Drizzt recalled his own experiences when the volcano blew, when he watched from afar as the mountain crumbled into a river of roiling stone and ash, when the shock wave rushed across the forests, leveling ancient trees as if they were insignificant strands of grass. The power of the spectacle had brought Drizzt to his knees. What must it have been like to be in Neverwinter that awful day, to see the devastation up close, to hear the screams of men, women, and children as they were burned and buried alive?

“How did you survive?” the drow prompted somberly.

“I crawled off the bridge,” Entreri replied, “and to the street, but it was too deep in ash—hot ash—for me to plow along it. And the stones were falling thick. I saw more than one person crushed under a fiery boulder. The buildings, strong as they seemed, provided no shelter. Those who hid inside were buried under rubble or chased out by the fires—everywhere were fires. The air was too thick to breathe.”

“So you died and the sword brought you back,” Dahlia reasoned, but Entreri shook his head.

Drizzt solved the riddle by remembering the layout of Neverwinter, whose streets he had walked several times. He, too, had often been drawn to the bridges, to the river that served as the city’s heart.

“You couldn’t pass along the street, so you went back to the river, near the bridge,” he said.

“To swim in the lava?” Dahlia mocked.

But Drizzt just shook his head and kept looking at Entreri.

“There was an opening along the bank, above the level of the river,” the assassin explained. “And the water flowing from it was relatively cool.”

“You crawled out of Neverwinter through her sewers,” Drizzt reasoned. “Do you think they remain open?” He watched Dahlia as he spoke, and noted that her smirk disappeared.

Entreri pointed down to the south of the city, to where the great river meandered into the Sword Coast. “It’s possible.”

Chapter 7: Shadows, Always shadows

Effron continually looked over his shoulder, peering through the ashen mists and endless shadows of the Shadowfell. He wasn’t supposed to be there, and Draygo Quick would punish him severely if the weathered old battle mage discovered his breach of etiquette and station.

But he had to know.

This involved Dahlia. He had to know!

Despite his desperation, Effron didn’t dare travel anywhere near the Cavus Dun guildhouse, nor did he dare speak with any of the leaders of that organization. Nay, they would rush straight to Draygo, he knew, for they would not protect the confidentiality of a mere ascendant noble like Effron when weighed against the potential ire of Draygo Quick.

He knew that he had only a matter of hours, however, and when he could not locate Jermander or Ratsis at their usual haunts—and more troubling, when he learned that Ratsis had indeed been spotted that very day in the Shadowfell—he went to a secluded boulder tumble, set with a small cottage that never seemed to stay in the same place for more than a moment or two.

Effron waited for a shift, then sprinted for the door and reached out to grasp . . . nothing.

Smiling, appreciating the cleverness of the home’s owner, the twisted warlock waited and watched, trying to discern some pattern to the illusionary games. When he thought he had it figured out, he quietly began a spell, timing it for another house jump.

The cottage disappeared and popped back into view between a pair of large boulders. Into the ground went the wraithlike Effron, slipping through cracks in the stone, sliding down and popping up again right where the house should have been.

But it was across the way, beside a different stone entirely.

“Clever,” Effron whispered under his breath. “Was it ever really in this place?”

“What do you want?” came a sharp reply from right behind him, and the startled Effron jumped around so violently that his limp arm went into a great pendulum swing behind his back.

“Shifter,” was all he could gasp as the spectacle of the imposing woman stood before him—or, he reminded himself, appeared to stand before him.

“What do you want?” she snapped at him again, biting each word short with her harsh accent. “I do not appreciate uninvited visitors.”

“I am Effr—”

“I know who you are. What do you want?”

“You went with Jermander.”

“You assume much.”

Effron straightened and cleared his throat, then politely rephrased, “Did you go with Jermander’s band?”

“Again,” the Shifter reiterated, and then she was gone. Effron thought to spin around, guessing that she would be standing right behind him, but he decided against that course.

“I hired Jermander of Cavus Dun—”

“Mentioning that group, admitting that you paid them, speaking of them at all, will likely get a person killed,” came the reply from right behind him. “Assuming, of course, that such a person or such a group even exists.”

Effron realized that in his desperation and fear of Herzgo Alegni—or was it his fear of disappointing Herzgo Alegni, he wondered—he was getting very sloppy.

“I need to know the fate of Dahlia,” he said simply, resisting the urge to add any details that might hint at Cavus Dun, Jermander, Ratsis, or anyone else.

“Dahlia?” the Shifter asked. Effron suddenly wondered if Jermander had indeed subcontracted the Shifter. But then she unexpectedly added, in a whisper, “Alegni’s man.”

Effron wasn’t sure if the Shifter was referring to him or to Barrabus the Gray, but the way she spoke the words led him to believe it to be the latter, and made him think that it was directly related to whatever had happened, or had not happened, regarding Dahlia.

He turned around to face the woman. “Whatever you can tell me, whatever you can learn for me, will be much appreciated.”

She looked at him skeptically.

“And richly rewarded,” he added.

A smile widened on the Shifter’s pretty face. “Five hundred pieces of gold,” she said flatly.

Normally Effron would have argued, even to the point of refusing the transaction, so outrageous was the price, but again the specter of Alegni hovered over him and he brought forth a bag of coins and handed it to the Shifter.

Of course, that was just an image of the disorienting woman, and he felt a sudden pull from the side as the invisible lady snatched the purse, which seemed to dematerialize into nothingness as it left his hand.

He heard the clink of coins off to the other side and started to turn, but just held his ground and laughed helplessly. Maybe she was there, maybe not, for this clever sorceress could certainly misdirect sound as easily as she created the visual discrepancies.

“You did not tell Jermander that Alegni’s man would defend Dahlia,” she said.

“Defend her? Or did he wish to claim the kill as his own?” Effron replied.

“Either way, Jermander is dead.”

Effron swallowed hard, suddenly understanding that there would likely be a great price to pay for this unfolding catastrophe.

“And Dahlia?” he managed to ask past the lump in his throat.

Herzgo Alegni felt like a prisoner in his own city of Neverwinter, and it was a feeling he did not like at all.

“I would see the result,” he stated flatly, and started for the door.

“You would not,” Draygo Quick rasped back at him.

Alegni paused and composed himself, not looking back at the withered old warlock. Draygo Quick’s news that Jermander and some others of Cavus Dun had been killed was not unwelcomed by Alegni, nor was it surprising, for he had figured from the first time he had seen Jermander in Neverwinter that Effron had hired out the mercenaries, and that Effron would be bold enough to try to strike at Dahlia despite his orders to the contrary.

For the twisted and broken young warlock, it would be, after all, a double victory.

“Don’t you think they are coming for you?” Draygo Quick asked. “Or lying in wait, should you ever leave the defenses of this place?”

Alegni shrugged as if it hardly mattered. It wasn’t as if Barrabus the Gray could actually hide from him, after all, though he did wish that his magical link to the dangerous man was more informative and more continual.

“Do you not think they will come into the city after me?” he asked.

“Do you?”

“I count on it,” Alegni said with a grin. “I hope for it.”

“Don’t underestimate—”

“I do not underestimate anyone,” Alegni interrupted. “Even you.”

It was not often that Draygo Quick could be put back on his heels in a conversation, but Herzgo Alegni had obviously done just that, and the warrior tiefling did well to hide any gloating at that moment.

“Effron is young,” Draygo Quick said, and Alegni could hardly believe that the stubborn and fierce warlock was actually changing the subject. “He is full of promise.”

“And full of conflict,” Alegni added.

“Indeed,” said the warlock. “Particularly in this delicate situation.”

“I didn’t bring him here,” Alegni reminded. “I didn’t want him here.” He paused and stared hard at the withered warlock for just a moment. “I do not want him here.”

He thought that he might have pushed just a bit too far, though, when Draygo Quick stiffened and hardened his gaze.

“And yet he is here,” the warlock stated flatly. “And he remains here by my command.”

Alegni’s face tightened, but there was no room for debate in Draygo Quick’s tone.

“There are proper punishments and there are excessive punishments,” Draygo Quick warned. “I take it personally when one of my minions is excessively punished.”

“And there are reparations,” Herzgo Alegni offered, and Draygo Quick cocked his head curiously. He seemed so decrepit and withered that, had he been reclining, Herzgo Alegni might have thought that he had just died.

“Sylora Salm is dead and the Thayans in disarray,” Alegni explained. “But they are not yet fully defeated. And there are other interests in the region, including these Neverwinter citizens I have subjugated, and some agents, I presume, of other interested parties. Now is the time for a full show of force.”

“You’re asking again for more soldiers.”

Alegni shrugged. “It would seem prudent.”

“The best thing you might do to secure your hold here is to destroy these assassins who hunt you,” Draygo Quick replied.

“That will be done,” Alegni assured him, and he instinctively grasped Claw’s hilt, though the sword had offered him little of late regarding Barrabus the Gray. “But still . . . to minimize the damage done by Effron . . .”

“A hundred,” Draygo Quick agreed.

“Three,” Alegni started to bargain, but Draygo Quick cut him short with a sharp reiteration.

“A hundred.”

After a courteous—and wise—bow, Herzgo Alegni took his leave.

“You understand your role?” Draygo Quick spoke in the apparently empty room.

From behind a tapestry stepped an elf Shadovar, dressed in fine breeches and an expensive waistcoat, and with a flat top hat adorned with a ribbon of gems. He wore his blousy white shirt open to the waistcoat, showing a shapely neck and a small tattoo to the right of his windpipe: the letters CD, for Cavus Dun, intertwined.