Charon's Claw
Page 18

“I don’t know,” he admitted.
Dahlia felt Drizzt’s gaze upon her and glanced his way. His visage was cold, as if chastising her for going after Entreri so bluntly. The man had just saved her life, after all. She offered a shrug.
“Well, why did you leave us, then?” Dahlia asked, a bit more cordially.
“Herzgo Alegni carries my old sword,” Entreri replied. “My old sword, sentient and telepathic, can learn things from me. Being with you endangered you, and while I care not a whit for the lives of either of you, I do not wish for you to fail in your quest.”
“And yet, despite your words, here you are, endangering us.”
“I know your intent,” Entreri replied. “Being closer to Alegni makes it more likely that he will learn of your intentions from me.”
“So we should just kill you,” said Dahlia, and she kept any hint of humor out of her voice.
“You will die first,” Entreri promised.
Drizzt stepped between them. Only then did Dahlia realize that she and Entreri had begun drifting together, face to face, unblinking.
“I thought to simply go away, though I could not escape Alegni if I fled Faerûn itself,” Entreri explained.
“And you just happened upon us?” Drizzt asked.
Entreri shook his head. “I don’t know how much I’ll be able to help you before Alegni—before my old sword—lays me low on the street,” he admitted. “And yet, here I am,” he added, looking around at the dead Shadovar, “helping you on your way. Alegni and Charon’s Claw did not hinder my blade as I struck at your enemies, whom I would have to presume serve as his allies.”
He looked Drizzt directly in the eye, and Dahlia noted that they shared something, some long and deep bond and obvious respect.
“I’m not going back to serve him,” Entreri stated flatly. “There is no amount of pain, no amount of torture, that will put me beside Herzgo Alegni.”
To her surprise, Dahlia realized that she believed him—not only that he intended as he said, but also that this grayish man was possessed of inner power great enough to do as he had just claimed.
She stepped back and let Drizzt and Entreri have their conversation, and caught only a few snips of the dialogue, as Entreri admitted that his mere presence with them might well have compromised any hope of secrecy they might harbor, or that this attack might have been directed to this place and against them because of his previous proximity to them.
Dahlia knew from his responses and body language that Drizzt would accept Entreri as a companion on this mission, and when she let down her own stubbornness, she realized that if Drizzt did not, she would insist. She focused mostly on Entreri then, staring at him, understanding him.
She saw the pain.
She knew that pain.
“An interesting dilemma,” Drizzt said to Dahlia a short while later. In the distance, they could see Entreri gathering firewood, as they had agreed.
“You doubt his sincerity?”
“Strangely, no,” said Drizzt. “I have known this man for many years—”
“Yet, you have not known of him for many years,” Dahlia was quick to point out.
“True enough.” Drizzt nodded in deference to her obvious logic. “But in our time together, I came to know who he truly was. I saw him emotionally stripped naked in Menzoberranzan, raw and unprotected. He is many things—including many heinous traits that I cannot abide—but in a strange way, there is honor in Artemis Entreri, and there always has been.” As he spoke the words, Drizzt thought about that first encounter with the assassin, when Entreri had held Catti-brie captive for days. Helpless and at his mercy—and yet the assassin had shown her great mercy in that time.
But there were other times, when Entreri had not been so kind, Drizzt thought, and he remembered a halfling’s finger . . .
He looked away from Dahlia, to Entreri—a confusing link to a distant past.
“He won’t willingly betray us,” Dahlia said, and Drizzt spun back on her. “He hates Herzgo Alegni as I do.”
“Why?” Drizzt asked.
Dahlia looked at him curiously.
“Why do you hate Herzgo Alegni?” Drizzt almost fell back a step as Dahlia’s face tightened. She spat on the ground at Drizzt’s feet.
“So you believe Entreri will not willingly betray us, and I agree,” Drizzt said quickly, thinking it wise to change the subject. “But what about unwillingly? He has already admitted that his mere presence with us might well have tipped Alegni off to our intentions. The sword holds him, and seems to know his every thought.”
Dahlia turned her gaze to the distant Entreri, and slowly shook her head. “It cannot,” she said, and she seemed to be speaking more to herself than to Drizzt. “Sentient weapons do not hold such power.”
“It enslaves him.”
“It feels his intentions, his anger, his move to action,” Dahlia replied. “That is a different matter. The sword reacts to his impulses, as Kozah’s Needle heeds my call, and it is powerful enough because of their long history to overrule his demands.”
“You cannot know that."
“As you cannot know that your fear is well founded,” Dahlia said. “Artemis Entreri did not lead those Shadovar to us, as he was near Neverwinter while they were out on the hunt. Perhaps his presence with us allowed his sword to understand the general course of our intent, but perhaps not nearly as specifically as you believe—else why would he have been allowed to get so near to Neverwinter without a host of Alegni’s guards falling over him? The sword does not know his every thought and every move. I cannot believe that, particularly when he and the sword are not near each other. It’s a sword, not a god!”
“But we will get near, and so Entreri will be near to the sword, and there remains the possibility,” Drizzt reasoned.
“So you would abandon this potentially powerful ally out of that fear?”
The drow thought about that for a long while, and realized that he really didn’t want to walk a separate road from Entreri. Once again, this man tied him to a past for which he longed, a time when the world seemed simpler to him, and far more comfortable. Still, despite all of that, he heard himself saying, “Yes.”
“Then he will seek out Alegni on his own—he won’t turn from that. I saw the pain in his eyes, and he will not turn from that! So we each will strike at Neverwinter, and weaker will we both be—”
“There is a third option,” Drizzt interrupted.
Dahlia eyed him curiously.
“There are ways to block such telepathic intrusions,” Drizzt explained, the idea just coming to him—and it seemed one that solved many of his current problems and addressed many of his current fears. “Jarlaxle’s eye patch—do you recall it? It was so enchanted. With it, the mercenary rendered himself invisible from magical and telepathic spying, and such dominance as the sword has shown over Entreri.”
“So we’ll go and find Jarlaxle and he’ll help us?”
“He has ties to Entreri, as well—”
“He is dead,” Dahlia stated flatly. “You saw him die. You saw him go over the rim of the primordial pit only heartbeats before the creature vomited its killing spew. Accept it, you fool!”
Drizzt had no way to answer. He wasn’t sure that his hopes for Jarlaxle were simply a matter of refusing to accept the obvious. He had seen Jarlaxle dodge too many arrows. By all indications, Jarlaxle had died in Gauntlgrym. Who could have survived the power of the primordial erupting from inside that rim of fire, after all?
But Drizzt had once made the mistake of thinking some dear friends dead without conclusive proof, and he didn’t intend to travel that fool’s road again. Maybe Jarlaxle’s charred remains lay on the side of the primordial’s pit, or perhaps he had fallen into the fiery maw of the lava beast and nothing at all remained of him.
Or maybe not.
“So you’d use Entreri’s dilemma to once again take me far from this place,” Dahlia said. “To once again turn me from my quest.”
Her anger was clear for Drizzt to see. “If Jarlaxle is to be found, then wonderful, for he, too, would prove a valuable ally,” he said. “But the point stands even if Jarlaxle does not. There are items, or enchantments, which we might procure to protect Entreri from the prying sword.”
“Do you think he has not already looked for such things?”
Drizzt wasn’t sure what to say. At the very least, Dahlia’s point showed that they might spend months in search of their answer. In his many decades of adventuring, had Drizzt ever encountered anything other than Jarlaxle’s eye patch that might provide the needed shield, after all? And even that eye patch had failed Jarlaxle against the mind-bending manipulation of Crenshinibon, the drow reminded himself. He looked back at Entreri, who was approaching now, and gave a resigned sigh.
“So will you send me away or accept my help?” Entreri asked when he got to them, and he dropped an armful of kindling on the ground beside the small fire pit the drow had dug.
“Are we that obvious?” Drizzt asked.
“It’s the discussion I would be having were our situations reversed,” said Entreri.
“And you would send us away.”
“No, I would cut out your heart,” the assassin quipped, and he went to sorting the firewood. “Makes things simpler, you see.”
“Would you settle for having your skull crushed?” Dahlia asked, and if she was joking at all, her voice didn’t reflect it.
Entreri dropped a piece of kindling and rose, turning slowly to face the woman. “If it were that easy, I would have been killed already,” he said, expressionless. “And you will not turn me away. I’ve made my choice now, and my road is for Neverwinter, beside you or not.”
“We fear the sword,” Drizzt explained. “Should we not?”
Perhaps it was the simple honesty of that statement, Drizzt thought, or maybe it was because he wasn’t questioning Entreri’s word, but simply addressing influences that might prove beyond the assassin’s control, but Entreri seemed to relax then.
“Is there a way we can protect you from the intrusions? Do you even know when you are being scoured?”
“Idalia’s Flute,” Entreri replied, and it seemed as if he was looking far, far away then. He snorted and shook his head.
“A magical item?” Dahlia asked.
“One I possessed for some time,” Entreri explained. “If I had it now, I’m sure that I could defeat the call of Charon’s Claw, or at least offer some resistance.”
He looked into Drizzt’s questioning expression.
“Jarlaxle has it,” Entreri explained. “He repaired it, used it to lure me back to his side, then took it from me when he sold me into slavery to the Netherese.”
“Ah, then we should find Jarlaxle and seek his help,” said Dahlia, and Drizzt felt the bite of her sarcasm keenly.
Entreri stared at her incredulously, obviously not appreciating her sarcasm.