Robert Salvatore: The Orc King

Drizzt nodded with every word, unable to deny the truth of it all. He had made his peace with the orcs of Many-Arrows, to a great extent. But still, he would be a liar to himself if he failed to admit a twinge of guilt in battling those who had refused to end the ancient wars and ancient ways, and had continued the fight against the orcs—a war that Drizzt, too, had once waged, and waged viciously.

“A Mithral Hall trade caravan was turned back from Five Tusks,” Hralien said, changing his tone as he shifted the subject. “A similar report comes to us from Silverymoon, where one of their caravans was refused entry to Many-Arrows at Ungoor’s Gate north of Nesmé. It is a clear violation of the treaty.”

“King Obould’s response?”

“We are not certain that he even knows of the incidents. But whether he does or not, it is apparent that his shaman rivals have spread their message of the old ways far beyond Dark Arrows Keep.”

Drizzt nodded.

“King Obould is in need of your help, Drizzt,” Hralien said. “We have walked this road before.”

Drizzt nodded in resignation at the unavoidable truth of that statement. There were times when he felt as if the road he walked was not a straight line toward progress, but a circling track, a futile loop. He let that negative notion pass, and reminded himself of how far the region had come—and that in a world gone mad from the Spell-plague. Few places in all of Faerûn could claim to be more civilized than they had been those hundred years before, but the region known as the Silver Marches, in no small part because of the courage of a succession of orc kings named Obould, had much to be proud of.

His perspective and memories of that time a hundred years gone, before the rise of the Empire of Netheril, the coming of the aboleths, and the discordant and disastrous joining of two worlds, brought to Drizzt thoughts of another predicament so much like the one playing out before him. He remembered the look on Bruenor’s face, as incredulous as any expression he had ever seen before or since, when he had presented the dwarf with his surprising assessment and astounding recommendations.

He could almost hear the roar of protest: “Ye lost yer wits, ye durned orc-brained, pointy-eared elf!”

On the other side of the magical barrier, the elf shrieked and Guenhwyvar growled, and Drizzt looked up to see the wizard stubbornly trying to crawl away. Guenhwyvar’s great paw thumped against his back, and the panther flexed, causing the elf to drop back to the ground, squirming to avoid the extending claws.

Hralien started to call to his comrades, but Drizzt held his hand up to halt them. He could have walked around the invisible wall, but instead he sprang into the air beside it, reaching his hand as high as he could. His fingers slid over the top and caught a hold, and the drow rolled his back against the invisible surface and reached up with his other hand. A tuck and roll vaulted him feet-over-head over the wall, and he landed nimbly on the far side.

He bade Guenhwyvar to move aside then reached down and pulled the elf wizard to his feet. He was young, as Drizzt had expected—while some older elves and dwarves were inciting the Casin Cu Calas, the younger members, full of fire and hatred, were the ones executing the unrest in brutal fashion.

The elf, uncompromising, stared at him hatefully. “You would betray your own kind,” he spat.

Drizzt cocked his eyebrows curiously, and tightened his grip on the elf’s shirt, holding him firmly. “My own kind?”

“Worse then,” the elf spat. “You would betray those who gave shelter and friendship to the rogue Drizzt Do’Urden.”

“No,” he said.

“You would strike at elves and dwarves for the sake of orcs!”

“I would uphold the law and the peace.”

The elf mocked him with a laugh. “To see the once-great ranger siding with orcs,” he muttered, shaking his head.

Drizzt yanked him around, stealing his mirth, and tripped him, shoving him backward into the magical wall.

“Are you so eager for war?” the drow asked, his face barely an inch from the elf’s. “Do you long to hear the screams of the dying, lying helplessly in fields amidst rows and rows of corpses? Have you ever borne witness to that?”

“Orcs!” the elf protested.

Drizzt grabbed him in both hands, pulled him forward, and slammed him back against the wall. Hralien called to Drizzt, but the dark elf hardly heard it.

“I have ventured outside of the Silver Marches,” Drizzt said, “have you? I have witnessed the death of once-proud Luskan, and with it, the death of a dear, dear friend, whose dreams lay shattered and broken beside the bodies of five thousand victims. I have watched the greatest cathedral in the world burn and collapse. I witnessed the hope of the goodly drow, the rise of the followers of Eilistraee. But where are they now?”

“You speak in ridd—” the elf started, but Drizzt slammed him again.

“Gone!” Drizzt shouted. “Gone, and gone with them the hopes of a tamed and gentle world. I have watched once safe trails revert to wilderness, and have walked a dozen-dozen communities that you will never know. They are gone now, lost to the Spellplague or worse! Where are the benevolent gods? Where is the refuge from the tumult of a world gone mad? Where are the candles to chase away the darkness?”

Hralien had quietly moved around the wall and walked up beside Drizzt. He put a hand on the drow’s shoulder, but that brought no more than a brief pause in the tirade. Drizzt glanced at him before turning back to the captured elf.

“They are here, those lights of hope,” Drizzt said, to both elves. “In the Silver Marches. Or they are nowhere. Do we choose peace or do we choose war? If it is battle you seek, fool elf, then get you gone from this land. You will find death aplenty, I assure you. You will find ruins where once proud cities stood. You will find fields of wind-washed bones, or perhaps the remains of a single hearth, where once an entire village thrived.

“And in that hundred years of chaos, amidst the coming of darkness, few have escaped the swirl of destruction, but we have flourished. Can you say the same for Thay? Mulhorand? Sembia? You say I betray those who befriended me, yet it was the vision of one exceptional dwarf and one exceptional orc that built this island against the roiling sea.”

The elf, his expression more cowed, nonetheless began to speak out again, but Drizzt pulled him forward from the wall and slammed him back even harder.

“You fall to your hatred and you seek excitement and glory,” the drow said. “Because you do not know. Or is it because you do not care that your pursuits will bring utter misery to thousands in your wake?”

Drizzt shook his head, and threw the elf aside, where he was caught by two of Hralien’s warriors and escorted away.

“I hate this,” Drizzt admitted to Hralien, quietly so that no one else could hear. “All of it. It is a noble experiment a hundred years long, and still we have no answers.”

“And no options,” Hralien replied. “Save those you yourself just described. The chaos encroaches, Drizzt Do’Urden, from within and without.”

Drizzt turned his lavender eyes to watch the departure of the elf and the captured dwarves.

“We must stand strong, my friend,” Hralien offered, and he patted Drizzt on the shoulder and walked away.

“I’m not sure that I know what that means anymore,” Drizzt admitted under his breath, too softly for anyone else to hear.

One of the consequences of living an existence that spans centuries instead of decades is the inescapable curse of continually viewing the world through the focusing prism employed by an historian.