Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3)(51)

His guards went up without a conscious thought to them.

His memories floated before him anyway: the childhood betrayal by his mother, the ultimate betrayal of his uncle and those others, the dirt of Calimport’s streets.

He felt a violation, as he had known as a child, of the most intimate and damaging sort. He faced it again, or tried to, but he realized something . . . something quite unexpected.

Entreri lost his own contemplations to a moment of surprise, and glanced over at Dahlia, and she at him.

Naked, joined, with no place to hide.

His thoughts were pried open and flying free.

Unlike his companions, though, Drizzt Do’Urden knew this type of intrusion, and recognized almost immediately the subtle trickery, the willing slavery.

During his days wandering the Underdark, after abandoning Menzoberranzan, Drizzt had been seduced in just such a manner—logical promises and wondrous carefree visions of life in Paradise—by the illithids, the wretched mind flayers. Obediently and lovingly, Drizzt and his companions had massaged the hive mind of the illithid community.

He had traveled this same road before, had fallen victim to it, his identity stolen away. Determined never to face such slavery again, Drizzt had trained himself to resist—with a wall of anger. In light of that terrible experience, it wasn’t hard for Drizzt to build that wall once more, almost instantly.

He slowly and subtly reached into his pouch and grasped the onyx figurine, quietly calling for Guenhwyvar, and like his subdued companions, he lowered his blades and began to walk slowly and unthreateningly toward the mesmerizing beast. Every step proved a labor, for the intrusion was strong here, truly powerful. Drizzt had learned painfully how to battle it, and still he doubted he could resist.

Or perhaps even worse, that he could resist without tipping his hand.

He saw the many images floating around him, and had he found a moment free of the demands of discipline, he might have been surprised to glimpse the deep secrets of his companions, particularly those of Dahlia, particularly the one that had him lying dead atop a pile of the corpses of former lovers.

But to go there and take in the view would have meant that his thoughts, too, floated free, and thus, that he, too, would be trapped by the telepathic web.

He stayed behind the wall, strengthened it with every step. He remembered his terrible experience with the illithids. Only one thing had saved him then.

He felt himself beginning to slip, felt the tendrils of another mind, this godlike snake’s mind, reaching into his deepest thoughts.

He thought of Catti-brie and Bruenor, of Belwar and of Clacker, of Zaknafein and of Regis and Wulfgar, of lost friends and those who had given him his identity. This intruder would steal all of his memories, he told himself repeatedly, strengthening the wall of anger.

For without those memories, Drizzt Do’Urden had nothing.

His walk slowed to a halt, his blades dipped because he could not raise them. Out of the periphery of his vision, left and right, he noted that Entreri and Dahlia had begun eyeing him suspiciously, even threateningly.

This deity had recognized his resistance and his deception, he knew, and would turn his own companions upon him.

“No!” Drizzt yelled, one last act of defiance, and he fell back and forced his blades to the ready. Both Dahlia and Entreri turned on him, weapons moving as if to strike, and Drizzt had to face the possibility of killing his lover, and of killing Entreri, this one tie to a past he desperately missed. It all happened so quickly, though, that those thoughts barely registered as anything more than fleeting regrets, and purely on instinct, the drow struck hard, Twinkle backhanding away a stab of Kozah’s Needle, Icingdeath keeping Entreri at bay.

He could win, for they were not fighting as Entreri and Dahlia, but as controlled shells of those magnificent warriors, as mere pawns to the god-snake.

He could not win, he realized immediately after, for in addition to these two, there remained the other slaves, and worse, the giant snake itself, a foe he doubted he could beat.

A foe he knew he could not beat.

A foe so far beyond him that it mocked him for even thinking he could defeat it, or even resist it!

The subtle web closed in as Entreri and Dahlia backed off, and Drizzt lost again, and would be lost, fully so, as he had been to the illithids as a young rogue, a century before.

All the discipline, all the rage, could not win.

Not against a god.

Besides, Drizzt then realized, life would be good in the service of this allknowing creature. Life would be peace and calm and satisfaction in seeing to his master’s needs.

He sighed and let down his guard before the great snake . . .

He was the first of the slaves to cry out a warning as the black form of Guenhwyvar leaped atop that huge creature. Drizzt shrieked first in outrage and then again in surprise as he saw that the snake wasn’t a snake at all, but a fishlike, horrid looking thing, and how it screamed, both in an audible watery voice and in Drizzt’s mind—so brutally in his mind that it knocked him from his feet, to join Dahlia, Entreri, and the others on the wet floor.

There was a giant snake, lying dead to the side, and this strange creature had taken its identity and place and image. But no more. Guenhwyvar’s attack had stripped away that illusion, leaving a creature that appeared far less formidable.

Drizzt leaped up immediately and charged, pausing only long enough to knock Entreri aside and kick the staff from Dahlia’s hands, for he knew then that he was free, but did not know if the others had broken from their bonds.