Servant of the Shard

There is a simple beauty in the absolute ugliness of demons. There is no ambiguity there, no hesitation, no misconception, about how one must deal with such creatures. You do not parlay with demons. You do not hear their lies. You cast them out, destroy them, rid the world of them-even if the temptation is present to utilize their powers to save what you perceive to be a little corner of goodness.

This is a difficult concept for many to grasp and has been the downfall of many wizards and priests who have errantly summoned demons and allowed the creatures to move beyond their initial purpose-the answering of a question, perhaps-because they were tempted by the power offered by the creature. Many of these doomed spellcasters thought they would be doing good by forcing the demons to their side, by bolstering their cause, their army, with demonic soldiers. What ill, they supposed, if the end result proved to the greater good? Would not a goodly king be well advised to add «controlled» demons to his cause if goblins threatened his lands?

I think not, because if the preservation of goodness relies upon the use of such obvious and irredeemable evil to defeat evil, then there is nothing, truly, worth saving.

The sole use of demons, then, is to bring them forth only in times when they must betray the cause of evil, and only in a setting so controlled that there is no hope of their escape. Cadderly has done this within the secure summoning chamber of the Spirit Soaring, as have, I am sure, countless priests and wizards. Such a summoning is not without peril, though, even if the circle of protection is perfectly formed, for there is always a temptation that goes with the manipulation of powers such as a balor or a nalfeshnie.

Within that temptation must always lie the realization of irredeemable evil. Irredeemable. Without hope. That concept, redemption, must be the crucial determinant in any such dealings. Temper your blade when redemption is possible, hold it when redemption is at hand, and strike hard and without remorse when your opponent is beyond any hope of redemption.

Where on that scale does Artemis Entreri lie, I wonder? Is the man truly beyond help and hope?

Yes, to the former, I believe, and no to the latter. There is no help for Artemis Entreri because the man would never accept any. His greatest flaw is his pride- not the boasting pride of so many lesser warriors, but the pride of absolute independence and unbending self-reliance. I could tell him his errors, as could anyone who has come to know him in any way, but he would not hear my words.

Yet perhaps there may be hope of some redemption for the man. I know not the source of his anger, though it must have been great. And yet I will not allow that the source, however difficult and terrible it might have been, in any way excuses the man from his actions. The blood on Entreri's sword and trademark dagger is his own to wear.

He does not wear it well, I believe. It burns at his skin as might the breath of a black dragon and gnaws at all that is within him. I saw that during our last encounter, a quiet and dull ache at the side of his dark eyes. I had him beaten, could have killed him, and I believe that in many ways he hoped I would finish the task and be done with it, and end his mostly self-imposed suffering.

That ache is what held my blade, that hope within me that somewhere deep inside Artemis Entreri there is the understanding that his path needs to change, that the road he currently walks is one of emptiness and ultimate despair. Many thoughts coursed my mind as I stood there, weapons in hand, with him defenseless before me. How could I strike when I saw that pain in his eyes and knew that such pain might well be the precursor to redemption? And yet how could I not, when I was well

aware that letting Artemis Entreri walk out of that crystalline tower might spell the doom of others?

Truly it was a dilemma, a crisis of conscience and of balance. I found my answer in that critical moment in the memory of my father, Zaknafein. To Entreri's thinking, I know, he and Zaknafein are not so different, and there are indeed similarities. Both existed in an environment hostile and to their respective perceptions evil. Neither, to their perceptions, did either go out of his way to kill anyone who did not deserve it. Are the warriors and assassins who fight for the wretched pashas of Calimport any better than the soldiers of the drow houses? Thus, in many ways, the actions of Zaknafein and those of Artemis Entreri are quite similar. Both existed in a world of intrigue, danger, and evil. Both survived their imprisonment through ruthless means. If Entreri views his world, his prison, as full of wretchedness as Zaknafein viewed Menzoberranzan, then is not Entreri as entitled to his manner as was Zaknafein, the weapons master who killed many, many dark elves in his tenure as patron of House Do'Urden?

It is a comparison I realized when first I went to Calimport, in pursuit of Entreri, who had taken Regis as prisoner (and even that act had justification, I must admit), and a comparison that truly troubled me. How close are they, given their abilities with the blade and their apparent willingness to kill? Was it, then, some inner feelings for Zaknafein that stayed my blade when I could have cut Entreri down?

No, I say, and I must believe, for Zaknafein was far more discerning in whom he would kill or would not kill. I know the truth of Zaknafein's heart. I know that Zaknafein was possessed of the ability to love, and the reality of Artemis Entreri simply cannot hold up against that.

Not in his present incarnation, at least, but is there hope that the man will find a light beneath the murderous form of the assassin?

Perhaps, and I would be glad indeed to hear that the man so embraced that light. In truth, though, I doubt that anyone or anything will ever be able to pull that lost

flame of compassion through the thick and seemingly impenetrable armor of dispassion that Artemis Entreri now wears.

— Drizzt Do'Urden

Chapter 16 A DARK NOTE ON A SUNNY DAY

Danica sat on a ledge of an imposing mountain beside the field that housed the magnificent Spirit Soaring, a cathedral of towering spires and flying buttresses, of great and ornate windows of multicolored glass. Acres of grounds were striped by well-maintained hedgerows, many of them shaped into the likeness of animals, and one wrapping around and around itself in a huge maze.

The cathedral was the work of Danica's husband, Cadderly, a mighty priest of Deneir, the god of knowledge. This structure had been Cadderly's most obvious legacy, but his greatest one, to Danica's reasoning, were the twin children romping around the entrance to the maze and their younger sibling, sleeping within the cathedral. The twins had gone running into the hedgerow maze, much to the dismay of the dwarf Pikel Bouldershoulder. Pikel, a practitioner of the druidic ways-magic that his surly brother Ivan still denied-had created the maze and the other amazing gardens.

Pikel had gone running into the maze behind the children screaming, "Eeek!" and other such Pikelisms, and pulling at his green-dyed hair and beard. His maze wasn't quite ready for visitors yet, and the roots hadn't properly set.

Of course, as soon as Pikel had gone running in, the twins had sneaked right back out and were now playing quietly in front of the maze entrance. Danica didn't know how far along the confusing corridors the green-bearded dwarf had gone, but she had heard his voice fast receding and figured that he'd be lost in the maze, for the third time that day, soon enough.

A wind gust came whipping across the mountain wall, blowing Danica's thick mop of strawberry blond hair into her face. She blew some strands out of her mouth and tossed her head to the side, just in time to see Cadderly walking toward her.

What a fine figure he cut in his tan-white tunic and trousers, his light blue silken cape and his trademark blue, wide-brimmed, and plumed hat. Cadderly had aged greatly while constructing the Spirit Soaring, to the point where he and Danica honestly believed he would expire. Much to Danica's dismay Cadderly had expected to die and had accepted that as the sacrifice necessary for the construction of the monumental library. Soon after he had completed the construction of the main building-the details, like the ornate designs of the many doors and the golden leaf work around the beautiful archways, might never be completed-the aging process had reversed, and the man had grown younger almost as fast as he'd aged. Now he seemed a man in his late twenties with a spring in his step, and a twinkle in his eye every time he glanced Danica's way. Danica had even worried that this process would continue, and that soon she'd find herself raising four children instead of three.

He eventually grew no younger, though, stopping at the point where Cadderly seemed every bit the vivacious and healthy young man he had been before all the trouble had started within the Edificant Library, the structure that had stood on this ground before the advent of the chaos curse and the destruction of the old order of Deneir. The willingness to sacrifice everything for the new cathedral and the new order had sufficed in the eyes of Deneir, and thus, Cadderly Bonaduce had been given back his life, a life so enriched by the addition of his wife and their children.

"I had a visitor this morning," Cadderly said to her when he moved beside her. He cast a glance at the twins and smiled all the wider when he heard another frantic call from the lost Pikel.

Danica marveled at how her husband's gray eyes seemed to smile as well. "A man from Carradoon," she replied, nodding. "I saw him enter."

"Bearing word from Drizzt Do'Urden," Cadderly explained, and Danica turned to face him directly, suddenly very interested. She and Cadderly had met the unusual dark elf the previous year and had taken him back to the northland using one of Cadderly's wind-walking spells.

Danica spent a moment studying Cadderly, considering the intense expression upon his normally calm face. "He has retrieved the Crystal Shard," she reasoned, for when last she and Cadderly had been with Drizzt and his human companion, Catti-brie, they had spoken of just that. Drizzt promised that he would retrieve the ancient, evil artifact and bring it to Cadderly to be destroyed.

"He did," Cadderly said.

He handed a roll of parchment sheets to Danica. She took them and unrolled them. A smile crossed her face when she learned of the fate of Drizzt's lost friend, Wulfgar, freed from his prison at the clutches of the demon Errtu. By the time she got to the second page, though, Danica's mouth drooped open, for the note went on to describe the subsequent theft of the Crystal Shard by a rogue dark elf named Jarlaxle, who had sent one of his drow soldiers to Drizzt in the guise of Cadderly.

Danica paused and looked up, and Cadderly took back the parchments. "Drizzt believes the artifact has likely gone underground, back to the dark elf city of Menzoberranzan, where Jarlaxle makes his home," he explained.

"Well, good enough for Menzoberranzan, then," Danica said in all seriousness.

She and Cadderly had discussed the powers of the sentient shard at length, and she understood it to be a tool of destruction-destruction of the wielder's enemies, of the wielder's allies, and ultimately of the wielder himself.

There had never been, and to Cadderly's reasoning, could never be, a different outcome where Crenshinibon was concerned. To possess the Crystal Shard was, ultimately, a terminal disease, and woe to all those nearby.

Cadderly was shaking his head before Danica ever finished the sentiment. "The Crystal Shard is an artifact of sunlight, which is perhaps, in the measure of symbolism, its greatest perversion."

"But the drow are creatures of their dark holes," Danica reasoned. "Let them take it and be gone. Perhaps in the Underdark, the Crystal Shard's power will be lessened, even destroyed."

Again Cadderly was shaking his head. "Who is the stronger?" he asked. "The artifact or the wielder?"

"It sounds as if this particular dark elf was quite cunning," Danica replied. "To have fooled Drizzt Do'Urden is no easy feat, I would guess."

Cadderly shrugged and grinned. "I doubt that Crenshinibon, once it finds its way into the new wielder's heart-which it surely will unless this Jarlaxle is akin in heart to Drizzt Do'Urden-will allow him to retreat to the depths," he explained. "It is not necessarily a question of who is the stronger. The subtlety of the artifact is its ability to manipulate its wielder into agreement, not dominate him."

"And the heart of a dark elf would be easily manipulated," Danica reasoned.

"A typical dark elf, yes," Cadderly agreed. A few moments of quiet passed as each considered the words and the new information.

"What are we to do, then?" Danica asked at length. "If you believe that the Crystal Shard will not allow a retreat to the sunless Underdark, then are we to allow it to wreak havoc on the surface world? Do we even know where it might be?"

Still deep in thought, Cadderly did not answer right away. The question of what to do, of what their responsibilities might be in this situation, went to the very core of the philosophical trappings of power. Was it Cadderly's place, because of his clerical power, to hunt down the new wielder of the Crystal Shard, this dark elf thief, and take the item by force, bringing it to its destruction? If that was the case, then what of every other injustice in the world? What of the pirates on the Sea of Fallen Stars? Was Cadderly to charter a boat and go out hunting them? What of the Red Wizards of Thay, that notorious band? Was it Cadderly's duty to seek them out and do battle with each and every one? Then there were the Zhentarim, the Iron Throne, the Shadow Thieves….

"Do you remember when we met here with Drizzt Do'Urden and Catti-brie?" Danica asked, and it seemed to Cadderly that the woman was reading his mind. "Drizzt was distressed when we realized that our summoning of the demon Errtu had released the great beast from its banishment-a banishment handed out to it by Drizzt years before. What did you tell Drizzt about that to calm him?"

"The releasing of Errtu was no major problem," Cadderly admitted again. "There would always be a demon available to a sorcerer with evil designs. If not Errtu, then another."

"Errtu was just one of a number of agents of chaos," Danica reasoned, "as the Crystal Shard is just another element of chaos. Any havoc it brings would merely replace the myriad other tools of chaos in wreaking exactly that, correct?"

Cadderly smiled at her, staring intently into the seemingly limitless depths of her almond-shaped brown eyes. How he loved this woman. She was so much his partner in every aspect of his life. Intelligent and possessed of the greatest discipline Cadderly had ever known, Danica always helped him through any difficult questions and choices, just by listening and offering suggestions.

"It is the heart that begets evil, not the instruments of destruction," he completed the thought for her.

"Is the Crystal Shard the tool or the heart?" Danica asked.

"That is the question, is it not?" Cadderly replied. "Is the artifact akin to a summoned monster, an instrument of destruction for one whose heart was already tainted?

Or is it a manipulator, a creator of evil where there would otherwise be none?" He held out his arms, having no real answer for that. "In either case, I believe I will contact some extra-planar sources and see if I can locate the artifact and this dark elf, Jarlaxle. I wish to know the use to which he has put the Crystal Shard, or perhaps even more troubling, the use to which the Crystal Shard plans to put him."

Danica started to ask what he might be talking about, but she figured it out before she could utter the words, and her lips grew very thin. Might the Crystal Shard, rather than let this Jarlaxle creature take it to the light-less Underdark, use him to spearhead an invasion by an army of drow? Might the Crystal Shard use the position and race of its new wielder to create havoc beyond anything it had ever known before? Even worse for them personally, if Jarlaxle had stolen the artifact by using an imitation of Cadderly, then Jarlaxle certainly knew of Cadderly. If Jarlaxle knew, the Crystal Shard knew-and knew, too, that Cadderly might have information about how to destroy it. A flash of worry crossed Danica's face, one that Cadderly could not miss, and she instinctively turned to regard her children.

"I will try to discover where he might be with the artifact, and what trouble they together might already be causing," Cadderly explained, not reading Danica's expression very well and wondering, perhaps, if she was doubting him.

"You do that," the more-than-convinced woman said in all seriousness. "Right away."

A squeal from inside the maze turned them both in that direction.

"Pikel," the woman explained.

Cadderly smiled. "Lost again?"

"Again?" Danica asked. "Or still?"

They heard some rumbling off to the side and saw Pikel's more traditional brother, Ivan Bouldershoulder, rolling toward the maze grumbling with every step. "Doodad," the yellow-bearded dwarf said sarcastically, referring to Pikel's pronunciation of his calling. "Yeah,

Doo-dad," Ivan grumbled. "Can't even find his way out of a hedgerow."

"And you will help him?" Cadderly called to the dwarf.

Ivan turned curiously, noting the pair, it seemed, for the first time. "Been helpin' him all me life," he snorted.

Both Cadderly and Danica nodded and allowed Ivan his fantasy. They knew well enough, if Ivan did not, that his helping Pikel more often caused problems for both of the dwarves. Sure enough, within the span of a few minutes, Ivan's calls about being lost echoed no less than Pikel's. Cadderly and Danica, and the twins sitting outside the devious maze, thoroughly enjoyed the entertainment.

A few hours later, after preparing the proper sequence of spells and after checking on the magical circle of protection the young-again priest always used when dealing with even the most minor of the creatures of the lower planes, Cadderly sat in a cross-legged position on the floor of his summoning chamber, chanting the incantation that would bring a minor demon, an imp, to him.

A short while later, the tiny, bat-winged, horned creature materialized in the protection circle. It hopped all about, confused and angry, finally focusing on Cadderly. It spent some time studying the man, no doubt trying to get some clues to his demeanor. Imps were often summoned to the material plane, sometimes for information, other times to serve as familiars for wizards of evil weal.

"Deneir?" the imp asked in a coughing, raspy voice that Cadderly thought seemed both typical and fitting to its smoky natural environment. "You wear the clothing of a priest of Deneir."

The creature was staring at the red band on his hat, Cadderly knew, on which was set a porcelain-and-gold pendant depicting a candle burning above an eye, the symbol of Deneir.

Cadderly nodded.

"Ahck!" the imp said and spat upon the ground.

"Hoping for a wizard in search of a familiar?" Cadderly asked slyly.

"Hoping for anything other than you, priest of Deneir," the imp replied.

"Accept that which has been given to you," Cadderly said. "A glimpse of the material plane is better than none, after all, and a reprieve from your hellish existence."

"What do you want, priest of Deneir?"

"Information," Cadderly replied, but even as he said it, he realized that his questions would be difficult indeed, perhaps too much so for so minor a demon. "All that I require of you is that you give to me the name of a greater demonic source, that I might bring it forth."

The imp looked at him curiously, tilting its head as a dog might, and licking its thin lips with a pointed tongue.

"Nothing greater than a nalfeshnie," Cadderly quickly clarified, seeing the impish smile growing and wanting to limit the power of whatever being he next summoned. A nalfeshnie was no minor demon, but was certainly within Cadderly's power to control, at least long enough for him to get what he needed.

"Oh, I has a name for you, priest of Deneir…" the imp started to say, but it jerked spasmodically as Cadderly began to chant a spell of torment. The imp fell to the floor, writhing and spitting curses.

"The name?" Cadderly asked. "And I warn you, if you deceive me and try to trick me into summoning a greater creature, I will dismiss it promptly and find you again. This torment is nothing compared to that which I will exact upon you!"

He said the words with conviction and with strength, though in truth, it pained the gentle man to be doing even this level of torture, even upon a wretched imp. He reminded himself of the importance of his quest and bolstered his resolve.

"Mizferac!" the imp screamed out. "A glabrezu, and a stupid one!"

Cadderly released the imp from his spell of torment, and the creature gave a beat of its wings and righted itself, staring at him coldly. "I did your bidding, evil priest of Deneir. Let me go!"

"Be gone, then," said Cadderly, and even as the little beast began fading from view, offering a few obscene gestures, Cadderly had to toss in, "I will tell Mizferac what you said concerning its intelligence."

He did indeed enjoy that last expression of panic on the face of the little imp.

Cadderly brought Mizferac in later that same day and found the towering pincer-armed glabrezu to be the embodiment of all that he hated about demons. It was a nasty, vicious, conniving, and wretchedly self-serving creature that tried to get as much gain as it could out of every word. Cadderly kept their meeting short and to the point. The demon was to inquire of other extra-planar creatures about the whereabouts of a dark elf named Jarlaxle, who was likely on the surface of Faerun. Furthermore, Cadderly put a powerful geas on the demon, preventing it from actually walking the material world, but retreating only back to the Abyss and using sources to discern the information.

"That will take longer," Mizferac said.

"I will call on you daily," Cadderly replied, putting as much anger without adding any passion whatsoever as he could into his timbre. "Each passing day I will grow more impatient, and your torment will increase."

"You make a terrible enemy in Mizferac, Cadderly Bonaduce, Priest of Deneir," the glabrezu replied, obviously trying to shake him with its knowledge of his name.

Cadderly, who heard the mighty song of Deneir as clearly as if it was a chord within his own heart, merely smiled at the threat. "If ever you find yourself free of your bonds and able to walk the surface of Toril, do come and find me, Mizferac the fool. It will please me greatly to reduce your physical form to ash and banish your spirit from this world for a hundred years."

The demon growled, and Cadderly dismissed it, simply and with just a wave of his hand and an utterance of a single word. He had heard every threat a demon could give and many times. After the trials the young priest had known in his life, from facing a red dragon to doing battle with his own father, to warring against the chaos curse, to, most of all, offering his very life up as sacrifice to his god, there was little any creature, demonic or not, could say to him that would frighten him.

He recalled the glabrezu every day for the next tenday, until finally the fiend brought him some news of the Crystal Shard and the drow, Jarlaxle, along with the surprising information that Jarlaxle no longer possessed the artifact, but traveled in the company of a human, Artemis Entreri, who did.

Cadderly knew that name well from the stories that Drizzt and Catti-brie had told him in their short stay at the Spirit Soaring. The man was an assassin, a brutal killer. According to the demon, Entreri, along with the Crystal Shard and the dark elf Jarlaxle, was on his way to the Snowflake Mountains.

Cadderly rubbed his chin as the glabrezu passed along the information-information that he knew to be true, for he had enacted a spell to make certain the demon had not lied to him.

"I have done as you demanded," the glabrezu growled, clicking its pincer-ended appendages anxiously. "I am released from your bonds, Cadderly Bonaduce."

"Then begone, that I do not have to look upon your ugly face any longer," the young priest replied.

The demon narrowed its huge eyes threateningly and clicked its pincers. "I will not forget this," it promised.

"I would be disappointed if you did," Cadderly replied casually.

"I was told that you have young children, fool," Mizferac remarked, fading from view.

"Mizferac, ehugu-winance!" Cadderly cried, catching the departing demon before it had dissipated back to the swirling smoke of the Abyss. Holding it in place by the sheer strength of his enchantment, Cadderly twisted the demon's physical form painfully by the might of his spell.

"Do I smell fear, human?" Mizferac asked defiantly.

Cadderly smiled wryly. "I doubt that, since a hundred years will pass before you are able to walk the material plane again." The threat, spoken openly, freed Mizferac of the summoning binding-and yet, the beast was not freed, for Cadderly had enacted another spell, one of exaction.

Mizferac created magical darkness to fill the room. Cadderly fell into his own chanting, his voice trembling with feigned terror.

"I can smell you, foolish mortal," Mizferac remarked, and Cadderly heard the voice from the side, though he guessed correctly that Mizferac was using ventriloquism to throw him off guard. The young priest was fully into the flow of Deneir's song now, hearing every beautiful note and accessing the magic quickly and completely. First he detected evil, easily locating the great negative force of the glabrezu- then another mighty negative force as the demon gated in a companion.

Cadderly held his nerve and continued casting.

"I will kill the children first, fool," Mizferac promised, and it began speaking to its new companion in the guttural tongue of the Abyss-one that Cadderly, through the use of another spell that he had enacted before he had ever brought Mizferac to him this day, understood perfectly. The glabrezu told its fellow demon to keep the foolish priest occupied while it went to hunt the children.

"I will bring them before you for sacrifice," Mizferac started to promise, but the end of the sentence came out as garbled screams as Cadderly's spell went off, creating a series of spinning, slicing blades all around the two demons. The priest then brought forth a globe of light to counter Mizferac's darkness. The spectacle of Mizferac and its companion, a lesser demon that looked like a giant gnat, getting sliced and chopped was revealed.

Mizferac roared and uttered a guttural word-one designed to teleport him away, Cadderly assumed. It failed. The young priest, so strong in the flow of Deneir's song, was the quicker. He brought forth a prayer that dispelled the demon's magic before Mizferac could get away.

A spell of binding followed immediately, locking Mizferac firmly in place, while the magical blades continued their spinning devastation.

"I will never forget this!" Mizferac roared, words edged with outrage and agony.

"Good, then you will know better than ever to return," Cadderly growled back.

He brought forth a second blade barrier. The two demons were torn apart, their material forms ripped into dozens of bloody pieces, thus banishing them from the material plane for a hundred years. Satisfied with that, Cadderly left his summoning chamber covered in demon blood. He'd have to find a suitable spell from Deneir to clean up his clothes.

As for the Crystal Shard, he had his answers-and it seemed to him a good thing that he had bothered to check, since a dangerous assassin, an equally dangerous dark elf, and the even more dangerous Crystal Shard were apparently on their way to see him.

He had to talk to Danica, to prepare all the Spirit Soaring and the order of Deneir, for the potential battle.

Chapter 17 A CALL FOR HELP

There is something enjoyable about these beasts, I must admit," Jarlaxle noted when he and Entreri pulled up beside a mountain pass.

The assassin quickly dismounted and ran to the ledge to view the trail below-and to view the band of orcs he suspected were still stubbornly in pursuit. The pair had left the desert behind, at long last, entering a region of broken hills and rocky trails.

"Though if I had one of my lizards from Menzoberran-zan, I could simply run away to the top of the hill and over the other side," the drow went on. He took off his great plumed hat and rubbed a hand over his bald head. The sun was strong this day, but the dark elf seemed to be handling it quite well-certainly better than Entreri would have expected of any drow under this blistering sun. Again the assassin had to wonder if Jarlaxle might have a bit of magic about him to protect his sensitive eyes. "Useful beasts, the lizards of Menzoberranzan," Jarlaxle remarked. "I should have brought some to the surface with me."

Entreri gave him a smirk and a shake of his head. "It will be hard enough getting into half the towns with a drow beside me," he remarked. "How much more welcoming might they be if I rode in on a lizard?"

He looked back down the mountainside, and sure enough, the orc band was still pacing them, though the wretched creatures were obviously exhausted. Still, they followed as if compelled beyond their control.

It wasn't hard for Artemis Entreri to figure out exactly what might be so compelling them.

"Why can you not just take out your magical tent, that we can melt away from them?" Jarlaxle asked for the third time.

"The magic is limited," Entreri answered yet again. He glanced back at Jarlaxle as he replied, surprised that the cunning drow would keep asking the same question. Was Jarlaxle, perhaps, trying to garner some information about the tent? Or even worse, was the Crystal Shard reaching out to the drow, subtly asking him to goad Entreri in that direction? If they did take out the tent and disappear, after all, they would have to reappear in the same place. That being true, had the Crystal Shard figured out how to send its telepathic call across the planes of existence? Perhaps the next time Entreri and Jarlaxle used the plane- shifting tent, they would return to the material plane to find an orc army, inspired by Crenshinibon, waiting for them. "The horses grow weary," Jarlaxle noted. "They can outrun orcs," Entreri replied. "If we let them run free, perhaps." "They're just orcs," Entreri muttered, though he could hardly believe how persistent this group remained.

He turned back to Jarlaxle, no longer doubting the drow's claim. The horses were indeed tired-they had been riding a long day before even realizing the orcs were following their trail. They had ridden the beasts practically into the desert sands in an effort to get out of that barren, wide-open region as quickly as possible. Perhaps it was time to stop running. "There are only about a score of them," Entreri remarked, watching their movements as they crawled over the lower slopes.

"Twenty against two," Jarlaxle reminded. "Let us go and hide in your tent, that the horses can rest, and come out and begin the chase anew."

"We can defeat them and drive them away," Entreri insisted, "if we choose and prepare the battlefield."

It surprised the assassin that Jarlaxle didn't look very eager about that possibility. "They're only orcs," Entreri said again.

"Are they?" Jarlaxle asked.

Entreri started to respond but paused long enough to consider the meaning behind the dark elf's words. Was this pursuit a chance encounter? Or was there something more to this seemingly nondescript band of monsters?

"You believe that Kimmuriel and Rai-guy are secretly guiding this band," Entreri stated more than asked.

Jarlaxle shrugged. "Those two have always favored using monsters as fodder," he explained. "They let the orcs-or kobolds, or whatever other creature is available- rush in to weary their opponents while they prepare the killing blow. It is nothing new in their tactics. They used such a ruse to take House Basadoni, forcing the kobolds to lead the charge and take the bulk of the casualties."

"It could be," Entreri agreed with a nod. "Or it could be a conspiracy of another sort, one with its roots in our midst."

It took Jarlaxle a few moments to sort that out. "Do you believe that I have urged the orcs on?" he asked.

In response, Entreri patted the pouch that held the Crystal Shard. "Perhaps Crenshinibon has come to believe that it needs to be rescued from our clutches," he said.

"The shard would prefer an orcish wielder to either you or me?" Jarlaxle asked doubtfully.

"I am not its wielder, nor will I ever be," Entreri answered sharply. "Nor will you, else you would have taken it from me our first night on the road from Dallabad, when I was too weak with my wounds to resist. I know this truth, so do you, and so does Crenshinibon. It understands that we are beyond its reach now, and it fears us, or fears me, at least, because it recognizes what is in my heart."

He spoke the words with perfect calm and perfect coldness, and it wasn't hard for Jarlaxle to figure out what he might be talking about. "You mean to destroy it," the drow remarked, and his tone made the sentence seem like an accusation.

"And I know how to do it," Entreri bluntly admitted. "Or at least, I know someone who knows how to do it."

The expressions that crossed Jarlaxle's handsome face ranged from incredulity to sheer anger to something less obvious, something buried deep. The assassin knew that he had taken a chance in proclaiming his intent so openly with the drow who had been fully duped by the Crystal Shard and who was still not completely convinced, despite Entreri's many reminders, that giving up the artifact had been a good thing to do. Was Jarlaxle's unreadable expression a signal to him that the Crystal Shard had indeed gotten to the drow leader once again and was even then working through, and with, Jarlaxle to find a way to get rid of Entreri's bothersome interference?

"You will never find the strength of heart to destroy it," Jarlaxle remarked.

Now it was Entreri's turn to wear a confused expression. "Even if you discover a method, and I doubt that there is one, when the moment comes, Artemis Entreri will never find the heart to be rid of so powerful and potentially gainful an item as Crenshinibon," Jarlaxle proclaimed slyly. A grin widened across the dark elf's face. "I know you, Artemis Entreri," he said, grinning still, "and I know that you'll not throw away such power and promise, such beauty as Crenshinibon!"

Entreri looked at him hard. "Without the slightest hesitation," he said coldly. "And so would you, had you not fallen under its spell. I see that enchantment for what it is, a trap of temporary gain through reckless action that can only lead to complete and utter ruin. You disappoint me, Jarlaxle. I had thought you smarter than this."

Jarlaxle's expression, too, turned cold. A flash of anger lit his dark eyes. For just a moment, Entreri thought his first fight of the day was upon him, thought the dark elf would attack him. Jarlaxle closed his eyes, his body swaying as he focused his thoughts and his concentration.

"Fight the urge," the assassin found himself whispering under his breath. Entreri the consummate loner, the man who, for all his life, had counted on no one but himself, was surely surprised to hear himself now.

"Do we continue to run, or do we fight them?" Jarlaxle asked a moment later. "If these creatures are being guided by Rai-guy and Kimmuriel, we will learn of it soon enough- likely when we are fully engaged in battle. The odds of ten- to-one, of even twenty-to-one, against orcs on a mountain battlefield of our choosing does not frighten me in the least, but in truth, I do not wish to face my former lieutenants, even two-against-two. With his combination of wizardly and clerical powers, Rai-guy has variables enough to strike fear into the heart of Gromph Baenre, and there is nothing predictable, or even understandable, about many of Kimmuriel Oblo-dra's tactics. In all the years he has served me, I have not begun to sort the riddle that is Kimmuriel. I know only that he is extremely effective."

"Keep talking," Entreri muttered, looking back down at the orcs, who were much closer now, and at all the potential battlefield areas. "You are making me wish that I had left you and the Crystal Shard behind."

He caught a slight shift in Jarlaxle's expression as he said that, a subtle hint that perhaps the mercenary leader had been wondering all along why Entreri had bothered with both the theft and the rescue. If Entreri meant to destroy the Crystal Shard anyway, after all, why not just run away and leave it and the feud between Jarlaxle and his dangerous lieutenants behind?

"We will discuss that," Jarlaxle replied.

"Another time," Entreri said, trotting along the ledge to the right. "We have much to do, and our orc friends are in a hurry."

"Headlong into doom," Jarlaxle remarked quietly. He slid off of his horse and moved to follow Entreri.

Soon after, the pair had set up in a location on the northeastern side of the range, the steepest ascent. Jarlaxle worried that perhaps some of the orcs would come up from the other paths, the same ones they had taken, stealing from them the advantage of the higher ground, but Entreri was convinced that the artifact was calling out to the creatures insistently, and that they would alter their course to follow the most direct line to Crenshinibon. That line would take them up several high bluffs on this side of the hills, and along narrow and easily defensible trails.

Sure enough, within a few minutes of attaining their new perch, Entreri and Jarlaxle spotted the obedient and eager orc band, scrambling over stony outcroppings below them.

Jarlaxle began his customary chatting, but Entreri wasn't listening. He turned his thoughts inward, listening for the Crystal Shard, knowing that it was calling out to the orcs. He paid close heed to its subtle emanations, knowing them all too well from his time in possession of the item, for though he had denied the Crystal Shard, had made it as clear as possible that the artifact could offer him nothing, it had not relented its tempting call.

He heard that call now, drifting out over the mountain passes, reaching out to the orcs and begging them to come and find the treasure.

Halt the call, Entreri silently commanded the artifact. These creatures are not worthy to serve either you or me as slaves.

He sensed it then, a moment of confusion from the artifact, a moment of fleeting hope-there, Entreri knew without the slightest of doubts, Crenshinibon did desire him as a wielder! — followed by… questions. Entreri seized the moment to interject his own thoughts into the stream of the telepathic call. He offered no words, for he didn't even speak Orcish, and doubted that the creatures would understand any of the human tongues he did speak, but merely imparted images of orc slaves, serving the master dark elf. He figured Jarlaxle would be a more imposing figure to orcs than he. Entreri showed them one orc being eaten by drow, another being beaten and torn apart with savage glee.

"What are you doing, my friend?" he heard Jarlaxle's insistent call, in a loud voice that told him his drow companion had likely asked that same question several times already.

"Putting a little doubt into the minds of our ugly little camp-followers," Entreri replied. "Joining Crenshinibon's call to them in the hopes that they will hardly sort out one lie from the other."

Jarlaxle wore a perplexed expression indeed, and Entreri understood all the questions that were likely behind it, for he was harboring many of the same doubts. One lie from another indeed. Or were the promises of Crenshinibon truly lies? the assassin had to ask himself. Even beyond that fundamental confusion, the assassin understood that Jarlaxle would, and had to, fear Entreri's motivations. Was Entreri, perhaps, shading his words to Jarlaxle in a way that would make the mercenary drow come to agree with Entreri's assessment that he, and not the dark elf, should carry the Crystal Shard?

"Ignore whatever doubts Crenshinibon is now giving to you," Entreri said matter-of-factly, reading the dark elf's expression perfectly.

"Even if you speak the truth, I fear that you play a dangerous game with an artifact that is far beyond your understanding," Jarlaxle retorted after another introspective pause.

"I know what it is," Entreri assured him, "and I know that it understands the truth of our relationship. That is why the Crystal Shard so desperately wants to be free of me- and is thus calling to you once more."

Jarlaxle looked at him hard, and for just a moment, Entreri thought the drow might move against him.

"Do not disappoint me," the assassin said simply.

Jarlaxle blinked, took off his hat, and rubbed the sweat from his bald head again.

"There!" Entreri said, pointing down to the lower slopes, to where a fight had broken out between different factions among the orcs. Few of the ugly brutes seemed to be trying to make peace, as was the way with chaotic orcs. The slightest spark could ignite warfare within a tribe of the beasts that would continue at the cost of many lives until one side was simply wiped out. Entreri, with his imparted images of torture and slavery and images of a drow master, had done more than flick a little spark. "It would seem that some of them heeded my call over that of the artifact."

"And I had thought this day would bring some excitement," Jarlaxle remarked. "Shall we join them before they kill each other? To aid whichever side is losing, of course." "And with our aid, that side will soon be winning," Entreri reasoned, and Jarlaxle's quick response came as no surprise.

"Of course," said the drow, "we are then honor-bound to join in with the side that is losing. It could be a complicated afternoon."

Entreri smiled as he worked his way around the ledge of the current perch, looking for a quick way down to the orcs.

By the time the pair got close to the fighting, they realized that their estimates of a score of orcs had been badly mistaken. There were at least fifty of the beasts, all running around in a frenzy now, whacking at each other with abandon, using clubs, branches, sharpened sticks, and a few crafted weapons.

Jarlaxle tipped his hat to the assassin, motioned for Entreri to go left, and went right, blending into the shadows so perfectly that Entreri had to blink to make sure they were not deceiving him. He knew that Jarlaxle, like all dark elves, was stealthy. Likewise he knew that while Jarlaxle's cloak was not the standard drow piwafwi, it did have many magical qualities. It surprised him that anyone, short of using a wizard's invisibility spell, could find a way so to completely hide that great plumed hat.

Entreri shook it off and ran to the left, finding an easy path of shadows through the sparse trees, boulders, and rocky ridges. He approached the first group of orcs-four of the beasts squared up in battle, three against one. Moving silently, the assassin worked his way around the back of the trio, thinking to even up the odds with a sudden strike. He knew he was making no noise, knew he was hiding perfectly from tree to tree to rock to ridge. He had performed attacks like this for nearly three decades, had perfected the stealthy strike to an unprecedented level-and these were only orcs, simple, stupid brutes.

How surprised Entreri was, then, when two of the fighting trio howled and leaped around, charging right for him. The orc they had been fighting, with complete disregard to the battle at hand, similarly charged at the assassin. The remaining orc opponent promptly cut it down as it ran past.

Hard-pressed, Entreri worked his sword left and right, parrying the thrusts of the two makeshift spears and shearing the tip off one in the process. He was back on his heels, in a position of terrible balance. Had he been fighting an opponent of true skill he surely would have been killed, but these were only orcs. Their weapons were poorly crafted and their tactics were utterly predictable. He had defeated their first thrusts, their only chance, and yet, still they came on, headlong, with abandon.

Charon's Claw waved before them, filling the air with an opaque wall of ash. They plunged right through-of course they did! — but Entreri had already skittered to the left, and he spun back behind the charge of the closest orc, plunging his dagger deep into the creature's side. He didn't retract the blade immediately, though he had broken free. He could have made an easy kill of the second stumbling orc. No, he used the dagger to draw out the life-force from the already dying creature, taking that life-force into his own body to speed the healing of his own previous wounds.

By the time he let the limp creature drop to the ground, the second orc was at him, stabbing wildly. Entreri caught the spear with the crosspiece of his dagger and easily turned it up high, over his shoulder, and ducked and stepped ahead, shearing across with a great sweep of Charon's Claw. The orc instinctively tried to block with its arm, but the sword cut right through the limb, and drove hard into the orc's side, splintering ribs and tearing a great hole in its lung, all the way to its heart.

Entreri could hardly believe that the third of the group was still charging at him after seeing how easily and completely he had destroyed its two companions. He casually planted his left foot against the chest of the drooping, dead creature impaled on his sword, and waited for the exact moment. When that moment came, he turned the dead orc and kicked it free, dropping it in the path of its charging, howling companion.

The orc tripped, diving headlong past Entreri. The assassin stabbed up hard with the dagger, catching the orc under the chin and driving the blade up into its head. He bent as the heavy orc continued its facedown dive, ending with him holding the creature's head from the ground and the orc twitching spasmodically as it died.

A twist and yank tore the dagger free, and Entreri paused only long enough to wipe both his blades on the dead beast's back before running off in pursuit of other prey.

His stride was more tempered this time, though, for his failure in approaching the trio from behind bothered him greatly. He believed he understood what had happened-the Crystal Shard had called out a warning to the group-but the thought that carrying the cursed item left him without his favored mode of attack and his greatest ability to defend himself was more than a little unsettling.

He charged across the side of the rock facing, picking shadows where he could find them but worrying little about cover. He understood that with the Crystal Shard on his belt, he was likely as obvious as he would be sitting beside a blazing campfire on a dark night. He came past one small area of brush onto the lower edge of sloping, bare stone. Cursing the open ground but hardly slowing, Entreri started across.

He saw the charge of another orc out of the corner of his eye, the creature rushing headlong at him, one arm back and ready to launch a spear his way.

The orc was barely five strides away when it threw, but Entreri didn't even have to parry the errant missile, just letting it fly harmlessly past. He did react to it, though, with dramatic movement, and that only spurred on the eager orc attacker.

It leaped at the seemingly vulnerable man, a flying tackle aimed for Entreri's waist. Two quick steps took the assassin out of harm's way, and he swished his sword down onto the orc's back as it flew past, cracking the powerful weapon right through the creature's backbone. The orc skidded down hard on its face, its upper torso and arms squirming wildly, but its legs making no movement of their own.

Entreri didn't even bother finishing the wretched creature. He just ran on. He had a direction sorted for his run, for he heard the unmistakable laughter of a drow who seemed to be having too much fun.

He found Jarlaxle standing atop a boulder amidst the largest tumult of battling orcs, spurring one side on with excited words that Entreri could not understand, while systematically cutting down their opponents with dagger after thrown dagger.

Entreri stopped in the shadow of a tree and watched the spectacle.

Sure enough, Jarlaxle soon changed sides, calling out to the other orcs, and launching that endless stream of daggers at members of the side he had just been urging on.

The numbers dwindled, obviously so, and eventually, even the stupid orcs caught on to the deadly ruse. As one, they turned on Jarlaxle.

The drow only laughed at them all the harder as a dozen spears came his way-every one of them missing the mark badly due to the displacement magic in the drow's cloak and the bad aim of the orcs. The drow countered, throwing one dagger after another. Jarlaxle spun around on his high perch, always seeking the closest orc, and always hitting home with a nearly perfect throw.

Out of the shadows came Entreri, a whirlwind of fury, dagger working efficiently, but sword waving wildly, building walls of floating ash as the assassin sliced up the battlefield to suit his designs. Inevitably, Entreri worked his way into a situation that put him one-on-one against an orc. Just as inevitably, that creature was down and dying within the span of a few thrusts and stabs.

Entreri and Jarlaxle walked slowly back up the mountain slope soon after, with the drow complaining at the meager take of silver pieces they had found on the orcs. Entreri was hardly listening, was more concerned with the call that had brought the creatures to them in the first place-the plea, the scream, for help from Crenshinibon. These were just a rag-tag band of orcs, but what more powerful creatures might the Crystal Shard find to come to its call next?

"The call of the shard is strong," he admitted to Jarlaxle,

"It has existed for centuries," the drow answered. "It knows well how to preserve itself."

"That existence is soon to end," Entreri said grimly.

"Why?" Jarlaxle asked with perfect innocence.

The tone more than the word stopped Entreri cold in his tracks and made him turn around to regard his surprising companion.

"Do we have to go through this all over again?" the assassin asked.

"My friend, I know why you believe the Crystal Shard to be unacceptable for either of us to wield, but why does that translate into the need to destroy it?" Jarlaxle asked. He paused and glanced around, and motioned for Entreri to follow and led the assassin to the edge of a fairly deep ravine, a remote valley. "Why not just throw it away then?" he asked. "Toss it from this cliff and let it land where it may?"

Entreri stared out at the remote vale and almost considered taking Jarlaxle's advice. Almost, but a very real truth rang clear in his mind. "Because it would find its way back to the hands of our adversaries soon enough," he replied. "The Crystal Shard saw great potential in Rai-guy,"

Jarlaxle nodded. "Sensible," he said. "Ever was that one too ambitious for his own good. Why do you care, though? Let Rai-guy have it and have all of Calimport, if the artifact can deliver the city to him. What does it matter to Artemis Entreri, who is gone from that place, and who will not return anytime soon in any event? Likely, my former lieutenant will be too preoccupied with the potential gains he might find with the artifact in his hands even to worry about our whereabouts. Perhaps freeing ourselves of the burden of the artifact will indeed save us from the pursuit we now fear at our backs."

Entreri spent a long moment musing over that reasoning, but one fact kept nagging at him. "The Crystal Shard knows I wish to see it destroyed," he replied, "It knows that in my heart I hate it and will find some way to be rid of the thing. Rai-guy knows the threat that is Jarlaxle. As long as you live, he can never be certain of his position within Bregan D'aerthe. What would happen if Jarlaxle reappeared in Menzoberranzan, reaching out to old comrades against the fools who tried to steal the throne of Bregan D'aerthe?"

Jarlaxle offered no response, but the twinkle in his dark eyes told Entreri that his drow companion would like nothing more than to play out that very scenario.

"He wants you dead," Entreri said bluntly. "He needs you dead, and with the Crystal Shard at his disposal, that might not prove to be an overly difficult task."

The twinkle in Jarlaxle's dark eyes remained, but after a moment's thought, he just shrugged and said, "Lead on."

Entreri did just that, back to their horses and back to the trails that would take them to the northeast, to the Snowflake Mountains and the Spirit Soaring. Entreri was quite pleased with the way he had handled Jarlaxle, quite pleased in the strength of his argument for destroying the Crystal Shard.

But it was all just so much dung, he knew, all a justification for that which was in his heart. Yes, he was determined to destroy the Crystal Shard, and would see the artifact obliterated, but it was not for any fear of retribution or of pursuit. Entreri wanted Crenshinibon destroyed simply because the mere existence of the dominating artifact revolted him. The Crystal Shard, in trying to coerce him, had insulted him profoundly. He didn't hold any notion that the wretched world would be a better place without the artifact, and hardly cared whether it would be or not, but he did believe that he would more greatly enjoy his existence in the world knowing that one less wretched and perverted item such as the Crystal Shard remained in existence.

Of course, as Entreri harbored these thoughts, Crenshinibon realized them as well. The Crystal Shard could

only seethe, could only hope that it might find someone weaker of heart and stronger of arm to slay Artemis Entreri and free it from his grasp.

Chapter 18 RESPECTABLE OPPONENTS

It was Entreri," Sharlotta Vespers said with a sly grin as she examined the orc corpse on the side of the mountain a couple days later. "The precision of the cuts… and see, a dagger thrust here, a sword slash there."

"Many fight with sword and dirk," the wererat, Gord Abrix, replied. The wretch, wearing his human form at that time, moved his hands out wide as he spoke, revealing his own sword and dagger hanging on his belt.

"But few strike so well," Sharlotta argued.

"And these others," Berg'inyon Baenre agreed in his stilted command of the common tongue. He swung his arm about to encompass the many orcs lying dead around the base of a large boulder. "Wounds consistent with a dagger throw-and so many of them. Only one warrior that I know of carries such a supply as that."

"You are counting wounds, not daggers!" Gord Abrix argued.

"They are one and the same in a fight this frantic," Berg'inyon reasoned. "These are throws, not stabs, for there is no tearing about the sides of the cuts, just a single fast puncture. And I think it unlikely that anyone would throw a few daggers at one opponent, somehow run down and pull them free, then throw them at another."

"Where are these daggers, then, drew?" the wererat leader asked doubtfully.

"Jarlaxle's missiles are magical in nature and disappear," Berg'inyon answered coldly. "His supply is nearly endless. This is the work of Jarlaxle, I know-and not his best work, I warn both of you."

Sharlotta and Gord Abrix exchanged nervous glances, though the wererat leader still held that doubting expression.

"Have you not yet learned the proper respect for the drow?" Berg'inyon asked him pointedly and threateningly.

Gord Abrix went back on his heels and held his empty hands up before him.

Sharlotta eyed him closely. Gord Abrix wanted a fight, she knew, even with this dark elf standing before him. Sharlotta hadn't really seen Berg'inyon Baenre in action, but she had seen his lessers, dark elves who had spoken of this young Baenre with the utmost respect. Even those lessers would have had little trouble in slaughtering the prideful Gord Abrix. Yes, Sharlotta realized then and there, her own self-preservation would depend upon her getting as far away from Gord Abrix and his sewer dwellers as possible, for there was no respect here, only abject hatred for Artemis Entreri and a genuine dislike for the dark elves. No doubt, Gord Abrix would lead his companions, wererat and otherwise, into absolute devastation.

Sharlotta Vespers, the survivor, wanted no part of that. "The bodies are cold, the blood dried, but they have not been cleanly picked," Berg'inyon observed.

"A couple of days, no more," Sharlotta added, and she looked to Gord Abrix, as did Berg'inyon.

The wererat nodded and smiled wickedly. "I will have them," he declared. He walked off to confer with his wererat companions, who had been standing off to the side of the battleground.

"He will have a straight passageway to the realm of death," Berg'inyon quietly remarked to Sharlotta when the two were alone.

Sharlotta looked at the drow curiously. She agreed, of course, but she had to wonder why, if the dark elves knew this, they were allowing Gord Abrix to hold so critical a role in this all-important pursuit.

"Gord Abrix thinks he will get them," she replied, "both of them, yet you do not seem so confident."

Berg'inyon chuckled at the remark-one he obviously believed absurd. "No doubt, Entreri is a deadly opponent," he said.

"More so than you understand," Sharlotta, who knew the assassin's exploits well, was quick to add.

"And yet he is still, by any measure the easier of the prey," Berg'inyon assured her. "Jarlaxle has survived for centuries with his intelligence and skill. He thrives in a land more violent than Calimport could ever know. He ascends to the highest levels of power in a warring city that prevents the ascent of males. Our wretched companion Gord Abrix cannot understand the truth of Jarlaxle, nor can you, so I tell you this now-out of the respect I have gained for you in these short tendays-beware that one."

Sharlotta paused and stared long and hard at the surprising drow warrior. Offering her respect? The notion pleased her and made her fearful all at once, for Sharlotta had already learned to try to look beneath every word uttered by her dark elf comrades. Perhaps Berg'inyon had just paid her a high and generous compliment. Perhaps he was setting her up for disaster.

Sharlotta glanced down at the ground, biting her lower lip as she fell into her thoughts, sorting it all out. Perhaps Berg'inyon was setting her up, she reasoned again, as Rai-guy and Kimmuriel had set up Gord Abrix. As she thought of the mighty Jarlaxle and the item he possessed, she came to realize, of course, that there was no way Rai- guy could believe Gord Abrix and his ragged wererat band could possibly bring down the great Entreri and the great Jarlaxle. If that came to pass, then Gord Abrix would have the Crystal Shard in his possession, and what trouble might he bring about before Rai-guy and Kimmuriel could take it away from him? No, Rai-guy and Kimmuriel did not believe that the wererat leader would get anywhere near the Crystal Shard, and furthermore, they didn't want him anywhere near it.

Sharlotta looked back up at Berg'inyon to see him smiling slyly, as if he had just followed her reasoning as clearly as if she had spoken it aloud. "The drow always use a lesser race to lead the way into battle," the dark elf warrior said. "We never truly know, of course, what surprises our enemies might have in store."

"Fodder," Sharlotta remarked.

Berg'inyon's expression was perfectly blank, was absent of any sense of compassion at all, giving Sharlotta all the confirmation she needed.

A shudder coursed up Sharlotta's spine as she considered the sheer coldness of that look, dispassionate and inhuman, a less-than-subtle reminder to her that these dark elves were indeed very different, and much, much more dangerous. Artemis Entreri was, perhaps, the closest creature she had ever met in temperament to the drow, but it seemed to her that, in terms of sheer evil, even he paled in comparison. These long-lived dark elves had perfected the craft of efficient heartlessness to a level beyond human comprehension, let alone human mimicry. She turned to regard Gord Abrix and his eager wererats, and made a silent vow then to stay as far away from the doomed creatures as possible.

The demon writhed on the floor in agony, its skin smoking, its blood boiling.

Cadderly did not pity the creature, though it pained him to have to lower himself to this level. He did not enjoy torture-even the torture of a demon, as deserving a creature as ever existed. He did not enjoy dealing with the denizens of the lower planes at all, but he had to for the sake of the Spirit Soaring, for the sake of his wife and children.

The Crystal Shard was coming to him, was coming for him, he knew, and his impending battle with the vile artifact might prove to be as important as his war had been against Tuanta Quiro Miancay, the dreaded Chaos Curse.

It was as important as his construction of the Spirit Soaring, for what lasting effect might the remarkable cathedral hold if Crenshinibon reduced it to rubble?

"You know the answer," Cadderly said as calmly as he could. "Tell me, and I will release you."

"You are a fool, priest of Deneir!" the demon growled, its guttural words broken apart as spasm after spasm wracked its physical form. "Do you know the enemy you make in Mizferac?"

Cadderly sighed. "And so it continues," he said, as if he were speaking to himself, though well aware that Mizferac would hear his words and understand the painful implications of them with crystalline clarity.

"Release me!" the glabrezu demanded.

"Yokk tu Mizferac be-enck do-tu," Cadderly recited, and the demon howled and jerked wildly about the floor within the perfectly designed protective circle.

"This will take as long as you wish," Cadderly said coldly to the demon. "I have no mercy for your kind, I assure you."

"We… want… no… mercy," Mizferac growled. Then a great spasm wracked the beast, and it jerked wildly, rolling about and shrieking curses in its profane, demonic language.

Cadderly just quietly recited more of the exaction spell, bolstering his resolve with the continual reminder that his children might soon be in mortal danger.

"Ye wasn't lost! Ye was playing!" Ivan Bouldershoulder roared at his green-bearded brother.

"Doo-dad maze!" Pikel argued vehemently.

The normally docile dwarf's tone took his brother somewhat by surprise. "Ye getting talkative since ye becomed a doo-dad, ain't ye?" he asked.

"Oo oi!" Pikel shrieked, punching his fist in the air.

"Well, ye shouldn't be playin' in yer maze when Cad- deriy's at such dark business," Ivan scolded.

"Doo-dad maze," Pikel whispered under his breath, and he lowered his gaze.

"Yeah, whatever ye might be callin' it," grumbled Ivan, who had never been overly fond of his brother's woodland calling and considered it quite an unnatural thing for a dwarf. "He might be needin' us, ye fool." Ivan held up his great axe as he spoke, flexing the bulging muscles on his short but powerful arm.

Pikel responded with one of his patented grins and held up a wooden cudgel.

"Great weapon for fighting demons," Ivan muttered. "Sha- la-" Pikel started.

"Yeah, I'm knowin' the name," Ivan cut in. "Sha-la-la. I'm thinking that a demon might be callin' it kind-lind- ling." Pikel's grin drooped into a severe frown. The door to the summoning chamber pulled open and a very weary Cadderly emerged-or tried to. He tripped over something and sprawled facedown to the floor. "Oops," said Pikel.

"Me brother put one o' his magic trips on the doorway," Ivan explained, helping the priest back to his feet. "We was worryin' that a demon might be walkin' out."

"So of course, Pikel would trip the thing to the floor and bash it with his club," Cadderly said dryly, pulling himself back to his feet.

"Sha-la-la!" Pikel squealed gleefully, completely missing the sarcasm in the young cleric's tone.

"Ain't one coming, is there?" Ivan asked, looking past Cadderly.

"The glabrezu, Mizferac, has been dismissed to its own foul plane," Cadderly assured the dwarves. "I brought it forth again, thus rescinding the hundred year banishment I had just exacted upon it, to answer a specific question, and with that done, I had-and have, I hope-no further need of it."

"Ye should've kept him about just so me and me brother could bash him a few times," said Ivan. "Sha-la-la!" Pikel agreed.

"Save your strength, for I fear we will need it," Cadderly explained. "I have learned the secret to destroying the Crystal Shard, or at least, I have learned of the creature that might complete the task."

"Demon?" Ivan asked.

"Doo-dad?" Pikel added hopefully.

Cadderly, shaking his head, started to reply to Ivan, but paused to put a perfectly puzzled expression over the green-bearded dwarf. Embarrassed, Pikel merely shrugged and said, "Ooo."

"No demon," he said to the other dwarf at length. "A creature of this world."

"Giant?"

Think bigger."

Ivan started to speak again, but paused, taking in Cad- derly's sour expression and studying it in light of all that they had been through together.

"Let me guess one more time," the dwarf said.

Cadderly didn't answer.

"Dragon," Ivan said.

"Ooo," said Pikel.

Cadderly didn't answer.

"Red dragon," Ivan clarified.

"Ooo," said Pikel.

Cadderly didn't answer.

"Big red dragon," said the dwarf. "Huge red dragon! Old as the mountains."

"Ooo," said Pikel, three more times.

Cadderly merely sighed.

"Old Fyren's dead," Ivan said, and there was indeed a slight tremor in the tough dwarf's voice, for that fight with the great red dragon had nearly been the end of them all.

"Fyrentennimar was not the last of its kind, nor the greatest, I assure you," Cadderly replied evenly.

"Ye're thinking that we got to take the thing to another of the beasts?" Ivan asked incredulously. "To one bigger than old Fyren?"

"So I am told," explained Cadderly. "A red dragon, ancient and huge."

Ivan shook his head, and snapped a glare over Pikel, who said, "Ooo," once again.

Ivan couldn't help but chuckle. They had met up with mighty Fyrentennimar on their way to find the mountain fortress that housed the minions of Cadderly's own wicked father. Through Cadderly's powerful magic, the dragon had been «tamed» into flying Cadderly and the others across the Snowflake Mountains. A battle deeper in those mountains had broken the spell though, and old Fyren had turned on its temporary masters with a vengeance. Somehow, Cadderly had managed to hold onto enough magical strength to weaken the beast enough for Vander, a giant friend, to lop off its head, but Ivan knew, and so did the others, that the win had been as much a feat of luck as of skill.

"Drizzt Do'Urden telled ye about another of the reds, didn't he?" Ivan remarked.

"I know where we can find one," Cadderly replied grimly.

Danica walked in, then, her smile wide-until she noted the expressions on the faces of the other three.

"Poof!" said Pikel and he walked out of the room, muttering squeaky little sounds.

A puzzled Danica watched him go. Then she turned to his brother.

"He's a doo-dad," Ivan explained, "and fearin' no natural creature. There ain't nothin' less natural than a red dragon, I'm guessing, so he's not too happy right now." Ivan snorted and walked out behind his brother.

"Red dragon?" Danica asked Cadderly.

"Poof," the priest replied.

Chapter 19 BECAUSE HE NEVER HAD TO

Entreri frowned when he glanced from the not-too-distant village to his ridiculously plumed drow companion. The hat alone, with its wide brim and huge diatryma feather that always grew back after Jarlaxle used it to summon a real giant bird, would invite suspicion and likely open disdain, from the farmers of the village. Then there was the fact that the wearer was a dark elf….

"You really should consider a disguise," Entreri said dryly, and shook his head, wishing he still had a particular magic item, a mask that could transform the wearer's appearance. Drizzt Do'Urden had once used the thing to get from the northlands around Waterdeep all the way to Calimport disguised as a surface elf.

"I have considered a disguise," the drow replied, and to Entreri's-temporary-relief, he pulled the hat from his head. A good start, it seemed.

Jarlaxle merely brushed the thing off and plopped it right back in place. "You wear one, as well," the drow protested to Entreri's scowl, pointing to the small-brimmed black hat Entreri now wore. The hat was called a bolero, named after the drow wizard who had given it its tidy shape and had imbued it, and several others of the same make, with certain magical properties.

"Not the hat!" the frustrated Entreri replied, and he rubbed a hand across his face. "These are simple farmers, likely with very definite feelings about dark elves- and likely, those feelings are not favorable."

"For most dark elves, I would agree with them," said Jarlaxle, and he ended there, and merely kept riding on his way toward the village, as if Entreri had said nothing to him at all.

"Hence, the disguise," the assassin called after him. "Indeed," said Jarlaxle, and he kept on riding. Entreri kicked his heels into his horse's flanks, spurring the mount into a quick canter to bring him up beside the elusive drow. "I mean that you should consider wearing one," Entreri said plainly.

"But I am," the drow replied. "And you, Artemis Entreri, above all others, should recognize me! I am Drizzt Do'Urden, your most hated rival."

"What?" the assassin asked incredulously. "Drizzt Do'Urden, the perfect disguise for me," Jarlaxle casually replied. "Does not Drizzt walk openly from town to town, neither hiding nor denying his heritage, even in those places where he is not well-known?" "Does he?" Entreri asked slyly.

"Did he not?" Jarlaxle quickly replied, correcting the tense, for of course, as far as Artemis Entreri knew, Drizzt Do'Urden was dead.

Entreri stared hard at the drow. "Well, did he not?" Jarlaxle asked plainly. "And it was Drizzt's nerve, I say, in parading about so openly, that prevented townsfolk from organizing against him and slaying him. Because he remained so obvious, it became obvious that he had nothing to hide. Thus, I use the same technique and even the same name. I am Drizzt Do'Urden, hero of Ice-wind Dale, friend of King Bruenor Battlehammer of Mithral Hall, and no enemy of these simple farmers. Rather, I might be of use to them, should danger threaten." "Of course," Entreri replied. "Unless one of them crosses you, in which case you will destroy the entire town."

"There is always that," Jarlaxle admitted, but he didn't slow his mount, and he and Entreri were getting close to the village now, close enough to be seen for what they were-or at least, for what they were pretending to be.

There were no guards about, and the pair rode in undisturbed, their horses' hooves clattering on cobblestone roads. They pulled up before one two-story building, on which hung a shingle painted with a foamy mug of mead and naming the place as

Gent eman Briar's

Good y P ace of Si ing

in lettering old and weathered.

"Si ing," Jarlaxle read, scratching his head, and he gave a great and dramatic sigh. "This is a gathering hall for those of melancholy?"

"Not sighing," Entreri replied. He looked at Jarlaxle, snorted, and rolled off the side of his horse. "Sitting, or perhaps sipping. Not sighing."

"Sitting, then, or sipping," Jarlaxle announced, looping his right leg over his horse, and rolling over backward off the mount into a somersault to land gracefully on his feet. "Or perhaps a bit of both! Ha!" He ended with a great gleaming smile.

Entreri stared at him hard yet again, and just shook his head, thinking that perhaps he would have been better off leaving this one with Rai-guy and Kimmuriel.

A dozen patrons were inside the place, ten men and a pair of women, along with a grizzled old barkeep whose snarl seemed to be eternally etched upon his stubbly face, a locked expression amidst the leathery wrinkles and acne scars. One by one, the thirteen took note of the pair entering, and inevitably, each nodded or merely glanced away, and shot a stunned expression back at the duo, particularly at the dark elf, and sent a hand to the hilt of the nearest weapon. One man even leaped up from his chair, sending it skidding out behind him.

Entreri and Jarlaxle merely tipped their hats and moved to the bar, making no threatening movements and keeping their expressions perfectly friendly.

"What're ye about?" the barkeep barked at them. "Who're ye, and what's yer business?"

"Travelers," Entreri answered, "weary of the road and seeking a bit of respite."

"Well, yell not be finding it here, ye won't!" the barkeep growled. "Get yer hats back on yer ugly heads and get yer arses out me door!"

Entreri looked to Jarlaxle, who seemed perfectly unperturbed. "I do believe we will stay a bit," the drow stated. "I do understand your hesitance, good sir… good Eman Briar," he added, remembering the sign.

"Eman?" the barkeep echoed in obvious confusion. "Eman Briar, so says your placard," Jarlaxle answered innocently.

"Eh?" the puzzled man asked, then his old yellow eyes lit up as he caught on, "Gentleman Briar," he insisted. "The L's all rotted away. Gentleman Briar."

"Your pardon, good sir," the charming and disarming Jarlaxle said with a bow. He gave a great sigh and threw a wink at Entreri's predictable scowl. "We have come in to sigh, sit, and sip, a bit of all three. We want no trouble and bring none, I assure you. Have you not heard of me? Drizzt Do'Urden of Icewind Dale, who reclaimed Mithral Hall for dwarven King Bruenor Battlehammer?"

"Never heard o' no Drizzit Dudden," Briar replied. "Now get ye outta me place afore me Mends and me haul ye out!" His voice rose as he spoke, and several of the gathered men did, as well, moving together and readying their weapons.

Jarlaxle glanced around at the lot of them, smiling, seeming perfectly amused. Entreri, too, was quite entertained by it all, but he didn't bother looking around, just leaned back on his barstool, watching his friend and trying to see how Jarlaxle might wriggle out of this one. Of course, the ragged band of farmers hardly bothered the skilled assassin, especially since he was sitting next to the dangerous Jarlaxle. If they had to leave the town in ruin, so be it.

Thus, Entreri did not even search the ever-present silent call of the imprisoned Crystal Shard. If the artifact wanted these simple fools to take it from Entreri, then let them try!

"Did I not just tell you that I reclaimed a dwarven kingdom?" Jarlaxle asked. "And mostly without help. Hear me well, Gent Eman Briar. If you and your friends here try to expel me, your kin will be planting more than crops this season."

It wasn't so much what he said as it was the manner in which he said it, so casual, so confident, so perfectly assured that this group could not begin to frighten him. The men approaching slowed to a halt, all of them glancing to the others for some sign of leadership.

"Truly, I desire no trouble," Jarlaxle said calmly. "I have dedicated my life to erasing the prejudices-rightful conceptions, in many instances-that so many hold for my people. I am not merely a weary traveler, but a warrior for the causes of common men. If goblins attacked your fair town, I would fight beside you until they were driven away, or until my heart beat its last!" His voice continued a dramatic climb. "If a great dragon swooped down upon your village, I would brave its fiery breath, draw forth my weapons and leap to the parapets…."

"I think they understand your point," Entreri said to him, grabbing him by the arm and easing him back to his seat.

Gentleman Briar snorted. "Ye're not even carryin' no weapon, drow," he observed.

"A thousand dead men have said the same thing," Entreri replied in all seriousness. Jarlaxle tipped his hat to the assassin. "But enough banter," Entreri added, hopping from his seat and pulling back his cloak to reveal his two fabulous weapons, the jeweled dagger and the magnificent Charon's Claw with its distinctive bony hilt. "If you mean to fight us, then do so now, that I can finish this business and still find a good meal, a better drink, and a warm bed before the fall of night. If not, then go back to your tables, I beg, and leave us in peace, else I'll forget my delusional paladin friend's desire to become the hero of the land."

Again, the patrons glanced nervously at each other, and some grumbled under their breaths.

"Gentleman Briar, they await your signal," Entreri remarked. "Choose well which signal that will be, or else find a way to mix blood with your drink, for you shall have gallons of it pooling about your tavern."

Briar waved his hand, sending his patrons retreating to their respective tables, and gave a great snort and snarl. "Good!" Jarlaxle remarked, slapping his leg. "My reputation is saved from the rash actions of my impetuous friend. Now, if you would be so kind as to fetch me a fine and delicate drink, Gentleman Briar," he instructed, pulling forth his purse, which was bulging with coins.

"I'm servin' no damned drow in me tavern," Briar insisted, crossing his thin but muscled arms over his chest. "Then I will gladly serve myself," Jarlaxle answered without hesitation, and he politely tipped his great plumed hat. "Of course, that will mean fewer coins for you." Briar stared at him hard.

Jarlaxle ignored him and stared instead at the fairly wide selection of bottles on the shelves behind the bar. He tapped a delicate finger against his lip, scrutinizing the colors, and the words of the few that were actually marked. "Suggestions?" he asked Entreri. "Something to drink," the assassin replied. Jarlaxle pointed to one bottle, uttered a simple magical command, and snapped his finger back, and the bottle flew from the shelf to his waiting grasp. Two more points and commands had a pair of glasses sitting upon the bar before the companions.

Jarlaxle reached for the bottle. The stunned and angry Briar snapped his hand out to grab the dark elf's arm. He never got close.

Faster than Briar could possibly react, faster than he could think to react, Entreri snapped his hand on the bar- keep's reaching arm, slamming it down to the bar and holding it fast. In the same fluid motion, the assassin's other hand came, holding the jeweled dagger, and Entreri plunged it hard into the wooden shelf right between Gentleman Briar's fingers. The blood drained from the man's ruddy face. "If you persist, there will be little left of your tavern," Entreri promised in the coldest, most threatening voice

Gentleman Briar had ever heard. "Enough to build a proper box to bury you in, perhaps." "Doubtful," said Jarlaxle.

The drow was perfectly at ease, hardly paying attention, seeming as though he had expected Entreri's intervention all along. He poured the two drinks and eased himself back, sniffing, and sipping his liquor.

Entreri let the man go, glanced around to make sure that none of the others were moving, and slid his dagger back into its sheath on his belt.

"Good sir," Jarlaxle said. "I tell you one more time that we have no argument with you, nor do we wish one. Our road behind us has been long and dry, and the road before us will no doubt prove equally harsh. Thus we have entered your fair tavern in this fair village. Why would you think to deny us?"

"The better question is, why would you wish to be killed?" Entreri put in.

Gentleman Briar looked from one to the other and threw up his hands in defeat. "To the Nine Hells with both of ye," he growled, spinning away.

Entreri looked to Jarlaxle, who merely shrugged and said, "I have already been there. Hardly worth a return visit." He took up his glass and the bottle and walked away. Entreri, with his own glass, followed him across the room to the one free table in the small place.

Of course, the two tables near that one soon became empty as well, when the patrons took up their glasses and other items and scurried away from the dark elf.

"It will always be like this," Entreri said to his companion a short while later.

"It had not been so for Drizzt Do'Urden of late, so my spies indicated," the drow answered. "His reputation, in those lands where he was known, outshone the color of his skin in the eyes of even the small-minded men. So, soon, will my own."

"A reputation for heroic deeds?" Entreri asked with a doubting laugh. "Are you to become a hero for the land, then?" "That, or a reputation for leaving burned-out villages behind me," Jarlaxle replied. "Either way, I care little."

That brought a smile to Entreri's face, and he dared to hope then that he and his companion would get along famously.

Kimmuriel and Rai-guy stared at the mirror enchanted for divining, watching the procession of nearly a score of ratmen, all in their human guise, trotting into the village.

"It is already tense," Kimmuriel observed. "If Gord Abrix plays correctly, the townsfolk will join with him against Entreri and Jarlaxle. Thirty-to-two. Fine odds."

Rai-guy gave a derisive snort. "Strong enough odds, perhaps, so that Jarlaxle and Entreri will be a bit weary before we go in to finish the task," he said.

Kimmuriel looked to his friend but, thinking about it, merely shrugged and grinned. He wasn't about to mourn the loss of Gord Abrix and a bunch of flea-infested wererats.

"If they do get in and get lucky," Kimmuriel remarked, "we must be quick. The Crystal Shard is in there."

"Crenshinibon is not calling to Gord Abrix and his fools," Rai-guy replied, his dark eyes gleaming with anticipation. "It is calling to me, even now. It knows we are close and knows how much greater it will be when I am the wielder."

Kimmuriel said nothing, but studied his friend intently, suspecting that if Rai-guy achieved his goal, he and Crenshinibon would likely soon be at odds with Kimmuriel.

"How many does the tiny village hold?" Jarlaxle asked when the tavern doors opened and a group of men walked in.

Entreri started to answer flippantly, but held the thought and scrutinized the new group a bit more closely. "Not that many," he answered, shaking his head.

Jarlaxle followed the assassin's lead, studying the movements of the new arrivals, studying their weapons- swords mostly, and more ornate than anything the villagers were carrying.

Entreri's head snapped to the side as he noted other forms moving about the two small windows. He knew then, beyond any doubt.

These are not villagers, Jarlaxle silently agreed, using the intricate sign language of the dark elves, but moving his fingers much more slowly than normal in deference to Entreri's rudimentary understanding of the form.

"Ratmen," the assassin whispered in reply.

"You hear the shard calling to them?"

"I smell them," Entreri corrected. He paused a moment to consider whether the Crystal Shard might indeed be calling out to the group, a beacon for his enemies, but he just dismissed the thought, for it hardly mattered.

"Sewage on their shoes," Jarlaxle noted.

"Vermin in their blood," the assassin spat. He got up from his seat and took a step out from the table. "Let us begone," he said to Jarlaxle, loudly enough for the closest of the dozen ratmen who had entered the tavern to hear.

Entreri took a step toward the door, and a second, aware that all eyes were upon him and his flamboyant companion, who was just then rising from his seat. Entreri took a third step, then… he leaped to the side, driving his dagger into the heart of the closest ratman before it could begin to draw its sword.

"Murderers!" someone yelled, but Entreri hardly heard, leaping forward and drawing forth Charon's Claw.

Metal rang out loudly as he brutally parried the swinging sword of the next closest wererat, hitting the blade so hard that he sent it flying out wide. A quick reversal sent Entreri's sword slashing out to catch the ratman across the face, and it fell back, clutching its torn eyes.

Entreri had no time to pursue, for all the place was in motion then. A trio of ratmen, swords slashing the air before them, were closing fast. He waved Charon's Claw, creating a wall of ash, and leaped to the side, rolling under a table. The ratmen reacted, turning to pursue, but by the time they had their bearings, Entreri came up hard, bringing the table with him, launching it into their faces. Now he cut down low, taking a pair out at the knees, the fine blade cleanly severing one leg and nearly a second.

Ratmen bore down on him, but a rain of daggers came whipping past the assassin, driving them back.

Entreri waved his sword wildly, making a long and wavy vision-blocking wall. He managed a glance back at his companion to see Jarlaxle's arm furiously pumping, sending dagger after dagger soaring at an enemy. One group of ratmen, though, hoisted a table, as had Entreri, and used it as a shield. Several daggers thumped into it, catching fast. Bolstered by the impromptu shield, the group charged hard at the drow.

Too occupied suddenly with more enemies of his own, including a couple of townsfolk, Entreri turned his attention back to his own situation. He brought his sword up parallel to the floor, intercepting the blade of one villager and lifting it high. Entreri started to tilt the blade point up, the expected parry, which would bring the man's sword out wide. As the farmer pushed back against the block, Entreri fooled him by bringing up the hilt instead, turning the blade down and forcing the man's sword across his body. Faster than the man could react with any backhand move, Entreri snapped his hand, his weapon's skull-capped pommel, into the man's face, laying him low.

Back across came Charon's Claw, a mighty cut to intercept the sword of another, a ratman, and to slide through the parry and take the tip from another farmer's pitchfork. The assassin followed powerfully, stepping into his two foes, his sword working hard and furiously against the ratman's blade, driving it back, back, and to the side, forcing openings.

The jeweled dagger worked fast as well, with Entreri making circular motions over the broken pitchfork shaft, turning it one way and another and keeping the inexperienced farmer stumbling forward and off his balance. He would have been an easy kill, but Entreri had other ideas.

"Do you not understand the nature of your new allies?" he cried at the man, and as he spoke, he worked his sword even harder, slapping the blade against the wererat's sword to bat it slightly out of angle, and slapping the flat of the blade against the wererat's head. He didn't want to kill the creature, just to tempt the anger out of it. Again and again, the assassin's sword slapped at the wererat, bruising, taunting, stinging.

Entreri noted the creature's twitch and knew what was coming.

He drove the wererat back with a sudden but shortened stab, and went fully at the farmer, looping his dagger over and around the pitchfork, forcing it down at an angle. He went in one step toward the farmer, drove the wooden shaft down farther, forcing the man at an awkward angle that had him leaning on the assassin. Entreri broke away suddenly.

The farmer stumbled forward helplessly and Entreri had him in a lock, looping his sword arm around the man and turning him as he came on so that he was then facing the twitching, changing wererat.

The man gave a slight gasp, thinking his life was at its end, but caught fully in Entreri's grasp, a dagger at his back but not plunging in, he calmed enough to take in the spectacle.

His scream at the horrid transformation, as the wererat's face broke apart, twisted and wrenched, reforming into the head of a giant rodent, rent the air and brought all attention to the sight.

Entreri shoved the farmer toward the wrenching, changing ratman. To his satisfaction, he saw the farmer drive the broken pitchfork shaft through the beast's gut.

Entreri spun away with many more enemies still to fight. The farmers were standing perplexed, not knowing which side to take. The assassin knew enough about the shape-changers to understand that he had started a chain reaction here, that the enraged and excited wererats would look upon their transformed kin and likewise revert to their more primal form.

He took a moment to glance Jarlaxle's way then and saw the drow up in the air, levitating and turning circles, daggers flying from his pumping arm. Following their paths, Entreri saw one wererat, and another, stumble backward under the assault. A farmer grabbed at his calf, a blade deeply embedded there.

Jarlaxle purposely hadn't killed the human, Entreri noted, though he surely could have.

Entreri winced suddenly as a barrage of missiles soared back up at Jarlaxle, but the drow anticipated it and let go his levitation, dropping lightly and gracefully to the floor. He drew out two daggers as a host of opponents rushed in at him, grabbing them from hidden scabbards on his belt and not his enchanted bracer in a cross-armed maneuver. As he brought his arms back to their respective sides, Jarlaxle snapped his wrists and muttered something under his breath. The daggers elongated into fine, gleaming swords.

The drow planted his feet wide and exploded into motion, his arms pumping, his swords cutting fast circles, over and under, at his sides, chopping the air with popping, whipping sounds. He brought one across his chest, then the next, spinning them wildly, then went up high with one, turning his hand to put the blade over his head and parallel with the floor.

Entreri's expression soured. He had expected better of his drow companion. He had seen this fighting style many times, particularly among the pirates who frequented the seas off Calimport. It was called "swashbuckling," a deceptive, and deceptively easy, fighting technique that was more show than substance. The swashbuckler relied on the hesitance and fear of his opponents to afford him opportunities for better strikes. While often effective against weaker opponents, Entreri found the style ridiculous against any of true talent. He had killed several swashbucklers in his day-two in one fight when they had inadvertently tied each other up with their whirling blades- and had never found them to be particularly challenging.

The group of wererats coming in at Jarlaxle at that moment apparently didn't have much respect for the technique either. They quickly rushed around the drow, forming a box, and came in at him alternately, forcing him to turn, turn, and turn some more.

Jarlaxle was more than up to the task, keeping his spinning swords in perfect harmony as he countered every testing thrust or charge.

"They will tire him," Entreri whispered under his breath as he worked away from his newest opponents. He was trying to pick a path that would bring him to his drow friend that he might get Jarlaxle out of his predicament. He glanced back at the drow then, hoping he might get there in time, but honestly wondering if the disappointing Jarlaxle was still worth the trouble.

He gasped, first in confusion, and then in admiration.

Jarlaxle did a sudden back flip, twisting as he somersaulted so that he landed facing the opponent who had been at his back. The wererat stumbled away, hit twice by shortened stabs-shortened because Jarlaxle had other targets in mind.

The drow rolled around, falling into a crouch, and exploded out of it with a devastating double thrust at the wererat opposite. The creature leaped back, throwing its hips behind it and slapping its blade down in a desperate parry.

Before he could even think about it, Entreri cried out, thinking his friend doomed, for one sword-wielding wererat charged from Jarlaxle's direct left, another from behind and to the right, leaving the drow no room to skitter away.

"They reveal themselves," Kimmuriel said with a laugh. He, Rai-guy, and Berg'inyon watched the action through a dimensional portal that in effect put them in the thick of the fighting.

Berg'inyon thought the spectacle of the changing wererats equally amusing. He leaped forward, then, catching one farmer who was inadvertently stumbling through the portal, stabbing the man once in the side, and shoving him back through and to the tavern floor.

More forms rushed by, more cries came in at them, with Kimmuriel and Berg'inyon watching attentively and Rai-guy behind them, his eyes closed as he prepared his spells-a process that was taking the drow wizard longer because of the continuing, eager call of the imprisoned Crystal Shard.

Gord Abrix flashed by the door.

"Catch him!" Kimmuriel cried, and the agile Berg'inyon leaped through the doorway, grabbed Gord Abrix in a debilitating lock, and dived back through with the wererat in tow. He kept Gord Abrix held firmly out of the way, the wererat crying protests at Kimmuriel.

But the drow psionicist wasn't listening, for he was focused fully on his wizard companion. His timing in closing the door had to be perfect.

Jarlaxle didn't even try to get out of there, and Entreri realized, he had expected the attacks all along, had baited them.

Down low, his left leg far in front of his right, both arms and blades fully extended before him, Jarlaxle somehow managed to reverse his grip, and in a sudden and perfectly balanced momentum shift, the drow came back up straight. His left arm and blade stabbed out to the left. The sword in his right hand was flipped over in his hand so that when Jarlaxle turned his fist down, the tip was facing behind him, cocking straight back.

Both charging wererats halted suddenly, their chests ripped open by the perfect stabs.

Jarlaxle retracted the blades, put them back into their respective spins, and turned left, the whirling blades drawing lines of bright blood all over the wounded wererat there, and completing the turn, slashing the wererat behind him repeatedly and finishing with a powerful crossing backhand maneuver that took the creature's head from its shoulders.

Thus disintegrating Entreri's ideas about the weakness of the swashbuckling technique.

The drow rushed past into the path of the first wererat he had struck, his spinning swords intercepting his opponent's, and bringing it into the spin with them. In a moment, all three blades were in the air, turning circles, and only two of them, Jarlaxle's, were still being held. The third was kept aloft by the slapping and sliding of the other two.

Jarlaxle hooked the hilt of that sword with the blade of one of his own, angled it out to the side and launched it into the chest of another attacker, knocking him back and to the floor.

He went ahead suddenly and brutally, blades whirling with perfect precision, to take the wererat's arm, then drop the other arm limply to its side with a well-placed blow to the collarbone, then slash its face, then its throat.

Up came Jarlaxle's foot, planting against the staggered wererat's chest, and he kicked out, knocking the creature to its back and running over it.

Entreri had meant to get to Jarlaxle's side, but instead, the drow came rushing up to Entreri's side, uttering a command under his breath that retracted one of his swords to dagger size. He quickly slid the weapon back to its sheath, and with his free hand grabbed Entreri by the shoulder and pulled him along.

The puzzled assassin glanced at his companion. More wererats were piling into the tavern, through the windows, through the door, but those remaining farmers were falling back now, moving into purely defensive positions. Though more than a dozen wererats remained, Entreri did not believe that he and this amazingly skilled drow warrior would have any trouble at all tearing them apart.

Furthermore and even more puzzling, Jarlaxle had their run angled for the closest wall. While putting a solid barrier at their backs might be effective in some cases against so many opponents, Entreri thought this ridiculous, given Jarlaxle's flamboyant, room-requiring style.

Jarlaxle let go of Entreri then and reached up to the top of his huge hat.

From somewhere unseen in the strange hat, he brought forth a black disk made of some fabric Entreri did not know and sent it spinning at the wall. It elongated as it went, turning flat side to the wooden wall, then it hit… and stuck.

And it was no longer a disk of fabric, but rather a hole-a real hole-in the wall.

Jarlaxle pushed Entreri through, dived through right behind him, and paused only long enough to pull the magical hole out behind him, leaving the wall solid once more.

"Run!" the dark elf cried, sprinting away, with Entreri right on his heels.

Before Entreri could even ask what the drow knew that he did not, the building exploded into a huge and consuming fireball that took the tavern, took all of those wererats still scrambling about the entrances and exits, and took the horses, including Entreri's and Jarlaxle's, tethered anywhere near to the place.

The pair went flying to the ground but got right back up, running full speed out of the village and back into the shadows of the surrounding hills and woodlands.

They didn't even speak for many, many minutes, just ran on, until Jarlaxle finally pulled up behind one bluff and fell against the grassy hill, huffing and puffing. "I had grown fond of my mount," he said. "A pity." "I did not see the spellcaster," Entreri remarked. "He was not in the room," Jarlaxle explained, "not physically, at least."

"Then how did you sense him?" Entreri started to ask, but he paused and considered the logic that had led Jarlaxle to his saving conclusion. "Because Kimmuriel and Rai-guy would never take the chance that Gord Abrix and his cronies would get the Crystal Shard," he reasoned. "Nor would they ever expect the wretched wererats ever to be able to take the thing from us in the first place."

"I have already explained to you that it is a common tactic for the two," Jarlaxle reminded. "They send their fodder in to engage their enemies, and Kimmuriel opens a window through which Rai-guy throws his potent magic."

Entreri looked back in the direction of the village, at the plume of black smoke drifting into the air. "Well thought," he congratulated. "You saved us both."

"Well, you at least," Jarlaxle replied, and Entreri looked back at him curiously, to see the drow waggling the fingers of one hand against his cheek, showing off a reddish-gold ring that Entreri had not noticed before.

"It was just a fireball," Jarlaxle said with a grin.

Entreri nodded and returned that grin, wondering if there was anything, anything at all, that Jarlaxle was not prepared for.

Chapter 20 BALANCING PRUDENCE AND DESIRE

Gord Abrix gasped and fell over as the small globe of fire soared past him, through the doorway, and into the tavern. As soon as it went through, Kimmuriel dropped the dimensional door. Gord Abrix had seen fireballs cast before and could well imagine the devastation back in the tavern. He knew he had just lost nearly a score of his loyal wererat soldiers.

He came up unsteadily, glancing around at his three dark elf companions, unsure, as he always seemed to be with this group, of what they might do next.

"You and your soldiers performed admirably," Rai-guy remarked.

"You killed them," Gord Abrix dared to say, though certainly not in any accusatory tone.

"A necessary sacrifice," Rai-guy replied. "You did not believe that they would have any chance of defeating Artemis Entreri and Jarlaxle, did you?"

"Then why send them?" the frustrated wererat leader started to ask, but his voice died away as the question left his mouth, the reasoning dissipated by his own internal reminders of who these creatures truly were. Gord Abrix and his henchmen had been sent in for just the diversion they provided, to occupy Entreri and Jarlaxle while Rai-guy and Kimmuriel prepared their little finish.

Kimmuriel opened the dimensional door then, showing the devastated tavern, charred bodies laying all about and not a creature stirring. The drow's lip curled up in a wicked smile as he surveyed the grisly scene, and a shudder coursed Gord Abrix's spine as he realized the fate he had only barely escaped.

Berg'inyon Baenre went through the door, into what remained of the tavern room, which was more outdoors than indoors now, and returned a moment later.

"A couple of wererats still stir but barely," the drow warrior informed his companions.

"What of our friends?" Rai-guy asked.

Berg'inyon shrugged. "I saw neither Jarlaxle nor Entreri," he explained. "They could be among the wreckage or could be burned beyond immediate recognition."

Rai-guy considered it for a moment, and motioned for Berg'inyon and Gord Abrix to go back to the tavern and snoop around.

"What of my soldiers?" the wererat asked.

"If they can be saved, pull them back through," Rai-guy replied. "Lady Lolth will grant me the power to healing them… should I choose to do so."

Gord Abrix started for the dimensional doorway, and paused and glanced back curiously at the obscure and dangerous drow, not sure how to sort through the wizard- cleric's words.

"Do you believe our prey are still in there?" Kimmuriel asked Rai-guy, using the drow tongue to exclude the wererat leader.

Berg'inyon answered from the doorway. "They are not," he said with confidence, though it was obvious he hadn't found the time yet to scour the ruins. "It would take more than a diversion and a simple wizard's spell to bring down that pair."

Rai-guy's eyes narrowed at the affront to his spell- casting, but in truth, he couldn't really disagree with the assessment. He had been hoping he could catch his prey easily and tidily, but he knew better in his heart, knew that Jarlaxle would prove a difficult and cagey quarry.

"Search quickly," Kimmuriel ordered.

Berg'inyon and Gord Abrix ran off, poking through the smoldering ruins.

"They are not in there," Rai-guy said to his psionicist friend a moment later.

"You agree with Berg'inyon's reasoning?" Kimmuriel asked.

"I hear the call of the Crystal Shard," Rai-guy explained with a snarl, for he did indeed hear the renewed call of the artifact, the prisoner of stubborn Artemis Entreri. "That call comes not from the tavern."

"Then where?" Kimmuriel asked.

Rai-guy could only shake his head in frustration. Where indeed. He heard the pleas, but there was no location attached to them, just an insistent call.

"Bring our henchmen back to us," the wizard instructed, and Kimmuriel went through the doorway, returning a moment later with Berg'inyon, Gord Abrix, and a pair of horribly burned, but still very much alive, wererats.

"Help them," Gord Abrix pleaded, dragging his torched friends to Rai-guy. "This is Poweeno, a close advisor and friend."

Rai-guy closed his eyes and began to chant, and opened his eyes and held his hand out toward the prone and squirming Poweeno. He finished his spell by waggling his fingers and uttering another line of arcane words, and a sharp spark crackled from his fingertips, jolting the unfortunate wererat. The creature cried out and jerked spasmodically, howling in agony as smoking blood and gore began to ooze from its layers of horrible wounds.

A few moments later, Poweeno lay very still, quite dead.

"What… what have you done?" Gord Abrix demanded of Rai-guy, the wizard already into spellcasting once more.

When Rai-guy didn't answer, Gord Abrix made a move toward him, or at least tried to. He found his feet stuck to the floor, as if he was standing in some powerful glue. He glanced about, his gaze settling on Kimmuriel. He recognized from the drow's satisfied expression that it was indeed the psionicist holding him fast in place.

"You failed me," Rai-guy explained opening his eyes and holding one hand out toward the other wounded wererat.

"You just said we performed admirably," Gord Abrix protested.

"That was before I knew that Jarlaxle and Artemis Entreri had escaped," Rai-guy explained.

He finished his spell, releasing a tremendous bolt of lightning into the other wounded wererat. The creature flipped over weirdly, then rolling into a fetal position, fast following its companion to the grave.

Gord Abrix howled and drew forth his sword, but Berg'inyon was there, smashing the blade away with his own, fine drow weapon. The warrior looked to his two drow companions. On a nod from Rai-guy, he slashed Gord Abrix across the throat.

The wererat, his feet still stuck fast, sank to the floor, staring helplessly and pleadingly at Rai-guy.

"I do not accept failure," the drow wizard said coldly.

"King Elbereth has sent the word out wide to our scouts," the elf Shayleigh assured Ivan and Pikel when the two dwarven emissaries arrived in Shilmista Forest to the west of the Snowflake Mountains. Cadderly had sent the dwarves straight out to their elf friends, confident that anyone approaching would surely be noticed by King Elbereth's wide network of scouts.

Pikel gave a sound then, which seemed to Ivan to be more one of trepidation than one of hope, though Shayleigh had just given them the assurances they had come here to get.

Or had she?

Ivan Bouldershoulder studied the elf maiden carefully. With her violet eyes and thick golden hair hanging far below her shoulders, she was undeniably beautiful, even to the thinking of a dwarf whose tastes usually ran to shorter, thicker, and more heavily bearded females. There was something else about Shayleigh's posture and attitude, though, about the subtle undertone of her melodious voice.

"Ye're not to kill 'em, ye know," Ivan remarked bluntly.

Shayleigh's posture did not change very much. "You yourself have named them as ultimately dangerous," she replied, "an assassin and a drow."

Ivan noted that the ominous flavor of her voice increased when she named the dark elf, as if the creature's mere race offended her more than the profession of his traveling companion.

"Cadderly's needin' to talk to 'em," Ivan grumbled.

"Can he not speak to the dead?"

"Ooo," said Pikel and he hopped away suddenly, disappearing briefly into the underbrush, and reemerging with one hand behind his back. He hopped up to stand before Shayleigh, a disarming grin on his face. "Drizzit," he reminded, and he pulled his hand around, revealing a delicate flower he had just picked for her.

Shayleigh could hardly hold her stern demeanor against that emotional assault. She smiled and took the wildflower, bringing it to her nose that she could smell its beautiful fragrance. "There is often a flower among the weeds," she said, catching on to Pikel's meaning. "As there may be a druid among a clan of dwarves. That does not mean there are others."

"Hope," said Pikel.

Shayleigh gave a helpless chuckle.

"Ye get yer heart in the right place," Ivan warned, "so says Cadderly, else the Crystal Shard'II find yer heart and twist it to its own needs. It's a big bit o' hope he's puttin' on ye, elf."

Shayleigh's sincere smile was all the assurance he needed.

"Brother Chaunticleer has outlined a grand scheme for keeping the children busy," Danica said to Cadderly. "I will be ready to leave as soon as the artifact arrives."

Cadderly's expression hardly seemed to support that notion.

"You did not think I would let you go visit an ancient dragon without me beside you, did you?" Danica asked, sincerely wounded. Cadderly blew a sigh.

"We've met one before and would have had no trouble at all with it if we had not brought it along with us across the mountains," the woman reminded.

"This time may be more difficult," Cadderly explained. "I will be expending energy merely in controlling the Crystal Shard at the same time I am dealing with the beast. Worse, the artifact will also be speaking to the dragon, I am sure. What better wielder for an instrument of chaos and destruction than a mighty red dragon?"

"How strong is your magic?" Danica asked. "Not that strong, I fear," Cadderly replied. "All the more reason that I, and Ivan and Pikel, must be with you," Danica remarked.

"Without the aid of Deneir, do you give any of us a chance of battling such a wyrm?" the priest asked sincerely. "If Deneir is not with you, you will need us to drag you out of there and quickly," the woman said with a wide smile. "Is that not what your friends are supposed to do?"

Cadderly started to respond, but he really couldn't say much against the look of determination, and of something even more than that-of serenity-stamped across Danica's fair face. Of course she meant to go with him, and he knew he couldn't possibly prevent that unless he left magically and with great deception. Of course, Ivan and Pikel would travel with him as well, though he had to wince when he considered the would-be druid, Pikel, facing a red dragon. They did not want to disturb the great beast any more than to borrow its fiery breath for a single burst of fire. Pikel, so dedicated to the natural, might not be so willing to walk away from a dragon, which was perhaps the greatest perversion of nature in all the world.

Danica cupped her hand under Cadderly's chin then and tilted his head back up so that he was eyeing her directly as she moved very close to him.

"We will finish this and to our satisfaction," she said, and she kissed him gently on the lips. "We have battled worse, my love."

Cadderly didn't begin to deny her words, or her presence, or her determination to go along on this important and dangerous journey. He brought her closer and kissed her again and again.

* * * *

"We are too busy elsewhere," Sharlotta Vespers tried to explain to Kimmuriel and Rai-guy. The pair were not pleased to learn that Dallabad had somehow been infiltrated by spies of great warlords from Memnon.

The dark elves exchanged concerned looks. Sharlotta had insisted repeatedly that every spy had been caught and killed, but what if she were wrong? What if even one spy had escaped to tell the warlords in Memnon the truth about the change at Dallabad? Or what if other spies had now discerned the real power behind the overthrow of House Basadoni?

"Every danger that Jarlaxle has sown may soon come to harvest," Kimmuriel said to his companion in the drow tongue.

While Sharlotta understood the words well enough, she surely didn't catch the subtleties of the common drow saying, one that referred to revenge taken on a drow house for crimes against another house. Kimmuriel's words were a stern warning, a reminder that Jarlaxle's involvement with Crenshinibon may have left them all vulnerable, no matter what remedial steps they now took.

Rai-guy nodded and stroked his chin, whispering something under his breath that the others could not catch. He stepped forward suddenly to stand right before Sharlotta, bringing his hands up in front of him, thumb-to-thumb. He uttered another word, and a gout of flame burst forth, engulfing the surprised woman's head. She slapped at the fire and screamed, running around the room, and dived to the floor, rolling.

"Make sure that all others who know too much are similarly uninformed," Rai-guy said coldly, as Sharlotta finally died on the floor at bis feet.

Kimmuriel nodded, his expression grim, though a hint of an eager grin did turn up the edges of his thin lips.

"I will open the portal back to Menzoberranzan," the wizard explained. "I hold no love for this place and know now, as do you, that our potential gains here do not outweigh the risk to Bregan D'aerthe. I do not even consider it a pity that Jarlaxle foolishly overstepped the bounds of rational caution,"

"Better that he did," Kimmuriel agreed. "That we can be on our way to the caverns where we truly belong." He glanced down at Sharlotta, her head blackened and smoking, and smiled once more. He bowed to his companion, his friend of like mind, and left the room, eager to begin the debriefing of others.

Rai-guy also left the room, though through another door, one that led him to the staircase to the basement of House Basadoni, where he could relax more privately in secure chambers. His words of retreat to Kimmuriel followed his every step.

Logical words. Words of survival in a place grown too dangerous.

But still… there remained a call in his head, an insistent intrusion, a plea for help.

A promise of greatness beyond his comprehension.

Rai-guy settled into a comfortable chair in his private room, reminding himself continually that a return to Menzoberranzan was the correct move for Bregan D'aerthe, that the risk of remaining on the surface, even in pursuit of the powerful artifact, was too great for the potential gains.

Soon after, the exhausted drow fell into a sort of reverie, as close to true sleep as a dark elf might know.

And in that "sleep," the call of Crenshinibon came again to Rai-guy, a plea for help, for rescue, and a promise of great gain in return.

That predictable call was soon magnified a hundred times over, with even greater promises of glory and power, with images not of magnificent crystalline towers on the deserts of Calimshan, but of a tower of the purest opal set in the center of Menzoberranzan, a black structure gleaming with inner heat and energy.

Rat-guy's reminders of prudence could not hold against that image, against the parade of Matron Mothers, the hated Triel Baenre among them, coming to the tower to pay homage to him.

The dark elf s eyes popped open wide. He collected his thoughts and sprang from the chair, moving quickly to locate Kimmuriel, to alter the psionisict's instructions. Yes, he would open the gate back to Menzoberranzan, and yes, much of Bregan D'aerthe would return to their home.

But Rai-guy and Kimmuriel were not finished here just yet. They would remain with a strike force until the Crystal Shard had found a proper wielder, a dark elf wizard-cleric who would bring to the artifact its greatest level of power, and who would take from it the same.

In a dark chamber far under Dallabad Oasis, Yha-raskrik silently congratulated himself on altering the promises of the Crystal Shard more greatly to entice Rai-guy. Kimmuriel had informed Yharaskrik of the change in Bregan D'aerthe's plans, but though Yharaskrik had outwardly accepted that change, the illithid was not willing to let the artifact go running off unchecked just yet. Through great concentration and mind control, Yharaskrik had been able to catch the subtle notes of the artifact's quiet call, but the illithid had not been able to begin to backtrack that call to the source.

Yharaskrik needed Bregan D'aerthe a bit longer, though the illithid recognized that once the drow band had fulfilled its purpose in locating the Crystal Shard, he and Rai-guy would likely be on opposite sides of the inevitable battle.

Let that be as it may, Yharaskrik realized. Kimmuriel Oblodra, a fellow psionicist who understood the deeper truths about Crenshinibon's shortcomings, would surely stand on his side of the battlefield.

Chapter 21 THE MASK OF A GOD

Why would you live in a desert, when such beauty is so near?" Jarlaxle asked Entreri.

The pair had moved quickly in the days after the disaster at Gentleman Briar's tavern, with Entreri even enlisting one wizard they found in an out-of-the-way tower magically to transport them many miles closer to their goal of the Spirit Soaring and the priest, Cadderly.

It didn't hurt, of course, that Jarlaxle seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of gold coins.

Now the Snowflake Mountains were in clear sight, towering before them. Summer was on the wane, and the wind blew chill, but Entreri could hardly argue Jarlaxle's assessment of the landscape. It surprised the assassin that a drow would find beauty in such a surface environment. They looked down on a canopy of great and ancient trees that filled a long, wide vale nestled right up against the Snowflake's westernmost slopes. Even Entreri, who seemed to spend most of his time denying beauty, could not deny the majesty of the mountains themselves, tall and jagged, capped with bright snow gleaming brilliantly in the daylight.

"Calimport is where I make my living," Entreri answered after a while.

Jarlaxle snorted at the thought. "With your skills, you could make your home anywhere in the world," he said. "In Waterdeep or in Luskan, in Icewind Dale or even here. Few would deny the value of a powerful warrior in cities large and villages small. None would evict Artemis Entreri-unless, of course, they knew the man as I know him."

That brought a narrow-eyed gaze from the assassin, but it was all in jest, both knew-or perhaps it wasn't. Even in that case, there was too much truth to Jarlaxle's statement for Entreri rationally to take offense.

"We must swing around the mountains to the south to get to Carradoon, and the trails leading us to the Spirit Soaring," Entreri explained. "A few days should have us standing before Cadderly, if we make all haste."

"All haste, then," said Jarlaxle. "Let us be rid of the artifact, and…" He paused and looked curiously at Entreri.

Then what?

That question hung palpably in the air between them, though it had not been spoken. Ever since they had fled the crystalline tower in Dallabad, the pair had run with purpose and direction-to the Spirit Soaring to be rid of the dangerous artifact-but what, indeed, awaited them after that? Was Jarlaxle to return to Calimport to resume his command of Bregan D'aerthe? both wondered. Entreri knew at once as he pondered the possibility that he would not follow his dark elf companion in that case. Even if Jarlaxle could somehow overcome the seeds of change sown by Rai-guy and Kimmuriel, Entreri had no desire to be with the drow band again. He had no desire to measure his every step in light of the knowledge that the vast majority of his supposed allies would prefer it if he were dead.

Where would they go? Together or apart? Both were contemplating that question when a voice, strong yet melodic, resonant with power, drifted across the field to them.

"Halt and yield!" it said.

Entreri and Jarlaxle glanced over as one to see a solitary figure, a female elf, beautiful and graceful. She was approaching them openly, a finely crafted sword at her side.

"Yield?" Jarlaxle muttered. "Must everyone expect us to yield? And halt? Why, we were not even moving!"

Entreri was hardly listening, was focusing his senses on the trees around them. The elf maiden's gait told him much, and he confirmed his suspicions almost immediately, spotting one, and another, elf archer among the boughs, bows trained upon him and his companion.

"She is not alone," the assassin whispered to Jarlaxle, though he tried to keep the smile on his face as he spoke, an inviting expression for the approaching warrior.

"Elves rarely are," Jarlaxle replied quietly. "Particularly when they are confronting drow."

Entreri couldn't hold his smile, facing that simple truth. He expected the arrows to begin raining down upon them at any moment.

"Greetings!" Jarlaxle called loudly. He swept off his hat, making a point to show his heritage openly.

Entreri noted that the elf maiden did wince and slow briefly at the revelation, for even from her distance-and she was still thirty strides away-Jarlaxle, without the visually overwhelming hat, was obviously drow.

She came a bit closer, her expression holding perfectly calm and steady, revealing nothing. It occurred to Entreri then that this was no chance meeting. He took a moment to listen for the silent call of Crenshinibon, to try to determine if the Crystal Shard had brought in more opponents to free it from Entreri's grasp.

He sensed nothing unusual, no contact at all between the artifact and this elf.

"There are a hundred warriors about you," the elf maiden said, stopping some twenty paces from the pair. "They would like nothing better than to pierce your tiny drow heart with their arrows, but we have not come here for that-unless you so desire it."

"Preposterous!" Jarlaxle said, quite animatedly. "Why would I desire such a thing, fair elf? I am Drizzt Do'Urden of Icewind Dale, a ranger, and of heart not unlike your own, I am sure!"

The elf s lips grew very thin.

"She does not know of you, my friend," Entreri offered.

"Shayleigh of Shilmista Forest knows of Drizzt Do'Urden," Shayleigh assured them both. "And she knows of Jarlaxle of Bregan D'aerthe, and of Artemis Entreri, most vile of assassins."

That made the pair blink more than a few times. "Must be the Crystal Shard telling her," Jarlaxle whispered to his companion.

Entreri didn't deny that, but neither did he believe it. He closed his eyes, trying to sense some connection between the artifact and the elf maiden again, and again he found nothing. Nothing at all.

But how else could she know?

"And you are Shayleigh of Shilmista?" Jarlaxle asked politely. "Or were you, perchance, speaking of another?"

"I am Shayleigh," the elf announced. "I, and my friends gathered in the trees all around you, were sent out here to find you, Jarlaxle of Bregan D'aerthe. You carry an item of great importance to us."

"Not I," the drow said, feigning confusion and glad that he could further mask that confusion by speaking truthful words.

"The Crystal Shard is in the possession of Jarlaxle and Artemis Entreri," Shayleigh stated definitively. "I care not which of you carries it, only that you have it."

"They will strike fast," Jarlaxle whispered to Entreri. "The shard coaxes them in. No parlay here, I fear."

Entreri didn't get that feeling, not at all. The Crystal Shard was not calling to Shayleigh, nor to any of the other elves. If it had been, that call had undoubtedly been completely denied.

The assassin saw Jarlaxle making some subtle motions then-the movements of a spell, he figured-and he put a hand on the dark elf s arm, holding him still.

"We do indeed possess the item you claim," Entreri said to Shayleigh, stepping up ahead of Jarlaxle. He was playing a hunch here, and nothing more. "We are bringing it to Cadderly of the Spirit Soaring."

"For what purpose?" Shayleigh asked. "That he may rid the world of it," Entreri answered boldly. "You say that you know of Drizzt Do'Urden. If that is true, and if you know Cadderly of the Spirit Soaring as well-which I believe you do-then you likely know that Drizzt was bringing this very artifact to Cadderly."

"Until it was stolen from him by a dark elf posing as Cadderly," Shayleigh said determinedly and in a leading tone. In truth, that was about as much as Cadderly had told her about how this particular pair had come to acquire the artifact.

"There are reasons for things that a casual observer might not understand," Jarlaxle interjected. "Be satisfied with the knowledge that we have the Crystal Shard and are delivering it, rightfully so, to Cadderly of the Spirit Soaring, that he might rid the world of the menace that is Crenshinibon."

Shayleigh motioned to the trees, and her companions walked out from the shadows. There were dozens of grim-faced elves, warriors all, armed with crafted bows and wearing fine weapons and gleaming, supple armor.

"I was instructed to deliver you to the Spirit Soaring," Shayleigh explained. "It was not clear whether or not you had to be alive. Walk swiftly and silently, make no movements that indicate any hostility, and perhaps you will live to see the great doors of the cathedral, though I assure you that I hope you do not."

She turned then and started away. The elves began to close in on the dark elf and his assassin companion, with their bows still in hand and arrows aimed for the kill.

"This is going better than I expected," Jarlaxle said dryly.

"You are an eternal optimist, then," Entreri replied in the same tone. He searched all around for some weakness in the ring of elves, but he saw only swift, inescapable death stamped on every fair face.

Jarlaxle saw it, too, even more clearly. "We are caught," he remarked.

"And if they know all the details of our encounter with Drizzt Do'Urden….." Entreri said ominously, letting the words hang in the air.

Jarlaxle held his wry smile until Entreri had turned away, hoping that he wouldn't be forced to reveal the truth of that encounter to his companion. He didn't want to tell Entreri that Drizzt was still alive. While Jarlaxle believed Entreri had gone beyond that destructive obsession with Drizzt, if he was wrong and Entreri learned the truth, he would likely be fighting for his life against the skilled warrior.

Jarlaxle glanced around at the many grim-faced elves and decided he already had enough problems.

As the meeting at the Spirit Soaring wore on, Cadderly fired back a testy remark concerning the feelings between the drow and the surface elves when Jarlaxle implied that he and his companion really couldn't trust anyone who brought them in under a guard of a score of angry elves.

"But you have already said that this is not about us," Jarlaxle reasoned. He glanced over at Entreri, but the assassin wasn't offering any support, wasn't offering anything at all.

Entreri hadn't spoken a word since they'd arrived, and neither had Cadderly's second at the meeting, a confident woman named Danica. Indeed, she and Entreri seemed cut of similar stuff-and neither of them seemed to like that fact. They had been staring, glowering at each other for nearly the entire time, as if there was some hidden agenda between them, some personal feud.

"True enough," Cadderly finally admitted. "In another situation, I would have many questions to ask of you, Jarlaxle of Menzoberranzan, and most of them far from complimentary toward your apparent actions."

"A trial?" the dark elf asked with a snort. "Is that your place, then, Magistrate Cadderly?"

The yellow-bearded dwarf behind the priest, obviously the more serious of the two dwarves, grumbled and shifted uncomfortably. His green-bearded brother just held his stupid, naive smile. To Jarlaxle's way of thinking, where he was always searching for layers under lies, that smile marked the green-bearded dwarf as the more dangerous of the two.

Cadderly eyed Jarlaxle without blinking. "We must all answer for our actions," he said.

"But to whom?" the drow countered. "Do you even begin to believe that you can understand the life I have lived, judgmental priest? How might you fare in the darkness of Menzoberranzan, I wonder?"

He meant to continue, but both Entreri and Danica broke their silence then, saying in unison, "Enough of this!" "Ooo," mumbled the green-bearded dwarf, for the room went perfectly silent. Entreri and Danica were as surprised as the others at the coordination of their remarks. They stared hard at each other, seeming on the verge of battle.

"Let us conclude this," Cadderly said. "Give over the Crystal Shard and go on your way. Let your past haunt your own consciences then, and I will be concerned only with that which you do in the future. If you remain near to the Spirit Soaring, then know that your actions are indeed my province, and know that I will be watching."

"I tremble at the thought," Entreri said, before Jarlaxle could utter a similar, though less blunt, reply. "Unfortunately, for all of us, our time together has only just begun. I need you to destroy the wretched artifact, and you need me because I carry it."

"Give it over," Danica said, eyeing the man coldly. Entreri smirked at her. "No." "I am sworn to destroy it," Cadderly argued. "I have heard such words before," Entreri replied. "Thus far, I am the only one who has been able to ignore the temptation of the artifact, and therefore, it remains with me until it is destroyed." He felt an inner twinge at that, a combination of a plea, a threat, and the purest rage he had ever known, all emanating from the imprisoned Crystal Shard.

Danica scoffed as if his claim was purely preposterous, but Cadderly held her in check.

"There is no need for such heroics from you," the priest assured Entreri. "You do not need to do this."

"I do," Entreri replied, though when he looked to Jarlaxle, it seemed to him as if his drow companion was siding with Cadderly.

Entreri could certainly see that point of view. Powerful enemies pursued them, and the Crystal Shard itself was not likely to be destroyed without a terrific battle. Still, Entreri knew in his heart that he had to see this through. He hated the artifact profoundly. He needed to see this controlling, awful item be utterly obliterated. He didn't know why he felt so strongly, but he did, plain and simple, and he wasn't giving over the artifact not to Cadderly or to Danica, not to Rai-guy and Kimmuriel, not to anyone while he still had breath in his body. "I will finish this," Cadderly remarked. "So you say," the assassin answered sarcastically and without hesitation.

"I am a priest of Deneir," Cadderly started to protest. "I name supposedly goodly priests among the least trustworthy of all creatures," Entreri interrupted coldly. "They are on my scale just below troglodytes and green slime, the greatest hypocrites and liars in all the world."

"Please, my friend, do not temper your feelings," Jarlaxle said dryly.

"I would have thought that such a distinction would belong to assassins, murderers, and thieves," Danica remarked, her tone and expression making her hatred for Artemis Entreri quite evident.

"Dear girl, Artemis Entreri is no thief," Jarlaxle said with a grin, hoping to diffuse some of the mounting tension before it exploded-and he and his companion found themselves squared off against the formidable array within this room and without, where scores of priests and a group of elves were no doubt discussing the arrival of the two less-than- exemplary characters with more than a passing concern.

Cadderly put a hand on Danica's arm, calming her, and took a deep breath and started to reason it all out again.

Again Entreri cut him short. "However you wish to parse your words, the simple truth is that I possess the Crystal Shard, and that I, above all others who have tried, have shown the control necessary to hold its call in check.

"If you wish to take the artifact from me," Entreri continued, "then try, but know that I'll not give it over easily- and that I will even utilize the powers of the artifact against you. I wish it destroyed-you wish it destroyed, so you say. Thus, we do it together."

Cadderly paused for a long while, glanced over at Danica a couple of times, and to Jarlaxle, and neither offered him any answers. With a shrug, the priest looked back at Entreri.

"As you wish," he agreed. "The artifact must be engulfed in magical darkness and breathed upon by an ancient and huge red dragon."

Jarlaxle nodded, but then stopped, his dark eyes going wide. "Give it to him," he said to his companion.

Artemis Entreri, though he had no desire to face a red dragon of any size or age, feared more the consequence of Crenshinibon's becoming free to wield its power once more. He knew how to destroy it now-they all did-and the Crystal Shard would never suffer them to live, unless that life was as its servant.

That possibility Artemis Entreri loathed most of all.

Jarlaxle thought to mention that Drizzt Do'Urden had shown equal control, but he held the thought silent, not wanting to bring up the drow ranger in any context. Given Cadderly's understanding of the situation, it seemed obvious to Jarlaxle that the priest knew the truth of his encounter with Drizzt, and Jarlaxle did not want Entreri to discover that his nemesis was still alive-not now, at least, with so many other pressing issues before him.

Jarlaxle considered blurting it all out, on a sudden thought that speaking the truth plainly would heighten Entreri's willingness to be done with all of this, to give over the shard that he and Jarlaxle could pursue a more important matter-that of finding the drow ranger.

Jarlaxle held it back, and smiled, recognizing the source of the inspiration as a subtle telepathic ruse by the imprisoned artifact.

"Clever," he whispered, and merely smiled as all eyes turned to regard him.

Soon after, while Cadderly and his friends made preparations for the journey to the lair of some dragon Cadderly knew of, Entreri and Jarlaxle walked the grounds outside of the magnificent Spirit Soaring, well aware, of course, that many watchful eyes were upon their every move.

"It is undeniably beautiful, do you not agree?" Jarlaxle asked, looking back at the soaring cathedral, with its tall spires, flying buttresses, and great, colored windows.

"The mask of a god," Entreri replied sourly.

"The mask or the face?" asked the always-surprising Jarlaxle.

Entreri stared hard at his companion, and back at the towering cathedral. "The mask," he said, "or perhaps the illusion, concocted by those who seek to elevate themselves above all others and have not the skills to do so."

Jarlaxle looked at him curiously.

"A man inferior with the blade or with his thoughts can still so elevate himself," Entreri explained curtly, "if he can impart the belief that some god or other speaks through him. It is the greatest deception in all the world, and one embraced by kings and lords, while minor lying thieves on the streets of Calimport and other cities lose their tongues for so attempting to coax the purses of others."

That struck Jarlaxle as the most poignant and revealing insight he had yet pried from the mouth of the elusive Artemis Entreri, a great clue as to who this man truly was.

Up to that point, Jarlaxle had been trying to figure out a way that he could wait behind while Entreri, Cadderly, and whomever Cadderly chose to bring along went to face the dragon and destroy the artifact.

Now, because of this seemingly unrelated glimpse into the heart of Artemis Entreri, Jarlaxle realized he had to go along.

Chapter 22 IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

The great beast lay at rest, but even in slumber did the dragon seem a terrible and wrathful thing. It curled catlike, its long tail running up past its head, its huge, scaly back rising like a giant wave and sinking in a great exhalation that sent plumes of gray smoke from its nostrils and injected a vibrating rumble throughout the stone of the cavern floor. There was no light in the rocky chamber, save the glow of the dragon itself, a reddish-gold hue-a hot light, as if the beast were too full of energy and savage fires to hold it all in with mere scales.

On the other end of the scrying mirror, the six unlikely companions-Cadderly, Danica, Ivan, Pikel, Entreri, and Jarlaxle-watched the dragon with a mixture of awe and dread.

"We could use Shayleigh and her archers," Danica remarked, but of course, that was not possible, since the elves had absolutely refused to work alongside the dark elf for any purpose whatsoever and had returned to their forest home in Shilmista.

"We could use King Elbereth's entire army," Cadderly added.

"Ooo," said Pikel, who seemed truly mesmerized by the beast, a great wyrm at least as large and horrific as old Fyrentennimar.

"There is the dragon," Cadderly said, turning to Entreri. "Are you certain you still wish to accompany me?" His question ended weakly, though, given the eager glow in Artemis Entreri's eyes.

The assassin reached into his pouch and brought forth the Crystal Shard.

"Witness your doom," he whispered to the artifact. He felt the shard reaching out desperately and powerfully- Cadderly felt those sensations as well. It called to Jarlaxle first, and indeed, the opportunistic drow did begin physically to reach for it, but he resisted.

"Put it away," Danica whispered harshly, looking from the green-glowing shard to the shifting beast. "It will awaken the dragon!"

"My dear, do you expect to coax the fiery breath from a dragon that remains asleep?" Jarlaxle reminded her, but Danica turned an angry glare at him.

Entreri, hearing the Crystal Shard's call clearly and recognizing its attempt, understood that the woman spoke wisely, though, for while they would indeed have to wake the beast, they would be far better served if it did not know why. The assassin looked at the artifact and gave a confident, cocky grin, and dropped it back into his pouch and nodded for Cadderly to disenchant the scrying mirror. "When do we go?" the assassin asked Cadderly, and his tone made it perfectly clear that he wasn't shaken in the least by the sight of the monstrous dragon, made it clear that he was eager to be done with the destruction of the vile artifact.

"I have to prepare the proper spells," Cadderly replied. "It will not be long."

The priest motioned for Danica and his other friends to escort their two undesirable companions away then, though he only dropped the image from the scrying mirror temporarily. As soon as he was alone, he called up the dragon cave again, after placing another spell upon himself that allowed him to see in the dark. He sent the roving eye of the scrying mirror all around the large, intricate lair.

There were many great cracks in the floor, he noted, and when he followed one down, he came to recognize that a maze of tunnels and chambers lay beneath the sleeping wyrm. Furthermore, Cadderly wasn't convinced that the dragon's cave was very secure structurally. Not at all.

He'd have to keep that well in mind while choosing the spells he would bring with him to the home of this great beast known as Hephaestus.

Rai-guy, deep in concentration, his eyes closed, allowed the calls of Crenshinibon to invade his thoughts fully. He caught only flashes of anger and despair, the pleas for help, the promises of ultimate glory.

He saw some other images, as well, particularly one of a great curled red dragon, and he heard a word, a name echoing in his head: Hephaestus.

Rai-guy knew he had to act quickly. He settled back in his private chamber beneath House Basadoni and prayed with all his heart to his Lady Lolth, telling her of the Crystal Shard, and of the glorious chaos the artifact might allow him to bring to the world.

For hours, Rai-guy stayed alone, praying, sending away any who knocked at his door-Berg'inyon and Kimmuriel among them-with a gruff and definitive retort.

Then, when he believed he'd caught the attention of his dark Spider Queen, or at least the ear of one of her minions, the wizard fell into powerful spellcasting, opening an extra-planar gate.

As always with such a spell, Rai-guy had to take care that no unwanted or overly powerful planar denizens walked through that gate. His suspicions were correct, though, and indeed, the creature that came through the portal was one of the yochlol. These were the handmaidens of Lolth, beasts that more resembled half-melted candles with longer appendages than the Spider Queen herself.

Rai-guy held his breath, wondering suddenly and fearfully if he had erred in letting on about the artifact. Might Lolth desire the artifact herself and instruct Rai-guy to deliver it to her?

"You have called for help from the Lady," the yochlol said, its voice watery and guttural all at once, a dual- toned and horrible sound.

"I wish to return to Menzoberranzan," Rai-guy admitted, "and yet I cannot at this time. An instrument of chaos is about to be destroyed…."

"Lady Lolth knows of the artifact, Crenshinibon, Rai-guy of House Teyachumet," the yochlol replied, and the title the creature bestowed upon him surprised the drow wizard-cleric.

He had indeed been a son of House Teyachumet-but that house of Ched Nasad had been obliterated more than a century before. A subtle reminder, the drow realized, that the memory of Lolth and her minions was long indeed.

And a warning, perhaps, that he should take great care about how he planned to put the mighty artifact to use in the city of Lolth's greatest priestesses.

Rai-guy saw his dreams of domination over Menzober- ranzan melt then and there.

"Where will you retrieve this item?" the handmaiden asked.

Rai-guy stammered a reply, his thoughts elsewhere for the moment. "Hephaestus's lair… a red dragon," he said. "I know not where…"

"Your answer will be given," the handmaiden promised.

It turned around and walked through Rai-guy's gate, and the portal closed immediately, though the drow wizard had done nothing to dispel it.

Had Lolth herself been watching the exchange? Rai-guy had to wonder and to fear. Again he understood the futility of his dreams of conquest over Menzoberranzan. The Crystal Shard was powerful indeed, perhaps powerful enough for Rai- guy to manipulate or otherwise unseat enough of the Matron Mothers for him to achieve a position of tremendous power, but something about the way the yochlol had spoken his full name told him he should be careful indeed. Lady Lolth would not permit such a change in the balance of Menzoberranzan's power structure.

For just a brief moment, Rai-guy considered abandoning his quest to retrieve the Crystal Shard, considered taking his remaining allies and his gains and retreating to Menzoberranzan as the coleader, along with his friend, Kimmuriel, of Bregan D'aerthe.

A brief moment it was, for the call of the Crystal Shard came rushing back to him then, whispering its promises of power and glory, showing Rai-guy that the surface was not so forbidding a place as he believed. With Crenshinibon, the dark elf could carry on Jarlaxle's designs, but in more appropriate regions-a mountainous area teeming with goblins, perhaps-and build a magnificent and undyingly loyal legion of minions, of slaves.

The drow wizard rubbed his slender black fingers together, waiting anxiously for the answer the yochlol had promised him.

"You cannot deny the beauty," Jarlaxle remarked, he and Entreri again sitting outside of the cathedral, relaxing before their journey. Both were well aware that many wary gazes were focused upon them from many vantage points.

"Its very purpose denies that beauty," Entreri replied, his tone showing that he had little desire to replay this conversation yet again.

Jarlaxle studied the man closely, as if hoping that physical scrutiny alone would unlock this apparently dark episode in Artemis Entreri's past. The drow wasn't surprised by Entreri's dislike of «hypocritical» priests. In many ways, Jarlaxle agreed with him. The dark elf had been alive for a long, long time, and had often ventured out of Menzoberranzan-and had known the movements of practically every visitor to that dark city-and he had seen enough of the many varied religious sects of Toril to understand the hypocritical nature of many so-called priests. There was something far deeper than that looming here within Artemis Entreri, though, something visceral.

It had to be an event in Entreri's past, a deeply disturbing episode involving a priest. Perhaps he had been wrongly accused of some crime and tortured by a priest, who often served as jailers for the smaller communities of the surface. Perhaps he had known love once, and that woman had been stolen from him or had been murdered by a priest.

Whatever it was, Jarlaxle could clearly see the hatred in Entreri's dark eyes as the man looked upon the magnificent-and it was magnificent, by any standards- Spirit Soaring. Even for Jarlaxle, a creature of the Under-dark, the place lived up to its name, for when he gazed upon those soaring towers, his very soul was lifted, his spirit enlightened and elevated.

Not so for his companion, obviously, and yet another mystery of Artemis Entreri for Jarlaxle to unravel. He did indeed find this man interesting.

"Where will you go after the artifact is destroyed?" Entreri asked unexpectedly.

Jarlaxle had to pause, both fully to digest the question and to consider his answer-for in truth, he really had no answer. "If we destroy it, you mean," he corrected. "Have you ever dealt with the likes of a red dragon, my friend?"

"Cadderly has, as I'm sure have you," Entreri replied.

"Only once, and I truly have little desire ever to speak with such a beast again," Jarlaxle said. "One cannot reason with a red dragon beyond a certain level, because they are not creatures with any definitive goals for personal gain. They see, they destroy, and take what is left over. A simple existence, really, and one that makes them all the more dangerous."

"Then let it see the Crystal Shard and destroy it," Entreri remarked, and he felt a twinge then as Crenshini-bon cried out.

"Why?" Jarlaxle asked suddenly, and Entreri recognized that his ever-opportunistic friend had heard that silent call.

"Why?" the assassin echoed, turning to regard Jarlaxle fully.

"Perhaps we are being premature in our planning," Jarlaxle explained. "We know how to destroy the Crystal

Shard now-likely that will be enough for us to use against the artifact to bend it continually to our will."

Entreri started to laugh.

"There is truth in what I say, and a gain to be had in following my reasoning," Jarlaxle insisted. "Crenshinibon began to manipulate me, no doubt, but now that we have determined that you, and not the artifact, are truly the master of your relationship, why must we rush ahead to destroy it? Why not determine first if you might control the item enough for our own gain?"

"Because if you know, beyond doubt, that you can destroy it, and the Crystal Shard knows that, as well, there may well be no need to destroy it," Entreri played along.

"Exactly!" said the now-excited dark elf.

"Because if you know you can destroy the crystalline tower, then there is no possible way that you will wind up with two crystalline towers," Entreri replied sarcastically, and the eager grin disappeared from Jarlaxle's black-skinned face in the blink of an astonished eye.

"It did it again," the drow remarked dryly.

"Same bait on the hook, and the Jarlaxle fish chomps even harder," Entreri replied.

"The cathedral is beautiful, I say," Jarlaxle remarked, looking away and pointedly changing the subject.

Entreri laughed again.

Delay him, then, Yharaskrik imparted to Kimmuriel when the drow told the illithid the plan to intercept Jarlaxle, Entreri, and the priest Cadderly and his friends at the lair of Hephaestus the red dragon.

Rai-guy will not be deterred in any way short of open battle, Kimmuriel explained. He will have the Crystal Shard at all costs.

Because the Crystal Shard so instructs him, Yharaskrik replied.

Yet it seems as if he has freed himself, partially at least, from its grasp, Kimmuriel argued. He dismissed many of the drow soldiers back to our warren in Menzoberranzan and has systematically relinquished our holdings here on the surface.

True enough, the illithid admitted, but you are fooling yourself if you believe that the Crystal Shard will allow Rai-guy to take it to the lightless depths of the Underdark. It is a relic that derives its power from the light of the sun.

Rai-guy believes that a few crystalline towers on the surface will allow the artifact to channel that sunlight power back to Menzoberranzan, Kimmuriel explained, for indeed, the drow wizard had told him of that very possibility-a possibility that Crenshinibon itself had imparted to Rai-guy.

Rai-guy has come to see many possibilities, Yha- raskrik's thoughts imparted, and there was a measure of doubt, translated into sarcasm, in the illithid's response. The source of those varied and marvelous possibilities is always the same.

It was a point on which Kimmuriel Oblodra, who now found himself caught in the middle of five dangerous adversaries- Rai-guy, Yharaskrik, Jarlaxle, Artemis Entreri, and the Crystal Shard itself-did not wish to dwell. There was little he could do to alter the approaching events. He would not go against Rai-guy, out of respect for the wizard-cleric's prowess and intelligence, and also because of his deep relationship with the drow. Of his potential enemies, Kimmuriel feared Yharaskrik least of all. With Rai-guy at his side, he knew the illithid could not win. Kimmuriel could neutralize Yharaskrik's mental weaponry long enough for Rai-guy to obliterate the creature.

While he held respect for the manipulative powers of the Crystal Shard and knew that the mighty artifact would not be pleased with any psionicist, Kimmuriel was honestly beginning to believe that the artifact was indeed a fine match for Rai-guy, a joining that would be of mutual benefit. Jarlaxle hadn't been able to control the artifact, but Jarlaxle had not been properly forewarned about its manipulative powers. Kimmuriel doubted that Rai-guy would make that same mistake.

Still, the psionicist believed that all would be simpler and cleaner if the Crystal Shard were indeed destroyed, but he wasn't about to go against Rai-guy to ensure that event.

He looked at the illithid and realized that he already had gone against his friend, to some extent, merely by informing this bulbous-headed creature, who was certainly an enemy of Rai-guy, that Rai-guy meant to enter an alliance with the Crystal Shard.

Kimmuriel bowed to Yharaskrik out of respect, and floated away on psionic winds, back to House Basadoni and his private chambers. Not far down the hall, he knew, Rai- guy was awaiting his answer from the yochlol and plotting his strike against Jarlaxle and the fallen leader's newfound companions.

Kimmuriel had no idea where he was going to fit into all of this.

Chapter 23 THE FACE OF DISASTER

Artemis Entreri eyed the priest of Deneir with obvious mistrust as Cadderly walked up before him and began a slow chant. Cadderly had already cast prepared defensive spells upon himself, Danica, Ivan, and Pikel, but it occurred to Entreri that the priest might use this opportunity to get rid of him. What better way to destroy Entreri than to have him face the breath of a dragon errantly thinking he had proper magical defenses against such a firestorm?

The assassin glanced over at Jarlaxle, who had refused Cadderly's aid, claiming he had his own methods. The dark elf nodded to him and waggled his fingers, silently assuring Entreri that Cadderly had indeed placed the antifire enchantment upon him.

When he was done, Cadderly stepped back and inspected the group. "I still believe that I can do this better alone," he remarked, drawing a scowl from both Danica and Entreri.

"If it was as simple as erecting a fire barrier and tossing out the artifact for the dragon to breathe upon, I would agree," Jarlaxle replied. "You may need to goad the beast to breathe, I fear. Wyrms are not quick to use their most powerful weapon."

"When it sees us all, it will more likely loose its breath," Danica reasoned.

"Poof!" agreed Pikel.

"Contingencies, my dear Cadderly," said Jarlaxle. "We must allow for every contingency, must prepare for every eventuality and turn in the game. With an ancient and intelligent wyrm, no variable is unlikely."

Their conversation ended as they both noted Pikel hopping about his brother, sprinkling some powder over the protesting and slapping Ivan, while singing a whimsical song. He finished with a wide smile, and hopped up and whispered into Ivan's ear.

"Says he got a spell of his own to add," the yellow- bearded dwarf remarked. "Put one on meself and on himself, and's wondering which o' ye othersll be wantin' one."

"What type of spell?"

"Another fire protection," Ivan explained. "Says doodads can do that."

That brought a laugh to Jarlaxle-not because he didn't believe the dwarf's every word, but because he found the entire spectacle of a dwarven druid quite charming. He bowed to Pikel and accepted the dwarf's next spellcasting. The others followed suit.

"We will be as quick as possible," Cadderly explained, moving them all to the large window at the back of the room on a high floor in one of the Spirit Soaring's towering spires. "Our goal is to destroy the item and nothing more. We are not to battle the beast, not to raise its ire, and," he looked at Entreri and Jarlaxle as he finished, "surely not to attempt to steal anything from mighty Hephaestus.

"Remember," the priest added, "the enchantments upon you may diminish one blast of Hephaestus's fire, perhaps two, but not much more than that."

"One will be enough," Entreri replied.

"Too much," muttered Jarlaxle.

"Does everyone know his or her role and position when we enter the dragon's main chamber?" Danica,asked, ignoring the grumbling drow.

No questions came back at her. Taking that as an affirmative answer, Cadderly began casting yet again, a wind-walking spell that soon carried them out of the cathedral and across the miles to the south and east to the caverns of mighty Hephaestus. The priest didn't magically walk them in the front door, but rather soared along deeper chambers, the understructure of the cavern complex, coming into a large antechamber to the dragon's main lair.

When he broke the spell, depositing their material forms in the cavern, they could hear the great sighing sound of the sleeping wyrm, the huge intake and smoky exhalation.

Jarlaxle put a finger to pursed lips and inched ahead, as silent as could be. He disappeared around an outcropping of stone, and came right back in, actually clutching the wall to steady himself. He looked at the others and nodded grimly, though there could be no doubt he had seen the beast simply from the expression on his normally confident face.

Cadderly and Entreri led the way, Danica and Jarlaxle followed, with the Bouldershoulder brothers behind. The tunnel behind the outcropping wound only for a short distance, and opened up widely into a huge cavern, its floor crisscrossed by many cracks and crevices.

The companions hardly noticed the physical features of that room, though, for there before them, looming like a mountain of doom, lay Hephaestus, its red-gold scales gleaming from its own inner heat. The beast was huge, even curled as it was, its size alone mocking them and making every one of them want to fall to his knees and pay homage.

That was one of the traps in dealing with dragons, that awe-inspiring aura of sheer power, that emanation of helplessness to all who would look upon their horrible splendor. These were not novice warriors, though, trying to make a quick stab at great fame. These were seasoned veterans, every one. Each, with the exception of Artemis Entreri, had faced a beast such as Hephaestus before. Despite his inexperience in this particular arena, nothing in all the world-not a dragon, not an arch-devil, not a demon lord-could take the heart from Artemis Entreri.

The wyrm's eye, seeming more like that of a cat than a lizard, with a green iris and a slitted pupil that quickly widened to adjust to the dim light, popped open as soon as the group entered. Hephaestus watched their every movement.

"Did you think to catch me sleeping?" the dragon said quietly, which still made its voice sound like an avalanche to the companions.

Cadderly called out a cueing word to his companions, and snapped his fingers, bringing forth a magical light that filled all the chamber.

Up snapped Hephaestus's great horned head, the pupils of its eyes fast thinning. It turned as it rose, to face the impertinent priest directly.

To the side, Entreri eased the Crystal Shard out of his pouch, ready to throw it before the beast as soon as Hephaestus seemed about to loose its fiery breath. Jarlaxle, too, was ready, for his job in this was to use his innate dark elf powers to bring forth a globe of darkness over the artifact as the flames consumed it.

"Thieves!" the dragon roared. Its voice shook the chamber and sent shudders through the floor-a poignant reminder to Cadderly of the instability of this place. "You have come to steal the treasure of Hephaestus. You have prepared your proper spells and wear items of magic that you consider powerful, but are you truly prepared? Can any mere mortal truly be prepared to face the awful splendor that is Hephaestus?"

Cadderly tuned out the words and fell into the song of Deneir, seeking some powerful spell, some type of mighty magical chaos, perhaps, as he had once used against Fyrentennimar, that he could trick the beast and be done with this. His best spells against the previous dragon had been of reverse aging, lessening the beast with mighty spellcasting, but he could not use those this time, for so doing would diminish the dragon's breath as well, and defeat their very purpose in being there. He had other magic at his disposal, though, and the Song of Deneir rang triumphantly in his head. Along with that song, though, the priest heard the calls of Crenshinibon, discordant notes in the melody and surely a distraction.

"Something is amiss," Jarlaxle whispered to Entreri. "The beast expected us and anticipates our movements. It should have risen with attacks, not words."

Entreri glanced at him, and back at Hephaestus, the great head swaying back and forth, back and forth. He glanced down at the Crystal Shard, wondering if it had betrayed them to the beast.

Indeed, Crenshinibon was sending forth its plea at that time, to the beast and against Cadderly's spellcasting, but it had not been the Crystal Shard that had warned Hephaestus of intruders. No, that distinction fell to a certain dark elf wizard-cleric, hiding in a tunnel across the way along with a handful of drow companions. Right before Cadderly and the others had wind-walked into the lair, Rai-guy had sent a magical whisper to Hephaestus, a warning of intruders and a suggestion that these thieves had come with magic designed to use the creature's own breath against it.

Now Rai-guy waited for the appearance of the Crystal Shard, for the moment when he and his companions, including Kammuriel, could strike hard and begone, their prize in hand.

"Thieves we are, and we'll have your treasure!" shouted Jarlaxle. He used a language that none of the others, save Hephaestus, understood, a tongue of the red dragons, and one that the great wyrms believed that few others could begin to master. Jarlaxle, using a whistle that he kept on a chain around his neck, spoke it with perfect inflection. Hephaestus's head snapped down in line with him, the wyrm's eyes going wide.

Entreri dived aside in a roll, coming right back to his feet.

"What did you say?" the assassin asked.

Jarlaxle's fingers worked furiously. He thinks that I am another red dragon.

There seemed a long, long moment of absolute quiet, of a gigantic hush before a more gigantic storm. Then everything exploded into motion, beginning with Cadderly's leap forward, his arm extended, finger pointing accusingly at the beast.

"Hephaestus!" the priest roared at the appropriate moment of spellcasting. "Burn me if you can!"

It was more than a dare, more than a challenge, and more than a threat. It was a magical compulsion, launched through a powerful spell. Though forewarned by some vague suggestions against the action, Hephaestus sucked in its tremendous breath, the force of the intake drawing Cadderly's curly brown locks forward onto his face.

Entreri dived ahead and pulled forth Crenshinibon, tossing it to the floor before the priest. Jarlaxle, even as Hephaestus tilted back its head, came forward with the great exhalation and produced his globe of darkness.

No! Crenshinibon screamed in Entreri's head, so powerful and angry a call that the assassin grabbed at his ears and stumbled aside, dazed.

The artifact's call was abruptly cut off.

Hephaestus's head came forward, a great line of fire roaring down, mocking Jarlaxle's globe, mocking Cadderly and all his spells.

Even as the globe of darkness came up over the Crystal Shard, Rai-guy grabbed at it with a spell of telekinesis, a sudden and powerful burst of snatching power that sent the item flying fast across the way, past Hephaestus, who was seemingly oblivious to it, and down the corridor to the hiding wizard-cleric's waiting hand.

Rai-guy's red-glowing eyes narrowed as he turned to regard Kimmuriel, for it had been Kimmuriel's task to so snatch the item-a task the psionicist had apparently neglected.

I was not fast enough, the psionicist's fingers waggled at his companion.

But Rai-guy knew better, and so did Crenshinibon, for the powers of the mind were among the quickest of magic to enact. Still staring hard at his companion, Rai-guy began spellcasting once more, aiming for the great chamber.

On and on went the fiery maelstrom, and in the middle of it stood Cadderly, his arms out wide, praying to Deneir to see him through.

Danica, Ivan, and Pikel stared at him intently, praying as well, but Jarlaxle was more concerned with his darkness, and Entreri was looking more to Jarlaxle.

"I hear not the continuing call of Crenshinibon!" Entreri cried hopefully above the fiery roar.

Jarlaxle was shaking his head. "The darkness should have been consumed by the artifact's destruction," he cried back, sensing that something was terribly, terribly wrong.

The fires ended, leaving a seething Hephaestus still staring at the unharmed priest of Deneir. The dragon's eyes narrowed to threatening slits.

Jarlaxle dispelled his darkness globe, and there remained no sign of Crenshinibon among the bubbling, molten stone.

"We done it!" Ivan cried.

"Home!" Pikel pleaded.

"No," insisted Jarlaxle.

Before he could explain, a low humming sound filled the chamber, a noise the dark elf had heard before and one that didn't strike him as overly pleasant at that dangerous moment.

"A magical dispel!" the dark elf warned. "Our enchantments are threatened!"

This left them, they all realized, in a room with an outraged, ancient, huge red dragon without many of their protections in place.

"What d' we do?" Ivan growled, slapping the handle of his battle axe across his open palm.

"Wee!" Pikel answered.

'Wee?" the perplexed yellow-bearded dwarf echoed, his face screwed up as he stared at his green-haired brother.

"Wee!" Pikel said again, and to accentuate his point, he grabbed Ivan by the collar and ran him a short distance to the side, to the edge of a crevice, and leaped off, taking Ivan on the dive with him.

Hephaestus's great wings beat the air, lifting the huge wyrm's front half high above the floor. Its hind legs clawed at the floor, digging deep gullies in the stone.

"Run away!" Cadderly cried, agreeing wholeheartedly with Pikel's choice. "All of you!"

Danica rushed forward, as did Jarlaxle, the woman rolling into a ready crouch before the wyrm. Hephaestus wasted not a second in snapping its great maw down at her. She scrambled aside, coming up from her roll in a crouch again, taunting the beast.

Cadderly couldn't watch it, reminding himself that he simply had to trust in her. She was buying him precious moments, he knew, that he might launch another magical attack or defensive spell, perhaps, at Hephaestus. He fell into the song of Deneir again and heard its notes more clearly this time, as he sorted through an array of spells to launch.

He heard a scream, Danica's scream, and he looked up to see Hephaestus's fiery breath drive down upon her, striking the stone floor and spraying up in an inverted fan of fires.

Cadderly, too, cried out, and reached desperately into the song of Deneir for the first spell he could find that would alter that horrible scene, the first enchantment he could think of to stop it.

He brought forth an earthquake.

Even as it started-a violent shudder and rumbling, like waves on a pond, lifting and rolling the floor-Jarlaxle drew the dragon's attention his way by hitting the beast with a stream of stinging daggers.

Entreri, too, moved-and surprised himself by going ahead instead of back, toward the spot where Hephaestus had just breathed.

There, too, there was only bubbling stone.

Cadderly called out for Danica, desperately, but his voice fell away as the floor collapsed beneath him.

"Let us begone, and quickly," Kimmuriel remarked, "before the great wyrm recognizes that there were more than those six intruders in its lair this day."

He and the other drow had already moved some distance down the tunnel, away from the main chamber. Leaving altogether seemed a prudent suggestion, one that had Berg'inyon Baenre and the other five drow soldiers nodding eagerly, but one that, for some reason, did not seem acceptable to the stern Rai-guy.

"No," he said firmly. "They must all die, here and now."

"As the dragon will likely kill them," Berg'inyon agreed, but Rai-guy was shaking his head, indicating that such a probability simply wasn't good enough for him.

Rai-guy and Crenshinibon were already fully into their bonding by then. The Crystal Shard demanded that Cadderly and the others, these infidels who understood the secret to its destruction, be killed immediately. It demanded that nothing concerning the group be left to chance. Besides, it telepathically coaxed Rai-guy, would not a red dragon be an enormous asset to add to Bregan D'aerthe?

"Find them and kill them, every one!" Rai-guy demanded emphatically.

Berg'inyon considered the command, and broke his soldiers into two groups and ran off with one group, the other heading a different direction. Kimmuriel spent a longer time staring hard at Rai-guy, seeming less than pleased. He, too, disappeared eventually, seemed simply to fall through the floor.

Leaving Rai-guy alone with his newest and most beloved ally.

In an alcove off to the side of the tunnel where Rai-guy stood, Yharaskrik's less-than-corporeal form slid through the stone and materialized, the illithid's Crenshinibon- defeating lantern in its hand.

Chapter 24 CHAOS

With skills honed to absolute perfection, Danica had avoided the flames by a short distance, close enough so that her skin was bright red on the left side of her face. No magic would aid Danica now, she knew, only her thousands and thousands of hours of difficult training, those many years she had spent perfecting her style of fighting and, more importantly, dodging. Danica had no intention of battling the great wyrm, of striking out in any offensive manner against a beast she doubted she could even hurt, let alone slay. All her abilities, all her energy and concentration, was solely on the defensive now, her posture a balanced crouch that would allow her to skitter out to either side, ahead, or back.

Hephaestus's fang-filled jaws snapped down at her with a tremendous clapping noise, but the dragon hit only air as the monk dived out to the right. A claw followed, a swipe that surely would have cut Danica into pieces, except that she altered the momentum of her roll to go straight back in a sudden retreat.

Then came the breath, another burst of fire that seemed to go on and on forever.

Danica had to dive and roll a couple of times to put out the flames on the back side of her clothing. Sensing that

Hephaestus had noted her escape and would adjust the line of fiery breath, she cut a fast corner around a jag in the wall, throwing herself flat against the stone behind the protective rock.

She noted two figures then. Artemis Entreri was running her way, but leaping short of her position into a wide crevice that had opened with Cadderly's earthquake. The strange dark elf, Jarlaxle, skittered behind the dragon, and to Danica's astonishment, launched a spell Hephaestus's way. A sudden arc of lightning caught the dragon's attention and gave Danica a moment of freedom. She didn't waste it.

Danica ran flat out, leaping even as the spinning Hephaestus swept its great tail around to squash her. She disappeared into the same crevice as had Artemis Entreri.

She knew as soon as she crossed the lip of the crack that she was in trouble-but still far less trouble, she supposed, than she would have found back in the dragon's lair. The descent twisted and turned, lined with broken and often sharp-edged, stone. Again Danica's training came into play, her hands and legs working furiously to buffer the blows and slow her descent. Some distance down, the crack opened into a chamber, and Danica had nothing to hold onto for the last twenty feet of her drop. Still, she coordinated her movements so that she landed feet first, but with her legs turned slightly, propelling her into a sidelong somersault. She tumbled over and over again, her roll absorbing the momentum of the fall.

She came up to her feet a few moments later, and there before her, leaning on a wall looking bruised but hardly battered, stood Artemis Entreri. He was staring at her intently and held a lit torch in his hand but tossed it aside as soon as Danica took note of him.

"I had thought you consumed by the first of Hephaestus's fires," the assassin remarked, coming away from the wall and drawing both sword and dagger, the smaller blade glowing with a white, fiery light.

"One cannot always get what one most wants," the woman answered coldly.

"You have hated me since the moment you saw me," the assassin remarked, ending with a chuckle to show that he hardly cared.

"Long before that, Artemis Entreri," Danica replied coldly, and she advanced a step, eyeing the assassin's weapons intently.

"We know not what enemies we will find down here," Entreri explained, but he knew even as he said the words, as he looked upon Danica's mask of hatred, that no explanation would suffice, that anything short of his surrender to her would invite her wrath. Artemis Entreri had little desire to battle the woman, to do any unnecessary fighting down here, but neither would he shy from any fight.

"Indeed," was all that Danica answered. She continued coming forward.

This had been coming for some time, both knew, and despite the fact that they were both separated from their respective companions, despite the fact that an angry dragon was barely fifty feet above their heads, and all of it in a cavern that seemed on the verge of complete collapse, Danica saw this encounter as more than an opportunity but a necessity.

For all his logic and common sense, Artemis Entreri really wasn't disappointed by her feelings.

As soon as Hephaestus began its stunningly fast spin, Jarlaxle had to question the wisdom of his distracting lightning bolt. Still, the drow had reacted as any ally would, taking the beast's attention so that both Entreri and the woman might escape.

In truth, after the initial shock of seeing an outraged red dragon turning at him, Jarlaxle wasn't overly worried. Despite the powerful dispel that had saturated the room- too powerful a spell for any dragon to cast, the mercenary leader recognized-Jarlaxle remained confident that he possessed enough tricks to get away from this one.

Hephaestus's great jaws snapped down at the drow, who was standing perfectly still and seemed an easy target. The magic of Jarlaxle's cloak forced the wyrm to miss, and Hephaestus roared all the louder when its head slammed into a solid wall.

Next, predictably, came the fiery breath, but even as Hephaestus began its great exhale, Jarlaxle waggled a ringed finger, opening a dimension door that brought him behind the dragon. He could have simply skittered away then, but he wanted to hold the beast at bay a little bit longer. Out came a wand, one of several the drow carried, and it spewed a gob of greenish semiliquid at the very tip of Hephaestus's twitching tail.

"Now you are caught!" Jarlaxle proclaimed loudly as the fiery breath at last ceased.

Hephaestus spun around again, and indeed, the wyrm's tail looped about, its end stuck fast by the temporary but incredibly effective goo.

Jarlaxle let fly another wad from the wand, this one smacking the dragon in the face.

Of course, then Jarlaxle remembered why he had never wanted to face such a beast as this again, for Hephaestus went into a terrific frenzy, issuing growls through its clamped mouth that resonated through the very stones of the cavern. It thrashed about so wildly its tail tore the stone from the floor.

With a tip of his wide-brimmed hat, the mercenary drow called upon his magical ring again, one of the last portal- enacting enchantments it could offer, and disappeared back behind the wyrm, a bit further along the wall than he had been before his first dimension door. There was another exit from the room back there, one that Jarlaxle suspected would bring him to some old friends.

Some old friends who likely had the Crystal Shard, he knew, for certainly it had not been destroyed by Hephaestus's first breath, certainly it had been magically stolen away right before the powerful magic-defeating spell had filled the room.

The last thing Jarlaxle wanted was for Rai-guy and Kimmuriel to get their hands on the Crystal Shard and, undoubtedly, come looking for him once more.

He was out of the cavern a moment later, the thunderous sounds of Hephaestus's thrashing thankfully left behind. He reached up into his marvelous hat and brought forth a piece of black cloth in the shape of a small bat. He whispered a few magical words and tossed it into the air. The cloth swatch transformed into a living, breathing creature, a servant of its creator that fluttered back to Jar-laxle's shoulder. The drow whispered some instructions into its ear and tossed it up before him again, and his little scout flew off into the gloom.

"We will take Hephaestus as our own," Rai-guy whispered to the Crystal Shard, the drow considering all the great gains that might be made this day. Logically, the dark elf knew he should be well on his way out of the place, for could Kim-muriel and the others really defeat Jarlaxle and the powerful companions he had brought to the dragon's lair?

Rai-guy smiled, hardly afraid, for how could he be fearful with Crenshinibon in his possession? Soon, very soon, he knew, he would be allied with a great wyrm. He turned and started down the wide tunnel toward the main chamber of Hephaestus's lair.

He noticed some movement off to the side, in an alcove, and Crenshinibon screamed a warning in his head.

Yharaskrik stepped out, not ten paces away. The tentacles around the illithid's mouth were waving menacingly.

"Kimmuriel's friend, no doubt," the dark elf remarked, "who betrayed Kohrin Soulez."

Betrayal implies alliance, Yharaskrik telepathically answered. There was no betrayal.

"If you were to venture here with us, then why not do so openly?" the drow asked.

I came for you, not with you, the ever-confident illithid answered.

Rai-guy understood well what was going on, for the Crystal Shard was making its abject hatred of the creature quite apparent in his thoughts.

"The drow and your race have been allied many times in the past," Rai-guy remarked, "and rarely have we found reason to do battle. So it should be now."

The wizard wasn't trying to talk the illithid out of any rash actions out of fear-far from it. He was thinking he might have, perhaps, made another powerful connection here, one that could be exploited.

The screaming in his mind, Crenshinibon's absolute hatred of the mind flayer, made that alliance seem less likely.

And even less likely a moment later, when Yharaskrik lit the magical lantern and aimed its glow Crenshinibon's way. The protests in the drow wizard's mind faded far, far away.

The artifact will be brought back before the dragon, came Yharaskrik's telepathic call. It was a psionically enhanced command, and one that had Rai-guy involuntarily taking a step toward the main chamber once more.

The cunning dark elf had survived more than a century in the hostile territory of his own homeland, and he was no novice to any type of battle. He fought back against the compelling suggestion and rooted his feet to the floor, turning back to regard the octopus-headed creature, his red- glowing eyes narrowing threateningly.

"Release the Crystal Shard and perhaps we will let you live," Rai-guy said.

It must be destroyed! Yharaskrik screamed into his mind. It is an item of no gain, of loss to all, even to itself. As the creature finished, it held the lantern up even higher and advanced a step, its tentacles wriggling out, reaching for Rai-guy hungrily though the drow was still too far away for any physical attack, but not out of range for psionic attacks, the drow found out a split second later, even as he began casting his own spell.

A blast of stunning and confusing energy washed over him, reached into him, and scrambled his mind. He felt himself falling over backward, watched almost helplessly as his line of vision rolled up the wall, and to the high ceiling.

He called for Crenshinibon, but it was too far away, lost in the swirl of the magical lantern's glow. He thought of the illithid, of those horrid tentacles burrowing under his skin, reaching for his brain.

Rai-guy steadied himself and fought desperately, finally regaining his balance and glancing back to see Yharaskrik very close-too close, those tentacles almost touching him.

He nearly exploded into the motion of yet another spell- casting, but he recognized that he had to be more subtle here, that he had to make the creature believe he was defeated. That was the secret of battling illithids, as many drow had been trained. Play upon their arrogance. Yharaskrik, like all of its kind, would hardly be able to comprehend that an inferior creature like a drow had somehow resisted its psionic attacks.

Rai-guy worked a simple spell, with subtle movements, and all the while feigning helplessness.

It must be done! the illithid screamed in his thoughts. The tentacles moved toward Rai-guy's face, and Yha-raskrik's hand reached for the Crystal Shard.

Rai-guy released his spell. It was not a devastating blast, not a rumble of some great explosion, not a bolt of lightning nor a gout of fire. A simple gust of wind came from the drow's hand, a sharp and surprising burst that snapped Yha-raskrik's tentacles back across its ugly face, that blew the creature's robes back behind it and forced it to retreat a step.

That blew out the lantern.

Yharaskrik glanced down, thought to summon some psionic energy to relight the lantern, and looked up and thought to strike Rai-guy with another psionic blast of scrambling energy, fearing some second spellcasting.

As quickly as the illithid could begin to do either of those things, a wave of crushing emotions washed over it, a Crenshinibon-imparted flood of despair and hopelessness, and, paradoxically of hope, with subtle promises that all could be put right, with greater glory gained for all.

Yharaskrik's psionic defenses came up almost immediately, dulling the Crystal Shard's demanding call.

A jolt of energy, the shocking grasp of Rai-guy, caught the illithid on the chest, lifted it from the ground, and sent it sprawling backward to the floor.

"Fool!" Rai-guy growled. "Do you think I need Cren- shinibon to destroy the likes of you?"

Indeed, when Yharaskrik looked back at the drow wizard, thinking to attack mentally, he stared at the end of a small black wand. The illithid let go the blast anyway, and indeed it staggered Rai-guy backward, but the drow had already enacted the power of the wand. It was a wand similar to the one Jarlaxle had used to pin down Hephaestus's tail and momentarily clamp the dragon's mouth shut.

It took Rai-guy a long moment to fight through this burst of scrambling energy, but when he did stand straight again, he laughed aloud at the spectacle of the illithid splayed out on the floor, held in place by a viscid green glob.

The mental domination from Crenshinibon began on the creature anew, wearing at its resolve. Rai-guy walked to tower over Yharaskrik, to look the helpless mind flayer in the bulbous eye, letting it know in no uncertain terms that this fight was at its end.

She had no apparent weapon, but Entreri knew better than to ask for her surrender, knew well enough what this skilled warrior was capable of. He had battled fighting monks before, though not often, and had always found them full of surprises. He could see the honed muscles of Danica's legs twitching eagerly, the woman wanting badly to come at him.

"Why do you hate me so?" the assassin asked with a wry grin, halting his advance a mere three strides from Danica. "Or is it, perhaps, that you simply fear me and are afraid to show it? For you should fear me, you understand."

Danica stared at him hard. She did indeed hate this man, and had heard much about him from Drizzt Do'Urden, and even more-and even more damning-testimony from Catti-brie. Everything about him assaulted her sensibilities. To Danica, finding Artemis Entreri in the company of dark elves seemed more an indictment of the dark elves.

"But perhaps we would do better to settle our differences when we are far, far from this place," Entreri offered. "Though our fight is inevitable in your eyes, is it not?"

"Logic would so dictate to both," Danica replied. As she finished the sentence, she came forward in a rush, slid down to the floor beneath Entreri's extending blade, and swept him from his feet. "But neither of us is a slave to wise thinking, are we, foul assassin?"

Entreri accepted the trip without resistance, indeed, even helped the flow of Danica's leg along by tumbling backward, throwing himself into a roll, and lifting his feet up high to get them over her swinging leg. He didn't quite get all the way back to his feet before reversing momentum, planting his toes, and throwing himself forward in a sudden, devastating rush.

Danica, still prone, angled herself to put her feet in line with the charging Entreri, then rolled back suddenly and with perfect timing to get one foot against the assassin's inner thigh as he fell over her, his sword reaching for her gut. With precision born of desperation, Danica rolled back up onto her shoulders, every muscle in her torso and legs working in perfect coordination to drive Entreri away, to keep that awful sword back.

He went up and over, flying past Danica and dipping his head at the last moment to go into a forward roll. He came back to his feet with a spin, facing the monk, who was up and charging, and stopping cold in her tracks as she faced again the deadly sword and its dagger companion.

Entreri felt the adrenaline coursing through his body, the rush of a true challenge. As much as he realized the foolishness of it all, he was enjoying this.

So was the woman.

The sound of a voice came from the side, the melodious call of a dark elf. "Do slay each other and save us the trouble," Berg'inyon Baenre explained, entering the small area along with a pair of dark elf companions. All three of them carried twin swords that gleamed with powerful enchantments.

Coughing and bleeding from a dozen scrapes, Cadderly pulled himself out of the rockslide and stumbled across a small corridor. He fished in a pouch to bring forth his light tube, a cylindrical object with a continual light spell cast into it, the enchantment focused into an adjustable beam out one end. He had to find Danica. He had to see her again. That last image of her, the dragon's fiery breath falling over her, had him dizzy with fear.

What would his life be without Danica? What would he say to the children? Everything about the life of Cadderly Bonaduce was wrapped inextricably around that wonderful and capable woman.

Yes, capable, he pointedly told himself again and again, as he staggered along in the dusty corridor, pausing only once to cast a minor spell of healing upon a particularly deep cut on one shoulder. He bent over and coughed again, and spat out some dirt that had gotten into his throat.

He shook his head, muttered again that he had to find her, and stood straight, pointing his light ahead-pointing his light so that it reflected off of the black skin of a drow.

That beam stung Kimmuriel Oblodra's sensitive eyes, but he was not caught unawares by it.

It all fell into place quickly for the intelligent priest. He had learned much of Jarlaxle in speaking with the drow and his assassin companion and had deduced much more with information gleaned from denizens of the lower planes. He was indeed surprised to see another dark elf- who could not be? — but he was far from overwhelmed.

The drow and Cadderly stood ten paces apart, staring at each other, sizing each other up. Kimmuriel reached for the priest's mind with psionic energy-enough energy to crush the willpower of a normal man.

But Cadderly Bonaduce was no normal human. The manner in which he accessed his god, the flowing song of Deneir, was somewhat akin to the powers of psionics. It was a method of the purest mental discipline.

Cadderly could not lash out with his mind, as Kimmuriel had just done, but he could surely defend against such an attack, and furthermore, he surely recognized the attack for what it was.

He thought of the Crystal Shard then, of all he knew about it, of its mannerisms and its powers.

The drow psionicist waved a hand, breaking the mental connection, and drew out a gleaming sword. He enacted another psionic power, one that would physically enhance him for the coming fight.

Cadderly did no similar preparations. He just stood staring at Kimmuriel and grinning knowingly. He cast one simple spell of translation.

The drow regarded him curiously, inviting an explanation.

"You wish Crenshinibon destroyed as much as I," the priest remarked, his magic translating the words as they came out of his mouth, "You are a psionicist, the bane of the Crystal Shard, its most hated enemy."

Kimmuriel paused and stared hard, with his physical and his mental eye. "What do you know, foolish human?" he asked.

"The Crystal Shard will not suffer you to live for long," Cadderly said, "and you know it."

"You believe I would help a human against Rai-guy?" Kimmuriel asked incredulously.

Cadderly didn't know who this Rai-guy might be, but Kimmuriel's question made it obvious that he was a dark elf of some power and importance.

"Save yourself, then, and leave," Cadderly offered, and he said it with such calm and confidence that Kimmuriel narrowed his eyes and regarded him even more closely.

Again came the psionic intrusions. This time Cadderly let the drow in somewhat, guided his probing mind's eye to the song of Deneir, let him see the truth of the power of the harmonious flow, let him see the truth of his doom should he persist in this battle.

The psionic connection again went away, and Kimmuriel stood up straight, staring hard at Cadderly.

"I am not normally this generous, dark elf," Cadderly said, "but I have greater problems before me. You hold no love for Crenshinibon and wish it destroyed perhaps more passionately than do I. If it is not, if your companion, this

Rai-guy you spoke of, is allowed to possess it, it will be the end of you. So help me if you will in destroying the Crystal Shard. If you and your kin intend to return to your lightless home, I will in no way interfere."

Kimmuriel held his impassive pose for a short while, and smiled and shook his head. "You will find Rai-guy a formidable foe," he promised, "especially with Crenshinibon in his possession."

Before Cadderly could begin to respond, Kimmuriel waved his hand and became something less than corporeal. That transparent form turned and simply walked through the stone wall.

Cadderly waited a long moment and breathed a huge sigh of relief. How he had improvised there and bluffed. The spells he had prepared this day were for dealing with dragons, not dark elves, and the power of that one was substantial indeed. He had felt that keenly with the psionic intrusions.

Now he had a name, Rai-guy, and now his fears about the truth of Hephaestus's breathing had been confirmed. Cadderly, like Jarlaxle, understood enough about the mighty relic to know that if the breath had destroyed Crenshinibon, everyone in the area would have known it in no uncertain terms. Now Cadderly could guess easily enough where and how the Crystal Shard had gone. Knowing that there were other dark elves about, compounding the problem of one very angry red dragon, didn't make him feel any better about the prospects for his three missing friends.

He started away as fast as he dared, and fell again into the song of Deneir, praying for guidance to Danica's side.

"Always I seem doomed to protect those I most despise," Entreri whispered to Danica, motioning with his hand for the woman to shift over to the side.

The dark elves broke ranks. One moved to square off against Danica, and Berg'inyon and one other headed for the assassin. Berglnyon waved his companion aside.

"Kill the woman, and quickly," he said in the drow tongue. "I wish to try this one alone."

Entreri glanced over at Danica and held up two fingers, pointing to the two that would go for her, and pointing to her. The woman gave a quick nod, and a great deal passed between them in that instant. She would try to keep the two dark elves busy, but both understood that Entreri would have to be done with the third quickly.

"I have often wondered how I would fare against Drizzt Do'Urden," Berg'inyon said to the assassin. "Now that I will apparently never get the chance, I will settle for you, Drizzt's equal by all accounts."

Entreri bowed. "It is good to know that I serve some value for you, cowardly son of House Baenre," he said.

He knew as he came back up that Berg'inyon wouldn't hesitate in the face of those words. Still, the sheer ferocity of the drow's attack nearly had Entreri beaten before the fight ever really began. He leaped back, staying up on his heels, skittering away as the two swords came in hard, side by side down low, then low again, then high, then at his belly. He jumped back once, twice, thrice, then managed to bat his sword across those of Berg'inyon on the fourth double-thrust, hoping to drive the blades down low. This was no farmer he faced, and no orc or wererat, but a skilled, veteran drow warrior. Berg'inyon kept his left- handed sword pressing up against the assassin's blade, but dropped his right into a quick circle, then came up and over hard.

The jeweled dagger hooked it and turned it aside at the last second. Entreri rolled his other hand over, the tip of his own sword going toward Berg'inyon. He didn't follow through with the thrust, though, but continued the roll, bringing his blade down and around under the drow's, and stabbing straight ahead.

Berg'inyon quickly turned his left-hand blade across his body and down, disengaged his right from the dagger and brought it across over the left, further driving Entreri's sword down. In the same fluid motion, the skilled drow rolled his right-hand blade up and over his crossing left, the blade going forward at the assassin's head, a brilliant move that Berg'inyon knew would be the end of Artemis Entreri.

Across the way, Danica fared no better. Her fight was a mixture of pure chaos and lightning fast, almost violent movement. The woman crouched and dropped, sprang up hard, and rushed side to side, avoiding slash after slash of drow blades. These two were nowhere near as good as the one across the way battling her companion, but they were dark elves after all, and even the weakest of drow warriors was skilled by surface standards. Furthermore, they knew each other well and complemented each other's movements with deadly precision, preventing Danica from getting any real counterattacks. Every time one came ahead in a rush that seemed to offer the woman some hope of rolling past his double-thrusting blades, or even skittering in under them and kicking at a knee, the companion drow beat her to the potential attack zone, two gleaming swords holding her at bay.

With those long blades and precise movements, they were working her to exhaustion. She had to react, to overreact even, to every thrust and slash. She had to leap away from a blade sent across by a mere flick of a drow wrist.

She looked over at Entreri and the other drow, their blades ringing in a wild song and with the dark elf seeming, if anything, to be gaining an advantage. She knew she had to try something dangerous, even desperate.

Danica came ahead in a rush, and cut left suddenly, bursting out to the side though she had only three strides to the wall. Seeing her apparently caught, the closest dark elf cut fast in pursuit, stabbing at… nothing.

Danica ran right up the wall, turning over as she went and kicking out into a backward somersault that brought her down and to the side of the pursuing dark elf. She fell low as she landed and spun around viciously, one leg extended to kick out the dark elf s legs.

She would have had him, but there was his companion, swords extended, blade driving deeply into Danica's thigh. She howled and scrambled back, kicking futilely at the pursuing dark elves.

A globe of darkness fell over her. She slammed her back against the stone and had nowhere left to go.

He ran along, with the less-than-corporeal Kimmuriel Oblodra following close behind.

"You seek an exit?" the drow psionicist asked with a voice that seemed impossibly thin.

"I seek my friends," Cadderly replied.

"They are out of the mountain, likely," Kimmuriel remarked, and that slowed the priest considerably.

For indeed, would not Danica and the dwarves search for a way out of the mountain-and there were many easy exits from the lower tunnels, Cadderly knew from his searching of the place before this journey. Dozens of corridors crisscrossed down there, but a quiet pause and a lifted and wetted finger would show the drafts of air. Certainly Ivan and Pikel would have little trouble in finding their way out of the underground maze, but what of Danica?

"Something comes this way," Kimmuriel warned, and Cadderly turned to see the drow shrink back against the wall, and stand perfectly still, seeming simply to disappear.

Cadderly knew the drow wouldn't aid him in any fight and would likely even join in if the approaching footsteps were those of Kimmuriel's dark elf companions.

They were not, Cadderly knew almost as soon as that worry cropped up, for these were not the steps of any stealthy creature.

"Ye stupid doo-dad!" came the roar of a familiar voice. "Droppin' me in a hole, and one full o' rocks!"

"Ooo oi!" Pikel replied as they came bounding around the bend in the tunnel, right into the path of Cadderly's light beam.

Ivan shrieked and started to charge, but Pikel grabbed him and pulled him down, whispering into his ear.

"Hey, ye're right," the yellow-bearded dwarf admitted. "Damned drows don't use light."

Cadderly came up beside them. "Where is Danica?"

Any relief the two dwarves had felt at the sight of their friend disappeared immediately.

"Help me find her!" Cadderly said to the dwarves and to Kimmuriel, as he spun around.

Kimmuriel Oblodra, apparently fearing that Cadderly and his companions would not be safe traveling company, was already long gone.

His smile, a wicked grin indeed, widened as one of his blades came up over the other, for he knew that Entreri had nothing left with which to parry. Out went Berg'inyon's killing stab.

But the assassin was not there!

Berg'inyon's thoughts whirled frantically. Where had he gone? How were his weapons still in place with the previous parries? He knew Entreri could not have moved far, and yet, he was not there.

The angle of the sudden disengage clued Berg'inyon in to the truth, told the drow that in the same moment Berg'inyon had executed the roll, Entreri had also come forward, but down low, using Berg'inyon's own blade as the visual block.

The dark elf silently congratulated the cunning human, this man rumored to be the equal of Drizzt Do'Urden, even as he felt the jeweled dagger sliding into his back, reaching for his heart.

"You should have kept one of your lackeys with you," Entreri whispered in the drow's ear, easing the dying Berg'inyon Baenre to the floor. "He could have died beside you."

The assassin pulled free his dagger and turned around to consider the woman. He saw her get slashed, saw her skitter away, saw the globe fall over her.

Entreri winced as the two dark elves-too far away for him to offer any timely assistance-rolled out in opposite directions, flanking the woman and rushing into that darkness, swords before them.

Just a split second before the darkness fell, the dark elf standing before Danica to the right began to execute a roll farther that way, spinning a circle to bring him around quickly and with momentum, the only clue for Danica.

The other one, she guessed, was moving to her left, but both were surely coming in at a tight enough angle to prevent her from rushing straight ahead between them. Those three options: left, right, and ahead, were unavailable, as was moving back, for the stone of the wall was solid indeed.

She sensed their movements, not specifically, but enough to realize that they were coming in fast for the kill.

One option presented itself. One alone.

Danica leaped straight up, tucking her legs under her, so full of desperation that she hardly felt the burn of the wound in her thigh.

She couldn't see the double-thrust low attack of the drow to her right, nor the double-thrust high attack from the one on the left, but she felt the disturbance below her as she cleared both sets of blades. She came up high in a tuck, and kicked out to both sides with a sudden and devastating spreading snap of her legs.

She connected on both sides, driving a foot into the forehead of the drow on her right, and another into the throat of the drow on her left. She pressed through to complete extension, sending both dark elves flying away. She landed in perfect balance and burst ahead three running steps. A forward dive brought her rolling out of the darkness. She came up and around-to see the dark elf now on her left, and the one she had kicked on the forehead, still staggering backward out of the darkness globe and into the waiting grasp of Artemis Entreri.

The drow jerked suddenly, violently, and Entreri's fine sword exploded through his chest. The assassin held it there for a moment, let Charon's Claw work its demonic power, and the dark elf s face began to smolder, burn, and roll back from his skull.

Danica looked away, focusing on the darkness, waiting for the other dark elf to come rushing out. Blood was pouring from her wounded leg, and her strength was fast receding.

She was too lightheaded a moment later to hear the final gurgling of the drow dying in the darkness globe, its throat too crushed to bring in anymore air, but even if she had heard that reassuring sound, it would have done little to bolster her hopes.

She could not hold her footing, she knew, or her consciousness.

Artemis Entreri, surely no ally, was still very much alive, and very, very close.

Yharaskrik was overwhelmed. The combination of Rai-guy's magic and the continuing mental attack of the Crystal Shard had the illithid completely overmatched. Yharaskrik couldn't even focus its mental energies enough at that moment to melt away through the stone, away from the imprisoning goo.

"Surrender!" the drow wizard-cleric demanded. "You cannot escape us. We will take your word that you will promise fealty to us," the drow explained, oblivious to the shadowy form that darted out behind him to retrieve an item. "Crenshinibon will know if you lie, but if you speak of honest fealty, you will be rewarded!"

Indeed, as the dark elf proclaimed those words, Crenshinibon echoed them deep in Yharaskrik's mind. The thought of servitude to Crenshinibon, one of the most hated artifacts for all of the mind flayers, surely repulsed the bulbous-headed creature, but so, too, did the thought of obliteration. That was precisely what Yharaskrik faced. The illithid could not win, could not escape. Crenshinibon would melt its mind even as Rai-guy blasted its body.

I yield, the illithid telepathically communicated to both of its attackers.

Rai-guy relented his magic and considered Crenshinibon. The artifact informed him that Yharaskrik had truthfully surrendered.

"Wisely done," the drow said to the illithid. "What a waste your death would be when you might bolster my army, when you might serve me as liaison to your powerful people."

"My people hate Crenshinibon and will not hear those calls," Yharaskrik said in its watery voice.

"But you understand differently," said the drow. He spoke a quick spell, dissolving the goo around the illithid. "You see the value of it now."

"A value above that of death, yes," Yharaskrik admitted, climbing back to its feet.

"Well, well, my traitorous lieutenant," came a voice from the side. Both Rai-guy and Yharaskrik turned to see Jarlaxle perched a bit higher on the wall, tucked into an alcove.

Rai-guy growled and called upon Crenshinibon mentally to crush his former master. Even as he started that silent call, up came the magical lantern. Its glow fell over the artifact, defeating its powers.

Rai-guy growled again. "You need do more than defeat the artifact!" he roared and swept his arm out toward Yharaskrik. "Have you met my new friend?"

"Indeed, and formidable," Jarlaxle admitted, tipping his wide-brimmed hat in deference to the powerful illithid. "Have you met mine?" As he finished, his gaze aimed to the side, further along the wide tunnel.

Rai-guy swallowed hard, knowing the truth before he even turned that way. He began waving his arms wildly, trying to bring up some defensive magic.

Using his innate drow abilities, Jarlaxle dropped a globe of darkness over the wizard and the mind flayer, a split second before Hephaestus's fiery breath fell over them, immolating them in a terrible blast of devastation.

Jarlaxle leaned back and shielded his eyes from the glow of the fire, the reddish-orange line that so disappeared into the blackness.

Then there came a sudden sizzling noise, and the darkness was no more. The tunnel reverted to its normal blackness, lightened somewhat by the glow of the dragon. That light intensified a hundred times over, a thousand times over, into a brilliant glow, as if the sun itself had fallen upon them.

Crenshinibon, Jarlaxle realized. The dragon's breath had done its work, and the binding energy of the artifact had been breached. In the moment before the glare became too great, Jarlaxle saw the surprised look on the reptilian face of the great wyrm, saw the charred corpse of his former lieutenant, and saw a weird image of Yharaskrik, for the illithid had begun to melt into the stone when Hephaestus had breathed. The retreat had done little good, since Hephaestus's breath had bubbled the stone.

It was soon too bright for the eyes of the drow. "Well fired… er, breathed," he said to Hephaestus.

Jarlaxle spun around, slipped through a crack at the back of the alcove, and sprinted away not a moment too soon. Hephaestus's terrible breath came forth yet again, melting the stone in the alcove, chasing Jarlaxle down the tunnel, and singeing the seat of his trousers.

He ran and ran in the still-brightening light. Cren- shinibon's releasing power filled every crack in every stone. Soon Jarlaxle knew he was near the outside wall, and so he utilized his magical hole again, throwing it against the wall and crawling through into the twilight of the outside beyond.

That area, too, brightened immediately and considerably, seeming as if the sun had risen. The light poured through Jarlaxle's magical hole. With a snap of his wrist, the drow took the magic item away, closing the portal and dimming the area to natural light again-except for the myriad beams shooting out of the glowing mountain in other places.

"Danica!" came Cadderly's frantic call behind him. "Where is Danica?"

Jarlaxle turned to see the priest and the two bumbling dwarves-an odd pair of brothers if ever the drow had seen one-running toward him.

"She went down the hole after Artemis Entreri," Jarlaxle said in a comforting tone. "A fine and resourceful ally."

"Boom!" said Pikel Bouldershoulder.

"What's the light about?" Ivan added.

Jarlaxle looked back to the mountain and shrugged. "It would seem that your formula for defeating the Crystal Shard was correct after all," the drow said to Cadderly.

He turned with a smile, but that look was not reflected on the face of the priest. He was staring back at the mountain with horror, wondering and worrying about his dear wife.

Chapter 25 THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

Hephaestus was an intelligent dragon, smart enough to master many powerful spells, to speak the tongues of a dozen races, to defeat all of the many, many foes who had come against it. The dragon had lived for centuries, gaining wisdom as dragons do, and in that depth of wisdom, Hephaestus recognized that it should not be staring at the brilliance of the Crystal Shard's released energy.

But the dragon could not turn away from the brilliance, from the sheerest and brightest, the purest power it had ever seen.

The wyrm marveled as a skeletal shadow rolled out of the brilliantly glowing object, then another, and a third, and so on, until the specters of seven long-consumed liches danced about the destroyed Crystal Shard, as they had danced around the object during its dark creation.

Then, one by one, they dissipated into nothingness.

The dragon stared incredulously, feeling the honest emotions as clearly as if it were empathically bound to the next form that flowed out of the artifact, the shadow of a man, hunched and broken with sadness. The stolen soul of the long-dead sheik sat on the floor, staring at the stone forlornly, an aura so devastated flowing out from the shadow that Hephaestus the Merciless felt a twinge in its cold heart.

That last specter, too, thinned to nothingness, and, finally, the light of the Crystal Shard dimmed.

Only then did Hephaestus recognize the depth of its mistake. Only then did the ancient red dragon realize that it was now totally blind, its eyes utterly destroyed by the pureness of the power released.

The dragon roared-how it roared! The greatest scream of anger, of rage, that ever-angry Hephaestus had ever issued. In that roar, too, was a measure of fear, of regret, of the realization that the wyrm could not dare go forth from its lair to pursue the intruders who had brought this cursed item before it, could not go out from the confines to the open world where it would need its eyes as well as those other keen senses to truly thrive, indeed to survive.

Hephaestus's olfactory senses told the wyrm that it had at least destroyed the drow and the illithid that had been standing in the corridor a few moments before. Taking that satisfaction in the realization that it was likely the only satisfaction Hephaestus could hope to find this day, the wyrm retreated to the large chamber secretly and magically concealed behind its main sleeping hall, the chamber where there was only one possible entrance, and the one where the dragon kept its piled hoard of gold, gems, jewels, and trinkets.

There the outraged but defeated wyrm curled up again, desiring sleep, peaceful slumber among its hoarded riches, hoping that the passing years would cure its burned eyes. It would dream, yes it would, of consuming those intruders, and it would set its great intelligent mind to work at solving the problem of blindness if the slumber did not bring the desired cure.

Cadderly nearly leaped for joy when the form came rushing out of the tunnels, but when he recognized the running man for who he was, Artemis Entreri, and noted that the woman slung across his shoulders was hardly moving and was covered in blood, his heart sank fast.

"What'd ye do to her?" Ivan roared, starting forward, but he found that he was moving slowly, as if in a dream. He looked to Pikel and found that his brother, too, was moving with unnatural sluggishness.

"Be at ease," Jarlaxle said to them. "Danica's wounds are not of Entreri's doing."

"How can ye know?" Ivan demanded.

"He would have left her dead in the darkness," the drow reasoned, and the simple logic of it did indeed calm the volatile brothers a bit.

Cadderly, though, ran on. As he was beyond the parameters of Jarlaxle's spell when it was cast, he was not slowed in the least. He rushed up to Entreri, who, upon seeing his approach, had stopped and turned one shoulder down, moving Danica to a standing, or at least leaning, position.

"Drow blade," the assassin said as soon as Cadderly got close enough to see the wound-and the feeble attempt at tying it off the assassin had made.

The priest went to work at once, falling into the song of Deneir, bringing forth all the healing energies he could find. Indeed, he discovered to his absolute relief that his love's wounds were not so critical, that she would certainly mend and quickly enough.

By the time he finished, the Bouldershoulders and Jarlaxle had arrived. Cadderly looked up at the dwarves and smiled and nodded, and turned a puzzled expression on the assassin.

"Her actions saved me in the tunnels," Entreri said sourly. "I do not enjoy being in anyone's debt." That said, he walked away, not once looking back.

Cadderly and his companions, including Danica, caught up to Entreri and Jarlaxle later on that day, after it became apparent, to everyone's relief, that Hephaestus would not be coming out of its lair in pursuit.

"We are returning to the Spirit Soaring with the same spell that brought us here," the priest announced. "It would be impolite, at least, if I did not offer you magical transport for the journey back."

Jarlaxle looked at him curiously.

"No tricks," Cadderly assured the cagey drow. "I hold no trials over either of you, for your actions have been no less than honorable since you came to my domain. I do warn you both, however, that I will tolerate no-"

"Why would we wish to return with you?" Artemis Entreri cut him short. "What in your hole of falsehood is for our gain?"

Cadderly started to respond-in many directions all at once. He wanted to yell at the man, to coerce the man, to convert the man, to destroy the man-anything he could do against that sudden wall of negativism. In the end, he said not a word, for indeed, what at the Spirit Soaring would be for the benefit of these two?

Much, he supposed, if they desired to mend their souls and their ways. Entreri's actions with Danica did hint that there might indeed be a possibility of that in the future. On a whim, the priest entered Deneir's song and brought forth a minor spell, one that revealed the general weal of those he surveyed.

A quick look at Entreri and Jarlaxle was all he needed to confirm that the Spirit Soaring, Carradoon, Shilmista Forest, and all the region about that section of the Snowflake Mountains would be better off if these two went in the opposite direction.

"Farewell, then," he said with a tip of his hat. "At least you found the opportunity to do one noble act in your wretched existence, Artemis Entreri." He walked by the pair, Ivan and Pikel in tow.

Danica took her time, though, eyeing Entreri with every step. "I am not ungrateful for what you did when my wound overcame me," she admitted, "but neither would I shy from finishing that which we started in the tunnels below Hephaestus's lair."

Entreri started to say, "To what end?" but changed his mind before the first word had escaped his lips. He merely shrugged, smiled, and let the woman pass.

"A new rival for Entreri?" Jarlaxle remarked when the four had gone. "A replacement for Drizzt, perhaps?"

"Hardly," Entreri replied.

"She is not worthy, then?"

The assassin only shrugged, not caring enough to try to determine whether she was or not.

Jarlaxle's laugh brought him from his contemplation.

"Growth," the drow remarked.

"I warn you that I'll tolerate little of your judgments," Entreri replied.

Jarlaxle laughed all the harder. "Then you plan to remain with me."

Entreri looked at him hard, stealing the mirth, considering a question that he could not immediately answer.

"Very well, then," Jarlaxle said lightheartedly, as if he took the silence as confirmation. "But I warn you, if you cross me, I will have to kill you."

"That will be difficult to do from beyond the grave," Entreri promised.

Jarlaxle laughed once more. "When I was young," he began, "a friend of mine, a weapon master whose ultimate frustration was that he believed I was the better fighter- though in truth, the one time I bested him was more good fortune than superior skill-remarked to me that at last he had found one who would grow to be at least my equal, and perhaps my superior, a child, really, who showed more promise as a warrior than any before.

"That weapon master's name was Zaknafein-you may have heard of him," Jarlaxle went on.

Entreri shook his head.

"The young warrior he spoke of was none other than Drizzt Do'Urden," Jarlaxle explained with a grin.

Entreri tried hard to show no emotion, but his inner feelings at the surprise betrayed him a tiny bit, and certainly enough for Jarlaxle to note it. "And did the prophecy of Zaknafein come true?" Entreri asked.

"If it did, does that hold any revelation for Artemis Entreri?" Jarlaxle asked slyly. "For would discovering the relative strength of Drizzt and Jarlaxle tell Entreri anything pertinent? How does Artemis Entreri believe he measures up against Drizzt Do'Urden?" Then the critical question: "Does Entreri believe he truly defeated Drizzt?"

Entreri looked at Jarlaxle long and hard, but as he stared, his expression inevitably softened. "Does it matter?" he answered, and that indeed was the answer that Jarlaxle most wanted to hear from his new, and, to his way of thinking, long-term companion.

"We are not yet done here," Jarlaxle announced then, changing the subject abruptly. "There is one group lingering about, fearful and angry. Their leader has decided that he cannot leave yet, not with things as they stand."

Entreri didn't ask, but just followed Jarlaxle as the dark elf made his way around the outcroppings of mountain stone. The assassin fell back a few steps when he saw the group Jarlaxle had spoken of: four dark elves led by a dangerous psionicist. Entreri put his hands immediately to the hilt of his deadly dagger and sword. A short distance away, Jarlaxle and Kimmuriel spoke in the drow tongue, but Entreri could make out most of their words.

"Do we battle now?" Kimmuriel Oblodra asked when Jarlaxle neared.

"Rai-guy is dead, the Crystal Shard destroyed," Jarlaxle replied. "What would be the purpose?"

Entreri noted that Kimmuriel did not wince at either proclamation.

"Ah, but I guess that you have tasted the sweetness of power, yes?" Jarlaxle asked with a chuckle. "You are seated at the head of Bregan D'aerthe now, it would seem, and you suppose all by yourself. You have little desire to relinquish your garnered position?"

Kimmuriel started to shake his head-it was obvious to Entreri that he was about to try to make peace here with Jarlaxle-but the surprising Jarlaxle cut short Kim-muriel's response. "Very well then!" Jarlaxle said dramatically. "I have little desire for yet another fight, Kimmuriel, and I accept and understand that my actions of late have likely earned me too many enemies within the ranks of Bregan D'aerthe for my return as leader."

"You are surrendering?" Kimmuriel asked doubtfully, and he seemed even more on his guard then, as did the foot- soldiers standing behind him.

"Hardly," Jarlaxle replied with another chuckle. "And I warn you, if you continue to do battle with me, or even to pursue me and track my whereabouts, I will indeed challenge you for the position you have rightly earned."

Entreri listened intently, shaking his head, certain that he must be getting some of the words, at least, very wrong.

Kimmuriel started to respond, but stuttered over a few words, and just gave up with a great sigh.

"Do well with Bregan D'aerthe," Jarlaxle warned. "I will rejoin you one day and will demand of you that we share the leadership. I expect to find a band of mercenaries as strong as the one I now willingly leave behind." He looked to the other three. "Serve him with honor."

"Any reunion between us will not be in Calimport," Kimmuriel assured him, "nor anywhere else on the cursed surface. I am bound for home, Jarlaxle, back to the caverns that are our true domain."

Jarlaxle nodded, as did the three foot-soldiers.

"And you?" Kimmuriel asked.

The former mercenary leader only shrugged and smiled again. "I cannot know where I most wish to be because I have not seen all that there is."

Again, Kimmuriel could only stare at his former leader curiously. In the end, he merely nodded and, with a snap of his fingers and a thought, opened a dimensional portal through which he and his three minions passed.

"Why?" Entreri asked, moving up beside his unexpected companion.

"Why?" Jarlaxle echoed.

"You could have returned with them," the assassin clarified, "though I'd have never gone with you. You chose not to go, not to resume control of your band. Why would you give that up to remain out here, to remain beside me?"

Jarlaxle thought it over for a few moments. Then, using words that Entreri himself had used before, he said with a laugh, "Perhaps I hate drow more than I hate humans."

In that instant, Artemis Entreri could have been blown over by a gentle breeze. He didn't even want to know how Jarlaxle had known to say that.