Gauntlgrym (Neverwinter #1)(18)
“You got enough?” Tulula asked, glancing back across the lake. “We’ve a long ride home and you promised we’d be back in Caer-Dineval tomorrow.”
Drizzt hesitated a bit, helplessly scanning the horizon, then he nodded. “Help your father back into the wagon,” he told her. “We’ll be away soon.”
The drow trotted off to the cottage and poked about it for a bit, then moved up into the scraggly wood, hardly a forest, crunching through the dried pine needles of seasons past. He looked for clues, any clue: the hint of a door on a hillside, a patch of ground that once might have been a pond, the hint of music in the windy air.…
From the side of one hillock, he looked back to see Tulula in the open wagon, her father beside her. She waved to Drizzt, ready to depart.
He moved about a bit more, hoping against all reason that he would find something, anything, to give him hope that this place—Iruladoon, Roundie had called it—had once been the forest as described to him, that the caretaker had been Regis and the marvelous witch, Catti-brie. He thought of his return to Kelvin’s Cairn, and dreaded telling Bruenor that their journey to Icewind Dale had been for naught.
Where might they go now? Did old Bruenor have any more roads left in him?
“Come along then!” Tulula called from the wagon, and reluctantly the drow started down, his keen eyes still scanning the ground and trees for some sign, any sign.
Drizzt’s eyes were keen, but not sharp enough to see all. In his passing, he brushed by some trees and old branches, and dislodged something that fell behind him. He didn’t notice, and went on his way to the wagon. The trio started off on the long road that would take them around the lake and back to Caer-Dineval.
As the sun dipped lower over the lake, the light flashed white on bone—a fish bone, a piece of scrimshaw carved into the likeness of a woman holding a magical bow.
The same bow Drizzt Do’Urden carried on his back.
The air was unseasonably chilly, and storm clouds had gathered off in the northwest on the morning Drizzt walked back out of Caer-Dineval, a reminder that the season was soon to turn. He looked to the distant peak of Kelvin’s Cairn and thought that perhaps he should spend another day in town and let the storm pass.
Drizzt laughed at himself, at his cowardice, and not for anything to do with the weather. He didn’t want to tell Bruenor that he’d found not a sign, not a tease. He knew he shouldn’t tarry, of course. Autumn was falling, and in a matter of tendays, the first snows would come sweeping down upon Icewind Dale, sealing the one pass through the mountains to the south.
On the rocky cliff between the town’s welcoming inn and the old castle of the Dinev family, the drow lifted his unicorn pendant to his lips and blew into the horn. He spotted Andahar, a tiny flash of white before him, approaching fast.
The steed seemed no bigger than his closed hand at first, but each stride along the rift between dimensions doubled its size, and in moments, the powerful equine beast trotted to a stop in front of Drizzt. Andahar pawed the ground and shook his thick neck, white mane flying wildly.
Drizzt heard the excited chatter of the guards at the caer’s gate, but he didn’t even look back to acknowledge them, nor was he surprised by their reaction. Who would not be awe-stricken at the first glimpse of Andahar, tacked and with barding that glittered in the daylight with rows of bells and jewels?
Drizzt grabbed the steed’s mane and agilely leaped into the saddle. Then he did salute the gawking folk at the gate before turning the magnificent unicorn to the north and thundering off toward Kelvin’s Cairn.
What a wonderful gift Andahar had been, the drow thought, and certainly not for the first time. The ruling council of Silverymoon had commissioned the mount for Drizzt, in gratitude for his work, both with the blade and diplomacy, in the Third Orc War.
The wind whistled past his ears as Andahar galloped across the miles. The drow wasn’t cold, though, not with the warmth generated by the unicorn’s great muscles. His hair and cloak flew wide behind him. He called forth the bells to sing with the ride, and they answered to his will. Trusting in Andahar, Drizzt let his thoughts slip back to pleasant memories of his old friends. He was disappointed, of course, in not finding any sign of the mysterious witch of the wood, or the curious halfling caretaker, disappointed at the reaffirmation of that which he already knew to be true.
He still had his memories, though, and on occasions like this, alone and on the trail, he looked for them and found them, and couldn’t help but smile as he thought of that previous life he had known.
That previous life he knew he should forget.
That previous life he could not forget.
The sun was still high in the sky when he dismissed Andahar and entered the dwarven tunnels. Once the complex had been the home of Clan Battlehammer, and those few dozen dwarves who had remained there still considered themselves part of the clan. They knew of Drizzt, though only a couple had ever met the drow. They also knew of Pwent and the legendary Gutbuster Brigade, and glad they were to welcome travelers from Mithral Hall, including one who named himself as a distant cousin to the late King Bruenor Battlehammer himself.
“To King Connerad Brawnanvil Battlehammer!” the leader of the Kelvin’s Cairn Battlehammers, Stokely Silverstream, greeted Drizzt when he entered the main forge area. Stokely lifted a mug in toast and waved to a younger dwarf, who hustled to get Drizzt a drink.