THE WALK OF BARRABUS
He is down there,” the imp told Arunika.
“You’re certain?”
The petulant little creature gave a great harrumph and crossed its deceptively skinny arms over its scrawny chest, its barbed tail whipping back and forth behind it like a cat waiting for a cornered mouse to emerge from under a bureau.
“I know him,” the imp answered. “I smell him.”
“Drizzt Do’Urden?”
“In the sewers, moving to the bridge. Hunting Alegni, as I was hunting him, and where else, where else?”
“With his two companions?”
“The two the warlock hates, yes.”
“And have you told Effron that Dahlia and Barrabus have returned to Neverwinter, my dear little untrusted slave?” The succubus saw a look of curiosity on the little one’s face then that comforted her greatly. Effron had compromised Invidoo, she knew for certain—the wretched little fellow had even admitted it to her. But this was not Invidoo, after all, despite the remarkable physical similarities.
“I speak to you,” the imp said at length. “To you only in this world. I would be gone soon—poof! Now, I be gone, if you will let me.”
“Not yet, but perhaps indeed soon, my little pet,” Arunika promised. Her thoughts were spinning then. The trio had come for Alegni, as expected, and quite cleverly and efficiently, it would seem. And if they were heading for the bridge, they would probably find the tiefling warlord. He went there every morning, after all, and the sun was beginning to rise. Dare she hope that they would, perhaps, kill him?
Then what? She, they, had to be quick.
“Hide,” she instructed her minion. “Do not leave this room. I will return presently.” With that, Arunika grabbed her night coat and rushed out of her small cabin. She didn’t even worry about her disguise, spreading her devil wings and flying away with all speed, only folding them and taking her human disguise when she landed before the side doorway to the room of Brother Anthus’s in the large temple.
She pushed through and roughly woke the man, blabbered out her plans immediately, and sent him on his way.
And she went on hers, again taking to the night sky, and this time landing before the house of Jelvus Grinch.
They had to be ready. This would be their one chance to break free, and Jelvus Grinch had to understand that. She paused before entering, though, and weighed again the possibilities, both if Alegni remained as lord of Neverwinter and if he was thrown down.
The latter scenario proved more promising, and certainly would afford her more power.
She had to warn Jelvus Grinch, and from him, to spread the word.
He was the key.
“What do you know?” Effron asked Alegni, his voice thick with suspicion as the hulking warlord drew his red-bladed sword and lifted it before his eyes, the glow of the face making Alegni appear even more diabolical than usual.
“They are here,” Alegni informed him.
Effron glanced all around, in near panic, as if he expected Barrabus and Drizzt and that most-hated Dahlia to spring from the shadows and throttle him at that very moment.
“Clever,” Alegni remarked, and Effron realized that he was talking to the sword.
Effron almost said something, but thought better of it. Eventually, Alegni turned back to him.
“They saw our reinforcements, it would seem,” Alegni informed him. “And so our sneaky enemies evaded the wall entirely.” As he finished, he flipped the sword in his hand and plunged it down into the floorboards. Alegni was on the second story of the inn on the hill, and the mighty sword drove right through, cracking through the ceiling of the room below him, and drawing a gasp and cry from the occupants.
“They could not come over the wall without being spied,” Alegni explained. “So they went under the wall.”
Effron looked down at the floor, not quite sure of what the hulking tiefling was implying.
“Under the city, where the waste drains to the river.”
“The sewers?” Effron asked, and crinkled his face.
“A fitting place for that traitor Barrabus, wouldn’t you say? And more fitting indeed for Dahlia; I cannot think of a better road for her to walk.”
“Or a better place for her to die,” Effron replied, but Alegni shook his head.
“No need. They have come for me. Barrabus knows where to find me.”
“Here?”
Alegni shook his head again. “They’ll not escape the sewers before dawn’s light,” he explained.
“The bridge,” Effron breathed.
“Go to our minions,” the tiefling warlord instructed. “Block every escape route from the bridge.”
“You intend to meet them?” Effron asked.
“I intend to enjoy this spectacle to the fullest,” Alegni replied.
“They are three to one against you,” the warlock warned.
“Are they?” Alegni asked with a wry grin as he pulled his sword out of the floor. “Are they indeed?”
“I would help you kill Dahlia!” Effron demanded, and even he was a bit surprised at the stridency in his tone.
“I suppose that you have earned that,” Alegni replied, and Effron held his stern gaze, but was truly relieved, having feared that his outburst would get him punished yet again by the merciless brute. “But first, you will help me to get her companions under control. If we are careful, we might get Dahlia alive.”
“She dies!” Effron insisted. The words surprised him, though, particularly the conviction he heard in his own voice. For a long time, he had been telling himself that he wanted to speak with this elf woman, wanted to ask her questions that only she could answer. But then, in the moment of truth, he had felt no sense of mercy.
“Eventually,” Alegni replied.
That thought, so obviously pleasant to Alegni, strangely had Effron off his guard. He wanted Dahlia to die—more than anything in the world, Effron wanted to be the one to deliver that killing blow—but now the notion of something more than simply killing her, of capturing her and torturing her . . .
It should have been a pleasant thought to him, and yet, surprisingly, it was not.
“Go!” Alegni said to him, and when he looked at the tiefling and considered the explosive tone, Effron realized that Alegni had repeated that command, likely several times.
Effron ran from the room, almost tripping down the stairs and almost running over a trio on the first landing, a man and woman dressed in nightclothes and the owner of the inn.
“Here now, is there trouble?” the innkeeper demanded.
Effron glanced back up the stairs to Alegni’s door. “Go ask him,” he said, and he laughed.
For he understood Alegni’s agitated state, for he shared Alegni’s agitated state, and he knew that if the innkeeper and these other two fools went up there to complain about the broken ceiling, Herzgo Alegni would cut them into pieces.