"04 - Sea of Swords - R A Salvatore 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Paths Of Darkness)

go back to that age, knowing what I now know!” Those words amuse me profoundly,
for in truth, the lament should be, “If only I could reclaim the lust and the
joy I knew then!”
That is the meaning of life, I have come at last to understand, and in that
understanding, I have indeed found that lust and that joy. A life of twenty
years where that lust and joy, where that truth is understood might be more full
than a life of centuries with head bowed and shoulders slumped.
I remember my first battle beside Wulfgar, when I led him in, against tremendous
odds and mighty giants, with a huge grin and a lust for life. How strange that
as I gained more to lose, I allowed that lust to diminish!
It took me this long, through some bitter losses, to recognize the folly of that
reasoning. It took me this long, returned to Icewind Dale after unwittingly
surrendering the Crystal Shard to Jarlaxle and completing at last (and forever,
I pray) my relationship with Artemis Entreri, to wake up to the life that is
mine, to appre­ciate the beauty around me, to seek out and not shy away from the
excitement that is there to be lived.
There remain worries and fears, of course. Wulfgar is gone from us—I know not
where—and I fear for his head, his heart, and his body. But I have accepted that
his path was his own to choose, and that he, for the sake of all three—head,
heart, and body—had to step away from us. I pray that our paths will cross
again, that he will find his way home. I pray that some news of him will come to
us, either calming our fears or setting us into action to recover him.
But I can be patient and convince myself of the best. For to brood upon my fears
for him, I am defeating the entire purpose of my own life.
That I will not do.
There is too much beauty.
There are too many monsters and too many rogues.
There is too much fun.
—Drizzt Do'Urden


Chapter 1
BACK TO BACK

is long white hair rolled down Catti-brie's shoulder, tickling the front of her
bare arm, and her own thick auburn hair cascaded down Drizzt's arm and chest.
The two sat back to back on the banks of Maer Dualdon, the largest lake in
Icewind Dale, staring up at the hazy summer sky. Lazy white clouds drifted
slowly overhead, their white fluffy lines sometimes cut in sharp contrast as one
of many huge schinlook vultures coasted underneath. It was the clouds, not the
many birds that were out this day, that held the attention of the couple.
“A knucklehead trout on the gaff,” Catti-brie said of one unusual cloud
formation, a curving oblong before a trailing, thin line of white.
“How do you see that?” the dark elf protested with a laugh.
Catti-brie turned her head to regard her black-skinned, violet-eyed companion.
“How do ye' not?” she asked. “It's as plain as the white line o' yer own
eyebrows.”
Drizzt laughed again, but not so much at what the woman was saying, but rather,
at how she was saying it. She was living with Bruenor's clan again in the
dwarven mines just outside of Ten-Towns, and the mannerisms and accent of the