The breeze brought wisps of flame from the dying embers beside her, but that was the only life in the camp. Nodding, the elf held up her fist, the signal to her companions.
Like a coven of ghosts the moon elves appeared from all around the dead camp, drifting in silently, as if floating, their white and dark brown cloaks blurring their forms against the wintry background.
"Seven kills and the rest sent running," remarked Albondiel, the leader of the patrol. "This drow is cunning and fast."
"As is his sword," another of the group of five added. When the others looked at him, he showed them one of the dead ores, its arm severed, its heavy wooden shield cleanly cut in half.
"A mighty warrior, no doubt," Sinnafain said. "Is it possible that we've found a second Drizzt Do'Urden?"
"Obould had drow in his ranks as well," Albondiel reminded her.
"This one is killing ores," she replied. "With abandon."
"Have drow ever been selective in their victims?" one of the others asked.
"I know of at least one who seems to be," Sinnafain was quick to remind. "I will not make the same errors as did my cousin Ellifain. I will not prejudge and be blinded by the whispers of reputation."
"Many victims have likely uttered similar statements," Albondiel said to her, but when she snapped her disapproving glare at him, she was calmed by his grin.
"Another Drizzt?" he asked rhetorically, and he shrugged. "If he is, then good for us. If not…"
"Then ill for him," Sinnafain finished for him, and Albondiel nodded and assured her, "We will know soon enough."
Drizzt brushed the last of the cold dirt away, fully revealing the blanket. Beneath it lay the curled form of Ellifain, the misguided elf who had posed as the male Le'Lorinel, and who had tried to kill him in her rage.
Drizzt stood and stared down at the hole and the wrapped body. She lay on her side, her legs tucked to her chest. She seemed very small to Drizzt, like a baby.
If he could take back one strike in all his life____________________
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, 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 at Ellifain. He replayed again the last moments of the poor elfs 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 considering 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 night-time breeze. The notes of that wind-driven song carried InnovindiFs 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 Corellon'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 Corellon himself."
Still Drizzt did not answer.
"Is it Corellon 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 time 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.