The Dark Elf Trilogy: Sojourn

 

Part 4.

Resolutions

I now view my long road as a search for truth - truth in my own heart, in the world around me, and in the larger questions of purpose and of existence. How does one define good and evil?

I carried an internal code of morals with me on my trek, though whether I was born with it or it was imparted tome by Zaknafein - or whether it simply developed from my perceptions - I cannot ever know. This code forced me to leave Menzoberranzan, for though I was not certain of what those truths might have been, I knew beyond doubt that they would not be found in the domain of Lloth.

After many years in the Underdark outside of Menzoberranzan and after my first awful experiences on the surface, I came to doubt the existence of any universal truth, came to wonder if there was, after all, any purpose to life. In the world of drow, ambition was the only purpose, the seeking of material gains that came with increased rank. Even then, that seemed a little thing to me, hardly a reason to exist.

I thank you, Montolio DeBrouchee, for confirming my suspicions. I have learned that the ambition of those who follow selfish precepts is no more than a chaotic waste, a finite gain that must be followed by infinite loss. For there is indeed a harmony in the universe, a concordant singing of common weal. To join that song, one must find inner harmony, must find the notes that ring true.

There is one other point to be made about that truth: Evil creatures cannot sing.

16. Of Gods and Purpose

The lessons continued to go quite well. The old ranger had lessened the drow's considerable emotional burden, and Drizzt picked up on the ways of the natural world better than anyone Montolio had ever seen. But Montolio sensed that something still bothered the drow, though he had no idea of what it might be.

"Do all humans possess such fine hearing?" Drizzt asked him suddenly as they dragged a huge fallen branch out of the grove. "Or is yours a blessing, perhaps, to make up for your blindness?"

The bluntness of the question surprised Montolio for just the moment it took him to recognize the drow's frustration, an uneasiness caused by Drizzt's failure to understand the man's abilities.

"Or is your blindness, perhaps, a ruse, a deception you use to gain the advantage?" Drizzt pressed relentlessly.

"If it is?" Montolio replied offhandedly.

"Then it is a good one, Montolio DeBrouchee," Drizzt replied. "Surely it aids you against enemies... and friends alike." The words tasted bitter to Drizzt, and he suspected that he was letting his pride get the best of him.

"You have not often been bested in battle," Montolio replied, recognizing the source of Drizzt's frustrations as their sparring match. If he could have seen the drow then, Drizzt's expression would have revealed much.

"You take it too hard," Montolio continued after an uneasy silence. "I did not truly defeat you."

"You had me down and helpless."

"You beat yourself," Montolio explained. "I am indeed blind, but not as helpless as you seem to think. You underestimated me. I knew that you would, too, though I hardly believed that you could be so blind."

Drizzt stopped abruptly, and Montolio stopped on cue as the drag on the branch suddenly increased. The old ranger shook his head and cackled. He then pulled out a dagger, spun it high into the air, caught it, and, yelling, "Birch!" heaved it squarely into one of the few birch trees by the evergreen grove.

"Could a blind man do that?" Montolio asked rhetorically.

"Then you can see," Drizzt stated.

"Of course not," Montolio retorted sharply. "My eyes have not functioned for five years. But neither am I blind, Drizzt, especially in this place I call my home!

"Yet you thought me blind," the ranger went on, his voice calm again. "In our sparring, when your spell of darkness expired, you believed that you had gained the edge. Did you think that all of my actions - effective actions, I must say - both in the battle against the orcs and in our fight were simply prepared and rehearsed? If I were as crippled as Drizzt Do'Urden believes me, how should I survive another day in these mountains?"

"I did not... " Drizzt began, but his embarrassment silenced him. Montolio spoke the truth, and Drizzt knew it. He had, at least on an unconscious level, thought the ranger less than whole since their very first meeting. Drizzt felt he showed his friend no disrespect - indeed, he thought highly of the man - but he had taken Montolio for granted and thought the ranger's limitations greater than his own.

"You did," Montolio corrected, "and I forgive you that. To your credit, you treated me more fairly than any who knew me before, even those who had traveled beside me through uncounted campaigns. Sit now," he bade Drizzt. "It is my turn to tell my tale, as you have told yours."

"Where to begin?" Montolio mused, scratching at his chin. It all seemed so distant to him now, another life that he had left behind. He retained one link to his past, though: his training as a ranger of the goddess Mielikki. Drizzt, similarly instructed by Montolio, would understand.

"I gave my life to the forest, to the natural order, at a very young age," Montolio began. "I learned, as I have begun to teach you, the ways of the wild world and decided soon enough that I would defend that perfection, that harmony of cycles too vast and wonderful to be understood. That is why I so enjoy battling orcs and the like. As I have told you before, they are the enemies of natural order, the enemies of trees and animals as much as of men and the goodly races. Wretched things, all in all, and I feel no guilt in cutting them down!"

Montolio then spent many hours recounting some of his campaigns, expeditions in which he acted singly or as a scout for huge armies. He told Drizzt of his own teacher, Dilamon, a ranger so skilled with a bow that he had never seen her miss, not once in ten thousand shots. "She died in battle," Montolio explained, "defending a farmhouse from a raiding band of giants. Weep not for Mistress Dilamon, though, for not a single farmer was injured and not one of the few giants who crawled away ever showed its ugly face in that region again!"

Montolio's voice dropped noticeably when he came to his more recent past. He told of the Rangewatchers, his last adventuring company, and of how they came to battle a red dragon that had been marauding the villages. The dragon was slain, as were three of the Rangewatchers, and Montolio had his face burned away.

"The clerics fixed me up well," Montolio said somberly. "Hardly a scar to show for my pain." He paused, and Drizzt saw, for the first time since he had met the old ranger, a cloud of pain cross Montolio's face. "They could do nothing for my eyes, though. The wounds were beyond their abilities."

"You came out here to die," Drizzt said, more accusingly than he intended.

Montolio did not refute the claim. "I have suffered the breath of dragons, the spears of orcs, the anger of evil men, and the greed of those who would rape the land for their own gain," the ranger said. "None of those things wounded as deeply as pity. Even my Rangewatcher companions, who had fought beside me so many times pitied me. Even you."

"I did not... " Drizzt tried to interject.

"You did indeed," Montolio retorted. "In our battle, you thought yourself superior. That is why you lost! The strength of any ranger is wisdom, Drizzt. A ranger understands himself, his enemies, and his friends. You thought me impaired, else you never would have attempted so brash a maneuver as to jump over me. But I understood you and anticipated the move." That sly smile flashed wickedly. "Does your head still hurt?"

"It does," Drizzt admitted, rubbing the bruise, "though my thoughts seem to be clearing."

"As to your original question," Montolio said, satisfied that his point had been made, "there is nothing exceptional about my hearing, or any of my other senses. I just pay more attention to what they tell than do other folks, and they guide me quite well, as you now understand. Truly, I did not know of their abilities myself when I first came out here, and you are correct in your guess as to why I did. Without my eyes, I thought myself a dead man, and I wanted to die here, in this grove that I had come to know and love in my earlier travels.

"Perhaps it was due to Mielikki, the Mistress of the Forest - though more likely it was Graul, an enemy so close at hand - but it did not take me long to change my intentions concerning my own life. I found a purpose out here, alone and crippled - and I was crippled in those first days. With that purpose came a renewal of meaning in my life, and that in turn led me to realize again my limits. I am old now, and weary, and blind. If I had died five years ago, as I had intended, I would have died with my life incomplete. I never would have known how far I could go. Only in adversity, beyond anything Montolio DeBrouchee had ever imagined, could I have come to know myself and my goddess so well."

Montolio stopped to consider Drizzt. He heard a shuffle at the mention of his goddess, and he took it to be an uncomfortable movement. Wanting to explore this revelation, Montolio reached inside his chain mail and tunic and produced a pendant shaped like a unicorn's head.

"Is it not beautiful?" he pointedly asked.

Drizzt hesitated. The unicorn was perfectly crafted and marvelous in design, but the connotations of such a pendant did not sit easily with the drow. Back in Menzoberranzan Drizzt had witnessed the folly of following the commands of deities, and he liked not at all what he had seen.

"Who is your god, drow?" Montolio asked. In all the weeks he and Drizzt had been together, they had not really discussed religion.

"I have no god," Drizzt answered boldly, "and neither do I want one."

It was Montolio's turn to pause.

Drizzt rose and walked off a few paces.

"My people follow Lloth," he began. "She, if not the cause, is surely the continuation of their wickedness, as this Gruumsh is to the orcs, and as other gods are to other peoples. To follow a god is folly. I shall follow my heart instead."

Montolio's quiet chuckle stole the power from Drizzt's proclamation. "You have a god, Drizzt Do'Urden," he said.

"My god is my heart," Drizzt declared, turning back to him.

"As is mine."

"You named your god as Mielikki," Drizzt protested.

"And you have not found a name for your god yet," Montolio shot back. "That does not mean that you have no god. Your god is your heart, and what does your heart tell you?"

"I do not know," Drizzt admitted after considering the troubling question.

"Think then!" Montolio cried. "What did your instincts tell you of the gnoll band, or of the farmers in Maldobar? Lloth is not your deity - that much is certain. What god or goddess then fits that which is in Drizzt Do'Urden's heart?"

Montolio could almost hear Drizzt's continuing shrugs.

"You do not know?" the old ranger asked. "But I do."

"You presume much," Drizzt replied, still not convinced.

"I observe much," Montolio said with a laugh. "Are you of like heart with Guenhwyvar?"

"I have never doubted that fact," Drizzt answered honestly.

"Guenhwyvar follows Mielikki."

"How can you know?" Drizzt argued, growing a bit perturbed. He didn't mind Montolio's presumptions about him, but Drizzt considered such labeling an attack on the panther. Somehow to Drizzt, Guenhwyvar seemed to be above gods and all the implications of following one.

"How can I know?" Montolio echoed incredulously. "The cat told me, of course! Guenhwyvar is the entity of the panther, a creature of Mielikki's domain."

"Guenhwyvar does not need your labels," Drizzt retorted angrily, moving briskly to sit again beside the ranger.

"Of course not," Montolio agreed. "But that does not change the fact of it. You do not understand, Drizzt Do'Urden. You grew up among the perversion of a deity."

"And yours is the true one?" Drizzt asked sarcastically.

"They are all true, and they are all one, I fear," Montolio replied. Drizzt had to agree with Montolio's earlier observation: He did not understand.

"You view the gods as entities without," Montolio tried to explain. "You see them as physical beings trying to control our actions for their own ends, and thus you, in your stubborn independence, reject them. The gods are within, I say, whether one has named his own or not. You have followed Mielikki all of your life, Drizzt. You merely never had a name to put on your heart."

Suddenly Drizzt was more intrigued than skeptical.

"What did you feel when you first walked out of the Underdark?" Montolio asked. "What did your heart tell you when first you looked upon the sun or the stars, or the forest green?"

Drizzt thought back to that distant day, when he and his drow patrol had come out of the Underdark to raid an elven gathering. Those were painful memories, but within them loomed one sense of comfort, one memory of wondrous elation at the feel of the wind and the scents of newly bloomed flowers.

"And how did you talk to Bluster?" Montolio continued. "No easy feat, sharing a cave with that bear! Admit it or not, you've the heart of a ranger. And the heart of a ranger is a heart of Mielikki."

So formal a conclusion brought back a measure of Drizzt's doubts. "And what does your goddess require?" he asked, the angry edge returned to his voice. He began to stand again, but Montolio slapped a hand over his legs and held him down.

"Require?" The ranger laughed. "I am no missionary spreading a fine word and imposing rules of behavior! Did I not just tell you that gods are within? You know Mielikki's rules as well as I. You have been following them all of your life. I offer you a name for it, that is all, and an ideal of behavior personified, an example that you might follow in times that you stray from what you know is true." With that, Montolio took up the branch and Drizzt followed.

Drizzt considered the words for a long time. He did not sleep that day, though he remained in his den, thinking.

"I wish to know more of your... our... goddess," Drizzt admitted that next night, when he found Montolio cooking their supper.

"And I wish to teach you," Montolio replied.

* * *

A hundred sets of yellow, bloodshot eyes settled to stare at the burly human as he made his way through the encampment, reining his yellow dog tightly to his side. Roddy didn't enjoy coming here, to the fort of the orc king, Graul, but he had no intentions of letting the drow get away this time. Roddy had dealt with Graul several times over the last few years; the orc king, with so many eyes in the wild mountains had proven an invaluable, though expensive, ally in hunting bounties.

Several large orcs purposely crossed Roddy's path, jostling him and angering his dog. Roddy wisely kept his pet still, though he, too, wanted to set upon the smelly orcs. They played this game every time he came in, bumping him, spitting at him, anything to provoke a fight. Orcs were always brave when they outnumbered opponents a hundred to one.

The whole group swept up behind McGristle and followed him closely as he covered the last fifty yards, up a rocky slope, to the entrance of Graul's cave. Two large orcs jumped out of the entrance, brandishing spears, to intercept the intruder.

"Why has yous come?" one of them asked in their native tongue. The other held out its hand, as if expecting payment.

"No pay this time," Roddy replied, imitating their dialect perfectly. "This time Graul pay!"

The orcs looked to each other in disbelief, then turned on Roddy and issued snarls that were suddenly cut short when an even larger orc emerged from the cave.

Graul stormed out and threw his guards aside, striding right up to put his oozing snout only an inch from Roddy's nose. "Graul pay?" he snorted, his breath nearly overwhelming Roddy.

Roddy's chuckle was purely for the sake of those excited orc commoners closest to him. He couldn't show any weakness here; like vicious dogs, orcs were quick to attack anyone who did not stand firm against them.

"I have information, King Graul," the bounty hunter said firmly. "Information that Graul would wish to know."

"Speak," Graul commanded.

"Pay?" Roddy asked, though he suspected that he was pushing his luck.

"Speak!" Graul growled again. "If yous wordses has value, Graul will let yous live."

Roddy silently lamented that it always seemed to work this way with Graul. It was difficult to strike any favorable bargain with the smelly chieftain when he was surrounded by a hundred armed warriors. Roddy remained undaunted, though. He hadn't come here for money - though he had hoped he might extract some - but for revenge. Roddy wouldn't openly strike against Drizzt while the drow was with Mooshie. In these mountains, surrounded by his animal friends, Mooshie was a formidable force, and even if Roddy managed to get past him to the drow, Mooshie's many allies, veterans such as Dove Falconhand, would surely avenge the action.

"There be a dark elf in yer domain, mighty orc king!" Roddy proclaimed. He didn't get the shock he had hoped for.

"Rogue," Graul clarified.

"Ye know?" Roddy's wide eyes betrayed his disbelief.

"Drow killed Graul's fighters," the orc chieftain said grimly. All the gathered orcs began stamping and spitting, cursing the dark elf.

"Then why does the drow live?" Roddy asked bluntly. The bounty hunter's eyes narrowed as he came to suspect that Graul did not now know the drow's location. Perhaps he still had something to bargain with.

"Me scouts cannot finds him!" Graul roared, and it was true enough. But any frustration the orc king showed was a finely crafted piece of acting. Graul knew where Drizzt was, even if his scouts did not.

"I have found him!" Roddy roared, and all the orcs jumped and cried in hungry glee. Graul raised his arms to quiet them. This was the critical part, the orc king knew. He scanned the gathering to locate the tribe's shaman, the spiritual leader of the tribe, and found the red-robed orc watching and listening intently, as Graul had hoped.

On advice from that shaman, Graul had avoided any action against Montolio for all these years. The shaman thought the cripple who was not so crippled to be an omen of bad magic, and with their religious leader's warnings, all the orc tribe cowered whenever Montolio was near. But in allying with the drow, and, if Graul's suspicions were correct, in helping the drow to win the battle on the high ridge, Montolio had struck where he had no business, had violated Graul's domain as surely as had the renegade drow. Now convinced that the drow was indeed a rogue - for no other dark elves were in the region - the orc king only awaited some excuse that might spur his minions to action against the grove. Roddy, Graul had been informed, might now provide that excuse.

"Speak!" Graul shouted in Roddy's face, to intercept any forthcoming attempts for payment.

"The drow isses with the ranger," Roddy replied. "He sits in the blind ranger's grove!" If Roddy had hoped that his proclamation would inspire another eruption of cursing, jumping, and spitting, he was surely disappointed. The mention of the blind ranger cast a heavy pall over the gathering, and now all the common orcs looked from the shaman to Graul and back again for some guidance.

It was time for Roddy to weave a tale of conspiracy, as Graul had been told he would.

"Ye must goes and gets them!" Roddy cried. "They're not fer... "

Graul raised his arms to silence both the muttering and Roddy. "Was it the blind ranger who killded the giant?" the orc king asked Roddy slyly. "And helped the drow to kill me fighters?"

Roddy, of course, had no idea what Graul was talking about, but he was quick enough to catch on to the orc king's intent.

"It was!" he declared loudly. "And now the drow and the ranger plot against ye all! Ye must bash them and smash them before they come and bash yerselves! The ranger'll be bringing his animals, and elveses - lots an' lots of elveses - and dwarveses, too, against Graul!"

The mention of Montolio's friends, particularly the elves and dwarves, which Graul's people hated above everything else in all the world, brought sour expressions on every face and caused more than one orc to look nervously over its shoulder, as if expecting the ranger's army to be encircling the camp even then. Graul stared squarely at the shaman.

"He-Who-Watches must bless the attack," the shaman replied to the silent question. "On the new moon!"

Graul nodded, and the red-robed orc turned about, summoned a score of commoners to his side, and set out to begin the preparations.

Graul reached into a pouch and produced a handful of silver coins for Roddy. Roddy hadn't provided any real information that the king did not already know, but the bounty hunter's declaration of a conspiracy against the orc tribe gave Graul considerable assistance in his attempt to rouse his superstitious shaman against the blind ranger.

Roddy took the pitiful payment without complaint, thinking it well enough that he had achieved his purpose, and turned to leave.

"Yous is to stay," Graul said suddenly at his back. On a motion from the orc king, several orc guards stepped up beside the bounty hunter. Roddy looked suspiciously at Graul. "Guest," the orc king explained calmly. "Join in the fight." Roddy wasn't left with many options. Graul waved his guards aside and went alone back into his cave. The orc guards only shrugged and smiled at each other, having no desire to go back in and face the king's guests, particularly the huge silver-furred wolf.

* * *

When Graul had returned to his place within, he turned to speak to his other guest. "Yous was right," Graul said to the diminutive sprite.

"I-am-quite-good-at-getting-information." Tephanis beamed, and silently he added, and-creating-favorable-situations!

Tephanis thought himself clever at that moment, for not only had he informed Roddy that the drow was in Montolio's grove, but he had then arranged with King Graul for Roddy to aid them both. Graul had no love for the blind ranger, Tephanis knew, and with the drow's presence serving as an excuse, Graul could finally persuade his shaman to bless the attack.

"Caroak will help in the fight?" Graul asked, looking suspiciously at the huge and unpredictable silver wolf.

"Of-course," Tephanis said immediately. "It-is-in-our-interest,-too,-to-see-those-enemies-destroyed!"

Caroak, understanding every word the two exchanged, rose up and sauntered out of the cave. The guards at the entrance did not try to block his way.

"Caroak-will-rouse-the-worgs," Tephanis explained. "A-mighty-force-will-assemble-against-the-blind-ranger. Too-long-has-he-been-an-enemy-of-Caroak."

Graul nodded and mused privately about the coming weeks. If he could get rid of both the ranger and the drow, his valley would be more secure than it had been in many years - since before Montolio's arrival. The ranger rarely engaged the orcs personally, but Graul knew that it was the ranger's animal spies that always alerted the passing caravans. Graul could not remember the last time his warriors had caught a caravan unawares, the preferred orc method. If the ranger was gone, however...

With summer, the height of the trading season, fast approaching, the orcs would prey well this year.

All that Graul needed now was confirmation from the shaman, that He-Who-Watches, the orc god Gruumsh One-eye, would bless the attack.

The new moon, a holy time for the orcs and a time when the shaman believed he could learn of the god's pleasures, was more than two weeks away. Eager and impatient, Graul grumbled at the delay, but he knew that he would simply have to wait. Graul, far less religious than others believed, meant to attack no matter the shaman's decision, but the crafty orc king would not openly defy the tribe's spiritual leader unless it was absolutely necessary.

The new moon was not so far away, Graul told himself. Then he would be rid of both the blind ranger and the mysterious drow.