Sojourn: The Legend of Drizzt (45 page)

“For a dark elf, perhaps,” Cassius replied honestly.

Drizzt’s accepting smile disarmed the spokesman and quieted the two guards, who now stood protectively close to his sides. “I can offer no reason for coming, beyond my desire to come,” Drizzt continued. “Long has been my road, Spokesman Cassius. I am weary and in need of rest. Ten-Towns is the place of rogues, I have been told, and do not doubt that a dark elf is a rogue among the dwellers of the surface.”

It seemed logical enough, and Drizzt’s sincerity came through clearly to the observant spokesman. Cassius dropped his chin in his palm and thought for a long while. He didn’t fear the drow, or doubt the elf’s words, but he had no intention of allowing the stir that a drow would cause in his city.

“Bryn Shander is not your place,” Cassius said bluntly, and Drizzt’s lavender eyes narrowed at the unfair proclamation. Undaunted, Cassius pointed to the north. “Go to Lonelywood, in the forest on the northern banks of Maer Dualdon,” he offered. He swung his gaze to the southeast. “Or to Good Mead or Dougan’s Hole on the southern lake, Redwaters. These are smaller towns, where you will cause less stir and find less trouble.”

“And when they refuse my entry?” Drizzt asked. “Where then, fair spokesman? Out in the wind to die on the empty plain?”

“You do not know—”

“I know,” Drizzt interrupted. “I have played this game many times. Who will welcome a drow, even one who has forsaken his people and their ways and who desires nothing more than peace?” Drizzt’s voice was stern and showed no self-pity, and Cassius again understood the words to be true.

Truly Cassius sympathized. He himself had been a rogue once
and had been forced to the ends of the world, to forlorn Icewind Dale, to find a home. There were no ends farther than this; Icewind Dale was a rogue’s last stop. Another thought came to Cassius then, a possible solution to the dilemma that would not nag at his conscience.

“How long have you lived on the surface?” Cassius asked, sincerely interested.

Drizzt considered the question for a moment, wondering what point the spokesman meant to make. “Seven years,” he replied.

“In the northland?”

“Yes.”

“Yet you have found no home, no village to take you in,” Cassius said. “You have survived hostile winters and doubtless, more direct enemies. Are you skilled with those blades you hang on your belt?”

“I am a ranger,” Drizzt said evenly.

“An unusual profession for a drow,” Cassius remarked.

“I am a ranger,” Drizzt said again, more forcefully, “well trained in the ways of nature and in the use of my weapons.”

“I do not doubt,” Cassius mused. He paused, then said, “There is a place offering shelter and seclusion.” The spokesman led Drizzt’s gaze to the north, to the rocky slopes of Kelvin’s Cairn. “Beyond the dwarven vale lies the mountain,” Cassius explained, “and beyond that the open tundra. It would do Ten-Towns well to have a scout on the mountain’s northern slopes. Danger always seems to come from that direction.”

“I came to find my home,” Drizzt interrupted. “You offer me a hole in a pile of rock and a duty to those whom I owe nothing.” In truth, the suggestion appealed to Drizzt’s ranger spirit.

“Would you have me tell you that things are different?” Cassius replied. “I’ll not let a wandering drow into Bryn Shander.”

“Would a man have to prove himself worthy?”

“A man does not carry so grim a reputation,” Cassius replied
evenly, without hesitation.” If I were so magnanimous, if I welcomed you on your words alone and threw my gates wide, would you enter and find your home? We both know better than that, drow. Not everyone in Bryn Shander would be so open-hearted, I promise. You would cause an uproar wherever you went and whatever your demeanor and intent, you would be forced into battles.

“It would be the same in any of the towns,” Cassius went on, guessing that his words had struck a chord of truth in the homeless drow. “I offer you a hole in a pile of rock, within the borders of Ten-Towns, where your actions, good or bad, will become your reputation beyond the color of your skin. Does my offer seem so shallow now?”

“I shall need supplies,” Drizzt said, accepting the truth of Cassius’s words. “And what of my horse? I do not think the slopes of a mountain are a proper place for such a beast.”

“Trade your horse then,” Cassius offered. “My guard will get a fair price and return here with the supplies you will need.”

Drizzt thought about the suggestion for a moment, then handed the reins to Cassius.

The spokesman left then, thinking himself quite clever. Not only had he averted any immediate trouble, he had convinced Drizzt to guard his borders, all in a place where Bruenor Battle-hammer and his clan of grim-faced dwarves could certainly keep the drow from causing any trouble.

Roddy McGristle pulled his wagon into a small village nestled in the shadows of the mountain range’s western end. Snow would come soon, the bounty hunter knew, and he had no desire to be caught halfway up the dale when it began. He’d stay here with the farmers and wait out the winter. Nothing could leave the dale
without passing this area, and if Drizzt had gone there, as the friars had revealed, he had nowhere left to run.

Drizzt set out from the gates that night, preferring the darkness for his journey, despite the cold. His direct approach to the mountain took him along the eastern rim of the rocky gorge that the dwarves had claimed as their home. Drizzt took extra care to avoid any guards the bearded folk might have set. He had encountered dwarves only once before, when he had passed Citadel Adbar on his earliest wanderings out of Mooshie’s Grove, and it had not been a pleasant experience. Dwarven patrols had chased him off without waiting for any explanations, and they had dogged him through the mountains for many days.

For all his prudence in getting past the valley, though, Drizzt could not ignore a high mound of rocks he came upon, a climb with steps cut into the piled stones. He was less than halfway to the mountain, with several miles and hours of night still to go, but Drizzt moved up the detour, step over step, enchanted by the widening panorama of town lights about him.

The climb was not high, only fifty feet or so, but with the flat tundra and clear night Drizzt was afforded a view of five cities: two on the banks of the lake to the east, two to the west on the largest lake, and Bryn Shander, on its hillock a few miles to the south.

How many minutes passed Drizzt did not know, for the sights sparked too many hopes and fantasies for him to notice. He had been in Ten-Towns for barely a day, but already he was feeling comfortable with the sights, with knowing that thousands of people about the mountain would hear of him and possibly come to accept him.

A grumbling, gravelly voice shook Drizzt from his contemplations. He dropped into a defensive crouch and circled behind a
rock. The stream of complaints marked the coming figure clearly. He was wide-shouldered and about a foot shorter than Drizzt, though obviously heavier than the drow. Drizzt knew it was a dwarf even before the figure paused to adjust its helmet—by slamming its head into a stone.

“Dagnaggit blasted,” the dwarf muttered, “adjusting” the helmet a second time.

Drizzt was certainly intrigued, but he was also smart enough to realize that a grumbling dwarf wouldn’t likely welcome an uninvited drow in the middle of a dark night. As the dwarf moved for yet another adjustment, Drizzt skipped off, running lightly and silently along the side of the trail. He passed close by the dwarf but then was gone with no more rustle than the shadow of a cloud.

“Eh?” the dwarf mumbled when he came back up, this time satisfied with his headgear’s fit. “Who’s that? What’re ye about?” He went into a series of short, spinning hops, eyes darting alertly all about.

There was only the darkness, the stones, and the wind.

he season’s first snow fell lazily over Icewind Dale, large flakes drifting down in mesmerizing zigzag dances, so different from the wind-whipped blizzards most common to the region. The young girl, Catti-brie, watched it with obvious enchantment from the doorway of her cavern home, the hue of her deep-blue eyes seeming even purer in the reflection of the ground’s white blanket.

“Late in comin’, but hard when it gets here,” grumbled Bruenor Battlehammer, a red-bearded dwarf, as he came up behind Catti-brie, his adopted daughter. “Suren to be a hard season, as are all in this place for white dragons!”

“Oh, me Daddy!” replied Catti-brie sternly. “Stop yer whining! Suren ’tis a beautiful fall, and harmless enough without the wind to drive it.”

“Humans,” huffed the dwarf derisively, still behind the girl. Catti-brie could not see his expression, tender toward her even as he grumbled, but she didn’t need to. Bruenor was nine parts
bluster and one part grouch, by Catti-brie’s estimation.

Catti-brie spun on the dwarf suddenly, her shoulder-length, auburn locks twirling about her face. “Can I go out to play?” she asked, a hopeful smile on her face. “Oh, please, me Daddy!”

Bruenor forced on his best grimace. “Go out!” he roared. “None but a fool’d look for an Icewind Dale winter as a place for playin’! Show some sense, girl! The season’d freeze yer bones!”

Catti-brie’s smile disappeared, but she refused to surrender so easily. “Well said for a dwarf,” she retorted, to Bruenor’s horror. “Ye’re well enough fit for the holes and the less ye see o’ the sky, the more ye’re smiling. But I’ve a long winter ahead, and this might be me last chance to see the sky. Please, Daddy?”

Bruenor could not hold his snarling visage against his daughter’s charm, but he did not want her to go out. “I’m fearing there’s something prowlin’ out there,” he explained, trying to sound authoritative. “Sensed it on the climb a few nights back, though I never seen it. Mighten be a white lion, or a white bear. Best to …” Bruenor never finished, for Catti-brie’s disheartened look more than destroyed the dwarf’s imagined fears.

Catti-brie was no novice to the dangers of the region. She had lived with Bruenor and his dwarven clan for more than seven years. A raiding goblin band had killed Catti-brie’s parents when she was only a toddler, and though she was human, Bruenor had taken her in as his own.

“Ye’re a hard one, me girl,” Bruenor said in answer to Catti-brie’s relentless, sorrow-filled expression. “Go out and find yer play, then, but don’t ye be goin’ too far! On yer word, ye spirited filly, keep the caves in sight and a sword and horn on yer belt.”