Artemis Entreri suddenly felt a compulsion to tell her all about his relationship with Herzgo Alegni. He almost started, but then recoiled, feeling much as he had on those many occasions when Charon’s Claw had invaded his thoughts.
He looked at Arunika with more scrutiny, as he might consider a sorceress.
“Herzgo Alegni swept into Neverwinter through your actions,” Arunika quickly replied. “He would never have found such a dominion here in the city had not Barrabus the Gray become a hero to the folk.” The timbre of her voice changed abruptly, evoking sympathy and making Entreri feel foolish for his suspicion. “And now Alegni is no more, and I’m tending your wounds at the behest of the leaders of the city,” Arunika went on. “I would be remiss, and betraying my duties to my fellow citizens if I did not ask-and why should we not know?”
“He was my slaver and nothing less,” Entreri replied before he even realized that he was speaking the words. He looked curiously at Arunika, but just for a moment, before concluding that she was a trustworthy and sympathetic listener. “And now he is gone. For most of my life, my ally was me and me alone. I prefer that, and need no alliance with you or anyone else in this town.”
He tried to sound defiant, but really didn’t.
“Then not an ally,” Arunika said. She moved her face before Entreri’s and said in a suggestive tone, “A friend.”
“I need no friends.”
Arunika smiled and moved even closer.
“What do you need, Barrabus the Gray?”
Artemis Entreri wanted to assert that Barrabus the Gray was not his name. He wanted to tell Arunika again that he didn’t need her. He wanted to move away even as she moved forward.
He wanted to do a lot of things.
Drizzt flexed his arm and stretched it upward as he moved to Entreri’s door. The healing salve and the visit by the cleric had helped, no doubt.
Physically, at least.
In his good hand, the drow still held the onyx figurine, and he still called out silently for his friend who would not answer.
Entreri’s door opened before the drow reached it, and the red-haired woman called Arunika walked out. She paused and flashed a disarming smile at Drizzt, then threw a wink at Dahlia, who stood behind him.
Drizzt caught Dahlia’s gaze with a questioning stare.
“She is a strange one,” Dahlia remarked.
“One of the leaders of Neverwinter, I believe.”
Dahlia shrugged as if it did not matter and pushed past Drizzt and into Entreri’s room.
The assassin stood at the room’s small bar, stripped to the waist and looking quite exhausted as he poured some fine brandy into a small glass. This had been Alegni’s room during his brief tenure as Neverwinter’s self-appointed lord, and the tiefling warlord had decorated it and stocked it quite well.
Dahlia entered the room before Drizzt, and the drow was given pause by her sudden stop. She turned and looked back over her shoulder at the receding Arunika, then, barely muting her scowl, turned back on Entreri.
Drizzt winced.
“You are… healed?” the elf woman asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Ready for the road,” Entreri answered, and he downed the brandy in one swig.
Drizzt moved to the bar and took a seat. Entreri poured himself another drink and slid the bottle Drizzt’s way, staring at the drow intently.
That surprised Drizzt for just a moment, before he realized that Entreri wasn’t staring at him, but at the great sword strapped diagonally across his back, in a harness given him by a leatherworker of Neverwinter.
Drizzt blocked the sliding bottle and left it sitting idle, but Dahlia was fast to the stool beside him, and quickly grabbed the brandy and another glass.
“Ready for the road?” she echoed. “And what road does Artemis Entreri desire?”
Entreri took a sip of his drink and nodded his chin toward the sword.
“Gauntlgrym?” Dahlia asked.
“Of course.”
“You will be free?”
“I will be dead, I am sure,” Entreri said. “So, yes.”
Dahlia shook her head. “How can you know?”
“I am tied to the sword,” Entreri answered. “My longevity is due to the sword- it alone has kept me in a state of perpetual youth… or middle age, perhaps. I have known this for a long, long while.”
“And still you would destroy it?” Dahlia said.
“I will find no peace until Charon’s Claw is no more.”
“You will be dead!”
“Better that than enslaved,” Entreri said. “It is long past time for me to be dead.” He looked past Dahlia to Drizzt and smiled wickedly. “You would agree, of course.”
Drizzt didn’t respond in any way. He did not know whether he preferred such an outcome or not. Entreri was his tie to a past much missed. Just having Entreri around brought him a strange sense of peace, as if his friends were out there, waiting for him to return home.
But was that enough? He knew Entreri’s deadly history, and expected that this killer’s reputation would remain well-earned going forward.
It was the same dilemma Drizzt had faced with this particular man in the past, such as when they had walked out of the Underdark side by side. On more than one occasion, Drizzt could have killed Entreri, and never had he been confident that staying his blade had been the correct choice. What about Entreri’s victims, if there were such, after Drizzt’s acts of mercy, after all? Would they appreciate Drizzt’s eternal optimism, and his rather foolish hopes for redemption?
“We do not know that the primordial will destroy it,” Dahlia warned.
“At the least, we know that it will be someplace where no one can retrieve it,” Drizzt said.
“Sentient weapons have a way of being found, and wielded,” said Dahlia.
“The primordial will destroy it,” Entreri replied with conviction. “I sense the sword’s fear.”
“Then we go, straightaway,” Drizzt said.
“Are you so interested in killing this man, then?” Dahlia accused, turning sharply on Drizzt.
The drow leaned back, caught off guard by the elf woman’s intensity.
“I am,” Entreri interjected, and both turned to regard him.
Entreri shrugged and drained his glass, then moved to retrieve the bottle.
“There is a time for all of us to die,” Drizzt said, matter-of-factly, callously, even. “Sometimes, perhaps, past time.”
“Your concern is touching,” Entreri remarked.
“It is, of course, your choice to make,” Drizzt offered. He tried to keep the coldness out of his tone, but he couldn’t. Drizzt silently berated himself. He was angry and agitated about Guenhwyvar’s absence.
And there was more to it than that, Drizzt knew deep in his heart, whenever he glanced at Dahlia, to find her staring at Entreri.
He felt irrelevant, like there was some bond between these two greater than his own bond with Dahlia.
And without Guenhwyvar, what did he have left other than his companionship with Dahlia? Drizzt took a deep breath.
Entreri suddenly threw his glass against a wall across the room. The assassin scooped up the brandy bottle and took a long swallow.
As surprising as that was, Drizzt surprised the others and himself even more when he stepped back from them and drew Charon’s Claw from off his back.
The powerful sword bit at him immediately, releasing energy into his hands. The first concentrated attacks came at the core of the drow, at his heart and soul, as Charon’s Claw tried to utterly obliterate him-and it had the power to do that to most who tried to wield it, Drizzt understood without the slightest bit of doubt.
But Drizzt Do’Urden was not so easily dominated or destroyed. Nor was he inexperienced in the ways of sentient weapons. The sword Khazid’hea, the famed Cutter, had once similarly attacked him, though not nearly as powerfully as this particular blade, he had to admit. And in the drow academy for warriors, MeleeMagthe
re, students spent many tendays studying the powers of sentient weapons and pitting their wills against dominating magical implements.
The drow doubled down on his own concentration then and fought back, demanding fealty from the blade.
The blade fought back.
Gradually, Drizzt altered his counterattack, promising the sword a glorious joining. He would wield it well.
Charon’s Claw teased him with power. It directed Drizzt’s thoughts to Artemis Entreri, who was now, the sword assured him, his slave.
And indeed, when Entreri protested the drawn blade and took a step toward Drizzt, Charon’s Claw laid him low.
Dahlia cried out and broke Kozah’s Needle into her flails, putting them into motion immediately.
But Drizzt held up his left hand and motioned her to patience. He told the sword to free Entreri, and when it did not, he demanded that the painful vibrations cease.
“Now!” he ordered aloud.
Artemis Entreri staggered to the side and gradually straightened. He walked straight back from Drizzt, never taking his eyes from the drow, never blinking, though the pain had obviously ceased.
He believed that this was a betrayal, Drizzt saw clearly from his angry expression. “Free him,” Drizzt told the sword.
Charon’s Claw went at the drow’s soul again, even more ferociously, and Drizzt groaned and staggered once more. Images and thoughts of obliteration, of nothingness, filled his mind, as Charon’s Claw tried to use fear to weaken his resolve.
Drizzt had lived too long, had been through too much, to give in to such despair.
He won the fight, but only to a draw. Charon’s Claw would not release Artemis Entreri, and there was no way Drizzt would ever get through that angry wall. Perhaps Drizzt could prevent the sword from inflicting, or at least from sustaining, any torture upon the man, but he could make no progress past that point.
He turned to the sword’s own tactics.
Now the drow’s thoughts were back in Gauntlgrym, at the pit of the primordial. Entreri had said that he could sense the sword’s fear at such a prospect.
Drizzt saw it, too, felt it keenly.
He redoubled his concentration, picturing the sword dropping down, down to the waiting fiery maw of the godlike beast.
This was no deception, and despite his desperate struggle, a smile widened on his face. Charon’s Claw was deathly afraid.
Charon’s Claw recognized its doom.
The sword went at him again, wildly.
Drizzt changed the image in his mind to one of Entreri wielding Charon’s Claw once more, presenting the blade with a clear choice: the fire or Entreri.
Charon’s Claw calmed immediately.
Drizzt slid it away into its scabbard. He shook his head and looked back at his companions, and nearly fell to his knees from sudden weakness, thoroughly drained by the battle.
“Are you mad?” Entreri growled at him.
“Why would you do such a thing?” Dahlia added.
“The sword fears our course,” Drizzt explained, and he cast a sly look at the assassin as he finished, “It would prefer your hand once more above a journey to the mouth of the primordial.”
“You can control it,” Dahlia said breathlessly.
Entreri never looked at her, his gaze fixed on Drizzt.
“As I said, the choice is yours,” the drow said.
“You would trust me beside you with that blade in hand?” Entreri asked.
“No,” Drizzt said, even as Dahlia started to say yes.
Entreri stared at the drow for a long, long while. “You wield it,” he said at length.
“I cannot.”
“Because you know it will turn on you,” Entreri reasoned. “You have not the accompanying glove, and cannot maintain your discipline indefinitely at so high a level. And that sword is relentless, I assure you.”
“Then you cannot wield it, either,” the drow replied.
Entreri started to drink from the brandy bottle, but just laughed helplessly and retrieved another glass from the bar, pouring himself a modest amount. He set the bottle down, held his glass aloft, and said, “To Gauntlgrym.”
Drizzt nodded grimly.
Dahlia’s chortle sounded more like a gasp.
They heard their names called out ahead of them as they moved to the common hallway on the inn’s second floor, and from there to the stairs, and before the trio ever reached the exit, the cheering on the street outside began to mount.
“Hailed as heroes,” Dahlia remarked.
“They are truly pathetic,” Entreri was fast to respond.
Drizzt studied the man, looking for a clue that perhaps he was enjoying this notoriety more than he would let on. But no, there was nothing to indicate any such thing, and when Drizzt considered Entreri in light of the man he had once known, he wasn’t really surprised.
Neither Drizzt nor the assassin cared much for such accolades, but for very different reasons. Drizzt didn’t care because he understood that the community was stronger than the individual. In that same vein, he accepted the cheers in the knowledge that they would do the community well.
Entreri, though, didn’t care because Entreri didn’t care-about applause or sneering, or anything else regarding his place in the world and the views of those around him. He simply didn’t care, and so the enthusiasm with which they were greeted when they exited the inn brought a scowl to Entreri’s face, one Drizzt knew to be sincere.
Dahlia, though, seemed quite pleased.
Drizzt didn’t know what to make of that. She had just exacted revenge-her most desperately wanted revenge-upon a tiefling who had apparently haunted her for most of her young life. Drizzt hardly understood the visceral level of hatred he had seen this elf woman exhibit, but truly that battle had meant quite a bit to her, and on a very deep and primal level. Even her obvious fears for Entreri’s impending demise now seemed to wash away as she basked in the excitement of the crowd.
And indeed, the citizens of Neverwinter exuded excitement and joy at this time. Nearly the entire population of the settlers had gathered along the streets outside the inn, and among their front lines stood Genevieve and the man who had helped her drag their wounded companion from the sewers.
That sight gave Drizzt profound peace. Perhaps the death of Alegni and the retreat of the Shadovar was a bigger gain for the future of Neverwinter, but personalizing such a victory to the level of the three saved aboleth slaves settled well on the shoulders of Drizzt Do’Urden.
Weapons and fists lifted into the air defiantly, a cry of freedom regained. When Drizzt considered the recent history of this settlement, he came to understand and appreciate the exuberance.
He had come through Neverwinter beside Bruenor not so long ago, before the revelation of the Thayan and Netherese presence even, and had found the citizens besieged by the strange, shriveled zombie victims of the cataclysmic volcano. They hadn’t known the source of the threat, of the Dread Ring then, and the nefarious powers behind the unsettling and dangerous events.
But now it had played out and the Thayans were in disarray, perhaps even gone from the region. And Alegni and his Netherese had been driven from the city, the beast beheaded.
Had the prospects for a new Neverwinter, post-apocalypse, ever looked any brighter?
Perhaps they were laying that victory too much onto the shoulders of Drizzt and his two companions, the drow thought, for it was the work of these many folk that had really won the day. Drizzt and his companions had defeated Alegni and had kept that twisted necromancer at bay, but the bulk of the fighting had been done, and won, by the people now cheering. When Drizzt considered his own role in it all, mostly trying to simply stay alive against a possessed Artemis Entreri, it seemed laughable to him that he would be viewed on such a figurative pedestal.
But to no harm, any of it, the drow knew from decades of similar experience. He had seen this type of celebration in Ten-Towns, surely, and in Mithral Hall, and across the lands. It was a collecti
ve expression of relief and victory, and whatever symbols-Drizzt and his two companions, in this instance-were purely irrelevant to that needed emotional release. He looked directly at Genevieve and nodded, and her beaming smile back at him warmed him indeed.
“Well met again, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Jelvus Grinch said, stepping out ahead of the crowd and moving right before the trio. “I trust your dwarf companion is well.”
Drizzt didn’t wince at the reference to Bruenor, whom Jelvus Grinch had met briefly under an assumed name. For a moment, his reaction surprised him, and when he thought about it, his reaction pleased him. He missed Bruenor sorely, but he was indeed at peace about the dwarf.
He merely nodded to Jelvus Grinch, not wishing to go into detail over something the man didn’t really care about anyway.
“Once before, I asked you to stay with us,” Jelvus Grinch said. “Perhaps now you understand how great your value to Neverwinter might prove…”
“We’re leaving,” Artemis Entreri coldly interrupted.
Jelvus Grinch fell back and looked at the man curiously.
“Now,” Entreri added.
“We don’t know how far the Shadovar have retreated,” Jelvus Grinch pleaded. “Many went through the gates their wizards enacted-and perhaps they can come back through those same gates!”
“Then you should remain vigilant,” Entreri replied. “Or leave.”
“You know more about them than we do,” Jelvus Grinch shot back, now with a hint of anger in his tone.
“I know nothing of them or of the dark place they call home,” Entreri spat back at him before he could gain any momentum. “They’re gone, Alegni is dead. That’s all I care about.”
“And you have his sword,” Jelvus Grinch said, glancing over at the weapon strapped diagonally across Drizzt’s thin back.
Artemis Entreri laughed, a condescending and mocking tone clearly telling the Neverwinter man that he couldn’t begin to understand the implications of his last words.
“We must go,” Drizzt interjected calmly. “We have urgent business that cannot wait. Keep your guard strong, though I doubt the Netherese will return anytime soon. From what I have seen, they are obedient to strong leaders, and with Alegni gone, would any other Netherese lord deem to replace him in a place so dangerous and hostile as Neverwinter?”
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