with some cover. With practiced ease and perfect silence, the skilled warrior moved to that point, and the sorcerer came out behind her, easing along the right-hand wall, trying to get a view beyond his companion.
All seemed clear and quiet. He motioned for her to continue.
She crept beneath the overhang and turned the corner.
A movement farther to the left had her standing faster and turning to defend, but too late as the spinning weapon cracked her against the side of her head and sent her staggering into the middle of the corridor.
Alfwin called out for his trailing companions and stepped forward, wand extended. He tried to sort out the blur of shadowy movement before him, two forms of similar size entangled and crossing the corridor left to right.
He was about to shoot into that tangle, hoping he would hit the right target, when a third option showed, a bit farther along.
As he let fly, so too did his opponent, countering the warlock’s black bolt with a lightning strike.
No, not a bolt of lightning, but a missile sizzling with lightning energy, the sorcerer realized as the streaking arrow burrowed clear through his shoulder to explode against the wall behind him.
He yelped in pain and shock and leveled the wand again. Then he was blind.
The sorcerer’s fiery bolt had stung him, bubbling the skin of his leading forearm, but Drizzt held his ground without flinching and called on his innate drow powers, a remnant of magic from the emanations of the deep Underdark, to fill the corridor before him, the region around the warlock, with a globe of absolute darkness. He kept Taulmaril level, methodically setting a second arrow and letting fly, the glowing arrow seeming to blink out of existence as it disappeared into the darkness.
He had to win, and he had to win fast, he knew, for these tight confines could surely favor a wizard. His enemy might fill the whole of the corridor with a wall of biting flames, or send forth a plague of insects.
Drizzt wouldn’t give him the chance.
He drew back and fired again.
When the fighting broke out up ahead, Zingrawf and his halfling companion signaled back and called back for the tiefling huntress, then turned and advanced, seeing the form fast approaching.
They had no idea that the form was not their female companion, for she lay dead in an alcove.
Entreri rushed to catch up, and he, unlike the burly tiefling in front of him, didn’t hesitate when the corridor brightened suddenly in a flash of lightning.
The halfling warrior separated then, running ahead to join the duo up front, and almost caught up to the spellcaster when they both disappeared into absolute blackness.
Again the burly trailing tiefling stopped, and again Entreri did not, for he knew well the tricks of Drizzt Do’Urden and had seen similar globes of darkness many times in his battles beside and against the drow.
He could have simply skewered the bulky fighter with his sword then, but he saw little fun in that.
“Well met,” he said instead.
The burly male froze for a third heartbeat, then, finally figuring it out, it seemed, and spun around fiercely, sweeping the breadth of the corridor with his large battle-axe.
Entreri, far too clever to be caught by such a clumsy and obvious move, let the weapon harmlessly pass, then waded in behind and thrust his sword into the tiefling’s shoulder. Mocking the lumbering brute with laughter, the assassin easily stepped back to avoid the backhand slash.
Entreri could have gone in again-so many openings presented themselves in the tiefling’s awkward posture- but a streak of silver flashed over the tiefling’s shoulder and had Entreri ducking for his life.
He started to call out for Drizzt to cease, but another arrow cracked against the stone, showering Entreri and the tiefling in sparks. Entreri dived to the far side desperately, and knew he was vulnerable to the tiefling now, to that heavy axe.
But his opponent seemed no longer interested. The brute lurched forward and half-turned, showing Entreri a smoking hole in his back where an arrow had struck.
From the darkness globe came the other warrior, backstepping, arms up defensively, and futilely, before him.
A lightning arrow blew right through him and flew on to drive into the chest of the burly tiefling.
Drizzt’s right hand moved in a near-perfect circle, reaching back over his shoulder, accepting an arrow from his enchanted quiver, and coming around to nock, pull, and fire, before beginning its circuit anew.
A line of arrows streamed out, Drizzt swaying the bow, left to right and back again, shooting low and shooting high.
He glanced only once at Dahlia, who crouched atop the warrior she had felled.
An image flashed in Drizzt’s head then, of Dahlia reclining with Artemis Entreri, of Dahlia entwined with Artemis Entreri, locked in passionate play.
Drizzt’s face, so calm and determined until that moment, struck an angry grimace and he stepped forward.
“He is done,” he heard Dahlia say, but he kept firing.
The elf reached up to grab at his arm, but Drizzt pushed past her and increased the barrage, skipping arrows off the stone, left and right, and off the ceiling as well.
“He is done!” Dahlia insisted, but she was speaking of the sorcerer, and Drizzt was aiming past the sorcerer, to the other Shadovar enemies behind his darkness globe, and at a companion he knew to be there.
The corridor flashed like a raging thunderstorm, stone smoking and cracking, the air sizzling with lightning energy.
The burly tiefling warrior somehow continued to stand, though likely more because the repeated blows were holding him aloft than out of any sense of balance or even consciousness.
Against the wall, Entreri called out for Drizzt to stop, but his words seemed thin indeed against the thundering cacophony of the barrage.
The stone right before his face fractured as an arrow skipped past, shards stinging his eyes. He rolled out from the wall and swept the feet out from under the tiefling, then flattened out, accepting the crashing weight as the brute fell atop him.
But could even this burly blanket stop a shot from that devastating bow?
“Heavily enchanted,” Glorfathel warned as Ambergris edged toward the magnificent, gem-studded throne on the tiled stone dais.
“Cast protections, then,” Afafrenfere said, eyeing those marvelous baubles hungrily.
Glorfathel laughed at the monk. “No mage in the Shadowfell or on Toril would be foolish enough to touch that throne. It is imbued with the power-”
“Of dwarf gods,” Ambergris finished for him, and she was very near to the throne. She glanced past it, to a small graveyard of cairns. A curious sight indeed, for who would put such monuments so near to such a throne in the middle of an audience hall? Two of the cairns were larger than the others, and as she focused on the grandest of them, Ambergris realized yet another mystery: these were new. They hadn’t been placed in the last tenday, perhaps, but the graves were certainly not nearly as ancient as everything else they had seen in the complex.
“What secrets might ye be keepin’ here, Clangeddin?” she asked softly. “And what powers, mighty Moradin?” She reached her hand out tentatively.
“Dare not,” the elf warned, and Afafrenfere swallowed hard.
Ambergris stiffened immediately as her thick fingers touched the burnished arm of the great chair, as if some bolt of power had shot down her spine. She sucked in her breath and held the pose for a long while, the other two staring on incredulously.
They could not begin to understand the rush of power traveling through the dwarf at that time. She saw flashes of the last disciple of the dwarf gods who had touched this throne, and then a clear image of him sitting there. She noted his red beard and one-horned crown, and her lips moved to form the name of “King Bruenor?”
She held on a bit longer, but the energy proved too great. She focused on the vision, as if trying desperately to convince this famous dwarf king that she, too, was of Delzoun heritage, that she truly was of the Adbar O’Mauls! But Ambergris carried no royal blood, and so the throne rejected her, but kindly, energy building until she could hold on no longer.
The dwarf staggered backward.
“It canno’ be,” she mumbled, but she knew that it had been, indeed. This was no deception.
