All movement stopped suddenly. The assassin, with one arm twisted out wide and the other behind Drizzt's scimitar arm, was helpless to stop the ranger's momentum if Drizzt decided to plunge the blade through Entreri's throat.
Growling and trembling, as close to the very edge of control as he had ever been, Drizzt held the blade back. "So what have we proven?" he demanded, voice full of venom, his lavender orbs locked in a wicked stare with Entreri's dark eyes. "Because my head connected in a favorable place with yours, limiting your vision, I am the better fighter?"
"Finish it!" Entreri snarled back.
Drizzt growled again and twisted Entreri's dagger arm more, bending the assassin's wrist so that the dagger fell to the floor. "For all those you have killed, and all those you surely will, I should kill you," Drizzt said, but he knew even as he said the words, and Entreri did, too, that he could not press home his blade, not now. In that awful moment Drizzt lamented not going through with the move in the first instant, before he had found the time to consider his actions.
But now he could not, so with a sudden explosion of motion he let go of Entreri's arm and drove his open palm hard into the assassin's face, disengaging them and knocking Entreri staggering backward.
"Damn you, Jarlaxle, have you had your pleasure?" Drizzt cried, turning about to see the mercenary and his companions, for Jarlaxle had opened the door.
Drizzt came forward determinedly, as if he meant to run right over Jarlaxle, but a noise behind him stopped him, for Entreri came on, yelling.
Yelling. The significance of that was lost on Drizzt in that moment as he spun about, right to left, his free right arm brushing out and across, lifting Entreri's leading arm, which held again that awful dagger. And around came Drizzt's left arm, scimitar leading, in a stab as Entreri crashed in, a stab that should have plunged the weapon into the assassin's chest to its hilt.
The two came together and Drizzt's eyes widened indeed, for somehow, somehow, Entreri's very skin had repelled the blow.
But Artemis Entreri, his body tingling with the energy of the absorbed hit, with the psionics Kimmuriel had suddenly given back to him, surely understood, and in a purely reactive move, without any conscious thought-for if the tormented man had considered it he would have loosed the energy back into himself-Entreri reached out and clasped Drizzt's chest and gave him back his blow with equal force.
His hand sank into Drizzt's chest even as Drizzt, blood bubbling from the wound, fell to the ground.
Out on the landing time seemed to freeze, stuck fast in that awful, awful moment. Guenhwyvar roared and leaped into the translucent wall, but merely bounced away. Outraged, roaring wildly, the cat went back at the wall, claws screeching against the unyielding pane.
Bruenor, too, went into a fighting frenzy, hacking futilely with his axe while Regis stood dumbfounded, saying, "No, it cannot be," over and over.
And there stood Catti-brie, wavering back and forth, her jaw drooping open, her eyes locked on that horrible sight. She suffered through every agonizing second as Entreri's empowered hand melted into Drizzt's chest, as the lifeblood of her dearest friend, of the ranger she had come to love so dearly, spurted from him. She watched the strength leave his legs, the buckling knees, and the sinking, sinking as Entreri guided him to the floor, and the sinking, sinking, of her own heart, an emptiness she had felt before, when she had seen Wulfgar fall with the yochlol.
And even worse it seemed for her this time.
"What have I done?" the assassin wailed, falling to his knees beside the drow. He turned an evil glare over Jarlaxle. "What have you done?"
"I gave you your fight and showed you the truth," Jarlaxle calmly replied. "Of yourself and your skills. But I am not finished with you. I came to you for my own purposes, not your own. Having done this for you, I demand that you perform for me."
"No! No!" the assassin cried, reaching down furiously to try to stem the spurting blood. "Not like this!"
Jarlaxle looked to Kimmuriel and nodded. The psionicist gripped Entreri with a mental hold, a telekinetic force that lifted Entreri from Drizzt and dragged him behind Kimmuriel as the psionicist headed out of the room, back down the stairs.
Entreri thrashed and cursed, aiming his outrage at Jarlaxle but eyeing Drizzt, who lay very still on the floor. Indeed he had been granted his fight and, indeed, as he should have foreseen, it had proven nothing. He had lost-or would have, had not Kimmuriel intervened-yet he was the one who had lived.
Why, then, was he so angry? Why did he want at that moment, to put his dagger across Jarlaxle's slender throat?
Kimmuriel hauled him away.
"He fought beautifully," Rai'gy remarked to Jarlaxle, indicating Drizzt, the blood flowing much lighter now, a pool of it all about his prone and very still form. "I understand now why Dantrag Baenre is dead."
Jarlaxle nodded and smiled. "I have never seen Drizzt Do'Urden's equal," he admitted, "unless it is Artemis Entreri. Do you understand now why I chose that one."
"He is drow in everything but skin color," Rai'gy said with a laugh.
An explosion rocked the tower.
"Catti-brie and her marvelous bow," Jarlaxle explained, looking to the landing where only Guenhwyvar remained, roaring and clawing futilely at the unyielding glass. "They saw, of course, every bit of it. I should go and speak with
them before they bring the place down around us."
With a thought to the crystal shard, Jarlaxle turned that
wall in front of Guenhwyvar opaque once more.
Then he nodded to the still form of Drizzt Do'Urden and
walked out of the room.
EPILOGUE
He is sulking," Kimmuriel remarked, joining Jaraxle sometime later in the main chamber of the lower floor. "But at least he has stopped swearing to cut off your head."
Jarlaxle, who had just witnessed one of the most enjoyable days of his long life, laughed yet again. "He will come to his senses and will at last be free of the shadow of Drizzt Do'Urden. For that Artemis Entreri will thank me openly." He paused and considered his own words. "Or at least," the mercenary corrected, "he will… silently thank me."
"He tried to die," Kimmuriel stated flatly. "When he went at Drizzt's back with the dagger he led the way with a shout that alerted the outcast. He tried to die and we, and I, at your bidding, stopped that."
"Artemis Entreri will no doubt find other opportunities for stupidity if he holds that course," the mercenary leader replied with a shrug. "And we will not need him forever."
Drizzt Do'Urden came down the stairs then in tattered clothing, stretching his sore arm, but otherwise seeming not too badly injured.
"Rai'gy will have to pray to Lady Lolth for a hundred years to regain her favor after using one of her bestowed healing spells upon your dying form," Jarlaxle remarked with a laugh. He nodded to Kimmuriel, who bowed and left the room.
"May she take him to her side for those prayers," Drizzt replied dryly. His witty demeanor did not hold, though, could not hold, in the face of all that he had just come through. He eyed Jarlaxle with all seriousness. "Why did you save me?"
"Future favors?" Jarlaxle asked more than stated.
"Forget it."
Yet again Jarlaxle found himself laughing. "I envy you, Drizzt Do'Urden," he replied honestly. "Pride played no part in your fight, did it?"
Drizzt shrugged, not quite understanding.
"No, you were free of that self-defeating emotion," Jarlaxle remarked. "You did not need to prove yourself Artemis Entreri's better. Indeed, I do envy you, to have found such inner peace and confidence."
"You still have not answered my question."
"A measure of respect, I suppose," Jarlaxle answered with a shrug. "Perhaps I did not believe that you deserved death after your worthy performance."