Pikel looked at him curiously.
“We are nearing the home of a great ranger, now deceased,” Tarathiel explained. “An enchanted and hallowed place that has come to be known as Mooshie’s Grove.”
Pikel’s eyes widened so greatly that they seemed as if they would fall out of his head.
“You have heard of it?”
“Uh huh.”
Tarathiel smiled and led on through the winding mountain trail, with tall pines all about, the wind swirling around them. They came to the diamond-shaped grove of trees and piled stone walls soon after, the place still looking as if the ranger Montolio was still alive and tending it. There was strong magic about the grove.
Tarathiel only hoped that the last inhabitant of the area he had known was still around. He had taken Drizzt Do’Urden there a few years before, as a measure of the unusual dark elf, and he and Innovindil had decided that a similar test might suit Pikel Bouldershoulder well.
The two went into the grove and walked around, admiring the elevated walkways and the simple, beautiful design of the huts.
“So, you and your brother were heading to the coronation of King Bruenor Battlehammer?” the elf asked to pass the time, knowing that Innovindil was similarly questioning the other brother back in the Moonwood.
“Yup yup,” Pikel said, but he was obviously distracted, hopping about, scratching his head and nodding happily.
“You know King Bruenor well, then?”
“Yup yup,” Pikel answered.
He stopped suddenly, looked at the elf, and blinked a few times.
“Uh uh,” he corrected, and gave a shrug.
“You do not know Bruenor well?”
“Nope.”
“But well enough to represent … what was his name? Cadderly?”
“Yup yup.”
“I see. And tell me, Pikel,” Tarathiel asked, “how is it that you have come by such druidic …?”
His voice trailed off, for he noticed that Pikel was suddenly distracted, looking away, his eyes widening. Following the dwarf’s gaze, Tarathiel soon enough understood that his question had fallen on deaf ears, for there, just outside the grove, stood the most magnificent of equine creatures in all the world. Large and strong, with legs that could shatter a giant’s skull, and a single, straight horn that could skewer two men standing back to back, the unicorn pawed the ground anxiously, watching Pikel every bit as intently as the dwarf was regarding it.
Pikel put his arm above his head, finger pointing up, like his own unicorn horn, and began hopping all about.
“Be easy, dwarf,” Tarathiel warned, unsure of how the magnificent, and ultimately dangerous, creature would respond.
Pikel, though, hardly seemed nervous, and with a shriek of delight, the dwarf went hopping across the way, tumbling over the stone wall that lined that edge of the grove, and rushed out toward the beast.
The unicorn pawed the ground and gave a great whinny, but Pikel hardly seemed to notice and charged on.
Tarathiel grimaced, thinking himself foolish for bringing the dwarf to the grove. He took up the chase, calling for Pikel to stop.
But it was Tarathiel who stopped, just as he was going over the stone wall. Across the small field, Pikel stood beside the unicorn, stroking its muscled neck, his face a mask of awe. The unicorn seemed a bit unsure and continued pawing the ground, but it did not ward Pikel away, nor did it make any move to rush off.
Tarathiel sat down on the wall, smiling and nodding, and very glad of that.
Pikel stayed with the magnificent unicorn for some time before the creature finally turned and galloped away. The enchanted dwarf floated back across the field, skipping so lightly that his feet didn’t even seem to touch the ground.
“Are you pleased?”
“Yup yup!”
“I think it liked you.”
“Yup yup!”
“You know of Mielikki?”
Pikel’s smile nearly took in his big ears. He reached under the front of his tunic and pulled forth a pendant of a carved unicorn head, the symbol of the nature goddess.
Tarathiel had seen another wearing a similar pendant, though Pikel’s was carved of wood while the other had been made of scrimshaw using the bones of the knucklehead trout of Icewind Dale.
“Will King Bruenor be pleased that one who worships the goddess is in his court?” Tarathiel asked, leading the conversation to a place he thought might prove revealing.
Pikel looked at him curiously.
“He is a dwarf, after all, and most dwarves are not favorably disposed toward the goddess Mielikki.”
“Pffft,” Pikel scoffed, waving a hand at the elf.
“You believe I am wrong?”
“Yup yup.”
“I have heard that there is another in his court so favorably disposed to Mielikki,” Tarathiel remarked. “One who trained right here with Montolio the Ranger. A very unusual creature, not so much unlike Pikel Bouldershoulder.”
“Drizzit Dudden!” Pikel cried, and though it took Tarathiel a moment to recognize the badly-pronounced name, when he did, he nodded his approval.
If the unicorn hadn’t been proof enough, then Pikel’s knowledge of Drizzt certainly was.
“Drizzt, yes,” the elf said. “It was he I took out here, when first I found the unicorn. The unicorn liked him, too.”
“Hee hee hee.”
“Let us spend the night here,” the elf explained. “We will set out as soon as the sun rises to return to your brother.”
That thought seemed quite acceptable, even pleasing to Pikel Bouldershoulder. The dwarf ran off, searching all the grove, soon enough finding a pair of hammocks he could string up.
They spent a comfortable night indeed within the magical aura that permeated Mooshie’s Grove.
“He knew Drizzt Do’Urden,” Tarathiel said to Innovindil when the two met that following evening, to discuss their respective meetings with the unusual dwarf brothers.
“As did Ivan,” Innovindil confirmed. “In fact, Drizzt Do’Urden and Catti-brie, Bruenor’s adopted human daughter, are the ties between the priest Cadderly and Mithral Hall. All that Ivan and Pikel, and Cadderly, know of Bruenor they learned from that pair.”
“Pikel believes that Drizzt will be with Bruenor,” Tarathiel said somberly.
“If he returns to the region, we will learn the truth of Ellifain’s current state, of being and of mind.”
Tarathiel’s eyes clouded over and he looked down. The life and fate of Ellifain Tuuserail was among the saddest and darkest tales in the Moonwood. Ellifain had been but a young child that fateful night, half a century before, when the dark elves had crept out of their tunnels and descended upon a gathering of moon elves out in celebration of the night. All were slaughtered, except for Ellifain, and the baby girl would have found a similar fate had it not been for the uncharacteristically generous action of a particular drow, Drizzt Do’Urden. He had buried the child beneath her dead mother, smearing her with her mother’s blood to make it look like Ellifain, too, had been mortally wounded.
While Tarathiel and Innovindil and all the rest of the Moonwood clan had come to understand the generosity of Drizzt’s actions and to trust in the remarkable dark elf’s account of that horrible night, Ellifain had never gotten past that one terrible moment. The massacre had scarred the elf beyond reason, despite the best efforts of hired clerics and wizards, and had put her on a singular course throughout her adult life: to kill drow elves and to kill Drizzt Do’Urden.
The two had met face to face when Drizzt had once ventured through the Moonwood, and it had taken all that Tarathiel and the others could muster to hold Ellifain in check, to keep her from Drizzt’s throat, or more likely, from death at the end of his scimitars.
“Do you think she will reveal herself in an effort to get at him?” Innovindil asked. “Is it our responsibility, in that case, to warn Drizzt Do’Urden and King Bruenor to take care of what elves they allow entry to Mithral Hall?”
Tarathiel shrugged in answer to the first question. A few years before, without explanation, Ellifain had disappeared from the Moonwood. They had tracked her to Silverymoon, where she was trying to hire a swordsman to serve as a sparring partner, with the requirement that he was skilled in the two long weapon style common among drow.
The pair had almost caught Ellifain on numerous occasions, but she had always seemed one step ahead of them. And she had disappeared, simply vanished, it seemed, and the trail soon grew cold. The elves suspected wizardly interference, likely a teleport spell, but they had found none who would admit to any such thing, and indeed, had found none who would even admit to ever meeting Ellifain, despite all their efforts and a great deal of offered gold.
The trail was dead, and the elves had hoped—they still did hope—that Ellifain had given up her life-quest of finding and killing Drizzt, but Tarathiel and Innovindil doubted that to be the case. There was no reason guiding Ellifain’s weapon hand, only unrelenting anger and a thirst for vengeance beyond anything the elves had ever known before.
“It is our responsibility as a neighbor to warn King Bruenor,” Tarathiel answered.
“We hold responsibilities to dwarves?”
“Only because Ellifain’s course, if she still follows it, is not one guided by any moral trail.”
Innovindil considered his words for a few moments then nodded her agreement. “She believes that if she can kill Drizzt, she will destroy those images that haunt her every step. In killing Drizzt, she is striking back against all the drow, avenging her family.”
“But if warned, and she reveals herself and her intent, he will likely slaughter her,” Tarathiel said, and Innovindil winced at the thought.
“Perhaps that would be the most merciful course of all,” the female said quietly, and she looked up at Tarathiel, whose face grew very tight, whose eyes narrowed dangerously.
But that expression softened in the face of Innovindil’s simple logic, in the undeniable understanding that Ellifain, the true Ellifain, had died that night long ago on the moonlit field, and that this creature she had become was ultimately and inexorably flawed.
“I do not think that Ivan and Pikel Bouldershoulder are the ones to deliver such a message to King Bruenor,” Innovindil remarked, and Tarathiel’s dark expression brightened a bit, a smirk even crossing his face.
“Likely they would jumble the message and bring about a war between Mithral Hall and the Moonwood,” he said with a forced chuckle.
“Boom!” Innovindil added in her best Pikel impression, and both elves laughed aloud.
Tarathiel’s eyes went to the western sky, though, where the setting sun was lighting pink fires against a line of clouds, and his mirth dissipated. Ellifain was out there, or she was dead, and either way, there was nothing he could do to save her.
It never took much to fluster the gnome, but this was more than his sensibilities could handle. He walked swiftly along the streets of Mirabar, heading for the connections to the Undercity, but not traveling in a direct line. Nanfoodle was trying hard—too hard—to avoid being detected.
He was cognizant of that fact, and so he tried to straighten out his course and settle his stride to a more normal pace. Why shouldn’t he go into the Undercity, after all? He was the Marchion’s Prime Alchemist, often working with fresh ore and often visiting the dwarves, so why was he trying to conceal his destination?
Nanfoodle shook his head and scolded himself repeatedly, then stopped, took a deep breath, and started again with a more normal stride and an expression of forced calm.
Well, a calm expression that lasted until he considered again his course. He had told Councilor Agrathan of Torgar’s imprisonment and had thought to let his incidental knowledge of the situation go at that, figuring that he had done his duty as a friend—and he truly felt that he was a friend—of the dwarves. However, with so much time behind them and no apparent action coming on Torgar’s behalf, Nanfoodle had come to realize that Agrathan had taken the issue no further than the marchion. Even worse, to the gnome’s sensibilities, Mirabar’s dwarves were still under the impression that Torgar was on the road to, or perhaps had even arrived at, Mithral Hall. For several days, the gnome had wrestled with his conscience over the issue. Had he done enough? Was it his duty as a friend to tell the dwarves, to tell Shingles McRuff at least, who was known to be the best friend of Torgar Hammerstriker? Or was it his duty to the marchion, his employer and the one who had brought him to Mirabar, to keep his mouth shut and mind his own business?
As these questions played yet again in poor Nanfoodle’s thoughts, the gnome’s strides became less purposeful and more meandering, and he brought his hands together before him, twiddling his thumbs. His eyes were only half-open, the gnome exploring his heart and soul as much as paying attention to his surroundings, and so he was quite surprised when a tall and imposing figure stepped out before him as he turned down one narrow alleyway.
Nanfoodle skidded to an abrupt stop, his gaze gradually climbing the robed, shapely figure before him, settling on the intense eyes of Shoudra Stargleam.
“Um, hello Sceptrana,” the gnome nervously greeted. “A fine day for a walk it is, yes?”
“A fine day above ground, yes,” Shoudra replied. “Can you be so certain that the Undercity is similarly pleasant?”
“The Undercity? Well, I would know nothing about the Undercity … have not been down there with the dwarves in days, in tendays!”
“A situation you plan to remedy this very day, no doubt.”
“W-why, no,” the gnome stammered. “Was just out for a walk. Yes, yes … trying to sort a formula in my head, you see. Must toughen the metal …”
“Spare me the dodges,” Shoudra bade him. “So now I know who it was who whispered in Agrathan’s ear.”
“Agrathan? The Councilor Hardhammer, you mean?”
Nanfoodle realized how unconvincing he sounded, and that only made him seem more nervous to the clever Shoudra.
“Djaffar was a bit loud in the hallway on the night when Torgar Hammerstriker was dragged back to Mirabar,” Shoudra remarked.
“Djaffar? Loud? Well, he usually is, I suppose,” Nanfoodle bluffed, thinking himself quite clever. “In any hallway, I would guess, though I’ve not seen nor heard him in any hallway that I can recall.”
“Truly?” Shoudra said, a wry grin widening on her beautiful face. “And yet you were not surprised to hear that Torgar Hammerstriker was dragged back to Mirabar? How, then, is this not news to you?”
“Well, I … well …”
The little gnome threw up his hands in defeat.
“You heard him, that night, outside my door.”
“I did.”
“And you told Agrathan.”
Nanfoodle gave a great sigh and said, “Should he not know? Should the dwarves be oblivious to the actions of their marchion?”
“And it is your place to tell them?”
“Well …” Nanfoodle gave a snort, and another, and stamped his foot. “I do not know!”
He gnashed his teeth for a few moments, then looked up at Shoudra, and was surprised to see an expression on her face that was quite sympathetic.
“You feel as betrayed as I,” he remarked.
“The marchion owes me, and you, nothing,” the woman was quick to respond. “Not even an explanation.”
“Yet you seem to think that we owe him something in return.”
Shoudra’s eyes widened and she seemed to grow very tall and terrible before the little gnome.
“You owe to him because he is Mirabar!” she scolded. “It is the position, not the man, deserving and demanding of your respect, Nanfoodle the Foolish.”
“I am not of Mirabar!” the gnome shot back, with unexpected fury. “I was brought in for my expertise, and I am paid well because I am the greatest in my field.”
“Your field? You are a master of illusion and a master of the obvious all at once,” Shoudra countered. “You are a carnival barker, a trickster
and a—”
“How dare you?” Nanfoodle yelled back. “Alchemy is the greatest of the Arts, the one whose truths we have not yet uncovered. The one that holds the promise of power for all, and not just a select few, like those powers of Shoudra and her ilk, who guard mighty secrets for personal gain.”
“Alchemy is a means to make a few potions of minor magic, and a bit of powder that blows up more often on its creator than on its intended target. Beyond that, it is a sham, a lie perpetrated by the cunning on the greedy. You can no more strengthen the metal of Mirabar’s mines than transmute lead into gold.”
“Why, from the solid earth I can create hungry mud at your feet to swallow you up!” Nanfoodle roared.
“With water?” Shoudra calmly asked, the simple reply taking most of the bluster from the excited gnome, visibly shrinking him back to size.
He started to reply, stammering indecipherably, and just gave a snort, and remarked, “Not all agree with your estimation of the value of alchemy.”
“Indeed, and some pay well for the unfounded promises it offers.”
Nanfoodle snorted again. “The point remains that I owe nothing to your marchion beyond my position to him as my employer,” he reasoned, “and only as my current employer, as I am a free-lance alchemist who has served many well-paying folks throughout the wide lands of the North. I could walk into Waterdeep tomorrow and find employ at near equal pay.”
“True enough,” Shoudra replied, “but I have not asked you for any loyalty to Elastul, only to Mirabar, this city that you have come to name as your home. I have been watching you closely, Nanfoodle, ever since Councilor Agrathan came to me with his knowledge of the imprisonment of Torgar. I have replayed many times my encounter with Djaffar, and I know whose door it is that abuts my own. You are out this day, walking nervously, meandering your course, which is obviously to the mines and the dwarves. I share your frustration and understand well that which gnaws at your heart, and so, since Councilor Agrathan has taken little action, you have decided to tell others. Friends of Torgar, likely, in an effort to start some petition against the marchion’s actions and get Torgar freed from his cell, wherever that may be.”
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