“Home.”
“I am home,” Drizzt said, mostly because he simply had to deny what Jarlaxle seemed to be hinting at.
“Matron Mother Baenre has reconstituted House Do’Urden.”
“They are no kin to me, no blood, and no family.”
“Of course not,” Jarlaxle agreed. “They are mostly Xorlarrins now, and my own soldiers.”
“She did it to sully my name, I expect, given the liberal use of the House name in the War of the Silver Marches. I can think of nothing more pathetic, and I hardly care.”
“Nor should you! You are far removed from that House and that city. But,” Jarlaxle said, leaning forward and prodding Drizzt with the halfeaten turkey leg to emphasize his point, “you should care about the new Matron Mother of House Do’Urden. She is someone well known to you, and someone desperately in need of your help.”
Drizzt stared at his counterpart blankly, his thoughts dancing about the decades as he tried to recall the fate of all those priestesses he had known in Menzoberranzan. The only one he could think of who would remotely satisfy Jarlaxle’s claims was his sister Vierna. But Vierna was dead, long dead, Drizzt knew all too well. He had killed her with his own blade.
“Dahlia,” Jarlaxle said, and Drizzt found it hard to breathe.
“Yes, it is true,” Jarlaxle assured the incredulous ranger.
“Dahlia is no drow!”
“She is
darthiir
—a surface elf, and indeed, that is the name Matron Mother Baenre has given to her. Matron Mother Darthiir Do’Urden.”
Drizzt shook his head in disbelief, stumbling over words he could not find.
“She is no more than a puppet, of course,” Jarlaxle explained. “Baenre uses her to insult the other matron mothers. Indeed, Dahlia sits on the Ruling Council, her mind too broken for her to serve as anything more than an echo for whatever Matron Mother Baenre declares. She will not survive long, of course—already, several of the other matron mothers have tried to murder her. They will succeed eventually, or Baenre will grow tired of her and will destroy her.”
“This cannot be.”
“I have no reason to lie to you,” Jarlaxle said. “Dahlia is a pitiful and broken thing, but her soul is still in her corporeal form, trapped in a web of ultimate confusion wrought upon her by Matron Mother Baenre’s pet illithid. Kimmuriel has looked inside her thoughts, and yes, I insist again, she is still in there. She understands her plight, and she is quite terrified, every moment of every day.”
“And you want me to go back to Menzoberranzan beside you to rescue her?” Drizzt asked with intonations of utter disbelief dripping from every syllable.
“I have a plan.”
“Make a better one.”
“Tiago Baenre is the weapons master of House Do’Urden,” Jarlaxle said.
The mere mention of his name brought a sneer to Drizzt’s lips, and brought another thought to him. “What of Doum’wielle?”
“Cast out by Gromph. She is alive, I believe. I have agents searching for her. I do expect that rescuing that one will be more difficult than the hunt for Dahlia. Not physically, of course, but if Dahlia is a confused soul with a battered mind, then Doum’wielle is a truly broken and fallen sort. There is not enough water washing against the Sword Coast to clean the blood from Doum’wielle’s young hands.”
Drizzt dropped a wing bone to his plate, propped his elbow on the table and put his head in his hands, staring at Jarlaxle all the while.
“Tiago will come for you again, of course,” Jarlaxle said. “His obsession is complete and undaunted. And he will bring many friends, truly powerful friends.”
“So you want me to go to him instead?”
“The look on his face alone will be worth the journey, I expect.”
“Forgive me for not agreeing with that assessment.”
“Dahlia will not survive long,” Jarlaxle said flatly. “Already, she is wearing out her usefulness to Matron Mother Baenre. Her death will be most unpleasant, if they even allow her to escape into the peace of death.”
“You have many resources at your fingertips,” Drizzt reminded him. “Why do you need me?”
“There are many reasons, but they are my own,” Jarlaxle replied. “All you need to know is that I do need you, and that we can do this. Dahlia can be free and the threat of Tiago removed. Then my psionicist friend can repair her broken mind. So I ask you as my friend to stand beside me—and yes, I offer in exchange my own work in helping your friend King Bruenor regain this place and my continuing efforts to make sure he holds it—from the drow and from the primordial. And that is no small thing.”
Drizzt could hardly wrap his mind around any of this. All the memories of Dahlia, once his lover and traveling companion, came flooding back to him. They had been close, very close, and though he had never grown to love her as he had loved, and once again loved, Catti-brie, Drizzt could not deny that he still cared for Dahlia, or at least that he cared what happened to her.
Of course, he also couldn’t deny that she had attacked him on the slopes of Kelvin’s Cairn, and had inflicted a wound that would have surely proven mortal had not Catti-brie and the others found him up there, dying under the stars.
“And it will be a great service to another you have come to know as a friend,” Jarlaxle went on.
Had his thoughts been focused on Jarlaxle’s words, Drizzt would have easily guessed that Jarlaxle referred to Artemis Entreri, particularly given the weapon hanging at his hip.
But Drizzt wasn’t focusing on much at that stunning moment, his mind bouncing from past to present and back again, as all the years of his journey compressed into this one moment.
He could go with Jarlaxle, but what if he did and they failed, and he was caught in the city of his birth? What if he was slain trying to rescue a former lover, and so was taken from his beloved wife for the sake of Dahlia?
“Catti-brie is engaged in her own struggle,” Jarlaxle said as if reading his mind—which Drizzt realized would be no great feat. He was surely echoing every thought with his expressions. “Archmage Gromph assists her only because of me, of course, and because of my stake in Luskan, which offers to him, and to King Bruenor and all his designs, the only true hope.”
“Again you hint that I owe this—”
“No, no,” Jarlaxle said, holding up his hands and shaking his head emphatically. “I only hope that you see me as I see you. As a friend, and one to be trusted.”
Before Drizzt could digest the words, before he could respond, there came a louder roar from the corridor, followed by a shriek of Jarlaxle’s monstrous pet bird, one that told the pair that their meal was about to be interrupted.
“Come,” Jarlaxle said, leaping up, taking up Khazid’hea, and drawing Charon’s Claw as well. “To the play!”
Drizzt and Jarlaxle went out together, side-by-side, Guenhwyvar close behind. They found a cluster of a dozen demons—balgura; manes; and even a pair of gigantic, four-armed glabrezu—waiting for them.
The demons were sorely outnumbered.
“Ye canno’ begin to be thinking o’ such a thing!” Catti-brie said, and her reversion to that thick Dwarvish brogue warned Drizzt to tread lightly. Aye, but she had that look in her eye, and when it came to this, her tongue could be a greater weapon than the scimitars on his belt.
“Have ye lost yer mind then, ye durned fool?” she lashed out.
Drizzt started to reply, to explain that Jarlaxle was doing a great service to the dwarves, and that he was deserving of their trust, even in this seemingly suicidal mission. But the ranger gave up after a few whispered words, realizing it was futile.
He had just hit his wife with his intention to stroll into the City of Spiders. She deserved to express a few moments of outrage.
“Oh, but ain’t we a couple o’ sly and clever dark elves, me and me friend Jarlaxle?” Catti-brie went on, imitating Drizzt’s posture and striking a most unflattering pose. “Just walking into Menzoberranzan so casual and easy that they’ll think we belong and won’t be cutting our heads off. Bah! But if I e’er heared a more stupid plan, then I’m not for rememberin’ it!”
“I remember one time when you walked into Menzoberranzan alone,” Drizzt said, and as soon as the words left his mouth, he wished he could have taken them back. On that dark occasion, she had done so only because of his own foolishness.
Catti-brie slugged him in the shoulder. “Ye’re a damned fool,” she said, her voice suddenly more resonant with fear and sorrow than with anger.
“Ye canno’ go,” she decided, and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Did you not just float into the pit of a primordial beast of fire?”
“Not the same thing.”
“No, worse!”
“Not so!”
“Of course it is so!” Drizzt argued. “For all your tricks and magic, and that ring I gave you, you cannot know the heart of the primordial! And for all your wards, for all your power, we both know that the beast could have incinerated you”—he paused and tried to assume a more understanding and sympathetic posture, but still indignantly snapped his fingers in the air—“like
that
!” he said. “And you would have been no more than a charred pile of bones to be swallowed by the magma. I would not even have known, nor would Bruenor nor anyone else, unless Jarlaxle chose to share the information—and would he have admitted it to us, had he caused your fiery death?”
“Ye just said ye trusted him.”
Drizzt couldn’t hold his stern expression in light of the way Cattibrie had made the off-hand remark. Despite it all he giggled just a bit, and so did Catti-brie, and she threw her arms around him and wrapped him in a hug.
“I’m just scared,” she whispered in his ear.
“I know,” he said with a growl. Then, “I know,” in a more conciliatory and understanding tone. “How do you think I feel knowing that you’ll be working beside the mighty and merciless Archmage of Menzoberranzan, trying to reignite some ancient magic that is . . .” He sighed and buried his face in her hair.
“But I’m trustin’ ye,” Catti-brie said.
Drizzt pushed her out to arms’ length, locked her rich blue eyes with his lavender ones, and slowly nodded his understanding and acceptance.
“I’m not wantin’ to go through this life without ye,” the woman said.
“I have already seen life without you,” Drizzt replied. “It is not something I wish to experience again.”
Catti-brie hugged him tighter. “Do ye think ye can save her? Dahlia?”
“I don’t know,” Drizzt admitted. “She is in the spidery claws of Matron Mother Baenre.”
“So were you once,” Catti-brie said, and Drizzt squeezed her a bit tighter.
“I have to try,” Drizzt said. “I . . . we owe this to Jarlaxle, and I owe it to Entreri.”
“I’m not thinking ye’re owing anything to that one. Ye spared him his life on more than one occasion, and that’s better than he’s deserving.”
Drizzt really had no retort, even though he disagreed. So complicated was his relationship with the former assassin! And indeed, despite everything that had occurred, both ways, he did feel that he owed it to Entreri to make this try, desperate as it seemed.
“And are ye thinking ye owe it to Dahlia?” Catti-brie asked.
Drizzt pulled back and shrugged. “She does not deserve this fate.”
“Ah, me husband, righting all the wrongs o’ the world.”
Drizzt shrugged again, searching for an answer.
“And that is why I love you,” Catti-brie said slowly and clearly, and she came forward again and gave Drizzt a deep and long kiss. “You go free her, and bring her home, and if there is anything I can do to help heal her broken mind, you’ll need not even to ask.”
Drizzt felt as if his heart would explode at that moment. He pulled Catti-brie tight, so tight. He wanted to join with her then, as if he could somehow merge their souls into one brighter being, and he held her for a long, long while.
He stepped back after a few moments, recalling another issue, and an important one. “Here,” he said, pulling the magical necklace with the unicorn head and golden horn over his head and handing it to her. “I’ll have no need of Andahar in the Underdark, and not in Menzoberranzan, where the brilliant essence of a unicorn would surely announce my arrival.”
Catti-brie took the gift and nodded. She slipped it over her head, her hand touching the beautiful sculpture hanging upon her chest.
“And here,” Drizzt added, reaching into his pouch to bring forth the onyx figurine of the panther Guenhwyvar.
Catti-brie’s eyes widened in shock. “I’m thinkin’ ye’ll be needin’ that one!” she argued, holding forth her palm in denial of the gift.
“I’ve thought long on this,” Drizzt assured her. “I am not bringing Guenhwyvar back to Menzoberranzan. She was created in Myth Drannor, so says the tale, but she was long in the city of drow. Many know of her and many coveted her, including the family of those from whom I took her. I cannot risk it.”
Catti-brie started to protest, but Drizzt put his finger over her lips to silence her.
“If I am to die, then so be it,” he said. “This is the life I have chosen and the code of behavior that I must follow. I can accept that. But I cannot accept Guenhwyvar in the hands of a dark elf. I cannot reduce my dear companion to an existence as a tool of murder and chaos. She deserves better. If I am to die, then she deserves nothing less than you.”
“I’m thinkin’ ye’re more likely to die without her at yer side!”
Drizzt didn’t disagree, but neither did he retract his hand. “I am with fine allies. Worthy fighters, both, and Jarlaxle with a million tricks I have not yet witnessed. If we are captured, he may be able to somehow buy us out of our dilemma, but never would we be allowed to take the precious Guenhwyvar with us.”
He motioned the figurine toward her.
“I cannot.”
“You must. I go with a heavy heart, but I accept that because I must do this. And because I know that if I am to perish in the City of Spiders, then so be it, because I say with all hope and faith that my friends are safe and thriving without me, that Bruenor will sit on his throne and you will secure that seat. That Wulfgar and Regis have found adventure and enjoyment in the distant land of Delthuntle, and that Guenhwyvar . . . Aye, there’s the rub. I cannot accept that my grand risk might condemn her to such an existence.” He pushed the figurine at Catti-brie again and nodded more than once until she at last took it from him. “Keep her safe,” he said.