Out to the left leaped the drow, planting his feet on the chest of one guard and shoving off, launching the man to the floor and himself back and to the right, where he got up and over the blade of the fourth, turning as he went so that he was almost sitting on the man's shoulders. Jarlaxle dropped his bloody blades in a cross before the man's throat and slashed them out to their respective sides as he back-rolled over that shoulder, gracefully gaining his feet and spinning away.
The sentry grasped at his throat and sank to his knees.
* * * * *
"For Selûne!" the guard cried, thinking his victory at hand.
And under the cover of his shout, Athrogate called to his right-hand morningstar, enabling its magic, bringing forth explosive oil from its prongs. The dwarf snapped himself around, launching the head of the weapon at the guard's blocking shield. His arm was a limp thing, and there was no weight behind the strike, but when it connected with that shield, the oil exploded, shattering both the shield and the arm that held it and throwing the man back to the floor.
Athrogate fell off to the left, swiping across with his second weapon, one coated with the magically-duplicated ooze of a creature known to strike fear in the hearts of the greatest warriors: a rust monster. The initial contact of morningstar against shield did little to dissuade the oblivious attacker, who shield-rushed the dwarf and crashed his sword down hard on Athrogate's shoulder.
Roaring in pain, the dwarf sent his left arm in furious pumps, spinning the morningstar head in horizontal twirls, each connecting with the shield. So furious was his attack that the guard had to backtrack.
But the man seemed unconcerned, was even mocking the dwarf, as, bloody and battered, Athrogate turned to square up with him.
On he charged, and the dwarf spun left, his right arm swinging, his morningstar coming at the shield with little power behind it.
It needed none, however, for the shield had turned to rust, and the impact blew it apart, red dust flying all over them both.
The guard paused in surprise, and Athrogate roared and spun the rest of the way around more furiously, his left coming across in a mighty backhand. His shield ruined, the guard had no choice but to spin away from the blow.
And Athrogate, leaping in that final turn, planted his leading left foot solidly and stepped into perfect balance with his right, halting his momentum with brutal efficiency. He stepped forward with his left foot, swinging his weapon, smashing the guard in the back in mid-turn, and sending him staggering forward.
Athrogate was with him, every stride, his left arm working left-to-right and down, then reversing right-to-left and over, the ball smashing against the man's back repeatedly, driving him forward in a stumbling run. Again and again the pursuing dwarf hit him, as if guiding him with the morningstar.
Headlong, face-first, into a stone pillar.
The guard's arms reflexively went around the thing as he slid down, though he was hardly conscious of the movement.
Athrogate whacked him again, just because.
* * * * *
Entreri snapped his arms left and right as he drove up to his feet, dragging the poor Yinochek with him. He tried to break the man's neck, but had no leverage to do so, nor did he have the time to complete the strangulation. Reluctantly, angrily, he released the priest and shoved him forward at the nearest man, another priest, then rushed in hard behind and shoulder-blocked another aside. He spun out to the right in a dead run, hoping to get ahead of the stab of another man.
He wouldn't have made it, except that suddenly, instead of stabbing, the man was flying forward, launched by the powerful peck of Jarlaxle's diatryma. Entreri ran right by the giant bird as it plowed forward, trampling the fallen defender.
On Entreri sprinted, his bare feet slapping the stone floor. He cut and veered as guards closed in on him from both sides, but with a sudden burst, he got beyond them, diving into a headlong roll over the fallen chair. He came back to his feet with three men in close pursuit.
He noted Jarlaxle's sudden flurry, saw men falling every which way, and marked the fires raging out beyond the room, thick smoke starting to come in the door. None of it would help him, he knew.
He had to anticipate Jarlaxle, had to think like his drow companion.
He went straight for the extra-dimensional hole hanging on the side of the pillar.
With halberds reaching out just behind him, Entreri dived in and disappeared from sight.
He felt a body in there, one that moved and groaned, and he slugged the man across the face, laying him low. As he scrambled around, his hand closed on a pommel.
Kill them! came a message in his mind, one of eagerness.
Entreri wasn't about to disappoint the blade.
The three guards stood before the hole, rightly hesitating and tentative. Out came Entreri in a great leap, red-bladed sword in one hand, jeweled dagger in the other. He smashed Charon's Claw down atop the nearest halberd, to his right and before him, and drove the weapon down, but then rolled his sword underneath it as he landed and quick-stepped forward. He swung his arm back up and over his shoulder, taking the long, spearlike weapon with it, and swinging it out to intercept the thrusting sword of the next man in line.
At the same time, the assassin executed a reverse backhand parry with his dagger, driving the sword on his left out behind him. He turned as he did to face the man holding the sword, and lifted his left arm high, taking the sword with it, then thrust across with Charon's Claw, stabbing the man in the chest. As that one fell away, freeing up his dagger hand, Entreri threw himself backward and under the swipe of the cumbersome halberd. He fell into a sitting position, but kept turning, driving his jeweled dagger into the spearman's knee then rolling around as the man howled, tearing his dagger free. He slashed across with Charon's Claw, taking the man's legs out and toppling him to the ground. Entreri used the falling man as a shield, leaping back to his feet, but he needn't have, he realized, for the third had turned to run off.
Entreri leaped into pursuit, but pulled up short, his attention drawn across the room, where the three priests escorted the blessed voice proper out a back door.
"No!" Entreri yelled charging that way, though he knew he'd never get there in time to stop the escape. It couldn't happen like this! Not after all his effort, not after all the memories of Shanali had assaulted him.
Devout Tyre, in the lead, pulled open the door; Entreri did the only thing he could and launched his sword like a great spear.
* * * * *
"Ah, but ye're a good pig," Athrogate said to Snort. He leaned heavily on the boar, nearly collapsing from loss of blood, and directed the creature to the extra-dimensional pocket. As he neared the black hole, the dwarf noted a man crawling out.
Devout Gositek turned to him pitifully.
Athrogate slugged him hard, knocking him out, so that he was hanging by the waist over the lip of the hole, the fingers of his extended arms just brushing the floor.
On a word from the dwarf, Snort leaped back into the hole. Athrogate looked to Jarlaxle and saluted, though the drow hardly seemed to notice. Then the dwarf hopped into a sitting position on the rim of the dimensional pocket, grabbed Gositek by the scruff of his neck, and rolled back out of sight, taking the battered priest with him.
* * * * *
Out of the corner of his eye, Devout Tyre saw the missile coming. He fell back with a yelp, knocking his fellows into a stumble, with Blessed Voice Proper Yinochek, still gasping for breath, falling back against the wall. The red-bladed sword rushed past Tyre and hit the wood, the weight of the missile closing the door hard, and leaving the sword stuck there, quivering.
"Get him out!" Tyre commanded the other two, turning toward the charging Entreri. "I will finish this one."
With a snarl of defiance, the priest grabbed Charon's Claw and yanked it from the door.
Everything seemed to move in slow motion for Devout Tyre. He stumbled away from the door as one of his companions, Devout Premmy, tugged the porta
l back open. He saw the man Entreri, screaming in protest, still thirty feet or more away. He watched the man change hands with his remaining weapon, saw him leap high and far, planting his left foot as he came down.
Entreri's hips rotated to square with the door. His left arm swung out wide as he rolled his right shoulder forward, arm coming up and over in a mighty throw.
Tyre hardly registered the movement, the silver flickers of the missile, but he knew somehow exactly where it was heading. He tried to scream a warning, but his voice came out as a high-pitched shriek.
He hardly heard that, but instead heard Entreri's seemingly elongated cry of "Shanali!"
And as though with the snap of some unseen wizard's fingers, time sped up and the silver missile flashed past him. Devout Tyre turned and saw his Blessed Voice Proper, the Principal Cleric of the Protector's House, with his arms out before him, quivering, his face a mask of exquisite pain, the jeweled hilt of a dagger protruding from his chest.
And Tyre saw… white. Just hot white, as his sensibilities finally registered the excruciating pain that burned throughout his body and soul. He screamed again—or tried to, but his lips curled up over his teeth, and rolled back even farther as if melting away. Somewhere deep inside him, Tyre knew that he should drop the evil sword.
But his sensibilities were long gone by then, his thoughts no longer connecting to his body. Pain controlled him, and nothing more, as he felt a million stinging needles, a million burning bites, a fire within him as profound and devastating as the one that had exploded in the corridor across the way.
He fell to the floor but never knew it. He lay there trembling, his skin smoldering and crackling into charred bits as Charon's Claw ate him.
* * * * *
The throw—both of them—had come from somewhere so deep inside of him that Artemis Entreri had hardly even realized his actions. He had seen nothing but Shanali, frail and dying in the dust. He had felt nothing but his rage, his absolute fury that the vile priest would escape him.
The moment his dagger thudded into Principal Cleric Yinochek's heart, the spell was broken, and Entreri, running at the four priests, felt a flood of angry satisfaction.
He slowed his pace, noting movement from the side, then watched as two of the priests deserted Yinochek and rushed out the door, Jarlaxle's diatryma in close pursuit. There were soldiers coming toward the room down the hall beyond, he saw, but how they changed their attitude and their direction when that giant bird crashed out through the doorway.
Entreri rushed up and pushed the door closed. He glanced at the dying Tyre but paid him no more heed than that, moving instead to stand before the principal cleric.
"Do you know how many lives you have ruined?" he asked the man.
Trembling, sputtering, his eyes wide with horror, Yinochek's lips moved but no words came forth.
"Yes," Entreri noted. "You know. You understand it all. You know the wretchedness of your actions as you steal the coin of the peasants and the innocence of the girls. You know, and so you are afraid." He reached up and grabbed the dagger hilt, and Yinochek stiffened.
Entreri thought to obliterate the man's soul with his magical weapon, but he shook his head and dismissed the notion.
"Selûne is a goodly god, so I've heard," he said, "and thus will have nothing to do with the likes of you. I call you a fraud, and there is nowhere left for you to hide."
The man's eyes rolled back into his head, and he slumped to the floor.
"A better way to go than that one," Jarlaxle said, and only then did Entreri realize that the drow had come to his side. Jarlaxle's gaze led Entreri's to what remained of Devout Tyre, who lay on his back shaking wildly, his robes smoking and his face showing more bone than flesh.
With a growl, Entreri stomped hard on the man's forearm, crushing the burnt skin and bone, and the recoil lifted Charon's Claw into the air, where Entreri easily caught it.
He looked back at Jarlaxle as the drow settled the fabric patch back into his great hat.
The building shook violently, and across the room, a gout of flames rushed in.
"Come," Jarlaxle bade him, putting on his magical mask. "We must be away."
Entreri looked back at the blessed voice proper, sitting against the wall, his chest covered in blood, his eyes white.
He thought of Shanali one last time. He took a brief moment to consider the long and dirty road of his miserable life, which had ultimately brought him to that awful place.
EPILOGUE
The commotion behind him did little to take Entreri's gaze from the city below him. He stood on the jag of rock at the paupers' graveyard, staring down at the plume of smoke that hung lazily over the ruins of the Protector's House.
His vengeance had been sated, obviously so, but there was little left in the man. Finally he turned back to Jarlaxle, who had opened his portable hole against another stone, and stood with Athrogate beside him, staring into the darkness.
"Well, ye might as well be coming here," the dwarf recited. "Afore I find me way in there. In that case, yerself should fear, me pulling ye out by the tip o' yer ears!"
Entreri rubbed a hand over his weary face, and moved down from the perch as Devout Gositek, his face all bruised, crawled out of the hole.
"I am not afraid to die," he said, trembling so badly he seemed as if he was about to soil himself.
Jarlaxle turned deferentially to Entreri.
"Then get out of here," the assassin said.
Gositek's jaw dropped open.
"Generous," Jarlaxle remarked.
"Surprised," said Athrogate.
Gositek looked at the elf and dwarf, then scrambled for the stair. But Entreri intercepted him, and with frightening strength yanked him aside and ran him to the very edge of the hundred-foot drop.
"No, please!" the priest who was not afraid to die desperately pleaded.
"If you wish to remain alive, then look down there," Entreri growled in his ear. "Mark well the destruction of the Protector's House. You will rebuild it—you and your fellow priests?"
When Gositek didn't immediately answer, Entreri shifted him forward, almost off the ledge.
The terrified man yelped and blurted, "Yes!"
Entreri tugged him back. "And you will never forget their names again," he instructed. "Any of them. And you and your brethren will come up here, every day, and pray for the souls of those who have gone before."
"Yes, yes, yes," Gositek stammered.
"Do you understand me?" Entreri roared, shaking him near the edge again.
"I do! We will!"
"I don't believe you," Entreri said, and the man began to cry.
Entreri threw him back from the cliff and to the ground. "Remember that view," he warned. "For if you forget your promise, you will see it again, with smoke once more rising from the ruins of your rebuilt temple. And on that next occasion, I will throw you from the cliff."
The man nodded stupidly as he crawled away. Finally, near the edge of the graveyard, he managed to put his feet under him, and he scrambled down the long stair.
Entreri moved to the top of that stair and watched him run away.
"Are you satisfied now, my friend?" Jarlaxle asked.
Entreri put his head down and forced himself to remain calm then turned around, his expression revealing his emptiness.
Jarlaxle offered a shrug. "It is often the way," he said. "We've all demons needing to be put to rest, but the experience is not as rewardi—"
"Shut up," Entreri interrupted.
Athrogate laughed.
"We must be gone from this place," Jarlaxle said.
"I don't care where you go," Entreri answered. He reached into his pouch and pulled forth Idalia's flute, which he had broken into two pieces. He locked stares with the drow and tossed it to Jarlaxle's feet.
Jarlaxle gave a helpless chuckle, but there was no real mirth in it. Finally breaking Entreri's imposing stare, he bent and retrieved the flute. "A valuable item," he said.
"Cursed," came Entreri's reply.
"Ah, Artemis," said the drow. "I understand your wounds and your anger, but in the end, you will see that this was all for the best."
"You might be right, but that changes little."
"How so?" asked the drow.
Entreri pulled his pack around. He fished out the obsidian figurine and dropped it to the ground, calling forth his nightmare mount. As the creature materialized, Entreri pulled forth another object and sent it spinning at Jarlaxle.
A black, small-brimmed hat.
"I am finished with you," Entreri said. "Your road is your own, and I care not if it takes you to the gates of the Nine Hells."
Jarlaxle caught the hat and rolled it over in his slender hands. "But Artemis, be reasonable."
"I have never been more so," Entreri replied, and he put one foot in a stirrup and hoisted himself astride the tall black horse. "Farewell, Jarlaxle. Or fare ill. It matters not to me."
"But I am your muse."
"I don't like the songs you inspire."
Entreri turned his mount around, stepping to the stair.
"Where will you go?"
The assassin paused and looked back sourly.
"I can find out, in any case," Jarlaxle reminded him.
"To Calimport," Entreri answered, and he gave a helpless laugh at the truth of the drow's statement—and Jarlaxle took heart in that, at least. "To Dwahvel, and to a place I might call home."
"Ah, Mistress Tiggerwillies!" Jarlaxle said with sudden animation. "And will you seek to regain your status among the streets of that fair city?"
Entreri chortled and nodded toward the distant plume of smoke. "Artemis Entreri is dead," he said. "He died in the Protector's House in Memnon, chasing ghosts."
He turned his horse away, down the stairs and out of sight.
"Might that we should follow him," Athrogate said to Jarlaxle. "He'll be getting' hisself into trouble, no doubt. It's the way his blood's flowing."
Road of the Patriarch ts-3 Page 39
