Servant of the Shard

I live in a world where there truly exists the embodiment of evil. I speak not of wicked men, nor of goblins-often of evil weal-nor even of my own people, the dark elves, wickeder still than the goblins. These are creatures-all of them-capable of great cruelty, but they are not, even in the very worst of cases, the true embodiment of evil. No, that title belongs to others, to the demons and devils often summoned by priests and mages. These creatures of the lower planes are the purest of evil, untainted vileness running unchecked. They are without possibility of redemption, without hope of accomplishing anything in their unfortunately nearly eternal existence that even borders on goodness.

I have wondered if these creatures could exist without the darkness that lies within the hearts of the reasoning races. Are they a source of evil, as are many wicked men or drow, or are they the result, a physical manifestation of the rot that permeates the hearts of far too many?

The latter, I believe. It is not coincidental that demons and devils cannot walk the material plane of existence without being brought here by the actions of one of the reasoning beings. They are no more than a tool, I know, an instrument to carry out the wicked deeds in service to the truer source of that evil.

What then of Crenshinibon? It is an item, an artifact- albeit a sentient one-but it does not exist in the same state of intelligence as does a reasoning being. For the Crystal Shard cannot grow, cannot change, cannot mend its ways. The only errors it can learn to correct are those of errant attempts at manipulation, as it seeks to better grab at the hearts of those around it. It cannot even consider, or reconsider, the end it desperately tries to achieve-no, its purpose is forever singular.

Is it truly evil, then?

No.

I would have thought differently not too long ago, even when I carried the dangerous artifact and came better to understand it. Only recently, upon reading a long and detailed message sent to me from High Priest Cadderly Bonaduce of the Spirit Soaring, have I come to see the truth of the Crystal Shard, have I come to understand that the item itself is an anomaly, a mistake, and that its never- ending hunger for power and glory, at whatever cost, is merely a perversion of the intent of its second maker, the eighth spirit that found its way into the very essence of the artifact.

The Crystal Shard was created originally by seven liches, so Cadderly has learned, who designed to fashion an item of the very greatest power. As a further insult to the races these undead kings intended to conquer, they made the artifact a draw against the sun itself, the giver of life. The liches were consumed at the completion of their joining magic. Despite what some sages believe, Cadderly insists that the conscious aspects of those vile creatures were not drawn into the power of the item, but were, rather, obliterated by its sunlike properties. Thus, their intended insult turned against them and left them as no more than ashes and absorbed pieces of their shattered spirits.

That much of the earliest history of the Crystal Shard is known by many, including the demons that so desperately crave the item. The second story, though, the one Cadderly uncovered, tells a more complicated tale, and shows the truth of Crenshinibon, the ultimate failure of the artifact as a perversion of goodly intentions.

Crenshinibon first came to the material world centuries ago in the far-off land of Zakhara. At the time, it was merely a wizard's tool, though a great and powerful one, an artifact that could throw fireballs and create great blazing walls of light so intense they could burn flesh from bone. Little was known of Crenshinibon's dark past until it fell to the hands of a sultan. This great leader, whose name has been lost to the ages, learned the truth of the Crystal Shard, and with the help of his many court wizards, decided that the work of the liches was incomplete. Thus came the "second creation" of Crenshinibon, the heightening of its power and its limited consciousness.

This sultan had no dreams of domination, only of peaceful existence with his many warlike neighbors. Thus, using the newest power of the artifact, he envisioned, then created, a line of crystalline towers. The towers stretched from his capital across the empty desert to his kingdom's second city, an oft-raided frontier city, in intervals equating to a single day's travel. He strung as many as a hundred of the crystalline towers, and nearly completed the mighty defensive line.

But alas, the sultan overreached the powers of Crenshinibon, and though he believed that the creation of each tower strengthened the artifact, he was, in fact, pulling the Crystal Shard and its manifestations too thin. Soon after, a great sandstorm came up, sweeping across the desert. It was a natural disaster that served as a prelude to an invasion by a neighboring sheikdom. So thin were the walls of those crystalline towers that they shattered under the force of the glass, taking with them the sultan's dream of security.

The hordes overran the kingdom and murdered the sultan's family while he helplessly looked on. Their merciless sheik would not kill the sultan, though-he wanted the painful memories to burn at the man-but Crenshinibon took the sultan, took a piece of his spirit, at least.

Little more of those early days is known, even to Cadderly, who counts demigods among his sources, but the young high priest of Deneir is convinced that this "second creation" of Crenshinibon is the one that remains key to the present hunger of the artifact. If only Crenshinibon could have held its highest level of power. If only the crystalline towers had remained strong. The hordes would have been turned away, and the sultan's family, his dear wife and beautiful children, would not have been murdered.

Now the artifact, imbued with the twisted aspects of seven dead liches and with the wounded and tormented spirit of the sultan, continues its desperate quest to attain and maintain its greatest level of power, whatever the cost.

There are many implications to the story. Cadderly hinted in his note to me, though he drew no definitive conclusions, that the creation of the crystalline towers actually served as the catalyst for the invasion, with the leaders of the neighboring sheikdom fearful that their borderlands would soon be overrun. Is the Crystal Shard, then, a great lesson to us? Does it show clearly the folly of overblown ambition, even though that particular ambition was rooted in good intentions? The sultan wanted strength for the defense of his peaceable kingdom, and yet he reached for too much power.

That was what consumed him, his family, and his kingdom.

What of Jarlaxle, then, who now holds the Crystal Shard? Should I go after him and try to take back the artifact, then deliver it to Cadderly for destruction? Surely the world would be a better place without this mighty and dangerous artifact.

Then again, there will always be another tool for those of evil weal, another embodiment of their evil, be it a demon, a devil, or a monstrous creation similar to Crenshinibon.

No, the embodiments are not the problem, for they cannot exist and prosper without the evil that is within the hearts of reasoning beings.

Beware, Jarlaxle. Beware.

— Drizzt Do'Urden

Chapter 1 WHEN HE LOOKED INSIDE

Dwahvel Tiggerwillies tiptoed into the small, dimly lit room in the back of the lower end of her establishment, the Copper Ante. Dwahvel, that most competent of halfling females-good with her wiles, good with her daggers, and better with her wits-wasn't used to walking so gingerly in this place, though it was as secure a house as could be found in all of Calimport. This was Artemis Entreri, after all, and no place in all the world could truly be considered safe when the deadly assassin was about.

He was pacing when she entered, taking no obvious note of her arrival at all. Dwahvel looked at him curiously. She knew that Entreri had been on edge lately and was one of the very few outside of House Basadoni who knew the truth behind that edge. The dark elves had come and infiltrated Calimport's streets, and Entreri was serving as a front man for their operations. If Dwahvel held any preconceived notions of how terrible the drow truly could be, one look at Entreri surely confirmed those suspicions. He had never been a nervous one-Dwahvel wasn't sure that he was now-and had never been a man Dwahvel would have expected to find at odds with himself.

Even more curious, Entreri had invited her into his confidence. It just wasn't his way. Still, Dwahvel suspected no trap. This was, she knew, exactly as it seemed, as surprising as that might be. Entreri was speaking to himself as much as to her, as a way of clarifying his thoughts, and for some reason that Dwahvel didn't yet understand, he was letting her listen in.

She considered herself complimented in the highest way and also realized the potential danger that came along with that compliment. That unsettling thought in mind, the halfling guildmistress quietly settled into a chair and listened carefully, looking for clues and insights. Her first, and most surprising, came when she happened to glance at a chair set against the back wall of the room. Resting on it was a half-empty bottle of Moonshae whiskey.

"I see them at every corner on every street in the belly of this cursed city," Entreri was saying. "Braggarts wearing their scars and weapons like badges of honor, men and women so concerned about reputation that they have lost sight of what it is they truly wish to accomplish. They play for the status and the accolades, and with no better purpose."

His speech was not overly slurred, yet it was obvious to Dwahvel that Entreri had indeed tasted some of the whiskey.

"Since when does Artemis Entreri bother himself with the likes of street thieves?" Dwahvel asked.

Entreri stopped pacing and glanced at her, his face passive. "I see them and mark them carefully, because I am well aware that my own reputation precedes me. Because of that reputation, many on the street would love to sink a dagger into my heart," the assassin replied and began to pace again. "How great a reputation that killer might then find. They know that I am older now, and they think me slower-and in truth, their reasoning is sound. I cannot move as quickly as I did a decade ago."

Dwahvel's eyes narrowed at the surprising admission.

"But as the body ages and movements dull, the mind grows sharper," Entreri went on. "I, too, am concerned with reputation, but not as I used to be. It was my goal in life to be the absolute best at that which I do, at out-fighting and out-thinking my enemies. I desired to become the perfect warrior, and it took a dark elf whom I despise to show me the error of my ways. My unintended journey to Menzoberranzan as a 'guest' of Jarlaxle humbled me in my fanatical striving to be the best and showed me the futility of a world full of that who I most wanted to become. In Menzoberranzan, I saw reflections of myself at every turn, warriors who had become so callous to all around them, so enwrapped in the goal, that they could not begin to appreciate the process of attaining it."

"They are drow," Dwahvel said. "We cannot understand their true motivations."

"Their city is a beautiful place, my little friend," Entreri replied, "with power beyond anything you can imagine. Yet, for all for that, Menzoberranzan is a hollow and empty place, bereft of passion unless that passion is hate. I came back from that city of twenty thousand assassins changed indeed, questioning the very foundations of my existence. What is the point of it, after all?"

Dwahvel interlocked the fingers of her plump little hands and brought them up to her lips, studying the man intently. Was Entreri announcing his retirement? she wondered. Was he denying the life he had known, the glories to which he had climbed? She blew a quiet sigh, shook her head, and said, "We all answer that question for ourselves, don't we? The point is gold or respect or property or power…"

"Indeed," he said coldly. "I walk now with a better understanding of who I am and what challenges before me are truly important. I know not yet where I hope to go, what challenges are left before me, but I do understand now that the important thing is to enjoy the process of getting there.

"Do I care that my reputation remains strong?" Entreri asked suddenly, even as Dwahvel started to ask him if he had any idea at all of where his road might lead- important information, given the power of the Basadoni Guild. "Do I wish to continue to be upheld as the pinnacle of success among assassins within Calimport?

"Yes, to both, but not for the same reasons that those fools swagger about the street corners, not for the same reasons that many of them will make a try for me, only to wind up dead in the gutter. No, I care about reputation because it allows me to be so much more effective in that which I choose to do. I care for celebrity, but only because in that mantle my foes fear me more, fear me beyond rational thinking and beyond the bounds of proper caution. They are afraid, even as they come after me, but instead of a healthy respect, their fear is almost paralyzing, making them continuously second-guess their own every move. I can use that fear against them. With a simple bluff or feint, I can make the doubt lead them into a completely erroneous position. Because I can feign vulnerability and use perceived advantages against the careless, on those occasions when I am truly vulnerable the cautious will not aggressively strike."

He paused and nodded, and Dwahvel saw that his thoughts were indeed sorting out. "An enviable position, to be sure," she offered.

"Let the fools come after me, one after another, an endless line of eager assassins," Entreri said, and he nodded again. "With each kill, I grow wiser, and with added wisdom, I grow stronger."

He slapped his hat, that curious small-brimmed black bolero, against his thigh, spun it up his arm with a flick of his wrist so that it rolled right over his shoulder to settle on his head, complementing the fine haircut he had just received. Only then did Dwahvel notice that the man had trimmed his thick goatee as well, leaving only a fine mustache and a small patch of hair below his lower lip, running down to his chin and going to both sides like an inverted T.

Entreri looked at the halfling, gave a sly wink, and strode from the room.

What did it all mean? Dwahvel wondered. Surely she was glad to see that the man had cleaned up his look, for she had recognized his uncharacteristic slovenliness as a sure signal that he was losing control, and worse, losing his heart.

She sat there for a long time, bouncing her clasped hands absently against her puckered lower lip, wondering why she had been invited to such a spectacle, wondering why Artemis Entreri had felt the need to open up to her, to anyone-even to himself. The man had found some epiphany, Dwahvel realized, and she suddenly realized that she had, too.

Artemis Entreri was her friend.

Chapter 2 LIFE IN THE DARK LANE

Faster! Faster, I say!" Jarlaxle howled. His arm flashed repeatedly, and a seemingly endless stream of daggers spewed forth at the dodging and rolling assassin.

Entreri worked his jeweled dagger and his sword-a drow- fashioned blade that he was not particularly enamored of- furiously, with in and out vertical rolls to catch the missiles and flip them aside. All the while he kept his feet moving, skittering about, looking for an opening in Jarlaxle's superb defensive posture-a stance made all the more powerful by the constant stream of spinning daggers.

"An opening!" the drow mercenary cried, letting fly one, two, three more daggers.

Entreri sent his sword back the other way but knew that his opponent's assessment was correct. He dived into a roll instead, tucking his head and his arms in tight to cover any vital areas.

"Oh, well done!" Jarlaxle congratulated as Entreri came to his feet after taking only a single hit, and that a dagger sticking into the trailing fold of his cloak instead of his skin.

Entreri felt the dagger swing in against the back of his leg as he stood up. Fearing that it might trip him, he tossed his own dagger into the air, then quickly pulled the cloak from his shoulders, and in the same fluid movement, started to toss it aside.

An idea came to him, though, and he didn't discard the cloak but rather caught his deadly dagger and set it between his teeth. He stalked a semicircle about the drow, waving his cloak, a drow piwafwi, slowly about as a shield against the missiles.

Jarlaxle smiled at him. "Improvisation," he said with obvious admiration. 'The mark of a true warrior." Even as he finished, though, the drow's arm starting moving yet again. A quartet of daggers soared at the assassin.

Entreri bobbed and spun a complete circuit, but tossed his cloak as he did and caught it as he came back around. One dagger skidded across the floor, another passed over Entreri's head, narrowly missing, and the other two got caught in the fabric, along with the previous one.

Entreri continued to wave the cloak, but it wasn't flowing wide anymore, weighted as it was by the three daggers. "Not so good a shield, perhaps," Jarlaxle commented. "You talk better than you fight," Entreri countered. "A bad combination."

"I talk because I so enjoy the fight, my quick friend," Jarlaxle replied.

His arm went back again, but Entreri was already moving. The human held his arm out wide to keep the cloak from tripping him, and dived into a roll right toward the mercenary, closing the gap between them in the blink of an eye.

Jarlaxle did let fly one dagger. It skipped off Entreri's back, but the drow mercenary caught the next one sliding out of his magical bracer into his hand and snapped his wrist, speaking a command word. The dagger responded at once, elongating into a sword. As Entreri came over, his sword predictably angled up to gut Jarlaxle, the drow had the parry in place.

Entreri stayed low and skittered forward instead, swinging his cloak in a roundabout manner to wrap it behind Jarlaxle's legs. The mercenary quick-stepped and almost got out of the way, but one of the daggers hooked his boot and he fell over backward. Jarlaxle was as agile as any drow, but so too was Entreri. The human came up over the drow, sword thrusting.

Jarlaxle parried fast, his blade slapping against Entreri's. To the drow's surprise, the assassin's sword went flying away. Jarlaxle understood soon enough, though, for Entreri's now free hand came forward, clasping Jarlaxle's forearm and holding the drow's weapon out wide.

And there loomed the assassin's other hand, holding again that deadly jeweled dagger.

Entreri had the opening and had the strike, and Jarlaxle couldn't block it or begin to move away from it. A wave of such despair, an overwhelming barrage of complete and utter hopelessness, washed over Entreri. He felt as if someone had just entered his brain and began scattering all of his thoughts, starting and stopping all of his reflexes. In the inevitable pause, Jarlaxle brought his other arm forward, launching a dagger that smacked Entreri in the gut and bounced away.

The barrage of discordant, paralyzing emotions continued to blast away in Entreri's mind, and he stumbled back. He hardly felt the motion and was somewhat confused a moment later, as the fuzziness began to clear, to find that he was on the other side of the small room sitting against the wall and facing a smiling Jarlaxle.

Entreri closed his eyes and at last forced the confusing jumble of thoughts completely away. He assumed that Rai-guy, the drow wizard who had imbued both Entreri and Jarlaxle with stoneskin spells that they could spar with all of their hearts without fear of injuring each other, had intervened. When he glanced that way, he saw that the wizard was nowhere to be seen. He turned back to Jarlaxle, guessing then that the mercenary had used yet another in his seemingly endless bag of tricks. Perhaps he had used his newest magical acquisition, the powerful Crenshinibon, to overwhelm Entreri's concentration.

"Perhaps you are slowing down, my friend," Jarlaxle remarked. "What a pity that would be. It is good that you defeated your avowed enemy when you did, for Drizzt Do'Urden has many centuries of youthful speed left in him."

Entreri scoffed at the words, though in truth, the thought gnawed at him. He had lived his entire life on the very edge of perfection and preparedness. Even now, in the middle years of his life, he was confident that he could defeat almost any foe-with pure skill or by out-thinking any enemy, by properly preparing any battlefield-but Entreri didn't want to slow down. He didn't want to lose that edge of fighting brilliance that had so marked his life.

He wanted to deny Jarlaxle's words, but he could not, for he knew in his heart that he had truly lost that fight with Drizzt, that if Kimmuriel Oblodra had not intervened with his psionic powers, then Drizzt would have been declared the victor.

"You did not outmatch me with speed," the assassin started to argue, shaking his head.

Jarlaxle came forward, his glowing eyes narrowing dangerously-a threatening expression, a look of rage, that the assassin rarely saw upon the handsome face of the always-in-control dark elf mercenary leader.

"I have this!" Jarlaxle announced, pulling wide his cloak and showing Entreri the tip of the artifact, Crenshinibon, the Crystal Shard, tucked neatly into one pocket. "Never forget that. Without it, I could likely still defeat you, though you are good, my friend-better than any human I have ever known. But with this in my possession… you are but a mere mortal. Joined in Crenshinibon, I can destroy you with but a thought. Never forget that."

Entreri lowered his gaze, digesting the words and the tone, sharpening that image of the uncharacteristic expression on Jarlaxle's always smiling face. Joined in Crenshinibon?… but a mere mortal? What in the Nine Hells did that mean? Never forget that, Jarlaxle had said, and indeed, this was a lesson that Artemis Entreri would not soon dismiss.

When he looked back up again, Entreri saw Jarlaxle wearing his typical expression, that sly, slightly amused look that conferred to all who saw it that this cunning drow knew more than he did, knew more than he possibly could.

Seeing Jarlaxle relaxed again also reminded Entreri of the novelty of these sparring events. The mercenary leader would not spar with any other. Rai-guy was stunned when Jarlaxle had told him that he meant to battle Entreri on a regular basis.

Entreri understood the logic behind that thinking. Jarlaxle survived, in part, by remaining mysterious, even to those around him. No one could ever really get a good look at the mercenary leader. He kept allies and opponents alike off-balance and wondering, always wondering, and yet, here he was, revealing so much to Artemis Entreri.

"Those daggers," Entreri said, coming back at ease and putting on his own sly expression. "They were merely illusions."

"In your mind, perhaps," the dark elf replied in his typically cryptic manner.

"They were," the assassin pressed. "You could not possibly carry so many, nor could any magic create them that quickly."

"As you say," Jarlaxle replied. "Though you heard the clang as your own weapons connected with them and felt the weight as they punctured your cloak."

"I thought I heard the clang," Entreri corrected, wondering if he had at last found a chink in the mercenary's never-ending guessing game.

"Is that not the same thing?" Jarlaxle replied with a laugh, but it seemed to Entreri as if there was a darker side to that chuckle.

Entreri lifted that cloak, to see several of the daggers- solid metal daggers-still sticking in its fabric folds, and to find several more holes in the cloth. "Some were illusions, then," he argued unconvincingly.

Jarlaxle merely shrugged, never willing to give anything away.

With an exasperated sigh, Entreri started out of the room.

"Do keep ever present in your thoughts, my friend, that an illusion can kill you if you believe in it," Jarlaxle called after him.

Entreri paused and glanced back, his expression grim. He wasn't used to being so openly warned or threatened, but he knew that with this one particular companion, the threats were never, ever idle.

"And the real thing can kill you whether you believe in it or not," Entreri replied, and he turned back for the door.

The assassin departed with a shake of his head, frustrated and yet intrigued. That was always the way with Jarlaxle, Entreri mused, and what surprised him even more was that he found that aspect of the clever drow mercenary particularly compelling.

That is the one, Kimmuriel Oblodra signaled to his two companions, Rai-guy and Berg'inyon Baenre, the most recent addition to the surface army of Bregan D'aerthe.

The favored son of the most powerful house in Menzoberranzan, Berg'inyon had grown up with all the drow world open before him-to the level that a drow male in Menzoberranzan could achieve, at least-but his mother, the powerful Matron Baenre, had led a disastrous assault on a dwarven kingdom, ending in her death and throwing all the great drow city into utter chaos. In that time of ultimate confusion and apprehension, Berg'inyon had thrown his hand in with Jarlaxle and the ever elusive mercenary band of Bregan D'aerthe. Among the finest of fighters in all the city, and with familial connections to still-mighty House Baenre, Berg'inyon was welcomed openly and quickly promoted, elevated to the status of high lieutenant. Thus, he was not here now serving Rai-guy and Kimmuriel, but as their peer, taken out on a sort of training mission.

He considered the human Kimmuriel had targeted, a shapely woman posing in the dress of a common street whore.

You have read her thoughts'? Rai-guy signaled back, his fingers weaving an intricate pattern, perfectly complementing the various expressions and contortions of his handsome and angular drow features.

Raker spy, Kimmuriel silently assured his companion. The coordinator of their group. All pass her by, reporting their finds.

Berg'inyon shifted nervously from foot to foot, uncomfortable around the revelations of the strange and strangely powerful Kimmuriel. He hoped that Kimmuriel wasn't reading his thoughts at that moment, for he was wondering how Jarlaxle could ever feel safe with this one about. Kimmuriel could walk into someone's mind, it seemed, as easily as Berg'inyon could walk through an open doorway. He chuckled then but disguised it as a cough, when he considered that clever Jarlaxle likely had that doorway somehow trapped. Berg'inyon decided that he'd have to learn the technique, if there was one, to keep Kimmuriel at bay.

Do we know where the others might be? Berg'inyon's hands silently asked.

Would the show be complete if we did not? came Rat-guy's responding gestures. The wizard smiled widely, and soon all three of the dark elves wore sly, hungry expressions.

Kimmuriel closed his eyes and steadied himself with long, slow breaths.

Rai-guy took the cue, pulling an eyelash encased in a bit of gum arabic out of one of his several belt pouches. He turned to Berg'inyon and began waggling his fingers. The drow warrior flinched reflexively-as most sane people would do when a drow wizard began casting in their direction.

The first spell went off, and Berg'inyon, rendered invisible, faded from view. Rai-guy went right back to work, now aiming a spell designed mentally to grab at the target, to hold the spy fast.

The woman flinched and seemed to hold for a second, but shook out of it and glanced around nervously, now obviously on her guard.

Rai-guy growled and went at the spell again. Invisible Berg'inyon stared at him with an almost mocking smile- yes, there were advantages to being invisible! Rai-guy continually demeaned humans, called them every drow name for offal and carrion. On the one hand, he was obviously surprised that this one had resisted the hold spell-no easy mental task-but on the other, Berg'inyon noted, the blustery wizard had prepared more than one of the spells. One, without any resistance, should have been enough.

This time, the woman took one step, and held fast in her walking pose.

Go! Kimmuriel's fingers waved. Even as he gestured, the powers of his mind opened the doorway between the three drow and the woman. Suddenly she was there, though she was still on the street, but only a couple of strides away. Berg'inyon leaped out and grabbed the woman, tugging her hard into the extra-dimensional space, and Kimmuriel shut the door.

It had happened so fast that to any watching on the street, it would have seemed as if the woman had simply disappeared.

The psionicist raised his delicate black hand up to the victim's forehead, melding with her mentally. He could feel the horror in there, for though her physical body had been locked in Rai-guy's stasis, her mind was working and she knew indeed that she now stood before dark elves.

Kimmuriel took just a moment to bask in that terror, thoroughly enjoying the spectacle. Then he imparted psionic energies to her. He built around her an armor of absorbing kinetic energy, using a technique he had perfected in Entreri's battle with Drizzt Do'Urden.

When it was done, he nodded.

Berg'inyon became visible again almost immediately, as his fine drow sword slashed across the woman's throat, the offensive strike dispelling the defensive magic of Rai-guy's invisibility spell. The drow warrior went into a fast dance, slashing and thrusting with both of his fine swords, stabbing hard, even chopping once with both blades, a heavy drop down onto the woman's head.

But no blood spewed forth, no groans of pain came from the woman, for Kimmuriel's armor accepted each blow, catching and holding the tremendous energy offered by the drow warrior's brutal dance.

It went on and on for several minutes, until Rai-guy warned that the spell of holding was nearing its end. Berg'inyon backed away, and Kimmuriel closed his eyes again as Rai-guy began yet another casting.

Both onlookers, Kimmuriel and Berg'inyon, smiled wickedly as Rai-guy produced a tiny ball of bat guano that held a sulfuric aroma and shoved it, along with his finger into the woman's mouth, releasing his spell. A flash of fiery light appeared in the back of the woman's mouth, disappearing as it slid down her throat.

The sidewalk was there again, very close, as Kimmuriel opened a second dimension portal to the same spot on the street, and Rai-guy roughly shoved the woman back out.

Kimmuriel shut the door, and they watched, amused.

The hold spell released first, and the woman staggered. She tried to call out, but coughed roughly from the burn in her throat. A strange expression came over her, one of absolute horror.

She feels the energy contained in the kinetic barrier, Kimmuriel explained. I hold it no longer-only her own will prevents its release.

How long? a concerned Rai-guy asked, but Kimmuriel only smiled and motioned for them to watch and enjoy.

The woman broke into a run. The three drow noted other people moving about her, some closing cautiously- other spies, likely-and others seeming merely curious. Still others grew alarmed and tried to stay away from her.

All the while, she tried to scream out, but just kept hacking from the continuing burn in her throat. Her eyes were wide, so horrifyingly and satisfyingly wide! She could feel the tremendous energies within her, begging release, and she had no idea how she might accomplish that.

She couldn't hold the kinetic barrier, and her initial realization of the problem transformed from horror into confusion. All of Berg'inyon's terrible beating came out then, so suddenly. All of the slashes and the stabs, the great chop and the twisting heart thrust, burst over the helpless woman. To those watching, it seemed almost as if she simply fell apart, gallons of blood erupting about her face, head, and chest.

She went down almost immediately, but before anyone could even begin to react, could run away or charge to her aid, Rai-guy's last spell, a delayed fireball, went off, immolating the already dead woman and many of those around her.

Outside the blast, wide-eyed stares came at the charred corpse from comrade and ignorant onlooker alike, expressions of the sheerest terror that surely pleased the three merciless dark elves.

A fine display. Worthy indeed.

For Berg'inyon, the spectacle served a second purpose, a clear reminder to him to take care around these fellow lieutenants himself. Even taking into consideration the high drow standards for torture and murder, these two were particularly adept, true masters of the craft.

Chapter 3 A HUMBLING ENCOUNTER

He had his old room back. He even had his name back. The memories of the authorities in Luskan were not as long as they claimed.

The previous year, Morik the Rogue had been accused of attempting to murder the honorable Captain Deudermont of the good ship Sea Sprite, a famous pirate hunter. Since in Luskan accusation and conviction were pretty much the same thing, Morik had faced the prospect of a horrible death in the public spectacle of Prisoner's Carnival. He had actually been in the process of realizing that ultimate torture when Captain Deudermont, horrified by the gruesome scene, had offered a pardon.

Pardoned or not, Morik had been forever banned from Luskan on pain of death. He had returned anyway, of course, the following year. At first he'd taken on an assumed identity, but gradually he had regained his old trappings, his true mannerisms, his connections on the streets, his apartment, and, finally, his name and the reputation it carried. The authorities knew it too, but having plenty of other thugs to torture to death, they didn't seem to care.

Morik could look back on that awful day at Prisoner's Carnival with a sense of humor now. He thought it perfectly ironic that he had been tortured for a crime that he hadn't even committed when there were so many crimes of which he could be rightly convicted.

It was all a memory now, the memory of a whirlwind of intrigue and danger by the name of Wulfgar. He was Morik the Rogue once more, and all was as it had once been… almost.

For now there was another element, an intriguing and also terrifying element, that had come into Morik's life. He walked up to the door of his room cautiously, glancing all about the narrow hallway, studying the shadows. When he was confident that he was alone, he walked up tight to the door, shielding it from any magically prying eyes, and began the process of undoing nearly a dozen deadly traps, top to bottom along both sides of the jamb. That done, he took out a ring of keys and undid the locks-one, two, three-then he clicked open the door. He disarmed yet another trap-this one explosive-then entered, closing and securing the door and resetting all the traps. The complete process took him more than ten minutes, yet he performed this ritual every time he came home. The dark elves had come into Morik's life, unannounced and uninvited. While they had promised him the treasure of a king if he performed their tasks, they had also promised him and had shown him the flip side of that golden coin as well.

Morik checked the small pedestal at the side of the door next. He nodded, satisfied to see that the orb was still in place in the wide vase. The vessel was coated with contact poison and maintained a sensitive pressure release trap. He had paid dearly for that particular orb- an enormous amount of gold that would take him a year of hard thievery to retrieve-but in Morik's fearful eyes, the item was well worth the price. It was enchanted with a powerful anti-magic dweomer that would prevent dimensional doors from opening in his room, that would prevent wizards from strolling in on the other side of a teleportation spell.

Never again did Morik the Rogue wish to be awakened by a dark elf standing at the side of his bed, looming over him.

All of his locks were in place, his orb rested in its protected vessel, and yet some subtle signal, an intangible breeze, a tickling on the hairs at the back of his neck, told Morik that something was out of place. He glanced all around, from shadow to shadow, to the drapes that still hung over the window he had long ago bricked up. He looked to his bed, to the tightly tucked sheets, with no blankets hanging below the edge. Bending just a bit, Morik saw right through the bottom of the bed. There was no one hiding under there.

The drapes, then, he thought, and he moved in that general direction but took a circuitous route so that he wouldn't force any action from the intruder. A sudden shift and quick-step brought him there, dagger revealed, and he pulled the drapes aside and struck hard, catching only air. Morik laughed in relief and at his own paranoia. How different his world had become since the arrival of the dark elves. Always now he was on the edge of his nerves. He had seen the drow a total of only five times, including their initial encounter way back when Wulfgar was new to the city and they, for some reason that Morik still did not completely understand, wanted him to keep an eye on the huge barbarian.

He was always on his edge, always wary, but he reminded himself of the potential gains his alliance with the drow would bring. Part of the reason that he was Morik the Rogue again, from what he had been able to deduce, had to do with a visit to a particular authority by one of Jarlaxle's henchmen.

He gave a sigh of relief and let the drapes swing back, then froze in surprise and fear as a hand clamped over his mouth and the fine edge of a dagger came tight against his throat.

"You have the jewels?" a voice whispered in his ear, a voice showing incredible strength and calm despite its quiet tone. The hand slipped off of his mouth and up to his forehead, forcing his head back just enough to remind him of how vulnerable and open his throat was.

Morik didn't answer, his mind racing through many possibilities-the least likely of which seeming to be his potential escape, for that hand holding him revealed frightening strength and the hand holding the dagger at his throat was too, too steady. Whoever his attacker might be, Morik understood immediately that he was overmatched.

"I ask one more time; then I end my frustration," came the whisper.

"You are not drow," Morik replied, as much to buy some time as to ensure that this man-and he knew that it was a man and certainly no dark elf-would not act rashly.

"Perhaps I am, though under the guise of a wizard's spell," the assailant replied. "But that could not be-or could it? — since no magic will work in this room." As he finished, he roughly pushed Morik away, then grabbed his shoulder to spin the frightened rogue around as he fell back.

Morik didn't recognize the man, though he still understood that he was in imminent danger. He glanced down at his own dagger, and it seemed a pitiful thing indeed against the magnificent, jewel-handled blade his opponent carried-almost a reflection of the relative strengths of their wielders, Morik recognized with a wince.

Morik the Rogue was as good a thief as roamed the streets of Luskan, a city full of thieves. His reputation, though bloated by bluff, had been well-earned across the bowels of the city. This man before him, older than Morik by a decade, perhaps, and standing so calm and so balanced…

This man had gotten into his apartment and had remained there unobserved despite Morik's attempted scrutiny. Morik noted then that the bed sheets were rumpled-but hadn't he just looked at them, to see them perfectly smooth?

"You are not drow," Morik dared to say again.

"Not all of Jarlaxle's agents are dark elves, are they, Morik the Rogue?" the man replied.

Morik nodded and slipped his dagger into its sheath at his belt, a move designed to alleviate the tension, something that Morik desperately wanted to do.

"The jewels?" the man asked.

Morik could not hide the panic from his face.

"You should have purchased them from Telsburgher," the man remarked. "The way was clear and the assignment was not difficult."

"The way would have been clear," Morik corrected, "but for a minor magistrate who holds old grudges."

The intruder continued to stare, showing neither intrigue nor anger, telling Morik nothing at all about whether or not he was even interested in any excuses.

"Telsburgher is ready to sell them to me," Morik quickly added, "at the agreed price. His hesitation is only a matter of his fear that there will be retribution from Magistrate Jharkheld. The evil man holds an old grudge. He knows that I am back in town and wishes to drag me back to his Prisoner's Carnival, but he cannot, by word of his superiors, I am told. Thank Jarlaxle for me."

"You thank Jarlaxle by performing as instructed," the man replied, and Morik nervously shifted from foot to foot. "He helps you to fill his purse, not to fill his heart with good feelings."

Morik nodded. "I fear to go after Jharkheld," he explained. "How high might I strike without incurring the wrath of the greater powers of Luskan, thus ultimately wounding Jarlaxle's purse?"

"Jharkheld is not a concern," the man answered with a tone so assured that Morik found that he believed every word. "Complete the transaction."

"But…" Morik started to reply.

"This night," came the answer, and the man turned away and started for the door.

His hands worked in amazing circles right before Morik's eyes as trap after trap after lock fell open. It had taken Morik several minutes to get through that door, and that with an intricate knowledge of every trap-which he had set- and with the keys for the three supposedly difficult locks, and yet, within the span of two minutes, the door now swung open wide.

The man glanced back and tossed something to the floor at Morik's feet.

A wire.

"The one on your bottom trap had stretched beyond usefulness," the man explained. "I repaired it for you."

He went out then and closed the door, and Morik heard the clicks and sliding panels as all the locks and traps were efficiently reset.

Morik went to his bed cautiously and pulled the bed sheets aside. A hole had been cut into his mattress, perfectly sized to hold the intruder. Morik gave a helpless laugh, his respect for Jarlaxle's band multiplying. He didn't even have to go over to his trapped vase to know that the orb now within it was a fake and that the real one had just walked out his door.

Entreri blinked as he walked out into the late afternoon Luskan sun. He dropped a hand into his pocket, to feel the enchanted device he had just taken from Morik. This small orb had frustrated Rai-guy. It defeated his magic when he'd tried to visit Morik himself, as it was likely doing now. That thought alone pleased Entreri greatly. It had taken Bregan D'aerthe nearly a ten day to discern the source of Morik's sudden distance, how the man had made his room inaccessible to the prying eyes of the wizards. Thus, Entreri had been sent. He held no illusions that his trip had to do with his thieving prowess, but rather, it was simply because the dark elves weren't certain of how resistant Morik might be and simply hadn't wished to risk any of their brethren in the exploration. Certainly Jarlaxle wouldn't have been pleased to learn that Rai-guy and Kimmuriel had forced Entreri to go, but the pair knew that Entreri wouldn't go to Jarlaxle with the information.

So Entreri had played message boy for the two formidable, hated dark elves.

His instructions upon taking the orb and finishing his business with Morik had been explicit and precise. He was to place the orb aside and use the magical signal whistle Rai- guy had given him to call to the dark elves in faraway Calimport, but he wasn't in any hurry.

He knew that he should have killed Morik, both for the man's impertinence in trying to shield himself and for failing to produce the required jewels. Rai-guy and Kimmuriel would demand such punishment, of course. Now he'd have to justify his actions, to protect Morik somewhat.

He knew Luskan fairly well, having been through the city several times, including an extended visit only a few days before, when he, along with several other drow agents, had learned the truth of Morik's magic-blocking device. Wandering the streets, he soon heard the shouts and cheers of the vicious Prisoner's Carnival. He entered the back of the open square just as some poor fool was having his intestines pulled out like a great length of rope. Entreri hardly noticed the spectacle, concentrating instead on the sharp-featured, diminutive, robed figure presiding over the torture.

The man screamed at the writhing victim, telling him to surrender his associates, there and then, before it was too late. "Secure a chance for a more pleasant afterlife!" the magistrate screeched, his voice as sharp as his angry, angular features. "Now! Before you die!"

The man only wailed. It seemed to Entreri as if he was far beyond any point of even comprehending the magistrate's words.

He died soon enough and the show was over. The people began filtering out of the square, most nodding their heads and smiling, speaking excitedly of Jharkheld's fine show this day.

That was all Entreri needed to hear.

He moved shadow to shadow, following the magistrate down the short walk from the back of the square to the tower that housed the quarters of the officials of Prisoner's Carnival as well as the dungeons holding those who would soon face the public tortures.

He mused at his own good fortune in carrying Morik's orb, for it gave him some measure of protection from any wizard hired to further secure the tower. That left only sentries and mechanical traps in his way.

Artemis Entreri feared neither.

He went into the tower as the sun disappeared in the west.

"They have too many allies," Rai-guy insisted.

"They would be gone without a trace," Jarlaxle replied with a wide smile. "Simply gone."

Rai-guy groaned and shook his head, and Kimmuriel, across the room and sitting comfortably in a plush chair, one leg thrown over the cushioning arm, looked up at the ceiling and rolled his eyes.

"You continue to doubt me?" Jarlaxle asked, his tone light and innocent, not threatening. "Consider all that we have already accomplished here in Calimport and across the surface. We have agents in several major cities, including Waterdeep."

"We are exploring agents in other cities," Rai-guy corrected. "We have but one currently working, the little rogue in Luskan." He paused and glanced over at his psionicist counterpart and smiled. "Perhaps."

Kimmuriel chuckled as he considered their second agent now working in Luskan, the one Jarlaxle did not know had left Calimport.

The others are preliminary," Rai-guy went on. "Some are promising, others not so, but none are worthy of the title of agent at this time."

"Soon, then," said Jarlaxle, coming forward in his own comfortable chair. "Soon! They will become profitable partners or we will find others-not so difficult a thing to do among the greedy humans. The situation here in Calimport… look around you. Can you doubt our wisdom in coming here? The gems and jewels are flowing fast, a direct line to a drow population eager to expand their possessions beyond the limited wealth of Menzoberranzan."

"Fortunate are we if the houses of Ched Nasad determine that we are undercutting their economy," Rai-guy, who hailed from that other drow city, remarked sarcastically.

Jarlaxle scoffed at the notion.

"I cannot deny the profitability of Calimport," the wizard lieutenant went on, "yet when we first planned our journey to the surface, we all agreed that it would show immediate and strong returns. As we all agreed it would likely be a short tenure, and that, after the initial profits, we would do well to reconsider our position and perhaps retreat to our own land, leaving only the best of the trading connections and agents in place."

"So we should reconsider, and so I have," said Jarlaxle. "It seems obvious to me that we underestimated the potential of our surface operations. Expand! Expand, I say."

Again came the disheartened expressions. Kimmuriel was still staring at the ceiling, as if in abject denial of what Jarlaxle was proposing.

"The Rakers desire that we limit our trade to this one section," Jarlaxle reminded, "yet many of the craftsmen of the more exotic goods-merchandise that would likely prove most attractive in Menzoberranzan-are outside of that region."

"Then we cut a deal with the Rakers, let them in on the take for this new and profitable market to which they have no access," said Rai-guy, a perfectly reasonable suggestion in light of the history of Bregan D'aerthe, a mercenary and opportunistic band that always tried to use the words "mutually beneficial" as their business credo.

"They are pimples," Jarlaxle replied, extending his thumb and index finger in the air before him and pressing them together as if he was squeezing away an unwanted blemish. "They will simply disappear."

"Not as easy a task as you seem to believe," came a feminine voice from the doorway, and the three glanced over to see Sharlotta Vespers gliding into the room, dressed in a long gown slit high enough to reveal one very shapely leg. "The Rakers pride themselves on spreading their organizational lines far and wide. You could destroy all of their houses and all of their known agents, even all of the people dealing with all of their agents, and still leave many witnesses."

"Who would do what?" Jarlaxle asked, but he was still smiling, even patting his chair for Sharlotta to go over and sit with him, which she did, curling about him familiarly. The sight of it made Rai-guy glance again at Kimmuriel. Both knew that Jarlaxle was bedding the human woman, the most powerful remnant-along with Entreri- of the old Basadoni Guild, and neither of them liked the idea. Sharlotta was a sly one, as humans go, almost sly enough to be accepted among the society of drow. She had even mastered the language of the drow and was now working on the intricate hand signals of the dark elven silent code. Rai-guy found her perfectly repulsive, and Kimmuriel, though seeing her as exotic, did not like the idea of having her whispering dangerous suggestions into Jarlaxle's ear.

In this particular matter, though, it seemed to both of them that Sharlotta was on their side, so they didn't try to interrupt her as they usually did.

"Witnesses who would tell every remaining guild," Sharlotta explained, "and who would inform the greater powers of Calimshan. The destruction of the Rakers Guild would imply that a truly great power had secretly come to Calimport."

"One has," Jarlaxle said with a grin.

"One whose greatest strength lies in remaining secret," Sharlotta replied.

Jarlaxle pushed her from his lap, right off the chair, so that she had to move quickly to get her shapely legs under her in time to prevent falling unceremoniously on her rump.

The mercenary leader then rose as well, pushing right past Sharlotta as if her opinion mattered not at all, and moving closer to his more important lieutenants. "I once envisioned Bregan D'aerthe's role on the surface as that of importer and exporter," he explained. "This we have easily achieved. Now I see the truth of the human dominated societies, and that is a truth of weakness. We can go further- we must go further."

"Conquest?" Rai-guy asked sourly, sarcastically.

"Not as Baenre attempted with Mithral Hall," Jarlaxle eagerly explained. "More a matter of absorption." Again came that wicked smile. "For those who will play."

"And those who will not simply disappear?" Rai-guy asked, but his sarcasm seemed lost on Jarlaxle, who only smiled all the wider.

"Did you not execute a Raker spy only the other day?" Jarlaxle asked.

"There is a profound difference in defending our privacy and trying to expand our borders," the wizard replied.

"Semantics," Jarlaxle said with a laugh. "Simply semantics."

Behind him, Sharlotta Vespers bit her lip and shook her head, fearing that her newfound benefactors might be about to make a tremendous and very dangerous blunder.

From an alley not so far away, Entreri listened to the shouts and confusion coming from the tower. When he had entered, he'd gone downstairs first, to find a particularly unpleasant prisoner to free. Once he had ushered the man to relative safety, to the open tunnels at the back of the dungeons, he had gone upstairs to the first floor, then up again, moving quietly and deliberately along the shadowy, torch-lit corridors.

Finding Jharkheld's room proved easy enough.

The door hadn't even been locked.

Had he not just witnessed the magistrate's work at Prisoner's Carnival, Artemis Entreri might have reasoned with him concerning Morik. Now the way was clear for Morik to complete his task and proffer the jewels.

Entreri wondered if the escaped prisoner, the obvious murderer of poor Jharkheld, had been found in the maze of tunnels yet. What misery the man would face. A wry grin found its way onto Entreri's face, for he hardly felt any guilt about using the wretch for his own gain. The idiot should have known better, after all. Why would someone come in unannounced and at obvious great personal risk to save him? Why hadn't he even questioned Entreri while the assassin was releasing him from the shackles? Why, if he was smart enough to deserve his life, hadn't he tried to capture Entreri in his place, to put this unasked-for and unknown savior up in the shackles in his stead, to face the executioner? So many prisoners came through these dungeons that the gaolers likely wouldn't even have been aware of the change.

So, his fate was the thug's own to accept, and in Entreri's thinking, of his own doing. Of course, the thug would claim that someone else had helped him to escape, had set it all up to make it look like it was his doing. Prisoner's Carnival hardly cared for such excuses. Nor did Artemis Entreri.

He dismissed all thoughts of those problems, glanced around to ensure that he was alone, and placed the magic dispelling orb along the side of the alley. He walked across the way and blew his whistle. He wondered then how this might work. Magic would be needed, after all, to get him back to Calimport, but how might that work if he had to take the orb along? Wouldn't the orb's dweomer simply dispel the attempted teleportation?

A blue screen of light appeared beside him. It was a magical doorway, he knew, and not one of Rai-guy's, but rather the doing of Kimmuriel Oblodra. So that was it, he mused. Perhaps the orb wouldn't work against psionics.

Or perhaps it would, and that thought unsettled the normally unshakable Entreri profoundly as he moved to collect the item. What would happen if the orb somehow did affect Kimmuriel's dimension warp? Might he wind up in the wrong place-even in another plane of existence, perhaps?

Entreri shook that thought away as well. Life was risky when dealing with drow, magical orbs or not. He took care to pocket the orb slyly, so that any prying eyes would have a difficult time making out the movement in the dark alley, then strode quickly up to the portal, and with a single deep breath, stepped through.

He came out dizzy, fighting hard to hold his balance, in the guild hall's private sorcery chambers back in Calimport, hundreds and hundreds of miles away.

There stood Kimmuriel and Rai-guy, staring at him hard.

"The jewels?" Rai-guy asked in the drow language, which Entreri understood, though not well.

"Soon," the assassin replied in his shaky command of Deep Drow. "There was a problem,"

Both dark elves lifted their white eyebrows in surprise.

"Was," Entreri emphasized. "Morik will have the jewels presently."

"Then Morik lives," Kimmuriel remarked pointedly. "What of his attempts to hide from us?"

"More the attempts of local magistrates to seal him off from any outside influences," Entreri lied. "One local magistrate," he quickly corrected, seeing their faces sour. "The issue has been remedied."

Neither drow seemed pleased, but neither openly complained.

"And this local magistrate had magically sealed off Morik's room from outside, prying eyes?" Rai-guy asked.

"And all other magic," Entreri answered. "It has been corrected."

"With the orb?" Kimmuriel added.

"Morik proffered the orb," Rai-guy remarked, narrowing his eyes.

"He apparently did not know what he was buying," Entreri said calmly, not getting alarmed, for he recognized that his ploys had worked.

Rai-guy and Kimmuriel would hold their suspicions that it had been Morik's work, and not that of any minor official, of course. They would suspect that Entreri had bent the truth to suit his own needs, but the assassin knew that he hadn't given them anything overt enough for them to act upon-at least, not without raising the ire of Jarlaxle.

Again, the realization that his security was almost wholly based on the mercenary leader did not sit well with Entreri. He didn't like being dependent, equating the word with weakness.

He had to turn the situation around.

"You have the orb," Rai-guy remarked, holding out his slender, deceivingly delicate hand.

"Better for me than for you," the assassin dared to reply, and that declaration set the two dark elves back on their heels.

Even as he finished speaking, though, Entreri felt the tingling in his pocket. He dropped a hand to the orb, and his sensitive fingers felt a subtle vibration coming from deep within the enchanted item. Entreri's gaze focused on Kimmuriel. The drow was standing with his eyes closed, deep in concentration.

Then he understood. The orb's enchantment would do nothing against any of Kimmuriel's formidable mind powers, and Entreri had seen this psionic trick before. Kimmuriel was reaching into the latent energy within the orb and was exciting that energy to explosive levels.

Entreri toyed with the idea of waiting until the last moment then throwing the orb into Kimmuriel's face. How he would enjoy the sight of that wretched drow caught in one of his own tricks!

With a wave of his hand, Kimmuriel opened a dimensional portal, from the room to the nearly deserted dusty street outside. It was a portal large enough for the orb, but that would not allow Entreri to step through.

Entreri felt the energy building, building… the vibrations were not so subtle any longer. Still he held back, staring at Kimmuriel-just staring and waiting, letting the drow know that he was not afraid.

In truth this was no contest of wills. Entreri had a mounting explosion in his pocket, and Kimmuriel was far enough away so that he would feel little effect from it other than the splattering of Entreri's blood. Again the assassin considered throwing the orb into Kimmuriel's face, but again he realized the futility of such a course.

Kimmuriel would simply stop exciting the latent energy within the orb, would shut off the explosion as completely as dipping a torch into water snuffed out its flame. Entreri would have given Rai-guy and Kimmuriel all the justification they needed to utterly destroy him. Jarlaxle might be angry, but he couldn't and wouldn't deny them their right to defend themselves.

Artemis Entreri wasn't ready for such a fight.

Not yet.

He tossed the orb out through the open door and watched, a split second later, as it exploded into dust.

The magical door went away.

"You play dangerous games," Rai-guy remarked.

"Your drow friend is the one who brought on the explosion," Entreri casually replied.

"I speak not of that," the wizard retorted. "There is a common saying among your people that it is foolhardy to send a child to do a man's work. We have a similar saying, that it is foolhardy to send a human to do a drow's work."

Entreri stared at him hard, having no response. This whole situation was starting to feel like those days when he had been trapped down in Menzoberranzan, when he had known that, in a city of twenty thousand dark elves, no matter how good he got, no matter how perfect his craft, he would never be considered any higher in society's rankings than twenty thousand and one.

Rai-guy and Kimmuriel tossed out a few phrases between themselves, insults mostly, some crude, some subtle, all aimed at Entreri.

He took them, every one, and said nothing, because he could say nothing. He kept thinking of Dallabad Oasis and a particular sword and gauntlet combination.

He accepted their demeaning words, because he had to.

For now.

Chapter 4 MANY ROADS TO MANY PLACES

Entreri stood in the shadows of the doorway, listening with great curiosity to the soliloquy taking place in the room. He could only make out small pieces of the oration. The speaker, Jarlaxle, was talking quickly and excitedly in the drow tongue. Entreri, in addition to his limited Deep Drow vocabulary, couldn't hear every word from this distance.

"They will not stay ahead of us, because we move too quickly," the mercenary leader remarked. Entreri heard and was able to translate every word of that line, for it seemed as if Jarlaxle was cheering someone on. "Yes, street by street they will fall. Who can stand against us joined?"

"Us joined?" the assassin silently echoed, repeating the drow word over and over to make sure that he was translating it properly. Us? Jarlaxle could not be speaking of his alliance with Entreri, or even with the remnants of the Basadoni Guild. Compared to the strength of Bregan D'aerthe, these were minor additions. Had Jarlaxle made some new deal, then, without Entreri's knowledge? A deal with some pasha, perhaps, or an even greater power?

The assassin bent in closer, listening particularly for any names of demons or devils-or of illithids, perhaps. He shuddered at the thought of any of the three. Demons were too unpredictable and too savage to serve any alliance. They would do whatever served their specific needs at any particular moment, without regard for the greater benefit to the alliance. Devils were more predictable- were too predictable. In their hierarchical view of the world, they inevitably sat on top of the pile.

Still, compared to the third notion that had come to him, that of the illithids, Entreri was almost hoping to hear Jarlaxle utter the name of a mighty demon. Entreri had been forced to deal with illithids during his stay in Menzoberranzan-the mind flayers were an unavoidable side of life in the drow city-and he had no desire to ever, ever, see one of the squishy-headed, wretched creatures again.

He listened a bit longer, and Jarlaxle seemed to calm down and to settle more comfortably into his seat. The mercenary leader was still talking, just muttering to himself about the impending downfall of the Rakers, when Entreri strode into the room.

"Alone?" the assassin asked innocently. "I thought I heard voices."

He noted with some relief that Jarlaxle wasn't wearing his magical, protective eye patch this day, which made it unlikely that the drow had just encountered, or soon planned to encounter, any illithids. The eye patch protected against mind magic, and none in all the world were more proficient at such things as the dreaded mind flayers.

"Sorting things out," Jarlaxle explained, and his ease with the common tongue of the surface world seemed no less fluent than that of his native language. "There is so much afoot."

"Danger, mostly," Entreri replied.

"For some," said Jarlaxle with a chuckle.

Entreri looked at him doubtfully.

"Surely you do not believe that the Rakers can match our power?" the mercenary leader asked incredulously.

"Not in open battle," Entreri answered, "but that is how it has been with them for many years. They cannot match many, blade to blade, and yet they have ever found a way to survive."

"Because they are fortunate."

"Because they are intricately tied to greater powers," Entreri corrected. "A man need not be physically powerful if he is guarded by a giant."

"Unless the giant has more tightly befriended a rival," Jarlaxle interjected. "And giants are known to be unreliable."

"You have arranged this with the greater lords of Calimport?" Entreri asked, unconvinced. "With whom, and why was I not involved in such a negotiation?"

Jarlaxle shrugged, offering not a clue.

"Impossible," Entreri decided. "Even if you threatened one or more of them, the Rakers are too long-standing, too entrenched in the power web of all Calimshan, for such treachery against them to prosper. They have allies to protect them against other allies. There is no way that even Jarlaxle and Bregan D'aerthe could have cleared the opposition to such a sudden and destabilizing shift in the power structure of the region as the decimation of the Rakers."

"Perhaps I have allied with the most powerful being ever to come to Calimport," Jarlaxle said dramatically, and typically, cryptically.

Entreri narrowed his dark eyes and stared at the outrageous drow, looking for clues, any clues, as to what this uncharacteristic behavior might herald. Jarlaxle was often cryptic, always mysterious, and ever ready to grab at an opportunity that would bring him greater power or profits, and yet, something seemed out of place here. To Entreri's thinking, the impending assault on the Rakers was a blunder, which was something the legendary Jarlaxle never did. It seemed obvious, then, that the cunning drow had indeed made some powerful connection or ally, or was possessed of some deeper understanding of the situation. This Entreri doubted since he, not Jarlaxle, was the best connected person on Calimport's streets.

Even given one of those possibilities, though, something just didn't seem quite right to Entreri. Jarlaxle was cocky and arrogant-of course he was! — but never before had he seemed this self-assured, especially in a situation as potentially explosive as this.

The situation seemed only more explosive if Entreri looked beyond the inevitability of the downfall of the Rakers. He knew well the murderous power of the dark elves and held no doubt that Bregan D'aerthe would slaughter the competing guild, but there were so many implications to that victory-too many, certainly, for Jarlaxle to be so comfortable.

"Has your role in this been determined?" Jarlaxle asked.

"No role," Entreri answered, and his tone left no doubt that he was pleased by that fact. "Rai-guy and Kimmuriel have all but cast me aside."

Jarlaxle laughed aloud, for the truth behind that statement-that Entreri had been willingly cast aside- was all too obvious.

Entreri stared at him and didn't crack a smile. Jarlaxle had to know the dangers he had just walked into, a potentially catastrophic situation that could send him and Bregan D'aerthe fleeing back to the dark hole of Menzoberranzan. Perhaps that was it, the assassin mused. Perhaps Jarlaxle longed for home and was slyly facilitating the move. The mere thought of that made Entreri wince. Better that Jarlaxle kill him outright than drag him back there.

Perhaps Entreri would be set up as an agent, as was Morik in Luskan. No, the assassin decided, that would not suffice. Calimport was more dangerous than Luskan, and if the power of Bregan D'aerthe was forced away, he would not take such a risk. Too many powerful enemies would be left behind.

"It will begin soon, if it has not already," Jarlaxle remarked. "Thus, it will be over soon."

Sooner than you believe, Entreri thought, but he kept silent. He was a man who survived through careful calculation, by weighing scrupulously the consequences of every step and every word. He knew Jarlaxle to be a kindred spirit, but he could not reconcile that with the action that was being undertaken this very night, which, in searching it from any angle, seemed a tremendous and unnecessary gamble.

What did Jarlaxle know that he did not?

No one ever looked more out of place anywhere than did Sharlotta Vespers as she descended the rung ladder into one of Calimport's sewers. She was wearing her trademark long gown, her hair neatly coiffed as always, her exotic face painted delicately to emphasize her brown, almond-shaped eyes. Still, she was quite at home there, and anyone who knew her would not have been surprised to find her there.

Especially if they considered her warlord escorts.

"What word from above?" Rai-guy asked her, speaking quickly and in the drow tongue. The wizard, despite his misgivings about Sharlotta, was impressed by how quickly she had absorbed the language.

"There is tension," Sharlotta replied. "The doors of many guilds are locked fast this night. Even the Copper Ante is accepting no patrons-an unprecedented event. The streets know that something is afoot."

Rai-guy flashed a sour look at Kimmuriel. The two had just agreed that their plans depended mostly on stealth and surprise, that all of the elements of the Basadoni Guild and Bregan D'aerthe would have to reach their objectives nearly simultaneously to ensure that few witnesses remained.

How much this seemed like Menzoberranzan! In the drow city, one house going after another-a not-uncommon event- would measure success not only by the result of the actual fighting, but by the lack of credible witnesses left to produce evidence of the treachery. Even if every drow in the great city knew without doubt which house had precipitated the battle, no action would ever be taken unless the evidence demanding it was overwhelming.

But this was not Menzoberranzan, Rai-guy reminded himself. Up here, suspicion would invite investigation. In the drow city, suspicion without undeniable evidence only invited quiet praise.

"Our warriors are in place," Kimmuriel remarked. "The drow are beneath the guild houses, with force enough to batter through, and the Basadoni soldiers have surrounded the main three buildings. It will be swift, for they cannot anticipate the attack from below."

Rai-guy kept his gaze upon Sharlotta as his associate detailed the situation, and he did not miss a slight arch of one of her eyebrows. Had Bregan D'aerthe been betrayed? Were the Rakers setting up defenses against the assault from below?

"The agents have been isolated?" the drow wizard pressed to Sharlotta, referring to the first round of the invasion: the fight with-or rather, the assassinations of- Raker spies in the streets.

"The agents are not to be found," Sharlotta replied matter-of-factly, a surprising tone given the enormity of the implications.

Again Rai-guy glanced at Kimmuriel.

"All is in place," the psionicist reminded.

"Keego's swarm cramps the tunnels," Rai-guy replied, his words an archaic drow proverb referring to a long-ago battle in which an overwhelming swarm of goblins led by the crafty, rebellious slave, Keego, had been utterly destroyed by a small and sparsely populated city of dark elves. The drow had gone out from their homes to catch the larger force in the tight tunnels beyond the relatively open drow city. Simply translated, given the current situation, Rai-guy's words followed up Kimmuriel's remark. All was in place to fight the wrong battle.

Sharlotta looked at the wizard curiously, and he understood her confusion, for the soldiers of Bregan D'aerthe waiting in the tunnels beneath the Rakers' houses hardly constituted a "swarm."

Of course, Rai-guy hardly cared whether Sharlotta understood or not.

"Have we traced the course of the missing agents?" Rai- guy asked Sharlotta. "Do we know where they have fled?"

"Back to the houses, likely," the woman replied. "Few are on the streets this night."

Again, the less-than-subtle hint that too much had been revealed. Had Sharlotta herself betrayed them? Rai-guy fought the urge to interrogate her on the spot, using drow torture techniques that would quickly and efficiently break down any human. If he did so, he knew, he would have to answer to Jarlaxle, and Rai-guy was not ready for that fight… yet.

If he called it all off at that critical moment-if all the fighters, Basadoni and dark elf, returned to the guild house with their weapons unstained by Raker blood- Jarlaxle would not be pleased. The drow was determined to see this conquest through despite the protests of all of his lieutenants.

Rai-guy closed his eyes and logically sifted through the situation, trying to find some safer common ground. There was one Raker house far removed from the others, and likely only lightly manned. While destroying it would do little to weaken the structure and effectiveness of the opposition guild, perhaps such a conquest would quiet Jarlaxle's expected rampage.

"Recall the Basadoni soldiers," the wizard ordered. "Have their retreat be a visible one-instruct some to enter the Copper Ante or other establishments."

"The Copper Ante's doors are closed," Sharlotta reminded him.

"Then open them," Rai-guy instructed. "Tell Dwahvel Tiggerwillies that there is no need for her and her diminutive clan to cower this night. Let our soldiers be seen about the streets-not as a unified fighting force, but in smaller groups."

"What of Bregan D'aerthe?" Kimmuriel asked with some concern. Not as much concern, Rai-guy noted, as he would have expected, given that he had just countermanded Jarlaxle's explicit orders.

"Reposition Berg'inyon and all of our magic-users to the eighth position," Rai-guy replied, referring to the sewer hold beneath the exposed Raker house.

Kimmuriel arched his white eyebrows at that. They knew the maximum resistance they could expect from that lone outpost, and it hardly seemed as if Berg'inyon and more magic-users would be needed to win out easily in that locale.

"It must be executed as completely and carefully as if we were attacking House Baenre itself," Rai-guy demanded, and Kimmuriel's eyebrows went even higher. "Redefine the plans and reposition all necessary drow forces to execute the attack."

"We could summon our kobold slaves alone to finish this task," Kimmuriel replied derisively.

"No kobolds and no humans," Rai-guy explained, emphasizing every word. "This is work for drow alone."

Kimmuriel seemed to catch on to Rai-guy's thinking then, for a wry smile showed on his face. He glanced at Sharlotta, nodded back at Rai-guy, and closed his eyes. He used his psionic energies to reach out to Berg'inyon and the other Bregan D'aerthe field commanders.

Rai-guy let his gaze settle fully on Sharlotta. To her credit, her expression and posture did not reveal her thoughts. Still, Rai-guy felt certain she was wondering if he had come to suspect her or some other Raker informant.

"You said that our power would prove overwhelming," Sharlotta remarked.

"For today's battle, perhaps," Rai-guy replied. "The wise thief does not steal the egg if his action will awaken the dragon."

Sharlotta continued to stare at him, continued to wonder, he knew. He enjoyed the realization that this too- clever human woman, guilty or not, was suddenly worried. She turned for the ladder again and took a step up.

"Where are you going?" Rai-guy asked.

"To recall the Basadoni soldiers," she replied, as if the explanation should have been obvious.

Rai-guy shook his head and motioned for her to step down. "Kimmuriel will relay the commands," he said.

Sharlotta hesitated-Rai-guy enjoyed the moment of confusion and concern-but she did step back down to the tunnel floor.

Berg'inyon could not believe the change in plans-what was the point of this entire offensive if the bulk of the Rakers' Guild escaped the onslaught? He had grown up in

Menzoberranzan, and in that matriarchal society, males learned how to take orders without question. So it was now for Berg'inyon.

He had been trained in the finest battle tactics of the greatest house of Menzoberranzan and had at his disposal a seemingly overwhelming force for the task at hand, the destruction of a small, exposed Raker house-an outpost sitting on unfriendly streets. Despite his trepidation at the change in plans, his private questioning of the purpose of this mission, Berg'inyon Baenre wore an eager smile.

The scouts, the stealthiest of the stealthy drow, returned. Only minutes before, they had been inserted into the house above through wizard-made tunnels.

Drow fingers flashed, the silent hand gesture code.

While Berg'inyon's confidence mounted, so did his confusion over why this target alone had been selected. There were only a score of humans in the small house above, and none of them seemed to be magic-users. According to the drow scouts' assessment they were street thugs-men who survived by keeping to favorable shadows.

Under the keen eyes of a dark elf, there were no favorable shadows.

While Berg'inyon and his army had a strong idea of what they would encounter in the house above them, the humans could not understand the monumental doom that lay below them.

You have outlined to the group commanders all routes of retreat? Berg'inyon's fingers and facial gestures asked. He made it clear from the fact that he signaled retreat with his left hand that he was referring to any possible avenues their enemies might take to run away.

The wizards are positioned accordingly, one scout silently replied.

The lead hunters have been given their courses, another added.

Berg'inyon nodded, flashed the signal for commencing the operation, then moved to join his assault group. His would be the last group to enter the building, but they were the ones who would cut the fastest path to the very top.

There were two wizards in Berg'inyon's group. One stood with his eyes closed, ready to convey the signal. The other positioned himself accordingly, his eyes and hands pointed up at the ceiling, a pinch of seeds from the Under-dark selussi fungus in one hand.

It is time, came a magical whisper, one that seeped through the walls and to the ears of all the drow.

The magic-user eyeing the ceiling began his spell- casting, weaving his hands as if tracing joining semicircles with each, thumbs touching, little fingers touching, back and forth, back and forth, chanting quietly all the while.

He finished with a chant that sounded more like a hiss, and reached his outstretched fingers to the ceiling.

That part of the stone ceiling began to ripple, as if the wizard had stabbed his fingers into clear water. The wizard held the pose for many seconds. The rippling increased until the stone became an indistinct blur.

The stone above the wizard disappeared-was just gone. In its place was an upward reaching corridor that cut through several feet of stone to end at the ground floor of the Raker house.

One unfortunate Raker had been caught by surprise, his heels right over the edge of the suddenly appearing hole. His arms worked great circles as he tried to maintain his balance. The drow warriors shifted into position under the hole and leaped. Enacting their innate drow levitation abilities, they floated up, up.

The first dark elf floating up beside the falling Raker grabbed him by the collar and yanked him backward, tumbling him into the hole. The human managed to land in a controlled manner, feet first, then buckling his legs and tumbling to the side to absorb the shock. He came up with equal grace, drawing a dagger.

His face blanched when he saw the truth about him: dark elves-drow! — were floating up into his guild house. Another drow, handsome and strong, holding the finest-edged blade the Raker could ever have imagined, faced him.

Maybe he tried to reason with the dark elf, offering his surrender, but while his mouth worked in a logical, hide- saving manner, his body, paralyzed by stark terror, did not. He still held his knife out before him as he spoke, and since Berg'inyon did not understand well the language of the surface dwellers, he had no way of understanding the Raker's intent.

Nor was the drow about to pause to figure it out. His fine sword stabbed forward and slashed down, taking the dagger and the hand that held it. A quick retraction re- gathered his balance and power, and out went the sword again. Straight and sure, it tore through flesh and sliced rib, biting hard at the foolish man's heart.

The man fell, quite dead, and still wearing that curious, stunned expression.

Berg'inyon didn't pause long enough to wipe his blade. He crouched, sprang straight up, and levitated fast into the house. His encounter had delayed him no more than a span of a few heartbeats, and yet, the floor of the room and the corridor beyond the open door was already littered with human corpses.

Berg'inyon's team exited the room soon after, before the wizard's initial passwall spell had even expired. Not a drow had been more than slightly injured and not a human remained alive. The Raker house held no treasure when they were done- not even the few coins several of the guildsmen had secretly tucked under loose floorboards-and even the furniture was gone. Magical fires had consumed every foot of flooring and all of the partitioning walls. From the outside, the house seemed quiet and secure. Inside, it was no more than a charred and empty husk.

Bregan D'aerthe had spoken.

"I accept no accolades," Berg'inyon Baenre remarked when he met up with Rai-guy, Kimmuriel, and Sharlotta. It was a common drow saying, with clear implications that the vanquished opponent was not worthy enough for the victor to take any pride in having defeated him.

Kimmuriel gave a wry smile. "The house was effectively purged," he said. "None escaped. You performed as was required. There is no glory in that, but there is acceptance."

As he had done all day, Rai-guy continued his scrutiny of Sharlotta Vespers. Was the human woman even comprehending the sincerity of Kimmuriel's words, and if so, did that allow her any insight into the true power that had come to Calimport? For any guild to so completely annihilate one of another's houses was no small feat- unless the attacking guild happened to be comprised of drow warriors who understood the complexities of inter-house warfare better than any race in all the world. Did Sharlotta recognize this? And if she did, would she be foolish enough to try to use it to her advantage?

Her expression now was mostly stone-faced, but with just a trace of intrigue, a hint to Rai-guy that the answer would be yes, to both questions. The drow wizard smiled at that, a confirmation that Sharlotta Vespers was walking onto very dangerous ground. Quiensin ful biezz coppon quangolth cree, a drow, went the old saying in Menzoberranzan, and elsewhere in the drow world. Doomed are those who believe they understand the designs of the drow.

"What did Jarlaxle learn to change his course so?" Berg'inyon asked.

"Jarlaxle has learned nothing of yet," Rai-guy replied. "He chose to remain behind. The operation was mine to wage."

Berg'inyon started to redirect his question to Rai-guy then, but he stopped in midsentence and merely offered a bow to the appointed leader.

"Perhaps later you will explain to me the source of your decision, that I will better understand our enemies," he said respectfully.

Rai-guy gave a slight nod.

There is the matter of explaining to Jarlaxle," Sharlotta remarked, in her surprising command of the drow tongue. "He will not accept your course with a mere bow."

Rai-guy's gaze darted over at Berg'inyon as she finished, quickly enough to catch the moment of anger flash through his red-glowing eyes. Sharlotta's observations were correct, of course, but coming from a non-drow, an iblith- which was also the drow word for excrement- they intrinsically cast an insulting reflection upon Berg'inyon, who had so accepted the offered explanation. It was a minor mistake, but a few more quips like that against the young Baenre, Rai-guy knew, and there would remain too little of Sharlotta Vespers for anyone ever to make a proper identification of the pieces.

"We must tell Jarlaxle," the drow wizard put in, moving the conversation forward. "To us out here, the course change was obviously required, but he has secluded himself, too much so perhaps, to view things that way."

Kimmuriel and Berg'inyon both looked at him curiously- why would he speak so plainly in front of Sharlotta, after all? — but Rai-guy gave them a quick and quiet signal to follow along.

"We could implicate Domo and the wererats," Kimmuriel put in, obviously catching on. "Though I fear that we will then have to waste our time in slaughtering them." He looked to Sharlotta. "Much of this will fall to you."

"The Basadoni soldiers were the first to leave the fight," Rai-guy added. "And they will be the ones to return without blood on their blades." Now all three gazes fell upon Sharlotta.

The woman held her outward calm quite well. "Domo and the wererats, then," she agreed, thinking things through, obviously, as she went. "We will implicate them without faulting them. Yes, that is the way. Perhaps they did not know of our plans and coincidentally hired on with Pasha Da'Daclan to guard the sewers. As we did not wish to reveal ourselves fully to the coward Domo, we held to the unguarded regions, mostly around the eighth position."

The three drow exchanged looks, and nodded for her to continue.

"Yes," Sharlotta went on, gathering momentum and confidence. "I can turn this into an advantage with Pasha Da'Daclan as well. He felt the press of impending doom, no doubt, and that fear will only heighten when word of the utterly destroyed outer house reaches him. Perhaps he will come to believe that Domo is much more powerful than any of us believed, and that he was in league with the Basadonis, and that only House Basadoni's former dealings with the Rakers cut short the assault."

"But will that not implicate House Basadoni clearly in the one executed attack?" asked Kimmuriel, playing the role of Rai-guy's mouthpiece, drawing Sharlotta in even deeper. "Not that we played a role, but only that we allowed it to happen," Sharlotta reasoned. "A turn of our heads in response to their increased spying efforts against our guild. Yes, and if this is conveyed properly, it will only serve to make Domo seem even more powerful. If we make the Rakers believe that they were on the edge of complete disaster, they will behave more reasonably, and Jarlaxle will find his victory." She smiled as she finished, and the three dark elves returned the look.

"Begin," Rai-guy offered, waving his hand toward the ladder leading out of their sewer quarters.

Sharlotta smiled again, the ignorant fool, and left them.

"Her deception against Pasha Da'Daclan will necessarily extend, to some level, to Jarlaxle," Kimmuriel remarked, clearly envisioning the web Sharlotta was foolishly weaving about herself.

"You have come to fear that something is not right with Jarlaxle," Berg'inyon bluntly remarked, for it was obvious that these two would not normally act so independently of their leader.

"His views have changed," Kimmuriel responded. "You did not wish to come to the surface," Berg'inyon said with a wry smile that seemed to question the motives of his companions' reasoning.

"No, and glad will we be to see the heat of Narbondel again," Rai-guy agreed, speaking of the great glowing clock of Menzoberranzan, a pillar that revealed its measurements with heat to the dark elves, who viewed the Underdark world in the infrared spectrum of light. "You have not been up here long enough to appreciate the ridiculousness of this place. Your heart will call you home soon enough."

"Already," Berg'inyon replied. "I have no taste for this world, nor do I like the sight or smell of any I have seen up here, Sharlotta Vespers least of all."

"Her and the fool Entreri," said Rai-guy. "Yet Jarlaxle favors them both."

"His tenure in Bregan D'aerthe may be nearing its end," said Kimmuriel, and both Berg'inyon and Rai-guy opened their eyes wide at such a bold proclamation.

In truth, though, both were harboring the exact same sentiments. Jarlaxle had reached far in merely bringing them to the surface. Perhaps he'd reached too far for the rogue band to continue to hold much favor among their former associates, including most of the great houses back in Menzoberranzan. It was a gamble, and one that might indeed pay off, especially as the flow of exotic and desirable goods increased to the city.

The plan, however, had been for a short stay, only long enough to establish a few agents to properly facilitate the flow of trade. Jarlaxle had stepped in more deeply then, conquering House Basadoni and renewing his ties with the dangerous Entreri. Then, seemingly for his own amusement, Jarlaxle had gone after the most hated rogue, Drizzt Do'Urden. After completing his business with the outcast and stealing the mighty artifact Crenshinibon, he had let Drizzt walk away, had even forced Rai-guy to use a Lolth-bestowed spell of healing to save the miserable renegade's life.

And now this, a more overt grab for not profit but power, and in a place where none of Bregan D'aerthe other than Jarlaxle wished to remain.

Jarlaxle had taken small steps along this course, but he had put a long and winding road behind him. He brought all of Bregan D'aerthe further and further from their continuing mission, from the allure that had brought most of the members, Rai-guy, Kimmuriel, and Berg'inyon among them, into the organization in the first place.

"What of Sharlotta Vespers?" Kimmuriel asked.

"Jarlaxle will eliminate that problem for us," Rai-guy replied.

"Jarlaxle favors her," Berg'inyon reminded.

"She just entered into a deception against him," Rai-guy replied with all confidence. "We know this, and she knows that we know, though she has not yet considered

the potentially devastating implications. She will follow our commands from this point forward."

The drow wizard smiled as he considered his own words. He always enjoyed seeing an iblith fall into the web of drow society, learning piece by piece that the sticky strands were layered many levels deep.

"I know of your hunger, for I share in it," Jarlaxle remarked. "This is not as I had envisioned, but perhaps it was not yet time."

Perhaps you place too much faith in your lieutenants, the voice in his head replied.

"No, they saw something that we, in our hunger, did not," Jarlaxle reasoned. "They are troublesome, often annoying, and not to be trusted when their personal gain is at odds with their given mission, but that was not the case here. I must examine this more carefully. Perhaps there are better avenues toward our desired goal."

The voice started to respond, but the drow mercenary cut short the dialogue, shutting it out.

The abruptness of that dismissal reminded Crenshinibon that its respect for the dark elf was well-placed. This Jarlaxle was as strong of will and as difficult to beguile as any wielder the ancient sentient artifact had ever known, even counting the great demon lords who had often joined with Crenshinibon through the centuries.

In truth, the only wielder the artifact had ever known who could so readily and completely shut out its call had been the immediate predecessor to Jarlaxle, another drow, Drizzt Do'Urden. That one's mental barrier had been constructed of morals. Crenshinibon would have been no better off in the hands of a goodly priest or a paladin, fools all and blind to the need to attain the greatest levels of power.

All that only made Jarlaxle's continued resistance even more impressive, for the artifact understood that this one held no such conscience-based mores. There was no intrinsic understanding within Jarlaxle that Crenshinibon was some evil creation and thus to be avoided out of hand. No, to Crenshinibon's reasoning, Jarlaxle viewed everyone and everything he encountered as tools, as vehicles to carry him along his desired road.

The artifact could build forks along that road, and perhaps even sharper turns as Jarlaxle wandered farther and farther from the path, but there would be no abrupt change in direction at this time.

Crenshinibon, the Crystal Shard, did not even consider seeking a new wielder, as it had often done when confronting obstacles in the past. While it sensed resistance in Jarlaxle, that resistance did not implicate danger or even inactivity. To the sentient artifact, Jarlaxle was powerful and intriguing, and full of the promise of the greatest levels of power Crenshinibon had ever known.

The fact that this drow was not a simple instrument of chaos and destruction, as were so many of the demon lords, or an easily duped human-perhaps the most redundant thought the artifact had ever considered-only made him more interesting.

They had a long way to go together, Crenshinibon believed.

The artifact would find its greatest level of power. The world would suffer greatly.

Chapter 5 THE FIRST THREADS ON A GRAND TAPESTRY

Others have tried, and some have even come close," said Dwahvel Tiggerwillies, the halfling entrepreneur and leader of the only real halfling guild in all the city, a collection of pickpockets and informants who regularly congregated at Dwahvel's Copper Ante. "Some have even supposedly gotten their hands on the cursed thing."

"Cursed?" Entreri asked, resting back comfortably in his chair-a pose Artemis Entreri rarely assumed.

So unusual was the posture, that it jogged Entreri's own thoughts about this place. It was no accident that this was the only room in all the city in which Artemis Entreri had ever partaken of liquor-and even that only in moderate amounts. He had been coming here often of late-ever since he had killed his former associate, the pitiful Dondon Tiggerwillies, in the room next door. Dwahvel was Dondon's cousin, and she knew of the murder but knew, too, that Entreri had, in some respects, done the wretch a favor. Whatever ill will Dwahvel harbored over that incident couldn't hold anyway, not when her pragmatism surfaced.

Entreri knew that and knew that he was welcomed here by Dwahvel and all of her associates. Also, he knew that the Copper Ante was likely the most secure house in all of the city. No, its defenses were not formidable- Jarlaxle could flatten the place with a small fraction of the power he had brought to Calimport-but its safeguards against prying eyes were as fine as those of a wizards' guild. That was the area, as opposed to physical defenses, where Dwahvel utilized most of her resources. Also, the Copper Ante was known as a place to purchase information, so others had a reason to keep it secure. In many ways, Dwahvel and her comrades survived as Sha'lazzi Ozoule survived, by proving of use to all potential enemies.

Entreri didn't like the comparison. Sha'lazzi was a street profiteer, loyal to no one other than Sha'lazzi. He was no more than a middleman, collecting information with his purse and not his wits, and auctioning it away to the highest bidder. He did no work other than that of salesman, and in that regard, the man was very good. He was not a contributor, just a leech, and Entreri suspected that Sha'lazzi would one day be found murdered in an alley, and that no one would care.

Dwahvel Tiggerwillies might find a similar fate, Entreri realized, but if she did, her murderer would find many out to avenge her.

Perhaps Artemis Entreri would be among them.

"Cursed," Dwahvel decided after some consideration.

"To those who feel its bite."

"To those who feel it at all," Dwahvel insisted.

Entreri shifted to the side and tilted his head, studying his surprising little friend.

"Kohrin Soulez is trapped by his possession of it," Dwahvel explained. "He builds a fortress about himself because he knows the value of the sword."

"He has many treasures," Entreri reasoned, but he knew that Dwahvel was right on this matter, at least as far as Kohrin Soulez was concerned.

"That one treasure alone invites the ire of wizards," Dwahvel predictably responded, "and the ire of those who rely upon wizards for their security."

Entreri nodded, not disagreeing, but neither was he persuaded by Dwahvel's arguments. Charon's Claw might indeed be a curse for Kohrin Soulez, but if that was so it was because Soulez had entrenched himself in a place where such a weapon would be seen as a constant lure and a constant threat. Once he got his hands on the powerful sword, Artemis Entreri had no intention of staying anywhere near to Calimport. Soulez's chains would be his escape.

"The sword is an old artifact," Dwahvel remarked, drawing Entreri's attention more fully. "Everyone who has ever claimed it has died with it in his hands."

She thought her warning dramatic, no doubt, but the words had little effect on Entreri. "Everyone dies, Dwahvel," the assassin replied without hesitation, his response fueled by the living hell that had come to him in Calimport. "It is how one lives that matters."

Dwahvel looked at him curiously, and Entreri wondered if he had, perhaps, revealed too much, or tempted Dwahvel too much to go and learn even more about the reality of the power backing Entreri and the Basadoni Guild. If the cunning halfling ever learned too much of the truth, and Jarlaxle or his lieutenants learned of her knowledge, then none of her magical wards, none of her associates-even Artemis Entreri- and none of her perceived usefulness would save her from Jarlaxle's merciless soldiers. The Copper Ante would be gutted, and Entreri would find himself without a place in which to relax.

Dwahvel continued to stare at him, her expression a mixture of professional curiosity and personal-what was it? — compassion?

"What is it that so unhinges Artemis Entreri?" she started to ask, but even as the words came forth, so too came the assassin, his jeweled dagger flashing out of his belt as he leaped out of the chair and across the expanse, too quickly for Dwahvel's guards to even register the movement, too quickly for Dwahvel to even realize what was happening.

He was simply there, hovering over her, her hairy head pulled back, his dagger just nicking her throat.

But she felt it-how she felt the bite of that vicious, life-stealing dagger. Entreri had opened a tiny wound, yet through it Dwahvel could feel her very life-force being torn out of her body.

"If such a question as that ever echoes outside of these walls," the assassin promised, his breath hot on her face, "you will regret that I did not finish this strike."

He backed away then, and Dwahvel quickly threw up one hand, fingers flapping back and forth, the signal to her crossbowmen to hold their shots. With her other hand, she rubbed her neck, pinching at the tiny wound.

"You are certain that Kohrin Soulez still has it?" Entreri asked, more to change the subject and put things back on a professional level than to gather any real information.

"He had it, and he is still alive," the obviously shaken Dwahvel answered. "That seems proof enough."

Entreri nodded and assumed his previous posture, though the relaxed position did not fit the dangerous light that now shone in his eyes.

"You still wish to leave the city by secure routes?" Dwahvel asked.

Entreri gave a slight nod.

"We will need to utilize Domo and the were-" the halfling guildmaster started to say, but Entreri cut her short.

"No."

"He has the fastest-"

"No."

Dwahvel started to argue yet again. Fulfilling Entreri's request that she get him out of Calimport without anyone knowing it would prove no easy feat, even with Dome's help. Entreri was publicly and intricately tied to the Basadoni Guild, and that guild had drawn the watchful eyes of every power in Calimport. She stopped short, and this time Entreri hadn't interrupted her with a word but rather with a look, that all-too-dangerous look that Artemis Entreri had perfected decades before. It was the look that told his target that the time was fast approaching for final prayers.

"It will take some more time, then," Dwahvel remarked. "Not long, I assure you. An hour perhaps."

"No one is to know of this other than Dwahvel," Entreri instructed quietly, so that the crossbowmen in the shadows of the room's corners couldn't hear. "Not even your most trusted lieutenants."

The halfling blew a long, resigned sigh. "Two hours, then," she said.

Entreri watched her go. He knew that she couldn't possibly accede to his wishes to get him out of Calimport without anyone at all knowing of the journey-the streets were too well monitored-but it was a strong reminder to the halfling guildmaster that if anyone started talking about it too openly, Entreri would hold her personally responsible.

The assassin chuckled at the thought, for he couldn't imagine himself killing Dwahvel. He liked and respected the halfling, both for her courage and her skills.

He did need this departure to remain secret, though. If some of the others, particularly Rai-guy or Kimmuriel, found out that he had gone out, they would investigate and soon, no doubt, discern his destination. He didn't want the two dangerous drow studying Kohrin Soulez.

Dwahvel returned soon after, well within the two hours she had pessimistically predicted, and handed Entreri a rough map of this section of the city, with a route sketched on it.

"There will be someone waiting for you at the end of Crescent Avenue," she explained. "Right before the bakery."

"Detailing the second stretch your halflings have determined to be clear for travel," the assassin reasoned.

Dwahvel nodded. "My kin and other associates."

"And, of course, they will watch the movements as each map is collected," Entreri indicated.

Dwahvel shrugged. "You are a master of disguises, are you not?"

Entreri didn't answer. He set out immediately, exiting the Copper Ante and turning down a dark ally, emerging on the other side looking as though he had gained fifty pounds and walking with a pronounced limp.

He was out of Calimport within the hour, running along the northwestern road. By dawn, he was on a dune, looking down upon the Dallabad Oasis. He considered Kohrin Soulez long and hard, recalling everything he knew about the old man.

"Old," he said aloud with a sigh, for in truth, Soulez was in his early fifties, less than fifteen years older than Artemis Entreri.

The assassin turned his thoughts to the palace-fortress itself, trying to recall vivid details about the place. From this angle, all Entreri could make out were a few palm trees, a small pond, a single large boulder, a handful of tents including one larger pavilion, and behind them all, seeming to blend in with the desert sands, a brown, square- walled fortress. A handful of robed sentries walked around the fortress walls, seeming quite bored. The fortress of Dallabad did not appear very formidable-certainly nothing against the likes of Artemis Entreri-but the assassin knew better.

He had visited Soulez and Dallabad on several occasions when he had been working for Pasha Basadoni, and again more recently, when he had been in the service of Pasha Pook. He knew of the circular building within those square wall with its corridors winding in tighter and tighter circles toward the great treasury rooms of Kohrin Soulez, culminating in the private quarters of the oasis master himself.

Entreri considered Dwahvel's last description of the man and his place in the context of those memories and chuckled as he recognized the truth of her observations. Kohrin Soulez was indeed a prisoner.

Still, that prison worked well in both directions, and there was no way that Entreri could easily slip in and take that which he desired. The palace was a fortress, and a fortress full of soldiers specifically trained to thwart any attempts by the too-common thieves of the region.

The assassin thought that Dwahvel was wrong on one point, though. Kohrin himself, and not Charon's Claw, was the source of that prison. The man was so fearful of losing his prized weapon that he allowed it to dominate and consume him. His own fear of losing the sword had paralyzed him from taking any chances with it. When had Soulez last left Dallabad? the assassin wondered. When had he last visited the open market or chatted with his old associates on Calimport's streets?

No, people made their own prisons, Entreri knew, and knew well, for hadn't he, in fact, done the same thing in his obsession with Drizzt Do'Urden? Hadn't he been consumed by a foolish need to do battle with an insignificant dark elf who really had nothing to do with him?

Confident that he would never again make such an error, Artemis Entreri looked down upon Dallabad and smiled widely. Yes, Kohrin Soulez had done well to design his fortress against any would-be thieves skulking in from shadow to shadow or under cover of the darkness of night, but how would those many sentries fare when an army of dark elves descended upon them?

"You were with him when he learned of the retreat," Sharlotta Vespers asked Entreri the next night, soon after the assassin had quietly returned to Calimport. "How did Jarlaxle accept the news?"

"With typical nonchalance," Entreri answered honestly. "Jarlaxle has led Bregan D'aerthe for centuries. He is not one to betray that which is in his heart."

"Even to Artemis Entreri, who can read a man's eyes and tell him what he had for dinner the night before?" Sharlotta asked, grinning.

That smirk couldn't hold against the deadly calm expression that came over Entreri's face. "You do not begin to understand these new allies who have come to join with us," he said in all seriousness.

"To conquer us, you mean," Sharlotta replied, the first time since the takeover that Entreri had heard her even hint ill will against the dark elves. He wasn't surprised- who wouldn't quickly come to hate the wretched drow? On the other hand, Entreri had always known Sharlotta as someone who accepted whatever allies she could find, as long as they brought to her the power she so desperately craved.

"If they so choose," Entreri replied without missing a beat and in a most serious tone. "Underestimate any facet of the dark elves, from their fighting abilities to whether or not they betray themselves with expressions, and you will wind up dead, Sharlotta."

The woman started to respond but did not, fighting hard to keep an uncharacteristic hopelessness off of her expression. He knew she was beginning to feel the same way he had during his journey to Menzoberranzan, the same way that he was beginning to feel once more, particularly whenever Rai-guy and Kimmuriel were around. There was something humbling about even being near these handsome, angular creatures. The drow always knew more than they should and always revealed less than they knew. Their mystery was only heightened by the undeniable power behind their often subtle threats. And always there was that damned condescension toward anyone who was not drow. In the current situation, where Bregan D'aerthe could obviously easily overwhelm the remnants of House Basadoni, Artemis Entreri included, that condescension took on even uglier tones. It was a poignant and incessant reminder of who was the master and who was the slave.

He recognized that same feeling in Sharlotta, growing with every passing moment, and he almost used that to enlist her aid in his secret scheme to take Dallabad and its greatest prize.

Almost-then Entreri considered the course and was shocked that his feelings toward Rai-guy and Kimmuriel had almost brought forth such a blunder as that. For all his life, with only very rare exceptions, Artemis Entreri had worked alone, had used his wits to ensnare unintentional and unwitting allies. Cohorts inevitably knew too much for Entreri ever to be comfortable with them. The one exception he now made, out of simple necessity, was Dwahvel Tiggerwillies, and she, he was quite sure, would never double-cross him, not even under the questioning of the dark elves. That had always been the beauty of Dwahvel and her halfling comrades.

Sharlotta, however, was a completely different sort, Entreri now pointedly reminded himself. If he tried to enlist Sharlotta in his plan to go after Kohrin Soulez, he'd have to watch her closely forever after. She'd likely take the information from him and run to Jarlaxle, or even to Rai-guy and Kimmuriel, using Entreri's soon-to-be-lifeless body as a ladder with which to elevate herself.

Besides, Entreri did not need to bring up Dallabad to Sharlotta, for he had already made arrangements toward that end. Dwahvel would entice Sharlotta toward Dallabad with a few well-placed lies, and Sharlotta, who was predictable indeed when one played upon her sense of personal gain, would take the information to Jarlaxle, only strengthening Entreri's personal suggestions that Dallabad would prove a meaningful and profitable conquest.

"I never thought I would miss Pasha Basadoni," Sharlotta remarked off-handedly, the most telling statement the woman had yet made.

"You hated Basadoni," Entreri reminded.

Sharlotta didn't deny that, but neither did she change her stance.

"You did not fear him as much as you fear the drow, and rightly so," Entreri remarked. "Basadoni was loyal, thus predictable. These dark elves are neither. They are too dangerous."

"Kimmuriel told me that you lived among them in Menzoberranzan," Sharlotta mentioned. "How did you survive?"

"I survived because they were too busy to bother with killing me," Entreri honestly replied. "I was dobluth to them, a non-drow outcast, and not worth the trouble. Also, it seems to me now that Jarlaxle might have been using me to further his understanding of the humans of Calimport."

That brought a chuckle to Sharlotta's thick lips. "I would hardly consider Artemis Entreri the typical human of Calimport," she said. "And if Jarlaxle had believed that all men were possessed of your abilities, I doubt he would have dared come to the city, even if all of Menzoberranzan marched behind him."

Entreri gave a slight bow, taking the compliment in polite stride, though he never had use for flattery. To Entreri's way of thinking, one was good enough or one wasn't, and no amount of self-serving chatter could change that.

"And that is our goal now, for both our sakes," Entreri went on. "We must keep the drow busy, which would seem not so difficult a task given Jarlaxle's sudden desire rapidly to expand his surface empire. We are safer if House Basadoni is at war."

"But not within the city," Sharlotta replied. "The authorities are starting to take note of our movements and will not stand idly by much longer. We are safer if the drow are engaged in battle, but not if that battle extends beyond house-to-house."

Entreri nodded, glad that Dwahvel's little suggestions to Sharlotta that other eyes might be pointing their way had brought the clever woman to these conclusions so quickly. Indeed, if House Basadoni reached too far and too fast, the true power of the house would likely be discovered. Once the realm of Calimshan came to that revelation, their response against Jarlaxle's band would be complete and overwhelming. Earlier on, Entreri had entertained just such a scenario, but he had come to dismiss it. He doubted that he, or any other iblith of House Basadoni, would survive a Bregan D'aerthe retreat.

That ultimate chaos, then, had been relegated to the status of a backup plan.

"But you are correct," Sharlotta went on. "We must keep them busy-their military arm, at least."

Entreri smiled and easily held back the temptation to enlist her then and there against Kohrin Soulez. Dwahvel would take care of that, and soon, and Sharlotta would never even figure out that she had been used for the gain of Artemis Entreri.

Or perhaps the clever woman would come to see the truth.

Perhaps, then, Entreri would have to kill her.

To Artemis Entreri, who had suffered the double-dealing of Sharlotta Vespers for many years, it was not an unpleasant thought.

Chapter 6 MUTUAL BENEFIT

Artemis Entreri surely recognized the voice but hardly the tone. In all the months he had spent with Jarlaxle, both here and in the Underdark, he had never known the mercenary leader to raise his voice in anger.

Jarlaxle was shouting now, and to Entreri's pleasure as much as his curiosity, he was shouting at Rai-guy and Kimmuriel.

"It will symbolize our ascension," Jarlaxle roared.

"It will allow our enemies a focal point," Kimmuriel countered.

"They will not see it as anything more than a new guild house," Jarlaxle came back.

"Such structures are not uncommon," came Rai-guy's response, in calmer, more controlled tones.

Entreri entered the room then, to find the three standing and facing each other. A fourth drow, Berg'inyon Baenre, sat back comfortably against one wall.

"They will not know that drow were behind the construction of the tower," Rai-guy went on, after a quick and dismissive glance at the human, "but they will recognize that a new power has come to the Basadoni Guild."

"They know that already," Jarlaxle reasoned.

"They suspect it, as they suspect that old Basadoni is dead," Rai-guy retorted. "Let us not confirm their suspicions. Let us not do their reconnaissance for them."

Jarlaxle narrowed his one visible eye-the magical eye patch was over his left this day-and turned his gaze sharply at Entreri. "You know the city better than any of us," he said. "What say you? I plan to construct a tower, a crystalline image of Crenshinibon similar to the one in which you destroyed Drizzt Do'Urden. My associates here fear that such an act will prompt dangerous responses from other guilds and perhaps even the greater authorities of Calimshan."

"From the wizards' guild, at least," Entreri put in calmly. "A dangerous group."

Jarlaxle backed off a step in apparent surprise that Entreri had not readily gone along with him. "Guilds construct new houses all the time," the mercenary leader argued. "Some more lavish than anything I plan to create with Crenshinibon."

"But they do so by openly hiring out the proper craftsmen-and wizards, if magic is necessary," Entreri explained.

He was thinking fast on his feet here, totally surprised by Jarlaxle's dangerous designs. He didn't want to side with Rai-guy and Kimmuriel completely, though, because he knew that such an alliance would never serve him. Still, the notion of constructing an image of Crenshinibon right in the middle of Calimport seemed foolhardy at the very least.

"There you have it," Rai-guy cut in with a chortle. "Even your lackey does not believe it to be a wise or even feasible option."

"Speak your words from your own mouth, Rai-guy," Entreri promptly remarked. He almost expected the volatile wizard to make a move on him then and there, given the look of absolute hatred Rai-guy shot his way.

"A tower in Calimport would invite trouble," Entreri said to Jarlaxle, "though it is not impossible. We could, perhaps, hire a wizard of the prominent guild as a front for our real construction. Even that would be more easily accomplished if we set our sights on the outskirts of the city, out in the desert, perhaps, where the tower can better bask in the brilliant sunlight."

"The point is to erect a symbol of our strength," Jarlaxle put in. "I hardly wish to impress the little lizards and vipers that will view our tower in the empty desert."

"Bregan D'aerthe has always been better served by hiding its strength," Kimmuriel dared to interject. "Are we to change so successful a policy here in a world full of potential enemies? Time and again you seem to forget who we are, Jarlaxle, and where we are,"

"We can mask the true nature of the tower's construction for a handsome price," Entreri reasoned. "And perhaps I can discern a location that will serve your purposes," he said to Jarlaxle, then turned to Kimmuriel and Rai-guy, "and alleviate your well-founded fears."

"You do that," Rai-guy remarked. "Show some worth and prove me wrong."

Entreri took the left-handed compliment with a quiet chuckle. He already had the perfect location in mind, yet another prompt to push Jarlaxle and Bregan D'aerthe against Kohrin Soulez and Dallabad Oasis.

"Have we heard any response from the Rakers?" Jarlaxle asked, walking to the side of the room and taking his seat.

"Sharlotta Vespers is meeting with Pasha Da'Daclan this very hour," Entreri replied.

"Will he not likely kill her in retribution?" Kimmuriel asked.

"No loss for us," Rai-guy quipped sarcastically.

"Pasha Da'Daclan is too intrigued to-" Entreri began.

"Impressed, you mean," corrected Rai-guy.

"He is too intrigued" Entreri said firmly, "to act so rashly as that. He harbors no anger at the loss of a minor outpost, no doubt, and is more interested in weighing our true strength and intentions. Perhaps he will kill her, mostly to learn if such an act might illicit a response."

"If he does, perhaps we will utterly destroy him and all of his guild," Jarlaxle said, and that raised a few eyebrows.

Entreri was less surprised. The assassin was beginning to suspect that there was some method behind Jarlaxle's seeming madness. Typically, Jarlaxle would have been the type to find a way for his relationship to be mutually beneficial with a man as entrenched in the power structures as Pasha Da'Daclan of the Rakers. The mercenary dark elf didn't often waste time, energy, and valuable soldiers in destruction-no more than was necessary for him to gain the needed foothold. At this time, the foothold in Calimport was fairly secure, and yet Jarlaxle's hunger seemed only to be growing.

Entreri didn't understand it, but he wasn't too worried, figuring that he could find some way to use it to his own advantage.

"Before we take any action against Da'Daclan, we must weaken his outer support," the assassin remarked.

"Outer support?" The question came from both Jarlaxle and Rai-guy.

"Pasha Da'Daclan's arms have a long reach," Entreri explained. "I suspect that he has created some outer ring of security, perhaps even beyond Calimport's borders."

From the look on the faces of the dark elves, Entreri realized that he had just successfully laid the groundwork, and that nothing more needed to be said at that time. In truth, he knew Pasha Da'Daclan better than to believe that the old man would harm Sharlotta Vespers. Such overt revenge simply wasn't Da'Daclan's way. No, he would invite the continued dialogue with Sharlotta, because for the Basadonis to have moved so brazenly against him as to destroy one of his outer houses, they would, by his reasoning, have to have some new and powerful weapons or allies. Pasha Da'Daclan wanted to know if the attack had been precipitated by the mere cocksureness of the new leaders of the guild-if Basadoni was indeed dead, as the common rumors implied-or by well-placed confidence. The fact that Sharlotta herself, who in the event of Basadoni's death would certainly have been elevated to the very highest levels within the organization, had come out to him hinted, at least, at the second explanation for the attack. In that instance, Pasha Da'Daclan wasn't about to invite complete disaster.

So Sharlotta would leave Da'Daclan's house very much alive, and she would hearken to Dwahvel Tiggerwillies's previous call When she returned to Jarlaxle late that night, the mercenary would hear confirmation that Da'Daclan had an ally outside the city, an ally, Entreri would later explain, whose location would be the perfect setting for a new and impressive tower.

Yes, this was all going along quite well, in the assassin's estimation.

"Silence Kohrin Soulez, and Pasha Da'Daclan has no voice outside of Calimport," Sharlotta Vespers explained to Jarlaxle that same evening.

"He needs no voice outside the city," Jarlaxle returned. "Given the information that you and my other lieutenants have provided, there is too much backing for the human right here within Calimport for us wisely to consider any course of true conquest."

"But Pasha Da'Daclan does not understand that," Sharlotta replied without hesitation.

It was obvious to Jarlaxle that the woman had thought this through quite extensively. She had returned from her meeting with Da'Daclan, and later meetings with her street informants, quite excited and animated. She hadn't really accomplished anything conclusive with Da'Daclan, but she had sensed that the man was on the defensive. He was truly worried about the state of complete destruction that had befallen his outer, minor house. Da'Daclan didn't understand Basadoni's new level of power, nor the state of control within the Basadoni Guild, and that too made him nervous.

Jarlaxle rested his angular chin in his delicate black hand. "He believes Pasha Basadoni to be dead?" he asked for the third time, and for the third time, Sharlotta answered, "Yes."

"Should that not imply a new weakness, then, within the guild?" the mercenary leader reasoned.

"Perhaps in your world," Sharlotta replied, "where the drow houses are ruled by Matron Mothers who serve Lolth directly. Here the loss of a leader implies nothing more than instability, and that, more than anything else, frightens rivals. The guilds do not normally wage war because to do so would be detrimental to all sides. This is something the old pashas have learned through years, even decades, of experience. It's something they have passed down to their children, or other selected followers, for generations."

Of course it all made sense to Jarlaxle, but he held his somewhat perplexed look, prompting her to continue. In truth, Jarlaxle was learning more about Sharlotta than about anything to do with the social workings of Calimport's underground guilds.

"As a result of our attack, Pasha Da'Daclan believes the rumors that speak of old Basadoni's death," the woman continued. "To Da'Daclan's thinking, if Basadoni is dead-or has at least lost control of the guild-then we are more dangerous by far." Sharlotta flashed her wicked and ironic smile.

"So with every outer strand we cut-first the minor house and now this Dallabad Oasis-we lessen Da'Daclan's sense of security," Jarlaxle reasoned.

"And make it easier for me to force a stronger treaty with the Rakers," Sharlotta explained. "Perhaps Da'Daclan will even give over to us the entire block about the destroyed minor house to appease us. His base of operations is gone from that area anyway."

"Not so big a prize," Jarlaxle remarked.

"Ah yes, but how much more respect will the other guilds offer to Basadoni when they learn that Pasha Da'Daclan turned over some of his ground to us after we so wronged him?" Sharlotta purred. Her continuing roll of intrigue, her building of level upon level of gain, heightened Jarlaxle's respect for her.

"Dallabad Oasis?" he asked.

"A prize in and of itself," Sharlotta was quick to answer, "even without the gains it will afford us in our game with Pasha Da'Daclan."

Jarlaxle thought it over for a bit, nodded, and, with a sly look at Sharlotta, nodded toward the bed. Thoughts of great gain had ever been an aphrodisiac for Jarlaxle.

Jarlaxle paced his room later that night, having dismissed Sharlotta that he could consider in private the information she had brought to him. According to the woman- who had been so ill-briefed by Dwahvel- Dallabad Oasis was working as a relay point for Pasha Da'Daclan, the exit for information to Da'Daclan's more powerful allies far from Calimport. Run by some insignificant functionary named Soulez, Dallabad was an independent fortress. It was not an official part of the Rakers or any other guild from the city. Soulez apparently accepted payment to serve as information-relay, and also, Sharlotta had explained, sometimes collected tolls along the northwestern trails.

Jarlaxle continued to pace, digesting the information, playing it in conjunction with the earlier suggestions of Artemis Entreri. He felt the telepathic intrusion of his newest ally then, but he merely adjusted his magical eye patch to ward off the call.

There had to be some connection here, some truth within the truth, some planned relationship between Dallabad's tenuous position and the mere convenience of this all. Hadn't Entreri earlier suggested that Jarlaxle conquer some place outside of Calimport where he could more safely set up a crystalline tower?

And now this: a perfect location practically handed over to him for conquest, a place so conveniently positioned for Bregan D'aerthe to make a double gain.

The mental intrusions continued. It was a strong call, the strongest Jarlaxle had ever felt through his eye patch.

He wants something, Crenshinibon said in the mercenary leader's head.

Jarlaxle started to dismiss the shard, thinking that his own reasoning could bring him to a clearer picture of this whole situation, but Crenshinibon's next statement leaped past the conclusions he was slowly forming.

Artemis Entreri has deeper designs here, the shard insisted. An old grudge, perhaps, or some treasure within the obvious prize.

"Not a grudge," Jarlaxle said aloud, removing the protective eye patch so that he and the shard could better communicate. "If Entreri harbored such feelings as that, then he would see to this Soulez creature personally. Ever has he prided himself on working alone."

You believe the sudden imposition of Dallabad Oasis, a place never before mentioned, into both the equation of the Rakers and our need to construct a tower to be a mere fortunate coincidence? the shard asked, and before Jarlaxle could even respond, Crenshinibon made its assessment clear. Artemis Entreri harbors some ulterior motive for an assault against Dallabad Oasis. There can be no doubt. Likely, he knew that our informants would bring to us the suggestion that conquering Dallabad would frighten Pasha Da'Daclan and considerably strengthen our bargaining power with him.

"More likely, Artemis Entreri arranged for our informants to come to that very conclusion," Jarlaxle reasoned, ending with a chuckle.

Perhaps he views this as a way toward our destruction, the shard imparted. That he can break free of us and rule on his own.

Jarlaxle was shaking his head before the full reasoning even entered his mind. "If Artemis Entreri wished to be free of us, he would find some excuse to depart the city."

And run as faraway as Morik the Rogue, perhaps? came the ironic thought.

It was true enough, Jarlaxle had to admit. Bregan D'aerthe had already proven that its arms on the surface world were long indeed, long enough, perhaps, to catch a runaway deserter. Still, Jarlaxle highly doubted the shard's last reasoning. First of all, Artemis Entreri was wise enough to understand that Bregan D'aerthe would not go blindly against Dallabad or any other foe. Also, to Jarlaxle's thinking, such a ploy to bring about Bregan D'aerthe's downfall on the surface would be far too risky- and would it not be more easily accomplished merely by telling the greater authorities of Calimshan that a band of dark elves had come to Calimport?

He offered all of the reasoning to Crenshinibon, building common ground with the artifact that the most likely scenario here involved the shard's second line of reasoning, that of a secret treasure within the oasis.

The drow mercenary closed his eyes and absorbed the Crystal Shard's feelings on these plausible and growing suspicions and laughed again when he learned that he and the artifact had both come to accept the conclusion and were of like mind concerning it. Both were more amused and impressed than angry. Whatever Entreri's personal motives, and whether or not the information connecting Dallabad to Pasha Da'Daclan held any truth or not, the oasis would be a worthy and seemingly safe acquisition.

More so to the artifact than to the dark elf, for Crenshinibon had made it quite clear to Jarlaxle that it needed to construct an image of itself, a tower to collect the brilliant sunlight.

A step closer to its ever-present, final goal.

Chapter 7 TURNING ADVANTAGE INTO DISASTER

Kohrin Soulez held his arm up before him, focusing his thoughts on the black, red-laced gauntlet that he wore on his right hand. Those laces seemed to pulse now, an all-too- familiar feeling for the secretive and secluded man.

Someone was trying to look in on him and his fortress at Dallabad Oasis.

Soulez forced his concentration deeper into the magical glove. He had recently been approached by a mediator from Calimport inquiring about a possible sale of his beloved sword, Charon's Claw. Soulez, of course, had balked at the absurd notion. He held this item more dear to his heart than he had any of his numerous wives, even above his many, many children. The offer had been serious, promising wealth beyond imagination for the single item.

Soulez had gained enough understanding of Calimport's guildsmen and had been in possession of Charon's Claw long enough to know what a serious offer, obviously refused and without room for bargaining, might bring, and so he was not surprised to find that prying eyes were seeking him out now. Since further investigation had whispered that the would-be purchaser might be Artemis Entreri and the Basadoni Guild, Soulez had been watching carefully for those eyes in particular.

They would look for weakness but would find none, and thus, he believed, they would merely go away.

As Soulez fell deeper into the energies of the gauntlet, he came to recognize a new element, dangerous only because it hinted that the would-be thief this time might not be so easily dissuaded. These were not the magical energies of a wizard he felt, nor the prayers of a divining priest. No, this energy was different than the expected, but certainly nothing beyond the understanding of Soulez and the gauntlet.

"Psionics," he said aloud, looking past the gauntlet to his lieutenants, who were standing at attention about his throne room.

Three of them were his own children. The fourth was a great military commander from Memnon, and the fifth was a renowned, and now retired, thief from Calimport. Conveniently, Soulez thought, a former member of the Basadoni Guild.

"Artemis Entreri and the Basadonis," Soulez told them, "if it is them, have apparently found access to a psionicist."

The five lieutenants muttered among themselves about the implications of that.

"Perhaps that has been Artemis Entreri's edge for all these years," the youngest of them, Kohrin Soulez's daughter, Ahdahnia, remarked.

"Entreri?" laughed Preelio, the old thief. "Strong of mind? Certainly. Psionics? Bah! He never needed them, so fine was he with the blade."

"But whoever seeks my treasure has access to the mind powers," said Soulez. "They believe that they have found an edge, a weakness of mine and of my treasure's, that they can exploit. That only makes them more dangerous, of course. We can expect an attack."

All five of the lieutenants stiffened at that proclamation, but none seemed overly concerned. There was no grand conspiracy against Dallabad among the guilds of Calimport. Kohrin Soulez had paid dearly to certify that information right away. The five knew that no one guild, or even two or three of the guilds banded together, could muster the power to overthrow Dallabad-not while

Soulez carried the sword and the gauntlet and could render any wizards all but ineffective.

"No soldiers will break through our walls," Ahdahnia remarked with a confident smirk. "No thieves will slide through the shadows to the inner structures."

"Unless through some devilish mind power," Preelio put in, looking to the elder Soulez.

Kohrin Soulez only laughed. "They believe they have found a weakness," he reiterated. "I can stop them with this-" he held up the glove-"and of course, I have other means." He let the thought hang in the air, his smile bringing grins to the faces of all in attendance. There was a sixth lieutenant, after all, one little seen and little bothered, one used primarily as an instrument of interrogation and torture, one who preferred to spend as little time with the humans as possible.

"Secure the physical defenses," Soulez instructed them. "I will see to the powers of the mind."

He waved them away and sat back, focusing again on his mighty black gauntlet, on the red stitching that ran through it like veins of blood. Yes, he could feel the meager prying, and while he wished that the jealous folk would simply leave him to his business in peace, he believed that he would enjoy this little bit of excitement.

He knew that Yharaskrik certainly would.

Far below Kohrin Soulez's throne room, in deep tunnels that few of Soulez's soldiers even knew existed, Yharaskrik was already well aware that someone or something using psionic energies had breached the oasis. Yharaskrik was a mind flayer, an illithid, a humanoid creature with a bulbous head that resembled a huge brain, with several tentacles protruding from the part of his face where a nose, mouth, and chin should have been. Illithids were horrible to behold, and could be quite formidable physically, but their real powers lay in the realm of the mind, in psionic energies that dwarfed the powers of human practitioners, even of drow practitioners. Illithids could simply overwhelm an opponent with stunning blasts of mental energies, and either enslave the unfortunate victim, his mind held in a fugue state, or move in for a feast, attaching their horrid tentacles to the helpless victim and burrowing in to suck out brain matter.

Yharaskrik had been working with Kohrin Soulez for many years. Soulez considered the creature as much an indentured servant as a minion. He believed he had cut a fair deal with the creature after Soulez had apparently rendered Yharaskrik helpless in a short battle, capturing the illithid's mind blast within the magical netting of his gauntlet and thus leaving Yharaskrik open to a devastating counterstrike with the deadly sword. In truth, had Soulez gone for that strike, Yharaskrik would have melted away into the stone, using energies not directed against Soulez and thus beyond the reach of the gauntlet.

Soulez had not pressed the attack, though, as Yharaskrik's communal brain had calculated. The opportunistic man had struck a deal instead, offering the illithid its life and a comfortable place to do its meditation-or whatever else it was that illithids did-in exchange for certain services whenever they were needed, primarily to aid in the defense of Dallabad Oasis.

In all these years, Kohrin Soulez had never once harbored any suspicions that coming to Dallabad in such a capacity had been Yharaskrik's duty all along, that the illithid had been chosen among its strange kin to seek out and study the black and red gauntlet, as mind flayers were often sent to learn of anything that could so block their devastating energies. In truth, Yharaskrik had learned little of use concerning the gauntlet over the years, but the creature was never anxious about that. Brilliant illithids were among the most patient of all the creatures in the multiverse, savoring the process more than the goal. Yharaskrik was quite content in its tunnel home.

Some psionic force had tickled the illithid's sensibility, and Yharaskrik felt enough of the stream of energy to know that it was no other illithid psionically prying about Dallabad Oasis.

The mind flayer, as confident in his superiority as all of his kind, was more intrigued than concerned. He was actually a bit perturbed that the fool Soulez had captured that psychic call with his gauntlet, but now the call had returned, redirected. Yharaskrik had called back, bringing his roving mind eye down, down, to the deep caverns.

The illithid did not try to hide its surprise when it discerned the source of that energy, nor did the creature on the other end, a drow, even begin to mask his own stunned reaction.

Haszakkin! the drow's thoughts instinctively screamed, their word for illithid-a word that conveyed a measure of respect the drow rarely gave to any creature that was not drow.

Dyon G'ennivalz? Yharaskrik asked, the name of a drow city the illithid had known well in its younger days.

Menzoberranzan, came the psionic reply.

House Oblodra, the brilliant creature imparted, for that atypical drow house was well known among all the mind flayer communities of Faerun's Underdark.

No more, came Kimmuriel's response.

Yharaskrik sensed anger there, and understood it well as Kimmuriel relayed the memories of the downfall of his arrogant family. There had been, during the Time of Troubles, a period when magic, but not psionics, had ceased to function. In that too-brief time, the leaders of House Oblodra had challenged the greater houses of Menzoberranzan, including mighty Matron Baenre herself. The energies shifted with the shifting of the gods, and psionics had become temporarily impotent, while the powers of conventional magic had returned. Matron Baenre's response to the threats of House Oblodra had wiped the structure and all of the family- except for Kimmuriel, who had wisely used his ties with Jarlaxle and Bregan D'aerthe to make a hasty retreat-from the city, dropping it into the chasm called the Clawrift.

You seek the conquest of Dallabad Oasis? Yharaskrik asked, fully expecting an answer, for creatures communicating through psionics often held their own loyalties to each other even above those of their kindred.

Dallabad will be ours before the night has passed, Kimmuriel honestly replied.

The connection abruptly ended, and Yharaskrik understood the hasty retreat as Kohrin Soulez sauntered into the dark chamber, his right hand clad in the cursed gauntlet that so interfered with psionic energy.

The illithid bowed before his supposed master.

"We have been scouted," Soulez said, getting right to the point, his tension obvious as he stood before the horrid mind flayer.

"Mind s eye," the illithid agreed in its physical, watery voice. "I sensed it."

"Powerful?" Soulez asked.

Yharaskrik gave a quiet gurgle, the illithid equivalent of a resigned shrug, showing his lack of respect for any psionicist that was not illithid. It was an honest appraisal, even though the psionicist in question was drow and not human, and tied to a drow house that was well known among Yharaskrik's people. Still, though the mind flayer was not overly concerned about any battle he might see against the drow psionicist, Yharaskrik knew the dark elves well enough to understand that the Oblodran psionicist would likely be the least of Kohrin Soulez's problems.

"Power is always a relative concept," the illithid answered cryptically.

Kohrin Soulez felt the tingling of magical energy as he ascended the long spiral staircase that took him back to the ground level of his palace in Dallabad. The guild-master broke into a run, scrambling, muscles working to their limits and his old bones feeling no pain. He thought that the attack must already be underway.

He calmed somewhat, slowing and huffing and puffing to catch his breath. He came up into the guild house to find many of his soldiers milling about, talking excitedly, but seeming more curious than terrified.

"Is it yours, Father?" asked Ahdahnia, her dark eyes gleaming.

Kohrin Soulez stared at her curiously, and taking the cue, Ahdahnia led him to an outer room with an east-facing window.

There it stood, right in the middle of Dallabad Oasis, within the outer walls of Kohrin Soulez's fortress.

A crystalline tower, gleaming in the bright sunlight, an image of Crenshinibon, the calling card of doom.

Kohrin Soulez's right hand throbbed with tingling energy as he looked at the magical structure. His gauntlet could capture magical energy and even turn it back against the initiator. It had never failed him, but in just looking at this spectacular tower the guildmaster suddenly recognized that he and his toys were puny things indeed. He knew without even going out and trying that he could not hope to drag the magical energies from that tower, that if he tried, it would consume him and his gauntlet. He shuddered as he pictured a physical manifestation of that absorption, an image of Kohrin Soulez frozen as a gargoyle on the top rim of that magnificent tower.

"Is it yours, Father?" Ahdahnia asked again.

The eagerness left her voice and the sparkle left her eyes as Kohrin turned to her, his face bloodless.

Outside of Dallabad fortress's wall, under the shelter of a copse of palm trees and surrounded by globes of magical darkness, Jarlaxle called to the tower. Its outer wall elongated, and sent forth a tendril, a stairway tunnel that breached the darkness globes and reached to the mercenary's feet. Secure that his soldiers were all in place, Jarlaxle ascended the stairs into the tower proper. With a thought to the Crystal Shard, he retracted the tunnel, effectively sealing himself in.

From that high vantage point in the middle of the fortress courtyard, Jarlaxle watched the unfolding drama around him.

Could you dim the light? he telepathically asked the tower.

Light is strength, Crenshinibon answered. For you, perhaps, the mercenary replied. For me, it is uncomfortable.

Jarlaxle felt a sensation akin to a chuckle from the Crystal Shard, but the artifact did comply and thicken its eastern wall, considerably dulling the light in the room. It also provided a floating chair for Jarlaxle, so that he could drift about the perimeter of the room, studying the battle that would soon unfold.

Notice that Artemis Entreri will partake of the attack, the Crystal Shard remarked, and it sent the chair floating to the northern side of the room. Jarlaxle took the cue and focused hard down below, outside the fortress wall, to the tents and trees and boulders. Finally, with helpful guidance from the artifact, the drow spotted the figure lurking about the shadows.

He did not do so when we planned the attack on Pasha Da'Daclan, Crenshinibon added. Of course, the Crystal Shard knew that Jarlaxle was considering the same thing. The implications continued to follow the line that Entreri had some secret agenda here, some private gain that was either outside of the domain of Bregan D'aerthe, or held some consequence within the second level of the band's hierarchy.

Either way, both Jarlaxle and Crenshinibon thought it more amusing than in any way threatening.

The floating chair drifted back across the small circular room, putting Jarlaxle in line with the first diversionary attack, a series of darkness globes at the top of the outer wall. The soldiers there went into a panic, running and crying out to reform a defensive line away from the magic, but even as they moved back-in fairly good order, Jarlaxle noted-the real attack began, bubbling up from the ground within the fortress courtyard.

Rai-guy had crossed the courtyard, ten difficult feet at a time, casting a series of passwall spells out of a wand. Now, from a natural tunnel that he had fortunately located below the fortress, the drow wizard enacted the last of those passwalls, vanishing a section of stone and dirt.

Immediately the soldiers of Bregan D'aerthe arose, floating with drow levitation into the courtyard, enacting darkness globes above them to confuse their enemies and to lessen the blinding impact of the hated sun.

"We should have attacked at night," Jarlaxle said aloud.

Daytime is when my power is at its peak, Crenshinibon responded immediately, and Jarlaxle felt the rest of the thought keenly. Crenshinibon was none-too-subtly reminding him that it was more powerful than all of Bregan D'aerthe combined.

That expression of confidence was more than a little disconcerting to the mercenary leader, for reasons that he hadn't yet begun to untangle.

Rai-guy stood in the hole, issuing orders to those dark elves running and leaping into levitation, floating up and eager for battle. The wizard was particularly animated this day. His blood was up, as always during a conquest, but he was not pleased at all that Jarlaxle had decided to launch the attack at dawn, a seemingly foolish trade-off of putting his soldiers, used to a world of blackness, at a disadvantage, for the simple gain of constructing a crystalline tower vantage point. The appearance of the tower was an amazing thing, without doubt, one that showed the power of the invaders clearly to those defending inside. Rai-guy did not diminish the value of striking such terror, but every time he saw one of his soldiers squint painfully as he rose up out of the hole into the daylight, the wizard considered his leader's continuing surprising behavior and gritted his teeth in frustration.

Also, the mere fact that they were using dark elves openly against the fortress seemed more than a bit of a gamble. Could they not have accomplished this conquest, as they had planned to do with Pasha Da'Daclan, by striking openly with human, perhaps even kobold soldiers, while the dark elves infiltrated more quietly? What would be left of Dallabad after the conquest now, after all? Almost all remaining alive within-and there would be many, since the dark elves led every assault with their trademark sleep- poisoned hand crossbow darts-would have to be executed anyway, lest they communicate the truth of their conquerors.

Rai-guy reminded himself of his place in the guild and knew it would take a monumental error on the part of Jarlaxle, one that cost the lives of many of Bregan D'aerthe, for him to rally enough support truly to overthrow Jarlaxle. Perhaps this would be that mistake.

The wizard heard a change in the timbre of the shouts from above. He glanced up, taking note that the sunlight seemed brighter, that the globes of magical darkness had gone away. The magically created shaft, too, suddenly disappeared, capturing a pair of levitating soldiers within it as the stone and dirt rematerialized. It lasted only a moment, as if something suddenly reached out and grabbed away the magic that was trying to dispel Rai-guys vertical passwall dweomers. That moment was long enough to destroy utterly the two unfortunate drow soldiers.

The wizard cursed at Jarlaxle, but under his breath.

He reminded himself to keep safe and to see, in the end, if this attack, even if a complete failure, might not prove personally beneficial.

Kohrin Soulez fell back. His sensibilities were stung, both by the realization that these were dark elves that had come to secluded Dallabad, and by the magical counterattack that had overwhelmed his gauntlet. He had come out from the main house to rally his soldiers, the blood-red blade of Charon's Claw bared and waving, leaving streaks of ashy blackness in the air. Soulez had run to the area of obvious invasion, where globes of darkness and screams of pain and terror heralded the fighting.

Dispelling those globes was no major task for the gauntlet, nor was closing the hole in the ground through which the enemy continued to arrive, but Soulez had nearly been overwhelmed by a wave of energy that countered the countering energy he was exerting himself. It was a blast of magical power so raw and pure that he could not hope to contain it. He knew it had come from the tower.

The tower!

The dark elves!

His doom was at hand!

He fell back into the main house, ordering his soldiers to fight to the last. As he ran along the more deserted corridors leading to his private chambers, his dear Ahdahnia right behind him, he called out to Yharaskrik to come and whisk him away.

There was no answer.

"He has heard me," Soulez assured his daughter anyway. "We need only escape long enough for Yharaskrik to come to us. Then we will run out to inform the lords of Calimport that the dark elves have come."

"The traps and locks along the hallways will keep our enemies at bay," Ahdahnia replied.

Despite the surprising nature of their enemies, the woman actually believed the claim. These long corridors weaving along the somewhat circular main house of Dallabad were lined with heavy, metal-banded doors of stone and wood layers that could defeat most intrusions, wizardly or physical. Also, the sheer number of traps in place between the outer walls and Kohrin Soulez's inner sanctuary would deter and daunt the most seasoned of thieves.

But not the most clever.

Artemis Entreri had worked his way unnoticed to the base of the fortress's northern wall. It was no small feat- an impossible one under normal circumstances, for there was an open field surrounding the fortress, running nearly a hundred feet to the trees and tents and boulders, and several of the small ponds that marked the place- but this was not a normal circumstance. With a tower materializing inside the fortress, most of the guards were scurrying about, trying to find some answers as to whether it was an invading enemy or some secret project of Kohrin Soulez's. Even those guards on the walls couldn't help but stare in awe at that amazing sight.

Entreri dug himself in. His borrowed black cloak-a camouflaging drow piwafwi that wouldn't last long in the sun-offered him some protection should any of the guards lean over the twenty foot wall and look down at him.

The assassin waited until the sounds of fighting erupted from within.

To untrained eyes, the wall of Kohrin Soulez's fortress would have seemed a sheer thing indeed, all of polished white marble joints forming an attractive contrast to the brownish sandstone and gray granite. To Entreri, though, it seemed more of a stairway than a wall, with many seam-steps and finger-holds.

He was up near the top in a matter of seconds. The assassin lifted himself up just enough to glance over at the two guards anxiously reloading their crossbows. They were looking in the direction of the courtyard where the battle raged.

Over the wall without a sound went the piwafwi-cloaked assassin. He came down from the wall only a few moments later, dressed as one of Kohrin Soulez's guards.

Entreri joined in with some others running frantically around to the front courtyard, but he broke away from them as he came in sight of the fighting. He melted back against the wall and toward the open, main door, where he spotted Kohrin Soulez. The guildmaster was battling drow magic and waving that wondrous sword. Entreri kept several steps ahead of the man as he was forced to fall back. The assassin entered the main building before Soulez and his daughter.

Entreri ran, silent and unseen, along those corridors, through the open doors, past the unset traps, ahead of the two fleeing nobles and those soldiers trailing their leader to secure the corridor behind him. The assassin reached the main door of Soulez's private chambers with enough time to spare to recognize that the alarms and traps on this portal were indeed in place and to do something about them.

Thus, when Ahdahnia Soulez pushed open that magnificent, gold-leafed door, leading her father into his seemingly secure chamber, Artemis Entreri was already there, standing quietly ready behind a floor-to-ceiling tapestry.

The three Dallabad soldiers-well-trained, well-armed, and well-armored with shining chain and small bucklers-faced off against the three dark elves along the western wall of the fortress. The men, frightened as they were, kept the presence of mind to form a triangular defense, using the wall behind them to secure their backs.

The dark elves fanned out and came at them in unison. Their amazing drow swords-two for each warrior-worked circular attack routines so quickly that the paired weapons seemed to blur the line between where one sword stopped and the other began.

The humans, to their credit, held strong their position, offered parries and blocks wherever necessary, and suppressed any urge to scream out in terror and charge blindly-as some of their nearby comrades were doing to disastrous results. Gradually, talking quickly between them to analyze each of their enemy's movements, the trio began to decipher the deceptive and brilliant drow sword dance, enough so, at least, to offer one or two counters of their own.

Back and forth it went, the humans wisely holding their position, not following any of the individually retreating dark elves and thus weakening their own defenses. Blade rang against blade, and the magical swords Kohrin Soulez had provided his best-trained soldiers matched up well enough against the drow weapons.

The dark elves exchanged words the humans did not understand. Then the three drow attacked in unison, all six swords up high in a blurring dance. Human swords and shields came up to meet the challenge and the resulting clang of metal against metal rang out like a single note.

That note soon changed, diminished, and all three of the human soldiers came to recognize, but not completely to comprehend, that their attackers had each dropped one sword.

Shields and swords up high to meet the continuing challenge, they only understood their exposure below the level of the fight when they heard the clicks of three small crossbows and felt the sting as small darts burrowed into their bellies.

The dark elves backed off a step. Tonakin Ta'salz, the central soldier, called out to his companions that he was hit, but that he was all right. The soldier to Tonakin's left started to say the same, but his words were slurred and groggy. Tonakin glanced over just in time to see him tumble facedown in the dirt. To his right, there came no response at all.

Tonakin was alone. He took a deep breath and skittered back against the wall as the three dark elves retrieved their dropped swords. One of them said something to him that he did not understand, but while the words escaped him, the expression on the drow's face did not.

He should have fallen down asleep, the drow was telling him. Tonakin agreed wholeheartedly as the three came in suddenly, six swords slashing in brutal and perfectly coordinated attacks.

To his credit, Tonakin Ta'salz actually managed to block two of them.

And so it went throughout the courtyard and all along the wall of the fortress. Jarlaxle's mercenaries, using mostly physical weapons but with more than a little magic thrown in, overwhelmed the soldiers of Dallabad. The mercenary leader had instructed his killers to spare as many as possible, using sleep darts and accepting surrender. He noted, though, that more than a few were not waiting long enough to find out if any opponents who had resisted the sleep poison might offer a surrender.

The dark elf leader merely shrugged at that, hardly concerned. This was open battle, the kind that he and his mercenaries didn't see often enough. If too many of Kohrin Soulez's soldiers were killed for the oasis fortress to properly function, then Jarlaxle and Crenshinibon would simply find replacements. In any case, with Soulez chased back into his house by the sheer power of the Crystal Shard, the assault had already reached its second stage.

It was going along beautifully. The courtyard and wall were already secured, and the house had been breached at several points. Now Kimmuriel and Rai-guy at last came onto the scene.

Kimmuriel had several of the captives who were still awake dragged before him, forcing them to lead the way into the house. He would use his overpowering will to read their thoughts as they walked him and the drow through the trapped maze to the prize that was Soulez.

Jarlaxle rested back in the crystalline tower. A part of him wanted to go down and join in the fun, but he decided instead to remain and share the moment with his most powerful companion, the Crystal Shard. He even allowed the artifact to thin the eastern wall once more, allowing more sunlight into the room.

"Where is he?" Kohrin Soulez fumed, stomping about the room. "Yharaskrik!"

"Perhaps he cannot get through," Ahdahnia reasoned. She moved nearer to the tapestry as she spoke.

Entreri knew he could step out and take her down, then go for his prize. He held the urge, intrigued and wary.

"Perhaps the same force from the tower-" Ahdahnia went on.

"No!" Kohrin Soulez interrupted. "Yharaskrik is beyond such things. His people see things-everything- differently."

Even as he finished, Ahdahnia gasped and skittered back across Entreri's field of view. Her eyes went wide as she looked back in the direction of her father, who had walked out of Entreri's very limited line of sight.

Confident that the woman was too entranced by whatever it was that she was watching, Entreri slipped down low to one knee and dared peek out around the tapestry.

He saw an illithid step out of the psionic dimensional doorway and into the room to stand before Kohrin.

A mind flayer!

The assassin fell back behind the tapestry, his thoughts whirling. Very few things in all the world could rattle Artemis Entreri, who had survived life on the streets from a tender young age and had risen to the very top of his profession, who had survived Menzoberranzan and many, many encounters with dark elves. One of those few things was a mind flayer. Entreri had seen a few in the dark elf city, and he abhorred them more than any other creature he had ever met. It wasn't their appearance that so upset the assassin, though they were brutally ugly by any but illithid standards. No, it was their very demeanor, their different view of the world, as Kohrin had just alluded to.

Throughout his life, Artemis Entreri had gained the upper hand because he understood his enemies better than they understood him. He had found the dark elves a bit more of a challenge, based on the fact that the drow were too experienced-were simply too good at conspiring and plotting for him to gain any real comprehension… any that he could hold confidence in, at least.

With illithids, though he had only dealt with them briefly, the disadvantage was even more fundamental and impossible to overcome. There was no way Artemis Entreri could understand that particular enemy because there was no way he could bring himself to any point where he could view the world as an illithid might. No way.

So Entreri tried to make himself very small. He listened to every word, every inflection, every intake of breath, very carefully.

"Why did you not come earlier to my call?" Kohrin Soulez demanded.

"They are dark elves," Yharaskrik responded in that bubbling, watery voice that sounded to Entreri like a very old man with too much phlegm in his throat. "They are within the building."

"You should have come earlier!" Ahdahnia cried. "We could have beaten-" Her voice left her with a gasp. She stumbled backward and seemed about to fall. Entreri knew the mind flayer had just hit her with some scrambling burst of mental energy.

"What do I do?" Kohrin Soulez wailed.

"There is nothing you can do," answered Yharaskrik. "You cannot hope to survive."

"P-par-parlay with them, F-father!" cried the recovering Ahdahnia. "Give them what they want-else you cannot hope to survive."

"They will take what they want," Yharaskrik assured her, and turned back to Kohrin Soulez. "You have nothing to offer. There is no hope."

"Father?" Ahdahnia asked, her voice suddenly weak, almost pitiful.

"You attack them!" Kohrin Soulez demanded, holding his deadly sword out toward the illithid. "Overwhelm them!"

Yharaskrik made a sound that Entreri, who had mustered enough willpower to peek back around the tapestry, recognized to be an expression of mirth. It wasn't a laugh, actually, but more like a clear, gasping cough.

Kohrin Soulez, too, apparently understood the meaning of the reply, for his face grew very red.

"They are drow. Do you now understand that?" the illithid asked. "There is no hope."

Kohrin Soulez started to respond, to demand again that Yharaskrik take the offensive, but as if he had suddenly come to figure it all out, he paused and stared at his octopus-headed companion. "You knew," he accused. "When the psionicist entered Dallabad, he conveyed…"

"The psionicist was drow," the illithid confirmed.

"Traitor!" Kohrin Soulez cried.

"There is no betrayal. There was never friendship, or even alliance," the illithid remarked logically.

"But you knew!"

Yharaskrik didn't bother to reply.

"Father?" Ahdahnia asked again, and she was trembling visibly.

Kohrin Soulez's breath came in labored gasps. He brought his left hand up to his face and wiped away sweat and tears. "What am I to do?" he asked, speaking to himself. "What will…"

Yharaskrik began that coughing laughter again, and this time, it sounded clearly to Entreri that the creature was mocking pitiful Soulez.

Kohrin Soulez composed himself suddenly and glared at the creature. "This amuses you?" he asked.

"I take pleasure in the ironies of the lesser species," Yharaskrik responded. "How much your whines sound as those of the many you have killed. How many have begged for their lives futilely before Kohrin Soulez, as he will now futilely beg for his at the feet of a greater adversary than he can possibly comprehend?"

"But an adversary that you know well!" Kohrin cried.

"I prefer the drow to your pitiful kind," Yharaskrik freely admitted. "They never beg for mercy that they know will not come. Unlike humans, they accept the failings of individual-minded creatures. There is no greater joining among them, as there is none among you, but they understand and accept that fallibility." The illithid gave a slight bow. "That is all the respect I now offer to you, in the hour of your death," Yharaskrik explained. "I would throw energy your way, that you might capture it and redirect it against the dark elves- and they are close now, I assure you-but I choose not to."

Artemis Entreri recognized clearly the change that came over Kohrin Soulez then, the shift from despair to nothing- to-lose anger that he had seen so many times during his decades on the tough streets.

"But I wear the gauntlet!" Kohrin Soulez said powerfully, and he moved the magnificent sword out toward

Yharaskrik. "I will at least get the pleasure of first witnessing your end!"

But even as he made the declaration, Yharaskrik seemed to melt into the stone at his feet and was gone.

"Damn him!" Kohrin Soulez screamed. "Damn you-" His tirade cut short as a pounding came on the door.

"Your wand!" the guildmaster cried to his daughter, turning to face her, in the direction of the floor-to- ceiling tapestry that decorated his private chamber.

Ahdahnia just stood there, wide-eyed, making no move to reach for the wand at her belt. Her expression changing not at all, she crumpled to the floor. There stood Artemis Entreri.

Kohrin Soulez's eyes widened as he watched her descent, but as if he hardly cared for the fall of Ahdahnia other than its implications for his own safety, his gaze focused clearly on Entreri.

"It would have been so much easier if you had merely sold the blade to me," the assassin remarked.

"I knew this was your doing, Entreri," Soulez growled back at him, advancing a step, the blood-red blade gleaming at the ready.

"I offer you one more chance to sell it," Entreri said, and Soulez stopped short, his expression one of pure incredulity. "For the price of her life," the assassin added, pointing down at Ahdahnia with his jeweled dagger. "Your own life is yours to bargain for, but you'll have to make that bargain with others."

Another bang sounded out in the corridor, followed by the sounds of some fighting.

"They are close, Kohrin Soulez," Entreri remarked, "close and overwhelming."

"You brought dark elves to Calimport," Soulez growled back at him.

"They came of their own accord," Entreri replied. "I was merely wise enough not to try to oppose them. So I make my offer, but only this one last time. I can save Ahdahnia- she is not dead but merely asleep." To accentuate his point, he held up a small crossbow quarrel of unusual design, a drow bolt that had been tipped with sleeping poison. "Give me the sword and gauntlet-now-and she lives. Then you can bargain for your own life. The sword will do you little good against the dark elves, for they need no magic to destroy you."

"But if I am to bargain for my life, then why not do so with the sword in hand?" Kohrin Soulez asked.

In response, Entreri glanced down at the sleeping form of Ahdahnia.

"I am to trust that you will keep your word?" Soulez answered.

Entreri didn't answer, other than to fix the man with a cold stare.

There came a sharp rap on the heavy door. As if incited by that sound of imminent danger, Kohrin Soulez leaped forward, slashing hard.

Entreri could have killed Ahdahnia and still dodged, but he did not. He slipped back behind the tapestry and went down low, scrambling along its length. He heard the tearing behind him as Soulez slashed and stabbed. Charon's Claw easily sliced the heavy material, even took chunks out of the wall behind it.

Entreri came out the other side to find Soulez already moving in his direction, the man wearing an expression that seemed half crazed, even jubilant.

"How valuable will the drow elves view me when they enter to find Artemis Entreri dead?" he squealed, and he launched a thrust, feint and slash for the assassin's shoulder.

Entreri had his own sword out then, in his right hand, his dagger still in his left, and he snapped it up, driving the slash aside. Soulez was good, very good, and he had the formidable weapon back in close defensively before the assassin could begin to advance with his dagger.

Respect kept Artemis Entreri back from the man, and more importantly, from that devastating weapon. He knew enough about Charon's Claw to understand that a simple nick from it, even one on his hand that he might suffer in a successful parry, would fester and grow and would likely kill him.

Confidant that he'd find the right opening, the deadly assassin stalked the man slowly, slowly.

Soulez attacked again with a low thrust that Entreri hopped back from, and a thrust high that the assassin ducked. Entreri slapped at the red blade with his sword and thrust at his opponent's center mass. It was a brilliantly quick routine that would have left almost any opponent at least shallowly stabbed.

He never got near to hitting Entreri. Then he had to scramble and throw out a cut to the side to keep the assassin, who had somehow quick-stepped to his right while slapping hard at the third thrust, at bay.

Kohrin Soulez growled in frustration as they came up square again, facing each other from a distance of about ten feet, with Entreri continuing that composed stalk. Now Soulez also moved, angling to intercept.

He was dragging his back foot behind him, Entreri noted, keeping ready to change direction, trying to cut off the room and any possible escape routes.

"You so desperately desire Charon's Claw," Soulez said with a chuckle, "but do you even begin to understand the true beauty of the weapon? Can you even guess at its power and its tricks, assassin?"

Entreri continued to back and pace-back to the left, then back to the right-allowing Soulez to shrink down the battlefield. The assassin was growing impatient, and also, the sounds on the door indicated that the resistance in the hallway had come to an end. The door was magnificent and strong, but it would not hold out long, and Entreri wanted this finished before Rai-guy and the dark elves arrived.

"You think I am an old man," Soulez remarked, and he came forward in a short rush, thrusting.

Entreri picked it off and this time came forward with a counter of his own, rolling his sword under Soulez's blade and sliding it out. The assassin turned and stepped ahead, dagger rushing forward, but he had to disengage from the powerful sword too soon. The angle of the parry was forcing the enchanted blade dangerously close to Entreri's exposed hand, and without the block, he had to skitter into a quick retreat as Soulez slashed across.

"I am an old man," Soulez continued, sounding undaunted, "but I draw strength from the sword. I am your fighting equal, Artemis Entreri, and with this sword you are surely doomed."

He came on again, but Entreri retreated easily, sliding back toward the wall opposite the door. He knew he was running out of room, but to him that only meant that Kohrin Soulez was running out of room, too, and out of time.

"Ah, yes, run back, little rabbit," Soulez taunted. "I know you, Artemis Entreri. I know you. Behold!" As he finished, he began waving the sword before him, and Entreri had to blink, for the blade began trailing blackness.

No, not trailing, the assassin realized to his surprise, but emitting blackness. It was thick ash that held in place in the air in great sweeping opaque fans, altering the 'battlefield to Kohrin Soulez's designs.

"I know you!" Soulez cried and came forward, sweeping, sweeping more ash screens into the air.

"Yes, you know me," Entreri answered calmly, and Soulez slowed. The timbre of Entreri's voice had reminded him of the power of this particular opponent. "You see me at night, Kohrin Soulez, in your dreams. When you look into the darkest shadows of those nightmares, do you see those eyes looking back at you?"

As he finished, he came forward a step, tossing his sword slightly into the air before him, and at just the right angle so that the approaching sword was the only thing Kohrin Soulez could see.

The room's door exploded into a thousand tiny little pieces.

Soulez hardly noticed, coming forward to meet the attack, slapping the apparently thrusting sword on top, then below and to the side. So beautifully angled was Entreri's toss that the man's own quick parry strikes, one countering the spin of the other, gave Soulez the illusion that Entreri was still holding the other end of the blade.

He leaped ahead, through the opaque fans of the sword's conjured ash, and struck hard for where he knew the assassin had to be.

Soulez stiffened, feeling the sting in his back. Entreri's dagger cut into his flesh.

"Do you see those eyes looking back at you from the shadows of your nightmares, Kohrin Soulez?" Entreri asked again. "Those are my eyes."

Soulez felt the dagger pulling at his life-force. Entreri hadn't driven it home yet, but he didn't have to. The man was beaten, and he knew it. Soulez dropped Charon's Claw to the floor and let his arm slip down to his side.

"You are a devil," he growled at the assassin.

"I?" Entreri answered innocently. "Was it not Kohrin Soulez who would have sacrificed his daughter for the sake of a mere weapon?"

As he finished, he was fast to reach down with his free hand and yank the black gauntlet from Soulez's right hand. To Soulez's surprise, the glove fell to the floor right beside the sword.

From the open doorway across the room came the sound of a voice, melodic yet sharp, and speaking in a language that rolled but was oft-broken with harsh and sharp consonant sounds.

Entreri backed away from the man. Soulez turned around to see the ash lines drifting down to the floor, showing him several dark elves standing in the room.

Kohrin Soulez took a deep, steadying breath. He had dealt with worse than drow, he silently reminded himself. He had parlayed with an illithid and had survived meetings with the most notorious guildmasters of Calimport. Soulez focused on Entreri then, seeing the man engaged in conversation with the apparent leader of the dark elves, seeing the man drifting farther and farther from him.

There, right beside him, lay his precious sword, his greatest possession-an artifact he would indeed protect even at the cost of his own daughter's life.

Entreri moved a bit farther from him. None of the drow were advancing or seemed to pay Soulez any heed at all.

Charon's Claw, so conveniently close, seemed to be calling to him.

Gathering all his energy, tensing his muscles and calculating the most fluid course open to him, Kohrin Soulez dived down low, scooped the black, red-stitched gauntlet onto his right hand, and before he could even register that it didn't seem to fit him the same way, scooped up the powerful, enchanted sword.

He turned toward Entreri with a growl. "Tell them that I will speak with their leader…" he started to say, but his words quickly became a jumble, his tone going low and his pace slowing, as if something was pulling at his vocal chords.

Kohrin Soulez's face contorted weirdly, his features seeming to elongate in the direction of the sword.

All conversation in the room stopped. All eyes turned to stare incredulously at Soulez.

"T-to the Nine… Nine Hells with y-you, Entreri!" the man stammered, each word punctuated by a croaking groan.

"What is he doing?" Rai-guy demanded of Entreri.

The assassin didn't answer, just watched in amusement as Kohrin Soulez continued to struggle against the power of Charon's Claw. His face elongated again and wisps of smoke began wafting up from his body. He tried to cry out, but only an indecipherable gurgle came forth. The smoke increased, and Soulez began to tremble violently, all the while trying to scream out.

Nothing more than smoke poured from his mouth.

It all seemed to stop then, and Soulez stood staring at Entreri and gasping.

The man lived just long enough to put on the most horrified and stunned expression Artemis Entreri had ever seen. It was an expression that pleased Entreri greatly. There was something too familiar in the way in which Soulez had abandoned his daughter.

Kohrin Soulez erupted in a sudden, sizzling burst. The skin burned off his head, leaving no more than a whitened skull and wide, horrified eyes.

Charon's Claw hit the hard floor again, making more of a dull thump than any metallic ring. The skull-headed corpse of Kohrin Soulez crumpled in place.

"Explain," Rai-guy demanded.

Entreri walked over and, wearing a gauntlet that appeared identical to the one Kohrin Soulez had but not a match for the other since it was shaped for the same hand, reached down and calmly gathered up his newest prize.

"Pray I do not go to the Nine Hells, as you surely will, Kohrin Soulez," the deadly assassin said to the corpse. "For if I see you there, I will continue to torment you throughout eternity."

"Explain!" Rai-guy demanded more forcefully.

"Explain?" Entreri echoed, turning to face the angry drow wizard. He gave a shrug, as if the answer seemed obvious. "I was prepared, and he was a fool."

Rai-guy glared at him ominously, and Entreri only smiled back, hoping his amused expression would tempt the wizard to action.

He held Charon's Claw now, and he wore the gauntlet that could catch and redirect magic.

The world had just changed in ways that the wretched Rai-guy couldn't begin to understand.

Chapter 8 THE SIMPLE REASON

The tower will remain. Jarlaxle has declared it," said Kimmuriel. "The fortress weathered our attack well enough to keep Dallabad operating smoothly, and without anyone outside of the oasis even knowing that an assault had taken place."

"Operating," Rai-guy echoed, spitting the distasteful word out. He stared at Entreri, who walked beside him into the crystal tower. Rai-guy's look made it quite clear that he considered the events of this day the assassin's doing and planned on holding Entreri personally responsible if anything went wrong. "Is Bregan D'aerthe to become the overseers of a great toll booth, then?"

"Dallabad will prove more valuable to Bregan D'aerthe than you assume," Entreri replied in his stilted use of the drow language. "We can keep the place separate from House Basadoni as far as all others are concerned. The allies we place out here will watch the road and gather news long before those in Calimport are aware. We can run many of our ventures from out here, farther from the prying eyes of Pasha Da'Daclan and his henchmen."

"And who are these trusted allies who will operate Dallabad as a front for Bregan D'aerthe?" Rai-guy demanded. "I had thought of sending Domo."

"Domo and his filthy kind will not leave the offal of the sewers," Sharlotta Vespers put in.

"Too good a hole for them," Entreri muttered.

"Jarlaxle has hinted that perhaps the survivors of Dallabad will suffice," Kimmuriel explained. "Few were killed."

"Allied with a conquered guild," Rai-guy remarked with a sigh, shaking his head. "A guild whose fall we brought about."

"A very different situation from allying with a fallen house of Menzoberranzan," Entreri declared, seeing the error in the dark elf's apparent internal analogy. Rai-guy was viewing things through the dark glass of Menzoberranzan, was considering the generational feuds and grudges that members of the various houses, the various families, held for each other.

"We shall see," the drow wizard replied, and he motioned for Entreri to hang back with him as Kimmuriel, Berg'inyon, and Sharlotta started up the staircase to the second level of the magical crystalline tower.

"I know that you desired Dallabad for personal reasons," Rai-guy said when the two were alone. "Perhaps it was an act of vengeance, or that you might wear that very gauntlet upon your hand and carry that same sword you now have sheathed on your hip. Either way, do not believe you've done anything here I don't understand, human."

"Dallabad is a valuable asset," Entreri replied, not backing away an inch. "Jarlaxle has a place where he can safely construct and maintain the crystalline tower. There was gain here to be had by all."

"Even to Artemis Entreri," Rai-guy remarked.

In answer, the assassin drew forth Charon's Claw, presenting it horizontally to Rai-guy for inspection, letting the drow wizard see the beauty of the item. The sword had a slender, razor-edged, gleaming red blade, its length inscribed with designs of cloaked figures and tall scythes, accentuated by a black blood trough running along its center. Entreri opened his hand enough for the wizard to see the skull-bobbed pommel, with a hilt that appeared like whitened vertebrae. Running from it toward the crosspiece, the hilt was carved to resemble a backbone and rib-cage, and the crosspiece itself resembled a pelvic skeleton, with legs spread out wide and bent back toward the head, so that the wielder's hand fit neatly within the «bony» boundaries. All of the pommel, hilt and crosspiece was white, like bleached bones-perfectly white, except for the eye sockets of the skull pommel, which seemed like black pits at one moment and flared with red fires the next.

"I am pleased with the prize I earned," Entreri admitted.

Rai-guy stared hard at the sword, but his gaze inevitably kept drifting toward the other, less-obvious treasure: the black, red-stitched gauntlet on Entreri's hand.

"Such weapons can be more of a curse than a blessing, human," the wizard remarked. "They are possessed of arrogance, and too often does that foolish pride spill over into the mind of the wielder, to disastrous result."

The two locked stares, with Entreri's expression melting into a wry grin. "Which end would you most like to feel?" he asked, presenting the deadly sword closer to Rai-guy, matching the wizard's obvious threat with one of his own.

Rai-guy narrowed his dark eyes, and walked away.

Entreri held his grin as he watched the wizard move up the stairs, but in truth, Rai-guy's warning had struck a true chord to him. Indeed, Charon's Claw was strong of will- Entreri could feel that clearly-and if he was not careful with the blade always, it could surely lead him to disaster or destroy him as it had utterly slaughtered Kohrin Soulez.

Entreri glanced down at his own posture, reminding himself-a humble self-warning-not to touch any part of the sword with his unprotected hand.

Even Artemis Entreri could not deny a bit of caution against the horrific death he had witnessed when Charon's Claw had burned the skin from the head of Kohrin Soulez.

"Crenshinibon easily dominates the majority of the survivors," Jarlaxle announced to his principal advisors a short while later in an audience chamber he had crafted of the second level the magical tower. "To those outside of Dallabad Oasis, the events of this day will seem like nothing more than a coup within the Soulez family, followed by a strong alliance to the Basadoni Guild."

"Ahdahnia Soulez agreed to remain?" Rai-guy asked.

"She was willing to assume the mantle of Dallabad even before Crenshinibon invaded her thoughts," Jarlaxle explained.

"Loyalty," Entreri remarked under his breath.

Even as the assassin was offering the sarcastic jibe, Rai-guy admitted, "I am beginning to like the young woman more already."

"But can we trust her?" Kimmuriel asked.

"Do you trust me?" Sharlotta Vespers interjected. "It would seem a similar situation."

"Except that her guildmaster was also her father," Kimmuriel reminded.

"There is nothing to fear from Ahdahnia Soulez or any of the others who will remain at Dallabad," Jarlaxle put in, forcefully, thus ending the philosophical debate. "Those who survived and will continue to do so belong to Crenshinibon now, and Crenshinibon belongs to me."

Entreri didn't miss the doubting look that flashed briefly across Rai-guy's face at the moment of Jarlaxle's final proclamation, and in truth, he, too, wondered if the mercenary leader wasn't a bit confused as to who owned whom.

"Kohrin Soulez's soldiers will not betray us," Jarlaxle went on with all confidence. "Nor will they even remember the events of this day, but rather, they will accept the story we tell them to put forth as truth, if that is what we choose. Dallabad Oasis belongs to Bregan D'aerthe now as surely as if we had installed an army of dark elves here to facilitate the operations."

"And you trust the woman Ahdahnia to lead, though we just murdered her father?" Kimmuriel said more than asked.

"Her father was killed by his obsession with that sword; so she told me herself," Jarlaxle replied, and as he spoke, all gazes turned to regard the weapon hanging easily at Entreri's belt. Rai-guy, in particular, kept his dangerous glare upon Entreri, as if silently reiterating the warnings of their last conversation.

The wizard meant those warnings to be a threat to Entreri, a reminder to the assassin that he, Rai-guy, would be watching Entreri's every move much more closely now, a reminder that he believed that the assassin had, in effect, used Bregan D'aerthe for the sake of his personal gain-a very dangerous practice.

"You do not like this," Kimmuriel remarked to Rai-guy when the two were back in Calimport.

Jarlaxle had remained behind at Dallabad Oasis, securing the remnants of Kohrin Soulez's forces and explaining the slight shift in direction that Ahdahnia Soulez should now undertake.

"How could I?" Rai-guy responded. "Every day, it seems that our purpose in coming to the surface has expanded. I had thought that we would be back in Menzoberranzan by this time, yet our footpads have tightened on the stone."

"On the sand," Kimmuriel corrected, in a tone that showed he, too, was not overly pleased by the continuing expansion of Bregan D'aerthe's surface ventures.

Originally, Jarlaxle had shared plans to come to the surface and establish a base of contacts, humans mostly, who would serve as profiteering front men for the trading transactions of the mercenary drow band. Though he had never specified the details, Jarlaxle's original explanation had made the two believe that their time on the surface would be quite limited.

But now they had expanded, had even constructed a physical structure, with more apparently planned, and had added a second base to the Basadoni conquest. Worse than that, both dark elves were thinking, though not openly saying, perhaps there was something even more behind Jarlaxle's continuing shift of attitude. Perhaps the mercenary leader had erred in taking a certain relic from the renegade Do'Urden.

"Jarlaxle seems to have taken a liking to the surface," Kimmuriel went on. "We all knew that he had tired somewhat of the continuing struggles within our homeland, but perhaps we underestimated the extent of that weariness."

"Perhaps," Rai-guy replied. "Or perhaps our friend merely needs to be reminded that this is not our place."

Kimmuriel stared at him hard, his expression clearly asking how one might «remind» the great Jarlaxle of anything.

"Start at the edges," Rai-guy answered, echoing one of Jarlaxle's favorite sayings, and favorite tactics for Bregan D'aerthe. Whenever the mercenary band went into infiltration or conquest mode, they started gnawing at the edges of their opponent-circling the perimeter and chewing, chewing-as they continued their ever-tightening ring. "Has Morik yet delivered the jewels?"

There it lay before him, in all its wicked splendor.

Artemis Entreri stared long and hard at Charon's Claw, the fingers on both of his unprotected hands rubbing in against his moist palms. Part of him wanted to reach out and grasp the sword, to effect now the battle that he knew would soon enough be fought between his own willpower and that of the sentient weapon. If he won that battle, the sword would truly be his, but if he lost….

He recalled, and vividly, the last horrible moments of Kohrin Soulez's miserable life.

It was exactly that life, though, that so propelled Entreri in this seemingly suicidal direction. He would not be as Soulez had been. He would not allow himself to be a prisoner to the sword, a man trapped in a box of his own making. No, he would be the master, or he would be dead.

But still, that horrific death….

Entreri started to reach for the sword, steeling his willpower against the expected onslaught.

He heard movement in the hallway outside his room.

He had the glove on in a moment and scooped up the sword in his right hand, moving it to its sheath on his hip in one fluid movement even as the door to his private chambers-if any chambers for a human among Bregan D'aerthe could be considered private-swung open.

"Come," instructed Kimmuriel Oblodra, and he turned and started away.

Entreri didn't move, and as soon as the drow realized it, he turned back. Kimmuriel had a quizzical look upon his handsome, angular face. That look of curiosity soon turned to one of menace, though, as he considered the standing, but hardly moving assassin.

"You have a most excellent weapon now," Kimmuriel remarked. "One to greatly complement your nasty dagger. Fear not. Neither Rai-guy nor I have underestimated the value of that gauntlet you seem to keep forever upon your right hand. We know its powers, Artemis Entreri, and we know how to defeat it."

Entreri continued to stare, unblinking, at the drow psionicist. A bluff? Or had resourceful Kimmuriel and Rai- guy indeed found some way around the magic-negating gauntlet? A wry smile found its way onto Entreri's face, a look bolstered by the assassin's complete confidence that whatever secret Kimmuriel might now be hinting of would do the drow little good in their immediate situation. Entreri knew, and his look made Kimmuriel aware as well, that he could cross the room then and there, easily defeat any of Kimmuriel's psionically created defenses with the gauntlet, and run him through with the mighty sword.

If the drow, so cool and so powerful, was bothered or worried at all, he did a fine job of masking it. But so did Entreri.

"There is work to be done in Luskan," Kimmuriel remarked at length. "Our friend Morik still has not delivered the required jewels."

"I am to go and serve as messenger again?" Entreri asked sarcastically.

"No message for Morik this time," Kimmuriel said coldly. "He has failed us."

The finality of that statement struck Entreri profoundly, but he managed to hide his surprise until Kimmuriel had turned around and started away once more. The assassin understood clearly, of course, that Kimmuriel had, in effect, just told him to got to Luskan and murder Morik. The request did not seem so odd, given that Morik apparently was not living up to Bregan D'aerthe's expectations. Still, it seemed out of place to Entreri that Jarlaxle would so willingly and easily cut his only thread to a market as promising as Luskan without even asking for some explanation from the tricky little rogue. Jarlaxle had been acting strange, to be sure, but was he as confused as that?

It occurred to Entreri even as he started after Kimmuriel that perhaps this assassination had nothing to do with Jarlaxle.

His feelings, and fears, were only strengthened when he entered the small room. He came in not far behind Kimmuriel but found Rai-guy, and Rai-guy alone, waiting for him.

"Monk has failed us yet again," the wizard stated immediately. "There can be no further chances for him. He knows too much of us, and with such an obvious lack of loyalty, well, what are we to do? Go to Luskan and eliminate him. A simple task. We care not for the jewels. If he has them, spend them as you will. Just bring me Morik's heart." As he finished, he stepped aside, clearing the way to a magical portal he had woven, the blurry image inside showing Entreri the alleyway beside Morik's building.

"You will need to remove the gauntlet before you stride through," Kimmuriel remarked, slyly enough for Entreri to wonder if perhaps this whole set-up was but a ruse to force him into an unguarded position. Of course, the resourceful assassin had considered that very thing on the walk over, so he only chuckled at Kimmuriel, walked up to the portal, and stepped right through.

He was in Luskan now, and he looked back to see the magical portal closing behind him. Kimmuriel and Rai-guy were looking at him with expressions that showed everything from confusion to anger to intrigue.

Entreri held up his gloved hand in a mocking wave as the pair faded out of sight. He knew they were wondering how he could exercise such control over the magic-dispelling gauntlet. They were trying to get a feel for its power and its limitations, something that even Entreri had not yet figured out. He certainly didn't mean to offer any clues to his quiet adversaries, thus he had changed from the real magical gauntlet to the decoy that had so fooled Soulez.

When the portal closed he started out of the alleyway, changing once again to the real gauntlet and dropping the fake one into a small sack concealed under the folds of his cloak at the back of his belt.

He went to Morik's room first and found that the little thief had not added any further security traps or tricks. That surprised Entreri, for if Morik was again disappointing his merciless leaders he should have been expecting company. Furthermore, the thief obviously had not fled the small apartment.

Not content to sit and wait, Entreri went back out onto Luskan's streets, making his way from tavern to tavern, from corner to corner. A few beggars approached him, but he sent them away with a glare. One pickpocket actually went for the purse he had secured to his belt on the right side. Entreri left him sitting in the gutter, his wrist shattered by a simple twist of the assassin's hand.

Sometime later, and thinking that it was about time for him to return to Morik's abode, the assassin came into an establishment on Half-Moon Street known as the Cutlass. The place was nearly empty, with a portly barkeep rubbing away at the dirty bar and a skinny little man sitting across from him, chattering away. Another figure among the few patrons remaining in the place caught Entreri's attention. The man was sitting comfortably and quietly at the far left end of the bar with his back against the wall and the hood of his weathered cloak pulled over his head. He appeared to be sleeping, judging from his rhythmic breathing, the hunch of his shoulders, and the loll of his head, but Entreri caught a few tell-tale signs-like the fact that the rolling head kept angling to give the supposedly sleeping man a fine view of all around him-that told him otherwise.

The assassin didn't miss the slight tensing of the shoulders when that angle revealed his presence to the supposedly sleeping man.

Entreri strode up to the bar, right beside the nervous, skinny little man, who said, "Arumn's done serving for the night."

Entreri glanced over, his dark eyes taking a full measure of this one. "My gold is not good enough for you?" he asked the barkeep, turning back slowly to consider the portly man behind the bar.

Entreri noted that the barkeep took a long, good measure of him. He saw respect coming into Arumn's eyes. He wasn't surprised. This barkeep, like so many others, survived primarily by understanding his clientele. Entreri was doing little to hide the truth of his skills in his graceful, solid movements. The man pretending to sleep at the bar said nothing, and neither did the nervous one.

"Ho, Josi's just puffing out his chest, is all," the bar-keep, Arumn, remarked, "though I had planned on closing her up early. Not many looking for drink this night."

Satisfied with that, Entreri glanced to the left, to the compact form of the man pretending to be asleep. "Two honey meads," he said, dropping a couple of shining gold coins on the bar, ten times the cost of the drinks.

The assassin continued to watch the "sleeper," hardly paying any heed at all to Arumn or nervous little Josi, who was constantly shifting at his other side. Josi even asked Entreri his name, but the assassin ignored him. He just continued to stare, taking a measure, studying every movement and playing them against what he already knew of Morik.

He turned back when he heard the clink of glass on the bar. He scooped up one drink in his gloved right hand, bringing the dark liquid to his lips, while he grasped the second glass in his left hand, and instead of lifting it, just sent it sliding fast down the bar, angled slightly for the outer lip, perfectly set to dump onto the supposedly- sleeping man's lap.

The barkeep cried out in surprise. Josi Puddles jumped to his feet, and even started toward Entreri, who simply ignored him.

The assassin's smile widened when Morik, and it was indeed Morik, reached up at the last moment and caught the mead-filled missile, bringing his hand back and wide to absorb the shock of the catch and to make sure that any liquid that did splash over did not spill on him.

Entreri slid off the barstool, took up his glass of mead and motioned for Morik to go with him outside. He had barely taken a step, though, when he sensed a movement toward his arm. He turned back to see Josi Puddles reaching for him.

"No, ye don't!" the skinny man remarked. "Ye ain't leavin' with Arumn's glasses."

Entreri watched the hand coming toward him and lifted his gaze to look Josi Puddles straight in the eye, to let the man know, with just a look and just that awful, calm and deadly demeanor, that if he so much as brushed Entreri's arm with his hand, he would surely pay for it with his life.

"No, ye…" Josi started to say again, but his voice failed him and his hand stopped moving. He knew. Defeated, the skinny man sank back against the bar.

"The gold should more than pay for the glasses," Entreri remarked to the barkeep, and Arumn, too, seemed quite unnerved.

The assassin headed for the door, taking some pleasure in hearing the barkeep quietly scolding Josi for being so stupid.

The street was quiet outside, and dark, and Entreri could sense the uneasiness in Morik. He could see it in the man's cautious stance and in the way his eyes darted about.

"I have the jewels," Morik was quick to announce. He started in the direction of his apartment, and Entreri followed.

The assassin thought it interesting that Morik presented him with the jewels-and the size of the pouch made Entreri believe that the thief had certainly met his master's expectations-as soon as they entered the darkened room. If Morik had them, why hadn't he simply given them over on time? Certainly Morik, no fool, understood the volatile and extremely dangerous nature of his partners.

"I wondered when I would be called upon," Morik said, obviously trying to appear completely calm. "I have had them since the day after you left but have gotten no word from Rai-guy or Kimmuriel."

Entreri nodded, but showed no surprise-and in truth, when he thought about it, the assassin wasn't really surprised at all. These were drow, after all. They killed when convenient, killed when they felt like it. Perhaps they had sent Entreri here to slay Morik in the hopes that Morik would prove the stronger. Perhaps it didn't matter to them either way. They would merely enjoy the spectacle of it.

Or perhaps Rai-guy and Kimmuriel were anxious to clip away at the entrenchment that Jarlaxle was obviously setting up for Bregan D'aerthe. Kill Morik and any others like him, sever all ties, and go home. He lifted his black gauntlet into the air, seeking any magical emanations. He detected some upon Morik and some other minor dweomers in and around the room, but nothing that seemed to him to be any kind of scrying spell. It wasn't that he could have done anything about any spells or psionics divining the area, anyway. Entreri had come to understand already that the gauntlet could only grab at spells directed at him specifically. In truth, the thing was really quite limited. He might catch one of Rai-guy's lightning bolts and hurl it back at the wizard, but if Rai-guy filled the room with a fireball….

"What are you doing?" Morik asked the distracted assassin.

"Get out of here," Entreri instructed. "Out of this building and out of the city altogether, for a short while at least." The obviously puzzled Morik just stared at him. "Did you not hear me?"

That order comes from Jarlaxle?" Morik asked, seeming quite confused. "Does he fear that I have been discovered, that he, by association, has been somehow implicated?"

"I tell you to begone, Morik," Entreri answered. "I, and not Jarlaxle, nor, certainly, Rai-guy or Kimmuriel."

"Do I threaten you?" asked Morik. "Am I somehow impeding your ascension within the guild?"

"Are you that much a fool?" Entreri replied.

"I have been promised a king's treasure!" Morik protested. "The only reason I agreed-"

"Was because you had no choice," Entreri interrupted. "I know that to be true, Morik. Perhaps that lack of choice is the only thing that saves you now."

Morik was shaking his head, obviously upset and unconvinced. "Luskan is my home," he started to say.

Charon's Claw came out in a red and black flash. Entreri swiped down beside Morik, left and right, then slashed across right above the man's head. The sword left a trail of black ash with all three swipes so that Entreri had Morik practically boxed in by the opaque walls. So quickly had he struck, the dazed and dazzled rogue hadn't even had a chance to draw his weapon.

"I was not sent to collect the jewels or even to scold and warn you, fool," Entreri said coldly-so very, very coldly. "I was sent to kill you."

"But…."

"You have no idea the level of evil with which you have allied yourself," the assassin went on. "Flee this place- this building and this city. Run for all your life, fool Morik. They will not look for you if they cannot find you easily- you are not worth their trouble. So run away, beyond their vision and take hope that you are free of them."

Morik stood there, encapsulated by the walls of black ash that still magically hung in the air, his jaw hanging open in complete astonishment. He looked left and right, just a bit, and swallowed hard, making it clear to Entreri that he had just then come to realize how overmatched he truly was. Despite the assassin's previous visit, easily getting through all of Morik's traps, it had taken this display of brutal swordsmanship to show Morik the deadly truth of Artemis Entreri.

"Why would they…?" Morik dared to ask. "I am an ally, eyes for Bregan D'aerthe in the northland. Jarlaxle himself instructed me to…" He stopped at the sound of Entreri's laughter.

"You are iblith," Entreri explained. "Offal. Not of the drow. That alone makes you no more than a plaything to them. They will kill you-I am to kill you here and now by their very words."

"Yet you defy them," Morik said, and it wasn't clear from his tone if he had come around yet truly to believe Entreri or not.

"You are thinking that this is some test of your loyalty," Entreri correctly guessed, shaking his head with every word. "The drow do not test loyalty, Morik, because they expect none. With them, there is only the predictability of actions based in simple fear."

"Yet you are showing yourself disloyal by letting me go," Morik remarked. "We are not friends, with no debt and little contact between us. Why do you tell me this?"

Entreri leaned back and considered that question more deeply than Morik could have expected, allowing the thief's recognition of illogic to resonate in his thoughts. For surely Entreri's actions here made little logical sense. He could have been done with his business and back on his way to Calimport, without any real threat to him. By contrast, and by all logical reasoning, there would be little gain for Entreri in letting Morik walk away.

Why this time? the assassin asked himself. He had killed so many, and often in situations similar to this, often at the behest of a guildmaster seeking to punish an impudent or threatening underling. He had followed orders to kill people whose offense had never been made known to him, people, perhaps, similar to Morik, who had truly committed no offense at all.

No, Artemis Entreri couldn't quite bring himself to accept that last thought. His killings, every one, had been committed against people associated with the underworld, or against misinformed do-gooders who had somehow become entangled in the wrong mess, impeding the assassin's progress. Even Drizzt Do'Urden, that paladin in drow skin, had named himself as Entreri's enemy by preventing the assassin from retrieving Regis the halfling and the magical ruby pendant the little fool had stolen from Pasha Pook. It had taken years, but to Entreri, killing Drizzt Do'Urden had been the justified culmination of the drow's unwanted and immoral interference. In Entreri's mind and in his heart, those who had died at his hands had played the great game, had tossed aside their innocence in pursuit of power or material gain.

In Entreri's mind, everyone he had killed had indeed deserved it, because he was a killer among killers, a survivor in a brutal game that would not allow it to be any other way.

"Why?" Morik asked again, drawing Entreri from his contemplation.

The assassin stared at the rogue for a moment, and offered a quick and simple answer to a question too complex for him to sort out properly, an answer that rang of more truth than Artemis Entreri even realized.

"Because I hate drow more than I hate humans."