out of throwing range of any giants. They'll be safe enough - likely the first of them are already across."
"How clear is it up there?" Catti-brie asked, not even trying to hold the concern out of her voice.
"Very. Perhaps too much so," Wulfgar answered, misreading her concern, and he paused, apparently catching on. "You wonder if Drizzt will find his way to us," he said.
"Or if we can find our way to him."
Wulfgar sat on the edge of the bed and stared at Catti-brie for a long, long while.
"Not so long ago you told me he wasn't dead," he reminded. "You have to hold onto that."
"And if I cannot?" the woman admitted, lowering her eyes for even voicing such a fear.
Wulfgar cupped her chin with his huge hand and tilted her head back so that she had to look him in the eye. "Then hold on to your memories of him, though I do not believe he is dead," he insisted. "Better to have loved . .."
Catti-brie looked away.
After a moment of confusion, Wulfgar turned her back yet again. "It is better to have loved him and lost him than never to have known him at all," he stated, reciting one of the oldest litanies in all corners of the Realms. "You were lovers; there is nothing more special than that."
Telltale tears welled in Catti-brie's deep blue eyes.
"You ... you told me ..." Wulfgar stammered. "You said that in your years on the boat with Captain Deudermont.. ."
"I didn't tell you anything," she replied. "I let you assume."
"But. . ."
Wulfgar paused, replaying that conversation he and Catti-brie had shared during their trials out on the battle line with Banak. He had asked her pointedly about whether or not she and Drizzt had become more than friends, and indeed she had not answered directly, other than to refer to the fact that they had been traveling as companions for six long years.
"Why?" Wulfgar finally asked.
"Because I'm thinking myself the fool for not," Catti-brie said. "Oh, but we came close. We just never .. . I'm not wanting to talk about this."
"You wanted to see how I would react if I believed that you and Drizzt were lovers," Wulfgar said, and it was a statement not a question, indicating that he had it all figured out.
"I'll not deny that."
"To see if Wulfgar had healed from his torment in the Abyss? To see if I had overcome the demons of my upbringing?"
"Don't you get all angry," Catti-brie said to him. "Maybe it was to see if Wulfgar was deserving of a wife like Delly."
"You think I still love you?"
"As a brother would love a sister."
"Or more?"
"I had to know."
"Why?"
The simple question had Catti-brie rocking back in her bed. "Because I know it's farther along with me and Drizzt," she said after only a brief pause. "Because I know how I feel now, and nothing's to change that, and I wanted to know how it would affect yourself, above all."
"Why?"
"Because I'd not break up our group," Catti-brie answered. "Because we five have forged something here I'm not wanting to lose, however I'm feeling about Drizzt."
Wulfgar spent a long while staring at her, and the woman began to squirm under that scrutiny.
"Well, what're you thinking?"
"I'm thinking that you sound less like a dwarf every day," he answered with a wry grin. "In accent, I mean, but you sound more like a dwarf every day in spirit. It's Bruenor who's cursed us both, I see. Perhaps we are both too pragmatic for our own good."
"How can you say that?"
"Six years beside a man you love and you're not lovers?"
"He's not a man, and there's the rub."
"Only if your dwarven practicality makes it a rub."
Catti-brie couldn't deny his tone or his smile, and it infected her soon enough. The two shared a laugh, then, self-deprecating for both.
"We've got to find him," Wulfgar said at length. "For all our sakes, Drizzt must come back to us."
"I'll be up and about soon enough, and out we'll go," Catti-brie agreed, and as she spoke, she glanced across the way at her belongings, at the weathered traveling cloak and the dark wood of Taulmaril peeking our from under it.
At the scabbard that once held Khazid'hea.
"What is it?" Wulfgar asked, noticing the sudden frown that crossed the woman's face.
Catti-brie led his gaze with a pointing finger. "My sword," she whispered.
Wulfgar rose and crossed to the pile, pulling off the cloak and quickly confirming that, indeed, the sword was gone,