Neither noticed the illithid descending from the darkness above, farther back on the platform, behind Zaknafein.
“Come, monster of Matron Malice,” Drizzt growled, sliding his weapons together. “Come and feel my blades.”
Zaknafein paused only a few steps away and flashed his wicked smile again. The swords came up and the spirit-wraith took another step.
Fwoop!
The illithid’s blast rolled over both of them. Zaknafein remained unaffected, but Drizzt caught the force fully. Darkness rolled over him, his eyelids drooped with undeniable weight. He heard his scimitars fall to the stone, but he was beyond any other comprehension. Zaknafein snarled in gleeful victory, banged his swords together, and stepped toward the falling drow.
Belwar screamed, but it was Clacker’s monstrous cry of protest that sounded loudest, rising above the din of the battle-filled cavern. Everything Clacker had ever known as a pech rushed back to him when he saw the drow who had befriended him fall, doomed. That pech identity surged back more keenly, perhaps, than Clacker had even known in his former life.
Zaknafein lunged, seeing his helpless victim in range, but then smashed headfirst into a stone wall that had appeared from nothingness. The spirit-wraith bounced back, his eyes wide in frustration. He clawed at the wall and pounded on it, but it was quite real and sturdy. The stone blocked Zaknafein fully from the stairway and his intended prey.
Back down the stairway, Belwar turned his stunned gaze on Clacker. The svirfneblin had heard that some pech could conjure such stone walls. “Did you…?” the burrow-warden gasped.
The pech in a hook horror’s body did not pause long enough to answer. Clacker leaped the stairs four at a stride and gently hoisted Drizzt in his huge arms. He even thought to retrieve the drow’s scimitars, then came pounding back down the flight.
“Run.” Clacker commanded the burrow-warden. “For all of your life, run, Belwar Dissengulp!”
The deep gnome, scratching his head with his pickaxe-hand, did indeed run. Clacker cleared a wide path to the cavern’s rear exit―none dared stand before his enraged charge―and the burrow-warden, with his short svirfneblin legs, one of which was sprained, had a difficult time keeping up.
Back up the stairs, behind the wall, Zaknafein could only assume that the floating illithid, the same one that had blasted Drizzt, had blocked his charge. Zaknafein whirled about on the monster and screamed in sheer hatred.
Fwoop! Another blast came.
Zaknafein leaped up and sliced off both of the illithid’s feet with a single stroke. The illithid levitated higher, sending mental cries of anguish and distress to its companions.
Zaknafein couldn’t reach the thing, and with other illithids rushing in from every angle, the spirit-wraith didn’t have time to enact his own levitation spell. Zaknafein blamed this illithid for his failure; he would not let it escape. He hurled a sword as precisely as any spear.
The illithid looked down at Zaknafein in disbelief, then to the blade buried half to the hilt in its chest and knew that its life was at an end.
Mind flayers rushed toward Zaknafein, firing their stunning blasts as they came. The spirit-wraith had only one sword remaining, but he smashed his opponents down anyway, venting his frustrations on their ugly octopus heads.
Drizzt had escaped… for now.
Chapter 21.
Lost and Found
“Praise Lloth,” Matron Malice stammered, sensing the distant elation of her spirit-wraith. “He has Drizzt!” The matron mother snapped her gaze to one side, then the other, and her three daughters backed away at the sheer power of the emotions contorting her visage.
“Zaknafein has found your brother!”
Maya and Vierna smiled at each other, glad that this whole ordeal might finally be coming to a conclusion. Since the enactment of Zin-carla, the normal and necessary routines of House Do’Urden had virtually ceased, and every day their nervous mother had turned further and further inward, absorbed by the spirit-wraith’s hunt.
Across the anteroom, Briza’s smile would have shown a different light to any who took the time to notice, an almost disappointed light.
Fortunately for the first-born daughter, Matron Malice was too absorbed by distant events to take note. The matron mother fell deeper into her meditative trance, savoring every morsel of rage the spirit-wraith threw out, in the knowledge that her blasphemous son was on the receiving end of that anger. Malice’s breathing came in excited gasps as Zaknafein and Drizzt played through their sword fight, then the matron mother nearly lost her breath altogether.
Something had stopped Zaknafein.
“No!” Malice screamed, leaping out of her decorated throne. She glanced around, looking for someone to strike or something to throw. “No!” she cried again. “It cannot be!”
“Drizzt has escaped?” Briza asked, trying to keep the smugness out of her voice. Malice’s subsequent glare told Briza that her tone might have revealed too much of her thoughts.
“Is the spirit-wraith destroyed?” Maya cried in sincere distress.
“Not destroyed,” Malice replied, an obvious tremor in her usually firm voice. “But once more, your brother runs free!”
“Zin-carla has not yet failed,” Vierna reasoned, trying to console her excited mother.
“The spirit-wraith is very close,” Maya added, picking up Vierna’s cue.
Malice dropped back into her seat and wiped the sweat out of her eyes. “Leave me,” she commanded her daughters, not wanting them to observe her in such a sorry state. Zin-carla was stealing her life away, Malice knew, for every thought, every hope, of her existence hinged on the spirit-wraith’s success.
When the others had gone, Malice lit a candle and took out a tiny, precious mirror. What a wretched thing she had become in the last few weeks. She had hardly eaten, and deep lines of worry creased her formerly glass-smooth, ebony skin. By appearances, Matron Malice had aged more in the last few weeks than in the century before that.
“I will become as Matron Baenre,” she whispered in disgust, “withered and ugly.” For perhaps the very first time in her long life, Malice began to wonder of the value of her continual quest for power and the merciless Spider Queen’s favor. The thoughts disappeared as quickly as they had come, though. Matron Malice had gone too far for such silly regrets. By her strength and devotion, Malice had taken her house to the status of a ruling family and had secured a seat for herself on the prestigious ruling council.
She remained on the verge of despair, though, nearly broken by the strains of the last years. Again she wiped the sweat from her eyes and looked into the little mirror.
What a wretched thing she had become.
Drizzt had done this to her, she reminded herself. Her youngest son’s actions had angered the Spider Queen; his sacrilege had put Malice on the edge of doom.
“Get him, my spirit-wraith,” Malice whispered with a sneer. At that moment of anger, she hardly cared what future the Spider Queen would layout for her.
More than anything else in all the world, Matron Malice Do’Urden wanted Drizzt dead.
They ran through the winding tunnels blindly, hoping that no monsters would rear up suddenly before them. With the danger so very real at their backs, the three companions could not afford the usual caution.
Hours passed and still they ran. Belwar, older than his friends and with little legs working two strides for every one of Drizzt’s and three strides for each of Clacker’s, tired first, but that didn’t slow the group. Clacker hoisted the burrow-warden onto a shoulder and ran on.
How many miles they had covered they could not know when they at last broke for their first rest. Drizzt, silent and melancholy through all the trek, took up a guard position at the entrance to the small alcove they had chosen as a temporary camp. Recognizing his drow friend’s deep pain, Belwar moved over to offer comfort.