Jestry thought he should say no, and thought he should say he feared to do exactly that, and thought he should blurt out that Arunika was nowhere near as beautiful as Sylora, of course, and that he could only truly love Sylora.
He thought a lot of things.
He said nothing.
She danced away from him then, to the edge of the balcony, where she leaped over, her magical cloak transforming her into the likeness of a giant crow, and she glided down to the courtyard on widespread wings.
Jestry found himself drawn to the railing, watching the woman alight, watching her transform again into the woman he had come to adore.
This was not going well. Evidently Barrabus had underestimated the scouting network of the Neverwinter enclave.
“I have friends in the region,” Barrabus said.
“Shadovar?” Jelvus Grinch asked.
Barrabus smiled innocently. He knew the question to be rhetorical. “My friends are enemies of the zealots who have infiltrated Neverwinter Wood. Is that not enough for you?”
Around him, the crowd stirred.
“We have reason to believe that these zealots, who facilitated the cataclysm that destroyed this fair city, are now building the most awful of necromantic facilities not far from your intended city. They’ve raised an army of the dead culled from the bodies of that cataclysm, and will send them to the”-he paused and glanced around at the rebuilding efforts-“inadequate walls you have constructed.”
“We’re not simple farmers,” one woman protested. “All here can raise a weapon and raise it well!”
That brought a cheer from all around, and Jelvus Grinch, widely considered the first citizen of Neverwinter, couldn’t help but puff out his chest a bit.
But if Barrabus was impressed, he didn’t show it.
“You will be overrun,” he stated flatly. “And even if some of you manage to escape, or somehow hold out, those who are killed will return as zombies to battle from the ranks of your enemies.”
That stole some of their bluster, to be sure.
“And you offer your services?” Jelvus Grinch said, and Barrabus nodded. “And those of the Shadovar, your kinfolk?”
“I’m no Shadovar.”
“But you’re allied-”
“For the time, perhaps. That’s none of your affair.”
“We have no love for the Empire of Netheril!”
“And they care not for you, or for your city,” Barrabus answered. “They have no designs here that concern you.”
“The Netherese were known prominently in Neverwinter before the cataclysm,” Jelvus argued. “Some have said that a Netherese noble dominated the Lord of Neverwinter in the waning days-”
“That was a long time ago.”
“And now they don’t care?” the woman in the crowd yelled.
“It’s only been ten years!” Jelvus Grinch added.
“Have you seen any Netherese within your walls?” asked Barrabus. “Have they made any advances against any of your citizens?”
“Then why are you here?” asked Jelvus. “If your allies have no designs on Neverwinter, then why do they care at all?”
“My allies battle the zealots-you know this. If the zealots overrun Neverwinter”-he turned to speak to all of the gathering-“if you are all slain that you might join the zealots’ undead army, then the struggle of the Shadovar in Neverwinter Wood becomes all the more difficult.”
“Allies of necessity, then?” Jelvus Grinch reasoned when the murmurs had died away.
Barrabus shrugged noncommittally. “If allies at all,” he said, again with little conviction. “I am here to warn you of the possibility of an assault. I offer my services as scout, and my blades in the battle should it come, nothing more, nothing less.”
“Can ye fight, then?” one man called from behind.
Barrabus’s smile was anything but innocent. It was a look he had perfected as a child in Calimport, an expression of confidence unshakable and unnerving. There was no boast, no answer, because there needed to be none.
Jelvus Grinch surely knew the truth, simply in looking at Barrabus’s face.
“I cannot condone an alliance with the Shadovar,” he said.
“But you won’t discourage it,” Barrabus reasoned from his tone. “And I am not Shadovar.”
“Your help would be… appreciated.”
Barrabus nodded and Jelvus broke up the gathering with a call for all to get to work shoring up the meager walls surrounding their rebuilding efforts.
“You really think the undead will come?” Jelvus Grinch quietly asked Barrabus as the pair walked off alone.
“Likely. The zealots attempted a second cataclysm.”
Jelvus Grinch stopped walking and sucked in his breath.
“It was foiled and the volcano put back in its place, by all accounts,” Barrabus assured him. “I doubt you have to fear another eruption.”
Jelvus Grinch looked at him skeptically.
“If I thought differently, would I be here?” Barrabus said, and when that didn’t seem to relax Jelvus, Barrabus the Gray added, “I was here for the first explosion, you know.”
“When Neverwinter was destroyed?” Jelvus Grinch balked. “There were no survivors.”
“There were a few,” Barrabus replied. “The lucky, the quick, and the clever-or, more likely, those who were all three.”
“You were here? When the ash fell and the lava-”
“When the gray flow rampaged through Neverwinter and to the sea, taking almost everything with it. I was there.” He pointed to the Winged Wyvern Bridge. “I watched the river run with molten stone and ash, and bodies. So many bodies.”
“I shouldn’t believe you,” Jelvus Grinch said. “But I find I do.”
“I have better things to do than lie to the likes of you over such an unimportant piece of trivia.”
Jelvus nodded and bowed.
“There’s one more thing,” Barrabus said. “There’s an elf about, a drow of some renown. His name is Drizzt-”
“Do’Urden,” Jelvus finished.
“You know of him,” said Barrabus. “You know him personally?”
“He escorted a caravan here some months ago,” Jelvus answered. “He and a dwarf-Bonnego Battleaxe of the Adbar Battleaxes. Would that he had stayed in these dark times! And we asked, do not doubt. To have the likes of Drizzt Do’Urden beside us now would serve us greatly should the attack you expect come to pass.”
Barrabus nodded and sighed more deeply than he should have. So, the vision he had seen in Sylora’s scrying pool had been accurate, and Drizzt Do’Urden was alive and well and in the North.
“What is it?” Jelvus Grinch asked, drawing him from his thoughts. “Do you know of Drizzt?”
“I do. A long time ago…” His voice trailed off. “I would ask you, as a favor, as a sign of our budding alliance, that you would inform me if Drizzt is seen anywhere near Neverwinter.”
Now Jelvus Grinch looked at him suspiciously, so Barrabus added, “I do loathe most drow elves, and would hate to kill him by mistake.”
That seemed to satisfy the man. Barrabus gave a quick salute and went out from Neverwinter’s gate to see what he could learn.
4
That guard recognized me,” Dahlia whispered to Drizzt as they moved into Luskan, past the guards at the gate, all of whom continued to stare at the departing elf. One in particular wore an expression that indeed seemed more than simple lust.
“Did he? Or are you not simply a remarkable sight?” Drizzt replied. “Perhaps he recognized me.”
“If he had recognized you, it would have been of no consequence, I’m sure,” Dahlia said. “I’ve warned you I’m not welcome in Luskan.”
“Yet you did not disguise yourself.”
“My troubles here are ten years old.”
“Yet you fear being recognized.”
“Fear it? Or welcome it?”
“Perhaps you would someday deign to tell me why you expect trouble here i
n Luskan,” Drizzt said. “I’m curious why you’re so unwelcome here.”
“I killed a high captain,” Dahlia admitted, almost flippantly. “Borlann the Crow. Ten years ago, right before I set out with Jarlaxle and Athrogate for the mines of Gauntlgrym, I killed him.”
Drizzt couldn’t help but smile.
“Would you like to know why I killed him?” she asked.
“Does it matter?”
“Does it matter to you?”
Drizzt shook his head, and though he was a bit taken aback by the level of his disinterest over the reasons and by his instinctive sense of callousness toward anyone who would have taken the mantle of Ship Rethnor, he found he could only smile wider. “If I had my way nearly a century ago, Borlann’s father would never have been conceived, and neither he.”
“You’ve had dealings with the House of Rethnor as well, I see.”
“Kensidan, Borlann’s grandfather, murdered a dear friend of mine when Ship Rethnor and the other high captains seized power in Luskan and condemned the city to the sorry state we see today. I had no choice but to flee, though I dearly wanted to pay Kensidan back for his efforts.”
“Then perhaps I’ve settled your debt to the family of this Kensidan.”
“Only if one believes in generational responsibility, and I don’t. I know nothing of Borlann.”
“He was a high captain,” Dahlia answered. “What more is there to know? He dealt death and misery on a daily basis, and often to those undeserving.”
“I need no justification from you. Do you need it from me?”
Dahlia spat on the ground.
Drizzt stared after her as she walked to the side of the road, entering an alleyway. She pulled a small coffer from her backpack and flipped open the lid. Drizzt eased just a bit closer, and glanced both ways along the street to make sure no one paid them too much heed. From this angle, he could see the coffer was comprised of multiple compartments, one of which Dahlia had opened. She pinched the powdery ingredients within and snapped her fingers in front of her face, sending the puff of brown powder all around her.
Then she reached into a different section of the coffer and came back with a silvery hair pick. She pulled off her hat and turned her back to Drizzt, bending low and away from him and flipping her black and red braid forward.
When she came back up and turned around, Drizzt sucked in his breath. Dahlia’s woad was gone, with not a blemish marring her perfect skin. And her hair, still that remarkable black and red, was fashioned in a completely different cut, short and stylish with a sharp part, hair angling down in front to almost cover her left eye.
She closed the coffer and tucked it into her pack, put her leather hat back on her head, and walked over to Drizzt.
“Do you like it?” she asked, and the attempt at vanity from Dahlia was as jarring to the drow as the abrupt change in her looks. Her entire appearance seemed softer, less aggressive and threatening.
He considered her question, and realized that he had no easy answer. The Dahlia he had known was not unattractive. Her fighting prowess, the danger of her, her ability to convey her hatred of the high captains by spitting on the road-he couldn’t help but be intrigued. But this other side-even her posture seemed somehow more feminine to him-reminded him of the warmth he’d once known-more conventional, perhaps, but no less attractive. Perhaps the greatest tease of all was the hint that Dahlia could be tamed.
Or could she?
Would Drizzt even want to?
“I accept your silence as compliment enough,” she teased, starting away.
“If you could so easily disguise yourself then why didn’t you do it before we entered Luskan?” Drizzt asked.
Dahlia replied with a wicked grin.
“It’s not as much fun if it isn’t as dangerous,” Drizzt answered for her.
“When there’s conviction behind your complaining, perhaps then I’ll listen more attentively, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Dahlia replied. “For now, just accept that I understand the truth of your sentiments and will welcome your blades when trouble finds us.”
“You’re walking with purpose,” Drizzt said, thinking it wise to change the subject. “Pray tell where you’re leading me.”
“Pray tell me why you brought me here. My course would’ve been south, to Neverwinter Wood, remember?”
“There are questions I need to answer first.”
“To see if Jarlaxle survived,” Dahlia replied, catching Drizzt by such surprise that he stopped walking, and had to scramble to catch up.
“It’s obvious,” she said when he neared. “Your affection for him, I mean.”
“He is helpful,” was all Drizzt would admit.
“He is dead,” Dahlia said. “We both saw him fall, and witnessed the explosive fury of the primordial right behind.”
Drizzt wasn’t sure of that, of course, since he’d known Jarlaxle as the ultimate survivor of many seemingly impossible escapes, but he could only shrug against Dahlia’s assertion.
“I would know, too, of the power of Bregan D’aerthe in Luskan,” he said.
“Diminished,” Dahlia replied without hesitation. “It had weakened considerably those ten years ago, and it’s unlikely the drow have expanded once more in the City of Sails. What’s left here for them?”
“That’s what I hope to learn.”
“You seek Jarlaxle,” Dahlia teased, “because you care.”
Drizzt didn’t deny it.
Dahlia walked past him out into the middle of the street and motioned toward an inn across the way. “Seeing all of those decrepit farms and famished farmers has spurred my appetite,” she said without looking back at Drizzt.
The drow stood there watching her back as she walked away from him and toward the inn. She’d made that statement for his benefit, he knew, just to remind him that they were not alike, to remind him that she had an understanding of the world that was different-and greater-than his own.
He kept thinking that Dahlia would glance back toward him when she noticed he wasn’t following her.
She didn’t.
By the time Drizzt entered the inn, Dahlia was already seated at a table and talking to one of the serving girls. There weren’t many patrons in the inn at this early hour, but those who were, mostly male, focused on the exotic Dahlia. Even when Drizzt entered, he garnered no more than a quick glance from any of the men.
Dahlia waved the serving girl away as Drizzt approached.
“Did you think, perhaps, that I would wish a meal as well?” Drizzt asked.
Dahlia laughed at him. “I expected your sympathies for the poor farmer folk would force your belly to grumble for days to come. So that you might properly sob for them, I mean.”
“Why would you say such a thing?”
Dahlia laughed again and looked away.
Drizzt heaved a sigh and started to stand, thinking he’d go to the bar and buy a meal, but before he’d even stepped away from his chair, the serving girl returned, bearing two bowls of steaming stew.
Dahlia motioned for him to sit, her expression conciliatory, and at last more serious.
“It troubled you to see those farms,” she said a few moments later, the bowls of stew in front of them, Drizzt stirring his with his spoon.
“What would you have me say?”
“I would have you admit the truth.”
Drizzt looked up and stared at her. “I’ve always known Luskan to be a city of ruffians. I’ve always found many of the customs here, such as the Prisoner’s Carnival, distasteful, and I realized when Captain Deudermont fell that Luskan would know even darker times. But yes, it pains me to see it. To see the helplessness of the commoners trapped in plays of power and a reality made more harsh by the proliferation of pirates and thugs.”
“Is that what pains you?” Dahlia asked, and her tone hinted at some clever insight, which drew Drizzt’s gaze once more. “Or is it that you cannot make things right? Is it their helplessness or your own that troubles you so?”
/> “Do you seek to enlighten me or to taunt me?”
Dahlia laughed and took a bite of stew.
Drizzt did likewise and tried to keep his attention focused on the others in the common room-folks who watched him and Dahlia quite intently. He took note of one woman leaving in a hurry, though she tried to appear casual in her departure, and of another man who slowly walked to the exit and never stopped staring at the pair, particularly Dahlia.
By the time they had at last left the inn, midday had long passed and the sun was halfway to the horizon. Once more, Dahlia took up the lead.
“How many eyes are upon us now, I wonder?” Drizzt asked, the first words they had spoken since their pre-meal conversation.
“Us?”
“On you,” the drow clarified. “Do you believe it’s your beauty that attracts such attention, or your history here?”
While her appearance had changed fairly dramatically with her hairstyle and skin alterations, this was so obviously still Dahlia, the one and only Dahlia. Anyone who had ever met Dahlia, Drizzt knew, would not be fooled by such cosmetic changes, nor would anyone who had ever met Dahlia likely forget her.
“Don’t you think I’m beautiful?” Dahlia asked with a fake pout. “I am wounded.” She stopped abruptly and offered Drizzt a warm smile. “Don’t you like my disguise?”
There was a softness to her now that seemed almost magical. Her hair was more cute than seductive, and her face carried a soft glow and an innocence without the magical woad. Perhaps it was the warm afternoon light, the sun sending a warm glowing line across the waters off the Sword Coast. In that glow, Dahlia seemed unblemished, gentle and warm, through and through. It took all of Drizzt’s willpower to refrain from kissing her.
“You invite trouble,” he heard himself say.
“I’m disguised to avoid exactly that.”
Drizzt shook his head with every word. “You’re hardly disguised, and were not at all when we came through Luskan’s gate. If you truly wished to avoid trouble, you would’ve changed your appearance much more profoundly back out there, in the farmlands.”
“Am I to spend all of my days in hiding, then?”
“Has Dahlia ever spent a single day in hiding?” Drizzt asked lightheartedly.
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