The Last Threshold (Neverwinter #4)(130)

Aye, this was home to Drizzt, a place of physical cold and emotional warmth, a place where he had learned to trust and to love, and he couldn’t help but feel alive with the sound of the wind of Icewind Dale in his ears. He could hardly imagine the person he had become in the jails of Draygo Quick, so apathetic and hopeless.

He looked back to the caravan, to Dahlia in particular, who rode on a wagon with Artemis Entreri pacing his nightmare nearby, speaking with her. Drizzt imagined them in each other’s arms, and hoped that it would become true. Because he could never truly return her love, he knew.

Drizzt turned Andahar around and paced back to the lead wagon. “Bryn Shander?” he asked.

“Aye, that’s where we’re bound.”

“The roads will grow worse, for the melt is on, and the tundra mud is inevitable,” Drizzt explained. “Another tenday before us, likely, if the weather holds.”

The driver nodded. “Been this way many times,” he explained.

“My friends and I will escort you to Bryn Shander’s gates, but then I, at least, will turn away for Kelvin’s Cairn.”

“You will get your pay.”

Drizzt smiled. He hardly cared, and had only wanted to inform the caravan of his plans.

“The Battlehammer dwarves for you, then?” the driver added, and Drizzt nodded. “I heard you were friends o’ them.”

“Proud to be called such.”

“We’ve a wagon of goods bound for Stokely Silverstream’s boys,” the driver explained, and Drizzt was glad to hear that name again. “Might be two. I’ll begin splitting up the goods when we camp tonight, sorting them that’s for the dwarves, and you can guard those wagons to the mountain.”

Drizzt nodded again and moved up front with Afafrenfere. He paced Andahar a bit faster after that, his conversation making him anxious to walk the ways of Kelvin’s Cairn once more.

The next morning, soon after they were on the road again, the tip of that small mountain came into view, and Drizzt’s heart leaped.





THE SONG OF THE GODDESS



THE BEER, THE ALE, AND THE HONEY MEAD FLOWED FREELY IN THE BALL-ROOM hall of Clan Battlehammer, beneath the rocks of Kelvin’s Cairn. Dain Stokely Silverstream led the toasts, one after another, for Drizzt and the others of the drow’s band, and so ridiculously effusive were the compliments that it didn’t take long for the companions to recognize that they were as much an excuse as a reason for drinking.

Other than Drizzt, long a friend of the clan, Amber Gristle O’Maul got the bulk of the attention and praise, and truly, the female dwarf hadn’t felt so welcomed in a long, long while.

Nor had she often found herself among so many peers in matters of holding one’s liquor.

The celebration went on for many days, and both Drizzt and Dahlia were repeatedly pressed to recount their story of Gauntlgrym, describing the primordial, and most important of all, the fall of King Bruenor Battlehammer, patriarch and hero of the clan. The openness of Stokely and the others about the true identity of the dwarf who had gone by the name of Bonnego Battleaxe surprised Drizzt, and pleasantly so. The official story among the Battlehammer dwarves was that King Bruenor had died in Mithral Hall, decades before his actual demise, but this outpost of Battlehammers knew better, for they had been there, led by Thibbledorf Pwent, when King Bruenor, infused with the power of dwarf gods, had valiantly saved the day, heroically giving his own life in the process.

They knew the truth of Bonnego, and Mithral Hall almost surely knew as well—and thus, knew too that the cairn in Mithral Hall marking the grave of King Bruenor was an empty pile of rocks. But they’d never publicly admit it.

The absurdity of the open duplicity was surely not lost on Drizzt, but he found that he approved of the winks and nods, and that the Battlehammers celebrated the ultimate victory that had marked his dearest friend’s demise came as a sincere and warm comfort to him.

“So how long’re ye for the dale?” Stokely asked Drizzt a tenday later, when the two found a private moment outside the mining complex on the lower trails of Kelvin’s Cairn.

“Perhaps forever,” Drizzt answered, and he noted Stokely’s approving nod and grin. “I’ve nowhere else to go that I can fathom, for nowhere else feels so much like home.”

“Sure that meself’s one to understand that! But I’m not thinkin’ yer friends’re of like mind. Amber, likely, and that monk fellow, but not so much th’other three, mostly that broken fellow.”

“Are you so certain of that, or is it, perhaps, your own wishes to have Effron away?” Drizzt asked, and Stokely stiffened at the remark.

“Well, he is demon spawn, or devil spawn, or whatever durned tieflings be,” the dwarf said uncomfortably.

“And I am drow spawn,” Drizzt reminded.

Stokely could only shrug. “We ain’t for kickin’ him out,” he said.

Drizzt laughed. “We’ll not be staying here for long.”

“Ye just said forever.”

“Here at Kelvin’s Cairn,” Drizzt clarified. “Perhaps we’ll set up in Bryn Shander, or maybe Lonelywood would be more to our liking. Dahlia and Entreri aren’t overly comfortable with your tunnels.”

Stokely narrowed his eyes.

“Inviting as you’ve made them,” Drizzt quickly added, and he bowed to diffuse Stokely’s growing scowl. “Dahlia is an elf, after all, and Entreri—”