Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3)(60)

Had he known that Entreri was lying, that the assassin had no idea of the layout of this region, including the wider tunnel along which he had just directed the three, Drizzt might have chosen differently.

The crawl tunnel led to an old iron grate, with several of its bars torn out or twisted wide.

“I came through this very grate,” Entreri whispered to the others, but loudly enough so that he was heard over the melodic and continual song of the river beyond, “on my escape from the volcano.” He tapped one of the bars with his long sword, pulled it free at the bottom, and yanked wide out to one side. “My doing.”

“Apparently, the lava did more behind you,” Drizzt noted, for only a pair of the eight bars on the grate remained intact, and the one Entreri had indicated as his handiwork would not now allow the easiest passage. Black stone lay where once had been clear ground, narrowing the vertical height of the opening, and the river channel was tighter now because of that cooling lava rock, like natural levies, forcing the water up nearer the grate than in years past.

Still, it was not hard for Drizzt to slip though, using the grate itself as a hand hold as he came onto the riverbank.

The winged wyvern that marked Alegni’s bridge loomed above him and to his immediate right as he exited, the path to its entrance clear to see. A bit of brush along the bank provided ample cover for him to get to the base of the bridge unseen.

Though she was the most anxious to get on with this confrontation, Dahlia was also the last out of the tunnel and onto the riverbank, and she did not press the others to move more quickly toward the bridge.

This was the fight she had wanted for all of her adult life, the chance to truly repay this rapist and murderer. But now she found herself strangely ill at the mere thought of it, caught somewhere between the bile of hatred and the tears of memory, the longing to exact revenge and her unspoken fear, one she had barely admitted to herself, that the taste might not be sweet.

And if that taste did not heal her broken heart, what might be left for Dahlia? It took all the elf warrior’s focus to carefully position herself as she hunched and crawled along the brush. It was not until Entreri tapped her on the shoulder and nodded his chin to direct her gaze that she even noticed the solitary hulking form standing at the center of the winged wyvern’s long expanse.

Dahlia recoiled. Suddenly, she was once more a helpless child so easily pinned beneath the great bulk Herzgo Alegni.

Her mother fell dead again before her mind’s eye.

She held a baby in her arms, the wind in her face as the ravine opened wide before her . . .

She had no idea how many heartbeats passed, then, but knew it to be many, for not only was Entreri prodding her but so was Drizzt, having come back from his lead position.

Dahlia quickly lifted a hand to wipe the tears from her eyes. She could not hide them from these two, sitting so close, their gazes intent, expressions confused and sympathetic.

The elf woman took a deep breath, a small growl escaping her lips. She sublimated her pain to her rage, and with a grim face, motioned for the two to move along.

She had to stay behind them, she told herself, had to use them as a shield against the base outrage that threatened to launch her headlong at Alegni, and no doubt, headlong to her death.

The city was mostly still asleep, most windows still dark and not a soul to be seen, other than the one figure standing at the rail at the center of the gently arcing bridge. The eastern sky glowed, the first rays of dawn soon to reach above the trees of Neverwinter Wood to cast long shadows at the nearby Sword Coast.

Drizzt looked to Entreri, his fingers moving slowly and deliberately in the drow sign language as he silently asked the assassin if this kind of empty early morning was typical in Neverwinter.

Entreri, with only rudimentary understanding of the language, shrugged noncommittally, and then became distracted as Dahlia crept up behind him.

It seemed too easy to the cautious drow ranger, too pat. He regarded Entreri once more, and wondered if perhaps Dahlia’s desire for this fight had clouded both their judgments. Had Entreri led them into a trap?

Drizzt shook the thought away almost as soon as it had come to him. The pain on Entreri’s face was all too real; the man wanted Herzgo Alegni dead almost as surely as Dahlia desired that outcome.

Sometimes, indeed most of the time, things were as they seemed.

The drow stepped out of the brush, standing to his full height, and walked onto the bridge. He drew Icingdeath in his right hand and dropped his left hand into his pouch.

Entreri was beside him in a heartbeat, Dahlia scrambling out behind, and the three started their stalk.

They were only a few steps onto the bridge when the tiefling warlord noticed them. He turned and straightened, staring at them. At that very moment, the first rays of dawn shot the length of the bridge, past the three intruders and shined upon the warlord as if it was intended for him alone. That glow revealed a strange grin on Alegni’s face, visible to them even though they were still thirty strides away.

Alegni had been expecting them.

No matter, Drizzt realized, and he paused and produced the onyx figurine as Entreri stopped beside him.

Not Dahlia, though. She rushed between her two companions, knocking them both aside, her reassembled long staff carried like a javelin. She had left her hesitation and her tears back in the brush, it seemed.

“Guenhwyvar, come to me!” Drizzt commanded, and as soon as that call was heard, he replaced the statue and brought forth his second blade, following Entreri into his charge.