R.A. Salvatore - Maestro

“And a demon lord?” asked Drizzt, who seemed unable to let this go.

“Aye,” the equally suspicious Entreri echoed.

Jarlaxle stared at Drizzt and held up his arms as if in surrender. “It is Artemis Entreri,” he said to the ranger. He turned to the assassin. “Put the mask back on, and leave it on. And it is Drizzt Do’Urden before you and no demon imposter. What foolishness has possessed you? Both of you?”

“We are dealing with powerful denizens of the lower planes,” Entreri said, and he became a drow once more. “What you call foolishness, I deem caution.”

“And if you had killed each other? What then?”

“Then it would all be, perhaps, as it was ever supposed to be,” Entreri said with deadly seriousness. He looked at Drizzt as he issued the threat.

“If the last thing I do before I cease to draw breath in this life is to end the life of Artemis Entreri, then I know I will leave this world a better place than I found it,” Drizzt returned.

Jarlaxle kept his hands out to the side, too flustered to even realize his arms were out there. This seemed to him a throwback to days long past-hadn’t Drizzt and Entreri gone far beyond this foolishness? They had traveled together for many years, indeed had done incredible things together, in Port Llast, particularly.

Now, for no reason Jarlaxle could discern, they were ready, eager even, to kill each other.

“Demogorgon,” Jarlaxle whispered under his breath. Wasn’t one of the greatest weapons of the Prince of Demons his ability to drive men mad? That unsettling thought nagged at Jarlaxle and had him looking over his shoulder more than once, as if expecting the gargantuan Demogorgon to come crashing through the hall at any moment.

The way was clear-both ways now that the remaining pack of demons had been properly dispatched. To the side, the great flightless bird pecked at the smoking corpse of the balgura.

Jarlaxle wearily rubbed his face and considered the warnings Faelas had given him regarding Menzoberranzan. None of this was going as he had expected. Every step seemed to bring new challenges-would he even be able to take his rest this day with the possibility that he would awaken to the sounds of Drizzt and Entreri engaged in mortal combat?

“I know not what has brought to you both these … suspicions,” he said. “Is there so little trust to be had between we three?”

Drizzt and Entreri scowled at each other.

“Then we should turn back for Gauntlgrym,” said Jarlaxle.

“Aye, and be rid of this one,” Entreri said with a nod at Drizzt. “We shouldn’t have brought him in the first place.”

Jarlaxle sighed and held his thoughts silent. If Drizzt had not agreed to come along, he wouldn’t have made this journey. He didn’t care enough about the elf Dahlia to risk so much. And though he, or at least Bregan D’aerthe, was indebted to Artemis Entreri for his loss of another lover, another woman, a half-elf named Calihye, Jarlaxle had no intention of risking his life repaying that debt.

What Jarlaxle couldn’t tell Entreri was that this journey really wasn’t about Dahlia. He meant to rescue her, and hoped Kimmuriel would find some way to unwind the writhing snakes in her mind. That would aid Jarlaxle in his greater aims, and indeed, had served him as a catalyst for convincing Drizzt to come in the first place. But Dahlia’s fate was not paramount.

Jarlaxle was bringing Drizzt to Menzoberranzan to exploit a growing rift among his people, a rising scream of protest from the males of Menzoberranzan that they would not forever be held as vassals to the matriarchs. For more than a century, Jarlaxle and so many others had looked to Drizzt as the one who found freedom, the one who denied the ways of Lolth and escaped, and indeed thrived. Even Gromph couldn’t help but nod approvingly-if secretly-when he thought of Drizzt Do’Urden. That was why Gromph had chosen to clandestinely use Drizzt’s body as the conduit for his great dispelling magic to boil away the Darkening that Tsabrak Xorlarrin, acting on the will of Lolth, had created above the Silver Marches.

Drizzt was Jarlaxle’s chance to exploit the rift in Menzoberranzan, and Matron Mother Zeerith Xorlarrin’s chance to regain her stature in the city.

The arrival of Drizzt-to pull Dahlia from the ridiculous reincarnation of House Do’Urden, to poke his finger in the eye of Matron Mother Quenthel Baenre, to send great waves through the city-was Jarlaxle’s countering wave against the rising tide of zealotry growing in Menzoberranzan. Unyielding fealty to the strictest edicts of Lady Lolth would push all the males of Menzoberranzan far back down the ladder of ascension, and would indeed threaten even Bregan D’aerthe. Jarlaxle had worked too hard and too long to let that happen.

But ah, what now? he wondered, looking at his companions. Their mission suddenly seemed ill-fated. He had gone into it unsure, and indeed with some of his advisers and even Gromph warning him that there was too little certainty and too much to lose. And now, in the few days since they had marched from Luskan’s Undercity, they had learned that their destination had been virtually shut down, even to magical intrusions. They had found corridors full of demons, and now this, some strangeness that had infected his companions in a most dangerous way.

“We will return Drizzt to King Bruenor’s court, and then we will return to, and remain in, Luskan,” Jarlaxle said.

Entreri’s face contorted with a clear undercurrent of growing rage. “You promised me this,” he said in a quiet and deadly voice. “You owe me this.”

“We cannot do this without Drizzt,” Jarlaxle said, and convincingly despite the secretive other half of the equation,. He, Drizzt, and Entreri were gaining something special here, and they all knew it. Their work together in fending off the demon hordes was no minor matter-he and Entreri simply couldn’t replace Drizzt with someone else and go their merry way.

“I give not a damn about Drizzt,” Entreri growled back at him.

“Then you give not a damn about Dahlia,” Jarlaxle said. “Without him, we cannot get near to her.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then we return the way we came.”

“No!”

The two stared at each other, Entreri hatefully, Jarlaxle curiously.

“We go on,” said Drizzt, and both turned to him. He looked Jarlaxle in the eye. “Or I do, alone. Dahlia is down there. She was my companion, my friend. I cannot abandon her in her time of desperation.”

“Will you take a second wife, then?” Entreri asked.

“She would be better off as my slave than as consort to the demon masked in the body of Artemis Entreri,” Drizzt snapped back, and both drew their blades once more.

“One strike!” Jarlaxle warned, stepping between them. “One blade against blade, one wound from either of you upon the other, even in the midst of battle, even by accident, and our quest is ended.” He looked to each, staring sternly until the blades went down then went away.

“When Dahlia is returned to the World Above, I give you leave to murder each other, if that is your choice.”

She heard the whistle, a strange sound indeed, that reverberated like the beacon of a lighthouse in K’yorl’s mind, and so, too, in Yvonnel’s.

What was this sensation?

And then Yvonnel’s heart leaped. They had done it! K’yorl had sent her thoughts out from the stoup and across the planes to contact Kimmuriel. And there, in the hive-mind of the illithids, she had found her son.

That elation turned to doubt, though, when Kimmuriel recoiled in anger.

Kimmuriel chastised his mother for causing him to deliver to Gromph Baenre the fabric of the spell the deceived archmage had used to bring Demogorgon to the Underdark, and in doing so, thinning the boundary of the Faerzress itself.