Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3)(80)

She tensed, and inhaled deeply to steady herself. As she stood straight once more, Entreri took a step to the side. He looked at the fire, giving her this moment of privacy as she passed through the darkness.

“You hated him more than I ever could,” Entreri admitted.

“He’s dead,” Dahlia stated flatly.

“And a pity that he fell through the dimensions as he breathed his last,” said Entreri. “I would have tied his corpse to my nightmare and dragged it through the streets of Neverwinter until the skin fell from his broken bones.”

He felt Dahlia looking at him, though he did not return the stare.

“For me?” she asked.

“For both of us,” he replied. Given what he knew now about Dahlia, such an act might have brought him a deeper peace from a more profound scar—with Herzgo Alegni substituting for one who betrayed him so many decades before.

Dahlia managed a little chuckle then, and said, “I would have liked watching that.”

In the brush not so far away, Drizzt Do’Urden couldn’t make out many of the words the two exchanged. He had dismounted and dismissed Andahar far back, when first he had spotted the fire. Somehow, he knew that it would be the camp of Dahlia and Entreri.

And still, Drizzt had not openly approached. He tried to tell himself that he wasn’t sneaking up on them.

He had watched their discussion for some time, and could have moved closer without being detected, perhaps close enough to hear their words.

But those words didn’t seem to matter. Drizzt found himself more interested in their movements, particularly the way they looked at each other, and more poignantly, how they looked away from each other.

There was nothing sexual between them, no hint that Entreri had made a cuckold of him or anything of the sort.

Strangely, Drizzt had a feeling that such a crude revelation might have stung less profoundly.

For he knew now what he had long suspected: Artemis Entreri knew something of Dahlia, understood something of Dahlia, which he did not and could not. Some cord wound between them. In her tears and in her quiet chuckle, Dahlia had shared more with Artemis Entreri then she had with Drizzt in all their nights of lovemaking.

How could it be that this quiet conversation about a campfire in the nighttime forest felt more intimate than making love?

It made no sense.

But there it was before him.





WHERE THE SHADOWS NEVER END





The wounds were considerable,” the shade priest explained. “He will be many tendays in repair.”

“Then get more priests to tend him,” Draygo Quick answered sharply. “He does not have tendays.”

The priest rocked back, surprised, obviously, at being treated so. He and his brethren had just pulled the tiefling from the very edge of the grave, after all.

“Few had thought that Lord Alegni would survive, though your great action in destroying the vicious feline was brilliantly performed,” the priest replied, a stinging rebuttal, though one couched, prudently, with proper compliment to the powerful Netherese lord.

The words were true enough—regarding Alegni at least, Draygo Quick had to admit. The tiefling’s skin had been hanging in tatters, after all, and one of his eyes had been plucked from its socket, left hanging by a cord on his cheek.

And those had been the least of his wounds.

“I need him, quickly,” Draygo Quick demanded.

“He will live,” was all the priest could respond.

“He must do more than live,” the warlock warned. “He must return to Faer?n in mere days to retrieve that which he has lost.”

“The sword.”

“Our sword,” the withered old warlock replied.

“You could send others . . .”

“It is not my responsibility. It is Herzgo Alegni’s. Summon other priests—as many as you can find. Mend every wound and stand him up.”

The priest looked at him doubtfully.

“For his own sake,” Draygo Quick answered that stare. “Now be gone.”

The priest knew better than to argue with the likes of Draygo Quick, and he bowed curtly and hustled away.

Draygo Quick took a wheezing breath. He had sponsored Herzgo Alegni to a position of great power in Netherese society. He was not responsible for the tiefling, of course, but Alegni’s actions—his victories and his failures—surely played upon the well-guarded reputation of Draygo Quick.

Herzgo Alegni had lost a Netherese artifact, a powerful and prized sword, and one that Draygo Quick had given to him. Herzgo Alegni had to get it back. That would always be the case in Netherese custom and law, but it was even more poignant this time, Draygo Quick knew, for the recent history of Alegni had not been one of shining triumph. His expedition to the region known as Neverwinter should have been secured years before. True, the unexpected cataclysm of the volcanic eruption had occurred at a terrible time, but excuses could only carry one so far among the strict and demanding Netheril Empire.

Now the loss of the sword seemed even more profound, because it had come at a time of even higher expectation and because it had not been the only loss. Despite Draygo Quick’s controversial decision to send scores of reinforcements to Alegni’s Neverwinter garrison, the city of Neverwinter itself had been lost to the Netherese.

Even with the Thayans in disarray and on the run, the city had been lost.