"Leave your gold and begone!" the blessed voice proper demanded. "It will purchase your life, and nothing more. And be glad that I am in a generous mood!"
"Go to your balcony," Entreri retorted. "Look out over them, Foul Voice Improper. How many are of your seed? Like myself, perhaps?"
"Remove him!" one of the priests before the throne yelled, but Yinochek stood up suddenly and shouted above them all, "Enough!"
"You have tried my patience to its limits," he went on. "What is your…"
Entreri's scalp itched. He glanced around, measuring his strides, calculating the time his movements might bring. He stopped, as did Yinochek, as the door behind him banged open, forcefully, as if it had been kicked from up high.
"Wait! Your pardon and one moment, Blessed Voice Proper," said Devout Gositek, scrambling into the room. He held a wide-brimmed, feathered hat—Jarlaxle's hat.
"There is much more to this than our friend here, who consorts with elves who are much more than they seem," the man went on. As he finished he pulled something—a black fabric disk—from out of the great hat. "Much more than they seem," he said again.
Entreri's jaw dropped open at the reference, at the clue. He had his distraction.
Yinochek sat back down. "How dare you intrude, Devout Gositek?" he asked.
Gositek held up the disk of fabric, eliciting many curious stares.
Entreri leaped out to the side and smashed the guard across the face plate of his helmet with the sack of gold, launching the man to the floor. As he fell away, Entreri yanked the guard's halberd free, half turned, and launched it into the gut of the guard opposite, bending him double. His feet already moving, the assassin charged the throne, and when one of the three priests managed to react quickly enough to block his way, he threw the bag of gold into the man's face. Coins flew, and blood, and the priest fell back—even harder as Entreri planted a bare foot on his chest and leaped across.
He covered the distance to the throne in one stride, reaching up and pulling the slip-knot in the wire set under his hair. He swung it around as he went, catching the free end with his other hand, and with his fists outstretched before him, bore down on his prey. Yinochek lifted both hands defensively, but Entreri leaped headlong above the attempt to block him, snapped his hands down when they were behind the priest's defenses, then rolled over Yinochek's shoulder. Somersaulting and twisting as he went, Entreri brought his arm up and over his head so that as he descended he was back-to-back with the priest, the wire—the garrote—tight across Yinochek's throat.
Entreri used his momentum to yank the man away from the throne, hoping to snap his neck cleanly and be done with it.
But Yinochek was more stubborn and quicker than that, and he managed to come around with the flow of momentum. When it untangled, he remained very much alive, though Entreri was right behind him, tugging hard on the vicious wire, digging it into Yinochek's throat.
It would take too long, Entreri feared, expecting the guards and the priests to rush over him.
When he looked back, however, he pressed on with determination and hope that it would end then and there.
Even as Entreri had first started his move, even as he had lunged to the right at the guard, the man on the carpet behind him, Devout Gositek by all appearances, flicked the oblong piece of fabric through the air. It elongated as it twirled, widening to several feet in diameter, and slapped against the side of one of the immense pillars lining the hall.
And it was no longer a piece of fabric at all, but a magical, portable hole, a dimensional pocket. From within it, almost as soon as it hit the wall, there came a tumult and a shout.
"Snort!"
The guards nearest the hole fell back as flames erupted from the blackness, and out leaped a red war pig, snorting fire, and with a hairy and no less fiery dwarf astride it. He passed between the nearest guards, morningstars whirling left and right, and landed a solid hit on both, launching them aside.
All across the room, guards and priests finally moved to respond, and yet another surprise caught them and held them momentarily, as Devout Gositek reached a hand under his chin and tore off the magical mask, revealing himself in all of his ebon-skinned glory.
Jarlaxle threw his hat to the floor, plucking free and tossing the magical feather as he did. His hands went into a rolling spin, summoning daggers into them from his enchanted bracers and launching them out in a steady line at the nearest guard. Even with those movements, the drow kept his wits about him enough to glance across the way, where Entreri knelt behind the blessed voice proper, who sat on the floor and clawed furiously at the assassin and at the wire that dug into his throat.
With but a thought, Jarlaxle summoned his innate drow magical abilities and brought a globe of darkness over the pair.
The armor worn by soldiers of the Protector's House was beautifully crafted and with few vulnerable areas, and so Jarlaxle's barrage did little real damage to the man. As that finally dawned on the sentry, he roared and lowered his halberd.
Jarlaxle snapped his wrists alternately, elongated daggers into swords, and even as one came into being, he parried across, turning the halberd, and leaped forward and to the side, right past the stumbling man.
The drow executed a perfect spin, and launched a backhanded uppercut that brought his fine blade under the rim of the guard's great helm, driving up into his skull.
Jarlaxle retracted it almost immediately and leaped away, gaining some time by finding Athrogate's swath of destruction, as the sentry went to the floor, flailing furiously and grabbing at the vicious wound.
Artemis Entreri understood Jarlaxle's tactical meaning in summoning the globe of darkness, of course, but it didn't suit him.
Not then.
He wanted to see Yinochek's face.
He rolled his legs under him and heaved backward, dragging the man out of the globe. As he came through the back limit of the darkness, he saw one of the priests, Devout Tyre, following his every move, the man's hands waving in spellcasting. Very familiar with clerical magic, Entreri knew what was coming, and he was not caught the least bit off guard as waves of compelling magical energy washed over him, an enchantment that could hold a man fast in place as surely as any paralysis.
Indeed, Entreri felt his arms go rigid, felt his body begin to deceive him.
But he conjured an image of Shanali, that last sight he had of her, and he imagined the man before him atop her, rutting like an animal, and thinking her no more than that.
His arms crossed more powerfully and Yinochek gave a pathetic wheeze.
But on came the other three priests and a pair of guards, and behind them lumbered… a gigantic bird?
Snort stomped and flames rolled out in a perfect circle, distracting the sentries, who were then swatted away by the wild Athrogate. His mighty legs clamping and twisting, he turned the boar at the next bunch to repeat the maneuver.
But the guards, well-trained men all, accepted the burst of flames and held their lowered halberds steady. Athrogate managed to drive one aside, but the other jabbed in at him, catching him just above the side seam in his metal breastplate. The fine tip drove through the leather under-padding and into the dwarf's armpit, and he had to throw himself back, letting Snort run right out from under him.
He fell hard to the floor, snapping the shaft of the halberd, but arched his small back and jerked his muscles in a single sudden spasm that propelled him back to his feet to meet the charge. Athrogate took some hope in the fact that the man's halberd had snapped, but it was short lived as the sentry, in one fluid motion, pulled a sword and slid a shield from his back. The man closed as if to run the dwarf right over.