The Silent Blade

Often I sit and ponder the turmoil I feel when my blades are at rest, when all the world around me seems at peace. This is the supposed ideal for which I strive, the calm that we all hope will eventually return to us when we are at war, and yet, in these peaceful times-and they have been rare occurrences indeed in the more than seven decades of my life-I do not feel as if I have found perfection, but, rather, as if something is missing from my life.

It seems such an incongruous notion, and yet I have come to know that I am a warrior, a creature of action. In those times when there is no pressing need for action, I am not at ease. Not at all.

When the road is not filled with adventure, when there are no monsters to battle and no mountains to climb, boredom finds me. I have come to accept this truth of my life, this truth about who I am, and so, on those rare, empty occasions I can find a way to defeat the boredom. I can find a mountain peak higher than the last I climbed.

I see many of the same symptoms now in Wulfgar, returned to us from the grave, from the swirling darkness that was Errtu's corner of the Abyss. But I fear that Wulfgar's state has transcended simple boredom, spilling into the realm of apathy. Wulfgar, too, was a creature of action, but that doesn't seem to be the cure for his lethargy or his apathy. His own people now call out to him, begging action. They have asked him to assume leadership of the tribes. Even stubborn Berkthgar, who would have to give up that coveted position of rulership, supports Wulfgar. He and all the rest of them know, at this tenuous time, that above all others Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, could bring great gains to the nomadic barbarians of Icewind Dale.

Wulfgar will not heed that call. It is neither humility nor weariness stopping him, I recognize, nor any fears that he cannot handle the position or live up to the expectations

of those begging him. Any of those problems could be overcome, could be reasoned through or supported by Wulfgar's friends, myself included. But, no, it is none of those rectifiable things.

It is simply that he does not care.

Could it be that his own agonies at the clawed hands of Errtu were so great and so enduring that he has lost his ability to empathize with the pain of others? Has he seen too much horror, too much agony, to hear their cries?

I fear this above all else, for it is a loss that knows no precise cure. And yet, to be honest, I see it clearly etched in Wulfgar's features, a state of self-absorption where too many memories of his own recent horrors cloud his vision. Perhaps he does not even recognize someone else's pain. Or perhaps, if he does see it, he dismisses it as trivial next to the monumental trials he suffered for those six years as Errtu's prisoner. Loss of empathy might well be the most enduring and deep-cutting scar of all, the silent blade of an unseen enemy, tearing at our hearts and stealing more than our strength. Stealing our will, for what are we without empathy? What manner of joy might we find in our lives if we cannot understand the joys and pains of those around us, if we cannot share in a greater community? I remember my years in the Underdark after I ran out of Menzoberranzan. Alone, save the occasional visits from Guenhwyvar, I survived those long years through my own imagination.

I am not certain that Wulfgar even has that capacity left to him, for imagination requires introspection, a reaching within one's thoughts, and I fear that every time my friend so looks inward, all he sees are the minions of Errtu, the sludge and horrors of the Abyss.

He is surrounded by friends, who love him and will try with all their hearts to support him and help him climb out of Errtu's emotional dungeon. Perhaps Catti-brie, the woman he once loved (and perhaps still does love) so deeply, will prove pivotal to his recovery. It pains me to watch them together, I admit. She treats Wulfgar with such tenderness and compassion, but I know that he feels not her gentle touch. Better that she slap his face, eye him sternly, and show him the truth of his lethargy. I know this and yet I cannot tell her to do so, for their relationship is much more complicated than that. I have nothing but Wulfgar's best interests in my mind and my heart now, and yet, if I showed Catti-brie a way that seemed less than compassionate, it could be, and would be-by Wulfgar at least, in his present state of mind— construed as the interference of a jealous suitor.

Not true. For though I do not know Catti-brie's honest feelings toward this man who once was to be her husband-for she has become quite guarded with her feelings of late-I do recognize that Wulfgar is not capable of love at this time.

Not capable of love … are there any sadder words to describe a man? I think not, and wish that I could now assess Wulfgar's state of mind differently. But love, honest love, requires empathy. It is a sharing-of joy, of pain, of laughter, of tears. Honest love makes one's soul a reflection

of the partner's moods. And as a room seems larger when it is lined with mirrors, so do the joys become amplified. And as the individual items within the mirrored room seem less acute, so does pain diminish and fade, stretched thin by the sharing.

That is the beauty of love, whether in passion or friendship. A sharing that multiplies the joys and thins the pains. Wulfgar is surrounded now by friends, all willing to engage in such sharing, as it once was between us. Yet he cannot so engage us, cannot let loose those guards that he necessarily put in place when surrounded by the likes of Errtu.

He has lost his empathy. I can only pray that he will find it again, that time will allow him to open his heart and soul to those deserving, for without empathy he will find no purpose. Without purpose, he will find no satisfaction. Without satisfaction, he will find no contentment, and without contentment, he will find no joy.

And we, all of us, will have no way to help him.

— Drizzt Do'Urden

Chapter 1 A STRANGER AT HOME

Artemis Entreri stood on a rocky hill overlooking the vast, dusty city, trying to sort through the myriad feelings that swirled within him. He reached up to wipe the blowing dust and sand from his lips and from the hairs of his newly grown goatee. Only as he wiped it did he realize that he hadn't shaved the rest of his face in several days, for now the small beard, instead of standing distinct upon his face, fell to ragged edges across his cheeks. Entreri didn't care.

The wind pulled many strands of his long hair from the tie at the back of his head, the wayward lengths slapping across his face, stinging his dark eyes. Entreri didn't care.

He just stared down at Calimport and tried hard to stare inside himself. The man had lived nearly two-thirds of his life in the sprawling city on the southern coast, had come to prominence as a warrior and a killer there. It was the only place that he could ever really call home. Looking down on it now, brown and dusty, the relentless desert sun flashed brilliantly off the white marble of the greater homes. It also illuminated the many hovels, shacks, and torn tents set along roads-muddy roads only because they had no proper sewers for drainage. Looking down on Calimport now, the returning assassin didn't know how to feel. Once, he had known his place in the world. He had reached the pinnacle of his nefarious profession, and any who spoke his name did so with reverence and fear. When a pasha hired Artemis Entreri to kill a man, that man was soon dead. Without exception. And despite the many enemies he had obviously made, the assassin had been able to walk the streets of Calimport openly, not from shadow to shadow, in all confidence that none would be bold enough to act against him.

No one would dare shoot an arrow at Artemis Entreri, for they would know that the single shot must be perfect, must

finish this man who seemed above the antics of mere mortals, else he would then come looking for them. And he would find them, and he would kill them.

A movement to the side, the slight shift of a shadow, caught Entreri's attention. He shook his head and sighed, not really surprised, when a cloaked figure leaped out from the rocks, some twenty feet ahead of him and stood blocking the path, arms crossed over his burly chest.

"Going to Calimport?" the man asked, his voice thick with a southern accent.

Entreri didn't answer, just kept his head straight ahead, though his eyes darted to the many rocks lining both sides of the trail.

"You must pay for the passage," the burly man went on. "I am your guide." With that he bowed and came up showing a toothless grin.

Entreri had heard many tales of this common game of money through intimidation, though never before had one been bold enough to block his way. Yes, indeed, he realized, he had been gone a long time. Still he didn't answer, and the burly man shifted, throwing wide his cloak to reveal a sword under his belt.

"How many coins do you offer?" the man asked.

Entreri started to tell him to move aside but changed his mind and only sighed again.

Deaf?" said the man, and he drew out his sword and advanced yet another step. "You pay me, or me and my friends will take the coins from your torn body."

Entreri didn't reply, didn't move, didn't draw his jeweled dagger, his only weapon. He just stood there, and his ambivalence seemed to anger the burly man all the more.

The man glanced to the side-to Entreri's left-just slightly, but the assassin caught the look clearly. He followed it to one of the robber's companions, holding a bow in the shadows between two huge rocks.

"Now," said the burly man. "Last chance for you."

Entreri quietly hooked his toe under a rock, but made no movement other than that. He stood waiting, staring at the burly man, but with the archer on the edge of his vision. So well could the assassin read the movements of men, the slightest muscle twitch, the blink of an eye, that it was he who moved first. Entreri leaped out diagonally, ahead and to the left, rolling over and kicking out with his right foot. He launched the stone the archer's way, not to hit the man-that would have been above the skill even of Artemis Entreri-but in the hopes of distracting him. As he came over into the somersault, the assassin let his cloak fly wildly, hoping it might catch and slow the arrow.

He needn't have worried, for the archer missed badly and would have even if Entreri hadn't moved at all.

Coming up from the roll, Entreri set his feet and squared himself to the charging swordsmen, aware also that two other men were coming over the rocks at either side of the trail.

Still showing no weapon, Entreri unexpectedly charged ahead, ducking the swipe of the sword at the last possible instant, then came up hard behind the swishing blade, one hand catching the attacker's chin, the other snapping behind

the man's head, grabbing his hair. A twist and turn flipped the swordsman on the ground. Entreri let go, running his hand up the man's weapon arm to fend off any attempted attacks. The man went down on his back hard. At that moment Entreri stomped down on his throat. The man's grasp on the sword weakened, almost as if he were handing the weapon to Entreri.

The assassin leaped away, not wanting to get his feet tangled as the other two came in, one straight ahead, the other from behind. Out flashed Entreri's sword, a straight left-handed thrust, followed by a dazzling, rolling stab. The man easily stepped back out of Entreri's reach, but the attack hadn't been designed to score a hit anyway. Entreri flipped the sword to his right hand, an overhand grip, then stepped back suddenly, so suddenly, turning his hand and the blade. He brought it across his body, then stabbed it out behind him. The assassin felt the tip enter the man's chest and heard the gasp of air as he sliced a lung.

Instinct alone had Entreri spinning, turning to the right and keeping the attacker impaled. He brought the man about as a shield against the archer, who did indeed fire again. But again, the man missed badly, and this time the arrow burrowed into the ground several feet in front of Entreri.

"Idiot," the assassin muttered, and with a sudden jerk, he dropped his latest victim to the dirt, bringing the sword about in the same fluid movement. So brilliantly had he executed the maneuver that the remaining swordsman finally understood his folly, turned about, and fled.

Entreri spun again, threw the sword in the general direction of the archer, and bolted for cover.

A long moment slipped past.

Where is he?" the archer called out, obvious fear and frustration in his voice. "Merk, do you see him?"

Another long moment passed.

"Where is he?" the archer cried again, growing frantic. "Merk, where is he?"

"Right behind you" came a whisper. A jeweled dagger flashed, slicing the bowstring and then, before the stunned man could begin to react, resting against the front of his throat.

"Please," the man stammered, trembling so badly that his movements, not Entreri's, caused the first nick from that fine blade. "I have children, yes. Many, many children. Seventeen …"

He ended in a gurgle as Entreri cut him from ear to ear, bringing his foot up against the man's back even as he did, then kicking him facedown to the ground.

"Then you should have chosen a safer career," Entreri answered, though the man could not hear.

Peering out from the rocks, the assassin soon spotted the fourth of the group, moving from shadow to shadow across the way. The man was obviously heading for Calimport but was simply too scared to jump out and run in the open. Entreri knew that he could catch the man, or perhaps re-string the bow and take him down from this spot. But he didn't, for he hardly cared. Not even bothering to search the bodies for loot, Entreri wiped and sheathed his magical dagger and moved back onto the road. Yes, he had been gone a long, long time.

Before he had left this city, Artemis Entreri had known his place in the world and in Calimport. He thought of that now, staring at the city after an absence of several years. He understood the shadowy world he had inhabited and realized that many changes had likely taken place in those alleys. Old associates would be gone, and his reputation would not likely carry him through the initial meetings with the new, often self-proclaimed leaders of the various guilds and sects.

"What have you done to me, Drizzt Do'Urden?" he asked with a chuckle, for this great change in the life of Artemis Entreri had begun when a certain Pasha Pook had sent him on a mission to retrieve a magical ruby pendant from a runaway halfling. An easy enough task, Entreri had believed. The halfling, Regis, was known to the assassin and should not have proven a difficult adversary.

Little did Entreri know at that time that Regis had done a marvelously cunning job of surrounding himself with powerful allies, particularly the dark elf. How many years had it been, Entreri pondered, since he had first encountered Drizzt Do'Urden? Since he had first met his warrior equal, who could rightly hold a mirror up to Entreri and show the lie that was his existence? Nearly a decade, he realized, and while he had grown older and perhaps a bit slower, the drow elf, who might live six centuries, had aged not at all.

Yes, Drizzt had started Entreri on a path of dangerous introspection. The blackness had only been amplified when Entreri had gone after Drizzt again, along with the remnants of the drow's family. Drizzt had beaten Entreri on a high ledge outside Mithral Hall, and the assassin would have died, except that an opportunistic dark elf by the name of Jarlaxle had rescued him. Jarlaxle had then taken him to Menzoberranzan, the vast city of the drow, the stronghold of Lolth, Demon Queen of Chaos. The human assassin had found a different standing down there in a city of intrigue and brutality. There, everyone was an assassin, and Entreri, despite his tremendous talents at the murderous art, was only human, a fact that relegated him to the bottom of the social ladder.

But it was more than simple perceptual standing that had struck the assassin profoundly during his stay in the city of drow. It was the realization of the emptiness of his existence. There, in a city full of Entreris, he had come to recognize the folly of his confidence, of his ridiculous notion that his passionless dedication to pure fighting skill had somehow elevated him above the rabble. He knew that now, looking down at Calimport, at the city he had known as a home, at his last refuge, it seemed, in all the world.

In dark and mysterious Menzoberranzan, Artemis Entreri had been humbled.

As he made his way to the distant city, Entreri wondered many times if he truly desired this return. His first days would be perilous, he knew, but it was not fear for the end of his life that brought a hesitance to his normally cocky stride. It was fear of continuing his life.

Outwardly, little had changed in Calimport-the town of a million beggars, Entreri liked to call it. True to form, he passed by dozens of pitiful wretches, lying in rags, or

naked, along the sides of the road, most of them likely in the same spot the city guards had thrown them that morning, clearing the way for the golden-gilded carriages of the important merchants. They reached toward Entreri with trembling, bony fingers, arms so weak and emaciated that they could not hold them up for even the few seconds it took the heartless man to stride past them.

Where to go? he wondered. His old employer, Pasha Pook, was long dead, the victim of Drizzt's powerful panther companion after Entreri had done as the man had bade him and returned Regis and the ruby pendant. Entreri had not remained in the city for long after that unfortunate incident, for he had brought Regis in and that had led to the demise of a powerful figure, ultimately a black stain on Entreri's record among his less-than-merciful associates. He could have mended the situation, probably quite easily, by simply offering his normally invaluable services to another powerful guildmaster or pasha, but he had chosen the road. Entreri had been bent on revenge against Drizzt, not for the killing of Pook-the assassin cared little about that-but because he and Drizzt had battled fiercely without conclusion in the city's sewers, a fight that Entreri still believed he should have won.

Walking along the dirty streets of Calimport now, he had to wonder what reputation he had left behind. Certainly many other assassins would have spoken ill of him in his absence, would have exaggerated Entreri's failure in the Regis incident in order to strengthen their own positions within the gutter pecking order.

Entreri smiled as he considered the fact, and he knew it to be fact, that those ill words against him would have been spoken in whispers only. Even in his absence, those other killers would fear retribution. Perhaps he didn't know his place in the world any longer. Perhaps Menzoberranzan had held a dark. . no, not dark, but merely empty mirror before his eyes, but he could not deny that he still enjoyed the respect.

Respect he might have to earn yet again, he pointedly reminded himself.

As he moved along the familiar streets, more and more memories came back to him. He knew where most of the guild houses had been located, and suspected that, unless there had been some ambitious purge by the lawful leaders of the city, many still stood intact, and probably brimming with the associates he had once known. Pook's house had been shaken to the core by the killing of the wretched pasha and, subsequently, by the appointment of the lazy halfling Regis as Pook's successor. Entreri had taken care of that minor problem by taking care of Regis, and yet, despite the chaos imposed upon that house, when Entreri had gone north with the halfling in tow, the house of Pook had survived. Perhaps it still stood, though the assassin could only guess as to who might be ruling it now.

That would have been a logical place for Entreri to go and rebuild his base of power within the city, but he simply shrugged and walked past the side avenue that would lead to it. He thought he was merely wandering aimlessly, but soon enough he came to another familiar region and realized that

he had subconsciously aimed for this area, perhaps in an effort to regain his heart.

These were the streets where a young Artemis Entreri had first made his mark in Calimport, where he, barely a teenager, had defeated all challengers to his supremacy, where he had battled the man sent by Theebles Royuset, the lieutenant in powerful Pasha Basadoni's guild. Entreri had killed that thug and had later killed ugly Theebles, the clever murder moving him into Basadoni's generous favor. He had become a lieutenant in one of the most powerful guilds of Calimport, of all of Calimshan, at the tender age of fourteen.

But now he hardly cared, and recalling the story did not even bring the slightest hint of a smile to his face. He thought back further, to the torment that had landed him here in the first place, trials too great for a boy to overcome, deception and betrayal by everyone he had known and trusted, most pointedly his own father. Still, he didn't care, couldn't even feel the pain any longer. It was meaningless, emptiness, without merit or point.

He saw a woman in the shadows of one hovel, hanging washed clothes to dry. She shifted deeper into the shadows, obviously wary. He understood her concern, for he was a stranger here, dressed too richly with his thick, well-stitched traveling cloak to belong in the shanty town. Strangers in these brutal places usually brought danger.

"From there to there," came a call, the voice of a young man, full of pride and edged with fear. Entreri turned slowly to see the youth, a tall and gangly lad, holding a club laced with spikes, swinging it nervously.

Entreri stared at him hard, seeing himself in the boy's face. No, not himself, he realized, for this one was too obviously nervous. This one would likely not survive for long.

"From there to there!" the boy said more loudly, pointing with his free hand to the end of the street where Entreri had entered, to the far end, where the assassin had been going.

"Your pardon, young master," Entreri said, dipping a slight bow, and feeling, as he did, his jeweled dagger, set on his belt under the folds of his cloak. A flick of his wrist could easily propel that dagger the fifteen feet, past the awkward youth's defenses and deep into his throat.

"Master," the lad echoed, his tone as much that of an incredulous question as an assertion. "Yes, master," he decided, apparently liking the title. "Master of this street, of all these streets, and none walk them without the permission of Taddio." As he finished, he prodded his thumb repeatedly into his chest.

Entreri straightened, and for just an instant, death flashed across his black eyes and the words "dead master" echoed through his thoughts. The lad had just challenged him, and the Artemis Entreri of a few years previous, a man who accepted and conquered all challenges, would have simply destroyed the youth where he stood.

But now that flash of pride whisked by, leaving Entreri unfazed and uninsulted. He gave a resigned sigh, wondering if he would find yet another stupid fight this day. And for

what? he wondered, facing this pitiful, confused little boy on an empty street over which no rational person would even deign to claim ownership. "I begged you pardon, young master," he said calmly. "I did not know, for I am new to the region and ignorant of your customs."

"Then you should learn!" the lad replied angrily, gaining courage in Entreri's submissive response and coming forward a couple of strong strides.

Entreri shook his head, his hand starting for the dagger, but going, instead to his belt purse. He pulled out a gold coin and tossed it to the feet of the strutting youth.

The boy, who drank from sewers and ate the scraps he could rummage from the alleys behind the merchant houses, could not hide his surprise and awe at such a treasure. He regained his composure a moment later, though, and looked back at Entreri with a superior posture. "It is not enough," he said.

Entreri threw out another gold coin, and a silver. "That is all that I have, young master," he said, holding his hands out wide.

"If I search you and learn differently. ." the lad threatened.

Entreri sighed again, and decided that if the youth approached he would kill him quickly and mercifully.

The boy bent and scooped up the three coins. "If you come back to the domain of Taddio, have with you more coins," he declared. "I warn you. Now begone! Out the same end of the street you entered!"

Entreri looked back the way he had come. In truth, one direction seemed as good as any other to him at that time, so he gave a slight bow and walked back, out of the domain of Taddio, who had no idea how lucky he had been this day.

The building stood three full stories and, decorated with elaborate sculptures and shining marble, was truly the most impressive abode of all the thieving guilds. Normally such shadowy figures tried to keep a low profile, living in houses that seemed unremarkable from the outside, though they were, in truth, palatial within. Not so with the house of Pasha Basadoni. The old man-and he was ancient now, closer to ninety than to eighty-enjoyed his luxuries, and enjoyed showing the power and splendor of his guild to all who would look.

In a large chamber in the middle of the second floor, the gathering room for Basadoni's principle commanders, the two men and one woman who truly operated the day-to-day activities of the extensive guild entertained a young street thug. He was more a boy than a man, an unimpressive figure held in power by the backing of Pasha Basadoni and surely not by his own wiles.

"At least he is loyal," remarked Hand, a quiet and subtle thief, the master of shadows, when Taddio left them. "Two gold pieces and one silver-no small take for one working that gutter section."

"If that is all he received from his visitor," Sharlotta

Vespers answered with a dismissive chuckle. Sharlotta stood tallest of the three captains, an inch above six feet, her body slender, her movements graceful-so graceful that Pasha Basadoni had nicknamed her his "Willow Tree." It was no secret that Basadoni had taken Sharlotta as his lover and still used her in that manner on those rare occasions when his old body was up to the task. It was common knowledge that Sharlotta had used those liaisons to her benefit and had climbed the ranks through Basadoni's bed. She willingly admitted as much, usually just before she killed the man or woman who had complained about it. A shake of her head sent waist-length black hair flipping back over one shoulder, so that Hand could see her wry expression clearly.

"If Taddio had received more, then he would have delivered more," Hand assured her, his tone, despite his anger, revealing that hint of frustration he and their other companion, Kadran Gordeon, always felt when dealing with the condescending Sharlotta. Hand ruled the quiet services of Basadoni's operation, the pickpockets and the prostitutes who worked the market, while Kadran Gordeon dealt with the soldiers of the street army. But Sharlotta, the Willow Tree, had Basadoni's ear above them all. She served as the principal attendant of the Pasha and as the voice of the now little seen old man.

When Basadoni finally died, these three would fight for control, no doubt, and while those who understood only the peripheral truths of the guild would likely favor the brash and loud Kadran Gordeon, those, such as Hand, who had a better feeling for the true inner workings, understood that Sharlotta Vespers had already taken many, many steps to secure and strengthen her position with or without the specter of Basadoni looming over them.

"How many words will we waste on the workings of a boy?" Kadran Gordeon complained. "Three new merchants have set up kiosks in the market a stone's throw from our house without our permission. That is the more important matter, the one requiring our full attention."

"We have already talked it through," Sharlotta replied. "You want us to give you permission to send out your soldiers, perhaps even a battle-mage, to teach the merchants better. You will not get that from us at this time."

"If we wait for Pasha Basadoni to finally speak on this matter, other merchants will come to the belief that they, too, need not pay us for the privilege of operating within the boundaries of our protective zone." He turned to Hand, the small man often his ally in arguments with Sharlotta. But the thief was obviously distracted, staring down at one of the coins the boy Taddio had given to him. Sensing that he was being watched, Hand looked up at the other two.

"What is it?" Kadran prompted.

"I've not seen one like this," Hand explained, flipping the coin to the burly man.

Kadran caught it and quickly examined it, then, with a surprised expression, handed it over to Sharlotta. "Nor have I seen one with this stamp," he admitted. "Not of the city, I believe, nor of anywhere in Calimshan."

Sharlotta studied the coin carefully, a flicker of

recognition coming to her striking light green eyes. "The crescent moon," she remarked, then flipped it over. "Profile of a unicorn. This is a coin from the region of Silverymoon."

The other two looked to each, surprised, as was Sharlotta, by the revelation. "Silverymoon?" Kadran echoed incredulously.

"A city far to the north, east of Waterdeep," Sharlotta replied.

"I know where Silverymoon lies," Kadran replied dryly. "The domain of Lady Alustriel, I believe. That is not what I find surprising."

"Why would a merchant, if it was a merchant, of Silverymoon find himself walking in Taddio's worthless shanty town?" Hand asked, echoing Kadran's suspicions perfectly.

"Indeed, I thought it curious that anyone carrying such a treasure of more than two gold pieces would be in that region," Kadran agreed, pursing his lips and twisting his mouth in his customary manner that sent one side of his long and curvy mustache up far higher than the other, giving his whole dark face an unbalanced appearance. "Now it seems to have become more curious by far."

"A man who wandered into Calimport probably came in through the docks," Hand reasoned, "and found himself lost in the myriad of streets and smells. So much of the city looks the same, after all. It would not be difficult for a foreigner to wander wayward."

"I do not believe in coincidences," Sharlotta replied. She tossed the coin back to Hand. "Take it to one of our wizard associates-Giunta the Diviner will suffice. Perhaps there remains enough of a trace of the previous owner's identity upon the coins that Giunta can locate him."

"It seems a tremendous effort for one too afraid of the boy to even refuse payment," Hand replied.

"I do not believe in coincidences," Sharlotta repeated. "I do not believe that anyone could be so intimidated by that pitiful Taddio, unless it is someone who knows that he works as a front for Pasha Basadoni. And I do not like the idea that one so knowledgeable of our operation took it upon himself to wander into our territory unannounced. Was he, perhaps, looking for something? Seeking a weakness?" "You presume much," Kadran put in. "Only where danger is concerned," Sharlotta retorted. "I consider every person an enemy until he has proven himself differently, and I find that in knowing my enemies, I can prepare against anything they might send against me."

There was little mistaking the irony of her words, aimed as they were at Kadran Gordeon, but even the dangerous soldier had to nod his agreement with Sharlotta's perception and precaution. It wasn't every day that a merchant bearing coins from far away Silverymoon wandered into one of Calimport's desolate shanty towns.

He knew this house better than any in all the city. Within those brown, unremarkable walls, within the wrapper of a common warehouse, hung golden-stitched tapestries and

magnificent weapons. Beyond the always barred side door, where an old beggar now huddled for meager shelter, lay a room of beautiful dancing ladies, all swirling veils and alluring perfumes, warm baths in scented water, and cuisine delicacies from every corner of the Realms.

This house had belonged to Pasha Pook. After his demise, it had been given by Entreri's archenemy to Regis the halfling, who had ruled briefly, until Entreri had decided the little fool had ruled long enough. When Entreri had left Calimport with Regis, the last time he had seen the dusty city, the house was in disarray, with several factions fighting for power. He suspected that Quentin Bodeau, a veteran burglar with more than twenty years' experience in the guild, had won the fight. What he didn't know, given the confusion and outrage within the ranks, was whether the fight had been worth winning. Perhaps another guild had moved into the territory. Perhaps the inside of this brown warehouse was now as unremarkable as the outside.

Entreri chuckled at the possibilities, but they could not find any lasting hold within his thoughts. Perhaps he would eventually sneak into the place, just to satisfy his mild curiosity. Perhaps not.

He lingered by the side door, moving close enough past the apparently one-legged beggar, to recognize the cunning tie that bound his second leg up tight against the back of his thigh. The man was a sentry, obviously, and most of the few copper coins that Entreri saw within the opened sack before him had been placed there by the man, salting the purse and heightening the disguise.

No matter, the assassin thought. Playing the part of an ignorant visitor to Calimport, he walked up before the man and reached into his own purse, producing a silver coin and dropping it in the sack. He noted the not-really-old man's eyes flicker open a bit wider when he pulled back his cloak to go to his purse, revealing the hilt of his unique jeweled dagger, a weapon well known in the alleys and shadows of Calimport.

Had he been foolish in showing that weapon? Entreri wondered as he walked away. He hadn't any intention of revealing himself when he came to this place, but also, he had no intention of not revealing himself. The question and the worry, like his musing on the fate of Pook's house, found no hold in his wandering thoughts. Perhaps he had erred. Perhaps he had shown the dagger in a desperate bid for some excitement. And perhaps the man had recognized it as the mark of Entreri, or possibly he had noticed it only because it was indeed a truly beautiful weapon.

It didn't matter.

LaValle worked very hard to keep his breathing steady and to ignore the murmurs of those nervous associates beside him as he peered deeply into the crystal ball later that same night. The agitated sentry had reported the incident outside, a gift of a strange coin from a man walking with the quiet and confident gait of a warrior and wearing a dagger

befitting the captain of a king's guard.

The description of that dagger had sent the more veteran members of the house, the wizard LaValle included, into a frenzy. Now LaValle, a longtime associate of the deadly Artemis Entreri, who had seen that dagger many times and uncomfortably close far too often had used that prior knowledge and his crystal ball to seek out the stranger. His magical eyes combed the streets of Calimport, sifting from shadow to shadow, and then he felt the growing image and knew indeed that the dagger, Entreri's dagger, was back in the city. Now as the image began to take shape, the wizard and those standing beside him, a very nervous Quentin Bodeau and two younger cocky killers, would learn if it was indeed the deadliest of assassins who carried it.

A small bedroom drifted into focus.

"That is Tomnoddy's Inn," explained Dog Perry, who called himself Dog Perry the Heart because of his practice of cutting out a victim's heart fast enough that the dying man could witness its last beats (though none other than Dog Perry himself had ever actually seen this feat performed).

LaValle held up a hand to silence the man as the image became sharper, focusing on the belt looped over the bottom post of the bed, a belt that included the telltale dagger.

"It is Entreri's," Quentin Bodeau said with a groan.

A man walked past the belt, stripped to the waist, revealing a body honed by years and years of hard practice, muscles twitching with every movement.

Quentin put on a quizzical expression, studying the man, the long hair, the goatee and scratchy, unkempt beard. He had always known Entreri to be meticulous in every detail, a perfectionist to the extreme. He looked to LaValle for an answer.

"It is he," the wizard, who knew Artemis Entreri perhaps better than anyone else in all the city, answered grimly.

"What does that mean?" Quentin asked. "Has he returned as friend or foe?"

"Indifferent, more likely," LaValle replied. "Artemis Entreri has always been a free spirit, never showing allegiance too greatly to any particular guild. He wanders through the treasuries of each, hiring to the highest bidder for his exemplary services." As he spoke, the wizard glanced over at the two younger killers, neither of whom knew Entreri other than by reputation. Chalsee Anguaine, the younger, tittered nervously-and wisely, LaValle knew-but Dog Perry squinted his eyes as he considered the man in the crystal ball. He was jealous, LaValle understood, for Dog Perry wanted, above all else, that which Entreri possessed: the supreme reputation as the deadliest of assassins.

"Perhaps we should find a need for his services quickly," Quentin Bodeau reasoned, obviously trying hard not to sound nervous, for in the dangerous world of Calimport's thieving guilds, nervousness equalled weakness. "In that way we might better learn the man's intentions and purpose in returning to Calimport."

"Or we could just kill him," Dog Perry put in, and LaValle bit back a chuckle at the so-predictable viewpoint and also at his knowledge that Dog Perry simply did not

understand the truth of Artemis Entreri. No friend or fan of the brash young thug, LaValle almost hoped that Quentin would give Dog Perry his wish and send him right out after Entreri.

But Quentin, though he had never dealt with Entreri personally, remembered well the many, many stories of the assassin's handiwork, and the expression the guildmaster directed at Dog Perry was purely incredulous.

"Hire him if you need him," said LaValle. "Or if not, then merely watch him without threat."

"He is one man, and we are a guild of a hundred," Dog Perry protested, but no one was listening to him anymore.

Quentin started to reply, but stopped short, though his expression told LaValle exactly what he was thinking. He feared that Entreri had come back to take the guild, obviously, and not without some rationale. Certainly the deadliest of assassins still had many powerful connections within the city, enough for Entreri, with his own amazing skills, to topple the likes of Quentin Bodeau. But LaValle did not think Quentin's fears well-founded, for the wizard understood Entreri enough to realize that the man had never craved such a position of responsibility. Entreri was a loner, not a guildmaster. After he had deposed the halfling Regis from his short rein as guildmaster, the place had been Entreri's for the taking, and yet he had walked away, just walked out of Calimport altogether, leaving all of the others to fight it out.

No, LaValle did not believe that Entreri had come back to take this guild or any other, and he did well to silently convey that to the nervous Quentin. "Whatever our ultimate choices, it seems obvious to me that we should first merely observe our dangerous friend," the wizard said, for the benefit of the two younger lieutenants, "to learn if he is friend, foe, or indifferent. It makes no sense to go against one as strong as Entreri until we have determined that we must, and that, I do not believe to be the case."

Quentin nodded, happy to hear the confirmation, and with a bow LaValle took his leave, the others following suit.

"If Entreri is a threat, then Entreri should be eliminated," Dog Perry said to the wizard, catching up to him in the corridor outside his room. "Master Bodeau would have seen that truth had your advice been different."

LaValle stared long and hard at the upstart, not appreciating being talked to in that manner from one half his age and with so little experience in such matters, for LaValle had been dealing with dangerous killers such as Artemis Entreri before Dog Perry was even born. "I'll not say that I disagree with you," he said to the man.

"Then why your counsel to Bodeau?"

"If Entreri has come into Calimport at the request of another guild, then any move by Master Bodeau could bring dire consequences to our guild," the wizard replied, improvising as he went, for he didn't believe a word of what he was saying. "You know that Artemis Entreri learned his trade under Pasha Basadoni himself, of course."

"Of course," Dog Perry lied.

LaValle struck a pensive pose, tapping one finger across his pursed lips. "It may prove to be no problem at all to

us," he explained. "Surely when news of Entreri's return-an older and slower Entreri, you see, and one, perhaps, with few connections left within the city-spreads across the streets, the dangerous man will himself be marked."

"He has made many enemies," Dog Perry reasoned eagerly, seeming quite intrigued by LaValle's words and tone.

LaValle shook his head. "Most enemies of the Artemis Entreri who left Calimport those years ago are dead," the wizard explained. "No, not enemies, but rivals. How many young and cunning assassins crave the power that they might find with a single stroke of the blade?"

Dog Perry narrowed his eyes, just beginning to catch on.

"One who kills Entreri, in essence, claims credit for killing all of those whom Entreri killed," LaValle went on. "With a single stroke of the blade might such a reputation be earned. The killer of Entreri will almost instantly become the highest priced assassin in all the city." He shrugged and held up his hands, then pushed through his door, leaving an obviously intrigued Dog Perry standing in the hallway with the echoes of his words.

In truth, LaValle hardly cared whether the young troublemaker took those words to heart or not, but he was indeed concerned about the return of the assassin. Entreri unnerved the wizard, more so than all the other dangerous characters that LaValle had worked beside over the many years. LaValle had survived by posing a threat to no one, by serving without judgment whomever it was that had come to power in the guild. He had served Pasha Pook admirably, and when Pook had been disposed, he had switched his allegiance easily and completely to Regis, convincing even Regis's protective dark elf and dwarven friends that he was no threat. Similarly, when Entreri had gone against Regis, LaValle had stepped back and let the two decide the issue (though, of course, there had never been any doubt whatsoever in LaValle's mind as to which of those two would triumph), then throwing his loyalty to the victor. And so it had gone, down the line, master after master during the tumult immediately following

Entreri's departure, to the present incarnation of guildmaster, Quentin Bodeau.

Concerning Entreri, though, there remained one subtle difference. Over the decades, LaValle had built a considerable insulating defense about him. He worked very hard to make no enemies in a world where everyone seemed to be in deadly competition, but he also understood that even a benign bystander could get caught and slaughtered in the common battles. Thus he had built a defense of powerful magic and felt that if one such as Dog Perry decided, for whatever reason, that he would be better off without LaValle around, he would find the wizard more than ready and able to defend himself. Not so with Entreri, LaValle knew, and that is why even the sight of the man so unnerved him. In watching the assassin over the years, LaValle had come to know that where Entreri was concerned, there simply weren't enough defenses.

He sat on his bed until very late that night, trying to remember every detail of every dealing he had ever had with the assassin and trying to figure out what, if anything in

particular, had brought Entreri back to Calimport.

Chapter 2 RUNNING THE HORSE

Their pace held slow but steady. The springtime tundra, the hardening grasp of ice dissipating, had become like a great sponge, swelling in places to create mounds higher even than Wulfgar. The ground was sucking at their boots with every step, as if it were trying desperately to hold them. Drizzt, the lightest on his feet, had the easiest time of it-of those walking, at least. Regis, sitting comfortably up high on the shoulders of an uncomplaining Wulfgar, felt no muddy wetness in his warm boots. Still, the other three, who had spent so many years in Icewind Dale and were accustomed to the troubles of springtime travel, plodded on without complaint. They knew from the outset that the slowest and most tiresome part of their journey would be the first leg, until they got around the western edges of the Spine of the World and out of Icewind Dale.

Every now and then they found patches of great stones, the remnants of a road built long ago from Ten Towns to the western pass, but these did little more than assure them that they were on the right path, something that seemed of little importance in the vast open stretches of the tundra. All they really had to do was keep the towering mountains to the south, and they would not lose their way.

Drizzt led them and tried to pick a course that followed the thickest regions of sprouting yellow grass, for this, at least, afforded some stability atop the slurpy ground. Of course-and the drow and his Mends knew it-tall grass might also serve as camouflage for the dangerous tundra yetis, always hungry beasts that often feasted on unwary travelers.

With Drizzt Do'Urden leading them, though, the friends did not consider themselves unwary.

They put the river far behind them and found yet another stretch of that ancient road when the sun was halfway to the western horizon. There, just beyond one long rock slab, they also came upon some recent tracks.

"Wagon," Catti-brie remarked, seeing the long lines of deep grooves.

"Two," Regis commented, noting the twin lines at each groove.

Catti-brie shook her head. "One," she corrected, following the tracks, noting how they sometimes joined and other times separated, and always with a wider track as they moved apart. "Sliding in the mud as it rolled along, its back end often unaligned with the front."

"Well done," Drizzt congratulated her, for he, too, had come to the same conclusion. "A single wagon traveling east and not more than a day ahead of us."

"A merchant wagon left Bremen three days before we arrived there," Regis, always current on the goings-on of Ten Towns, commented.

"Then it would seem they are having great difficulty navigating the marshy ground," Drizzt replied.

"And might be other troubles they're findin'," came

Bruenor's call from a short distance to the side, the dwarf stooping low over a small hump of grass.

The friends moved to join him and saw immediately his cause for concern: several tracks pressed deep into the mud.

"Yetis," the dwarf said distastefully. "And they came right to the wagon tracks and then went back. They're knowin' this for a used trail or I'm a bearded gnome."

"And the yeti tracks are more recent," Catti-brie remarked, noting the water still within them.

Up on Wulfgar's shoulders, Regis glanced around nervously, as if he expected a hundred of the shaggy beasts to leap out at them.

Drizzt, too, bent low to study the depressions and began to shake his head.

"They are recent," Catti-brie insisted.

"I do not disagree with your assessment of the time," the drow explained. "Only with the identification of the creature."

"Not a horse," Bruenor said with a grunt. "Unless that horse's lost two legs. A yeti, and a damned big one."

"Too big," the drow explained. "Not a yeti, but a giant."

"Giant?" the dwarf echoed skeptically. "We're ten miles from the mountains. What's a giant doing out here?"

"What indeed?" the drow answered, his grim tone giving the answer clear enough. Giants rarely came out of the Spine of the World Mountains, and then only to cause mischief. Perhaps this was a single rogue— that would be the best scenario-or perhaps it was an advanced scout for a larger and more dangerous group.

Bruenor cursed and dropped the head of his many-notched axe hard into the soft turf. "If ye're thinkin' o' walking all the way back to the durned towns, then be thinkin' again, elf," he said. "Sooner I'm outta this mud, the better. The towns've been livin' well enough without our help all these years. They're not needin' us to turn back now!"

"But if they are giants-" Catti-brie started to argue, but Drizzt cut her short.

"I've no intention of turning back," he said. "Not yet. Not until we have proof that these tracks foretell a greater disaster than one, or even a handful, of giants could perpetrate. No, our road remains east, and all the quicker because I now hope to catch that lone wagon before the fall of darkness, or soon after if we must continue on. If the giant is part of a rogue hunting group and it knows of the wagon's recent passage, then the Bremen merchants might soon be in dire need of our help."

They set off at a swifter pace, following the wagon tracks, and within a couple of hours they saw the merchants struggling with a loose and wobbly wagon wheel. Two of the five men, obviously the hired guards, pulled hard to try and lift the carriage while a third, a young and strong merchant whom Regis identified as Master Camlaine the scrimshaw trader, worked hard, though hardly successfully, to realign the tilted wheel. Both the guards had sunk past their ankles into the mud, and though they struggled mightily, they could hardly get the carriage up high enough for the fit.

How the faces of all five brightened when they noted the

approach of Drizzt and his friends, a well-known company of heroes indeed among the folk of Icewind Dale.

"Well met, I should say, Master Do'Urden!" the merchant Camlaine cried. "Do lend us the strength of your barbarian friend. I will pay you well, I promise. I am to be in Luskan in a fortnight, yet if our luck holds as it has since we left Bremen, I fear that winter will find us still in the dale."

Bruenor handed his axe to Catti-brie and motioned to Wulfgar. "Come on, boy," he said. "Ye'll play come-along and I'll show ye an anvil pose."

With a nonchalant shrug, Wulfgar brought Regis swinging down from his shoulders and set him on the ground. The halfling moaned and rushed to a pile of grass, not wanting to get mud all over his new boots.

"Ye think ye can lift it?" Bruenor asked Wulfgar as the huge man joined him by the wagon. Without a word, without even putting down his magnificent warhammer Aegis-fang, Wulfgar grabbed the wagon and pulled hard. The mud slurped loudly in protest, grabbing and clinging, but in the end it could not resist, and the wheel came free of the soupy ground.

The two guards, after a moment of disbelief, found handholds and similarly pulled, hoisting the wagon even higher. Down to hands and knees went Bruenor, setting his bent back under the axle right beside the wheel. "Go ahead and set the durned thing," he said and then he groaned as the weight came upon him.

Wulfgar took the wheel from the struggling merchant and pulled it into line, then pushed it more securely into place. He took a step back, took up Aegis-fang in both hands, and gave it a good whack, setting it firmly. Bruenor gave a grunt from the suddenly shifting weight, and Wulfgar moved to lift the wagon again, just a few inches, so that Bruenor could slip out from under it. Master Camlaine inspected the work, turning about with a bright smile and nodding his approval.

"You could begin a new career, good dwarf and mighty Wulfgar," he said with a laugh. "Wagon repair."

"There is an aspiration fit for a dwarven king," Drizzt remarked, coming over with Catti-brie and Regis. "Give up your throne, good Bruenor, and fix the carts of wayward merchants."

They all had a laugh at that, except for Wulfgar, who simply seemed detached from it all, and for Regis, still fretting over his muddy boots.

"You are far out from Ten Towns," Camlaine noted, "with nothing to the west. Are you leaving Icewind Dale once more?"

"Briefly," Drizzt replied. "We have business in the south."

"Luskan?"

"Beyond Luskan," the drow explained. "But we will indeed be going through that city, it would seem."

Camlaine brightened, obviously happy to hear that bit of news. He reached to a jingling purse on his belt, but Drizzt held up a hand, thinking it ridiculous that the man should offer to pay.

"Of course," Camlaine remarked, embarrassed, remembering that Bruenor Battlehammer was indeed a dwarven king, wealthy

beyond anything a simple merchant could ever hope to achieve. "I wish there was some way I … we, could repay you for your help. Or even better, I wish that there was some way I could bribe you into accompanying us to Luskan. I have hired fine and able guards, of course," he added, nodding to the two men. "But Icewind Dale remains a dangerous place, and friendly swords-or warhammers or axes-are always welcomed."

Drizzt looked to his friends and, seeing no objections, nodded. "We will indeed travel with you out of the dale," he said.

"Is your mission urgent?" the scrimshaw merchant asked. "Our wagon has been dragging more than rolling, and our team is weary. We had hoped to repair the wheel and then find a suitable campsite, though there yet remain two or three hours of daylight."

Drizzt looked to his friends and again saw no complaints there. The group, though their mission to go to the Spirit Soaring and destroy Crenshinibon was indeed vital, was in no great hurry. The drow found a campsite, a relatively high bluff not so far away and they all settled down for the night. Camlaine offered his new companions a fine meal of rich venison stew. They passed the meal with idle chatter, with Camlaine and his four companions doing most of the talking, stories about problems in Bremen over the winter, mostly, and about the first catch of the prized knucklehead trout, the fish that provided the bone material for the scrimshaw. Drizzt and the others listened politely, not really interested. Regis, however, who had lived on the banks of Maer Dualdon and had spent years making scrimshaw pieces of his own, begged Camlaine to show him the finished wares he was taking to Luskan. The halfling poured over each piece for a long while, studying every detail.

"Ye think we'll be seeing them giants this night?" Catti-brie asked Drizzt quietly, the two moving off to the side of the main group.

The drow shook his head. "The one who happened upon the tracks turned back for the mountains," he said. "Likely, he was merely checking the route. I had feared that he then went in pursuit of the wagon, but since Camlaine and his crew were not so far away, and since we saw no other sign of any behemoth, I do not expect to see him."

"But he might be bringing trouble to the next wagon along," Catti-brie reasoned.

Drizzt conceded the point with a nod and a smile, a look that grew more intense as he and the beautiful woman locked stares. There had been a notable strain between them since the return of Wulfgar, for in the six years of Wulfgar's absence, Drizzt and Catti-brie had forged a deeper friendship, one bordering on love. But now Wulfgar, who had been engaged to marry Catti-brie at the time of his apparent death, was back, and things between the drow and the woman had become far more complicated.

Not at this moment, though. For some reason that neither of the friends could understand, for this one second, it was as if they were the only two people in all the world, or as if time had stopped all around them, freezing the others in a state of oblivion.

It didn't last, not more than a brief moment, for a commotion at the other side of the encampment drew the two apart. When she looked past Drizzt, Catti-brie found Wulfgar staring at them hard. She locked eyes with the man, but again, it was only for a moment. One of Camlaine's guards standing behind Wulfgar, called to the group, waving his arms excitedly.

"Might be that our giant friend decided to show its ugly face," Catti-brie said to Drizzt. When they joined the others, the guard was pointing out toward another bluff, this one an oozing mud mound pushed up like a miniature volcano by the shifting tundra.

"Behind that," the guard said.

Drizzt studied the mound intently; Catti-brie pulled Taulmaril, the Heartseeker bow, from her shoulder and set an arrow.

"Too small a pimple for a giant to hide behind," Bruenor insisted, but the dwarf clutched his axe tightly as he spoke.

Drizzt nodded his agreement. He looked to Catti-brie and to Wulfgar alternately, motioning that they should cover him. Then he sprinted away, picking a careful and quiet path that brought him right to the base of the mound. With a glance back to ensure that his friends were ready, the drow skipped up the side of the mound, his twin scimitars drawn.

And then he relaxed, and put his deadly blades away, as a man, a huge man wearing a wolf-skin wrap, came out around the base into plain sight.

"Kierstaad, son of Revjak," Catti-brie remarked.

"Following his hero," Bruenor added, looking up at Wulfgar, for it was no secret to any of them, or to any of the barbarians of Icewind Dale, that Kierstaad idolized Wulfgar. The young man had even stolen Aegis-fang and followed the companions along when they had gone out onto the Sea of Moving Ice to rescue Wulfgar from the demon, Errtu. To Kierstaad, Wulfgar symbolized the greatness that the tribes of Icewind Dale might achieve and the greatness that he, too, so desired.

Wulfgar frowned at the sight.

Kierstaad and Drizzt exchanged a few words, then both moved back to the main group. "He has come for a word with Wulfgar," the drow explained.

"To beg for the survival of the tribes," Kierstaad admitted, staring at his barbarian kin.

"The tribes fare well under the care of Berkthgar the Bold," Wulfgar insisted.

"They do not!" Kierstaad replied harshly, and the others took that as their cue to give the two men some space. "Berkthgar understands the old ways, that is true," Kierstaad went on. "But the old ways do not offer the hope of anything greater than the lives we have known for centuries. Only Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, can truly unite the tribes and strengthen our bond with the folk of Ten Towns."

"That would be for the better?" Wulfgar asked skeptically.

"Yes!" Kierstaad replied without hesitation. "No longer should any tribesman starve because the winter is difficult. No longer should we be so completely dependent upon the

caribou herd. Wulfgar, with his friends, can change our ways … can lead us to a better place."

"You speak foolishness," Wulfgar said, waving his hand and turning from the man. But Kierstaad wouldn't let him get away that easily. The young man ran up behind and grabbed Wulfgar roughly by the arm, turning him about.

Kierstaad started to offer yet another argument, started to explain that Berkthgar still considered the folk of Ten Towns, even the dwarven folk of Wulfgar's own adoptive father, more as enemies than as allies. There were so many things that young Kierstaad wanted to say to Wulfgar, so many arguments to make to the big man, to try and convince him that his place was with the tribes. But all those words went flying away as Kierstaad went flying away, for Wulfgar turned about viciously, following the young man's pull, and brought his free arm swinging about, slugging the young man heavily in the chest and launching him into a short flight and then a backward roll down the side of the bluff.

Wulfgar turned away with a low, feral growl, storming back to his supper bowl. Protests came at him from every side, particularly from Catti-brie. "Ye didn't have to hit the boy," she yelled, but Wulfgar only waved his hand at her and snarled again, then went back to his food.

Drizzt was the first one down to Kierstaad's side. The young barbarian was lying facedown in the muck at the bottom of the bluff. Regis came along right behind, offering one of his many handkerchiefs to wipe some of the mud from Kierstaad's face-and also to allow the man to save some measure of pride and quietly wipe the welling tears from his eyes.

"He must understand," Kierstaad remarked, starting back up the hill, but Drizzt had him firmly by the arm, and the young barbarian did not truly fight against the pull.

"This matter was already resolved," the drow said, "between Wulfgar and Berkthgar. Wulfgar made his choice, and that choice was the road."

"Blood before friends-that is the rule of the tribes," Kierstaad argued. "And Wulfgar's blood kin need him now."

Drizzt tilted his head, and a knowing expression came over his fair, ebon-skinned face, a look that settled Kierstaad more than any words ever could. "Is it so?" the drow asked calmly. "Do the tribes need Wulfgar, or does Kierstaad need him?"

"What do you mean?" the young man stammered, obviously embarrassed.

"Berkthgar has been angry with you for a long time," the drow explained. "Perhaps you will not find a position that pleases you while Berkthgar rules the tribes."

Kierstaad pulled roughly away; his face screwed up with anger. "This is not about Kierstaad's position within the tribes," he insisted. "My people need Wulfgar, and so I have come for him."

"He'll not follow you," Regis said. "Nor can you drag him, I would guess."

Frustration evident on his face, Kierstaad began clenching and unclenching his fists at his side. He looked up the bluff, then took a step that way, but agile Drizzt moved

quickly in front of him.

"He'll not follow," the drow said. "Even Berkthgar begged Wulfgar to remain and to lead, but that, by Wulfgar's own words, is not his place at this time."

"But it is!"

"No!" Drizzt said forcefully, stopping Kierstaad's further arguments cold. "No, and not only because Wulfgar has determined that it is not his place. Truly I was relieved to learn that he did not accept the leadership from Berkthgar, for I, too, care about the welfare of the tribes of Icewind Dale."

Even Regis looked at the drow with surprise at that seemingly illogical reasoning.

"You do not believe Wulfgar to be the rightful leader?" Kierstaad asked incredulously.

"Not at this time," Drizzt replied. "Can any of us appreciate the agony the man has suffered? Or can we measure the lingering effects of Errtu's torments? No, Wulfgar is not now fit to lead the tribes-he is having a difficult enough time leading himself."

"But we are his kin," Kierstaad tried to argue, but as he spoke them the words sounded lame even to him. "If Wulfgar feels pain, then he should be with us, in our care."

"And how might you tend the wounds that tear at Wulfgar's heart?" Drizzt asked. "No, Kierstaad. I applaud your intentions, but your hopes are false. Wulfgar needs time to remember who he truly is, to remember all that was once important to him. He needs time, and he needs his friends, and though I'll not argue your contention of the importance of blood kin, I tell you now in all honesty that those who love Wulfgar the most are here, not back with the tribes."

Kierstaad started to reply but only huffed and stared emptily back up the bluff, having no practical rebuttal.

"We will return soon enough," the drow explained. "Before the turn of winter, I hope, or in the spring soon after, at the latest. Perhaps Wulfgar will find again his heart and soul on the road with his friends. Perhaps he will return to Icewind Dale ready to assume the leadership that he truly deserves and that the tribes truly deserve."

"And if not?" Kierstaad asked.

Drizzt only shrugged. He was beginning to understand the depth of Wulfgar's pain and could make no guarantees.

"Keep him safe," Kierstaad said.

Drizzt nodded.

"On your word," the young barbarian pressed.

"We care for each other," the drow replied. "It has been that way since before we set out from Icewind Dale to reclaim Bruenor's throne in Mithral Hall nearly a decade ago."

Kierstaad continued to stare up the bluff. "My tribe has camped north of here," he explained, starting slowly away. "It is not far."

"Stay with us through the night," the drow offered.

"Master Camlaine has some fine food," Regis added hopefully. Drizzt knew just from the fact that the halfling was apparently willing to split the portions an extra way that Kierstaad's plight had touched his little friend.

But Kierstaad, obviously too embarrassed to go back up

and face Wulfgar, only shook his head and started off to the north, across the empty tundra.

"You should beat him," Regis said, looking back up the hill at Wulfgar.

"How would that help?" the drow asked.

"I think our large friend could use a bit of humility."

Drizzt shook his head. "His reaction to Kierstaad's touch was just that: a reaction," the drow explained. He was beginning to understand Wulfgar's mood a bit more clearly now, for Wulfgar's striking of Kierstaad had been wrought of no conscious thought. Drizzt recalled his days back in Melee-Magthere, the drow school for fighters. In that always dangerous environment, where enemies lurked around every corner, Drizzt had seen such reactions, had reacted similarly on many occasions himself. Wulfgar was back with friends now in a safe enough place, but emotionally he was still the prisoner of Errtu, his constant defenses still in place against the intrusions of the demon and its minions.

"It was instinctual and nothing more."

"He could have apologized," Regis replied.

No, he could not, Drizzt thought, but he kept the notion silent. An idea came over the drow then, one that put a particularly sparkling twinkle in his lavender eyes, a look that Regis had seen many times before.

"What are you thinking?" the halfling prompted.

"About giants," Drizzt replied with a coy smile, "and about the danger to any passing caravans."

"You believe that they will come at us this night?"

"I believe that they are back in the mountains, perhaps planning to bring a raiding party to the trail," Drizzt answered honestly. "And we would be long gone before they ever arrived."

"Would be?" Regis echoed softly, still studying the drow's glowing eyes-no trick of the late-day sun-and the way Drizzt's gaze drifted back toward the snowy peaks shining in the south. "What are you thinking?" "We cannot wait for the giants' return," the drow said. "Nor do I wish to leave any future caravans in peril. Perhaps Wulfgar and I should go out this night."

Regis's jaw dropped open, his dumbfounded expression bringing a laugh to the drow's lips.

"In my days with Montolio, the ranger who trained me, I learned much about horsemanship," Drizzt began to explain.

"You plan to take one or both of the merchant's horses to go to the mountains?" an incredulous Regis asked.

"No, no," Drizzt replied. "Montolio had been quite a rider in his youth, before he lost his vision, of course. And the horses he chose to ride were the strongest and least broken by saddles. But he had a technique-he called it 'running the horse'-to calm the steeds enough so that they would behave. He would bring them out in an open field on a long lead and snap a whip behind them repeatedly to get them running in wide and hard circles, even to get them bucking."

"Would that not only make them less behaved?" the halfling asked, for he knew little about horses.

Drizzt shook his head. "The strongest of horses possesses too much energy, Montolio explained to me. Thus, he would

take them out and let them release that extra layer, and when he would then climb on their backs they would ride strong but in control."

Regis shrugged and nodded, accepting the story. "What has that to do with Wulfgar?" he asked, but his expression changed to one of understanding even as the question came out of his mouth. "You plan to run Wulfgar as Montolio ran the horses," he reasoned.

"Perhaps he needs a good fight," Drizzt replied. "And truly I wish to rid the region of any trouble with giants."

"It will take you hours to get to the mountains," Regis estimated, looking to the south. "Perhaps longer if the giants' trail is not clear to follow."

"But we will move much quicker than you three if you stay, as we promised, with Camlaine," the drow replied. "Wulfgar and I will be back beside you within two or three days, long before you've turned the corner around the Spine of the World."

"Bruenor will not like being left out," Regis remarked.

"Then do not tell him," the drow instructed. Then, before Regis could offer the expected reply, he added, "Nor should you tell Catti-brie. Explain to them only that Wulfgar and I set out in the night, and that I promised to return the day after tomorrow."

Regis gave a frustrated sigh-once before Drizzt had run off, promising Regis to secrecy, and a frantic Catti-brie had nearly beat the information out of the halfling. "Why am I always the one to hold your secrets?" he asked.

"Why are you always sniffing where your nose does not belong?" Drizzt answered with a laugh.

The drow caught up to Wulfgar on the far side of the encampment. The big man was sitting alone, absently tossing stones down to the ground. He did not look up, nor did he offer any apologetic expressions, burying them beneath a wall of anger.

Drizzt sympathized completely and recognized the torment simmering just below the surface. Anger was his friend's only defense against those horrible memories. Drizzt crouched low and looked into Wulfgar's pale blue eyes, even if the huge man did not match the gaze.

"Do you remember our first fight?" the drow asked slyly.

Now Wulfgar did turn his stare up at the drow. "Do you mean to teach me another lesson?" he asked, his tone showing that he was more than ready to accept that challenge.

The words stung Drizzt profoundly. He recalled his last angry encounter with Wulfgar, over the barbarian's treatment of Catti-brie those seven years before in Mithral Hall. They had fought viciously with Drizzt emerging as victor. And he recalled his first fight against Wulfgar, when Bruenor had captured the lad and brought him into the dwarven clan in Icewind Dale after the barbarians had tried to raid Ten Towns. Bruenor had charged Drizzt with training Wulfgar as a fighter, and those first lessons between the two had proven especially painful for the young and overly proud barbarian. But that was not the encounter to which Drizzt was now referring.

"I mean the first time that we fought together side by

side against a real enemy," he explained.

Wulfgar's eyes narrowed as he considered the memory, a glimpse at his friendship with Drizzt from many years ago.

"Biggrin and the verbeeg," Drizzt reminded. "You and I and Guenhwyvar charging headlong into a lair full of giants."

The anger melted from Wulfgar's face. He managed a rare smile and nodded.

"A tough one was Biggrin," Drizzt went on. "How many times did we hit the behemoth? It took a final throw from you to drive the dagger-"

"That was a long time ago," Wulfgar interrupted. He couldn't manage to maintain the smile, but at least he did not sink right back into the explosive anger. Wulfgar again found a more even keel, much like his detached, almost ambivalent attitude when they had first started out on this journey.

"But you do remember?" Drizzt pressed, his grin growing across his black face, that telltale twinkle in his lavender eyes.

"Why …" Wulfgar started to ask, but stopped short and sat studying his friend. He hadn't seen Drizzt in such a mood in a long, long time, even well before his fateful fight with the handmaiden of the demon queen Lolth back in Mithral Hall. This was a flash of Drizzt from the days before the quest to reclaim the dwarven kingdom, an image of the drow in those times when Wulfgar honestly feared that Drizzt's recklessness would soon put him and the drow in a situation from which they could not escape.

Wulfgar liked the image.

"We have some giants readying to waylay travelers on the road," the drow said. "Our pace will be slower out of the dale, now that we have agreed to accompany

Master Camlaine. It seems to me that a side journey to deal with these dangerous marauders might be in order."

It was the first hint of an eager sparkle in Wulfgar's eye that Drizzt had seen since they had been reunited in the ice cave after the defeat of Errtu.

"Have you spoken with the others?" the barbarian asked.

"Just me and you," Drizzt explained. "And Guenhwyvar, of course. She would not appreciate being left out of this fun."

The pair left camp long after sunset, waiting for Catti-brie, Regis, and Bruenor to fall asleep. With the drow leading, having no difficulty in seeing under the starry tundra sky, they went straight back to the point where the giant and the wagon tracks intersected. There, Drizzt reached into a pouch and produced the onyx panther figurine, placing it reverently on the ground. "Come to me, Guenhwyvar," he called softly.

A mist came up, swirling about the figurine, growing thicker and thicker, flowing and swirling and taking the shape of the great panther. Thicker and thicker, and then it was no mist circling the onyx likeness, but the panther herself. Guenhwyvar looked up at Drizzt with eyes showing an intelligence far beyond that indicated by her feline form.

Drizzt pointed down to the giant track, and Guenhwyvar, understanding, led them away.

She knew as soon as she opened her eyes that something was amiss. The camp was quiet, the two merchant guards sitting on the bench of the wagon, talking softly.

Catti-brie shifted up to her elbows to better survey the scene. The fire had burned low but was still bright enough to cast shadows from the bedrolls. Closest lay Regis, curled in a ball so near to the fire that Catti-brie was amazed the little fellow hadn't gone up in flames. The mound that was Bruenor lay just a bit further back, right where Catti-brie had said good night to her adoptive father. The woman sat up, then got to one knee, craning her neck, but she could not locate two particular forms among the sleeping.

She started for Bruenor, but changed her mind and went to Regis instead. The halfling always seemed to know….

A gentle shake only made him groan and roll tighter into a ball. A rougher shake and a call of his name only had him spitting curses and tightening even more.

Catti-brie kicked him in the rump.

"Hey!" he protested loudly, coming up suddenly.

"Where'd they go to?" the woman asked.

"What're ye about, girl?" came Bruenor's sleepy voice, the dwarf awakened by Regis's call.

"Drizzt and Wulfgar have gone out from camp," she explained, then turned her penetrating gaze back over Regis.

The halfling squirmed under the scrutiny. "Why would I know?" he argued, but Catti-brie didn't blink. Regis looked to Bruenor for support, but found the half-dressed dwarf ambling over, seeming every bit as perturbed as Catti-brie, and apparently ready, like the woman, to direct his ire the halfling's way.

"Drizzt said that they would return to us, and the caravan, tomorrow, or perhaps the day after that," the halfling admitted.

"And where'd they go off to?" Catti-brie demanded.

Regis shrugged, but Catti-brie had him by the collar, hoisting him to his feet before he ever finished the motion. "Are ye meanin' to play this game again?" she asked.

"To find Kierstaad and apologize, I would guess," the halfling said. "He deserves as much."

"Good enough if the boy's got an apology in his heart," Bruenor remarked. Seemingly satisfied with that, the dwarf turned back for his bedroll.

Catti-brie, though, stood holding Regis roughly and shaking her head. "He's not got it in him," she said, drawing the dwarf back into the conversation. "Not now, and that's not where they're off to." She moved closer to Regis as she spoke, but did let go of him. "Ye need to tell me," she said calmly. "Ye can't be playin' this game. If we're to travel half the length o' Faerun together, then we're needing a bit o' trust, and that ye're not earning."

"They went after the giants," Regis blurted. He couldn't believe that he had said it, but neither could he deny the logic of Catti-brie's argument nor the plaintive look in her beautiful eyes.

"Bah!" Bruenor snorted, stomping his bare foot— and

slamming it so hard that it sounded as if he was wearing boots. "By the brains of a pointed-headed ore-cousin! Why didn't ye tell us sooner?"

"Because you would have made me go," Regis argued, but his voice lost its angry edge when Catti-brie moved right in front of his face.

"Ye always seem to be knowing too much and tellin' too little," she growled. "As when Drizzt left Mithral Hall."

"I listen," Regis replied with a helpless shrug.

"Get dressed," Catti-brie instructed Regis, who just looked back at her incredulously.

"Ye heard her!" Bruenor roared.

"You want to go out there?" the halfling asked, pointing to the black emptiness that was the nighttime tundra. "Now?"

"Won't be the first time I pulled that durned elf from the mouth of a tundra yeti," the dwarf snorted, heading for his bedroll.

"Giants," Regis corrected.

"Even worse, then!" Bruenor roared louder, waking the rest of the camp.

"But we cannot leave," Regis protested, motioning to the three merchants and their guardsmen. "We promised to guard them. What if the giants come in behind us?"

That brought a concerned look to the faces of the five members of the merchant team, but Catti-brie didn't blink at the ridiculous thought. She just kept looking hard at Regis, and at his possessions, including the new unicorn-headed mace one of Bruenor's smithies had forged for him, a beautiful mithral and black steel item with blue sapphires set for the eyes.

With a profound sigh the halfling pulled his tunic on over his head.

They were out within the hour, backtracking to the point where wagon track, giant track, and now drow and barbarian track, intersected. They had much more difficulty finding it than had Wulfgar and Drizzt, with the drow's superior night vision. For even though Catti-brie wore an enchanted circlet that allowed her to see in the dark, she was no ranger and could not match Drizzt's keen senses and training. Bruenor bent low, sniffing the ground, then led on through the darkness.

"Probably get swallowed by waiting yetis," Regis grumbled.

"I'll shoot high, then," Catti-brie answered, holding her deadly bow out. "Above the belly, so ye won't have a hole in ye when we cut ye out."

Of course Regis continued to grumble, but he kept his voice lower, not letting Catti-brie hear clearly so that she could not offer any more sarcastic replies.

They spent the dark hours before the dawn feeling their way over the rocky foothills of the Spine of the World. Wulfgar complained many times that they must have lost the trail, but Drizzt held faith in Guenhwyvar, who kept appearing ahead of them, a darker shadow against the night

sky, high on rocky outcroppings.

Soon after the break of day, as they moved along a winding mountain path, the drow's faith in the panther was confirmed as the pair came across a distinctive footprint, a huge boot, along a low and muddy depression on the trail.

"An hour ahead, no more," Drizzt explained, examining the print. He looked back at Wulfgar and smiled widely, lavender eyes sparkling.

The barbarian, more than ready for a fight, nodded.

Following Guenhwyvar's lead, they climbed higher and higher until, above them, the land seemed to suddenly disappear, the trail ending at a sheer cliff face. Drizzt moved up first, shadow to shadow, motioning Wulfgar to follow as he determined the way to be clear. They had come to the side of a canyon, a deep and rocky ravine bordered on all four sides by mountain walls, though the barrier to their right, the south, was not complete, leaving one exit from the valley floor. At first, they surmised that the giant encampment must be down there in the ravine, hidden among the boulders, but then Wulfgar spotted a line of smoke drifting up from behind a wall of boulders on the cliff wall almost directly across the way, some fifty yards from their position.

Drizzt scaled a nearby tree, getting a better angle, and soon confirmed that to be the giants' camp. A pair of behemoths were sitting behind the sheltering stones, eating a meal. The drow surveyed the landscape. He could get around, and so could Guenhwyvar, without going down to the valley floor.

"Can you reach them with a hammer throw from here?" he asked Wulfgar.

The barbarian nodded.

"Lead me in, then," the drow said. With a wink, he started off to the left, moving over the lip of the cliff and edging along its facing. Guenhwyvar also started off, picking a higher route than Drizzt along the cliff face.

The dark elf moved like a spider, crawling from ledge to ledge, while Guenhwyvar went along above him in a series of powerful bounds, clearing twenty feet at a leap. Within half an hour, amazingly, the drow had moved beyond the northern wall, around to the eastern facade and within twenty feet or so of the seemingly oblivious giants. He motioned back to Wulfgar, then set his feet firmly and took a deep breath. Not wanting to be spotted, he had come in slightly below the level of the shelf and the boulder wall, and now he measured the short run he would have, and then the distance of the leap to the giants' shelf. He didn't want to have to use his hands to safely land the jump, preferring to come in with both scimitars drawn and ready.

He could make it, he decided, so he looked up at Guenhwyvar. The cat was perched on a shelf some thirty feet above the giants. Drizzt opened his mouth in a mock roar.

The great panther responded, only her roar was far from silent. It rumbled off the mountain walls, drawing the attention of the giants and of any other creatures for miles around.

With a howl, the giants sprang to their feet. The drow

ran silently along the ledge and leaped for their position.

Shouting a call to Tempus, the barbarian god of war, Wulfgar hoisted Aegis-fang. . but hesitated, stung by the sound of that name. The name of a god he had once worshiped but to whom he had not prayed in so many years. A god he felt had abandoned him in the pits of the Abyss. Waves of emotional turmoil rolled over him, dizzying him, sending him careening back to that awful place of Errtu's darkness.

And leaving Drizzt terribly exposed.

They had been guessing as much as trailing, for though Catti-brie could see well in the dark, her night vision still could not match that of the drow, and Bruenor, though skilled at tracking, could not match the hunting prowess of Guenhwyvar. Still, when they heard the panther's roar echoing off the stones about them, they knew their guess had been a good one.

Off they ran, Bruenor's rolling pace matching Catti-brie's long and graceful strides. Regis didn't even try to catch up, didn't even try to follow the same path. While Bruenor and Catti-brie charged off straight in the direction of the roar, Regis veered north, following an easier trail, smooth but angling upward. The halfling wasn't thrilled with the idea of getting into any fights, let alone one against giants, but he did truly want to help out. Perhaps he might find a higher vantage point from which he could call down directions to his friends. Perhaps he might find a place where he could throw stones (and he was a pretty good shot) at safely distant giants. Perhaps he might find-A tree trunk, the halfling thought, a bit distracted as he rushed around a bend and bumped into a solid trunk.

No, not a trunk, Regis realized. Trees did not wear boots.

Two giants rose up to search out Guenhwyvar; two giants noted the sudden approach of the leaping drow elf. Drizzt timed and aimed his leap perfectly, coming to the lip of the ledge lightly, in full balance. But he hadn't counted on two opponents waiting for him. He had expected Wulfgar's throw to take one down, or at least to distract the behemoth long enough for the dark elf to find steady footing.

Improvising quickly, the drow summoned his innate magical powers-though few remained after all these years on the surface-and brought forth a globe of impenetrable darkness. He centered it on the back wall ten feet from the ground so that it blocked the sight of the behemoths, but, since the globe's radius was about the same length as Drizzt was tall, it left their lower legs visible to Drizzt. He went in hard and fast, skidding down low and slashing wildly with both his scimitars, Twinkle and the newly named Icingdeath.

The giants kicked and stomped, bent low and swung their clubs frantically, and though they were as likely to hit each other as the drow, a giant could take a solid hit from

another giant's club.

Drizzt could not.

Damn Errtu! How many evils had he suffered? How many attacks upon body and soul? He felt again Biz-matec's pincers closing about his neck, felt the dull aches of heavy punches as Errtu beat upon him as he lay in the filth, and then the sharp sting of fire as the demon dragged him into the flames that always surrounded its hideous form. And he felt the touch, gentle and alluring, of the succubus, perhaps the worst tormentor of all.

And now his friend needed him. Wulfgar knew that, could hear the battle being joined. He should have led the way with a throw of Aegis-fang, should have put the giants off balance, perhaps even put one down altogether.

He knew that and wanted desperately to help his friend, and yet his eyes were not seeing the fight between Drizzt and the giants. They were looking again into the swirls of Errtu's prison.

"Damn you!" the barbarian cried, and he built a wall of the sheerest red anger, trying to block the visions with pure rage.

It was easily the largest giant Regis had ever seen, towering twenty feet and as wide as buildings Regis had once called home. Regis looked at his new mace, his pitifully small mace, and doubted that he could even raise a bruise on the giant. Then he looked up to see the monster bending lower, a huge hand-a hand big enough to grab the halfling and squeeze the life out of him-reaching down.

"A bit of a meal, then?" the huge creature said in a voice surprisingly sophisticated for one of its kind. "Not much of one, of course, but little's better than nothing."

Regis sucked in his breath and put his hand over his heart, feeling as if he would faint-and then feeling a familiar lump by his collarbone. He reached into his tunic and pulled out a gemstone, a large ruby dangling at the end of a chain. "A pretty thing, don't you think?" he asked sheepishly.

"I think I like my rodents mashed," the giant replied, and up went its huge foot, and off ran Regis with a squeak. A single long stride put the giant's other foot in front of him, though, and he had nowhere to run.

Drizzt rolled over a kicking giant leg, tucking his shoulder as he hit the stone and coming back over to his feet nimbly, reversing direction and stabbing glowing Twinkle into the huge calf. That brought a roar of pain, and then came another yell. It was Wulfgar. The barbarian's curse was followed by an explosion of stone as something-a relieved Drizzt figured it to be Aegis-fang-slammed hard into the cliff.

The missile bounced from the stone wall into the open air beyond, where the drow could see that it was a boulder-thrown

by yet another giant, no doubt— and no warhammer.

Even worse for Drizzt, one of the giants moved out far enough on the ledge to see around the globe of darkness. "Argh, ye black-skinned rat!" it said, lifting its club.

Guenhwyvar soared down thirty feet from her perch to slam the bending behemoth on the shoulders, a six-hundred-pound missile of slashing claws and biting teeth. Caught by surprise and off balance, the giant toppled over the stone wall and out into the air, taking Guenhwyvar with it.

Drizzt, dodging yet another stubborn kick, cried out for the cat, but had to turn away, had to focus on the remaining, kicking giant.

As the plummeting giant rolled over Guenhwyvar sprang again, flying out wide and far, back toward the cliff where Wulfgar stood battling his mental demons.

The cat slammed hard against a ledge, far below the barbarian, and there she desperately clung, battered and shaking, while the giant continued its bouncing descent. Down, down the giant fell, a hundred feet and more before it settled, battered and groaning, upon a rocky outcropping.

Another explosion rocked the ledge where Drizzt battled the giant, then a third. The sudden, shocking noise finally broke Wulfgar free of his dark memories. He saw Guenhwyvar struggling to hold her perch on the ledge, nothing but empty air below her all the way to the ravine's floor. He saw Drizzt's globe of darkness, and every now and then a flash of bluish light as the drow sent his scimitar flying fast under the globe but above the blocking boulder wall. He saw the giant's head as it came up straight, and he took aim.

But then another boulder slammed the cliff wall, ricocheting off stone and right into the giant's side, bending it low into the darkness. And then another hit the wall right below Wulfgar's position, nearly shaking him from his feet. The barbarian located the throwers, three more giants on a ledge down and to the right, well concealed behind a barrier of rock, and probably with a cave in the cliff wall behind them. The third threw its rock Wulfgar's way, and the barbarian had to dive aside to avoid being crushed.

He came up and had to scramble again as two more rocks hurtled in.

With a roar-to no god, but just a primal growl— Wulfgar brought Aegis-fang over his head and returned the volley. The mighty warhammer sailed end over end to strike the stone right before the ducking giants. With a thunderous retort it knocked a fair-sized chunk out of the rock wall.

The giants came up staring, obviously impressed with the damage the weapon had inflicted on the stone. When they moved, all three clambered all over each other to retrieve the weapon.

But Aegis-fang disappeared, and when it magically returned to Wulfgar's grasp, the barbarian could see the three giants spread out over the wall in clear view.

Catti-brie and Bruenor came to the lip of the canyon, on the same side as Wulfgar but farther to the south, about halfway between the barbarian and the three giants. They were in time to see the next spinning throw of Aegis-fang. One of the giants managed to get back over the protective wall, and a second was on its way up when the warhammer crashed in, dropping the behemoth onto the back of the third. Solid as the hit was, it didn't kill the giant. Nor did the silver-streaking magical arrow Catti-brie let fly from Taulmaril, scoring a hit on the same giant's back,

"Bah, ye two're to steal all that danged fun!" Bruenor grumbled, skipping off to the south, looking for a way to get at the giants. "Gotta make me a dwarven bow!"

"A bow?" Catti-brie asked skeptically as she set another arrow. "When did you learn to work wood?"

As she finished, Aegis-fang came spinning by once again. Bruenor pointed to it emphatically. "Dwarven bow!" he explained with a wink, then ran off.

Though wounded, the three giants did well to regroup. Up came the first, a huge stone high over its head.

Catti-brie's next arrow drove hard into that stone, cutting right through it, and the two halves slipped down, banging the giant on the head.

The second giant came up fast, throwing hard for Catti-brie, but far wide of the mark. It did get back down in time to dodge her next lightning-streaking arrow, though. The bolt buried itself hard into the cliff wall.

The third giant let fly for Wulfgar even as Aegis-fang returned to the man's hand, and the barbarian had to dive once more to avoid being smashed. Still, the stone rebounded from the back wall at an unexpected angle, clipping Wulfgar painfully on the hip.

Looking up to him, Catti-brie saw that he had an even greater problem, for beyond him, on the north wall and up higher, loomed yet another giant. This one was huge, holding a stone over its head that looked as though it could take down both the barbarian and the ledge he was standing on.

"Wulfgar!" Catti-brie cried in warning, thinking the man doomed.

Drizzt hadn't witnessed any of the missile exchange, though he did get enough of a break from his dodging and slashing to see that Guenhwyvar was all right. The panther had made it onto the lower ledge, and though obviously wounded, seemed more angry at the fact that she could not easily get back into the fight.

The giant's kicks came slower now. As the behemoth tired, its legs stun from many deep cuts. The only trouble the swift drow had now was making sure that he didn't lose his footing in the deepening blood.

Then he heard Catti-brie's cry and was so startled that he slowed too much. The giant's boot caught up to him, hitting him squarely and sending him on a tumbling dive to

the far end of the ledge, beyond the edge of the darkness globe. Coming right back to his feet, ignoring the ache, Drizzt ran up the stony wall, climbing a dozen feet before the giant came out in pursuit, bending low, thinking its prey to be on the ground.

Drizzt dropped on the giant's shoulders, wrapping his legs about its neck and double-stabbing his scimitars into the sides of its eyes. The behemoth howled and stood straight. The monster reached for the source of the pain, but the drow was too quick. Rolling over down the giant's back and landing nimbly on his feet, Drizzt cut fast for the lip of the ledge, hopping to the rocky barricade.

The giant batted at its torn eyes, blinded by the cuts and the blood. It waved its hands frantically and turned toward the noise of the drow's movements, lurching to grab him.

But Drizzt was already gone, spinning about the giant and chasing it from behind, prodding hard to keep the behemoth going as it reached for the ledge, overbalancing. Howling with pain, the giant tried to turn around, but that only sent Drizzt in even harder, scimitars biting about the stooping thing's chin.

The giant tried to scramble back but fell into the open air.

Wulfgar turned around at Catti-brie's call but had no time to strike out first or to dodge. Catti-brie got her bow up and level, but the huge giant threw first.

The stone sailed past Wulfgar, past Catti-brie, and Bruenor, down to the ledge in the south. Short-hopping off the stone-blocking wall, it slammed one giant in the chest, throwing it back and to the ground.

Looking down at her drawn arrow, a stunned Catti-brie spotted Regis sitting comfortably on the giant's shoulder. "The little rat," she whispered under her breath, truly impressed.

Now all three-giant, Wulfgar and Catti-brie— turned their attention to the lower ledge. Lightning arrows streaked in one after another, punctuated by a spinning throw of Aegis-fang, or the thunderous report of a huge, giant-hurled boulder. The sheer force of the barrage soon had the three giants dizzy and ducking.

Aegis-fang clipped one on the shoulder as it tried to run out the side down a concealed trail. The force of the hammer blow turned it around in time to see the next streaking arrow, right before the bolt drove through its ugly face. Down it went in a heap. A second giant stepped out, rock high to throw, only to catch a huge boulder in the chest and go flying away.

The third, badly wounded, stayed in a crouch behind the wall, not even daring to creep back the fifteen feet to the cave opening in the wall behind it. Head down, it didn't see the dwarf climb into position on a ledge above it, though it did look up when it heard the roar of a leaping Bruenor.

The dwarf king's axe, buried deep into the giant's brain,

sported yet another notch.

Chapter 3 THE UNPLEASANT MIRROR

Well would you do to this one investigate," Giunta the Diviner said to Hand as the man left the wizard's house. "Danger I sense, and we both know who it may be, though to speak the name we fear."

Hand mumbled a reply and continued on his way, glad to be gone from the excitable wizard and Giunta's particularly annoying manner of structuring a sentence, one the wizard claimed came from another plane of existence, but that Hand merely considered Giunta's way of trying to impress those around him. Still, Giunta had his uses, Hand recognized, for of the dozen or so wizards the Basadoni house often utilized, none could unravel mysteries better than Giunta. From simply sensing the emanations of the strange coins Giunta had almost completely reconstructed the conversation between Hand, Kadran, and Sharlotta, as well as the identity of Taddio as the courier of the coins. Looking deeper, Giunta's face had turned into a profound frown, and as he had described the demeanor and general appearance of the one who had given the coins to Taddio, both he and Hand began to put the pieces together.

Hand knew Artemis Entreri. So did Giunta, and it was common knowledge among the street folk that Entreri had left Calimport in pursuit of the dark elf who had brought about the downfall of Pasha Pook, and that the drow was reportedly living in some dwarven city not far from Silverymoon.

Now that his suspicions pointed in a particular direction, Hand knew it was time to turn from magical information gathering to more conventional methods. He went out to the streets, to the many spies, and opened wide the eyes of Pasha Basadoni's powerful guild. Then he started back to the main house to speak with Sharlotta and Kadran but changed his mind. Indeed, Sharlotta had spoken truthfully when she had said that she desired knowledge of her enemies.

Better for Hand that she didn't know.

His room was hardly fitting for a man who had climbed so high among the ranks of the street. This man had been a guildmaster, albeit briefly, and could command huge sums of money from any house in the city simply as a retainer fee for his services. But Artemis Entreri didn't care much about the sparse furnishings of the cheap inn, about the dust piled on the window sills, about the noise of the street ladies and their clients in the adjoining rooms.

He sat on the bed and thought about his options, reconsidering all his movements since returning to Calimport. He had been a bit careless, he realized, particularly in going to the stupid boy who was now claiming rulership of his old shanty town and by showing his dagger to the beggar at Pook's old house. Perhaps, Entreri realized, that journey and encounter had been no coincidence or bad luck, but by subconscious design.

Perhaps he had wanted to reveal himself to any who would look closely enough.

But what would that mean? he had to wonder now. How had the guild structures changed, and where in those new hierarchies would Artemis Entreri fit in? Even more importantly, where did Artemis Entreri want to fit in?

Those questions were beyond Entreri at that time, but he realized that he could not afford to sit and wait for others to find him. He should learn some of the answers, at least, before dealing with the more powerful houses of Calimport. The hour was late, well past midnight, but the assassin donned a dark cloak and went out onto the streets anyway.

The sights and sounds and smells brought him back to his younger days, when he had often allied with the dark of night and shunned the light of day. He noticed before he had even left the street that many gazes had settled upon him, and he sensed that they focused with more than a passing interest, more than the attention a foreign merchant might expect. Entreri recalled his own days on these streets, the methods and speed with which information was passed along. He was already being watched, he knew, and probably by several different guilds. Possibly the tavern keeper where he was staying or one of the patrons, perhaps, had recognized him or had recognized enough about him to raise suspicions. These people of Calimport's foul belly lived on the edge of disaster every minute of every day. Thus they possessed a level of alertness beyond anything so many other cultures might know. Like grassland field rats, rodents living in extensive burrow complexes with thousands and thousands of inhabitants, the people of Calimport's streets had designed complex warning systems: shouts and whistles, nods, and even simple body posture.

Yes, Entreri knew as he walked along the quiet street, his practiced footsteps making not a sound, they were watching him.

The time had come for him to do some looking of his own-and he knew where to start. Several turns brought him to Avenue Paradise, a particularly seedy place where potent herbs and weeds were openly traded, as were weapons, stolen goods, and carnal companionship. A mockery of culture itself, Avenue Paradise stood as the pinnacle of hedonism among the underclass. Here a beggar, if he found a few extra coins that day, could, for a few precious moments, feel like a king, could surround himself with perfumed ladies and imbibe enough mind-altering substances to forget the sores that festered on his filthy skin. Here, one like the boy that Entreri had paid in his old shanty town could live, for a few hours, the life of pasha Basadoni.

Of course it was all fake, fancy facades on rat-ridden buildings, fancy clothes on scared little girls or dead-eyed whores, heavily perfumed with cheap smells to hide the months of sweat and dust without a proper bath. But even fake luxury would suffice for most of the street people, whose constant misery was all too real.

Entreri walked slowly along the street, dismissing his introspection and turning his eyes outward, studying every detail. He thought he recognized more than one of the older, pitiful whores, but in truth, Entreri had never succumbed to such unhealthy and tawdry temptations as could be found on

Avenue Paradise. His carnal pleasures, on those very few occasions he took them (for he considered them a weakness to one aspiring to be the perfect fighter), came in the harems of mighty pashas, and he had never held any tolerance whatsoever for anything intoxicating, for anything that dulled his keen mind and left him vulnerable. He had come to Avenue Paradise often, though, to find others too weak to resist. The whores had never liked him, nor had he ever bothered with them, though he knew, as did all the pashas, that they could be a very valuable source of information. Entreri simply could not bring himself to ever trust a woman who made her daily life in that particular line of employ.

So now he spent more time looking at the thugs and pickpockets and was amused to learn that one of the pickpockets was also studying him. Hiding a grin, he even changed his course to bring himself closer to the foolish young man.

Sure enough, Entreri was barely ten strides past when the thief came out behind him, walking past and «slipping» at the last moment to cover his reach for Entreri's dangling purse.

A split second later, the would-be thief was off balance, turned in and down, with Entreri's hand clamped over the ends of his fingers, squeezing the most exquisite pain up the man's arm. Out came the jeweled dagger, quietly but quickly, its tip poking a tiny hole in the man's palm as Entreri turned his shoulder in closer to conceal the movement and lessened his paralyzing grip.

Obviously confused at the relief of pressure on his pained hand, the thief moved his free hand to his own belt, pulling aside his cloak and grabbing at a long knife.

Entreri stared hard and concentrated on the dagger, instructing it to do its darker work, using its magic to begin sucking the very life-force out of the foolish thief.

The man weakened, his dagger fell harmlessly to the street, and both his eyes and his jaw opened wide in a horrified, agonized, and ultimately futile attempt at a scream.

"You feel the emptiness," Entreri whispered to him. "The hopelessness. You know that I hold not only your life, but your very soul in my hands."

The man didn't, couldn't move.

"Do you?" Entreri prompted, bringing a nod from the now gasping man.

"Tell me," the assassin bade, "are there any halflings on the street this night?" As he spoke, he let up a bit on the life-stealing process, and the man's expression shifted again, just a bit, to one of confusion.

"Halflings," the assassin explained, punctuating his point by drawing hard on the man's life-force again, so forcefully that the only thing holding the man up was Entreri's body.

With his free hand, trembling violently through every inch of movement, the thief pointed farther down the avenue in the general direction of a few houses that Entreri knew well. He thought to ask the man a more focused question or two but decided against it, realizing that he might have revealed too much of his identity already by the mere hunger

of his particular jeweled dagger.

"If I ever see you again, I shall kill you," the assassin said with such complete calm that all the blood ran from the thief's face. Entreri released him, and he staggered away, falling to his knees and crawling on. Entreri shook his head in disgust, wondering, and not for the first time, why he had ever come back to this wretched city.

Without even bothering to look and ensure that the thief continued away, the assassin strode more quickly down the street. If the particular halfling he sought was still about and still alive, Entreri could guess which of those buildings he might be in. The middle and largest of the three, The Copper Ante, had once been a favorite gambling house for many of the halflings in the Calimport dock section, mostly because of the halfling-staffed brothel upstairs and the Thayan brown pipeweed den in the back room. Indeed, Entreri did see many (considering that this was Calimport, where halflings were scarce) of the little folk scattered about the various tables in the common room when he entered. He scanned each table slowly, trying to guess what his former friend might look like now that several years had passed. The halfling would be wider about the belly, no doubt, for he loved rich food and had set himself up in a position to afford ten meals a day if he so chose.

Entreri slipped into an open seat at one table where six halflings tossed dice, each moving so quickly that it was almost impossible for a novice gambler to even tell which call the one at the head of the table was making and which halfling was grabbing which pot as winnings for which throw. Entreri easily sorted it out, though, and found, to his amusement but hardly his surprise, that all six were cheating. It seemed more a contest of who could grab the most coins the fastest than any type of gambling, and all half dozen appeared to be equally suited to the task, so much so that Entreri figured that each of them would likely leave with almost exactly the amount of coins with which he had begun.

The assassin dropped four gold pieces on the table and grabbed up some dice, giving a half-hearted throw. Almost before the dice stopped rolling, the closest halfling reached for the coins, but Entreri was the quicker, slapping his hand over the halfling's wrist and pinning it to the table.

"But you lost!" the little one squeaked, and the flurry of movement came to an abrupt halt, the other five looking at Entreri and more than one reaching for a weapon. The gaming stopped at several other tables, as well, the whole area of the common room focusing on the coming trouble.

"I was not playing," Entreri said calmly, not letting the halfling go.

"You put down money and threw dice," one of the others protested. "That is playing."

Entreri's glare put the complaining halfling back in his seat. "I am playing when I say, and not before," he explained. "And I only cover bets that are announced openly before I throw."

"You saw how the table was moving," a third dared to argue, but Entreri cut him short with an upraised hand and a

nod.

He looked to the gambler at his right, the one who had reached for the coins, and waited a moment to let the rest of the room settle down and go back to their own business. "You want the coins? They, and twice that amount above them, shall be yours," he explained, and the greedy halfling's expression went from one of distress to a gleaming-eyed grin. "I came not to play but to ask a simple question. Provide an answer, and the coins are yours." As he spoke, Entreri reached into his purse and brought out more coins-more than twice the number the halfling had grabbed.

"Well, Master …" the halfling began.

"Do'Urden," Entreri replied, with hardly a conscious thought, though he had to bite back a chuckle at the irony after he heard the name come out of his mouth. "Master Do'Urden of Silverymoon."

All the halflings at the table eyed him curiously, for the unusual name sounded familiar to them all. In truth, and they came to realize it one by one, they all knew that name. It was the name of the dark elven protector of Regis, perhaps the highest ranking (albeit for a short while!) and most famous halfling ever to walk the streets of Calimport.

"Your skin has-" the halfling pinned under Entreri's grasp started to remark lightheartedly, but he stopped, swallowed hard and blanched as he put the pieces together. Entreri could see the halfling recall the story of Regis and the dark elf, and the one who had subsequently deposed the halfling guildmaster and then gone out after the drow.

"Yes," the halfling said as calmly as he could muster, "a question."

"I seek one of your kind," Entreri explained. "An old friend by the name of Dondon Tiggerwillies."

The halfling put on a confused look and shook his head, but not before a flicker of recognition has crossed his dark eyes, one the sharp Entreri did not miss.

"Everyone of the streets knows Dondon," Entreri stated. "Or once knew of him. You are not a child, and your gaming skills tell me that you have been a regular to the Copper Ante for years. You know, or knew, Dondon. If he is dead, then I wish to hear the story. If not, then I wish to speak with him."

Grave looks passed from halfling to halfling. "Dead," said one across the table, but Entreri knew from the tone and the quick manner in which the diminutive fellow blurted it out that it was a lie, that Dondon, ever the survivor, was indeed alive.

Halflings in Calimport always seemed to stick together, though.

"Who killed him?" Entreri asked, playing along.

"He got sick," another halfling offered, again in that quick, telltale manner.

"And where is he buried?"

"Who gets buried in Calimport?" the first liar replied.

"Tossed into the sea," said another.

Entreri nodded with every word. He was actually a bit amused at how these halflings played off each other, building an elaborate lie and one the assassin knew he could

eventually turn against them.

"Well, you have told me much," he said, releasing the halfling's wrist. The greedy gambler immediately went for the coins, but a jeweled dagger jabbed down between the reaching hand and the desired gems in the blink of a startled eye.

"You promised coins!" the halfling protested.

"For a lie?" Entreri calmly asked. "I inquired about Dondon outside and was told that he was in here. I know he is alive, for I saw him just yesterday."

The halflings all glanced at each other, trying to piece together the inconsistencies here. How had they fallen so easily into the trap?

"Then why speak of him in the past tense?" the halfling directly across the table asked, the first to insist that Dondon was dead. This halfling thought himself sly, thought that he had caught Entreri in a lie … as indeed he had.

"Because I know that halflings never reveal the whereabouts of other halflings to one who is not a halfling," Entreri answered, his demeanor changing suddenly to a lighthearted, laughing expression, something that had never come easily to the assassin. "I have no fight with Dondon, I assure you. We are old friends, and it has been far too long since we last spoke. Now, tell me where he is and take your payment."

Again the halflings looked around, and then one, licking his lips and staring hungrily at the small pile of coins, pointed to a door at the back of the large room.

Entreri replaced the dagger in its sheath and gave a gesture that seemed a salute as he moved from the table, walking confidently across the room and pushing through the door without even a knock.

There before him reclined the fattest halfling he had ever seen, a creature wider than it was tall. He and the assassin locked stares, Entreri so intent on the fellow that he hardly noticed the scantily clad female halflings flanking him. It was indeed Dondon Tiggerwillies, Entreri realized to his horror. Despite all the years and all the scores of pounds, he knew the halfling, once the slipperiest and most competent confidence swindler in all of Calimport.

"A knock is often appreciated," the halfling said, his voice raspy, as though he could hardly force the sounds from his thick neck. "Suppose that my friends and I were engaged in a more private action."

Entreri didn't even try to figure out how that might be possible.

"Well, what do you want, then?" Dondon asked, stuffing an enormous bite of pie into his mouth as soon as he finished speaking.

Entreri closed the door and walked into the room, halving the distance between him and the halfling. "I want to speak with an old associate," he explained.

Dondon stopped chewing and stared hard. Obviously stunned by recognition, he began violently choking on the pie and wound up spitting a substantial piece of it back onto his plate. His attendants did well to hide their disgust as they moved the plate aside.

"I did not… I mean, Regis was no friend of mine. I mean

. ." Dondon stammered, a fairly common reaction from those faced with the spectre of Artemis Entreri.

"Be at ease, Dondon," Entreri said firmly. "I came to speak with you, nothing more. I care not for Regis, nor for any role Dondon might have played in the demise of Pook those years ago. The streets are for the living, are they not, and not the dead?"

"Yes, of course," Dondon replied, visibly trembling. He rolled forward a bit, trying to at least sit up, and only then did Entreri notice a chain trailing a thick anklet he wore about his left leg. Finally, the fat halfling gave up and just rolled back to his previous position. "An old wound," he said with a shrug.

Entreri let the obviously ridiculous excuse slide past. He moved closer to the halfling and went down in a crouch, brushing aside Dondon's robes that he could better see the shackle. "I have only recently returned," he explained. "I hoped that Dondon might enlighten me concerning the current demeanor of the streets."

"Rough and dangerous, of course," Dondon answered with a chuckle that became a phlegm-filled cough.

"Who rules?" Entreri asked in a dead serious tone. "Which houses hold power, and what soldiers champion them?"

"I wish that I could be of help to you, my friend," Dondon said nervously. "Of course I do. I would never withhold information from you. Never that! But you see," he added, lifting up his shackled ankle, "they do not let me out much anymore."

"How long have you been in here?"

"Three years."

Entreri stared incredulously and distastefully at the little wretch, then looked doubtfully at the relatively simple shackle, a lock that the old Dondon could have opened with a piece of hair.

In response, Dondon held up his enormously thick hands, hands so pudgy that he couldn't even bring the higher parts of his fingers together. "I do not feel much with them anymore," he explained.

A burning outrage welled inside Entreri. He felt as if he would simply explode into a murderous fit that would have him physically shaving the pounds from Dondon's fat hide with his jeweled dagger. Instead, he went at the lock, turning it roughly to scan for any possible traps, then reaching for a small pick.

"Do not," came a high-pitched voice behind him. The assassin sensed the presence before he even heard the words. He spun about, rolling into a crouch, dagger in one hand, arm cocked to throw. Another female halfling, this one dressed in a fine tunic and breeches, with thick, curly brown hair and huge brown eyes, stood at the door, hands up and open, her posture completely unthreatening.

"Oh, but that would be a bad thing for me and for you," the female halfling said with a little grin.

"Do not kill her," Dondon pleaded with Entreri, trying to grab for the assassin's arm, but missing far short of the mark and rolling back, gasping for breath.

Entreri, ever alert, noticed then that both the female

halflings attending Dondon had slipped hands into secret places, one to a pocket, the other to her generous waist-length hair, both no doubt reaching for weapons of some sort. He understood then that this newcomer was a leader among the group.

"Dwahvel Tiggerwillies, at your service," she said with a graceful bow. "At your service, but not at your whim," she added with a smile.

"Tiggerwillies?" Entreri echoed softly, glancing back at Dondon.

"A cousin," the fat halfling explained with a shrug. "The most powerful halfling in all of Calimport and the newest proprietor of the Copper Ante."

The assassin looked back to see the female halfling completely at ease, hands in her pockets.

"You understand, of course, that I did not come in here alone, not to face a man of Artemis Entreri's reputation," Dwahvel said.

That brought a grin to Entreri's face as he imagined the many halflings concealed about the room. It struck him as a half-sized mock-up of another similar operation, that of Jarlaxle the dark elf mercenary in Menzoberranzan. On the occasions when he had to face the always well-protected Jarlaxle, though, Entreri had understood without doubt that if he made even the slightest wrong move, or if Jarlaxle or one of the drow guards ever perceived one of Entreri's movements as threatening, his life would have been at an abrupt end. He couldn't imagine now that Dwahvel Tiggerwillies, or any other halfling for that matter, could command such well-earned respect. Still, he hadn't come here for a fight, even if that old warrior part of him perceived Dwahvel's words as a challenge.

"Of course," he replied simply. "Several with slings eye you right now," she went on. "And the bullets of those slings have been treated with an explosive formula. Quite painful and devastating." "How resourceful," the assassin said, trying to sound impressed.

"That is how we survive," Dwahvel replied. "By being resourceful. By knowing everything about everything and preparing properly."

In a single swift movement-one that would surely have gotten him killed in Jarlaxle's court-the assassin spun the dagger over and slipped it into its sheath, then stood up straight and dipped a low and respectful bow to Dwahvel.

"Half the children of Calimport answer to Dwahvel," Dondon explained. "And the other half are not children at all," he added with a wink, "and answer to Dwahvel, as well."

"And of course, both halves have watched Artemis Entreri carefully since he walked back into the city," Dwahvel explained.

"So glad that my reputation preceded me," Entreri said, sounding puffy indeed.

"We did not know it was you until recently," Dwahvel replied, just to deflate the man, who of course, was not at all conceited.

"And you discovered this by….?" Entreri prompted.

That left Dwahvel a bit embarrassed, realizing that she

had just been squeezed for a bit of information she had not intended to reveal. "I do not know why you would expect an answer," she said, somewhat perturbed. "Nor do I begin to see any reason I should help the one who dethroned Regis from the guild of the former Pasha Pook. Regis, was in a position to aid all the other halflings of Calimport."

Entreri had no answer to that, so he offered nothing in reply.

"Still, we should talk," Dwahvel went on, turning sidelong and motioning to the door.

Entreri glanced back at Dondon.

"Leave him to his pleasures," Dwahvel explained. "You would have him freed, yet he has little desire to leave, I assure you. Fine food and fine companionship."

Entreri looked with disgust to the assorted pies and sweets, to the hardly moving Dondon, then to the two females. "He is not so demanding," one of them explained with a laugh.

"Just a soft lap to rest his sleepy head," the other added with a titter that set them both to giggling.

"I have all that I could ever desire," Dondon assured him.

Entreri just shook his head and left with Dwahvel, following the little halfling to a more private-and undoubtedly better guarded-room deeper into the Copper Ante complex. Dwahvel took a seat in a low, plush chair and motioned for the assassin to take one opposite. Entreri was hardly comfortable in the half-sized piece, his legs straight out before him.

"I do not entertain many who are not halflings," Dwahvel apologized. "We tend to be a secretive group."

Entreri saw that she was looking for him to tell her how honored he was. But, of course, he wasn't, and so he said nothing, just keeping a tight expression, eyes boring accusingly into the female.

"We hold him for his own good," Dwahvel said plainly.

"Dondon was once among the most respected thieves in Calimport," Entreri countered.

"Once," Dwahvel echoed, "but not so long after your departure, Dondon drew the anger of a particularly powerful pasha. The man was a friend of mine, so I pleaded for him to spare Dondon. Our compromise was that Dondon remain inside. Always inside. If he ever is seen walking the streets of Calimport again, by the pasha or any of the pasha's many contacts, then I am bound to turn him over for execution."

"A better fate, by my estimation, than the slow death you give him chained in that room."

Dwahvel laughed aloud at that proclamation. "Then you do not understand Dondon," she said. "Men more holy than I have long identified the seven sins deadly to the soul, and while Dondon has little of the primary three, for he is neither proud nor envious nor wrathful, he is possessed of an excess of the last four-sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust. He and I made a deal, a deal to save his life. I promised to give him, without judgment, all that he desired in exchange for his promise to remain within my doors."

"Then why the chains about his ankle?" Entreri asked.

"Because Dondon is drunk more often than sober," Dwahvel

explained. "Likely he would cause trouble within my establishment, or perhaps he would stagger onto the street. It is all for his own protection."

Entreri wanted to refute that, for he had never seen a more pitiful sight than Dondon and would personally prefer a tortured death to that grotesque lifestyle. But when he thought about Dondon more carefully, when he remembered the halfling's personal style those years ago, a style that often included sweet foods and many ladies, he recognized that Dondon's failings now were the halfling's own and nothing forced upon him by a caring Dwahvel.

"If he remains inside the Copper Ante, no one will bother him," Dwahvel said after giving Entreri the moment to think it over. "No contract, no assassin. Though, of course, this is only on the five-year-old word of a pasha. So you can understand why my fellows were a bit nervous when the likes of Artemis Entreri walked into the Copper Ante inquiring about Dondon."

Entreri eyed her skeptically.

"They were not sure it was you at first," Dwahvel explained. "Yet we have known that you were back in town for a couple of days now. Word is fairly common on the streets, though, as you can well imagine, it is more rumor than truth. Some say that you have returned to displace Quentin Bodeau and regain control of Pook's house. Others hint that you have come for greater reasons, hired by the Lords of Waterdeep themselves to assassinate several high-ranking leaders of Calimshan."

Entreri's expression summed up his incredulous response to that preposterous notion.

Dwahvel shrugged. "Such are the trappings of reputation," she said. "Many people are paying good money for any whisper, however ridiculous, that might help them solve the riddle of why Artemis Entreri has returned to Calimport. You make them nervous, assassin. Take that as the highest compliment.

"But also as a warning," Dwahvel went on. "When guilds fear someone or something, they often take steps to erase that fear. Several have been asking very pointed questions about your whereabouts and movements, and you understand this business well enough to realize that to be the mark of the hunting assassin."

Entreri put his elbow on the arm of the small chair and plopped his chin in his hand, considering the halfling carefully. Rarely had anyone spoken so bluntly and boldly to Artemis Entreri, and in the few minutes they had been sitting together, Dwahvel Tiggerwillies had earned more respect from Entreri than most would gather in a lifetime of conversations.

"I can find more detailed information for you," Dwahvel said slyly. "I have larger ears than a Sossalan mammoth and more eyes than a room of beholders, so it is said. And so it is true."

Entreri put a hand to his belt and jiggled his purse. "You overestimate the size of my treasury," he said.

"Look around you," Dwahvel retorted. "What need have I for more gold, from Silverymoon or anywhere else?"

Her reference to the Silverymoon coinage came as a subtle

hint to Entreri that she knew of what she was speaking.

"Call it a favor between friends," Dwahvel explained, hardly a surprise to the assassin who had made his life exchanging such favors. "One that you might perhaps repay me one day."

Entreri kept his face expressionless as he thought it over. Such a cheap way to garner information. Entreri highly doubted that the halfling would ever require his particular services, for halflings simply didn't solve their problems that way. And if Dwahvel did call upon him, maybe he would comply, or maybe not. Entreri hardly feared that Dwahvel would send her three-foot-tall thugs after him. No, all that Dwahvel wanted, should things sort out in his favor, was the bragging right that Artemis Entreri owed her a favor, a claim that would drain the blood from the faces of the majority of Calimport's street folk.

The question for Entreri now was, did he really care if he ever got the information Dwahvel offered? He thought it over for another minute, then nodded his accord. Dwahvel brightened immediately.

"Come back tomorrow night, then," she said. "I will have something to tell you."

Outside the Copper Ante, Artemis Entreri spent a long while thinking about Dondon, for he found that every time he conjured an image of the fat halfling stuffing pie into his face he was filled with rage. Not disgust, but rage. As he examined those feelings, he came to recognize that Dondon Tiggerwillies had been about as close to a friend as Artemis Entreri had ever known. Pasha Basadoni had been his mentor, Pasha Pook his primary employer, but Dondon and Entreri had related in a different manner. They acted in each other's benefit without set prices, exchanging information without taking count. It had been a mutually beneficial relationship. Seeing Dondon now, purely hedonistic, having given up on any meaning in life, it seemed to the assassin that the halfling had committed a form of living suicide.

Entreri did not possess enough compassion for that to explain the anger he felt, though, and when he admitted that to himself he came to understand that the sight of Dondon repelled him so much because, given his own mental state lately, it could well be him. Not chained by the ankle in the company of women and food, of course, but in effect, Dondon had surrendered, and so had Entreri.

Perhaps it was time to take down the white flag.

Dondon had been his friend in a manner, and there had been one other similarly entwined. Now it was time to go and see LaValle.

Chapter 4 THE SUMMONS

Drizzt couldn't get down to the ledge where Guenhwyvar had landed, so he used the onyx figurine to dismiss the cat. She faded back to the Astral plane, her home, where her wounds would better heal. He saw that Regis and his unexpected giant ally had moved out of sight, and that Wulfgar and Catti-brie were moving to join Bruenor down at

the lower ledge to the south, where the last of the enemy giants had fallen. The dark elf began picking his way to join them. At first, he thought he might have to backtrack all the way around to his initial position with Wulfgar, but using his incredible agility and the strength of fingers trained for decades in the maneuvering skills of sword play, he somehow found enough ledges, cracks, and simple angled surfaces to get down beside his friends.

By the time he got there, all three had entered the cave at the back of the shelf.

"Damned things might've kept a bit more treasure if they're meanin' to put up such a fight," he heard Bruenor complaining.

"Perhaps that's why they were scouting out the road," Catti-brie replied. "Might it have been better for

ye if we went at them on our way back from Cadderly's place? Perhaps then we'd've found more treasure to yer liking. And maybe a few merchant skulls to go along with it."

"Bah!" the dwarf snorted, drawing a wide smile from Drizzt. Few in all the Realms needed treasure less than Bruenor Battlehammer, Eighth King of Mithral Hall (despite his chosen absence from the place) and also leader of a lucrative mining colony in Icewind Dale. But that wasn't the point of Bruenor's ire, Drizzt understood, and he smiled all the wider as Bruenor confirmed his suspicions.

"What kind o' wicked god'd put ye against such powerful foes and not even reward ye with a bit o' gold?" the dwarf grumbled.

"We did find some gold," Catti-brie reminded him. Drizzt, entering the cave, noted that she held a fairly substantial sack that bulged with coins.

Bruenor flashed the drow a disgusted look. "Copper mostly," he grumbled. "Three gold coins, a pair o' silver, and nothing more but stinkin' copper!"

"But the road is safe," Drizzt said. He looked to Wulfgar as he spoke, but the big man would not match his stare. The drow tried hard not to pass any judgment over his tormented friend. Wulfgar should have led Drizzt's charge to the shelf. Never before had he so failed Drizzt in their tandem combat. But the drow knew that the barbarian's hesitance came not from any desire to see Drizzt injured nor, certainly, any cowardice. Wulfgar spun in emotional turmoil, the depths of which Drizzt Do'Urden had never before seen. He had known of these problems before coaxing the barbarian out for this hunt, so he could not rightly place any blame now.

Nor did he want to. He only hoped that the fight itself, after Wulfgar had become involved, had helped

the man to rid himself of some of those inner demons, had run the horse, as Montolio would have called it, just a bit.

"And what about yerself?" Bruenor roared, bouncing over to stand before Drizzt. "What're ye about, going off on yer own without a word to the rest of us? Ye thinking all the fun's for yerself, elf? Ye thinking that me and me girl can't be helpin' ye?"

"I did not want to trouble you with so minor a battle," Drizzt calmly replied, painting a disarming smile on his dark face. "I knew that we would be in the mountains, outside and

not under them, in terrain not suited for the likes of a short-limbed dwarf."

Bruenor wanted to hit him. Drizzt could see that in the way the dwarf was trembling. "Bah!" he roared instead, throwing up his hands and walking back for the exit to the small cave. "Ye're always doin' that, ye stinkin' elf. Always going about on yer own and taking all the fun. But we'll find more on the road, don't ye doubt! And ye better be hopin' that ye see it afore me, or I'll cut 'em all down afore ye ever get them sissy blades outta their sheaths or that stinkin' cat outta that statue.

"Unless they're too much for us. …" he continued, his voice trailing away as he moved out of the cave. "Then I just might let ye have 'em all to yerself, ye stinkin' elf!"

Wulfgar, without a word and without a look at Drizzt, moved out next, leaving the drow and Catti-brie alone. Drizzt was chuckling now as Bruenor continued to grumble, but when he looked at Catti-brie, he saw that she was truly not amused, her feelings obviously hurt.

"I'm thinking that a poor excuse," she remarked.

"I wanted to bring Wulfgar out alone," Drizzt explained. "To bring him back to a different place and time, before all the trouble."

"And ye're not thinkin' that me dad, or meself, might want to be helping with that?" Catti-brie asked.

"I wanted no one here that Wulfgar might fear needed protecting," Drizzt explained, and Catti-brie slumped back, her jaw dropping open.

"I speak only the truth, and you see it clearly," Drizzt went on. "You remember how Wulfgar acted toward you before the fight with the yochlol. He was protective to the point of becoming a detriment to any battle cause. How could I rightly ask you to join us out here now, when that previous scenario might have repeated, leaving Wulfgar, perhaps, in an even worse emotional place than when we set out? That is why I did not ask Bruenor or Regis, either. Wulfgar, Guenhwyvar, and I would fight the giants, as we did that time so long ago in Icewind Dale. And maybe, just maybe, he would remember things the way they had been before his unwelcome tenure with Errtu."

Catti-brie's expression softened, and she bit her lower lip as she nodded her agreement. "And did it work?" she asked. "Suren the fight went well, and Wulfgar fought well and honestly."

Drizzt's gaze drifted out the exit. "He made a mistake," the drow admitted. "Though surely he compensated as the battle progressed. It is my hope that Wulfgar will forgive himself his initial hesitance and focus on the actual fight where he performed wonderfully."

"Hesitance?" Catti-brie asked skeptically.

"When we first began the battle," Drizzt started to explain, but he waved his hand dismissively as if it did not really matter. "It has been many years since we have fought together. It was an excusable miscue, nothing more." In truth, Drizzt had a hard time dismissing the fact that Wulfgar's hesitance had almost cost him and Guenhwyvar dearly.

"Ye're in a generous mood," the ever-perceptive Catti-brie remarked.

"It is my hope that Wulfgar will remember who he is and who his friends truly are," the drow ranger replied.

"Yer hope," Catti-brie echoed. "But is it your expectation?"

Drizzt continued to stare out the exit. He could only shrug.

The four were out of the ravine and back on the trail shortly after, and Bruenor's grumbling about Drizzt turned into complaining about Regis. "Where in the Nine Hells is Rumblebelly?" the dwarf bellowed. "And how in the Nine Hells did he ever get a giant to throw rocks for him?"

Even as he spoke, they felt the vibrations of heavy, heavy footfalls beneath their feet and heard a silly song sung in unison. There was a happy halfling voice, Regis, and a second voice that rumbled like the thunder of a rockslide. A moment later, Regis came around a bend in the northern trail, riding on the giant's shoulder, the two of them singing and laughing with every step.

"Hello," Regis said happily when he steered the giant to join his friends. He noted that Drizzt had his hands on his scimitars, though they were sheathed (and that meant little for the lightning-fast drow), Bruenor clutched tightly to his axe, Catti-brie to her bow, and Wulfgar, holding Aegis-fang, seemed as if he was about to explode into murderous action.

"This is Junger," Regis explained. "He was not with the other band-he says he doesn't even know them. And he is a smart one."

Junger put a hand up to secure Regis's seat, then bowed low before the stunned group.

"In fact, Junger does not even go down to the road, does not go out of the mountains at all," Regis explained. "Says he has no interest in the affairs of dwarves or men."

"He telled ye that, did he?" Bruenor asked doubtfully.

Regis nodded, his smile wide. "And I believe him," he said, waggling the ruby pendant, whose magical hypnotizing properties were well known to the friends.

"That don't change a thing," Bruenor said with a growl, looking to Drizzt as if expecting the ranger to start the fight. A giant was a giant, after all, to the dwarf's way of thinking, and any giant looked much better lying down with an axe firmly embedded in its skull.

"Junger is no killer," Regis said firmly.

"Only goblins," the huge giant said with a smile. "And hill giants. And orcs, of course, for who could abide the ugly things?"

His sophisticated dialect and his choice of enemies had the dwarf staring at him wide-eyed. "And yeti," Bruenor said. "Don't ye be forgettin' yeti."

"Oh, not yeti," Junger replied. "I do not kill yeti."

The scowl returned to Bruenor's face.

"Why, one cannot even eat the smelly things," Junger explained. "I do not kill them, I domesticate them."

"Ye what?" Bruenor demanded.

"Domesticate them," Junger explained. "Like a dog or a horse. Oh, but I've quite a selection of yeti workers at my cave back in the mountains."

Bruenor turned an incredulous expression on Drizzt, but the ranger, as much at a loss as the dwarf, only shrugged.

"We've lost too much time already," Catti-brie remarked. "Camlaine and the others'll be halfway out o' the dale afore we catch them. Be rid o' yer friend, Regis, and let us get to the trail."

Regis was shaking his head before she ever finished. "Junger does not usually leave the mountains," he explained. "But he will for me."

"Then I'll not have to carry you anymore," Wulfgar grumbled, walking away. "Good enough for that."

"Ye're not having to carry him anyway," Bruenor replied, then looked back to Regis. "I'm thinking ye can do yer own walking. Ye don't need a giant to act as a horse."

"More than that," Regis said, beaming. "A bodyguard."

The dwarf and Catti-brie both groaned; Drizzt only chuckled and shook his head.

"In every fight, I spend more time trying to keep out of the way," Regis explained. "Never am I any real help. But with Junger-"

"Ye'll still be trying to keep outta the way," Bruenor interrupted.

"If Junger is to fight for you, then he is no more than any of the rest of us," Drizzt added. "Are we, then, merely bodyguards of Regis?"

"No, of course not," the halfling replied. "But-"

"Be rid of him," Catti-brie said. "Wouldn't we look the fine band of friendly travelers walking into Luskan beside a mountain giant?"

"We'll walk in with a drow," Regis answered before he could think about it, then blushed a deep shade of red.

Again, Drizzt only chuckled and shook his head.

"Put him down," Bruenor said to Junger. "I think he's needin' a talk."

"You mustn't hurt my friend Regis," Junger replied. "That I simply cannot allow."

Bruenor snorted. "Put 'im down."

With a look to Regis, who held a stubborn pose for a few moments longer, Junger complied. He set the halfling gently on the ground before Bruenor, who reached as if to grab Regis by the ear, but then glanced up, up, up at Junger and thought the better of it. "Ye're not thinkin', Rumblebelly," the dwarf said quietly, leading Regis away. "What happens if the big damned thing finds its way outta yer ruby spell? He'll squish ye flat afore any o' us can stop him, and I'm not thinking I'd try to stop him if I could, since ye'd be deserving the flattening!"

Regis started to argue, but he remembered the first moments of his encounter with Junger, when the huge giant had proclaimed that he liked his rodents smashed. The little halfling couldn't deny the fact that a single step from Junger would indeed mash him, and the hold of the ruby pendant was ever tentative. He turned and walked back from

Bruenor and bade Junger to go back to his home in the deep mountains.

The giant smiled-and shook his head. "I hear it," he said cryptically. "So I shall stay."

"Hear what?" Regis and Bruenor asked together.

"Just a call," Junger assured them. "It tells me that I should go along with you to serve Regis and protect him."

"Ye hit him good with that thing, didn't ye now?" Bruenor whispered at the halfling.

"I need no protecting," Regis said firmly to the giant. "Though we all thank you for your help in the fight. You can go back to your home."

Again Junger shook his head. "Better that I go with you."

Bruenor glowered at Regis, and the halfling had no explanation. As far as he could tell, Junger was still under the spell of the pendant-the fact that Regis was still alive seemed evidence of that-yet the behemoth was clearly disobeying him.

"Perhaps you can come along," Drizzt said to the surprise of them all. "Yes, but if you mean to join us, then perhaps your pet tundra yetis might prove invaluable. How long will it take you to retrieve them?"

"Three days at the most," Junger replied.

"Well, go then, and be quick about it," Regis said, hopping up and down and wriggling the ruby pendant at the end of its chain.

That seemed to satisfy the giant. It bowed low then bounded away.

"We should've killed the thing here and now," Bruenor said. "Now it'll come back in three days and find us long gone, then it'll likely take its damned smelly yetis and go down hunting on the road!"

"No, he told me he never goes out of the mountains," Regis reasoned.

"Enough of this foolishness," Catti-brie demanded. "The thing's gone, and so should we all be." None offered an argument to that, so they set off at once, Drizzt purposely falling into line beside Regis.

"Was it all the call of the ruby pendant?" the ranger asked.

"Junger told me that he was farther from home than he had been in a long, long time," Regis admitted. "He said he heard a call on the wind and went to answer it. I guess he thought I was the caller."

Drizzt accepted that explanation. If Junger continued to fall for the simple ruse, they would be around the edge of the Spine of the World, rushing fast along a better road, before the behemoth ever returned to this spot.

Indeed Junger was running fast in the direction of his relatively lavish mountain home, and it struck the giant as curious, for just a moment, that he had ever left the place. In his younger days, Junger had been a wanderer, living meal to meal on whatever prey he could find. He snickered now when he considered all that he had told the foolish little

halfling, for Junger had indeed once feasted on the meat of humans, and even on a halfling once. The truth was, he shunned such meals now as much because he didn't like the taste as because he thought it better not to make such powerful enemies as humans. Wizards in particular scared him. Of course, to find human or halfling meat, Junger had to leave his mountain home, and that he never liked to do.

He wouldn't have come out at all this time had not a call on the wind, something he still did not quite understand, compelled him.

Yes, Junger had all he wanted at his home: plenty of food, obedient servants, and comfortable furs. He had no desire to ever leave the place.

But he had, and he understood that he would again, and though that seemed an incongruous thought to the not-stupid giant, it was one that he simply couldn't pause to consider. Not now, not with the constant buzzing in his ear.

He would get the yetis, he knew, and then return, following the instructions of the call on the wind.

The call of Crenshinibon.

Chapter 5 STIRRING THE STREETS

LaValle walked to his private suite in the guild house late that morning after meeting with Quentin Bodeau and Chalsee Anguaine. Dog Perry was supposed to attend, and he was the one LaValle truly wanted to see, but Dog had sent word that he would not be coming, that he was out on the streets learning more about the dangerous Entreri.

In truth, the meeting proved nothing more than a gathering to calm the nerves of Quentin Bodeau. The guildmaster wanted reassurances that Entreri wouldn't merely show up and murder him. Chalsee Anguaine, in the manner of a cocky young man, promised to defend Quentin with his life. This LaValle knew to be an obvious lie. LaValle argued that Entreri wouldn't work that way, that he would not come in and kill Quentin without first learning all of Quentin's ties and associates and how powerfully the man held the guild.

"Entreri is never reckless," LaValle had explained. "And the scenario you fear would indeed be reckless."

By the time LaValle had turned to leave, Bodeau felt better and expressed his sentiment that he would feel better still if Dog Perry, or someone else, merely killed the dangerous man. It would never be that easy, LaValle knew, but he had kept the thought silent.

As soon as he entered his rooms, a suite of four with a large greeting room, a private study to the right, bedroom directly behind, and an alchemy lab and library to the left, the wizard felt as if something was amiss. He suspected Dog Perry to be the source of the trouble-the man did not trust him and had even privately, though surely subtly, accused him of the intent to side with Entreri should it come to blows.

Had the man come in here when he knew LaValle to be at the meeting with Quentin? Was he still here, hiding, crouched with weapon in hand?

The wizard looked back at the door and saw no signs that

the lock-and the door was always locked-had been tripped, or that his traps had been defeated. There was one other way into the place, an outside window, but LaValle had placed so many glyphs and wards upon it, scattering them in several different places, that anyone crawling through would have been shocked with lightning, burned three different times, and frozen solid on the sill. Even if an intruder managed to survive the magical barrage, the explosions would have been heard throughout this entire level of the guild house, bringing soldiers by the score.

Reassured by simple logic and by a defensive spell he placed upon his body to make his skin resistant to any blows, LaValle started for his private study.

The door opened before he reached it, Artemis Entreri standing calmly within.

LaValle did well to stay on his feet, for his knees nearly buckled with weakness.

"You knew that I had returned," Entreri said easily, stepping forward and leaning against the jamb. "Did you not expect that I would pay a visit to an old friend?"

The wizard composed himself and shook his head, looking back at the door. "Door or window?" he asked.

"Door, of course," Entreri replied. "I know how well you protect your windows."

"The door, as well," LaValle said dryly, for obviously he hadn't protected it well enough.

Entreri shrugged. "You still use that lock and trap combination you had upon your previous quarters," he explained, holding up a key. "I suspected as much, since I heard that you were overjoyed when you discovered that the items had survived when the dwarf knocked the door in on your head."

"How did you get a-" LaValle started to ask.

"I got you the lock, remember?" Entreri answered.

"But the guild house is well defended by no soldiers known by Artemis Entreri," the wizard argued.

"The guild house has its secret leaks," the assassin quietly replied.

"But my door," LaValle went on. "There are. . were other traps."

Entreri put on a bored expression, and LaValle got the point.

"Very well," the wizard said, moving past Entreri into the study and motioning for the assassin to follow. "I can have a fine meal delivered, if you so desire."

Entreri took a seat opposite LaValle and shook his head. "I came not for food, merely for information," he explained. "They know I am in Calimport."

"Many guilds know," LaValle confirmed with a nod. "And yes, I did know. I saw you through my crystal ball as, I am sure, have many of the wizards of the other pashas. You have not exactly been traveling from shadow to shadow."

"Should I be?" Entreri asked. "I came in with no enemies, as far as I know, and with no intent to make any."

LaValle laughed at the absurd notion. "No enemies?" he asked. "Ever have you made enemies. The creation of enemies is the obvious side product of your dark profession." His

chuckle died fast when he looked carefully at the not-amused assassin, the wizard suddenly realizing that he was mocking perhaps the most dangerous man in all the world.

"Why did you scry me?" Entreri asked.

LaValle shrugged and held up his hands as if he didn't understand the question. "That is my job in the guild," he answered.

"So you informed the guildmaster of my return?"

"Pasha Quentin Bodeau was with me when your image came into the crystal ball," LaValle admitted.

Entreri merely nodded, and LaValle shifted uncomfortably.

"I did not know it would be you, of course," the wizard explained. "If I had known, I would have contacted you privately before informing Bodeau to learn your intent and your wishes."

"You are a loyal one," Entreri said dryly, and the irony was not lost on LaValle.

"I make no pretensions or promises," the wizard replied. "Those who know me understand that I do little to upset the balance of power about me and serve whoever has weighted his side of the scale the most."

"A pragmatic survivor," Entreri said. "Yet did you not just tell me that you would have informed me had you known? You do make a promise, wizard, a promise to serve. And yet, would you not be breaking that promise to Quentin Bodeau by warning me? Perhaps I do not know you as well as I had thought. Perhaps your loyalty cannot be trusted."

"I make a willing exception for you," LaValle stammered, trying to find a way out of the logic trap. He knew beyond a doubt that Entreri would try to kill him if the assassin believed that he could not be trusted.

And he knew beyond a doubt that if Entreri tried to kill him, he would be dead.

"Your mere presence means that whichever side you serve has weighted the scale in their favor," he explained. "Thus, I would never willingly go against you."

Entreri didn't respond other than to stare hard at the man, making LaValle shift uncomfortably more than once. Entreri, having little time for such games and with no real intention of harming LaValle, broke the tension, though, and quickly. "Tell me of the guild in its present incarnation," he said. "Tell me of Bodeau and his lieutenants and how extensive his street network has become."

"Quentin Bodeau is a decent man," LaValle readily complied. "He does not kill unless forced into such a position and steals only from those who can afford the loss. But many under him, and many other guilds, perceive this compassion as weakness, and thus the guild has suffered under his reign. We are not as extensive as we were when Pook ruled or when you took the leadership from the halfling Regis." He went on to detail the guild's area of influence, and the assassin was indeed surprised at how much Pook's grand old guild had frayed at the edges. Streets that had once been well within Pook's domain were far out of reach now, for those avenues considered borderlands between various operations were much closer to the guild house.

Entreri hardly cared for the prosperity or weakness of

Bodeau's operation. This was a survival call and nothing more. He was only trying to get a feeling for the current layout of Calimport's underbelly so that he might not inadvertently bring the wrath of any particular guild down upon him.

LaValle went on to tell of the lieutenants, speaking highly of the potential of young Chalsee and warning Entreri in a deadly serious tone, but one that hardly seemed to stir the assassin, of Dog Perry.

"Watch him closely," LaValle said again, noting the assassin's almost bored expression. "Dog Perry was beside me when we scried you, and he was far from happy to see Artemis Entreri returned to Calimport. Your mere presence poses a threat to him, for he commands a fairly high price as an assassin, and not just for Quentin Bodeau." Still garnering no obvious response, LaValle pressed even harder. "He wants to be the next Artemis Entreri," the wizard said bluntly.

That brought a chuckle from the assassin, not one of doubt concerning Dog Perry's abilities to fulfill his dream or one of any flattery. Entreri was amused by the fact that this Dog Perry hardly understood that which he sought, for if he did, he would turn his desires elsewhere.

"He may see your return as more than an inconvenience," LaValle warned. "Perhaps as a threat, or even worse … as an opportunity."

"You do not like him," Entreri reasoned.

"He is a killer without discipline and thus hardly predictable," the wizard replied. "A blind man's flying arrow. If I knew for certain that he was coming after me, I would hardly fear him. It is the often irrational actions of the man that keep us all a bit worried."

"I hold no aspirations for Bodeau's position," Entreri assured the wizard after a long moment of silence. "Nor do I have any intention of impaling myself on the dagger of Dog Perry. Thus you will show no disloyalty to Bodeau by keeping me informed, wizard, and I expect at least that much from you."

"If Dog Perry comes after you, you will be told," LaValle promised, and Entreri believed him. Dog Perry was an upstart, a young hopeful who desired to strengthen his reputation with a single thrust of his dagger. But LaValle understood the truth of Entreri, the assassin knew, and while the wizard might become nervous indeed if he invoked the wrath of Dog Perry, he would find himself truly terrified if ever he learned that Artemis Entreri wanted him dead.

Entreri sat a moment longer, considering the paradox of his reputation. Because of his years of work, many might seek to kill him, but, for the same reasons, many others would fear to go against him and indeed would work for him.

Of course, if Dog Perry did manage to kill him, then LaValle's loyalty to Entreri would come to an abrupt end, transferred immediately to the new king assassin.

To Artemis Entreri it all seemed so perfectly useless.

"You do not see the possibilities here," Dog Perry

scolded, working hard to keep his voice calm, though in truth he wanted to throttle the nervous young man.

"Have you heard the stories?" Chalsee Anguaine retorted. "He has killed everything from guildmasters to battle mages. Everyone he has decided to kill is dead."

Dog Perry spat in disgust. "That was a younger man," he replied. "A man revered by many guilds, including the Basadoni House. A man of connections and protection, who had many powerful allies to assist in his assassinations. Now he is alone and vulnerable, and no longer possessed of the quickness of youth."

"We should bide our time and learn more about him and discover why he has returned," Chalsee reasoned.

"The longer we wait, the more Entreri will rebuild his web," Dog Perry argued without hesitation. "A wizard, a guildmaster, spies on the street. No, if we wait then we cannot go against him without considering the possibility that our actions will begin a guild war. You understand the truth of Bodeau, of course, and recognize that under his leadership we would not survive such a war."

"You remain his principal assassin," Chalsee argued.

Dog Perry chuckled at the thought. "I follow opportunities," he corrected. "And the opportunity I see before me now is one that cannot be ignored. If I-if we-kill Artemis Entreri, we will command his previous position."

"Guildless?"

"Guildless," Dog Perry answered honestly. "Or better described as tied to many guilds. A sword for the highest bidder."

"Quentin Bodeau would not accept such a thing," Chalsee said. "He will lose two lieutenants, thus weakening his guild."

"Quentin Bodeau will understand that because his lieutenants now hire to more powerful guilds, his own position will be better secured," Dog Perry replied.

Chalsee considered the optimistic reasoning for a moment, then shook his head doubtfully. "Bodeau would then be vulnerable, perhaps fearing that his own lieutenants might strike against him at the request of another guildmaster."

"So be it," Dog Perry said coldly. "You should be very careful how tightly you tie your future to the likes of Bodeau. The guild erodes under his command, and eventually another guild will absorb us. Those willing to let the strongest conquer may find a new home. Those tied by foolish loyalty to the loser will have their bodies picked clean by beggars in the gutter."

Chalsee looked away, not enjoying this conversation in the least. Until the previous day, until they had learned that Artemis Entreri had returned, he had thought his life and career fairly secure. He was rising through the ranks of a reasonably strong guild. Now Dog Perry seemed intent on upping the stakes, on reaching for a higher level. While Chalsee could understand the allure, he wasn't certain of the true potential. If they succeeded against Entreri, he did not doubt Dog Perry's prediction, but the mere thought of going after Artemis Entreri…

Chalsee had been but a boy when Entreri had last left

Calimport, had been connected to no guilds and knew none of the many Entreri had slain. By the time Chalsee had joined the underworld circuit, others had claimed the position of primary assassins in Calimport: Marcus the Knife of Pasha Wroning's Guild; the independent Clarissa and her cohorts who ran the brothels serving the nobility of the region— yes, Clarissa's enemies seemed to simply disappear. Then there was Kadran Gordeon of the Basadoni Guild, and perhaps most deadly of all, Slay Targon, the battle mage. None of them had come near to erasing the reputation of Artemis Entreri, even though the end of Entreri's previous Calimport career had been marred by the downfall of the guildmaster he was supposedly serving and by his reputed inability to defeat a certain nemesis, a drow elf, no less.

And now Dog Perry wanted to catapult himself to the ranks of those four notorious assassins with a single kill, and in truth, the plan sounded plausible to Chalsee.

Except, of course, for the little matter of actually killing Entreri.

"The decision is made," Dog Perry said, seemingly sensing Chalsee's private thoughts. "I am going against him … with or without your assistance."

The implicit threat behind those words was not lost on Chalsee. If Dog Perry meant to have any chance against Entreri, there could be no neutral parties. When he proclaimed his intentions to Chalsee, he was bluntly inferring that Chalsee had to either stand with him or against him, to stand in his court or in Entreri's. Considering that Chalsee didn't even know Entreri and feared the man as much as an ally as an enemy, it didn't seem much of a choice.

The two began their planning immediately. Dog Perry insisted that Artemis Entreri would be dead within two days.

"The man is no enemy," LaValle assured Quentin later that same night as the two walked the corridors leading to the guildmaster's private dining hall. "His return to Calimport was not predicated by any desire to reclaim the guild."

"How can you know?" the obviously nervous leader asked. "How can anyone know the mind-set of that one? Ever has he survived through unpredictability."

"There you are wrong," LaValle replied. "Entreri has ever been predictable because he makes no pretense of that which he desires. I have spoken to him."

The admission had Quentin Bodeau spinning about to face the wizard directly. "When?" he stuttered. "Where? You have not left the guild house all this day."

LaValle smiled and tilted his head as he regarded the man-the man who had just foolishly admitted that he was monitoring LaValle's movements. How frightened Quentin must be to go to such lengths. Still, the wizard knew, Quentin realized that LaValle and Entreri were old companions and that if Entreri did desire a return to power in the guild, he would likely enlist LaValle.

"You have no reason not to trust me," LaValle said calmly. "If Entreri wanted the guild back, I would tell you forthwith, that you might surrender leadership and still retain some high-ranking position."

Quentin Bodeau's gray eyes flared dangerously. "Surrender?" he echoed.

"If I led a guild and heard that Artemis Entreri desired my position, I would surely do that!" LaValle said with a laugh that somewhat dispelled the tension. "But have no such fears. Entreri is back in Calimport, 'tis true, but he is no enemy to you."

"Who can tell?" Bodeau replied, starting back down the corridor. LaValle fell into step beside him. "But understand that you are to have no further contacts with the man."

"That hardly seems prudent. Are we not better off understanding his movements?"

"No further contacts," Quentin Bodeau said more forcefully, grabbing LaValle by the shoulder and turning him so he could look directly into the wizard's eyes. "None, and that is not my choice."

"You miss an opportunity, I fear," LaValle started to argue. "Entreri is a friend, a very valuable-"

"None!" Quentin insisted, coming to an abrupt halt to accentuate his point. "Believe me when I say that it would please me greatly to hire the assassin to take care of a few troublemakers among the sewer wererat guild. I have heard that Entreri particularly dislikes the distasteful creatures and that they hold little love for him."

LaValle smiled at the memory. Pasha Pook had been heavily connected with a nasty wererat leader by the name of Rassiter. After Pook's fall, Rassiter had tried to enlist Entreri into a mutually beneficial alliance. Unfortunately for Rassiter, a very angry Entreri hadn't seen things quite that way.

"But we cannot enlist him," Quentin Bodeau went on. "Nor are we … are you, to have any further contact with him. These orders have come down to me from the Basadoni Guild, the Rakers' Guild, and Pasha Wroning himself."

LaValle paused, caught off guard by the stunning news. Bodeau had just listed the three most powerful guilds of Calimport's streets.

Quentin paused at the dining room door, knowing that there were attendants inside, wanting to get this settled privately with the wizard. "They have declared Entreri an untouchable," he went on, meaning that no guildmaster, at the risk of street war, was to even speak with the man, let alone have any professional dealings with him.

LaValle nodded, understanding but none too happy about the prospects. It made perfect sense, of course, as would any joint action the three rival guilds could agree upon. They had iced Entreri out of the system for fear that a minor guildmaster might empty his coffers and hire the assassin to kill one of the more prominent leaders. Those in the strongest positions of power preferred the status quo, and they all feared Entreri enough to recognize that he alone might upset that balance. What a testament to the man's reputation! And LaValle, above all others, understood it to be rightly given.

"I understand," he said to Quentin, bowing to show his obedience. "Perhaps when the situation is better clarified we will find our opportunity to exploit my friendship with this

very valuable man."

Bodeau managed his first smile in several days, feeling assured by LaValle's seemingly sincere declarations. He was indeed far more at ease as they continued on their way to share an evening meal.

But LaValle was not. He could hardly believe that the other guilds had moved so quickly to isolate Entreri. If that was the case, then he understood that they would be watching the assassin closely-close enough to learn of any attempts against Entreri and to bring about retaliation on any guild so foolish as to try to kill the man.

LaValle ate quickly, then dismissed himself, explaining that he was in the middle of penning a particularly difficult scroll he hoped to finish that night.

He went immediately to his crystal ball, hoping to locate Dog Perry, and was pleased indeed to learn that the fiery man and Chalsee Anguaine were both still within the guild house. He caught up to them on the street level in the main armory. He could guess easily enough why they might be in that particular room.

"You plan to go out this evening?" the wizard calmly asked as he entered.

"We go out every evening," Dog Perry replied. "It is our job, is it not?"

"A few extra weapons?" LaValle asked suspiciously, noting that both men had daggers strapped to every conceivable retrievable position.

"The guild lieutenant who is not careful is usually dead," Dog Perry replied dryly.

"Indeed," LaValle conceded with a bow. "And, by word of the Basadoni, Wroning, and Rakers' guilds, the guild lieutenant who goes after Artemis Entreri is doing no favors for his master."

The blunt declaration gave both men pause. Dog Perry worked through it quickly and calmly, getting back to his preparations with no discernible trace of guilt upon his blank expression. But Chalsee, less experienced by far, showed some clear signs of distress. LaValle knew he had hit the target directly. They were going after Entreri this very night.

"I would have thought you would consult with me first," the wizard remarked, "to learn his whereabouts, of course, and perhaps see some of the defenses he obviously has set in place."

"You babble, wizard," Dog Perry insisted. "I have many duties to attend and have no time for your foolishness." He slammed the door of the weapons locker as he finished, then walked right past LaValle. A nervous Chalsee Anguaine fell into step behind him, glancing back many times.

LaValle considered the cold treatment and recognized that Dog Perry had indeed decided to go after Entreri and had also decided that LaValle could not be trusted as far as the dangerous assassin was concerned. Now the wizard, in considering all the possibilities, found his own dilemma. If Dog Perry succeeded in killing Entreri the dangerous young man who had just pointedly declared himself no friend of LaValle's would gain immensely in stature and power (if the

other guilds did not decide to kill him for his rash actions). But if Entreri won, which LaValle deemed most likely, then he might not appreciate the fact that LaValle had not contacted him with any warning, as they had agreed.

And yet LaValle could not dare to use his magics and contact Entreri. If the other guilds were watching the assassin, such forms of contact would be easily detected and traced.

A very distressed LaValle went back to his room and sat for a long while in the darkness. In either scenario, whether Dog Perry or Entreri proved victorious, the guild might be in for more than a little trouble. Should he go to Quentin Bodeau? he wondered, but then he dismissed the thought, realizing that Quentin would do little more than pace the floor and chew his fingernails. Dog Perry was out in the streets now, and Quentin had no means to recall him.

Should he gaze into his crystal ball and try to learn of the battle? Again, LaValle had to consider that any magical contact, even if it was no more than silent scrying, might be detected by the wizards hired by the more powerful guilds and might then implicate LaValle.

So he sat in the darkness, wondering and worrying, as the hours slipped by.

Chapter 6 LEAVING THE DALE BEHIND

Drizzt watched every move the barbarian made-the way Wulfgar sat opposite him across the fire, the way the man went at his dinner-looking for some hint of the barbarian's mindset. Had the battle with the giants helped? Had Drizzt "run the horse" as he had explained his hopes to Regis? Or was Wulfgar in worse shape now than before the battle? Was he more consumed by this latest guilt, though his actions, or inaction, hadn't really cost them anything?

Wulfgar had to recognize that he had not performed well at the beginning of the battle, but had he, in his own mind, made up for that error with his subsequent actions?

Drizzt was as perceptive to such emotions as anyone alive, but, in truth, he could not get the slightest read of the barbarian's inner turmoil. Wulfgar moved methodically, mechanically, as he had since his return from Errtu's clutches, going through the motions of life itself without any outward sign of pain, satisfaction, relief, or anything else. Wulfgar was existing, but hardly living. If there remained a flicker of passion within those sky-blue orbs, Drizzt could not see it.

Thus, the drow ranger was left with the impression that the battle with the giants had been inconsequential, had neither bolstered the barbarian's desire to live nor had placed any further burdens upon Wulfgar. In looking at his friend now, the man tearing a piece of fowl from the bone, his expression unchanging and un-revealing, Drizzt had to admit to himself that he had not only run out of answers but out of places to look for answers.

Catti-brie moved over and sat down beside Wulfgar then, and the barbarian did pause to regard her. He even managed a

little smile for her benefit. Perhaps she might succeed where he had failed, the drow thought. He and Wulfgar had been friends, to be sure, but the barbarian and Catti-brie had shared something much deeper than that.

The thought of it brought a tumult of opposing feelings into Drizzt's gut. On the one hand he cared deeply for Wulfgar and wanted nothing more in all the world than for the barbarian to heal his emotional scars. On the other hand, seeing Catti-brie close to the man pained him. He tried to deny it, tried to elevate himself above it, but it was there, and it was a fact, and it would not go away.

He was jealous.

With great effort, the drow sublimated those feelings enough to honestly leave the couple alone. He went to join Bruenor and Regis and couldn't help but contrast the halfling's beaming face as he devoured his third helping with that of Wulfgar, who seemed to be eating only to keep his body alive. Pragmatism against pure pleasure.

"We'll be out o' the dale tomorrow," Bruenor was saying, pointing out the dark silhouettes of the mountains, looming much larger to the south and east. Indeed, the wagon had turned the corner and they were heading south now, no longer west. The wind, which always filled the ears in Icewind Dale, had died to the occasional gust.

"How's me boy?" Bruenor asked when he noticed the dark elf.

Drizzt shrugged.

"Ye could've got him killed, ye durned fool elf," the dwarf huffed. "Ye could've got us all killed. And not for the first time!"

"And not for the last," Drizzt promised with a smile, bowing low. He knew that Bruenor was playing with him here, that the dwarf loved a good fight as much as he did, particularly one against giants. Bruenor had been upset with him, to be sure, but only because Drizzt hadn't included him in the original battle plans. The brief but brutal fight had long since exorcised that grudge from Bruenor, and so now he was just teasing the drow as a means of relieving his honest concerns for Wulfgar.

"Did ye see his face when we battled?" the dwarf asked more earnestly. "Did ye see him when Rumblebelly showed up with his stinkin' giant friend and it appeared as if me boy was about to be squished flat?"

Drizzt admitted that he did not. "I was engaged with my own concerns at the time," he explained. "And with Guenhwyvar's peril."

"Nothing," Bruenor declared. "Nothing at all. No anger as he lifted his hammer to throw it at the giants."

"The warrior sublimates his anger to keep in conscious control," the drow reasoned.

"Bah, not like that," Bruenor retorted. "I saw rage in me boy when we fought Errtu on the ice island, rage beyond anything me old eyes've ever seen. And how I'd like to be seein' it again. Anger, rage, even fear!"

"I saw him when I arrived at the battle," Regis admitted. "He did not know that the new and huge giant would be an ally, and if it was not, if it had joined in on the side of

the other giants, then Wulfgar would have easily been killed, for he had no defense against our angle from his open ledge. And yet he was not afraid at all. He looked right up at the giant, and all I saw was…"

"Resignation," the drow finished for him. "Acceptance of whatever fate might throw at him."

"I'm not for understanding." Bruenor admitted.

Drizzt had no answers for him. He had his suspicions, of course, that Wulfgar's trauma had been too great and had thus stolen from him his hopes and dreams, his passions and purpose, but he could find no way to put that into words that the ever-pragmatic dwarf might understand. He thought it ironic, in a sense, for the closest example of similar behavior he could recall was Bruenor's own, soon after Wulfgar had fallen to the yochlol. The dwarf had wandered aimlessly through the halls for days on end, grieving.

Yes, Drizzt realized, that was the key word. Wulfgar was grieving.

Bruenor would never understand, and Drizzt wasn't sure that he understood.

"Time to go," Regis remarked, drawing the dark elf from his contemplation. Drizzt looked to the halfling, then to Bruenor.

"Camlaine's invited us to a game o' bones," Bruenor explained. "Come along, elf. Yer eyes see better'n most, and I might be needing ye."

Drizzt glanced back to the fire, to Wulfgar and Catti-brie, sitting very close and talking. He noted that Catti-brie wasn't doing all of the speaking. She had somehow engaged Wulfgar, even had him a bit animated in his discussion. A big part of Drizzt wanted to stay right there and watch their every move, but he wouldn't give in to that weakness, so he went with Bruenor and Regis to watch the game of bones.

"Ye cannot know our pain at seeing the ceiling fall in on ye," Catti-brie said, gently moving the conversation to that fateful day in the bowels of Mithral Hall. Up to now, she and Wulfgar had been sharing happier memories of previous fights, battles in which the companions had overwhelmed monsters and put down threats without so high a price.

Wulfgar had even joined in, telling of his first battle with Bruenor-against Bruenor-when he had broken his standard staff over the dwarf's head, only to have the stubborn little creature swipe his legs out from under him and leave him unconscious on the field. As the conversation wound on, Catti-brie focused on another pivotal event: the Grafting of Aegis-fang. What a labor of love that had been, the pinnacle of Bruenor's amazing career as a smith, done purely out of the dwarf's affection for Wulfgar.

"If he hadn't loved ye so, he'd ne'er been able to make so great a weapon," she had explained. When she saw that her words were getting through to the pained man she had shifted the conversation subtly again, to the reverential treatment Bruenor had shown the warhammer after Wulfgar's apparent demise. And that, of course, had brought Catti-brie to the discussion of the day of Wulfgar's fall, to the memory of the evil yochlol.

To her great relief, Wulfgar had not tightened up when she went in this direction, but had stayed with her, hearing her words and adding his own when they seemed relevant.

"All the strength went from me body," Catti-brie went on. "And never have I seen Bruenor closer to breaking. But we went on and started fighting in yer name, and woe to our enemies then."

A distant look came into Wulfgar's light eyes and the woman went silent, giving him time to digest her words. She thought he would respond, but he did not, and the seconds slipped away quietly.

Catti-brie moved closer to him and put her arm about his back, resting her head on his strong shoulder. He didn't push her away, even shifted so they would both be more comfortable. The woman had hoped for more, had hoped to get Wulfgar into an emotional release. But while she hadn't achieved quite that, she recognized that she had gotten more than she could have rightfully expected. The love had not resurfaced, but neither had the rage.

It would take time.

The group did indeed roll out of Icewind Dale the next morning, a distinction made clear by the shifting wind. In the dale, the wind came from the northeast, rolling down off the cold waters of the Sea of Moving Ice. At the juncture to points south, east, and north of the bulk of the mountains, the wind blew constantly no longer, but was more a matter of gusts than the incessant whistle through the dale. And now, moving more to the south, the wind again kicked up, swirling against the towering Spine of the World. Unlike the cold breeze that gave its name to Icewind Dale, this was a gentle blow. The winds wafted up from warmer climes to the south or off the warmer waters of the Sword Coast, hitting against the blocking mountains and swirling back.

Drizzt and Bruenor spent most of the day away from the wagon, both to scout a perimeter about the steady but slow pacing team and to give some privacy to Catti-brie and Wulfgar. The woman was still talking, still trying to bring the man to a better place and time. Regis rode all the day long nestled in the back of the wagon among the generous-smelling foodstuffs.

It proved to be a quiet and uneventful day of travel, except for one point where Drizzt found a particularly disturbing track, that of a huge, booted giant.

"Rumblebelly's friend?" Bruenor asked, bending low beside the ranger as he inspected the footprint.

"So I would guess," Drizzt replied.

"Durned halfling put more of a spell than he should've on the thing," Bruenor grumbled.

Drizzt, who understood the power of the ruby pendant and the nature of enchantments in general, could not agree. He knew that the giant, no stupid creature, had been released from any spell Regis had woven soon after leaving the group. Likely, before they were miles apart, the giant had begun to wonder why in the world he had ever deigned to help the halfling and his strange group of friends. Then, soon after that, he had either forgotten the whole incident or was angry indeed at having been so deceived.

And now the behemoth seemed to be shadowing them, Drizzt realized, noting the general course of the tracks.

Perhaps it was mere coincidence, or perhaps even a different giant-Icewind Dale had no shortage of giants, after all. Drizzt could not be sure, and so, when he and Bruenor returned to the group for their evening meal, they said nothing about the footprints or about increasing the night watch. Drizzt did go off on his own, though, as much to get away from the continuing scene between Catti-brie and Wulfgar as to scout for any rogue giants. There in the dark of night, he could be alone with his thoughts and his fears, could wage his own emotional wars and remind himself over and over that Catti-brie alone could decide the course of her life.

Every time he recalled an incident highlighting how intelligent and honest the woman had always been, he was comforted. When the full moon began its lazy ascent over the distant waters of the Sword Coast, the drow felt strangely warm. Though he could hardly see the glow of the campfire, he understood that he was truly among friends.

Wulfgar looked deeply into her blue eyes and knew that she had purposefully brought him to this point, had smoothed the jagged edges of his battered consciousness slowly and deliberately, had massaged the walls of anger until her gentle touch had rubbed them into transparency. And now she wanted, she demanded, to look behind those walls, wanted to see the demons that so tormented Wulfgar.

Catti-brie sat quietly, calmly, patiently waiting. She had coaxed some specific horror stories out of the man and then had probed deeper, had asked him to lay bare his soul and his terror, something she knew could not be easy for the proud and strong man.

But Wulfgar hadn't rebuffed her. He sat now, his thoughts whirling, his gaze locked firmly by hers, his breath coming in gasps, his heart pounding in his huge chest.

"For so long I held on to you," he said quietly. "Down there, among the smoke and the dirt, I held fast to an image of my Catti-brie. I kept it right before me at all times. I did."

He paused to catch his breath, and Catti-brie placed a gentle hand on his.

"So many sights that a man was not meant to view," Wulfgar said quietly, and Catti-brie saw a hint of moisture in his light eyes. "But I fought them all with an image of you."

Catti-brie offered a smile, but that did little to comfort Wulfgar.

"He used it against me," the man went on, his tone lowering, becoming almost a growl. "Errtu knew my thoughts and turned them against me. He showed me the finish of the yochlol fight, the creature pushing through the rubble, falling over you and tearing you to pieces. Then it went for Bruenor…."

"Was it not the yochlol that brought you to the lower planes?" Catti-brie asked, trying to use logic to break the demonic spell.

"I do not remember," Wulfgar admitted. "I remember the fall of the stones, the pain of the yochlol's bite tearing

into my chest, and then only blackness until I awakened in the court of the Spider Queen.

"But even that image … you do not understand! The one thing I could hold onto Errtu perverted and turned against me. The one hope left in my heart burned away and left me empty."

Catti-brie moved closer, her face barely an inch from Wulfgar's. "But hope rekindles," she said softly. "Errtu is gone, banished for a hundred years, and the Spider Queen and her hellish drow minions have shown no interest in Drizzt for years. That road has ended, it seems, and so many new ones lie before us. The road to the Spirit Soaring and Cadderly. From there to Mithral Hall perhaps, and then, if we choose, we might go to Waterdeep and Captain Deudermont, take a wild voyage on Sea Sprite, cutting the waves and chasing pirates.

"What possibilities lie before us!" she went on, her smile wide, her blue eyes flashing with excitement. "But first we must make peace with our past."

Wulfgar heard her well, but he only shook his head, reminding her that it might not be as easy as she made it sound. "For all those years you thought I was dead," he said. "And so I thought of you for that time. I thought you killed, and Bruenor killed, and Drizzt cut apart on the altar of some vile drow matron. I surrendered hope because there was none."

"But you see the lie," Catti-brie reasoned. "There is always hope, there must always be hope. That is the lie of Errtu's evil kind. The lie about them, and the lie that is them. They steal hope, because without hope there is no strength. Without hope there is no freedom. In slavery of the heart does a demon find its greatest pleasures."

Wulfgar took a deep, deep breath, trying to digest it all, balancing the logical truths of Catti-brie's words— and of the simple fact that he had indeed escaped Errtu's clutches-against the pervasive pain of memory.

Catti-brie, too, spent a long moment digesting all that Wulfgar had shown to her over the past days. She understood now that it was more than pain and horror that bound her friend. Only one emotion could so cripple a man. In replaying his memories within his own mind, Wulfgar had found some wherein he had surrendered, wherein he had given in to the desires of Errtu or the demon's minions, wherein he had lost his courage or his defiance. Yes, it was obvious to Catti-brie, staring hard at the man now that guilt above all else was the enduring demon of Wulfgar's time with Errtu.

Of course to her that seemed absurd. She could readily forgive anything Wulfgar had said or done to survive the decadence of the Abyss. Anything at all. But it was not absurd, she quickly reminded herself, for it was painted clearly on the big man's pained features.

Wulfgar squinted his eyes shut and gritted his teeth. She was right, he told himself repeatedly. The past was past, an experience dismissed, a lesson learned. Now they were all together again, healthy and on the road of adventure. Now he had learned the errors of his previous engagement to Catti-brie and could look at her with fresh hopes and desires.

She recognized a measure of calm come over the man as he opened his eyes again to stare back at her. And then he came

forward, kissing her softly, just brushing his lips against hers as if asking permission.

Catti-brie glanced all around and saw that they were indeed alone. Though the others were not so far away, those who were not asleep were too engaged in their gambling to take note of anything.

Wulfgar kissed her again, a bit more urgently, forcing her to consider her feelings for the man. Did she love him? As a friend, surely, but was she ready to take that love to a different level?

Catti-brie honestly did not know. Once she had decided to give her love to Wulfgar, to marry him and bear his children, to make her life with him. But that was so many years ago, a different time, a different place. Now she had feelings for another, perhaps, though in truth, she hadn't really examined those feelings any deeper than she had her current feelings for Wulfgar.

And she hadn't the time to examine them now, for Wulfgar kissed her again passionately. When she didn't respond in kind, he backed off to arms' length, staring at her hard.

Looking at him then, on the brink of disaster, on a precipice between past and future, Catti-brie came to understand that she had to give this to him. She pulled him back and initiated another kiss, and they embraced deeply, Wulfgar guiding her to the ground, rolling about, touching, caressing, fumbling with their clothes.

She let him lose himself in the passion, let him lead with touches and kisses, and she took comfort in the role she had accepted, took hope that their encounter this night would help bring Wulfgar back to the world of the living.

And it was working. Wulfgar knew it, felt it. He bared his heart and soul to her, threw away his defenses, basked in the feel of her, in the sweet smell of her, in the very softness of her.

He was free! For those first few moments he was free, and it was glorious and beautiful, and so real.

He rolled to his back, his strong hug rolling Catti-brie atop him. He bit softly on the nape of her neck, then, nearing a point of ecstasy, leaned his head back so that he could look into her eyes and share the moment of joy.

A leering succubus, vile temptress of the Abyss, stared back at him.

Wulfgar's thoughts careened back across Icewind Dale, back to the Sea of Moving Ice, to the ice cave and the fight with Errtu, then back beyond that, back to the swirling smoke and the horrors. It had all been a lie, he realized. The fight, the escape, the rejoining with his friends. All a lie perpetrated by Errtu to rekindle his hope that the demon could then snuff it out once again. All a lie, and he was still in the Abyss, dreaming of Catti-brie while entwining with a horrid succubus.

His powerful hand clamped under the creature's chin and pushed it away. His second hand came across in a vicious punch and then he lifted the beast into the air above his prone form and heaved it away, bouncing across the dirt. With a roar, Wulfgar pulled himself to his feet, fumbling to lift and straighten his pants. He staggered for the fire and,

ignoring the pain, reached in to grab a burning branch, then turned back to attack the wicked succubus.

Turned back to attack Catti-brie.

He recognized her then, half-undressed, staggering to her hands and knees, blood dripping freely from her nose. She managed to look up at him. There was no rage, only confusion on her battered face. The weight of guilt nearly buckled the barbarian's strong legs.

"I did not. ." he stammered. "Never would I …" With a gasp and a stifled cry, Wulfgar rushed across the campsite, tossing the burning stick aside, gathering up his pack and warhammer. He ran out into the dark of night, into the ultimate darkness of his tormented mind.

Chapter 7 KELP-ENWALLED

You cannot come in," the squeaky voice said from behind the barricade. "Please, sir, I beg you. Go away."

Entreri hardly found the halfling's nervous tone amusing, for the implications of the shut-out rang dangerously in his mind. He and Dwahvel had cut a deal— a mutually beneficial deal and one that seemed to favor the halfling, if anyone-and yet, now it seemed as if Dwahvel was going back on her word. Her doorman would not even let the assassin into the Copper Ante. Entreri entertained the thought of kicking in the barricade, but only briefly. He reminded himself that halflings were often adept at setting traps. Then he thought he might slip his dagger through the slit in the boards, into the impertinent doorman's arm, or thumb, or whatever other target presented itself. That was the beauty of Entreri's dagger: he could stick someone anywhere and suck the life-force right out of him.

But again, it was a fleeting thought, more of a fantasy wrought of frustration than any action the ever-careful Entreri would seriously consider.

"So I shall go," he said calmly. "But do inform Dwahvel that my world is divided between friends and enemies." He turned and started away, leaving the doorman in a fluster.

"My, but that sounded like a threat," came another voice before Entreri had moved ten paces down the street.

The assassin stopped and considered a small crack in the wall of the Copper Ante, a peep hole, he realized, and likely an arrow slit.

"Dwahvel," he said with a slight bow.

To his surprise, the crack widened and a panel slid aside. Dwahvel walked out in the open. "So quick to name enemies," she said, shaking her head, her curly brown locks bouncing gaily.

"But I did not," the assassin replied. "Though it did anger me that you apparently decided not to go through with our deal."

Dwahvel's face tightened suddenly, stealing the up-to-then lighthearted tone. "Kelp-enwalled," she explained, an expression more common to the fishing boats than the streets, but one Entreri had heard before. On the fishing boats, «kelp-enwalling» referred to the practice of isolating

particularly troublesome pincer crabs, which had to be delivered live to market, by building barricades of kelp strands about them. The term was less literal, but with similar meaning, on the street. A kelp-enwalled person had been declared off-limits, surrounded and isolated by barricades of threats.

Suddenly Entreri's expression also showed the strain.

"The order came from greater guilds than mine, from guilds that could, and would, burn the Copper Ante to the ground and kill all of my fellows with hardly a thought," Dwahvel said with a shrug. "Entreri is kelp-enwalled, so they said. You cannot blame me for refusing your entrance."

Entreri nodded. He above many others could appreciate pragmatism for the sake of survival. "Yet you chose to come out and speak with me," he said.

Another shrug from Dwahvel. "Only to explain why our deal has ended," she said. "And to ensure that I do not fall into the latter category you detailed for my doorman. I will offer to you this much, with no charge for services. Everyone knows now that you have returned, and your mere presence has made them all nervous. Old Basadoni still rules his guild, but he is in the shadows now, more a figurehead than a leader. Those handling the affairs of the Basadoni Guild, and the other guilds, for that matter, do not know you. But they do know your reputation. Thus they fear you as they fear each other. Might not Pasha Wroning fear that the Rakers have hired Entreri to kill him? Or even within the individual guilds, might those vying for position before the coming event of Pasha Basadoni's death not fear that one of the others has coaxed Entreri back to assure personal ascension?"

Entreri nodded again but replied, "Or is it not possible that Artemis Entreri has merely returned to his home?"

"Of course," Dwahvel said. "But until they all learn the truth of you, they will fear you, and the only way to learn the truth-"

"Kelp-enwalled," the assassin finished. He started to thank Dwahvel for showing the courage of coming out to tell him this much, but he stopped short. He recognized that perhaps the halfling was only following orders, that perhaps this meeting was part of the surveying process.

"Watch well your back," Dwahvel added, moving for the secret door. "You understand that there are many who would like to claim the head of Entreri for their trophy wall."

"What do you know?" the assassin asked, for it seemed obvious to him that Dwahvel wasn't speaking merely in generalities here.

"Before the kelp-enwalling order, my spies went out to learn what they may about the perceptions concerning your return," she explained. "They were asked more questions than they offered and often by young, strong assassins. Watch well your back." And then she was gone, back through the secret door into the Copper Ante.

Entreri just blew a sigh and walked along. He didn't question his return to Calimport, for either way it simply didn't seem important to him. Nor did he start looking more deeply into the shadows that lined the dark street. Perhaps one or more held his killer. Perhaps not.

Perhaps it simply did not matter.

"Perry," Giunta the Diviner said to Kadran Gordeon as the two watched the young thug steal along the rooftops, shadowing, from a very safe distance, the movements of Artemis Entreri. "A lieutenant for Bodeau."

"Is he watching?" Kadran asked.

"Hunting," the wizard corrected.

Kadran didn't doubt the man. Giunta's entire life had been spent in observation. This wizard was the watcher, and from the patterns of those he observed he could then predict with an amazing degree of accuracy their next movements.

"Why would Bodeau risk everything to go after Entreri?" the fighter asked. "Surely he knows of the kelp-enwalling order, and Entreri has a long alliance with that particular guild."

"You presume that Bodeau even knows of this," Giunta explained. "I have seen this one before. Dog Perry, he is called, though he fancies himself 'the Heart. "

That nickname rang a chime of recognition in Kadran. "For his practice of cutting a still-beating heart from the chest of his victims," the man remarked. "A brash young killer," he added, nodding, for now it made sense.

"Not unlike one I know," Giunta said slyly, turning his gaze over Kadran.

Kadran smiled in reply. Indeed, Dog Perry was not so unlike a younger Kadran, brash and skilled. The years had taught Kadran some measure of humility, however, though many of those who knew him well thought he was still a bit deficient in that regard. He looked more closely at Dog Perry now, the man moving silently and carefully along the rim of a rooftop. Yes, there seemed a resemblance to the young thug Kadran used to be. Less polished and less wise, obviously, for even in his cocky youth Kadran doubted that he would have gone after the likes of Artemis Entreri so soon after the man's return to Calimport and obviously without too much preparation.

"He must have allies in the region," Kadran remarked to Giunta. "Seek out the other rooftops. Surely the young thug would not be foolish enough to hunt Entreri alone."

Giunta widened his scan. He found Entreri moving easily along the main boulevard and recognized many other characters in the area, regulars who held no known connection to Bodeau's guild or to Dog Perry.

"Him," the wizard explained, pointing to another figure weaving in and out of the shadows, following the same route as Entreri, but far, far behind. "Another of Bodeau's men, I believe."

"He does not seem overly intent on joining the fight," Kadran noted, for the man seemed to hesitate with every step. He was so far behind Entreri and losing ground with each passing second that he could have jumped out and run full speed at the man down the middle of the street without being noticed by the pursued assassin.

"Perhaps he is merely observing," Giunta remarked as he

moved the focus of the crystal ball back to the two assassins, their paths beginning to intersect, "following his ally at the request of Bodeau to see how Dog Perry fares. There are many possibilities, but if he does mean to get into the fight beside Dog Perry, then he should run fast. Entreri is not one to drag out a battle, and it seems-"

He stopped abruptly as Dog Perry moved to the edge of a roof and crouched low, muscles tensing. The young assassin had found his spot of ambush, and Entreri turned into the ally, seemingly playing into the man's hand.

"We could warn him," Kadran said, licking his lips nervously.

"Entreri is already on his guard," the wizard explained. "Surely he has sensed my scrying. A man of his talents could not be magically looked at without his knowledge." the wizard gave a little chuckle. "Farewell, Dog Perry," he said.

Even as the words came out of his mouth, the would-be assassin leaped down from the roof, hitting the ground in a rush barely three strides behind Entreri, closing so fast that almost any man would have been skewered before he even registered the noise behind him.

Almost any man.

Entreri spun as Dog Perry rushed in, Perry's slender sword leading. A brush of the spinning assassin's left hand, holding the ample folds of his cloak as further protection, deflected the blow wide. Ahead went Entreri, a sudden step, pushing up with his left hand, lifting Dog Perry's arm as he went. He moved right under the now off-balance would-be killer, stabbing up into the armpit with his jeweled dagger as he passed. Then, so quickly that Dog Perry never had a chance to compensate, so quickly that Kadran and Giunta hardly noticed the subtle turn, he pivoted back, turning to face Dog Perry's back. Entreri tore the dagger free and flipped it to his descending left hand, snapped his right hand around to the chin of the would-be killer, and kicked the man in the back of the knees, buckling his legs and forcing him back and down. The older assassin's left hand stabbed up, driving the dagger under the back of Dog Perry's skull and deep into his brain.

Entreri retracted the dagger immediately and let the dead man fall to the ground, blood pooling under him, so quickly and so efficiently that Entreri didn't even have a drop of blood on him.

Giunta, laughing, pointed to the end of the ally, back on the street, where the stunned companion of Dog Perry took one look at the victorious Entreri, turned on his heel, and ran away.

"Yes, indeed," Giunta remarked. "Let the word go out on the streets that Artemis Entreri has returned."

Kadran Gordeon spent a long while staring at the dead man. He struck his customary pensive pose, pursing his lips so that his long and curvy mustache tilted on his dark face. He had entertained the idea of going after Entreri himself, and now was quite plainly shocked by the sheer skill of the man. It was Gordeon's first true experience with Entreri, and suddenly he understood that the man had come by his reputation honestly.

But Kadran Gordeon was not Dog Perry, was far more skilled than that young humbler. Perhaps he would indeed pay a visit to this former king of assassins.

"Exquisite," came Sharlotta's voice behind the two. They turned to see the woman staring past them into the image in Giunta's large crystal ball. "Pasha Basadoni told me I would be impressed. How well he moves!"

"Shall I repay the Bodeau guild for breaking the kelp-enwalling order?" Kadran asked.

"Forget them," Sharlotta retorted, moving closer, her eyes twinkling with admiration. "Concentrate our attention upon that one alone. Find him and enlist him. Let us find a job for Artemis Entreri."

Drizzt found Catti-brie sitting on the back lip of the wagon. Regis sat next to her, holding a cloth to her face. Bruenor, axe swinging dangerously at his side, pacing back and forth, grumbled a stream of curses. The drow knew at once what had happened, the simple truth of it anyway, and when he considered it, he was not so surprised that Wulfgar had struck out.

"He did not mean to do it," Catti-brie said to Bruenor, trying to calm the volatile dwarf. She, too, was obviously angry, but she, like Drizzt, understood better the truth of Wulfgar's emotional turmoil. "I'm thinking he wasn't seein' me," the woman went on, speaking more to Drizzt. "Looking back at Errtu's torments, by me guess."

Drizzt nodded. "As it was at the beginning of the fight with the giants," he said.

"And so ye're to let it go?" Bruenor roared in reply. "Ye're thinkin' that ye can't hold the boy responsible?

Bah! I'll give him a beating that'll make his years with Errtu seem easy! Go and get him, elf. Bring him back that he can tell me girl he's sorry. Then he can tell me. Then he can find me fist in his mouth and take a good long sleep to think about it!" With a growl, Bruenor drove his axe deep into the ground. "I heared too much o' this Errtu," he declared. "Ye can't be livin' in what's already done!"

Drizzt had little doubt that if Wulfgar walked back into camp at that moment, it would take him, Catti-brie, Regis, Camlaine, and all his companions just to pull Bruenor off the man. And in looking at Catti-brie, one eye swollen, her bloody nose bright red, the ranger wasn't sure he would be too quick to hold the dwarf back.

Without another word Drizzt turned and walked away, out of the camp and into the darkness. Wulfgar couldn't have gone far, he knew, though the night was not so dark with the big moon shining bright across the tundra. Just outside the campsite he took out his figurine. Guenhwyvar led the way, rushing into the darkness and growling back to guide the running ranger.

To Drizzt's surprise the trail led neither south nor back to the northeast and Ten Towns, but straight east, toward the towering black peaks of the Spine of the World. Soon Guenhwyvar led him into the foothills, dangerous territory

indeed, for the high bluffs and rocky outcroppings provided fine ambush points for lurking monsters or highwaymen.

Perhaps, Drizzt mused, that was exactly why Wulfgar had come this way. Perhaps he was looking for trouble, for a fight, or maybe even for some giant to surprise him and end his pain.

Drizzt skidded to a stop and blew a long and profound sigh, for what seemed most unsettling to him was not the thought that Wulfgar was inviting disaster, but his own reaction to it. For at that moment, the image of hurt Catti-brie clear in his mind, the ranger almost-almost-thought that such an ending to Wulfgar's tale would not be such a terrible thing.

A call from Guenhwyvar brought him from his thoughts. He sprinted up a steep incline, leaped to another boulder, then skittered back down to another trail. He heard a growl-from Wulfgar and not the panther-then a crash as Aegis-fang slammed against some stone. The crash was near to Guenhwyvar, Drizzt realized, from the sound of the hit and the cat's ensuing protesting roars.

Drizzt leaped over a stone lip, rushed across a short expanse, and jumped down a small drop to land lightly right beside the big man just as the warhammer magically reappeared in his grasp. For a moment, considering the wild look in Wulfgar's eyes, the drow thought he would have to draw his blades and fight the man, but Wulfgar calmed quickly. He seemed merely defeated, his rage thrown out.

"I did not know," he said, slumping back against the stone.

"I understand," Drizzt replied, holding back his own anger and trying to sound compassionate.

"It was not Catti-brie," Wulfgar went on. "In my thoughts, I mean. I was not with her, but back there, in that place of darkness."

"I know," said Drizzt. "And so does Catti-brie, though I fear we shall have some work ahead of us in calming Bruenor." He ended with a wide and warm smile, but his attempt to lighten the situation was lost on Wulfgar.

"He is right to be outraged," the barbarian admitted. "As I am outraged, in a way you cannot begin to understand."

"Do not underestimate the value of friendship," Drizzt answered. "I once made a similar error, nearly to the destruction of all that I hold dear."

Wulfgar shook his head through every word of it, unable to find any footing for agreement. Black waves of despair washed over him, burying him. What he had done was beyond forgiveness, especially since he realized, and admitted to himself, that it would likely happen again. "I am lost," he said softly.

"And we will all help you to find your way," Drizzt answered, putting a comforting hand on the big man's shoulder.

Wulfgar pushed him away. "No," he said firmly, and then he gave a little laugh. "There is no way to find. The darkness of Errtu endures. Under that shadow, I cannot be who you want me to be."

"We only want you to remember who you once were," the

drow replied. "In the ice cave, we rejoiced to find Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, returned to us."

"He was not," the big man corrected. "I am not the man who left you in Mithral Hall. I can never be that man again."

"Time will heal-" Drizzt started to say, but Wulfgar silenced him with a roar.

"No!" he cried. "I do not ask for healing. I do not wish to become again the man that I was. Perhaps I have learned the truth of the world, and that truth has shown me the errors of my previous ways."

Drizzt stared hard at the man. "And the better way is to punch an unsuspecting Catti-brie?" he asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm, his patience for the man fast running out.

Wulfgar locked stares with Drizzt, and again the drow's hands went to his scimitar hilts. He could hardly believe the level of anger rising within him, overwhelming his compassion for his sorely tormented friend. He understood that if Wulfgar did try to strike at him, he would fight the man without holding back.

"I look at you now and remember that you are my friend," Wulfgar said, relaxing his tense posture enough to assure Drizzt that he did not mean to strike out. "And yet those reminders come only with strong willpower. Easier it is for me to hate you, and hate everything around me, and on those occasions when I do not immediately summon the willpower to remember the truth, I will strike out."

"As you did with Catti-brie," Drizzt replied, and his tone was not accusatory, but rather showed a sincere attempt to understand and empathize.

Wulfgar nodded. "I did not even recognize that it was her," he said. "It was just another of Errtu's fiends, the worst kind, the kind that tempted me and defeated my willpower, and then left me not with burns or wounds but with the weight of guilt, with the knowledge of failure. I wanted to resist….I…"

"Enough, my friend," Drizzt said quietly. "You shoulder blame where you should not. It was no failure of Wulfgar, but the unending cruelty of Errtu."

"It was both," said a defeated Wulfgar. "And that failure compounds with every moment of weakness."

"We will speak with Bruenor," Drizzt assured him. "We will use this incident as a guide and learn from it."

"You may say to Bruenor whatever you choose," the big man said, his tone suddenly turning ice cold once more. "For I will not be there to hear it."

"You will return to your own people?" Drizzt asked, though he knew in his heart that the barbarian wasn't saying any such thing.

"I will find whatever road I choose," Wulfgar replied. "Alone."

"I once played this game."

"Game?" the big man echoed incredulously. "I have never been more serious in all my life. Now go back to them, back where you belong. When you think of me, think of the man I once was, the man who would never strike Catti-brie."

Drizzt started to reply, but stopped himself and stood

studying his broken friend. In truth, he had nothing to say that might comfort Wulfgar. While he wanted to believe that he and the others could help coax the man back to rational behavior, he wasn't certain of it. Not at all. Would Wulfgar strike out again, at Catti-brie, or at any of them, perhaps hurting one of them severely? Would the big man's return to the group facilitate a true fight between him and Bruenor, or between him and Drizzt? Or would Catti-brie, in self-defense, drive Khazid'hea, her deadly sword, deep into the man's chest? On the surface, these fears all rang as preposterous in the drow's mind, but after watching Wulfgar carefully these past few days, he could not dismiss the troublesome possibility.

And perhaps worst of all, he had to consider his own feelings when he had seen the battered Catti-brie. He hadn't been the least bit surprised.

Wulfgar started away, and Drizzt instinctively grabbed him by the forearm.

Wulfgar spun and threw the drow's hand aside. "Farewell, Drizzt Do'Urden," he said sincerely, and those words conveyed many of his unspoken thoughts to Drizzt. A longing to go with the drow back to the group, a plea that things could be as they had once been, the friends, the companions of the hall, running down the road to adventure. And most of all, in that lucid tone, words spoken so clearly and deliberately and thoughtfully, they brought to Drizzt a sense of finality. He could not stop Wulfgar, short of hamstringing the man with a scimitar. And in his heart, at that terrible moment, he knew that he should not stop Wulfgar. "Find yourself," Drizzt said, "and then find us." "Perhaps," was all that Wulfgar could offer. Without looking back, he walked away.

For Drizzt Do'Urden, the walk back to the wagon to rejoin his friends was the longest journey of his life.