back to the elf and he understood. The magical powder Dahlia had applied was wearing off, and her woad was returning. He breathed a sigh of relief and gave a little laugh.
“It’s all right,” he explained, standing back up and moving for the door. “Beware that her hair might change as well.”
“She’s a doppelganger, then?” the woman asked with horror.
“Nay, just a bit of magical disguise.”
The woman, a simple creature, shook her head at such nonsense, and Drizzt managed a smile, then ran out of the house, leaping onto Andahar’s back and setting the unicorn off in a full gallop along the road to the north.
Images of Dahlia’s foot haunted him with Andahar’s every running stride.
They stood around her in a circle, bloody and battered. All of them, from Bengarion to Dor’crae, the nine lovers she had killed.
“You cannot escape us,” Dor’crae promised her. Half of his skin was missing, blasted free from the force of the rushing water. “We await you.”
“You think we have forgotten you?” asked another.
“You think we have forgiven you?” asked another.
They began to laugh, all nine, and to pace in unison, circling Dahlia as she spun around every which way. She had nowhere to run. Kozah’s Needle could not help her this time.
A tenth form joined the marching nine; a tiny form; a baby, half elf and half tiefling. He didn’t say anything, but stared at Dahlia hatefully then smiled a wicked smile to show a mouth full of sharpened teeth.
Dahlia cried out and fell away from him, but that only put her closer—too close!—to those on the other side. She cried out again and stumbled back to her original spot.
They taunted her and laughed at her. Desperate, she charged at the line, fists balled, determined to fight to the bitter end.
But she was grabbed by others, by Shadovar, and was thrown down and held.
Her mother cried out for her.
Herzgo Alegni fell over her.
When he finished, he walked away, laughing, along with his guards. To kill her mother, Dahlia knew, but Dahlia was not there anymore, was back in the midst of the circling ten she’d murdered.
She was naked, and she fell to the ground, crying.
They laughed at her all the more.
“We have not forgotten,” they chanted.
“We have not forgiven,” they chanted.
“We await you,” the baby taunted. “The time is near.”
Drizzt went over Luskan’s wall with no more noise or notice than a shadow in the starlight. He knew the city well, and made his way from structure to structure, alley to alley, roof to roof, to the base of the bridge to Closeguard Isle.
He could see the balcony where he and Dahlia had stood beside High Captain Kurth, as Kurth had explained to them the layout of the city. After a short while, watching the movements of the soldiers on Closeguard, Drizzt figured he could get to that balcony unnoticed.
But then what?
Was he to put a scimitar to the throat of a high captain? Would the man then surrender the antidote? Did Kurth even have any information regarding the poisoned traps in the jeweler’s shop?
Frustration almost had Drizzt stomping his boot. His thoughts wrapped in on themselves, leading nowhere. He knew that time was against him, was against Dahlia, but what was he to do?
“Go to Kurth,” he whispered and nodded, for that seemed the only option. He crouched beside the railing and took his first step on the bridge, but slipped back quickly when he saw several forms approaching from the other end.
The men and women walked right past him. He heard their general comments, talk of trouble with Ship Rethnor, and with one woman blaming Beniago for the current state of affairs.
“Beniago was so taken with that murderess,” she said.
“The trouble with Ship Rethnor will pass,” another woman insisted. “None o’ their leaders were killed by Beniago’s group—just a pair o’ hired scalawags. All the rest fell before the elf and the drow.”
“And when Ship Rethnor decides to kill a few of us?” the first woman replied angrily.
“Ye’d do well to temper yer wrath when it’s aimed at Beniago,” a man said.
“Bah, but he’s out drinking and whoring.” The first woman waved her hand.
“He has eyes,” the man said, and the woman glowered at him.
The group moved away and Drizzt let them go, reconsidering his own course. He glanced back at Closeguard Isle and the tower, but went the other way, into the city, heading for the dock section, where ruffians roamed for their “drinking and whoring.”