Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3)(100)

“I knew I would find you alone,” the woman continued, her accent strong, biting off her consonants so abruptly that it jarred the drow. He did not know her. He did not even know of her possible origins. “It is not hard to find Drizzt Do’Urden alone in these times, is it?”

Thinking he had located the source, the direction at least, Drizzt edged out a bit, putting himself in line for a charge if necessary.

“Be at ease,” the woman said, as if reading his mind. The voice came from a completely different area of the darkened corridor than the previous remarks, and there was no way anyone could have moved between those particular points without him hearing or seeing it.

Perhaps it was a matter of cloaking spells, like invisibility, but more likely, she was utilizing magical ventriloquism.

A sorceress, then, Drizzt thought, and he knew that he needed to be doubly careful.

“I have not come to do battle,” she explained. “Nor to harm you in any way.”

“Who are you, then? Thayan or Shadovar?”

Her laughter started behind him, but quickly came from the original spot, before him. “Need it be one or the other?”

“Those seem to be the people most interested in me of late,” he said.

She laughed again. “I am from the Shadowfell,” she admitted. “Sent by one who is not your enemy, though you have something he wants.”

Drizzt straightened. Given Arunika’s warning, he knew where this was leading. “The sword,” he stated.

“It is a Netherese blade.”

“A vile one.”

“That is not my judgment to offer. We would like it back.”

“You cannot have it.”

“Are you sure?”

The question struck him curiously and put him a bit off balance.

“Does it mean so much to you?” the woman asked, and she was behind him again, and given his last response, he was fast to turn and set himself defensively. Could she move quickly enough to steal Charon’s Claw from its scabbard on his back? “Do you have such loyalty to the man you call Artemis Entreri?”

“Do you ask me to return a sword, or a slave?” Drizzt retorted.

“Does it matter?”

“Of course.”

“This is your friend, then, this Artemis Entreri?” the woman asked, and her voice came from an entirely different place then, farther along the corridor back the other way. “A loyal companion, like a brother to you?”

Her tone, even more than her curious words, made it clear that she was mocking him, or at least mocking the notion that he and Artemis Entreri might be the best of friends.

“Would he have to be any such thing for me to know what is right and what is wrong?” Drizzt countered, fighting hard to suppress his antagonism toward Entreri.

“Right and wrong?” she asked, her voice going from behind him to back in front of him between the words. “Black and white? Are you so simplistic as to believe that there is only one answer to such a question?”

“Which question?” Drizzt shot back. “That seems to be all you offer: questions.”

“Nay, my friend,” she replied immediately. “Had I nothing to offer, I would not be here.” As she finished, she came out of the shadows—or simply materialized in the corridor, Drizzt could not be sure—and slowly approached him.

“You have nothing to offer against the clear morality of such a choice,” Drizzt insisted.

“Are you sure?” Her smile, so confident, so knowing, unnerved him. She stopped only a few strides from him and said simply, “I want the sword.”

“You cannot have it.”

Her hand came up slowly, palm facing upward and holding a curious item. For a moment, Drizzt didn’t understand the movement or the item, and his hands went fast to his scimitar hilts, the blades coming out just a bit. He wondered if she was casting a spell of some sort, or if this item, a very small box lined with glowing blue lines of energy and magic, would strike out at him with some unknown force.

After a moment, the item in her hand shifted.

No, he realized, something contained inside the item had shifted, something inside the small cage she held had moved around.

Drizzt peered more closely as the reality began to dawn on him. He felt the strength drain from his legs, felt his heart pounding in his chest.

Guenhwyvar.

Dahlia kept one eye cracked open, and stared out the corner of it at her companion. Entreri was sitting, his legs tucked up tight against him, his head back against the wall, eyes closed. She doubted that he was asleep at that point, and she didn’t want Entreri noticing that she was staring at him.

Staring at him and measuring him.

The woman felt naked before this man. It seemed to Dahlia that he knew more about her emotional turmoil than she did. But what did that mean for her? Entreri was sympathetic to her pains. He knew her trauma—not the specifics, perhaps, though that, too, was possible, she realized, since he had been with Herzgo Alegni for so many years. Certainly he had recognized the scars, because he shared those scars, or so he’d strongly hinted. But did he, truly?

It screamed out in Dahlia’s thoughts that Entreri might be using her dark secret as a cynical way to gain some level of control over her, or to gain her trust for his own eventual gain. That he could speak to her so intimately, as if he was a kindred spirit, certainly forced her to let down some of her ever-present guards.