THE HERO OF ICEWIND DALE
HAIL AND WELL MET,” TIAGO BAENRE SAID TO THE GROUP OF GUARDS WHO had come running when the young warrior and his three dark elf companions approached Bryn Shander’s western gate. He smiled as he spoke, attempting to be disarming here, but the group surely didn’t relax in light of his tone and posture, for surely few cut a more impressive and imposing figure than Tiago Baenre. He wore black leather armor, studded with mithral and accented in swirling designs of platinum leaf. His belt was a cord of woven gold, tied at the hip and hanging down the side of his leg, like a tassel. His fine piwafwi was perfectly black, so rich in hue that it seemed as if the fabric had great depth, like peering hopelessly into a deep Underdark cavern.
But aside from the obvious fit and quality of his clothing, two other items quite clearly marked this drow as someone to be feared. Set in his belt, not in a scabbard but simply through a loop—for who would hide such magnificence as Vidrinath inside a sheath?—rested his amazing sword, its semi-translucent glassteel blade sparkling with the power of the inset diamonds, its curled hilt’s green spider eyes staring at the guards as if it served as some sentient guardian familiar to Tiago. Set on Tiago’s back, Orbcress was sized at that moment to be no more than a small buckler. Whatever its size, the shield spoke of powerful enchantments, for it seemed as if it were fashioned from a block of ice, and closer inspection revealed what seemed to be an intricate spider web encased within.
“Be at ease,” he told the guard more directly with his halting command of the common language of the surface. “I have come in search of a friend, and am no enemy to the folk of Ten-Towns.”
“Drizzt Do’Urden?” one of the guards asked, speaking more to her companions than to the visitors, but Tiago heard, and truly, no words had ever rung sweeter in his ears.
“He is here?”
“Was,” a different guard replied. “Went out to Easthaven a few days ago, and meant to move out east from there, from what I heard.”
“To where?” Tiago asked, and he tried hard not to let his disappointment show—and particularly not in the form of the anger that was suddenly bubbling up inside of him.
The guard shrugged and looked to his fellows, who similarly shook their heads or shrugged, having no answer.
“Not far, and not for long, likely,” replied the woman who had first spoken Drizzt’s name. “Might be to see the barbarian tribes, or might be to hunt. But he’s sure to return soon enough. Nowhere to go east of Ten-Towns.”
That calmed Tiago greatly. “Easthaven?” he asked as sweetly as he could manage.
“A day’s ride down the Eastway,” the woman answered.
Tiago turned to his companions, Ravel, Saribel, and Jearth, and all four wore perplexed expressions.
“To the east,” another guard explained, and he turned back and pointed down the boulevard straight into the heart of the city. “Straight through and straight out Bryn Shander’s eastern gate, to the east.”
“Night is upon us,” the woman explained. “You’ll be wanting lodging.”
Tiago shook his head. “I have arrangements elsewhere. This road, the Eastway, runs out from the other end of this city?”
“Aye,” several answered.
Tiago turned and started back the way he had come, the other three drow moving in his wake, not one of them offered a parting word, or looking back, except for Jearth, whose duty it was to keep the rear guard watch.
“Drizzt Do’Urden,” an excited Tiago whispered when they were out of earshot of the guards.
“Only days ahead of us,” Ravel agreed.
“With nowhere to run,” Saribel remarked, and all four dreamed of the glory they would soon know.
The small, flat-bottomed boat lurched and rolled, and the nervous captain looked at his three passengers, fearing they would punish him severely for the uncomfortable journey. But the seven of them, drow all, didn’t appear at all bothered by the rolling; so dexterous and balanced were they even in this unfamiliar environment that they barely shifted as the deck was jolted repeatedly by the shock of uneven waves.
The captain glanced at the drow more than they regarded him, which gave him some comfort at least. These were proclaimed friends of Drizzt Do’Urden, but something about their demeanor didn’t fit that description. Not that the captain knew Drizzt well, of course, having met him only once on this same ferry route, but the tales of the rogue drow were common about Ten-Towns, particularly Easthaven, which looked out onto the open tundra. Drizzt had been instrumental in forging the peace between Ten-Towns and the barbarian tribes a century before, and that peace held to this day, to say nothing of his legendary exploits in defeating the minions of the infamous Crystal Shard.
Even though few alive in Ten-Towns knew much of present-day Drizzt—indeed, only a couple of elves remaining in Lonelywood were even alive back in the time of Akar Kessell and the Crystal Shard—most would swing wide their doors for him. The nervous captain could hardly believe the same would be true for this particular group of grim-faced drow adventurers.
He was glad then, as he turned his craft around the last stony jut and into the shallow and somewhat protected cove on the lake’s eastern shore. He dropped the single sail and let the current take them, locking the wheel and moving to the anchor and long gangplank set forward. He could typically secure the landing very quickly, having years of practice, but this day, despite the frothing waters, the captain had them in place and with the bridge to the shore up and steady faster than ever before.
He moved far aside, to the front corner of the craft, as the contingent of drow headed away.
“This is the exact location where you left Drizzt?” asked Tiago, coming near the end of the line, with only Jearth behind him.
“Same spot,” the captain replied.
“A tenday ago?”
“To the day, sir.”
“You will await our return in this very place.”
The captain nearly choked on that. He had agreed to, and been paid for, taking them out here, but even with the rough weather, he wanted a day of knucklehead fishing. Indeed, in weather such as this, knucklehead trout were more likely to bite.
“But—” he started to argue, but the drow fixed him with such a stare that he knew that any contrary word from him would likely get him murdered, then and there.
“You will await our return,” Tiago said again.
“H-how long?” the captain stammered.
“Until you die of old age, if need be,” said Tiago. “And then you will return us to Easthaven’s dock, or you will begin a circuitous ferry from that dock to this place as the rest of my force is brought forth.”
The notion that there were more of these dangerous folk around had the hairs on the back of the captain’s neck standing up. What had he stepped into here, he wondered and imagined a drow invasion force burning Easthaven to the ground!
Later that same day, the sun setting low, the captain breathed a sigh of relief when Tiago and the others stepped off his boat again, this time onto Easthaven’s docks. They had found no sign of Drizzt out in the east, and had quickly realized the fool’s errand of trying to pursue the rogue, who knew the region so much better than they, into the open tundra.
So instead, Tiago and a select few remained at the inn in Easthaven, with the bulk of their thirty-warrior force camped in an extra-dimensional space created by Ravel and the other spellspinners, ready for fast recall.
And they waited.
Another tenday passed. Tiago sent out tendrils—Saribel’s priestesses—to Bryn Shander, and hired indigenous scouts to widen his network to encompass the whole of Ten-Towns, including the Battlehammer contingent living under the lone mountain. Ravel and his spellspinners, meanwhile, utilized their divination magic, while Saribel and her kind called out to Lolth’s handmaidens for guidance in their search.
A month slipped by. Tiago hired locals to reach out to the barbarian tribes for word on the missing drow.
Another month passed, with no word of Drizzt, and indeed, even the extra-planar creatures the priestesses and now magic-users he had called upon could find no sign of the rogue. The season began its turn, where the mountain passes would fill with snow and cold, and Icewind Dale would again be isolated from the rest of Faer?n. By the time of the first snowstorm, no caravan moved along the single road connecting Icewind Dale to the lands south of the Spine of the World.
No caravan, perhaps, but the storm did not hinder the approach of a demonic balor, whose every monstrous stride turned the snowpack to steam.