A slight quiver in his voice betrayed Drizzt to the ranger. Montolio clearly understood that Drizzt did not accept the evil practices, and never had.

Drizzt went on with his story, telling it completely and accurately, at least for the more than forty years he had spent in the Underdark. He told of his days under the strict tutelage of his sister Vierna, cleaning the house chapel endlessly and learning of his innate powers and his place in drow society. Drizzt spent a long time explaining that peculiar social structure to Montolio, the hierarchies based on strict rank, and the hypocrisy of drow “law,” a cruel facade screening a city of utter chaos. The ranger cringed as he heard of the family wars. They were brutal conflicts that allowed for no noble survivors, not even children. Montolio cringed even more when Drizzt told him of drow “justice,” of the destruction wreaked upon a house that had failed in its attempt to eradicate another family.

The tale was less grim when Drizzt told of Zaknafein, his father and dearest friend. Of course, Drizzt’s happy memories of his father became only a short reprieve, a prelude to the horrors of Zaknafein’s demise. “My mother killed my father,” Drizzt explained soberly, his deep pain evident, “sacrificed him to Lloth for my crimes, then animated his corpse and sent it out to kill me, to punish me for betraying the family and the Spider Queen.”

It took a while for Drizzt to resume, but when he did, he again spoke truthfully, even revealing his own failures in his days alone in the wilds of the Underdark. “I feared that I had lost myself and my principles to some instinctive, savage monster,” Drizzt said, verging on despair. But then the emotional wave that had been his existence rose again, and a smile found his face as he recounted his time beside Belwar, the most honored svirfneblin burrow-warden, and Clacker, the pech who had been polymorphed into a hook horror. Expectedly, the smile proved short-lived, for Drizzt’s tale eventually led him to where Clacker fell to Matron Malice’s undead monster. Another friend had died on Drizzt’s behalf.

Appropriately, by the time Drizzt came to his exit from the Underdark, the dawn peeked through the eastern mountains. Now Drizzt picked his words more carefully, not ready to divulge the tragedy of the farming family for fear that Montolio would judge him and blame him, destroying their newfound bond. Rationally, Drizzt could remind himself that he had not killed the farmers, had even avenged their deaths, but guilt was rarely a rational emotion, and Drizzt simply could not find the words—not yet.

Montolio, aged and wise and with animal scouts throughout the region, knew that Drizzt was concealing something. When they had first met, the drow had mentioned a doomed farming family, and Montolio had heard of a family slaughtered in the village of Maldobar. Montolio didn’t believe for a minute that Drizzt could have done it, but he suspected that the drow was somehow involved. He didn’t press Drizzt, though. Drizzt had been more honest, and more complete, than Montolio had expected, and the ranger was confident that the drow would fill in the obvious holes in his own time.

“It is a good tale,” Montolio said at length. “You have been through more in your few decades than most elves will know in three hundred years. But the scars are few, and they will heal.”

Drizzt, not so certain, put a lamenting look upon him, and Montolio could only offer a comforting pat on the shoulder as he rose and headed off for bed.

Drizzt was still asleep when Montolio roused Hooter and tied a thick note to the owl’s leg. Hooter wasn’t so pleased at the ranger’s instructions; the journey could take a week, valuable and enjoyable time at this height of the mousing and mating season. For all its whining hoots, however, the owl would not disobey.

Hooter ruffled its feathers, caught the first gust of wind, and soared effortlessly across the snow-covered range to the passes that would take it to Maldobar—and beyond that to Sundabar, if need be. A certain ranger of no small fame, a sister of the Lady of Silverymoon, was still in the region, Montolio knew through his animal connections, and he charged Hooter with seeking her out.

“Will-there-be-no-end-to-it?” the sprite whined, watching the burly human pass along the trail. “First-the-nasty-drow-and-now-this-brute! Am-I-never-to-be-rid-of-these-trouble-makers?” Tephanis slapped his head and stamped his feet so rapidly that he dug himself a little hole.

Down on the trail, the big, scarred yellow dog growled and bared its teeth, and Tephanis, realizing that his pouting had been too loud, zipped in a wide semicircle, crossing the trail far behind the traveler and coming up on the other flank. The yellow dog, still looking in the opposite direction, cocked its head and whimpered in confusion.

15. A Shadow over Sanctuary

Drizzt and Montolio said nothing of the drow’s tale over the next couple of days. Drizzt brooded over painfully rekindled memories, and Montolio tactfully gave him the room he needed. They went about their daily business methodically, farther apart, and with less enthusiasm, but the distance was a passing thing, which they both realized.

Gradually they came closer together, leaving Drizzt with hopes that he had found a friend as true as Belwar or even Zaknafein. One morning, though, the drow was awakened by a voice that he recognized all too well, and Drizzt thought at once that his time with Montolio had come to a crashing end.

He crawled to the wooden wall that protected his dugout chamber and peered through.

“Drow elf, Mooshie,” Roddy McGristle was saying, holding a broken scimitar out for the old ranger to see. The burly mountain man, looming even larger in the many layers of furs he wore, sat atop a small but muscled horse just outside of the rock wall surrounding the grove. “Ye seen him?”

“Seen?” Montolio echoed sarcastically, giving an exaggerated wink of his milky-white eyes. Roddy was not amused.

“Ye know what I mean!” he growled. “Ye see more’n the rest of us, so don’t ye be playin’ dumb!” Roddy’s dog, showing a wicked scar from where Drizzt had struck it, caught a familiar scent then and started sniffing excitedly and darting back and forth along the paths of the grove.

Drizzt crouched at the ready, a scimitar in one hand and a look of dread and confusion on his face. He had no desire to fight—he did not even want to strike the dog again.

“Get your dog back to your side!” Montolio huffed.

McGristle’s curiosity was obvious. “Seen the dark elf, Mooshie?” he asked again, this time suspiciously.

“Might that I have,” Montolio replied. He turned and let out a shrill, barely audible whistle. Immediately, Roddy’s dog, hearing the ranger’s clear ire in no uncertain terms, dropped its tail between its legs and slunk back to stand beside its master’s horse.

“I’ve a brood of fox pups in there,” the ranger lied angrily. “If your dog sets on them… ” Montolio let the threat hang at that, and apparently Roddy was impressed. He dropped a noose down over the dog’s head and pulled it tight to his side.

“A drow, must be the same one, came through here before the first snows,” Montolio went on. “You will have a hard hunt for that one, bounty hunter.” He laughed. “He had some trouble with Graul, by my knowledge, then set out again, back for his dark home, I would guess. Do you mean to follow the drow down into the Underdark? Certainly your reputation would grow considerably, bounty hunter, though your very life might prove the cost!”

Drizzt relaxed at the words; Montolio had lied for him! He could see that the ranger did not hold McGristle in high regard, and that fact, too, brought comfort to Drizzt. Then Roddy came back forcefully, laying out the story of the tragedy in Maldobar in a blunt and warped way that put Drizzt and Montolio’s friendship to a tough test.