He pulled the door closed as he left Alegni’s room, and quickly lifted his finger to his pursed lips, indicating that Effron, who had been waiting outside the room, should remain quiet until they were away from the room.

“Will I accompany Lord Alegni to retrieve the sword?” Effron asked many steps later—a bit too eagerly for Draygo Quick’s liking.

He stared at the young warlock.

“I’ll go with him?” Effron asked again.

“You will go . . . near him,” Draygo Quick corrected. “Herzgo Alegni likely walks to his death.” He started to go on, but paused, gauging Effron’s response.

“How does that make you feel?” he asked.

Effron gave one of his twisted, awkward shrugs, trying futilely to dismiss the notion as if he didn’t care—but of course, he most certainly did.

“He’s reckless now,” Draygo Quick explained.

“Because of the sword, the urgency in retrieving it,” Effron surmised.

“Partly, but mostly because of Dahlia’s involvement. That, and the betrayal he feels at the hands of Barrabus the Gray.”

“Artemis Entreri,” Effron corrected.

Draygo Quick chortled at that, as if it hardly mattered.

“The human was his slave for decades,” Effron said. “Surely Lord Alegni could have expected no fealty there!”

“There’s always a strange dynamic at play between master and slave,” Draygo Quick explained. “An unexpected one, to be sure. Not unlike father and son.” He tilted his head in a curious manner at Effron as he spoke that thought.

“So I’m to shadow his movements,” Effron said. “And?”

“You are to retrieve Charon’s Claw,” Draygo Quick instructed. “Nothing else matters.”

Effron nodded, but there remained something less than convincing in his expression.

“Nothing else,” the old warlock reiterated. “Not the fate of Herzgo Alegni, nor that of Dahlia.”

Effron swallowed hard.

“Oh yes, I know how deeply you hate her, twisted one, but that is a battle for another day. One I will grant you, on my word—but not until Claw is safely back in Netherese hands.”

“Likely I will have to destroy them to retrieve it,” Effron said.

“Will you?”

Now it was Effron’s turn to curiously regard the master.

“We have a bargaining chip,” Draygo Quick explained. “One the drow will not readily ignore.” As he spoke, he reached into an extra-dimensional pocket in his voluminous robes and produced a small cage, one that easily fit in his palm, of glowing blue light. Inside it, in quarters too tight to pace, stood a tiny black panther, ears flattened, teeth bared.

Despite the gravity of the situation and the dangerous road ahead, Effron laughed aloud. “It was said that you destroyed the beast.”

“Destroyed? Why would I destroy something as beautiful . . .” he paused and brought the cage up before his wrinkled face, and the cat’s ears flattened even more and she gave a tiny growl, “. . . something as valuable as this.”

“I would truly love having such a companion as that,” Effron said, but he bit off the last word and swallowed hard when Draygo Quick flashed a hard stare at him.

“You could never control this one, not even if you possessed the statuette the drow carries,” Draygo Quick assured him. “She is more than a magical familiar—much more. She is tied to that drow now, bound by a hundred years and a thousand adventures. She would no sooner serve you than she would the drow’s worst mortal enemy.”

“Perhaps we are one and the same.”

“Is that your answer for everything? Your unrelenting anger at any creature in your path?” Draygo Quick didn’t try to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

“Am I to retrieve the sword or am I not?”

Draygo Quick held up the panther once more for Effron to see. “Which is more valuable to the drow, do you suppose?”

Chapter 14: Hunting Side by Side

Your step has become halting,” Entreri whispered to Drizzt, so softly that Dahlia, who was only a couple of steps behind them, had to crane her neck to hear.

“You sense it, too?” the drow asked.

“Not as clearly as you do, obviously.”

“Sense what?” Dahlia asked.

“We’re being tracked,” Drizzt replied. “Or more fittingly, we’re being shadowed.” Dahlia straightened and looked all around.

“And if they’re watching, they now know that we know,” Entreri said dryly and he looked at Dahlia and shook his head and sighed.

“There is no one about,” the elf woman replied, rather loudly. Both Drizzt and Entreri stared at her, the drow shaking his head helplessly. He, too, heaved a sigh and moved off to the side, deeper into the forest brush.

“You think there are Shadovar? Or Thayans?” Dahlia asked Entreri. “He thinks so,” the assassin replied, nodding his chin toward the drow, who was then crouched beside a bush inspecting the leaves and the ground. “Shadovar, it would seem.”

“And you trust his judgment over your own?”

“It’s not a competition,” Entreri replied. “And don’t underestimate the woodland skills of our companion. This is his domain—were we in a city, then I would take the lead. But out here in the forest—to answer your question—yes.” He finished as Drizzt came walking back over.

“Someone was here not long ago,” the drow explained. He glanced back the way they had come, leading their eyes to a fairly clear vista of the trails and roads along the lower ground they had left behind. “Likely watching for our approach.”

“Shadovar, Thayans, or someone else?”

“Shadovar,” Drizzt answered without hesitation.

“How could you know such a thing?” Dahlia asked, again with her voice full of obvious doubt.

“I know that we are being trailed.”

“Even so, have you seen our pursuers?”

Drizzt shook his head, and as he did, he stared hard at Dahlia.

“Yet you conclude that they are Shadovar,” Dahlia pressed. “Why would you believe such a thing?”

Drizzt stared at her, seeming quite amused, for some time, before saying, “The sword told me.”

Dahlia, a retort obviously at the ready on the tip of her tongue, started to reply, but gulped it back.

“It’s excited,” Drizzt said to Entreri. “I feel it.”

Entreri nodded, as if such a sensation from Charon’s Claw was not unknown or unexpected. “The young and twisted warlock, likely,” he said.

“What do you know of him?” Drizzt asked.

“I know that he is formidable, full of tricks and spells that cause grievous wounds. He does not panic when battle is upon him, and seems much wiser than his youth would indicate. He’s deadly, do not doubt, and doubly so from afar. Worse, if it is Effron shadowing us, then expect that he’s not alone.”

“You seem to know much of him,” Dahlia remarked.

“I hunted your Thayan friends beside him,” Entreri replied. “I killed your Thayan friends beside him.”

Dahlia stiffened a bit at that remark, but relaxed quickly, for really, given her parting of the ways with Sylora, how could she truly be angered at such an admission? She, too, had killed many Thayans of late.

“He was very close to Herzgo Alegni,” Entreri went on. “At times, it seemed as if he hated his fellow tiefling, but other times, they revealed a bond, and a deep one.”

“A brother?” Drizzt wondered aloud.

“An uncle?” Entreri replied with a shrug. “I know not, but I’m certain that Effron is not pleased at our treatment of Alegni. And he’s an opportunist—an ambitious one.”

“Regaining the sword would be a great boon to his reputation,” Drizzt reasoned.

“We don’t even know if it is him,” Dahlia remarked. “We don’t even know if there are Shadovar hunting us. We don’t even know if anyone is hunting us!”

“If you keep speaking so loudly, we’ll likely find out soon enough,” Entreri replied.

“Is that not a good thing?”

Dahlia’s stubbornness drew another sigh from Drizzt, and a second from Entreri, as well.

“We’ll find out,” Drizzt assured her. “But not on our hunter’s terms. We’ll find out in a place and time of our choosing.”

He turned on his heel and walked off along the path, slowly scanning the forest left and right and ahead, searching for enemies, for ambush, and for a place where they might turn the pursuit.

“Must we always play this game?” Effron asked, and though he tried to resist, he found himself spinning around to see the latest incarnation of this strange illusionist—or perhaps it was really her this time, he dared to hope.

But the Shifter’s voice replied to him from behind, yet again.

“It’s no game,” she assured him. “Many are my enemies.”

“And many are your allies.”

“Not so.”

“Perhaps you would find more allies if you were not so cursedly annoying,”

Effron offered.

“Allies among people like yourself, who wish to employ my services?”

“Is that so outrageous?”

“But are these allies not also soon to be my enemies when I am employed by one opposed to them?” the Shifter asked, and as Effron turned, her voice turned with him, always remaining behind the flustered young tiefling.

Effron lowered his gaze. “Perhaps both, then.”

“Better neither,” the Shifter replied. “Now tell me why you have come.”

“You cannot surmise?”

“If you’re expecting that I will return to Faerûn to steal back Herzgo Alegni’s lost sword, then you are a fool. That realization would sadden me, for always have I thought your foolishness because of your age, and not a defect in your reasoning powers.”

“You know of the sword?”

“Everyone knows of the sword,” the Shifter replied casually, her tone almost mocking Effron’s seriousness. “Everyone who pays attention to such things, I mean. Herzgo Alegni lost it to those whom you hired Cavus Dun to hunt. Your failure led to his failure, so it would seem.”

“My failure?” Effron asked incredulously. “Did I not send you, along with Cavus Dun—”

“Your failure,” the Shifter interrupted. “It was your mission, designed by you, and with the hunting party selected by you. That you did not properly prepare us, or did not send enough of us, rests heavily on the broken shoulders of Effron.”

“You cannot—”

“You would do well to simply acknowledge your mistake and move on, young tiefling. Cavus Dun lost valued members to this unusual trio. They have ordered no vengeance or recriminations upon you . . . yet.”

Effron surely needed no trouble with the likes of Cavus Dun! He doubted the Shifter’s description of the ramifications, doubted that any among Cavus Dun’s hierarchy were holding him responsible—they had given their blessing for the hunt, after all, and had assured him that his money, no small amount, had been well spent. More likely, he knew, the Shifter was bargaining for a better position in whatever deal Effron might offer her, and was also acting under orders from Cavus Dun to keep him back on his heels, as she had done, so that no blame for the failures in Neverwinter, from the disastrous battle against Dahlia and her cohorts to the loss of Charon’s Claw to the near-death of Lord Alegni himself, could ever be whispered in their direction.