But she could not. Drizzt Do'Urden, after all, was a small player in a wide world, a world that continually begged audience at the Lady of Silverymoon's busy court.
"Good speed, daughter of Bruenor," the beautiful, silver-haired woman said under her breath. "Good speed and fare well."
Drizzt eased his mount along the stony trail, ascending into the mountains. The breeze was warm and the sky clear, but a storm had hit this region in the last few days, and the trail remained somewhat muddy. Finally, fearing that his horse would slip and break a leg, Drizzt dismounted and led the beast carefully, cautiously.
He had seen the shadowing elf many times that morning, for the trails were fairly open, and in the up-and-down process of climbing mountains, the two riders were not often far apart. Drizzt was not overly surprised when he went around a bend to find the elf approaching from a trail that had been paralleling his own.
The pale-skinned elf, too, walked his mount, and he nodded in approval to see Drizzt doing likewise. He paused, still twenty feet from the drow, as though he did not know how he should react.
"If you have come to watch over the horse, then you might as well ride, or walk, beside me," Drizzt called. Again the elf nodded, and he walked his shining black stallion up to the side of Drizzt's black-and-white mount.
Drizzt looked ahead, up the mountain trail. "This will be the last day I will need the horse," he explained. "I do not know that I will ride again, actually."
"You do not mean to come out of these mountains?" the elf asked.
Drizzt ran a hand through his flowing white mane, surprised by the finality of those words, and by their truth.
"I seek a grove not far from here," he said, "once the home of Montolio DeBrouchee."
"The blind ranger," the elf acknowledged.
Drizzt was surprised by the elf's recognition. He considered his pale companion's reply and studied him closely. Nothing about the moon elf indicated that he was a ranger, but he knew of Montolio. 'It is fitting that the name Montolio DeBrouchee lives on in legend," the drow decided aloud.
"And what of the name Drizzt Do'Urden?" the moon elf, full of surprises, asked. He smiled at Drizzt's expression and added, "Yes, I know of you, dark elf."
"Then you have the advantage," Drizzt remarked.
"I am Tarathiel," the moon elf said. "It was no accident that you were met on your passage through the Moonwood. When my small clan discovered that you were afoot, we decided that it would be best for Ellifain to meet you."
"The maiden?" Drizzt reasoned.
Tarathiel nodded, his features seeming almost translucent in the sunlight. "We did not know how she would react to the sight of a drow. You have our apologies."
Drizzt nodded his acceptance. "She is not of your clan," he guessed. "Or at least, she was not, not when she was very young."
Tarathiel did not reply, but the intrigue that was splayed across his face showed Drizzt that he was on the right track.
"Her people were slaughtered by drow," Drizzt went on, fearing the expected confirmation.
"What do you know?" Tarathiel demanded, his voice taking a hard edge for the first time in the conversation.
"I was among that raiding party," Drizzt admitted. Tarathiel went for his sword, but Drizzt, lightning fast, grabbed hold of his wrist.
"I killed no elves," Drizzt explained. "The only ones I wanted to fight were those who had accompanied me to the surface."
Tarathiel's muscles relaxed, and he pulled his hand away. "Ellifain remembers little of the tragedy. She speaks of it more in dreams than in her waking hours, and then she rambles." He paused and stared Drizzt squarely in the eye.
"She has mentioned purple eyes," he said. "We did not know what to make of that, and she, when questioned about it, cannot offer any answers. Purple is not a common color for drow eyes, so say our legends."
"It is not," Drizzt confirmed, and his voice was distant as he remembered again that terrible day so long ago. This was the elf maiden! The one that a younger Drizzt Do'Urden had risked all to save, the one whose eyes had shown Drizzt beyond doubt that the ways of his people were not the ways of his heart.
"And so, when we heard of Drizzt Do'Urden, drow friend—drow friend with purple eyes—of the dwarven king that has reclaimed Mithril Hall, we thought that it would be best for Ellifain to face her past," Tarathiel explained.
Again Drizzt, his mind looking more to the past than to the mountain scenery about him, merely nodded.
Tarathiel let it go at that. Ellifain had, apparently, viewed her past, and the sight had nearly broken her.
The moon elf refused Drizzt's request for him to take the horses and leave and, later that day, the two were riding again, along a narrow trail on a high pass, a way that Drizzt remembered well. He thought of Montolio, Mooshie, his surface mentor, the blind old ranger who could shoot a bow by the guidance of a pet owl's hoots. Montolio had been the one to teach a younger Drizzt of a god figure that embodied the same emotions that stirred Drizzt's heart and the same precepts that guided the renegade draw's conscience. Mielikki was her name, goddess of the forest, and since his time with Montolio, Drizzt Do'Urden had walked under her silent guidance.
Drizzt felt a wellspring of emotions bubbling within him as the trail wound away from the ridge and climbed a steeper incline through a region of broken boulders. He was terrified of what he might find. Perhaps an orc horde—the wretched humanoids were all too common in this region— had taken over the old ranger's wondrous grove. Suppose a fire had burned it away, leaving a barren scar upon the land?
They came into a thick copse of trees, plodding along a narrow but fairly clean trail, with Drizzt in the lead. He saw the wood thinning ahead, and beyond it a small field. He stopped his black-and-white horse and glanced back at Tarathiel.
"The grove," he explained, and he slipped from his saddle, Tarathiel doing likewise. They tethered the horses under the cover of the copse and crept side by side to the wood's end.
There stood Mooshie's grove, perhaps sixty yards across, north to south, and half that wide. The pines stood tall and straight—no fire had struck this grove—and the rope bridges that the blind ranger had constructed could still be seen running from tree to tree at various heights. Even the low stone wall stood intact, not a rock out of place, and the grass was low.
"Someone is living in there," Tarathiel reasoned, for the place had obviously not grown wild. When he looked to Drizzt, he saw that the drow, features set and grim, had scimitars in his hands, one glowing a soft bluish light.
Tarathiel strung his long bow as Drizzt crawled out from the brush and skittered over to the rock wall. Then the moon elf rushed off, joining his drow companion.
"I have seen the signs of many orcs since we entered the mountains," Tarathiel whispered. He pulled back on his bowstring and nodded grimly. "For Montolio?"
Drizzt returned the nod and inched up to peek over the stone wall. He expected to see orcs, and expected to see dead orcs soon after.
The drow froze in place, his arms falling limply at his sides and his breath suddenly hard to come by.
Tarathiel nudged him, looking for an answer, but with none forthcoming, the elf took up his bow and peeked over the wall.
At first he saw nothing, but then he followed Drizzt's unblinking gaze to the south, to a small break in the trees, where a branch was bobbing as though something had just brushed against it. Tarathiel caught a flash of white from the shadows beyond. A horse, he thought.
It came from the shadows then, a powerful steed wearing a coat of gleaming white. Its unusual eyes glowed fiery pink, and an ivory horn, easily half the height of the elf's body, protruded from its forehead. The unicorn looked in the companions' general direction, pawed the ground, and snorted.