Streams of Silver

1. A Dagger at Their Backs

He kept his cloak pulled tightly about him, though little light seeped in through the curtained windows, for this was his existence, secretive and alone. The way of the assassin.

While other people went about their lives basking in the pleasures of the sunlight and the welcomed visibility of their neighbors, Artemis Entreri kept to the shadows, the dilated orbs of his eyes focused on the narrow path he must take to accomplish his latest mission.

He truly was a professional, possibly the finest in the entire realms at his dark craft, and when he sniffed out the trail of his prey, the victim never escaped. So the assassin was unbothered by the empty house that he found in Bryn Shander, the principal city of the ten settlements in the wasteland of Icewind Dale. Entreri had suspected that the halfling had slipped out of Ten-Towns. But no matter; if this was indeed the same halfling that he had sought all the way from Calimport, a thousand miles and more to the south, he had made better progress than he ever could have hoped. His mark had no more than a two-week head start and the trail would be fresh indeed.

Entreri moved through the house silently and calmly, seeking hints of the halfling’s life here that would give him the edge in their inevitable confrontation. Clutter greeted him in every room—the halfling had left in a hurry, probably aware that the assassin was closing in. Entreri considered this a good sign, further heightening his suspicions that this halfling, Regis, was the same Regis who had served the Pasha Pook those years ago in the distant southern city.

The assassin smiled evilly at the thought that the halfling knew he was being stalked, adding to the challenge of the hunt as Entreri pitted his stalking prowess against his intended victim’s hiding ability. But the end result was predictable, Entreri knew, for a frightened person invariably made a fatal mistake.

The assassin found what he was looking for in a desk drawer in the master bedroom. Fleeing in haste, Regis had neglected to take precautions to conceal his true identity. Entreri held the small ring up before his gleaming eyes, studying the inscription that clearly identified Regis as a member of Pasha Pook’s thieves’ guild in Calimport. Entreri closed his fist about the signet, the evil smile widening across his face.

“I have found you, little thief,” he laughed into the emptiness of the room. “Your fate is sealed. There is nowhere for you to run!”

His expression changed abruptly to one of alertness as the sound of a key, in the palatial house’s front door echoed up the hallway of the grand staircase. He dropped the ring into his belt pouch and slipped, as silent as death, to the shadows of the top posts of the stairway’s heavy banister.

The large double doors swung open, and a man and a young woman stepped in from the porch ahead of two dwarves. Entreri knew the man, Cassius, the spokesman of Bryn Shander. This had been his home once, but he had relinquished it several months earlier to Regis, after the halfling’s heroic actions in the town’s battle against the evil wizard, Akar Kessell, and his goblin minions.

Entreri had seen the other human before, as well, though he hadn’t yet discovered her connection to Regis. Beautiful women were a rarity in this remote setting, and this young woman was indeed the exception. Shiny auburn locks danced gaily about her shoulders, the intense sparkle of her dark blue eyes enough to bind any man hopelessly within their depths.

Her name, the assassin had learned, was Catti-brie. She lived with the dwarves in their valley north of the city, particularly with the leader of the dwarven clan, Bruenor, who had adopted her as his own a dozen years before when a goblin raid had left her orphaned.

This could prove a valuable meeting, Entreri mused. He cocked an ear through the banister poles to hear the discussion below.

“He’s been gone but a week!” Catti-brie argued.

“A week with no word,” snapped Cassius, obviously upset. “With my beautiful house empty and unguarded. Why, the front door was unlocked when I came by a few days ago!”

“Ye gave the house to Regis,” Catti-brie reminded the man.

“Loaned!” Cassius roared, though in truth the house had indeed been a gift. The spokesman had quickly regretted turning over to Regis the key to this palace, the grandest house north of Mirabar. In retrospect, Cassius understood that he had been caught up in the fervor of that tremendous victory over the goblins, and he suspected that Regis had lifted his emotions even a step further by using the reputed hypnotic powers of the ruby pendant.

Like others who had been duped by the persuasive halfling, Cassius had come to a very different perspective on the events that had transpired, a perspective that painted Regis unfavorably.

“No matter the name ye call it,” Catti-brie conceded, “ye should not be so hasty to decide that Regis has forsaken the house.”

The spokesman’s face reddened in fury. “Everything out today!” he demanded. “You have my list. I want all of the halfling’s belongings out of my house! Any that remain when I return tomorrow shall become my own by the rights of possession! And I warn you, I shall be compensated dearly if any of my property is missing or damaged!” He turned on his heel and stormed out the doors.

“He’s got his hair up about this one,” chuckled Fender Mallot, one of the dwarves. “Never have I seen one whose friends swing from loyalty to hatred more than Regis!”

Catti-brie nodded in agreement of Fender’s observation. She knew that Regis played with magical charms, and she figured that his paradoxical relationships with those around him were an unfortunate side effect of his dabblings.

“Do ye suppose he’s off with Drizzt and Bruenor?” Fender asked. Up the stairs, Entreri shifted anxiously.

“Not to doubt,” Catti-brie answered. “All winter they’ve been asking him to join in the quest for Mithril Hall, an’ to be sure, Wulfgar’s joining added to the pressure.”

“Then the little one’s halfway to Luskan, or more,” reasoned Fender. “And Cassius is right in wantin’ his house back.”

“Then let us get to packing,” said Catti-brie. “Cassius has enough o’ his own without adding to the hoard from Regis’s goods.”

Entreri leaned back against the banister. The name of Mithril Hall was unknown to him, but he knew the way to Luskan well enough. He grinned again, wondering if he might catch them before they ever reached the port city.

First, though, he knew that there still might be some valuable information to be garnered here. Catti-brie and the dwarves set about the task of collecting the halfling’s belongings, and as they moved from room to room, the black shadow of Artemis Entreri, as silent as death, hovered about them. They never suspected his presence, never would have guessed that the gentle ripple in the drapes was anything more than a draft flowing in from the edges of the window, or that the shadow behind a chair was disproportionately long.

He managed to stay close enough to hear nearly all of their conversation, and Catti-brie and the dwarves spoke of little else than the four adventurers and their journey to Mithril Hall. But Entreri learned little for his efforts. He already knew of the halfling’s famed companions—everyone in Ten-Towns spoke of them often: of Drizzt Do’Urden, the renegade drow elf, who had forsaken his dark-skinned people in the bowels of the Realms and roamed the borders of Ten-Towns as a solitary guardian against the intrusions of the wilderness of Icewind Dale; of Bruenor Battlehammer, the rowdy leader of the dwarven clan that lived in the valley near Kelvin’s Cairn; and most of all, of Wulfgar, the mighty barbarian, who was captured and raised to adulthood by Bruenor, returned with the savage tribes of the dale to defend Ten-Towns against the goblin army, then struck up a truce between all the peoples of Icewind Dale. A bargain that had salvaged, and promised to enrich, the lives of all involved.

“It seems that you have surrounded yourself with formidable allies, halfling,” Entreri mused, leaning against the back of a large chair, as Catti-brie and the dwarves moved into an adjoining room. “Little help they will offer. You are mine!”

Catti-brie and the dwarves worked for about an hour, filling two large sacks, primarily with clothes. Catti-brie was astounded with the stock of possessions Regis had collected since his reputed heroics against Kessell and the goblins—mostly gifts from grateful citizens. Well aware of the halfling’s love of comfort, she could not understand what had possessed him to run off down the road after the others. But what truly amazed her was that Regis hadn’t hired porters to bring along at least a few of his belongings. And the more of his treasures that she discovered as she moved through the palace, the more this whole scenario of haste and impulse bothered her. It was too out of character for Regis. There had to be another factor, some missing element, that she hadn’t yet weighed.

“Well, we got more’n we can carry, and most o’ the stuff anyway!” declared Fender, hoisting a sack over his sturdy shoulder. “Leave the rest for Cassius to sort, I say!”

“I would no’ give Cassius the pleasure of claiming any of the things,” Catti-brie retorted. “There may yet be valued items to be found. Two of ye take the sacks back your rooms at the inn. I’ll be finishing the work up here.”

“Ah, yer too good to Cassius,” Fender grumbled. “Bruenor had him marked right as a man taking too much pleasure in counting what he owns!”

“Be fair, Fender Mallot,” Catti-brie retorted, though her agreeing smile belied any harshness in her tone. “Cassius served the towns well in the war and has been a fine leader for the people of Bryn Shander. Ye’ve seen as well as meself that Regis has a talent for putting up a cat’s fur!”

Fender chuckled in agreement. “For all his ways of gettin’ what he wants, the little one has left a row or two of ruffled victims!” He patted the other dwarf on the shoulder and they headed for the main door.

“Don’t ye be late, girl,” Fender called back to Catti-brie. “We’re to the mines again. Tomorrow, no later!”

“Ye fret too much, Fender Mallot!” Catti-brie said, laughing.

Entreri considered the last exchange and again a smile widened across his face. He knew well the wake of magical charms. The “ruffled victims” that Fender had spoken of described exactly the people that Pasha Pook had duped back in Calimport. People charmed by the ruby pendant.

The double doors closed with a bang. Catti-brie was alone in the big house—or so she thought.

She was still pondering Regis’s uncharacteristic disappearance. Her continued suspicions that something was wrong, that some piece of the puzzle was missing, began to foster within her the sense that something was wrong here in the house, as well.

Catti-brie suddenly became aware of every noise and shadow around her. The “click-click” of a pendulum clock. The rustle of papers on a desk in front of an open window. The swish of drapes. The scutterings of a mouse within the wooden walls.

Her eyes darted back to the drapes, still trembling slightly from their last movement. It could have been a draft through a crack in the window, but the alert woman suspected differently. Reflexively dropping to a crouch and reaching for the dagger on her hip, she started toward the open doorway a few feet to the side of the drapes.

Entreri had moved quickly. Suspecting that more could yet be learned from Catti-brie, and not willing to pass up the opportunity offered by the dwarves’ departure, he had slipped into the most favorable position for an attack and now waited patiently atop the narrow perch of the open door, balanced as easily as a cat on a window sill. He listened for her approach, his dagger turning over casually in his hand.

Catti-brie sensed the danger as soon as she reached the doorway and saw the black form dropping to her side. But as quick as her reactions were, her own dagger was not halfway from its sheath before the thin fingers of a cool hand had clamped over her mouth, stifling a cry, and the razored edge of a jeweled dagger had creased a light line on her throat.

She was stunned and appalled. Never had she seen a man move so quickly, and the deadly precision of Entreri’s strike unnerved her. A sudden tenseness in his muscles assured her that if she persisted in drawing her weapon, she would be dead long before she could use it. Releasing the hilt, she made no further move to resist.

The assassin’s strength also surprised her as he easily lifted her to a chair. He was a small man, slender as an elf and barely as tall as she, but every muscle on his compact frame was toned to its finest fighting edge. His very presence exuded an aura of strength and an unshakable confidence. This, too, unnerved Catti-brie, because it wasn’t the brash cockiness of an exuberant youngster, but the cool air of superiority of one who had seen a thousand fights and had never been bested.

Catti-brie’s eyes never turned from Entreri’s face as he quickly tied her to the chair. His angular features, striking cheekbones and a strong jaw line, were only sharpened by the straight cut of his raven black hair. The shadow of beard that darkened his face appeared as if no amount of shaving could ever lighten it. Far from unkempt, though, everything about the man spoke of control. Catti-brie might even have considered him handsome, except for his eyes.

Their gray showed no sparkle. Lifeless, devoid of any hint of compassion or humanity, they marked this man as an instrument of death and nothing more.

“What do ye want o’ me?” Catti-brie asked when she mustered the nerve.

Entreri answered with a stinging slap across her face. “The ruby pendant!” he demanded suddenly. “Does the halfling still wear the ruby pendant?”

Catti-brie fought to stifle the tears welling in her eyes. She was disoriented and off guard and could not respond immediately to the man’s question.

The jeweled dagger flashed before her eyes and slowly traced the circumference of her face.

“I have not much time,” Entreri declared flatly. “You will tell me what I need to know. The longer it takes you to answer, the more pain you will feel.”

His words were calm and spoken with honesty.

Catti-brie, toughened under Bruenor’s own tutelage, found herself unnerved. She had faced and defeated goblins before, even a horrid troll once, but this collected killer terrified her. She tried to respond, but her trembling jaw would allow no words.

The dagger flashed again.

“Regis wears it!” Catti-brie shrieked, a tear tracing a solitary line down each of her cheeks.

Entreri nodded and smiled slightly. “He is with the dark elf, the dwarf, and the barbarian,” he said matter-of-factly. “And they are on the road to Luskan. And from there, to a place called Mithril Hall. Tell me of Mithril Hall, dear girl.” He scraped the blade on his own cheek, its fine edge poignantly clearing a small patch of beard. “Where does it lie?”

Catti-brie realized that her inability to answer would probably spell her end. “I-I know not,” she stammered boldly, regaining a measure of the discipline that Bruenor had taught her, though her eyes never left the glint of the deadly blade.

“A pity,” Entreri replied. “Such a pretty face…”

“Please,” Catti-brie said as calmly as she could with the dagger moving toward her. “Not a one knows! Not even Bruenor! To find it is his quest.”

The blade stopped suddenly and Entreri turned his head to the side, eyes narrowed and all of his muscles taut and alert.

Catti-brie hadn’t heard the turn of the door handle, but the deep voice of Fender Mallot echoing down the hallway explained the assassin’s actions.

“‘Ere, where are ye, girl?”

Catti-brie tried to yell, “Run!” and her own life be damned, but Entreri’s quick backhand dazed her and drove the word out as an indecipherable grunt.

Her head lolling to the side, she just managed to focus her vision as Fender and Grollo, battle-axes in hand, burst into the room. Entreri stood ready to meet them, jeweled dagger in one hand and a saber in the other.

For an instant, Catti-brie was filled with elation. The dwarves of Ten-Towns were an iron-fisted battalion of hardened warriors, with Fender’s prowess in battle among the clan second only to Bruenor’s.

Then she remembered who they faced, and despite their apparent advantage, her hopes were washed away by a wave of undeniable conclusions. She had witnessed the blur of the assassin’s movements, the uncanny precision of his cuts.

Revulsion welling in her throat, she couldn’t even gasp for the dwarves to flee.

Even had they known the depths of the horror in the man standing before them, Fender and Grollo would not have turned away. Outrage blinds a dwarven fighter from any regard for personal safety, and when these two saw their beloved Catti-brie bound to the chair, their charge at Entreri came by instinct.

Fueled by unbridled rage, their first attacks roared in with every ounce of strength they could call upon. Conversely, Entreri started slowly, finding a rhythm and allowing the sheer fluidity of his motions to build his momentum. At times he seemed barely able to parry or dodge the ferocious swipes. Some missed their mark by barely an inch, and the near hits spurred Fender and Grollo on even further.

But even with her friends pressing the attack, Catti-brie understood that they were in trouble. Entreri’s hands seemed to talk to each other, so perfect was the complement of their movements as they positioned the jeweled dagger and saber. The synchronous shufflings of his feet kept him in complete balance throughout the melee. His was a dance of dodges, parries, and counterslashes.

His was a dance of death.

Catti-brie had seen this before, the telltale methods of the finest swordsman in all of Icewind Dale. The comparison to Drizzt Do’Urden was inescapable; their grace and movements were so alike, with every part of their bodies working in harmony.

But they remained strikingly different, a polarity of morals that subtly altered the aura of the dance.

The drow ranger in battle was an instrument of beauty to behold, a perfect athlete pursuing his chosen course of righteousness with unsurpassed fervor. But Entreri was merely horrifying, a passionless murderer callously disposing of obstacles in his path.

The initial momentum of the dwarves’ attack began to diminish now, and both Fender and Grollo wore a look of amazement that the floor was not yet red with their opponent’s blood. But while their attacks were slowing, Entreri’s momentum continued to build. His blades were a blur, each thrust followed by two others that left the dwarves rocking back on their heels.

Effortless, his movements. Endless, his energy.

Fender and Grollo maintained a solely defensive posture, but even with all of their efforts devoted to blocking, everyone in the room knew that it was only a matter of time before a killing blade slipped through.

Catti-brie didn’t see the fatal cut, but she saw vividly the bright line of blood that appeared across Grollo’s throat. The dwarf continued fighting for a few moments, oblivious to the cause of his inability to find his breath. Then, startled, Grollo dropped to his knees, grasping his throat, and gurgled into the blackness of death.

Fury spurred Fender beyond his exhaustion. His axe chopped and cut wildly, screaming for revenge.

Entreri toyed with him, actually carrying the charade so, far as to slap him on the side of the head with the flat of the saber.

Outraged, insulted, and fully aware that he was overmatched, Fender launched himself into a final, suicidal, charge, hoping to bring the assassin down with him.

Entreri sidestepped the desperate lunge with an amused laugh, and ended the fight, driving the jeweled dagger deep into Fender’s chest, and following through with a skull-splitting slash of the saber as the dwarf stumbled by.

Too horrified to cry, too horrified to scream, Catti-brie watched blankly as Entreri retrieved the dagger from Fender’s chest. Certain of her own impending death, she closed her eyes as the dagger came toward her, felt its metal, hot from the dwarf’s blood, flat on her throat.

And then the teasing scrape of its edge against her soft, vulnerable skin as Entreri slowly turned the blade over in his hand.

Tantalizing. The promise, the dance of death.

Then it was gone. Catti-brie opened her eyes just as the small blade went back into its scabbard on the assassin’s hip. He had taken a step back from her.

“You see,” he offered in simple explanation of his mercy, “I kill only those who stand to oppose me. Perhaps, then, three of your friends on the road to Luskan shall escape the blade. I want only the halfling.”

Catti-brie refused to yield to the terror he evoked. She held her voice steady and promised coldly, “You underestimate them. They will fight you.”

With calm confidence, Entreri replied, “Then they, too, shall die.”

Catti-brie couldn’t win in a contest of nerves with the dispassionate killer. Her only answer to him was her defiance. She spat at him, unafraid of the consequences.

He retorted with a single stinging backhand. Her eyes blurred in pain and welling tears, and Catti-brie slumped into blackness. But as she fell unconscious, she heard a few seconds longer, the cruel, passionless laughter fading away as the assassin moved from the house.

Tantalizing. The promise of death.

2. City of Sails

“Well, there she is, lad, the City of Sails,” Bruenor said to Wulfgar as the two looked down upon Luskan from a small knoll a few miles north of the city.

Wulfgar took in the view with a profound sigh of admiration. Luskan housed more than fifteen thousand—small compared to the huge cities in the south and to its nearest neighbor, Waterdeep, a few hundred miles farther down the coast. But to the young barbarian, who had spent all of his eighteen years among nomadic tribes and the small villages of Ten-Towns, the fortified seaport seemed grand indeed.

A wall encompassed Luskan, with guard towers strategically spaced at varying intervals. Even from this distance, Wulfgar could make out the dark forms of many soldiers pacing the parapets, their spear tips shining in the new light of the day.

“Not a promising invitation,” Wulfgar noted.

“Luskan does not readily welcome visitors,” said Drizzt, who had come up behind his two friends. “They may open their gates for merchants, but ordinary travelers are usually turned away.”

“Our first contact is there,” growled Bruenor. “And I mean to get in!”

Drizzt nodded and did not press the argument. He had given Luskan a wide berth on his original journey to Ten-Towns. The city’s inhabitants, primarily human, looked upon other races with disdain. Even surface elves and dwarves were often refused entry. Drizzt suspected that the guards would do more to a drow elf than simply put him out.

“Get the breakfast fire burning,” Bruenor continued, his angry tones reflecting his determination that nothing would turn him from his course. “We’re to break camp early, an’ make the gates ‘fore noon. Where’s that blasted Rumblebelly?”

Drizzt looked back over his shoulder in the direction of the camp. “Asleep,” he answered, though Bruenor’s question was wholly rhetorical. Regis had been the first to bed and the last to awaken (and never without help) every day since the companions had set out from Ten-Towns.

“Well, give him a kick!” Bruenor ordered. He turned back to the camp, but Drizzt put a hand on his arm to stay him.

“Let the halfling sleep,” the drow suggested. “Perhaps it would be better if we came to Luskan’s gate in the less-revealing light of dusk.”

Drizzt’s request confused Bruenor for just a moment—until he looked more closely at the drow’s sullen visage and recognized the trepidation in his eyes. The two had become so close in their years of friendship that Bruenor often forgot that Drizzt was an outcast. The farther they traveled from Ten-Towns, where Drizzt was known, the more he would be judged by the color of his skin and the reputation of his people.

“Aye, let ‘im sleep,” Bruenor conceded. “Maybe I could use a bit more, meself!”

They broke camp late that morning and set a leisurely pace, only to discover later that they had misjudged the distance to the city. It was well past sunset and into the early hours of darkness when they finally arrived at the city’s north gate.

The structure was as unwelcoming as Luskan’s reputation: a single iron-bound door set into the stone wall between two short, squared towers was tightly shut before them. A dozen fur-capped heads poked out from the parapet above the gate and the companions sensed many more eyes, and probably bows, trained upon them from the darkness atop the towers.

“Who are you who come to the gates of Luskan?” came a voice from the wall.

“Travelers from the north,” answered Bruenor. “A weary band come all the way from Ten-Towns in Icewind Dale!”

“The gate closed at sunset,” replied the voice. “Go away!”

“Son of a hairless gnoll,” grumbled Bruenor under his breath. He slapped his axe across his hands as though he meant to chop the door down.

Drizzt put a calming hand on the dwarf’s shoulder, his own sensitive ears recognizing the clear, distinctive click of a crossbow crank.

Then Regis unexpectedly took control of the situation. He straightened his pants, which had dropped below the bulge of his belly, and hooked his thumbs in his belt, trying to appear somewhat important. Throwing his shoulders back, he walked out in front of his companions.

“Your name, good sir?” he called to the soldier on the wall.

“I am the Nightkeeper of the North Gate. That is all you need to know!” came the gruff reply. “And who—”

“Regis, First Citizen of Bryn Shander. No doubt you have heard my name or seen my carvings.”

The companions heard whispers up above, then a pause. “We have viewed the scrimshaw of a halfling from Ten-Towns. Are you he?”

“Hero of the goblin war and master scrimshander,” Regis declared, bowing low. “The spokesmen of Ten-Towns will not be pleased to learn that I was turned into the night at the gate of our favored trading partner.”

Again came the whispers, then a longer silence. Presently the four heard a grating sound behind the door, a portcullis being raised, knew Regis, and then the banging of the door’s bolts being thrown. The halfling looked back over his shoulder at his surprised friends and smiled wryly.

“Diplomacy, my rough dwarven friend,” he laughed.

The door opened just a crack and two men slipped out, unarmed but cautious. It was quite obvious that they were well protected from the wall. Grim-faced soldiers huddled along the parapets, monitoring every move the strangers made through the sights of crossbows.

“I am Jierdan,” said the stockier of the two men, though it was difficult to judge his exact size because of the many layers of fur he wore.

“And I am the Nightkeeper,” said the other. “Show me what you have brought to trade.”

“Trade?” echoed Bruenor angrily. “Who said anything about trade?” He slapped his axe across his hands again, drawing nervous shufflings from above. “Does this look like the blade of a stinkin’ merchant?”

Regis and Drizzt both moved to calm the dwarf, though Wulfgar, as tense as Bruenor, stayed off to the side, his huge arms crossed before him and his stern gaze boring into the impudent gatekeeper.

The two soldiers backed away defensively and the Nightkeeper spoke again, this time on the edge of fury. “First Citizen,” he demanded of Regis, “why do you come to our door?”

Regis stepped in front of Bruenor and steadied himself squarely before the soldier. “Er…a preliminary scouting of the marketplace,” he blurted out, trying to fabricate a story as he went along. “I have some especially fine carvings for market this season and I wanted to be certain that everything on this end, including the paying price for scrimshaw, shall be in place to handle the sale.”

The two soldiers exchanged knowing smiles. “You have come a long way for such a purpose,” the Nightkeeper whispered harshly. “Would you not have been better suited to simply come down with the caravan bearing the goods?”

Regis squirmed uncomfortably, realizing that these soldiers were far too experienced to fall for his ploy. Fighting his better judgement, he reached under his shirt for the ruby pendant, knowing that its hypnotic powers could convince the Nightkeeper to let them through, but dreading showing the stone at all and further opening the trail for the assassin that he knew wasn’t far behind.

Jierdan started suddenly, however, as he noticed the figure standing beside Bruenor. Drizzt Do’Urden’s cloak had shifted slightly, revealing the black skin of his face.

As if on cue, the Nightkeeper tensed as well and, following his companion’s lead, quickly discerned the cause of Jierdan’s sudden reaction. Reluctantly, the four adventurers dropped their hands to their weapons, ready for a fight they didn’t want.

But Jierdan ended the tension as quickly as he had begun it, by bringing his arm across the chest of the Nightkeeper and addressing the drow openly. “Drizzt Do’Urden?” he asked calmly, seeing confirmation of the identity he had already guessed.

The drow nodded, surprised at the recognition.

“Your name, too, has come down to Luskan with the tales frown Icewind Dale,” Jierdan explained. “Pardon our, surprise.” He bowed low. “We do not see many of your race at our gates.”

Drizzt nodded again, but did not answer, uncomfortable with this unusual attention. Never before had a gatekeeper bothered to ask him his name or his business. And the drow had quickly come to understand the advantage of avoiding gates altogether, silently slipping over a city’s wall in the darkness and seeking the seedier side, where he might at least have a chance of standing unnoticed in the dark corners with the other rogues. Had his name and heroics brought him a measure of respect even this far from Ten-Towns?

Bruenor turned to Drizzt and winked, his own anger dissipated by the fact that his friend had finally been given his due from a stranger.

But Drizzt wasn’t convinced. He didn’t dare hope for such a thing—it left him too vulnerable to feelings that he had fought hard to hide. He preferred to keep his suspicions and his guard as close to him as the dark cowl of his cloak. He cocked a curious ear as the two soldiers backed away to hold a private conversation.

“I care not of his name,” he heard the Nightkeeper whisper at Jierdan. “No drow elf shall pass my gate!”

“You err,” Jierdan retorted. “These are the heroes of Ten-Towns. The halfling is truly First Citizen of Bryn Shander, the drow a ranger with a deadly, but undeniably honorable, reputation, and the dwarf—note the foaming mug standard on his shield—is Bruenor Battlehammer, leader of his clan in the dale.”

“And what of the giant barbarian?” asked the Nightkeeper, using a sarcastic tone in an attempt to sound unimpressed, though he was obviously a bit nervous. “What rogue might he be?”

Jierdan shrugged. “His great size, his youth, and a measure of control beyond his years. It seems unlikely to me that he should be here, but he might be the young king of the tribes that the tale-tellers have spoken of. We should not turn these travelers away; the consequences may be grave.”

“What could Luskan possibly fear from the puny settlements in Icewind Dale?” the Nightkeeper balked.

“There are other trading ports,” Jierdan retorted. “Not every battle is fought with a sword. The loss of Ten-Towns’ scrimshaw would not be viewed favorably by our merchants, nor by the trading ships that put in each season.”

The Nightkeeper scrutinized the four strangers again. He didn’t trust them at all, despite his companion’s grand claims, and he didn’t want them in his city. But he knew, too, that if his suspicions were wrong and he did something to jeopardize the scrimshaw trade, his own future would be bleak. The soldiers of Luskan answered to the merchants, who were not quick to forgive errors that thinned their purses.

The Nightkeeper threw up his hands in defeat. “Go in, then,” he told the companions. “Keep to the wall and make your way down to the docks. The last lane holds the Cutlass, and you’ll be warm enough there!”

Drizzt studied the proud strides of his friends as they marched through the door, and he guessed that they had also overheard pieces of the conversation. Bruenor confirmed his suspicions when they had moved away from the guard towers, down the road along the wall.

“Here, elf,” the dwarf snorted, nudging Drizzt and being obviously pleased. “So the word’s gone beyond the dale and we’re heared of even this far south. What have ye to say o’ that?”

Drizzt shrugged again and Bruenor chuckled, assuming that his friend was merely embarrassed by the fame. Regis and Wulfgar, too, shared in Bruenor’s mirth, the big man giving the drow a good-hearted slap on the back as he slipped to the lead of the troupe.

But Drizzt’s discomfort stemmed from more than embarrassment. He had noted the grin on Jierdan’s face as they had passed, a smile that went beyond admiration. And while he had no doubts that some tales of the battle with Akar Kessell’s goblin army had reached the City of Sails, it struck Drizzt odd that a simple soldier knew so much about him and his friends, while the gatekeeper, solely responsible for determining who passed into the city, knew nothing.

Luskan’s streets were tightly packed with two– and three-story buildings, a reflection of the desperation of the people there to huddle within the safety of the city’s high wall, away from the ever-present dangers of the savage northland. An occasional tower, a guard post, perhaps, or a prominent citizen’s or guild’s way to show superiority, sprouted from the roofline. A wary city, Luskan survived, even flourished, in the dangerous frontier by holding fast to an attitude of alertness that often slipped over the line into paranoia. It was a city of shadows, and the four visitors this night keenly felt the curious and dangerous stares peeking out from every darkened hole as they made their way.

The docks harbored the roughest section of the city, where thieves, outlaws, and beggars abounded in their narrow alleys and shadowed crannies. A perpetual ground fog wafted in from the sea, blurring the already dim avenues into even more mysterious pathways.

Such was the lane the four friends found themselves turning down, the last lane before the piers themselves, a particularly decrepit run called Half-Moon Street. Regis, Drizzt, and Bruenor knew immediately that they had entered a collecting ground for vagabonds and ruffians, and each put a hand to his weapon. Wulfgar walked openly and without fear, although he, too, sensed the threatening atmosphere. Not understanding that the area was atypically foul, he was determined to approach his first experience with civilization with an open mind.

“There’s the place,” said Bruenor, indicating a small group, probably thieves, congregating before the doorway of a tavern. The weatherbeaten sign above the door named the place the Cutlass.

Regis swallowed hard, a frightening mixture of emotions welling within him. In his early days as a thief in Calimport, he had frequented many places like this, but his familiarity with the environment only added to his apprehension. The forbidden allure of business done in the shadows of a dangerous tavern, he knew, could be as deadly as the hidden knives of the rogues at every table. “You truly want to go in there?” he asked his friends squeamishly.

“No arguing from ye!” Bruenor snapped back. “Ye knew the road ahead when ye joined us in the dale. Don’t ye be whining now!”

“You are well guarded,” Drizzt put in to comfort Regis.

Overly proud in his inexperience, Wulfgar pressed the statement even further. “What cause would they have to do us harm? Surely we have done no wrong,” he demanded. Then he proclaimed loudly to challenge the shadows, “Fear not, little friend. My hammer shall sweep aside any who stand against us!”

“The pride o’ youth,” Bruenor grumbled as he, Regis, and Drizzt exchanged incredulous looks.

The atmosphere inside the Cutlass was in accord with the decay and rabble that marked the place outside. The tavern portion of the building was a single open room, with a long bar defensively positioned in the corner of the rear wall, directly across from the door. A staircase rose up from the side of the bar to the structure’s second level, a staircase more often used by painted, overperfumed women and their latest companions than by guests of the inn. Indeed, merchant sailors who put into Luskan usually came ashore only for brief periods of excitement and entertainment, returning to the safety of their vessels if they could manage it before the inevitable drunken sleep left them vulnerable.

More than anything else, though, the tavern at the Cutlass was a room of the senses, with myriad sounds and sights and smells. The aroma of alcohol, from strong ale and cheap wine to rarer and more powerful beverages, permeated every corner. A haze of smoke from exotic pipe-weeds, like the mist outside, blurred the harsh reality of the images into softer, dreamlike sensations.

Drizzt led the way to an empty table tucked beside the door, while Bruenor approached the bar to make arrangements for their stay. Wulfgar started after the dwarf, but Drizzt stopped him. “To the table,” he explained. “You are too excited for such business; Bruenor can take care of it.”

Wulfgar started to protest, but was cut short.

“Come on,” Regis offered. “Sit with Drizzt and me. No one will bother a tough old dwarf, but a tiny halfling and a skinny elf might look like good sport to the brutes in here. We need your size and strength to deter such unwanted attention.”

Wulfgar’s chin firmed up at the compliment and he strode boldly toward the table. Regis shot Drizzt a knowing wink and turned to follow.

“Many lessons you will learn on this journey, young friend,” Drizzt mumbled to Wulfgar, too softly for the barbarian to hear. “So far from your home.”

Bruenor came back from the bar bearing four flagons of mead and grumbling under his breath. “We’re to get our business finished soon,” he said to Drizzt, “and get back on the road. The cost of a room in this orc-hole is open thievery!”

“The rooms were not meant to be taken for a whole night,” Regis snickered.

But Bruenor’s scowl remained. “Drink up,” he told the drow. “Rat Alley is but a short walk, by the tellin’s of the barmaid, and it might be that we can make contact yet this night.”

Drizzt nodded and sipped the mead, not really wanting any of it, but hoping that a shared drink might relax the dwarf. The drow, too, was anxious to be gone from Luskan, fearful that his own identity—he kept his cowl pulled even tighter in the tavern’s flickering torchlight—might bring them more trouble. He worried further for Wulfgar, young and proud, and out of his element. The barbarians of Icewind Dale, though merciless in battle, were undeniably honorable, basing their society’s structure entirely on strict and unbending codes. Drizzt feared that Wulfgar would fall easy prey to the false images and treachery of the city. On the road in the wild lands Wulfgar’s hammer would keep him safe enough, but here he was likely to find himself in deceptive situations involving disguised blades, where his mighty weapon and battle-prowess offered little help.

Wulfgar downed his flagon in a single gulp, wiped his lips with zeal, and stood. “Let us be going,” he said to Bruenor. “Who is it that we seek?”

“Sit yerself back down and shut yer mouth, boy,” Bruenor scolded, glancing around to see if any unwanted attention had fallen upon them. “This night’s work is for me and the drow. No place for a too-big fighter like yerself! Ye stay here with Rumblebelly an’ keep yer mouth shut and yer back to the wall!”

Wulfgar slumped back in humiliation, but Drizzt was glad that Bruenor seemed to have come to similar conclusions about the young warrior. Once again, Regis saved a measure of Wulfgar’s pride.

“You are not leaving with them!” he snapped at the barbarian. “I have no desire to go, but I would not dare to remain here alone. Let Drizzt and Bruenor have their fun in some cold, smelly alley. We’ll stay here and enjoy a well-deserved evening of high entertainment!”

Drizzt slapped Regis’s knee under the table in thanks and rose to leave. Bruenor quaffed his flagon and leaped from his chair.

“Let’s be going, then,” he said to the drow. And then to Wulfgar, “Keep care of the halfling, and beware the women! They’re mean as starved rats, and the only thing they aim to bite at is your purse!”

Bruenor and Drizzt turned at the first empty alleyway beyond the Cutlass, the dwarf standing nervous guard at its entrance while Drizzt moved down a few steps into the darkness. Convinced that he was safely alone, Drizzt removed from his pouch a small onyx statuette, meticulously carved into the likeness of a hunting cat, and placed it on the ground before him.

“Guenhwyvar,” he called softly. “Come, my shadow.”

His beckon reached out across the planes, to the astral home of the entity of the panther. The great cat stirred from its sleep. Many months had passed since its master had called, and the cat was anxious to serve.

Guenhwyvar leaped out across the fabric of the planes, following a flicker of light that could only be the calling of the drow. Then the cat was in the alley with Drizzt, alert at once in the unfamiliar surroundings.

“We walk into a dangerous web, I fear,” Drizzt explained. “I need eyes where my own cannot go.”

Without delay and without a sound, Guenhwyvar sprang to a pile of rubble, to a broken porch landing, and up to the rooftops. Satisfied, and feeling much more secure now, Drizzt slipped back to the street where Bruenor waited.

“Well, where’s that blasted cat?” Bruenor asked, a hint of relief in his voice that Guenhwyvar was actually not with the drow. Most dwarves are suspicious of magic, other than the magical enchantments placed upon weapons, and Bruenor had no love for the panther.

“Where we need him most,” was the drow’s answer.

He started off down Half-Moon Street. “Fear not, mighty Bruenor, Guenhwyvar’s eyes are upon us, even if ours cannot return their protective gaze!”

The dwarf glanced all around nervously, beads of sweat visible at the base of his horned helm. He had known Drizzt for several years, but had never gotten comfortable around the magical cat.

Drizzt hid his smile under his cowl.

Each lane, filled with piles of rubble and refuse, appeared the same, as they made their way along the docks. Bruenor eyed each shadowed niche with alert suspicion. His eyes were not as keen in the night as those of the drow, and if he had seen into the darkness as clearly as Drizzt, he might have clutched his axe handle even more tightly.

But the dwarf and drow weren’t overly concerned. They were far from typical of the drunkards that usually stumbled into these parts at night, and not easy prey for thieves. The many notches on Bruenor’s axe and the sway of the two scimitars on the drow’s belt would serve as ample deterrent to most ruffians.

In the maze of streets and alleyways, it took them a long while to find Rat Alley. Just off the piers, it ran parallel to the sea, seemingly impassable through the thick fog. Long, low warehouses lined both its sides, and broken crates and boxes cluttered the alley, reducing the already narrow passage in many places to single-file breadth.

“Nice place to be walkin’ down on a gloomy night,” Bruenor stated flatly.

“Are you certain that this is the lane?” Drizzt asked, equally unenthused about the area before them.

“By the words o’ the merchant in Ten-Towns, if one’s alive that can get me the map, the one be Whisper. An’ the place to find Whisper is Rat Alley—always Rat Alley.”

“Then on with it,” said Drizzt. “Foul business is best finished quickly.”

Bruenor slowly led the way into the alley. The two had barely gone ten feet when the dwarf thought he heard the click of a crossbow. He stopped short and looked back at Drizzt. “They’re on us,” he whispered.

“In the boarded window above and to the right of us,” Drizzt explained, his exceptional night vision and hearing having already discerned the sound’s source. “A precaution, I hope. Perhaps a good sign that your contact is close.”

“Never called a crossbow aimed at me head a good sign!” argued the dwarf. “But on, then, and keep yerself at the ready. This place reeks of danger!” He started again through the rubble.

A shuffle to their left told them that eyes were upon them from that way as well. But still they continued, understanding that they couldn’t have expected any different a scenario when they had started out from the Cutlass. Rounding a final mound of broken planks, they saw a slender figure leaning against one of the alleyway’s walls, cloak pulled tightly against the chill of the evening mist.

Drizzt leaned over Bruenor’s shoulder. “May that be the one?” he whispered.

The dwarf shrugged, and said, “Who else?” He took one more step forward, planted his feet firmly, wide apart, and addressed the figure. “I be looking for a man named Whisper,” he called. “Might that be yerself?”

“Yes, and no,” came the reply. The figure turned toward them, though the low-pulled cloak revealed little.

“What games do ye play?” Bruenor shot back.

“Whisper I am,” replied the figure, letting the cloak slip back a little. “But for sure no man!”

They could see clearly now that the figure addressing them was indeed a woman, a dark and mysterious figure with long black hair and deeply set, darting eyes that showed experience and a profound understanding of survival on the street.

3. Night Life

The Cutlass grew busier as the night wore on. Merchant sailors crowded in from their ships and the locals were quick into position to feed upon them. Regis and Wulfgar remained at the side table, the barbarian wide-eyed with curiosity at the sights around him, and the halfling intent on cautious observation.

Regis recognized trouble in the form of a woman sauntering toward them. Not a young woman, and with the haggard appearance all too familiar on the dockside, but her gown, quite revealing in every place that a lady’s gown should not be, hid all her physical flaws behind a barrage of suggestions. The look on Wulfgar’s face, his chin nearly level with the table, Regis thought, confirmed the halfling’s fears.

“Well met, big man,” the woman purred, slipping comfortably into the chair next to the barbarian.

Wulfgar looked at Regis and nearly laughed out loud in disbelief and embarrassment.

“You are not from Luskan,” the woman went on. “Nor do you bear the appearance of any merchants now docked in port. Where are you from?”

“The north,” Wulfgar stammered. “The dale…Icewind.”

Regis hadn’t seen such boldness in a woman since his years in Calimport, and he felt that he should intervene. There was something wicked about such women, a perversion of pleasure that was too extraordinary. Forbidden fruit made easy. Regis suddenly found himself homesick for Calimport. Wulfgar would be no match for the wiles of this creature.

“We are poor travelers,” Regis explained, emphasizing the “poor” in an effort to protect his friend. “Not a coin left, but with many miles to go.”

Wulfgar looked curiously at his companion, not quite understanding the motive behind the lie.

The woman scrutinized Wulfgar once again and smacked her lips. “A pity,” she groaned, and then asked Regis, “Not a coin?”

Regis shrugged helplessly.

“A pity it is,” the woman repeated, and she rose to leave.

Wulfgar’s face blushed a deep red as he began to comprehend the true motives behind the meeting.

Something stirred in Regis, as well. A longing for the old days, running in Calimport’s bowery, tugged at his heart beyond his strength to resist. As the woman started past him, he grabbed her elbow. “Not a coin,” he explained to her inquiring face, “but this.” He pulled the ruby pendant out from under his coat and set it dangling at the end of its chain. The sparkles caught the woman’s greedy eye at once and the magical gemstone sucked her into its hypnotic entrancement. She sat down again, this time in the chair closest to Regis, her eyes never leaving the depths of the wondrous, spinning ruby.

Only confusion prevented Wulfgar from erupting in outrage at the betrayal, the blur of thoughts and emotions in his mind showing themselves as no more than a blank stare.

Regis caught the barbarian’s look, but shrugged it away with his typical penchant for dismissing negative emotions, such as guilt. Let the morrow’s dawn expose his ploy for what it was; the conclusion did not diminish his ability to enjoy this night. “Luskan’s night bears a chill wind,” he said to the woman.

She put a hand on his arm. “We’ll find you a warm bed, have no fear.”

The halfling’s smile nearly took in his ears.

Wulfgar had to catch himself from falling off of his chair.

Bruenor regained his composure quickly, not wanting to insult Whisper, or to let her know that his surprise in finding a woman gave her a bit of an advantage over him. She knew the truth, though, and her smile left Bruenor even more flustered. Selling information in a setting as dangerous as Luskan’s dockside meant a constant dealing with murderers and thieves, and even within the structure of an intricate support network it was a job that demanded a hardened hide. Few who sought Whisper’s services could hide their obvious surprise at finding a young and alluring woman practising such a trade.

Bruenor’s respect for the informant did not diminish, though, despite his surprise, for the reputation Whisper had earned had come to him across hundreds of miles. She was still alive, and that fact alone told the dwarf that she was formidable.

Drizzt was considerably less taken aback by the discovery. In the dark cities of the drow elves, females normally held higher stations than males, and were often more deadly. Drizzt understood the advantage Whisper carried over male clients who tended to underestimate her in the male-dominated societies of the dangerous northland.

Anxious to get this business finished and get back on the road, the dwarf came straight to the purpose of the meeting. “I be needing a map,” he said, “and been told that yerself was the one to get it.”

“I possess many maps,” the woman replied coolly.

“One of the north,” Bruenor explained. “From the sea to the desert, and rightly naming the places in the ways o’ what races live there!”

Whisper nodded. “The price shall be high, good dwarf,” she said, her eyes glinting at the mere notion of gold.

Bruenor tossed her a small pouch of gems. “This should pay for yer trouble,” he growled, never pleased to be relieved of money.

Whisper emptied the contents into her hand and scrutinized the rough stones. She nodded as she slipped them back into the pouch, aware of their considerable value.

“Hold!” Bruenor squawked as she began to tie the pouch to her belt. “Ye’ll be taking none o’ me stones till I be seeing the map!”

“Of course,” the woman replied with a disarming smile. “Wait here. I shall return in a short while with the map you desire.” She tossed the pouch back to Bruenor and spun about suddenly, her cloak snapping up and carrying a gust of the fog with it. In the flurry, there came a sudden flash, and the woman was gone.

Bruenor jumped back and grabbed at his axe handle. “What sorcerous treachery is this?” he cried.

Drizzt, unimpressed, put a hand on the dwarf’s shoulder. “Calm, mighty dwarf,” he said. “A minor trick and no more, masking her escape in the fog and the flash.” He pointed toward a small pile of boards. “Into that sewer drain.”

Bruenor followed the line of the drow’s arm and relaxed. The lip of an open hole was barely visible, its grate leaning against the warehouse wall a few feet farther down the alley.

“Ye know these kind better than meself, elf,” the dwarf stated, flustered at his lack of experience in handling the rogues of a city street. “Does she mean to bargain fair, or do we sit here, set up for her thievin’ dogs to plunder?”

“No to both,” answered Drizzt. “Whisper would not be alive if she collared clients for thieves. But I would hardly expect any arrangement she might strike with us to be a fair bargain.”

Bruenor took note that Drizzt had slipped one of his scimitars free of its sheath as he spoke. “Not a trap, eh?” the dwarf asked again, indicating the readied weapon.

“By her people, no,” Drizzt replied. “But the shadows conceal many other eyes.”

More eyes than just Wulfgar’s had fallen upon the halfling and the woman.

The hardy rogues of Luskan’s dockside often took great sport in tormenting creatures of less physical stature, and halflings were among their favorite targets. This particular evening, a huge, overstuffed man with furry eyebrows and beard bristles that caught the foam from his ever-full mug dominated the conversation at the bar, boasting of impossible feats of strength and threatening everybody around him with a beating if the flow of ale slowed in the least.

All of the men gathered around him at the bar, men who knew him, or of him, nodded their heads in enthusiastic agreement with his every word, propping him up on a pedestal of compliments to dispel their own fears of him. But the fat man’s ego needed further sport, a new victim to cow, and as his gaze floated around the perimeter of the tavern, it naturally fell upon Regis and his large, but obviously young friend. The spectacle of a halfling wooing the highest priced lady at the Cutlass presented an opportunity too tempting for the fat man to ignore.

“Here now, pretty lady,” he slobbered, ale spouting with every word. “Think the likes of a half-a-man’ll make the night for ye?” The crowd around the bar, anxious to keep in the fat man’s high regard, exploded into overzealous laughter.

The woman had dealt with this man before and she had seen others fall painfully before him. She tossed him a concerned look, but remained firmly tied to the pull of the ruby pendant. Regis, though, immediately looked away from the fat man, turning his attention to where he suspected the trouble most likely would begin—to the other side of the table and Wulfgar.

He found his worries justified. The proud barbarian’s knuckles whitened from the grasp he had on the table, and the seething look in his eye told Regis that he was on the verge of exploding.

“Let the taunts pass!” Regis insisted. “This is not worth a moment of your time!”

Wulfgar didn’t relax a bit, his glare never releasing his adversary. He could brush away the fat man’s insults, even those cutting at Regis and the woman. But Wulfgar understood the motivation behind those insults. Through exploitation of his less-able friends, Wulfgar was being challenged by the bully. How many others had fallen victim to this hulking slob? he wondered. Perhaps it was time for the fat man to learn some humility.

Recognizing some potential for excitement, the grotesque bully came a few steps closer.

“There, move a bit, half-a-man,” he demanded, waving Regis aside.

Regis took a quick inventory of the tavern’s patrons. Surely there were many, in here who might jump in for his cause against the fat man and his obnoxious cronies. There was even a member of the official city guard, a group held in high respect in every section of Luskan.

Regis interrupted his scan for a moment and looked at the soldier. How out of place the man seemed in a dog-infested spittoon like the Cutlass. More curious still, Regis knew the man as Jierdan, the soldier at the gate who had recognized Drizzt and had arranged for them to pass into the city just a couple of hours earlier.

The fat man came a step closer, and Regis didn’t have time to ponder the implications.

Hands on hips, the huge blob stared down at him. Regis felt his heart pumping, the blood coursing through his veins, as it always did in this type of on-the-edge confrontation that had marked his days in Calimport. And now, like then, he had every intention of finding a way to run away.

But his confidence dissipated when he remembered his companion.

Less experienced, and Regis would be quick to say, “less wise!” Wulfgar would not let the challenge go unanswered. One spring of his long legs easily carried him over the table and placed him squarely between the fat man and Regis. He returned the fat man’s ominous glare with equal intensity.

The fat man glanced to his friends at the bar, fully aware that his proud young opponent’s distorted sense of honor would prevent a first strike. “Well, look ye here,” he laughed, his lips turned back in drooling anticipation, “seems the young one has a thing to say.”

He started slowly to turn back on Wulfgar, then lunged suddenly for the barbarian’s throat, expecting that his change in tempo would catch Wulfgar by surprise.

But although he was inexperienced in the ways of taverns, Wulfgar understood battle. He had trained with Drizzt Do’Urden, an ever-alert warrior, and had toned his muscles to their sharpest fighting edge. Before the fat man’s hands ever came near his throat, Wulfgar had snapped one of his own huge paws over his opponent’s face and had driven the other into the fat man’s groin. His stunned opponent found himself rising into the air.

For a moment, onlookers were too amazed to react at all, except for Regis, who slapped a hand across his own disbelieving face and inconspicuously slid under the table.

The fat man outweighed three average men, but the barbarian brought him up easily over the top of his seven-foot frame, and even higher, to the full extension of his arms.

Howling in helpless rage, the fat man, ordered his supporters to attack. Wulfgar watched patiently for the first move against him.

The whole crowd seemed to jump at once. Keeping his calm, the trained warrior searched out the tightest concentration, three men, and launched the human missile, noting their horrified expressions just before the waves of blubber rolled over them, blasting them backward. Then their combined momentum smashed an entire section of the bar from its supports, knocking the unfortunate innkeeper away and sending him crashing into the racks holding his finest wines.

Wulfgar’s amusement was short-lived, for other ruffians were quickly upon him. He dug his heels in where he was, determined to keep his footing, and lashed out with his great fists, swatting his enemies aside, one by one, and sending them sprawling into the far corners of the room. Fighting erupted all around the tavern. Men who could not have been spurred to action if a murder had been committed at their feet sprang upon each other with unbridled rage at the horrifying sight of spilled booze and a broken bar.

Few of the fat man’s supporters were deterred by the general row, though. They rolled in on Wulfgar, wave after wave. He held his ground well, for none could delay him long enough for their reinforcements to get in. Still, the barbarian was being hit as often as he was connecting with his own blows. He took the punches stoically, blocking out the pain through sheer pride and his fighting tenacity that simply would not allow him to lose.

From his new seat under the table, Regis watched the action and sipped his drink. Even the barmaids were into it now, riding around on some unfortunate combatants’ backs, using their nails to etch intricate designs into the men’s faces. In fact, Regis soon discerned that the only other person in the tavern who wasn’t in the fight, other than those who were already unconscious, was Jierdan. The soldier sat quietly in his chair, unconcerned with the brawling beside him and interested only, it seemed, in watching and measuring Wulfgar’s prowess.

This, too, disturbed the halfling, but once again he found that he didn’t have time to contemplate the soldier’s unusual actions. Regis had known from the start that he would have to pull his giant friend out of this, and now his alert eyes had caught the expected flash of steel. A rogue in the line directly behind Wulfgar’s latest opponents had drawn a blade.

“Damn!” Regis muttered, setting down his drink and pulling his mace from a fold in his cloak. Such business always left a foul taste in his mouth.

Wulfgar threw his two opponents aside, opening a path for the man with the knife. He charged forward, his eyes up and staring into those of the tall barbarian. He didn’t even notice Regis dart out from between Wulfgar’s long legs, the little mace poised to strike. It slammed into the man’s knee, shattering the kneecap, and sent him sprawling forward, blade exposed, toward Wulfgar.

Wulfgar side-stepped the lunge at the last moment and clasped his hand over the hand of his assailant. Rolling with the momentum, the barbarian knocked aside the table and slammed into the wall. One squeeze crushed the assailant’s fingers on the knife hilt, while at the same time Wulfgar engulfed the man’s face with his free hand and hoisted him from the ground. Crying out to Tempus, the god of battle, the barbarian, enraged at the appearance of a weapon, slammed the man’s head through the wooden planks of the wall and left him dangling, his feet fully a foot from the floor.

An impressive move, but it cost Wulfgar time. When he turned back toward the bar, he was buried under a flurry of fists and kicks from several attackers.

“Here she comes,” Bruenor whispered to Drizzt when he saw Whisper returning, though the drow’s heightened senses had told him of her coming long before the dwarf was aware of it. Whisper had only been gone a half-hour or so, but it seemed much longer to the two friends in the alley, dangerously open to the sights of the crossbowmen and other thugs they knew were nearby.

Whisper sauntered confidently up to them. “Here is the map you desire,” she said to Bruenor, holding up a rolled parchment.

“A look, then,” the dwarf demanded, starting forward.

The woman recoiled and dropped the parchment to her side. “The price is higher,” she stated flatly. “Ten times what you have already offered.”

Bruenor’s dangerous glare did not deter her. “No choice is left to you,” she hissed. “You shall find no other who can deliver this unto you. Pay the price and be done with it!”

“A moment,” Bruenor said with sudden calm. “Me friend has a say in this.” He and Drizzt moved a step away.

“She has discovered who we are,” the drow explained, though Bruenor had already come to the same conclusion. “And how much we can pay.”

“Be it the map?” Bruenor asked.

Drizzt nodded. “She would have no reason to believe that she is in any danger, not down here. Have you the money?”

“Aye,” said the dwarf, “but our road is long yet, and I fear we’ll be needing what I’ve got and more.”

“It is settled then,” Drizzt replied. Bruenor recognized the fiery gleam that flared up in the drow’s lavender eyes. “When first we met this woman, we struck a fair deal,” he went on. “A deal we shall honor.”

Bruenor understood and approved. He felt the tingle of anticipation start in his blood. He turned back on the woman and noticed at once that she now held a dagger at her side instead of the parchment. Apparently she understood the nature of the two adventurers she was dealing with.

Drizzt, also noticing the metallic glint, stepped back from Bruenor, trying to appear unmenacing to Whisper, though in reality, he wanted to get a better angle on some suspicious cracks that he had noticed in the wall—cracks that might be the edgings of a secret door.

Bruenor approached the woman with his empty arms outstretched. “If that be the price,” he grumbled, “then we have no choice but to pay. But I’ll be seein’ the map first!”

Confident that she could put her dagger into the dwarf’s eye before either of his hands could get back to his belt for a weapon, Whisper relaxed and moved her empty hand to the parchment under her cloak.

But she underestimated her opponent.

Bruenor’s stubby legs twitched, launching him up high enough to slam his helmet into the woman’s face, splattering her nose and knocking her head into the wall. He went for the map, dropping the original purse of gems onto Whisper’s limp form and muttering, “As we agreed.”

Drizzt, too, had sprung into motion. As soon as the dwarf flinched, he had called upon the innate magic of his heritage to conjure a globe of darkness in front of the window harboring the crossbowmen. No bolts came through, but the angered shouts of the two archers echoed throughout the alley.

Then the cracks in the wall split open, as Drizzt had anticipated, and Whisper’s second line of defense came rushing through. The drow was prepared, scimitars already in his hands. The blades flashed, blunt sides only, but with enough precision to disarm the burly rogue that stepped out. Then they came in again, slapping the man’s face, and in the same fluidity of motion, Drizzt reversed the angle, slamming one pommel, and then the other, into the man’s temples. By the time Bruenor had turned around with the map, the way was clear before them.

Bruenor examined the drow’s handiwork with true admiration.

Then a crossbow quarrel ticked into the wall just an inch from his head.

“Time to go,” Drizzt observed.

“The end’ll be blocked, or I’m a bearded gnome,” Bruenor said as they neared the exit to the alley. A growling roar in the building beside them, followed by terrified screams, brought them some comfort.

“Guenhwyvar,” Drizzt stated, as two cloaked men burst out into the street before them and fled without looking back.

“Sure that I’d forgotten all about that cat!” cried Bruenor.

“Be glad that Guenhwyvar’s memory is greater than your own,” laughed Drizzt, and Bruenor, despite his feelings for the cat, laughed with him. They halted at the end of the alley and scouted the street. There were no signs of any trouble, though the heavy fog provided good cover for a possible ambush.

“Take it slow,” Bruenor offered. “We’ll draw less attention.”

Drizzt would have agreed, but then a second quarrel, launched from somewhere down the alley, knocked into a wooden beam between them.

“Time to go!” Drizzt stated more decisively, though Bruenor needed no further encouragement, his little legs already pumping wildly as he sped off into the fog.

They made their way through the twists and turns of Luskan’s rat maze, Drizzt gracefully gliding over any rubble barriers and Bruenor simply crashing through them. Presently, they grew confident that there was no pursuit, and they changed their pace to an easy glide.

The white of a smile showed through the dwarf’s red beard as he kept a satisfied eye cocked over his shoulder. But when he turned back to view the road before him, he suddenly dove down to the side, scrambling to find his axe.

He had come face up with the magical cat.

Drizzt couldn’t contain his laughter.

“Put the thing away!” Bruenor demanded.

“Manners, good dwarf,” the drow shot back. “Remember that, Guenhwyvar cleared our escape trail.”

“Put it away!” Bruenor declared again, his axe swinging at the ready.

Drizzt stroked the powerful cat’s muscled neck. “Do not heed his words, friend,” he said to the cat. “He is a dwarf, and cannot appreciate the finer magics!”

“Bah!” Bruenor snarled, though he breathed a bit easier as Drizzt dismissed the cat and replaced the onyx statue in his pouch.

The two came upon Half-Moon Street a short while later, stopping in a final alley to look for any signs of ambush. They knew at once that there had been trouble, for several injured men stumbled, or were carried, past the alley’s entrance.

Then they saw the Cutlass, and two familiar forms sitting on the street out in front.

“What’re ye doin’ out here?” Bruenor asked as they approached.

“Seems our big friend answers insults with punches,” said Regis, who hadn’t been touched in the fray. Wulfgar’s face, though, was puffy and bruised, and he could barely open one eye. Dried blood, some of it his own, caked his fists and clothes.

Drizzt and Bruenor looked at each other, not too surprised.

“And our rooms?” Bruenor grumbled.

Regis shook his head. “I doubt it.”

“And my coins?”

Again the halfling shook his head.

“Bah!” snorted Bruenor, and he stamped off toward the door of the Cutlass.

“I wouldn’t…” Regis started, but then he shrugged and decided to let Bruenor find out for himself.

Bruenor’s shock was complete when he opened the tavern door. Tables, glass, and unconscious patrons lay broken all about the floor. The innkeeper slumped over one part of the shattered bar, a barmaid wrapping his bloodied head in bandages. The man Wulfgar had implanted into the wall still hung limply by the back of his head, groaning softly, and Bruenor couldn’t help but chuckle at the handiwork of the mighty barbarian. Every now and then, one of the barmaids, passing by the man as she cleaned, gave him a little push, taking amusement at his swaying.

“Good coins wasted,” Bruenor surmised, and he walked back out the door before the innkeeper noticed him and set the barmaids upon him.

“Hell of a row!” he told Drizzt when he returned to his companions. “Everyone in on it?”

“All but one,” Regis answered. “A soldier.”

“A soldier of Luskan, down here?” asked Drizzt, surprised by the obvious inconsistency.

Regis nodded. “And even more curious,” he continued, “it was the same guard, Jierdan, that let us into the city.” Drizzt and Bruenor exchanged concerned looks.

“We’ve killers at our backs, a busted inn before us, and a soldier paying us more mind than he should,” said Bruenor.

“Time to go,” Drizzt responded for the third time.

Wulfgar looked at him incredulously. “How many men did you down tonight?” Drizzt asked him, putting the logical assumption of danger right out before him. “And how many of them would drool at the opportunity to put a blade in your back?”

“Besides,” added Regis before Wulfgar could answer, “I’ve no desire to share a bed in an alley with a host of rats!”

“Then to the gate,” said Bruenor.

Drizzt shook his head. “Not with a guard so interested in us. Over the wall, and let none know of our passing.”

An hour later, they were trotting easily across the open grass, feeling the wind again beyond the break of Luskan’s wall.

Regis summed up their thoughts, saying, “Our first night in our first city, and we’ve betrayed killers, fought down a host of ruffians, and caught the attention of the city guard. An auspicious beginning to our journey!”

“Aye, but we’ve got this!” cried Bruenor, fairly bursting with anticipation of finding his homeland now that the first obstacle, the map, had been overcome.

Little did he or his friends know, however, that the map he clutched so dearly detailed several deadly regions, one in particular that would test the four friends to their limits—and beyond.

4. The Conjuring

A landmark of wonder marked the very center of the City of Sails, a strange building that emanated a powerful aura of magic. Unlike any other structure in all the Forgotten Realms, the Hosttower of the Arcane seemed literally a tree of stone, boasting five tall spires, the largest being the central, and the other four, equally high, growing out of the main trunk with the graceful curving arc of an oak. Nowhere could any sign of the mason be seen; it was obvious to any knowledgeable viewer that magic, not physical labor, had produced this artwork.

The Archmage, undisputed Master of the Hosttower, resided in the central tower, while the other four housed the wizards closest in the line of succession. Each of these lesser towers, representing the four compass directions, dominated a different side of the trunk, and its respective wizard held responsibility for watching over and influencing the events in the direction he overlooked. Thus, the wizard west of the trunk spent his days looking out to sea, and to the merchant ships and pirates riding out on Luskan’s harbor.

A conversation in the north spire would have interested the companions from Ten-Towns this day.

“You have done well, Jierdan,” said Sydney, a younger, and lesser, mage in the Hosttower, though displaying enough potential to have gained an apprenticeship with one of the mightiest wizards in the guild. Not a pretty woman, Sydney cared little for physical appearances, instead devoting her energies to her unrelenting pursuit of power. She had spent most of her twenty-five years working toward one goal—the title of Wizard—and her determination and poise gave most around her little doubt about her ability to attain it.

Jierdan accepted the praise with a knowing nod, understanding the condescending manner in which it was offered. “I only performed as I was instructed,” he replied under a facade of humility, tossing a glance to the frail-looking man in brown mottled robes who stood staring out of the room’s sole window.

“Why would they come here?” the wizard whispered to himself. He turned to the others, and they recoiled instinctively from his gaze. He was Dendybar the Mottled, Master of the North Spire, and though he appeared weak from a distance, closer scrutiny revealed a power in the man mightier than bulging muscles. And his well-earned reputation for valuing life far less than the pursuit of knowledge intimidated most who came before him. “Did the travelers give any reason for coming here?”

“None that I would believe,” Jierdan replied quietly. “The halfling spoke of scouting out the marketplace, but I—”

“Not likely,” interrupted Dendybar, speaking more to himself than to the others. “Those four weigh more into their actions than simply a merchant expedition.”

Sydney pressed Jierdan, seeking to keep her high favor with the Master of the North Spire. “Where are they now?” she demanded.

Jierdan didn’t dare fight back against her in front of Dendybar. “On the docks…somewhere,” he said, then shrugged.

“You do not know?” hissed the young mage.

“They were to stay at the Cutlass,” Jierdan retorted. “But the fight put them out on the street.”

“And you should have followed them!” Sydney scolded, dogging the soldier relentlessly.

“Even a soldier of the city would be a fool to travel alone about the piers at night,” Jierdan shot back. “It does not matter where they are right now. I have the gates and the piers watched. They cannot leave Luskan without my knowledge!”

“I want them found!” Sydney ordered, but then Dendybar silenced her.

“Leave the watch as it is,” he told Jierdan. “They must not depart without my knowledge. You are dismissed. Come before me again when you have something to report.”

Jierdan snapped to attention and turned to leave, casting one final glare at his competitor for the mottled wizard’s favor as he passed. He was only a soldier, not a budding mage like Sydney, but in Luskan, where the Hosttower of the Arcane was the true, secretive force behind all of the power structures in the city, a soldier did well to find the favor of a wizard. Captains of the guard only attained their positions and privileges with the prior consent of the Hosttower.

“We cannot allow them to roam freely,” argued Sydney when the door had closed behind the departing soldier.

“They shall bring no harm for now,” replied Dendybar. “Even if the drow carries the artifact with him, it will take him years to understand its potential. Patience, my friend, I have ways of learning what we need to know. The pieces of this puzzle will fit together nicely before much longer.”

“It pains me to think that such power is so close to our grasp,” sighed the eager young mage. “And in the possession of a novice!”

“Patience,” repeated the Master of the North Spire.

Sydney finished lighting the ring of candles that marked the perimeter of the special chamber and moved slowly toward the solitary brazier that stood on its iron tripod just outside the magic circle inscribed upon the floor. It disappointed her to know that once the brazier was also burning, she would be instructed to depart.

Savoring every moment in this rarely opened room, considered by many to be the finest conjuring chamber in all the northland, Sydney had many times begged to remain in attendance.

But Dendybar never let her stay, explaining that her inevitable inquiries would prove too much of a distraction. And when dealing with the nether worlds, distractions usually proved fatal.

Dendybar sat cross-legged within the magic circle, chanting himself into a deep meditative trance and not even aware of Sydney’s actions as she completed the preparations. All of his senses looked inward, searching his own being, to ensure that he was fully prepared for such a task. He had left only one window in his mind open to the outside, a fraction of his awareness hinging on a single cue: the bolt of the heavy door being snapped back into place after Sydney had departed.

His heavy eyelids cracked open, their narrow line of vision solely fixed upon the fires of the brazier. These flames would be the life of the summoned spirit, giving it a tangible form for the period Dendybar kept it locked to the material plane.

“Ey vesus venerais dimin doer,” the wizard began, chanting slowly at first, then building into a solid rhythm. Swept away by the insistent pull of the casting, as though the spell, once given a flicker of life, drove itself to the completion of its dweomer, Dendybar rolled on through the various inflections and arcane syllables with ease, the sweat on his face reflecting eagerness more than nerves.

The mottled wizard reveled in summoning, dominating the will of beings beyond the mortal world through the sheer insistence of his considerable mental strength. This room represented the pinnacle of his studies, the indisputable evidence of the vast boundaries of his powers.

This time he was targeting his favorite informant, a spirit that truly despised him, but could not refuse his call. Dendybar came to the climactic point in the casting, the naming. “Morkai,” he called softly.

The brazier’s flame brightened for just an instant.

“Morkai!” Dendybar shouted, tearing the spirit from its hold on the other world. The brazier puffed into a small fireball, then died into blackness, its flames transmuted into the image of a man standing before Dendybar.

The wizard’s thin lips curled upward. How ironic, he thought, that the man he had arranged to murder would prove to be his most valuable source of information.

The specter of Morkai the Red stood resolute and proud, a fitting image of the mighty wizard he had once been. He had created this very room back in the days when he served the Hosttower in the role of Master of the North Spire. But then Dendybar and his cronies had conspired against him, using his trusted apprentice to drive a dagger into his heart, and thus opening the trail of succession for Dendybar himself to reach the coveted position in the spire.

That same act had set a second, perhaps more significant, chain of events into motion, for it was that same apprentice, Akar Kessell, who had eventually come to possess the Crystal Shard, the mighty artifact that Dendybar now believed in Drizzt Do’Urden’s hands. The tales that had filtered down from Ten-Towns of Akar Kessell’s final battle had named the dark elf as the warrior who had brought him down.

Dendybar could not know that the Crystal Shard now lay buried beneath a hundred tons of ice and rock on the mountain in Icewind Dale known as Kelvin’s Cairn, lost in the avalanche that had killed Kessell. All that he knew of the tale was that Kessell, the puny apprentice, had nearly conquered all of Icewind Dale with the Crystal Shard and that Drizzt Do’Urden was the last to see Kessell alive.

Dendybar wrung his hands eagerly whenever he thought of the power that the relic would bring to a more learned wizard.

“Greetings, Morkai the Red,” Dendybar laughed. “How polite of you to accept my invitation.”

“I accept every opportunity to gaze upon you, Dendybar the Assassin,” replied the specter. “I shall know you well when you ride Death’s barge into the darkened realm. Then we shall be on even terms again…”

“Silence!” Dendybar commanded. Though he would not admit the truth to himself, the mottled wizard greatly feared the day when he would have to face the mighty Morkai again. “I have brought you here for a purpose,” he told the specter. “I have no time for your empty threats.”

“Then tell me the service I am to perform,” hissed the specter, “and let me be gone. Your presence offends me.”

Dendybar fumed, but did not continue the argument. Time worked against a wizard in a spell of summoning, for it drained him to hold a spirit on the material plane, and each second that passed weakened him a little bit more. The greatest danger in this type of spell was that the conjuror would attempt to hold control for too long, until he found himself too weak to control the entity he had summoned.

“A simple answer is all that I require from you this day, Morkai,” Dendybar said, carefully selecting each word as he went. Morkai noted the caution and suspected that Dendybar was hiding something.

“Then what is the question?” the specter pressed.

Dendybar held to his cautious pace, considering every word before he spoke it. He did not want Morkai to get any hint of his motives in seeking the drow, for the specter would surely pass the information across the planes. Many powerful beings, perhaps even the spirit of Morkai himself, would go after such a powerful relic if they had any idea of the shard’s whereabouts.

“Four travelers, one a drow elf, came to Luskan from Icewind Dale this day,” the mottled wizard explained. “What business do they have in the city? Why are they here?”

Morkai scrutinized his nemesis, trying to find the reason for the question. “That is a query better asked of your city guard,” he replied. “Surely the guests stated their business upon entering the gate.”

“But I have asked you!” Dendybar screamed, exploding suddenly in rage. Morkai was stalling, and each passing second now took its toll on the mottled wizard. The essence of Morkai had lost little power in death, and he fought stubbornly against the spell’s binding dweomer.

Dendybar snapped open a parchment before him.

“I have a dozen of these penned already,” he warned.

Morkai recoiled. He understood the nature of the writing, a scroll that revealed the true name of his very being. And once read, stripping the veil of secrecy from the name and laying bare the privacy of his soul, Dendybar would invoke the true power of the scroll, using offkey inflections of tone to distort Morkai’s name and disrupt the harmony of his spirit, thus racking him to the core of his being.

“How long shall I search for your answers?” Morkai asked.

Dendybar smiled at his victory, though the drain on him continued to heighten. “Two hours,” he replied without delay, having carefully decided the length of the search before the summoning, choosing a time limit that would give Morkai enough opportunity to find some answers, but not long enough to allow the spirit to learn more than he should.

Morkai smiled, guessing the motives behind the decision. He snapped backward suddenly and was gone in a puff of smoke, the flames that had sustained his form relegated back to their brazier to await his return.

Dendybar’s relief was immediate. Although he still had to concentrate to keep the gate to the planes in place, the pull against his will and the drain on his power lessened considerably when the spirit had gone. Morkai’s willpower had nearly broken him during their encounter, and Dendybar shook his head in disbelief that the old master could reach out from the grave so mightily. A shudder ran up his spine as he pondered his wisdom in plotting against one so powerful. Every time he summoned Morkai, he was reminded that his own day of reckoning would surely come.

Morkai had little trouble in learning about the four adventurers. In fact, the specter already knew much about them. He had taken a great interest in Ten-Towns during his reign as Master of the North Spire, and his curiosity had not died with his body. Even now, he often looked in on the doings in Icewind Dale, and anyone who concerned himself with Ten-Towns in recent months knew something of the four heroes.

Morkai’s continued interest in the world he had left behind was not an uncommon trait in the spirit world. Death altered the ambitions of the soul, replacing the love of material or social gains with an eternal hunger for knowledge. Some spirits had looked down upon the Realms for centuries untold, simply collecting information and watching the living go about their lives. Perhaps it was envy for the physical sensations they could no longer feel. But whatever the reason, the wealth of knowledge in a single spirit often outweighed the collected works in all of the libraries in the Realms combined.

Morkai learned much in the two hours Dendybar had alotted him. His turn now came to choose his words carefully. He was compelled to satisfy the summoner’s request, but he intended to answer in as cryptic and ambiguous a manner as he possibly could.

Dendybar’s eyes glinted when he saw the brazier’s flames begin their telltale dance once again. Had it been two hours already? he wondered, for his rest seemed much shorter, and he felt that he had not fully recovered from his first encounter with the specter. He could not refute the dance of the flames, though. He straightened himself and tucked his ankles in closer, tightening and securing his cross-legged, meditative position.

The ball of fire puffed in its climactic throes and Morkai appeared before him. The specter stood back obediently, not offering any information until Dendybar specifically asked for it. The complete story behind the visit of the four friends to Luskan remained sketchy to Morkai, but he had learned much of their quest, and more than he wanted Dendybar to find out about. He still hadn’t discerned the true intentions behind the mottled wizard’s inquiries, but felt certain that Dendybar was up to no good, whatever his goals.

“What is the purpose of the visit?” Dendybar demanded, angry at Morkai’s stalling tactics.

“You yourself have summoned me,” Morkai responded slyly. “I am compelled to appear.”

“No games!” growled the mottled wizard. He glared at the specter, fingering the scroll of torment in open threat. Notorious for answering literally, beings from other planes often flustered their conjurors by distorting the connotative meaning of a question’s exact wording.

Dendybar smiled in concession to the specter’s simple logic and clarified the question. “What is the purpose of the visit to Luskan by the four travelers from Icewind Dale?”

“Varied reasons,” Morkai replied. “One has come in search of the homeland of his father, and his father before him.”

“The Drow?” Dendybar asked, trying to find some way to link his suspicions that Drizzt planned to return to the underworld of his birth with the Crystal Shard. Perhaps an uprising by the dark elves, using the power of the shard? “Is it the drow who seeks his homeland?”

“Nay,” replied the specter, pleased that Dendybar had fallen off on a tangent, delaying the more specific, and more dangerous line of questioning. The passing minutes would soon begin to dissipate Dendybar’s hold upon the specter, and Morkai hoped that he could find a way to get free of the mottled wizard before revealing too much about Bruenor’s company. “Drizzt Do’Urden has forsaken his homeland altogether. He shall never return to the bowels of the world, and certainly not with his dearest friends in tow!”

“Then who?”

“Another of the four flees from danger at his back,” Morkai offered, twisting the line of inquiry.

“Who seeks his homeland?” Dendybar demanded more emphatically.

“The dwarf, Bruenor Battlehammer,” replied Morkai, compelled to obey. “He seeks his birthplace, Mithril Hall, and his friends have joined in his quest. Why does this interest you? The companions have no connection to Luskan, and pose no threat to the Hosttower.”

“I did not summon you here to answer your questions!” Dendybar scolded. “Now tell me who is running from danger. And what is the danger?”

“Behold,” the specter instructed. With a wave of his hand, Morkai imparted an image upon the mind of the mottled wizard, a picture of a black-cloaked rider wildly charging across the tundra. The horse’s bridle was white with lather, but the rider pressed the beast onward relentlessly.

“The halfling flees from this man,” Morkai explained, “though the rider’s purpose remains a mystery to me.” Telling Dendybar even this much angered the specter, but Morkai could not yet resist the commands of his nemesis. He felt the bonds of the wizard’s will loosening, though, and suspected that the summoning neared its end.

Dendybar paused to consider the information.

Nothing of what Morkai had told him gave any direct link to the Crystal Shard, but he had learned, at least, that the four friends did not mean to stay in Luskan for very long. And he had discovered a potential ally, a further source of information. The black-cloaked rider must be mighty indeed to have set the halfling’s formidable troupe fleeing down the road.

Dendybar was beginning to formulate his next moves, when a sudden insistent pull of Morkai’s stubborn resistance broke his concentration. Enraged, he shot a threatening glare back at the specter and began unrolling the parchment. “Impudent!” he growled, and though he could have stretched out his hold on the specter a bit longer if he had put his energies into a battle of wills, he started reciting the scroll.

Morkai recoiled, though he had consciously provoked Dendybar to this point. The specter could accept the racking, for it signaled the end of the inquisition. And Morkai was glad that Dendybar hadn’t forced him to reveal the events even farther from Luskan, back in the dale just beyond the borders of Ten-Towns.

As Dendybar’s recitations twanged discordantly on the harmony of his soul, Morkai removed the focal point of his concentration across hundreds of miles, back to the image of the merchant caravan now one day out from Bremen, the closest of the Ten Towns, and to the image of the brave young woman who had joined up with the traders. The specter took comfort in the knowledge that she had, for a while at least, escaped the probings of the mottled wizard.

Not that Morkai was altruistic; he had never been accused of an abundance of that trait. He simply took great satisfaction in hindering in any way he could the knave who had arranged his murder.

Catti-brie’s red-brown locks tossed about her shoulders. She sat high up on the lead wagon of the merchant caravan that had set out from Ten-Towns on the previous day, bound for Luskan. Unbothered by the chill breeze, she kept her eyes on the road ahead, searching for some sign that the assassin had passed that way. She had relayed information about Entreri to Cassius, and he would pass it along to the dwarves. Catti-brie wondered now if she had been justified in sneaking away with the merchant caravan before Clan Battlehammer could organize its own chase.

But only she had seen the assassin at work. She knew well that if the dwarves went after him in a frontal assault, their caution wiped away in their lust of revenge for Fender and Grollo, many more of the clan would die.

Selfishly, perhaps, Catti-brie had determined that the assassin was her own business. He had unnerved her, had stripped away years of training and discipline and reduced her to the quivering semblance of a frightened child. But she was a young woman now, no more a girl. She had to personally respond to that emotional humiliation, or the scars from it would haunt her to her grave, forever paralyzing her along her path to discover her true potential in life.

She would find her friends in Luskan and warn them of the danger at their backs, and then together they would take care of Artemis Entreri.

“We make a strong pace,” the lead driver assured her, sympathetic to her desire for haste.

Catti-brie did not look at him; her eyes rooted on the flat horizon before her. “Me heart tells me ‘tisn’t strong enough,” she lamented.

The driver looked at her curiously, but had learned better than to press her on the point. She had made it clear to them from the start that her business was private. And being the adopted daughter of Bruenor Battlehammer, and reputedly a fine fighter in her own right, the merchants had counted themselves lucky to have her along and had respected her desire for privacy. Besides, as one of the drivers had so eloquently argued during their informal meeting before the journey, “The notion of staring at an ox’s ass for near to three-hunnerd miles makes the thought o’ having that girl along for company sit well with me!”

They had even moved up their departure date to accommodate her.

“Do not worry, Catti-brie,” the driver assured her, “we’ll get you there!”

Catti-brie shook her blowing hair out of her face and looked into the sun as it set on the horizon before her. “But can it be in time?” she asked softly and rhetorically, knowing that her whisper would break apart in the wind as soon as it passed her lips.

5. The Crags

Drizzt took the lead as the four companions jogged along the banks of the river Mirar, putting as much ground between themselves and Luskan as possible. Although they hadn’t slept in many hours, their encounters in the City of Sails had sent a burst of adrenaline through their veins and none of them was weary.

Something magical hung in the air that night, a crispy tingling that would have made the most exhausted traveler lament closing his eyes to it. The river, rushing swiftly and high from the spring melt, sparkled in the evening glow, its whitecaps catching the starlight and throwing it back into the air in a spray of bejeweled droplets.

Normally cautious, the friends could not help but let their guard down. They felt no danger lurking near, felt nothing but the sharp, refreshing chill of the spring night and the mysterious pull of the heavens. Bruenor lost himself in dreams of Mithril Hall; Regis in memories of Calimport; even Wulfgar, so despondent about his ill-fated encounter with civilization, felt his spirits soar. He thought of similar nights on the open tundra, when he had dreamed of what lay beyond the horizons of his world. Now, out beyond those horizons, Wulfgar found only one element missing. To his surprise, and against the adventuring instincts that denied such comfortable thoughts, he wished that Catti-brie, the woman he had grown to cherish, was with him now to share the beauty of this night.

If the others had not been so preoccupied with their own enjoyment of the evening, they would have noticed an extra bounce in Drizzt Do’Urden’s graceful step as well. To the drow, these magical nights, when the heavenly dome reached down below the horizon, bolstered his confidence in the most important and difficult decision he had ever made, the choice to forsake his people and his homeland. No stars sparkled above Menzoberranzan, the dark city of the black elves. No unexplainable allure tugged at the heartstrings from the cold stone of the immense cavern’s lightless ceiling.

“How much my people have lost by walking in darkness,” Drizzt whispered into the night. The pull of the mysteries of the endless sky carried the joy of his spirit beyond its normal boundaries and opened his mind to the unanswerable questions of the multiverse. He was an elf, and though his skin was black, there remained in his soul a semblance of the harmonic joy of his surface cousins. He wondered how general these feelings truly ran among his people. Did they remain in the hearts of all drow? Or had eons of sublimation extinguished the spiritual flames? To Drizzt’s reckoning, perhaps the greatest loss that his people had suffered when they retreated to the depths of the world was the loss of the ability to ponder the spirituality of existence simply for the sake of thought.

The crystalline sheen of the Mirar gradually dulled as the lightening dawn dimmed the stars. It came as an unspoken disappointment to the friends as they set their camp in a sheltered spot near the banks of the river.

“Be knowin’ that nights like that are few,” Bruenor observed as the first ray of light crept over the eastern horizon. A glimmer edged his eye, a hint of the wondrous fantasizing that the normally practical dwarf rarely enjoyed.

Drizzt noted the dwarf’s dreamy glow and thought of the nights that he and Bruenor had spent on Bruenor’s Climb, their special meeting place, back in the dwarf’s valley in Ten-Towns. “Too few,” he agreed.

With a resigned sigh, they set to work, Drizzt and Wulfgar starting breakfast while Bruenor and Regis examined the map they had obtained in Luskan.

For all of his grumbling and teasing about the halfling, Bruenor had pressured him to come along for a very definite reason, aside from their friendship, and though the dwarf had masked his emotions well, he was truly overjoyed when Regis had come up huffing and puffing on the road out of Ten-Towns in a last-minute plea to join the quest.

Regis knew the land south of the Spine of the World better than any of them. Bruenor himself hadn’t been out of Icewind Dale in nearly two centuries, and then he had been just an unbearded dwarf-child. Wulfgar had never left the dale, and Drizzt’s only trek across the world’s surface had been a nighttime adventure, skipping from shadow to shadow and avoiding many of the places the companions would need to search out, if they were ever to find Mithril Hall.

Regis ran his fingers across the map, excitedly recalling to Bruenor his experiences in each of the places listed, particularly Mirabar, the mining city of great wealth to the north, and Waterdeep, true to its name as the City of Splendors, down the coast to the south.

Bruenor slipped his finger across the map, studying the physical features of the terrain. “Mirabar’d be more to me liking,” he said at length, tapping the mark of the city tucked within the southern slopes of the Spine of the World. “Mithril Hall’s in mountains, that much I know, and not aside the sea.”

Regis considered the dwarf’s observations for just a moment, then plunked his finger down on yet another spot, by the scale of the map a hundred miles and more inland from Luskan. “Longsaddle,” he said. “Halfway to Silverymoon, and halfway between Mirabar and Waterdeep. A good place to search out our course.”

“A city?” Bruenor asked, for the mark on the map was no more than a small black dot.

“A village,” Regis corrected. “There are not many people there, but a family of wizards, the Harpells, have lived there for many years and know the northland as well as any. They would be happy to help us.”

Bruenor scratched his chin and nodded. “A fair hike. What might we be seeing along the way?”

“The crags,” Regis admitted, a bit disheartened as he remembered the place. “Wild and orc-filled. I wish we had another road, but Longsaddle still seems the best choice.”

“All roads in the north hold danger,” Bruenor reminded him.

They continued their scrutiny of the map, Regis recalling more and more as they went. A series of unusual and unidentified markings—three in particular, running in an almost straight line due east of Luskan to the river network south of Lurkwood—caught Bruenor’s eye.

“Ancestral mounds,” Regis explained. “Holy places of the Uthgardt.”

“Uthgardt?”

“Barbarians,” answered Regis grimly. “Like those in the dale. More wise to the ways of civilization, perhaps, but no less fierce. Their separate tribes are all about the northland, wandering the wilds.

Bruenor groaned in understanding of the halfling’s dismay, all too familiar himself with the savage ways and fighting prowess of barbarians. Orcs would prove much less formidable foes.

By the time the two had finished their discussion, Drizzt was stretching out in the cool shade of a tree overhanging the river and Wulfgar was halfway through his third helping of breakfast.

“Yer jaw still dances for food, I see!” Bruenor called as he noted the meager portions left on the skillet.

“A night filled with adventure,” Wulfgar replied gaily, and his friends were glad to observe that the brawl had apparently left no scars upon his attitude. “A fine meal and a fine sleep, and I shall be ready for the road once more!”

“Well don’t ye get too comfortable yet!” Bruenor ordered. “Ye’ve a third of a watch to keep this day!”

Regis looked about, perplexed, always quick to recognize an increase in his workload. “A third?” he asked. “Why not a fourth?”

“The elf’s eyes are for the night,” Bruenor explained. “Let him be ready to find our way when the day’s flown.”

“And where is our way?” Drizzt asked from his mossy bed. “Have you come to a decision for our next destination?”

“Longsaddle,” Regis replied. “Two hundred miles east and south, around Neverwinter Wood and across the crags.”

“The name is unknown to me,” Drizzt replied.

“Home of the Harpells,” Regis explained. “A family of wizards renowned for their good-natured hospitality. I spent some time there on my way to Ten-Towns.”

Wulfgar balked at the idea. The barbarians of Icewind Dale despised wizards, considering the black arts a power employed only by cowards. “I have no desire to view this place,” he stated flatly.

“Who asked ye?” growled Bruenor, and Wulfgar found himself backing down from his resolve, like a son refusing to hold a stubborn argument in the face of a scolding by his father.

“You will enjoy Longsaddle,” Regis assured him. “The Harpells have truly earned their hospitable reputation, and the wonders of Longsaddle will show you a side of magic you never expected. They will even accept…” He found his hand involuntarily pointing to Drizzt, and he cut short the statement in embarrassment.

But the stoic drow just smiled. “Fear not, my friend,” he consoled Regis. “Your words ring of truth, and I have come to accept my station in your world.” He paused and looked individually into each uncomfortable stare that was upon him. “I know my friends, and I dismiss my enemies,” he stated with a finality that dismissed their worries.

“With a blade, ye do,” Bruenor added with a soft chuckle, though Drizzt’s keen ears caught the whisper.

“If I must,” the drow agreed, smiling. Then he rolled over to get some sleep, fully trusting in his friends’ abilities to keep him safe.

They passed a lazy day in the shade beside the river. Late in the afternoon, Drizzt and Bruenor ate a meal and discussed their course, leaving Wulfgar and Regis soundly asleep, at least until they had eaten their own fill.

“We’ll stay with the river for a night more,” Brueror said. “Then southeast across the open ground. That’d clear us of the wood and lay open a straight path ‘fore us.”

“Perhaps it would be better if we traveled only by night for a few days,” Drizzt suggested. “We know not what eyes follow us out of the City of Sails.”

“Agreed,” replied Bruenor. “Let’s be off, then. A long road before us, and a longer one after that!”

“Too long,” murmured Regis, opening a lazy eye.

Bruenor shot him a dangerous glare. He was nervous about this trek and about bringing his friends on a dangerous road, and in an emotional defense, he took all complaints about the adventure personally.

“To walk, I mean,” Regis quickly explained. “There are farmhouses in this area, so there must be some horses about.”

“Horses’d bring too a high price in these parts,” replied Bruenor.

“Maybe…” said the halfling slyly, and his friends could easily guess what he was thinking. Their frowns reflected a general disapproval.

“The crags stand before us!” Regis argued. “Horses might outrun orcs, but without them, we shall surely fight for every mile of our hike! Besides, it would only be a loan. We could return the beasts when we were through with them.”

Drizzt and Bruenor did not approve of the halfling’s proposed trickery, but could not refute his logic. Horses would certainly aid them at this point of the journey.

“Wake the boy,” Bruenor growled.

“And about my plan?” asked Regis.

“We’ll make the choice when we find the opportunity!”

Regis was contented, confident that his friends would opt for the horses. He ate his fill, then scraped together the supper’s meager remnants and went to wake Wulfgar.

They were on the trail again soon after, and a short time after that, they saw the lights of a small settlement in the distance.

“Take us there,” Bruenor told Drizzt. “Mighten be that Rumblebelly’s plan’s worth a try.”

Wulfgar, having missed the conversation at the camp, didn’t understand, but offered no argument, or even questioned the dwarf. After the disaster at the Cutlass, he had resigned himself to a more passive role on the trip, letting the other three decide which trails they were to take. He would follow without complaint, keeping his hammer ready for when it became needed.

They moved inland away from the river for a few miles, then came upon several farms clustered together inside a stout wooden fence.

“There are dogs about,” Drizzt noted, sensing them with his exceptional hearing.

“Then Rumblebelly goes in alone,” said Bruenor.

Wulfgar’s face twisted in confusion, especially since the halfling’s look indicated that he wasn’t thrilled with the idea. “That I cannot allow,” the barbarian spouted. “If any among us needs protection, it is the little one. I’ll not hide here in the dark while he walks alone into danger!”

“He goes in alone,” Bruenor said again. “We’re here for no fight, boy. Rumblebelly’s to get us some horses.”

Regis smiled helplessly, caught fully in the trap that Bruenor had clearly set for him. Bruenor would allow him to appropriate the horses, as Regis had insisted, but with the grudging permission came a measure of responsibility and bravery on his part. It was the dwarf’s way, of absolving himself of involvement in the trickery.

Wulfgar remained steadfast in his determination to stand by the halfling, but Regis knew that the young warrior might inadvertently cause him problems in such delicate negotiations. “You stay with the others,” he explained to the barbarian. “I can handle this deal alone.”

Mustering up his nerve, he pulled his belt over the hang of his belly and strode off toward the small settlement.

The threatening snarls of several dogs greeted him as he approached the fence’s gate. He considered turning back—the ruby pendant probably wouldn’t do him much good against vicious dogs—but then he saw the silhouette of a man leave one of the farmhouses and start his way.

“What do you want?” the farmer demanded, standing defiantly on the other side of the gate and clutching an antique pole arm, probably passed down through his family’s generations.

“I am but a weary traveler,” Regis started to explain, trying to appear as pitiful as he could. It was a tale the farmer had heard far too often.

“Go away!” he ordered.

“But—”

“Get you gone!”

Over a ridge some distance away, the three companions watched the confrontation, though only Drizzt viewed the scene in the dim light well enough to understand what was happening. The drow could see the tenseness in the farmer by the way he gripped the halberd, and could judge the deep resolve in the man’s demands by the unbending scowl upon his face.

But then Regis pulled something out from under his jacket, and the farmer relaxed his grip upon the weapon almost immediately. A moment later, the gate swung open and Regis walked in.

The friends waited anxiously for several grueling hours with no further sign of Regis. They considered confronting the farmers themselves, worried that some foul treachery had befallen the halfling. Then finally, with the moon well past its peak, Regis emerged from the gate, leading two horses and two ponies. The farmers and their families waved good-bye to him as he left, making him promise to stop and visit if he ever passed their way again.

“Amazing,” laughed Drizzt. Bruenor and Wulfgar just shook their heads in disbelief.

For the first time since he had entered the settlement, Regis pondered that his delay might have caused his friends some distress. The farmer had insisted that he join in for supper before they sat down to discuss whatever business he had come about, and since Regis had to be polite (and since he had only eaten one supper that day) he agreed, though he kept the meal as short as possible and politely declined, when offered his fourth helping. Getting the horses proved easy enough after that. All he had to do was promise to leave them with the wizards in Longsaddle when he and his friends moved on from there.

Regis felt certain that his friends could not stay mad at him for very long. He had kept them waiting and worrying for half the night, but his endeavor would save them many days on a dangerous road. After an hour or two of feeling the wind rushing past them as they rode, they would forget any anger they held for him, he knew. Even if they didn’t so easily forgive, a good meal was always worth a little inconvenience to Regis.

Drizzt purposely kept the party moving more to the east than the southeast. He found no landmarks on Bruenor’s map that would let him approximate the straight course to Longsaddle. If he tried the direct route and missed the mark, no matter how slightly, they would come upon the main road from the northern city of Mirabar not knowing whether to turn north or south. By going directly east, the drow was assured that they would hit the road to the north of Longsaddle. His path would add a few miles, but perhaps save them several days of backtracking.

Their ride was clear and easy for the next day and night, and after that, Bruenor decided that they were far enough from Luskan to assume a more normal traveling schedule. “We can go by day, now,” he announced early in the afternoon of their second day with the horses.

“I prefer the night,” Drizzt said. He had just awakened and was brushing down his slender, well-muscled black stallion.

“Not me,” argued Regis. “Nights are for sleeping, and the horses are all but blind to holes and rocks that could lame them up.”

“The best for both then,” offered Wulfgar, stretching the last sleep out of his bones. “We can leave after the sun peaks, keeping it behind us for Drizzt, and ride long into the night.”

“Good thinking, lad,” laughed Bruenor. “Seems to be afternoon now, in fact. On the horses, then! Time’s for going!”

“You might have held your thoughts to yourself until after supper!” Regis grumbled at Wulfgar, reluctantly hoisting the saddle onto the back of the little white pony.

Wulfgar moved to help his struggling friend. “But we would have lost half a day’s ride,” he replied.

“A pity that would have been,” Regis retorted.

That day, the fourth since they had left Luskan, the companions came upon the crags, a narrow stretch of broken mounds and rolling hills. A rough, untamed beauty defined the place, an overpowering sense of wilderness that gave every traveler here a feeling of conquest, that he might be the first to gaze upon any particular spot. And, as was always the case in the wilds, with the adventurous excitement came a degree of danger. They had barely entered the first dell in the up-and-down terrain when Drizzt spotted tracks that he knew well: the trampling march of an orc band.

“Less than a day old,” he told his concerned companions.

“How many?” asked Bruenor.

Drizzt shrugged. “A dozen at least, maybe twice that number.”

“We’ll keep to our path,” the dwarf suggested. “They’re in front of us, and that’s better’n behind.”

When sunset came, marking the halfway point of that day’s journey, the companions took a short break, letting the horses graze in a small meadow.

The orc trail was still before them, but Wulfgar, taking up the rear of the troupe had his sights trained behind.

“We are being followed,” he said to his friends’ inquiring faces.

“Orcs?” Regis asked.

The barbarian shook his head. “None like I have ever seen. By my reckoning, our pursuit is cunning and cautious.”

“Might be that the orcs here are more wise to the ways of goodly folk than be the orcs of the dale,” said Bruenor, but he suspected something other than orcs, and he didn’t have to look at Regis to know that the halfling shared his concerns. The first map marking that Regis had identified as an ancestral mound could not be far from their present position.

“Back to the horses,” Drizzt suggested. “A hard ride might do much to improve our position.”

“Go till after moonset,” Bruenor agreed. “And stop when ye’ve found a place we can hold against attack. I’ve a feeling we’re to see some fighting ‘fore the dawn finds us!”

They encountered no tangible signs during the ride, which took them nearly across the span of the crags. Even the orc trail faded off to the north, leaving the path before them apparently clear. Wulfgar was certain, though, that he caught several sounds behind them, and movements along the periphery of his vision.

Drizzt would have liked to continue until the crags were fully behind them, but in the harsh terrain, the horses had reached the limit of their endurance. He pulled up into a small copse of fir trees set on top of a small rise, fully suspecting, like the others, that unfriendly eyes were watching them from more than one direction.

Drizzt was up one of the trees before the others had even dismounted. They tethered the horses close together and set themselves around the beasts. Even Regis would find no sleep, for, though he trusted Drizzt’s night vision, his blood had already begun pumping in anticipation of what was to come.

Bruenor, a veteran of a hundred fights, felt secure enough in his battle prowess. He propped himself calmly against a tree, his many-notched axe across his chest, one hand firmly in place upon its handle.

Wulfgar, though, made other preparations. He began by gathering together broken sticks and branches and sharpening their points. Seeking every advantage, he set them in strategic positions around the area to provide the best layout for his stand, using their deadly points to cut down the routes of approach for his attackers. Other sticks he cunningly concealed in angles that would trip up and stick the orcs before they ever reached him.

Regis, the most nervous of all, watched it all and noted the differences in his friends’ tactics. He felt that there was little he could do to prepare himself for such a fight, and he sought only to keep himself far enough out of the way so as not to hinder the efforts of his friends. Perhaps the opportunity would arise for him to make a surprise strike, but he didn’t even consider such possibilities at this point. Bravery came to the halfling spontaneously. It was certainly nothing he ever planned.

With all of their diversions and preparations deflecting their nervous anticipation, it came as almost a relief when, barely an hour later, their anxiety became reality. Drizzt whispered down to them that there was movement on the fields below the copse.

“How many?” Bruenor called back.

“Four to one against us, and maybe more,” Drizzt replied.

The dwarf turned to Wulfgar. “Ye ready, boy?”

Wulfgar slapped his hammer out before him. “Four against one?” he laughed. Bruenor liked the young warrior’s confidence, though the dwarf realized that the odds might actually prove more lopsided, since Regis wouldn’t likely be out in the open fighting.

“Let ‘em in, or hit them out in the field?” Bruenor asked Drizzt.

“Let them in,” the drow replied. “Their stealthy approach shows me that they believe surprise is with them.”

“And a turned surprise is better’n a first blow from afar,” Bruenor finished. “Do what ye can with yer bow when it’s started, elf. We’ll be waitin’ fer ye!”

Wulfgar imagined the fire seething in the drow’s lavender eyes, a deadly gleam that always belied Drizzt’s outward calm before a battle. The barbarian took comfort, for the drow’s lust for battle outweighed even his own, and he had never seen the whirring scimitars outdone by any foe. He slapped his hammer again and crouched in a hole beside the roots of one of the trees.

Bruenor slipped between the bulky bodies of two of the horses, pulling his feet up into a stirrup on each, and Regis, after he had stuffed the bedrolls to give the appearance of sleeping bodies, scooted under the low-hanging boughs of one of the trees.

The orcs approached the camp in a ring, obviously looking for an easy strike. Drizzt smiled in hope as he noted the gaps in their ring, open flanks that would prevent quick support to any isolated group. The whole band would hit the perimeter of the copse together, and Wulfgar, closest to the edge, would most likely launch the first strike.

The orcs crept in, one group slipping toward the horses, another toward the bedrolls. Four of them passed Wulfgar, but he waited a second longer, allowing the others to get close enough to the horses for Bruenor to strike.

Then the time for hiding had ended.

Wulfgar sprang from his concealment, Aegis-fang, his magical warhammer, already in motion. “Tempus!” he cried to his god of battle, and his first blow crashed in, swatting two of the orcs to the ground.

The other group rushed to get the horses free and out of the camp, hoping to cut off any escape route.

But were greeted by the snarling dwarf and his ringing axe!

As the surprised orcs leaped into the saddles, Bruenor clove one down the middle, and took a second one’s head clean from its shoulders before the remaining two even knew that they had been attacked.

Drizzt picked as targets the orcs closest to the groups under attack, delaying the support against his friends for as long as possible. His bowstring twanged, once, twice, and a third time, and a like number of orcs fell to the earth, their eyes closed and their hands helplessly clenched upon the shafts of the killing arrows.

The surprise strikes had cut deeply into the ranks of their enemies, and now the drow pulled his scimitars and dropped from his perch, confident that he and his companions could finish the rest off quickly. His smile was short-lived, though, for as he descended, he noticed more movement in the field.

Drizzt had come down in the middle of three creatures, his blades in motion before his feet had even touched the ground. The orcs were not totally surprised—one had seen the drow dropping—but Drizzt had them off balance and swinging around to bring their weapons to bear.

With the drow’s lightninglike strikes, any delay at all meant certain death, and Drizzt was the only one in the jumble of bodies under control. His scimitars slashed and thrust into orcan flesh with killing precision.

Wulfgar’s fortunes were equally bright. He faced two of the creatures, and though they were vicious fighters, they could not match the giant barbarian’s power. One got its crude weapon up in time to block Wulfgar’s swing, but Aegis-fang blasted through the defense, shattering the weapon and then the unfortunate orc’s skull without even slowing for the effort.

Bruenor fell into trouble first. His initial attacks went off perfectly, leaving him with only two standing opponents—odds that the dwarf liked. But in the excitement, the horses reared and bolted, tearing their tethers free from the branches. Bruenor tumbled to the ground, and before he could recover, was clipped in the head by the hoof of his own pony. One of the orcs was similarly thrown down, but the last one landed free of the commotion and rushed to finish off the stunned dwarf as the horses cleared the area.

Luckily, one of those spontaneous moments of bravery came over Regis at that moment. He slipped out from under the tree, falling in silently behind the orc. It was tall for an orc, and even on the tips of his toes, Regis did not like the angle of a strike at its head. Shrugging resignedly, the halfling reversed his strategy.

Before the orc could even begin to strike at Bruenor, the halfling’s mace came up between its knees and higher, driving into its groin and lifting it clear off the ground. The howling victim grasped at its injury, its eyes lolling about aimlessly, and dropped to the ground with no further ambitions for battle.

It had all happened in an instant, but victory was not yet won. Another six orcs poured into the fray, two cutting off Drizzt’s attempt to get to Regis and Bruenor, three more going to the aid of their lone companion facing the giant barbarian. And one, creeping along the same line Regis had taken, closed on the unsuspecting halfling.

At the same moment Regis made out the drow’s warning call, a club slammed between his shoulder blades, blasting the wind from his lungs and tossing him to the ground.

Wulfgar was pressed on all four sides, and despite his boasts before the battle, he found that he didn’t care for the situation. He concentrated on parrying, hoping that the drow could get to him before his defenses broke down.

He was too badly outnumbered.

An orcan blade cut into a rib, another clipped his arm.

Drizzt knew that he could defeat the two he now faced, but doubted that it would be in time for him to help his barbarian friend. Or the halfling. And there were still reinforcements on the field.

Regis rolled onto his back to lay right beside Bruenor, and the dwarf’s groaning told him that the fight was over for both of them. Then the orc was above him, its club raised above its head, and an evil smile spread wide upon its ugly face. Regis closed his eyes, having no desire to watch the descent of the blow that would kill him.

Then he heard the sound of impact…above him.

Startled, he opened his eyes. A hatchet was embedded into his attacker’s chest. The orc looked down at it, stunned. The club dropped harmlessly behind the orc, and it, too, fell backward, quite dead.

Regis didn’t understand. “Wulfgar?” he asked into the air.

A huge form, nearly as large as Wulfgar’s, sprang over him and pounced upon the orc, savagely tearing the hatchet free. He was human, and wearing the furs of a barbarian, but unlike the tribes of Icewind Dale, this man’s hair was black.

“Oh, no,” Regis groaned, remembering his own warnings to Bruenor about the Uthgardt barbarians. The man had saved his life, but knowing the savage reputation, Regis doubted that a friendship would grow out of the encounter. He started to sit up, wanting to express his sincere thanks and dispel any unfriendly notions the barbarian might have about him. He even considered using the ruby pendant to evoke some friendly feelings.

But the big man, noting the movement, spun suddenly and kicked him in the face.

And Regis fell backward into blackness.

6. Sky Ponies

Black-haired barbarians, screaming in the frenzy of battle, burst into the copse. Drizzt realized at once that these burly warriors were the forms he had seen moving behind the orcan ranks on the field, but he wasn’t yet certain of their allegiance.

Whatever their ties, their arrival struck terror into the remaining orcs. The two fighting Drizzt lost all heart for the battle, a sudden shift in their posture revealing their desire to break off the confrontation and flee. Drizzt obliged, assured that they wouldn’t get far anyway, and sensing that he, too, would be wise to slip from sight.

The orcs fled, but their pursuers soon caught them in another battle just beyond the trees. Less obvious in his flight, Drizzt slipped unnoticed back up the tree where he had left his bow.

Wulfgar could not so easily sublimate his battle lust. With two of his friends down, his thirst for orcan blood was insatiable, and the new group of men that had joined the fight cried out to Tempus, his own god of battle, with a fervor that the young warrior could not ignore. Distracted by the sudden developments, the ring of orcs around Wulfgar let up for just a moment, and he struck hard.

One orc looked away, and Aegis-fang tore its face off before its eyes returned to the fight at hand. Wulfgar bore through the gap in the ring, jostling a second orc as he passed. As it stumbled in its attempt to turn and realign its defense, the mighty barbarian chopped it down. The two remaining turned and fled, but Wulfgar was right behind. He launched his hammer, blasting one from life, and sprang upon the other, bearing it to the ground beneath him and then crushing the life from it with his bare hands.

When he was finished, when he had heard the final crack of neckbone, Wulfgar remembered his predicament and his friends. He sprang up and backed away, his back against the trees.

The black-haired barbarians kept their distance, respectful of his prowess, and Wulfgar could not be sure of their intentions. He scanned around for his friends. Regis and Bruenor lay side by side near where the horses had been tethered; he could not tell if they were alive or dead. There was no sign of Drizzt, but a fight continued beyond the other edge of the trees.

The warriors fanned out in a wide semi-circle around him, cutting off any routes of escape. But they stopped their positioning suddenly, for Aegis-fang had magically returned to Wulfgar’s grasp.

He could not win against so many, but the thought did not dismay him. He would die fighting, as a true warrior, and his death would be remembered. If the black-haired barbarians came at him, many, he knew, would not return to their families. He dug his heels in and clasped the warhammer tightly. “Let us be done with it,” he growled into the night.

“Hold!” came a soft, but imperative whisper from above. Wulfgar recognized Drizzt’s voice at once and relaxed his grip. “Keep to your honor, but know that more lives are at stake than your own!”

Wulfgar understood then that Regis and Bruenor were probably still alive. He dropped Aegis-fang to the ground and called out to the warriors, “Well met.”

They did not reply, but one of them, nearly as tall and heavily muscled as Wulfgar, broke rank and closed in to stand before him. The stranger wore a single braid in his long hair, running down the side of his face and over his shoulder. His cheeks were painted white in the image of wings. The hardness of his frame and disciplined set of his face reflected a life in the harsh wilderness, and were it not for the raven color of his hair, Wulfgar would have thought him to be of one of the tribes of Icewind Dale.

The dark-haired man similarly recognized Wulfgar, but better versed in the overall structures of the societies in the northland, was not so perplexed by their similarities. “You are of the dale,” he said in a broken form of the common tongue. “Beyond the mountains, where the cold wind blows.”

Wulfgar nodded. “I am Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, of the Tribe of the Elk. We share gods, for I, too, call to Tempus for strength and courage.”

The dark-haired man looked around at the fallen orcs.

“The god answers your call, warrior of the dale.”

Wulfgar’s jaw lifted in pride. “We share hatred for the orcs, as well,” he continued, “but I know nothing of you or your people.”

“You shall learn,” the dark-haired man replied. He held out his hand and indicated the warhammer. Wulfgar straightened firmly, having no intentions of surrendering, no matter the odds. The dark-haired man looked to the side, drawing Wulfgar’s eyes with his own. Two warriors had picked up Bruenor and Regis and slung them over their backs, while others had recaptured the horses and were leading them in.

“The weapon,” the dark-haired man demanded. “You are in our land without our say, Wulfgar, son of Beornegar. The price of that crime is death. Shall you watch our judgement over your small friends?”

The younger Wulfgar would have struck then, damning them all in a blaze of glorious fury. But Wulfgar had learned much from his new friends, Drizzt in particular. He knew that Aegis-fang would return to his call, and he knew, too, that Drizzt would not abandon them. This was not the time to fight.

He even let them bind his hands, an act of dishonor that no warrior of the Tribe of the Elk would ever allow. But Wulfgar had faith in Drizzt. His hands would be freed again. Then he would have the last word.

By the time they reached the barbarian camp, both Regis and Bruenor had regained consciousness and were bound and walking beside their barbarian friend. Dried blood crusted Bruenor’s hair and he had lost his helm, but his dwarven toughness had carried him through another encounter that should have finished him.

They crested a rise and came upon the perimeter of a ring of tents and blazing campfires. Whooping their war cries to Tempus, the returning war party roused the camp, tossing severed orc heads into the ring to announce their glorious arrival. The fervor inside the camp soon matched the level of the entering war party, and the three prisoners were pushed in first, to be greeted by a score of howling barbarians.

“What do they eat?” Bruenor asked, more in sarcasm than concern.

“Whatever it is, feed them quickly,” Regis replied, drawing a clap on the back of his head and a warning to be silent from the guard behind him.

The prisoners and horses were herded into the center of the camp and the tribe encircled them in a victory dance, kicking orc heads around in the dust and singing out, in a language unknown to the companions, their praise to Tempus and to Uthgar, their ancestral hero, for the success this night.

It went on for nearly an hour, and then, all at once, it ended and every face in the ring turned to the closed flap of a large and decorated tent.

The silence held for a long moment before the flap swung open. Out jumped an ancient man, as slender as a tent pole, but showing more energy than his obvious years would indicate. His face painted in the same markings as the warriors, though more elaborately, he wore a patch with a huge green gemstone sewn upon it over one eye. His robe was the purest white, its sleeves showing as feathered wings whenever he flapped his arms out to the side. He danced and twirled through the ranks of the warriors, and each held his breath, recoiling until he had passed.

“Chief?” Bruenor whispered.

“Shaman,” corrected Wulfgar, more knowledgeable in the ways of tribal life. The respect the warriors showed this man came from a fear beyond what a mortal enemy, even a chieftain, could impart.

The shaman spun and leaped, landing right before the three prisoners. He looked at Bruenor and Regis for just a moment, then turned his full attention upon Wulfgar.

“I am Valric High Eye,” he screeched suddenly. “Priest of the followers of the Sky Ponies! The children of Uthgar!”

“Uthgar!” echoed the warriors, clapping their hatchets against their wooden shields.

Wulfgar waited for the commotion to die away, then presented himself. “I am Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, of the Tribe of the Elk.”

“And I’m Bruenor—” began the dwarf.

“Silence!” Valric shouted at him, trembling with rage. “I care nothing for you!”

Bruenor closed his mouth and entertained dreams concerning his axe and Valric’s head.

“We meant no harm, nor trespass,” Wulfgar began, but Valric put his hand up, cutting him short.

“Your purpose does not interest me,” he explained calmly, but his excitement resurged at once. “Tempus has delivered you unto us, that is all! A worthy warrior?” He looked around at his own men and their response showed eagerness for the coming challenge.

“How many did you claim?” he asked Wulfgar.

“Seven fell before me,” the young barbarian replied proudly.

Valric nodded in approval. “Tall and strong,” he commented. “Let us discover if Tempus is with you. Let us judge if you are worthy to run with the Sky Ponies!”

Shouts started at once and two warriors rushed over to unbind Wulfgar. A third, the leader of the war party who had spoken to Wulfgar at the copse of trees, tossed down his hatchet and shield and stormed into the ring.

Drizzt waited in his tree until the last of the war party had given up the search for the rider of the fourth horse and departed. Then the drow moved quickly, gathering together some of the dropped items: the dwarf’s axe and Regis’s mace. He had to pause and steady himself when he found Bruenor’s helm, though, blood-stained and newly dented, and with one of its horns broken away. Had his friend survived?

He shoved the broken helm into his sack and slipped out after the troupe, keeping a cautious distance.

Relief flooded through him when he came upon the camp and spotted his three friends, Bruenor standing calmly between Wulfgar and Regis. Satisfied, Drizzt put aside his emotions and all thoughts of the previous encounter, narrowing his vision to the situation before him, formulating a plan of attack that would free his friends.

The dark-haired man held his open hands out to Wulfgar, inviting his blond counterpart to clasp them. Wulfgar had never seen this particular challenge before, but it was not so different from the tests of strength that his own people practised.

“Your feet do not move!” instructed Valric. “This is the challenge of strength! Let Tempus show us your worth!”

Wulfgar’s firm visage didn’t reveal a hint of his confidence that he could defeat any man at such a test. He brought his hands up level with those of his opponent.

The man grabbed at them angrily, snarling at the large foreigner. Almost immediately, before Wulfgar had even straightened his grip or set his feet, the shaman screamed out to begin, and the dark-haired man drove his hands forward, bending Wulfgar’s back over his wrists. Shouting erupted from every corner of the encampment; the dark-haired man roared and pushed with all his strength, but as soon as the moment of surprise had passed, Wulfgar fought back.

The iron-corded muscles in Wulfgar’s neck and shoulders snapped taut and his huge arms reddened with the forced surge of blood into their veins. Tempus had blessed him truly; even his mighty opponent could only gape in amazement at the spectacle of his power. Wulfgar looked him straight in the eye and matched the snarl with a determined glare that foretold the inevitable victory. Then the son of Beornegar drove forward, stopping the dark-haired man’s initial momentum and forcing his own hands back into a more normal angle with his wrists. Once he had regained parity, Wulfgar realized that one sudden push would put his opponent into the same disadvantage that he had just escaped. From there, the dark-haired man would have little chance of holding on.

But Wulfgar wasn’t anxious to end this contest. He didn’t want to humiliate his opponent—that would breed only an enemy—and even more importantly, he knew that Drizzt was about. The longer he could keep the contest going, and the eyes of every member of the tribe fixed upon him, the longer Drizzt would have to put some plan into motion.

The two men held there for many seconds, and Wulfgar couldn’t help but smile when he noticed a dark shape slip in among the horses, behind the enthralled guards at the other end of the camp. Whether it was his imagination, he could not tell, but he thought that he saw two points of lavender flame staring out at him from the darkness. A few seconds more, he decided, though he knew that he was taking a chance by not finishing the challenge. The shaman could declare a draw if they held for too long.

But then it was over. The veins and sinews in Wulfgar’s arms bulged and his shoulders lifted even higher. “Tempus!” he growled, praising the god for yet another victory, and then with a sudden, ferocious explosion of power, he drove the dark-haired man to his knees. All around, the camp went silent, even the shaman being stricken speechless by the display.

Two guards moved tentatively to Wulfgar’s side.

The beaten warrior pulled himself to his feet and stood facing Wulfgar. No hints of anger marred his face, just honest admiration, for the Sky Ponies were an honorable people.

“We would welcome you,” Valric said. “You have defeated Torlin, son of Jerek Wolf-slayer, Chieftain of the Sky Ponies. Never before has Torlin been bested!”

“What of my friends?” Wulfgar asked.

“I care nothing for them!” Valric snapped back. “The dwarf will be set free on a trail leading from our land. We have no quarrel with him or his kind, nor do we desire any dealings with them!”

The shaman eyed Wulfgar slyly. “The other is a weakling,” he stated. “He shall serve as your passage to the tribe, your sacrifice to the winged horse.”

Wulfgar did not immediately respond. They had tested his strength, and now were testing his loyalties. The Sky Ponies had paid him their highest honor in offering him a place in their tribe, but only on condition that he show his allegiance beyond any doubt. Wulfgar thought of his own people, and the way they had lived for so many centuries on the tundra. Even in this day, many of the barbarians of Icewind Dale would have accepted the terms and killed Regis, considering the life of a halfling a small price for such an honor. This was the disillusionment of Wulfgar’s existence with his people, the facet of their moral code that had proved unacceptable to his personal standards.

“No,” he replied to Valric without blinking.

“He is a weakling!” Valric reasoned. “Only the strong deserve life!”

“His fate is not mine to decide,” Wulfgar replied. “Nor yours.”

Valric motioned to the two guards and they immediately rebound Wulfgar’s hands.

“A loss for our people,” Torlin said to Wulfgar. “You would have received a place of honor among us.”

Wulfgar didn’t answer, holding Torlin’s stare for a long moment, sharing respect and also the mutual understanding that their codes were too different for such a joining. In a shared fantasy that could not be, both imagined fighting beside the other, felling orcs by the score and inspiring the bards to a new legend.

It was time for Drizzt to strike. The drow had paused by the horses to view the outcome of the contest and also to better measure his enemies. He planned his attack for effect more than for damage, wanting to put on a grand show to cow a tribe of fearless warriors long enough for his friends to break free of the ring.

No doubt, the barbarians had heard of the dark elves. And no doubt, the tales they had heard were terrifying.

Silently, Drizzt tied the two ponies behind the horses, then mounted the horses, a foot in one stirrup on each. Rising between them, he stood tall and threw back the cowl of his cloak. The dangerous glow in his lavender eyes sparkling wildly, he bolted the mounts into the ring, scattering the stunned barbarians closest to him.

Howls of rage rose up from the surprised tribesmen, the tone of the shouts shifting to one of terror when they viewed the black skin. Torlin and Valric turned to face the oncoming menace, though even they did not know how to deal with a legend personified.

And Drizzt had a trick ready for them. With a wave of his black hand, purple flames spouted from Torlin and Valric’s skin, not burning, but casting both the superstitious tribesmen into a horrified frenzy. Torlin dropped to his knees, clasping his arms in disbelief, while the highstrung shaman dove to the ground and began rolling in the dirt.

Wulfgar took his cue. Another surge of power through his arms snapped the leather bonds at his wrists. He continued the momentum of his hands, swinging them upward, catching both of the guards beside him squarely in the face and dropping them to their backs.

Bruenor also understood his part. He stomped heavily onto the instep of the lone barbarian standing between him and Regis, and when the man crouched to grasp his pained foot, Bruenor butted him in the head. The man tumbled as easily as Whisper had back in Rat Alley in Luskan.

“Huh, works as well without the helmet!” Bruenor marveled.

“Only for a dwarf’s head!” Regis remarked as Wulfgar grabbed both of them by the back of their collars and hoisted them easily onto the ponies.

He was up then, too, beside Drizzt, and they charged through the other side of the camp. It had all happened too quickly for any of the barbarians to ready a weapon or form any kind of defense.

Drizzt wheeled his horse behind the ponies to protect the rear. “Ride!” he yelled to his friends, slapping their mounts on the rump with the flat of his scimitars. The other three shouted in victory as though their escape was complete, but Drizzt knew that this had been the easy part. The dawn was fast approaching, and in this up-and-down, unfamiliar terrain, the native barbarians could easily catch them.

The companions charged into the silence of pre-dawn, picking the straightest and easiest path to gain as much ground as possible. Drizzt still kept an eye behind them, expecting the tribesmen to be fast on their trail. But the commotion in the camp had died away almost immediately after the escape, and the drow saw no signs of pursuit.

Now only a single call could be heard, the rhythmic singing of Valric in a tongue that none of the travelers understood. The look of dread on Wulfgar’s face made all of them pause. “The powers of a shaman,” the barbarian explained.

Back in the camp, Valric stood alone with Torlin inside the ring of his people, chanting and dancing through the ultimate ritual of his station, summoning the power of his tribe’s Spiritual Beast. The appearance of the drow elf had completely unnerved the shaman. He stopped any pursuit before it had even begun and ran to his tent for the sacred leather satchel needed for the ritual, deciding that the spirit of the winged horse, the Pegasus, should deal with these intruders.

Valric targeted Torlin as the recipient of the spirit’s form, and the son of Jerek awaited the possession with stoic dignity, hating the act, for it stripped him of his identity, but resigned to absolute obedience to his shaman.

From the moment it began, however, Valric knew that in his excitement, he had overstepped the urgency of the summoning.

Torlin shrieked and dropped to the ground, writhing in agony. A gray cloud surrounded him, its swirling vapors molding with his form, reshaping his features. His face puffed and twisted, and suddenly spurted outward into the semblance of a horse’s head. His torso, as well, transmuted into something not human. Valric had meant only to impart some of the strengths of the spirit of the Pegasus in Torlin, but the entity itself had come, possessing the man wholly and bending his body into its own likeness.

Torlin was consumed.

In his place loomed the ghostly form of the winged horse. All in the tribe fell to their knees before it, even Valric, who could not face the image of the Spiritual Beast. But the Pegasus knew the shaman’s thoughts and understood its children’s needs. Smoke fumed from the spirit’s nostrils and it rose into the air in pursuit of the escaping intruders.

The friends had settled their mounts into a more comfortable, though still swift, pace. Free of their bonds, with the dawn breaking before them and no apparent pursuit behind them, they had eased up a bit. Bruenor fiddled with his helmet, trying to push the latest dent out far enough for him to get the thing back on his head. Even Wulfgar, so shaken a short time before when he had heard the chanting of the shaman, began to relax.

Only Drizzt, ever wary, was not so easily convinced of their escape. And it was the drow who first sensed the approach of danger.

In the dark cities, the black elves often dealt with otherworldly beings, and over the many centuries they had bred into their race a sensitivity for the magical emanations of such creatures. Drizzt stopped his horse suddenly and wheeled about.

“What do ye hear?” Bruenor asked him.

“I hear nothing,” Drizzt answered, his eyes darting about for some sign. “But something is there.”

Before they could respond, the gray cloud rushed down from the sky and was upon them. Their horses bucked and reared in uncontrollable terror and in the confusion none of the friends could sort out what was happening. The Pegasus then formed right in front of Regis and the halfling felt a deathly chill penetrate his bones. He screamed and dropped from his mount.

Bruenor, riding beside Regis, charged the ghostly form fearlessly. But his descending axe found only a cloud of smoke where the apparition had been. Then, just as suddenly, the ghost was back, and Bruenor, too, felt the icy cold of its touch. Tougher than the halfling, he managed to hold to his pony.

“What?” he cried out vainly to Drizzt and Wulfgar.

Aegis-fang whistled past him and continued on at the target. But the Pegasus was only smoke again and the magical warhammer passed unhindered through the swirling cloud.

In an instant, the spirit was back, swooping down upon Bruenor. The dwarf’s pony spun down to the ground in a frantic effort to scramble away from the thing.

“You cannot hit it!” Drizzt called after Wulfgar, who went rushing to the dwarf’s aid. “It does not exist fully on this plane!”

Wulfgar’s mighty legs locked his terrified horse straight and he struck as soon as Aegis-fang returned to his hands.

But again he found only smoke, before his blow.

“Then how?” he yelled to Drizzt, his eyes darting around to spot the first signs of the reforming spirit.

Drizzt searched his mind for answers. Regis was still down, lying pale and unmoving on the field, and Bruenor, though he had not been too badly injured in his pony’s fall, appeared dazed and shivering from the chill of unearthly cold. Drizzt grasped at a desperate plan. He pulled the onyx statue of the panther from his pouch and called for Guenhwyvar.

The ghost returned, attacking with renewed fury. It descended upon Bruenor first, mantling the dwarf with its cold wings. “Damn ye back to the Abyss!” Bruenor roared in brave defiance.

Rushing in, Wulfgar lost all sight of the dwarf, except for the head of his axe bursting harmlessly through the smoke.

Then the barbarian’s mount halted in its tracks, refusing, against all efforts, to move any closer to the unnatural beast. Wulfgar leaped from his saddle and charged in, crashing right through the cloud before the ghost could reform, his momentum carrying both him and Bruenor out the other side of the smoky mantle. They rolled away and looked back, only to find that the ghost had disappeared altogether again.

Bruenor’s eyelids drooped heavily and his skin held a ghastly hue of blue, and for the first time in his life, his indomitable spirit had no gumption for the fight. Wulfgar, too, had suffered the icy touch in his pass through the ghost, but he was still more than ready for another round with the thing.

“We can’t fight it!” Bruenor gasped through his chattering teeth. “Here for a strike, it is, but gone when we hit back!”

Wulfgar shook his head defiantly. “There is a way!” he demanded, though he had to concede the dwarf’s point. “But my hammer cannot destroy clouds!”

Guenhwyvar appeared beside its master and crouched low, seeking the nemesis that threatened the drow.

Drizzt understood the cat’s intentions. “No!” he commanded. “Not here.” The drow had recalled something that Guenhwyvar had done several months earlier. To save Regis from the falling stone of a crumbling tower, Guenhwyvar had taken the halfling on a journey through the planes of existence. Drizzt grabbed onto the panther’s thick coat.

“Take me to the land of the ghost,” he instructed. “To its own plane, where my weapons will bite deeply into its substantial being.”

The ghost appeared again as Drizzt and the cat faded into their own cloud.

“Keep swinging!” Bruenor told his companion. “Keep it as smoke so’s it can’t get at ye!”

“Drizzt and the cat have gone!” Wulfgar cried.

“To the land of the ghost,” Bruenor explained.

It took Drizzt a long moment to set his bearings. He had come into a place of different realities, a dimension where everything, even his own skin, assumed the same hue of gray, objects being distinguishable only by a thin waver of black that outlined them. His depth perception was useless, for there were no shadings, and no discernible light sources to use as a guide. And he found no footing, nothing tangible beneath him, nor could he even know which way was up or down. Such concepts didn’t seem to fit here.

He did make out the shifting outlines of the Pegasus as it jumped between planes, never fully in one place or the other. He tried to approach it and found propulsion to be an act of the mind, his body automatically following the instructions of his will. He stopped before the shifting lines, his magical scimitar poised to strike when the target fully appeared.

Then the outline of the Pegasus was complete and Drizzt plunged his blade into the black waver that marked its form. The line shifted and bent, and the outline of the scimitar shivered as well, for here even the properties of the steel blade took on a different composition. But the steel proved the stronger and the scimitar resumed its curved edge and punctured the line of the ghost. There came a sudden tingling in the grayness, as though Drizzt’s cut had disturbed the equilibrium of the plane, and the ghost’s line trembled in a shiver of agony.

Wulfgar saw the smoke cloud puff suddenly, almost reforming into the ghost shape. “Drizzt!” he called out to Bruenor. “He has met the ghost on even terms!”

“Get ye ready, then!” Bruenor replied anxiously, though he knew that his own part in the fight had ended. “The drow might bring it back to ye long enough for a hit!” Bruenor clutched at his sides, trying to hug the deathly cold out of his bones, and stumbled over to the halfling’s unmoving form.

The ghost turned on Drizzt, but the scimitar struck again. And Guenhwyvar jumped into the fray, the cat’s great claws tearing into the black outline of its enemy. The Pegasus reeled away from them, understanding that it held no advantage against foes on its own plane. Its only recourse was a retreat back to the material plane.

Where Wulfgar waited.

As soon as the cloud resumed its shape, Aegis-fang hammered into it. Wulfgar felt a solid strike for just a moment, and knew that he had hit his mark. Then the smoke blew away before him.

The ghost was back with Drizzt and Guenhwyvar, again facing their relentless stabs and rakes. It shifted back again, and Wulfgar struck quickly. Trapped with no retreat, the ghost took hits from both planes. Every time it materialized before Drizzt, the drow noted that its outline came thinner and less resistant to his thrusts. And every time the cloud reformed before Wulfgar, its density had diminished. The friends had won, and Drizzt watched in satisfaction as the essence of the Pegasus slipped free of the material form and floated away through the grayness.

“Take me home,” the weary drow instructed Guenhwyvar. A moment later, he was back on the field beside Bruenor and Regis.

“He’ll live,” Bruenor stated flatly at Drizzt’s inquiring look. “More to faintin’ than to dying’d be me guess.”

A short distance away, Wulfgar, too, was hunched over a form, broken and twisted and caught in a transformation somewhere between man and beast. “Torlin, son of Jerek,” Wulfgar explained. He lifted his gaze back toward the barbarian camp. “Valric is has done this. The blood of Torlin soils his hands!”

“Torlin’s own choice, perhaps?” Drizzt offered.

“Never!” Wulfgar insisted. “When we met in challenge, my eyes looked upon honor. He was a warrior. He would never have allowed this!” He stepped away from the corpse, letting its mutilated remains emphasize the horror of the possession. In the frozen pose of death, Torlin’s face had retained half the features of a man, and half of the equine ghost.

“He was the son of their chieftain,” Wulfgar explained. “He could not refuse the demands of the shaman.”

“He was brave to accept such a fate,” Drizzt remarked.

“Son of their chieftain?” snorted Bruenor. “Seems we’ve put even more enemies on the road behind us! They’ll be looking to settle this score.”

“As will I!” Wulfgar proclaimed. “His blood is yours to carry, Valric High Eye!” he shouted into the distance, his calls echoing around the mounds of the crags. Wulfgar looked back to his friends, rage seething in his features, as he declared grimly, “I shall avenge Torlin’s dishonor.”

Bruenor nodded his approval at the barbarian’s dedication to his principles.

“An honorable task,” Drizzt agreed, holding his blade out to the east, toward Longsaddle, the next stop along their journey. “But one for another day.”

7. Dagger and Staff

Entreri stood on a hill a few miles outside the City of Sails, his campfire burning low behind him. Regis and friends had used this same spot for their last stop before they entered Luskan and, in fact, the assassin’s fire burned in the very same pit. This was no coincidence, though. Entreri had mimicked every move the halfling’s party had made since he had picked up their trail just south of the Spine of the World. He would move as they moved, shadowing their marches in an effort to better understand their actions.

Now, unlike the party before him, Entreri’s eyes were not on the city wall, nor toward Luskan at all. Several campfires had sprung up in the night to the north, on the road back to Ten-Towns. It wasn’t the first time those lights had appeared behind him, and the assassin sensed he, too, was being followed. He had slowed his frantic pace, figuring that he could easily make up the ground while the companions went about their business in Luskan. He wanted to secure his own back from any danger before concentrating on snaring the halfling. Entreri had even left telltale signs of his passing, baiting his pursuers in closer.

He kicked the embers of the fire low and climbed back into the saddle, deciding it better to meet a sword face to face than to take a dagger in the back.

Into the night he rode, confident in the darkness. This was his time, where every shadow added to the advantage of one who lived in shadows.

He tethered his mount before midnight, close enough to the campfires to finish the trek on foot. He realized now that this was a merchant caravan; not an uncommon thing on the road to Luskan at this time of year. But his sense of danger nagged at him. Many years of experience had honed his instinct for survival and he knew better than to ignore it.

He crept in, seeking the easiest way into the circle of wagons. Merchants always lined many sentries around the perimeter of their camps, and even the pull-horses presented a problem, for the merchants kept them tied close beside their harnesses.

Still, the assassin would not waste his ride. He had come this far and meant to find out the purpose of those who followed him. Slithering on his belly, he made his way to the perimeter and began circling the camp underneath the defensive ring. Too silently for even wary ears to hear, he passed two guards playing at bones. Then he went under and between the horses, the beasts lowering their ears in fear, but remaining quiet.

Halfway around the circle, he was nearly convinced that this was an ordinary merchant caravan, and was just about to slip back into the night when he heard a familiar female voice.

“Ye said ye saw a spot o’ light in the distance.”

Entreri stopped, for he knew the speaker.

“Yeah, over there,” a man replied.

Entreri slipped up between the next two wagons and peeked over the side. The speakers stood a short distance from him, behind the next wagon, peering into the night in the direction of his camp. Both were dressed for battle, the woman wearing her sword comfortably.

“I have underestimated you,” Entreri whispered to himself as he viewed Catti-brie. His jeweled dagger was already in his hand. “A mistake I shan’t repeat,” he added, then crouched low and searched for a path to his target.

“Ye been good to me, for bringing me so fast,” Catti-brie said. “I’m owing to ye, as Regis and the others’ll be.”

“Then tell me,” the man urged. “What causes such urgency?”

Catti-brie struggled with the memories of the assassin. She hadn’t yet come to terms with her terror that day in the halfling’s house, and knew that she wouldn’t until she had avenged the deaths of the two dwarven friends and resolved her own humiliation. Her lips tightened and she did not reply.

“As you wish,” the man conceded. “Your reasons justify the run, we do not doubt. If we seem to pry, it only shows our desire to help you however we may.”

Catti-brie turned to him, a smile of sincere appreciation on her face. Enough had been said, and the two stood and stared at the empty horizon in silence.

Silent, too, was the approach of death.

Entreri slipped out from under the wagon and rose suddenly between them, one hand outstretched to each. He grasped Catti-brie’s neck tightly enough to prevent her scream, and he silenced the man forever with his blade.

Looking across the breadth of Entreri’s shoulders, Catti-brie saw the horrific expression locked onto her companion’s face, but she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t cried out, for his mouth was not covered.

Entreri shifted back a bit and she knew. Only the jeweled dagger’s hilt was visible, its crosspiece flat against the underside of the man’s chin. The slender blade had found the man’s brain before he ever realized the danger.

Entreri used the weapon’s handle to guide his victim quietly to the ground, then jerked it free.

Again the woman found herself paralyzed before the horror of Entreri. She felt that she should wrench away and shout out to the camp, even though he would surely kill her. Or draw her sword and at least try to fight back. But she watched helplessly as Entreri slipped her own dagger from her belt and, pulling her low with him, replaced it in the man’s fatal wound.

Then he took her sword and pushed her down under the wagon and out beyond the camp’s perimeter.

Why can’t I call out? she asked herself again and again, for the assassin, confident of the level of terror, didn’t even hold her as they slipped deeper into the night. He knew, and she had to admit to herself, that she would not give up her life so easily.

Finally, when they were a safe distance from the camp, he spun her around to face him—and the dagger. “Follow me?” he asked, laughing at her. “What could you hope to gain?”

She did not answer, but found some of her strength returning.

Entreri sensed it, too. “If you call out, I shall kill you,” he declared flatly. “And then, by my word, I shall return to the merchants and kill them all as well!”

She believed him.

“I often travel with the merchants,” she lied, holding the quiver in her voice. “It is one of the duties of my rank as a soldier of Ten-Towns.”

Entreri laughed at her again. Then he looked into the distance, his features assuming an introspective tilt. “Perhaps this will play to my advantage,” he said rhetorically, the beginnings of a plan formulating in his mind.

Catti-brie studied him, worried that he had found some way to turn her excursion into harm for her friends.

“I’ll not kill you—not yet,” he said to her. “When we find the halfling, his friends will not defend him. Because of you.”

“I’ll do nothing to aid ye!” Catti-brie spat.”Nothing!”

“Precisely,” Entreri hissed. “You shall do nothing. Not with a blade at your neck—” he brought the weapon up to her throat in a morbid tease—”scratching at your smooth skin. When I am done with my business, brave girl, I shall move on, and you shall be left with your shame and your guilt. And your answers to the merchants who believe you murdered their companion!” In truth, Entreri didn’t believe for a moment that his simple trick with Catti-brie’s dagger would fool the merchants. It was merely a psychological weapon aimed at the young woman, designed to instill yet another doubt and worry into her jumble of emotions.

Catti-brie did not reply to the assassin’s statements with any sign of emotion. No, she told herself, it won’t be like that!

But deep inside, she wondered if her determination only masked her fear, her own belief that she would be held again by the horror of Entreri’s presence, and that the scene would unfold exactly as he had predicted.

Jierdan found the campsite with little difficulty. Dendybar had used his magic to track the mysterious rider all the way from the mountains and had pointed the soldier in the right direction.

Tensed and his sword drawn, Jierdan moved in. The place was deserted, but it had not been that way for long. Even from a few feet away, the soldier from Luskan could feel the dying warmth of the campfire. Crouching low to mask his silhouette against the line of the horizon, he crept toward a pack and blanket off to the side of the fire.

Entreri rode his mount back into camp slowly, expecting that what he had left might have drawn some visitors. Catti-brie sat in front of him, securely bound and gagged, though she fully believed, to her own disgust, that her own terror made the bonds unnecessary.

The wary assassin realized that someone had entered the camp, before he had ever gotten near the place. He slid from his saddle, taking his prisoner with him. “A nervous steed,” he explained to Catti-brie, taking obvious pleasure in the grim warning as he tied her to the horse’s rear legs. “If you struggle, he will kick the life from you.”

Then Entreri was gone, blending into the night as though he were an extension of its darkness.

Jierdan dropped the pack back to the ground, frustrated, for its contents were merely standard traveling gear and revealed nothing about the owner. The soldier was a veteran of many campaigns and had bested man and orc alike a hundred times, but he was nervous now, sensing something unusual, and deadly, about the rider. A man with the courage to ride alone on the brutal course from Icewind Dale to Luskan was no novice to the ways of battle.

Jierdan was startled, then, but not too surprised, when the tip of a blade came to rest suddenly in the vulnerable hollow on the back of his neck, just below the base of his skull. He neither moved nor spoke, hoping that the rider would ask for some explanation before driving the weapon home.

Entreri could see that his pack had been searched, but he recognised the furred uniform and knew that this man was no thief. “We are beyond the borders of your city,” he said, holding his knife steady. “What business have you in my camp, soldier of Luskan?”

“I am Jierdan of the north gate,” he replied. “I have come to meet a rider from Icewind Dale.”

“What rider?”

“You.”

Entreri was perplexed and uncomfortable with the soldier’s response. Who had sent this man, and how had he known where to look? The assassin’s first thoughts centered on Regis’s party. Perhaps the halfling had arranged for some help from the city guard. Entreri slipped his knife back info its sheath, certain that he could retrieve it in time to foil any attack.

Jierdan understood the calm confidence of the act as well, and any thoughts that he might have had for striking at this man flew from him. “My master, desires your audience,” he said, thinking it wise to explain himself more completely. “A meeting to your mutual benefit.”

“Your master?” asked Entreri.

“A citizen of high standing,” Jierdan explained. “He has heard of your coming and believes that he may help with your quest.”

“What does he know of my business?” Entreri snapped, angered that someone had dared to spy on him. But he was relieved, too, for the involvement of some other power structure within the city explained much, and possibly eliminated the logical assumption that the halfling was behind this meeting.

Jierdan shrugged. “I am merely his courier. But I, too, can be of assistance to you. At the gate.”

“Damn the gate,” Entreri snarled. “I’ll take the wall easily enough. It is a more direct route to the places I seek.”

“Even so, I know of those places, and of the people who control them.”

The knife leaped back out, cutting in and stopping just before Jierdan’s throat. “You know much, but you explain little. You play dangerous games, soldier of Luskan.”

Jierdan didn’t blink. “Four heroes from Ten-Towns came into Luskan five days ago: a dwarf, a halfling, a barbarian, and a black elf.” Even Artemis Entreri couldn’t hide a hint of excitement at the confirmation of his suspicions, and Jierdan noted the signs. “Their exact location escapes me, but I know the area where they are hiding. Are you interested?”

The knife returned again to its sheath. “Wait here,” Entreri instructed. “I have a companion who shall travel with us.”

“My master said that you rode alone,” Jierdan queried.

Entreri’s vile grin sent a shiver through the soldier’s spine. “I acquired her,” he explained. “She is mine and that is all that you ever need to know.”

Jierdan didn’t press the point. His sigh of relief was audible when Entreri had disappeared from sight.

Catti-brie rode to Luskan untied and ungagged, but Entreri’s hold upon her was no less binding. His warning to her when he had retrieved her in the field had been succinct and undeniable. “A foolish move,” he had said, “and you die. And you die with the knowledge that the dwarf, Bruenor, shall suffer for your insolence.”

The assassin had told Jierdan no more about her, and the soldier didn’t ask, though the woman intrigued him more than a little. Dendybar would get the answers, Jierdan knew.

They moved into the city later that morning, under the suspicious eye of the Daykeeper of the North Gate. It had cost Jierdan a week’s pay to bribe them through, and the soldier knew he would owe even more when he returned that night, for the original deal with the Daykeeper allowed the passage of one outsider; nothing had been said about the woman. But if Jierdan’s actions brought him Dendybar’s favor, then they would be well worth the price.

According to the city code, the three gave up their horses at the stable just inside the wall, and Jierdan led Entreri and Catti-brie through the streets of the City of Sails, past the sleepy-eyed merchants and vendors who had been out since before dawn and into the very heart of the city.

The assassin was not surprised an hour later when they came upon a long grove of thick pine trees. He had suspected that Jierdan was somehow connected to this place. They passed through a break in the line and stood before the tallest structure in the city, the Hosttower of the Arcane.

“Who is your master?” Entreri asked bluntly.

Jierdan chuckled, his nerve bolstered by the sight of Dendybar’s tower. “You shall meet him soon enough.”

“I shall know now,” Entreri growled. “Or our meeting is ended. I am in the city, soldier, and I do not require your assistance any longer.”

“I could have the guards expel you,” Jierdan shot back. “Or worse!”

But Entreri had the last word. “They would never find the remains of your body,” he promised, the cold certainty of his tone draining the blood from Jierdan’s face.

Catti-brie noted the exchange with more than a passing concern for the soldier, wondering if the time might soon come when she could exploit the untrusting nature of her captors to her own advantage.

“I serve Dendybar the Mottled, Master of the North Spire,” Jierdan declared, drawing further strength from the mention of his powerful mentor’s name.

Entreri had heard the name before. The Hosttower was a common topic of the whisperings all around Luskan and the surrounding countryside, and the name of Dendybar the Mottled came up often in conversation, describing the wizard as an ambitious power seeker in the tower, and hinting at a dark and sinister side of the man that allowed him to get what he wanted. He was dangerous, but potentially a powerful ally. Entreri was pleased. “Take me to him now,” he told Jierdan. “Let us discover if we have business or no.”

Sydney was waiting to escort them from the entryroom of the Hosttower. Offering no introduction, and asking for none, she led them through the twisting passages and secret doors to the audience hall of Dendybar the Mottled. The wizard waited there in grand style, wearing his finest robes and with a fabulous luncheon set before him.

“Greetings, rider,” Dendybar said after the necessary, yet uncomfortable, moments of silence when each of the parties sized up the other. “I am Dendybar the Mottled, as you are already aware. Will you and your lovely companion partake of my table?”

His raspy voice grated on Catti-brie’s nerves, and though she hadn’t eaten since the supper the day before, she had no appetite for this man’s hospitality.

Entreri shoved her forward. “Eat,” he commanded.

She knew that Entreri was testing both her and the wizards. But it was time for her to test Entreri as well. “No,” she answered, looking him straight in the eye.

His backhand knocked her to the floor. Jierdan and Sydney started reflexively, but seeing no help forthcoming from Dendybar, quickly stopped and settled back to watch. Catti-brie moved away from the killer and remained in a defensive crouch.

Dendybar smiled at the assassin. “You have answered some of my questions about the girl,” he said with an amused smile. “What purpose does she serve?”

“I have my reasons,” was all that Entreri replied.

“Of course. And might I learn your name?”

Entreri’s expression did not change.

“You seek the four companions from Ten-Towns, I know,” Dendybar continued, having no desire to bandy the issue. “I seek them, as well, but for different reasons, I am sure.”

“You know nothing of my reasons,” Entreri replied.

“Nor do I care,” laughed the wizard. “We can help each other to our separate goals. That is all that interests me.”

“I ask for no help.”

Dendybar laughed again. “They are a mighty force, rider. You underestimate them.”

“Perhaps,” replied Entreri. “But you have asked my purpose, yet have not offered your own. What business does the Hosttower have with travelers from Ten-Towns?”

“Fairly asked,” answered Dendybar. “But I should wait until we have formalized an agreement before rendering an answer.”

“Then I shan’t sleep well for worry,” Entreri spat.

Again the wizard laughed. “You may change your mind before this is finished,” he said. “For now I offer a sign of good faith. The companions are in the city. Dockside. They were to stay in the Cutlass. Do you know it?”

Entreri nodded, now very interested in the wizard’s words.

“But we have lost them in the alleyways of the western city,” Dendybar explained, shooting a glare at Jierdan that made the soldier shift uneasily.

“And what is the price of this information?” Entreri asked.

“None,” replied the wizard. “Telling you helps my own cause. You will get what you want; what I desire will remain for me.”

Entreri smiled, understanding that Dendybar intended to use him as a hound to sniff out the prey.

“My apprentice will show you out,” Dendybar said, motioning to Sydney.

Entreri turned to leave, pausing to meet the gaze of Jierdan. “Ware my path, soldier,” the assassin warned. “Vultures eat after the cat has feasted!”

“When he has shown me to the drow, I’ll have his head,” Jierdan growled when they had gone.

“You shall keep clear of that one,” Dendybar instructed.

Jierdan looked at him, puzzled. “Surely you want him watched.”

“Surely,” agreed Dendybar. “But by Sydney, not you. Keep your anger,” Dendybar said to him, noting the outraged scowl. “I preserve your life. Your pride is great, indeed, and you have earned the right. But this one is beyond your prowess, my friend. His blade would have you before you ever knew he was there.”

Outside, Entreri led Catti-brie away from the Hosttower without a word, silently replaying and reviewing the meeting, for he knew that he had not seen the last of Dendybar and his cohorts.

Catti-brie was glad of the silence, too, engulfed in her own contemplations. Why would a wizard of the Hosttower be looking for Bruenor and the others? Revenge for Akar Kessell, the mad wizard that her friends had helped defeat before the last winter? She looked back to the treelike structure, and to the killer at her side, amazed and horrified at the attention her friends had brought upon themselves.

Then she looked into her own heart, reviving her spirit and her courage. Drizzt, Bruenor, Wulfgar, and Regis were going to need her help before this was all over. She must not fail them.