He heard about rumors of a dragon flying over the fields to the east, and he smiled, remembering the rumors of dragons that had come to Yarin’s Court only a couple of years before.
He heard the halflings talking about some strange goings-on at the Monastery of the Yellow Rose.
“They’ve let a drow into their order,” one said with obvious disbelief, and the mention of dark elves alarmed Pikel—he had seen drow at the demon’s chamber in the mines.
“Aye,” the halfling woman replied. “But not just any. It’s Drizzt Do’Urden himself, I’ve been told, come from the Sword Coast.”
Pikel’s eyes popped open wide and he struggled mightily. The woman grabbed him to hold him steady and cried out for her husband.
“He’s in his death throes!” she told Chalmer when he rushed into the room, several others crowding in behind him. “Oh, the poor dear.”
Pikel fought through the pain. “Drizzit Dudden!” he gasped. “Drizzit Dudden!”
Chalmer and his wife looked at each other, perplexed. “What?”
“Drizzit Dudden?” echoed a halfling voice from the door.
CHAPTER 24
The Heretic
ASTARTLED DRIZZT, PANTING FOR BREATH, RETRACTED HIS ARM and saw blood dripping from the end of his glassteel blade.
“Why do you hesitate?” Entreri demanded, almost chasing him now, though his voice was pained. “You know me as a fiend! You know all as a grand lie!”
“Shut up!” Drizzt cried, and he came forward to end it, to end Artemis Entreri.
And Artemis Entreri stood straight and closed his eyes, his arms out wide, inviting the death blow.
But it was Drizzt who toppled, right after his scimitars fell to the ground, the drow crouching in agony—and indeed he was wracked by great turmoil and pain. He was sure, so sure, that it was all a lie, a grand deception to utterly destroy him, and yet, in this moment of truth, in this last desperate gasp of defiance, he found that he hadn’t the strength to do it. He could not strike down this man he had come to know as an ally.
As he could not before strike down Catti-brie.
And so he was lost, and the black wings of doubt and terror chased him to the ground and held him there, sobbing.
Artemis Entreri stood over him, saying nothing.
KIMMURIEL TOOK YVONNEL’S hand and sent his psionic wave out to the slumping ranger, and that wave carried Yvonnel’s spell, carried her consciousness.
Her mouth moved, winding a pair of chants, one divine and one arcane, dispelling magic and curing disease. With Kimmuriel’s help, she journeyed through the ranger’s recent memories, following Drizzt back to the Monastery of the Yellow Rose. At all the points where Drizzt had forced himself to claim deception against the reality around him, Yvonnel assaulted those doubts. They appeared as foggy gray curtains to her, and she easily tore them down and pressed onward, backward in time, to the next curtain of doubt and the next beyond that.
Drizzt’s remembered path led them back to Luskan. The thick curtain that had precipitated the attack against Catti-brie was torn asunder, leaving Drizzt naked with the truth that he had almost killed his beloved.
Not some fiend, but his beloved Catti-brie. Just Catti-brie. Really Catti-brie!
They were back in Menzoberranzan and House Do’Urden, and through Drizzt’s recollections, Yvonnel witnessed the death of Zaknafein.
And tore the curtain down.
Then back in the tunnels they went, descending from Gauntlgrym on the journey to Menzoberranzan, and there Yvonnel found the initial intrusion of the Abyssal Plague, a wall of confusion, depression, and doubt, an unwinding of Drizzt’s reality.
Her spells of healing slammed into that wall, chipping some darkness away, but it was not as easy as tearing down a curtain anymore.
“Give me this, Lady Lolth,” she begged, knowing that one standing nearby could answer her prayers.
She slammed into that wall of blackness once more and was repelled—but she held out hope, for it wasn’t Drizzt trying to fight her. He was broken, a witness and not a participant, as she had anticipated.
“Yiccardaria,” she whispered, and was heard.
A surge of magical strength coursed through her divine spell, spinning and diving like a drill, tossing black flakes aside as it punctured the wall of Abyssal doubt.
And there was lightness beyond, and reality beyond, and memories—trusted memories!—beyond.
The priestess came out of her spellcasting trance and staggered back under the weight of the magic she had evoked. She looked across the way, to the kneeling and sobbing Drizzt, the broken drow.
The torn masterpiece.
IN HIS MIND, he was atop Kelvin’s Cairn, his thoughts spinning and dulled from the encounter with Dahlia. She had killed him.
But Catti-brie was there, and Bruenor and Regis, rushing to him and to Guenhwyvar, and the warm healing magic flooded through him.
And Wulfgar was there.
Drizzt opened his eyes and gasped until he could steady his breath, staring at Artemis Entreri’s feet.
But holding fast to that moment atop Kelvin’s Cairn.
For it was real.
All of it.
“BRILLIANTLY EXECUTED,” SAID a female voice behind Kimmuriel and Yvonnel and both turned to see Yiccardaria’s approach.
Yvonnel knew the handmaiden would return, but Kimmuriel gasped.
“Heretic,” Yiccardaria said, and that was enough—too much, actually. Kimmuriel fell into his psionics and warp-stepped away.
Back to Illusk, beneath Luskan, Yvonnel figured.
Yiccardaria laughed.
“You could have stopped his retreat,” said Yvonnel.
“I am a handmaiden of Lolth,” Yiccardaria replied. “Of course.”
“But you let him go. So Lady Lolth approves of my work here, and of Kimmuriel’s help.”
“Or she simply doesn’t care about that mind flayer lover, either way,” said Yiccardaria.
Yvonnel nodded. “But you—she—granted me the spells to defeat the Abyssal Plague within Drizzt.”
Yiccardaria walked up beside Yvonnel and looked to the field beyond, where Drizzt remained on his knees, face in hands, weapons lying beside him.
“Did you cure it or break him?” the handmaiden asked.
“He sees the truth now, the truth that was always there in front of him. That is my guess, at least. His reactions are what I would expect from one of his conscience.”
“Good,” said Yiccardaria. “Then you have been granted your wish, to heal him that you may make his death all the more exquisite.” She held her hand out to the field and the ranger. “I would prefer to watch you turn him into a drider, and I will show you how.”
“No.”
The simple answer stopped Yiccardaria before she could ever get going. “No? You prefer to simply torture him to death?”
“No.”
“There will be no easy death,” the handmaiden said. “That is the bargain. And weave no more clever traps for the heretic Drizzt. If you wish him to live for a bit longer, then make of him a drider. If not that, then begin your torture and I will relay his screams to the Spider Queen. They will please her.”
“No.”
“No, what?”
“No, I will weave no clever plans to destroy him,” Yvonnel said. “I will not torture him, or kill him, and certainly will not turn him into a drider,”
The handmaiden stared at her threateningly. “There is no bargain to be had here,” she warned. “You will do as we agreed.”
“Will I?” Yvonnel asked, and she looked past Yiccardaria and gave a little nod.
The handmaiden swung around, and even called “Kimmuriel!” as if suspecting the two had plotted this blasphemy.
But it was not Kimmuriel Oblodra standing behind her.
It was Kane, Grandmaster of Flowers.
Without a word, with speed the demon couldn’t begin to anticipate, the monk delivered a right cross into the handmaiden?
??s pretty drow face, hitting her so hard he knocked her right out of her disguise. She resembled a lump of mud, or a half-melted candle with waving tentacles again, planted on the ground where the drow woman had stood.
She flailed, but those tentacles weren’t really aimed, as Yiccardaria was trying vainly to get past the stunning power of Kane.
He hit her again, right and left, and leaped up high to drop a devastating double-kick upon her. He back flipped off her, landing facing her. He unloaded a barrage so brutal and forceful that Yvonnel found herself inadvertently backing away.
The handmaiden never had a chance, never even managed a single block or retaliating swing.
She just sank down to the ground, a bubbling pile of oozing, melting mud.
Kane bowed to his defeated opponent and stood straight, looking at Yvonnel, and the woman knew she was wearing a face full of trepidation. She had never witnessed such overwhelming, controlled brutality, such speed, precision, and sheer power, and especially not from a seemingly unarmed human.
“And now, Lolth will declare me a heretic,” Yvonnel said with a shrug. “I am in good company, though.”
“Is he really cured?” the monk asked, looking out at the field.
“He did not expel me when I went into his mind with the truth,” Yvonnel explained. “He was broken, with nothing to lose and in full crisis.”
“As you predicted.”
The woman nodded. “Until this moment, Drizzt could not be cured because he could not trust the healer. Now, what choice did he have?”
“Then let us go and see,” said Kane, and he led Yvonnel out of the copse of trees and onto the field.
Drizzt was still on his knees, Entreri standing beside him. The drow looked up at the approach of Kane and Yvonnel, his eyes going wide indeed when he saw Gromph’s daughter.
“Well met again, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Yvonnel said.
Drizzt glanced at his scimitars, lying beside him on the ground.
“Yes, I do believe that you would more easily strike me down than you ever could Catti-brie, or Artemis Entreri, it would seem,” Yvonnel said, and those lavender eyes fixed upon her once more.
“You know the truth,” Yvonnel announced. “You are cured.”
“And?” Drizzt asked, and the woman shrugged.
“And so you are free,” Yvonnel replied. “We will get you back to Luskan and Catti-brie. All is well there, and proceeding with brilliant magic and beauty. Yet there is no satisfaction in Catti-brie’s eyes, I fear.”
Drizzt tilted his head a bit, curious.
“Because of you, of course,” said Entreri. “She is heartbroken, but that too is soon to be cured.”
“Is it?” Drizzt asked, staring directly at Yvonnel again. “Is this your ultimate or penultimate play regarding my … future?”
“I hope it will not prove to be my last adventure with you,” Yvonnel admitted, and that made Entreri’s eyes widen as much as Drizzt’s, which made the woman simply laugh. “But it is the last of this journey we have walked together—yes, the ultimate play. I give to you your thoughts untwisted, your heart trusting, your path your own to choose.”
“Why?”
“Because you have earned it, and I would be a lesser and petty thing to allow my surprise at your resilience, at the power of your love, to lead me to jealousy instead of, perhaps, enlightenment. And I am not a lesser and petty thing.”
“I am free?”
“Of course.”
“With no debt owed?
“None to me.” She looked to Kane. “As for the monastery …”
“No debt owed …” Kane began, but he looked askew at Drizzt for a moment, then changed his mind. “There is one thing I would ask of you.”
DRIZZT WATCHED THE candle burn out—a full candle, a burn measured in hours and not minutes.
For nearly three hours, he had remained in his stance, his posture perfect, his breathing slowed and smooth, his thoughts blissfully empty. He had never come close to this length of time, not one-tenth of the candle had burned before his previous collapses.
Now the whole of it was melted, and Drizzt felt as if he could go on—and he expected that he would be doing exactly that when Grandmaster Kane entered the room. But the monk motioned for him to stand, and did so with a look of approval, joy even.
“There is no need to go further at this time,” Kane said.
“Why? Why is there a limit?”
“There are not six in the order who could see a candle through its burn,” Kane explained. “To get to this place, this length, one must hold to pure inner peace.” The monk nodded. “I can confirm the words of Yvonnel. You are indeed cured of your malady, Drizzt Do’Urden.”
“I am,” the drow replied. “And I am anxious to be home.” He gave a little laugh. “And at the same time, I am intrigued by this place and these teachings.”
“You have many years of life before you. Close no doors behind as you journey on.”
Drizzt nodded and followed Kane out of the room. To Drizzt’s surprise, the monks had prepared a feast for him, in his honor and in celebration of his cure. Artemis Entreri was there, which pleased him.
Yvonnel was there, which confused him.
Kane sat him right next to the woman, with Entreri on the other side of her and Afafrenfere flanking Drizzt.
“Yes, there is much you do not know,” Yvonnel said with a laugh, looking into the doubts plainly etched on Drizzt’s face.
“I have left Menzoberranzan behind,” she explained. “I suspect that the Spider Queen hates me more than she hates you now.”
“You sound pleased by that.”
“Amused,” Yvonnel corrected. “It will pass. Lolth has more pressing problems than a runaway priestess.”
“A priestess no more, I would expect.”
“We shall see. Lady Lolth is more complicated than most would imagine. My surprises, like your own, likely amuse her more than they anger her, for they throw her children into chaos. You understood that about yourself, did you not, Drizzt Do’Urden?”
He shook his head, not catching on.
“All the time as you ran from your heritage, to the battles you waged against drow, even when your dwarf friend killed my namesake—a most painful memory, I assure you—you were unwittingly doing the work of Lolth.”
Drizzt bristled at that, sitting straight.
“Take no offense,” Yvonnel clarified. “You were not serving Lolth, but your actions surely did, for she thrives on strife and chaos and conflict. A harmonious Menzoberranzan bores her and allows her devout followers too much time to consider things anew, and so she will never let it be that way.”
Drizzt relaxed, but still couldn’t quite manage to blink.
“Perhaps someday we will take it from her,” Yvonnel said.
“It?”
“Menzoberranzan,” said the woman. “And our own destinies. Is that not something you have desired?”
“You think to lead a revolution?”
“Our lives are long,” said Yvonnel. “Who knows what changes a millennium might bring?”
Drizzt was about to make a snide remark that perhaps Yvonnel would fall back under Lolth’s spell, but he held the words and instead considered the great changes he had seen in the world over the course of two centuries.
The journey forward was a somewhat circular path, but rarely did it wind up in exactly the same place.
There was always a surprise.
And so it was the very next morning, just as Drizzt, Yvonnel, and Entreri were preparing to leave to find Tazmikella, when a tired and dirty halfling came galloping up the hill on a tired and dirty pony.
“I seek the drow named Drizzt Do’Urden!” she shouted to the monks who stood on the porch of the monastery’s grand front door, with Drizzt and the others saying their farewells to the masters of the order. “Or Drizzit Dudden, or something like that!” the halfling added frantically.
“Drizzit Dudden?” Drizzt whispered. It was a curious
mash-up of his name, one he had only heard from a single fellow a long, long time before.
WE SHOULD BE away, Denderida’s fingers flashed to Priestess Charri.
Malcanthet contained the threat, Charri’s hands responded.
For now. There will be more.
Charri Hunzrin walked to the ill-fitting door of the chamber the spriggans had provided for her and her entourage. She certainly sympathized with the sentiments Denderida was expressing, but there were other matters in play less favorable to that course.
House Hunzrin had brought Malcanthet to the surface, purposefully so and without the blessing of House Baenre or the explicit guidance of Lolth. It behooved Charri and the others to make sure the succubus was fully contented with their performance, or she would surely report back to Matron Mother Baenre.
“Another tenday,” Charri said.
“A tenday in this filthy place,” one of the others lamented, and Charri didn’t scold her. How could she disagree? She preferred even stinky goblins and orcs to these utterly disgusting spriggans, and it wasn’t even a close comparison.
Her fingers flashed to Denderida, Go to Toofless and secure us a place nearer the surface, and nearer to Vaasa. If trouble comes to Malcanthet, then let Malcanthet and her spriggan allies handle it.
Denderida nodded, and soon after, the drow were marching fast to the northwest along the tunnels of upper Smeltergard, to areas far less inhabited, and, Charri believed, far preferable.
THEY TOOK DIRECTIONS from the Kneebreaker, a fine middle-aged woman named Brouha, but did not invite her to ride along. If she was about to take offense to that, surely her opinion was changed and her eyes opened wide when Artemis Entreri dropped an obsidian figurine to the ground and summoned a black-as-coal, hellish horse—a nightmare—all fiery hooves and smoking breath.
And as the assassin scrambled up onto his mount, Drizzt blew a whistle and a second mount appeared, seeming far, far away. Even from this apparently great distance, though, all gathered on the front porch of the monastery could see the dramatic contrast. This one was no hellish beast but a unicorn, brilliantly white and with a beautiful horn.