Robert Salvatore: Siege of Darkness

"I cannot deny you!" Errtu admitted, and his great, bulbous, bloodshot eyes narrowed wickedly.

His statement was true enough. Lloth could enlist his aid simply by offering him his very existence in return. The Spider Queen was smarter than that, however. If she enslaved Errtu and was, indeed, as she expected, caught up in the coming storm, Errtu might escape her capture or, worse, find a way to strike back at her. Lloth was malicious and merciless in the extreme, but she was, above all else, intelligent. She had in her possession honey for this fly.

"This is no threat," she said honestly to the fiend. "This is an offer.»

Errtu did not interrupt, still, the bored and outraged fiend trembled on the edge of catastrophe.

"I have a gift, Errtu," she purred, "a gift that will allow you to end the banishment Drizzt Do'Urden has placed on you.»

The tanar'ri did not seem convinced. "No gift," he rumbled. "No magic can break the terms of banishment. Only he who banished me can end the indenture.»

Lloth nodded her agreement; not even a goddess had the power to go against that rule. "But that is exactly the point!" the Spider Queen exclaimed. "This gift will make Drizzt Do'Urden want you back on his plane of existence, back within his reach.»

Errtu did not seem convinced.

In response, Lloth lifted one arm and clamped her fist tightly, and a signal, a burst of multicolored sparks and a rocking blast of thunder, shook the swirling sludge and momentarily stole the perpetual gray of the dismal level.

Forlorn and beaten, head down—for it did not take one such as Lloth very long to sunder the pride—he walked from the fog. Errtu did not know him, but understood the significance of this gift.

Lloth clamped her fist tight again, another explosive signal sounded, and her captive fell back into the veil of smoke.

Errtu eyed the Spider Queen suspiciously. The tanar'ri was more than a little interested, of course, but he realized that most everyone who had ever trusted the diabolical Lloth had paid greatly for their foolishness. Still, this bait was too great for Errtu to resist. His canine maw turned up into a grotesque, wicked smile.

"Look upon Menzoberranzan," Lloth said, and she waved her arm before the thick stalk of a nearby mushroom. The plant's fibers became glassy, reflecting the smoke, and, a moment later, Lloth and the fiend saw the city of drow. "Your role in this will be small, I

assure you," Lloth said, "but vital. Do not fail me, great Errtu!"

It was as much a threat as a plea, the fiend knew.

"The gift?" he asked.

"When things are put aright.»

Again a suspicious look crossed Errtu's huge face.

"Drizzt Do'Urden is a pittance," Lloth said. "Daermon N'a'shezbaernon, his family, is no more, so he means nothing to me. Still, it would please me to watch great and evil Errtu pay back the renegade for all the inconveniences he has caused.»

Errtu was not stupid, far from it. What Lloth was saying made perfect sense, yet he could not ignore the fact that it was Lloth, the Spider Queen, the Lady of Chaos, who was making these tempting offers.

Neither could he ignore the fact that her gift promised him relief from the interminable boredom. He could beat a thousand minor fiends a day, every day, torture them and send them crawling pitifully into the muck. But if he did that for a million days, it would not equal the pleasure of a single hour on the Material Plane, walking among the weak, tormenting those who did not deserve his vengeance.

I watched the preparations unfolding at Mithril Hall, preparations for war, for, though we, especially Catti-brie, had dealtHouse Baenre a stinging defeat back in Menzoberranzan,none of us doubted that the dark elves might come our wayonce more. Above all else, Matron Baenre was likely angry, and havingspent my youth in Menzoberranzan, I knew it was not a good thing tomake an enemy of the first matron mother.

Still, I liked what I was seeing here in the dwarven stronghold. Most of all, I enjoyed the spectacle of Bruenor Battlehammer.

Bruenor! My dearest friend. The dwarf 1 had fought beside since mydays in Icewind Dale — days that seemed very long ago indeed! I had fearedBruenor's spirit forever broken when Wulfgar fell, that the fire that hadguided this most stubborn of dwarves through seemingly insurmountableobstacles in his quest to reclaim his lost homeland had been forever doused.Not so, Ilearned in those days of preparation. Bruenor's physical scarswere deeper now — his left eye was lost, and a bluish line ran diagonally across his face, from forehead to jawbone — but the flames of spirit had beenrekindled, burning bright behind his good eye.

Bruenor directed the preparations, from agreeing to the fortificationdesigns being constructed in the lowest tunnels to sending out emissariesto the neighboring settlements in search of allies. He asked for no help in the decision-making, and needed none, for this was Bruenor, Eighth King of Mithril Hall, a veteran of so many adventures, a dwarf who had earnedhis title.

Now his grief was gone; he was king again, to the joy of his friends andsubjects. "Let the damned drow come!" Bruenor growled quite often, and always he nodded in my direction if I was about, as if to remind me that hemeant no personal insult.

In truth, that determined war cry from Bruenor Battlehammer was

among the sweetest things I had ever heard.

What was it, I wondered, that had brought the grieving dwarf from hisdespair? And it wasn't just Bruenor; all about me I saw an excitement, inthe dwarves, in Catti-brie, even in Regis, the halfling known more forpreparing for lunch and nap than for war. I felt it, too. That tingling anticipation, that camaraderie that had me and all the others patting each otheron the back, offering praises for the simplest of additions to the common defense, and raising our voices together in cheer whenever good news was announced.

What was it? It was more than shared fear, more than giving thanks for what we had while realizing that it might soon be stolen away. I didn't understand it then, in that time of frenzy, in that euphoria of frantic preparations. Now, looking back, it is an easy thing to recognize.

It was hope.

To any intelligent being, there is no emotion more important thanhope. Individually or collectively, we must hope that the future will be better than the past, that our offspring, and theirs after them, will be a bitcloser to an ideal society, whatever our perception of that might be. Certainly a warrior barbarian's hope for the future might differ from the ideal fostered in the imagination of a peaceful farmer. And a dwarf would not strive to live in a world that resembled an elf's ideal! But the hope itself is not so different. It is at those times when we feel we are contributing to that ultimate end, as it was in Mithril Hall when we believed the battle with Menzoberranzan would soon come — that we would defeat the dark elves and end, once and for all, the threat from the Underdark city — we feel trueelation.

Hope is the key. The future will be better than the past, or the present.Without this belief, there is only the self-indulgent, ultimately empty striving of the present, as in drow society, or simple despair, the time of lifewasted in waiting for death.

Bruenor had found a cause — we all had — and never have I been morealive than in those days of preparation in Mithril Hall.

Her thick auburn hair bouncing below her shoulders, Catti-brie worked furiously to keep the drow's whirling scimitars at bay. She was a solidly built woman, a hundred and thirty pounds of muscles finely toned from living her life with Bruenor's dwarven clan. Catti-brie was no stranger to the forge or the sledge.