Road of the Patriarch

The point of self reflection is, foremost, to clarify and to find honesty. Self reflection is the way to throw self lies out and face the truth—however painful it might be to admit that you were wrong. We seek consistency in ourselves, and so when we are faced with inconsistency, we struggle to deny.

Denial has no place in self-reflection, and so it is incumbent upon a person to admit his errors, to embrace them and to move along in a more positive direction.

We can fool ourselves for all sorts of reasons. Mostly for the sake of our ego, of course, but sometimes, I now understand, because we are afraid.

For sometimes we are afraid to hope, because hope breeds expectation, and expectation can lead to disappointment.

And so I ask myself again, without the protective wall—or at least, conscious of it and determined to climb over it—why do I feel kinship to this man, Artemis Entreri, who has betrayed almost everything that I have come to hold dear? Why do I think about him—ever? Why did I not kill him when I had the chance? What instinct halted the thrust of a scimitar?

I have often wondered, even recently and even as I ponder this new direction, if Artemis Entreri is who I might have been had I not escaped Menzoberranzan. Would my increasing anger have led me down the road he chose, that of passionless killer? It seems a logical thing to me that I might have lost myself in the demands of perfectionism, and would have found refuge in the banality of a life lived without passion. A lack of passion is perhaps a lack of introspection, and it is that very nature of self-evaluation that would have utterly destroyed my soul had I remained in the city of my birth.

It is only now, in these days when I have at last shed the weight of guilt that for so long burdened my shoulders, that I can say without hesitation that no, had I remained in Menzoberranzan, I would not have become the image of Artemis Entreri. More like Zaknafein, I expect, turning my anger outward instead of inward, wearing rage as armor and not garmenting my frame in the fears of what is in my heart. Zaknafein's was not an existence I desire, nor is it one in which I would have long survived, I am sure, but neither is it the way of Entreri.

So the worries are shed, and we, Entreri and I, are not akin in the ways that I had feared. And yet, I think of him still, and often. It is, I know now, because I suspect that we are indeed akin in some ways, and they are not my fears, but my hopes.

Reality is a curious thing. Truth is not as solid and universal as any of us would like it to be; selfishness guides perception, and perception invites justification. The physical image in the mirror, if not pleasing, can be altered by the mere brush of fingers through hair.

And so it is true that we can manipulate our own reality. We can persuade, even deceive. We can make others view us in dishonest ways. We can hide selfishness with charity, make a craving for acceptance into magnanimity, and amplify our smile to coerce a hesitant lover. The world is illusion, and often delusion, as victors write the histories and the children who die quietly under the stamp of a triumphant army never really existed. The robber baron becomes philanthropist in the final analysis, by bequeathing only that for which he had no more use. The king who sends young men and women to die becomes beneficent with the kiss of a baby. Every problem becomes a problem of perception to those who understand that reality, in reality, is what you make reality to be.

This is the way of the world, but it is not the only way. It is not the way of the truly goodly king, of Gareth Dragonsbane who rules in Damara, of Lady Alustriel of Silverymoon, or of Bruenor Battlehammer of Mithral Hall. Theirs is not a manner of masquerading reality to alter perception, but a determination to better reality, to follow a vision, and to trust their course is true, and it therefore follows, that perception of them will be just and kind.

For a more difficult alteration than the physical is the image that appears in the glass of introspection, the pureness or rot of the heart and the soul.

For many, sadly, this is not an issue, for the illusion of their lives becomes self-delusion, a masquerade that revels in the applause and sees in a pittance to charity a stain remover for the soul. How many conquerors, I wonder, who crushed out the lives of tens of thousands, could not hear those cries of inflicted despair beyond the applause of those who believed the wars would make the world a better place? How many thieves, I wonder, hear not the laments of victims and willingly blind themselves to the misery wrought of their violation under a blanket of their own suffered injustices?

When does theft become entitlement?

There are those who cannot see the stains on their souls. Some lack the capacity to look in the glass of introspection, perhaps, and others alter reality without and within.

It is, then, the outward misery of Artemis Entreri that has long offered me hope. He doesn't lack passion; he hides from it. He becomes an instrument, a weapon, because otherwise he must be human. He knows the glass all too well, I see clearly now, and he cannot talk himself around the obvious stain. His justifications for his actions ring hollow—to him most of all.

Only there, in that place, is the road of redemption, for any of us. Only in facing honestly that image in the glass can we change the reality of who we are. Only in seeing the scars and the stains and the rot can we begin to heal.

I think of Artemis Entreri because that is my hope for the man. It is a fleeting and distant hope to be sure, and perhaps in the end, it is nothing more than my own selfish need to believe that there is redemption and that there can be change. For Entreri? If so, then for anyone.

For Menzoberranzan?

— Drizzt Do'Urden

CHAPTER 18 PRAGMATIC IMMORALITY

The end of the assault was no less brutal than the beginning. The man, past middle age, gyrated fiercely and growled and grunted with primordial savagery, and even slapped the young woman across the face once in his climactic delirium.

Then it ended, like the snap of fingers, and the man pulled himself off the young girl and lowered his many-layered red, gold, and white robes as he calmly walked away with not a look back at the deflowered creature. For Principal Cleric Yozumian Dudui Yinochek, the Blessed Voice Proper of the Protector's House, the most powerful man in at least one entire ward of the port city of Memnon, had not the time to consider the rabble.

His pursuits were intellectual, his obstacles physical, and his «flock» often more an inconvenience than a source of strength.

He walked stiff-legged and swayed a bit as he crossed the cluttered room, his energy spent. He considered the carts and the crates, the canvas sacks and piled tools. Rarely did he or any of the clerics of Selûne, who controlled the all-important tides, go to that room for purposes other than that one. The place was dirty and smelled of brine; it was a chamber for the servants and not the blessed clerics. The place had only a single redeeming quality: a fairly secretive door heading out to the street, through which «visitors» could readily be smuggled.

That thought turned the principal cleric back to the young woman, barely more than a girl. She cried, but was apparently wise enough not to whine too loudly and insult his performance. She was in pain of course, but it would pass. Her confusion and inner tumult would be more damaging than the sting of a punctured hymen, Yinochek knew.

"You performed a valuable service to Selûne this night," he said to her. "Free of my earthly desires, I can better contemplate the mysteries of paradise, and as they are revealed to me, the road to redemption will be better shown to you and to your failing father. Here."

He lifted a loaf of stale bread he had set on a cart by the hall door when he had entered, and gave it a shake to dislodge a few of the crawling creatures, then tossed it to her. She caught it and clutched it tightly, desperately to her breast. That brought a condescending chuckle from Yinochek.

"You treasure it, of course," he said. "Because you do not understand that your greater reward will be the result of my contemplations. You are so rooted in the needs of the physical that you cannot begin to comprehend the divine."

With a derisive snort at the blank, tear-streaked expression that came back at him, Yinochek turned to the door and pulled it open, startling a handsome young cleric.

"Devout Gositek," he greeted.

"My apologies, Principal," Papan Gositek said, crossing his arms at his belt and bending stiffly in supplication. "I heard…"

"Yes, I am finished," Yinochek explained, glancing back and leading Gositek's gaze to the woman, who slowly rocked and clutched at the bread. The principal cleric turned back to the younger priest.

"Your treatise on the Promise of Ibrandul awaits me in my quarters," he said, and the young priest beamed. "I have been told that your insights are nothing short of brilliant, and from what I have perused, I am finding that the rumors are credible. So misunderstood is that god, whose domain is death itself."

Gositek's teeth showed, despite his strenuous attempt at humility.

"Your work proceeds?" Yinochek asked, and he knew he had caught the young man in a prideful gloat.

"Y-yes, yes, Principal," Gositek stammered, respectfully lowering his gaze.

Yinochek hid his amusement. Pride was considered a weakness of course, even a sin, but Yinochek understood the truth of the matter: absent pride, no young man would undertake the rigors of such contemplation. He shifted aside just a bit as Gositek began to lift his head, allowing the man a view of the shivering girl.

Gositek's eyes, and even a little lick of his lips, betrayed his lust.

"Take her," Yinochek offered. "She is pained, if you care, but your work is more important than her comfort. Release your earthly passions and find a state of contemplation. I am beyond curious to view your thesis regarding the godly propaganda ploys of the Fugue Plane. The thought of the gods themselves vying for the souls of the uncommitted dead fascinates me, and presents opportunities for us to recruit for the worship of Selûne."

Yinochek turned to the girl. "Your dead mother has not yet attained paradise," he said, and he didn't even try to hide his contemptuous snicker. "Devout Gositek here," he stepped aside so that she could better see the man, "prays for her. Your attention to his needs will allow him to better assure her ascent."

He turned back to Gositek and shrugged. "It will be better this way," he said, and walked out of the room.

The girl was all but forgotten by Yinochek by the time he arrived at his chamber on the temple's third and highest floor. He moved past his wooden desk—polished and rich in hue, unlike the gray and grainy driftwood that was most often used in the desert port. The wood had been imported, as was the case with most of the implements, furniture, and decorations of the fabulous temple, by far the largest and most grand structure in the southwestern quarter of the sprawling city.

Divine contemplations required inspirational surroundings.

Yinochek moved to the western door, the one that led to the private balcony, in the great temple known as the Protector's House. There resided the priests of Selûne, the Moon Goddess, and their sister faiths of Valkur and Shaundakul. The single encompassing structure was the center of prayer and contemplation, with a growing library that was fast becoming the envy of the Sword Coast. That library had expanded considerably—and ironically—only a few years earlier, soon after the Time of Troubles, when a cult of the death god Ibrandul had been discovered in the catacombs of that very building. Flushed from their secrecy, not all of those rogue priests had been killed. Under the daring and bold command of Yinochek, many had been assimilated. "Expand the knowledge," he had told his doubting lessers.

Of course, they had done it secretly.

The balcony was shielded from the ever-prying eyes of idiot peasants who continually gathered in the square below, begging indulgences or healing spells when they had not the coin to pay. His other balcony didn't have the angled high railing to prevent those spiritual beggars from viewing him. Yinochek could view the harbor in full, a round moon setting beyond the watery horizon, silhouetting the tall masts of the great trading ships moored off the coast as they swayed with the rhythmic, gentle waves. That natural harmony reminded the principal cleric of his lovemaking that night, creating in him a connectedness to the universe and lifting him to thoughts of eternity and oneness with Selûne. He sighed and basked in the moment. Physically sated of base and corrupting urges, he soared among the stars and the gods, and more than an hour passed, the moon disappearing from sight, before he turned his thoughts to Gositek's brilliant thesis.

He had found inner peace and so he could find Selûne.

He couldn't even remember what his shivering vessel had looked like that night, nor did he care to try.

CHAPTER 19 A SCENE UNCOMFORTABLY FAMILIAR

Lady Christine, Queen of Damara, sat on the white, iron-backed stool before the grand, platinum-decorated mirror of her vanity. Before her rested an assortment of beauty treatments, jars, and perfumes she had been given as gifts from all over the kingdom, and from Impiltur as well. Her appearance was important, the ladies-in-waiting continually reminded her, for with her stature and with her magnificent husband, she held the hopes and dreams of women across the Bloodstone Lands.

She was an illusion, built to sustain the facade necessary for effective leadership.

Though she had been raised as a noblewoman, Christine was not comfortable with such things. In her heart she was an adventurer, a fighter, a determined voice.

How thin her voice had seemed that day, when Artemis Entreri had been let go. She heard Gareth moving around the bedroom behind her, and saw him flitter across the image at the corner of her mirror. He was on edge, she knew, for her lack of conversation after the release of the assassin had told him clearly that she did not approve.

It was such a coy little game, she thought, the relationship called marriage. They both knew the issue at hand, but they would dance around it for hours, even days, rather than face the volatility head on.

At least, that was the usual way for most couples, but never had demurring been a staple of Lady Christine's emotional repertoire.

"If you would prefer a less opinionated queen, I'm sure one can be easily found," she said. She regretted the sarcasm as soon as the words had left her mouth, but at least she had started the dialogue.

She saw the image of Gareth behind her, and felt his strong and comforting hands come to rest upon her shoulders. She liked the touch of his fingers against her bare flesh, interrupted only by the thin straps of her nightgown.

"What a fool I would be if I desired to be rid of the closest friend and advisor I have ever known," he said, and he bent and kissed her on top of her head.

"I didn't suggest that you be rid of Master Kane," she replied, and she let Gareth see her smile in the mirror.

He joined in her laugh and gently squeezed her shoulders.

Christine turned in her seat and looked at him. "Yet you were quick to dismiss my advice throughout this ordeal with Artemis Entreri and that devilish drow."

Gareth's nodding sigh was one of both agreement and resignation.

"Why?" Christine asked. "What is it you know of them that the rest of us—other than Kane, it seems—do not?"

"I know little of either of them," Gareth admitted. "And I suspect that the world would be a better place with both of them removed from it. Certainly I find few redeeming qualities in the likes of Artemis Entreri or that confounding drow. But neither have I the right to pass such judgment. By all accounts they are innocent of any heinous actions."

"They committed treason to the throne."

"By claiming a land over which no man has rightful dominion?" Gareth asked.

"Yet you went to dethrone them, posthaste."

Gareth nodded again. "I would not let it stand. Vaasa will become a barony of Damara. Of that I am determined. And I am certain it will be done with the blessing and support of every city within our northern neighbor. Surely Palishchuk desires such a union."

"Then which is it? Treason? Or are you a conqueror?"

"A little of both, I suspect."

"And you believe the drow and his wild tale that this was all prearranged?" Christine did not hide her skepticism in the least. "That he planned for you to come so that you could be seen as a hero yet again to the folk of Palishchuk? He is an opportunist in the extreme, and only your quick action prevented him from securing his kingdom!"

"I do not doubt that," said Gareth. "Nor do I underestimate the threat from that one. For him to successfully infiltrate the Citadel of Assassins is no small feat, nor is retrieving the head of Archmage Knellict an action of one who should be easily dismissed. Spysong is watching them, and carefully, I assure you. They will be gone from the land within the tenday, as demanded."

"Or they will be killed?"

"Efficiently," Gareth promised. "Indeed, the dragon sisters have agreed to fly them far from our borders."

"Where they may wreak havoc somewhere else."

"Perhaps."

"And in that admission, do you believe that you serve Ilmater?"

"I often do not know," the man said. He turned away and paced back to the side of the bed.

Christine shifted her chair so that she could face him directly, and earnestly asked, "What is it, my love? What hold has this man upon you?"

Gareth stared at her and let a long moment pass silently, then said, "The experience with Artemis Entreri will make me a better king."

That proclamation made Lady Christine raise her eyebrows. "In that you are determined that you will not become akin to him?" she asked, and her inflection revealed doubt and confusion with every word.

"No, that is not the point," Gareth replied. "But in my private conversation with Artemis Entreri, he was correct in that neither blood nor a disconnected deed is the true measure of leadership. My actions now, and now alone, can justify this title I hold dear… and it is an empty title unless it is one that truly represents the hopes, dreams, and betterment of the people of the kingdom—of all the people of the kingdom."

"Artemis Entreri told you that?" Christine asked, not attempting to mask the doubt in her voice.

"I'm uncertain that he understood what he was asking," said Gareth. "But in essence, yes, that is exactly what he told—what he taught—to me. I rule Damara, and wish to bring Vaasa under my fold in the single Kingdom of Bloodstone. But that decision must be one that serves the betterment of the folk of Vaasa, else I am no more worthy to claim this title than—"

"Than Entreri, Jarlaxle, or Zhengyi?"

"Yes," said Gareth, and he nodded as he looked at her, his eyes set with determination, his lips showing that optimistic and hopeful grin that so endeared him to almost everyone who had ever looked upon him. Against that sincere expression, Lady Christine could not maintain her resentment.

"Then let the image of Artemis Entreri linger in your thoughts, my love, for the good of Damara and Vaasa," she said. "And let the man be far gone from here, his dark elf friend beside him."

"For the good of Damara and Vaasa," said Gareth. Christine went to her husband, the man she loved.

She barely felt the dagger tip connect with his skin before she retracted her arm and stabbed him again, and again. In a wild, crying frenzy, Calihye struck at the helpless man. She felt the warmth of blood under her thigh and pumped her arm even more furiously, her eyes closed, tears streaming down her cheeks and crying for Parissus all the while.

Her anger, her frustration, her sadness, her remorse, her explosion of desperation all played out, leaving her in a great physical weariness, and she looked down at the man who had been her lover.

He lay on his back, arms out wide and making no move to defend against her. He stared at her, his jaw clenched, his expression a mask of disappointment.

He didn't have a scratch on him. The blood on her thigh was her own, caused by a cut she had inflicted on one retraction of the blade.

"So predictable, these weak human creatures," Kimmuriel Oblodra remarked as he and Jarlaxle watched the spectacle playing out on Entreri's bed from an extra-dimensional pocket from which had opened a gate to the side of the room.

"She was so convincing," Jarlaxle said. "I never would have believed…"

"Then you have been around these fools too long," Kimmuriel said. "Are your judgments so impaired that I should not welcome you back to Bregan D'aerthe when you at last abandon this folly and return to Menzoberranzan?"

Jarlaxle glanced at the psionicist, a frozen look, a murderer's look, that reminded Kimmuriel in no uncertain terms who he was addressing.

But Jarlaxle didn't hold to the threatening stare, as he was drawn back to the spectacle on the bed. Calihye's expression had turned more to terror by that point, and she struck again, at Entreri's eye, as if she wanted so desperately to stop him from looking at her with his accusing gaze.

Entreri did flinch, but so remotely that Jarlaxle marveled at the sheer discipline of the man. He had ordered Kimmuriel to enact the psionic kinetic barrier, of course, for the psionicist had learned of Calihye's desperate plan. But Entreri could not have known that he was so protected, and yet he had not in any way tried to fend off the attacks.

Had Calihye coaxed him to a point of such vulnerability? Had her actions and soothing words so put Artemis Entreri off his guard?

Or did he simply not care?

"Fascinating," Jarlaxle whispered.

"It reminds you of your own birth, no doubt," said Kimmuriel, catching him off balance. He looked at his companion.

"No doubt," Jarlaxle replied, and since his companion had mentioned it, he could indeed picture a terrified and frustrated Matron Baenre plunging her spider-shaped dagger at his newborn breast. He imagined that her look must have been somewhat similar to Calihye's at that very moment, such a delicious mixture of a dozen conflicting emotions.

"You never did get the opportunity to thank my House's matron mother," Kimmuriel remarked.

"Oh, but I did," Jarlaxle assured him.

"When Baenre's Secondboy scooped you from the altar and all of the kinetic energy bound within your infant frame exploded into him and tore his chest apart," Kimmuriel agreed, recalling the stories of that distant time, tales that had been told and retold in House Oblodra over the centuries. "My grandmatron did have a way of removing her sworn enemies."

"Few could so fluster Matron Baenre as the matron mothers of House Oblodra," said Jarlaxle. "I am certain that Baenre keenly considered such insults as the power of Lolth flowed through her and offered her the power to tumble House Oblodra into the Clawrift."

Kimmuriel, ever so in control, did wince at that, and Jarlaxle smiled. For only a few short years before, Jarlaxle's mother had obliterated Kimmuriel's House in one devastating burst of power.

The two exchanged looks of mutual surrender, then turned their attention back to the room, where the stubborn and terrified Calihye lifted the dagger before her in both hands, clutched it tightly, and drove it at Entreri's heart yet again. He reached up and stopped her, and as she struggled to push through his powerful grasp, his other hand came up and slapped her hard. As he did that, he turned his hips and sent her tumbling off the far side of the bed.

"He knows what happened," Kimmuriel remarked. He led Jarlaxle's gaze behind them, to the brutish orc warrior patiently awaiting its orders.

"End the dweomer," Jarlaxle instructed, and he grabbed the orc's tether and pulled the creature behind him into the room. As Entreri jumped up from the bed to face them, Jarlaxle tugged the orc close and whispered, "Kill him," into its ear, then shoved it forward at Entreri.

The sight of a naked human, his right side red with blood from chest to hip, was all the encouragement the brutish beast needed. It charged Entreri and leaped for him.

With hardly an effort, only simple instinct, Entreri's hand came out hard to grasp the orc by the throat, and all of the energy that had been bound up kinetically within his frame, every one of Calihye's vicious strokes and stabs, flowed through that connection.

The orc's chest exploded with garish wounds; its left eye drove into its brain, blood spurting from the wound.

It spasmed and jerked, and tried to cry out in stunned horror.

But all it could do was gurgle on its own blood, and Entreri unceremoniously dropped the dead thing down to the ground.

He stood there on the edge of disaster, covered in blood, breathing deeply as if fighting for control.

Jarlaxle knew that the furious man wanted nothing more than to spring forward and strike at him, then. He also held faith that Artemis Entreri was too disciplined to do such a stupid thing.

Behind Entreri, Calihye rose and gasped at the sight of the dead orc and the two dark elves. Her arms went limp at her sides and the dagger fell to the floor.

"I am sorry," Jarlaxle said to Entreri.

The assassin didn't blink.

"It is not the way I wanted it to be," Jarlaxle said.

Entreri's look told him clearly that the man considered it none of Jarlaxle's business.

"I could not let her kill you, even if you seemed resigned to that fate," Jarlaxle explained.

Kimmuriel's fingers flashed disapproval in the air. You spend too much time justifying yourself to your inferiors, the psionicist scolded.

"And you spend too much time breathing," Entreri said to Kimmuriel, reminding the drow that he had learned to interpret that silent drow language during his stay in Menzoberranzan, even though his less delicate human fingers could not «speak» it well.

Jarlaxle put his hand on Kimmuriel's arm, a silent reminder to the psionicist that he did not have permission to kill Entreri.

Never blinking, never taking his awful stare off of Artemis Entreri, Kimmuriel obediently stepped back, prepared, Jarlaxle knew all too well, to cripple or even kill the human with a wave of psionic energy.

As Kimmuriel retreated, Calihye stumbled forward to Entreri's side. Her sobs genuine, she grabbed his arm and lowered her head to his shoulder in supplication, whispering that she was sorry over and over again.

"The poor thing has wound herself into an emotional collapse," Kimmuriel remarked.

"Shut up," said Entreri. He turned to Calihye and roughly pulled her back.

"It was Parissus," she blabbered. "And you were leaving. You can't leave… I can't let you… I'm sorry."

Entreri's responding expression was, perhaps, the most profound look of disappointment and dismay Jarlaxle Baenre had ever seen. Entreri let out a long sigh and seemed to relax, and apparently bolstered by that, taking confidence that the moment of crisis had passed, Calihye dared to look up and say, "You will never hurt me." She even managed to put a weak, hopeful smile on her face.

She was trying to be cute, to be coy, to be playful, Jarlaxle recognized, but he saw, too, that to Entreri, she appeared as nothing but mocking.

He ran his hand down her cheek softly, then changed in a blink, his expression going hard, his hand grabbing at her chin. Her eyes went wide and she clutched and clawed at his unyielding wrist with both hands.

He drove her before him with two powerful strides and with frightening strength shoved her backward. She crashed through the shutters, she smashed through the glass of the window, and she shrieked only once as she tumbled over the pane to fall a dozen feet to the street below.

Entreri turned back to Jarlaxle.

"You should have killed her," the drow said, and in a voice dripping with sympathy and regret. "She is dangerous."

"Shut up."

Jarlaxle sighed.

"And if you slay her, I promise you that you will join her in death," Entreri added.

Jarlaxle sighed again. But of course, he could only blame himself for using the flute to manipulate the assassin, for prying open the heart of Artemis Entreri, which for so long had been shielded from the agony of love.

The cold began to overtake her. Blood flowed from a hundred cuts and when she tried to extract herself from the planking and broken glass, Calihye found that her leg would not support her.

She was dying, she knew. Miserable and alone in the biting cold, naked and bleeding before the world. She held no hope, and didn't want to live, anyway. She had failed, in all ways.

She had fallen in love with the man who had killed her dear Parissus, and that discordant reality had broken her. When faced with the thought of leaving her home, or of saying farewell to Entreri, she had found the options untenable.

So she had made her own course, reverting to her fierce desire for revenge, using her despair at the loss of her dearest love Parissus as armor against the heartbreak Entreri was about to inflict upon her by leaving her.

And she had failed.

So she was dying, and she was glad of it. She crawled through the glass in search of a suitable shard, agony burning, cold wind biting. She found a sizable chunk, elongated like a dagger's blade, and with it clutched in hand, she crawled around the side of the inn, into the alleyway where she could die, free from the intrusion of any curious eyes.

She barely made it in, and fell back into a sitting position against the wall. Her breathing came in rasps, and she coughed up some blood. She realized she didn't even have to put the shard to her throat to end it all; the fall had done the work.

But death from her wounds would be too slow, and it hurt too much.

Calihye lifted the point of the shard to her throat. She thought of Entreri, of their lovemaking, but she brushed it away. She pictured Parissus instead, and imagined her waiting in death, arms wide to embrace her dear Calihye again.

Calihye closed her eyes and stabbed.

Or tried to, but a stronger hand clasped her wrist and held it steady. Calihye opened her eyes, and they went all the wider when she realized that a dark elf held her wrist, and that other drow were about, all leering at her. In that instant of terror, the fog and the pain abandoned her.

"We are not finished with you quite yet," she heard from the back of the group, and the dark elves parted to reveal one of the drow she had just seen in the room above, the one Entreri had spoken of before and had named as Kimmuriel.

"Perhaps in time we will allow you to take your life," Kimmuriel said to her. "Perhaps we will even do it for you, though I doubt you will enjoy our technique."

A pair of dark elves forced her to her feet and a twist of her wrist made her drop the glass shard.

"But then, perhaps you will enjoy the Underdark even less," said Kimmuriel. "Fail in your duties, and we will be happy to determine which is the worst fate for Lady Calihye."

"Duties?" the stunned woman managed to whisper.

The drow dragged her away.

CHAPTER 20 DREAMS AND MEMORIES

CHAPTER 21 NEVER THE SIMPLE COURSE

Entreri stood staring at the west, at a cluster of palm trees rising from the rolling dunes of sand. He nodded as he realized where they were, for he was quite familiar with the mountains south of their position. Not much of this region north of the divide was rolling white sand, though south of those mountains, closer to Calimport, the desert extended for miles and miles. The land was almost equally barren, but was more a matter of mesas and long-dead river valleys, but one stretch was the exception. They were along the trade route, and since the mountains stretched out, impassable, southeast of their position, Entreri realized that they were no more than a few days from Memnon. He looked back at the dragon sisters, who were preparing to depart, and offered Tazmikella, when she caught his glance, as close to an expression of gratitude as he'd ever offered anyone.

Off to the side of Entreri, Athrogate sat, spitting curses and pulling off his boots. "Rotten stuff," he said, pouring a generous amount of sand from one shoe. When they came in, Ilnezhara had skimmed low, and the rut the claw-riding Athrogate had cut in the coarse sand could be traced back many yards.

While the dwarf's discomfort pleased Entreri, he shifted his gaze to his other companion. Jarlaxle stood near the dragons with his back to Entreri, his hat far back on his head, completely obscuring the assassin's view of him. Something in the expressions of the two gigantic creatures clued him in that Jarlaxle had somehow caught them off guard. With a cursory glance at the complaining Athrogate, Entreri moved beside his long-time companion.

And saw a handsome elf, with golden skin and hair the color of the morning sun.

Entreri fell back a step.

"Although the hair suits you well, I prefer the drow image," Ilnezhara said. "Exotic, mysterious, enticing…"

"Dangerous," said her sister. "That is always the lure for you, dear sister, which is why we are farther into Dojomentikus's domain than I had desired. Come now, it is time for us to be gone."

"Dojo would not strike out at the both of us, sister," said Ilnezhara. She turned back to Entreri and Jarlaxle. "Such a petty beast, like most males. Imagine that just a few trinkets could invoke such wrath."

"A few trinkets and your refusal to breed with him."

"He bored me."

"Perhaps he should have donned a drow disguise," Tazmikella said, and Entreri realized that that should have been his line—except that he was hardly listening to the conversation, for he remained transfixed on Jarlaxle.

"You should close your mouth," Ilnezhara said, and it took Entreri a moment to understand that she had directed the comment at him. "The sand will blow in. It is most uncomfortable."

Entreri shot her a quick look, but turned back to his companion.

"Kimmuriel is often difficult in his dealings," Jarlaxle explained. "He conceded quite a bit, but demanded of me that I wear this mantle beyond the Bloodstone Lands, for all the rest of my days on the surface."

"Agatha's mask," Entreri realized, for he had once worn the magical item, many years before. With it, he had assumed the mien of Regis, the troublesome halfling, and had used the disguise to infiltrate Mithral Hall before the drow invasion. He shook that memory from his mind, for from that failed invasion had come his servitude in the city of drow, a place he did not like to think about.

"The same," Jarlaxle confirmed.

"I had thought it lost, or destroyed."

"Little gets lost that cannot be found, and no magic is ever truly destroyed for those who know how to put it back together." He smiled as he spoke, reached behind him, and brought forth a familiar gauntlet, the complimentary piece to Entreri's mighty sword.

"Kimmuriel managed to piece it back together; he is no fonder of magic-users than are you, my friend." He tossed the gauntlet to Entreri, who studied it for a moment, noting the red lines shot through the black material. He slipped it on his hand and clutched the hilt of Charon's Claw. The gauntlet minimized the magical connection. Kimmuriel, as always, had done well.

"Well now, I'd say that's better, but it'd be a lie," Athrogate said, walking up to join the group and taking a long look at the transformed Jarlaxle. "Any elf's but a girl making ready to cry. Bwahaha!" The dwarf waggled his bare toes in the hot sand as he laughed.

"And if you keep rhyming, you're going to die," Entreri said, and Athrogate laughed all the louder.

"No," Entreri said, his voice deadly even. Athrogate stopped and stared at the man and his undeniably grim tone. "There is no joke in my words," Entreri promised. "And the rhyme was coincidental."

Athrogate winced, but at the burn on the soles of his feet, not at the threat, and he hopped about. "Well, tell that one to quit inspiring me, then," he blustered, waving his arms at Jarlaxle. "Ye can't be expectin' me to behave when he's springin' such surprises on me!" He walked around Jarlaxle, inspecting him more closely, and even reached up with his stubby fingers and pinched the drow's cheek, then fiddled with the golden hair. "Bah, but that's a good one," he decided. "Good for getting into places ye don't belong. Ye got more o' that magic? Might be that if we find some orcs, ye can make me look like 'em so I can walk in before bashing?"

"That wouldn't take magic," said Entreri. "Just trim your beard."

Athrogate shot him a dangerous look. "Now ye're crossing a line, boy."

"I should have eaten him," said Ilnezhara.

"No, and all is quite well," said Jarlaxle. "Well met and well left, good ladies. I… we are most grateful for your assistance, and I speak truly when I say that I will miss your company. In all of my travels across the wide world, never before have I encountered such beauty and grace, such power and intelligence." He bowed low, his outrageous hat sweeping the desert sands.

"So you believe the tales that proclaim that dragons are weak for flattery?" said Ilnezhara, but her grin showed that she really was quite pleased with the drow's proclamation.

"I speak truly," Jarlaxle insisted. "In all things. You will find the Bloodstone Lands an interesting and profitable place upon your return, I believe."

"And we will see you again," said Tazmikella. "And I warn you, your disguises do not fool dragon eyes."

"But I cannot return, I fear," the drow replied.

"Dragons and drow live longer than humans, longer even than the memories of humans," said Ilnezhara. "Until we meet again, Jarlaxle."

As she finished, she leaped and turned, her great wings going wide and catching the rising heat of the desert sands. Her sister leaped after her, and though it only took one great beat of their tremendous wings to spirit them swiftly away, the downdraft of that action sent a storm of sand flying over the three companions.

"Durned wyrms!" Athrogate complained.

By the time the three got the sand out of their eyes and managed to look back, the sisters were no more than small spots in the distant east.

"Well, I won't be missing them two, but I'm not for walking on this ground," Athrogate muttered. He plopped back down on his butt and began pulling on his boots. "Too soft and unsure for me liking."

"I don't walk," Jarlaxle assured him. The drow-turned-elf reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a curious red figurine. He offered a wink at Entreri and tossed it to Athrogate.

The dwarf caught it and sat staring at the item: a small red boar. "Sculptor forget to put the skin on the damned thing?"

"It's an infernal boar," Jarlaxle explained. "A creature of the lower planes, fierce and untiring—a suitable mount for Athrogate."

"Suitable?" the dwarf asked, obviously perplexed. "Why, if I sat on it, I'd lose it up me bum! Bwahaha!"

"The figurine is a conduit," Jarlaxle explained, and he pulled out his own obsidian statuette and dropped it on the ground beside him. He called to the hellish nightmare, and in moments, the fiery steed pawed the soft ground beside him.

Athrogate gave him a crooked smile, then likewise dropped the red boar to the ground. "What do I call it?" he eagerly asked.

"Snort," Jarlaxle said.

Athrogate snorted.

"No, that is its name. Call to 'Snort, and 'Snort' will come to your call, if you see what I mean."

Watching with little amusement and no surprise, Entreri brought his own mount, Blackfire, to his side. At the same time, Athrogate did as instructed, and sure enough, a large red-skinned boar appeared beside the dwarf. Steam rose from its back, and when it snorted, as it often did, little bursts of red flame erupted from its nostrils.

"Snort," Athrogate said approvingly. He moved beside the creature, which, like the nightmares, appeared with full saddle, but he hesitated before lifting his leg over it. "Seems a bit hot," he explained to his companions.

Entreri just shook his head and turned his nightmare around, starting off toward a distant oasis at a gallop.

Jarlaxle and Athrogate came soon after, and the smaller mount had no trouble pacing the nightmares, its little legs stepping furiously.

Entreri stayed in front of the others all the way to the last high dune overlooking the oasis. He stopped his mount and waited there, not out of any desire for companionship, but rather, because the sight below gave him cautious pause. He knew the ways of the desert, knew the various peoples who roamed the shifting sands. That particular stop along the trade route was classified as "everni," which translated, literally, as lawless. An oasis such as that was under no formal control, with no governing militia in place, and by edict of the pashas of both Memnon and Calimport to the south, "unavailable to claim." Anyone who tried to set up a residence or fortress in such an oasis would find himself at war with both powerful city-states.

The obvious benefit to such an arrangement was that it prevented any tolls from being forced on the frequent merchant caravans traveling between the cities. The downside, of course, was that caravans often had to defend themselves from competing interests and bandits.

The wreckage of a trio of wagons beside the small pond in the shadow of the palms showed that one recent caravan had not done so successfully.

"Perhaps we should have bid the dragons stay beside us just a bit longer," Jarlaxle remarked when he and Athrogate came up on the bluff and looked down at the many white-robed forms milling about the place.

"Desert nomads," Entreri explained. "They hold no allegiance to elves or to dwarves, or even to humans who are not of their tribe."

"They sacked them wagons?" Athrogate asked.

"Or found them destroyed," said Jarlaxle.

"They did it," Entreri insisted. "That caravan was destroyed within the tenday, or else the wood would have already been scavenged. The night gets cold here, as you will learn soon enough, and wood is greatly treasured." He nodded to the south of the small oasis pond, where buzzards hopped about. "The carrion birds haven't even finished their feast. This caravan was sacked within the last couple of days, and there are your highwaymen, enjoying their respite."

"How long will they remain?" Jarlaxle asked.

"As long as they choose. There is no pattern to the nomads' wandering. They roam, they fight, they steal, and they eat."

"Sounds like a good life to me," Athrogate remarked. "Though I'd be looking for a bit o' the drink to top it all off!"

Entreri scowled at him.

"At least he's not rhyming anymore," Jarlaxle whispered. "Though his words tear no less."

"So if we go down there, we're looking at a fight?" Athrogate asked.

"Perhaps. Perhaps not," said Entreri. "Desert nomads fight for gain and gain alone. If they saw us as a threat, or as worthy victims, they would fight. Else, they would ask of us stories, and perhaps even share their spoils. They are an unpredictable lot."

"That makes them dangerous," said Athrogate.

"That makes them intriguing," Jarlaxle corrected. He slid down from his hell horse and dismissed it, pocketing the figurine.

"Ah well, if it's a fight, all the better," Athrogate said and began to dismount.

Jarlaxle stopped him, though. "Stay here and stay astride," the drow instructed.

"Yerself's going down there?"

"Us?" Entreri asked.

Jarlaxle considered the oasis and began a quick count. "There can't be more than twenty of the creatures. And I find that I am thirsty."

Entreri knew well that Jarlaxle could summon some drink if that were the case, or could create an entire extra-dimensional chamber full of food and fine wine if he so desired. "I did not come here to engage in random fights in the desert," he said, his expression sour.

"But you came here for information, or at least, you will need information to find that which you seek. Who better to tell us of the road to Memnon, or the current disposition within the city? Let us learn what we might."

Entreri stared at his troublesome companion for a long while, but he did indeed draw his foot over his horse and drop to the sand. He dismissed the nightmare and placed the figurine in his belt pouch, within easy reach.

"If we need you, charge in hard and fast," Jarlaxle said to Athrogate.

"Don't know any other way," the dwarf replied.

"Which is why I value your companionship," the drow said. "And you will find, I do believe, that your mount is possessed of the same fighting spirit—and a few tricks of its own."

Entreri looked to the dwarf as he sat astride that strange-looking, fierce war boar. He glanced back at the oasis and the white headgear of the nomads. He could well imagine where events were leading, but he found himself walking beside Jarlaxle down the western face of the high dune nonetheless.

"The nomads have been known to fill uninvited guests with arrows, then seek their answers in the items on the corpses," Entreri said as they neared the oasis—and already several sets of eyes turned their way.

Jarlaxle whispered something that the assassin could not make out, and Entreri felt a surge of warmth within him, rolling from his core to tickle all of his being, arms, legs, and head.

"If they let fly with their bows, they'll find only more questions," Jarlaxle replied.

"Questions in the arrows that will be lying at our feet?" Entreri rightly surmised.

"It will take a mighty bolt to get through that enchantment, I assure you."

Just before the duo stepped onto the sudden transformation of sand to grass, a pair of men rushed over to block their way. Both held wide-bladed weapons—khopesh blades, they were called—and with an ease that showed them to be quite skilled with them.

"You tink to joost walk trooh our camp?" one asked in the common language of the land, one that neither Entreri or Jarlaxle had heard in many months, and spoken with so severe an accent that it took both of them a moment to decipher the words.

"Show us the boundary, and we will walk around," said Entreri.

"De boundary? Why de boundary is de oasis, silly man."

"Ah, but if that is the case, then how are we to fill our skins from the pond?" Jarlaxle asked.

"Dat ees a problem," the nomad agreed. "But for you and not for me." Beside him, the other put his second hand to the long hilt of the great khopesh sword.

"We are not here to fight," said Entreri. "Nor do we care about your dealings with the caravan."

"Caravan?" the man echoed. "Dese wagons? But we found dem here. Poor men. Dey should take more care. Bandits, you know."

"Indeed," said Entreri. "And their ill luck is not my concern. We have come for some water, that we might be on our way. Nothing more" — he eyed the second nomad, who seemed quite eager to put his great sword into action— "and nothing less. By edict of the pashas of both Memnon and Calimport, these oases are open and free."

A dangerous grin creased the face of the first man.

"But we will pay anyway," said Entreri, similarly grinning. "We will take the water we need and in exchange we will entertain you with tales of our exploits beside Pasha Basadoni in Calimport."

The nomad's grin disappeared in the blink of an eye. "Basadoni?"

"Ah, Artemis, they know the name!" said Jarlaxle.

Both bandits blanched at the mention of Entreri's name, and the second one actually fell back a step, his hands loosening on the hilt of the khopesh.

"Well… yes," the first stammered. "We would not be friends of de desert if we did not accept barter, of course."

Entreri snorted and walked right past him, brushing him with his shoulder and pushing him aside. Jarlaxle kept close beside him the thirty feet to the pond's edge.

"Your reputation precedes you," the drow mentioned quietly.

Entreri snorted again as if he did not care, and bent low to put his water-skin in the cool waters. By the time he stood straight again, several other desert nomads approached, including an enormously fat man dressed in richer robes of white and red. Instead of the simple cloth hoods the others wore, he wore a white and red turban, stitched with golden thread, and he carried a jeweled scepter wrought of solid gold. His gold-colored shoes were no less ornate, with their toes stretching forward and rolling up into an almost complete circle.

He moved to stand a few feet from the pair, while his bodyguards fanned out in a semicircle about them.

"There is a saying in the desert that bold is once removed from foolish," he said in a dialect far more cultured and reminiscent of Calimport than the open sands.

"Your sentries appeared to have dropped their protestations," Jarlaxle replied. "We had thought a deal struck. Water for stories."

"I have no need of your stories."

"Ah, but they are grand, and the water will not be missed."

"I know a story of a man named Artemis Entreri," the boss said. "A man who served with Pasha Basadoni."

"He is dead," said Entreri.

The boss eyed him curiously. "Did he not name you as…?"

"Artemis," Entreri confirmed. "Just Artemis."

"Of Pasha Basadoni's guild?"

"No," Entreri said, at the same time Jarlaxle replied, "Yes." The pair turned and looked at each other.

"I claim no allegiance to any guild," Entreri said to the boss.

"And yet you dare to walk into my oasis—"

"It is not yours."

"Your diplomacy skills are amazing," Jarlaxle muttered to Entreri.

The fat man held his scepter out before him horizontally. "Bold," he said and he tipped one end up slightly. "Foolish," he added, and he more than reversed the angle, as if weighing his words with a scale.

"My friend is weary from many days on the road, and in the hot sun," said Jarlaxle. "We are traveling adventurers."

"Blades for hire?"

Jarlaxle smiled.

"So you would offer your services in exchange for my water?"

"That would be quite a bargain for…?"

"I am Sultan Alhabara."

"Quite a bargain for Sultan Alhabara, then," said Jarlaxle. "I assure you that our services are quite formidable."

"Indeed," said the fat man, and he gave a slight chuckle, which brought a response of laughter from the six men fanned out about him. "And what fee would be deemed appropriate for the services of Artemis and…?"

"I am Drizzt Do'Urden," said the drow-turned-elf.

"By the balls of a castrated orc," muttered Entreri and he heaved a great sigh.

"What?" Jarlaxle asked, feigning innocence as he turned to him.

"We could not have just ridden by, could we?" Entreri replied. "Very well, then."

"Easy, Artemis," Jarlaxle bade him.

"Our fee is more than fat Alhabara can afford," Entreri said to the man. "More than stupid Alhabara can imagine. The water is free, in any case, by edict of Memnon and of Calimport. Can the criminal Alhabara understand that?"

Alhabara flashed a fierce scowl and the men around him sputtered with outrage, but Entreri didn't relent.

"And so I take what is free, without asking the permission of a common thief," he said and he swept his gaze out at the others as he finished, "And the first of you to lift blade against me will be the first to die this day."

The man in the middle of the trio to Entreri's left did draw on him, tearing a khopesh from his belt and waving it menacingly in Entreri's direction. The man even came forward a step, or started to, but a look from Entreri held him in place.

Alhabara, meanwhile, fell back several steps and lifted his scepter defensively before him.

"Rulership," Jarlaxle whispered to Entreri, correctly identifying the magical rod the sultan held, for it was one he had seen before, many times, among chieftains and tribal leaders. If it was akin to any of the similar rods Jarlaxle had known, such an item could enable its wielder to impose his will on his would-be subjects—those of weak mind, at least.

A moment later, both the drow and the assassin felt a wave of compulsion wash over them, a telepathic call from Sultan Alhabara to fall to their knees.

The pair looked to each other, then back at the man. "Hardly," Entreri said.

To either side of the companions, weapons came forth. Jarlaxle responded by plucking the feather from his cap and tossing it to the ground him. The item transformed into a gigantic, twelve-foot-tall creature known as a diatryma, a great flightless bird with short wings tucked in close to its sides, and a thick, strong neck and powerful triangular beak.

The six closest men screamed and fell back. Alhabara scrambled away and cried out, "Kill them!"

The man nearest the bird on the right tried to rush past it to get at the man and the elf, but the diatryma's powerful neck snapped as he passed, driving the beak into his shoulder with such force that it snapped bone and dislocated his shoulder so badly that it left his arm swinging numbly several inches down from its previous position, and far to the back. The man yelped and tumbled to the grass, howling pitifully.

Charon's Claw and his jeweled dagger in hand, Entreri leaped at the trio on the left. Back-to-back with him, Jarlaxle snapped his wrist, bringing a magical dagger into his hand from his enchanted bracer. A second snap elongated that dagger into a slender sword, which the drow flipped to his left hand and used to parry the nearest khopesh in the same movement.

His right hand snapped again and the bracer answered. While working his sword brilliantly and fluidly to keep that troublesome khopesh at bay, he retracted and flung the dagger at the last in line. Hardly slowing, he wrist-snapped, retracted, and threw again, and again.

The man was good with his blade and quite agile. After five throws, he only had one dagger-wound in one thigh, and that had been no more than a glancing blow. His friend tried to press the attack on Jarlaxle, but the agile drow easily held him at bay, even working his sword around the khopesh to stick him lightly in the ribs.

And all the while, Jarlaxle kept up the flow of daggers, spinning end over end and coming at the man high, low, and center with no discernable, thus no defensible pattern. The man couldn't anticipate, he could only react, and in that state, another blade got through, grazing the side of his face, then a third—a solid strike into the shoulder of his sword arm.

Worse for him, and for his friend, Jarlaxle's pet bird intervened, trampling the man as he pressed in on Jarlaxle. The man managed to bang his khopesh off the giant creature's leg, but the bird stomped him, then jabbed down with three hard pecks.

Jarlaxle sent it off after Sultan Alhabara, as he turned his attention to the remaining man. His next dagger came forth and he did not throw it, but snapped his hand to elongate it into a second, sister blade.

He stalked at his wounded opponent.

A trio of arrows soared in from the side, shot from a tree across the oasis.

Jarlaxle saw them too late to avoid them.

Entreri turned left, then went went that direction and forward, moving to the flank of the trio so that they all couldn't get at him at once. He led with an underhanded sweep of his dagger, one that, because of his bold stride forward, caught the swinging sword up near the hilt and allowed him the leverage to turn it out with just that small blade. Without room to maneuver his own sword, he came across with a right-hand punch instead, cracking Charon's Claw's pommel into the man's cheek.

He followed through with the punch past the man's broken face, extended his left arm, taking both the khopesh and the man's arm out wide with him, and rolled his sword arm over that extension then down and under.

Feeling pressure from a second attacker coming in behind him, Entreri rolled right over the arm, a complete flip that left him on his feet, and he came up strong, lifting his sword arm high, gashing the bandit's arm in the process. A twist had the man rolling over Entreri's hip, flailing helplessly.

"You are dead," Entreri promised, for the man had no defense at all. "Except…"

Entreri reversed his grip as he dropped his sword arm, and he stabbed out behind him as he did a sudden reverse pivot.

The blade drove into the gut of a second bandit, the one who had been in the middle of the trio, the one who had drawn first.

"I promised him that he would die first," Entreri explained. He kicked the prone man—who had dropped his khopesh to hold his badly torn arm—in the face and leaped past him, dagger and sword working in complimentary circles to foil the attack of the third man.

It was all going so smoothly and easily, he thought, but then he noted that dozens of others were closing in, hooting and raising swords and bows. A quick glance back showed him arrows diving for Jarlaxle. Beyond the drow, he saw his other companion, one better forgotten, roaring down the side of the dune on his war pig, holding tight with his powerful legs, his arms out wide and swinging morningstars left and right.

"Wahoo!" Athrogate yelled, the clear and steady tone of his shout defying the jolting, stiff-legged romp down the side of the dune. Despite those stiff legs and their shortness, Athrogate learned that his magical boar could cover tremendous ground.

The dwarf clamped his legs tight and sent his morningstars swinging wide left and right. He crossed from sand to grass, and the nearest bandits moved to intercept, a couple leveling spears.

Athrogate just howled louder and kept straight his course, thinking to pick off the prodding spears with his weapons. As he bore in, however, he found that his mount was more than a beast of burden. The boar had been summoned from the fiery pits of the Nine Hells, where battle was constant. Both its temperament and its armament were well suited to that harsh environment. It broke its stride only briefly, so it could snort and stomp a hoof, and as it did, a burst of orange flames rushed out from its body, a complete ring of wispy fire rolling away as it dissipated.

"Bwahaha!" Athrogate howled in gleeful surprise, and as the boar drove on, the dwarf clamped his legs tighter around it and adjusted the angle of his spinning weapons.

The bandits fell back and curled, shocked by the fiery burst. A bit of residual flame burned on one's robes, while the other had wisps of smoke rising from his singed hair. And both showed bright red skin where the flames had touched them.

Neither was really harmed by the burst, but as Athrogate rushed between them, the weight of his already heavy blows was only enhanced by the momentum of the boar. One man took a hit in the chest and went into a nearly complete backward somersault, except that he landed on his face instead of his feet. The other somehow maintained his footing after the strike.

But the morningstar had taken him across the side of his head, and though he was standing, he was far, far from consciousness. Athrogate was many strides away before he crumbled to the ground.

"Wahoo!" the dwarf roared wildly, thoroughly enjoying it all.

The arrows hit Jarlaxle's magical barrier barely an inch from the drow. They just stopped, in mid-air, and fell to the ground. The enchantment wasn't going to last, though, the drow knew, and so he looked out at the tree and the archers and used his innate magic to summon a globe of darkness over them.

"I'm blinded!" he heard one man cry, and he smiled, for he had indeed heard that false claim before.

The man before him was a stubborn one, he found, who came on yet again. With a sigh, Jarlaxle met his slashing khopesh, executing a downward diagonal, with a double-sword block. A turn to face the three locked blades gave him all the leverage he needed, and he easily drove the sword down.

He retracted suddenly, and the man nearly overbalanced. The drow began a "rattling parry," where both his swords rolled out a tapping drum roll on the blade. As his opponent finally began to compensate against the almost continual push, Jarlaxle side-stepped and with a sudden flourish rushed his sword downward, reversing the tip to point at the ground and taking the khopesh down with it.

The bandit pushed back, and found his blade climbing freely, but only because Jarlaxle had disengaged. The drow rolled his arms out wide, right blade closest to his opponent and angled out and down, left blade angled out and up. He tilted his body accordingly to provide maximum balance to the pose.

But it was a pose he held only briefly, for he drove his blades back in with sudden fury, the right blade coming up and under the khopesh down near the hilt, the left slamming down near the thicker end of the blade.

The bandit couldn't negotiate the alteration of pressure, and the drow's swipes tore the blade from his hands completely and sent it into a spin. Jarlaxle held that spin, the khopesh rotating around its hilt and the drow's right-hand sword.

The bandit stared at it as if mesmerized.

"Here," the gracious Jarlaxle offered, and he released the sword from its twirl, sending it up into the air back toward the bandit. The man looked up, his hands went up, and just before the khopesh landed in his grasp, the sole of the drow's boot landed against his face.

He hit the ground before the khopesh bounced atop him.

Jarlaxle glanced at Entreri. "Summon your…" he started to cry, but before he had even finished, Entreri's nightmare arrived on the scene, snorting fire and pawing the ground.

The poor remaining bandit on that side had already been stripped of his weapons, and the sight of the hellish horse stripped him of his sensibilities as well, apparently, for he blubbered something undecipherable and half-ran, half-crawled away, crying and screaming all the way.

Entreri leaped astride the powerful nightmare, and kicked the steed into a gallop that drove back the nearest group of approaching bandits. A pair of spears and an arrow came at him, but Jarlaxle's magical shield held them back.

Then Jarlaxle was up on his own black steed behind Entreri, who kicked his nightmare into a run. The two were swept up in Athrogate's wake, then thundered past the dwarf and his war pig. A battery of archers rose from behind one wagon, but almost as they stood, they, too, began screaming about blindness, as Jarlaxle's magical darkness engulfed them.

Behind the riding trio, Jarlaxle's diatryma continued its rampage, and the bandits had to settle for that fight.

Out the far side of the oasis, running free across desert sands once more, the three covered nearly a mile before Jarlaxle pulled up and bid his friend do likewise.

"Bwahaha!" Athrogate roared. "I can't ever be thankin' ye enough for me new pet! Bwahaha! Snort! Bwahaha!"

Jarlaxle offered him a smile, but turned on Entreri. "That went well," the drow said dryly. "All of my lessons in diplomacy were wasted on you, it seems."

Entreri started to respond, but he noticed then that a new feather was already growing inside the band on Jarlaxle's magnificent hat. He just shook his head and spurred his steed forward.

"We should be going back," said Athrogate. "More to hit!"

Jarlaxle never turned from the departing Entreri, and without a response, he kicked his nightmare into a run behind his departing companion.

"Bah," Athrogate snorted in disappointment.

He gave a wistful glance back toward the oasis, and reluctantly followed.

CHAPTER 22 INDULGING THE GODS

Well, now we're knowing why the last fool died," Athrogate said when he and his two companions entered the house that had been offered to them in the southwestern quarter of Memnon.

They had come into the city earlier that morning, and on Entreri's insistence—at least for himself—had eschewed the better sections of the port, where all the taverns were located, and had gone straight to a ramshackle district where the houses were no more than flimsy walls and floors of stone and dirt—and that was for the people fortunate enough to even have a shelter at all. Many of their neighbors, the poorest citizens by far in the city, slept on the side of the sandy avenues, often without even lean-tos to protect them from the occasional rains. A flash of gold from Jarlaxle had spared the trio that fate, at least, and the man, one of the clerks from the Protector's House, the temple of Selûne, had told them of their good fortune, for the owner of the house had recently departed the mortal world, leaving it open for the taking.

Jarlaxle groaned when he entered behind the dwarf, and knew he had greatly over-bribed the clerk. The place was no more than four walls, a roof that showed as much sky as reed, a floor of dirt, and a single table of piled stones so covered by crawling bugs—evil-looking reddish-brown critters with long pincers and an upward-curling tail—that it seemed obvious to the drow that the creatures had called the place home for a long, long time.

Athrogate walked over to the table and snorted, seeming amused. "Back home, we had a name for this," he said, and he extended one fat thumb and squished a crawler flat with a crunching sound. "Buffet."

"Do not dare eat that," said Jarlaxle, and Athrogate gave one of his characteristic "bwahahas" in reply.

Entreri walked in last. He glanced around and gave it all hardly a thought.

"Seemin' a bit too familiar to ye, by me own thinkin'," Athrogate teased.

Entreri looked at him out of the corner of his eye, but just shook his head and turned away. "They have midday services in the square overlooking the docks," he said to Jarlaxle. "I will be there, south side of the Protector's House." He turned and started back out the ill-fitting door.

"You are leaving us?" the drow asked.

"I never invited you here to begin with," Entreri reminded him as he walked away.

"Bwahaha!" roared Athrogate.

"Enough, good dwarf," Jarlaxle said, though he never took his eyes off the door. "This is difficult for our friend."

"Place didn't seem to bother him all that much," said Athrogate.

Jarlaxle turned to face him. "This?" he asked. "I suspect that Artemis Entreri is well acquainted with similar accommodations. But returning to this city, the place of his birth and early life, brings with it some painful memories, I would expect, which is why he needed to come here."

To Jarlaxle's surprise, Athrogate winced at that, and nodded but didn't otherwise reply, a very uncharacteristic response that revealed quite a bit to the perceptive, worldly drow.

"So are ye thinking the time's come to do some drinking?" the dwarf blurted. "I a'weighin' to go hear the prayin', or to make me a treat with these critters to eat! Bwahaha!"

"Is that all there is to Athrogate?" Jarlaxle asked in all seriousness, cutting short the dwarf's outburst. Athrogate stared at him hard, suddenly sobered.

"You are free of all feelings, it seems, other than your own humor," Jarlaxle pressed, and Athrogate's face tightened with every word. "Such as it is. Is there nothing but your pleasure?"

"I might be saying the same to yerself."

"You might, but my answer would involve a long history of explanation."

"Or ye might be telling me to mind me own business."

"Indeed, and which will you do, my hairy friend?"

"Ye're going to a place where ye don't belong."

"Your level of carefree is not attained without cause," said the drow. "Something to drink, something to hit, and a joke to make them groan—is that all there is to Athrogate?"

"Ye don't know nothing."

Indeed, Jarlaxle thought and smirked and decided to keep the irony of that double negative to himself. "So tell me."

Athrogate ground his teeth and slowly shook his head.

"Should I fill you with potent drink before I ask such things?" Jarlaxle asked.

"Ye do and ye'll find the ball end of a morningstar crunched into the side o' yer head."

Jarlaxle took the threat with a laugh, and let it drop. In discussion, at least, for in his thoughts he played it through over and over again. Something had created Athrogate as he was; something had broken the dwarf to that base level, where he had no emotional defense other than a wall of ridicule and self-ridicule, fastened by the occasional rap of a mighty morningstar and hidden by the more-than-occasional drink.

Jarlaxle nodded, thinking that he had just found something interesting, something he meant to explore, despite the dwarf's very serious threat.

The scene was all too familiar to Artemis Entreri and sent his thoughts careening back across the years. Before him, in the wide square that fronted the gigantic Protector's House, by far the largest structure in that part of the city, stood, sat, and lay the rabble of southwestern Memnon. They were the dispossessed, the poorest of the poor in the city, nearly all of them suffering the maladies so common among those who could not find enough to eat or drink, who could not keep clean, who could not find shelter from the rain.

But they were not hopeless. No, the men on the eastern side of the square, richly dressed and bejeweled, would not allow for such a state of despair. They called out in melodic voices of the glories of Selûne and of the wonders that awaited her servants. Their pages went among the crowd, offering good news and good cheer, speaking of salvation and promises of an eternity free of all pain.

But there was more to this than cheerleading, Entreri knew all too well. There were promises of immediate relief from ailments, and even suggestions—normally reserved for grieving parents—that the afterlife for their dearly departed could be made even more accommodating than the promises of their god.

"Would you have your child suffer on the Fugue Plane a moment longer than he must?" one young acolyte said to a tearful woman not far from Entreri. "Of course not! Come along, good woman. Every moment we tarry is another moment your dear Toyjo will suffer."

It wasn't the first time the acolyte had pulled that same woman forward, Entreri could tell, and he watched as the pair shuffled through the crowd, the acolyte tugging her along.

"By Moradin, but yerselfs are calling me kin heartless," Athrogate muttered as he and Jarlaxle walked up beside Entreri. "Such a brotherhood ye got here. Makes me want to be findin' a wizard that'd polymorph me into a human." He ended with a fake sniffle, and wiped his eye.

Entreri flashed him a sour look, but as he was no more enamored with his fellow humans than was Athrogate, he really had no practical response. He looked to Jarlaxle instead—and did a double-take, still not used to seeing the drow with golden hair and tanned skin.

"You know this scene?" Jarlaxle asked.

"They are selling indulgences," Entreri explained.

"Selling?" Athrogate snorted. "These dirty fools got coin for spending?"

"What little they have, they spend."

Athrogate snorted as one particularly skinny man ambled by. "Ye might be better off in buying a cookie, if ye're asking me."

"The priests will heal their wounds for a fee?" Jarlaxle asked.

"Minor healing, and temporary at best," said Entreri. "Most who wish for physical heals are wasting their time. They are selling the indulgence of the god Selûne. For a few silver pieces, a grieving mother can spare her dead child a tenday in the Fugue, or can facilitate her own way when she dies, if that is her choice."

"They are paying for a priest's promise of such a thing?"

Entreri looked at him and shrugged.

Jarlaxle looked back over the throng—and it was indeed a throng of poor souls—then focused on the activity near the temple doors. Lines of dirty peasants waited their turn at the desks that had been set up. One by one, they walked forward and handed over a pittance, and one of the two men at the desk scribbled down a name.

"What a marvelous business," the drow said. "For a few comforting words and a line of text…" He gave an envious laugh, but to the side, Athrogate spat.

Both Entreri and Jarlaxle regarded the dwarf.

"They're telling them women that turning over their coins'll help dead kids?"

"Some," said Entreri.

"Orcs," muttered the dwarf. "Worse than orcs." He spat again and stormed off.

Entreri and Jarlaxle exchanged a confused glance, and Jarlaxle set off after the dwarf. Entreri watched them go, but didn't follow.

He remained at the square for quite a while, and every so often found his eyes drawn to a street entrance across the way, an avenue that wound down toward the docks.

A place he knew well.

"The Fugue Plane is a place of torment," Devout Gositek assured the nervous little man who stood before his desk. The man's hands worked feverishly about a tiny coin purse, rolling the dirty bag incessantly.

"I've not much," he said through his two remaining teeth, crooked and yellow.

"The charity given by the poor is more greatly appreciated, of course," Gositek recited, and the devout brothers standing guard behind him both smirked. One even winked at the other, for Gositek had done nothing but complain to them all morning, as soon as the listing had been pegged in the foyer, naming Gositek as one of the indulgence agents every day for the next tenday. He would spend his mornings, collecting coin, and his afternoons offering prayers for the paupers at the smelly graveyard. It was not an envied duty at the Protector's House.

"It is not the amount of coin," Gositek lied, "but rather the amount of sacrifice that is important for Selûne. So the poor are blessed, don't you see? Your opportunities for freeing your loved ones from the Fugue, and shortening your own visit, are far greater than those of the rich man."

The dirty old peasant rolled his tiny purse yet again. He licked his lips repeatedly as he fumbled about and extracted a single coin. Then, with a nearly toothless grin that spoke of lechery and deceit, he handed the coin to Devout Gositek's assistant, who sat beside him to watch over the heavy metal box, a slot in the top to accept the donations.

The peasant seemed quite pleased with himself, of course, but Gositek's glare was uncompromising. "You hold a purse," the devout said. "It bulges with coin, and you offer a single piece?"

"My only silver," the old peasant wheezed. "The rest're but copper, and just a score."

Gositek just stared at him.

"But my belly's growling bad," the man whined.

"For food or for drink?"

The peasant stammered and sputtered, but couldn't quite seem to find the words to deny the charge—and indeed, the stench that wafted from him would have made any such denial seem rather foolish.

Gositek sat back in his wooden chair and folded his arms in front of him. "I am disappointed," he said.

"But my belly…"

"I am not disappointed in your lack of charity, good brother," Gositek interrupted. "But in your continuing lack of common sense."

The peasant stared at him blankly.

"Twice the chance!" Gositek derided him. "Twice the opportunity to impress your devotion upon sacred Selûne! You can sacrifice greatly, for a pittance, and at the same time better your earthly standing by controlling your impure thoughts. Forsake your coin to Selûne, and forego your drink for yourself. Do you not understand?"

The man stuttered and shook his head.

"Each coin buys you double the indulgence and more," said Gositek, extending his hand.

The peasant slapped the purse into it.

Gositek smiled at the man, but it was a cold grin indeed, the smug grin of the cat dominating the mouse before feasting. Slowly and deliberately, Gositek pulled open the purse and dumped the meager contents into his free hand. His eyes flashed as he noted a silver piece among the two dozen coppers, and he looked up from it to the lying peasant, who squirmed and withered under that gaze.

"Record the name," Gositek instructed his assistant.

"Bullium," the peasant said, and he bobbed his head in a pathetic attempt to bow, and started away. He paused, though, and licked his lips again, staring at the pile of coins in Gositek's hand.

Devout Gositek pulled a few coppers from the pile, staring at the man all the while. He handed the rest to his assistant for the collection box, and started to put the others in the purse. He paused again, however, still staring at the man, and gave half of that pile to his assistant as well. Three coppers went into the purse, which Gositek handed back to the man.

But when the peasant grabbed it, Gositek didn't immediately let go.

"These are a loan, Bullium," he said, his tone grave and even. "Your indulgences are bought—a full year removed from your time on the Fugue Plane. But they are bought for the full contents of your purse, due to your reluctance and your lie about the second piece of silver. You have back three. I expect five returned to Selûne to complete the purchase of the indulgence."

Still stupidly bobbing his head, the peasant grabbed the purse and shuffled away.

Beside the wooden chair, Gositek's assistant chuckled.

"You believe that Knellict and his band haven't done worse?" Jarlaxle asked when he at last caught up to the dwarf. They were almost back at their bug-filled shack by then.

"Knellict's a fool, and an ugly one, too," Athrogate grumbled. "Not much I'm liking there."

"But you served him, and the Citadel of Assassins."

"Better that than fight the dogs."

"So it is all pragmatism with you."

"If I knew what the word meant, I'd agree or not," said the dwarf. "What's that, a religion?"

"Practicality," Jarlaxle explained. "You do what serves your needs as you see fit."

"Don't everyone?"

Jarlaxle laughed at that. "To a degree, I expect. But few use that as the guiding principle of their lives."

"Maybe that's all I got left."

"Again you speak in riddles," said the drow, and when Athrogate scowled at him, Jarlaxle held up his hands defensively. "I know, I know. You do not wish to speak of it."

Athrogate snorted. "Ye ever hear o' Felbarr, elf?"

"Was he a dwarf?"

"Not a he, but a place. Citadel Felbarr."

Jarlaxle considered the name for a bit, then nodded. "Dwarven stronghold… east of Mithral Hall."

"South o' Adbar," Athrogate confirmed with a nod of his own. "Was me home and me place, and ne'er did me thoughts expect I'd ever be living anywhere but."

"But…?"

"An orc clan," Athrogate explained. "They come in hard and fast—I'm not even knowin' how many years ago it's been. Not enough and too many, if ye get me meaning."

"So the orcs sacked your home and now you cannot but wander?" asked Jarlaxle. "Surely your clan is about. Scattered perhaps, but…"

"Nah, me kin're back in Felbarr. Drove them orcs out, and none too long ago."

Athrogate's face grew tight as he said that, Jarlaxle noted, and he decided to pause there and let Athrogate digest it all. He had started the dwarf down a painful road, he knew, but he did not want to press Athrogate too much.

To his surprise, and his delight, the dwarf went on without prodding, running his mouth as if he were a river and the drow had just crashed through the beaver dam.

"Ye got young ones?" Athrogate asked.

"Children?" Jarlaxle chuckled. "None that I am aware of."

"Bah, but ye're missing, then," said the dwarf.

To Jarlaxle's surprise, there was moistness about Athrogate's eyes— something he never thought he'd see.

"You had children," Jarlaxle surmised, gauging Athrogate's reaction to his every word before speaking the next. "They were slain when the orcs invaded."

"Good sprites, one and all," Athrogate said, and he looked away, past Jarlaxle, as if his eyes were staring into a distant place and distant time. "And me Gerthalie—what dwarf could ever be thinking he'd be so blessed by Sharindlar to find himself a woman o' such charms?"

He paused and closed his eyes, and Jarlaxle swallowed hard and wondered if he had been wise in leading Athrogate back to that place.

"Yep, ye got it," the dwarf said, eyes popping wide. All hint of tears were gone, replaced by the wildness Jarlaxle had grown used to. "Orcs took 'em all. Watched me littlest one, Drenthro, die. In me arms, he went. Bah, but curse Moradin and all the rest for letting that happen!

"So we were chased out, but them orcs was too stupid to hold the place, and soon enough, they started fighting betwixt themselves. Me king called for a fight, and a fight he got, but meself didn't go. Surprised them all, don't ye doubt."

"Athrogate doesn't seem one to shy from a fight."

"And never's he been one. But not that time, elf. Couldn't go back there." He stood with his hands on hips, shaking his head. "Nothing there for me. They got their Felbarr back, but Felbarr's not me home no more."

"Perhaps now, after all these years…."

"Nah! Ain't one o' them who was alive when the orcs come is still alive now. I'm old, elf, older than ye'd believe, but a dwarf's memory is older than the dwarf himself. Them boys in Felbarr now wouldn't have me, and I wouldn't be wanting them to have me. Dolts. In the first try on getting the place back, more than three hunnerd years ago, Athrogate said no. They called me a coward, elf. Yep, can ye be believing that? Me own kin. Thinkin' me afraid o' orcs. I ain't afraid o' undead dragons! But to them, Athrogate's the coward."

"Because you would not partake of the retribution?" Not wanting to break the dwarf's momentum, Jarlaxle didn't speak the other part of his question, regarding Athrogate's recounting of time. Few dwarves lived three centuries, and none, to Jarlaxle's knowledge, could survive for so long and still retain the vigor and power of one such as Athrogate. Either he was confused with his dates, or there was even more to the creature than Jarlaxle had assumed.

"Because I wouldn't be going back into that cursed hole," Athrogate answered. "Seen too much o' me dead kin in every corner and every shadow."

"Athrogate died that day the orcs came," said Jarlaxle, and the dwarf's look was one of appreciation, telling the drow that he had spoken the truth. "But if that was centuries ago, perhaps now…."

"No!" the dwarf blurted. "Ain't nothing there for me. Ain't been nothing there for me in a dwarf's lifetime and more."

"So you set out to the east?"

"East, west, south—didn't much matter to meself," explained Athrogate. "Just anywhere but there."

"You have heard of Mithral Hall, then?"

"Sure, them Battlehammer boys. Good enough folk. They lost their place a hunnerd years after we lost Felbarr, but I'm hearing they got it back."

"Good enough folk?" asked Jarlaxle, and he filed away the confirmation of the timeline in his thoughts, for indeed, Mithral Hall had been lost to the duergar and the shadow dragon some two centuries before. "Or too good for Athrogate? Does Athrogate think himself unworthy? Were the barbs of your kin striking true?"

"Bah!" the dwarf snorted convincingly. "But what's good and what's bad? And what's mattering, elf? It's all a game with them gods laughing at us, ye're knowing as well as meself's knowing!"

"And so you laugh at everything, and hit whatever appears to need a hit."

"Hitting it good, too, but ain't I?"

"Better than almost any I've ever seen."

Athrogate snorted again. "Better'n any."

Jarlaxle received more than a few curious stares as he walked through the streets of the human-dominated city. They were not like the suspicious glares to which he had grown accustomed when he had walked as a drow, however, for there was no hatred, just curiosity, and more than a passing interest in his garments, which appeared far too rich for that poor section of Memnon.

In truth, the sum value of Jarlaxle's garments, just those he wore as he walked across the city, would have made a Waterdhavian lady of court jealous.

The drow shook all the distractions from his thoughts, reminding himself that the man he secretly followed was no novice to the ways of the thief. He knew that in all likelihood, Artemis Entreri had already detected the covert pursuit, but the man didn't show it.

Which of course meant nothing.

Entreri crossed the square before the temple with determined strides, making a beeline for an avenue on the southern side, a dusty way that sloped down and overlooked the southern harbor. With no cover available, Jarlaxle skirted the edge, and he feared that he'd lose the swift-moving Entreri because of his longer route. As he came around the southern edge of the square, though, he found that Entreri had slowed considerably. As the assassin made his way, Jarlaxle paralleled him, moving with all speed behind the row of shacks.

Within a few yards onto the avenue, Jarlaxle noted the visible change that had come over his friend, and never had he seen the sure and confident Entreri looking such. He seemed as if he could barely muster the strength to put one foot in front of the other. The blood had drained from his face, giving him a chalky visage, and made his lips seem even thinner.

With hardly an effort, the graceful drow climbed up to the roof of a shack, and shimmied across on his belly to overlook the avenue.

A few feet down the road, Entreri had stopped, and stood staring. His hands were by his sides, but they weren't at the ready near his weapon hilts.

Jarlaxle knew it beyond any doubt: Artemis Entreri, as he stood there, was helpless. A novice assassin could have walked up behind him and dispatched him easily.

That unsettling thought made Jarlaxle glance around, though he had no reason to suspect that any killers might be nearby.

He silently laughed at himself and his irrational fit of nerves, and when he looked back at Entreri, he only then fathomed the absolute strangeness of it all. He rolled over the edge of the roof, dropped lightly to his feet and walked over to stand beside Entreri—who didn't notice him until the very last moment.

Even then, Entreri never bothered to cast a glance Jarlaxle's way. His eyes remained fixed on a shack down the way, an unremarkable structure of clay and wood, and with the skeleton of a long-rotted awning jutting out in front. Beneath that, a ruined wicker chair was nestled against the shack, beside the open entrance.

"You know this place?"

Entreri didn't look at him and didn't answer. His breathing became more labored, however, telling Jarlaxle the truth of it.

This had been Entreri's home, the place of his earliest days.

CHAPTER 23 MISERY REVISITED

If I am to help you, then I need to know," Jarlaxle argued, but Entreri's expression alone showed that the drow's logic was falling on deaf ears. They were back at the house with Athrogate, and Entreri had said not a word in the hour since they had rejoined their hairy companion.

"I'm getting the feelin' that he's not wanting yer help, elf," Athrogate said.

"He allowed us to come along on his adventure."

"I did not stop you from following me," Entreri clarified. "My business here is my own."

"And what, then, am I to do?" asked the drow with exaggerated drama.

"Live here in luxury, o' course!" said Athrogate, and he accentuated his point by slamming his hand down on the table, crushing a beetle beneath it. "Good huntin' and good food," he said, lifting the crushed bug before his face as if he meant to eat it. "Who could be asking for anything more? Bwahaha!" To Jarlaxle's relief, though Entreri hardly cared either way, the dwarf flicked the crushed beetle across the room instead of depositing it in his mouth.

"I care not at all," Entreri answered. "Go and find more comfortable lodgings. Leave Memnon all together."

"Why have you come here?" Jarlaxle asked, and Entreri showed the slightest wince. "And how long will you stay?"

"I don't know."

"To which."

Entreri didn't answer. He turned on his heel and stalked out of the house into the early morning sun.

"He's an angry one, ain't he?" Athrogate asked.

"With good reason, I presume."

"Well, ye said he growed up here," said the dwarf. "That'd put a pinch in me own butt, to be sure."

Jarlaxle looked from the open door to the dwarf, and gave a little laugh, and for the first time he realized that he was truly glad Athrogate had decided to come along. He considered his own role in this ordeal, as well, and he began to doubt the wisdom of entangling Entreri with Idalia's flute. Kimmuriel had warned him against that very thing, explaining to him that prying open a person's heart could bring many unexpected consequences.

No, Jarlaxle decided after some reflection. He was correct in giving Entreri the flute. In the end, it would be a good thing for his friend.

If it didn't kill him.

The compulsion that took him back to the sandy avenue that morning was so overpowering that Entreri didn't even realize he was returning to stand before the shack until he was there. The street was far from deserted, with many people sitting in the meager shade of the other buildings, and all of them eyeing the unusual stranger, with his high black leather boots, so finely stitched, and two weapons of great value strapped at his waist.

Clearly, Entreri didn't belong there, and the trepidation he saw in the gazes that came his way, and the background sensation of pure disgust, brought recognition and recollection indeed.

Artemis Entreri had seen those same stares during his days in Calimport serving Pasha Basadoni. The peasants of Memnon thought him a mercenary, sent by one of the more prosperous lords to collect a debt or settle a score, no doubt.

He relegated them to the back of his mind, reminding himself that if they all charged him together, he would leave them all dead in the dirt, then reminding himself further that those peasants would never find the courage to attack him in the first place. It wasn't in their humor—anyone with such gumption and willpower would have long ago left such a place.

It was even easier to dismiss them—in fact, it wasn't even a choice—when Entreri looked back to the ill-fitting door on the shack that had been his home for the first twelve years of his life. As soon as he focused on that place again, nothing else seemed to matter, as he fell into the same state of reflection that had allowed Jarlaxle to walk up right beside him unnoticed the night before.

Hardly aware of his movements, Entreri found himself approaching the door. He paused when he got there and lifted his fist to knock. He held it there, however, and reminded himself of who he was and of who these inconsequential, pathetic peasants were, and he just pushed through the door.

The room was quiet and still cool, as the morning sun hadn't yet come high enough over the hill to chase away the nighttime chill. No candles burned within, and no one was home, but a piece of stale bread on the table and a ruffled and tattered blanket in the corner told Entreri that someone had indeed been in the house recently. The bread wasn't covered in hungry beetles, even, and to Entreri, who knew the climate and the ways of Memnon, that was as telling as a warm campfire.

Someone lived in the house that had been his. His mother? Was it possible? She would be in her early sixties now, he knew. Was it possible that she still lived in the same place where she and his father, Belrigger, had made their home?

The smell told him otherwise, for whoever was living there took no care whatsoever in hygiene. He saw no chamber pot, but it wasn't hard for him to tell that one should have been in use.

That wasn't how he remembered his mother. She had barely a copper to her name, but she had always worked hard to keep herself, and her child, clean.

The thought came over him that the years might have broken that relic of pride from her. He grimaced, and hoped that it was not Shanali's home. But if that were the case, then she must have died. She could not have found her way out, he knew, for she was past twenty when he left. No one got out of that neighborhood past the age of twenty.

And if she was still there, then it must still have been her house.

The walls began to close in on him suddenly. The stench of feces assailed his nostrils and drove him back. He shoved through the door more forcefully than he'd entered, and staggered out into the street.

He found his breath coming in gasps. He looked around, as near to panic as he had been throughout his adult life. He saw the faces leering at him, glaring at him, hating him, and felt in that moment of uncertainty that the most frail among the onlookers could easily run up and dispatch him.

He tried to steady himself, but couldn't help but glance back over his shoulder at the swaying door. Memories of his childhood flooded his thoughts, of cold nights huddled on that very floor, brushing away the biting insects. He thought of his mother and her near-constant pain, and of his surly father and the pain he too often inflicted. He remembered those years in a way he hadn't in decades, and even thought of the few friends he had run the streets with.

There was a measure of freedom in poverty, he figured, and found some composure in that ridiculous irony.

He turned away again, thinking to plot his course, to find some way to move forward from there.

He found a faceful of wrinkled old woman instead.

"Byah, but ain't you the pretty one, with your shiny swords and fine boots," she cackled at him.

Entreri stared at the bent little creature, at her leathery face and dull eyes—a face he had seen a million times and not at all before.

"Ain't you the superior one?" she scolded. "Where you can just come down here and do as you please, when you please, no doubting."

Entreri looked past her, to the many eyes upon him, and understood that she spoke for them all. Even there, there was a collective pride.

"Well, you should be thinking your steps more carefully," the woman said more assertively, growing bolder with every word. She moved to poke Entreri in the chest.

That, Entreri could not allow, for he had known clever wizards to assume just such a guise as a pretense for touching an enemy, whereupon they could loose some prepared enchantment that would jolt their opponent right out of his boots. With uncanny reflexes and precision, and using his sword hand and the gauntlet Jarlaxle had reconstituted, he caught the thrust before it got near to him, and none-too-gently turned the woman's hand out.

"You know nothing of me," he said quietly. "And nothing of my reason for being here. It is not your affair, and do not interfere again." As he spoke, he looked past her to the many people rising in the shadows, all of them unsure but outraged.

"On pain of death," he assured the old wretch as he released her, shoved her aside, and walked past. The first one who came after him, he decided, would be put down in blood. If they kept on coming, the second one, he decided, he would cripple at his feet, and use the man to feed his health back to him through the dagger, if necessary. Two steps from the woman, however, he knew his planning unnecessary, for none would move on him.

But neither would the stubborn old woman let it drop. "Ah, but you're the dangerous one, ain't you?" she yelled. "We'll see how proud you puff your chest when Belrigger learns that you been in his house!"

At that proclamation, Entreri nearly fell over, his legs going weak beneath him.

He fought the urge to turn on the woman and demand more information. It was not the time, not with so many watching, and already angry at him. He studied the people around him more carefully as he made his way back to the square, in light of the knowledge that one of the old crowd, Belrigger, at least, was indeed still alive and about. Indeed, he started to notice more in-depth things about some—a tilt of the head, a look, the way one woman sat on her chair. A sense of familiarity came at him from many corners. So many people were the same ones Artemis Entreri had known as a child. Older now, but the same. And others, he thought, particularly one group of younger men and women, were people he had not known, but who showed enough similarities for him to guess that they might be the children of people he had.

Or maybe there was just a commonality of habit, and a shared manner of expression among all the peasants, he told himself.

It didn't matter, though, since in the end, Belrigger, his father, was alive.

That thought stayed with Entreri throughout the day. It followed him down the streets of Memnon, and all the way to the port. It haunted him under the bright, hot sun, and followed him, wraithlike, into the shadows.

Artemis Entreri had willingly, eagerly, stepped into mortal battle with the likes of Drizzt Do'Urden, but returning to his old home soon after sundown proved to be the most difficult challenge he had ever accepted. He used every trick he knew to get around to the back of the shack unnoticed, then quietly pried off a few planks of the back wall and slipped inside.

No one was home, so he replaced the planks and moved to the darkness of the back corner and sat down, staring at the door.

Hours passed, but Entreri remained on alert. He did not start, did not move at all, when at last the door swung in.

An old man shuffled in. Small and bent, his steps were so tiny that it took him a dozen to reach the table that was only three feet in.

Entreri heard flint hit steel and a single candle flared to life, affording the assassin a clear look at the old man's face. He was thin, so thin, emaciated, even, and with a bald head so reddened by the unrelenting Memnon sun that it seemed to glow in the faint light. He sported a wild gray beard and kept his face continually squinting, which jutted out his chin and made the facial hair seem even more pronounced.

He pulled out a small pouch with his dirty, trembling hands, and managed to dump its contents on the table. Muttering to himself the whole time, he began sorting through copper, silver, and other shiny pieces that Entreri recognized as the polished stones that could be found among the rocks south of the docks. The assassin understood, for he remembered well that some of the people of the neighborhood would venture there and collect pretty stones then sell them to the folk of Memnon, who paid for them as much to get rid of the annoying vagabonds as anything else.

Entreri couldn't be sure of the man's identity, but he knew that it certainly wasn't Belrigger. Age could not have bent his father so.

The man began giggling, and Entreri's eyes opened wide at the sound—one he had heard before. He rose without a whisper and moved to the table. Still unnoticed by the wretch, he slammed his hand down on the coins and stones.

"What?" the old man asked, falling back and turning on Entreri.

That wild-eyed look… the smell of his breath…

Entreri knew.

"Who are you?"

Entreri smiled. "You don't remember your own nephew?"

"Damn yourself, Tosso-posh," the man said as he entered the house an hour later. "If you're to shit yourself, then stay out of…" He was carrying a lit candle, and moved right for the table, but stopped just short as the door was pushed closed behind him—obviously by someone who had been standing behind it as it opened.

Belrigger took a step forward and spun. "You're not Tosso," he said as he took the measure of Entreri.

Entreri stared at the man for a few moments, for he surely recognized Belrigger. The years had not been kind to him. He looked drawn and stretched, as if he had been getting no nourishment other than the potent liquor he no doubt poured regularly down his throat.

Entreri looked past the man, to the far back corner, and Belrigger followed his lead and glanced back that way, bringing his candle around to illuminate the space. There lay Tosso-posh, face down, a small pool of blood around his midsection.

Belrigger spun back, his face a mask of rage and fear, but if he meant to lash out at the intruder, the sight of a long red blade leveled his way seemed to dissuade him more than a little.

"Who are you?" he breathed.

"Someone who just settled a score," Entreri answered.

"You murdered Tosso?"

"He's probably not dead yet. Belly wounds take their time."

Belrigger sputtered as if he simply couldn't find the words.

"You know what he did to me," Entreri stated.

Belrigger began shaking his head, and finally managed to say, "Did to you? Who are you?"

Entreri laughed at him. "I see that you hold no familial loyalty. I am hardly surprised."

"Familial?" Belrigger mouthed, and then his eyes went wider still as he asked again, "Who are you?"

"You know."

"I grow tired of your games," Belrigger said, and started as if he meant to leave. But the red sword flashed, tip coming in under his chin and stopping him in his tracks. With a slight twist of his wrist, Entreri forced the man back to the table, and then Entreri came forward and turned the blade again, angling Belrigger for a chair, where he fell back into a sitting position.

"Words I have heard before," Entreri said, and he pulled the other chair over and sat closer to the door. "Usually followed by the back of your hand. I would almost invite that slap now."

Belrigger seemed as if he could hardly breathe. "Artemis?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper.

"Have I changed so much, Father?"

After another few moments of gasping, Belrigger finally seemed to find his composure. "What are you doing here?" He glanced over the side of the table, at Entreri's fine sword and dress. "You escaped this place. Why would you come back?"

"Escaped? I was sold into slavery."

Belrigger snorted and looked away.

Entreri slammed his hand upon the table, demanding the man's full attention. "That notion amuses you?"

"It does nothing for me. It was not my decision, nor my care!"

"My loving father," came Entreri's sarcastic reply. To his surprise, and outrage, Belrigger laughed at him.

"Even Tosso didn't find such nerve as that," said Entreri, and his mention of Belrigger's dying friend sobered the man.

"What do you want?"

"I want to know of my mother," said Entreri. "Is she alive?"

Belrigger's mocking expression answered before the man ever spoke. "You went to Calimport, yes?"

Entreri nodded.

"Shanali was dead before you arrived there, even if the merchants drove their horses furiously," said Belrigger. "She knew she was dying, you fool. Why do you think she sold off her precious Artemis?"

Entreri's thoughts began spinning. He tried to recall that last meeting, and saw the frailty in his mother in an entirely new light.

"I actually pitied the whore," Belrigger said, and even as the word left his mouth, Entreri came forward with frightening speed and smashed him hard across the face.

Entreri fell back into his own seat, and Belrigger stared at him threateningly, and spat blood on the floor.

"She had no choice," Belrigger went on. "She needed coin to pay the priests to save her miserable life, and they wouldn't even take her diseased body in trade for their spells. So she sold you, and they took her coin. And still she died. I doubt they did anything to try to stop it."

Belrigger fell quiet, and Entreri sat there for a long while, digesting the surprising words, trying to find some way to deny them.

"Have you found what you sought, murderer?" said Belrigger.

"She sold me?" Entreri asked.

"I just told you so."

"And my dear father protected me," Entreri replied.

"Your dear father?" asked Belrigger. "And you know who that is?"

Entreri's face went very tight.

"Are you stupid enough to think me your father?" Belrigger asked with a laugh. "I'm not your father, you fool. If I was, I'd've beaten more sense into you."

"You lie."

"Shanali was fat with you when I met her. Fat in the womb from whoring herself out to those priests. Like all the rest of the girls. Might that you left too young to know the truth of it, but most of the brats you see running the dirty streets come from priest seed." He stopped and snorted, then laughed again. "I just gave her a place to live, and she gave me some pleasures in exchange."

Entreri hardly heard him. He considered again the scenes of his youth, when men came in and paid Belrigger, then went to Shanali's bed. The assassin closed his eyes, almost hoping that Belrigger would move fast in his moment of vulnerability. If Belrigger had come forward and taken Entreri's dagger, he wouldn't stop him, and would invite the blade into his heart.

But the man didn't move, Entreri knew, because he continued to laugh.

Until, that is, Entreri opened his eyes again and gave him that tell-tale stare.

Belrigger cleared his throat, obviously uncomfortable.

Entreri rose and sheathed his sword. One step brought him towering over the seated man. "Get up."

Belrigger stared at him defiantly. "What do you want?"

Entreri's fist crushed his nose. "Get up."

Bleeding, Belrigger rose, with one arm raised defensively before him. "What do you want? I told you everything. I'm not your father!"

Entreri's left hand snapped up and caught Belrigger's blocking hand. With the simplest of moves, the assassin bent Belrigger's hand over backward and wrenched the arm painfully to the side.

"But you beat me," Entreri said.

"You needed it," Belrigger gasped, trying to raise his other arm.

Entreri's free hand snapped out, slamming him in his already-bloody face.

"A tough life!" Belrigger protested. "You needed sense! You needed to know!"

"Say again that my mother was a whore," said Entreri. He twisted the bent arm a bit more, driving Belrigger to one knee.

"What would you have me say?" the man pleaded. "She did what she had to do to survive. It's what we all do. I don't blame her, and never did. I took her in when none would."

"To your own gain."

"Some," Belrigger admitted. "You cannot blame me for the way things are.

"I can blame you for every fist you laid upon me," Entreri calmly replied. "I can blame you for letting that filth" — he nodded his chin at Tosso-posh— "near me. Or did he pay you, too? A bit of coin for your boy, Belrigger?"

Gasping in pain, Belrigger furiously shook his head. "No… I didn't…"

Entreri's knee drove into Belrigger's face, knocking him to the floor on his back. Out came the jeweled dagger, and Entreri moved over the groaning man.

But Entreri shook his head. He put the dagger away, and walked out the door.

The old woman was out there again, having apparently heard the scuffle. Heard that and more, Entreri realized, as, instead of scolding him yet again, she said, "I knew Shanali, and I'm remembering yerself, Artemis."

Entreri stared at her hard.

"Did you kill Belrigger?"

"No," Entreri replied. "You heard our conversation?"

The woman shrank back. "Some," she admitted.

"If he lied to me, I will return and cut him apart."

The woman shook her head, a resigned look coming over her wrinkled old face. She nodded toward the chair set in front of her house, and Entreri followed her there.

"Your mother was a pretty one," she said as soon as she sat down. "I knew her mother, too, just as pretty, and just as young when she bore Shanali as Shanali was when she gave birth to you. Only a girl, doing th'only thing a girl down here can do."

"With the priests?"

"With whoe'er's the coin," the old one said with obvious disgust.

"And she really is dead?"

"Not long after you left," said the woman. "She was dying, and it got all the worse when she let her son go. Like she had no reason to keep fighting, not when them priests took her coins and cast their spells and said they couldn't do anything more for her."

Entreri took a deep, steadying breath, reminding himself that he expected from the beginning that he would not find Shanali alive.

"She's with the rest of them," the old woman said, surprising him, as his expression revealed. "On the hill, behind the rock, where they bury them that got no names worth remembering."

Like everyone who had spent his childhood in that part of Memnon, Entreri knew well the pauper's graveyard, a patch of dirt behind a large rocky outcropping that overlooked the southwestern most point of Memnon Harbor. Despite himself, he looked that way, and without another word to the old woman, and with only a final glance at the shack that had been his home, a place to which he knew he would never return, he walked away.

CHAPTER 24 TO THE SOUL OF THE MATTER

Jarlaxle had his back to Entreri, pretending to look out the shack's front door at the early morning street. Athrogate snored contentedly in the corner of the room, his breathing interrupted at irregular intervals—Jarlaxle amused himself by imagining spiders climbing into the dwarf's open mouth.

Entreri sat at the table, his face tight and angry—the expression he had worn for most of the years he and Jarlaxle had spent together, one that Jarlaxle had hoped to replace forever with the use of Idalia's flute.

So much progress they had made, the drow silently lamented, but then that foolish woman had betrayed Entreri and torn a hole in his opened heart. And worst of all, what the drow knew but Entreri did not was that Calihye hadn't even wanted to attack him. Emotionally torn, confused by her loyalties and frightened of leaving the Bloodstone Lands, the woman had acted purely on impulse. Her strike was not wrought of malice toward Artemis Entreri, as it would have been in the early days of their relationship, but rather, was propelled by terror and grief and an anguish she could not overcome.

Jarlaxle hoped that someday Artemis Entreri might know that, but he doubted it strongly. Still, with Calihye safely under the control of Bregan D'aerthe, the drow knew better than to say "never."

The more pressing problem, of course, surrounded them in the hellish city of Memnon. Entreri had come home, though what that meant, Jarlaxle could not be sure. He glanced back at the grim man, who seemed not to notice him at all, not to notice anything. Entreri sat upright and his eyes were open, but he was no more aware, Jarlaxle reasoned, than was the sputtering dwarf in the corner.

His hands moving slowly and surely, Jarlaxle retrieved one of the small potion vials from his belt pouch. He stared at it for a long while, hating himself for having to so manipulate his friend yet again.

That thought surprised the drow; when in his entire life had he ever felt such a twang? In his betrayal of Zaknafein those centuries before, perhaps?

He looked at Entreri again, and he felt as if he was staring at his old drow companion.

I needed to do this, he reminded himself, and for Entreri most of all.

He quaffed the potion.

Jarlaxle closed his eyes as the magic settled in his body and in his mind, as he began to «hear» the thoughts of the other people in the room. He considered the life of Kimmuriel, who was always in such a state of heightened perception, and for an instant, he truly pitied the psionicist.

He shook his head and gave a great sigh, reminding himself that he had no time for such distractions. The potion wouldn't last long.

"So are you going to tell me where you went yesterday?" he said, turning to face the human.

Entreri looked up at him. "No."

But he was already telling Jarlaxle much more, for the question had elicited memories of the previous day's events: images of the street they had visited, of an old man lying on the floor holding in his spilling guts, of another man.

His father! No, the man he had thought his father, had known as his father for all his life.

"You have come here to find your mother. That much I know," Jarlaxle dared to say, though Entreri's expression grew more threatening from the moment he mentioned the lost woman.

An image flashed in Jarlaxle's mind, not of a woman, but of a view.

"You know, too, that I have told you that none of this is your affair," Entreri said.

"Why would you push an ally away?" Jarlaxle asked.

"You cannot help me in this."

"Of course I can."

"No!"

Jarlaxle straightened, assailed suddenly by a wall of red. He felt Entreri's anger more keenly than ever before, a razor edge that bordered on murderous rage. Images flashed too quickly for him to sort them and grasp them. He noted many of priests, of the great Protector's House, of the lines for indulgences playing out in the square.

Then just hatred.

Jarlaxle held up his hand defensively without even realizing it, though Entreri had made no move from the table.

The drow shook his head, to see the man staring at him curiously.

"What are you about?" the obviously suspicious Entreri asked.

"About tall enough to put me face between a woman's bosoms!" came a roar from the side, and Jarlaxle was truly relieved for the interruption at that particular moment.

Entreri cast a glance at Athrogate, then stood up quickly, his chair sliding out behind him. He stalked around the table, and never taking his stare off Jarlaxle, left the house.

"What's tyin' that one's armpit hair in knots?" Athrogate asked.

Jarlaxle merely smiled, glad that the potion's effects were already fading. The last thing he wanted was to be bombarded by the images that flitted through the mind of Athrogate!

Little life showed on the facings of the wind-swept brown rocks footing the mountains south of Memnon. There were a few lizards, though, sunning themselves or scampering from ledge to ledge, and so Jarlaxle knew that beneath the surface, deep in cracks or in caves formed by the incongruity of stone on stone, life found a way.

It always did—under the desert sun, or in the pits of the Underdark, where no stars shone.

A crude stone stair wound up the hundred feet or so around a large jut of rock, but Jarlaxle didn't use it. He moved off to the side, where the jag would keep him covered from view, and tipped his great hat to enact its levitation properties. He half-walked and half-floated up the sheer face. As he neared the top, he paused and glanced back behind him to view the distant harbor, and nodded with recognition in confirming that it was the same view he had seen in Entreri's thoughts when he had used the mind-reading potion.

Certain that Entreri was on the other side of the stone, Jarlaxle crept low as he went to the top.

Behind it was a flat patch of sandy ground, wider than the drow had expected. Many small and weathered stones littered the place—ancient gravestones, Jarlaxle realized. Across the sandy field directly south of his position, the drow noted a tarp-covered mound.

Bodies awaiting burial.

Entreri was indeed up there, walking among the stones, looking down at the sand and apparently lost in contemplation. Only one other man was about, a priest of Selûne, who stood at the westernmost edge, looking down at the harbor through a break in the brown stones.

It was a paupers' graveyard, where Entreri's mother was likely buried, Jarlaxle surmised. He retreated a bit over the far side of the rock and rested his back against it, considering it all. His friend was in turmoil, clearly. In breaking through Entreri's emotional wall, Jarlaxle had opened him to those painful memories.

He crawled back up and took one last look at Entreri, wondering what might result.

He floated back down carrying more than a little guilt on his slender shoulders.

"You'll not find any names on those stones," the priest said to Entreri as the assassin puttered about, coincidentally moving nearer to the man.

Entreri looked up and noticed the priest—the same one who had been collecting indulgences in the square that day—for the first time, really, so absorbed had he been in pondering the dirt and the many souls buried beneath it. He noted the man's defensive posture, and understood that the priest felt threatened.

He offered a helpless shrug and walked off a bit.

"It's not often that a man of your obvious means would come here," the priest persisted.

Entreri turned and regarded him again.

"I mean, these wretches don't get much in the manner of visitors," the priest went on. "Mostly unknown, unloved, and unwanted…" He ended with a condescending chuckle, which disappeared abruptly in light of Entreri's ensuing scowl.

"Yet you write their names on your scrolls when they give you their coins in the square," the assassin remarked. "Are you up here to pray for them, then? To fulfill the indulgences they purchased at your table?"

The priest cleared his throat and said, "I am Devout Gositek."

"You've confused me with someone who cares."

"I am a priest of Selûne," the man protested.

"You are a charlatan who sells false hope."

Gositek steadied himself and straightened his robes. "Beware your words…" he said, inquiring of Entreri's name with his expression and inflection.

Entreri didn't blink, and at first didn't respond at all. It was all he could do to keep from leaping across the ten feet that separated him from Gositek and throwing the fool from the cliff.

Entreri reminded himself to do nothing so rash. The young man was barely half his age and could not have been involved with his mother in any way.

"As I said, I am Devout Gositek," the man said again, apparently drawing strength from Entreri's snub. "A favored scribe of Principal Cleric Yozumian Dudui Yinochek, the Blessed Voice Proper, himself. Speak ill to me at your peril. We rule the Protector's House. We are the hope and prayers of Memnon."

He babbled on for a bit, but Entreri hardly heard him, for that name, Yinochek, sparked memory in him.

"How old is he?" Entreri asked, interrupting the fool.

"What? Who?"

"This man, this Blessed Voice Proper?"

"Yinochek?"

"How old is he?"

"Why, I don't know his exact—"

"How old is he?"

"Sixty years, perhaps?" Gositek asked as much as answered.

Entreri nodded as memories came back to him of a young and fiery priest, an oratory prodigy, a blessed voice proper, who had often delivered powerful homilies from the balcony of the Protector's House. He remembered viewing some of those beside his young mother, her eyes upturned, her heart uplifted.

"And this man has been at the Protector's House for many years?" Entreri asked. "And he has been known as Blessed Voice Proper…"

"From the beginning," Gositek confirmed. "And yes, he was a young man when first he came to join the priests of Selûne. Why? Do you know of him?"

Entreri turned and walked away.

"You used to live here," Gositek called after him, but Entreri didn't stop.

"What was her name?" the perceptive priest asked.

Entreri stopped, and turned to regard the man.

"The woman you seek here," Gositek explained. "It was a woman, yes? What was her name?"

"She had no name," Entreri replied. "None that you would remember. Look around you for your answers. Look at all their names, for they are etched on every stone."

Gositek straightened.

Entreri walked out of the graveyard.

Entreri hardly glanced at Jarlaxle as he took the bag of gold.

"You are welcome," the drow said, with more amusement than sarcasm.

"I know," was all he got in return.

The man's mood hardly surprised Jarlaxle. "I see that you are wearing your hat this day," he said, trying to lighten the mood, and referring to a thin-brimmed black top hat he had provided to Entreri, one with many magical properties—though not as many as Jarlaxle's great hat, of course! "I have not seen it on your head in many days."

Entreri stared at him. The hat was tightly form-fitted, owing to a thin wire beneath its band. Entreri reached up and found the magical-mechanical clip, set just above his left temple. With a flick of his fingers, he disengaged it, and with a turn of his wrist, he removed the hat, tossing it to Jarlaxle, as if the reminder of where he had gotten the hat somehow sullied his desire to wear it.

That wasn't it at all, of course, as Jarlaxle clearly understood. Entreri had gotten exactly what he wanted from the hat, for it held much less rigidity, absent the wire. The idea of snubbing Jarlaxle had simply been an added bonus.

Entreri held stares with him for a moment longer, then hoisted the small sack of gold and walked out of the house.

"Must've had a bug crawl up his bum last night," said Athrogate, pulling himself up from the floor and stretching the aches from his knotty old muscles.

Still watching the departing man, and rolling the discarded hat in his hands, Jarlaxle answered, "No, my hirsute friend, it goes far deeper than that. Artemis has been forced to remember his past, and so now he has to confront the truth of who he is. Witness your own mood when speaking of Citadel Felbarr."

"I telled ye I don't want to be talkin' about that."

"Exactly. Only Artemis isn't talking about anything. He's living it, in his heart. We did that to him, I fear, when he was given the flute." Finally, the drow turned to regard the dwarf. "And now we have to help him through this."

"We? Ye're pretty good with throwing around that word, elf. Course, if I knew what ye was talking about, I might be inclined to agree. Then again, I'm thinking that agreeing with ye is just going to get meself in trouble."

"Probably."

"Bwahaha!"

Jarlaxle knew that he could depend upon that one.

The scene at the square that morning was much as it had been when Entreri and Jarlaxle had first looked upon it, as it was almost every morning. The cobblestones could hardly be seen beneath the hordes of squatting peasants, and the long lines leading to the two tables flanking the Protector's House's great doors.

When they arrived, Jarlaxle and Athrogate had little trouble picking Artemis Entreri out from that ragamuffin crowd. He stood in the line at the farthest table, which struck Jarlaxle as odd until he noted the priest seated there, the same one he had seen in the pauper's graveyard the previous day. Entreri wondered if he had made a connection with the man.

Athrogate in tow, the drow cut through the first line of peasants and weaved across the way to move beside his companion. Those immediately behind Entreri protested the cut—or started to, until Athrogate barked at them. With his morningstars so prevalent, and a face scarred by a hundred years of battle, Athrogate had little trouble suppressing the protests of the paupers.

"Go away," Entreri said to Jarlaxle.

"I would be remiss—"

"Go away," the assassin said again, turning his head to look the elf in the eye. Jarlaxle held that stare for a few moments, long enough so that the line had time to thin ahead of them and when he disengaged the stare, Entreri was practically at the table. Entreri snorted at him dismissively, but Jarlaxle did not back off more than a couple of steps.

"First at a graveyard and now here," the priest, Gositek, said when Entreri's turn arrived. "You are truly a man of surprises."

"More than you can imagine," Entreri replied and he hoisted the sack of gold onto the table, which shook under its weight. As the bag settled, the top slipped open a bit, revealing the shiny yellow metal, and a collective gasp erupted from the peasants behind Entreri, and before, from the priest whose eyes widened so much that they seemed as if they might roll out onto the pile.

The guards behind Gositek came forward to hold back the pressing crowd, and Gositek finally sputtered, "Are you trying to incite a riot?" And it seemed as if he could hardly find breath for his voice.

"I am buying an indulgence," Entreri replied.

"The graveyard—"

"For a name long-forgotten by the priests of Selûne, their promises be damned."

"Wh-what do you mean?" Gositek stammered, and he worked to tighten the drawstring and hide away the gold before it could cause a stampede. As he moved to pull the sack toward him, though, Entreri's hand clamped hard and fast around his wrist, an iron grip that halted the man.

"Yes, the n-n-name…" Gositek stuttered, turning to his scribe, who sat with his mouth agape, staring stupidly. "Record the name—and a great indulgence it will—"

"Not from you," Entreri instructed.

Gositek stared at him blankly.

"I will purchase this indulgence from the blessed voice proper alone," Entreri explained. "He will receive the gold personally, will record the name personally, and recite the prayers personally."

"But that is not—"

"It is that, or it is nothing," said Entreri. "Would you go to your blessed voice proper after I have left with my gold, and explain to him why you could not allow me to see him?"

Gositek shifted nervously, rubbed a hand across his face, and licked his thin lips.

"I haven't the authority," the priest managed to say.

"Then go and find it."

The priest looked to his scribe and to the guards, all of them shaking their heads helplessly. Finally, Gositek managed to tell one of the guards to go, and the man ran off.

The line grew restless behind Entreri, but he wasn't moving for the short while it took before the guard returned. He pulled Gositek aside and whispered to him, and the devout came back to the table and sat down.

"You are fortunate," he said, "for the blessed voice proper is in his audience hall at this very time, and with a calendar that is not full. For the sake of an extreme indulgence—"

"For a sack of gold coins," Entreri corrected, and Gositek cleared his throat and did not argue the point.

"He will see you."

Entreri lifted the bag and stepped beyond the table, moving for the door, but the guards blocked his way.

"You cannot bring weapons inside the Protector's House," Gositek explained, rising again and moving to the side of Entreri. "Nor any magical items. I am sorry, but the safety of…"

Entreri unhitched his weapon belt and handed it back to Jarlaxle, who moved over, Athrogate still in tow—and with the dwarf still facing the crowd, holding them back with his snarling visage.

"Shall I strip naked here?" Entreri asked, pulling his piwafwi from his shoulders.

Gositek fumbled on that one. "Just inside," he said, motioning for the guard to open the door. Entreri went in with the priest, Jarlaxle, and Athrogate close behind.

"Your belt," Gositek instructed. "And your boots."

Entreri untied his belt and handed it to the drow, then pulled off his boots while Gositek began casting a spell. When finished, the priest scanned Entreri head to toe, and bade him to open his shirt. A nod from the priest to a burly guard had the man up close to Entreri, patting him down.

A few moments later, wearing nothing but his pants and shirt and holding a sack of gold, Entreri was escorted by yet another pair of armored soldiers through the next set of doors, disappearing into the Protector's House. In the anteroom, Jarlaxle bagged his belongings.

Gositek motioned for the elf and the dwarf to head back outside.

"There are many more bags of gold where that one came from," Jarlaxle said to the poor, stuttering priest. Noting Gositek's obvious interest, Jarlaxle gingerly reached back and pushed the door closed. "Let me explain," he said sweetly.

Some moments later, the crowd shifted uneasily as Devout Gositek walked out of the building. "Take care of their needs," he instructed the scribe and the two guards.

A flurry of protests erupted from the peasants, but the man held up his hand and cast a stern look at them to silence them. Then he disappeared back into the structure.

As the two sentries, their heavy armor clanking noisily, led him through the palace known as the Protector's House, Artemis Entreri's thoughts kept going back to his days in Calimport, serving the notorious Pasha Basadoni. For only there had Entreri seen so much gold and silver lining, and platinum artifacts and tapestries woven by the day's greatest artists. Only there had Entreri witnessed such grandeur, and hoarding of wealth. He was hardly surprised by the ostentatious decorations. Fabulous paintings and sculptures were each individually worth more coin than half the people gathered in the square could make in their lifetimes, even if they pooled all their wealth together.

Entreri knew the scene all too well. The wealth always flowed uphill and into the hands of a few. It was the way of the world, and whether it was facilitated by the threats and intimidation of the pashas of Calimport, or priests with their more subtle and insidious extortions, he had long ago ceased being surprised by it. Nor did he really care, except…

Except that part of the wealth that particular sect had taken from his mother had involved the most personal property of all. And she had since lay forgotten, in an unremarkable patch of sandy ground, hidden from the view of the city.

He looked at the sentries flanking him. It would would be his last walk, he knew, his last day.

So be it.

He came into a grand hall, with a ceiling that stretched up two score feet, and gigantic columns all carved and decorated with gold leaf standing in two rows, front to back. Between them lay a long and narrow bright red carpet, flanked every few feet by a soldier of the church in shining plate mail and with a halberd planted solidly at his side, its tip twice his height from the floor and tied with the banners of the principal cleric and his god, Selûne.

At the end of the carpet, perhaps thirty strides away, sat Principal Cleric Yinochek, the Blessed Voice Proper of Selûne, in a throne of polished hardwood, fashioned with white pillows shot with lines of pink and red. He wore voluminous robes, stitched with gold, and a crown of fabulous jewels rested on his head. He was indeed sixty or more, Entreri saw, though his eyes were still bright and his physique still hard and muscular. He even imagined that he saw a bit of his own features in the man, but he quickly dismissed that uncomfortable notion.

Before the throne stood three priests, two to the right and one to the left, and all half-turned to regard the approach of the man with his sack of gold.

Entreri felt the weight of their stares, their suspicions clear upon their faces, and for the flash of an instant, he believed himself too obvious, his intentions too clear. The wire of the hat band pressed in on him, and he nearly forgot himself and reached up to adjust it under his black hair.

But he stopped himself, then laughed at himself as he shook his head and glanced around, remembering who he was. He was not the bastard pauper child from the dirty streets—that was who he had been.

"I have come to purchase an indulgence," he said.

"We were told as much by Devout Gositek," one of the priests before the throne replied, but Entreri dismissed him with a wave of his hand.

"I have come to purchase an indulgence," he said again, his eyes set on, and his finger pointing at, the principal cleric, the blessed voice proper, who sat on the throne.

The four priests exchanged glances—more than one seemed out of sorts and seething.

"So we have been informed," Principal Cleric Yinochek replied. "And so we have welcomed you into our home, a place few people outside of the clergy ever see. And you speak directly to me, Principal Cleric Yinochek, as you requested." He motioned to the bag of gold. "Devout Tyre here will record the name of the person for whom you desire prayer."

"You will pray for her personally?" Entreri asked.

"Your indulgence is worthy of such, so I have been told," Yinochek replied. "Pray you leave the bag and offer the name. Then be gone in the comfort of knowing that the Blessed Voice Proper of Selûne prays for this woman."

Entreri shook his head and held the bag of gold close to his chest. "It is more than that."

"More?"

"Her name is—was, Shanali," said Entreri, and he paused and stared hard at the man, seeking a flash of recognition.

Yinochek wouldn't give him that satisfaction. If the principal cleric knew the name at all, he hid it completely, and when Entreri rationally considered the passage of thirty years and the reality of it all, he could only silently berate himself. Did the man even ask the names of the women he bedded? Even if he had, Yinochek couldn't likely remember them, the multitudes, if what the old woman had told Entreri was indeed the truth of it—and he knew in his heart that it was.

"She was my mother," Entreri said.

The looks that came back at him were of boredom, not interest.

"And she is deceased?" Yinochek asked. "As is my own mother, I assure you. That is the way of—"

"She has been dead for thirty years," Entreri interrupted, and Yinochek flashed a scowl and the other three priests and several of the guards bristled that the man would dare cut short the Blessed Voice Proper of Selûne.

But Entreri persisted. "She was a young girl—less than half my current age."

"It was a long time ago," Yinochek stated.

"I have been gone a long time," said Entreri. "Shanali—do you know the name?"

The man held his hands out helplessly and looked around at his similarly confused fellow priests. "Should I?"

"She was known among the priests of the Protector's House, so I am told."

"A noblewoman?" asked Yinochek. "But I was informed that you were at the cemetery on the rise—"

"Nobler than any in this room today," Entreri again interrupted. "She did what she had to do to survive, and to provide for me, her only child. I consider that noble."

"Of course," Yinochek replied, and he did well—better, at least—than the other three priests at hiding his amusement at the proclamation.

"Even if that meant whoring herself to priests in the Protector's House," Entreri said, and their mirth disappeared in the blink of an eye. "But you don't remember her, of course, though you were surely here at the time."

Yinochek didn't answer, other than to stare hard at the man, for a long, long time. "She has been dead for many, many years," he said finally. "Likely she has passed through the Fugue Plane in any case. Spare your indulgence for yourself, impertinent child, I pray you."

Entreri snorted. "Prayers to a god who would allow priests, even a blessed voice proper, to steal the dignity of the women of their flock?" he asked. "Prayers to Selûne, whose priests fornicate with starving young girls? Do you believe that I would wish such prayers? Better to pray to Lady Lolth, who at least admits the truth of her vile clergy."

Yinochek trembled with rage. At either side of Entreri, the guards stepped forward, weapons coming ready.

"Leave your gold and begone!" the blessed voice proper demanded. "It will purchase your life, and nothing more. And be glad that I am in a generous mood!"

"Go to your balcony," Entreri retorted. "Look out over them, Foul Voice Improper. How many are of your seed? Like myself, perhaps?"

"Remove him!" one of the priests before the throne yelled, but Yinochek stood up suddenly and shouted above them all, "Enough!"

"You have tried my patience to its limits," he went on. "What is your…"

Entreri's scalp itched. He glanced around, measuring his strides, calculating the time his movements might bring. He stopped, as did Yinochek, as the door behind him banged open, forcefully, as if it had been kicked from up high.

"Wait! Your pardon and one moment, Blessed Voice Proper," said Devout Gositek, scrambling into the room. He held a wide-brimmed, feathered hat—Jarlaxle's hat.

"There is much more to this than our friend here, who consorts with elves who are much more than they seem," the man went on. As he finished he pulled something—a black fabric disk—from out of the great hat. "Much more than they seem," he said again.

Entreri's jaw dropped open at the reference, at the clue. He had his distraction.

Yinochek sat back down. "How dare you intrude, Devout Gositek?" he asked.

Gositek held up the disk of fabric, eliciting many curious stares.

Entreri leaped out to the side and smashed the guard across the face plate of his helmet with the sack of gold, launching the man to the floor. As he fell away, Entreri yanked the guard's halberd free, half turned, and launched it into the gut of the guard opposite, bending him double. His feet already moving, the assassin charged the throne, and when one of the three priests managed to react quickly enough to block his way, he threw the bag of gold into the man's face. Coins flew, and blood, and the priest fell back—even harder as Entreri planted a bare foot on his chest and leaped across.

He covered the distance to the throne in one stride, reaching up and pulling the slip-knot in the wire set under his hair. He swung it around as he went, catching the free end with his other hand, and with his fists outstretched before him, bore down on his prey. Yinochek lifted both hands defensively, but Entreri leaped headlong above the attempt to block him, snapped his hands down when they were behind the priest's defenses, then rolled over Yinochek's shoulder. Somersaulting and twisting as he went, Entreri brought his arm up and over his head so that as he descended he was back-to-back with the priest, the wire—the garrote—tight across Yinochek's throat.

Entreri used his momentum to yank the man away from the throne, hoping to snap his neck cleanly and be done with it.

But Yinochek was more stubborn and quicker than that, and he managed to come around with the flow of momentum. When it untangled, he remained very much alive, though Entreri was right behind him, tugging hard on the vicious wire, digging it into Yinochek's throat.

It would take too long, Entreri feared, expecting the guards and the priests to rush over him.

When he looked back, however, he pressed on with determination and hope that it would end then and there.

Even as Entreri had first started his move, even as he had lunged to the right at the guard, the man on the carpet behind him, Devout Gositek by all appearances, flicked the oblong piece of fabric through the air. It elongated as it twirled, widening to several feet in diameter, and slapped against the side of one of the immense pillars lining the hall.

And it was no longer a piece of fabric at all, but a magical, portable hole, a dimensional pocket. From within it, almost as soon as it hit the wall, there came a tumult and a shout.

"Snort!"

The guards nearest the hole fell back as flames erupted from the blackness, and out leaped a red war pig, snorting fire, and with a hairy and no less fiery dwarf astride it. He passed between the nearest guards, morningstars whirling left and right, and landed a solid hit on both, launching them aside.

All across the room, guards and priests finally moved to respond, and yet another surprise caught them and held them momentarily, as Devout Gositek reached a hand under his chin and tore off the magical mask, revealing himself in all of his ebon-skinned glory.

Jarlaxle threw his hat to the floor, plucking free and tossing the magical feather as he did. His hands went into a rolling spin, summoning daggers into them from his enchanted bracers and launching them out in a steady line at the nearest guard. Even with those movements, the drow kept his wits about him enough to glance across the way, where Entreri knelt behind the blessed voice proper, who sat on the floor and clawed furiously at the assassin and at the wire that dug into his throat.

With but a thought, Jarlaxle summoned his innate drow magical abilities and brought a globe of darkness over the pair.

The armor worn by soldiers of the Protector's House was beautifully crafted and with few vulnerable areas, and so Jarlaxle's barrage did little real damage to the man. As that finally dawned on the sentry, he roared and lowered his halberd.

Jarlaxle snapped his wrists alternately, elongated daggers into swords, and even as one came into being, he parried across, turning the halberd, and leaped forward and to the side, right past the stumbling man.

The drow executed a perfect spin, and launched a backhanded uppercut that brought his fine blade under the rim of the guard's great helm, driving up into his skull.

Jarlaxle retracted it almost immediately and leaped away, gaining some time by finding Athrogate's swath of destruction, as the sentry went to the floor, flailing furiously and grabbing at the vicious wound.

Artemis Entreri understood Jarlaxle's tactical meaning in summoning the globe of darkness, of course, but it didn't suit him.

Not then.

He wanted to see Yinochek's face.

He rolled his legs under him and heaved backward, dragging the man out of the globe. As he came through the back limit of the darkness, he saw one of the priests, Devout Tyre, following his every move, the man's hands waving in spellcasting. Very familiar with clerical magic, Entreri knew what was coming, and he was not caught the least bit off guard as waves of compelling magical energy washed over him, an enchantment that could hold a man fast in place as surely as any paralysis.

Indeed, Entreri felt his arms go rigid, felt his body begin to deceive him.

But he conjured an image of Shanali, that last sight he had of her, and he imagined the man before him atop her, rutting like an animal, and thinking her no more than that.

His arms crossed more powerfully and Yinochek gave a pathetic wheeze.

But on came the other three priests and a pair of guards, and behind them lumbered… a gigantic bird?

Snort stomped and flames rolled out in a perfect circle, distracting the sentries, who were then swatted away by the wild Athrogate. His mighty legs clamping and twisting, he turned the boar at the next bunch to repeat the maneuver.

But the guards, well-trained men all, accepted the burst of flames and held their lowered halberds steady. Athrogate managed to drive one aside, but the other jabbed in at him, catching him just above the side seam in his metal breastplate. The fine tip drove through the leather under-padding and into the dwarf's armpit, and he had to throw himself back, letting Snort run right out from under him.

He fell hard to the floor, snapping the shaft of the halberd, but arched his small back and jerked his muscles in a single sudden spasm that propelled him back to his feet to meet the charge. Athrogate took some hope in the fact that the man's halberd had snapped, but it was short lived as the sentry, in one fluid motion, pulled a sword and slid a shield from his back. The man closed as if to run the dwarf right over.

From the other side came the second sentry, who similarly dropped his long weapon for sword and shield.

And Athrogate found he could hardly lift his right arm, blood running freely down his side.

Metal rang against metal as one long note across the way, closer to the door, as a pair of guards engaged the drow, and two more rushed in to join. Fighting defensively, diving into sudden rolls and using his lighter armor and better agility to keep ahead of the lunging men, Jarlaxle had little hope of scoring any solid hits against four skilled opponents. His swords whipped about every which way, seemingly randomly, but almost always deflecting a strike or forcing an attacker back.

Out in the hall behind him came many shouts, and the guards took heart.

So did the drow. And he rolled again, making sure that the approaching reinforcements could properly view the battle from the outside hall, and that they could see him, a drow, clearly. He wanted to hold their attention. He didn't want them to notice what was above the door jamb.

The release of fire, the breath of a red dragon, shook the structure with its sheer intensity as the leading guard passed under the archway. That man avoided most of the flames, but still came into the audience hall on fire, flailing. Behind him, for Jarlaxle had been sure to set the silver statuette with its little maw facing backward, the dozen men charging after him were not so fortunate, and were not about to rush through the tremendous force of that conflagration.

Fire rolled on for what seemed like many heartbeats, immolating the screaming sentries, ending any hopes of reinforcements and igniting tapestries, benches, carpeting, and the wooden beams of the structure.

Around Jarlaxle, the four sentries stared in disbelief—and though the distraction lasted for no more than perhaps two seconds, that was a second longer than Jarlaxle needed.

The drow came up from his roll, planted his feet, and propelled himself back the other way, into their midst. Out to the left slashed one blade, chopping hard on a sword arm and driving the weapon from the man's grasp. Out to the right stabbed the second sword, through a seam in armor and into the side of a man.

Out to the left leaped the drow, planting his feet on the chest of one guard and shoving off, launching the man to the floor and himself back and to the right, where he got up and over the blade of the fourth, turning as he went so that he was almost sitting on the man's shoulders. Jarlaxle dropped his bloody blades in a cross before the man's throat and slashed them out to their respective sides as he back-rolled over that shoulder, gracefully gaining his feet and spinning away.

The sentry grasped at his throat and sank to his knees.

"For Selûne!" the guard cried, thinking his victory at hand.

And under the cover of his shout, Athrogate called to his right-hand morningstar, enabling its magic, bringing forth explosive oil from its prongs. The dwarf snapped himself around, launching the head of the weapon at the guard's blocking shield. His arm was a limp thing, and there was no weight behind the strike, but when it connected with that shield, the oil exploded, shattering both the shield and the arm that held it and throwing the man back to the floor.

Athrogate fell off to the left, swiping across with his second weapon, one coated with the magically-duplicated ooze of a creature known to strike fear in the hearts of the greatest warriors: a rust monster. The initial contact of morningstar against shield did little to dissuade the oblivious attacker, who shield-rushed the dwarf and crashed his sword down hard on Athrogate's shoulder.

Roaring in pain, the dwarf sent his left arm in furious pumps, spinning the morningstar head in horizontal twirls, each connecting with the shield. So furious was his attack that the guard had to backtrack.

But the man seemed unconcerned, was even mocking the dwarf, as, bloody and battered, Athrogate turned to square up with him.

On he charged, and the dwarf spun left, his right arm swinging, his morningstar coming at the shield with little power behind it.

It needed none, however, for the shield had turned to rust, and the impact blew it apart, red dust flying all over them both.

The guard paused in surprise, and Athrogate roared and spun the rest of the way around more furiously, his left coming across in a mighty backhand. His shield ruined, the guard had no choice but to spin away from the blow.

And Athrogate, leaping in that final turn, planted his leading left foot solidly and stepped into perfect balance with his right, halting his momentum with brutal efficiency. He stepped forward with his left foot, swinging his weapon, smashing the guard in the back in mid-turn, and sending him staggering forward.

Athrogate was with him, every stride, his left arm working left-to-right and down, then reversing right-to-left and over, the ball smashing against the man's back repeatedly, driving him forward in a stumbling run. Again and again the pursuing dwarf hit him, as if guiding him with the morningstar.

Headlong, face-first, into a stone pillar.

The guard's arms reflexively went around the thing as he slid down, though he was hardly conscious of the movement.

Athrogate whacked him again, just because.

Entreri snapped his arms left and right as he drove up to his feet, dragging the poor Yinochek with him. He tried to break the man's neck, but had no leverage to do so, nor did he have the time to complete the strangulation. Reluctantly, angrily, he released the priest and shoved him forward at the nearest man, another priest, then rushed in hard behind and shoulder-blocked another aside. He spun out to the right in a dead run, hoping to get ahead of the stab of another man.

He wouldn't have made it, except that suddenly, instead of stabbing, the man was flying forward, launched by the powerful peck of Jarlaxle's diatryma. Entreri ran right by the giant bird as it plowed forward, trampling the fallen defender.

On Entreri sprinted, his bare feet slapping the stone floor. He cut and veered as guards closed in on him from both sides, but with a sudden burst, he got beyond them, diving into a headlong roll over the fallen chair. He came back to his feet with three men in close pursuit.

He noted Jarlaxle's sudden flurry, saw men falling every which way, and marked the fires raging out beyond the room, thick smoke starting to come in the door. None of it would help him, he knew.

He had to anticipate Jarlaxle, had to think like his drow companion.

He went straight for the extra-dimensional hole hanging on the side of the pillar.

With halberds reaching out just behind him, Entreri dived in and disappeared from sight.

He felt a body in there, one that moved and groaned, and he slugged the man across the face, laying him low. As he scrambled around, his hand closed on a pommel.

Kill them! came a message in his mind, one of eagerness.

Entreri wasn't about to disappoint the blade.

The three guards stood before the hole, rightly hesitating and tentative. Out came Entreri in a great leap, red-bladed sword in one hand, jeweled dagger in the other. He smashed Charon's Claw down atop the nearest halberd, to his right and before him, and drove the weapon down, but then rolled his sword underneath it as he landed and quick-stepped forward. He swung his arm back up and over his shoulder, taking the long, spearlike weapon with it, and swinging it out to intercept the thrusting sword of the next man in line.

At the same time, the assassin executed a reverse backhand parry with his dagger, driving the sword on his left out behind him. He turned as he did to face the man holding the sword, and lifted his left arm high, taking the sword with it, then thrust across with Charon's Claw, stabbing the man in the chest. As that one fell away, freeing up his dagger hand, Entreri threw himself backward and under the swipe of the cumbersome halberd. He fell into a sitting position, but kept turning, driving his jeweled dagger into the spearman's knee then rolling around as the man howled, tearing his dagger free. He slashed across with Charon's Claw, taking the man's legs out and toppling him to the ground. Entreri used the falling man as a shield, leaping back to his feet, but he needn't have, he realized, for the third had turned to run off.

Entreri leaped into pursuit, but pulled up short, his attention drawn across the room, where the three priests escorted the blessed voice proper out a back door.

"No!" Entreri yelled charging that way, though he knew he'd never get there in time to stop the escape. It couldn't happen like this! Not after all his effort, not after all the memories of Shanali had assaulted him.

Devout Tyre, in the lead, pulled open the door; Entreri did the only thing he could and launched his sword like a great spear.

"Ah, but ye're a good pig," Athrogate said to Snort. He leaned heavily on the boar, nearly collapsing from loss of blood, and directed the creature to the extra-dimensional pocket. As he neared the black hole, the dwarf noted a man crawling out.

Devout Gositek turned to him pitifully.

Athrogate slugged him hard, knocking him out, so that he was hanging by the waist over the lip of the hole, the fingers of his extended arms just brushing the floor.

On a word from the dwarf, Snort leaped back into the hole. Athrogate looked to Jarlaxle and saluted, though the drow hardly seemed to notice. Then the dwarf hopped into a sitting position on the rim of the dimensional pocket, grabbed Gositek by the scruff of his neck, and rolled back out of sight, taking the battered priest with him.

Out of the corner of his eye, Devout Tyre saw the missile coming. He fell back with a yelp, knocking his fellows into a stumble, with Blessed Voice Proper Yinochek, still gasping for breath, falling back against the wall. The red-bladed sword rushed past Tyre and hit the wood, the weight of the missile closing the door hard, and leaving the sword stuck there, quivering.

"Get him out!" Tyre commanded the other two, turning toward the charging Entreri. "I will finish this one."

With a snarl of defiance, the priest grabbed Charon's Claw and yanked it from the door.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion for Devout Tyre. He stumbled away from the door as one of his companions, Devout Premmy, tugged the portal back open. He saw the man Entreri, screaming in protest, still thirty feet or more away. He watched the man change hands with his remaining weapon, saw him leap high and far, planting his left foot as he came down.

Entreri's hips rotated to square with the door. His left arm swung out wide as he rolled his right shoulder forward, arm coming up and over in a mighty throw.

Tyre hardly registered the movement, the silver flickers of the missile, but he knew somehow exactly where it was heading. He tried to scream a warning, but his voice came out as a high-pitched shriek.

He hardly heard that, but instead heard Entreri's seemingly elongated cry of "Shanali!"

And as though with the snap of some unseen wizard's fingers, time sped up and the silver missile flashed past him. Devout Tyre turned and saw his Blessed Voice Proper, the Principal Cleric of the Protector's House, with his arms out before him, quivering, his face a mask of exquisite pain, the jeweled hilt of a dagger protruding from his chest.

And Tyre saw… white. Just hot white, as his sensibilities finally registered the excruciating pain that burned throughout his body and soul. He screamed again—or tried to, but his lips curled up over his teeth, and rolled back even farther as if melting away. Somewhere deep inside him, Tyre knew that he should drop the evil sword.

But his sensibilities were long gone by then, his thoughts no longer connecting to his body. Pain controlled him, and nothing more, as he felt a million stinging needles, a million burning bites, a fire within him as profound and devastating as the one that had exploded in the corridor across the way.

He fell to the floor but never knew it. He lay there trembling, his skin smoldering and crackling into charred bits as Charon's Claw ate him.

The throw—both of them—had come from somewhere so deep inside of him that Artemis Entreri had hardly even realized his actions. He had seen nothing but Shanali, frail and dying in the dust. He had felt nothing but his rage, his absolute fury that the vile priest would escape him.

The moment his dagger thudded into Principal Cleric Yinochek's heart, the spell was broken, and Entreri, running at the four priests, felt a flood of angry satisfaction.

He slowed his pace, noting movement from the side, then watched as two of the priests deserted Yinochek and rushed out the door, Jarlaxle's diatryma in close pursuit. There were soldiers coming toward the room down the hall beyond, he saw, but how they changed their attitude and their direction when that giant bird crashed out through the doorway.

Entreri rushed up and pushed the door closed. He glanced at the dying Tyre but paid him no more heed than that, moving instead to stand before the principal cleric.

"Do you know how many lives you have ruined?" he asked the man.

Trembling, sputtering, his eyes wide with horror, Yinochek's lips moved but no words came forth.

"Yes," Entreri noted. "You know. You understand it all. You know the wretchedness of your actions as you steal the coin of the peasants and the innocence of the girls. You know, and so you are afraid." He reached up and grabbed the dagger hilt, and Yinochek stiffened.

Entreri thought to obliterate the man's soul with his magical weapon, but he shook his head and dismissed the notion.

"Selûne is a goodly god, so I've heard," he said, "and thus will have nothing to do with the likes of you. I call you a fraud, and there is nowhere left for you to hide."

The man's eyes rolled back into his head, and he slumped to the floor.

"A better way to go than that one," Jarlaxle said, and only then did Entreri realize that the drow had come to his side. Jarlaxle's gaze led Entreri's to what remained of Devout Tyre, who lay on his back shaking wildly, his robes smoking and his face showing more bone than flesh.

With a growl, Entreri stomped hard on the man's forearm, crushing the burnt skin and bone, and the recoil lifted Charon's Claw into the air, where Entreri easily caught it.

He looked back at Jarlaxle as the drow settled the fabric patch back into his great hat.

The building shook violently, and across the room, a gout of flames rushed in.

"Come," Jarlaxle bade him, putting on his magical mask. "We must be away."

Entreri looked back at the blessed voice proper, sitting against the wall, his chest covered in blood, his eyes white.

He thought of Shanali one last time. He took a brief moment to consider the long and dirty road of his miserable life, which had ultimately brought him to that awful place.