Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3)

Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3) Page 55

Artemis Entreri returned his sword and dagger to their holsters.

Behind Drizzt, the woman warrior whom Dahlia had overwhelmed groaned and rolled, and even tried to prop herself up on her elbows. Dahlia was there at once, delivering a strong kick to the shade’s side, and as the woman tried to curl up, Dahlia stomped down hard on the back of her neck, pinning her in place.

“If you move again, I will shatter your neck,” the deadly elf warned.

Drizzt came up beside and grabbed Dahlia by the arm, trying to pull her away. She resisted at first, but the drow looked at her plaintively and tugged more insistently.

As soon as Dahlia lifted her foot from the woman’s neck and stepped back, and before Drizzt could reach down to assist the captive shade, Entreri shoved past him and grabbed the warrior by the hair and arm, and roughly yanked her from the floor.

“Your sword?” he asked, noting her gaze, for indeed, her long sword lay on the floor not far away. “Yes, do retrieve it, that I might finish what should already have been done.” With that, the assassin shoved the shade to the side and back to the ground, near her weapon.

She looked at the weapon, then back to Entreri, who had drawn his weapons once more and stood waiting, and beckoning.

Drizzt watched the spectacle in dismay, a telling reminder to him of who this man, Entreri, was, or he had been at least. Lost in the nostalgia of better days, had he deceived himself? Had he allowed that which he wanted so badly, a return to a time and place, to blind him to the reality of Artemis Entreri?

He glanced the other way, to his other companion, who watched eagerly, and with a grin. And Drizzt understood that expression; Dahlia wanted to see this fight, wanted to see Entreri cut the shade to pieces.

Drizzt swallowed hard and reminded himself that Dahlia had good reason to hate the shades, and that these were his sworn enemies—they had been in the tunnel looking for him and the sword, no doubt.

“Pick it up,” Entreri said to the shade. “Pick it up and stand. My companions will stay to the side. You against me, and if you win, perhaps they will let you go.”

“Hardly,” Dahlia remarked, drawing a smirk from Entreri.

Drizzt caught the silent exchange between the two. They were of like mind, and following desires that he did not, could not, share.

Once again, an image of Entreri and Dahlia in an embrace, a passionate kiss, flashed through his mind, but he growled it away and answered Charon’s Claw with a wave of anger and an image of his own: a deep pit, its sides swirling with the rush of powerful water elementals, its bottom the fiery maw of the primordial.

“I know you, Barrabus the Gray,” the shade said, still on the floor and propped again on her elbows. “I will not fight you.”

“Coward.”

The shade shrugged. “I know you. I once fought beside you.”

Entreri tilted his head, regarding the woman more closely, but Drizzt saw no flash of recognition there.

“As I know this elf, Dahlia, champion of the Thayans.”

“Then you know that you will die here,” Dahlia replied, and Drizzt winced once more. He almost wished that Entreri would just step over and end this torment, for the shade and for him.

He stepped over instead, between Entreri and the shade, and he reached his hand to her. When she took it, he helped her to her feet, her weapon still on the ground.

“Your patrol came looking for us,” Drizzt said.

“No,” the shade said, and shook her head.

“Do not lie to me or I will let my companions have you. Answer my questions and—”

“And what?” the shade and Entreri asked together.

“And Drizzt will let her go,” Dahlia said with a mocking chortle.

“Will he, then?” asked Entreri.

“I will,” Drizzt said to the shade directly. “Answer my questions and run away the way you were going, the way from which we came.”

The shade glanced past Drizzt to Entreri, then to Dahlia. “I do not believe you,” she said, looking back directly into Drizzt’s lavender eyes.

“It’s all you have,” he calmly answered. “And it’s not so difficult a question. Your friends are in the entry cavern to Gauntlgrym, it would seem. I would know their numbers.”

“You ask me to betray Herzgo Alegni, as Barrabus betrayed him!” the woman snapped.

“Alegni is dead!” Dahlia declared, and the woman looked at her curiously, as if her statement was purely ridiculous.

“Speak that name again and I will bash in your skull,” Dahlia promised, and spat at the shade’s feet.

Strangely, that threat seemed to bolster the shade. She stood taller, as if accepting her fate, and so, no longer afraid. Drizzt had seen this before, indeed had felt such feelings of his own in times past, and so he understood that his moment to garner any useful information was fast passing.

“You cannot escape,” the shade said to him.

“They’re in the cavern,” Drizzt replied.

The shade smiled and nodded. “They’re waiting for you, and if you don’t come to them, they will find you. And kill you.”

Her smile was sincere, Drizzt understood, for she had gone past the point of fear and fully into acceptance. His thoughts spun—he recalled the cavern, the stalagmites and hanging pillars, so much like Menzoberranzan. He considered the layout of the place, the shallow underground pond and the beach before the great wall of Gauntlgrym.

“Go, then,” Drizzt said, stepping aside and motioning back down the tunnel, not toward the surface as he had first indicated, but back the way the Shadovar patrol had come. “Go back to your dark friends and deliver my word. They will not find us. They will not retrieve this foul sword. There are many tunnels in the Underdark. They are the ways of the drow, not the Netherese.”

The shade stared at him. He could feel Entreri’s glare burning into his back.

“You will not do this,” Dahlia said.

Drizzt turned a stern look her way, a silent warning.

“Go,” he said to the shade, though he didn’t look back at her. “I will not offer again.”

The shade started tentatively, looking around at the three, not knowing from which would come the killing blow. She eased past Drizzt, who turned to stare at Entreri, then sidled past the assassin.

Entreri moved to the side a step, turning as the shade passed, and Drizzt pointedly moved up as well, putting himself between the assassin and the shade.

She broke into a run, nearly tripping over the corpse of one of her companions.

“I have witnessed many stupid things from you, drow,” Entreri remarked, moving around behind Drizzt and bumping him as he did, “but nothing more foolish than this.”

Drizzt slowly turned, first to see Dahlia, who stared at him hatefully, as if he had just betrayed her, then, as he came around to see Entreri . . . Entreri, who had retrieved Taulmaril from the floor, and who had only bumped into Drizzt to cover the fact that he had taken an arrow from the quiver on Drizzt’s back!

The assassin drew back on the bowstring, leveling the shot at the shade, who was still in easy range.

And Drizzt couldn’t get to him in time.

“Entreri, no!” the drow said, and he was pleading as much as commanding.

Entreri did pause at that, at the curious timbre in Drizzt’s voice, likely, and he glanced over.

“Do not, I beg,” said Drizzt.

“That she will go and warn her allies of our approach?” The assassin ended with a growl and set his sights on the fleeing shade woman once more.

“Kill her,” Dahlia agreed.

“That she will go and tell them we discovered their ambush,” Drizzt replied.

Entreri did let fly, and Drizzt winced, but the assassin had turned the bow a bit, and the lightning arrow flashed in the corridor, cracking into stone with a solid retort, and the uninjured shade yelped in surprise and scrambled along.

Artemis Entreri stood straight and stared at Drizzt, recognizing that the drow had something in mind, some plan that would use the fleeing shade to their advantage. He tossed the bow back to Drizzt, never blinking, never unlocking his stare from that of Drizzt.

More passed between the pair in that moment than the potential practicality of sending the shade on her way. Drizzt saw something else in Entreri’s eye.

And Drizzt understood something quite profound: Artemis Entreri had trusted him.

Chapter 19: 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.