The captain looked at him curiously.
“The year?” Entreri repeated.
“The very year my son was born,” the captain answered. “1466. Eighteen years ago this coming fall.”
“1484,” Entreri muttered, doing the math.
“The Year of the Awakened Sleepers,” Afafrenfere remarked.
“No wonder me belly’s grumbling with hunger,” Ambergris put in dryly.
“I have ever been a friend to Ten-Towns,” Drizzt called out. “Something … strange has happened here. Beyond reason or all sense. I bid you let me enter, that I might speak with the ruling council, perhaps a gathering of all the towns—”
“Ride around, drow,” the captain replied sternly. “Your previous reputation wards you from the wrath of the people, perhaps, but you have used up all your good will here. You’ll not be allowed entry here, nor to any of the other towns, once word has spread of your return.”
“I did not bring the demon—not knowingly, at least,” Drizzt tried to argue.
“Go to the dwarves, then,” the captain offered, and he winced as he spoke, as if trying to reconcile the Drizzt of legend with the Drizzt who had brought ruin to much of Bryn Shander with this shaken drow standing before him. “Stokely Silverstream will have you, to be sure. Let him call a gathering of Ten-Towns. Let him plead the case of Drizzt Do’Urden.”
The advice seemed sound enough, a pocket of clarity within this tumultuous, illogical sea of absurdity. Drizzt and Entreri dismissed their mounts and the six hiked off around the city, taking the southerly route. When they came to the western gate, they found it flanked by two stone guard towers, much larger than the meager structures that had been there when last they had passed through, still further confirmation that they had lost many years in their night of long sleep in the strange forest on the banks of Lac Dinneshere.
“It’s true, then,” Ambergris said, staring at the gate, for of course these could not have been constructed in the tenday they believed they had been gone. Before the gate and just south of it, was a wide circle of blackness, surrounded by a rock wall and with a small stone statue of a drow warrior, sword and shield upraised.
“ ‘On this spot did Master Tiago slay the demon,’ ” Afafrenfere read from the plaque beneath it. “ ‘And the snows will cover it nevermore.’ ”
“We have all gone insane, then,” said Dahlia, shaking her head. “I have walked the planes to the Shadowfell, I have existed as a statue of stone, and now I have awakened from a slumber of eighteen winters? What madness this?”
She walked off a bit to the west and stood facing away from the others, hands on hips and head down.
“Madness indeed,” muttered Entreri.
“But if it’s all true, then Draygo Quick’s long lost interest,” Ambergris said, and she slapped Afafrenfere on the back and gave a great snort. “But why’s the long faces?” she asked of them all. “None had family now gone, eh? We come to the dale to be rid o’ Tiago’s hunters.”
“And Draygo’s eyes,” Effron reminded.
“Aye, and Cavus Dun, too,” said Afafrenfere.
“So fugitives we been, and now one long nap’s fixed it for us!” Ambergris said with a belly-laugh. “Slate’s as clean as an Icewind Dale snowstorm, and every road’s open!”
“You would dismiss this loss of time so easily?” Drizzt asked incredulously.
“Ye thinkin’ ye know anything I might be doing against it?” the dwarf replied. “It is what it is, elf, and what it is is a blessin’ more than any curse to any one o’ us! Least-ways, that’s what I be thinkin’!”
Effron nodded his agreement and managed a smile, as did Afafrenfere, but neither Entreri nor Drizzt could find the line of thinking to join in their relief, or whatever it was. The shock of this all had them both reeling, particularly Drizzt, who dropped a hand into his belt pouch and rolled a small piece of scrimshaw around in his fingers. They had found an enchanted forest, so it seemed obvious, and one where time had all but stopped through a long night’s slumber. He had heard the song of Mielikki, so he believed, and had found a reminder to a long-lost friend.
But what did it all mean? How did it all make any sense, and what implications might he draw?
Overwhelmed, Drizzt led the others away from Bryn Shander at a leisurely, meandering pace. They got into the foothills of Kelvin’s Cairn as night descended and, exhausted and overwhelmed, set their camp.
Drizzt didn’t know it, but it was the night of the Spring Equinox, the holiest day in the calendar of Mielikki, in the Year of the Awakened Sleepers.
Drizzt got the fire burning, and Ambergris brought it to great heights. At one point, the dwarf giggled that she would surely “turn the night orange.”
“Truly?” Effron replied. “I prefer purple!” With that, he cast a spell, and a colored bolt reached out from his fingers to the flames, his cantrip altering the color indeed—to purple.
“Bah for yerself and yer minor magic!” Ambergris huffed, and she cast her own enchantment, her divine magic overwhelming the warlock’s tricks.
“Oh, indeed!” said Effron, and he went right back at her, and the flames fought their battle, shifting hue in a wild dance for supremacy. It became a game to her and Effron, to the amusement of Afafrenfere, who kept feeding more kindling to the blaze.
Even ever-dour Entreri, sitting off to the side and polishing his dagger, couldn’t suppress a chuckle or two.
Because they were all free, Drizzt realized. This apparent and bizarre time-shift had only made the world a better place for these four fugitives. The dwarf and monk could go as they pleased with no fear of Cavus Dun, and for Effron and Entreri, the specter of Draygo Quick seemed lifted, and likely, too, the shadows of a hundred others with a vendetta against Artemis Entreri.
So, too, would this strange leap of years benefit Drizzt and Dahlia, he realized, but the elf warrior showed no mirth, sitting by herself, her expression grim, and glancing his way every now and again.
For Drizzt, there was just confusion. Had his sleep, had the enchanted forest, been a vision, a love letter to him from Mielikki? More likely, he realized, it had been a moment of closure. Awakening in the tiny secluded area of a land still grasped by the late winter signaled a farewell to Drizzt.
The forest was gone.
Somehow he knew that, in his heart and soul. The enchanted forest was gone, was no more, and so too were flown any ties to the world that had once been, before the Spellplague.
Thus, his past was gone, at long last.
He focused on that moment when the moon had opened his eyes, and thought it a passage. He thought of Innovindil (and stole a glance at Dahlia) and her insistence that an elf must live his life in shorter time spans, must reinvent his existence, his friends, his love, with each passing generation, to know vitality and happiness.
He glanced at Dahlia again, but his gaze inevitably lowered to his own hands, where he rolled a piece of scrimshaw over and over again.
By the time he looked back up, while the dwarf, monk, and warlock remained at play with the fire, Dahlia had gone to sit with Entreri, the two conversing privately.
Drizzt nodded, rose, and walked off into the night. He came to a high rock, overlooking Bryn Shander away to the southeast, and with the high peak of Kelvin’s Cairn to the northwest behind him. He stood there, the wind in his face and in his ears, remembering what was and pondering what might now be.
“We’re not staying,” came Dahlia’s voice behind him, and he wasn’t surprised—by her presence or her message. “We’ll go to the dwarves, perhaps, but for a short while only. We’re to ride with a caravan out of this forlorn place at the earliest opportunity.”
“To where?” Drizzt asked, but didn’t turn to face her.
“Does it matter? A decade and more’s gone by and our names have slipped past in the wind.”
“You underestimate the memories of those with a vendetta,” Drizzt said, and he turned in time to see Dahlia shrug, as if it hardly mattered.
“When we came here, you said it would be for the season. The seasons have come and gone fifty times and more. I’ve not thought of living my years out in the emptiness of Icewind Dale, and might any time prove safer for us to leave than right now, before rumors of our return filter to the south?”
Drizzt mulled over her words, looking for some way to argue the point. He was as confused as the rest of them, unsure of what had happened or what it might mean. Was it really 1484? Had the world passed them by while they had slept in some enchanted forest?
And if that was the enchanted forest of Nathan Obridock, the place named Iruladoon, then what of the auburn-haired witch and the halfling by the pond?
Drizzt couldn’t help but wince as he considered the place, for there it was again in his heart, the knowledge that he had witnessed the very end of Iruladoon when he had awakened in the one warm spot amidst the last snows. He had felt the magic drain away to nothingness. It wasn’t that the enchantment had moved along. Nay, it had dissipated all together. That place, whether it was Iruladoon or not, was no more, nevermore. He knew that with certainty, though he knew not how he understood it with certainty. Mielikki had signaled to him that it was no more, that it was gone, and with a pervading sense of comfort … that it was all right.
“Are you agreed?” Dahlia asked impatiently, and Drizzt realized from her tone and her stance that she was reiterating that question for more than the second time.
“Agreed?” he had to ask.
“First caravan out,” Dahlia said.
Drizzt chewed his lip and looked all around, but really tried to look within his own heart. Behind Dahlia loomed the blackness of Kelvin’s Cairn, and it did not elicit a cold emotion within Drizzt—quite the opposite.
“We can have the life up here that we spoke of before we went to Easthaven,” he said.
Dahlia looked at him incredulously, even laughed at him.
“It will be an easy life, and one of adventure.”
“They wouldn’t even let you in their town, you fool,” Dahlia reminded him.
“That will change, with time.”
But Dahlia shook her head resolutely, and Drizzt recognized that she didn’t disagree with his particular reasoning, but rejected the whole premise.
“We’re all for going, all five,” she said. “Even Ambergris.”
“To where?”
Again Dahlia laughed at him. “Does it matter?”
“If it doesn’t, then why not here?”
“No,” she stated flatly. “We are leaving this forlorn place of tedious winds and endless boredom. All of us. And I’ll not chase your ghosts back to Icewind Dale again, if all of Menzoberranzan, all of the Empire of Netheril, and all the demons of the Abyss are chasing us.”
“There are no ghosts left to chase,” Drizzt whispered under his breath, for he knew it to be true.
But even with that, spoken sincerely, there was no compromise to be found within her, Drizzt realized. She saw Icewind Dale as a surrogate to Catti-brie for him, a place of those memories, and she would not tolerate it.
