The Halfling’s Gem (39 page)

Rassiter stooped over the two bodies lying in front of the side passage. Reverting halfway through the transformation between
rat and human, they had died in the excruciating agony that only a lycanthrope could know. Just like the ones farther back down the main tunnel, these had been slashed and nipped with expert precision, and if the line of bodies didn’t mark the path clearly enough, the globe of darkness hanging in the side passage certainly did. It appeared to Rassiter that his trap had worked, though the price had certainly been high.

He dropped to the lower corner of the wall and crept along, nearly tripping over still more bodies of his guildmates as he came through the other side.

The wererat shook his head in disbelief as he moved down the tunnel, stepping over a wererat corpse every few feet. How many had the master swordsman killed?

“A drow!” Rassiter balked in sudden understanding as he turned the final bend. Bodies of his comrades were piled deep there, but Rassiter looked beyond them. He would willingly pay such a price for the prize he saw before him, for now he had the dark warrior in hand, a drow elf for a prisoner! He would gain Pasha Pook’s favor and rise above Artemis Entreri once and for all.

At the end of the passage, Drizzt leaned silently against the sundew, draped by a thousand tendrils. He still held his two scimitars, but his arms hung limply at his sides and his head drooped down, his lavender eyes closed.

The wererat moved down the passage cautiously, hoping the drow was not already dead. He inspected his waterskin, filled with vinegar, and hoped he had brought enough to dissolve the sundew’s hold and free the drow. Rassiter dearly wanted this trophy alive.

Pook would appreciate the present more that way.

The wererat reached out with his sword to prod at the drow, but recoiled in pain as a dagger flashed by, slicing across his arm. He spun back around to see Artemis Entreri, his saber
drawn and a murderous look in his dark eyes.

Rassiter found himself caught in his own trap; there was no other escape from the passage. He fell flat against the wall, clutching his bleeding arm, and started inching his way back up the passage.

Entreri followed the ratman’s progress without a blink.

“Pook would never forgive you,” Rassiter warned.

“Pook would never know,” Entreri hissed back.

Terrified, Rassiter darted past the assassin, expecting a sword in his side as he passed. But Entreri cared nothing about Rassiter; his eyes had shifted down the passage to the specter of Drizzt Do’Urden, helpless and defeated.

Entreri moved to recover his jeweled dagger, undecided as to whether to cut the drow free or let him die a slow death in the sundew’s clutches.

“And so you die,” he whispered at length, wiping the slime from his dagger.

With a torch out before him, Wulfgar gingerly stepped into the second room. Like the first, it was square and unadorned, but one side was blocked halfway across by a floor-to-ceiling screen. Wulfgar knew that danger lurked behind the screen, knew it to be a part of the trap Entreri had set out and into which he had blindly rushed.

He didn’t have the time to berate himself for his lack of judgment. He positioned himself in the center of the room, still in sight of his friends, and laid the torch at his feet, clutching Aegis-fang in both hands.

But when the thing rushed out, the barbarian still found himself gawking, amazed.

Eight serpentlike heads interwove in a tantalizing dance, like the needles of frenzied women knitting at a single garment. Wulfgar saw no humor in the moment, though, for each mouth was filled with row upon row of razor-sharp teeth.

Catti-brie and Bruenor understood that Wulfgar was in trouble when they saw him shuffle back a step. They expected Entreri, or a host of soldiers, to confront him. Then the hydra crossed the open doorway.

“Wulfgar!” Catti-brie cried in dismay, loosing an arrow. The silver bolt blasted a deep hole into a serpentine neck, and the hydra roared in pain and turned one head to consider the stinging attackers from the side.

Seven other heads struck out at Wulfgar.

“You disappoint me, drow,” Entreri continued. I had thought you my equal, or nearly so. The bother, and risks, I took to guide you here so we could decide whose life was the lie! To prove to you that those emotions you cling to so dearly have no place in the heart of a true warrior.

“But now I see that I have wasted my efforts,” the assassin lamented. “The question has already been decided, if it ever was a question. Never would I have fallen into such a trap!”

Drizzt peeked out from one half-opened eye and raised his head to meet Entreri’s gaze. “Nor would I,” he said, shrugging off the limp tendrils of the dead sundew. “Nor would I!”

The wound became apparent in the monster when Drizzt moved out. With a single thrust, the drow had killed the sundew.

A smile burst across Entreri’s face. “Well done!” he cried, readying his blades. “Magnificent!”

“Where is the halfling?” Drizzt snarled.

“This does not concern the halfling,” Entreri replied, “or your silly toy, the panther.”

Drizzt quickly sublimated the anger that twisted his face.

“Oh, they are alive,” Entreri taunted, hoping to distract his enemy with anger. “Perhaps, though perhaps not.”

Unbridled rage often aided warriors against lesser foes, but in an equal battle of skilled swordsmen, thrusts had to be measured and defenses could not be let down.

Drizzt came in with both blades thrusting. Entreri deflected them aside with his saber and countered with a jab of his dagger.

Drizzt twirled out of danger’s way, coming around a full circle and slicing down with Twinkle. Entreri caught the weapon with his saber, so that the blades locked hilt to hilt and brought the combatants close.

“Did you receive my gift in Baldur’s Gate?” the assassin chuckled.

Drizzt did not flinch. Regis and Guenhwyvar were out of his thoughts now. His focus was Artemis Entreri.

Only Artemis Entreri.

The assassin pressed on. “A mask?” he questioned with a wide smirk. “Put it on, drow. Pretend you are what you are not!”

Drizzt heaved suddenly, throwing Entreri back.

The assassin went with the move, just as happy to continue the battle from a distance. But when Entreri tried to catch himself, his foot hit a mud-slicked depression in the tunnel floor and he slipped to one knee.

Drizzt was on him in a flash, both scimitars wailing away. Entreri’s hands moved equally fast, dagger and saber twisting and turning to parry and deflect. His head and shoulders bobbed wildly, and remarkably, he worked his foot back under him.

Drizzt knew that he had lost the advantage. Worse, the assault had left him in an awkward position with one shoulder too close to the wall. As Entreri started to rise, Drizzt jumped back.

“So easy?” Entreri asked him as they squared off again. “Do you think that I sought this fight for so long, only to die in its opening exchanges?”

“I do not figure anything where Artemis Entreri is concerned,” Drizzt came back. “You are too foreign to me, assassin. I do not pretend to understand your motives, nor do I have any desire to learn of them.”

“Motives?” Entreri balked. “I am a fighter—purely a fighter. I do not mix the calling of my life with lies of gentleness and love!” He held the saber and dagger out before him. “These are my only friends, and with them—”

“You are nothing,” Drizzt cut in. “Your life is a wasted lie.”

“A lie?” Entreri shot back. “You are the one who wears the mask, drow. You are the one who must hide.”

Drizzt accepted the words with a smile. Only a few days before, they might have stung him, but now, after the insight Catti-brie had given him, they rang hollowly in Drizzt’s ears. “You are the lie, Entreri,” he replied calmly. “You are no more than a loaded crossbow, an unfeeling weapon, that will never know life.” He started walking toward the assassin, jaw firm in the knowledge of what he must do.

Entreri strode in with equal confidence.

“Come and die, drow,” he spat.

Wulfgar backed quickly, snapping his warhammer back and forth in front of him to parry the hydra’s dizzying attacks. He knew that he couldn’t hold the incessant thing off for long. He had
to find a way to strike back against its offensive fury.

But against the seven snapping maws, weaving a hypnotic dance and lunging out singly or all together, Wulfgar had no time to prepare an attack sequence.

With her bow, beyond the range of the heads, Catti-brie had more success. Tears rimmed her eyes in fear for Wulfgar, but she held them back with a grim determination not to surrender. Another arrow blasted into the lone head that had turned her way, scorching a hole right between the eyes. The head shuddered and jerked back, then dropped to the floor with a thud, quite dead.

The attack, or the pain from it, seemed to paralyze the rest of the hydra for just a second, and the desperate barbarian did not miss the opportunity. He rushed forward a step and slammed Aegis-fang with all of his might into the snout of another head, snapping it back. It, too, dropped lifelessly to the floor.

“Keep it in front of the door!” Bruenor called. “And don’t ye be coming through without a shout. Suren the girl’d cut’ ye down!”

If the hydra was a stupid beast, it at least understood hunting tactics. It turned its body at an angle to the open door, preventing any chance for Wulfgar to get by. Two heads were down, and another silver arrow, and then another, sizzled in, this time catching the bulk of the hydra’s body. Wulfgar, working frantically and just finished with the furious battle against the wererats, was beginning to tire.

He missed the parry as one head came in, and powerful jaws closed around his arm, cutting gashes just below his shoulder.

The hydra attempted to shake its neck and tear the man’s arm off, its usual tactic, but it had never encountered one of Wulfgar’s strength before. The barbarian locked his arm tight against his side, grimacing away the pain, and held the hydra in
place. With his free hand Wulfgar grasped Aegis-fang just under the hammer’s head and jabbed the butt end into the hydra’s eye. The beast loosened its grip and Wulfgar tore himself free and fell back, just in time to avoid five other snapping attacks.

He could still fight, but the wound would slow him even more.

“Wulfgar!” Catti-brie cried again, hearing his groan.

“Get out o’ there, boy!” Bruenor yelled.

Wulfgar was already moving. He dived toward the back wall and rolled around the hydra. The two closest heads followed his movement and dipped in to snap him up.

Wulfgar rolled right to his feet and reversed his momentum, splitting one jaw wide open with a mighty chop. Catti-brie, witnessing Wulfgar’s desperate flight, put an arrow into the other head’s eye.

The hydra roared in agony and rage and spun about, now having four lifeless heads bouncing across the floor.

Wulfgar, backing across to the other side of the room, got an angle to see what lay behind the screen. “Another door!” he cried to his friends.

Catti-brie got in one more shot as the hydra crossed over to pursue Wulfgar. She and Bruenor heard the crack as the door split free of its hinges, then a sliding bang as yet another portcullis dropped behind the big man.