This is not Mithral Hall defending her gates against marauding orcs. This is not the garrison of Ten-Towns holding back a barbarian horde or battling the monstrous minions of Akar Kessell. In all Faerun now, there is conflict and shadow and confusion, and a sense that there is no clear path to victory. The world has grown dark, and in a dark place, so dark rulers can arise.
I long for the simplicity of Icewind Dale.
For down here in the more populous lands, there is Luskan, full of treachery and deceit and unbridled greed. There are a hundred “Luskans” across the continent, I fear. In the tumult of the Spellplague and the deeper and more enduring darkness of the Shadowfell, the return of the shades and the Empire of Netheril, those structures of community and society could not remain unscathed. Some see chaos as an enemy to be defeated and tamed; others, I know from my earliest days, see chaos as opportunity for personal gain.
For down here, there are the hundreds of communities and clusters of farms depending on the protection of the city garrisons, who will not come. Indeed, under the rule of despot kings or lords or high captains alike, those communities so oft become the prey of the powerful cities.
For down here, there is Many Arrows, the orc kingdom forced upon the Silver Marches by the hordes of King Obould in that long-ago war-though even now, nearly a century hence, it remains a trial, a test, whose outcome cannot be predicted. Did King Bruenor, with his courage in signing the Treaty of Garumn’s Gorge, end the war, or merely delay a larger one?
It is always confusion, I fear, always those shifting sands.
Until I draw my blades, and that is the dark truth of who I have become. For when my scimitars are in hand, the battle becomes immediate, the goal survival. The greater politic that once guided my hand is a fleeting vision, the waving lines of rising heat showing rivers of sparkling water where there is only, in truth, dry sand. I live in a land of many Akar Kessells, but so few, it seems, places worth defending!
Perhaps among the settlers of Neverwinter there exists such a noble defense as that I helped wage in Ten- Towns, but there live, too, in the triad of interests, the Thayans and their undead hordes and the Netherese, many persons no less ruthless and no less self-interested. Indeed, no less wrong.
How might I engage my heart in such a conflict as the morass that is Neverwinter? How might I strike with conviction, secure in the knowledge that I fight for the good of the land, or for the benefit of goodly folk?
I cannot. Not now. Not with competing interests equally dark.
But no more am I surrounded by friends of similar weal, it seems. Were it my choice alone, I would flee this land, perhaps to the Silver Marches and (hopefully) some sense of goodliness and hope. To Mithral Hall and Silverymoon, who cling still to the heartsong of King Bruenor Battlehammer and Lady Alustriel, or perhaps to Waterdeep, shining still, where the lords hold court for the benefit of their city and citizens.
But Dahlia will not be so persuaded to leave. There is something here, some old grudge that is far beyond my comprehension. I followed her to Sylora Salm willingly, settling my own score as she settled hers. And now I follow her again, or I abandon her, for she will not turn aside. When Artemis Entreri mentioned that name, Herzgo Alegni, such an anger came over Dahlia, and such a sadness, I think, that she will hear of no other goal.
Nor will she hear of any delay, for winter is soon to be thick about us. No storm will slow her, I fear; no snow will gather deep enough that stubborn Dahlia will not drive through it, to Neverwinter, to wherever she must go to find this Netherese lord, this Herzgo Alegni.
I had thought her hatred of Sylora Salm profound, but nay, I know now, it cannot measure against the depths of Dahlia’s loathing of this tiefling Netherese warlord. She will kill him, so she says, and when I threatened to leave her to her own course, she did not blink and did not hesitate, and did not care enough to offer me a fond farewell.
So again I am drawn into a conflict I do not understand. Is there a righteous course to be found here? Is there a measure of right and wrong between Dahlia and the Shadovar? By the words of Entreri, it would seem that this tiefling is a foul beast deserving of a violent end, and surely the reputation of Netheril supports that notion.
But am I now so lost in my choice of path that I take the word of Artemis Entreri as guidance? Am I now so removed from any sense of correctness, from any communities so designed, that it falls to this?
The sands shift beneath my feet. I draw my blades, and in the desperation of battle, I will wield them as I always have. My enemies will not know the tumult in my heart, the confusion that I have no clear moral path before me. They will know only the bite of Icingdeath, the flash of Twinkle.
But I will know the truth.
Does my reluctance to pursue Alegni reflect a distrust of Dahlia, I wonder? She is certain in her course-more certain than I have ever seen her, or seen anybody, for that matter. Even Bruenor, in his long ago quest to regain Mithral Hall, did not stride so determinedly. She will kill this tiefling or she will die trying. A sorry friend, a sorrier lover, am I indeed if I do not accompany her.
But I do not understand. I do not see the path clearly. I do not know what greater good I serve. I do not fight in the hopes of betterment of my corner of the world.
I just fight.
On the side of Dahlia, who intrigues me.
On the side of Artemis Entreri, so it would seem.
Perhaps in another century, I will return to Menzoberranzan, not as an enemy, not as a conqueror, not to tear down the structures of that society I once held as most vile.
Perhaps I will return because I will belong.
This is my fear, of a life wasted, of a cause misbegotten, of a belief that is, in the end, an empty and unattainable ideal, the foolish designs of an innocent child who believed there could be more.
— Drizzt Do’Urden
THE WAR WOAD
Drizzt wasn’t alarmed when he awoke at dawn to find that Dahlia was not lying beside him in their small camp. He knew where she would be. He paused just long enough to strap on his scimitar belt and scoop Taulmaril over his shoulder, then trotted down the narrow forest paths and up the steep incline, grabbing tree to tree and pulling himself along. Near the top of that small hill, he spotted her, calmly staring in the distance with her back to him.
Despite the cold-and this morning was the coldest of the season by far, Dahlia wore only her blanket, loosely wrapped around her, drooping from one naked shoulder. Drizzt hardly noted her dress, or undress, remarkable as it was, for his gaze was caught by Dahlia’s hair. The previous night, she had worn it in her stylish and soft shoulder cut, but now she had returned to the single thick black and red braid, rising up and curling deliciously around her delicate neck. It seemed as if Dahlia could become a different person with the pass of a magical comb.
He started toward her slowly, a dry branch cracking under his step, the slight sound turning Dahlia’s head just a bit to regard him.
Drizzt stopped short, staring at the patterns of blue spots, the warrior elf ’s woad pattern. That, too, had been absent from her appearance the previous night, as if she had softened herself for Drizzt’s bed, as if Dahlia was using the hair and woad as a reflection of her mood, or…
Drizzt narrowed his gaze. Not as a reflection of her mood, he realized, but as an enticement to, a manipulation of, her drow lover.
They had argued the previous evening, and fiery Dahlia, braid and woad intact, had staked out her position, her intention to go after Alegni, forcefully.
But then she had come to Drizzt more gently in reconciliation, her hair softer, her pretty face clear of the warrior pattern. They had not discussed Alegni then, but neither had they gone to sleep angry at each other.
Drizzt walked over to join Dahlia, taking in the sight from the western edge of the hillock. He looked down across the miles to Neverwinter, shrouded in a low ground fog as the colder air drew forth the wet warmth from the great river.
“The mist hides much of the scarring,” Drizzt said, his arms going around the woman, who didn’t react to his touch. “It was once a beautiful city, and will be again if the Thayans are truly defeated.”
