Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3)(71)

So it is with the ill person who suddenly must face mortality, when the paralyzing shackles of the concept of forever are sundered. As time diminishes, every moment crystallizes into one of importance. I have met several people in my travels who, when told by a cleric that they had not long to live, insisted to me that their disease was the greatest event of their existence, insisted that colors became more vivid, sounds more acute and meaningful and pleasurable, and friendships more endearing.

The shattering of the normal routine brings life to this person, so paradoxically, considering that the catalyst is, after all, the imminence of death.

But though we know, though we are seasoned, we cannot prepare.

I felt this rippling of the serene lake that had become my life when Cattibrie became afflicted by the Spellplague, and then, even more profoundly, when she and Regis were taken from me. All of my sensibilities screamed at me; it wasn’t supposed to be like that. So many things had been sorted through hard work and trial, and we four remaining Companions of the Hall were ready for our due and just reward: adventures and leisure of our choosing.

I don’t know that I took those two dear friends for granted, though losing them so unexpectedly and abruptly surely tore apart the serenity of calm waters I had found all about me.

A lake full of tumultuous cross-currents and slithering snakes of discordant thought, sliding all about. I remember my confusion, my rage, helpless rage . . . I grabbed Jarlaxle because I needed something to hold, some solid object and solid hope to stop the current from sweeping me away.

So too with the departure of Wulfgar, whose choice to leave us was not really unexpected.

So too with Bruenor. We walked a road together that we knew would end as it ended. The only question was whether he or I would die first at the end of an enemy’s spear.

I feel that I long ago properly insulated myself against this trap of simply accepting what was with the false belief that what was would always be.

In almost every case.

Almost, I see now.

I speak of the Companions of the Hall as if we were five, then four when Wulfgar departed. Even now as I recognize my error, I found at my fingertips the same description when I penned, “we four.”

We were not five in the early days, but six.

We were not four when Wulfgar departed, but five.

We were not two when Catti-brie and Regis were taken from us, but three.

And the one whom I seldom consider, the one whom I fear I have too often taken for granted, is the one most joined to the heart of Drizzt Do’Urden.

And now the snakes return, tenfold, twisting around my legs, just out of reach, and I stagger because the ground beneath my feet is not firm, because the sands buckle and roll beneath the crashing waves, because the balance I have known has been torn from me.

I cannot summon Guenhwyvar.

I do not understand—I have not lost hope!—but for the first time, with the onyx figurine in hand, the panther, my dear friend, will not come to my call, nor do I sense her presence, roaring back at me across the planescape. She went through to the Shadowfell with Herzgo Alegni, or went somewhere, disappearing into the black mist on the winged bridge of Neverwinter.

I sensed the distance soon after, a vast expanse between us, too far to reach with the magic of the idol.

I do not understand.

Was Guenhwyvar not eternal? Was she not the essence of the panther? Such essence cannot be destroyed, surely!

But I cannot summon her, cannot hear her, cannot feel her around me and in my thoughts.

What road is this, then, that I find myself upon? I have followed a trail of vengeance beside Dahlia—nay, behind Dahlia, for little can I doubt that it is she who guides my strides. So do I cross the leagues to kill Sylora Salm, and I cannot consider that an illegitimate act, for it was she who freed the primordial and wreaked devastation on Neverwinter. Surely defeating Sylora was a just and worthy cause.

And so back again have I traveled to Neverwinter to exact revenge upon this tiefling, Herzgo Alegni—and I know not the crime, even. Do I justify my battle with my knowledge of his enslavement of Artemis Entreri?

In the same breath, can I justify freeing Artemis Entreri? Perhaps it is that his enslavement was really imprisonment, atonement for a life ill-lived. Was this Alegni then a gaoler tasked with controlling the assassin? How can I know?

I shake my head as I consider the reality, that I have as my lover an elf I do not understand, and one who has no doubt committed acts beside which I would never willingly associate myself. To delve into Dahlia’s past would reveal much, I fear—too much, and so I choose not to probe.

So be it.

And so it is true with Artemis Entreri, except that I have chosen simply to allow for his redemption, to accept what he was and who he was and hope that perhaps, by my side, he will make amends. There was always within him a code of honor, a sense of right and wrong, though horribly stilted through the prism of his pained eyes.

Am I a fool, then? With Dahlia? With Entreri? A fool of convenience? A lonely heart adrift in waters too wide and too wild? An angry heart too scarred to linger on hopes I now know to be false?

There’s the rub, and the most painful thought of all.

These are the questions I would ask of Guenhwyvar. Of course she could not answer, and yet, of course she could. With her eyes, her simple glance, her honest scrutiny reminding me to look within my own heart with similar honesty.

The ripples, the waves, the wild cross-currents, lift me and drop me and twist me all around, and I cannot set my feet and direction. I should fear that unexpected winding, these turns left and right to places not of my own choosing.