DRIZZT GUIDED ANDAHAR AS FAST AS HE DARED WHILE TRYING to keep Dahlia steady. He’d slung her over the back of the unicorn, and had stopped no less than three times in the first twenty strides to make sure she was still breathing.
She was, but barely. One of her thighs had turned an ugly blue and spittle flowed from her lips.
Drizzt didn’t dare stop to more closely inspect her wound, though he figured it had to be on her lower leg. He spurred Andahar on, trying to figure out where to turn, or if he was even going in the right direction.
With the delays and indecision, and the futile attempts to ease Dahlia’s suffering, it was long past midday when Drizzt at last arrived at the farmhouse south of Luskan, where the dirty woman eked out a paltry existence with her five children. They weren’t hiding this time. The children and the woman came to the doorway and watched him slip down from Andahar and gently pull Dahlia off the unicorn’s back. He draped her across his shoulders and moved toward the doorway. The woman crossed her arms and wore a profound scowl.
“She dead?” the woman asked. Her expression went from sour to surprised when she looked upon Dahlia … because Dahlia’s hair and facial skin didn’t appear the same as she had when they came through there, Drizzt realized.
“Not dead, not dying,” Drizzt answered defiantly. “But she’s gravely ill—poisoned. I need to leave her here. I need you to watch over her while I return to Luskan.”
He moved to enter the doorway, but the woman didn’t immediately step aside. She stood there staring at him.
“Please, will you tend her?” Drizzt asked.
“I’m not knowing much about poison.”
“Just keep her as comfortable as you …” Drizzt started to explain, but the woman yelled past him suddenly, to her children.
“Go and fetch Ben the Brewer!” she ordered sharply. “And be quick!”
The children ran off down the dirt path.
“Ben the Brewer?” Drizzt asked.
“He has many herbs,” the woman replied.
“He can cure her?” Drizzt asked, and he was surprised by the desperation in his tone.
The farmer woman looked at him and scoffed, but finally stepped aside so he could bring her into the house. He lay Dahlia down gently on a bedroll and moved immediately to her boot, unstrapping it and pulling it off—or trying to, for her leg was thick with poison.
After some time and more than a little grease, Drizzt at last managed to get the boot off. Dahlia’s foot was horribly swollen and discolored, blue and red and yellow.
He winced and brought a hand up to his face to try to compose himself. The farmer woman moved past him and studied the foot. “Looks like the bite of a tundra viper,” she said.
“And Ben the Brewer can cure that?” Drizzt asked.
The woman cast him a pitiful glance and shook her head.
Drizzt took a deep breath. He couldn’t lose Dahlia. Not now. Not with the loss of Bruenor so raw, not with his sudden loneliness, the realization that all of his friends were gone. He fell back from the bed, surprised by that revelation, by how much he needed Dahlia, by how frightened he was that she, too, might leave him.
“This is no snakebite,” the farmer woman said, inspecting the single puncture in the bottom of Dahlia’s foot.
“A poisoned spike.”
“Then you should seek the one who coated the spike,” the woman said. “Few would play with such a mixture if they had no antidote, eh? Or get us a dose, aye, for we … you, will need the poison to counter the poison.”
Drizzt nodded and spent a long moment staring at Dahlia. Other than the angry leg, she looked quite serene, though very pale.
“I’ll return before the next dawn,” the drow pledged.
He started for the door, but even as he reached it the farmer woman cried out. Drizzt spun around to find her backing away from Dahlia, her hand over her open mouth, a look of horror on her face. The dark elf rushed to Dahlia, but found nothing amiss.
“What?” he asked, turning to their host.
“Her face!” the woman cried. “It’s bruising again, like before!”
Drizzt looked back to the elf and he understood. The magical powder Dahlia had applied was wearing off, and her woad was returning. He breathed a sigh of relief and gave a little laugh.
“It’s all right,” he explained, standing back up and moving for the door. “Beware that her hair might change as well.”
“She’s a doppelganger, then?” the woman asked with horror.
“Nay, just a bit of magical disguise.”
The woman, a simple creature, shook her head at such nonsense, and Drizzt managed a smile, then ran out of the house, leaping onto Andahar’s back and setting the unicorn off in a full gallop along the road to the north.
Images of Dahlia’s foot haunted him with Andahar’s every running stride.
They stood around her in a circle, bloody and battered. All of them, from Bengarion to Dor’crae, the nine lovers she had killed.
“You cannot escape us,” Dor’crae promised her. Half of his skin was missing, blasted free from the force of the rushing water. “We await you.”
“You think we have forgotten you?” asked another.
“You think we have forgiven you?” asked another.
They began to laugh, all nine, and to pace in unison, circling Dahlia as she spun around every which way. She had nowhere to run. Kozah’s Needle could not help her this time.
A tenth form joined the marching nine; a tiny form; a baby, half elf and half tiefling. He didn’t say anything, but stared at Dahlia hatefully then smiled a wicked smile to show a mouth full of sharpened teeth.
Dahlia cried out and fell away from him, but that only put her closer—too close!—to those on the other side. She cried out again and stumbled back to her original spot.
They taunted her and laughed at her. Desperate, she charged at the line, fists balled, determined to fight to the bitter end.
But she was grabbed by others, by Shadovar, and was thrown down and held.
Her mother cried out for her.
Herzgo Alegni fell over her.
When he finished, he walked away, laughing, along with his guards. To kill her mother, Dahlia knew, but Dahlia was not there anymore, was back in the midst of the circling ten she’d murdered.
She was naked, and she fell to the ground, crying.
They laughed at her all the more.
“We have not forgotten,” they chanted.
“We have not forgiven,” they chanted.
“We await you,” the baby taunted. “The time is near.”