Road of the Patriarch

Are they still together, walking side by side, hands ever near the hilts of their weapons— to defend against each other, I would guess, as much as from other enemies?

Many times I think of them, Artemis Entreri and Jarlaxle. Even with the coming of King Obould and his orc hordes, even amidst the war and the threat to Mithral Hall, I find my thoughts often wandering the miles of distance and time to find in my mind's eye a reckoning of the unlikely pair.

Why do I care?

For Jarlaxle, there is the ever-present notion that he once knew my father, that he once wandered the ways of Menzoberranzan beside Zaknafein, perhaps much as he now wanders the ways of the World Above beside Artemis Entreri. I have always known that there was a complexity to this strange creature that defied the easy expectations one might have of a drow—even that one drow might have for another. I find comfort in the complexity of Jarlaxle, for it serves as a reminder of individualism. Given my dark heritage, oftentimes it is only the belief in individualism that allows me to retain my sanity. I am not trapped by my heritage, by my elf's ears and my coal-colored skin. While I often find myself a victim of the expectations of others, they cannot define me, limit me, or control me as long as I understand that there is no racial truth, that their perceptions of who I must be are irrelevant to the truth of who I am.

Jarlaxle reinforces that reality, as blunt a reminder as anyone could ever be that there resides in each of us a personality that defies external limitations. He is a unique one, to be sure, and a good thing that is, I believe, for the world could not survive too many of his ilk.

I would be a liar indeed if I pretended that my interest in Artemis Entreri only went so far as his connection to the affirmation that is Jarlaxle. Even if Jarlaxle had returned to the Underdark, abandoning the assassin to his lonely existence, I admit that I would regularly turn my thoughts to him. I do not pity him, and I would not befriend him. I do not expect his redemption or salvation, or repentance for, or alteration of, the extreme selfishness that defines his existence. In the past I have considered that Jarlaxle will affect him in positive ways, at least to the extent that he will likely show Entreri the emptiness of his existence.

But that is not the impetus of my thoughts for the assassin. It is not in hope that I so often turn my thoughts to him, but in dread.

I do not fear that he will seek me out that we might do battle yet again. Will that happen? Perhaps, but it is nothing I fear, from which I shy, or of which I worry. If he seeks me, if he finds me, if he draws a weapon upon me, then so be it. It will be another fight in a life of battle—for us both, it seems.

But no, the reason Artemis Entreri became a staple in my thoughts, and with dread, is that he serves as a reminder to me of who I might have been. I walked a line in the darkness of Menzoberranzan, a tightrope of optimism and despair, a path that bordered hope even as it bordered nihilism. Had I succumbed to the latter, had I become yet another helpless victim of crushing drow society, I would have loosed my blades in fury instead of in the cause of righteousness—or so I hope and pray that such is indeed the purpose of my fight—in those times of greatest stress, as when I believed my friends lost to me, I find that rage of despair. I abandon my heart. I lose my soul.

Artemis Entreri abandoned his heart many years ago. He succumbed to his despair, 'tis obvious. How different is he than Zaknafein, I have to ask—though doing so is surely painful. It almost seems to me as if I am being disrespectful of my beloved father by offering such a comparison. Both Entreri and Zaknafein loose the fury of their blades without remorse, because both believe that they are surrounded by a world not worthy of any element of their mercy. I make the case in differentiating between the two that Zaknafein's antipathy was rightly placed, where Entreri is blind to aspects of his world deserving of empathy and undeserving of the harsh and final judgment of steel.

But Entreri does not differentiate. He sees his environs as Zaknafein viewed Menzoberranzan, with the same bitter distaste, the same sense of hopelessness, and thus, the same lack of remorse for waging battle against that world.

He is wrong, I know, but it is not hard for me to recognize the source of his ruthlessness. I have seen it before, and in a man I hold in the highest esteem. Indeed, in a man to whom I owe my very life.

We are all creatures of ambition, even if that ambition is to free ourselves of responsibility. The desire to escape ambition is, in and of itself ambition, and thus ambition is an inescapable truth of rational existence.

Like Zaknafein, Artemis Entreri has internalized his goals. His ambition is based in the improvement of the self. He seeks perfection of the body and the arts martial, not for any desire to use that perfection toward a greater goal, but rather to use it for survival. He seeks to swim above the muck and mire for the sake of his own clean breath.

Jarlaxle's ambition is quite the opposite, as is my own—though our purposes, I fear, are not of the same ilk. Jarlaxle seeks to control not himself, but his environment. Where Entreri may spend hours building the muscle memory for a single maneuver, Jarlaxle spends his time in coercing and manipulating those around him to create an environment that fulfills his needs. I do not pretend to understand those needs where Jarlaxle is concerned. They are internal ambitions, I believe, and not to do with the greater needs of society or any sense of the common good. If I were to wager a guess based on my limited experience with that most unusual drow, I would say that Jarlaxle creates tension and conflict for the sake of entertainment. He finds personal gain in his machinations—no doubt orchestrating the fight between myself and Artemis Entreri in the replica of Crenshinibon was a maneuver designed to bring the valuable asset of Entreri more fully into his fold. But I expect that Jarlaxle would cause trouble even without the lure of treasure or personal gain.

Perhaps he is bored with too many centuries of existence, where the mundane has become to him representative of death itself. He creates excitement for the sake of excitement. That he does so with callous disregard to those who become unwitting principles in his often deadly game is a testament to the same sort of negative resignation that long ago infected Artemis Entreri, and Zaknafein. When I think of Jarlaxle and Zaknafein side by side in Menzoberranzan, I have to wonder if they did not sweep through the streets like some terrible monsoon, leaving a wake of destruction along with a multitude of confused dark elves scratching their heads at the receding laughter of the wild pair.

Perhaps in Entreri, Jarlaxle has found another partner in his private storm.

But Artemis Entreri, for all their similarities, is no Zaknafein.

The variance of method, and more importantly, of purpose, between Entreri and Jarlaxle will prove a constant tug between them, I expect—if it has not already torn them asunder and left one or both dead in the gutter.

Zaknafein, as Entreri, might have found despair, but he never lost his soul within it. He never surrendered to it.

That is a white flag Artemis Entreri long ago raised, and it is one not easily torn down.

— Drizzt Do'Urden

CHAPTER 1 LIFE AS USUAL?

It wasn't much of a door, actually, just a few planks thrown together and tied with frayed rope, old cloth, and vines. So when the ferocious dwarf hit it in full charge, it exploded into its component parts. Wood, rope, and vine went flying into the small cave, trailed by ribbons of cloth.

No fury summoned from the Nine Hells could have brought more tumult and chaos in the instants that followed. The dwarf, thick black hair flying wildly, long beard parted in the middle into two long braids flopping across his chest and shoulders, lunged at the poor goblins, twin morningstars spinning with deadly precision.

The dwarf veered for the largest group, a collection of four of the goblins. He barreled into their midst without heed for the crude weapons they brandished, blowing past their defenses, kicking, stomping, and smashing away with his devastating morningstars, their spiked metal heads whipping at the ends of adamantine chains. He hit one goblin square in the chest, crushing its lungs and lifting it into a ten-foot flight. A turn and duck put him under the thrust of a spear that was no more than a pointed stick, and as he rolled around, the dwarf brought his trailing arm up and across, hooking the goblin's arm and throwing it aside. The dwarf squared before the goblin, and two overhead swings crushed its shoulder and its skull. He kicked the creature hard under the chin as it dropped to the stone, shattering its jaw, though it was already so far gone from life that it didn't even scream.

The dwarf's braids whipped as he leaped and turned to face the two remaining goblins. They could not match that ferocity, could not seem to even comprehend it, and they hesitated just an instant.

An instant more than the dwarf needed.

Forward he raced, and each arm struck at the goblins. One hit squarely, the other a glancing blow, but even that second goblin stumbled under the weight of the assault. The dwarf rolled over the goblin, driving it down with kicks and chops.

He rushed past and broke for the door, leaping into a sidelong spin and coming around with a double swing that took one goblin in the back as it tried to retreat through the door and back to the mountain slopes. Indeed, it got through the door, and much more quickly than it ever would have believed possible if it had been thinking of such things.

Its shattered spine took precedence, though, and as it crumbled to the dirt and stone, it felt… nothing.

The dwarf landed in front of the door, feet wide and steady. He went into a defensive crouch, eyes wild, braids bouncing, and arms out to his sides with the morningstar's heads dropping down low.

There had been at least ten of the creatures in the cave, he was certain, but with five down, he found only two facing him.

Well, at least one was facing him. The other banged frantically on a second door at the back of the cave, one more substantial and made of iron-bound hardwood.

The second goblin shrank against its companion, not daring to take its gaze from the furious intruder.

"Ah, but ye got yerself a safer room," the dwarf said, and took a step forward.

The goblin recoiled, small and pathetic sounds escaping its chattering teeth. The other pounded more furiously.

"Come on, then," the dwarf chided. "Pick up a stick and fight back. Don't ya be takin' all the fun out of it!"

The goblin straightened just a little bit, and the dwarf had seen enough of battle to catch the clue. He whirled around, launching a high-flying backhand that got nowhere close to hitting the sneaky goblin that slipped in the blasted door behind him. But it wasn't supposed to hit the creature, of course, merely distract it.

So it did, and as the dwarf strode forward and came around with his second swing, he found a clean opening. The goblin's face shattered under the weight of the morningstar, and the creature would have flown far indeed had not the jamb of the door caught it.

When the dwarf turned back, both goblins were pounding on the unyielding door with desperate abandon.

The dwarf sighed and relaxed, shaking his head in dismay. He walked across the room, and one, two, caved in the backs of the creatures' skulls.

He took up his morningstars in one hand and grabbed one of the fallen creatures by the back of the neck with his other. With the strength of a giant, he flung that goblin aside, throwing it the ten feet to the side wall with ease. The second then went for a similar flight.

The dwarf adjusted his girdle, a thick leather enchanted affair that bestowed upon him that great strength—even more than his powerful frame carried on its own.

"Nice work," he remarked, studying the craftsmanship of the portal.

No goblin doors those; the creatures had likely pillaged them from the ruins of some castle or another in the bogs of Vaasa. He had to give the goblins credit, though, for they had fit the portal quite well into the wall.

The dwarf knocked, and called out in the goblin tongue, in which he was quite fluent, "Hey there, ye flat-headed walking snot balls. Now ye don't be wantin me to ruin such a fine door as this, do ye? So just open it up and make it easy. I might even let ye live, though I'm suren to be takin' yer ears."

He put his own ear to the door as he finished, and heard a quiet whimper, followed by a louder "Shhhh!"

He sighed and knocked again. "Come on, then. Last chance for ye."

As he spoke, he stepped back and rolled his fingers around the leather-wrapped handles of the twin morningstars, willing forth their magic. Liquid oozed from the spikes of each ball, clear and oily on the right hand one, and reddish and chalky on the other. He sized up the door, recognizing the center cross of perpendicular metal bands as the most important structural point.

He counted to three—he had to give the goblins an honest chance, didn't he? — then launched into a ferocious leap and swing, left morningstar leading, and connecting precisely at the juncture of those two critical iron bands. The dwarf kept jumping and turning and building momentum with his right-hand weapon, though he did whack at the door a couple of times with the left, denting wood and metal and leaving behind that reddish residue.

It was the ichor of a rust monster, a devilish creature that made every knight in shining armor wet himself. For within moments, those solid iron bands began to turn the color of the liquid, rusting away.

When he was convinced that the integrity of the iron bands had been fully compromised, the dwarf jumped into his greatest leap of all, turning as he went so that he brought all of his weight and all of his strength to bear as he finally unloaded his right-hand morningstar at the same exact spot. Likely his great might and impeccable form would have cracked the door anyway, but there was no doubt at all as the liquid on that second head, oil of impact by name, exploded on contact.

Sundered in two, both the door and the locking bar in place behind it, the portal fell open, half flopping in to the dwarf's right, still held awkwardly by one hinge, while the left side tumbled to the floor.

There stood a trio of goblins, wearing ill-fitted, plundered armor—one had gone so far as to don an open-faced metal helm—and holding various weapons, a short sword for one, a glaive for the second, and a battle-axe for the third. That might have given younger adventurers pause, of course, but the dwarf had spent four centuries fighting worse, and a mere glance told him that none of the three knew how to handle the weapons they brandished.

"Well, if ye're wantin' to give me yer ears, then I'll be lettin' ye walk out o' here," the dwarf said in heavily-accented Goblin. "I'm not for givin' the snot of a flat-headed orc one way or th'other whether ye live or whether ye die, but I'm takin' yer ears to be sure." As he finished, he produced a small knife, and spun it to stick into the floor before the feet of the middle of the trio. "Ye give me yer left ears, and give me back the knife, and I'm lettin' ye walk on yer way. Ye don't, and I'm takin' them from yer corpses. Yers to choose."

The goblin on the dwarf's right lifted its glaive, howled, and charged.

Just the answer Athrogate was hoping for.

Artemis Entreri slipped behind a dressing screen when he heard the dwarf pushing through the door. Never an admirer of Athrogate, and never quite trusting him, the assassin was glad for the opportunity to eavesdrop.

"Ah, there ye be, ye elf-skinny pretender to me throne," Athrogate bellowed as he pushed into Calihye's room.

The woman looked at him with a sidelong glance, seeming unconcerned— and a big part of that confidence, Entreri knew, came from the fact that he was within striking distance.

"So ye're thinking that ye got yerself a title here, are ye?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Lady Calihye, leading the board," Athrogate replied, and Calihye and Entreri nodded in recognition.

At the Vaasan Gate, a contest of sorts was being run by the many adventurers striking out into the wilderness. A price had been put on the ears of the various monsters roaming the wasteland, and to add to the enjoyment, the gate's commanders had put up a peg board listing the rankings of the bounty hunters. Almost from the start, Athrogate's name had topped that board, a position he had held until only a few months previous, when Calihye had claimed the title. Her fighting companion, Parissus, had been only a few kills back of the dwarf.

"Ye think I'm caring?" the dwarf asked.

"More than I am, obviously," replied the half-elf.

Behind the screen, Entreri nodded again, pleased with the response from the warrior who had become so dear to him.

Athrogate harrumphed and snorted, and roared, "Well, ye ain't for staying there!"

Entreri paid close attention to every inflection. Was the dwarf threatening Calihye?

The assassin's hands instinctively went to his weapon, and he dared move a bit farther behind the screen so that he could peek around the edge closest to the door, the angle of attack that would bring him in at the powerful dwarf's flank, if it came to that.

He relaxed as Athrogate brought one hand forward holding a small, bulging sack—and Entreri knew well what might be in there.

"Ye'll be looking at me rump again, half-elf," Athrogate remarked, and gave the bag a shake. "Fourteen goblins, a pair o' stupid orcs, and an ogre for good measure."

Calihye shrugged as if she didn't care.

"Ye best be winter huntin', if ye got enough dwarf in ye," Athrogate said. "Meself, I'll be goin' south to drink through the snows, so if ye're having some good luck, ye might get back on top—not that ye'll stay there more than a few days once the melt's on."

Athrogate paused there, and a wry smile showed between the bushy black hair of his beard. "Course, ye ain't got yer hunting partner no more, now do ye? Unless ye're to convince the sneak to go out with ye, and I'm not thinking that one's much for snowy trails!"

Entreri was too distracted to take offense at that last remark, however honest, for Calihye's wince had not been slight when Athrogate had referred to Parissus. The wound was still raw, he knew. Calihye and Parissus had been fighting side-by-side for years, and Parissus was dead, killed on the road to Palishchuk after she fell from the wagon Entreri drove from a horde of winged, snakelike monsters.

"I have little desire to go out and hunt goblins, good dwarf," Calihye said, her voice steady—though with some effort, Entreri noted.

The dwarf snorted at her. "Do as ye will or do as ye won't," he replied. "I'm not for carin', for I'll be takin' me title in the spring, from yerself or anyone else who's thinkin' to best me. Don't ye doubt!"

"Not to doubt and not to care," Calihye said, taking some of his bluster.

Indeed, Athrogate hardly seemed to have an answer for that. He just nodded and made an indecipherable sound, and shook the bag of ears at Calihye. Then he nodded again, said, "Yeah," and turned and walked out the door.

Entreri didn't note the movement at all, for he stayed focused on Calihye, who held her composure well though the weight of the dwarf's remarks surely sat heavily on her delicate shoulders.

CHAPTER 2 THE ROAD TO BLOODSTONE

The companions could not have appeared more disparate. Jarlaxle rode a tall, lean mare, seventeen hands at least. He was dressed all in finery—silk clothing, a great sweeping cloak, and a huge wide-brimmed purple hat, adorned with the gigantic feather of a diatryma bird. He seemed impervious to the dust of the road, as not a smudge or stain showed on his clothing. He was lean and graceful, sitting perfectly upright, appearing as a noble of great stature and breeding. One could easily imagine him as a prince of drow society, a dark emissary skilled in the ways of diplomacy.

The dwarf riding next to him, on a donkey no less, could never have been accused of such delicacies. Stocky and brutish, many might have confused Athrogate for the source of the road's dirt. To the obvious irritation of the poor donkey, he wore a suit of armor, part leather, part plated, and covered with a myriad of buckles and straps. He hadn't bothered with a saddle, but just clamped his legs tightly around the unfortunate beast, which poked along stiff-legged, giving the dwarf a jolting and popping ride. His weapons, a pair of gray, glassteel morningstars, rose up in an X from his back, their spiked heads bouncing with each of the donkey's jarring steps.

And of course, Athrogate's considerable hair, too, was so unlike the cleanshaven drow, whose head shone smooth and black beneath the rim of his great hat—and indeed, those occasions when Jarlaxle lifted the hat showed him to be completely devoid of hair on his head, save a pair of thin, angled eyebrows. Athrogate wore his mane like a proud lion. Black hair, lots of it, lifted wildly from his head in every direction, blending with an abundance coming out of his ears, and he had once more braided his great beard, with its customary part in the middle, each braid secured with ties that featured blue gemstones.

"Ah, but ain't we the big heroes," Athrogate said to his traveling companion.

Ahead of them on the trail rode Artemis Entreri and Calihye, with a couple of soldiers leading the way. Behind the drow and the dwarf came more soldiers, leading a caisson that held the body of Commander Ellery, the young and once-promising knight, niece of King Gareth Dragonsbane and an officer in the Army of Bloodstone. The people of the Bloodstone Lands mourned Ellery's loss. The heroine had been cut down in the strange castle that had appeared in the bog lands of Vaasa, north of the half-orc city of Palishchuk.

Jarlaxle was glad that no one other than he and Entreri knew the truth of her death, that it had come at Entreri's hand during a fight between Ellery and Jarlaxle.

"Heroes, indeed," the drow finally replied. "I prophesied as much to you when I pulled you out of that hole. Holding fast to your anger about Canthan's unfortunate demise would have been a rather silly attitude when so much glory was there for our taking."

"Who said I was angry?" Athrogate huffed. "Just didn't want to have to eat the fool."

"It was more than that, good dwarf."

"Bwahaha!"

"Your allegiances were torn—legitimately so," Jarlaxle said, and glanced at Athrogate to try to measure the dwarf's reaction.

Athrogate had been engaged in a fight to the death with Entreri when Jarlaxle had intervened. Using one of his many, many magical items, Jarlaxle had opened a ten-foot-deep magical hole at the surprised dwarf's feet, into which Athrogate had tumbled. Grumbling and complaining, the helplessly trapped Athrogate had been unwilling to join in and see the error of his ways—until Entreri had dropped the corpse of the dwarf's wizard associate into the hole beside him.

"Ye're not for knowing Knellict the way I'm for knowing Knellict," Athrogate leaned over and whispered. Again Jarlaxle was taken aback by the tremor that came into the normally fearless dwarf's voice when he mentioned the name of Knellict, who at that time was either the primary assistant of Timoshenko, the Grandfather of Assassins in the prominent murderers' guild in Damara, or—so hinted the whispers—who had assumed the mantle of grandfather himself. "Seen him turn a dwarf into a frog once, then another into a hungry snake," Athrogate went on, and he sat straight again and shuddered. "Halfway through dinner, he turned 'em back."

The level of cruelty certainly didn't surprise or unnerve Jarlaxle, third son of House Baenre, who, as a newborn, had been stabbed in the chest by his own mother—a sacrifice to the vile goddess who ruled the world of the drow. Jarlaxle had spent centuries in Menzoberranzan, living and breathing the unending cruelty and viciousness of his malevolent race. Nothing Athrogate had told him, nothing Athrogate could tell him, could elicit a shudder such as the one the dwarf had offered during his recounting.

And Jarlaxle had suspected as much about Knellict, anyway. Knellict was the darker background in an organization built in the shadows, the dreaded Citadel of Assassins. Jarlaxle knew from his own experience as leader of the mercenary band Bregan D'aerthe, that in such organizations the leader—in the case of the citadel, reputedly Timoshenko—played a softer, more politic hand, while his lieutenants, such as Knellict, were quite often the barbarians behind the throne, the vicious enforcers who made followers and potential enemies alike take some measure of hope in the leader's infrequent but not unknown smiles.

On top of that, Knellict was a wizard, and Jarlaxle had always found that type to be capable of the greatest cruelties. Perhaps it was their superior intellect that so divorced them from the visceral agony resulting from their actions. Perhaps it was the arrogance that often accompanied such great intellect that so allowed them to disassociate themselves from the common folk, as an ordinary man might step on a cockroach without remorse. Or perhaps it was because wizards usually attacked from a distance. Unlike the warrior, whose killing strike often soaked his arm in the warmth of his enemy's blood, a wizard might throw a spell from afar and watch its destructive effects divorced from their immediacy.

They were a complicated and dangerous bunch, spellcasters, aloof and ultimately cruel. In Bregan D'aerthe, Jarlaxle had often elevated wizards to lieutenant or higher posts for just those reasons.

And the dwarf beside him, the drow reminded himself, was not to be taken lightly either. For all his jovial and foolish banter, Athrogate remained a potentially dangerous and capable enemy, one who had put Artemis Entreri back on his heels in their battle within the Zhengyian construct. Athrogate was as pure an instrument of destruction as any assassin's guild—or any army, for that matter—could ever hope to employ. He had gained quite the reputation at the Vaasan Gate, bringing in the ears of bounty creatures by the sackload. And for all his passion, his bluster, and his raucousness, Jarlaxle saw a significant gulf in Athrogate's personality. However Athrogate might befriend Jarlaxle and Entreri, if the order came from on high to kill them, Athrogate would likely shrug and take on the task. It would be just business for him, much as it had been for Entreri for all those years he served the Pashas in Calimport.

"Is yer friend understandin' the honor he's gettin'?" Athrogate asked, nodding his chin toward Entreri. "Knight of the Order—ain't no small thing in the Bloodstone Lands these days, what with Gareth bein' the king and all."

"I am sure he does not, and will not," the drow replied, and he gave a little laugh as he considered Entreri's obstinacy. With the exception of the two half-orcs, Arrayan and Olgerkhan, who had remained in Palishchuk, the survivors of the battle with Urshula the dracolich and the other minions of the magically animated castle were being hailed as heroes in Bloodstone Village on the morrow. Even Calihye, who had not gone into the castle, and Davis Eng, a soldier of the Army of Bloodstone who had been wounded on the road out from the Vaasan Gate, were to be honored. Those two and Athrogate would be recognized as Citizens of Good Standing in Damara and Vaasa, a title that would grant them discounts from merchants, free lodging in any inn, and—most important for Athrogate—free first drinks in any tavern. Jarlaxle could easily picture the dwarf running from tavern to tavern in Heliogabalus, swilling down a multitude of first drinks.

For his part, recognized for a more important role, Jarlaxle was to be given a slightly higher title, that of Bloodstone Hero, which conveyed all the benefits of the lower medal, and also allowed Jarlaxle free passage throughout the burgeoning kingdom and granted the guarantee of Gareth's protection wherever it might be needed. While Jarlaxle agreed that his own role in the victory had been paramount, he had been a bit perplexed at first by the discrepancies in the honors, particularly between himself and Athrogate, who had battled the dracolich valiantly. At first he had presumed it to be the result of Athrogate's rather extensive and less-than-stellar public record, but after hearing of the honors to be given to Entreri, the actual slayer of the beast, Jarlaxle had come to see the truth of it. These degrees of honor had been quietly suggested, whispered through appropriate and legitimate channels, by Knellict and the Citadel of Assassins. Knellict had already explained to Jarlaxle that his value to the guild would, in no small part, be due to his ability to fill the void left by the death of Commander Ellery, distant niece of King Gareth, who was also tied in with the citadel.

For Entreri, that one blow—luring the beast to thrust its head under the trap he had set in a side tunnel off the main lair—had changed the world. Entreri was the hero of the day, and accordingly, King Gareth would bestow upon him the title of Apprentice Knight of the Order.

Artemis Entreri, a knight in a paladin king's army… it was more than Jarlaxle could take, and he burst out laughing.

"Bwahaha!" Athrogate joined in, though he hadn't any idea what had set the drow off. Apparently catching on to that reality, Athrogate bit off his chortle and said, "So what's got ye titterin', coalskin?"

Low clouds in the west dulled the late afternoon sun, and the cool breeze comfortably tickled Master Kane. He sat cross-legged, hands on his thighs with his palms facing up. He kept his eyes closed, allowing his mind to focus inward as he consciously relaxed his body, using his rhythmic breathing as a cadence for his complete concentration.

One would not normally fly upon a magical carpet with his eyes closed, but Kane, former Grandmaster of Flowers at the Monastery of the Yellow Rose, was not concerned by trivial matters such as steering the thing. Every so often, he opened his eyes and adjusted accordingly, but he figured that unless a dragon happened to be soaring through the skies over Bloodstone Valley, he was safe enough.

So perfect was his mental count that he opened his eyes just as Bloodstone Village came into view far below him. He spotted all of the major buildings, of course, but they didn't impress him, not even the grand palace of his dear friend, Gareth Dragonsbane.

Nothing man-made could hold much of an impact over Kane, who had known the decorated corridors of the Monastery of the Yellow Rose, but the White Tree….

As soon as the monk spotted it in the grand garden on the shores of Lake Midai his heart filled with serenity and the contentment that could only come from accepting oneself as a part of something larger, of something eternal. The seed for that tree, the Tree-Gem, had been given to Kane and his fellow heroes by Bahamut, the platinum dragon, the greatest wyrm of all, as a tribute to their efforts in defeating the Witch-King and his demonic associates and destroying the Wand of Orcus.

The White Tree stood as a symbol of that victory, and more than that, it served as a magical ward preventing creatures of the Abyssal planes from walking across the Bloodstone Lands. That tree showed Kane that their efforts had created not just a temporary victory, but a lasting blessing on the land he called home.

As he looked upon it, Kane reached to his side and picked up his walking stick, which had been fashioned from a branch of that magical tree. Smooth as polished stone and as white as the day he had taken it from the tree, for the dirt of no road could gray it, the jo staff was as hard and solid as adamantine, and in Kane's skilled hands, it could shatter stone.

With a thought, Kane veered the magic carpet toward the tree, gliding in to a smooth landing on the ground before its trunk. He stayed in his seated position, legs crossed, hands on his upturned thighs, the jo stick laid across his lap, as he offered prayers to the tree, and thanks to Bahamut, Lord of Goodly Dragons, for his wondrous gift.

"Well, by the blessings of the drunken god's double visions!" came a roar, drawing the monk from his meditation. He rose and turned, not surprised at all when Friar Dugald, nearly four hundred pounds of man-flesh, barreled into him.

Kane didn't move an inch against that press, which would have sent mighty warriors flying backward.

Dugald wrapped his meaty arms around the monk and slapped him hard on the back. Then he moved Kane back to arm's length—or rather, as he extended his arms, he moved himself back to arm's length—for again, the monk proved immovable.

"It has been too long!" Dugald proclaimed. "My friend, you spend all of your days wandering the land, or in the monastery to the south, and forget your friends here in Bloodstone Village."

"I carry you with me," Kane replied. "You travel in my prayers and thoughts. Never are any of you forgotten."

Dugald's flabby, bald head bobbed enthusiastically at that, and Kane could tell from the way he exaggerated his motions, and from the smell of him, that the friar had been consuming the blood of the vine. Dugald had found a kindred spirit within the Order of the God Ilmater in the study and patronage of St. Dionysus, the patron of such spirits, and Dugald was quite the loyal disciple.

Kane reminded himself that his own vows of discipline against such potent drink had been his conscious choice. He must not judge others based on his personal standards.

He turned away from Dugald to regard the tree, its spreading limbs framed by the quiet lake behind it. It had grown quite a bit in the two years since Kane's last visit to Bloodstone Village, and though the tree was only twelve years old, it already stood more than thirty feet, with branches wide and strong—branches it occasionally offered to the heroes that they might fashion items of power from the magical wood.

"Too long you've been gone," Dugald remarked.

"It is my way."

"Well, how am I to argue with that?" the friar asked.

Kane merely shrugged.

"You have come for the ceremony?"

"To speak with Gareth, yes."

Dugald eyed him with suspicion and asked, "What do you know?"

"I know that his choice of hanging a medal about the neck of a drow is something other than expected."

"More than Kane have said as much," Dugald said. "And this drow's a strange one, even by the standards of his lot, so they're saying. Do you know anything of him? Gareth knows only the stories coming from the wall."

"And yet he will offer this one the title of Bloodstone Hero, and award his companion status as a Knight of the Order?"

"Apprentice Knight," Dugald corrected.

"A temporary equivocation."

Dugald conceded the point with a nod. No one who had attained the title of apprentice knight had not then gone on, within two years, to full knight status—except of course for Sir Liam of Halfling Downs, who had gone missing, and was presumed slain, on the road home after attending his ceremony of honor.

"You have reason to believe that this drow is not worthy, my friend?" Dugald asked.

"He is a dark elf."

Dugald sighed and assumed a pensive, almost accusing stare.

"Yes, we have the sisters of Eilistraee as evidence," Kane replied. "It is a precept of the Monastery of the Yellow Rose to judge the actions and not the heritage of any person. But he is a drow, who arrived here only recently. His history is unknown and I have not heard a single whisper that he serves Eilistraee."

"General Dannaway of the Vaasan Gate is meeting with the king and Lady Christine even now," Dugald replied. "He speaks well of the exploits of this Jarlaxle character and the soon-to-be-apprentice knight."

"Formidable warriors."

"So it seems."

"Skill with the blade is the least important asset for a knight of the order," Kane said.

"Every knight can lay waste to his share," Dugald countered.

"Purity of purpose, adherence to conscience, and the discipline to strike or to hold in the best interests of Bloodstone," Kane came right back, citing the crux of the Bloodstone knight's pledge. "Honorable General Dannaway will attest to their feats in killing monsters beyond the Vaasan Gate, no doubt, but he knows little of the character of these two."

Dugald looked at his friend curiously. "I'll be guessing that Kane does, then?"

The monk shrugged. Before his journey to Bloodstone Village, he had spoken to Hobart Bracegirdle, the halfling leader of the war gang the Kneebreakers, who had been operating from the Vaasan Gate in recent days. Hobart had offered a few clues to the intriguing duo, Jarlaxle and Entreri, but nothing substantial enough for Kane to yet draw any conclusions. In truth, the monk had no reason to believe that the two were anything less than their actions at the gate and in the battle outside of Palishchuk seemed to indicate. But he knew, too, that those actions had not been definitive.

"I fear King Gareth's choice regarding these newcomers is premature, that is all," he said.

The friar nodded his concession of that point, then turned and swept his arm out to the north, where stood the grand palace of Gareth and Christine. Still under construction after a decade of work, the palace was comprised of the original Tranth home, the residence of the Baron of Bloodstone, expanded in width and with perpendicular wings running forward on either end. Most of the continuing work on the palace involved the minor details, the finishing touches, the decorative parapets and stained-glass windows. The people of Bloodstone Village—indeed, the people and artisans of the entire region known as the Bloodstone Lands—wanted the palace of their king to be reflective of his deeds and reputation. With Gareth Dragonsbane, that would prove a tall order indeed, and one that would take all the artisans of the land years to fulfill.

Side by side, the two went to see their friends. They entered without questions, past guards who bowed in deference at the appearance of the ragged-looking man. Anyone who did not know the reputation of Grandmaster Kane would have no way of looking at the man and suspecting any such thing. He was past middle age, thin, even skinny, with fraying white hair and beard. He wore rags and no visible jewelry other than a pair of magical rings. His belt was a simple length of rough rope, his sandals worn and threadbare. Only his walking stick, white like the wood of the tree from which it was made, seemed somewhat remarkable, and that alone would not be enough to clue anyone in to the truth of the shabby-looking creature.

For Kane, a simple wanderer, had been the one to strike the fatal blow and free the Bloodstone Lands from the grip of the Witch-King Zhengyi.

The guards knew him, bowed as he passed, and whispered excitedly to one another when he had gone by.

As the pair came upon the decorated white wooden doors—another gift of the White Tree—of Gareth's audience chamber, the guards posted there scrambling to open them, they discovered that another of their former adventuring band had come calling. The animated and always-excited ramblings of Celedon Kierney charged out through the doors as soon as they were cracked open.

"Gareth has put out the call to Spysong, then," Kane remarked to Dugald. "That is good."

"Isn't that what brought you here?" Dugald asked, for Kane, like Celedon, was part of the Bloodstone scouting network known as Spysong, with the monk serving as its principle agent in Vaasa.

Kane shook his head. "No formal call summoned me, no. I thought it prudent."

The doors swung wider and the pair stepped through the threshold. All conversation in the room stopped. A wide smile erupted on the handsome face of King Gareth. Dugald had been expected, of course, but Kane's arrival was obviously a rather pleasant surprise.

Beautiful Lady Christine, too, offered a smile, though she remained less animated than her passionate husband, as always.

Celedon offered Kane the raised back of his right hand, fingers stiffened, thumb straight up. He held it there for a moment, then turned his hand so that his thumb tapped his heart, the greeting of Spysong.

Kane acknowledged it with a nod, and moved forward beside Dugald to stand before the dais that held the thrones of Gareth and Christine. He immediately noticed the weariness in Gareth's blue eyes. The man seemed very fit for his forties. He wore a sleeveless black tunic, his bare, muscled arms showing no weakness. His hair was still much more black than gray, though a bit of the salt had crept in. His jaw line remained firm and sharp.

But his eyes…

The blue still showed its youthful luster, but Kane looked past the shine to the increased heaviness of Gareth's eyelids and the slight discoloration of the skin around his eyes. The weight of ruling the land had settled upon his strong shoulders, and wore at him despite his disposition and despite the love showered on him always by almost everyone in Damara.

Leadership with consequence would do that to a man, Kane knew. To any man. There was no escaping such a burden.

Court etiquette demanded that King Gareth speak first, officially greeting his newest guests, but Celedon Kierney moved in between the guests and the royals.

"A-a drow!" he yammered, waving his arms in disbelief. "Surely that is what brought Master Kane to court… his surprise—nay, astonishment—that you are doing such a thing."

Gareth sighed and shot a plaintive look Kane's way.

Kane, though, found his attention stolen by the crinkled nose of General Dannaway, who stared at him with obvious disgust. The monk, dressed in his dirty rags, was not unaccustomed to such expressions, of course, nor did they concern him.

Still, he met the man's gaze with an intense look, one so unnerving that Dannaway actually took a step backward.

"I–I must be going, my king," Dannaway stammered, and bowed repeatedly.

"Of course," Gareth replied. "You are dismissed."

Dannaway moved at once for the exit, crinkling his nose again as he passed near an uncaring Kane.

But Dugald, smile wide, was not so generous. He put a hand on Dannaway's elbow to halt the man and make him turn, then whispered—but loudly enough for all to hear, "He could insert his hand into your chest, pull forth your heart, hold it beating before your disbelieving eyes, then put it back before your body ever missed it." He ended with an exaggerated wink and the unnerved Dannaway stumbled away and nearly to the ground.

He rushed ahead so quickly that he overbalanced, and had not the guard at the white doors swung them wide at his approach, he no doubt would have barreled into them head-first.

"Dugald…." Lady Christine warned.

"Oh, he should know," the fat friar replied, and he laughed, and so did Celedon. Gareth soon joined in, and even Christine could not completely hide her giggle. Kane, though, showed little emotion.

It was just the five friends, then, and all pretense and protocol could not hold against the bonds of their shared experiences.

"A drow?" Kane asked after the titters died away.

"Dannaway speaks highly of him, and of the drow's friend," Gareth replied.

"Dannaway sees it as a source of glory for his work at the wall," Celedon put in. "And a mitigation of the great losses incurred in the journey he instigated to the replica of Castle Perilous."

"Not much of a replica if these vagabonds so easily defeated it," Dugald scoffed.

"We do not know their worth," Kane said. "And I remind all that a great ranger fell at that castle. We know not its true nature, nor the depth of its powers. To that end, Spysong has dispatched Riordan to Palishchuk to begin a more thorough investigation."

The mention of Riordan Parnell brought nods all around. Another member of the band of seven who had defeated Zhengyi, the bard still served the land well with his uncanny ability to coax the truth from reluctant witnesses.

"Other investigations will be needed, of course," Kane said. "I suggest that our responses be kept to a minimum until they are completed."

"Never a moment to relax, eh, my friend?" asked Gareth.

"Riordan went at the request of the Duke of Soravia," the monk replied, referring to still another of the seven heroes, Olwen Forest-friend, a bear of a man whose laughter would often shake the walls of a tavern. "Olwen did not receive the news of Mariabronne's demise well."

"His protege," Dugald remarked, nodding. "Mariabronne studied under him for so many years, and has lately spent much time at Olwen's side." He gave a sigh and shook his head. "I must offer Olwen comfort."

"The Duke of Soravia will not attend tomorrow's ceremony," Gareth said, nodding in agreement.

"He believes it to be premature, no doubt," said Kane.

"We have visiting dignitaries who wished to witness the event," Lady Christine said. "Baroness Sylvia of Ostel—"

"We cannot deny the accomplishments of this group," Gareth interrupted, but Kane continued to look at Christine.

"The Baroness of Ostel," the monk said. "Whose closest ally is…?"

"The Baron of Morov," said Celedon. "Dimian Ree."

Gareth rubbed his chin. "Ree is an unseemly character, I agree. But he is, first and foremost, a baron of Damara." Celedon started to interrupt, but Gareth held up his hand to stop him. "I know the rumors of his relationship with Timoshenko," the king said. "And I do not doubt them, though none of us have found any solid evidence of corroboration between Morov and the Citadel of Assassins. But even if it were true, I cannot move against Dimian Ree. Heliogabalus is his domain, and it remains the principle city of Damara, whether I am there or here."

Gareth's point was well taken by all in the room. The Sister Baronies, as Morov and Ostel were often called, commanded the center of Damara, and Baron Ree and Baroness Sylvia had the unquestioning loyalty of more than sixty thousand Damarans, nearly half the population of the kingdom. Gareth was king and had the love of all, so it seemed, but everyone in the room understood the tentative nature of Gareth's ascent. For in unifying Damara under one ruler, he had reduced the power of several long-entrenched baronies. And in trying to bring Vaasa into his realm to create the greater Kingdom of Bloodstone, he was rattling the nerves of many Damarans, who had known untamed Vaasa as a source of naught but misery for all of their lives.

More talk went on outside of Bloodstone Village than within, Gareth and everyone else in the room knew well, and not all of that talk favored the creation of a greater Kingdom of Bloodstone, or even the continued unification of the previously independent baronies.

Though Baroness Sylvia and Lady Christine had forged something of a friendship over the past few years, no one in the room thought highly of Baron Dimian Ree of Morov, considering him to be the consummate self-serving politician. But none in the room dared underestimate him, either, given the volatile political climate, and so Gareth's words put a block in the path of the debate.

"The drow and his friend approach Bloodstone Village in the company of a dwarf," Kane said.

"Athrogate, by name," said Gareth. "A most unpleasant fellow, but a fine warrior, by all accounts. A second dwarf died in the castle, and will be honored posthumously."

"Athrogate is a known associate of Timoshenko and Knellict," said Kane. "As was the wizard, Canthan, who also fell in the castle."

"Master Kane, you have quite a conspiracy envisioned," said Christine.

Kane took the jab with good nature, and bowed to the Queen of Bloodstone. "No, milady," he corrected. "It is my duty to serve Gareth's throne and King Gareth, and so I do. The web of a potential conspiracy appears faintly visible if the light is just right, but it could be a trick of the sun, I know."

"Wherever we have seen a filament of a web, we have found a spider," Celedon interjected, rather loudly. "It is not right, I say. There is more here than we know, and we should not be offering such honors as apprentice knight of the order until the questions are answered beyond all doubt. I'll not—"

Kane stopped him with an upraised hand, right before Gareth could tell him to shut up. "The drow, his human companion, and the dwarf," the monk said in a quiet voice. "Be they friends, we have gained worthy allies. Be they enemies, and we have put them under our eye, clearly so. To know your enemy is a warrior's greatest asset. If you wish to remain as king, Gareth my friend, and hope to expand beyond the gate fortress north of here, then you need to know Athrogate and the creatures of the shadows who work his strings."

"And if these three, this drow, the dwarf, and the man on whom I will tomorrow bestow knighthood, are truly aligned with the Citadel of Assassins?" Gareth asked, though his grin betrayed the fact that he already knew well the answer.

Kane shrugged as if it did not matter. "We will reward them and honor them, and never allow them free passage to any place or position where they might do us harm."

Even Celedon calmed at that assurance, for when Kane offered such words, he always delivered on his promise.

Soon after, Celedon, Dugald, and Kane took their leave, promising to return later that evening for a feast in their honor.

"You're hoping to lure Olwen here with a grand table," Christine said to Gareth when they were alone—alone except for the guards, who had become such a fixture of their lives that they were all but invisible to the couple.

"Olwen can smell an orc from a hundred yards, so it is said," Gareth replied. "And so it is also said that he can smell a meal from a hundred miles."

"It is more than a hundred miles to Kinbrace," Christine reminded, referring to the seat of Soravia's power, where Olwen dwelt. "Even with his enchanted boots, even with his growling stomach urging him on, Olwen could not cover that distance in time for your feast."

"I was thinking that another might enjoy the reunion of the seven," Gareth slyly replied.

Christine rolled her blue eyes, for she knew of whom her husband spoke, and she wasn't thrilled at the prospect of entertaining Emelyn the Gray. The oldest of the band who had defeated Zhengyi, past his seventieth birthday, Emelyn's understanding of «civility» often tried Lady Christine's patience. Glad she was those years ago when the wizard announced that he would return to the Warrenwood ten miles southeast of Bloodstone Village, and happier still was she when it became apparent that he would rarely return for a visit.

Gareth moved out of the audience chamber to a side corridor that led to his private rooms. He entered a small anteroom to his bedchamber and moved to a desk set against the side wall, near his bedroom door. The back of the desk rose high above the writing table, and was draped with a silken cloth. Gareth pulled the drape free, revealing a mirror, framed in gold that was molded into exotic runes and symbols. From the side of the mirror, the king slid forth a six-inch red ball set in a golden base. He positioned it right before the mirror and lifted his hand as if to cover it.

"There is no other way?" Christine asked from the doorway behind him.

Gareth glanced back at her and offered a grin as she rolled her eyes yet again. He knew that she was only half-serious, for Emelyn was indeed a trial, and in all truth, Gareth had not been sorry at the wizard's announcement of his «retirement» with the centaurs of Warrenwood.

"We may be needing Emelyn's services soon enough," Gareth replied, and he placed his hand on top of the red ball and closed his eyes, picturing his old friend in his thoughts.

A few moments later, he looked into the mirror, and instead of seeing his own reflection, he saw a separate room. It was full of vials and skulls, books and trinkets, statues small and large, and a grand and ornate desk that seemed as alive as the white tree from which it had been fashioned.

At the desk with his back to Gareth sat an old man in satiny gray robes. His white hair, long and unkempt, hung down nearly to the desk—in fact its end strands showed that they had dipped into the inkwell more than once—as he hunched over his parchment.

"Emelyn?" Gareth asked, then more insistently, "Emelyn!"

The wizard straightened, glanced left, then right, then turned around to look behind him and across the room at the sister mirror set in his wall.

"Peering in uninvited, are we?" he said in a nasal and scratchy voice. "Hoping to catch a view of Gabrielle, no doubt." He ended with a cackle of delight.

Gareth just shook his head, and wondered again why such a beautiful young woman as Gabrielle had agreed to marry the old kook.

"Oh, I know your game!" Emelyn accused, wagging a gnarled old finger Gareth's way and flashing a yellow, gap-toothed smile.

"One you perfected, no doubt," Gareth dryly replied, "which is why I keep a shroud over my mirror."

The wizard's smile disappeared. "Never were you one to share, Gareth."

Behind the king, Lady Christine made her presence known by clearing her throat, loudly. Of course, that only made Emelyn cackle all the more.

"I was looking for you, my friend, though Lady Gabrielle is surely a more welcome sight before my eyes," said Gareth.

"She is in Heliogabalus, seeking components and potions."

"A pity, then, for I have come with an invitation."

"To see a drow honored?" Emelyn replied. "Bah!"

Gareth accepted that with a nod. He knew, of course, that Emelyn would have heard about the morning's ceremony. Surely the word was general all about Bloodstone Valley.

"Kane and Celedon have arrived in Bloodstone Village," Gareth explained. "I think it a good time for old friends to eat and drink, and speak of adventures past."

Emelyn started to respond, apparently in the negative, but stopped short and chewed his lip. A moment later, he rose from his chair and faced Gareth directly. "There is little I can do until Gabrielle's return, in any case," he said.

The mirror filled with smoke.

And so did the room, and both Gareth and Christine gave a shout and fell back.

The smoke cleared, revealing a sputtering Emelyn, waving his hands before his face to chase the fumes away.

"Never used to… create such combustion," Emelyn explained, coughing repeatedly as he spoke. At last he straightened and smoothed his robes. He looked alternately into the blank stares of Gareth and Christine, then back to Gareth. "So when do we eat?"

"I was hoping that perhaps you could retrieve Olwen before the meal," Gareth explained.

"Olwen?"

"The Duke of Soravia," Christine clarified, and Emelyn snapped a stare over her.

"How might we locate him?" Emelyn asked. "He is never near the six castles of Kinbrace of late. Always out and about."

"We could look," Gareth said. He stepped aside and waved his arm back at the scrying mirror.

"More than a meal?" Emelyn asked.

"You have heard of the goings-on in Vaasa?"

"I have heard that you mean to honor a drow, and that there is apparently a knight-in-waiting."

"A Zhengyian construct appeared north of Palishchuk," Gareth explained.

"They seem to be more common of late. There was a tower outside of Heliogabalus—"

"Mariabronne the Rover fell within the walls of this one."

That set Emelyn back on his heels.

"It was said to be a replica of Castle Perilous," Lady Christine interjected. "Alive with gargoyles, and ruled by a dracolich."

Emelyn's eyes, gray like his robes, widened with every proclamation. "And this drow and the others defeated the menace?"

Gareth nodded. "But the construct remains."

"And you wish me to fly to the north to see what I might learn," Emelyn reasoned.

"That would seem prudent."

"And Olwen?" Emelyn asked, but before Gareth or Christine could respond, the old wizard gasped and held up his hand. "Ah, Mariabronne!" he said. "I'd not considered Olwen's love for that one."

"Find him?" Gareth bade Emelyn, and again he indicated the mirror.

Emelyn nodded and stepped forward.

No one in Faerûn was better at preparing a banquet than Christine Dragonsbane. She was the daughter of Baron Tranth, the former ruler of the region known as Bloodstone Valley, which included Bloodstone Village. Growing up in the time of Zhengyi, in the noble House that controlled the sole pass between Vaasa and Damara, Christine had witnessed scores of feasts prepared for visiting dignitaries, both from the duchies and baronies of Damara and from Zhengyi's court. In the years before open warfare, much of the duplicity that had lured Damara into a position vulnerable to Zhengyi's imperialistic designs had occurred right there in Bloodstone Village, at the table of Baron Tranth.

The meal planned for that night held no such potential for intrigue, of course. The guests were the friends of Gareth, honest and true companions who had fought beside him in the desperate struggle against the Witch-King. Riordan Parnell wouldn't be there, as he was off to Palishchuk, which complicated things for Christine a bit. Had he been in attendance, Riordan, an extraordinary bard, would have provided much of the entertainment. And entertainment was paramount on Gareth's mind.

"This is a meal for solidarity of purpose and agreement of how we should proceed," he told Christine not long after Emelyn had magically flown out to Soravia. "But most of all it is for Olwen. He has lost a child, in effect."

"And we have both lost a niece," Christine reminded.

Gareth nodded, but neither of them were truly devastated by the death of Commander Ellery. She had been a relative, but a distant one, and one that neither Gareth nor Christine had known very well. Gareth had seen her only a few times and had spoken to her only once, on the occasion of her appointment to the Army of Bloodstone.

"This night is for Olwen," Christine agreed, and took her leave.

Soon after, though, they found out that they were both incorrect. Emelyn the Gray returned from Soravia, appearing in Gareth's audience chamber amidst a cloud of smoke. Coughing and waving his hands, more with annoyance than with any expectation that he would clear the cloud, Emelyn stood alone, shaking his head.

"Olwen is not in his castle," the old wizard explained. "Nor is he anywhere in the city, or in Kinnery or Steppenhall. He went out soon after the news of Mariabronne's fall reached Kinbrace, along with several of his rangerly ilk. Who knows what silliness they are up to."

" 'Rangerly'?" Gareth asked.

"Druidic, then?" Emelyn offered. "How am I to properly describe men who dance about the trees and offer prayers of gratitude to beautiful and benevolent creatures right before and right after they kill them?"

" 'Rangerly' will suffice," the king conceded, and Emelyn wagged his wrinkled old head.

"Do you have any notion of where they went?" Gareth asked.

"Somewhere in the northeast—some grove they have deemed sacred, no doubt."

"A funeral?"

Emelyn shrugged.

"And there was no way to find him?" Gareth asked.

Emelyn's look became less accommodating, his expression telling Gareth in no uncertain terms that if he could have found the man, Olwen would be standing beside him.

"Olwen has been an adventurer for most of his life," Emelyn reminded. "He has known loss as often as victory and has buried many friends."

"As have we all."

"He will overcome his grief," said the wizard. "Better, perhaps, that he is not here in the morning when you celebrate those who survived the trip to this Zhengyian construct. Olwen would have strong questions for them, do not doubt, particularly for the drow."

"We all have questions, my friend," Gareth said.

Emelyn eyed him with open suspicion, and Gareth couldn't hold back his smile from his ever-perceptive old companion.

"How could we not?" the king asked. "We had an unusual party travel north on our behalf, unbeknownst to us, and we are now left an unusual band of victorious survivors. We have a construct of unknown origin—"

Emelyn held up his hand to stop his friend. "I detest Palishchuk," he remarked.

Gareth's grin widened. "I could trust no other with this most important investigation. Riordan is already there, doing that which Riordan does best— interrogating people without them even realizing it—but he has no practical understanding of such creation magic as this."

"I am not fond of Riordan, either," grumped Emelyn, and Gareth couldn't contain a chuckle. "But he is a bard, is he not? Are bards not especially skilled at determining the origins and history of places and dweomers?"

"Emelyn…." Gareth said.

The old wizard huffed. "Palishchuk. Oh joy of joys. To be surrounded by half-orcs and their unparalleled wit and wisdom."

"One of the heroes who defeated the castle's guardians was a half-orc wizard," said Gareth, and that seemed to pique Emelyn's curiosity for a moment.

A brief moment. "And I know a dwarf who dances gracefully," came the sarcastic reply. "For a dwarf. Which means that the area clerics need only repair a few broken toes among the spectators after each performance. Could a half-orc wizard be any more promising?"

"When the survivors returned to the Vaasan Gate, they reported that Wingham was in Palishchuk."

That did interest Emelyn, obviously so.

"Enough, my king," he surrendered. "You wish me to go, and so I go, but it will not be as brief a journey as my trip to Soravia, a land that I know well and can thus teleport to and from quickly. Expect me to be gone a tenday, and that only if the riddles presented by the Zhengyian construct are not too tightly wound. Am I to leave at once, or might I partake of the feast you promised in order to lure me here in the first place?"

"Eat, and eat well," said Gareth, smiling, then he paused and took on a more serious visage. "I trust that your magic is powerful enough to lift you and transport you when your belly is full?"

"If you were not the king, I'd offer a demonstration."

"Ah, but if I were not the king, then Zhengyi would not likely allow it."

Emelyn just shook his head and walked off to the guest rooms where he could clean up and prepare for Christine's table.

It was a night of toasts to old friends and old times. The five adventuring companions lifted their glasses to Olwen, most of all, and to Mariabronne, who had held such promise. They reiterated their goal of unifying the Bloodstone Lands, Damara and Vaasa, into a singular kingdom, and of defeating any and all remnants of the tyrant Zhengyi.

They talked of the next morning's ceremony, sharing what little they knew of the man who would be granted knighthood and of his strange, ebon-skinned companion. Celedon Kierney promised that they would know much more of the pair soon enough, a vow he made with a nod of approval from Kane. There was no disagreement at that table among the friends who had struggled hand-in-hand for more than a decade. They saw the challenges before them, the potential trouble, and the mystery of the newcomers, and they methodically set out their plans.

In the morning, after Friar Dugald offered a blessing for them all, Emelyn departed for Palishchuk and Celedon set out for Heliogabalus. Celedon asked Kane to accompany him, or to fly him part of the way on the magical carpet, but Kane declined. He wanted to witness the day's events.

And so as King Gareth and Queen Christine prepared for their ceremony, they knew that they were well flanked by powerful friends.

CHAPTER 3 INTERESTED DRAGONS

She exited the front door of her modest mercantile, a shop specializing in trinkets, around sunset, as she did every evening, handing the keys over to her trusted assistant. The sign over her head as she walked from her porch read Tazmikella's Bag of Silver, and true to the moniker, most of the items within, candlesticks and paperweights, decorative orbs and pieces of jewelry, were crafted of that precious metal.

Tazmikella herself had earned quite a handsome reputation among the merchant class of the circular road called Wall's Around in Heliogabalus, a cul-de-sac off the more major route, Wall Way, so named because of its proximity to the city's high defensive encirclement. The woman was rather ordinary looking and dressed simply. Her hair showed some of its former strawberry blond luster, but was mostly soft gray, and her shoulders appeared just a bit too wide in support of her smallish head. But she always had a kind word for her fellow merchants, and always a disarming smile, and if she had ever fleeced a customer, none had ever complained.

Unassuming and simple, with few needs and plain tastes, Tazmikella did not have a fancy coach awaiting her departure. She walked, every night, the same route out of the city and to an unremarkable cabin set on the side of a hillock.

The woman coming out of Ilnezhara's Gold Coins across the street from her could not have appeared more contrary. She stood straight, tall, and thin, with a shock of thick, copper-colored hair and huge blue eyes. She was dressed in the finest of threads, and a handsome coach driven by a team of shining horses awaited her.

"Can I offer you a ride, poor dear?" Ilnezhara asked her counterpart, as she did every evening—much to the amusement of the other merchants, who often whispered and chortled about the pair and their rivalry.

"I was given legs for a purpose," Tazmikella responded on cue.

"To the city gates, at least?" Ilnezhara continued, to which Tazmikella merely waved her hand and walked on by, as she did every night.

Any witnesses watching more closely that night might have seen something a bit out of the ordinary, though, for as Tazmikella passed by Ilnezhara's coach, she turned her head slightly and offered the tall woman the slightest of nods, and received one in return.

Tazmikella was out of the city in short order, moving far from the torchlit wall toward the lonely hill where she kept her modest home. At the base of that hill, in nearly complete darkness, she surveyed all the land around her, ensuring that she was alone. She moved to a wide clearing beyond a shielding line of thick pines. In the middle, she closed her eyes and slipped out of her clothes. Tazmikella hated wearing clothes, and could never understand the need of humans to hide their natural forms. She always thought that level of shame and modesty to be reflective of a race that could not elevate itself above its apparent limitations, a race that insisted on subjugating itself to more powerful beings instead of standing as their own gods in proud self-determination.

Tazmikella was possessed of no such modesty. She stood naked in that unnatural form, basking in the feel of the night breezes. The change came subtly, for she had long ago perfected the art of transformation. Her wings and tail began to grow first, for they were the least painful—additions were always easier than transformations, which included cracking and reshaping bone structure.

The trees around her seemed to shrink. Her perspective shifted as she grew to enormous proportions, for Tazmikella was no human. She had crawled from her egg centuries before beside her sister and sole sibling in the great deserts of Calimshan, far to the southwest.

Tazmikella the copper dragon lifted into the night air. She gained altitude quickly, flying away from the human city. The leaders of the land knew who she was, and accepted her, but the commonfolk would never comprehend, of course. If she revealed herself to them, King Gareth and his friends would be left with no choice but to evict her from the Bloodstone Lands. And she really didn't want a fight with that company.

She moved directly north, across the least populated expanse of Morov and into the even less densely populated Duchy of Soravia. She flew between the Goliad and the Galena Snake, the two parallel rivers running south from the Galena Mountains. And she continued to climb, for the thin air and the cold did not bother Tazmikella at all. A person on the ground might catch a fleeting glimpse of her, but would that person know her to be a dragon flying high, or think her a night bird, or a bat, flying low?

She was not concerned. She was naked in the night air, above such concerns. She was free.

Tazmikella crossed the mountains easily, weaving in and out of the towering peaks, enjoying the play of the multidirectional air flows and the stark contrast between the dark stones and moonlit snow. She entered Vaasa just to the west of Palishchuk, and turned east as she came out of the mountains. Within moments, she noted the lights of the half-orc city.

The dragon stayed up high as she overflew the city, for she knew that the half-orcs, living amidst the Vaasan wilds for so many years, knew how to protect themselves from any threat. If they saw the form of a dragon overflying their city at night, they wouldn't pause to consider the color of the wyrm—nor would they be able to determine that in any case, under the light of the half-moon and stars alone.

Tazmikella used her extraordinary eyesight to scrutinize the city as she passed. It was late, but many torches burned and the town's largest tavern was bright and noisy. They still celebrated the victory over the Zhengyian castle, she realized.

She banked right, to the north, and began her descent, confident that none of Palishchuk's citizens would be out and about. Almost immediately, she saw the dark and dead structure, an immense fortress, a replica of Castle Perilous, only a few miles to the north of the city.

She came down in a straight line, too intrigued to pause and take a survey of the area. As she alighted, she changed back into a human form, thinking that anyone who subsequently spied her wouldn't feel threatened by the sight of a naked, middle-aged woman. Of course, if any lurking onlookers had watched her more closely, that image would have created more confusion than comfort, for she strode up to the huge portcullis that barred the front of the structure without pause. She considered the patchwork grate that had been chained over the break in the gate, where Jarlaxle and his companions had apparently entered. She could have removed that patch easily enough, but that would have meant stooping to crawl under.

Instead, the woman slipped her arms between two of the thick portcullis spikes, then pushed outward with both, easily bending the metal so that she could simply step through.

Unconcerned, Tazmikella strode right through the gatehouses and across the courtyard of torn, broken ground, littered with the shattered forms of many, many skeletons.

She found the great doors of the main keep repaired and secured by a heavy chain—one that she grabbed with one hand and easily snapped.

She found what she was looking for in the main room just beyond the doors. A pedestal stood intact, though blackened by fire near its top. The remnants of a large book, pages torn and burned, lay scattered about. Her expression growing more sour, Tazmikella went up to the ruined tome and lifted the black binding. Most of it was destroyed, but she saw enough of the cover to recognize the images of dragons stamped there.

She knew the nature of the book, a tome of creation and of enslavement.

"Damn you, Zhengyi," the dragon whispered.

The clues of Jarlaxle and Entreri's progress through the place were easy enough to follow, and Tazmikella soon entered a huge chamber far below the structure, where lay the bones of a long-past battle, and the debris of a more recent struggle. One look at the dracolich confirmed everything Tazmikella and her sister Ilnezhara had feared.

The dragon arrived back on the hillside outside of Heliogabalus shortly before the dawn. She dressed and rubbed her weary eyes, but she did not return to her home. Rather, she moved south to a singular tower, the home of her sister. She didn't bother knocking, for she was expected.

"It was that easily discerned that you did not even need a full day at the site?" the taller, copper-haired Ilnezhara said as soon as Tazmikella entered.

"It was exactly as we feared."

"A Zhengyian tome, animated by the captured soul of a dead dragon?"

"Urshula, I think."

"The black?"

"The same."

"And the book?"

"Destroyed. Torn and burned. The work of Jarlaxle, I would expect. That one is too clever to allow such a treasure to escape his greedy hands. He saw the truth of Zhengyian tomes when he destroyed Herminicle's tower."

"And we offered him too many clues," Ilnezhara added.

They both paused and considered the scenario unfolding before them. Ilnezhara and Tazmikella had been approached by Zhengyi those years before with a tempting offer. If they served beside his conquering armies, he would reward them each with an enchanted phylactery, waiting to rescue their spirits when they died. Zhengyi had offered the sisters immortality in the form of lichdom.

But the price was too high, they had agreed, and while the prospect of surviving as a dracolich might be better than death, it was anything but appealing.

"Jarlaxle understood exactly what was buried within the pages of Zhengyi's book, so we can only assume that he has Urshula now, safely tucked away in a pocket," Tazmikella said after a long while.

"This drow plays dangerous games," said Ilnezhara. "If he knows the power of the phylactery, does he also understand the magic behind it? Will Jarlaxle begin tempting dragons to his side, as did Zhengyi?"

"If he walks into Heliogabalus and offers us a dark pact toward lichdom, I will bite him in half," Tazmikella promised.

Ilnezhara put on a pouting expression. "Could you not just chain him and hand him to me, that I might use him as I please for a few centuries?"

"Sister…." Tazmikella warned.

Ilnezhara simply laughed in response, but it was a chuckle edged with nervous tension. For both of them were beginning to understand that Jarlaxle, a creature they considered a minion, was not to be taken lightly.

"Jarlaxle and Entreri defeated a dracolich," Tazmikella stated, and there was no further laughter. "And Urshula the Black was no minor wyrm in life or death."

"And now he is in Jarlaxle's pocket, figuratively and literally."

"We should talk to those two."

Ilnezhara nodded her agreement.

Every so often in his life, the fiercely independent Artemis Entreri found himself in a time and place not of his choosing, and from which he could not immediately escape. It had been so for months in Menzoberranzan, when Jarlaxle had rescued him from a disastrous fight with Drizzt Do'Urden outside of Mithral Hall and had taken him back with the dark elves on their retreat from the dwarf lands.

It had been so quite often in his younger days, serving the dangerous Basadoni Guild in Calimport. In those early phases of his career, Artemis Entreri had done what he was told, when he was told. On those occasions when his assignment was not to his liking, the younger Entreri had just shrugged and accepted it—what else was he to do?

As he got older, more experienced and with a reputation that made even the Pashas nervous, Entreri accepted the assignments of his choosing, and no one else's. Still, every so often, he found himself in a place where he did not wish to be, as it was that morning in Bloodstone Village.

He watched the ceremony with a strange detachment, as if he sat in the crowd that had gathered before the raised platform in front of King Gareth's palace. With some amusement, he watched Davis Eng go forward and accept his honor. The man hadn't even made it to Palishchuk of his own accord. He had been downed on the road and had been carried in, a liability and not an asset, in the back of a wagon.

Some people will celebrate anything, Entreri mused. Even mediocrity.

Back on the streets of Calimport, a man who had performed as pathetically as Eng would have been given one chance to redeem himself, if that.

Calihye was called forward next, and Entreri watched that presentation more carefully, and with less judgment. The half-elf had refused to go into the castle, though she had agreed to stay with the wounded Davis Eng. She had broken her agreement with Commander Ellery, her vow of servitude to the mission, and still she was being rewarded.

Entreri merely smirked at that one and let the negative thoughts filter away, his personal feelings for the half-elf overruling his pervasive cynicism for the moment.

Still, it amazed him how liberal the king seemed to be with his accolades— because it was all for show, Entreri understood. The ceremony wasn't about Davis Eng or Calihye. It wasn't about the annoying Athrogate, who hopped forward next to receive his honor. It wasn't even about Jarlaxle and Entreri. It was about the people watching, the commonfolk of Bloodstone. It was all about creating heroes for the morale of the peasants, to keep them bowing and praising their leaders so that they wouldn't notice their own troubles. Half of them went to bed hungry most nights, while those they loved so, the paladin king and his court, would never know such hardship.

In the end, cynicism won over, and so when Entreri was called forward— the second time, for he had been too turned inward to even hear the first summons—he stepped briskly and didn't even hide his scowl.

He heard Jarlaxle's laugh behind him as he moved to stand before Gareth, and he knew that his companion was enjoying the spectacle. He managed one glance back at the drow, just to glare. And of course, Jarlaxle laughed all the more.

"Artemis Entreri," Gareth said, turning the man back to face him. "You are new to this land, and yet you have already proven your worth. With your actions at the Vaasan Gate, and in the north against the construct of Zhengyi, you have distinguished yourself above so many others. For your defeat of the dracolich, Artemis Entreri, I bestow upon you the title of Apprentice Knight of the Order."

A man dressed in dirty robes stepped up to the bald, fat priest at Gareth's side. The priest, Friar Dugald, offered a quick blessing over the sword then handed it to Gareth.

But as he did, the ragged man looked not at the king, but at Entreri. And though Gareth's complimentary words had been full of all the right notes, Entreri saw clearly that this man—a dear friend of the king's, apparently—was not viewing Entreri in the same complimentary light.

Artemis Entreri had survived the vicious streets of Calimport with his skill at arms, but even more importantly, he had survived due to his ability to measure friends and enemies at a glance.

That man, slightly older than he, and no commoner despite his ragged dress, was no friend.

Gareth took the sword and lifted it high with both hands.

"Please kneel," Queen Christine instructed Entreri, who was still regarding the man in rags.

Entreri turned his head slowly to consider the queen, then gave a slight nod and dropped to his knees. Gareth laid the sword on his left shoulder, and proclaimed him an apprentice knight of the order. The fat priest began to recite all of the honors and benefits such a title bestowed, but Entreri was hardly listening. He thought of the man in rags, of the look that had passed between them.

He thought about how Jarlaxle was wrangling them both into places where they did not belong.

Far to the north of Bloodstone Village, the celebration in Palishchuk lasted long into the night, and Riordan Parnell continued to lead the way. Whenever things seemed to be quieting, the bard took up a rousing song about Palishchuk and its many heroes.

And glasses were lifted in toast.

Most of the town had turned out in the common room of the Weary Wanderer that night to honor—yet again—Arrayan and Olgerkhan, their brave kinfolk who had ventured into the castle. Several of the citizens had been killed and many more injured in the battle with the castle's gargoyles, who had flown through the dark sky to assault the town. To a man and woman, the half-orcs recognized that had Arrayan, Olgerkhan, and the others not proven victorious over the dracolich and its vile minions, their beloved city would likely have been abandoned, with refugees streaming south for the safety of the Vaasan Gate.

So the half-orcs were more than willing to celebrate, and when Riordan Parnell, the legendary bard and a charter member of King Gareth's court, had arrived in Palishchuk, the revelry had taken on new heights.

Seeing that his reputation had preceded him, Riordan was determined not to disappoint. He sang and played on his fine lute, backed by some fairly good musicians from Wingham's traveling merchant band, who—as good luck would have it, for Wingham and Riordan were old friends—happened to be in town.

Riordan sang and everyone drank. He sang some more, and they drank some more. Riordan graciously treated many of the dignitaries, including the two guests of honor, from his seemingly endless pouch of coins—for in his generosity, the bard could cleverly determine how much each was drinking. Initially, he had thought to keep Arrayan and Olgerkhan semi-lucid, for there was much more to that particular evening's celebration than merely the bard showing off his musical talents. Drunken people talked more freely, after all, and Riordan had gone there for information.

After seeing the pair of heroes, though, the bard had slightly altered his plans. One look at Arrayan's beautiful face had convinced him to make sure that Olgerkhan was getting the most potent of drinks, all the night long. Truly, Arrayan had caught Riordan off his guard—and that was not a common occurrence for the brash and charming rake. It wasn't that she was spectacularly beautiful, for Riordan had bedded many of the most alluring women in the Bloodstone Lands. No, what had so surprised the bard was that he found himself attracted to Arrayan at all. Her face was flat and round, but very pleasantly so, her hair lustrous, and her teeth straight and clean, so unlike the crooked and protruding tusks so prevalent in her orc heritage. Indeed, had he seen Arrayan walking the streets of Heliogabalus or Bloodstone Village, Riordan would never have guessed that a drop of orc blood coursed her veins.

Knowing the truth of it, though, the bard could see bits of that heritage here and there on the woman. Her ears were a bit small, and her forehead just a little sloped, up from a brow that was a hair too thick.

But none of it mattered to the whole, for the woman was pretty, and pleasant and smiling, and Riordan was intrigued, and because of that, surprised.

So he made sure, with a wink at the barmaid and an extra coin on her tray, that Arrayan's escort and fellow hero, the brutish Olgerkhan, was amply sauced. Soon enough, Olgerkhan fell off his chair and out of the picture entirely, snoring contentedly on the floor to the howls and cheers of the other patrons.

Riordan picked his time carefully. He knew that he couldn't outmaneuver Wingham, for the old half-orc was far too crafty to be taken in by a man of Riordan's well-earned reputation, and he saw that Wingham took quite the interest in Arrayan, who, Riordan had learned, was his niece. When he judged that an ample number of patrons were falling by the wayside, the bard changed the tempo of his songs. It was early in the morning by then, and so he began to wind things down… slowly.

He also began slipping a bit more enchantment into his tunes, using the magic of his voice, the gift of the true bards, to manipulate the mood of the slightly inebriated Arrayan. He put her at ease. He charmed her with subtle flattery. The background magic of his songs convinced her that he was her friend, to be trusted, who could offer comfort and advice.

More than once, Riordan noticed Wingham glancing his way with obvious suspicion. He pressed on, though, continuing his quiet manipulation while trying to find a plan to be rid of the too-smart old half-orc.

Even clever Riordan realized that he was out of his league, though. There was no way he was going to distract Wingham. During one of his rare pauses from song, the bard gathered a pair of drinks from the tavernkeeper and moved to Wingham's side. He was not surprised when Wingham dismissed the other three merchants who had been sitting at his table.

"You sing well," the old half-orc said.

Riordan slipped one of the drinks over to him then lifted the other in an appreciative toast. Wingham tapped one glass to the other and took a deep swallow.

"You know Nyungy?" he asked before he had even replaced his glass on the table.

Riordan looked at him curiously for just a moment. "The bard? Of course. Who of my heritage and training would not know the name of the greatest bard to ever walk the Bloodstone Lands?"

"The greatest half-orc bard," Wingham clarified.

"I would not put such limitations on the reputation of Nyungy."

"He would tell you that the exploits of Riordan Parnell outshone his own." Wingham lifted his glass to lead the toast, and Riordan, grinning, tapped his glass to Wingham's.

"I think you flatter me too greatly," the bard said before he drank. After the sip, he added, "I played a small role, one man among many, in the defeat of the Witch-King."

"Curse his name," said Wingham, and Riordan nodded. "I stand by my comment, for I have heard those very words from Nyungy, and recently."

"He is still alive, then? Fine news! Nyungy has not been heard from for years now, and many assumed that he had passed on from this life, to a reward that we all know must be just."

"Alive and well, if a bit crotchety and sore in the joints," Wingham confirmed. "In fact, he warned me to be wary of Riordan Parnell when we learned that you were coming to Palishchuk, only two days ago."

Riordan paused and cocked his head, studying his companion.

"Yes, my friend, Nyungy lives right here in Palishchuk," Wingham confirmed. "Of course he does. Indeed, it was he who deciphered that Arrayan had unwittingly begun the cycle of magic of the Zhengyian construct. His wisdom helped guide me to the understanding that ultimately allowed Commander Ellery's group to defeat the construct and its hellish minions."

Riordan sat staring at the old half-orc through it all, neither blinking or nodding.

"Yes, you would do well to pay Nyungy a visit before you leave, since you have come to discern the complete truth of this construct and its defeat."

Riordan swallowed a bit too hard. "I have come to honor the exploits of Arrayan and Olgerkhan," he said, "and to share in the joy and celebration until King Gareth arrives from Bloodstone Village to formally honor them."

"And truly, what a fine honor it is that the king would even travel the muddy expanse of Vaasa to pay such a tribute, rather than demanding the couple travel to him in his seat of power."

"They are worthy of the honor."

"No doubt," Wingham agreed. "But that is far from the extent of it—for their visit and for your own."

Riordan didn't bother to deny anything.

"King Gareth is right to worry," Wingham went on. "This castle was formidable."

"The loss of Mariabronne, and Gareth's relative, Ellery, would attest to that."

"To say nothing of Canthan, a high-ranking wizard in the Citadel of Assassins."

The blunt statement gave Riordan pause.

"Surely you suspected as much," said Wingham.

"There were rumors."

"And they are true. Yes, my singing friend, there is much more for us—for you—to unravel here than the simple defeat of yet another Zhengyian construct. Fear not, for I will not hinder you. Far from it, for the sake of Palishchuk and all of Vaasa, my hopes lie with Riordan and King Gareth."

"We have always considered Wingham a valuable ally and friend."

"You flatter me. But our goals are the same, I assure you." Wingham paused and looked at Riordan slyly. "Some of our goals, at least."

At that surprising comment, Riordan let Wingham steer his gaze across the way to Arrayan.

Riordan gave a laugh. "She is beautiful, I admit," he said.

"She is in love, and with a man deserving of her."

Riordan glanced at Olgerkhan, who lay under the table curled up like a baby, and laughed again. "A man too fond of the liquor this night, it would seem."

"With the help of a few well-placed coins and better-placed compliments," said Wingham.

Riordan sat back and smiled at the perceptive half-orc. "You fear for Arrayan's reputation."

"A charming hero from King Gareth's Court…"

"Has come to speak with her, as a friend," Riordan finished.

"Your reputation suggests a bit more."

"Fair enough," the bard said, and he lifted his glass in salute to Wingham. "On my word, then, friend Wingham," he said. "Arrayan is a beautiful woman, and I would be a liar if I said otherwise to you."

"You are a bard, after all," came the dry reply, and Riordan could only shrug and accept the barb.

"My intentions for her are honorable," Riordan said. "Well, except that, yes, I have indeed played it so that she is… less inhibited. I have many questions to ask her this night, and I would have her honest replies, without fear of consequence."

He noted that Wingham stiffened at that.

"She has done nothing wrong," said the half-orc.

"That I do not doubt."

"She was unwittingly trapped by the magic of the tome—a book that I gave to her," Wingham said, and a bit of desperation seemed to be creeping into his voice.

"I am less concerned with her, and with Olgerkhan, than with their other companions, those who made it out alive and those who did not," the bard assured the half-orc.

"I will tell you the entire story of the book and the creation," Wingham replied. "I would prefer that you do not revisit that painful experience on Arrayan, this night or any other. Besides, since she was in the thrall of powerful and manipulative magic, my observations will prove more accurate and enlightening."

Riordan thought it over for a moment then nodded. "But you were not with them inside the construct."

"True enough."

Riordan set his glass down on the table, and slid his chair back. "I will be gentle," he promised as he stood up.

Wingham didn't seem overly pleased by it all, but he nodded his agreement. He didn't have much of a choice, after all. Riordan Parnell, cousin of Celedon Kierney, friend of Gareth and all the others, was one of the seven who had brought Zhengyi down and had rescued the Bloodstone Lands from the hellish nightmare of the Witch-King.

The celebration was fine that night in Bloodstone Village, as well. Though many had little idea of what had transpired in Vaasa to warrant such a ceremony, or a knighting, the folk of the long-beleaguered land seemed always ready for a celebration. King Gareth told them to eat, drink, and make merry, so make merry they did.

A huge open air pavilion was set up on the front grounds of Castle Dragonsbane, to the side of the Palace of the White Tree. A few tents had been set about, but most of the people preferred to dance and sing under the stars that clear, dark night. They knew they wouldn't have many such evenings left before the onset of winter's cold winds.

For his part, Jarlaxle wandered in small circles around the table where Entreri, the hero of the day, sat with Calihye and some of the lesser lords and ladies of King Gareth's court. Every so often, Friar Dugald would wander by, offering a mug in toast, before staggering off into the crowd.

Many, of course, showed great interest in the drow as he glided about the perimeter, and he found himself tipping his hat almost non-stop. It was a practiced gesture, and one that served well to hide the truth of Jarlaxle's attention. For with a wave of his hand and a call to a small silver cone he held tight in his palm, the drow had created an area of amplified sensibilities, from himself to Entreri and the half-elf. People strode up before Jarlaxle and addressed him directly, even loudly, but he just nodded and smiled and moved along, hearing not a word from them.

But hearing everything said between Entreri and Calihye.

"I have no desire to winter in the tight confines of the Vaasan Gate," Entreri said to her, and from his tone, Jarlaxle could tell that he had spoken those very words several times already. "I will find work in Heliogabalus, if it suits me to work, and enjoy fine food and drink if not."

"And fine women?" Calihye asked.

"If you would accompany me, then yes," Entreri replied without hesitation.

Jarlaxle chortled upon hearing that, then realized that he had just confused, and likely insulted, a pair of young women who had approached him.

With an offer, perhaps?

He had to find out, so he abandoned Entreri's conversation just long enough to recognize that the moment had passed.

"Your pardon," he managed to say as the pair turned their backs and rushed away.

With a shrug, Jarlaxle summoned the cone again and tuned in.

"… Parissus has unfinished affairs," Calihye was saying, referring to her dear friend who had been killed on the road to Palishchuk—a death that she had initially blamed on Artemis Entreri, and for which she had vowed revenge. It seemed that she had entertained a change of heart, Jarlaxle thought, unless she planned to love the man to death.

Jarlaxle smiled and nodded at that rather discordant thought. For some reason, he found himself thinking of Ilnezhara, his dragon lover.

"I am bound to her by years of friendship," Calihye continued. "You cannot deny me my responsibilities to see that her final wishes are carried out as she desired."

"I deny you no road. Your path is your own to decide."

"But you won't come with me?"

Jarlaxle couldn't help but smirk as he regarded that distant exchange, how Calihye gently placed her hand on Entreri's forearm as she spoke.

Ah, the manipulation of human women, Jarlaxle thought.

"Jarlaxle has been my friend for years, as well," Entreri replied. "We have business in Heliogabalus."

"Jarlaxle is not capable of handling your affairs alone?"

Entreri gave a chuckle. "You would have me trust him?"

Jarlaxle nodded his approval at that.

"I thought you were friends," Calihye said.

Entreri merely shrugged and looked back to his drink, set on the table before him.

Jarlaxle noted Calihye's expression, a bit of a frown showing around the edges of her mouth. As Entreri turned back to her, that frown disappeared in the blink of a drow's eye, upturning into a calming, assured smile.

"Interesting," the drow muttered under his breath.

"What is?" came a question before him, one that had him nearly jumping out of his boots. Before him stood a group of young men, boys actually, all of them staring at him, sizing him up from head to toe.

All of those stares reminded Jarlaxle keenly that he was out of his element, that he was among a suspicious throng of lesser creatures. He was a novelty, and though that was a position he had long coveted among the drow, among the surface races, it was both a blessing and a curse, an opportunity and a shackle.

"A good evening to you," he said to them, tipping his outrageous hat.

"They're saying ye killed a dragon," the same boy who had spoken before offered.

"Many," Jarlaxle replied with a wink.

"Tell us!" another of the group exclaimed.

"Ah, so many stories…" the drow began, and he started off for a nearby table, herding the boys before him.

He glanced back at Entreri and Calihye as he went, to see his friend with both hands wrapped around his mug, his head down. At his side, Calihye held his arm and stared at him, and try as he might, Jarlaxle could not read her expression.

Arrayan was thoroughly enjoying herself. All guilt had washed from her, finally. Even the defeat of the «living» castle had not allowed the woman to truly relax, for several people had died in battling that construct—a creation of her unwitting actions.

That was all behind her, though, for one night at least. The music, the drink, the cheers… had it all, just possibly, been worth it?

Sitting beside her, face down on the table—and that after clawing his way up from the floor—Olgerkhan snored contentedly. Dear Olgerkhan. He had been her truest friend when they had entered the castle, and had become her lover since they had left it. Soon they were to be married, and it was a day that could not come quickly enough for Arrayan. She had known the brutish half-orc for all of her life, but not until the crisis within the construct, when she had watched Olgerkhan sacrifice so much for her benefit, had she come to understand the truth of his feelings for her—and hers for him.

She reached over and tousled his hair, but he was too drunk to even respond. She had never seen Olgerkhan drunk before, for neither of them often partook of potent liquor. For herself, Arrayan had begun sipping her drinks more carefully hours before. She wasn't much of a drinker, and it hadn't taken a lot to set her head spinning. She was only just coming back to clarity, somewhat.

She was glad of that indeed when she noted the handsome and heroic bard striding her way, a huge smile on his face. Behind him, she caught a glimpse of her uncle Wingham, but the concern clearly stamped on his old face did not register with the tipsy woman.

"Milady Arrayan," Riordan Parnell said as he moved near to her. He dipped a graceful, arm-sweeping bow. "I feel that the warmth of the night has almost overcome me. I wish to take a short walk in the cool air outside, and would be honored if you would join me."

A flash of concern crossed Arrayan's face, and she was hardly aware of the movement as she looked to Olgerkhan.

"Ah, milady, I assure you that my intentions are nothing but honorable," Riordan said. "Your love for Olgerkhan is well known, and so appropriate, given the status that you two have rightly earned. You will be the most celebrated couple in Palishchuk, perhaps in all of Vaasa."

"Help me to rouse him, then," Arrayan replied, and she blushed as she realized that she slurred her words a bit. She reached over to grab Olgerkhan, but Riordan took her by the wrist.

"Just we two," he bade her. He glanced back over his shoulder, leading her gaze to Wingham.

The old half-orc still wore that grave look, but he nodded in response to Arrayan's questioning expression.

With a fair amount of potent liquor clouding Arrayan's thoughts, it was not hard for the powerful Riordan to weave a magical enchantment over her as they walked out of the tavern. By the time they'd moved only a block from the place, Arrayan had come to fully trust the handsome man from Damara.

In such a situation, it didn't take Riordan long to learn what he needed. He had heard of Mariabronne's demise already—that the ranger had been killed not by the dracolich, but by shadowy demons beforehand when he had been out scouting. Yet, strangely, Mariabronne's corpse had been found at the scene of the dracolich battle, bitten in half.

Riordan got the complete picture, including when three of the already dead companions—Mariabronne, Canthan, and Ellery—had walked past Arrayan to join in the fight. They had been animated by someone or something. Canthan had thrown spells in the dracolich fight, and the animated warrior and ranger had battled fiercely.

The magic that had brought their physical bodies to animation had been powerful, Riordan understood.

He listened intently as Arrayan lowered her voice and admitted the truth of Canthan's demise: that the man and the dwarf had turned on her and Olgerkhan, and had been stopped by Entreri and Jarlaxle. She lowered her voice even more as she recounted the last moments of Canthan's life, when Entreri's horrible, vampiric dagger had drawn forth his remaining life-force and transferred it to Olgerkhan.

Riordan's head spun. There was so much more to the whole business than anyone had understood. And what had happened to Ellery, Gareth's niece, a Commander of the Bloodstone Army? Even Arrayan didn't know, for the woman had remained behind the group with Jarlaxle, studying the tome, and had not returned with the mysterious drow to the room where Entreri had finished off Canthan.

And so Riordan's interrogation, for all the answers it provided, had only led him to so many more, and more intriguing, questions.

They were questions to which he would find no answers from either Arrayan or Olgerkhan, or anyone else in Palishchuk.

With so much to report, he escorted the woman back to the tavern and didn't even stay the night, collecting his mount from the stable and riding out into the darkness, galloping hard to the south.

At the same time, not far to the west, Emelyn the Gray, in the form of a night bird, sped the other way. The grumpy wizard had no intention of going into Palishchuk, so he skirted around the town to the west and veered back to the northeast. He found the castle easily enough and flew over the outer wall, reverting to his human form as he settled before the doors of the main keep. He took a moment to consider the broken chain on the doors.

"Hmm," he said, a sound he would repeat many times that night and the next morning, as he made his way through the Zhengyian construct.

CHAPTER 4 HOME, BITTER HOME

You should put the dragon statuette back," Jarlaxle remarked as he and Entreri arrived at the door to their apartment in Heliogabalus, a modest affair set on the second story of an unremarkable wooden building. Modest from outward appearances, at least, for inside lay the spoils of the pair's successful ventures before their trip north to Vaasa. Entreri and Jarlaxle were very good at gathering coin, and Jarlaxle in particular was very good at spending it.

"I left it in the castle," Entreri replied, an obvious lie that brought a grin to the drow. Never would Entreri leave behind such a powerful tool as the statuette, which had proven instrumental in defeating the dracolich. That tiny, silvery item could be set as a trap, bringing forth the various breath forms of the deadly chromatic dragons.

"Perhaps I can persuade Tazmikella and Ilnezhara to provide us with another one," Jarlaxle said.

"And what else might you coerce from the dragon sisters?"

Jarlaxle feigned a wounded look.

"Now that you have proffered a bargaining chip, I mean," Entreri clarified.

Jarlaxle's expression shifted to one of confusion—again, obviously feigned.

"Immortality was the prize Zhengyi offered to the dragons," Entreri said. "The gem you took from the book—the second one, not the one from Herminicle's tower—would prove intriguing for our dragon friends, would it not?"

"Perhaps," the drow agreed. "Or perhaps they will find it revolting. Perhaps they will kill me if I even mention it, or if I reveal it but do not turn it over to them."

"Jarlaxle is nothing if not daring."

The drow shrugged and grinned. "Our dragon friends sent us to Vaasa to find just such a tome, and just such a phylactery. I am duty-bound to report to them in full."

"And to turn over the spoils?"

"The phylactery?" The drow scoffed. "I made no such agreement."

"They are dragons."

"And one is a fine lover. That changes nothing."

Entreri shuddered at the thought, which of course only made Jarlaxle smile all the wider.

"We were not sent to retrieve anything more than information, and so information I shall offer," said Jarlaxle. "Nothing less."

"And if they demand the phylactery?"

"It belongs to Urshula. I am simply holding it for him."

"And if they demand the phylactery?" Entreri asked again.

"They need not know—"

"They already know! They are dragons. They have lived in this region for centuries. They remember well the time of Zhengyi—perhaps they even fought beside him, or against him."

"Presumptions."

"They are dragons," Entreri said yet again. "Why do you not seem to understand that? You live through manipulation—never have I seen anyone better at playing the emotions of those around him. But these are dragons. They are not serving wenches or even human kings or queens. You play with a force you do not understand."

"I have played with greater, and won."

Entreri shook his head, certain then that they were doomed.

"Ever the worrier," said Jarlaxle. He had just hung his cloak on a hook, but took it back. "I will settle this, and calm your churning gut. Tazmikella and Ilnezhara are dragons—yes, my friend, I understand this—but they are copper dragons. Formidable in battle, of course, but not so much in the realm of the mind."

"You forget how they enlisted us in the first place," said Entreri.

Indeed, the dragon sisters had created an elaborate ruse to entwine the pair and to determine their intentions. Tazmikella had hired them, secretly and from afar, and when they had discovered the riddle of the woman—not that she was a dragon, but merely that she was the one who had hired them to acquire a certain candlestick—she had created a second ruse, claiming that Ilnezhara was her bitter and hated rival and that the woman was in possession of something that rightfully belonged to Tazmikella: Idalia's flute, the same magical instrument that had later been given to Entreri.

But the deception hadn't ended there, with a simple theft, for during that attempted robbery, Entreri and Jarlaxle had been shown the awful truth of Ilnezhara, revealed to them in her dragon form. Then she had wound a third level of intrigue, and yet another secret test, offering them their lives only on condition that they return to their former employer, Tazmikella, and kill her.

By any measure, even that of Entreri and Jarlaxle, the dragon sisters had played them for fools, and repeatedly.

Jarlaxle shrugged at the painful reminder and admitted, "A decent enough game they played, but one, no doubt, they had spent years perfecting. In Menzoberranzan, a ruse within a ruse within a ruse is an everyday affair, and usually spontaneously generated."

"And yet you were tripped up by theirs."

"Only because I did not expect—"

"You underestimated them."

"Because I believed them to be humans, of course, and it would be hard to underestimate a human."

"I am truly glad you feel that way."

Jarlaxle laughed. "I know they are dragons now."

"This woman you take as a lover," Entreri added dryly.

That gave Jarlaxle pause. "Because I love you as a brother, I pray that you will one day fathom the truth of it all, my friend."

"They're dragons," Entreri muttered. "And I know how drow love their brothers."

Jarlaxle sighed at his friend's unrelenting ignorance, then offered a salute embedded in a resigned sigh and slung his cloak over his shoulders. "I will return after sunset. Perhaps you would do well to run back to Vaasa and the castle and retrieve the statuette. And if you do, pray use the powers of white or blue. The fiery breath of a red dragon would not be wisely placed over our door—too much wood, of course."

The drow found his «employers» at Ilnezhara's tower. They always met there, rather than at the modest abode of Tazmikella. Perhaps that was an indication of Ilnezhara's haughtiness, her refusal to lower herself and venture to the hovel. Jarlaxle, of course, saw it a bit differently. Tazmikella's willingness to go to Ilnezhara's fabulous abode betrayed her true feelings, he believed. She pretended to care little for the niceties, but as with so many others who did likewise, it was a deception—a self-deception. So many people derided the materialistic tendencies of dragons, drow, humans, and dwarves… claiming that their own hearts were purer, their own designs more lofty and important, when in truth, they were merely deriding that which they believed they could not attain. Or if they could attain such things, they still used their «lofty» aspirations in the same manner the wealthy merchant used his gilded coach: to elevate themselves above other people.

That personal elevation was the true occupation of rational beings, even long-living creatures such as dragons.

"It was as we expected," Ilnezhara remarked after the initial greetings.

That it was she who had initiated the conversation and not the more typically forthcoming Tazmikella revealed the anxiety felt by both of the sisters.

"Your predictions that Zhengyi's library had been unearthed seem validated, yes," he answered. "You said there would be more constructs, and alas, that is what we found."

"One to dwarf Herminicle's tower," said Tazmikella, and the drow nodded.

"As a dragon might dwarf a human, in size and in strength," Ilnezhara added.

Jarlaxle didn't miss her point. The sisters knew that Zhengyi had enslaved dragons like Urshula the Black. They understood the magic that had created Herminicle's tower, and they had expected similar magic to reach to greater heights when fueled by a dragon.

So it was.

"The book was destroyed," Ilnezhara added.

"Unfortunately," said the drow.

"By Jarlaxle," the tall copper-haired creature said, and that put Jarlaxle back a step. "Or one like him," she quickly equivocated, "fast with the blade and with the spell."

Jarlaxle started to protest, but Tazmikella cut him short. "I went there," she said. "I ventured into the castle and found the podium in the main keep. I found the remnants of the book of creation, torn and burned."

Jarlaxle started to argue, then to deny, but he smiled instead, dipped a bow of congratulations to the deductive dragon, and said, "It had to be destroyed, of course."

"And the phylactery contained within?" asked Ilnezhara.

Jarlaxle's eyes shifted to take in the delicate creature, his lover, and his hand casually slipped near to the belt pouch on his right hip, wherein he kept a small orb that could blink him away from any threatening situation. Crushing that ceramic orb would throw him through the multiverse—to where, to which plane of existence even, he could not predict.

In that moment, he figured that there were few places in the multiverse more adverse than in the den of a pair of angry dragons.

"Zhengyi created many such phylacteries," Tazmikella explained. "He tempted every dragon in the Bloodstone Lands with his promises, we two included. Our guess is that the castle north of Palishchuk contained the phylactery of the dracolich Urshula the Black."

Jarlaxle shrugged. "The acidic breath of the creature we battled was consistent with that."

"And the dracolich was destroyed?"

"With help from the statuette you wisely gave to me."

"And the phylactery was removed," Ilnezhara said.

Jarlaxle held his free hand out to the side as if he did not understand.

"The phylactery that was embedded in the tome of creation, which was shredded by Jarlaxle, was, therefore, removed," the dragon clarified.

"By you," her sister added.

The drow stepped back and brought his hand away from his pouch and up to his chin. "And if what you say is true?" he asked.

"Then you possess something you do not understand," Ilnezhara replied. "You have made your way by playing your wits against those you encounter. Now you are playing with dragons—with dead dragons. That seems not a healthy course."

"Your concern is touching."

"This is no game, Jarlaxle," Tazmikella said. "Zhengyi wove a complicated web. His temptations were…" She looked to her sister.

"Potent," Ilnezhara finished for her. "Who would not wish immortality?"

"There are phylacteries for Tazmikella and Ilnezhara?" Jarlaxle asked, catching on to their anxiety, finally.

"We did not ally with Zhengyi," Ilnezhara stated.

"Not by the time of his demise," the drow replied. "I would guess that many of your kind refused the Witch-King, until…"

He let that hang in the air.

"Until?" Tazmikella's tone showed that she was in no mood for cryptic games.

"Until the moment of truth," Jarlaxle explained. "Until the moment when the choice between oblivion and lichdom was laid bare."

"You are a clever one," said Ilnezhara. "But not so if you think this a game to be manipulated."

"You demand the phylactery of Urshula the Black? You presume that I have it, and demand it of me?"

The sisters exchanged looks again. "We want you to understand that with which you play," Tazmikella said.

"We care nothing for Urshula, alive or dead," Ilnezhara added. "Never was he an ally, surely."

"You fear that I am unlocking Zhengyi's secrets," said the drow.

He paused for a moment, certain of his guess, and considered the fact that he was still alive. Obviously the sisters wanted something from him. He looked at Tazmikella, then over to his lover, and he realized that the dragons weren't going to kill him anytime soon. They knew he would come to a point of understanding—they needed him to come to a point of understanding— though it was a dangerous place for them.

"Zhengyi created phylacteries for you both," the drow said again, with more confidence. "He tempted you, and you refused him."

He paused, but neither dragon began to argue.

"But the phylacteries remain, and you want them," Jarlaxle reasoned.

"And we will kill anyone who happens upon them and does not turn them over immediately," Ilnezhara said with cold calm.

The drow considered the promise for a moment, and knew Ilnezhara well enough to realize that she was deadly serious.

"You would control your own destiny," he said.

"We will not allow another to control it," said Tazmikella. "A minor differentiation. The results will prove the same for any who hold the items."

"You sent me to Vaasa in the hope that I would learn that which I have learned," Jarlaxle reasoned. "You would have me find the rest of Zhengyi's still-hidden treasures, to return to you that which is rightfully yours."

They didn't disagree.

"And for me?"

"You get to tell others that you met two dragons and survived," said Ilnezhara.

Jarlaxle grinned, then laughed aloud. "Might I tell them of the more intimate encounters?"

The woman's return smile was genuine, and warm, and gave Jarlaxle great relief.

"And of Urshula the Black?" he dared ask after a few moments.

"We said we care nothing for that one, alive or dead," Ilnezhara replied. "But be warned and be wary, my black-skinned friend," she added, and she sidled up to the drow and stroked the back of her hand across his cheek. "King Gareth and his friends will not suffer a second Zhengyi. He is not one to underestimate."

Jarlaxle was nodding as she finished, but that disappeared in the blink of an eye as the dragon clamped her hand on the back of his cloak and shirt and effortlessly lifted him into the air, turning him as she did to face her directly.

"Nor would we suffer another tyrant," she warned. "I know that you do not underestimate me."

Hanging in the air as he was, feeling the sheer strength of the dragon as she held him aloft as easily as if he were made of feathers, the drow could only tip his great hat to her.

Entreri turned up the side of his collar as he walked past Piter's bakery, not wanting anyone inside to recognize him and pull him in. He and Jarlaxle had rescued the man from some highwaymen who had indentured him as their private cook. Then Jarlaxle, so typical for the drow, had set Piter up in Heliogabalus in his own shop. Ever was the drow playing angles, trying to squeeze something from nothing, which annoyed Entreri no end.

Piter was a fine baker—even Entreri could appreciate that—but the assassin simply wasn't in the mood for the perpetually smiling and overly appreciative chef.

He moved swiftly past the storefront and turned down the next side street, heading for one of the many taverns that graced that section of the crowded city. He chose a new location, the Boar's Snout, instead of the haunts he and Jarlaxle often frequented. As with smiling Piter, Entreri wasn't in the mood for making conversation with the annoying dregs, nor was he hoping that Jarlaxle would find him. The drow had gone off to see the dragon sisters, and Entreri was enjoying his time alone—finally alone.

He had a lot to think about.

He moved through the half-empty tavern—the night was young—and pulled up a chair at a table in the far corner, sitting as always with his back to the wall and in full view of the door.

The barkeep called out to him, asking his pleasure, and he returned with, "Honey mead."

Then he sat back and considered the road that had brought him to that place. By the time the serving wench appeared with his drink, he had Idalia's flute in his hands, rolling it over and over, feeling the smoothness of the wood.

"If ye're thinking to play for yer drink, then ye should be asking Griney over there," he heard the wench say. He looked up at the woman, who was barely more than a girl. "I ain't for making no choosings about barter." She placed the mead down before him. "A pair o' silver and three coppers," she explained.

Entreri considered her for a moment, her impertinent look, as if she expected an argument. He matched her expression with a sour one of his own and drew out three silvers. He slapped them into her hand and waved her away.

Then he slid his drink to the side, for he wasn't really thirsty, and went back to considering the flute and his last journey—truly one of the strangest adventures of his life. Entreri's trip to Vaasa had also been a journey inside himself, for the first time in more years than he could remember. Because of the magic contained in the flute—and he knew for certain that it was indeed the instrument that had facilitated his inward journey—he had opened himself to emotions long buried. He had seen beauty—in Ellery, in Arrayan, and in Calihye. He had felt attraction, mostly to Arrayan at first, and so strongly that it had led him to make mistakes, nearly getting him killed at the hands of that wretched creature Athrogate.

He had found compassion, and had done things for Arrayan's benefit, and for the benefit of her beloved Olgerkhan.

He had risked his life to save a brutish half-orc.

One hand still worked the flute, but Entreri brought his other up to rub his face. It occurred to him that he should shove this magical flute down Jarlaxle's throat, that he should use it to throttle the drow before its magic led him to his own demise.

But the flute had brought him to Calihye. He couldn't dismiss that. The magic of the flute had given him permission to love the half-elf, had brought him to a place where he never expected and never intended to be. And he enjoyed that place. He couldn't deny that.

But it is going to get me killed, he thought, and he nearly jumped out of his seat to see that a man sat at his table, across from him, waiting for him to look up.

No reminder that the flute was putting him off his normally keen guard could have been more clear to the assassin.

"I have allowed you to walk over unimpeded and unchallenged," Entreri bluffed, and looked back down at the flute. "State your business and be gone."

"Or you will leave me dead on the floor?" the man asked, and Entreri slowly lifted his eyes to lock his opponent's gaze.

He let his stare be his answer, the same look that so many in Calimport had experienced as the last thing they had ever seen.

The man squirmed just a bit, and Entreri could see that he was unsure if indeed he had been «allowed» to come over and sit down, and hadn't really caught Entreri by surprise as it had seemed.

"Knellict would take exception," the man whispered.

It took every bit of control Artemis Entreri could manage to not reach over the table and murder the man then and there, for even mentioning that cursed name.

"You put your threats away and you keep them away," the man went on, seeming to gain courage from the mention of the powerful archmage. He even shifted as if to point his finger Entreri's way, but Entreri's stare defeated that movement before it really got going. "I'm here for him, I am," the man said. "For Knellict. Ye thinking ye're in the mood for a fight with Knellict?"

Entreri just stared.

"Well? Ye got no answer for that, do ye?"

Entreri managed an amused grin at how badly the man was reading him.

The stranger sat up straighter and leaned forward, confidence growing. "Course ye got no answer," he said. "Ain't none wanting a fight with Knellict." Entreri nodded, his amusement growing as the fool's voice continued to mount in volume. "Not even King Gareth, himself!" the man ended, and he reached up and snapped his fingers before Entreri's face—or tried to, for the assassin, far quicker, grabbed the man by the wrist and slammed his hand down hard on the table, palm up.

Before the fool could begin to squirm, the assassin's other hand came up over the table, holding the jeweled dagger. Entreri flipped it and slammed it down hard, driving it into the wood of the table right between the fumbling fool's fingers.

"Raise your voice again, and I will cut out your tongue," Entreri assured him. "Your patron will appreciate that, I assure you. He might even offer me a bounty for taking the wagging tongue of an idiot."

The man was breathing so heavily, in such gasps, that Entreri half-expected him to faint onto the floor. Even when Entreri put his dagger away, the fool kept on panting.

"I believe that you have some information to relay," Entreri said after a long while.

"A-a job," the man stammered. "For yerself and just yerself, Apprentice Knight. There's a merchant, Beneghast, who's come afoul o' Knellict."

Entreri's thoughts began to spin. Had they arranged for him to attain a position of trust within the kingdom only to waste the gain for the sake of a simple merchant? However, the perceptive Entreri lost his surprise as the fool went on, clarifying the plan.

"Beneghast's got a highwayman laying in wait. Ye're to rush to Beneghast's rescue from our men."

"But of course I won't get there quite in time."

"Oh, ye're to get there soon enough to kill the merchant," the fool explained, and he grinned widely, showing a few rotten teeth in a mouth that was more discolored gum than tooth. "But we'll be blaming the thief."

"And I am the hero for apprehending the murderer," Entreri reasoned, for it was a ruse he had heard many times in his life.

"And ye just turn him over to the city guards, who'll come rushing yer way."

"Guards paid well, no doubt."

The man laughed.

Entreri nodded. He walked his thoughts through the too-familiar, and too-complicated scenario. Why not have the highwayman just kill the man and be done with it? Or have the guards «find» the body of Beneghast, right where they placed it after killing him?

Because it wasn't about Beneghast at all, Entreri understood. It wasn't payback for any wrong done Knellict. It was a test for Entreri, plain and simple. Knellict wanted to see if Entreri would kill, indiscriminately and without question, out of loyalty to the Citadel of Assassins.

How many times had Artemis Entreri facilitated something very much like this back in Calimport when he had served as Pasha Basadoni's principle assassin? How many new prospects had he similarly tested?

And how many had he killed for failing the test?

The fool sat there, wagging his head and showing that repulsive grin, and rather than dismissing him, Entreri stood and took his leave, shoving past and heading for the door.

"Wall's Around," the man called after him, referring to a section of the city the assassin knew well. Entreri could only shake his head at the courier's stupidity and lack of discretion.

The assassin couldn't get out of that tavern fast enough.

He headed down the street, pointedly away from Wall's Around at first. With every step, he considered the test, considered that Knellict would deign to test him at all.

With every step, he grew angrier.

CHAPTER 5 UNSHACKLED

To the outside world, even to Artemis Entreri, it was a simple bakery, the place where chef Piter worked his wonders. After the sun set over Heliogabalus, Piter and his workers went home and the doors were locked, not to be opened again until the pre-dawn hours each and every day.

Entreri likely understood that the place was a bit more than that, Jarlaxle realized. Its pretensions as a simple bakery served as a front, a token of legitimacy for Jarlaxle. How might Entreri react, the drow wondered, if he discovered that Piter's bakery was also a conduit to the Underdark?

It was after dark and the door was locked. Jarlaxle, of course, had a key. He walked past the storefront casually, his gaze sweeping the area and taking in his surroundings to be certain that no one was watching.

He walked past again a few moments later, after a second inspection of the area, and quietly entered and secured the portal behind him, both with his key and with a minor incantation. In the back room, the drow moved to the leftmost of the three large ovens. He glanced over his shoulder one last time, then climbed almost completely into the oven. He reached up into the chimney, holding forth a small silver chime, and lightly tapped it against the brick.

Then he climbed back out and brushed the soot from his clothing—none of the soot was stubborn enough to cling to Jarlaxle's magical garb.

He waited patiently as the minutes slipped past, confident that his call had been heard. Finally, a form bubbled out of the oven's base, sliding effortlessly through the bricks. It grew and extended, seemed no more than a shadow, but gradually took on a humanoid shape.

Shadow became substance and Kimmuriel Oblodra, the psionicist who had been Jarlaxle's principle lieutenant in the mercenary band Bregan D'aerthe, blinked open his eyes.

"You keep me waiting," Jarlaxle remarked.

"You call at inconvenient times," Kimmuriel replied. "I have an organization to run."

Jarlaxle grinned and bowed in response. "And how fares Bregan D'aerthe, my old friend?"

"We thrive. Now that we have abandoned expansionist designs, that is. We are creatures of the Underdark, of Menzoberranzan, and there—"

"You thrive," Jarlaxle dryly finished. "Yes, I get the point."

"But it seems one that you stubbornly refuse to accept," Kimmuriel dared to argue. "You have not abandoned your designs for a kingdom in the World Above."

"A connection to greater treasures," Jarlaxle corrected, and Kimmuriel shrugged. "I will not repeat my errors perpetrated under the influence of Crenshinibon, but neither will I recoil from opportunity."

"Opportunity in the land of a paladin king?"

"Wherever it may be found."

Kimmuriel slowly shook his head.

"We are heroes of the crown, do you not know?" Jarlaxle said. "My companion is a knight of the Army of Bloodstone. Can a barony be far behind?"

"Underestimate Gareth and his friends at your peril," the psionicist warned. "I set spies to watch them from afar, as you instructed. They are not blind fools who accept your tales at face value. They have dispatched emissaries to Palishchuk and to the castle already, and they even now question their informants in Heliogabalus and in other cities, whose primary duties involve keeping track of the movements of the Citadel of Assassins."

"I would be disappointed if they were inept," Jarlaxle replied casually, as if it did not matter.

"I warn you, Jarlaxle. You will find Gareth and those adventurers who stand beside him to be the most formidable foes you have ever faced."

"I have faced the matron mothers of Menzoberranzan," the drow reminded him.

"Who were ever kept at bay by the edicts of Lady Lolth herself. Those matron mothers knew that they would displease the Spider Queen if they brought harm upon one she had so blessed as Jar—"

"I do not need you to recount my life's history to me."

"Do you not?"

The ever-confident Jarlaxle couldn't help but wince at that statement, for of course it was true. Jarlaxle had been blessed by the Spider Queen, had been ordained as one of her agents of tumult and chaos. Lady Lolth, the demon queen of chaos, had rejected Matron Baenre's sacrifice of her third-born son, as was drow tradition. Due to the work of one loyal to Lolth, Baenre's spider-shaped dagger had not penetrated the babe Jarlaxle's tender flesh, and when Lolth had magically granted Jarlaxle the memories of his infancy, of that fateful night in House Baenre, he had keenly felt his mother's desperation. How she had ground that spider-shaped dagger on his chest, terrified that the rejection of her sacrifice had portended doom for her supreme House.

"Matron Baenre learned centuries ago that her own fate was inextricably tied to that of Jarlaxle," Kimmuriel, one of only three living drow who knew the truth, went on. "Ever were her hands tied from retaliating against you, even on those many occasions she desperately wanted to cut out your heart."

"Lady Lolth spurned me long ago, my friend." Jarlaxle tried hard not to betray any emotions other than his typically flippant attitude, but it was difficult. On his mother's orders, the failure of the sacrificial ceremony had been buried beneath a swath of lies. She had ordered him declared dead, then wrapped in a shroud of silk and thrown into the lake known as Donigarten, as was customary for sacrificed third sons.

"But Baenre never knew of your betrayal of the Spider Queen, and her rejection of you as her favored drow," said Kimmuriel. "To Matron Baenre, to her dying breath, you were the untouchable one, the one whose flesh her dagger could not penetrate. The blessed child who, as a mere infant, utterly and completely destroyed his older brother."

"Do you suggest that I should have told the witch?"

"Hardly. I only remind you in the context of your present state," Kimmuriel said, and he offered his former master a low and respectful bow.

"Baenre found me, and Bregan D'aerthe, to be a powerful and necessary ally."

"And so Bregan D'aerthe remains an ally to House Baenre, and Matron Mother Triel, under the guidance of Kimmuriel," the psionicist said.

Jarlaxle nodded. "Kimmuriel is no fool, which is why I entrusted Bregan D'aerthe to you during my… my journey."

"Your relationship with the matron mothers was not akin to the one you now seem determined to forge in the Bloodstone Lands," Kimmuriel stated. "King Gareth will not suffer such treachery."

"You presume I will offer him a choice."

"You presume that you will hold the upper hand. Your predecessor in this adventure, a Witch-King of tremendous power, learned the error of his ways."

"And perhaps I have learned from Zhengyi's failure."

"But have you learned from your own?" Kimmuriel dared to say, and for just a brief instant, Jarlaxle's red eyes flared with anger. "You nearly brought ruin to Bregan D'aerthe," Kimmuriel pressed anyway.

"I was under the influence of a mighty artifact. My vision was clouded."

"Clouded only because the Crystal Shard offered you that which you greatly desired. Is the phylactery you now hold in your pocket offering you any less?"

Jarlaxle took a step back, surprised by Kimmuriel's forwardness. He let his anger play out to a state of grudging acceptance—that was exactly why he had given Bregan D'aerthe over to Kimmuriel, after all. Jarlaxle had chosen a road of adventure and personal growth, one that could have proven disastrous for Bregan D'aerthe had he dragged them along. But with the possibilities he had found in Vaasa and Damara, was he, perhaps, dragging them right back into the path of ruin?

No, Jarlaxle realized as he considered his dark elf counterpart, the intelligent and independent psionicist who dared to speak to him so bluntly.

A smile grew upon his face as he looked over his friend. "There are possibilities here I cannot ignore," he said.

"Intriguing, I agree."

"But not enough to bring Bregan D'aerthe to my side should I need them," Jarlaxle reasoned.

"Not enough to risk Bregan D'aerthe. That was our agreement, was it not? Did you not install me as leader for the very purpose of building a wall between that which you created and that which you would gamble?"

Jarlaxle laughed aloud at the truth in that.

"I am wiser than I know," he said, and Kimmuriel would have laughed with him, if Kimmuriel ever laughed.

"But you will continue to monitor, of course," Jarlaxle said, and Kimmuriel nodded. "I have another duty for you."

"My network is stretched thin."

Jarlaxle shook his head. "Not for your spies, but for yourself. There is a woman, Calihye. She did not travel south with me and Entreri, though she is his lover."

"That one is not possessed of the frailties that would allow for such unreasonable emotions," Kimmuriel corrected. "She is his partner for physical release, perhaps, but it could be no more with Artemis Entreri. It is the one thing about the fool that I applaud."

"Perhaps that is the reason I find comfort around him. His demeanor reminds me of home."

Kimmuriel didn't react at all, and Jarlaxle figured the psionicist, so cunning regarding the larger issues of life but so oblivious about the little truths of existence, hadn't even realized the comparison of himself to Entreri.

"I see no incongruity between her actions and her professed intent," Jarlaxle explained, a code he had often used with his invasive lieutenant.

Kimmuriel bowed, showing his understanding.

"You will continue to monitor?" Jarlaxle asked.

"And to inform," Kimmuriel assured him. "I do not abandon you, Jarlaxle. Never that."

"Never?"

"To date," Kimmuriel said, and despite himself, he did chortle a bit.

"It could get very dangerous here," Jarlaxle finally admitted.

"You play dangerous games with dangerous enemies."

"If it comes to war, I am well-prepared," said Jarlaxle. "The armies of the nether world await my call, and Zhengyi left behind constructs that are continually self-protecting."

"You will claim the castle."

"I already have. I own he who owns it. The dracolich is mine to command. As I said, I am well prepared. Better prepared if Bregan D'aerthe offered support. Quietly, of course."

"If it escalates, I will watch and I will judge what is best for Bregan D'aerthe," said Kimmuriel.

Jarlaxle grinned and bowed. "You will offer me an escape, of course."

"I will watch and I will judge," the psionicist said again.

Jarlaxle had to accept that. His deal with Kimmuriel precipitated on the fulcrum of Kimmuriel's independence. Kimmuriel, and not Jarlaxle, ruled Bregan D'aerthe, and would continue to until Jarlaxle returned to Menzoberranzan and formally retrieved his throne. That was as they had agreed upon after the destruction of the Crystal Shard. Neither held any illusions about that agreement, of course. Jarlaxle knew that if he stayed away from his homeland for too long, allowing Kimmuriel to make inroads into the supportive relationships Jarlaxle had built within the City of Spiders, then Kimmuriel would not relinquish control of Bregan D'aerthe without a fight.

Jarlaxle also knew that calling upon Kimmuriel in times of desperation was a risky prospect indeed, for if Kimmuriel allowed him to fall, the psionicist would stand unopposed as leader of the profitable mercenary band. But Jarlaxle understood well the drow who served as his steward. Kimmuriel had never coveted power over other drow, as had Rai-guy or Berg'inyon Baenre, or any of the other notables in the band. Kimmuriel's designs dwelt in the realm of the intellect. He was a psionicist, a creature of thought and introspection. Kimmuriel preferred intellectual sparring with illithids to bargaining for position with the wretched matron mothers of Menzoberranzan. He would rather spend his day destroying brain moles or visiting the Astral abodes of githyanki than reporting his findings to Matron Mother Triel or maneuvering Bregan D'aerthe's warriors to capitalize on any dramatic events in the nearly constant intra-House warfare.

"You try to build here," Kimmuriel remarked even as he started into the chimney and his magical road back to the Underdark. "You grasp to create something on the World Above, yet no matter your success, it could not rival that which awaits you in Menzoberranzan. I try to understand you, Jarlaxle, but even my brilliance is no match for your unpredictability. What is it you seek here that does not already await you in our homeland?"

Freedom, Jarlaxle thought, but did not say.

Of course, Kimmuriel was a psionicist, and a powerful one indeed, so Jarlaxle never really had to «say» anything to him to get his point across.

Kimmuriel stared at him for a few moments, then slowly nodded. "There is no freedom," he finally said. "There is only survival."

When Jarlaxle didn't immediately respond, the steward of Bregan D'aerthe slipped into the chimney and melted into the stone.

Jarlaxle stood staring into the oven for a long while, fearing that Kimmuriel was right.

The roadway formed a wide circle inside the sharp right angle of Heliogabalus's wall, a cul-de-sac of mercantiles. Ilnezhara's shop was nearby, as was Tazmikella's. Dozens of chandlers, cobblers, blacksmiths, weavers, tailors, wheelwrights, importers, bakers, and other craftsmen and tradesmen of every imaginable stripe made Wall's Around their working home.

A large, three-tiered fountain centered the cul-de-sac, water dribbling from top to bottom without much energy, more of a continual rolling overflow. As he had envisioned it during his approach, Entreri had thought to use the fountain as his base, his vantage point to watch the scripted attack play out around him. But as he came through another alley to gain his third angle on the fountain, he realized that Knellict's hired highwayman had beaten him to it. The man was cleverly curled inside the second bowl, and only the uneven drip of the water had clued the assassin in to the fact that something was amiss.

He considered the highwayman's dark form and sensed patience and discipline—he was no novice.

With a nod, Entreri faded back into the shadows of the alley, grabbed a rail, and scaled the side of one shop, propelling himself to the roof. Low at the edge, he studied the fountain again, though he couldn't see the would-be assailant from that angle. Silent as a shadow, he slipped from roof to roof, circling the cul-de-sac, taking in a full view of the layout.

And noting two more figures lurking in the darkness under the porch of a darkened emporium.

The assassin froze in place then slipped lower on the roof, his gaze never leaving the two silhouettes. Those were Knellict's men, he knew, the wizard's insurance that nothing went amiss. Entreri couldn't make out many details, for they were well-concealed, but their lack of movement as the moments slipped past again spoke to him of discipline and training.

The easy course—to slay the merchant Beneghast and be on his way in Knellict's good graces—called out to him.

But Artemis Entreri had never been fond of the easy course.

The moment of truth, the time that Entreri had to ready himself one way or the other, slipped past, and the assassin transitioned into an almost unthinking, instinctual state. He had to move fast, back around the cul-de-sac, to put the fountain directly between himself and the two men under the porch. Roof to roof he went, fading back to the far side of each building, his body bending and twisting with each stride so that he seemed a part of the landscape and nothing more, and moving so silently that people in the buildings below his running feet wouldn't think that so much as a squirrel was skittering across their rooftops.

He came back down to the ground with equal grace, sliding flat at the eave, hooking his hand on the lip of the roof, and rolling over to extend himself fully before gently dropping to the alleyway.

He hesitated at the front corner of the building, for someone exited the door just a couple of steps to his left. That oblivious figure walked right past without taking any note of him, and continued on out of the cul-de-sac.

When a second figure appeared across the way and to his right, Entreri crouched a bit more. It was Beneghast.

The highwayman in the fountain would have noticed the merchant, as well, Entreri realized, and so he used that split second of distraction. He exploded into motion, running low and silently, then diving into a forward roll that brought him up against the lowest bowl of the fountain.

The man watched Beneghast's approach; the merchant would cross right by the fountain on the side opposite Entreri. The highwayman tried to find Entreri then, staying low and slowly swerving his head to take in as much of Wall's Around as possible, briefly locking his stare on this alleyway and that in search of the shadowy figure of the assassin he'd been told to expect.

Entreri quietly counted it out. He had already taken a measure of Beneghast's distance from the fountain, and could easily approximate the walking speed of the bent little man with a sack thrown over his shoulder.

The man in the fountain up above him was skilled, he reminded himself, and that meant that he would continue his scan for Entreri until the last possible second. But as Beneghast approached, the highwayman would have to shift his focus to the merchant.

That one moment, after the highwayman stopped his scan to look back at the target, yet before the highwayman actually found Beneghast again and moved to intercept, was Entreri's time.

He rolled up to a standing position, thin behind the stem of the fountain. He didn't allow Beneghast's approach to occupy a moment of his thought, but simply leaped up to the rim of that bottom bowl, a vertical jump of three feet. While his feet set quietly and surely on the slick, rounded rim, his left hand went out against the second bowl to secure his balance and his right hand, dagger drawn, struck hard and sure.

He felt the blade slide through the highwayman's ribs, and as soon as he noted the pressure of the initial contact, he came forward with it, releasing his grip on the second bowl and snapping his hand against the highwayman's head instead, driving him down below the water so that his cry became a burst of bubbles and nothing more.

Entreri felt the warmth of the man's blood rushing over his forearm, but the angle of the stab was all wrong for a quick in-the-heart kill. That mattered not at all to Entreri, though, for he summoned the vampiric powers of his dagger, drawing the highwayman's life-force into the magical blade, leaving him limp and lifeless in the bowl in a matter of a few heartbeats.

How convenient that the highwayman was wearing a mask, he thought, as he slipped the cloth free and quickly set it over his own face.

A short pause, a quick breath, and Entreri moved again, swiftly and gracefully, barely making a splash in the bowl as he slipped up to the rim and sprang free, landing lightly in the street beyond the wider, lower level. Beneghast noted his approach, of course, but the assassin moved so fast that the poor merchant barely had the time to gasp.

Entreri was there with frightening speed, standing right before him, the tip of his dagger just below Beneghast's Adam's apple.

He locked stares with the man, letting Beneghast see the intensity in his dark eyes, the promise of death. The merchant groaned and wobbled, as if his legs would simply give out beneath him—but of course, the dagger remained tight and held him upright. A slight grin appeared on Entreri's face, and he retracted the dagger just a bit.

"Oh, I am murdered!" the merchant squealed, and Entreri smiled wider and made no move to silence him. "Oh, fie, that my life should be taken by… by…"

"Ah, ah," Entreri warned, lifting one finger of his free hand up before Beneghast and wagging it back and forth.

The merchant fell silent, except for the short gasps of his breathing.

"Drop your sack behind you," Entreri instructed.

The satchel hit the ground.

Entreri paused, considering the two watching from under the porch. They were tense, he knew, on edge and ready to strike, and wondering where Entreri might be.

The assassin paced slowly around Beneghast, smoothly picking up the sack as he moved around behind the man. His eyes never left the merchant, but also, he looked past the man, noting movement behind the windows and open doors of several shops. A whistle in the distance told him that the city guard had been alerted. No doubt Knellict's paid stooges were fast approaching to arrest the murderous highwayman even then.

And no doubt, the two fools under the porch across the way were wringing their hands and cursing under their breath that Artemis Entreri had yet to make an appearance.

"If you want to live, you will do exactly as I instruct—and even then, I cannot guarantee that you will escape with your life," Entreri told Beneghast. The man yelped—or started to, before Entreri cut him short. "You have one chance. Do you understand?"

"Y-yes," the merchant stammered, nodding stupidly.

"A bit of discretion would go a long way toward keeping my dagger out of your heart," the assassin told him.

"Y-yes—yes—" Beneghast stammered, but then stopped and slapped a hand across his mouth.

"When I tell you to run, you will go straight ahead," Entreri explained. "Turn into the alley on this side of the emporium—do not pass the porch. Do you understand?"

The sound of shouting came to them, from down the straight road leading to Wall's Around.

"Run," said Entreri.

Beneghast leaped into motion, screaming and sprinting, stumbling like a fool and nearly falling onto his face. He veered out toward the center of the road and seemed as if in his panic he would run right past the porch—to his sudden demise, no doubt—but then he stumbled again at the last moment and came out of it running straight into the alley.

Whistles and shouts closed from behind, but Entreri didn't even glance that way. He watched the two forms rush out from under the porch, two men, one large, one small—or perhaps the small one was a woman. They both looked Entreri's way, to which he offered a simple shrug, then the large one charged down the alley behind Beneghast, while the smaller began gesturing as if casting a spell.

So intent was that one on the fleeing Beneghast, that she—for it was indeed a woman—never even noted Entreri's swift approach. Just as she was about to release her spell, a blade flashed down before her, trailing a line of magical ash that hung in the air, blocking her view.

"What—?" she gasped and fell back a step, turning to regard Entreri just as he pulled the mask down from his face.

"I just wanted you to see the truth," he said.

The woman's eyes popped open wide, and her jaw dropped.

Entreri stabbed her with his dagger—or tried to, for she had an enchantment about her that defeated the attack. It was as if he had struck the blade against solid stone.

The woman shrieked again and turned to flee, but Entreri smacked her with his sword, again to no avail, and kicked her trailing foot back over her leading ankle. She tripped up and fell flat, immediately rolling to her back and raising her hands defensively before her.

"Do not kill me!" she begged. "Please, I have wealth."

He hit her again, and again, and again. "How many will your shield stop?" he said as she thrashed helplessly below him.

Beneghast's cry echoed out of the alleyway.

Entreri kicked the female mage one more time, then leveled Charon's Claw at her, the magnificent red blade barely an inch from her wide eyes.

"Tell your master that I am not a pawn," he said.

The woman bobbed her head frantically, and Entreri nodded and ran off. He noted two guards passing the fountain in hot pursuit, but he outdistanced them, disappearing into the darkness of the alley. As he did, he threw the sack up to a roof and ran on. Past a pile of discarded boxes and a broken wagon, he came in sight of Beneghast, down against the wall and bleeding, one hand up before his face pitifully. Above him loomed the larger assassin from the porch, a warhammer raised for the kill.

Entreri's dagger flew down the alleyway, striking true in the side of the killer's chest. The man staggered a step but did not go down. He turned and offered a defensive stance, though he couldn't help but lurch to the side from the pain.

Charon's Claw in both hands, Entreri went in with sudden and overwhelming fury. He swiped across, right to left, and the murderer, no novice to battle, blocked and disengaged quickly enough to keep his hammer in front of him.

"You're mad," he gasped, intercepting an overhand chop.

Entreri noted how forcefully that hammer came up to parry, and was not surprised in the least when the man moved forward underneath the angle of Charon's Claw. Nor did Entreri try to prevent that movement, nor did he twist aside. He simply loosened his grip on Charon's Claw and went forward as well, coming against the big man, who tried to overpower him and bull rush him to the ground.

Except Artemis Entreri was much stronger than he looked, and also had his hand clamped around the hilt of the jeweled dagger. A slight twist stopped the momentum of the large man as surely as any stone wall ever could. The killer looked down at Entreri, his hammer falling free to clang to the ground beside the fallen Charon's Claw. A look of absolute horror crossed his face, a look that never failed to bring a grin to Artemis Entreri's lips.

Entreri twisted the dagger again. He could have drawn the man's life-force out, utterly destroying his soul, but he found a moment of mercy. Instead of utter annihilation, he settled for the simple kill.

Entreri eased the dying man to the ground, and picked up Charon's Claw as he did.

"You… he saved me," Beneghast said, and the change in pronoun clued Entreri in to the fact that they were not alone. He came up fast and spun, facing the two guards—men he knew to be in Knellict's employ.

The expressions on the faces of the two guards revealed their utter confusion. Entreri hadn't followed the script.

"Saved you?" Entreri scoffed at Beneghast. "No amount of your gold will make me follow you down your road of lies! Take this man," Entreri ordered the guards. "He murdered the merchant Beneghast and left him dead in the fountain. His companion lies dead here, by my own hand, and he has promised me riches if I feign ignorance of his murderous ways."

The guards exchanged confused looks and Entreri was certain that he could have knocked them both over if he merely blew upon them. To the side, Beneghast stuttered and stammered, spitting all over himself.

Entreri silenced him with a look, then reached down and grabbed him by the front of his tunic. As he roughly pulled the merchant to his feet, purposely bringing a concealing grunt from the man, he whispered into his ear, "If you wish to live, play along."

He stood straight and shoved Beneghast into the arms of the confused guards.

"Be quick and escort him away. There may be more murderers hiding in the shadows."

They didn't know what to do—that much remained plain on their faces. They finally turned and started away, Beneghast in tow. The merchant managed to look back at Entreri, who nodded and winked, then put a finger to his pursed lips.

Did the guards fall for the ruse, Entreri wondered? Did they know Beneghast and the Citadel of Assassins's killers? He had seen no recognition on their faces in the moment before he had made his choice.

And even if he was wrong, even if they knew the truth of Beneghast's identity and subsequently killed him, what did Artemis Entreri care?

He tried to tell himself that, over and over, but he found himself back up on the rooftops. He moved to retrieve the merchant's sack—no reason he shouldn't collect some reward for his good deed, after all—then slipped along the tops of the buildings, shadowing the movements of the guards and their prisoner. As he expected, the corrupted soldiers didn't stay out in the street, but turned down another alleyway, one that opened out the back end, where they and their «prisoner» could easily escape.

"Go on, then," Entreri heard one tell Beneghast.

"Knellict's not to like losing one of his men," the other remarked.

"Not our affair," the other said. "That merchant fellow is dead and this one's to leave. That's all we were told to do."

On the roof above them, Entreri smiled. He watched Beneghast stumble out the back side of the alleyway, running as if his life depended on it—for surely it did.

The two guards followed slowly, chatting amongst themselves. One of them produced a small bag and jiggled it to show that it was full of coins.

Entreri looked at the sack he carried, then glanced back at the pair. For the first time since he had entered Wall's Around, the assassin paused to consider the ramifications of his course. He knew that he had just bought himself and Jarlaxle a lot of trouble from a very dangerous enemy. He could have gone along with Knellict's orders so easily.

But that would have meant accepting his fate, admitting that he was reverting to the life he had lived in Calimport, when he had been no more than a killing tool for Pasha Basadoni and so many others.

"No," he whispered and shook his head. He wasn't going back to that life, not ever, whatever the cost. He looked at the departing guards again.

He shrugged.

He dropped the sack.

He jumped down between the guards, weapons drawn.

He left soon after, a sack over one shoulder, and a bag of coins tied to his belt.

CHAPTER 6 FRIGHTENED MICE, NERVOUS DRAGONS

The white cat dropped down from the windowsill and strode toward the disheveled merchant. Purring, the cat banged its head against Beneghast's leg.

"Ah, Mourtrue," the merchant said, sagging back against the wall and reaching down to pat his companion. "I thought I would never see you again. I thought I would never see anything again. Oh, but they were murderers, Mourtrue. Murderers, I say!"

"Do tell," the cat answered.

Beneghast froze in place, his words catching on the lump in his throat. He slowly lifted his hand away from the animal and shrank back against the wall.

Mourtrue began to grow.

"Please," the cat implored him, "do tell your tale. It is one that interests me greatly."

Beneghast gave a wail and flung himself aside—or tried to. A paw caught him and threw him back hard against the wall, the sharp claws shredding his good vest and overcoat in the process.

"I am not asking," the cat explained, grimacing as popping sounds erupted from all over its body. Bones broke and reformed, and skin stretched and twisted. The white fur shortened, became a bristly coat of fuzz, and disappeared.

Beneghast's knees went weak and he slumped to the floor. Knellict the wizard towered over him.

"You like cats," Knellict said. "That is a mark in your favor, for so do I."

"P-please, y-your magnificence," Beneghast stuttered, shaking his head so violently that his teeth chattered.

"You should be dead, of course."

"But…" Beneghast started, but he was too terrified to go on.

"But my men are dead instead," Knellict finished for him. "How is it that a foolish and flabby merchant could have done such a thing?"

"Oh, no, your magnificence!" Beneghast wailed. "Not that! Never! I struck no one. I did as I was told, and nothing more."

"You were told to kill my men?"

"No! Of course not, your superiorness. It was the masked man! Wicked with the blade, was he. He killed one in the alley that I saw. I know not of any oth—"

"The masked man?"

"The one with the red-bladed sword, and the dagger with the jeweled hilt. He caught me on the street and took my goods—your payment was in there. Oh please, your magnificence! I had your coin, and I wouldn't have been late but for the guards who came and took my gemstones. I tried to tell them that I needed the stones to—"

"You told city guards that you owed coin to Knellict?" the wizard interrupted, and his eyes flashed with the promise of death.

Beneghast got even smaller—Knellict didn't think that possible—and gave a strange squeaking sound.

"You killed my man in the fountain," Knellict accused, trying to break it down piece by piece to get a better sense of it all. Had his men provoked Entreri? Jailiana, who had survived, was just the type to have changed the plan, the impetuous little wench.

Beneghast shook his head violently. "There was no man in the fountain, except that the masked man came out of the fountain."

"The man with the red-bladed sword?"

"Yes," the merchant replied, bobbing his head.

"And that was when you were first accosted?"

"Yes."

Knellict pursed his lips. So, Entreri had betrayed him from the start.

"Please, magnificent sir," Beneghast whined. "I did nothing wrong."

"What of the two guards found at the other end of the alley?"

Beneghast's expression was all the answer Knellict needed, for the man obviously had no knowledge of that pair.

"You did nothing wrong?" Knellict asked. "Yet you were late in repayment."

"But… but…" Beneghast stammered, "but it's all here. All of it and more. And all for you."

"Get it."

The man moved fast, arms and legs flailing in all directions and ultimately doing little to get him out of the corner and off the floor. But then an invisible hand grabbed at him and hoisted him up, right off the ground.

"Where?" Knellict asked.

Hanging in midair, the terrified Beneghast lamely pointed at a dresser across the way. Knellict's telekinetic grip launched him that way, to crash into the drawers and crumble at the bureau's base. He only remained down for an instant, though, to his credit, and he yanked open a drawer so forcefully that it came right out of the dresser and fell at his feet. Clothes flew every which way and the merchant spun back, a large pouch in hand.

"All of it," he promised, "and more."

As Knellict reached out toward the merchant, a movement from the side caught both their attention. Into the room walked the real Mourtrue, looking exactly as Knellict had a moment before. The cat started for his master, but suddenly went up into the air, magically grasped, and flew fast to Knellict's waiting grasp.

"No!" the merchant wailed, lunging forward. "Please, not my Mourtrue."

"Commendable," said Knellict as he held and gently stroked the frightened cat. "You are loyal to your feline companion."

"Oh please, sir," said Beneghast, and he fell to his knees begging. "Anything but my Mourtrue."

"You love her?"

"As if she was my child."

"And does she return the love?"

"Oh yes, sir."

"Let us see, and if you are right, then I forgive your debt and your tardiness. In fact, if you have so garnered the loyalty of such a beautiful creature as this, I will return all of the coin in that purse tenfold."

Beneghast stared at him with confusion, not really knowing what to say.

"Fair?" Knellict asked.

Beneghast had no idea what to say, but he nodded despite himself.

Knellict began to cast a spell and Beneghast recoiled. It took some time for the wizard to complete the enchantment, finally waggling the fingers of one hand at the merchant, sending out waves of crackling energy.

Beneghast heard popping sounds—the sounds of his bones cracking and reshaping. The room got larger suddenly, impossibly huge, which confused poor Beneghast as much as did the fact that his breaking bones didn't really hurt.

He felt strange. His vision was black and white, and so many odors floated out at him they overwhelmed his sensibilities. He glanced left and right and saw white lines across his field of vision, as if he had… whiskers.

Mourtrue's growl turned his attention back to the wizard, who stood with gigantic, titanic even, proportions. In Knellict's arms, Mourtrue squirmed and twisted.

Beneghast started to question it all, but his voice came out as a chirp and nothing more.

Then he understood, and he glanced back to see his thin tail.

He was a mouse.

He snapped his gaze back to Knellict and Mourtrue.

"Shall we learn the depths of your cat's loyalty, then?" asked the smug mage.

He dropped Mourtrue to the floor, but it seemed to Beneghast as if the cat never even touched down, so graceful and fast was Mourtrue's leap.

"I guess not so deep," Knellict said.

Knellict left a short while later, the well-fed cat curled up against his shoulder, wondering what in the world he was going to do about this Artemis Entreri fellow.

Tazmikella knew who it was as soon as she saw the lean, late-middle-aged man walking slowly up the hill toward her front door. His threadbare and weather-beaten robes could have belonged to any of a thousand nomads who wandered the region, of course, but the walking stick, white as bone, belonged to one man alone.

A shudder coursed Tazmikella's spine and she couldn't help but wince at the sight of Master Kane. She hated the monk—irrationally so, she knew. She hated him because she feared him, and Tazmikella did not like «fearing» any human. But Kane was a monk, a grandmaster, and that meant that he could all too easily avoid the effects of her breath weapon, her greatest battle asset. Tazmikella didn't fear wizards, not even an archmage like Knellict. She didn't fear the paladin king, nor any of his heroic friends—not the ranger, priest, thief, or bard—save for one. The only humans—the only creatures of the lesser races, the drow included—who so unnerved the dragon were those strange ascetics who dedicated their lives to perfecting their bodies.

And Kane was no ordinary monk, even. In the martial sense, he was the greatest of the disciples in all the Bloodstone Lands and far beyond. So perfect was his understanding of and control over his body, that he could achieve a state of otherworldliness, it was said, where his physical form transcended its corporeal limitations to escape the very bonds of the Material Plane.

All of those rumors and whispers bounced about Tazmikella's thoughts as she watched the seemingly simple man's determined approach.

"Remember who you are," the dragon finally whispered to herself. She gave a quick shake of her head and her concerned look became a grimace.

"Master Kane," she said as the man neared her porch. "It has been far too long…" She meant to continue with an invitation for the monk to enter her home, but Kane didn't wait, walking right past her with only a slight nod of his head for acknowledgement.

Tazmikella paused at the door and didn't look back inside at the monk until she found the strength to wipe the sneer off her face. She reminded herself repeatedly that Kane was there at the request of King Gareth, no doubt.

"To what do I owe the honor of your presence?" she said, a bit too sweetly, as she turned and walked to her seat at the table opposite the monk. She noted his posture as she went, and that too only reminded her that the man was different. Kane did not sit with his feet on the floor, as others would. He had his legs folded tightly beneath him, feet under his buttocks, and with his back perfectly straight and balanced over the center of his form. He could move in a blink, Tazmikella realized, unfolding faster than any enemy, even a coiled snake, might strike.

"Your sister will join us presently," Kane replied.

"You expect Ilnezhara to arrive in a timely fashion?" Tazmikella asked, her tone light and sarcastic, and for effect, she rolled her eyes.

She might as well have rolled out of the chair and across the floor, for all the effect her humor had on Kane. He sat there, unblinking and unmoving. Not just unmoving, but utterly still, save the minor rise and fall of his breathing. The dragon paused, even shifted noisily a few times, leaning forward in anticipation, trying to prompt the monk to speak.

But he did not.

He just sat there.

Many moments slipped past, and he just sat there.

Tazmikella got up repeatedly and walked to the door, glancing out for any sign of her sister. Then she sat back down, offering both smiles and frowns. She asked a few questions—about the weather, about Vaasa, about King Gareth and Lady Christine, inquiring how they fared.

Kane just sat there.

Finally, after what felt like the whole of the morning to Tazmikella, but was in fact less than an hour, Ilnezhara arrived at the door. She came in and greeted her sister and the monk, who gave the slightest of nods in response.

"Do take care, good sister," Tazmikella dared to say, for she drew confidence with the arrival of a second dragon. "It would seem that my guest is not in good humor this morning."

"You were not at the ceremony honoring those returning from Vaasa," he said, addressing both.

"I did hear of that," Ilnezhara replied. "Those who investigated the latest Zhengyian construct, yes?"

Kane stared long and hard at her.

"Well of course, information travels slowly from Bloodstone Village to Heliogabalus, and we are not about to take wing."

"By order of King Gareth," Tazmikella added. "We would not wish to terrify half of Damara."

"Jarlaxle the drow and Artemis Entreri are known to you," Kane stated. "They were in your employ before their journey to Vaasa—a journey they took at your request, perhaps?"

"You presume much, Master Kane," said Ilnezhara.

"You deny little," Kane replied.

"We have had minor dealings with this drow and his friend," Tazmikella said. "You know our business. Who better to acquire goods than that pair?"

"You sent them to Vaasa," the monk said.

Ilnezhara scoffed, but Kane didn't blink, so Tazmikella remarked, "We suggested to Jarlaxle that his talents might serve him better in the wilderness, and that perhaps he would find adventure, reputation, and booty."

"There is an old saying that a dragon's suggestion is ever a demand," the monk remarked.

Tazmikella managed a weak grin, and looked to her sister. She noted the exchange of looks between Kane and Ilnezhara, bordering on threatening.

"We know Jarlaxle and Entreri," Tazmikella said bluntly. "They are not in our employ, but we have, on occasion, employed them. If you have come to question their bona fides, Master Kane, should you not have arrived before the ceremo—"

Kane stopped her with an upraised hand, a gesture that had the proud dragon fighting hard to suppress her anger.

"Your accommodations here are at the suffrage of King Gareth," Kane reminded her. "Never forget that. We are not enemies; we have welcomed both of you into the community of Bloodstone with open arms and trust."

"Your warning does not reek of trust, Grandmaster," said Ilnezhara.

"You repudiated Zhengyi's advances. That is not unnoticed."

"And now?" Ilnezhara prompted.

Kane unfolded suddenly, standing on the chair, and dipped a low bow. "I pray you understand that we are in dangerous times."

"You see the world from a human perspective," Ilnezhara cautioned. "You view disasters in the terms of years, at most, and not in terms of decades or centuries. It is understandable that you would utter such a silly statement."

Kane betrayed no anger at the statement as he sat again, but neither did he seem impressed. "The castle was no small matter, was perhaps the greatest manifestation of Zhengyi, curse his name, since his demise those years ago."

"Zhengyi himself was a small matter," Ilnezhara replied. "A temporary inconvenience and nothing more."

Even Tazmikella winced at the obvious and self-serving understatement. Both she and her sister had breathed much easier indeed when the Witch-King had fallen, and not since the time when Aspiraditus the red dragon and her three fiery offspring had flown into the mountains of western Damara four hundred years before had the dragon sisters been that concerned about anything.

"Perhaps we measure our catastrophes in the sense of tendays, or even years, good lady, because that is all we have," Kane countered. "Our time is short by your measures, but eternity by our own. I am not overly concerned about this latest Zhengyian construct, for it is dead now, and I am confident that whatever plagues the Witch-King left behind for us will be handled accordingly by Spysong and the Army of Bloodstone."

"And yet, you are here," reasoned Tazmikella.

"This is how we handle accordingly our catastrophes," Kane answered, and for the first time, a bit of emotion, a dry sarcasm, crept into his monotone voice.

"Then pray tell us of your catastrophe," Ilnezhara stated with a clear air of condescension.

Kane stared at her for a few moments but did not reply.

"Pray tell us why you have come to see us," Tazmikella intervened, guessing correctly that the monk wasn't willing to label the purpose of his visit as such.

"That this drow and human in your employ walked out of that castle, while King Gareth's niece, a knight of the order, did not, is worrying," the monk admitted. "That this drow and human walked out of that castle, while Mariabronne the Rover, a hero of the realm by all measures and a student of Olwen, did not, is worrying. I would be ill-serving my king and friend Gareth if I did not investigate the circumstances of his niece's death. And I would be ill-serving my friend Olwen if I did not investigate the circumstances of his student's death. It is no mystery why I have come."

The sisters looked at each other.

"Do you vouch for the character of the drow and human?" Kane asked.

"They have not disappointed us," Tazmikella said.

"Yet," added her sister.

Tazmikella looked from Ilnezhara to Kane, trying to judge the monk's response, but reading his emotions was like trying to find footprints on hard stone.

"We are not well acquainted with the pair, truth be told," Tazmikella offered.

"You were not responsible for importing them to Damara?"

"Certainly not," Tazmikella answered, and Ilnezhara echoed her words as she was speaking them. "We learned of them in Heliogabalus, and decided that we could put their talents to use. It is not so different from the methods of Spysong, and I am certain that if we had not hired the pair, your friend Celedon would have."

"They are talented at what they do," Ilnezhara added.

"Stealing?" asked Kane.

"Procurement," Tazmikella corrected.

Kane actually offered a bit of a smile at that equivocation. He snapped up to stand on the chair again, and dipped a low bow. Without another word, he turned and walked out of Tazmikella's house.

"Those two are going to get themselves killed," Tazmikella remarked when the monk was far away.

"At least," said her sister, with more concern than Tazmikella expected. She glanced over to see Ilnezhara staring at the open door and the back of the departing Kane.

Indeed, Tazmikella thought, few creatures in all the world could unnerve a dragon more than a grandmaster monk.

"You have heard about the fight at Great Fork Ford?" Ilnezhara said, obviously noticing Tazmikella's stare. "Two reds and a mighty white seemed about to rout one of Gareth's brigades."

"And Grandmaster Kane rushed in," Tazmikella continued. "He dared their breath, fire and frost, and avoided it all."

"And even deceived the dragons into breathing upon each other," Ilnezhara added.

"The white—Glacialamacus, it is rumored—was severely burned, and none know if she has survived her wounds. And both reds were wounded, by the frost and by the blows of Kane, followed by the charge of Gareth's warriors."

"It is all rumor, you know," Tazmikella remarked.

"Perhaps, but a plausible rumor, no doubt."

After a long pause, digesting the implications, Tazmikella added, "I grow weary of those two."

"Jarlaxle troubles me," Ilnezhara agreed.

"Troubles?"

"But he is a fine lover," Ilnezhara went on unabated. "Perhaps I should keep him close."

Tazmikella just rolled her eyes at that, hardly surprised.

From the outside, the black hole in the mountainside seemed like just another of the many caves that dotted the region of towering stones and steep facings of the high peaks of the Galenas, east of the Vaasan Gate. Anyone who entered that particular cave, though, would find it to be much more, full of comforts and treasures, inviting aromas and magically lit walkways.

Of course, anyone who entered it uninvited would likely find himself dead.

Chased from Heliogabalus after the fall of Zhengyi, Timoshenko, the Grandfather of Assassins, and his mighty advisor Knellict, had moved the band to their remote, well-defended location. Suites of rooms went far back into the mountain, some carved by hired stonemasons and miners, and many others created by Knellict's magic. Timoshenko's band lived in comfort and security, but were not too remote from their dealings in Damara, for Knellict and his mage companions had also created and maintained a series of magical portals to strategic locations within Gareth's kingdom.

Through one of those portals, Jailiana, the mage who had survived Entreri's betrayal at Wall's Around, had arrived back at the citadel, trembling with outrage. She had delivered her report quickly, and had asked for support that she might go right back to Heliogabalus and slaughter the traitor. As angry as she was, however, Jailiana knew better than to act without the express permission of Knellict, and so when he had ordered her to stand down, she had quietly gone, sulking, to her chambers.

Knellict came out into the sunlight on the natural stone balcony of the cave, staring west along the northern foothills of the stony mountains. He still held Mourtrue, and had taken quite a liking to the purring cat, and was even considering creating a magical wizard-familiar bond with the animal.

It pleased Knellict to know that one of those who had tried to deceive him was making his way through this creature's intestines.

"Jailiana trembles with anger," came a voice behind him, one of his lieutenants, a dependable if unremarkable fellow named Coureese.

"I have a spell prepared that can cure that," Knellict absently replied. "Of course, it would freeze her solid in the process."

"She knows that she failed you," Coureese said.

"Failed?" Knellict turned, and Coureese looked at him, at the white cat, with obvious surprise. "She did not fail."

"She was to ensure the death of Beneghast."

"She was to witness the loyalty, or lack thereof, of Artemis Entreri," Knellict corrected. "She did not fail."

"But he got away, and two men were slain."

"Where can he run, I wonder? And we lose young recruits almost daily. There are always more to take their places, and if we did not lose so many, then how would we ever know which ones were worthy of our efforts to train them?"

Coureese's lips moved, but he didn't say anything, and Knellict smiled at the man's confusion.

"Perhaps I should go and tell Jailiana of your feelings," Coureese offered.

"Perhaps I should telekinese you over the cliff."

The man blanched and fell back a step.

"Let her stew in her anger," Knellict explained. "It is a fine motivator. And let us set an order of elimination on the head of dear Artemis Entreri. Perhaps our female friend would seek the coin."

"She would go after him for free," Coureese replied. "She would pay us for the opportunity."

"Well, that is her decision to make. She has seen this man at his craft. I would expect that a woman wise enough to dabble in the arcane ways would also be wise enough to recognize the difference between opportunity and suicide."

Coureese wagged his head for a few moments, digesting all of that. Finally, he asked, "The bounty?"

Knellict considered it for a moment, thinking it might be a good training exercise for the younger members, and a good way to truly measure the prowess of Artemis Entreri. "Fifty pieces of platinum," he replied.

Coureese licked his lips and nodded.

"Your thoughts?" Knellict prompted, seeing, and expecting, his discomfort. After all, a man of Entreri's reputation—even the little bit that was known in Damara, which was likely only a very minor piece of the intriguing killer's history—would normally bring a bounty of ten times that offering.

"Nothing, my lord Knellict. I will post the order of elimination." He bowed quickly and turned to leave. Before he reached the cave, however, the magical stone door slid out from its concealment at the side, sealing the entrance in a camouflaged manner that made it seem as if no cave existed there. Coureese spun back to face Knellict, for he knew that the archmage had closed that door with a minor spell.

"When I ask for your thoughts, you would do well to offer them," Knellict explained. "All of them."

"Your pardon, master," Coureese begged, bowing repeatedly and awkwardly. "I only…"

"Just speak them," the mage demanded.

"Fifty pieces of platinum?" Coureese blurted. "I had thought that I would try to collect this bounty myself, but to go after this Entreri—who walks beside a drow! — for such a price is not enticing."

"Because you are intelligent."

Coureese looked up at him.

"Only a fool would go after Artemis Entreri for this price, agreed. So let us see what fools we need to remove from our ranks. Or I should say, let us see what fools Entreri will eliminate for us. And in the process, perhaps he will leave a trail of bodies that King Gareth cannot ignore. We can only gain here."

"But Entreri will not likely be killed," Coureese dared to remark.

Knellict snorted as if that hardly mattered. "When I want him to die, he will die. Athrogate is close to him, do not forget, and the dwarf is loyal. Better to enrage Entreri—or should I call him 'Sir' Entreri? — and embarrass King Gareth. And perhaps one of those who seek him out will show unexpected promise and actually slay him. Or perhaps several will prove resourceful enough to work together to win the bounty."

Coureese began to nod, catching on to all the potential gains.

"Every so often, we must put such a test before our young recruits," Knellict explained and shrugged. "How else are we to know who is worthy and who should be dead?"

Coureese offered a final nod then, hearing the door magically sliding open behind him as Knellict simply waved a hand, he bowed and took his leave.

Knellict chuckled and stroked the purring Mourtrue. "Ah, cat, how am I ever to survive with such fools as that serving me? And he is one of the better ones of late!"

He went back to the ledge and stared out over southern Vaasa. He missed the days of glory when Zhengyi had occupied the troublesome Gareth and the Citadel of Assassins had thrived.

He hated living in a cave—even one magically furnished.

CHAPTER 7 SHADOWS

To a surface dweller, they were called shadows, patches of confusing darkness made all the harder to decipher because of the splotches of light beside them. But to Jarlaxle, who had spent centuries wandering the lightless abyss known as the Underdark, these «shadows» were really just dimmer areas of lightness. And so the drow had no trouble at all in discerning the man crouched beside a pile of debris in the alleyway beside the building where he and Entreri shared their second-story apartment. So painfully obvious was the fool that Jarlaxle had to work hard to keep from giggling at him as he walked past the alleyway to the wooden staircase that would take him to the outer door of his apartment.

At the foot of those stairs, the drow casually glanced all about. Sure enough, he spotted a second man, slipping along the rooftop of an adjoining building.

"What have you done, Artemis?" Jarlaxle whispered under his breath.

He started up the stairs, but stopped short and turned around, acting very much as if he had forgotten something. He even went so far in his deception as to snap his fingers in the air before starting off quickly back the way he had come. They were all watching him, he knew, and there were likely more than two.

But how could they question his decision to enter Piter's Bakery, given the sweet, sweet aroma emanating from its open door?

The drow's turnabout might have fooled the would-be ambushers, but it revealed much more to Artemis Entreri, who watched from his apartment, from the corner of the small window overlooking the street. He understood the significance of Jarlaxle's somewhat exaggerated movements: the finger snap and the feigned expression of forgetfulness.

Agents of the Citadel of Assassins were nearby, no doubt, and Jarlaxle had spied them.

After waiting a bit longer to see if anyone followed Jarlaxle's detour to Piter's shop—and no one did—the assassin moved back into the center of the room and considered his course. He was most certainly outnumbered, and the first rule when so outmanned was to never allow oneself to be cornered. He moved swiftly to the door, drew his sword and dagger, and kicked it open. He went through in a rush, speaking the command password, "White," so that the magic of his trap didn't kill him where he stood.

As he went under the arch of the door, he jumped up and hooked his dagger inside the looped silver chain that held a small statuette of a dragon rampant, its eyes shining like white moonstones. A flick of his wrist had the dragon safely dangling on the blade of his dagger, a second fluid twist dropped the figurine safely away in a pouch, and a third, executed with such precision and speed that it all seemed as one swipe, replaced the dagger in its scabbard with the fine chain from the statuette still looped around it.

Three running steps took Entreri down the hall, to the outer door, the balcony, then the stairway to the street. He thought to pause and inspect whether his uninvited guests had placed any traps on the door, but suspecting that he didn't have that much time, he just lowered his shoulder and crashed through. On the balcony, he cut fast to the left, to the stairs, and he started down—one, two, three strides. There, still more than halfway up, he slipped over the waist-high railing, catching it with his free hand, sliding down its angled decline for a moment, then dropping to the ground. He rolled as he landed to absorb the shock, and came back to his feet already into his run. As he ran across the street, he could feel the eyes of archers upon him.

A small two-wheeled cart of fruit had been placed across from Entreri's stair. The jovial vendor and his teenage son chatted easily with a young couple who were inspecting the wares—a scene very typical for the streets of Heliogabalus.

Or not so, Entreri realized as he approached, for he noted that the foursome were not fast to react to his sudden and unexpected appearance and his obvious urgency—or even to the fact that he held a red-bladed, fabulously designed sword in one hand. He locked stares with the bearded vendor, just for a moment, but that was enough for him to see a flicker of recognition in the man's dark eyes. Not the recognition of a common vendor who might have seen him pass by a dozen times, but the look of a man who had found what he was seeking.

Entreri broke into a charge just as he heard the click of a crossbow releasing from somewhere to the side—and he heard the bolt hum through the air right behind him. He drew his dagger back out as he went, but again kept the blade carefully tipped so that it did not allow the silver chain to slide off as he pulled the statuette free of the pouch.

The young couple next to the cart threw off their peasant cloaks and spun around, weapons at the ready, but Entreri charged through with a quick back-and-forth slash of his sword that had them both falling aside in opposite directions.

A leap brought Entreri to the edge of the cart. A second spring brought him past the «vendor» and the younger man, sailing through the entryway to the alley. Up snapped Entreri's dagger arm as he crossed just under a trellis beam that joined the buildings. He set his dagger into the wooden beam, the dragon statuette bouncing beneath it. He hit the ground in more of a dive than a run, for he understood how little time he had, how close came the pursuit.

And those pursuers, he knew, wouldn't utter the password, wouldn't properly identify the dragon.

He was still rolling and scrambling—anything to move down the alleyway—when the trap went off right behind him and he felt a blast of frost that chilled him to the bone and left a red burn on his trailing ankle. He tried to stand, but his leg had gone numb, and he quickly found himself face down on the cobblestones. He thrashed and rolled, sword slashing across, for he was certain that another of the killers would be fast upon him.

Pie in hand, Jarlaxle leaned casually on Piter's counter and watched the couple, a man and his petite and pretty lover, come through the door. They looked into each other's eyes, giggling all the while.

Jarlaxle knew a put-on when he saw one.

"Ah, young love!" he cried dramatically. "Good Piter, I will gladly pay for their sweets."

The two looked at Jarlaxle, expressions correctly confused. He tossed the pie to the man, but up high. When the man went to catch it, the movement lifted up the hem of his waistcoat, revealing a pair of well-worn dagger handles.

The second pie Jarlaxle threw came in harder, and was not meant to be caught—except by the man's surprised expression.

"What?" the woman yelled as the pie splattered across her lover's face, and he gave a yell, as well, but one of pain.

"Jarlaxle, what are you about?" Piter demanded.

"I am killed!" the surprised man cried. He slapped at his face, sending cream flying and eventually revealing a small dart that had been concealed within the pie, protruding from his cheek. He reached for it, hands trembling, but he couldn't quite seem to grasp it.

Beside him, the young girl screamed and cried.

Jarlaxle had his arms bent, hands by his shoulders, ready to thrust them down and call forth a pair of blades from the magical bracers set on his wrists. He could summon daggers with a thought, then elongate the magical weapons into long swords with a snap of his arms.

But he didn't, because at least the girl's reaction was all wrong. The man, predictably, slumped down to the floor, his eyes rolling back into his skull, froth spilling from his slack jaw.

"Jarlaxle!" Piter cried, scrambling out beside his investor. "What have you done? Oh, Clairelle! Oh, Mischa!"

Jarlaxle cleared his throat as Piter wobbled his way to help Clairelle support the limp form of her lover.

"You know them?" the drow asked.

A troubled Piter looked back at him. "This is Maringay's daughter and her husband-to-be! They live right next to you. They are to be wed in the spring, and I am… I was to bake… oh, what have you done?"

"I have put him to sleep, and nothing more," Jarlaxle explained as he moved past the trio to the door. "Keep them inside, for there are killers about."

Clairelle slapped at him, then grabbed his pant leg as he moved past.

"It was for his own good," the embarrassed drow lied. "Your gallant lover would wish to play the role of hero, no doubt, and now is not the time. Lock your door, Piter, and keep all inside. On pain of death, do not go out!"

Jarlaxle tugged his leg away, spent the time to tip his hat at the distressed young lady, then quickly took his leave. He burst onto the street, suddenly doubting all that he had seen and inferred.

But he heard the tumult a bit farther down, across from his apartment. A man staggered out of the alleyway, white—frosted—from head to toe and walking awkwardly, stiffly. He crashed into the fruit cart, and the jolt sent a pile of apples spilling onto the street.

Apples frozen so solid that some of them shattered like glass when they hit the cobblestones.

"Entreri," the drow whispered.

He slipped a ring onto his finger and clenched his fist, releasing its magic. Up he jumped, a dozen feet and more, to land lightly on the roof of Piter's shop, where he fast melted from sight.

Entreri staggered down to the end of the alley, which was blocked by a wall and fronted by a pile of broken crates and some old wooden furniture. He had thought to use the pile to go over the wall and sprint out across the street parallel to his own, but his legs were barely working, one of them shifting from complete numbness to a pervasive, burning pain. He looked back to see the phony vendor and his «son» lying very still on the ground, covered in frost. A third killer, one of the pair who had feigned shopping at the cart, leaned up against the alley wall, seeming frozen in place, eyes open and unseeing, eyelashes white with ice. His companion staggered back out in the street behind him then tripped over the partially frozen fruit cart and tumbled hard to the cobblestones where he lay shivering and helpless, likely dying.

But more were coming, Entreri realized as a pair of forms darted left to right across his field of vision, on the other side of the street.

Entreri knew that he was in trouble. He used the pile of debris to pull himself up, and he tried to walk, but his numb foot flopped forward and he tripped over his own toes. He kept his balance, though, and did not fall down. Instead he used the stumble to propel himself back behind some of the crates, turning as he went.

A dark form slipped in around the left-hand corner of the alley exit, hugging the wall and using it for support as he inched down across the icy surface. A second killer came in a bit faster, and skidded across the ice. When his feet hit dry ground, he jolted forward several steps.

Had his legs been capable, Entreri would have leaped out to intercept, laying the overbalanced fool low before he ever came out of that bent-over stumble.

But his legs were not capable, and and he could hardly stand, let alone move to attack.

The man regained his balance and straightened to face the assassin, a gleaming long sword in one hand, a small buckler strapped to his other arm. He stayed out of reach and remained in a defensive crouch, glancing back repeatedly at his slowly approaching companion.

"Hurry it on, then," he whispered harshly. "We got the rat cornered."

"The rat that spews like a dragon of white," the other replied.

"Yes, come and freeze," Entreri bluffed.

He angled himself so that he did not appear as if he was leaning quite so heavily on the wall, but in truth, had it not been for that solid barrier behind him, Entreri would have toppled over. He brought his impressive sword out in front of him, waving the red blade tantalizingly.

The nearer man straightened a bit and took a step away.

"It was a trap set in the alley, and nothing he's got to play again," the man closer to Entreri deduced, calling the assassin's bluff.

"As you wish," Entreri said with an evil little chuckle, and he waved the blade in invitation.

He held his sigh of relief when the man backed another half a step, for he felt the tell-tale tingling in his legs to indicate that the feeling was beginning to return, that his blood flowed once more. It took all of his training to hold back his grimace in the next few moments, but he knew that he couldn't let on how weak he still was.

If they attacked boldly, he was dead.

"Knellict sent you, of course," Entreri said. "He promised me that he would utilize me as a trainer, though he may decide, after the six of you lie dead, that I take my task far too seriously."

The two men exchanged nervous looks. More importantly to Entreri, they held their ground and did not advance.

But then one of them, the second who had come in, straightened and relaxed, and began to laugh a bit. "He thinks there's but six of us," he said, and he slapped his friend on the shoulder, and that fool, too, began to giggle stupidly.

Entreri got the meaning, and he lamented that he would die in such a way—struck from above, no doubt, and without any means to defend himself from that quarter.

Despite his speed, despite his stealth, despite the uneven grades and facings of the various rooftops, Jarlaxle kept his bearings. He knew exactly where he was at all times, and when he saw the two men standing overlooking one alleyway, one hunched over and with crossbow in hand, aiming down, he could well imagine the target.

The drow's hand came up fast and steady from under his cloak, holding a favored weapon of his race, a hand crossbow. He let fly and watched with satisfaction as the archer twitched from the sting of the tiny bolt. The other man looked at the archer in surprise, but the crossbowman couldn't answer, for he was already swaying from the sleep poison, leaning forward, sure to tumble.

The other man grabbed at him.

Jarlaxle reached into himself, summoning forth his innate dark elven magic in the form of a globe of absolute darkness that covered both would-be killers.

Jarlaxle heard the shuffling, the grunt, and the shout. He was quite pleased, but hardly surprised when he saw the movement over the lip of the ledge, just below his stationary globe, as the archer pitched forward, taking his grabbing companion with him.

"Entreri, what have you done?" Jarlaxle whispered.

The drow faded into the shadows of the jumble of jagged, multi-pitched rooftops, looking for a way to get a safe view of the alley below.

Entreri reacted on instinct when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He threw himself across to the opposite side of the narrow alleyway. He took care to stay on balance, though, for the pair of ruffians advanced. Apparently emboldened by the arrival of their reinforcement, they charged.

Entreri started forward, sword leading, in a sudden rush. The newcomers crashed down beside him. He pulled up short, though, for his attack was no more than a feint, an attempt to buy time so that he could take care of the newest threat. Had he been a lesser fighter, a desperate charge would have been the only course, an attempt to burst through the pair and run off.

But Entreri wasn't about to flee any fight.

He nearly fell over when he stopped so abruptly, though, for the feeling had not yet fully returned to one leg. Still, he covered the stumble, falling against the wall of the alley, and bouncing back to center balance.

He spun around, and nearly froze in confusion when he noted the tangle of the two newcomers, who had crashed through some of the debris. One lay perfectly still and limp and the other squirmed in pain, grabbing at his wrist, ankle, and knee alternately, having done serious damage to all three. Entreri understood a moment later, when he glanced up from where they had come, to see a globe of enchanted blackness hovering in the air.

Jarlaxle.

With the other pair coming on fast, Entreri leaped at the reinforcements and stabbed hard, driving Charon's Claw right through the top, unconscious man and into the fellow below him. The first made no sound, as though he was already dead, but the bottom man screamed and thrashed.

Entreri had no time to finish him off. He yanked Charon's Claw free, a gush of blood following its retraction, and spun around. His blade crossed just in time to bat aside a thrusting sword then force the other man's dagger arm up and out. The assassin pressed his advantage, shuffling ahead and stabbing repeatedly, not in any real hope of scoring a hit on his skilled opponents, but more to drive them back and give him some room to maneuver—and to react in case the man on the bottom of the pile had any fight left in him.

He turned his back foot perpendicular to both enemies and to his front foot. He brought it forward and tapped his heel, then planted and stepped ahead. Then again and again, quick-stepping in perfect balance and driving the two killers back. He still couldn't feel one foot, but his every plant was solid and certain, and bolstered by the coordination of foot against foot, using the leg he could feel to guide the leg he couldn't.

Finally, and just before they hit the still-slick area where the white dragon's breath had struck, the pair managed to coordinate a counter stance. They moved wider apart, each turning slightly to better their angles of attack.

Entreri recognized that his momentum had played out. He fell back in a defensive crouch, legs wide and balanced, though one remained a bit stiff and more immobile than he let on.

"Ah, but he killed Wyrt!" cried the knave on the right, the one with the sword.

"Shut your mouth, fool!" his companion snapped at him.

"You'll meet him again, and soon," Entreri promised. He wasn't fond of speaking to his opponents in battle, but he had to buy time. His leg tingled and burned, and it was all he could do to hide his winces.

The man with the dagger lunged, and Entreri slapped Charon's Claw out to intercept. The man was fast, though, and he retracted his arm inside the reach of the sword, and came ahead with a cunning second strike.

He didn't understand.

For even on one leg, even distracted by the pain and the numbness and off balance, Entreri easily brought his blade back in—indeed, it moved to such a position even as his opponent began to pull the dagger back.

And Entreri knew that feint wasn't all of it.

To the side came the other man, sword thrusting, but Charon's Claw slashed across smoothly, slapping the blade and driving him back.

Entreri brought all his weight over his numb left leg. He had to trust it, and he locked it in place, pivoting his right leg back with the coming of the anticipated second dagger thrust.

The knife came in short, its tip just brushing his backing hip.

To the attacker's credit, the man recognized his miss quickly enough to leap backward from any coming counter.

That, too, Entreri anticipated, and instead of pursuing, he brought Charon's Claw back across the other again. Calling forth the magic of the sword, he hung a line of opaque ash in the air to shield himself from the swordsman's sight.

He knew the man would instinctively straighten before he managed to shuffle his feet back. In that instant, Entreri dropped to one knee and slashed his sword across under the wall of ash.

The assassin felt the impact, then the tug of ligament and bone resisting the cruel cut, and the swordsman howled in agony.

Entreri came up in a complete spin, around left to right, that left him squared up to the man with the dagger. A crash to the side told him that the swordsman had fallen back hard, and was out of the fight for a little while at least.

Entreri instinctively brought his sword across to block, and sure enough, the dagger flew at him, clanging harmlessly off of Charon's Claw's blood-red—and bloody—blade.

The killer drew another dagger.

Entreri grinned.

The man turned and ran, howling for mercy with every step. He only got a couple of strides before he hit the ice and went sprawling to the ground. Crying, screaming, and scrambling, he continued away as if expecting the killing blow to fall at any moment. He finally got back to dry ground, and went flailing down the street.

Entreri just stood there, amused.

A sharp cry from behind, followed by a gurgle, had him turning around. There stood Jarlaxle, wiping the blood from a dagger, having finished off the bottom man.

The drow looked at Entreri for a long while, silently asking him what it was all about. Entreri just returned the stare, offering nothing. Finally, Jarlaxle looked away, just a bit.

"Oh lovely," the dark elf said.

Entreri followed the drow's gaze to the side, where the ash wall began to drift apart. There, right where the man had been standing, remained both of his feet, severed at the ankles. The rest was back from there, slumped against the wall, bloody hands in the air, trembling. He didn't even try to stem the flow any longer.

Jarlaxle walked up to him and looked him over. "You are bleeding to death," he calmly explained. "It will be slow, but no more painful than that which you experience now. You will get cold, however, and do not panic when the world goes dark before your eyes."

The man whimpered, shaking his head, hands up, pleading.

"Perhaps if you are willing to divulge…" Jarlaxle started, and the man wagged his head furiously—or started to, until Entreri stepped up beside his friend and plunged Charon's Claw into the fool's heart.

Entreri pulled the sword free, glanced at Jarlaxle only briefly, and offered nothing more as he started out of the alleyway to retrieve his dagger and the dragon statuette.

"You seek no answers because you know them already, I must presume," Jarlaxle said.

Entreri kept walking, and fortunately, the feeling in his leg had returned enough for him to manage his balance across the slick surface of the frozen alleyway.

CHAPTER 8 TO SLEEP WITH DRAGONS

Bwahaha, ye just keep the drink flowing," Athrogate howled. He hoisted his foamy mug and gulped it down in one swallow—at least the contents of it that didn't pour all over his braided black beard. He dropped the mug back on the table and drew his sleeve across his beard, taking only a bit of the foam from the frothy mess.

Jarlaxle started to slide the next mug of ale across the table. "I know they were Knellict's men," he said, holding the ale just out of Athrogate's reach. "Else, he has a rival band operating right in Heliogabalus."

"Goblin snot. Any rival band'd be lying dead in a day's time," the dwarf blustered, and gave an exaggerated wink.

Jarlaxle slid the ale the rest of the way, and the mug never even stopped in its slide before it went up into the air and overturned into the dwarf's mouth.

"Bwahaha!" Athrogate howled as he slammed it back down, gave an enormous belch, and slapped his arm across his mouth yet again. As he moved to retract his arm, he noted that the cuff of his sleeve was sopping wet, so he put it in his mouth and sucked the ale out of the fabric.

Jarlaxle shook his head, looked at the lines of empty mugs covering more than half the large tavern table, and nodded to the serving girl who watched him from the bar. He'd known he'd have to get Athrogate drunk to get his tongue wagging, of course, but he hadn't quite realized how expensive a proposition that might be.

"Shall I order more?" he asked, and the dwarf howled at the absurdity of the question.

Jarlaxle chuckled and held up his open hand, indicating five more of the large mugs, then saluted the nodding serving girl with a tip of his wine glass—the only drink he had imbibed while Athrogate had gone through a dozen ales.

"So it was Knellict, and the target was Artemis Entreri," Jarlaxle remarked.

"Never said it was Knellict," Athrogate corrected, and he belched again.

"A rival within the Citadel of Assassins?"

"Never said it weren't Knellict," Athrogate added with an even louder burp.

The waitress began placing the full mugs on the table then, so Jarlaxle paused and offered a disarming smile. She cleared her tray and began scooping some of the empties, and the drow dropped a pair of shiny gold coins on the platter beside them, drawing a wide smile from her.

"Then say," he said to the dwarf as soon as the girl had gone. The drow kept his hand tight on a mug, holding it hostage.

"Entreri got himself a job to kill a merchant," Athrogate said, then he paused to stare at the mug. After a moment, Jarlaxle slid the ale over, and Athrogate wasted no time studying it.

"Knellict believes that Entreri kept the spoils from that job?" Jarlaxle reasoned. "He would have no reason. We are still fat on the bounties collected in Vaasa, and as a knight of the order, coin is hardly Artemis Entreri's concern."

"Bwahaha, knight of the order!" the dwarf howled.

"Apprentice knight, then."

"Bwahaha!"

"He would have no incentive to keep the booty from the slain merchant," Jarlaxle said.

"Weren't no slain merchant, so I'm hearing," Athrogate replied. He motioned to another mug. Jarlaxle slid one to his waiting grasp, but he didn't flip it right up to his mouth. "Not until Knellict caught up to the merchant, at least. Seems yer friend got his identities all crossed."

"He killed the wrong merchant?"

"He killed a couple o' Knellict's men, sent to watch his work." Athrogate finished by emptying the mug then offering a resounding belch.

Jarlaxle sat back, letting it all digest. What have you done, Artemis? he thought, but did not ask aloud. Certainly his companion, as professional and fine an assassin as had ever walked the streets of Heliogabalus or any other city, could not have made such a grievous error as that.

So it was no error on Entreri's part. It was a statement. Of what? Independence? Stupidity?

"Tell me, Athrogate," Jarlaxle quietly and calmly asked, "is the bounty offered for Entreri enough to entice those morningstars from your back?"

"Bwahaha!" howled the dwarf.

"Is that why you have returned to Heliogabalus, instead of taking the road to Vaasa?"

"Winter's coming, ye dolt. Got no thoughts o' riding out Vaasan blizzards. Work through the summer, drink through the winter—now there's a formula for dwarven success."

"But if some easy work is to be found in Heliogabalus…" Jarlaxle teased. "An unexpected windfall, perhaps."

"For yer Entreri? Bwahaha! Would hardly cover the drink ye bought me here and now."

Jarlaxle slid another mug across as he furrowed his brow in confusion. "Knellict underestimates—"

"He wouldn't give yer friend the respect of a decent bounty," the dwarf explained. "He's knowin' that many'd take up the hunt for Entreri, on the gain to their reputation alone. To kill a hero knight? Now there's a feather to rival that thing you keep in yer stupid hat!"

"For an upstart, perhaps," the drow reasoned.

"Or as an insult. Whatever."

"But when Knellict realizes his error, and runs out of upstarts, he will reconsider the remuneration."

"I'd be agreeing, or not, if I knew what in a pig's nose ye was talking about," said Athrogate. "Remuner-what?"

"The payment," Jarlaxle explained. "When all those who try for Entreri are slain, Knellict will recognize the truth of this enemy and will offer a larger reward."

"Or he'll kill yer friend himself—course, I still ain't telling ye it's Knellict at all, now am I?"

"No, of course not."

Athrogate howled, belched, and downed another mugful.

"And if the reward goes higher, might Athrogate be tempted to try?"

"Meself don't ever try, black skin. I do or I don't."

"And would you 'do'? If the price were right?"

"No more or less than yerself'd do it."

Jarlaxle started to reply, and sharply, but he recognized that he couldn't honestly disagree with the proposition, though of course the reward would have to be exceedingly high.

"I like yer friend," Athrogate admitted. "Nine Hells, I like ye both."

"But you like gold more."

Athrogate lifted the next mug up high before him in salute. "I'm liking what coin buys me. Got meself one life for living. Could be over next tenday, or in three hunnerd years. Either case, I'm thinking the more time I'm spending drunk and fat, the better a life I'm living. And don't ye never doubt me, black skin, the better life I'm living is th'only thing what's really mattering."

It was a philosophy that Jarlaxle found hard to contradict. He motioned to the waitress again, indicating that she should keep the drink coming, then he fished out some more gold coins and dropped them on the table.

"I like you as well, good dwarf," he said as he rose from his seat. "And so I tell you in all seriousness, whatever bounty Knellict—yes, yes, if it is Knellict," he added, seeing Athrogate about to interject. "Whatever bounty you find on Artemis Entreri's head, it is not enough to make the attempt worth your while."

"Bwahaha!"

"Simply consider all the years of drinking you will forfeit. Let that be your guide." Jarlaxle winked, gave a slight bow and walked away, passing by the serving girl who was coming over with another full tray. He gave her a little pat on the buttocks as he passed, and she offered a promising smile in return.

Yes, he could understand why Athrogate would shy from Vaasa when the weather turned cold. Certainly he, too, would like to weather the winter in the more hospitable city.

Unless, of course, Artemis Entreri had worn through that hospitality.

Jarlaxle exited the tavern. The rain had ended, the heavy clouds blown away by a cold northern wind to reveal the faint first stars of evening above. So quickly had the chill come through that the puddles left over from the day's rain steamed into the night air, rising in ghostly wisps. Jarlaxle spent a while looking both ways along the boulevard, examining those wisps and wondering if killers lurked behind their gray veils.

"What have you done, Artemis?" he asked quietly, then he bundled his cloak around his neck and started off for home. He reversed direction almost immediately, though, having no patience for the events swirling around him.

By the time he got to Wall's Around, twilight had fallen across the city. A bank of clouds hanging along the western horizon defeated the last, meager rays of the sun, ushering in an earlier and deeper darkness. Thus, several of the mercantiles had candles burning, for though it was dark, it was not yet time for them to close their doors.

So it was for Ilnezhara's Gold Coins, where a single, multi-armed candelabra danced in the large window. All around it, crystals sparkled in the uneven light.

The little bell set upon the door sang out when Jarlaxle entered. The place was nearly empty, with only one middle-aged woman and a young couple walking the length of the showcases, and a single figure behind the counter across the way.

Jarlaxle took pleasure in the blanch of the middle-aged woman when she finally noticed him. Even more delicious, the younger woman slid a step to the side, bringing her much closer to her male companion. She clutched the man's arm so urgently that she roused him from his shopping.

The man's jaw drooped, stiffened suddenly, and he puffed his chest out. He gave a quick glance around, and led his companion toward the exit, moving past Jarlaxle, who politely tipped his hat.

The young woman gave a little yelp at that, and being on the side closest the drow, she shrank even nearer to her protector.

"I do so enjoy the taste of human flesh," Jarlaxle whispered as they passed, and the woman gave another little yelp and her brave friend moved even more furiously to the door.

Jarlaxle didn't even bother to glance back at them as they departed. The sharp ring of the bell was enough to amuse him.

And to draw the attention of the other two in the shop. The middle-aged woman he did not know stared at him—a bit fearful, perhaps, but seemingly more intrigued than frightened.

Jarlaxle bowed to her and when he came up, he worked his fingers through a simple parlor trick and produced a single flower, a late summer purple alveedum, a rare and striking Bloodstone spectacle.

He held it out to the woman, but she did not take it. She slid past him instead, staring at him every step of the way.

Jarlaxle's fingers worked fast and the flower disappeared. He offered the woman a shrug.

She just kept staring, and her eyes roamed up and down, sizing him from head to toe.

Jarlaxle moved to a nearby case and pretended to inspect several pieces of golden jewelry. He did not glance the woman's way, nor toward the proprietor behind the counter, but he covertly kept careful track of both of them. Finally, he heard the bell on the door tinkle, and he glanced that way to lock a final stare with the obviously intrigued woman. She betrayed her thoughts with a wry smile as she exited the store.

"The wife of Yenthiele Sarmagon, the Chief Gaoler of Heliogabalus and a close personal friend of Baron Dimian Ree," Ilnezhara remarked as soon as the door closed behind the departing woman. "Take care if you bed that one."

"She seemed quite boring to me," Jarlaxle replied, never looking up from the necklace he rolled through his fingers, reveling in the weight of the precious metal.

"Most humans are," Ilnezhara said. "I suspect it is their state of always being close to death. They are confined by fears of what may come next, and so they cannot step outside of their caution."

"But of course, by that reasoning, a drow is a much better lover."

"And a dragon better still," Ilnezhara was quick to respond, and Jarlaxle didn't dare question that statement. He offered a grin and a tip of his hat.

"But even the companionship of a dragon cannot sate the appetite of Jarlaxle, it would seem," Ilnezhara went on.

Jarlaxle considered her words, and the somewhat sour look that had come over her fair features. She crossed her arms in front of her—a most unusual gesture from this one, he thought.

"You do not think me content?" the drow asked, a bit too innocently, he knew.

"I believe that you stir."

"My contentment, or lack thereof, is compartmentalized," Jarlaxle explained, thinking that it might be wise to assuage the dragon's ego. "In many ways, I am indeed content—quite happy, in fact. In other ways, less so."

"You live for excitement," Ilnezhara replied. "You are not content, never content, when the road is smooth and straight."

Jarlaxle mulled that over for a few moments, then grinned even wider. "And you would live out the rest of your life in the bliss of buying trinkets and reselling them for profit," came his sarcastic reply.

"Who says I buy them?" Ilnezhara answered without hesitation.

Jarlaxle tipped his hat and offered a quick smile that did not hold, for he would not release the dragon from the bite of his sarcasm so readily as that.

"Are you content, Ilnezhara?"

"I have found a life worth living, yes."

"But only because you measure it by the short lifespan of King Gareth and his friends, whom you fear. This is not your life, your existence, but merely a pause for position, a plateau from which Ilnezhara and Tazmikella can move along to their next pursuits."

"Or perhaps we dragons are not as anxious and agitated as drow," the dragon replied. "Might it be the little things—a drow lover this tenday, salvaging a destroyed merchant ship next—that suffice?"

"Should I be insulted?"

"Better that than consumed."

Jarlaxle paused again, trying to get a reading on his most curious of counterparts. He couldn't rightly tell where Ilnezhara's jokes ended and her threats began, and that was no place he wanted to be where a dragon was concerned.

"Perhaps it is the excitement I can provide extraneous to our… relationship, that so enthralls you," he offered somewhat hesitantly a moment later. He put on his best cavalier effect as he finished the thought, striking a pose that evoked the mischievous nature of a troublemaking young boy.

But Ilnezhara did not smile. Her jaw tightened and her eyes stared straight ahead, boring through him.

"So serious," he observed.

"The storm approaches."

Jarlaxle put on an innocent expression and posture, standing with his arms out wide.

"You survived the trials of the castle of the Witch-King," Ilnezhara explained. "And it is not in Jarlaxle's nature to merely survive. Nay, you seek to prosper from every experience, as you did with Herminicle's tower."

"I escaped with my life—barely."

"With your life and…?"

"If we are both to speak in riddles, then neither will find an answer, milady."

"You believe that you have found advantage in the constructs of Zhengyi," the dragon stated. "You have discovered magic, and allies perhaps, and now you seek to parlay those into personal gain."

Jarlaxle started to shake his head, but Ilnezhara would not be so easily dismissed.

"To elevate your position within the current structure of Damara—to be named as apprentice knight of the order, then to climb to full knighthood—is one thing. To elevate your position without, to aspire to climb a ladder of your own making, in a kingdom where Gareth reigns the fields and farms and Timoshenko haunts the alleyways and shadows, is to invite disaster on no small scale."

"Unless my allies are more powerful than my potential enemies," Jarlaxle said.

"They are not," the dragon replied without pause. "You reveal a basic misunderstanding of those you seek to climb beside, or above. It is not a misunderstanding shared by myself or my sister, at any level, be assured. I met with Zhengyi in the days before the storm, as did my sister. His name is reviled throughout the land, of course, but there was a brief period when he was highly regarded, or absent that, when he was powerful enough to destroy any who openly defied him. He came to us not with threats, but with powerful temptation."

"He offered you immortality," Jarlaxle said. "Dracolichdom."

"Urshula the Black was not alone in Zhengyi's designs," the dragon confirmed. "A hundred dracoliches will rise in turn because of the legacy of the Witch-King. A month from now, perhaps, or a hundred years or a thousand years. They are out there, their spirits patient in phylacteries set within tomes of creation, immortal."

"And of Ilnezhara?"

"I chose my course, as did Tazmikella, and at a time when it seemed as if Zhengyi could not be stopped."

She paused there, staring hard, and Jarlaxle silently recited the next logical thought: if Zhengyi could not tempt the dragon sisters back in the day when he seemed to be the supreme and unchallenged power in the Bloodstone Lands, how might Jarlaxle hope to tempt them now?

"My sister and I expect that your services will not be required through the quiet winter months," Ilnezhara said. "Nor those of Entreri. If you wish to journey out of Heliogabalus, mayhaps to rest from your recent trials in the softer climate of the Moonsea, then go with our blessing."

A knowing smile widened on Jarlaxle's face.

"If a situation arises where your particular skills might be of value, and you two are still about Heliogabalus, we will seek you out," the dragon went on, in a tone that made it clear to the drow that she had no intention of doing any such thing. He was being dismissed.

More than that, Ilnezhara and Tazmikella were running from him, distancing themselves.

"Take care, Ilnezhara," Jarlaxle dared to warn. "Artemis Entreri and I uncovered much in the northland."

Ilnezhara narrowed her eyes, and for a moment, Jarlaxle feared that she would revert to her true dragon form and assault him. That threatening stare flashed away, though, and she calmly replied, "Enough to garner attention, of course."

That gave Jarlaxle pause.

"Whose attention?" he asked. "Your own?"

"You had that before you went north, of course."

Jarlaxle let that digest for a moment. She was torn, he could see, and there remained in her a wistfulness toward him. She had dismissed him—almost.

"Ah, perhaps we will travel south," he said. "Weaned in the Underdark, I have little tolerance for winter's cold bite."

"That may be wise."

"I expect that I, and particularly Artemis, would do well to report our departure to King Gareth," the drow reasoned. "Though the journey north to Bloodstone Village is not one I care to take. Already the wind blows cold up there. Still, as I see this as our responsibility, I should send word, and it is not a message I wish to entrust to a city guardsman."

"No, of course not," the dragon agreed, in an almost mocking tone that conveyed to the drow that she was catching on to his little game.

"Perhaps if any of Gareth's friends are in town…." the drow mused aloud.

Ilnezhara hesitated, locking stares with him. She smiled, frowned, then slowly nodded, making it clear to him that that favor was the last he should expect, her expression reminding him of, and confirming, the earlier dismissal.

"I have heard that Grandmaster Kane has been seen about Heliogabalus," she said.

"A remarkable character of unique disposition, I would gather."

"A vagabond in weathered and dirty robes," Ilnezhara corrected. "And the most dangerous man in all of the Bloodstone Lands."

"Artemis Entreri is in the Bloodstone Lands."

"The most dangerous man in all of the Bloodstone Lands," the dragon reiterated, and with a surety that Jarlaxle did not lightly dismiss.

"Grandmaster Kane, then," he said. "He will deliver my message, I am certain."

"He does not fail King Gareth," Ilnezhara agreed, and warned: "Ever."

Jarlaxle sat there nodding for a few minutes. "Perhaps he will be interested in some information regarding Gareth's dead niece, as well." The dark elf rose and offered a disarming smile to the dragon. He tried very hard to appear appreciative of the information she had just shared, and tried even harder to keep his supreme disappointment hidden.

He turned to go, but stopped in his tracks when the dragon said from behind him, "You weave webs that entrap. It is the way of your existence, from your earliest days in Menzoberranzan, no doubt. You play intrigue with characters like Knellict and Timoshenko, and it is a game in which you excel. But hear me well, Jarlaxle. King Gareth and his friends ride hard and straight, and bother not with the meandering strands of webs. Your weave will never be strong enough to slow the charge of Kane."

Out in the street, Jarlaxle quickly regained the spring in his step. He had gone to Ilnezhara hoping to enlist both her and her sister in his plans. Certainly he had to adjust his thinking and his immediate aspirations regarding Vaasa. Absent the dragons, his position was severely compromised—and even more so when he considered the mischief Artemis Entreri had apparently begun.

Caution told him he might do well to go to ground, perhaps even to take that holiday Ilnezhara had offhandedly advised—step away and reassess his opportunities against the seemingly mounting obstacles.

Never did Jarlaxle laugh louder than when he was laughing at himself.

"Caution," he said, letting the word roll off his tongue so that it seemed as if it was ten syllables instead of two. Then he offered the same treatment to a word he considered synonymous: "Boredom."

Every sensible bone in Jarlaxle's body screamed out at him to heed the advice of Ilnezhara, to remove himself from the web of intrigue that grew ever more intricate in the Bloodstone Lands. Truly, Jarlaxle realized that the current tide was pushing against him, that shadows gathered at every corner. A wise man might cut his losses—or winnings, even—and run for safer ground. For such «wise» men, Jarlaxle reasoned, though they didn't know it, death was irrelevant, redundant.

The tide swelled dangerously, to be sure. When facing a losing combination in sava, the wise player sacrificed a piece or surrendered.

But Jarlaxle, above them all, moved boldly in a way that seemed incongruous, even foolish. He bluffed harder.

" 'Let a roll of chance's dice alter the board, " he recited, an old drow saying that exalted in chaos. When dangerous reality closed in, so went Lolth's edict, the goal was simply to alter the reality.

His heels clicked loudly on the cobblestones—as he willed his enchanted boots to do—as he made his way down the cul-de-sac, with one name rolling through his thoughts: Grandmaster Kane.

Jarlaxle slept with dragons.

"Hang from the ceiling by yer toes, do ye?" Athrogate harrumphed. "Ye're bats!"

"They should not know?" the drow replied innocently.

"They shouldn't be knowing how Athrogate's knowing!"

"You believe that Spysong knew nothing of Canthan and his dwarf friend who accompanied him to the castle?"

Athrogate pursed his lips and seemed to shrink down in his seat. He alleviated his mounting fear with a mug of ale, dropped straight to the belly.

"Are you so naive regarding your enemies?" Jarlaxle pressed.

"They ain't me enemies. Ain't done nothing against the crown, nor anyone else who didn't make me do it."

Jarlaxle smiled at the familiar words, spoken with Dwarvish flair but so similar to the claims of Entreri.

"The reckoning is coming fast," the drow warned. "Gareth's niece Ellery is dead."

"I'm still wondering how that might've happened."

"The details will matter not to Gareth's friends."

"Could say the same o' Knellict's friends if I'm doing what ye're asking me to be doing."

"The opposite, I would venture," said Jarlaxle. "The complicity of Ellery will mitigate the blow to Knellict. You will be doing him a favor."

Athrogate snorted, and a bit of ale spurted from his hairy nose.

"My little friend, you have thrived by remaining outside the web woven by your spidery friends."

"What in the Nine Hells are ye babbling about?"

"You are part of them, but removed from them," Jarlaxle explained. "You serve the Citadel of Assassins, but you do not plot with them. There is nothing in your past for which you will answer at the Court of King Gareth, else you would have been called to answer long ago."

"Would I, now?"

"Yes. You walk the edge of a coin, as do I, and now heads and tails are ready for a fight. How tight will our edge become when the blows begin to fall? Too narrow to tread, I expect, and if we must fall to one side or the other, which shall it be?"

"If ye're thinking Knellict's the tail, then yer friend's already jumped to the head," the dwarf reminded.

"This is not about Artemis Entreri," the drow replied. "It is about Jarlaxle, and Athrogate." He slid another mug Athrogate's way, and as per usual it never even stopped sliding before being scooped up and overturned into the dwarf's mouth.

Jarlaxle went on, "There is an old saying in my home, Menzoberranzan. Pey ne nil ne-ne uraili."

"And here I'm thinking that ye looked funny. Next to the way ye talk…"

" 'In truth, the bonds are shed, " the drow translated. "You feel the chains of worry now, my friend. Shed them."

"He won't be likin' the truth."

"But he is wise enough to lay blameless the messenger."

Athrogate took a deep breath then swallowed another ale. He slammed his hands on the edge of the table and pulled himself to his feet. "He's payin'," he said to the serving wench who turned his way, and he pointed to Jarlaxle.

"Pey ne nil ne-ne uraili," Jarlaxle whispered as Athrogate embarked on his mission to find Kane. His translation of the drow saying had been exact, if incomplete, for the bonds referenced were not the chains of worry, but the limiting boundaries of the flesh.

Announce yer arrival, Athrogate silently and repeatedly reminded himself. Surprising a grandmaster monk probably wasn't a wise choice. He placed the rickety wooden ladder before the wall of the inn and banged it loudly in place against the eave of the roof.

"Ye buy a room in the inn," he grumbled as he started up. "That's why they're callin' it an inn. Ye don't rent a bed on the durned inn. Ain't called an out!

Every bootfall rang more loudly than the previous as the dwarf clumped his way up to peer over the edge.

A dozen feet from the lip, his back against the stone chimney, sat the monk. His legs were folded under him, his hands on thighs, palms upright. He sat with perfect posture and balance, and seemed more a fixture of the building, like the chimney, than a living creature.

Athrogate paused, expecting a response, but when the limit of his patience slipped past with no word or movement from the monk, the dwarf hauled himself up again, rolling his upper body awkwardly onto the slightly-sloping roof. He belched as his belly—grown more ample in just the few days he had been in Heliogabalus—wedged against the soffet.

"Are ye sleeping, then?" he asked as he pulled himself up to his hands and knees. One of the bouncing heads of his twin morningstars swung in and bashed him off the side of his face, but he just blew out the side of his mouth as if to push it aside. "I'm thinking a friend o' King Gareth'd have himself a better bed. King ain't paying ye much these days?"

Kane opened one eye to regard the dwarf.

"And I'm surprised that ye got no guards," Athrogate dared to say. The dwarf managed to stand up, and when he did, he realized that the slate shingles all around him were loose—no, not just loose, but were a false set of extra shingles set upon the real ones!

"Oh, by Clangeddin's fartin' arse," he managed to say as his feet slid out from under him, dropping him hard to his belly then off the roof entirely. He crashed into the debris-filled alleyway all entangled with his ladder, arms and legs flailing helplessly, morningstar heads bouncing and slapping around him.

He sprang to his feet and hopped about, eyes darting to every shadow. If anybody had witnessed that humiliation, Athrogate would have to kill him, of course.

When he was satisfied that his unceremonious fall had gone unnoticed, he slapped his hands on his hips and looked back up at the roof.

"Durned monk," he muttered as he collected his morningstars, set them back in place across his back, and untangled the ladder. A couple of the steps had been knocked out, but it would still suffice, he decided, so he propped it back in place and began his careful climb, again taking care to announce his arrival.

When he came up to the edge of the roof, he reached out and tested the remaining slate.

"It is safe now, dwarf," Kane said. He remained in the same position, eyes still closed.

"Clever trap," Athrogate remarked, and he came up slowly, inch by inch, feeling every bit of ground before settling his weight onto it. "Couldn't ye just hire a few guards and leave the traps for stinky thieves?"

"I need no guards."

"Ye're up here all alone—and why ain't ye in a room?"

"I am in the grandest room in all the universe."

"Lookin' like the rains're coming. Think ye'll be singing that then?"

"I did not invite you here, dwarf," Kane replied. "I do not welcome company. If you have purpose, then speak it. Or be gone."

Athrogate narrowed his eyes and crossed his burly arms over his chest.

"Ye know who I be?" he asked.

"Athrogate," the monk replied.

"Ye know the things I done?"

No answer.

"Ain't none killed more at the wall," Athrogate declared.

"None who bothered to count, at least," came the quiet—and infuriating—reply.

"I went to the castle north o' Palishchuk!" the dwarf declared.

"And that is the only reason I allow you to bother me now," said Kane. "If you have come to speak with me of that adventure, then pray wag. If not, then pray leave."

Athrogate deflated just a bit. "Well, good enough then," he said. "Weren't for that trip, then I'd be having no business with ye anyway."

"None that you would wish," Kane calmly and confidently replied, and the dwarf shrank just a bit more.

"I come to talk about Ellery."

Kane opened his eyes and turned his head, suddenly seeming very interested. "You saw her fall?"

"Nope," the dwarf admitted. "I saw Canthan fall, though. Fell at me feet, killed to death by Artemis Entreri."

Kane didn't blink. "You accuse him?"

"Nope," the dwarf clarified. "Was a fight Canthan started. Stupid wizard was tryin' to kill them half-orcs." The dwarf paused and collected his thoughts. "Ye got to know that Canthan weren't one to follow the lead o' King Gareth."

"He had ulterior motives in traveling to the castle?"

"Don't know what an 'ulterior' might be, but he was looking out for Canthan, and for his masters—and ain't none o' them sitting by your king, for the sake o' yer king." He ended with an exaggerated wink, but Kane didn't blink and Athrogate issued a frustrated sigh.

"He was part o' the Citadel of Assassins," the dwarf explained.

"That much was suspected."

"And known," said Athrogate, "by yer own Commander Ellery. And she knowed it well before she picked him to go along to the north."

"Are you saying that Canthan killed Ellery?"

"Nah, ye dolt—" Athrogate bit the word back as it escaped his flapping lips, but again, Kane showed no reaction. "Nah, none o' that. I'm saying that Ellery, yer king's blood kin, picked Canthan to go because she was told to pick him to go. Ye might be thinking her a paladin o' yer order, but ye'd be thinking wrong."

"You are claiming that Ellery had connections with the Citadel of Assassins?"

"I'm adding two fingers and three fingers and making a fist to whack ye upside the head. If yerself can't count, that'd be yer own problem."

"Spysong counts more proficiently than you can imagine, good dwarf. The strands of the citadel entwine many, it would seem, to varying degrees."

The level of threat in that statement was not lost on Athrogate, a sobering reminder of who he was dealing with, and of his own complicity—at least in the eyes of King Gareth's court.

"Well, I was just thinking ye should know," he said then backed to the ladder and eased one foot onto the top step. He didn't turn as he climbed down, though, preferring to keep his gaze squarely on Kane.

The monk didn't move, didn't stand, didn't react at all.

When he was back in the alley, walking briskly away, Athrogate puzzled over the wisdom of that meeting, and of betraying Knellict.

"Damned drow," he muttered, and suddenly every shadow seemed darker and more ominous. "Damned drink."

Those last words rang in his head, nettling his sensibilities.

"Think I'll go get me some," Athrogate added, compelled to offer a formal apology to his beloved ale.

CHAPTER 9 OUT THE GAUNTLET

Bah, ye're listenin' to the way I babble and ye're thinking I'm a stupid one, ain't ye, elf?"

"I?" Jarlaxle replied with mock innocence. He grabbed Athrogate's arm as the dwarf reached his hand into a pocket and produced some coin for the waiting serving girl.

Athrogate looked down at the drow's hand, tight around his wrist, then lifted his gaze to consider Jarlaxle eye-to-eye.

"Ye're asking me to go, ain't ye?"

"It is an offer of adventure."

Athrogate snorted. "Yer friend's tied Knellict's butt hairs in a knot and now yerself's flicking yer finger under the nose o' Kane hisself. Adventure, ye say? I'm thinking ye built yerself two walls o' iron, Jarlaxle, and now they're both to fall atop ye. Only question is, which'll flatten ye first?"

"Ah, but if they fall together, might they not impede each other's progress?" He held his hands up before him, fingers together and skyward, then dropped them in toward each other until the fingers tapped together, forming an inverted V. "There is room left between them, is there not?"

"Ye're bats."

Jarlaxle could only laugh at that observation, and really, when he thought about it, there wasn't much point in disagreeing.

"Ain't far enough in all the world to run from them," Athrogate said more solemnly, preempting the drow's forthcoming repeat of the offer. "So ye're to run from Heliogabalus, and a good choice that'll be—best ye got, anyway, though I'm not saying much in that!"

"Come with us."

"Ah, but ye're a stubborn one." The dwarf planted his hands on his hips, paused for just a moment, then shook his hairy head. "Can't be doing that."

Jarlaxle knew that he was beaten, and he couldn't rightly blame the pragmatic dwarf. "Well, then," he said, patting Athrogate's strong shoulder. "Take heart in my assurance that your tab here is paid the winter through." He turned to the tavernkeeper standing behind the bar and the man nodded, having obviously overheard. "Drink yourself into oblivion until the snows have receded and you return to the Vaasan Gate. Compliments of Jarlaxle. And visit baker Piter as you wish. Your coin will not be welcomed there, but your appetite surely will."

Athrogate pursed his lips and nodded his appreciation. Whether he wanted to get entangled with Jarlaxle or not, the dwarf wasn't about to turn down those offers!

"Eat well and drink well, good Athrogate, my friend," Jarlaxle finished, and he bowed.

Athrogate grabbed him hard by the arm before he could straighten, though, and pulled his ear close. "Don't ye be calling me that, ye durned elf. Least not when ears're perked our way."

Satisfied that they understood each other, Jarlaxle straightened, nodded in deference to the dwarf's demands, and left the tavern. He didn't look back because he didn't want Athrogate to see the sting of disappointment on his face.

He went out into the street and spent a moment surveying his surroundings. He tried to remain confident in his decisions even in the face of Athrogate's doubts. The dwarf knew the region well, of course, but Jarlaxle brushed it off as the dwarf underestimating him.

At least, he tried to tell himself that.

"You heard?" the drow asked the shadows, using the language of his Underdark home.

"Of course," came a reply in the same strange tongue.

"It is as I told you."

"As dangerous as I told you," the voice of Kimmuriel Oblodra replied.

"As promising as I told you."

No answer drifted to Jarlaxle's ears.

"One enemy is manageable," Jarlaxle whispered. "The other need not be our enemy."

"We shall see," was all Kimmuriel would offer.

"You are ready when the opportunity presents itself?"

"I am always ready, Jarlaxle. Is that not why you appointed me?"

Jarlaxle smiled and took comfort in those confident words. Kimmuriel was thinking ahead, of course. The brilliant psionicist had thrived on the treachery of Menzoberranzan, and so to him the games of humans were child's play. Entreri and Jarlaxle had become targets of the Citadel of Assassins and curiosities of Spysong. Those two groups would battle around the duo as much or more than they would battle with the duo. And that would present opportunities. The citadel was the less formidable, by far, and so it followed that they could be used to keep Spysong at bay.

Jarlaxle sensed that Kimmuriel was gone—preparing the battlefield, no doubt—so Jarlaxle made his way through Heliogabalus's streets. Lights burned on many corners, but they flickered in the wind and were dulled by the fog that had come up, so typical of that time of the year, where the temperature varied so greatly day to night. The drow pulled his cloak tighter and willed his magical boots to silence. Perhaps it was better that he blend in with his surroundings just then.

Perfectly silent, nearly invisible in his drow cloak, Jarlaxle had little trouble not only getting back to the stairs leading to his apartment in the unremarkable building, but he managed to do a circuit or three of the surrounding area, noting others who did not notice him.

A tip of the right side of his great hat lifted Jarlaxle's feet off the ground and he glided up the rickety, creaky staircase silently. He went inside, into the hallway, and moved up to his door in complete darkness.

Complete darkness for a surface dweller, but not for Jarlaxle. Still, he could barely make out the little dragon statuette trap set above the apartment door. He couldn't tell the color of its eyes, though.

He had told Entreri to keep it set at white, but was he to trust that?

Not wanting to bring up any light to alert the many suspicious characters he had noted outside, the drow reached into his hat and pulled forth from under its top a disk of black felt. A couple of roundabout swings elongated it enough and Jarlaxle tossed it against the wall beside the door.

It stuck, and its magic created a hole in the wall, revealing dim candlelight from within.

Jarlaxle stepped through to see Entreri standing in the shadows of the corner, at an angle that allowed him to peer out through the narrow slot between the dark shade and the window's wooden edge.

Entreri acknowledged him with a nod, but never took his eyes off the street outside.

"We have visitors gathering," the assassin whispered.

"More than you know," Jarlaxle replied. He reached up and pulled his disk through, eliminating the hole and leaving the wall as it had been before.

"Are you going to berate me again for angering Knellict? Are you going to ask me again what I have done?"

"Some of our visitors are Knellict's men, no doubt."

"Some?"

"Spysong has taken an interest," Jarlaxle explained.

"Spysong? King Gareth's group?"

"I suspect they've deduced that the fights with the gargoyles and the dracolich were not the only battles at the castle. After all, of the four who fell, two were to the same blade."

"So again, I am to blame?"

Jarlaxle laughed. "Hardly. If there is even blame to be had, by Gareth's reckoning."

Entreri moved closer to the window, slipped the tip of his dagger under the edge of the shade and dared to retract it just a bit to widen the viewing space.

"I do not like this," the assassin said. "They know we're in here, and could strike—"

"Then let us not be in here," Jarlaxle interrupted.

Entreri let the shade slip back into place and stepped to the side of the window, eyeing his friend. "To the dragons?" he asked.

Jarlaxle shook his head. "They will have nothing to do with this. Gareth's friends unnerve them, I think."

"Wonderful."

"Bah, they are only dragons."

Entreri crinkled his face at that, but wasn't about to ask for clarification. "Where, then?"

"Nowhere in the city will be safe. Indeed, I expect that we will find strong tendrils of both our enemies throughout all of Damara."

Entreri's face grew tight. He knew, obviously, what the drow had in mind.

"There is a castle where we might find welcome," Jarlaxle confirmed.

"Welcome? Or refuge?"

"One man's prison is another man's home."

"Another drow's home," Entreri corrected, eliciting a burst of laughter from Jarlaxle.

"Lead on," the assassin bade his black-skinned companion a moment later, when a sound from outside reminded them that it might not be the time for philosophical rambling.

Jarlaxle turned for the door. "White as we agreed?" he asked.

"Yes."

The drow opened the door then paused and glanced back. Holding the door wide, he stepped aside and motioned for Entreri to go first into the hallway.

Entreri walked by, over the threshold. "Blue," he said, and reached up to retrieve the dragon statuette.

Jarlaxle laughed all the louder.

"It's Gareth's boys, I tell ya," Bosun Bruiseberry said to his companion. An incredibly thin and wiry little rat, Bosun seemed to move through the tightest of alleyways and partitions as easily as if they were broad avenues—which of course only frustrated his hunting partner, Remilar the Bold, a young wizard whose regard for himself greatly exceeded that of his peers and masters at the citadel of Assassins.

"So Spysong, too, has taken an interest in this Artemis Entreri creature," Remilar replied. He bit the words off short, nearly tripping as his rich blue robes caught on the jagged edge of a loose board on the side of Entreri's apartment building.

"Or an interest in us," Bosun said. "Seems that group across the street're watching Burgey's boys in the back alley off to the left."

"Competing interests," Remilar answered in a disinterested drawl. "Very well then, let us be quick about our task, and about our departure. I did not interrupt my all-important research to leave without that bounty."

"This one's dangerous, by all accounts, and his drow friend's worse."

Remilar gave a disgusted sigh and brushed past his cautious companion. He moved to the end of the alley, the front corner of the building, and glanced out at the street beyond.

Bosun moved up very close behind, even put a hand on Remilar's back, which made the mage straighten and offer another heavy and disgusted sigh.

"Quickly, then," he said to the young assassin.

"I can slip in and get behind the rat Entreri," Bosun offered. "Yerself'll distract them and me blades'll do the dirty task. I'll be taking his ear for proof."

If Remilar was impressed, his expression certainly didn't show it. "We've no time for your legendary stealth," he replied, and had Bosun been a brighter chap, he'd have caught the sarcastic tone in the adjective. "You are the decoy in this one. Right in through the front door you go. Draw him out—or them, if the drow is at home—and show him your blades. You need keep his thoughts and actions occupied for but a few seconds and I will lay him low with a blast of lightning and a burst of missiles to still his twitching. Be sharp and fast with your blade to retrieve the trophy—his head, if you will—and with a snap of my fingers, we will depart this place, teleporting back to the hills outside the citadel."

Bosun wore a stupid look as he digested all of that. He began to question the plan, but Remilar grabbed him by the front of the tunic and pulled him past, out into the street.

"You wish to do battle with Spysong, or to lose Entreri to other bounty-claimers?" the wizard asked.

A yell went up from a nearby building, and the pair knew they were out of time for their planning. Bosun stumbled to the door and reached up for the handle.

But the door exploded before his surprised face, torn from its hinges as out charged Entreri astride a tall, gaunt black stallion that snorted ebon smoke and wore cuffs of orange fire around its thundering hooves. The mount, a hellish nightmare, apparently didn't distinguish between barriers, for it treated the frozen-with-surprise Bosun in the exact same manner as it had the door.

Down he went under a sudden and vicious barrage of hooves. He hit the ground and squirmed, and good fortune turned him inside the thundering back hooves as the nightmare charged over him. That good fortune didn't hold, however, as the second nightmare exited the building, the dark elf astride. Poor Bosun lifted his head just enough to get it clipped, and to get his scalp torn away, by the fiery hooves of the second mount.

To the side, still in the shadows of the alley, Remilar the More-Smart-Than-Bold improvised, casting the third of his planned spells first.

Her hands trembled as she opened the small chest, for it was the first time she had dared to lift that cover since returning from Palishchuk. She had kept herself busy during her short stopover before going to Bloodstone Village for the ceremony, and mostly so that she could avoid that very thing. The task, necessary and painful, was something that Calihye could hardly bear.

Inside the small chest were trinkets and a necklace, and a rolled-up parchment with a sketch done by one of the merchants of a caravan that had spent some time on the Fugue. The artist had done a sketch of Calihye and Parissus, arm-in-arm. She looked at it and felt tears welling behind her blue eyes. The likeness was strong enough to elicit memories of her dear Parissus.

Calihye ran the fingers of one hand gently over the image. The pose was so natural for the pair, so typical. The taller Parissus stood firm, with Calihye's head resting on her shoulder. Calihye lifted a scarf with her free hand and brought it to her face. She closed her eyes, the image in the sketch firmly rooted in her thoughts, and breathed deeply, taking in the scent of her lost companion.

Her shoulders bobbed with sobs, tears wetted the scarf.

A few moments later, Calihye sorted herself out with a deep and steadying breath. Her lips grew very tight as she put both scarf and sketch off to the side. More trinkets came out: some jewelry, a pair of medals given to the duo by one of the former undercommanders at the Vaasan Gate, a necklace of varied gemstones. The woman paused then pulled forth a fake beard and a cap of brown leather, a disguise that Parissus had often worn when she and Calihye had gone out tavern-hopping. Parissus impersonated a man quite well, Calihye thought, and she heard in her mind the husky voice her friend could assume at will. How they had played with the sensibilities of folks across the Bloodstone Lands and beyond!

The woman finally arrived at the item she had gone there to retrieve: a small crystal vial filled with blood: Calihye's and Parissus's, mixed and mingled, a reminder of their shared pledge.

"In life and beyond," she recited quietly. She looked at her dagger, which she had placed on a small table to the side, and continued as if addressing it, "Not yet."

Calihye produced a small silver chain from her pouch, an item she had purchased in Bloodstone Village upon her departure. She held the vial up before her eyes, turning it slowly so that she could see the tiny golden eyelet set in the back. With the fingers of an accomplished thief, Calihye threaded the chain through the eyelet then brought it up and set the unusual necklace around her delicate elf's neck.

She lifted her hand to cover the crystal vial then touched the scarf to her face once more and inhaled the scent of Parissus.

She did not cry again and when she removed the scarf, her face was devoid emotion.

Remilar nearly lost his train of thought, and his spell, when he noted Bosun crawling his way, blood streaming down his forehead. The garishly wounded man reached out a trembling hand Remilar's way, his look plaintive, confused, dazed.

In the midst of the spell, and unwilling to let it go, Remilar nodded furiously at the man, bidding him to hurry.

Somehow Bosun found a burst of energy, scrambling along, but he wouldn't get there in time, Remilar knew.

Across the street, agents of the Citadel of Assassins came out of the shadows to give chase and fire arrows and spells at the retreating duo. But to Remilar's horror, others came out of the shadows as well, and it only took the mage a moment to understand the identity of the second force.

Spysong!

Had the Citadel of Assassins been baited with Entreri and Jarlaxle? Had Entreri's treachery been nothing more than a ruse to lure the network into Spysong's deadly sights?

Remilar shook the thoughts from his head, and realized that he had lost his spell, as well. He motioned more vigorously to the crawling Bosun and began casting again.

Bosun got there in time, falling at Remilar's feet and hooking his arms around the mage's ankles. Remilar even reached down and grabbed the man's shoulder as his spell released, transporting them across space to a rocky hillside in southern Vaasa, a score of miles east of the Vaasan Gate.

"Come along, then," Remilar said to his prone companion. "It's two hundred yards uphill to the citadel, and I'm not about to carry you." He reached down and tugged at the man, and shook his head when he looked into Bosun's eyes, for the man seemed hardly conscious of his surroundings.

And indeed, Bosun was not even there behind that vacant gaze. He was lost in a swirl of gray mists and flashing, sharp lights, the confusion of the psionicist's mind attack as Kimmuriel Oblodra possessed his corporeal body.

The nightmares pounded down the cobblestones, smoke and gouts of flame flying from their otherworldly hooves. Jarlaxle led Entreri around one tight corner—too tight! — and his coal black, hellish steed brushed a cart of fresh fish. Patrons ran every which way and the vendor threw his arms defensively over the open cart. The look upon the middle-aged man's bloodless, open-jawed, wide-eyed face was one Artemis Entreri would not forget for many tendays to come.

The market parted before the charging pair, people scrambling, tripping, calling out for one god or another, even crying in terror. Mothers grabbed their children and hugged them close, rocking and cooing as if Death himself had arrived on the street that day.

Jarlaxle seemed to be enjoying it all, Entreri noted. The drow even pulled off his hat at one point and waved it around, all the while expertly weaving his mount through the dodging crowds.

Entreri spurred his steed past the drow and took the lead, then led Jarlaxle down a sharp corner to a quieter street.

"The peasants are cover for our escape!" Jarlaxle protested.

Entreri didn't answer. He just put his head down and spurred his nightmare on faster. They crossed several blocks, turning often and fast, frightening every horse and every person who viewed their fiery-hoofed nightmares. Pursuit rang out behind them, from the back and the sides, but they were moving too quickly and too erratically, and they had left too much confusion back at the initial scene, for anyone to properly organize to cut them off.

"We've got to make it through the gate," Entreri said as Jarlaxle pulled up even with him on one wide and nearly deserted avenue.

"And then my own," Jarlaxle replied.

Entreri glanced at him curiously, not understanding. He hadn't the time to contemplate it then, however, for as they came around the next corner, leaning hard and turning harder, they came in sight of Heliogabalus's northern gate. It was open, as always, but more than a few guards were already turning their way.

The reactions of those guards, sudden frantic running and screaming, led both riders to guess that the massive portcullis would soon lower, and the heavy iron gates would begin their swing.

Jarlaxle put his head down and kicked hard at the nightmare's sides, and the coal black horse accelerated, its hooves crackling sparks off the cobblestones. Rather than pace his friend, Entreri fell into line behind him, and similarly spurred on his mount. Jarlaxle waved his arms, and a globe of darkness appeared on the sheltered parapet above the open gates. The drow's arm went out to the side and Entreri saw that Jarlaxle held a thin wand.

"Wonderful," the assassin muttered, expecting that his reckless friend would set off a fireball or some other destructive magic that would bring a retaliatory hail of arrows down upon them.

Jarlaxle leveled the wand and spoke a command word. A glob of green goo burst forth from the item's tip and leaped out ahead of the riders, soaring toward a man who worked a crank at the side of the gate. Jarlaxle adjusted his sights and launched a second glob at the gates themselves, then spurred his nightmare on even faster.

The man working the crank fell back and cried out, pulling free the crank's setting pin as he went. The crank began to spin, and the portcullis started to drop.

But the magical glob slapped hard against the mechanism, filling the gears with the sticky substance. The spin became a crawl and the crank creaked to a halt, leaving the portcullis only slightly closed, with enough room for the ducking riders to get through.

The second glob struck its target as well, slapping into place at the hinge of the right-hand gate, filling the wedge and holding back the guards who tried to pull the gates closed. One of them turned for the glob, but then all of them cried out and scrambled aside as the riders and their hellish steeds bore down upon them.

Jarlaxle was far from finished, and Entreri was reminded quite clearly why he still followed that unusual dark elf. The wand went away and the drow switched the reins to his right hand. He brought his left hand out with a snap, and a golden hoop bracelet appeared from beneath the cuff on the sleeve of his fine shirt. That hoop went right over his palm, and he grabbed it and brought it in before his face.

An arrow arced out at the pair, follow by a second.

Jarlaxle blew through the hoop, and its magic magnified his puff a thousand-thousand times over, creating a barrier of wind before him that sent the arrows flying harmlessly wide.

"Stay right on my tail!" the drow shouted to Entreri, and to Entreri's horror, Jarlaxle summoned a second globe of darkness in the clearing between the narrowly opened gates.

Jarlaxle put his head down, and three powerful strides brought him under the creaking portcullis, straining against the strength of the goo. He plunged into the darkness, and Entreri, teeth gritted in abject horror, rushed in behind.

Then it was light again, or relatively so, as the normal night was as compared to Jarlaxle's summoned globes, and the pair galloped off down the road north of Heliogabalus. A couple of arrows reached for them from behind—one even managed to clip Entreri's horse—but the nightmares were not slowed, carrying their riders far, far away.

Some time later, the city lost in the foggy night behind them, Jarlaxle pulled up short and clip-clopped his nightmare off the road.

"We've no time for your games," Entreri chastised him.

"You would ride straight to the Vaasan Gate?"

"To anywhere that is not here."

"And Knellict, or one of Gareth's wizards, or perhaps both, will enact a spell and land before us, as happened on the road south of Palishchuk upon our return from the castle."

The drow dismounted, and as soon as he hit the ground he dismissed his nightmare then reached down and picked up the obsidian statuette and placed it safely in his pouch.

Entreri sat astride his horse, making no move to follow suit.

Seemingly unperturbed, Jarlaxle drew another wand out of a loop inside his cloak, one of several wands set in a line there. He held it up before him and offered a questioning look at his companion. "Are you meaning to join me?"

Entreri looked around at the drizzly, dark night, then sighed and dropped from his saddle. He spoke the command, reducing his nightmare to a tiny statuette, then scooped it up and shuffled toward the drow.

Jarlaxle held out his free hand and Entreri took it, and a moment later, colorful swirls began to fill the air around the pair. Streaks of yellow and shocks of blinding blue flashed all around, followed by a sudden and disorienting distortion of visual perception, as if all the light, stars and moon, began to warp and bend.

A sudden blackness fell over the pair, a thump of nothingness as profound as the moment of death itself.

Gradually, Entreri reoriented himself to his new surroundings, the nook where a great, man-made wall joined a natural wall of towering mountain stone. They had arrived at the westernmost edge of the Vaasan Gate, he realized as he got his bearings and noticed the tent city set upon the plain known as the Fugue.

"Why didn't you do that from the beginning?" the flustered assassin asked.

"It would not have been as dramatic."

Entreri started to respond, but bit it back, recognizing the pragmatism behind Jarlaxle's decision. Had the drow used his magic wand to whisk them out of the city, the remnants of the spell would have been recognized by their enemies, who might have quickly surmised the destination. Riding out of town so visibly, they might have bought themselves at least a little time.

"We should ride out to the north with all speed," Jarlaxle informed him.

"To hide in the castle?"

"You forget the powers of Zhengyi's construct. We won't be hiding, I assure you."

"You sound as if you've already put things in motion," Entreri remarked, and he knew, of course, that that was indeed the case. "I need some time here."

"Will you bring the half-elf along?" Jarlaxle asked, catching Entreri off his guard. "She might lack the common sense of Athrogate, after all, and out of misplaced loyalty to you decide that she should join us."

"And you think that would be foolish? Does that mean that you're not as confident as you pretend?"

Jarlaxle laughed at him. "She is not implicated in any of this. Not by Knellict and not by Gareth, whatever either side might know of your relationship with her. We would do well to put her at arms' length for a short time. Once we are established in the northland, Calihye can ride in openly. Until that time, she might prove more valuable to us, and will certainly remain safer, if there is distance between you two. Of course, I am presuming that you can suffer the pain in your loins…."

Entreri narrowed his eyes and tightened his jaw, and Jarlaxle merely chuckled again.

"As you will," the drow said with a great flourish, and he walked off along the wall.

Entreri remained there in the shadows for a short time, considering his options. He knew where he would find Calihye, and soon enough, he decided on what he would say to her.

Her fingers trembled as she traced the delicate outline of Parissus's face in the precious portrait. Calihye closed her eyes and could feel again the smoothness of Parissus's cheeks, the softness of her skin above the hard and strong tension of her muscles.

She would never replace that feel, Calihye knew, and moistness came into her blue eyes once more.

She sniffed it away, dropped the portrait, and spun when her door opened. Artemis Entreri stepped into the room.

"I knocked," the man explained. "I did not mean to surprise you."

Calihye, so skilled and clear-thinking, forced herself up quickly and closed the ground to her lover. "I did not expect you," she said, hoping she hadn't too obviously exaggerated her excitement. She wrapped her arms around the man's neck and kissed him deeply.

Entreri was more than glad to reciprocate. "My plans have changed," he said after lingering about the woman's lips for a long while. "Again I find myself at the center of a storm named Jarlaxle."

"You were chased out of Heliogabalus?"

Entreri chuckled.

"By Knellict or Gareth?"

"Yes," Entreri replied, and he smiled widely and kissed Calihye again.

But the woman would have none of it. She pulled back to arms' length. "What will you do? Where will we go?"

"Not 'we, " Entreri corrected. "I will go out to the north, straightaway. To the castle north of Palishchuk."

Calihye shook her head, her face crinkling with confusion.

"It will all sort out," Entreri promised her. "And quickly."

"Then I will go with you."

Entreri was shaking his head before she ever finished the thought. "No," he replied. "I need you here. It may well be that you will serve as my eyes, but that is not possible if you are known to be an associate."

"We have been seen together," the woman reminded him.

"Such liaisons are not uncommon, not unexpected, and not indicative of anything more."

"Is that how you feel?" the woman asked, a hard edge coming to her voice.

Entreri grinned at her. "How I feel isn't the point, is it? It is how we are, or will easily be, perceived, and that is all that matters. We engaged in a brief and intense affair, but we parted ways in Bloodstone Village and went on with our separate lives."

Calihye considered his words, considered all of it for a few moments, then shook her head. "Better that I come with you," she insisted, and she pulled away and turned for the rack that held her traveling gear.

"No," Entreri stated, his tone leaving no room for debate.

The woman was glad that her back was to him, else he would have seen her sudden scowl.

"It is not wise, and I'll not put you in such danger," Entreri explained. "Nor will I willingly relinquish the advantage I have with you as a secret ally."

"Advantage?" Calihye spat, turning to face him. "Is that the goal of your life, then? To seek advantage? You would forego pleasure for the sake of tactical advantage that you likely will not even need?"

"When you put it that way," Entreri replied, "yes."

Calihye straightened as if she had been struck.

"I'll not allow either my loins or my heart to bring us both to disaster," the assassin told her. "The road before me is dark, but I believe it is a short one." His voice changed, growing husky and serious, but no longer harsh and grave. "I'll not lead you to your doom out of selfishness," he explained. "We will not be apart for long—perhaps no longer than we had originally intended."

"Or you will die out in the northland, without me."

"In that instance, I would be doubly grateful that I did not allow you beside me.

Calihye tried to understand her own feelings well enough to respond. Should she be angry with him? Should she be insulted? Should she thank him for thinking of her above his own desires?

She felt like she was wrapping herself into winding webs, where even her emotions had to execute a feint within a feint.

"I did not come here to argue with you," Entreri said, his voice growing steady once more.

"Then why did you come? To have me one last time before you ride out of my life?"

"A pity, but I haven't the time," he answered. "And I am not riding out of your life. This is temporary. I owed it to you to keep you abreast of my travels."

"You owe it to me to tell me that you'll likely die by someone else's hand?" Calihye asked, and in a moment of particular wickedness, she wondered how Entreri might appear if he recognized the double meaning in her words.

He didn't, obviously, for he began shaking his head and slowly approached.

Calihye noted his belt and the dagger set there on his hip.

But the door opened then and Jarlaxle poked his head into the room. "Ah, good, you remain upright," he said with an exaggerated wink.

"You said I had time," a frustrated Entreri growled at him, turning to face him.

"I fear I underestimated the cleverness of our enemies," the drow admitted. "Kiss the girl farewell and let us be gone. Some time ago would have been preferable."

Entreri turned back to Calihye. He didn't kiss her again, but merely took her hands in his own and shrugged. "Not long," he promised, and he followed the dark elf.

Calihye stood there for a long time after the door had closed behind the departing pair, her emotions swirling from confusion to fear to anger and back again. She looked back at the portrait of her lost friend, then, and wondered if Entreri too would be lost to her in the Vaasan wasteland.

She found no options, though. She could only clench her fists and jaw in helpless frustration.