and still dazed from the magical assaults, Drizzt had no intention of joining combat at that difficult moment, and so he cut to his right, back away from the magic-using orc, and ran out of the copse.
And just in time, for without regard to its orc comrades, the wizard dropped a fireball on those trees, a tremendous blast that instantly consumed the copse and everyone within.
Drizzt continued his run farther to the side before turning back at the orc. He dropped Taulmaril and drew forth his blades, and he thought of Guenhwyvar, and called out plaintively for his lost cat.
In sight of the wizard again, Drizzt dived behind a tree.
A lightning bolt split it down the middle before him, opening the ground to the orc wizard again, stealing Drizzt's protective wall, and so he ran on, to the side again.
"I won't run out of magic, foolish drow!" the orc called - and in High Drow, with perfect inflection!
That unnerved Drizzt almost as much as the magical barrage, but Drizzt accepted his role, and suspected that Bruenor was no less hard-pressed.
He swung out away from the orc wizard then veered around, finding a direct path to his enemy that would take him under a widespread maple and right beside another cluster of evergreens.
He roared and charged. He saw a tell-tale movement beside him, and grinned as he recognized it.
Drizzt reached inside himself as the wizard began casting, and summoned a globe of absolute darkness before him, between him and the mage.
Into the darkness went Drizzt. To his right, the evergreens rustled, as if he had cut fast and leaped out that way.
Dull pain and cold darkness filled Regis's head. He was far from consciousness, and sliding farther with every passing heartbeat. He knew not where he was, or what had put him there, in a deep and dark hole.
Somewhere, distantly, he felt a heavy thud against his back, and the jolt sent lines of searing pain into the halfling.
He groaned then simply let it all go.
The sensation of flying filled him, as if he had broken free of his mortal coil and was floating...floating.
"Not so clever, drow," Jack said through Hakuun's mouth as they both noted the movement in the limbs of the evergreens. A slight turn had the fiery pea released from Jack's spell lofting out that way, and an instant later, those evergreens exploded into flames, with, Jack and Hakuun both presumed, the troublesome drow inside.
But Drizzt had not gone out to his right. That had been Guenhwyvar, re-summoned from the Astral Plane by his call, heeding his quiet commands to serve her role as diversion. Guenhwyvar had gone across right behind Drizzt to leap into the evergreens, while Drizzt had tumbled headlong, gaining momentum, into the darkness.
In there, he had leaped straight up, finding the maple's lowest branch.
"Be gone, Guen," he whispered as he ran along that branch, feeling the heat of the flames to his side. "Please be gone," he begged as he came out of the blackness, bearing down on the wizard, who was still looking at the evergreens, still apparently oblivious to Drizzt.
The drow came off the branch in a leaping somersault, landing lightly in a roll before the orc, who nearly jumped out of his boots and threw his hands up defensively. As Drizzt came out of that roll, he sprang and rolled again, going right past the orc, right over the orc's shoulder as he turned back upright.
Anger drove him, memories of Innovindil. He told himself that he had solved the riddle, that that creature had been the cause.
Fury driving his arms, he slashed back behind him and down with Icingdeath as he landed, and felt the blade slash hard through the orc's leather tunic and bite deeply into flesh. Drizzt skidded to an abrupt stop and pirouetted, slashing hard with Twinkle, gashing the back-bending orc across the shoulder blades. Drizzt stepped back toward him, moving around him on the other side, and cut Twinkle down hard across the creature's exposed throat, driving it to the ground on its back.
He moved for the kill, but stopped short, realizing that he needn't bother. A growl from over by the burning pines showed him that Guenhwyvar hadn't heeded his call to be gone, but neither had the panther, so swift and clever, been caught in the blast.
Relief flooded through Drizzt, but with the diversion, he didn't take notice of a small winged snake slithering out of the dead orc's ear.