“Put yer pet away, elf,” Bruenor said. “If cat tastes as bad as dog, I’ll want none of it!
“My place, this is,” the dwarf went on, “me bein’ Bruenor and this bein’ Bruenor’s Climb!”
“I saw no sign of ownership,” Drizzt replied indignantly, his patience exhausted from the long road that now seemed to grow longer. “I know your claim now, and so I will leave. Take heart, dwarf. I shall not return.”
Bruenor put a hand up, both to silence the drow and to stop him from leaving. “Just a pile o’ rocks,” he said, as close to an apology as Bruenor had ever given. “I named it as me own, but does that make it so? Just a damned piled o’ rocks!”
Drizzt cocked his head at the dwarf’s unexpected rambling.
“Nothin’s what it seems, drow!” Bruenor declared. “Nothin’! Ye try to follow what ye know, ye know? But then ye find that ye know not what ye thought ye knowed! Thought a dog’d be tastin’ good—looked good enough—but now me belly’s cursing me every move!”
The second mention of the dog sparked a sudden revelation concerning Roddy McGristle’s departure. “You sent him away” Drizzt said, pointing down to the route out of the vale. “You drove McGristle off my trail.”
Bruenor hardily heard him, and certainly wouldn’t have admitted the kind-hearted deed, in any case. “Never trusted humans,” he said evenly. “Never know what one’s about, and when ye find out, too many’s the time it’s too late for fixin’! But always had me thoughts straight about other folks. An elf’s an elf, after all, and so’s a gnome. And orcs are straight-out stupid and ugly. Never knew one to be other-ways, an’ I known a few!” Bruenor patted his axe, and Drizzt did not miss his meaning.
“So was me thoughts about the drow,” Bruenor continued. “Never met one—never wanted to. Who would, I ask? Drow’re bad, mean-hearted, so I been telled by me dad an’ by me dad’s dad, an’ by any who’s ever telled me.” He looked out to the lights of Termalaine on Maer Dualdon in the west, shook his head, and kicked a stone. “Now I heared a drow’s prowlin’ about me valley, and what’s a king to do? Then me daughter goes to him!” A sudden fire came into Bruenor’s eyes, but it mellowed quickly, almost as if in embarrassment, as soon as he looked at Drizzt. “She lies in me face—never has she done that afore, and never again if she’s a smart one!”
“It was not her fault,” Drizzt began, but Bruenor waved his hands about wildly to dismiss the whole thing.
“Thought I knowed what I knowed,” Bruenor continued after a short pause, his voice almost a lament. “Had the world figured, sure enough. Easy to do when ye stay in yer own hole.”
He looked back to Drizzt, straight into the dim shine of the drow’s lavender eyes. “Bruenor’s Climb?” the dwarf asked with a resigned shrug. “What’s it mean, drow, to put a name on a pile o’ rocks? Thought I knowed, I did, an’ thought a dog’d taste good.” Bruenor rubbed a hand over his belly and frowned. “Call it a pile o’ rocks then, an’ I’ve no claim on it more’n yerself! Call it Drizzt’s Climb then, an’ ye’d be kicking me out!”
“I would not,” Drizzt replied quietly. “I do not know that I could if I wished to!”
“Call it what ye will!” Bruenor cried, suddenly distressed. “And call a dog a cow—that don’t change the way the thing’ll taste!” Bruenor threw up his hands, flustered, and turned away, stomping down the rock path, grumbling with every step.
“And ye be keepin’ yer eyes on me girl,” Drizzt heard Bruenor snarl above his general grumbles, “if she’s so orc-headed as to keep goin’ to the stinkin’ yeti an’ worm-filled mountain! Be knowin’ that I hold yerself… ” The rest faded away as Bruenor disappeared around a bend.
Drizzt couldn’t begin to dig his way through that rambling dialogue, but he didn’t need to put Bruenor’s speech in perfect order. He dropped a hand on Guenhwyvar, hoping that the panther shared the suddenly wondrous panoramic view. Drizzt knew then that he would sit up on the climb, Bruenor’s Climb, many times and watch the lights flicker to life, for, adding up all that the dwarf had said, Drizzt surmised one phrase clearly, words he had waited so many years to hear:
Welcome home.
Epilogue
Of all the races in the known realms, none is more confusing, or more confused, than humans. Mooshie convinced me that gods, rather than being outside entities, are personifications of what lies in our hearts. If this is true, then the many, varied gods of the human sects—deities of vastly different demeanors—reveal much about the race.
If you approach a halfling, or an elf, or a dwarf, or any of the other races, good and bad, you have a fair idea of what to expect. There are exceptions, of course; I name myself as one most fervently! But a dwarf is likely to be gruff, though fair, and I have never met an elf, or even heard of one, that preferred a cave to the open sky. A human’s preference, though, is his own to know—if even he can sort it out.
In terms of good and evil, then, the human race must be judged most carefully. I have battled vile human assassins, witnessed human wizards so caught up in their power that they mercilessly destroyed all other beings in their paths, and seen cities where groups of humans preyed upon the unfortunate of their own race, living in kingly palaces while other men and women, and even children, starved and died in the gutters of the muddy streets. But I have met other humans—Catti-brie, Mooshie, Wulfgar, Agorwal of Termalaine—whose honor could not be questioned and whose contributions to the good of the realms in their short life spans will outweigh that of most dwarves and elves who might live a half a millennium and more.
They are indeed a confusing race, and the fate of the world comes more and more into their ever-reaching hands. It may prove a delicate balance, but certainly not a dull one. Humans encompass the spectrum of character more fully than any other beings; they are the only “goodly” race that wages war upon itself—with alarming frequency.
The surface elves hold out hope in the end. They who have lived the longest and seen the birth of many centuries take faith that the human race will mature to goodness, that the evil in it will crush itself to nothingness, leaving the world to those who remain.
In the city of my birth I witnessed the limitations of evil, the self-destruction and inability to achieve higher goals, even goals based upon the acquisition of power. For this reason, I, too, will hold out hope for the humans, and for the realms. As they are the most varied, so too are humans the most malleable, the most able to disagree with that within themselves that they learn to be false.
My very survival has been based upon my belief that there is a higher purpose to this life: that principles are a reward in and of themselves. I cannot, therefore, look forward in despair, but rather with higher hopes for all in mind and with the determination that I might help to reach those heights.
This is my tale, then, told as completely as I can recall and as completely as I choose to divulge. Mine has been a long road filled with ruts and barriers, and only now that I have put so much so far behind me am I able to recount it honestly.
I will never look back on those days and laugh; the toll was too great for humor to seep through. I do often remember Zaknafein, though, and Belwar and Mooshie, and all the other friends I have left behind.
I have often wondered, too, of the many enemies I have faced, of the many lives my blades have ended. Mine has been a violent life in a violent world, full of enemies to myself and to all that I hold dear. I have been praised for the perfect cut of my scimitars, for my abilities in battle and I must admit that I have many times allowed myself to feel pride in those hard-earned skills.
Whenever I remove myself from the excitement and consider the whole more fully, though, I lament that things could not have been different. It pains me to remember Masoj Hun’ett, the only drow I ever killed; it was he who initiated our battle and he certainly would have killed me if I had not proven the stronger. I can justify my actions on that fated day, but never will I be comfortable with their necessity. There should be a better way than the sword.