The drow doubled down on his own concentration then and fought back, demanding fealty from the blade.
The blade fought back.
Gradually, Drizzt altered his counterattack, promising the sword a glorious joining. He would wield it well.
Charon’s Claw teased him with power. It directed Drizzt’s thoughts to Artemis Entreri, who was now, the sword assured him, his slave.
And indeed, when Entreri protested the drawn blade and took a step toward Drizzt, Charon’s Claw laid him low.
Dahlia cried out and broke Kozah’s Needle into her flails, putting them into motion immediately.
But Drizzt held up his left hand and motioned her to patience. He told the sword to free Entreri, and when it did not, he demanded that the painful vibrations cease.
“Now!” he ordered aloud.
Artemis Entreri staggered to the side and gradually straightened. He walked straight back from Drizzt, never taking his eyes from the drow, never blinking, though the pain had obviously ceased.
He believed that this was a betrayal, Drizzt saw clearly from his angry expression. “Free him,” Drizzt told the sword.
Charon’s Claw went at the drow’s soul again, even more ferociously, and Drizzt groaned and staggered once more. Images and thoughts of obliteration, of nothingness, filled his mind, as Charon’s Claw tried to use fear to weaken his resolve.
Drizzt had lived too long, had been through too much, to give in to such despair.
He won the fight, but only to a draw. Charon’s Claw would not release Artemis Entreri, and there was no way Drizzt would ever get through that angry wall. Perhaps Drizzt could prevent the sword from inflicting, or at least from sustaining, any torture upon the man, but he could make no progress past that point.
He turned to the sword’s own tactics.
Now the drow’s thoughts were back in Gauntlgrym, at the pit of the primordial. Entreri had said that he could sense the sword’s fear at such a prospect.
Drizzt saw it, too, felt it keenly.
He redoubled his concentration, picturing the sword dropping down, down to the waiting fiery maw of the godlike beast.
This was no deception, and despite his desperate struggle, a smile widened on his face. Charon’s Claw was deathly afraid.
Charon’s Claw recognized its doom.
The sword went at him again, wildly.
Drizzt changed the image in his mind to one of Entreri wielding Charon’s Claw once more, presenting the blade with a clear choice: the fire or Entreri.
Charon’s Claw calmed immediately.
Drizzt slid it away into its scabbard. He shook his head and looked back at his companions, and nearly fell to his knees from sudden weakness, thoroughly drained by the battle.
“Are you mad?” Entreri growled at him.
“Why would you do such a thing?” Dahlia added.
“The sword fears our course,” Drizzt explained, and he cast a sly look at the assassin as he finished, “It would prefer your hand once more above a journey to the mouth of the primordial.”
“You can control it,” Dahlia said breathlessly.
Entreri never looked at her, his gaze fixed on Drizzt.
“As I said, the choice is yours,” the drow said.
“You would trust me beside you with that blade in hand?” Entreri asked.
“No,” Drizzt said, even as Dahlia started to say yes.
Entreri stared at the drow for a long, long while. “You wield it,” he said at length.
“I cannot.”
“Because you know it will turn on you,” Entreri reasoned. “You have not the accompanying glove, and cannot maintain your discipline indefinitely at so high a level. And that sword is relentless, I assure you.”
“Then you cannot wield it, either,” the drow replied.
Entreri started to drink from the brandy bottle, but just laughed helplessly and retrieved another glass from the bar, pouring himself a modest amount. He set the bottle down, held his glass aloft, and said, “To Gauntlgrym.”
Drizzt nodded grimly.
Dahlia’s chortle sounded more like a gasp.
They heard their names called out ahead of them as they moved to the common hallway on the inn’s second floor, and from there to the stairs, and before the trio ever reached the exit, the cheering on the street outside began to mount.
“Hailed as heroes,” Dahlia remarked.
“They are truly pathetic,” Entreri was fast to respond.
Drizzt studied the man, looking for a clue that perhaps he was enjoying this notoriety more than he would let on. But no, there was nothing to indicate any such thing, and when Drizzt considered Entreri in light of the man he had once known, he wasn’t really surprised.
Neither Drizzt nor the assassin cared much for such accolades, but for very different reasons. Drizzt didn’t care because he understood that the community was stronger than the individual. In that same vein, he accepted the cheers in the knowledge that they would do the community well.
Entreri, though, didn’t care because Entreri didn’t care—about applause or sneering, or anything else regarding his place in the world and the views of those around him. He simply didn’t care, and so the enthusiasm with which they were greeted when they exited the inn brought a scowl to Entreri’s face, one Drizzt knew to be sincere.
Dahlia, though, seemed quite pleased.
Drizzt didn’t know what to make of that. She had just exacted revenge—her most desperately wanted revenge—upon a tiefling who had apparently haunted her for most of her young life. Drizzt hardly understood the visceral level of hatred he had seen this elf woman exhibit, but truly that battle had meant quite a bit to her, and on a very deep and primal level. Even her obvious fears for Entreri’s impending demise now seemed to wash away as she basked in the excitement of the crowd.
And indeed, the citizens of Neverwinter exuded excitement and joy at this time. Nearly the entire population of the settlers had gathered along the streets outside the inn, and among their front lines stood Genevieve and the man who had helped her drag their wounded companion from the sewers.
That sight gave Drizzt profound peace. Perhaps the death of Alegni and the retreat of the Shadovar was a bigger gain for the future of Neverwinter, but personalizing such a victory to the level of the three saved aboleth slaves settled well on the shoulders of Drizzt Do’Urden.
Weapons and fists lifted into the air defiantly, a cry of freedom regained. When Drizzt considered the recent history of this settlement, he came to understand and appreciate the exuberance.
He had come through Neverwinter beside Bruenor not so long ago, before the revelation of the Thayan and Netherese presence even, and had found the citizens besieged by the strange, shriveled zombie victims of the cataclysmic volcano. They hadn’t known the source of the threat, of the Dread Ring then, and the nefarious powers behind the unsettling and dangerous events.
But now it had played out and the Thayans were in disarray, perhaps even gone from the region. And Alegni and his Netherese had been driven from the city, the beast beheaded.
Had the prospects for a new Neverwinter, post-apocalypse, ever looked any brighter?
Perhaps they were laying that victory too much onto the shoulders of Drizzt and his two companions, the drow thought, for it was the work of these many folk that had really won the day. Drizzt and his companions had defeated Alegni and had kept that twisted necromancer at bay, but the bulk of the fighting had been done, and won, by the people now cheering. When Drizzt considered his own role in it all, mostly trying to simply stay alive against a possessed Artemis Entreri, it seemed laughable to him that he would be viewed on such a figurative pedestal.
But to no harm, any of it, the drow knew from decades of similar experience. He had seen this type of celebration in Ten-Towns, surely, and in Mithral Hall, and across the lands. It was a collective expression of relief and victory, and whatever symbols—Drizzt and his two companions, in this instance—were purely irrelevant to that needed emotional release. He looked directly at Genevieve and nodded, and her beaming smile back at him warmed him indeed.
“Well met again, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Jelvus Grinch said, stepping out ahead of the crowd and moving right before the trio. “I trust your dwarf companion is well.”
Drizzt didn’t wince at the reference to Bruenor, whom Jelvus Grinch had met briefly under an assumed name. For a moment, his reaction surprised him, and when he thought about it, his reaction pleased him. He missed Bruenor sorely, but he was indeed at peace about the dwarf.
He merely nodded to Jelvus Grinch, not wishing to go into detail over something the man didn’t really care about anyway.
“Once before, I asked you to stay with us,” Jelvus Grinch said. “Perhaps now you understand how great your value to Neverwinter might prove . . .”
“We’re leaving,” Artemis Entreri coldly interrupted.
Jelvus Grinch fell back and looked at the man curiously.
“Now,” Entreri added.
“We don’t know how far the Shadovar have retreated,” Jelvus Grinch pleaded. “Many went through the gates their wizards enacted—and perhaps they can come back through those same gates!”
“Then you should remain vigilant,” Entreri replied. “Or leave.”
“You know more about them than we do,” Jelvus Grinch shot back, now with a hint of anger in his tone.
“I know nothing of them or of the dark place they call home,” Entreri spat back at him before he could gain any momentum. “They’re gone, Alegni is dead. That’s all I care about.”
“And you have his sword,” Jelvus Grinch said, glancing over at the weapon strapped diagonally across Drizzt’s thin back.
Artemis Entreri laughed, a condescending and mocking tone clearly telling the Neverwinter man that he couldn’t begin to understand the implications of his last words.
“We must go,” Drizzt interjected calmly. “We have urgent business that cannot wait. Keep your guard strong, though I doubt the Netherese will return anytime soon. From what I have seen, they are obedient to strong leaders, and with Alegni gone, would any other Netherese lord deem to replace him in a place so dangerous and hostile as Neverwinter?”
“We cannot know,” Jelvus Grinch said.
Drizzt dropped a hand on the man’s strong shoulder. “Hold your faith in your fellow citizens,” Drizzt advised. “The region is full of dangers, as you knew when first you returned.”
“And you’ll remain?” the man asked hopefully.
“Not too far for now, I expect,” Drizzt assured him.
“Then don’t remain a stranger to the folk of Neverwinter, I beg. You, all three, are ever welcome here.”
A great cheer arose behind him, affirming the sentiment.
The gathering followed the trio across the city, across the winged wyvern bridge.
“We will name it again the Walk of Barrabus!” Jelvus Grinch proclaimed, and the cheering renewed.
“Barrabus is dead,” Artemis Entreri replied, cutting Grinch’s grin off short. “I killed him. Don’t remind me of him with your foolish names.”
It sounded as a clear threat to everyone who heard it, and Entreri followed it by staring hard at Jelvus Grinch, by silently letting the man know that if he named the bridge as he’d just promised, Entreri really would come back and kill him.
