Robert Salvatore: STARLESS NIGHT

Twinkle went straight in. Dantrag's sword banged against its side. Sly Drizzt twisted the scimitar, used its curving blade to roll it over the weapon master's sword and bite at his arm.

Dantrag leaped back, trying to break the clinch, but Drizzt paced him, scimitars waving. Again, then a third time, Drizzt turned Dantrag's perfect parries into minor hits, the fluid motions of his curving blades trapping the straight blocks of the swords.

Could Dantrag anticipate Drizzt's moves as well as Drizzt had anticipated the weapon master's? Drizzt wondered with more than a little sarcasm, and he sublimated his wicked smile. Straight ahead went Twinkle, and out snapped the blocking sword, the only possible defense. Drizzt started to twist the blade, and Dantrag started to retract the arm.

But Drizzt stopped suddenly and reversed the flow. Twinkle shooting across faster than Dantrag could react. The deadly scimitar gashed deeply into the weapon master's other forearm, poking it out wide, then came back across, Drizzt stepping into the move so that his extended blade slashed a tight line across Dantrag's belly.

Wincing in pain, the weapon master managed to leap back from his deadly adversary. "You are good," he admitted, and though he tried to keep his confident facade, Drizzt could tell by the quiver in his voice that the last hit had been serious.

Dantrag smiled unexpectedly. "Berg'inyon!" he called, looking to the side. His eyes widened indeed when he saw that his brother was no longer there.

"He wishes to be the weapon master," Drizzt reasoned calmly.

Dantrag roared in outrage and leaped ahead, his attacks coming in rapid fire, suddenly stealing the offensive.

Up flashed the sword and in stepped the furious assassin, his jeweled dagger drinking eagerly of his opponent's lifeblood. Entreri jerked the weapon once, then again, then stepped back and let the dead drow fall to the stone.

The assassin kept the presence of mind to immediately jump to the side of the passage, and shook his head helplessly as several darts knocked against the corridor wall opposite the opening.

Entreri turned to the still-kneeling Catti-brie and demanded again to know what she was up to.

The auburn-haired woman, so deceptively innocent-looking, smiled widely and held up the last of the loaded hourglasses, then put it into one of her arrow-blasted holes.

The blood drained from the assassin's face as he realized how Catti-brie had blown up the walkway back in the cavern, as he realized what she was doing now.

"We should be running," Catti-brie remarked, coming up from her crouch, Taulmaril in hand.

Entreri was already moving, not even looking down the side corridor as he passed it.

Catti-brie came right behind, actually laughing. She paused long enough at the hole in the floor, leading back into the main cavern, to shout out to those levitating dark elves drifting up toward her that they weren't likely to enjoy the reception.

Thrust left, thrust right, down-cut left, down-cut right. Dantrag's attack came brutally swift and hard, but Drizzt's scimitars were in place for the parries and blocks, and again the cunning ranger used a third weapon—his boot—to counter. He snapped his foot up to slam the weapon master's already wounded belly.

Dantrag couldn't stop from lurching over, and then he was back on the defensive again, reacting desperately as Drizzt relentlessly waded in.

Around the bend came Entreri. "Run on!" he cried, and though the assassin needed Drizzt for his ultimate escape, he did not dare to stop and pull the ranger along.

Catti-brie came next, just in time to see Drizzt's scimitars flash straight ahead, to be taken out wide and held by Dantrag's blocking swords. Up came Drizzt's knee, quicker than Dantrag's, as the two inevitably moved together, and in a sudden explosion of agony, the wounded weapon master understood that he could not hold Drizzt back.

Drizzt turned Twinkle over the blocking sword and put it in line for Dantrag's ribs, then the two seemed to pause for an instant, eye to eye.

"Zak'nafein would have defeated you," the ranger promised grimly, and he plunged Twinkle deep into Dantrag's heart.

Drizzt turned to Catti-brie, trying to fathom the level of terror apparent in her wide eyes.

It creaked and groaned in protest, shock waves and searing flames melting its hold on the cavern ceiling. Then it fell, like a great spear, whistling along its thousand-foot descent.

Helpless and horrified, those dark elves levitating nearby watched it fly past.

Inside the domed chapel, the ceremony continued undisturbed.

A female soldier, an elite guard of House Baenre but certainly no noble, rushed up to the central dais, screaming wildly. At first. Matron Baenre and the others thought her caught up in the outrageous frenzy, an all-too-common sight in the out-of-control drow rituals. Gradually they came to understand that this soldier was screaming cries of warning. Seven matron mothers turned suddenly suspicious gazes on Matron Baenre, and even her own daughters did not know what she was about. Then the stalactite hit.

Drizzt caught Catti-brie in midair, then he, too, was flying. He rolled over as the two touched down, burying the young woman under him protectively.

They were both screaming, but neither heard anything beyond the thunderous roar of the widening fireball. Drizzt's back warmed, and his cloak ignited in several places as the very edge of the firestorm rolled over him.

Then it was done as quickly as it had begun. Drizzt rolled off Catti-brie, scrambled to get out of his burning cloak, and rushed to get to his still-down companion, fearing that she had been knocked unconscious, or worse, in the explosion.

Catti-brie opened a blue eye and flashed a wistful, mischievous smile.

"I'm betting that the way is clear behind us," she smirked and Drizzt nearly laughed aloud. He scooped her up in his arms and hugged her tightly, feeling in that instant as though they might actually be free once more. He thought of the times to come in Mithril Hall, times that would be spent beside Bruenor and Regis and Guenhwyvar, and, of course, Catti-brie.

Drizzt could not believe all that he had almost thrown away.

He let Catti-brie go for a moment and rushed back around the bend, just to confirm that all those drow pursuing them were gone.

"Hello," Catti-brie whispered under her breath, looking down to a magnificent sword lying next to the fallen weapon master. Catti-brie gingerly picked the weapon up, confused as to why an evil drow noble would wield a sword whose hilt was sculpted in the shape of a unicorn, the symbol of the goodly goddess Mielikki.

"What have you found?" Drizzt asked, returning calmly.

"I think that this one'd suit yerself," Catti-brie remarked, holding up the weapon to display the unusual pommel.

Drizzt stared at the sword curiously. He had not noticed that hilt in his fight with Dantrag, though he certainly remembered that blade as the one that had so easily cut through the stone wall. "You keep it," he offered with a shrug. "I favor the scimitar, and if that is truly a weapon of Mielikki, then she would be pleased to have it on the hip of Catti-brie."

Catti-brie saluted Drizzt, smiled widely, and slipped the sword into her belt. She turned about, hearing Entreri's return, as Drizzt bent over Dantrag's body and quietly slipped the bracers off the dead draw's wrists,

"We cannot delay!" the obviously flustered assassin snapped. "All of Menzoberranzan knows of us now, and a thousand miles will not be enough ground between me and that wretched city."

For perhaps the first time, Drizzt found that he completely agreed with the assassin.

Belted as it was on the hip of the human woman was not exactly what the sentient Khazid'hea had in mind. The sword had heard much talk of Drizzt Do'Urden and, upon Dantrag's defeat, had altered the appearance of its magical pommel so that it might rest in the grasp of the legendary warrior.