R. Salvatore: Night of the Hunter

There was, after all, one more slave down here. She wasn’t working, though, when the pair came upon her, but sitting sullenly on a stone, facing the wall, head in her hands.

Entreri went for her shackle and just as she turned, Drizzt put a hand on her shoulder.

How the dwarf’s eyes widened with surprise and joy! She grabbed at Drizzt as if to hug him, and blurted his name-or tried to, but found her mouth filled with that sickly green spew and wound up coughing and spitting the cursed mucus all over the floor.

“Are there any more slaves?” Drizzt asked, pointing farther along the descending corridor.

“Dahlia?” Entreri asked, an edge of desperation growing in his tone.

Amber gave an emphatic shake of her head and pointed to her work area, then down the hallway, and shook her head again.

So they rushed back, gathered up the three humans they had rescued, and headed back to rejoin their friends.

Artemis Entreri glanced back over his shoulder with almost every step.

Dahlia hesitated. Her twitch showed discomfort. Something was wrong, something out of proportion and beyond reality.

Catti-brie.

The name screamed in her thoughts repeatedly. This was the ghost who had haunted Drizzt’s dreams. This was the woman who had ruined Dahlia’s life with Drizzt, who had tainted Dahlia’s love with Drizzt before it could even truly bloom. Were it not for her …

Dahlia found herself very near the altar stone then, facing the pit and Catti-brie, who stood across the block from her.

Dahlia moved to the right, Catti-brie similarly shifted sidelong to keep the stone between them.

“Dahlia?” the woman asked, and to hear this woman, Catti-brie, speaking her name stunned Dahlia as surely as a slap across the face.

“You are Dahlia, yes?” Catti-brie asked. “I have heard of you, from Drizzt.”

The words hardly registered to the elf woman. All she heard was a grating sound, a screeching sound, an annoying cackle at the back of her mind.

The only word that came clear to her was, again, “Catti-brie.”

Only when the woman reacted did Dahlia even realize that she had spoken the name aloud.

Dahlia’s thoughts swirled back to the side of Kelvin’s Cairn in faraway Icewind Dale, where Drizzt had spurned her, had betrayed her, had chosen this … this ghost above her. No strike had ever wounded Dahlia as profoundly as the one she had delivered upon Drizzt, and with the hope of killing him.

She had to kill him.

He was the source of all of her pain, of all of her misery. It was because of him that Dahlia had gone to Port Llast, had been captured by the drow, had been tortured …

She felt the tentacles of the awful illithid wriggling inside of her.

But wait, she thought, and she shook her head, for that mind flayer had told her the truth, at least. Where no one else ever had, the mind flayer had made so much clear to Dahlia.

“No, not Drizzt,” she whispered, and Catti-brie wore a puzzled expression.

“From Drizzt,” the woman reiterated, but Dahlia didn’t hear.

“Because of you,” Dahlia said pointedly. “Because of you, ghost!” She watched Catti-brie shaking her head, then bending low to retrieve her dropped bow.

The bow!

Oh, but Dahlia knew that bow! She thought of fighting beside Drizzt, of their brilliant teamwork when she intercepted his lightning arrows and re-directed the magical energy to more pointed ends.

She knew that bow, Drizzt’s bow, and now this woman-this ghost held it, as if mocking her, as if mocking the love Dahlia had known with Drizzt.

A low and feral growl escaped her lips.

“Dahlia?” Catti-brie said, her voice calm and intentionally disarming. “Be at ease, Dahlia, I am not your enemy.”

The altar thrummed to life before her, calling Dahlia to action, telling her to rise and vanquish this ghost, this woman who had caused her so much pain, this disciple of evil Mielikki.

Dahlia barely registered the stream of thoughts, but she surely understood the call and promise of the altar stone before her. She sent her flail into a spin, banging them together, building a charge, then pounded them repeatedly on the altar, and the throbbing black energy pulsed within and lent her weapon more magical power.

“Dahlia!” Catti-brie called to her, and Dahlia noted that the woman had backed from the altar, then had moved toward the tunnel to the Forge.

But she would not escape, Dahlia knew. Not from here.

“Destroy her!” Dahlia heard herself shout to the jade spider beside that tunnel, and surely the elf warrior would have been surprised had she stepped back from her rising emotions enough to decipher her own words, for how could she know the spider as an ally?

Wulfgar brought Aegis-fang up over his shoulder and swung it across with all his strength. With a resounding thud and a reverberation that ran back up the barbarian’s arms, rippling his muscles under the tremendous vibrations, it struck the door dead center, right in the heart of the drider-like image of Lolth the drow craftsmen had constructed of black adamantine.

And bounced off, and neither the door nor the bas relief of Lolth showed as much as a scratch.

“Oh, me girl!” Bruenor yelled, pushing in past Wulfgar, who staggered aside under the weight of his own blow.

Regis, too, rushed for the door.

“Pick it, Rumblebelly!” Bruenor implored him.

Regis glanced all around the portal and the new archway, and ran his fingers over the smooth, cool metal. “Pick what?” he asked, completely at a loss and holding his hands out helplessly, for there was no sign of a lock or even a handle to be found.

“Bah!” Bruenor snorted and he hopped to the side and pulled Aegis-fang from Wulfgar, then leaped back for the door, Regis tumbling aside.

Bruenor noted the inscription on the warhammer’s head, the symbols of his three gods overlaid, and from that reminder, he drew strength.

Great strength, the might of Clangeddin, and he slammed the warhammer into the door with tremendous power, rattling the stones of the Forge.

“Me girl!” he cried, and he hit the door again, as mighty a stroke as Wulfgar had delivered, at least.

“Me girl!”

He felt the power of Clangeddin coursing his veins, growing within him.

Tirelessly he pounded the portal.

But it showed not a scratch.

Catti-brie watched the woman slack-jawed, hardly believing the sudden rage that had come over Dahlia, who stood opposite the altar block, wildly banging her flail against the hard stone, her face a twisted mask of anger.

And Dahlia screamed to the spider, a pony-sized beast behind Catti-brie, and with another across the way, and, she then noticed, with thousands of fist-sized arachnids gathering on the wall of webbing.

Catti-brie turned fast, setting an arrow as she went. She called to the primordial, demanding help, as she drew back and let fly.

The lever! the ancient beast replied in her mind.

The spider shrieked horribly as the arrow blasted into it, throwing it back a skittering step.

“I cannot get to it! My way is blocked by enemies!” Catti-brie yelled in her thoughts and aloud, but in a language she could not consciously understand, a crackling, popping, sizzling series of sounds that made little sense to her human sensibilities-or to Dahlia’s elven sensibilities as well, Catti-brie could see from looking at the woman, who paused in her drumming to stare incredulously.

A second arrow followed the first at the nearby jade spider, and a third and fourth went quickly after, and the spider shrieked and ran off down the tunnel.

Catti-brie pivoted, turning the bow upon Dahlia, who now stood on the altar, flail swinging easily.

“I don’t want to kill you,” she started to say, but the floor rumbled and rolled, a great roar from the primordial below, and Catti-brie was knocked to one knee as Dahlia leaped off the side of the altar, away from the pit.