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Drizzt looked at her curiously, but for just a moment before he noted Dahlia’s superior, knowing smile.
“I was a farmer,” explained the man Drizzt had just lifted. “Right near Luskan. Goodman Stuyles at yer service. ” He held out his hand, but Drizzt didn’t take it. “My family worked the land since before the fall o’ the Hosttower of the Arcane. ”
“Then why are you here?” the drow asked suspiciously.
“Ain’t no use for farms around Luskan no more,” the man replied. “Folks’re trading for their food now, and most by ship, or by the wagon like the one that just passed. ”
“And most of it stolen food, don’t ye doubt!” another man interjected. “They got no patience for a farm, nor no means to protect one. ”
Drizzt glanced over at Dahlia, who merely shrugged as if it was all quite expected.
“We grew it, they stole it, and burned that what they couldn’t take,” said Stuyles.
Down the road, more of the highwaymen came into view, but only briefly before scattering into the brush, no doubt to try to flank the newcomers.
“Go,” Drizzt bade the four, waving them away.
A couple moved to do just that, one going over to help the woman to her feet and calling for the nearest horse as he did.
“I would think you would offer a meal and a dry bed for the two of us for letting you go,” Dahlia said to the group, drawing surprised looks from all four, and most of all, from Drizzt. “Weary travelers, rainy night. …” she went on.
Drizzt’s jaw hung open, and didn’t begin to close when Goodman Stuyles answered, “Join us, then. ”
“We have other business,” Drizzt said rather sternly, aiming his remark squarely at Dahlia.
But Dahlia just laughed and followed the four highwaymen. With a great sigh, Drizzt did, too.
The bandits had set up several wide lean-tos among a row of thick pines just off the road, affording them a comfortable enough camp despite the driving rain. They proved to be surprisingly hospitable, offering a warm meal and some good, strong drink.
Goodman Stuyles stayed with Drizzt and Dahlia through the meal and afterward, prodding Drizzt for tales of Icewind Dale—old adventures that had apparently become legendary in these parts so many years later. Drizzt had never fancied himself a storyteller, but he complied with the requests, and soon found quite the audience—a dozen or so—sitting around him and listening intently.
Most of those drifted off to sleep as the fires burned low, but a couple remained, enjoying the banter. “And what business might you have now that brings you south of that forsaken land?” asked one of them, a tall man named Hadencourt, after Drizzt had finished the story of battling a white dragon in an ice cave.
“We’re on our way to Luskan,” Drizzt answered, “to inquire after some old friends. ”
“And then to Neverwinter Wood, eh?” Dahlia added, and Drizzt couldn’t react fast enough to suppress his surprise at her inclusion of that tidbit.
“There’s a great battle raging there,” farmer Stuyles remarked.
“Neverwinter Wood?” Hadencourt pressed. “What would bring a drow elf and a”—he looked rather curiously at Dahlia, as if not quite knowing what to make of her—“a lady such as yourself to that war-scarred place?”
Dahlia started to reply, but Drizzt spoke over her. “We’re adventurers. It would seem that Neverwinter Wood is now a place of adventure!” He ended by lifting his cup of brandy in a toast. “Though in truth, we haven’t decided our course after Luskan, and in truth, we are not even certain that our road will take us all the way to the City of Sails. I’ve been thinking that it’s far past time for a return to Mithral Hall. ”
The whole time he spoke, the drow stared intently at Dahlia, warning her to keep silent. When he looked back at Hadencourt, he noted that the man wore a smile that seemed a bit too informed for his liking.
“Call it personal,” Dahlia said, and she never stopped looking at Hadencourt.
The discussion ended there, abruptly, with Drizzt commenting that it was past time for them all to get some rest. As the others dispersed, Dahlia watched Hadencourt head off to his lean- to for the night.
Goodman Stuyles stepped away to speak with several others of the band. “We’ll be moving tomorrow,” he reported back to Drizzt a few moments later. “That wagon will soon enough reach Port Llast and we’re thinking a garrison’ll come looking for us. Are ye to be coming with us, then? We’d be glad to have ye along. ”
“No,” Drizzt stated flatly, over Dahlia’s opposite response. “I cannot. ”
“We’re just surviving, is all,” Stuyles said. “A man’s a right to eat!”
“That you didn’t feel the bite of my blade is a testament that I don’t disagree,” Drizzt told him. “But I fear that traveling along beside you would show me choices with which I cannot agree and of which I cannot abide. Would you enter every adventure unsure of my allegiance?”
Stuyles took a step back and eyed the drow. “Better ye go then,” he said, and Drizzt nodded coldly.
“So the world is too dirty for Drizzt Do’Urden,” Dahlia mocked when Stuyles had gone. “What rights, what proper recourse, for those who have not, when those who have keep all?”
“Waterdeep is not so far to the south. ”
“Aye, and the lords of Waterdeep will throw open their gates and their wares to all those put out in the chaos. ”
At that moment, Drizzt didn’t find Dahlia’s sarcasm very endearing. He calmed himself with memories of Icewind Dale, memories nearly a century old, of a time and place when matters of right and wrong seemed so much more apparent. Even in that unforgiving frontier, there seemed a level of civilization far beyond the current drama playing out along the Sword Coast. He considered the fall of Captain Deudermont in Luskan, when the high captains had seized full control of the City of Sails and thus, the surrounding region. A Waterdhavian lord had fallen beside Deudermont, and the other lords of that great city had surely failed in their subsequent inaction.
But even in that dark moment, Drizzt understood the fall of Luskan to darkness was just a minor symptom of a greater disease, as was the fall of Cadderly and Spirit Soaring. With the advent of the Shadowfell, the patches of shadow were both literal and figurative, and in those vast areas of darkness, anarchy and chaos had found their way.
How could Drizzt fight beside men like Stuyles and these highwaymen, however justified their ambushes, when he knew that those they ambushed would very often be men and women, like this band, simply trying to find a way to survive and keep their families fed?
Was there a “right” and “wrong” to be found here? To steal from the powerful or to toil for their copper coins?
“What are you thinking?” Dahlia asked him, her voice having lost its sharp edge.
“That I am one very small person, after all,” Drizzt replied without looking.
When he did at last turn around to regard the woman, she was grinning knowingly—too confidently, as if she was working some manipulation on him he didn’t yet understand.
Strangely, that notion didn’t bother Drizzt as much as he would have expected. Perhaps his confusion when faced by such a reality as the tumult of the Sword Coast was so profound that he would accept a hand, however offered, in lifting him from the darkness.
Part I: Loose Ends
And now I am alone, more so than I’ve been since the days following the death of Montolio those many years ago. Even on that later occasion when I traveled back into the Underdark to Menzoberranzan, forsaking my friends in the foolish belief that I was unfairly endangering them, it was not like this. For though I physically walked alone into the Underdark, I didn’t go without the emotional support that they were there beside me, in spirit. I went with full confidence that Bruenor, Catti-brie, and Regis remained alive and well—indeed, more well, I believed, because I had left them.
But now I am alone. They are gone, one and al
l. My friends, my family.
There remains Guenhwyvar, of course, and she is no small thing to me—a true and loyal companion, someone to listen to my laments and my joys and my pondering. But it is not the same. Guen can hear me, but is there anything I would hear from her? She can share my victories, my joys, my trials, but there’s no reciprocation. After knowing the love of friends and family, I cannot so fool myself again, as I did in those first days after I left Menzoberranzan, as to believe that the wonderful Guenhwyvar is enough.
My road takes me from Gauntlgrym as it once took me from Mithral Hall, and I doubt I shall return—certainly I’ll not return to stand and stare at the cairn of Bruenor Battlehammer, as I rarely visited the graves of Catti-brie and Regis during my years in Mithral Hall. A wise elf lady once explained to me the futility of such things, as she taught me that I must learn to live my life as a series of shorter spans. It is the blessing of the People to live through the dawn and sunset of centuries, but that blessing can serve too as a curse. Few elves partner for life, as is common among the humans, for example, because the joy of such a partnership can weigh as an anchor after a hundred years, or two hundred.
“Treat each parting as a rebirth,” Innovindil said to me. “Let go of that which is past and seek new roads. Perhaps never to forget your lost friends and family and lovers, but to place them in your memory warmly and build again with new friends those things that so pleased you. ”
I’ve gone back to Innovindil’s lessons many times over the last few decades, since Wulfgar left Mithral Hall and since Catti-brie and Regis were lost to me. I’ve recited them as a litany against the rage, the pain, the sadness … a reminder that there are roads yet to walk.
I was deluding myself, I now know.
For I hadn’t let go of my dear friends. I hadn’t lost hope that someday, one day, some way, I would raze a giant’s lair beside Wulfgar once more, or would fish beside Regis on a lazy summer’s day on the banks of Maer Dualdon, or I would spend the night in Catti-brie’s warm embrace. I tasked Jarlaxle with finding them, not out of any real hope that he would, but because I couldn’t bear to relinquish the last flicker of hope for these moments, these soft joys, these truest smiles, I once knew.
And now Bruenor is gone and the Companions of the Hall are no more.
I watched him take his last breath. There is closure. There is finality. And only through Bruenor had I kept the dream of Catti-brie and Regis, and even Wulfgar, alive. Only through his determination and steadfastness did I allow myself to believe that somehow, some magical way, they might still be out there. Our journey to Icewind Dale should have disavowed me of that notion, and did so to some extent (and also pushed Bruenor, at long last, into a state of resignation), and whatever little flickers remained within my heart were snuffed out when I watched my dearest friend breathe his last.
So I am alone. The life I had known is ended.
I surely feel the sadness, the regret at things that couldn’t be, the loneliness. At every turn, I want to call out to Bruenor to tell him my news, only to remember that, alas, he is not there. All of it is there, all of the pain that one would expect.
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