Exile

Chapter 12. Wilds, Wilds, Wilds

“Did you set it?” Drizzt asked Belwar when the burrow-warden returned to his side in the winding passage.

“The fire pit is cut.” Belwar replied, tapping his mithril hands triumphantly―but not too loudly―together. “And I rumpled the extra bedroll off in a corner. Scraped my boots all over the stone and put your neck-purse in a place where it will be easily found. I even left a few silver coins under the blanket―I figure I’ll not be needing them anytime soon, anyway.” Belwar managed a chuckle, but despite the disclaimer, Drizzt could see that the svirfneblin did not so easily part with valuables.

“A fine deception,” Drizzt offered, to take away the sting of the cost.

“And what of you, dark elf?” Belwar asked. “Have you seen or heard anything?”

“Nothing,” Drizzt replied. He pointed down a side corridor. “I sent Guenhwyvar away on a wide circuit. If anyone is near, we will soon know.”

Belwar nodded. “Good plan,” he remarked. “Setting the false camp this far from Blingdenstone should keep your troublesome mother from my kinfolk.”

“And perhaps it will lead my family to believe that I am still in the region and plan to remain.” Drizzt added hopefully. “Have you given any thought to our destination?”

“One way is as good as another,” remarked Belwar, hoisting his hands out wide. “No cities are there, beyond our own, anywhere close. None to my knowledge, at least.”

“West, then.” offered Drizzt. “Around Blingdenstone and off into the wilds, straight away from Menzoberranzan.”

“A wise course, it would seem,” agreed the burrow-warden. Belwar closed his eyes and attuned his thoughts to the emanations of the stone. Like many Underdark races, deep gnomes possessed the ability to recognize magnetic variations in the rock, an ability that allowed them to judge direction as accurately as a surface dweller might follow the sun’s trail. A moment later, Belwar nodded and pointed down the appropriate tunnel.

“West.” Belwar said. “And quickly. The more distance you put between yourself and that mother of yours, the safer we all shall be.” He paused to consider Drizzt for a long moment, wondering if he might be prodding his new friend a bit too deeply with his next question.

“What is it?” Drizzt asked him, recognizing his apprehension.

Belwar decided to risk it, to see just how close he and Drizzt had become. “When first you learned that you were the reason for the drow activity in the eastern tunnels,” the deep gnome began bluntly, “you seemed a bit weak in the knees, if you understand me. They are your family, dark elf. Are they so terrible?”

Drizzt’s chuckle put Belwar at ease, told the deep gnome that he had not pressed too far. “Come,” Drizzt said, seeing Guenhwyvar return from the scouting trek. “If the deception of the camp is complete, then let us take our first steps into our new life. Our road should be long enough for tales of my home and family.”

“Hold,” said Belwar. He reached into his pouch and produced a small coffer. “A gift from King Schnicktick.” he explained as he lifted the lid and removed a glowing brooch, its quiet illumination bathing the area around them.

Drizzt stared at the burrow-warden in disbelief. “It will mark you as a fine target.” the drow remarked.

Belwar corrected him. “It will mark us as fine targets.” he said with a sly snort. “But fear not, dark elf, the light will keep more enemies at bay than it will bring. I am not so fond of tripping on crags and chips in the floor.”

“How long will it glow?” Drizzt asked, and Belwar gathered from his tone that the drow hoped it would fade soon.

“Forever is the dweomer,” Belwar replied with a wide smirk. “Unless some priest or wizard counters it. Stop your worrying. What creatures of the Underdark would willingly walk into an illuminated area?”

Drizzt shrugged and trusted in the experienced burrow-warden’s judgment. “Very well,” he said, shaking his white mane helplessly. “Then off for the road.”

“The road and the tales,” replied Belwar, falling into step beside Drizzt, his stout little legs rolling along to keep up with the drow’s long and graceful strides.

They walked for many hours, stopped for a meal, then walked for many more. Sometimes Belwar used his illuminating brooch; other times the friends walked in darkness, depending on whether or not they perceived danger in the area. Guenhwyvar was frequently about yet rarely seen, the panther eagerly taking up its appointed duties as a perimeter guard.

For a week straight, the companions stopped only when weariness or hunger forced a break in the march, for they were anxious to be as far from Blingdenstone―and from those hunting Drizzt―as possible. Still, another full week would pass before the companions moved out into tunnels that Belwar did not know. The deep gnome had been a burrow-warden for almost fifty years, and he had led many of Blingdenstone’s farthest-reaching mining expeditions.

“This place is known to me,” Belwar often remarked when they entered a cavern. “Took a wagon of iron,” he would say, or mithril, or a multitude of other precious minerals that Drizzt had never even heard of. And, though the burrow-warden’s extended tales of those mining expeditions all ran in basically the same direction―how many ways can a deep gnome chop stone? Drizzt always listened intently, savoring every word.

He knew the alternative.

For his part in the storytelling, Drizzt recounted his adventures in Menzoberranzan’s Academy and his many fond memories of Zaknafein and the training gym. He showed Belwar the double-thrust low and how the pupil had discovered a parry to counter the attack, to his mentor’s surprise and pain. Drizzt displayed the intricate hand and facial combinations of the silent drow code, and he briefly entertained the notion of teaching the language to Belwar. The deep gnome promptly burst into loud and rolling laughter. His dark eyes looked incredulously at Drizzt, and he led the drow’s gaze down to the ends of his arms. With a hammer and pickaxe for hands, the svirfneblin could hardly muster enough gestures to make the effort worthwhile. Still, Belwar appreciated that Drizzt had offered to teach him the silent code. The absurdity of it all gave them both a fine laugh.

Guenhwyvar and the deep gnome also became friends during those first couple of weeks on the trail. Often, Belwar would fall into a deep slumber only to be awakened by prickling in his legs, fast asleep under the weight of six hundred pounds of panther. Belwar always grumbled and swatted Guenhwyvar on the rump with his hammer-hand―it became a game between the two―but Belwar truly didn’t mind the panther being so close. In fact, Guenhwyvar’s mere presence made sleep―which always left one so vulnerable in the wilds―much easier to come by.

“Do you understand?” Drizzt whispered to Guenhwyvar one day. Off to the side, Belwar was fast asleep, flat on his back on the stone, using a rock for a pillow. Drizzt shook his head in continued amazement when he studied the little figure. He was beginning to suspect that the deep gnomes carried their affinity with the earth a bit too far.

“Go get him.” he prompted the cat.

Guenhwyvar lumbered over and plopped across the burrow-warden’s legs. Drizzt moved away into the shielding entrance of a tunnel to watch.

Only a few minutes later, Belwar awoke with a snarl. “Magga cammara, panther!” the deep gnome growled. “Why must you always bed down on me, instead of beside me?” Guenhwyvar shifted slightly but let out only a deep sigh in response. “Magga cammara, cat!” Belwar roared again. He wiggled his toes frantically, trying futilely to keep the circulation going and dismiss the tingles that had already begun. “Away with you!” The burrow-warden propped himself up on one elbow and swung his hammer hand at Guenhwyvar’s backside.

Guenhwyvar sprang away in feigned flight, quicker than Belwar’s swat. But just as the burrow-warden relaxed, the panther cut back on its tracks, pivoted completely, and leaped atop Belwar, burying him and pinning him flat to the stone.

After a few moments of struggling, Belwar managed to get his face out from under Guenhwyvar’s muscled chest.

“Get yourself off me or suffer the consequences!” the deep gnome growled, obviously an empty threat. Guenhwyvar shifted, getting a bit more comfortable in its perch.

“Dark elf!” Belwar called as loudly as he dared. “Dark elf, take your panther away. Dark elf!”

“Greetings,” Drizzt answered, walking in from the tunnel as though he had only just arrived. “Are you two playing again? I had thought my time as sentry near to its end.”

“Your time has passed,” replied Belwar, but the svirfneblin’s words were muffled by thick black fur as Guenhwyvar shifted again. Drizzt could see Belwar’s long, hooked nose, though, crinkle up in irritation.

“Oh, no, no,” said Drizzt. “I am not so tired. I would not think of interrupting your game. I know that you both enjoy it so.” He walked by, giving Guenhwyvar a complimentary pat on the head and a sly wink as he passed.

“Dark elf!” Belwar grumbled at his back as Drizzt departed. But the drow kept going, and Guenhwyvar, with Drizzt’s blessings, soon fell fast asleep.

Drizzt crouched low and held very still, letting his eyes go through the dramatic shift from infravision―viewing the heat of objects in the infrared spectrum―to normal vision in the realm of light. Even before the transformation was completed, Drizzt could tell that his guess had been correct. Ahead, beyond a low natural archway, came a red glow. The drow held his position, deciding to let Belwar catch up to him before he went to investigate. Only a moment later, the dimmer glow of the deep gnome’s enchanted brooch came into view.

“Put out the light,” Drizzt whispered, and the brooch’s glow disappeared.

Belwar crept along the tunnel to join his companion. He, too, saw the red glow beyond the archway and understood Drizzt’s caution. “Can you bring the panther?” the burrow-warden asked quietly.

Drizzt shook his head. “The magic is limited by spans of time. Walking the material plane tires Guenhwyvar. The panther needs to rest.”

“Back the way we came, we could go.” Belwar suggested. “Perhaps there is another tunnel around.”

“Five miles,” replied Drizzt, considering the length of the unbroken passageway behind them. “Too long.”

“Then let us see what is ahead,” the burrow-warden reasoned, and he started boldly off. Drizzt liked Belwar’s straightforward attitude and quickly joined him.

Beyond the archway, which Drizzt had to crouch nearly double to get under, they found a wide and high cavern, its floor and walls covered in a mosslike growth that emitted the red light. Drizzt pulled up short, at a loss, but Belwar recognized the stuff well enough.

“Baruchies!” the burrow-warden blurted, the word turning into a chuckle. He turned to Drizzt and, not seeing any reaction to his smile, explained. “Crimson spitters, dark elf. Not for decades have I seen such a patch of the stuff. Quite a rare sight they are, you know.”

Drizzt, still at a loss, shook the tenseness out of his muscles and shrugged, then started forward. Belwar’s pick-hand hooked him under the arm, and the powerful deep gnome spun him back abruptly.

“Crimson spitters,” the burrow-warden said again, pointedly emphasizing the latter of the words. “Magga cammara, dark elf, how did you get along through the years?”

Belwar turned to the side and slammed his hammer-hand into the wall of the archway, taking off a fair-sized chunk of stone. He scooped this up in the flat of his pick-hand and flipped it off to the side of the cavern. The stone hit the red-glowing fungus with a soft thud, then a burst of smoke and spores blasted into the air.

“Spit,” explained Belwar, “and choke you to death will the spore! If you plan to cross here, walk lightly, my brave, foolish friend.”

Drizzt scratched his unkempt white locks and considered the predicament. He had no desire to return the five miles down the tunnel, but neither did he plan to go plodding through this field of red death. He stood tall just inside the archway and looked around for some solution. Several stones, a possible walkway, rose up out of the baruchies, and beyond them lay a trail of clear stone about ten feet wide running perpendicular to the archway across the chasm.

“We can make it through,” he told Belwar. “There is a clear path.”

“There always is in a field of baruchies,” the burrow-warden replied under his breath. Drizzt’s keen ears caught the comment. “What do you mean?” he asked, springing agilely out to the first of the raised stones.

“A grubber is about,” the deep gnome explained. “Or has been.”

“A grubber?” Drizzt prudently hopped back to stand beside the burrow-warden.

“Big caterpillar,” Belwar explained. “Grubbers love baruchies. They are the only things the crimson spitters do not seem to bother.”

“How big?”

“How wide was the clear path?” Belwar asked him.

“Ten feet, perhaps,” Drizzt answered, hopping back out to the first stepping stone to view it again. Belwar considered the answer for a moment. “One pass for a big grubber, two for most.” Drizzt hopped back to the side of the burrow-warden again, giving a cautious look over his shoulder. “Big caterpillar.” he remarked.

“But with a little mouth.” Belwar explained. “Grubbers eat only moss and molds―and baruchies, if they can find them. Peaceful enough creatures, all in all.”

For the third time, Drizzt sprang out to the stone. “Is there anything else I should know before I continue?” he asked in exasperation.

Belwar shook his head.

Drizzt led the way across the stones, and soon the two companions stood in the middle of the ten-foot path. It traversed the cavern and ended with the entrance to a passage on either side. Drizzt pointed both ways, wondering which direction Belwar would prefer.

The deep gnome started to the left, then stopped abruptly and peered ahead. Drizzt understood Belwar’s hesitation, for he, too, felt the vibrations in the stone under his feet.

“Grubber.” said Belwar. “Stand quiet and watch, my friend. They are quite a sight.”

Drizzt smiled wide and crouched low, eager for the entertainment. When he heard a quick shuffle behind him, though, Drizzt began to suspect that something was out of sorts.

“Where...” Drizzt began to ask when he turned about and saw Belwar in full flight toward the other exit.

Drizzt stopped speaking abruptly when an explosion like the crash of a cave-in erupted from the other way, the way he had been watching.

“Quite a sight!” he heard Belwar call, and he couldn’t deny the truth of the deep gnome’s words when the grubber made its appearance. It was huge―bigger than the basilisk Drizzt had killed―and looked like a gigantic pale gray worm, except for the multitude of little feet pumping along beside its massive torso. Drizzt saw that Belwar had not lied, for the thing had no mouth to speak of, and no talons or other apparent weapons. But the giant was coming straight at Drizzt with a vengeance now, and Drizzt couldn’t get the image of a flattened dark elf, stretched from one end of the cavern to the other, out of his mind. He reached for his scimitars, then realized the absurdity of that plan. Where would he hit the thing to slow it? Throwing his hands helplessly out wide, Drizzt spun on his heel and fled after the departing burrow-warden.

The ground shook under Drizzt’s feet so violently that he wondered if he might topple to the side and be blasted by the baruchies. But then the tunnel entrance was just ahead and Drizzt could see a smaller side passage, too small for the grubber, just outside the baruchie cavern. He darted ahead the last few strides, then cut swiftly into the small tunnel, diving into a roll to break his momentum. Still, he ricocheted hard off the wall, then the grubber slammed in behind, smashing at the tunnel entrance and dropping pieces of stone all about.

When the dust finally cleared, the grubber remained outside the passage, humming a low, growling moan and, every so often, banging its head against the stone. Belwar stood just a few feet farther in than Drizzt, the deep gnome’s arms crossed over his chest and a satisfied grin on his face.

“Peaceful enough?” Drizzt asked him, rising to his feet and shaking off the dust.

“They are indeed.” replied Belwar with a nod. “But grubbers do love their baruchies and have no mind to share the things!”

“You almost got me crushed!” Drizzt snarled at him.

Again Belwar nodded. “Mark it well, dark elf, for the next time you set your panther to sleep on me, I will surely do worse!”

Drizzt fought hard to hide his smile. His heart still pumped wildly under the influence of the adrenaline burst, but Drizzt held no anger toward his companion. He thought back to encounters he had suffered just a few months before, when he was out alone in the wilds. How different life would be with Belwar Dissengulp by his side! How much more enjoyable! Drizzt glanced back over his shoulder to the angry and stubborn grubber.

And how much more interesting!

“Come along,” the smug svirfneblin continued, starting off down the passage. “We are only making the grubber angrier by loitering in its sight.”

The passageway narrowed and turned a sharp bend just a few feet farther in. Around the bend, the companions found even more trouble, for the corridor ended in a blank stone wall. Belwar moved right up to inspect it, and it was Drizzt’s turn to cross his arms over his chest and gloat.

“You have put us in a dangerous spot, little friend.” the drow said. “An angry grubber behind, trapping us in a box corridor!”

Pressing his ear to the stone, Belwar waved Drizzt off with his hammer-hand. “Merely an inconvenience,” the deep gnome assured him. “There is another tunnel beyond―not more than seven feet.”

“Seven feet of stone.” Drizzt reminded him.

But Belwar didn’t seem concerned. “A day.” he said. “Perhaps two.” Belwar held his arms out wide and began a chant too low for Drizzt to hear clearly, though the drow realized that Belwar was engaged in some sort of spellcasting.

“Bivrip!” Belwar cried.

Nothing happened.

The burrow-warden turned back on Drizzt and did not seem disappointed. “A day.” he proclaimed again.

“What did you do?” Drizzt asked him.

“Set my hands a humming.” replied the deep gnome. Seeing that Drizzt was completely at a loss, Belwar turned on his heel and slammed his hammer-hand into the wall. An explosion of sparks brightened the small passage, blinding Drizzt. By the time the drow’s eyes could adjust to the continuing burst of Belwar’s punching and hacking, he saw that his svirfneblin companion already had ground several inches of rock into fine dust at his feet. “Magga cammara, dark elf,” Belwar cried with a wink. “You did not believe that my people would go to all the trouble of crafting such fine hands for me without putting a bit of magic into them, did you?”

Drizzt moved to the side of the passage and sat. “You are full of surprises, little friend.” he answered with a sigh of surrender.

“I am indeed!” Belwar roared, and he pounded the stone again, sending flecks flying in every direction.

They were out of the box corridor in a day, as Belwar had promised, and they set off again, traveling now―by the deep gnome’s estimation―generally north. Luck had followed them so far, and they both knew it, for they had spent two weeks in the wilds and had encountered nothing more hostile than a grubber protecting its baruchies.

A few days later, their luck changed.

“Summon the panther,” Belwar bade Drizzt as they crouched in the wide tunnel they had been traveling. Drizzt did not argue the wisdom of the burrow-warden’s request; he didn’t like the green glow ahead any more than Belwar did. A moment later, the black mist swirled and took shape, and Guenhwyvar stood beside them.

“I go first.” Drizzt said. “You both follow together, twenty steps behind.” Belwar nodded and Drizzt turned and started away. Drizzt almost expected the movement when the svirfneblin’s pickaxe-hand hooked him and turned him about.

“Be careful.” Belwar said. Drizzt only smiled in reply, touched at the sincerity in his friend’s voice and thinking again how much better it was to have a companion by his side. Then Drizzt dismissed his thoughts and moved away, letting his instincts and experience guide him.

He found the glow to be emanating from a hole in the corridor floor. Beyond it, the corridor continued but bent sharply, nearly doubling back on itself. Drizzt fell to his belly and peered down the hole. Another passage, about ten feet below him, ran perpendicular to the one he was in, opening a short way ahead into what appeared to be a large cavern.

“What is it?” Belwar whispered, coming up behind.

“Another corridor to a chamber,” Drizzt replied. “The glow comes from there.” He lifted his head and looked down into the ensuing darkness of the higher corridor. “Our tunnel continues,” Drizzt reasoned. “We can go right by it.”

Belwar looked down the passageway they had been traveling, noting the turn. “Doubles back,” he reasoned. “And probably comes right out at that side passage we passed an hour ago.” The deep gnome dropped to the dirt and looked into the hole.

“What would make such a glow?” Drizzt asked him, easily guessing that Belwar’s curiosity was as keen as his own. “Another form of moss?”

“None that I know,” Belwar replied.

“Shall we find out?”

Belwar smiled at him, then hooked his pick-hand on the ledge and swung over and in, dropping down to the lower tunnel. Drizzt and Guenhwyvar followed silently, the drow, scimitars in hand, again taking the lead as they moved toward the glow.

They came into a wide and high chamber, its ceiling far beyond their sight and a lake of green-glowing foul-smelling liquid bubbling and hissing twenty feet below them. Dozens of interconnected narrow stone walkways, varying from one to ten feet wide, crisscrossed the gorge, most ending at exits leading into more side corridors.

“Magga cammara,” whispered the stunned svirfneblin, and Drizzt shared that thought.

“It appears as though the floor was blasted away.” Drizzt remarked when he again found his voice.

“Melted away,” replied Belwar, guessing the liquid’s nature. He hacked off a chunk of stone at his side and, tapping Drizzt to get his attention, dropped it into the green lake. The liquid hissed as if in anger where the rock hit, eating away at the stone before it even sank from sight.

“Acid,” Belwar explained.

Drizzt looked at him curiously. He knew of acid from his days of training under the wizards of Sorcere in the Academy. Wizards often concocted such vile liquids for use their magical experiments, but Drizzt did not figure that acid would appear naturally, or in such quantities.

“Some wizard’s working, I would guess,” said Belwar. “An experiment out of control. It has probably been here for a hundred years, eating away at the floor, sinking down inch by inch.”

“But what remains of the floor seems secure enough,” observed Drizzt, pointing to the walkways. “And we have a score of tunnels to choose from.”

“Then let us begin at once,” said Belwar. “I do not like this place. We are exposed in the light, and I would not care to take quick flight along such narrow bridges―not with a lake of acid below me!”

Drizzt agreed and took a cautious step out on the walkway, but Guenhwyvar quickly moved past him. Drizzt understood the panther’s logic and wholeheartedly agreed.

“Guenhwyvar will lead us,” he explained to Belwar. “The panther is the heaviest and quick enough to spring away if a section begins to fall.”

The burrow-warden was not completely satisfied. “What if Guenhwyvar does not make it to safety?” he asked, truly concerned. “What will the acid do to a magical creature?”

Drizzt wasn’t certain of the answer. “Guenhwyvar should be safe,” he reasoned, pulling the onyx figurine from his pocket. “I hold the gateway to the panther’s home plane.”

Guenhwyvar was a dozen strides away by then―the walkway seemed sturdy enough―and Drizzt set out to follow. “Magga cammara, I pray you are right.” he heard Belwar mumble at his back as he took the first steps out from the ledge.

The chamber was huge, several hundred feet across even to the nearest exit. The companions neared the halfway point―Guenhwyvar had already passed it―when they heard a strange chanting sound. They stopped and glanced about, searching for the source.

A weird-looking creature stepped out from one of the numerous side passages. It was bipedal and black skinned, with a beaked bird’s head and the torso of a man, featherless and wingless. Both of its powerful-looking arms ended in hooked, wicked claws, and its legs ended in three-toed feet. Another creature stepped out from behind it, and another from behind them.

“Relatives?” Belwar asked Drizzt, for the creatures did indeed resemble some weird cross between a dark elf and a bird.

“Hardly.” Drizzt replied. “In all of my life, I have never heard of such creatures.”

“Doom! Doom!” came the continuing chant, and the friends looked around to see more of the bird-men stepping out from other passages. They were dire corbies, an ancient race more common to the southern reaches of the Underdark―though rare even there―and almost unknown in this part of the world. Corbies had never been of much concern to any of the Underdark races, for the bird-men’s methods were crude and their numbers were small. For a passing band of adventurers, however, a flock of savage dire corbies meant trouble indeed.

“Nor have I ever encountered such creatures,” Belwar agreed. “But I do not believe that they are pleased to see us.”

The chant became a series of horrifying shrieks as the corbies began to disperse out onto the walkways, walking at first, but occasionally breaking into quick trots, their anxiety obviously increasing.

“You are wrong, my little friend,” Drizzt remarked. “I believe that they are quite pleased to have their dinner delivered to them.”

Belwar looked around helplessly. Nearly all of their escape routes were already cut off, and they couldn’t hope to get out without a fight. “Dark elf, I can think of a thousand places I would rather do battle,” the burrow-warden said with a resigned shrug and a shudder as he took another look down into the acid lake. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, Belwar began his ritual to enchant his magical hands.

“Move while you chant,” Drizzt instructed him, leading him on. “Let us get as close to an exit as we can before the fighting begins.”

One group of corbies closed rapidly at the party’s side, but Guenhwyvar, with a mighty spring that spanned two of the walkways, cut the bird-men off.

“Bivrip!” Belwar cried, completing his spell, and he turned toward the impending battle.

“Guenhwyvar can take care of that group,” Drizzt assured him, quickening his steps toward the nearest wall. Belwar saw the drow’s reasoning; still another group of enemies had come out of the exit they were making for.

The momentum of Guenhwyvar’s leap carried the panther straight into the pack of corbies, bowling two of them right off the walkway. The bird-men shrieked horribly as they fell to their deaths, but their remaining companions seemed unbothered by the loss. Drooling and chanting, “Doom! Doom!” they tore in at Guenhwyvar with their sharp talons.

The panther had formidable weapons of its own. Each swat of a great claw tore the life from a corby or sent it tumbling from the walkway to the acid lake. But, while the cat continued to slash into the bird-men’s ranks, the fearless corbies continued to fight back, and more rushed in eagerly to join. A second group came from the opposite direction and surrounded Guenhwyvar.

Belwar set himself on a narrow section of the walkway and let the line of corbies come to him. Drizzt, taking a parallel route along a walkway fifteen feet to his friend’s side, did likewise, drawing his scimitars somewhat reluctantly. The drow could feel the savage instincts of the hunter welling up within him as the battle drew near, and he fought back with all of his willpower to sublimate the wild urges. He was Drizzt Do’Urden, no more the hunter, and he would face his foes fully in control of his every movement.

Then the corbies were upon him, flailing away, shrieking their frenzied chants. Drizzt did little more than parry in those first seconds, the flats of his blades working marvelously to deflect each attempted strike. The scimitars spun and whirled, but the drow, refusing to loose the killer within him, made little headway in his fight. After several minutes, he still faced off against the first corby that had come at him.

Belwar was not so reserved. Corby after corby rushed in at the little svirfneblin, only to be pounded to a sudden halt by the burrow-warden’s explosive hammer-hand. The electrical jolt and the sheer force of the blow often killed the corby where it stood, but Belwar never waited long enough to find out. Following each hammer blow, the deep gnome’s pickaxe-hand came across in a roundhouse arc, sweeping the latest victim from the walkway.

The svirfneblin had dropped a half-dozen of the bird-men before he got the chance to look over at Drizzt. He recognized at once the inner struggle the drow was fighting.

“Magga cammara!” Belwar screamed. “Fight them, dark elf, and fight to win! They will show no mercy! There can be no truce! Kill them―cut them down―or surely they shall kill you!”

Drizzt hardly heard Belwar’s words. Tears rimmed his lavender eyes, though even in that blur, the almost magical rhythm of his weaving blades did not slow. He caught his opponent off balance and reversed the motion of a thrust, slamming the bird-man in the head with the pommel of his scimitar. The corby dropped like a stone and rolled. It would have fallen from the ledge, but Drizzt stepped across it and held it in place.

Belwar shook his head and belted another adversary. The corby hopped backward, its chest smoking and charred by the jarring impact of the enchanted hammer-hand. The corby looked at Belwar in blank disbelief, but uttered not a sound, nor made any move at all, as the pickaxe hooked in, catching it in the shoulder and launching it out over the acid lake.

Guenhwyvar flustered the hungry attackers. As the corbies closed in on the panther’s back, thinking the kill at hand, Guenhwyvar crouched and sprang. The panther soared through the green light as though it had taken flight, landing on yet another of the walkways fully thirty feet away. Skidding on the smooth stone, Guenhwyvar just managed to halt before toppling over the ledge into the acid pool.

The corbies glanced around in stunned amazement for just a moment, then took up their shrieks and wails and set off along the walkways in pursuit.

A single corby, near where Guenhwyvar had landed, ran fearlessly to battle the cat. Guenhwyvar’s teeth found its neck in an instant and squeezed the life from it. But while the panther was so engaged, the corbies’ devilish trap showed another twist. From far above in the high-ceilinged cavern, a corby at last saw a victim in position. The bird-man wrapped its arms around the heavy boulder on the ledge beside it and pushed out, dropping with the stone.

At the last second, Guenhwyvar saw the plummeting monster and scrambled out of its path. The corby, in its suicidal ecstacy, didn’t even care. The bird-man slammed into the walkway, the momentum of the heavy boulder shattering the narrow bridge to pieces.

The great panther tried to spring out again, but the stone underneath Guenhwyvar’s feet disintegrated before they could set and spring. Claws scratching futilely at the crumbling bridge, Guenhwyvar followed the corby and its boulder down into the acid lake.

Hearing the elated shouts of the bird-men behind him, Belwar spun about just in time to see Guenhwyvar’s fall. Drizzt, too engaged at the time―for another corby flailed away at him and the one he had dropped was stirring back to consciousness between his feet―did not see. But the drow did not have to see. The figurine in Drizzt’s pocket heated suddenly, wisps of smoke rising ominously from Drizzt’s piwafwi cloak. Drizzt could guess easily enough what had happened to his dear Guenhwyvar. The drow’s eyes narrowed, their sudden fire melting away his tears.

He welcomed the hunter.

Corbies fought with fury. The highest honor of their existence was to die in battle. And those closest to Drizzt Do’Urden soon realized that the moment of their highest honor was upon them.

The drow thrust both his scimitars straight out, each finding an eye of the corby facing him. The hunter pulled out the blades, spun them over in his hands, and plunged them down into the bird-man at his feet. He snapped the scimitars up immediately and plunged them down again, taking grim satisfaction in the sound of their smooth cut.

Then the drow dived headlong into the corbies ahead of him, his blades cutting in from every possible angle hit a dozen times before it ever launched a single swing, the first corby was quite dead before it even fell. Then the second, then the third. Drizzt backed them up to a wider section of the walkway. They came at him three at a time.

They died at his feet three at a time.

“Get them, dark elf.” mumbled Belwar, seeing his friend explode into action. The corby coming to meet the burrow-warden turned its head to see what had caught Belwar’s attention. When it turned back, it was met squarely in the face by the deep gnome’s hammer-hand. Pieces of beak flew in every direction, and that unfortunate corby was the first of its species to take flight in several millennium of evolution. Its short airborne excursion pushed its companions back from the deep gnome, and the corby landed, dead on its back, many feet from Belwar.

The enraged deep gnome wasn’t finished with this one. He raced up, bowling from the walkway the single corby who managed to get back to intercept him. When he arrived at last at his beakless victim, Belwar drove his pickaxe-hand deep into its chest. With that single muscled arm, the burrow-warden hoisted the dead corby high into the air and let out a horrifying shriek of his own.

The other corbies hesitated. Belwar looked to Drizzt and was dismayed. A score of corbies crowded in on the wide section of the walkway where the drow made his stand. Another dozen lay dead at Drizzt feet, their blood running off the ledge and dripping into the acid lake in rhythmic hissing plops. But it wasn’t the odds that Belwar feared; with his precise movements and measured thrusts, Drizzt was undeniably winning. High above the drow, though, another suicidal corby and his pet rock took a dive.

Belwar believed that Drizzt’s life had come to a crashing end.

But the hunter sensed the peril.

A corby reached for Drizzt. With a flash of the drow’s scimitars, both its arms flew free of their respective shoulders. In the same dazzling movement, Drizzt snapped his bloodied scimitars into their sheaths and bolted for the edge of the platform. He reached the lip and leaped out toward Belwar just as the suicidal boulder-riding corby crashed down, taking the platform and a score of its kin with it into the acid pool.

Belwar heaved his beakless trophy into the corbies facing him and dropped to his knees, reaching out with his pickaxe-hand to try to aid his soaring friend. Drizzt caught the burrow-warden’s hand and the ledge at the same time, slamming his face into the stone but finding a hold.

The jolt ripped the drow’s piwafwi, though, and Belwar watched helplessly as the onyx figurine rolled out and dropped toward the acid.

Drizzt caught it between his feet.

Belwar nearly laughed aloud at the futility and hopelessness of it all. He looked over his shoulder to see the corbies resuming their advance.

“Dark elf, surely it has been fun.” the svirfneblin said resignedly to Drizzt, but the drow’s response stole the levity from Belwar as surely as it stole the blood from the deep gnome’s face.

“Swing me!” Drizzt growled so powerfully that Belwar obeyed before he even realized what he was doing. Drizzt rolled out and came swinging back toward the walkway, and when he bounced into the stone, every muscle in his body jerked violently to aid his momentum.

He rolled right around the bottom of the walkway, scrambling and clawing with his arms and legs to gain a footing back up behind the crouching deep gnome. By the time Belwar realized what Drizzt had done and thought to turn around, Drizzt had his scimitars out and slicing across the face of the first approaching corby.

“Hold this,” Drizzt bade his friend, flicking the onyx figurine to Belwar with his toe. Belwar caught the item between his arms and fumbled it into a pocket. Then the deep gnome stood back and watched, taking up a rear guard, as Drizzt cut a devastating path to the nearest exit.

Five minutes later, to Belwar’s absolute amazement, they were running free down a darkened tunnel, the frustrated shrieks of “Doom! Doom!” fast fading behind them.

Chapter 13. A Little Place to Call Home

“Enough. Enough!” the winded burrow-warden gasped at Drizzt, trying to slow his companion. “Magga cammara, dark elf. We have left them far behind.”

Drizzt spun on the burrow-warden, scimitars ready in hand and angry fires burning still in his lavender eyes. Belwar backed away quickly and cautiously.

“Calm, my friend,” the svirfneblin said quietly, but despite the reassurance, the burrow-warden’s mithril hands came defensively in front of him. “The threat to us is ended.”

Drizzt breathed deeply to steady himself, then, realizing that he had not put his scimitars away, promptly slipped them into their sheaths.

“Are you all right?” Belwar asked, moving back to Drizzt’s side. Blood smeared the drow’s face from where he had slammed into the side of the walkway.

Drizzt nodded. “It was the fight,” he tried vainly to explain. “The excitement. I had to let go of―”

“You need not explain,” Belwar cut him short. “You did fine, dark elf. Better than fine. Had it not been for your actions, we, all three, surely would have fallen.”

“It came back to me,” Drizzt groaned, searching for the words that could explain. “That darker part of me. I had thought it gone.”

“It is,” the burrow-warden said.

“No,” argued Drizzt. “That cruel beast that I have become possessed me fully against those bird-men. It guided my blades, savagely and without mercy.”

“You guided your own blades,” Belwar assured him.

“But the rage,” replied Drizzt. “The unthinking rage. All I wanted to do was kill them and hack them down.”

“If that was the truth, we would be there still,” reasoned the svirfneblin. “By your actions, we escaped. There are many more of the bird-men back there to be killed, yet you led the way from the chamber. Rage? Perhaps, but surely not unthinking rage. You did as you had to do, and you did it well, dark elf. Better than anyone I have ever seen. Do not apologize, to me or to yourself!”

Drizzt leaned back against the wall to consider the words. He was comforted by the deep gnome’s reasoning and appreciated Belwar’s efforts. Still, though, the burning fires of rage he had felt when Guenhwyvar fell into the acid lake haunted him, an emotion so overwhelming that Drizzt had not yet come to terms with it. He wondered if he ever would.

In spite of his uneasiness, though, Drizzt felt comforted by the presence of his svirfneblin friend. He remembered other encounters of the last years, battles he had been forced to fight alone. Then, like now, the hunter had welled within him, had come to the fore and guided the deadly strikes of his blades. But there was a difference this time that Drizzt could not deny. Before, when he was alone, the hunter did not so readily depart. Now, with Belwar by his side, Drizzt was fully back in control.

Drizzt shook his thick white mane, trying to dismiss any last remnants of the hunter. He thought himself foolish now for the way he had begun the battle against the bird-men, slapping with the flat of his blades. He and Belwar might be in the cavern still if Drizzt’s instinctive side had not emerged, if he had not learned of Guenhwyvar’s fall.

He looked at Belwar suddenly, remembering the inspiration of his anger. “The statuette!” he cried. “You have it.”

Belwar scooped the item out of his pocket. “Magga cammara!” Belwar exclaimed, his round-toned voice edged with panic. “Might the panther be wounded? What effect would the acid have against Guenhwyvar? Might the panther have escaped to the Astral Plane?”

Drizzt took the figurine and examined it in trembling hands, taking comfort in the fact that it was not marred in any way. Drizzt believed that he should wait before calling Guenhwyvar; if the panther was injured, it surely would heal better at rest in its own plane of existence. But Drizzt could not wait to learn of Guenhwyvar’s fate. He placed the figurine down on the ground at his feet and called out softly.

Both the drow and the svirfneblin sighed audibly when the mist began to swirl around the onyx statue. Belwar took out his enchanted brooch to better observe the cat.

A dreadful sight awaited them. Obediently, faithfully, Guenhwyvar came to Drizzt’s summons, but as soon as the drow saw the panther, he knew that he should have left Guenhwyvar alone so that it might lick its wounds. Guenhwyvar’s silken black coat was burned and showing more patches of scalded skin than fur. Once-sleek muscles hung ragged, burned from the bone, and one eye remained closed and horribly scarred.

Guenhwyvar stumbled, trying to get to Drizzt’s side. Drizzt rushed to Guenhwyvar instead, dropping to his knees and throwing a gentle hug around the panther’s huge neck. “Guen,” he mumbled.

“Will it heal?” Belwar asked softly, his voice nearly breaking apart on every word.

Drizzt shook his head, at a loss. Really, he knew very little about the panther beyond its abilities as his companion. Drizzt had seen Guenhwyvar wounded before, but never seriously. Now he could only hope that the magical extraplanar properties would allow Guenhwyvar to recover fully.

“Go back home.” Drizzt said. “Rest and get well, my friend. I will call for you in a few days.”

“Perhaps we can give some aid now,” Belwar offered.

Drizzt knew the futility of that suggestion. “Guenhwyvar will better heal at rest,” he explained as the cat dissipated into the mist again. “We can do nothing for Guenhwyvar that will carry over to the other plane. Being here in our world taxes the panther’s strength. Every minute takes a toll.”

Guenhwyvar was gone and only the figurine remained. Drizzt picked it up and studied it for a very long time before he could bear to drop it back into a pocket.

A sword flicked the bedroll up into the air, then slashed and cut beside its sister blade until the blanket was no more than a tattered rag. Zaknafein glanced down at the silver coins on the floor. Such an obvious dupe, but the camp, and the prospect of Drizzt returning to it, had kept Zaknafein at bay for several days!

Drizzt Do’Urden was gone, and he had taken great pains to announce his departure from Blingdenstone. The spirit-wraith paused to consider this new bit of information, and the necessity of thought, of tapping into the rational being that Zaknafein had been on more than an instinctive level, brought the inevitable conflict between this undead animation and the spirit of the being it held captive.

Back in her anteroom, Matron Malice Do’Urden felt the struggle within her creation. In Zin-carla, control of the spirit-wraith remained the responsibility of the matron mother that the Spider Queen graced with the gift. Malice had to work hard at the appointed task, had to spit off a succession of chants and spells to insinuate herself between the thought processes of the spirit-wraith and the emotions and soul of Zaknafein Do’Urden.

The spirit-wraith lurched as he felt the intrusions of Malice’s powerful will. It proved to be no contest; in barely a second, the spirit-wraith was studying the small chamber Drizzt and one other being, probably a deep gnome, had disguised as a campsite. They were gone now, weeks out, and no doubt moving away from Blingdenstone with all speed. Probably, the spirit-wraith reasoned, moving away from Menzoberranzan as well.

Zaknafein moved outside the chamber into the main tunnel. He sniffed one way, back east toward Menzoberranzan, then turned and dropped to a crouch and sniffed again. The location spells Malice had imbued upon Zaknafein could not cover such distances, but the minute sensations the spirit-wraith received from his inspection only confirmed his suspicions. Drizzt had gone west.

Zaknafein walked off down the tunnel, not the slightest limp evident from the wound he had received at the end of a goblin’s spear, a wound that would have crippled a mortal being. He was more than a week behind Drizzt, maybe two, but the spirit-wraith was not concerned. His prey had to sleep, had to rest and eat. His prey was flesh, and mortal and weak.

“What manner of being is it?” Drizzt whispered to Belwar as they watched the curious bipedal creature filling buckets in a fast-running stream. This entire area of the tunnels was magically lighted, but Drizzt and Belwar felt safe enough in the shadows of a rocky outcropping a few dozen yards from the stooping robed figure.

“A man,” Belwar replied. “Human, from the surface.”

“He is a long way from home,” Drizzt remarked. “Yet he seems comfortable in his surroundings. I would not believe that a surface-dweller could survive in the Underdark. It goes against the teachings I received in the Academy.”

“Probably a wizard,” Belwar reasoned. “That would account for the light in this region. And it would account for his being here.”

Drizzt looked at the svirfneblin curiously.

“A strange lot are wizards,” Belwar explained, as though the truth was self-evident. “Human wizards, even more than any others, so I’ve heard tell. Drow wizards practice for power. Svirfneblin wizards practice the arts to better know the stone. But human wizards,” the deep gnome went on, obvious disdain in his tone. “Magga cammara, dark elf, human wizards are a different lot altogether!”

“Why do human wizards practice the art of magic at all?” Drizzt asked.

Belwar shook his head. “I do not believe that any scholars have yet discovered the reason,” he replied in all sincerity. “A strange and dangerously unpredictable race are the humans, and better to be left alone.”

“You have met some?”

“A few.” Belwar shuddered, as though the memory was not a pleasant one. “Traders from the surface. Ugly things, and arrogant. The whole of the world is only for them, by their thinking.”

The resonant voice rang out a bit more loudly than Belwar had intended, and the robed figure by the stream cocked his head in the companions’ direction.

“Comen out, leetle rodents,” the human called in a language that the companions could not understand. The wizard reiterated the request in another tongue, then in drow, and then in two more unknown tongues, and then in svirfneblin. He continued on for many minutes, Drizzt and Belwar looking at each other in disbelief.

“He is a learned man,” Drizzt whispered to the deep gnome.

“Rats, probably.” the human muttered to himself. He glanced around, seeking some way to flush out the unseen noisemakers, thinking that the creatures might provide a fine meal.

“Let us learn if he is friend or foe,” Drizzt whispered, and he started to move out from the concealment. Belwar stopped him and looked at him doubtfully, but then, with no recourse other than his own instincts, he shrugged and let Drizzt move on.

“Greetings, human so far from home,” Drizzt said in his native language, stepping out from behind the outcropping.

The human’s eyes went hysterically wide and he pulled roughly on his scraggly white beard. “You ist notten a rat,” he shrieked in strained but understandable drow.

“No.” Drizzt said. He looked back to Belwar, who was moving out to join him.

“Thieves!” the human cried. “Comen to shteal my home, ist you?”

“No.” Drizzt said again.

“Go avay!” the human yelled, waving his hands as a farmer would to shoo chickens. “Getten. Go on, qvickly now!”

Drizzt and Belwar exchanged curious glances.

“No.” Drizzt said a third time.

“Thees ist my home, stupit dark elven!” the human spat.

“Did I asket you to comen here? Did I sent a letter invititing you to join me in my home? Or perhapst you and your oogiy little friend simply consider it your duty to velcome me to the neighborhood?”

“Careful, drow.” Belwar whispered as the human rambled on. “He’s a wizard, for sure, and a shaky one, even by human standards.”

“Oren maybe bot the drow ant deep gnome races fear of me?” the human mused, more to himself than to the intruders. “Yes, of course. They have heard that I Brister Fendlestick, decided to take to the corridors of the Underdark and have joined forces to protecket themselvens against me! Yes, yes, it all seems so clear, and so pititiful, to me now!”

“I have fought wizards before,” Drizzt replied to Belwar under his breath. “Let us hope that we can settle this without blows. Whatever must happen, though, know that I have no desire to return the way we came.” Belwar nodded his grim agreement as Drizzt turned back to the human.

“Perhaps we can convince him simply to let us pass.” Drizzt whispered.

The human trembled on the verge of an explosion. “Fine!” he screamed suddenly. “Then do not getten away!” Drizzt saw his error in thinking that he might reason with this one. The drow started forward, meaning to close in before the wizard could launch any attacks.

But the human had learned to survive in the Underdark, and his defenses were in place long before Drizzt and Belwar ever appeared around the rocky outcropping. He waved his hands and uttered a single word that the companions could not understand. A ring on his finger glowed brightly and loosed a tiny ball of fire up into the air between him and the intruders.

“Velcome to my home, then!” the wizard yelled triumphantly. “Play with this!” He snapped his fingers and vanished.

Drizzt and Belwar could feel the explosive energy gathering around the glowing orb.

“Run!” the burrow-warden cried, and he turned to flee. In Blingdenstone, most of the magic was illusionary, designed for defense. But in Menzoberranzan, where Drizzt had learned of magic, the spells were undeniably offensive. Drizzt knew the wizard’s attack, and he knew that in these narrow and low corridors, flight would not be an option.

“No!” he cried, and he grabbed the back of Belwar’s leather jack and pulled the deep gnome along, straight toward the glowing orb. Belwar knew to trust in Drizzt, and he turned and ran willingly beside his friend. The burrow-warden understood the drow’s plan as soon as his eyes managed to tear away from the spectacle of the orb. Drizzt was making for the stream.

The friends dived headlong into the water, bouncing and scraping on the stones, just as the fireball exploded.

A moment later, they rose up from the steaming water, wisps of smoke rising from the back of their clothing, which had not been submerged. They coughed and sputtered, for the flames had temporarily stolen the air from the chamber, and the residual heat from the glowing stones nearly overwhelmed them.

“Humans,” Belwar muttered grimly. He pulled himself from the water and shook vigorously. Drizzt came out beside him and couldn’t hide his laughter. The deep gnome, though, found no levity at all in the situation. “The wizard,” he pointedly reminded Drizzt. Drizzt dropped into a crouch and glanced nervously all around.

They set off at once.

“Home!” Belwar proclaimed a couple of days later. The two friends looked down from a narrow ledge at a wide and high cavern that housed an underground lake. Behind them was a three-chambered cave with only a single tiny entrance, easily defensible.

Drizzt climbed the ten or so feet to stand by his friend on the top-most ledge. “Possibly,” he tentatively agreed, “though we left the wizard only a few days’ walk from here.”

“Forget the human,” Belwar snarled, glancing over at the burn mark on his precious jack.

“And I am not so fond of having so large a pool only a few feet from our door,” Drizzt continued.

“With fish it is filled.” the burrow-warden argued. “And with mosses and plants that will keep our bellies full, and water that seems clean enough!”

“But such an oasis will attract visitors,” reasoned Drizzt. “We would find little rest, I fear.”

Belwar looked down the sheer wall to the floor of the large cavern. “Never a problem,” he said with a snicker. “The bigger ones cannot get up here, and the smaller ones…well, I have seen the cut of your blades, and you have seen the strength of my hands. About the smaller ones I shall not worry!”

Drizzt liked the svirfneblin’s confidence, and he had to agree that they had found no other place suitable for use as a dwelling. Water, hard to find and, more often than not, undrinkable, was a precious commodity in the dry Underdark. With the lake and the growth about it, Drizzt and Belwar would never have to travel far to find a meal.

Drizzt was about to agree, but then a movement down by the water caught his and Belwar’s attention.

“And crabs!” spouted the svirfneblin, obviously not having the same reaction to the sight as the drow. “Magga cammara, dark elf! Crabs! As fine a meal as ever you will find!”

Indeed it was a crab that had slipped out of the lake, a gigantic, twelve-foot monster with pincers that could snap a human―or an elf or a gnome―fully in half. Drizzt looked at Belwar incredulously. “A meal?” he asked.

Belwar’s smile rolled right up around his crinkled nose as he banged his hammer and pick hands together.

They ate crab meat that night, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that, and Drizzt soon was quite willing to agree that the three-chambered cave by the underground lake made a fine home.

The spirit-wraith paused to consider the red-glowing field. In life, Zaknafein Do’Urden would have avoided such a patch, respecting the inherent dangers of odd-glowing rooms and luminous mosses. But to the spirit-wraith the trail was clear; Drizzt had come this way.

The spirit-wraith waded in, ignoring the noxious puffs of deadly spores that shot up at him with every step, choking spores that filled the lungs of unfortunate creatures.

But Zaknafein did not draw breath.

Then came the rumbling as the grubber rushed to protect its domain. Zaknafein fell into a defensive crouch, the instincts of the being he once had been sensing the danger. The grubber rolled into the glowing moss patch but noticed no intruder to chase away. It moved in anyway, thinking that a meal of baruchies might not be such a bad thing.

When the grubber reached the center of the chamber, the spirit-wraith let his levitation spell dissipate. Zaknafein landed on the monster’s back, locking his legs fast. The grubber thrashed and thundered about the room, but Zaknafein’s balance did not waver. The grubber’s hide was thick and tough, able to repel all but the finest of weapons, which Zaknafein possessed.

“What was that?” Belwar asked one day, stopping his work on the new door blocking their cave opening. Down by the pool, Drizzt apparently had heard the sound as well, for he had dropped the helmet he was using to fetch some water and had drawn both scimitars. He held a hand up to keep the burrow-warden silent, then picked his way back to the ledge for a quiet conversation.

The sound, a loud clacking noise, came again.

“You know it, dark elf?” Belwar asked softly.

Drizzt nodded. “Hook horrors,” he replied, “possessing the keenest hearing in all the Underdark.” Drizzt kept his recollections of his sole encounter with this type of monster to himself. It had occurred during a patrol exercise, with Drizzt leading his Academy class through the tunnels outside Menzoberranzan. The patrol came upon a group of the giant, bipedal creatures with exoskeletons as hard as plated metal armor and powerful beaks and claws. The drow patrol, mostly through Drizzt’s exploits, had won the day, but what Drizzt remembered most keenly was his belief that the encounter had been an exercise planned by the masters of the Academy, and that they had sacrificed an innocent drow child to the hook horrors for the sake of realism.

“Let us find them,” Drizzt said quietly but grimly. Belwar paused to catch his breath when he saw the dangerous simmer in the drow’s lavender eyes.

“Hook horrors are dangerous rivals,” Drizzt explained, noticing the deep gnome’s hesitation. “We cannot allow them to roam the region.”

Following the clacking noises, Drizzt had little trouble closing in. He silently picked his way around a final bend with Belwar close by his side. In a wider section of the corridor stood a single hook horror, banging its heavy claws rhythmically against the stone as a svirfneblin miner might use his pickaxe.

Drizzt held Belwar back, indicating that he could dispatch the monster quickly if he could sneak in on it without being noticed. Belwar agreed but remained poised to join in at the first opportunity or need.

The hook horror, obviously engaged in its game with the stone wall, did not hear or see the approaching stealthy drow. Drizzt came right in beside the monster, looking for the easiest and fastest way to dispatch it. He saw only one opening in the exoskeleton, a slit between the creature’s breastplate and its wide neck. Getting a blade in there could be a bit of a problem, though, for the hook horror was nearly ten feet tall.

But the hunter found the solution. He came in hard and fast at the hook horror’s knee, butting with both his shoulders and bringing his blades up into the creature’s crotch.

The hook horror’s legs buckled, and it tumbled back over the drow. As agile as any cat, Drizzt rolled out and sprang on top of the felled monster, both his blades coming tip in at the slit in the armor.

He could have finished the hook horror at once; his scimitars easily could have slipped through the bony defenses. But Drizzt saw something―terror?―on the hook horror’s face, something in the creature’s expression that should not have been there. He forced the hunter back inside, took control of his swords, and hesitated for just a second―long enough for the hook horror, to Drizzt’s absolute amazement, to speak in clear and proper drow language, “Please do...not ...kill…me.”

Chapter 14. Clacker

The scimitars slowly eased away from the hook horror’s neck. “Not…as I… ap-appear,” the monster tried to explain in its halting speech. With each uttered word, the hook horror seemed to become more comfortable with the language. “I am… pech.”

“Pech?” Belwar gawked, moving up to Drizzt’s side. The svirfneblin looked down at the trapped monster with understandable confusion. “A bit big you are for a pech,” he remarked.

Drizzt looked from the monster to Belwar, seeking some explanation. The drow had never heard the word before. “Rock children,” Belwar explained to him. “Strange little creatures. Hard as the stone and living for no other reason than to work it.”

“Sounds like a svirfneblin,” Drizzt replied.

Belwar paused a moment to figure out if he had been complimented or insulted. Unable to discern, the burrow-warden continued somewhat cautiously. “There are not many pech about, and fewer still that look like this one!” He cast a doubting eye at the hook horror, then gave Drizzt a look that told the drow to keep his scimitars at the ready.

“Pech… n’n-no more,” the hook horror stammered, clear remorse evident in its throaty voice. “Pech no more.”

“What is your name?” Drizzt asked it, hoping to find some clues to the truth.

The hook horror thought for a long moment, then shook its great head helplessly. “Pech… n’n-no more,” the monster said again, and it purposely tilted its beaked face backward, widening the crack in its exoskeleton armor and inviting Drizzt to finish the strike.

“You cannot remember your name?” Drizzt asked, not so anxious to kill the creature. The hook horror neither moved nor replied. Drizzt looked to Belwar for advice, but the burrow-warden only shrugged helplessly.

“What happened?” Drizzt pressed the monster. “You must tell me what happened to you.”

“W-w-w.” The hook horror struggled to reply. “W-wi-wiz-ard. Evil wi-zard.”

Somewhat schooled in the ways of magic and in the unscrupulous uses its practitioners often put it to, Drizzt began to understand the possibilities and began to believe this strange creature. “A wizard changed you?” he asked, already guessing the answer. He and Belwar exchanging amazed expressions. “I have heard of such spells.”

“As have I.” agreed the burrow-warden. “Magga cammara, dark elf, I have seen the wizards of Blingdenstone use similar magic when we needed to infiltrate…” The deep gnome paused suddenly, remembering the heritage of the elf he was addressing.

“Menzoberranzan,” Drizzt finished with a chuckle.

Belwar cleared his throat, a bit embarrassed, and turned back to the monster. “A pech you once were,” he said, needing to hear the whole explanation spelled out in one clear thought, “and some wizard changed you into a hook horror.”

“True,” the monster replied. “Pech no more.”

“Where are your companions?” the svirfneblin asked. “If what I have heard of your people is true, pech do not often travel alone.”

“D-d-d-dead,” said the monster. “Evil w-w-w-”

“Human wizard?” Drizzt prompted.

The great beak bobbed in an excited nod. “Yes, mom-man.”

“And the wizard then left you to your pains as a hook horror,” Belwar said. He and Drizzt looked long and hard at each other and then the drow stepped away, allowing the hook horror to rise.

“I w-w-w-wish you w-w-w-would k-k-kill me,” the monster then said, twisting up into a sitting position. It looked at its clawed hands with obvious disgust. “The s-stone, the stone… lost to me.”

Belwar raised his own crafted hands in response. “So had I once believed,” he said. “You are alive, and no longer are you alone. Come with us to the lake, where we can talk some more.”

Presently the hook horror agreed and began, with much effort, to raise its quarter-ton bulk from the floor. Amid the scraping and shuffling of the creature’s hard exoskeleton, Belwar prudently whispered to Drizzt, “Keep your blades at the ready!”

The hook horror finally stood, towering to its imposing ten-foot height, and the drow did not argue Belwar’s logic.

For many hours, the hook horror recounted its adventures to the two friends. As amazing as the story was the monster’s growing acclimation to the use of language. This fact, and the monster’s descriptions of its previous existence―of a life tapping and shaping the stone in an almost holy reverence―further convinced Belwar and Drizzt of the truth of its bizarre tale.

“It feels g-g-good to speak again, though the language is not my own,” the creature said after a while. “It feels as if I have f-found again a part of what I once wow-was.”

With his own similar experiences so clear in his mind, Drizzt understood the sentiments completely.

“How long have you been this way?” Belwar asked.

The hook horror shrugged, its huge chest and shoulders rattling through the movement. “Weeks, m-months,” it said. “I cannot remember. The time is l-lost to me.”

Drizzt put his face in his hands and exhaled a deep sigh, in full empathy and sympathy with the unfortunate creature. Drizzt, too, had felt so lost and alone out in the wilds. He, too, knew the grim truth of such a fate. Belwar patted the drow softly with his hammer-hand.

“And where now are you going?” the burrow-warden asked the hook horror. “Or where were you coming from?”

“Chasing the w-w-w-” the hook horror replied, fumbling helplessly over that last word as though the mere mention of the evil wizard pained the creature greatly. “But so much is l-lost to me. I would find him with l-little effort if I was still p-p-pech. The stones would tell me where to l-look. But I cannot talk to them very often anymore.” The monster rose from its seat on the stone. “I will go.” it said determinedly. “You are not safe with me around.”

“You will stay,” Drizzt said suddenly and with a tone of finality that could not be denied.

“I c-cannot control,” the hook horror tried to explain.

“You’ve no need to worry,” said Belwar. He pointed to the doorway up on the ledge at the side of the cavern. “Our home is up there, with a door too small for you to get through. Down here by the lake you must rest until we all decide our best course of action.”

The hook horror was exhausted, and the svirfneblin’s reasoning seemed sound enough. The monster dropped heavily back to the stone and curled up as much as its bulky body would allow. Drizzt and Belwar took their leave, glancing back at their strange new companion with every step.

“Clacker,” Belwar said suddenly, stopping Drizzt beside him. With great effort, the hook horror rolled over to consider the deep gnome, understanding that Belwar had uttered the word in its direction.

“That is what we shall call you, if you have no objections.” the svirfneblin explained to the creature and to Drizzt.

“Clacker.”

“A fitting name,” Drizzt remarked.

“It is a g-good name,” agreed the hook horror, but silently the creature wished that it could remember its pech name, the name that rolled on and on like a rounded boulder in a sloping passage and spoke prayers to the stone with each growling syllable.

“We will widen the door,” Drizzt said when he and Belwar got inside their cave complex. “So that Clacker may enter and rest beside us in safety.”

“No, dark elf,” argued the burrow-warden. “That we shall not do.”

“He is not safe out there beside the water,” Drizzt replied. “Monsters will find him.”

“Safe enough he is!” snorted Belwar. “What monster would willingly attack a hook horror?” Belwar understood Drizzt’s sincere concern, but he understood, too, the danger in Drizzt’s suggestion. “I have witnessed such spells,” the svirfneblin said somberly. “They are called polymorph. Immediately comes the change of the body, but the change of the mind can take time.”

“What are you saying?” Drizzt’s voice edged on panic.

“Clacker is still a pech,” replied Belwar, “trapped though he is in the body of a hook horror. But soon, I fear, Clacker will be a pech no more. A hook horror he will become, mind and body, and however friendly we might be, Clacker will come to think of us as no more than another meal.”

Drizzt started to argue, but Belwar silenced him with one sobering thought. “Would you enjoy having to kill him, dark elf?”

Drizzt turned away. “His tale is familiar to me.”

“Not as much as you believe,” replied Belwar.

“I, too, was lost,” Drizzt reminded the burrow-warden.

“So you believe,” Belwar answered. “But that which was essentially Drizzt Do’Urden remained within you, my friend. You were as you had to be, as the situation around you forced you to be. This is different. Not just in body, but in very essence will Clacker become a hook horror. His thoughts will be the thoughts of a hook horror and, magga cammara, he will not return your grant of mercy when you are the one on the ground.”

Drizzt could not be satisfied, though he could not refute the deep gnome’s blunt logic. He moved into the complex’s left-hand chamber, the one he had claimed as his bedroom, and fell into his hammock.

“Alas for you, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Belwar mumbled under his breath as he watched the drow’s heavy movements, laden with sorrow. “And alas for our doomed pech friend.” The burrow-warden went into his own chamber and crawled into his hammock, feeling terrible about the whole situation but determined to remain coldly logical and practical, whatever the pain. For Belwar understood that Drizzt felt a kinship to the unfortunate creature, a potentially fatal bond founded in empathy for Clacker’s loss of self.

Later that night, an excited Drizzt shook the svirfneblin from his slumber. “We must help him,” Drizzt whispered harshly.

Belwar wiped an arm across his face and tried to orient himself. His sleep had been uneasy, filled with dreams in which he had cried ‘Bivrip’ in an impossibly loud voice, then had proceeded to bash the life out of his newest companion.

“We must help him!” Drizzt said again, even more forcefully. Belwar could tell by the drow’s haggard appearance that Drizzt had found no sleep this night.

“I am no wizard,” the burrow-warden said. “Neither are―”

“Then we will find one!” Drizzt growled. “We will find the human who cursed Clacker and force him to reverse the dweomer! We saw him by the stream only a few days ago. He cannot be so far away!”

“A mage capable of such magic will prove no easy foe,” Belwar was quick to reply. “Have you so quickly forgotten the fireball?” Belwar glanced to the wall, to where his scorched leather jack hung on a peg, as if to convince himself. “The wizard is beyond us, I fear,” Belwar mumbled, but Drizzt could see the lack of conviction in the burrow-warden’s expression as he spoke the words.

“Are you so quick to condemn Clacker?” Drizzt asked bluntly. A wide smile began to spread over Drizzt’s face as he saw the svirfneblin weakening. “Is this the same Belwar Dissengulp who took in a lost drow? That most honored burrow-warden who would not give up hope for a dark elf that everyone else considered dangerous and beyond help?”

“Go to sleep, dark elf,” Belwar retorted, pushing Drizzt away with his hammer-hand.

“Wise advice, my friend,” said Drizzt. “And you sleep well. We may have a long road ahead of us.”

“Magga cammara,” huffed the taciturn svirfneblin, stubbornly holding to his facade of gruff practicality. He rolled away from Drizzt and soon was snoring.

Drizzt noted that Belwar’s snores now sounded from the depths of a deep and contented sleep.

Clacker beat against the wall with his clawed hands, taptapping the stone relentlessly.

“Not again,” a flustered Belwar whispered to Drizzt. “Not out here!”

Drizzt sped along the winding corridor, homing in on the monotonous sound. “Clacker!” he called softly when the hook horror was in sight.

The hook horror turned to face the approaching drow, clawed hands wide and ready and a growling hiss slipping through his great beak. A moment later, Clacker realized what he was doing and abruptly stopped.

“Why must you continue that banging?” Drizzt asked him, trying to pretend, even to himself, that he had not seen Clacker’s battle stance. “We are out in the wilds, my friend. Such sounds invite visitors.”

The giant monster’s head drooped. “You should not have c-c-come out with m-me.” Clacker said. “I c-c-cannot-many things will happen that I cannot c-control.”

Drizzt reached up and put a comforting hand on Clacker’s bony elbow. “It was my fault,” the drow said, understanding the hook horror’s meaning. Clacker had apologized for turning dangerously on Drizzt. “We should not have gone off in different directions,” Drizzt continued, “and I should not have approached you so quickly and without warning. We will all stay together now, though our search may prove longer, and Belwar and I will help you to maintain control.”

Clacker’s beaked face brightened. “It does feel so very g-good to tot-tap the stone,” he proclaimed. Clacker banged a claw on the rock as if to jolt his memory. His voice and his gaze trailed away as he thought of his past life, the one that the wizard had stolen from him. All the pech’s days had been spent tapping the stone, shaping the stone, talking to the precious stone.

“You will be pech again,” Drizzt promised.

Belwar, approaching from the tunnel, heard the drow’s words and was not so certain. They had been out in the tunnels for more than a week and had found not a sign of the wizard. The burrow-warden took some comfort in the fact that Clacker seemed to be winning back part of himself from his monstrous state, seemed to be regaining a measure of his pech personality. Belwar had watched the same transformation in Drizzt just a few weeks before, and beneath the survivalistic barriers of the hunter that Drizzt had become, Belwar had discovered his closest friend.

But the burrow-warden took care not to assume the same results with Clacker. The hook horror’s condition was the result of powerful magic, and no amount of friendship could reverse the workings of the wizard’s dweomer. In finding Drizzt and Belwar, Clacker had been granted a temporary―and only temporary―reprieve from a miserable and undeniable fate.

They moved on through the tunnels of the Underdark for several more days without any luck. Clacker’s personality still did not deteriorate, but even Drizzt, who had left the cave complex beside the lake so full of hope, began to feel the weight of increasing reality.

Then, just as Drizzt and Belwar had begun discussing returning to their home, the group came into a fair-sized cavern littered with rubble from a recent collapse of the ceiling.

“He has been here!” Clacker cried, and he offhandedly lifted a huge boulder and tossed it against a distant wall, where it shattered into so much rubble. “He has been here!”

The hook horror rushed about, smashing stone and throwing boulders with growing, explosive rage.

“How can you know?” Belwar demanded, trying to stop his giant friend’s tirade.

Clacker pointed up at the ceiling. “He d-did this. The w-w-w-he did this!”

Drizzt and Belwar exchanged concerned glances. The chamber’s ceiling, which had been about fifteen feet up, was gouged and blasted, and in its center loomed a massive hole that extended up to twice the ceiling’s former height. If magic had caused that devastation, it was powerful magic indeed!

“The wizard did this?” Belwar echoed. He cast that stubbornly practical look he had perfected toward Drizzt one more time.

“His t-t-tower,” Clacker replied, and rushed off about the chamber to see if he could discern which exit the wizard ad taken.

Now Drizzt and Belwar were completely at a loss, and Clacker, when he finally took the time to look at them, realized their confusion.

“The w-w-w―”

“Wizard,” Belwar put in impatiently.

Clacker took no offense, even appreciated the assistance.

“The w-wizard has a t-tower,” the excited hook horror tried to explain. “A g-great iron t-tower that he takes with him, setting it up wherever it is c-c-convenient.” Clacker looked up at the ruined ceiling. “Even if it does not always fit.”

“He carries a tower?” Belwar asked, his long nose crinkling right up over itself.

Clacker nodded excitedly, but then didn’t take the time to explain further, for he had found the wizard’s trail, a clear boot print in a bed of moss leading down another of the corridors.

Drizzt and Belwar had to be satisfied with their friend’s incomplete explanation, for the chase was on. Drizzt took up the lead, using all the skills he had learned in the drow Academy and had heightened during his decade alone in the Underdark. Belwar, with his innate racial understanding of the Underdark and his magically lighted brooch, kept track of their direction, and Clacker, in those instances when he fell more completely back into his former self, asked the stones for guidance. The three of them passed another blasted chamber, and another chamber that showed clear signs of the tower’s presence, though its ceiling was high enough to accommodate the structure.

A few days later, the three companions turned into a wide and high cavern, and far back from them, beside a rushing stream, loomed the wizard’s home. Again Drizzt and Belwar looked at each other helplessly, for the tower stood fully thirty feet high and twenty across, its smooth metallic walls mocking their plans. They took separate and cautious routes to the structure and were even more amazed, for the tower’s walls were pure adamantite, the hardest metal in all the world.

They found only a single door, small and barely showing its outline in the perfection of the tower’s craftsmanship. They didn’t have to test it to know that it was secure against unwelcome visitors.

“The w-w-w-he is in there,” Clacker snarled, running his claws over the door in desperation.

“Then he will have to come out,” Drizzt reasoned. “And when he does, we will be waiting for him.”

The plan did not satisfy the pech. With a rumbling roar that echoed throughout the region, Clacker threw his huge body against the tower door, then jumped back and slammed it again. The door didn’t even shudder under the pounding, and it quickly became obvious to the deep gnome and the drow that Clacker’s body would certainly lose the battle.

Drizzt tried vainly to calm his giant friend, while Belwar moved off to the side and began a familiar chant.

Finally, Clacker tumbled down in a heap, sobbing in exhaustion and pain and helpless rage. Then Belwar, his mithril hands sparking whenever they touched, waded in.

“Move aside!” the burrow-warden demanded. “I have come too far to be stopped by a single door!” Belwar moved directly in front of the small door and slammed his enchanted hammer-hand at it with all his strength. A blinding flash of blue sparks burst out in every direction. The deep gnome’s muscled arms worked furiously, scraping and bashing, but when Belwar had exhausted his energy, the tower door showed only the slightest of scratches and superficial burns.

Belwar banged his hands together in disgust, showering himself in harmless sparks, and Clacker agreed wholeheartedly with his frustrated sentiments. Drizzt, though, was more angry and concerned than his friends. Not only had the wizard’s tower stopped them, but the wizard inside undoubtedly knew of their presence. Drizzt moved about the structure cautiously, noting the many arrow slits. Creeping below one, he heard a soft chant, and though he couldn’t understand the wizard’s words, he could guess easily enough the human’s intent.

“Run!” he yelled to his companions, and then, in sheer desperation, he grabbed a nearby stone and hauled it up into the opening of the arrow slit. Luck was with the drow, for the wizard completed his spell just as the rock slammed against the opening. A lightning bolt roared out, shattered the stone, and sent Drizzt flying, but it reflected back into the tower.

“Damnation! Damnation!” came a squeal from inside the tower. “I hate vhen that hoppens!”

Belwar and Clacker rushed over to help their fallen friend. The drow was only stunned, and he was up and ready before they ever got there.

“Oh, you ist going to pay dearly for that one, yest you ist!” came a cry from within.

“Run away!” cried the burrow-warden, and even the outraged hook horror was in full agreement. But as soon as Belwar looked into the drow’s lavender eyes, he knew that

Drizzt would not flee. Clacker, too, backed away a step from the fires gathering within Drizzt Do’Urden.

“Magga cammara, dark elf, we cannot get in.” the svirfneblin prudently reminded Drizzt.

Drizzt pulled out the onyx figurine and held it against the arrow slit, blocking it with his body. “We shall see,” he growled, and then he called to Guenhwyvar.

The black mist swirled about and found only one empty path clear from the figurine.

“I vill keell you all!” cried the unseen wizard.

The next sound from within the tower was a low panther’s growl, and then the wizard’s voice rang out again. “I cood be wrong!”

“Open the door!” Drizzt screamed. “On your life, foul wizard!”

“Never!”

Guenhwyvar roared again, then the wizard screamed and the door swung wide.

Drizzt led the way. They entered a circular room, the tower’s bottom level. An iron ladder ran up its center to a trap door, the wizard’s attempted escape route. The human hadn’t quite made it, however, and he hung upside-down off the back side of the ladder, one leg hooked at the knee through a rung. Guenhwyvar, appearing fully healed from the ordeal in the acid lake and looking again like the most magnificent of panthers, perched on the other side of the ladder, casually mouthing the wizard’s calf and foot.

“Do come een!” the wizard cried, throwing his arms out wide, then drawing them back to pull his drooping robe up from his face. Wisps of smoke rose from the remaining tatters of the lightning-blackened robe. “I am Brister Fendlestick. Velcome to my hoomble home!”

Belwar kept Clacker at the door, holding his dangerous friend back with his hammer-hand, while Drizzt moved up to take charge of the prisoner. The drow paused long enough to regard his dear feline companion, for he hadn’t summoned Guenhwyvar since that day when he had sent the panther away to heal.

“You speak drow,” Drizzt remarked, grabbing the wizard by the collar and agilely spinning him down to his feet. Drizzt eyed the man suspiciously; he had never seen a human before the encounter in the corridor by the stream. To this point, the drow wasn’t overly impressed.

“Many tongues ist known to me,” replied the wizard, brushing himself off. And then, as if his proclamation was meant to carry some great importance, he added, “I am Brister Fendlestick!”

“Do you name pech among your languages?” Belwar growled from the door.

“Pech?” the wizard replied, spitting the word with apparent distaste.

“Pech.” Drizzt snarled, emphasizing his response by snapping the edge of a scimitar to within an inch of the wizard’s neck.

Clacker took a step forward, easily sliding the blocking svirfneblin across the smooth floor.

“My large friend was once a pech,” Drizzt explained. “You should know that.”

“Pech.” the wizard spat. “Useless leetle things, and always they ist in the way.” Clacker took another long stride forward.

“Be on with it, drow,” Belwar begged, futilely leaning against the huge hook horror.

“Give him back his identity,” Drizzt demanded. “Make our friend a pech again. And be quick about it.”

“Bah!” snorted the wizard. “He ist better off as he ist!” the unpredictable human replied. “Why would anyone weesh to remain a pech?”

Clacker’s breath came in a loud gasp. The sheer strength of his third stride sent Belwar skidding off to the side.

“Now, wizard,” Drizzt warned. From the ladder, Guenhwyvar issued a long and hungry growl.

“Oh, very vell, very vell!” the wizard spouted, throwing up his hands in disgust. “Wretched pech!” He pulled an immense book from of a pocket much too small to hold it.

Drizzt and Belwar smiled to each other, thinking victory at hand. But then the wizard made a fatal mistake.

“I shood have killed him as I killed the others,” he mumbled under his breath, too low for even Drizzt, standing right beside him, to make out the words.

But hook horrors had the keenest hearing of any creature in the Underdark.

A swipe of Clacker’s enormous claw sent Belwar spiraling across the room. Drizzt, spinning about at the sound of heavy steps, was thrown aside by the momentum of the rushing giant, the drow’s scimitars flying from his hands. And the wizard, the foolish wizard, padded Clacker’s impact with the iron ladder, a jolt so vicious that it bowed the ladder and sent Guenhwyvar flying off the other side.

Whether the initial crushing blow of the hook horror’s five-hundred-pound body had killed the wizard was academic by the time either Drizzt or Belwar had recovered enough to call out to their friend. Clacker’s hooks and beak slashed and snapped relentlessly, tearing and crushing. Every now and then came a sudden flash and a puff of smoke as another of the many magical items that the wizard carried snapped apart.

And when the hook horror had played out his rage and looked around at his three companions, surrounding him in battle-ready stances, the lump of gore at Clacker’s feet was no longer recognizable.

Belwar started to remark that the wizard had agreed to change Clacker back, but he didn’t see the point. Clacker fell to his knees and dropped his face into his claws, hardly believing what he had done.

“Let us be gone from this place,” Drizzt said, sheathing his blades.

“Search it,” Belwar suggested, thinking that marvelous treasures might be hidden within. But Drizzt could not remain for another moment. He had seen too much of himself in the unbridled rage of his giant companion, and the smell of the bloodied heap filled him with frustrations and fears that he could not tolerate. With Guenhwyvar in tow, he walked from the tower.

Belwar moved over and helped Clacker to his feet, then guided the trembling giant from the structure. Stubbornly practical, though, the burrow-warden made his companions wait around while he scoured the tower, searching for items that might aid them, or for the command word that would allow him to carry the tower along. But either the wizard was a poor man―which Belwar doubted―or he had his treasures safely hidden away, possibly in some other plane of existence, for the svirfneblin found nothing beyond a simple water skin and a pair of worn boots. If the marvelous adamantite tower had a command word, it had gone to the grave with the wizard.

Their journey home was a quiet one, lost in private concerns, regrets, and memories. Drizzt and Belwar did not have to speak their most pressing fear. In their discussions with Clacker, they both had learned enough of the normally peaceable race of pech to know that Clacker’s murderous outburst was far removed from the creature he once had been.

But, the deep gnome and the drow had to admit to themselves, Clacker’s actions were not so far removed from the creature he was fast becoming.

Chapter 15. Pointed Reminders

“What do you know?” Matron Malice demanded of Jarlaxle, walking at her side across the compound of House Do’Urden. Malice normally would not have been so conspicuous with the infamous mercenary, but she was worried and impatient. Reported stirring within the hierarchy of Menzoberranzan’s ruling families did not bode well for House Do’Urden.

“Know?” Jarlaxle echoed, feigning surprise.

Malice scowled at him, as did Briza, walking on the other side of the brash mercenary.

Jarlaxle cleared his throat, though it sounded more like a laugh. He couldn’t supply Malice with the details of the rumblings; he was not so foolish as to betray the more powerful houses of the city. But Jarlaxle could tease Malice with a simple statement of logic that only confirmed what she already had assumed. “Zin-carla, the spirit-wraith, has been in use for a very long time.”

Malice struggled to keep her breathing inconspicuously smooth. She realized that Jarlaxle knew more than he would say, and the fact that the calculating mercenary had so coolly stated the obvious told her that her fears were justified. The spirit-wraith of Zaknafein had indeed been searching for Drizzt for a very long time. Malice did not need to be reminded that the Spider Queen was not known for her patience.

“Have you any more to tell me?” Malice asked.

Jarlaxle shrugged noncommittally.

“Then be gone from my house,” the matron mother snarled.

Jarlaxle hesitated for a moment, wondering if he should demand payment for the little information he had provided. Then he dipped into one of his well-known low, hat-sweeping bows and turned for the gate.

He would find his payment soon enough.

In the anteroom to the house chapel an hour later, Matron Malice rested back in her throne and let her thoughts roll out into the winding tunnels of the wild Underdark. Her telepathy with the spirit-wraith was limited, usually a passing of strong emotions, nothing more. But from those internal struggles of Zaknafein, who had been Drizzt’s father and closest friend in life and was now Drizzt’s deadliest enemy, Malice could learn much of her spirit-wraith’s progress. Anxieties caused by Zaknafein’s inner struggle inevitably would increase whenever the spirit-wraith got close to Drizzt.

Now, after the disturbing meeting with Jarlaxle, Malice had to learn of Zaknafein’s progress. A short time later, her efforts were rewarded.

“Matron Malice insists that the spirit-wraith has gone west, beyond the svirfneblin city,” Jarlaxle explained to Matron Baenre. The mercenary had set out straight from House Do’Urden to the mushroom grove in the southern end of Menzoberranzan, to where the greatest of the drow families were housed.

“The spirit-wraith keeps to the trail,” Matron Baenre mused, more to herself than to her informant. “That is good.”

“But Matron Malice believes that Drizzt has a lead of many days, even weeks,” Jarlaxle went on.

“She told you this?” Matron Baenre asked incredulously, amazed that Malice would reveal such damaging information.

“Some information can be gathered without words.” the mercenary replied slyly. “Matron Malice’s tone inferred much that she did not wish me to know.”

Matron Baenre nodded and closed her wrinkled eyes, wearied by the whole experience. She had played a role in getting Matron Malice onto the ruling council, but now she could only sit and wait to see if Malice would remain.

“We must trust in Matron Malice,” Matron Baenre said at length.

Across the room from Baenre and Jarlaxle, Elviddinvelp, Matron Baenre’s companion mind flayer, turned its thoughts away from the conversation. The drow mercenary had reported that Drizzt had gone west, far out from Blingdenstone, and that news carried potential importance that could not be ignored.

The mind flayer projected its thoughts far out to the west, issued a clear warning down the corridors that were not as empty as they might appear.

Zaknafein knew as soon as he looked upon the still lake that he had caught up to his quarry. He dropped low into the crooks and crags along the wide cavern’s wall and made his way about. Then he found the unnatural door and the cave complex beyond.

Old feelings stirred within the spirit-wraith, feelings of the kinship he once had known with Drizzt, New, savage emotions were quick to overwhelm them, though, as Matron Malice came into Zaknafein’s mind in a wild fury. The spirit-wraith burst through the door, swords drawn, and tore through the complex. A blanket flew into the air and came down in pieces as Zaknafein’s swords sliced across it a dozen times.

When the fit of rage had played itself out, Matron Malice’s monster settled back into a crouch to examine the situation. Drizzt was not at home.

It took the hunting spirit-wraith only a short time to determine that Drizzt, and a companion, or perhaps even two, had set out from the cavern a few days before. Zaknafein’s tactical instincts told him to lie in wait, for surely this was no phony campsite, as had been the one outside the deep gnome city. Surely Zaknafein’s prey meant to return. The spirit-wraith sensed that Matron Malice, back on her throne in the drow city, would endure no delays. Time was running short for her―the dangerous whispers were growing louder every day―and Malice’s fears and impatience cost her dearly this time.

Only a few hours after Malice had driven the spirit-wraith into the tunnels in pursuit of her renegade son, Drizzt, Belwar, and Clacker returned to the cavern by a different route.

Drizzt sensed at once that something was very wrong. He drew his blades and rushed across to the ledge, springing up to the door of the cave complex before Belwar and Clacker could even begin to question him.

When they arrived at the cave, they understood Drizzt’s alarm. The place was destroyed, hammocks and bedrolls torn apart, bowls and a small box that had been stuffed with gathered foods smashed and thrown to every corner. Clacker, who could not fit inside the complex, spun from the door and moved away, ensuring that no enemy was lurking in the far reaches of the large cavern.

“Magga cammara!” Belwar roared. “What monster did this?”

Drizzt held up a blanket and pointed out the clean cuts in the fabric. Belwar did not miss the drow’s meaning.

“Blades,” the burrow-warden said grimly. “Fine and crafted blades.”

“The blades of a drow,” Drizzt finished for him.

“Far are we from Menzoberranzan,” Belwar reminded him. “Far out in the wilds, beyond the knowledge and sight of your kin.”

Drizzt knew better than to agree with such an assumption. For the bulk of his young life, Drizzt had witnessed the fanaticism that guided the lives of Lloth’s foul priestesses.

Drizzt himself had traveled on a raid many miles to the surface of the Realms, a raid that suited no better purpose than to give the Spider Queen a sweet taste of the blood of surface elves. “Do not underestimate Matron Malice.” he said grimly.

“If it is indeed your mother come to call,” Belwar growled, clapping his hands together, “she will find more than she expected waiting for her. We shall lie for her,” the svirfneblin promised, “the three of us.”

“Do not underestimate Matron Malice,” Drizzt said again. “This encounter was no coincidence, and Matron Malice will be prepared for whatever we have to offer.”

“You cannot know that,” Belwar reasoned, but when the burrow-warden recognized the sincere dread in the drow’s lavender eyes, all conviction drifted out of his voice.

They gathered what few usable items remained and set out only a short while later, again going west to put even more distance between themselves and Menzoberranzan.

Clacker took up the lead, for few monsters would willingly put themselves in the path of a hook horror. Belwar walked in the middle, the solid anchor of the party, and Drizzt floated along silently far to the rear, taking it upon himself to protect his friends if his mother’s agents should catch up to them. Belwar had reasoned that they might have a good lead on whoever ruined their home. If the perpetrators had set off in pursuit of them from the cave complex, following their trail to the tower of the dead wizard, many days would pass before the enemy even returned to the cavern of the lake. Drizzt was not so secure in the burrow-warden’s reasoning.

He knew his mother too well.

After several interminable days, the troupe came into a region of broken floors, jagged walls, and ceilings filled with stalactites that leered down at them like poised monsters. They closed in their ranks, needing the comfort of companionship. Despite the attention it might draw, Belwar took out his magically lighted brooch and pinned it on his leather jack. Even in the glow, the shadows thrown by sharp-edged mounds promised only peril.

This region seemed more hushed than the Underdark’s usual stillness. Rarely did travelers in the subterranean world of the Realms hear the sounds of other creatures, but here the quiet felt more profound, as though all life somehow had been stolen from the place. Clacker’s heavy steps and the scrape of Belwar’s boots echoed unnervingly off the many stone faces.

Belwar was the first to sense approaching danger. Subtle vibrations in the stone called out to the svirfneblin that he and his friends were not alone. He stopped Clacker with his pick-hand, then looked back to Drizzt to see if the drow shared his uneasy feelings.

Drizzt signaled to the ceiling, then levitated up into the darkness, seeking an ambush spot among the many stalactites. The drow drew one of his scimitars as he ascended and put his other hand on the onyx figurine in his pocket.

Belwar and Clacker set up behind a ridge of stone, the deep gnome mumbling through the refrain that would enchant his mithril hands. Both felt better in the knowledge that the drow warrior was above them, looking over them.

But Drizzt was not the only one who figured the stalactites as an ambush spot. As soon as he entered the layer of jagged, spearlike stones, the drow knew he was not alone.

A form, slightly larger than Drizzt but obviously humanoid, drifted out around a nearby stalactite. Drizzt kicked off a stone to propel himself at it, drawing his other scimitar as he went. He knew his peril a moment later, for his enemy’s head resembled a four-tentacled octopus. Drizzt had never actually viewed such a creature before, but he knew what it was: an illithid, a mind flayer, the most evil and most feared monster in all the Underdark.

The mind flayer struck first, long before Drizzt had closed within his scimitar’s limited range. The monster’s tentacles wiggled and waved, and―fwoop!―a cone of mental energy rolled over Drizzt. The drow fought back against the impending blackness with all of his willpower. He tried to concentrate on his target, tried to focus his anger, but the illithid blasted again. Another mind fIayer appeared and fired its stunning force at Drizzt from the side.

Belwar and Clacker could see nothing of the encounter, for Drizzt was above the radius of the deep gnome’s illuminating brooch. Both sensed that something was going on above them, though, and the burrow-warden risked a whispered call to his friend.

“Drizzt?”

His answer came only a moment later, when two scimitars clanged to the stone. Belwar and Clacker started toward the weapons in surprise, then fell back. Before them the air shimmered and wavered, as if an invisible door to some other plane of existence was being opened.

An illithid stepped through, appearing right before the surprised friends and letting out its mental blast before either of them even had time to cry out. Belwar reeled and stumbled to the floor, but Clacker, his mind already in conflict between hook horror and pech, was not so adversely affected.

The mind fIayer loosed its force again, but the hook horror stepped right through the stunning cone and smashed the illithid with a single blow of his enormous clawed hand.

Clacker looked all around, and then up. Other mind flayers were drifting down from the ceiling, two holding Drizzt by the ankles. More invisible doors opened. In an instant, blast after blast came at Clacker from every angle, and the defense of his dual personalities’ inner turmoil quickly began to wear away. Desperation and welling outrage took over Clacker’s actions.

Clacker was solely a hook horror at that moment, acting on the instinctive rage and ferocity of the monstrous breed. But even the hard shell of a hook horror proved no defense against the mind fIayers’ continuing insidious blasts. Clacker rushed at the two holding Drizzt.

The darkness caught him halfway there.

He was kneeling on the stone―he knew that much. Clacker crawled on, refusing to surrender, refusing to relinquish the sheer anger.

Then he lay on the floor, with no thoughts of Drizzt or Belwar or rage.

There was only darkness.