R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

Dahlia could only wince as she considered that ominous warning, for she was an elf, the ultimate enemy of the drow.

She would be tortured to death, she knew, and likely her torment would last for years.

The four heads of Berellip Xorlarrin’s whip rose and struck at the form in the cage, biting deeply into the legs of the victim, tearing his skin, but alas, Afafrenfere did not stir.

“Your friend is dead,” Berellip announced to Entreri and Dahlia, walking over to stand where they both could see her. “He is the fortunate one.”

She looked up at Entreri and grinned wickedly. “Bregan D’aerthe?” she said. “Do you have any more lies to add to your tale? It was they, these allies you falsely claimed, who informed us of your return.”

Entreri didn’t answer.

“We will learn where you have been these last twenty years, do not doubt,” she said. “And then you will die. How that will happen is somewhat to your choosing. Tell me where Drizzt Do’Urden is hiding.”

“I don’t know,” Entreri answered, and he glanced to the side as a pair of male dark elves moved up to Afafrenfere’s cage, one fumbling with a ring of keys as if to remove the corpse.

The Xorlarrin high priestess laughed at him. “So be it,” she said, then waved off the two male attendants. “Leave him! Let them bask in his stench, to remind them that they, too, will soon begin to rot.”

Berellip turned to Dahlia. “Where are the rest of your companions?”

The elf woman steeled her gaze and tightened her jaw, and again, the drow priestess laughed, mirthlessly and wickedly, taking pleasure in pain and nothing more. Berellip turned and motioned to an attendant, who rushed forward bearing a basket, which he handed to the priestess.

Berellip upended it, and a blackened and misshapen head tumbled out to land on the floor. It didn’t roll or bounce, but landed with a splat and seemed to flatten out a bit, liquid oozing from it.

“Your son, I believe,” Berellip said, and despite her determination to give these wretched creatures no satisfaction, Dahlia screamed.

She could not believe how badly it hurt, seeing this child she had long thought dead by her own hands now truly dead before her. And so she cried and she hated the world all the more.

And the many drow in the Forge paused in their work to laugh at her.

The forges did not go quiet, and when the drow craftsmen tired, other dark elves replaced them at their work.

Artemis Entreri hung there, half-conscious, half-asleep, exhausted and hungry, as the hours slid past. He was long past being bothered by the heat, or by anything. The drow going about their business, the goblins running to and fro … none of it meant anything to him any longer. In the cage to his left, Afafrenfere hung limply.

To Entreri’s right, Dahlia cried, softly now as exhaustion stole her volume.

That sound alone truly hurt him. He could accept his own fate-he figured he’d find a way to die soon enough and so be it-but for some reason he hadn’t yet figured out, Dahlia’s fate touched him profoundly, and painfully.

He wanted to go to her. He wanted to hug her and talk her through this newest violation. He wanted to get out of his cage if for no better reason than to dispose of that blackened, misshapen skull, to get it out of Dahlia’s sight, to bring her some relief, perhaps, from the agony.

Many times did he reach out for the elf woman, his hand almost getting to touch her when she one time reached back.

But clever were the drow, of course, experts in torture and imparting hopelessness.

Their fingers could almost touch.

Her sobs whispered in his ear and echoed in his heart.

Jarlaxle had done this, he believed. Berellip had mentioned Bregan D’aerthe. Jarlaxle had once again sacrificed Entreri for his own gain.

But it made no sense to Entreri. Jarlaxle had rescued him from the curse of the medusa in the Shadowfell. To what end, then? That, and this?

He cursed the drow mercenary under his breath anyway, and glanced back at Dahlia.

All that he wanted was to go to her and try to help.

His feelings, so foreign, surprised him.

I haven’t even asked how you feel,” Catti-Brie said to Drizzt. They sat on some rocks at the edge of their encampment on a starlit night, the southern breeze warm for the season.

“About?”

“All of it,” the woman said. “The turn of events, the return of-”

“How could I be anything but thrilled?” Drizzt asked and he took his wife’s hand.

“But surely it is overwhelming. Have you even come to the point where any of this seems real?”

Drizzt gave a helpless little laugh. “Perhaps I am too busy basking in the joy of it all to care. I admit that there have been some fears-didn’t Wulfgar tell us tales of grand deception along these same lines during his captivity with Errtu?”

“Is it all just a dream, then?” Catti-brie asked. “A grand deception?”

“No,” Drizzt answered without hesitation. “Or if it is, I don’t care!” he looked over at Catti-brie, to see her leaning back from him, her expression curious.

“Perception is reality,” Drizzt explained. “My reality now is joyous. A welcome reprieve.” He laughed again and leaned in to kiss the woman.

“So it is real,” Catti-brie agreed. “But is it truly joyous to you?”

“Do you doubt my love?”

“No, of course not! But how overwhelming this must be. For the rest of us, returning was a choice, and for me and Regis particularly, our lives did not move on from that night in Mithral Hall when Mielikki took us away to heal our broken minds. The movement of time for us has been insignificant compared to the century of life without us that you have known, and even through the last two decades, we walked in our new life with the single purpose of rejoining as the Companions of the Hall. We knew what to expect-indeed, we strove for exactly this-but for you, it is a surprise, a dramatic bend in a road.”

“The most welcomed surprise any person has ever known, no doubt,” said Drizzt.

“Are you sure?”

He put his arm around her and pulled her back in close, side-against-side. “I have spent a century missing-all of you, but you most of all.”

“That pains me,” she said quietly, but Drizzt dismissed it with a determined shake of his head.

“No,” he told her. “No. Your memory was sustenance and surely no burden.” He gave a little chuckle and kissed her on the cheek to preface his next comment. “I tried to forget you.”

“You make me feel so loved,” she teased.

“Truly,” he said in all seriousness. “When I battled orcs beside Innovindil, when I thought you, all of you, were dead, her counsel to me was straightforward. Live your life in the shorter spans of time of human lifetimes, she told me. To be an elf is to know and accept loss. And so I tried, and so, to this day, I failed. I tried to forget you, and yet I could not. You were there with me every day. I blocked you out and denied you. But alas.”

He paused and kissed her again. “I have known another lover, but I have not known love again. Perhaps it was Mielikki, reaching into my heart and whispering to me that you would return to me …”

“You don’t believe that.”

“No, I don’t,” he admitted. “What, then? Perhaps we two were just fortunate to truly find love, and a bond that outlived our mortal bodies?”

“Fortunate, or cursed?” Catti-brie asked with a wry grin. “Were you not lonely?”

“No,” Drizzt answered, again with surety and no hesitation. “I was lonely only when I denied you. I was lonely when I was with Dahlia, who I could not, could never, love. I was never lonely when the ghost of Catti-brie walked beside me, and the smiles I have known over the last century have ever been in connection with you.” He glanced back over his shoulder, to look where Wulfgar, Regis, and Bruenor were exchanging tales of their adventures of the last two decades. Drizzt’s expression grew curious when Wulfgar set a bucket of water down in front of the halfling, who shoved his head into it.