Fathers and Sons

Chapter Five

Drizzt never thought he could feel so content. All he ever wanted was to find acceptance and for someone to see him for who he was inside. Few people in the Underdark or anywhere in Faerun could see past his drow heritage.

But in a land where no one knew of the drow at all, he felt as though the fates had given him a second chance.

He and Legolas became good friends over the past few days, and they even gave him and Zaknafein their own chambers in the palace. While his father and Thranduil continued to butt heads, Drizzt and Zaknafein agreed to become part of the forces that protected the woodland realm from their enemies, at least for the time being. They proved to be potent allies against the endless stream of giant spiders that threatened the forest daily.

"That was the last of them," Drizzt commented as he and Legolas sat high in a tree one late afternoon. Several spider corpses lay strewn across the forest floor underneath them. "There will surely be more by the end of the tenday."

"You fight with such passion, more than I have ever seen," Legolas commented as the two of them took in the surrounding sights. From this vantage, they could see beyond the canopies far beyond the distance. Drizzt could see mountains to the west and north, and a lone peak far in the east. Legolas had happily educated him on the layout of this part of Middle Earth and he knew how to identify the Misty Mountains, the Grey Mountains and the Lonely Mountain.

"I am motivated in the cause," Drizzt explained as he relaxed against the branches, enjoying the breeze. "Arachnids are sacred to the spider queen."

"And you exact revenge on your people by killing them?"

Drizzt couldn't deny that accusation, and he only shrugged. He remembered the sting of his sister's six snake whip as a child whenever a spider had crawled into his sphere of vision. Because males were unworthy to gaze upon the sight of such a creature. Now, he got to kill them.

Of course, the vermin spiders of Mirkwood were large and dangerous, nothing like the common arachnid one might encounter in nature, and they posed a threat to the elves.

A comfortable silence fell between them and as Drizzt regarded Legolas, watching as his slender form perched on a branch, he followed the elf's gaze north. "Gundabad?" he surmised. Legolas had told him about the disturbing nightmares he had been having and how the mountains in the far north might have something to do with them.

"I have yet to inform Thranduil of this danger," Legolas began softly as he turned to Drizzt. "Because I don't know how."

"Surely a king must know what dangers might face his kingdom," Drizzt suggested. "That he might meet that threat in battle."

Legolas hesitated before speaking again. It pained Drizzt to see that the elf and his father were not as close as he was to Zaknafein. "You must go to Gundabad, my friend," he urged. "Do not let the unknown keep you from experiencing the world."

"My mother is trying to tell me something from across the void of death," Legolas lamented. "The woman who gave me life, whom I have no memory of and of whom my father refuses to acknowledge ever existed."

Drizzt wasn't sure how to comfort his friend. He had never known the love of a mother. Malice had given birth to him, but she had never loved him. She had only ever valued him as an asset because his fighting skill could bring her victory in her schemes against other noble houses. Thinking back on his decision to abandon his family at the height of their war with House Hun'ett, he wondered how they had fared without him or Zaknafein.

There was no word in the drow language for love. And there was no concept of it in his society. He was sure it existed in some drow's hearts, but he had yet to see it reflected in their eyes. Yet somehow, he knew he was capable of feeling it. He was sure that he felt love for Zaknafein. It was a closeness he felt for his father. He left Menzoberranzan because he longed to experience more of it. If only the drow of Menzoberranzan could turn from Lolth, perhaps they could feel it too.