“Come along!” he ordered Dahlia, and he rushed right past the still-spinning zealot and into the cave, not even pausing to retrieve his dagger.
Dahlia followed, slowing only long enough to glance back at Drizzt and to smack the zealot one last time across the side of his head. Convulsing weirdly now in his death throes, he fell to the ground as she passed him by.
“Valindra first!” Dahlia cried when she saw Entreri cut to the left, to the base of the tower.
But when she entered the cave, she blinked. It was a shallow cave with no apparent exits or hiding spots, but the lich was nowhere to be found.
Drizzt cheered and almost laughed when Entreri came down upon Dahlia’s foe, and the precision of the assassin’s strike reminded Drizzt all too keenly of how deadly a foe Artemis Entreri could be. The killing blow had to be perfect, and so Entreri had been perfect.
The drow took immense satisfaction in his decision to be merciful, to allow Entreri to travel beside him and Dahlia.
Still, his own situation remained precarious. He was fully thirty paces out from the treelike tower, nearer to the wall than he was to Sylora or his companions, who had disappeared into the cave.
Ashmadai enemies lined the wall, and the continual volley of stones and arrows had Drizzt paying them more heed than Sylora—something he knew would certainly spell his doom.
He had to leave, to move to the side enough, at least, to get out of Sylora’s line of sight. But then what good would he be to his companions?
A familiar roar sent shivers through his spine, and sent the Ashmadai opposing him into a desperate frenzy.
Guenhwyvar—always and ever Guenhwyvar—arrived on the field just opposite the wall from Drizzt, charging at the Ashmadai line with abandon, ignoring the slings and arrows and chasing the zealots from their perches.
With full confidence in his panther companion, confidence built on a century or more of experience, Drizzt turned back to the distant sorceress with full force. As he dismissed those enemies behind him, he navigated the ground to move nearer to the tree. Sylora could fill in the few safe spots, he understood, but he saw, too, that the initial rings of woe were dissipating, leaving behind blackened areas of absolute death, but areas, perhaps, that he might cross.
If he could pick his way carefully and prevent the sorceress from filling in the gaps in the outer areas of agony, he might indeed get to the cave.
His hands worked in a blur then, a solid line of missiles flying forth, nearly every shot true. He could no longer see Sylora, so great was the spark shower. When no further black missiles reached out in response, it occurred to him that she might even have retreated into the tower.
Or dare he hope that one of his arrows had penetrated the strange bubble and struck her?
Drizzt nodded, but didn’t slow the barrage for another few heartbeats.
He started forward tentatively, picking his way across the field.
Even as he entered the short stairwell leading up to the base floor of the tower, Entreri was met by a howling Ashmadai guard, stabbing at him furiously with the sharp end of his scepter.
Such straightforward ferocity was no way to battle Artemis Entreri. He easily deflected the thrust aside with his sword then expertly snapped that sword back out straight, taking the man in the shoulder. And when the Ashmadai overreacted, spinning aside and throwing his weapon up and over—and missing badly as Entreri swiftly retracted the sword ahead of the parry—the assassin calmly stepped forward and drove his dagger under the man’s ribs.
The zealot howled and lurched over, and was surely doomed, except that neither Entreri nor his companion cared at all about him. The assassin slammed him on the back of the head as he bent, then grabbed his collar and yanked him forward and down the stairs.
Dahlia added a crack with a flail as he tumbled by, but like Entreri, her focus remained in front of her, not behind.
Up they went into the first floor then rushed along the stairway to the second. From there they could see the balcony, now empty, and the spark shower from Drizzt’s continuing barrage as the missiles struck the shield Sylora had left behind.
Despite that explosive assault, Entreri moved toward the balcony, and the small stairway leading to the tower’s third floor. There he fell back, dodging a blast of black ash as