Robert Salvatore: STARLESS NIGHT

Entreri walked off along the ledge, pausing a short distance away to turn and regard his hated rival.

"Long, too, is my own memory," he remarked, referring to Jarlaxle's parting words. "And are my methods less devious than those of the drow?"

Drizzt did not bother to respond. "Suren I'm cursing me own words," Catti-brie whispered to Drizzt. "I'd be liking nothing better than to put an arrow through that one's back!"

Drizzt hooked his arm over the young woman's shoulder and led her back into the tunnels. He would not disagree that Catti-brie's shot, if taken, would have made the world a better place, but he was not afraid of Artemis Entreri anymore.

Entreri had a lot on his mind, Drizzt knew. The assassin hadn't liked what he had seen in Menzoberranzan, such a dear mirror to his own dark soul, and he would be long in recovering from his emotional trials, long in turning his thoughts back to a drow ranger so very far away.

Less than an hour later, the two friends came upon the site of Wulfgar's death. They paused and stood before it for a long while, silently, arm in arm.

By the time they turned to leave, a score of armed and armored dwarves had appeared, blocking every exit with engines of war.

"Surrender or be squished!" came the cry, followed by howls of surprise when the two intruders were recognized. In rushed the dwarven soldiers, surrounding, mobbing the pair.

'Take them to the watch commander!" came a call, and Drizzt and Catti-brie were shuffled off at breakneck speed, along the winding ways and through the formal entrance to the tunnels of Mithril Hall. A short distance from there, they found the aforementioned commander, and the two friends were as startled to see him in that position as Regis was to see them.

"The commander?" was Catti-brie's first words as she looked again at her little friend. Regis bounded over and leaped into her arms, at the same time throwing an arm about Drizzt's neck.

"You're back!" he cried repeatedly, his cherubic features beaming brightly.

"Commander?" Catti-brie asked again, no less incredulously.

Regis gave a little shrug. "Somebody had to do it," he explained.

"And he's been doing it fine by me own eyes," said one dwarf. The other bearded folk in the room promptly agreed, putting a blush on the halfling's deceivingly dimpled face.

Regis gave a little shrug, then kissed Catti-brie so hard that he bruised her cheek.

Bruenor sat as if turned to stone, and the other dwarves in his audience hall, after giving their hearty welcomes to Catti-brie, wisely departed.

"I bringed him back," the young woman began matter-of-factly when she and her father were alone, trying to sound as if nothing spectacular had occurred. "And suren ver eves should feast on the sights of Menzoberranzan!

Bruenor winced; tears welled in his blue-gray eye. "Damned fool girl," he uttered loudly, stealing Catti-brie's cavalier attitude. She had known Bruenor since her earliest recollections, but she wasn't sure if the dwarf was about to hue her or throttle her.

"Damned fool yerself," she responded with characteristic stubbornness. Bruenor leaped forward and lifted his hand. He had never before hit his adopted daughter, but only managed to stop himself at the last moment now.

"Damned fool yerself!" Catti-brie said again, as if danng Bruenor to strike her. "Sitting here wallowing in something that ye cannot change, when them things that are needing changing go merrily along their way!" Bruenor turned away.

"Do ye think I'm missing Wulfgar any less than yerself?" Catti-brie went on, grabbing his shoulder (though she could not begin to turn the solid dwarf). "Do ye think Drizzt's missing him less?"

"And he's a fool, too!" Bruenor roared, spinning about to eye her squarely. For just a fleeting instant, Catti-brie saw that old spark, that old fire, burning in the dwarf's moist eye. "And he'd be the first to agree with ye," Cam-brie replied, and a smile widened on her fair face. "And so are we all at times But if s a friend's duty to help when we're being fools.

Bruenor gave in, offered the hug that his dear daughter desperately needed. "And Drizzt could never be asking for a better friend than Catti-brie," he admitted, burying his words in the young woman's neck, wet with an old dwarfs tears.

Outside Mithril Hall, Drizzt Do'Urden sat upon a stone, heedless of the stinging wind heralding the onslaught of winter, basking in the dawn he thought he would never see.