When a blood-thirsty band of orcs, led by an as-yet-unseen enemy, comes rampaging out of the Spine of the World, it lays waste to everything in its path. Dark elf ranger Drizzt Do'Urden and his most trusted friends find themselves in the path of destruction.

Assassin Artemis Entreri whisks his kidnapped victim, Regis the halfling, south to Calimport and into Pasha Pook's vengeful hands. If Pook can control the magical panther Guenhwyvar, Regis will die in a real game of cat and mouse. Using an enchanted mask, dark elf Drizzt Do'Urden hides his heritage and races with the barbarian Wulfgar to save their light-fingered friend.

Having found a measure of peace among the dwarves in the reclaimed Mithral Hall, Drizzt begins to know contentment for perhaps the first time in his tumultuous life. But for the dark elf renegade from a city ruled by priestesses of a demon goddess, no peace can long last. It is Lolth herself, the dreaded Queen of the Demonweb Pits, who musters her followers to pour up from the black depths of the Underdark to reclaim for their goddess the one soul...

The gods of the Realms are quarreling and stepping over one another in their greedy grabs for power and Lloth, the dark Spider Queen deity, decides to cautiously enter the fray by sending the beast Errrtu as her evil emmisary to the city of Menzoberranzan.

The Arcane Brotherhood has long held the city of Luskan in their power, but when corruption eats away at their ranks, Captain Deudermont comes to the rescue of a city that has become a safe haven for the Sword Coast's most dangerous pirates. But rescuing a city from itself may not be as easy as Deudermont thinks, and when Drizzt can't talk him out of it, he'll be forced to help.

Here for the first time in one volume is R.A. Salvatore's The Dark Elf trilogy, the stirring epic that recounts the tortured beginnings and early struggles of Drizzt Do'Urden, one of the most beloved characters of the Forgotten Realms setting.