THE WIND IN THEIR EARS
It happened imperceptibly, a delicate transition that touched the memories and souls of the companions as profoundly as it reverberated in their physical senses. For as the endless and mournful wind of Icewind Dale filled their ears, as the smell of the tundra filled their noses, as the cold northern air tickled their skin, and as the sheet of wintry white dazzled their eyes, so too did the aura of the place, the primal savagery, the pristine beauty, fill their thoughts, so too did the edge of catastrophe awaken their conflicting fears.
That was the true power of the dale, exemplified by the wind, always the wind, the constant reminder of the paradox of existence, that one was always alone and never alone, that communion ended at senses' edge and yet that the same communion never truly ended.
They walked side-by-side, without speaking, but not in silence. They were joined by the wind of Icewind Dale, in the same place and same time, and whatever thoughts they each entertained separately could not fully escape the bond of awareness forced by Icewind Dale itself upon all who ventured there.
They crossed out of the pass through the Spine of the World and onto the wider tundra one bright and shining morning, and found that the snows were not yet too deep, and the wind not yet too cold. In a few days, if the weather held, they would arrive in Ten-Towns, the ten settlements around the three deep lakes to the north. There, Regis had once found sanctuary from the relentless pursuit of Pasha Pook, a former employer, from whom he had stolen the magical ruby pendant he still wore. There, the beleaguered and weary Drizzt Do'Urden had at last found a place to call home, and the friends he continued to hold most dear.
For the next few days, they held wistfulness in their eyes and fullness in their hearts. Around their small campfire each night they spoke of times past, of fishing Maer Dualdon, the largest of the lakes; of nights on Kelvin's Cairn, the lone mountain above the caves where Bruenor's clan had lived in exile, where the stars seemed so close that one could grasp them; and questions of immortality seemed crystalline clear. For one could not stand on Bruenor's Climb on Kelvin's Cairn, amidst the stars on a cold and crisp Icewind Dale night and not feel a profound connection to eternity.
The trail, known simply as "the caravan route," ran almost directly northeast to Bryn Shander, the largest of the ten settlements, the accepted seat of power for the region and the common marketplace. Bryn Shander was favorably located within the meager protection of a series of rolling hillocks and nearly equidistant to the three lakes, Maer Dualdon to the northwest, Redwaters to the southeast and Lac Dinneshere, the easternmost of the lakes. Along the same line as the caravan route, just half a day's walk northeast of Bryn Shander, loomed the dormant volcano Kelvin's Cairn, and before it, the valley and tunnels that once, and for more than a century, had housed Clan Battlehammer.
Nearly ten thousand hearty souls lived in those ten settlements, all but those in Bryn Shander on the banks of one of the three lakes.
The approach of a dark elf and a halfling elicited excitement and alarm in the young guards manning Bryn Shander's main gate. To see anyone coming up the caravan route at such a late date was a surprise, but to have one of those approaching be an elf with skin as black as midnight...!
The gates closed fast and hard, and Drizzt laughed aloud - loud enough to be heard, though he and Regis were still many yards away.
"I told you to keep your hood up," Regis scolded.
"Better they see me for what I am before we're in range of a longbow."
Regis took a step away from the drow, and Drizzt laughed again, and so did the halfling.
"Halt and be recognized!" a guard shouted at them in a voice too shaky to truly be threatening.
"Recognize me, then, and be done with this foolishness," Drizzt called back, and he stopped in the middle of the road barely twenty strides from the wooden stockade wall. "How many years must one live among the folk of Ten-Towns before the lapse of a few short years so erases the memory of men?"
A long pause ensued before a different guard called out, "What is your name?"
"Drizzt Do'Urden, you fool!" Regis yelled back. "And I am Regis of Lonelywood, who serves King Bruenor in Mithral Hall."
"Can it be?" yet another voice cried out.
The gates swung open as quickly and as forcefully as they had closed.
"Apparently their memories are not as short as you feared," Regis remarked.
"It's good to be home," the drow replied.
The snow-covered trees muffled the wind's mournful song as Regis silently padded through them down to the banks of the partially frozen lake a few days later. Maer Dualdon spread out wide before him, gray ice, black ice, and blue water. One boat bobbed at the town of Lonelywood's longest wharf, not yet caught fast by the winter. From dozens of small houses nestled in the woods, single lines of smoke wafted into the morning air.
Regis was at peace.
He moved to the water's edge, where a small patch remained unfrozen, and dropped a tiny chunk of ice into the lake, then watched as the ripples rolled out from the impact, washing little bits of water onto the surrounding ice. His mind took him through those ripples and into the past. He thought of fishing - this had been his favorite spot. He told himself it would be a good thing to come back one summer and again set his bobber in the waters of Maer Dualdon.
Hardly thinking of the action, he reached into a small sack he had tied to his belt and produced a palm-sized piece of white bone, the famous skull that gave the trout of Icewind Dale their name. From his other hip pouch, he produced his carving knife, and never looking down at the bone, his eyes gazing across the empty lake, he went to work. Shavings fell as the halfling worked to free that which he knew to be in the bone, for that was the true secret of scrimshaw. His art wasn't to carve the bone into some definable shape, but to free the shape that was already in there, waiting for skilled and delicate fingers to show it to the world.
Regis looked down and smiled as he came to understand the image he was freeing, one so fitting for him at that moment of reflection on what had once been, of good times spent among good friends in a land so beautiful and so deadly all at once.
He lost track of time as he stood there reminiscing and sculpting, and soaking in the beauty and the refreshing chill. Half in a daze, half in the past, Regis nearly jumped out of his furry boots when he glanced down again and saw the head of a gigantic cat beside his hip.
His little squeak became a call of, "Guenhwyvar!" as the startled halfling tried to catch his breath.
"She likes it here, too," Drizzt said from the trees behind him, and he turned to watch his drow friend's approach.
"You could have called out a warning," Regis said, and he noted that in his startled jump, he'd nicked his thumb with the sharp knife. He brought it up to suck on the wound, and was greatly relieved to learn that his scrimshaw had not been damaged.
"I did," Drizzt replied. "Twice. You've the wind in your ears."
"It's not so breezy here."
"Then the winds of time," said Drizzt.
Regis smiled and nodded. "It's hard to come here and not want to stay."
"It's a more difficult place than Mithral Hall," said Drizzt.
"But a more simple one," Regis answered, and it was Drizzt's turn to smile and nod. "You met with the spokesmen of Bryn Shander?"
Drizzt shook his head. "There was no need," he explained. "Proprietor Faelfaril knew well of Wulfgar's journey through Ten-Towns four years ago. I learned everything we need from the innkeeper."
"And it saved you the trouble of the fanfare you knew would accompany your return."
"As you avoided it by jumping a wagon north to Lonelywood," Drizzt retorted.
"I wanted to see it again. It was my home, after all, and for many, many years. Did fat old Faelfaril mention any subsequent visits by Wulfgar?"
Drizzt shook his head. "Our friend came through, praise Tempus, but very briefly before going straightaway out to the tundra, to rejoin his people. The folk of Bryn Shander heard one other mention of him, just one, a short time after that, but nothing definitive and nothing that Faelfaril remembers well."
"Then he is out there," Regis said, nodding to the northeast, the open lands where the barbarians roamed. "I'd wager he's the king of them all by now."
Drizzt's expression showed he didn't agree. "Where he went, where he is, is not known in Bryn Shander, and perhaps Wulfgar has become chieftain of the Tribe of the Elk, his people. But the tribes are no longer united, and have not been for years. They have only occasional and very minor dealings with the folk of Ten-Towns at all, and Faelfaril assured me that were it not for the occasional campfires seen in the distance, the folk of Ten-Towns wouldn't even know that they were constantly surrounded by wandering barbarians."
Regis furrowed his brow in consternation.
"But neither do they fear the tribes, as they once did," Drizzt said. "They coexist, and there is relative peace, and that is no small legacy of our friend Wulfgar."
"Do you think he's still out there?"
"I know he is."
"And we're going to find him," said Regis.
"Poor friends we would be if we didn't."
"It's getting cold," the halfling warned.
"Not as cold as the ice cave of a white dragon."
Regis rubbed Guenhwyvar's strong neck and chuckled helplessly. "You'll get me there, too, before this is all done," he said, "or I'm an unbearded gnome."
"Unbearded?" Drizzt asked and Regis shrugged.
"Works for Bruenor the other way," he said.
"A furry-footed gnome, then," Drizzt offered.
"A hungry halfling," Regis corrected. "If we're going out there, we'll need ample supplies. Buy some saddlebags for your cat, or bend your back, elf."
Laughing, Drizzt walked over and draped his arm around Regis's sturdy shoulders, and started turning the halfling to leave. Regis resisted, though, and instead forced Drizzt to pause and take a good long look at Maer Dualdon.
He heard the drow sigh deeply, and knew he'd been taken by the same nostalgic trance, by memories of the years they had known in the simple, beautiful, and deadly splendors of Icewind Dale.
"What are you carving?" Drizzt asked after a long while.
"We'll both know when it reveals itself," Regis answered, and Drizzt accepted that inescapable truth with a nod.
They went out that very afternoon, packs heavy with food and extra clothing. They made the base of Kelvin's Cairn as twilight descended, and found shelter in a shallow cave, one that Drizzt knew very well.
"I'm going up tonight," Drizzt informed Regis over supper.
"To Bruenor's Climb?"
"To where it was before the collapse, yes. I will stoke the fire well before I go, I promise, and leave Guenhwyvar beside you until I return."
"Let it burn low, and keep or release the cat as she needs," Regis answered. "I'm going with you."
Surprised, but pleasantly so, Drizzt nodded. He kept Guenhwyvar by his side as he and Regis made a silent ascent to the top of Kelvin's Cairn. It was a difficult climb, with few trails, and those along icy rocks, but less than an hour later, the companions stepped out from behind one overhang to find that they had reached the peak. The tundra spread wide before them, and stars twinkled all around them.
The three of them stood there in communion with Icewind Dale, in harmony with the cycles of life and death, in contemplation of eternity and a oneness of being with all the great universe, for a long time. They took great comfort in feeling so much a part of something larger than themselves.
And somewhere in the north, a campfire flared to life, seeming like another star.
They each wondered silently if Wulfgar might be sitting beside it, rubbing the cold from his strong hands.
A wolf howled from somewhere unseen, and another answered, then still more took up the nighttime song of Icewind Dale.
Guenhwyvar growled softly, not angered, excited, or uneasy, but simply to speak to the heavens and the wind.
Drizzt crouched beside her and looked across her back to meet Regis's stare. Each knew well what the other was thinking and feeling and remembering, and there was no need at all for words, so none were spoken.
It was a night that they, all three, would remember for the rest of their lives.