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
Chapter 1: 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.”
“With the Shadovar haunting the streets and alleyways?” Dahlia replied, her tone harsh.
Drizzt didn’t quite know how to reply, so he just hugged her a bit closer.
“They are in the city, among the settlers, so said Barrabus—the man you call Artemis Entreri,” Dahlia replied.
“A foothold likely gained only because of the greater threat of Sylora Salm. If that threat is diminished, I expect that the Shadovar—”
“When their leader is dead, the threat of the Shadovar will diminish,” Dahlia interrupted bluntly and coldly. “And their leader will soon be dead.”
Drizzt tried to hug her closer, but she pulled away from him. She took a couple of steps closer to the edge of the bluff and rearranged her blanket around her.
“Time is not his ally, it is ours,” Drizzt said.
Dahlia turned on him sharply, her gaze stern—and intensified by the threatening patterns of her war woad.
“He will know the truth,” Drizzt insisted. “He will learn from Entreri of what transpired with Sylora Salm, and will know that we will come for him—Entreri admitted as much to us when he told us that he was enslaved and that he could not join us in your vendetta.”
“Then the foul Netherese warlord should be very afraid right now,” Dahlia replied.
“And so he will be very alert right now, with his forces pulled in tightly. Now is not the time—”
Again, Dahlia cut him short. “It is not your choice.”
“As the Thayan threat diminishes, so too will our opponent’s guard, and so too will his standing within the city,” Drizzt pressed on against her anger. “I have met these settlers and they are goodly folk—they’ll not suffer the Netherese for long. This is not the time to go after him.”
Dahlia’s blue eyes flashed with anger, and for a moment, Drizzt thought she might lash out at him. Even knowing her designs and determination to get Alegni, the drow ranger could hardly believe the level of intensity in that rage! He could not imagine her angrier if he had admitted to her some heinous crime he had committed against her family. He was glad that she did not have her weapon available to her at that moment.
Drizzt let a long silence pass between them before daring to continue. “You will kill Alegni.”
“Do not speak his name!” Dahlia insisted, and she spat upon the ground, as if even hearing the name had brought bile into her mouth.
Drizzt patted his hands in the air, trying to calm her.
Gradually, the angry fires in her eyes were replaced with a profound sadness.
“What is it?” he whispered, daring to move closer.
Dahlia turned around but did not refuse him as he put his arms around her once more. Together, they looked down at Neverwinter.
“I’m going to kill him,” she whispered, and it seemed to Drizzt as if she was speaking to herself more than to him. “No delay. No wait. I will kill him.”
“As you killed Sylora Salm?”
“Had I known she named him as her enemy, I would have helped her. Had I known the identity of the Shadovar leader, I never would have left Neverwinter for Luskan or Gauntlgrym. I never would have departed the region until he was dead by my hand.”
She said those last three words with such clarity, such intensity, such venom, that Drizzt knew he would get nowhere in reasoning with Dahlia at this time.
So he just held her.
In the skeleton of a dead tree, peering through a crack in the rotting wood, Effron the Twisted watched the couple with great interest. The misshapen warlock heard every word of their conversation and wasn’t surprised by any of it. He knew of Dahlia, knew more of her than anyone else alive, likely, and he understood the demons that guided her.
Of course she would try to kill Herzgo Alegni. She would be happier if she died trying to kill him than if they both remained alive.
Effron understood her.
The warlock couldn’t deny his own emotions in looking at this elf warrior woman. Part of him wanted to leap out from the tree and destroy the couple then and there. Good sense overruled that impulse, though, for he had heard enough of the reputation of this Drizzt Do’Urden creature to realize that he ought to play this game cautiously.
Besides, he wasn’t sure he wanted Dahlia killed—not immediately, at least. There were some things he wanted to know, needed to know, and only she could provide the answers.
The Shadovar warlock shade-shifted away from the spot, but did not immediately return to Herzgo Alegni’s side to report his findings. Effron was nobody’s slave, after all, and was not without his own resources.
He went instead to a forest region of dells and rocky ridges outside of Neverwinter. The sky was still very dark, with low clouds, and a light snow had begun to fall, but Effron knew this area well and moved unerringly to an encampment set in a shallow cave.
Sitting nearby were a handful of Shadovar—Netherese soldiers who had come through from the Shadowfell soon after Effron, at Effron’s secret bidding, but who had not yet pledged their allegiance to Alegni.
When the twisted warlock shambled into their midst, they all stood up, not quite at attention but still with some modicum of respect.
“You have the globes?” the warlock asked one shade, a tall human male named Ratsis.
In response, Ratsis flashed a crooked-toothed smile and reached under the open collar of his shirt to produce a silver chain necklace set with two shadow-filled translucent globes, each the size of a child’s fist. In the swirling shadowmists within each globe crawled a spider, small and furry, like a tiny tarantula. Ratsis grinned.
“For the elf woman,” Effron reminded him.
“And what of her companion?” Ratsis asked.
“Kill him,” Effron replied without hesitation. “He is too dangerous to capture, or to allow to escape. Kill him.”
“We are seven,” insisted Jermander, another of the group, a fierce tiefling warrior who wore both his pride and his unrelenting anger openly. “They are but two!”