“Shut yer face!” roared Feldegar, and he put another quarrel off the stone to emphasize his point.
Bruenor looked down at his young cousin and considered retreating. But that route seemed impossible, for Yorik obviously couldn’t run. Even if they managed to slip away unnoticed, the goblins would soon be on them. Bruenor saw one slim chance. Perhaps he was far enough from the light. If he could manage to get over the jutting stone and slip around the corner into the shadows of the side tunnel, he could come back into the main tunnel right in front of the goblins’ position, too close for another volley of spears.
“Wait here and ready yerself,” he whispered to Yorik.
The young dwarf nodded and clutched his hammer, coiling his good leg under him for a spring that might propel him out when battle was joined.
Bruenor belly-crawled over the rock but froze when he heard Toadface’s call.
“Lights is dying, wicked dwarvses,” the goblin teased, hoping he could get the dwarves to run away. He figured that looting the ettin’s lair was less dangerous than fighting against an equal number of dwarves.
Bruenor sighed when he realized that he hadn’t been spotted. He eased himself out of the main corridor and down the side passage. So far, so good.
This second tunnel fell away steeply after a few steps, rolling down into the blackness of a huge chamber. Bruenor could only guess at its dimensions, but he understood the implications when he remembered suddenly that the survivor of the first expedition had mentioned a side passage in his tale of terror. And if the goblins had come down the main tunnel from one direction, and he and his friends from another …
“Time for …” he heard one deep voice say from the depths of the side tunnel.
“Lunch,” answered another.
“Damn!” Bruenor spat, and he quickly slipped back to Yorik.
“Ettin?” Yorik asked him rhetorically, for Yorik had also heard the voices.
“What’s the wait, Bruenor?” Feldegar called softly from across the way. “The torches’ll burn low.”
“Lunch …” one of the giant’s heads answered for Bruenor.
“… time!” growled the other.
“Drats,” came Toadface’s voice from down the hall.
Bruenor knew the fight with the goblins to be at an end. They would flee at the approach of the ettin, and his group would be wise to do the same. But what of Yorik? Bruenor grabbed at a desperate plan. “Get yer bow ready,” he called to Feldegar. “And me an’ Yorik ours,” he lied, for he and Yorik didn’t have bows. “Goblins won’t be staying for the ettin; take ’em in their backs as they leave!”
Feldegar understood the reasoning. “Oh, I’ve got me goblin all picked and ready,” he pointedly laughed, knowing his previous target to be the leader and wanting the big goblin to understand its peril completely.
“Lights I see!” boomed the ettin.
“Lights they be!” it answered itself.
“Waits, wicked dwarvses!” cried Toadface. “Dwarvses is not fer fightin’ two-heads!”
“A bargain, then?” Bruenor offered.
“Says it,” answered Toadface.
“A truce.”
“And runs?”
“Not to run,” Bruenor growled. “To fight!”
“Two-heads?!” Toadface shrieked.
“Run, then, and catch me bolt in yer back!” Feldegar reminded the goblin.
Caught in the trap, Toadface gingerly stepped out from his nook and moved to the corner of the side passage opposite from Bruenor and Yorik. Bruenor moved out around the jutting stone to face the goblin.
“Me and yerself trip it up,” Bruenor whispered to Toadface. “Bait it,” he then called quietly to Feldegar. Understanding the plan, Feldegar was already moving. He put his back to the wall directly across from the entrance to the side passage, waiting to meet the approaching monster head on.
Toadface motioned similarly to his forces, and Sniglet squeamishly moved out into the open next to Feldegar. But the last of the goblins, terrified, darted away down the darkness of the corridor.
Feldegar raised his crossbow and snarled.
“Hold!” Bruenor said to him. “Let the miserable rat run. We’ve bigger things to fight!”
Feldegar growled again and turned an angry glare on Sniglet, who shrank back. “Hold yer ground!” the dwarf snapped. He slapped the head of the goblin’s spear out toward the side passage. “And make yer throw count!”
“Left leg, right leg?” Bruenor said to Toadface. The big goblin nodded, though he wasn’t sure which was which.
The stamp of a heavy foot issued from the passage. Then another. Bruenor tensed and held his breath.
Ettins grew large in this part of Faerûn, and this one was big even by their standards. It towered fully fifteen feet, and its girth nearly filled the corridor. Even fearless Feldegar blew a sigh when he saw it, and when he saw, more pointedly, the cruelly spiked club it held in each huge hand.
“Goblin!” yelled one of the ettin’s heads.
“Dwarfmeat!” hooted the other.
“Goblin!” the first argued.
“Goblin, always goblin!” complained the second. “I want dwarfmeat!” The ettin hesitated for just a moment, giving Feldegar the chance to settle its foolish argument.
The dwarf’s crossbow twanged, the stinging quarrel nicking wickedly into the ettin’s ribs. The hungry giant looked at the impudent little dwarf, both heads smiling. “Dwarfmeat!” they roared together and the giant rushed ahead. One great stride carried it to the main corridor.
Toadface struck next. He leaped onto the ettin’s leg, biting and stabbing with his little sword at the huge calf muscles. One of the ettin’s heads cast him a curious, even amused glance.
The flat side of Bruenor’s axe smashed in just as the second leg crossed into the main corridor. The dwarf’s aim proved perfect, and the strength of his blow enough to shatter the ettin’s kneecap.
The giant howled and lurched forward, suddenly not the least bit amused.
And as it stumbled past, Bruenor completed the deft maneuver. He reversed his grip, spinning a full circle, and knifed the razor edge of his axe into the back of the giant’s leg, just where the hamstring joined the knee. The leg buckled and the ettin fell forward, burying Toadface beneath it.
Then came a second stinging volley as Feldegar fired another quarrel and Sniglet threw one of his spears.
But the ettin was far from finished, and its howls were more of rage than pain as it hoisted itself up on its huge arms.
Not to be left out, Yorik sprang out from his concealment, rushing past Bruenor and swinging his hammer as he came. But his leg buckled under him before he was close enough for an effective strike, and the ettin, looking around for the source of its broken knee, saw him coming. With a single movement, the giant slapped Yorik’s small hammer harmlessly aside and poised its wicked club for a blow that certainly would have crushed the prostrate dwarf.
Had it not been for Bruenor.
True to his brave and noble heritage, the mighty young Battlehammer didn’t hesitate. He ran up the back of the prone giant and, with every ounce of power he could muster, with every muscle snapping in accord, drove his axe into the back of the ettin’s left head. The weapon shivered as it smashed through the thick skull. Bruenor’s arms tingled and went numb, and the horrid CRACK! resounded through the tunnels.
Yorik let out an audible sigh of relief as the giant’s eyes criss-crossed and its tongue flopped limply out of its mouth.
Half of the thing was dead.
But the other half fought on with fury, and the ettin finally managed its first strike. Coiling its good leg under it (and scraping poor Toadface into the stone), it lunged forward wildly and swung its club in a wide arc at Feldegar and Sniglet.
The dwarf actually saved the little goblin’s life (though Feldegar would deny it to the end of his days), for he grabbed Sniglet’s shoulder and threw him forward, toward the ettin and within the angle of the blo
w. Then Feldegar dived sidelong, taking the ettin’s club in the shoulder but rolling with its momentum.
Helpless on his back, Sniglet closed his eyes and planted the butt of his spear against the floor. But the ettin hardly noticed the little goblin. Its concentration was squarely on Feldegar. The dwarf had rolled right to his knees, his crossbow leveled for another shot. At the twang of the release, the ettin reflexively ducked its head—
—impaling itself through the eye upon Sniglet’s spear.
Sniglet squealed in terror and scrambled away, but the battle was over. With a final shudder, the ettin lay dead.
Bruised and battered, Toadface finally managed to push out from under the giant’s leg. Feldegar rushed over to Yorik. And Bruenor, who had clung to the giant’s back throughout, now stood atop the dead ettin’s back, amazed at the sheer force of his blow and staring incredulously at the first notch he had put into the blade of his new axe.
Finally they regrouped, dwarves on one side of the ettin and goblins on the other. “Wicked dwarvses!” Sniglet hissed, erroneously believing that Feldegar had thrown him in as a sacrifice to the ettin. He quieted and slumped to the side of his boss when Feldegar’s crossbow came up level with his nose.
Bruenor glared at his companion. “The truce,” he reminded Feldegar sternly.
Feldegar dearly wanted to finish his business with the wretched goblins, but he conceded the point. He had witnessed Bruenor’s awesome strike and had no desire to cross the young heir to Mithral Hall’s throne.
Bruenor and Toadface stared at each other with uncertainty. They had been allies out of necessity, but the hatred between dwarves and goblins was a basic tenet of their very existence. Certainly, no trust or friendship would grow out of this joining.
“We lets yous leave,” Toadface said at length, trying to regain a measure of his dignity. But Toadface wanted no part of the dwarves. He was outnumbered three to two, and he, too, now understood the strength of the beardless dwarf.
Bruenor’s smile promised death, and at that moment he wanted nothing more than to spring over the ettin and silence the filthy goblin forever. But he was to rule Clan Battlehammer one day, and his father had taught him well the order of duties.
Honor above anger.
“Split the trophy and leave?” he said to Toadface.
Toadface considered the proposition, thinking an ettin’s head and news of the dwarves a wonderful gift for the goblin king. (He didn’t know, however, that the goblin king already knew all about the dwarves and thought it grand to have an ettin keeping unwitting guard.)
“Left head, right head?” Bruenor offered.
Toadface nodded, though he still hadn’t figured out which was which.
consider “Dark Mirror” to be one of the most important pieces of writing I’ve done in my career, from a personal development perspective. It helped that I was working with Jim Lowder, one of the most demanding and careful editors in the field, on this one. Jim never lets a writer get away with the easy path, or with a superficial tale. He asks “why?” all the time.
By the time I penned this tale, the initial exuberance of publishing had worn off, as well as the burst of nonstop writing I had experienced (out of terror) when I finally quit my day job in 1990. I decided to participate in this anthology for reasons of personal exploration above all else and I wrote this story to examine a curious paradox that had developed in the Legend of Drizzt. So many readers were mailing me to comment on the examination of racism in the dark elf books—and indeed, through Drizzt’s trials and tribulations, I was able to explore and lay bare quite a few racist tropes; the analogies to our world were unavoidable, and I didn’t want to sidestep them anyway.
But there was one problem: isn’t traditional “Tolkienesque” fantasy all about racism? Elves are different from dwarves are different from halflings are different from humans are different from orcs and goblins. Yes, orcs and goblins, there’s the rub. Isn’t the notion of a race representing the embodiment of evil a classic definition of racism? Of course it is! So what if I punched Drizzt, so often the victim of racism, right in the face with his own prejudices? What if I shook up the comfort zone of fantasy’s broad strokes even more than I had (inadvertently) with my drow hero?
That’s what “Dark Mirror” was intended to do. It also marked a transition in my own writing. As a young and eager author, full of excitement and energy and so many tales to tell, I thought I had all the answers. In fact, I thought it my job to speak the truth, if you will, to tell people the truth of things. I thought I knew everything (and I have come to realize that almost all young authors are possessed of similar arrogance). As I got older, I came to understand that I know nothing, and that my job isn’t to give answers, it is to tease the readers to ask the questions of themselves. Simply put, I don’t know the answers to the racial paradox “Dark Mirror” lays bare. I could give you a satisfactory explanation if pressed, I’m sure, and even include some quotes from Joseph Campbell or some other writing “god” to back up my “truths.” It would probably sound quite impressive.
But even though I’m a fiction writer by trade, I try not to lie.
unrise. Birth of a new day. An awakening of the surface world, filled with the hopes and dreams of a million hearts. Filled, too, I have come painfully to know, with the hopeless labors of so many others.
There is no such event as sunrise in the dark world of my dark elf heritage, nothing in all the lightless Underdark to match the beauty of the sun inching over the rim of the eastern horizon. No day, no night, no seasons.
Surely the spirit loses something in the constant warmth and constant darkness. Surely there, in the Underdark’s eternal gloom, one cannot experience the soaring hopes, unreasonable though they might be, that seem so very attainable at that magical moment when the horizon glistens silver with the arrival of the morning sun. When darkness is forever, the somber mood of twilight is soon lost, the stirring mysteries of the surface night are replaced by the factual enemies and very real dangers of the Underdark.
Forever, too, is the Underdark season. On the surface, the winter heralds a time of reflection, a time for thoughts of mortality, of those who have gone before. Yet this is only a season on the surface, and the melancholy does not settle too deep. I have watched the animals come to life in the spring, have watched the bears awaken and the fish fight their way through swift currents to their spawning grounds. I have watched the birds at aerial play, the first run of a newborn colt.…
Animals of the Underdark do not dance.
The cycles of the surface world are more volatile, I think. There seems no constant mood up here, neither gloomy nor exuberant. The emotional heights one can climb with the rising sun can be equally diminished as the fiery orb descends in the west. This is a better way. Let fears be given to the night, that the day be full of sun, full of hope. Let anger be calmed by the winter snows, then forgotten in the warmth of spring.
In the constant Underdark, anger broods until the taste for vengeance is sated.
This constancy also affects religion, which is so central to my dark elf kin. Priestesses rule the city of my birth, and all bow before the will of the cruel Spider Queen Lloth. The religion of the drow, though, is merely a way of practical gain, of power attained, and for all their ceremonies and rituals, my people are spiritually dead. For spirituality is a tumult of emotions, the contrast of night and day that drow elves will never know. It is a descent into despair and a climb to the highest pinnacle.
Greater the heights do seem when they follow the depths.
I could not have picked a better day to set out from Mithral Hall, where my dwarven friend, Bruenor Battlehammer, was king once more. For two centuries, the dwarven homeland had been in the hands of evil gray dwarves, the duergar, and their mighty leader, the shadow dragon Shimmergloom. Now the dragon was dead, killed by Bruenor himself, and the gray dwarves had been swept away.
The snow lay deep in the mountains about the dwarven stronghold, but the
deepening blue of the predawn sky was clear, the last stubborn stars burning until the very end, until night gave up its hold on the land. My timing was fortunate, for I came upon an easterly facing seat, a flat rock, windblown clear of snow, only moments before the daily event that I pray I never miss.
I cannot describe the tingle in my chest, the soaring of my heart, at that last moment before the yellow rim of Faerûn’s sun crests the glowing line of the horizon. I have walked the surface world for nearly two decades, but never will I grow tired of the sunrise. To me, it has become the antithesis of my troubled time in the Underdark, the symbol of my escape from the lightless world and evil ways of my kin. Even when it is ended, when the sun is fully up and climbing fast the eastern sky, I feel its warmth penetrating my ebony skin, lending me vitality I never knew in the depths of the world.
So it was this winter’s day, in the southernmost spur of the Spine of the World Mountains. I had been out of Mithral Hall for only a few hours, with a hundred miles before me on my journey to Silverymoon, which must be among the most marvelous of cities in all the world. It pained me to leave Bruenor and the others with so much work yet to do in the mines. We had taken the halls earlier that same winter, cleared them of duergar scum and all the other monsters that had wandered in during the two-century absence of Clan Battlehammer. Already the smoke of dwarven furnaces rose into the air above the mountains; already the dwarven hammers rang out in the relentless pursuit of the precious mithral.
Bruenor’s work had just begun, especially with the engagement of his adopted human daughter, Catti-brie, to the barbarian lad, Wulfgar. Bruenor could not have been happier, but like so many people I have come to know, the dwarf could not hold fast to that happiness above his frenzy over the many preparations the wedding precipitated, above his unrealistic craving that the wedding be the finest ceremony the northland had ever seen.
I did not point this out to Bruenor. I didn’t see the purpose, though the dwarf’s incredible workload did temper my desire to leave the halls.
The Collected Stories, The Legend of Drizzt Page 2
