“And Addadearber will take over the world!” Ashelia said, grinning widely. “Or Icewind Dale, at the least. Are ye worthy o’ that kingdom, wizard?”
“What ill have I done to deserve it?” Addadearber replied.
“My fingers are freezing. I can barely hold the thing!” Lathan complained, swinging the axe at the end of one arm.
“I’ll take it,” Spragan was quick to reply, but all he received in answer was a scowl.
“I’m older. You just collect the kindli-” Lathan stopped short, confused when he glanced to his left to see that Spragan was no longer beside him on the trail, that the trail itself was no longer the same as he remembered. He stood beside a stand of birch, but didn’t remember passing it. “Spragan?”
No answer.
Lathan looked all around, and the ground behind seemed strangely unfamiliar, though he had just crossed. When he turned back to look ahead, he saw a copse of thick trees crowded in front of him, with no sign of the trail.
“Spragan!” he called more loudly. He moved off quickly in one direction for a short bit then back the other way, then back the way he had come.
“Spragan!”
“What?” his younger friend answered from right beside him, so suddenly Lathan nearly swung the axe at him.
“What’s the matter?” Spragan asked.
Lathan shook his head. “Let’s get done and get out of here.”
Spragan looked at him as though he had no idea what Lathan might be talking about, but he shrugged and indicated a nearby hillside where several older trees had shed their branches. “Kindling,” he announced, and started away.
Lathan took a deep breath and berated himself for showing such irrational cowardice in front of the younger boy. He took up the axe with grim determination, sighted a nearby young elm, and decided that a bit of exercise and axe-swinging might be just what he needed to settle his nerves.
He hoisted the axe in both his hands, wringing the cold out of them, as he strode purposefully toward his goal. As he neared, he glanced back to make sure that Spragan remained in sight.
He couldn’t see his friend. He couldn’t even seem to locate the hillside Spragan had indicated, though he hadn’t traveled more than a dozen steps.
Lathan gripped the axe more tightly.
Spragan suffered no such reservations or uneasy feelings. He danced through the thick underbrush and among the many wildflowers, gathering twigs and small branches. It had been a long day and he was hungry. He licked his lips repeatedly, almost tasting the trout in anticipation.
He bent down to a shrub and picked up an old, dry, long-dead branch, eyes widening as he thought his job might be done with but one catch. He propped the branch against a tree and kicked at its center, breaking it in half, then bent to retrieve one of the pieces so he could break it again.
He froze halfway down, seeing that he was not alone.
She smiled at him as only a young girl could, bright and beaming, and with a shake of her head that sent her long auburn hair dancing over her girlish shoulders. Her dress, too, caught his attention, for it seemed so out of place, inadequate against the chill winds of Icewind Dale. White and full of ruffles, it seemed more a gown fitting for a grand ball in Bryn Shander than something one would wear into the forest. Even the black cloak tied around her shoulders appeared more fashionable than warm.
“What are you doing out … Who are you?” Spragan sputtered.
The girl smiled and stared at him.
“Do you live here?”
She giggled and dashed behind a tree.
Spragan dropped the branch and rushed to follow her, but when he went around the tree, she was nowhere to be seen.
She was behind him! He sensed it without turning. Spragan jumped forward a step and whirled around.
It was her, but it wasn’t her, the girl before him was his age, at least.
And she took his breath away. She had to be the older sister of the child he’d just seen, with her bright smile, flowing reddish-brown hair, and blue eyes-so blue he seemed to sink right into them as he stared at her. But it wasn’t her older sister, Spragan sensed. It was the same girl, only older, and dressed the same. Confused, the poor young man reached for her arm.
His hand went right through her as she vanished, just faded to nothingness.
A young girl’s giggle had him spinning back around, and there she was, right there, and no older than eight.
And she was gone again. A woman’s laughter turned him once more, and she was as old as his mother, though still incredibly beautiful.
A young girl again. A teenager, like him. A child once more. A woman, no more a girl. An old crone … One after another they appeared to him, all around him, laughing-laughing at him! — and turning him this way and that. Poor Spragan jumped around, then tried to sprint away, stumbling down the hillside.
Singing filled the air around him, sweet and melancholy, and peppering him with a range of emotions. He tried to pick up speed, but stumbled again then caught himself fast against one tree and skidded to an abrupt halt as he used it to turn around.
And she was there, right in front of him, a woman again, perhaps twenty-five years of age. She wasn’t singing anymore, and wasn’t smiling, her face tight, her eyes intense. Spragan shrank back from her, but his legs wouldn’t heed his command to run.
The woman breathed deeply, her arms lifting to her sides, her form blurring suddenly as the air around her shimmered with some unknown energy. Her hair blew back and fluttered wildly, though there was no wind, and her layered gown did likewise as she rose up tall before him-no, not tall, he realized to his horror! She floated in the air! And purple flames erupted all around her, and her eyes rolled up into her head, showing only white.
Spragan gave a cry of horror and hot winds buffeted him and flung him to the ground.
“Who are you?” he cried, scrambling to his knees.
The wind came on more furiously, carrying twigs that nicked at him as they flew past, and sand that stung his eyes and reddened his face. He rose against the blow and turned.
She was still there, floating in the air, flames dancing around her, hair flying wildly.
Then she was a little girl again, but no less ominous-indeed more threatening as her eyes rolled back to show blue, and her mouth opened wide in a sinister hiss.
Spragan ran past her, and he was half-running and half-flying as the wind gripped him and rushed him along. He cried out and tried to duck, but too late. Even though he managed to lift an arm, it served as little defense as he smashed into a low branch and was thrown onto his back.
The ground below him reverberated with music, like a heartbeat, and the air hummed with the woman’s song.
Words flitted through poor Spragan’s mind: “ghost” … “banshee” … But whatever it was, whatever she was, he knew beyond doubt that he was doomed. Though dazed, his nose broken, he tried to run on, blood filling his mouth, tears dulling his vision.
But she was there at every turn, young or old, and terribly beautiful.
So terribly beautiful.
Lathan set the axe between his feet, spat in both his hands, and gripped the handle tightly. He gave a growl as he lifted the axe back over his right shoulder, lining up his first strike on the young elm tree, but he had to pause when the axe brushed the branch of a nearby pine.
Lathan looked at it curiously, wondering how he hadn’t noticed it was so close. With a shrug, he shifted a step to the side and hoisted the axe once more.
A gust of wind hit him just as he began his swing, and the pine beside him swayed in the sudden breeze, and again his axe clipped through needled branches as it came forth, and before it could gain any momentum, it got hooked on one of those branches and held fast.
“What the-?” Lathan asked aloud as he turned to regard the tree.
Then the wind began to blow more furiously, and the pine danced as wildly as Lathan’s blond hair. Stubbornly he tugged at the axe, but the tree held it fast.
“No, you don’t!” he growled in defiance, and with a great tug, he tore the axe free. Before the wind could interfere again, he turned and swung at the elm.
But the tree was faster, bending low and to the side, sweeping past him with a great whoosh, and as Lathan tried to continue his swing, he found his legs pulled out from under him, throwing him facedown to the ground, the axe bouncing from his grasp. And still the tree wound back, pulling the caught Lathan with it, though he clawed desperately at the ground to stop his slide.
Finally he did stop, and he rolled, trying to free his foot.
The wind stopped as abruptly as it had come up, and that seemed a good thing to Lathan only as long as it took him to realize that he was caught in the branch of a rather tall pine tree that was bent low.
He managed to gasp before the rush of the tree’s return swing snatched him up and took his breath away, lifting him high and fast into the air, only to let him go at exactly the right moment.
Screaming, spinning, flailing wildly and helplessly, Lathan flew through the forest. Every instant, he cringed, thinking he was about to splatter against a tree or branch, but each time he somehow missed, as if the forest was getting out of his way.
On he flew, out of the forest, and below him, Roundabout looked up, mouth agape. Over the boat and the dock he went, out to the waters of Lac Dinneshere, where he landed with a great splash.
“Ashelia! Wizard!” Roundabout cried, sprinting to the boat to grab a rope or something to throw to the lad, who flailed in the water some thirty feet out from the dock.
The two came out of the cabin just as a second missile soared overhead, much higher and farther than Lathan. Easily a hundred feet out from the dock, the woodsman’s axe splashed into the waters of Lac Dinneshere.
Roundabout’s very first throw of the rope proved perfect, but still it took them some time to pull the shivering, terrified Lathan from the frigid water.
“Get him inside afore his toes fall off!” Ashelia instructed.
“Spragan! Where is Spragan?” Addadearber yelled at the wailing young man.
They hustled him off the dock, and before they even reached the cabin, Addadearber had his answer. Rushing out of the forest, crying and screaming, waving his arms as if a hive of bees was right behind him, came poor Spragan, his face all cut and bloody, his jacket shredded, one shoe missing. He fell to the ground, obviously not for the first time, and Roundabout ran to him.
Spragan screamed and tried to flee.
The ranger called out his name in comforting tones and tried to reach for him in an unthreatening manner, but Spragan howled all the louder, and thrashed as if fighting for his very life against a horde of demons. He tried to run away, but got his feet all tangled and fell down again.
Roundabout was on him in an instant, expertly tying him up in a paralyzing hold, one that put the ranger’s mouth near to Spragan’s ear, where he whispered reassurances.
But if the boy heard him, he didn’t show it, and just began wailing, “She’s going to eat me! She’s going to eat me!” over and over again.
Roundabout glanced at the dark forest, then set his feet under him and hauled himself and the boy up, keeping the lad’s arms fully locked all the way. With superior strength, he lifted Spragan right from the ground so that he couldn’t dig in his heels and get any leverage to tug free.
But by then, the boy had fallen limp anyway, sobbing quietly and whispering every so often that he didn’t want to die.
A short while later, Addadearber and Roundabout stood beside the cabin, staring into the forest. Behind them, the sun reached in long rays across Lac Dinneshere.
“I see more intrigue than trepidation on your face, wizard,” Roundabout remarked after a long silence.
“Magic,” the wizard answered. “Lots of it.”
“Felt it when we first got here,” the ranger agreed. “Do you know the name of this place?”
“Didn’t know it had a name.”
“Only the barbarian tribes know it,” Roundabout explained. “They named it Iruladoon long, long ago, before Ten-Towns, when the elves were thick in Icewind Dale.”
“I’ve not heard that word before.”
“Old Elvish word,” Roundabout explained. “It translates to ‘a place without time.’ I expect the barbarians thought it appropriate because the long-lived elves didn’t seem to age.”
“Spragan talked about a girl, a woman, in various stages of age all at once. Might it be that there’s more to the naming of Iruladoon than simpleton barbarians being confused by long-lived elves?”
“You want to find out, of course,” Roundabout remarked.
“I’ve devoted my whole life to the Art,” Addadearber replied. “It is my religion, my hope that there is something more beyond this pitiful, short existence we’re offered. And now I, like so many of my colleagues, have watched the collapse of all that we hold dear. I stand before a place of magic-that much is assured. Does it hold some answers? Some hope? I know not, but know that I am bound by my faith to find out.”
“The wood’s not wanting visitors,” Roundabout reminded him.
Addadearber nodded. “I have a spell that will allow me passage. I fear to use it, but I shall. And you, of course, believe that you can enter Iruladoon.”
Roundabout nodded, and with a grin to his companion, the ranger pulled up his hood.
“Should we wait until morning?” the wizard asked.
“I prefer the dark,” Roundabout replied with a wink of his blue eye.
The ranger moved to the trees at a careful pace. He paused for just a moment when he reached the tree line, then nodded and disappeared into the forest.
Addadearber cast a minor spell upon himself and squinted into the shadows, ensuring that his spell had worked to enhance his lowlight vision. Then he paused and prepared himself for the more potent, and thus, far more dangerous, dweomer. Not long ago, the enchantment had been a routine thing to powerful Addadearber, but since the advent of the Spellplague, he hadn’t dared attempt it. Reports from all over Faerun spoke of wizards permanently trapped inside one of their own spells, and Addadearber didn’t find that prospect particularly appealing.
But the forest beckoned him, the promise of revelation. He gave a short puff, blowing out all of his doubts, and immediately launched into casting. Arms waving, he chanted furiously, throwing all of his power into the dweomer, reminding himself of the potential consequences of failure.
He turned black head to toe. Not a darker hue, but absolute black, seeming almost dimensionless in his monotone color. Then he flattened, parchment thin, as the wraithform took full hold.
Addadearber didn’t breathe in his undead form, but if he did, he would be breathing easier, to be sure. Roundabout had gone into Iruladoon cautiously, but the wizard needed no such care. Not in that form, where he could slip silently and unnoticed from deepening shadow to deepening shadow.
As if carried on a stiff breeze, a parchment blowing in the wind, Addadearber soared up and between the lines of trees.
He sensed Roundabout as he glided past the creeping man, who stiffened and sniffed and glanced all around, but never caught on to Addadearber’s passing. With great speed, he managed the entire perimeter of Iruladoon before the onset of twilight, coming back to the same area where he had first entered the wood. Then he went in deeper, following no path but his own instincts, weaving silently and invisibly in the darkening night.
His eyes flashed as he crested one hill, for there, in the distance, he saw a campfire. As he neared it, he noted that it was on the edge of a small pond. Behind it and to the side, a circular door had been set against the face of an earthen mound-the type of house he had seen in halfling communities. And so he was not surprised when exactly that, a halfling with curly brown hair and a disarming, easy stride walked out from behind the house, a fishing pole over one shoulder and his other thumb hooked under one of the red suspenders that held up his breeches, which in turn held up his rather am
ple belly.
Addadearber held back and let the little one set the pole upon a forked stick he had set in the bank, though he didn’t bother to cast his line just then. He went back to his fire and assembled a tripod, upon which he hung a sizable pot. Then he went to the pond with a bucket. Apparently soup or stew was on the menu for that night.
Satisfied that there was nothing amiss about the place, and likely no one else about, the wizard closed his eyes and released his dweomer. He felt only a few short instances of tingling pain as his body expanded to its three-dimensional proportions.
He allowed himself a deep sigh of relief.
“You call this place home?” the wizard asked, startling the halfling.
The little one turned to regard the man with curiosity. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said, obvious alarm in his voice. “This is not your place.”
“But I am here, and I am not pleased.”
The halfling cocked his head, and if he was concerned by the wizard’s tone, he did not show it.
“Do you know who I am?”
The halfling shook his head.
“I am Addadearber of the Lightning!”
The halfling shrugged.
“I am the chief mage of Caer-Dineval, the mightiest wizard of Icewind Dale,” Addadearber declared.
That seemed to pique the little one’s interest, as his mouth formed the words “Icewind Dale” incredulously.
“The mightiest!” the impatient wizard reiterated.
The halfling wore a wry smile and glanced around. “I doubt that.”
“And that is why I am here. A couple of my friends were ill-treated by the forest you call home-or by some wizard within. They were expelled, brutally, and by magic.”
“They did not belong here.”
“You say that a lot.”
“For your own, and for their own, benefit,” the halfling explained. “This is not a place for visitors. You should leave.”
“Little one, do not anger me. You will not enjoy the spectacle of an angry Addadearber. I will leave when I decide …”
The Collected Stories, The Legend of Drizzt (forgotten realms) Page 27