Sojourn: The Legend of Drizzt Read Online Free PDF

if anyone would be following, then he took up the trail, letting the whistling guide him.
    The boy moved unerringly away from the farmhouse, up into the mountains, and Drizzt moved behind him by a hundred paces or so, determined to keep the boy out of danger.
    In the dark tunnels of the Underdark Drizzt could have crept right up behind the boy—or behind a goblin or practically anything else—and patted him on the rump before being discovered. But after only a half-hour or so of this pursuit, the movements and erratic speed changes along the trail, coupled with the fact that the whistling had ceased, told Drizzt that the boy knew he was being followed.
    Wondering if the boy had sensed a third party, Drizzt summonedGuenhwyvar from the onyx figurine and sent the panther off on a flanking maneuver. Drizzt started ahead again at a cautious pace.
    A moment later, when the child’s voice cried out in distress, the drow drew his scimitars and threw out all caution. Drizzt couldn’t understand any of the boy’s words, but the desperate tone rang clearly enough.
    “Guenhwyvar!” the drow called, trying to bring the distant panther back to his side. Drizzt couldn’t stop and wait for the cat, though, and he charged on.
    The trail wound up a steep climb, came out of the trees suddenly, and ended on the lip of a wide gorge, fully twenty feet across. A single log spanned the crevasse, and hanging from it near the other side was the boy. His eyes widened considerably at the sight of the ebony-skinned elf, scimitars in hand. He stammered a few words that Drizzt could not begin to decipher.
    A wave of guilt flooded through Drizzt at the sight of the imperiled child; the boy had only landed in this predicament because of Drizzt’s pursuit. The gorge was only about as deep as it was wide, but the fall ended on jagged rocks and brambles. At first, Drizzt hesitated, caught off guard by the sudden meeting and its inevitable implications, then the drow quickly put his own problems out of mind. He snapped his scimitars back into their sheaths and folding his arms across his chest in a drow signal for peace, he put one foot out on the log.
    The boy had other ideas. As soon as he recovered from the shock of seeing the strange elf, he swung himself to a ledge on the stone bank opposite Drizzt and pushed the log from its perch. Drizzt quickly backed off the log as it tumbled down into the crevasse. The drow understood then that the boy had never been in real danger but had pretended distress to flush out his pursuer. And Drizzt presumed, if the pursuer had been one of the boy’s family, as the boy no doubt had suspected, the peril might have deflected any thoughts of punishment.
    Now Drizzt was the one in the predicament. He had been discovered. He tried to think of a way to communicate with the boy, to explain his presence and stave off panic. The boy didn’t wait for any explanations, though. Wide-eyed and terror-stricken, he scaled the bank—via a path he obviously knew well—and darted off into the shrubbery.
    Drizzt looked around helplessly. “Wait!” he cried in the drow tongue, though he knew the boy would not understand and would not have stopped even if he could.
    A black feline form rushed out beside the drow and sprang into the air, easily clearing the crevasse. Guenhwyvar padded down softly on the other side and disappeared into the thicket.
    “Guenhwyvar!” Drizzt cried, trying to halt the panther. Drizzt had no idea how Guenhwyvar would react to the child. To Drizzt’s knowledge, the panther had only encountered one human before, the wizard that Drizzt’s companions had subsequently killed. Drizzt looked around for some way to follow. He could scale down the side of the gorge, cross at the bottom, and climb back up, but that would take too long.
    Drizzt ran back a few steps, then charged the gorge and leaped into the air, calling on his innate powers of levitation as he went. Drizzt was truly relieved when he felt his