Chapter 8
Jarlaxle wasn't surprised at all when the soldiers returned later, sans Entreri, to take him to the torture chamber. He only hoped that his friend had escaped, or at the least was still alive in the chamber. Having decided that his best chance lay in breaking free during the trip to the chamber, the mercenary accepted the holding spell with patience, and ticked off in his mind the time before the spell released him. He planned to use his will power to throw off the last of the spell's effects before creating some havoc of his own.
Alas, the wizard was prepared for that possibility and had the soldiers knock out the elf before removing him from the cell.
Jarlaxle awakened some time later with a throbbing headache, more frustrated and irritated than he'd been in a long time. Still, he had plans, and none of them included getting tortured. He glanced around the empty chamber, taking in the display of torture devices which were bathed in the early afternoon light washing in from the barred windows. Entreri was nowhere in sight, which the mercenary realized was either a very good or a very bad sign.
The door opened, and a tall grey-haired man entered followed by two soldiers. The man, presumably Waylein, looked peeved and was fingering the pommels of the two sabers hanging at his sides. The soldiers looked scared, and Jarlaxle felt a bit hopeful at this observation. The man stopped before him and brought his hands down to his sides.
"Your friend has escaped—temporarily," Waylein greeted him, "but don't become too hopeful. I have dozens of soldiers looking for him, and I have you right here under my nose. Of course, your so-called friend may just abandon you, but I assure you that he won't make it out of this fortress alive. Especially alone."
Jarlaxle grinned slyly, for the man had no idea what Entreri was really capable of. Still, the thought of betrayal did pass through the dark elf's mind. Would Entreri, now free, simply save himself? The assassin that Jarlaxle had first met surely would have. But Entreri had chosen to send himself into danger earlier; surely this precluded the possibility that the assassin would abandon Jarlaxle now.
Unless Entreri had sent himself in Jarlaxle's place because he had figured out the perfect plan to escape and save himself. Or unless the assassin, now liberated, followed the allure of freedom and decided not to risk himself further. If either of those were the case, thoughts of his companion would not have even entered his mind.
No, the drow tried to tell himself. It wasn't that. Jarlaxle was an elf of many precautions, even an elf of a few secret, deeply-buried fears, but he dared to hope that he would not be left here alone, for practical reasons if nothing else.
"But enough of such depressing things," Waylein declared, his voice almost melodic. "Let us move on to more pleasant considerations. Ever have I wanted to meet a dark elf! And ever have I imagined what a wonderful experience torturing a drow would be!" Green eyes sparkled with a mad light, the man's anticipation evident.
Jarlaxle dismissed the sigh that threatened to pass from his lips.
As Waylein took a moment to study his many, many torture devices, the door to the chamber opened again. The man spun toward the interruption in anger. "This had better—"
Artemis Entreri jumped through the door, two long swords in his hands, picking off the surprised guards with practiced ease. Jarlaxle nearly laughed with delight, but as the door fell shut behind the assassin, the mercenary frowned. A dozen cuts and slashes decorated the already previously injured man, and a shallow puncture wound bled freely on his left leg. The swords he carried dripped with gore, and Jarlaxle knew Entreri would have taken out several soldiers on his way to the chamber, but overall things did not look good. Not good at all.
Waylein drew his sabers without hesitation. "So here you are, my latest pet. How rude of you to avoid our most important morning together! We must remedy that situation."
At this insinuation, Entreri grasped his swords so tightly that his knuckles whitened for a brief moment, and the look of pure hatred and rage on the man's face would have made anyone sane faint. His eyes narrowed in on Waylein like a tiger's on a hare. The tormented assassin had had enough of this sadistic freak. From his father, to Theebles, to a dozen others just like them, he had had enough of men like him, period.
"Do not look upon me with such loathing, dear pet," Waylein commented airily. The two swordsmen measured and began to circle each other. "As an assassin, I'm sure you understand the subtle pleasures of pain." The man punctuated his comment with a quick thrust forward, a teasing feint that did nothing at all to rattle the assassin.
Jarlaxle watched tensely as the humans maneuvered themselves into more favorable positions. Being chained to the wall was not the elf's desired seat for such a show, so with Waylein's attention diverted elsewhere, the mercenary began working on his shackles, trying to diffuse their magic.
Entreri glared at the man, who seemed to wear the face of every man of his kind the assassin had ever known. He wanted to destroy the man, to verbally flay him and then repeat the process physically. And he knew how to begin. "Do you expect me to fear someone like you? Do not play me for the fool," he taunted as he circled the man. "In the underworld, it is common knowledge that those who get such great pleasure out of torturing and raping prisoners are overcompensating for their past experiences." The contempt in his voice was like acid.
Jarlaxle hesitated in his efforts, surprised by Entreri's verbal jab. Whatever had made Entreri choose that line of attack?
"Unlikely!" Waylein replied just a bit too forcefully. He stabbed forward in a feint and followed through with his second saber, but Entreri easily parried.
"Let me guess," the assassin continued without pausing. "Weak as you are, you think torturing others will give you back your pride, or perhaps your control and power?"
Pride. Control. Power. Jarlaxle's mind jumped down several paths at once.
Green eyes flashed with a deep, deep wrath, a wrath past the point of sanity. "You're being ludicrous!"
"Is that so?" Entreri mocked him. In his rage, the assassin had not only forgotten he had an audience, he hardly cared, and when Waylein failed to answer, he continued his vicious taunts with a smirk. "Let me guess: you rape your prisoners because you fail in bed with women. Or maybe because you're sick of having your advances rejected by men?"
Jarlaxle couldn't seem to shake his feeling of foreboding. The assassin seemed so bent on ridiculing the man, far past the point he normally taunted his victims. What did it mean?
Entreri kept pressing. "Or perhaps this is your desperate attempt to escape your nightmares?"
Jarlaxle frowned, something subtle tickling the back of his mind.
"Not true!" Already unstable and provoked beyond reason, Waylein attacked the assassin wildly, and the injured man had difficulty keeping up. Metal rang against metal for several minutes, sparks shooting from the blades at times, as Waylein drove forward and Entreri beat his attacks aside.
Finally, Waylein seemed to understand that he would have to employ a great deal of wit to kill this man, even though he was wounded. He visibly brought his emotions under control and backed off, still facing Entreri.
"You presume to judge me, assassin?" He returned taunts, the gleam in his eyes one of joyful malice. "How many people have you killed?"
"True enough." And with that admission, the assassin's past seemed to burn at his skin, even if it were just for a moment. "But why would that make me unable to judge a man who rapes his own son?" He snorted.
Rapes his son? Jarlaxle thought, and did not like the implications. For all his knowledge of drow tortures, Jarlaxle felt his stomach sinking. In truth, the dark elves could out-think anyone when it came to pain and suffering, but humans were not without dark ingenuity. Despite the shadows he'd dwelled in, the fact that humankind was also capable of great, unimaginable evil was not lost on Jarlaxle.
"It was simply that the boy failed me and needed to be punished." Waylein was seething; his eyes seemed to nearly glow with a wild light. "And you cannot judge my actions. I am free to live my life as I see fit!" The man's words became louder and louder, his face redder and redder. "Besides, you have not lived my life! It is not as though you know what it is like to be so misused by your own father!"
The boy needed to be punished? The sick sadism and familiar sting in it galled him, and Entreri, in his fury, thought his soul would jump up his throat and out of his mouth. "Is that your excuse?" Entreri bit out, his sarcastic façade faltering. He hated this man who seemed to be just an older, thinner version of the man he'd once loathed most in all the world. The hatred, the familiarity, evoked such a visceral rage that Entreri was speaking before he knew what he was saying. "Do you think yourself the only man to suffer betrayal at the hands of a father? How about father and uncle! Yet I would never sink to your level."
Jarlaxle's eyes closed for just a moment, the implication was so profound. The rage of it, the horror of it, scratched in the undercurrents of Entreri's bitter, sarcastic tone. He opened his eyes and looked upon his friend, and he saw, at least in part, like a line of stars pointing to the brightest star in the night sky, the progression of a killer. Of a man who'd lost the ability to feel compassion and empathy—a man who'd allowed himself to be swallowed by anger and bitterness. And he knew, with all his own limited heart, that he had to genuinely help this man. And Entreri's next words hinted that Jarlaxle might succeed:
"You could in turn betray your own son?" the assassin hissed, and that momentary flare of empathy, or insight, or sense of wrongness, however brief, was a clear sign to a curious puzzle-solver, a master game-player, and a concerned friend. The spark, of course, was immediately buried under Entreri's dark rage, but the drow noted its passing all the same, and the plans exploded in his mind—brilliant, dangerous, amusing, heart-breakingly painful, and ultimately mutually beneficial—if only they could escape.
But even that was not really an obstacle. Jarlaxle relaxed in his chains, secure that he'd diffused enough of their magic and knowing that the normally passionless assassin would, in his genuine rage, best Waylein. The anger and its accompanying energy would temporarily overcome Entreri's wounds.
It was Waylein, however, who attacked first, a rather brilliant feint and strike, but one the experienced assassin saw through instantly. Entreri simply dived to the side, headlong into a roll that brought him under and clear of Waylein's gleaming sabers. Regaining his feet, the assassin inched back in, picking off a few tentative strikes from the older man before jumping into sudden motion with a quick thrust of his right blade. Waylein managed to parry, then counter with a thrust, but Entreri twisted his left-hand sword past and then inside of the thrust and pushed the saber out wide. Waylein, sensing the next move, desperately parried the follow-through and jumped clear, only to turn and cut his right blade across, trying desperately to slash the assassin's throat.
Entreri simply leaned back, easily defeating the attack, but he knew he had little time left. He had lost too much blood. He pressed forward, a fury of attacks, beating Waylein back from the sheer force and number of hits, and watched with satisfaction as the man began to panic. He ran up practically on top of the man, only to circle to the side at the last possible instant, sliding his right-hand sword through the Waylein's ribs and into his heart even as his left-hand sword countered the man's final strike.
Waylein was dead before his body completely collapsed to the floor.