He lightly stepped across the mouth of one wide and shallow alcove, then came to the edge of a second, narrower and deeper. When he was satisfied that this one, too, was unoccupied, he turned back for a general scan of the area.
Shining green eyes, cat eyes, stared back at him from the ledge on the opposite wall.
Out came Twinkle, flaring an angry blue, bathing the area in light. Drizzt, his eyes shifting back from the infrared spectrum, saw the great, dark silhouette as the monster leaped, and he deftly dove out of harm's way. The cat touched down lightly, with all six legs!, and it pivoted about, showing white teeth and sinister eyes.
It was pantherlike, its fur so black as to shimmer a deep blue, and it was nearly as large as Guenhwyvar. Drizzt didn't know what to think. If this had been a normal panther, he would have tried to calm it, tried to show it that he was no enemy and that he would go right past its lair. But this cat, this monster, had six legs! And from its shoulders protruded long, whiplike appendages, waving menacingly and tipped with bony ridges.
Snarling, the beast padded in, ears tight against its head, formi dable fangs bared. Drizzt crouched low, scimitars straight out in front, feet perfectly balanced so that he could dodge aside.
The beast stopped its stalk. Drizzt watched carefully as its middle set of legs and its hind legs tamped down.
It came fast; Drizzt started left, but the beast skidded to a stop, and Drizzt did likewise, lurching ahead to cut with one blade in a straight thrust. Right between the panther's eyes went the scimitar, perfectly aligned.
It hit nothing but air, and Drizzt stumbled forward. He instinc tively dove to the stone and rolled right as one tentacle whipped just above his head and the other scored a slight hit on his hip. Huge paws raked and swatted all about him, but he worked his scimitars wildly, somehow keeping them at bay. He came up running, quickly putting a few feet between himself and the dangerous cat.
The drow settled back into his defensive crouch, less confident now. The beast was smart, Drizzt would never have expected such a feint from an animal. Worse, the drow could not understand how he had missed. His blade's thrust had been true. Even the incredible agility of a cat could not have gotten the beast out of the way so quickly.
A tentacle came at him from the right, and he threw a scimitar out that way not just to parry, but hoping to sever the thing.
He missed, then barely managed, past his surprise, to twirl to the left, taking another hit on the hip, this one painful.
The beast rushed forward, one paw flying out in front to hook the spinning drow. Drizzt braced, Twinkle ready to block, but the paw caught him fully a foot below the scimitar's blocking angle.
Again Drizzt's ability to react saved him, for instead of fighting the angle of the in turned paw (which would have ripped large lines in his body), he dove with it, down to the stone, scrambling and kicking his way past the panther's snapping maw. He felt like a mouse run~ring back under a house cat, and, worse, this cat had two sets of legs left to cross!
Drizzt elbowed and batted, jabbed up, and scored a solid hit. He couldn't see in the sudden, wild flurry, and only when he came out the panther's back side did he realize that his blindness was his sav ing grace. He came up into a running step, then leaped into a head long roll just ahead of twin snapping tentacles.
He hadn't been able to see, and he had scored his only hit.
The panther came around again, snarling in rage, its green eyes boring like lamplights into the drow.
Drizzt spat at those eyes, a calculated move, for though his aim seemed true and the beast made no move to dodge, the spittle hit only the stone floor. The cat was not where it appeared to be.
Drizzt tried to remember his training in Menzoberranzan's Academy He had heard of such beasts once, but they were very rare and hadn't been a source of any major lessons.
In came the cat. Drizzt leaped forward, inside the snapping reach of those painful tentacles. He guessed, aiming his attack a couple of feet to the right of