Homeland (The Legend of Drizzt #1)(98)

But Drizzt was able to shake away the numbing pain and regain his footing. He knew where the real Masoj was standing now and had no intention of letting the trickster out of sight again.

A dagger in his hand, Masoj watched Drizzt’s stalking approach. Drizzt didn’t understand. Why wasn’t the wizard preparing another spell? The fall had reopened the wound in Drizzt’s shoulder, and the magical bolts had torn his side and a leg. The wounds were not serious, though, and Masoj had no chance against him in physical combat.

The wizard stood before him, unconcerned, dagger drawn and a wicked smile on his face.

Face down on the hard stone, Alton felt the warmth of his own blood running freely between the melted holes that were his eyes. The cat was higher up the side of the mound, not yet fully recovered from the lightning bolt.

Alton forced himself up and raised his wand for a second strike... but the wand had snapped in half.

Frantically Alton recovered the other piece and held it up before his disbelieving eyes. Guenhwyvar was coming again, but Alton didn’t notice.

The glowing ends of the wand, a power building within the magical stick, enthralled him. “You cannot do that,” Alton whispered in protest.

Guenhwyvar leaped just as the broken wand exploded. A ball of fire roared up into Menzoberranzan’s night, chunks of rubble rocketed off the great cavern’s eastern wall and ceiling, and both Drizzt and Masoj were knocked from their feet.

“Now Guenhwyvar belongs to no one,” Masoj sneered, tossing the figurine to the ground.

“No DeVir remains to claim vengeance on House Do’Urden,” Drizzt growled back, his anger holding off his despair. Masoj became the focus of that anger, and the wizard’s mocking laughter led Drizzt toward him in a furious rush.

Just as Drizzt got in range, Masoj snapped his fingers and was gone.

“Invisible,” Drizzt roared, slicing futilely at the empty air before him. His exertions took the edge from his blind rage and he realized that Masoj was no longer in front of him.

How foolish he must seem to the wizard. How vulnerable! Drizzt crouched to listen. He sensed a distant chanting from up above, on the cavern wall.

Drizzt’s instincts told him to dive to the side, but his new understanding of wizards told him that Masoj would anticipate such a move. Drizzt feigned to the left and heard the climactic words of the building spell. As the lightning blast thundered harmlessly to the side, Drizzt sprinted straight ahead, hoping his vision would return in time for him to get to the wizard.

“Damn you!” Masoj cried, understanding the feint as soon as he had errantly fired. Rage became terror in the next instant, as Masoj caught sight of Drizzt, sprinting across the stone, leaping the rubble, and crossing the sides of the mounds with all the grace of a hunting cat.

Masoj fumbled in his pockets for the components to his next spell. He had to be quick. He was fully twenty feet from the cavern floor, perched on a narrow ledge, but Drizzt was moving fast, impossibly fast!

The ground beneath him did not register in Drizzt’s conscious thoughts.

The cavern wall would have seemed unclimbable to him in a more rational state, but now he gave it not a care. Guenhwyvar was lost to him. Guenhwyvar was gone.

That wicked wizard on the ledge, that embodiment of demonic evil, had caused it. Drizzt sprang to the wall, found one hand free-he must have discarded one scimitar-and caught a tenuous hold. It wasn’t enough for a rational drow, but Drizzt’s mind ignored the protests of the muscles in his straining fingers. He had only ten feet to go.

Another volley of energy bolts thudded into Drizzt, hammering the top of his head in rapid succession. “How many spells remain, wizard?” he heard himself defiantly cry as he ignored the pain.

Masoj fell back when Drizzt looked up at him, when the burning light of those lavender orbs fell upon him like a pronouncement of doom. He had seen Drizzt in battle many times, and the sight of the fighting young warrior had haunted him through all the planning of this assassination. But Masoj had never seen Drizzt enraged before. If he had, he never would have agreed to try to kill Drizzt. If he had, he would have told Matron SiNafay to go sit on a stalagmite.

What spell was next? What spell could slow the monster that was Drizzt Do’Urden?

A hand, glowing with the heat of anger, grabbed the lip of the ledge. Masoj stomped on it with the heel of his boot. The fingers were broken-the wizard knew that the fingers were broken-but Drizzt, impossibly, was up beside him and the blade of a scimitar was through the wizard’s ribs.

“The fingers are broken!” the dying mage gasped in protest.

Drizzt looked down at his hand and realized the pain for the first time. “Perhaps,” he said absently, “but they will heal.”

Drizzt, limping, found his other scimitar and cautiously picked his way over the rubble of one of the mounds. Fighting the fear within his broken heart, he forced himself to peer over the crest at the destruction. The back side of the mound glowed eerily in the residual heat, a beacon for the awakening city.

So much for stealth. Pieces of Alton DeVir lay scattered at the bottom, around the wizard’s smoldering robes. “Have you found peace, Faceless One?” Drizzt whispered, exhaling the last of his anger. He remembered the assault Alton had launched against him those years ago in the Academy. The faceless master and Masoj had explained it away as a test for a budding warrior.

“How long you have carried your hate,” Drizzt muttered at the blasted bits of corpse.