Streams of Silver (Forgotten Realms: The Icewind Dale, #2; Legend of Drizzt, #5)

by R.A. Salvatore

We make the dragons as we make the gods, because we need them, because, somewhere deep in our hearts, we recognize that a world without them is a world not worth living in.

No, I would not want to live in a world without dragons, as I would not want to live in a world without magic, for that is a world without mystery, and that is a world without faith.

Bruenor nodded his approval at the barbarian’s dedication to his principles.

Nostalgia is possibly the greatest of the lies that we all tell ourselves. It is the glossing of the past to fit the sensibilities of the present. For some, it brings a measure of comfort, a sense of self and of source, but others, I fear, take these altered memories too far, and because of that, paralyze themselves to the realities about them. How many people long for that “past, simpler, and better world,” I wonder, without ever recognizing the truth that perhaps it was they who were simpler and better, and not the world about them?

Perhaps it is one of our most basic fears, and one wrought of foolish pride, that our children will know better than we do.

When their eyes cleared again, they found that the horses and ponies had been reduced to the size of cats! “What?” blurted Bruenor, but Regis was laughing again and Harkle acted as though nothing unusual had happened. “Pick them up and come along,” he instructed.

Such weapons offend because the true warrior understands that while one is learning how to use a sword, one should also be learning why and when to use a sword. To grant the power of a weapon master to anyone at all, without effort, without training and proof that the lessons have taken hold, is to deny the responsibility that comes with such power.

The short-lived humans might have toppled a thousand kingdoms and built a thousand more in the few centuries that a single dwarven king would rule his people in peace.”

Intertwined with those dead were other, similar skeletons in strangely crafted mail, as though the fighting had pitted dwarf against dwarf. It was a riddle beyond the surface dwellers’ experience, but Drizzt Do’Urden understood. In the city of the dark elves, he had known the Duergar, the malicious gray dwarves, as allies. Duergar were the dwarven equivalent of the drow,

“It resisted my spell,” she said, observing the obvious. “Not unexpected from a door of dwarven crafting. The dwarves use little magic themselves, but their ability to resist the spellcastings of others is considerable.”