The Realms of the Elves a-11

by Коллектив Авторов

  Tos'un shook his head, not quite understanding what had just happened. He had given in to his rage and hunger.

  He thought back to Melee-Magthere. He had been a rather unremarkable student, and as such a disappointment to mighty Uthegental. At the school, one of the primary lessons was to let go of conscious thought and let the body react as it was trained to do.

  Never before had Tos'un truly appreciated those lessons.

  Standing amidst the carnage, Tos'un came to recognize the difference between ordinary drow warriors-still potent by the standards of any race-and the weapons masters.

  He understood that he had fought that one battle as one such as Uthegental might have: a perfect harmony of instinct and swords, with every movement just a bit quicker than normal for him.

  Though Tos'un didn't know how he had achieved that level of battle prowess, and wondered if he could do it again, he could tell without doubt that Khazid'hea was pleased.

  – — Sinnafain moved from cover to cover amidst the ruined ore encampment. She paused behind a boulder then darted to the side of a lean-to where a pair of ores lay dead. That vantage point also afforded her a wide view of the trails to the west, the direction in which the dark elf had fled.

  She scanned for a few seconds, her keen elf eyes picking out any movement, no matter how slight. A chipmunk scurried along some stones about thirty feet from her. To the side, a bit farther along, a breeze kicked up some dried leaves and sent them twirling above the snowy blanket. The drow was nowhere to be seen.

  Sinnafain scampered to the next spot, the overturned cooking tripod. She crouched low behind the meager cover it offered and again paused.

  The breeze brought wisps of flame from the dying embers beside her, but that was the only life in the camp. Nodding, the elf held up her fist, the signal to her companions.

  Like a coven of ghosts the moon elves appeared from all around the dead camp, drifting in silently, as if floating, their white and dark brown cloaks blurring their forms against the wintry background.

  "Seven kills and the rest sent running," remarked Albondiel, the leader of the patrol. "This drow is cunning and fast."

  "As is his sword," another of the group of five added. When the others looked at him, he showed them one of the dead ores, its arm severed, its heavy wooden shield cleanly cut in half.

  "A mighty warrior, no doubt," Sinnafain said. "Is it possible that we've found a second Drizzt Do'Urden?"

  "Obould had drow in his ranks as well," Albondiel reminded her.

  "This one is killing ores," she replied. "With abandon."

  "Have drow ever been selective in their victims?" one of the others asked.

  "I know of at least one who seems to be," Sinnafain was quick to remind. "I will not make the same errors as did my cousin Ellifain. I will not prejudge and be blinded by the whispers of reputation."

  "Many victims have likely uttered similar statements," Albondiel said to her, but when she snapped her disapproving glare at him, she was calmed by his grin.

  "Another Drizzt?" he asked rhetorically, and he shrugged. "If he is, then good for us. If not…"

  "Then ill for him," Sinnafain finished for him, and Albondiel nodded and assured her, "We will know soon enough."

  Drizzt brushed the last of the cold dirt away, fully revealing the blanket. Beneath it lay the curled form of Ellifain, the misguided elf who had posed as the male Le'Lorinel, and who had tried to kill him in her rage.

  Drizzt stood and stared down at the hole and the wrapped body. She lay on her side, her legs tucked to her chest. She seemed very small to Drizzt, like a baby.

  If he could take back one strike in all his life…

  He glanced over his shoulder to see Innovindil fiddling with one of the saddlebags on Sunset. The elf produced a silver censer set on a triangle of thin, strong chains. Next came a sprinkler, silver handled, green-jeweled, and with a bulbous head set with a grid of small holes.

  Innovindil went back to the saddlebag for the oil and the incense, and Drizzt looked at Ellifain. He replayed again the last moments of the poor elfs life, which would have been the last moments of his own life as well had not Bruenor and the others come barging in to his rescue, healing potion in hand.

  His reputation had been her undoing, he knew. She could not stand to suffer his growing fame as a drow of goodly heart, because in her warped memories of that brutal evening those decades before, she saw Drizzt as just another of the vile dark elves who had slaughtered her parents and so many of their friends. Drizzt had saved Ellifain on that long-ago night by covering her with the blood and body of her slain mother, but the poor elf girl, too young on that night to remember, had never accepted that story.

  Her anger had consumed her, and in a cruel twist of fate, Drizzt had been forced to inadvertently destroy that which he had once saved.

  So intent was he as he looked down upon her and considering the winding roads that had so tragically brought them crashing together, Drizzt didn't even notice Innovindil's quiet song as she paced around the grave, sprinkling magical oil of preservation and swaying the censer out over the hole so that its scent would mask the smell of death.

  Innovindil prayed to the elf gods with her song, bidding them to rescue Ellifain from her rage and confusion.

  When Drizzt heard his own name he listened more intently to the elf s song. Innovindil bade the gods to let Ellifain look down upon the dark elf Drizzt, and see and learn the truth of his heart.

  She finished her song so melodiously and quietly that her voice seemed to merge with, to become one with, the night-time breeze. The notes of that wind-driven song carried InnovindiFs tune long afterward.

  She bade Drizzt to help her then gracefully slipped into the hole beside Ellifain. Together they brought the corpse out and placed a clean second blanket around her, wrapping her tightly and tying it off.

  "Do you believe that she is at peace?" Drizzt asked when they were done, both standing back from the body, hand-in-hand.

  "In her infirmity, she remained worthy of Corellon's gentle hand."

  After a moment, she looked at Drizzt and saw the uncertainty clear upon his handsome features.

  "You do not doubt that," she said. "You doubt Corellon himself."

  Still Drizzt did not answer.

  "Is it Corellon specifically?" Innovindil asked. "Or does Drizzt Do'Urden doubt the very existence of an afterlife?"

  The question settled uncomfortably on Drizzt's shoulders, for it took him to places he rarely allowed his pragmatic views to go.

  "I do not know," he replied somberly. "Do any of us really know?"

  "Ghosts have been seen, and conversed with. The dead have walked the world again, have they not? With tales to tell of their time in the worlds beyond."

  "We presume ghosts to be… ghosts," Drizzt replied. "And those returned from the dead are vague, at best, from all that I have heard. Such practices were not unknown among the noble Houses of Menzoberranzan, though it was said that to pull a soul from the embrace of Lolth was to invoke her wrath. Still, are their tales anything more than cloudy dreams?"

  Innovindil squeezed his hand and paused for a long while, conceding his point. "Perhaps we believe because to do otherwise is self-defeating, the road to despair. But surely there are things we cannot explain, like the crackling magic about us. If this life is finite, even the long years an elf might know then…"

  "Then it is a cruel joke?" Drizzt asked.

  "It would seem."

  Drizzt was shaking his head before she finished. "If this moment of self-awareness is short," he said, "a flicker in the vastness of all that is, all that has been, and all that will be then it can still have a purpose, still have pleasure and meaning."

  "There is more, Drizzt Do'Urden," Innovindil said.

  "You know, or you pray?"

  "Or I pray because I know." — "Belief is not knowledge."

  "As perception is not reality?"

  Drizzt considered the sarcasm of that questi
on for a long while then offered a smile of defeat and of thanks all at once.

  "I believe that she is at peace," Innovindil said.

  "I have heard of priests resurrecting the dead," Drizzt said, a remark borne of his uncertainty and frustration. "Surely the life and death of Ellifain is not the ordinary case."

  His hopeful tone faded as he turned to regard his frowning companion. "I only mean-"

  "That your own guilt weighs heavily on you," Innovindil finished for him.

  "No."

  "Do you inquire about the possibility of resurrection for the sake of Ellifain, or for the sake of Drizzt Do'Urden?" Innovindil pressed. "Would you have the priests undo that which Drizzt Do'Urden did, that about which Drizzt Do'Urden cannot forgive himself?"

  Drizzt rocked back on his heels, his gaze going back to the small form in the blankets.

  "She is at peace," Innovindil said again, moving around to stand in front of him, forcing him to look her in the eye. "There are spells through which the priests-or wizards, even-can speak with the dead. Perhaps we can impose on the priests of the Moonwood to hold court with the spirit of Ellifain."

  "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 ore 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 ore 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 ore jerked again then came forward. Tos'un started to move to block, but recognized that it was no attack. He stepped aside as the ore 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, 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. lean aid you in that, Khazid'hea explained, sensing his confusion and anticipating his question. True deception is a state of mind-even in the face of magical detection.

  "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 altered 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 ores for their rotten foodstuffs, or venturing back into the wilds of the Under-dark 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 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 ore 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. can taste your venom.

  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 elfs 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 ores constructing a formidable 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.