Night of the Hunter

CHAPTER 26

Drizzt and Entreri moved swiftly along the tunnel in short bursts, one darting to the next position at a bend or corner, then motioning the other to run past, to the next. They passed the back side of the lava-made tunnel to the primordial chamber, to find that it had been sealed by the drow, by a wall of iron with some new masonry work securing it. Drizzt paused there, staring at the new wall, thinking of this and the mithral door with its new adamantine jamb. The dark elves were protecting the primordial pit. They had taken this place as their home.

Drizzt knew this area of the complex fairly well, and he turned around to peer into the continuing tunnel on the other side of the corridor he and Entreri now traversed. He had battled a drow mage down there, along with the wizard’s pet magma beast, which had carved these tunnels. From that mage, Drizzt had looted the ruby ring he had recently given to Catti-brie.

He waved Entreri past the opening of the lava tunnel, knowing it to be a dead end.

On they ran, leapfrogging past each other with practiced skill, and soon came to the entrance to a downward sloping tunnel, wide and smooth and recently worked, including grooves from, and for, the metal wheels of laden ore carts.

Down they ran for many strides, now side-by-side, for the tunnel was wide and straight with nowhere to hide. They came to a wide intersection, one passage forking left and down, the corridor continuing straight ahead, and a third passage breaking perpendicularly to the right. Unlike the other two, this third corridor was not descending.

Drizzt motioned for Entreri to hold this position, then started away to the right. The tunnel opened left and right into alcoves-mining stations, Drizzt realized, seeing the picks and shovels, and empty shackles staked to the stone.

“They’ve taken their prisoners with them,” Entreri remarked, catching up to Drizzt in the culminating chamber of the wing, where three separate sets of shackles sat on the stone, mining tools beside them.

Drizzt led the way back, in full run, and turned down the main, central corridor and ran on for a long way. They found more side tunnels, more empty mining stations, and then a gruesome discovery: a pair of slain humans, very recently cut down where they worked.

“The drow have gone deeper,” Entreri reasoned. “We’ll find no living slaves.”

Drizzt wanted to argue, but the reasoning was sound. They were far below the level of the Forge already, and the tunnel before them sloped more steeply and would soon open into the deeper Underdark.

“We have to return,” Entreri said, or started to, but Drizzt held up his hand for silence.

Entreri looked at him curiously.

Drizzt moved over and put his ear against the stone wall, then pointed to that side. “The other passageway,” he whispered.

As he neared the wall, Entreri, too, heard the rhythmic tapping of a pick against stone.

In their hasty retreat, the dark elves hadn’t cleared all of their slaves, apparently.

The pair ran back up to the four-way intersection and broke to their right to the far fork. This one went on for some ways before they encountered any mining stations, but as they neared the initial one, they clearly heard the slave at work.

It was a woman, a human. She shrank back as they neared, covering defensively.

“From Port Llast,” Entreri said, moving for the shackle and working fast to open the rudimentary lock. He looked at the woman. “We’re here to free you,” he said, and even as he finished, he pulled the shackle from her ankle. “Where is Dahlia?”

The woman wore a confused expression.

“The elf woman,” Entreri explained, his voice growing more insistent, more frantic. “She carried a metal staff. She was with me in Port Llast. Where is Dahlia?”

“There are others,” the woman answered and swallowed hard, clearly intimidated. She motioned down the tunnel.

“Wait here,” Drizzt bade her, and he and Entreri rushed off. Within a few moments, a bedraggled man limped up to join the woman, then a third miner limped into the room.

Drizzt and Entreri found just a few alcoves in this area, and soon broke out into another wide, descending tunnel, and it seemed as if there were no more work stations to be found, for this place, much like the center tunnel, dived more steeply now.

Drizzt motioned for Entreri to turn back, but the assassin sprinted out ahead anyway, his eyes peering through the gloom. “Dahlia?” he called softly.

Drizzt moved up beside him and put a hand on his shoulder to steady him. “We have to go,” he said. “We cannot pursue a drow army into the deeper Underdark.”

Entreri looked at him, and for a moment Drizzt thought the man might simply lash out.

“We have wounded,” Drizzt reminded.

Entreri’s shoulders slumped and he gave a long and profound sigh, then turned back, but as he did, he caught some movement out of the corner of his eye.

There was, after all, one more slave down here. She wasn’t working, though, when the pair came upon her, but sitting sullenly on a stone, facing the wall, head in her hands.

Entreri went for her shackle and just as she turned, Drizzt put a hand on her shoulder.

How the dwarf’s eyes widened with surprise and joy! She grabbed at Drizzt as if to hug him, and blurted his name-or tried to, but found her mouth filled with that sickly green spew and wound up coughing and spitting the cursed mucus all over the floor.

“Are there any more slaves?” Drizzt asked, pointing farther along the descending corridor.

“Dahlia?” Entreri asked, an edge of desperation growing in his tone.

Amber gave an emphatic shake of her head and pointed to her work area, then down the hallway, and shook her head again.

So they rushed back, gathered up the three humans they had rescued, and headed back to rejoin their friends.

Artemis Entreri glanced back over his shoulder with almost every step.

Dahlia hesitated. Her twitch showed discomfort. Something was wrong, something out of proportion and beyond reality.

Catti-brie.

The name screamed in her thoughts repeatedly. This was the ghost who had haunted Drizzt’s dreams. This was the woman who had ruined Dahlia’s life with Drizzt, who had tainted Dahlia’s love with Drizzt before it could even truly bloom. Were it not for her …

Dahlia found herself very near the altar stone then, facing the pit and Catti-brie, who stood across the block from her.

Dahlia moved to the right, Catti-brie similarly shifted sidelong to keep the stone between them.

“Dahlia?” the woman asked, and to hear this woman, Catti-brie, speaking her name stunned Dahlia as surely as a slap across the face.

“You are Dahlia, yes?” Catti-brie asked. “I have heard of you, from Drizzt.”

The words hardly registered to the elf woman. All she heard was a grating sound, a screeching sound, an annoying cackle at the back of her mind.

The only word that came clear to her was, again, “Catti-brie.”

Only when the woman reacted did Dahlia even realize that she had spoken the name aloud.

Dahlia’s thoughts swirled back to the side of Kelvin’s Cairn in faraway Icewind Dale, where Drizzt had spurned her, had betrayed her, had chosen this … this ghost above her. No strike had ever wounded Dahlia as profoundly as the one she had delivered upon Drizzt, and with the hope of killing him.

She had to kill him.

He was the source of all of her pain, of all of her misery. It was because of him that Dahlia had gone to Port Llast, had been captured by the drow, had been tortured …

She felt the tentacles of the awful illithid wriggling inside of her.

But wait, she thought, and she shook her head, for that mind flayer had told her the truth, at least. Where no one else ever had, the mind flayer had made so much clear to Dahlia.

“No, not Drizzt,” she whispered, and Catti-brie wore a puzzled expression.

“From Drizzt,” the woman reiterated, but Dahlia didn’t hear.

“Because of you,” Dahlia said pointedly. “Because of you, ghost!” She watched Catti-brie shaking her head, then bending low to retrieve her dropped bow.

The bow!

Oh, but Dahlia knew that bow! She thought of fighting beside Drizzt, of their brilliant teamwork when she intercepted his lightning arrows and re-directed the magical energy to more pointed ends.

She knew that bow, Drizzt’s bow, and now this woman-this ghost held it, as if mocking her, as if mocking the love Dahlia had known with Drizzt.

A low and feral growl escaped her lips.

“Dahlia?” Catti-brie said, her voice calm and intentionally disarming. “Be at ease, Dahlia, I am not your enemy.”

The altar thrummed to life before her, calling Dahlia to action, telling her to rise and vanquish this ghost, this woman who had caused her so much pain, this disciple of evil Mielikki.

Dahlia barely registered the stream of thoughts, but she surely understood the call and promise of the altar stone before her. She sent her flail into a spin, banging them together, building a charge, then pounded them repeatedly on the altar, and the throbbing black energy pulsed within and lent her weapon more magical power.

“Dahlia!” Catti-brie called to her, and Dahlia noted that the woman had backed from the altar, then had moved toward the tunnel to the Forge.

But she would not escape, Dahlia knew. Not from here.

“Destroy her!” Dahlia heard herself shout to the jade spider beside that tunnel, and surely the elf warrior would have been surprised had she stepped back from her rising emotions enough to decipher her own words, for how could she know the spider as an ally?

Wulfgar brought Aegis-fang up over his shoulder and swung it across with all his strength. With a resounding thud and a reverberation that ran back up the barbarian’s arms, rippling his muscles under the tremendous vibrations, it struck the door dead center, right in the heart of the drider-like image of Lolth the drow craftsmen had constructed of black adamantine.

And bounced off, and neither the door nor the bas relief of Lolth showed as much as a scratch.

“Oh, me girl!” Bruenor yelled, pushing in past Wulfgar, who staggered aside under the weight of his own blow.

Regis, too, rushed for the door.

“Pick it, Rumblebelly!” Bruenor implored him.

Regis glanced all around the portal and the new archway, and ran his fingers over the smooth, cool metal. “Pick what?” he asked, completely at a loss and holding his hands out helplessly, for there was no sign of a lock or even a handle to be found.

“Bah!” Bruenor snorted and he hopped to the side and pulled Aegis-fang from Wulfgar, then leaped back for the door, Regis tumbling aside.

Bruenor noted the inscription on the warhammer’s head, the symbols of his three gods overlaid, and from that reminder, he drew strength.

Great strength, the might of Clangeddin, and he slammed the warhammer into the door with tremendous power, rattling the stones of the Forge.

“Me girl!” he cried, and he hit the door again, as mighty a stroke as Wulfgar had delivered, at least.

“Me girl!”

He felt the power of Clangeddin coursing his veins, growing within him.

Tirelessly he pounded the portal.

But it showed not a scratch.

Catti-brie watched the woman slack-jawed, hardly believing the sudden rage that had come over Dahlia, who stood opposite the altar block, wildly banging her flail against the hard stone, her face a twisted mask of anger.

And Dahlia screamed to the spider, a pony-sized beast behind Catti-brie, and with another across the way, and, she then noticed, with thousands of fist-sized arachnids gathering on the wall of webbing.

Catti-brie turned fast, setting an arrow as she went. She called to the primordial, demanding help, as she drew back and let fly.

The lever! the ancient beast replied in her mind.

The spider shrieked horribly as the arrow blasted into it, throwing it back a skittering step.

“I cannot get to it! My way is blocked by enemies!” Catti-brie yelled in her thoughts and aloud, but in a language she could not consciously understand, a crackling, popping, sizzling series of sounds that made little sense to her human sensibilities-or to Dahlia’s elven sensibilities as well, Catti-brie could see from looking at the woman, who paused in her drumming to stare incredulously.

A second arrow followed the first at the nearby jade spider, and a third and fourth went quickly after, and the spider shrieked and ran off down the tunnel.

Catti-brie pivoted, turning the bow upon Dahlia, who now stood on the altar, flail swinging easily.

“I don’t want to kill you,” she started to say, but the floor rumbled and rolled, a great roar from the primordial below, and Catti-brie was knocked to one knee as Dahlia leaped off the side of the altar, away from the pit.

Hissing and steam came from the pit and a burst of fiery magma leaped up over the ledge to crash down in a pile behind Dahlia and the altar, between the elf woman and the second of her spiders.

And not just normal, insentient lava rock-she heard its throaty grumble. She reached out to it through her ring, and it heard her call and rose up on two rocky legs. The jade spider nearby reared on its back legs and shrieked in angry protest and the magma elemental came on, unafraid.

“Brilliant,” Dahlia congratulated, but seemed hardly concerned. Again she put her flail into a spin and now began advancing slowly on the woman with the bow.

“Drizzt is with me,” Catti-brie said. “He is here, in Gauntlgrym-”

“Q’Xorlarrin,” Dahlia corrected, and kept coming.

“You don’t have to do this,” Catti-brie pleaded with her. Looking past her, Catti-brie saw the jade spider go up into the air, its eight legs slapping and kicking at the elemental, mandibles biting in and breaking stone.

“Dahlia, I am not your enemy.”

The elf woman laughed at her and continued her advance, now only a few short steps away. And from behind, Catti-brie heard the first spider’s return along the small tunnel behind her to the right.

Dahlia charged and Catti-brie let fly, the arrow aimed for the woman’s belly, center mass. Catti-brie winced, thinking she had surely slain this poor elf, yet the arrow did not strike home but simply disappeared.

And Dahlia’s flail sparked with crawling, arcing sparks of energy all the more.

Catti-brie turned Taulmaril out defensively, like a staff, parrying the first strike. But Dahlia came in at her in a blur, spinning left and right, one flying weapon going out left, the other right. Desperately, Catti-brie worked her bow in a circle, creating a spinning wall to block, but it could not hold, and she was not surprised when a flail slipped through her defenses and smacked her painfully across the thigh, nearly laying her low.

And then she was surprised when Dahlia released the lightning energy collected by her weapon, the jarring bolt throwing Catti-brie back through the air, to crash in hard against the wall-and only the wall was holding her up.

Her mind spun as the elf stalked in for the kill. She tried to sort out her remaining spells, but they were few indeed, and none to lash out quickly or to properly defend.

“A ghost once more!” Dahlia cried triumphantly and rushed in, and Catti-brie dropped her bow and brought her hands up, at first defensively, but hardly thinking, she touched her thumbs together in a familiar pose and met the elf woman’s charge with another fan of flame from burning hands.

Dahlia screamed and fell back, batting her arms at the biting fires, and Catti-brie looked at her hands, confused. She had no such spells remaining in her repertoire that day.

“The ring,” she breathed, but before she could consider it, she saw movement from the side, from a charging, rearing spider, its mandibles dripping with deadly poison, and she fell to the floor desperately.

The rumbling belch of the primordial reverberated in the stone foundations of Gauntlgrym and into the Underdark tunnels below.

Drizzt, Entreri, Ambergris, and the three rescued humans felt it keenly, the tunnel around them growling with vibrations.

Drizzt and Entreri exchanged concerned looks, understanding the implications both for their companions back in the Forge and, for Entreri, the possibility that he would never get out of this dark place alive. They started ahead more swiftly, but Drizzt paused and turned to Ambergris.

“Turn left at the end of this passage and follow the right-hand wall of the next into the Forge,” he instructed and the dwarf nodded.

And Drizzt and Entreri sprinted ahead, the assassin still laboring a bit on his wounded knee.

The companions in the Forge felt the growling, too, and knowing that Catti-brie had gone into that primordial chamber-and with Bruenor knowing exactly what was in that place-they pressed on furiously with their work on the door. Bruenor in particular threw himself against it, trying to wedge his fingers in between the door and the jamb that he might tug it open.

“Girl!” he cried. “Oh, me girl!” and he fought furiously with the metal portal. And he yelled for Clangeddin to give him strength, and sought the god in his thoughts and memories of the throne above.

“No, dwarf,” came a call from the side, the weak voice of Afafrenfere. All the others turned to regard the monk, who was sitting up now, and even that with great effort, obviously.

“Not that god,” Afafrenfere advised. “You’ll not muscle the door.”

“Eh?” a confused Bruenor asked.

“Three gods for the dwarves, yes?” the monk asked.

Bruenor started to argue, but stopped short and looked at Afafrenfere curiously, hands on his hips.

“Eh?” he asked again, but this time he was speaking more to himself than to the monk.

The snapping mandibles were barely a hand’s breadth from her face when Catti-brie leveled Taulmaril and fired an arrow into the face of the jade monstrosity. The spider’s shrill screech echoed off the walls of the chamber and it staggered back a shuffle of steps.

Catti-brie shot it again.

She turned to Dahlia and let fly another arrow, but low, to slam into the ground before the elf woman, the force and jolt sending Dahlia scrambling backward.

Catti-brie spun back on the spider and charged, drawing closer, and shot it again, and again. It tried to run away, but the woman pursued, pouring a line of lightning arrows into it, breaking it apart. One leg fell free, then a second and finally, with a great shriek, the spider rolled over and shuddered in its death throes.

And Catti-brie whirled back and shot the ground at Dahlia’s feet as the stubborn woman came on. The elf warrior was holding a staff now, though, and not her flail, and she drove it down to the stone, and though she shuddered, it seemed to Catti-brie that her magical weapon had eaten the brunt of the blow. Indeed, it crackled once more with lightning energy, and Dahlia strained, it seemed, to hold on.

Catti-brie had no choice, and so she let fly another stream of lightning missiles, at the ground before the woman and at the woman, an explosive barrage that sent sparks flying wildly all around the center of the chamber. Catti-brie advanced, arrows flying, and Dahlia staggered under every blow, grunting and growling.

Sparks flew off and dived into the primordial pit. Sparks showered the webbing, burning into the flammable material and sending spiders scurrying all around.

Beyond Dahlia, through the crackling volley, Catti-brie noted the magma elemental standing tall, holding the thrashing jade spider up over its head as it stomped for the pit. She entertained the notion of bringing the elemental in against Dahlia, to catch her, perhaps, and hold her, for she did not want to kill this elf woman.

The elemental threw the spider into the pit and swung around to Catti-brie’s call. It took a long stride at Dahlia, heading to Catti-brie’s defense, but before it put its foot down to the stone, it hesitated weirdly, and seemed as if stuck in place, struggling mightily.

And Catti-brie understood and winced.

For in its dying fall, the jade spider had spat its webbing back at the elemental, the filaments grabbing hold well enough to tug it suddenly and violently.

The elemental pitched backward over the ledge, tumbling from sight and from the battle.

And Catti-brie shot Dahlia again, and the elf trembled violently as the energy of the staff crackled and jerked her around.

But Dahlia settled and screamed and charged, planting the pole and vaulting high just as Catti-brie shot the stone beneath her.

And Catti-brie also charged, fortunately so, for she slid down and crossed under the leaping Dahlia, and skidded up to her feet and ran off the other way, calling to the primordial, calling to her ring.

She leaped atop the altar and sprang away.

And felt very sickly immediately from simply contacting the foul stone.

She landed and she staggered, and she cried out against a demonic voice laughing in her mind.

She feared that Dahlia was coming in fast behind her, and with a staff bristling with mighty energy.

She knew she had to turn around and drive the woman back with more arrows, to overload the staff if that was possible, or at least to force it from Dahlia’s grasp with the sheer strength of the teeming magical energy.

But she couldn’t turn and she couldn’t shoot, and it was all she could do to hold onto Taulmaril. Then she stumbled down to the floor.

And the demon in her thoughts, the Demon Queen of Spiders, laughed.

It was too much power-she should not have been able to hold it.

But she was, her hands tightly clenched on the staff, crackling lightning rolling up and down it, rolling up and down her, as well. The braid atop her head danced weirdly.

She watched Catti-brie’s flight across the chamber, watched her stagger down to the floor, and Dahlia heard cheering in her thoughts even as her adversary heard the laughter of the Spider Queen.

Dahlia slowed, and winced. She thought of Drizzt, and not just that last encounter on the mountainside, but of their lovemaking, of their adventuring together, of their friendship.

She thought of Effron, and of how her companions-how her friends-had rescued her from him in the docked boat, and had then given her the time with him to heal their wounds.

And now he was dead, her boy, killed by drow …

But the memory shifted before she could complete the thought, before she could realize that the drow had done this terrible thing to her and to her son.

And instead, that line of thought swerved, leaping through connections that suddenly made perfect sense to the elf warrior.

Effron was dead because of Drizzt, because Drizzt had spurned her, and he had done so because of a ghost, because of this ghost, Catti-brie.

This disciple of foul Mielikki.

That last notion made little sense to Dahlia, who knew little of Mielikki and cared even less, but it didn’t matter. For now it all made perfect sense. Effron was dead because of Catti-brie; everything bad in Dahlia’s life was because of Catti-brie.

And now she could find revenge. She charged. She planted her staff at the base of the altar stone and vaulted high into the air, screaming with unbridled glee and unbridled hatred.

Catti-brie came up to her feet and spun around to meet that flying charge, and Dahlia, landing right in front of her, could have ended the fight immediately, could have released all the power stored in Kozah’s Needle in one mighty blast that would have melted the woman where she stood.

But no, that would be too easy, too mercifully quick.

Catti-brie deflected Dahlia’s stabbing staff aside, then came up and across horizontally, bow held wide in both hands, to block a powerful downward chop.

The woman proved a decent fighter, parrying and angling her weapon appropriately to slide strikes harmlessly wide, but she was no match for Dahlia.

And Catti-brie knew it. Dahlia could see it on her face. She knew she was overmatched.

But she was not afraid.

For a moment, that puzzled Dahlia, but only for a moment. She understood that Catti-brie was buying time, and was she calling again to the primordial for help?

Dahlia drove on more ferociously, pounding her weapon heavily, driving Catti-brie back with each strike. And the woman was running out of room, closing in on the wall.

Dahlia increased her tempo, swatting and stabbing, rushing ahead and forcing her enemy ever backward, and when Catti-brie’s back went against the wall, Dahlia swung mightily. Taulmaril came across to block, but as the weapons connected, Dahlia broke her staff in half, two equal lengths joined with a strong cord. The strike had been blocked above the halfway mark of the weapon, so that top half flew back over toward Dahlia as she drove the weapon down.

She was ready for that, however, and she caught it, and now stabbed freely beneath the blocking blow.

Catti-brie did well to drive her bow down to mitigate the attack, but as soon as Kozah’s Needle touched her chest, Dahlia released a bit of its energy, enough to jolt the woman against the wall, her head cracking hard into the stone.

Dahlia retracted and dropped one of the two poles, then, confident that Catti-brie was too dazed to respond. She swung around in a full circuit, letting her weapon fly out to its full length and rejoining it into a single staff as she went. She came around with great speed and power and batted Taulmaril from Catti-brie’s hands, launching it into the remaining webbing at the corner of the chamber, just to the side of the sealed tunnel meant for Matron Zeerith.

Hardly slowing, Dahlia slid one hand out wide and drove the staff sidelong before her, under the chin of slumping Catti-brie, lifting her up against the wall with Kozah’s Needle tight against her throat.

Now it was personal, Dahlia thought, and she was pleased, and so was the voice in her head.

Now she could feel the woman’s fear.

Now she could feel the woman’s pain.

Now she could watch the light go out in Catti-brie’s blue eyes. “Now,” Dahlia said, hardly aware of the words, “Mielikki will lose.” And Dahlia was happy.

Wulfgar pounded at the door while Regis crawled around the adamantine arch above it, looking for a lock or clasp or something that might spring whatever was holding it closed.

Bruenor, however, looked inside himself. He noted Afafrenfere, nodding his way in encouragement, then closed his eyes and sent his thoughts back to the Throne of the Dwarven Gods.

He heard the song of Moradin, the roar of Clangeddin, the whispers of Dumathoin.

He opened his eyes and moved for the door, nudging Wulfgar out of the way. He begged silence from Clangeddin, and begged for wisdom from Moradin.

Then he focused on the whispers, the secrets.

This was still Gauntlgrym, he was told, whatever the dark elves might be doing to deface the complex. This was still the realm of the dwarves, ever on and always before. The dressings on the door mattered not.

Not the black bas relief of foul Lolth nor the adamantine arch.

No, this was the same door, crafted of dwarf hands, set in stone by dwarf smiths, by Bruenor’s ancestors.

He put his hand against the mithral.

He was friend here, royal of blood, noble of deed, he told the door, told the spiritual remnants the ancient dwarf craftsmen had imbued here with their love of their craft.

He was friend to Gauntlgrym, and this place remained Gauntlgrym.

The door itself seemed to breathe with life, the seal breaking as the portal swung outward.

And Bruenor charged in, Wulfgar and Regis close behind.

Catti-brie couldn’t respond. She couldn’t draw breath. The staff, crackling with power, crushed in against her windpipe. Her eyes bulged and she grabbed the staff in both hands, inside Dahlia’s grasp, and tried to push back.

But Catti-brie was in an awkward position, her head bent slightly by a jag in the wall, and she hadn’t the strength to push Dahlia away, nor the mobility to even twist her neck enough to get the press off of her windpipe.

And there was another power in the staff: a dark energy that she could feel as tangibly as the metal of Kozah’s Needle. She thought of the altar, pulsing as if alive, and the feeling of weakness and sickness as she had stepped upon it flashed in her now-fleeting thoughts.

Now fleeting because she was falling away. The edges of her vision darkened.

She thought of Drizzt and wished she had said goodbye, but she was at peace because she knew that she had done Mielikki’s bidding, that she and the Companions of the Hall had saved him.

In that notion, Lolth might win now, but Catti-brie had done as the goddess had bade …

A sharp recoil sounded in Catti-brie’s mind, a shout of “No!” as profound as if she had screamed the word aloud.

This was not about Drizzt. Not now.

This was about Mielikki and Lolth.

This was about Catti-brie and Dahlia, proxies for the titanic struggle. Catti-brie could not be content with her efforts atop Kelvin’s Cairn. Who would Drizzt be without her? How could he withstand a broken heart yet again?

Or Bruenor, her Da? Or Wulfgar or Regis?

She could not, must not, surrender until the end. She could not be satisfied with past victories when present battles raged.

She had but a fleeting moment of consciousness left, and in that instant, she recalled Dahlia’s drop from the webbing, when the elf warrior had broken this strange staff in half across her shoulders.

Catti-brie’s fingers played along the length of the metal pole; she sent the last vestiges of her conscious thoughts into that weapon to find its secrets.

Then she pushed out with every bit of strength she had left, a last, desperate gasp and grasp for life, and as she did, she tried to drive her head forward, meeting the press, and as she did, her fingers found the secret of Kozah’s Needle and she released the staff into two parts.

The break of the weapon released her, so suddenly, and her head snapped forward, her forehead crashing against startled Dahlia’s nose, slamming the woman backward in a stagger, and in that awkward shuffle, her staff, the focus of her balance, suddenly broken in two, Dahlia couldn’t hold on.

Catti-brie, her teeth chattering from the sheer power contained within the weapon, yanked Kozah’s Needle from Dahlia’s grasp and drove the ends back together, trying to hold on to it.

She looked at Dahlia then, blood running down the elf’s face from her shattered nose, and an expression on her face that Catti-brie couldn’t begin to comprehend.

As soon as she had inadvertently let go of the weapon, a staff teeming with the imbued dark energies of the altar, Dahlia’s connection to the darkness had diminished, just a bit, and beside those feelings of hatred for Catti-brie, of blame for the death of Effron, came the gentle images of Drizzt once more and the companions she had known, and the sea journey where Effron and she had found peace.

She thought of Drizzt and tried to reach for him more fully, but could not hold, his image fading from her to be replaced, to her surprise, by one she suddenly realized as more dear.

By the image of Artemis Entreri. She heard his words to her, of comfort in his own way, but of understanding.

And in them, the whisper of a better way and a better life, the distant whisper of hope itself.

And the turmoil of Dahlia, the great paradox of love and hate that had twined together throughout her life, that had carried her through murderous battles with her every lover, shocked her and infused doubt against the red wall of outrage.

She felt Alegni’s violation once more, saw the murder of her mother, threw her infant baby from the cliff. Szass Tam leered at her, her dying lovers cried out for mercy she would not afford them.

The cackles of Lolth met the sobs of broken Dahlia.

She didn’t know what to do, a voice screaming in her head to launch herself back at Catti-brie, a wound in her heart telling her to fall down and cry. She stumbled back from the wall and turned and had to get out of there, had to get away from this woman she faced, from the awful truth of herself and her miserable life.

She started to run for the far exit, the tunnel to the Forge, but in rushed the red-bearded dwarf, the huge barbarian, and the clever halfling-the other ghosts that haunted Drizzt Do’Urden, the other companions returned to life to stand with Drizzt against the dark lady.

Against Lolth.

Against wretched Dahlia.

Yes, wretched Dahlia, she knew, and she let out a cry, part anger, part remorse, part profound sadness, and she turned to her right, to the pit and thought to leap in and be done with the pain.

She took a running stride, but a sharp voice in her head denied her.

No! came the order she could not resist, the order from Lolth, the order relayed through Methil, hidden invisibly across the way, who spoke for Lolth.

Dahlia skidded to a stop and whirled around, then sprinted for the one remaining opening, the entrance to the sealed tunnel meant to serve as Matron Zeerith’s chamber.

The remaining webs parted for her, and in her mind, she knew that the magical wall of iron would be dispelled, freeing her to the lower tunnels, saving her to fight and win another day.

Catti-brie watched the woman’s run, and saw her companions entering the chamber, but only distantly did those images register. Her focus had to be the staff, Kozah’s Needle, and the tremendous power contained within, curling tendrils of energy that battled her as surely as Dahlia had battled her. Her own lightning from Taulmaril arced and ran around the weapon, combining with the dark powers from the altar, and within those black energies lived a flicker of the Spider Queen, a conduit to the mind of the dark Demon Queen of Spiders.

In that staff, Catti-brie heard the thoughts of Dahlia, the telepathic exchange between the elf and the goddess. She felt the turmoil, the battle, light and dark, and she knew that Dahlia meant to end her struggle by leaping into the pit even before she saw Dahlia turn that way.

And Catti-brie, too, heard the denial, the darkness refuting Dahlia, the darkness dominating Dahlia, and as Dahlia spun around and rushed into the second tunnel, Catti-brie felt her hope for freedom that she could turn again upon Drizzt and his friends as an agent of Lolth.

Catti-brie could hardly hold the staff, and she, too, turned for the primordial pit, thinking to feed the god-like primordial beast this tainted weapon.

But mercy stopped her, mercy for Dahlia and her dismayed realization that Dahlia had lost and Dahlia was lost, and this realization turned her back fast the other way.

Kozah’s Needle, teeming with power, flew spear-like into the tunnel behind the retreating Dahlia. It hit the wall just inside, and the resulting explosion shook the ground with the power of an earthquake, and as she tumbled down, Catti-brie feared that she had just broken the whole of the place, and perhaps had freed the primordial.