Jarlaxle tipped his hat to them as he stepped over them to the center door. He took a deep breath and he pushed through, taking care to softly close the door behind him. He had come into a large cellar full of low archways, connecting the massive stone supports for the castle. Fortunately, Caer Gromph hadn’t sunk its roots into this portion of the castle.
Jarlaxle moved slowly, keeping close to the stone buttresses, trying to get a feel of the dusty and ancient catacombs. The smell of decay hung thick in here, and many crypts lined the walls, open to the main area, their skeletal remains lying in a state of eternal rest, many with arms crossed, others with bones fallen away. Rusty swords and tarnished crowns, tattered and decayed robes and crawly things flitted around the edges of Jarlaxle’s lowlight vision, but the gloom was too complete for him to get an accurate view of the place. He crouched beside one of the low archways and pulled a little ceramic ball out of his belt pouch. He brought it up to his lips and whispered the command, then tossed it deeper into the catacomb.
The ball rolled and bounced and burst into flame as it settled, spitting sparks as it lit the dust around it, and flickering with the intensity of a torch, casting strange shadows all around.
“Come and play, pretty lady,” Jarlaxle said quietly.
He froze in place and listened, and thought something or someone had shuffled behind another low archway not so far from him.
“Do be reasonable,” he said, moving that way, but his words were more of an afterthought, for his concentration surely lay elsewhere.
He came up near that low archway and paused, shadows dancing.
Suddenly, one of those shadows wasn’t a shadow, but the medusa leaping out at him as he spun around to meet the charge, her red eyes wide, her killing gaze falling over him.
Jarlaxle saw her in all of her awful glory, and he knew without doubt that only his eyepatch had saved him in that instance, that without its powerful dweomer, his skin would already be turning to stone. He called upon his innate drow abilities, his affinity to the magical emanations of the Underdark, and brought forth a globe of impenetrable darkness around him and the medusa, stealing her most powerful weapon.
At the same time, his left hand pumped, his bracer feeding him daggers to throw out at his foe, and he caught a dagger in his right hand as well, and snapped his wrist to elongate the weapon into a sword, which he put out before him, hoping to keep the medusa and her hair of living, poisonous snakes back from him.
When he didn’t strike her with his prodding weapon, he thrust out further, and still hit nothing but the empty air, and he knew that his foe had slipped aside.
Totally blind and totally helpless were not the same thing with Jarlaxle. He had committed the area to crystal-clear memory, and now he moved without hesitation, slipping down and around to get under the archway, an opening no higher than his shoulders. He came out of the magical darkness as soon as he crossed under, throwing his back against the buttress stone.
He nearly faltered, however, for from this new vantage, he noted before him the man he had called a friend for decades,
Artemis Entreri stood perfectly still, of course, though he had surely been in the midst of movement when he had looked at the medusa. He was angled and up against Dahlia’s side, as if trying to knock her aside, and it didn’t take much imagination for Jarlaxle to picture the scene that had led to this tragedy.
The distraction almost cost Jarlaxle dearly, for he noted the pursuit of the medusa only at the last instant. He leaped away and spun around to face his nemesis, but not to look at her, instead leveling a wand at the level of her head. He listened intently to the hissing approach of her snakes as she moved into range to strike at him as he spoke the command word, then breathed a sigh of relief when that hissing abruptly ceased and he heard the medusa stumble backward.
Jarlaxle dared open his eye to see the powerful creature struggled and staggering, her head engulfing in a blob of viscous goo, and her hands, too, had become fast stuck as she had tried to scrape the sticky stuff away.
One of the snakes wriggled free of the goo, waving at Jarlaxle menacingly, though the medusa was too far away for it to strike at him.
Still, that freed serpent might guide his foe, he realized, uncertain of the relationship between a medusa and those snakes, or whether she might, perhaps, see through the creature’s eyes. So he fired another glob at her, this one capturing her midsection and pinning her back against the side of the stone archway.
He thought to go and finish her off, but held back, figuring that perhaps Lord Draygo would be more agreeable in their future encounters if he let the wretched and powerful creature live. He watched for a few more moments, until he was certain that she was truly and fully caught.
Jarlaxle turned to the statues, and quickly located the third, that of Afafrenfere, not so far away. From another of his many pouches, the drow mercenary produced a large jug and set it on the floor halfway between the monk and the other two.
He took a deep breath, unsure as to whether this would work. Even Gromph, who had fashioned it for him, could offer no guarantees. And even if it did work, the archmage had warned, the conversion of flesh to stone, then back to flesh, brought with it such a tremendous shock to the body that many would not survive one or the other transmutations.
“Entreri and Dahlia,” the drow whispered to himself, trying to garner his resolve. “Hearty souls.” He looked at the monk and could only shrug, for he cared little for the stranger.
He popped the cork off the jug and stepped back as smoke began to pour forth, filling the area and obscuring his vision. His first indication that his powerful brother had succeeded was the sound of jostling, as Entreri and Dahlia, flesh once more, stumbled and tumbled, trying to extract themselves from the tangle.
Entreri cried out, “No!” and Dahlia merely cried out, and from the other side, the monk leaped into view, landing in a defensive crouch, one arm up to shield his eyes, the other cocked to strike.
“Be at ease, my friends,” Jarlaxle said, stepping forward and scooping up the jug as the fog began to dissipate. “The battle is won.”
“You!” Entreri cried, clearly horrified and outraged, and launched himself at Jarlaxle.
“Artemis!” Dahlia interrupted, and interrupted, too, Entreri’s charge, blocking his way.
“You are quite welcome,” Jarlaxle said dryly.
“Who are you?” Dahlia demanded.
“Jarlaxle!” Entreri answered before the drow could.
“At your service,” Jarlaxle agreed, sweeping low in a bow. “Indeed, already at your service,” he added, and he snapped his finger, breaking another magical ceramic torch. He dropped it to the floor as it flared to life, revealing the stuck medusa clearly to the others. Still she struggled against the stone buttress, one menacing snake coiled atop her goo-covered head.
“You would ask for gratitude,” Entreri spat at him.
“Call us even, then,” Jarlaxle replied. “Or leave our squabble for another time and place, when we are safely away from Lord Draygo and his minions.”
Dahlia looked back at him, clearly alarmed, as did Afafrenfere.
“Come,” Jarlaxle bade them. “It is time to go. You have been here a long time.”
“How is this possible?” Dahlia asked, glancing all around at the unfamiliar catacomb. “We were in the room, the checkerboard floor. Drizzt and Effron fell-”
“They are well,” Jarlaxle assured her. “They have already escaped back to Luskan.”
“How long?” Afafrenfere asked.
“The three of you have served as decorations for Castle Draygo for many months,” Jarlaxle explained. “For more than a year. It is the spring of 1466 on Toril.”
Three stunned expressions came back at him, for even Entreri seemed sobered by the news.