Hero by R. A. Salvatore
The handmaiden heard her. Yiccardaria seemed confused, but she was soon on her way to Yvonnel’s side.
DRIZZT’S BLADES SWEPT in with brilliant speed, three times left and right, and three times did Entreri bat those attacks aside—as Drizzt knew he would. It was all so familiar, so in tune, so … repetitive. This fight had been waged before, the choreography similar, near exact even, the combatants the same, even two of the weapons the same.
Almost as if on cue, Entreri charged ahead, sword up high, forcing a ducking, twisting disengage from Drizzt, with Vidrinath rushing up to intercept a subtle under-stroke of the dagger.
A roll sent the scimitar for the assassin’s chest, but Entreri was too quick, leaning and shuffling back before the blade ever got close.
Across went Charon’s Claw, trailing a sheet of ash that hung in the air, and Drizzt fell out to the side as Entreri burst through, weapons flailing and hitting only empty air. But the assassin was not caught at a disadvantage. Drizzt rushed in behind, and Entreri’s Netherese blade swept across again as he turned properly to meet the drow, putting another opaque wall between them. This time, Drizzt went through as Entreri went through, crossing side-by-side—so close! And yet even in there, even with the visual barrier, these two knew each other so very well that metal hit only metal, each one thrusting and parrying and defeating the other’s advantage.
The wall of ash diminished between them from their turmoil, and as Entreri began to enact another one, Drizzt struck first, engulfing them both in a globe of absolute magical darkness.
And in there, they fought, blades hitting blades, twisting and dodging on instinct and sound and simply from knowing their opponent.
Entreri came out of the globe first, rolling to the side. Drizzt came out some distance away, and with room between them, out came Taulmaril.
“Still a coward!” Entreri said even as he dived back into the globe.
Drizzt’s leveled bow followed. He could take the man down, even in that darkness, with a barrage of arrows that could not be blocked or avoided.
But he didn’t. Something, the familiarity of it all perhaps, or perhaps his own sense of honor, stayed his hand. He flipped the bow back into his belt buckle and drew again his melee weapons.
He thought of bringing in Guenhwyvar, but on that, too, he demurred.
He would beat this man alone, without tricks.
Going back into the globe of darkness, Drizzt found himself wondering why he was so determined on that point. Entreri wasn’t Entreri, after all, but some demonic fiend sent to break him body and soul. Shouldn’t he use every advantage he could muster to kill this beast, as he had with Tiago Baenre?
The thought was fleeting, and the pair were right back into it, blades spinning and stabbing. When Drizzt missed a parry and barely escaped serious injury he heard a gasp from Entreri—and used the seeming distraction to drive Icingdeath home.
But the blade was caught and pulled out wide by that vicious dagger, Entreri apparently recognizing his own mistake in making a sound—if it was even a mistake and not a lure, Drizzt decided. And so the drow threw himself forward, going into a clinch with his foe, and drove harder.
Out the back of the globe they went in a tumble, disengaging as they rolled and coming back up several strides apart. Neither was unmarked now, with assorted nicks and cuts.
Drizzt thought of the sleeping poison of Vidrinath—perhaps his enemy would be slowed.
He also considered the reputed festering wounds of Charon’s Claw, and wondered if he was already dead.
“HE MUST BE cured to properly realize his doom,” Yvonnel explained to Yiccardaria. “And the children of Lolth will find the added benefit of understanding, at long last, how to beat the Abyssal affliction.”
“It seems a lot of trouble for a mere male,” replied the handmaiden in her beautiful, dark elf form.
“Not just any male,” Yvonnel reminded her, “but one Lolth has singled out for extreme torment.”
“So destroy his beloved and his friends before his eyes,” the handmaiden said. “Torture them. Break them and so break him. Then turn him into a drider—it is a fitting end for Drizzt Do’Urden, is it not?”
“He will not—he does not—believe it. Any of it,” Yvonnel said. “The Abyssal affliction has dulled him to such atrocities. I could murder his friends horribly in front of him, and he would doubt the reality of it too much for the pain to be absolute. So let us fix him—grant me this.”
Yiccardaria looked at her suspiciously. “Though I and you and certainly Lady Lolth have wasted far too much time and effort on this insignificant insect, I will remain by your side until you are finished and Drizzt Do’Urden is properly and finally destroyed,” she said.
“Of course, Handmaiden,” Yvonnel said with a bow.
Yiccardaria glanced around curiously then, seeming alarmed.
“Kimmuriel Oblodra,” Yvonnel explained, for she felt the disturbance as well, “warping distance to come to my call.”
“Another heretic!” the handmaiden scoffed.
Yvonnel held up her hand and wore a look of disagreement. “He is Jarlaxle’s lackey. Are we to punish him, as well? Would Lady Lolth desire such a thing? And recall that it was Kimmuriel’s work with the illithid hive mind that allowed for the defense of Menzoberranzan against Demogorgon. Surely that counts as some measure of penance.”
Yiccardaria faded from sight. “I will inquire,” she said, vanishing, and even as she did, Kimmuriel stepped into view.
“Them again,” the psionicist said, looking past Yvonnel to the battling duo. “This is a song I’ve heard too many times. Let us be done with this, if you will.”
“I will,” Yvonnel promised, “when Drizzt is ready for us.”
The daughter of Gromph licked her lips in anticipation. Everything was coming together now, perfectly.
She hoped.
DRIZZT THRUST VIDRINATH between Entreri’s upraised weapons, but across came the red blade of Charon’s Claw, driving it aside. The assassin’s ensuing move to the left turned Drizzt, putting the drow’s back to a tangle of birch trees.
Entreri came in low with his slash and with his dagger instead of his sword. But Drizzt had seen this before. Even as he stepped back and launched his downward attacks on the stooping assassin, he knew Entreri’s sword would come up high to intercept. When he tried to reangle Icingdeath for a lower stab, the dagger came up to drive it aside.
“It will not be a quick kill,” Entreri promised, and Drizzt was back in time, it seemed, to a windy stone ledge …
On came Entreri, furiously, as if giving lie to those words, exactly as Drizzt knew he would. The attack was blocked, so the assassin went into a spin, blades out like the edge of a screw.
Drizzt complemented the move.
Like competing dust devils in far-off Calimshan’s endless dunes, the two whirled and spun, often reversing, always reacting perfectly.
They came out of the twists together, very near each other, and the next exchange proved the most furious yet, scimitars, sword, and dagger working in a ringing blur, metal sliding against metal, both fighters growling and yelling through the pain and exhaustion.
Down low went Entreri’s slash. Drizzt hopped it and came in high.
Entreri ducked and came up at a deadly angle, and Drizzt leaned back—so far back, almost to the ground!
And he snapped right back up, double-thrusting low, and down went Charon’s Claw to keep the blades too low to score a hit.
Drizzt worked Entreri up high then, inviting the attack. Entreri took the bait and double-thrust low.
Drizzt’s scimitars crossed down atop Entreri’s blades, and his leg came up, snap-kicking high to painfully clip the man’s nose.
But up, too, came the dagger, and it cut into Drizzt’s calf and sent the drow rushing away.
Entreri swept Charon’s Claw across to create an opaque field of ash.
And Drizzt didn’t hesitate.
Entreri thought he had a
But the assassin wasn’t there.
Confused, and more than a bit leery, the drow fell into a low defensive crouch, finally spotting Entreri, who stood strangely at ease a few strides away.
Drizzt paced in carefully, ready to resume, moving in fast and close with his scimitars leading. But Entreri lifted his blades as if to block, then threw his arms down and to the side, throwing both Charon’s Claw and his dagger into the ground at his sides. The sword sank in and stood diagonally, and the dagger buried in the earth up to its hilt.
“What?” Drizzt asked, stopping just short, both Vidrinath and Icingdeath within a finger’s breadth of the assassin’s chest.
“Do it,” Entreri said.
“What are you doing?” Drizzt’s hands began to sweat more than they had during the furious battle.
“If you think me your enemy, then be done with me here and now,” Entreri replied. “If I am the bringer of this nightmare you believe around you, then end it and end me.”
“You claimed—”
“I told you what you needed to believe, nothing more.”
Drizzt hesitated.
“Is it all a lie, Drizzt Do’Urden?” Entreri asked. “Is it all a grand deception?”
“Yes!” he insisted.
“Then who is more likely to be your deceiver than Artemis Entreri?”
“Lolth!” Drizzt answered before he could even consider the words.
“In what better form?”
Vidrinath came in, tearing through the assassin’s leather jerkin with ease, cutting into his skin and nicking his rib.
Entreri grimaced and fought hard to stay straight.
“If you believe it all a lie, then I am a lie,” Entreri insisted. “If I am a lie, then destroy the facade. Do it!”
“Shut up!” Drizzt yelled back.
“Coward!”
Drizzt glared at him.
“You cannot! Coward!”
“I will!”
Entreri pressed forward and the scimitar sank in deeper.
CHAPTER 23
The Riddle
BELLS TOLLED THROUGHOUT HELGABAL, CALLING THE ARMY OF King Yarin to formation and alerting the citizens to hole up and be wary. All over the city men and women rushed about, seeking safety or answering the call. Excited children shouted to friends and wagged their fists, enjoying the break in their normal routines and not quite grasping the gravity of the situation.
“King Yarin will not leave his room,” Dreylil Andrus told the court wizard, Red Mazzie, when he joined the man in Queen Concettina’s chamber.
The place was covered in blood, and with burn marks all over—from dripping demon blood, they believed.
“I am surprised he allowed you to leave his side,” Red Mazzie replied. “I have never seen the man so shaken, not even in the earliest days, when the line of Dragonsbane faltered and a dozen dangerous people vied for the throne of Damara.”
“He is surrounded by many trusted guards,” the captain assured the wizard.
“How fares Rafer Ingot?” Red Mazzie asked. Rafer was Yarin’s most favored bodyguard, even though both Dreylil Andrus and Red Mazzie profoundly hated the man.
“Dying,” Andrus replied. “The demon’s whip struck him and inflicted a festering wound. The priests cannot help him. He will die in agony.”
“A pity,” said Red Mazzie, who clearly didn’t feel that way at all.
“But the king will survive and is safe enough,” the captain informed him. “His chamber is a fortress.”
Red Mazzie nodded, but couldn’t hide his doubt, and so Dreylil Andrus put on a questioning look and bade him to speak openly.
“We thought the same of Princess Acelya’s room,” Red Mazzie reminded him. “Has she been found?”
The guard captain shook his head. “Our attention has been here,” he explained, and indeed, the unexpected, shocking battle had only recently concluded.
“The creature flew out over the northern wall,” Andrus continued, “and away to the north, so we believe. We have many witnesses to this, though we still do not know the nature of the beast.”
“A succubus,” Red Mazzie answered. “That would be my guess. And a very powerful one to have done—” he looked around and sighed “—all of this.” He shook his head, at a loss. “Perhaps half-succubus,” he said unconvincingly, for he was clearly uncertain, “and half some other, more powerful demon. I am not well-schooled in demonology, I admit. I prefer to keep my dealing with the lower planes nonexistent.”
Dreylil Andrus looked around. “Few would disagree with that sentiment.”
“If the creature is gone, how long will the king remain in his private chambers?” the wizard asked.
Dreylil Andrus lowered his voice to a whisper, for other men and women were about the room and the hallway, searching for clues. “King Yarin has been carnally consorting with a demon, it would appear, and it has brought him to a trembling and broken place. To think that he was lying with that beast, perhaps for years …”
“Not years,” Red Mazzie replied with confidence.
“What do you know?”
The wizard pulled Andrus over by the broken window and produced a gem-studded necklace from his pocket. “Do you remember this?”
“From those filthy dwarves,” the guard captain answered.
Red Mazzie grabbed the item by one particular gemstone. “This jewel was enchanted,” he said. “I can feel the echoes of its magic. A phylactery, and one that held the demon succubus, I would guess—nay, it is more than a guess.”
Dreylil Andrus’s eyes went wide. “The king wears a similar item!” He turned to run from the room, but Red Mazzie grabbed him by the arm and held him back.
“I was given the opportunity to inspect the king’s matching necklace before he accepted the gift,” he reminded, “and I remain confident that there was and is no dweomer upon it. I will look at it again more carefully, however, and yes, we should take it away from King Yarin in any event.”
“If that one held the demon, and is now empty …”
“It is quite inert now,” the wizard assured him. “The dweomer is no more.”
“So the queen and the demon share her mortal body?”
Red Mazzie shook his head.
“Then where is the soul of Queen Concettina?” the guard captain asked.
Before the wizard could speculate, a woman cried out from the side of the room, by the hearth, not so far away, and the two men and some others rushed over.
She stood trembling, pointing at the chimney, then down to the hearth, where a pool of blood settled upon the ashes. Dreylil Andrus dropped to his knees and scrambled forward, craning his neck to peer up into the chimney. He came out immediately, looking quite sick.
“Get her out,” he told the nearest guard, and he fell back a step.
“The queen!” Red Mazzie cried, thinking the riddle solved.
The guard moved in and began tugging, tentatively and with a most disgusted expression, at the body stuffed up the chimney. A woman’s bare arm dropped into view and the man yanked harder. Another guard came over to assist, but still, it took them some time to finally pull the unfortunate victim from the tight shaft. When the broken body fell into the hearth, Red Mazzie and the others knew his error.
“Princess Acelya,” Dreylil Andrus breathed.
“But where is Queen Concettina?” one of the guards asked.
“She is not in the necklace,” Red Mazzie asserted. “The magic is wholly spent.”
“And where is the man we were told was in this room?” another guard dared to remark, and Red Mazzie and Dreylil Andrus both stared at him dangerously.
“Such rumors will allow your head to roll free,” the wizard remarked, and the guard—all the guards—shrank back.
“Take her out of here,” the guard captain
The woman nodded and motioned to the man who had tugged the poor woman out of the chimney. He stepped over and lifted the body into his arms, gently shifting Acelya over his shoulder.
“The rest of you search the hallways and all chambers about this room,” Andrus ordered. “We will find Queen Concettina and any others who might know of this horrible crime!”
“You heard the rumors of the queen’s lover?” Red Mazzie asked when the two men were alone.
“The barbarian from Aglarond,” Dreylil Andrus replied.
“Icewind Dale, actually, but yes, him. The guards did not come to this room on a call of help, but because …”
“I know.”
“Then where is he?” the wizard asked.
“With Queen Concettina? Was she even here? Is she even anywhere about? Or was she long disposed of by the imposter demon?”
“Then where is her lover?” the wizard reiterated.
Dreylil Andrus nodded his agreement with that curiosity, and something else occurred to him then. The dwarves and the barbarian were connected in only one way he could think of, in the form of one of his soldiers who, by happenstance, had been on duty this very night in this very proximity and whose green-bearded brother was often seen conversing with Queen Concettina out in the garden. Who had, in fact, been spied out there with the woman just the other day.
The thought did not settle well on Captain Andrus’s shoulders. He was quite fond of those dwarves, and considered Ivan Bouldershoulder among his greatest military assets.
But these strained coincidences were not lying to him.
THE BODY SHE inhabited could sense the direction of its rightful soul, and so Malcanthet continued her run to the north only briefly before turning due west. With her wings lifting her into long leaps, the succubus covered tremendous ground, and the Galena Mountains loomed large in front of her when the first rays of dawn lit their peaks.
After each long stride, she paused and adjusted, sensing that she was getting close. But of course, the gemstone with the body’s true soul was underground, in a deep complex that reputedly ran through the mountains all the way to Vaasa. Malcanthet knew that finding the surface entrance would prove no easy task.