moment, Drizzt felt as if he was upon Andahar, riding from Luskan through the dark night. Exhilaration replaced dismay, and pure energy replaced fear.
He moved faster, diving and rolling, coming around to let fly behind to drive back an Ashmadai, then back forward, one, two, three shots to blind Sylora, if not actually hurt her. On one turn, he noted a host of zombies and he let fly at the group as well. But then he noted that they were not approaching, and a heartbeat before another black volley came at him from the balcony, one of those charred little creatures broke apart into flying ash and soared up to Sylora, as if it was one of her arrows.
He didn’t understand, and he didn’t have time to sort it out. Better to shoot the zombies, perhaps, or the Ashmadai?
He just kept his stream of shots and his continual movement, dodging rings and stones and arrows, trying not to wince when he glanced at Dahlia and her desperate struggle.
They would win, he believed. He was riding through the dark Luskan night and he would prevail.
There was no other choice.
“How do I hurt you, you beast?” Dahlia asked, accentuating her question with a spin of her staff and a straight, hard stab that jabbed the zealot in the chest, again to little or no effect. Her voice was raspy, her abdomen knotting and clenching from the withering wound.
But she wasn’t twitching from the residual effects of her own lightning anymore, at least, though her braid had unwound itself in the process, leaving a thin shock of long black and red strands splayed around her otherwise bald head. Worse for Dahlia, she couldn’t feel several of her fingers, and worse still, one of her eyes flickered and closed from the newest wound wrought by the zealot’s powerfully enchanted scepter.
Despite all of that, the elf warrior broke her staff in half as she retracted it, then spun out those two poles, one in either hand, and broke them fast into flails. She didn’t expect the weapons to be any more effective than the long pole, but she hoped her whirling display would buy her more time.
She couldn’t win. She knew that.
“Shoot him again, Drizzt,” she whispered desperately.
She ducked low as the scepter whipped across up high, then cut her counter short as the zealot retracted and stabbed for her belly once more. Then she jumped up high as his real attack swept in, a low cut aimed at Dahlia’s legs.
She’d expected it. If he could but touch her legs with that withering scepter, the resulting cramping muscles would likely render her incapable of escaping.
And that’s exactly what Dahlia was thinking about: escaping. As the scepter passed beneath her tucked legs, she still maintained enough of her balance to spin her weapons up and over, smashing them down atop the zealot’s wrapped head.
He ignored the strikes and brought his scepter sweeping back the other way.
Dahlia moved as if to jump again, but instead stepped back—and it was a good thing she took that second route. The zealot stopped his swing midway through and lifted the scepter straight up. Had Dahlia leaped as before, she would have surely collided with it on her inevitable descent.
Now he faced her again, his eyes shining, his smile peeking out between the tight wrappings.
It occurred to Dahlia then that either of those places, eyes or mouth, might prove to be her best opportunity, but before she could even think through that proposition, she let out a cry of surprise and fell back as a form came leaping down.
She recognized it as Barrabus, as the man Drizzt named Entreri, and for a moment thought he was leaping at her. His hands were up high and wide, one holding his dagger, the other a knife. He crashed onto the zealot’s back, and even that didn’t bring the monstrous Ashmadai to the ground.
But down came those hands, faster than the zealot could react, dagger plunging into one eye, knife into the other.
How the zealot howled and spun around, feet moving every which way, arms waving crazily. The scepter fell from his grasp as his sensibilities fled.
Entreri hung on, riding him like a wild horse.
Around and around the zealot spun, slapping and lurching, and finally throwing the assassin aside.
Out came the knife with Entreri’s tumble, though he’d lost his grip on the dagger.
There it stuck, protruding from the mummified zealot’s left eye.
Entreri hit the ground in a roll and drew his long sword as