Maestro

CHAPTER 10

Anyone watching from the side would have thought them a single being, a marilith, perhaps, with six arms, all holding deadly weapons of extraordinary craftsmanship and imbued with powerful magic. Even those who knew these three warriors well-Drizzt, Entreri, and Jarlaxle-would have simply sat back and gasped.

Their coordination was marvelous. Their intertwining dance-rolling over each other’s thrusts, following a sweeping blade to cross to the other side of their battle line, ducking beneath the sidelong swipe of an ally’s weapon, even leaping at the last possible instant as a long sword or scimitar cut beneath-mesmerizing in its perfection and timing.

The demons in front of them, including balgura and manes, melted away, cut a dozen times, stabbed in the eye, the heart, the groin, and the line of three warriors steadily advanced, stepping over the smoking, dissipating husks of the fallen.

When the corridor widened, so, too, did their line. Whichever two were on the ends moved out wide, which only made the rolling dance a more athletic endeavor. Simple turns became dramatic leaps, and simple steps become quick jaunts. Having more enemies clustering in front of them only gave them more things to hit. The demons couldn’t keep up with the trio, and never seemed close to getting a weapon or a clawed hand anywhere near an intended target.

The power … Jarlaxle heard in his head, and it seemed more an expression of ecstasy than anything else.

The mercenary concentrated on the fight at hand, stabbing Khazid’hea forward, then twisting to parry the swing of a balgura’s heavy hammer.

In the simple parry, meant to deflect and not to block, the demon’s weapon fell apart, the shaft sliced cleanly and even the heavy stone head falling to the stone floor in two pieces, cut diagonally. Jarlaxle, intent on finishing the brute, which he did with a second thrust, only barely registered the destroyed hammer, but that image stayed with him as he moved forward.

He knew Khazid’hea, Cutter, was a powerful blade-a sword of sharpness-but the thought that such a simple twist could cut a heavy warhammer so easily and cleanly seemed purely ridiculous!

The power … he heard again in his head, and this time he knew it was the blade telepathically communicating.

Jarlaxle dismissed the noise in his thoughts and focused more fully on the battle at hand, reminding himself that working with such allies as Drizzt and Entreri could get one as readily killed by a friendly sword as an enemy blade if one was imperfect in the dance.

But that was exactly what seemed to be happening around him.

Drizzt leaped forward and fell into line, right beside a balgura. The demon hesitated only for the blink of an eye before biting at the drow dinner that had just served itself.

Jarlaxle’s fine sword intervened, cutting the balgura in the side of its face. But then Drizzt’s blade parried Jarlaxle’s, and a riposte sent Jarlaxle sliding backward.

“Foul tricksters!” Drizzt yelled. “Be warned, we are deceived!”

Entreri leaped past Jarlaxle then, going at Drizzt-clearly to kill the drow rather than support him!

Jarlaxle didn’t know what to do, so he reacted with the wand that had served him so well all these years. He hit the pair with a summoned gob of goo.

“You are both deceived!” he shouted as they tumbled away, and Jarlaxle filled the void immediately to stab hard at the balgura, forcing it back. To the side, Drizzt and Entreri were already both extricating themselves from the goo. Jarlaxle had only scored a glancing hit.

Jarlaxle threw down the feather from his magical hat, bringing forth the giant diatryma bird, and bade it drive back the balgura and the few remaining minor demons behind it. From a ring, he launched a blade barrier, a whirlwind of summoned swords, into the back of the demon pack, chewing at them and slicing them apart. From a necklace, he detached a small ruby and threw it to the far side of the enemy forces, melting a bunch of manes with a fireball.

Jarlaxle hated wasting his precious contingency spells and items-he could not summon the diatryma for another day, could not use the spell from his ring until he managed to get it recharged by a powerful priest, and it would take him many coins to replace the ruby on his necklace of fireballs. But there were other concerns.

He looked to his companions, shouting at them to stop. They were nearly free then, and already trying to swing at each other.

“By the gods, you idiots,” Jarlaxle screamed, “the fight is ended!”

The volume of his scream and the atypical behavior from Jarlaxle finally seemed to get through to them. Drizzt tore free of the remaining goo and stumbled backward, scimitars still in hand as he eyed Entreri suspiciously.

“Show your true form, d-demon,” Entreri ordered, but he stuttered at the end and blinked repeatedly, then stood up straight and glanced at Jarlaxle, clearly confused.

“It would seem that our demon enemies have some tricks of their own to play,” said Drizzt, who also sheathed his weapons then.

But Jarlaxle was only half-listening, if that.

Do you feel it? Khazid’hea asked in his head. The magic of life, the music of chaos …

Jarlaxle wasn’t sure what to make of it, but then it occurred to him that this part of their journey had taken them very near the Faerzress. Khazid’hea was a drow blade, and so the magic of that mystical radiation had been instrumental in giving the sword sentience and its magically enhanced keen edge.

You have been here before, many times, Jarlaxle reminded the blade. He was confident that the sword had traversed these tunnels in the past. Yet I sense your surprise.

Never like this, he felt from his excited sword.

Jarlaxle wasn’t sure what to make of it, but he slid the sword away for safekeeping and focused again on his companions. Both were shaken and scrutinized each other as if they both expected a demon to take shape from within the other’s drow form.

“The mask,” Drizzt said, confirming Jarlaxle’s fears. “How do we know it is truly Artemis Entreri beneath Agatha’s Mask?”

“Because I gave it to him and watched him put it on,” Jarlaxle replied in a deadpan, incredulous tone.

“A major demon would be clever enough to continue Entreri’s exact ruse if it got its claws on that magic mask,” reasoned Drizzt.

Entreri pulled off the mask and reverted to his normal form immediately. “And a major demon would be clever enough to deflect attention in such a manner as you just did,” he said, aiming the remark at Drizzt, who seemed very much his adversary at that point.

“I have magical truesight,” Jarlaxle interrupted and when both turned to regard him, he tapped his heavily enchanted eye patch. “Though Agatha’s Mask could fool me. Its magic is ancient and powerful, no polymorph enchantment a demon might wage would deceive me. Even one cast by a major demon.”

“And a demon lord?” asked Drizzt, who seemed unable to let this go.

“Aye,” the equally suspicious Entreri echoed.

Jarlaxle stared at Drizzt and held up his arms as if in surrender. “It is Artemis Entreri,” he said to the ranger. He turned to the assassin. “Put the mask back on, and leave it on. And it is Drizzt Do’Urden before you and no demon imposter. What foolishness has possessed you? Both of you?”

“We are dealing with powerful denizens of the lower planes,” Entreri said, and he became a drow once more. “What you call foolishness, I deem caution.”

“And if you had killed each other? What then?”

“Then it would all be, perhaps, as it was ever supposed to be,” Entreri said with deadly seriousness. He looked at Drizzt as he issued the threat.

“If the last thing I do before I cease to draw breath in this life is to end the life of Artemis Entreri, then I know I will leave this world a better place than I found it,” Drizzt returned.

Jarlaxle kept his hands out to the side, too flustered to even realize his arms were out there. This seemed to him a throwback to days long past-hadn’t Drizzt and Entreri gone far beyond this foolishness? They had traveled together for many years, indeed had done incredible things together, in Port Llast, particularly.

Now, for no reason Jarlaxle could discern, they were ready, eager even, to kill each other.

“Demogorgon,” Jarlaxle whispered under his breath. Wasn’t one of the greatest weapons of the Prince of Demons his ability to drive men mad? That unsettling thought nagged at Jarlaxle and had him looking over his shoulder more than once, as if expecting the gargantuan Demogorgon to come crashing through the hall at any moment.

The way was clear-both ways now that the remaining pack of demons had been properly dispatched. To the side, the great flightless bird pecked at the smoking corpse of the balgura.

Jarlaxle wearily rubbed his face and considered the warnings Faelas had given him regarding Menzoberranzan. None of this was going as he had expected. Every step seemed to bring new challenges-would he even be able to take his rest this day with the possibility that he would awaken to the sounds of Drizzt and Entreri engaged in mortal combat?

“I know not what has brought to you both these … suspicions,” he said. “Is there so little trust to be had between we three?”

Drizzt and Entreri scowled at each other.

“Then we should turn back for Gauntlgrym,” said Jarlaxle.

“Aye, and be rid of this one,” Entreri said with a nod at Drizzt. “We shouldn’t have brought him in the first place.”

Jarlaxle sighed and held his thoughts silent. If Drizzt had not agreed to come along, he wouldn’t have made this journey. He didn’t care enough about the elf Dahlia to risk so much. And though he, or at least Bregan D’aerthe, was indebted to Artemis Entreri for his loss of another lover, another woman, a half-elf named Calihye, Jarlaxle had no intention of risking his life repaying that debt.

What Jarlaxle couldn’t tell Entreri was that this journey really wasn’t about Dahlia. He meant to rescue her, and hoped Kimmuriel would find some way to unwind the writhing snakes in her mind. That would aid Jarlaxle in his greater aims, and indeed, had served him as a catalyst for convincing Drizzt to come in the first place. But Dahlia’s fate was not paramount.

Jarlaxle was bringing Drizzt to Menzoberranzan to exploit a growing rift among his people, a rising scream of protest from the males of Menzoberranzan that they would not forever be held as vassals to the matriarchs. For more than a century, Jarlaxle and so many others had looked to Drizzt as the one who found freedom, the one who denied the ways of Lolth and escaped, and indeed thrived. Even Gromph couldn’t help but nod approvingly-if secretly-when he thought of Drizzt Do’Urden. That was why Gromph had chosen to clandestinely use Drizzt’s body as the conduit for his great dispelling magic to boil away the Darkening that Tsabrak Xorlarrin, acting on the will of Lolth, had created above the Silver Marches.

Drizzt was Jarlaxle’s chance to exploit the rift in Menzoberranzan, and Matron Mother Zeerith Xorlarrin’s chance to regain her stature in the city.

The arrival of Drizzt-to pull Dahlia from the ridiculous reincarnation of House Do’Urden, to poke his finger in the eye of Matron Mother Quenthel Baenre, to send great waves through the city-was Jarlaxle’s countering wave against the rising tide of zealotry growing in Menzoberranzan. Unyielding fealty to the strictest edicts of Lady Lolth would push all the males of Menzoberranzan far back down the ladder of ascension, and would indeed threaten even Bregan D’aerthe. Jarlaxle had worked too hard and too long to let that happen.

But ah, what now? he wondered, looking at his companions. Their mission suddenly seemed ill-fated. He had gone into it unsure, and indeed with some of his advisers and even Gromph warning him that there was too little certainty and too much to lose. And now, in the few days since they had marched from Luskan’s Undercity, they had learned that their destination had been virtually shut down, even to magical intrusions. They had found corridors full of demons, and now this, some strangeness that had infected his companions in a most dangerous way.

“We will return Drizzt to King Bruenor’s court, and then we will return to, and remain in, Luskan,” Jarlaxle said.

Entreri’s face contorted with a clear undercurrent of growing rage. “You promised me this,” he said in a quiet and deadly voice. “You owe me this.”

“We cannot do this without Drizzt,” Jarlaxle said, and convincingly despite the secretive other half of the equation,. He, Drizzt, and Entreri were gaining something special here, and they all knew it. Their work together in fending off the demon hordes was no minor matter-he and Entreri simply couldn’t replace Drizzt with someone else and go their merry way.

“I give not a damn about Drizzt,” Entreri growled back at him.

“Then you give not a damn about Dahlia,” Jarlaxle said. “Without him, we cannot get near to her.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then we return the way we came.”

“No!”

The two stared at each other, Entreri hatefully, Jarlaxle curiously.

“We go on,” said Drizzt, and both turned to him. He looked Jarlaxle in the eye. “Or I do, alone. Dahlia is down there. She was my companion, my friend. I cannot abandon her in her time of desperation.”

“Will you take a second wife, then?” Entreri asked.

“She would be better off as my slave than as consort to the demon masked in the body of Artemis Entreri,” Drizzt snapped back, and both drew their blades once more.

“One strike!” Jarlaxle warned, stepping between them. “One blade against blade, one wound from either of you upon the other, even in the midst of battle, even by accident, and our quest is ended.” He looked to each, staring sternly until the blades went down then went away.

“When Dahlia is returned to the World Above, I give you leave to murder each other, if that is your choice.”

She heard the whistle, a strange sound indeed, that reverberated like the beacon of a lighthouse in K’yorl’s mind, and so, too, in Yvonnel’s.

What was this sensation?

And then Yvonnel’s heart leaped. They had done it! K’yorl had sent her thoughts out from the stoup and across the planes to contact Kimmuriel. And there, in the hive-mind of the illithids, she had found her son.

That elation turned to doubt, though, when Kimmuriel recoiled in anger.

Kimmuriel chastised his mother for causing him to deliver to Gromph Baenre the fabric of the spell the deceived archmage had used to bring Demogorgon to the Underdark, and in doing so, thinning the boundary of the Faerzress itself.

Yvonnel couldn’t sort it out for a long while, but as K’yorl responded to Kimmuriel, it became clear: Lolth had done this. In the Abyss, in a balor’s lair, the Spider Queen in K’yorl’s form had used Kimmuriel to deceive Gromph. And now Kimmuriel was in hiding from the dangerous Gromph. Yvonnel could feel Kimmuriel’s hatred and could sense his desire for vengeance against his mother. And even K’yorl’s doubts and confusion would have no sway here in convincing Kimmuriel that she had not done this to him.

Yvonnel felt the battered woman’s deep regret. The former Matron Mother of House Oblodra desperately wanted to set things straight with her son-not out of any love for Kimmuriel, of course, but simply out of worry over her own legacy. What a curse her name would become, perhaps even centuries after her demise, when all the drow believed it was she who broke the boundary of the Faerzress and loosed the demon lords upon the Underdark. And there was nothing K’yorl could do about it.

Kimmuriel shut them out then, so suddenly and forcefully that Yvonnel was thrust from the melding, and her eyes blinked open back in the Room of Divination. She suppressed her panic, and her instinct to slap K’yorl, too, out of her trance. Instead she focused on the image in the scrying bowl, nodding as she realized that K’yorl was no longer in the hive-mind, that her consciousness was flying fast along the corridors of the Underdark-backtracking the call of the whistle, perhaps.

The image flickered and formed, then went away again, repeating the process several times.

And the last image caught Yvonnel’s attention and took her breath away.

But the stoup waters cleared, and K’yorl groaned and opened her eyes, the connection broken.

“Where are they?” Yvonnel Baenre demanded, the bared power of her voice forcing K’yorl from her thoughts and into the present. K’yorl stared at her adversary, and even sneered.

“Where are they?” Yvonnel repeated. “Tell me or I will fetch the illithid Methil and bid him wrest the information from your thoughts. In that event, he will leave some foul presents behind, I promise.”

K’yorl tried to maintain her glare, but Yvonnel’s expression made it clear that she was not bluffing. The illithid Methil El Viddenvelp would implant deep suggestions, even memories, to terrorize K’yorl, leaving her helpless to distinguish reality from nightmare.

“Kimmuriel is not certain …”

“Of their exact location,” Yvonnel finished for her. “Where are they? And who are they? Jarlaxle, I know, but the others …

“Drizzt Do’Urden,” K’yorl blurted and Yvonnel’s breath left her once more.

“Where?” she demanded with what little voice she could muster.

“You ask …”

“Last opportunity,” Yvonnel said with a low and threatening growl.

K’yorl stuttered no more. “Jarlaxle and his companions are in the Underdark, a few days out from Menzoberranzan.”

Yvonnel pulled her hand from the magical stoup, but commanded the enchanted Baenre tool to hold K’yorl in place. Glowering all the way, the young and dangerous Baenre walked up to stare K’yorl in the face, her eyes barely an inch away.

“You do not need to make me your enemy,” she said with surprising tenderness. “I understand that you hate me-no, more than that, I understand that you hate House Baenre above all others. That is well and good and likely deserved. And I do not care.”

She paused and cupped K’yorl’s chin in her hand. “Why are they coming?”

K’yorl’s responding expression was one of pure incredulity. “For House Do’Urden,” Yvonnel said. “To rescue the elf called Dahlia.”

K’yorl managed a small nod of affirmation.

“This is marvelous, do you not see?” Yvonnel asked, and she spun away, laughing. She stopped quickly and spun back on K’yorl. “Jarlaxle is hiding Gromph from Matron Mother Quenthel?”

K’yorl nodded, her expression showing her belief she was surely doomed now.

“Bold!” said Yvonnel. “And brave-Jarlaxle comes personally to see to this. Marvelous!”

K’yorl stared at her incredulously, having no way to sort out the glee, unexpected for such a dangerous situation.

“And we have a better way to spy!” Yvonnel said.

K’yorl’s jaw drooped open and she shook her head, clearly at a loss.

Yvonnel understood that dumbfounded look. To K’yorl Odran, this Yvonnel Baenre standing in front of her was a reflection of, perhaps a reincarnation of, or indeed perhaps even one and the same with, the Yvonnel Baenre she had known before.

She did not understand that this mere child before her was so much more.

“Splendid!” Yvonnel cried out, rushing back around the stoup and sinking her hands once more into the rim, to again contact the hands of K’yorl Odran.

“Go, now,” Yvonnel instructed, and when K’yorl did not immediately respond, she added, “To Jarlaxle! At once!”

She paused a moment, then reconsidered. “No, to Kimmuriel,” she instructed. “To him, but do not contact him.”

“The illithids …” K’yorl meekly protested.

“Go!”

In moments, they were across the planes once more, though as soon as they neared the spot where Kimmuriel stood, his delicate hands massaging the brain of the great hive-mind, Yvonnel telepathically instructed K’yorl away. Follow the path again to Jarlaxle.

Perhaps they could have gotten out there straightaway from the Room of Divination, but Yvonnel had wanted something else, ever so briefly. She had felt the power surrounding Kimmuriel on their initial pass, emanating at the edges of her consciousness. The hive-mind.

Glorious power!

Oh, but she would experience that someday, she promised herself as her thoughts and K’yorl’s wound back to Toril, and back to along the winding corridors of the Underdark. In a heartbeat, though Yvonnel was not even aware of her own heartbeat at that amazing moment, she found herself looking at the mercenary leader, Jarlaxle.

Her uncle.

The purple eyes of one of his companions caught her and held her. From the memories of the Eternal, this new Yvonnel knew this was Drizzt Do’Urden, the ultimate heretic, and also, in the greatest of ironies, the beloved tool of Lolth. And they were heading, blindly, to Menzoberranzan.

Yvonnel could hardly contain her joy.

She telepathically bade K’yorl to flicker through Drizzt’s thoughts, then to the third, unknown companion.

There, she got an amazing surprise, to learn that this was no drow but a human in perfect drow disguise. A human … weak-minded, susceptible.

Yvonnel sensed Jarlaxle’s unease-the wary mercenary suspected that something was amiss.

At her bidding, K’yorl went back into the thoughts of the disguised human, and there they stayed, hidden from Jarlaxle and Drizzt, and even from the unwitting human host. As they had done with Minolin Fey in the corridor in an earlier session, they now looked out through the eyes of Artemis Entreri.

A short while later, Yvonnel emerged alone from the Room of Divination. Minolin Fey waited outside. The priestess glanced past her into the room, looking curiously at the unmoving K’yorl, who remained at the stoup, her hands melded with the stone.

“She is held, mind and body,” Yvonnel explained. “You will go to her often and magically sustain her.”

“Mistress?”

“It could be days, tendays even. I’ll not have her die of thirst.”

Minolin Fey seemed not to understand.

“If K’yorl Odran perishes, or becomes too weak to continue her task, I will return you to Errtu in the Abyss in her stead.”

Minolin Fey’s widening eyes told Yvonnel that she had heard that command clearly.

“And inform Matron Mother Quenthel and all the others that no one is to enter this room,” Yvonnel added. “Any who disobey will face my wrath, and it will not be a pleasant thing.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

Yvonnel swung around and walked away to the echoes of her favorite words. She wasn’t quite sure what she had done, or how. Through some combination of her own divine magic and the powers of the scrying room, she had magically held K’yorl. That alone was nothing special of course, but in this case, it had accomplished much more. K’yorl was locked in place, in body and in thought. She saw the world through the eyes of Artemis Entreri, though neither of them knew it.

And Yvonnel, too, could access that vision simply by looking into the waters of the stoup. She had magically created the perfect spy in the adventuring trio’s midst: one of their own. And in the process, she had turned K’yorl Odran into what amounted to a living crystal ball.

What a fabulous day it had been! They were coming. Drizzt Do’Urden was delivering himself to her in Menzoberranzan.

“I know not what to make of it!” Jarlaxle said to Matron Mother Zeerith the next morning, when he had slipped away from the other two to meet the woman in an appointed place, less than a day’s march from the gates of Menzoberranzan.

“Have you called to Kimmuriel?”

“Finally, he answered,” Jarlaxle said, holding up the small silver whistle he kept on a chain, one Kimmuriel had psionically attuned to his thoughts so he could hear it across miles, even across the planes of existence. “I had thought him lost to me.”

“He is in the hive-mind of an illithid colony,” Zeerith reminded him.

“He will be of little help on our mission,” Jarlaxle explained. “None, actually, until we are back in Luskan, where he will try to unravel Dahlia’s insanity. He will not venture into the Underdark.”

“Gromph is about,” Zeerith reasoned.

“It is more than that,” Jarlaxle explained, and he reflexively glanced back in the direction of his companions, who had been acting so curiously. “There is something about the thinning of the Faerzress … a mind sickness.”

“The chaos of the Abyss seeps through?” Zeerith wondered aloud.

“The illithids are very sensitive to such things, and terrified of them, of course,” Jarlaxle explained. “Kimmuriel will not come here.”

“Do you still wish to follow through with your plans?” Zeerith asked, after a long pause to digest the information.

“I want to get Dahlia out of there, yes. It will wound Matron Mother Baenre, but not mortally, and will force her hand in allowing the Xorlarrin family to assume complete control over House Do’Urden.”

“Or she will disband House Do’Urden all together.”

“She’ll not do that,” Jarlaxle said with some confidence. “She has pressed the other Houses into a tight corner-even her allies have come to fear her as much as they fear their rivals. She has shown them that she considers herself far above them, above their counsel even. The matron mother’s one play to assure no movement against her is to bring House Xorlarrin back, and to do so in a way that offers them, you, the same independence as every other House. Are your children up to that task?”

Zeerith gave a little noncommittal laugh. She wasn’t going back to Menzoberranzan, they both had decided. Jarlaxle’s play to weaken the matriarchy had Matron Mother Zeerith’s fingerprints all over it. Those other matron mothers who decided to wage war to keep their power unchallenged would surely conspire to murder Matron Mother Zeerith first, if they could find her.

“You will need Kimmuriel before this is through,” she said, and Jarlaxle didn’t argue the point.

“I might need him simply to deal with my companions,” he replied, glancing back the way he had come, to the chambers that held Drizzt and Entreri.

“Our people are running patrols in the outer corridors,” Zeerith explained. “I can lead you there and give you my imprimatur. That should get you into the city, though from there, there is little I can offer.”

“Who among your children know I’m coming for Dahlia?”

“None.”

“Thank you,” Jarlaxle said with a bow. He didn’t trust Zeerith’s flock, of course. There was simply too much opportunity for personal gain for any of them. In truth, Jarlaxle was shocked that he trusted Zeerith-might she not regain favor with Quenthel by double-crossing him?

It was a calculated risk. Zeerith might come to consider that Jarlaxle’s odds of succeeding were so tiny and, given that, any gains she might make with him would not outweigh the possibilities for her to find favor with the Ruling Council once more.

But no, he decided, Zeerith’s best play was with him. Her relationship with the men of her House was no ploy. She hadn’t elevated the Xorlarrin males in any twisted plot to give her an edge on the other Houses-far from it! House Xorlarrin’s climb was in spite of Zeerith’s unusual feelings toward the weaker gender, and not because of them. But she had held her ground through the decades because there was honest conviction behind her decision. To Zeerith’s belief, subjugating the males of Menzoberranzan meant that the drow could only achieve half of their potential.

“This journey has left me uncertain,” he admitted. “Nothing is as it should be, or as I anticipated.”

“Demon lords walk the Underdark. Are you surprised by the chaos?”

Jarlaxle thought of the fit of-of what? Delusion? Insanity?-that had come over Drizzt and Entreri in the earlier fight. Might that increase? He was tempted to take off his eye patch, that he might experience whatever had gripped the two, if indeed it was some outside influence, but he quickly dismissed that notion.

“Concerned, more than surprised,” he replied. “Let me go to them and offer the choice. I will return to you this way momentarily, and if with them, then know we will press on. I would like to be in the city this very tenday.”

“They are not to know of my involvement, on pain of their deaths,” Matron Mother Zeerith reminded him.

“You don’t trust me?” Jarlaxle asked, feigning dismay.

“I do not trust them,” she corrected, and Jarlaxle grinned and spun away.

He was back with Entreri and Drizzt a short while later, the two settled very near to where he had left them. Entreri guarded the north corridor, a winding and climbing trail, absently spinning his jeweled dagger on its point against the tip of his extended index finger.

Drizzt sat across the way, on a ledge of rock in front of the corridor that had brought them to this crossroads.

“The way is clear, for a bit at least,” Jarlaxle announced.

Entreri nodded, but Drizzt didn’t lift his face, apparently distracted.

Jarlaxle didn’t much like the look of that, but he pressed on. “Now I must tell you that at every turn, my expectations have been altered. You know of the unexpected challenges Faelas Xorlarrin explained, and there are more, I fear. Something-I cannot quite discern the source-but something is amiss down here in these deep tunnels. We will likely get into the city, but from there, I cannot predict our fate.”

“Are you saying that we should turn back?” Entreri asked, and every word was accompanied by a profound scowl.

“I am only offering the truth.”

“You promised me that we would do this. You owe this to me!”

Jarlaxle held his hand up in the air to calm the man, and was afraid that Entreri might leap at him with deadly intent. “What say you, Drizzt?” he asked.

The ranger didn’t seem to hear.

“Say it!” Entreri demanded, apparently taking the silence as an admission that they should indeed turn back. For a moment, Jarlaxle expected another skirmish.

But Drizzt looked up finally and said, “We came for Dahlia. She is still in the city?”

“Of course,” Entreri snapped, at the same time as Jarlaxle replied, “That is my belief.”

“Then let us be done with this,” said Drizzt. “We came for Dahlia, and so we shall find her and deliver her from Menzoberranzan.”

Jarlaxle was glad to hear it, though he certainly had expected nothing less. But his smile wouldn’t hold. Something in the way Drizzt rose, something etched on his face that Jarlaxle couldn’t quite place, spoke of a profound unease. With every step Drizzt took it seemed as if he wanted to wince-not from physical pain, but from something within him that was surely less than comfortable.

Jarlaxle led the way quickly, determined to get into the city as soon as possible. He knew that Zeerith was watching, and that she was ahead of him. He found her signal scratches here and there, guiding him along his path.

Matron Mother Zeerith was doing her job, and Jarlaxle was confident that she had set up the means to get them into the city with a patrol.

But Entreri simmered on the edge of explosive outrage and Drizzt wore an expression that seemed utterly defeated, forlorn beyond anything Jarlaxle could imagine from Drizzt, or anything he had ever seen from the ranger before.

Jarlaxle only liked riddles when he knew the answer.