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behind us."
"Not a darkness," Drizzt replied. "Conyberry is as it appears: a humble
farming village of good and honest folk."
"But Agatha," Wulfgar protested.
"A hundred similar villages line this countryside," Drizzt explained. "Many
unnamed, and all unnoticed by the lords of the land. Yet all of the villages,
and even the Lords of Waterdeep, I would guess, have heard of Conyberry and the
ghost of Neverwinter Wood."
"Agatha brings them fame," Wulfgar concluded.
"And a measure of protection, no doubt," added Drizzt.
"For what bandit would lay out along the road to Conyberry with a ghost
haunting the land?" Wulfgar laughed. "Still, it seems a strange marriage."
"But not our business," Drizzt said, stopping his horse. "The tangle the man
spoke of." He pointed to a copse of twisted birch trees. Behind it, Neverwinter
Wood loomed dark and mysterious.
Wulfgar's horse flattened its ears. "We are close," the barbarian said,
slipping from the saddle. They tethered their mounts and started into the
tangle, Drizzt as silent as a cat, but Wulfgar, too big for the tightness of the
trees, crunching with every step.
"Do you mean to kill the thing?" he asked Drizzt.
"Only if we must," the drow replied. "We are here for the mask alone, and we
have given our word to the people of Conyberry."
"I do not believe that Agatha will willingly hand us her treasures," Wulfgar
reminded Drizzt. He broke through the last line of birch trees and stood beside
the drow at the dark entrance to the thick oaks of the forest.
"Be silent now," Drizzt whispered. He drew Twinkle and let its quiet blue
gleam lead them into the gloom.
The trees seemed to close in about them; the dead hush of the wood only made
them more concerned with the resounding noise of their own footfalls. Even
Drizzt, who had spent centuries in the deepest of caverns, felt the weight of
this darkest corner of Neverwinter on his shoulders. Evil brooded here, and if
either he or Wulfgar had any doubts about the legend of the banshee, they knew
better now. Drizzt pulled a thin candle from his belt pouch and broke it in
half, handing a piece to Wulfgar.
"Stuff your ears," he explained in a breathless whisper, reiterating
Malchor's warning. "To hear her keen is to die."
The path was easy to follow, even in the deep darkness, for the aura of evil
rolled down heavier on their shoulders with every step. A few hundred paces
brought the light of a fire into sight. Instinctively they both dropped to a
defensive crouch to survey the area.
Before them lay a dome of branches, a cave of trees that was the banshee's
lair. Its single entrance was a small hole, barely large enough for a man to
crawl through. The thought of going into the lighted area within while on their
hands and knees did not thrill either of them. Wulfgar held Aegis-fang before
him and indicated that he would open a bigger door. Boldly he strode toward the
dome.
Drizzt crept up beside him, uncertain of the practicality of Wulfgar's idea.
Drizzt had the feeling that a creature who had survived so successfully for so
very long would be protected against such obvious tactics. But the drow didn't
have any better ideas at the moment, so he dropped back a step as Wulfgar
hoisted the war hammer above his head.
Wulfgar spread his feet wide for balance and took a steadying breath, then
slammed Aegis-fang home with all his strength. The dome shuddered under the
blow; wood splintered and went flying, but the drow's concerns soon came to
light. For as the wooden shell broke away, Wulfgar's hammer drove down into a
concealed mesh of netting. Before the barbarian could reverse the blow,
Aegis-fang and his arms were fully entangled.
Drizzt saw a shadow move across the firelight inside, and, recognizing his
companion's vulnerability, he didn't hesitate. He dove through Wulfgar's legs
and into the lair, his scimitars nipping and jabbing wildly as he came. Twinkle
nicked into something for just a split second, something less than tangible, and
Drizzt knew that he had hit the creature of the nether world. But dazed by the
sudden intensity of the light as he came into the lair, Drizzt had trouble
finding his footing. He kept his head well enough to discern that the banshee
had scampered into the shadows off to the other side. He rolled up to a wall,
put his back against it for support, and scrambled to his feet, deftly slicing
through Wulfgar's bonds with Twinkle.
Then came the wail.
It cut through the feeble protection of the candle wax with bone-shivering
intensity, sapping into Drizzt's and Wulfgar's strength and dropping a dizzying
blackness over them. Drizzt slumped heavily against the wall, and Wulfgar,
finally able to tug free of the stubborn netting, stumbled backward into the
black night and toppled onto his back.
Drizzt, alone inside, knew that he was in deep trouble. He battled against
the dizzying blur and the stinging pain in his head and tried to focus on the
firelight.
But he saw two dozen fires dancing before his eyes, lights he could not
shake away. He believed that he had come out of the keen's effects, and it took
him a moment to realize the truth of the place.
A magical creature was Agatha, and magical protections, confusing illusions
of mirror images, guarded her home.
Suddenly Drizzt was confronted on more than twenty fronts by the twisted
visage of a long-dead elven maiden, her skin withered and stretched along her [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]