He glanced over his shoulder to see Innovindil fiddling with one of the saddlebags on Sunset. The elf produced a silver censer set on a triangle of thin and strong chains. Next came a sprinkler, silver handled, green- jeweled, and with a bulbous head set with a grid of small holes.
Innovindil went back to the saddlebag for the oil and the incense, and Drizzt looked back to Ellifain. He replayed again the last moments of the poor elf’s life, which would have been the last moments of his own life as well had not Bruenor and the others come barging in to his rescue, healing potion in hand.
His reputation had been her undoing, he knew. She could not stand to suffer his growing fame as a drow of goodly heart, because in her warped memories of that brutal evening those decades before, she saw Drizzt as just another of the vile dark elves who had slaughtered her parents and so many of their friends. Drizzt had saved Ellifain on that long-ago night by covering her with the blood and body of her slain mother, but the poor elf girl, too young on that night to remember, had never accepted that story.
Her anger had consumed her, and in a cruel twist of fate, Drizzt had been forced to inadvertently destroy that which he had once saved.
So intent was he as he looked down upon her and considered the winding roads that had so tragically brought them crashing together, Drizzt didn’t even notice Innovindil’s quiet song as she paced around the grave, sprinkling magical oil of preservation and swaying the censer out over the hole so that its scent would mask the smell of death.
Innovindil prayed to the elf gods with her song, bidding them to rescue Ellifain from her rage and confusion.
When Drizzt heard his own name he listened more intently to the elf’s song. Innovindil bade the gods to let Ellifain look down upon the dark elf Drizzt, and see and learn the truth of his heart.
She finished her song so melodiously and quietly that her voice seemed to merge with, to become one with, the nighttime breeze. The notes of that wind-driven song carried Innovindil’s tune long afterward.
She bade Drizzt to help her, then gracefully slipped into the hole beside Ellifain. Together they brought the corpse out and placed a clean second blanket around her, wrapping her tightly and tying it off.
“Do you believe that she is at peace?” Drizzt asked when they were done, both standing back from the body, hand in hand.
“In her infirmity, she remained worthy of Corellan’s gentle hand.”
After a moment, she looked at Drizzt and saw the uncertainty clear upon his handsome features.
“You do not doubt that,” she said. “You doubt Corellan himself.”
Still Drizzt did not answer.
“Is it Corellan specifically?” Innovindil asked. “Or does Drizzt Do’Urden doubt the very existence of an afterlife?”
The question settled uncomfortably on Drizzt’s shoulders, for it took him to places he rarely allowed his pragmatic views to go.
“I do not know,” he replied somberly. “Do any of us really know?”
“Ghosts have been seen, and conversed with. The dead have walked the world again, have they not? With tales to tell of their period in the worlds beyond.”
“We presume ghosts to be … ghosts,” Drizzt replied. “And those returned from the dead are vague, at best, from all that I have heard. Such practices were not unknown among the noble Houses of Menzoberranzan, though it was said that to pull a soul from the embrace of Lolth was to invoke her wrath. Still, are their tales anything more than cloudy dreams?”
Innovindil squeezed his hand and paused for a long while, conceding his point. “Perhaps we believe because to do otherwise is self-defeating, the road to despair. But surely there are things we cannot explain, like the crackling magic about us. If this life is finite, even the long years an elf might know, then …”
“Then it is a cruel joke?” Drizzt asked.
“It would seem.”
Drizzt was shaking his head before she finished. “If this moment of self-awareness is short,” he said, “a flicker in the vastness of all that is, all that has been, and all that will be, then it can still have a purpose, still have pleasure and meaning.”
“There is more, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Innovindil said.
“You know, or you pray?”
“Or I pray because I know.”
“Belief is not knowledge.”
“As perception is not reality?”
Drizzt considered the sarcasm of that question for a long while, then offered a smile of defeat and of thanks all at once.
“I believe that she is at peace,” Innovindil said.
“I have heard of priests resurrecting the dead,” Drizzt said, a remark borne of his uncertainty and frustration. “Surely the life and death of Ellifain is not the ordinary case.”
His hopeful tone faded as he turned to regard his frowning companion.
“I only mean-”
“That your own guilt weighs heavily on you,” Innovindil finished for him.
“No.”
“Do you inquire about the possibility of resurrection for the sake of Ellifain, or for the sake of Drizzt Do’Urden?” Innovindil pressed. “Would you have the priests undo that which Drizzt Do’Urden did, that about which Drizzt Do’Urden cannot forgive himself?”
Drizzt rocked back on his heels, his gaze going back to the small form in the blankets.
“She is at peace,” Innovindil said again, moving around to stand in front of him, forcing him to look her in the eye. “There are spells through which the priests-or wizards, even-can speak with the dead. Perhaps we can impose on the priests of the Moonwood to hold court with the spirit of Ellifain.”
“For the sake of Drizzt Do’Urden?”
“A worthy reason.”
They let it go at that, and set their last camp before they would turn for home. Beyond the mountain ridge to the west, the endless waves crashed against the timeless stones, mocking mortality.
Innovindil used the backdrop of that rhythm to sing her prayers yet again, and Drizzt joined in as he assimilated the words, and it occurred to him that whether or not the prayers drifted to the physical form of a true god, there was in them power, peace, and calm.
In the morning, with Ellifain secured across the wide rump of Sunset, the pair turned for home. The journey would be a longer one, they knew, for winter grew thicker and they would have to walk their mounts more than fly them.
The orc overbalanced as Tos’un knew it would, throwing its cumbersome broadsword out too wildly across its chest. It stumbled to the side and staggered ahead, and Tos’un reversed his retreat to begin a sudden, finishing thrust.
But the drow stopped short as the orc jerked unexpectedly. Tos’un fell back into a defensive crouch, concerned that his opponent, the last of a small group he had ambushed, had feigned the stumble.
The orc jerked again then came forward. Tos’un started to move to block, but recognized that it was no attack. He stepped aside as the orc fell face down, a pair of long arrows protruding from its back. Tos’un looked past the dead brute, across the small encampment, to see a pale-skinned, black-haired elf woman standing calmly, bow in hand.
With no arrow set.
Indeed, Tos’un’s first thought heartily concurred. His eyes flashed and he almost leaped ahead. He could get to her and cut her down before she ever readied that bow, he knew, or before she could draw out the small sword on her hip and ready a proper defense.
The drow didn’t move.
The look on her face helped the drow resist both the sword’s call and his own murderous instincts. Before he
