PART 3

HARMONY

I am often struck by the parallel courses I find in the wide world. My life’s road has led me to many places, back and forth from Mithral Hall to the Sword Coast, to Icewind Dale and the Snowflake Mountains, to Calimport and to the Underdark. I have come to know the truth of the old saying that the only constant is change, but what strikes me most profoundly is the similarity of direction in that change, a concordance of mood, from place to place, in towns and among people who have no, or at least only cursory, knowledge of each other.

I find unrest and I find hope. I find contentment and I find anger. And always, it seems, I’m met with the same general set of emotions among the people from place to place. I understand there is a rationality to it all, for even peoples remote from each other will share common influences: a difficult winter, a war in one land that affects commerce in another, whispers of a spreading plague, the rise of a new king whose message resonates among the populace and brings hope and joy even to those far removed from his growing legend. But still, I often feel as though there is another realm of the senses. As a cold winter might spread through Icewind Dale and Luskan, and all the way to the Silver Marches, so too, it seems, does mood spiderweb the paths and roads of the Realms. It’s almost as if there is a second layer of weather, an emotional wave that rolls and roils its way across Faerûn.

There is trepidation and hopeful change in Mithral Hall and the rest of the Silver Marches, a collective holding of breath where the coin of true peace and all-out war spins on its edge, and not dwarf nor elf nor human nor orc knows on which side it will land. There is a powerful emotional battle waging between the status quo and the desire to embrace great and promising change.

And so I found this same unsettling dynamic in Longsaddle, where the Harpells are engaged in a similar state of near disaster with the rival factions of their community. They hold the coin fast, locked in spells to conserve what is, but the stress and strain are obvious to all who view. And so I found this same dynamic in Luskan, where the potential change is no less profound than the possible—and none too popular—acceptance of an orc kingdom as a viable partner in the league of nations that comprise the Silver Marches.

A wave of unrest and edginess has gripped the land, from Mithral Hall to the Sword Coast—palpably so. It’s as if the people and races of the world have all at once declared the unacceptability of their current lot in life, as if the sentient beings have finished their collective exhale and are now taking in a new breath.

I head to Icewind Dale, a land of tradition that extends beyond the people who live there, a land of constants and of constant pres sure. A land not unaccustomed to war, a land that knows death intimately. If the same breath that brought Obould from his hole, that brought out ancient hatreds among the priests of Longsaddle, that led to the rise of Deudermont and the fall of Arklem Greeth, has filled the unending winds of Icewind Dale, then I truly fear what I may find there, in a place where the smoke of a gutted homestead is almost as common as the smoke of a campfire, and where the howl of the wolf is no less threatening than the war cry of a barbarian, or the battle call of an orc, or the roar of a white dragon. Under the constant struggle to simply survive, Icewind Dale is on edge even in those times when the world is in a place of peace and contentment. What might I find there now, when my road has passed through lands of strife and battle?

I wonder sometimes if there is a god, or gods, who play with the emotions of the collective of sentient beings as an artist colors a canvas. Might there be supernatural beings watching and taking amusement at our toils and tribulations? Do these gods wave giant wands of envy or greed or contentment or love over us all, that they can then watch at their pleasure, perhaps even gamble on the outcome?

Or do they, too, battle amongst themselves, reflections of our own failures, and their victories and failures similarly extend to us, their insignificant minions?

Or am I simply taking the easier route of reasoning, and ascribing what I cannot know to some irrationally defined being or beings for the sake of my own comfort? This trail, I fear, may be no more than warm porridge on a wintry morning.

Whatever it is, the weather or the rise of a great foe, folk demanding to partake of advancements in comfort or the sweep of a plague, or some unseen and nefarious god or gods at play, or whether, perhaps, the collective I view is no more than an extension of my own inner turmoil or contentment, a projection of Drizzt upon the people he views…whatever it may be, this collective emotion seems to me a palpable thing, a real and true motion of shared breath.

— Drizzt Do’Urden

CHAPTER 19

THE WIND IN THEIR EARS

I t happened imperceptibly, a delicate transition that touched the memories and souls of the companions as profoundly as it reverberated in their physical senses. For as the endless and mournful wind of Icewind Dale filled their ears, as the smell of the tundra filled their noses, as the cold northern air tickled their skin, and as the sheet of wintry white dazzled their eyes, so too did the aura of the place, the primal savagery, the pristine beauty, fill their thoughts, so too did the edge of catastrophe awaken their conflicting fears.

That was the true power of the dale, exemplified by the wind, always the wind, the constant reminder of the paradox of existence, that one was always alone and never alone, that communion ended at senses’ edge and yet that the same communion never truly ended.

They walked side-by-side, without speaking, but not in silence. They were joined by the wind of Icewind Dale, in the same place and same time, and whatever thoughts they each entertained separately could not fully escape the bond of awareness forced by Icewind Dale itself upon all who ventured there.

They crossed out of the pass through the Spine of the World and onto the wider tundra one bright and shining morning, and found that the snows were not yet too deep, and the wind not yet too cold. In a few days, if the weather held, they would arrive in Ten-Towns, the ten settlements around the three deep lakes to the north. There, Regis had once found sanctuary from the relentless pursuit of Pasha Pook, a former employer, from whom he had stolen the magical ruby pendant he still wore. There, the beleaguered and weary Drizzt Do’Urden had at last found a place to call home, and the friends he continued to hold most dear.

For the next few days, they held wistfulness in their eyes and fullness in their hearts. Around their small campfire each night they spoke of times past, of fishing Maer Dualdon, the largest of the lakes; of nights on Kelvin’s Cairn, the lone mountain above the caves where Bruenor’s clan had lived in exile, where the stars seemed so close that one could grasp them; and questions of immortality seemed crystalline clear. For one could not stand on Bruenor’s Climb on Kelvin’s Cairn, amidst the stars on a cold and crisp Icewind Dale night and not feel a profound connection to eternity.

The trail, known simply as “the caravan route,” ran almost directly northeast to Bryn Shander, the largest of the ten settlements, the accepted seat of power for the region and the common marketplace. Bryn Shander was favorably located within the meager protection of a series of rolling hillocks and nearly equidistant to the three lakes, Maer Dualdon to the northwest, Redwaters to the southeast and Lac Dinneshere, the easternmost of the lakes. Along the same line as the caravan route, just half a day’s walk northeast of Bryn Shander, loomed the dormant volcano Kelvin’s Cairn, and before it, the valley and tunnels that once, and for more than a century, had housed Clan Battlehammer.