* * ** * *
For three days the drow crouched in the shadows behind the farm, watching the family at work and at play. The closeness of the group became more and more evident, and whenever a true fight did erupt among the children, the nearest adult quickly stepped in and mediated it to a level of reasonableness. Invariably, the combatants were back at play together within a short span.
All doubts had flown from Drizzt. “‘Ware my blades, rogues,” he whispered to the quiet
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mountains one night. The young drow renegade had decided that if any gnolls or goblins–or creatures of any other race at all–tried to swoop down upon this particular farming family, they first would have to contend with the whirling scimitars of Drizzt Do’Urden.
Drizzt understood the risk he was taking by observing the farm family. If the farmer-folk noticed him–a distinct possibility–they surely would panic. At this point in his life, though, Drizzt was willing to take that chance. A part of him may even have hoped to be discovered.
Early on the morning of the fourth day, before the sun had found its way into the eastern sky, Drizzt set out on his daily patrol, circumventing the hills and woodlands surrounding the lone farmhouse. By the time the drow returned to his perch, the work day on the farm was in full swing. Drizzt sat comfortably on a bed of moss and peered from the shadows into the brightness of the cloudless day. Less than an hour later, a solitary figure crept from the farmhouse and in Drizzt’s direction. It was the youngest of the children, the sandy-haired lad who seemed to spend nearly as much time in the trough as out of it, usually not of his own volition.
Drizzt rolled around the trunk of a nearby tree, uncertain of the lad’s intent. He soon realized that the youngster hadn’t seen him, for the boy slipped into the thicket, gave a snort over his shoulder, back toward the farmhouse, and headed off into the hilly woodland, whistling all the while. Drizzt understood then that the lad was avoiding his chores, and Drizzt almost applauded the boy’s carefree attitude. In spite of that, though, Drizzt wasn’t convinced of the small child’s wisdom in wandering away from home in such dangerous terrain. The boy couldn’t have been more than ten years old; he looked thin and delicate, with innocent, blue eyes peering out from under his amber locks.
Drizzt waited a few moments, to let the boy get a lead and to see if anyone would be following, then he took up the trail, letting the whistling guide him.
The boy moved unerringly away from the farmhouse, up into the mountains, and Drizzt moved behind him by a hundred paces or so, determined to keep the boy out of danger. In the dark tunnels of the Underdark Drizzt could have crept right up behind the boy–or behind a goblin or practically anything else–and patted him on the rump before being discovered. But after only a half-hour or so of this pursuit, the movements and erratic speed changes along the trail, coupled with the fact that the whistling had ceased, told Drizzt that the boy knew he was being followed.
Wondering if the boy had sensed a third party, Drizzt summoned Guenhwyvar from the onyx figurine and sent the panther off on a flanking maneuver. Drizzt started ahead again at a cautious
pace.
A moment later, when the child’s voice cried out in distress, the drow drew his scimitars and threw out all caution. Drizzt couldn’t understand any of the boy’s words, but the desperate tone rang clearly enough.
“Guenhwyvar!” the drow called, trying to bring the distant panther back to his side. Drizzt couldn’t stop and wait for the cat, though, and he charged on.
The trail wound up a steep climb, came out of the trees suddenly, and ended on the lip of a wide gorge, fully twenty feet across. A single log spanned the crevasse, and hanging from it near the other side was the boy. His eyes widened considerably at the sight of the ebony-skinned elf, scimitars in hand. He stammered a few words that Drizzt could not begin to decipher.
A wave of guilt flooded through Drizzt at the sight of the imperiled child; the boy had only wide, but the fall ended on jagged rocks and brambles. At first, Drizzt hesitated, caught off guard by landed in this predicament because of Drizzt’s pursuit. The gorge was only about as deep as it was the sudden meeting and its inevitable implications, then the drow quickly put his own problems out of mind. He snapped his scimitars back into their sheaths and, folding his arms across his chest in a drow signal for peace, he put one foot out on the log.
The boy had other ideas. As soon as he recovered from the shock of seeing the strange elf, he swung himself to a ledge on the stone bank opposite Drizzt and pushed the log from its perch. Drizzt quickly backed off the log as it tumbled down into the crevasse. The drow understood then
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that the boy had never been in real danger but had pretended distress to flush out his pursuer. And, Drizzt presumed, if the pursuer had been one of the boy’s family, as the boy no doubt had suspected, the peril might have deflected any thoughts of punishment.
Now Drizzt was the one in the predicament. He had been discovered. He tried to think of a way to communicate with the boy, to explain his presence and stave off panic. The boy didn’t wait for any explanations, though. Wide-eyed and terror-stricken, he scaled the bank–via a path he obviously knew well–and darted off into the shrubbery.
Drizzt looked around helplessly. “Wait!” he cried in the drow tongue, though he knew the boy would not understand and would not have stopped even if he could.
A black feline form rushed out beside the drow and sprang into the air, easily clearing the crevasse. Guenhwyvar padded down softly on the other side and disappeared into the thicket. “Guenhwyvar!” Drizzt cried, trying to halt the panther. Drizzt had no idea how Guenhwyvar would react to the child. To Drizzt’s knowledge, the panther had only encountered one human before, the wizard that Drizzt’s companions had subsequently killed. Drizzt looked around for some way to follow. He could scale down the side of the gorge, cross at the bottom, and climb back up, but that would take too long.
Drizzt ran back a few steps, then charged the gorge and leaped into the air, calling on his innate powers of levitation as he went. Drizzt was truly relieved when he felt his body pull free of the ground’s gravity. He hadn’t used his levitation spell since he had come to the surface. The spell served no purpose for a drow hiding under the open sky. Gradually, Drizzt’s initial momentum carried him near the far bank. He began to concentrate on drifting down to the stone, but the spell ended abruptly and Drizzt plopped down hard. He ignored the bruises on his knee, and the questions of why his spell had faltered, and came up running, calling desperately for Guenhwyvar to stop.
Drizzt was relieved when he found the cat. Guenhwyvar sat calmly in a clearing, one paw casually pinning the boy facedown to the ground. The child was calling out again–for help, Drizzt assumed–but appeared unharmed.
“Come, Guenhwyvar,” Drizzt said quietly, calmly. “Leave the child alone.” Guenhwyvar yawned lazily and complied, padding across the clearing to stand at its master’s side.
The boy remained down for a long moment. Then, summoning his courage, he moved suddenly, leaping to his feet and spinning to face the dark elf and the panther. His eyes seemed wider still, almost a caricature of terror, peeking out from his now dirty face.
“What are you?” the boy asked in the common human language.
Drizzt held his arms out to the sides to indicate that he did not understand. On impulse, he poked a finger into his chest and replied, “Drizzt Do’Urden.” He noticed that the boy was moving slightly, secretly dropping one foot behind the other and then sliding the other back into place. Drizzt was not surprised–and he made certain that he kept Guenhwyvar in check this time–when the boy turned on his heel and sprinted away, screaming “Help! It’s a drizzit!” with every stride.
Drizzt looked at Guenhwyvar and shrugged, and the cat seemed to shrug back.
3. The Whelps
Nathak, a spindle-armed goblin, made his way slowly up the steep, rocky incline, every step weighted with dread. The goblin had to report his findings–five dead gnolls could not be ignored–but the unfortunate creature seriously doubted that either Ulgulu or Kempfana would willingly accept the news. Still, what options did Nathak have? He could run away, flee down the other side of the mountain, and off into the wilderness. That seemed an even more desperate course, though, for the goblin knew well Ulgulu’s taste for vengeance. The great purple-skinned master could tear a tree from the ground with his bare hands, could tear handfuls of stone from the cave wall, and could readily tear the throat from a deserting goblin.
Every step brought a shudder as Nathak moved beyond the concealing scrub into the small entry room of his master’s cave complex.
“Bouts time yez isses back,” one of the other two goblins in the room snorted. “Yez been