R.A Salvatore - Gauntlgrym

“You fancy yourself as perceptive, I expect,” she replied.

“You accepted the ring, and you used it. You betrayed Sylora when it most counted. Perhaps the arrival of Dahlia-not the image of Dahlia, but the actual warrior-would have changed the outcome of the fight in the Cutlass. Yet you chose not to finish your mission.”

“What do you know of my mission?”

“That you were sent here to see if any would respond to the growing earthquakes,” Jarlaxle replied without hesitation. “To learn if I meant to return to Gauntlgrym.”

Dahlia grinned.

“Well, now you know,” the drow said. “I do, and I am not without allies.”

“Should I go tell Sylora as much?”

“I expect she will know soon enough, since some of your Ashmadai minions escaped the tavern.”

“You know of the Ashmadai?”

Jarlaxle raised an eyebrow, and the corner of his mouth.

“The tunnels have collapsed,” Dahlia said, changing the subject. “There is no way back to Gauntlgrym.”

“I know a way,” Jarlaxle said.

Dahlia’s blue eyes flashed for just a moment before she fully suppressed her intrigue.

“And I will lead you there,” the drow said, revealing to her that he had seen her slip.

“You presume much.”

“And yet I presume correctly. What gain is there for you to pretend otherwise? In the end, and soon, you will be walking beside me and my friends to the halls of Gauntlgrym.”

Dahlia came out of her chair in a hurry, standing strong and taking up her eight-foot staff.

“You already gave me your answer when you used the ring,” Jarlaxle said.

Dahlia put on a pensive expression, but she was nodding.

“Why?” Jarlaxle asked. “This is hardly the easiest course for you.”

“If the primordial is contained and cannot spew its calamity, Sylora’s Dread Ring will fail,” Dahlia replied. “She will not gain the upper hand in her battle with the Netherese.”

“You are fond of the Netherese?”

Dahlia’s eyes flashed again, with obvious, unbridled fury.

“I share your contempt for them,” Jarlaxle was quick to add. He eyed Dahlia carefully. “But your contempt for Sylora is no less profound.”

“Szass Tam will blame her for the failure of the Dread Ring.”

“You would like that.”

“It would be among the greatest pleasures of my life.”

“So that you could return to Szass Tam in a position of power?”

Again Dahlia’s eyes flashed, and Jarlaxle realized he’d missed the mark badly with that line of reasoning. It was true, then, he knew. In using the ring, the out, he had given her, Dahlia had seized the opportunity to free herself of not only Sylora, but the lich lord of Thay himself. Perhaps their wretched fascination with death had offended her sensibilities, or perhaps she’d just come to rightly conclude that those who followed Szass Tam were destined to perpetual subjugation, always to be followers, never leaders.

Those were possibilities Jarlaxle intended to explore.

“We should leave soon for Gauntlgrym,” he said. “Before word has reached Sylora. Before she can rally her minions against us.”

“And when she does, we will kill them,” Dahlia replied. “Perhaps this drow, Drizzt, will show me that his reputation is well-earned.”

Jarlaxle smiled at that, not a doubt in his mind.

“We should leave at once,” Jarlaxle told the trio when he returned to them soon after. “Some of those who would stop us have fled the city, spreading word far and wide of our intentions, no doubt.”

“We’re not knowin’ enough, by yer own words!” Bruenor argued. “Where to put the durned bowls?”

“We will learn much when we arrive in Gauntlgrym, of that I hold faith,” Jarlaxle replied, and he privately recalled the words of Gromph, relayed from the dwarf ghost trapped in Arklem Greeth’s phylactery: Seat a king in the throne of Gauntlgrym. “Time will work against us now, my friend,” he went on. “There are many who would see the primordial awaken and explode once more, for their own nefarious gains.”

“Is Bregan D’aerthe about?” Drizzt asked. “Ready for the road?”

Jarlaxle seemed put on his heels a bit by that, and his lips went tight.

“Just we four?” Drizzt asked.

“Nay, five,” Jarlaxle replied, and he turned to the open door and motioned with his hand. In walked Dahlia.

“Ain’t she the girl in the goo?” Bruenor asked.

“It was a trick, so that she could flee her foul companions under the guise of death,” Jarlaxle explained.

“Companions she brought with her the first time we went there,” Athrogate protested. “Was her that bringed us there to free the beast!”

“And ye’re thinkin’ we’re to trust her?” Bruenor argued, hands on hips, nostrils flaring.

“Dahlia was deceived on that long-ago day,” Jarlaxle replied. He looked at Athrogate and added, “As were we.”

“Bah!” the dwarf snorted. “She took us there, tricked us there, to free the beast!”

“I tried to stop you,” Dahlia reminded him.

“So ye’re sayin’ now.”

“I speak the truth and you know it,” Dahlia said, turning to regard Drizzt and Bruenor-particularly Drizzt-more directly. “I have an interest no less than your own in securing the primordial once more.”

“Rooted in conscience or revenge?” Drizzt asked with a wry grin.

Dahlia stared at him hard.

Bruenor started to argue, but Drizzt put his hand on the dwarf’s shoulder to quiet him, then nodded for Dahlia to continue.

“I have paid for my disobedience to my masters-my former masters-every day since,” she said. “And I pay doubly, because I see the result of my failure. Once I believed Szass Tam to be…”

“Szass what?” Bruenor asked, glancing at Drizzt, who shrugged, equally at a loss.

“The lord and master of the realm of Thay,” Dahlia explained, “whose minions control the Dread Ring in Neverwinter Wood, and the ash-covered zombies who roam the region.”

Both dwarf and drow nodded, remembering the tall tales of the powerful lich.

“Once I believed Szass Tam to be a prophet,” Dahlia went on. “A great man of glorious designs. But when I came to understand the price of those designs, I felt quite the fool.”

“Revenge, then,” said Drizzt, and his elimination of any element of morality from Dahlia’s change of heart had the elf staring at him once again, her lips tight, her eyes narrowed.

“I been callin’ ye that for ten years now,” Athrogate chimed in. “A fool, I mean.”

Dahlia just snorted at him. “The minions of Szass Tam, the zealot Ashmadai and Sylora Salm, and even my old companion Dor’crae-”

“The vampire,” Athrogate muttered.

Bruenor looked at him, then at Dahlia, with disgust. “Ye keep fine friends,” he said.

“Some would say the same of a dwarf and a drow,” Dahlia replied, but when Bruenor’s eyes narrowed dangerously at that, she could only hold her hands up, admitting that she was guilty as charged. “They will try to stop you… us,” she said. “I know them. I know their tactics and their powers. You will find me to be a valuable ally.”

“Or a dangerous spy,” said Bruenor.

Drizzt glanced from his friend to the elf warrior, but his gaze finally settled upon Jarlaxle. Few understood those conflicting gray areas of morality and pragmatism better than the leader of Bregan D’aerthe, after all. Noting Drizzt’s questioning stare, Jarlaxle replied with a slight nod.

“The five of us, then,” Drizzt said.

“And straightaway to Gauntlgrym,” Jarlaxle agreed.

Hands still on his hips, Bruenor seemed less than convinced. He started to argue, but Drizzt leaned in low and whispered, “Gauntlgrym,” reminding the dwarf that he was but days from realizing a goal he had spent decades chasing.