R. Salvatore - The Last Threshold

“They wouldn’t even let you in their town, you fool,” Dahlia reminded him.

“That will change, with time.”

But Dahlia shook her head resolutely, and Drizzt recognized that she didn’t disagree with his particular reasoning, but rejected the whole premise.

“We’re all for going, all five,” she said. “Even Ambergris.”

“To where?”

Again Dahlia laughed at him. “Does it matter?”

“If it doesn’t, then why not here?”

“No,” she stated flatly. “We are leaving this forlorn place of tedious winds and endless boredom. All of us. And I’ll not chase your ghosts back to Icewind Dale again, if all of Menzoberranzan, all of the Empire of Netheril, and all the demons of the Abyss are chasing us.”

“There are no ghosts left to chase,” Drizzt whispered under his breath, for he knew it to be true.

But even with that, spoken sincerely, there was no compromise to be found within her, Drizzt realized. She saw Icewind Dale as a surrogate to Catti-brie for him, a place of those memories, and she would not tolerate it.

But nor could Drizzt lie any longer, to himself or to Dahlia. He felt a twinge of guilt in coercing her up here in the first place, but reminded himself that he had done so only to protect her from Tiago Baenre. But now that threat seemed distant, and Dahlia was right, there was no compelling reason for any of them to remain in Icewind Dale any longer.

Any of the other five, at least.

“It is best that you go,” he agreed.

“That I go?” she asked, and a dark edge came over her voice and her posture. Drizzt nodded.

“But not you?”

“This is my home.”

“But not mine?” she asked.

“No.”

“So that you can chase your witch of the wood?”

Drizzt chuckled helplessly at that, for there was some measure of truth in it, he had to admit. Not literally, of course, but in this place, even without his old and dear friends by his side, he felt the warmth of hearth and home, and it was a feeling he would not allow to slip from his grasp yet again.

“Have I told you of Innovindil?” he asked, and Dahlia rolled her eyes. Drizzt pressed on anyway, though he remembered that yes, he had told her many stories of his lost elf friend. “Have I explained to you the idea that an elf who resides among the shorter-living races must live his life in bursts to accommodate their sensations of time?”

“Yes, yes, to let go of the past and press ahead to new roads,” Dahlia said absently, as if long bored of that particular lecture.

“I seem to be ignoring Innovindil’s advice,” said Drizzt.

“Then let us leave in the morning.”

“No.”

Dahlia shrugged, clearly confused by the seemingly pointless reference to Innovindil, given his answer.

“Innovindil was wrong,” Drizzt said. “Perhaps not entirely, and perhaps not for everyone, but for me, in this regard, I know now, and admit now, that Innovindil was wrong.”

“In this regard?”

“Regarding love,” Drizzt said.

“The auburn-haired witch of the wood.”

Drizzt nodded. “My heart remains with Catti-brie. I gave it to her wholly and cannot take it back.”

“She is dead a hundred years.”

“Not in my heart.”

“Ghosts are cold comfort, Drizzt Do’Urden.”

“So be it,” he replied, and he had never been more certain of his road in all of his two centuries. “I’m not saddened by this realization, by this admission that I remain in love with a woman lost to me a century ago.”

“Saddened? I would think you insane!”

“Then I hope for you, dear Dahlia, for I wish you nothing but the best road, that one day you will understand my … insanity. Because I do truly care for you, as my friend, I hope that you will one day be so afflicted as am I. Catti-brie died, but my love for her did not. Innovindil was wrong, and I will live my life happier in the warm memories of Catti-brie’s embrace than in a foolish and impossible effort to replace her.”

“So there is only one love? There can be no other?”

Drizzt considered that for a moment, then honestly shrugged. “I know not,” he admitted. “Perhaps this is, at long last, the time when I will find closure. Perhaps there will come in my path someday another to so warm me. But I do not seek that. I do not need it. Catti-brie remains with me, very much alive.”

He watched Dahlia swallow hard, and it pained him to hurt her-but how much greater would he be wounding her by living a lie out of cowardice?

“Then take our relationship for what it is,” Dahlia offered at length, and there seemed to be a bit of desperation creeping into the edges of her voice.

“And what is that, a distraction?”

“Play,” she said as lightly as she could manage, and she put on a too-wide smile. “Let us enjoy the road and each other’s body. We fight well together and we love well together, so take it for what it is and let it have no meaning beyond-”

“No,” Drizzt interrupted, though he could not deny that Dahlia’s offer was enticing. “Not for your sake and not for my own. My heart and home are here, in Icewind Dale, and here I will stay. And here, you should not stay.”

The crestfallen expression that enveloped Dahlia nearly had Drizzt running to embrace her, but again, for her own sake, he did not.

“You would send me away with Entreri?” she asked, and her eyes narrowed, and her facial woad seemed to heighten then, reflecting a growing anger. “He is a fine lover, you know.”

Drizzt recognized that she was just lashing out here, just trying to sting him back for the rejection he had shown her. He did well to offer no response.

“I have shared his bed many times,” Dahlia pressed, to which Drizzt merely nodded.

“You do not care?” Dahlia asked, her tone on the edge of outrage.

Drizzt swallowed hard, seeing this breakup devolving into a matter of foolish pride, and he knew that he should allow Dahlia to salvage some of that. Or should he, and again, for her own sake?

“No,” he answered flatly. “I do care, but not as you imagine. I am glad that you have found each other.”

“You are walking a dangerous path, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Dahlia warned.

Drizzt wasn’t sure how to take that at first. Was she referring to his own emotional state, given his dramatic choice? Was she taking up Innovindil’s mantle of long-searching wisdom to appeal to him on some philosophical level?

She lifted her walking stick before her and snapped her wrists expertly to break it in half, into two four-foot lengths, and these she broke in half into flails- “nun’chuks,” Afafrenfere had named them-and sent them into easy spins at her side.

“You do not get to so easily dismiss me,” Dahlia informed him. “I am not a plaything for the whims of Drizzt Do’Urden.”

Drizzt thought better of reminding her that she had just offered to be exactly that, and instead focused on how he might diffuse this strange situation. “I seek only that which is best for us both.”

“Oh, shut up,” she said. “Shut up and draw your blades.”

Drizzt held his hands out unthreateningly, as if that request was absurd.

“Diamonds do not move so easily from one ear to the other,” she said. “And this one, the black diamond, is to be the most difficult of all.” She began circling to Drizzt’s left, moving up the incline near to the edge of the rock. “That is why I chose you, of course. Or do you still not understand?”

“Apparently, I don’t-” he started to answer, his words cut short as he ducked and dodged back, one of Dahlia’s weapons whipping suddenly at his head-and had it connected, it surely would have cracked open his skull.

“Dahlia!”