Without the slightest hesitation, the drow improvised. Above all else, he had to get to Dahlia, and so he went that way with all speed, scooping Twinkle and Icingdeath as he passed.

A shimmer of light in the air before him warned him. He thought it spidery web tendrils, and so brought his blades slashing before him.

At the very last moment and with no time to change course, Drizzt noted that the edges of that shimmer didn’t quite match the flora immediately before him.

He fell through the extra-dimensional gate, the Shifter’s trap, reappearing near the edge of a high bluff far to the other side of Dahlia. He managed to skid to a stop before falling over, but only got his head and shoulders back around in time to see a tall female shade smiling widely and with her arm extended toward him.

From that extended fist, from a ring on her finger, came the ghostly, nearly translucent head of a ram, rushing through the air.

Drizzt tried to tuck and turn, but got slammed on the side, and found himself flying from the ledge into the open air.

“Go with him. Kill the drow,” Jermander said to Ambergris as the enraged Afafrenfere rushed past their position, slowing only to vault the spidery filaments between him and the drow, barriers impeding his rush to avenge his partner’s death.

The dwarf nodded and sped out to the right, toward the ledge from which Drizzt had flown.

“She is not yet secured,” the Shifter said, nodding toward the surprisingly resilient Dahlia, who, despite a continuing filament barrage, had managed to wriggle one leg free, and despite the efforts of Bol and Horrible, continued to duck and dodge and lash out with stinging hits.

“These are the hirelings to whom you promised a full share?” the Shifter asked, her sarcasm heightened by her accent, which bit off the words in a sharp manner.

“Bol and Horrible are hindered by their orders,” Jermander sharply replied. “Their weapons are lethal, their tactics designed to kill, and yet we have forbidden them from even injuring Dahlia.”

“Who is formidable in her own right,” Ratsis added.

“You promised me that she would be caught easily if separated from her drow companion,” the Shifter reminded. “I have done so, quite expertly.”

Ratsis glanced to Jermander, who rolled his eyes, then nodded toward the nearest of the huge spiders. Taking the cue, Ratsis redoubled the efforts of his minions, prodding them on with telepathic commands.

The agitated arachnids stamped their many legs and more filaments shot out at the dodging elf warrior as she continued to lash out with those metallic flails.

Lashing out wildly, Ratsis noted, her spinning weapons more often than not getting nowhere near to Bol or Horrible . . . but never hitting only air, Ratsis noted. Dahlia always seemed to twist those spinning weapons in line with each other, and every attack routine ended with them smacking together, throwing sparks.

More sparks with each hit, Ratsis realized, as if they were building energy.

“Clever woman,” he started to say, but abruptly stopped as Dahlia played her hand.

Bol’s heavy flail head swung around above her once more, and up slapped the woman’s flail, a blow that should have barely diverted the heavy flail ball. But when the pole struck, there came a flash of lightning, a great release of energy, greater, even, than the tremendous momentum of the swinging ball.

That ball shot straight up suddenly, and the surprised Bol couldn’t react other than to instinctively hold on tight to his jolted weapon.

He should have let it go, for as the ball reached the end of its chain, it continued over backward and down.

Ratsis’s eyes widened as the big man’s head snapped forward, Bol’s face a mask of confusion. The burly warrior stumbled a step to the side, then toppled over, flail handle falling underneath him so that when he landed, the pull on the handle and chain yanked his head around, leaving him lying on his side, but face down in the dirt.

The flail’s ball remained on the back of his head, secured by the spikes that had driven through his skull.

It had all happened in the blink of an eye, but now time seemed to slow greatly, so that Horrible’s outraged, shocked scream went on and on, as the woman, her orders overruled by her rage, leaped in to cut down the webbed Dahlia.

Dahlia managed to turn and block that initial strike, but even then, more filaments fell over her, further enwrapping and hindering her. One arm was down now, caught fast, and though she parried brilliantly with her remaining flail, there was no energy charge remaining there, and none to be built.

Jermander shouted out for Horrible to stop, but the furious woman would not relent.

“Stop her!” Ratsis said to the Shifter, who was already lifting her fist and grinning.

Horrible leaped back from Dahlia, out of reach of the spinning flail. As Dahlia’s arm came around behind her, it, too, got tangled in the webbing, leaving the woman twisted awkwardly at the hip. With both arms pinned, Dahlia stood helpless as Horrible swung her sword up over her head for a killing chop.

But Horrible jerked weirdly, then a ghostly ram’s head appeared at her side and slammed her, throwing her many strides to the side. She kept moving forward when she landed, almost reflexively, and even tried to continue her overhead swing. But that long blade tangled in the branches of a tree even as she stumbled face-first into the trunk.

She fell to the side, to the ground, and lay very still.

“The spiders!” the Shifter yelled at Ratsis when he turned to her in surprise. “The spiders! Catch her fast!”

He landed with his typical grace, and might have even managed to keep his footing long enough to scamper down the steep slope and relieve some of the weight of the fall. But Drizzt’s descent took him in line with the short and stabbing, sharp-edged branches of a dead tree. He touched down on the sandy hillside, the light snows and early cold having done nothing yet to solidify the loose soil, and had to throw himself around backward, desperately dodging those deadly branches.

And as he did, spinning around and throwing himself forward and low to try to catch himself, the soil gave way beneath him and in his slide, his leg hooked under an exposed tree root.

Drizzt’s momentum threw him backward over that root with tremendous force. His leg bent in half as he slammed hard to the ground, and there he lay, hooked and caught and barely conscious, fully dazed by the weight of the crash. Both of his blades had flown from his hands, though he was hardly aware of it, and his leg wrapped back under him, bent tightly at the knee, the hook of it being even more pronounced and painful because of the steep slope, where Drizzt’s head was much lower than his knee.

Drizzt searched for points of clarity, for anchors of consciousness through which he could grab on and hold on. Two realities came clear to him: he was in trouble, and Dahlia was in serious trouble.

That latter thought inspired him to force some clarity. He felt the keen pain in his leg, and understood instinctively that it would take him some time and great effort to extract himself, if he could even do so at all.

He brought his hand to his belt pouch, to find it open and empty. He glanced around, then back over his head, lower down the hillside, where he spotted the black shape.

“Guenhwyvar!’ he called. “I need you!”

Ambergris could only hope that Jermander and Ratsis hadn’t noticed her spell, her waggling fingers creating a translucent hammer in the air behind Horrible, striking hard, right through the woman’s skull just an instant before the Shifter had stopped the warrior woman’s killing blow even more effectively with the ram’s head attack.

Running on after Afafrenfere, she took some comfort in knowing for certain that the monk hadn’t noted her treachery. His vision and course narrowed by sheer outrage, Afafrenfere was seeing nothing but the straight line path that would take him to the drow.

And the dwarf wouldn’t get there before him, or even with him, she realized. She slowed her pace just enough to cast a second spell, a whispered command to “halt” that had the weight of divine power behind it. Despite his urgency and rage, Afafrenfere skidded to a stop, momentarily only, but enough for Ambergris to catch up.

“He dies!” the monk insisted.

“Yeah, yeah, don’ we all?” Ambergris replied, and she grabbed Afafrenfere’s arm so that he could not sprint out ahead of her.

“Hurry!” the monk urged.

“Be easy,” the dwarf countered. “If ye’re wantin’ to jump into this dark one’s face, then ye’re wantin’ to be dead!”

Afafrenfere tried to pull away anyway, but Ambergris had a grip to make a stone giant proud, and he wasn’t wriggling free. Together they came to the edge of the cliff. Down below lay Drizzt, in clear sight, still caught and bent over backward awkwardly on the root. Below him and to the side, a gray mist was forming.

“Fly away!” Ambergris cried to the monk, shoving him to the side. Afafrenfere tried to protest, but Ambergris shoulder-blocked him hard, and both went rushing down the side of the hill, a slope not as steep as that near Drizzt, but one that still left the pair scrambling simply to keep their feet under them.

“Fly away!” Ambergris kept saying, and whenever the monk tried to argue or to slow down, the dwarf barreled into him, buckler leading, and kept him moving along.

Finally, many yards down the side, Afafrenfere managed to catch a hold on a tree as he passed and pull himself out of the insistent dwarf ’s way.

Ambergris skidded to a stop.

“What are you doing?” a flustered and sputtering Afafrenfere yelled at her.

“Keepin’ ye alive!” she shouted back at him.

Afafrenfere responded with a growl and started to shove past her.

Up came Ambergris’s Skullbreaker, smacking the monk in the face and laying him low. “Shut up, ye fool. Ye’re feedin’ the worms were meself not wanting a bit o’ company, and to be sure yerself ’s th’only one o’ that bunch I e’er could stomach.”

She grabbed the dazed and disoriented monk roughly by the collar and tossed him up over her shoulders, then trotted off into the forest.

With Bol and Horrible out of the way, Ratsis’s spiders increased their barrage, lines of webbing flying all around Dahlia, and despite her protests and frantic movements, she was becoming inexorably wrapped and trapped. One of her arms became pinned to her side, and she lost the flail in her other hand, unable to pull it free of the webbing.

With all of her considerable strength, Dahlia could not twist the weapon free, nor yank her wrapped arm free, nor could she get her legs free of the piling webs.

“Well done,” Jermander congratulated and he started forward from the brush, sword in hand. He was almost to Dahlia when a form appeared, leaping down from the branches of the same tree where Horrible had fallen. The agile newcomer hit the ground with a second leap, one that lifted him right atop one of Ratsis’s arachnids. He came down hard, sword set tip-down, and with expert precision, he drove the weapon right through the pony-sized spider’s bulbous eye. The eight-legged beast thrashed and shrieked as goo bubbled up around the blade, but only for a moment before it crumbled down and lay still.

Jermander eyed the newcomer. Behind him, Ratsis screamed in protest over the demise of one of his treasured pets.