* * *
“Hey, what-are-you-doing?” came a weary complaint from a sack behind Roddy’s bench. Tephanis crawled out. “Why-are-we-leaving?”
Roddy twisted about and took a swipe, but Tephanis, even sleepy-eyed, had no trouble darting out of harm’s way. “Ye lied to me, ye cousin to a kobold!” Roddy growled. “Ye telled me that the drow was dead. But he’s not! He’s on the road to Mirabar, and I mean to catch him!”
“Mirabar?” Tephanis cried. “Too-far, too-far!” The quickling and Roddy had passed through Mirabar the previous spring. Tephanis thought it a perfectly miserable place, full of grim-faced dwarves, sharp-eyed men, and a wind much too cold for his liking. “We-must-go-south-for-the-winter. South-where-it-is-warm!”
Roddy’s ensuing glare silenced the sprite. “I’ll forget what ye did to me,” he snarled, then he
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added an ominous warning, “if we get the drow.” He turned from Tephanis then, and the sprite crawled back into his sack, feeling miserable and wondering if Roddy McGristle was worth the trouble. Roddy drove through the night, bending low to urge his horse onward and muttering “Six years!” over and over.
* * *
Drizzt huddled close to the fire that roared out of an old ore barrel the group had found. This would be the drow’s seventh winter on the surface, but still he remained uncomfortable in the chill. He had spent decades, and his people had lived for many millennia, in the seasonless and warm Underdark. Although winter was still months away, its approach was evident in the chill winds blowing down from the Spine of the World Mountains. Drizzt wore only an old blanket, thin and torn, over his clothes, chain mail, and weapon belt.
The drow smiled when he noticed his companions fidgeting and huffing over who got the next draw on a bottle of wine they had begged and how much the last drinker had taken. Drizzt was alone at the barrel now; the Weeping Friars, while not actually shunning the drow, didn’t often go near him. Drizzt accepted this and knew that the fanatics appreciated his companionship for practical, if not aesthetic, reasons. Some of the band actually enjoyed attacks by the various monsters of the land, viewing them as opportunities for some true suffering, but the more pragmatic of the group appreciated having the armed and skilled drow around for protection.
The relationship was acceptable to Drizzt, if not fulfilling. He had left Mooshie’s Grove years ago filled with hope, but hope tempered by the realities of his existence. Time after time, Drizzt had approached a village only to be put out behind a wall of harsh words, curses, and drawn weapons. Every time, Drizzt shrugged away the snubbing. True to his ranger spirit–for Drizzt was indeed a ranger now, in training as well as in heart–he accepted his lot stoically. The last rejection had shown Drizzt that his resolve was wearing thin, though. He had been turned away from Luskan, on the Sword Coast, but not by any guards, for he had never even approached the place. Drizzt’s own fears had kept him away, and that fact had frightened him more than any swords he had ever faced. On the road outside the city, Drizzt had met up with this handful of Weeping Friars, and the outcasts had tentatively accepted him, as much because they had no means to keep him out as because they were too full of their own wretchedness to care about any racial differences. Two of the group had even thrown themselves at Drizzt’s feet, begging him to unleash his “dark elf terrors” and make them suffer.
Through the spring and summer, the relationship had evolved with Drizzt serving as silent guardian while the friars went about their begging and suffering ways. All in all, it was quite distasteful, even sometimes deceitful, to the principled drow, but Drizzt had found no other options.
Drizzt stared into the leaping flames and considered his fate. He still had Guenhwyvar at his call and had put his scimitars and bow to gainful use many times. Every day he told himself that beside the somewhat helpless fanatics, he was serving Mielikki, and his own heart, well. Still, he did not hold the friars in high regard and did not call them friends. Watching the five men now, drunk and slobbering all over each other, Drizzt suspected that he never would.
“Beat me! Slash me!” one of the friars cried suddenly, and he ran over toward the barrel, stumbling into Drizzt. Drizzt caught him and steadied him, but only for a moment. lanky frame tumbled down in an angular heap. “Loosh your dwow whickedniss on me head!” the dirty, unshaven friar sputtered, and his
Drizzt turned away, shook his head, and unconsciously dropped a hand into his pouch to feel the onyx figurine, needing the touch to remind him that he was not truly alone. He was surviving, fighting an endless and lonely battle, but was far from contented. He had found a place, perhaps, but not a home.
“Like the grove without Montolio,” the drow mused. “Never a home.”
“Did you say something?” asked a portly friar, Brother Mateus, coming over to collect his
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drunken companion. “Please excuse Brother Jankin, friend. He has imbibed too much, I fear.”
Drizzt’s helpless smile told that he had taken no offense, but his next words caught Brother Mateus, the leader and most rational member–if not the most honest–of the group, off guard.
“I will complete the trip to Mirabar with you,” Drizzt explained, “then I will leave.”
“Leave?” asked Mateus, concerned.
“This is not my place,” Drizzt explained.
“Ten-Towns ish the place!” Jankin blurted.
“If anyone has offended you… ” Mateus said to Drizzt, taking no heed of the drunken man.
“No one,” Drizzt said and smiled again. “There is more for me in this life, Brother Mateus. Do not be angry, I beg, but I am leaving. It was not a decision I came to lightly.”
least escort us through the tunnel into Mirabar?” Mateus took a moment to consider the words. “As you choose,” he said, “but might you at
“Ten-Towns!” Jankin insisted. “Thast the place fer’ suf-ferin’! Vou’d like it, too, drow. Land o’ rogues, where a rogue might find hish place!”
“Often there are rakes in the shadows who would prey on unarmed friars,” Mateus interrupted, giving Jankin a rough shake.
Drizzt paused a moment, transfixed on Jankin’s words. Jankin had collapsed, though, and the drow looked up to Mateus. “Is that not why you take the tunnel route into the city?” Drizzt asked the portly friar. The tunnel was normally reserved for mine carts, rolling down from the Spine of the World, but the friars always went through it, even in situations such as this, when they had to make a complete circuit of the city just to get to the long route’s entrance. “To fall victim and suffer?” Drizzt continued. “Surely the road is clear and more convenient with winter still months away.” Drizzt did not like the tunnel to Mirabar. Any wanderers they met on that road would be too close for the drow to hide his identity. Drizzt had been accosted there on both his previous trips through.
“The others insist that we go through the tunnel, though it is many miles out of our way,” appreciate your company through to Mirabar.” replied Mateus, a sharp edge to his tone. “But I prefer more personal forms of suffering and would
Drizzt wanted to scream at the phony friar. Mateus considered missing a single meal a harsh suffering and only used his facade because many gullible people handed coins to the cloaked fanatics, more often than not just to be rid of the smelly men.
Drizzt nodded and watched as Mateus hauled Jankin away. “Then I leave,” he whispered under his breath. He could tell himself over and over that he was serving his goddess and his heart by protecting the seemingly helpless band, but their behavior often flew in the face of those words.
“Dwow! Dwow!” Brother Jankin slobbered as Mateus dragged him back to the others.
21. Hephaestus
Tephanis watched the party of six–the five friars and Drizzt–make their slow way toward the tunnel on the western approach to Mirabar. Roddy had sent the quickling ahead to scout out the region, telling Tephanis to turn the drow, if he found the drow, back toward Roddy. “Bleeder’ll be taking care of that one,” Roddy had snarled, slapping his formidable axe across his palm.
Tephanis wasn’t so sure. The sprite had watched Ulgulu, a master arguably more powerful than Roddy McGristle, dispatched by the drow, and another mighty master, Caroak, had been torn apart by the drow’s black panther. If Roddy got his wish and met the drow in battle, Tephanis might soon be searching for yet another master.
“Not-this-time, drow,” the sprite whispered suddenly, an idea coming to mind. “This-time-I-get-you!” Tephanis knew the tunnel to Mirabar–he and Roddy had used it the winter before last, when snow had buried the western road–and had learned many of its secrets, including one that the sprite now planned to use to his advantage.
He made a wide circuit around the group, not wanting to alert the sharp-eared drow, and still made the tunnel entrance long before the others. A few minutes later, the sprite was more than a mile in, picking at an intricate lock, one that seemed clumsy to the skilled quickling, on a portcullis
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crank.
* * *
Brother Mateus led the way into the tunnel, with another friar at his side and the remaining three completing a shielding circle around Drizzt. Drizzt had requested this so that he could remain inconspicuous if anyone happened by. He kept his cloak pulled up tightly and his shoulders hunched. He stayed low in the middle of the group.
They met no other travelers and moved along the torch-lit passage at a steady pace. They came to an intersection and Mateus stopped abruptly, seeing the raised portcullis to a passage on the right side. A dozen steps in, an iron door swung wide, and the passage beyond that was pitch black, not torch-lit like the main tunnel.
“How curious,” Mateus remarked.
“Careless,” another corrected. “Let us pray that no other travelers, who might not know the way as well as we, happen by here and take the wrong path!”
“Perhaps we should close the door,” still another offered.
“No,” Mateus quickly interjected. “There may be some down there, merchants perhaps, who would not be so pleased if we followed that plan.”
“No!” Brother Jankin cried suddenly and ran to the front of the group. “It is a sign! A sign from God! We are beckoned, my brethren, to Phaestus, the ultimate suffering!”
Jankin turned to charge down the tunnel, but Mateus and one other, hardly surprised by Jankin’s customarily wild outburst, immediately sprang upon him and bore him to the ground.
“Phaestus!” Jankin cried wildly, his long and shaggy black hair flying all about his face. “I am coming!” he thought he recognized the reference. “Who, or what, is Phaestus?” “What is it?” Drizzt had to ask, having no idea of what the friars were talking about, though
“Hephaestus,” Brother Mateus corrected.
Drizzt did know the name. One of the books he had taken from Mooshie’s Grove was of dragon lore, and Hephaestus, a venerable red dragon living in the mountains northwest of Mirabar, had an entry.
“That is not the dragon’s real name, of course,” Mateus went on between grunts as he struggled with Jankin. “I do not know that, nor does anyone else anymore.” Jankin twisted suddenly, throwing the other monk aside, and promptly stomped down on Mateus’s sandal.
“Hephaestus is an old red dragon who has lived in the caves west of Mirabar for as long as anyone, even the dwarves, can remember,” explained another friar, Brother Herschel, one less engaged than Mateus. “The city tolerates him because he is a lazy one and a stupid one, though I would not tell him so. Most cities, I presume, would choose to tolerate a red if it meant not fighting the thing! But Hephaestus is not much for pillaging–none can recall the last time he even came out of his hole–and he even does some ore-melting for hire, though the fee is steep.”
“Some pay it, though,” added Mateus, having Jankin back under control, “especially late in the season, looking to make the last caravan south. Nothing can separate metal like a red dragon’s breath!” His laughter disappeared quickly as Jankin slugged him, dropping him to the ground.
Jankin bolted free, for just a moment. Quicker than anyone could react, Drizzt threw off his cloak and rushed after the fleeing monk, catching him just inside the heavy iron door. A single step and twisting maneuver put Jankin down hard on his back and took the wild-eyed friar’s breath away.
“Let us get by this region at once,” the drow offered, staring down at the stunned friar. “I grow tired of Jankin’s antics–I might just allow him to run down to the dragon!”
Two of the others came over and gathered Jankin up, then the whole troupe turned to depart.
“Help!” came a cry from farther down the dark tunnel.
Drizzt’s scimitars came out in his hands. The friars all gathered around him, peering down
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into the gloom.
“Do you see anything?” Mateus asked the drow, knowing that Drizzt’s night vision was much keener than his own.
“No, but the tunnel turns a short way from here,” Drizzt replied.
“Help!” came the cry again. Behind the group, around the corner in the main tunnel, Tephanis had to suppress his laughter. Quicklings were adept ventriloquists, and the biggest problem Tephanis had in deceiving the group was keeping his cries slow enough to be understood.
Drizzt took a cautious step in, and the friars, even Jankin, sobered by the distress call, followed right behind. Drizzt motioned for them to go back, even as he suddenly realized the potential for a trap.
two steps away, could push through the startled friars, the sprite already had the door locked. A But Tephanis was too quick. The door slammed with a resounding thud and before the drow, moment later, Drizzt and the friars heard a second crash as the portcullis came down.
Tephanis was back out in the daylight a few minutes later, thinking himself quite clever and reminding himself to keep a puzzled expression when he explained to Roddy that the drow’s party was nowhere to be found.
* * *
The friars grew tired of yelling as soon as Drizzt reminded them that their screams might arouse the occupant at the other end of the tunnel. “Even if someone happens by the portcullis, he will not hear you through this door,” the drow said, inspecting the heavy portal with the single candle Mateus had lit. A combination of iron, stone, and leather, and perfectly fitted, the door had been crafted by dwarves. Drizzt tried pounding on it with the pommel of a scimitar, but that produced only a dull thud that went no farther than the screams. “We are lost,” groaned Mateus. “We have no way out, and our stores are not too plentiful.”
“Another sign!” Jankin blurted suddenly, but two of the friars knocked him down and sat on him before he could run off toward the dragon’s den.
“Perhaps there is something to Brother Jankin’s thinking,” Drizzt said after a long pause.
Mateus looked at him suspiciously. “Are you thinking that our stores would last longer if Brother Jankin went to meet Hephaestus?” he asked.
Drizzt could not hold his laughter. “I have no intention of sacrificing anyone,” he said and looked at Jankin struggling under the friars. “No matter how willing! But we have only one way out, it would seem.”
Mateus followed Drizzt’s gaze down the dark tunnel. “If you plan no sacrifices, then you are looking the wrong way,” the portly friar huffed. “Surely you are not thinking to get past the dragon!”
“We shall see,” was all that the drow answered. He lit another candle from the first one and moved a short distance down the tunnel. Drizzt’s good sense argued against the undeniable excitement he felt at the prospect of facing Hephaestus, but it was an argument that he expected simple necessity to overrule. Montolio had fought a dragon, Drizzt remembered, had lost his eyes to a red. The ranger’s memories of the battle, aside from his wounds, were not so terrible. Drizzt was beginning to understand what the blind ranger had told him about the differences between survival and fulfillment. How valuable would be the five hundred years Drizzt might have left to live? For the friar’s sake, Drizzt did hope that someone would come along and open the portcullis and door. The drow’s fingers tingled with promised thrills, though, when he reached into his sack and pulled out a book on dragon lore he had taken from the grove.
The drow’s sensitive eyes needed little light, and he could make out the script with only minor difficulty. As he suspected, there was an entry for the venerable red who lived west of Mirabar. The book confirmed that Hephaestus was not the dragon’s real name, rather the name given to it in reference to some obscure god of blacksmiths.