Entreri entered the chamber right after Bok, using the commotion caused by the golem to slip unnoticed through the door and off into the shadows in a manner strikingly similar to the drow. As they approached the midpoint of the oval room’s wall, each was met by a shadow so akin to his own that he had to stop and take measure of it before he engaged.
“So at last I meet Drizzt Do’Urden,” Entreri hissed.
“The advantage is yours,” replied Drizzt, “for I know naught of you.”
“Ah, but you will, black elf!” the assassin said, laughing. In a blur, they came together, Entreri’s cruel saber and jeweled dagger matching the speed of Drizzt’s whirring scimitars.
Wulfgar pounded his hammer into the golem with all his might, the monster, distracted by its pursuit of the drow, not even raising a pretense of defense. Aegis-fang knocked it back, but it seemed not to notice, and started again toward its prey. Bruenor and Wulfgar looked at each other in disbelief and drove in on it again, hammer and axe flailing.
Regis lay, unmoving against the wall, stunned by the kick of Bok’s heavy foot. Catti-brie, though, was back up on one knee, her sword in hand. The spectacle of grace and skill of the combatants along the wall held her in check for a moment.
Sydney, just outside the doorway, was likewise distracted, for the battle between the dark elf and Entreri was unlike anything she had ever seen, two master swordsmen weaving and parrying in absolute harmony.
Each anticipated the other’s movements exactly, countering the other’s counter, back and forth in a battle that seemed as though it could know no victor. One appeared the reflection of the other, and the only thing that kept the onlookers aware of the reality of the struggle was the constant clang of steel against steel as scimitar and saber came ringing together. They moved in and out of the shadows, seeking some small advantage in a fight of equals. Then they slipped into the darkness of one of the alcoves.
As soon as they disappeared from sight, Sydney remembered her part in the battle. Without further delay, she drew a thin wand from her belt and took aim on the barbarian and the dwarf. As much as she would have liked to see the battle between Entreri and the dark elf played out to its end, her duty told her to free up the golem and let it take the drow quickly.
Wulfgar and Bruenor dropped Bok to the stone, Bruenor ducking between the monster’s legs while Wulfgar slammed his hammer home, toppling Bok over the dwarf.
Their advantage was short-lived. Sydney’s bolt of energy sliced into them, its force hurling Wulfgar backward into the air. He rolled to his feet near the opposite door, his leather jerkin scorched and smoking, and his entire body tingling in the aftermath of the jolt.
Bruenor was slammed straight down to the floor and he lay there for a long moment. He wasn’t too hurt—dwarves are as tough as mountain stone and especially resistant to magic—but a specific rumble that he heard while his ear was against the floor demanded his attention. He remembered that sound vaguely from his childhood, but couldn’t pinpoint its exact source.
He did know, though, that it foretold doom.
The tremor grew around them, shaking the chamber, even as Bruenor lifted his head. The dwarf understood. He looked helplessly to Drizzt and yelled, “Ware elf!” the second before the trap sprang and part of the alcove’s floor fell away.
Only dust emerged from where the drow and the assassin had been. Time seemed to freeze for Bruenor, who, was fixated upon that one horrible moment. A heavy block dropped from the ceiling in the alcove, stealing the very last of the dwarf’s futile hopes.
The execution of the stonework trap only multiplied the violent tremors in the chamber. Walls cracked apart, chunks of stone shook loose from the ceiling. From one doorway, Sydney cried for Bok, while at the other, Wulfgar threw the locking bar aside and yelled for his friends.
Catti-brie leaped to her feet and rushed to the fallen halfling. She dragged him by the ankles toward the far door, calling for Bruenor to help.
But the dwarf was lost in the moment, staring vacantly at the ruins of the alcove.
A wide crack split the floor of the chamber, threatening to cut off their escape. Catti-brie gritted her teeth in determination and charged ahead, making the safety of the hallway. Wulfgar screamed for the dwarf, and even started back for him.
Then Bruenor rose and moved toward them—slowly, his head down, almost hoping in his despair that a crack would open beneath him and drop him into a dark hole.
And put an end to his intolerable grief.
20. End of a Dream
When the last tremors of the cave-in had finally died away, the four remaining friends picked their way through the rubble and the veil of dust back to the oval chamber. Heedless of the piles of broken stone and the great cracks in the floor that threatened to swallow them up, Bruenor scrambled into the alcove, the others close on his heels.
No blood or any other sign of the two master swordsmen was anywhere to be found, just the mound of rubble covering the hole of the stonework trap. Bruenor could see the edgings of darkness beneath the pile, and he called out to Drizzt. His reason told him, against his heart and hopes, that the drow could not hear, that the trap had taken Drizzt from him.
The tear that rimmed his eye dropped to his cheek when he spotted the lone scimitar, the magical blade that Drizzt had plundered from a dragon’s lair, resting against the ruins of the alcove. Solemnly, he picked it up and slid it into his belt.
“Alas for ye, elf,” he cried into the destruction. “Ye deserved a better end.” If the others had not been so caught up in their own reflections at that moment, they would have noticed the angry undertone to Bruenor’s mourning. In the face of the loss of his dearest and most trusted friend, and already questioning the wisdom of continuing through the halls before the tragedy, Bruenor found his grief muddled with even stronger feelings of guilt. He could not escape the part he had played in bringing about the dark elf’s fall. He remembered bitterly how he had tricked Drizzt into joining the quest, feigning his own death and promising an adventure the likes of which none of them had ever seen.
He stood now, quietly, and accepted his inner torment.
Wulfgar’s grief, was equally deep, and uncomplicated by other feelings. The barbarian had lost one of his mentors, the warrior who had transformed him from a savage, brutish warrior to a calculating and cunning fighter.
He had lost one of his truest friends. He would have followed Drizzt to the bowels of the Abyss in search of adventure. He firmly believed that the drow would one day get them into a predicament from which they could not escape, but when he was fighting beside Drizzt, or competing against his teacher, the master, he felt alive, existing on the very dangerous edge of his limits. Often Wulfgar had envisioned his own death beside the drow, a glorious finish that the bards would write and sing about long after the enemies who had slain the two friends had turned to dust in unmarked graves.
That was an end the young barbarian did not fear.
“Ye’ve found yer peace now, me friend,” Catti-brie said softly, understanding the drow’s tormented existence better than anyone. Catti-brie’s perceptions of the world were more attuned to Drizzt’s sensitive side, the private aspect of his character that his other friends could not see beneath his stoic features. It was the part of Drizzt Do’Urden that had demanded he leave Menzoberranzan and his evil race, and had forced him into a role as an outcast. Catti-brie knew the joy of the drow’s spirit, and the unavoidable pain he had suffered at the snubbings of those who could not see that spirit for the color of his skin.