R.A Salvatore - Gauntlgrym

“I did,” Drizzt replied, trying to keep the exasperation out of his voice, for he had told Lathan that bit of information a dozen times at least that day, and twice that number the day before, and even before that. The previous year, Drizzt had met with the ranger, commonly known as Roundabout, or Roundie, to the south of Icewind Dale, at the urging of Jarlaxle.

Roundabout’s description of the wood was exactly the same as Lathan’s: a magical place, inhabited by a beautiful witch with auburn hair, and a halfling caretaker who lived in a hillside cave-home by a small pond. According to Roundabout, though, only the wizard Addadearber had actually seen the halfling, and only Roundabout himself and a man named Spragan had seen the woman, and they had come away with very different impressions. To the ranger, she had seemed as a goddess dancing on a ladder of stars, but Spragan, according to Roundabout and confirmed by Lathan, had never truly recovered from the horror of that encounter.

Drizzt sighed as he looked around at the sparse trees and stony ground of the sheltered nook at the end of a small cove, cleverly hidden by rocky outcroppings. Up above on the hillside stood scattered small pine trees typical of Icewind Dale.

“Perhaps it was north of here,” Drizzt offered. “There are many sheltered vales along the high ground at the northeastern stretches of Lac Dinneshere.”

The old man shook his head with every word. He pointed to the cabin. “Right behind the lodge,” he insisted. “No other lodge near here. That’s the place. This is the place. The forest was here.”

“But there is no forest,” said Drizzt. “And no sign that any forest ever was here, beyond these few trees.”

“Telled you that, too,” said Lathan.

“They came back after their encounter,” his daughter, Tulula, said. “They looked for it. Of course they did, and so did many others. Roundie’d been here many the time before that day, and came back many the time after, and never did he see the same forest again, or the witch or halfling.”

Drizzt put his hand on his hip, his expression doubtful as he continued his scan, seeking something, anything, he could bring back to Bruenor, who, along with Pwent, was visiting with some clan dwarves in the tunnels under the lone mountain of Kelvin’s Cairn, the complex that had housed Clan Battlehammer in the decades before Bruenor had reclaimed Mithral Hall.

Mithral Hall. Four decades had passed since they’d left that wondrous dwarven kingdom, since Bruenor had abdicated his throne in a most extreme and irreversible manner. How many adventures the three of them had shared, along with Nanfoodle the gnome and Jessa the orc. Drizzt couldn’t help but smile as he considered those last two, gone from the band for more than twenty years now.

And once more he’d found himself in Icewind Dale, the land of Drizzt’s first real home, the land of the Companions of the Hall, the land of Catti-brie and Regis and Wulfgar, of a displaced dwarf king and a wayward dark elf searching, forever searching, it seemed, to find a place he could rightly call his home. What a troupe they had been! What adventures they had known!

Drizzt and Bruenor had put those three lost friends far behind them, of course, and had long ago given up any notion of finding the wayward spirits of Catti-brie and Regis, or of rejoining Wulfgar, for a human’s lifetime had passed, more than two-thirds of a century, and none of the three had been young on those fateful days so long ago. With Pwent, Nanfoodle, and Jessa, they had searched the hilly crags east of Luskan and the foothills of the Spine of the World for Gauntlgrym, the elusive ancient homeland of the Delzoun dwarves. A thousand maps had led them down a thousand trails, through a hundred deep caves, their thoughts only of Gauntlgrym, or, on those occasions when Bruenor and Drizzt quietly reminisced about Bruenor’s adopted children and their halfling friend, it was just to share their memories, so dear.

An unexpected meeting with Jarlaxle in Luskan a few years previous had rekindled great hopes and great pains. Immediately after the loss of Catti-brie and Regis, both Drizzt and Bruenor had enlisted the worldly Jarlaxle to find them, at any cost. The passage of seven decades and more hadn’t deterred the clever dark elf, apparently, or perhaps it had just been dumb luck, but Jarlaxle had stumbled upon a legend that was growing in the northwestern corner of Faer?n, the legend of a magical forest inhabited by a beautiful witch who apparently quite strikingly resembled the human daughter of King Bruenor Battlehammer.

The hunt had led Drizzt, Bruenor, and Pwent to Roundabout the ranger, in the small mountain village of Auckney, and he had directed them to Lac Dinneshere, one of the three lakes about which were scattered the communities that gave Ten-Towns its name.

Drizzt looked at Lathan, whose story verified what the old ranger in Auckney had said, but where was the forest? Icewind Dale had changed little in the last century. Ten-Towns had not grown-in fact, it seemed to Drizzt that there were less people in each of the towns than had been there when he’d called the place home.

“Are ye even listening to me, then?” Tulula scolded, her tone telling the daydreaming Drizzt that she had asked that question several times already.

“Just thinking,” he apologized. “So they and others searched for the forest, but nothing was ever found? Not a trace, nor a hint?”

Tulula shrugged. “Rumors,” she said. “And when I was a young girl, one boat came in with the crew all atwitter. Do ye remember that, Da?”

“Barley Farhook’s boat,” Lathan said, nodding. “Aye, and Spragan wanted to put right out, he did, after all them years where folk snickered at our own tale. Aye, and we did go out, a few boats, but there was nothing to be found here, and they laughed at us again.”

“Where are your crewmates now?” Drizzt asked.

“Bah, all dead,” Lathan replied. “Addadearber taken in the Spellplague, Ashelia’s boat taken by the lake with Spragan aboard her, too. All gone, many years ago.”

Drizzt scanned the ruined cottage and the vale behind it, trying to figure out if there was anything left to do. He hadn’t expected to find anything, of course-the world was full of wild tales of the most unusual sort, especially in the sixty-six years since the Spellplague had descended upon Faer?n, since the death of Mystra and the great turmoil and tribulations that had shaken the foundation of civilization itself.

Then again, the world was full of actual surprises, as well.

“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.