“Then it cannot be him, and we should …” Drizzt started to say, but his eyes widened as he considered the scene at the lever immediately following the demise of Dor’crae. He recalled Bruenor’s last words to him, sweet and sad and forever echoing in his mind, of Bruenor fast dying, the light leaving his gray eyes, and of Thibbledorf Pwent …
Thibbledorf Pwent.
Drizzt thought of the torn tent in the goblin camp, the recognizable carnage. Vampire or battlerager, he and Dahlia had debated.
All of those nagging thoughts coalesced, and Drizzt had his answer. He was right in his guess, and so was Dahlia.
Without another word, he turned around and urged Andahar forward.
“Thank you,” she whispered in his ear, but she needn’t have, for if he had been alone, Drizzt would have taken this very same course.
They slowed when they entered the tree line, Drizzt picking his way carefully through the trees and tangled branches. They had barely entered the thicket when Dahlia’s wand glowed brighter and a wisp of blue-gray fog reached out from it, wafting into the forest before them.
“Well, that is interesting,” Drizzt remarked.
“Follow it,” Dahlia instructed.
The foggy coil continued to reach out before them like a rope, guiding their way through the trees. They came past a stand of oaks, and near what they thought to be a boulder.
Andahar pulled up suddenly and snorted, and Drizzt gasped in alarm, for it was no rock before them, but a large and strange beast, a blended concoction of magic run afoul.
Part bear. Part fowl.
“So we go north,” Afafrenfere remarked. “You know this place?”
Artemis Entreri tossed his full sack over the back of the saddle and leaped astride his nightmare. “Only an hour’s ride up the road,” he explained.
“Aye, and me friend here can run like no other,” Ambergris said. “But with me short legs, I’m thinkin’ I best be riding.”
Entreri nodded, then merely walked his mount away and said over his shoulder, “A pity you’ve got no horse then, or pig.”
Ambergris put her hands on her hips and stared up at the man. “It’ll be takin’ us longer to get there, then,” she said.
“No, it will take you longer,” Entreri corrected, and he kicked his mount into movement and leaped away, charging out Neverwinter’s northern gate.
Brother Afafrenfere snorted and chuckled helplessly.
“Aye,” Ambergris agreed. “If I had a better road afore me, I’d be walkin’ away.”
“Better than … what?” the monk asked. “Do we even know what adventure Drizzt might have planned for us?”
“We need to be keepin’ him close,” Ambergris explained. “Dahlia, and aye, that one, too,” she said, nodding toward the now-distant Entreri. “If Lord Draygo or Cavus Dun comes a’huntin’, I’ll be wantin’ the blades o’ them three between me and the shades.”
Afafrenfere considered her words for a few moments, then nodded and started toward the northern gate.
“Don’t ye outrun me,” the dwarf warned. “Or I’ll put a spell on ye and leave ye held and helpless in the forest.”
The reminder of the unexpected assault in the bowels of Gauntlgrym had Afafrenfere turning around, glowering at the dwarf. “That worked once,” he replied, “but not again. Never again.”
Ambergris laughed heartily as she came up beside him. “Best spell what e’er found ye, boy,” she said. “For now ye’ve got a finer life ahead o’ ye! A life of adventure, don’t ye doubt. A life o’ battle.”
“Aye, and probably a life of battling my own companions,” he said dryly, and Ambergris laughed all the harder.
That beast, an owlbear, didn’t rise up to meet them, and Drizzt calmed quickly, recognizing that it was quite dead.
“Well now,” Dahlia said, sliding down from the unicorn’s back to stand beside the slain behemoth. And it was a behemoth, as large as a great brown bear, but with the head and powerful beak of an owl atop those powerful ursine shoulders.
“Indeed,” Drizzt agreed as he slid down.
Dahlia bent low beside the beast, ruffling the fur—the bloody fur—around its neck. “I expect that we’ve found our vampire’s most recent kill.”
“A vampire killed an owlbear?” Drizzt asked skeptically and he, too, bent low and began inspecting the corpse, but not its neck.
“So you admit that it was a vampire?” As she asked, Dahlia used both hands to pull the beast’s thick fur aside, to reveal the canine puncture wounds.
“So it would seem,” Drizzt replied. “And yet—” He put his shoulder to the owlbear and nudged it over just a bit, then similarly parted the fur, to reveal a larger hole, a much deeper puncture. “I know this wound as well.”
“Do tell.”
“A helmet spike,” Drizzt could hardly get the words out. He thought again of the grisly scene beside the lever, thought of Pwent.
“Perhaps a vampire and a battlerager are working together?”
“A dwarf allied with a vampire?” Drizzt asked doubtfully. He had another explanation, but one he wasn’t ready to share.
“Athrogate traveled beside Dor’crae.”
“Athrogate is a mercenary,” Drizzt said, shaking his head. This wasn’t just any battlerager he was considering. “Battleragers are loyal soldiers, not mercenaries.”
Dahlia stood and pointed her wand toward the forest once more. The mist reappeared and snaked away through the trees.
“Well, let’s find out what’s going on, then,” Dahlia said.
Drizzt dismissed Andahar and they moved into the forest on foot. For many hours they searched fruitlessly, Dahlia expending charge after charge of her wand. Many times, Drizzt put his hand to his belt pouch, but he knew that he shouldn’t bring in Guen, not for another day at least.
“If we wait until nightfall, perhaps the vampire will find us,” Dahlia remarked later on, and only then did Drizzt realize that the sun had already passed its zenith and was moving lower in the west. He considered Dahlia’s words and the thought did not sit well with him. Guenhwyvar would be with them in the morning, and she would find their prey.
So intrigued had Drizzt been by the possibilities swirling before him that he had forgotten one other detail of the day’s plans. He looked to the north, where their three companions waited, at his request. Artemis Entreri would not be pleased.
“Where to now?” Dahlia asked.
Drizzt turned back to the west. They were too far out, having passed into reaches of the forest that neither of them knew. “Back to Neverwinter,” the drow decided.
“You would leave Entreri and the others out alone in the forest with a vampire about?”
“If we’re not at their camp by twilight, they’ll return to the city,” Drizzt said absently. He could not focus on the others. This hunt, so suddenly, was more important. “Vampire.…” Dahlia said again, ominously.
“We will find it tomorrow.”
“You indulge me,” Dahlia remarked. “I like that.”
Drizzt didn’t bother to explain his own interests, particularly when Dahlia moved closer, wearing an impish grin.
“Vampire,” she said again with a wide smile, her eyes sparkling.
Drizzt considered that grin, and wanted to share in her mirth at that moment, but found it impossible, for he was too troubled by the possibilities.
Dahlia moved right in front of him and casually draped her arms around his shoulders, putting her face very close to his. “No argument this time?” she asked quietly.
Drizzt managed a chuckle.
“Vampire,” she said and her smile turned in a lewd direction. She shifted to the side and lunged for his throat, biting him playfully on the neck.
“Still no argument?” she asked and she bit him again, a bit harder.
“You are hoping for a vampire, I can see,” Drizzt replied, and it was hard for him to keep his thoughts straight at that particular moment. It was the first time they had touched, other than riding, since they’d left the darkness of Gauntlgrym. “I would hate to disavow you of your wishes.”
Dahlia moved back to stare him in the eye. “Hoping?”
“Hoping to be one, then,” Drizzt said, “apparently.”
Dahlia, laughing, hugged him close. She brought her lips to his ear and kissed him softly, then asked, “Have you forgiven me?”
Drizzt pushed her back to arms’ length and studied her face. He couldn’t deny his attraction to her, particularly when she wore her hair in this softer style, and with the war woad barely visible.
“I had nothing to forgive.”
“My kiss with Entreri?” Dahlia asked. “Your jealousy?”
“It was the sword, playing on my insecurities, pressing my imagination to dark places.”
“Are you sure that’s all it was?” she asked, and she reached over and brushed Drizzt’s long white hair from in front of his face. “Perhaps the sword was only exploiting that which it saw within you.”
Drizzt was shaking his head before she had ever finished. “There’s nothing to forgive,” he repeated.
He almost added, “Have you forgiven yourself?” but he wisely held that thought, not wanting to open anew the wound inflicted by the appearance of the young and twisted warlock.
“Let’s go to Neverwinter,” Drizzt said, but now Dahlia was shaking her head.
“Not yet,” she explained, and she led him to a mossy bed.
Dahlia tapped Drizzt on the arm and when he looked up from his bowl of stew, nodded toward the tavern door.
Drizzt was not surprised to see the three enter, nor was he caught off guard by Artemis Entreri’s dour expression. When the assassin noticed him, he led the other two straight through the crowd to the table.
“Winter fast approaches,” Entreri said, pulling up a chair across from Drizzt.
“The night is cold,” he added when Drizzt didn’t respond.
“Good, then, that you decided to return to the city,” the drow replied casually.
“Oh, grand,” Afafrenfere remarked to Ambergris off to the side. “I will so enjoy watching these two beat each other to death.”
The dwarf snorted.
Drizzt, seeming unbothered by it all, went back to his stew, or tried to until Entreri’s hand snapped across the table and grabbed him roughly by the wrist.
The drow lifted his gaze slowly to regard the man.
“I don’t appreciate being left in a cold forest,” Entreri said evenly.
“We got lost,” Drizzt replied.
“How could you get lost?” Entreri asked. “You were the one who named the place of rendezvous.”
“Our road took us to the east, to unfamiliar ground,” Dahlia interjected.
“What road?” asked Entreri, still staring at Drizzt.
Drizzt sat back in his chair as Entreri let go of his wrist. The drow glanced to the side and motioned to the other two to take a seat. He wondered where he should take this. He was pretty certain now who and what Dahlia and he were hunting. The question was: Did he want Artemis Entreri along on that hunt? The encounter, should it happen, was going to be difficult enough to control as it was, and how much more difficult would it become with the unpredictable and merciless Artemis Entreri in the mix?