R. Salvatore: Night of the Hunter

She leaped atop the altar and sprang away.

And felt very sickly immediately from simply contacting the foul stone.

She landed and she staggered, and she cried out against a demonic voice laughing in her mind.

She feared that Dahlia was coming in fast behind her, and with a staff bristling with mighty energy.

She knew she had to turn around and drive the woman back with more arrows, to overload the staff if that was possible, or at least to force it from Dahlia’s grasp with the sheer strength of the teeming magical energy.

But she couldn’t turn and she couldn’t shoot, and it was all she could do to hold onto Taulmaril. Then she stumbled down to the floor.

And the demon in her thoughts, the Demon Queen of Spiders, laughed.

It was too much power-she should not have been able to hold it.

But she was, her hands tightly clenched on the staff, crackling lightning rolling up and down it, rolling up and down her, as well. The braid atop her head danced weirdly.

She watched Catti-brie’s flight across the chamber, watched her stagger down to the floor, and Dahlia heard cheering in her thoughts even as her adversary heard the laughter of the Spider Queen.

Dahlia slowed, and winced. She thought of Drizzt, and not just that last encounter on the mountainside, but of their lovemaking, of their adventuring together, of their friendship.

She thought of Effron, and of how her companions-how her friends- had rescued her from him in the docked boat, and had then given her the time with him to heal their wounds.

And now he was dead, her boy, killed by drow …

But the memory shifted before she could complete the thought, before she could realize that the drow had done this terrible thing to her and to her son.

And instead, that line of thought swerved, leaping through connections that suddenly made perfect sense to the elf warrior.

Effron was dead because of Drizzt, because Drizzt had spurned her, and he had done so because of a ghost, because of this ghost, Catti-brie.

This disciple of foul Mielikki.

That last notion made little sense to Dahlia, who knew little of Mielikki and cared even less, but it didn’t matter. For now it all made perfect sense. Effron was dead because of Catti-brie; everything bad in Dahlia’s life was because of Catti-brie.

And now she could find revenge. She charged. She planted her staff at the base of the altar stone and vaulted high into the air, screaming with unbridled glee and unbridled hatred.

Catti-brie came up to her feet and spun around to meet that flying charge, and Dahlia, landing right in front of her, could have ended the fight immediately, could have released all the power stored in Kozah’s Needle in one mighty blast that would have melted the woman where she stood.

But no, that would be too easy, too mercifully quick.

Catti-brie deflected Dahlia’s stabbing staff aside, then came up and across horizontally, bow held wide in both hands, to block a powerful downward chop.

The woman proved a decent fighter, parrying and angling her weapon appropriately to slide strikes harmlessly wide, but she was no match for Dahlia.

And Catti-brie knew it. Dahlia could see it on her face. She knew she was overmatched.

But she was not afraid.

For a moment, that puzzled Dahlia, but only for a moment. She understood that Catti-brie was buying time, and was she calling again to the primordial for help?

Dahlia drove on more ferociously, pounding her weapon heavily, driving Catti-brie back with each strike. And the woman was running out of room, closing in on the wall.

Dahlia increased her tempo, swatting and stabbing, rushing ahead and forcing her enemy ever backward, and when Catti-brie’s back went against the wall, Dahlia swung mightily. Taulmaril came across to block, but as the weapons connected, Dahlia broke her staff in half, two equal lengths joined with a strong cord. The strike had been blocked above the halfway mark of the weapon, so that top half flew back over toward Dahlia as she drove the weapon down.

She was ready for that, however, and she caught it, and now stabbed freely beneath the blocking blow.

Catti-brie did well to drive her bow down to mitigate the attack, but as soon as Kozah’s Needle touched her chest, Dahlia released a bit of its energy, enough to jolt the woman against the wall, her head cracking hard into the stone.

Dahlia retracted and dropped one of the two poles, then, confident that Catti-brie was too dazed to respond. She swung around in a full circuit, letting her weapon fly out to its full length and rejoining it into a single staff as she went. She came around with great speed and power and batted Taulmaril from Catti-brie’s hands, launching it into the remaining webbing at the corner of the chamber, just to the side of the sealed tunnel meant for Matron Zeerith.

Hardly slowing, Dahlia slid one hand out wide and drove the staff sidelong before her, under the chin of slumping Catti-brie, lifting her up against the wall with Kozah’s Needle tight against her throat.

Now it was personal, Dahlia thought, and she was pleased, and so was the voice in her head.

Now she could feel the woman’s fear.

Now she could feel the woman’s pain.

Now she could watch the light go out in Catti-brie’s blue eyes. “Now,” Dahlia said, hardly aware of the words, “Mielikki will lose.” And Dahlia was happy.

Wulfgar pounded at the door while Regis crawled around the adamantine arch above it, looking for a lock or clasp or something that might spring whatever was holding it closed.

Bruenor, however, looked inside himself. He noted Afafrenfere, nodding his way in encouragement, then closed his eyes and sent his thoughts back to the Throne of the Dwarven Gods.

He heard the song of Moradin, the roar of Clangeddin, the whispers of Dumathoin.

He opened his eyes and moved for the door, nudging Wulfgar out of the way. He begged silence from Clangeddin, and begged for wisdom from Moradin.

Then he focused on the whispers, the secrets.

This was still Gauntlgrym, he was told, whatever the dark elves might be doing to deface the complex. This was still the realm of the dwarves, ever on and always before. The dressings on the door mattered not.

Not the black bas relief of foul Lolth nor the adamantine arch.

No, this was the same door, crafted of dwarf hands, set in stone by dwarf smiths, by Bruenor’s ancestors.

He put his hand against the mithral.

He was friend here, royal of blood, noble of deed, he told the door, told the spiritual remnants the ancient dwarf craftsmen had imbued here with their love of their craft.

He was friend to Gauntlgrym, and this place remained Gauntlgrym.

The door itself seemed to breathe with life, the seal breaking as the portal swung outward.

And Bruenor charged in, Wulfgar and Regis close behind.

Catti-brie couldn’t respond. She couldn’t draw breath. The staff, crackling with power, crushed in against her windpipe. Her eyes bulged and she grabbed the staff in both hands, inside Dahlia’s grasp, and tried to push back.

But Catti-brie was in an awkward position, her head bent slightly by a jag in the wall, and she hadn’t the strength to push Dahlia away, nor the mobility to even twist her neck enough to get the press off of her windpipe.

And there was another power in the staff: a dark energy that she could feel as tangibly as the metal of Kozah’s Needle. She thought of the altar, pulsing as if alive, and the feeling of weakness and sickness as she had stepped upon it flashed in her now-fleeting thoughts.

Now fleeting because she was falling away. The edges of her vision darkened.

She thought of Drizzt and wished she had said goodbye, but she was at peace because she knew that she had done Mielikki’s bidding, that she and the Companions of the Hall had saved him.