“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 than 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.
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 s
omething 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
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 hadn’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.
Neverwinter: Neverwinter Saga, Book II Page 18
