The Collected Stories, The Legend of Drizzt (forgotten realms)

by R. A. Salvatore

  “For the sake of Drizzt Do’Urden?”

  “A worthy reason.”

  They let it go at that, and set their last camp before they would turn for home. Beyond the mountain ridge to the west, the endless waves crashed against the timeless stones, mocking mortality.

  Innovindil used the backdrop of that rhythm to sing her prayers yet again, and Drizzt joined in as he assimilated the words, and it occurred to him that whether or not the prayers drifted to the physical form of a true god, there was in them power, peace, and calm.

  In the morning, with Ellifain secured across the wide rump of Sunset, the pair turned for home. The journey would be a longer one, they knew, for winter grew thicker and they would have to walk their mounts more than fly them.

  The orc overbalanced as Tos’un knew it would, throwing its cumbersome broadsword out too wildly across its chest. It stumbled to the side and staggered ahead, and Tos’un reversed his retreat to begin a sudden, finishing thrust.

  But the drow stopped short as the orc jerked unexpectedly. Tos’un fell back into a defensive crouch, concerned that his opponent, the last of a small group he had ambushed, had feigned the stumble.

  The orc jerked again then came forward. Tos’un started to move to block, but recognized that it was no attack. He stepped aside as the orc fell face down, a pair of long arrows protruding from its back. Tos’un looked past the dead brute, across the small encampment, to see a pale-skinned, black-haired elf woman standing calmly, bow in hand.

  With no arrow set.

  Kill her! Khazid’hea screamed in his head.

  Indeed, Tos’un’s first thought heartily concurred. His eyes flashed and he almost leaped ahead. He could get to her and cut her down before she ever readied that bow, he knew, or before she could draw out the small sword on her hip and ready a proper defense.

  The drow didn’t move.

  Kill her!

  The look on her face helped the drow resist both the sword’s call and his own murderous instincts. Before he even glanced left and right, he knew. He might get one step before a barrage of arrows felled him. Perhaps two, if he was quick enough and lucky enough. Either way, he’d never get close to the elf.

  He lowered Khazid’hea and turned back its stream of curses by filling his mind with fear and wariness. The sword quickly caught on and went silent in his thoughts.

  The elf said something to him, but he did not understand. He knew a bit of the Elvish tongue, but couldn’t decipher her particular dialect. A sound from the side finally turned him, to see a trio of elf archers slipping out of the shadows, bows drawn and ready. On the other side, three others made a similar appearance.

  And more were still under cover, the drow suspected. He did his best to silently inform Khazid’hea.

  The sword replied with a sensation of frustrated growling.

  The elf spoke again, but in the common tongue of the surface. Tos’un recognized the language, but he understood only a few of her words. He could tell she wasn’t threatening him, and that alone showed the drow where he stood.

  He offered a smile and slid Khazid’hea into its scabbard. He held his hands up unthreateningly, then moved them out and shrugged. To either side of him, the archers relaxed, but only a bit.

  Another moon elf moved out from the shadows, this one wearing the ceremonial robes of a priest. Tos’un bit back his initial revulsion at the site of the heretic, and forced himself to calm down as the cleric went through a series of gyrations and soft chanting.

  He is casting a spell of languages, to better communicate with you, Khazid’hea silently informed the drow.

  And a spell to discern truth from lies, if his powers are anything akin to the priestesses of Menzoberranzan, Tos’un replied.

  As he completed the thought, the drow felt a strange calm emanating from the sentient sword.

  I can aid you in that, Khazid’hea explained, sensing his confusion and anticipating his question. True deception is a state of mind. Even from magical detections.

  “I will know your intent and your purpose,” the elf cleric said to Tos’un in words the drow understood perfectly, jarring him from his private conversation with the sword.

  But that connection had not been fully severed, Tos’un realized. A continuing sense of pervading calm filtered through his thoughts and filtered the timbre of his vocal reply.

  And so he passed through the priest’s line of questioning, answering sincerely though he knew well that he was not being honest.

  Without Khazid’hea’s help, he would have felt the bite of a dozen elven arrows that day, he knew.

  And where am I to run? Tos’un asked Khazid’hea much later. What is there for me beyond the perimeter of this camp? You would have me hunting orcs for their rotten foodstuffs, or venturing back into the wilds of the Underdark where I cannot survive.

  You are drow, the sword answered. You have stated before your hated of elves, the oppressors of your people. They are unsuspecting and off their guard, because of my help to you.

  Tos’un wasn’t so sure of that. Certainly those elves nearest to him seemed at ease. He might get through a few of them. But what others lurked in the shadows? he wondered, and so the sword felt his question.

  Khazid’hea had no answer.

  Tos’un watched the elves moving around their camp. Despite their proximity to enemies, for they were across the Surbrin and in Obould’s claimed territory, laughter rang out almost constantly. One took up a song in Elvish, and the rhythm and melody, though he could not know the words, carried Tos’un’s thoughts back to Menzoberranzan.

  Would you have me choose between these people and Obould’s ugly kin? the drow asked.

  Still the sword remained quiet in his thoughts.

  The drow sat back, closed his eyes, and let the sounds of the elves’ camp filter around him. He considered the roads before him, and truly none seemed promising. He didn’t want to continue on his own. He knew the limitations and mortality of that route. Eventually, King Obould would catch up to him.

  He shuddered as he considered the brutal death of his lost drow friend, the priestess Kaer’lic. Obould had bitten out her throat.

  We can defeat him, Khazid’hea interrupted. You can slay Obould and take his armies as your own. His kingdom will be yours!

  Tos’un had to work hard to stop himself from laughing out loud, and his incredulity served as a calming blanket over the excited sword. With or without Khazid’hea, there was no way Tos’un Armgo would willingly do battle with the powerful orc king.

  The drow considered the road to the Underdark again. He remembered the way, but would it be possible for him to battle back to Menzoberranzan? The mere thought of the journey had him shuddering yet again.

  That left him with the elves. The hated surface elves, the traditional enemies of his people. Might he really find a place among them? He wanted to kill them, every one, almost as badly as did his always-hungry sword, but he knew that acting on such an impulse would leave him without any options at all.

  Is it possible that I will find my place among them? he asked the sword. Might Tos’un become the next Drizzt Do’Urden, a rogue from the Underdark living in peace among the surface races?

  The sword didn’t reply, but the drow sensed that it was not amused. So Tos’un let his own thoughts follow that unlikely course. What might his life be like if he played along with the surface elves? He eyed a female as he wondered, and thought that bedding her might not be a bad thing. And after all, among the surface elves, unlike in his own matriarchal society, he would not be limited by his gender.

  But would he always be limited by his ebon skin?

  Drizzt wasn’t, he reminded himself. From everything he had learned over the past days, Tos’un knew that Drizzt lived quite well not only with the surface elves but with dwarves as well.

  Could it be that Drizzt Do’Urden has created a path that I might similarly follow?

  You hate these elves, Khazid’hea replied. I can taste your ven
om.

  But that does not mean that I cannot accept their hospitality, for my own sake and not for theirs.

  Will you stop fighting?

  Again Tos’un nearly laughed out loud, for he understood that the only thing Khazid’hea cared about was wetting its magnificent blade with fresh blood.

  With them, I will slaughter Obould’s ugly kin, he promised, and the sword seemed to calm.

  And if I hunger for an elf’s blood?

  In time, Tos’un replied. When I grow tired of them, or when I find another more promising road.…

  It was all new, of course, and all speculative. The drow couldn’t be certain of anything just then, nor was he working from any position of power that offered him true choices. But the inner dialogue and the possibilities he saw before him were not unpleasant. For the time being, that was enough.

  Drizzt stood, hands on hips, staring in disbelief at the signpost:

  BEWARE! HALT!

  The Kingdom of Many-Arrows

  Enter on word of King Obould

  Or enter and die!

  It was written in many languages, including Elvish and Common, and its seemingly simple message conveyed so much more to Drizzt and Innovindil. They had spent a month or more traversing the wintry terrain to return to that spot, the same trail on which they had seen the orcs constructing a formidable and refined gate. That gate, which they had already carefully observed some fifty feet farther along the path to the north, showed design and integrity that would make a dwarf engineer proud.

  “They have not left. Their cohesion remains,” Drizzt stated.

  “And they proclaim their king as Obould, and their kingdom takes his surname,” Innovindil added. “It would seem that the unusual orc’s vision outlasted his breath.”

  Drizzt shook his head, though he had no practical answers against the obvious observation. Still, it didn’t make sense to him, for it was not the way of the orc.

  After a long while, Innovindil said, “Come, the night will be colder and a storm is brewing. Let us be on our way.”

  Drizzt glanced back at her and nodded, though his thoughts were still focused on that sign and its implications.

  “We can make Mithral Hall long before sunset,” he asked.

  “I wish to cross the Surbrin,” Innovindil replied, and as she spoke she led Drizzt’s gaze to the form of Ellifain strapped over Sunset’s back, “to the Moonwood first, if you would agree.”

  With the weather holding and the sun still bright, though black clouds gathered in the northeast, they flew through Keeper’s Dale and past the western door of King Bruenor’s domain. Both of them took comfort in seeing that the gates remained solid and closed.

  They crossed around the southern side of the main mountain of the dwarven homeland, then past the wall and bridge that had been built east of the complex. Several dwarf sentries spotted them and recognized them after a moment of apparent panic. Drizzt returned their waves and heard his name shouted from below.

  Over the great river, partially covered in ice and its steel gray waters flowing swiftly and angrily, they set down, their shadows long before them.

  The land was secure. Obould’s minions had not pressed their attack, and predictably, as their campfire flared in the dark of night, the snow beginning to fall, they were visited by a patrol of elves, Innovindil’s own people scouting the southern reaches of their domain.

  There was much rejoicing and welcoming. The elves joined in song and dance, and Drizzt went along with it all, his smile genuine.

  The storm grew stronger, the wind howling, but the troupe, nestled in the embrace of a thick stand of pines, were not deterred in their celebration, their joy at the return of Innovindil, and their somber satisfaction that poor Ellifain had come home.

  Soon after, Innovindil recounted the journey to her kin, telling them of her disappointment and surprise to see that the orcs had not gone home to their dark holes after the fall of King Obould.

  “But Obould is not dead,” one of the elves replied, and Innovindil and her drow companion sat intrigued and quiet.

  Another elf stepped forward to explain, “We have found a kin of yours, Drizzt Do’Urden, striking at the orcs much as you once did. His name is Tos’un.”

  Drizzt felt as if the wind, diminished as it was through the thick boughs of the pines, might just blow him over. He had killed two other dark elves in the fight with Obould’s invading army, and had seen at least two more in his personal battle. In fact, one of those drow, a priestess, had brought forth a magical earthquake that had sent both Drizzt and the orc king tumbling, Drizzt, with good fortune, to a ledge not far below, and Obould, so Drizzt had thought, into a deep ravine where he surely would have met his demise. Might this Tos’un be one of those who had watched Drizzt’s battle with the orc king?

  “Obould is alive,” the elf said again. “He walked from the carnage of the landslide.”

  Drizzt didn’t think it possible, but given what he had seen of the orc army, could he truly deny the claim?

  “Where is this Tos’un?” he asked, his voice no more than a whisper.

  “Across the Surbrin to the north, far from here,” the elf explained. “He fights beside Albondiel and his patrol, and fights well by all reports.”

  “You have become accepting,” Drizzt remarked.

  “We have been given good reason.”

  Drizzt was hardly convinced.

  He is in the Moonwood, Khazid’hea reminded Tos’un one brilliant and brutally cold morning.

  They were still out across the Surbrin, in the northern stretches of the newly-proclaimed Kingdom of Many Arrows, just south of the towering easternmost peaks of the Spine of the World. The drow tried not to respond, but his thoughts flickered back to Sinnafain’s announcement to him that Drizzt Do’Urden had returned from the west and stopped in the Moonwood.

  He saw you on that day he battled Obould, Khazid’hea warned. He knows you were in league with the orcs.

  He saw two drow, Tos’un corrected. And from afar. He cannot know for certain that it was me.

  And if he does? His eyes are much more attuned to the glare of the sun than are yours. Do not underestimate his understanding. He did battle with two of your companions, as well. You cannot know what Drizzt might have learned from them before he slew them.

  Tos’un slid the sword away and glanced around the ring of boulders fronting the shallow cave that he and the elves had taken for their camp the previous night. He had suspected that Drizzt had been involved in the fall of Donnia Soldue and Adnon Khareese, but the sword’s confirmation jarred him.

  You will exact vengeance for your dead friends? Khazid’hea asked, and there was something in the sword’s telepathy that led him to understand the folly of that course. In truth, Tos’un wanted no battle with the legendary rogue that had so upset the great city of Menzoberranzan. Kaer’lic had feared that Drizzt was actually in Lolth’s favor, as chaos seemed to widen in his destructive wake, but even if that were not the case, the rogue’s reputation still brought shudders up Tos’un’s spine.

  Could he bluff his way past Drizzt’s doubts, or would the rogue just cut him down?

  Good, Khazid’hea purred in his thoughts. You understand that this is not a battle you are ready to fight. The sword led his gaze to Sinnafain, sitting on a rock not far away and staring out at the wide valley beyond.

  Kill her quickly and let us be gone, Khazid’hea offered. The others are out or deep in Reverie-they will not arrive in time to stop you.

  Despite his reservations, Tos’un’s hand closed on the sword’s hilt. But he let go almost immediately.

  Drizzt will not strike me down. I can dissuade him. He will accept me.

  At the very least, he will demand my return, Khazid’hea protested, so that he can give me back to that human woman.

  I will not allow that.

  How will you prevent it? And how will Tos’un answer the calls of the priests when Khazid’hea is not helping him to defeat their trut
h-seeking spells?

  We are beyond that point, the drow replied.

  Not if I betray you, the sword warned.

  Tos’un sucked in his breath and knew he was caught. The thought of going back out alone in the winter cold did not sit well with him, but he had no answer for the wretched sword.

  Nor was he willing to surrender Khazid’hea, to Drizzt or to anyone. Tos’un understood that his fighting skills were improving because of the tutoring of the blade, and few weapons in the world possessed a finer edge. Still, he did not doubt Khazid’hea’s estimation that he was not ready to do battle with the likes of Drizzt Do’Urden.

  Hardly aware of the movements, the drow walked up behind Sinnafain.

  “It is a beautiful day, but the wind will keep us about the cave,” she said, and Tos’un caught most of the words and her meaning. He was a quick student, and the Elvish language was not so different from that of the drow, with many similar words and word roots, and an identical structure.

  She turned on the rock to face him just as he struck.

  The world must have seemed to spin for Sinnafain. She lay on the ground, the drow standing above her, his deadly sword’s tip at her chin, forcing her to arch her neck.

  Kill her! Khazid’hea demanded.

  Tos’un’s mind raced. He wanted to plunge his sword into her throat and head. Or maybe he should take her hostage. She would be a valuable bargaining chip, and one that would afford him many pleasures before it was spent, to be sure.

  But to what end?

  Kill her! Khazid’hea screamed in his mind.

  Tos’un eased the blade back and Sinnafain tilted her chin down and looked at him. The terror in her blue eyes felt good to him, and he almost pulled the sword back, just to give her some hope, before reversing and cutting out her throat.

  But to what end?

  Kill her!

  “I am not your enemy, but Drizzt will not understand,” Tos’un heard himself saying, though his command of the language was so poor that Sinnafain’s face screwed up in confusion.