Exile (The Dark Elf Trilogy #2)(80)

Belwar snorted an embarrassed laugh.

“No,” Clacker said soberly, determined not to get sidetracked. “Deep gnomes, too, can call upon the powers of the earth, but theirs is a different relationship. The svirfnebli’s love of the earth is only one of their varied definitions of happiness,” Clacker looked away from his companions, to the rock wall. “Pech are brothers with the earth. It aids us as we aid it, out of affection.”

“You speak of the earth as though it is some sentient being,” Drizzt remarked, not sarcastically, just out of curiosity.

“It is, dark elf,” replied Belwar, imagining Clacker as he must have appeared before his encounter with the wizard, “for those who can hear it.”

Clacker’s huge beaked head nodded in accord.

“Svirfnebli can hear the earth’s distant song; he said. “Pech can speak to it directly.”

This was all quite beyond Drizzt’s understanding. He knew the sincerity in his companions’ words, but drow elves were not nearly as connected to the rocks of the Underdark as the svirfnebli and the pech. Still, if Drizzt needed any proof of what Belwar and Clacker were hinting at, he had only to recall his battle against Belwar’s earth elemental that decade ago, or imagine the wall that had somehow appeared out of nowhere to block his enemies in the illithid cavern.

“What do the stones tell you now?” Drizzt asked Clacker. “Have we outdistanced our enemies?”

Clacker moved over and put his ear to the wall. “The words are vague now,” he said with obvious lament in his voice. His companions understood the connotation of his tone. The earth was speaking no less clearly; it was Clacker’s hearing, impeded by the impending return of the hook horror, that had begun to fade.

“I hear no others in pursuit,” Clacker went on, “but I am not so sure as to trust my ears,” He snarled suddenly, spun away, and walked back to the far side of the alcove.

Drizzt and Belwar exchanged concerned looks, then moved to follow.

“What is it?” the burrow-warden dared to ask the hook horror, though he could guess readily enough.

“I am falling,” Clacker replied, and the grating that had returned to his voice only emphasized the point. “In the illithid cavern, I was pech-more pech than ever before. I was pech in narrow focus. I was the earth.’ Belwar and Drizzt seemed not to understand.

“The wow-wall,’ Clacker tried to explain. “Bringing up such a wall is a task that only a g-g-group of pech elders could accomplish, working together through painstaking rituals,” Clacker paused and shook his head violently, as though he was trying to throw out the hook horror side. He slammed a heavy claw into the wall and forced himself to continue. “Yet I did it. I became the stone and merely lifted my hand to block Drizzt’s enemies!”

“And now it is leaving,” Drizzt said softly. “The pech is falling away from your grasp once again, buried under the instincts of a hook horror.”

Clacker looked away and again banged a hook against the wall in reply. Something in the motion brought him comfort, and he repeated it, over and over, rhythmically tapping as if trying to hold on to a piece of his former self.

Drizzt and Belwar walked out of the alcove and back into the corridor to give their giant friend his privacy. A short time later, they noticed that the tapping had ceased, and Clacker stuck his head out, his huge, birdlike eyes filled with sorrow. His stuttered words sent shivers through the spines of his friends, for they found that they could not deny his logic or his desire.

“P-please k-k-kill me!’





PART 5

SPIRIT


Spirit. It cannot be broken and it cannot be stolen away. A victim in the throes of despair might feel otherwise, and certainly the victim’s “master” would like to believe it so. But in truth, the spirit remains, sometimes buried but never fully removed.

That is the false assumption of Zin-carla and the danger of such sentient animation. The priestesses, I have come to learn, claim it as the highest gift of the Spider Queen deity who rules the drow. I think not. Better to call Zin-carla Lloth’s greatest lie.

The physical powers of the body cannot be separated from the rationale of the mind and the emotions of the heart. They are one and the same, a compilation of a singular being. It is in the harmony of these three-body, mind, and heart-that we find spirit.

How many tyrants have tried? How many rulers have sought to reduce their subjects to simple, unthinking instruments of profit and gain? They steal the loves, the religions, of their people; they seek to steal the spirit.

Ultimately and inevitably; they fail. This I must believe. If the flame of the spirit’s candle is extinguished, there is only death, and the tyrant finds no gain in a kingdom littered with corpses.

But it is a resilient thing, this flame of spirit, indomitable and ever-striving. In some, at least, it will survive, to the tyrant’s demise.

Where, then, was Zaknafein, my father; when he set out purposefully to destroy me? Where was I in my years alone in the wilds, when this hunter that I had become blinded my heart and guided my sword hand often against my conscious wishes?

We both were there all along, I came to know, buried but never stolen.

Spirit. In every language in all the Realms, surface and Underdark, in every time and every place, the word has a ring of strength and determination. It is the hero’s strength, the mother’s resilience, and the poor man’s arm. It cannot be broken, and it cannot be taken away.