Relentless

by R. A. Salvatore

  A dozen battle dwarves slid their weapons away and watched them enter, as one breaking into a cheer when Catti-brie walked out of the narrow corridor.

  Those dwarves parted, nodding and happy, greeting Catti-brie and her companions warmly. Just before they opened the forge room door for the four visitors, they had to pause and take note of another group fast-approaching down a side corridor.

  Yvonnel, Dahlia, Entreri, Regis, and Athrogate rushed to join them, all five wearing grim expressions.

  “The woods about us are filled with driders,” Regis said, rushing up to Catti-brie. “So many, and my friend . . .”

  Yvonnel grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back, warning him to silence with a scowl. The drow woman then exchanged a rather awkward look with Catti-brie.

  “King Bruenor is in the primordial chamber, I am told,” Yvonnel explained. “We can relay all the news together at once. The dwarves are gathering Jarlaxle and Zaknafein now to join us.”

  A hundred questions bounced about Catti-brie’s thoughts at that moment, inspired mostly by Yvonnel’s tone, and by Regis—something was wrong with Regis. The hairs on the back of Catti-brie’s neck stood on end. Yes, something was very wrong here. She saw it on their faces, all of them, particularly the halfling’s, for the halfling looked as if he might simply explode.

  They went into the forge room and through it to the side corridor leading to the large chamber that held the primordial of fire in a chasm whose walls swirled continually, the great pit capped by water elementals. There they found Bruenor waiting, along with Queen Tannabritches, Ivan and Pikel Bouldershoulder, Lady Donnola Topolino, and the two drow, Zaknafein and Jarlaxle.

  “Ah, blessed be Dumathoin,” Bruenor said when he saw his very pregnant daughter. “Please be tellin’ me that them durned portals’re running again.”

  “Kipper Harpell teleported us in,” Catti-brie explained. “No portals.”

  “And none likely,” Penelope Harpell added.

  “Bah!” huffed the dwarf king.

  “Yvonnel flew us in as a living cloud, through the drow and driders and demons,” Regis said.

  “Athrogate!” Bruenor cried then, noting his shield dwarf, whom he thought lost at Thornhold. “Ah, but there’re stories to be telling!”

  “And I’ll start with the most important,” Yvonnel said grimly. She pulled a sack from around her shoulder. “There is no easy way to say this.” She paused and took a deep breath, and those who had come in with her all seemed to hold their breath at the same moment.

  Catti-brie’s heart fell. She knew. At that moment, that most terrible moment, she knew.

  “Drizzt is gone,” Yvonnel announced. She laid the sack at the feet of Catti-brie, and when it settled and pitched over a bit, the pommel of a familiar scimitar stabbed out of its opening.

  “Gone?” Bruenor demanded. “What’re ye meaning, gone?”

  “The spider,” Regis blurted, running forward because he simply had to. He went straight to his wife, Donnola, and fell into her arms, needing the support.

  “He is gone,” Yvonnel said again.

  “Where’s the body?” Bruenor demanded, his voice and ire rising greatly.

  “Gone?” Jarlaxle asked.

  Yvonnel nodded.

  “But not dead,” Jarlaxle said.

  Yvonnel shrugged.

  “It was a retriever,” Jarlaxle reminded. “It took him, and thus, he might be held prisoner in the Abyss.”

  “Then to the Abyss we go!” Zaknafein growled, and Bruenor loudly agreed—as did Artemis Entreri, which surprised most of the others.

  Catti-brie wasn’t even listening, though. She couldn’t hear anything beyond the thrumming of the blood in her ears. She looked to Yvonnel, who seemed the most versed here, and to Jarlaxle, who always seemed to have an answer, but no, they seemed somehow beyond her reach, far away, indistinct.

  Like their voices, like all of their voices now, as they bickered and shouted over each other, promising a fight or something . . . something . . .

  It was just a mosquito to her, buzzing in her ear. Like that day, that early morning when she and Drizzt were out on the road south of Mithral Hall. That mosquito, yes, and she couldn’t quite see it because she couldn’t yet open her tired eyes, and she could only hear it, buzzing, buzzing.

  Nothing focused for her in that terrible moment except the pommel. So distinct, so familiar.

  The pommel.

  Drizzt was lost to her.

  She didn’t know what to do.

  So she screamed.

  Just screamed. At the top of her lungs, with every ounce of strength she had, she threw out a wall of pure denial, a stream of curses at the gods, at her god, at any god, at divine justice itself, for how could this be?

  She just screamed.

  And when she had thrown it all out there, her knees wobbled and went out from under her. Down she went, but not far, for Zaknafein, as agile and quick as his son, was there to catch her and support her. Others were fast to the spot as well, Regis with a potion in hand to bolster her, and soon she was up again, apologizing, then feeling stupid for apologizing.

  The world spun, and her thoughts spun faster.

  She pushed them all away, and when Bruenor, her beloved father, came to hug her, she held out her hands to stop him.

  “Don’t!”

  “Me girl?” the dwarf asked, tears streaming down his cheeks. He started for her again.

  “I can’no’,” she said, keeping her hands defensively before her. She knew, she just knew, that if anyone touched her to comfort her, she would melt.

  She could not do that. Not here. Not now.

  She fought through her pain—she had never imagined pain like this before. She let the thoughts swirl—her child . . . their child . . . Drizzt . . . in his arms—and swirl some more, like a whirlpool, taking them all down, burying them beneath an ocean of tears.

  She always knew this could happen—it was a likelihood of the life they had chosen.

  And it had happened! To her, to Regis, to Wulfgar, to Bruenor! They had been taken to the afterlife and yet they were back.

  But no, not this time, she just knew. She knew the deal Mielikki had given to her when she had kept the four in Iruladoon. That was a special circumstance, the Spellplague, and they were there for Mielikki, not for the desires of mere mortals.

  It would not happen again. There would be no second divine intervention—that was the deal. No resurrection.

  She stared at the pommel, that beautiful black adamantine hilt fashioned into the likeness of the toothed maw of a hunting cat.

  Duty. Responsibility.

  She found her focus, but it wavered when she noted all the stares coming at her from those around. The buzzing was gone now. Just silence.

  Drizzt was gone.

  Duty. Responsibility.

  They were all in trouble. She was in trouble. Her child was in mortal danger.

  Duty. Responsibility.

  But now . . . with their child . . . their child, her child, Drizzt’s child, in danger!

  The woman growled and pushed away from those standing about her, toward the bag Yvonnel had placed at her feet.

  She fished about and found Guenhwyvar first and foremost. Beloved Guenhwyvar, so much more than a magical item, so much more than a companion. Guenhwyvar was family, and Catti-brie decided that she wouldn’t let the onyx figurine out of her possession until the day she gave it to her child, to Drizzt’s child.

  She found next the buckle of the sword belt, a magical construct of her own making, which held within it Taulmaril the Heartseeker, her bow that she had given to Drizzt. She removed it from the belt and slid it into her pouch.

  She moved methodically, using her duty to hold herself upright. She had to think about that which she now had to do, and not think about the coming trials and trauma, the reality of life without Drizzt or the possibility of finding some way, any way, to go and get him.

  She took out Drizzt’s p
iwafwi, the wonderful and finely made cloak that never seemed to show the wear of the road. Jarlaxle had commissioned it for Drizzt. Catti-brie brought it in close and inhaled, smelling Drizzt, burying her face in that scent.

  She turned and offered it to Jarlaxle, but he held up his hands and shook his head, declining. “. . . yours,” he said, and it was clear he was having trouble speaking in that terrible moment. “Keep it . . . wear it. I beg.”

  She fished around in the sack a bit more, and found herself growing stronger and more determined. After a few moments, she stood and looked to Yvonnel. “The scrimshaw pendant for Andahar?” she asked.

  “Drizzt took it to run from the spider,” Athrogate answered before Yvonnel could.

  “He wanted to get the beast as far away from the rest of us as possible,” Yvonnel added.

  Catti-brie nodded, then went to the sack, pulling out the sword belt and the mithral shirt, the bracers Drizzt wore as anklets. She held it all before her, the legacy of her love. On an impulse, she drew his other sword, the scimitar of Vidrinath and Twinkle, joined by Catti-brie in the Forge of Gauntlgrym, presented it powerfully, and told the others, her voice strong and thick with the dwarven brogue, “We’re not to lose this war. We’re winning. For Drizzt, we’re winning. We come too far to let this dream go, demons and driders and drow be durned!”

  “Aye and huzzah!” Queen Tannabritches cheered, but the others all looked to the three drow, particularly to Jarlaxle. All except Bruenor, who stood perfectly still, except for his face, which kept grimacing and twisting, low growls coming forth.

  He was lost, Catti-brie knew, and that gave her more determination and more strength.

  “It is a fair declaration,” the rogue mercenary admitted with a shrug. “For Drizzt, then, and huzzah, indeed!”

  The others joined in, except for Catti-brie, Bruenor, and one other. She noted Zaknafein, his cheeks twitching, his eyes large and sad, gaze cast down.

  She slid Vidrinath away and went to him, directly to him, and matched his stare with her own.

  “I am sorry that you never came to truly know your son, or to fully understand the beauty that he gave to us all,” she managed to say, her voice breaking several times.

  “And that you gave to him,” Jarlaxle interjected.

  With an appreciative nod to Jarlaxle, Catti-brie cleared her throat and continued. “Here,” she said, and gave Zaknafein the bracer and mithral shirt. “Bruenor made this for Drizzt, and these bracers he took from the corpse of Dantrag Baenre.”

  “I . . .” Zak started to answer, but could get no words out beyond that.

  “And these.” Catti-brie surprised Zak and everyone else in handing over Drizzt’s scimitars. “These are yours now, to wield in the name of Drizzt Do’Urden, your son, who loved you always.”

  Zaknafein’s hands trembled as he took the sword belt.

  “However you might feel about me, or about the others around you who are not drow, I trust that you will make good use of these blades in defending all that was dear to Drizzt. And when we win—and we shall—you will go as you determine with this part of Drizzt in hand, at least.”

  “Aye,” she heard Bruenor say from the side, and she was glad to know that the dwarf, as good a friend as Drizzt had ever known, as good a father as she could have ever hoped for, agreed with her bold decision.

  “Where would you have me go?” Zaknafein asked when he had finally steadied himself.

  “Where you will.”

  “And if I choose to remain here, by your side?” Zak asked, and he looked around at all of them, taking them in one at a time, meeting every gaze. “If I choose to remain beside all of you? Fighting beside you? Learning from you?” He brought his gaze back to stare directly into Catti-brie’s eyes as he finished, “Knowing my grandchild as I wished I might have known my son?”

  “I would like that,” Catti-brie said, her voice somewhat less than a whisper, tears flowing from her blue eyes, and then she welcomed Zaknafein’s hug and returned it tenfold, pulling him tight against her, her child, his grandchild, squeezed between them, hugged by both of them.

  Regis was there a moment later, then Bruenor, then Jarlaxle.

  Catti-brie let herself be swept up in that great hug, in the shared sense of loss.

  She remembered then the words of Drizzt and whispered them, more to herself than to the others, “Joy multiplies when it is shared among friends, but grief diminishes with every division.”

  She opened her eyes then and looked over Zak’s shoulder, and noted, curiously, Artemis Entreri.

  The man was as shaken as she had ever seen him. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he held Dahlia against his side.

  His eyes were locked on Catti-brie, though, and his thoughts, she knew without doubt, were full of sadness and emptiness at the loss of the drow who had been his greatest enemy, his greatest rival, and finally, a model to him of what he might have been and, perhaps, of what he could strive to be.

  Catti-brie wanted to tell him, but she could not: hold on to that.

  “Hold on to that,” she did whisper under her breath, and no one heard but her.

  “Hold on to that.”

  Part 3

  Lasting Ramifications

  Are they all like that?

  Do all drow children possess such innocence, such simple, untainted smiles that cannot survive the ugliness of our world? Or are you unique, Drizzt Do’Urden?

  And if you are so different, what, then, is the cause? The blood, my blood, that courses through your veins? Or the years you spent with your weanmother?

  This one is different!

  This one is different.

  Zaknafein Do’Urden

  Homeland

  Chapter 14

  Making Webs in the Shadows

  The Year of the Shattered Oak

  Dalereckoning 1313

  You know these tunnels? Beniago’s hand movements asked of Zaknafein. The Bregan D’aerthe band had gone silent now, traversing caves far from Menzoberranzan. They had been out for several tendays and, credit to the skill of Beniago and a most exceptional scout, Nav Rayan Dyrr, they had avoided almost all trouble. No small feat in the Underdark.

  I do, Zaknafein answered with his fingers.

  Then you have been to the City of Shimmering Webs, Beniago’s hands replied.

  Once, a long time ago.

  With Jarlaxle, I presume.

  And another, Zak replied. A brilliant assassin named—

  Arathis Hune, Beniago answered before he could finish.

  That set Zaknafein back on his heels. This Baenre knew more than he was letting on, and that likely included the fact that Arathis Hune had met a most unexpected and inconvenient end, not long after the moment when the artery in Arathis Hune’s neck had met the sharp edge of the sword Zaknafein now carried on his left hip.

  Arathis Hune had been a major force in the mercenary band, second only to Jarlaxle within the hierarchy of Bregan D’aerthe.

  I am surprised to witness Zaknafein relating the notion of Arathis Hune as brilliant, signed Beniago.

  He was, perhaps, the second most brilliant assassin I have ever known.

  Second only to the drow who killed him?

  That is usually how it works.

  Beniago Kurth nodded in salute to that.

  We are going to Ched Nesad? Zaknafein asked.

  So it would seem.

  Zaknafein slipped back a bit, then, slowing his pace to better take in the images and textures of the corridors around him, using the visual and tactile cues to send his thoughts back to that most thrilling excursion—perhaps the greatest adventure he had known in his life. The three rogues had traveled to the City of Shimmering Webs to parlay with a high priestess, a matron who had allowed her pride to get a bit beyond her earned reputation. She had angered Lolth, so they had been told.

  Perhaps that was true, perhaps not, Zaknafein had thought then and still now—for who could really know the will of the chaotic goddess who hel
d these two cities, Menzoberranzan and Ched Nesad, in her thrall?

  It didn’t matter anyway, of course, for Lolth didn’t really care for any single high priestess—or almost any matron, even—enough to demand retribution in this mortal existence. She would surely exact any deserved revenge in the afterlife.

  In this particular case, however, the offending matron had done something far more lethal than committing an offense against Lolth.

  She had offended Matron Mother Baenre.

  A lot of drow had done that over the millennia, Zaknafein was sure, but more sure was Jarlaxle, who had made it quite clear that few had done it twice, and none had ever lived long enough to offend Matron Mother Baenre a third time.

  The troupe continued on their silent way for another few days, but then, right in an area that Zaknafein remembered well, a place where he had rescued a band of halfling slaves, the direction shifted dramatically.

  The Hunzrin band had veered to the north. Soon after, the scout reported that the Hunzrins were heading back toward Menzoberranzan along a lesser-used series of tunnels and caves.

  “They knew they were being followed,” Zaknafein said to Beniago.

  “I don’t think so,” Beniago replied. “This particular Hunzrin party left under the utmost secrecy. It is quite possible that they traveled all this way on purpose, just in case they were being watched. We are beyond the range of all but the most powerful diviners now. Their scrying mirrors or pools would not have kept up with the Hunzrins at this point.”

  “They are being careful indeed, then.”

  Beniago nodded, and once more Zaknafein got the impression the Baenre fighter knew a lot more than he was letting on.

  Zaknafein shrugged off the notion as immaterial. He had known Jarlaxle for centuries and so was used to such things.

  “We are not bound for the city of Ched Nesad, then?” the woman asked her hosts.

  “You know of Ched Nesad?” Du’Quelve Hunzrin asked.

  “Of course,” Priestess Iccara replied. “The City of Shimmering Webs. A most worthy tribute to the Spider Queen, do you not agree?”