Charon's claw

ARTIFACTS

Drizzt winced and reflexively pulled away. He hadn’t been expecting Dahlia’s touch, particularly not on his wounded shoulder. Stripped to the waist, he sat on a stool in a room at the inn in Neverwinter. Outside Drizzt’s window, the sounds of battle could still be heard, though intermittently. The few remaining Shadovar in the city had been cornered.

“It is a salve to clean the wound,” the elf explained. Perturbed by his inattentiveness, Dahlia grabbed Drizzt’s arm none too gently and straightened him where he sat.

That had to hurt, she knew, but the drow didn’t flinch. She braced his shoulder then, keeping it still, and moved his arm out to the side and back, separating the wound, opening it wide.

Still Drizzt didn’t blink. He sat staring at the onyx figurine set on the table before him, as if it were his long-lost lover. A combination of disgust and anger filled Dahlia’s thoughts.

“It’s just an artifact,” she muttered. She wore her hair in the bob now, her braid and the warrior woad were gone. She had become softer for the wounded Drizzt, and all he did was stare at that onyx figurine.

Still, Dahlia couldn’t suppress some degree of sympathy as she examined the wound. Entreri’s sword had slipped under the short sleeve of the drow’s mithral shirt and had penetrated fairly deeply. With the blood now washed away and the arm tilted back, she could see right through the layers of flesh to the torn muscles within.

Dahlia shook her head. “That you could even lift your weapon again after this cut is remarkable,” she said.

“He betrayed us,” Drizzt said without turning to look at her.

“I told you to kill him in the forest or to send him away at least,” Dahlia snapped back, more angrily than was called for, certainly.

“And in the end, he saved us,” Drizzt said.

“I wounded Alegni,” she said. “And I took his mighty sword. Even without Artemis Entreri on that bridge, Herzgo Alegni would have died.”

Drizzt turned to look at Dahlia, and his expression, so full of sarcasm, made the elf want to thrust a finger into his open wound, just to bring him to his knees.

Instead she roughly applied the salve-covered cloth, pressing it tight. When Drizzt didn’t wince, Dahlia pressed it more tightly, and finally, one lavender eye did narrow in pain.

“The priests will be in presently,” Dahlia said, trying to cover her rough handling as a pragmatic matter.

Drizzt wore his stoic expression again. “Where is Entreri?”

“In the other room with that red-haired whore,” Dahlia said. The drow tilted his head and his expression turned sly, if somewhat annoyed.

Her animosity toward this citizen, Arunika, was uncalled for, she knew. And yet, there it was, hanging in the air between them and worn clearly on her unblemished face.

She tied off the bandage and let go of Drizzt’s arm, then reached for the onyx figurine.

He caught her by the wrist.

“Leave it.”

Dahlia pulled back, but Drizzt would not let go.

“Leave it,” he repeated, and then he released her.

“I was only trying to learn if I might sense the cat,” she said.

“I will sense the return of Guenhwyvar before any others,” Drizzt assured her, and he pulled the figurine in closer to him.

Dahlia heaved a great sigh and turned her attention to the other artifact in the room, the red-bladed sword standing against the wall.

“Is it a mighty weapon?” she asked, moving toward it.

“Don’t touch it.”

Dahlia stopped short and swung around to face the drow, cocking her head.

“So you command?” she asked.

“So I warn,” Drizzt corrected.

“I’m no novice to sentient weapons,” said the wielder of Kozah’s Needle.

“Charon’s Claw is different.”

“You carried it from the river,” said Dahlia. “Did it steal your soul in that journey, or merely your humor?”

That brought a smile to the drow’s face, albeit a small and brief one.

Dahlia walked right beside the weapon, and even dared to touch the counterweight ball at the base of the pommel with one finger.

“Do you think it still controls him? Entreri?” she asked, purposely acting quite pleased by that possibility.

“I think that anyone who lifts that blade will be consumed by it.”

“Unless they are strong enough, like Drizzt Do’Urden,” Dahlia added.

The drow half-nodded and half-shrugged. “And even one strong enough not to be so consumed would invoke the wrath of Entreri.”

“The sword controls him.”

“Only if the wielder of the sword knows how to make the sword control him,” Drizzt warned. “If not, one who tries would likely be dead long before she learned how to make Entreri her puppet.”

Dahlia laughed as if Drizzt’s reasoning were absurd, and most especially at his use of the female pronoun in his warning.

But she did move away from the sword.

A loud rap turned them both in time to see the door swing open and a dirty female dwarf march in.

“Amber Gristle O’Maul, o’ the Adbar O’Mauls,” she said with a bow.

“So you have told us every time you enter,” Dahlia replied dryly.

“Good for ye to hear,” the dwarf answered with a laugh. “Folks know o’ Drizzt Do’Urden, and having me name tied to that one’s good for me own reputation, haha!” She grinned widely in response to Drizzt’s widening smile.

The drow’s smile didn’t hold, though. “How does she fare?” he asked, and both Dahlia and the dwarf knew of whom he was speaking: the woman who had been dragged from the sewers on a litter.

“Better!” Ambergris declared with a toothy grin. “Didn’t think it when first I seen her, still covered in sewer muck and dirty wounds, but she’s to live, don’t ye doubt!”

Drizzt nodded, with obvious relief.

“Got me a platter o’ healin’ spells for yer wound this day, ranger,” Ambergris said with an exaggerated wink. “We’ll get ye on the road soon enough, where’er that road’s to be!”

“I have no wounds, you fool,” Entreri said to the red-haired woman who held a steaming mug of some medicinal tea or other herbal remedy.

“You staggered from the bridge,” Arunika replied. “Herzgo Alegni wounded you greatly with that foul blade of his.”

She presented the mug near to the man and he tried to push it away.

But he might as well have been trying to shove a stone building aside, for Arunika’s arm did not budge in the least.

“Drink it,” she ordered. “Do not act like a child. There is much still to be done.”

“I owe this city nothing.”

“Neverwinter owes you, and we know it,” Arunika replied. “That is why I am here with medicinal tea. That is why the healers come to tend to your friends, and to you, if necessary.”

“Unnecessary.”

The red-haired woman nodded, and nodded again when the stubborn man at last took the mug and began to drink.

“Tell me of your story, Barrabus the Gray,” she prompted. “Truly I was surprised to see you betray Alegni-I had thought you his squire.”

Entreri’s face grew tight.

“His champion, then, if that description less wounds your foolish pride,” Arunika said with a laugh. “But do tell me of your travels and how you became such a champion of a Netherese lord, for you are no shade, though your skin is a shade too gray for your human heritage.”

“Tell you?” Entreri echoed with a laugh. “You bring me tea and think yourself my ally? Did I ask for such allegiance?”

“The best allies are often unexpected and uninvited.”

Entreri considered those words in light of the two companions he found beside him on the bridge against Herzgo Alegni, and he chuckled yet again.

“I need no allies, woman,” he said. “Alegni is gone and I am free for the first time in a long, long while.”

“He was your ally,” the woman protested.

Entreri glared at her.

“What, then?” she asked. “I would know.”

Artemis Entreri suddenly felt a compulsion to tell her all about his relationship with Herzgo Alegni. He almost started, but then recoiled, feeling much as he had on those many occasions when Charon’s Claw had invaded his thoughts.

He looked at Arunika with more scrutiny, as he might consider a sorceress.

“Herzgo Alegni swept into Neverwinter through your actions,” Arunika quickly replied. “He would never have found such a dominion here in the city had not Barrabus the Gray become a hero to the folk.” The timbre of her voice changed abruptly, evoking sympathy and making Entreri feel foolish for his suspicion. “And now Alegni is no more, and I’m tending your wounds at the behest of the leaders of the city,” Arunika went on. “I would be remiss, and betraying my duties to my fellow citizens if I did not ask-and why should we not know?”

“He was my slaver and nothing less,” Entreri replied before he even realized that he was speaking the words. He looked curiously at Arunika, but just for a moment, before concluding that she was a trustworthy and sympathetic listener. “And now he is gone. For most of my life, my ally was me and me alone. I prefer that, and need no alliance with you or anyone else in this town.”

He tried to sound defiant, but really didn’t.

“Then not an ally,” Arunika said. She moved her face before Entreri’s and said in a suggestive tone, “A friend.”

“I need no friends.”

Arunika smiled and moved even closer.

“What do you need, Barrabus the Gray?”

Artemis Entreri wanted to assert that Barrabus the Gray was not his name. He wanted to tell Arunika again that he didn’t need her. He wanted to move away even as she moved forward.

He wanted to do a lot of things.

Drizzt flexed his arm and stretched it upward as he moved to Entreri’s door. The healing salve and the visit by the cleric had helped, no doubt.

Physically, at least.

In his good hand, the drow still held the onyx figurine, and he still called out silently for his friend who would not answer.

Entreri’s door opened before the drow reached it, and the red-haired woman called Arunika walked out. She paused and flashed a disarming smile at Drizzt, then threw a wink at Dahlia, who stood behind him.

Drizzt caught Dahlia’s gaze with a questioning stare.

“She is a strange one,” Dahlia remarked.

“One of the leaders of Neverwinter, I believe.”

Dahlia shrugged as if it did not matter and pushed past Drizzt and into Entreri’s room.

The assassin stood at the room’s small bar, stripped to the waist and looking quite exhausted as he poured some fine brandy into a small glass. This had been Alegni’s room during his brief tenure as Neverwinter’s self-appointed lord, and the tiefling warlord had decorated it and stocked it quite well.

Dahlia entered the room before Drizzt, and the drow was given pause by her sudden stop. She turned and looked back over her shoulder at the receding Arunika, then, barely muting her scowl, turned back on Entreri.

Drizzt winced.

“You are… healed?” the elf woman asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Ready for the road,” Entreri answered, and he downed the brandy in one swig.

Drizzt moved to the bar and took a seat. Entreri poured himself another drink and slid the bottle Drizzt’s way, staring at the drow intently.

That surprised Drizzt for just a moment, before he realized that Entreri wasn’t staring at him, but at the great sword strapped diagonally across his back, in a harness given him by a leatherworker of Neverwinter.

Drizzt blocked the sliding bottle and left it sitting idle, but Dahlia was fast to the stool beside him, and quickly grabbed the brandy and another glass.

“Ready for the road?” she echoed. “And what road does Artemis Entreri desire?”

Entreri took a sip of his drink and nodded his chin toward the sword.

“Gauntlgrym?” Dahlia asked.

“Of course.”

“You will be free?”

“I will be dead, I am sure,” Entreri said. “So, yes.”

Dahlia shook her head. “How can you know?”

“I am tied to the sword,” Entreri answered. “My longevity is due to the sword- it alone has kept me in a state of perpetual youth… or middle age, perhaps. I have known this for a long, long while.”

“And still you would destroy it?” Dahlia said.

“I will find no peace until Charon’s Claw is no more.”

“You will be dead!”

“Better that than enslaved,” Entreri said. “It is long past time for me to be dead.” He looked past Dahlia to Drizzt and smiled wickedly. “You would agree, of course.”

Drizzt didn’t respond in any way. He did not know whether he preferred such an outcome or not. Entreri was his tie to a past much missed. Just having Entreri around brought him a strange sense of peace, as if his friends were out there, waiting for him to return home.

But was that enough? He knew Entreri’s deadly history, and expected that this killer’s reputation would remain well-earned going forward.

It was the same dilemma Drizzt had faced with this particular man in the past, such as when they had walked out of the Underdark side by side. On more than one occasion, Drizzt could have killed Entreri, and never had he been confident that staying his blade had been the correct choice. What about Entreri’s victims, if there were such, after Drizzt’s acts of mercy, after all? Would they appreciate Drizzt’s eternal optimism, and his rather foolish hopes for redemption?

“We do not know that the primordial will destroy it,” Dahlia warned.

“At the least, we know that it will be someplace where no one can retrieve it,” Drizzt said.

“Sentient weapons have a way of being found, and wielded,” said Dahlia.

“The primordial will destroy it,” Entreri replied with conviction. “I sense the sword’s fear.”

“Then we go, straightaway,” Drizzt said.

“Are you so interested in killing this man, then?” Dahlia accused, turning sharply on Drizzt.

The drow leaned back, caught off guard by the elf woman’s intensity.

“I am,” Entreri interjected, and both turned to regard him.

Entreri shrugged and drained his glass, then moved to retrieve the bottle.

“There is a time for all of us to die,” Drizzt said, matter-of-factly, callously, even. “Sometimes, perhaps, past time.”

“Your concern is touching,” Entreri remarked.

“It is, of course, your choice to make,” Drizzt offered. He tried to keep the coldness out of his tone, but he couldn’t. Drizzt silently berated himself. He was angry and agitated about Guenhwyvar’s absence.

And there was more to it than that, Drizzt knew deep in his heart, whenever he glanced at Dahlia, to find her staring at Entreri.

He felt irrelevant, like there was some bond between these two greater than his own bond with Dahlia.

And without Guenhwyvar, what did he have left other than his companionship with Dahlia? Drizzt took a deep breath.

Entreri suddenly threw his glass against a wall across the room. The assassin scooped up the brandy bottle and took a long swallow.

As surprising as that was, Drizzt surprised the others and himself even more when he stepped back from them and drew Charon’s Claw from off his back.

The powerful sword bit at him immediately, releasing energy into his hands. The first concentrated attacks came at the core of the drow, at his heart and soul, as Charon’s Claw tried to utterly obliterate him-and it had the power to do that to most who tried to wield it, Drizzt understood without the slightest bit of doubt.

But Drizzt Do’Urden was not so easily dominated or destroyed. Nor was he inexperienced in the ways of sentient weapons. The sword Khazid’hea, the famed Cutter, had once similarly attacked him, though not nearly as powerfully as this particular blade, he had to admit. And in the drow academy for warriors, MeleeMagthere, students spent many tendays studying the powers of sentient weapons and pitting their wills against dominating magical implements.

The drow doubled down on his own concentration then and fought back, demanding fealty from the blade.

The blade fought back.

Gradually, Drizzt altered his counterattack, promising the sword a glorious joining. He would wield it well.

Charon’s Claw teased him with power. It directed Drizzt’s thoughts to Artemis Entreri, who was now, the sword assured him, his slave.

And indeed, when Entreri protested the drawn blade and took a step toward Drizzt, Charon’s Claw laid him low.

Dahlia cried out and broke Kozah’s Needle into her flails, putting them into motion immediately.

But Drizzt held up his left hand and motioned her to patience. He told the sword to free Entreri, and when it did not, he demanded that the painful vibrations cease.

“Now!” he ordered aloud.

Artemis Entreri staggered to the side and gradually straightened. He walked straight back from Drizzt, never taking his eyes from the drow, never blinking, though the pain had obviously ceased.

He believed that this was a betrayal, Drizzt saw clearly from his angry expression. “Free him,” Drizzt told the sword.

Charon’s Claw went at the drow’s soul again, even more ferociously, and Drizzt groaned and staggered once more. Images and thoughts of obliteration, of nothingness, filled his mind, as Charon’s Claw tried to use fear to weaken his resolve.

Drizzt had lived too long, had been through too much, to give in to such despair.

He won the fight, but only to a draw. Charon’s Claw would not release Artemis Entreri, and there was no way Drizzt would ever get through that angry wall. Perhaps Drizzt could prevent the sword from inflicting, or at least from sustaining, any torture upon the man, but he could make no progress past that point.

He turned to the sword’s own tactics.

Now the drow’s thoughts were back in Gauntlgrym, at the pit of the primordial. Entreri had said that he could sense the sword’s fear at such a prospect.

Drizzt saw it, too, felt it keenly.

He redoubled his concentration, picturing the sword dropping down, down to the waiting fiery maw of the godlike beast.

This was no deception, and despite his desperate struggle, a smile widened on his face. Charon’s Claw was deathly afraid.

Charon’s Claw recognized its doom.

The sword went at him again, wildly.

Drizzt changed the image in his mind to one of Entreri wielding Charon’s Claw once more, presenting the blade with a clear choice: the fire or Entreri.

Charon’s Claw calmed immediately.

Drizzt slid it away into its scabbard. He shook his head and looked back at his companions, and nearly fell to his knees from sudden weakness, thoroughly drained by the battle.

“Are you mad?” Entreri growled at him.

“Why would you do such a thing?” Dahlia added.

“The sword fears our course,” Drizzt explained, and he cast a sly look at the assassin as he finished, “It would prefer your hand once more above a journey to the mouth of the primordial.”

“You can control it,” Dahlia said breathlessly.

Entreri never looked at her, his gaze fixed on Drizzt.

“As I said, the choice is yours,” the drow said.

“You would trust me beside you with that blade in hand?” Entreri asked.

“No,” Drizzt said, even as Dahlia started to say yes.

Entreri stared at the drow for a long, long while. “You wield it,” he said at length.

“I cannot.”

“Because you know it will turn on you,” Entreri reasoned. “You have not the accompanying glove, and cannot maintain your discipline indefinitely at so high a level. And that sword is relentless, I assure you.”

“Then you cannot wield it, either,” the drow replied.

Entreri started to drink from the brandy bottle, but just laughed helplessly and retrieved another glass from the bar, pouring himself a modest amount. He set the bottle down, held his glass aloft, and said, “To Gauntlgrym.”

Drizzt nodded grimly.

Dahlia’s chortle sounded more like a gasp.

They heard their names called out ahead of them as they moved to the common hallway on the inn’s second floor, and from there to the stairs, and before the trio ever reached the exit, the cheering on the street outside began to mount.

“Hailed as heroes,” Dahlia remarked.

“They are truly pathetic,” Entreri was fast to respond.

Drizzt studied the man, looking for a clue that perhaps he was enjoying this notoriety more than he would let on. But no, there was nothing to indicate any such thing, and when Drizzt considered Entreri in light of the man he had once known, he wasn’t really surprised.

Neither Drizzt nor the assassin cared much for such accolades, but for very different reasons. Drizzt didn’t care because he understood that the community was stronger than the individual. In that same vein, he accepted the cheers in the knowledge that they would do the community well.

Entreri, though, didn’t care because Entreri didn’t care-about applause or sneering, or anything else regarding his place in the world and the views of those around him. He simply didn’t care, and so the enthusiasm with which they were greeted when they exited the inn brought a scowl to Entreri’s face, one Drizzt knew to be sincere.

Dahlia, though, seemed quite pleased.

Drizzt didn’t know what to make of that. She had just exacted revenge-her most desperately wanted revenge-upon a tiefling who had apparently haunted her for most of her young life. Drizzt hardly understood the visceral level of hatred he had seen this elf woman exhibit, but truly that battle had meant quite a bit to her, and on a very deep and primal level. Even her obvious fears for Entreri’s impending demise now seemed to wash away as she basked in the excitement of the crowd.

And indeed, the citizens of Neverwinter exuded excitement and joy at this time. Nearly the entire population of the settlers had gathered along the streets outside the inn, and among their front lines stood Genevieve and the man who had helped her drag their wounded companion from the sewers.

That sight gave Drizzt profound peace. Perhaps the death of Alegni and the retreat of the Shadovar was a bigger gain for the future of Neverwinter, but personalizing such a victory to the level of the three saved aboleth slaves settled well on the shoulders of Drizzt Do’Urden.

Weapons and fists lifted into the air defiantly, a cry of freedom regained. When Drizzt considered the recent history of this settlement, he came to understand and appreciate the exuberance.

He had come through Neverwinter beside Bruenor not so long ago, before the revelation of the Thayan and Netherese presence even, and had found the citizens besieged by the strange, shriveled zombie victims of the cataclysmic volcano. They hadn’t known the source of the threat, of the Dread Ring then, and the nefarious powers behind the unsettling and dangerous events.

But now it had played out and the Thayans were in disarray, perhaps even gone from the region. And Alegni and his Netherese had been driven from the city, the beast beheaded.

Had the prospects for a new Neverwinter, post-apocalypse, ever looked any brighter?

Perhaps they were laying that victory too much onto the shoulders of Drizzt and his two companions, the drow thought, for it was the work of these many folk that had really won the day. Drizzt and his companions had defeated Alegni and had kept that twisted necromancer at bay, but the bulk of the fighting had been done, and won, by the people now cheering. When Drizzt considered his own role in it all, mostly trying to simply stay alive against a possessed Artemis Entreri, it seemed laughable to him that he would be viewed on such a figurative pedestal.

But to no harm, any of it, the drow knew from decades of similar experience. He had seen this type of celebration in Ten-Towns, surely, and in Mithral Hall, and across the lands. It was a collective expression of relief and victory, and whatever symbols-Drizzt and his two companions, in this instance-were purely irrelevant to that needed emotional release. He looked directly at Genevieve and nodded, and her beaming smile back at him warmed him indeed.

“Well met again, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Jelvus Grinch said, stepping out ahead of the crowd and moving right before the trio. “I trust your dwarf companion is well.”

Drizzt didn’t wince at the reference to Bruenor, whom Jelvus Grinch had met briefly under an assumed name. For a moment, his reaction surprised him, and when he thought about it, his reaction pleased him. He missed Bruenor sorely, but he was indeed at peace about the dwarf.

He merely nodded to Jelvus Grinch, not wishing to go into detail over something the man didn’t really care about anyway.

“Once before, I asked you to stay with us,” Jelvus Grinch said. “Perhaps now you understand how great your value to Neverwinter might prove…”

“We’re leaving,” Artemis Entreri coldly interrupted.

Jelvus Grinch fell back and looked at the man curiously.

“Now,” Entreri added.

“We don’t know how far the Shadovar have retreated,” Jelvus Grinch pleaded. “Many went through the gates their wizards enacted-and perhaps they can come back through those same gates!”

“Then you should remain vigilant,” Entreri replied. “Or leave.”

“You know more about them than we do,” Jelvus Grinch shot back, now with a hint of anger in his tone.

“I know nothing of them or of the dark place they call home,” Entreri spat back at him before he could gain any momentum. “They’re gone, Alegni is dead. That’s all I care about.”

“And you have his sword,” Jelvus Grinch said, glancing over at the weapon strapped diagonally across Drizzt’s thin back.

Artemis Entreri laughed, a condescending and mocking tone clearly telling the Neverwinter man that he couldn’t begin to understand the implications of his last words.

“We must go,” Drizzt interjected calmly. “We have urgent business that cannot wait. Keep your guard strong, though I doubt the Netherese will return anytime soon. From what I have seen, they are obedient to strong leaders, and with Alegni gone, would any other Netherese lord deem to replace him in a place so dangerous and hostile as Neverwinter?”

“We cannot know,” Jelvus Grinch said.

Drizzt dropped a hand on the man’s strong shoulder. “Hold your faith in your fellow citizens,” Drizzt advised. “The region is full of dangers, as you knew when first you returned.”

“And you’ll remain?” the man asked hopefully.

“Not too far for now, I expect,” Drizzt assured him.

“Then don’t remain a stranger to the folk of Neverwinter, I beg. You, all three, are ever welcome here.”

A great cheer arose behind him, affirming the sentiment.

The gathering followed the trio across the city, across the winged wyvern bridge.

“We will name it again the Walk of Barrabus!” Jelvus Grinch proclaimed, and the cheering renewed.

“Barrabus is dead,” Artemis Entreri replied, cutting Grinch’s grin off short. “I killed him. Don’t remind me of him with your foolish names.”

It sounded as a clear threat to everyone who heard it, and Entreri followed it by staring hard at Jelvus Grinch, by silently letting the man know that if he named the bridge as he’d just promised, Entreri really would come back and kill him.

Drizzt noted it all. He knew that look-frozen, utterly uncaring, uncompromisingly removed from sympathy-from a century before, and the poignant reminder of the truth of Artemis Entreri slapped the drow’s romantic nostalgia quite decidedly, and shook him profoundly in his current time and place.

Drizzt looked to Jelvus Grinch to view his reaction, and the way the blood drained from the strong man’s face revealed that Artemis Entreri had lost none of his charm.

The First Citizen of Neverwinter cleared his throat several times before mustering the courage to resume speaking, this time to Drizzt. “Have you found better fortune with your panther?”

Drizzt shook his head.

“I suggest you speak to Arunika,” said Jelvus Grinch. “She is investigating this, at my insistence. The woman is quite wise in the ways of magic, and knows the workings of the various planes.”

Drizzt glanced at his companions, who offered no obvious opinion.

“Where do I find her?” he asked.

“We’re ready for the road,” Artemis Entreri remarked.

“We can wait,” Dahlia said.

“No, we can’t,” said Entreri. “If you wish to go and find the red-haired woman, then do so, but we’ll be on our way up the northern road. I trust you’ll ride hard to find us.”

Drizzt turned to Jelvus Grinch, who indicated the inn behind him. “Arunika has been given a room there, that she could better tend to your companion.”

The drow turned and regarded Entreri and Dahlia one last time, to see Entreri’s harsh expression and obvious agitation at the thought of any delays, and conversely, Dahlia’s almost frantically-darting eyes, as if looking for some way to forestall this expedition. Drizzt had never expected anything quite like that from Dahlia, whether she wore her hard-visage braid and woad, or the softer image she now painted upon her pretty face.

Guenhwyvar’s plight was more important, and he rushed into the inn. He had barely said the name “Arunika,” before the innkeeper directed him to a room down the first floor hallway.

Arunika opened the door before he had even knocked, and he understood the reception when he entered, for her room looked out on the gathering in the street and the window was open. Even as Drizzt noted that, Arunika moved over and closed it.

“You believe that throwing the weapon into the mouth of the primordial will destroy it,” she said.

“I came to speak of Guenhwyvar.”

“That, too,” the red-haired woman agreed.

Drizzt found himself quite at ease as he regarded her disarming smile… truly disarming, with freckled dimples and a sweetness that went beyond all reason.

He determinedly shook that curious, and curiously stray, thought away.

“I agree with your assessment of the sword,” Arunika said, and she eased back into a soft cushioned couch, casually tossing her long and soft red hair from in front of her face.

“And our course?”

“Artemis Entreri thinks that destroying the blade will destroy him.”

“He does not fear…” Drizzt started to say, but he stopped short and stared hard at Arunika. How had she come to know Entreri’s real name? To everyone else in the city, save himself and Dahlia, the man was still known as Barrabus the Gray, and as far as he knew, none of them had uttered any hints of the assassin’s real identity.

“Oh, he fears it, of course,” Arunika replied, apparently missing the drow’s shocked response-or ignoring it. “He just has too much hatred within him to admit it. Everyone fears death, ranger. Everyone.”

“Then perhaps some simply fear living more.”

Arunika shrugged as if it did not matter. “If you deign to destroy Charon’s Claw, your best path is to the primordial, I agree,” she went on. “Oh, there are better ways-surer ways… the breath of an ancient white dragon comes to mind-but I expect that time is not your ally. Charon’s Claw is a Netherese blade, and those unbearable despots will go to such lengths to protect and retrieve their artifacts that would impress any githyanki zealot.”

Drizzt wasn’t quite sure of the analogy. He had heard of the githyanki. They were sometimes seen in Menzoberranzan and the few he had viewed did seem to possess unduly decorated armor and weapons. The reference seemed clear enough, though.

“Since I know of no cooperative ancient white dragons in the area, my advice to you would be the primordial in Gauntlgrym.”

“You seem to know quite a bit of quite a bit,” Drizzt replied. “Charon’s Claw? Gauntlgrym? Even the assassin’s real name. I expect that little of that information is general throughout Neverwinter.”

“I survive by being smarter than those around me,” Arunika replied.

“And you have ways of seeing things others cannot discern, no doubt.”

“No doubt,” the woman replied, and she patted the cushion beside her on the couch.

Drizzt grabbed a wooden chair instead, and set it before her, drawing a cute- too cute-little laugh from Arunika as he did.

“Does my insight, or perhaps, my other-sight, disappoint you?” she asked coyly.

Drizzt considered that for a moment, and then answered, “Not if it aids me.”

“Your beloved Guenhwyvar,” Arunika stated. “May I have the figurine?”

Before he even considered the movement, Drizzt produced the onyx statuette and reached it out toward Arunika, hesitating only when she similarly stretched to retrieve it from him. Few had held this figurine, few would the drow trust to ever touch it, let alone take it from his grasp. Yet here he was, giving it to a curiously knowledgeable woman he hardly knew! His grip instinctively tightened.

“If you wish my advice and insight, it would be better for you to allow me to study it properly,” the woman remarked, and Drizzt perked up as if coming out of a slumber and handed Guenhwyvar over.

“It will take some time for me to properly inspect the aura around the magical statue,” Arunika explained, rolling it over in her hands before her sparkling, pretty eyes.

Incredibly pretty, Drizzt thought, and it wasn’t until her words registered that he was able to get that thought out of his mind.

“I have little time,” he said. “My friends have already departed Neverwinter, likely, and I will not leave without Guenhwyvar.”

“Without the statue, you mean,” Arunika corrected, and the reality of that stung Drizzt profoundly.

“You’re welcome to stay and watch,” the woman said. She rose from the couch and moved to a desk at the side of the room, pulling open the largest, lowest drawer and producing a satchel. She placed it on the table and rummaged through it, bringing forth assorted candles and powders, a silver bowl, a phial of clear liquid, and a silvery scroll tube.

Drizzt watched from across the room and said not another word as Arunika set up her scrying table. She chanted under her breath as she lit the candles, spacing them appropriately around the bowl, then began a different incantation as she poured the liquid into the bowl, splashing it over the onyx figurine in the process.

She set her hands on the table, palms up, tilted her head back, and let her eyes roll up as she began to chant louder and more insistently.

It went on for a long, long while, and Drizzt constantly glanced out the window to try to gauge the passing hours. He knew that Dahlia and Entreri couldn’t go into Gauntlgrym without him-he had the sword, after all! But the thought of them out on the road alone bit at his sensibilities in no good way.

The sun was low in the sky when Arunika abruptly stood up from her seat and rubbed her eyes. Casually, she tossed the onyx figurine back to Drizzt.

“What do you know?” he asked, not liking that almost dismissive toss, or the resigned look on the woman’s face.

“I sense no connection to the creature you call Guenhwyvar,” Arunika admitted.

“What does that mean?” Drizzt asked, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice, though a primal scream was surely bubbling within him.

The red-haired woman shrugged.

“That the magic has been dispelled?” Drizzt demanded. “Or that the panth-or that Guenhwyvar has been destroyed? Is that even possible?”

“Of course,” Arunika said, and Drizzt swallowed hard.

“She is the astral essence of the panther, akin to a goddess,” Drizzt protested.

“Even gods can be destroyed, Drizzt Do’Urden. Though we do not know that such is the case. Somehow, some way, the connection between the panther and the statuette has been severed-understand that they are not the same thing! Artemis Entreri carries the token of the nightmare, indeed you wear one of a unicorn, but these are magical creations affixed to magical implements. Your whistle is your steed. To destroy the whistle would be to obliterate the magical construct you call Andahar. The same is true of Entreri’s mount. These are not life forms, but enchantments cleverly disguised as such. Without the disguise, you could ride your whistle across the leagues, though I doubt your sensibilities would find much comfort in that, to say nothing of your arse.”

Drizzt could hardly keep up with her, given the enormity of the woman’s proclamation regarding Guenhwyvar. His blank stare brought Arunika over to him, where she dropped a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“Guenhwyvar is different from your whistle,” she explained. “Different from Entreri’s hell steed. Guenhwyvar is a living, breathing creature of another dimension, an essence not captured by the statuette, but one called by the statuette. It is an old enchantment-one from the days of the great mythals, I expect! — and one not easily replicated by any living mage, not even Elminster himself.”

“You think her dead,” Drizzt remarked.

Arunika shrugged and patted his shoulder again. “I think we cannot know. What we, what I, know, is that there is no connection I can sense between your statuette and that creature, Guenhwyvar. Your figurine still radiates magic-that much I can easily see, but it is a beacon without a viewer.”

Drizzt swallowed hard and slowly shook his head, not wanting to hear it.

“I’m sorry, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Arunika said, and she went up to her tip-toes and kissed Drizzt on the cheek.

He pulled back. “Keep looking!” He thought back to a fateful day in Mithral Hall, so long ago, when he had grabbed Jarlaxle by the collar and similarly implored him, only on that occasion, to find Catti-brie and Regis.

Arunika just fixed him with that sympathetic, calming smile and nodded.

Drizzt stumbled out of the room and the inn and back onto the street, where only a few folks milled around, all looking his way curiously.

“He’s been to the red-headed one’s bed,” one woman snickered to her friend as they hustled by, clearly mistaking the drow’s wobbly gait.

“Guenhwyvar,” he whispered, rolling the onyx statue over in his hand. A burst of rage came over him. He blew into his silver whistle, and leaped upon Andahar’s strong back as the unicorn thundered up to join him, then urged the mighty steed away at a full gallop.

He needed the exertion; he sought exhaustion. Only in action could he find solace at that dark moment.

He thundered out of Neverwinter’s main gate, Andahar’s hooves churning the northern road, the wind bringing moistness to the drow’s lavender eyes.

Or maybe it wasn’t the wind.

“I thought that I hated Alegni,” Entreri said, standing across the small cooking fire from Dahlia. Prudence dictated that they should have no such firelight out in the unsettled wilds of Neverwinter Wood, but these two didn’t often listen to such moderate voices; or perhaps it was that very voice that compelled the two troubled souls to light such a beacon, inviting danger and battle.

“You did not?” the elf sarcastically replied.

Entreri laughed. “Of course I did, with all of my heart, so I believed-until I measure my hatred of him to your own.”

“Perhaps your heart is not as big as mine.”

“Perhaps my heart is not as dark as yours.” The assassin managed a little grin as he uttered the quip, expecting a rejoinder from the quick-witted woman. To his surprise, though, Dahlia simply looked down at the fire and stirred it a bit with a stick she had retrieved. She poked and prodded at the embers, drawing bursts of small flames which made her eyes sparkle in their dancing and darting reflections.

There was pain in Dahlia’s pretty eyes, along with a simmering anger-no, something more than anger, like the purest outrage crystallized into a sharp and stabbing point of light.

Artemis Entreri recognized it, had felt the same, and when he, too, was very young.

“You presume much,” Dahlia said. “We went to kill Alegni, and so we did, and you attacked him no less than I.”

This, too, this avoidance, Entreri knew well.

“I had no choice. I had no escape from the man,” he said. “He carried the sword and the sword owned me. My choice was to fight-”

“To die,” Dahlia interrupted.

“Preferable to what came before.”

The woman looked up, her eyes meeting his, but only for a heartbeat before she turned again to the safety of the distracting firelight.

“This was the easier, and the safer path,” Entreri said. “A prisoner attempts to break free, or he accepts his servitude. But not so for you. Herzgo Alegni had no hold over Dahlia, yet you drove us there, to that bridge and to that fight.”

“I pay back my debts.”

“Indeed, and what a great debt this must have been, yes?”

She glanced at him again, but this time, not in shared recognition, but with a warning scowl. And again, she returned her gaze to the firelight.

“And when all seemed lost, Alegni’s army closing in around us, Drizzt downed by my own sword, and myself helpless beneath Alegni’s blade, Dahlia was free.”

She did look up, then, and stared at him hard.

“Free to fly away.”

“What friend would I be…?” she started to ask, but Entreri’s quiet snicker mocked her.

“I know you better than that,” he declared.

“You know nothing,” she said, but without conviction, for as she stared at Entreri and he at her, the connection between them could not escape either.

“You did not fly back onto the bridge out of loyalty, but out of something so deep within you and so dark inside that you could not leave. I said I would die before returning to my servitude, but Dahlia was no less captured than I. I by a sword, and you by…”

Dahlia looked away abruptly, her gaze to the fire, where she kicked at it to send a rush of embers into the air, obviously needing the distraction, the change of subject, anything.

“A memory,” Artemis Entreri finished, and Dahlia’s shoulders slumped so profoundly that she seemed as if she would simply topple over into the fire.

And despite himself, despite everything he had spent nearly a century and a half perfecting, Artemis Entreri went to her, right beside her, and put his arm around her to hold her steady. Her tears streamed down her face and dropped to the ground below, but he did not wipe them away.

She tensed, and inhaled deeply to steady herself. As she stood straight once more, Entreri took a step to the side. He looked at the fire, giving her this moment of privacy as she passed through the darkness.

“You hated him more than I ever could,” Entreri admitted.

“He’s dead,” Dahlia stated flatly.

“And a pity that he fell through the dimensions as he breathed his last,” said Entreri. “I would have tied his corpse to my nightmare and dragged it through the streets of Neverwinter until the skin fell from his broken bones.”

He felt Dahlia looking at him, though he did not return the stare.

“For me?” she asked.

“For both of us,” he replied. Given what he knew now about Dahlia, such an act might have brought him a deeper peace from a more profound scar-with Herzgo Alegni substituting for one who betrayed him so many decades before.

Dahlia managed a little chuckle then, and said, “I would have liked watching that.”

In the brush not so far away, Drizzt Do’Urden couldn’t make out many of the words the two exchanged. He had dismounted and dismissed Andahar far back, when first he had spotted the fire. Somehow, he knew that it would be the camp of Dahlia and Entreri.

And still, Drizzt had not openly approached. He tried to tell himself that he wasn’t sneaking up on them.

He had watched their discussion for some time, and could have moved closer without being detected, perhaps close enough to hear their words.

But those words didn’t seem to matter. Drizzt found himself more interested in their movements, particularly the way they looked at each other, and more poignantly, how they looked away from each other.

There was nothing sexual between them, no hint that Entreri had made a cuckold of him or anything of the sort.

Strangely, Drizzt had a feeling that such a crude revelation might have stung less profoundly.

For he knew now what he had long suspected: Artemis Entreri knew something of Dahlia, understood something of Dahlia, which he did not and could not. Some cord wound between them. In her tears and in her quiet chuckle, Dahlia had shared more with Artemis Entreri then she had with Drizzt in all their nights of lovemaking.

How could it be that this quiet conversation about a campfire in the nighttime forest felt more intimate than making love?

It made no sense.

But there it was before him.