Maestro

CHAPTER 15

Jarlaxle was nearest to the opened double doors. He spun to meet that threat, Khazid’hea in one hand, a wand in the other. A mob of Melarni guards rushed to the defense of their matron mother-then stumbled as one when a blob of syrupy goo slammed into the leading pair, stopping them cold. A second heavy glob flew in to further bind and entangle the group.

For a moment, Jarlaxle thought he had the situation in hand, but above that second magical glob came a huge spear-and the mercenary realized that one of the famed and deadly Melarni driders had come.

“Do not hesitate!” Jarlaxle warned his capable companions once again, a command doubly critical now that he had to abandon the fight with the priestesses and retreat to the doors, to get them closed and secured before all hope was lost.

“The balcony,” Matron Mother Zhindia said from beside Kiriy.

Kiriy had reached the main corridor to the room where Matron Mother Darthiir Do’Urden was, her goal nearly in sight. But at the intersection was also the corridor leading to the forward guard chambers, with the balcony entrance to House Do’Urden just beyond those.

Kiriy’s instincts told her to go straight to dispose of the wretched surface elf abomination, and so she didn’t welcome the order to defend the balcony instead. She understood Zhindia’s insistence, though, from a practical standpoint. The war was clearly on now, given the sounds echoing about. The Hunzrin soldiers were advancing. This fight had to be about more than Dahlia

She started to respond, but felt a jolt. Though it was a sensation Kiriy had never before experienced, she somehow understood that the connection to the Melarni war room had been severed. Instinctively, she glanced back the way she had come, expecting the troublesome and impudent Ravel and his loyal wizards to come rushing down against her.

But no, the path behind her was clear, and she had left the audience chamber and her siblings far, far behind.

“Are you there?” she whispered.

No answer.

She was torn. She glanced again along the corridor that would wind around the House chapel and take her to Darthiir’s room, but she knew in her heart that she couldn’t go that way. Not yet. She had to obey Matron Mother Zhindia. House Melarn would be all-important to her ascent and restructuring of House Xorlarrin. She picked up her pace and was soon sprinting along the corridor. She burst into the first guard station to find a handful of House Do’Urden soldiers milling about anxiously, weapons drawn.

For a moment, Kiriy expected they would turn and attack her, but she quickly remembered that they thought her on their side.

But she surely wasn’t an ally. They were Baenre and Bregan D’aerthe soldiers.

“What is happening?” she asked sharply.

“First Priestess, they are battling on the balcony,” one answered.

“It is House Hunzrin,” said another. “The stone heads!”

“And you are here?” Kiriy asked with as much incredulity as she could manage.

“We will use the choke point of the door to hold them, First Priestess,” answered the first of the previous speakers, who seemed to be the leader.

“Fools!” Kiriy scolded. “House Baenre is watching and will see our troubles, surely-indeed, they already have, of course!” She wasn’t sure if she was correct or not, but likely it was true that the battle had been noted beyond the balcony of House Do’Urden. Kiriy left out the part where House Baenre would do nothing to help the doomed House Do’Urden, caught as they were in the tangled web Archmage Gromph had made.

“To the balconies with you!” she cried. “At once. Put on a grand display. Fight for your House and your honor until the Baenre garrison arrives, and let all the Hunzrin fodder die out there on the balcony.”

The guards looked at each other doubtfully, and Kiriy hid her smile at the confirmation that the Hunzrin forces had come in great numbers.

“Go!” she shouted. “Let our enemies know complete defeat before they have ever entered our house! Go, I say, or feel the wrath of Lady Lolth, who will brook no cowardice!”

The five scrambled out, and Kiriy followed, waving for the guards in the next room to join in with the first group. From that second doorway, the first priestess got a glance at the balconies, where Hunzrin soldiers swarmed and Do’Urden guards died.

“For the glory of Lolth,” she whispered, hoping against hope that Matron Mother Zhindia could hear her and had seen the beautiful battle through her eyes.

Kiriy ran back through the rooms and along the corridor, smiling, giggling even, at the thought of murdering the abominable Matron Mother Darthiir. She considered the spells she would use to incapacitate the fool, and decided that the final blow would come from her hands-physically. She would feel Dahlia’s blood. She would hear the last gasping breath of this abomination whose very existence mocked the glory of the Spider Queen.

The Priestess standing in front of him sneered when Artemis Entreri came out of his disguise, revealing himself as a mere human. That would be to his advantage, Entreri knew. The dark elves would not understand the weight of the threat he posed in this “inferior” skin.

The whip cracked above his head, and he ducked and reflexively threw Charon’s Claw up horizontally to keep the stinging weapon high. But in came the skilled priestess, low and fast with her mace, the weapon sparkling with magical energy, and it took all of Entreri’s balance to allow him to backtrack enough to avoid a brutal strike.

And so the assassin reminded himself not to fall victim to the same thing, not to underestimate these opponents. These were dark elves, supremely trained, marvelously agile, and worse, these were drow women, whose training typically exceeded that of the males.

He came back to an upright and balanced position and began a countering routine, trying to find some fast way inside the reach of that vicious whip.

It cracked again, just to his left, too far to pose a threat, and so he thought he had his chance.

But before he could even take the first step forward, something magically appeared in the air to his right, and he understood a moment before the summoned magical hammer struck him that the priestess in front of him had snapped her whip merely as a distraction for her sister, who remained on the floor to the side.

Entreri took the hit, turning and bending at the last instant to accept it on the shoulder instead of the side of his face. He continued turning, and threw himself to his left in a spinning dive, which froze the priestess in front of him in surprise and afforded Entreri the moment he needed.

As he turned in that spin, he noted the kneeling priestess, once more spellcasting, and his left arm flicked beneath his downward-facing chest in a sudden backhand.

The kneeling priestess had magical wards engaged, of course, but magical, too, was Entreri’s jeweled dagger. It hit the protective shield and drove through, diving into the priestess’s wide eye.

She wailed and fell away, mortally wounded. Her trembling hands reached for the killing blade, but she could not find the courage to touch the quivering dagger.

Entreri crashed down to the ground and bounced himself to his knees, then threw himself to his feet with great speed and agility.

Not fast enough, though, to avoid the snap of his other foe’s whip, lashing against his leg, thigh to shin across the side of his knee.

He grimaced and spun to square off, and found the priestess already there, right in front of him, her mace whipping for his face.

A sudden parry with his sword intercepted the heavy weapon, but the force of the blow knocked his blade back and he only barely managed to avoid being clipped by the deadly red blade of Charon’s Claw.

Horrible death loomed less than a finger’s breadth from his cheek.

He fell back, trying to regain an even footing with his foe, but the priestess pressed on relentlessly, working her weapons brilliantly.

Drizzt knew the priestess at the end was Matron Mother Zhindia, and knew that he had to get to her as quickly as possible. But there remained two others between him and Zhindia Melarn on this side of the table.

Soon to be one, he believed as he came in hard. The apparently surprised priestess hadn’t even drawn her weapons. He stabbed with Icingdeath, certain he had a kill.

But the priestess spoke a word, just a single word, and she was gone, simply vanished, and Drizzt’s thrusting blade hit nothing but air.

He didn’t immediately understand the move, though he was familiar with such spells as Word of Recall, but he was wise enough not to even try to understand it then, and instead pressed forward for the next priestess in line.

And he was in darkness, complete and impenetrable, which was not unexpected when dealing with powerful dark elves. So he charged on, focusing on the mental image, sword leading, to try to get to the woman before she could turn out of the way.

He felt the tingle of magic, and deep in his thoughts realized that he had stepped upon a magical glyph just an instant before the jarring blast of lightning crackled up his leg and launched him sidelong into the air. He kept his wits enough to twist and roll about, fighting past the spasms evoked by the lightning to get his legs out just before he collided into the left-hand wall of the oval room.

He crashed down hard to the floor, focusing on simply not dropping his weapons. His hands shook wildly, his forearms flexing and jolting so forcefully that his elbows hurt. He wasn’t in the globe of darkness any longer, which left him exposed and disoriented. He recognized his vulnerability and stubbornly demanded his center and his balance as he forced himself to his feet.

The priestess was out of her conjured darkness, too, moving back from the table nearer the room’s far doors. She was casting again, but that was the least of Drizzt’s troubles. Matron Mother Zhindia, who stood directly in front of the second set of bronze doors, was casting, too.

Before he could make his move, a line of fire shot down from above, brilliant and intense, covering him, engulfing him, melting the stone of the floor at his feet.

Within the crackling flames, Drizzt heard the laughter of the confident priestesses.

Yvonnel’s thoughts screamed in protest when she saw the immolating fires sweep down over Drizzt.

“To him! Protect him!” she screamed, both telepathically to her entwined out-of-body companion and audibly back in the Room of Divination in House Baenre.

Even as she cried out, though, Yvonnel saw the truth, and her admiration and curiosity soared.

The jolting experience as they flew out of Entreri’s eyes sent the world spinning.

If the room behind him was full of confusion-priestesses tumbling, magic exploding, darkness stealing half the table-then the corridor just beyond the room had devolved into absolute chaos.

Just the way Jarlaxle wanted it to be.

His magical globs had caught the leading warriors, reducing their charge to a stumbling obstruction for those scrambling to get past them and into the fray. Jarlaxle stood at the entryway to the room, putting his magical bracer to good use. His arm pumped repeatedly, and with every retraction, the bracer slipped another summoned dagger into his grasp. A line of the deadly missiles flew down the corridor, past the jumbled lead warriors. Like a swarm of angry bees, they stung at the next dark elves in line, forcing them to dodge and to duck and to dive aside, and all that while trying to navigate around the six-legged gooey tangle.

Whenever one of the group managed to get past that trio, Jarlaxle focused his fire, a stream of death soaring out to pummel the would-be attacker before he could begin to gain any momentum.

But this was a losing proposition. Behind him, his friends were engaged and outnumbered by high priestesses of the Spider Queen.

And it only got worse, even as Jarlaxle tried to sort out a solution. The corridor behind the tangled group seemed to calm for just a moment, before the three caught in the syrupy globs went flying to one side of the passageway, slamming into, and sticking to, the wall to Jarlaxle’s left.

Around them came a monstrous beast, its eight-legged charge led by a huge spear, flying fast for the mercenary’s head.

Even as he ducked, Jarlaxle kept up his flow of flying daggers, but he knew that these missiles would not stop the drider. He thought of his wand. A glob of goo might entangle a leg or two.

The drider had many to spare.

So, purely on instinct, the mercenary backed quickly into the room but continued to let fly the daggers. In the midst of that assault, he brought his right arm down low on one roll and halted the magic of the bracer just long enough to launch a different missile. He didn’t aim at the drider, but rather at the floor just inside the threshold.

He was right back to launching his stream of daggers at the beast as that thin black missile spun and elongated and came to rest in front of the threshold.

The drider, axes now in both hands, batted aside most of the daggers, taking a few minor hits. It shoved through the tangled blockade and charged into the room, clearly oblivious to Jarlaxle’s subtle trap. It only realized its mistake, its face twisting with rage and denial, when its leading legs stamped down upon empty air and the beast tumbled face down into the mercenary’s portable hole.

Jarlaxle flipped his hat onto his head and sent another couple of daggers flying down the hall as he scrambled ahead. He leaped the ten-foot expanse of his own trap, pulling his wand as he went and launched a glob of goo down at the drider, just to keep it busy and disoriented.

He winced, though, as he landed, hoping he had been counting his shots correctly.

He skidded over to one of the large bronze doors and swung it closed, then rushed to the next.

The Melarni dark elves came from the hallway-an arrow nearly put an end to Jarlaxle, and ended up sticking in his wide-brimmed hat. He made a mental note to find that archer and punish him severely for making a hole in his fine hat.

But first the doors.

He banged the second one shut then shot a glob into them at the base, sealing them. Another flew from his wand, up at the top of the jamb for good measure. With that, the wand became no more functional than a simple stick, its charges expended.

I have to replace that one! Jarlaxle thought, and he cursed aloud as he drew forth yet another wand.

Still muttering curses to himself as he turned back to the room, the mercenary also uttered a command word and dropped a fireball into the portable pit as he leaped it again.

The drider’s shriek helped to compensate for the loss of his wand.

He landed easily, reaching into his pouch and pulling forth a long bar of silvery metal, a special metal indeed that ignited easily and burned white-hot. Into the pit it went, followed closely by a second fireball, and while the magical flames would burn and bite at the drider, wounding it, perhaps even mortally, the metallic bar took all doubt from that outcome. A brilliant white glow emanated from the pit, like the blinding ignition of a new sun. The drider’s screams became something more profound than mere agony, higher-pitched and full of terror.

And full of the frantic realization that death had come.

He felt a bit off balance, with just his sword in hand, but it wasn’t simply a sword, of course, but Charon’s Claw. He stayed one-handed with the blade, even though the hilt was long enough for him to take it up with both hands.

The priestess was too quick for a two-handed style, though, her mace and whip working with seeming independence, as was so typical of the truly ambidextrous dark elves.

So Entreri kept his left hand free for balance, and kept his left shoulder back, fighting more like a fencer than a brawling warrior.

He measured the strikes of his opponent.

Down he cut to intercept a low sweep of the mace, and the whip cracked near his left ear. He almost reached for it with his open hand-if he could move inside as the priestess struck, he might grab the length of the whip.

She came on again, mace coming across, then again on the backhand, and as she opened up with her arm swinging back wide, the whip snapped again.

Entreri was down low, though, beneath it, and he almost made the grab.

Not yet, he told himself, even though he knew that he hadn’t much time here, that they needed to be done with the room and out of House Melarn. But he couldn’t make his play until he knew it was there for him to take, or the priestess would recognize the danger and so would protect against it.

He had to goad her, had to let her grow confident-no difficult plan, given his diminished stature as a mere human, and a human male at that.

She came on more boldly, mace sweeping, whip cracking, and Entreri expected to find his opportunity soon.

But a wave of dizziness assaulted him and he stumbled. His leg went numb.

The priestess laughed at him and pressed on.

The whip-the infernal whip carried poison!

Now he took up Charon’s Claw in both hands, needing to drive the aggressive priestess back. The red blade swept in front of him, hooking and batting the whip before it could snap. Entreri would have used that moment to try to tug the weapon from the priestess’s hand, but in came the mace, hard at his left side, and he had to bring Charon’s Claw across to block.

The mace crackled with unexpected power, lightning energy arcing across its head, and even with that block, the off-balance assassin was driven hard to the side. He stumbled, throwing himself into a roll that got him away from the priestess, and one that brought him near the other, with Entreri’s dagger buried into her eye.

He needed that dagger back now, to fall into his more normal battle routines, but he got a surprise as he reached for the weapon. The drow priestess mewled softly-she wasn’t dead.

Entreri grabbed the jeweled hilt, but didn’t tear the dagger free. He called upon it and let it drink the wounded priestess’s remaining life energy, drawing it into himself, feasting as a vampire might.

His energy returned slowly, the injection of life energy battling the poison.

The other priestess was over him now, attacking with her weapons, but Entreri held on a bit longer, Charon’s Claw working furiously to block the mace and keep the cracking whip out wide.

Just a bit more, he knew.

The numbness left Entreri’s leg. Even the cut healed.

He tore out the dagger, the priestess falling over sideways to the floor, and he put his legs under him.

At that moment, Entreri saw Drizzt engulfed in fire, and thought he had lost one of his allies.

No time, he realized.

Across went Charon’s Claw, and Entreri enacted a different bit of its magic, the blade trailing an opaque magical ash that hung in the air like a curtain between him and his foe.

He flipped the dagger into the air and dived out to the right, through the curtain.

He came up to see the gaze of the oblivious priestess rising up with the spinning missile, the jewels catching the torchlight.

She turned finally, as if only then realizing that Entreri had gone through the strange floating ash, and her expression shifted from confusion to a mask of fear. For now Entreri was too close, and he held that mighty sword in both hands out wide to his right, and when that blade came across so expertly no magical armor would stop it.

Artemis Entreri cut the priestess in half at the waist.

Drizzt knew this was no simple flame strike. He had witnessed more than a few of those in his life, including many from Catti-brie. This one came from a matron mother of a ruling House, and the fires roared and stung and bit.

But Drizzt emerged, uncomfortable but unharmed, much to the surprise and dismay of the two priestesses, including Zhindia, who were focused on him at that time.

“How?” he heard the nearby priestess whisper as he descended upon her, his blades working in a blur, defeating her magical armor and tearing at her skin. Her puzzlement didn’t surprise Drizzt. She couldn’t know of the frostbrand named Icingdeath, which provided him protection from even powerful magical fires. The discomfort had been all too real for Drizzt, the matron mother’s magic nearly overwhelming the defenses of the blade. For a fleeting instant, Drizzt wished he hadn’t given the protective ring to Catti-brie. But in the end, in the mere eye-blink it took Drizzt to react, the defensive powers of the scimitar proved sufficient, kept him alive and kept him free of serious harm.

The priestess went down, gasping and reaching at her torn throat. Drizzt turned his attention to the far doors, to the matron mother standing in front of them, already casting once more.

She would be wise enough to avoid fire.

The ranger felt the waves of gripping magic, a spell of holding. He was already on the move, diving back the way he had come, but he crashed hard to the floor under the disorienting blast. He was trying to sheathe his blades as he went, a maneuver he had practiced and used for decades to great effect, but that spell from Matron Mother Zhindia assaulted him, and Twinkle went skidding aside even as Icingdeath slid into its sheath.

Drizzt ignored it and turned the fall into an awkward roll, scooping up Taulmaril as he went.

He came back to his feet wobbly, his brain numbed by the magical assault. He kept enough of his wits about him to control his movements and focus. He had the first arrow away before Zhindia could finish her next spell.

The shot seemed true, but at the last moment a blade, spinning and dancing in the air, clipped the arrow and turned it aside.

She had set up a blade barrier, Drizzt realized.

Another arrow suffered the same fate. A third got through, but exploded into fireworks as it hit Zhindia’s personal defensive magic shield.

In the flash of those multicolored fireworks, Drizzt got a good look at the spinning blades in front of Matron Mother Zhindia. The ranger dived and rolled, back and forth, and sent a stream of arrows at the woman. He recognized that he wouldn’t get through those magical defenses, that he wouldn’t kill Matron Mother Zhindia with his bow from afar.

But that was no longer his purpose.

He was gaining a measure of the blade barrier, watching its patterns, witnessing the speed of the blades and the areas they patrolled.

A magical hammer appeared in the air in front of him, crackling with black arcs of some lightning-like energy-surely garnered from the lower planes.

Drizzt dodged. He threw Taulmaril out to block and his hands tingled from the impact, black tendrils reaching out from the hammer along the bow’s shaft and biting him.

A step back and a leap to the side bought him enough room to let fly another arrow, but so engrossed was Matron Mother Zhindia that she didn’t even blink as this one came in and burst into fireworks right before her eyes.

She reached up into the air in front of her and began to draw with her finger, the digit leaving a line of sparkling light where it passed.

She sketched a symbol, a rune of power, hanging in the air. Drizzt fell back and clutched at his chest, which burned suddenly with intense pain.

Across the table, a priestess fell hard, cut in half. But even as she fell, her killer, Entreri, stumbled and gasped at the flowing agony of Matron Mother Zhindia’s symbol.

The magical hammer swept in at Drizzt from the side, and he knew it had him.

But a blade intervened-a diving Jarlaxle stabbed Khazid’hea forward.

A reprieve, one reprieve, and no more, Drizzt realized. Jarlaxle, too, felt the pain of that symbol, and his dive left him on the floor, cringing in agony.

Zhindia drew a second magical symbol in the air, and Drizzt knew he and his friends couldn’t win, that they were overmatched and surely doomed. He wanted to throw down his bow and surrender, and beg for a quick death.

“Drizzt!” Jarlaxle called from the floor. “Deception! A rune of despair!”

Jarlaxle started to rise, but the hammer swept in again and struck him hard, dropping him to the floor.

A missile flew out from Drizzt’s right, a jeweled dagger spinning for Matron Mother Zhindia. A magical blade from the defensive barrier clipped it, but did not defeat the throw. The dagger turned through the barrier, past that wall of dancing blades, but could not get through Matron Mother Zhindia’s wards, and another multicolored explosion flashed in the room.

And Drizzt knew that they were doomed.

Entreri cried out and fell to one knee, clutching at his chest.

Drizzt’s heart fell, for they were beaten.

Jarlaxle would die here, and Dahlia was doomed.

Why had they come to this place? They couldn’t win. Catti-brie would not bear his children, and it wasn’t even Catti-brie anyway-just a horrible deception, wrapping misery into more misery. And so his life would go full circle, with him dying in this, the place of his birth.

The hammer clipped him and sent him tumbling. The waves of pain and despair from the floating, glowing runes chased him to the floor and assailed him.

But Drizzt laughed. What did it matter, after all? It was all a ruse, all an illusion, all the great deception of some demon goddess who was toying with him as Errtu had toyed with the heart and soul of Wulfgar those years before.

It didn’t matter.

Drizzt leaped to his feet and stared at the Matron Mother of House Melarn, supreme zealot among the fanatical priestesses of Lolth.

Catti-brie was long dead, Regis crossing into the nether realm beside her. Wulfgar had died in Icewind Dale, and Bruenor’s last words echoed in his thoughts. They were all dead anyway. It was all a sick joke, and so nothing really mattered.

And he laughed.

Because it was all a horrible game, and in that unreality, what power might a Symbol of Hopelessness hold over him? And in that special insight, even the agony of the Symbol of Pain couldn’t lay him low. He refused to accept it, and refused to consider that any physical pain could possibly be worse than the grand deception that had made him believe that his friends were alive.

The hammer came at him and he threw Taulmaril into it, turning it aside.

He drew out Icingdeath and he charged.

His eyes remained on Zhindia-he let her become the focal point of all the pain and all the rage. He understood the rhythm of the blade barrier-he knew the dance of those magical swords, like sentries patrolling a wall.

He saw the priestess’s eyes widen with surprise, and widen more with fear. Behind her, the doors opened and she turned and scampered, the doors ponderously closing behind her.

“No!” Drizzt roared. He leaped, not for all his life, but simply because this kill would serve him. This kill would deny the deception, would hurt Lolth as she had ruined him.

He went horizontal in the air, throwing his feet out to the side, and he tucked and contorted and twisted and flew through.

Several blades clipped him and cracked against him, but he felt no pain. He landed on his feet, stumbling forward into the doors, unsure of why the blade barrier hadn’t torn him to shreds. He crashed into the doors and felt a burst of energy flow from him, throwing the doors wide, and if he had paused long enough to notice, he would have seen that his shove had caused great gashes into the thick bronze, slicing part of the metal into ragged shards.

But he didn’t notice, bursting through in a run. Matron Mother Zhindia was just ahead. As Drizzt crossed the threshold, he crossed, too, a second glyph of warding, and he was flying again, jolted by a mighty blast of lightning.

He held his scimitar with all his might, determined that he would not drop it with his twitching muscles. He held it and he put all his focus on it, and used that to ride through the jolting blast, coming down from his impact against the wall once more in a run. He saw the matron mother down the corridor, turning into a side room.

He knew that his companions were behind him, that they likely needed him.

Or were they even his companions?

Was it Jarlaxle and Entreri, or two lesser demons, serving Lolth in her grand deception to utterly break Drizzt Do’Urden?

They were hurt behind him, but Drizzt didn’t care. Not then, not with Matron Mother Zhindia Melarn in his sights.

Yvonnel, in spirit and in body, could hardly contain her glee. Truly, she wanted to leap up from the stoup and run around it to wrap the glorious Matron Mother K’yorl in a loving hug.

She had felt the infusion of kinetic protection into the heretic Drizzt, but still had winced when he foolishly tried to leap through Matron Mother Zhindia’s defensive wall of spinning blades.

And Yvonnel felt the exultation, the ecstasy, the brilliant release of tremendous power when Drizzt had shouldered the doors, inadvertently, unwittingly, unknowingly releasing the powerful energy the spinning blades had exacted upon his torso to be gobbled up and held by K’yorl’s brilliant ploy.

It wasn’t over yet, she reminded herself, and focused once more on Drizzt. He ran, he turned, he burst through the door in close pursuit of Zhindia.

Another glyph exploded, sending him sidelong, burning him. K’yorl’s shield was no more.

And there was Zhindia in a small side passage, barely more than a deep alcove, her fingers moving, her lips curled deliciously as she completed a spell, one that would surely end this battle.

Yvonnel screamed into K’yorl’s thoughts. Desperately, she imparted an image of Minolin Fey, babbling and bumbling about with the candles.

And K’yorl understood and complied, a blast of psionic energy rolling forth, leading the way for Drizzt.

It caught Matron Mother Zhindia by surprise. She stuttered. Her spell fell away, her defenses lapsed.

Shock and confusion filled her red eyes.

And fear. So much fear.

Drizzt stumbled forward with every bit of life he could muster, stabbing his blade at the personification of all that pained him. The tip struck some magical shield and was deflected, but only barely. With a roar of protest, Drizzt brought the scimitar back to bear, and both he and his opponent understood that her ward had been defeated.

He was inside her defenses, then, both magical and martial, and she could not stop his thrust, and could not turn aside. He had her helpless and soon-to-be-dead.

She stared at him, her faced locked in an expression of utter despair.

And it was not Matron Mother Zhindia he saw …

But Catti-brie.