No race in all the Realms better understands the word “vengeance” than the drow. Vengeance is their dessert at their daily table, the sweetness they taste upon their smirking lips as though it was the ultimate delicious pleasure. And so hungering did the drow come for me. I cannot escape the anger and the guilt I feel for the loss of Wulfgar, for the pains the enemies of my dark past have brought to the friends I hold so dear. Whenever I look into Catti-brie’s fair face, I see a profound and everlasting sadness that should not be there, a burden that has no place in the sparkling eyes of a child. Similarly wounded, I have no words to comfort her and doubt that there are any words that might bring solace. It is my course, then, that I must continue to protect my friends. I have come to realize that I must look beyond my own sense of loss for Wulfgar, beyond the immediate sadness that has taken hold of the dwarves of Mithral Hall and the hardy men of Settlestone. By Catti-brie’s account of that fateful fight, the creature Wulfgar battled was a yochlol, a handmaiden of Lolth. With that grim information, I must look beyond the immediate sorrow and consider that the sadness I fear is still to come.
I do not understand all the chaotic games of the Spider Queen—I doubt that even the evil high priestesses know the foul creature’s true designs—but there lies in a yochlol’s presence a significance that even I, the worst of the drow religious students, cannot miss. The handmaiden’s appearance revealed that the hunt was sanctified by the Spider Queen. And the fact that the yochlol intervened in the fighting does not bode well for the future of Mithral Hall.
It is all supposition, of course. I know not that my sister Vierna acted in concert with any of Menzoberranzan’s other dark powers, or that, with Vierna’s death, the death of my last relative, my link to the city of drow would ever again be explored. When I look into Catti-brie’s eyes, when I look upon Bruenor’s horrid scars, I am reminded that hopeful supposition is a feeble and dangerous thing.
My evil kin have taken one friend from me. They will take no more. I can find no answers in Mithral Hall, will never know for certain if the dark elves hunger still for vengeance, unless another force from Menzoberranzan comes to the surface to claim the bounty on my head. With this truth bending low my shoulders, how could I ever travel to Silverymoon, or to any other nearby town, resuming my normal lifestyle? How could I sleep in peace while holding within my heart the very real fear that the dark elves might soon return and once more imperil my friends?
The apparent serenity of Mithral Hall, the brooding quiet, will show me nothing of the future designs of the drow. Yet, for the sake of my friends, I must know those dark intentions. I fear that there remains only one place for me to look. Wulfgar gave his life so that his friends might live. In good conscience, could my own sacrifice be any less?
* * *
Not since the day I walked out of Menzoberranzan have I been so torn about a pending decision. I sat near the entrance of a cave, looking out at the mountains before me, with the tunnel leading to the Underdark at my back. This was the moment in which I had believed my adventure would begin. When I had set out from Mithral Hall, I had given little thought to the part of my journey that would take me to this cave, taking for granted that the trip would be uneventful. Then I had glimpsed Ellifain, the maiden I had saved more than three decades before, when she had been just a frightened child. I wanted to go to her again, to speak with her and help her overcome the trauma of that terrible drow raid. I wanted to run out of that cave and catch up with Tarathiel, and ride beside the elf back to the Moonwood. But I could not ignore the issues that had brought me to this place. I had known from the outset that visiting Montolio’s grove, the place of so many fond memories, would prove an emotional, even spiritual, experience. He had been my first surface friend, my mentor, the one who had guided me to Mielikki. I can never express the joy I felt in learning that Montolio’s grove was under the protective eye of a unicorn. A unicorn! I have seen a unicorn, the symbol of my goddess, the pinnacle of natural perfection!
I might well be the first of my race to have ever touched the soft mane and muscled neck of such a beast, the first to encounter a unicorn in friendship. It is a rare pleasure to glimpse the signs that a unicorn has been about, and rarer still to ever gaze at one. Few in the Realms can say that they have ever been near a unicorn; fewer still have ever touched one. I have. Was it a sign from my goddess? In good faith, I had to believe that it was, that Mielikki had reached out to me in a tangible and thrilling way. But what did it mean?
I rarely pray. I prefer to speak to my goddess through my daily actions, and through my honest emotions. I need not gloss over what has occurred with pretty words, twisting them to show myself most favorably. If Mielikki is with me, then she knows the truth, knows how I act and how I feel.
I prayed that night in the cave entrance, though. I prayed for guidance, for something that would indicate the significance of the unicorn’s appearance. The unicorn allowed me to touch it; it accepted me, and that is the highest honor a ranger can ask. But what was the implication of that honor?
Was Mielikki telling me that here, on the surface, I was, and would continue to be, accepted, and that I should not leave this place? Or was the unicorn’s appearance to show me the goddess’s approval of my choice to return to Menzoberranzan? Or was the unicorn Mielikki’s special way of saying farewell? That last thought haunted me all through the night. For the first time since I had set out from Mithral Hall, I began to consider what I, Drizzt Do’Urden, had to lose. I thought of my friends, Montolio and Wulfgar, who had passed on from this world, and thought of those others I would likely never see again. A host of questions assailed me. Would Bruenor ever get over the loss of his adopted son? And would Catti-brie overcome her own grief? Would the enchanted sparkle, the sheer love of life, ever return to her blue eyes? Would I ever again prop my weary head against Guenhwyvar’s muscled flank? More than ever, I wanted to run from the cave, home to Mithral Hall, and stand beside my friends, to see them through their grief, to guide them and listen to them and simply embrace them. Again I could not ignore the issues that had brought me to this cave. I could go back to Mithral Hall, but so could my dark kin. I did not blame myself for Wulfgar’s death—I could not have known that the dark elves would come. And now I could not deny my understanding of the awful ways and continuing hunger of Lolth. If the drow returned and extinguished that—cherished!—light in Catti-brie’s eyes, then Drizzt Do’Urden would die a thousand horrible deaths. I prayed all that night, but found no divine guidance. In the end, as always, I came to realize that I had to follow what I knew in my heart was the right course, had to trust that what was in my heart was in accord with Mielikki’s will. I left the fire blazing at the entrance of that cave. I needed to see its light, to gain courage from it, for as many steps as possible as I walked into the tunnel. As I walked into darkness.
* * *
There are no shadows in the Underdark. Only after years on the surface have I come to understand the significance of that seemingly minute fact, the significance of the contrast between lightness and darkness. There are no shadows in the Underdark, no areas of mystery where only the imagination can go. What a marvelous thing is a shadow! I have seen my own silhouette walk under me as the sun rode high; I have seen a gopher grow to the size of a large bear, the light low behind him, spreading his ominous silhouette far across the ground. I have walked through the woods at twilight, my gaze alternating between the lighter areas catching the last rays of day, leafy green slipping to gray, and those darkening patches, those areas where only my mind’s eye could go. Might a monster be there? An orc or a goblin? Or might a hidden treasure, as magnificent as a lost, enchanted sword or as simple as a fox’s den, lay within the sheltering gloom?
When I walk the woods at twilight, my imagination walks beside me, heightens my senses, opens my mind to any possibilities. But there are no shadows in the Underdark, and there is no room for fanciful imagining. All, everywhere, is gripped in a brooding, continual, predatory hush and a very real, ever present danger. To imagine a crouched enemy, or a hidden treasure, is an exercise in enjoyment, a conjured state of alertness, of aliveness. But when that enemy is too often real and not imagined, when every jag in the stone, every potential hiding place, becomes a source of tension, then the game is not so much fun. One cannot walk the corridors of the Underdark with his imagination beside him. To imagine an enemy behind one stone might well blind a person to the very real enemy behind another. To slip into a daydream is to lose that edge of readiness, and in the Underdark, to be unwary is to die.
This proved the most difficult transition for me when I went back into those lightless corridors. I had to again become the primal hunter, had to survive, every moment, on that instinctual edge, a state of nervous energy that kept my muscles always taut, always ready to spring. Every step of the way, the present was all that mattered, the search for potential hiding places of potential enemies. I could not afford to imagine those enemies. I had to wait for them and watch for them, react to any movements. There are no shadows in the Underdark.
There is no room for imagination in the Underdark. It is a place for alertness, but not aliveness, a place with no room for hopes and dreams.
* * *
One of the sects of Faerun names the sins of humanity as seven, and foremost among them is pride. My interpretation of this had always been to think of the arrogance of kings, who proclaimed themselves gods, or at least convinced their subjects that they spoke with some divine beings, thus conveying the image that their power was god-given. That is only one manifestation of this most deadly of sins. One does not have to be a king to be taken down by false pride. Montolio DeBrouchee, my ranger mentor, warned me about this, but his lessons concerned a personal aspect of pride. “A ranger often walks alone, but never walks without friends nearby,” the wise man explained. “A ranger knows his surroundings and knows where allies might be found.”
To Montolio’s way of thinking, pride was blindness, a blurring of insight and wisdom, and the defeat of trust. A too-proud man walked alone and cared not where allies might be found. When I discovered the web of Menzoberranzan growing thick about me, I understood my error, my arrogance. Had I come to think so much of myself and my abilities that I forgot those allies who had, to this point, allowed me to survive? In my anger over the death of Wulfgar and my fears for Catti-brie, Bruenor, and Regis, I never considered that those living friends could help to take care of themselves. The problem that had befallen us all was my own fault, I had decided, and, thus, was my duty to correct, however impossible that might be for a single person.
I would go to Menzoberranzan, discover the truth, and end the conflict, even if that end meant the sacrifice of my own life. What a fool I had been. Pride told me that I was the cause of Wulfgar’s death; pride told me that I could be the one to right the wrong. Sheer arrogance prevented me from dealing openly with my friend, the dwarven king, who could muster the forces necessary to combat any forthcoming drow attacks. On that ledge on the Isle of Rothé, I realized that I would pay for my arrogance; later, I would learn that others dear to me might pay as well. It is a defeat of the spirit to learn that one’s arrogance causes such loss and pain. Pride invites you to soar to heights of personal triumph, but the wind is stronger at those heights and the footing, tentative. Farther, then, is the fall.
* * *
Courage.
In any language, the word has a special ring to it, as much, I suspect, from the reverent way in which it is spoken as from the actual sounds of the letters. Courage. The word evokes images of great deeds and great character: the grim set of the faces of men defending their town’s walls from raiding goblins; the resilience of a mother caring for young children when all the world has seemingly turned hostile. In many of the larger cities of the Realms, young waifs stalk the streets, without parents, without homes. Theirs is a unique courage, a braving of hardships both physical and emotional. I suspect that Artemis Entreri fought such a battle in the mud-filled lanes of Calimport. On one level, he certainly won, certainly overcame any physical obstacles and rose to a rank of incredible power and respect.
On another level, Artemis Entreri surely lost. What might he have been, I often wonder, if his heart had not been so tainted? But I do not mistake my curiosity for pity. Entreri’s odds were no greater than my own. He could have won out over his struggles, in body and in heart. I thought myself courageous, altruistic, when I left Mithral Hall determined to end the threat to my friends. I thought I was offering the supreme sacrifice for the good of those dear to me. When Catti-brie entered my cell in House Baenre, when, through half-closed eyes, I glimpsed her fair and deceivingly delicate features, I learned the truth. I did not understand my own motivations when I walked from Mithral Hall. I was too full of unknown grief to recognize my own resignation. I was not courageous when I walked into the Underdark, because, in the deepest corner of my heart, I felt as if I had nothing to lose. I had not allowed myself to grieve for Wulfgar, and that emptiness stole my will and my trust that things could be put aright.
Courageous people do not surrender hope. Similarly, Artemis Entreri was not courageous when he came with Catti-brie to rescue me. His actions were wrought of sheer desperation, for if he remained in Menzoberranzan, he was surely doomed. Entreri’s goals, as always, were purely selfish. By his rescue attempt he made a conscious choice that coming after me was his best chance for survival. The rescue was an act of calculation, not of courage. By the time Catti-brie had run out of Mithral Hall in pursuit of her foolish drow friend, she had honestly overcome her grief for Wulfgar. The grieving process had come full circle for Catti-brie, and her actions were motivated only by loyalty. She had everything to lose, yet had gone alone into the savage Underdark for the sake of a friend. I came to understand this when first I looked into her eyes in the dungeons of House Baenre. I came to understand fully the meaning of the word “courage.” And I came, for the first time since Wulfgar fell, to know inspiration. I had fought as the hunter, savagely, mercilessly, but it wasn’t until I looked again upon my loyal friend that I regained the eyes of the warrior. Gone was my resignation and acceptance of fate; gone was my belief that all would be right if House Baenre got its sacrifice—if I gave my heart to Lolth.
In that dungeon, the healing potions returned strength to my battered limbs; the sight of grim, determined Catti-brie returned strength to my heart. I vowed then that I would resist, that I would fight the overwhelming events, and would fight to win. When I saw Catti-brie, I remembered all that I had to lose.