The Dark Elf Trilogy: Sojourn

20. Years and Miles

 
Part 5.
Sojourn
How different the trail seemed as I departed Mooshie's Grove from the road that had led me there. Again I was alone, except when Guenhwyvar came to my call. On this road, though, I was alone only in body. In my mind I carried a name, the embodiment of my valued principles. Mooshie had called Mielikki a goddess; to me she was a way of life.
She walked beside me always along the many surface roads I traversed. She led me out to safety and fought off my despair when I was chased away and then hunted by the dwarves of Citadel Adbar, a fortress northeast of Mooshie's Grove. Mielikki, and my belief in my own value, gave me the courage to approach town after town throughout the northland. The receptions were always the same: shock and fear that quickly turned to anger. The more generous of those I encountered told me simply to go away; others chased me with weapons bared. On two occasions I was forced to fight, though I managed to escape without anyone being badly injured.
The minor nicks and scratches were a small price to pay. Mooshie had bidden me not to live as he had, and the old ranger's perceptions, as always, proved true. On my journeys throughout the northland I retained somethingDhope - that I never would have held if I had remained a hermit in the evergreen grove. As each new village showed on the horizon, a tingle of anticipation quickened my steps. One day, I was determined, I would find acceptance and find my home.
It would happen suddenly, I imagined. I would approach a gate, speak a formal greeting, then reveal myself as a dark elf. Even my fantasy was tempered by reality, for the gate would not swing wide at my approach. Rather, I would be allowed guarded entry, a trial period much like the one I endured in Blingdenstone, the svirfneblin city. Suspicions would linger about me for many months, but in the end, principles would be seen and accepted for what they were; the character of the person would outweigh the color of his skin and the reputation of his heritage.
I replayed that fantasy countless times over the years. Every word of every meeting in my imagined town became a litany against the continued rejections. It would not have been enough, but always there was Guenhwyvar, and now there was Mielikki.
20. Years and Miles
The Harvest Inn in Westbridge was a favorite gathering place for travelers along the Long Road that stretched between the two great northern cities of Waterdeep and Mirabar. Aside from comfortable bedding at reasonable rates, the Harvest offered Derry's Tavern and Eatery, a renowned story-swapping bar where on any night of any week a guest might find adventurers from regions as varied as Luskan and Sundabar. The hearth was bright and warm, the drinks were plentiful, and the yarns woven in Derry's were ones that would be told and retold all across the realms.
Roddy kept the cowl of his worn traveling cloak pulled low about him, hiding his scarred face, as he tore into his mutton and biscuits. The old yellow dog sat on the floor beside him, growling, and every now and then Roddy absently dropped it a piece of meat.
The ravenous bounty hunter rarely lifted his head from the plate, but Roddy's bloodshot eyes peered suspiciously from the shadows of his cowl. He knew some of the ruffians gathered in Derry's this night, personally or by reputation, and he wouldn't trust them any more than they, if they were wise, would trust him.
One tall man recognized Roddy's dog as he passed the table and stopped, thinking to greet the bounty hunter. The tall man walked away silently, though, realizing that miserable McGristle wasn't really worth the effort. No one knew exactly what had happened those years before in the mountains near Maldobar, but Roddy had come out of that region deeply scarred, physically and emotionally. Always a surly one, McGristle now spent more time growling than talking.
Roddy gnawed a bit longer then dropped the thick bone down to his dog and wiped his greasy hands on his cloak, inadvertently brushing back the side of his cowl that hid his gruesome scars. Roddy quickly pulled the cowl back down, his gaze darting about for anyone who might have noticed. A single disgusted glance had cost several men their lives where Roddy's scars were concerned.
No one seemed to notice, though, not this time. Most of those who weren't busily eating were over at the bar, arguing loudly.
"Never was it!" one man growled.
"I told you what I saw!" another shot back. "And I told you right!"
"To yer eyes!" the first shouted back, and still another put in, "Ye'd not know one if ye seen one!" Several of the men closed in, bumping chest to chest.
"Stand quiet!" came a voice. A man pushed out of the throng and pointed straight at Roddy, who, not recognizing the man, instinctively dropped his hand to Bleeder, his well-worn axe.
"Ask McGristle!" the man cried. "Roddy McGristle. He knows about dark elves better than any."
A dozen conversations sprouted up at once as the whole group, looking like some amorphous rolling blob, slid over toward Roddy. Roddy's hand was off Bleeder again, crossing fingers with the other one on the table in front of him.
"Ye're McGristle, are ye?" the man asked Roddy, showing the bounty hunter a good measure of respect.
"Might that I am," Roddy replied calmly, enjoying the attention. He hadn't been surrounded by a group so interested in what he had to say since the Thistledown clan had been found murdered.
"Aw," a disgruntled voice piped in from somewhere in the back, "what's he know about dark elves."
Roddy's glare sent those in front back a step, and he noticed the movement. He liked the feeling, liked being important again, respected.
"Drow elf killed my dog," he said gruffly. He reached down and yanked up the old yellow hound's head, displaying the scar. "And dented this one's head. Damned dark elf - " he said deliberately, easing the cowl back from his face - "gave me this." Normally Roddy hid the hideous scars, but the crowd's gasps and mumbles sounded immensely satisfying to the wretched bounty hunter. He turned to the side, gave them a full view, and savored the reaction for as long as he could.
"Black-skinned and white-haired?" asked a short, fat-bellied man, the one who had begun the debate back at the bar with his own tale of a dark elf.
"Would have to be if he was a dark elf," Roddy huffed back. The man looked about triumphantly.
"That is what I tried to tell them," he said to Roddy. "They claim that I saw a dirty elf, or an orc maybe, but I knew it was a drow!"
"If ye see a drow," Roddy said grimly and deliberately, weighing every word with importance, "then ye know ye seen a drow. And ye'll not forget that ye seen a drow! And let any man that doubts yer words go and find a drow for himself. He'll come back to ye with a word of bein' sorry!"
"Well, I seen a dark elf," the man proclaimed. "I was camping in Lurkwood, north of Grunwald. Peaceful enough night, I thought, so I let the fire up a bit to beat the cold wind. Well, in walked this stranger without a warning, without a word!"
Every man in the group hung on the words now, hearing them in a different light now that the drow-scarred stranger had somewhat confirmed the tale.
"Without a word, or a bird call, or nothing!" the fat-bellied man went on. "He had his cloak pulled low, suspicious, so I said to him, 'What are you about?'
" 'Searching for a place that my companions and I may camp the night,' he answered, calm as you may. Seemed reasonable enough to me, but I still did not like that low cowl.
" 'Pull back your hood then,' I told him. 'I share nothing without seeing a man's face.' He considered my words a minute, then he moved his hands up, real slow," - the man imitated the movement dramatically, glancing around to ensure that he had everyone's attention.
"I needed to see nothing more!" the man cried suddenly, and everyone, though they had heard the same tale told the same way only a moment before, jumped back in surprise. "His hands were as black as coal and as slender as an elf's. I knew then, but I know not how I knew so surely, that it was a drow before me. A drow, I say, and let any man who doubts my words go and find a dark elf for himself!"
Roddy nodded his approval as the fat-bellied man stared down his former doubters. "Seems I've heard too much about dark elves lately," the bounty hunter grumbled.
"I've heared of just the one," another man piped in. "Until we spoke to you, I mean, and heard of your battle. That makes two drow in six years."
"As I said" Roddy remarked grimly, "seems I've heard too much about dark - " Roddy never finished as the group exploded into exaggerated laughter around him. It seemed like the grand old times to the bounty hunter, the days when everyone about him hung tense on his every word.
The only man who wasn't laughing was the fat-bellied storyteller, too shook up from his own recounting of his meeting with the drow. "Still," he said above the commotion, "when I think of those purple eyes staring out at me from under that cowl!"
Roddy's smile disappeared in the blink of an eye. "Purple eyes?" he barely managed to gasp. Roddy had encountered many creatures that used infravision, the heat-sensing sight most common among denizens of the Underdark, and he knew that normally, such eyes showed as dots of red. Roddy still remembered vividly the purple eyes looking down at him when he was trapped under the maple tree. He knew then, and he knew now, that those strange-hued orbs were a rarity even among the dark elves.
Those in the group closest to Roddy stopped their laughing, thinking that Roddy's question shed doubt on the truth of the man's tale.
"They were purple," the fat-bellied man insisted, though there was little conviction in his shaky voice. The men around him waited for Roddy's agreement or rebuttal, not knowing whether or not to laugh at the storyteller.
"What weapons did the drow wield?" Roddy asked grimly, rising ominously to his feet.
The man thought for a moment. "Curved swords," he blurted.
"Scimitars?"
"Scimitars," the other agreed.
"Did the drow say his name?" Roddy asked, and when the man hesitated, Roddy grabbed him by the collar and pulled him over the table. "Did the drow say his name?" the bounty hunter said again, his breath hot on the fat-bellied man's face.
"No... er, uh, Driz... "
"Drizzit?"
The man shrugged helplessly, and Roddy threw him back to his feet. "Where?" the bounty hunter roared. "And when?"
"Lurkwood," the quivering, full-bellied man said again. "Three weeks ago. Drow's going to Mirabar with the Weeping Friars, I would guess." Most of the crowd groaned at the mention of the fanatic religious group. The Weeping Friars were a ragged band of begging sufferers who believed - or claimed to believe - that there was a finite amount of pain in the world. The more suffering they took on themselves, the friars said, the less remained for the rest of world to endure. Nearly everyone scorned the order. Some were sincere, but some begged for trinkets, promising to suffer horribly for the good of the giver.
"Those were the drow's companions," the fat-bellied man continued. "They always go to Mirabar, go to find the cold, as winter comes on."
"Long way," someone remarked.
"Longer," said another. "The Weeping Friars always take the tunnel route."
"Three hundred miles," the first man who had recognized Roddy put in, trying to calm the agitated bounty hunter. But Roddy never even heard him. His dog in tow, he spun away and stormed out of Berry's, slamming the door behind him and leaving the whole group mumbling to each other in absolute surprise.
"It was Drizzit that took Roddy's dog and ear," the man went on, now turning his attention to the group. He had no previous knowledge of the strange drow's name; he merely had made an assumption based on Roddy's reaction. Now the group flowed around him, holding their collective breath for him to tell them of the tale of Roddy McGristle and the purple-eyed drow. Like any proper patron of Derry's, the man didn't let lack of real knowledge deter him from telling the tale. He hooked his thumbs into his belt and began, filling in the considerable blanks with whatever sounded appropriate.
A hundred more gasps and claps of appreciation and startled delight echoed on the street outside of Derry's that night, but Roddy McGristle and his yellow dog, their wagon wheels already thick in the mud of the Long Road, heard none of them.
* * *
"Hey, what-are-you-doing?" came a weary complaint from a sack behind Roddy's bench. Tephanis crawled out. "Why-are-we-leaving?"
Roddy twisted about and took a swipe, but Tephanis, even sleepy-eyed, had no trouble darting out of harm's way.
"Ye lied to me, ye cousin to a kobold!" Roddy growled. "Ye telled me that the drow was dead. But he's not! He's on the road to Mirabar, and I mean to catch him!"
"Mirabar?" Tephanis cried. "Too-far, too-far!" The quickling and Roddy had passed through Mirabar the previous spring. Tephanis thought it a perfectly miserable place, full of grim-faced dwarves, sharp-eyed men, and a wind much too cold for his liking. "We-must-go-south-for-the-winter. South-where-it-is-warm!"
Roddy's ensuing glare silenced the sprite. "I'll forget what ye did to me," he snarled, then he added an ominous warning, "if we get the drow." He turned from Tephanis then, and the sprite crawled back into his sack, feeling miserable and wondering if Roddy McGristle was worth the trouble. Roddy drove through the night, bending low to urge his horse onward and muttering "Six years!" over and over.
* * *
Drizzt huddled close to the fire that roared out of an old ore barrel the group had found. This would be the drow's seventh winter on the surface, but still he remained uncomfortable in the chill. He had spent decades, and his people had lived for many millennia, in the seasonless and warm Underdark. Although winter was still months away, its approach was evident in the chill winds blowing down from the Spine of the World Mountains. Drizzt wore only an old blanket, thin and torn, over his clothes, chain mail, and weapon belt.
The drow smiled when he noticed his companions fidgeting and huffing over who got the next draw on a bottle of wine they had begged and how much the last drinker had taken. Drizzt was alone at the barrel now; the Weeping Friars, while not actually shunning the drow, didn't often go near him. Drizzt accepted this and knew that the fanatics appreciated his companionship for practical, if not aesthetic, reasons. Some of the band actually enjoyed attacks by the various monsters of the land, viewing them as opportunities for some true suffering, but the more pragmatic of the group appreciated having the armed and skilled drow around for protection.
The relationship was acceptable to Drizzt, if not fulfilling. He had left Mooshie's Grove years ago filled with hope, but hope tempered by the realities of his existence. Time after time, Drizzt had approached a village only to be put out behind a wall of harsh words, curses, and drawn weapons. Every time, Drizzt shrugged away the snubbing. True to his ranger spirit - for Drizzt was indeed a ranger now, in training as well as in heart - he accepted his lot stoically.
The last rejection had shown Drizzt that his resolve was wearing thin, though. He had been turned away from Luskan, on the Sword Coast, but not by any guards, for he had never even approached the place. Drizzt's own fears had kept him away, and that fact had frightened him more than any swords he had ever faced. On the road outside the city, Drizzt had met up with this handful of Weeping Friars, and the outcasts had tentatively accepted him, as much because they had no means to keep him out as because they were too full of their own wretchedness to care about any racial differences. Two of the group had even thrown themselves at Drizzt's feet, begging him to unleash his "dark elf terrors" and make them suffer.
Through the spring and summer, the relationship had evolved with Drizzt serving as silent guardian while the friars went about their begging and suffering ways. All in all, it was quite distasteful, even sometimes deceitful, to the principled drow, but Drizzt had found no other options.
Drizzt stared into the leaping flames and considered his fate. He still had Guenhwyvar at his call and had put his scimitars and bow to gainful use many times. Every day he told himself that beside the somewhat helpless fanatics, he was serving Mielikki, and his own heart, well. Still, he did not hold the friars in high regard and did not call them friends. Watching the five men now, drunk and slobbering all over each other, Drizzt suspected that he never would.
"Beat me! Slash me!" one of the friars cried suddenly, and he ran over toward the barrel, stumbling into Drizzt. Drizzt caught him and steadied him, but only for a moment.
"Loosh your dwow whickedniss on me head!" the dirty, unshaven friar sputtered, and his lanky frame tumbled down in an angular heap.
Drizzt turned away, shook his head, and unconsciously dropped a hand into his pouch to feel the onyx figurine, needing the touch to remind him that he was not truly alone. He was surviving, fighting an endless and lonely battle, but was far from contented. He had found a place, perhaps, but not a home.
"Like the grove without Montolio," the drow mused. "Never a home."
"Did you say something?" asked a portly friar, Brother Mateus, coming over to collect his drunken companion. "Please excuse Brother Jankin, friend. He has imbibed too much, I fear."
Drizzt's helpless smile told that he had taken no offense, but his next words caught Brother Mateus, the leader and most rational member - if not the most honest - of the group, off guard.
"I will complete the trip to Mirabar with you," Drizzt explained, "then I will leave."
"Leave?" asked Mateus, concerned.
"This is not my place," Drizzt explained.
"Ten-Towns ish the place!" Jankin blurted.
"If anyone has offended you... " Mateus said to Drizzt, taking no heed of the drunken man.
"No one," Drizzt said and smiled again. "There is more for me in this life, Brother Mateus. Do not be angry, I beg, but I am leaving. It was not a decision I came to lightly."
Mateus took a moment to consider the words. "As you choose," he said, "but might you at least escort us through the tunnel into Mirabar?"
"Ten-Towns!" Jankin insisted. "Thast the place fer' suf-ferin'! Vou'd like it, too, drow. Land o' rogues, where a rogue might find hish place!"
"Often there are rakes in the shadows who would prey on unarmed friars," Mateus interrupted, giving Jankin a rough shake.
Drizzt paused a moment, transfixed on Jankin's words. Jankin had collapsed, though, and the drow looked up to Mateus. "Is that not why you take the tunnel route into the city?" Drizzt asked the portly friar. The tunnel was normally reserved for mine carts, rolling down from the Spine of the World, but the friars always went through it, even in situations such as this, when they had to make a complete circuit of the city just to get to the long route's entrance. "To fall victim and suffer?" Drizzt continued. "Surely the road is clear and more convenient with winter still months away." Drizzt did not like the tunnel to Mirabar. Any wanderers they met on that road would be too close for the drow to hide his identity. Drizzt had been accosted there on both his previous trips through.
"The others insist that we go through the tunnel, though it is many miles out of our way," replied Mateus, a sharp edge to his tone. "But I prefer more personal forms of suffering and would appreciate your company through to Mirabar."
Drizzt wanted to scream at the phony friar. Mateus considered missing a single meal a harsh suffering and only used his facade because many gullible people handed coins to the cloaked fanatics, more often than not just to be rid of the smelly men.
Drizzt nodded and watched as Mateus hauled Jankin away. "Then I leave," he whispered under his breath. He could tell himself over and over that he was serving his goddess and his heart by protecting the seemingly helpless band, but their behavior often flew in the face of those words.
"Dwow! Dwow!" Brother Jankin slobbered as Mateus dragged him back to the others.