How much worse becomes the cruel reality when at last we are touched by inescapable tragedy.

I look at Catti-brie and I am reminded of my limitations. My fantasies of saving the moment and the day are dashed against jagged and immovable rocks. I want to save her and I cannot. I look at Catti-brie, wandering lost, and in those moments when I can accept that this state is forever, my hopes become less about victory and more about …

I can hardly think it. Have I truly been reduced to hoping that this woman I love will pass on quickly and peacefully?

And still the fight goes on around us, I am sure, in this world gone mad. And still will my scimitars be put to use in a struggle that has, I fear, only just begun. And still will I be needed to mediate between Bruenor and Jarlaxle, Cadderly and Jarlaxle. I cannot skulk away and be alone with my mounting grief and pain. I cannot abrogate my responsibilities to those around me.

But it all, so suddenly, seems less important to me. Without Catti-brie, what is the point of our fight? Why defeat the dracolich when the outcome will not change, since we are all doomed in the end? Is it not true that that which we deem important is, in the grand scheme of the millennia and the multiverse, utterly and completely irrelevant?

This is the demon of despair wrought of impotence. More profound than the helplessness created by Shimmergloom the shadow dragon’s dark cloud of breath. More profound than the lesson of the drow matron mothers. For that question, “What is the point?” is the most insidious and destructive of all.

I must deny it. I cannot give in to it, for the sake of those around me and for the sake of myself, and yes, for the sake of Catti-brie, who would not allow me to surrender to such a concept.

Truly this inner turmoil tests me more than any demon, any dragon, any horde of ravaging orcs ever could.

For as this dark moment shows me the futility, so too it demands of me the faith—the faith that there is something beyond this mortal coil, that there is a place of greater understanding and universal community than this temporary existence.

Else it is all a sad joke.

— Drizzt Do’Urden

CHAPTER 24

WANDERING IN THE DARKNESS

How can I be tellin’ ye what I ain’t for knowing?” Ivan grumbled, putting Temberle back on his heels. “I thought … you might know …” the young man stammered. “You are a dwarf,” Hanaleisa added dryly.

“So’s he!” Ivan fumed, poking a finger Pikel’s way. His obstinate expression melted when he looked back to the Bonaduce siblings, both wearing skeptical expressions. “Yeah, I know,” Ivan agreed with an exasperated sigh.

“Doo-dad,” said Pikel, and with an imperious “harrumph” of his own, he walked away.

“He’s durned good in the higher tunnels, though,” Ivan said in his brother’s defense. “When there’s roots pokin’ through. He talks to ‘em, and the damned things talk back!”

“Our current plight?” Rorick reminded, walking over to join the discussion. “The folk are sick of tunnels and growing ever more agitated.”

“They’d rather be out in Carradoon, would they?” Ivan retorted. It was sarcasm, of course, but to everyone’s surprise, Rorick didn’t blink.

“They’re saying that very thing,” he informed the others.

“They forget what chased us here in the first place,” said Temberle, but Rorick shook his head with every word.

“They forget nothing—and we’ve been fighting those same monsters in the tunnels, anyway.”

“From defensible positions, on ground of our choosing,” said Hanaleisa, to which Rorick merely shrugged.

“Do ye think ye might be finding yer way back to the tunnels near to Carradoon?” Ivan asked Temberle and Hanaleisa.

“You cannot …” Temberle started, but Hanaleisa cut him short.

“We can,” she said. “I’ve been marking the tunnels at various junctures. We can get back close to where we started, I’m sure.”

“Might be our best option,” said Ivan.

“No,” said Temberle.

“We’re not knowin’ what’s still there, boy,” Ivan reminded. “And we know what’s waiting for us in the mountains, and I know ye didn’t see nothing the size o’ that damned wyrm in Carradoon, else ye’d all be dead. I’d like to give ye a better choice—I’d like a better choice for meself! — but I’m not for knowing another way out o’ these tunnels, and the one I came down can’t be climbed, and I wouldn’t be climbing back that way anyhow!”

Temberle and Hanaleisa exchanged concerned looks, and both glanced across the torchlit chamber to the haggard refugees. The weight of responsibility pressed down upon them, for their decisions would affect everyone in that chamber, perhaps fatally.

“Choice ain’t for ye, anyway,” Ivan blustered a few heartbeats later, as if reading their thoughts, certainly reading their expressions. “Ye done good in gettin’ these folk from Carradoon, and I’ll be sure to tell yer Ma and Da that when we get back to Spirit Soaring. But I’m here now, and last time I bothered to look, I’ve got a bit o’ rank and experience on the both o’ ye put together.

“We can’t stay down here. Yer brother’s right on that. If we were all kin dwarves, we’d just widen a few holes, put up a few walls, call the place home, and be done with it. But we ain’t, and we got to get out, and I can’t be getting us out unless we’re going back the way ye came in.”

“We’ll be fighting there,” Hanaleisa warned.

“More the reason to go, then!” Ivan declared with a toothy grin.

And they went, back the way they had come, and when they weren’t sure of either left or right, because Hanaleisa’s markings were neither complete nor always legible, they guessed and pressed on. And when they guessed wrong, they turned around and marched back, double-time, by the barking commands of Ivan Bouldershoulder.

Bark he did, but he added a much-needed enthusiasm, full of optimistic promise. His energy proved contagious and the group made great headway that first day. The second went along splendidly as well, except for one unusually long detour that nearly dropped Ivan, who insisted on leading the way, into a deep pit.

By the third day, their steps came smaller and the barks became mere words. Still they went along, for what choice did they have? When they heard the growls of monsters echoing along distant tunnels, though they all cringed at the notion of more fighting, they took hope that such sounds meant they were nearing the end of their Underdark torment. Hungry, as they had fed on nothing more than a few mushrooms and a few cave fish, thirsty, as most of the water they found was too fetid to drink, they took a deep breath and pushed forward.

Around a bend in the corridor, where the tunnel soon widened into a large chamber, they saw their enemies—not undead monsters, but the crawling fleshy beasts that Ivan knew so well—at the same time their enemies saw them. Driven by the knowledge that he had led those poor, beleaguered folks, including Cadderly’s precious children, into danger, Ivan Bouldershoulder was fast to the charge. Fury drove his steps, and determination that he would not be the cause of disaster brought great strength to his limbs. The dwarf hit the advancing enemy line like a huge rock denying the tide. Crawlers flowed around him, but those nearest exploded under the weight of Ivan’s mighty axe.

Flanking him left came Temberle and Hanaleisa, a great slash of the blade and a flurry of fists, and to the right came Pikel and Rorick. Rorick attempted only one spell, and when it utterly failed, he took up the dagger he carried on his belt and was glad that he, like his siblings, had been taught how to fight.

For Pikel, there was no magical glow to his club, no shillelagh enchantment to add weight to his blows. But like his brother, Pikel had gone to a deeper place of anger, a place where he was fighting not just for himself, but for others who could hardly defend against such enemies.