Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3)(84)

“You could never control this one, not even if you possessed the statuette the drow carries,” Draygo Quick assured him. “She is more than a magical familiar—much more. She is tied to that drow now, bound by a hundred years and a thousand adventures. She would no sooner serve you than she would the drow’s worst mortal enemy.”

“Perhaps we are one and the same.”

“Is that your answer for everything? Your unrelenting anger at any creature in your path?” Draygo Quick didn’t try to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

“Am I to retrieve the sword or am I not?”

Draygo Quick held up the panther once more for Effron to see. “Which is more valuable to the drow, do you suppose?”





HUNTING SIDE BY SIDE





Your step has become halting,” Entreri whispered to Drizzt, so softly that Dahlia, who was only a couple of steps behind them, had to crane her neck to hear.

“You sense it, too?” the drow asked.

“Not as clearly as you do, obviously.”

“Sense what?” Dahlia asked.

“We’re being tracked,” Drizzt replied. “Or more fittingly, we’re being shadowed.” Dahlia straightened and looked all around.

“And if they’re watching, they now know that we know,” Entreri said dryly and he looked at Dahlia and shook his head and sighed.

“There is no one about,” the elf woman replied, rather loudly. Both Drizzt and Entreri stared at her, the drow shaking his head helplessly. He, too, heaved a sigh and moved off to the side, deeper into the forest brush.

“You think there are Shadovar? Or Thayans?” Dahlia asked Entreri. “He thinks so,” the assassin replied, nodding his chin toward the drow, who was then crouched beside a bush inspecting the leaves and the ground. “Shadovar, it would seem.”

“And you trust his judgment over your own?”

“It’s not a competition,” Entreri replied. “And don’t underestimate the woodland skills of our companion. This is his domain—were we in a city, then I would take the lead. But out here in the forest—to answer your question—yes.” He finished as Drizzt came walking back over.

“Someone was here not long ago,” the drow explained. He glanced back the way they had come, leading their eyes to a fairly clear vista of the trails and roads along the lower ground they had left behind. “Likely watching for our approach.”

“Shadovar, Thayans, or someone else?”

“Shadovar,” Drizzt answered without hesitation.

“How could you know such a thing?” Dahlia asked, again with her voice full of obvious doubt.

“I know that we are being trailed.”

“Even so, have you seen our pursuers?”

Drizzt shook his head, and as he did, he stared hard at Dahlia.

“Yet you conclude that they are Shadovar,” Dahlia pressed. “Why would you believe such a thing?”

Drizzt stared at her, seeming quite amused, for some time, before saying, “The sword told me.”

Dahlia, a retort obviously at the ready on the tip of her tongue, started to reply, but gulped it back.

“It’s excited,” Drizzt said to Entreri. “I feel it.”

Entreri nodded, as if such a sensation from Charon’s Claw was not unknown or unexpected. “The young and twisted warlock, likely,” he said.

“What do you know of him?” Drizzt asked.

“I know that he is formidable, full of tricks and spells that cause grievous wounds. He does not panic when battle is upon him, and seems much wiser than his youth would indicate. He’s deadly, do not doubt, and doubly so from afar. Worse, if it is Effron shadowing us, then expect that he’s not alone.”

“You seem to know much of him,” Dahlia remarked.

“I hunted your Thayan friends beside him,” Entreri replied. “I killed your Thayan friends beside him.”

Dahlia stiffened a bit at that remark, but relaxed quickly, for really, given her parting of the ways with Sylora, how could she truly be angered at such an admission? She, too, had killed many Thayans of late.

“He was very close to Herzgo Alegni,” Entreri went on. “At times, it seemed as if he hated his fellow tiefling, but other times, they revealed a bond, and a deep one.”

“A brother?” Drizzt wondered aloud.

“An uncle?” Entreri replied with a shrug. “I know not, but I’m certain that Effron is not pleased at our treatment of Alegni. And he’s an opportunist—an ambitious one.”

“Regaining the sword would be a great boon to his reputation,” Drizzt reasoned.

“We don’t even know if it is him,” Dahlia remarked. “We don’t even know if there are Shadovar hunting us. We don’t even know if anyone is hunting us!”

“If you keep speaking so loudly, we’ll likely find out soon enough,” Entreri replied.

“Is that not a good thing?”

Dahlia’s stubbornness drew another sigh from Drizzt, and a second from Entreri, as well.

“We’ll find out,” Drizzt assured her. “But not on our hunter’s terms. We’ll find out in a place and time of our choosing.”

He turned on his heel and walked off along the path, slowly scanning the forest left and right and ahead, searching for enemies, for ambush, and for a place where they might turn the pursuit.