a feint, a right, left, right combination that Entreri easily picked off, but the attacks had not been designed to score any definitive hit anyway, just to allow Drizzt to put his feet in line.
To the side of the room cunning Jarlaxle saw it and understood that the fight was about to end.
Now Drizzt came in again with a left, but he stepped into the blow and launched his scimitar from far out to the side, from a place where Entreri's closed eye could hardly make out the movement. The assassin did instinctively parry with the sword and counter with the dagger, but Drizzt rolled his scimitar right over the intended parry, then snapped it back out, slashing Entreri's wrist and launching the sword away. At the same time, the ranger dropped his blade from his right hand and caught Entreri's stabbing dagger arm at the wrist. Stepping in and rolling his wrist and turning his weapon hand, Drizzt twisted Entreri's dagger arm back under itself, holding it out wide while before the assassin's free hand could hold Drizzt's arm back the dark elf's scimitar tip came in at Entreri's throat.
All movement stopped suddenly. The assassin, with one arm twisted out wide and the other behind Drizzt's scimitar arm, was helpless to stop the ranger's momentum if Drizzt decided to plunge the blade through Entreri's throat.
Growling and trembling, as close to the very edge of control as he had ever been, Drizzt held the blade back. "So what have we proven?" he demanded, voice full of venom, his lavender orbs locked in a wicked stare with Entreri's dark eyes. "Because my head connected in a favorable place with yours, limiting your vision, I am the better fighter?"
"Finish it!" Entreri snarled back.
Drizzt growled again and twisted Entreri's dagger arm more, bending the assassin's wrist so that the dagger fell to the floor. "For all those you have killed, and all those you surely will, I should kill you," Drizzt said, but he knew even as he said the words, and Entreri did, too, that he could not press home his blade, not now. In that awful moment Drizzt lamented not going through with the move in the first instant, before he had found the time to consider his actions.
But now he could not, so with a sudden explosion of motion he let go of Entreri's arm and drove his open palm hard into the assassin's face, disengaging them and knocking Entreri staggering backward.
"Damn you, Jarlaxle, have you had your pleasure?" Drizzt cried, turning about to see the mercenary and his companions, for Jarlaxle had opened the door.
Drizzt came forward determinedly, as if he meant to run right over Jarlaxle, but a noise behind him stopped him, for Entreri came on, yelling.
Yelling. The significance of that was lost on Drizzt in that moment as he spun about, right to left, his free right arm brushing out and across, lifting Entreri's leading arm, which held again that awful dagger. And around came Drizzt's left arm, scimitar leading, in a stab as Entreri crashed in, a stab that should have plunged the weapon into the assassin's chest to its hilt.
The two came together and Drizzt's eyes widened indeed, for somehow, somehow, Entreri's very skin had repelled the blow.
But Artemis Entreri, his body tingling with the energy of the absorbed hit, with the psionics Kimmuriel had suddenly given back to him, surely understood, and in a purely reactive move, without any conscious thought-for if the tormented man had considered it he would have loosed the energy back into himself-Entreri reached out and clasped Drizzt's chest and gave him back his blow with equal force.
His hand sank into Drizzt's chest even as Drizzt, blood bubbling from the wound, fell to the ground.
Out on the landing time seemed to freeze, stuck fast in that awful, awful moment. Guenhwyvar roared and leaped into the translucent wall, but merely bounced away. Outraged, roaring wildly, the cat went back at the wall, claws screeching against the unyielding pane.
Bruenor, too, went into a fighting frenzy, hacking futilely with his axe while Regis stood dumbfounded, saying, "No, it cannot be," over and over.
And there stood Catti-brie, wavering back and forth, her jaw drooping open, her eyes locked on that horrible sight. She suffered through every agonizing second as Entreri's empowered hand melted into Drizzt's chest, as the lifeblood of her dearest friend, of the ranger she had come to love so dearly, spurted from him. She watched the strength leave his legs,