Maestro

by R. A. Salvatore

  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.