Long has it occurred to me that I am a creature of action, of battle and of adventure. In times of peace and calm, like my friend Bruenor, I find myself longing for the open road, where bandits rule and wild orcs roam. For so many years, I stubbornly clung to the battle and the adventure. I admit my thrill when King Bruenor decided to quietly abdicate and go on his search for legendary Gauntlgrym.
For in that quest, we found the open road, the wilderness, the adventure, and indeed, the battles.
But something was missing. I couldn’t quite place it, couldn’t quite articulate it, but for a long while now, indeed back to the early days of King Bruenor’s reign of reclaimed Mithral Hall, there remained a sharp edge missing, a necessary edge scraping my skin and keeping me wholly alive.
Anyone who has ever stood on the edge of a cliff understands this. One can bask in the views, and with such a wide panorama, one cannot help but feel the thrill of being a part of something bigger and grander, much like the manner in which the stars pull a soul heavenward to join with the incomprehensible vastness of the universe.
But amid all the beauty and awe-inspiring grandeur, it is the feel of the wind that completes the sensation, particularly if it is a swirling and gusting breeze. For then comes the greatest affirmation of life: the sensation of fear, the recognition of how fleeting this entire existence can be.
When I stand on the edge of that cliff, on the precipice of disaster, and I lean against that wind, I am truly alive. I have to be quick to realign my balance and my footing as the wind swirls; if I wish to stay on my perch, indeed to stay alive, I have to remain quicker than the whims of the wind.
In the past, I stubbornly kept tight the battles and the adventures, and ever turned my eye to the open and dangerous road, but it was not until very recently that I came to understand that which was truly missing: the thrill of the risk.
The thrill of the risk. The edge of that high precipice. Not the risk itself, for that was ever there, but the thrill of that risk … In truth, it was not until my midnight ride back from Luskan that I realized how long I’d been missing that thrill.
When first I left Dahlia, I was afraid for her, but that fear dissipated almost immediately, replaced by a sense of invincibility that I have not known in decades, in a century perhaps! I knew that I would get over Luskan’s guarded wall, that I would find Beniago, and that I would bend him to my need. I knew that I would win out. I knew that I would be quicker than the gusting wind.
Why?
The risk was ever there, I now understand, but for so many years, the thrill of that risk was not because of the untenable price of defeat. For the price of having friends so dear and a companion so beloved is … vulnerability.
I can accept the wind blowing Drizzt Do’Urden from the cliff. Such a price is not too high. But to watch Catti-brie fall before me?
Then I am not invincible. Then there is simply the risk, and not the thrill of living on the edge of that dangerous cliff.
No more.
For when I rode to Luskan, I was invincible. The walls could not stop me. Beniago could not stop me.
And now I understand that when I lost my friends, my family, my home, I lost, too, my vulnerability, and gained back in return the thrill of danger, the freedom to not only walk on the edge of that high cliff, but to dance there, to taunt the wind.
What a strange irony.
But what, then, of my growing relationship with Dahlia?
She fascinates me. She teases me with her every movement and every word. She lures me—to where I do not know!
On my ride, in my unbridled joy, in the thrill of adventure and battle and yes, risk, I knew that she would survive. I knew it! Even when all reason warned me that the poison would take her long before I could return from Luskan, somewhere deep inside of me, I just knew she wouldn’t be lost to me. Not then, not like that. Her fate could not be written such; her death wouldn’t be so crude and mundane.
But what if I was proven wrong? What if she had been taken from me, like those before? Surely Dahlia dances more wildly on the edge of that cliff than I do. She is fearless to the point of utter recklessness—in the short time I have known her, I have seen that all too clearly.
And yet, that risk does not frighten me.
I don’t want her to die. The fascination, the attraction, is all too real and all too powerful. I want to know her, to understand her. I want to yell at her and kiss her all at once. I want to test her in battle and in passion.
She is as erratic as she is erotic, changing her tone as easily as she alters her appearance. I think it a game she plays, a way to keep friends and enemies alike off-balance. But I cannot be sure, and that, too, is part of her never-ending seduction. Is she teasing me with seemingly erratic behavior, or is Dahlia truly erratic? Is she the actor or the role?
Or perhaps there is a third answer: Am I so desperate to know this unpredictable doppelganger that I am reading too much into her every word? Am I seeking, and thus seeing, deeper meaning than she intends as I scour for clues to that which is in her heart?
A carefully guarded heart. But why?
Another mystery to unravel …
I knew she wouldn’t be lost to me, but how? How did my instincts counter my reason so fully? Given all that has passed in my life, shouldn’t I have expected the worst outcome regarding Dahlia? Given the losses I have endured, shouldn’t I have feared exactly that in a desperate situation?
And yet I did not. I reveled in the midnight ride, in the adventure and the thrill of the risk.
Is it Dahlia’s competency, her swagger, her own fearlessness, affecting my heart? Or is it, perhaps, that I do not love her—not as I loved Catti-brie, or Bruenor, Wulfgar and Regis?
Or is it something more, I wonder? Perhaps Innovindil’s lesson reached me more deeply than I had known. Logically, rationally, I can see Innovindil’s viewpoint, that we elves have to live our lives in shorter segments because of the short-lived races with whom we naturally interact. But could it be that Innovindil’s lessons have sparked within me a confidence that I will go on, that there is more road in front of me? Though those I deeply loved are removed from my side, I will find others to share the leagues and the fights?
It is all of that, I expect, and perhaps something more. Perhaps each loss hardened my heart and numbed me to the pain. The loss of Bruenor stung less than those of Catti-brie and Regis, and less than my knowledge that Wulfgar, too, has surely passed on. There are other reasons, I am confident. Bruenor’s last words to me, “I found it, elf,” reflected a full life’s journey, to be sure! What dwarf could ask for more than what King Bruenor Battlehammer knew? His final battle alone, his victory over the pit fiend while immersed in the power of dwarven kings of old, would surely fill to bursting the heart of any dwarf.
So I did not cry for Bruenor, though I surely miss him no less than any of the others.
There is no one answer, then. Life is a complicated journey, and few are the direct lines from feeling to consequence and consequence to anticipation. I will try to unravel it all, of course, as that is my nature, but in the end, I am left now with only one inescapable truth: the joy of that midnight ride, of bargaining with Beniago at the end of a scimitar, of reckless adventure.
The thrill, the edge of the cliff.
This is your promise to Drizzt Do’Urden, my lady Dahlia the erotic, the erratic.
And this is your legacy to Drizzt Do’Urden, my old Companions of the Hall.
Do you see me now, Catti-brie?
Do you see me now, Bruenor?
Do you see me now, Regis?
Do you see me now, Wulfgar?
Because I see you. You walk with me. You are in my thoughts every day, all four, and I see you smile when I smile and frown when I hurt. I believe this, I sense this.
I pray for this.
—Drizzt Do’Urden
DRIZZT MOVED TO THE BACK OF THE SMALL ENCAMPMENT, coming to the edge of the bluff overlooking the riverbank. Dahlia was at the cold stream, her boots and black leather hat on the ground beside her. Her black hair was still in its fashionably shoulder-length cut, swept forward, and her woad remained hidden by the makeup … or was it the other way around, where the woad was the makeup and this was the real Dahlia?
Drizzt chuckled as he considered that, for the illusion that was Dahlia resonated with him on many more levels than her physical appearance. It was a helpless chuckle, for he held no hope that he would unwind the mysteries of Dahlia anytime soon.
She slipped her shapely leg into the stream, then drew it forth and rubbed at her sore and still discolored foot. She looked at the unsightly puncture and shook her head with obvious disgust.
“Which is real and which the illusion?” Drizzt asked, skipping down the steep incline to stand beside her. He noted that she wore a new piece of jewelry, a black diamond in her right ear, complimenting the ten diamond studs in her left.
“Both and neither,” Dahlia answered dismissively. She grimaced as she squeezed her foot, bringing forth some pus and blood from the wound.
“Are you so afraid that the truth of Dahlia will be revealed?”
Dahlia looked up at him sourly, and shook her head as if his question wasn’t worth her trouble.
“We owe a great debt to Meg the farmer woman and Ben the Brewer,” Drizzt remarked.
“You would start babbling about them again?” Dahlia snapped back. “Had you returned to the farmhouse a few moments later, I would’ve been one foot lighter. Or both of them would’ve lain dead at my feet.”
“They would’ve taken your foot only because they thought it the only way to save your life.”
“They would’ve tried to take my foot and I would’ve killed them both,” Dahlia insisted.
“You would’ve killed a mother in front of her children?”
“I would’ve asked the children to turn around first,” Dahlia sarcastically replied.
Drizzt laughed at her unrelenting sourness, but Dahlia only glared at him all the more. For a moment, just a heartbeat, Drizzt almost expected her to jump up and attack him then and there.
“Damn you, Beniago,” the woman muttered, squeezing her aching foot yet again.
“He provided the antidote,” Drizzt said.
“Then he’s a fool, because he saved the life of one who will kill him.”
“It wasn’t Beniago who set the traps,” Drizzt reminded her.
“It was Beniago who forced me from the rope to the floor.”
“He defends the wares of Ship Kurth.”
“And you would defend him?”
“Hardly. Didn’t I arrive to chase him off?”
Dahlia spat on her foot and squeezed it again. A dribble of blood and greenish-white pus slipped out. “Killing him will wound Ship Kurth, and make it clear that I’m not one to be toyed with.”
“Ah, that’s it, then,” Drizzt said with a grin. “It’s your embarrassment at being outfoxed.”
Dahlia narrowed her eyes threateningly.
“High Captain Kurth, or yes, perhaps Beniago, understood that you would return to the jewelry shop to appropriate the piece, and so they were quite ready for you,” Drizzt said. “In fact, I suspect that the only reason they even took us to that particular merchant was because of your obvious fondness for sparkling gemstones.”
“I knew they’d know,” Dahlia insisted. “I wanted them to know.”
“And you wanted them to defeat you and kill you?”
Dahlia’s blue eyes threw imaginary darts into his face, Drizzt knew, but he grinned all the more, enjoying having the upper hand against Dahlia for once. For all of her stubbornness, she couldn’t, with true conviction, claim she’d expected the trap.
“I already told you I’d sorted out the design of the trap and deduced how to defeat it,” Dahlia said, biting each word off short for emphasis. “I would’ve slipped free of the lash and Beniago would’ve died if you hadn’t intervened.”
“With poison in your foot?”
“I would’ve stripped Beniago’s corpse naked and found the elixir. And had it not been for your foolish intervention, I would have had the time to tend the wound then and there, before the poison had spread up my leg.”
Drizzt laughed, shook his head, and let it go at that.
“We will return to Luskan,” Dahlia announced, standing and facing to the north up the road.
“To repay Ship Kurth?”
“Yes.”
“What of Sylora? I thought it was she you hated above all others.”
Despite her stubbornness—and she was possessed of great quantities—Dahlia couldn’t resist glancing back over her shoulder, back to the south.
“I go with you now to find Sylora,” Drizzt stated flatly, “as I committed to do when we left Gauntlgrym. I, too, would like to repay her for her actions that have so devastated Neverwinter. But I won’t return to Luskan beside you, should you choose that course.”
“I wouldn’t have gone to Luskan at all had it not been for your insistence,” Dahlia reminded him.
“But not to engage Ship Kurth or any other of the high captains.”
“No, to find Jarlaxle, because you cannot accept that he’s gone,” Dahlia said, for no reason other than to sting him, Drizzt realized.
“To Neverwinter Wood?” he asked. “Or do we part ways here?”
Dahlia’s glare abruptly turned into a wicked smile. “You’ll not abandon me. Not now.”
“I won’t go to Luskan,” Drizzt said flatly.
Dahlia held her stare for a few moments, but then it was she who blinked and nodded. “Ship Kurth will still be there when we’re done with the witch of Thay,” she decided. “And perhaps we would do well to let a few tendays pass, so that Luskan forgets about Drizzt and Dahlia.”
“And then we kill Beniago?”
Dahlia nodded and Drizzt shook his head.
“Let it be,” the drow advised.
Dahlia’s sigh showed more contempt than resignation.
“Kill Beniago?” Drizzt went on skeptically. “He who is powerful within Luskan and Ship Kurth? Beniago, who I spared at the end of my blade?”
“You think him an ally?” Dahlia asked incredulously.
“I think that perhaps the past is better left in the past,” Drizzt replied. “Beniago gave me the elixir knowing I would use it to save you. He was grateful that I didn’t kill him, because I surely had him dead, had I so chosen. He will soon enough be a man of great power within Luskan, and within the whole of the region, and he has shown himself to be no enemy of ours.”
“Drizzt Do’Urden bargains with murderers now,” Dahlia said with a wry smirk.
She meant the remark as another jab, obviously, but it struck Drizzt as more of an honest question than that. It was a question that he’d asked himself many times in his past. He thought of Artemis Entreri, his long-time nemesis, and undeniably a killer. Yet Drizzt and Entreri had struck a bond beneath the tunnels of Mithral Hall when it was still in the hands of the duergar dwarves. And Entreri had fought beside Drizzt and Catti-brie during their escape from Menzoberranzan. Drizzt and Entreri battled side-by-side, because it had been in their best interests. And on more than one occasion, Drizzt had not finished off Entreri, had not killed him, when he’d found the opportunity.
His thoughts also fell to Jarlaxle, of course, the drow to whom Drizzt had run when he’d lost Catti-brie and Regis. Was Jarlaxle not a killer?
“He thinks these killers potential allies,” Dahlia went on.
“Better, perhaps, that they are not overt enemies,” he quietly replied.
Dahlia couldn’t let it go without one last stab. “And thinks these killers perhaps even lovers, yes?” She gave a little laugh and limped back up the grassy banking toward the camp.
“This is what I’ve come to know,” Drizzt stated flatly, halting Dahlia in her tracks. “There is right and there is wrong. There is good and there is evil, but rarely are either of these concepts fully embodied in any one person. Life is more complicated than that; people are more complicated than that. Not all allies will prove of similar weal and not all enemies will be so different from me. I wish this weren’t true.” He gave a resigned, almost hopeless smile. He thought of Captain Deudermont, then, his old friend who had placed principle over pragmatism in an untenable situation, the result of which had been the fall of Luskan to the nefarious high captains. Drizzt had not agreed with Deudermont’s designs, had warned against them, to no avail.
“Or perhaps I don’t,” he admitted. “Perhaps it is, after all, that complexity that makes life interesting.”
“The complexity you find in others, which doesn’t exist in the pure heart of Drizzt Do’Urden?” Dahlia teased.
Drizzt laughed and shrugged. A million retorts flitted through his thoughts, but in the end, Drizzt had no response. Dahlia had weighed her words and her tone perfectly, he realized. She knew him, his reputation and his soul, and obviously she had no hesitation in flicking her finger against his heart. He watched her diminish into the shadows, reminded again that this was not Catti-brie beside him, not a rock of conscience, not even a dependable friend. What might Dahlia do to help Drizzt if her own life was on the line? Would she flee and leave him to his fate?
He played through their many battles at each other’s side in Gauntlgrym. Dahlia had fought valiantly, fearlessly. He could count on her in matters of the sword.
“Will you join me tonight by the fire?” Dahlia asked from beyond the bluff.
But could Drizzt count on her in matters of the heart?
Drizzt shook it all away with a little laugh. What did it matter? He pulled himself up and brushed the dust of the road from his pants and cloak, then went to the river and quickly splashed his face.
Then he went to Dahlia’s lair.
With Andahar keeping a swift pace, Drizzt and Dahlia passed Port Llast the very next night, giving the town a wide berth for fear that some of Kurth’s agents might be among the visitors. Not far down the road from there, Drizzt realized that they were not alone.
“In the tree to the left,” Dahlia whispered back when he informed her.
Drizzt pulled Andahar up to a halt and turned the steed sidelong to the road, his eyes focusing on that inhabited tree.
“Must I shoot you from your perch before you admit your presence?” Drizzt called out, bringing Taulmaril across his lap.
“Please, not that, good sir Drizzt,” came the reply from within the shelter of the boughs—the fast-browning boughs, for the summer season was beginning its turn to fall.
“Stuyles’s man,” Dahlia remarked, and Drizzt nodded.
“Would you break bread with us again?” the drow called out. “Entertain us with tales of the north while we repay the bards’ debt?”
“We should just ride past them,” Dahlia said. “Or do you feel the need to tell them of the farmer woman and the brewer?”
“Perhaps many would be interested, including Stuyles.”
“To what end?” Dahlia asked. “Do you hope that they will lay down their knives and swords and return to the plow? Will Drizzt Do’Urden fix the world?”
Ahead of them, the would-be highwayman dropped down from the tree’s lowest branch and waved them on, and Drizzt, not bothering to answer Dahlia, spurred Andahar forward. Dahlia kept her sour expression all the way to the bandits’ encampment.
They were greeted warmly, and offered food and a seat by a warm fire. Stuyles was there, and prodded Drizzt for his latest tales, and the drow obliged by telling him of their meetings with Meg the farmer woman and Ben the Brewer.
They all laughed when Drizzt recounted Dahlia’s defense of her foot at the expense of poor Ben, and indeed, any here knew the man.
Even Dahlia couldn’t resist a bit of a grin.
One by one, the bandits drifted away to their respective cots, until only the tall bandit named Hadencourt remained. “Now you go to Neverwinter Wood to repay Lady Sylora?” Hadencourt asked.
Dahlia, half asleep by that point, perked up immediately and stared at the man.
“We hear much,” Hadencourt explained. “And surely the tale of Dahlia Sin’felle is one of note, as were her two journeys to Gauntlgrym.”
The matter-of-fact manner in which he spoke made Drizzt uneasy. He looked to Dahlia, who seemed on the verge of throttling the man.
“Pray tell us what you’ve heard, good Hadencourt,” Drizzt prompted.
“More than any of the others here, of course,” said the man. “But then, I knew much more about the situation long before I met up with Farmer Stuyles and his band of misguided heroes.”
Dahlia and Drizzt exchanged suspicious looks.
“I’m not a former farmer,” Hadencourt flatly declared. “Nor a peasant, nor a commoner, nor a true member of this ridiculous band, in any manner they would accept.”
“Do tell,” said Dahlia.
Hadencourt stood up—Drizzt and Dahlia were quick to do likewise. “I’d prefer to show you,” Hadencourt said, and started off into the dark night.
Drizzt and Dahlia exchanged glances yet again, and Drizzt recognized the murderous hints on her face. He called forth Guenhwyvar, sent her on a roundabout path, and they set to follow the man.
In a moonlit lea, they caught up to Hadencourt. He stood easy, staring up at the stars and the lunar orb.
“Are you an agent from Waterdeep?” Drizzt asked.
“Or from the high captains of Luskan?” a more suspicious Dahlia added.
Hadencourt laughed and slowly turned to face them. “Hardly,” he said, “to either.”
“You serve Sylora Salm!” Dahlia accused, and she brought her staff in front of her in a powerful and aggressive movement.
Hadencourt laughed all the louder. “Serve?” he echoed, and his voice took on a different timbre, deeper and more resonant, full of something … darker.
Horns wormed out of his head, spiraling up above him. His mouth elongated, widened into a devilish grin of long and pointed teeth. His skin darkened, midnight blue, black perhaps, and he grew in stature, his clothing tearing, his enlarging and cloven feet bursting from his boots as he stood towering over the couple. With fiendish, clawed hands, he ripped the remainder of his clothing aside, his spiked tail waving out behind him.
A great inhalation lifted the fiend’s massive chest and a pair of leathery wings sprouted behind hm.
“By the gods, is the world full of devils?” Drizzt asked.
“It’s a malebranche,” whispered Dahlia, who was quite knowledgeable of the denizens of the lower planes.
As if in answer to Drizzt’s rhetorical question, two more fiends leaped out from the brush to either side. These were smaller than Hadencourt, each wielding a shield and a long sword. While Hadencourt’s skin was cool and dark, like a long dead coal, theirs was fiery red, peeking at Drizzt and Dahlia in stark stripes through the leathery wrapping of hellish armor. Each wore a bronze helm, but the horns showing through those headpieces were surely their own and not ornamental.
“It’s a world more to our liking now,” Hadencourt started to reply to Drizzt, but the drow cut him short by bringing up Taulmaril and shooting an arrow right into Hadencourt’s chest. The enchanted missile slammed in hard, burning and sizzling, and knocked the malebranche back several steps, and before he could even bellow in rage, the other two leaped at the companions, long swords flashing.
Dahlia’s weapon pointed forward like a spear, and out flashed Drizzt’s scimitars, coming up in front of him in an underhand cross that slapped aside the legion devil’s thrusting sword. He followed through hard, left and right, wanting to get past this lesser fiend to get to Hadencourt.
But this one was quick, whipping its shield around in time to block the chopping blades, and even as Drizzt retracted and re-aligned, two more legion devils leaped out from the side to join their embattled companions, one coming in hard to Drizzt’s left, the other to Dahlia’s right.
Drizzt started to yell out to warn his companion, but he bit off the first word, realizing that Dahlia didn’t need his shout. She stabbed her staff straight ahead, driving back the legion devil, then swung it down and to the side, planting against the ground beside Drizzt’s feet. Up she went, high into the air, and she drove out to the side, double-kicking into the second charging fiend. One foot slammed against the shield block, but the second slipped past and cracked the devil in the face, halting its charge and nearly dropping it to the ground. The devil tried to swipe at her with its long sword, but Dahlia was too agile for that and rolled her legs up high, the sword harmlessly slashing nothing but air beneath her.
She flipped over into a somersault and landed in a crouch beside Drizzt.
He wasn’t watching. He couldn’t be. His scimitars flashed left and right, thrusting ahead and lifting vertically to defeat the surprisingly well-coordinated attacks of the devils. He worked purely on instinct and the fast fiends came at him, sword, sword, shield, and shield. Metal rang out against metal as scimitar met sword, then came the dull thuds as Drizzt’s attack met a heavily-padded shield.
The devil to his right came in aggressively, leading with its blade forward then swinging around for a shield bash. Its companion, working in perfect unison, tried to trap the drow by luring him farther to the left. But Drizzt recognized the maneuver.
As the devil to his right swung around to shield rush, Drizzt broke off fully with the other and turned a fast backspin over to his right, coming ahead in a rush behind the thrusting shield. He got a clean strike in, Icingdeath slamming hard against the devil’s back, tearing a few of the leathery armor bands and bringing hot blood over the fiend’s red skin.
The drow started in, thinking to drive the wounded devil into its companion and score many hits on both as they tangled, but again their coordination proved too clever, for both devils scrambled away as both of those facing Dahlia rushed off to the side as well.
After a single step of pursuit, both drow and elf skidded to a stop and swung back on each other, then turned as one to face Hadencourt.
He stood a few long strides away, holding a large black trident in one hand. He still stood straight, but the wound of Drizzt’s missile was clear to see, fetid smoke wafting out of the hole in Hadencourt’s right breast.
Drizzt glanced left and right, but the four legion devils showed no sign of returning. He looked to Dahlia and then both turned once more to Hadencourt.
“Come on, then,” Dahlia dared the fiend.
Hadencourt’s mouth widened into a feral hiss and he spun around, pirouetting around his planted trident. He free arm led the way around, crooked at the elbow, a large black metal bracer on that wrist glowing with sudden power. The malebranche snapped his hand forward and from that bracer came a host of spinning disks—shuriken—flying out at Drizzt and Dahlia.
Both went into a fast defense, Drizzt with his scimitars and Dahlia breaking her staff immediately into flails, whipping them back and forth to block and deflect as many of the multitude of missiles as she could.
And so they did, both of these superb warriors, but the sharp edges of the shuriken proved the least of their troubles. The missiles held a vicious secret, an explosive secret, and every block resulted in a small blast that drove the respective defender back in surprise and in pain as showers of tiny shards washed over them.
Now came the legion devils once more from the sides.
Hadencourt snapped his arm again and another volley of spinning missiles flew out at the disoriented pair.
They fell back. The legion devils charged in to finish the task.
Drizzt reached into his innate powers, back to the magic of the deep Underdark, and summoned a globe of impenetrable darkness, filling the area. He put one scimitar away as he did, his free hand grabbing Dahlia by the arm and tugging her along.
But they hardly got out of the globe when they were fighting again, a legion devil shield-rushing them and knocking Drizzt back, stumbling, while Dahlia fell to the ground.
Drizzt went back in hard, drawing his second blade, slashing ferociously to try and end the battle quickly. The legion devil didn’t cry out, but its fellows apparently heard its silent call, for soon they appeared around the globe.
“Run! Go!” Drizzt cried to Dahlia.
He didn’t have to ask her twice. Off stumbled Dahlia, a legion devil in close pursuit. She rushed from the lea and into the cover of the forest.
Drizzt forgot about her the moment she started away, because he had to. His focus became the three foes in front of him and the fourth, infinitely more dangerous, on the other side across his magical globe. He put his scimitars up in a flashing flurry, spinning and striking furiously. He dived down to the side, into a roll, and came up charging forward at the nearest devil, who threw its shield across to block.
And Drizzt stutter-stepped, stopping just for a moment, just long enough for the shield to whip past before lunging ahead with a vicious thrust. The legion devil managed to bring its sword around in time to partially block that stab, but only partially, and still the tip of Twinkle punctured its leathery skin. Better-aimed, the real attack of Icingdeath knifed in over the sword and scimitar, driving right into the howling devil’s mouth, breaking teeth and twisting into the throat and skull.
The blade reversed almost the moment it went in, for Drizzt had no time to tarry.
He couldn’t have asked for a better moment for Guenhwyvar’s arrival—how many times in his life had the drow experienced exactly that? The speeding panther flew in front of him, driving back the three legion devils.
Drizzt turned and he ran, full speed, his magical ankle bracelets speeding him along. He veered and paused only long enough to retrieve his bow, then tried to approximate where Dahlia had entered the forest—perhaps he could catch her pursuing devil and down it—but she was long gone.
Behind him, he heard Guenhwyvar roar out, and he knew there was pain in that call, but he knew that he couldn’t turn and fight.
Not here. Not now.