Servant of the Shard: The Sellswords

by R. A. Salvatore

  “I seek my friends,” Cadderly replied.

  “They are out of the mountain, likely,” Kimmuriel remarked, and that slowed the priest considerably.

  For indeed, would not Danica and the dwarves search for a way out of the mountain—and there were many easy exits from the lower tunnels, Cadderly knew from his searching of the place before this journey. Dozens of corridors crisscrossed down there, but a quiet pause and a lifted and wetted finger would show the drafts of air. Certainly Ivan and Pikel would have little trouble in finding their way out of the underground maze, but what of Danica?

  “Something comes this way,” Kimmuriel warned, and Cadderly turned to see the drow shrink back against the wall, and stand perfectly still, seeming simply to disappear.

  Cadderly knew the drow wouldn’t aid him in any fight and would likely even join in if the approaching footsteps were those of Kimmuriel’s dark elf companions.

  They were not, Cadderly knew almost as soon as that worry cropped up, for these were not the steps of any stealthy creature.

  “Ye stupid doo-dad!” came the roar of a familiar voice. “Droppin’ me in a hole, and one full o’ rocks!”

  “Ooo oi!” Pikel replied as they came bounding around the bend in the tunnel, right into the path of Cadderly’s light beam.

  Ivan shrieked and started to charge, but Pikel grabbed him and pulled him down, whispering into his ear.

  “Hey, ye’re right,” the yellow-bearded dwarf admitted. “Damned drows don’t use light.”

  Cadderly came up beside them. “Where is Danica?”

  Any relief the two dwarves had felt at the sight of their friend disappeared immediately.

  “Help me find her!” Cadderly said to the dwarves and to Kimmuriel, as he spun around.

  Kimmuriel Oblodra, apparently fearing that Cadderly and his companions would not be safe traveling company, was already long gone.

  His smile, a wicked grin indeed, widened as one of his blades came up over the other, for he knew that Entreri had nothing left with which to parry. Out went Berg’inyon’s killing stab.

  But the assassin was not there!

  Berg’inyon’s thoughts whirled frantically. Where had he gone? How were his weapons still in place with the previous parries? He knew Entreri could not have moved far, and yet, he was not there.

  The angle of the sudden disengage clued Berg’inyon in to the truth, told the drow that in the same moment Berg’inyon had executed the roll, Entreri had also come forward, but down low, using Berg’inyon’s own blade as the visual block.

  The dark elf silently congratulated the cunning human, this man rumored to be the equal of Drizzt Do’Urden, even as he felt the jeweled dagger sliding into his back, reaching for his heart.

  “You should have kept one of your lackeys with you,” Entreri whispered in the drow’s ear, easing the dying Berg’inyon Baenre to the floor. “He could have died beside you.”

  The assassin pulled free his dagger and turned around to consider the woman. He saw her get slashed, saw her skitter away, saw the globe fall over her.

  Entreri winced as the two dark elves—too far away for him to offer any timely assistance—rolled out in opposite directions, flanking the woman and rushing into that darkness, swords before them.

  Just a split second before the darkness fell, the dark elf standing before Danica to the right began to execute a roll farther that way, spinning a circle to bring him around quickly and with momentum, the only clue for Danica.

  The other one, she guessed, was moving to her left, but both were surely coming in at a tight enough angle to prevent her from rushing straight ahead between them. Those three options: left, right, and ahead, were unavailable, as was moving back, for the stone of the wall was solid indeed.

  She sensed their movements, not specifically, but enough to realize that they were coming in fast for the kill.

  One option presented itself. One alone.

  Danica leaped straight up, tucking her legs under her, so full of desperation that she hardly felt the burn of the wound in her thigh.

  She couldn’t see the double-thrust low attack of the drow to her right, nor the double-thrust high attack from the one on the left, but she felt the disturbance below her as she cleared both sets of blades. She came up high in a tuck, and kicked out to both sides with a sudden and devastating spreading snap of her legs.

  She connected on both sides, driving a foot into the forehead of the drow on her right, and another into the throat of the drow on her left. She pressed through to complete extension, sending both dark elves flying away. She landed in perfect balance and burst ahead three running steps. A forward dive brought her rolling out of the darkness. She came up and around—to see the dark elf now on her left, and the one she had kicked on the forehead, still staggering backward out of the darkness globe and into the waiting grasp of Artemis Entreri.

  The drow jerked suddenly, violently, and Entreri’s fine sword exploded through his chest. The assassin held it there for a moment, let Charon’s Claw work its demonic power, and the dark elf’s face began to smolder, burn, and roll back from his skull.

  Danica looked away, focusing on the darkness, waiting for the other dark elf to come rushing out. Blood was pouring from her wounded leg, and her strength was fast receding.

  She was too lightheaded a moment later to hear the final gurgling of the drow dying in the darkness globe, its throat too crushed to bring in anymore air, but even if she had heard that reassuring sound, it would have done little to bolster her hopes.

  She could not hold her footing, she knew, or her consciousness.

  Artemis Entreri, surely no ally, was still very much alive, and very, very close.

  Yharaskrik was overwhelmed. The combination of Rai-guy’s magic and the continuing mental attack of the Crystal Shard had the illithid completely overmatched. Yharaskrik couldn’t even focus its mental energies enough at that moment to melt away through the stone, away from the imprisoning goo.

  “Surrender!” the drow wizard-cleric demanded. “You cannot escape us. We will take your word that you will promise fealty to us,” the drow explained, oblivious to the shadowy form that darted out behind him to retrieve an item. “Crenshinibon will know if you lie, but if you speak of honest fealty, you will be rewarded!”

  Indeed, as the dark elf proclaimed those words, Crenshinibon echoed them deep in Yharaskrik’s mind. The thought of servitude to Crenshinibon, one of the most hated artifacts for all of the mind flayers, surely repulsed the bulbous-headed creature, but so, too, did the thought of obliteration. That was precisely what Yharaskrik faced. The illithid could not win, could not escape. Crenshinibon would melt its mind even as Rai-guy blasted its body.

  I yield, the illithid telepathically communicated to both of its attackers.

  Rai-guy relented his magic and considered Crenshinibon. The artifact informed him that Yharaskrik had truthfully surrendered.

  “Wisely done,” the drow said to the illithid. “What a waste your death would be when you might bolster my army, when you might serve me as liaison to your powerful people.”

  “My people hate Crenshinibon and will not hear those calls,” Yharaskrik said in its watery voice.

  “But you understand differently,” said the drow. He spoke a quick spell, dissolving the goo around the illithid. “You see the value of it now.”

  “A value above that of death, yes,” Yharaskrik admitted, climbing back to its feet.

  “Well, well, my traitorous lieutenant,” came a voice from the side. Both Rai-guy and Yharaskrik turned to see Jarlaxle perched a bit higher on the wall, tucked into an alcove.

  Rai-guy growled and called upon Crenshinibon mentally to crush his former master. Even as he started that silent call, up came the magical lantern. Its glow fell over the artifact, defeating its powers.

  Rai-guy growled again. “You need do more than defeat the artifact!” he roared and swept his arm out toward Yharaskrik. “Have you met my new friend?”

/>   “Indeed, and formidable,” Jarlaxle admitted, tipping his wide-brimmed hat in deference to the powerful illithid. “Have you met mine?” As he finished, his gaze aimed to the side, further along the wide tunnel.

  Rai-guy swallowed hard, knowing the truth before he even turned that way. He began waving his arms wildly, trying to bring up some defensive magic.

  Using his innate drow abilities, Jarlaxle dropped a globe of darkness over the wizard and the mind flayer, a split second before Hephaestus’s fiery breath fell over them, immolating them in a terrible blast of devastation.

  Jarlaxle leaned back and shielded his eyes from the glow of the fire, the reddish-orange line that so disappeared into the blackness.

  Then there came a sudden sizzling noise, and the darkness was no more. The tunnel reverted to its normal blackness, lightened somewhat by the glow of the dragon. That light intensified a hundred times over, a thousand times over, into a brilliant glow, as if the sun itself had fallen upon them.

  Crenshinibon, Jarlaxle realized. The dragon’s breath had done its work, and the binding energy of the artifact had been breached. In the moment before the glare became too great, Jarlaxle saw the surprised look on the reptilian face of the great wyrm, saw the charred corpse of his former lieutenant, and saw a weird image of Yharaskrik, for the illithid had begun to melt into the stone when Hephaestus had breathed. The retreat had done little good, since Hephaestus’s breath had bubbled the stone.

  It was soon too bright for the eyes of the drow. “Well fired … er, breathed,” he said to Hephaestus.

  Jarlaxle spun around, slipped through a crack at the back of the alcove, and sprinted away not a moment too soon. Hephaestus’s terrible breath came forth yet again, melting the stone in the alcove, chasing Jarlaxle down the tunnel, and singeing the seat of his trousers.

  He ran and ran in the still-brightening light. Crenshinibon’s releasing power filled every crack in every stone. Soon Jarlaxle knew he was near the outside wall, and so he utilized his magical hole again, throwing it against the wall and crawling through into the twilight of the outside beyond.

  That area, too, brightened immediately and considerably, seeming as if the sun had risen. The light poured through Jarlaxle’s magical hole. With a snap of his wrist, the drow took the magic item away, closing the portal and dimming the area to natural light again—except for the myriad beams shooting out of the glowing mountain in other places.

  “Danica!” came Cadderly’s frantic call behind him. “Where is Danica?”

  Jarlaxle turned to see the priest and the two bumbling dwarves— an odd pair of brothers if ever the drow had seen one—running toward him.

  “She went down the hole after Artemis Entreri,” Jarlaxle said in a comforting tone. “A fine and resourceful ally.”

  “Boom!” said Pikel Bouldershoulder.

  “What’s the light about?” Ivan added.

  Jarlaxle looked back to the mountain and shrugged. “It would seem that your formula for defeating the Crystal Shard was correct after all,” the drow said to Cadderly.

  He turned with a smile, but that look was not reflected on the face of the priest. He was staring back at the mountain with horror, wondering and worrying about his dear wife.

  CHAPTER

  THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

  25

  Hephaestus was an intelligent dragon, smart enough to master many powerful spells, to speak the tongues of a dozen races, to defeat all of the many, many foes who had come against it. The dragon had lived for centuries, gaining wisdom as dragons do, and in that depth of wisdom, Hephaestus recognized that it should not be staring at the brilliance of the Crystal Shard’s released energy.

  But the dragon could not turn away from the brilliance, from the sheerest and brightest, the purest power it had ever seen.

  The wyrm marveled as a skeletal shadow rolled out of the brilliantly glowing object, then another, and a third, and so on, until the specters of seven long-consumed liches danced about the destroyed Crystal Shard, as they had danced around the object during its dark creation.

  Then, one by one, they dissipated into nothingness.

  The dragon stared incredulously, feeling the honest emotions as clearly as if it were empathically bound to the next form that flowed out of the artifact, the shadow of a man, hunched and broken with sadness. The stolen soul of the long-dead sheik sat on the floor, staring at the stone forlornly, an aura so devastated flowing out from the shadow that Hephaestus the Merciless felt a twinge in its cold heart.

  That last specter, too, thinned to nothingness, and, finally, the light of the Crystal Shard dimmed.

  Only then did Hephaestus recognize the depth of its mistake. Only then did the ancient red dragon realize that it was now totally blind, its eyes utterly destroyed by the pureness of the power released.

  The dragon roared—how it roared! The greatest scream of anger, of rage, that ever-angry Hephaestus had ever issued. In that roar, too, was a measure of fear, of regret, of the realization that the wyrm could not dare go forth from its lair to pursue the intruders who had brought this cursed item before it, could not go out from the confines to the open world where it would need its eyes as well as those other keen senses to truly thrive, indeed to survive.

  Hephaestus’s olfactory senses told the wyrm that it had at least destroyed the drow and the illithid that had been standing in the corridor a few moments before. Taking that satisfaction in the realization that it was likely the only satisfaction Hephaestus could hope to find this day, the wyrm retreated to the large chamber secretly and magically concealed behind its main sleeping hall, the chamber where there was only one possible entrance, and the one where the dragon kept its piled hoard of gold, gems, jewels, and trinkets.

  There the outraged but defeated wyrm curled up again, desiring sleep, peaceful slumber among its hoarded riches, hoping that the passing years would cure its burned eyes. It would dream, yes it would, of consuming those intruders, and it would set its great intelligent mind to work at solving the problem of blindness if the slumber did not bring the desired cure.

  Cadderly nearly leaped for joy when the form came rushing out of the tunnels, but when he recognized the running man for who he was, Artemis Entreri, and noted that the woman slung across his shoulders was hardly moving and was covered in blood, his heart sank fast.

  “What’d ye do to her?” Ivan roared, starting forward, but he found that he was moving slowly, as if in a dream. He looked to Pikel and found that his brother, too, was moving with unnatural sluggishness.

  “Be at ease,” Jarlaxle said to them. “Danica’s wounds are not of Entreri’s doing.”

  “How can ye know?” Ivan demanded.

  “He would have left her dead in the darkness,” the drow reasoned, and the simple logic of it did indeed calm the volatile brothers a bit.

  Cadderly, though, ran on. As he was beyond the parameters of Jarlaxle’s spell when it was cast, he was not slowed in the least. He rushed up to Entreri, who, upon seeing his approach, had stopped and turned one shoulder down, moving Danica to a standing, or at least leaning, position.

  “Drow blade,” the assassin said as soon as Cadderly got close enough to see the wound—and the feeble attempt at tying it off the assassin had made.

  The priest went to work at once, falling into the song of Deneir, bringing forth all the healing energies he could find. Indeed, he discovered to his absolute relief that his love’s wounds were not so critical, that she would certainly mend and quickly enough.

  By the time he finished, the Bouldershoulders and Jarlaxle had arrived. Cadderly looked up at the dwarves and smiled and nodded, and turned a puzzled expression on the assassin.

  “Her actions saved me in the tunnels,” Entreri said sourly. “I do not enjoy being in anyone’s debt.” That said, he walked away, not once looking back.

  Cadderly and his companions, including Danica, caught up to Entreri and Jarlaxle later on that day, after it became apparent, to everyo
ne’s relief, that Hephaestus would not be coming out of its lair in pursuit.

  “We are returning to the Spirit Soaring with the same spell that brought us here,” the priest announced. “It would be impolite, at least, if I did not offer you magical transport for the journey back.”

  Jarlaxle looked at him curiously.

  “No tricks,” Cadderly assured the cagey drow. “I hold no trials over either of you, for your actions have been no less than honorable since you came to my domain. I do warn you both, however, that I will tolerate no—”

  “Why would we wish to return with you?” Artemis Entreri cut him short. “What in your hole of falsehood is for our gain?”

  Cadderly started to respond—in many directions all at once. He wanted to yell at the man, to coerce the man, to convert the man, to destroy the man—anything he could do against that sudden wall of negativism. In the end, he said not a word, for indeed, what at the Spirit Soaring would be for the benefit of these two?

  Much, he supposed, if they desired to mend their souls and their ways. Entreri’s actions with Danica did hint that there might indeed be a possibility of that in the future. On a whim, the priest entered Deneir’s song and brought forth a minor spell, one that revealed the general weal of those he surveyed.

  A quick look at Entreri and Jarlaxle was all he needed to confirm that the Spirit Soaring, Carradoon, Shilmista Forest, and all the region about that section of the Snowflake Mountains would be better off if these two went in the opposite direction.

  “Farewell, then,” he said with a tip of his hat. “At least you found the opportunity to do one noble act in your wretched existence, Artemis Entreri.” He walked by the pair, Ivan and Pikel in tow.

  Danica took her time, though, eyeing Entreri with every step. “I am not ungrateful for what you did when my wound overcame me,” she admitted, “but neither would I shy from finishing that which we started in the tunnels below Hephaestus’s lair.”

  Entreri started to say, “To what end?” but changed his mind before the first word had escaped his lips. He merely shrugged, smiled, and let the woman pass.