R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

“I took it from a mage, a drow noble,” he explained as he slid it off and held it up for Catti-brie. “In the bowels of Gauntlgrym-it is a long tale, and a good one for the road.” He reached his hand out, offering the ring to the woman for a closer look.

“It protects you from the flames?”

“As surely as my scimitar,” Drizzt replied. “Indeed, when first I put it on, I felt a sense of affinity between the two, scimitar and ring. It was almost as if their magic had … nodded respectfully to each other.”

Catti-brie looked at him curiously, and skeptically, for she had never heard of such a thing. Drizzt’s weapon, powerful though it was, was not sentient in any way that she knew, and rings such as this ruby band were not uncommon, not overly powerful, and not known to possess any type of empathy or telepathy.

She handed it back, but Drizzt caught her hand before she could retract it.

“In many cultures, the ring is the sign of fidelity and undying love,” he explained as he slipped it onto her finger. “Take this in that spirit, and with the added benefit of the protection it offers. With my scimitar in hand, we two can walk across hot coals!”

Catti-brie looked curiously at the jewel. For just a fleeting second when it had gone onto her hand, she had felt something … something like a call from afar, or as if the ring was feeling her as surely as she was feeling it. The sensation was gone in a moment, and then it seemed just a ruby band once more, but one that had shrunken already to perfectly fit her, as magical rings were wont to do.

She held her hand up to better view it with the ring on, and looked through her fingers to the violet eyes of the drow she so loved.

“The others are gone?” she asked.

“They left with the dawn,” Drizzt replied.

Catti-brie lifted the edge of the blanket, and Drizzt didn’t need to be invited into the bed twice.

“I thought we had returned for Drizzt,” Regis said to Catti-brie, the two at the back of the line of five as they made their way into the rocky dells around Kelvin’s Cairn, the long and winding approach to the dwarven complex. He didn’t even try to hide the regret from his voice, and Catti-brie caught it, he knew, when she turned to regard him with obvious concern.

“Were you hoping for a fight?”

“I was hoping that I would be of use,” Regis replied. “I left much behind me to get to Icewind Dale.”

“He would have died without us,” the woman replied.

“Without you, not me. You arrived armed with healing spells. My potions were not needed-indeed, I was not needed. Had I remained in the south, the outcome here would have been the same.”

“You cannot know that,” said Wulfgar. He slowed to let the other two catch up to him. Drizzt and Bruenor were far in the distance, already around the next bend. “Something you might have done, someone you might have met and influenced, perhaps played a part before we ever came upon him atop the mountain.”

“Or perhaps those assassins we fought on the bank of the lake would have come for me instead, and, alone, I would have been slain,” Catti-brie added.

But Regis shook his head, having none of it. His thoughts were to the south, with the Grinning Ponies. His memories drifted across the Sea of Fallen Stars, to sweet Donnola Topolino and a mercantile empire he could claim beside her. It was wonderful to be among the Companions of the Hall again, of course, but there remained the question of why. Duty had brought him here, running. But what duty might that be?

To fight a war for Bruenor and Mithral Hall? To go and do battle with a vampire? Laudable missions, both, he reasoned, but neither seemed above the work he was doing with the Grinning Ponies.

Catti-brie stopped her walk and grabbed him by the shoulder to halt him, too, then called Wulfgar close to join them. “Drizzt won his fight on the night we rejoined him,” she explained. “Even if we had not been there and he had succumbed to his wounds, that night, victory was his.”

Regis looked to Wulfgar for some clarification of the surprising remark, but the barbarian could only shrug, obviously as much at a loss as he.

“The battle was for his soul, not his body,” Catti-brie explained. “For the very identity of Drizzt Do’Urden, and such a fight must be won or lost alone. And yet, Mielikki bade us to return, and facilitated it-and that is no small thing, even for a god!”

“Because she knew he would win,” Wulfgar put in, and Regis stared at him, trying to catch up to the reasoning.

“And because he won against the desires of a vengeful goddess, one Drizzt has cheated since his earliest days,” Catti-brie added. “This is not ended, I expect. Lolth cannot get his soul, but she will exact retribution, do not doubt.”

“She will try,” Regis corrected, his voice steeled, his shoulders squared. He was glad that he had kept most of his doubts private, for how trivial they suddenly seemed to him. Yes, he would like to ride beside Doregardo and the Grinning Ponies once more-those were fine years of camaraderie and adventure. And yes, of course, he desperately wanted to find Donnola again-he had been away from her for years, yet his love for her had not diminished. Indeed, it seemed to him that he loved her more now than he had when she had forced him to flee the ghost of Ebonsoul.

But even that love had to wait, he resolutely reminded himself. He was only alive again because of this, because of Mielikki.

A sharp whistle up ahead turned the trio to see Drizzt back at the bend, waving for them to hurry along.

Soon after, the five had crossed into the dwarf complex. Only Drizzt had revealed his true identity, and unlike the snarling folk of Bryn Shander, Stokely Silverstream’s dwarves were more than willing to hear the drow’s side of the Balor story. The guards escorted the group straight to Stokely, who was taking his breakfast in proper dwarf fashion, with a heaping plate of eggs and breads, and a flagon of beer to wash it down.

“Well now,” the dwarf leader greeted, rising and offering his hand to Drizzt. “Heared ye might be about. Some friends o’ yers came looking for ye. A monk fellow, the pretty Amber Gristle O’Maul …”

“Of the Adbar O’Mauls,” Drizzt said before Stokely could, and the dwarf chuckled and went on.

“They came looking for ye, and surprised we were! Where ye been, elf? Near to twenty years gone by …”

“It is a long tale, my friend, and one I am anxious to tell,” Drizzt replied. “But trust me when I say that it will be the least interesting of the tales you hear this day.”

Drizzt nodded from Stokely to the other dwarves in the room, his look begging for some privacy.

“Bah, but ye ain’t to be trusted, Drizzt,” said another of the dwarves in the room, a mining boss named Junky. “That’s what them o’ the towns’re sayin’!”

“Then them in the towns’re stupid,” Bruenor retorted.

“We need to speak with you,” Drizzt said quietly to Stokely. “On my word, and on the graves of Bruen-” He paused and flashed a little grin. “On the graves of Bonnego Battle-axe and Thibbledorf Pwent,” he corrected.

Stokely nodded, considered the words for a moment, then waved the other dwarves out of the room.

As soon as they were gone, Drizzt stepped back and swept his arm out toward the other four, standing at his side. “You know my friends not, and yet you do,” Drizzt said.

“Eh?” Stokely looked them over, shaking his head, then focusing mostly on Bruenor, as would be expected. Soon his inspection became more than a simple perusal, though, for there seemed a spark in the clan leader’s eye, as if he should know this young dwarf standing before him, but couldn’t quite place him. He silently echoed the name Drizzt had just spoken.