“As we both fought alongside Bruenor on the day he chose to stand beside Obould against Grguch and the old ways of Gruumsh,” Drizzt added. “If I recall that day correctly, a younger Hralien was so taken by the moment that he chose to place his trust in a dark elf, though that same drow had marched to war against Hralien’s people only months before.”
Hralien laughed and held up his hands in surrender.
“And what resulted from that trust?” Drizzt asked. “How fares Tos’un Armgo, husband of Sinnafain, father of Teirflin and Doum’wielle?”
“I will ask him when I return to the Moonwood,” the beaten Hralien replied, but he managed to get in the last arrow when he directed Drizzt’s gaze to the prisoners they had taken that day.
Drizzt conceded the point with a polite nod. It wasn’t over. It wasn’t decided. The world rolled on around him, the sand shifted under his feet.
He reached down to pet Guenhwyvar, needing to feel the comfort of his panther friend, the one constant in his surprising life, the one great hope along his ever-winding road.
R.A. SALVATORE
R.A. Salvatore was born in Massachusetts in 1959. His love affair with fantasy, and with literature in general, began during his sophomore year of college when he was given a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings as a Christmas gift. He promptly changed his major from computer science to journalism. He received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Communications in 1981, then returned for the degree he always cherished, the Bachelor of Arts in English. He began writing seriously in 1982, penning the manuscript that would become Echoes of the Fourth Magic.
His first published novel was The Crystal Shard from TSR in 1988 and he is still best known as the creator of the dark elf Drizzt, one of fantasy’s most beloved characters.
His novel The Silent Blade won the Origins Award, and in the fall of 1997, his letters, manuscripts, and other professional papers were donated to the R.A. Salvatore Library at his alma mater, Fitchburg State College in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.
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