Starless Night

Chapter 24 HEAD FIRST

 
Drizzt came back into his cell to see Catti-brie still lying on the stone floor, holding the spider mask and gasping heavily as she tried to steady her breathing. Behind her, ntreri hung awkwardly by one arm, twisted and stuck to the gooey wall.
"This'll get him down, " Catti-brie explained, tossing the mask to Drizzt.
Drizzt caught the mask but made no move, having much more on his mind than freeing the assassin.
"Regis telled me, " Catti-brie explained, though that point seemed obvious enough. "I made him tell me."
"You came alone?"
Catti-brie shook her head, and for a moment Drizzt nearly swooned, thinking that another of his friends might be in peril, or might be dead. But Catti-brie motioned to Guenhwyvar, and the ranger breathed a sigh of relief.
"You are a fool, " Drizzt replied, his words wrought of sheer incredulity and frustration. He scowled fiercely at Catti-brie, want ing her to know that he was not pleased.
"No more than yerself, " the young woman answered with a wistful smile, a smile that stole the scowl from Drizzt's face. The dark elf couldn't deny his joy at seeing Catti-brie again, even in this dangerous circumstance.
"Are ye wanting to talk about it now?" Catti-brie asked, smiling still. "Or are ye wanting to wait until we're back in Mithril Hall?"
Drizzt had no answer, just shook his head and ran a hand through his thick mane. He looked to the spider mask then, and to Entreri, and his scowl returned.
"We've a deal, " Catti-brie quickly put in. "He got me to ye, and said he'd get us both out, and we're to guide him back to the sur face."
"And once there?" Drizzt had to ask.
"Let him go his way, and we're to go our own, " Catti-brie answered firmly, as though she needed to hear the strength of her voice for the sake of her own resolve.
Again Drizzt looked doubtfully from the mask to the assassin. The prospects of setting Artemis Entreri free on the surface did not sit well in the noble ranger's gut. How many would suffer for Drizzt's actions now? How many would again be terrorized by the darkness that was Artemis Entreri?
"I gived me word, " Catti-brie offered in the face of her friend's obvious doubts.
Drizzt continued to ponder the consequences. He couldn't deny Entreri's potential value on the ensuing journey, particularly the fight they would likely face in getting out of the Baenre complex. Drizzt had fought beside the assassin before on similar occasions, and together they had been nothing short of brilliant.
Still...
"I came in good faith, " Entreri stuttered through chattering, barely controlled teeth. "I saved... I. . . saved that one." His free arm twitched out as though to indicate Catti-brie, but it jerked sud denly, violently, and banged against the wall instead.
"I'll have your word then, " Drizzt offered, moving toward the man. He meant to go on and exact a promise from Entreri that his evil deeds would be at an end, even that once on the surface he would willingly stand trial for his dark past. Entreri saw it coming clearly, though, and cut Drizzt short, his rising anger giving him temporary control over his uncooperative muscles.
"Nothing!" he snarled. "You have what I offered to her!"
Drizzt immediately looked back to Catti-brie, who was up and moving for her bow.
"I gived me word, " she replied, more emphatically, matching his doubtful stare.
"And we are running.., short.., of time, " Entreri added.
The ranger moved the last two steps swiftly and plopped the mask over Entreri's head. The man's arm slid out of the goo and he dropped to the floor, unable to gain enough control to even stand. Drizzt went for the remaining potion bottles, hoping that they might restore the assassin's muscle control. He still wasn't wholly. convinced that showing Entreri back to the surface was the right choice, but he decided that he couldn't wait around and debate the issue. He would free Entreri, and together the three and Guenhwy var would try to escape the compound and the city. Other problems would have to be dealt with later.
It would all be moot, after all, if the potion's healing magic did not help the assassin, for Drizzt and Catti-brie surely could not carry the man out of there.
But Entreri was standing again before he had even finished his first draw on the ceramic flask. The effects of the dart were tempo rary and fast fading, and the revitalizing potion spurred the recov ery even more quickly.
Drizzt and Catti-brie shared another flask, and Drizzt, after strapping on his armor, belted on two of the six remaining and gave two each to his companions.
"We have to go back out of Baenre's great mound, " Entreri said, readying himself for the journey. "The high ritual is still in progress, no doubt, but if the slain minotaurs on the higher level have been discovered, then we'll likely find a host of soldiers waiting for us."
"Unless Vendes, in her arrogance, came down here alone, " Drizzt replied. His tone, and the assassin's responding stare revealed that neither of them thought that possibility likely
"Head first, " Catti-brie offered. Both her companions looked to her, not understanding.
"The dwarven way, " the young woman explained. "When ye've a back to yer wall, ye put yer head down low and let it lead."
Drizzt looked to Guenhwyvar, to Catti-brie and her bow, to Entreri and his deadly blades, and to his own scimitars, how con venient for cocky Dantrag, in anticipation of his fight with the cap tured ranger, to have placed all of Drizzt's items so near at hand! "They may have us cornered, " Drizzt admitted, "but I doubt that they understand what it is they have cornered!"
Matron Baenre, Matron Mez'Barris Armgo, and K'yorl Odran stood in a tight triangle atop the central altar of House Baenre's immense chapel. Five other matron mothers, rulers of the fourth to eighth ranking houses of the city, formed a ring about the trio. This elite group, Menzoberranzan's ruling council, met often in the small, secret room used as council chambers, but not in centuries had they come together in prayer.
Matron Baenre felt truly at the pinnacle of her power. She had brought them together, one and all, had banded the eight ruling houses in an alliance that would force all of Menzoberranzan to fol low Matron Baenre's lead to Mithril Hall. Even vicious K'yorl, so resistant to the expedition and the alliance, now seemed honestly caught up in the budding frenzy Earlier in the ceremony, K'yorl, with no prompting, had offered to go along personally on the attack, and Mez'Barris Armgo, not wanting the ruler of the house ranked behind her own to shine darker in Matron Baenre's eyes, had immediately offered likewise.
Lloth was with her, Matron Baenre believed with all of her evil heart. The others believed that Lloth was with the withered matron mother, too, and, thus, the alliance had been firmly joined.
Matron Baenre did well to hide her smile through the next por tions of the ceremony She tried hard to be patient with Vendes. She had sent her daughter to get Drizzt, after all, and Vendes was expe rienced enough in the ways of drow rituals to understand that the renegade might not survive the ceremony If Vendes took a few tor turing liberties with the prisoner now, Matron Baenre could not fault her. Baenre did not plan to sacrifice Drizzt at the ceremony She had many games left to play with that one, and dearly wanted to give Dantrag his chance to outshine all other weapon masters in Menzoberranzan. But these religious frenzies had a way of deciding their own events, Baenre knew, and if the situation demanded that Drizzt be given over to Lloth, then she would eagerly wield the sac rificial dagger.
The thought was not an unpleasant one.
At the front of the circular structure, beside the great doors, Dantrag and Berg'inyon found themselves faced with equally diffi cult choices. A guard sneaked in, whispering word that some com motion had occurred at the great mound, that several minotaurs were rumored killed, and that Vendes and her escort had gone to the lower levels.
Dantrag looked down the rows of seated dark elves, to the raised central dais. All of his other sisters were down there, and his elder brother, Gromph, as well (though he didn't doubt that Gromph would have eagerly accepted the excuse to be out of that female dominated scene). The high ritual was a ceremony of emo tional peaks and valleys, and the ruling matron mothers, turning faster and faster circles on the dais, slapping their hands together and chanting wildly, were surely heading for a peak.
Dantrag looked into the waiting gaze of Berg'inyon, the younger Baenre obviously at a loss as to how they should proceed.
The weapon master moved out of the main hall, taking the guard and Berg'inyon with him. Behind them there came a succes sion of crescendos as the frenzied cheers mounted.
Go to the perimeter, Dantrag's hands flashed to Berg'inyon, for he would have had to shout to be heard. See that it is secure.
Berg'inyon nodded and moved off down the bending corridor, to one of the secret side doors, where he had left his lizard mount.
Dantrag took a quick moment to check his own gear. Likely, Vendes had the situation, if there even was a situation, well under control, but deep inside, Dantrag almost hoped that she did not, hoped that his fight with Drizzt would be thrust upon him. He felt his sentient sword's agreement with that thought, felt a wave of vicious hunger emanate from the weapon.
Dantrag let his thoughts continue down that path. He would carry the slain renegade's body in to his mother at the high ritual, would let her and the other matron mothers (and Uthegental Armgo, who sat in the audience) witness the result of his prowess.
The thought was not an unpleasant one.
"Head first, " Catti-brie mouthed silently as the companions came up into the main level within the marble cylinder. Guenhwy var crouched in front of her, ready to spring; Drizzt and Entreri stood to either side of the cat, weapons drawn. Catti-brie bent back Taulmaril.
A high ranking drow soldier, a female, stood right before the opening as the marble door slid aside. Wide went her red eyes, and she threw her hands up before her.
Catti-brie's arrow blew right through the meager defense, blew right through the female, and took down the drow behind her as well. Guenhwyvar leaped in the arrow's wake, easily clearing the two falling dark elves and barreling into a host of others, scattering them all across the circular room.
Out went Drizzt and Entreri, one on either side of the opening, their flashing weapons leading. They came back into Catti-brie's line of sight almost immediately, both of them bearing suddenly blood stained blades.
Catti-brie fired again, right between them, pounding a hole in the fleshy drow wall blocking the entrance to the exit corridor. Then she leaped out, between her companions, with Drizzt and Entreri doing equally brilliant sword work on either side of her. She fired again, nailing a drow to one of the side doors in the circular room. Entreri's dagger bit hard into a drow heart; Drizzt's scimitars crossed up an opponent's attack routine, then countered, one over the other in opposing, diagonal, downward swipes, drawing a neat X on the drow's throat.
But this was Guenhwyvar 's show. Inside the crowded room, nothing in all the world could have created more general havoc and panic than six hundred pounds of snarling, clawing fury Guenhwy var dashed this way and that, swiping one drow on the backside, tripping up another with a bite to the ankle. The cat actually killed no dark elves in that wild rush through the room and into the corri dor, but left many wounded, and many more fleeing, terrified, in its wake.
Catti-brie was first into the corridor.
"Shoot the damned door!" Entreri cried to her, but she needed no prodding and put the first and second arrows away before the assassin even finished the command. Soon she could hardly even see the door for the blazing shower of sparks igniting all about it, but what she could make out continued to appear solid.
"Open, oh, open!" the young woman shouted, thinking that they were going to be trapped in the corridor. Once the chaos in the room behind them subsided, their enemies would overwhelm them. Just to accentuate Catti-brie's fears, the corridor suddenly went black.
Good fortune alone saved them, for the woman's next shot struck one of the opening mechanisms within the door, and up it slid. Still running blindly, Catti-brie stumbled out into the Baenre compound, Drizzt and Entreri, and then Guenhwyvar, coming fast behind.
They saw the streaks of glowing house emblems, leaving a residual trail of light as several lizard riders swarmed to the area of the commotion. The companions had to make their choice immedi ately, as crossbow quarrels clicked off the stone around them. Entreri took up the lead. His first thought was to go for the fence, but he realized that the three of them, with only one spider mask, could not get past that barrier in time. He ran to the right, around the side of the great mound. It was an uneven wall, for the structure was really a tight cluster of several huge stalagmites. Catti-brie and Drizzt came right behind, but Guenhwyvar pivoted completely about just outside the doorway, and rushed back in, scattering the closest pursuing dark elves.
Entreri's mind worked furiously, trying to remember the gen eral layout of the huge compound, trying to discern how many guards were likely on duty, and where they were all normally located. The immense house grounds covered nearly half a mile in one direction and a quarter of a mile in the other, and many of the guards, if Entreri chose correctly, would never get near the fighting.
It seemed as if all the drow of the house were about them now, though, a mounting frenzy on all sides of the escaping prisoners.
"There's nowhere to go!" Catti-brie cried. A javelin slammed the stone just above her head, and she swung about, Taulmaril ready The enemy dark elf was already moving, diving out of sight behind a mound near the fence, but Catti-brie let fly anyway. The magical arrow skipped off the stone and slammed the fence, disinte grating into a tremendous shower of silver and purple sparks. For a moment, the woman dared to hope that luck had shown her a way to blow through the barrier, but when the sparks cleared, she real ized that the strand of the mighty fence wasn't even scratched.
Catti-brie hesitated for a moment to consider the shot, but Drizzt slammed roughly against her back, forcing her to run on.
Around another bend went the assassin, only to find that many drow were coming at them from the other direction. With enemies so close, to run out into the open compound would have been sui cide, and they could go neither forward nor back the way they had come. Entreri rushed forward anyway, then cut a sharp right, leap ing up onto the mound, onto a narrow, ascending walkway used mostly by the goblin slaves the Baenre family had put to work sculpting the outside of the gorgeous palace.
The ledge was not difficult for the assassin, who was used to running along the high, narrow gutters of the great houses of south ern cities. Neither was it difficult for Drizzt, so agile and balanced. If Catti-brie had found the time to pause a moment and consider her course, though, she likely would not have been able to go on. They were running up a path a foot and a half wide, open on one side (to an increasingly deep drop) and with an uneven wall on the other. But the dark elves were not far behind, and none of the fugitives had time to consider his or her course. Catti-brie not only paced Entreri step for step, but she managed to fire off a couple of shots into the compound below, just to keep her enemies scrambling for cover.
Entreri thought that they had met an obstacle when he rounded a bend to find two stupidly staring goblin workers. The terrified slaves wanted no part of any fight, though, and they dove over the edge of the walkway, sliding the bumpy ride down the side of the mound.
Around the next bend the assassin spotted a wide and deco rated balcony, five feet to the side of the continuing walkway. Entreri leaped onto it, seeing a better carved stairway ascending from that point.
As soon as he landed, two dark elves burst out of doors set in the back of the balcony, against the mound. A silver streaking arrow greeted the first, blowing her back into the carved room, and Entreri made short work of the other, finishing her before Drizzt and Catti brie had even leaped across to join him.
Then came Guenhwyvar, the panther flying past the three sur prised companions to take up the lead along the stairway
Higher and higher went the companions, fifty feet, a hundred feet, two hundred feet, off the ground. Huffing and puffing, the tired group ran on, having no choice. Finally, after they had put a thousand feet below them, the huge stalagmite became a stalactite, and the stair gave way to horizontal walkways, connecting many of the larger hanging stones over the Baenre compound.
A group of drow charged along the walkway from the other direction, cutting off the companions. The dark elves fired their hand crossbows as they came, into the great panther as Guenhwy var flattened its ears and charged. Darts stung the cat, pumping their poison, but Guenhwyvar would not be stopped. Realizing this, the trailing members of the group turned and fled, and some of those caught too close to the cat simply leaped over the side of the railed walkway, using their innate powers of levitation to keep them aloft.
Catti-brie immediately hit one of them with an arrow, the force of the impact spinning the dying drow over and over in midair, to hang grotesquely at a diagonal, upside down angle, lines of his blood running freely from the wound to scatter like rain on the stone floor many hundreds of feet below. The other levitating dark elves, realizing how vulnerable they were, quickly dropped from sight.
Guenhwyvar buried the remaining elves on the walkway. Entreri came right behind and finished off those wounded drow left broken in the fierce panther's wake. Entreri looked back to his com panions and gave a determined shout, seeing running room ahead of them.
Catti-brie responded in kind, but Drizzt kept silent. He knew better than the others how much trouble he and his friends were really in. Many of the Baenre drow could likely levitate, an ability that Drizzt had for some reason lost after he had spent some time on the surface. The Baenre soldiers would be up all along the walk ways before long, hiding among the stalactites with their hand crossbows ready
The walkway came to another stalactite and split both ways around the structure. Guenhwyvar went left, Entreri right.
Suspecting an ambush, the assassin rushed around the bend in a slide on his knees. A single drow was waiting for him, arm extended. The dark elf snapped the hand crossbow down as soon as she saw the assassin coming in low. She fired but missed, and Entreri's sword punctured her side. Up came the assassin in a flourish. Hav ing no time for any extended battles, Entreri used his prodding sword as leverage and heaved the female over the railing.
Drizzt and Catti-brie heard a roar and saw a dark elf, swatted by the panther, go tumbling away on the left as well. Catti-brie started that way to follow, but heard a whistle from behind and looked over her shoulder just as Drizzt's tattered green cloak waved in the air. The woman reflexively ducked, then stood.staring at a crossbow dart that had tangled up in the thick cloth, a crossbow dart that had been aimed at the back of her head.
Drizzt dropped the cloak and skipped to Catti-brie's side, affording her a fine view of the walkway behind them and the group of drow fast approaching.
On the narrow walkway, there was no better weapon in all the world than Taulmaril.
Streak after streak flashed down the length, killing and wound ing several drow. Catti-brie thought she could keep up the attack indefinitely, until all the pursuing enemies were slain, but suddenly Drizzt grabbed her by the shoulders and heaved her to the side, falling flat with her under him halfway around the round stalactite.
A lightning bolt slammed the stone, right where they had been standing, showering them both with multicolored sparks.
"Damn wizard!" the fiery woman shouted. She came up on one knee and fired again, thinking she had located the mage. Her arrow dove for the approaching group, but hit some magical barrier and exploded into nothingness.
"Damn wizard!" Catti-brie cried again, then she was running, pulled on by Drizzt.
The walkway beyond the stalactite was clear, and the compan ions far outdistanced those pursuing, as the dark elves had to be wary of any ambush near the pillar.
Many intersecting walkways, a virtual maze above the great compound, presented themselves, and very few Baenre soldiers were anywhere to be seen. Again it seemed as though the friends had some running room, but where could they go? The entire cav ern of Menzoberranzan was opened wide before them, below them, but the walkways ended far short of the perimeter of the Baenre compound in every direction, and few stalactites hung low enough to join with the great stalagmite mounds that might have offered them a way to get back to the ground.
Guenhwyvar, apparently sharing those confused thoughts, fell back into the group, and Entreri again took up the lead. He soon came to a fork in the walkway and looked back to Drizzt for guid ance, but the drow only shrugged. Both of the seasoned warriors realized that the defenses were fast organizing around them.
They came to another stalactite pillar and followed a ringing walkway ascending its curving side. They found a door, for this one pillar was hollowed, but there was only a single, empty room inside, no place to hide. At the top of the ascending ring, the bridg ing walkways continued on in two directions. Entreri started left, then stopped abruptly and fell flat to his back.
A javelin soared just over him, hitting and sinking into the stone stalactite right in front of Catti-brie's face. The young woman stared at it as writhing black tentacles arched along its quivering length, crackling and biting at the rock. Catti-brie could only imagine what pains that evil looking enchantment might cause.
"Lizard riders, " Drizzt whispered into her ear, pulling her along once more. Catti-brie looked all about for a shot and heard the scuttling feet of subterranean lizards as they ran along the cavern's ceiling. But in the dimly lit view afforded her by her magical circlet, she made out no clear targets.
"Drizzt Do'Urden!" came a cry from a lower, parallel walkway Drizzt stopped and looked that way, to see Berg'inyon Baenre on his lizard, hanging under the closest edge of the stone walkway and readying a javelin. The young Baenre's throw was remarkable, given the distance and his curious angle, but still the weapon fell short.
Catti-brie responded with a shot as the rider darted back under the stone bridge, her arrow skimming the stone and flying freely to the ground so very far below.
"That was a Baenre, " Drizzt explained to her, "a dangerous one indeed!"
"Was, " Catti-brie replied evenly, and she took up her bow and fired again, this time aiming for the center of the lower bridge. The magical arrow burrowed through the stone, and there came a shriek.
Berg'inyon fell free from below the bridge, and his dead lizard tumbled after. Out of the companions' sight, the young noble enacted his levitational powers and turned about in the air, slowly descending to the cavern floor.
Drizzt kissed Catti-brie on the cheek in admiration of the remarkable shot. Then they ran on, after Entreri and Guenhwyvar. Around the next stalactite, the two saw Entreri and the cat bury another dark elf.
It all seemed so hopeless, though, to no avail. They could keep scoring minor victories for hours on end and not deplete the resources of House Baenre. Even worse, sooner or later the com pound's defense would organize fully, and the matron mother and high priestesses, and probably more than a few powerful wizards as well, would come out of the domed chapel to join in the chase.
They climbed a walkway ringing another stalactite, going to the highest worked levels of the cavern. Still there were drow above them, they knew, hiding in the shadows, on their lizard mounts, carefully picking their shots.
Guenhwyvar stopped suddenly and sprang straight up, disap pearing into a cluster of hanging stones fully twenty five feet above the walkway. Back down came the mighty panther, raking and gouging the lizard it brought along. The two crashed to the stone walkway, rolling and biting, and for a moment, Drizzt thought that Guenhwyvar would surely go over the side.
Entreri skidded to a stop a safe distance from the battling beasts, but the ranger sprang beyond him, putting his scimitars to deadly work on the entangled lizard.
Catti-brie had wisely kept her stare upward, and when a drow drifted slowly out of the stalactite cluster, Taulmaril was waiting. The dark elf fired his hand crossbow and missed, the quarrel skip ping off the bridge behind her; Catti-brie responded and blew the tip off a stalactite just to the side of the drow.
The drow realized immediately that he could not win against the woman and that deadly bow. He scrambled along the stalactites, kicking off them and flying along the cavern's ceiling. Another arrow cracked into the stone, not so far behind, and then another blew out the hanging stone right in front of him, just as he went to grab at it.
The levitating drow was stuck with no handholds, hanging in midair twenty feet up and now a few dozen feet to the side of the walkway He should have released his levitation spell and dropped for the ground, recalling the magical energies when he was far below Catti-brie's level. He went up instead, seeking the safety of the nooks in the uneven ceiling.
Catti-brie took deadly aim and let fly. The streaking arrow drove right through the doomed drow and thundered up into the ceiling above, disappearing into the stone. A split second later, there came another explosion from above, from somewhere above the cavern roof.
Catti-brie stared curiously, trying to decipher the meaning of that second blast.