He heard Sunset clip-clopping back away from him and turned to see Innovindil astride the pegasus, angling to line him up for a straight run to the exit tunnel. With a grin, Drizzt sprinted back to her and clambered up behind her, and the elf wasted no time in putting Sunset into a quick run and a short leap, wings going out and beating hard. With grace more akin to a deer than a horse, Sunset alighted across the frozen river in the tunnel and Innovindil quickly pulled him up to a stop.
Drizzt was down in a flash, Innovindil following.
"Do you think they know we're here?" the moon elf asked.
"Does it matter?"
Now the corridors became more conventional, wide, high, and winding, maze-like, with many turns and side passages. The enormity of Shining White surprised Drizzt, and the enormity of their task became more than a little daunting.
"Guenhwyvar will smell Sunrise out," he said as he pulled out the figurine.
"More likely to smell your blood, I suspect," came an answer from a voice that was not Innovindil's, that was far too deep and resonant to belong to an elf.
Drizzt turned slowly, as did his companion, and Sunset pawed the stone.
A pair of frost giants stood calmly some twenty feet or so behind them, one with hands on her hips, the other holding a massive hammer in his right hand patting it onto his left.
"You bring a second pegasus for Dame Gerti," the female remarked. "She will be pleased—perhaps enough so to allow you a quick death."
Drizzt nodded and said, "Aye, we have come to please Gerti, of course. That is our greatest desire."
He slapped Sunset on the rump as he finished, and Innovindil went up astride the pegasus even as it leaped away.
Drizzt turned to follow, took a few steps, then, hearing the giants charging in behind, he cut a quick turn and charged at them, howling with fury.
"Drizzt!" Innovindil shouted, and he knew by her tone that she had concluded that he meant to engage the behemoths.
Nothing could have been farther from his thoughts.
He rushed at the one holding the hammer, and as it started to swing at him he cut to the right, toward the second giant.
The first was too clever to continue its attack—an attack that likely would have struck its companion. But as the female behemoth reached for Drizzt he turned anyway again, back toward the first, his feet, their speed enhanced by magical anklets, moving in a blur. He dived into a roll, turning sidelong as he went so that he came up short and cut back to his right, which sent him rushing right between the giants. Both of them lurched in to grab at him, and the female might have had him, except that the pair knocked heads halfway down.
Both grunted and straightened, and Drizzt ran free.
Barely ten strides down the next corridor, though, the drow heard the shouts of more giants, and he had to turn into yet another perpendicular corridor so that he didn't run headlong into a behemoth.
"No dead ends," the drow whispered—a prayer if he ever heard one—with every blind turn.
He soon came into a wider corridor lined on both sides with statues of various shapes and size. Most were of ice, though a few of stone. Some were giant-sized, but most reflected the stature of a human or an elf. The detailing and craftsmanship was as finely worked as dwarven stone, and the elegance of the artwork was not lost on the drow—the statues would not have seemed out of place in Menzoberranzan or in an elven village. He had little time to pause and admire the pieces, though, for he heard the giants behind him and in front, and horns blowing from deeper in the seemingly endless complex.
He pulled his cloak from his shoulders and cut to the side, toward a cluster of several elf-sized statues.
* * * * *
Innovindil could only hope that the floor stayed stone and was not glazed over with ice, for she could ill afford to allow Sunset to slow the run with giants scrambling all around her. She came upon corridor after corridor, turning sometimes and running straight at others, meaning to turn at some others and yet finding a group of enemies coming at her from that direction…. A blind run was the best the elf could manage. Or a blind flight, for every now and then she put the pegasus up into the air to gain speed. She had to take care, though, for airborne, Sunset could not navigate the sharp, right-angled turns. Innovindil watched ahead and behind, and looked up repeatedly. She kept hoping that the ceiling would open up before her so that she could lift Sunset into a short flight, perhaps one that would get them both out through a natural chimney or a worked skylight.
At one corner, the elf and her pegasus nearly slammed into the stone wall, for the angle of the turn proved to be more than ninety degrees. Sunset skidded to a rough stop, brushing the stone as Innovindil brought the pegasus about.
Innovindil sucked in her breath as they realigned and she prompted the pegasus to run again, for that moment of stillness left her vulnerable, she knew.
And so she was only a little surprised when she saw a gigantic spear of ice—a long, shaped icicle—soaring at her from down the previous corridor. She ducked instinctively, and if she had not, she would have been skewered. Even with the near miss, the elf was almost dislodged, for the spear shattered on the stone above her and a barrage of ice chips showered over her.
Stubbornly holding her seat, Innovindil kicked her heels into Sunset's flank and bade him to run on. She heard a shout behind her and to the side, from whence the spear had come, and she understood enough of the frost giant language, which was somewhat akin to Elvish, to understand that a giantess was berating the spear thrower.
"Do you want to hurt Gerti's new pet?"
"The pegasus or the elf?" the giant answered, his booming voice echoing off the stone behind Innovindil.
"Both, then!" the giantess laughed.
For some reason, their tone made Innovindil think that catching the spear in her chest would have been preferable.
* * * * *
Two giants charged down the corridor, only occasionally glancing to either side until one suddenly lurched to the left and gave a victorious shout.
The other yelled, "Clever!" when it, too, noticed the cloak on the statue—a cloak not carved of stone, but flowing as only fabric could.
With a single stride to the side, the first giant brought a heavy club to bear, crushing down on the cloak. The ice statue beneath it exploded into a shower of shards and splinters.
"Oh, you broke Mardalade's work!" the other shouted.
"T-the drow?" the first stammered and dropped its club.
"Finds you quite amusing," came an answer from behind, and both giants spun around.
Drizzt, skipping down the other way, paused long enough to offer a salute, then a smile as he pointed back behind the behemoths.
Neither turned—until they heard the low growl of a giant panther.
The two giants spun and ducked as six hundred pounds of black-furred muscle leaped over them, cutting close enough so that both threw up their hands and ducked even lower, one falling to the stone.
Drizzt sprinted away. He used the moment of reprieve to try to sort out the maze of crisscrossing corridors. He listened carefully to the sounds all around him, too, trying to make some sense of them. Shouts from unrelated areas told him that Innovindil was still running, and gave him a fairly good idea of her general direction.
He sprinted away, back to the west, then north, then west again. He heard the clip-clop of the running pegasus as he approached the next four-way intersection, and ran harder, thinking to catch hold of his friend as she passed through, and leap up behind her.
But he slowed, quickly abandoning that notion. Better that the giants had two targets, he realized.