Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3)(46)

“You wore a cat’s eye circlet,” Drizzt agreed, and he held up Twinkle, confirming that Entreri was not wearing any such thing at that time.

“Innate now,” the assassin explained. “A gift from Jarlaxle.”

Drizzt nodded and moved to sheathe the sword, but Dahlia caught his arm. He looked at her curiously, and she shook her head, her face a mask of discomfort.

“I don’t like snakes and I don’t like spiders,” she said. “If you sheathe that, then know that you’ll be carrying me.”

That brought a laugh from Entreri, but a brief one, as Dahlia, deadly serious, fixed him with a glare telling him in no uncertain terms that he was crossing a dangerous line.

Drizzt started away, and Dahlia splashed along behind him. “A gentleman would carry me,” she muttered under her breath.

“Because you’re such a lady?” Entreri asked from behind.

Up in front, Drizzt stopped and took a deep breath. An image of the two locked in a passionate embrace flitted through his thoughts and he nearly growled aloud as he dismissed it.

With the light of Twinkle leading the way, the trio moved farther along the main passageway, and soon enough came to a honeycomb network of more impressive and hand-worked side tunnels. They knew that they were underneath the outskirts of the city—the old city, at least. Their choices were limited at first, for these were still much smaller tunnels, almost all impassable and with a couple that they might have traversed by belly-crawling . . . something none of them wanted. But a short while after that, they came to a network of passages larger still, many as navigable as the one they now traveled and a couple even larger than that.

“Do you remember the way?” Drizzt asked Entreri. He whispered the words, for other sounds echoed across the wet and slimy stones.

Entreri moved up beside the drow, who stood at a five-way intersection, and surveyed the area. Hands on hips, he at last shook his head. “It was long ago.”

“Not so long,” Dahlia argued, clearly impatient.

Both Entreri and Drizzt looked at the elf woman.

“When I last came through here, I simply followed the water’s flow,” he explained. “I cared for that which was before me, not behind.”

“You would have been far cleverer had you marked your passing, or at least, had you returned and mapped it after you had escaped,” Dahlia continued.

Entreri stared at her hard. “I didn’t intend on returning through this route. Ever.”

Dahlia waved at him dismissively. “You disappoint me,” she said. “A true warrior always prepares.”

Drizzt studied Entreri closely, expecting the man to explode and to fall over Dahlia in a murderous rage. But he just stood there, staring at her for a bit longer, before turning back to face Drizzt and look to the tunnels once more. “Left, I would guess,” he said. “The river is to our left and I entered the sewers along its bank. It is the source of the running water that flushes these passages, and so . . .”

“Flushes?” Dahlia prodded a thick pile of muck and feces with the half-staff she carried, her face a mask of disgust.

The pile shifted aside and out from under it came a serpent, black and thick and coiled, and easily as long as Dahlia was tall. It flew out from its position, lifting into the air, so fierce was its strike at Dahlia.

Dahlia recoiled and tried to fall away as the snapping toothy maw closed for her face.

A descending line of light flashed before her, but more importantly to her at that time, the bulk of the snake crashed into her. How she screamed and thrashed! All discipline flew from her as she worked purely in reaction to get that horrid thing away from her. And even after it fell aside, it took the woman quite a few heartbeats to sort it all out, to realize that she had not been bitten, to understand that the light marked the descent of Drizzt’s scimitar, and that she had been met by nothing more than the snake’s headless body flying from momentum and thrashing in its death throes.

Drizzt grabbed Dahlia and held her arms by her sides, trying to calm her as Entreri walked by.

“Did it pierce me? Am I poisoned?” she asked over and over again.

“Perhaps, and no,” Entreri answered, and both looked at him, and Dahlia’s face crinkled with disgust. He held the severed snake head, stuck on the end of his sword. “It is a constrictor, not a venomous serpent,” he said. “It won’t kill you with a bite, but would wrap you instead and crush the breath out of you, all the while trying to swallow the top of your head.”

Now it was Drizzt’s turn to flash a glare at Entreri. “It is—was not poisonous,” he said calmly. “And it did not bite you, in any case.”

That seemed to steady Dahlia a bit more. She kicked the thick, strong body of the snake farther away from her, and the body jerked spasmodically once more. Dahlia gasped and hopped away.

“You really don’t like snakes, do you?” Entreri said, and he flicked his blade, launching the snake head far away. He walked back past Drizzt and Dahlia. “Come along, then. The sooner we are out of these smelly sewers, the better.”

Neither Dahlia nor Drizzt was about to argue with that statement and they rushed to catch up, Drizzt again taking the lead—but this time, Dahlia stood right beside him.

Entreri handed her the other half of Kozah’s Needle. Dahlia looked at it doubtfully, not taking it.