Errtu knew rage.
But so did Tiago, who had witnessed the death of Byok.
The balor swung again, but Tiago was quicker and dived aside. Out snapped the demon’s whip, but Tiago rushed back in, inside the bite of the flaming weapon. Across came the demon’s greatsword, but the drow’s shield was there, and Tiago rolled around the hit and struck a blow of his own.
Vidrinath, forged in Gauntlgrym by the legendary smith, Gol’fanin, sliced through Errtu’s flesh and muscle with ease, cutting deep into the balor’s hip. Tiago retracted, blocked another heavy swing, then stabbed straight ahead, skewering Errtu’s belly, spilling guts and blood.
The balor lifted a giant, three-clawed foot and stomped down hard, and when Tiago dodged, Errtu kicked out and sent the drow flying aside.
The beast lifted its fiery whip, rolling its flaming length back over its shoulder. Stunned from the kick, Tiago reacted too slowly, and he tried desperately to roll around to get his shield in line to absorb at least some of the vicious blow.
Forward came Errtu’s arm … almost.
For the beast froze in place, staring hatefully at Tiago, and curiously at the bulge that had just prodded into the front of its massive chest.
Not pausing to figure it out, Tiago put his feet under him, sprang up and charged, then leaped high into the air and brought Vidrinath down in a powerful overhand chop. The magnificent sword cleaved Errtu’s head in two, right down the middle, and both halves flapped weirdly as the balor sank to its knees. Somehow, though it had no mouth left, the great demon issued a huge, agonized bellow, a cry of rage and denial, an echoing promise and threat, “A hundred years is not so long a time, Drizzt Do’Urden!”
Errtu melted into the ground.
Tiago looked past the charred spot to see Yerrininae standing before him, great trident in hand, the weapon dripping the blood and ichor of the slain balor.
“He thought you Drizzt,” the drider said. “That is a good thing.”
“Let the beast know it was Tiago Baenre who slew him,” the young warrior replied. He knelt to the ground, for as Errtu’s body had melted away, the only things left behind were the demon’s sword and the head of Byok.
“The kill is mine to claim,” Tiago insisted, gently stroking Byok’s head. “The sword and whip are yours, mighty Yerrininae, and well-earned.”
A cheer from behind turned Tiago around, just in time to see the last glabrezu fall before Jearth’s warriors. To the side of that fight, the gathered folk of Bryn Shander stood in the broken gates, staring out, cheering, but tentatively.
Tiago understood their hesitance, surely, for not only had they seen the full extent of his drow force now, many more dark elves than they had expected, but a handful of horrid driders as well.
“Take your force and return to the camp,” he quietly instructed Yerrininae. “This battle is won.”
“There are more than a hundred potential enemies staring at you,” the drider quietly replied.
“Not enemies,” Tiago assured him. “Grateful peasants, more likely.” He saluted the drider and walked toward the gate, motioning for the others to remain to the side.
“It would appear as if Drizzt Do’Urden has made powerful enemies of the lower planes,” he said to the gathered folk. “You are fortunate that we were nearby.”
They all looked at him, and he noted the glances south, to the rest of his force, and many more to the north, where the five driders had gathered and started away.
Tiago thought to reassure them, but he held his tongue, letting it all sink in, trying to see where it would all lead.
It started as a small clapping of a single person, far in the back of the crowd, but grew quickly to riotous cheering and calls of “huzzah!” for the drow heroes who had saved Bryn Shander.
Tiago and his band kept their encampment south of the city, but Tiago and the Xorlarrin nobles remained in Bryn Shander after the fight. Their coin was no good there any longer, with free food and drink and lodging for as long as they desired.
In the short time before their arrival on the field of battle, Errtu and the glabrezu demons had killed scores and had caused great damage to the eastern section of the city, and only the charge of Tiago had saved them, the folk believed, and so it was true.
“Oh, the irony,” Jearth said one night in the tavern, lifting his glass in toast. “To think that Tiago Baenre would be hailed as a hero to humans on the surface world.”
Tiago, Ravel, and Saribel all drank to that delicious twist.
They remained in Bryn Shander, awaiting word of Drizzt’s return—and now Tiago did not doubt that the folk of Ten-Towns would aid him in his search. To further ensure their cooperation, the politic young Baenre began many rumors of his own, emphasizing that Drizzt Do’Urden had brought this demonic tragedy to Icewind Dale, and hinting that Drizzt had done so intentionally. As those whispers echoed and amplified through the streets of Bryn Shander, Tiago and his allies grew confident that the folk of Ten-Towns would not stand with Drizzt when he at last returned.
But the days became another month, and the season passed to spring, and then summer. Runners went to the barbarian tribes, and to the far reaches of Ten-Towns.
But not a word was heard of Drizzt Do’Urden and his five companions, and the last person to see them, the captain of the ferry, insisted that they had gone ashore exactly where he had placed Tiago’s group.
Before the roads closed once more with the coming winter, Tiago and his force traveled south, through the Spine of the World and back to Gauntlgrym. Ravel and his spellspinners had left behind a prepared area to support a magical portal, though, which could get them back to Ten-Towns quickly. They used that magic many times over the next months, and even over the next few years.
But not a trace of Drizzt Do’Urden was to be found, not a rumor from the barbarians nor a sighting among the dwarves of Kelvin’s Cairn, nor a visit to any of the towns of Icewind Dale.
The angry Tiago sent out tendrils across the northern reaches of Faerûn, sent hired scouts to Mithral Hall and the Silver Marches, bribed thieves in Luskan, and demanded of Bregan D’aerthe that they bring him to Drizzt. He invoked the power of House Baenre, and his aunt, the Matron Mother of Menzoberranzan, and even mighty Gromph, growing curious, joined in the hunt.
But none could find Drizzt, for he was lost, truly, even to Bregan D’aerthe, even to the eyes of Lady Lolth, even to Draygo Quick and the archwizards of Netheril, and to the great lament of Jarlaxle, who spent a king’s fortune in the hunt, going so far as to enlist a host of spies to roam the Shadowfell.
And the years became a decade, and the legend of Drizzt lived on, but the body, it seemed, did not.
Drizzt had been taken by the wind, lost among the legends, a name for another time.
THE LONG NIGHT’S SLEEP
MOONLIGHT.
A distinct beam reached down to the sleeping drow, penetrating the veil of his slumber, beckoning him back to consciousness. Lying flat on his back, Drizzt opened his eyes and focused on the pale orb high in the sky above him, peeking at him through a tangle of scraggly, leafless branches. He had slept for many hours, he realized, though it made little sense to him. For he had fallen asleep in the early evening, and judging by the moon, the night couldn’t be more than half over.
Gradually the memories came drifting to him: the sound of sweet music, the return of Artemis Entreri to the camp, the overwhelming desire to lie back down and go to sleep.
The starlight stolen by the heavy canopy above … but now that blanketing canopy was no more.
Drizzt felt the thick grass at his side. But when he propped himself up on his elbows, he realized this immediate area was the only remaining hint of the lush forest in which he had previously awakened. He blinked and shook his head, trying to make sense of the scene before him. His five companions lay around him, their rhythmic breathing, the snoring of Ambergris, showing them to be fast asleep. This one area, perhaps ten strides in diameter, seemed exactly
as it had been in the “dream,” but everything else, everything beyond this tiny patch, was as it had been when first the six had come to this spot. No small, well-kept house. No pond. Exactly as it had been before his dream.
No, not exactly, for the snow lay thick on the ground immediately beyond the enchanted bedroom, but there had been no snow, nor any sign of an approaching storm, when they had come out from Easthaven.
Drizzt stood up and walked to the edge of the grassy anomaly. The moonlight was bright enough to give him a clear view as he inspected the snowpack, and from its formation, it seemed to him that the lower levels of snowpack, compacted and icy, had been in place for many tendays. He looked up at the clear sky, sorting the constellations.
Late winter?
But they had come out here from Easthaven just two days before, and in the early autumn.
Drizzt tried to sort it all out. Had it all been a dream? Only then did he realize that he still held an object in his hand, and he lifted it up before his eyes and confirmed the scrimshaw statuette of Catti-brie and Taulmaril.
“Entreri,” he whispered and nudged the assassin with his foot. The dangerous man, ever a light sleeper, awakened immediately and bolted upright, as if expecting an attack and already prepared to defend against it.
And in an instant, the assassin wore the same expression, Drizzt knew, as was upon the drow’s own face. He blinked repeatedly, face contorted with confusion, as he glanced around at the curious, impossible sight.
“The music?” Entreri asked quietly. “The forest?”
Drizzt shrugged, having no answers.
“A dream then,” said Entreri.
“If so, then a common one,” Drizzt replied, and showed him the scrimshaw. “And look around! Our encampment is in summertime, it seems, but the rest of the world is not.”
They let the others sleep, both going out and breaking branches from the scraggly trees around the area so they could start a fire if winter closed in. They noticed, too, that the camp remained warm, summertime warm, but the air outside that small cluster proved wickedly cold, and a strong wind swept across the lake from the northwest. But that wind, like the winter itself, did not penetrate the magically protected area, almost as if that small patch of summertime grass existed in a different plane.
Drizzt started a fire and began preparing breakfast just before the dawn, and the others awakened, and each wore the same expression and remembered the sweet music in the summertime forest and asked the same questions and lacked the same answers. None of this made any sense, of course.
Any thoughts they might entertain of spending more time in this enchanted spot, to see if the forest returned, were lost with the break of dawn, for the daylight broke the enchantment fully, and the wind howled in at them, blowing snow stealing their summertime beds.
Drizzt alone heard the music again, then, but it was a different song, or at least, the closing notes to the previous song.
The closing notes, the end. A sense of finality engulfed him, for he knew that he was watching this forest, Iruladoon, die away, lost to the ages forevermore.
“Across the frozen lake?” Ambergris asked, breaking the drow’s contemplation.
Drizzt considered the words, then shook his head. He wasn’t sure of the exact month, but he knew it to be late in the winter season, or early in the spring, and he had no idea how thick the ice might be.
“The same path that took us here,” he replied, and he started to the south, moving down toward the even ground of the lake bed. “To Easthaven.”
“Ye plannin’ to tell us what’s what?” Ambergris asked.
“If I had any idea what might be happening, I would,” Drizzt replied.
“Well, ye seem to be knowin’ our path,” the dwarf protested.
“I know where our path is not,” Drizzt clarified. “And it is not straight across the lake, with no cover from the wind, and where the ice might prove too thin to support us.”
The dwarf shrugged, satisfied with that, and off they went, trudging through the snowpack, pulling their inadequate cloaks tight around them. Drizzt couldn’t begin to sort out any of this mystery, but he was glad indeed that they hadn’t awakened in midwinter, or surely they would have soon perished.
They were still moving along the lake bed, their progress slow, when the sun began to dip off to their right-hand side.
“We need to find a cave or a sheltered dell,” Drizzt explained, turning from the lake and into the small foothills that lined the western shore of Lac Dinneshere. As the daylight began to fade, he moved to the top of one small hill, trying to get his bearings. To the south, he saw the lights of Easthaven, still many hours of walking away, but he noted, too, an encampment much nearer, nestled in the foothills. A barbarian tribe, he knew, and judging from the location and the estimated time of year, likely the Tribe of the Elk, Wulfgar’s people, who knew the legend of Drizzt well.
He left his five friends in a sheltered vale near to the barbarian fires and moved in alone, breathing a sigh of relief when he determined that it was indeed the Tribe of the Elk. He entered with his hands upraised, unthreatening, and introduced himself clearly as many suspicious looks came his way.
One large barbarian wearing the garb of the chieftain stepped forward and paced right up to the drow, staring down at him from barely a hand’s breadth away. “Drizzt Do’Urden?” he asked, and he seemed less than convinced. He lifted his weapon, a very familiar and magnificent warhammer, Drizzt’s way. “What ghost are you?”
“Aegis-fang,” Drizzt breathed, for surely it was indeed the warhammer Bruenor had crafted for Wulfgar a century before, and truly it did Drizzt’s heart good to see the hammer in the hands of the leader of this barbarian tribe, a proper legacy for a great man of Icewind Dale.
“No ghost,” he assured the man. He looked around, trying to find some face he might recognize, though he had not seen any of the tribe for some time. He spotted one large young man, barely more than a teenager with blond hair and sparkling blue eyes, one who immediately sparked some note of recognition in the drow.
But no, Drizzt realized. He was surely confused, and conflating this one with a barbarian he had known so many years before. The sight of Aegis-fang, the smell of Icewind Dale, the sound of the wind in his ears once more—it all seemed enough to transport Drizzt back those many decades.
“I have friends nearby, just five,” Drizzt explained. “We’re bound for Easthaven, but ill-equipped for the season. If we could spend the night …”
The chieftain looked around at his people, then back at the drow. “Drizzt Do’Urden?” he asked again, seeming unconvinced. “Drizzt Do’Urden is long lost to the world, they say, taken by the tundra many years ago.”
“If they say that, then they are wrong. I passed through Easthaven only recently, coming out to find … well, you or some other tribe, to investigate rumors of a forest on the banks of Lac Dinneshere.”
“Why would you seek us?”
“I was told that three of your tribesmen spoke of such a forest.”
“I know of no such rumors,” said the chieftain and he seemed to stiffen at the suggestion.
“I have heard this talk,” interjected one of the others, an older woman. “But not for many years.”
Drizzt glanced at her, but found his gaze drawn instead to the young man who reminded Drizzt so much of young Wulfgar, who, Drizzt suspected, might be a descendant of his friend, so strong, uncanny even, seemed the resemblance. The young man shied away from his glance.
“You are Drizzt Do’Urden?” the chieftain asked him directly.
“As surely as your hammer was forged by King Bruenor Battlehammer for Wulfgar, son of Beornegar,” Drizzt answered. “A hammer named Aegis-fang, and etched upon its mithral head with the intertwined symbols of the three dwarf gods, Moradin, Dumathoin, and Clangeddin. I was there when it was forged, and there when it was given to Wulfgar—and indeed, with Wulfgar did I travel to the lair of Ingeloakastamizilian, Icingdeath, the w
hite dragon, and there where I came upon this very weapon.” As he finished, he drew out his diamond-edged scimitar, which he had named after the slain dragon, and held it up before the chieftain, letting the firelight catch the brilliant edge. He rolled it over in his hand to display the black adamantine handle shaped as the head of a hunting cat.
“Gather your friends,” the chieftain said, nodding in recognition of the distinctive scimitar and smiling widely, for as Drizzt had hoped, the legend of Drizzt and particularly of Wulfgar, remained strong in the oral tradition of the Tribe of the Elk. “Share our fire and our food, and we will dress you warmly for the road to Easthaven.”
“Long dead,” said the young ferryman. “Drowned in ’73. Saved the boat, but not old Spiblin.”
The six companions looked to each other curiously, not knowing what to make of the strange words. They had made the southeastern corner of Lac Dinneshere, the egress point of the ferry, early the next afternoon, and luck had been with them, for they saw the boat’s sails not far off the shore. A signal fire had brought it sailing in, but to their surprise, the captain was not the crusty graybeard who had dropped them at this spot only a few days earlier.
“There are several ferries from Easthaven’s docks, then,” Drizzt reasoned.
“Nay, just this one,” said the young skipper.
“And the former captain?”
“Long dead, like I telled you.”
“Wait, you said ’73,” Afafrenfere put in.
“Aye, we speak of it as the Year of the Wave, for such a storm blew down from the north that half the waters of Dinneshere took the docks of Easthaven, and most of our fleet as well. Spiblin was too stubborn to run to higher ground, saying he’d save his boat if he had to die doing it. And so he did, to both. Eleven years, it’s been since then.”
“1484?” Drizzt asked, and behind him, Effron sucked in his breath. Drizzt turned around, to see the monk and the tiefling staring at each other.
“By Dalereckoning. It is 1484?” Effron asked the ferryman, who nodded. Effron looked back at the monk and said, “The Year of the Awakened Sleepers.”
The Last Threshold: Neverwinter Saga, Book IV Page 43
