Afafrenfere ducked that punch and sprang under it, past Drizzt’s undefended flank, to land with his back foot even with the drow, his right foot behind.
The monk stabbed his left arm under Drizzt’s retracting left, lifting it tight against the drow’s armpit and snaking his forearm and hand around, up, and over the drow’s shoulder to grab the back of Drizzt’s hair.
Drizzt tied to roll and duck away, but the monk was having none of it, stepping more fully behind him with easy balance.
Drizzt elbowed hard to force Afafrenfere out from behind him, to try to again gain some leverage on the left, but the monk had anticipated the desperate attack and so not only accepted the reduced hit by twisting only his torso but managed to snake his right arm outside-in under the crook of Drizzt’s elbow.
Straight up went the monk, and Drizzt was locked, his left arm caught up and out by the monk’s left, upper arm pinning the drow under the armpit, hand tight on the back of Drizzt’s hair, and with his right arm now painfully lifted at the elbow by Afafrenfere’s right.
Drizzt had to twist and roll to get out of the lock, but when he tried to maneuver, he again found weakness in his stung right knee, and the slight hesitation allowed Afafrenfere to get around enough to stamp his right foot in front of Drizzt’s. The monk lifted and shoved and tripped Drizzt right over that foot. With his arms pinned, the drow had no defense, no way to lessen the weight of the fall. He and Afafrenfere pitched over, Drizzt landing face down, the monk crashing atop him.
The stunned drow, his breath blasted out, had no defense as the monk began crawling up over him, each movement lifting Drizzt’s arms more painfully, making him even more helpless.
As his senses came back to him, Drizzt was well aware of the fact that Afafrenfere could easily pop his shoulders out of joint.
The monk knew it, too, and so he let go and leaped away, standing calmly as Drizzt finally pulled himself back to his feet. He faced Afafrenfere, who brought his hands together at his chest and bowed.
He is a demon imposter, humiliating you! the voices in Drizzt’s thoughts screamed at him. He took himself through a dark maze of unreason, coming to the conclusion, somehow, that Afafrenfere had beaten him in this manner not to humiliate him but to give the appearance that all was well—for how could such a fight have ended otherwise against a foe so greatly trained in unarmed combat?
Every instinct in Drizzt told him to leap upon the defenseless, bending man and execute a choke hold that would take the life out of him.
He even started to do so, just a hint, before catching himself, before a sliver of sanity grabbed at him.
And so he stumbled away and did not strike out at the man who had defeated him.
But neither did he return the bow, a very basic tenet of the sparring, a fact that was not missed by Afafrenfere or the onlookers.
YVONNEL RAISED MORE than one eyebrow in the room when she said to Jarlaxle, Kimmuriel, and Gromph, “He needs our help, and so let us help him.”
“Why?” Gromph asked, the question that was on all of their minds.
But before the conversation could go down that deeper road, Jarlaxle intervened. “I am trying to do exactly that.”
“And you will fail,” said Yvonnel. She looked to Kimmuriel for support, and to Jarlaxle’s surprise the psionicist nodded his agreement with her.
“Why?” Gromph asked again.
“Because the healing Jarlaxle attempts with the monks is incomplete,” Yvonnel replied.
“Not that,” said the archmage. “Why would you care about the well being of a rogue heretic from a fallen House, who has brought nothing but misery to Menzoberranzan?”
“Perhaps I see value in him,” Jarlaxle answered. “And perhaps he is my friend.”
“Not you,” Gromph clarified. “I understand your motivations, even if I think you a fool. But why you?” he asked, nodding his chin at Yvonnel. “What games do you play here?”
“He is the Champion of Menzoberranzan, or did you not witness that glorious victory?”
“He was a spear thrown at a demon, nothing more,” the archmage countered.
“Does it matter why?” Jarlaxle interjected. “Your daughter—”
“Do not call her that,” Gromph interrupted, and Jarlaxle noted the stare between him and Yvonnel. They were in agreement on this point. It seemed quite clear that their familial relationship was physical only, at least in the sense of father and daughter. That made sense to Jarlaxle, given this strange woman’s mental makeup. Was she really more Gromph’s daughter, or his—and Jarlaxle’s—mother? And of course that didn’t even matter, because more importantly, was Yvonnel anything besides the virtual avatar of Lolth, the voice of the Spider Queen as had been her namesake? Yvonnel the Eternal had torn down House Oblodra by channeling the unbridled power of Lolth. Could anything less be said of this Yvonnel’s display against Demogorgon?
“What does it matter?” Jarlaxle asked again. “She had come here with important advice—even Kimmuriel agrees with her insights. Do I not owe it to Drizzt to try?”
“I know not what your twisted mind views as your debt to that worthless rogue,” said Gromph, “but perhaps you would do well to care more about the motivations of this woman before you. Perhaps she desires Drizzt to be sane when she tortures him to death, or ruins everything that is important to him. Would that not be the way of Lolth?”
That gave Jarlaxle pause. He rested back in his chair and stared hard at Yvonnel, scrutinizing every aspect of the too-beautiful young woman. He approached her advice and offer from every conceivable angle, trying to see Gromph’s point, but he couldn’t quite get to that place of dark vision no matter how hard-pressed. He had been in the dungeon of House Baenre with Drizzt, Entreri, and Dahlia. There was no reason for Yvonnel to have gone to all of this trouble. She had him then, fully helpless and vulnerable. And if she really was speaking as the voice of Lolth, then she surely could have cured him in the dungeons of House Baenre before murdering him, had that been her desire.
So Jarlaxle let his thoughts stream out wider than merely his focus on Drizzt. Was Yvonnel, perhaps, working a greater plan to punish Jarlaxle, too? And Kimmuriel and Gromph, perhaps? Was her arrival here and were her subsequent suggestions simply a plan to destroy the larger conspiracy against Menzoberranzan, the one that included many males and even Matron Mother Zeerith Xorlarrin?
It made sense on some level, but again Jarlaxle was shaking his head. If Lolth, through Yvonnel, wanted to tamp down this budding movement of drow males and their desire to find some equality within her city, then some devious plot to heal Drizzt only to torment him would be a terrible maneuver indeed.
No, the most likely motivation was exactly what Jarlaxle saw hinted at in Yvonnel’s eyes when she first arrived. She was intrigued by Drizzt. She had seen the same possibilities of a wider and grander philosophy, one based on a love of others as much as, or more than, a love of oneself. Drizzt’s dedication to a greater cause than his own gain did hint at something from which most drow were starved.
“So let us help him,” Jarlaxle agreed.
Yvonnel nodded and smiled. “We need to go to him—I do, at least.”
“I will go with you,” said Jarlaxle.
Yvonnel considered it for a moment, then shook her head. “I know every step of my plan, and you are not a part of it at this time. No need to complicate anything.”
Jarlaxle started to protest, but Yvonnel had already turned to Kimmuriel. “I do not wish you to accompany me …”
“I would not,” he said, to which she just nodded and kept on speaking.
“But I will briefly need you soon enough, and I might need you again when the moment of truth is revealed. You can travel without constraint of distance and time, so it seems, in thought at least.”
Kimmuriel nodded, and without hesitating Jarlaxle slid over his head the silver chain upon which hung a small whistle. He tossed it to Yvonnel. “It is attuned to Kimmuriel,” he explained. “He will hear it across the very pl
anes of existence. And it will guide him truly and will allow him to quickly come to your side.”
“You can get me to this Monastery of the Yellow Rose?” Yvonnel asked Gromph.
“No.”
“I ask you for nothing more than a simple teleportation spell,” the young woman shot back. “For me and one other. Surely …”
“I do not know this place,” said Gromph. “I have never been there, nor viewed it, and so such a spell carries a risk.”
“A small one.”
“There is no risk so miniscule that I will accept it for the sake of Drizzt Do’Urden,” Gromph said. “None.”
“I can get you there,” Jarlaxle interjected, and looked to Kimmuriel. But Kimmuriel, too, shook his head, and when he thought about it, Jarlaxle understood, for Kimmuriel could not simply warp time and space randomly and without restriction. He could travel to places he knew well, or could follow the call of the whistle with his thoughts across any distance, even through planar barriers. But, like Gromph, he had never been to the monastery.
“How do you feel about riding a dragon?” Jarlaxle asked Yvonnel. “It will take a few days—longer than a teleport spell, surely—but …”
“I look forward to the experience,” she said. “Secure my passage, and get me an audience with Grandmaster Kane.”
“HE IS QUICKER than any I have fought,” Master Afafrenfere said to Savahn and Perrywinkle Shin. “Even without his magical anklets.”
“His display was most impressive,” Savahn agreed, and with a grin, she added, “For a moment, I feared that it would not be Brother Afafrenfere who would soon challenge me for the title of Master of the East Wind.”
“Drizzt could attain that rank,” Afafrenfere replied.
“No, he could not,” Perrywinkle Shin said, even as Savahn was nodding in agreement. The other two looked to the Master of Summer, the highest ranking monk of the Order of the Yellow Rose, other than Grandmaster Kane, with surprise.
Master Shin said nothing in response to those looks, just stared at them as if they should be able to figure out his reasoning.
And both nodded, remembering the end of the fight between Afafrenfere and Drizzt, when the drow didn’t bow in respect, and indeed, seemed very much as if he wanted to slug the monk in the face.
Physically, the measure of Drizzt Do’Urden seemed unlimited. He certainly could, with years of training, aspire to the level of Afafrenfere or Savahn, and likely to Perrywinkle Shin’s rank, as well—perhaps he could become one of the very few to transcend, as had Kane.
But attaining those higher levels of the Order of the Yellow Rose were less a matter of physical prowess and more about the mental and emotional discipline needed to allow a disciple to so perfectly follow the grueling regimens of understanding and of manipulating his or her body.
In this most important area, Drizzt’ Do’Urden was sorely lacking.
No one who had known Drizzt before his journey to the Underdark would have ever anticipated such a thing.
“HOW LONG?” DAHLIA asked.
Entreri could tell that she was trying hard to keep the anxiety out of her voice, and the reality that his idea had so adversely affected her pained him greatly. He hadn’t even thought about the pain he would cause Dahlia when he agreed to go with Yvonnel—Artemis Entreri simply was not used to thinking of anyone other than himself, not as a matter of course, at least.
And why wouldn’t Dahlia be in agony over his decision? She was no coward, of course, and she well understood the value of friends and the responsibilities comrades must share with each other—hadn’t Entreri, Jarlaxle, and Drizzt just rescued her, after all? But the woman was finally, after all these years of misery, finding a bit of peace and security. She had resolved her differences with her son, and now Effron was creating his chambers in the growing Hosttower of the Arcane.
And she and Entreri had found each other, both bringing something to the other that eased the pain and gave new insight and perspective.
And now he was leaving, with perhaps the most dangerous drow on the surface of Faerûn, as part of a group that included Gromph Baenre.
“You are not the same since you returned from your visit with that strange Kimmuriel creature,” Dahlia stated.
Entreri couldn’t deny the truth of that. After the meeting Yvonnel, Jarlaxle, and Kimmuriel had come to Entreri with Yvonnel’s plan—a plan that included Entreri. He would accompany Yvonnel to the Monastery of the Yellow Rose. And to precipitate that journey, Entreri had allowed Kimmuriel into his mind, a most unsettling thing indeed.
“We took a journey together,” Entreri tried to explain.
Dahlia was clearly startled by that news. “Where?”
“Not where, but when,” Entreri clarified. “Across the centuries, to memories long faded, and ones that now surprise me.”
Dahlia didn’t understand, but didn’t press the point.
“You feel like you owe this to Drizzt,” she said when Entreri’s pause went on too long for her patience. “I understand.”
Entreri shook his head. Her words were rational and logical, and followed, given the purpose of Drizzt’s trek to the Underdark where his affliction started. But still, those words sounded wrong to the assassin. This was no debt pulling him to go to Drizzt for the sake of some desperate plan to save the ranger. No, it was something more than a debt, or if a debt, then one, strangely, that Artemis Entreri owed to himself. He thought of a windswept ledge outside of Mithral Hall, of a sewer in Calimport, of a tower chamber designed specifically for him and Drizzt to do battle.
“In that case, I should go,” Dahlia said, and still Entreri shook his head.
“Yvonnel asked me, and would not even hear of Jarlaxle accompanying us.”
“Why? And why would you trust her?”
“I don’t.”
“Obviously you do!”
Entreri blew a sigh—it was hard to refute that he was indeed putting great trust in the unusual young dark elf.
“I expect that she has no reason to lure me away, since she recently had me, had all of us, in her possession,” he explained.
“What reason would she have to help Drizzt?”
“I cannot begin to know.”
Now Dahlia snorted and put her hands on her hips. “I do not wish to be difficult,” she said, “but none of this makes any sense to me.”
“Yvonnel is convinced that Drizzt needs a great trauma or a moment of high crisis in order for him to allow her spells to heal him,” Entreri explained. “And so, is there anyone in all the world better at bringing Drizzt Do’Urden to a place of great crisis than Artemis Entreri?”
His moment of levity seemed to have no effect on the woman.
“It is more a matter of making him face the truth of his despair, making him actually face the depths that he fears inevitable,” Entreri went on more seriously, “before he will surrender his stubbornness enough to let Yvonnel, or anyone, help him.”
“I am not sure I believe that,” Dahlia said.
“Neither am I,” Entreri admitted, and he didn’t add his realization that if Yvonnel was wrong, he would likely be killed. He instinctively brought his hand to the hilt of Charon’s Claw. For years he had cursed this blade for keeping him alive, though he was never really sure if the curse upon him was made from Charon’s Claw. In either case, he was fairly certain now that the Netherese blade’s hold over his soul was diminished, if not fully gone. To the point, Artemis Entreri sensed that he was mortal again, and what ill luck that was, since for perhaps the first time in his life, he did not want to die.
“You will meet with this great man, Kane, again?” Dahlia asked. Entreri had told her of his previous encounter with the Grandmaster of Flowers, more than a century before, when he and Jarlaxle had adventured in the Bloodstone Lands.
“Perhaps, if Jarlaxle can find a way to arrange it.”
Dahlia put on a wide smile, showing Entreri her acceptance and trust in him—and he greatly appreciated that.
br /> “Tell Kane that you’re the King of Vaasa,” she joked, referring again to that old encounter. “That proclamation should have him running to meet with you.”
Entreri surrendered and wrapped Dahlia in a great hug.
“Please don’t tell Catti-brie of my departure, or anything of Yvonnel’s plans,” he whispered when they broke their long kiss. “I do not wish to offer false hope.”
That raised Dahlia’s eyebrows.
Entreri could only shrug. Yvonnel’s plan seemed difficult to him, even ridiculous when he stepped back from it. But it was all they had.
DRIZZT ENTERED THE small circular chamber tentatively.
The candle was new, set in the holder exactly as the one Drizzt had seen on his first visit to this place. They had anticipated his arrival, he thought, when he noted the small fusee on the floor.
They seemed to know him well.
Too well.
The notion that he was being toyed with, that his persecutors were deriving great pleasure from walking him in endless circles, followed him to his place in front of the candle, and he rolled the fusee over in his fingers, unsure if he should proceed. He wanted to take his own measure, but he certainly didn’t want to give his captors—and that was how he was now seeing the monks—the exhibition they apparently desired.
But he couldn’t resist, so he flicked the fusee and dropped into his deep squat as he lit the candle, determined to see this through, to prove to himself at least that he could find a place of contentment, a place of silent meditation, a place where his tormentors and his torment, perhaps, could not reach him.
For the first moments, he felt as if he could hold the pose forever. It didn’t seem a trial at all as he relaxed into the full position, hands folded in front of him. He stared at the candle and let the light take him inside—not inside the candle, but inside himself.
The muscles at the back of his thighs began to pain him, burning.
He fought it off and stubbornly held his position.
Time slipped past him, irrelevant. He felt the discomfort and fought to go deeper into the candle, deeper into himself. It was his own realization of the pose that was hurting him, he knew from his many hours with Afafrenfere and the others. His muscles were twitching, seeking to hold him perfectly steady. And it was exactly that, the effort of trying to be perfect, that prevented any such thing.