Drizzt recalled his own experiences when the volcano blew, when he watched from afar as the mountain crumbled into a river of roiling stone and ash, when the shock wave rushed across the forests, leveling ancient trees as if they were insignificant strands of grass. The power of the spectacle had brought Drizzt to his knees. What must it have been like to be in Neverwinter that awful day, to see the devastation up close, to hear the screams of men, women, and children as they were burned and buried alive?
“How did you survive?” the drow prompted somberly.
“I crawled off the bridge,” Entreri replied, “and to the street, but it was too deep in ash—hot ash—for me to plow along it. And the stones were falling thick. I saw more than one person crushed under a fiery boulder. The buildings, strong as they seemed, provided no shelter. Those who hid inside were buried under rubble or chased out by the fires—everywhere were fires. The air was too thick to breathe.”
“So you died and the sword brought you back,” Dahlia reasoned, but Entreri shook his head.
Drizzt solved the riddle by remembering the layout of Neverwinter, whose streets he had walked several times. He, too, had often been drawn to the bridges, to the river that served as the city’s heart.
“You couldn’t pass along the street, so you went back to the river, near the bridge,” he said.
“To swim in the lava?” Dahlia mocked.
But Drizzt just shook his head and kept looking at Entreri.
“There was an opening along the bank, above the level of the river,” the assassin explained. “And the water flowing from it was relatively cool.”
“You crawled out of Neverwinter through her sewers,” Drizzt reasoned. “Do you think they remain open?” He watched Dahlia as he spoke, and noted that her smirk disappeared.
Entreri pointed down to the south of the city, to where the great river meandered into the Sword Coast. “It’s possible.”
Chapter 7: Shadows, Always shadows
Effron continually looked over his shoulder, peering through the ashen mists and endless shadows of the Shadowfell. He wasn’t supposed to be there, and Draygo Quick would punish him severely if the weathered old battle mage discovered his breach of etiquette and station.
But he had to know.
This involved Dahlia. He had to know!
Despite his desperation, Effron didn’t dare travel anywhere near the Cavus Dun guildhouse, nor did he dare speak with any of the leaders of that organization. Nay, they would rush straight to Draygo, he knew, for they would not protect the confidentiality of a mere ascendant noble like Effron when weighed against the potential ire of Draygo Quick.
He knew that he had only a matter of hours, however, and when he could not locate Jermander or Ratsis at their usual haunts—and more troubling, when he learned that Ratsis had indeed been spotted that very day in the Shadowfell—he went to a secluded boulder tumble, set with a small cottage that never seemed to stay in the same place for more than a moment or two.
Effron waited for a shift, then sprinted for the door and reached out to grasp . . . nothing.
Smiling, appreciating the cleverness of the home’s owner, the twisted warlock waited and watched, trying to discern some pattern to the illusionary games. When he thought he had it figured out, he quietly began a spell, timing it for another house jump.
The cottage disappeared and popped back into view between a pair of large boulders. Into the ground went the wraithlike Effron, slipping through cracks in the stone, sliding down and popping up again right where the house should have been.
But it was across the way, beside a different stone entirely.
“Clever,” Effron whispered under his breath. “Was it ever really in this place?”
“What do you want?” came a sharp reply from right behind him, and the startled Effron jumped around so violently that his limp arm went into a great pendulum swing behind his back.
“Shifter,” was all he could gasp as the spectacle of the imposing woman stood before him—or, he reminded himself, appeared to stand before him.
“What do you want?” she snapped at him again, biting each word short with her harsh accent. “I do not appreciate uninvited visitors.”
“I am Effr—”
“I know who you are. What do you want?”
“You went with Jermander.”
“You assume much.”
Effron straightened and cleared his throat, then politely rephrased, “Did you go with Jermander’s band?”
“Again,” the Shifter reiterated, and then she was gone. Effron thought to spin around, guessing that she would be standing right behind him, but he decided against that course.
“I hired Jermander of Cavus Dun—”
“Mentioning that group, admitting that you paid them, speaking of them at all, will likely get a person killed,” came the reply from right behind him. “Assuming, of course, that such a person or such a group even exists.”
Effron realized that in his desperation and fear of Herzgo Alegni—or was it his fear of disappointing Herzgo Alegni, he wondered—he was getting very sloppy.
“I need to know the fate of Dahlia,” he said simply, resisting the urge to add any details that might hint at Cavus Dun, Jermander, Ratsis, or anyone else.
“Dahlia?” the Shifter asked. Effron suddenly wondered if Jermander had indeed subcontracted the Shifter. But then she unexpectedly added, in a whisper, “Alegni’s man.”
Effron wasn’t sure if the Shifter was referring to him or to Barrabus the Gray, but the way she spoke the words led him to believe it to be the latter, and made him think that it was directly related to whatever had happened, or had not happened, regarding Dahlia.
He turned around to face the woman. “Whatever you can tell me, whatever you can learn for me, will be much appreciated.”
She looked at him skeptically.