A crossbow quarrel hit the side of her face, scraped painfully against her jawbone.
Catti-brie walked on, jaw set, teeth gritted tightly. She saw the red-glowing eyes of the remaining two drow closing on her fast, knew that they had drawn swords and charged. She put the bow up, using their eyes as beacons.
A globe of darkness fell over her.
Terror welled up inside the young woman, but she fought it back stubbornly, her expression not changing. She knew she had only moments before a drow sword plunged through her. Her mind recalled the last positions in which she had seen her enemies, showed her the angles for her shot.
She put another arrow up, heard the slightest scuffle ahead and to the left, turned, and fired. Then she loosed a third and a fourth, using no guidance beyond her instinct, hoping that she might at least wound the charging dark elves and slow their progress. She fell flat to the floor and fired sidelong, then winced as her arrow soared away in the blackness, apparently not connecting.
Instincts guiding her still, Catti-brie rolled to her back and fired above her, heard a dull thump, then a sharp crack as the missile drove through a floating drow and into the ceiling. Chunks of rubble fell from above, and Catti-brie covered up.
She remained in a defensive position for a long while, expecting the ceiling to fall on her, expecting a dark elf to rush up and slash her apart.
He got his sword near the dwarf far more often than the dwarf's bulky axe came near to hitting him, but the lone drow facing Bruenor knew he could not win, could not stop this enraged enemy. He called upon his innate magic and lined Bruenor with blue-
glowing, harmless flames— faerie fire, it was called-distinctively outlining the dwarf's form and presenting the drow with an easier target.
Bruenor didn't even flinch.
The drow came with a vicious, straightforward thrust that forced the dwarf back on his heels, then turned and fled, thinking to put a few feet between him and his enemy, then turn and drop a darkness globe over the dwarf.
Bruenor didn't try to match the drow's long strides. He brought his axe in, clasped it in both hands, and pulled it back over his head.
"Me boy!" the dwarf yelled with all his rage, and with all his strength he hurled the axe, end over end. It was a daring move, a move offered by the desperation of a father who had lost his child. Bruenor's axe would not return to him as Aegis-fang had to Wulfgar. If the axe did not hit the mark…
It caught the drow just as he was turning the corner back into the winding side tunnel, diving into his hip and back and hurling him across the way to collide with the opposite corner. He tried to recover, wriggled about on the floor for a few moments, searching for his lost sword and air to breathe.
As his hand neared the hilt of his fallen weapon, a dwarven boot slammed down atop it, crushing the fingers.
Bruenor considered the angle of the sticking axe and the gush of blood pouring all about the weapon's blade. "Ye're dead," he said coldly to the dark elf, and he tore the weapon free with a sickening crackle.
The drow heard the words distantly, but his mind had shut down by that time, his thoughts flowing away from him as surely as was his life's blood.
Vierna did not relent as her companion fell dead, showed no signs that she cared at all for the battle's sudden turn. Drizzt's stomach turned at the sight of his sister, her features locked in the hatred that the Spider Queen so often fostered, a rage beyond reason, beyond consciousness and conscience.
Drizzt did not let his ambivalence affect his swordplay, though, not after Vierna had proclaimed his friends dead. He hit the snapping snake heads often, but couldn't seem to connect solidly enough to seriously damage any.
One got its fangs into his arm. Drizzt felt the numbing tingle and whipped his other blade across to sever the thing.
The movement left his opposite flank open, though, and a second head got him on the shoulder. A third came in for the side of his face.
His backhand slash took the nearest viper's head and drove the other attacking snake away.
Vierna's whip had only three heads remaining, but the hits had staggered Drizzt. He rocked back a few steps, found some support in the solid wall along the side of the entryway. He looked to his shoulder, horrified to see the severed head of the snake still holding fast, its fangs deeply embedded.
Only then did Drizzt notice the familiar silver flashes of Taulmaril, Catti-brie's bow. Guenhwyvar was alive and about; Catti-brie was out in the hall, fighting; and, from
somewhere far down the other corridor, the one along the right-hand side of the small chamber, Drizzt heard the unmistakable roar of Bruenor Battlehammer's litany of rage.
"Me boy!"
"You said they were dead," Drizzt remarked to Vierna. He steadied himself against the wall.
"They do not matter!" Vierna yelled back at him, obviously as amazed as Drizzt by the revelation. "You are all that matters, you and the glories your death will bring me!" She launched herself forward at her wounded brother, three snake heads leading the way.
Drizzt had found his strength again, had found it in the presence of his friends, in the knowledge that they, too, were involved in this fight and would need him to win.
Instead of lashing out or swiping across, Drizzt let then snake heads come to him. He got bit again, twice, but Twinkle split one viper's rushing head down the middle, leaving its torn body writhing uselessly.
Drizzt kicked off the wall, driving Vierna back in surprise. He worked his blades fast and hard, aiming always for the snakes of Vierna's whip, though more than once he felt as if he could have slipped through his sister's defenses and scored a hit on her body.
Another snake head dropped to the floor.
Vierna came across with the decimated whip, but a scimitar sliced deeply into her forearm before she could snap the remaining snake head forward. The weapon flew to the floor. The writhing snake became a lifeless thong as soon as the whip left Vierna's hand.
Vierna hissed-she seemed an animal-at Drizzt, her empty hands grasping the air repeatedly.
Drizzt did not immediately advance, did not have to, for Twinkle's deadly tip was poised only inches from his sister's vulnerable breast.
Vierna's hand twitched toward her belt, where twin maces, carved in intricate runes of spiderwebs, awaited. Drizzt could well guess the power of those weapons, and he knew firsthand from his days in Menzoberranzan Vierna's skill in using them.
"Do not," he ordered, indicating the weapons.
"We were both trained by Zaknafein," Vierna reminded him, and the mention of his father stung Drizzt. "Do you fear to find out who best learned the many lessons?"
"We were both sired by Zaknafein," Drizzt retorted, tapping Vierna's hand away from her belt with Twinkle's furiously glowing blade. "Do not continue this and dishonor him. There is a better way, my sister, a light you cannot know."
Vierna's cackling laughter mocked him. Did he really believe he could reform her, a priestess of Lloth?
"Do not!" Drizzt commanded more forcefully as Vierna's hand again inched toward the nearest mace.
She lurched for it. Twinkle plunged through her breast, through her heart, its bloody tip coming out her back.
Drizzt was right against her then, holding her arms in tight, supporting her as her legs failed her.
They stared at each other, unblinking, as Vierna slowly slumped to the floor. Gone was her rage, her obsession, replaced by a look of serenity, a rare expression on the face of a drow.
"I am sorry," was all Drizzt could quietly mouth.
Vierna shook her head, refusing any apology. To Drizzt, it seemed as if that buried part of her that was Zaknafein Do'Urden's daughter approved of this ending. Vierna's eyes then closed forever.