"Greetings," Entreri said.
Jarlaxle, curiously wearing no eye patch this day, tipped his broad-brimmed hat and asked, "Why have you come?"
Entreri looked at him as if surprised by the question, but turned the not-so-secret notion in his head to one appearing as an ironic twist: Why have I come indeed!
Jarlaxle's uncharacteristic scowl told the assassin that the Crystal Shard had heard those thoughts and had communicated them instantly to its wielder. No doubt, the artifact was now telling Jarlaxle to dispose of Entreri, a suggestion the mercenary leader was obviously resisting.
"Your course is that of the fool," Jarlaxle remarked, struggling with the words as his internal battle heightened. "There is nothing here for you."
Entreri settled back on his heels, assuming a pensive posture. "Then perhaps I should leave," he said.
Jarlaxle didn't blink.
Hardly expecting one as cunning as Jarlaxle to be caught off guard, Entreri exploded into motion anyway, a forward dive and roll that brought him up in a run straight at his opponent.
Jarlaxle grabbed his belt pouch-he didn't even have to take the artifact out-and extended his other hand toward the assassin. Out shot a line of pure white energy.
Entreri caught it with his red-stitched gauntlet, took the energy in, and held it there. He held some of it, anyway, for it was too great a power to be completely held at bay. The assassin felt the pain, the intense agony, though he understood that only a small fraction of the shard's attack had gotten through.
How powerful was that item? he wondered, awestruck and thinking that he might be in serious trouble.
Afraid that the energy would melt the gauntlet or otherwise consume it, Entreri turned the magic right back out. He didn't throw it at Jarlaxle, for he hardly wanted to kill the drow. Entreri loosed it on the wall to the dark elf s side. It exploded in a blistering, blinding, thunderous blow that left both man and dark elf staggering to the side.
Entreri kept his course straight, dodging and parrying with his blade as Jarlaxle's arm pumped, sending forth a stream of daggers. The assassin blocked one, got nicked by a second, and squirmed about two more. He then came on fast, thinking to tackle the lighter dark elf.
He missed cleanly, slamming the wall behind Jarlaxle.
The drow was wearing a displacement cloak, or perhaps it was that ornamental hat, Entreri mused, but only
briefly, for he understood that he was vulnerable and came right around, bringing Charon's Claw in a broad, ash- making sweep that cut the view between the opponents.
Hardly slowing, Entreri crashed straight through that visual barrier, his straightforwardness confusing Jarlaxle long enough for him to get by-and properly gauge his attack angle this time-close enough to work his own form of magic.
With skills beyond those of nearly any man alive, Entreri sheathed Charon's Claw, drew forth his dagger in his gloved hand, and pulled out his replica pouch with his other. He spun past Jarlaxle, deftly cutting the scrambling drow's belt pouch and catching it in the same gloved hand, while dropping the false pouch at the mercenary's feet.
Jarlaxle hit him with a series of sharp blows then, with what felt like an iron maul. Entreri went rolling away, glancing back just in time to pick off another dagger, then to catch the next in his side. Groaning and doubled over in pain, Entreri scrambled away from his adversary, who held, he now saw, a small warhammer.
"Do you think I need the Crystal Shard to destroy you?" Jarlaxle confidently asked, stooping over to retrieve the pouch. He held up the warhammer then and whispered something. It shrank into a tiny replica that Jarlaxle tucked up under the band of his great hat.
Entreri hardly heard him and hardly saw the move. The pain, though the dagger hadn't gone in dangerously far, was searing. Even worse, a new song was beginning to play in his head, a demand that he surrender himself to the power of the artifact he now possessed.
"I have a hundred ways to kill you, my former friend," Jarlaxle remarked. "Perhaps Crenshinibon will prove the most efficient in this, and in truth, I have little desire to torture you."
Jarlaxle clasped the pouch then, and a curious expression crossed his face.
Still, Entreri could hardly register any of Jarlaxle's words or movements. The artifact assailed him powerfully, reaching into his mind and showing such overwhelming images of complete despair that the mighty assassin nearly fell to his knees sobbing.
Jarlaxle shrugged and rubbed the moisture from his hand on his cloak, and produced yet another of his endless stream of daggers from his enchanted bracer. He brought it back, lining up the killing throw on the seemingly defenseless man.
"Please tell me why I must do this," the drow asked. "Was it the Crystal Shard calling out to you? Your own overblown ambitions, perhaps?"
The images of despair assailed him, a sense of hopelessness more profound than anything Entreri had ever known. One thought managed to sort itself out in the battered mind of Artemis Entreri: Why didn't the Crystal Shard summon forth its energy and consume him then and there? Because it cannot! Entreri's willpower answered. Because I am now the wielder, something that the Crystal Shard does not enjoy at all! "Tell me!" Jarlaxle demanded.
Entreri summoned up all his mental strength, every ounce of discipline he had spent decades grooming, and told the artifact to cease, simply commanded it to shut down all connection to him. The sentient artifact resisted, but only for a moment. Entreri's wall was built of pure discipline and pure anger, and the Crystal Shard was closed off as completely as it had been during those days when Drizzt Do'Urden had carried it. The denial that Drizzt, a goodly ranger, had brought upon the artifact had been wrought of simple morality, while Entreri's was wrought of simple strength of will, but to the same effect. The shard was shut down.
And not an instant too soon, Entreri realized as he blinked open his eyes and saw a stream of daggers coming at him. He dodged and parried with his own dagger, hardly picking anything off cleanly, but deflecting the missiles so that they did not, at least, catch him squarely. One hit him in the face, high on his cheekbone and just under his eye, but he had altered the spin enough so that it slammed in pommel first and not point first. Another grazed his upper arm, cutting a long slash.
"I could have killed you with the return bolt!" Entreri managed to cry out.
Jarlaxle's arm pumped again, this dagger going low and clipping the dancing assassin's foot. The words did register, though, and the mercenary leader paused, his arm cocked, another dagger in hand, ready to throw. He stared at Entreri curiously.
"I could have struck you dead with your own attack," Entreri growled out through teeth gritted in pain.
"You feared you would destroy the shard," Jarlaxle reasoned.
"The shard's energy cannot destroy the shard!" Entreri snapped back.
"You came in here to kill me," Jarlaxle declared.
"No!"
"To take the Crystal Shard, whatever the cost!" Jarlaxle countered.
Entreri, leaning heavily back against the wall now, his legs growing weak from pain, mustered all his determination and looked the drow in the eye-though he did so with only one eye, for his other had already swollen tightly closed. "I came in here," he said slowly, accentuating every word, "making you believe, through the artifact, that such was my intent."
Jarlaxle's face screwed up in one of his very rare expressions of confusion, and his dagger arm began to slip lower. "What are you about?" he asked, his anger seemingly displaced now by honest curiosity.
"They are coming for you," Entreri vaguely explained. "You have to be prepared."