“Nothing else,” the old warlock reiterated. “Not the fate of Herzgo Alegni, nor that of Dahlia.”
Effron swallowed hard.
“Oh yes, I know how deeply you hate her, twisted one, but that is a battle for another day. One I will grant you, on my word-but not until Claw is safely back in Netherese hands.”
“Likely I will have to destroy them to retrieve it,” Effron said.
“Will you?”
Now it was Effron’s turn to curiously regard the master.
“We have a bargaining chip,” Draygo Quick explained. “One the drow will not readily ignore.” As he spoke, he reached into an extra-dimensional pocket in his voluminous robes and produced a small cage, one that easily fit in his palm, of glowing blue light. Inside it, in quarters too tight to pace, stood a tiny black panther, ears flattened, teeth bared.
Despite the gravity of the situation and the dangerous road ahead, Effron laughed aloud. “It was said that you destroyed the beast.”
“Destroyed? Why would I destroy something as beautiful…” he paused and brought the cage up before his wrinkled face, and the cat’s ears flattened even more and she gave a tiny growl, “… something as valuable as this.”
“I would truly love having such a companion as that,” Effron said, but he bit off the last word and swallowed hard when Draygo Quick flashed a hard stare at him.
“You could never control this one, not even if you possessed the statuette the drow carries,” Draygo Quick assured him. “She is more than a magical familiar-much more. She is tied to that drow now, bound by a hundred years and a thousand adventures. She would no sooner serve you than she would the drow’s worst mortal enemy.”
“Perhaps we are one and the same.”
“Is that your answer for everything? Your unrelenting anger at any creature in your path?” Draygo Quick didn’t try to keep the disappointment out of his voice.
“Am I to retrieve the sword or am I not?”
Draygo Quick held up the panther once more for Effron to see. “Which is more valuable to the drow, do you suppose?”
HUNTING SIDE BY SIDE
Your step has become halting,” Entreri whispered to Drizzt, so softly that Dahlia, who was only a couple of steps behind them, had to crane her neck to hear.
“You sense it, too?” the drow asked.
“Not as clearly as you do, obviously.”
“Sense what?” Dahlia asked.
“We’re being tracked,” Drizzt replied. “Or more fittingly, we’re being shadowed.” Dahlia straightened and looked all around.
“And if they’re watching, they now know that we know,” Entreri said dryly and he looked at Dahlia and shook his head and sighed.
“There is no one about,” the elf woman replied, rather loudly. Both Drizzt and Entreri stared at her, the drow shaking his head helplessly. He, too, heaved a sigh and moved off to the side, deeper into the forest brush.
“You think there are Shadovar? Or Thayans?” Dahlia asked Entreri. “He thinks so,” the assassin replied, nodding his chin toward the drow, who was then crouched beside a bush inspecting the leaves and the ground. “Shadovar, it would seem.”
“And you trust his judgment over your own?”
“It’s not a competition,” Entreri replied. “And don’t underestimate the woodland skills of our companion. This is his domain-were we in a city, then I would take the lead. But out here in the forest-to answer your question-yes.” He finished as Drizzt came walking back over.
“Someone was here not long ago,” the drow explained. He glanced back the way they had come, leading their eyes to a fairly clear vista of the trails and roads along the lower ground they had left behind. “Likely watching for our approach.”
“Shadovar, Thayans, or someone else?”
“Shadovar,” Drizzt answered without hesitation.
“How could you know such a thing?” Dahlia asked, again with her voice full of obvious doubt.
“I know that we are being trailed.”
“Even so, have you seen our pursuers?”
Drizzt shook his head, and as he did, he stared hard at Dahlia.
“Yet you conclude that they are Shadovar,” Dahlia pressed. “Why would you believe such a thing?”
Drizzt stared at her, seeming quite amused, for some time, before saying, “The sword told me.”
Dahlia, a retort obviously at the ready on the tip of her tongue, started to reply, but gulped it back.
“It’s excited,” Drizzt said to Entreri. “I feel it.”
Entreri nodded, as if such a sensation from Charon’s Claw was not unknown or unexpected. “The young and twisted warlock, likely,” he said.
“What do you know of him?” Drizzt asked.
“I know that he is formidable, full of tricks and spells that cause grievous wounds. He does not panic when battle is upon him, and seems much wiser than his youth would indicate. He’s deadly, do not doubt, and doubly so from afar. Worse, if it is Effron shadowing us, then expect that he’s not alone.”
“You seem to know much of him,” Dahlia remarked.
“I hunted your Thayan friends beside him,” Entreri replied. “I killed your Thayan friends beside him.”
Dahlia stiffened a bit at that remark, but relaxed quickly, for really, given her parting of the ways with Sylora, how could she truly be angered at such an admission? She, too, had killed many Thayans of late.
“He was very close to Herzgo Alegni,” Entreri went on. “At times, it seemed as if he hated his fellow tiefling, but other times, they revealed a bond, and a deep one.”
“A brother?” Drizzt wondered aloud.
“An uncle?” Entreri replied with a shrug. “I know not, but I’m certain that Effron is not pleased at our treatment of Alegni. And he’s an opportunist-an ambitious one.”
“Regaining the sword would be a great boon to his reputation,” Drizzt reasoned.
“We don’t even know if it is him,” Dahlia remarked. “We don’t even know if there are Shadovar hunting us. We don’t even know if anyone is hunting us!”
“If you keep speaking so loudly, we’ll likely find out soon enough,” Entreri replied.
“Is that not a good thing?”
Dahlia’s stubbornness drew another sigh from Drizzt, and a second from Entreri, as well.
“We’ll find out,” Drizzt assured her. “But not on our hunter’s terms. We’ll find out in a place and time of our choosing.”
He turned on his heel and walked off along the path, slowly scanning the forest left and right and ahead, searching for enemies, for ambush, and for a place where they might turn the pursuit.
“Must we always play this game?” Effron asked, and though he tried to resist, he found himself spinning around to see the latest incarnation of this strange illusionist-or perhaps it was really her this time, he dared to hope.
But the Shifter’s voice replied to him from behind, yet again.
“It’s no game,” she assured him. “Many are my enemies.”
“And many are your allies.”
“Not so.”
“Perhaps you would find more allies if you were not so cursedly annoying,”
Effron offered.
“Allies among people like yourself, who wish to employ my services?”
“Is that so outrageous?”
“But are these allies not also soon to be my enemies when I am employed by one opposed to them?” the Shifter asked, and as Effron turned, her voice turned with him, always remaining behind the flustered young tiefling.
Effron lowered his gaze. “Perhaps both, then.”
“Better neither,” the Shifter replied. “Now tell me why you have come.”
“You cannot surmise?”
“If you’re expecting that I will return to Faerun to steal back Herzgo Alegni’s lost sword, then you are a fool. That realization would sadden me, for always have I thought your foolishness because of your age, and not a defect in your reasoning powers.”
“You know of the sword?”
“Everyone knows of the sword,” the Shifter replied casually, her tone almost mocking Effron’s seriousness. “Everyone who pays attention to such things, I mean. Herzgo Alegni lost it to those whom you hired Cavus Dun to hunt. Your failure led to his failure, so it would seem.”
“My failure?” Effron asked incredulously. “Did I not send you, along with Cavus Dun-”
“ Your failure,” the Shifter interrupted. “It was your mission, designed by you, and with the hunting party selected by you. That you did not properly prepare us, or did not send enough of us, rests heavily on the broken shoulders of Effron.”
“You cannot-”
“You would do well to simply acknowledge your mistake and move on, young tiefling. Cavus Dun lost valued members to this unusual trio. They have ordered no vengeance or recriminations upon you… yet.”
Effron surely needed no trouble with the likes of Cavus Dun! He doubted the Shifter’s description of the ramifications, doubted that any among Cavus Dun’s hierarchy were holding him responsible-they had given their blessing for the hunt, after all, and had assured him that his money, no small amount, had been well spent. More likely, he knew, the Shifter was bargaining for a better position in whatever deal Effron might offer her, and was also acting under orders from Cavus Dun to keep him back on his heels, as she had done, so that no blame for the failures in Neverwinter, from the disastrous battle against Dahlia and her cohorts to the loss of Charon’s Claw to the near-death of Lord Alegni himself, could ever be whispered in their direction.
“Let’s talk about future gains instead of past losses,” the tiefling offered.
The Shifter’s laughter echoed all around him, as if without a point of origin. Just floating freely in the air-or was it even audible, he wondered? Might she be imparting the chortles telepathically?
Effron looked down again, trying to find his sense of balance against this interminably aggravating associate.
Many heartbeats passed before the laughter subsided, and many more in silence.
“Talk of them, then,” the Shifter finally prompted.
“What glory might we find if we regain the sword?” Effron asked slyly.
“I don’t desire glory. Glory brings fame, and fame brings jealousy, and jealousy brings danger. What glory might you find, you mean.”
“So be it,” Effron said. “And what treasures might you find?”
“That’s a more interesting question.”
“Five hundred pieces of gold,” Effron announced.
The Shifter-the image of the Shifter-did not appear intrigued. “For a Netherese blade as powerful as Claw?” she scoffed.
“You are not creating it, merely retrieving it.”
“You forget that I have dealt with this trio of warriors before,” she said. “With powerful allies beside me, some of whom are dead, and none of whom would wish to return to face those three again. Yet you expect me to do so alone, and for a paltry sum.”
“Not to face the three,” Effron corrected. “Just one.”
“They are all formidable!”
“While it pleases me to see you afraid, I am not asking you to do battle. Not against three, not against one.”
“To simply steal a sentient sword?” Again her tone was incredulous, which made sense, of course, given such a proposed task as that!
“To simply make a deal,” Effron corrected. He reached into his pouch and produced a small glowing cage of magical energy, one that fit in his palm, one that contained a tiny likeness of a panther the Shifter had seen before, right before she had fled the fight in the forest.
“No, not a likeness,” the Shifter said aloud, and she leaned in to better inspect the living creature trapped within the force cage-and it was indeed her, Effron realized at that moment, and not an image.
“Magnificent,” she whispered.
“You cannot have her.”
“Better her than the sword, I expect!”
“Except that she is untamable,” Effron explained.
“You are quite young and inexperienced to be proclaiming that so definitively.”
“So said Draygo Quick.”
The mention of the great warlock lord had the Shifter standing straight immediately, and staring hard, not at Guenhwyvar, but back at Effron.
“You come to me with the imprimatur of Draygo Quick?”
“At his insistence, and with his coin.”
The Shifter swallowed hard, all semblance of that confident trickster flown away. “Why didn’t you tell me that when first you contacted me?”
“Five hundred pieces of gold,” Effron stated.
The Shifter disappeared, then reappeared beside him-only it was again an illusion, he suspected, as was confirmed when she answered from the other side as he turned to face her image.
“To trade the panther back to the drow in exchange for the sword?”
Effron nodded.
“Herzgo Alegni has already taken his hunters after the blade,” the Shifter explained.
Again Effron nodded, for he knew of Alegni’s departure for Neverwinter Wood, a posse of Shadovar beside him. He wasn’t too concerned about that, however, for Alegni had told him that they were merely going to pick up the trail. Herzgo Alegni was no fool, and after the beating he had received on his coveted bridge, one given despite his trickery with Artemis Entreri, he would not soon again take such a risk where Dahlia and her cohorts were involved-particularly not while they held Charon’s Claw. For more than a few, Draygo Quick included, had warned Alegni that the weapon might not so easily forgive his failure, and might even go over to the side of Artemis Entreri against him.
Could Claw control Alegni the way it had tormented the man known as Barrabus the Gray?
The thought proved not as amusing to Effron as he had suspected and so he pushed it away quickly, returning to the situation at hand.
“The drow’s friends might not appreciate such an exchange, particularly Lord Alegni’s former slave,” the Shifter remarked.
“If I thought they would, I would go to them myself,” Effron replied. “You are clever enough to find a way, and to get away if the need arises.”
The Shifter, her image at least, seemed intrigued. Effron and others always thought that the current image’s expressions and posture matched that of the host, though, of course, none knew for certain. As she considered the information, a long while passed before she said, “One thousand gold if I return with the sword.”
“Draygo Quick…” Effron started to reply.
“Five hundred from him and five hundred from Herzgo Alegni,” the Shifter interrupted. “It’s worth at least that to him, is it not?”
Effron didn’t blink.
“Or did you think to exact that sum from him for yourself?” the Shifter asked slyly.
“I have no desire for the coins.”
“Then you are indeed a fool.”
“So be it.”
“So be it? That you are a fool, or that you agree to my terms?”
“One thousand pieces of gold.”
“And five hundred if I return without it, for my troubles.”
“No.”
The image of the Shifter faded away to nothingness.
“One hundred,” Effron quickly said, trying hard, but futilely, to keep the desperation out of his voice. “If you return with the panther.”
The image of the Shifter reappeared.
“If you lose the panther, but do not regain the sword, then you will find no gold, but surely the wrath of Draygo Quick.”
“And if I bring back both?” she asked.
“The wrath of Draygo Quick, who desires no conflict with this or any other drow,” Effron said. “Make the deal.”
“Ah, the ever-present wrath of Draygo Quick,” the Shifter said. “It seems that you have added a measure of danger to the bargain.” Her image suddenly grabbed the cage from Effron’s hand, but it did not appear in that image’s hand, but rather, s
eemed to simply disappear. “How, then, can I say no?”
Effron nodded and watched the image melt away again to nothingness, and then he knew that he was alone.
He collected his wits, always so scattered after dealing with this annoying creature, and started away, hoping that Herzgo Alegni would not claim the prize first.
Because to Effron, Charon’s Claw was not the prize. He would procure it and use it to prompt Herzgo Alegni to the true victory, the one he and the tiefling warlord both badly wanted: Lady Dahlia, helpless before them, in all her shame, to answer for her crimes.
Drizzt Do’Urden sat in the crook of a thick branch, tight against the trunk of a large tree, trying to make himself as small as possible. He pulled his ragged forest green cloak around him as tightly as possible, and told himself that he would need to replace this garment soon enough, perhaps with some elven cloak, or another drow piwafwi if he could find some way to procure one.
That thought, of course, led him back to the last time he had seen Jarlaxle, when the drow had gone over the lip of the primordial’s pit after Athrogate, only to be obliterated, so it seemed, by the primordial’s subsequent eruption.
Drizzt closed his eyes and forced himself to let it all go. Too many questions accompanied thoughts of Jarlaxle, as they did with Entreri. Too many inconsistencies and too many needed excuses. The world was much easier when viewed in black and white, and these two, Jarlaxle most poignantly and pointedly, surely injected areas of shadow into Drizzt’s view of the world as it should be.
So did Dahlia, of course.
Below Drizzt’s perch, Entreri and Dahlia went about their business, acting as if they were putting together a camp for the night. They moved half-heartedly, hardly playing their roles, as the time dragged along.
Finally, Drizzt spotted some movement in the shadows a short distance behind them.
No, not a movement in the shadows, he realized, but a movement of the shadows. Arunika’s warning about the Netherese and their fanatical grip on their artifacts rang clear in his mind.
The drow gave a little whistle, a series of high-pitched notes like the song of a wren, the previously agreed-upon signal. Both Entreri and Dahlia glanced up toward him, and so, fearing that the Shadovar might be close enough to view any arm waving, he whistled again to confirm.
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