The Legacy: Dungeons & Dragons

Drizzt Do’Urden is hunted by the goddess Lolth in the thrilling first book of The Legacy of the Drow Having found a measure of peace among the dwarves in Mithral Hall, Drizzt Do’Urden begins to know contentment for the first time in his tumultuous life. Bruenor has reclaimed his throne. Regis has been freed from Artemis Entreri. Wulfgar and Catti-brie are to be wed. But for a renegade who hails from the Underdark--where his people, the ruthless drow, are ruled by priestesses of the goddess Lolth--no peace can last forever. It is Lolth herself, the dreaded Queen of the Demonweb Pits, who musters her followers to pour up from the black depths of the Underdark to reclaim the one soul that managed to elude her: Drizzt Do’Urden.

Autorentext

R.A. Salvatore

Leseprobe
Spring Dawning

Drizzt Do’Urden walked slowly along a trail in the jutting southernmost spur of the Spine of the World Mountains, the sky brightening around him. Far away to the south, across the plain to the Evermoors, he noticed the glow of the last lights of some distant city, Nesmé probably, going down, replaced by the growing dawn. When Drizzt turned another bend in the mountain trail, he saw the small town of Settlestone, far below. The barbarians, Wulfgar’s kin from faraway Icewind Dale, were just beginning their morning routines, trying to put the ruins back in order.

Drizzt watched the figures, tiny from this distance, bustle about, and he remembered a time not so long ago when Wulfgar and his proud people roamed the frozen tundra of a land far to the north and west, on the other side of the great mountain range, a thousand miles away.

Spring, the trading season, was fast approaching, and the hardy men and women of Settlestone, working as dealers for the dwarves of Mithral Hall, would soon know more wealth and comfort than they ever would have believed possible in their previous day-­by-­day existence. They had come to Wulfgar’s call, fought valiantly beside the dwarves in the ancient halls, and would soon reap the rewards of their labor, leaving behind their desperate nomadic ways as they had left behind the endless, merciless wind of Icewind Dale.

“How far we have all come,” Drizzt remarked to the chill emptiness of the morning air, and he chuckled at the double-­meaning of his words, considering that he had just returned from Silverymoon, a magnificent city far to the east, a place where the beleaguered drow ranger never before dared to believe that he would find acceptance. Indeed, when he had accompanied Bruenor and the others in their search for Mithral Hall, barely two years before, Drizzt had been turned away from Silverymoon’s decorated gates.

“Ye’ve done a hundred miles in a tenday alone,” came an unexpected answer.

Drizzt instinctively dropped his slender black hands to the hilts of his scimitars, but his mind caught up to his reflexes and he relaxed immediately, recognizing the melodic voice with more than a little of a Dwarvish accent. A moment later, Catti-­brie, the adopted human daughter of Bruenor Battlehammer, came skipping around a rocky outcropping, her thick auburn mane dancing in the mountain wind and her deep blue eyes glittering like wet jewels in the fresh morning light.

Drizzt could not hide his smile at the joyous spring in the young girl’s steps, a vitality that the often vicious battles she had faced over the last few years could not diminish. Nor could Drizzt deny the wave of warmth that rushed over him whenever he saw Catti-­brie, the young woman who knew him better than any. Catti-­brie had understood Drizzt and accepted him for his heart, and not the color of his skin, since their first meeting in a rocky, windswept vale more than a decade before, when she was but half her present age.

The dark elf waited a moment longer, expecting to see Wulfgar, soon to be Catti-­brie’s husband, follow her around the bluff.

“You have come out a fair distance without an escort,” Drizzt remarked when the barbarian did not appear.

Catti-­brie crossed her arms over her chest and leaned on one foot, tapping impatiently with the other. “And ye’re beginning to sound more like me father than me friend,” she replied. “I see no escort walking the trails beside Drizzt Do’Urden.”

“Well spoken,” the drow ranger admitted, his tone respectful and not the least bit sarcastic. The young woman’s scolding had pointedly reminded Drizzt that Catti-­brie could take care of herself. She carried with her a short sword of dwarven make and wore fine armor under her furred cloak, as fine as the suit of chain mail that Bruenor had given to Drizzt! Taulmaril the Heartseeker, the magical bow of Anariel, rested easily over Catti-­brie’s shoulder. Drizzt had never seen a mightier weapon, and even beyond the powerful tools she carried, Catti-­brie had been raised among the sturdy dwarves, by Bruenor himself, as tough as the mountain stone.

“Is it often that ye watch the rising sun?” Catti-­brie asked, noticing Drizzt’s east-­facing stance.

Drizzt found a flat rock to sit upon and bade Catti-­brie to join him. “I have watched the dawn since my first days on the surface,” he explained, throwing his thick forest-­green cloak back over his shoulders. “Though back then, it surely stung my eyes, a reminder of where I came from, I suppose. Now, though, to my relief, I find that I can tolerate the brightness.”

“And well that is,” Catti-­brie replied. She locked the drow’s marvelous eyes with her intense gaze, forced him to look at her, at the same innocent smile he had seen those many years before on a windswept slope in Icewind Dale.

The smile of his first female friend.

“ ’Tis sure that ye belong under the sunlight, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Catti-­brie continued, “as much as any person of any race, by me own measure.”

Drizzt looked back to the dawn and did not answer. Catti-­brie went silent, too, and they sat together for a long while, watching the awakening world.

“I came out to see ye,” Catti-­brie said suddenly. Drizzt regarded her curiously, not understanding.

“Now, I mean,” the young woman explained. “We’d word that ye’d returned to Settlestone, and that ye’d be coming back to Mithral Hall in a few days. I’ve been out here every day since.”

Drizzt’s expression did not change. “You wish to talk with me privately?” he asked, to prompt a reply.

Catti-­brie’s deliberate nod as she turned back to the eastern horizon revealed to Drizzt that something was wrong.

“I’ll not forgive ye if ye miss the wedding,” Catti-­brie said softly. She bit down on her bottom lip as she finished, Drizzt noted, and sniffled, though she tried hard to make it seem like the beginnings of a cold.

Drizzt draped an arm across the beautiful woman’s strong shoulders. “Can you believe for an instant, even if all the trolls of the Evermoors stood between me and the ceremony hall, that I would not attend?”

Catti-­brie turned to him—­fell into his gaze—­and smiled widely, knowing the answer. She threw her arms around Drizzt for a tight hug, then leaped to her feet, pulling him up beside her.

Drizzt tried to equal her relief, or at least to make her believe that he had. Catti-­brie had known all along that he would not miss her wedding to Wulfgar, two of his dearest friends. Why, then, the tears, the sniffle that was not from any budding cold? the perceptive ranger wondere…