It all seemed so surreal to Drizzt, and he felt less grounded than ever in that terrible moment. But he settled his thoughts solidly, telling himself that perhaps he would find an answer here, one way or another, and reminding himself that anything he could do to precipitate the end of this delusion, whatever the final cost, had to be preferable to the shifting sands upon which he now stood.
They went into the circular training room and Kane dismissed the few monks he found within, leaving the pair alone on the floor, though some others, including Perrywinkle Shin, Savahn, and Afafrenfere, remained up on the overlook. The grandmaster turned to face Drizzt and brought his palms together in front of his chest, then bowed low. He came up in a fighting stance that reminded Drizzt somewhat of Regis’s new sword, fighting style, with his front foot forward and pointed at Drizzt, his back foot perpendicular and strongly grounded.
Kane, though, bent that back leg and slid the front foot forward, going low, almost as if he were coiling for a strike.
Drizzt hesitated, his hand shifting to draw his blades even though this seemed ridiculous to him. Kane was unarmed and unarmored, while Drizzt possessed weapons that could cut a man in half, that could slice through muscle and bone as easily as he could slide his own hand through water.
“You are uncertain,” Kane said, coming only slightly out of his stance.
“I have no desire to kill you.”
“Even if I am nothing more than a lie? That is your confusion, is it not?”
“If you are not a lie, and are indeed the man I have been told of in many heroic tales, then killing you would be a travesty and a waste,” Drizzt said. “If you are yet another illusion and part of the deception, I gain nothing by fighting you, for in that …”
He ended with a great “oomph” as Kane charged in suddenly and brutally, somersaulting and double-kicking Drizzt to launch him backward. The drow fell into a roll and executed it three full times to absorb much of the shock, but came up near the wall, far from Kane, wincing from the sting and trying to catch his breath.
Kane laughed at him. “Perhaps not as much of a challenge as I had hoped,” the Grandmaster of Flowers teased. “Draw your blades, Drizzt Do’Urden.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then there is nothing I can do for you,” Kane answered matter-of-factly, “and in accordance with my agreement with Jarlaxle, I will simply kill you here and now. Is that what you desire?”
Drizzt stared at the monk incredulously, and shook his head as Kane approached, stalking like a determined murderer indeed.
Out came the scimitars, Icingdeath and Vidrinath, in a sudden movement, one that had Drizzt rushing forward with a sudden swing at the approaching monk. He should have had the win right there. His draw and strike was perfectly executed, and too quick for almost any opponent to even realize the attack had begun.
But this was the Grandmaster of Flowers, a legendary warrior, and so Kane’s left hand came up and out as Vidrinath stabbed forward, the back of the hand slapping the flat of the blade and turning the strike harmlessly wide.
Drizzt’s movement with Icingdeath anticipated exactly that, the slightest delay followed by a low sweep coming across left-to-right just below the monk’s waist. With the sharp edge leading and coming in so powerfully, Kane surely couldn’t use his own flesh to parry.
The blade went right across, and the monk seemed to simply disappear from its path, so fluidly did Kane leap and tuck his legs up and over, touching down and immediately launching forward.
Drizzt slowed that advance with an up-angled backhand of Icingdeath, and the drow dived out the other way, not wanting to get into close combat with the unarmed man. He had the reach advantage with his scimitars, and it was not an advantage he wanted to relinquish.
But Kane was close behind, moving as fast as Drizzt—faster even!—despite the magical boost of speed offered by Drizzt’s enchanted anklets.
The monk leaped and spun to the left, his left foot executing a circle kick up high, and Drizzt leaned back just enough to avoid the blow. But Kane came around, right foot touching down, and snapped off a straight kick with that same left foot.
Drizzt crossed his blades to block, but the sheer power of the kick rocked him backward and almost took the scimitars from his hands. The ranger kept his wits enough to bring one scimitar in and around though, slashing at the monk’s extended calf.
With stunning dexterity, Kane turned that leg and collapsed it before the cut, bending at the knee to wrap his leg over the slashing blade. He rolled his foot and extended the leg, twisting Drizzt’s arm and threatening to dislodge the scimitar.
But Drizzt let go of Vidrinath so that he could retract his arm before Kane’s leg could twist and break it, and the drow went low and caught the falling blade before Kane could counter the disengage.
Drizzt ran out to the right, Kane close behind, the drow wisely double-crossing his scimitars down over his head and behind him to block another strike. He veered right, then dived left, coming up and around several strides away from the monk.
“Brilliant!” Kane congratulated. “Oh please, warrior, do not disappoint. Do not make me kill you here.”
Drizzt hardly heard the words, more concerned with Kane’s left leg, particularly around the back of the monk’s knee. There should have been blood there. His strike had been solid, even with the clever monk’s brilliantly executed parry.
But there was no blood, leading Drizzt to wonder if the grandmaster’s white tunic was somehow enchanted, lined with mithral, perhaps.
On came Kane, hands and feet punching and kicking in a furious flurry.
This was the type of fighting Drizzt knew well, though, and his blades worked with swiftness and surety, picking off strikes and countering repeatedly to be similarly blocked and countered by Kane. The drow couldn’t help but remember his fights with Entreri, or with Marilith, perhaps, where the movements were too fast for conscious thought, were simply a reaction and flow of form.
It went on for many heartbeats, a breathtaking and dizzying array of punches, stabs, kicks, and slashes, repeated and simultaneous even, for both fighters were fully ambidextrous. It was a blur of motion—no onlooker could have separated the combatants, could have discerned where scimitar ended or arm or leg began. There was no ring of metal on metal, of course, just a constant thud and whump and slap.
Around down low and out to the right went Vidrinath, then up high, outside of Kane’s left hand and forcing the arm across. Drizzt used the movement to free up his right foot and kicked up high and hard into the monk’s side.
Only then, in the moment of impact, did Drizzt realize that Kane’s corresponding left leg also went up behind the flow of arms, only much higher, indeed straight up in the air above the monk’s head.
Drizzt couldn’t even fathom the speed and dexterity of the movement, and wisely didn’t dwell on his own shock. He had to move quickly, falling and leaping back as the monk’s leg came sweeping straight down.
If the downward kick had hit him, it would have shattered his shoulder. As it was, the monk’s foot did clip him, just a bit, but enough to send him staggering back even farther.
Separated again, Drizzt barely had time to set himself before the fury of Kane was upon him once more, this time with the monk’s attacks coming more sidelong, sweeping and spinning kicks and hooks, accentuated by sudden jabs of tremendous power.
Drizzt matched and blocked, but his counterattacks came fewer now. It seemed as if Kane had increased the speed and fury beyond what Drizzt could reasonably match. The drow had never witnessed anything quite like this—even Marilith with her six blades could not strike as often or as precisely as Kane.
Drizzt backed up—he had no choice—and the monk paced him, never breaking his practiced assault, a series of movements so precise and so built into Kane’s physical memory that he seemed to hardly be working at all.
He would not tire.
Drizzt backed some more. He sensed that he was approachin
g the wall.
He couldn’t fight this opponent conventionally, so he improvised, daringly, desperately. He threw himself up high and into a backward somersault, coming around right near the wall, Kane following.
But Drizzt didn’t hold the tuck and touch down but rather extended his legs to plant them against the wall. With tremendous strength, the drow caught the momentum of the leap, and with startling agility, he re-angled his torso upward as he crashed into and pushed away from the wall, going higher and launching a second somersault, this one a forward roll, that projected him right over Kane’s head, and for the first time in the fight, the drow knew that he had actually surprised the grandmaster. He turned as he descended and came to his feet facing Kane, who had also turned.
Out slashed Icingdeath, and out came Kane’s right arm to block the blade and stop it short.
Out slashed Vidrinath, and out came Kane’s left arm to block the blade and stop it short.
And there the pair held, scimitars outside the monk’s bare arms, and Drizzt couldn’t believe his magical and mighty blades hadn’t simply cut right through.
“First blood,” Drizzt managed to say, falling back in disbelief. Indeed, there was a small line of blood on Kane’s left arm where Vidrinath had struck.
Kane merely smiled wryly and countered, “Hardly.”
Only then did Drizzt realize that he, too, was bleeding, and more than Kane, with a gash running from his lower neck and down over his collarbone from the downward cut of Kane’s earlier, seemingly impossible kick.
On came Kane.
Drizzt created a globe of darkness on the spot and met the man inside, and so they resumed, no less furiously. Fighting blind didn’t much hinder Drizzt, and, he quickly realized, did not seem to hinder Kane at all.
The drow’s senses attuned to the moment, hearing the rustle of clothing, the slight smudge of a foot turning on the floor, feeling the rush of wind ahead of an incoming strike. Drizzt ducked a high kick and stabbed out, hitting nothing, then reflexively leaped and tucked as Kane tried to leg-sweep his feet out from under him.
On and on they battled, sometimes connecting, oftentimes not. Drizzt took a stinging blow in his left shoulder and for a moment he felt his arm go dead. He rolled around to drop that shoulder back, and kicked out hard, connecting solidly on … some part of Kane. And with that recognition of his opponent’s position, Drizzt launched Vidrinath into a furious series of short stabs, all the while stubbornly trying to hold onto Icingdeath as the feeling gradually returned to his left arm.
This time it was Kane who leaped away, and Drizzt didn’t want the monk to come back into the globe of darkness from some unseen direction, so he, too, charged off, diving defensively, coming up with wild swings until he cleared the edge of his drow magic.
He saw Kane, but far back and off to the side. In that moment, Kane’s eyes flared and he leaped into motion, bringing his left arm in close, grabbing at his tunic—or rather, Drizzt realized, grabbing something from a hidden pocket on his tunic. And when Kane extended the arm again, he launched a series of small, spinning, star-shaped discs at the ranger.
Drizzt threw his feet out from under him, sheathing his scimitars as he fell flat to his belly on the floor, the monk’s missiles spinning past above him. He landed and popped up to his knees, and with Taulmaril the Heartseeker in hand.
Drizzt hated that it had come to this. He felt as if he were about to destroy a masterpiece, but off went his arrows, silver streaks of killing power, in a line at the monk.
Kane leaned back to the left, narrowly avoiding one, then farther to dodge a second. Then he swept forward and to the right as a third arrow flew harmlessly past. He leaped, he ducked, he flipped, he lay out flat, and he flipped again, and arrow after arrow went flying past him.
Finally, Drizzt stopped the barrage. He recognized that he simply could not hit the man. He blew a sigh of disbelief, flipping his hand over to return the magical bow to his enchanted belt buckle, then drew his scimitars resignedly, shaking his head.
“No, my friend, the fight is over,” said Kane.
“Then I can leave?”
“No, to leave you must defeat me.”
“You just—”
“Surrendered?” Kane asked with a chuckle. “Hardly.”
“Then fight!”
“You have mastered fire, the art of the physical,” Kane explained. “But not so the art of thought and calm. Water is your weakness now, Drizzt Do’Urden, and I, too, can strike from afar.”
“The throwing stars …” Drizzt started to say, but his voice trailed off before he finished the thought. Kane clutched his fists against his chest and dragged his arms straight down as if pulling something from his torso. His hands went down to his abdomen before he thrust them forward and opened his palms, as if launching something Drizzt’s way.
And indeed he had, but not stars and not anything that Drizzt could see, and not anything that Drizzt could block, and not anything that Drizzt could dodge.
A wave of stunning, stinging energy struck Drizzt and blew the wind out of him and turned his forthcoming question into a gasp of pain and shock. He staggered back and didn’t even realize that his scimitars had fallen from his grasp, didn’t even hear them hit the floor.
He felt the power that had entered his body, disorienting and purely numbing, and he felt as if some great talon had hooked over the line of his life energy and strummed it like a lute string.
And he felt that inner energy reverberating, singing a discordant tune within him, and his legs went weak and he continued to stagger and wasn’t even sure how he was still standing.
He had a fleeting notion that he should retrieve his scimitars when he found Grandmaster Kane standing right in front of him.
The monk shrugged and gave a resigned sigh, then hit Drizzt with a right cross that launched him head over heels and dropped him unconscious to the floor.
“We have to save him,” Kane said loudly, to the masters he knew were watching from the balcony above. “He has dedicated his entire existence to bettering himself and the world around him, and so he is a work of art, fine art, and we cannot let it be destroyed.”
CHAPTER 17
A New Outlook
CONCETTINA KNEW THAT KING YARIN WOULD EXPECT HER TO BE extra attentive this night. He came to her bearing a beautiful necklace, with glittering gems on a silver chain. She didn’t understand why, but Yarin was obviously quite proud of this gift, and of the very similar new necklace that he wore as well. He insisted that she keep it on during their lovemaking.
So she tried to feign delight, and tried to be attentive, though really, the necklaces did little to change the doldrums that inhabited their bed.
At least at first.
“Truly, you are not very good at this,” she heard herself saying, and she couldn’t believe it—and neither could Yarin, who was above her and who had been, in his mind at least, working furiously.
“What did you say?” he asked after a long hesitation, his face more full of incredulity than anything Concettina had ever before witnessed.
“Perhaps if you were more skilled, we would have a better chance at conceiving a child.” Again, Concettina couldn’t believe what she was saying, or where that courage—or stupidity—had come from.
Yarin pulled up from her a bit, stared at her, and trembled. Then he gathered up his fist and punched her right in the face.
Concettina wanted to yell out, but she heard herself … laughing.
“Better,” she said.
King Yarin punched her again, and tried for a third, but this time, Concettina caught his hand in mid swing, and stopped it as surely as would a castle wall.
“Good, you can learn,” she said, and with frightened strength, she lifted Yarin up from her and flipped him over onto his back, and was atop him before he could shout his protest.
King Yarin stumbled out of her chambers a short while later, half-dressed and thoroughly out of sorts. One of the guards in the hall
said something to him, but he dismissed the man with a wave of his hand—and that wave sent him stumbling right into the opposite wall.
In the room behind him, Queen Concettina laughed, and that followed King Yarin down the hallway until one of the sentries shut the door.
On the bed, Concettina felt … empowered. She couldn’t believe what she had done, or how she had done it. She had never been so adventurous or so forceful, not ever in her life. She wasn’t sure where it had come from, her brave words and her physical power—to take the punches and to so easily stop them and turn the tables!—and her sexual abandonment …
Desperation, she thought. Perhaps she was past the point of good sense and decorum. She knew that she was going to die if she could not conceive.
Or if King Yarin lived.
Despite her shock and the wrongness of her thoughts and actions, the woman couldn’t suppress a grin as she considered the disheveled old man limping out of her bedroom, or the fact that King Yarin wouldn’t survive many encounters like the one they had just shared.
She removed the necklace to place it with the rest of her considerable jewelry collection, but hesitated, as if her hand simply would not let her put it down.
“You can’t sleep in it, you fool,” she whispered, scolding herself, and she tried to put it down again.
“Put it on,” she heard, or thought she heard, in a soft whisper.
Concettina looked around, her gaze finally settling on the painting, and she wondered if Acelya was back at her spying post.
But no, she thought, Acelya’s voice was nasally and stuck in a perpetual whine, but this whisper she had heard had come from a low and melodic voice, a beautiful voice.
“It is your only course, Concettina,” the voice said. “Put it on.”
Growing alarmed, Concettina moved to the door and put her ear to it, then even cracked it open just a tiny bit.
One sentry was out there now, half asleep and in a chair, leaning on his halberd.
She moved back into the room. “Who are you?” she whispered.
“Put it on,” the voice replied more insistently. “You need the strength.”