Drizzt moved to the top of the ridge overlooking the stream. He saw Dahlia below him, splashing water on her face. He looked at her curiously for just a moment, for something seemed … different. Then he realized her braid was back, and as he considered the water dripping from her shining face, he recognized that mesmerizing woad pattern of bluish spots.
His initial reaction was to pull back. Before he even considered the elf’s exotic look, his instincts made him react negatively to this harsher appearance. He was surprised by his response, for he’d previously found Dahlia’s exotic hair and woad enticing. And still she was beautiful—he couldn’t deny that. This was a more dangerous look, but wasn’t that, after all, what Drizzt’s life had become?
Hadn’t danger been his choice, his preference?
He closed his eyes and imagined the “softer” Dahlia, tending his arm, her hair bouncing lightly around her shoulders, her face clean and fresh and unblemished. He opened his eyes and looked upon her again, considering the change that seemed to come over her at a whim.
Drizzt remembered his midnight ride to Luskan and back, the exuberance of the danger, the thrill of the hunt. Those emotions better accompanied this incarnation of Dahlia. Even though she’d worn the softer look when they ventured into Luskan, it was this impression of Dahlia that helped Drizzt take the risks and enjoy the experience with little regard for the consequences. This incarnation of Dahlia was not vulnerable, was hardly delicate.
As he trotted down to join his lover, it occurred to Drizzt that perhaps he’d become as paradoxical as she.
“Have you ever been in love?” she asked without looking back at him as he neared.
The question stopped him in his tracks.
“Tell me about her,” Dahlia said.
Memories of Catti-brie swirled around his thoughts, and it occurred to him that he would likely tell Dahlia of Catti-brie in a different way, with different emphasis and different tales, if she’d been wearing her softer guise.
She looked up at him and wore a smile, though it was lost in the mesmerizing swirl of her woad. Perhaps she meant it to be a warm smile, but he couldn’t tell.
“It was a long time ago,” he managed to reply.
Dahlia laughed at him. “I’m not jealous,” she assured him.
“I know.” His voice was flat.
Dahlia’s smile disappeared, replaced by a pensive look then a slight nod of understanding. “Tell me of the dwarf, then. Of this King Bruenor Battlehammer. I knew him only for a short while, but he intrigued me. How long did you know him?”
“More than a century,” Drizzt replied, and he found he was indeed more at ease then. It would be far easier to speak of Bruenor than of Catti-brie, particularly to Dahlia. “Perhaps closer to two centuries.”
“From afar?”
“My closest friend.”
“For a hundred and fifty years?” Dahlia asked incredulously, and her smile returned, this time reflecting astonishment.
“Would that I had him beside me for another hundred,” Drizzt said.
“Instead of me?”
The suddenness of her question again threw the drow off-balance. He had to think about the answer—and wondered how he might phrase his impulsive thoughts even if he could sort them out.
Dahlia laughed again, relieving the tension. “Beside me, perhaps?” she offered.
“I’ll tell you of him and let you decide,” Drizzt replied, glad for the out.
“And of your lover?”
Drizzt felt his face grow tight.
Dahlia reached down and retrieved her wide leather hat and plopped it on her head, adjusting her braid so that it curled around her shapely neck and ended at the top of her cleavage.
“Come,” she said as she rose. “The road lies before us and I wish to hear your tales of King Bruenor.”
Drizzt moved down to the stream and vigorously shook his wounded arm in the cold water. He hustled to catch up to Dahlia, drawing a bandage from his pouch as he went. By the time they reached the road and he lifted his whistle to summon Andahar, he’d wrapped the arm from above the elbow all the way to the wrist. For the rest of that day as they rode, he clenched and unclenched his fist, battling the tingles of the residual devilish poison, and his bandage soon enough showed more than one red stain from the renewed blood flow.
Drizzt didn’t care about that inconvenience, however, for he told the tales of Bruenor, as Dahlia bade him. Those stories, happy and thrilling and filled with love and friendship, forcibly battled a different type of poison within the heart and soul of Drizzt Do’Urden.
They set their camp long after the sun had disappeared below the horizon, and were off again before the light of dawn. Andahar carried them effortlessly. Soon enough, they came to the northern reaches of Neverwinter, but on Dahlia’s insistence, they didn’t venture into the settlement. They set their camp just northeast of the town.
While looking for some wood for their small fire, Drizzt heard a rustle of leaves, a footstep. That alone didn’t concern him too greatly—the Neverwinter Guard was likely around the area, and they were not enemies, after all. But as he moved around to investigate, using all the stealth that marked the night as the time of the drow, Drizzt quickly grew more concerned, for whomever he followed showed himself to be quite practiced at the art of avoidance.
The drow at last spotted his quarry, and when he did, he understood why it had taken him so long to locate the source of the noise that had brought him deeper into the forest. The moon was full and bright, after all, and Drizzt’s drow eyes could cut through the shadows on a night like this as easily as in full sunlight. Any normal traveler, even a city guard, should have been easy to spot. But now, finally, when Drizzt discovered the source of that footstep, he forgave himself for not locating this one earlier.
The man—or woman, he couldn’t tell—was of the Shadowfell, a shade who blended into the darkness beneath one wide-spread elm so easily Drizzt for a moment wondered if he were watching a Netherese lord shift back into that dark realm.
He spotted his prey again, and knew then that it was indeed a man, heavyset and powerfully built. Again Drizzt took up the silent pursuit, moving as invisibly as the other, and far more quietly with his practiced steps and full understanding of the forest floor. He smelled the campfire before he spotted it, and moved more quickly. He counted at least three more shades, all in armor and strapped with weapons.
He recalled what Dahlia had told him of the turmoil in the wood and recognized the war party for what it was.
Drizzt soon enough melted into the night and trotted back the way he’d come.
To his surprise, he found Dahlia on the edge of their camp, her staff already broken into flails and looped over her sash belt on either hip, within ready grasp.
“Shadovar—” Drizzt started to say.
“I know. I smell them,” Dahlia said.
“A handful,” Drizzt explained, nodding his chin toward the distant camp. “Just over those hills. We can swing off to the west, down near to the coast and …”
He stopped talking when Dahlia simply walked away from him into the forest, straight as a killing arrow in the direction of the Shadovar encampment.
Drizzt watched her curiously. “We need not fight them,” he called after her, but she didn’t slow.
“Aren’t the Netherese the enemies of the Thayans?” he asked when he caught up to her.
“Mortal enemies,” Dahlia replied, but she didn’t stop her march.
“So Sylora Salm would wish us to do battle with this group?” Drizzt asked, hoping to shake Dahlia free of the almost trancelike state that had come over her. Even in the dim light, he could see the rage simmering in her sparkling eyes. She had her weapons off her belt by then, and clutched them so tightly that her skin, appearing pale even in the starlight, seemed brighter around the knuckles, as if white hot with anger.
“If we battle with the shades, do we not do Sylora’s bidding?” he asked again.
Dahlia stopped and turned to face him directly. “The Netherese and the Thayans vie for control of Neverwinter Wood,” she admitted. “Yes—are you pleased with yourself?—Sylora Salm would want this group slain, would want all these foul grayskins slain.”
“Then let’s go the other way,” Drizzt took a step back toward their own camp, already a considerable distance behind them.
But Dahlia’s chuckle denied him. “Not everything in my life is about the desires of Sylora Salm,” she said, continuing on her way.
Again Drizzt caught up to her, to find her expression no less resolute than before.
There would be no reasoning with her, Drizzt realized. Over the hills and through the valleys, Dahlia’s path remained straight in the direction Drizzt had pointed, toward the Shadovar encampment.
Drizzt had little first-hand knowledge of the Empire of Netheril and little experience with the minions of Shadowfell. He tried to sort this out, for he knew he wouldn’t let Dahlia go into this fight alone. He was more than glad to accompany her in her mission to kill Sylora Salm, both because of the devastation Sylora had wrought on the city of Neverwinter and for the loss of Bruenor. Given that decision, did it matter if Drizzt and Dahlia’s actions now would be to Sylora’s temporary benefit?
Drizzt had no love, no friendship, and not even the benefit of the doubt for the Shadovar and their foul designs.
“There are at least four,” he whispered to Dahlia.
They were getting fairly close to the camp. Dahlia stopped and looked down at his scimitars. She smiled when Drizzt drew them, then she nodded and started to run.
Over the hill, they spotted the campfire, and Dahlia didn’t slow.
Drizzt remained a few strides behind, easily pacing her with his anklets and superior lowlight vision, and because of both, he was even able to match her strides while keeping himself fairly well concealed. He put away his scimitars and took up Taulmaril instead.
He spotted one Shadovar in the low branches of a tree, but apparently Dahlia didn’t. She continued right under the perch.
The Shadovar leaped down at her and flew aside with a shocked and pained shriek as Drizzt drilled him with a lightning arrow.
Dahlia skidded to a stop and spun around just long enough to snap a double-strike, left and right, into the face of her wounded attacker, cracking his skull.
On she ran, the camp in sight and now full of activity.
“Down left!” Drizzt called to her.
Into the firelight went Dahlia, to learn that Drizzt’s estimate of their enemies had been low, for even with the fallen Shadovar outside the camp, five Shadovar stood in front of her.
She did as Drizzt had instructed, a sidelong roll to her left, and a pair of arrows soared past her, cleanly removing the middle opponent from their rough semicircle.
Dahlia came up engaged with the pair on the left, and as the two from the right moved to surround her, another arrow flashed through, driving them back, and a dark form came leaping in, scimitars glowing and spinning.
Dahlia furiously pressed her momentum at the pair in front of her, her flails whirling out wide and slamming in powerfully at her opponents. She had them on their heels and meant to keep them there, relentlessly assaulting, left and right, overhand and underhand.
The Shadovar to her left flank managed to stab at her, but her left-hand flail intercepted with a backhanded block, the top pole flipping right over to wrap the sword. Her right hand came across to similarly slap and wrap the sword, and before the Shadovar could retract, Dahlia yelled and threw both her hands out wide, each flail pulling free in the same rotation, spinning the blade and thus tearing it from the swordsman’s grasp.
Dahlia rotated her left wrist, sending the flail in a spin, and clipped the Shadovar in the face as it came around.
Dahlia retreated from the other Shadovar at the same time, half-turning and dropping her right foot back behind her left, and with her new alignment, she brought her right hand across in front of her, bending her wrist once, twice, thrice, and snapping that second flail like a whip, the flying pole biting forth to jab the Shadovar hard in the face.
At the same time, Dahlia shifted her left hand under the right, working her weapon in a circular defense, right to left then back to the right, keeping the other Shadovar at bay.
She whip-snapped three times again, but only the first two connected as the dazed Shadovar tumbled away.
Dahlia came up straight against her lone opponent, and just to keep him off balance, reverted her two weapons into one long staff again. She noted then the recognition on her enemy’s face. This Shadovar knew her, knew Dahlia as Sylora’s champion.
And so he knew, too, that he was doomed.
Drizzt swept the two swords aside, his own blades ringing a tune on the one to his left with a backhand block then a forehand, and back and forth.
“Dahlia!” he called as he drove farther out that way, past the woman’s back.
The fighter to Drizzt’s right pursued him, and was caught completely by surprise as Dahlia threw her staff out behind her, catching it high along the shaft and stabbing back hard, jabbing the Shadovar squarely in the throat.
Drizzt finished his drumbeat on the sword of his other foe by stepping forward suddenly as he struck one last time, his blade slashing the Shadovar’s forearm. His sword went flying wide and the Shadovar fell back, grasping its arm.
But Drizzt didn’t follow, leaping back to his right, a sweeping backhand slashing out in front of him to bite at the other dazed warrior. His forehand followed, right below the level of the first strike, and the drow ranger threw himself around in a complete circuit. Once again, the backhand led the way, now just below the last strike, then a forehand, lower again. And around Drizzt continued to a third double strike.
Drizzt leaped back to the left. The other Shadovar had recovered his sword. To the drow’s right, his last opponent stood very still, arms stretched out wide. This Shadovar, too, dropped his weapon, though he was obviously not aware of the motion.
Six lines of blood appeared from his neck to his belly.
He sank to the ground.
The remaining Shadovar in front of him turned and fled.
Drizzt glanced back at Dahlia and winced at the sight. She had that last Shadovar down by then, and drove her staff like a spear against the fallen warrior’s head, again and again.
“Dahlia!” Drizzt called. He’d never seen her acting so viciously. “Dahlia!”
She finally glanced at him, but quickly looked past him to see the fleeing Shadovar moving into the forest.
“No,” the elf said with a growl.
She charged past Drizzt, shouldering him aside and nearly to the ground in her haste.
“Let him go,” Drizzt implored her, but too late.
Dahlia sprinted to a large tree, planted her staff, and vaulted up to the branches. Drizzt followed her progress by the rustling and shaking leaves, and couldn’t help but be impressed by her arboreal prowess.
Then Drizzt spotted the fleeing Shadovar, some distance away and running through the trees, stumbling often.
The Shadovar came up straight then leaned forward in a sprint, but too late.
Dahlia dropped upon him.
Drizzt shook himself from his spectator’s trance, glanced around quickly to confirm that the four Shadovar in the camp were all dead, and sprinted off, calling for Dahlia to spare that one that they might garner some information.
He stopped calling out as he neared the scene and saw Dahlia bending over, her flails pumping furiously. By the time he came up beside her, he had to look away. She’d beaten her enemy’s head to a misshapen mess of blood and gore.
“Dahlia,” he said, loudly but not sharply.
A flail hummed in the air, spinning and striking down, pulverizing bone.
“Dahlia!” he yelled.
She couldn’t hear him. Drizzt looked for an opening so he could get near to her without getting clipped, and quickly enough so he wouldn’t give her the opportunity to turn on him with those battering weapons. Dahlia seemed beyond rational to him at that moment, her face a mask of rage, and indeed, she grunted and growled with every vicious beat.
Drizzt truly believed that she might lash out at him.
He slid his blades away, measuring her movements, recognizing her rhythm. Down went her left arm, to the other side from him, and up went her right.
Drizzt dived across her back, slipping his right arm underneath Dahlia’s raised arm and clamping his hand behind her neck. As he landed on her back, driving her to the side, she instinctively tried to slap back at him with her free left, and that gave Drizzt the chance to loop his left hand under her left elbow.
He had her trapped, one arm up high, the other pulled back like a chicken wing, and as she continued to stagger to her left under the weight of his assault, it was an easy enough task for Drizzt to slip his left foot to the side of Dahlia’s left foot and trip her up. He made the fall as easy as he possibly could, but he had to keep his weight upon her as she thrashed and screamed in protest.
“Dahlia,” he kept saying against her insistent chorus of “Let me go!”
“He’s dead,” Drizzt assured her. “They’re all dead.”
“I want to kill him more!”
Drizzt blinked in shock and tightened his hold, fully immobilizing the woman. He brought his lips to her ear and whispered, “Dahlia.”
“Let me go!”
“They’re dead. You killed them. Dahlia!”
He kept whispering, and finally, after a long while, Dahlia relaxed beneath him.
Drizzt eased his grip, inch by inch, then slid off her and jumped to his feet, reaching a hand down in an offer of aid.
Still on her belly, Dahlia looked up at him but refused the hand. She rolled to the side, twisted, and put her feet under her. Then she stalked past Drizzt, back the way they’d come. She did slow enough to spit on the mound of gore that had once been a Shadovar head.
Drizzt winced again and stared, dumbfounded.
Such were Dahlia’s demons.
But how, and why, and to what end, he had no idea.
THE LESS YOU SAY, THE MORE I’LL TOLERATE YOU,” BARRABUS THE Gray said to his hunting companion.
The misshapen warlock replied with a crooked, condescending grin, an expression that was becoming more and more typical of the young tiefling, and one that greatly annoyed Barrabus. The assassin had never been fond of spellcasters—priest or wizard. He didn’t understand them, and certainly didn’t like fighting them. He’d fought hundreds of duels against warriors, and usually escaped untouched. But whenever he battled a wizard, he knew he was going to get stung. Even the puniest of spellcasters had clever dweomers that would sift through his defenses to bite at him.
Even more than that, Barrabus had never met a wizard who wasn’t arrogant, as he’d never met a priest who didn’t justify the most heinous of actions by hiding behind his god.
He had no use for either.
Yet here he was, out in Neverwinter Wood beside this Effron creature, whose dead arm hung behind his back and waggled like a boneless tail, and whose strange eyes seemed a testament to a mixed breeding gone absurd. To make his sheer physical ugliness even more profound, Effron was a tiefling, and Barrabus had come to know he’d rather couple with an orc than partner with one of the devil spawn. Truly, this one seemed possessed of everything Barrabus the Gray didn’t like, and that only reminded him all the more that he was no longer possessed of free will, that the awful sword, which he’d carried—and foolishly believed he’d dominated—for decades, would truly torment him for eternity.
“Are you afraid I’ll alert the zealots to our presence?” Effron said with a snicker. “Ah yes, as Lord Alegni explained to me, you’re only truly deadly when you catch your victim by surprise.”
Barrabus stopped and turned around to face Effron, his expression grim—but that did little to douse the tiefling’s taunting grin.
“I take it you expect me to attack you, then,” the assassin said dryly.
“I’m never off guard,” the warlock replied.
Barrabus laughed, but coldly. How many times had he heard such a proclamation? How many times had such a claim been the last words ever spoken by a victim?
Oh, but how Barrabus wished that to be the case now! He would love to cut this one’s throat out.
“And you cannot attack me anyway,” Effron went on. “Lord Alegni wouldn’t allow it, would he?”
At what point would Effron’s taunting lead him to the breaking point, where recklessness overruled reason, the assassin wondered? He understood the torment he would receive if he killed Effron. The awful sword had made it perfectly clear to him. He hadn’t forgotten his turtlelike posture on the bridge—the Herzgo Alegni Bridge—and the unbelievable agony accompanying, indeed facilitating, that humiliation.
But this one …
It had occurred to Barrabus more than once that morning, their first day out in the forest together, that Alegni had placed Effron at his side just to provoke him. Perhaps Alegni, who seemed equally disgusted by Effron, knew the warlock would be too much for Barrabus’s limited patience, the sword’s threats be damned. Perhaps Alegni wanted Barrabus to slay Effron and thus rid him of the troublesome warlock. Then, as an added benefit, he would torture Barrabus—perhaps to death—as punishment.
The tiefling warlock seemed to revel in annoying Barrabus or Alegni, or any of the others at the Netherese encampment, for that matter. He was always flashing that crooked grin.
To what end?
Barrabus saw pain in the young tiefling’s face, but he didn’t care enough to look deeper.
He did widen his scrutiny of Effron, though, examining the shattered, badly dislocated shoulder and that ridiculous limb hanging limply behind the tiefling. Someone might have done Effron a great favor and killed him in the course of whatever trauma had caused those injuries.
He caught something else then, just a whisper of sound in the distance—the snap of a fallen twig, perhaps. Effron, oblivious, started to speak, but Barrabus waved him to silence with such intensity that even the obstinate tiefling quickly shut up.
Barrabus turned and moved behind the nearest tree, drawing his weapons as he went. When he looked back, he could only sigh, for Effron had not moved, and just stood there, looking at him curiously, and with a bit of amusement, it seemed.
So be it, Barrabus decided, and he turned his attention to the forest beyond. He was glad he was allied with the Shadovar at that moment, because the zealots he easily spotted might have been invisible in the shadows if they’d been minions of Herzgo Alegni.
He turned back again to the warlock, waving to get his attention, then warning him with sharp hand signals that four enemies approached.
In response, Effron just offered that stupid grin, and he tilted back and forth quickly so that his limp arm would flop out to the side in a ridiculous and macabre wave.
Barrabus narrowed his eyes and wished he had enough time to run back there and throttle the idiot. But again, so be it, he decided, and he felt even better about that choice when he considered that perhaps these zealots would kill Effron and save him the trouble. That pleasant thought didn’t hold, however, for when Barrabus turned back to the approaching Ashmadai patrol, he realized they’d already noted Effron, and what had seemed like a simple ambush for Barrabus suddenly transformed into something much more complicated.
One large Ashmadai began waving one of those scepters—only this weapon appeared more black and streaked with red than usual—to direct the other three. One of those three slung a bow over his shoulder and scrambled to a climbable tree, while the other two began their approach, moving defensively from tree to tree and brush to brush. One forged ahead, ducking for cover, then motioned for his companion, who sprinted past him to the next point of cover.
They were well trained and well practiced, Barrabus saw that simply from their coordination. He glanced back at Effron again, who maintained his oblivious posture, and shook his head.
Barrabus weighed the movements of the approaching zealots, weighed his options, and found his opportunity. He always preferred to cut the head off the serpent, so as the three continued toward him, two on the ground and one in the trees, Barrabus slid out to the side and began his own advance—but around the foot soldiers.
The one in the back acted like the leader, and so that one became the primary target. Determinedly, stubbornly, even spitefully, Barrabus wouldn’t let concern for Effron deter him, particularly since the idiot warlock seemed unconcerned for his own safety.
Barrabus continued to watch the first three for some time, moving past them carefully but soon recognizing that they had spied Effron as their prey. But he knew he needn’t be too concerned. Long experience had shown him that once locked in on a potential foe, these zealots practiced pure recklessness, and if Barrabus had been walking upright and singing a song of a Calimport brothel, those leading three wouldn’t likely have paid him any heed.
He continued to watch their advance for a short while longer anyway, and he realized deep in his gut that it was mostly because he wanted to witness the death of Effron.
The archer in the tree moved swiftly into position. Barrabus saw him set an arrow. The other two were nearly at the edge of the clearing, and should charge forth at any moment.
With a determined grimace, Barrabus pulled his attention away and turned back to the Ashmadai leader, noting then the warrior’s curious armor. He wore spiked pauldrons and had circular spiked metal plates strapped at various points on his body: one over his left breast, one centered on his gut, smaller ones on his hips and legs, and a strangely spiked codpiece. That garb was unusual enough, particularly for the uniformly leathered Ashmadai, but what showed beneath the armor as the assassin moved closer for a better look had Barrabus pausing in puzzled curiosity.
Was he about to battle a mummy? The warrior was wrapped head to toe in strips of some grayish material, like dirty old rags.
The assassin didn’t know what to make of it, but as soon as he heard the bowstring’s twang behind him, he didn’t care, and he bolted from the brush.
He came in hard, sword leading in a sudden thrust. He stopped his run with a hop, planting both feet and springing into an airborne somersault. The Ashmadai warrior, surprisingly quick, turned as the assassin flew by, and even managed to prod out with his black and red scepter.
Barrabus parried that easily enough and landed with his sword cleverly underneath the Ashmadai’s weapon. As he turned back in, the Ashmadai charged at him as well, and never quite managed to disengage that weapon. Up went Barrabus’s sword, carrying the scepterlike staff-spear with it and creating a clean opening in the Ashmadai’s defenses. Barrabus waded in happily, dagger set by his hip. He mused that he might be able to get back in time to watch Effron’s demise.
The Ashmadai warrior twisted and tried to pull back, but Barrabus was too fast for that, and the turn only opened up a better target: the hollow of the warrior’s breast, just beside the spiked metal plate.
The fine dagger, magically enchanted, smoothed by the blood of a hundred kills, caught up to the retreating man and plunged hard.
And didn’t penetrate.
Only then did Barrabus understand that the Ashmadai’s backward motion was not a futile retreat, but a ploy—and one that allowed the strange zealot to pull Barrabus off-balance and also put them both in a position where the Ashmadai could disengage his weapon. And since the kill shot had seemed assured, Barrabus had no contingencies in mind.
The assassin moved purely on instinct as he felt the staff-spear pull free of his upraised blade, bringing his sword down hard, though he knew he’d be behind the incoming strike, and throwing himself to the side, swinging his opposite hip out even wider. His amazingly quick reaction prevented a solid strike from the scepter, and he accepted the glancing blow and spun away.
Halfway through that spin, he realized he had a problem.
The muscles on his right hip, where the clubbing scepter had struck, began to twitch and contract, and Barrabus stumbled.
Barrabus the Gray never stumbled.
His hip continued to spasm, the skin tightening around the bruise, and a burning sensation ran down the side of his thigh. He’d never felt anything quite like it. It wasn’t poison, but more of a magical effect.
A necrotic and withering magic.
The twitching did not diminish—quite the opposite. His leg muscles snapped and released and snapped again, painfully, and Barrabus had to fight hard just to hold his footing.
He stumbled more than once, and couldn’t think of executing either a charge or a retreat.
The Ashmadai warrior came on, a grinning mummy.