Homeland (29 page)
He peeked around at the gnomish guards, still holding their silent vigil, completely unaware. Drizzt drew his blades and patted Guenhwyvar for luck, then called upon the innate magic of his race and dropped a globe of darkness in the corridor.
Squeals of alarm sounded throughout the tunnels, and Drizzt charged in, diving right into the darkness between the unseen guards and rolling back to his feet on the other side of his spell, only two running strides from the small chamber. He saw a dozen gnomes scrambling about, trying to prepare their defenses. Few of them paid Drizzt any attention, though, as the sounds of battle erupted from various side corridors.
One gnome chopped a heavy pick at Drizzt’s shoulder. Drizzt got a blade up to block the blow but was amazed at the strength in the diminutive gnome’s arms. Still, Drizzt could then have killed his attacker with the other scimitar. Too many doubts, and too many memories, though, haunted his actions. He brought a leg up into the gnome’s belly, sending the little creature sprawling.
Belwar Dissengulp, next in line for Drizzt, noted how easily the young drow had dispatched one of his finest fighters and knew that the time had already come to use his most powerful magic. He pulled the emerald summoning stone from his neck and threw it to the ground at Drizzt’s feet.
Drizzt jumped back, sensing the emanations of magic. Behind him, Drizzt heard the approach of his companions, overpowering the shocked gnome guards and rushing to join him in the chamber. Then Drizzt’s attentions went squarely to the heat patterns of the stone floor in front of him. The grayish lines wavered and swam, as if the stone was somehow coming alive.
The other drow fighters roared in past Drizzt, bearing down on the gnome leader and his charges. Drizzt didn’t follow, guessing that the event unfolding at his feet was more critical than the general battle now echoing throughout the complex.
Fifteen feet tall and seven wide, an angry, towering humanoid monster of living stone rose before Drizzt.
“Elemental!” came a scream to the side. Drizzt glanced over to see Masoj, Guenhwyvar at his side, fumbling through a spellbook, apparently in search of some dweomer to battle this unexpected monster. To Drizzt’s dismay, the frightened wizard mumbled a couple of words and vanished.
Drizzt set his feet under him, and took a measure of the monster, ready to spring aside in an instant. He could sense the thing’s power, the raw strength of the earth embodied in living arms and legs.
A lumbering arm swung out in a wide arc, whooshing above Drizzt’s ducking head and slamming into the cavern wall, crushing rocks into dust.
“Do not let it hit me,” Drizzt instructed himself in a whisper that came out as a disbelieving gasp. As the elemental recoiled its arm, Drizzt poked a scimitar at it, chipping away a small chunk, barely a scratch. The elemental grimaced in pain—apparently Drizzt could indeed hurt it with his enchanted weapons.
Still standing in the same spot off to the side, the invisible Masoj held his next spell in check, watching the spectacle and waiting for the combatants to weaken each other. Perhaps the elemental would destroy Drizzt altogether. Invisible shoulders gave a resigned shrug. Masoj decided to let the gnomish power do his dirty work for him.
The monster launched another blow, and another, and Drizzt dived forward and scrambled through the thing’s stone pillar legs. The elemental reacted quickly and stomped heavily with one foot, barely missing the agile drow, and sending branching cracks in the floor for many feet in either direction.
Drizzt was up in a flash, slicing and thrusting with both his blades into the elemental’s backside, then springing back out of reach as the monster swung about, leading with another ferocious blow.
The sounds of battle grew more distant. The gnomes had taken flight—those that were still alive—but the drow warriors were in full pursuit, leaving Drizzt to face the elemental.
The monster stomped again, the thunder of its foot nearly knocking Drizzt from his feet, and it came in hard, falling down at Drizzt, using the tonnage of its body as a weapon. If Drizzt had been even slightly surprised, or if his reflexes had not been honed to such perfection, he surely would have been crushed flat. He managed to get to the side of the monster’s bulk, while taking only a glancing blow from a swinging arm.
Dust rushed up from the terrific impact; cavern walls and ceiling cracked and dropped flecks and stones to the floor. As the elemental regained its feet, Drizzt backed away, overwhelmed by such unconquerable strength.
He was all alone against it, or so Drizzt thought. A sudden ball of hot fury enveloped the elemental’s head, claws raking deep scratches into its face.
“Guenhwyvar!” Drizzt and Masoj shouted in unison, Drizzt in elation that an ally had been found, and Masoj in rage. The wizard did not want Drizzt to survive this battle, and he dared not launch any magical attacks, at Drizzt or the elemental, with his precious Guenhwyvar in the way.
“Do something, wizard!” Drizzt cried, recognizing the shout and understanding now that Masoj was still around.
The elemental bellowed in pain, its cry sounding as the rumble of huge boulders crashing down a rocky mountain. Even as Drizzt moved back in to help his feline friend, the monster spun, impossibly quick, and dived headfirst to the floor.
“No!” Drizzt cried, realizing that Guenhwyvar would be crushed. Then the cat and the elemental, instead of slamming against the stone, sank down into it!
The purple flames of faerie fire outlined the figures of the gnomes, showing the way for drow arrows and swords. The gnomes countered with magic of their own, illusionists’ tricks mostly. “Down here!” one drow soldier cried, only to slam face first into the stone of a wall that had appeared as the entrance to a corridor.
Even though the gnome magic managed to keep the dark elves somewhat confused, Belwar Dissengulp grew frightened. His elemental, his strongest magic and only hope, was taking too long with the single drow warrior far back in the main chamber. The burrow-warden wanted the monster by his side when the main combat began. He ordered his forces into tight defensive formations, hoping that they could hold out.
Then the drow warriors, detained no more by gnomish tricks, were upon them, and fury stole Belwar’s fear. He lashed out with his heavy pickaxe, smiling grimly as he felt the mighty weapon bite into drow flesh.
All magic was aside now, all formations and carefully laid battle plans dissolved into the wild frenzy of the brawl. Nothing mattered, except to hit the enemy, to feel the pick head or blade sinking into flesh. Above all others, deep gnomes hated the drow, and in all the Underdark there was nothing a dark elf enjoyed more than slicing a svirfnebli into littler pieces.
Drizzt rushed to the spot, but only the unbroken section of floor remained. “Masoj?” he gasped, looking for some answers from the one schooled in such strange magic.
Before the wizard could answer, the floor erupted behind Drizzt. He spun, weapons ready, to face the towering elemental.
Then Drizzt watched in helpless agony as the broken mist that was the great panther, his dearest companion, rolled off the elemental’s shoulders and broke apart as it neared the floor.
Drizzt ducked another blow, though his eyes never left the dissipating dust-and-mist cloud. Was Guenhwyvar no more? Was his only friend gone from him forever? A new light grew in Drizzt lavender eyes, a primal rage that simmered throughout his body. He looked back to the elemental, unafraid.
“You are dead,” he promised, and he walked in.
The elemental seemed confused, though of course it could not understand Drizzt’s words. It dropped a heavy arm straight down to squash its foolish opponent. Drizzt did not even raise his blades to parry, knowing that every ounce of his strength could not possibly deflect such a blow. Just as the falling arm was about to reach him, he dashed forward, within its range.
The quickness of his move surprised the elemental, and the ensuing flurry of swordplay took Masoj’s breath away. The wizard had never seen such grace in battle, such fluidity of motion. Drizzt climbed up and down the elemental’s body, hacking and slashing, digging the points of his weapons home and flicking off pieces of the monster’s stone skin.
The elemental howled its avalanche howl and spun in circles, trying to catch up to Drizzt and squash him once and for all. Blind anger brought new levels of expertise to the magnificent young swordsman, though, and the elemental caught nothing but air or its own stony body under its heavy slaps.
“Impossible,” Masoj muttered when he found his breath. Could the young Do’Urden actually defeat an elemental? Masoj scanned the rest of the area. Several drow and many gnomes lay dead or grievously wounded, but the main fighting was moving even farther away as the gnomes found their tiny escape tunnels and the drow, enraged beyond good sense, followed them.
Guenhwyvar was gone. In this chamber, only Masoj, the elemental, and Drizzt remained as witnesses. The invisible wizard felt his mouth draw up in a smile. Now was the time to strike.
Drizzt had the elemental lurching to one side, nearly beaten, when the bolt roared in, a blast of lightning that blinded the young drow and sent him flying into the chamber’s back wall. Drizzt watched the twitch of his hands, the wild dance of his stark white hair before his unmoving eyes. He felt nothing—no pain, no reviving draw of air into his lungs—and heard nothing, as if his life force had been some how suspended.
The attack dispelled Masoj’s dweomer of invisibility, and he came back in view, laughing wickedly. The elemental, down in a broken, crumbled mass, slowly slipped back into the security of the stone floor.
“Are you dead?” the wizard asked Drizzt, the voice breaking the hush of Drizzt’s deafness in dramatic booms. Drizzt could not answer, didn’t really know the answer anyway. “Too easy,” he heard Masoj say, and he suspected that the wizard was referring to him and not the elemental.
Then Drizzt felt a tingling in his fingers and bones and his lungs heaved suddenly, grabbing a volume of air. He gasped in rapid succession, then found control of his body and realized that he would survive.
Masoj glanced around for returning witnesses and saw none. “Good,” he muttered as he watched Drizzt regain his senses. The wizard was truly glad that Drizzt’s death had not been so very painless. He thought of another spell that would make the moment more fun.
A hand—a gigantic stone hand—reached out of the floor just then and grasped Masoj’s leg, pulling his feet right into the stone.
The wizard’s face twisted in a silent scream.
Drizzt’s enemy saved his life. Drizzt snatched up one of the scimitars from the ground and hacked at the elemental’s arm. The weapon sliced in, and the monster, its head reappearing between Drizzt and Masoj, howled in rage and pain and pulled the trapped wizard deeper into the stone.
With both hands on the scimitar’s hilt, Drizzt struck as hard as he could, splitting the elemental’s head right in half. This time the rubble did not sink back into its earthen plane; this time the elemental was destroyed.
“Get me out of here!” Masoj demanded. Drizzt looked at him, hardly believing that Masoj was still alive, for he was waist deep in solid stone.
“How?” Drizzt gasped. “You …” He couldn’t even find the words to express his amazement.
“Just get me out!” the wizard cried.
Drizzt fumbled about, not knowing where to begin.
“Elementals travel between planes,” Masoj explained, knowing that he had to calm Drizzt down if he ever wanted to get out of the floor. Masoj knew, too, that the conversation could go a long way in deflecting Drizzt’s obvious suspicions that the lightning bolt had been aimed at him. “The ground an earth elemental traverses becomes a gate between the Plane of Earth and our plane, the Material Plane. The stone parted around me as the monster pulled me in, but it is quite uncomfortable.” He twitched in pain as the stone tightened around one foot. “The gate is closing fast!”
“Then Guenhwyvar might be …” Drizzt started to reason.
He plucked the statuette right out of Masoj’s front pocket and carefully inspected it for any flaws in its perfect design.