Jarlaxle dropped a mask on the table beside the assassin’s legs, and Drizzt recognized that magical item. Jarlaxle had gotten it from him after he had taken it from a banshee named Agatha. It appeared as a simple white stage mask with a tie to hold it in place, but it was so much more.
“You will walk as a drow,” Jarlaxle told Entreri. “Every step of the way from this place to Menzoberranzan and back again. We do not know what eyes will be upon us when we leave the wards my friends have enacted as protection around Illusk.”
Entreri picked up the mask, rolled it over several times with his fingers, and at last managed a nod, one clearly of great reluctance.
“We can afford no mistakes,” Jarlaxle explained. “So we will take no chances.”
“Would not a simple spell of illusion suffice?”
“Ah, but that is the beauty of Agatha’s Mask,” Jarlaxle explained. “Neither it nor the changes its wearer enacts can be detected with magic.”
As he explained things to Entreri, Jarlaxle turned sidelong, his gaze sweeping out to include Drizzt in his warning. Drizzt was looking past Jarlaxle, though, to this enigma he knew as Entreri. He noted the assassin’s eyes widening with clear shock, a profound scowl coming over him. Drizzt didn’t even have to follow Entreri’s gaze to realize he had noted the red blade Jarlaxle wore at his hip.
Entreri seemed as if he would melt there and then. His lips moved as if he wanted to say something, but no sound came forth.
“It was not destroyed,” Jarlaxle said, obviously noting the same thing as Drizzt.
“Throw it back in the pit!” Entreri demanded.
“You still do not know if your longevity is tied to the blade.”
“It is,” Entreri stated flatly. He spat both words, and spat before and after for good measure.
“Well, so be it, then,” Jarlaxle told him. He drew the blade, laid it on the table, then pulled off the magical gauntlet and put it down beside the sword.
Entreri shied away, sliding his chair back. “Throw it back into the pit,” he whispered again, seeming on the edge of abject desperation.
“No one will hold Charon’s Claw over you now,” Jarlaxle assured him. “I give it to you. The Netherese are a fading memory-they’ll not hunt the blade now.”
“I do not want it,” Entreri said with a sneer. “Destroy it.”
“I am sure I have no idea how that might be done,” said Jarlaxle. “Nor would I deign to do so if I did. You have long demanded of me that I help you retrieve Dahlia from Matron Mother Baenre, and so I … so we shall.”
“Not with that,” Entreri insisted, his hateful stare never leaving the bone-hilted, red-bladed, diabolical sword. “It’s not possible.”
Drizzt could feel the pain emanating from Entreri’s every word. This sword, Charon’s Claw, had enslaved him. And with it, the Shadovar Lord Herzgo Alegni had tortured the man for decades. All of those awful memories resounded clearly now in Entreri’s tone. This was not a man used to being submissive, but the obvious level of his fear now truly touched Drizzt. Entreri really had expected to die when he threw Charon’s Claw into the primordial pit, and yet he had demanded that the sword go in. He, Drizzt, and Dahlia had ventured through danger to the bowels of Gauntlgrym for exactly that reason: to destroy Charon’s Claw, and with it, to destroy Artemis Entreri.
It would seem that Entreri hated Charon’s Claw more than he valued his own life. The question, then, Drizzt knew, was whether or not Entreri hated the sword more than he cared for Dahlia-and that, Drizzt now suspected from Entreri’s hesitance and twisting expression, was a different matter entirely.
“Do you not believe you can dominate the blade?” Jarlaxle asked.
“I want nothing to do with it.”
“But it is here, and not destroyed,” said Drizzt, “and if Jarlaxle had not retrieved it, then someone else would have. Surely such a powerful magical sword would have soon enough found a worthy wielder, and since Charon’s Claw knows you and is tied to you …”
“Shut up,” said Entreri.
“The choice is yours,” said Jarlaxle. “Who is the master and who the slave?”
Entreri’s scowl showed that he wasn’t buying into that particular line of reasoning.
“An excuse,” Drizzt interjected, rather harshly, and the other two stared at him curiously.
“What do you know?” Jarlaxle asked.
“I know that I am looking upon a coward, and that I never expected,” Drizzt stated. He didn’t blink as he locked Entreri’s gaze with his own. “Our human friend uses the sword to shield his deeper anger.”
Entreri shook his head, his expression caught somewhere between outrage and doubt.
“You loathe Charon’s Claw so you won’t have to loathe yourself,” Drizzt accused. “Isn’t that always your way? There is always some external reason for your anger, so you claim, but in truth that reason is …” He waved his hand dismissively and swung about for the door.
“You dare?” Entreri muttered.
“If we are to be done with this, Jarlaxle, then let us be on with it now,” Drizzt said. “I miss my wife already.”
He paused and gave a derisive snort, and without turning, addressed Entreri, “If you mean to run up and attack me, you should do so now, while my back is turned.”
“Shut up,” Entreri said again.
“Because you cannot bear to hear my words?” Now Drizzt did swing around to face the man.
Entreri stared at him hard, and for a moment it seemed he meant to leap across the room and attack Drizzt. But then he just laughed helplessly and whispered, “Yes.”
He lowered his gaze to the table and stood there studying the vicious sword that had for so long been the instrument of his torture.
“Who is the slave and who the master?” Jarlaxle asked again.
“That choice is wholly your own, Artemis Entreri,” Drizzt said. “That sword, powerful as it may be, cannot compel you in any way-if you are your own master first.”
Entreri chewed his lip for a moment, never taking his gaze from that cursed blade. Then he moved swiftly, sweeping the glove from the table and sliding his hand into it. With a growl, he took up Charon’s Claw and raised the blood-red blade up before his eyes. It seemed to Drizzt that Entreri and the sword shared a private moment then, a private battle, and if Charon’s Claw had any hold over him, then it would be proven only if Entreri held it without the protective gauntlet.
“Let us be done with this,” Entreri said, and he slid the sword into his belt. “And quickly, for surely I will be driven mad with the echoes of Drizzt Do’Urden-who has appointed himself as my conscience-sounding about me.”
Drizzt smiled warmly at that, and even patted Entreri on the shoulder as he moved past with Jarlaxle. For all of the assassin’s grumbling and complaining, Drizzt noticed that Entreri didn’t flinch at his friendly touch.
Not at all.
Minolin Fey gasped and put her hand to her mouth, thinking that such a sound probably wasn’t a good idea with Yvonnel posing naked save a string-of-pearls belt with a tassel of gemstones cascading down over her right hip, that leg demurely crossed over her left.
She wasn’t gasping at Yvonnel, who looked very beautiful and had been sitting like this for long stretches over the last several days-well, in a sense she was. The reaction came from the image on the canvas in front of her, the portrait of Yvonnel now being finished by Minolin Fey’s mother, Matron Mother Byrtyn Fey.
Matron Mother Byrtyn was a noted artist, her work always a pleasure to behold, and her best work manifested in portraits.
But Yvonnel had demanded no interpretation. She had explicitly instructed Matron Mother Byrtyn to paint her exactly as she appeared. And Yvonnel, this little tyrant who had sprung forth from Minolin Fey’s loins, had gone further when explaining things to Minolin Fey. If Byrtyn failed at this task, Yvonnel meant to turn her into a drider.
Looking at the painting now, undeniably beautiful, but surely quite different from the living Yvonnel sitting on the divan in front of them, Minolin Fey believed her mother doomed.