“I died with me king, in Gauntlgrym. I’m just lettin’ meself go back to him.”

“There is nothing I can say?” Drizzt asked.

“Me king,” the dwarf answered. “He’ll be waitin’ for me at Moradin’s side, and I ain’t done nothing yet that’d make Moradin turn me away! But I will. I’m knowin’ that I will if I don’t end this now.”

Drizzt tried to focus on the words, but a disconcerting thought had crossed his mind at Pwent’s mention of his king.

“Bruenor will not … rise?” the drow asked, his voice hesitant. He could hardly bear to look at Pwent, his old friend, in this wretched state, but to see Bruenor Battlehammer, his dearest friend for more than a century, similarly afflicted, would be more than his heart could bear, he was sure.

“No, elf.” Pwent assured him. “He’s set in his grave, where ye put him. Killed natural and for good and all, and dyin’ the hero. Unlike meself.”

“None question the heroics of Thibbledorf Pwent, in the fight for Gauntlgrym and in a hundred before that,” Drizzt said. “Your legend is wide and grand, your legacy secure.”

Pwent nodded and grunted in thanks and didn’t speak the obvious: that his legacy would remain secure only if he turned away from his current course. And there was only one way to accomplish that.

He put his thick hand atop Drizzt’s and repeated, “Ah, me king.”

“So be it,” Drizzt said, and he had trouble getting those words out of his mouth.

Dahlia called to him. “Let’s get moving. I want to get back to Neverwinter, and soon!”

“Farewell, my friend,” Drizzt said, and he walked out of the cave. “Sit in feast and hoist a mug beside King Bruenor in Dwarfhome.”

“To Clan Battlehammer and to yerself, too, elf,” Pwent answered, and it did Drizzt’s heart a bit of good to hear the serenity in his voice, as if he had truly come to terms with this, understanding it as his best, or only, choice. Still, Drizzt’s heart could not have been heavier as he walked out of that cave.

He paused outside and turned back to regard the dark opening, though Pwent was now out of sight. He should stay and witness this, he thought. He owed that much to this shield dwarf who had given so much to him and to Bruenor over the decades. Pwent had been as much a hero in the last fight in Gauntlgrym as any of them, and now Drizzt would just walk away and let him be burned to ashes by the rising sun?

“Come along,” Dahlia bade him, and he shot her an angry look indeed.

“You can’t do anything for him,” Dahlia explained, walking over to take Drizzt’s hand. “He makes the right choice, morally. You would disagree with that? If so, then go and enlist him to our side. A vampire is a powerful companion, I know.”

Drizzt studied her, not quite understanding her real intent, and not quite able to discount her words or the possibility of taking Thibbledorf Pwent along. Didn’t he owe his old friend that much at least?

“But he will eat,” Dahlia added. “And if he can find no food other than goblinkin, he will feast on the neck of an elf, or a human. There is no other possibility. He cannot resist the hunger—if he could, you would find great and powerful communities of vampires, and what king might resist them or their temptations of immortality?”

“You know this?”

“I have much experience with these creatures,” Dahlia explained. “Thay is littered with them.”

Drizzt glanced back at the cave opening.

“There is nothing you can do for him,” Dahlia whispered, and when Drizzt turned back to regard her, he found true sympathy in her blue eyes, for him and for Pwent, and he was glad of that. “There is nothing anyone can do for him, except the dwarf himself. He can end his torment, as he has decided, before the curse further eats his mind and drives him into the darkness. I have seen this: young vampires, newly undead, destroying themselves before the affliction could fully take hold.”

Drizzt took a deep breath, but did not turn from the cave, even leaned toward it as if thinking of returning.

“Let him have this moment,” Dahlia whispered. “He will die again as a hero, for few so afflicted could ever so resist the dark temptations, as he now intends.”

Drizzt nodded, and knew that he had to be satisfied with that, that he had to take the small victory and hold it close. In his mind, he drew a parallel between Pwent and Artemis Entreri, as he considered Dahlia’s claim that Pwent would indeed feast upon an elf or human or some other goodly person. That was his nature now, and it was a powerful, irresistible demand.

So what of Entreri? The man had killed many. Would he kill more, and not only those deserving, or not only in the service of the greater good?

Aye, that was always the question, Drizzt recognized. And it was always his hope that Entreri would find his way around that vicious nature.

How ironic that Thibbledorf Pwent had to sacrifice himself, without hope, while Entreri continued to draw breath. How tragic that the insurmountable danger was Pwent’s to bear, while hope could remain for Artemis Entreri.

Indeed, that reality proved to be a bitter pill.

Chapter 5: Purpose

AT DRIZZT’S INSISTENCE, THE FIVE COMPANIONS LEFT NEVERWINTER EARLY the next morning. Though he had not slept at all the night before, Drizzt was determined to be on his way. Many times did he glance to the east, to the forest where he had found the cursed Thibbledorf Pwent, and many times did that sad reality throw him back in time, to the fall of Pwent and Bruenor.

He kept shaking the darkness away, and moved with purpose now, leading the five companions up the coastline before the onslaught of winter, which came early and hit hard, burying the land around the forest in deep snows and bringing sheets of dangerous ice all along the northern Sword Coast. Many times during their short journey Dahlia asked Drizzt what he was planning, and many times Entreri inquired about his dagger, but the drow remained quiet and wore a calm and contented grin.

“Port Llast?” Entreri asked when their destination became obvious, for they turned onto a trail that led down from the rocky cliffs to the quiet seaside town. Once a thriving quarry and port city, Port Llast hardly resembled anything that could be called a village any longer.

“Ye slurring yer words for a reason?” Ambergris asked.

“Not a slur,” said Drizzt. “That is the town’s name. Port Llast. Two Ls.”

“Similar to the Hells,” muttered the ever-sarcastic Entreri.

“I’m not knowin’ the place,” the dwarf replied, and Afafrenfere shrugged in accord.

“A thriving city, a century ago,” Drizzt explained. “These cliffs provided many of the stones for the greatest buildings of Waterdeep, Luskan, and Neverwinter, and towns all along the Sword Coast.”

“And what happened?” Ambergris asked, glancing around. “Looks like good stone to me, and can ye ever really run short o’ the stuff?”

“Orcs … bandits …” Drizzt explained.

“Luskan,” Entreri put in, and Drizzt winced reflexively, though he was fairly certain that Entreri had no idea of Drizzt’s role in the catastrophe that had taken place in the City of Sails, which was just a few days’ ride farther up the coast.

“Port Llast was overrun and worn down,” Drizzt explained. “It went from a city of nearly twenty thousand to just a few hundred, and in short order.”

“Still substantial, then,” said Afafrenfere. “A few hundred, and that in a port city?”

“That was before the Spellplague,” Entreri said. He looked at Drizzt and added, “Tell them of our paradise destination.”

“Land rose up out there,” Drizzt said, pointing to the west, to the open sea. “Some effect of the Spellplague, it is rumored, though whatever the cause, the land is surely there. This new island changed the tides, which ruined the harbor and finished off any remaining hopes for the city.”

“Finished?” asked the dwarf.

“We circumvented this place several times,” Dahlia said, confused. “There are people there still.”

“Some, but not many,” Drizzt explained.

“It’s Umberlee’s town,” Entreri said, referring to an evil sea goddess with a reputation of sending in horrid sea monster minions to wreak havoc along the coasts of Faerûn.

“And still, the people hold on and fight back,” Drizzt countered.

“Noble,” said Afafrenfere.

“Stubborn,” said Ambergris.

“Stupid,” Entreri insisted, with such clarity and confidence that he drew the looks of the other four. “Hold on to what? They’ve no harbor, they’ve no quarry. All they’ve got are memories of a time lost, and one that’s not coming back.”

“There’s honor in defendin’ yer home,” Ambergris argued.

Entreri laughed at her. “Without hope?” he said. “How many villagers remain, drow? Three hundred? Two? And less each year, as some give up and move away and others are slain by the devils of Umberlee, or the orcs and bandits that dominate this region. They’ve no chance of defending their home. They’ve nothing of value to lure new settlers, and no reinforcements for their diminishing ranks.”

Dahlia wore a knowing smirk as she looked at Drizzt. “They have us, apparently.”

Entreri stared hard at Drizzt, and asked incredulously, “Truly?”

“Let’s see what we might learn of the place,” Drizzt answered. “The winter will be no more dangerous for us here than anywhere else.”

Entreri shook his head, more in abject disbelief than in resignation, but said no more. His look at Drizzt spoke volumes, though, mostly in reminding Drizzt that Entreri had only come along for the sake of retrieving his prized dagger.

The trail wove down through high walls of dark stone. Several carved plateaus showed the ruins of old catapults, all trained on the harbor far below. After a myriad of angled hairpin turns down the steep decline, the five companions came at last to the city’s southern gate, to find it closed and well-guarded.

“Halt and hail!” a soldier called down from the rampart. “And what a strange band of deckhands to be knocking at our door. A drow elf in front and a motley crew behind.” The man shook his head and called back. Another pair of soldiers joined him at the wall, their eyes going wide.

And not surprisingly, for not only was a drow leading the party, but he sat astride a unicorn, and with a man behind him astride a nightmare of the lower planes!

“Not a sight ye’d see every day, eh?” Ambergris called up at them.

“Well met,” Drizzt said. “And pray tell, does Port Llast still name Dovos Dothwintyl as First Captain?”

“You know him, then?” the guard replied.

“Not so well. Better did I know Haeromos Dothwintyl, in days long past, when I sailed with Deudermont and Sea Sprite.”

That had the three speaking amongst themselves, and when they turned back, a second guard, a woman, called down, “Who would you be, dark elf? A fellow by the name of Drizzt, perhaps?”