Charon's claw

CAUGHT BETWEEN A SHADE AND A DARK PLACE

The tunnel ran smoothly for a long way, then came to a deep drop, but fortunately, the fleeing shade hadn’t bothered to remove the dangling rope that her hunting party had set. Down went the three companions, moving swiftly and silently, trailing the female. Soon enough, the tunnel opened onto a ledge that ran perpendicular, angling down toward the cavern below. The view below was not open to them. A wall of about chest height blocked the edge of the perpendicular walkway. Drizzt and Dahlia both knew they had come to the right place, though, surely recognizing the hanging stalactite towers.

The three crept up to the wall, exiting the tunnel.

“She delivered your message,” Entreri remarked, peering over the edge. Down below, the cavern buzzed with activity. Shades came out from many of the stalagmite mounds, gathering into ranks and battle groups. Some were already moving for the base of the walkway on which the companions stood.

Across the large cavern loomed Gauntlgrym’s wall, the underground pond still and dark before it, except for a pair of small rowboats shuttling a handful of shades toward the beach.

“Be quick,” Drizzt said, and he sprinted off, crouching low and close to the walkway’s outer wall, Entreri and Dahlia close behind.

As they neared the bottom, now with enemy soldiers not far away, Drizzt stopped, looked to Entreri, and nodded. As Drizzt reached for his whistle, the assassin drew out his obsidian figurine.

“How deep is the lake?” Entreri mouthed, and Drizzt could only shrug. He didn’t know, though it was a good question, but what choice did they have?

Again they exchanged looks and nodded. Drizzt blew his call for Andahar as Entreri dropped the statuette to the ground, summoning his nightmare steed. Surprised cries erupted almost immediately. Entreri’s hellish mount came into shape right before him with a burst of flame and smoke, and Andahar materialized in the cavern beyond the walkway, galloping hard for Drizzt. The unicorn skidded to a stop and the drow grabbed the white mane, glistening even in the low lichen light of the large cavern, and pulled himself astride. He turned as he settled, reaching a hand out for Dahlia, but she was already on her way, vaulting nimbly to her seat behind him.

Entreri came by first, thundering out into the cavern, sword waving as he bore down on the nearest Netherese.

“Give me the bow!” Dahlia cried, grabbing at it.

“No!” Drizzt yelled back before he could even consider the response. The vehemence of that reply shocked him and confused him, for it had come unbidden, a sudden reaction to the notion of Dahlia taking Taulmaril-to the notion of Dahlia wielding Catti-brie’s weapon.

Drizzt bent low and urged mighty Andahar on, the unicorn’s hooves cracking hard against the stone. Before them, Shadovar scattered from Entreri, who veered left around a stalagmite mound.

Drizzt went right around the same one, and steered Andahar even farther to the right. Confusion was their ally, he knew, and so better to split the focus of their determined enemies. Both steeds ran on, winding paths around the many mounds, leaping the rails for ore carts whenever they crossed. Drizzt didn’t even draw his blades, letting Dahlia with her long staff prod and swipe at any enemies who ventured, or were caught, too close.

Javelins and arrows reached out at them. Drizzt bent low and kept his course anything but straight. All around him, he heard shades calling out for others to take intercepting angles to cut them off.

Few ever got near to them, though. Their mounts were too swift and too agile, their surprise too complete. One poor shade rushed out in front of Andahar, apparently not even realizing that he was in the unicorn’s path. He got run over, the sure-footed unicorn not slowing or tripping in the least as it trampled him. Even with their distracting zigzagging and enemies scrambling all around, all three made it to the pond in short order, coming in almost side by side.

The dark water hissed in protest as the fiery hooves of Entreri’s nightmare splashed in. Drizzt leaped Andahar high and long, the unicorn splashing down hard some ten strides from the shore and running on.

“How deep is it?” Entreri asked again of his companions, who were now before him.

Dahlia glanced back and shrugged. When she had first come through here, she had utilized magic.

The water quickly rose to the top of Andahar’s legs, slowing the run dramatically; Dahlia tucked her legs up under her to try to keep her high black boots dry. Suddenly their progress seemed so dangerously slow!

“We’ll be swimming,” Dahlia called to Drizzt, leaning in close.

“Then we swim,” he replied.

“They have archers,” Dahlia argued.

“Should I stop, then, so we might-” He ended abruptly, an arrow reaching out at him from the far bank.

Andahar reared and kicked at it, but it slipped through and dug hard into the unicorn’s breast. Had the steed not so reared, Drizzt surely would have taken the bolt.

As they splashed back down, Drizzt tightened his legs around his mount and pulled Taulmaril free from his shoulder.

More arrows reached out at him-to the side, he heard Entreri’s mount shriek, an unsettling, otherworldly howl, and knew that the nightmare had been hit. It would take more than an arrow to bring down that hell steed, of course, but what of its rider?

More arrows came forth, but Drizzt responded with his own magical bolts, launching them out at the nearing bank. He could hardly get a good shot, aiming straight ahead while mounted, but he sprayed off many arrows in succession, trying to at least keep those archers dodging around and unable to take careful aim.

“Come on,” he called to Andahar and at the pond as they slogged through. It wasn’t getting any deeper, at least.

“Boat!” Entreri called from Drizzt’s left, and the assassin fell back a bit as Drizzt turned.

Indeed, the drow saw not one, but two boats full of Shadovar rowing in from the side, angling to intercept. A shade in the prow of the trailing craft held a bow.

But now Drizzt was shooting across his body, and Andahar’s bobbing head was not obstructing him at all.

His first arrow took that archer, lifted him into the air, and dropped him off the back of the boat. Then the drow concentrated on the nearer craft and sent a stream of lightning its way. The three shades on the craft ducked and dodged. One’s head exploded with the impact of a bolt and the other two, apparently having seen enough, jumped into the dark, brackish water.

Drizzt shifted for the second craft, but he paused in curiosity, for behind the boat, what seemed like a wind-whipped silvery spray danced across the top of the water.

But there was no wind in the cavern.

Unable to sort the mystery, the drow focused again on the task at hand, sending an arrow at the remaining manned boat, and some other missiles back toward the shore for good measure. His first shot skipped in low, purposely so, and exploded against the hull, splintering planks.

“Those are fish, not ripples,” he heard Dahlia say behind him, and prompted by that, he turned back to aim for a second shot at the remaining threat.

The shades within the craft had ducked out of sight, though, and splashed frantically at the water threatening to swamp them.

It wasn’t until Drizzt regarded the “wave” of fish again, and considered the sudden screams, that he understood their sudden desperation.

The fish had swept over the pair of shades in the water, leaping all around them and biting at them voraciously. In this light, Drizzt couldn’t make out the changing hue, but he knew from the horrible and desperate sounds that Shadovar blood was fast mixing with the dark water.

Screams came from the second boat, too, as those vicious little fish made their way in through the splinter, the boat’s open wound, that Taulmaril had caused.

“Faster! Oh, faster!” Dahlia begged him, for though most of the fish had stopped to feast, another leaping wave swept their way.

Drizzt held Taulmaril up, bowstring drawn, and motioned to the woman.

“What?”

“Catch it!” the drow implored her.

Dahlia stared at him in puzzlement for just a heartbeat, then held Kozah’s Needle out near the tip of the arrow.

Drizzt let fly and the staff swallowed the lightning energy.

Andahar whinnied loudly, in obvious pain. Beside them, Entreri and his steed cried out.

Dahlia plunged her staff into the water and released the lightning energy, and how both horses and all three riders yelped at that painful sting.

But they pressed on, silver fish now floating all around them, dead or stunned. More were coming, though, but Drizzt ignored them. For the water had become shallower, and the drow drove Andahar on, and all of his shots were aimed before them as he swept the beach with magical lightning.

Entreri’s steed charged across the wet sand first, steam flowing from its black, glistening mane. Straight for the doorway they ran, Drizzt and Dahlia riding close behind. The assassin rolled down and dismissed his mount immediately, that he might retrieve the obsidian statuette, but Drizzt did not similarly send Andahar away as he and Dahlia leaped down to the ground. Instead, the unicorn reared and turned and thundered off at the nearest enemies, lowering his ivory horn.

The three companions scrambled through the narrow entry tunnel and burst into the large audience hall beyond, to be met by a line of shade warriors. Drizzt and Entreri entered first, side by side, their blades working ferociously to drive back the stabbing pikes. One polearm thrust in between them and Drizzt sprang upon it, driving it to the ground, then jumped away, crossing before Entreri, who side-flipped the other way, back behind the drow, a perfect somersault that landed him on his feet, blades still working in harmony.

As he had gone across, Drizzt took a trio of pikes with him, tying up the line and forcing the shades to fall back. In that one instant of respite, Drizzt glanced down to his right, to the magnificent throne, and he imagined, but could not see, the grave of his dearest friend just beyond.

The enemies before him proved to be a skilled and well-practiced team, and their short retreat formed them into a defensive, blocking semi-circle around the entry tunnel.

And from the other side of that tunnel came the sounds of pursuit, and one voice in particular, a voice too familiar to the companions, particularly to Entreri, lifted above the others.

“Hold them!” a tiefling warlord screamed.

“He lives!” Dahlia cried in denial, in horror, in anger, as she skidded into the chamber behind her two companions.

“No time,” Drizzt started to yell back, for he expected that Dahlia would simply turn around and go after that most hated tiefling. Drizzt understood that desire well! Alegni had indeed survived and had taken Guenhwyvar, as that strange Shadovar woman had claimed. The drow’s mind spun wildly. He wondered if Alegni might have his beloved companion in tow. In the middle of his fighting, he managed to brush a hand across his belt pouch, silently calling for the panther, hoping against hope that perhaps Alegni had erred in bringing the cat, Drizzt’s cat, who was more than a magical creation, who was a loyal friend.

He shook it all away when a pike nearly skewered him. He continued to silently beckon for Guenhwyvar, but again called to Dahlia to fight forward and not turn around.

But no need, for Dahlia had already rushed past behind him, moving to the side. She planted her staff and vaulted up high, clearing the Shadovar line, pikes coming up behind her as the warriors tried to turn around to meet the threat.

Entreri, understanding Dahlia’s tactics, was already moving, though. He too swept behind Drizzt, coming in hard against the shades, driving them and turning them and cutting them down, tying up that corner of the defensive formation.

Drizzt rushed beside him, then behind him, moving along the wall away from the tunnel mouth-and just in time, as some burst of black magical energy soared in through the opening, an aimed cloud of burning, biting smoke. It split the shade line in two, those in the middle of the formation falling back and falling away, flailing in pain.

As he came free behind the assassin, Drizzt again called upon his dark elf powers, and reached forth at the enemy battling Dahlia. Purplish flames erupted around the shade, outlining him in dancing faerielike fire. Caught by surprise, the Shadovar nearly dropped his pike, and did drop his guard.

He recovered almost immediately, trying to realign his weapon.

Too late.

Dahlia’s flail swiped across and shattered his jawbone, and as he lurched, the elf warrior turned a circuit, bringing her second spinning weapon around in a powerful backhand. This one cracked the back of the fighter’s skull and launched him head over heels in a flip that left him on his back on the stone floor, twitching and shuddering uncontrollably.

Again, Drizzt called on his innate magical powers, the powers wrought of his deep Underdark homeland, bringing forth a globe of impenetrable darkness right before the entry tunnel, and right in front of those enemies coming in pursuit.

“Go, go!” he yelled at Entreri, coming up on the man’s left and adding his spinning scimitars to the fray.

Entreri rolled behind him and came around clear of the tangled flank, and sprinted after Dahlia in a dead run across the vast hall, and Drizzt, with his magical anklets speeding his every step, disengaged from the pikemen and went in swift pursuit.

The three easily outran the more heavily encumbered Shadovar, making a straight line for an exit tunnel ahead and to the right.

But more shades came in from the side, and once again, arrows and javelins flew their way.

With speed and acrobatics and more than a bit of luck, they all got into the cover of that tunnel, and ran along, Drizzt and Dahlia both trying to sort out their way to the lower levels, Entreri just keeping pace.

They went around a corner and Drizzt pulled up short, motioning for the other two to continue. He went down low to one knee and slipped back around the corner with his bow in hand, and he mowed down the incoming shades with a line of deadly missiles.

“Here!” he heard Dahlia call for him, and he ran off, thinking he had bought them some time, at least.

But not much time, he realized as a powerful explosion wracked the corridor behind him. He glanced back to see sparks arcing along the walls of the corner where he had just been kneeling, and heard the renewed pursuit.

They passed through a series of chambers, guessing more than knowing which doors to burst through. They turned another corner, and another beyond that, speeding for a heavy, partially ajar metal doorway. Entreri shouldered it, crashing through, Drizzt and Dahlia close behind, and as the large room opened into view before them, all three saw and heard a similar door opposite them slam shut.

Entreri made for it with all speed, Dahlia close behind, as Drizzt slammed the door behind him. He looked for a locking bar, but none was to be found. But some furniture still remained, including a heavy stone chair frame, so he pulled it into place before the door and propped it at an angle to somewhat secure the portal.

Across the room, Entreri tugged at the other door and banged on it, but whoever had exited had already secured it.

“Now where?” Dahlia asked, leaping around and scanning for other doors.

But there were none to be seen.

“Now where?” she asked again, more insistently.

“Now we fight,” Entreri replied. “That was Alegni’s voice,” he added, and spat on the floor.

“Kill him, at least, before we die, then,” Dahlia said, and Entreri nodded grimly.

“Whatever you do, Drizzt, get me to him,” Entreri said. “I will salute you with my final moments of life, for whatever that might be worth to you.”

Drizzt regarded the two, standing so easily beside each other, both seeming perfectly comfortable with their fate-as long as they could get to Herzgo Alegni. He couldn’t imagine the hatred that drove them, and once again he was reminded of their unspoken bond, their sharing of something deeper, something he couldn’t comprehend, let alone partake.

Drizzt did recognize that either of them would die happy if that death came after the killing blow upon Herzgo Alegni. How could someone hate another so much, he wondered? What had happened, what violation, what violent betrayal or continued torture, to facilitate such venom?

A thunderous retort hit the door behind him, and Drizzt scrambled to set the chair frame back in place. He heard the report as a hail of missiles hit the door, and heard too the calls for pursuit and the multitude of footsteps.

He turned to view his friends, equally doomed, but found himself looking behind them, at the other door, which had silently opened.

Dahlia grunted, looked curiously at Drizzt, then collapsed to the ground.

A bolt of lightning hit the door behind Drizzt, crackling as it climbed around the metal and once more throwing the chair aside.

Drizzt started for Dahlia; he turned for the door.

Then he was blinded.

The drow had come.

R. A. Salvatore

Charon's Claw

“BREGAN D’AERTHE!”

D rizzt knew. He felt the sting of a crossbow bolt, and another and a third, and the ensuing, almost immediate burn of drow poison, familiar from so long ago, coursing through his veins.

He knew. He heard the thunder of the approaching Shadovar. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. He wanted to fight at least, to offer some last and fitting expression of Drizzt Do’Urden. If this was his end, as surely he believed it to be, then it should match the way he lived his life.

He wondered about the afterlife, and hoped there was one, and a just one. One where he would find again his friends lost, find his love, Catti-brie, and he even managed a grin in the magical darkness as the strength left his knees, as the scimitars fell from his grasp, in imagining the meeting between Catti-brie and Dahlia.

The grin was gone before it even began. Catti-brie and Dahlia

… and Drizzt.

He hoped he would find Catti-brie, for the thought of spending eternity beside Dahlia…

He was on the ground then, though he felt nothing. He resisted the drow poison enough to remain awake and somewhat cogent, but his physical abilities were absent, and not to soon return.

“Bregan D’aerthe!” he heard Artemis Entreri cry, and Drizzt hoped that perhaps this was Jarlaxle’s band, that perhaps they might survive.

Entreri clarified, “We’re agents of Bregan D’aerthe!”

Clever, Drizzt thought. Ever was Artemis Entreri clever-that is what made him doubly dangerous.

He sensed forms passing by him, moving over him, but he could not lash out at them, and thought that he should not lash out at them.

The irony of a drow rescue was not lost on the groggy and fast-sinking dark elf ranger, nor was the notion that it would indeed be a very short reprieve.

The room’s door burst open under the weight of ranks of Shadovar pressing forward.

A wall of poisoned crossbow bolts came at them. The room blackened before them. A second magical darkness engulfed their front ranks, and a third magical darkness hit the throng behind that one.

And in that confused frenzy, a fireball erupted, biting flames curling Shadovar skin, blistering Shadovar hands as they tried to hold to metal weapons. Turning and thrashing, disoriented in the darkness, tripping over the bodies of their front ranks lying helpless on the ground under the spell of drow poison, the charge abruptly halted.

“Press on!” Herzgo Alegni screamed from the back when he recognized the stall.

“Drow!” came the responding shouts. “The dark elves have come!”

“Effron!” Herzgo Alegni shouted. He hardly knew what to make of that, and certainly he didn’t want a battle with a drow force. But neither would he let that sword, or his hated enemies, Entreri and the wretched Dahlia, escape! He spotted the twisted warlock by the entrance to the tunnel in the room ahead of him.

“Fill the room with deadly magic!” Alegni yelled at the warlock.

“There are Shadovar in that room, my lord!” a shade lieutenant near to Alegni dared to argue.

Hardly thinking of the movement, hardly even registering his own reaction to the lieutenant’s words, Alegni punched the shade in the jaw, and the shade dropped to the floor in a heap.

“I will have them!” Alegni bellowed, and all around him cowered under the power of his voice and the very real threat behind his demands. “I will have that sword!” He regarded the shade he had hit. Normally, the warlord refrained from such public corporeal punishment of his charges, other than his open torment of Barrabus the Gray, of course. He put a hand out to help hoist the shade back to his feet, but when the lieutenant hesitated, staring at him suspiciously, Alegni retracted the hand and quietly warned, “The next time you so openly oppose my orders, I will answer with my sword.”

He moved forward to find Effron and his magic-wielding forces filling the room at the far end of the corridor with blazing lightning, clouds of acid, balls of fire, and bubbling poisonous ooze. Prodded by a continually yelling Alegni, their barrage of deadly magic went on and on, shaking the stones of Gauntlgrym.

They could see none of it, of course, as the drow darkness lingered, and finally as both barrage and darkness began to thin, the Shadovar forces pressed on.

To find an empty room, with not a body to be seen and the back door closed and sealed once more.

“They could not all have escaped,” Effron remarked when Alegni entered the scarred battlefield. “Some of our enemies were slain here, I am certain.”

“You’re guessing,” Alegni growled back at him.

“Reasoning. None could have withstood our concentrated assault.”

“You know little of the drow, I see.”

Effron shrugged, that curious motion with one of his shoulders always behind him.

“So some were killed,” Alegni mused. “Dahlia, do you think?”

Effron swallowed hard.

“You would not wish such a thing, would you, twisted boy?” Alegni teased. “To think her dead, but gone from you. To think her dead without you being able to witness the last light leaving her blue eyes. That would hurt most of all, wouldn’t it?”

Effron stared at him hatefully, not blinking. “Do you speak for me or for yourself?”

“If she is dead, then so be it,” Alegni said as convincingly as he could manage.

“And Barra-Artemis Entreri?”

“If he is dead, I will take up Charon’s Claw and bring him back, that I might torment him for another decade to repay him for his insolence and treachery.”

“He resisted the sword before. Could you ever trust him, or in your ability to control him, even with Claw back in your grasp?”

Alegni smiled at that, but didn’t really have an answer. In any case, both Dahlia and Entreri were gone, either still fleeing or dead. Or captured, Alegni mused, and under the control of these dark elves that had so suddenly appeared before his forces.

The tiefling warlord couldn’t hold to his smile, for the arrival of a sizable drow force, if it was indeed that, certainly complicated his quest.

“If they’re alive, and these were their allies, then they continue toward the primordial beast,” Alegni said to Effron and all of those nearby. “That is the worst potential, so continue our march. Fill these tunnels with Shadovar. Find that beast!”

“If they are dead and the drow have taken the sword, they will likely bargain its return,” Effron remarked quietly as the forces organized and set out once more.

Alegni nodded. “But we prepare for the more immediate potential.”

“We have lines of warriors strung out far ahead in the corridors,” Effron assured him. “We have found the main stair to the lower levels.”

“Send word of this new enemy, then,” Alegni ordered.

“We do not know them to be an enemy,” Effron reasoned.

That rang as curious in Alegni’s ears-hadn’t they just fought a vicious and quick exchange, after all? — but as he considered the suddenness with which the two alert and powerful forces had met, perhaps there was some truth to Effron’s claim. Perhaps the drow had inadvertently happened in the way of the Shadovar advance, and had reacted to force with force, as Alegni surely would have done.

Perhaps, but the desperate tiefling wasn’t about to take any chances.

“Get us to the primordial,” he told Effron, “with all haste and without mercy for any who stand in our way.”

Drizzt still had his scimitars and still had his bow, but they wouldn’t do him any good, even though his physical senses and abilities were beginning to return. Magical tentacles had grown out of the stone and grabbed him-and Entreri and Dahlia, who were seated back to back with him-fully immobilizing them all.

He heard Dahlia groan, only then beginning to awaken. Entreri was perfectly conscious, and Drizzt doubted that any of the bolts had even struck him.

“Bregan D’aerthe?” a finely dressed drow warrior standing before Drizzt remarked, his voice clearly full of doubt. “What’s your name?”

He was speaking in the high tongue of Menzoberranzan, a language Drizzt had not heard in a long, long time, but one that he recognized, and one that returned to him with amazing speed and clarity.

“Masoj,” Drizzt answered without hesitation, pulling out a name from his distant past.

The drow, a warrior noble if his dress and fine swords were to be believed, looked at him curiously.

“Masoj?” he asked. “Of what House?”

“Of no House he will admit,” Artemis Entreri put in, also speaking perfect Drow.

A soldier beside the noble drow stiffened and moved as if to punish the man for daring to speak out, but the noble held him back.

“Do continue,” he prompted Entreri.

“Masoj, of a House that offended the Spider Queen,” Entreri explained. “None will admit it, save Kimmuriel, who leads Bregan D’aerthe.”

“You are of House Oblodra?” the warrior noble asked Drizzt, bending low to look Drizzt in the eye.

In the lavender eye, Drizzt knew, and he feared that his reputation and strange eyes might precede him and ruin everything.

Drizzt shook his head. “I will admit no such thing,” he said, the proper response.

“You are related to Kimmuriel, then?” the warrior noble pressed.

“Distantly,” Drizzt answered.

“Jearth,” came a female voice from the side, “the Netherese flank us. We have no time to tarry.”

“Kill them and be done with it?” Jearth, the warrior noble, replied.

“It would seem prudent.”

“They are of Bregan D’aerthe, they claim,” Jearth replied. “If Kimmuriel’s forces are around, I would have them on our side, would you agree? It should be easy enough to facilitate their aid, particularly with Tiago Baenre among our ranks.” Drizzt’s thoughts whirled as he tried to place the names. Jearth sounded somewhat familiar to him, but he knew of Tiago not at all. But Baenre! Of course, the mere mention of that powerful House sent Drizzt’s memories spinning back to his decades in Menzoberranzan.

“Bregan D’aerthe?” the female echoed incredulously. She started around to Drizzt’s left. “A drow, an elf…” She paused just long enough to spit upon Dahlia, and Drizzt winced, considering what might soon happen to poor Dahlia, given her heritage and the hatred between the elf races.

“And a human,” the female continued as she walked, but she bit off that last word, and Drizzt craned his neck enough to see her, to notice the surprised expression on her face as she looked over Artemis Entreri.

“Priestess,” Entreri said to her with proper deference.

The female continued to stare at him with obvious curiosity.

“I know you,” she said quietly, and seemed unsure and tentative.

“I have been to Menzoberranzan,” Entreri replied to that look. “Before the Spellplague, beside Jarlaxle.”

Drizzt held his breath, for Entreri had left Menzoberranzan beside him, and after they had wrought great damage. Reminding this priestess of that time might also remind her of the escape, and the identity of Entreri’s companions during that escape!

“You would be long dead then, human.”

“And yet I’m not,” Entreri replied. “There’s magic in the world, it would seem.”

“Do you know him?” the noble warrior asked the priestess.

“Do you know me, human?” she asked. “Do you know Berellip Xorlarrin?”

There came a long pause. Drizzt craned his neck even farther, catching a glimpse of Entreri as the seated man studied the drow priestess before him. Drizzt knew the name, the surname at least, and it brought him little comfort. For House Xorlarrin had been among the greatest of Menzoberranzan, potent with magic and formidable. Drizzt swallowed hard yet again, for he recalled then this warrior noble, Jearth Xorlarrin, who had been through Melee-Magthere, the drow academy, not long before him. He considered it great luck indeed that Jearth had apparently not recognized him, for though a century and more had elapsed, few dark elves had eyes the color of Drizzt’s.

This whole thing seemed so perfectly absurd to Drizzt-until, of course, he considered that Jarlaxle had been involved. Whenever Jarlaxle was involved, absurdity was soon to follow.

“I do,” Entreri replied to the priestess, and Drizzt just sighed helplessly.

“Where, then?” the female demanded.

“On a ledge on the edge of the Clawrift,” Entreri answered without hesitation, though there was a bit of a question in his voice, as if he wasn’t completely sure and was afraid-rightly so! — to get it wrong.

Berellip began to laugh.

“How could I ever forget?” Entreri asked with more confidence. “Did you not use your powers to dangle me over the abyss in the moment of my ecstasy?”

“It was about pleasing me, human,” she answered. “Your discomfort mattered not at all.”

“As it must be,” Entreri replied.

“Berellip?” asked the incredulous warrior noble, who was clearly more flummoxed even than Drizzt. “You know him?”

“If he is who he claims to be, he was my first colnbluth lover,” Berellip answered, using the drow word for anyone who was not drow. She laughed. “My only human lover. And quite skilled, if I recall correctly, which is why I didn’t drop him into the Clawrift.”

“I was there to please you,” Entreri said.

Drizzt could hardly believe what he was hearing, but he resisted shaking his head or wearing a stupefied expression and being obvious-if he was to be taken seriously as a member of Bregan D’aerthe, after all, then such news should not be so shocking to him.

“He was brought to Menzoberranzan by Jarlaxle,” Berellip explained to Jearth. “And graciously put at the disposal of those among us who were curious about the prowess of a human.”

“He is who you believe him to be?” the warrior asked skeptically.

“On the edge of the Clawrift, indeed,” Berellip said, and her voice revealed that it had probably been a pleasant experience-at least from her perspective.

Drizzt didn’t know whether to laugh out loud or scream at the absurdity of it all. He chose-wisely-to remain silent. Once again, images of his escape from Menzoberranzan, Entreri beside him, had him holding his breath. If Berellip or Jearth put the pieces together, if they had learned that Entreri had fled Menzoberranzan beside Drizzt Do’Urden, the result would be catastrophic indeed.

“They’re Bregan D’aerthe, then,” Jearth declared.

“So it would seem,” Berellip answered, and Drizzt breathed just a little bit easier.

“An elf?” Jearth asked incredulously. “I would not suffer her to live.”

“Take her as you will,” Berellip started to answer, but Entreri interrupted.

“She is Jarlaxle’s consort,” Entreri blurted to Drizzt’s continuing surprise. “His most valuable spy, as you can imagine, for she navigates the villages of the elves and Eladrin with ease.”

Simply in looking at Jearth, Drizzt realized that his assassin companion had just saved Dahlia from a certain fate of rape, torture, and ultimately, murder.

“You let iblith speak for you?” Berellip asked Drizzt, moving around to stand before him.

Drizzt held his breath yet again. She had recognized Entreri-what might happen if she recognized him? Certainly she was old enough to know the stories of Drizzt Do’Urden, traitor to his people.

“He is Jarlaxle’s colnbluth,” Drizzt explained at length. “I serve Kimmuriel.”

“And which leads Bregan D’aerthe?” Berellip asked.

“Kimmuriel,” Drizzt said without hesitation, though he was flailing blindly, for he had no idea of what he was talking about, and had even less of an idea of what Berellip and Jearth might know of the inner workings of Jarlaxle’s band.

“Then why do you allow him to speak?”

“In deference to Jarlaxle,” Drizzt replied. “That is our edict from Kimmuriel. All deference to Jarlaxle. I am here to serve as Kimmuriel’s eyes, as Jarlaxle’s colnbluth and his elf consort scout out this most curious place.”

“Weapons master,” came a voice from the back of the room, out of Drizzt’s sight. “The Shadovar move to flank us. We must move at once.”

Jearth looked to Berellip.

“Free them,” the priestess said. “We will need their blades. Put them in a tunnel where the fighting will be especially fierce. My memory is that Jarlaxle’s toy was exceptionally fine with the blade, as well as his spear.”

She leaned in close to Entreri and said quietly. “If you fight well, you may survive, and if you do, I will allow you to please me once more.”

To that point, the groggy Dahlia had been perfectly still and perfectly silent, but she gave a little gasp at that remark, Drizzt noted with more than a passing interest.

“She must have been an amazing lover for you to remember her after all of these decades,” Dahlia said to Entreri when the three were moving together and alone a short while later.

“I don’t remember her at all,” Entreri replied.

“But… you mentioned the incident,” Dahlia protested. “This Claw…?”

She held up her hands helplessly.

“The Clawrift,” Drizzt explained. “A chasm in the drow city.”

“And he remembered it, and the encounter with her beside it,” Dahlia said. Drizzt didn’t look at her, figuring that it would only confirm the intrigue he clearly heard in Dahlia’s voice. Again came those flashes, images of Dahlia and Entreri entwined in passion. But now Drizzt understood the source of them- partly, at least-and so he pushed them away and silently warned Charon’s Claw to shut up.

If it was Charon’s Claw, and that was the rub. For in his heart, Drizzt understood that the sentient sword was not planting the whole of his feelings regarding Dahlia and Artemis Entreri. The sword had sensed some jealousy within him and was fueling it, likely, but Drizzt would be lying to himself to pretend that he was not honestly bothered by the level of intimacy between Entreri and Dahlia, a level that far exceeded his own with this elf woman who was his lover.

“Not at all,” Entreri said.

“I heard you!” Dahlia protested.

“That was the chosen place,” said Entreri. “For all of the noble priestesses who were curious about the prowess of a human.”

“You said she magically dangled you over the ledge,” Dahlia protested. “They all did.”

Both Dahlia and Drizzt stopped and stared at him.

“Lovely ladies, these priestesses of Lolth,” Entreri mouthed dryly. “Not very imaginative, but…” He just shrugged and moved along.

Drizzt thought back to those long-ago days, when Jarlaxle had taken Artemis Entreri to Menzoberranzan, and there the assassin had been like a slave-not necessarily to Jarlaxle, but to any and all of the drow who deemed to use him as they would. Drizzt had learned of some of Entreri’s trials in those days, for Drizzt, too, had gone to Menzoberranzan at that time to surrender, and had been promptly imprisoned there until a dear friend had come to get him. He had left the city beside Artemis Entreri, a daring escape.

Beside Entreri and Catti-brie.

She had come for him, daring the deep Underdark, defying the power of the drow, risking everything for the sake of a foolish Drizzt, who truly hadn’t appreciated the value and responsibility of friendship.

Would Dahlia have come for him, he couldn’t help but wonder? He had to let it go, he scolded himself. Now was not the time to consider the past, or the reliability of his present companions. They could fight, and fight well, and now, with the tunnels full of deadly enemies, that was enough.

Indeed, in short order, the three companions found themselves alone and hard-pressed once more, for the Shadovar were all about the upper levels of the complex, like a creeping and pervasive darkness.

“We have to get down below quickly,” Drizzt explained as he hustled beside Entreri, Dahlia just behind them, along a corridor lined by many rooms on either side. These had been dwarven living quarters in ancient times, obviously, the residences of Gauntlgrym.

“There is only one descent that I know of,” Dahlia agreed. “Alegni will move to block it.”

“If he even knows of it,” said Drizzt. As he spoke, he noted that a door ahead of Entreri on the right-hand side of the corridor was slightly ajar, and it seemed to him as if the cracked opening had just shifted slightly.

Drizzt called upon his magical anklets to speed his movements. He darted across in front of Entreri, barreling into the door full speed, bursting it wide and charging into the side room. A group of four shades awaited him, or more accurately, had planned to spring out at him and his companions. The first fell away, slammed by the door. The second instinctively reached for his tumbling companion, then spun back and threw his arms up to defend, but too late as Drizzt’s scimitar cut across his throat, the drow rushing past. “Right!” he heard Dahlia cry as he engaged the remaining two, and he understood that this ambush had been coordinated from more than one room. No matter, though, his task lay before him.

He batted down a pointing stave with a backhand right, and the flummoxed sorcerer couldn’t even finish his spell. Drizzt’s left scimitar went across the other way, batting aside a thrusting sword. Without even turning his hips, the drow deftly rolled his weapon over that sword and came back in the other way, neatly parrying a thrust of the attacker’s second sword.

Only then, in recognizing the two-handed fighting style, did Drizzt come to understand, too, that this shade was of elf heritage, perhaps even dark elf heritage. Again, no matter, for he hadn’t the time to ask a question. He stabbed out with that left hand, forcing the shade back, then retreated himself a few fast steps. He reversed his grip on Icingdeath in his right hand and stabbed it out behind him, perfectly timing the strike to halt the charge of the shade who had been slammed by the door. Axe up high for an overhead, two-handed chop and coming in fast, the fool had no defense. He couldn’t turn, couldn’t stop, couldn’t dodge, and couldn’t get his weapon or even an arm down for a block.

He took the stab in his gut, the curving blade working upward, through his diaphragm and into his lung.

The shade staggered back, the blade sliding out, and he gasped and tried to find his balance.

But Drizzt turned even as he retracted the blade, a spinning circuit that gave him a forehand slash with Twinkle that chopped the shade to the ground. As he came around, Drizzt darted out and leaped high, crashing down atop the mage, who was again trying to enact some spell. Drizzt yelled in his face, trying to disorient him, and unleashed a barrage of blows, left and right, tearing at the mage’s robes, bashing him around the skull.

He hit the shade a dozen times or more in the heartbeats he had before the swordsman leaped at him, and then he had to hope it would be enough as he found himself engaged with the skilled warrior.

The very skilled warrior, Drizzt realized almost immediately, as those swords came in at him from a multitude of angles, seemingly all at once, so fast and perfect was the execution of the elf shade.

Entreri started into the room right behind Drizzt, but on Dahlia’s call, the assassin leaped into the air and turned sidelong. He planted his feet against the door jamb and launched himself back the other way, falling to the ground in a roll and coming back up right beside the opening right-hand door. He flipped his dagger into his right hand as he went, and stabbed out hard behind his hip, catching a shade in the gut as it crossed the threshold into the corridor. Even as the dagger plunged in, Entreri flipped his grip on the hilt and ripped it back out, then rolled his arm up and over, stabbing behind over his right shoulder, this time plunging the small blade into the lurching shade’s eye. As that one fell, more poured out.

“Drow, we need you!” Entreri yelled.

“Drizzt!” Dahlia foolishly added.

Even Entreri was too engaged, however, to understand the possible implications of shouting out that particular name in these tunnels. The second shade out the door, heavily armored and with sword and shield, came at him fiercely, driving him back.

And he heard another door, one at least, opening behind him.

The shade had gained the advantage at the start of the fight and showed no intention of letting it dissipate, working his blades ferociously and with deadly precision, keeping Drizzt on his heels, his scimitars spinning to block and deflect.

He tried to come up even, but the shade pressed harder.

Drizzt began to see the patterns in his opponent’s movements. His warrior instincts took over, his vast experience led him to more careful and controlled parries, and soon enough he was managing a counter with almost every block.

Eventually he would fight himself back to even footing, and then, he knew, he could soon enough gain the upper hand on this lesser, though very good, fighter.

A cry from the hallway told him that “soon” was likely too long, and his pause nearly cost him as the shade pressed wildly. Twinkle and Icingdeath caught the thrusts and turned them out, and blocked the heavy slash, but Drizzt understood that it would take him many back-and-forth exchanges to even get back to where he was before Dahlia had cried out.

He managed a glance to the side as he turned his opponent, circling to his right to face the door, and that quick glance told him that Entreri and Dahlia-and he, stuck in this room-were surely in trouble. The hallway was filling with enemies.

A third shade rushed out of the room-or tried to until Dahlia stabbed the woman hard in the face with the end of her staff.

Entreri noted it and started to call out to her, for he knew the enemies were entering the hall behind him, and the armored shade before him pressed him hard. Dahlia didn’t need his prompt, though, understanding well the dilemma. She quick-stepped forward and prodded ahead with Kozah’s Needle, thrusting it into the lower back of Entreri’s opponent. There, too, the shade was armored, and Dahlia hit a metal plate.

So she let loose a burst of lightning energy from her magical quarterstaff.

The arcing energy leaped across the metal plates, curling and biting at the warrior, coming together from either side in a blinding and bursting dance across the bars of his full-faced helmet.

His next swing came awkwardly, as the lightning crawled around him like an angry swarm of biting insects, and Entreri easily dodged, rolling under the blade. As the nimble assassin came around, stepping behind the lurching sword and passing on the shade’s right, he managed to bash his sword across that faceplate, stunning the armored warrior.

Entreri rushed past the open doorway, where another shade loomed, and past the door to Drizzt’s room, catching a quick glance as he went.

Reflexively, Entreri tossed his dagger into the air and swept his left hand across and back again past his belt buckle, extending it out as he crossed Drizzt’s room.

“Drow, be quick!” he called to Drizzt, and he caught his dagger and fell into another roll to avoid a sweep of a Netherese axe. He turned as he rolled over, coming up beside Dahlia.

“Drow!” they yelled together.

Drizzt heard their summons, and he surely understood, but again, had no idea how he might extricate himself-until his opponent lurched strangely and turned stiffly to keep up with the dancing drow.

And Drizzt understood from that look of pain on his enemy’s face, that Entreri had thrown his belt knife into the elf shade’s side.

The shade’s right arm drooped. He fought to keep his defenses in place, but the spasms of pain denied him.

Drizzt winced as the shade winced. His sense of honor screamed out at him that this was not a fair fight, and against a truly worthy opponent. Only for a moment, though, as he realized the foolishness of such a lament, particularly given that he had gone in there one against four.

He worked his scimitars more furiously, mostly down-angled for his parries, for he noted that the lower angle brought more pain to his opponent.

The ring of metal on metal and a surge of movement in the hall reminded him that he needed to be quick, and so he fell back with his left foot, inviting a thrust from the shade’s injured right, and when that blade came forward, instead of picking it off with Twinkle, Drizzt swept Icingdeath across and under, coming back fast after hooking the sword and driving it with his own blade back across to his right.

He stepped left as he did, dodging his hips to avoid the stab of the shade’s lefthand blade until Icingdeath and the hooked sword could fully intercept the thrust.

Which cleared the opening for Drizzt’s left hand, and Twinkle struck hard and true, and the shade fell away, throwing his swords as he went, hands reaching for a torn throat.

“Drizzt!” Dahlia yelled.

“We can’t hold the door!” Entreri added, and then more quietly asked Dahlia, “Will you quit calling his name?” He barely got the warning out and expected no reply, for the press was too great, with too many enemies blocking the corridor before them. Entreri’s words to Drizzt rang true, for they had to retreat.

Both started to call out again, and both gasped in surprise as a bolt of lightning exited Drizzt’s room and slammed into the shade facing Entreri.

Not a lightning bolt, they both realized, but a lightning enchanted arrow, and it drove right through that shade and burrowed into the one in front of Dahlia. Before that pair had even fallen away, another arrow exploded into the side of the first one’s head.

Dahlia stabbed her staff into the face of the mortally wounded shade still standing before her, driving him back and to the ground.

“More!” she cried, and on cue, a third lightning arrow screamed out into the corridor.

And simply disappeared.

And then came a fourth, and Dahlia’s teeth started chattering and her thick braid began to writhe with energy as if it was a living serpent.

“Hold!” Entreri cried as the third came out to be absorbed. He rushed across the body of the fallen shade, driving hard into the next rank, forcing them back with a flurry of stabs and thrusts.

Dahlia leaped past him as he cleared the immediate corridor, and thrust her staff down against the stone floor, releasing the pent up lightning energy.

The whole of the corridor seemed to leap under the power of that retort, shades twisting and falling, staggering aside in shock, mental and physical.

“Go! Go!” Entreri yelled, grabbing her and spinning her around and pushing her back the way they had come. He moved right behind her, Drizzt coming fast on his heels. The drow didn’t continue, though, spinning around and falling low and letting fly a stream of lightning arrows at the confused enemies.

“Forward!” the drow ordered to his companions, turning them around.

The shades scattered and fled, the trio in close pursuit-until they crossed a side passage that rang out as familiar to Drizzt and Dahlia, one they both believed would take them to the lower chambers.

Off they ran, Drizzt sealing the end with a globe of magical darkness. Then he paused as Entreri and Dahlia spread out beyond, seeking the proper routes.

The drow held perfectly still, craning his neck in concentration. He heard the slightest of footfalls, and sent a line of arrows into and through the magical darkness.

He ducked out of sight around a corner, and not a heartbeat too soon as a Shadovar wizard responded with a stream of magic missiles, and a second mage added a line of biting fire.

On charged the shades, and Drizzt leaned out and drove them back once more, the Heartseeker’s arrows cutting holes through rank after rank, three shades dropping with the first shot alone.

Drizzt ran off.

Only a heartbeat later, the area where he had been crouching exploded in a fireball, then a second and third.

“Keep running,” he warned Entreri and Dahlia as he crossed by them, and he tossed something at Entreri.

The assassin caught it: his buckle knife.

On they ran.