Connor grumbled and balked, complaining about some shoeing that needed to be done to one of the mares, but he could never resist his little sister’s batting blue eyes and wide, bright smile, and Eleni’s promise of erasing his considerable debt had sealed his fate. With his parents’ blessing, Connor led the Thistledown children up into the mountains, buckets in the children’s hands and a crude sword belted on his hip.
Drizzt saw the ruse coming long before the farmer’s young daughter moved out alone in the blueberry patch. He saw, too, the four Thistledown boys, crouched in the shadows of a nearby grove of maple trees, Connor, somewhat less than expertly, brandishing the crude sword.
The youngest had led them here, Drizzt knew. The day before, the drow had witnessed the boy being pulled out into the woodshed. Cries of “drizzit!” had issued forth after every switch, at least at the beginning. Now the stubborn lad wanted to prove his outrageous story.
The blueberry picker jerked suddenly, then fell to the ground and cried out. Drizzt recognized “Help!” as the same distress call the sandy-haired boy had used, and a smile widened across his dark face. By the ridiculous way the girl had fallen, Drizzt saw the game for what it was. The girl was not injured now; she was simply calling out for the drizzit.
With an incredulous shake of his thick white mane, Drizzt started away, but an impulse grabbed at him. He looked back to the blueberry patch, where the girl sat rubbing her ankle, all the while glancing nervously around or back toward her concealed brothers. Something pulled at Drizzt’s heartstrings at that moment, an urge he could not resist. How long had he been alone, wandering without companionship? He longed for Belwar at that moment, the svirfneblin who had accompanied him through many trials in the wilds of the Underdark. He longed for Zaknafein, his father and friend. Seeing the interplay between the caring siblings was more than Drizzt Do’Urden could bear. The time had come for Drizzt to meet his neighbors. Drizzt hiked the hood of his oversized gnoll cloak up over his head, though the ragged garment did little to hide the truth of his heritage, and bounded across the field. He hoped that if he could at least deflect the girl’s initial reaction to seeing him, he might find some way to communicate with her. The hopes were farfetched at best.
“The drizzit!” Eleni gasped under her breath when she saw him coming. She wanted to cry out loud but found no breath; she wanted to run, but her terror held her firmly. From the copse of trees, Liam spoke for her. “The drizzit!” the boy cried. “I told you so! I told you so!” He looked to his brothers, and Flanny and Shawno were having the expected excited reactions. Connor’s face, though, was locked into a look of dread so profound that one glance at it stole the joy from Liam.
“By the gods,” the eldest Thistledown son muttered. Connor had adventured with his father and had been trained to spot enemies. He looked now to his three confused brothers and muttered a single word that explained nothing to the inexperienced boys. “Drow.”
Drizzt stopped a dozen paces from the frightened girl, the first human woman he had seen up close, and studied her. Eleni was pretty by any race’s standards, with huge, soft eyes, dimpled cheeks, and smooth, golden skin. Drizzt knew there would be no fight here. He smiled at Eleni and crossed his arms gently over his chest. “Drizzt,” he corrected, pointing to his chest. A movement to the side turned him away from the girl.
“Run, Eleni!” Connor Thistledown cried, waving his sword and bearing down on the drow. “It is a dark elf! A drow! Run for your life!”
Of all that Connor had cried, Drizzt only understood the word “drow.” The young man’s attitude and intent could not be mistaken, though, for Connor charged straight between Drizzt and Eleni, his sword tip pointed Drizzt’s way. Eleni managed to get to her feet behind her brother, but she did not flee as he had instructed. She, too, had heard of the evil dark elves, and she would not leave Connor to face one alone.
“Turn away, dark elf,” Connor growled. “I am an expert swordsman and much stronger than you.”
Drizzt held his hands out helplessly, not understanding a word.
“Turn away!” Connor yelled.
On an impulse, Drizzt tried to reply in the drow silent code, an intricate language of hand and facial gestures.
“He’s casting a spell!” Eleni cried, and she dove down into the blueberries. Connor shrieked and charged.
Before Connor even knew of the counter, Drizzt grabbed him by the forearm, used his other hand to twist the boy’s wrist and take away the sword, spun the crude weapon three times over Connor’s head, flipped it in his slender hand, then handed it, hilt first, back to the boy.
Drizzt held his arms out wide and smiled. In drow custom, such a show of superiority without injuring the opponent invariably signaled a desire for friendship. To the oldest son of farmer Bartholemew Thistledown, the drow’s blinding display brought only awe-inspired terror.
Connor stood, mouth agape, for a long moment. His sword fell from his hand, but he didn’t notice; his pants, soiled, clung to his thighs, but he didn’t notice.
A scream erupted from somewhere within Connor. He grabbed Eleni, who joined in his scream, and they fled back to the grove to collect the others, then farther, running until they crossed the threshold of their own home.
Drizzt was left, his smile fast fading and his arms out wide, standing all alone in the blueberry patch.
A set of dizzily darting eyes had watched the exchange in the blueberry patch with more than a casual interest. The unexpected appearance of a dark elf, particularly one wearing a gnoll cloak, had answered many questions for Tephanis. The quickling sleuth had already examined the gnoll corpses but simply could not reconcile the gnolls’ fatal wounds with the crude weapons usually wielded by the simple village farmers. Seeing the magnificent twin scimitars so casually belted on the dark elf’s hips and the ease with which the dark elf had dispatched the farm boy, Tephanis knew the truth.
The dust trail left by the quickling would have confused the best rangers in the Realms. Tephanis, never a straightforward sprite, zipped up the mountain trails, spinning circuits around some trees, running up and down the sides of others, and generally doubling, even tripling, his route. Distance never bothered Tephanis; he stood before the purple-skinned barghest whelp even before Drizzt, considering the implications of the disastrous meeting, had left the blueberry patch.
4. Worries
Farmer Bartholemew Thistledown’s perspective changed considerably when Connor, his oldest son, renamed Liam’s “drizzit” a dark elf. Farmer Thistledown had spent his entire forty-five years in Maldobar, a village fifty miles up the Dead Orc River north of Sundabar. Bartholemew’s father had lived here, and his father’s father before him. In all that time, the only news any Farmer Thistledown had ever heard of dark elves was the tale of a suspected drow raid on a small settlement of wild elves a hundred miles to the north, in Coldwood. That raid, if it was even perpetrated by the drow, had occurred more than a decade before.
Lack of personal experience with the drow race did not diminish Farmer Thistledown’s fears at hearing his children’s tale of the encounter in the blueberry patch. Connor and Eleni, two trusted sources old enough to keep their wits about them in a time of crisis, had viewed the elf up close, and they held no doubts about the color of his skin.