Sojourn: The Legend of Drizzt Read Online Free PDF Page B

body pull free of the ground’s gravity. He hadn’t used his levitation spell since he had come to the surface. The spell served no purpose for a drow hiding under the open sky. Gradually, Drizzt’s initial momentum carried him near the far bank. He began to concentrate on drifting down to the stone, but the spell ended abruptly and Drizzt plopped down hard. He ignored the bruises on his knee, and the questions of why his spell had faltered, and came up running, calling desperately for Guenhwyvar to stop.
    Drizzt was relieved when he found the cat. Guenhwyvar sat calmly in a clearing, one paw casually pinning the boy facedown to the ground. The child was calling out again—for help,Drizzt assumed—but appeared unharmed.
    “Come, Guenhwyvar,” Drizzt said quietly, calmly. “Leave the child alone.” Guenhwyvar yawned lazily and complied, padding across the clearing to stand at its master’s side.
    The boy remained down for a long moment. Then, summoning his courage, he moved suddenly, leaping to his feet and spinning to face the dark elf and the panther. His eyes seemed wider still, almost a caricature of terror, peeking out from his now dirty face.
    “What are you?” the boy asked in the common human language.
    Drizzt held his arms out to the sides to indicate that he did not understand. On impulse, he poked a finger into his chest and replied, “Drizzt Do’Urden.” He noticed that the boy was moving slightly, secretly dropping one foot behind the other and sliding the other back into place. Drizzt was not surprised—and he made certain that he kept Guenhwyvar in check this time—when the boy turned on his heel and sprinted away, screaming “Help! It’s a drizzit!” with every stride.
    Drizzt looked at Guenhwyvar and shrugged, and the cat seemed to shrug back.

athak, a spindle-armed goblin, made his way slowly up the steep, rocky incline, every step weighted with dread. The goblin had to report his findings—five dead gnolls could not be ignored—but the unfortunate creature seriously doubted that either Ulgulu or Kempfana would willingly accept the news. Still, what options did Nathak have? He could run away, flee down the other side of the mountain, and off into the wilderness. That seemed an even more desperate course, though, for the goblin knew well Ulgulu’s taste for vengeance. The great purple-skinned master could tear a tree from the ground with his bare hands, could tear handfuls of stone from the cave wall, and could readily tear the throat from a deserting goblin.
    Every step brought a shudder as Nathak moved beyond the concealing scrub into the small entry room of his master’s cave complex.
    “Bouts time yez isses back,” one of the other two goblins in the room snorted. “Yez been gone fer two days!”
    Nathak just nodded and took a deep breath. “What’re ye fer?” the third goblin asked. “Did ye finded the gnolls?”
    Nathak’s face blanched, and no amount of deep breathing could relieve the fit that came over the goblin. “Ulgulu in there?” he asked squeamishly.
    The two goblin guards looked curiously at each other, then back to Nathak. “He finded the gnolls,” one of them remarked, guessing the problem. “Dead gnolls.”
    “Ulgulu won’ts be glad,” the other piped in, and they moved apart, one of them lifting the heavy curtain that separated the entry room from the audience chamber.
    Nathak hesitated and started to look back, as though reconsidering this whole course. Perhaps flight would be preferable, he thought. The goblin guards grabbed their spindly companion and roughly shoved him into the audience chamber, crossing their spears behind Nathak to prevent any retreat.
    Nathak managed to find a measure of composure when he saw that it was Kempfana, not Ulgulu, sitting in the huge chair across the room. Kempfana had earned a reputation among the goblin ranks as the calmer of the ruling brothers, though Kempfana, too, had impulsively devoured enough of his minions