Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3)(113)

“And what?” the shade and Entreri asked together.

“And Drizzt will let her go,” Dahlia said with a mocking chortle.

“Will he, then?” asked Entreri.

“I will,” Drizzt said to the shade directly. “Answer my questions and run away the way you were going, the way from which we came.”

The shade glanced past Drizzt to Entreri, then to Dahlia. “I do not believe you,” she said, looking back directly into Drizzt’s lavender eyes.

“It’s all you have,” he calmly answered. “And it’s not so difficult a question. Your friends are in the entry cavern to Gauntlgrym, it would seem. I would know their numbers.”

“You ask me to betray Herzgo Alegni, as Barrabus betrayed him!” the woman snapped.

“Alegni is dead!” Dahlia declared, and the woman looked at her curiously, as if her statement was purely ridiculous.

“Speak that name again and I will bash in your skull,” Dahlia promised, and spat at the shade’s feet.

Strangely, that threat seemed to bolster the shade. She stood taller, as if accepting her fate, and so, no longer afraid. Drizzt had seen this before, indeed had felt such feelings of his own in times past, and so he understood that his moment to garner any useful information was fast passing.

“You cannot escape,” the shade said to him.

“They’re in the cavern,” Drizzt replied.

The shade smiled and nodded. “They’re waiting for you, and if you don’t come to them, they will find you. And kill you.”

Her smile was sincere, Drizzt understood, for she had gone past the point of fear and fully into acceptance. His thoughts spun—he recalled the cavern, the stalagmites and hanging pillars, so much like Menzoberranzan. He considered the layout of the place, the shallow underground pond and the beach before the great wall of Gauntlgrym.

“Go, then,” Drizzt said, stepping aside and motioning back down the tunnel, not toward the surface as he had first indicated, but back the way the Shadovar patrol had come. “Go back to your dark friends and deliver my word. They will not find us. They will not retrieve this foul sword. There are many tunnels in the Underdark. They are the ways of the drow, not the Netherese.”

The shade stared at him. He could feel Entreri’s glare burning into his back.

“You will not do this,” Dahlia said.

Drizzt turned a stern look her way, a silent warning.

“Go,” he said to the shade, though he didn’t look back at her. “I will not offer again.”

The shade started tentatively, looking around at the three, not knowing from which would come the killing blow. She eased past Drizzt, who turned to stare at Entreri, then sidled past the assassin.

Entreri moved to the side a step, turning as the shade passed, and Drizzt pointedly moved up as well, putting himself between the assassin and the shade.

She broke into a run, nearly tripping over the corpse of one of her companions.

“I have witnessed many stupid things from you, drow,” Entreri remarked, moving around behind Drizzt and bumping him as he did, “but nothing more foolish than this.”

Drizzt slowly turned, first to see Dahlia, who stared at him hatefully, as if he had just betrayed her, then, as he came around to see Entreri . . . Entreri, who had retrieved Taulmaril from the floor, and who had only bumped into Drizzt to cover the fact that he had taken an arrow from the quiver on Drizzt’s back!

The assassin drew back on the bowstring, leveling the shot at the shade, who was still in easy range.

And Drizzt couldn’t get to him in time.

“Entreri, no!” the drow said, and he was pleading as much as commanding.

Entreri did pause at that, at the curious timbre in Drizzt’s voice, likely, and he glanced over.

“Do not, I beg,” said Drizzt.

“That she will go and warn her allies of our approach?” The assassin ended with a growl and set his sights on the fleeing shade woman once more.

“Kill her,” Dahlia agreed.

“That she will go and tell them we discovered their ambush,” Drizzt replied.

Entreri did let fly, and Drizzt winced, but the assassin had turned the bow a bit, and the lightning arrow flashed in the corridor, cracking into stone with a solid retort, and the uninjured shade yelped in surprise and scrambled along.

Artemis Entreri stood straight and stared at Drizzt, recognizing that the drow had something in mind, some plan that would use the fleeing shade to their advantage. He tossed the bow back to Drizzt, never blinking, never unlocking his stare from that of Drizzt.

More passed between the pair in that moment than the potential practicality of sending the shade on her way. Drizzt saw something else in Entreri’s eye.

And Drizzt understood something quite profound: Artemis Entreri had trusted him.





CAUGHT BETWEEN A SHADE

AND A DARK PLACE





The tunnel ran smoothly for a long way, then came to a deep drop, but fortunately, the fleeing shade hadn’t bothered to remove the dangling rope that her hunting party had set. Down went the three companions, moving swiftly and silently, trailing the female. Soon enough, the tunnel opened onto a ledge that ran perpendicular, angling down toward the cavern below. The view below was not open to them. A wall of about chest height blocked the edge of the perpendicular walkway. Drizzt and Dahlia both knew they had come to the right place, though, surely recognizing the hanging stalactite towers.