“Guen, be gone!” Drizzt commanded as he began to fire his missiles at the second tree. He felt the panther’s resistance, and despite her pain, Guenhwyvar didn’t want to leave him. But he yelled again, compelling the cat, and he nodded grimly as the corporeal form became an insubstantial gray mist below him. A hundred quills or more dropped to the ground, or atop the lifeless body of the spined devil, as the panther dematerialized.
That sight, all of those spines that had so pained poor Guenhwyvar, enraged Drizzt even more and he let fly more and more arrows, blowing apart branches in the other tree and clearing great swaths of leaves with every shot. A volley of quills came forth in response, but Drizzt avoided the surprisingly accurate missiles by simply dropping from his perch, landing on the ground softly and hardly slowing his withering fire.
He soon had the devil pinned behind the tree trunk, ducking for cover that the mighty bow, Taulmaril the Heartseeker, would not afford it. As he walked past the devil Guenhwyvar had killed, it occurred to him that he’d rarely seen Guenhwyvar so resist his command that she return to her Astral home.
He let fly another arrow, this one blowing right through the trunk and stabbing at the spined devil behind it. Now the beast came forth in a charge, its quills glowing a fierce red in its agony and outrage. It ran along the branch leading nearest to Drizzt, who calmly kept approaching, and leaped out at him.
He took the creature out of mid-air with his next explosive missile, reversing its flight and throwing it to the ground. A second arrow drove hard against the resilient fiend as it tried to stand, though still it managed to get upright.
Drizzt’s expression didn’t change, his movements remaining slow and deliberate as he stalked his prey. He drew back again on Taulmaril, trying to dismiss a nagging discomfort: why had Guenhwyvar resisted his demand that she return home?
Surely this devil, as vicious and cunning as it was, would prove no match for him.
The spined beast howled at him. He put his arrow right into its open mouth.
But then Drizzt understood Guenhwyvar’s reaction. Suddenly, and on instinct, he whirled around and dropped his hands down low on the bow, swinging it around like a club just in time to ward the legion devil rushing in at his back.
Even with his maneuver, though, the drow was at a disadvantage, for the agile devil easily dodged, throwing shield and sword out wide to either side, but then coming right back after the drow.
Drizzt dropped Taulmaril and retreated as fast as he could, desperately reaching for his scimitars as he came up hard against a tree. He saw the devil’s sword rushing quicker, though, and knew he was going to get stabbed, and only hoped that he could bring his blades around enough to minimize the blow.
Time seemed to slow as the sword thrust forward at him, inside his reach as Twinkle and Icingdeath slid free of their scabbards. Drizzt drew in his breath, trying to make himself smaller, trying futilely to keep himself moving ahead of that wicked blade.
He hardly registered the movement as a metal pole came down hard atop that sword, as a second metal pole, joined by a fine but strong line, wrapped down and under the sword, and as a third part of that staff, similarly fastened to the end of the mid-piece, wrapped up and over to smack the surprised devil across the face.
With the tri-staff wrapped around the sword, Dahlia yanked hard, turning the thrust and bringing the devil’s arm out wide. The beast responded with a roar and accepted the turn, twisting its shield horizontally and trying to jam its edge sidelong into Drizzt’s face.
Too late.
The drow dropped low, under the second attack, and both his blades thrust forth in front of him, double-stabbing the legion devil in the chest.
The devil tried to back off those scimitars, but Drizzt dug in his heels and pressed forward, holding faith that Dahlia would keep the sword trapped out wide.
She did, running beside, pacing the drow and his victim for several long strides until at last the devil slammed its back into a tree and Drizzt drove his blades right through the beast. They held that pose for a long while, the devil with its arms out wide, twitching as it tried desperately to hold onto the last moments of its life on the Prime Material Plane.
Then its shield slumped to its side, and Dahlia yanked the sword free of its weakened grasp.
Drizzt held the scimitars in deeply for several more heartbeats, then, with a sudden and fierce growl, he shifted the angle and dragged the dying beast out from the tree, turning as he went to throw the devil aside, and twisting his scimitars to rip open more flesh.
The drow stood tall as the devil spilled face-down into the dirt.
“You didn’t think I would desert you, did you?” Dahlia asked innocently.
Drizzt looked at her, but no smile came to him, and Dahlia’s confused responding expression lasted only the moment it took her to notice his right arm, stuck full of quills and swelling from the poison.
“Where is your cat?” Dahlia asked, coming to his side, for it became obvious that only his adrenalin in the rush of battle had kept the drow upright this long. She steadied him as he swayed.
“Gone,” Drizzt answered in a whisper, and he closed his eyes and fought back against the waves of pain.
As soon as he was steady on his feet once more, Dahlia moved to collect Taulmaril. “We’ll find a place to rest,” she explained, “so I can cut out those spines…”
“Do you think you can elude me?” roared Hadencourt’s booming voice, and it seemed to be coming from every direction at once, with echoes both near and far away.
Dahlia drew Drizzt’s gaze to the dead devils. “He knows where we are,” she explained. “He’s a malebranche, a war devil-his sight extends through the eyes of his minions.”
She was moving as she spoke, and so was Drizzt, neither wanting to face Hadencourt or any of his remaining soldiers just then.
“I will find you!” the unseen war devil roared with an accompanying burst of laughter. “You cannot hide!”
Drizzt and Dahlia stumbled off through the brush.
10
An uneasy Herzgo Alegni paced around a dark thicket in Neverwinter Wood. He knew another Netherese lord had come through the shadows. He could feel the presence. And the sickly sensation accompanying that feeling gave him a good indication of who it might be.
He was hardly surprised, but still dismayed when the withered old man made his appearance, his mottled robes masking his frame-a body that had once, long ago, rippled with the muscles of a warrior.
“Master,” Alegni said humbly, bowing his head and lowering his gaze to the ground.
“So you remember,” the old man said with a snort.
Alegni glanced up to look into the warlock’s face. How could he not remember such a thing? This man, Draygo Quick, had sponsored Herzgo Alegni into the Circle of Power, and had recommended Alegni specifically to lead the expedition in Neverwinter Wood.
As soon as he realized his faux pas, Alegni dropped his gaze back to the ground, but Draygo merely laughed.
“How many more decades will you need, my protege?” the old warlock said, and the twist of sarcasm he put on that last word made Alegni wince.
“Oh, look up at me!” Draygo Quick insisted. When Alegni complied, he continued, “I didn’t sponsor you for this task so that you would forever live in Neverwinter Wood.”
“I know, Master,” Herzgo Alegni replied. “But much has happened here, much unexpected. We were on the verge of victory-the city’s main bridge had been named in my honor.”
Draygo laughed again, a wheezing sound that showed how his years of playing with diseases and rot had exacted a toll on his lungs. “I cannot deny that the cataclysm of the volcano was unexpected.”