Drizzt wasn't sure that he agreed. He wondered how much of Wulfgar's refusal was fostered by the overwhelming adjustment the barbarian was trying to make. Even the simplest things in this life seemed unfamiliar to poor Wulfgar. He was awkward with everyone, especially Catti-brie, though Bruenor and Drizzt had little doubt that the spark was rekindling between the two.
'I will guide Berkthgar, though,' Wulfgar went on. 'And will accept no hostility between his people, my people, and the folk of Icewind Dale. We each have enough real enemies without creating more!'
Drizzt didn't argue that point.
'Do you love her?' Wulfgar asked suddenly, and the drow was off his guard.
'Of course I do,' Drizzt responded truthfully. 'As I love you, and Bruenor, and Regis.'
'I would not interfere-' Wulfgar started to say, but he was stopped by Drizzt's chuckle.
'The choice is neither mine nor yours,' the drow explained, 'but Catti-brie's. Remember what you had, my friend, and remember what you, in your foolishness, nearly lost.'
Wulfgar looked long and hard at his dear friend, determined to heed that wise advice. Catti-brie's life was Catti-brie's to decide and whatever, or whomever, she chose, Wulfgar would always be among friends.
The winter would be long and cold, thick with snow and mercifully uneventful. Things would not be the same between the friends, could never be after all they had experienced, but they
would be together again, in heart and in soul. Let no man, and no fiend, ever try to separate them again!
*****
It was one of those perfect spring nights in Icewind Dale, not too cold, but with enough of a breeze to keep the skin tingling. The stars were bright and thick. Drizzt couldn't tell where the night sky ended and the dark tundra began. And it didn't matter to him, Bruenor or Regis. Guenhwyvar was similarly content, prowling about on the lower rocks of Bruenor's Climb.
'They're friends again,' Bruenor explained, speaking of Catti-brie and Wulfgar. 'He's needin' her now, and she's helping to get him back.'
'You do not forget six years of torment at the hands of a fiend like Errtu in short order,' Regis agreed.
Drizzt smiled widely, thinking that his friends had found their place together once more. That notion, of course, led the drow to wonder about his own place.
'I believe that I can catch up with Deudermont in Luskan,' he said suddenly, unexpectedly. 'If not there, then certainly in Waterdeep.'
'Ye durned elf, what're ye runnin' from this time?' the dwarf pressed.
Drizzt turned to regard him and laughed aloud. 'I am not running from anything, good dwarf,' the drow replied. 'But I must, on my word and for the good of all, deliver the crystal shard to Cadderly at the Spirit Soaring, in faraway Carradoon.'
'Me girl said that place was south o' Sundabar,' Bruenor protested, thinking he had caught the drow in a lie. 'Ye ain't for sailin' there!'
'Far south of Sundabar,' Drizzt agreed, 'but closer to Baldur's Gate than to Waterdeep. The
Bruenor's bluster was defeated by the simple logic. 'Durned elf,' the dwarf muttered. 'I'm not much for goin' back on a durned boat! But if we must …'
Drizzt looked hard at the dwarf. 'You are coming?'
'You think we would stay?' Regis replied, and when Drizzt turned his startled gaze on the halfling, Regis promptly reminded him that it was he, and not Drizzt, who had captured Crenshinibon.
'Of course they're goin',' came a familiar voice from the darkness some distance below. 'As are we!'
A moment later, Catti-brie and Wulfgar walked up the steep path to join their friends.
Drizzt looked to them all, one by one, then turned away to regard the stars.
'All my life, I have been searching for a home,' the drow said quietly. 'All my life, I have been wanting more than that which was offered to me, more than Menzoberranzan, more than friends who stood beside me out of personal gain. I always thought home to be a place, and indeed it is, but not in any physical sense. It is a place in here,' Drizzt said, putting a hand to his heart and turning back to look upon his companions. 'It is a feeling given by true friends.
'I know this now, and know that I am home.'
'But ye're off to Carradoon,' Catti-brie said softly.
'And so're we!' Bruenor bellowed.
Drizzt smiled at them, laughed aloud. 'If circumstances will not allow me to remain at home,' the ranger said firmly, 'then I will simply take my home with me!'
From somewhere not so far away, Guenhwyvar roared. They would be out on the road, all six, before the next dawn.
