Drizzt snapped an angry glare on the svirfneblin, but his visage softened considerably when he took the moment to realize Belwar’s concern.
“Zaknafein,” Drizzt explained. “Zaknafein Do’Urden, my father and mentor. It was he who trained me with the blade and who instructed me in all my life. Zaknafein was my only friend in Menzoberranzan, the only drow I have ever known who shared my beliefs.”
“He meant to kill you,” Belwar stated flatly. Drizzt winced, and the burrow-warden quickly tried to offer him some hope. “Did he not recognize you, perhaps?”
“He was my father,” Drizzt said again, “my closest companion for two decades.”
“Then why, dark elf?”
“That was not Zaknafein,” replied Drizzt. “Zaknafein is dead, sacrificed by my mother to the Spider Queen.”
“Magga cammara,” Belwar whispered, horrified at the revelation concerning Drizzt’s parents. The straightforwardness with which Drizzt explained the heinous deed led the burrow-warden to believe that Malice’s sacrifice was not so very unusual in the drow city. A shudder coursed through Belwar’s spine, but he sublimated his revulsion for the sake of his tormented friend.
“I do not yet know what monster Matron Malice has put in Zaknafein’s guise,” Drizzt went on, not even noticing Belwar’s discomfort.
“A formidable foe, whatever it may be,” the deep gnome remarked.
That was exactly what troubled Drizzt. The drow warrior he had battled in the illithid cavern moved with the precision and unmistakable style of Zaknafein Do’Urden. Drizzt’s rationale could deny that Zaknafein would turn against him, but his heart told him that the monster he had crossed swords with was indeed his father.
“How did it end?” Drizzt asked after a long pause.
Belwar looked at him curiously.
“The fight,” Drizzt explained. “I remember the illithid but nothing more.”
Belwar shrugged and looked to Clacker. “Ask him,” the burrow-warden replied. “A stone wall appeared between you and your enemies, but how it got there I can only guess.”
Clacker heard the conversation and moved over to his friends. “I put it there,” he said, his voice still perfectly clear.
“Powers of a pech?” Belwar asked. The deep gnome knew the reputation of pech powers with the stone, but not in enough detail to fully understand what Clacker had done.
“We are a peaceful race,” Clacker began, realizing that this might be his only chance to tell his friends of his people. He remained more pechlike than he had since the polymorph, but already he felt the base urges of a hook horror creeping back in. “We desire only to work the stone. It is our calling and our love. And with this symbiosis with the earth comes a measure of power. The stones speak to us and aid us in our toils.”
Drizzt looked wryly at Belwar. “Like the earth elemental you once raised against me.”
Belwar snorted an embarrassed laugh.
“No,” Clacker said soberly, determined not to get sidetracked. “Deep gnomes, too, can call upon the powers of the earth, but theirs is a different relationship. The svirfnebli’s love of the earth is only one of their varied definitions of happiness.” Clacker looked away from his companions, to the rock wall. “Pech are brothers with the earth. It aids us as we aid it, out of affection.”
“You speak of the earth as though it is some sentient being,” Drizzt remarked, not sarcastically, just out of curiosity.
“It is, dark elf,” replied Belwar, imagining Clacker as he must have appeared before his encounter with the wizard, “for those who can hear it.”
Clacker’s huge beaked head nodded in accord.
“Svirfnebli can hear the earth’s distant song,” he said. “Pech can speak to it directly.”
This was all quite beyond Drizzt’s understanding. He knew the sincerity in his companions’ words, but drow elves were not nearly as connected to the rocks of the Underdark as the svirfnebli and the pech. Still, if Drizzt needed any proof of what Belwar and Clacker were hinting at, he had only to recall his battle against Belwar’s earth elemental that decade ago, or imagine the wall that had somehow appeared out of nowhere to block his enemies in the illithid cavern.
“What do the stones tell you now?” Drizzt asked Clacker. “Have we outdistanced our enemies?”
Clacker moved over and put his ear to the wall. “The words are vague now,” he said with obvious lament in his voice. His companions understood the connotation of his tone. The earth was speaking no less clearly; it was Clacker’s hearing, impeded by the impending return of the hook horror, that had begun to fade.
“I hear no others in pursuit,” Clacker went on, “but I am not so sure as to trust my ears.” He snarled suddenly, spun away, and walked back to the far side of the alcove.
Drizzt and Belwar exchanged concerned looks, then moved to follow.
“What is it?” the burrow-warden dared to ask the hook horror, though he could guess readily enough.
“I am falling,” Clacker replied, and the grating that had returned to his voice only emphasized the point. “In the illithid cavern, I was pech―more pech than ever before. I was pech in narrow focus. I was the earth.” Belwar and Drizzt seemed not to understand.
“The wow-wall,” Clacker tried to explain. “Bringing up such a wall is a task that only a g-g-group of pech elders could accomplish, working together through painstaking rituals.” Clacker paused and shook his head violently, as though he was trying to throw out the hook horror side. He slammed a heavy claw into the wall and forced himself to continue. “Yet I did it. I became the stone and merely lifted my hand to block Drizzt’s enemies!”
“And now it is leaving,” Drizzt said softly. “The pech is falling away from your grasp once again, buried under the instincts of a hook horror.”
Clacker looked away and again banged a hook against the wall in reply. Something in the motion brought him comfort, and he repeated it, over and over, rhythmically tapping as if trying to hold on to a piece of his former self.
Drizzt and Belwar walked out of the alcove and back into the corridor to give their giant friend his privacy. A short time later, they noticed that the tapping had ceased, and Clacker stuck his head out, his huge, birdlike eyes filled with sorrow. His stuttered words sent shivers through the spines of his friends, for they found that they could not deny his logic or his desire.
“P-please k-k-kill me!”
Part 5.
Spirit
Spirit. It cannot be broken and it cannot be stolen away. A victim in the throes of despair might feel otherwise, and certainly the victim’s “master” would like to believe it so. But in truth, the spirit remains, sometimes buried but never fully removed.
That is the false assumption of Zin-carla and the danger of such sentient animation. The priestesses, I have come to learn, claim it as the highest gift of the Spider Queen deity who rules the drow. I think not. Better to call Zin-carla Lloth’s greatest lie.
The physical powers of the body cannot be separated from the rationale of the mind and the emotions of the heart. They are one and the same, a compilation of a singular being. It is in the harmony of these three―body, mind, and heart―that we find spirit.
How many tyrants have tried? How many rulers have sought to reduce their subjects to simple, unthinking instruments of profit and gain? They steal the loves, the religions, of their people; they seek to steal the spirit.
Ultimately and inevitably; they fail. This I must believe. If the flame of the spirit’s candle is extinguished, there is only death, and the tyrant finds no gain in a kingdom littered with corpses.
But it is a resilient thing, this flame of spirit, indomitable and ever-striving. In some, at least, it will survive, to the tyrant’s demise.
Where, then, was Zaknafein, my father; when he set out purposefully to destroy me? Where was I in my years alone in the wilds, when this hunter that I had become blinded my heart and guided my sword hand often against my conscious wishes?
We both were there all along, I came to know, buried but never stolen.
Spirit. In every language in all the Realms, surface and Underdark, in every time and every place, the word has a ring of strength and determination. It is the hero’s strength, the mother’s resilience, and the poor man’s arm. It cannot be broken, and it cannot be taken away.
This I must believe.
Drizzt Do’Urden
Chapter 22.
Without Direction
The sword cut came too swiftly for the goblin slave to even cry out in terror. It toppled forward, quite dead before it ever hit the floor. Zaknafein stepped on its back and continued on; the path to the narrow cavern’s rear exit lay open before the spirit-wraith, barely ten yards away. Even as the undead warrior moved beyond his latest kill, a group of illithids came into the cavern in front of him. Zaknafein snarled and did not turn away or slow in the least. His logic and his strides were direct; Drizzt had gone through this exit, and he would follow.
Anything in his way would fall to his blade.
Let this one go on its way! came a telepathic cry from several points in the cavern, from other mind flayers who had witnessed Zaknafein in action. You cannot defeat him! Let the drow leave! The mind flayers had seen enough of the spirit-wraith’s deadly blades; more than a dozen of their comrades had died at Zaknafein’s hand already.
This new group standing in Zaknafein’s way did not miss the urgency of the telepathic pleas. They parted to either side with all speed―except for one.
The illithid race based its existence on pragmatism founded in vast volumes of communal knowledge. Mind flayers considered base emotions such as pride fatal flaws.
It proved to be true again on this occasion.
Fwoop! The single illithid blasted the spirit-wraith, determined that none should be allowed to escape.
An instant later, the time of a single, precise swipe of a sword, Zaknafein stepped on the fallen illithid’s chest and continued on his way out into the wilds of the Underdark.
No other illithids made any move to stop him.
Zaknafein crouched and carefully picked his path. Drizzt had traveled down this tunnel; the scent was fresh and clear. Even so, in his careful pursuit, where he would often have to pause and check the trail, Zaknafein could not move as swiftly as his intended prey.
But, unlike Zaknafein, Drizzt had to rest.
“Hold.” The tone of Belwar’s command left no room for debate. Drizzt and Clacker froze in their tracks, wondering what had put the burrow-warden on sudden alert.
Belwar moved over and put his ear to the rock wall. “Boots,” he whispered, pointing to the stone. “Parallel tunnel.”
Drizzt joined his friend by the wall and listened intently, but, though his senses were keener than almost any other dark elf, he was not nearly as adept at reading the vibrations of the stone as the deep gnome.
“How many?” he asked.
“A few,” replied Belwar, but his shrug told Drizzt that he was only making a hopeful approximation.
“Seven,” said Clacker from a few paces down the wall, his voice clear and sure. “Duergar―gray dwarves―fleeing from the illithids, as are we.”
“How can you…” Drizzt started to ask, but he stopped, remembering what Clacker had told him concerning the powers of the pech.
“Do the tunnels cross?” Belwar asked the hook horror. “Can we avoid the duergar?”
Clacker turned back to the stone for the answers. “The tunnels join a short way ahead,” he replied, “then continue on as one.”
“Then if we stay here, the gray dwarves will probably pass us by,” Belwar reasoned.
Drizzt was not so certain of the deep gnome’s reasoning. “We and the duergar share a common enemy,” Drizzt remarked, then his eyes widened as a thought came to him suddenly. “Allies?”
“Although often the duergar and drow travel together, gray dwarves do not usually ally with svirfnebli,” Belwar reminded him. “Or hook horrors, I would guess!”
“This situation is far from usual,” Drizzt was quick to retort. “If the duergar are in flight from the mind flayers, then they are probably ill-equipped and unarmed. They might welcome such an alliance, to the gain of both groups.”
“I do not believe they will be as friendly as you assume,” Belwar replied with a sarcastic snicker, “but concede I will that this narrow tunnel is not a defensible region, more suited to the size of a duergar than to the long blades of a drow and the longer-still arms of a hook horror. If the duergar double back at the crossroad and head toward us, we may have to do battle in an area that will favor them.”
“Then to the place where the tunnels join,” said Drizzt, “and let us learn what we may.”
The three companions soon came into a small, oval-shaped chamber. Another tunnel, the one in which the duergar were traveling, entered the area right beside the companions’ tunnel, and a third passage ran out from the back of the room. The friends moved across into the shadows of this farthest tunnel even as the shuffling of boots echoed in their ears.
A moment later, the seven duergar came into the oval chamber. They were haggard, as Drizzt had suspected, but they were not unarmed. Three carried clubs, another a dagger, two held swords, and the last sported two large rocks.
Drizzt held his friends back and stepped out to meet the strangers. Though neither race held much love for the other, drow and duergar often formed mutually gainful alliances. Drizzt guessed that the chances of forming a peaceful alliance would be greater if he went out alone.
His sudden appearance startled the weary gray dwarves. They rushed all about frantically, trying to form some defensive posture. Swords and clubs came up at the ready, and the dwarf holding the rocks cocked his arm back for a throw.
“Greetings, duergar,” Drizzt said, hoping that the gray dwarves would understand the drow tongue. His hands rested easily on the hilts of his sheathed scimitars; he knew he could get to them quickly enough if he needed them.
“Who might ye be?” one of the sword-wielding gray dwarves asked in shaky but understandable drow.
“A refugee, as yourselves,” replied Drizzt, “fleeing from the slavery of the cruel mind flayers.”
“Then ye know our hurry,” snarled the duergar, “so be standin’ outa our way!”
“I offer to you an alliance,” said Drizzt. “Surely greater numbers will only aid us when the illithids come.”
“Seven’s as good as eight,” the duergar stubbornly replied. Behind the speaker, the rock thrower pumped his arm threateningly.
“But not as good as ten,” Drizzt reasoned calmly.
“Ye got friends?” asked the duergar, his tone noticeably softening. He glanced about nervously, looking for a possible ambush. “More drow?”
“Hardly,” Drizzt answered.
“I seen him!” cried another of the group, also in the drow tongue, before Drizzt could begin to explain. “He runned out with the beaked monster an’ the svirfneblin!”
“Deep gnome!” The leader of the duergar spat at Drizzt’s feet. “Not a friend of the duergar or the drow!”
Drizzt would have been willing to let the failed offer go at that, with he and his friends moving on their way and the gray dwarves going their own. But the well-earned reputation of the duergar labeled them as neither peaceful nor overly intelligent. With the illithids not far behind, this band of gray dwarves hardly needed more enemies.
A rock sailed at Drizzt’s head. A scimitar flashed out and deflected it harmlessly aside.
“Bivrip!” came the burrow-warden’s cry from the tunnel. Belwar and Clacker rushed out, not surprised in the least by the sudden turn of events. In the drow Academy, Drizzt, like all dark elves, had spent months learning the ways and tricks of the gray dwarves. That training saved him now, for he was the first to strike, lining all seven of his diminutive opponents in the harmless purple flames of faerie fire.
Almost at the same time, three of the duergar faded from view, exercising thei
r innate talents of invisibility. The purple flames remained, though, clearly outlining the disappearing dwarves.
A second rock flew through the air, slamming into Clacker’s chest. The armored monster would have smiled at the pitiful attack if a beak could smile, and Clacker continued his charge straight ahead into the duergar’s midst.
The rock thrower and the dagger wielder fled out of the hook horror’s way, having no weapons that could possibly hurt the armored giant. With other foes readily available, Clacker let them go. They came around the side of the chamber, bearing straight in at Belwar, thinking the svirfneblin the easiest of the targets.
The swipe of a pickaxe abruptly stopped their charge. The unarmed duergar lunged forward, trying to grab the arm before it could launch a backswing. Belwar anticipated the attempt and crossed over with his hammer-hand, slamming the duergar squarely in the face. Sparks flew, bones crumbled, and gray skin burned and splattered. The duergar flew to his back and writhed about frantically, clutching his broken face.
The dagger wielder was not so anxious anymore.
Two invisible duergar came at Drizzt. With the outline of purple flames, Drizzt could see their general movement, and he had prudently marked these two as the sword-wielders. But Drizzt was at a clear disadvantage, for he could not distinguish subtle thrusts and cuts. He backed away, putting distance between himself and his companions.
He sensed an attack and threw out a blocking scimitar, smiling at his luck when he heard the ring of weapons. The gray dwarf came into view for just a moment, to show Drizzt his wicked smile, then faded quickly away.
“How many does ye think ye can block?” the other invisible duergar asked smugly.
“More than you, I suspect,” Drizzt replied, and then it was the drow’s turn to smile. His enchanted globe of absolute darkness descended over all three of the combatants, stealing the duergar advantage.
In the wild rush of the battle, Clacker’s savage hook horror instincts took full control of his actions. The giant did not understand the significance of the empty purple flames that marked the third invisible duergar, and he charged instead at the two remaining gray dwarves, both holding clubs.
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