Sojourn

by R. A. Salvatore

  Looking at the ranger and Guenhwyvar, so at ease and accepting of one another, Drizzt felt the pangs of friendship and guilt. “Perhaps I should never have come,” he whispered, turning his gaze back to the moon.

  “Why?” Montolio asked quietly. “You do not like my food?” His smile disarmed Drizzt as the drow turned back to him somberly.

  “To the surface, I mean,” Drizzt explained, managing a laugh in spite of his melancholy. “Sometimes I think my choice a selfish act.”

  “Survival usually is,” Montolio replied. “I have felt that way myself on some occasions. I was once forced to drive my sword into a man’s heart. The harshness of the world brings great remorse, but mercifully it is a passing lament and certainly not one to carry into battle.”

  “How I wish it would pass,” Drizzt remarked, more to himself or to the moon than to Montolio.

  But the remark hit Montolio squarely. The closer he and Drizzt had become, the more the ranger shared Drizzt’s unknown burden. The drow was young by elf standards but was already world-wise and skilled in battle beyond most professional soldiers. Undeniably one of Drizzt’s dark heritage would find barriers in an unaccepting surface world. By Montolio’s estimation, though, Drizzt should be able to get through these prejudices and live a long and prosperous life, given his considerable talents. What was it, Montolio wondered, that so burdens this elf? Drizzt suffered more than he smiled and punished himself more than he should.

  “Is yours an honest lament?” Montolio asked him. “Most are not, you know. Most self-imposed burdens are founded on misperceptions. We—at least we of sincere character―always judge ourselves by stricter standards than we expect others to abide by. It is a curse, I suppose, or a blessing, depending on how one views it.” He cast his sightless gaze Drizzt’s way. “Take it as a blessing, my friend, an inner calling that forces you to strive to unattainable heights.”

  “A frustrating blessing” Drizzt replied casually.

  “Only when you do not pause to consider the advances that the striving has brought to you,” Montolio was quick to reply, as though he had expected the drow’s words. “Those who aspire to less accomplish less. There can be no doubt. It is better, I think, to grab at the stars than to sit flustered because you know you cannot reach them.” He shot Drizzt his typical wry smile. “At least he who reaches will get a good stretch, a good view, and perhaps even a low-hanging apple for his effort!”

  “And perhaps also a low-flying arrow fired by some unseen assailant,” Drizzt remarked sourly.

  Montolio tilted his head helplessly against Drizzt’s unending stream of pessimism. It pained him deeply to see the good-hearted drow so scarred. “He might indeed,” Montolio said, a bit more harshly than he had intended, “but the loss of life is only great to those who chance to live it! Let your arrow come in low and catch the huddler on the ground, I say. His death would not be so tragic!”

  Drizzt could not deny the logic, nor the comfort the old ranger gave to him. Over the last few weeks, Montolio’s offhanded philosophies and way of looking at the world—pragmatically yet heavily edged with youthful exuberance, put Drizzt more at ease than he had been since his earliest training days in Zaknafein’s gymnasium. But Drizzt also could not deny the inevitably short life span of that comfort. Words could soothe, but they could not erase the haunting memories of Drizzt’s past, the distant voices of dead Zaknafein, dead Clacker, and the dead farmers. A single mental echo of “drizzit” vanquished hours of Montolio’s well-intended advice.

  “Enough of this cockeyed banter,” Montolio went on, seeming perturbed. “I call you friend, Drizzt Do’Urden, and I hope you call me the same. What sort of friend might I be against this weight that stoops your shoulders unless I know more of it? I am your friend, or I am not. The decision is yours, but if I am not, then I see no purpose in sharing nights as wondrous as this beside you. Tell me, Drizzt, or be gone from my home!”

  Drizzt could hardly believe that Montolio, normally so patient and relaxed, had put him on such a spot. The drow’s first reaction was to recoil, to build a wall of anger in the face of the old man’s presumptions and cling to that which he considered personal. As the moments passed, though, and Drizzt got beyond his initial surprise and took the time to sift through Montolio’s statement, he came to understand one basic truth that excused those presumptions: He and Montolio had indeed become friends, mostly through the ranger’s efforts.

  Montolio wanted to share in Drizzt’s past, so that he might better understand and comfort his new friend.

  “Do you know of Menzoberranzan, the city of my birth and of my kin?” Drizzt asked softly. Even speaking the name pained him. “And do you know the ways of my people, or the Spider Queen’s edicts?”

  Montolio’s voice was somber as he replied. “Tell me all of it, I beg,”

  Drizzt nodded—Montolio sensed the motion even if he could not see it—and relaxed against the tree. He stared at the moon but actually looked right past it. His mind wandered back through his adventures, back down that road to Menzoberranzan, to the Academy, and to House Do’Urden. He held his thoughts there for a while, lingering on the complexities of drow family life and on the welcomed simplicity of his times in the training room with Zaknafein.

  Montolio watched patiently, guessing that Drizzt was looking for a place to begin. From what he had learned from Drizzt’s passing remarks, Drizzt’s life had been filled with adventure and turbulent times, and Montolio knew that it would be no easy feat for Drizzt, with his still limited command of the common tongue, to accurately recount all of it. Also, given the burdens, the guilt and the sorrow, the drow obviously carried, Montolio suspected that Drizzt might be hesitant.

  “I was born on an important day in the history of my family,” Drizzt began. “On that day, House Do’Urden eliminated House DeVir.”

  “Eliminated?”

  “Massacred,” Drizzt explained. Montolio’s blind eyes revealed nothing, but the ranger’s expression was clearly one of revulsion, as Drizzt had expected. Drizzt wanted his companion to understand the horrible depths of drow society, so he pointedly added, “And on that day, too, my brother Dinin drove his sword through the heart of our other brother, Nalfein.”

  A shudder coursed up Montolio’s spine and he shook his head. He realized that he was only just beginning to understand the burdens Drizzt carried.

  “It is the drow way,” Drizzt said calmly, matter-of-factly, trying to impart the dark elves’ casual attitude toward murder. “There is a strict structure of rank in Menzoberranzan. To climb it, to attain a higher rank, whether as an individual or a family, you simply eliminate those above you.”

  A slight quiver in his voice betrayed Drizzt to the ranger. Montolio clearly understood that Drizzt did not accept the evil practices, and never had.

  Drizzt went on with his story, telling it completely and accurately, at least for the more than forty years he had spent in the Underdark. He told of his days under the strict tutelage of his sister Vierna, cleaning the house chapel endlessly and learning of his innate powers and his place in drow society. Drizzt spent a long time explaining that peculiar social structure to Montolio, the hierarchies based on strict rank, and the hypocrisy of drow “law,” a cruel facade screening a city of utter chaos. The ranger cringed as he heard of the family wars. They were brutal conflicts that allowed for no noble survivors, not even children. Montolio cringed even more when Drizzt told him of drow “justice,” of the destruction wreaked upon a house that had failed in its attempt to eradicate another family.

  The tale was less grim when Drizzt told of Zaknafein, his father and dearest friend. Of course, Drizzt’s happy memories of his father became only a short reprieve, a prelude to the horrors of Zaknafein’s demise. “My mother killed my father,” Drizzt explained soberly, his deep pain evident, “sacrificed him to Lloth for my crimes, then animated his corpse and sent it out to kill me, to punish me for betraying the family and the Spider Queen.”

  It took a
while for Drizzt to resume, but when he did, he again spoke truthfully, even revealing his own failures in his days alone in the wilds of the Underdark. “I feared that I had lost myself and my principles to some instinctive, savage monster,” Drizzt said, verging on despair. But then the emotional wave that had been his existence rose again, and a smile found his face as he recounted his time beside Belwar, the most honored svirfneblin burrow-warden, and Clacker, the pech who had been polymorphed into a hook horror. Expectedly, the smile proved short-lived, for Drizzt’s tale eventually led him to where Clacker fell to Matron Malice’s undead monster. Another friend had died on Drizzt’s behalf.

  Appropriately, by the time Drizzt came to his exit from the Underdark, the dawn peeked through the eastern mountains. Now Drizzt picked his words more carefully, not ready to divulge the tragedy of the farming family for fear that Montolio would judge him and blame him, destroying their newfound bond. Rationally, Drizzt could remind himself that he had not killed the farmers, had even avenged their deaths, but guilt was rarely a rational emotion, and Drizzt simply could not find the words—not yet.

  Montolio, aged and wise and with animal scouts throughout the region, knew that Drizzt was concealing something. When they had first met, the drow had mentioned a doomed farming family, and Montolio had heard of a family slaughtered in the village of Maldobar. Montolio didn’t believe for a minute that Drizzt could have done it, but he suspected that the drow was somehow involved. He didn’t press Drizzt, though. Drizzt had been more honest, and more complete, than Montolio had expected, and the ranger was confident that the drow would fill in the obvious holes in his own time.

  “It is a good tale,” Montolio said at length. “You have been through more in your few decades than most elves will know in three hundred years. But the scars are few, and they will heal.”

  Drizzt, not so certain, put a lamenting look upon him, and Montolio could only offer a comforting pat on the shoulder as he rose and headed off for bed.

  * * *

  Drizzt was still asleep when Montolio roused Hooter and tied a thick note to the owl’s leg. Hooter wasn’t so pleased at the ranger’s instructions; the journey could take a week, valuable and enjoyable time at this height of the mousing and mating season. For all its whining hoots, however, the owl would not disobey.

  Hooter ruffled its feathers, caught the first gust of wind, and soared effortlessly across the snow-covered range to the passes that would take it to Maldobar—and beyond that to Sundabar, if need be. A certain ranger of no small fame, a sister of the Lady of Silverymoon, was still in the region, Montolio knew through his animal connections, and he charged Hooter with seeking her out.

  * * *

  “Will-there-be-no-end-to-it?” the sprite whined, watching the burly human pass along the trail. “First-the-nasty-drow-and-now-this-brute! Am-I-never-to-be-rid-of-these-trouble-makers?” Tephanis slapped his head and stamped his feet so rapidly that he dug himself a little hole.

  Down on the trail, the big, scarred yellow dog growled and bared its teeth, and Tephanis, realizing that his pouting had been too loud, zipped in a wide semicircle, crossing the trail far behind the traveler and coming up on the other flank. The yellow dog, still looking in the opposite direction, cocked its head and whimpered in confusion.

  15. A Shadow over Sanctuary

  Drizzt and Montolio said nothing of the drow’s tale over the next couple of days. Drizzt brooded over painfully rekindled memories, and Montolio tactfully gave him the room he needed. They went about their daily business methodically, farther apart, and with less enthusiasm, but the distance was a passing thing, which they both realized.

  Gradually they came closer together, leaving Drizzt with hopes that he had found a friend as true as Belwar or even Zaknafein. One morning, though, the drow was awakened by a voice that he recognized all too well, and Drizzt thought at once that his time with Montolio had come to a crashing end.

  He crawled to the wooden wall that protected his dugout chamber and peered through.

  “Drow elf, Mooshie,” Roddy McGristle was saying, holding a broken scimitar out for the old ranger to see. The burly mountain man, looming even larger in the many layers of furs he wore, sat atop a small but muscled horse just outside of the rock wall surrounding the grove. “Ye seen him?”

  “Seen?” Montolio echoed sarcastically, giving an exaggerated wink of his milky-white eyes. Roddy was not amused.

  “Ye know what I mean!” he growled. “Ye see more’n the rest of us, so don’t ye be playin’ dumb!” Roddy’s dog, showing a wicked scar from where Drizzt had struck it, caught a familiar scent then and started sniffing excitedly and darting back and forth along the paths of the grove.

  Drizzt crouched at the ready, a scimitar in one hand and a look of dread and confusion on his face. He had no desire to fight—he did not even want to strike the dog again.

  “Get your dog back to your side!” Montolio huffed.

  McGristle’s curiosity was obvious. “Seen the dark elf, Mooshie?” he asked again, this time suspiciously.

  “Might that I have,” Montolio replied. He turned and let out a shrill, barely audible whistle. Immediately, Roddy’s dog, hearing the ranger’s clear ire in no uncertain terms, dropped its tail between its legs and slunk back to stand beside its master’s horse.

  “I’ve a brood of fox pups in there,” the ranger lied angrily. “If your dog sets on them… ” Montolio let the threat hang at that, and apparently Roddy was impressed. He dropped a noose down over the dog’s head and pulled it tight to his side.

  “A drow, must be the same one, came through here before the first snows,” Montolio went on. “You will have a hard hunt for that one, bounty hunter.” He laughed. “He had some trouble with Graul, by my knowledge, then set out again, back for his dark home, I would guess. Do you mean to follow the drow down into the Underdark? Certainly your reputation would grow considerably, bounty hunter, though your very life might prove the cost!”

  Drizzt relaxed at the words; Montolio had lied for him! He could see that the ranger did not hold McGristle in high regard, and that fact, too, brought comfort to Drizzt. Then Roddy came back forcefully, laying out the story of the tragedy in Maldobar in a blunt and warped way that put Drizzt and Montolio’s friendship to a tough test.

  “The drow killed the Thistledowns!” Roddy roared at the ranger’s smug smile, which vanished in the blink of an eye. “Slaughtered them, and his panther ate one o’ them. Ye knew Bartholemew Thistledown, ranger. Shame on ye for talkin’ lightly on his murderer!”

  “Drow killed them?” Montolio asked grimly.

  Roddy held out the broken scimitar once more. “Cut ‘em down,” he growled. “There’s two thousand gold pieces on that one’s head—I’ll give ye back five hunnerd if ye can find out more for me.”

  “I have no need of your gold,” Montolio quickly replied.

  “But do ye have need to see the killer brought in?” Roddy shot back. “Do ye mourn for the deaths o’ the Thistledown clan, as fine a family as any?”

  Montolio’s ensuing pause led Drizzt to believe that the ranger might turn him in. Drizzt decided then that he would not run, whatever Montolio’s decision. He could deny the bounty hunter’s anger, but not Montolio’s. If the ranger accused him, Drizzt would have to face him and be judged.

  “Sad day,” Montolio muttered. “Fine family, indeed. Catch the drow, McGristle. It would be the best bounty you ever earned.”

  “Where to start?” Roddy asked calmly, apparently thinking he had won Montolio over. Drizzt thought so, too, especially when Montolio turned and looked back toward the grove.

  “You have heard of Morueme’s Cave?” Montolio asked.

  Roddy’s expression visibly dropped at the question. Morueme’s Cave, on the edge of the great desert Anauroch, was so named for the family of blue dragons that lived there. “Hunnerd an’ fifty miles,” McGristle groaned. “Through the Nethers—a tough range.”

  “The drow went there, or ab
out there, early in the winter,” Montolio lied.

  “Drow went to the dragons?” Roddy asked, surprised.

  “More likely, the drow went to some other hole in that region,” Montolio replied. “The dragons of Morueme could possibly know of him. You should inquire there.”

  “I’m not so quick to bargain with dragons,” Roddy said somberly. “To risky, and even goin’, well, it costs too much!”

  “Then it seems that Roddy McGristle has missed his first catch,” Montolio said. “A good try, though, against the likes of a dark elf.”

  Roddy reined in his horse and spun the beast about. “Don’t ye put yer bets against me, Mooshie!” he roared back over his shoulder. “I’ll not let this one get away, if I have to search every hole in the Nethers myself!”

  “Seems a bit of trouble for two thousand gold,” Montolio remarked, not impressed.

  “Drow took my dog, my ear, and give me this scar!” Roddy countered, pointing to his torn face. The bounty hunter realized the absurdity of his actions—of course, the blind ranger could not see him—and spun back, setting his horse charging out of the grove.

  Montolio waved a hand disgustedly at McGristle’s back, then turned to find the drow. Drizzt met him on the edge of the grove, hardly knowing how to thank Montolio.

  “Never liked that one,” Montolio explained.

  “The Thistledown family was murdered,” Drizzt admitted bluntly.

  Montolio nodded.

  “You knew?”

  “I knew before you came here,” the ranger answered. “Honestly, I wondered if you did it, at first.”

  “I did not,” Drizzt said.

  Again Montolio nodded.

  The time had come for Drizzt to fill in the details of his first few months on the surface. All the guilt came back to him when he recounted his battle with the gnoll group, and all the pain came rushing back, focused on the word “drizzit,” when he told of the Thistledowns and his gruesome discovery. Montolio identified the speedy sprite as a quickling but was quite at a loss to explain the giant goblin and wolf creatures that Drizzt had battled in the cave.