“Why?” he cried, looking up at her. “What?”
“Do you think Asmodeus would approve of such idiocy? Love? There is no love. There is only lust.”
“But-”
“You disappoint me,” Sylora interrupted and started away, and Jestry pulled himself to his feet and scrambled after her. Again she stopped just as he neared, turning an even sharper stare over him.
“That is the truth we know!” Sylora said, and she poked her finger hard against his chest. “And in that truth, we are stronger. There is no love. Our enemies are weak because they delve into such nonsense. There is no love, only lust. There is no warmth, only heat. There is no friendship, only alliance. There is no community, only self. These are the tenets of your existence. These are the truths to which you gave yourself. Would you deny all of that because your loins itch?”
As she finished, she reached down and grabbed Jestry’s crotch hard and twisted. The man grimaced but held his ground.
“You desire me,” Sylora whispered, moving very close to the man’s face. She held her grip as she did, and twisted a bit more.
“You desire me,” she said again, more intently, and Jestry realized that there was a question in her tone. He nodded.
“You must have me,” she said. “You seek to possess me.”
Again he nodded.
“What I just gave to you with Arunika will only sate you temporarily,” she whispered. “And then you will need me again, even more, and you will beg me to show you even greater pleasure.”
Jestry was breathing too hard to respond.
Sylora let him go and shoved him back a step.
“I’m glad of that,” she said, suddenly calm. “And the promise of greater pleasures, pleasures beyond your imagination, is not a hollow one. I have a purpose for you, Jestry, and when you fulfill it, I’ll show to you a level of ecstasy that will probably kill you. You would like to die like that, wouldn’t you?”
Jestry found himself nodding before he even considered the implications of her promise.
“But woe to you if your death is not found in service to Asmodeus.”
“What do you mean?”
“The devil lord would frown on love, don’t you think?”
The words hit Jestry hard and he lowered his gaze with embarrassment. “Yes,” he admitted softly.
“There is no love, only lust,” Sylora instructed yet again. “Our enemies don’t understand that, and so they are soft.”
“The Netherese?” Jestry asked, looking up.
Sylora shook her head. “Not the Netherese. They, too, understand, and that’s why they are dangerous. Our other enemies-the humans, the dwarves, the elves, the halflings-they are weak.”
“But we’re human,” Jestry said before he could bite back the words.
“We have ascended, because we know the truth. And what is that truth, Jestry?”
The man swallowed hard because within Sylora’s words there loomed a clear threat should he fail this test.
“There is no love, only lust,” Jestry recited.
“But you said that you loved me.”
Jestry took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “Only because I desire you. I’d tear off your clothes and throw you down before me!”
“You said that you loved me.”
“I’ve been taught that women wish to hear those words, so I said them that I might more fully possess you,” Jestry insisted. He tried to sound convincing, but knew the lie to be so obvious as to be ridiculous.
“And now that you know that I reject those words, and that I desire you in the same way as you do me?” Sylora teased, coming forward to stand very near to him again, letting him feel her hot breath on his neck and chin.
“I hunger for you even more,” Jestry said. He was glad that he’d paused long enough to consider his response before blurting it out, for he’d almost said that he “loved” her even more.
Sylora grabbed him roughly by the chin and tugged him closer. “Fear not, my champion, for I will feed you well.”
She moved as if to kiss him, but instead bit him hard on the lower lip, drawing blood.
8
Drizzt guided andahar as fast as he dared while trying to keep Dahlia steady. He’d slung her over the back of the unicorn, and had stopped no less than three times in the first twenty strides to make sure she was still breathing.
She was, but barely. One of her thighs had turned an ugly blue and spittle flowed from her lips.
Drizzt didn’t dare stop to more closely inspect her wound, though he figured it had to be on her lower leg. He spurred Andahar on, trying to figure out where to turn, or if he was even going in the right direction.
With the delays and indecision, and the futile attempts to ease Dahlia’s suffering, it was long past midday when Drizzt at last arrived at the farmhouse south of Luskan, where the dirty woman eked out a paltry existence with her five children. They weren’t hiding this time. The children and the woman came to the doorway and watched him slip down from Andahar and gently pull Dahlia off the unicorn’s back. He draped her across his shoulders and moved toward the doorway. The woman crossed her arms and wore a profound scowl.
“She dead?” the woman asked. Her expression went from sour to surprised when she looked upon Dahlia… because Dahlia’s hair and facial skin didn’t appear the same as she had when they came through there, Drizzt realized.
“Not dead, not dying,” Drizzt answered defiantly. “But she’s gravely ill-poisoned. I need to leave her here. I need you to watch over her while I return to Luskan.”
He moved to enter the doorway, but the woman didn’t immediately step aside. She stood there staring at him.
“Please, will you tend her?” Drizzt asked.
“I’m not knowing much about poison.”
“Just keep her as comfortable as you…” Drizzt started to explain, but the woman yelled past him suddenly, to her children.
“Go and fetch Ben the Brewer!” she ordered sharply. “And be quick!”
The children ran off down the dirt path.
“Ben the Brewer?” Drizzt asked.
“He has many herbs,” the woman replied.
“He can cure her?” Drizzt asked, and he was surprised by the desperation in his tone.
The farmer woman looked at him and scoffed, but finally stepped aside so he could bring her into the house. He lay Dahlia down gently on a bedroll and moved immediately to her boot, unstrapping it and pulling it off-or trying to, for her leg was thick with poison.
After some time and more than a little grease, Drizzt at last managed to get the boot off. Dahlia’s foot was horribly swollen and discolored, blue and red and yellow.
He winced and brought a hand up to his face to try to compose himself. The farmer woman moved past him and studied the foot. “Looks like the bite of a tundra viper,” she said.
“And Ben the Brewer can cure that?” Drizzt asked.
The woman cast him a pitiful glance and shook her head.
Drizzt took a deep breath. He couldn’t lose Dahlia. Not now. Not with the loss of Bruenor so raw, not with his sudden loneliness, the realization that all of his friends were gone. He fell back from the bed, surprised by that revelation, by how much he needed Dahlia, by how frightened he was that she, too, might leave him.
“This is no snakebite,” the farmer woman said, inspecting the single puncture in the bottom of Dahlia’s foot.
“A poisoned spike.”
“Then you should seek the one who coated the spike,” the woman said. “Few would play with such a mixture if they had no antidote, eh? Or get us a dose, aye, for we… you, will need the poison to counter the poison.”
Drizzt nodded and spent a long moment staring at Dahlia. Other than the angry leg, she looked quite serene, though very pale.
“I’ll return before the next dawn,” the drow pledged.
He started for the door, but even as he reached it the farmer woman cried out. Drizzt spun around to find her
backing away from Dahlia, her hand over her open mouth, a look of horror on her face. The dark elf rushed to Dahlia, but found nothing amiss.
“What?” he asked, turning to their host.
“Her face!” the woman cried. “It’s bruising again, like before!”
Drizzt looked back to the elf and he understood. The magical powder Dahlia had applied was wearing off, and her woad was returning. He breathed a sigh of relief and gave a little laugh.
“It’s all right,” he explained, standing back up and moving for the door. “Beware that her hair might change as well.”
“She’s a doppelganger, then?” the woman asked with horror.
“Nay, just a bit of magical disguise.”
The woman, a simple creature, shook her head at such nonsense, and Drizzt managed a smile, then ran out of the house, leaping onto Andahar’s back and setting the unicorn off in a full gallop along the road to the north.
Images of Dahlia’s foot haunted him with Andahar’s every running stride.
They stood around her in a circle, bloody and battered. All of them, from Bengarion to Dor’crae, the nine lovers she had killed.
“You cannot escape us,” Dor’crae promised her. Half of his skin was missing, blasted free from the force of the rushing water. “We await you.”
“You think we have forgotten you?” asked another.
“You think we have forgiven you?” asked another.
They began to laugh, all nine, and to pace in unison, circling Dahlia as she spun around every which way. She had nowhere to run. Kozah’s Needle could not help her this time.
A tenth form joined the marching nine; a tiny form; a baby, half elf and half tiefling. He didn’t say anything, but stared at Dahlia hatefully then smiled a wicked smile to show a mouth full of sharpened teeth.
Dahlia cried out and fell away from him, but that only put her closer-too close!-to those on the other side. She cried out again and stumbled back to her original spot.
They taunted her and laughed at her. Desperate, she charged at the line, fists balled, determined to fight to the bitter end.
But she was grabbed by others, by Shadovar, and was thrown down and held.
Her mother cried out for her.
Herzgo Alegni fell over her.
When he finished, he walked away, laughing, along with his guards. To kill her mother, Dahlia knew, but Dahlia was not there anymore, was back in the midst of the circling ten she’d murdered.
She was naked, and she fell to the ground, crying.
They laughed at her all the more.
“We have not forgotten,” they chanted.
“We have not forgiven,” they chanted.
“We await you,” the baby taunted. “The time is near.”
Drizzt went over Luskan’s wall with no more noise or notice than a shadow in the starlight. He knew the city well, and made his way from structure to structure, alley to alley, roof to roof, to the base of the bridge to Closeguard Isle.
He could see the balcony where he and Dahlia had stood beside High Captain Kurth, as Kurth had explained to them the layout of the city. After a short while, watching the movements of the soldiers on Closeguard, Drizzt figured he could get to that balcony unnoticed.
But then what?
Was he to put a scimitar to the throat of a high captain? Would the man then surrender the antidote? Did Kurth even have any information regarding the poisoned traps in the jeweler’s shop?
Frustration almost had Drizzt stomping his boot. His thoughts wrapped in on themselves, leading nowhere. He knew that time was against him, was against Dahlia, but what was he to do?
“Go to Kurth,” he whispered and nodded, for that seemed the only option. He crouched beside the railing and took his first step on the bridge, but slipped back quickly when he saw several forms approaching from the other end.
The men and women walked right past him. He heard their general comments, talk of trouble with Ship Rethnor, and with one woman blaming Beniago for the current state of affairs.
“Beniago was so taken with that murderess,” she said.
“The trouble with Ship Rethnor will pass,” another woman insisted. “None o’ their leaders were killed by Beniago’s group-just a pair o’ hired scalawags. All the rest fell before the elf and the drow.”
“And when Ship Rethnor decides to kill a few of us?” the first woman replied angrily.
“Ye’d do well to temper yer wrath when it’s aimed at Beniago,” a man said.
“Bah, but he’s out drinking and whoring.” The first woman waved her hand.
“He has eyes,” the man said, and the woman glowered at him.
The group moved away and Drizzt let them go, reconsidering his own course. He glanced back at Closeguard Isle and the tower, but went the other way, into the city, heading for the dock section, where ruffians roamed for their “drinking and whoring.”
He knew that he’d need luck on his side, but knew, too, that this was not a section of indoor taverns behind closed doors. Most of the establishments near the docks were open-front bars, with patrons wandering up and down the street.
Drizzt paused again when he neared the area, which was well lit and quite boisterous even at this late hour-particularly at this late hour. Some of the many people on the street would recognize him, and given his recent encounter with both Ship Rethnor and Ship Kurth, that might not be such a good thing. He wouldn’t be the only drow down there, at least, he noted, as he spotted one tattooed dark elf walking with others of his crew.
Drizzt pulled the hood of his forest-green cloak up over his head and pulled the cowl low. He wrapped the cloak around his body, as well, to hide his distinctive blades.
He went down among the crowd, keeping his head low, his eyes constantly scanning.
He caught more than one man staring at him curiously, and knew that his time here would be short indeed when one such fellow then turned to a companion and whispered something, and the companion rushed away. To gather allies, no doubt.
Drizzt shook the notion away and focused on Dahlia, reminding himself that she needed him here and needed him to be quick. He picked up his pace, moving along, studying the faces.
Beniago.
The man seemed to be alone, walking with a mug of ale in one hand, a half-eaten loaf of bread in the other. Drizzt surveyed the area then moved fast. He cut across Beniago’s path, perhaps ten strides ahead of the man, and only briefly glanced at him, making sure that Beniago noticed him as well.
But only for that fleeting instant.
He didn’t want the assassin to be sure that it was him. The hint was his tease.
He crossed the narrow street and moved between a pair of taverns and down a shadowy alley, picking up his speed as soon as he was out of sight. The drow skidded to a stop and picked his way up the side of a building to a rooftop. He crept along the alleyway, and he watched.
Beniago turned into that alleyway a few heartbeats later, drink and bread gone, weapons drawn. The assassin of Ship Kurth moved down cautiously, twenty steps into the alley, then around a corner at the backside of the building into a shorter alley that exited onto a far less bustling street.
The man stayed near to a wall, his gaze darting all around. He was out of sight of the street now.
Drizzt dropped into the alley behind him, his cloak open, his hood back.
Beniago spun to face him, gave a gasp, and thrust his sword at the drow’s midsection.
A scimitar picked it off cleanly, and even as Beniago brought his long weapon back to bear, the drow came on fiercely, both of his blades out and high in front of him, his wrists rolling over each other in a devastating and straightforward assault.
Beniago fell back and repeatedly batted his sword up horizontally in front of him. He kept his other arm, holding his prized dagger, cocked at his side.
Drizzt noted it, of course, and so he pressed all the harder, his scimitars beating a steady rhythm against Beniago’s sword. He found an opening, Twink
le hitting the sword at just the right angle to move it aside, and Icingdeath coming in right behind, with an open path to Beniago’s shoulder.
But Drizzt didn’t take the opening to score a hit, and altered his angle just enough so that Beniago could adjust his sword and block that blade, too.
Drizzt came on harder, recklessly it seemed, and he stumbled past and crashed hard against the alleyway wall as Beniago threw himself to the side.
With a growl, apparently thinking victory imminent, Beniago’s other hand stabbed out, but that growl turned to a gasp as Drizzt’s blade came down in a swift backhand slash, intercepting the thrust and gashing Beniago’s forearm.
The assassin cried out and his dagger went flying away.
Beniago turned to his right and leaped away, his left sword hand, slashing back to fend off the drow.
But the drow dropped below the swipe, executing his own cut, and Beniago had to leap up to avoid getting his ankles chopped out from under him. He landed off-balance, trying to throw himself back against the wall enough to catch his balance, but that twisting movement slowed him.
Drizzt tumbled past him with amazing quickness, his magically-enhanced anklets providing a burst of speed. He came to his feet farther along the first alleyway, blocking the escape.
Beniago skidded to a stop, his cut arm tucked under his sword arm, his blade waving defensively in front of him. He began to backstep immediately, and glanced over his shoulder.
“My panther is out there,” Drizzt warned-and lied, for he’d already overtaxed Guenhwyvar and had not dared summon her back to the Prime Material Plane. “If you try to flee, she will destroy you.”
“I’m second to the high captain of Ship Kurth,” Beniago warned. “If you kill me-”
“They will seek to kill me in response?” Drizzt mocked him. “Is that not already the case, Beniago?”
“More so!” the assassin promised, and he seemed to grow more confident then, for a din had begun on the street behind them.
Drizzt heard it, too, and he reached into his innate powers, last remnants of his days in Menzoberranzan, and placed a magical globe of darkness halfway down the alley between himself and the street.
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