“You think I am an old man,” Soulez remarked, and he came forward in a short rush, thrusting.
Entreri picked it off and this time came forward with a counter of his own, rolling his sword under Soulez’s blade and sliding it out. The assassin turned and stepped ahead, dagger rushing forward, but he had to disengage from the powerful sword too soon. The angle of the parry was forcing the enchanted blade dangerously close to Entreri’s exposed hand, and without the block, he had to skitter into a quick retreat as Soulez slashed across.
“I am an old man,” Soulez continued, sounding undaunted, “but I draw strength from the sword. I am your fighting equal, Artemis Entreri, and with this sword you are surely doomed.”
He came on again, but Entreri retreated easily, sliding back toward the wall opposite the door. He knew he was running out of room, but to him that only meant that Kohrin Soulez was running out of room, too, and out of time.
“Ah, yes, run back, little rabbit,” Soulez taunted. “I know you, Artemis Entreri. I know you. Behold!” As he finished, he began waving the sword before him, and Entreri had to blink, for the blade began trailing blackness.
No, not trailing, the assassin realized to his surprise, but emitting blackness. It was thick ash that held in place in the air in great sweeping opaque fans, altering the battlefield to Kohrin Soulez’s designs.
“I know you!” Soulez cried and came forward, sweeping, sweeping more ash screens into the air.
“Yes, you know me,” Entreri answered calmly, and Soulez slowed. The timbre of Entreri’s voice had reminded him of the power of this particular opponent. “You see me at night, Kohrin Soulez, in your dreams. When you look into the darkest shadows of those nightmares, do you see those eyes looking back at you?”
As he finished, he came forward a step, tossing his sword slightly into the air before him, and at just the right angle so that the approaching sword was the only thing Kohrin Soulez could see.
The room’s door exploded into a thousand tiny little pieces.
Soulez hardly noticed, coming forward to meet the attack, slapping the apparently thrusting sword on top, then below and to the side. So beautifully angled was Entreri’s toss that the man’s own quick parry strikes, one countering the spin of the other, gave Soulez the illusion that Entreri was still holding the other end of the blade.
He leaped ahead, through the opaque fans of the sword’s conjured ash, and struck hard for where he knew the assassin had to be.
Soulez stiffened, feeling the sting in his back. Entreri’s dagger cut into his flesh.
“Do you see those eyes looking back at you from the shadows of your nightmares, Kohrin Soulez?” Entreri asked again. “Those are my eyes.”
Soulez felt the dagger pulling at his life-force. Entreri hadn’t driven it home yet, but he didn’t have to. The man was beaten, and he knew it. Soulez dropped Charon’s Claw to the floor and let his arm slip down to his side.
“You are a devil,” he growled at the assassin.
“I?” Entreri answered innocently. “Was it not Kohrin Soulez who would have sacrificed his daughter for the sake of a mere weapon?”
As he finished, he was fast to reach down with his free hand and yank the black gauntlet from Soulez’s right hand. To Soulez’s surprise, the glove fell to the floor right beside the sword.
From the open doorway across the room came the sound of a voice, melodic yet sharp, and speaking in a language that rolled but was oft-broken with harsh and sharp consonant sounds.
Entreri backed away from the man. Soulez turned around to see the ash lines drifting down to the floor, showing him several dark elves standing in the room.
Kohrin Soulez took a deep, steadying breath. He had dealt with worse than drow, he silently reminded himself. He had parlayed with an illithid and had survived meetings with the most notorious guildmasters of Calimport. Soulez focused on Entreri then, seeing the man engaged in conversation with the apparent leader of the dark elves, seeing the man drifting farther and farther from him.
There, right beside him, lay his precious sword, his greatest possession—an artifact he would indeed protect even at the cost of his own daughter’s life.
Entreri moved a bit farther from him. None of the drow were advancing or seemed to pay Soulez any heed at all.
Charon’s Claw, so conveniently close, seemed to be calling to him.
Gathering all his energy, tensing his muscles and calculating the most fluid course open to him, Kohrin Soulez dived down low, scooped the black, red-stitched gauntlet onto his right hand, and before he could even register that it didn’t seem to fit him the same way, scooped up the powerful, enchanted sword.
He turned toward Entreri with a growl. “Tell them that I will speak with their leader …” he started to say, but his words quickly became a jumble, his tone going low and his pace slowing, as if something was pulling at his vocal chords.
Kohrin Soulez’s face contorted weirdly, his features seeming to elongate in the direction of the sword.
All conversation in the room stopped. All eyes turned to stare incredulously at Soulez.
“T-to the Nine … Nine Hells with y-you, Entreri!” the man stammered, each word punctuated by a croaking groan.
“What is he doing?” Rai-guy demanded of Entreri.
The assassin didn’t answer, just watched in amusement as Kohrin Soulez continued to struggle against the power of Charon’s Claw. His face elongated again and wisps of smoke began wafting up from his body. He tried to cry out, but only an indecipherable gurgle came forth. The smoke increased, and Soulez began to tremble violently, all the while trying to scream out.
Nothing more than smoke poured from his mouth.
It all seemed to stop then, and Soulez stood staring at Entreri and gasping.
The man lived just long enough to put on the most horrified and stunned expression Artemis Entreri had ever seen. It was an expression that pleased Entreri greatly. There was something too familiar in the way in which Soulez had abandoned his daughter.
Kohrin Soulez erupted in a sudden, sizzling burst. The skin burned off his head, leaving no more than a whitened skull and wide, horrified eyes.
Charon’s Claw hit the hard floor again, making more of a dull thump than any metallic ring. The skull-headed corpse of Kohrin Soulez crumpled in place.
“Explain,” Rai-guy demanded.
Entreri walked over and, wearing a gauntlet that appeared identical to the one Kohrin Soulez had but not a match for the other since it was shaped for the same hand, reached down and calmly gathered up his newest prize.
“Pray I do not go to the Nine Hells, as you surely will, Kohrin Soulez,” the deadly assassin said to the corpse. “For if I see you there, I will continue to torment you throughout eternity.”
“Explain!” Rai-guy demanded more forcefully.
“Explain?” Entreri echoed, turning to face the angry drow wizard. He gave a shrug, as if the answer seemed obvious. “I was prepared, and he was a fool.”
Rai-guy glared at him ominously, and Entreri only smiled back, hoping his amused expression would tempt the wizard to action.
He held Charon’s Claw now, and he wore the gauntlet that could catch and redirect magic.
The world had just changed in ways that the wretched Rai-guy couldn’t begin to understand.
CHAPTER
THE SIMPLE REASON
8
The tower will remain. Jarlaxle has declared it,” said Kimmuriel. “The fortress weathered our attack well enough to keep Dallabad operating smoothly, and without anyone outside of the oasis even knowing that an assault had taken place.”
“Operating,” Rai-guy echoed, spitting the distasteful word out. He stared at Entreri, who walked beside him into the crystal tower. Rai-guy’s look made it quite clear that he considered the events of this day the assassin’s doing and planned on holding Entreri personally responsible if anything went wrong. “Is Bregan D’aerthe to become the overseers of a great toll booth, then??
??
“Dallabad will prove more valuable to Bregan D’aerthe than you assume,” Entreri replied in his stilted use of the drow language. “We can keep the place separate from House Basadoni as far as all others are concerned. The allies we place out here will watch the road and gather news long before those in Calimport are aware. We can run many of our ventures from out here, farther from the prying eyes of Pasha Da’Daclan and his henchmen.”
“And who are these trusted allies who will operate Dallabad as a front for Bregan D’aerthe?” Rai-guy demanded. “I had thought of sending Domo.”
“Domo and his filthy kind will not leave the offal of the sewers,” Sharlotta Vespers put in.
“Too good a hole for them,” Entreri muttered.
“Jarlaxle has hinted that perhaps the survivors of Dallabad will suffice,” Kimmuriel explained. “Few were killed.”
“Allied with a conquered guild,” Rai-guy remarked with a sigh, shaking his head. “A guild whose fall we brought about.”
“A very different situation from allying with a fallen house of Menzoberranzan,” Entreri declared, seeing the error in the dark elf’s apparent internal analogy. Rai-guy was viewing things through the dark glass of Menzoberranzan, was considering the generational feuds and grudges that members of the various houses, the various families, held for each other.
“We shall see,” the drow wizard replied, and he motioned for Entreri to hang back with him as Kimmuriel, Berg’inyon, and Sharlotta started up the staircase to the second level of the magical crystalline tower.
“I know that you desired Dallabad for personal reasons,” Rai-guy said when the two were alone. “Perhaps it was an act of vengeance, or that you might wear that very gauntlet upon your hand and carry that same sword you now have sheathed on your hip. Either way, do not believe you’ve done anything here I don’t understand, human.”
“Dallabad is a valuable asset,” Entreri replied, not backing away an inch. “Jarlaxle has a place where he can safely construct and maintain the crystalline tower. There was gain here to be had by all.”
“Even to Artemis Entreri,” Rai-guy remarked.
In answer, the assassin drew forth Charon’s Claw, presenting it horizontally to Rai-guy for inspection, letting the drow wizard see the beauty of the item. The sword had a slender, razor-edged, gleaming red blade, its length inscribed with designs of cloaked figures and tall scythes, accentuated by a black blood trough running along its center. Entreri opened his hand enough for the wizard to see the skull-bobbed pommel, with a hilt that appeared like whitened vertebrae. Running from it toward the crosspiece, the hilt was carved to resemble a backbone and rib-cage, and the crosspiece itself resembled a pelvic skeleton, with legs spread out wide and bent back toward the head, so that the wielder’s hand fit neatly within the “bony” boundaries. All of the pommel, hilt and crosspiece was white, like bleached bones—perfectly white, except for the eye sockets of the skull pommel, which seemed like black pits at one moment and flared with red fires the next.
“I am pleased with the prize I earned,” Entreri admitted.
Rai-guy stared hard at the sword, but his gaze inevitably kept drifting toward the other, less-obvious treasure: the black, red-stitched gauntlet on Entreri’s hand.
“Such weapons can be more of a curse than a blessing, human,” the wizard remarked. “They are possessed of arrogance, and too often does that foolish pride spill over into the mind of the wielder, to disastrous result.”
The two locked stares, with Entreri’s expression melting into a wry grin. “Which end would you most like to feel?” he asked, presenting the deadly sword closer to Rai-guy, matching the wizard’s obvious threat with one of his own.
Rai-guy narrowed his dark eyes, and walked away.
Entreri held his grin as he watched the wizard move up the stairs, but in truth, Rai-guy’s warning had struck a true chord to him. Indeed, Charon’s Claw was strong of will—Entreri could feel that clearly—and if he was not careful with the blade always, it could surely lead him to disaster or destroy him as it had utterly slaughtered Kohrin Soulez.
Entreri glanced down at his own posture, reminding himself—a humble self-warning—not to touch any part of the sword with his unprotected hand.
Even Artemis Entreri could not deny a bit of caution against the horrific death he had witnessed when Charon’s Claw had burned the skin from the head of Kohrin Soulez.
“Crenshinibon easily dominates the majority of the survivors,” Jarlaxle announced to his principal advisors a short while later in an audience chamber he had crafted of the second level the magical tower. “To those outside of Dallabad Oasis, the events of this day will seem like nothing more than a coup within the Soulez family, followed by a strong alliance to the Basadoni Guild.”
“Ahdahnia Soulez agreed to remain?” Rai-guy asked.
“She was willing to assume the mantle of Dallabad even before Crenshinibon invaded her thoughts,” Jarlaxle explained.
“Loyalty,” Entreri remarked under his breath.
Even as the assassin was offering the sarcastic jibe, Rai-guy admitted, “I am beginning to like the young woman more already.”
“But can we trust her?” Kimmuriel asked.
“Do you trust me?” Sharlotta Vespers interjected. “It would seem a similar situation.”
“Except that her guildmaster was also her father,” Kimmuriel reminded.
“There is nothing to fear from Ahdahnia Soulez or any of the others who will remain at Dallabad,” Jarlaxle put in, forcefully, thus ending the philosophical debate. “Those who survived and will continue to do so belong to Crenshinibon now, and Crenshinibon belongs to me.”
Entreri didn’t miss the doubting look that flashed briefly across Rai-guy’s face at the moment of Jarlaxle’s final proclamation, and in truth, he, too, wondered if the mercenary leader wasn’t a bit confused as to who owned whom.
“Kohrin Soulez’s soldiers will not betray us,” Jarlaxle went on with all confidence. “Nor will they even remember the events of this day, but rather, they will accept the story we tell them to put forth as truth, if that is what we choose. Dallabad Oasis belongs to Bregan D’aerthe now as surely as if we had installed an army of dark elves here to facilitate the operations.”
“And you trust the woman Ahdahnia to lead, though we just murdered her father?” Kimmuriel said more than asked.
“Her father was killed by his obsession with that sword; so she told me herself,” Jarlaxle replied, and as he spoke, all gazes turned to regard the weapon hanging easily at Entreri’s belt. Rai-guy, in particular, kept his dangerous glare upon Entreri, as if silently reiterating the warnings of their last conversation.
The wizard meant those warnings to be a threat to Entreri, a reminder to the assassin that he, Rai-guy, would be watching Entreri’s every move much more closely now, a reminder that he believed that the assassin had, in effect, used Bregan D’aerthe for the sake of his personal gain—a very dangerous practice.
“You do not like this,” Kimmuriel remarked to Rai-guy when the two were back in Calimport.
Jarlaxle had remained behind at Dallabad Oasis, securing the remnants of Kohrin Soulez’s forces and explaining the slight shift in direction that Ahdahnia Soulez should now undertake.
“How could I?” Rai-guy responded. “Every day, it seems that our purpose in coming to the surface has expanded. I had thought that we would be back in Menzoberranzan by this time, yet our footpads have tightened on the stone.”
“On the sand,” Kimmuriel corrected, in a tone that showed he, too, was not overly pleased by the continuing expansion of Bregan D’aerthe’s surface ventures.
Originally, Jarlaxle had shared plans to come to the surface and establish a base of contacts, humans mostly, who would serve as profiteering front men for the trading transactions of the mercenary drow band. Though he had never specified the details, Jarlaxle’s original explanation had made the two believe that their time on the surface would be quite limited.
But now they had expanded, had even constructed a physical structure, with more apparently planned, and had added a second base to the Basadoni conquest. Worse than that, both dark elves were thinking, though not openly saying, perhaps there was something even more behind Jarlaxle’s continuing shift of attitude. Perhaps the mercenary leader had erred in taking a certain relic from the renegade Do’Urden.
“Jarlaxle seems to have taken a liking to the surface,” Kimmuriel went on. “We all knew that he had tired somewhat of the continuing struggles within our homeland, but perhaps we underestimated the extent of that weariness.”
“Perhaps,” Rai-guy replied. “Or perhaps our friend merely needs to be reminded that this is not our place.”
Kimmuriel stared at him hard, his expression clearly asking how one might “remind” the great Jarlaxle of anything.
“Start at the edges,” Rai-guy answered, echoing one of Jarlaxle’s favorite sayings, and favorite tactics for Bregan D’aerthe. Whenever the mercenary band went into infiltration or conquest mode, they started gnawing at the edges of their opponent—circling the perimeter and chewing, chewing—as they continued their ever-tightening ring. “Has Morik yet delivered the jewels?”
There it lay before him, in all its wicked splendor.
Artemis Entreri stared long and hard at Charon’s Claw, the fingers on both of his unprotected hands rubbing in against his moist palms. Part of him wanted to reach out and grasp the sword, to effect now the battle that he knew would soon enough be fought between his own willpower and that of the sentient weapon. If he won that battle, the sword would truly be his, but if he lost….
He recalled, and vividly, the last horrible moments of Kohrin Soulez’s miserable life.
It was exactly that life, though, that so propelled Entreri in this seemingly suicidal direction. He would not be as Soulez had been. He would not allow himself to be a prisoner to the sword, a man trapped in a box of his own making. No, he would be the master, or he would be dead.