Just as much, Bruenor knew, as his gaze slipped past Drizzt to Catti-brie, his beloved daughter, Drizzt’s wife. Never had she looked as beautiful to Bruenor as she did just then, never more sure of herself and comfortable in her place. She wore her auburn hair up high on one side, hanging loosely on the other, and it caught the light of the fountain, reflected off the rich, silken colors of her blouse, the garment of the gnome wizard. It had been a full robe on the gnome, of course, but it reached only to mid-thigh on Catti-brie, and while the sleeves had nearly covered the gnome’s hands, they flared halfway down Catti-brie’s delicate forearms. She wore a dark blue dress under the blouse, a gift from Lady Alustriel, her new tutor—working through Nanfoodle—that reached to her knees and matched exactly the blue trim of her blouse. High boots of black leather completed the outfit, and seemed so appropriate for Catti-brie, as they were both delicate and sturdy all at once.

Bruenor chuckled, recalling so many images of Catti-brie covered in dirt and in the blood of her enemies, dressed in simple breeches and tunic, and fighting in the mud. Those times were gone, he knew, and he thought of Wulfgar.

So much had changed.

Bruenor looked back to the podium and the treaty, and the extent of the change weakened his knees beneath him.

Along the southern rim of the center platform stood the other dignitaries: Lady Alustriel of Silverymoon, Galen Firth of Nesmé, King Emerus Warcrown of Citadel Felbarr—looking none too pleased, but accepting King Bruenor’s decision—and Hralien of the Moonwood. More would join in, it was said, including the great human city of Sundabar and the largest of the dwarven cities in the region, Citadel Adbar.

If it held.

That thought made Bruenor look across the podium to the other principal, and he could not believe that he had allowed King Obould Many-Arrows to enter Mithral Hall. Yet there stood the orc, in all his terrible splendor, with his black armor, ridged and spiked, and his mighty greatsword strapped diagonally across his back.

Together they walked to opposite sides of the podium. Together they lifted their respective quills.

Obould leaned forward, but even though he was a foot and a half taller, his posture did not diminish the splendor and strength of King Bruenor Battlehammer.

“If ye’re e’er to deceive…” Bruenor started to whisper, but he shook his head and let the thought drift away.

“It is no less bitter for me,” Obould assured him.

And still they signed. For the good of their respective peoples, they put their names to the Treaty of Garumn’s Gorge, recognizing the Kingdom of Many-Arrows and forever changing the face of the Silver Marches.

Calls went out from the gorge, and horns blew along the tunnels of Mithral Hall. And there came a greater blast, a rumble and resonance that vibrated through the stones of the hall and beyond, as the great horn once known as Kokto Gung Karuck, a gift from Obould to Bruenor, sounded from its new perch on the high lookout post above Mithral Hall’s eastern door.

The world had changed, Bruenor knew.

EPILOGUE

How different might the world now be if King Bruenor had not chosen such a course with the first Obould Many-Arrows,” Hralien asked Drizzt. “Better, or worse?”

“Who can know?” the drow replied. “But at that time, a war between Obould’s thousands and the gathered armies of the Silver Marches would have changed the region profoundly. How many of Bruenor’s people would have died? How many of your own, who now flourish in the Glimmerwood in relative peace? And in the end, my friend, we do not know who would have prevailed.”

“And yet here we stand, a century beyond that ceremony, and can either of us say with absolute truth that Bruenor chose correctly?”

He was right, Drizzt knew, to his ultimate frustration. He reminded himself of the roads he had walked over the last decades, of the ruins he had seen, of the devastation of the Spellplague. But in the North, instead of that, because of a brave dwarf named Bruenor Battlehammer, who threw off his baser instincts, his hatred and his hunger for revenge, in light of what he believed to be the greater good, the region had known a century and more of relative peace. More peace than ever it had known before. And that while the world around had fallen to shadow and despair.

Hralien started away, but Drizzt called after him.

“We both supported Bruenor on that day when he signed the Treaty of Garumn’s Gorge,” he reminded. Hralien nodded as he turned.

“As we both fought alongside Bruenor on the day he chose to stand beside Obould against Grguch and the old ways of Gruumsh,” Drizzt added. “If I recall that day correctly, a younger Hralien was so taken by the moment that he chose to place his trust in a dark elf, though that same drow had marched to war against Hralien’s people only months before.”

Hralien laughed and held up his hands in surrender.

“And what resulted from that trust?” Drizzt asked. “How fares Tos’un Armgo, husband of Sinnafain, father of Teirflin and Doum’wielle?”

“I will ask him when I return to the Moonwood,” the beaten Hralien replied, but he managed to get in the last arrow when he directed Drizzt’s gaze to the prisoners they had taken that day.

Drizzt conceded the point with a polite nod. It wasn’t over. It wasn’t decided. The world rolled on around him, the sand shifted under his feet.

He reached down to pet Guenhwyvar, needing to feel the comfort of his panther friend, the one constant in his surprising life, the one great hope along his ever-winding road.

R.A. SALVATORE

R.A. Salvatore was born in Massachusetts in 1959. His love affair with fantasy, and with literature in general, began during his sophomore year of college when he was given a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings as a Christmas gift. He promptly changed his major from computer science to journalism. He received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Communications in 1981, then returned for the degree he always cherished, the Bachelor of Arts in English. He began writing seriously in 1982, penning the manuscript that would become Echoes of the Fourth Magic.

His first published novel was The Crystal Shard from TSR in 1988 and he is still best known as the creator of the dark elf Drizzt, one of fantasy’s most beloved characters.

His novel The Silent Blade won the Origins Award, and in the fall of 1997, his letters, manuscripts, and other professional papers were donated to the R.A. Salvatore Library at his alma mater, Fitchburg State College in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.

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