Charon's Claw (Neverwinter #3)(97)

“I will kill the drow,” Afafrenfere vowed again.

“We’ll be there,” Glorfathel assured them. “I’ve already secured payment from Effron, that we might aid in the final battle.”

With a nod, he disappeared, and the portal thinned then dissipated behind him. “If we take them and get the sword, we will be hailed as heroes,” Afafrenfere said as soon as they were alone.

Ambergris put her hands on hips, shook her head, and snorted. “Ye just don’t understand, do ye?” she asked.

Afafrenfere crossed his strong, slender arms over his chest.

Ambergris just laughed and started away.

“To the hunt?” the eager monk asked.

“To see what we might find o’ worth on the dead shades,” the dwarf corrected.

“And might be when ye see how many dead shades’re lyin’ about that ye’ll finally understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Understand that I ain’t hoping to be lying dead beside any o’ them anytime soon,” said the dwarf as she stomped away.





Drizzt, Dahlia, and Entreri came above a ridge line, looking down a long and steep descent to a region of stone and boulders. Drizzt and Dahlia knew the place well—they had charged down that very slope into a battle with the Thayan forces of Sylora Salm.

“We’re not far,” Drizzt remarked, and pointed down to the left.

“Not far from the outer tunnels,” Dahlia corrected. “We’ll hike for hours more to get to the entryway of Gauntlgrym, if it even remains.”

Her tone was combative, and Drizzt gave her an appropriately disconcerting look—one Dahlia returned tenfold.

“Better to be underground, out of the exposure of the open road,” Drizzt said.

“Do you fear another fight with the Netherese?” Dahlia shot back.

“Better to be done with all of this,” Entreri muttered, and started moving, without looking back.

Drizzt felt like a fool—he could only assume that Dahlia held similar feelings—for Entreri had just diminished their lovers’ spat in all of its ridiculousness. The animosity and argument between Drizzt and Dahlia was obviously the by-product of some other issue between them, and given the gravity of their mission as they neared their goal, Entreri’s poignant mockery had silenced them both. They were near to Gauntlgrym, thus near to the primordial, thus near to destroying Charon’s Claw, an act that would mark the end of Artemis Entreri’s enslavement at the price of his very life.

Next to that, how petty did Drizzt and Dahlia’s jealousy and quarreling seem?

Humbled, Drizzt started off after the assassin. He had gone many steps before Dahlia followed, far back in his wake.

They found the tunnel entrance easily enough and moved deliberately and silently along the darkened pathway toward the grand cavern that housed the entryway to Gauntlgrym. All three marched with practiced steps, not a footfall to be heard among them, and with equal skill and experience, all they needed to guide them through the corridors was the meager light of Drizzt’s scimitar, Twinkle.

That soft blue-white glow illuminated a very small area before the drow, who took up the lead, and no doubt it marked them, him at least, as a target for any monsters or goblinkin that might be lurking in the area. That proved to be of little concern, though, for all three of the companions itched for a fight, any fight. To Drizzt’s thinking, if they didn’t soon find a common enemy, they would probably be battling each other.

Once again, images of cutting down Artemis Entreri flitted through his mind, along with the reminder of that intimate conversation between the assassin and Dahlia. They shared something, Drizzt knew, something deeper than the bond between himself and Dahlia. He imagined making a fatal blow—one made, curiously, with a red-bladed sword.

“How near are we?” Entreri asked a long while later, jarring Drizzt from his thoughts in the quiet of the tunnels, an eerie hush broken only occasionally by the distant sound of dripping water, or the harsh crack of something hard against the stone.

Drizzt stopped and turned around, waiting as Entreri and Dahlia closed up behind him. He looked to Dahlia for an answer, but the elf shrugged, her memories apparently as hazy as his own.

“Halfway, I would guess,” Drizzt replied. “Perhaps less.”

“Then let’s set a guard and rest,” said Entreri.

“I thought you were eager to die,” Dahlia snapped at him.

“I’m eager to be rid of the sword,” he answered without hesitation. “But I’m not eager to engage more Shadovar when my legs are weak from the long hike.”

Dahlia started to respond, to argue, but Drizzt beat her to it. “I agree,” he said, ending the debate, though his siding with Entreri brought him a scowl from Dahlia that likely signaled the start of another debate, he knew. “We must be on our best guard when we enter Gauntlgrym. We don’t know what we’ll encounter in her dark and broken halls.

“You suggested it,” he said to Entreri. “So I suspect that you’ve discovered a place you think suitable for a camp—or do you propose that we just pause in the middle of the tunnel?”

Entreri turned to look over his left shoulder and pointed up at the top of the cavern wall, right where it rounded into a ceiling. Following that lead, Drizzt moved over and held Twinkle up high. The scimitar’s glow revealed a small tunnel winding up and to the side of the corridor.