She did manage to scream, at least, but that was abruptly cut short.
As more Ashmadai rushed to crowd in around him, Drizzt found a moment to glance at Dahlia. She was on her feet again, her braid dancing like a living serpent atop her head. She’d retrieved her staff, but was obviously shaken and confused. The strange Ashmadai bore down on her with great advantage.
And Entreri had not gone to her!
Drizzt spied the assassin scrambling off to the side, along the rocks at the base of the tower, apparently seeking a way in. The dark elf called out to him, but didn’t finish the thought before the ground around him roiled suddenly, turning black and with a strange smoky ash wafting from it. The Ashmadai nearest Drizzt cried out first from the burning pain.
And Drizzt felt it too, acutely, such a sting as if his pants had been lit on fire. Only his bracers saved him then, his feet working fast enough to extract him from the devilish black ring of ashen energy.
Hardly thinking of the movement, the drow had simply leaped out of the ring of woe as efficiently as possible, and that moved him farther from Dahlia, back out from the cave entrance and the rocky hill. He got a better view of Sylora Salm at least, standing above him, twenty feet above on the balcony.
She held a strange wand, a broken branch, it seemed, and she smiled wickedly. In that moment, Drizzt felt as if all of this had surely been for naught, as if he and his companions had been fools indeed to think they could go against the magnificence that was Sylora Salm.
Back at the smoking ashen ring, a pair of zealots burst from the growing cloud of withering blackness, reaching for Drizzt.
Their faces were no more than skinless skulls, their reaching hands skeletal, and both crumpled dead to the ground before they ever got near.
But Sylora kept smiling.
Dahlia’s skills and warrior instincts superseded her surprise and got her back to her feet and back in a fighting pose before the mummified champion could truly exploit the explosive turnaround.
But it was worse than mere surprise. The blow had hurt her, and her muscles trembled so violently she could hardly hold onto her long staff. Dahlia wanted to break her weapon back into flails, or perhaps into a tri-staff, that she might pry the zealot’s weapon away, but she didn’t dare, for fear of dropping Kozah’s Needle altogether.
The wound inflicted by the zealot’s scepter had not abated, either, her gut muscles tightening painfully. She didn’t know how long she could fend off this ferocious opponent. She was beginning to understand that she was beaten.
That understanding only got worse when, in one parry and dodge, she looked past her opponent to the back of the cave and saw a grinning Valindra Shadowmantle looking back at her. The lich held her larger, redder scepter, and more than once pointed it Dahlia’s way. But she didn’t enact any of its powers, or her own. She simply seemed to be enjoying the show.
Valindra didn’t intervene because she knew she didn’t have to, Dahlia thought, for even though her sensations were returning, her grasp growing steadier on the long staff, she could hardly hope to defeat this strange Ashmadai.
In a single fluid movement, Drizzt sheathed his blades, took up his bow, and sent a stream of arrows at Sylora Salm.
They struck that strange shield in front of her and burst into myriad multi-colored sparks, one after another. The drow could only hope he was doing some damage to that magical defense, at least, wearing it thinner with each explosive strike.
He caught sight of Sylora moving her hand, her wand, behind that barrage, and he fell back as the two Ashmadai who’d fallen dead at his feet leaped up suddenly, animated by the sorceress.
Drizzt turned his bow at them, but before he could fire off an arrow, the two leaned toward the balcony and seemed to elongate, then to fly off as they became insubstantial black smoke.
Drizzt spun his bow up and let fly, filling the area in front of Sylora with yet more sparks. From that field of explosion, though, came a responding missile, black and large and flying fast at Drizzt. Again the magical speed of his anklets saved him as he threw himself aside, both from the missile and from yet another Ashmadai coming in at him from behind.
That unfortunate woman caught Sylora’s missile instead, and it covered her in what seemed like thick soot. In moments she began to writhe and scream out, throwing herself to the ground as if on fire.
Drizzt sent an arrow, then a second and third, up at Sylora, then turned and shot dead the screaming Ashmadai, purely out of mercy.
He moved with every shot, having no intention of catching any return fire from Sylora.
All the dead Ashmadai around him began to rise up, and all the remaining living Ashmadai backed away.
The zombies didn’t come at him, though. One after another they leaned toward the balcony and were stretched upward, reduced to black smoke, and absorbed into Sylora’s wand.
Another missile flew down from on high, striking the ground in front of Drizzt, creating another ring of woe, perhaps ten feet in diameter.
The drow moved aside and kept up his fire. Then he moved again from a third ring of woe, then a fourth. He recognized that Sylora was surely cutting him off from the cave, from Dahlia, with an overlapping line of rising ash energy. The powerful sorceress didn’t stop there but created more deadly rings, driving Drizzt back, herding him like an animal to the slaughter.
He growled and continued his missile response, increasing the speed of his shots so incredibly that it seemed as if the bow reached forth with one long missile. The balcony exploded and sizzled with such a rain of sparks that to a distant onlooker, it might have appeared as if all the wizards of Faerun had joined in a great fireworks celebration.
Drizzt kept glancing at Dahlia, wanting to help her, but not daring to interrupt his flow of arrows, not wanting to even allow Sylora to see the battlefield in front of her.
He was almost out of room to move.
On the rocky hillside at the base of the tower, Artemis Entreri quickly deduced that there was no way into that treelike structure. He also found a host of enemies waiting for him, a cluster of ashen zombies, standing and swaying.
To his surprise and relief, they didn’t attack, and to his further astonishment, one after another burst into smoke and flew up at the distant balcony lip, as if it had been dismantled and sucked in by some giant vortex.
Not one to pause and reflect on good fortune, Entreri scrambled up the front of the hill, and was nearly stabbed as a zealot appeared from behind one of the many large rocks, spearlike scepter thrusting hard.
Across came the assassin’s sword, just quick enough to drive aside the thrust. But the Ashmadai tiefling rose up above him, on the rock he’d been scaling, and thus gaining the advantage.
Except that this was Artemis Entreri.
Entreri cried out and fell back, turning to run, and the predictable zealot leaped at his back.
Entreri spun and swept his sword across, deflecting the scepter. He fell aside as he did, the man frantically trying to twist and grab at him, and catching instead a stabbing dagger right in the heart.
With a groan, the Ashmadai continued by, and Entreri cut him chest to groin, gutting him as he tumbled past.
A second Ashmadai replaced the first, coming straight up in front of Entreri, who had his back to the open drop now. The zealot stabbed wildly as if trying to force Entreri from the ledge, and at one point, the man cried out, thinking victory at hand as Entreri bent far backward, balancing precariously.
But when the zealot dropped his shoulder and bulled forward to finish the task, even diving so he would go with his victim, Entreri twisted to the side and dropped into a low crouch. He came up fast, shouldering the man from the ground, and turned and launched him into the open air.
Then he ran on, up the hillside, angling for the top of the cave.
He ran out of room, but mostly, Drizzt was just running. He sprinted to the edge of one ring of woe, and having no choice as another ashen black missile streamed out from the ba
lcony at him, he leaped over it.
The smoking strands reached up at him and bit at him hard, stinging his legs, and he landed wobbly, but still managed to snap off another ineffective shot at Sylora.
But now Drizzt was back in open ground, and as he shook off the latest burns, he started to run around, buying himself more time. First he concentrated on those Ashmadai nearby, lowering Taulmaril and sending out a stream of arrows to drive them away.
Then he went back to Sylora, continuing his spark barrage to keep her from spotting him clearly. Finally, he turned his attention to poor Dahlia, who fought frantically, but lost ground against the strange opponent she faced.
Drizzt winced as she barely dodged a high swing of the Ashmadai’s scepter, then shook his head in frustration as Dahlia properly responded and slammed the man-to no visible effect.
The zealot’s next swing clipped her, just a bit, as she spun, and she even turned around enough for Drizzt to catch her profound grimace of agony.
He couldn’t get to her. He had no clear shot, but he had no choice, either. He leveled the bow and let fly as Dahlia spun to the side, and to his relief, she didn’t come right back the other way, and to his greater relief, her staff didn’t catch that missile.
The arrow struck true, square in the chest of the mummified Ashmadai, slamming him hard, and he staggered backward, almost into the cave.
Only then did Drizzt see another figure deeper within the shadows, and he surely recognized Valindra Shadowmantle!
He let fly again, and a third time, though he had to roll aside to avoid another ring of woe, then had to dive again as a more direct missile nearly caught him from above. Both of his shots soared past Dahlia and the Ashmadai and into the cave, though he couldn’t tell if he’d scored any meaningful hit on Valindra or not.
What he did see, to his dismay, was that his earlier direct hit on the Ashmadai apparently had inflicted no serious damage. The man again pummeled Dahlia, who kept cringing and lurching, and seemed barely able to block his barrage.
Drizzt couldn’t help her!
He had no choice but to turn his attention back to Sylora, to match her assaults with an overwhelming volley. The sparks, even if they did no more than somewhat blind the sorceress, were his only defense, and eventually getting through that magical shield, his only hope. As it was, Sylora had already littered the field with the black circles of destruction. The Ashmadai at the perimeters of the fight began throwing rocks, and a few even had bows.
For a moment, Drizzt considered that he might have to flee the field, and if Dahlia fell near the cave, the drow expected he would have no choice but to run away.
Drizzt knew they’d been baited, brought to a place in which he and his friends could not win.
Their enemy was, perhaps, too powerful for them.
But the despair could not take hold. Unexpectedly at that dark moment, Drizzt felt as if he was upon Andahar, riding from Luskan through the dark night. Exhilaration replaced dismay, and pure energy replaced fear.
He moved faster, diving and rolling, coming around to let fly behind to drive back an Ashmadai, then back forward, one, two, three shots to blind Sylora, if not actually hurt her. On one turn, he noted a host of zombies and he let fly at the group as well. But then he noted that they were not approaching, and a heartbeat before another black volley came at him from the balcony, one of those charred little creatures broke apart into flying ash and soared up to Sylora, as if it was one of her arrows.
He didn’t understand, and he didn’t have time to sort it out. Better to shoot the zombies, perhaps, or the Ashmadai?
He just kept his stream of shots and his continual movement, dodging rings and stones and arrows, trying not to wince when he glanced at Dahlia and her desperate struggle.
They would win, he believed. He was riding through the dark Luskan night and he would prevail.
There was no other choice.
“How do I hurt you, you beast?” Dahlia asked, accentuating her question with a spin of her staff and a straight, hard stab that jabbed the zealot in the chest, again to little or no effect. Her voice was raspy, her abdomen knotting and clenching from the withering wound.
But she wasn’t twitching from the residual effects of her own lightning anymore, at least, though her braid had unwound itself in the process, leaving a thin shock of long black and red strands splayed around her otherwise bald head. Worse for Dahlia, she couldn’t feel several of her fingers, and worse still, one of her eyes flickered and closed from the newest wound wrought by the zealot’s powerfully enchanted scepter.
Despite all of that, the elf warrior broke her staff in half as she retracted it, then spun out those two poles, one in either hand, and broke them fast into flails. She didn’t expect the weapons to be any more effective than the long pole, but she hoped her whirling display would buy her more time.
She couldn’t win. She knew that.
“Shoot him again, Drizzt,” she whispered desperately.
She ducked low as the scepter whipped across up high, then cut her counter short as the zealot retracted and stabbed for her belly once more. Then she jumped up high as his real attack swept in, a low cut aimed at Dahlia’s legs.
She’d expected it. If he could but touch her legs with that withering scepter, the resulting cramping muscles would likely render her incapable of escaping.
And that’s exactly what Dahlia was thinking about: escaping. As the scepter passed beneath her tucked legs, she still maintained enough of her balance to spin her weapons up and over, smashing them down atop the zealot’s wrapped head.
He ignored the strikes and brought his scepter sweeping back the other way.
Dahlia moved as if to jump again, but instead stepped back-and it was a good thing she took that second route. The zealot stopped his swing midway through and lifted the scepter straight up. Had Dahlia leaped as before, she would have surely collided with it on her inevitable descent.
Now he faced her again, his eyes shining, his smile peeking out between the tight wrappings.
It occurred to Dahlia then that either of those places, eyes or mouth, might prove to be her best opportunity, but before she could even think through that proposition, she let out a cry of surprise and fell back as a form came leaping down.
She recognized it as Barrabus, as the man Drizzt named Entreri, and for a moment thought he was leaping at her. His hands were up high and wide, one holding his dagger, the other a knife. He crashed onto the zealot’s back, and even that didn’t bring the monstrous Ashmadai to the ground.
But down came those hands, faster than the zealot could react, dagger plunging into one eye, knife into the other.
How the zealot howled and spun around, feet moving every which way, arms waving crazily. The scepter fell from his grasp as his sensibilities fled.
Entreri hung on, riding him like a wild horse.
Around and around the zealot spun, slapping and lurching, and finally throwing the assassin aside.
Out came the knife with Entreri’s tumble, though he’d lost his grip on the dagger.
There it stuck, protruding from the mummified zealot’s left eye.
Entreri hit the ground in a roll and drew his long sword as he came back around to his feet.
“Come along!” he ordered Dahlia, and he rushed right past the still-spinning zealot and into the cave, not even pausing to retrieve his dagger.
Dahlia followed, slowing only long enough to glance back at Drizzt and to smack the zealot one last time across the side of his head. Convulsing weirdly now in his death throes, he fell to the ground as she passed him by.
“Valindra first!” Dahlia cried when she saw Entreri cut to the left, to the base of the tower.
But when she entered the cave, she blinked. It was a shallow cave with no apparent exits or hiding spots, but the lich was nowhere to be found.
Drizzt cheered and almost laughed when Entreri came down upon Dahlia’s foe, and the precision of the assassin’s strike reminde
d Drizzt all too keenly of how deadly a foe Artemis Entreri could be. The killing blow had to be perfect, and so Entreri had been perfect.
The drow took immense satisfaction in his decision to be merciful, to allow Entreri to travel beside him and Dahlia.
Still, his own situation remained precarious. He was fully thirty paces out from the treelike tower, nearer to the wall than he was to Sylora or his companions, who had disappeared into the cave.
Ashmadai enemies lined the wall, and the continual volley of stones and arrows had Drizzt paying them more heed than Sylora-something he knew would certainly spell his doom.
He had to leave, to move to the side enough, at least, to get out of Sylora’s line of sight. But then what good would he be to his companions?
A familiar roar sent shivers through his spine, and sent the Ashmadai opposing him into a desperate frenzy.
Guenhwyvar-always and ever Guenhwyvar-arrived on the field just opposite the wall from Drizzt, charging at the Ashmadai line with abandon, ignoring the slings and arrows and chasing the zealots from their perches.
With full confidence in his panther companion, confidence built on a century or more of experience, Drizzt turned back to the distant sorceress with full force. As he dismissed those enemies behind him, he navigated the ground to move nearer to the tree. Sylora could fill in the few safe spots, he understood, but he saw, too, that the initial rings of woe were dissipating, leaving behind blackened areas of absolute death, but areas, perhaps, that he might cross.
If he could pick his way carefully and prevent the sorceress from filling in the gaps in the outer areas of agony, he might indeed get to the cave.
His hands worked in a blur then, a solid line of missiles flying forth, nearly every shot true. He could no longer see Sylora, so great was the spark shower. When no further black missiles reached out in response, it occurred to him that she might even have retreated into the tower.
Or dare he hope that one of his arrows had penetrated the strange bubble and struck her?
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