Sojourn

6. Sundabar

“Oh, enough, Fret,” the tall woman said to the white-robed, white-bearded dwarf, batting his hands away. She ran her fingers through her thick, brown hair, messing it considerably.

“Tsk, tsk,” the dwarf replied, immediately moving his hands back to the dirty spot on the woman’s cloak. He brushed frantically, but the ranger’s continual shifting kept him from accomplishing much. “Why, Mistress Falconhand, I do believe that you would do well to consult a few books on proper behavior.”

“I just rode in from Silverymoon,” Dove Falconhand replied indignantly, tossing a wink to Gabriel, the other fighter in the room, a tall and stern-faced man. “One tends to collect some dirt on the road.”

“Nearly a week ago!” the dwarf protested. “You attended the banquet last night in this very cloak!” The dwarf then noticed that in his fuss over Dove’s cloak he had smudged his own silken robes, and that catastrophe turned his attention from the ranger.

“Dear Fret,” Dove went on, licking a finger and casually rubbing it over the spot on her cloak, “you are the most unusual of attendants.”

The dwarf’s face went beet red, and he stamped a shiny slipper on the tiled floor. “Attendant?” he huffed. “I should say…”

“Then do!” Dove laughed.

“I am the most—one of the most—accomplished sages in the north! My thesis concerning the proper etiquette of racial banquets—”

“Or lack of proper etiquette—” Gabriel couldn’t help but interrupt. The dwarf turned on him sourly—”at least where dwarves are concerned,” the tall fighter finished with an innocent shrug.

The dwarf trembled visibly and his slippers played a respectable beat on the hard floor.

“Oh, dear Fret,” Dove offered, dropping a comforting hand on the dwarf’s shoulder and running it along the length of his perfectly trimmed, yellow beard.

“Fred!” the dwarf retorted sharply, pushing the ranger’s hand away. “Fredegar!”

Dove and Gabriel looked at each other for one brief, knowing moment, then cried out the dwarf’s surname in an explosion of laughter. “Rockcrusher!”

“Fredegar Quilldipper would be more to the point!” Gabriel added. One look at the fuming dwarf told the man that the time had passed for leaving, so he scooped up his pack and darted from the room, pausing only to slip one final wink Dove’s way.

“I only desired to help.” The dwarf dropped his hands into impossibly deep pockets and his head drooped low.

“So you have!” Dove cried to comfort him.

“I mean, you do have an audience with Helm Dwarf-friend,” Fret went on, regaining some pride. “One should be proper when seeing the Master of Sundabar.”

“Indeed one should,” Dove readily agreed. “Yet all I have to wear you see before you, dear Fret, stained and dirtied from the road. I am afraid that I shall not cut a very fine figure in the eyes of Sundabar’s master. He and my sister have become such friends.” It was Dove’s turn to feign a vulnerable pout, and though her sword had turned many a giant into vulture food, the strong ranger could play this game better than most.

“Whatever shall I do?” She cocked her head curiously as she glanced at the dwarf. “Perhaps,” she teased. “If only…”

Fret’s face began to brighten at the hint.

“No,” Dove said with a heavy sigh. “I could never impose so upon you.”

Fret verily bounced with glee, clapping his thick hands together. “Indeed you could, Mistress Falconhand! Indeed you could!”

Dove bit her lip to forestall any further demeaning laughter as the excited dwarf skipped out of the room. While she often teased Fret, Dove would readily admit that she loved the little dwarf. Fret had spent many years in Silverymoon, where Dove’s sister ruled, and had made many contributions to the famed library there. Fret really was a noted sage, known for his extensive research into the customs of various races, both good and evil, and he was an expert on issues demihuman. He also was a fine composer. How many times, Dove wondered with sincere humility, had she ridden along a mountain trail, whistling a cheery melody composed by this very same dwarf?

“Dear Fret,” the ranger whispered under her breath when the dwarf returned, a silken gown draped over one arm—but carefully folded so that it would not drag across the floor!—assorted jewelry and a pair of stylish shoes in his other hand, a dozen pins sticking out from between his pursed lips, and a measuring string looped over one ear. Dove hid her smile and decided to give the dwarf this one battle. She would tiptoe into Helm Dwarf-friend’s audience hall in a silken gown, the picture of Ladydom, with the diminutive sage huffing proudly by her side.

All the while, Dove knew, the shoes would pinch and bite at her feet and the gown would find some place to itch where she could not reach. Alas for the duties of station, Dove thought as she stared at the gown and accessories. She looked into Fret’s beaming face then and realized that it was worth all the trouble.

Alas for the duties of friendship, she mused.

The farmer had ridden straight through for more than a day; the sighting of a dark elf often had such effects on simple villagers. He had taken two horses out of Maldobar; one he had left a score of miles behind, halfway between the two towns. If he was lucky, he’d find the animal unharmed on the return trip. The second horse, the farmer’s prized stallion, was beginning to tire. Still the farmer bent low in the saddle, spurring the steed on. The torches of Sundabar’s night watch, high up on the city’s thick stone walls, were in sight.

“Stop and speak your name!” came the formal cry from the captain of the gate guards when the rider approached, half an hour later.

Dove leaned on Fret for support as they followed Helm’s attendant down the long and decorated corridor to the audience room. The ranger could cross a rope bridge without handrails, could fire her bow with deadly accuracy atop a charging steed, could scramble up a tree in full chain armor, sword and shield in hand. But she could not, for all of her experience and agility, manage the fancy shoes that Fret had squeezed her feet into.

“And this gown,” Dove whispered in exasperation, knowing that the impractical garment would split in six or seven places if she had occasion to swing her sword while wearing it, let alone inhaled too abruptly.

Fret looked up at her, wounded.

“This gown is surely the most beautiful… “ Dove stuttered, careful not to send the tidy dwarf into a tantrum. “Truly I can find no words suitable to my gratitude, dear Fret.”

The dwarf’s gray eyes shone brightly, though he wasn’t sure that he believed a word of it. Either way, Fret figured that Dove cared enough about him to go along with his suggestions, and that fact was all that really mattered to him.

“I beg a thousand pardons, my lady,” came a voice from behind. The whole entourage turned to see the captain of the night watch, a farmer by his side, trotting down the somber hallway.

“Good captain!” Fret protested at the violation of protocol. “If you desire an audience with the lady, you must make an introduction in the hall. Then, and only then, and only if the master allows, you may…”

Dove dropped a hand on the dwarf’s shoulder to silence him. She recognized the urgency etched onto the men’s faces, a look the adventuring heroine had seen many times. “Do go on, Captain,” she prompted. To placate Fret, she added, “We have a few moments before our audience is set to begin. Master Helm will not be kept waiting.”

The farmer stepped forward boldly. “A thousand pardons for myself, my lady,” he began, fingering his cap nervously in his hands. “I am but a farmer from Maldobar, a small village north…”

“I know of Maldobar,” Dove assured him. “Many times I have viewed the place from the mountains. A fine and sturdy community.” The farmer brightened at her description. “No harm has befallen Maldobar, I pray.”

“Not as yet, my lady,” the farmer replied, “but we’ve sighted trouble, we’re not to doubting.” He paused and looked to the captain for support. “Drow.”

Dove’s eyes widened at the news. Even Fret, tapping his foot impatiently throughout the conversation, stopped and took note.

“How many?” Dove asked.

“Only one, as we have seen. We’re fearing he’s a scout or spy, and up to no good.”

Dove nodded her agreement. “Who has seen the drow?”

“Children first,” the farmer replied, drawing a sigh from Fret and setting the dwarf’s foot impatiently tapping once again.

“Children?” the dwarf huffed.

The farmer’s determination did not waver. “Then McGristle saw him,” he said, eyeing Dove directly, “and McGristle’s seen a lot!”

“What is a McGristle?” Fret huffed.

“Roddy McGristle,” Dove answered, somewhat sourly, before the farmer could explain. “A noted bounty hunter and fur trapper.”

“The drow killed one of Roddy’s dogs!” the farmer put in excitedly, “and nearly cut down Roddy! Dropped a tree right on him! He’s lost an ear for the experience.”

Dove didn’t quite understand what the farmer was talking about, but she really didn’t need to. A dark elf had been seen and confirmed in the region, and that fact alone set the ranger into motion. She flipped off her fancy shoes and handed them to Fret, then told one of the attendants to go straight off and find her traveling companions and told the other to deliver her regrets to the Master of Sundabar.

“But Lady Falconhand!” Fret cried.

“No time for pleasantries,” Dove replied, and Fret could tell by her obvious excitement that she was not too disappointed at canceling her audience with Helm. Already she was wiggling about, trying to open the catch on the back of her magnificent gown.

“Your sister will not be pleased.” Fret growled loudly over the tapping of his boot.

“My sister hung up her backpack long ago,” Dove retorted, “but mine still wears the fresh dirt of the road!”

“Indeed,” the dwarf mumbled, not in a complimentary way.

“Ye mean to come, then?” the farmer asked hopefully.

“Of course,” Dove replied. “No reputable ranger could ignore the sighting of a dark elf! My three companions and I will set out for Maldobar this very night, though I beg that you remain here, good farmer. You have ridden hard—it is obvious—and need sleep.” Dove glanced around curiously for a moment, then put a finger to her pursed lips.

“What?” the annoyed dwarf asked her.

Dove’s face brightened as her gaze dropped down to Fret. “I have little experience with dark elves,” she began, “and my companions, to my knowledge, have never dealt with one,” Her widening smile set Fret back on his heels.

“Come, dear Fret,” Dove purred at the dwarf. Her bare feet slapping conspicuously on the tiled floor, she led Fret, the captain, and the farmer from Maldobar down the hallway to Helm’s audience room.

Fret was confused—and hopeful—for a moment by Dove’s sudden change of direction. As soon as Dove began talking to Helm, Fret’s master, apologizing for the unexpected inconvenience and asking Helm to send along one who might aid in the mission to Maldobar, the dwarf began to understand.

By the time the sun found its way above the eastern horizon the next morning, Dove’s party, which included an elven archer and two powerful human fighters, had ridden more than ten miles from Sundabar’s heavy gate.

“Ugh!” Fret groaned when the light increased. He rode a sturdy Adbar pony at Dove’s side. “See how the mud has soiled my fine clothes! Surely it will be the end of us all! To die filthy on a gods-forsaken road!”

“Pen a song about it,” Dove suggested, returning the widening smiles of her other three companions. “The Ballad of the Five Choked Adventurers, it shall be named.”

Fret’s angry glare lasted only the moment it took Dove to remind him that Helm Dwarf-friend, the Master of Sundabar himself, had commissioned Fret to travel along.

7. Simmering Rage

On the same morning that Dove’s party left on the road to Maldobar, Drizzt set out on a journey of his own. The initial horror of his gruesome discovery the previous night had not diminished, and the drow feared that it never would, but another emotion had also entered Drizzt’s thinking. He could do nothing for the innocent farmers and their children, nothing except avenge their deaths. That thought was not so pleasing to Drizzt; he had left the Underdark behind, and the savagery as well, he had hoped. With the images of the carnage still so horribly clear in his mind, and all alone as he was, Drizzt could look only to his scimitar for justice.

Drizzt took two precautions before he set out on the murderer’s trail. First, he crept back down to the farmyard, to the back of the house, where the farmers had placed a broken plowshare. The metal blade was heavy, but the determined drow hoisted it and carried it away without a thought to the discomfort.

Drizzt then called Guenhwyvar. As soon as the panther arrived and took note of Drizzt’s scowl, it dropped into an alert crouch. Guenhwyvar had been around Drizzt long enough to recognize that expression and to believe that they would see battle before it returned to its astral home.

They moved off before dawn, Guenhwyvar easily following the barghest’s clear trail, as Ulgulu had hoped. Their pace was slow, with Drizzt hindered by the plowshare, but steady, and as soon as Drizzt caught the sound of a distant buzzing noise, he knew he had done right in collecting the cumbersome item.

Still, the remainder of the morning passed without incident. The trail led the companions into a rocky ravine and to the base of a high, uneven cliff. Drizzt feared that he might have to scale the cliff face—and leave the plowshare behind—but soon he spotted a single narrow trail winding up along the wall. The ascending path remained smooth as it wound around sheer bends in the cliff face, blind and dangerous turns. Wanting to use the terrain to his advantage, Drizzt sent Guenhwyvar far ahead and moved along by himself, dragging the plowshare and feeling vulnerable on the open cliff.

That feeling did nothing to quench the simmering fires in Drizzt’s lavender eyes, though, which burned clearly from under the low-pulled cowl of his oversized gnoll cloak. If the sight of the ravine looming just to the side unnerved the drow, he needed only to remember the farmers. A short while later, when Drizzt heard the expected buzzing noise from somewhere lower on the narrow trail, he only smiled.

The buzz quickly closed from behind. Drizzt fell back against the cliff wall and snapped out his scimitar, carefully monitoring the time it took the sprite to close.

Tephanis flashed beside the drow, the quickling’s little dagger darting and prodding for an opening in the defensive twists of the waving scimitar. The sprite was gone in an instant, moving up ahead of Drizzt, but Tephanis had scored a hit, nicking Drizzt on one shoulder.

Drizzt inspected the wound and nodded gravely, accepting it as a minor inconvenience. He knew he could not defeat the blinding attack, and he knew, too, that allowing this first strike had been necessary for his ultimate victory. A growl on the path up ahead put Drizzt quickly back on alert. Guenhwyvar had met the sprite, and the panther, with flashing paws that could match the quickling’s speed, no doubt had turned the thing back around.

Again Drizzt put his back to the wall, monitoring the buzzing approach. Just as the sprite came around the corner, Drizzt jumped out onto the narrow path, his scimitar at the ready. The drow’s other hand was less conspicuous and held steady a metal object, ready to tilt it out to block the opening.

The speeding sprite cut back in toward the wall, easily able, as Drizzt realized, to avoid the scimitar. But in his narrow focus on his target, the sprite failed to notice Drizzt’s other hand.

Drizzt hardly registered the sprite’s movements, but the sudden “Bong!” and the sharp vibrations in his hand as the creature smacked into the plowshare brought a satisfied grin to his lips. He let the plowshare drop and scooped up the unconscious sprite by the throat, holding it clear of the ground. Guenhwyvar bounded around the bend about the same time the sprite shook the dizziness from his sharp-featured head, his long and pointed ears nearly flopping right over the other side of his head with each movement.

“What creature are you?” Drizzt asked in the goblin tongue, the language that had worked for him with the gnoll band. To his surprise, he found that the sprite understood, though his high-pitched, blurred response came too quickly for Drizzt to even begin to understand.

He gave the sprite a quick jerk to silence him, then growled, “One word at a time! What is your name?”

“Tephanis,” the sprite said indignantly. Tephanis could move his legs a hundred times a second, but they didn’t do him much good while he was suspended in the air. The sprite glanced down to the narrow ledge and saw his small dagger lying next to the dented plowshare.

Drizzt’s scimitar moved in dangerously. “Did you kill the farmers?” he asked bluntly. He almost struck in response to the sprite’s ensuing chuckle.

“No,” Tephanis said quickly.

“Who did?”

“Ulgulu!” the sprite proclaimed. Tephanis pointed up the path and blurted out a stream of excited words. Drizzt managed to make out a few, “Ulgulu… waiting… dinner,” being the most disturbing of them.

Drizzt really didn’t know what he would do with the captured sprite. Tephanis was simply too fast for Drizzt to safely handle. He looked to Guenhwyvar, sitting casually a few feet up the path, but the panther only yawned and stretched.

Drizzt was about to come back with another question, to try to figure out where Tephanis fit into the whole scenario, but the cocky sprite decided that he had suffered enough of the encounter. His hands moving too fast for Drizzt to react, Tephanis reached down into his boot, produced another knife, and slashed at Drizzt’s already injured wrist.

This time, the cocky sprite had underestimated his opponent. Drizzt could not match the sprite’s speed, could not even follow the tiny, darting dagger. As painful as the wounds were, though, Drizzt was too filled with rage to take note. He only tightened his grip on the sprite’s collar and thrust his scimitar ahead. Even with such limited mobility, Tephanis was quick enough and nimble enough to dodge, laughing wildly all the while.

The sprite struck back, digging a deeper cut into Drizzt’s forearm. Finally Drizzt chose a tactic that Tephanis could not counter, one that took the sprite’s advantage away. He slammed Tephanis into the wall, then tossed the stunned creature off the cliff.

Some time later, Drizzt and Guenhwyvar crouched in the brush at the base of a steep, rocky slope. At the top, behind carefully placed bushes and branches, lay a cave, and, every so often, goblin voices rolled out.

Beside the cave, to the side of the sloping ground was a steep drop. Beyond the cave, the mountain climbed on at an even greater angle. The tracks, though they were sometimes scarce on the bare stone, had led Drizzt and Guenhwyvar to this spot; there could be no doubt that the monster who slaughtered the farmers was in the cave.

Drizzt again fought with his decision to avenge the farmers’ deaths. He would have preferred a more civilized justice, a lawful court, but what was he to do? He certainly could not go to the human villagers with his suspicions, nor to anyone else. Crouching in the bush, Drizzt thought again of the farmers, of the sandy-haired boy, of the pretty girl, barely a woman, and of the young man he had disarmed in the blueberry patch. Drizzt fought hard to keep his breathing steady. In the wild Underdark he had sometimes given in to his instinctive urges, a darker side of himself that fought with brutal and deadly efficiency, and Drizzt could feel that alter-ego welling within him once again. At first, he tried to sublimate the rage, but then he remembered the lessons he had learned. This darker side was a part of him, a tool for survival, and was not altogether evil.

It was necessary.

Drizzt understood his disadvantage in the situation, however. He had no idea how many enemies he would encounter, or even what type of monsters they might be. He heard goblins, but the carnage at the farmhouse indicated that something much more powerful was involved. Drizzt’s good judgment told him to sit and watch, to learn more of his enemies.

Another fleeting instant of remembrance, the scene at the farmhouse, threw that good judgment aside. Scimitar in one hand, the sprite’s dagger in another, Drizzt stalked up the stony hill. He didn’t slow when he neared the cave, but merely ripped the brush aside and walked straight in.

Guenhwyvar hesitated and watched from behind, confused by the drow’s straightforward tactics.

Tephanis felt cool air brushing by his face and thought for a moment that he was enjoying some pleasant dream. The sprite came out of his delusion quickly, though, and realized that he was fast approaching the ground. Fortunately, Tephanis was not far from the cliff. He send his hands and feet spinning rapidly enough to produce a constant humming sound and clawed and kicked at the cliff in an effort to slow his descent. In the meantime, he began the incantations to a levitation spell, possibly the only thing that could save him.

A few agonizingly slow seconds passed before the sprite felt his body buoyed by the spell. He still hit the ground hard, but he realized that his wounds were minor.

Tephanis stood relatively slowly and dusted himself off. His first thought was to go and warn Ulgulu of the approaching drow, but he reconsidered at once. He could not levitate up to the cave complex in time to warn the barghest, and there was only one path up the cliff face—which the drow was on.

Tephanis had no desire to face that one again.

Ulgulu had not tried to cover his tracks at all. The dark elf had served the barghest’s needs; now he planned to make a meal of Drizzt, one that might bring him into maturity and allow him to return to Gehenna.

Ulgulu’s two goblin guards were not too surprised at Drizzt’s entrance. Ulgulu had told them to expect the drow and to simply delay him out in the entry room until the barghest could come and attend to him. The goblins halted their conversation abruptly, dropped their spears in a blocking cross over the curtain, and puffed out their scrawny chests, foolishly following their boss’s instructions as Drizzt approached.

“None can go in—” one of them began, but then, in a single swipe of Drizzt’s scimitar, both the goblin and its companion staggered down, clutching at their opened throats. The spear barrier fell away and Drizzt never even slowed as he stalked through the curtain.

In the middle of the inner room, the drow saw his enemy. Scarlet-skinned and giant-sized, the barghest waited with crossed arms and a wicked, confident grin.

Drizzt threw the dagger and charged right in behind it. That throw saved the drow’s life, for when the dagger passed harmlessly through his enemy’s body, Drizzt recognized the trap. He came in anyway, unable to break his momentum, and his scimitar entered the image without finding anything tangible to cut into.

The real barghest was behind the stone throne at the back of the room. Using another power of his considerable magical repertoire, Kempfana had sent an image of himself into the middle of the room to hold the drow in place.

Immediately Drizzt’s instincts told him that he had been set up. This was no real monster he faced but an apparition meant to keep him in the open and vulnerable. The room was sparsely furnished; nothing nearby offered any cover.

Ulgulu, levitating above the drow, came down quickly, lighting softly behind him. The plan was perfect and the target was right in place.

Drizzt, his reflexes and muscles trained and honed to fighting perfection, sensed the presence and dove forward into the image as Ulgulu launched a heavy blow. The barghest’s huge hand only clipped Drizzt’s flowing hair, but that alone nearly ripped the drow’s head to the side.

Drizzt half-turned his body as he dove, rolling back to his feet facing Ulgulu. He met a monster even larger than the giant image, but that fact did nothing to intimidate the enraged drow. Like a stretched cord, Drizzt snapped straight back at the barghest. By the time Ulgulu even recovered from his unexpected miss, Drizzt’s lone scimitar had poked him three times in the belly and had dug a neat little hole under his chin.

The barghest roared in rage but was not too badly hurt, for Drizzt’s drow-made weapon had lost most of its magic in the drow’s time on the surface and only magical weapons—such as Guenhwyvar’s claws and teeth—could truly harm a creature from Gehenna’s rifts.

The huge panther slammed onto the back of Ulgulu’s head with enough force to drop the barghest facedown on the floor. Never had Ulgulu felt such pain as Guenhwyvar’s claws raked across his head.

Drizzt moved to join in, when he heard a shuffle from the back of the room. Kempfana came charging out from behind the throne, bellowing in protest.

It was Drizzt’s turn to utilize some magic. He threw a globe of darkness in the scarlet-skinned barghest’s path, then dove into it himself, crouching on his hands and knees. Unable to slow, Kempfana roared in, stumbled over the braced drow—kicking Drizzt with enough force to blast the air from his lungs—and fell heavily out the other side of the darkness.

Kempfana shook his head to clear it and planted his huge hands to rise. Drizzt was on the barghest’s back in no time, hacking away wildly with his vicious scimitar. Blood matted Kempfana’s hair by the time he was able to brace himself enough to throw the drow off. He staggered to his feet dizzily and turned to face the drow.

Across the room, Ulgulu crawled and tumbled, rolled and twisted. The panther was too quick and too sleek for the giant’s lumbering counters. A dozen gashes scarred Ulgulu’s face and now Guenhwyvar had its teeth clamped on the back of the giant’s neck and all four paws raking at the giant’s back.

Ulgulu had another option, though. Bones crackled and reformed. Ulgulu’s scarred face became an elongated snout filled with wicked canine teeth. Thick hair sprouted from all over the giant, fending off Guenhwyvar’s claw attacks. Flailing arms became kicking paws.

Guenhwyvar battled a gigantic wolf, and the panther’s advantage was short-lived.

Kempfana stalked in slowly, showing Drizzt new respect.

“You killed them all,” Drizzt said in the goblin tongue, his voice so utterly cold that it stopped the scarlet-skinned barghest in his tracks.

Kempfana was not a stupid creature. The barghest recognized the explosive rage in this drow and had felt the sharp bite of the scimitar. Kempfana knew better than to walk straight in, so again he called upon his otherworldly skills. In the blink of an orange-burning eye, the scarlet-skinned barghest was gone, stepping through an extradimensional door and reappearing right behind Drizzt.

As soon as Kempfana disappeared, Drizzt instinctively broke to the side. The blow from behind came quicker, though, landing squarely on Drizzt’s back and launching him across the room. Drizzt crashed into the base of one wall and came up into a kneel, gasping for his breath.

Kempfana did stalk straight in this time; the drow had dropped his scimitar halfway to the wall, too far away for Drizzt to grasp.

The great barghest-wolf, nearly twice Guenhwyvar’s size, rolled over and straddled the panther. Great jaws snapped near Guenhwyvar’s throat and face, the panther batting wildly to hold them at bay. Guenhwyvar could not hope to win an even fight against the wolf. The only advantage the panther retained was mobility. Like a black-shafted arrow, Guenhwyvar darted out from under the wolf and toward the curtain.

Ulgulu howled and gave chase, ripping the curtain down and charging on, toward the waning daylight.

Guenhwyvar came out of the cave as Ulgulu tore through the curtain, pivoted instantly, and leaped straight up to the slopes above the entrance. When the great wolf came out, the panther again crashed down on Ulgulu’s back and resumed its raking and slashing.

“Ulgulu killed the farmers, not I,” Kempfana growled as he approached. He kicked Drizzt’s scimitar across to the other side of the room. “Ulgulu wants you—you who killed his gnolls. But I shall kill you, drow warrior. I shall feast on your life force so that I may gain in strength!”

Drizzt, still trying to find his breath, hardly heard the words. The only thoughts that occurred to him were the images of the dead farmers, images that gave Drizzt courage. The barghest drew near and Drizzt snapped a vile gaze upon him, a determined gaze not lessened in the least by the drow’s obviously desperate situation.

Kempfana hesitated at the sight of those narrowed, burning eyes, and the barghest’s delay brought Drizzt all the time he needed. He had fought giant monsters before, most notably hook horrors. Always Drizzt’s scimitars had ended those battles, but for his initial strikes, he had, every time, used only his own body. The pain in his back was no match for his mounting rage. He rushed out from the wall, remaining in a crouch, and dove through Kempfana’s legs, spinning and catching a hold behind the barghest’s knee.

Kempfana, unconcerned, lurched down to grab the squirming drow. Drizzt eluded the giant’s grasp long enough to find some leverage. Still, Kempfana accepted the attacks as a mere inconvenience. When Drizzt put the barghest off balance, Kempfana willingly toppled, meaning to crush the wiry little elf. Again Drizzt was too quick for the barghest. He twisted out from under the falling giant, put his feet back under him, and sprinted for the opposite end of the chamber.

“No, you shall not!” Kempfana bellowed, crawling then running in pursuit. Just as Drizzt scooped up his scimitar, giant arms wrapped around him and easily lifted him off the ground.

“Crush you and bite you!” Kempfana roared, and indeed, Drizzt heard one of his ribs crack. He tried to wiggle around to face his foe, then gave up on the notion, concentrating instead on freeing his sword arm.

Another rib snapped; Kempfana’s huge arms tightened. The barghest did not want to simply kill the drow, though, realizing the great gains toward maturity he could make by devouring so powerful an enemy, by feeding on Drizzt’s life force.

“Bite you, drow.” The giant laughed. “Feast!”

Drizzt grasped his scimitar in both hands with strength inspired by the images of the farmhouse. He tore the weapon loose and snapped it straight back over his head. The blade entered Kempfana’s open, eager mouth and dove down the monster’s throat.

Drizzt twisted it and turned it.

Kernpfana whipped about wildly and Drizzt’s muscles and joints nearly ripped apart under the strain. The drow had found his focus, though, the scimitar hilt, and he continued to twist and turn.

Kempfana went down heavily, gurgling, and rolled onto Drizzt, trying to squash the life out of him. Pain began to seep into Drizzt’s consciousness.

“No!” he cried, grabbing at the image of the sandy-haired boy, slain in his bed. Still Drizzt twisted and turned the blade. The gurgling continued, a wheezing sound of air rising through choking blood. Drizzt knew that this battle was won when the creature above him no longer moved.

Drizzt wanted only to curl up and find his breath but told himself that he was not yet finished. He crawled out from under Kempfana, wiped the blood, his own blood, from his lips, unceremoniously ripped his scimitar free of Kempfana’s mouth, and retrieved his dagger.

He knew that his wounds were serious, could prove fatal if he didn’t attend to them immediately. His breath continued to come in forced, bloodied gasps. It didn’t concern him, though, for Ulgulu, the monster who had killed the farmers, still lived.

Guenhwyvar sprang from the giant wolf’s back, again finding a tenuous footing on the steep slope above the cave entrance. Ulgulu spun, snarling, and leaped up at the panther, clawing and raking at the stones in an effort to get higher.

Guenhwyvar leaped out over the barghest-wolf, pivoted immediately, and slashed at Ulgulu’s backside. The wolf spun but Guenhwyvar leaped by, again to the slope.

The game of hit-and-run went on for several moments, Guenhwyvar striking, then darting away. Finally, though, the wolf anticipated the panther’s dodge. Ulgulu brought the leaping panther down in his massive jaws. Guenhwyvar squirmed and tore free, but came up near the steep gorge. Ulgulu hovered over the cat, blocking any escape.

Drizzt exited the cave as the great wolf bore down, pushing Guenhwyvar back. Pebbles rolled out into the gorge; the panther’s back legs slipped and then clawed back, trying to find a hold. Even mighty Guenhwyvar could not hold out against the weight and strength of the barghest-wolf, Drizzt knew.

Drizzt saw immediately that he could not get the great wolf off Guenhwyvar in time. He pulled out the onyx figurine and tossed it near the combatants. “Be gone, Guenhwyvar!” he commanded.

Guenhwyvar normally would not desert its master in a time of such danger, but the panther understood what Drizzt had in mind. Ulgulu bore in powerfully, determinedly driving Guenhwyvar from the ledge.

Then the beast was pushing only intangible vapors. Ulgulu lurched forward and scrambled wildly, kicking more stones and the onyx figurine into the gorge. Overbalanced, the wolf could not find a hold, and then Ulgulu was falling.

Bones popped again, and the canine fur thinned; Ulgulu could not enact a levitation spell in his canine form. Desperate, the barghest concentrated, reaching for his goblinoid form. The wolf maw shortened into a flat-featured face; paws thickened and reformed into arms.

The half-transformed creature didn’t make it, but instead cracked into the stone.

Drizzt stepped off the ledge and into a levitation spell, moving down slowly and close to the rocky wall. As it had before, the spell soon died away. Drizzt bounced and clawed through the last twenty feet of the fall, coming to a hard stop at the rocky bottom. He saw the barghest twitching only a few feet away and tried to rise in defense, but darkness overwhelmed him.

Drizzt could not know how many hours had passed when a thunderous roar awakened him some time later. It was dark now and a cloudy night. Slowly the memories of the encounter came back to the dazed and injured drow. To his relief, he saw that Ulgulu lay still on the stone beside him, half a goblin and half a wolf, obviously quite dead.

A second roar, back up by the cave, turned the drow toward the ledge high above him. There stood Lagerbottoms, the hill giant, returned from a hunting trip and outraged by the carnage he had found.

Drizzt knew as soon as he managed to crawl to his feet that he could not fight another battle this day. He searched around for a moment, found the onyx figurine, and dropped it into his pouch. He wasn’t too concerned for Guenhwyvar. He had seen the panther through worse calamities—caught in the explosion of a magical wand, pulled into the Plane of Earth by an enraged elemental, even dropped into a lake of hissing acid. The figurine appeared undamaged, and Drizzt was certain that Guenhwyvar was now comfortably at rest in its astral home.

Drizzt, however, could afford no such rest. Already the giant had begun picking its way down the rocky slope. With a final look to Ulgulu, Drizzt felt a sense of vengeance that did little to defeat the agonizing, bitter memories of the slaughtered farmers. He set off, moving farther into the wild mountains, running from the giant and from the guilt.

8. Clues and Riddles

More than a day had passed since the massacre when the first of the Thistledowns’ neighbors rode out to their secluded farm. The stench of death alerted the visiting farmer to the carnage even before he looked in the house or barn.

He returned an hour later with Mayor Delmo and several other armed farmers at his side. They crawled through the Thistledown house and across the grounds cautiously, putting cloth over their faces to combat the terrible smell.

“Who could have done this?” the mayor demanded. “What monster?” As if in answer, one of the farmers walked out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, holding a broken scimitar in his hands.

“A drow weapon?” the farmer asked. “We should be getting McGristle.”

Delmo hesitated. He expected the party from Sundabar to arrive any day and felt that the famed ranger Dove Falconhand would be better able to handle the situation than the volatile and uncontrollable mountain man.

The debate never really began, though, for the snarl of a dog alerted all in the house that McGristle had arrived. The burly, dirty man stalked into the kitchen, the side of his face horribly scarred and caked with brown, dried blood.

“Drow weapon!” he spat, recognizing the scimitar all too clearly. “Same as he used agin me!”

“The ranger will be in soon,” Delmo began, but McGristle hardly listened. He stalked about the room and into the adjoining bedroom, gruffly tapping bodies with his foot and bending low to inspect some minor details.

“Saw the tracks outside,” McGristle stated suddenly. “Two sets, I make ‘em.”

“The drow has an ally,” the mayor reasoned. “More cause for us to wait for the party from Sundabar.”

“Bah, ye hardly know if they’re even comin’!” McGristle snorted. “Got to get after the drow now, while the trail’s fine for my dog’s nose!”

Several of the gathered farmers nodded their accord—until Delmo prudently reminded them of exactly what they might be facing.

“A single drow took you down, McGristle,” the mayor said. “Now you think there’s two of them, maybe more, and you want us to go and hunt them?”

“Bad fortune, it was, that took me down!” Roddy snapped back. He looked around, appealing to the now less-than-eager farmers. “I had that drow, had him cleaned an’ dressed!”

The farmers milled nervously and whispered to each other as the mayor took Roddy by the arm and led him to the side of the room.

“Wait a day,” Delmo begged. “Our chances will be much greater if the ranger comes.”

Roddy didn’t seem convinced. “My battle’s my own to fight,” he snarled. “He killed my dog an’ left me ugly.”

“You want him, and you’ll have him,” the mayor promised, “but there might be more on the table here than your dog or your pride.”

Roddy’s face contorted ominously, but the mayor was adamant. If a drow war party was indeed operating in the area, all of Maldobar was in imminent danger. The small group’s greatest defense until help could arrive from Sundabar was unity, and that defense would fail if Roddy led a group of men—fighters who were scarce enough already—on a chase through the mountains. Benson Delmo was astute enough to know that he could not appeal to Roddy on those terms, though. While the mountain man had remained in Maldobar for a couple of years, he was, in essence, a drifter and owed no allegiance to the town.

Roddy turned away, deciding that the meeting was at its end, but the mayor boldly grabbed his arm and turned him back around. Roddy’s dog bared its teeth and growled, but that threat was a small consideration to the fat man in light of the awful scowl that Roddy shot him.

“You’ll have the drow,” the mayor said quickly, “but wait for the help from Sundabar, I beg.” He switched to terms that Roddy could truly appreciate. “I am a man of no small means, McGristle, and you were a bounty hunter before you got here, and still are, I’d expect.”

Roddy’s expression quickly changed from outrage to curiosity.

“Wait for the help, then go get the drow.” The mayor paused, considering his forthcoming offer. He really had no experience in this sort of thing and, while he didn’t want to come in too low and spoil the interest he had sparked, he didn’t want to tax his own purse strings any more than was necessary. “A thousand gold for the drow’s head.”

Roddy had played this pricing game many times. He hid his delight well; the mayor’s offer was five times his normal fee and he would have gone after the drow in any case, with or without payment.

“Two thousand!” the mountain man grumbled without missing a beat, suspecting that more could be exacted for his troubles. The mayor rocked back on his heels but reminded himself several times that the town’s very existence might be at stake.

“And not a copper less!” Roddy added, crossing his burly arms over his chest.

“Wait for Mistress Falconhand,” Delmo said meekly, “and you shall have your two thousand.”

All through the night, Lagerbottoms followed the wounded drow’s trail. The bulky hill giant was not yet certain how it felt about the death of Ulgulu and Kempfana, the unasked for masters who had taken over his lair and his life. While Lagerbottoms feared any enemy who could defeat those two, the giant knew that the drow was sorely wounded.

Drizzt realized he was being followed but could do little to hide his tracks. One leg, injured in his bouncing descent into the ravine, dragged painfully and Drizzt had all he could do to keep ahead of the giant. When dawn came, bright and clear, Drizzt knew that his disadvantage had increased. He could not hope to escape the hill giant through the long and revealing light of day.

The trail dipped into a small grouping of variously sized trees, sprouting up wherever they could find cracks between the numerous boulders. Drizzt meant to go straight through—he saw no option other than continuing his flight—but while he leaned on one of the larger trees for support to catch his breath, a thought came to him. The tree’s branches hung limply, supple and cordlike.

Drizzt glanced back along the trail. Higher up and crossing a bare expanse of rock, the relentless hill giant plodded along. Drizzt drew his scimitar with the one arm that still seemed to work and hacked down the longest branch he could find. Then he looked for a suitable boulder.

The giant crashed into the copse about a half-hour later, its huge club swinging at the end of one massive arm. Lagerbottoms stopped abruptly when the drow appeared from behind a tree, blocking the path.

Drizzt nearly sighed aloud when the giant stopped, exactly at the appointed area. He had feared that the huge monster would just continue on and swat him down, for Drizzt, injured as he was, could have offered little resistance. Seizing the moment of the monster’s hesitation, Drizzt shouted “Halt!” in the goblin language and enacted a simple spell, limning the giant in blue-glowing, harmless flames.

Lagerbottoms shifted uncomfortably but made no advance toward this strange and dangerous enemy. Drizzt eyed the giant’s shuffling feet with more than a casual interest.

“Why do you follow me?” Drizzt demanded. “Do you desire to join the others in the sleep of death?”

Lagerbottoms ran his plump tongue over dry lips. So far, this encounter hadn’t gone as expected. Now the giant thought past those first instinctual urges that had led him out here and tried to consider the options. Ulgulu and Kempfana were dead; Lagerbottoms had his cave back. But the gnolls and goblins, too, were gone, and that pesky little quickling sprite hadn’t been around for a while. A sudden thought came to the giant.

“Friends?” Lagerbottoms asked hopefully.

Though he was relieved to find that combat might be avoided, Drizzt was more than a little skeptical at the offer. The gnoll band had given him a similar offer, to disastrous ends, and this giant was obviously connected to those other monsters that Drizzt had just killed, those who had slaughtered the farm family.

“Friends to what end?” Drizzt asked tentatively, hoping against all reason that he might find this creature to be motivated by some principles, and not just by blood lust.

“To kill,” Lagerbottoms replied, as though the answer had been obvious.

Drizzt snarled and jerked his head about in angry denial, his white mane flying wildly. He snapped the scimitar out of its sheath, hardly caring if the giant’s foot had found the loop of his snare.

“Kill you!” Lagerbottoms cried, seeing the sudden turn, and the giant lifted his club and took a huge stride forward, a stride shortened by the vinelike branch pulling tightly around his ankle.

Drizzt checked his desire to rush in, reminding himself that the trap had been set into motion, and reminding himself, too, that in his present condition he would be hard put to survive against the formidable giant.

Lagerbottoms looked down at the noose and roared in outrage. The branch wasn’t really a proper cord and the noose wasn’t so tight. If Lagerbottoms had simply reached down, the giant easily could have slipped the noose off his foot. Hill giants, however, were never known for their intelligence.

“Kill you!” the giant cried again, and it kicked hard against the strain of the branch. Propelled by the considerable force of the kick, the large rock tied to the branch’s other end, behind the giant, pelted forward through the underbrush and sailed into Lagerbottoms’s back.

Lagerbottoms had started to cry out a third time, but the menacing threat came out as a whoosh! of forced air. The heavy club dropped to the ground and the giant, clutching its kidney area, dropped to one knee.

Drizzt hesitated a moment, not knowing whether to run or finish the kill. He didn’t fear for himself; the giant would not be coming after him anytime soon, but he could not forget the lurid expression on the giant’s face when the monster had said that they might kill together.

“How many other families will you slaughter?” Drizzt asked in the drow tongue.

Lagerbottoms could not begin to understand the language. He just grunted and snarled through the burning pain.

“How many?” Drizzt asked again, his hand wrenching over the scimitar’s pommel and his eyes narrowing menacingly.

He came in fast and hard.

To Benson Delmo’s absolute relief, the party from Sundabar—Dove Falconhand, her three fighting companions, and Fret, the dwarven sage—came in later that day. The mayor offered the troupe food and rest, but as soon as Dove heard of the massacre at the Thistledown farm, she and her companions set straight out, with the mayor, Roddy McGristle, and several curious farmers close behind.

Dove was openly disappointed when they arrived at the secluded farm. A hundred sets of tracks obscured critical clues, and many of the items in the house, even the bodies, had been handled and moved. Still, Dove and her seasoned company moved about methodically, trying to decipher what they could of the gruesome scene.

“Foolish people!” Fret scolded the farmers when Dove and the others had completed their investigation. “You have aided our enemies!”

Several of the farmer-folk, even the mayor, looked around uncomfortably at the berating, but Roddy snarled and towered over the tidy dwarf. Dove quickly interceded.

“Your earlier presence here has marred some of the clues,” Dove explained calmly, disarmingly, to the mayor as she prudently stepped between Fret and the burly mountain man. Dove had heard many tales of McGristle before, and his reputation was not one of predictability or calm.

“We didn’t know,” the mayor tried to explain.

“Of course not,” Dove replied. “You reacted as anyone would have.”

“Any novice,” Fret remarked.

“Shut yer mouth!” McGristle growled, and so did his dog.

“Be at ease, good sir,” Dove bade him. “We have too many enemies beyond the town to need some within.”

“Novice?” McGristle barked at her. “I’ve hunted down a hunnerd men, an’ I know enough o’ this damned drow to find him.”

“Do we know it was the drow?” Dove asked, genuinely doubting.

On a nod from Roddy, a farmer standing on the side of the room produced the broken scimitar.

“Drow weapon,” Roddy said harshly, pointing to his scarred face. “I seen it up close!”

One look at the mountain man’s jagged wound told Dove that the fine-edged scimitar had not caused it, but the ranger conceded the point, seeing no gain in further argument.

“And drow tracks,” Roddy insisted. “The boot prints match close to the ones by the blueberry patch, where we seen the drow!”

Dove’s gaze led all eyes to the barn. “Something powerful broke that door,” she reasoned. “And the younger woman inside was not killed by any dark elf.”

Roddy remained undaunted. “Drow’s got a pet,” he insisted. “Big, black panther. Damned big cat!”

Dove remained suspicious. She had seen no prints to match a panther’s paws, and the way that a portion of the woman had been devoured, bones and all, did not fit any knowledge that she had of great cats. She kept her thoughts to herself, though, realizing that the gruff mountain man wanted no mysteries clouding his already-drawn conclusions.

“Now, if ye’ve had enough o’ this place, let’s get onto the trail,” Roddy boomed. “My dog’s got a scent, and the drow’s got a lead big enough already!”

Dove flashed a concerned glance at the mayor, who turned away, embarrassed, under her penetrating gaze.

“Roddy McGristle’s to go with you,” Delmo explained, barely able to spit out the words, wishing that he had not made his emotionally inspired deal with Roddy. Seeing the coolheadedness of the woman ranger and her party, so drastically different from Roddy’s violent temper, the mayor now thought it better that Dove and her companions handle the situation in their own way. But a deal was a deal.

“He’ll be the only one from Maldobar joining your troupe,” Delmo continued. “He is a seasoned hunter and knows this area better than any.”

Again Dove, to Fret’s disbelief, conceded the point.

“The day is fast on the wane,” Dove said. She added pointedly to McGristle, “We go at first light.”

“Drow’s got too much of a lead already!” Roddy protested. “We should get after him now!”

“You assume that the drow is running,” Dove replied, again calmly, but this time with a stern edge to her voice. “How many dead men once assumed the same of enemies?” This time, Roddy, perplexed, did not shout back. “The drow, or drow band, could be holed up nearby. Would you like to come upon them unexpectedly, McGristle? Would it please you to battle dark elves in the dark of night?”

Roddy just threw up his hands, growled, and stalked away, his dog close on his heels.

The mayor offered Dove and her troupe lodging at his own house, but the ranger and her companions preferred to remain behind at the Thistledown farm. Dove smiled as the farmers departed, and Roddy set up camp just a short distance away, obviously to keep an eye on her. She wondered just how much a stake McGristle had in all of this and suspected that there was more to it than revenge for a scarred face and a lost ear.

“Are you really to let that beastly man come with us?” Fret asked later on, as the dwarf, Dove, and Gabriel sat around the blazing fire in the farmyard. The elven archer and the other member of the troupe were out on perimeter guard.

“It is their town, dear Fret,” Dove explained. “And I cannot refute McGristle’s knowledge of the region.”

“But he is so dirty,” the dwarf grumbled. Dove and Gabriel exchanged smiles, and Fret, realizing that he would get nowhere with his argument, turned down his bedroll and slipped in, purposefully spinning away from the others.

“Good old Quilldipper,” mumbled Gabriel, but he noted that Dove’s ensuing smile did little to diminish the sincere concern on her face.

“You’ve a problem, Lady Falconhand?” he asked. Dove shrugged. “Some things do not fit properly in the order of things here,” she began.

“‘Twas no panther that killed the woman in the barn,” Gabriel remarked, for he, too, had noted some discrepancies.

“Nor did any drow kill the farmer, the one they named Bartholemew, in the kitchen,” said Dove. “The beam that broke his neck was nearly snapped itself. Only a giant possesses such strength.”

“Magic?” Gabriel asked.

Again Dove shrugged. “Drow magic is usually more subtle, according to our sage,” she said, looking to Fret, who was already snoring quite loudly. “And more complete. Fret does not believe that drow magic killed Bartholemew or the woman, or destroyed the barn door. And there is another mystery on the matter of the tracks.”

“Two sets,” Gabriel said, “and made nearly a day apart.”

“And of differing depths,” added Dove. “One set, the second, might indeed have been those of a dark elf, but the other, the set of the killer, went too deep for an elf’s light steps.”

“An agent of the drow?” Gabriel offered. “Conjured denizen of the lower planes, perhaps? Might it be that the dark elf came down the next day to inspect its monster’s work?” This time, Gabriel joined Dove in her confused shrug.

“So we shall learn,” Dove said. Gabriel lit a pipe then, and Dove drifted off into slumber.

“Oh-master, my-master,” Tephanis crooned, seeing the grotesque form of the broken, half-transformed barghest. The quickling didn’t really care all that much for Ulgulu or the barghest’s brother, but their deaths left some severe implications for the sprite’s future path. Tephanis had joined Ulgulu’s group for mutual gain. Before the barghests came along, the little sprite had spent his days in solitude, stealing whenever he could from nearby villages. He had done all right for himself, but his life had been a lonely and unexciting existence.

Ulgulu had changed all of that. The barghest army offered protection and companionship, and Ulgulu, always scheming for new and more devious kills, had provided Tephanis with unending important missions.

Now the quickling had to walk away from it all, for Ulgulu was dead and Kempfana was dead, and nothing Tephanis could do would change those simple facts.

“Lagerbottoms?” the quickling asked himself suddenly. He thought that the hill giant, the only member missing from the lair, might prove a fine companion. Tephanis saw the giant’s tracks clearly enough, heading away from the cave area and out into the deeper mountains. He clapped his hands excitedly, perhaps a hundred times in the next second, then was off, speeding away to find a new friend.

Far up in the mountains, Drizzt Do’Urden looked upon the lights of Maldobar for the last time. Since he had come down from the high peaks after his unpleasant encounter with the skunk, the drow had found a world of savagery nearly equal to the dark realm he had left behind. Whatever hopes Drizzt had realized in his days watching the farming family were lost to him now, buried under the weight of guilt and the awful images of carnage that he knew would haunt him forever.

The drow’s physical pain had lessened a bit; he could draw his breath fully now, though the effort sorely stung, and the cuts on his arms and legs had closed. He would survive.

Looking down at Maldobar, another place that he could never call home, Drizzt wondered if that might be a good thing.

9. The Chase

“What is it?” Fret asked, cautiously moving behind the folds of Dove’s forest-green cape.

Dove, and even Roddy, also moved tentatively, for while the creature seemed dead, they had never seen anything quite like it. It appeared to be some strange, giant-sized mutation between a goblin and a wolf.

They gained in courage as they neared the body, convinced that it was truly dead. Dove bent low and tapped it with her sword.

“It has been dead for more than a day, by my guess,” she announced.

“But what is it?” Fret asked again.

“Half-breed,” Roddy muttered.

Dove closely inspected the creature’s strange joints. She noted, too, the many wounds inflicted upon the thing-tearing wounds, like those caused by the scratching of a great cat.

“Shape-changer,” guessed Gabriel, keeping watch at the side of the rocky area.

Dove nodded. “Killed halfway through.”

“I never heared of any goblin wizards,” Roddy protested.

“Oh, yes,” Fret began, smoothing the sleeves of his soft-clothed tunic. “There was, of course, Grubby the Wiseless, pretended archmage, who…”

A whistle from high above stopped the dwarf. Up on the ledge stood Kellindil, the elven archer, waving his arms about. “More up here,” the elf called when he had their attention. “Two goblins and a red-skinned giant, the likes of which I have never seen!”

Dove scanned the cliff. She figured that she could scale it, but one look at poor Fret told her that they would have to go back to the trail, a journey of more than a mile. “You remain here,” she said to Gabriel. The stern-faced man nodded and moved off to a defensive position among some boulders, while Dove, Roddy, and Fret headed back along the ravine.

Halfway up the single winding path that moved along the cliff, they met Darda, the remaining fighter of the troupe. A short and heavily muscled man, he scratched his stubbly beard and examined what looked to be a plowshare.

“That’s Thistledown’s!” Roddy cried. “I seen it out back of his farm, set for fixing!”

“Why is it up here?” Dove asked.

“And why might it be bloodied?” added Darda, showing them the stains on the concave side. The fighter looked over the ledge into the ravine, then back to the plowshare. “Some unfortunate creature hit this hard,” Darda mused, “then probably went into the ravine.”

All eyes focused on Dove as the ranger pulled her thick hair back from her face, put her chin in her delicate but calloused hand, and tried to sort through this newest puzzle. The clues were too few, though, and a moment later, Dove threw her hands up in exasperation and headed off along the trail. The path wound in and left the cliff as it leveled near the top, but Dove walked back over to the edge, right above where they had left Gabriel. The fighter spotted her immediately and his wave told the ranger that all was calm below.

“Come,” Kellindil bade them, and he led the group into the cave. Some answers came clear to Dove as soon as she glanced upon the carnage in the inner room.

“Barghest whelp!” exclaimed Fret, looking upon the scarlet-skinned, giant corpse.

“Barghest?” Roddy asked, perplexed.

“Of course,” piped in Fret. “That does explain the wolf-giant in the gorge.”

“Caught in the change,” Darda reasoned. “Its many wounds and the stone floor took it before it could complete the transition.”

“Barghest?” Roddy asked again, this time angrily, not appreciating being left out of a discussion he could not understand.

“A creature from another plane of existence,” Fret explained. “Gehenna, it is rumored. Barghests send their whelps to other planes, sometimes to our own, to feed and to grow.” He paused a moment in thought. “To feed,” he said again, his tone leading the others. “The woman in the barn!” Dove said evenly.

The members of Dove’s troupe nodded their heads at the sudden revelation, but grim-faced McGristle held stubbornly to his original theory. “Drow killed ‘em!” he growled.

“Have you the broken scimitar?” Dove asked. Roddy produced the weapon from beneath one of the many folds in his layered skin garments.

Dove took the weapon and bent low to examine the dead barghest. The blade unmistakably matched the beast’s wounds, especially the fatal wound in the barghest’s throat. “You said that the drow wielded two of these,” Dove remarked to Roddy as she held up the scimitar.

“The mayor said that,” Roddy corrected, “on account of the story Thistledown’s son told. When I seen the drow—” He took back the weapon—”he had just the one—the one he used to kill the Thistledown clan!” Roddy purposely didn’t mention that the drow, while wielding just the one weapon, had scabbards for two scimitars on his belt.

Dove shook her head, doubting the theory, “The drow killed this barghest,” she said. “The wounds match the blade, the sister blade to the one you hold, I would guess. And if you check the goblins in the front room, you will find that their throats were slashed by a similar curving scimitar.”

“Like the wounds on the Thistledowns!” Roddy snarled. Dove thought it best to keep her budding hypothesis quiet, but Fret, disliking the big man, echoed the thoughts of all but McGristle. “Killed by the barghest,” the dwarf proclaimed, remembering the two sets of footprints at the farmyard. “In the form of the drow!”

Roddy glowered at him and Dove cast Fret a leading look, wanting the dwarf to remain silent. Fret misinterpreted the ranger’s stare, though, thinking it astonishment of his reasoning power, and he proudly continued. “That explains the two sets of tracks, the heavier, earlier set for the bar—”

“But what of the creature in the gorge?” Darda asked Dove, understanding his leader’s desire to shut Fret up. “Might its wounds, too, match the curving blade?”

Dove thought for a moment and managed to subtly nod her thanks to Darda. “Some, perhaps,” she answered. “More likely, that barghest was killed by the panther—” She looked directly at Roddy—”the cat you claimed the drow kept as a pet.”

Roddy kicked the dead barghest. “Drow killed the Thistledown clan!” he growled. Roddy had lost a dog and an ear to the dark elf and would not accept any conclusions that lessened his chances of claiming the two thousand gold piece bounty that the mayor had levied.

A call from outside the cave ended the debate—both Dove and Roddy were glad of that. After leading the troupe into the lair, Kellindil had returned outside, following up on some further clues he had discovered.

“A boot print,” the elf explained, pointing to a small, mossy patch, when the others came out. “And here,” he showed them scratches in the stone, a clear sign of a scuffle.

“My belief is that the drow went to the ledge,” Kellindil explained. “And then over, perhaps in pursuit of the barghest and the panther, though on that point I am merely assuming.”

After a moment of following the trail Kellindil had reconstructed, Dove and Darda, and even Roddy, agreed with the assumption.

“We should go back into the ravine,” Dove suggested. “Perhaps we will find a trail beyond the stony gorge that will lead us toward some clearer answers.”

Roddy scratched at the scabs on his head and flashed Dove a disdainful look that showed her his emotions. Roddy cared not a bit for any of the ranger’s promised “clearer answers,” having drawn all of the conclusions that he needed long ago. Roddy was determined—beyond anything else, Dove knew—to bring back the dark elf’s head.

Dove Falconhand was not so certain about the murderer’s identity. Many questions remained for both the ranger and for the other members of her troupe. Why hadn’t the drow killed the Thistledown children when they had met earlier in the mountains? If Connor’s tale to the mayor had been true, then why had the drow given the boy back his weapon? Dove was firmly convinced that the barghest, and not the drow, had slaughtered the Thistledown family, but why had the drow apparently gone after the barghest lair?

Was the drow in league with the barghests, a communion that fast soured? Even more intriguing to the ranger—whose very creed was to protect civilians in the unending war between the good races and monsters—had the drow sought out the barghest to avenge the slaughter at the farm? Dove suspected the latter was the truth, but she couldn’t understand the drow’s motives. Had the barghest, in killing the family, put the farmers of Maldobar on alert, thereby ruining a planned drow raid?

Again the pieces didn’t fit properly. If the dark elves planned a raid on Maldobar, then certainly none of them would have revealed themselves beforehand. Something inside Dove told her that this single drow had acted alone, had come out and avenged the slain farmers. She shrugged it off as a trick of her own optimism and reminded herself that dark elves were rarely known for such rangerlike acts.

By the time the five got down the narrow path and returned to the sight of the largest corpse, Gabriel had already found the trail, heading deeper into the mountains. Two sets of tracks were evident, the drow’s and fresher ones belonging to a giant, bipedal creature, possibly a third barghest.

“What happened to the panther?” Fret asked, growing a bit overwhelmed by his first field expedition in many years.

Dove laughed aloud and shook her head helplessly. Every answer seemed to bring so many more questions.

Drizzt kept on the move at night, running, as he had for so many years, from yet another grim reality. He had not killed the farmers—he had actually saved them from the gnoll band—but now they were dead. Drizzt could not escape that fact. He had entered their lives, quite of his own will, and now they were dead.

On the second night after his encounter with the hill giant, Drizzt saw a distant campfire far down the winding mountain trails, back in the direction of the barghest’s lair. Knowing this sight to be more than coincidence, the drow summoned Guenhwyvar to his side, then sent the panther down for a closer look.

Tirelessly the great cat ran, its sleek, black form invisible in the evening shadows as it rapidly closed the distance to the camp.

Dove and Gabriel rested easily by their campfire, amused by the continuing antics of Fret, who busily cleaned his soft jerkin with a stiff brush and grumbled all the while.

Roddy kept to himself across the way, securely tucked into a niche between a fallen tree and a large rock, his dog curled up at his feet.

“Oh, bother for this dirt!” Fret groaned. “Never, never will I get this outfit clean! I shall have to buy a new one.” He looked at Dove, who was futilely trying to hold a straight face. “Laugh if you will, Mistress Falconhand,” the dwarf admonished. “The price will come out of your purse, do not doubt!”

“A sorry day it is when one must buy fineries for a dwarf,” Gabriel put in, and at his words, Dove burst into laughter.

“Laugh if you will!” Fret said again, and he rubbed harder with the brush, wearing a hole right through the garment. “Drat and bebother!” he cursed, then he threw the brush to the ground.

“Shut yer mouth!” Roddy groused at them, stealing the mirth. “Do ye mean to bring the drow down upon us?”

Gabriel’s ensuing glare was uncompromising, but Dove realized that the mountain man’s advice, though rudely given, was appropriate. “Let us rest, Gabriel,” the ranger said to her fighting companion. “Darda and Kellindil will be in soon and our turn shall come for watch. I expect that tomorrow’s road will be no less wearisome—” She looked at Fret and winked—”and no less dirty, than today’s.”

Gabriel shrugged, hung his pipe in his mouth, and clasped his hands behind his head. This was the life that he and all of the adventuring companions enjoyed, camping under the stars with the song of the mountain wind in their ears. Fret, though, tossed and turned on the hard ground, grumbling and growling as he moved through each uncomfortable position.

Gabriel didn’t need to look at Dove to know that she shared his smile. Nor did he have to glance over at Roddy to know that the mountain man fumed at the continuing noise. It no doubt seemed negligible to the ears of a city-living dwarf but rang out conspicuously to those more accustomed to the road.

A whistle from the darkness sounded at the same time Roddy’s dog put its fur up and growled.

Dove and Gabriel were up and over to the side of the camp in a second, moving to the perimeter of the firelight in the direction of Darda’s call. Likewise, Roddy, pulling his dog along, slipped around the large rock, out of the direct light so that their eyes could adjust to the gloom.

Fret, too involved with his own discomfort, finally noticed the movements. “What?” the dwarf asked curiously. “What?”

After a brief and whispered conversation with Darda, Dove and Gabriel split up, circling the camp in opposite directions to ensure the integrity of the perimeter.

“The tree,” came a soft whisper, and Dove dropped into a crouch. In a moment, she sorted out Roddy, cleverly concealed between the rock and some brush. The big man, too, had his weapon readied, and his other hand held his dog’s muzzle tightly, keeping the animal silent.

Dove followed Roddy’s nod to the widespread branches of a solitary elm. At first, the ranger could discern nothing unusual among the leafy branches, but then came the yellow flash of feline eyes.

“Drow’s panther,” Dove whispered. Roddy nodded his agreement. They sat very still and watched, knowing that the slightest movement could alert the cat. A few seconds later, Gabriel joined them, falling into a silent position and following their eyes to the same darker spot on the elm. All three understood that time was their ally; even now, Darda and Kellindil were no doubt moving into position.

Their trap would surely have had Guenhwyvar, but a moment later, the dwarf crashed out of the campsite, stumbling right into Roddy. The mountain man nearly fell over, and when he reflexively threw his weaponless hand out to catch himself, his dog rushed out, baying wildly.

Like a black-shafted arrow, the panther bolted from the tree and flew off into the night. Fortune was not with Guenhwyvar, though, for it crossed straight by Kellindil’s position, and the keen-visioned elven archer saw it clearly.

Kellindil heard the barking and shouting in the distance, back by the camp, but had no way of knowing what had transpired. Any hesitation the elf had, however, was quickly dispelled when one voice called out clearly.

“Kill the murdering thing!” Roddy cried.

Thinking then that the panther or its drow companion must have attacked the campsite, Kellindil let his arrow fly. The enchanted dart buried itself deeply into Guenhwyvar’s flank as the panther rushed by.

Then came Dove’s call, berating Roddy. “Do not!” the ranger shouted. “The panther has done nothing to deserve our ire!”

Kellindil rushed out to the panther’s trail. With his sensitive elven eyes viewing in the infrared spectrum, he clearly saw the heat of blood dotting the area of the hit and trailing off away from the camp.

Dove and the others came upon him a moment later. Kellindil’s elven features, always angular and beautiful, seemed sharp as his angry glare fell over Roddy.

“You have misguided my shot, McGristle,” he said angrily. “On your words, I shot a creature undeserving of an arrow! I warn you once, and once alone, to never do so again.” After a final glare to show the mountain man how much he meant his words, Kellindil stalked off along the blood trail.

Angry fires welled in Roddy, but he sublimated them, understanding that he stood alone against the formidable foursome and the tidy dwarf. Roddy did let his glare drop upon Fret, though, knowing that none of the others could disagree with his judgment.

“Keep yer tongue in yer mouth when danger nears!” Roddy growled. “And keep yer stinkin’ boots off my back!”

Fret looked around incredulously as the group began to move off after Kellindil. “Stinking?” the dwarf asked aloud. He looked down, wounded, to his finely polished boots. “Stinking?” he said to Dove, who paused to offer a comforting smile. “Dirtied by that one’s back, more likely!”

Guenhwyvar limped back to Drizzt soon after the first rays of dawn peeked through the eastern mountains. Drizzt shook his head helplessly, almost unsurprised by the arrow protruding from Guenhwyvar’s flank. Reluctantly, but knowing it a wise course, Drizzt drew out the dagger he had taken from the quickling and cut the bolt free.

Guenhwyvar growled softly through the procedure but lay still and offered no resistance. Then Drizzt, though he wanted to keep Guenhwyvar by his side, allowed the panther to return to its astral home, where the wound would heal faster. The arrow had told the drow all he needed to know about his pursuers, and Drizzt believed that he would need the panther again all too soon. He stood out on a rocky outcropping and peered through the growing brightness to the lower trails, to the expected approach of yet another enemy.

He saw nothing, of course; even wounded, Guenhwyvar had easily outdistanced the pursuit and, for a man or similar being, the campfire was many hours’ travel.

But they would come, Drizzt knew, forcing him into yet another battle he did not want. Drizzt looked all around, wondering what devious traps he could set for them, what advantages he could gain when the encounter came to blows, as every encounter seemed to.

Memories of his last meeting with humans, of the man with the dogs and the other farmers, abruptly altered Drizzt’s thinking. On that occasion, the battle had been inspired by misunderstanding, a barrier that Drizzt doubted he could ever overcome. Drizzt had fostered no desire then to fight against the humans and fostered none now, despite Guenhwyvar’s wound.

The light was growing and the still-injured drow, though he had rested through the night, wanted to find a dark and comfortable hole. But Drizzt could afford no delays, not if he wanted to keep ahead of the coming battle.

“How far will you follow me?” Drizzt whispered into the morning breeze. He vowed in a somber but determined tone, “We shall see.”

10. A Question of Honor

“The panther found the drow,” Dove concluded after she and her companions had spent some time inspecting the region near the rocky outcropping. Kellindil’s arrow lay broken on the ground, at about the same spot where the panther tracks ended. “And then the panther disappeared.”

“So it would seem,” Gabriel agreed, scratching his head and looking down at the confusing trail.

“Hell cat,” Roddy McGristle growled. “Gone back to its filthy home!”

Fret wanted to ask, “Your house?” but he wisely held the sarcastic thought to himself.

The others, too, let the mountain man’s proclamation slip by. They had no answers to this riddle, and Roddy’s guess was as good as any of them could manage. The wounded panther and the fresh blood trail were gone, but Roddy’s dog soon had Drizzt’s scent. Baying excitedly, the dog led them on, and Dove and Kellindil, both skilled trackers, often discovered other evidence that confirmed the direction.

The trail lay along the side of the mountain, dipped through some thickly packed trees, and continued on across an expanse of bare stone, ending abruptly at yet another ravine. Roddy’s dog moved right to the lip and even down to the first step on a rocky and treacherous descent.

“Damned drow magic,” Roddy grumbled. He looked around and bounced a fist off his thigh, guessing that it would take him many hours to circumvent the steep wall.

“The daylight wanes,” Dove offered. “Let us set camp here and find our way down in the morn.”

Gabriel and Fret nodded their accord, but Roddy disagreed. “The trail’s fresh now!” the mountain man argued. “We should get the dog down there and back on it, at least, before we’re taking to our beds.”

“That could take hours… “ Fret began to protest, but Dove hushed the tidy dwarf.

“Come “ the ranger bade the others, and she walked off to the west, to where the ground sloped at a steep, but climbable decline.

Dove did not agree with Roddy’s reasoning, but she wanted no further arguments with Maldobar’s appointed representative.

At the bottom of the ravine they found only more riddles. Roddy spurred his dog off in every direction but could find no trace of the elusive drow. After many minutes of contemplation, the truth sparked in Dove’s mind and her smile revealed everything to her other seasoned companions.

“He doubled us!” Gabriel laughed, guessing the source of Dove’s mirth. “He led us right to the cliff, knowing we would assume he used some magic to get down!”

“What’re ye talkin’ about?” Roddy demanded angrily, though the experienced bounty hunter understood exactly what had happened.

“You mean that we have to climb all the way back up there?” Fret asked, his voice a whine.

Dove laughed again but sobered quickly as she looked to Roddy and said, “In the morning.”

This time the mountain man offered no objections.

By the time the next dawn had broken, the group had hiked to the top of the ravine and Roddy had his dog back on Drizzt’s scent, backtracking the trail in the direction of the rocky outcropping where they had first picked it up. The trick had been simple enough, but the same question nagged at all of the experienced trackers: how had the drow broken away from his track cleanly enough to so completely fool the dog? When they came again into the thickly packed trees, Dove knew that they had their answer.

She nodded to Kellindil, who was already dropping off his heavy pack. The nimble elf picked a low-hanging branch and swung up into the trees, searching for possible routes that the climbing drow might have followed. The branches of many trees twined together, so the options seemed many, but after a while, Kellindil correctly guided Roddy and his dog to the new trail, breaking off to the side of the copse and circling back down the side of the mountain, back in the direction of Maldobar.

“The town!” cried a distressed Fret, but the others didn’t seem concerned.

“Not the town,” offered Roddy, too intrigued to hold his angry edge. As a bounty hunter, Roddy always enjoyed a worthy opponent, at least during the chase. “The stream,” Roddy explained, thinking that now he had figured out the drow’s mind-set. “Drow’s headed for the stream, to follow it along an’ break off clean, back out to the wilder land.”

“The drow is a crafty adversary,” Darda remarked, wholeheartedly agreeing with Roddy’s conclusions.

“And now he has at least a day’s lead over us,” Gabriel remarked.

After Fret’s disgusted sigh finally died away, Dove offered the dwarf some hope. “Fear not,” she said. “We are well stocked, but the drow is not. He must pause to hunt or forage, but we can continue on.”

“We sleep only when need be!” Roddy put in, determined to not be slowed by the group’s other members. “And only for short times!”

Fret sighed heavily again.

“And we begin rationing our supplies immediately,” Dove added, both to placate Roddy and because she thought it prudent. “We shall be put to it hard enough just to close on the drow. I do not want any delays.”

“Rationing” Fret mumbled under his breath. He sighed for the third time and placed a comforting hand on his belly. How badly the tidy dwarf wished that he could be back in his neat little room in Helm’s castle in Sundabar!

Drizzt’s every intention was to continue deeper into the mountains until the pursuing party had lost its heart for the chase. He kept up his misdirecting tactics, often doubling back and taking to the trees to begin a second trail in an entirely different direction. Many mountain streams provided further barriers to the scent, but Drizzt’s pursuers were not novices, and Roddy’s dog was as fine a hunting hound as had ever been bred. Not only did the party keep true to Drizzt’s trail, but they actually closed the gap over the next few days.

Drizzt still believed that he could elude them, but their continuing proximity brought other, more subtle, concerns to the drow. He had done nothing to deserve such dogged pursuit; he had even avenged the deaths of the farming family. And, despite Drizzt’s angry vow that he would go off alone, that he would bring no more danger to anyone, he had known loneliness as too close a companion for too many years. He could not help but look over his shoulder, out of curiosity and not fear, and the longing did not diminish.

At last, Drizzt could not deny his curiosity for the pursuing party. That curiosity, Drizzt realized as he studied the figures moving about the campfire one dark night, might prove to be his downfall. Still, the realization, and the second-guessing, came too late for the drow to do anything about it. His needs had dragged him back, and now the campsite of his pursuers loomed barely twenty yards away.

The banter between Dove, Fret, and Gabriel tugged at Drizzt’s heartstrings, though he could not understand their words. Any desire the drow felt to walk into the camp was tempered, though, whenever Roddy and his mean-tempered dog strolled by the light. Those two would never pause to hear any explanations, Drizzt knew.

The party had set two guards, one an elf and one a tall human. Drizzt had sneaked past the human, guessing correctly that the man would not be as adept as the elf in the darkness. Now, though, the drow, again against all caution, picked his way around to the other side of the camp, toward the elven sentry.

Only once before had Drizzt encountered his surface cousins. It had been a disastrous occasion. The raiding party for which Drizzt was a scout had slaughtered every member of a surface elf gathering, except for a single elven girl, whom Drizzt had managed to conceal. Driven by those haunting memories, Drizzt needed to see an elf again, a living and vital elf.

The first indication Kellindil had that someone else was in the area came when a tiny dagger whistled past his chest, neatly severing his bowstring. The elf spun about immediately and looked into the drow’s lavender eyes. Drizzt stood only a few paces away.

The red glow of Kellindil’s eyes showed that he was viewing Drizzt in the infrared spectrum. The drow crossed his hands over his chest in an Underdark signal of peace.

“At last we have met, my dark cousin,” Kellindil whispered harshly in the drow tongue, his voice edged in obvious anger and his glowing eyes narrowing dangerously. Quick as a cat, Kellindil snapped a finely crafted sword, its blade glowing in a fiery red flame, from his belt.

Drizzt was amazed and hopeful when he learned that the elf could speak his language, and in the simple fact that the elf had not spoken loudly enough to alert the camp. The surface elf was Drizzt’s size and similary sharp-featured, but his eyes were narrower and his golden hair wasn’t as long or thick as Drizzt’s white mane.

“I am Drizzt Do’Urden,” Drizzt began tentatively.

“I care nothing for what you are called!” Kellindil shot back. “You are drow. That is all I need to know! Come then, drow. Come and let us learn who is the stronger!”

Drizzt had not yet drawn his blade and had no intention of doing so. “I have no desire to battle with you… “ Drizzt’s voice trailed away, as he realized his words were futile against the intense hatred the surface elf held for him.

Drizzt wanted to explain everything to the elf, to tell his tale completely and be vindicated by some voice other than his own. If only another—particularly a surface elf—would learn of his trials and agree with his decisions, agree that he had acted properly through the course of his life in the face of such horrors, then the guilt would fly from Drizzt’s shoulders. If only he could find acceptance among those who so hated—as he himself hated—the ways of his dark people, then Drizzt Do’Urden would be at peace.

But the elf’s sword tip did not slip an inch toward the ground, nor did the grimace diminish on his fair elven face, a face more accustomed to smiles.

Drizzt would find no acceptance here, not now and probably not ever. Was he forever to be misjudged? he wondered. Or was he, perhaps, misjudging those around him, giving the humans and this elf more credit for fairness than they deserved?

Those were two disturbing notions that Drizzt would have to deal with another day, for Kellindil’s patience had reached its end. The elf came at the drow with his sword tip leading the way.

Drizzt was not surprised—how could he have been? He hopped back, out of immediate reach, and called upon his innate magic, dropping a globe of impenetrable blackness over the advancing elf.

No novice to magic, Kellindil understood the drow’s trick. The elf reversed direction, diving out the back side of the globe and coming up, sword at the ready.

The lavender eyes were gone.

“Drow!” Kellindil called out loudly, and those in the camp immediately exploded into motion. Roddy’s dog started howling, and that excited and threatening yelp followed Drizzt back into the mountains, damning him to his continuing exile.

Kellindil leaned back against a tree, alert but not too concerned that the drow was still in the area. Drizzt could not know it at that time, but his words and ensuing actions―fleeing instead of fighting—had indeed put a bit of doubt in the kindly elf’s not-so-closed mind.

“He will lose his advantage in the dawn’s light,” Dove said hopefully after several fruitless hours of trying to keep up with the drow. They were in a bowl-shaped, rocky vale now, and the drow’s trail led up the far side in a high and fairly steep climb.

Fret, nearly stumbling with exhaustion at her side, was quick to reply. “Advantage?” The dwarf groaned. He looked at the next mountain wall and shook his head. “We shall all fall dead of weariness before we find this infernal drow!”

“If ye can’t keep up, then fall an’ die!” Roddy snarled. “We’re not to be lettin’ the stinking drow get away this time!”

It was not Fret, however, but another member of the troupe who unexpectedly went down. A large rock soared into the group suddenly, clipping Darda’s shoulder with enough force to lift the man from the ground and spin him right over in the air. He never even got the chance to cry out before he fell facedown in the dust.

Dove grabbed Fret and rolled for a nearby boulder, Roddy and Gabriel doing likewise. Another stone, and then several more, thundered into the region.

“Avalanche?” the stunned dwarf asked when he recovered from the shock.

Dove, too concerned with Darda, didn’t bother to answer, though she knew the truth of their situation and knew that it was no avalanche.

“He is alive,” Gabriel called from behind his protective rock, a dozen feet across from Dove’s. Another stone skipped through the area, narrowly missing Darda’s head.

“Damn,” Dove mumbled. She peeked up over the lip of her boulder, scanning both the mountainside and the lower crags at its base. “Now, Kellindil,” she whispered to herself. “Get us some time.”

As if in answer came the distant twang of the elf’s re-strung bow, followed by an angry roar. Dove and Gabriel glanced over to each other and smiled grimly.

“Stone giants!” Roddy cried, recognizing the deep, grating timbre of the roaring voice.

Dove crouched and waited, her back to the boulder and her open pack in her hand. No more stones bounced into the area; rather, thunderous crashes began up ahead of them, near Kellindil’s position. Dove rushed out to Darda and gently turned the man over.

“That hurt,” Darda whispered, straining to smile at his obvious understatement.

“Do not speak,” Dove replied, fumbling for a potion bottle in her pack. But the ranger ran out of time. The giants, seeing her out in the open, resumed their attack on the lower area.

“Get back to the stone!” Gabriel cried. Dove slipped her arm under the fallen man’s shoulder to support Darda as, stumbling with every movement, he crawled for the rock.

“Hurry! Hurry!” Fret cried, watching them anxiously with his back flat against the large stone.

Dove leaned over Darda suddenly, flattening him down to the ground as another rock zipped by just above their ducking heads.

Fret started to bite his fingernails, then realized what he was doing and stopped, a disgusted look on his face. “Do hurry!” he cried again to his friends. Another rock bounced by, too close.

Just before Dove and Darda got to Fret, a stone landed squarely on the backside of the boulder. Fret, his back tight against the rock barrier, flew out wildly, easily clearing his crawling companions. Dove placed Darda down behind the boulder, then turned, thinking she would have to go out again and retrieve the fallen dwarf.

But Fret was already back up, cursing and grumbling, and more concerned with a new hole in his fine garment than in any bodily injury.

“Get back here!” Dove screamed at him.

“Drat and bebother these stupid giants!” was all that Fret replied, stomping purposefully back to the boulder, his fists clenched angrily against his hips.

The barrage continued, both up ahead of the pinned companions and in their area. Then Kellindil came diving in, slipping to the rock beside Roddy and his dog.

“Stone giants,” the elf explained. “A dozen at the least.” He pointed up to a ridge halfway up the mountainside.

“Drow set us up,” Roddy growled, banging his fist on the stone. Kellindil wasn’t convinced, but he held his tongue.

Up on the peak of the rocky rise, Drizzt watched the battle unfolding. He had passed through the lower paths an hour earlier, before the dawn. In the dark, the waiting giants had been no obstacle for the stealthy drow; Drizzt had slipped through their line with little trouble.

Now, squinting through the morning light, Drizzt wondered about his course of action. When he had passed the giants, he fully expected that his pursuers would fall into trouble. Should he have somehow tried to warn them? he wondered. Or should he have veered away from the region, leading the humans and the elf out of the giants’ path?

Again Drizzt did not understand where he fit in with the ways of this strange and brutal world. “Let them fight among themselves,” he said harshly, as though trying to convince himself. Drizzt purposefully recalled his encounter of the previous night. The elf had attacked despite his proclamation that he did not want to fight. He recalled, too, the arrow he had dug out of Guenhwyvar’s flank.

“Let them all kill each other,” Drizzt said and he turned to leave. He glanced back over his shoulder one final time and noticed that some of the giants were on the move. One group remained at the ridge, showering the valley floor with a seemingly endless supply of rocks while two other groups, one to the left and one to the right, had fanned out, moving to encircle the trapped party.

Drizzt knew then that his pursuers would not escape. Once the giants had them flanked, they would find no protection against the cross fire.

Something stirred within the drow at that moment, the same emotions that had set him into action against the gnoll band. He couldn’t know for certain, but, as with the gnolls and their plans to attack the farmhouse, Drizzt suspected that the giants were the evil ones in this fight.

Other thoughts softened Drizzt’s determined grimace, memories of the human children at play on the farm, of the sandy-haired boy going into the water trough.

Drizzt dropped the onyx figurine to the ground. “Come, Guenhwyvar,” he commanded. “We are needed.”

“We’re being flanked!” Roddy McGristle snarled, seeing the giant bands moving along the higher trails.

Dove, Gabriel, and Kellindil all glanced around and to each other, searching for some way out. They had battled giants many times in their travels, together and with other parties. Always before, they had gone into the fight eagerly, happy to relieve the world of a few troublesome monsters. This time, though, they all suspected that the result might be different. Stone giants were reputably the best rock-throwers in all the realms and a single hit could kill the hardiest of men. Also, Darda, though alive, could not possibly run away, and none of the others had any intentions of leaving him behind.

“Flee, mountain man,” Kellindil said to Roddy. “You owe us nothing.”

Roddy looked at the archer incredulously. “I don’t run away, elf,” he growled. “Not from nothin’!”

Kellindil nodded and fitted an arrow to his bow.

“If they get to the side, we’re doomed,” Dove explained to Fret. “I beg your forgiveness, dear Fret. I should not have taken you from your home.”

Fret shrugged the thought away. He reached under his robes and produced a small but sturdy silver hammer. Dove smiled at the sight, thinking how odd the hammer seemed in the dwarf’s soft hands, more accustomed to holding a quill.

On the top ridge, Drizzt and Guenhwyvar shadowed the movements of the stone giant band circling to the trapped party’s left flank. Drizzt was determined to help the humans, but he wasn’t certain of how effective he could be against the likes of four armed giants. Still, he figured that with Guenhwyvar by his side, he could find some way to disrupt the giant group long enough for the trapped party to make a break.

The valley rolled out wider across the way and Drizzt realized that the giant band circling in the other direction, to the trapped party’s right flank, was probably out of rock-throwing range.

“Come, my friend,” Drizzt whispered to the panther, and he drew his scimitar and started down a descent of broken and jagged stone. A moment later, though, as soon as he noticed the terrain a short distance ahead of the giant band, Drizzt grabbed Guenhwyvar by the scruff and led the panther back up to the top ridge.

Here the ground was jagged and cracked but undeniably stable. Just ahead, however, great boulders and hundreds of loose smaller rocks lay strewn about the steeply sloping ground. Drizzt was not so experienced in the dynamics of a mountainside, but even he could see that the steep and loose landscape verged on collapse.

The drow and the cat rushed ahead, again getting above the giant band. The giants were nearly in position; some of them had even begun to launch rocks at the pinned party. Drizzt crept down to a large boulder and heaved against it, setting it into motion. Guenhwyvar’s tactics were far less subtle. The panther charged down the mountainside, dislodging stones with every great stride, leaping onto the back side of rocks and springing away as they began tumbling.

Boulders bounced and bounded. Smaller rocks skipped between them, building the momentum. Drizzt, committed to the action, ran down into the midst of the budding avalanche, throwing stones, pushing against others—whatever he could do to add to the rush. Soon the very ground beneath the drow’s feet was sliding and the whole section of the mountainside seemed to be coming down.

Guenhwyvar sped along ahead of the avalanche, a beacon of doom for the surprised giants. The panther sprang out over them, but they took note of the great cat only momentarily, as tons of bouncing rocks slammed into them.

Drizzt knew that he was in trouble; he was not nearly as quick and agile as Guenhwyvar and could not hope to outrun the slide, or to get out of its way. He leaped high into the air from the crest of a small ridge and called upon a levitation spell as he went.

Drizzt fought hard to hold his concentration on the effort. The spell had failed him twice before, and if he couldn’t hold it now, if he dropped back into the rush of stones, he knew he would surely die.

Despite his determination, Drizzt felt increasingly heavy on the air. He waved his arms futilely, sought that magical energy within his drow body—but he was coming down.

“Th’only ones that can hit us are up in front!” Roddy cried as a thrown boulder bounced harmlessly short of the right flank. “The ones on the right’re too far for throwing, and the ones on the left… !”

Dove followed Roddy’s logic and his gaze to the rising dust cloud on their left flank. She stared hard and long at the cascading rocks, and at what might have been a dark-cloaked elven form. When she looked back at Gabriel, she knew that he, too, had seen the drow.

“We have to go now,” Dove called to the elf.

Kellindil nodded and spun to the side of his barrier boulder, his bowstring taut.

“Quickly,” Gabriel added, “before the group to the right gets back in range.”

Kellindil’s bow twanged once and then again. Ahead, a giant howled in pain.

“Stay here with Darda,” Dove bade Fret, then she, Gabriel, and Roddy—holding his dog on a tight leash—darted out from their cover and charged the giants straight ahead. They rolled from rock to rock, cutting their course in confusing zigzags to prevent the giants from anticipating their movements. All the while, Kellindil’s arrows soared above them, keeping the giants more concerned with ducking than with throwing.

Deep crags marked the mountainside’s lower slopes, crags that offered cover but that also split the three fighters apart. Neither could they see the giants, but they knew the general direction and picked their separate ways as best they could.

Rounding a sharp bend between two walls of stone, Roddy came upon one of the giants. Immediately the mountain man freed his dog, and the vicious canine charged fearlessly and leaped high, barely reaching the twenty-foot-tall behemoth’s waist.

Surprised by the sudden attack, the giant dropped its huge club and caught the dog in midflight. It would have crushed the troublesome mutt in an instant, except that Bleeder, Roddy’s wicked axe, sliced into its thigh with all the force the burly mountain man could muster. The giant lurched and Roddy’s dog squirmed loose, climbing and clawing, then snapping at the giant’s face and neck. Below, Roddy hacked away, chopping the monster down as he would a tree.

Half-floating and half-dancing atop the bouncing stones, Drizzt rode the rock slide. He saw one giant emerge, stumbling, from the tumult, only to be met by Guenhwyvar. Wounded and stunned, the giant went down in a heap.

Drizzt had no time to savor his desperate plan’s success. His levitation spell continued somewhat, keeping him light enough so that he could ride along. Even above the main slide, though, rocks bounced heavily into the drow and dust choked him and stung his sensitive eyes. Nearly blinded, he managed to spot a ridge that could provide some shelter, but the only way he could get to it would be to release his levitation spell and scramble.

Another rock nicked into Drizzt, nearly spinning him over in midair. He could sense the spell failing and knew that he had only that one chance. He regained his equilibrium, released his spell, and hit the ground running.

He rolled and scrambled, coming up in a dead run. A rock skipped into the knee of his already wounded leg, forcing him parallel to the ground. Drizzt was rolling again, trying however he could to get to the safety of the ridge.

His momentum ended far short. He came back up to his feet, meaning to thrust ahead over the final distance, but Drizzt’s leg had no strength and it buckled immediately, leaving him stranded and exposed.

He felt the impact on his back and thought his life was at its end. A moment later, dazed, Drizzt realized only that he somehow had landed behind the ridge and that he was buried by something, but not by stones or dirt.

Guenhwyvar stayed on top of its master, shielding Drizzt until the last of the bouncing rocks had rolled to a stop.

As the crags gave way to more open ground, Dove and Gabriel came back in sight of each other. They noticed movement directly ahead, behind a loose-fitted wall of piled boulders a dozen feet high and about fifty feet long.

A giant appeared atop the wall, roaring in rage and holding a rock above its head, readied to throw. The monster had several arrows protruding from its neck and chest, but it seemed not to care.

Kellindil’s next shot surely caught the giant’s attention, though, for the elf put an arrow squarely into the monster’s elbow. The giant howled and clutched at its arm, apparently forgetting about its rock, which promptly dropped with a thud upon its head. The giant stood very still, dazed, and two more arrows knocked into its face. It teetered for a moment, then crashed into the dust.

Dove and Gabriel exchanged quick smiles, sharing their appreciation for the skilled elven archer, then continued their charge, going for opposite ends of the wall.

Dove caught one giant by surprise just around her corner. The monster reached for its club, but Dove’s sword beat it to the spot and cleanly severed its hand. Stone giants were formidable foes, with fists that could drive a person straight into the ground and a hide nearly as hard as the rock that gave them their name. But wounded, surprised, and without its cudgel, the giant was no match for the skilled ranger. She sprang atop the wall, which put her even with the giant’s face, and set her sword to methodical work.

In two thrusts, the giant was blinded. The third, a deft, sidelong swipe, cut a smile into the monster’s throat. Then Dove went on the defensive, neatly dodging and parrying the dying monster’s last desperate swings.

Gabriel was not as lucky as his companion. The remaining giant was not close to the corner of the piled rock wall. Though Gabriel surprised the monster when he came charging around, the giant had enough time—and a stone in hand—to react.

Gabriel got his sword up to deflect the missile, and the act saved his life. The stone blew the fighter’s sword from his hands and still came on with enough force to throw Gabriel to the ground. Gabriel was a seasoned veteran, and the primary reason he was still alive after so very many battles was the fact that he knew when to retreat. He forced himself through that moment of blurring pain and found his footing, then bolted back around the wall.

The giant, with its heavy club in hand, came right behind. An arrow greeted the monster as it turned into the open, but it brushed the pesky dart away as no more than an inconvenience and bore down on the fighter.

Gabriel soon ran out of room. He tried to make it back to the broken paths, but the giant cut him off, trapping him in a small box canyon of huge boulders. Gabriel drew his dagger and cursed his ill luck.

Dove had dispatched her giant by this time and rushed out around the stone wall, immediately catching sight of Gabriel and the giant.

Gabriel saw the ranger, too, but he only shrugged, almost apologetically, knowing that Dove couldn’t possibly get to him in time to save him.

The snarling giant took a step in, meaning to finish the puny man, but then came a sharp crack! and the monster halted abruptly. Its eyes darted about weirdly for a moment or two, then it toppled at Gabriel’s feet, quite dead.

Gabriel looked up to the side, to the top of the boulder wall, and nearly laughed out loud.

Fret’s hammer was not a large weapon—its head being only two inches across—but it was a solid thing, and in a single swing, the dwarf had driven it clean through the stone giant’s thick skull.

Dove approached, sheathing her sword, equally at a loss.

Looking upon their amazed expressions, Fret was not amused.

“I am a dwarf, after all!” he blurted at them, crossing his arms indignantly. The action brought the brain-stained hammer in contact with Fret’s tunic, and the dwarf lost his bluster in a fit of panic. He licked his stubby fingers and wiped at the gruesome stain, then regarded the gore on his hand with even greater horror.

Dove and Gabriel did laugh aloud.

“Know that you are paying for the tunic!” Fret railed at Dove. “Oh, you most certainly are!”

A shout to the side brought them from their momentary relief. The four remaining giants, having seen one group of their companions buried in an avalanche and another group cut down so very efficiently, had lost interest in the ambush and had taken flight.

Right behind them went Roddy McGristle and his howling dog.

A single giant had escaped both the avalanche’s thunder and the panther’s terrible claws. It ran wildly now across the mountainside, seeking the top ridge.

Drizzt set Guenhwyvar in quick pursuit, then found a stick to use as a cane and managed to get to his feet. Bruised, dusty, and still nursing wounds from the barghest battle—and now a dozen more from his mountain ride—Drizzt started away. A movement at the bottom of the slope caught his attention and held him, though. He turned to face the elf and, more pointedly, the arrow nocked in the elf’s drawn bow.

Drizzt looked around but had nowhere to duck. He could place a globe of darkness somewhere between himself and the elf, possibly, but he realized that the skilled archer, having drawn a bead on him, would not miss him even with that obstacle. Drizzt steadied his shoulders and turned about slowly, facing the elf squarely and proudly.

Kellindil eased his bowstring back and pulled the arrow from its nock. Kellindil, too, had seen the dark-cloaked form floating above the rock slide.

“The others are back with Darda,” Dove said, coming upon the elf at that moment, “and McGristle is chasing…”

Kellindil neither answered nor looked to the ranger. He nodded curtly, leading Dove’s gaze up the slope to the dark form, which moved again up the mountainside.

“Let him go,” Dove offered. “That one was never our enemy.”

“I fear to let a drow walk free,” Kellindil replied.

“As do I,” Dove answered, “but I fear the consequences more if McGristle finds the drow.”

“We will return to Maldobar and rid ourselves of that man,” Kellindil offered, “then you and the others may return to Sundabar for your appointment. I have kin in these mountains; together they and I will watch out for our dark-skinned friend and see that he causes no harm.”

“Agreed,” said Dove. She turned and started away, and Kellindil, needing no further convincing, turned to follow.

The elf paused and looked back one final time. He reached into his backpack and produced a flask, then laid it out in the open on the ground. Almost as an afterthought, Kellindil produced a second item, this one from his belt, and dropped it to the ground next to the flask. Satisfied, he turned and followed the ranger.

By the time Roddy McGristle returned from his wild, fruitless chase, Dove and the others had packed everything together and were prepared to leave.

“Back after the drow,” Roddy proclaimed. “He’s gained a bit o’ time, but we’ll close on him fast.”

“The drow is gone,” Dove said sharply. “We shall pursue him no more.”

Roddy’s face crinkled in disbelief and he seemed on the verge of exploding.

“Darda is badly in need of rest!” Dove growled at him, not backing down a bit. “Kellindil’s arrows are nearly exhausted, as are our supplies.”

“I’ll not so easily forget the Thistledowns!” Roddy declared.

“Neither did the drow,” Kellindil put in.

“The Thistledowns have already been avenged,” Dove added, “and you know it is true, McGristle. The drow did not kill them, but he most definitely slew their killers!”

Roddy snarled and turned away. He was an experienced bounty hunter and, thus, an experienced investigator. He had, of course, figured out the truth long ago, but Roddy couldn’t ignore the scar on his face or the loss of his ear—or the heavy bounty on the drow’s head.

Dove anticipated and understood his silent reasoning. “The people of Maldobar will not be so anxious to see the drow brought in when they learn the truth of the massacre,” she said, “and not so willing to pay, I would guess.”

Roddy snapped a glare at her, but again he could not dispute her logic. When Dove’s party set out on the trail back to Maldobar, Roddy McGristle went with them.

Drizzt came back down the mountainside later that day, searching for something that would tell him his pursuers’ whereabouts. He found Kellindil’s flask and approached it tentatively, then relaxed when he noticed the other item lying next to it, the tiny dagger he had taken from the sprite, the same one he had used to sever the elf’s bowstring on their first meeting.

The liquid within the flask smelled sweet, and the drow, his throat still parched from the rock dust, gladly took a quaff. Tingling chills ran through Drizzt’s body, refreshing him and revitalizing him. He had barely eaten for several days, but the strength that had seeped from his now-frail form came rushing back in a sudden burst. His torn leg went numb for a moment, and Drizzt felt that, too, grow stronger.

A wave of dizziness washed over Drizzt then, and he shuffled over to the shade of a nearby boulder and sat down to rest.

When he awoke, the sky was dark and filled with stars, and he felt much better. Even his leg, so torn in the ride down the avalanche, would once again support his weight. Drizzt knew who had left the flask and dagger for him, and now that he understood the nature of the healing potion, his confusion and indecision only grew.