Drizzt cheered and almost laughed when Entreri came down upon Dahlia’s foe, and the precision of the assassin’s strike reminded Drizzt all too keenly of how deadly a foe Artemis Entreri could be. The killing blow had to be perfect, and so Entreri had been perfect.
The drow took immense satisfaction in his decision to be merciful, to allow Entreri to travel beside him and Dahlia.
Still, his own situation remained precarious. He was fully thirty paces out from the treelike tower, nearer to the wall than he was to Sylora or his companions, who had disappeared into the cave.
Ashmadai enemies lined the wall, and the continual volley of stones and arrows had Drizzt paying them more heed than Sylora—something he knew would certainly spell his doom.
He had to leave, to move to the side enough, at least, to get out of Sylora’s line of sight. But then what good would he be to his companions?
A familiar roar sent shivers through his spine, and sent the Ashmadai opposing him into a desperate frenzy.
Guenhwyvar—always and ever Guenhwyvar—arrived on the field just opposite the wall from Drizzt, charging at the Ashmadai line with abandon, ignoring the slings and arrows and chasing the zealots from their perches.
With full confidence in his panther companion, confidence built on a century or more of experience, Drizzt turned back to the distant sorceress with full force. As he dismissed those enemies behind him, he navigated the ground to move nearer to the tree. Sylora could fill in the few safe spots, he understood, but he saw, too, that the initial rings of woe were dissipating, leaving behind blackened areas of absolute death, but areas, perhaps, that he might cross.
If he could pick his way carefully and prevent the sorceress from filling in the gaps in the outer areas of agony, he might indeed get to the cave.
His hands worked in a blur then, a solid line of missiles flying forth, nearly every shot true. He could no longer see Sylora, so great was the spark shower. When no further black missiles reached out in response, it occurred to him that she might even have retreated into the tower.
Or dare he hope that one of his arrows had penetrated the strange bubble and struck her?
Drizzt nodded, but didn’t slow the barrage for another few heartbeats.
He started forward tentatively, picking his way across the field.
Even as he entered the short stairwell leading up to the base floor of the tower, Entreri was met by a howling Ashmadai guard, stabbing at him furiously with the sharp end of his scepter.
Such straightforward ferocity was no way to battle Artemis Entreri. He easily deflected the thrust aside with his sword then expertly snapped that sword back out straight, taking the man in the shoulder. And when the Ashmadai overreacted, spinning aside and throwing his weapon up and over—and missing badly as Entreri swiftly retracted the sword ahead of the parry—the assassin calmly stepped forward and drove his dagger under the man’s ribs.
The zealot howled and lurched over, and was surely doomed, except that neither Entreri nor his companion cared at all about him. The assassin slammed him on the back of the head as he bent, then grabbed his collar and yanked him forward and down the stairs.
Dahlia added a crack with a flail as he tumbled by, but like Entreri, her focus remained in front of her, not behind.
Up they went into the first floor then rushed along the stairway to the second. From there they could see the balcony, now empty, and the spark shower from Drizzt’s continuing barrage as the missiles struck the shield Sylora had left behind.
Despite that explosive assault, Entreri moved toward the balcony, and the small stairway leading to the tower’s third floor. There he fell back, dodging a blast of black ash as Sylora filled the space with a ring of woe.
The assassin tested it, but backed off again as the smoke bit at him painfully.
“The other way,” he told Dahlia, nodding to the stair across the second level.
“She’s up there?” Dahlia asked, not moving other than to reform her singular long staff.
Entreri looked at her curiously, and tried to push her toward the stair.
But Dahlia avoided him and moved toward the balcony instead, though she motioned for him to continue across the room.
The assassin glanced back as he reached the stair, and smiled wide. Dahlia rushed to the edge of the smoking area, planted her staff against the base of the wall opposite the short stair, and leaped forward, twisting and pushing off as she came even with the opening. With great agility and strength, the elf woman hung there, her momentum lost, and as she started to descend, she lifted her legs higher to the side and pushed off with all her strength, lifting herself up the side stair.
Entreri sprinted up the short stairwell and burst through the door, to find himself facing Sylora Salm and her crooked wand.
Dahlia was there, too, having cleared the blackened area.
“All my enemies in one place,” Sylora said. “How convenient.”
Dahlia responded by thrusting the end of her staff at the woman’s mouth. The attack seemed true, but the weapon hit a barrier, a brown semicircle glowing in front of her at the impact.
Sylora laughed and whipped her small wand in front of her, and from that wand came a series of black darts, spinning through the room.
Both Dahlia and Entreri curled defensively, but both got hit. Many darts flew, and those small missiles brought forth painful bites indeed.
“Go!” Entreri demanded of Dahlia. He leaped at Sylora, as did Dahlia, sword, knife, and staff stabbing hard.
And all, weapons and attackers, were easily repelled by the barrier.
Down below, from the balcony, they heard a different cadence of explosive missiles.
“The barrier can be broken!” Dahlia surmised, and though Sylora hit them again with a rain of darts, on they came, their only defense a brutal forward assault.
Indeed, behind the globe, Sylora appeared genuinely concerned, and a bit disoriented by the sheer ferocity of their attacks.
The strikes didn’t diminish until something flew past Dahlia, making her instinctively duck. She called out to Entreri as she did, and he, too, had to dive aside, his dagger not quite catching up to the small fiend as it fluttered past him. The devil’s strike, however, did score, its whiplike tail lashing out at the assassin and cutting him painfully across the shoulder.
Up into the air went the creature, above the next rain of Sylora’s darts—and that barrage had Dahlia and Entreri staggering back under the weight and sting of the assault.
But Arunika’s imp hadn’t been hit. Its skin hanging in burned strands from Sylora’s earlier encasing ash, it understood the sorceress’s defenses more keenly than the others.
Sylora hardly even seemed aware of the creature as it flipped over the top of the bubble and dropped down upon her extended arm. With clawed feet and hands, it grabbed at her forearm and hand, at the wand, and when she pulled back against it and slapped at it with her other hand, the imp bared its fangs and bit down hard on her weapon hand.
It lifted its head, two severed fingers hanging from its mouth, and tore the Dread Ring wand from Sylora’s weakened grasp. Away it leaped, stinging her with its tail as it flew free of her desperate grabs.
Time seemed to stop then, a sudden, shocked pause from the three remaining in the tower room.
“Oh, now you die,” Artemis Entreri promised, rising from his knees against the far wall, Dahlia beside him.
But Sylora Salm wasn’t out of tricks. She threw her cloak up over her head, and as it descended, she transformed into the likeness of a giant raven.
Dahlia yelled in protest and struck at her. Entreri, too, managed a stab.
But neither scored a mortal, or even a serious hit, and the raven dived from the room, down the short stair, and out the tower balcony.
Drizzt leaped high, clearing the last line of still-smoking rings, on his way to the cave.
As he landed, though, he heard a sound from above, a peculiar sound given the circumstance and location: the whinnying of an angry horse.
That noise turned his attention back the other way, where he saw a large crow, a human-sized bird, fly out from the balcony, soaring into the night.
Drizzt leaped back the other way, drawing an arrow in mid-flight, and he landed and dropped to one knee, leveling his bow and letting fly.
The lightning arrow streaked off into the dark night, and sparks flew along with feathers as it struck home. But the crow kept gliding, disappearing over the wall and into the night beyond the strange fortress.
A second form came out from the balcony, and Drizzt nearly shot it, until he recognized it as Entreri’s nightmare steed, the assassin and Dahlia astride it.
The amazing hell horse dropped down gracefully from twenty feet, and somehow landed gently enough so that its two riders weren’t launched from its back.
Drizzt’s jaw hung open, his stunned expression reflected on the faces of a pair of Ashmadai watching from the wall, as the nightmare thundered away in pursuit, flames flying from its hooves. It ran along the wall to the open gate then charged across the outer ring, Drizzt following its progress by the shouts of the defenders still out there.
Drizzt started back toward that wall, but noticed Dahlia’s wide-brimmed leather hat and paused just long enough to scoop it up and put it on. Then, blowing his whistle loudly, the drow leaped the next ring, and sprinted around a third. He lined himself up with Andahar’s approach, and waved the mighty unicorn past him. He leaped up and grabbed Andahar’s mane as the galloping steed charged on.
In a few heartbeats, Drizzt was out of the fortress, with no pursuit apparent other than a growling panther leaping over the wall down to his right. He spotted Entreri’s steed, the flaming hooves bright in the night, and bent low over Andahar’s strong neck, urging his mount along, and gaining ground with every stride.
As he neared, it became apparent to Drizzt that Dahlia was guiding the mount in front of him. Entreri sat in the saddle, but she whispered into his ear continually. Entreri’s nightmare ran with conviction, as if they knew where they were going, though the raven was nowhere to be seen.
Drizzt didn’t question it. He put Andahar in line behind Entreri’s nightmare and instructed the unicorn to follow.
Dahlia glanced back at him and nodded. When the trail cleared a bit and allowed for it, she held her staff out wide and up high, and again motioned to Drizzt.
The drow ranger grinned as he figured it out. He clamped his legs tight around Andahar’s flanks, stood tall, and took up Taulmaril.
Kozah’s Needle swallowed his first lightning arrow. Dahlia nodded, and kept the staff up high and out wide.
Drizzt let fly again, then a third time, the powerful staff feasting on the lightning energy. Drizzt could see little arcs of power jumping along its length, and Dahlia grasped it with her other hand as well.
Still she kept the staff up high, though, and pumped it emphatically. Drizzt let fly again, then a fifth time, and sparks leaped higher and thicker along the weapon’s length. Dahlia’s mostly-unwound braid once more began to dance with residual energy.
But she called for one more, and so Drizzt let fly again.
The trees thickened around them and Dahlia wisely brought the staff in closer, and lower. Drizzt settled in his seat, placed his bow across his lap, and urged Andahar on.
Valindra Shadowmantle slipped out of the crack in the stone at the back of the shallow cave and reverted to her normal three-dimensional form. The drow and his shining white unicorn were out of sight by then, but Valindra followed their progress out of Ashenglade by the tumult of Ashmadai zealots calling out their locations.
Valindra glided out of the cave and onto the ravaged field. A few of the rings of woe still smoked with dark energy. The lich moved to one and dipped her toe in. As she suspected, it was Dread Ring energy, necromancy, and so to Valindra it felt like a warm bath in oil-scented waters.
The cries around her muted. The drow was out of the fortress then, she knew, and galloping away in pursuit of Sylora the Crow.
Valindra knew where Sylora had gone, and expected that Dahlia did, as well.
She pondered her next move, but became distracted when a small form flew down at her and landed on the ground beside her.
“Wretched creature!” Arunika’s imp snarled, waving the crooked wand. “I hope they make her suffer before they kill her!”
Valindra grinned at him then held her hand out for the wand.
The imp shifted away.
“Give me the wand now … Greeth! Greeth!” Valindra ordered.
Her eyes spun crazily and the imp’s bulbous eyes widened. Suddenly the diminutive creature couldn’t scramble fast enough to hand the wand over to the terrifying lich.
Valindra took it and brought it up in front of her eyes, issuing a little mewling sound as she did, as she connected to the comforting power of the Dread Ring.
“Shall I inform my mistress that you’re the new Thayan leader in Neverwinter Wood?” the imp asked.
Valindra didn’t even hear the creature, her focus locked on the sudden sensations of the roiling power. Sylora’s overreach had hurt the ring, she knew, and badly.
“Shall I inform my mistress that you’re the new Thayan leader in Neverwinter Wood?” the imp repeated.
“Be gone,” Valindra replied, staring at the wand the whole time, feeling its power as she rolled it around her fingers. “Tell her—Ark-lem!—that I’ll speak with her presently.”
The infusion of power tickled her, and mostly tickled Valindra’s thoughts. Images of Arklem Greeth flooded her. With this power, surely she could reclaim her beloved. And surely, once she’d resurrected him, he would help guide her from the tumult within her head. Maybe she wouldn’t need the Abolethic Sovereignty’s ambassador anymore. Valindra hated letting that piscine creature into her deepest thoughts, emotions, and secrets.
The imp fluttering up in front of her eyes pulled the lich from her contemplation, and as it sped away, sputtering curses, Valindra realized that it had likely asked her a question, likely repeatedly, before leaving in such a huff.
Valindra dismissed the creature from her thoughts—her increasingly scrambled thoughts. So much possibility! So great a promise of power! And the notion of Arklem Greeth at her side once more!
“No, no, I mustn’t,” the lich told herself.
Then she nodded as she considered her course and knew where she must go, and what she must ensure. She fell into her magical powers, preparing to leave, but stopped short and considered one other thing she might want to bring along.
There he was, crumpled on the ground just off to the side.