“Bah for yerself and yer minor magic!” Ambergris huffed, and she cast her own enchantment, her divine magic overwhelming the warlock’s tricks.
“Oh, indeed!” said Effron, and he went right back at her, and the flames fought their battle, shifting hue in a wild dance for supremacy. It became a game to her and Effron, to the amusement of Afafrenfere, who kept feeding more kindling to the blaze.
Even ever-dour Entreri, sitting off to the side and polishing his dagger, couldn’t suppress a chuckle or two.
Because they were all free, Drizzt realized. This apparent and bizarre time-shift had only made the world a better place for these four fugitives. The dwarf and monk could go as they pleased with no fear of Cavus Dun, and for Effron and Entreri, the specter of Draygo Quick seemed lifted, and likely, too, the shadows of a hundred others with a vendetta against Artemis Entreri.
So, too, would this strange leap of years benefit Drizzt and Dahlia, he realized, but the elf warrior showed no mirth, sitting by herself, her expression grim, and glancing his way every now and again.
For Drizzt, there was just confusion. Had his sleep, had the enchanted forest, been a vision, a love letter to him from Mielikki? More likely, he realized, it had been a moment of closure. Awakening in the tiny secluded area of a land still grasped by the late winter signaled a farewell to Drizzt.
The forest was gone.
Somehow he knew that, in his heart and soul. The enchanted forest was gone, was no more, and so too were flown any ties to the world that had once been, before the Spellplague.
Thus, his past was gone, at long last.
He focused on that moment when the moon had opened his eyes, and thought it a passage. He thought of Innovindil (and stole a glance at Dahlia) and her insistence that an elf must live his life in shorter time spans, must reinvent his existence, his friends, his love, with each passing generation, to know vitality and happiness.
He glanced at Dahlia again, but his gaze inevitably lowered to his own hands, where he rolled a piece of scrimshaw over and over again.
By the time he looked back up, while the dwarf, monk, and warlock remained at play with the fire, Dahlia had gone to sit with Entreri, the two conversing privately.
Drizzt nodded, rose, and walked off into the night. He came to a high rock, overlooking Bryn Shander away to the southeast, and with the high peak of Kelvin’s Cairn to the northwest behind him. He stood there, the wind in his face and in his ears, remembering what was and pondering what might now be.
“We’re not staying,” came Dahlia’s voice behind him, and he wasn’t surprised-by her presence or her message. “We’ll go to the dwarves, perhaps, but for a short while only. We’re to ride with a caravan out of this forlorn place at the earliest opportunity.”
“To where?” Drizzt asked, but didn’t turn to face her.
“Does it matter? A decade and more’s gone by and our names have slipped past in the wind.”
“You underestimate the memories of those with a vendetta,” Drizzt said, and he turned in time to see Dahlia shrug, as if it hardly mattered.
“When we came here, you said it would be for the season. The seasons have come and gone fifty times and more. I’ve not thought of living my years out in the emptiness of Icewind Dale, and might any time prove safer for us to leave than right now, before rumors of our return filter to the south?”
Drizzt mulled over her words, looking for some way to argue the point. He was as confused as the rest of them, unsure of what had happened or what it might mean. Was it really 1484? Had the world passed them by while they had slept in some enchanted forest?
And if that was the enchanted forest of Nathan Obridock, the place named Iruladoon, then what of the auburn-haired witch and the halfling by the pond?
Drizzt couldn’t help but wince as he considered the place, for there it was again in his heart, the knowledge that he had witnessed the very end of Iruladoon when he had awakened in the one warm spot amidst the last snows. He had felt the magic drain away to nothingness. It wasn’t that the enchantment had moved along. Nay, it had dissipated all together. That place, whether it was Iruladoon or not, was no more, nevermore. He knew that with certainty, though he knew not how he understood it with certainty. Mielikki had signaled to him that it was no more, that it was gone, and with a pervading sense of comfort … that it was all right.
“Are you agreed?” Dahlia asked impatiently, and Drizzt realized from her tone and her stance that she was reiterating that question for more than the second time.
“Agreed?” he had to ask.
“First caravan out,” Dahlia said.
Drizzt chewed his lip and looked all around, but really tried to look within his own heart. Behind Dahlia loomed the blackness of Kelvin’s Cairn, and it did not elicit a cold emotion within Drizzt-quite the opposite.
“We can have the life up here that we spoke of before we went to Easthaven,” he said.
Dahlia looked at him incredulously, even laughed at him.
“It will be an easy life, and one of adventure.”
“They wouldn’t even let you in their town, you fool,” Dahlia reminded him.
“That will change, with time.”
But Dahlia shook her head resolutely, and Drizzt recognized that she didn’t disagree with his particular reasoning, but rejected the whole premise.
“We’re all for going, all five,” she said. “Even Ambergris.”
“To where?”
Again Dahlia laughed at him. “Does it matter?”
“If it doesn’t, then why not here?”
“No,” she stated flatly. “We are leaving this forlorn place of tedious winds and endless boredom. All of us. And I’ll not chase your ghosts back to Icewind Dale again, if all of Menzoberranzan, all of the Empire of Netheril, and all the demons of the Abyss are chasing us.”
“There are no ghosts left to chase,” Drizzt whispered under his breath, for he knew it to be true.
But even with that, spoken sincerely, there was no compromise to be found within her, Drizzt realized. She saw Icewind Dale as a surrogate to Catti-brie for him, a place of those memories, and she would not tolerate it.
But nor could Drizzt lie any longer, to himself or to Dahlia. He felt a twinge of guilt in coercing her up here in the first place, but reminded himself that he had done so only to protect her from Tiago Baenre. But now that threat seemed distant, and Dahlia was right, there was no compelling reason for any of them to remain in Icewind Dale any longer.
Any of the other five, at least.
“It is best that you go,” he agreed.
“That I go?” she asked, and a dark edge came over her voice and her posture. Drizzt nodded.
“But not you?”
“This is my home.”
“But not mine?” she asked.
“No.”
“So that you can chase your witch of the wood?”
Drizzt chuckled helplessly at that, for there was some measure of truth in it, he had to admit. Not literally, of course, but in this place, even without his old and dear friends by his side, he felt the warmth of hearth and home, and it was a feeling he would not allow to slip from his grasp yet again.
“Have I told you of Innovindil?” he asked, and Dahlia rolled her eyes. Drizzt pressed on anyway, though he remembered that yes, he had told her many stories of his lost elf friend. “Have I explained to you the idea that an elf who resides among the shorter-living races must live his life in bursts to accommodate their sensations of time?”
“Yes, yes, to let go of the past and press ahead to new roads,” Dahlia said absently, as if long bored of that particular lecture.
“I seem to be ignoring Innovindil’s advice,” said Drizzt.
“Then let us leave in the morning.”
“No.”
Dahlia shrugged, clearly confused by the seemingly pointless reference to Innovindil, given his answer.
“Innovindil was wrong,” Drizzt said. “Perhaps not entirely, and perh
aps not for everyone, but for me, in this regard, I know now, and admit now, that Innovindil was wrong.”
“In this regard?”
“Regarding love,” Drizzt said.
“The auburn-haired witch of the wood.”
Drizzt nodded. “My heart remains with Catti-brie. I gave it to her wholly and cannot take it back.”
“She is dead a hundred years.”
“Not in my heart.”
“Ghosts are cold comfort, Drizzt Do’Urden.”
“So be it,” he replied, and he had never been more certain of his road in all of his two centuries. “I’m not saddened by this realization, by this admission that I remain in love with a woman lost to me a century ago.”
“Saddened? I would think you insane!”
“Then I hope for you, dear Dahlia, for I wish you nothing but the best road, that one day you will understand my … insanity. Because I do truly care for you, as my friend, I hope that you will one day be so afflicted as am I. Catti-brie died, but my love for her did not. Innovindil was wrong, and I will live my life happier in the warm memories of Catti-brie’s embrace than in a foolish and impossible effort to replace her.”
“So there is only one love? There can be no other?”
Drizzt considered that for a moment, then honestly shrugged. “I know not,” he admitted. “Perhaps this is, at long last, the time when I will find closure. Perhaps there will come in my path someday another to so warm me. But I do not seek that. I do not need it. Catti-brie remains with me, very much alive.”
He watched Dahlia swallow hard, and it pained him to hurt her-but how much greater would he be wounding her by living a lie out of cowardice?
“Then take our relationship for what it is,” Dahlia offered at length, and there seemed to be a bit of desperation creeping into the edges of her voice.
“And what is that, a distraction?”
“Play,” she said as lightly as she could manage, and she put on a too-wide smile. “Let us enjoy the road and each other’s body. We fight well together and we love well together, so take it for what it is and let it have no meaning beyond-”
“No,” Drizzt interrupted, though he could not deny that Dahlia’s offer was enticing. “Not for your sake and not for my own. My heart and home are here, in Icewind Dale, and here I will stay. And here, you should not stay.”
The crestfallen expression that enveloped Dahlia nearly had Drizzt running to embrace her, but again, for her own sake, he did not.
“You would send me away with Entreri?” she asked, and her eyes narrowed, and her facial woad seemed to heighten then, reflecting a growing anger. “He is a fine lover, you know.”
Drizzt recognized that she was just lashing out here, just trying to sting him back for the rejection he had shown her. He did well to offer no response.
“I have shared his bed many times,” Dahlia pressed, to which Drizzt merely nodded.
“You do not care?” Dahlia asked, her tone on the edge of outrage.
Drizzt swallowed hard, seeing this breakup devolving into a matter of foolish pride, and he knew that he should allow Dahlia to salvage some of that. Or should he, and again, for her own sake?
“No,” he answered flatly. “I do care, but not as you imagine. I am glad that you have found each other.”
“You are walking a dangerous path, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Dahlia warned.
Drizzt wasn’t sure how to take that at first. Was she referring to his own emotional state, given his dramatic choice? Was she taking up Innovindil’s mantle of long-searching wisdom to appeal to him on some philosophical level?
She lifted her walking stick before her and snapped her wrists expertly to break it in half, into two four-foot lengths, and these she broke in half into flails-“nun’chuks,” Afafrenfere had named them-and sent them into easy spins at her side.
“You do not get to so easily dismiss me,” Dahlia informed him. “I am not a plaything for the whims of Drizzt Do’Urden.”
Drizzt thought better of reminding her that she had just offered to be exactly that, and instead focused on how he might diffuse this strange situation. “I seek only that which is best for us both.”
“Oh, shut up,” she said. “Shut up and draw your blades.”
Drizzt held his hands out unthreateningly, as if that request was absurd.
“Diamonds do not move so easily from one ear to the other,” she said. “And this one, the black diamond, is to be the most difficult of all.” She began circling to Drizzt’s left, moving up the incline near to the edge of the rock. “That is why I chose you, of course. Or do you still not understand?”
“Apparently, I don’t-” he started to answer, his words cut short as he ducked and dodged back, one of Dahlia’s weapons whipping suddenly at his head-and had it connected, it surely would have cracked open his skull.
“Dahlia!”
“Draw your blades!” she shouted back at him. “Do not further disappoint me! You were the one, the lover I could not beat! You were the one to serve me my just reward. You are a failure as a lover, as a man, with your precious witch ever in your foolish heart. Do not doubly disappoint me by failing at the one thing I know you do well!”
On she came in a rush, and despite himself, Drizzt found his scimitars in his hands as he fended the sudden, brutal attacks, the flails spinning in at him from every conceivable angle. Instinct alone had Drizzt parrying and twisting away from the assault, for his brain could not fathom the situation unfolding before him. Instinct alone had him countering Dahlia’s movements, even striking out at her with a reflexive riposte after one clean parry.
Drizzt sucked in his breath and retracted his scimitar at the same time, horrified that he had nearly skewered Dahlia, to the point where blood had begun to stain her torn shirt.
She didn’t seem the least bit bothered, though, and pressed the attack with apparent glee, swinging her right-hand flail back in at Drizzt’s retracting blade. And when the pole struck the scimitar, Dahlia released some lightning energy, which coursed Twinkle and sparked into Drizzt’s left hand and arm.
The drow’s teeth clenched involuntarily, and it was all he could do to hold onto his weapon, the muscles in his forearm clenching and knotting under the tingling and burning sensation.
“Stop!” Drizzt yelled at her between the ring of his blades blocking her swinging poles. “Dahlia!”
His calls only made her attack all the more ferociously, however. She went into a spin, coming around with her flying weapon swinging across for Drizzt’s head. He ducked the blow, then leaped as she turned a second circuit, this time bending as she came around and sweeping a backhand of her other weapon for his legs.
She had left him an opening. With him up high and Dahlia down low, Drizzt could have charged in and put her at a tremendous, likely insurmountable, disadvantage then and there, and indeed he started that way.
But he didn’t lead with his blades. He hadn’t the heart to cut her again, and instead tried to wrap her in a hug as she tried to stand back up, moving in too close for her to strike at him with those deadly flails.
She seemed to lose all strength then, and Drizzt reached out for her, hopeful that this insanity had come to its end.
Dahlia smashed her forehead into his nose and drove a knee up into his groin as he fell back, and before he had even fully straightened again, she lashed out at him once more with her weapons.
He blocked right with Icingdeath, left with Twinkle, then brought Twinkle across to block again to the right, and turned around away from Dahlia, coming around with Icingdeath angled diagonally to lift up her second attack from the left.
He dived under that raising nun’chuk, just ahead of her next trailing strike. He rolled easily to his feet, tasting blood from his smashed nose, and fell into a crouch as Dahlia turned to pursue.
But again, suddenly, she seemed to lose all strength for the fight, and her arms slumped to the side and she looked at Drizzt with a clear sense of helplessness, of anguish and
sadness. She offered a shrug and a sniffle.
Then snapped her right hand, her nun’chuk lashing straight ahead like a serpent.
Drizzt fell for the ruse because he desperately needed to believe in the ruse. For all his training and all his speed and honed reflexes, Drizzt couldn’t quite catch up to that attack. The nun’chuk’s tip cracked into his forehead, knocking him upright, and Dahlia released the rest of Kozah’s Needle’s magical lightning, throwing him forcefully backward. He flipped off the edge of the rocky outcropping, spinning right over as he fell from the ledge. He slammed down on the sloping ground some ten feet below the rock, and bounced and rolled his way down the slope, crashing through brush, wet snow, and rocks alike.
He finally settled against a rock, his thoughts spinning, burning pain assailing him from many different wounds.
“Fool!” he heard Dahlia shout from above, and he knew she was coming for him. He couldn’t see her, for she had moved to the trail behind the rock, but she continued her verbal tirade, “This is to the death, yours or mine! So fight better or be damned, Drizzt Do’Urden!”
Drizzt climbed to all fours, or to three, at least, for he wound up tucking his right hand in close to his chest. He looked down at the hand, already swelling and bruised around the thumb and index finger. He tried to clench his fist, but could barely move the fingers.
He spotted his dropped scimitar, Icingdeath, on the slope just up above him, and climbed to his feet to retrieve it.
Such waves of pain washed over him that he nearly fell back to the ground. As he recovered, he settled his weight onto his right foot and glanced down at his left leg, noting a bulge against the leather at mid-calf. Drizzt swallowed hard, amazed that he was upright at all, for in the fall, he had surely broken the bone in his shin.
Slowly he put his foot back to the ground and eased some weight onto it. Again the waves of pain assaulted him. He looked around for a splint, but heard Dahlia’s approach and realized that he had no time.
He scrambled for his scimitar, retrieved it, and spun around to watch the woman’s determined approach, her weapons swinging easily at her sides.
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