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

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Not your enemy,” he said slowly, focusing on the words. “Drizzt will not understand.”

  He shook his head in frustration, reached down, and removed the helpless elf’s weapons, tossing them far aside. He jerked Sinnafain to her feet and shoved her away, Khazid’hea at her back. He glanced back at the cave a few times, but soon was far enough away to understand that no pursuit would be forthcoming.

  He spun Sinnafain around and forced her to the ground. “I am not your enemy,” he said yet again.

  Then, to Khazid’hea’s supreme outrage, Tos’un Armgo ran away.

  “It is Catti-brie’s sword,” Drizzt said when Sinnafain told him the tale of Tos’un a few days later, when she and her troupe returned to the Moonwood. “He was one of the pair I saw when I did battle with Obould.”

  “Our spells of truth-seeking did not detect his lie, or any malice,” Sinnafain argued.

  “He is drow,” Innovindil put in. “They are a race full of tricks.”

  But Sinnafain’s simple response, “He did not kill me,” mitigated much of the weight of that argument.

  “He was with Obould,” Drizzt said again. “I know that several drow aided the orc king, even prompted his attack.” He looked over at Innovindil, who nodded her agreement.

  “I will find him,” Drizzt promised.

  “And kill him?” Sinnafain asked.

  Drizzt didn’t answer, but only because he managed to bite back the word “yes,” before it escaped his lips.

  “You understand the concept?” Priest Jallinal asked Innovindil. “The revenant?”

  “A spirit with unfinished business, yes,” Innovindil replied, and she couldn’t keep the tremor out of her voice. The priests would not undertake such a ritual lightly. Normally revenants were thankfully rare, restless spirits of those who had died in great tumult, unable to resolve central questions of their very being. But Ellifain was not a revenant-not yet. In their communion with their god, the elf priests had come to believe that it would be for the best to create a revenant of Ellifain, something altogether unheard of. They were convinced of their course, though, and with their confidence, and given all that was at stake, Innovindil was hardly about to decline. She, after all, was the obvious choice.

  “Possession is not painful,” Jallinal assured her. “Not physically. But it is unsettling to the highest degree. You are certain that you can do this?”

  Innovindil sat back and glanced out the left side of the wooden structure, to the hut where she knew Drizzt to be. She found herself nodding as she considered Drizzt, the drow she had come to love as a cherished friend. He needed it to happen as much as Ellifain did.

  “Be done with it, and let us all rest more comfortably,” Innovindil said.

  Jallinal and the other clerics began their ritual casting, and Innovindil reclined on the floor pillows and closed her eyes. The magic filtered through her gently, softly, opening the conduit to the spirit the priests called forth. Her consciousness dulled, but was not expelled. Rather, her thoughts seemed as if filtered through those of her former friend, as if she was seeing and hearing everything reflected off the consciousness of Ellifain.

  For Ellifain was there with her, she knew, and when her body sat up, it was through Ellifain’s control and not Innovindil’s.

  There was something else, Innovindil recognized, for though it was Ellifain within her body along with her own spirit, her friend was different. She was calm and serene, at peace for the first time. Innovindil’s thoughts instinctively questioned the change, and Ellifain answered with memories-memories of a distant past recently brought forth into her consciousness.

  The view was cloudy and blocked-by the crook of an arm. Screams of agony and terror rent the air.

  She felt warmth, wet warmth, and knew it to be blood.

  The sky spun above her. She felt herself falling then landing atop the body of the woman who held her.

  Ellifain’s mother, of course!

  Innovindil’s mind whirled through the images and sounds-confused, overwhelmed. But then they focused clearly on a single image that dominated her vision: lavender eyes.

  Innovindil knew those eyes. She had stared into those same eyes for months.

  The world grew darker, warmer, and wetter.

  The image faded, and Innovindil understood what Ellifain had been shown in the afterlife: the truth of Drizzt Do’Urden’s actions on that horrible night. Ellifain had been shown her error in her single-minded hatred of that dark elf, her mistake in refusing to believe his reported actions in the deadly attack.

  Innovindil’s body stood up and walked out of the hut, moving with purpose across the way to the hut wherein Drizzt rested. She went through the door without as much as a knock, and there sat Drizzt, looking at her curiously, recognizing, no doubt, that something was amiss.

  She moved up and knelt before him. She stared closely into those lavender eyes, those same eyes she, Ellifain, had seen so intimately on the night of her mother’s murder. She brought a hand up against Drizzt’s cheek, then brought her other hand up so that she held his face, staring at her.

  “Innovindil?” he asked, and his voice sounded uncertain. He drew in his breath.

  “Ellifain, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Innovindil heard her voice reply. “Who you knew as Le’lorinel.”

  Drizzt labored to catch his breath.

  Ellifain pulled his head low and kissed him on the forehead, holding him there for a long, long while.

  Then she pulled him back to arms’ length. Innovindil felt the warm wetness of tears rolling down her cheeks.

  “I know now,” Ellifain whispered.

  Drizzt reached up and clasped her wrists. He moved his lips as if to respond, but no words came forth.

  “I know now,” Ellifain said again. She nodded and rose, then walked out of the hut.

  Innovindil felt it all so keenly. Her friend was at last at peace.

  The smile that was stamped upon Drizzt’s face was as genuine as any he had ever worn. The tears on his cheeks were wrought of joy and contentment.

  He knew that a troubled road lay ahead for him and for his friends. The orcs remained, and he had to deal with a dark elf wielding the ever-deadly Khazid’hea.

  But those obstacles seemed far less imposing to Drizzt Do’Urden that morning, and when Innovindil-the whole and unpossessed Innovindil-came to him and wrapped him in a hug, he felt as if nothing in all the world was amiss.

  For Drizzt Do’Urden trusted his friends, and with the forgiveness and serenity of Ellifain, Drizzt Do’Urden again trusted himself.

  If Ever They Happened Upon my Lair

  Fill the buckets, grab a fish,” muttered Ringo Heffenstone, a dwarf with exceptionally broad shoulders, even for a dwarf, and a large, square head. Ringo was quite an exception among the group of dwarves who had ventured out into the mud lands of northeastern Vaasa in that he wore no beard. A gigantic handlebar mustache, yes, but no beard. An unfortunate encounter with a gnomish fire-rocket a few years before back in the hills of northwestern Damara, the southern and more civilized neighbor to Vaasa, had left a patch of scarred skin on Ringo’s chin from which no hairs would sprout.

  It was a sad scar for a dwarf, to be sure, but with his typical pragmatism and stoicism, Ringo had just shrugged it off and redesigned his facial hair appropriately. Nothing ever really bothered Ringo. Certainly he could grump and mutter as well as the next dwarf about present indignities, such as his current position as water mule for the troop of dwarves, but in the end everything rolled out far and wide from him, eventually toppling off his broad shoulders.

  He came to the bank of the pond, his friends a few hundred feet behind him tipping beers and recounting their more raucous adventures with ever-increasing volume.

  A burst of howling laughter made Ringo cringe and look to the south. They weren’t far from Palishchuk, a city of half-orcs. They could have been there already, in fact, sleeping comfortably in a tavern. The half-orcs would gladly have taken their coin a
nd invited them in. But though the half-orcs were no enemies of the dwarves, the troop had already decided they would avoid the Palishchukians if at all possible. Ringo and the others didn’t much like the way half-orcs smelled, and even though those particular half-orcs acted far more in accordance with their human heritage than that of their orc ancestors, they still carried the peculiar aroma of their kind.

  Another burst of laughter turned Ringo back to the encampment. As several of his drunken friends unsuccessfully shushed those howling loudest, Ringo shook his head.

  He turned back to the pond, a vernal pool that formed every spring and summer as the frozen tundra softened. He noted the movement of some fish, flitting in and out of the shadows to the side, and shook his head again, amazed that they could survive in such an environment. If they could live through the extended Vaasan winter, in the shadow of the Great Glacier itself, how could he bring himself to catch one?

  “Bah, but ye’re safe, little fishies,” the dwarf said to them. “Ye keep winning against this place and old Ringo ain’t got no heart for killin’ ye and eatin’ ye.”

  He reached up and picked a piece of his dinner, a large bread crumb, from the left handlebar of his mustache. He’d been saving it for later, but he glanced at it and tossed it to the fish instead.

  The dwarf grinned as the fish broke the surface, inhaling the crumb. Several others came up, making plopping sounds and creating interconnected rings of ripples.

  Ringo watched the spectacle for a few moments then picked up one of his buckets and moved down to the water’s edge. He knelt in the mud and turned the bucket sidelong in the shallows to fill it.

  Just as he started to tip the bucket back upright, a wave washed in and sent water overflowing the pail, soaking the dwarf’s hands and hairy forearms.

  “Bah!” Ringo snorted, falling back from the freezing water.

  He fell into a sitting position, facing the lake, and curled his legs to get away from the cold wash of the encroaching wave. His gaze went out to the water, where more rings widened, their eastern edges rolling in toward him.

  Ringo scratched his head. It was a small pond, and little wind blew. They weren’t near any hills, where a rock or a tree might have tumbled from on high. He had seen no shadow from a falling bird.

  “Waves?”

  The dwarf stood up and put his hands on his hips as the water calmed. A glance to the side told him that the fish were long gone.

  The water stilled, and the hair on the back of Ringo’s neck tingled with nervous anticipation.

  “Hurry it up with that water!” one of the dwarves from the camp called.

  Ringo knew he should shout a warning or turn and run back to the camp, but he stood there staring at the still water of the dark pool. The meager sunlight filtered through the clouds in the west, casting lines of lighter hue on the glassy surface.

  He knew he was being watched. He knew he should reach around and unfasten his heavy wooden shield and his battle-axe. He was a warrior, after all, hardened by years of adventure and strife.

  But he stood there staring. His legs would not answer his call to retreat to the camp; his arms would not respond to his silent cries to retrieve his weapon and shield.

  He saw a greater darkness beneath the flat water some distance out from shore, a blacker spot in the deep gray. The water showed no disturbance, but Ringo instinctively recognized that the blacker form was rising from the depths.

  So smoothly that they didn’t even form a ripple, a pair of horns poked up through the surface thirty feet out from the bank. The horns continued to climb into the air, five feet … seven … and between them appeared the black crown of a reptilian head.

  Ringo began to tremble. His hands slid from his hips and hung loosely at his sides.

  He understood what was coming, but his mind would not accept it, would not allow him to shout, run, or grab his weapon, futile as he knew that weapon to be.

  The horns climbed higher, and the black head slipped gently from the water beneath them. Ringo saw the ridge of sharp scales, black as a mineshaft, framing the beast’s head in armor finer than any a dwarf master smith might ever craft. Then he saw the eyes, yellow and lizardlike, and the beast paused.

  The awful eyes saw him, too, he knew, and had been aware of him long before the beast had shown itself. They bored into him, framing him with their own inner light that shone as distinctively as the beam of a bull’s-eye lantern.

  “Hurry it up with that water!” came the call again. “I’m wantin’ to drink and pee afore the night comes on.”

  He wanted to answer.

  “Ringo?”

  “Heft-the-Stone, ye dolt!” another dwarf chimed in, using the nickname they had given to their principal pack mule.

  The playful insult never registered in Ringo’s senses, for his thoughts were locked on those awful reptilian eyes.

  Run! Ringo silently screamed, for himself and for them.

  But his legs felt as if they had sunk deeply into the gripping mud. He didn’t run as the water gently parted to reveal the tapering, long snout, as long as his own body but graceful and lithe. Flared nostrils came free of the water, steam rising from them. Then came the terrible maw, water running out either side between the teeth-fangs as long as the poor dwarf’s leg. Weeds hung from the maw, too, caught on those great teeth, trailing and dripping as the head rose up above the gray flatness of the pond.

  Up it rose, and as it did, the beast drifted forward, slowly and silently, so that in the span of a few moments the dragon’s head towered above the paralyzed dwarf, barely ten feet from the muddy bank.

  Ringo’s breath came in short gasps. Locked by the power of those awful reptilian eyes, his head tilted back as the head rose on the black-scaled, serpentine neck. Slowly, the dragon swayed, and Ringo moved with it, though he was totally unaware of his own motion.

  Beautiful, he thought, for the grace and power of the wyrm could not be denied.

  There was something preternatural, some power unbound by the limitations mere mortals might know, something godlike and beyond the sensibilities of the dwarf. Gone were any thoughts of drawing a weapon against so magnificent a beast. How could he presume to challenge a god? Who was he to even dare ask such a creature to think him worthy of battle?

  Transfixed, entranced, overwhelmed by the power and the beauty, Ringo barely registered the movement, the snakelike speed of the strike as the dragon’s head snapped forward, the jaws opening to fall over him.

  The dragon was in the lake, swaying methodically.

  There was darkness.

  And Ringo knew no more.

  “Bah, Heft-a-stone, will ye be quick about it, then?” Nordwinnil Fellhammer moaned, rising from his cross-legged position beside the campfire. “Suren that me lips are par-”

  Nordwinnil’s words caught in his throat as he turned to regard the pond and Ringo-or the two partial legs, knee-to-foot, standing in Ringo’s boots where Ringo had just been. Nordwinnil’s eyes widened and his jaw hung open as one of those legs tipped over, falling outward to plop into the mud.

  “Yeah, me own throat as-” said another of the dwarves, and he, too, abruptly cut off his sentence as he turned toward the pond and saw the gigantic black dragon crouching in the water near the shore.

  The beast chomped down, and one of Ringo’s arms fell free to splash into the pond.

  “D-d-d-d-dragon!” Nordwinnil screamed.

  He tried to sprint out to the side but turned so furiously that he twisted his legs together and wound up tumbling headlong into the tent behind him. He thrashed and scrambled as all the dwarves began to shout. He heard a thump and knew it to be an axe slapping defiantly against a wooden shield.

  The ground trembled as the beast came forth from the pond, and Nordwinnil scrambled all the more-and of course that only entangled him in the canvas all the more.

  More cries assailed him, screams of fright and a growl of defiance. He heard a crossbow crank back, followed by the sharp clic
k of the bolt’s release, the hiss of the wyrm, the abbreviated shriek of the dwarf archer, and the sloppy, crackling impact of the dragon’s fangs biting the dwarf in half.

  Nordwinnil tucked his legs and drove forward as a rain of dwarf blood sprinkled over him and the tent. He finally came out on the far side and kept on scrambling, crawling on all fours.

  He couldn’t shout past the lump in his throat when he heard his companions crying out, horribly shrieking, behind him. He didn’t dare look back and nearly fainted with terror when he felt a slap on his back.

  But it was a dwarf, good old Pergiss MacRingle, grabbing him by the collar and dragging him along.

  Good old Pergiss! Pergiss wouldn’t leave him behind.

  With his friend steadying him as they went, Nordwinnil managed to get his legs under him and climb to his feet. On they ran, or tried to, for the ground shook as if an earthquake had struck. The dragon stomped down on another dwarf, crushing the poor fellow into the soft ground. Pergiss and Nordwinnil tangled up and crashed down, and both fought to regain their footing.

  Nordwinnil looked back as the dragon turned their way, and those horrible eyes found him and held him.

  “Come on then, ye dolt!” Pergiss cried, but Nordwinnil couldn’t move.

  Pergiss looked back, and the dragon snapped its great leathery wings out wide, stealing the meager remnants of daylight with its magnificent blackness.

  “By the gods,” Pergiss managed to say.

  The dragon’s head shot forward just a few feet, its jaws opened wide, and it blew forth a spray of green-black acidic spittle.

  Nordwinnil and Pergiss lifted their arms before them to fend off the deadly rain, but the sticky, burning substance engulfed them.

  They screamed. They burned. They melted together so completely that anyone who happened upon the scene would never know where Nordwinnil ended and Pergiss began.

  There was silence again by the still pond near Palishchuk. The buzzards watched with interest, but they dared not take wing and caw.