Starlight Enclave

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Of course.” Ilina gave a little smile. “Many think their beliefs aspirational. Perhaps if the practical necessities weren’t ever-present, we would all seek their peaceful ways. Besides, you will see, they are quite important even if they will not lift weapons. They are not needed here, but if they were, they would be here, certainly.”

  Catti-brie let it go at that, thankful for yet another little look inside the aevendrow, layer upon layer of confirmation that all of this experience was exactly as it seemed.

  They moved through the town and along the mountain trails, the four outsiders retracing their course, even breaking for rests in or around the same caves that they had previously used. Several snowstorms slowed the journey, but with their magical protections (and the strange clothing of sealskin, white fox, and hag mucus worn by the others, which seemed as good as the boots or rings), their progress continued. Deep snows were rare up here—just a few, if any, big storms each year—but the small flurries came repeatedly, or maybe it was just crystallized blowing snow. Catti-brie could not be sure.

  The moon was up and nearly full in a bright and cloudless sky tendays later, when the targeted cave came into view. The four friends were very near where they had first come through Gromph’s gate, and Catti-brie noted that Jarlaxle, in particular, seemed to be continually glancing all about. He was setting markers, identifying peaks, she knew.

  Even if the aevendrow cast their ritual and dulled their memories, Jarlaxle intended to get back to this place.

  She couldn’t blame him.

  They set one last camp near the cave entrance, the large force, nearly two hundred strong, catching up and breaking into their assigned assault groups.

  “After the kurit sneak to the entrance and check it structurally, we will be the first to enter the cave,” Emilian told the four as they ate their dinner. “You four, myself, Ilina, Galathae, Vessi, and Azzudonna. Once you have shown us what we need to know to direct the fight, then you can move back to this place, where we’ll stage an infirmary.”

  “We asked to remain at your side,” Azzudonna said, noting herself and Vessi. “We will return to this camp with you.”

  “But we won’t be returning to the camp,” Zak said before Jarlaxle could reply. “I won’t, at least. I was down in the lower tunnel and remember it well, so I’ll be of help. And if the frogs and giants are still there, well, all the better.”

  “None of us will remain in the background,” Catti-brie said with confidence. “We are seasoned warriors all, and know each other well. Too, I ask that you don’t remain with us, my friends. Stay with familiar comrades.”

  “We’ve perfected our own . . . style,” Jarlaxle added. He looked right at Galathae, whom he had been told would be leading the expedition, and who was now coming over to join them. “If there are objectives you wish us to meet once the fighting starts, just point them out and take confidence that we’ll get it done.”

  “Just you four?” Galathae asked skeptically.

  “Five,” Catti-brie corrected, lifting the onyx panther figurine from her pouch.

  “Six,” said Jarlaxle, tapping the feather on his huge hat.

  “Maybe eight, if there is room for hellsteeds,” Entreri put in.

  Galathae looked to her fellow aevendrow, none of whom had any answers to the claims of the four.

  “This is our fight,” Galathae said. “You need not—”

  “Then it is our fight,” Catti-brie insisted.

  “Perte miye Callidae,” said Jarlaxle.

  “Perte miye Callidae,” he said again, this time with the voices of his three friends echoing every syllable.

  “Indeed,” said a nodding and smiling Galathae. “Sleep well and prepare yourselves.”

  Artemis Entreri crept into the cave, hugging the right-hand wall, scanning constantly for any signs of movement, both from other shadows and from the large body of the frog-like green slaad lying on the floor right where they had fought it and left it.

  All was quiet, not a twitch from a webbed foot nor a flicker of movement from the creature’s four-fingered hands.

  Patience, Entreri silently reminded himself. He squatted below a jag in the wall, tucked tight in the shadows, and he waited.

  And he watched.

  Sometime later, he crept out from the wall, staying low all the way to the corpse—and yes, he confirmed, it was that same corpse all these tendays later, showing the same wounds inflicted by the very sword Entreri now carried. It hadn’t decayed much at all—because of the cold, he knew.

  Back to the wall he went, then he crept all around the chamber and even down the descending tunnel.

  All was quiet.

  Entreri moved back outside. “The slaad is dead where we left it, just inside,” he told them. “All else is quiet, well into the tunnel.”

  “Maybe they deserted the place,” Zak offered.

  “The corpse still being there means nothing,” Galathae answered. “Slaadi care nothing for their dead or for each other.”

  “The room with the eggs was far below,” Zak added. “A few hundred strides down that tunnel, then down a great stairway and along yet another corridor.”

  “Any turns or side passages?” Galathae asked.

  “Not many and nothing to confuse. Large steps down to a straight run to a single fork right before the room, but both ways from the fork led into the chamber, although the tunnel to the left might have had another branch.”

  Galathae nodded to Emilian and he ran off.

  “Then let’s be done with this,” the paladin told those remaining. To the four newcomers, she added, “You are certain you wish to engage in this fight?”

  “Right up front,” Jarlaxle answered.

  Galathae motioned to the cave entrance.

  Zaknafein and Entreri led the way, the aevendrow paladin and Azzudonna close behind. Catti-brie, Jarlaxle, and Ilina trailed, while Emilian organized a second strike group to move in as reinforcements, as well as a team of kurit with a litter to collect the long-dead green slaad.

  Down the tunnel they went, silent as the shadows, silent as death. They came to the descending stairs and continued to the flat, straight tunnel below. Entreri and Zaknafein crept up to the fork, the red glow from the chamber beyond evident, and there Entreri held, sword and dagger now in hand, while Zak moved back the way they had come a short distance. When their companions came off the stairs and into the flat tunnel, Zak motioned back to Galathae, pointing left and right.

  Which or both? Zaknafein’s fingers flashed at her in the drow code.

  Galathae glanced over her shoulder and flashed some hand signals that way, then turned back and silently told the point runners, Left.

  Zak moved back to join Entreri and they started down side by side. They paused almost immediately, though, hearing movement ahead.

  The room wasn’t empty.

  Zak turned back, his fingers working fast to relay the news.

  How many? Entreri heard in his thoughts, and he recognized that it was Catti-brie who had sent the silent magical message.

  He crept forward, paused, then moved again.

  Several huge forms were shuffling about, including a trio of giants lifting and turning eggs. While it didn’t seem so huge near the towering frost giants, he noted a slaad, hulking and thick and blue and nearly twice his own height, then a pair of slightly smaller and leaner red slaadi farther to the right.

  He relayed it all back to Catti-brie with the connection of the message spell, then added that there was at least one more down the deeper hallway from this nesting room, for he heard its croaking call to its fellows.

  He moved back to Zaknafein, who relayed to Catti-brie, Put a fireball in there to start the fight.

  A few moments later, while Jarlaxle, Azzudonna, and Galathae moved up to join the pair, Catti-brie and Ilina remained back at the tunnel fork, waiting for Emilian’s squad to arrive. Ilina sent them off down the right-hand tunnel, her fingers relaying the information, while Catti-bri
e began quietly casting her spell.

  The five in the tunnel ducked and covered as one when the small ball of flame soared over them, flying into the room beyond. A wash of heat swept past, accompanied by screams of pain and great gurgling croaks of surprise.

  Entreri and Zaknafein led the way, diving into rolls as soon as they reached the room’s entrance, crossing paths in those dives to confuse the nearby enemies, and coming up shoulder-to-shoulder, leaping away as one for the nearest giant, which was frantically trying to balance a huge egg in one hand while it patted at the biting flames with the other.

  The giant reached for its axe, which leaned against the wall to the side, but then brought its hand back across to block a stab from Zak.

  A cut from Khazid’hea.

  Three giant fingers and half of its palm went spinning to the floor. The behemoth reacted without thinking, hurling the egg at Zak.

  Zak ducked, rolled forward and turned as he went, stabbing Khazid’hea downward on the turn and leaving the sword sticking up from the floor as he rose into a crouch facing Entreri, his hands cupped before him.

  Hesitating not at all, Entreri rushed forward, stepped into those cupped hands, and leaped away, Zak propelling him up and over.

  Both hands gripping the hilt of Charon’s Claw, Entreri drove it home with all his strength, the fine blade slicing through the thick hide jerkin and stabbing deep into the giant’s gut. Entreri could see and feel the behemoth’s skin smoking and curling away from the wound, and knew that the giant’s innards were faring no better. He was glad that the gash widened itself, for he slipped free and down, ducking fast as the giant slapped at him, then reached for him.

  The crack of a fiery whip straightened the giant and sent it falling back a step, reflexively grabbing at its burned face with both hands, then howling again and tucking its half hand under its other arm, trying to stem the spurting blood.

  “Behind you!” Entreri told the weapon master, for the egg had hit the floor, skipped to the wall, and bounced back, but now with a cracked shell. A blue creature that looked like a weird cross between a baby dragon and a giant centipede had pushed through the compromised shell and now swayed very near to Zak, toothy maw coiling, ready to strike.

  Jarlaxle approached in measured steps as he watched the opening charge of his two lieutenants. Even though it was all so perfectly predictable, he was still shaking his head in awe. The coordination, the improvisation, the precision of Zak and Entreri, although typical, could never be less than amazing to him, even though he himself could have joined these two experts and been complementary to their movements.

  He managed a little smile when he heard the slight gasps of appreciation from the two drow beside him.

  He planned to fight this battle with a pair of wands, mostly, but since this first giant was already getting ripped apart, he began with his conjured throwing daggers, one, two, and a third as Azzudonna and Galathae rushed past him into the room, veering left. He noted the egg flying past Zak and held his fourth shot when the weapon master came up in a turn with his hands cupped, realizing that Entreri would soon be leaping up high.

  But then Jarlaxle let fly that fourth dagger when the serpent appeared from the cracked egg.

  Azzudonna and Galathae were already around the corner, out of sight and out of range of the serpent, and there, Jarlaxle heard, another fight was already beginning.

  Around went the weapon master to Entreri’s call, only to find the hatchling too close for his whip, its head up high and swaying, then snapping forward, maw spreading wide, fangs pointing from either side.

  Zak growled a curse and tried to get away, but only a thrown dagger saved him from a vicious bite, as it clipped the hatchling’s head and deflected the strike wide.

  A quick rush to the side brought Zak past Khazid’hea, which he pulled free as he spun back on the serpent.

  He cracked his whip at it, and it hissed—but the fire didn’t hurt it!

  He did it again, cutting the tear, letting the opaque magma drip down before the beast, which struck again, its face plunging right through the hot residue.

  If the heat bothered it at all, it didn’t show it, but it didn’t matter, Zak saw, for the magma was upon its face, upon its eyes. It shuddered and swayed, trying to get free, but Zak came in fast.

  Cutter slashed across viciously, and the creature and the breaking egg rolled to the side, the hatchling falling in half and both ends squirming wildly about on the floor.

  Zak didn’t see that, but confident in his strike, he had already dismissed the serpent as a threat, for there remained a huge frost giant, wounded and angry, not far behind him.

  An arrow of lightning soared right over him as he spun, and he turned just in time to see the giant stagger from the impact. But still it roared and pressed on, gathering its axe, taking several more hits about the legs from Entreri’s sword and dagger, taking another arrow, then a third.

  Yet it kept coming.

  The behemoth answered with a great sweeping swing at Entreri, but a flare of light flashed between the combatants, surprising the giant and giving the man enough time not only to get below the strike, but to come up behind it and drive his sword into the bending behemoth’s side.

  Zak came in, snapping his whip at the giant’s face again and leaping into a tremendous downward slash with Cutter that finished off the giant’s injured hand, stealing its grip, the huge axe spinning out to the side wildly.

  Another arrow struck home.

  A flying panther crashed in right behind the lightning missile, landing fully on the giant’s head, bearing it to the ground.

  In went Entreri and Zaknafein to finish the brute.

  Jarlaxle nodded his appreciation to Ilina when she placed the warding flare between Entreri and the giant.

  “Brilliant,” he told her, and he realized he might as well have been speaking of Azzudonna and Galathae. If any doubts remained in Jarlaxle about the power of the aevendrow after cazzcalci and after the paladin so casually handled Entreri’s sword, they were thrown aside in but a few moments of watching the two brilliantly working about a giant, Galathae with sword and shield, Azzudonna spinning a sword and short-spear combination with such deftness that Jarlaxle wondered why such a weapon combination was so rare in Menzoberranzan. The masters at Melee-Magthere would learn a bit from this one!

  And those white blades, ice so tightly compressed as to be unbreakable, enchanted and treated with such skill, drew bright lines of blood all over the frost giant they faced.

  For all that skill, Jarlaxle understood that the two could use his help, and he rushed in support as a second giant came up on them, along with the blue slaad.

  A brilliant light appeared in the eyes of that second frost giant, blinding it, as Ilina joined in, and Catti-brie, too, turned her attention here, Heartseeker raining shots above the drow fighters and into the huge giants.

  Now with wands in hand, Jarlaxle called upon the magic in a ring, magically blinking through a short dimensional gate that landed him at the back of the room to the side of the growing melee, and with the three massive monsters in a perfect line.

  One wand, then the second sent a powerful lightning bolt shooting down that line, scorching all three.

  Jarlaxle nearly laughed aloud when Azzudonna cleverly leaped forward behind that flashing blast, jabbing her spear at the blinded, outraged giant who stood in the middle. At the same time, she gracefully and fearlessly danced between the giant and the slaad. The giant reacted with a great sweep of its axe, but Azzudonna was far too quick to get caught by that.

  The surprised slaad, however, did turn with her.

  From his new angle, Jarlaxle could see the fight across the room, Emilian’s group battling fiercely. He breathed easier when Entreri, Zak, and Guenhwyvar joined in with Azzudonna and Galathae, and Catti-brie kept her line of lightning arrows flying true.

  Behind Catti-brie, Ilina bided her time, picking her magic. A silvery spectral hammer appeared in the air besi
de the slaad and immediately engaged, and when that slaad managed to clip Azzudonna with a claw, sending her into a defensive roll out the other way, her wound began to knit almost immediately.

  Ilina’s magic, Jarlaxle realized, and he was glad. The aevendrow knew what they were doing against these enemies, clearly. If they won out here, he was confident none of them would leave this fight infected with the chaos phage.

  The mercenary reached for the feather in his cap, but just shook his head and moved on, picking targets.

  The diatryma wouldn’t be needed. Not yet, at least.

  The pair of red slaadi fled the fight down the tunnel at the back of the room, and Jarlaxle went in pursuit. He turned the corner to see them fleeing, but also to see, with the magic of his eyepatch, a second pair of slaadi, almost identical to the green beast they had killed on their first journey to this place, cloaked in invisibility and standing on either side of the wide tunnel.

  The mercenary skidded to a stop and reversed, putting his back to the wall and motioning to his friends. Zak and Entreri rolled away from their fight, which the aevendrow by then had in full control, and toward Jarlaxle. Catti-brie came, too, her bow working with every stride, pummeling the unblinded giant most of all.

  As the two warriors quickly approached, Jarlaxle put both wands in one hand, motioned to the tunnel entrance, and showed his friends two fingers. He pulled something from his pouch with pinched fingers and reached about, throwing it into the tunnel.

  Around went Jarlaxle, a wand in each hand, the air before him filled with glittering dust that outlined and clearly showed all four of the slaadi within.

  The corridor flashed twice with shocking blasts of lightning, and Jarlaxle flipped the wands, holstered them, and brought daggers into his hands that elongated into swords as his three friends joined him.

  The red slaadi tried to get forward in the fight to fend off the fury of Entreri and the two drow, while both green slaadi began casting.

  But the friends knew what to expect, and had already been protected from fireballs as they had seen them used in the first fight, and Catti-brie, too, was casting as she arrived.