“You are drow, not goblin,” he said, as if that fact explained everything.
“By your own words, you are no more akin to goblins than I am to drow,” I reminded him.
“Who can tell?” he replied with a shrug, a helpless gesture that pained me deeply. “Am I to tell Rico that I am not a goblin in heart and action, just a victim of merciless fate? Do you think that he would believe me? Do you think that sort of understanding is within the grasp of these simple farmer folk?”
“Are you afraid to try?” I asked him.
“Yes!” His intensity was surprising. “I’m not Rico’s first slave,” he said. “He’s held goblins, orcs, even a bugbear once. He enjoys forcing others to do his own work, you see. Yet, how many of these other slaves did you see when you came into Rico’s compound, Drizzt Do’Urden?”
He knew that I had not seen any, and I was not surprised by his explanation. I was beginning to hate this Rico Pengallen more than a little.
“Rico finished with them,” Nojheim went on. “They lost their ability to survive. They lost their usefulness. Did you notice the high cross-pole beside the front gate?”
I shuddered when I pictured what use that cross-pole might have been put to.
“I’m alive, and I’ll stay alive,” Nojheim declared. Then, for the first time, the determined goblin allowed his guard to slip down, his sullen expression betraying his words.
“You wish that the raiding ogres would have killed you,” I said to him, and he offered no argument.
For some time we sat in silence, silence that weighed heavily on both of us. I knew that I could not let this injustice stand, could not turn my back on one-even a goblin-who so obviously needed help. I considered the courses open to me and came to the conclusion that to truly remedy this injustice, I must use what influence I could. Like most of the farming villages in the region, Pengallen was not an independent community. The people here were within the general protection of, and therefore, under the overseeing law of the greater cities nearby. I could appeal to Alustriel, who ruled Silverymoon, and to Bruenor Battlehammer, the nearest king and my dearest friend.
“Perhaps some day I will find the strength to stand against Rico,” Nojheim said unexpectedly, pulling me from my contemplations. I remember his next words vividly. “I am not a courageous goblin. I prefer to live, though oftentimes I wonder what my life is truly worth.”
My father could have said those very words. My father, Zak’nafein, too, was a slave, though a slave of a different sort. Zak’nafein lived well in Menzoberranzan, but he detested the dark elves and their evil ways. He saw no escape, though, no way out of the drow city. For lack of courage, he lived his life as a drow warrior, survived by following those same codes that were so abhorrent to him.
I tried to remind Nojheim again that I had escaped a similar fate, that I had walked out of a desperate situation. I explained that I had traveled among peoples who surely hated me and feared me for the reputation of my heritage.
“You are drow, not any goblin,” he replied again, and this time I began to understand the meaning behind his words. “They will never understand that I am not evil in heart, as are other goblins. I don’t even understand it!”
“But you believe it,” I said firmly.
“Am I to tell them that this goblin is not an evil sort?”
“Exactly that!” I argued. It seemed reasonable enough to me. I thought that I had found the opening I needed.
Nojheim promptly closed that door, promptly taught me something about myself and about the world that I had not previously considered.
“What is the difference between us?” I pressed, hoping he would see my understanding of the truth.
“You think yourself persecuted?” the goblin asked. His yellow eyes narrowed, and I knew that he thought he was being shrewd.
“I no longer accept that definition, just as I no longer accept the persecution,” I declared. My pride had suddenly got in the way of understanding what this pitiful wretch was getting at. “People will draw their own judgments, but I will no longer accept their unfair conclusions.”
“You will fight those that do you wrong?” Nojheim asked.
“I will deny them, ignore them, and know in my heart that I am right in my beliefs.”
Nojheim’s smile revealed both an honest happiness that I had found my way, and a deeper sorrow-for himself, I came to know.
“Our situations are not the same,” he insisted. I started to protest, but he stopped me with an upraised hand. “You are drow, exotic, beyond the experiences of the vast majority of people you meet.”
“Almost everyone of the surface has heard horrible tales of the drow,” I tried to reason.
“But they have not dealt directly with drow elves!” Nojheim replied sharply. “You are an oddity to them, strangely beautiful, even by their own standards of beauty. Your features are fine, Drizzt Do’Urden, your eyes penetrating. Even your skin, so black and lustrous, must be considered beautiful by the people of the surface world. I am a goblin, an ugly goblin, in body if not in spirit.”
“If you showed them the truth of that spirit …”
Nojheim’s laughter mocked my concern. “Showed them the truth? A truth that would make them question what they had known all of their lives? Am I to be a dark mirror of their conscience? These people, Rico included, have killed many goblins-probably rightly so,” he quickly added, and that clarification explained to me everything Nojheim had been trying to get through my blind eyes.
If these farmers, many of whom had often battled goblins, and others who had kept goblins as slaves, found just one creature who did not fit into their definitions of the evil race, just one goblin who showed conscience and compassion, intellect and a spirit akin to their own, it might throw their whole existence into chaos. I, myself, felt as though I had been slapped in the face when I’d learned of Nojheim’s true demeanor. Only through my own experiences with my dark elven kin, the overwhelming majority of whom well deserved their evil reputation, was I able to work through that initial turmoil and guilt.
These farmers, though, might not so easily understand Nojheim. They would surely fear him, hate him all the more.
“I am not a courageous being,” Nojheim said again, and though I disagreed, I held that thought private.
“You will leave with me,” I told him. “This night. We will go back to the west, to Mithral Hall.”
“No!”
I looked at him, more hurt than confused.
“I’ll not be hunted again,” he explained, and I guessed from the faraway, pained look he gave me that he was remembering the first time Rico had chased him down.
I could not force Nojheim to comply, but I could not allow this injustice to stand. Was I to openly confront Rico? There were implications, potentially grave, to that course. I knew not what greater powers Pengallen held fealty to. If this village was sponsored by a city not known for tolerance, such as Nesme, to the south and west, then any action I took against its citizens could force trouble between that city and Mithral Hall, since I was, in effect, an emissary of Bruenor Battlehammer.
And so I left Nojheim. In the morning I secured the use of a fine horse and took the only route left open to me. I would go to Silverymoon first, I decided, since Alustriel was among the most respected rulers in all the land. Then, if need be, I would appeal to Bruenor’s strong sense of justice.
I also decided then and there that if neither Alustriel nor Bruenor would act on Nojheim’s behalf, I would take the matter unto myself-whatever the cost.
It took me three days of hard riding to get to Silverymoon. The greeting at the Moorgate, on the city’s western side, was uncommonly polite, the guards welcoming me with all the blessings of Lady Alustriel. It was Alustriel that I needed to see, I told them, and they replied that the Lady of Silverymoon was out of the city, on business with Sundabar, to the east. She would not return for a fortnight.