Which only aided Drizzt’s aim.
Arrows flew at the creature in rapid succession. A second skull exploded, the monster’s crown falling to the swampy ground.
Effron shifted his magical attack, cold starlight lancing down from above to bite at the staggering creature.
“Now, Ambergris!” he managed to yell between assaults. Back at the camp, he heard the dwarf invoke again the name of Dumathoin, and now, with the countervailing force of the skull lord destroyed, to even greater effect. So powerful was the dwarf’s call that several ghouls before her were reduced to dust, and even the wights could not stand in the face of her divine call.
Before Effron, the skull lord crumbled to the muck.
More explosions turned him to see Drizzt fending a group of ravenous ghouls. Only then did Effron truly see the beauty of Drizzt’s dance, for the drow dropped his bow and drew his blades so quickly that Effron could barely follow the movement.
Drizzt leaped forward, double-stabbing the ghoul before him, then tore his blades out to the side, reversed momentum, and brought them scissoring across to decapitate the creature. Hardly slowing, the drow flipped his grip on the hilts and stabbed out to either side with devastating backhanded thrusts, skewering a pair of ghouls simultaneously. He retracted almost as fast as he had stabbed, and back-flipped into a fast retreat, but landed leaning forward and in a sudden rush that brought him in against the wounded ghouls for a devastating finishing barrage.
Hardly slowing, the drow leaped upon the felled warrior wight, blades pounding away, ensuring that it would not rise again.
Seeing the battle ended, the warlock rushed to claim his prizes, lifting the crown in trembling hands. He wouldn’t dare wield it, or wear it, until further study, of course, but he took no such precautions with the staff, eagerly scooping it into his grasp. It was as tall as he, fashioned of three leg bones fused as one, and with a tiny humanoid skull up near its tip. The blue lightning was gone now, but the young warlock easily recovered it, finding a magical communion with the powerful item, and by the time Drizzt joined him, bluish-black flashes had begun anew, flickering from the eyes of the staff’s skull-headed top.
Drizzt looked at him suspiciously.
“Magic is neither good nor evil,” Effron explained in response to that curious expression. “It merely is.”
Drizzt’s expression didn’t shift much, retaining his edge of skepticism, but he said nothing and followed Effron back to the others. The fight there had ended as well, bodies piled before the four companions. Afafrenfere was the worst off, obviously, and Ambergris tended to his wounded shoulder and bloodied hands.
“Well fought,” Drizzt said.
“Better if one of us hadn’t run off,” Dahlia scolded, staring at him, “and another hadn’t followed.”
Drizzt laughed and shook his head, owing no apologies, and even Artemis Entreri chuckled at the absurdity of Dahlia’s remarks.
“Were these enemies directed against us?” Entreri asked. “By Draygo Quick?”
Effron shook his head. “Such roving bands are not uncommon in the marshes around Gloomwrought,” he explained. “Though this one was particularly powerful.” He looked at his new weapon as he spoke, and smiled, feeling the powers contained within the bone staff.
If undead monsters came at them again the next day, he knew, more than a few of them would be fighting on his side.
Chapter 17: The Chosen
ATHROGATE PLOPPED HIS HAIRY FEET DOWN ON THE LARGE PILLOW BEFORE the Bedine serving girl, who immediately began pressing her thumbs into the pressure points on his wide, flat soles.
“Meself, ha! I’m thinkin’ I might be gettin’ used to this life,” he said for the tenth time that day, which meant that he was almost halfway to his average daily usage of the remark. Being guests of a Netherese lord in Shade Enclave was not a difficult job, the dwarf and Jarlaxle had learned. A century before, this region had been a huge and inhospitable desert, but it had not been totally barren. Sparsely inhabited, indeed, but inhabited nonetheless. The Spellplague had changed all that, the great desert of Anauroch, itself a magical construct, had been transformed. And here, the Empire of Netheril had created their principle city on Toril.
For the indigenous people of Anauroch, the nomadic Bedine, the transformation had proved neither fruitful nor favorable, for they were now the servants of the Netherese, particularly in the region immediately around Shade Enclave. Along some of the farther reaches of Anauroch, Bedine tribes held fast to their old desert nomad ways, but these people had not prospered. The tribes held few alliances outside of Anauroch and they were no match for the mighty Empire of Netheril, and thus, many now served that empire as slaves, even as gladiators.
For Jarlaxle and Athrogate, their extended stay in the House of Ulfbinder had been a journey in pleasure and luxury, their every need attended by a horde of servants. For his part, the dwarf had never looked better. His beard had been trimmed just a bit, and the dung tips at the end of his beard braids had been replaced by strings of shining opals. His dirty traveling clothes and armor had been meticulously stitched and cleaned, but he wasn’t wearing it much anyway, preferring the thick and soft robes Lord Parise Ulfbinder had provided.
“It will grow tedious soon enough,” Jarlaxle replied to the dwarf, as he usually did when Athrogate fell into his swoon of luxury. Jarlaxle was, of course, no stranger to the finer things in life. “There is a world of adventure out there,” he added.
“Bah!” Athrogate shot back, and he bit off the expression and winced as the Bedine girl found a particularly sensitive spot on his foot. “Felt pain a hunnerd times,” he said when he caught his breath. “But it ain’t e’er felt so good! Bwahahaha!”
Jarlaxle just laughed and sipped his wine.
“The pleasure’s great, the food’s so fine, don’t ye make the deal, friend, take yer time!” Athrogate half-said, half-sung, ending with another great “Bwahahaha!”
Jarlaxle smiled and lifted his glass to toast the dwarf’s sentiment, but he wasn’t so sure that he agreed. They had been here a long time, months, on a trade mission that shouldn’t have taken more than a couple of tendays at the most. Jarlaxle and Kimmuriel had spoken at length about it in an ongoing conversation, for the psionicist could initiate communication with Jarlaxle from great distances, and undetected even by a Netherese lord, and the two had come to the conclusion that something else was at play here with the Netherese, with Parise Ulfbinder and his closest cohorts at least.