“Because of them,” Arunika corrected.
In his right hand, Drizzt held the red-bladed sword by one neck of its decorative crosspiece, the metal thickly wrapped with bandages. In his other hand, the drow held the onyx panther figurine. He was still calling to Guenhwyvar when Entreri rode his hellish steed over to join him.
Calling futilely for Guenhwyvar, the drow knew, for he could sense that the panther was beyond his reach, beyond the call of the figurine.
Dahlia swooped down beside them and reverted to her elf form. She was not happy, clearly. Drizzt didn’t need to ask her why, for he understood that she had not seen the actual death of Herzgo Alegni. Worse, Drizzt wondered, Herzgo Alegni might have escaped their attack with his dematerialization. If that thought unsettled him, and it did, what might it be doing to Dahlia, whose hatred of Alegni was more profound than anything Drizzt had ever seen?
“You should have left that thing in the river,” Entreri said, and he was shaking his head, obviously torn and obviously afraid.
“Where a common citizen of Neverwinter might have happened upon it?” Drizzt asked.
“The blade would be beyond him.”
“The blade would eat him,” Drizzt said. “Or it would enslave him…” The drow cast a stern gaze at Entreri, letting his disappointment show. “You would so sacrifice an unwitting person?”
“I would be free of that wretched sword, however I could!”
“It wouldn’t let you go,” Drizzt countered. “Whatever other slaves Claw might find, it would come back to you, and would force you back to it.”
“Then I should take it now and wield it?”
Drizzt looked at him, but instinctively pulled the blade farther from him. He knew a bit about sentient weapons, artifacts of great power and great ego, and he understood that Entreri, after decades of enslavement, could not begin to control Charon’s Claw, whether he held the blade or not.
Entreri knew it, too, Drizzt realized when the assassin laughed at his own absurd question.
“Destroy it, then,” Dahlia offered.
“And then I will be dust,” said Entreri, and with conviction. He gave another laugh, sad and resigned. “As I should have been half a century ago.”
Dahlia looked alarmed at that, and her expression stung at Drizzt more than it should have.
“Destroy it,” Entreri agreed. “You could not do me a greater service than to release me from the bondage of Charon’s Claw.”
“There must be another way,” Dahlia said, almost frantically.
“Destroy it,” said Entreri.
“You presume that we can,” Drizzt reminded him. Powerful artifacts were not so easily gotten rid of.
But even as he spoke the words, Drizzt found his answer. He looked at Dahlia and knew she understood it too.
For she, like Drizzt, had witnessed a force more powerful than Charon’s Claw, with a magic and energy older and more primal than even the dweomers imbued upon this magnificent, evil blade.
PART II
COMMON DESTINY
My thoughts slip past me, slithering snakes, winding and unwinding over each other, always just ahead, coiling and darting, just out of reach.
Diving down into dark waters where I cannot follow.
One of the most common truths of life is that we all take for granted things that simply are. Whether a spouse, a friend, a family, or a home, after enough time has passed, that person, place, or situation becomes the accepted norm of our lives.
It is not until we confront the unexpected, not until the normal is no more, that we truly come to appreciate what once we had.
I have said this, I have known this, I have felt this so many times…
But I find myself off-balance again, and the snakes slide past, teasing me. I cannot catch them, cannot sort through their intertwined bodies.
So it is with the ill person who suddenly must face mortality, when the paralyzing shackles of the concept of forever are sundered. As time diminishes, every moment crystallizes into one of importance. I have met several people in my travels who, when told by a cleric that they had not long to live, insisted to me that their disease was the greatest event of their existence, insisted that colors became more vivid, sounds more acute and meaningful and pleasurable, and friendships more endearing.
The shattering of the normal routine brings life to this person, so paradoxically, considering that the catalyst is, after all, the imminence of death.
But though we know, though we are seasoned, we cannot prepare.
I felt this rippling of the serene lake that had become my life when Cattibrie became afflicted by the Spellplague, and then, even more profoundly, when she and Regis were taken from me. All of my sensibilities screamed at me; it wasn’t supposed to be like that. So many things had been sorted through hard work and trial, and we four remaining Companions of the Hall were ready for our due and just reward: adventures and leisure of our choosing.
I don’t know that I took those two dear friends for granted, though losing them so unexpectedly and abruptly surely tore apart the serenity of calm waters I had found all about me.
A lake full of tumultuous cross-currents and slithering snakes of discordant thought, sliding all about. I remember my confusion, my rage, helpless rage… I grabbed Jarlaxle because I needed something to hold, some solid object and solid hope to stop the current from sweeping me away.
So too with the departure of Wulfgar, whose choice to leave us was not really unexpected.
So too with Bruenor. We walked a road together that we knew would end as it ended. The only question was whether he or I would die first at the end of an enemy’s spear.
I feel that I long ago properly insulated myself against this trap of simply accepting what was with the false belief that what was would always be.
In almost every case.
Almost, I see now.
I speak of the Companions of the Hall as if we were five, then four when Wulfgar departed. Even now as I recognize my error, I found at my fingertips the same description when I penned, “we four.”
We were not five in the early days, but six.
We were not four when Wulfgar departed, but five.
We were not two when Catti-brie and Regis were taken from us, but three.
And the one whom I seldom consider, the one whom I fear I have too often taken for granted, is the one most joined to the heart of Drizzt Do’Urden.
And now the snakes return, tenfold, twisting around my legs, just out of reach, and I stagger because the ground beneath my feet is not firm, because the sands buckle and roll beneath the crashing waves, because the balance I have known has been torn from me.
I cannot summon Guenhwyvar.
I do not understand-I have not lost hope! — but for the first time, with the onyx figurine in hand, the panther, my dear friend, will not come to my call, nor do I sense her presence, roaring back at me across the planescape. She went through to the Shadowfell with Herzgo Alegni, or went somewhere, disappearing into the black mist on the winged bridge of Neverwinter.
I sensed the distance soon after, a vast expanse between us, too far to reach with the magic of the idol.
I do not understand.
Was Guenhwyvar not eternal? Was she not the essence of the panther? Such essence cannot be destroyed, surely!
But I cannot summon her, cannot hear her, cannot feel her around me and in my thoughts.
What road is this, then, that I find myself upon? I have followed a trail of vengeance beside Dahlia-nay, behind Dahlia, for little can I doubt that it is she who guides my strides. So do I cross the leagues to kill Sylora Salm, and I cannot consider that an illegitimate act, for it was she who freed the primordial and wreaked devastation on Neverwinter. Surely defeating Sylora was a just and worthy cause.