Herzgo Alegni stubbornly pulled himself out of the bed and stood to his full, imposing height. The many bandages he wore fought against him as he straightened, but the proud tiefling just pressed through their binding, obviously determined to show no weakness before the withered old warlock. Still, he stumbled a bit, disoriented by the fact that he no longer had a working right eye.
“When will you be ready to return to the land of light?” Draygo Quick asked him curtly, and without even a casual hint that he cared about Alegni’s health in the least—which of course, he did not.
“When I am ordered to do so,” Alegni replied.
“Even this moment?”
“I will leave at once, if you so desire.”
Draygo Quick couldn’t suppress his smile. Alegni was a stubborn one. He could barely stand, his legs wobbly, his shoulders shaking from the strain as he tried to keep them squared.
“You know that you must return, of course.”
Alegni looked at him curiously.
“You left something behind.”
Still the tiefling seemed confused.
Draygo Quick was not surprised by the reaction, doubting that Alegni remembered much of anything of the last moments of that brutal fight. When he’d come into the Shadowfell, so near to death, the great panther tearing at him and biting deep into his flesh, his every action had been reflexive and desperate, his every sound filled with the most profound timbre of agony.
Suddenly Alegni’s one uncovered eye popped open wide and he glanced all around desperately. “Claw,” he muttered.
“They have it.”
Herzgo Alegni turned back to face his master, and his shoulders slumped. This was his failure, of course, and one that was typically accompanied by the most profound and extreme punishment. Netherese lords lived and died, the saying went, but weapons were eternal.
They were supposed to be, at least.
“They live?”
“All three, yes. Indeed, they seem to be doing quite well among the grateful citizens of Neverwinter.”
The tiefling screwed up his face. “Your soldiers failed!”
“My warlord, Herzgo Alegni, failed me, so it would seem.”
Alegni stiffened at that unavoidable truth. “They were three against one,” he explained.
“Four against two,” Draygo Quick corrected. “By your prideful choice.”
“And all of the Shadovar remained at bay!” the hulking warrior insisted.
“Lord Alegni, you are not appealing when you whimper like a child,” Draygo Quick warned. “Your charges—your charges—acted as they had been ordered. You were certain that Barrabus the Gray would be brought under your control, and that your deception would put you alone with Dahlia for your long-desired victory. It would appear that you were not quite correct.”
“Three against one!” the tiefling insisted.
“Four against two,” Draygo Quick again corrected. “Would you so easily forget the drow’s panther companion? Or Effron, who battled the beast for a long while as you played out your folly on the bridge?”
Alegni’s face tightened at the mention of Effron. Alegni wanted to argue, to throw some insult or threat the twisted warlock’s way, Draygo Quick recognized, for how many times had he seen that look?
“You have no one to blame but Herzgo Alegni,” the withered old warlock insisted. “Accept your responsibility. You know what must be done.”
“I must retrieve the sword.”
Draygo Quick nodded. “Back to your rest. The priests will be along, one after the other. Accept their healing and their nourishing spells, for you will face that dangerous trio again soon.”
“I have learned from my mistakes.”
“Good, then I’ll not have to tell you to take others along with you.”
“I’ll need a new weapon . . .” Alegni said, or started to say, for Draygo Quick was done with him and the old warlock turned on his heel and simply walked away.
He pulled the door closed as he left Alegni’s room, and quickly lifted his finger to his pursed lips, indicating that Effron, who had been waiting outside the room, should remain quiet until they were away from the room.
“Will I accompany Lord Alegni to retrieve the sword?” Effron asked many steps later—a bit too eagerly for Draygo Quick’s liking.
He stared at the young warlock.
“I’ll go with him?” Effron asked again.
“You will go . . . near him,” Draygo Quick corrected. “Herzgo Alegni likely walks to his death.” He started to go on, but paused, gauging Effron’s response.
“How does that make you feel?” he asked.
Effron gave one of his twisted, awkward shrugs, trying futilely to dismiss the notion as if he didn’t care—but of course, he most certainly did.
“He’s reckless now,” Draygo Quick explained.
“Because of the sword, the urgency in retrieving it,” Effron surmised.
“Partly, but mostly because of Dahlia’s involvement. That, and the betrayal he feels at the hands of Barrabus the Gray.”
“Artemis Entreri,” Effron corrected.
Draygo Quick chortled at that, as if it hardly mattered.
“The human was his slave for decades,” Effron said. “Surely Lord Alegni could have expected no fealty there!”
“There’s always a strange dynamic at play between master and slave,” Draygo Quick explained. “An unexpected one, to be sure. Not unlike father and son.” He tilted his head in a curious manner at Effron as he spoke that thought.
“So I’m to shadow his movements,” Effron said. “And?”
“You are to retrieve Charon’s Claw,” Draygo Quick instructed. “Nothing else matters.”
Effron nodded, but there remained something less than convincing in his expression.
“Nothing else,” the old warlock reiterated. “Not the fate of Herzgo Alegni, nor that of Dahlia.”
Effron swallowed hard.
“Oh yes, I know how deeply you hate her, twisted one, but that is a battle for another day. One I will grant you, on my word—but not until Claw is safely back in Netherese hands.”
“Likely I will have to destroy them to retrieve it,” Effron said.
“Will you?”
Now it was Effron’s turn to curiously regard the master.
“We have a bargaining chip,” Draygo Quick explained. “One the drow will not readily ignore.” As he spoke, he reached into an extra-dimensional pocket in his voluminous robes and produced a small cage, one that easily fit in his palm, of glowing blue light. Inside it, in quarters too tight to pace, stood a tiny black panther, ears flattened, teeth bared.
Despite the gravity of the situation and the dangerous road ahead, Effron laughed aloud. “It was said that you destroyed the beast.”
“Destroyed? Why would I destroy something as beautiful . . .” he paused and brought the cage up before his wrinkled face, and the cat’s ears flattened even more and she gave a tiny growl, “. . . something as valuable as this.”
“I would truly love having such a companion as that,” Effron said, but he bit off the last word and swallowed hard when Draygo Quick flashed a hard stare at him.
“You could never control this one, not even if you possessed the statuette the drow carries,” Draygo Quick assured him. “She is more than a magical familiar—much more. She is tied to that drow now, bound by a hundred years and a thousand adventures. She would no sooner serve you than she would the drow’s worst mortal enemy.”
“Perhaps we are one and the same.”
“Is that your answer for everything? Your unrelenting anger at any creature in your path?” Draygo Quick didn’t try to keep the disappointment out of his voice.
“Am I to retrieve the sword or am I not?”
Draygo Quick held up the panther once more for Effron to see. “Which is more valuable to the drow, do you suppose?”
HUNTING SIDE BY SIDE
Your step has become halting,” Entreri whispered to Drizzt, so softly that Dahlia, who was only a couple of steps behind them, had to crane her neck to hear.
“You sense it, too?” the drow asked.
“Not as clearly as you do, obviously.”
“Sense what?” Dahlia asked.
“We’re being tracked,” Drizzt replied. “Or more fittingly, we’re being shadowed.” Dahlia straightened and looked all around.
“And if they’re watching, they now know that we know,” Entreri said dryly and he looked at Dahlia and shook his head and sighed.
“There is no one about,” the elf woman replied, rather loudly. Both Drizzt and Entreri stared at her, the drow shaking his head helplessly. He, too, heaved a sigh and moved off to the side, deeper into the forest brush.
“You think there are Shadovar? Or Thayans?” Dahlia asked Entreri. “He thinks so,” the assassin replied, nodding his chin toward the drow, who was then crouched beside a bush inspecting the leaves and the ground. “Shadovar, it would seem.”
“And you trust his judgment over your own?”
“It’s not a competition,” Entreri replied. “And don’t underestimate the woodland skills of our companion. This is his domain—were we in a city, then I would take the lead. But out here in the forest—to answer your question—yes.” He finished as Drizzt came walking back over.
“Someone was here not long ago,” the drow explained. He glanced back the way they had come, leading their eyes to a fairly clear vista of the trails and roads along the lower ground they had left behind. “Likely watching for our approach.”
“Shadovar, Thayans, or someone else?”
“Shadovar,” Drizzt answered without hesitation.
“How could you know such a thing?” Dahlia asked, again with her voice full of obvious doubt.
“I know that we are being trailed.”
“Even so, have you seen our pursuers?”
Drizzt shook his head, and as he did, he stared hard at Dahlia.
“Yet you conclude that they are Shadovar,” Dahlia pressed. “Why would you believe such a thing?”
Drizzt stared at her, seeming quite amused, for some time, before saying, “The sword told me.”
Dahlia, a retort obviously at the ready on the tip of her tongue, started to reply, but gulped it back.
“It’s excited,” Drizzt said to Entreri. “I feel it.”
Entreri nodded, as if such a sensation from Charon’s Claw was not unknown or unexpected. “The young and twisted warlock, likely,” he said.
“What do you know of him?” Drizzt asked.
“I know that he is formidable, full of tricks and spells that cause grievous wounds. He does not panic when battle is upon him, and seems much wiser than his youth would indicate. He’s deadly, do not doubt, and doubly so from afar. Worse, if it is Effron shadowing us, then expect that he’s not alone.”
“You seem to know much of him,” Dahlia remarked.
“I hunted your Thayan friends beside him,” Entreri replied. “I killed your Thayan friends beside him.”
Dahlia stiffened a bit at that remark, but relaxed quickly, for really, given her parting of the ways with Sylora, how could she truly be angered at such an admission? She, too, had killed many Thayans of late.
“He was very close to Herzgo Alegni,” Entreri went on. “At times, it seemed as if he hated his fellow tiefling, but other times, they revealed a bond, and a deep one.”
“A brother?” Drizzt wondered aloud.
“An uncle?” Entreri replied with a shrug. “I know not, but I’m certain that Effron is not pleased at our treatment of Alegni. And he’s an opportunist—an ambitious one.”
“Regaining the sword would be a great boon to his reputation,” Drizzt reasoned.
“We don’t even know if it is him,” Dahlia remarked. “We don’t even know if there are Shadovar hunting us. We don’t even know if anyone is hunting us!”
“If you keep speaking so loudly, we’ll likely find out soon enough,” Entreri replied.
“Is that not a good thing?”
Dahlia’s stubbornness drew another sigh from Drizzt, and a second from Entreri, as well.
“We’ll find out,” Drizzt assured her. “But not on our hunter’s terms. We’ll find out in a place and time of our choosing.”
He turned on his heel and walked off along the path, slowly scanning the forest left and right and ahead, searching for enemies, for ambush, and for a place where they might turn the pursuit.