Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3)(62)

And none too soon, he realized as he glanced ahead, just in time to see Dahlia flying backward and to the stone, to see the hulking form stalking in at her.

“Guen!” Drizzt cried.

He felt the blood rolling out of his burning shoulder, but he stubbornly tightened his left hand and fought the pain. Down went Icingdeath to pick off Entreri’s low thrust, then up again, swiftly and horizontally to force the assassin to cut short his clever dagger follow-up, thrusting, perhaps even thinking to throw the dirk into Drizzt’s face.

A growl from the end of the bridge brought Drizzt little hope, for in that call of the great panther, he clearly heard pain. He worked around to the side, between Entreri and Dahlia, looking back the way they had come, looking back at Guenhwyvar.

The panther spun and bit furiously as dark bolts filled the air around her. Wafts of smoke still trailed from her black form, though she was fully substantial now, the gray mist completely coagulated.

Those awful bolts burned at her, Drizzt understood, and he followed them to their source: a twisted and malformed tiefling in purple and black robes, flicking a wand her way. As she had become corporeal, this one had intervened, assaulting her before she had even taken in the scene around her, distracting her and paining her greatly, so it seemed.

As Guenhwyvar tried to go to Drizzt’s call, the tiefling warlock filled the area before her with a black, sizzling cloud, and the panther shrieked and snarled.

“Kill your tormentor!” Drizzt ordered the panther.

He couldn’t rely on Guen. Not then.

He batted aside another strike, and slid one foot to the left, circling. He had to get to his fallen scimitar, had to deny the pain and the blood and fight with both hands against Artemis Entreri. There was no other way.

He darted side to side, using his speed to keep the assassin from any straightforward attacks. Icingdeath spun out before him in tight circles, the blade humming as it gained momentum—but never too much momentum for Drizzt to interrupt the flow suddenly and stab it out, ahead or to either side, as he did often.

Now he was facing Dahlia again, and to his relief, she was back to her feet, flails spinning. She leaped and somersaulted out to the side, landing lightly and charging right back in at the hulking figure.

But then she retreated at once as the great red-bladed sword swept across.

Drizzt sucked in his breath, and got stuck in the forearm for his distraction.

This was Artemis Entreri he was facing, and the man had lost nothing of his skill in the decades since last they had battled! Drizzt told himself to focus, reminded himself repeatedly that he could be of no use to Dahlia if he could not first win out here.

He moved Entreri out toward the right-hand rail of the wide bridge, away from the fallen scimitar.

“Resist it,” he implored the assassin between parries. “Alegni will kill Dahlia. Resist the call of Claw.”

In response, Entreri gritted his teeth and let out a cry of pain. His knuckles whitened as he grasped his weapons and he fell back a step.

“Fight it!” Drizzt implored him, and indeed, Entreri seemed locked in some inner battle, some great torment.

That was the moment for Drizzt to leap in and cut him down, a moment when the assassin could not defend. A stride forward, a single stab, and Drizzt could move to help Dahlia.

She focused on the last moments of her mother’s life. That horrible image flitted through Dahlia’s thoughts again and again, alongside all the other painful memories.

The thought of this beast atop her and inside her filled her with fury, but it worked against her, Dahlia realized almost immediately. For amid her rage at that ultimate violation, there remained too much guilt, too much vulnerability. If she let her mind take her back to those awful moments, she would paralyze herself.

But she had no such conflicting emotions concerning the fate of her mother.

Just rage.

Pure rage.

No guilt, no vulnerability, no fear.

Just rage.

Her belly burned from the poisonous cut of Claw, but Dahlia transformed that profound sting into energy, and yet more rage. She leaped and darted all around, keeping Alegni turning, his blade cutting the air only a finger’s breadth behind her—and yet, always a finger’s breadth behind her.

Her flails always spun in too short to strike Alegni. And his smile showed that he knew it, and knew that Dahlia was expending far more energy than he, since she ran around while he merely turned in tune with her.

She rushed away to the right, diving into a roll, came to her feet, planted her right foot, and turned in at him as he pursued.

And in that clever move, Dahlia wiped the smile off Alegni’s face, for as she executed her roll, her hands worked independently, each contracting the respective flail into a singular four-foot length, and as she rose up, so did she connect those poles together as one, only for the blink of an eye before breaking Kozah’s Needle into two pieces again, this time joined by a length of magical cord.

When Dahlia’s left hand snapped out at the trailing Alegni, it was not with a shortened flail, but with a much longer reach. The first pole snapped into place, the trailing free end whipping around, past the surprised tiefling’s defenses to crack him across the face, and Dahlia, of course, used that moment to let loose the lightning energy.

Herzgo Alegni staggered backward, a black line of charred skin down the left side of his face, just beside his eye socket all the way to his chin.