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“I’m glad you’re here,” Drizzt told her. “I only wish that you were glad too. ”
“I never said—”
“You have asked a dozen times why we’re here. Perhaps there is no purpose, other than to enjoy the sunlight through the forest canopy. ”
Dahlia stopped and stared hard at him, hands on hips, and Drizzt could not help but pause and return the look.
Dahlia shook her head. “This last few days you’ve been full of thought. You hardly hear my words. You’re here beside me and yet you aren’t. Why are we here?”
Drizzt sighed and gave a nod. “The journey to Gauntlgrym has left me with more questions than answers. ”
“We went to destroy the sword. We destroyed the sword. ”
“True enough,” Drizzt admitted. “But—”
“But Artemis Entreri remains,” Dahlia interrupted. “Does this trouble you so much?”
Drizzt paused and considered the myriad questions in his mind, after dismissing the question Dahlia had just asked. In the end, the matter of Entreri really was a minor thing when weighed against the true purpose of this day in the forest: to discern anything he might about Guenhwyvar.
“Is there a purpose to your life now?” he asked. She fell back a step and assumed a more defensive posture, studying him carefully.
“Since we have joined together, we have moved through several quests,” Drizzt explained. “All urgent. We put the primordial back in its magical trap. We sought revenge on Sylora, and on Herzgo Alegni, and then we went and freed Entreri from the insidious enslavement of the sword. Our roads have been a matter of small, but important needs, but what is the greater purpose binding them together?”
Dahlia looked at him as if he’d just grown a second head. “To survive,” she replied sarcastically.
“Not so!” the drow countered. “We could have left the region to the primordial forces. We could have walked far away from these enemies. ”
“They would have followed. ”
“In body, or simply in your dreams?”
“Both,” Dahlia decided. “Sylora would have tried to find us, and Alegni. …” She spat upon the ground.
“And so our road has been determined by immediate needs. ”
Dahlia shrugged and continued to look rather unimpressed.
“But what now?” he asked.
“You’re not asking me,” Dahlia replied. “You’re merely preparing me for whatever road you deem worthy. ”
Drizzt could only laugh and shrug at that for many heartbeats. “I’m asking,” he said at length. “Asking you and asking myself. ”
“Let me know when you find an answer,” the elf woman replied and turned back to the north, toward Neverwinter.
“A bit farther,” Drizzt said before she had gone more than a couple of steps.
Dahlia stopped and turned. “Why?” she demanded.
“Arunika the Seer,” Drizzt admitted. “I wish to speak with her again regarding Guenhwyvar. ” He stared at her for just a moment longer, then turned and shrugged and moved along to the south. Dahlia was quick to catch up.
“You might have told me that when we left,” Dahlia said.
Drizzt merely shrugged. Did it even matter? He wasn’t even sure where Arunika’s house might be. Somewhere in the south, Jelvus Grinch had told him, but no one seemed to know precisely.
On his previous meeting with her, after the defeat of the Shadovar in Neverwinter and before the journey to Gauntlgrym, the seer had claimed that she could sense no connection at all between the statuette Drizzt carried and the panther it was used to summon. Nothing had changed, as far as Drizzt could tell.
Still, before he left this place, he had to try one last time. He owed that, and so much more, to his most loyal companion.
With all of those thoughts stirring in his mind, Drizzt nearly walked right past a side trail marked by a recent passage of a large band, something the astute ranger would rarely miss. He spun around at the last moment and moved back to the side trail, bending low to examine the soft ground. Dahlia moved up beside him.
“Not so old,” the elf woman remarked.
Drizzt crouched lower, feeling the solidity of the ground, inspecting one clear print more carefully. “Goblins. ” He stood and looked into the forest. Perhaps this side trail led to Arunika’s house, he thought. Had she been assailed by the filthy little beasts?
If so, he’d likely find a bunch of dead goblins scattered about Arunika’s undamaged house. The woman was deceptively formidable, by all accounts.
“Or Ashmadai,” Dahlia replied, referring to the devil-worshiping zealots who had formed Sylora Salm’s army in Neverwinter Wood. Since the fall of Sylora, this force had scattered throughout the region, or so the Neverwinter guards had told them.
“Goblins,” Drizzt insisted. He took a few steps along the small trail, then looked back to Dahlia, who didn’t follow.
“They could strike at any of the caravans coming up from Waterdeep before the winter snows,” Drizzt said, but Dahlia merely shrugged and seemed unimpressed.
Her indifference stung Drizzt, but it was not unexpected. He understood that he had a long road ahead of him indeed if he ever hoped to encourage her to look out for the needs of others.
She smiled, however, and took up her walking stick, the magical stave known as Kozah’s Needle, and moved past Drizzt, heading along the small trail, deeper into the forest.
“We haven’t fought anyone in a tenday and more,” she remarked. “I could use the practice … and the coin. ”
Drizzt stared back at the road for some time as the elf woman moved away from him. There wasn’t much altruism flowing forth from her in words, but perhaps it was there nonetheless, buried under the chip that weighed upon her strong shoulders.
She had returned to Gauntlgrym and the primordial, after all, and though she could pretend she had done so simply to strike back at Sylora Salm, Drizzt knew better. Guilt had driven Dahlia back to that supreme danger in that dark place. That guilt was wrought of her need to right the wrong she had helped facilitate, for she had played a role in freeing the monstrous fire being and thus a role in the catastrophe that had obliterated Neverwinter a decade before.
Buried within Dahlia was compassion, empathy, and a sense of right and wrong.
Drizzt believed that, though he feared that he believed it because he had to.
A short while later, the sun still high overhead, Drizzt crouched low and peered through the tangle of branches before him. He held up his fist, signaling Dahlia to stay back. The goblins were ahead, not far, he knew, for he could smell them. Likely, they had set a camp just ahead, buried in the shadows of a grove of thick maples and a few boulders, for goblins did not like the sunlight and traveled only rarely in the daytime.
He motioned for Dahlia to move off to the right flank, then held his breath as the elf woman started away, her footsteps crunching in the leaves. Was she even trying to be careful, Drizzt wondered? Or was she just being petulant?
Drizzt shook his head, trying to let it go. The brown carpet of autumn lay thick about the ground. Even Drizzt, dark elf and skilled ranger, would have trouble moving silently in this region. So, no matter, he told himself. He drew Taulmaril, set an arrow, and crept ahead, trying to gain a better vantage. At last, he spotted the camp—or what was left of it.
Drizzt stood up straight and glanced over at Dahlia, his expression telling her that she need not take care to be silent any longer. Someone, or something, had beaten them to the camp—and had destroyed the place and the inhabitants.
Dead goblins lay scattered haphazardly about the ground, their shredded, bug-ridden blankets all around. Wisps of smoke still rose from several small logs, the remnants of a cooking fire, likely, which also had been thrown around in the apparent scuffle.
Drizzt removed his arrow, placed it back into the quiver, and slid Taulmaril over his shoulder, as Dahlia appeared at the side of t
he camp. She came in with a wide smile on her pretty face, and Drizzt found himself unable to look away from her in the morning light—indeed, in a different light than he had known during their recent conversations.
Her black, red-streaked hair was in that pretty bob again, bouncing lightly around her shoulders under her fashionable wide-brimmed black leather hat, its right side pinned up. The sun speckled down on her through the trees, dancing around the woman’s blue-dyed facial woad. In the morning light, those markings didn’t seem fierce to Drizzt, but somehow soft and even innocent, like freckles on a dancing child.
The drow reminded himself that Dahlia was a master of disguise and manipulation. She was, in all possibility, manipulating him even then. But still, he could not pull his eyes away from her.
She wore her black raven cape thrown back from her shoulders, with her white blouse unbuttoned low, to the tip of her black vest that stretched tight about her lithe torso. Her black skirt, cut short and angled, revealed much of her shapely legs—that which wasn’t covered by her tall black boots.
She was the perfect blend of apparent innocence and promising sensuality—in other words, Dahlia was dangerous. And he would do well to always remember that, especially after their adventures with Artemis Entreri.
But Drizzt couldn’t wrap his thoughts around Dahlia in any cohesive way. Not now, not ever. He watched her walk into the camp, casually prodding a dead goblin with Kozah’s Needle, still formed into a thick walking stick, four feet in length. All at once, she seemed sweet, sexy, and vicious, like she wanted to kiss him, or kill him, and as if it wouldn’t matter to her which it might be. How was that possible? What magic surrounded her? Or was it in his mind, Drizzt wondered?
“Someone got here before us,” she said.
“It would appear so. Saved us the trouble. ”
“Stole our fun, you mean,” Dahlia replied with a wry grin. She drew a small knife from her belt. “They are offering a bounty on goblin ears in Neverwinter. ”
“We didn’t kill them. ”
“That will hardly matter. ” She bent with the knife, but Drizzt stepped over and caught her arm, and brought her back up to stand before him.
“They’ll want to know who, or what, did this,” the drow said. “Ashmadai? A Netherese patrol?”
Dahlia considered his words for a moment, then glanced back down. “Well,” she said, “I know what did it, if not exactly who. ”
Drizzt followed her gaze to the dead goblin she had rolled. The way it had flopped had exposed its neck, showing two puncture wounds, as if made by fangs.
“Vampire,” Dahlia remarked.
Drizzt stared at the wound, seeking a different answer. Perhaps a wolf, he told himself, though he knew that to be ridiculous. A wolf would not have bitten a victim like that only to leave the throat intact. Still, the notion of another vampire was not something Drizzt wanted to embrace. He had seen more than enough of one such creature in the bowels of Gauntlgrym; indeed, Bruenor and Thibbledorf Pwent had been slain by just such a creature.
“You cannot be sure,” Drizzt replied, and not just out of a desperate hope, for something seemed amiss to him. He moved to the side, where a broken tent lay tangled around a small branch.