The Last Threshold (Neverwinter #4)(95)

Drizzt set himself again, anticipating the warrior wight’s next attack, and as the greatsword started moving, so too did Drizzt.

But the muddy ground slipped out under his weight and he stumbled.





Their defensive formation shuddered and seemed to fall apart as the ghoul poison reached deep into Brother Afafrenfere.

He swooned. He would have fallen to the ground all together, but a strong dwarf hand grabbed his shoulder, Ambergris yanking him upright with one arm, sweeping Skullbreaker out before her with the other to keep her own enemies at bay. As if that wasn’t enough to keep the dwarf occupied, she chanted at the same time.

Still, the dwarf’s heroic efforts would not be enough, Effron realized. He waved his hand, sending a swirling line of purplish-black flames past Afafrenfere to burn and drive back the hungry ghouls.

The warlock reached more deeply and powerfully into his repertoire for his next spell, and black tentacles pushed out of the muddy ground and began snapping at the ghouls all along that side of the formation, grabbing and squeezing and burning.

He had to move fast, he knew, for the tentacles would slow them for only a short period of time.

They could not win. Not with the greater undead monstrosities out there in the darkness.

Even as that troubling thought flitted through the warlock’s mind, he noticed a ghoul rise up once more, brought back to an animated state again after Dahlia had apparently destroyed it with her lightning.

A skull lord!

A skull lord lurked nearby, Effron knew, and it would raise its army repeatedly, until attrition slowed the blades and ghoulish poison broke their ranks. He had to find that particular monster and defeat it, and quickly.

But where?





Drizzt knew that he was going to get hit; there was no way to avoid it, and so he had to choose a glancing blow from the greatsword or the wight’s clawing hand. With great agility, the drow set his feet and scrambled forward past the wight, inside the sweep of the sword.

He felt the icy cold claw dig into his shoulder and he threw himself forward and to the side, desperate to disengage quickly.

He got free and out of range just in time to square up against another ghoul, his spinning blades lopping off clawing fingers, then stabbing the creature under the chin and lifting it up and back. The drow fast retracted, and let the destroyed ghoul fall to the ground.

Again, just in time, as Drizzt spun around and parried the sword of the pursuing wight.

Now he was back to even footing, working furiously, trying to get in close and be done with this undead swordsman.

But this fight had already gone on too long, Drizzt feared when he noted the approach of another, the three-skulled, wraith-like monster.

He batted aside the greatsword and leaped forward to stab at the wraith, but behind it and to the side, the skull lord waved its bone staff across before it, the deep blue energy wafting forth like a living serpent, purple and black crackling flames sweeping at the warrior wight and Drizzt.

The drow leaped back and to the side, falling into another roll, and a second tumble beyond that, and sheathing his scimitars as he went.

When he came up again, he had Taulmaril in hand, already leveled, and he let fly, straight and true, the lightning arrow slamming the three-skulled creature squarely in the chest.

It staggered backward, but did not fall, and responded immediately with another, larger wave of necromantic flames, and by calling to its minions, ghoul and wight, and swarming them at the lone drow.





The silver flash of a lightning-infused arrow showed Effron the way.

“Hold fast!” he told the four fighting around him, and to Ambergris, he added, “Be ready, on my call, to reach for the power of your god once more.”

Even as he addressed the dwarf, Ambergris launched an over-the-shoulder smash with her mace that evoked its name, Skullbreaker. A ghoul’s head exploded under the weight of the blow, brain matter and powdered bone flying all around.

“More fun this way,” she said with a laugh, and she swept two others away as they foolishly charged in behind their destroyed comrade.

Effron couldn’t deny the dwarf’s physical exclamation point, but he turned away from the fierce spectacle and enacted his wraith-form dweomer.

“Hold fast!” he told the four again, his voice as thin as his two-dimensional form, and he slid down into the ground and off in the direction of the flash.

He came up from the ground in the crack of an old, rotted tree, surveying the situation at hand. As he’d hoped, Drizzt had encountered the leader of the undead gang, and Effron’s eyes sparkled indeed when he looked upon the skull lord’s bone staff, crackling with necromantic power.

Drizzt rushed all around, diving and rolling, coming around and letting fly, one missile after another. He obviously wanted to take out the skull lord, but the immediate press of ghouls and other minions, including a warrior wight, forced him to blast back those nearest him time and time again.

And ever was he dodging as the three-skulled monster swept forth its staff, weaving sheets of crackling flames chasing Drizzt from spot to spot. Only the drow’s speed and agility kept him ahead of the attacks, and then only barely.

Effron knew he couldn’t keep it up for long.

The warlock slipped out of the tree and became three-dimensional, and immediately launched an insidious attack, whispering to the distant skull lord in the tongue of the nether world, pitting his willpower against that of the undead monstrosity.