Dungeons & Dragons’ most beloved draw, Drizzt d’Urden, is back in R.A. Salvatore’s latest novel. edge of glacier Way of the Drow is the second book in the series, and it begins there. Starlight Enclave Abandoned in 2021. In it, fan-favorite characters Katy-Brie, Jarlxall, Artemis Entreary, and Zaknafen fall into a society that is unlike any previously explored in Forgotten Realms. Proud to present this special piece.
On August 9, the novel began shipping from online retailers and independent booksellers nationwide—including signed copies available at Barnes & Noble.
They entered a wide alleyway of taverns and brothels, some free-standing constructions, others carved in stalagmites, and still others no more than walls of cloth that hardly shielded the activities within.
Dinine had known this place from the days when he was called Dinin, at that time the secondboy of the House d’Urdain. He often came here to play, gamble, fight – anything to break the monotony of his existence as the lowest noble at the court of Matron Malis. Briarin seemed calm and quite calm to him now. At first, he thought it was due to recent events—the march to the surface, the brewing troubles, and the war with the demon hordes that had been fought here in Menzoberanzen just a few years down—but as he and Vosselli continued their walk. , he realized that no, he was not at all.
Shelves were stocked, with racks of dirty glasses piled at the end of each bar.
Which meant it was not a sign of decline. No, on this day, at this very moment, the street was strangely empty.
He saw some patrons and potential customers, some leaning on bars, some standing with prostitutes as if making a bargain, a couple pitching bones in a small alley between two stalagmites that included the same tavern. was. But they were all so unnatural at it that they didn’t think they were typical residents of Stanchstreet. He looked for the insignia, and noted from the subtle revelation of their armor and weapons that these were not Menzoberanzen’s underdogs, no.
Yet he did not see the signs of the house, nor the insignia or the crest.
And it made it worse.
“Are you ready?” He whispered to his companion.
“Of course. You see too?”
“I count to six.”
“At least eight.”
“Ah yes, my favorite number, or so I was told from the moment I was born,” replied Dinine.
“Take heart, we have friends,” Voselli told him. “We only need to hold our ground for a while.”
“Unless they also have friends.”
Voselli stopped and turned halfway, smiling at him. She was about to say something, Dinina was about to shout, that she suddenly turned around, crossing her trident, bent down forcefully, stabbing her back with a sword Took it His attacker became unbalanced and fell far enough to roll Wosley’s shoulders and launched a devastating right cross that broke into his attacker’s face and his head was badly retracted.
He was completely unconscious before falling to the ground.
Dinene had watched every move, sweep and gracefully swung his left shoulder back, essentially “throwing” his right arm off his left shoulder, resulting in such a long and truly devastating punch.
He quietly reminded himself that this woman should never be angry, but that she was at all times contemplating something other than a fight, now as a pair of young men, or more clearly, barrage closed. I came to him. Four wavy and stabbing swords.
Her draw was so sharp that Dinina’s swords appeared to be in her hands, as Zaknafin had taught her, drawing and stabbing in one singular movement. The opponent on her right took a turn and tapped one sword to repel, but the other had not anticipated the sudden attack and grabbed the blade of Dinina’s left hand at the tip of her breastplate, where it slipped and struck her neck. Started going
DiNina would have finished him, nearly hitting him with the head, except that the second attacker was already countering with a backhand sweep with his blocking blade, causing Dinina to fall back and hit the blade of his left hand. was forced to turn sharply to intercept.
He was one of the fighting, at least temporarily faltering, stumbling and falling to the side, but another enemy leaped into the void and proceeded fiercely, to return Dinina on his heels. Forced, his two swords were working furiously to deliver four stabs. Blade in the Bay.
Work to the rhythm, he told himself quietly.
Litany of Zaknafin.
Work for the rhythm, get into the flow of the fight, find out the tendencies of your opponents. So Dinne did, and he was quite pleased with himself as he held his ground, anticipating each attack and defending, parrying, reposting, even avoiding a simple turn. After all those years as a driver, he was still living up to Jaknafein’s training, and Wosley had just lived up to the compliments he had received.
His tremors broke him from that rhythm and that confidence when he felt something hard coming for his head from behind.
Consciously, he simply folded his legs under hers and fell on his knees, patted his chin as well, and held himself up.
But the missile – which was actually another enemy Drow warrior – fell on top of him, falling over two attackers who didn’t do their best to stab their poor fellow in the collision.
With a quick appreciative glance at Voselli laughing, Dinine went up and on. He stabbed the first thrown Dro in the kidney, and just as the man cried out in pain, Dinine blew him from behind, seizing the initiative and driving back the two attackers. He deftly used a series of inside-outs with his left-hand stabs, swinging his arm closer and into his right hip and stumbling to launch attacks from there, moving the off-balance wide out. Forced to.
A final thrust sent the Drow back three strides, and Dinine completely turned on the draw to the right, the blades now rolling as if just to overcome the mate.
Except, no, because Dinnina broke down almost immediately to swiftly return to the left, where she was doing the sinking charge, apparently believing that Dinnina was fully involved with the other. The attacker came with an aggressive stance, one blade high, the other far forward.
Dinina smoothly crossed the tip of that blade, and raised her left hand high, the blade horizontally to steal the chops of Dro’s raised sword.
These were not homeless crooks. He was wearing fine armor.
But Dinina wielded benere swords, and with the speed of both fighters bringing them together rapidly, that fine armor barely slowed the thrust of Dinina’s right-hand blade.
Reversing strangely, Drow stopped sharply.
Dinne retreated, dropping his left shoulder, sending his free sword to cut through behind him to sustain the rest of the fighter’s hordes, while his right leg went up to the drowned Dro’s chest and pushed hard, sent Dinina out and into a roll and stabbed the mortal-wounded attacker and dropped the first warrior Dinina.
A flick to the right forces Dinina to point her sword, and a handcrossbow just in time to kick off the fight.
He looked around, looking at the flood in the street, and thought at first that an army had come against him and Voseli.
But no, most of these were blasphemy warriors, fellow former drivers, he felt. He looked at Vosli smiling.
“They’re shadowing us?” He asked.
“I told you we were friends,” she replied.
“You didn’t say they were shadowing us.”
The warrior groaned. “Maybe I wanted to confirm what I was told, and what I expected to be true.”
“That I can fight?”
“Yeah, and maybe you’ll soon count on me to tell me the truth about Dinina. You’re no commoner. You’re not self-educated in martial arts. You attended an academy and were trained by a weapons master. .
She calms down as another older Dro woman walks upstairs, another of the blasphemous force who had spent millennia in the abyss with the carcass and her fellow tyrants.
“What do you know, Alandra?” Voselli asked.
“Your ambushers are on the run.”
“Let them go.”
she nodded. “Yes, I already ordered. But there’s another, a priestess of the House Hunzrin. She wants to retrieve these fallen enemies so they don’t die.”
“Why does she care? Are these the killers of House Hanzrin?”
“No.”
“Then?”
“She said no, but my guess is definitely House Mellarn.”
“So House Hunzrin is trying to play the role of mediator here and avoid war,” argued Voselli. He looked around at five attackers, where only one, skewered by Dinine, seemed to be in mortal danger.
“Have he come and fix him,” Voselli decided. “And do to her as she would. Others come back to House Benare with us. I will not go beyond my authority here. Let Matron Mother Quenthel Benare decide their fate.”
Alandra ran away and gave orders to bark, while Voseli held Dinina back just the way they had come.
“It was my murder,” he told her as they left. “Didn’t you think that the nature of the fallen warrior should be my choice?”
“No,” she replied simply. “I was once the weapons master of the First House of Menzoberanzan. You’re a normal person, so you say. Why should I care what you want?”
Dinina stopped and let him go a few steps ahead of her, and stood with her hands on her hips until she came back.
“You mean to play the same game that decided our mutual fate in the past?” He asked.
“Your words have consequences. When I can count on you, I’ll respect you.”
“Because I’m a nobleman, you believe?”
“Because you won’t lie to me anymore. Don’t get me wrong, warrior. About our nature in this struggle and about our future, if we even have one, I’m just as fearful as you. We’re blasphemous, So they have decided. We are Matron Mother Benare’s shock soldiers, her fodder. She will surely throw us against her enemies, and she will not shed tears when we are ruined.”
“Or Lolth will reveal his joke and bring us back to a state of disgust,” replied Dinine, acknowledging his deepest fear.
“It’s crossed my mind. And so I intend to bring blasphemy together under my command. Here or back in the abyss, we stand together or we face suffering – and real Death happens only when we are lucky. But I like people who tell me the truth, Dinina.”
He practically spit out his sobriquet.
He did not want to cross Voseli. He didn’t really want to cross Matron Mother Benare. And above all, he didn’t want to be a pawn in the grand scheme of the Demon Queen of Spiders.
But in the end, he was a Do’Urden, Elderboy Dinin’ Do’Urden, and in this most confusing and dangerous time, he simply couldn’t figure out how the truth would play out.
