R. Salvatore: Night of the Hunter

In that notion, Lolth might win now, but Catti-brie had done as the goddess had bade …

A sharp recoil sounded in Catti-brie’s mind, a shout of “No!” as profound as if she had screamed the word aloud.

This was not about Drizzt. Not now.

This was about Mielikki and Lolth.

This was about Catti-brie and Dahlia, proxies for the titanic struggle. Catti-brie could not be content with her efforts atop Kelvin’s Cairn. Who would Drizzt be without her? How could he withstand a broken heart yet again?

Or Bruenor, her Da? Or Wulfgar or Regis?

She could not, must not, surrender until the end. She could not be satisfied with past victories when present battles raged.

She had but a fleeting moment of consciousness left, and in that instant, she recalled Dahlia’s drop from the webbing, when the elf warrior had broken this strange staff in half across her shoulders.

Catti-brie’s fingers played along the length of the metal pole; she sent the last vestiges of her conscious thoughts into that weapon to find its secrets.

Then she pushed out with every bit of strength she had left, a last, desperate gasp and grasp for life, and as she did, she tried to drive her head forward, meeting the press, and as she did, her fingers found the secret of Kozah’s Needle and she released the staff into two parts.

The break of the weapon released her, so suddenly, and her head snapped forward, her forehead crashing against startled Dahlia’s nose, slamming the woman backward in a stagger, and in that awkward shuffle, her staff, the focus of her balance, suddenly broken in two, Dahlia couldn’t hold on.

Catti-brie, her teeth chattering from the sheer power contained within the weapon, yanked Kozah’s Needle from Dahlia’s grasp and drove the ends back together, trying to hold on to it.

She looked at Dahlia then, blood running down the elf’s face from her shattered nose, and an expression on her face that Catti-brie couldn’t begin to comprehend.

As soon as she had inadvertently let go of the weapon, a staff teeming with the imbued dark energies of the altar, Dahlia’s connection to the darkness had diminished, just a bit, and beside those feelings of hatred for Catti-brie, of blame for the death of Effron, came the gentle images of Drizzt once more and the companions she had known, and the sea journey where Effron and she had found peace.

She thought of Drizzt and tried to reach for him more fully, but could not hold, his image fading from her to be replaced, to her surprise, by one she suddenly realized as more dear.

By the image of Artemis Entreri. She heard his words to her, of comfort in his own way, but of understanding.

And in them, the whisper of a better way and a better life, the distant whisper of hope itself.

And the turmoil of Dahlia, the great paradox of love and hate that had twined together throughout her life, that had carried her through murderous battles with her every lover, shocked her and infused doubt against the red wall of outrage.

She felt Alegni’s violation once more, saw the murder of her mother, threw her infant baby from the cliff. Szass Tam leered at her, her dying lovers cried out for mercy she would not afford them.

The cackles of Lolth met the sobs of broken Dahlia.

She didn’t know what to do, a voice screaming in her head to launch herself back at Catti-brie, a wound in her heart telling her to fall down and cry. She stumbled back from the wall and turned and had to get out of there, had to get away from this woman she faced, from the awful truth of herself and her miserable life.

She started to run for the far exit, the tunnel to the Forge, but in rushed the red-bearded dwarf, the huge barbarian, and the clever halfling-the other ghosts that haunted Drizzt Do’Urden, the other companions returned to life to stand with Drizzt against the dark lady.

Against Lolth.

Against wretched Dahlia.

Yes, wretched Dahlia, she knew, and she let out a cry, part anger, part remorse, part profound sadness, and she turned to her right, to the pit and thought to leap in and be done with the pain.

She took a running stride, but a sharp voice in her head denied her.

No! came the order she could not resist, the order from Lolth, the order relayed through Methil, hidden invisibly across the way, who spoke for Lolth.

Dahlia skidded to a stop and whirled around, then sprinted for the one remaining opening, the entrance to the sealed tunnel meant to serve as Matron Zeerith’s chamber.

The remaining webs parted for her, and in her mind, she knew that the magical wall of iron would be dispelled, freeing her to the lower tunnels, saving her to fight and win another day.

Catti-brie watched the woman’s run, and saw her companions entering the chamber, but only distantly did those images register. Her focus had to be the staff, Kozah’s Needle, and the tremendous power contained within, curling tendrils of energy that battled her as surely as Dahlia had battled her. Her own lightning from Taulmaril arced and ran around the weapon, combining with the dark powers from the altar, and within those black energies lived a flicker of the Spider Queen, a conduit to the mind of the dark Demon Queen of Spiders.

In that staff, Catti-brie heard the thoughts of Dahlia, the telepathic exchange between the elf and the goddess. She felt the turmoil, the battle, light and dark, and she knew that Dahlia meant to end her struggle by leaping into the pit even before she saw Dahlia turn that way.

And Catti-brie, too, heard the denial, the darkness refuting Dahlia, the darkness dominating Dahlia, and as Dahlia spun around and rushed into the second tunnel, Catti-brie felt her hope for freedom that she could turn again upon Drizzt and his friends as an agent of Lolth.

Catti-brie could hardly hold the staff, and she, too, turned for the primordial pit, thinking to feed the god-like primordial beast this tainted weapon.

But mercy stopped her, mercy for Dahlia and her dismayed realization that Dahlia had lost and Dahlia was lost, and this realization turned her back fast the other way.

Kozah’s Needle, teeming with power, flew spear-like into the tunnel behind the retreating Dahlia. It hit the wall just inside, and the resulting explosion shook the ground with the power of an earthquake, and as she tumbled down, Catti-brie feared that she had just broken the whole of the place, and perhaps had freed the primordial.

Drizzt and Entreri ran along the back corridor, passing the lava tube, an open tunnel to their left, a wall of iron blocking the passage to their right.

They paid it no heed, other than to use it as a guide-point in their rush to rejoin the others in the Forge.

But then they were flying, falling, tumbling, as a great retort rumbled all around them, dust and stones bursting out from their left, from around the magical wall of stone. Pelted and bounced around, the two crashed in across the way, Entreri several steps into the open lava tube.

“The beast,” Drizzt breathed, picking himself up from the ground. On he ran, Entreri, his limp noticeably more pronounced, struggling to keep up.

Entering the brightly lit Forge, Drizzt first noted Brother Afafrenfere leaning on the open mithral door on legs surely wobbly. He called out to the monk, who looked his way and pointed emphatically down the tunnel.

Drizzt never slowed, turning in fast, Entreri hustling close behind.

The two came into the primordial chamber, Drizzt leading and skidding to a stop as he took in the remarkable scene: the webbing, the dead green spider, the altar block, the pile of magma near the ledge, and the Companions of the Hall, standing together before a pile of collapsed rubble-right at the entrance to the lava tube, Drizzt knew.