Gauntlgrym by R.A. Salvatore Read Free Book Online Page A

each hip, both black with red stitching. She wore a puff-sleeved white blouse of the finest silk, cinched with diamond cuffs to allow her free movement. A small black leather vest provided some padding, but her real armor came from a magic ring, an enchanted cloak, and small magic bracers hidden under the cuffs of her blouse.
    As with all of her outfits, Dahlia left the top of the low-cut vest unbuttoned, and the stiff collar turned up to frame her delicate head. It would not do to be along the road under the sun with no hair to protect her pate, though, so she wore a wide-brimmed black leather hat, pinned up on the right, revealing her black and red braid, banded in red silk and stylishly plumed with a red feather.
    When she bent her right leg and turned it out just so, striking an alluring pose, what man could resist her?
    But what she saw in the mirror did not quite match the reality of her beauty.

    They caught her easily and threw her down, but didn’t pile one after another atop her as they had with the others. Dahlia caught the gaze of one burly barbarian, the Shadovar of huge size and strength who had led the raid. While most of the raiders appeared as dusky-skinned humans, the leader was obviously a convert, a horned half-demon—a tiefling.
    The young and delicate captive, barely a woman, was his, he decreed.
    They stripped her down and held her for the sacrifice, and for the first time, Dahlia truly understood her foolishness in running back to the village, understood what she, and not just what her People, had to lose.
    She heard her mother screaming for her, and from the corner of her eyes, saw the woman running at her, only to be tackled and sat upon.
    Then he stood over her, the huge tiefling, leering at her. “Loosen and ease, girl, and your mother will live,” he promised.
    He had her. She managed to turn her head to look at her mother as he lay down atop her, and managed to bite back her screams as he tore into her, though she felt as if she was ripping in half. The act itself was over quickly, but her humiliation had only just begun.
    Two barbarians grabbed her by the ankles and lifted her up into the air, upside down.
    “You will keep the seed of Herzgo Alegni,” they mocked as they pawed and slapped at her.
    Eventually they lowered her so that her head twisted painfully on the ground. She turned it enough to keep an inverted, distorted view of her mother—enough to see the tiefling, Herzgo Alegni, cross into her field of vision.
    He looked back at her and smiled—could she ever forget that smile?—then he so very casually stomped on the back of her mother’s neck, fine elf bones shattering under the blow.

    Dahlia took a deep breath and closed her eyes, fighting to hold her balance. But only briefly did she swoon, for she was not that child of a decade before. That young elf girl was dead, killed by Dahlia, murdered internally and replaced by the exquisite, deadly creature she saw in the mirror.
    Her hand went across her hard abdomen, and she recalled, just briefly, when she had been with child—with his child, with the smiling one’s child.
    With another deep breath, she adjusted her hat then swung away from the mirror to grab up Kozah’s Needle. The slender metal staff stood fully eight feet, and though it appeared glassy smooth from even a short distance, its grip was solid and sure. Its four joints were all but invisible, but Dahlia knew them as well as she knew her own wrist or elbow.
    With the flick of a hand, she cracked the staff at its midpoint, letting it swing down to fold onto itself into a comfortable four-foot walking stick. She noted the slight discharge of energy as it swung, feeding her, and the muscles in her forearm twitched under the soft folds of her sleeve.
    She took a last glance around her bedchamber. Dor’crae had taken her larger packs to the wagon already, but she let her eyes linger a few heartbeats, wanting to ensure that she had forgotten nothing.
    When she left,