18
out loud but found no breath; she wanted to run, but her terror held her firmly. From the copse of trees, Liam spoke for her. “The drizzit!” the boy cried. “I told you so! I told you so!” He looked to his brothers, and Flanny and Shawno were having the expected excited reactions. Connor’s face, though, was locked into a look of dread so profound that one glance at it stole the joy from Liam.
“By the gods,” the eldest Thistledown son muttered. Connor had adventured with his father and had been trained to spot enemies. He looked now to his three confused brothers and muttered a single word that explained nothing to the inexperienced boys. “Drow.”
Drizzt stopped a dozen paces from the frightened girl, the first human woman he had seen up close, and studied her. Eleni was pretty by any race’s standards, with huge, soft eyes, dimpled cheeks, and smooth, golden skin. Drizzt knew there would be no fight here. He smiled at Eleni and the side turned him away from the girl. crossed his arms gently over his chest. “Drizzt,” he corrected, pointing to his chest. A movement to
“Run, Eleni!” Connor Thistledown cried, waving his sword and bearing down on the drow. “It is a dark elf! A drow! Run for your life!”
Of all that Connor had cried, Drizzt only understood the word “drow.” The young man’s attitude and intent could not be mistaken, though, for Connor charged straight between Drizzt and Eleni, his sword tip pointed Drizzt’s way. Eleni managed to get to her feet behind her brother, but she did not flee as he had instructed. She, too, had heard of the evil dark elves, and she would not leave Connor to face one alone.
“Turn away, dark elf,” Connor growled. “I am an expert swordsman and much stronger than you.”
Drizzt held his hands out helplessly, not understanding a word.
“Turn away!” Connor yelled.
On an impulse, Drizzt tried to reply in the drow silent code, an intricate language of hand and facial gestures.
and charged. “He’s casting a spell!” Eleni cried, and she dove down into the blueberries. Connor shrieked
Before Connor even knew of the counter, Drizzt grabbed him by the forearm, used his other hand to twist the boy’s wrist and take away the sword, spun the crude weapon three times over Connor’s head, flipped it in his slender hand, then handed it, hilt first, back to the boy.
Drizzt held his arms out wide and smiled. In drow custom, such a show of superiority without injuring the opponent invariably signaled a desire for friendship. To the oldest son of farmer Bartholemew Thistledown, the drow’s blinding display brought only awe-inspired terror.
Connor stood, mouth agape, for a long moment. His sword fell from his hand, but he didn’t notice; his pants, soiled, clung to his thighs, but he didn’t notice.
A scream erupted from somewhere within Connor. He grabbed Eleni, who joined in his scream, and they fled back to the grove to collect the others, then farther, running until they crossed the threshold of their own home.
Drizzt was left, his smile fast fading and his arms out wide, standing all alone in the blueberry patch.
* * ** * *
a casual interest. The unexpected appearance of a dark elf, particularly one wearing a gnoll cloak, A set of dizzily darting eyes had watched the exchange in the blueberry patch with more than had answered many questions for Tephanis. The quickling sleuth had already examined the gnoll corpses but simply could not reconcile the gnolls’ fatal wounds with the crude weapons usually wielded by the simple village farmers. Seeing the magnificent twin scimitars so casually belted on the dark elf’s hips and the ease with which the dark elf had dispatched the farm boy, Tephanis knew the truth.
The dust trail left by the quickling would have confused the best rangers in the Realms.
19
Tephanis, never a straightforward sprite, zipped up the mountain trails, spinning circuits around some trees, running up and down the sides of others, and generally doubling, even tripling, his route. Distance never bothered Tephanis; he stood before the purple-skinned barghest whelp even before Drizzt, considering the implications of the disastrous meeting, had left the blueberry patch.
4. Worries
Farmer Bartholemew Thistledown’s perspective changed considerably when Connor, his oldest son, renamed Liam’s “drizzit” a dark elf. Farmer Thistledown had spent his entire forty-five years in Maldobar, a village fifty miles up the Dead Orc River north of Sundabar. Bartholemew’s father had lived here, and his father’s father before him. In all that time, the only news any Farmer Thistledown had ever heard of dark elves was the tale of a suspected drow raid on a small settlement of wild elves a hundred miles to the north, in Coldwood. That raid, if it was even perpetrated by the drow, had occurred more than a decade before. Lack of personal experience with the drow race did not diminish Farmer Thistledown’s fears at hearing his children’s tale of the encounter in the blueberry patch. Connor and Eleni, two trusted sources old enough to keep their wits about them in a time of crisis, had viewed the elf up close, and they held no doubts about the color of his skin.
“The only thing I can’t rightly figure,” Bartholemew told Benson Delmo, the fat and cheerful mayor of Maldobar and several other farmers gathered at his house that night, “is why this drow let the children go free. I’m no expert on the ways of dark elves, but I’ve heard tell enough about them to expect a different sort of action.”
“Perhaps Connor fared better in his attack than he believed,” Delmo piped in tactfully. They had all heard the tale of Connor’s disarming; Liam and the other Thistledown children, except for poor Connor, of course, particularly enjoyed retelling that part.
As much as he appreciated the mayor’s vote of confidence, though, Connor shook his head emphatically at the suggestion. “He took me,” Connor admitted. “Maybe I was too surprised at the sight of him, but he took me–clean.”
“And no easy feat,” Bartholemew put in, deflecting any forthcoming snickers from the gruff crowd. “We’ve all seen Connor at fighting. Just last winter, he took down three goblins and the wolves they were riding!”
“Calm, good Farmer Thistledown,” the mayor offered. “We’ve no doubts of your son’s prowess.”
“I’ve my doubts about the truth o’ the foe!” put in Roddy McGristle, a bear-sized and bear-hairy man, the most battle-seasoned of the group. Roddy spent more time up in the mountains than tending his farm, a recent endeavor he didn’t particularly enjoy, and whenever someone offered a bounty on orc ears, Roddy invariably collected the largest portion of the coffers, often larger than the rest of the town combined.
“Put yer neck hairs down,” Roddy said to Connor as the boy began to rise, a sharp protest obviously forthcoming. “I know what ye says ye seen, and I believe that ye seen what ye says. But ye called it a drow, an’ that title carries more than ye can begin to know. If it was a drow ye found, my guess’s that yerself an’ yer kin’d be lying dead right now in that there blueberry patch. No, not a drow, by my guess, but there’s other things in them mountains could do what ye says this thing did.”
“Name them,” Bartholemew said crossly, not appreciating the doubts Roddy had cast over his son’s story. Bartholemew didn’t much like Roddy anyway. Farmer Thistledown kept a respectable family, and every time crude and loud Roddy McGristle came to pay a visit, it took Bartholemew and his wife many days to remind the children, particularly Liam, about proper behavior. Roddy just shrugged, taking no offense at Bartholemew’s tone. “Goblin, troll–might be a wood elf that’s seen too much o’ the sun.” His laughter, erupting after the last statement, rolled over the group, belittling their seriousness.
“Then how do we know for sure,” said Delmo.
20
“We find out by finding it,” Roddy offered. “Tomorrow mornin’,”–he pointed around at each man sitting at Bartholemew’s table–”we go out an’ see what we can see.” Considering the impromptu meeting at an end, Roddy slammed his hands down on the table and pushed himself to his feet. He looked back before he got to the farmhouse door, though, and cast an exaggerated wink and a nearly toothless smile back at the group. “And, boys,” he said, “don’t be forgettin’ yer weapons!”
Roddy’s cackle rolled back in on the group long after the rough-edged mountain man had departed.
“We could call in a ranger,” one of the other farmers offered hopefully as the dispirited group began to depart. “I heard there’s one in Sundabar, one of Lady Alustriel’s sisters.”
“Is it ever too early when drow are involved?” Bartholemew quickly put in. “A bit too early for that,” Mayor Delmo answered, defeating any optimistic smiles.
The mayor shrugged. “Let us go with McGristle,” he replied. “If anyone can find some truth up in the mountains, it’s him.” He tactfully turned to Connor. “I believe your tale, Connor. Truly I do. But we’ve got to know for sure before we put out a call for such distinguished assistance as a sister of the Lady of Silverymoon.”
The mayor and the rest of the visiting farmers departed, leaving Bartholemew, his father, Markhe, and Connor alone in the Thistledown kitchen.
“Wasn’t no goblin or wood elf,” Connor said in a low tone that hinted at both anger and embarrassment.
Bartholemew patted his son on the back, never doubting him.