The Dark Elf Trilogy: Sojourn
14. Montolio's Test

 
"Well, I have waited long enough!" Montolio said sternly late one afternoon. He gave the drow another shake.
"Waited?" Drizzt asked, wiping the sleep from his eyes.
"Are you a fighter or a wizard?" Montolio went on. "Or both? One of those multitalented types? The elves of the surface are known for that."
Drizzt's expression twisted in confusion. "I am no wizard," he said with a laugh.
"Keeping secrets, are you?" Montolio scolded, though his continuing smirk lessened his gruff facade. He pointedly straightened himself outside of Drizzt's bedroom hole and folded his arms over his chest. "That will not do. I have taken you in, and if you are a wizard, I must be told!"
"Why do you say that?" asked the perplexed drow. "Wherever did you - "
"Hooter told me!" Montolio blurted. Drizzt was truly confused. "In the fight when first we met," Montolio explained, "you darkened the area around yourself and some orcs. Do not deny it, wizard. Hooter told me!"
"That was no wizard's spell," Drizzt protested helplessly, "and I am no wizard."
"No spell?" echoed Montolio. "A device then? Well, let me see it!"
"Not a device," Drizzt replied, "an ability. All drow, even the lowest ranking, can create globes of darkness. It is not such a difficult task."
Montolio considered the revelation for a moment. He had no experience with dark elves before Drizzt had come into his life. "What other 'abilities' do you possess?"
"Faerie fire," Drizzt replied. "It is a line of - "
"I know of the spell," Montolio said to him. "It is commonly used by woodland priests. Can all drow create this as well?"
"I do not know," Drizzt answered honestly. "Also, I am, or was - able to levitate. Only drow nobles can accomplish that feat. I fear that the power is lost to me, or soon shall be. That ability has begun to fail me since I came to the surface, as my piwafwi, my boots, and my drow-crafted scimitars have failed me."
"Try it," Montolio offered.
Drizzt concentrated for a long moment. He felt himself growing lighter, then he lifted off the ground. As soon as he got up, though, his weight returned and he settled back to his feet. He rose no more than three inches.
"Impressive," Montolio muttered.
Drizzt only laughed and shook his white mane. "May I go back to sleep now?" he asked, turning back to his bedroll.
Montolio had other ideas. He had come to further feel out his companion, to find the limits of Drizzt's abilities, wizardly and otherwise. A new plan came to the ranger, but he had to set it into motion before the sun went down.
"Wait," he bade Drizzt. "You can rest later, after sunset. I need you now, and your 'abilities.' Could you summon a globe of darkness, or must you take time to contemplate the spell?"
"A few seconds," Drizzt replied.
"Then get your armor and weapons," Montolio said, "and come with me. Be quick about it. I do not want to lose the advantage of daylight."
Drizzt shrugged and got dressed, then followed the ranger to the grove's northern end, a little used section of the woodland complex.
Montolio dropped to his knees and pulled Drizzt down beside him, pointing out a small hole on the side of a grassy mound.
"A wild boar has taken to living in there," the old ranger explained. "I do not wish to harm it, but I fear to get close enough to make contact with the thing. Boars are unpredictable at best."
A long moment of silence passed. Drizzt wondered if Montolio simply meant to wait for the boar to emerge.
"Go ahead then," the ranger prompted.
Drizzt turned on him incredulously, thinking that Montolio expected him to walk right up and greet their uninvited and unpredictable guest.
"Do it," the ranger continued. "Enact your darkness globe - right in front of the hole - if you please."
Drizzt understood, and his relieved sigh made Montolio bite his lip to hide his revealing chuckle. A moment later, the area before the grassy mound disappeared in blackness. Montolio motioned for Drizzt to wait behind and headed in.
Drizzt tensed, watching and listening. Several high-pitched squeals issued forth suddenly, then Montolio cried out in distress. Drizzt leaped up and charged in headlong, nearly tripping over his friend's prostrate form.
The old ranger groaned and squirmed and did not answer any of the drow's quiet calls. With no boar to be heard anywhere about, Drizzt dropped down to find out what had happened and recoiled when he found Montolio curled up, clutching at his chest.
"Montolio," Drizzt breathed, thinking the old man seriously wounded. He leaned over to speak directly into the ranger's face, then straightened quicker than he had intended as Montolio's shield slammed into the side of his head.
"It is Drizzt!" the drow cried, rubbing his developing bruise. He heard Montolio jump up before him, then heard the ranger's sword come out of its scabbard.
"Of course it is!" Montolio cackled.
"But what of the boar?"
"Boar?" Montolio echoed. "There is no boar, you silly drow. There never was one. We are the opponents here. The time has come for some fun!"
Now Drizzt fully understood. Montolio had manipulated him to use his darkness merely to take away his advantage of sight. Montolio was challenging him, on even terms. "Flat of the blade!" Drizzt replied, quite willing to play along. How Drizzt had loved such tests of skill back in Menzoberranzan with Zaknafein!
"For the sake of your life!" Montolio retorted with a laugh that came straight from his belly. The ranger sent his sword arcing in, and Drizzt's scimitar drove it harmlessly wide.
Drizzt countered with two rapid and short strokes straight up the middle, an attack that would have defeated most foes but did no more than play a two-note tune on Montolio's well-positioned shield. Certain of Drizzt's location, the ranger shield-rushed straight ahead.
Drizzt was pushed back on his heels before he managed to get out of the way. Montolio's sword came in again from the side, and Drizzt blocked it. The old man's shield slammed straight ahead again, and Drizzt deflected its momentum, digging his heels in stubbornly.
The crafty old ranger thrust the shield up high then, taking one of Drizzt's blades, and a good measure of the drow's balance, along with it, then sent his sword screaming across at Drizzt's midsection.
Drizzt somehow sensed the attack. He leaped back on his toes, sucked in his gut, and threw his rump out behind him. For all his desperation, he still felt the rush as the sword whisked past.
Drizzt went to the offensive, launching several cunning and intricate routines that he believed would end this contest. Montolio anticipated each one, though, for all of Drizzt's efforts were rewarded with the same sound of scimitar on shield. The ranger came on then and Drizzt was sorely pressed. The drow was no novice to blind-fighting, but Montolio lived every hour of every day as a blind man and functioned as well and as easily as most men with perfect vision.
Soon Drizzt realized that he could not win in the globe. He thought of moving the ranger out of the spell's area, but then the situation changed suddenly as the darkness expired. Thinking the game over, Drizzt backed up several steps, feeling his way with his feet up a rising tree root.
Montolio regarded his opponent curiously for a moment, noting the change in fighting attitude, then came on, hard and low.
Drizzt thought himself very clever as he dove headlong over the ranger, meaning to roll to his feet behind Montolio and come back in from one side or the other as the confused human spun about, disoriented.
Drizzt didn't get what he expected, though. Montolio's shield met the drow's face as he was halfway over, and Drizzt groaned and fell heavily to the ground. By the time he shook the dizziness away, he became aware that Montolio was sitting comfortably on his back, sword resting across Drizzt's shoulders.
"How... " Drizzt started to ask.
Montolio's voice was as sharp-edged as Drizzt had ever heard it. "You underestimated me, drow. You considered me blind and helpless. Never do that again!"
Drizzt honestly wondered, for just a split second, if Montolio meant to kill him, so angry was the ranger. He knew that his condescension had wounded the man, and he realized then that Montolio DeBrouchee, so confident and able, carried his own weight upon his old shoulders. For the first time since he had met the ranger, Drizzt considered how painful it must have been for the man to lose his sight. What else, Drizzt wondered, had Montolio lost?
"So obvious," Montolio said after a short pause. His voice had softened again. "With me charging in low, as I did."
"Obvious only if you sensed that the darkness spell had ended," Drizzt replied, wondering how disabled Montolio truly was. "I would never have attempted the diving maneuver in the darkness, without my eyes to guide me, yet how could a blind man know that the spell was no more?"
"You told me yourself!" Montolio protested, still making no move to get off Drizzt's back. "In attitude! The sudden shuffle of your feet - too lightly to be made in absolute blackness - and your sigh, drow! That sigh belied your relief, though you knew by then that you could not best me without your sight."
Montolio got up from Drizzt, but the drow remained prone, digesting the revelations. He realized how little he knew about his companion, how much he had taken for granted where Montolio was concerned.
"Come along, then," Montolio said. "This night's first lesson is ended. It was a valuable one, but there are other things we must accomplish."
"You said that I could sleep," Driazt reminded him.
"I had thought you more competent," Montolio replied immediately, casting a smirk the prone draw's way.
* * *
While Drizzt eagerly absorbed the many lessons Montolio set out for him, that night and in the days that followed, the old ranger gathered his own information about the drow. Their work was most concerned with the present, Montolio teaching Drizzt about the world around him and, how to survive in it. Invariably one or the other, usually Drizzt, would slip in some comment about his past. It became almost a game between the two, remarking on some distant event, more to measure the shocked expression of the other than to make any relevant point. Montolio had some fine anecdotes about his many years on the road, tales of valorous battles against goblins and humorous pranks that the usually serious-minded rangers often played on one another. Drizzt remained a bit guarded about his own past, but still his tales of Menzoberranzan, of the sinister and insidious Academy and the savage wars pitting family against family, went far beyond anything Montolio had ever imagined.
As great as the drow's tales were, though, Montolio knew that Drizzt was holding back, was carrying some great burden on his shoulders. The ranger didn't press Drizzt at first. He kept his patience, satisfied that he and Drizzt shared principles and - as he came to know with the drastic improvement of Drizzt's ranger skills - a similar way of viewing the world.
One night, beneath the moon's silvery light, Drizzt and Montolio rested back in wooden chairs that the ranger had constructed high in the boughs of a large evergreen. The brightness of the waning moon, as it dipped and dodged behind fast-moving, scattered clouds, enchanted the drow.
Montolio couldn't see the moon, of course, but the old ranger, with Guenhwyvar comfortably draped across his lap, enjoyed the brisk night no less. He rubbed a hand absently through the thick fur on Guenhwyvar's muscled neck and listened to the many sounds carried on the breeze, the chatter of a thousand creatures that the drow never even noticed, even though Drizzt's hearing was superior to Montolio's. Montolio chuckled every now and again, once when he heard a field mouse squealing angrily at an owl - Hooter probably - for interrupting its meal and forcing it to flee into its hole.
Looking at the ranger and Guenhwyvar, so at ease and accepting of one another, Drizzt felt the pangs of friendship and guilt. "Perhaps I should never have come," he whispered, turning his gaze back to the moon.
"Why?" Montolio asked quietly. "You do not like my food?" His smile disarmed Drizzt as the drow turned back to him somberly.
"To the surface, I mean," Drizzt explained, managing a laugh in spite of his melancholy. "Sometimes I think my choice a selfish act."
"Survival usually is," Montolio replied. "I have felt that way myself on some occasions. I was once forced to drive my sword into a man's heart. The harshness of the world brings great remorse, but mercifully it is a passing lament and certainly not one to carry into battle."
"How I wish it would pass," Drizzt remarked, more to himself or to the moon than to Montolio.
But the remark hit Montolio squarely. The closer he and Drizzt had become, the more the ranger shared Drizzt's unknown burden. The drow was young by elf standards but was already world-wise and skilled in battle beyond most professional soldiers. Undeniably one of Drizzt's dark heritage would find barriers in an unaccepting surface world. By Montolio's estimation, though, Drizzt should be able to get through these prejudices and live a long and prosperous life, given his considerable talents. What was it, Montolio wondered, that so burdens this elf? Drizzt suffered more than he smiled and punished himself more than he should.
"Is yours an honest lament?" Montolio asked him. "Most are not, you know. Most self-imposed burdens are founded on misperceptions. We - at least we of sincere characterDalways judge ourselves by stricter standards than we expect others to abide by. It is a curse, I suppose, or a blessing, depending on how one views it." He cast his sightless gaze Drizzt's way. "Take it as a blessing, my friend, an inner calling that forces you to strive to unattainable heights."
"A frustrating blessing" Drizzt replied casually.
"Only when you do not pause to consider the advances that the striving has brought to you," Montolio was quick to reply, as though he had expected the drow's words. "Those who aspire to less accomplish less. There can be no doubt. It is better, I think, to grab at the stars than to sit flustered because you know you cannot reach them." He shot Drizzt his typical wry smile. "At least he who reaches will get a good stretch, a good view, and perhaps even a low-hanging apple for his effort!"
"And perhaps also a low-flying arrow fired by some unseen assailant," Drizzt remarked sourly.
Montolio tilted his head helplessly against Drizzt's unending stream of pessimism. It pained him deeply to see the good-hearted drow so scarred. "He might indeed," Montolio said, a bit more harshly than he had intended, "but the loss of life is only great to those who chance to live it! Let your arrow come in low and catch the huddler on the ground, I say. His death would not be so tragic!"
Drizzt could not deny the logic, nor the comfort the old ranger gave to him. Over the last few weeks, Montolio's offhanded philosophies and way of looking at the world - pragmatically yet heavily edged with youthful exuberance, put Drizzt more at ease than he had been since his earliest training days in Zaknafein's gymnasium. But Drizzt also could not deny the inevitably short life span of that comfort. Words could soothe, but they could not erase the haunting memories of Drizzt's past, the distant voices of dead Zaknafein, dead Clacker, and the dead farmers. A single mental echo of "drizzit" vanquished hours of Montolio's well-intended advice.
"Enough of this cockeyed banter," Montolio went on, seeming perturbed. "I call you friend, Drizzt Do'Urden, and I hope you call me the same. What sort of friend might I be against this weight that stoops your shoulders unless I know more of it? I am your friend, or I am not. The decision is yours, but if I am not, then I see no purpose in sharing nights as wondrous as this beside you. Tell me, Drizzt, or be gone from my home!"
Drizzt could hardly believe that Montolio, normally so patient and relaxed, had put him on such a spot. The drow's first reaction was to recoil, to build a wall of anger in the face of the old man's presumptions and cling to that which he considered personal. As the moments passed, though, and Drizzt got beyond his initial surprise and took the time to sift through Montolio's statement, he came to understand one basic truth that excused those presumptions: He and Montolio had indeed become friends, mostly through the ranger's efforts.
Montolio wanted to share in Drizzt's past, so that he might better understand and comfort his new friend.
"Do you know of Menzoberranzan, the city of my birth and of my kin?" Drizzt asked softly. Even speaking the name pained him. "And do you know the ways of my people, or the Spider Queen's edicts?"
Montolio's voice was somber as he replied. "Tell me all of it, I beg,"
Drizzt nodded - Montolio sensed the motion even if he could not see it - and relaxed against the tree. He stared at the moon but actually looked right past it. His mind wandered back through his adventures, back down that road to Menzoberranzan, to the Academy, and to House Do'Urden. He held his thoughts there for a while, lingering on the complexities of drow family life and on the welcomed simplicity of his times in the training room with Zaknafein.
Montolio watched patiently, guessing that Drizzt was looking for a place to begin. From what he had learned from Drizzt's passing remarks, Drizzt's life had been filled with adventure and turbulent times, and Montolio knew that it would be no easy feat for Drizzt, with his still limited command of the common tongue, to accurately recount all of it. Also, given the burdens, the guilt and the sorrow, the drow obviously carried, Montolio suspected that Drizzt might be hesitant.
"I was born on an important day in the history of my family," Drizzt began. "On that day, House Do'Urden eliminated House DeVir."
"Eliminated?"
"Massacred," Drizzt explained. Montolio's blind eyes revealed nothing, but the ranger's expression was clearly one of revulsion, as Drizzt had expected. Drizzt wanted his companion to understand the horrible depths of drow society, so he pointedly added, "And on that day, too, my brother Dinin drove his sword through the heart of our other brother, Nalfein."
A shudder coursed up Montolio's spine and he shook his head. He realized that he was only just beginning to understand the burdens Drizzt carried.
"It is the drow way," Drizzt said calmly, matter-of-factly, trying to impart the dark elves' casual attitude toward murder. "There is a strict structure of rank in Menzoberranzan. To climb it, to attain a higher rank, whether as an individual or a family, you simply eliminate those above you."
A slight quiver in his voice betrayed Drizzt to the ranger. Montolio clearly understood that Drizzt did not accept the evil practices, and never had.
Drizzt went on with his story, telling it completely and accurately, at least for the more than forty years he had spent in the Underdark. He told of his days under the strict tutelage of his sister Vierna, cleaning the house chapel endlessly and learning of his innate powers and his place in drow society. Drizzt spent a long time explaining that peculiar social structure to Montolio, the hierarchies based on strict rank, and the hypocrisy of drow "law," a cruel facade screening a city of utter chaos. The ranger cringed as he heard of the family wars. They were brutal conflicts that allowed for no noble survivors, not even children. Montolio cringed even more when Drizzt told him of drow "justice," of the destruction wreaked upon a house that had failed in its attempt to eradicate another family.
The tale was less grim when Drizzt told of Zaknafein, his father and dearest friend. Of course, Drizzt's happy memories of his father became only a short reprieve, a prelude to the horrors of Zaknafein's demise. "My mother killed my father," Drizzt explained soberly, his deep pain evident, "sacrificed him to Lloth for my crimes, then animated his corpse and sent it out to kill me, to punish me for betraying the family and the Spider Queen."
It took a while for Drizzt to resume, but when he did, he again spoke truthfully, even revealing his own failures in his days alone in the wilds of the Underdark. "I feared that I had lost myself and my principles to some instinctive, savage monster," Drizzt said, verging on despair. But then the emotional wave that had been his existence rose again, and a smile found his face as he recounted his time beside Belwar, the most honored svirfneblin burrow-warden, and Clacker, the pech who had been polymorphed into a hook horror. Expectedly, the smile proved short-lived, for Drizzt's tale eventually led him to where Clacker fell to Matron Malice's undead monster. Another friend had died on Drizzt's behalf.
Appropriately, by the time Drizzt came to his exit from the Underdark, the dawn peeked through the eastern mountains. Now Drizzt picked his words more carefully, not ready to divulge the tragedy of the farming family for fear that Montolio would judge him and blame him, destroying their newfound bond. Rationally, Drizzt could remind himself that he had not killed the farmers, had even avenged their deaths, but guilt was rarely a rational emotion, and Drizzt simply could not find the words - not yet.
Montolio, aged and wise and with animal scouts throughout the region, knew that Drizzt was concealing something. When they had first met, the drow had mentioned a doomed farming family, and Montolio had heard of a family slaughtered in the village of Maldobar. Montolio didn't believe for a minute that Drizzt could have done it, but he suspected that the drow was somehow involved. He didn't press Drizzt, though. Drizzt had been more honest, and more complete, than Montolio had expected, and the ranger was confident that the drow would fill in the obvious holes in his own time.
"It is a good tale," Montolio said at length. "You have been through more in your few decades than most elves will know in three hundred years. But the scars are few, and they will heal."
Drizzt, not so certain, put a lamenting look upon him, and Montolio could only offer a comforting pat on the shoulder as he rose and headed off for bed.
* * *
Drizzt was still asleep when Montolio roused Hooter and tied a thick note to the owl's leg. Hooter wasn't so pleased at the ranger's instructions; the journey could take a week, valuable and enjoyable time at this height of the mousing and mating season. For all its whining hoots, however, the owl would not disobey.
Hooter ruffled its feathers, caught the first gust of wind, and soared effortlessly across the snow-covered range to the passes that would take it to Maldobar - and beyond that to Sundabar, if need be. A certain ranger of no small fame, a sister of the Lady of Silverymoon, was still in the region, Montolio knew through his animal connections, and he charged Hooter with seeking her out.
* * *
"Will-there-be-no-end-to-it?" the sprite whined, watching the burly human pass along the trail. "First-the-nasty-drow-and-now-this-brute! Am-I-never-to-be-rid-of-these-trouble-makers?" Tephanis slapped his head and stamped his feet so rapidly that he dug himself a little hole.
Down on the trail, the big, scarred yellow dog growled and bared its teeth, and Tephanis, realizing that his pouting had been too loud, zipped in a wide semicircle, crossing the trail far behind the traveler and coming up on the other flank. The yellow dog, still looking in the opposite direction, cocked its head and whimpered in confusion.