But a thin, wooden wand is of little use in parrying a metal blade.
Catti-brie saw nothing but her target, felt nothing in that instant but the necessity of her duty. Her sword snapped through the feeble wand and plunged home.
She looked at Sydney’s face for the first time. Time itself seemed to halt.
Sydney’s expression had not changed, her eyes and mouth still open in denial of this possibility.
Catti-brie watched in helpless horror as the last flickers of hope and ambition faded from Sydney’s eyes. Warm blood gushed over Catti-brie’s arm. Sydney’s final gasp of breath seemed impossibly loud.
And Sydney slid, ever so slowly, from the blade and into the realm of death.
A single, vicious cut from the mithril axe severed one of Bok’s arms, and Wulfgar fell free. He landed on one knee, barely on the edge of consciousness. His huge lungs reflexively sucked in a volume of revitalizing oxygen.
Sensing the dwarf’s presence clearly, but without eyes to focus upon its target, the headless golem lunged confusedly at Bruenor and missed badly.
Bruenor had no understanding of the magical forces that guided the monster, or kept it alive, and he had little desire to test his fighting skills against it. He saw another way. “Come on, ye filthy mold of orc-dung,” he teased, moving toward the gorge. In a more serious tone, he called to Wulfgar, “Get yer hammer ready, boy.”
Bruenor had to repeat the request over and over, and by the time Wulfgar began to hear it, Bok had backed the dwarf right up to the ledge.
Only half aware of his actions, Wulfgar found the warhammer returned to his hand.
Bruenor stopped, his heels clear of the stone floor, a smile on his face that accepted death. The golem paused, too, somehow understanding that Bruenor had nowhere left to run.
Bruenor dropped to the floor as Bok lunged forward, Aegis-fang slammed into its back, pushing it over the dwarf. The monster fell silently, with no ears to hear the sound of the air rushing past.
Catti-brie was still standing motionless over the mage’s body when Wulfgar and Bruenor entered the anteroom. Sydney’s eyes and mouth remained open in silent denial, a futile attempt to belie the pool of blood that deepened around her body.
Lines of tears wetted Catti-brie’s face. She had felled goblinoids and gray dwarves, once an ogre and a tundra yeti, but never before had she killed a human. Never before had she looked into eyes akin to her own and watched the light leave them. Never before had she understood the complexity of her victim, or even that the life she had taken existed outside the present field of battle.
Wulfgar moved to her and embraced her in full sympathy while Bruenor cut the halfling free of the remaining strands of webbing.
The dwarf had trained Catti-brie to fight and had reveled in her victories against orcs and the like, foul beasts that deserved death by all accounts. He had always hoped, though, that his beloved Catti-brie would be spared this experience.
Again Mithril Hall loomed as the source of his friends’ suffering.
Distant howls echoed from beyond the open door behind them. Catti-brie slid the sword into its sheath, not even thinking to wipe the blood from it, and steadied herself. “The pursuit is not ended,” she stated flatly. “It is past time we leave.”
She led them from the room then, but left a part of herself, the pedestal of her innocence, behind.
23. The Broken Helm
Air rolled across its black wings like the continuous rumble of distant thunder as the dragon swept out of the passageway and into Garumn’s Gorge, using the same exit that Drizzt and Entreri had passed just a few moments before. The two, a few dozen yards higher on the wall, held perfectly still, not even daring to breathe. They knew that the dark lord of Mithril Hall had come.
The black cloud that was Shimmergloom rushed by them, unnoticing, and soared down the length of the chasm. Drizzt, in the lead, scrambled up the side of the gorge, clawing at the stone to find whatever holds he could and trusting to them fully in his desperation. He had heard the sounds of battle far above him when he first entered the chasm, and knew that even if his friends had been victorious thus far, they would soon be met by a foe mightier than anything they had ever faced.
Drizzt was determined to stand beside them.
Entreri matched the drow’s pace, wanting to keep close to him, though he hadn’t yet formulated his exact plan of action.
Wulfgar and Catti-brie supported each other as they walked. Regis kept beside Bruenor, concerned for the dwarf’s wounds, even if the dwarf was not. “Keep yer worries for yer own hide, Rumblebelly,” he kept snapping at the halfling, though Regis could see that the depth of Bruenor’s gruffness had diminished. The dwarf seemed somewhat embarrassed for the way he had acted earlier. “Me wounds’ll heal; don’t ye be thinking ye’ve gotten rid of me so easy! There’ll be time for looking to them once we’ve put this place behind us.”
Regis had stopped walking, a puzzled expression on his face. Bruenor looked back at him, confused, too, and wondered if he had somehow offended the halfling again. Wulfgar and Catti-brie stopped behind Regis and waited for some indication of the trouble, not knowing what had been said between him and the dwarf.
“What’s yer grief?” Bruenor demanded.
Regis was not bothered by anything Bruenor had said, nor with the dwarf at all at that moment. It was Shimmergloom that he had sensed, a sudden coldness that had entered the cavern, a foulness that insulted the companions’ caring bond with its mere presence.
Bruenor was about to speak again, when he, too, felt the coming of the dragon of darkness. He looked to the gorge just as the tip of the black cloud broke the chasm’s rim, far down to the left beyond the bridge, but speeding toward them.
Catti-brie steered Wulfgar to the side, then he was pulling her with all his speed. Regis scurried back toward the anteroom.
Bruenor remembered.
The dragon of darkness, the ultimately foul monster that had decimated his kin and sent them fleeing for the smaller corridors of the upper level. His mithril axe raised, his feet frozen to the stone below them, he waited.
The blackness dipped under the arch of the stone bridge, then rose to the ledge. Spearlike talons gripped the rim of the gorge, and Shimmergloom reared up before Bruenor in all its horrid splendor, the usurping worm facing the rightful King of Mithril Hall.
“Bruenor!” Regis cried, drawing his little mace and turning back to the cavern, knowing that the best he could do would be to die beside his doomed friend.
Wulfgar threw Catti-brie behind him and spun back on the dragon.
The worm, eyes locked with the dwarf’s unyielding stare, did not even notice Aegis-fang spinning toward it, nor the fearless charge of the huge barbarian.
The mighty warhammer struck home against the raven black scales, but was harmlessly turned away. Infuriated that someone had interrupted the moment of its victory, Shimmergloom snapped its glare at Wulfgar.
And it breathed.
Absolute blackness enveloped Wulfgar and sapped the strength from his bones. He felt himself falling, forever falling, though there seemed to be no stone to catch him.
Catti-brie screamed and rushed to him, oblivious to her own danger as she plunged into the black cloud of Shimmergloom’s breath.
Bruenor trembled in outrage, for his long-dead kin and for his friend. “Get yerself from me home!” he roared at Shimmergloom, then charged head-on and dove into the dragon, his axe flailing wildly, trying to drive the beast over the edge. The mithril weapon’s razored edge had more effect on the scales than the warhammer, but the dragon fought back.