Dahlia hoped they could stay hidden long enough for Drizzt to recover.
I will tell the devil where you are, witch, came a voice in her head, a familiar voice, but one Dahlia had never expected to hear again. I will lead him to you and watch him devour you. Perhaps I will even possess your lifeless body, and torture it through the years.
“Dor’crae,” Dahlia spat, glancing around in horror.
She had no idea how the spirit of her vampire lover could speak to her. She had not only watched, but had ushered in the vampire’s seemingly utter destruction in the rushing wave of water elementals back in Gauntlgrym. But the voice in her head was that of Dor’crae! She knew it without doubt even then as she heard the vampire spirit’s taunting laughter.
You thought me destroyed, but I remain, the voice went on. I am more than my mortal trappings, you see. And indeed, I will need a new body. May I have yours, Dahlia?
Dahlia brushed away the taunts, and her surprise at realizing that Dor’crae survived, pressed by the importance of the actual threat he’d uttered. Could Dor’crae, apparently a disembodied, free-floating spirit, do as he’d suggested? Could he lead Hadencourt to Dahlia and Drizzt in their hiding place, a shallow cave, which was no more, really, than a narrow crevice between a pair of out-leaning boulders?
The elf rose from her crouch, turning slowly as if expecting the vampire to appear suddenly and strike out at her. Her finger went to a loop on her belt, where she kept a wooden finger-spike, a subtle stake to drive into Dor’crae’s black heart.
She waited a bit longer, concentrating to try to catch any hint of Dor’crae’s telepathy. Had she imagined it? Was this one of the devil’s tricks? Or was this, perhaps, a manifestation of her normally dormant conscience because she’d considered leaving Drizzt to die?
When she heard nothing more, Dahlia crept back through the brush to the overhang. She expected to see Drizzt lying on his back, sweating profusely and near delirium.
She didn’t understand Drizzt Do’Urden.
He was sitting up, and though his hair was disheveled and a bit matted from sweat, he managed a wry smile at Dahlia as he dug one last quill tip from his arm.
“I may need a new cloak,” the drow lamented, and poked his finger through one of the holes in his forest-green weathercloak.
“The poison?” Dahlia asked.
“By my word, it hurts,” Drizzt casually replied. He clenched his right fist, the muscles on his swollen arm tightening and forcing more blood and pus from the many wounds on his arms.
“Can you fight?”
Drizzt looked up at her. “Have I a choice?”
“Likely not,” said Dahlia. “I suspect we have a spy among us.”
Drizzt glanced all around.
“A spirit,” Dahlia said. She sighed deeply and looked around at the forest. “Dor’crae came to me.”
“The vampire?”
“Corporeally destroyed, but with a stubborn spirit, it would seem. And he mentioned our devil pursuers.”
Drizzt crinkled his brow.
“I think Hadencourt may soon come calling,” Dahlia said. “Can you bring back your panther?”
“No, Guenhwyvar needs to rest on the Astral Plane. The magic of the figurine can be broken if it’s sorely overused. It will be days before I summon her again-a tenday if there’s any way I can manage without her.”
Dahlia considered the odds. “Hadencourt has at least three legion devils remaining at his side, and perhaps some more of the spiny creatures.”
“The battlefield has to be of our choosing,” Drizzt explained.
Dahlia glanced back over her shoulder at the dark forest. “We should be gone, then, and soon.”
Soon after, Dahlia crouched in the brush atop a small hillock, looking down over their previous encampment, and indeed, Hadencourt’s minions were there, crawling all around the boulders.
Had it truly been Dor’crae who had come to her, and done as he’d promised? Was it possible?
She lay still and closed her eyes, listening to the wind and the rustle of leaves, trying to sense something more.
She felt it, then: a titter of mocking laughter-not aloud, but in her thoughts. Dor’crae had found her again.
The elf warrior got up and walked to a small clearing. She broke Kozah’s Needle into two four-foot lengths and set them to spinning and swinging. She knew this dance, had used it many times before to gather the weapon’s inner strength. Now she spun, bringing the poles together hard, a crackling blue bolt arcing out just briefly before being caught by Kozah’s Needle and sucked back in. And so it went, around and around, the staves clapping together and creating a jolt that Kozah’s Needle immediately absorbed.
She could feel the weapon’s power gathering within, the metal tingling in her grip. She chanted to the ancient, forgotten Netherese god that lent the weapon his name as she performed the ritual. The stars above her dimmed, their sparkles stolen by a concentrated black cloud.
They came at her all at once, all three of the legion devils charging from the brush, waving their swords and howling at the sight of their prey.
Dahlia spun to meet them, her two staves becoming flails, which she immediately put up in a furious routine, spinning them out left, right, and in front of her to keep the three at bay.
The legion devils seemed more than content to fan around her and come at her with measured strikes instead, their caution allowing Dahlia only a couple of hard hits against raised shields. In came their swords, in fine concert, and Dahlia had to work wildly to bat those strikes aside. Trusting her companion, she turned her attention to the devil in front of her and the one to the right, a move that surely gave the legion devil on her left flank an easy opening.
That beast howled as it moved to exploit the exposed elf, but it howled all the louder when a streaking magical arrow slammed into its chest, driving it back. A second followed, then a third, which clipped off the shield the devil tried to bring forth and exploded right in the fiend’s face.
“Down!” Drizzt yelled in the tongue of the surface elves, and Dahlia, without breaking her flowing routine, dropped to her knees.
Right over her head came the next arrow, aimed squarely at the center devil’s chest.
And so it would have struck the beast, except that Dahlia’s spinning flail whirled too near it and the weapon drew the arrow’s lightning energy into it, stealing the weight of the blow.
Dahlia looked at her flail with true surprise, and she could feel the power swelling within it. A second arrow followed the first and this time she purposely intercepted it.
Her hand burned with the power contained within that metal weapon, and she wasted no time in slapping it across to her right. The devil there got its shield up easily to block, but no matter. As Kozah’s Needle struck that shield, the added energy of two of Taulmaril’s missiles burst forth, hurling the fiend several strides away. Down went the devil, jerking in spasms, head shaking violently, jaw clenching, snapping and biting at the empty air.
In the span of a few heartbeats and a few launched arrows, Dahlia found herself one-on-one with the remaining devil, and she went on the offensive, brutally and almost recklessly, determined to bring the fiend down before its companion could return to its side. Her flails spun up and around, to the side and in at the legion devil from every angle, again and again. The devil tried to counter through one of the obvious openings left by the aggressive attacks, but Dahlia wouldn’t relent long enough for that, and anytime the devil tried to go on the attack, it got hit and hit hard, and hit repeatedly.
Drizzt understood his companion’s strategy, and knew that the fiend Dahlia’s lightning magic had thrown to the ground wouldn’t be out of the fight for long. He couldn’t get a clear shot at that one, though, so he turned his bow to her current opponent.
Again the drow felt that invincibility, that sense of living on the edge and the confidence that he wouldn’t tumble over that edge. By any reasonable measure, he should not dare this shot with Dahlia engaged in such close and furious combat.