The cold began to overtake her. Blood flowed from a hundred cuts and when she tried to extract herself from the planking and broken glass, Calihye found that her leg would not support her.
She was dying, she knew. Miserable and alone in the biting cold, naked and bleeding before the world. She held no hope, and didn't want to live, anyway. She had failed, in all ways.
She had fallen in love with the man who had killed her dear Parissus, and that discordant reality had broken her. When faced with the thought of leaving her home, or of saying farewell to Entreri, she had found the options untenable.
So she had made her own course, reverting to her fierce desire for revenge, using her despair at the loss of her dearest love Parissus as armor against the heartbreak Entreri was about to inflict upon her by leaving her.
And she had failed.
So she was dying, and she was glad of it. She crawled through the glass in search of a suitable shard, agony burning, cold wind biting. She found a sizable chunk, elongated like a dagger's blade, and with it clutched in hand, she crawled around the side of the inn, into the alleyway where she could die, free from the intrusion of any curious eyes.
She barely made it in, and fell back into a sitting position against the wall. Her breathing came in rasps, and she coughed up some blood. She realized she didn't even have to put the shard to her throat to end it all; the fall had done the work.
But death from her wounds would be too slow, and it hurt too much.
Calihye lifted the point of the shard to her throat. She thought of Entreri, of their lovemaking, but she brushed it away. She pictured Parissus instead, and imagined her waiting in death, arms wide to embrace her dear Calihye again.
Calihye closed her eyes and stabbed.
Or tried to, but a stronger hand clasped her wrist and held it steady. Calihye opened her eyes, and they went all the wider when she realized that a dark elf held her wrist, and that other drow were about, all leering at her. In that instant of terror, the fog and the pain abandoned her.
"We are not finished with you quite yet," she heard from the back of the group, and the dark elves parted to reveal one of the drow she had just seen in the room above, the one Entreri had spoken of before and had named as Kimmuriel.
"Perhaps in time we will allow you to take your life," Kimmuriel said to her. "Perhaps we will even do it for you, though I doubt you will enjoy our technique."
A pair of dark elves forced her to her feet and a twist of her wrist made her drop the glass shard.
"But then, perhaps you will enjoy the Underdark even less," said Kimmuriel. "Fail in your duties, and we will be happy to determine which is the worst fate for Lady Calihye."
"Duties?" the stunned woman managed to whisper.
The drow dragged her away.
CHAPTER 20
DREAMS AND MEMORIES
He went looking for her," Jarlaxle said to Kimmuriel when the pair met up the next day in a shaded glen near the appointed rendezvous with the dragon sisters. Not far away, Entreri and Athrogate sat about a tumble of boulders in the middle of a rocky lea.
Kimmuriel had joined them, intending to prevent the conversation from veering toward Calihye. Jarlaxle, as if reading his mind, had led with a reference to the wretched human woman.
"It is typical of humans, is it not?" the psionicist answered. "To throw a lover through a glass window, then seek her out in remorse? Our way is much more straightforward and honest, I think. No drow matron would expel a male and let him live."
"With notable exception."
"Notable," Kimmuriel agreed. "Of course, in the instance to which you refer, Matron Baenre had little choice in the matter. Is it true that the Secondboy of House Baenre was the one commanded to rid the House of the cursed Jarlaxle, who lay on the altar without a mark despite the repeated stabbing of the mighty matron mother herself?"
"You know the tale," Jarlaxle replied.
"Yes, but I would like to hear it as often as you would deign to tell it. To see your mother's face twisted in exquisite frustration and horror when her blade would not bite into the infant! And then to see her expression of the sheerest terror, and that of Triel as well, when Secondboy Doquaio whisked you from the slab! He must have looked much like that bloody creature in Artemis's room when the infant Jarlaxle unwittingly released the captured energy into him."
Kimmuriel took hope at Jarlaxle's chuckle, an indication, perhaps, that he had deflected the conversation from Calihye.
"And of course, then Jarlaxle was no longer the third son, and no longer a fitting sacrifice," he rambled on.
"I haven't seen Kimmuriel bantering this much since you wagged your hands in trying to alleviate a cramp in your forearm," Jarlaxle said, and the psionicist's lips went tight.
"She was gone from the alley," Jarlaxle said. "She didn't crawl far, for the blood trail ended—and rather abruptly, and right near a place where the blood had pooled. She was sitting there, against the wall, of course, before she was taken away."
"Lady Calihye has made powerful enemies, and powerful friends," said Kimmuriel. "Perhaps it is a good thing that Artemis Entreri is leaving the realm, and quickly."
"And she has made friends of convenience," Jarlaxle remarked, staring his associate right in the eye. "Who will turn on her, no doubt, at the slightest hint of betrayal."
Kimmuriel didn't deny it.
"This place is worth the trouble of Bregan D'aerthe," Jarlaxle went on. "There is much to be found here, such as the bloodstone, a mineral we cannot easily procure in the Underdark. With Knellict serving our… your cause, you will find easy access to it and other valuables."
"You have explained it all, many times."
Jarlaxle clapped Kimmuriel on the shoulder, and the stiff psionicist just stared at him with awkward curiosity. Kimmuriel did intend to use Calihye and Knellict to create a network in the Bloodstone Lands, but in truth it was more for the preservation of Jarlaxle's reputation than for any monetary gains or increase of power the psionicist expected to make. Jarlaxle's reputation couldn't withstand another disaster like the one in Calimport, so close on the heels of that debacle, Kimmuriel believed, and the last thing he wanted was for Bregan D'aerthe to turn away from Jarlaxle. For Jarlaxle would one day return to Menzoberranzan and resume his mantle of leadership. Bregan D'aerthe needed that in order to keep Matron Mother Triel Baenre at proper distance and in proper humor, and more than that, Kimmuriel needed it. His pursuits of the purely intellectual were not served well by the responsibilities of maintaining Jarlaxle's band. He longed for the day when Jarlaxle returned and he could turn his attention more fully to the illithids and the mysteries of their expansive mental powers.
And turn his attention away from the concerns of the mercenary band, and away from protecting the increasingly renegade Jarlaxle.
"I know that you doubt," Jarlaxle said, again as if reading his mind, which the psionicist knew to be impossible. Kimmuriel was far too mentally shielded for any such intrusions. "And I am glad that you do, for else who would force me to question my every twist and turn?"
"Your own common sense?"
Jarlaxle laughed aloud. "My vision is correct," he insisted.
"Menzoberranzan demands our attention at all times."
Jarlaxle nodded. "But the day will come when the contacts we—the contacts you secure on the surface will prove invaluable to the matron mothers."