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found on my journey, encounters with grand friends and marvelous mentors: Zaknafein, my father, and Montolio deBrouchee! And Catti-brie, who helped me to find my heart and a courage of a different sort—the courage to stubbornly exist in a place where my people are not welcome.
    And Bruenor, yes Bruenor—perhaps Bruenor above all others. It is incomprehensible that I was befriended by a dwarf king and taken in as a brother. Yes, it has been a reciprocal friendship. I helped Bruenor regain his throne, and walked beside him on his wider journey to bring his people together under the great homeland of Gauntlgrym. Between us, it seems, sits the very definition of friendship.
    With all of this, here I am. So many battles I have fought, so many obstacles overcome, yet I cannot deny that good fortune has played a tremendous role in leading me to this place and this time. Every man, every woman, will find battles, will find enemies to overcome, be they goblins or disease, an ill child, a wound that will not heal, a dearth of food, the chill of winter, unrequited love, the absence of a friend. Life is a journey from trial to test, from love to hate, from friendship to grief. We each deal with unsettling uncertainty and we each march on, ever on, following the road that will ultimately lead to our grave.
    What grand things might we do along that road? What side avenues will we build, which might start our children on their own walk, perhaps?
    So I have found this turn of perspective. I have scaled the peak and look now upon a grand, grand view. I can thank a woman whose warm embrace brings me peace. I can thank the greatest friends any man might ever know. I can thank a dwarf king who found a rogue on the side of a lonely mountain in a forsaken land and called him friend, and took him in.
    But I am an elf, and lo, there looms another mountain, I fear. I think often of Innovindil, who told me to live my life in shorter spans, in the expected days of those shorter-lived races about me. Should Catti-brie and I have children, I will likely outlive them, as I will almost surely outlive Catti-brie.
    It is a confusing thought, a paradox entwining the greatest joy with the most excruciating agony.
    And so here, on this mountaintop, surveying the grand view, I remain aware that I might witness the dawn of another few centuries. By the counting of elves, I have lived but a fraction of my life, yet at this stillearly moment, it feels so full!
    I am a fortunate man.
    Should I see those distant dawns, there are surely dark valleys ahead, and after such certain moments of profound loss will I find the strength to climb the next mountain, and the one after that, and the one after that?
    I will, I know, because in my grief the first time, when I thought these friends lost, my love lost, my life lost, I came to understand the truth: that the road will roll beneath your feet whether you step lightly with hope and swiftly with determination, or whether you plod in misery, scraping the dirt with heavy boots.
    Because the perspective of that journey is a choice, and I choose happiness, and I choose to climb the next mountain.
    —Drizzt Do’Urden

CHAPTER 1
TIDYING
    T he wagon bounced along the west road, the coffin, tied down as it was, still managing to grumble and bang—so much like the battlerager it carried. They had collected Thibbledorf Pwent for his final journey.
    Penelope Harpell and Catti-brie drove the wagon, with Drizzt astride his magical unicorn, Andahar, close beside them. They were bound for Gauntlgrym, after four tendays spent in Longsaddle, where they had dropped old Kipper and the other Harpells who had helped King Bruenor retake and secure the dwarven homeland. They could have used some sort of a teleport to bring the battlerager’s body home to Gauntlgrym, but the winter of the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant, or 1487 by Dalereckoning, had broken early and so they had decided to take an easy ride instead. Besides, big changes