“There are several ferries from Easthaven’s docks, then,” Drizzt reasoned.
“Nay, just this one,” said the young skipper.
“And the former captain?”
“Long dead, like I telled you.”
“Wait, you said ’73,” Afafrenfere put in.
“Aye, we speak of it as the Year of the Wave, for such a storm blew down from the north that half the waters of Dinneshere took the docks of Easthaven, and most of our fleet as well. Spiblin was too stubborn to run to higher ground, saying he’d save his boat if he had to die doing it. And so he did, to both. Eleven years, it’s been since then.”
“1484?” Drizzt asked, and behind him, Effron sucked in his breath. Drizzt turned around, to see the monk and the tiefling staring at each other.
“By Dalereckoning. It is 1484?” Effron asked the ferryman, who nodded. Effron looked back at the monk and said, “The Year of the Awakened Sleepers.”
They disembarked the ferry at Easthaven’s docks, and indeed these were not the same structures from which they had departed, though remnants of those “old” docks were still to be seen. They didn’t even enter the town, though, despite the late hour, but instead brought forth the nightmare and the unicorn. Drizzt, Dahlia, and Effron on Andahar, the other three on Entreri’s steed, they thundered off down the Eastway, making for Bryn Shander and Kelvin’s Cairn, determining that Clan Battlehammer seemed their best hope for answers.
Another riddle met them the next morning at Bryn Shander’s gate, for they were denied entrance.
“No friend of Ten-Towns drags a demon in his wake, then runs off!” the captain of the Bryn Shander garrison shouted to them from the wall when he at last arrived to the summons of the guards. “What menace chases you here this time, Drizzt Do’Urden?”
“No menace,” Drizzt replied, and he wanted to say much more, but found the words impossible to find. The city looked much the same, but he knew none of the guards, nor the captain, though he had met the captain on his last journey through the city, which seemed only a tenday previous.
“What demon?” Artemis Entreri asked when it became obvious that Drizzt was overwhelmed, and tongue-tied.
“A mighty balor, seeking Drizzt Do’Urden,” the captain replied from on high. “And praise that Master Tiago was around, to slay the demon before our western gate!”
A huzzah went up from the other guards at the mention of … Tiago?
Entreri turned and stared open-mouthed at Drizzt and both shook their heads. “And pray tell, what year was this battle?” Entreri asked the captain of the guard.
The captain looked at him curiously.
“The year?” Entreri repeated.
“The very year my son was born,” the captain answered. “1466. Eighteen years ago this coming fall.”
“1484,” Entreri muttered, doing the math.
“The Year of the Awakened Sleepers,” Afafrenfere remarked.
“No wonder me belly’s grumbling with hunger,” Ambergris put in dryly.
“I have ever been a friend to Ten-Towns,” Drizzt called out. “Something … strange has happened here. Beyond reason or all sense. I bid you let me enter, that I might speak with the ruling council, perhaps a gathering of all the towns-”
“Ride around, drow,” the captain replied sternly. “Your previous reputation wards you from the wrath of the people, perhaps, but you have used up all your good will here. You’ll not be allowed entry here, nor to any of the other towns, once word has spread of your return.”
“I did not bring the demon-not knowingly, at least,” Drizzt tried to argue.
“Go to the dwarves, then,” the captain offered, and he winced as he spoke, as if trying to reconcile the Drizzt of legend with the Drizzt who had brought ruin to much of Bryn Shander with this shaken drow standing before him. “Stokely Silverstream will have you, to be sure. Let him call a gathering of Ten-Towns. Let him plead the case of Drizzt Do’Urden.”
The advice seemed sound enough, a pocket of clarity within this tumultuous, illogical sea of absurdity. Drizzt and Entreri dismissed their mounts and the six hiked off around the city, taking the southerly route. When they came to the western gate, they found it flanked by two stone guard towers, much larger than the meager structures that had been there when last they had passed through, still further confirmation that they had lost many years in their night of long sleep in the strange forest on the banks of Lac Dinneshere.
“It’s true, then,” Ambergris said, staring at the gate, for of course these could not have been constructed in the tenday they believed they had been gone. Before the gate and just south of it, was a wide circle of blackness, surrounded by a rock wall and with a small stone statue of a drow warrior, sword and shield upraised.
“ ‘On this spot did Master Tiago slay the demon,’ ” Afafrenfere read from the plaque beneath it. “ ‘And the snows will cover it nevermore.’ ”
“We have all gone insane, then,” said Dahlia, shaking her head. “I have walked the planes to the Shadowfell, I have existed as a statue of stone, and now I have awakened from a slumber of eighteen winters? What madness this?”
She walked off a bit to the west and stood facing away from the others, hands on hips and head down.
“Madness indeed,” muttered Entreri.
“But if it’s all true, then Draygo Quick’s long lost interest,” Ambergris said, and she slapped Afafrenfere on the back and gave a great snort. “But why’s the long faces?” she asked of them all. “None had family now gone, eh? We come to the dale to be rid o’ Tiago’s hunters.”
“And Draygo’s eyes,” Effron reminded.
“Aye, and Cavus Dun, too,” said Afafrenfere.
“So fugitives we been, and now one long nap’s fixed it for us!” Ambergris said with a belly-laugh. “Slate’s as clean as an Icewind Dale snowstorm, and every road’s open!”
“You would dismiss this loss of time so easily?” Drizzt asked incredulously.
“Ye thinkin’ ye know anything I might be doing against it?” the dwarf replied. “It is what it is, elf, and what it is is a blessin’ more than any curse to any one o’ us! Least-ways, that’s what I be thinkin’!”
Effron nodded his agreement and managed a smile, as did Afafrenfere, but neither Entreri nor Drizzt could find the line of thinking to join in their relief, or whatever it was. The shock of this all had them both reeling, particularly Drizzt, who dropped a hand into his belt pouch and rolled a small piece of scrimshaw around in his fingers. They had found an enchanted forest, so it seemed obvious, and one where time had all but stopped through a long night’s slumber. He had heard the song of Mielikki, so he believed, and had found a reminder to a long-lost friend.
But what did it all mean? How did it all make any sense, and what implications might he draw?
Overwhelmed, Drizzt led the others away from Bryn Shander at a leisurely, meandering pace. They got into the foothills of Kelvin’s Cairn as night descended and, exhausted and overwhelmed, set their camp.
Drizzt didn’t know it, but it was the night of the Spring Equinox, the holiest day in the calendar of Mielikki, in the Year of the Awakened Sleepers.
Drizzt got the fire burning, and Ambergris brought it to great heights. At one point, the dwarf giggled that she would surely “turn the night orange.”
“Truly?” Effron replied. “I prefer purple!” With that, he cast a spell, and a colored bolt reached out from his fingers to the flames, his cantrip altering the color indeed-to purple.
“Bah for yerself and yer minor magic!” Ambergris huffed, and she cast her own enchantment, her divine magic overwhelming the warlock’s tricks.
“Oh, indeed!” said Effron, and he went right back at her, and the flames fought their battle, shifting hue in a wild dance for supremacy. It became a game to her and Effron, to the amusement of Afafrenfere, who kept feeding more kindling to the blaze.