"He'll be back, " Regis said to her, rushing over to sit beside her. "You know Drizzt. He'll be back."
It was too much for Catti-brie to digest. She gently pulled Regis's hand off her arm and rose. She looked to the panther fig urine once more, sitting upon the small table, but she had not the strength to retrieve it.
Catti-brie padded silently out of the room, back to her own chambers, where she fell listlessly upon her bed.
Drizzt spent midday sleeping in the cool shadows of a cave, many miles from Mithril Hall's eastern door. The early summer air was warm, the breeze off the cold glaciers of the mountains carrying little weight against the powerful rays of the sun in a cloudless sum mer sky.
The drow did not sleep long or well. His rest was filled with thoughts of Wulfgar, of all his friends, and of distant images, memo ries of that awful place, Menzoberranzan.
Awful and beautiful, like the dark elves who had sculpted it.
Drizzt moved to his shallow cave's entrance to take his meal. He basked in the warmth of the bright afternoon, in the sounds of the many animals. How different was this from his Underdark home! How wonderful!
Drizzt threw his dried biscuit into the dirt and punched the floor beside him.
How wonderful indeed was this false hope that had been dan gled before his desperate eyes. All that he had wanted in life was to escape the ways of his kin, to live in peace. Then he had come to the surface, and soon after, had decided that this place, this place of buzzing bees and chirping birds, of warm sunlight and alluring moonlight, should be his home, not the eternal darkness of those tunnels far below.
Drizzt Do'Urden had chosen the surface, but what did that choice mean? It meant that he would come to know new, dear friends, and by his mere presence, trap them into his dark legacy. It meant that Wulfgar would die by the summons of Drizzt's own sis ter, and that all of Mithril Hall might soon be in peril.
It meant that his choice was a false one, that he could not stay.
The disciplined drow calmed quickly and took out some more food, forcing it past the angry lump in his throat. He considered his course as he ate. The road before him would lead out of the moun tains and past a village called Pengallen. Drizzt had been there recently, and he did not wish to return.
He would not follow the road at all, he decided at length. What purpose would going to Silverymoon serve? Drizzt doubted that Lady Alustriel would be there, with the trading season open in full. Even if she was, what could she tell him that he did not already know?
No, Drizzt had already determined his ultimate course and he did not need Alustriel to confirm it. He gathered his belongings and sighed as he considered again how empty the road seemed without his dear panther companion. He walked out into the bright day, straight toward the east, off the southeastern road.
Her stomach did not complain that breakfast, and lunch, had passed and still she lay motionless on her bed, caught in a web of despair. She had lost Wulfgar, barely days before their planned wed ding, and now Drizzt, whom she loved as much as she had the bar barian, was gone as well. It seemed as though her entire world had crumbled around her. A foundation that had been built of stone shifted like sand on the blowing wind.
Catti-brie had been a fighter all of her young life. She didn't remember her mother, and barely recalled her father, who had been killed in a goblin raid in Ten Towns when she was very young. Bruenor Battlehammer had taken her in and raised her as his own daughter, and Catti-brie had found a fine life among the dwarves of Bruenor's clan. Except for Bruenor, though, the dwarves had been friends, not family. Catti-brie had forged a new family one at a time, first Bruenor, then Drizzt, then Regis, and, finally, Wulfgar.
Now Wulfgar was dead and Drizzt gone, back to his wicked homeland with, by Catti-brie's estimation, little chance of returning.
Catti-brie felt so very helpless about it all! She had watched Wulfgar die, watched him chop a ceiling down onto his own head so that she might escape the