Gauntlgrym (Neverwinter #1)(122)

The lich hissed at them, screamed at them in outrage for stealing her moment of glory. Lightning erupted from her fingertips, blasting into the ranks of those trying to enter the room, rebounding with killing force back up the tunnel.

She hissed again and waved her arms and a great ice storm formed above the corridor entryway, raining sleet and pelting ice down upon any who dared come through.

Valindra spun back to line up a new killing strike at the hated elves. Her red eyes flared with inner fire as she began her casting. But then she was screaming incoherently, caught in a pillar of unexplained light—bright, burning light.

She thrashed and tried to fight through it to launch her spell, but to no avail. Smoke began to rise from her rotted flesh, and much of it began to roll up under the brilliant glow.

The chamber began to shake and roll. The forges vomited angry fires once more as the primordial reacted to the assault on its minions, and all the room began to quake with such force that most were thrown from their feet.

Not Valindra, though, who floated above the tumult.

But the light did not relent, biting at her, burning her, half-blinding her. She managed a half turn and at last spotted her assailant, and despite the sting, her eyes did widen indeed.

And he tipped his wide-brimmed hat and leveled his wand, and a second beam engulfed Valindra.

And she began to smoke, her skin to curl.

With a shriek that seemed to stop all other chaos in the room, Valindra flailed wildly and out of sheer terror managed to spit forth a spell, one that turned her into the form of a wraith. Her wail continued to echo throughout the chamber, but the lich slipped through a crack in the floor and was gone, her wraith form sliding through cracks in the stones and rushing far from the scene, never to return.

After all, Valindra was a lich. She had forever to kill them, if need be. Drizzt, Dahlia … and Jarlaxle would wait.



He tried not to let the sudden chaos in the hall distract him, thrown as it was into wild and heated battle between three distinct forces, each hating the other two. He tried to ignore the room itself, which had become an army of its own, it seemed, with rolling floor and shaking walls, rocks tumbling dangerously from the ceiling and forges spewing forth fire that could melt flesh from bones, and char the bones to ash for good measure.

Drizzt had to put all of that in its proper perspective, with so formidable a foe as a legion devil facing him.

The fighting beyond him was of no interest. And the room he used to his advantage. So swift, so agile, Drizzt accepted the rolling floor rather than try to fight against it. When the floor pitched left, left was the way he went. He rode it, his feet moving back and forth, sideways and sidelong, whichever way was necessary to keep him in perfect balance and speed him along. And if the fight called for him to go opposite the pitch of the floor, he used the roll of stone to grant him lift as he pitched back the other way in a leap or somersault.

His devilish opponent, no stranger to wild battle, did well to hold its footing in the shaking and trembling, but as Drizzt fell into the rhythms of the primordial’s angry gyrations, the legion devil could not keep up.

The drow began not only to react perfectly to the quake, but to anticipate its next movement. Confident that he was quick enough to correct if his guess proved wrong, Drizzt worked his scimitars up high in front of his face, rolling his wrists over each other to create a circle of angled downward slashes. As the fiend brought its shield to block, the drow just angled to the side a bit more, keeping the devil on its heels, forcing it to use both shield and sword defensively.

Further to his left Drizzt turned, bending the fiend, turning the fiend, and when the floor rolled under their feet, left to right, Drizzt used the momentum to step back fast to the right, then used the cresting wave of stone beneath his feet to launch himself. Flipping back to the left, even as the fiend, caught in the flow and expecting the reversal, the drow was fast turning the other way.

Right over the sweeping blade went Drizzt, landing in perfect balance on shaky ground, and with the devil’s side exposed, shield and sword back the other way. He struck deeply, but only once—it was Icingdeath that bit into the creature of fire. It only had to bite once.

Drizzt held his pose for several heartbeats, the devil immobilized by agony on the end of his blade, hot blood bubbling from the wound. The drow gave a few slight twists and tugs to tear at the fiend’s organs, then he yanked the blade out.

The legion devil crumbled to the floor and sizzled away into black smoke and a mist of boiling blood.

Drizzt spun away to help Dahlia, but stopped short and watched in admiration as the elf spun and struck, her advance coming in a series of turns, and through every one and from every angle came a whirling strike from a flail, some spouting lightning, others just smashing with crushing force. The legion devil couldn’t match her speed and precision.

She hit it again and again, and by the time she played out her spinning charge, that devil, too, crumbled to the floor.

She looked at Drizzt, and the two exchanged smiles and nods.

“Me king?” Drizzt heard behind him, and he spun, shaking his head in disbelief. He looked to the small tunnel before turning to the dwarf, and so by the time he did regard his old friend, that dwarf had already picked up on the cue and started away at full, rambling speed.

Drizzt and Dahlia started to follow, but hadn’t gone two steps before a host of Ashmadai descended upon them.

More to kill.