Charon's Claw

Page 36

But she did move away from the sword.
A loud rap turned them both in time to see the door swing open and a dirty female dwarf march in.
“Amber Gristle O’Maul, o’ the Adbar O’Mauls,” she said with a bow.
“So you have told us every time you enter,” Dahlia replied dryly.
“Good for ye to hear,” the dwarf answered with a laugh. “Folks know o’ Drizzt Do’Urden, and having me name tied to that one’s good for me own reputation, haha!” She grinned widely in response to Drizzt’s widening smile.
The drow’s smile didn’t hold, though. “How does she fare?” he asked, and both Dahlia and the dwarf knew of whom he was speaking: the woman who had been dragged from the sewers on a litter.
“Better!” Ambergris declared with a toothy grin. “Didn’t think it when first I seen her, still covered in sewer muck and dirty wounds, but she’s to live, don’t ye doubt!”
Drizzt nodded, with obvious relief.
“Got me a platter o’ healin’ spells for yer wound this day, ranger,” Ambergris said with an exaggerated wink. “We’ll get ye on the road soon enough, where’er that road’s to be!”
“I have no wounds, you fool,” Entreri said to the red-haired woman who held a steaming mug of some medicinal tea or other herbal remedy.
“You staggered from the bridge,” Arunika replied. “Herzgo Alegni wounded you greatly with that foul blade of his.”
She presented the mug near to the man and he tried to push it away.
But he might as well have been trying to shove a stone building aside, for Arunika’s arm did not budge in the least.
“Drink it,” she ordered. “Do not act like a child. There is much still to be done.”
“I owe this city nothing.”
“Neverwinter owes you, and we know it,” Arunika replied. “That is why I am here with medicinal tea. That is why the healers come to tend to your friends, and to you, if necessary.”
“Unnecessary.”
The red-haired woman nodded, and nodded again when the stubborn man at last took the mug and began to drink.
“Tell me of your story, Barrabus the Gray,” she prompted. “Truly I was surprised to see you betray Alegni—I had thought you his squire.”
Entreri’s face grew tight.
“His champion, then, if that description less wounds your foolish pride,” Arunika said with a laugh. “But do tell me of your travels and how you became such a champion of a Netherese lord, for you are no shade, though your skin is a shade too gray for your human heritage.”
“Tell you?” Entreri echoed with a laugh. “You bring me tea and think yourself my ally? Did I ask for such allegiance?”
“The best allies are often unexpected and uninvited.”
Entreri considered those words in light of the two companions he found beside him on the bridge against Herzgo Alegni, and he chuckled yet again.
“I need no allies, woman,” he said. “Alegni is gone and I am free for the first time in a long, long while.”
“He was your ally,” the woman protested.
Entreri glared at her.
“What, then?” she asked. “I would know.”
Artemis Entreri suddenly felt a compulsion to tell her all about his relationship with Herzgo Alegni. He almost started, but then recoiled, feeling much as he had on those many occasions when Charon’s Claw had invaded his thoughts.
He looked at Arunika with more scrutiny, as he might consider a sorceress.
“Herzgo Alegni swept into Neverwinter through your actions,” Arunika quickly replied. “He would never have found such a dominion here in the city had not Barrabus the Gray become a hero to the folk.” The timbre of her voice changed abruptly, evoking sympathy and making Entreri feel foolish for his suspicion. “And now Alegni is no more, and I’m tending your wounds at the behest of the leaders of the city,” Arunika went on. “I would be remiss, and betraying my duties to my fellow citizens if I did not ask—and why should we not know?”
“He was my slaver and nothing less,” Entreri replied before he even realized that he was speaking the words. He looked curiously at Arunika, but just for a moment, before concluding that she was a trustworthy and sympathetic listener. “And now he is gone. For most of my life, my ally was me and me alone. I prefer that, and need no alliance with you or anyone else in this town.”
He tried to sound defiant, but really didn’t.
“Then not an ally,” Arunika said. She moved her face before Entreri’s and said in a suggestive tone, “A friend.”
“I need no friends.”
Arunika smiled and moved even closer.
“What do you need, Barrabus the Gray?”
Artemis Entreri wanted to assert that Barrabus the Gray was not his name. He wanted to tell Arunika again that he didn’t need her. He wanted to move away even as she moved forward.
He wanted to do a lot of things.
Drizzt flexed his arm and stretched it upward as he moved to Entreri’s door. The healing salve and the visit by the cleric had helped, no doubt.
Physically, at least.
In his good hand, the drow still held the onyx figurine, and he still called out silently for his friend who would not answer.
Entreri’s door opened before the drow reached it, and the red-haired woman called Arunika walked out. She paused and flashed a disarming smile at Drizzt, then threw a wink at Dahlia, who stood behind him.
Drizzt caught Dahlia’s gaze with a questioning stare.
“She is a strange one,” Dahlia remarked.
“One of the leaders of Neverwinter, I believe.”
Dahlia shrugged as if it did not matter and pushed past Drizzt and into Entreri’s room.
The assassin stood at the room’s small bar, stripped to the waist and looking quite exhausted as he poured some fine brandy into a small glass. This had been Alegni’s room during his brief tenure as Neverwinter’s self-appointed lord, and the tiefling warlord had decorated it and stocked it quite well.
Dahlia entered the room before Drizzt, and the drow was given pause by her sudden stop. She turned and looked back over her shoulder at the receding Arunika, then, barely muting her scowl, turned back on Entreri.
Drizzt winced.
“You are . . . healed?” the elf woman asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Ready for the road,” Entreri answered, and he downed the brandy in one swig.
Drizzt moved to the bar and took a seat. Entreri poured himself another drink and slid the bottle Drizzt’s way, staring at the drow intently.
That surprised Drizzt for just a moment, before he realized that Entreri wasn’t staring at him, but at the great sword strapped diagonally across his back, in a harness given him by a leatherworker of Neverwinter.
Drizzt blocked the sliding bottle and left it sitting idle, but Dahlia was fast to the stool beside him, and quickly grabbed the brandy and another glass.
“Ready for the road?” she echoed. “And what road does Artemis Entreri desire?”
Entreri took a sip of his drink and nodded his chin toward the sword.
“Gauntlgrym?” Dahlia asked.
“Of course.”
“You will be free?”
“I will be dead, I am sure,” Entreri said. “So, yes.”
Dahlia shook her head. “How can you know?”
“I am tied to the sword,” Entreri answered. “My longevity is due to the sword— it alone has kept me in a state of perpetual youth . . . or middle age, perhaps. I have known this for a long, long while.”
“And still you would destroy it?” Dahlia said.
“I will find no peace until Charon’s Claw is no more.”
“You will be dead!”
“Better that than enslaved,” Entreri said. “It is long past time for me to be dead.” He looked past Dahlia to Drizzt and smiled wickedly. “You would agree, of course.”
Drizzt didn’t respond in any way. He did not know whether he preferred such an outcome or not. Entreri was his tie to a past much missed. Just having Entreri around brought him a strange sense of peace, as if his friends were out there, waiting for him to return home.
But was that enough? He knew Entreri’s deadly history, and expected that this killer’s reputation would remain well-earned going forward.
It was the same dilemma Drizzt had faced with this particular man in the past, such as when they had walked out of the Underdark side by side. On more than one occasion, Drizzt could have killed Entreri, and never had he been confident that staying his blade had been the correct choice. What about Entreri’s victims, if there were such, after Drizzt’s acts of mercy, after all? Would they appreciate Drizzt’s eternal optimism, and his rather foolish hopes for redemption?
“We do not know that the primordial will destroy it,” Dahlia warned.
“At the least, we know that it will be someplace where no one can retrieve it,” Drizzt said.
“Sentient weapons have a way of being found, and wielded,” said Dahlia.
“The primordial will destroy it,” Entreri replied with conviction. “I sense the sword’s fear.”
“Then we go, straightaway,” Drizzt said.
“Are you so interested in killing this man, then?” Dahlia accused, turning sharply on Drizzt.
The drow leaned back, caught off guard by the elf woman’s intensity.
“I am,” Entreri interjected, and both turned to regard him.
Entreri shrugged and drained his glass, then moved to retrieve the bottle.
“There is a time for all of us to die,” Drizzt said, matter-of-factly, callously, even. “Sometimes, perhaps, past time.”
“Your concern is touching,” Entreri remarked.
“It is, of course, your choice to make,” Drizzt offered. He tried to keep the coldness out of his tone, but he couldn’t. Drizzt silently berated himself. He was angry and agitated about Guenhwyvar’s absence.
And there was more to it than that, Drizzt knew deep in his heart, whenever he glanced at Dahlia, to find her staring at Entreri.
He felt irrelevant, like there was some bond between these two greater than his own bond with Dahlia.
And without Guenhwyvar, what did he have left other than his companionship with Dahlia? Drizzt took a deep breath.
Entreri suddenly threw his glass against a wall across the room. The assassin scooped up the brandy bottle and took a long swallow.
As surprising as that was, Drizzt surprised the others and himself even more when he stepped back from them and drew Charon’s Claw from off his back.
The powerful sword bit at him immediately, releasing energy into his hands. The first concentrated attacks came at the core of the drow, at his heart and soul, as Charon’s Claw tried to utterly obliterate him—and it had the power to do that to most who tried to wield it, Drizzt understood without the slightest bit of doubt.
But Drizzt Do’Urden was not so easily dominated or destroyed. Nor was he inexperienced in the ways of sentient weapons. The sword Khazid’hea, the famed Cutter, had once similarly attacked him, though not nearly as powerfully as this particular blade, he had to admit. And in the drow academy for warriors, MeleeMagthere, students spent many tendays studying the powers of sentient weapons and pitting their wills against dominating magical implements.