But Zaknafein did not stop. The spirit-wraith did not draw breath and did not feel pain. Zak turned back on Drizzt and flashed a smile so evil that it would have made Matron Malice stand up and applaud.

Back now on the top step of the stairway, Drizzt stood wide-eyed in amazement. He saw the gruesome wound and saw, against all possibility, Zaknafein steadily advancing, not even flinching.

“Get away,” Belwar cried from the bottom of the stairs. An ogre rushed at the deep gnome, but Clacker intercepted and immediately crushed the thing’s head in a claw.

“We must leave,” Clacker said to Belwar, the clarity of his voice turning the burrow-warden on his heel.

Belwar could see it clearly in the hook horror’s eyes; in that critical moment, Clacker was more a pech than he had been since before the wizard’s polymorph spell. “The stones tell me of illithids gathering within the castle,” Clacker explained, and the deep gnome was not surprised that Clacker had heard the voices of the stones. “The illithids will rush out soon,” Clacker continued, “to the certain demise of every slave left in the cavern!”

Belwar did not doubt a word of it, but to the svirfneblin, loyalty far outweighed personal safety. “We cannot leave the drow,” he replied through clenched teeth.

Clacker nodded in full agreement and charged out to chase away a group of gray dwarves that had come too close.

“Run, dark elf!” Belwar cried. “We have no time!” Drizzt didn’t hear his svirfneblin friend. He focused on the approaching weapon master, the monster impersonating his father, even as Zaknafein focused on him. Of all the many evils perpetrated by Matron Malice, none, by Drizzt’s estimation, were greater than this abomination. Malice somehow had perverted the one thing in Drizzt’s world that had given him pleasure. Drizzt had believed Zaknafein dead, and that thought was painful enough.

But now this.

It was more than the young drow could bear. He wanted to fight this monster with all his heart and soul, and the spirit-wraith, created for no other reason than this very battle, wholly concurred.

Neither noticed the illithid descending from the darkness above, farther back on the platform, behind Zaknafein.

“Come, monster of Matron Malice,” Drizzt growled, sliding his weapons together. “Come and feel my blades.”

Zaknafein paused only a few steps away and flashed his wicked smile again. The swords came up and the spirit-wraith took another step.

Fwoop!

The illithid’s blast rolled over both of them. Zaknafein remained unaffected, but Drizzt caught the force fully. Darkness rolled over him, his eyelids drooped with undeniable weight. He heard his scimitars fall to the stone, but he was beyond any other comprehension. Zaknafein snarled in gleeful victory, banged his swords together, and stepped toward the falling drow.

Belwar screamed, but it was Clacker’s monstrous cry of protest that sounded loudest, rising above the din of the battle-filled cavern. Everything Clacker had ever known as a pech rushed back to him when he saw the drow who had befriended him fall, doomed. That pech identity surged back more keenly, perhaps, than Clacker had even known in his former life.

Zaknafein lunged, seeing his helpless victim in range, but then smashed headfirst into a stone wall that had appeared from nothingness. The spirit-wraith bounced back, his eyes wide in frustration. He clawed at the wall and pounded on it, but it was quite real and sturdy. The stone blocked Zaknafein fully from the stairway and his intended prey.

Back down the stairway, Belwar turned his stunned gaze on Clacker. The svirfneblin had heard that some pech could conjure such stone walls. “Did you…?” the burrow-warden gasped.

The pech in a hook horror’s body did not pause long enough to answer. Clacker leaped the stairs four at a stride and gently hoisted Drizzt in his huge arms. He even thought to retrieve the drow’s scimitars, then came pounding back down the flight.

“Run.” Clacker commanded the burrow-warden. “For all of your life, run, Belwar Dissengulp!”

The deep gnome, scratching his head with his pickaxe-hand, did indeed run. Clacker cleared a wide path to the cavern’s rear exit―none dared stand before his enraged charge―and the burrow-warden, with his short svirfneblin legs, one of which was sprained, had a difficult time keeping up.

Back up the stairs, behind the wall, Zaknafein could only assume that the floating illithid, the same one that had blasted Drizzt, had blocked his charge. Zaknafein whirled about on the monster and screamed in sheer hatred.

Fwoop! Another blast came.

Zaknafein leaped up and sliced off both of the illithid’s feet with a single stroke. The illithid levitated higher, sending mental cries of anguish and distress to its companions.

Zaknafein couldn’t reach the thing, and with other illithids rushing in from every angle, the spirit-wraith didn’t have time to enact his own levitation spell. Zaknafein blamed this illithid for his failure; he would not let it escape. He hurled a sword as precisely as any spear.

The illithid looked down at Zaknafein in disbelief, then to the blade buried half to the hilt in its chest and knew that its life was at an end.

Mind flayers rushed toward Zaknafein, firing their stunning blasts as they came. The spirit-wraith had only one sword remaining, but he smashed his opponents down anyway, venting his frustrations on their ugly octopus heads.

Drizzt had escaped… for now.

Chapter 21.

Lost and Found

“Praise Lloth,” Matron Malice stammered, sensing the distant elation of her spirit-wraith. “He has Drizzt!” The matron mother snapped her gaze to one side, then the other, and her three daughters backed away at the sheer power of the emotions contorting her visage.

“Zaknafein has found your brother!”

Maya and Vierna smiled at each other, glad that this whole ordeal might finally be coming to a conclusion. Since the enactment of Zin-carla, the normal and necessary routines of House Do’Urden had virtually ceased, and every day their nervous mother had turned further and further inward, absorbed by the spirit-wraith’s hunt.

Across the anteroom, Briza’s smile would have shown a different light to any who took the time to notice, an almost disappointed light.

Fortunately for the first-born daughter, Matron Malice was too absorbed by distant events to take note. The matron mother fell deeper into her meditative trance, savoring every morsel of rage the spirit-wraith threw out, in the knowledge that her blasphemous son was on the receiving end of that anger. Malice’s breathing came in excited gasps as Zaknafein and Drizzt played through their sword fight, then the matron mother nearly lost her breath altogether.

Something had stopped Zaknafein.

“No!” Malice screamed, leaping out of her decorated throne. She glanced around, looking for someone to strike or something to throw. “No!” she cried again. “It cannot be!”

“Drizzt has escaped?” Briza asked, trying to keep the smugness out of her voice. Malice’s subsequent glare told Briza that her tone might have revealed too much of her thoughts.

“Is the spirit-wraith destroyed?” Maya cried in sincere distress.

“Not destroyed,” Malice replied, an obvious tremor in her usually firm voice. “But once more, your brother runs free!”

“Zin-carla has not yet failed,” Vierna reasoned, trying to console her excited mother.

“The spirit-wraith is very close,” Maya added, picking up Vierna’s cue.

Malice dropped back into her seat and wiped the sweat out of her eyes. “Leave me,” she commanded her daughters, not wanting them to observe her in such a sorry state. Zin-carla was stealing her life away, Malice knew, for every thought, every hope, of her existence hinged on the spirit-wraith’s success.