Neverwinter ns-2

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Ship Kurth will hunt you to the ends of Faerun!”

  Drizzt put up his blades. “If I wanted to kill you, you would already be dead,” he said. “You left an opening against my overhand spin. Don’t deny it, for you noted it and tried to correct your block, and only were able to do so because I allowed it.”

  Beniago fumbled for a response, but had none.

  “Dahlia is poisoned,” Drizzt went on. “I need the antidote to the jeweler’s trap, and I need it now, or she will surely perish. I go now to that shop.” He started to climb the wall, for now a shout went up from the street behind him. “Come to me with the antidote.”

  “Why would-?”

  “You will be high captain one day,” Drizzt said as he neared the roof. “You’ll want allies.”

  “You ask me to trust you and Dahlia?” Beniago asked incredulously, but Drizzt was already gone from his sight.

  Not gone from the alleyway, though, as he found another perch and watched Beniago.

  A gang of pirates finally prodded through the darkness globe, then came charging down the alley as Beniago moved to retrieve his dagger. The assassin regarded his allies with a disgusted shake of his head and roughly shouldered past them.

  A semi-conscious Dahlia thrashed as Ben the Brewer’s hot knife cut deeply into her foot. The farmer woman holding her down nearly got a knee in the face for her efforts.

  “Ah, but it’s an ugly thing,” she said as green and white pus flowed from the wound. “Viper juice?”

  “Aye, and we’ve all seen the withering o’ that bite.”

  “Then she’s a dead one.”

  “Should be already, but not a lot went in,” Ben the Brewer replied. He cut again, drawing an X on Dahlia’s foot, and more pus flowed forth. “And she’s a tough one, I’m thinking.”

  Dahlia cried out, perhaps in pain, but it wasn’t a response to his knife, they both knew. She was lost in her fevered dreams once more, and obviously, those dreams were not proving to be a pleasant experience.

  Ben the Brewer reached up to Dahlia’s thigh and pulled tighter on the slip-knot he’d set there. “I’d take her leg,” he said. “The foot at least. But I’m not thinking she’d live through the cutting.”

  “She’s doomed anyway,” the farmer woman replied, and she looked to the wide-bladed axe and the long serrated knife he’d brought.

  “If High Captain Kurth learns of this…” Beniago started to say, holding his hand out to Drizzt.

  Drizzt took the phial. “He’ll thank you when Dahlia and I offer him our allegiance,” he finished for Beniago. “If Kurth is still high captain when we meet again, I mean,” the drow added, a clear implication that he believed that Beniago might find a way to rise to that seat of power.

  As he heard the words leave his mouth, Drizzt had to work hard to hide his own surprise. Though born in Menzoberranzan, Drizzt was hardly a master of subterfuge, hardly a player in the realms of shadow and murder. When before would he have even considered such an interaction with a man like Beniago? When before would he have even considered any alliance with one of the high captains of Luskan? Drizzt wasn’t merely tossing that possibility out in order to garner the antidote, he was actually thinking that he and Dahlia might do well to ally themselves with Kurth, or Beniago. There was, after all, a practical side of the matter: He had the antidote in hand!

  A shout came from one of the nearby alleyways.

  “Ship Rethnor has awakened to your presence,” Beniago warned.

  “And Ship Kurth?”

  “Possibly, but I can stand them down,” Beniago replied. “There’s little I can offer you against the rage of Ship Rethnor.”

  Drizzt lifted the whistle on the end of the chain and blew into it, and with great running strides, Andahar came to him, leaping through the dimensions. Drizzt motioned for the unicorn to keep running past him.

  “Farewell, Beniago,” the drow said, grabbing Andahar’s flowing mane and leaping up atop the steed. “If this is the antidote, know you have made a friend. If not, then know without doubt that my blades will find your heart.”

  And with that warning, Drizzt Do’Urden was gone, Andahar galloping across the market square, hooves clap-clapping on the cobblestones. A shout came up from a rooftop and Drizzt turned the unicorn sharply down an alleyway. He dodged a crate, leaped another, and swerved hard at the last instant to avoid some rubble.

  In full gallop, Andahar came out onto the next street over, and cries went up and faces appeared in darkened windows. Drizzt heard the shouts along the rooftops, trying to track his progress, no doubt in an attempt to ready some archers or some other ambush up ahead.

  So Drizzt turned Andahar again, and again, street by street, alley by alley. Galloping hard, he took out Taulmaril and set an arrow to the magical bowstring.

  Movement on the roof ahead and to the left caught his attention, so he put up the bow and drew back. His legs clamped hard around the unicorn, holding him steady as he let fly, again and again, a barrage of lightning arrows streaking for the roof’s facing, blasting holes in the wood and shale, and brightening the night in a shower of multicolored sparks.

  On they ran, Drizzt bending low over Andahar’s strong neck, whispering encouragement into the unicorn’s ear. He knew that enemies were all around, intent on stopping him. He knew that if he failed, Dahlia was surely doomed.

  But he wasn’t afraid. There wasn’t the slightest fear in him that he wouldn’t get there in time, that these thugs would stop him. He couldn’t believe that, or fear that, not at this moment, not in this…

  Exhilaration.

  That was the word for it, the only word for it. He was alive, his every sense honed and sharp-edged, relying on his warrior instincts.

  Exhilaration. Drizzt had no time for fear or doubt.

  Andahar snorted as if sensing the drow’s thoughts, and ran on harder, plowing along the lanes and alleyways in the zigzag maze Drizzt had determined to get them to the gate.

  An arrow reached out from the side, grazing Andahar. Drizzt responded with a lightning missile that revealed the archer, who promptly ran away.

  To the other side, a large pirate rushed out of a doorway, spear in hand, and aimed for the approaching unicorn.

  Drizzt’s arrow threw the fool back through the door before he’d even cocked his arm.

  Unicorn and rider thundered down a decline and turned a sharp corner, heading up another street, this one leading straight to the opened west gate. Arrow after arrow reached out from Taulmaril, streaking the night with silver, slamming against the walls of the guard tower or slashing into the cobblestones at the feet of the wide-eyed guards. They shouted warnings and they called to each other for help.

  And Drizzt kept shooting, arrows slamming into stone and wood, showering sparks and lighting beams with licks of flame. He scored no further hits on the scrambling guards-he wasn’t trying to cut any of them down-but he kept them running and diving and shouting for help, too confused and surprised to organize a valid counter, or even to shut the gates.

  Andahar never slowed, thundering up the road, and finally, a sentry found his wits enough to rush to one of the gates.

  Drizzt’s arrow splintered the wood barely a finger’s breadth from the sentry’s face, and he shrieked and fell away.

  Out into the night leaped Andahar, charging down the road.

  And off they went, the wind blowing in Drizzt’s white hair, and he felt free and alive. He knew that Dahlia would survive-he simply knew it in every corner of his soul. He couldn’t be wounded again, body or heart, so close to his most recent, brutal loss. Nay! He denied the possibility. He was free and he was running through the chill night on his mighty, magical steed. He was alive, the warrior, the thief, who had slipped into the heart of hostile Luskan and pulled from their foes the answer to Dahlia’s dilemma.

  “On, Andahar!” he cried, and he fired an arrow high into the night sky, a sizzling silver streak, an expression of his leaping heart.

  He s
et the bells of the barding to ringing.

  Exhilaration.

  They never slowed, running hard for hours, all the way back to the distant farmstead. Drizzt noted a single candle glowing from within as the structure at last came in sight, and he took that as a hopeful sign that Dahlia was still alive. He skidded Andahar to a stop and flung himself over the unicorn’s back as if it was all a dance.

  Just then, a murderous scream came from the farmhouse.

  He froze in place, his world collapsing, his mood, his feeling of invincibility, seeming so suddenly, a cruel joke. He was invincible or he was doomed, and the choice didn’t feel like his own, not that night, not then, not with Dahlia beside him.

  The scream-it had to be Dahlia’s scream-reminded him all too clearly of his own cry those many years ago when he’d awakened to find his wife lying cold beside him, his friend screaming, too, in the hallway for another lost to the mists of time.

  Drizzt crashed through the door, drawing his blades.

  The farmer woman huddled in the corner, her hand still muffling the last gasps of her scream.

  Dahlia half-sat, half-knelt on the bed, sweating and swaying side to side as if she would fall to the floor at any moment. She held Kozah’s Needle in tri-staff form, one end out in front of her and swinging back and forth like a pendulum.

  Drizzt stared at the floor in front of Dahlia, where a serrated knife lay, then kept turning to see a man sprawled upon the floor, face-down.

  “She killed him!” the farmer woman cried.

  “He tried to cut off my foot!” Dahlia yelled back, in a voice surprisingly strong.

  Drizzt ran to the fallen man. He groaned as soon as the drow touched his shoulder. “He’s alive.” Drizzt gently rolled Ben the Brewer over onto his back.

  “Give me a moment to find my balance and I’ll rectify that,” Dahlia said.

  Drizzt shot her an angry glare and motioned for the farmer woman to join him. She ran a wide circuit around Dahlia and fell down to the floor beside her wounded friend.

  Ben the Brewer opened his eyes and shook his head.

  “Now, that’ll leave a mark,” he said, rubbing the lump on his skull.

  Dahlia swooned and fell back on the bed, banging her head on the wall as she tumbled.

  Drizzt and the farmer woman helped Ben the Brewer to his feet.

  “Thought she was near dead,” Ben explained. “And she might well be. We’ll need to take that foot, but I’m not going near to that one unless she’s tied well!”

  In reply, Drizzt held up the phial. He rushed to Dahlia and cradled her head.

  “Kill him,” Dahlia whispered, opening one eye.

  “Drink,” Drizzt said. He knew that Beniago might have double-crossed him, might have given him nothing other than more of the same poison.

  But it was too late for him to change his mind.

  Dahlia began to cough and tremble almost immediately. She pulled herself away from Drizzt with a sudden convulsion and rolled to her side, where she vomited over the edge of the bed.

  Drizzt fell over her and tried to hold her still.

  “What did you do?” the farmer woman asked.

  “The antidote,” Drizzt tried to explain. His thoughts were whirling as he wondered if he’d just finished off his lover.

  “Aye, that’s what I’d expect,” said Ben the Brewer. “It’ll clean ‘er out, but won’t be a pretty sight.”

  He staggered over and picked up his knife, but when he stood straight, he found Drizzt staring back at him hard.

  Ben the Brewer dropped the blade back to the floor.

  “I just realized that I don’t even know your name,” Drizzt said to the farmer woman a couple of mornings later. They stood outside the house. It was his first time away from Dahlia since administering the antidote. The elf rested easily, at last, her fever broken, the swelling in her foot and leg at last receding.

  “Meg,” she answered.

  “Meg?”

  “Just Meg. I had more of a name once, when it mattered. Now I’m Meg, just Meg, and Ma to my kids. Nothing more.”

  “We owe you much,” Drizzt said.

  “You owe me a clean floor, to be sure!” Meg said with a sad laugh.

  Drizzt smiled at her. “Your generosity…”

  “I did what any person would do, or ought to do, or once upon a time outside Luskan would do,” Meg replied, her voice sharp.

  “Still, I would like to show my appreciation, to you and to Ben the Brewer.”

  “I want nothing from you, other than that you’ll be long gone from my house, not to return.”

  The chill in the woman’s voice surprised Drizzt. He thought perhaps their time there had forged a bond. He thought wrong, apparently.

  “Firewood, at least,” said Drizzt. “Or perhaps I can hunt a boar for your table.” She involuntarily licked her lips, and he smiled, thinking he’d tempted her.

  Her face turned stone cold. “You get your lady elf and be gone,” Meg said flatly. “She’ll be fine to travel this day, so you’re going, both of you, and don’t you come back.”

  “Because people will talk and the high captains will hear,” came Dahlia’s voice from the doorway. She walked out on surprisingly steady legs.

  Drizzt looked at Meg, but her expression didn’t change.

  “Call your steed,” Meg said. “You’ve a road worth riding.” She turned away and walked past Dahlia, and shut the door behind her.

  Drizzt stared after her, even started after her, but Dahlia grabbed him by the arm and held him back.

  “Summon Andahar,” she said quietly. “It will be best.”

  “They saved you.”

  “You saved me.”

  “They did-they helped us greatly!”

  “They tried to cut my foot off.”

  “Only to save you.”

  “Better to die, then.”

  The way she said it struck Drizzt profoundly, because he knew she meant it. He wanted to chastise her, wanted to tell her to never speak like that.

  But then he thought of his midnight ride, of his exhilaration, of his sense of control, of confidence, of his sense of sheer joy in the adventure, whatever the stakes. It was a feeling Drizzt Do’Urden had not known in a long, long time.

  He blew the whistle for Andahar, and he set the bells of the barding to ringing as they charged away, down the southern road.

  Long has it occurred to me that I am a creature of action, of battle and of adventure. In times of peace and calm, like my friend Bruenor, I find myself longing for the open road, where bandits rule and wild orcs roam. For so many years, I stubbornly clung to the battle and the adventure. I admit my thrill when King Bruenor decided to quietly abdicate and go on his search for legendary Gauntlgrym.

  For in that quest, we found the open road, the wilderness, the adventure, and indeed, the battles.

  But something was missing. I couldn’t quite place it, couldn’t quite articulate it, but for a long while now, indeed back to the early days of King Bruenor’s reign of reclaimed Mithral Hall, there remained a sharp edge missing, a necessary edge scraping my skin and keeping me wholly alive.

  Anyone who has ever stood on the edge of a cliff understands this. One can bask in the views, and with such a wide panorama, one cannot help but feel the thrill of being a part of something bigger and grander, much like the manner in which the stars pull a soul heavenward to join with the incomprehensible vastness of the universe .

  But amid all the beauty and awe-inspiring grandeur, it is the feel of the wind that completes the sensation, particularly if it is a swirling and gusting breeze. For then comes the greatest affirmation of life: the sensation of fear, the recognition of how fleeting this entire existence can be.

  When I stand on the edge of that cliff, on the precipice of disaster, and I lean against that wind, I am truly alive. I have to be quick to realign my balance and my footing as the wind swirls; if I wish to stay on my perch, indeed to stay alive, I have to remain quicker tha
n the whims of the wind.

  In the past, I stubbornly kept tight the battles and the adventures, and ever turned my eye to the open and dangerous road, but it was not until very recently that I came to understand that which was truly missing: the thrill of the risk.

  The thrill of the risk. The edge of that high precipice. Not the risk itself, for that was ever there, but the thrill of that risk… In truth, it was not until my midnight ride back from Luskan that I realized how long I’d been missing that thrill.

  When first I left Dahlia, I was afraid for her, but that fear dissipated almost immediately, replaced by a sense of invincibility that I have not known in decades, in a century perhaps! I knew that I would get over Luskan’s guarded wall, that I would find Beniago, and that I would bend him to my need. I knew that I would win out. I knew that I would be quicker than the gusting wind.

  Why?

  The risk was ever there, I now understand, but for so many years, the thrill of that risk was not because of the untenable price of defeat. For the price of having friends so dear and a companion so beloved is… vulnerability.

  I can accept the wind blowing Drizzt Do’Urden from the cliff. Such a price is not too high. But to watch Catti-brie fall before me?

  Then I am not invincible. Then there is simply the risk, and not the thrill of living on the edge of that dangerous cliff.

  No more.

  For when I rode to Luskan, I was invincible. The walls could not stop me. Beniago could not stop me.

  And now I understand that when I lost my friends, my family, my home, I lost, too, my vulnerability, and gained back in return the thrill of danger, the freedom to not only walk on the edge of that high cliff, but to dance there, to taunt the wind.

  What a strange irony.

  But what, then, of my growing relationship with Dahlia?

  She fascinates me. She teases me with her every movement and every word. She lures me-to where I do not know!

  On my ride, in my unbridled joy, in the thrill of adventure and battle and yes, risk, I knew that she would survive. I knew it! Even when all reason warned me that the poison would take her long before I could return from Luskan, somewhere deep inside of me, I just knew she wouldn’t be lost to me. Not then, not like that. Her fate could not be written such; her death wouldn’t be so crude and mundane.