R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

I have many times circled around this realization through the years. When I learned that Artemis Entreri had become friends with Jarlaxle, I hoped that Jarlaxle would lead the man from his personal demons. I wished Entreri well, meaning that I hoped he would find a better life and a better way. That thought has often flitted about my consciousness, a quiet hope.

But still this particular instance of chewing from my gut surprised me on this matter because of the depth it revealed of my feelings for the man.

I had my friends with me, after all, the Companions of the Hall, the group of my dearest friends, yea, my family, the only family I had ever known. My chewed-from-the-gut proclamation that I was going after Entreri was much more than a personal declaration, because of course these beloved companions would go along with me. Presumably, it follows that I was willing to put my dearest friends, even Catti-brie, into such obvious and dire jeopardy for the sake of Artemis Entreri!

That, I think, is no small thing, and looking at it in retrospect reveals to me much more than my desire to free Artemis Entreri.

When I first ventured to Icewind Dale, those around me thought me a bit reckless. Even Bruenor, who leaped onto a shadow dragon’s back with a keg of flaming oil strapped to his own back, often shook his head and muttered “durned elf” at my battle antics!

I fought as if I had nothing to lose, because in my heart and mind, I had nothing to lose. But then, so suddenly, I learned that I had so much to lose, in these friends I had come to know and love, in this woman who would be my wife.

This is not a new revelation-indeed, I have spent the better part of a century seeking freedom from these self-imposed restraints, and indeed, I thought I had found such freedom when Bruenor, the last of my companions, passed on to Dwarfhome. Even in my great lament at his passing, I felt as if I was finally free.

And then my friends, my family-my constraints? — returned to me. What did it mean? Surely I was glad, thrilled, overjoyed, but was I doomed to return to that place of caution I had known before?

But in that simple chew-from-the-gut moment, my insistence that I, that we, would go and free Entreri and the others, no matter the odds, I knew without doubt that my beloved friends had not brought my emotional shackles back with them. Perhaps it was their transformation, their literal passage through death, which had bolstered my own faith and resolve and willingness to engage the adventure. Perhaps this courage stemmed from my growing acceptance that these friends had been lost to me, and so I had not reclaimed the fear that they could be lost to me.

More likely, it was something more, something rooted in the twining of my core beliefs. In the course of events, you do what you think is right and proper, and hold faith that such a course will lead to good ends. To believe less … if this is what I truly hold in my heart and proclaim, then what a coward I would be to deny such a course out of fear, any fear, even fear for the safety of my beloved companions.

I spoke purely on reflex to the news of Entreri’s capture, spouting the course I knew to be correct, but when I went back and examined that moment, I discovered much more about myself indeed.

And much more about my friends, for the second revelation in that moment came with their response. They did not hesitate in the least, and indeed were eager for the fight-as eager as I. Even within Regis, there was no fear. This was the course, the correct path, and so we would walk it.

And so we did. I have not walked this lightly in decades, since long before Catti-brie was first lost to me in the advent of the Spellplague. So many times have I strived for this freedom, wandering from Mithral Hall with Catti-brie after its reclamation, time and again resolving to find joy.

But this was different. This wasn’t a considered thought, a spoken determination or pledge. This was what I have been seeking, come full circle from the time when Wulfgar and I entered the lair of the verbeeg named Biggrin. This choice was without a second thought-there was a problem and so we would go and fix it, and we would go brimming with confidence in ourselves, with faith in each other.

“Think we might be warnin’ them drow that they’ll get some more o’ their kin and make it more of a fight?” Bruenor had joked, but it almost didn’t seem like a joke at the time.

Because we knew in our hearts that we’d prove victorious.

Because no other outcome was acceptable.

It was just that simple.

Yet these were dark elves on the road ahead, a sizable number, and a band that had already managed to somehow defeat and capture Artemis Entreri and the others, and so as we began our steps, doubts crept in.

Not doubts regarding our chosen course, but doubts about whether or not we could succeed.

And doubts regarding how high the price might prove.

But this is our way.

This is our creed.

This is the mantra of the Companions of the Hall.

It can be no other way.

And since we knew our course to be true, doubts could not equal regret.

No matter the price.

— Drizzt Do’Urden

"Vein’s going dead,” a dirty dwarf miner by the name of Minto Silverhammer, who claimed bloodlines from both the Battlehammer and Silverstream family trees, remarked to his fellow workers as he emerged from a side tunnel in the deepest reaches of the mines beneath Kelvin’s Cairn. “Hearin’ echoes when I tap at it, so I’m not to go much deeper afore I’m breakin’ into new tunnels.”

“Hold yer pick, then,” said Junkular Stonebreaker, the team boss, a heavyset dwarf of many winters.

“We’ll have a light load o’ metal then, eh Junky?” the miner replied, using the boss’s more common nickname.

“Better that than an open run to the Underdark,” said Bellows, one of the other miners, and to accentuate his point, he leaned back on the heavy metal door that had been recently constructed to block off the main tunnel to the deeper and more expansive corridors and caverns beyond.

“How ’bout a closed run, then?” said yet another, and the group murmured and nodded.

This had been a long-running debate among the dwarves of Icewind Dale, Stokely Silverstream’s boys, with a constant side implication hanging over it: Gauntlgrym.

They knew where it was, they had been there, but that ancient and hallowed homeland remained out of their grasp. Paradoxically, the journey to Gauntlgrym inspired new caution under Kelvin’s Cairn. Now Stokely and his boys had first-hand knowledge of the profound dangers lurking just outside their domain, including the devil-worshiping zealots they had found in Gauntlgrym, and including, if reports-and now King Bruenor and Drizzt-were to be believed, that a sizable number of dark elves had filtered into the region.

“We’ll scout out beyond yer wall,” Junky assured Minto. “And get new doors in place if they’re needed. And once we got it secured, know that I’ll make sure yerself gets the breakthrough chop to the new veins.”

“Bah!” snorted Bellows, still leaning against the iron door, and now shifting back and forth to scratch his back on one of the huge hinges that kept the portal securely in place.