He halted, he howled, he dropped his axe. He watched his companion go tumbling away. Then came a barrage as the deadly drow squared up against him. Left and right slashed the scimitars, always just ahead of the dwarf’s pathetic attempts to get his shield in their way. He got nicked, he got slashed, he got shaved, as edges, points and flats of two blades made their way through his defenses. Every hit stung, but none of them were mortal.
But he couldn’t regain his balance and any semblance of defense, nor did he hold anything with which to counter, except his shield. In desperation, the dwarf turned and lunged, butting his shield arm forward. The drow easily rolled around it, though, and as he pivoted to the dwarf’s right he punched out behind him, driving the pommel of his right blade against the dwarf’s temple. He followed with a heavy left hook as he completed his turn, and the dazed dwarf offered no defense at all as fist and hilt smashed him across the face.
He staggered two steps to the side, and crumbled into the dirt.
Drizzt didn’t pause to confirm the effect, for back the other way, the first dwarf he had cut was back to his feet and staggering away. A few quick strides brought Drizzt up behind him, and the drow’s scimitar slashed across the back of the dwarf’s legs, drawing a howl and sending the battered creature whimpering to the ground.
Again, Drizzt looked past him even as he fell, for the remaining two members of the outlaw band were fast retreating. The drow put up Taulmaril and set an arrow retrieved from the enchanted quiver he wore on his back. He aimed center mass on the dwarf, but perhaps in deference to King Bruenor—or Thibble dorf, or Dagnabbit, or any of the other noble and fierce dwarves he had known those decades before, he lowered his angle and let fly. Like a bolt of lightning, the magical arrow slashed the air and drove through the fleshy part of the dwarf’s thigh. The poor dwarf screamed and veered then fell down.
Drizzt notched another arrow and turned the bow until he had the human, whose longer legs had taken him even farther away, in his sight. He took aim and drew back steadily, but held his shot as he saw the man jerk suddenly then stagger.
He stood there for just a moment before falling over, and Drizzt knew by the way he tumbled that he was dead before he ever hit the ground.
The drow glanced back over his shoulder, to see the three wounded dwarves struggling, but defeated, and the elf wizard still pinned by the ferocious Guenhwyvar. Every time the poor elf moved, Guenhwyvar smothered his face under a huge paw.
By the time Drizzt looked back, the killers of the human were in view. A pair of elves moved to gather the arrow-shot dwarf, while another went to the dead man, and another pair approached Drizzt, one riding on a white-winged steed, the pegasus named Sunrise. Bells adorned the mount’s harness, bridle, and saddle, tinkling sweetly—ironically so—as the riders trotted up to the drow.
“Lord Hralien,” Drizzt greeted with a bow.
“Well met and well done, my friend,” said the elf who ruled the ancient expanse of the Glimmerwood that the elves still called the Moon-wood. He looked around, nodding with approval. “The Night Riders have been dealt yet one more serious blow,” he said, using another of the names for the orc-killing vigilantes, as did all the elves, refusing to assign a title as honorable as Casin Cu Calas to a band they so abhorred.
“One of many we’ll need, I fear, for their numbers do not seem diminished,” said Drizzt.
“They are more visible of late,” Hralien agreed, and dismounted to stand before his old friend. “The Night Riders are trying to take advantage of the unrest in Many-Arrows. They know that King Obould VI is in a tenuous position.” The elf gave a sigh. “As he always seems to be, as his predecessors always seemed to be.”
“He has allies as well as enemies,” said Drizzt. “More allies than did the first of his line, surely.”
“And more enemies, perhaps,” Hralien replied.
Drizzt could not disagree. Many times over the last century, the Kingdom of Many-Arrows had known inner turmoil, most often, as was still the case, brewing from a rival group of orcs. The old cults of Gruumsh One-eye had not flourished under the rule of the Oboulds, but neither had they been fully eradicated. The rumors said that yet another group of shamans, following the old warlike ways of goblinkind, were creating unrest and plotting against the king who dared diplomacy and trade with the surrounding kingdoms of humans, elves, and even dwarves, the most ancient and hated enemy of the orcs.
“You killed not one of them,” Hralien remarked, glancing around at his warriors who gathered up the five wounded Night Riders. “Is this not in your heart, Drizzt Do’Urden? Do you not strike with surety when you strike to defend the orcs?”
“They are caught, to be justly tried.”
“By others.”
“That is not my province.”
“You would not allow it to be,” Hralien said with a wry grin that was not accusatory. “A drow’s memories are long, perhaps.”
“No longer than a moon elf’s.”
“My arrow struck the human first, and mortally, I assure you.”
“Because you fiercely battle those memories, while I try to mitigate them,” Drizzt replied without hesitation, setting Hralien back on his heels. If the elf, startled though he was, took any real offense, he didn’t show it.
“Some wounds are not so healed by the passage of a hundred years,” Drizzt went on, looking from Hralien to the captured Night Riders. “Wounds felt keenly by some of our captives here, perhaps, or by the grandfather’s grandfather of the man who lies dead in the field beyond.”
“What of the wounds felt by Drizzt Do’Urden, who did battle with King Obould in the orc’s initial sweep of the Spine of the World?” Hralien asked. “Before the settlement of his kingdom and the treaty of Garumn’s Gorge? Or who fought again against Obould II in the great war in the Year of the Solitary Cloister?”
Drizzt nodded with every word, unable to deny the truth of it all. He had made his peace with the orcs of Many-Arrows, to a great extent. But still, he would be a liar to himself if he failed to admit a twinge of guilt in battling those who had refused to end the ancient wars and ancient ways, and had continued the fight against the orcs—a war that Drizzt, too, had once waged, and waged viciously.
“A Mithral Hall trade caravan was turned back from Five Tusks,” Hralien said, changing his tone as he shifted the subject. “A similar report comes to us from Silverymoon, where one of their caravans was refused entry to Many-Arrows at Ungoor’s Gate north of Nesmé. It is a clear violation of the treaty.”
“King Obould’s response?”
“We are not certain that he even knows of the incidents. But whether he does or not, it is apparent that his shaman rivals have spread their message of the old ways far beyond Dark Arrows Keep.”
Drizzt nodded.
“King Obould is in need of your help, Drizzt,” Hralien said. “We have walked this road before.”
Drizzt nodded in resignation at the unavoidable truth of that statement. There were times when he felt as if the road he walked was not a straight line toward progress, but a circling track, a futile loop. He let that negative notion pass, and reminded himself of how far the region had come—and that in a world gone mad from the Spell-plague. Few places in all of Faerûn could claim to be more civilized than they had been those hundred years before, but the region known as the Silver Marches, in no small part because of the courage of a succession of orc kings named Obould, had much to be proud of.
His perspective and memories of that time a hundred years gone, before the rise of the Empire of Netheril, the coming of the aboleths, and the discordant and disastrous joining of two worlds, brought to Drizzt thoughts of another predicament so much like the one playing out before him. He remembered the look on Bruenor’s face, as incredulous as any expression he had ever seen before or since, when he had presented the dwarf with his surprising assessment and astounding recommendations.
He could almost hear the roar of protest: “Ye lost yer wits, ye durned orc-
brained, pointy-eared elf!”
On the other side of the magical barrier, the elf shrieked and Guenhwyvar growled, and Drizzt looked up to see the wizard stubbornly trying to crawl away. Guenhwyvar’s great paw thumped against his back, and the panther flexed, causing the elf to drop back to the ground, squirming to avoid the extending claws.
Hralien started to call to his comrades, but Drizzt held his hand up to halt them. He could have walked around the invisible wall, but instead he sprang into the air beside it, reaching his hand as high as he could. His fingers slid over the top and caught a hold, and the drow rolled his back against the invisible surface and reached up with his other hand. A tuck and roll vaulted him feet-over-head over the wall, and he landed nimbly on the far side.
He bade Guenhwyvar to move aside then reached down and pulled the elf wizard to his feet. He was young, as Drizzt had expected—while some older elves and dwarves were inciting the Casin Cu Calas, the younger members, full of fire and hatred, were the ones executing the unrest in brutal fashion.
The elf, uncompromising, stared at him hatefully. “You would betray your own kind,” he spat.
Drizzt cocked his eyebrows curiously, and tightened his grip on the elf’s shirt, holding him firmly. “My own kind?”
“Worse then,” the elf spat. “You would betray those who gave shelter and friendship to the rogue Drizzt Do’Urden.”
“No,” he said.
“You would strike at elves and dwarves for the sake of orcs!”
“I would uphold the law and the peace.”
The elf mocked him with a laugh. “To see the once-great ranger siding with orcs,” he muttered, shaking his head.
Drizzt yanked him around, stealing his mirth, and tripped him, shoving him backward into the magical wall.
“Are you so eager for war?” the drow asked, his face barely an inch from the elf’s. “Do you long to hear the screams of the dying, lying helplessly in fields amidst rows and rows of corpses? Have you ever borne witness to that?”
“Orcs!” the elf protested.
Drizzt grabbed him in both hands, pulled him forward, and slammed him back against the wall. Hralien called to Drizzt, but the dark elf hardly heard it.
“I have ventured outside of the Silver Marches,” Drizzt said, “have you? I have witnessed the death of once-proud Luskan, and with it, the death of a dear, dear friend, whose dreams lay shattered and broken beside the bodies of five thousand victims. I have watched the greatest cathedral in the world burn and collapse. I witnessed the hope of the goodly drow, the rise of the followers of Eilistraee. But where are they now?”
“You speak in ridd—” the elf started, but Drizzt slammed him again.
“Gone!” Drizzt shouted. “Gone, and gone with them the hopes of a tamed and gentle world. I have watched once safe trails revert to wilderness, and have walked a dozen-dozen communities that you will never know. They are gone now, lost to the Spellplague or worse! Where are the benevolent gods? Where is the refuge from the tumult of a world gone mad? Where are the candles to chase away the darkness?”
Hralien had quietly moved around the wall and walked up beside Drizzt. He put a hand on the drow’s shoulder, but that brought no more than a brief pause in the tirade. Drizzt glanced at him before turning back to the captured elf.
“They are here, those lights of hope,” Drizzt said, to both elves. “In the Silver Marches. Or they are nowhere. Do we choose peace or do we choose war? If it is battle you seek, fool elf, then get you gone from this land. You will find death aplenty, I assure you. You will find ruins where once proud cities stood. You will find fields of wind-washed bones, or perhaps the remains of a single hearth, where once an entire village thrived.
“And in that hundred years of chaos, amidst the coming of darkness, few have escaped the swirl of destruction, but we have flourished. Can you say the same for Thay? Mulhorand? Sembia? You say I betray those who befriended me, yet it was the vision of one exceptional dwarf and one exceptional orc that built this island against the roiling sea.”
The elf, his expression more cowed, nonetheless began to speak out again, but Drizzt pulled him forward from the wall and slammed him back even harder.
“You fall to your hatred and you seek excitement and glory,” the drow said. “Because you do not know. Or is it because you do not care that your pursuits will bring utter misery to thousands in your wake?”
Drizzt shook his head, and threw the elf aside, where he was caught by two of Hralien’s warriors and escorted away.
“I hate this,” Drizzt admitted to Hralien, quietly so that no one else could hear. “All of it. It is a noble experiment a hundred years long, and still we have no answers.”
“And no options,” Hralien replied. “Save those you yourself just described. The chaos encroaches, Drizzt Do’Urden, from within and without.”
Drizzt turned his lavender eyes to watch the departure of the elf and the captured dwarves.
“We must stand strong, my friend,” Hralien offered, and he patted Drizzt on the shoulder and walked away.
“I’m not sure that I know what that means anymore,” Drizzt admitted under his breath, too softly for anyone else to hear.
PART 1
THE PURSUIT OF HIGHER TRUTH
One of the consequences of living an existence that spans centuries instead of decades is the inescapable curse of continually viewing the world through the focusing prism employed by an historian.
I say “curse”—when in truth I believe it to be a blessing—because any hope of prescience requires a constant questioning of what is, and a deep-seated belief in the possibility of what can be. Viewing events as might the historian requires an acceptance that my own initial, visceral reactions to seemingly momentous events may be errant, that my “gut instinct” and own emotional needs may not stand the light of reason in the wider view, or even that these events, so momentous in my personal experience, might not be so in the wider world and the long, slow passage of time.
How often have I seen that my first reaction is based on half-truths and biased perceptions! How often have I found expectations completely inverted or tossed aside as events played out to their fullest!
Because emotion clouds the rational, and many perspectives guide the full reality. To view current events as an historian is to account for all perspectives, even those of your enemy. It is to know the past and to use such relevant history as a template for expectations. It is, most of all, to force reason ahead of instinct, to refuse to demonize that which you hate, and to, most of all, accept your own fallibility.
And so I live on shifting sands, where absolutes melt away with the passage of decades. It is a natural extension, I expect, of an existence in which I have shattered the preconceptions of so many people. With every stranger who comes to accept me for who I am instead of who he or she expected me to be, I roil the sands beneath that person’s feet. It is a growth experience for them, no doubt, but we are all creatures of ritual and habit and accepted notions of what is and what is not. When true reality cuts against that internalized expectation—when you meet a goodly drow! — there is created an internal dissonance, as uncomfortable as a springtime rash.
There is freedom in seeing the world as a painting in progress, instead of a place already painted, but there are times, my friend…
There are times.
And such is one before me now, with Obould and his thousands camped upon the very door of Mithral Hall. In my heart I want nothing more than another try at the orc king, another opportunity to put my scimitar through his yellow-gray skin. I long to wipe the superior grin from his ugly face, to bury it beneath a spray of his own blood. I want him to hurt—to hurt for Shallows and all the other towns flattened beneath the stamp of orc feet. I want him to feel the pain he brought to Shoudra Stargleam, to Dagna and Dagnabbit, and to all the dwarves and others who lay dead on the battlefield that he created.
Will Catti-brie ever walk well again? That, too, is the fault of Ob
ould.
And so I curse his name, and remember with joy those moments of retribution that Innovindil, Tarathiel, and I exacted upon the minions of the foul orc king. To strike back against an invading foe is indeed cathartic.
That, I cannot deny.
And yet, in moments of reason, in times when I sit back against a stony mountainside and overlook that which Obould has facilitated, I am simply not certain.
Of anything, I fear.
He came at the front of an army, one that brought pain and suffering to many people across this land I name as my home. But his army has stopped its march, for now at least, and the signs are visible that Obould seeks something more than plunder and victory.
Does he seek civilization?
Is it possible that we bear witness now to a monumental change in the nature of orc culture? Is it possible that Obould has established a situation, whether he intended this at first or not, where the interests of the orcs and the interests of all the other races of the region coalesce into a relationship of mutual benefit?
Is that possible? Is that even thinkable?
Do I betray the dead by considering such a thing?
Or does it serve the dead if I, if we all, rise above a cycle of revenge and war and find within us—orc and dwarf, human and elf alike—a common ground upon which to build an era of greater peace?
For time beyond the memory of the oldest elves, the orcs have warred with the “goodly” races. For all the victories—and they are countless! — and for all the sacrifices, are the orcs any less populous now than they were millennia ago?
I think not, and that raises the specter of unwinnable conflict. Are we doomed to repeat these wars, generation after generation, unendingly? Are we—elf and dwarf, human and orc alike—condemning our descendants to this same misery, to the pain of steel invading flesh?
I do not know.
And yet I want nothing more than to slide my blade between the ribs of King Obould Many-Arrows, to relish in the grimace of agony on his tusk-torn lips, to see the light dim in his yellow, bloodshot eyes.
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