had to get Drizzt.
Chapter 8 OUT OF PLACE
He moved without a whisper along the lightless tunnels, his eyes glowing lavender, seeking changes in the heat patterns along the floor and walls that would indicate bends, or enemies, in the tunnel. He seemed at home, a creature of the Underdark, moving with typically quiet grace and cautious posture.
Drizzt did not feel at home, though. Already he was deeper than the lowest tunnels of Mithril Hall, and the stagnant air pressed in on him. He had spent nearly two decades on the surface, learning and living by the rules that governed the outer world. Those rules were as different to Underdark precepts as a forest wildflower was to a deep cavern fungus. A human, a goblin, even an alert surface elf, would have taken no note of Drizzt's silent passage, though he might cross just a few feet away, but Drizzt felt clumsy and loud.
The drow ranger cringed with every step, fearing that echoes were resounding along the blank stone walls hundreds of yards away. This was the Underdark, a place negotiated less by sight than by hearing and the sense of smell.
Drizzt had spent nearly two thirds of his life in the Underdark, and a good portion of the last twenty years underground in the cav erns of Clan Battlehammer. He no longer considered himself a crea ture of the Underdark, though. He had left his heart behind on a mountainside, watching the stars and the moon, the sunrise and the sunset.
This was the land of starless nights, no, not nights, just a single, unending starless night, Drizzt decided, of stagnant air, and leering stalactites.
The tunnel's width varied greatly, sometimes as narrow as the breadth of Drizzt's shoulders, sometimes wide enough for a dozen men to walk abreast. The floor sloped slightly, taking Drizzt even deeper, but the ceiling paralleled it well, remaining fairly consistent at about twice the height of the five and a half foot drow. For a long time, Drizzt detected no side caverns or corridors, and he was glad of that, for he didn't want to be forced into any direction decisions yet, and in this simple setup, any potential enemies would have to come at him from straight ahead.
Drizzt honestly believed that he was not prepared for any sur prises, not yet. Even his infravision pained him. His head throbbed as he tried to sort out and interpret the varying heat patterns. In his younger years, Drizzt had gone for weeks, even months, with his eyes tuned exclusively to the infrared spectrum, looking for heat instead of reflected light. But now, with his eyes so used to the sun above and the torches lining the corridors of Mithril Hall, he found the infravision jarring.
Finally, he drew out Twinkle, and the enchanted scimitar glowed with a soft bluish light. Drizzt rested back against the wall and let his eyes revert to the regular spectrum, then used the sword as a guiding light. Soon after, he came to a six way intersection, two crossing horizontal corridors intersected by a vertical shaft.
Drizzt tucked Twinkle away and looked above, up the shaft. He saw no heat sources, but was little comforted. Many of the Under dark's predators could mask their body temperatures, like a surface tiger used its stripes to crawl through thick strands of high grass. Dreaded hook horrors, for example, had developed an exoskeleton; the bony plates shielded the creature's body heat so that they appeared as unremarkable rocks to heat sensing eyes. And many of the Underdark's monsters were reptilian, cold blooded, and hard to see.
Drizzt sniffed the stagnant air several times, then he stood still and closed his eyes, letting his ears provide all the external input. He heard nothing, save the beating of his own heart, so he checked his gear to ensure that all was secure and started to climb down the shaft, taking care amid the dangerously loose rubble.
He nearly made it silently down the sixty feet to the lower corri dor, but a single stone skidded down before him, striking the corri dor's floor with a sharp crack at almost the same instant that Drizzt's soft boots quietly came down from the wall.
Drizzt froze in place, listening to the sound as it echoed from wall to wall. As a drow patrol leader, Drizzt had once been able to follow echoes perfectly, almost instinctively discerning which walls were rebounding the sound, and from which direction.