Maestro

CHAPTER 19

Another uninvited guest,” Kiriy muttered to the still-unconscious Dahlia when she heard approaching footsteps in the hallway outside the door. She wasn’t worried, and even hoped that it might be this Drizzt Do’Urden creature. She was confident in the glyphs she had placed upon the entryway.

“Come, dear,” she said, slapping Dahlia’s cheek. “Come awake now and greet our visitors.”

Dahlia did groan a bit, the first signs that the sleeping poison was finally beginning to wear away-though Kiriy figured it would be several hours yet before she awakened.

Kiriy slapped her again, harder, just to hear her groan, and the sound brought a smile to the eldest daughter of Matron Mother Zeerith Xorlarrin.

The smile went away instantly, though, when the door burst in, and no glyphs exploded, and two drow males crashed into the room.

“How dare you!” Kiriy shouted, leaping up and drawing her whip.

“My dear Kiriy, High Priestess, do you not recognize me?” Jarlaxle asked, and he tapped his finger to his temple and dispelled the illusion and became again the mercenary leader.

The priestess gasped. “What are you doing here?” Kiriy drew a dagger and placed it against the back of Dahlia’s neck, and the elf groaned.

Jarlaxle held his hands out wide, innocently. “I serve House Do’Urden,” he replied. “And so, apparently, I serve you.”

“Then be out on the balcony and repel the stone heads, and be quick!” Kiriy ordered, or started to order, for Jarlaxle’s companion took a different tack than the mercenary leader.

Entreri pulled off his mask, becoming a human once more, and threw it aside.

“Iblith!” the priestess gasped, her dagger arm coming out for Entreri.

And he exploded into motion, charging ahead, his sword arcing out in front of him and creating a wall of floating black ash.

Kiriy thrust her scourge forward, the snake heads hungrily striking through the ash wall as she began to cast a spell. Confident the immediate way was clear, and that her spell was ready, she burst through the opaque barrier, ready to destroy the foolish human.

But Entreri wasn’t there.

“She is Xorlarrin!” she heard Jarlaxle cry, aiming it past her, and only then did the priestess begin to understand the truth of Artemis Entreri, a recognition that lasted only the eye-blink it took Charon’s Claw to slash against her back.

Kiriy was fully armored, both with exquisite drow mail woven into her robes and with her own considerable defensive magic. No normal sword could have gotten through that wall.

But Charon’s Claw was no normal sword.

No enchanted blade could have delivered a serious blow.

But Charon’s Claw was no mere enchanted blade.

Kiriy Xorlarrin staggered forward under the weight of the strike. She rolled, grimacing in pain, but ready to battle.

And there was Entreri, in her face, sword spinning and weaving, and his other hand, gripping a dagger, flashing all around.

Kiriy had raised her scourge and commanded the snakes to strike, twice, before she realized that not a serpent head remained.

She cried out and fell back, moving the dagger to defend.

But in came the red blade, striking all around, always just ahead of her defensive turns or blocks, always finding a strong angle. Just when she at last thought she had caught up to the human, he rolled behind her block and she felt the bite of a dagger in her ribs.

“Oh, not that!” she heard Jarlaxle say, and to her relief, briefly, she thought she had found reprieve.

But then the red blade came across, brutally, perfectly, and Kiriy’s head flipped up into the air.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Jarlaxle said from the bed, where he was examining Dahlia and had taken her staff in hand.

“I have had enough of drow priestesses,” Entreri replied.

“She is the eldest daughter of Matron Mother Zeerith.”

“Was,” Entreri corrected.

“Why must you make my life so difficult?”

“To have me walking beside you is a privilege,” Entreri replied, wiping his sword on Kiriy’s headless body. “I want you to earn every step.”

Jarlaxle surrendered with a sigh, his gaze going to Kiriy’s head, which had landed upright, her eyes still open. “I should craft a human disguise,” the mercenary mused. “They always underestimate you.”

“So you do.”

Jarlaxle began to reply, stopped and blinked, then started again, and stopped again when Dahlia stirred beside him. She met his disarming smile with a left hook, screamed, and leaped upon him.

Artemis Entreri was there in a heartbeat, before his dropped weapons even hit the floor. He grabbed at Dahlia as Jarlaxle fell away from her, finally tackling her to the bed. She kept up the struggle, punching and clawing, and even tried to bite Entreri.

Entreri sat up and pulled her up to her knees. He lined up her face in front of his own, gripping her arms tightly, pinning them down and holding her back.

“Dahlia!” he said.

She smashed her forehead into his face.

Entreri pushed her back a bit more and spat blood. “Dahlia! Dahlia, do you not know me?”

The elf stared at him, wide-eyed, her face contorting into a mask of the sheerest confusion.

“Dahlia!”

She seemed about to say something, but seemed confused too, and shook her head in denial.

“Dahlia,” Entreri said softly, and he felt all the strength go out of the elf. She simply collapsed, falling forward into his waiting hug, and there he held her tightly, whispering to her, promising her that he would get her out of this place.

“No, truly,” Jarlaxle said from over the headless body of Kiriy Xorlarrin. “You really didn’t have to do that.”

“I didn’t have to, but it felt good,” Entreri said, holding Dahlia close.

Jarlaxle started to reply, but shrugged instead. He took up Dahlia’s wondrous staff, quickly examined it, then broke it down and tucked it into his pouch.

“We must be away,” Jarlaxle said, and Entreri wasn’t about to argue.

“Indeed,” a woman’s voice replied, and there stood Matron Mother Quenthel Baenre, where a wall had been just a moment before. The disfigured illithid stood beside her, the pair flanked by Sos’Umptu and Minolin Fey. A cadre of the Baenre garrison hovered about, close behind, protecting the matron mother and the Archmage of Menzoberranzan, Tsabrak Xorlarrin, who maintained the passwall. Before Jarlaxle or Entreri could react, the room’s door banged open, and another battle group appeared, this one led by Weapons Master Andzrel Baenre.

Jarlaxle glanced at Entreri and shook his head.

The Baenres had come prepared.

“We saved Matron Mother Darthiir, your voice on the council,” Jarlaxle said when he noted Quenthel Baenre’s disgusted expression as she looked upon the headless corpse at her feet.

“For just that reason, I am sure,” the matron mother sarcastically replied.

On the balcony of the House chapel, Yvonnel, K’yorl, Yiccardaria, and Tiago looked down upon Drizzt Do’Urden.

He didn’t know they were there. His vision and thoughts were caught in the web of a clairvoyance enchantment that had sent him back through the decades. Drizzt gasped and stumbled to the altar, trembling, his knees giving out beneath him, but he crawled on, reaching desperately.

“He is a confused and tormented soul,” Yvonnel explained. “He witnesses now a moment that brings him great pain, and great doubt. He has no footing now, no confidence in his principles or his code of honor. He is a pitiable thing.”

“He is a heretic,” Tiago corrected, sword in hand and buckler unwinding into a larger shield. “An abomination, and soon to be a gift to Lady Lolth.”

“When you are told,” Yiccardaria said in no uncertain terms, and even stubborn Tiago had to back off a bit at the command of a yochlol.

“Your bravery is commendable, if your temerity is not. Do you underestimate this warrior, Tiago? Do you place no value on the brilliance he has attained?”

“I have battled him before,” the young upstart weapons master replied.

And so Drizzt knows what to expect from you and your unusual weapons, Yvonnel thought, but did not say. She did smile, though, and offered a rather evil chuckle that should have warned Tiago somewhat-if he wasn’t so cocksure of his own expertise.

“He does seem a pitiful thing,” Yvonnel said instead, nodding down at the seemingly broken drow, who knelt by the empty altar and held onto it for support. “There will be little glory in killing him when his eyes and his thoughts are caught in the past. The headsman is not regarded as a hero for his actions on the gallows.”

Tiago stared at her, clearly confused, trying to form some rebuttal and looking very much as if he suddenly believed that his trophy had been stolen from his grasp yet again.

“But that will not be the case,” said Yvonnel. “The enchantment upon Drizzt is mine own. I can dismiss it easily. Do not doubt that he will find focus when you go down there against him.”

Tiago visibly relaxed.

“Do you deny any aid when you are in combat with Drizzt?” Yiccardaria asked.

“I do not understand.”

“Shall I incapacitate Drizzt Do’Urden if you are losing?” Yvonnel explained. “Or heal your wounds if he scores first blood?”

The young weapons master seemed unsure, eyes darting from Yvonnel to Yiccardaria.

Yvonnel took great pleasure in his obvious unease, and nearly laughed aloud when he licked his lips. He was measuring his own confidence against his desired glory. If he agreed to the help, his glory would be diminished.

If he did not, he might well end up dead.

“No,” he said at last. “I ask for this kill, by my sword alone.”

Yiccardaria nodded and seemed contented, while Yvonnel was delighted.

She wouldn’t have helped him anyway.

“He will die,” Tiago promised.

Yiccardaria motioned to the tight circular staircase off to the side of the balcony, but Tiago took his own route, lifting a leg over the balcony railing and simply dropping over, tapping his House emblem to enact a levitation enchantment so he could touch down easily onto the floor some twenty feet below.

Even as he landed, Yvonnel dismissed the enchantment over Drizzt.

“They both champion Lolth,” Yiccardaria remarked. “But only one knows it.”

Drizzt reached for Zaknafein, his father, as the great warrior lay bleeding, dying upon the altar.

But Drizzt’s hand passed right through the image and scraped the top of the altar-stone as he pulled back, and the images around him of his family, of his gasping father and his murderous mother, of his three priestess sisters in their Lolth-worshiping raiment-of Vierna in particular, and Drizzt thought he spied a tear there as she watched her father die-cast him back across the decades and shed a dark light upon his choices.

But Vierna was a ghost. They were all ghosts. And then they were gone.

Leaving Drizzt kneeling beside the altar, staring at the hand he had put through the image of Zaknafein, seeing blood on that hand.

Drizzt understood it now. Yes, his hands were soaked in blood. He had caused the downfall of House Do’Urden, the sacrifice of Zaknafein, who had lain upon that altar willingly in his stead.

And for what?

He had saved an elf child. His principles, his conscience, had demanded it, but he had killed her anyway, later. She had come for him and he had killed her anyway.

What did it matter? What did any of it matter? Of what value were his principles when he continually cast them against the incoming tide itself?

How much of a fool was he, standing alone, and so desperately clinging to images of his reborn friends that he now knew to be mirages, illusions, deceptions?

There was no solid ground beneath his feet. He felt as if his entire life had been a lie, or a quest to tilt his lance at statues of dragons that would only be rebuilt if he somehow managed to topple them.

He could not win.

What, then, the point of fighting?

He took a deep breath. He sensed something, someone, behind him and glanced over his shoulder to see a drow warrior, Tiago Baenre, floating down from above, landing lightly on the floor some steps away, his sword and shield at the ready.

“Why are you here?” Drizzt asked him. “Why now?”

“To kill you, of course. To finish what should have been done in the tunnels of Q’Xorlarrin.”

Drizzt looked down again at his hand and gave a soft chuckle. The blood was still there-the blood would always be there.

“Q’Xorlarrin,” he whispered. “Gauntlgrym.”

Or was it? Did it matter?

“Am I to lie upon the altar, then, and accept your blade?” Drizzt said, twisting to face Tiago as he rose to his feet.

“The result would be the same,” Tiago replied. “Though I prefer to again defeat you.”

Drizzt’s thoughts went back to that room in Gauntlgrym, where he and Tiago had fought, and where he was certain he had Tiago beaten and dead, until Doum’wielle intervened with the same mighty sword Jarlaxle now carried.

“I am happy to kill you again in combat,” Tiago teased, “for the glory of Lolth.”

Drizzt simply shrugged and let Tiago have his delusions.

He drew his scimitars, and as they slid free of their sheaths, Drizzt planted in his mind the image of Zaknafein, upon this very altar, in this very place, being sacrificed to the goddess Tiago now championed.

Drizzt looked at Icingdeath and Twinkle as he rolled them over in his hands. So many memories.

He smiled as he thought of the dragon that gave his right-hand scimitar its name, as he recalled Wulfgar’s implausible throw to drop the giant icicle spear upon the unwitting wyrm.

But he forced fully back into his thoughts the image of Zaknafein, dying in his stead. Dying … Zaknafein murdered … because of Drizzt … because of cruel Lolth …

Tiago, self-professed champion of Lolth, leaped and came on.

The Hunter waited.

Tiago opened with a bull rush, shield leading, seeking to drive Drizzt back over the altar.

Drizzt, outwardly seeming hardly ready, was quicker, though, and he flashed out to the left, forcing Tiago to skid to a stop and swing about, launching his sword in a wide sweep to keep the dodging ranger at bay.

A moment of darkness crossed Tiago’s face as he squared up to his foe. There stood Drizzt, scimitars up and ready, diagonally out from either hip, head bowed but coming up. When Tiago glanced upon that face, into those lavender orbs, at that sly smile, he saw the truth.

Drizzt didn’t care.

Tiago went in carefully, Vidrinath stabbing ahead.

Drizzt, in no hurry, tapped the blade aside, left and right, and measured his ripostes, more to see how Tiago would react than with any hope of scoring an early hit. And so they felt each other out for a few turns and routines, mostly blade tapping blade, and only once with Drizzt putting Icingdeath out far enough and fast enough for Tiago to block with his shield.

But shield and scimitar barely connected, and Drizzt had the blade away before the webbing magic of Orbbcress could be activated. Drizzt covered that retraction with a secondary spin and strike, desiring that Tiago not know what he remembered from the last encounter.

Drizzt understood the properties of that shield, and believed he knew how Tiago would try to use it.

Tiago’s fine sword averted the second strike, and the deft drow quickly forged ahead, stabbing repeatedly from around the edge of his shield, forcing Drizzt into a retreat.

Drizzt focused his counters on that sword, parrying and rolling, seeking some way to twist it from Tiago’s hand. But whenever he got any leverage on the starlit glassteel blade, Tiago was fast to turn, bringing his shield into play and forcing Drizzt to surrender the twist or be caught.

This young warrior was very skilled. Drizzt reminded himself of that with every parry and every counter.

He was also very confident, seizing the initiative and pressing his attacks.

Drizzt let him, and continued his measured retreat, swinging to the far end of the room from the balcony where Tiago had leaped, and then coming back around to the right, gradually putting the balcony behind him and backstepping to the altar.

Tiago’s cadence, strike and step, was almost hypnotic, the flecks caught within Vidrinath sparkling like the stars seen atop Kelvin’s Cairn. Drizzt could almost feel the chill breeze on his face again, and how he wanted to be there …

Tiago huffed and puffed as he scrambled to keep pace and keep the offensive press, but Drizzt easily turned the stabbing blade.

Tiago dropped his right shoulder back and leaped ahead with unexpected ferocity, shield leading. But only for a moment. As Drizzt reacted, so, too, did Tiago, anticipating Drizzt’s reactions perfectly.

Drizzt went right and Tiago turned right, Vidrinath coming forward.

Tiago had first blood, and Drizzt’s hip burned from the poisonous strike.

Drizzt reset his position and his pace, accepting the gash and confident that he could defeat the drow sleeping poison.

The sight of the blood spurred Tiago, it seemed, and he came on as before, only much quicker now, Vidrinath leading and stabbing, changing angles with each strike, short stabs and sweeping reversals.

Twinkle and Icingdeath met the barrage, the three blades ringing together and scraping apart, and always that shield finishing the exchange, cutting off Drizzt’s attack.

The altar was near, and the young Baenre came on with a shield rush again, angling to Drizzt’s right. And as with the initial attack, he forced Drizzt out to the left-but this time, with Vidrinath ready.

But Drizzt knew that, and so didn’t go left. Icingdeath came down hard on the shield, a stunning blow that interrupted the bull rush.

Tiago cried in glee, thinking he had him, and enacted the web properties of his shield to grasp Icingdeath fast against it.

But then Drizzt, his feet on the top edge of the altar for leverage, was against that shield, too, pressing forward from above, driving Tiago back and down and twisting, and leaving the surprised warrior at a sudden and likely fatal disadvantage.

Tiago had no choice. He had to force Orbbcress to release its hold, or he would have been driven to the ground awkwardly, and thus exposed to Drizzt’s free scimitar. He spun desperately out to his right as he released Orbbcress’s grip, and so did Drizzt, diving down the other way from the altar, landing in a headlong roll that brought him right back to his feet, where he spun about in time to engage the angry Tiago’s renewed charge.

“You fight with tricks of your fine armaments,” Drizzt accused him, spinning and parrying, his feet moving too fast for Tiago to properly pursue in time so that he wasn’t simply blocked yet again. “Where are you, Tiago Baenre, without those gifts your heritage provides?”

“Do you claim no baubles?” an increasingly-agitated Tiago countered.

“Won in fair combat,” taunted Drizzt. “Can you say the same?”

On came Tiago with a wild sweep of his sword, and Drizzt sucked in his belly and leaped back out of range.

But in came the growling Baenre, throwing himself into Drizzt, shield leading. Drizzt struck down hard with both his blades to break the rush and keep the fierce warrior at bay.

And Orbbcress caught both of Drizzt’s scimitars, hilt to tip.

Drizzt couldn’t press forward this time. He had no altar behind him to bring him up high and grant him overpowering leverage. He tugged back, but futilely.

Tiago had his feet under him, and had both of those blades captured. He rolled his chest down and to his right, turning his shield, driving Drizzt over, and flipped a reverse grip on Vidrinath as he went.

If Drizzt let go of his caught blades and tried to grapple, Tiago would simply continue the turn and put a backhanded strike through the fool’s chest.

But Drizzt didn’t let go and was pulled with him.

Tiago stepped forward with his left foot and jerked back strongly to the right, eyes sparkling as both blades were pulled from Drizzt’s grasp.

He must have seen Drizzt’s feet beneath his moving shield, the unarmed heretic trying to get away-but even with his magical enhancements, Drizzt could not get out of range.

The moment of glory was upon him. With his legs properly placed under him, with all of his core strength driving up against the overbalanced drow, Drizzt had to stumble backward as Tiago whipped his shield back around to the left, arm going out wide while he flipped Vidrinath in his right hand for a brutal slash.

Tiago opened his shoulders-his entire body moved in perfect balance and perfect harmony, the power of the mighty swing coming from the strength of his legs, from the turning of his hips.

Undeniable.

Deadly.

“Brilliant!” Yvonnel gasped as she saw Tiago executing that turn and swing, as she noted Drizzt without his scimitars, fighting for balance.

“A champion is crowned,” said Yiccardaria.