guard.”
“No,” Dahlia said. “There never was a chance to surprise her, and I was a fool to think otherwise. Sylora Salm is a seasoned veteran of Thay and a great disciple of Szass Tam. Hadencourt merely reaffirms what I already knew: Sylora Salm has eyes all around her, and now that she’s warned of our intent, she’ll never let down her guard.”
“What do you know?” Drizzt asked, sensing that something more was going on, particularly from the way Dahlia kept looking into the shadows, as if she expected some devil or other monster to charge out at them then and there.
“Dor’crae,” Dahlia admitted. “He’s still around, or will be again presently. I’m certain of it. He can find us and we cannot know of his presence.”
“As I said, we could turn aside-”
“No,” Dahlia cut him short.
Drizzt watched her for a while, trying to read her eyes as she continued to stare off into the forest. There was little caution to be found there, and quite a bit of seething anger. She hated Sylora, of course, but it seemed to the drow that there was something more than that.
“Are you always so eager to kill?” Drizzt asked quietly, though there was nothing quiet about the implications of such a question.
Dahlia kept staring off into the distance then suddenly snapped her head around to consider the drow.
“Sylora, Beniago…” Drizzt remarked. “Do you know only one manner of negotiation?”
Her face tightened with anger, but it didn’t hold. She seemed sadder and more wounded then, and Drizzt regretted his off-hand remark.
“What anger drives you?” he pressed on anyway. Drizzt rose from beside the stream and paced toward her, but took a circuitous route around her. “She’s beautiful. She’s accomplished-a skilled warrior, a hunter, a tactician.”
He continued to circle. “She’s young and can command the world at her feet. Every road is open to her, yet she ever chooses those trails that will lead her to the greatest danger.”
“Does Drizzt Do’Urden shy from a fight?” she asked.
“Do I hunt the wolves in the forest?”
The porcupine reference did bring a bit of smile to Dahlia’s fair face.
“For one who avoids trouble, your blades carry the smell of much blood,” Dahlia retorted. “And for all of your bluster now, are you not walking that same dangerous road beside me?”
“I have my reasons.”
“I know your reasons,” Dahlia replied. She grabbed Drizzt’s hand as he moved around her and pulled him down roughly so she could kiss him.
He didn’t resist.
Drizzt moved to the top of the ridge overlooking the stream. He saw Dahlia below him, splashing water on her face. He looked at her curiously for just a moment, for something seemed… different. Then he realized her braid was back, and as he considered the water dripping from her shining face, he recognized that mesmerizing woad pattern of bluish spots.
His initial reaction was to pull back. Before he even considered the elf’s exotic look, his instincts made him react negatively to this harsher appearance. He was surprised by his response, for he’d previously found Dahlia’s exotic hair and woad enticing. And still she was beautiful-he couldn’t deny that. This was a more dangerous look, but wasn’t that, after all, what Drizzt’s life had become?
Hadn’t danger been his choice, his preference?
He closed his eyes and imagined the “softer” Dahlia, tending his arm, her hair bouncing lightly around her shoulders, her face clean and fresh and unblemished. He opened his eyes and looked upon her again, considering the change that seemed to come over her at a whim.
Drizzt remembered his midnight ride to Luskan and back, the exuberance of the danger, the thrill of the hunt. Those emotions better accompanied this incarnation of Dahlia. Even though she’d worn the softer look when they ventured into Luskan, it was this impression of Dahlia that helped Drizzt take the risks and enjoy the experience with little regard for the consequences. This incarnation of Dahlia was not vulnerable, was hardly delicate.
As he trotted down to join his lover, it occurred to Drizzt that perhaps he’d become as paradoxical as she.
“Have you ever been in love?” she asked without looking back at him as he neared.
The question stopped him in his tracks.
“Tell me about her,” Dahlia said.
Memories of Catti-brie swirled around his thoughts, and it occurred to him that he would likely tell Dahlia of Catti-brie in a different way, with different emphasis and different tales, if she’d been wearing her softer guise.
She looked up at him and wore a smile, though it was lost in the mesmerizing swirl of her woad. Perhaps she meant it to be a warm smile, but he couldn’t tell.
“It was a long time ago,” he managed to reply.
Dahlia laughed at him. “I’m not jealous,” she assured him.
“I know.” His voice was flat.
Dahlia’s smile disappeared, replaced by a pensive look then a slight nod of understanding. “Tell me of the dwarf, then. Of this King Bruenor Battlehammer. I knew him only for a short while, but he intrigued me. How long did you know him?”
“More than a century,” Drizzt replied, and he found he was indeed more at ease then. It would be far easier to speak of Bruenor than of Catti-brie, particularly to Dahlia. “Perhaps closer to two centuries.”
“From afar?”
“My closest friend.”
“For a hundred and fifty years?” Dahlia asked incredulously, and her smile returned, this time reflecting astonishment.
“Would that I had him beside me for another hundred,” Drizzt said.
“Instead of me?”
The suddenness of her question again threw the drow off-balance. He had to think about the answer-and wondered how he might phrase his impulsive thoughts even if he could sort them out.
Dahlia laughed again, relieving the tension. “Beside me, perhaps?” she offered.
“I’ll tell you of him and let you decide,” Drizzt replied, glad for the out.
“And of your lover?”
Drizzt felt his face grow tight.
Dahlia reached down and retrieved her wide leather hat and plopped it on her head, adjusting her braid so that it curled around her shapely neck and ended at the top of her cleavage.
“Come,” she said as she rose. “The road lies before us and I wish to hear your tales of King Bruenor.”
Drizzt moved down to the stream and vigorously shook his wounded arm in the cold water. He hustled to catch up to Dahlia, drawing a bandage from his pouch as he went. By the time they reached the road and he lifted his whistle to summon Andahar, he’d wrapped the arm from above the elbow all the way to the wrist. For the rest of that day as they rode, he clenched and unclenched his fist, battling the tingles of the residual devilish poison, and his bandage soon enough showed more than one red stain from the renewed blood flow.
Drizzt didn’t care about that inconvenience, however, for he told the tales of Bruenor, as Dahlia bade him. Those stories, happy and thrilling and filled with love and friendship, forcibly battled a different type of poison within the heart and soul of Drizzt Do’Urden.
They set their camp long after the sun had disappeared below the horizon, and were off again before the light of dawn. Andahar carried them effortlessly. Soon enough, they came to the northern reaches of Neverwinter, but on Dahlia’s insistence, they didn’t venture into the settlement. They set their camp just northeast of the town.
While looking for some wood for their small fire, Drizzt heard a rustle of leaves, a footstep. That alone didn’t concern him too greatly-the Neverwinter Guard was likely around the area, and they were not enemies, after all. But as he moved around to investigate, using all the stealth that marked the night as the time of the drow, Drizzt quickly grew more concerned, for whomever he followed showed himself to be quite practiced at the art of avoidance.
