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Page 9

 

  An unexpected meeting with Jarlaxle in Luskan a few years previous had rekindled great hopes and great pains. Immediately after the loss of Catti-brie and Regis, both Drizzt and Bruenor had enlisted the worldly Jarlaxle to find them, at any cost. The passage of seven decades and more hadn’t deterred the clever dark elf, apparently, or perhaps it had just been dumb luck, but Jarlaxle had stumbled upon a legend that was growing in the northwestern corner of Faerûn, the legend of a magical forest inhabited by a beautiful witch who apparently quite strikingly resembled the human daughter of King Bruenor Battlehammer.

  The hunt had led Drizzt, Bruenor, and Pwent to Roundabout the ranger, in the small mountain village of Auckney, and he had directed them to Lac Dinneshere, one of the three lakes about which were scattered the communities that gave Ten-Towns its name.

  Drizzt looked at Lathan, whose story verified what the old ranger in Auckney had said, but where was the forest? Icewind Dale had changed little in the last century. Ten-Towns had not grown—in fact, it seemed to Drizzt that there were less people in each of the towns than had been there when he’d called the place home.

  “Are ye even listening to me, then?” Tulula scolded, her tone telling the daydreaming Drizzt that she had asked that question several times already.

  “Just thinking,” he apologized. “So they and others searched for the forest, but nothing was ever found? Not a trace, nor a hint?”

  Tulula shrugged. “Rumors,” she said. “And when I was a young girl, one boat came in with the crew all atwitter. Do ye remember that, Da?”

  “Barley Farhook’s boat,” Lathan said, nodding. “Aye, and Spragan wanted to put right out, he did, after all them years where folk snickered at our own tale. Aye, and we did go out, a few boats, but there was nothing to be found here, and they laughed at us again. ”

  “Where are your crewmates now?” Drizzt asked.

  “Bah, all dead,” Lathan replied. “Addadearber taken in the Spellplague, Ashelia’s boat taken by the lake with Spragan aboard her, too. All gone, many years ago. ”

  Drizzt scanned the ruined cottage and the vale behind it, trying to figure out if there was anything left to do. He hadn’t expected to find anything, of course—the world was full of wild tales of the most unusual sort, especially in the sixty-six years since the Spellplague had descended upon Faerûn, since the death of Mystra and the great turmoil and tribulations that had shaken the foundation of civilization itself.

  Then again, the world was full of actual surprises, as well.

  “You got enough?” Tulula asked, glancing back across the lake. “We’ve a long ride home and you promised we’d be back in Caer-Dineval tomorrow. ”

  Drizzt hesitated a bit, helplessly scanning the horizon, then he nodded. “Help your father back into the wagon,” he told her. “We’ll be away soon. ”

  The drow trotted off to the cottage and poked about it for a bit, then moved up into the scraggly wood, hardly a forest, crunching through the dried pine needles of seasons past. He looked for clues, any clue: the hint of a door on a hillside, a patch of ground that once might have been a pond, the hint of music in the windy air. …

  From the side of one hillock, he looked back to see Tulula in the open wagon, her father beside her. She waved to Drizzt, ready to depart.

  He moved about a bit more, hoping against all reason that he would find something, anything, to give him hope that this place—Iruladoon, Roundie had called it—had once been the forest as described to him, that the caretaker had been Regis and the marvelous witch, Catti-brie. He thought of his return to Kelvin’s Cairn, and dreaded telling Bruenor that their journey to Icewind Dale had been for naught.

  Where might they go now? Did old Bruenor have any more roads left in him?

  “Come along then!” Tulula called from the wagon, and reluctantly the drow started down, his keen eyes still scanning the ground and trees for some sign, any sign.

  Drizzt’s eyes were keen, but not sharp enough to see all. In his passing, he brushed by some trees and old branches, and dislodged something that fell behind him. He didn’t notice, and went on his way to the wagon. The trio started off on the long road that would take them around the lake and back to Caer-Dineval.

  As the sun dipped lower over the lake, the light flashed white on bone—a fish bone, a piece of scrimshaw carved into the likeness of a woman holding a magical bow.

  The same bow Drizzt Do’Urden carried on his back.

  The air was unseasonably chilly, and storm clouds had gathered off in the northwest on the morning Drizzt walked back out of Caer-Dineval, a reminder that the season was soon to turn. He looked to the distant peak of Kelvin’s Cairn and thought that perhaps he should spend another day in town and let the storm pass.

  Drizzt laughed at himself, at his cowardice, and not for anything to do with the weather. He didn’t want to tell Bruenor that he’d found not a sign, not a tease. He knew he shouldn’t tarry, of course. Autumn was falling, and in a matter of tendays, the first snows would come sweeping down upon Icewind Dale, sealing the one pass through the mountains to the south.

  On the rocky cliff between the town’s welcoming inn and the old castle of the Dinev family, the drow lifted his unicorn pendant to his lips and blew into the horn. He spotted Andahar, a tiny flash of white before him, approaching fast.

  The steed seemed no bigger than his closed hand at first, but each stride along the rift between dimensions doubled its size, and in moments, the powerful equine beast trotted to a stop in front of Drizzt. Andahar pawed the ground and shook his thick neck, white mane flying wildly.

  Drizzt heard the excited chatter of the guards at the caer’s gate, but he didn’t even look back to acknowledge them, nor was he surprised by their reaction. Who would not be awe-stricken at the first glimpse of Andahar, tacked and with barding that glittered in the daylight with rows of bells and jewels?

  Drizzt grabbed the steed’s mane and agilely leaped into the saddle. Then he did salute the gawking folk at the gate before turning the magnificent unicorn to the north and thundering off toward Kelvin’s Cairn.

  What a wonderful gift Andahar had been, the drow thought, and certainly not for the first time. The ruling council of Silverymoon had commissioned the mount for Drizzt, in gratitude for his work, both with the blade and diplomacy, in the Third Orc War.

  The wind whistled past his ears as Andahar galloped across the miles. The drow wasn’t cold, though, not with the warmth generated by the unicorn’s great muscles. His hair and cloak flew wide behind him. He called forth the bells to sing with the ride, and they answered to his will. Trusting in Andahar, Drizzt let his thoughts slip back to pleasant memories of his old friends. He was disappointed, of course, in not finding any sign of the mysterious witch of the wood, or the curious halfling caretaker, disappointed at the reaffirmation of that which he already knew to be true.

  He still had his memories, though, and on occasions like this, alone and on the trail, he looked for them and found them, and couldn’t help but smile as he thought of that previous life he had known.

  That previous life he knew he should forget.

  That previous life he could not forget.

  The sun was still high in the sky when he dismissed Andahar and entered the dwarven tunnels. Once the complex had been the home of Clan Battlehammer, and those few dozen dwarves who had remained there still considered themselves part of the clan. They knew of Drizzt, though only a couple had ever met the drow. They also knew of Pwent and the legendary Gutbuster Brigade, and glad they were to welcome travelers from Mithral Hall, including one who named himself as a distant cousin to the late King Bruenor Battlehammer himself.

  “To King Connerad Brawnanvil Battlehammer!” the leader of the Kelvin’s Cairn Battlehammers, Stokely Silverstream, greeted Drizzt when he entered the main forge area. Stokely lifted a mug in toast and waved to a younger dwarf, who hustled to get Drizzt a drink.

  “He fares we
ll, I would hope,” Drizzt replied, not surprised that, four decades on, Connerad had succeeded his father, Banak. “Good blood. ”

  “Ye fought with his father. ”

  “Many the time,” Drizzt replied, accepting the mug and taking a welcomed swallow.

  “And yer own salute?” Stokely asked.

  “There can be only one,” Drizzt replied, and he lifted his mug high and waited until all the dwarves in the room turned to regard him.

  “To King Bruenor Battlehammer!” Drizzt and Stokely said together, and a rousing cheer went up in the chamber. Every dwarf drank deep then scrambled to get their mugs refilled.

  “I was but a dwarfling when me dad bringed us back to Icewind Dale,” Stokely explained. “But I’d’ve known him, and well, had I not been a fool and stayed so close to me home up here. ”

  “You served your own clan,” Drizzt replied. “Short are the times of respite in Icewind Dale. Could your father have fared as well, had you, and others with the wanderlust, traveled all the way to Mithral Hall?”

  “Bah, but true enough! I’m guessin’ me and me boys’ll have to settle for yer tales, elf, and we’re holdin’ ye to that promise! Yerself and old Pwent and Bonnego Battle-axe, of the Adbar Battle-axes. ”

  “This very night,” Drizzt promised. He set his mug down and patted Stokely on the shoulder as he moved past him, heading for the lower tunnels, where he knew his friends to be.

  “Well met, Bonnego,” he said to Bruenor when he entered the small side room, to find Bruenor, as always, spreading maps across the floor and taking notes.

  “What do ye know, elf?” Bruenor replied a bit too hopefully.

  Drizzt winced at the optimism, and let his expression convey the truth of the rumor.

  “Just a few pines and a bit of scrag,” Bruenor said with a sigh and a shake of his head, for that was what they had heard of this supposedly enchanted forest from practically everyone in Icewind Dale they had asked.

  “Ah, me king,” said Thibbledorf Pwent, limping into the room behind Drizzt.

  “Shoosh, ye dolt!” Bruenor scolded.

  “Perhaps there was once a forest there,” said Drizzt. “Perhaps enchanted in some way, and with a beautiful witch and halfling caretaker. The tale of Lathan mirrored that of Roundabout, and both I find credible. ”

  “Credible and wrong,” said Bruenor, “as I was knowin’ they’d be. ”

  “Ah, me king,” said Pwent.

  “Ye quit calling me that!”

  “Their words are no longer accurate,” Drizzt replied. “But that does not mean their memories are wrong. You saw the eyes of both men when they remembered that time, that encounter. Few could wear such expressions falsely, and fewer still could tell tales so aligned, separated by miles and decades. ”

  “Ye think they saw her?”

  “I think they saw something. Something interesting. ”

  Bruenor growled and shoved a table over onto its side. “I should’ve come here, elf! Those years ago, when first we lost me girl. We sent that rat Jarlaxle on the hunt, but it was me own road to be walkin’. ”