And there was Entreri, in her face, sword spinning and weaving, and his other hand, gripping a dagger, flashing all around.
Kiriy had raised her scourge and commanded the snakes to strike, twice, before she realized that not a serpent head remained.
She cried out and fell back, moving the dagger to defend.
But in came the red blade, striking all around, always just ahead of her defensive turns or blocks, always finding a strong angle. Just when she at last thought she had caught up to the human, he rolled behind her block and she felt the bite of a dagger in her ribs.
“Oh, not that!” she heard Jarlaxle say, and to her relief, briefly, she thought she had found reprieve.
But then the red blade came across, brutally, perfectly, and Kiriy’s head flipped up into the air.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Jarlaxle said from the bed, where he was examining Dahlia and had taken her staff in hand.
“I have had enough of drow priestesses,” Entreri replied.
“She is the eldest daughter of Matron Mother Zeerith.”
“Was,” Entreri corrected.
“Why must you make my life so difficult?”
“To have me walking beside you is a privilege,” Entreri replied, wiping his sword on Kiriy’s headless body. “I want you to earn every step.”
Jarlaxle surrendered with a sigh, his gaze going to Kiriy’s head, which had landed upright, her eyes still open. “I should craft a human disguise,” the mercenary mused. “They always underestimate you.”
“So you do.”
Jarlaxle began to reply, stopped and blinked, then started again, and stopped again when Dahlia stirred beside him. She met his disarming smile with a left hook, screamed, and leaped upon him.
Artemis Entreri was there in a heartbeat, before his dropped weapons even hit the floor. He grabbed at Dahlia as Jarlaxle fell away from her, finally tackling her to the bed. She kept up the struggle, punching and clawing, and even tried to bite Entreri.
Entreri sat up and pulled her up to her knees. He lined up her face in front of his own, gripping her arms tightly, pinning them down and holding her back.
“Dahlia!” he said.
She smashed her forehead into his face.
Entreri pushed her back a bit more and spat blood. “Dahlia! Dahlia, do you not know me?”
The elf stared at him, wide-eyed, her face contorting into a mask of the sheerest confusion.
“Dahlia!”
She seemed about to say something, but seemed confused too, and shook her head in denial.
“Dahlia,” Entreri said softly, and he felt all the strength go out of the elf. She simply collapsed, falling forward into his waiting hug, and there he held her tightly, whispering to her, promising her that he would get her out of this place.
“No, truly,” Jarlaxle said from over the headless body of Kiriy Xorlarrin. “You really didn’t have to do that.”
“I didn’t have to, but it felt good,” Entreri said, holding Dahlia close.
Jarlaxle started to reply, but shrugged instead. He took up Dahlia’s wondrous staff, quickly examined it, then broke it down and tucked it into his pouch.
“We must be away,” Jarlaxle said, and Entreri wasn’t about to argue.
“Indeed,” a woman’s voice replied, and there stood Matron Mother Quenthel Baenre, where a wall had been just a moment before. The disfigured illithid stood beside her, the pair flanked by Sos’Umptu and Minolin Fey. A cadre of the Baenre garrison hovered about, close behind, protecting the matron mother and the Archmage of Menzoberranzan, Tsabrak Xorlarrin, who maintained the passwall. Before Jarlaxle or Entreri could react, the room’s door banged open, and another battle group appeared, this one led by Weapons Master Andzrel Baenre.
Jarlaxle glanced at Entreri and shook his head.
The Baenres had come prepared.
“We saved Matron Mother Darthiir, your voice on the council,” Jarlaxle said when he noted Quenthel Baenre’s disgusted expression as she looked upon the headless corpse at her feet.
“For just that reason, I am sure,” the matron mother sarcastically replied.
On the balcony of the House chapel, Yvonnel, K’yorl, Yiccardaria, and Tiago looked down upon Drizzt Do’Urden.
He didn’t know they were there. His vision and thoughts were caught in the web of a clairvoyance enchantment that had sent him back through the decades. Drizzt gasped and stumbled to the altar, trembling, his knees giving out beneath him, but he crawled on, reaching desperately.
“He is a confused and tormented soul,” Yvonnel explained. “He witnesses now a moment that brings him great pain, and great doubt. He has no footing now, no confidence in his principles or his code of honor. He is a pitiable thing.”
“He is a heretic,” Tiago corrected, sword in hand and buckler unwinding into a larger shield. “An abomination, and soon to be a gift to Lady Lolth.”
“When you are told,” Yiccardaria said in no uncertain terms, and even stubborn Tiago had to back off a bit at the command of a yochlol.
“Your bravery is commendable, if your temerity is not. Do you underestimate this warrior, Tiago? Do you place no value on the brilliance he has attained?”
“I have battled him before,” the young upstart weapons master replied.
And so Drizzt knows what to expect from you and your unusual weapons, Yvonnel thought, but did not say. She did smile, though, and offered a rather evil chuckle that should have warned Tiago somewhat-if he wasn’t so cocksure of his own expertise.
“He does seem a pitiful thing,” Yvonnel said instead, nodding down at the seemingly broken drow, who knelt by the empty altar and held onto it for support. “There will be little glory in killing him when his eyes and his thoughts are caught in the past. The headsman is not regarded as a hero for his actions on the gallows.”
Tiago stared at her, clearly confused, trying to form some rebuttal and looking very much as if he suddenly believed that his trophy had been stolen from his grasp yet again.
“But that will not be the case,” said Yvonnel. “The enchantment upon Drizzt is mine own. I can dismiss it easily. Do not doubt that he will find focus when you go down there against him.”
Tiago visibly relaxed.
“Do you deny any aid when you are in combat with Drizzt?” Yiccardaria asked.
“I do not understand.”
“Shall I incapacitate Drizzt Do’Urden if you are losing?” Yvonnel explained. “Or heal your wounds if he scores first blood?”
The young weapons master seemed unsure, eyes darting from Yvonnel to Yiccardaria.
Yvonnel took great pleasure in his obvious unease, and nearly laughed aloud when he licked his lips. He was measuring his own confidence against his desired glory. If he agreed to the help, his glory would be diminished.
If he did not, he might well end up dead.
“No,” he said at last. “I ask for this kill, by my sword alone.”
Yiccardaria nodded and seemed contented, while Yvonnel was delighted.
She wouldn’t have helped him anyway.
“He will die,” Tiago promised.
Yiccardaria motioned to the tight circular staircase off to the side of the balcony, but Tiago took his own route, lifting a leg over the balcony railing and simply dropping over, tapping his House emblem to enact a levitation enchantment so he could touch down easily onto the floor some twenty feet below.
Even as he landed, Yvonnel dismissed the enchantment over Drizzt.
“They both champion Lolth,” Yiccardaria remarked. “But only one knows it.”
Drizzt reached for Zaknafein, his father, as the great warrior lay bleeding, dying upon the altar.
But Drizzt’s hand passed right through the image and scraped the top of the altar-stone as he pulled back, and the images around him of his family, of his gasping father and his murderous mother, of his three priestess sisters in their Lolth-worshiping raiment-of Vierna in particular, and Drizzt thought he spied a tear there as she watched her father die-cast him back across the decades and shed a dark light upon his choices.