He had to run to her, to hug her and comfort her, but he found that he could not. They hadn’t the time! Too much was yet to do, and quickly, if they ever hoped to be away from this place alive.

He and Dahlia, at least, he thought, as he looked at Entreri.

“It’s all right,” Entreri said to the elf woman gently, and he grasped her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “It’s time.” He turned to Drizzt and started walking for the pit. “Long past time.”

“You do it,” Drizzt said to him, and the drow stepped back from the sword.

Entreri looked at it, then back at Drizzt. “That was cruel.”

Drizzt swallowed hard, unable to deny the charge. He knew that Entreri could not approach the sword and throw it in, or even kick it in. If he neared the redbladed sword, Charon’s Claw would likely enthrall him again.

“You owe me nothing,” Entreri admitted. “I cannot ask this as a friend. Mutual respect, then? Or might I simply appeal to your sense of honor, and remind you that the world would be a far better place without the likes of me in it?” He gave a helpless little laugh, but sobered quickly, raised his empty hands, and begged, “Please.”

“Often have I entertained the thoughts of a redeemed Artemis Entreri,” Drizzt admitted. “A man of your skills could contribute—”

“Spare me your idiocy,” Entreri said, jolting Drizzt.

So be it.

Drizzt moved to kick the sword, but bent low and picked it up again. Immediately, Claw’s powers assaulted him. He could feel the swirl of desperation, of rage, of threats and tantalizing promises mingled together in a confused and confusing jumble.

“Idiocy?” Drizzt echoed with a shrug. “Hardly. You never understood it, Artemis Entreri. Alas! Idiocy, you say, but hope is never that.”

With a resigned shrug, Drizzt tossed the sword over the rim.

“I have forever envied you, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Entreri cried out quickly, knowing that he had but a heartbeat left. “Envied you, and not for your skill with your blades!”

Artemis Entreri closed his eyes and leaned his head back, accepting the cool blackness, the sweet release, of death.

Chapter 26: Expectations

Effron staggered around the Shadowfell, tears clouding his vision. He had been caught quite off guard by his reaction to the fall of Herzgo Alegni, his father, for he had profoundly hated the tiefling. Never in his life had he measured up to Alegni’s expectations, not from the moment of his rescue at the base of a wind-blown cliff to the moment of Herzgo Alegni’s crushing death. Herzgo Alegni prized strength of arm, and his broken son hardly fit that description. And indeed, the warlord had made his feelings quite clear to Effron. How many times had Effron entertained the fantasy of killing the brutish tiefling? Yet, now that Alegni had been killed, right before him, the twisted warlock could experience nothing but grief and the most profound pain.

And the most profound hatred.

Dahlia had done this. The elf who had borne him, the witch who had cast him from the cliff, had done this.

Gradually the shaken warlock made his way to Draygo Quick, who seemed unsurprised to see him.

“The sword?” the Netherese lord asked immediately.

“Herzgo Alegni is dead,” Effron said, and the pain of speaking the words had him blubbering again, his legs going weak beneath him so he had to put his hand to the wall to stop himself from toppling over.

“The sword?” Draygo Quick demanded again.

“Doomed,” Effron whispered. “Destroyed, certainly, for they gained the primordial chamber.”

“They? Dahlia and her companions?”

The twisted warlock nodded.

“And they killed Lord Alegni?”

Effron just stared at him.

“Impressive,” the withered old lord whispered. “Twice now he faced them, and twice he lost. Few who knew Herzgo Alegni would have wagered on such an outcome.” Effron winced with every callous word.

Draygo Quick grinned at him with yellow teeth. “Callous, yes,” he admitted, reading Effron’s expression. “Forgive me, broken one.”

“I will kill her for this,” Effron vowed.

“Dahlia?”

“Dahlia, and any who stand beside her. You must afford me an army, that I . . .”

“No.”

Effron stared at him as if he had been slapped. “Herzgo Alegni must be avenged!”

The old warlock shook his head.

“The sword!” Effron protested.

“We’ll have our diviners seek its magical call. If it is destroyed, as you believe, then so be it. Better that than to have it fall into the hands of an enemy once more.”

“I must avenge him!”

“What you plan to do is of no concern to me,” Draygo Quick retorted sharply. “I will grant you that much, and nothing more. If you wish to hunt down Dahlia and her companions, then hunt.”

“I will need support.”

“More than you will ever understand.”

“Grant me . . .” Effron started to say, but Draygo Quick cut him short.

“Then hire some. You have friends with Cavus Dun, do you not? If you believe that I will grant you more forces after these abject and expensive failures, then you are a fool.”

“Cavus Dun!” Effron cried as if he had hit on something. “They betrayed us!”

Draygo Quick looked at him curiously. “Do tell.”

“The wizard Glorfathel fled the fight,” Effron explained. “And that filthy dwarf turned on me. She cast a spell of holding, but I avoided it. Alas, the monk did not—and the dwarf chased me around, preventing me from helping Lord Alegni in his desperate fight. Swinging her mace and laughing all the while! Were I less skilled and clever . . .”

Draygo Quick waved a wrinkled hand in the air to silence the young warlock.

“Interesting,” he muttered.

“I shall demand recompense!” Effron proclaimed. “Cavus Dun will repay me.”

“Your attitude will surely get you cut into little pieces,” said the old warlock. “If you consider that to be repayment, then truly you are an easy buy.”

“We must go to them!” Effron demanded.

“We?”

“You cannot allow this to stand! The Shifter failed me, and now the treachery of the hirelings . . .”

“Easy, young one,” Draygo Quick said. “I will speak with the Grandfather of Cavus Dun to learn what I may. You avoid them. Trust my judgment on this.”

The way he finished the response told Effron to hold silent, and so he did, staring obediently at the great warlock, awaiting instructions.

“You should rethink your course.”

“I will kill her,” Effron said.

“Family matters,” Draygo said with a sigh. “Ah, by the gods. Well enough, then, young fool, I grant you my leave. Go as you will.”

“I will have the panther.”

“You will not!”

There was no bargain to be found in that tone, Effron knew.

“Will you not help me?” the twisted warlock begged.

“On this fool’s errand? Surely not. Your father failed by underestimating this band you hunt, and failed again in his attempt to right his wrong. He lost Charon’s Claw, and that is no small thing. Better that he died trying to recover the blade than return without it. That is the way of the world.”

His casual attitude surprised Effron, until the young tiefling realized that Alegni’s failure was just that: Alegni’s failure. It could not reflect on Draygo Quick any longer, and surely the old wretch was somewhat relieved to be rid of the troublesome Herzgo Alegni.

“Go and find her, then,” Draygo Quick said. “You may use my crystal ball if it will guide you to Toril properly. I understand the formidability of your enemies and will not expect your return.”

“I must.”

Draygo Quick waved him away. “I will hear no more of this,” the old wretch said, his tone becoming very sharp suddenly. He chortled and laughed at Effron. “Idiot boy, I only kept you alive out of respect for your father. Now that he is no more, I am done with you. Be gone, then. Go and hunt her, young fool, that you might see your father again so soon, in the darker lands.”

He waved Effron away.

Effron staggered out of the room, heading for his own chamber, tears welling in his strange eyes once more as he tried to deny the stinging words of merciless Draygo Quick. He replaced that wound with anger, stopped, and turned around, making for the warlock’s room of scrying instead.

“That was harsh, Master Quick, even by your standards,” said Parise Ulfbinder, a warlock and peer of Draygo Quick. Parise, too, was a Netherese lord of great repute, and an old friend of Draygo’s, though Draygo Quick had not seen him in person in a long while, the two preferring to correspond through their respective scrying devices. The mere fact that Parise had come to Draygo’s tower in person had tipped the old warlock off to the importance of the visit. He entered from a concealed door even as Effron departed.

“Are they recalled?”

“Indeed,” said Parise. “We have opened the gates and most of our forces are safely back within the Shadowfell.”

“You heard what Effron said of the Cavus Dun trio?”

“Glorfathel, Ambergris, and Afafrenfere are not to be found among the returned,” the other warlock confirmed, though his tone revealed that he really didn’t care about that particular curiosity. “It is possible that Effron speaks the truth.”

Draygo Quick looked to the door where Effron had departed and nodded, his expression one of great lament. Despite his parting words, Draygo had come to care for this pathetic and twisted creature, he had to admit, privately at least.

“These enemies are formidable, yet you would allow your young understudy to go in pursuit?” the handsome Netherese warrior asked.

Draygo Quick didn’t lash out at the blunt remark, but merely nodded again. “He must do this. He is tied to that one, Dahlia. He must find his revenge.”

“Or his death?”

“We all die,” Draygo Quick replied.

“True, but it is best to choose when we allow, or cause, others to do so,” Parise Ulfbinder remarked slyly, drawing Draygo Quick’s full attention. “I wish to talk to you about this curious drow who has associated himself with our enemies.”

“Drizzt Do’Urden.”

“Yes,” Parise said with a nod. “There may be more to him than you know, and likely more to him than he knows.”

Draygo Quick’s eyes widened as he considered that curious statement in the context of the speaker, a Netherese theorist who had been whispering dire warnings to any lord who might listen.

Down the hallway several doors, Effron lit a single candle and moved to a small table. Atop it rested an item covered by a red cloth.

Effron pulled the cloth back, and a skull-sized ball of pure crystal glistened in the candlelight before him.

“Ah, Dahlia Sin’Dalay, murderess,” he said, and his eyes sparkled in reflection. “You think you have won, Mother. You are wrong.”

Many heartbeats passed, not a one in the room daring to even draw breath. Entreri just stood there, head and shoulders thrown back, awaiting death. But death did not visit him.