“It’s a more difficult place than Mithral Hall,” said Drizzt.
“But a more simple one,” Regis answered, and it was Drizzt’s turn to smile and nod. “You met with the spokesmen of Bryn Shander?”
Drizzt shook his head. “There was no need,” he explained. “Proprietor Faelfaril knew well of Wulfgar’s journey through Ten-Towns four years ago. I learned everything we need from the innkeeper.”
“And it saved you the trouble of the fanfare you knew would accompany your return.”
“As you avoided it by jumping a wagon north to Lonelywood,” Drizzt retorted.
“I wanted to see it again. It was my home, after all, and for many, many years. Did fat old Faelfaril mention any subsequent visits by Wulfgar?”
Drizzt shook his head. “Our friend came through, praise Tempus, but very briefly before going straightaway out to the tundra, to rejoin his people. The folk of Bryn Shander heard one other mention of him, just one, a short time after that, but nothing definitive and nothing that Faelfaril remembers well.”
“Then he is out there,” Regis said, nodding to the northeast, the open lands where the barbarians roamed. “I’d wager he’s the king of them all by now.”
Drizzt’s expression showed he didn’t agree. “Where he went, where he is, is not known in Bryn Shander, and perhaps Wulfgar has become chieftain of the Tribe of the Elk, his people. But the tribes are no longer united, and have not been for years. They have only occasional and very minor dealings with the folk of Ten-Towns at all, and Faelfaril assured me that were it not for the occasional campfires seen in the distance, the folk of Ten-Towns wouldn’t even know that they were constantly surrounded by wandering barbarians.”
Regis furrowed his brow in consternation.
“But neither do they fear the tribes, as they once did,” Drizzt said. “They coexist, and there is relative peace, and that is no small legacy of our friend Wulfgar.”
“Do you think he’s still out there?”
“I know he is.”
“And we’re going to find him,” said Regis.
“Poor friends we would be if we didn’t.”
“It’s getting cold,” the halfling warned.
“Not as cold as the ice cave of a white dragon.”
Regis rubbed Guenhwyvar’s strong neck and chuckled helplessly. “You’ll get me there, too, before this is all done,” he said, “or I’m an unbearded gnome.”
“Unbearded?” Drizzt asked and Regis shrugged.
“Works for Bruenor the other way,” he said.
“A furry-footed gnome, then,” Drizzt offered.
“A hungry halfling,” Regis corrected. “If we’re going out there, we’ll need ample supplies. Buy some saddlebags for your cat, or bend your back, elf.”
Laughing, Drizzt walked over and draped his arm around Regis’s sturdy shoulders, and started turning the halfling to leave. Regis resisted, though, and instead forced Drizzt to pause and take a good long look at Maer Dualdon.
He heard the drow sigh deeply, and knew he’d been taken by the same nostalgic trance, by memories of the years they had known in the simple, beautiful, and deadly splendors of Icewind Dale.
“What are you carving?” Drizzt asked after a long while.
“We’ll both know when it reveals itself,” Regis answered, and Drizzt accepted that inescapable truth with a nod.
They went out that very afternoon, packs heavy with food and extra clothing. They made the base of Kelvin’s Cairn as twilight descended, and found shelter in a shallow cave, one that Drizzt knew very well.
“I’m going up tonight,” Drizzt informed Regis over supper.
“To Bruenor’s Climb?”
“To where it was before the collapse, yes. I will stoke the fire well before I go, I promise, and leave Guenhwyvar beside you until I return.”
“Let it burn low, and keep or release the cat as she needs,” Regis answered. “I’m going with you.”
Surprised, but pleasantly so, Drizzt nodded. He kept Guenhwyvar by his side as he and Regis made a silent ascent to the top of Kelvin’s Cairn. It was a difficult climb, with few trails, and those along icy rocks, but less than an hour later, the companions stepped out from behind one overhang to find that they had reached the peak. The tundra spread wide before them, and stars twinkled all around them.
The three of them stood there in communion with Icewind Dale, in harmony with the cycles of life and death, in contemplation of eternity and a oneness of being with all the great universe, for a long time. They took great comfort in feeling so much a part of something larger than themselves.
And somewhere in the north, a campfire flared to life, seeming like another star.
They each wondered silently if Wulfgar might be sitting beside it, rubbing the cold from his strong hands.
A wolf howled from somewhere unseen, and another answered, then still more took up the nighttime song of Icewind Dale.
Guenhwyvar growled softly, not angered, excited, or uneasy, but simply to speak to the heavens and the wind.
Drizzt crouched beside her and looked across her back to meet Regis’s stare. Each knew well what the other was thinking and feeling and remembering, and there was no need at all for words, so none were spoken.
It was a night that they, all three, would remember for the rest of their lives.
CHAPTER 20
THE BETTER NATURES OF MEN
T his was not my intent,” Captain Deudermont told the gathered Luskar, his strong voice reaching out through the driving rain. “My life was the sea, and perhaps will be again, but for now I accept your call to serve as governor of Luskan.”
The cheering overwhelmed the drumbeat of raindrops.
“Marvelous,” Robillard muttered from the back of the stage—the stage built for Prisoner’s Carnival, the brutal face of Luskar justice.
“I have sailed to many lands and seen many ways,” Deudermont went on and many in the crowd demanded quiet of their peers, for they wanted to savor the man’s every word. “I have known Waterdeep and Baldur’s Gate, Memnon and faraway Calimport, and every port in between. I have seen far better leaders than Arklem Greeth—” the mere mention of the name brought a long hiss from the thousands gathered—“but never have I witnessed a people stronger in courage and character than those I see before me now,” the governor went on, and the cheering erupted anew.
“Would that they would shut up that we might be done with this, and out of the miserable rain,” Robillard grumbled.
“Today I make my first decree,” the governor declared, “that this stage, that this abomination known as Prisoner’s Carnival, is now and forever ended!”
The response—some wild cheering, many curious stares, and more than a few sour expressions—reminded Deudermont of the enormity of the task before him. The carnival was among the most barbaric circuses Deudermont had ever witnessed, where men and women, some guilty, some probably not, were publicly tortured, humiliated, even gruesomely murdered. In Luskan, many called it entertainment.
“I will work with the high captains, who will leave our long-ago battles out to sea, I’m sure,” Deudermont moved along. “Together we will forge from Luskan a shining example of what can be, when the greater and common good is the goal, and the voices of the least are heard as strongly as those of the nobility.”
More cheering made Deudermont pause yet again.
“He is an optimistic sort,” muttered Robillard.
“And why not?” asked Suljack, who sat beside him, the lone high captain who had accepted the invitation to sit on the dais behind Deudermont, and had only committed to do so at the insistence of Kensidan. Being out there, listening to Deudermont, and to the cheers coming back at the dais from the throng of Luskar, had Suljack sitting taller and leaning this way and that with some enthusiasm.