Sojourn recap

Drizzt Do'Urden climbs out of the Underdark into a surface world that blinds him, and spends his first years there learning to live under a sky and watching human farms from a distance because he knows his face will terrify anyone who sees it. When the barghest Ulgulu slaughters a farming family he has been quietly watching, the drow tracks nearby make Drizzt the obvious culprit, and the bounty hunter Roddy McGristle takes up a pursuit that outlasts every fact against it. Drizzt destroys the real killers, cannot clear his name, and retreats into the mountains for years. There he finds Montolio DeBrouchee, an old blind ranger who takes him in, teaches him the surface world, names what he already is, and introduces him to the goddess Mielikki. It is the first home he has had. When a drow hunting party led by his brother comes up after him and the local orcs are turned loose on the grove, the attack is beaten off but Montolio is killed. Drizzt travels north to Icewind Dale, where the dwarf king Bruenor Battlehammer speaks for him and offers him a home.

Previously: Drizzt Do'Urden was born into a noble house of the drow city Menzoberranzan and raised to serve the Spider Queen, whose cruelty he could never make himself accept. Trained into a superb swordsman by the house weapon master Zaknafein, he broke with his people after a raid on the surface in which he refused to kill an elf child, renounced the goddess, and fled his family for the wild tunnels of the Underdark. His desertion cost the house the goddess's favor, and his mother sacrificed Zaknafein, who was in fact his father, in his place. Drizzt survived ten years alone in the tunnels with only the summoned panther Guenhwyvar for company, nearly losing himself to the instinctive killing state that kept him alive. He found shelter for a time among the deep gnomes of Blingdenstone and made friends there, but his family's hunt followed him and killed one of them. Rather than let the gnomes pay any more on his account, he refused their offer of a home and set out for the surface world he had seen only once, on the raid that broke his faith.

Drizzt reaches the surface and finds it almost unlivable. Daylight blinds and burns him, so he sleeps in caves along the mountains and moves only at night, teaching himself weather, seasons and the behavior of animals from scratch. Hunger and loneliness push him toward the settled valleys, where he watches human farms from the treeline: he wants company badly enough to take the risk of being seen, and knows well enough what being seen would mean. Above the same valley, in a lair worked into the rock, the barghest brothers Ulgulu and Kempfana feed on travellers and livestock to grow toward their full power, served by the quickling Tephanis and a rabble of goblins.

Drizzt spends weeks watching the Thistledown farm near the village of Maldobar, close enough that the children catch glimpses of him. Ulgulu, hunting, kills the family. Drow tracks around the farm and a frightened village make Drizzt the obvious murderer, and the frontier turns out to hunt him. The bounty hunter Roddy McGristle leads the search; in the fighting Drizzt is forced to kill Roddy's dog and leaves Roddy with a permanent facial wound and a grudge that will outlast every fact. Drizzt tracks the real killers to their lair and destroys Ulgulu and Kempfana, but there is no one he can tell, and no one who would believe a dark elf if he did.

Unable to clear his name, Drizzt goes north into the high country and lives alone again for years, deliberately avoiding people. Roddy McGristle keeps hunting him; his obsession costs him his standing with the local authorities and does not slow him down. Elves of the region take up the trail as well, among them the archer Kellindil, who studies the tracks and the pattern of the killings closely enough to notice that the evidence and the accusation do not fit together. Drizzt, meanwhile, has begun to slide back toward the wordless hunter he was underground, with nothing on the surface to hold him to anything else.

High in the mountains Drizzt finds a fortified grove kept by Montolio DeBrouchee, an old blind ranger who lives among animals, watches the orc tribes below, and judges by conduct because he cannot judge by sight. Montolio takes him in. Over a long winter he teaches Drizzt the surface world in earnest: woodcraft, weather, the names of things, how to fight beside allies rather than alone. He tells Drizzt that what he has been doing by instinct has a name, ranger, and introduces him to the goddess Mielikki, whom Drizzt accepts. For the first time since he left Menzoberranzan, Drizzt has a friend, a purpose and a place. Below the grove the orc chieftain Graul gathers his tribes, and word that a rogue drow is living on the surface makes its way back down to Menzoberranzan.

House Do'Urden, ruined and desperate to recover the Spider Queen's favor, sends a hunting party up to the surface under Drizzt's brother Dinin, at his sister Vierna's insistence. Roddy McGristle is still on the trail as well. Graul's orcs are set loose on Montolio's grove, and the grove's defenders fight a running battle through the trees and the prepared ground the old ranger has spent years laying out. Drizzt and Guenhwyvar break the assault and drive the drow party back toward the tunnels, but the victory is expensive: Montolio is killed. Drizzt buries him and keeps the promise implied in everything the old man taught him.

With the grove empty and no settled community willing to have him, Drizzt heads north to Icewind Dale, a frozen frontier at the edge of the known lands where ten small towns scrape a living from the tundra and the lake fishing. He is met there with the reaction he expects, but the dwarf king Bruenor Battlehammer, whose clan mines the valley beneath Kelvin's Cairn, judges him by what he does rather than what he is, speaks for him publicly, and offers him a cave on the mountain and the dwarves' company when he wants it. Bruenor's adopted human daughter Catti-brie, still a child, befriends him without hesitation. Drizzt's long journey out of the Underdark ends here: not with a world that accepts him, but with a place he can stay and a few people who will vouch for him.

The attack on Montolio's grove costs Drizzt the first home he has had on the surface. The orcs are broken and the drow hunting party is driven back underground, but Montolio is killed in the fighting. Drizzt buries the old ranger, keeps Hooter and the grove's animals in mind as he goes, and holds to the ranger's code and the goddess Mielikki that Montolio gave him rather than sliding back into the hunter he was in the Underdark. Kellindil and the elves of the region, who watched what Drizzt actually did rather than what he was, no longer count him an enemy. Because no settled place will have him and because staying anywhere populated invites the next hunt, Drizzt goes north to Icewind Dale, a frozen frontier at the edge of the maps where people are judged mainly on whether they are useful in a fight. The ten towns there greet him with the usual fear, but the dwarf king Bruenor Battlehammer takes his own measure of him, speaks for him, and offers him a place in the dwarven valley beneath Kelvin's Cairn; Bruenor's adopted human daughter Catti-brie befriends him outright. Drizzt's exile ends not with the world's acceptance but with a handful of people willing to take him as he is.