Cythara nodded and gave an almost imperceptible sigh. "You have chosen," she said. "There is no love in the hearts of brothers." "But-"
"Farewell, Yldar," Cythara said. "You have your path, and I have mine. I bear you no ill will, but I swear that if you follow me, I will forget that we were once siblings." With those words, she vanished into black smoke and heat.
"No!" Yldar cried, but Cythara was gone.
He searched the spot where she had stood, but there was no trace of the mage. He looked back at Twilight, but all she could do was shrug. Yldar slammed his fist against the empty altar and screamed once, a pained cry from the depths of his soul.
Yldar righted himself slowly, angrily. He lifted his chin and his eyes went cold. "What now?" he asked, once more the haughty elf prince.
There was a long silence.
Then Twilight threw her arms around him and kissed him passionately. "Come with me," she said. "We'll sell the Bracer-it's worth a fortune in coin. I could use a partner." Yldar looked away, and Twilight laid her head against his shoulder. "Let your sister go. She made her choice-you owe her nothing now."
"No," Yldar said. "No, I cannot."
Twilight opened her mouth to speak, but Yldar stopped her with a kiss.
"Come with me," Yldar asked. "I must go, but you can help me-help me save her."
Twilight did not answer for a long moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was soft, like the whisper of a breeze. "You do not have the right to ask this of me."
"But I love you," Yldar said. "Does that mean nothing?"
Twilight smiled, but her eyes seemed far away.
They lay together again that night, clinging to each other as though they would never see each other again, as if the dawn would never come.
But come it did, and when the sun kissed the eastern horizon, Yldar withdrew from Reverie and Twilight was gone.
Yldar lay alone, and despite the hollow feeling in his heart, he could not claim to be surprised. He rose and dressed, hardly interested in the rising sun, casting its rays down over another lonely road and an empty bed.
For Yldar, the next centuries looked lonely and empty indeed.
A sparkle of silver caught his attention from the floor. It was something under his mail shirt. He pushed the armor aside and his breath caught. It was the Bracer of Ynloeth, a marvelous fragment of a long-forgotten age.
There was a note. Three words, written on parchment.
Just three little words in Common, but for Yldar they carried a sea of meaning.
"Farewell," it said, "and remember."
Yldar shut his eyes, but he could not stop the tears.
COMRADES AT ODDS
He looked out at the night sky with an expression of complete derision, for the rogue drow, Tos'un Armgo, had hoped he would never again look upon the vast ceiling of the overworld. Years ago, during the drow raid on Mithral Hall, Tos'un had lost his companions and his House, preferring desertion to the continued insanity and deadly war that had gripped Menzoberranzan.
He had found friends, a group of similar dark elf renegades, and together the four had forged a fine life along the upper tunnels of the Underdark, and even among the surface dwellers-notably King Obould of the ores. The four had played a major role in spurring the invasion that had taken Obould's army to the gates of Mithral Hall. The drow instigators had covertly formed an alliance between Obould and the frost giants of the northern mountains, and they had goaded the ore king with visions of glory.
But Tos'un's three drow companions were dead. The last to fall, the priestess Kaer'lic, had been slain before Tos'un's eyes by King Obould himself. Only his speed and sheer luck had saved Tos'un from a similar fate.
So he was alone. No, not alone, he corrected himself as he dropped a hand onto the crafted hilt of Khazid'hea, a sentient sword he had found beneath the devastated site where Obould had battled Drizzt Do'Urden.
Wandering the trails of Obould's newfound kingdom, with smelly, stupid ores encamped all around him, Tos'un had come to the conclusion that the time had come for him to leave the World Above behind, to go back to the deep tunnels of the Underdark, perhaps even to find his way back to Menzoberranzan and his kin. A deep cave had brought him to a tunnel complex, and trails through the upper Underdark led him to familiar ground, back to the old abode he had shared with his three drow compatriots. From there, Tos'un knew his way to the deeper tunnels.
And so he walked, but with every step his doubts grew. Tos'un was no stranger to the Underdark; he had lived the first century of his life as a noble soldier in the ranks of House Barrison dePArmgo of Menzoberranzan. He had led drow scouting parties out into the tunnels, and had even guarded caravans bound for the trade city of Ched Nasad.
He knew the Underdark.
He knew, in his heart, that he could not survive those tunnels alone.
Each step came more slowly and deliberately than the previous. Doubts clouded his thoughts, and even the small voice in his head that he knew to be Khazid'heq's empathetic communication urged him to turn back.
Out of the tunnel, the stars above him, the cold wind blowing in his face, Tos'un stood alone and confused.
We will find our place, Khazid'hea telepathically assured him. We are stronger than our enemies. We are more clever than our enemies.
Tos'un Armgo couldn't help but wonder if the sentient sword had included Drizzt Do'Urden and King Obould in those estimations.
A campfire flared to life off in the distance, or a cooking fire, and the site of it reminded the drow that he hadn't eaten in more than a day.
"Let us go and find some well-supplied ores," he said to his growling stomach. "I am hungry."
Khazid'hea agreed.
Khazid'hea was always hungry.
Sunlight glistened off the white-feathered wings of the equine creature as Drizzt Do'Urden brought the pegasus in a steep bank and turn. Astride her own pegasus to the north of the drow, the elf Innovindil caught the view in dramatic fashion, contrasted as it was by the great dark clouds hovering over the Trollmoors to the south. The pair had set out from Mithral Hall three days before, confident that the standoff between the dwarves of Clan Battlehammer and the invading ore army would hold throughout the brutal winter months. Drizzt and Innovindil had to go far to the west, all the way to the Sword Coast, to retrieve the body of Ellifain, a fallen moon elf and kin to Innovindil, slain at the hands of Drizzt in a tragic misunderstanding.
They had started out traveling south and southwest, thinking to pass the city of Nesme on the northern banks of the dreaded Trollmoors to see how the rebuilding was commencing after the carnage of the previous summer. They had thought to cross over Nesme, skirting the Trollmoors so that they could catch a more southerly route to the west and the distant city of Luskan.
It was bitterly cold up in the sky with winter beginning to blow. Sunrise and Sunset, their pegasi mounts, didn't complain, but Innovindil and Drizzt could only remain in the air for short periods of time, so cold was the wind on their faces. Bruenor had given both of them fine seal coats and cloaks, thick mittens and hoods, but the wind bit too hard at any and all exposed skin for the pair to remain aloft.
As Drizzt came around in his lazy turn, Innovindil began to motion for him to put down on a plateau directly west of his position. But the drow beat her to the movement, motioning west and a bit to the north instead-and not for her to descend, but only to look.
Her expression soured as soon as she turned that way, for she didn't miss the drow's target: a line of black specks-ores, she knew-moving south along a narrow trail.