Tunevec gave a helpless chuckle and shook his head. He moved to retrieve his shirt but noted a shimmering in the air before he ever got there. The half-elf paused, watching as old Mahskevic the wizard materialized into view.
"Did you please him this day?" the gray-bearded old man asked in a voice that seemed pulled out of his tight throat. Mahskevic's somewhat mocking smile, full of yellow teeth, showed that he already knew the answer.
"Le'lorinel is obsessed with that one," Tunevec answered. More so than I would ever have believed possible."
Mahskevic merely shrugged, as if that hardly mattered. "He has labored for me for more than five years, both to earn the use of my spells and to pay you well," the wizard reminded. "We searched for many months to even find you, one who seemed promising in being able to emulate the movements of this strange dark elf, Drizzt Do'Urden."
"Why waste the time, then?" the frustrated half-elf retorted. "Why do you not accompany Le'lorinel to find this wretched drow and be done with him once and for all. Far easier that would seem than this endless sparring."
Mahskevic chuckled, as if to tell Tunevec clearly that he was underestimating this rather unusual drow, whose exploits, as Le'lorinel and Mahskevic had uncovered them, were indeed remarkable. "Drizzt is known to be the friend of a dwarf named Bruenor Battlehammer," the wizard explained. "Do you know the name?"
Tunevec, putting on his gray shirt, looked to the old human and shook his head.
"King of Mithral Hall," Mahskevic explained. "Or at least, he was. I have little desire to turn a clan of wild dwarves against me - bane of all wizards, dwarves. Making an enemy of Bruenor Battlehammer does not seem to me to be an opportunity for advancement of wealth or health.
"Beyond that, I have no grudge against this Drizzt Do'Urden," Mahskevic added. "Why would I seek to destroy him?"
"Because Le'lorinel is your friend."
"Le'lorinel," Mahskevic echoed, again with that chuckle. "I am fond of him, I admit, and in trying to hold my responsibilities of friendship, I often try to convince him that his course is self-destructive folly, and nothing more."
"He will hear none of that, I am sure," said Tunevec.
"None," agreed Mahskevic. "A stubborn one is Le'lorinel Tel'e'brenequiette."
"If that is even his name," snorted Tunevec, who was in a rather foul mood, especially concerning his sparring partner." 'I to you as you to me,'" he translated, for indeed Le'lorinel's name was nothing more than a variation on a fairly common Elvish saying.
"The philosophy of respect and friendship, is it not?" asked the old wizard.
"And of revenge," Tunevec replied grimly.
Down on the tower's middle floor, alone in a small, private room, Le'lorinel pulled off the mask and slumped to sit on the bed, stewing in frustration and hatred for Drizzt Do'Urden.
"How many years will it take?" the elf asked, and finished with a small laugh, while fiddling with an onyx ring. "Centuries? It does not matter!"
Le'lorinel pulled off the ring and held it up before glittering eyes. It had taken two years of hard work to earn this item from Mahskevic. It was a magical ring, designed to hold enchantments. This one held four, the four spells Le'lorinel believed it would take to kill Drizzt Do'Urden.
Of course, Le'lorinel knew that to use these spells in the manner planned would likely result in the deaths of both combatants.
It did not matter.
As long as Drizzt Do'Urden died, Le'lorinel could enter the netherworld contented.
Part 1
HINTS OF DARKNESS
It is good to be home. It is good to hear the wind of Icewind Dale, to feel its invigorating bite, like some reminder that I am alive.
That seems such a self-evident thing - that I, that we, are alive - and yet, too often, I fear, we easily forget the importance of that simple fact. It is so easy to forget that you are truly alive, or at least, to appreciate that you are truly alive, that every sunrise is yours to view and every sunset is yours to enjoy.
And all those hours in between, and all those hours after dusk, are yours to make of what you will.
It is easy to miss the possibility that every person who crosses your path can become an event and a memory, good or bad, to fill in the hours with experience instead of tedium, to break the monotony of the passing moments. Those wasted moments, those hours of sameness, of routine, are the enemy, I say, are little stretches of