Dahlia heard Guenhwyvar land behind her as she charged to the porch rubble. She batted aside one loose board before Drizzt began to pull himself up from the wreckage.
He glanced behind her and suddenly stopped moving.
“Stand easy, Guen,” he whispered.
The panther issued a low growl in response.
Dahlia slowly turned around.
A group of men stood in front of her, all holding bows, save one who leveled a wand in Dahlia’s direction.
“Keep your cat at bay,” the warlock with the wand warned.
“Yes, do,” added a tall man in a dark cloak, walking out of the alleyway directly across from the fallen porch. “I am Beniago,” he explained with a low bow. “Your presence is requested at Ship Kurth, forthwith.”
“And I suppose I would have no choice in the matter?” Drizzt asked.
“It would seem not,” Beniago replied.
“Better than Ship Rethnor,” Dahlia said to Drizzt.
Drizzt stared at her hard, his scowl placing blame for this turn of events on Dahlia’s pretty shoulders. But his anger couldn’t withstand Beniago’s next remark.
“You’re both wanted,” he said.
Drizzt studied Beniago carefully. He’d never met this one, but the man’s easy posture warned him that he was no novice with the blade. He and Dahlia were certainly and undeniably caught.
Still, Drizzt looked for weakness, for some seam in the leather armor, for some option should the need arise.
His scan ended at the man’s belt, at the hilt of that distinctive blade. Memories of a distant past flooded Drizzt’s thoughts.
It couldn’t be the same blade, the drow told himself.
But the enemy he’d known who had carried such a dagger had likely been in Luskan, with Jarlaxle, perhaps even at the time of his death.
It was possible.
“Forthwith,” Beniago repeated, forcefully drawing Drizzt from his contemplation. The drow looked up at the tall man, almost expecting to see an old enemy standing in front of him. But this man was taller, lighter skinned, with curly red hair … and a hundred years too young!
Beniago motioned to Drizzt to follow Dahlia, who had moved several steps away. He did so, with a grin on his face.
Perhaps one of the problems of living so long a life, he mused, was the jumble of memories—too many memories!—which inevitably found their way to his consciousness at the slightest provocation. He glanced again at the dagger and laughed at himself, certain now that it was a different blade.
But only because it had to be. The world had moved on.
HADENCOURT PAUSED OUTSIDE OF ASHENGLADE TO ADMIRE ITS construction, and though he knew it had been created magically, it still seemed impossible to him that so much had been built in so short a time. Hadencourt wasn’t quite as committed to Szass Tam, and by extension Sylora Salm, as he was to the Ashmadai zealots, but he had to give credit where credit was due.
Ashenglade was not the work of Asmodeus or any other denizen of the Nine Hells. It was the work of the Thayan Dread Ring.
As he approached the gates of the fortress, he faced a phalanx of grim-faced Ashmadai guards and a host of zombie minions, but all he had to do was flash his smile—his real smile and not the fa?ade he wore for the peasant bandits in the north. The resistance melted away, and the gates were thrown wide.
“Dahlia and the drow were heading north, to Luskan, they said,” Hadencourt reported when he stood beside Sylora Salm on the second floor of her treelike tower.
“Greeth! Ark-lem!” Valindra shrieked from the corner.
Hadencourt stared at her incredulously.
“Ignore her,” Sylora told him.
That was no easy thing to do, though, and Hadencourt’s gaze lingered over the lich for some time. Valindra stared back at him with a crooked grin.
“The farther they go from here, the better, though I’d love to burn Dahlia to ashes,” Sylora Salm replied to the original point.
Valindra’s expression disappeared and she cocked her head as she studied Hadencourt. She’d noted the great deference in Sylora’s tone, Hadencourt realized, and that, he deduced, was something rarely heard.
“You may get your opportunity,” he replied, turning back to the sorceress. “Dahlia made a point to mention Neverwinter Wood as her intended destination, though her immediate road headed the opposite way. She said there was adventure to be found here. I assume she was referring to you.”
“And her companion?”
“Tried to deflect her from revealing their future path.”
“He was wary of you?” Sylora asked suspiciously, and she turned around to view the hollowed tree trunk she’d excavated and hauled into the back of the chamber. Years before, Sylora had created of the trunk a scrying pool.
Hadencourt shook his head doubtfully. “He was more reserved than she, I would expect. But then, who isn’t?”
Sylora turned back to regard Hadencourt directly, her look as suspicious as her previous question. Hadencourt was a newcomer to Neverwinter Wood, one of the more recent Ashmadai reinforcements. He wouldn’t have known Dahlia from his time there, as she was long gone by the time he’d arrived—that was why Sylora had chosen him to serve as a scout on the northern road.
“I know all about Lady Dahlia,” Hadencourt admitted.
“Who are you?”
The tall man smiled as he’d done outside, revealing long, pointed teeth. He furrowed his brow and a pair of horns sprouted from his forehead.
“I thought you were Ashmadai,” Sylora said, trying to keep her calm fa?ade—no easy task when confronted by a mighty malebranche devil.
“Oh, my lady Sylora, I surely am!” Hadencourt replied. “More devoted than these tieflings and humans, of course. After all, they merely worship Asmodeus, while I witness his glory personally. And let me assure you that he’s every bit as impressive as his hordes of worshipers would have you believe.”
“Does Szass Tam know of your—?”
“Do you think me foolish enough to try to hide something this important from the archlich?”
“And he sent you here anyway,” Sylora remarked.
“Fear not, my lady Sylora,” Hadencourt said with a deep bow. “In this endeavor, I am subservient to Sylora Salm. I am no spy, unless it’s your spy. Such were my orders from Szass Tam, and I honor them with relish.”
Her expression reflected her skepticism.
“Greeth! Greeth!” Valindra chimed in.
Sylora looked past the devil to the lich, and Hadencourt turned as well to regard her—fast enough to see a serious and cogent expression on Valindra’s face, albeit briefly, before she tittered and floated away.
Grinning knowingly—the lich wasn’t as insane as she let on—Hadencourt faced Sylora once more.
“Were I a demon of the Abyss, you would be correct in your doubts, I expect,” Hadencourt said. “But consider my heritage. One does not survive the Nine Hells with subterfuge, but with obedience. I accept my place as your second.”
Sylora cocked an eyebrow, drawing a laugh from the devil.
“As your primary scout, then?” Hadencourt bargained. “Surely you will not expect me to submit to the commands of one of these mortal Ashmadai.”
“You will remain separate from the warriors here,” Sylora agreed.
“Well, then, with your leave, I’ll return to my duties on the north road.” He bowed again, and seeing Sylora’s nod, turned to leave.
“If you wish to truly serve as my second,” Sylora remarked, stopping him before he’d gone more than a couple of steps, “you will relieve me of that nuisance Dahlia.”
Hadencourt turned a sly eye Sylora’s way. “Szass Tam was not as definitive regarding her fate.”
“Szass Tam didn’t understand the depths of her traitorous ways, then.”
They exchanged nods.
“With pleasure, my lady Sylora,” Hadencourt the war devil said.
Sylora Salm had enough experience with devils to know he meant it.
“You would deny me this glory?” growled the Ashmadai warrior, Jestry. “I have earned this moment, and you would see me stand back and allow …” He paused, blowing his breath out in angry gasps as he considered the huddled, ash-covered zombies scrabbling through the forest all around them, heading for the walls of Neverwinter. They were some of the multitudes who had died in the cataclysm—the great volcanic eruption that had buried Neverwinter a decade before. They seemed more like the corpses of halflings, or human children, for the molten fires had shriveled their forms.
“We will not win this night,” Sylora replied. “Not fully, at least. All that we send in will be destroyed.”
“I’m not afraid to die!” Jestry proclaimed.
“Are you eager to die, Jestry?”
The Ashmadai warrior went to strict attention. “If in the service of my god Asmodeus—”
“Oh, shut up, fool,” Sylora said.
Jestry blinked in astonishment, and he seemed wounded.
“If Asmodeus thought you of more service in his presence, then he would drag you to the Nine Hells personally, and immediately,” Sylora teased. “He wants you to fight for him, fearlessly, but not to die for him.”
“My lady, an Ashmadai must be willing—”
“Willing and wanting are two different things,” Sylora interrupted. “Pray do sort out that difference, Jestry. I expect you to die in service to me, if it’s necessary. I don’t want you to die in service to me—not yet, at least—and surely I don’t want you to want to die in service to anyone else, and if you do then know that there will be ramifications.” She matched Jestry’s dumbfounded stare with a glower. “If you die, I can raise your corpse,” she explained, and motioned to the shriveled zombies moving in the forest night. “When I come to believe that you will be of more service to me as such, I’ll kill you myself, I promise you.”
Jestry paused for some time before speaking, “Yes, my lady.” His gaze went back to the northwest, to the distant torch lights marking the low wall of Neverwinter.
“Come along,” Sylora bade him, and she started walking the other way, to the south and deeper into the forest.
“My lady?”
“Be quick.”
“But … the battle against Neverwinter?”
“The servants of Szass Tam know their mission,” Sylora assured him, and she kept walking. Jestry, after another longing look to the distant torchlight, scrambled to catch up.