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Regis the halfling, the only one of his kind for hundreds of ers behind his head and leaned back against the is was short, even by the standards of his diminutive race, with the fluff of his curly brown locks barely cresting the three-foot ood meal, or several, as the opportunities presented the pole rose up above hi out over the quiet lake, lassy surface of Maer Dualdon Gentle ripples rolled down the ihtly The line had floated in toward shore and hung liis couldn’t feel the fish nibbling at the bait In seconds, the hook was cleaned with no catch to show for it, but the halfling didn’t know, and it would be hours before he’d even bother to check Not that he’d have cared, anyway

This trip was for leisure, not work With winter coht well be his last excursion of the year to the lake; he didn’t go in for winter fishing, like soreedy huh ivory stocked up from other people’s catches to keep him busy for all seven months of snow He was truly a credit to his less-than-a out a bit of civilization in a land where none existed, hundreds of htly be called a city Other halflings never ca the coladly packed up his belongings and returned to the south, except for a little probleuilduild

A four-inch block of the "white gold" lay beside the reclining halfling, along with several delicate carving instrus of a horse’s is had is s

"Too fine a day," he had rationalized, an excuse that never seeh, unlike so h the weather demons that bent this harsh land to their iron will had taken a holiday, or perhaps they were just gathering their strength for a brutal winter The result was an autu for the civilized lands to the south A rare day indeed for the land that had come to be called Icewind Dale, a name well-earned by the eastern breezes that always seehed Glacier Even on the few days that the wind shifted there was little relief, for Ten-Toas bordered on the north and west byIce Only southern breezes promised any relief, and any wind that tried to reach this desolate area froh peaks of the Spine of the World

Regis h the fuzzy limbs of the fur trees at the puffy white clouds as they sailed across the sky on the olden war was tempted now and then to take off his waistcoat Whenever a cloud blocked out the waris was reminded that it was September on the tundra In a month there would be snow In two, the roads west and south to Luskan, the nearest city to Ten-Toould be iis looked across the long bay that rolled in around the side of his little fishing hole The rest of Ten-Toas taking advantage of the weather, too; the fishing boats were out in force, scra around each other to find their special "hitting spots" No reed of huis Back in the southern land of Cali a fast ladder to Associate Guilduilds in the port city of Calireed had cut short his career His guildmaster, the Pasha Pook, possessed a wonderful collection of rubies - a dozen, at least - whose facets were so ingeniously cut that they seemed to cast an alis hadstones whenever Pook put them out on display, and, after all, he’d only taken one To this day, the halfling couldn’t figure out why the Pasha, who had no less than eleven others, was still so angry with hiis would say whenever the Pasha’shadhim to extend his exile to an even more remote land But he hadn’t needed that phrase for a year-and-a-half now, not since he had arrived in Ten-Towns Pook’s ar, but this frontier settlement, in the inable, was a longer way still, and Regis was quite content in the security of his new sanctuary There ealth here, and for those nih to be a scrimshander, someone who could transform the ivorylike bone of a knucklehead trout into an artistic carving, a co could be made with a minimum amount of work

And with Ten-Towns’ scri y and turn his new-found trade into a boo silently; his soft, low-cut boots barely stirring the dust He kept the cowl of his brown cloak pulled low over the floaves of his stark white hair and ht have thought him to be no more than an illusion, an optical trick of the brown sea of tundra

The dark elf pulled his cloak tighter about hiht as a hu round had not been erased by five years on the sunlit surface To this day, sunlight drained and dizzied hiht and was co with Bruenor in the dwarf’s valley, and he had seen the signs

The reindeer had begun their auturation southwest to the sea, yet no human tracks followed the herd The caves north of Ten-Towns, always a stop-over for the nomadic barbarians on their way back to the tundra, had not even been stocked to reprovision the tribes on their long trek Drizzt understood the implications In normal barbarian life, the survival of the tribes depended on their following the reindeer herd The apparent abandonment of their traditional as

And Drizzt had heard the battle drus rolled over the enizable only to the other barbarian tribes But Drizzt knehat they foretold He was an observer who understood the value of knowledge of friend or foe, and he had often used his stealth prowess to observe the daily routines and traditions of the proud natives of Icewind Dale, the barbarians

Drizzt picked up his pace, pushing himself to the limits of his endurance In five short years, he had coes known as Ten-Towns and for the people who lived there Like so many of the other outcasts who had finally settled there, the drow had found no welcome anywhere else in the Realms Even here he was only tolerated by ues, few people bothered him He’d been luckier than most; he’d found a few friends who could look beyond his heritage and see his true character

Anxiously, the dark elf squinted at Kelvin’s Cairn, the solitary mountain that marked the entrance to the rocky dwarven valley between Maer Dualdon and Lac Dinneshere, but his violet-colored almond eyes, ht, could not penetrate the blur of daylight enough to gauge the distance

Again he ducked his head under the cowl, preferring a blind run to the dizziness of prolonged exposure to the sun, and sank back into the dark dreahtless underworld city of his ancestors The drow elves had actually once walked on the surface world, dancing beneath the sun and the stars with their fair-skinned cousins Yet the dark elves were malicious, passionless killers beyond the tolerance of even their nor kin And in the inevitable war of the elven nations, the droere driven into the bowels of the ground Here they found a world of dark secrets and dark ics and were content to re once ics They beca cousins, whose dealings with the arcane arts under the life-giving warh, the drow had lost all desire to see the sun and the stars Both their bodies and minds had adapted to the depths, and luckily for all elt under the open sky, the evil dark elves were content to re to raid and pillage As far as Drizzt knew, he was the only one of his kind living on the surface He had learned soht, but he still suffered the hereditary weaknesses it ie under daytied by his own carelessness when the two bearlike tundra yetis, their cay fur still colored in su rose frois watched as it her "A four-footer, or better," the halflingtopped out just below thein one house tonight!"

A second ship raced up beside the one that had signaled the catch, banging into the anchored vessel in its rush The two crews ih each re between hiis clearly heard the shouts of the captains

"Ere, ye stole me catch!" the captain of the second ship roared

"You’re water-weary!" the captain of the first ship retorted "Never it was! It’s our fish fairly hooked and fairly hauled! Now be gone with your stinking tub before we take you out of the water!"

Predictably, the crew of the second ship was over the rail and swinging before the captain of the first ship had finished speaking

Regis turned his eyes back to the clouds; the dispute on the boats did not hold any interest for hi Such squabbles were common on the lakes, always over the fish, especially if so one Generally they weren’t too serious, , and only rarely did soet badly wounded or killed There were exceptions, though In one skir no less than seventeen boats, three full crews and half of a fourth were cut down and left floating in the bloodied water On that same day, that particular lake, the southerned from Dellon-lune to Redwaters