Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3)(118)

Alegni smiled at that, but didn’t really have an answer. In any case, both Dahlia and Entreri were gone, either still fleeing or dead. Or captured, Alegni mused, and under the control of these dark elves that had so suddenly appeared before his forces.

The tiefling warlord couldn’t hold to his smile, for the arrival of a sizable drow force, if it was indeed that, certainly complicated his quest.

“If they’re alive, and these were their allies, then they continue toward the primordial beast,” Alegni said to Effron and all of those nearby. “That is the worst potential, so continue our march. Fill these tunnels with Shadovar. Find that beast!”

“If they are dead and the drow have taken the sword, they will likely bargain its return,” Effron remarked quietly as the forces organized and set out once more.

Alegni nodded. “But we prepare for the more immediate potential.”

“We have lines of warriors strung out far ahead in the corridors,” Effron assured him. “We have found the main stair to the lower levels.”

“Send word of this new enemy, then,” Alegni ordered.

“We do not know them to be an enemy,” Effron reasoned.

That rang as curious in Alegni’s ears—hadn’t they just fought a vicious and quick exchange, after all?—but as he considered the suddenness with which the two alert and powerful forces had met, perhaps there was some truth to Effron’s claim. Perhaps the drow had inadvertently happened in the way of the Shadovar advance, and had reacted to force with force, as Alegni surely would have done.

Perhaps, but the desperate tiefling wasn’t about to take any chances.

“Get us to the primordial,” he told Effron, “with all haste and without mercy for any who stand in our way.”

Drizzt still had his scimitars and still had his bow, but they wouldn’t do him any good, even though his physical senses and abilities were beginning to return. Magical tentacles had grown out of the stone and grabbed him—and Entreri and Dahlia, who were seated back to back with him—fully immobilizing them all.

He heard Dahlia groan, only then beginning to awaken. Entreri was perfectly conscious, and Drizzt doubted that any of the bolts had even struck him.

“Bregan D’aerthe?” a finely dressed drow warrior standing before Drizzt remarked, his voice clearly full of doubt. “What’s your name?”

He was speaking in the high tongue of Menzoberranzan, a language Drizzt had not heard in a long, long time, but one that he recognized, and one that returned to him with amazing speed and clarity.

“Masoj,” Drizzt answered without hesitation, pulling out a name from his distant past.

The drow, a warrior noble if his dress and fine swords were to be believed, looked at him curiously.

“Masoj?” he asked. “Of what House?”

“Of no House he will admit,” Artemis Entreri put in, also speaking perfect Drow.

A soldier beside the noble drow stiffened and moved as if to punish the man for daring to speak out, but the noble held him back.

“Do continue,” he prompted Entreri.

“Masoj, of a House that offended the Spider Queen,” Entreri explained. “None will admit it, save Kimmuriel, who leads Bregan D’aerthe.”

“You are of House Oblodra?” the warrior noble asked Drizzt, bending low to look Drizzt in the eye.

In the lavender eye, Drizzt knew, and he feared that his reputation and strange eyes might precede him and ruin everything.

Drizzt shook his head. “I will admit no such thing,” he said, the proper response.

“You are related to Kimmuriel, then?” the warrior noble pressed.

“Distantly,” Drizzt answered.

“Jearth,” came a female voice from the side, “the Netherese flank us. We have no time to tarry.”

“Kill them and be done with it?” Jearth, the warrior noble, replied.

“It would seem prudent.”

“They are of Bregan D’aerthe, they claim,” Jearth replied. “If Kimmuriel’s forces are around, I would have them on our side, would you agree? It should be easy enough to facilitate their aid, particularly with Tiago Baenre among our ranks.” Drizzt’s thoughts whirled as he tried to place the names. Jearth sounded somewhat familiar to him, but he knew of Tiago not at all. But Baenre! Of course, the mere mention of that powerful House sent Drizzt’s memories spinning back to his decades in Menzoberranzan.

“Bregan D’aerthe?” the female echoed incredulously. She started around to Drizzt’s left. “A drow, an elf . . .” She paused just long enough to spit upon Dahlia, and Drizzt winced, considering what might soon happen to poor Dahlia, given her heritage and the hatred between the elf races.

“And a human,” the female continued as she walked, but she bit off that last word, and Drizzt craned his neck enough to see her, to notice the surprised expression on her face as she looked over Artemis Entreri.

“Priestess,” Entreri said to her with proper deference.

The female continued to stare at him with obvious curiosity.

“I know you,” she said quietly, and seemed unsure and tentative.

“I have been to Menzoberranzan,” Entreri replied to that look. “Before the Spellplague, beside Jarlaxle.”

Drizzt held his breath, for Entreri had left Menzoberranzan beside him, and after they had wrought great damage. Reminding this priestess of that time might also remind her of the escape, and the identity of Entreri’s companions during that escape!