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.
The drow doubled down on his own concentration then and fought back, demanding fealty from the blade.
The blade fought back.
Gradually, Drizzt altered his counterattack, promising the sword a glorious joining. He would wield it well.
Charon’s Claw teased him with power. It directed Drizzt’s thoughts to Artemis Entreri, who was now, the sword assured him, his slave.
And indeed, when Entreri protested the drawn blade and took a step toward Drizzt, Charon’s Claw laid him low.
Dahlia cried out and broke Kozah’s Needle into her flails, putting them into motion immediately.
But Drizzt held up his left hand and motioned her to patience. He told the sword to free Entreri, and when it did not, he demanded that the painful vibrations cease.
“Now!” he ordered aloud.
Artemis Entreri staggered to the side and gradually straightened. He walked straight back from Drizzt, never taking his eyes from the drow, never blinking, though the pain had obviously ceased.
He believed that this was a betrayal, Drizzt saw clearly from his angry expression. “Free him,” Drizzt told the sword.
Charon’s Claw went at the drow’s soul again, even more ferociously, and Drizzt groaned and staggered once more. Images and thoughts of obliteration, of nothingness, filled his mind, as Charon’s Claw tried to use fear to weaken his resolve.
Drizzt had lived too long, had been through too much, to give in to such despair.
He won the fight, but only to a draw. Charon’s Claw would not release Artemis Entreri, and there was no way Drizzt would ever get through that angry wall. Perhaps Drizzt could prevent the sword from inflicting, or at least from sustaining, any torture upon the man, but he could make no progress past that point.
He turned to the sword’s own tactics.
Now the drow’s thoughts were back in Gauntlgrym, at the pit of the primordial. Entreri had said that he could sense the sword’s fear at such a prospect.
Drizzt saw it, too, felt it keenly.
He redoubled his concentration, picturing the sword dropping down, down to the waiting fiery maw of the godlike beast.
This was no deception, and despite his desperate struggle, a smile widened on his face. Charon’s Claw was deathly afraid.
Charon’s Claw recognized its doom.
The sword went at him again, wildly.
Drizzt changed the image in his mind to one of Entreri wielding Charon’s Claw once more, presenting the blade with a clear choice: the fire or Entreri.
Charon’s Claw calmed immediately.
Drizzt slid it away into its scabbard. He shook his head and looked back at his companions, and nearly fell to his knees from sudden weakness, thoroughly drained by the battle.
“Are you mad?” Entreri growled at him.
“Why would you do such a thing?” Dahlia added.
“The sword fears our course,” Drizzt explained, and he cast a sly look at the assassin as he finished, “It would prefer your hand once more above a journey to the mouth of the primordial.”
“You can control it,” Dahlia said breathlessly.
Entreri never looked at her, his gaze fixed on Drizzt.
“As I said, the choice is yours,” the drow said.
“You would trust me beside you with that blade in hand?” Entreri asked.
“No,” Drizzt said, even as Dahlia started to say yes.
Entreri stared at the drow for a long, long while. “You wield it,” he said at length.
“I cannot.”
“Because you know it will turn on you,” Entreri reasoned. “You have not the accompanying glove, and cannot maintain your discipline indefinitely at so high a level. And that sword is relentless, I assure you.”
