Charon's claw tns-3

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Send scouts along this tunnel, then,” Alegni replied. “And we’ll make our camp right here, before the pit and the primordial. Let them come to us and let us be done with them.”

  He would take all precautions, but Herzgo Alegni truly doubted that his enemies would come to him in that place. They had joined with, or been taken by, these other drow. Likely the latter, for these dark elves had been in this place for some time, judging by the work Alegni and his minions had seen in their charge through the lower levels. The expertly crafted and repaired, and purposely dropped stairwell alone showed that Alegni and his force had stumbled upon a determined dark elf settlement.

  Had this curious ranger, Drizzt, known about that, he wondered, and not for the first time? Had Drizzt led the other two here to find reinforcements?

  He turned to the dwarf as he considered the pressing question, for she had insisted that could not be the case. She claimed to know of Drizzt, quite a bit of his history, actually, since he had settled in a dwarven citadel near to her own place of birth. Drizzt would not willingly fall in with others of his race, she had assured Alegni. He was a rogue, an outcast, and his head would be a greater trophy than Claw even, in the eyes of the Spider Queen’s followers.

  In that case, the dark elves, not Drizzt and his two companions, likely now had the blade, and likely had the three Alegni pursued, as well, either dead or wishing they were.

  He hoped that was not the case, even if he could bargain to get back the sword and the three living prisoners. He wanted more than that. He wanted a fight.

  He wanted to pay back the traitor Barrabus, and most of all, he wanted to defeat Dahlia yet again, to pull her into his grasp, battered and terrified.

  Oh, that one he would pay back most dearly, he fantasized, and he looked at Effron as he did, crystallizing his hatred.

  Drizzt, Dahlia, and Entreri moved quietly and cautiously, but with all considerable speed, for time was against them, they knew. The Shadovar force had entered the forge room, and so the shades controlled the small tunnel to the primordial chamber, and it was a force the three of them couldn’t hope to fight their way through.

  Perhaps the Menzoberranyr would return to battle the Shadovar, perhaps not. To Drizzt, that point was almost moot in any case. They had fooled the dark elves for the time being, but it would not hold, he feared. And what might happen to him and his companions if those dark elves learned of his true identity?

  To Drizzt’s thinking, then, they would follow this corridor around the forge room and see if they might have a way to slip in and quickly be done with the sword. He didn’t think it likely, for though he hadn’t fully explored the region the last time he was there, he was fairly confident that there were no secret tunnels that he and the dwarves of Icewind Dale had missed.

  What, then?

  They would leave, and with all speed. Entreri would have to wait for his freedom from Charon’s Claw. Perhaps they would travel to Waterdeep to find better guardians for the weapon. Perhaps they would learn of another way to be rid of it-maybe they would ride a merchant ship far off the Sword Coast and drop it deep into the cold ocean. Perhaps they would leave this place and return at a later date for a second try at the primordial-though, given the arrival of the drow in force, and now the advent of the Shadovar in Gauntlgrym, Drizzt didn’t see how that might happen without an army marching beside them. The ranger put it all out of his mind. He had to focus on the immediate situation if they hoped to survive.

  That situation changed abruptly as Drizzt rounded a steamy corner to find an unexpected intersecting tunnel, one crossing both left and right. He stopped and looked both ways, trying to make sense of it, for this was no ordinary corridor, nor was it of any conventional construction, nor was it very old.

  Dahlia and Entreri caught up to him, and both seemed equally at a loss as they stared into the red-veined tunnel, which seemed as if it had just been melted through the stone.

  “Could it be the beast?” Dahlia asked.

  “It’s some mighty magic, and some fire,” Entreri replied.

  “A small side eruption?” Drizzt asked, for surely he noted lava among the darker stone. One orange pool of it glowed brightly not far away, and even as the three looked on, it cooled to black.

  “We caught a bit of luck,” Entreri said, and he started in to the right, which seemed the logical direction heading back toward the primordial.

  Drizzt grabbed him by the shoulder almost immediately, though, and held him back. “The floor won’t be consistent or safe. Let me lead. My sword will protect me if my foot breaks through a cooling crust and into the molten lava.” He rolled Icingdeath in his hand and put its blade into the nearby lava, which cooled all the faster as the frost brand stole its heat energy.

  “The other way,” Dahlia whispered behind them, and both turned, and both figured that the elf had lost her direction sense in the dark tunnels.

  But Dahlia wasn’t talking about their course to the primordial chamber, she was warning them of movement in the other direction. Far down the tunnel there came a flash of light. It seemed as if the fiery creature digging the tunnel had swerved back to the other side to flicker into view.

  Drizzt sheathed Twinkle, but held Icingdeath as he started off, quick-stepping all around to find the most solid footing for his following friends. More than once, his foot broke through thin crust and tapped into still-hot lava, but Icingdeath protected him and he quickly readjusted to mark out a path for his less-protected companions.

  He feared that they were wasting too much time, and almost told his companions to go back to the intersection and wait for him to scout out the movement up ahead.

  Almost.

  He picked up his pace as the corridor swung a bit to the right, then slowed greatly when he came back to the left, and saw the tunneler, a fiery monstrosity that appeared as if some wizard had conjured a fire and earth elemental to the same spot, joining them as one melded monster. And there was the wizard, a drow, moving along right behind the beast.

  Drizzt put an arrow to Taulmaril, unsure of how to proceed.

  Dahlia and Entreri came up beside him.

  “Go back the other way,” Entreri whispered.

  “Bregan D’aerthe?” Drizzt whispered back. Perhaps they had found a powerful ally, or at least someone who could better inform them of the path ahead of them.

  Drizzt stepped out from the wall and gave a short whistle.

  The drow ahead stopped and spun around, and Drizzt held up his hand and flashed the signal of alliance. But to his surprise, the wizard cried out and fell away, and waved frantically for his companion elemental to turn back and attack.

  “Bregan D’aerthe!” Drizzt called out, but it hardly seemed to matter.

  “Wonderful,” Entreri remarked.

  Drizzt growled against the cynicism and stepped out, drew back, and let a lightning arrow fly into the chest of the approaching monstrosity. The creature staggered just a bit, but then came on. Drizzt fired again and again, but he had no idea of whether his enchanted arrows were having much of an effect on this fiery stone beast.

  “Run,” Entreri said.

  But Drizzt didn’t. He kept up his line of arrows, and when he heard the wizard behind the beast beginning the chanting of a spell, he angled his bow and began skipping arrows off the side walls.

  A line of fire appeared from behind the elemental, rushed right through the beast, and swept down at Drizzt and his companions.

  “Run!” Entreri called more frantically from behind, and this time, Drizzt heeded the assassin-but not in the direction Entreri had intended. Icingdeath in hand even as he held his bow, trusting in the frost magic to protect him from the bulk of the fire and minimize the flames as they passed him by, for the sake of his companions, Drizzt charged. He got off one more arrow, aiming for the elemental’s face, trying to blind it or distract it, then flung the bow and his quiver back toward Entreri and Dahlia. In the same motion, he drew out his second scimitar, and sped on
even faster, closing the ground quickly and, at the last instant, cutting right to the wall and flattening out to shinny past the beast.

  It swung out at him with a heavy and glowing limb, and Icingdeath slashed at it and bit at it hard-and not just with its fine diamond edge, but with its magic, its enchanted hatred of creatures of fire. The elemental roared, like boulders against boulders, and thrashed around as the powerful scimitar grabbed at its very life essence, and Drizzt had to resist the urge to charge in closer and strike again and again to bring the elemental down.

  He went past it instead, still using the wall of fire to cover his movements, and burst free at the mage. He came through the end of the fire just strides from the drow, who shrieked in surprise and lifted his hands, thumbs touching, and sprayed forth a fan of fire.

  This, too, Icingdeath minimized. Those fires stung Drizzt, but they did not truly hurt him, nor did they slow him, and he raced past and the mage ducked aside. He was too close to effectively stab or cut, but he punched out with his left, the pommel of Twinkle crunching into the drow wizard’s face and staggering him backward. He fought hard to hold his balance as Drizzt fell back over him-and surely Drizzt could have finished him then, for the wizard clearly wasn’t prepared for an enemy to so quickly circumvent his powerful pet.

  Drizzt rushed in close, preventing any somatic spellcasting movements. Again the wizard flung a fan of fires at him-and Drizzt noted that the drow focused on a curious ring as he did-and again Drizzt’s scimitar minimized the effect. He closed further and loosed a barrage of punches at the drow, driving his pommels all around the wizard’s head and chest.

  He had to be done with this quickly, he knew, and he attacked all the more furiously, expecting that monstrous elemental to come charging in from behind.

  “Run!” Entreri said to Dahlia, and he grabbed her hard as she started off after Drizzt. “Run!”

  “No!” she shouted, then both jumped as the bow and quiver bounced down in the diminishing line of fire before them.

  “Grab it!” Dahlia ordered.

  “I’m no archer!”

  The elemental issued an earthquake roar and thrashed around, then charged at them.

  “Grab it!” Dahlia yelled again, setting her long staff out before her. “Just shoot!” Spitting curses, Entreri took up the bow, grabbed an arrow from the quiver, and let fly at the approaching monster. The arrow barely got away before Dahlia’s magical staff swallowed it.

  “What are you doing?” Entreri yelled at her.

  “Just shoot!” she yelled back through chattering teeth.

  He did, and again, and Kozah’s Needle ate the bolt, and arcs of lightning magic danced all around the metallic staff, stinging Dahlia’s hands as she stubbornly held on. She rushed forward and thrust the end of the staff against the charging fiery behemoth, and in a great flash of lightning, the monster was thrown back a step. Another arrow almost hit the beast, but Dahlia’s staff got it at the last instant. She struck again, a lesser blow, but one that stole the monster’s momentum. They worked in rhythm, Entreri putting arrows into the air and Dahlia’s weapon absorbing them and redirecting the magic against the elemental with brutal, enhanced strikes. Shards of stone and bursts of flame accompanied each hit as the elf warrior chipped away at the elemental’s magical form. Never did Dahlia more need that extended reach, for she had to stay out of the sweeping radius of those explosive, rock and fire arms.

  She had to be perfect in her dance and in her strikes.

  But still the lethal behemoth came on, and Dahlia and Entreri had to give ground.

  Drizzt had gained a great advantage with his desperate charge, catching the wizard by surprise, and he was experienced enough against spellcasters to understand that he needed to press that advantage through to a swift victory.

  The mage flailed, trying to block, but the blows came too swiftly and from too many angles. One got through cleanly to crunch the mage’s skull, and he staggered back against the wall, waving his hands out defensively before him.

  And calling again on the ring, Drizzt recognized, and across came Icingdeath, cutting that hand in half, fingers flying. The mage howled and crumbled, and Drizzt spun and circle-kicked him hard in the side of the head, laying him low.

  The ranger spun back the other way, just in time to see the flash and hear the report of thunder again as Dahlia struck the behemoth and Kozah’s Needle released its lightning charge. He took a quick step but pulled up short, for there before him lay the severed piece of hand, four fingers intact, and a ruby band on one. Reflexively, the drow dropped and pulled off the ring, hardly thinking as he slipped it onto his own finger.

  He felt strange. The ring sang to him as if in accord with his scimitar… but there was something more.

  Drizzt staggered under the weight of that magical burden. He eyes blurred as if he was looking at the world suddenly through a haze of fire.

  And in his mind, he heard the elemental’s confusion, its anger, its desire to destroy and consume, and a sense of particular hatred

  … for him.

  “Keep shooting!” Dahlia prompted, and Entreri did, one after another, each missile being eaten by the magical staff. She kept thrusting it forth; she had to, or the magical energy would throw her aside.

  The staff ate an arrow, then a second as she jabbed at the beast. But the beast turned and ran away.

  The staff ate a third. Dahlia tried to call out for Entreri to stop, but the lightning energy had her jaw clenched so tightly, she couldn’t speak.

  The staff ate a fourth.

  A fifth.

  She had to slam it down and release the blast, but the beast was getting away.

  The beast was charging Drizzt!

  Dahlia threw Kozah’s Needle like a spear. It hit the elemental with a tremendous explosion, jolting the whole of the corridor with such power that it lifted Dahlia right into the air, to fall back down and stumble.

  And the elemental swung back and charged, and hardly seemed hurt. “Oh, by the gods,” Entreri mumbled, thinking that he and Dahlia were surely doomed. He put up Taulmaril and pulled back for one last shot, one last desperate and angry act of defiance.

  And he saw a form in the air behind the elemental: a leaping ranger, cape flying behind him, one scimitar grasped in both hands, up high over his head.

  Drizzt slammed into the beast, plunging Icingdeath through its back, the magical, fire-hating blade diving deep into the creature’s core being, the very magical energy that gave it form.

  How it thrashed and swung around, Drizzt holding on desperately, legs flying wildly.

  But he held on, and Icingdeath feasted.

  The elemental spun and thrashed in frenzy.

  And then it died and melted in on itself, a pile of smoking rock and lava in the middle of the corridor.

  “Well, that was fun,” Dahlia remarked as Drizzt pulled himself off the pile and staggered back a couple of steps.

  FAMILY REUNION

  The drow wizard groaned and growled, clutching the stump of his halved left hand.

  “Where does it lead?” Drizzt asked him. The ranger crouched before the wizard, looking him in the eye. “Where does it lead?”

  The wizard spat at him.

  “Your life depends on this,” Drizzt said. “Where does your tunnel lead? Where did you come from?”

  Artemis Entreri pushed Drizzt aside and roughly grabbed the wizard by the hair, yanking his head back and putting a dagger to his throat.

  “It goes to the primordial?” Entreri demanded in perfect Drow inflection.

  “Leave it alone!” the drow wizard yelled at him.

  Entreri smiled and looked back at his companions. “Take that as a yes,” he said.

  “What are we to do with…?” Drizzt started to ask, but he stopped with a gasp as Artemis Entreri drove his dagger through the front of the drow’s throat, angling up and into the mage’s brain. The drow stiffened, legs popping straight out, and began to tremble.

  Ent
reri yanked the blade out, wiped it on the wizard’s robe, and stood up, turning to face the incredulous stare of Drizzt and the amused expression of Dahlia.

  “You didn’t think I would leave a drow wizard alive behind us, did you?” Entreri said to Drizzt with a snort, and he started past.

  Drizzt stood there staring at the slain drow. Blood flowed heavily from the wound under his chin. His hands had fallen to his sides, giving Drizzt a clear view of the one he had cut in half. From a tactical level, Drizzt could understand Entreri’s brutality, of course, but still, the callousness with which he had executed the mage had jarred Drizzt.

  Would his old friends have treated a helpless prisoner in such a manner?

  He wasn’t sure, given the desperation of their current situation, but still, the casual brutality of Artemis Entreri had once again shocked him.

  “Come on,” Dahlia said, moving to Drizzt’s side and taking his arm affectionately. “We haven’t much time.”

  Drizzt looked at her, angrily at first. But that couldn’t hold against Dahlia’s responding look, one that reflected great understanding toward him-surprisingly so, Drizzt realized, since Dahlia hadn’t been nearly as shocked as he when Entreri had struck.

  “The world’s an ugly place,” she said quietly. “If we’re not ugly enough to defeat it, we will be dead.”

  The cynical truth stung Drizzt profoundly, but Dahlia’s insistent tug reminded him that they didn’t really have the luxury of standing around and debating the issue. Drizzt retrieved his bow and quiver, and they caught up to Entreri just before the intersection. He crouched on one knee, staring across to the other tunnel, motioning them to hold still and get down.

  As they crept up, Entreri slipped off to the left into the perpendicular tunnel, and Drizzt and Dahlia moved right. By the time they put their backs to the wall across that main corridor and right beside the one the wizard’s elemental had burrowed, they understood the assassin’s sudden caution, for they heard the approach of several Shadovar.