With those long blades and precise movements, they were working her to exhaustion. She had to react, to overreact even, to every thrust and slash. She had to leap away from a blade sent across by a mere flick of a drow wrist.

She looked over at Entreri and the other drow, their blades ringing in a wild song and with the dark elf seeming, if anything, to be gaining an advantage. She knew she had to try something dangerous, even desperate.

Danica came ahead in a rush, and cut left suddenly, bursting out to the side though she had only three strides to the wall. Seeing her apparently caught, the closest dark elf cut fast in pursuit, stabbing at… nothing.

Danica ran right up the wall, turning over as she went and kicking out into a backward somersault that brought her down and to the side of the pursuing dark elf. She fell low as she landed and spun around viciously, one leg extended to kick out the dark elf s legs.

She would have had him, but there was his companion, swords extended, blade driving deeply into Danica's thigh. She howled and scrambled back, kicking futilely at the pursuing dark elves.

A globe of darkness fell over her. She slammed her back against the stone and had nowhere left to go.

He ran along, with the less-than-corporeal Kimmuriel Oblodra following close behind.

"You seek an exit?" the drow psionicist asked with a voice that seemed impossibly thin.

"I seek my friends," Cadderly replied.

"They are out of the mountain, likely," Kimmuriel remarked, and that slowed the priest considerably.

For indeed, would not Danica and the dwarves search for a way out of the mountain-and there were many easy exits from the lower tunnels, Cadderly knew from his searching of the place before this journey. Dozens of corridors crisscrossed down there, but a quiet pause and a lifted and wetted finger would show the drafts of air. Certainly Ivan and Pikel would have little trouble in finding their way out of the underground maze, but what of Danica?

"Something comes this way," Kimmuriel warned, and Cadderly turned to see the drow shrink back against the wall, and stand perfectly still, seeming simply to disappear.

Cadderly knew the drow wouldn't aid him in any fight and would likely even join in if the approaching footsteps were those of Kimmuriel's dark elf companions.

They were not, Cadderly knew almost as soon as that worry cropped up, for these were not the steps of any stealthy creature.

"Ye stupid doo-dad!" came the roar of a familiar voice. "Droppin' me in a hole, and one full o' rocks!"

"Ooo oi!" Pikel replied as they came bounding around the bend in the tunnel, right into the path of Cadderly's light beam.

Ivan shrieked and started to charge, but Pikel grabbed him and pulled him down, whispering into his ear.

"Hey, ye're right," the yellow-bearded dwarf admitted. "Damned drows don't use light."

Cadderly came up beside them. "Where is Danica?"

Any relief the two dwarves had felt at the sight of their friend disappeared immediately.

"Help me find her!" Cadderly said to the dwarves and to Kimmuriel, as he spun around.

Kimmuriel Oblodra, apparently fearing that Cadderly and his companions would not be safe traveling company, was already long gone.

His smile, a wicked grin indeed, widened as one of his blades came up over the other, for he knew that Entreri had nothing left with which to parry. Out went Berg'inyon's killing stab.

But the assassin was not there!

Berg'inyon's thoughts whirled frantically. Where had he gone? How were his weapons still in place with the previous parries? He knew Entreri could not have moved far, and yet, he was not there.

The angle of the sudden disengage clued Berg'inyon in to the truth, told the drow that in the same moment Berg'inyon had executed the roll, Entreri had also come forward, but down low, using Berg'inyon's own blade as the visual block.

The dark elf silently congratulated the cunning human, this man rumored to be the equal of Drizzt Do'Urden, even as he felt the jeweled dagger sliding into his back, reaching for his heart.

"You should have kept one of your lackeys with you," Entreri whispered in the drow's ear, easing the dying Berg'inyon Baenre to the floor. "He could have died beside you."

The assassin pulled free his dagger and turned around to consider the woman. He saw her get slashed, saw her skitter away, saw the globe fall over her.

Entreri winced as the two dark elves-too far away for him to offer any timely assistance-rolled out in opposite directions, flanking the woman and rushing into that darkness, swords before them.

Just a split second before the darkness fell, the dark elf standing before Danica to the right began to execute a roll farther that way, spinning a circle to bring him around quickly and with momentum, the only clue for Danica.

The other one, she guessed, was moving to her left, but both were surely coming in at a tight enough angle to prevent her from rushing straight ahead between them. Those three options: left, right, and ahead, were unavailable, as was moving back, for the stone of the wall was solid indeed.

She sensed their movements, not specifically, but enough to realize that they were coming in fast for the kill.

One option presented itself. One alone.

Danica leaped straight up, tucking her legs under her, so full of desperation that she hardly felt the burn of the wound in her thigh.

She couldn't see the double-thrust low attack of the drow to her right, nor the double-thrust high attack from the one on the left, but she felt the disturbance below her as she cleared both sets of blades. She came up high in a tuck, and kicked out to both sides with a sudden and devastating spreading snap of her legs.

She connected on both sides, driving a foot into the forehead of the drow on her right, and another into the throat of the drow on her left. She pressed through to complete extension, sending both dark elves flying away. She landed in perfect balance and burst ahead three running steps. A forward dive brought her rolling out of the darkness. She came up and around-to see the dark elf now on her left, and the one she had kicked on the forehead, still staggering backward out of the darkness globe and into the waiting grasp of Artemis Entreri.

The drow jerked suddenly, violently, and Entreri's fine sword exploded through his chest. The assassin held it there for a moment, let Charon's Claw work its demonic power, and the dark elf s face began to smolder, burn, and roll back from his skull.

Danica looked away, focusing on the darkness, waiting for the other dark elf to come rushing out. Blood was pouring from her wounded leg, and her strength was fast receding.

She was too lightheaded a moment later to hear the final gurgling of the drow dying in the darkness globe, its throat too crushed to bring in anymore air, but even if she had heard that reassuring sound, it would have done little to bolster her hopes.

She could not hold her footing, she knew, or her consciousness.

Artemis Entreri, surely no ally, was still very much alive, and very, very close.

Yharaskrik was overwhelmed. The combination of Rai-guy's magic and the continuing mental attack of the Crystal Shard had the illithid completely overmatched. Yharaskrik couldn't even focus its mental energies enough at that moment to melt away through the stone, away from the imprisoning goo.

"Surrender!" the drow wizard-cleric demanded. "You cannot escape us. We will take your word that you will promise fealty to us," the drow explained, oblivious to the shadowy form that darted out behind him to retrieve an item. "Crenshinibon will know if you lie, but if you speak of honest fealty, you will be rewarded!"