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He’s done his best to forget everything.
And most days, Drizzt succeeds. The snowfields of Icewind Dale are impossibly different from black stone in the Underdark. The bright sun chases away the shadows in his mind. He can look at the stars at night and, in the spring, he can watch green spread across the plains and hills. The wind stirs the air in the way that the air in the caves never stirs.
Here Drizzt has friends. Bruenor and the rest of Clan Battlehammer, gruff and stubborn and bad-tempered as they are, are good right down to their souls. They fight for the weak and protect those in need. And Catti-brie…there is joy in her that resonates with him, reminding him even on the bleakest tundra days that light and joy and goodness thrive in the world.
He is not ready to relive some of his memories, those he has tried his best to forget.
When Bruenor came to him and asked him, as a friend, to teach his young indentured servant the ways of combat, Drizzt had agreed immediately. “Of course I’ll train him,” Drizzt had said. How he wished now that he had not!
He’d beaten the young barbarian soundly earlier, and earned his respect. This night he had given to Wulfgar, in part to ease the young man’s troubled mind and in part to give himself time to ease his own. It would set them on an even footing and begin things aright between them. Wulfgar has some odd conceptions of relations between the sentient beings of the world, conceptions that Drizzt will do his best to replace. Wulfgar has greatness in him, and Drizzt will do his part in the making of this young man. Wulfgar, Drizzt thinks, will make him proud.
Sitting on the side of Kelvin’s Cairn, watching the stars spin over the peaceful dale, Drizzt does not feel anything that resembles pride. He only feels pain.
He remembers three doors. One that led back into the house, with too many locks to count. One leading into the tactics room. And one leading into private chambers, the only room that Drizzt had never entered. A room, carpeted in black and lit with dimly-glowing globes, and a curtain that hid a weapon rack whose like Drizzt had still never seen. This room had been his home for many long years.
Never had he been alone.
“Zaknafein,” Drizzt whispers, leaning back against the stone. He searches the sky as if it holds answers to a question he can’t begin to ask.
Had the weapon master felt the same sense of potential when he looked upon Drizzt? Had he wondered what Drizzt would become? What had he believed about Drizzt, about their relationship as father and son? At their last meeting, there had been too many revelations, too much hurt, too much elation, for them to speak properly. When they’d parted, they had never had the chance to speak again.
So many questions. So many answers that Drizzt might never receive.
He closes his eyes and presses his hands to his face. He does not want to think of his father. It awakens too many agonizing memories. Again, he wonders if Zaknafein would have lived if Drizzt had only acted the way a drow should act. Could he have convinced Zaknafein to leave with him? He knows now that escape is possible. A drow can live on the surface—live happily, indeed!
For a moment, Drizzt wonders what Bruenor would think of Zak. Catti-brie would see right through Zak, as she sees through Drizzt. Cassius, spokesman of Ten-Towns, would have been wary, but he too would have seen the truth of Zaknafein. Drizzt smiles as he considers the life he might have had with the ranger Montolio, should he and Zak have come to the surface together. Belwar Dissengulp would surely shake his head and bewail his fate, falling into the company of two dark elves. Perhaps if Zak had come with Drizzt into the wilds of the Underdark, they might have even saved poor Clacker, the pech turned hook horror.
But this is all idle speculation. Zaknafein, the weapon master of House Do’Urden, the most feared warrior of Menzoberranzan, Drizzt’s father, is dead.
Drizzt looks back up at the stars, glad for once of skin and eyes that will not show tears. He will not burden his new student with this old ache. Wulfgar has pain in his past, true, but it is Drizzt’s task as his teacher to help the young barbarian to learn and grow free of that. He should be to Wulfgar as Zaknafein was to him: true, compassionate, invincible. Zaknafein stood between Drizzt and the darkness of Menzoberranzan. He hid the worst of it all from Drizzt until Drizzt was ready to bear it. He protected Drizzt when another drow would have let Drizzt fall, or even torn Drizzt apart himself. Though Zaknafein would have denied it to his dying breath, Drizzt believes that he was a hero.
How can he strive to be any less for his young student?
Drizzt rises to his feet, blinking away the last of his tears. “I’ll do it for you, Father,” he whispers into the cold night wind, hoping that some benevolent deity will carry his words to whatever afterlife Zaknafein inhabits.
The ranger turns and makes his way down the rocky path, back toward the little shelter he calls home. He pauses, just before he begins the descent, spinning lightly and leaping up onto a rock, facing wide-eyed into the night. His voice rings across the still plain of Icewind Dale, as clear as the peal of a trumpet in the night.
“For us!”