Robert Salvatore: The Legacy

The dwarf ghost teetered weakly as he came out of the dream, the nightmare, that cruel Yvonnel Baenre, that devious young female, had once again forced upon him. Baenre knew that those recollections were the most horrid torture she could exact upon the stubborn dwarf, and she did so often.

Now Gandalug stared at her with utter hatred. Here they were, nearly two thousand years later, two thousand years of an empty white prison and terrible memories that poor Gandalug could not escape.

"When you left Mithril Hall, you gave the throne to your son," Baenre stated. She knew the story, had forced it out of her tormented prisoner many centuries before. "The new king of Mithril Hall is named Bruenor-that was your son's name, was it not?"

The spirit held steady, kept his gaze firm and determined.

Matron Baenre laughed at him. "Contained in your memories are the ways and defenses of Mithril Hall," she said, "not so different now from what they were then, if I properly understand the ways of dwarves. It is ironic, is it not, that you, great Gandalug, the founder of Mithril Hall, the patron of Clan Battlehammer, will aid in the end of the hall and the clan?"

The dwarf king howled with rage and grew in size, gigantic hands reaching out for Baenre's skinny, withered throat. The matron mother laughed at him again. She held out the tooth and the whirlwind came at her bidding, grabbing at Gandalug and banishing him back to his white prison.

"And so Drizzt Do'Urden has escaped," Matron Baenre purred, and she was not unhappy. "He is a fortunate excuse and nothing more!"

Drizzt Do'Urden sat in his private chambers, considering all that had transpired. Memories of Wulfgar dominated his thoughts, but they were not dark images, were not flashes of the alcove wherein Wulfgar had been buried. Drizzt remembered the many adventures, always exciting, often reckless, he had shared beside the towering man. Trusting in his faith, Drizzt placed Wulfgar in that same corner of his heart where he had tucked the memories of Zaknafein, his father. He could not deny his sadness at Wulfgar's loss, didn't want to deny it, but the many good memories of the straight-backed young barbarian could counter that sadness, bring a bittersweet smile to Drizzt Do'Urden's calm face. He knew that Catti-brie, too, would come to a similar, accepting mind-set. She was young and strong and filled with a lust for adventure, however dangerous, as great as that of Drizzt and of Wulfgar. Catti-brie would learn to smile along with the tears.

Drizzt's only fear was for Bruenor. The dwarf king was not so young, not so ready to look ahead to what was yet to come in his remaining years. But Bruenor had suffered many tragedies in his long and hardy life, and, generally speaking, it was the way of the stoic dwarves to accept death as a natural passing. Drizzt had to trust that Bruenor was strong enough to continue.

It wasn't until Drizzt focused on Regis that he considered the many other things that had occurred. Entreri, the evil man who had done grievous wrongs to so many, was gone. How many in the four corners of Faerun would rejoice at that news?

And House Do'Urden, Drizzt's tie to the dark world of his kin, was no more. Had Drizzt finally slipped beyond the grasp of Menzoberranzan? Could he, and Bruenor and Catti-brie and all the others of Mithril Hall, rest easier now that the drow threat had been eliminated?

Drizzt wished he could be sure. By all accounts of the battle in which Wulfgar was killed, a yochlol, a hand maiden of Lloth, had appeared. If the raid to capture him had been inspired simply by Vierna's desperation, then what had brought so powerful a minion into their midst?

The thought did not sit well with Drizzt, and as he sat there in his room, he had to wonder if the drow threat was ended, if he might, at long last, finally know his peace with that city he had left behind.

"The emissaries from Settlestone are here," Catti-brie said to Bruenor, entering the dwarf's private chambers without even the courtesy of a knock.

"I'm not for caring," the dwarf king answered her gruffly.

Catti-brie moved over to him, grabbed him by his broad shoulder, and forced him to turn and look her in the eye. What passed between them was silent, a shared moment of grief and understanding that if they did not go on with their lives, did not forge ahead, then Wulfgar's death was all the more pointless.

What loss is death if life is not to be lived?

Bruenor grabbed his daughter around her slender waist and pulled her close in as crushing a hug as the dwarf had ever given. Catti-brie squeezed him back, tears rolling

from her deep blue eyes. So, too, did a smile widen on the vital young woman's face, and, though Bruenor's shoulders bobbed with unabashed sobs, she felt sure he soon would come to peace as well.

For all he had gone through, Bruenor remained the Eighth King of Mithril Hall, and, for all the adventures, joys, and sorrows Catti-brie had known, she had just passed her twentieth year.

R. A. Salvatore

Josidiah Starym skipped wistfully down the streets of Cormanthor, the usually stern and somber elf a bit giddy this day, both for the beautiful weather and the recent developments in his most precious and enchanted city. Josidiah was a bladesinger, a joining of sword and magic, protector of the elvish ways and the elvish folk. And in Cormanthor, in this year 253, many elves were in need of protecting. Gob-linkin were abundant, and even worse, the emotional turmoil within the city, the strife among the noble families—the Starym included—threatened to tear apart all that Coronal Eltargrim had put together, all that the elves had built in Cormanthor, greatest city in all the world.

Those were not troubles for this day, though, not in the spring sunshine, with a light north breeze blowing. Even Josidiah’s kin were in good spirits this day; Taleisin, his uncle, had promised the bladesinger that he would venture to Eltargrim’s court to see if some of their disputes might perhaps be worked out.

Josidiah prayed that the elven court would come back together, for he, perhaps above all others in the city, had the most to lose. He was a bladesinger, the epitome of what it meant to be elven, and yet, in this curious age, those definitions seemed not so clear. This was an age of change, of great magics, of monumental decisions. This was an age when the humans, the gnomes, the halflings, even the bearded dwarves, ventured down the winding ways of Cormanthor,

past the needle-pointed spires of the free-flowing elvish structures. For all of Josidiah’s previous one hundred and fifty years, the precepts of elvenkind seemed fairly defined and rigid; but now, because of their Coronal, wise and gentle Eltargrim, there was much dispute about what it meant to be elvish, and, more importantly, what relationships elves should foster with the other goodly races.

“Merry morn, Josidiah,” came the call of an elven female, the young and beautiful maiden niece of Eltargrim himself. She stood on a balcony overlooking a high garden whose buds were not yet in bloom, with the avenue beyond that.

Josidiah stopped in midstride, leapt high into the air in a complete spin, and landed perfectly on bended knee, his long golden hair whipping across his face and then flying out wide again so that his eyes, the brightest of blue, flashed. “And the merriest of morns to you, good Felicity,” the bladesinger responded. “Would that I held at my sides flowers befitting your beauty instead of these blades made for war.”

“Blades as beautiful as any flower ever I have seen,” Felicity replied teasingly, “especially when wielded by Josidiah Starym at dawn’s break, on the flat rock atop Berenguil’s Peak.”