“I have ventured outside of the Silver Marches,” Drizzt said, “have you? I
have witnessed the death of once-proud Luskan, and with it, the death of a
dear, dear friend, whose dreams lay shattered and broken beside the bodies of
five thousand victims. I have watched the greatest cathedral in the world burn
and collapse. I witnessed the hope of the goodly drow, the rise of the followers
of Eilistraee. But where are they now?”
“You speak in ridd—” the elf started, but Drizzt slammed him again.
“Gone!” Drizzt shouted. “Gone, and gone with them the hopes of a tamed
and gentle world. I have watched once safe trails revert to wilderness, and have
walked a dozen-dozen communities that you will never know. They are gone
now, lost to the Spellplague or worse! Where are the benevolent gods? Where
is the refuge from the tumult of a world gone mad? Where are the candles to
chase away the darkness?”
“They are here, those lights of hope,” Drizzt said, to both elves. “In the Silver
Marches. Or they are nowhere. Do we choose peace or do we choose war? If it
is battle you seek, fool elf, then get you gone from this land. You will find death
aplenty, I assure you. You will find ruins where once proud cities stood. You
will find fields of wind-washed bones, or perhaps the remains of a single hearth,
where once an entire village thrived.
“And in that hundred years of chaos, amidst the coming of darkness, few
have escaped the swirl of destruction, but we have flourished. Can you say the
same for Thay? Mulhorand? Sembia? You say I betray those who befriended me,
yet it was the vision of one exceptional dwarf and one exceptional orc that built
this island against the roiling sea.”
