Neverwinter ns-2

by R. A. Salvatore

  But what if I was proven wrong? What if she had been taken from me, like those before? Surely Dahlia dances more wildly on the edge of that cliff than I do. She is fearless to the point of utter recklessness-in the short time I have known her, I have seen that all too clearly.

  And yet, that risk does not frighten me.

  I don’t want her to die. The fascination, the attraction, is all too real and all too powerful. I want to know her, to understand her. I want to yell at her and kiss her all at once. I want to test her in battle and in passion.

  She is as erratic as she is erotic, changing her tone as easily as she alters her appearance. I think it a game she plays, a way to keep friends and enemies alike off-balance. But I cannot be sure, and that, too, is part of her never-ending seduction. Is she teasing me with seemingly erratic behavior, or is Dahlia truly erratic? Is she the actor or the role?

  Or perhaps there is a third answer: Am I so desperate to know this unpredictable doppelganger that I am reading too much into her every word? Am I seeking, and thus seeing, deeper meaning than she intends as I scour for clues to that which is in her heart?

  A carefully guarded heart. But why?

  Another mystery to unravel…

  I knew she wouldn’t be lost to me, but how? How did my instincts counter my reason so fully? Given all that has passed in my life, shouldn’t I have expected the worst outcome regarding Dahlia? Given the losses I have endured, shouldn’t I have feared exactly that in a desperate situation?

  And yet I did not. I reveled in the midnight ride, in the adventure and the thrill of the risk.

  Is it Dahlia’s competency, her swagger, her own fearlessness, affecting my heart? Or is it, perhaps, that I do not love her-not as I loved Catti-brie, or Bruenor, Wulfgar and Regis?

  Or is it something more, I wonder? Perhaps Innovindil’s lesson reached me more deeply than I had known. Logically, rationally, I can see Innovindil’s viewpoint, that we elves have to live our lives in shorter segments because of the short-lived races with whom we naturally interact. But could it be that Innovindil’s lessons have sparked within me a confidence that I will go on, that there is more road in front of me? Though those I deeply loved are removed from my side, I will find others to share the leagues and the fights?

  It is all of that, I expect, and perhaps something more. Perhaps each loss hardened my heart and numbed me to the pain. The loss of Bruenor stung less than those of Catti-brie and Regis, and less than my knowledge that Wulfgar, too, has surely passed on. There are other reasons, I am confident. Bruenor’s last words to me, “I found it, elf,” reflected a full life’s journey, to be sure! What dwarf could ask for more than what King Bruenor Battlehammer knew? His final battle alone, his victory over the pit fiend while immersed in the power of dwarven kings of old, would surely fill to bursting the heart of any dwarf.

  So I did not cry for Bruenor, though I surely miss him no less than any of the others.

  There is no one answer, then. Life is a complicated journey, and few are the direct lines from feeling to consequence and consequence to anticipation. I will try to unravel it all, of course, as that is my nature, but in the end, I am left now with only one inescapable truth: the joy of that midnight ride, of bargaining with Beniago at the end of a scimitar, of reckless adventure.

  The thrill, the edge of the cliff.

  This is your promise to Drizzt Do’Urden, my lady Dahlia the erotic, the erratic.

  And this is your legacy to Drizzt Do’Urden, my old Companions of the Hall.

  Do you see me now, Catti-brie?

  Do you see me now, Bruenor?

  Do you see me now, Regis?

  Do you see me now, Wulfgar?

  Because I see you. You walk with me. You are in my thoughts every day, all four, and I see you smile when I smile and frown when I hurt. I believe this, I sense this.

  I pray for this.

  – Drizzt Do’Urden

  9

  Drizzt moved to the back of the small encampment, coming to the edge of the bluff overlooking the riverbank. Dahlia was at the cold stream, her boots and black leather hat on the ground beside her. Her black hair was still in its fashionably shoulder-length cut, swept forward, and her woad remained hidden by the makeup… or was it the other way around, where the woad was the makeup and this was the real Dahlia?

  Drizzt chuckled as he considered that, for the illusion that was Dahlia resonated with him on many more levels than her physical appearance. It was a helpless chuckle, for he held no hope that he would unwind the mysteries of Dahlia anytime soon.

  She slipped her shapely leg into the stream, then drew it forth and rubbed at her sore and still discolored foot. She looked at the unsightly puncture and shook her head with obvious disgust.

  “Which is real and which the illusion?” Drizzt asked, skipping down the steep incline to stand beside her. He noted that she wore a new piece of jewelry, a black diamond in her right ear, complimenting the ten diamond studs in her left.

  “Both and neither,” Dahlia answered dismissively. She grimaced as she squeezed her foot, bringing forth some pus and blood from the wound.

  “Are you so afraid that the truth of Dahlia will be revealed?”

  Dahlia looked up at him sourly, and shook her head as if his question wasn’t worth her trouble.

  “We owe a great debt to Meg the farmer woman and Ben the Brewer,” Drizzt remarked.

  “You would start babbling about them again?” Dahlia snapped back. “Had you returned to the farmhouse a few moments later, I would’ve been one foot lighter. Or both of them would’ve lain dead at my feet.”

  “They would’ve taken your foot only because they thought it the only way to save your life.”

  “They would’ve tried to take my foot and I would’ve killed them both,” Dahlia insisted.

  “You would’ve killed a mother in front of her children?”

  “I would’ve asked the children to turn around first,” Dahlia sarcastically replied.

  Drizzt laughed at her unrelenting sourness, but Dahlia only glared at him all the more. For a moment, just a heartbeat, Drizzt almost expected her to jump up and attack him then and there.

  “Damn you, Beniago,” the woman muttered, squeezing her aching foot yet again.

  “He provided the antidote,” Drizzt said.

  “Then he’s a fool, because he saved the life of one who will kill him.”

  “It wasn’t Beniago who set the traps,” Drizzt reminded her.

  “It was Beniago who forced me from the rope to the floor.”

  “He defends the wares of Ship Kurth.”

  “And you would defend him?”

  “Hardly. Didn’t I arrive to chase him off?”

  Dahlia spat on her foot and squeezed it again. A dribble of blood and greenish-white pus slipped out. “Killing him will wound Ship Kurth, and make it clear that I’m not one to be toyed with.”

  “Ah, that’s it, then,” Drizzt said with a grin. “It’s your embarrassment at being outfoxed.”

  Dahlia narrowed her eyes threateningly.

  “High Captain Kurth, or yes, perhaps Beniago, understood that you would return to the jewelry shop to appropriate the piece, and so they were quite ready for you,” Drizzt said. “In fact, I suspect that the only reason they even took us to that particular merchant was because of your obvious fondness for sparkling gemstones.”

  “I knew they’d know,” Dahlia insisted. “I wanted them to know.”

  “And you wanted them to defeat you and kill you?”

  Dahlia’s blue eyes threw imaginary darts into his face, Drizzt knew, but he grinned all the more, enjoying having the upper hand against Dahlia for once. For all of her stubbornness, she couldn’t, with true conviction, claim she’d expected the trap.

  “I already told you I’d sorted out the design of the trap and deduced how to defeat it,” Dahlia said, biting each word off short for emphasis. “I would’ve slipped free of the lash and Beniago would’ve died if you had
n’t intervened.”

  “With poison in your foot?”

  “I would’ve stripped Beniago’s corpse naked and found the elixir. And had it not been for your foolish intervention, I would have had the time to tend the wound then and there, before the poison had spread up my leg.”

  Drizzt laughed, shook his head, and let it go at that.

  “We will return to Luskan,” Dahlia announced, standing and facing to the north up the road.

  “To repay Ship Kurth?”

  “Yes.”

  “What of Sylora? I thought it was she you hated above all others.”

  Despite her stubbornness-and she was possessed of great quantities-Dahlia couldn’t resist glancing back over her shoulder, back to the south.

  “I go with you now to find Sylora,” Drizzt stated flatly, “as I committed to do when we left Gauntlgrym. I, too, would like to repay her for her actions that have so devastated Neverwinter. But I won’t return to Luskan beside you, should you choose that course.”

  “I wouldn’t have gone to Luskan at all had it not been for your insistence,” Dahlia reminded him.

  “But not to engage Ship Kurth or any other of the high captains.”

  “No, to find Jarlaxle, because you cannot accept that he’s gone,” Dahlia said, for no reason other than to sting him, Drizzt realized.

  “To Neverwinter Wood?” he asked. “Or do we part ways here?”

  Dahlia’s glare abruptly turned into a wicked smile. “You’ll not abandon me. Not now.”

  “I won’t go to Luskan,” Drizzt said flatly.

  Dahlia held her stare for a few moments, but then it was she who blinked and nodded. “Ship Kurth will still be there when we’re done with the witch of Thay,” she decided. “And perhaps we would do well to let a few tendays pass, so that Luskan forgets about Drizzt and Dahlia.”

  “And then we kill Beniago?”

  Dahlia nodded and Drizzt shook his head.

  “Let it be,” the drow advised.

  Dahlia’s sigh showed more contempt than resignation.

  “Kill Beniago?” Drizzt went on skeptically. “He who is powerful within Luskan and Ship Kurth? Beniago, who I spared at the end of my blade?”

  “You think him an ally?” Dahlia asked incredulously.

  “I think that perhaps the past is better left in the past,” Drizzt replied. “Beniago gave me the elixir knowing I would use it to save you. He was grateful that I didn’t kill him, because I surely had him dead, had I so chosen. He will soon enough be a man of great power within Luskan, and within the whole of the region, and he has shown himself to be no enemy of ours.”

  “Drizzt Do’Urden bargains with murderers now,” Dahlia said with a wry smirk.

  She meant the remark as another jab, obviously, but it struck Drizzt as more of an honest question than that. It was a question that he’d asked himself many times in his past. He thought of Artemis Entreri, his long-time nemesis, and undeniably a killer. Yet Drizzt and Entreri had struck a bond beneath the tunnels of Mithral Hall when it was still in the hands of the duergar dwarves. And Entreri had fought beside Drizzt and Catti-brie during their escape from Menzoberranzan. Drizzt and Entreri battled side-by-side, because it had been in their best interests. And on more than one occasion, Drizzt had not finished off Entreri, had not killed him, when he’d found the opportunity.

  His thoughts also fell to Jarlaxle, of course, the drow to whom Drizzt had run when he’d lost Catti-brie and Regis. Was Jarlaxle not a killer?

  “He thinks these killers potential allies,” Dahlia went on.

  “Better, perhaps, that they are not overt enemies,” he quietly replied.

  Dahlia couldn’t let it go without one last stab. “And thinks these killers perhaps even lovers, yes?” She gave a little laugh and limped back up the grassy banking toward the camp.

  “This is what I’ve come to know,” Drizzt stated flatly, halting Dahlia in her tracks. “There is right and there is wrong. There is good and there is evil, but rarely are either of these concepts fully embodied in any one person. Life is more complicated than that; people are more complicated than that. Not all allies will prove of similar weal and not all enemies will be so different from me. I wish this weren’t true.” He gave a resigned, almost hopeless smile. He thought of Captain Deudermont, then, his old friend who had placed principle over pragmatism in an untenable situation, the result of which had been the fall of Luskan to the nefarious high captains. Drizzt had not agreed with Deudermont’s designs, had warned against them, to no avail.

  “Or perhaps I don’t,” he admitted. “Perhaps it is, after all, that complexity that makes life interesting.”

  “The complexity you find in others, which doesn’t exist in the pure heart of Drizzt Do’Urden?” Dahlia teased.

  Drizzt laughed and shrugged. A million retorts flitted through his thoughts, but in the end, Drizzt had no response. Dahlia had weighed her words and her tone perfectly, he realized. She knew him, his reputation and his soul, and obviously she had no hesitation in flicking her finger against his heart. He watched her diminish into the shadows, reminded again that this was not Catti-brie beside him, not a rock of conscience, not even a dependable friend. What might Dahlia do to help Drizzt if her own life was on the line? Would she flee and leave him to his fate?

  He played through their many battles at each other’s side in Gauntlgrym. Dahlia had fought valiantly, fearlessly. He could count on her in matters of the sword.

  “Will you join me tonight by the fire?” Dahlia asked from beyond the bluff.

  But could Drizzt count on her in matters of the heart?

  Drizzt shook it all away with a little laugh. What did it matter? He pulled himself up and brushed the dust of the road from his pants and cloak, then went to the river and quickly splashed his face.

  Then he went to Dahlia’s lair.

  With Andahar keeping a swift pace, Drizzt and Dahlia passed Port Llast the very next night, giving the town a wide berth for fear that some of Kurth’s agents might be among the visitors. Not far down the road from there, Drizzt realized that they were not alone.

  “In the tree to the left,” Dahlia whispered back when he informed her.

  Drizzt pulled Andahar up to a halt and turned the steed sidelong to the road, his eyes focusing on that inhabited tree.

  “Must I shoot you from your perch before you admit your presence?” Drizzt called out, bringing Taulmaril across his lap.

  “Please, not that, good sir Drizzt,” came the reply from within the shelter of the boughs-the fast-browning boughs, for the summer season was beginning its turn to fall.

  “Stuyles’s man,” Dahlia remarked, and Drizzt nodded.

  “Would you break bread with us again?” the drow called out. “Entertain us with tales of the north while we repay the bards’ debt?”

  “We should just ride past them,” Dahlia said. “Or do you feel the need to tell them of the farmer woman and the brewer?”

  “Perhaps many would be interested, including Stuyles.”

  “To what end?” Dahlia asked. “Do you hope that they will lay down their knives and swords and return to the plow? Will Drizzt Do’Urden fix the world?”

  Ahead of them, the would-be highwayman dropped down from the tree’s lowest branch and waved them on, and Drizzt, not bothering to answer Dahlia, spurred Andahar forward. Dahlia kept her sour expression all the way to the bandits’ encampment.

  They were greeted warmly, and offered food and a seat by a warm fire. Stuyles was there, and prodded Drizzt for his latest tales, and the drow obliged by telling him of their meetings with Meg the farmer woman and Ben the Brewer.

  They all laughed when Drizzt recounted Dahlia’s defense of her foot at the expense of poor Ben, and indeed, any here knew the man.

  Even Dahlia couldn’t resist a bit of a grin.

  One by one, the bandits drifted away to their respective cots, until only the tall bandit named Hadencourt remained. “Now you go to Neverwinter Wood to r
epay Lady Sylora?” Hadencourt asked.

  Dahlia, half asleep by that point, perked up immediately and stared at the man.

  “We hear much,” Hadencourt explained. “And surely the tale of Dahlia Sin’felle is one of note, as were her two journeys to Gauntlgrym.”

  The matter-of-fact manner in which he spoke made Drizzt uneasy. He looked to Dahlia, who seemed on the verge of throttling the man.

  “Pray tell us what you’ve heard, good Hadencourt,” Drizzt prompted.

  “More than any of the others here, of course,” said the man. “But then, I knew much more about the situation long before I met up with Farmer Stuyles and his band of misguided heroes.”

  Dahlia and Drizzt exchanged suspicious looks.

  “I’m not a former farmer,” Hadencourt flatly declared. “Nor a peasant, nor a commoner, nor a true member of this ridiculous band, in any manner they would accept.”

  “Do tell,” said Dahlia.

  Hadencourt stood up-Drizzt and Dahlia were quick to do likewise. “I’d prefer to show you,” Hadencourt said, and started off into the dark night.

  Drizzt and Dahlia exchanged glances yet again, and Drizzt recognized the murderous hints on her face. He called forth Guenhwyvar, sent her on a roundabout path, and they set to follow the man.

  In a moonlit lea, they caught up to Hadencourt. He stood easy, staring up at the stars and the lunar orb.

  “Are you an agent from Waterdeep?” Drizzt asked.

  “Or from the high captains of Luskan?” a more suspicious Dahlia added.

  Hadencourt laughed and slowly turned to face them. “Hardly,” he said, “to either.”

  “You serve Sylora Salm!” Dahlia accused, and she brought her staff in front of her in a powerful and aggressive movement.

  Hadencourt laughed all the louder. “Serve?” he echoed, and his voice took on a different timbre, deeper and more resonant, full of something… darker.

  Horns wormed out of his head, spiraling up above him. His mouth elongated, widened into a devilish grin of long and pointed teeth. His skin darkened, midnight blue, black perhaps, and he grew in stature, his clothing tearing, his enlarging and cloven feet bursting from his boots as he stood towering over the couple. With fiendish, clawed hands, he ripped the remainder of his clothing aside, his spiked tail waving out behind him.