Luskan, somewhere deep inside of me, I just knew she wouldn’t be lost to me. Not then, not like that. Her fate could not be written such; her death wouldn’t be so crude and mundane.
But what if I was proven wrong? What if she had been taken from me, like those before? Surely Dahlia dances more wildly on the edge of that cliff than I do. She is fearless to the point of utter recklessness-in the short time I have known her, I have seen that all too clearly.
And yet, that risk does not frighten me.
I don’t want her to die. The fascination, the attraction, is all too real and all too powerful. I want to know her, to understand her. I want to yell at her and kiss her all at once. I want to test her in battle and in passion.
She is as erratic as she is erotic, changing her tone as easily as she alters her appearance. I think it a game she plays, a way to keep friends and enemies alike off-balance. But I cannot be sure, and that, too, is part of her never-ending seduction. Is she teasing me with seemingly erratic behavior, or is Dahlia truly erratic? Is she the actor or the role?
Or perhaps there is a third answer: Am I so desperate to know this unpredictable doppelganger that I am reading too much into her every word? Am I seeking, and thus seeing, deeper meaning than she intends as I scour for clues to that which is in her heart?
A carefully guarded heart. But why?
Another mystery to unravel…
I knew she wouldn’t be lost to me, but how? How did my instincts counter my reason so fully? Given all that has passed in my life, shouldn’t I have expected the worst outcome regarding Dahlia? Given the losses I have endured, shouldn’t I have feared exactly that in a desperate situation?
And yet I did not. I reveled in the midnight ride, in the adventure and the thrill of the risk.
Is it Dahlia’s competency, her swagger, her own fearlessness, affecting my heart? Or is it, perhaps, that I do not love her-not as I loved Catti-brie, or Bruenor, Wulfgar and Regis?
Or is it something more, I wonder? Perhaps Innovindil’s lesson reached me more deeply than I had known. Logically, rationally, I can see Innovindil’s viewpoint, that we elves have to live our lives in shorter segments because of the short-lived races with whom we naturally interact. But could it be that Innovindil’s lessons have sparked within me a confidence that I will go on, that there is more road in front of me? Though those I deeply loved are removed from my side, I will find others to share the leagues and the fights?
It is all of that, I expect, and perhaps something more. Perhaps each loss hardened my heart and numbed me to the pain. The loss of Bruenor stung less than those of Catti-brie and Regis, and less than my knowledge that Wulfgar, too, has surely passed on. There are other reasons, I am confident. Bruenor’s last words to me, “I found it, elf,” reflected a full life’s journey, to be sure! What dwarf could ask for more than what King Bruenor Battlehammer knew? His final battle alone, his victory over the pit fiend while immersed in the power of dwarven kings of old, would surely fill to bursting the heart of any dwarf.
So I did not cry for Bruenor, though I surely miss him no less than any of the others.
There is no one answer, then. Life is a complicated journey, and few are the direct lines from feeling to consequence and consequence to anticipation. I will try to unravel it all, of course, as that is my nature, but in the end, I am left now with only one inescapable truth: the joy of that midnight ride, of bargaining with Beniago at the end of a scimitar, of reckless adventure.
The thrill, the edge of the cliff.
This is your promise to Drizzt Do’Urden, my lady Dahlia the erotic, the erratic.
And this is your legacy to Drizzt Do’Urden, my old Companions of the Hall.
Do you see me now, Catti-brie?
Do you see me now, Bruenor?
Do you see me now, Regis?
Do you see me now, Wulfgar?
Because I see you. You walk with me. You are in my thoughts every day, all four, and I see you smile when I smile and frown when I hurt. I believe this, I sense this.
I pray for this.
– Drizzt Do’Urden
9
Drizzt moved to the back of the small encampment, coming to the edge of the bluff overlooking the riverbank. Dahlia was at the cold stream, her boots and black leather hat on the ground beside her. Her black hair was still in its fashionably shoulder-length cut, swept forward, and her woad remained hidden by the makeup… or was it the other way around, where the woad was the makeup and this was the real Dahlia?
Drizzt chuckled as he considered that, for the illusion that was Dahlia resonated with him on many more levels than her physical appearance. It was a helpless chuckle, for he held no hope that he would unwind the mysteries of Dahlia anytime soon.
She slipped her shapely leg into the stream, then drew it forth and rubbed at her sore and still discolored foot. She looked at the unsightly puncture and shook her head with obvious disgust.
“Which is real and which the illusion?” Drizzt asked, skipping down the steep incline to stand beside her. He noted that she wore a new piece of jewelry, a black diamond in her right ear, complimenting the ten diamond studs in her left.
“Both and neither,” Dahlia answered dismissively. She grimaced as she squeezed her foot, bringing forth some pus and blood from the wound.
“Are you so afraid that the truth of Dahlia will be revealed?”
Dahlia looked up at him sourly, and shook her head as if his question wasn’t worth her trouble.
“We owe a great debt to Meg the farmer woman and Ben the Brewer,” Drizzt remarked.
“You would start babbling about them again?” Dahlia snapped back. “Had you returned to the farmhouse a few moments later, I would’ve been one foot lighter. Or both of them would’ve lain dead at my feet.”
“They would’ve taken your foot only because they thought it the only way to save your life.”
“They would’ve tried to take my foot and I would’ve killed them both,” Dahlia insisted.
“You would’ve killed a mother in front of her children?”
“I would’ve asked the children to turn around first,” Dahlia sarcastically replied.
Drizzt laughed at her unrelenting sourness, but Dahlia only glared at him all the more. For a moment, just a heartbeat, Drizzt almost expected her to jump up and attack him then and there.
“Damn you, Beniago,” the woman muttered, squeezing her aching foot yet again.
“He provided the antidote,” Drizzt said.
“Then he’s a fool, because he saved the life of one who will kill him.”
“It wasn’t Beniago who set the traps,” Drizzt reminded her.
“It was Beniago who forced me from the rope to the floor.”
“He defends the wares of Ship Kurth.”
“And you would defend him?”
“Hardly. Didn’t I arrive to chase him off?”
Dahlia spat on her foot and squeezed it again. A dribble of blood and greenish-white pus slipped out. “Killing him will wound Ship Kurth, and make it clear that I’m not one to be toyed with.”
“Ah, that’s it, then,” Drizzt said with a grin. “It’s your embarrassment at being outfoxed.”
Dahlia narrowed her eyes threateningly.
“High Captain Kurth, or yes, perhaps Beniago, understood that you would return to the jewelry shop to appropriate the piece, and so they were quite ready for you,” Drizzt said. “In fact, I suspect that the only reason they even took us to that particular merchant was because of your obvious fondness for sparkling gemstones.”
“I knew they’d know,” Dahlia insisted. “I wanted them to know.”
“And you wanted them to defeat you and kill you?”
Dahlia’s blue eyes threw imaginary darts into his face, Drizzt knew, but he grinned all the more, enjoying having the upper hand against Dahlia for once. For all of her stubbornness, she couldn’t, with true conviction, claim
