Entreri kicked him in the head and kicked him again before Canthan settled back down to the floor. The assassin put his sword away but held the dagger as he grabbed the semiconscious wizard by the scruff of his neck and dragged him back to the corridor.
"Surely you'll be reasonable in this regard," Jarlaxle, on his hands and knees and peering over the edge of the hole, said to Athrogate. "You cannot get out without my help."
Athrogate, hands on hips, just stared up at him.
"I had to do something," Jarlaxle said. "Was I to allow you to kill my friend?"
"Bah! Well I wouldn't've fought him if he hadn't've fought meself."
"True enough, but consider Olgerkhan."
"I did, and I killed him."
"Sometimes acts like that upset people."
"He shouldn't've got in me friend's way."
"So your friend could kill the girl?"
Athrogate shrugged as if it did not matter. "He had a reason."
"An errant reason."
"What's done is done. Ye wanting an apology?"
"I don't know that I want anything," Jarlaxle replied. "You seem to be the one in need, not I."
"Bah!"
"You cannot get out. Starvation is a lousy way for a warrior to die."
Athrogate just shrugged, moved to the side of the hole, studied the sheer wall for a moment, and sat down.
Jarlaxle sighed and turned away to consider Arrayan. She was still cradling Olgerkhan's head, whispering to him.
"Don't you dare leave me," she pleaded.
"And only now you realize your love for him?" Jarlaxle asked.
Arrayan shot him a hateful look that told him his guess was on the mark.
Noise from the corridor turned Jarlaxle's head, but not the woman's. In came Entreri, muttering under his breath and dragging Canthan at the end of one arm. He moved around the hole to Arrayan and Olgerkhan.
The woman looked at him with a mixture of surprise, curiosity, and horror.
Entreri had no time for it. He grabbed her by the shoulder and shoved her aside, then dropped Canthan before Olgerkhan.
Arrayan came back at him, but he stopped her with the coldest and most frightening look the woman had ever seen.
With her out of the way, Entreri turned his attention to Olgerkhan. He grabbed the large half-orc's hand and pulled it out over the groaning Canthan. He put his dagger into Olgerkhan's palm and forced the half-orc's fingers over it. He glanced at Arrayan then at Jarlaxle, and he drove the dagger down into Canthan's back.
He slipped his thumb free, placed it on the bottom of the dagger's jeweled hilt, and willed the blade to feed. The vampiric weapon went to its task with relish, stealing the very soul of Canthan and feeding it back to its wielder.
Olgerkhan's chest lifted and his eyes opened as he coughed forth his first breath in many seconds. He continued to gasp for a moment. His eyes widened in horror as he came to understand the source of his healing. He tried to pull his hand away.
But Entreri held him firmly in place, forcing him to feed until Canthan's life-force was simply no more.
"What did you do?" Arrayan cried, her voice caught between horror and joy. She came forward and Entreri did not try to stop her. He extracted his dagger from Olgerkhan's grasp and moved aside.
Arrayan fell over her half-orc friend, sobbing with joy and saying, "It was always you," over and over again.
Olgerkhan just shook his head, staring blankly at Entreri for a moment. He sat up, his strength and health renewed. Then he focused on Arrayan, upon her words, and he buried his face in her hair.
"Ah, the kindness of your heart," Jarlaxle remarked to the assassin. "How unselfish of you, since the contender for your prize was about to be no more."
"Maybe I just wanted Canthan dead."
"Then maybe you should have killed him in the other room."
"Shut up."
Jarlaxle laughed and sighed all at once.
"Where is Ellery?" Entreri asked.
"I believe that you nicked her heart."
Entreri shook his head at the insanity of it all.
"She was unreliable, in any case," Jarlaxle said. "Obviously so. I do take offense when women I have bedded turn on me with such fury."
"If it happens often, then perhaps you should work on your technique."
That had Jarlaxle laughing, but just for a moment. "So we are five," he said. "Or perhaps four," he added, glancing at the hole.
"Stubborn dwarf?" asked the assassin.
"Is there any other kind?"
Entreri moved to the edge of the hole. "Ugly one," he called down. "Your wizard friend is dead."
"Bah!" Athrogate snorted.
Entreri glanced back at Jarlaxle then moved over, grabbed Canthan's corpse, and hauled him over the edge of the hole, dropping him with a splat beside the surprised dwarf.
"Your friend is dead," Entreri said again, and the dwarf didn't bother to argue the point. "And so now you've a choice."
"Eat him or starve?" Athrogate asked.
"Eat him and eventually starve anyway," Jarlaxle corrected, coming up beside Entreri to peer in at the dwarf. "Or you could come out of the hole and help us."
"Help ye what?"
"Win," said the drow.
"Didn't ye just stop that possibility when Canthan put it forth?"
"No," Jarlaxle said with certainty. "Canthan was wrong. He believed that Arrayan was the continuing source of power for the castle, but that is not so. She was the beginning of the enchantment, 'tis true, but this place is far beyond her."
The drow had all of the others listening by then, with Olgerkhan, the color returned to his face, standing solidly once more.
"If I believed otherwise, then I would have killed Arrayan myself," Jarlaxle went on. "But no. This castle has a king, a great and powerful one."
"How do you know this?" Entreri asked, and he seemed as doubtful and confused at the others, even Athrogate.
"I saw enough of the book to recognize that it has a different design than the one Herminicle used outside of Heliogabalus," the drow explained. "And there is something else." He put a hand over the extra-dimensional pocket button he wore, where he kept the skull-shaped gem he had taken from Herminicle's book. "I sense a strength here, a mighty power. It is clear to me, and given all that I know of Zhengyi and all that the dragon sisters told me, with their words and with the fear that was so evident in their eyes, it is not hard for me to see the logic of it all."
"What are you talking about?" asked Entreri.
"Dragon sisters?" Athrogate added, but no one paid him any heed.
"The king," said Jarlaxle. "I know he exists and I know where he is."
"And you know how to kill him?" Entreri asked. It was a hopeful question, but one that was not answered with a hopeful response.
The assassin let it go at that, surely realizing he'd never get a straight answer from Jarlaxle. He looked back down at Athrogate, who was standing then, looking up intently.
"Are you with us? Or should we leave you to eat your friend and starve?" Entreri asked.
Athrogate looked down at Canthan then back up at Entreri. "Don't look like he'd taste too good, and one thing I'm always wantin' is food." He pronounced «good» and «food» a bit off on both, so that they seemed closer to rhyming, and that brought a scowl to Entreri's face.
"He starts that again and he's staying in the hole," he remarked to Jarlaxle, and the drow, who was already taking off his belt that he might command it to elongate and extract the dwarf, laughed again.
"We'll have your word that you'll make no moves against any of us," Entreri said.