my small clan discovered that you were afoot, we decided that it would be best for Ellifain to meet you."
"The maiden?" Drizzt reasoned.
Tarathiel nodded, his features seeming almost translucent in the sunlight. "We did not know how she would react to the sight of a drow. You have our apologies."
Drizzt nodded his acceptance. "She is not of your clan, " he guessed. "Or at least, she was not, not when she was very young."
Tarathiel did not reply, but the intrigue that was splayed across his face showed Drizzt that he was on the right track.
"Her people were slaughtered by drow, " Drizzt went on, fear ing the expected confirmation.
"What do you know?" Tarathiel demanded, his voice taking a hard edge for the first time in the conversation.
"I was among that raiding party, " Drizzt admitted. Tarathiel went for his sword, but Drizzt, lightning fast, grabbed hold of his wrist.
"I killed no elves, " Drizzt explained. "The only ones I wanted to fight were those who had accompanied me to the surface."
Tarathiel's muscles relaxed, and he pulled his hand away. "Elli fain remembers little of the tragedy. She speaks of it more in dreams than in her waking hours, and then she rambles." He paused and stared Drizzt squarely in the eye. "She has mentioned purple eyes, he said. "We did not know what to make of that, and she, when questioned about it, cannot offer any answers. Purple is not a com mon color for drow eyes, so say our legends."
"It is not, " Drizzt confirmed, and his voice was distant as he remembered again that terrible day so long ago. This was the elf maiden! The one that a younger Drizzt Do'Urden had risked all to save, the one whose eyes had shown Drizzt beyond doubt that the ways of his people were not the ways of his heart.
"And so, when we heard of Drizzt Do'Urden, drow friend, drow friend with purple eyes, of the dwarven king that has reclaimed Mithril Hall, we thought that it would be best for Ellifain to face her past, " Tarathiel explained.
Again Drizzt, his mind looking more to the past than to the mountain scenery about him, merely nodded.
Tarathiel let it go at that. Ellifain had, apparently, viewed her past, and the sight had nearly broken her.
The moon elf refused Drizzt's request for him to take the horses and leave and, later that day, the two were riding again, along a nar row trail on a high pass, a way that Drizzt remembered well. He thought of Montolio, Mooshie, his surface mentor, the blind old ranger who could shoot a bow by the guidance of a pet owl's hoots. Montolio had been the one to teach a younger Drizzt of a god figure that embodied the same emotions that stirred Drizzt's heart and the same precepts that guided the renegade drow's conscience. Mielikki was her name, goddess of the forest, and since his time with Monto ho, Drizzt Do'Urden had walked under her silent guidance.
Drizzt felt a wellspring of emotions bubbling within him as the trail wound away from the ridge and climbed a steeper incline through a region of broken boulders. He was terrified of what he might find. Perhaps an orc horde, the wretched humanoids were all too common in this region, had taken over the old ranger's wondrous grove. Suppose a fire had burned it away, leaving a bar ren scar upon the land?
They came into a thick copse of trees, plodding along a narrow but fairly clean trail, with Drizzt in the lead. He saw the wood thin fling ahead, and beyond it a small field. He stopped his black and white horse and glanced back at Tarathiel.
"The grove, " he explained, and he slipped from his saddle, Tarathiel doing likewise. They tethered the horses under the cover of the copse and crept side by side to the wood's end.
There stood Mooshie's grove, perhaps sixty yards across, north to south, and half that wide. The pines stood tall and straight, no fire had struck this grove, and the rope bridges that the blind ranger had constructed could still be seen running from tree to tree at various heights. Even the low stone wall stood intact, not a rock out of place, and the grass was low.
"Someone is living in there, " Tarathiel reasoned, for the place had obviously not grown wild. When he looked to Drizzt, he saw