Extinction - Lisa Smedman [23]
Ryld, unable to breathe, shouted at her the only way he could.
Flee! I am finished!
"No!" she gasped. "I won't leave you."
She lunged forward, attacking the troll with a furious barrage of blows. Ryld, observing with the eye of a master, saw that Halisstra had opened her stance, inadvertently exposing herself to what would be a fatal rake of the monster's claws.
Though Ryld should have been watching with the detachment of someone who knows he is about to die and can do nothing about it, he felt a strange emotion fill him in that impossibly long moment that stretched between two fading heartbeats, a deep sadness and a sense of infinite loss. Not only because Halisstra was about to die, but because her death would mean the end of something Ryld had only just discovered: true friendship-perhaps even love. The kind that would cause a person to willingly sacrifice herself in a hopeless attempt to save another. As their eyes met, Ryld realized that he would have done the same for Halisstra-and he saw that she knew it. He also saw something he'd never seen in the eyes of a drow: trust.
At that moment a drow female burst out of the forest, her silver-white hair plastered against her face by the rain. She was naked, save for a heavy silver chain around her waist that was hung with a large silver disk and a curved hunter's horn. She moved at a full-out sprint, holding above her head a sword whose blade glowed with leaping silver flames. With a piercing, high-pitched shout that sounded like a single note in a song, strong and true, she slashed down with her sword.
The blade bit deep into the troll's shoulder, then flared. Silver fire spread instantly across the troll's body, blinding Ryld. He winced, expecting to be burned himself, but the wave of heat he'd been anticipating never came. The flames seemed to emit song rather than heat, dancing to their own rhythm as they licked over the troll's rubbery skin.
Bellowing, its flesh blackening under the magical fire, the troll sagged to its knees. Ryld, suddenly able to breathe again as the massive hand fell away from his neck, gasped in a lungful of air. Though fouled by the stench of burning flesh, it had never tasted so sweet. He watched, dumbfounded, as the troll's body crumpled in on itself, the magical, silvery flames destroying it in a matter of heartbeats.
"I thank you, my lady," he told the drow-obviously a mage or a cleric, and a powerful one. He bowed deeply before her. "You have saved both our…"
His voice trailed off as he saw the look on the woman's face. She was staring at Halisstra with a look of surprise-and bitter anger. Ryld finally recognized the symbol on the silver disk that hung from the chain at her waist. It was a sword, set against a haloed circle. The symbol of Eilistraee.
"That's Seyll's armor," the cleric said, eyes blazing as she stared at the chain mail Halisstra was wearing. "You're the one who killed her."
The stranger wrenched the horn from her belt and blew a single, prolonged note. An instant later, the horns of her fellow hunters answered.
Chapter Seven
Nimor leaned over the map of Menzoberranzan that had been laid on the floor of the mine, its corners weighted with jagged, fist-sized chunks of silver. He gestured with his rapier.
"The spider we hope to slay has two heads," the drow told the five others-three duergar and two demons-that had gathered around the map. "Cut off either, and the body dies." The point of his blade pricked the southern edge of the city. "One head is here: Qu'ellarz'orl, the plateau where the First House stands." He moved the rapier, pointing to a spot on the northern edge of the city where a smaller cavern bulged off the main one. "The other is Tier Breche, the cavern that houses three of the most important institutions in Menzoberranzan: Sorcere, Melee-Magthere, and, most