Sojourn: The Legend of Drizzt by R. A. Salvatore Read Free Book Online Page A

only understood the word “drow.” The young man’s attitude and intent could not be mistaken, though, for Connor charged straight between Drizzt and Eleni, his sword tip pointed Drizzt’s way. Eleni managed to get to her feet behind her brother, but she did not flee as he had instructed. She, too, had heard of the evil dark elves, and she would not leave Connor to face one alone.
    “Turn away, dark elf,” Connor growled. “I am an expert swordsman and much stronger than you.”
    Drizzt held his hands out helplessly, not understanding a word.
    “Turn away!” Connor yelled.
    On an impulse, Drizzt tried to reply in the drow silent code, an intricate language of hand and facial gestures.
    “He’s casting a spell!” Eleni cried, and she dived down into the blueberries. Connor shrieked and charged.
    Before Connor even knew of the counter, Drizzt grabbed him by the forearm, used his other hand to twist the boy’s wrist and take away the sword, spun the crude weapon three times over Connor’s head, flipped it in his slender hand then handed it, hilt first, back to the boy.
    Drizzt held his arms out wide and smiled. In drow custom, such a show of superiority without injuring the opponent invariably signaled a desire for friendship. To the oldest son of farmerBartholemew Thistledown, the drow’s blinding display brought only awe-inspired terror.
    Connor stood, mouth agape, for a long moment. His sword fell from his hand but he didn’t notice; his pants, soiled, clung to his thighs, but he didn’t notice.
    A scream erupted from somewhere within Connor. He grabbed Eleni, who joined in his scream, and they fled back to the grove to collect the others, then farther, running until they crossed the threshold of their own home.
    Drizzt was left, his smile fast fading and his arms out wide, standing all alone in the blueberry patch.

    A set of dizzily darting eyes had watched the exchange in the blueberry patch with more than a casual interest. The unexpected appearance of a dark elf, particularly one wearing a gnoll cloak, had answered many questions for Tephanis. The quick-ling sleuth had already examined the gnoll corpses but simply could not reconcile the gnolls’ fatal wounds with the crude weapons usually wielded by the simple village farmers. Seeing the magnificent twin scimitars so casually belted on the dark elf’s hips and the ease with which the dark elf had dispatched the farm boy, Tephanis knew the truth.
    The dust trail left by the quickling would have confused the best rangers in the Realms. Tephanis, never a straightforward sprite, zipped up the mountain trails, spinning circuits around some trees, running up and down the sides of others, and generally doubling, even tripling, his route. Distance never bothered Tephanis; he stood before the purple-skinned barghest whelp even before Drizzt, considering the implications of the disastrous meeting, had left the blueberry patch.

armer Bartholemew Thistledown’s perspective changed considerably when Connor, his oldest son, renamed Liam’s “drizzit” a dark elf. Farmer Thistledown had spent his entire forty-five years in Maldobar, a village fifty miles up the Dead Orc River north of Sundabar. Bartholemew’s father had lived here, and his father’s father before him. In all that time, the only news any Farmer Thistledown had ever heard of dark elves was the tale of a suspected drow raid on a small settlement of wild elves a hundred miles to the north, in Coldwood. That raid, if it was even perpetrated by the drow, had occurred more than a decade before.
    Lack of personal experience with the drow race did not diminish Farmer Thistledown’s fears at hearing his children’s tale of the encounter in the blueberry patch. Connor and Eleni, two trusted sources old enough to keep their wits about them in a time of crisis, had viewed the elf up close, and they held no doubts about the color of his skin.
    “The only thing I can’t rightly figure,” Bartholemew