time calling forth the deeper powers of the enchantment to cut tears into the Plane of Fire.

  Catti-brie lifted her open hand before her face, looking through her fingers at the small tears, three thin, short lines of what looked like floating lava. She reached into her ring, calling to the fiery plane, trying to bring forth an elemental.

  She reached one, felt its strange sentience, connected to it, and forced it to move to the tear.

  A wall of denial, of anger—a stream of invective she could not understand—struck her, along with a sudden blast of cold, cold wind.

  “What?” she asked to no one, fully by reflex, and she lowered her hand and looked at the wavering lines of magma, the small drips of
flame falling to the ground before them, landing and coalescing as they tried to form into a singular living being of flame.

  Tried, and struggled, to little avail, much of the magma hardening almost immediately to dead black rock.

  The ground began to shake beneath the companions, a sudden rolling rumble, followed by a sharp sound from the glacial wall to their left and high above.

  Catti-brie felt the unbridled anger through her ring, but it wasn’t coming from the failing fire elemental—in fact, she felt that being’s fear and loathing, though neither was aimed at her.

  No, this was bigger, stronger, a level of indecipherable power and outrage she had known only once before in her life.

  “Run,” she told her friends, and she backed up a few steps. She shook her head. It could not be . . .

  “Run!” she said again, turning and sprinting off directly away from the towering glacial wall.

  “You cannot control it?” she heard Jarlaxle calling as he rushed to keep up with her, and she realized that he was speaking of the fire elemental.

  Another rumble knocked her off balance and nearly sent her tumbling.

  Then came a deafening and long cracking sound, and she didn’t dare look back or slow her stride.

  “By the gods,” she heard Entreri gasp, and now she did glance back.

  The ground shook; the glacier calved, fissures appearing down the sides of a large jag in its facing, then the whole of it sliding down, striking the ground with tremendous force and falling forward, crashing over the town, shattering the buildings nearest the ice wall, burying the magma lines, extinguishing whatever being of fire had come through Zak’s tear in the Material Plane.

  Catti-brie was on the ground, and she was not alone. Only Jarlaxle remained upright, the clever rogue with an answer for everything enacting a levitation spell and getting just above the rolling, shaking, quaking stones. A great rush of bits of ice, water, and wind washed over the four.

  Then it was quiet, settled, and the air cleared, revealing a gigantic chunk of ice half in, half out of the small lake, one that would have buried them all where they stood had Catti-brie not heard the threat and reacted.