Neverwinter (Neverwinter #2)(6)

“No,” Drizzt stated flatly, over Dahlia’s opposite response. “I cannot.”

“We’re just surviving, is all,” Stuyles said. “A man’s a right to eat!”

“That you didn’t feel the bite of my blade is a testament that I don’t disagree,” Drizzt told him. “But I fear that traveling along beside you would show me choices with which I cannot agree and of which I cannot abide. Would you enter every adventure unsure of my allegiance?”

Stuyles took a step back and eyed the drow. “Better ye go then,” he said, and Drizzt nodded coldly.

“So the world is too dirty for Drizzt Do’Urden,” Dahlia mocked when Stuyles had gone. “What rights, what proper recourse, for those who have not, when those who have keep all?”

“Waterdeep is not so far to the south.”

“Aye, and the lords of Waterdeep will throw open their gates and their wares to all those put out in the chaos.”

At that moment, Drizzt didn’t find Dahlia’s sarcasm very endearing. He calmed himself with memories of Icewind Dale, memories nearly a century old, of a time and place when matters of right and wrong seemed so much more apparent. Even in that unforgiving frontier, there seemed a level of civilization far beyond the current drama playing out along the Sword Coast. He considered the fall of Captain Deudermont in Luskan, when the high captains had seized full control of the City of Sails and thus, the surrounding region. A Waterdhavian lord had fallen beside Deudermont, and the other lords of that great city had surely failed in their subsequent inaction.

But even in that dark moment, Drizzt understood the fall of Luskan to darkness was just a minor symptom of a greater disease, as was the fall of Cadderly and Spirit Soaring. With the advent of the Shadowfell, the patches of shadow were both literal and figurative, and in those vast areas of darkness, anarchy and chaos had found their way.

How could Drizzt fight beside men like Stuyles and these highwaymen, however justified their ambushes, when he knew that those they ambushed would very often be men and women, like this band, simply trying to find a way to survive and keep their families fed?

Was there a “right” and “wrong” to be found here? To steal from the powerful or to toil for their copper coins?

“What are you thinking?” Dahlia asked him, her voice having lost its sharp edge.

“That I am one very small person, after all,” Drizzt replied without looking.

When he did at last turn around to regard the woman, she was grinning knowingly—too confidently, as if she was working some manipulation on him he didn’t yet understand.

Strangely, that notion didn’t bother Drizzt as much as he would have expected. Perhaps his confusion when faced by such a reality as the tumult of the Sword Coast was so profound that he would accept a hand, however offered, in lifting him from the darkness.






And now I am alone, more so than I’ve been since the days following the death of Montolio those many years ago. Even on that later occasion when I traveled back into the Underdark to Menzoberranzan, forsaking my friends in the foolish belief that I was unfairly endangering them, it was not like this. For though I physically walked alone into the Underdark, I didn’t go without the emotional support that they were there beside me, in spirit. I went with full confidence that Bruenor, Catti-brie, and Regis remained alive and well—indeed, more well, I believed, because I had left them.

But now I am alone. They are gone, one and all. My friends, my family.

There remains Guenhwyvar, of course, and she is no small thing to me—a true and loyal companion, someone to listen to my laments and my joys and my pondering. But it is not the same. Guen can hear me, but is there anything I would hear from her? She can share my victories, my joys, my trials, but there’s no reciprocation. After knowing the love of friends and family, I cannot so fool myself again, as I did in those first days after I left Menzoberranzan, as to believe that the wonderful Guenhwyvar is enough.

My road takes me from Gauntlgrym as it once took me from Mithral Hall, and I doubt I shall return—certainly I’ll not return to stand and stare at the cairn of Bruenor Battlehammer, as I rarely visited the graves of Catti-brie and Regis during my years in Mithral Hall. A wise elf lady once explained to me the futility of such things, as she taught me that I must learn to live my life as a series of shorter spans. It is the blessing of the People to live through the dawn and sunset of centuries, but that blessing can serve too as a curse. Few elves partner for life, as is common among the humans, for example, because the joy of such a partnership can weigh as an anchor after a hundred years, or two hundred.

“Treat each parting as a rebirth,” Innovindil said to me. “Let go of that which is past and seek new roads. Perhaps never to forget your lost friends and family and lovers, but to place them in your memory warmly and build again with new friends those things that so pleased you.”

I’ve gone back to Innovindil’s lessons many times over the last few decades, since Wulfgar left Mithral Hall and since Catti-brie and Regis were lost to me. I’ve recited them as a litany against the rage, the pain, the sadness … a reminder that there are roads yet to walk.

I was deluding myself, I now know.

For I hadn’t let go of my dear friends. I hadn’t lost hope that someday, one day, some way, I would raze a giant’s lair beside Wulfgar once more, or would fish beside Regis on a lazy summer’s day on the banks of Maer Dualdon, or I would spend the night in Catti-brie’s warm embrace. I tasked Jarlaxle with finding them, not out of any real hope that he would, but because I couldn’t bear to relinquish the last flicker of hope for these moments, these soft joys, these truest smiles, I once knew.