The defenders looked on with shock. Cadderly stared with amazement after the blue-white image and gasped at his memories of the Prophecies of Alaundo and of this year, 1385, the Year of Blue Fire. Coincidence, or fitting representation of their greater catastrophe? Before he could delve any deeper into his contemplations, from a room much farther inside Spirit Soaring, Catti-brie screamed in abject terror.
PART 4
SACRIFICE
The recognition of utter helplessness is more than humbling; it is devastating. On those occasions when it is made clear to someone, internally, that willpower or muscle or technique will not be enough to overcome the obstacles placed before him, that he is helpless before those obstacles, there follows a brutal mental anguish.
When Wulfgar was taken by Errtu in the Abyss, he was beaten and physically tortured, but on those few occasions I was able to coax my friend to speak of that time, those notes he sang most loudly in despair were those of his helplessness. The demon, for example, would make him believe that he was free and was living with the woman he loved, then would slaughter her and their illusionary children before Wulfgar’s impotent gaze.
That torture created Wulfgar’s most profound and lasting scars.
When I was a child in Menzoberranzan, I was taught a lesson universal to male drow. My sister Briza took me out to the edge of our cavern homeland where a gigantic earth elemental waited. The beast was harnessed and Briza handed me the end of the rein.
“Hold it back,” she instructed.
I didn’t quite understand, and when the elemental took a step away, the rope was pulled from my hand.
Briza struck me with her whip, of course, and no doubt, she enjoyed it.
“Hold it back,” she said again.
I took the rope and braced myself. The elemental took a step and I went flying after it. It didn’t even know that I existed, or that I was tugging with all my insignificant strength to try to hinder its movement.
Briza scowled as she informed me that I would try again.
This test must be a matter of cleverness, I decided, and instead of just bracing myself, I looped the rope around a nearby stalagmite, to Briza’s approving nods, and dug in my heels.
The elemental, on command, took a step and whipped me around the stone as if I were no more than a bit of parchment in a furious gale. The monster didn’t slow, didn’t even notice.
In that moment, I was shown my limitations, without equivocation. I was shown my impotence.
Briza then held the elemental in place with an enchantment and dismissed it with a second one. The point she was trying to make was that the divine magic of Lolth overwhelmed both muscle and technique. This was no more than another subjugation tactic by the ruling matron mothers, to make the males of Menzoberranzan understand their lowly place, their inferiority, particularly to those more in Lolth’s favor.
For me, and I suspect for many of my kin, the lesson was more personal and less societal, for that was my first real experience encountering a force supremely beyond my willpower, utterly beyond my control. It wasn’t as if had I tried harder or been more clever I might have changed the outcome. The elemental would have stepped away unhindered and unbothered no matter my determination.
To say I was humbled would be an understatement. There, in that dark cavern, I learned the first truth of both mortality and mortal flesh.
And now I feel that terrible measure of impotence again. When I look at Catti-brie, I know that she is beyond my ability to help. We all dream about being the hero, about finding the solution, about winning the moment and saving the day. And we all harbor, to some degree, the notion that our will can overcome, that determination and strength of mind can push us to great ends—and indeed they can. To a point.
Death is the ultimate barrier, and when faced with impending death, personally or for someone you love, a mortal being will encounter, most of all, ultimate humility.
We all believe that we can defeat that plague or that disease, should it befall us, through sheer willpower. It is a common mental defense against the inevitability we all know we share. I wonder, then, if the worst reality of a lingering death is the sense that your own body is beyond your ability to control.
In my case, the pain I feel in looking at Catti-brie is manifold, and not least among the variations is my own sense of helplessness. I deny the looks that Cadderly and Jarlaxle exchanged, expressions that revealed their hearts and minds. They cannot be right in their obvious belief that Catti-brie is beyond our help and surely doomed!
I demand that they are not right.
And yet I know that they are. Perhaps I only “know” because I fear beyond anything I have ever known that they are correct, and if they are, then I will know no closure. I cannot say goodbye to Catti-brie because I fear that I already have.
And thus, in moments of weakness, I lose faith and know that they are right. My love, my dearest friend, is lost to me forever—and there again lurches my stubbornness, for my first instinct was to write “likely forever.” I cannot admit the truth even as I admit the truth!
So many times have I seen my friends return from the brink of death: Bruenor on the back of a dragon, Wulfgar from the Abyss, Catti-brie from the dark plane of Tarterus. So many times have the odds been beaten. In the end, we always prevail!
But that is not true. And perhaps the cruelest joke of all is the confidence, the surety, that our good fortune and grand exploits have instilled in my friends, the Companions of the Hall.
How much worse becomes the cruel reality when at last we are touched by inescapable tragedy.
I look at Catti-brie and I am reminded of my limitations. My fantasies of saving the moment and the day are dashed against jagged and immovable rocks. I want to save her and I cannot. I look at Catti-brie, wandering lost, and in those moments when I can accept that this state is forever, my hopes become less about victory and more about …
I can hardly think it. Have I truly been reduced to hoping that this woman I love will pass on quickly and peacefully?
And still the fight goes on around us, I am sure, in this world gone mad. And still will my scimitars be put to use in a struggle that has, I fear, only just begun. And still will I be needed to mediate between Bruenor and Jarlaxle, Cadderly and Jarlaxle. I cannot skulk away and be alone with my mounting grief and pain. I cannot abrogate my responsibilities to those around me.
But it all, so suddenly, seems less important to me. Without Catti-brie, what is the point of our fight? Why defeat the dracolich when the outcome will not change, since we are all doomed in the end? Is it not true that that which we deem important is, in the grand scheme of the millennia and the multiverse, utterly and completely irrelevant?
This is the demon of despair wrought of impotence. More profound than the helplessness created by Shimmergloom the shadow dragon’s dark cloud of breath. More profound than the lesson of the drow matron mothers. For that question, “What is the point?” is the most insidious and destructive of all.
I must deny it. I cannot give in to it, for the sake of those around me and for the sake of myself, and yes, for the sake of Catti-brie, who would not allow me to surrender to such a concept.
Truly this inner turmoil tests me more than any demon, any dragon, any horde of ravaging orcs ever could.
For as this dark moment shows me the futility, so too it demands of me the faith—the faith that there is something beyond this mortal coil, that there is a place of greater understanding and universal community than this temporary existence.
Else it is all a sad joke.
— Drizzt Do’Urden
CHAPTER 24
WANDERING IN THE DARKNESS
How can I be tellin’ ye what I ain’t for knowing?” Ivan grumbled, putting Temberle back on his heels. “I thought … you might know …” the young man stammered. “You are a dwarf,” Hanaleisa added dryly.
“So’s he!” Ivan fumed, poking a finger Pikel’s way. His obstinate expression melted when he lo
oked back to the Bonaduce siblings, both wearing skeptical expressions. “Yeah, I know,” Ivan agreed with an exasperated sigh.
“Doo-dad,” said Pikel, and with an imperious “harrumph” of his own, he walked away.
“He’s durned good in the higher tunnels, though,” Ivan said in his brother’s defense. “When there’s roots pokin’ through. He talks to ‘em, and the damned things talk back!”
“Our current plight?” Rorick reminded, walking over to join the discussion. “The folk are sick of tunnels and growing ever more agitated.”
“They’d rather be out in Carradoon, would they?” Ivan retorted. It was sarcasm, of course, but to everyone’s surprise, Rorick didn’t blink.
“They’re saying that very thing,” he informed the others.
“They forget what chased us here in the first place,” said Temberle, but Rorick shook his head with every word.
“They forget nothing—and we’ve been fighting those same monsters in the tunnels, anyway.”
“From defensible positions, on ground of our choosing,” said Hanaleisa, to which Rorick merely shrugged.
“Do ye think ye might be finding yer way back to the tunnels near to Carradoon?” Ivan asked Temberle and Hanaleisa.
“You cannot …” Temberle started, but Hanaleisa cut him short.
“We can,” she said. “I’ve been marking the tunnels at various junctures. We can get back close to where we started, I’m sure.”
“Might be our best option,” said Ivan.
“No,” said Temberle.
“We’re not knowin’ what’s still there, boy,” Ivan reminded. “And we know what’s waiting for us in the mountains, and I know ye didn’t see nothing the size o’ that damned wyrm in Carradoon, else ye’d all be dead. I’d like to give ye a better choice—I’d like a better choice for meself! — but I’m not for knowing another way out o’ these tunnels, and the one I came down can’t be climbed, and I wouldn’t be climbing back that way anyhow!”
Temberle and Hanaleisa exchanged concerned looks, and both glanced across the torchlit chamber to the haggard refugees. The weight of responsibility pressed down upon them, for their decisions would affect everyone in that chamber, perhaps fatally.
“Choice ain’t for ye, anyway,” Ivan blustered a few heartbeats later, as if reading their thoughts, certainly reading their expressions. “Ye done good in gettin’ these folk from Carradoon, and I’ll be sure to tell yer Ma and Da that when we get back to Spirit Soaring. But I’m here now, and last time I bothered to look, I’ve got a bit o’ rank and experience on the both o’ ye put together.
“We can’t stay down here. Yer brother’s right on that. If we were all kin dwarves, we’d just widen a few holes, put up a few walls, call the place home, and be done with it. But we ain’t, and we got to get out, and I can’t be getting us out unless we’re going back the way ye came in.”
“We’ll be fighting there,” Hanaleisa warned.
“More the reason to go, then!” Ivan declared with a toothy grin.
And they went, back the way they had come, and when they weren’t sure of either left or right, because Hanaleisa’s markings were neither complete nor always legible, they guessed and pressed on. And when they guessed wrong, they turned around and marched back, double-time, by the barking commands of Ivan Bouldershoulder.
Bark he did, but he added a much-needed enthusiasm, full of optimistic promise. His energy proved contagious and the group made great headway that first day. The second went along splendidly as well, except for one unusually long detour that nearly dropped Ivan, who insisted on leading the way, into a deep pit.
By the third day, their steps came smaller and the barks became mere words. Still they went along, for what choice did they have? When they heard the growls of monsters echoing along distant tunnels, though they all cringed at the notion of more fighting, they took hope that such sounds meant they were nearing the end of their Underdark torment. Hungry, as they had fed on nothing more than a few mushrooms and a few cave fish, thirsty, as most of the water they found was too fetid to drink, they took a deep breath and pushed forward.
Around a bend in the corridor, where the tunnel soon widened into a large chamber, they saw their enemies—not undead monsters, but the crawling fleshy beasts that Ivan knew so well—at the same time their enemies saw them. Driven by the knowledge that he had led those poor, beleaguered folks, including Cadderly’s precious children, into danger, Ivan Bouldershoulder was fast to the charge. Fury drove his steps, and determination that he would not be the cause of disaster brought great strength to his limbs. The dwarf hit the advancing enemy line like a huge rock denying the tide. Crawlers flowed around him, but those nearest exploded under the weight of Ivan’s mighty axe.
Flanking him left came Temberle and Hanaleisa, a great slash of the blade and a flurry of fists, and to the right came Pikel and Rorick. Rorick attempted only one spell, and when it utterly failed, he took up the dagger he carried on his belt and was glad that he, like his siblings, had been taught how to fight.
For Pikel, there was no magical glow to his club, no shillelagh enchantment to add weight to his blows. But like his brother, Pikel had gone to a deeper place of anger, a place where he was fighting not just for himself, but for others who could hardly defend against such enemies.
“Oo oi!” he yelled repeatedly, emphasizing each shout by cracking his cudgel across the head of a crawling beast. He could only swing with one arm, it was true, and swung a weapon absent its usual enchantment, but crawler after crawler was bowled back or fell straight to the ground, shuddering in its death throes, its skull battered to shards.
With that living prow of five skilled fighters, the embattled refugees pushed on and drove their enemies back. Any thought that they should slow and close ranks, or flee back the way they had come, was denied by Ivan—not with words, but because he would neither slow nor turn. He seemed as if he cared not if those flanking and supporting him kept up.
For Ivan, this wasn’t about tactics, but about anger—anger at all of it: at the dragon and at the danger that threatened Cadderly’s children; at the frustration of his brother, who felt abandoned by his god; at the loss of security in the place he called home. Left and right went his axe, with no thought of defense—not a blocking arm or a creature leaping at him deterred his cuts. He sliced a grasping arm off where his axe hit it, and more than one fleshy beast did leap upon him, only to get a head-butt or a jab in the face from the pommel of the axe. Then, as the foolish creature inevitably fell away, Ivan kicked and spat and ultimately split the thing’s head wide with that double-bladed, monstrous weapon he carried.
He waded along, the floor slick with blood and gore, with brains and slabs of flesh.
He got too far ahead of the others, and creatures came at him from every side, even from behind.
And creatures died all around the frenzied dwarf.
They grabbed at him and clawed at him. Blood showed on every patch of Ivan that was not armored, and creatures died with strands of his yellow hair in their long fingers. But he didn’t slow, and his blows rained down with even more strength and fury.
Soon enough, even the stupid crawlers understood to stay away from that one, and Ivan could have walked across the rest of the chamber unhindered. Only then did he turn back to support the line.
The fight went on and on, until every swing of a weapon came with aching arms, until the whole of the refugee band gasped for every breath as they struggled to continue the battle. But continue they did, and the crawlers died and died. When it was at last over, the remnants of the strange enemy finally fleeing down side corridors, the wide chamber full of blood and bodies, the ranks of the refugees had not significantly thinned.
But if there was an end to their battle, none of them could see it.
“To Carradoon,” the indomitable Hanaleisa bade Ivan and Pikel, raising her voice so that all could hear, and hoping against hope that her feigned optimism would prove contagious.
The meager food, the constant fighting, the lack of daylight, the smell of death, and the grieving of so many for so many had depleted the band, she knew, as did everyone else. The reprieve that was Ivan, adding his bold, confident, and fearless voice, had proven a temporary uplift.
“We’ll be fighting, every step!” complained one of the fishermen, sitting on a rock, his face streaked with blood—his own and that of a crawler—and with tears. “My stomach’s growling for food and my arms are aching.”
“And there’s nothing back the way we came but dark death!” another shouted at him, and so yet another argument ensued.
“Get us out of here,” Hanaleisa whispered to Ivan. “Now.”
They didn’t bury their dead under piles of heavy stones, and they made no formal plans for their wounded, just offered each a shoulder and dragged themselves along. They were moving again soon after the fight, but it seemed an inch at a time.
“If it comes to fightin’ again, the two of ye will make us win or make us lose,” Ivan informed Temberle and Hanaleisa. “We can’t move along as fast, ‘tis true, but we can’t fight any slower or we die. They’ll be lookin’ to you two. Ye find that deeper place and pull out the strength ye need.”
The twins exchanged fearful glances, but those fast became expressions of determination.
* * * * *
In a quiet chamber not far from where the Bouldershoulders, the Bonaduce children, and the other refugees earned their hard-fought victory, the absolute darkness was interrupted by a blue-glowing dot, hovering more than six feet above the stone floor. As if some unseen hand was drawing with it, the dot moved along, cutting the blackness with a blue line.
It hung there, sizzling with magical power for a few moments, then seemed to expand, moving from two dimensions to three, forming a glowing doorway.
A young drow male stepped through that doorway, materializing from thin air, it seemed. Hand crossbow in one hand, sword in the other, the warrior slipped in silently, peering intently down the corridor, one way, then another. After a quick search of the area, he moved in front of the portal, stood up straight, and sheathed his sword.
The Ghost King t-3 Page 28