As great as the drow’s tales were, though, Montolio knew that Drizzt was holding back, was carrying some great burden on his shoulders. The ranger didn’t press Drizzt at first. He kept his patience, satisfied that he and Drizzt shared principles and—as he came to know with the drastic improvement of Drizzt’s ranger skills—a similar way of viewing the world.
One night, beneath the moon’s silvery light, Drizzt and Montolio rested back in wooden chairs that the ranger had constructed high in the boughs of a large evergreen. The brightness of the waning moon, as it dipped and dodged behind fast-moving, scattered clouds, enchanted the drow.
Montolio couldn’t see the moon, of course, but the old ranger, with Guenhwyvar comfortably draped across his lap, enjoyed the brisk night no less. He rubbed a hand absently through the thick fur on Guenhwyvar’s muscled neck and listened to the many sounds carried on the breeze, the chatter of a thousand creatures that the drow never even noticed, even though Drizzt’s hearing was superior to Montolio’s. Montolio chuckled every now and again, once when he heard a field mouse squealing angrily at an owl—Hooter probably—for interrupting its meal and forcing it to flee into its hole.
Looking at the ranger and Guenhwyvar, so at ease and accepting of one another, Drizzt felt the pangs of friendship and guilt. “Perhaps I should never have come,” he whispered, turning his gaze back to the moon.
“Why?” Montolio asked quietly. “You do not like my food?” His smile disarmed Drizzt as the drow turned back to him somberly.
“To the surface, I mean,” Drizzt explained, managing a laugh in spite of his melancholy. “Sometimes I think my choice a selfish act.”
“Survival usually is,” Montolio replied. “I have felt that way myself on some occasions. I was once forced to drive my sword into a man’s heart. The harshness of the world brings great remorse, but mercifully it is a passing lament and certainly not one to carry into battle.”
“How I wish it would pass,” Drizzt remarked, more to himself or to the moon than to Montolio.
But the remark hit Montolio squarely. The closer he and Drizzt had become, the more the ranger shared Drizzt’s unknown burden. The drow was young by elf standards but was already world-wise and skilled in battle beyond most professional soldiers. Undeniably one of Drizzt’s dark heritage would find barriers in an unaccepting surface world. By Montolio’s estimation, though, Drizzt should be able to get through these prejudices and live a long and prosperous life, given his considerable talents. What was it, Montolio wondered, that so burdens this elf? Drizzt suffered more than he smiled and punished himself more than he should.
“Is yours an honest lament?” Montolio asked him. “Most are not, you know. Most self-imposed burdens are founded on misperceptions. We—at least we of sincere character―always judge ourselves by stricter standards than we expect others to abide by. It is a curse, I suppose, or a blessing, depending on how one views it.” He cast his sightless gaze Drizzt’s way. “Take it as a blessing, my friend, an inner calling that forces you to strive to unattainable heights.”
“A frustrating blessing” Drizzt replied casually.
“Only when you do not pause to consider the advances that the striving has brought to you,” Montolio was quick to reply, as though he had expected the drow’s words. “Those who aspire to less accomplish less. There can be no doubt. It is better, I think, to grab at the stars than to sit flustered because you know you cannot reach them.” He shot Drizzt his typical wry smile. “At least he who reaches will get a good stretch, a good view, and perhaps even a low-hanging apple for his effort!”
“And perhaps also a low-flying arrow fired by some unseen assailant,” Drizzt remarked sourly.
Montolio tilted his head helplessly against Drizzt’s unending stream of pessimism. It pained him deeply to see the good-hearted drow so scarred. “He might indeed,” Montolio said, a bit more harshly than he had intended, “but the loss of life is only great to those who chance to live it! Let your arrow come in low and catch the huddler on the ground, I say. His death would not be so tragic!”
Drizzt could not deny the logic, nor the comfort the old ranger gave to him. Over the last few weeks, Montolio’s offhanded philosophies and way of looking at the world—pragmatically yet heavily edged with youthful exuberance, put Drizzt more at ease than he had been since his earliest training days in Zaknafein’s gymnasium. But Drizzt also could not deny the inevitably short life span of that comfort. Words could soothe, but they could not erase the haunting memories of Drizzt’s past, the distant voices of dead Zaknafein, dead Clacker, and the dead farmers. A single mental echo of “drizzit” vanquished hours of Montolio’s well-intended advice.
“Enough of this cockeyed banter,” Montolio went on, seeming perturbed. “I call you friend, Drizzt Do’Urden, and I hope you call me the same. What sort of friend might I be against this weight that stoops your shoulders unless I know more of it? I am your friend, or I am not. The decision is yours, but if I am not, then I see no purpose in sharing nights as wondrous as this beside you. Tell me, Drizzt, or be gone from my home!”
Drizzt could hardly believe that Montolio, normally so patient and relaxed, had put him on such a spot. The drow’s first reaction was to recoil, to build a wall of anger in the face of the old man’s presumptions and cling to that which he considered personal. As the moments passed, though, and Drizzt got beyond his initial surprise and took the time to sift through Montolio’s statement, he came to understand one basic truth that excused those presumptions: He and Montolio had indeed become friends, mostly through the ranger’s efforts.
Montolio wanted to share in Drizzt’s past, so that he might better understand and comfort his new friend.
“Do you know of Menzoberranzan, the city of my birth and of my kin?” Drizzt asked softly. Even speaking the name pained him. “And do you know the ways of my people, or the Spider Queen’s edicts?”
Montolio’s voice was somber as he replied. “Tell me all of it, I beg,”
Drizzt nodded—Montolio sensed the motion even if he could not see it—and relaxed against the tree. He stared at the moon but actually looked right past it. His mind wandered back through his adventures, back down that road to Menzoberranzan, to the Academy, and to House Do’Urden. He held his thoughts there for a while, lingering on the complexities of drow family life and on the welcomed simplicity of his times in the training room with Zaknafein.
Montolio watched patiently, guessing that Drizzt was looking for a place to begin. From what he had learned from Drizzt’s passing remarks, Drizzt’s life had been filled with adventure and turbulent times, and Montolio knew that it would be no easy feat for Drizzt, with his still limited command of the common tongue, to accurately recount all of it. Also, given the burdens, the guilt and the sorrow, the drow obviously carried, Montolio suspected that Drizzt might be hesitant.
“I was born on an important day in the history of my family,” Drizzt began. “On that day, House Do’Urden eliminated House DeVir.”
“Eliminated?”
“Massacred,” Drizzt explained. Montolio’s blind eyes revealed nothing, but the ranger’s expression was clearly one of revulsion, as Drizzt had expected. Drizzt wanted his companion to understand the horrible depths of drow society, so he pointedly added, “And on that day, too, my brother Dinin drove his sword through the heart of our other brother, Nalfein.”
A shudder coursed up Montolio’s spine and he shook his head. He realized that he was only just beginning to understand the burdens Drizzt carried.
“It is the drow way,” Drizzt said calmly, matter-of-factly, trying to impart the dark elves’ casual attitude toward murder. “There is a strict structure of rank in Menzoberranzan. To climb it, to attain a higher rank, whether as an individual or a family, you simply eliminate those above you.”