The Silent Blade

I watched the miles roll out behind me, whether walking down a road or sailing fast out of Waterdeep for the southlands, putting distance between us and the friend we four had left behind. The friend?

Many times during those long and arduous days, each of us in our own little space came to wonder about that word «friend» and the responsibilities such a label might carry. We had left Wulfgar behind in the wilds of the Spine of the World no less and had no idea if he was well, if he was even still alive. Could a true friend so desert another? Would a true friend allow a man to walk alone along troubled and dangerous paths?

Often I ponder the meaning of that word. Friend. It seems such an obvious thing, friendship, and yet often it becomes so very complicated. Should I have stopped Wulfgar, even knowing and admitting that he had his own road to walk? Or should I have gone with him? Or should we all four have shadowed him, watching over him?

I think not, though I admit that I know not for certain. There is a fine line between friendship and parenting, and when that line is crossed, the result is often disastrous. A parent who strives to make a true friend of his or her child may well sacrifice authority, and though that parent may be comfortable with surrendering the dominant position, the unintentional result will be to steal from that child the necessary guidance and, more importantly, the sense of security the parent is supposed to impart. On the opposite side, a friend who takes a role as parent forgets the most important ingredient of friendship: respect.

For respect is the guiding principle of friendship, the lighthouse beacon that directs the course of any true friendship. And respect demands trust.

Thus, the four of us pray for Wulfgar and intend that our paths will indeed cross again. Though we'll often look back over our shoulders and wonder, we hold fast to our understanding of friendship, of trust, and of respect. We accept, grudgingly but resolutely, our divergent paths.

Surely Wulfgar's trials have become my trials in many ways, but I see now that the friendship of mine most in flux is not the one with the barbarian-not from my perspective, anyway, since I understand that Wulfgar alone must decide the depth and course of our bond-but my relationship with Catti-brie. Our love for each other is no secret between us, or to anyone else watching us (and I fear that perhaps the bond that has grown between us might have had some influence in Wulfgar's painful decisions), but the nature of that love remains a mystery to me and to Catti-brie. We have in many ways become as brother and sister, and surely I am closer to her than I could ever have been to any of my natural siblings! For several years we had only each other to count

on and both learned beyond any doubt that the other would always be there. I would die for her, and she for me. Without hesitation, without doubt. Truly in all the world there is no one, not even Bruenor, Wulfgar, or Regis, or even Zaknafein, with whom I would rather spend my time. There is no one who can view a sunrise beside me and better understand the emotions that sight always stirs within me. There is no one who can fight beside me and better compliment my movements. There is no one who better knows all that is in my heart and thoughts, though I had not yet spoken a word. But what does that mean?

Surely I feel a physical attraction to Catti-brie as well. She is possessed of a combination of innocence and a playful wickedness. For all her sympathy and empathy and compassion, there is an edge to Catti-brie that makes potential enemies tremble in fear and potential lovers tremble in anticipation. I believe that she feels similarly toward me, and yet we both understand the dangers of this uncharted territory, dangers more frightening than any physical enemy we have ever known. I am drow, and young, and with the dawn and twilight of several centuries ahead of me. She is human and, though young, with merely decades of life ahead of her. Of course, Catti-brie's life is complicated enough merely having a drow elf as a traveling companion and friend. What troubles might she find if she and I were more than that? And what might the world think of our children, if ever that path we walked? Would any society in all the world accept them?

I know how I feel when I look upon her, though, and believe that I understand her feelings as well. On that level, it seems such an obvious thing, and yet, alas, it becomes so very complicated.

— Drizzt Do'Urden

Chapter 13 SECRET WEAPON

You have found the rogue?" Jarlaxle asked Rai'gy Bondalek. Kimmuriel Oblodra stood beside the mercenary leader, the psionicist appearing unarmed and unarmored, seeming perfectly defenseless to one who did not understand the powers of his mind.

"He is with a dwarf, a woman, and a halfling," Rai'gy answered. "And sometimes they are joined by a great black cat."

"Guenhwyvar," Jarlaxle explained. "Once the property of Masoj Hun'ette. A powerful magical item indeed."

"But not the greatest magic that they carry," Rai'gy informed. "There is another, stored in a pouch on the rogue's belt, that radiates magic stronger than all their other magics combined. Even through the distance of my scrying it beckoned to me, almost as if it were asking me to retrieve it from its present unworthy owner."

"What could it be?" the always opportunistic mercenary asked.

Rai'gy shook his head, his shock of white hair flying

from side to side. "Like no dweomer I have seen before," he admitted.

"Is that not the way of magic?" Kimmuriel Oblodra put in with obvious distaste. "Unknown and uncontrollable."

Rai'gy shot the psionicist an angry glare, but Jarlaxle, more than willing to utilize both magic and psionics, merely smiled. "Learn more about it and about them," he instructed the wizard-priest. "If it beckons to us, then perhaps we would be wise to heed its call. How far are they, and how fast can we get to them?"

"Very," Rai'gy answered. "And very. They had begun an overland route but were accosted by giantkind and goblinkin at every bend in the path."

"Perhaps the magical item is not particular about who it calls for a new owner," Kimmuriel remarked with obvious sarcasm.

"They turned about and took ship," Rai'gy went on, ignoring the comment. "Out of the great northern city of Waterdeep, I believe, far, far up the Sword Coast."

"But sailing south?" Jarlaxle asked hopefully.

"I believe," Rai'gy answered. "It does not matter. There are magics, of course, and mind powers," he added, nodding deferentially to Kimmuriel, "that can get us to them as easily as if they were standing in the next room."

"Back to your searching, then," Jarlaxle said.

"But are we not to visit a guild this very night?" Rai'gy asked.

"You will not be needed," Jarlaxle replied. "Minor guilds alone will meet this night."

"Even minor guilds would be wise to employ wizards," the wizard-priest remarked.

"The wizard of this one is a friend of Entreri," Jarlaxle explained with a laugh that made it sound as if it were all too easy. "And the other guild is naught but halflings, hardly versed in the ways of magic. Tomorrow night you will be needed, perhaps. This night continue your examination of Drizzt Do'Urden. In the end he will likely prove the most important cog of all."

"Because of the magical item?" Kimmuriel asked.

"Because of Entreri's lack of interest," Jarlaxle replied.

The wizard-priest shook his head. "We offer him power and riches beyond his comprehension," he said. "And yet he leads us onward as if he were going into hopeless battle against the Spider Queen herself."

"He cannot appreciate the power or the riches until he has resolved an inner conflict," explained Jarlaxle, whose greatest gift of all was the ability to get into the minds of enemies and friends alike, and not with prying powers, such as Kimmuriel Oblodra might use, but with simple empathy and understanding. "But fear not his present lack of motivation. I know Artemis Entreri well enough to understand that he will prove more than effective whether his heart is in the fight or not. As humans go I have never met one more dangerous or more devious."

"A pity his skin is so light," Kimmuriel remarked.

Jarlaxle only smiled. He knew well enough that if Artemis

Entreri had been born drow in Menzoberranzan the man would have been among the greatest of weapon masters, or perhaps he would have even exceeded that claim. Perhaps he would have been a rival to Jarlaxle for control of Bregan D'aerthe.

"We will speak in the comfortable darkness of the tunnels when the shining hellfire rises into the too-high sky," he said to Rai'gy. "Have more answers for me."

"Fare well with the guilds," Rai'gy answered, and with a bow he turned and left.

Jarlaxle turned to Kimmuriel and nodded. It was time to go hunting.

With their cherubic faces, halflings were regarded by the other races as creatures with large eyes, but how much wider those eyes became for the four in the room with Dwahvel when a magical portal opened right before them (despite the usual precautions against such magical intrusion), and Artemis Entreri stepped into the room. The assassin cut an impressive figure in a layered black coat and a black bolero, banded about the base of its riser in blacker silk.

Entreri assumed a strong, hands-on-hips pose just as Kimmuriel had taught him, holding steady against the waves of disorientation that always accompanied such psionic dimensional travel.

Behind him, in the chamber on the other side of the door, a room lightless save that spilling in through the gate from Dwahvel's chamber, huddled a few dark shapes. When one of the halfling soldiers moved to meet the intruder, one of those dark shapes shifted slightly, and the halfling, with hardly a squeak, toppled to the floor.

"He is sleeping and otherwise unharmed," Entreri quickly explained, not wanting a fight with the others, who were scrambling about for weapons. "I did not come here for a fight, I assure you, but I can leave all of you dead in my wake if you insist upon one."

"You could have used the front door," Dwahvel, the only one appearing unshaken, remarked dryly.

"I did not wish to be seen entering your establishment," the assassin, fully oriented once more, explained. "For your protection."

"And what form of entrance is this?" Dwahvel asked. "Magical and unbidden, yet none of my wards-and I paid well for them, I assure you-offered resistance."

"No magic that will concern you," Entreri replied, "but that will surely concern my enemies. Know that I did not return to Calimport to lurk in shadows at the bidding of others. I have traveled the Realms extensively and have brought back with me that which I have learned."

"So Artemis Entreri returns as the conqueror," Dwahvel remarked. Beside her the soldiers bristled, but Dwahvel did well to hold them in check. Now that Entreri was among them, to fight him would cost her dearly, she realized.

Very dearly.

"Perhaps," Entreri conceded. "We shall see how it goes."

"It will take more than a display of teleportation to

convince me to throw the weight of my guild behind you," Dwahvel said calmly. "To choose wrongly in such a war would prove fatal."

"I do not wish you to choose at all," Entreri assured her.

Dwahvel eyed him suspiciously, then turned to each of her trusted guards. They, too, wore doubting expressions.

"Then why bother to come to me?" she asked.

"To inform you that a war is about to begin," Entreri answered. "I owe you that much, at least."

"And perhaps you wish for me to open wide my ears that you may learn how goes the fight," the sly halfling reasoned.

"As you wish," Entreri replied. "When this is finished, and I have found control, I will not forget all that you have already done for me."

"And if you lose?"

Entreri laughed. "Be wary," he said. "And, for your health, Dwahvel Tiggerwillies, be neutral. I owe you and see our friendship as to the benefit of both, but if I learn that you betray me by word or by deed, I will bring your house down around you." With that, he gave a polite bow, a tip of the black bolero and slipped back through the portal.

One globe of darkness after another filled Dwahvel's chamber, forcing her and the three standing soldiers to crawl about helplessly until one found the normal exit and called the others to him.

Finally the darkness abated, and the halflings dared to re-enter, to find their sleeping companion snoring contentedly, and then to find, upon searching the body, a small dart stuck into his shoulder.

"Entreri has friends," one of them remarked.

Dwahvel merely nodded, not surprised and glad indeed at that moment that she had previously chosen to help the outcast assassin. He was not a man Dwahvel Tiggerwillies wished for an enemy.

"Ah, but you make my life so dangerous," LaValle said with an exaggerated sigh when Entreri, unannounced and uninvited, walked from thin air, it seemed, into LaValle's private room.

"Well done-on your escape from Kadran Gordeon, I mean," LaValle went on when Entreri didn't immediately respond. The wizard was trying hard to appear collected. Hadn't Entreri slipped into his guarded room twice before, after all? But this time— and the assassin recognized it splayed on LaValle's face-he had truly surprised the wizard. Bodeau had sharpened up the defenses of his guild house amazingly well against both magical and physical intrusion. As much as he respected Entreri, LaValle had obviously not expected the assassin to get through so easily.

"Not so difficult a task, I assure you," the assassin replied, keeping his voice steady so that his words sounded as simple fact and not a boast. "I have traveled the world, and under the world and have witnessed powers very different from anything experienced in Calimport. Powers that will

bring me that which I desire."

LaValle sat on an old and comfortable chair, planting one elbow on the worn arm and dropping his head sidelong against his open palm. What was it about this man, he wondered, that so mocked all the ordinary trappings of power? He looked all around at his room, at the many carved statues, gargoyles, and exotic birds, at the assortment of finely carved staves, some magical, some not, at the three skulls grinning from the cubbies atop his desk, at the crystal ball set upon the small table across the way. These were his items of power, items gained through a lifetime of work, items that he could use to destroy or at least to defend against, any single man he had ever met.

Except for one. What was it about this one? The way he stood? The way he moved? The simple aura of power that surrounded him, as tangible as the gray cloak and black bolero he now wore?

"Go and bring Quentin Bodeau," Entreri instructed.

"He will not appreciate becoming involved."

"He already is," Entreri assured the wizard. "Now he must choose."

"Between you and …?" LaValle asked.

"The rest of them," Entreri replied calmly.

LaValle tilted his head curiously. "You mean to do battle with all of Calimport then?" he asked skeptically.

"With all in Calimport who oppose me," Entreri said, again with the utmost calm.

LaValle shook his head, not knowing what to make of it all. He trusted Entreri's judgment-never had the wizard met a more cunning and controlled man-but the assassin spoke foolishness, it seemed, if he honestly believed he could stand alone against the likes of the Basadonis, let alone the rest of Calimport's street powers.

But still…

"Shall I bring Chalsee Anguaine, as well?" the wizard asked, standing and heading for the door.

"Chalsee has already been shown the futility of resistance," Entreri replied.

LaValle stopped abruptly, turning on the assassin as if betrayed.

"I knew you would go along," Entreri explained. "For you have come to know and love me as a brother. The lieutenant's mind-set, however, remained a mystery. He had to be convinced, or removed."

LaValle just stared at him, awaiting the verdict.

"He is convinced," Entreri remarked, moving to fall comfortably into LaValle's comfortable chair. "Very much so.

"And so," he continued as the wizard again started for the door, "will you find Bodeau."

LaValle turned on him again.

"He will make the right choice," Entreri assured the man.

"Will he have a choice?" LaValle dared to ask.

"Of course not."

Indeed, when LaValle found Bodeau in his private quarters and informed him that Artemis Entreri had come again the guildmaster blanched white and trembled so violently that LaValle feared he would simply fall over dead on the floor.

"You have spoken with Chalsee then?" LaValle asked.

"Evil days," Bodeau replied, and moving as if he had to battle mind with muscle through every pained step, he headed for the corridor.

"Evil days?" LaValle echoed incredulously under his breath. What in all the Realms could prompt the master of a murderous guild to make such a statement? Suddenly taking Entreri's claims more seriously, the wizard fell into step behind Bodeau. He noted, his intrigue mounting ever higher, that the guildmaster ordered no soldiers to follow or even to flank.

Bodeau stopped outside the wizard's door, letting LaValle assume the lead into the room. There in the study sat Entreri, exactly as the wizard had left him. The assassin appeared totally unprepared had Bodeau decided to attack instead of parlay, as if he had known without doubt that Bodeau wouldn't dare oppose him.

"What do you demand of me?" Bodeau asked before LaValle could find any opening to the obviously awkward situation.

"I have decided to begin with the Basadonis," Entreri calmly replied. "For they, after all, started this fight. You, then, must locate all of their soldiers, all of their fronts, and a complete layout of their operation, not including the guild house."

"I offer to tell no one that you came here and to promise that my soldiers will not interfere," Bodeau countered.

"Your soldiers could not interfere," Entreri shot back, a flash of anger crossing his black eyes.

LaValle watched in continued amazement as Quentin Bodeau fought so very hard to control his shaking.

"And we will not," the guildmaster offered.

"I have told you the terms of your survival," Entreri said, a coldness creeping into his voice that made LaValle believe that Bodeau and all the guild would be murdered that very night if the guildmaster didn't agree. "What say you?"

"I will consider-"

"Now."

Bodeau glared at LaValle, as if blaming the wizard for ever allowing Artemis Entreri into his life, a sentiment that LaValle, as unnerved as Bodeau, could surely understand.

"You ask me to go against the most powerful pashas of the streets," Bodeau said, trying hard to find some courage.

"Choose," Entreri said.

A long, uncomfortable moment slipped past. "I will see what my soldiers may discern," Bodeau promised. "Very wise," said Entreri. "Now leave us. I wish a word with LaValle."

More than happy to be away from the man, Bodeau turned on his heel and after another hateful glare at LaValle, swiftly exited the room.

"I do not begin to guess what tricks you have brought with you," LaValle said to Entreri.

"I have been to Menzoberranzan," Entreri admitted. "The city of the drow."

LaValle's eyes widened, his mouth drooping open. "I returned with more than trinkets." "You have allied with …"

"You are the only one I have told and the only one I shall tell," Entreri announced. "Understand the

responsibility that goes with such knowledge. It is one that I shan't take lightly."

"But Chalsee Anguaine?" LaValle asked. "You said he had been convinced."

"A friend found his mind and there put images too horrible for him to resist," Entreri explained. "Chalsee knows not the truth, only that to resist would bring about a fate too terrible to consider. When he reported to Bodeau his terror was sincere."

"And where do I stand in your grand plans?" the wizard asked, trying very hard not to sound sarcastic. "If Bodeau fails you, then what of LaValle?"

"I will show you a way out should that come to pass," Entreri promised, walking over to the desk. "I owe you that much at least." He picked up a small dagger LaValle had set there to cut seals on parchments or to prick a finger when a spell called for a component of blood.

LaValle understood then that Entreri was being pragmatic, not merciful. If the wizard was indeed spared should Bodeau fail the assassin, it would only be because Entreri had some use for him.

"You are surprised that the guildmaster so readily complied," Entreri said evenly. "You must understand his choice: to risk that I will fail and the Basadonis will win out and then exact revenge on my allies. . or to die now, this very night, and horribly, I assure you."

LaValle forced an expressionless set to his visage, playing the role of complete neutrality, even detachment.

"You have much work ahead of you, I assume," Entreri said, and he flicked his wrist, sending the dagger soaring past the wizard to knock heavily into the outside wall. "I take my leave."

Indeed, as the signal knock against the wall sounded, Kimmuriel Oblodra went into his contemplation again and brought up another dimensional pathway for the assassin to make his exit.

LaValle saw the portal open and thought for a moment out of sheer curiosity to leap through it beside Entreri to unmask this great mystery.

Good sense overruled curiosity.

And then the wizard was alone and very glad of it.

"I do not understand," Rai'gy Bondalek said when Entreri rejoined him, Jarlaxle, and Kimmuriel in the complex of tunnels beneath the city that the drow had made their own. He remembered then to speak more slowly, for Entreri, while fairly proficient in the drow language, was not completely fluent, and the wizard-priest didn't want to bother with the human tongue at all, either by learning it or by wasting the energy necessary to enact a spell that would allow them all to understand each other, whatever language each of them chose to speak. In truth, Bondalek's decision to force the discussion to continue in the drow language, even when Entreri was with them, was more a choice to keep the human assassin somewhat off-balance. "It seems, from all you previously said that the halflings would be better suited and more easily convinced to perform the services you just put upon Quentin Bodeau."

"I doubt not Dwahvel's loyalty," Entreri replied in the human Calimport tongue, and he eyed Rai'gy with every word.

The wizard turned a curious and helpless look over Jarlaxle, and the mercenary, with a laugh at the pettiness of it all, produced an orb from an inside fold of his cloak, held it aloft, and spoke a word of command. Now they would all understand.

"To herself and her well-being, I mean," Entreri said, again in the human tongue, though Rai'gy heard it in drow. "She is no threat."

"And pitiful Quentin Bodeau and his lackey wizard are?" Rai'gy asked incredulously, Jarlaxle's enchantment reversing the effect, so that, while the drow spoke in his native tongue, Entreri heard it in his own.

"Do not underestimate the power of Bodeau's guild," Entreri warned. "They are firmly entrenched, with eyes ever outward."

"So you force his loyalty early," Jarlaxle agreed, that he cannot later claim ignorance whatever the outcome."

"And where from here?" Kimmuriel asked.

"We secure the Basadoni Guild," Entreri explained. "That then becomes our base of power, with both Dwahvel and Bodeau watching to make certain that the others aren't aligning against us."

"And from there?" Kimmuriel pressed.

Entreri smiled and looked to Jarlaxle, and the mercenary leader recognized that Entreri understood that Kimmuriel was asking the questions as Jarlaxle had bade him to ask.

"From there we will see what opportunities present themselves," Jarlaxle answered before Entreri could reply. "Perhaps that base will prove solid enough. Perhaps not."

Later on, after Entreri had left them, Jarlaxle, with some pride, turned to his two cohorts. "Did I not choose well?" he asked.

"He thinks like a drow," Rai'gy replied, offering as high a compliment as Jarlaxle had ever heard him give to a human or to anyone else who was not drow. "Though I wish he would better learn our language and our sign language."

Jarlaxle, so pleased with the progress, only laughed.

Chapter 14 REPUTATION

The man felt strange indeed. Alcohol dimmed his senses so that he could not register all the facts about his current situation. He felt light, floating, and felt a burning in his chest.

Wulfgar clenched his fist more tightly, grasping the front of the man's tunic and pulling chest hairs from their roots in the process. With just that one arm the barbarian easily held the two hundred pound man off the ground. Using his other arm to navigate the crowd in the Cutlass, he made his way for the door. He hated taking this roundabout route-previously he had merely tossed unruly drunks through a window or a wall-but Arumn Gardpeck had quickly reigned in that behavior, promising to take the cost of damages out of Wulfgar's pay.

Even a single window could cost the barbarian a few bottles, and if the frame went with it Wulfgar might not find any drink for a week.

The man, smiling stupidly, looked at Wulfgar and finally managed to find some focus. Recognition of the bouncer and of his present predicament at last showed on his face. "Hey!" he complained, but then he was flying, flat out in the air, arms and legs flailing. He landed facedown in the muddy road, and there he stayed. Likely a wagon would have run him over had not a couple of passersby taken pity on the poor slob and dragged him into the gutter … taking the rest of his coins from him in the process.

"Fifteen feet," Josi Puddles said to Arumn, estimating the length of the drunk's flight. "And with just one arm."

"I told ye he was a strong one," Arumn replied, wiping the bar and pretending that he was hardly amazed. In the weeks since the barkeep had hired Wulfgar, the barbarian had made many such throws.

"Every man on Half Moon Street's talking about that," Josi added, the tone of his voice somewhat grim. "I been noticing that your crowd's a bit tougher every night this week."

Arumn understood the perceptive man's less than subtle statement. There was a pecking order in Luskan's underbelly that resisted intrusion. As Wulfgar's reputation continued to grow, some of those higher on that pecking order would find their own reputations at stake and would filter in to mend the damage.

"You like the barbarian," Josi stated as much as asked.

Arumn, staring hard at Wulfgar as the huge man filtered through the crowd once more, gave a resigned nod. Hiring Wulfgar had been a matter of business, not friendship, and Arumn usually took great pains to avoid any personal relationships with his bouncers— since many of those men, drifters by nature, either wandered away of their own accord or angered the wrong thug and wound up dead at Arumn's doorstep. With Wulfgar, though, the barkeep had lost some of that perspective. Their late nights together when the Cutlass was quiet, Wulfgar drinking at the bar, Arumn preparing the place for the next day's business, had become a pleasant routine. Arumn truly enjoyed Wulfgar's companionship. He discovered that once the drink was in the man, Wulfgar let down his cold and distant facade. Many nights they stayed together until the dawn, Arumn listening intently as Wulfgar wove tales of the frigid northland, of Icewind Dale, and of friends and enemies alike that made the barkeep's hair stand up on the back of his neck. Arumn had heard the story of Akar Kessel and the crystal shard so many times that he could almost picture the avalanche at Kelvin's Cairn that took down the wizard and buried the ancient and evil relic.

And every time Wulfgar recounted tales of the dark tunnels under the dwarven kingdom of Mithral Hall and the coming of the dark elves, Arumn later found himself shivering under his blankets, as he had when he was a child and his father had told him similarly dark stories by the hearth.

Indeed, Arumn Gardpeck had come to like his newest employee more than he should and less than he would.

"Then calm him," Josi Puddles finished. "He'll be bringing in Morik the Rogue and Tree Block Breaker anytime soon."

Arumn shuddered at the thought and didn't disagree. Particularly concerning Tree Block. Morik the Rogue, he knew, would be a bit more cautious (and thus, would be much more dangerous), would spend weeks, even months, sizing up the new threat before making his move, but brash Tree Block, arguably the toughest human-if he even was human, for many stories said that he had more than a little ore, or even ogre, blood in him-ever to step into Luskan, would not be so patient.

"Wulfgar," the barkeep called.

The big man sifted through the crowd to stand opposite Arumn.

"Did ye have to throw him out?" Arumn asked.

"He put his hand where it did not belong," Wulfgar replied absently. "Delly wanted him gone."

Arumn followed Wulfgar's gaze across the room to Delly… Delenia Curtie. Though not yet past her twentieth birthday, she had worked in the Cutlass for several years. She was a wisp of a thing, barely five feet tall and so slender that many thought she had a bit of elven blood in her-though it was more the result of drinking elven spirits, Arumn knew. Her blond hair hung untrimmed and unkempt and often not very clean. Her brown eyes had long ago lost their soft innocence and taken on a harder edge, and her pale skin had not seen enough of the sun in years, nor proper nutrition, and was now dry and rough. Her step had replaced the bounce of youth with the caution of a woman often hunted. But still there remained a charm about Delly, a sensual wickedness that many of the patrons, particularly after a few drinks, found too tempting to resist.

"If ye're to be killing every man who's grabbing Delly's bottom, I'll have no patrons left within the week," Arumn said dryly.

"Just push them out," Arumn continued when Wulfgar offered no response, not even a change of expression. "Ye don't have to be throwing them halfway to Waterdeep." He motioned back to the crowd, indicating that he was done with the barbarian.

Wulfgar walked away, back to his duties sifting through the boisterous bunch.

Within an hour another man, bleeding from his nose and mouth, took the aerial route, this time a two-handed toss that put him almost to the other side of the street.

Wulfgar held up his shirt, revealing the jagged line of deep scars. "Had me up in its mouth," he explained grimly, slurring the words. It had taken more than a little of the potent spirits to bring him to a level of comfort where he could discuss this battle, the fight with the yochlol, the fight that had brought him to Lolth, and she to Errtu for his years of torment. "A mouse in the cat's mouth." He gave a slight chuckle. "But this mouse had a kick."

His gaze drifted to Aegis-fang, lying on the bar a couple of feet away.

"Prettiest hammer I've ever seen," remarked Josi Puddles. He reached for it tentatively, staring at Wulfgar as his hand

inched in, for he, like all the others, had no desire to anger the frightfully dangerous man.

But Wulfgar, usually very protective of Aegis-fang, his sole link to his past life, wasn't even watching. His recounting of the yochlol fight had sent his thoughts and his heart careening back across the years, had locked him into a replay of the events that had put him in living hell.

"And how it hurt," he said softly, voice quavering, one hand subconsciously running the length of the scar.

Arumn Gardpeck stood before him staring, but though Wulfgar's eyes aimed at those of the barkeep, their focus was far, far away. Arumn slid another drink before the man, but Wulfgar didn't notice. With a deep and profound sigh the barbarian dropped his head into his huge arms, seeking the comfort of blackness.

He felt a touch on his bare arm, gentle and soft, and turned his head so that he could regard Delly. She nodded to Arumn, then gently pulled Wulfgar, coaxing him to rise and leading him away.

Wulfgar awoke later that night, long and slanted rays of moonlight filtering into the room through the western window. It took him a few moments to orient himself and to realize that this was not his room, for his room had no windows.

He glanced around and then to the blankets beside him, to the lithe form of Delly amidst those blankets, her skin seeming soft and delicate in the flattering light.

Then he remembered. Delly had taken him from the bar to bed-not to his own, but to hers-and he remembered all they had done.

Fearful, recalling his less-than-tender parting with Catti-brie, Wulfgar gently reached over and put his hand about the woman's neck, sighing in profound relief to find that she still had a pulse. Then he turned her over and scanned her bare body, not in any lustful way, but merely to see if she showed any bruises, any signs that he had brutalized her.

Her sleep was quiet and sound.

Wulfgar turned to the side of the bed, rolling his legs off the edge. He started to stand, but his throbbing head nearly knocked him backward. Reeling, he fought to control his balance and then ambled over to the window, staring out at the setting moon.

Catti-brie was likely watching that same moon, he thought, and somehow knew it to be true. After a while he turned to regard Delly again, all soft and snuggled amidst mounds of blankets. He had been able to make love to her without the anger, without the memories of the succubi balling his fists in rage. For a moment he felt as if he might be free, felt as if he should burst out of the house, out of Luskan altogether, running down the road in search of his old friends. He looked back at the moon and thought of Catti-brie and how wonderful it would be to fall into her arms.

But then he realized the truth of it all.

The drink had allowed him to build a wall against those memories, and behind that protective barrier he had been able to live in the present and not the past.

"Come on back to bed," came Belly's voice behind him, a gentle coax with a subtle promise of sensual pleasure. "And don't you be worrying over your hammer," she added, turning so that Wulfgar could follow her gaze to the opposite wall, against which Aegis-fang rested.

Wulfgar spent a long moment regarding the woman, caretaker of his emotions and his possessions. She was sitting up, the covers bundled about her waist, and making no move to cover her nakedness. Indeed she seemed to flaunt it a bit to entice the man back into her bed,

A large part of Wulfgar did want to go to her. But he resisted, realizing the danger, realizing that the drink had worn off. In a fit of passion, a fit of remembered rage, how easy it would be for him to squeeze her bird-like neck.

"Later," he promised, moving to gather his clothes. "Before we go to work this night."

"But you don't have to leave."

"I do," he said briskly, and he saw the flash of pain across her face. He moved to her immediately, very close. "I do," he repeated in a softer tone. "But I will come back to you. Later."

He kissed her gently on the forehead and started for the door.

"You are thinking that I'll want you back," came a harsh call behind him, and he turned to see Delly staring at him, her gaze ice cold, her arms folded defensively across her chest.

At first surprised, Wulfgar only then realized that he wasn't the only one in this room carrying around personal demons.

"Go," Delly said to him. "Maybe I'll take you back, and maybe I'll find another. All the same to me."

Wulfgar sighed and shook his head, then pushed out into the hall, more than happy to be out of that room.

The sun peeked over the eastern rim before the barbarian, an empty bottle at his side, found his way back into the void of sleep. He didn't see the sunrise, though, for his room had no windows.

He preferred it that way.

Chapter 15 THE CALL OF CRENSHINIBON

The prow cut swiftly through the azure blanket of the Sword Coast, shooting great fins of water and launching spray high into the air. At the forward rail, Catti-brie felt the stinging, salty droplets, so cold in contrast to the heat of the brilliant sun on her fair face. The ship, Quester, sailed south, and so south the woman looked. Away from Icewind Dale, away from Luskan, away from Waterdeep, from which they had sailed three days previous.

Away from Wulfgar.

Not for the first time, and she knew not for the last, the woman reconsidered their decision to let the beleaguered barbarian go off on his own. In his present state of mind, a state of absolute tumult and confusion, how could Wulfgar not need them?

And yet she had no way to get to him now, sailing south along the Sword Coast. Catti-brie blinked away moisture that was not sea spray and set her gaze firmly on the wide waters before them, taking some heart at the sheer speed of the vessel. They had a mission to complete, a vital mission, for during their days crossing by land they had come to learn beyond doubt that Crenshinibon remained a potent foe, sentient and intelligent. It was able to call in creatures to serve as its minions, monsters of dark heart eager to grasp at the promises of the relic. Thus the friends had gone to Waterdeep and had taken passage on the sturdiest available ship in the harbor, believing that enemies would be fewer at sea and far easier to discern. Both Drizzt and Catti-brie greatly lamented that Captain Deudermont and his wondrous Sea Sprite were not in.

Less than two hours out from port one of the crewmen had come after Drizzt, thinking to steal the crystal. Battered by the flat sides of flashing twin scimitars, the man, bound and gagged, had been handed off to another ship passing by, heading to the north to Waterdeep, with instructions to turn him over to the dock authorities in that lawful city for proper punishment.

Since then, though, the voyage had been uneventful, just swift sailing and empty waters, flat horizons dotted rarely by the sails of another distant ship.

Drizzt moved to join Catti-brie at the rail. Though she didn't turn around, she knew by the footsteps that followed the near-silent drow that Bruenor and Regis had come too.

"Only a few more days to Baldur's Gate," the drow said.

Catti-brie glanced over at him, noting that he kept the cowl of his traveling cloak low over his face-not to block any of the stinging spray, she knew, for Drizzt loved that feel as much as she, but to keep him in comfortable shade. Drizzt and Catti-brie had spent years together aboard Deudermont's Sea Sprite, and still the high sun of midday glittering off the waters bothered the drow elf, whose heritage had designed him for walking lightless caverns.

"How fares Bruenor?" the woman asked quietly, pretending not to know that the dwarf was standing behind her.

"Grumbling for solid ground and all the enemies in the world to stand against him, if necessary, to get him off this cursed floating coffin," the ranger replied, playing along.

Catti-brie managed a slight grin, not surprised at all. She had journeyed the seas with Bruenor farther to the south. While the dwarf had kept a stoic front on that occasion, his relief had been obvious when they had at last docked and returned again to solid ground. This time Bruenor was having an even worse time of it, spending long stretches at the rail-and not for the view.

"Regis seems unbothered," Drizzt went on. "He makes certain that no food remains on Bruenor's plate soon after Bruenor declares that he cannot eat."

Another smile found its way onto Catti-brie's face. Again it was short-lived. "Do ye think we'll be seeing him again?" she asked.

Drizzt sighed and turned his gaze out to the empty waters. Though they were both looking south, the wrong

direction, they were both, in a manner of speaking, looking for Wulfgar. It was as if, against all logic and reason, they expected the man to come swimming toward them.

"I do not know," the drow admitted. "In his mood, it is possible that Wulfgar has found many enemies and has flung himself against them with all his heart. No doubt many of them are dead, but the north is a place of countless foes, some, I fear, too powerful even for Wulfgar."

"Bah!" Bruenor snorted from behind. "We'll find me boy, don't ye doubt. And the worst foe he'll be seeing'll be meself, paying him back for slapping me girl and for bringing me so much worry!"

"We shall find him," Regis declared. "And Lady Alustriel will help, and so will the Harpells."

The mention of the Harpells brought a groan from Bruenor. The Harpells were a family of eccentric wizards known for blowing themselves and their friends up, turning themselves-quite by accident and without repair-into various animals and all other manner of self-inflicted catastrophes.

"Alustriel, then," Regis agreed. "She will help if we cannot find him on our own."

"Bah! And how tough're ye thinking that to be?" Bruenor argued. "Are ye knowin' many rampaging seven-footers then? And them carrying hammers that can knock down a giant or the house it's living in with one throw?"

"There," Drizzt said to Catti-brie. "Our assurances that we will indeed find our friend."

The woman managed another smile, but it, too, was a strained thing and could not last. And what would they find when they at last located their missing friend? Even if he was physically unharmed, would he wish to see them? And even if he did, would he be in a better humor? And most important of all, would they— would she-really wish to see him? Wulfgar had hurt Catti-brie badly, not in body, but in heart, when he had struck her. She could forgive him that, she knew, to some extent at least.

But only once.

She studied her drow friend, saw his shadowed profile under the edge of his cowl as he stared vacantly to the empty waters, his lavender eyes glazed, as if his mind were looking elsewhere. She turned to consider Bruenor and Regis then and found them similarly distracted. All of them wanted to find Wulfgar again-not the Wulfgar who had left them on the road but the one who had left them those years ago in the tunnels beneath Mithral Hall, taken by the yochlol. They all wanted it to be as it had once been, the Companions of the Hall adventuring together without the company of brooding internal demons.

"A sail to the south," Drizzt remarked, drawing the woman from her contemplation. Even as Catti-brie looked out from the rail, squinting in a futile attempt to spot the too-distant ship, she heard the cry from the crow's nest confirming the drow's claim.

"What's her course?" Captain Vaines called from somewhere near the middle of the deck.

"North," Drizzt answered quietly so that only Catti-brie, Bruenor, and Regis could hear.

"North," cried the crewman from the crow's nest a few seconds later.

"Yer eyes've improved in the sunlight," Bruenor remarked.

"Credit Deudermont," Catti-brie explained.

"My eyes," Drizzt added, "and my perceptions of intent."

"What're ye babbling about?" Bruenor asked, but the ranger held up his hand, motioning for silence. He stood staring intently at the distant ship whose sails now appeared to the other three as tiny black dots, barely above the horizon.

"Go and tell Captain Vaines to turn us to the west," Drizzt instructed Regis.

The halfling stood staring for just a moment, then rushed back to find Vaines. Just a minute or so later the friends felt the pull as Quester leaned and turned her prow to the left.

"Ye're just making the trip longer," Bruenor started to complain, but again Drizzt held up his hand.

"She is turning with us, keeping her course to intercept," the drow explained.

"Pirates?" Catti-brie asked, a question echoed by Captain Vaines as he moved up to join the others.

"They are not in trouble, for they cut the water as swiftly as we, perhaps even more so," Drizzt reasoned. "Nor are they a ship of a king's fleet, for they fly no standard, and we are too far out for any coastal patrollers."

"Pirates," Captain Vaines spat distastefully.

"How can ye know all that?" an unconvinced Bruenor demanded.

"Comes from hunting 'em," Catti-brie explained. "And we've hunted more than our share."

"So I heard in Waterdeep," said Vaines, which was why he had agreed to take them aboard for a swift run to Baldur's Gate in the first place. Normally a woman, a dwarf, and a halfling would find no easy-and surely no cheap-passage out of Waterdeep Harbor when accompanied by a dark elf, but among the honest sailors of Waterdeep the names Drizzt Do'Urden and Catti-brie rang out as sweet music.

The approaching ship showed bigger on the horizon now, but it was still too small for any detailed images-except to Drizzt, and to Captain Vaines and the man in the crow's nest, both holding rare and expensive spyglasses. The captain put his to his eye now and recognized the telltale triangular sails. "She's a schooner," he said. "And a light one. She cannot hold more than twenty or so and is no match for us."

Catti-brie considered the words carefully. Quester was a caravel, and a large one at that. She held three strong banks of sails and had a front end long and tapered to aid in her run, but she carried a pair of ballistae, and had thick and strong sides. A slender schooner did not seem much of a match for Quester, to be sure, but how many pirates had said the same about another schooner, Deudermont's Sea Sprite, only to wind up fast filling with sea water?

"Back to the south with us!" the captain called, and Quester creaked and leaned to the right. Soon enough, the approaching schooner corrected her course to maintain her intercepting route.

'Too far to the north," Vaines remarked, striking a pensive pose, one hand coming up to stroke the gray hairs of his beard. "Pirates should not be this far north and should not deign to approach us."

The others, particularly Drizzt and Catti-brie, understood his trepidation. Concerning brute force at least, the schooner and her crew of twenty, perhaps thirty, would seem no match for the sixty of Vaines's crew. But such odds could often be overcome at sea by use of a single wizard, Catti-brie and Drizzt both knew. They had seen Sea Sprite's wizard, a powerful invoker named Robillard, take down more than one ship single-handedly long before conventional weapons had even been used.

"Shouldn't and aren't ain't the same word," Bruenor remarked dryly. "I'm not knowing if they're pirates or not, but they're coming, to be sure."

Vaines nodded and moved back to the wheel with his navigator.

"I'll get me bow and go up to the nest," Catti-brie offered.

"Pick your shots well," Drizzt replied. "Likely there is one, or maybe a couple, who are guiding this ship. If you can find them and down them, the rest might flee."

"Is that the way of pirates?" Regis asked, seeming more than a little confused. "If they even are pirates?"

"That is the way of a lesser ship coming after us because of the crystal shard," Drizzt replied, and then the other two caught on.

"Ye're thinking the damned thing's calling them?" Bruenor asked.

"Pirates take few chances," Drizzt explained. "A light schooner coming after Quester is taking a great chance."

"Unless they got wizards," Bruenor reasoned, for he, too, had understood Captain Vaines's concerns.

Drizzt was shaking his head before the dwarf ever finished. Catti-brie would have been, too, except that she had already run off to retrieve Taulmaril. "A pirate running with enough magical aid to destroy Quester would have long ago been marked," the drow explained. "We would have heard of her and been warned of her before we ever left Waterdeep."

"Unless she is new to the trade or new of the power," Regis reasoned.

Drizzt conceded the point with a nod, but he remained unconvinced, believing that Crenshinibon had brought this new enemy in, as it had brought in so many others in a desperate attempt to wrest the relic away from those who would see it destroyed. The drow looked back across the deck, spotting the familiar form of Catti-brie with Taulmaril, the wondrous Heart-seeker, strapped across her back as she made her nimble way up the knotted rope.

Then he opened his belt pouch and gazed upon the wicked relic, Crenshinibon. How he wished he could hear its call to better understand the enemies it would bring before them.

Quester shuddered suddenly as one of its great ballistae let fly. The huge spear leaped away, skipping a couple times across the water far short of the out-of-range schooner, but close enough to let the sailors aboard her recognize that

Quester had no intention of parlay or surrender.

But the schooner flew on without the slightest course change, splitting the water right beside the spent ballista bolt, even clipping the metal-tipped spear as it hung buoylike in the swelling sea. Smooth and swift was its run, seeming more like an arrow cutting the air than a ship cutting the water. The narrow hull had been built purely for speed. Drizzt had seen pirates such as this; often similar ships had led Sea Sprite, also a schooner, but a three-master and much larger, on long pursuits. The drow had enjoyed those chases most of all during his time with Deudermont, sails full of wind, spray rushing past, his white hair flowing out behind him as he stood poised at the forward rail.

He was not enjoying this scenario, though. There were many pirates along the Sword Coast well capable of destroying Quester, larger and better armed and armored than the well-structured caravel, truly the hunting lions of the region. But this approaching ship was more a bird of prey, a swift and cunning hunter designed for smaller quarry, for fishing boats wandering too far from protected harbors or the luxury barges of wealthy merchants who let their warship escorts get a bit too far away from them. Or pirate schooners would work in conjunction, several on a target, a fleet hunting pack.

But no other sails were to be seen on any horizon.

From a different pouch, Drizzt took out his onyx figurine. "I will bring in Guenhwyvar soon," he explained to Regis and Bruenor. Captain Vaines came up again, a nervous expression stamped on his face-one that told the drow that, despite his many years at sea, Vaines had not seen much battle. "With a proper run the panther can leap fifty feet or more to gain the deck of our enemies' ship. Once there she will make more than a few call for a retreat."

"I have heard of your panther friend," Vaines said. "She was much the talk of Waterdeep Harbor."

"Ye better bring the damned cat up soon then," Bruenor grumbled, looking out over the rail. Indeed, the schooner already seemed much closer, speeding over the waves.

To Drizzt the image struck him as purely out of control; suicidal, like the giant that had followed them out of the Spine of the World. He put the figurine on the ground and called softly for the panther, watching as the telltale gray mist began to swirl about the statue, gradually taking shape.

Catti-brie wiped her eyes, then lifted the spyglass once again, scanning the deck, hardly believing what she saw. But again she saw the truth of it all: that this was no pirate, at least none of the kind she had ever before seen. There were women aboard, and not warrior women, not even sailors, and surely not prisoners. And children! Several she had seen, and none of them dressed as cabin boys.

She winced as a ballista spear grazed the schooner's deck, skipping off a turnstile and cracking through the side rail, only missing a young boy by a hands' breadth.

"Get ye down, and be quick," she instructed the lookout sharing the crow's nest. "Tell yer captain to load chain and

take her in her high sails."

The man, obviously impressed with the tales he had heard of Drizzt and Catti-brie, turned without hesitation and started down the rope, but the woman knew that the task for stopping this coming travesty had fallen squarely upon her shoulders.

Quester had dropped to battle sail, but the schooner kept at full, kept its run straight and swift, and seemed as if it meant to smash right through the larger caravel.

Catti-brie put up the spyglass again, scanning slowly, searching, searching. She knew now that Drizzt's guess about the schooner's course and intent had been correct, knew that this was Crenshinibon's doing, and that truth made her blood boil with rage. One, or two, perhaps, would be the key, but where. .

She spotted the man at the forward rail of the flying bridge, his form mostly obscured by the mainmast. She held her sights on him for a long while, resisting the urge to shift and observe damage as Quester's ballistae let fly again, this time in accord with Catti-brie's orders. Spinning chains ripped high through the schooner's top sails. This sight, this man at the rail, one hand gripping the wood so tightly that it was white for lack of blood, was more important.

The schooner flinched, the ship veering slightly, unintentionally, until the crew could work the ballista-altered sails to put her in line again. In that turn, the image of the man at the rail drifted clear of the obstructing mast, and Catti-brie saw him clearly, saw the crazed look upon his face, saw the line of drool running from the corner of his mouth.

And she knew.

She dropped the spyglass and took up Taulmaril, lining her shot with great care, using the mainmast as a guide, for she could hardly even see the target.

"If they've a wizard, he should have acted by now," a frantic Captain Vaines cried. "For what do they wait? To tease us, as a cat to a mouse?"

Bruenor looked at the man and snorted derisively.

"They've no wizard," Drizzt assured the captain.

"Do they mean to simply ram us, then?" the captain asked. "We'll take her down, then!" He turned to yell new instructions to the ballista crews, to instruct his archers to rake the deck. But before he uttered a word a silver streak from the nest above startled him. He spun around to see the streak cut across the schooner's deck, then angle sharply to the right and fly out over the open sea.

Before he could begin to question it another streak shot out, following nearly the same course, except that this one didn't deflect. It soared right past the schooner's mainmast.

Everything seemed to come to a stop, a tangible pause from caravel and schooner alike.

"Hold the cat!" Catti-brie called down to Drizzt.

Vaines looked at the drow doubtfully, but Drizzt didn't doubt, not at all. He put his hand up and called Guenhwyvar-who had moved back on the deck to get a running start-back to his side.

"It is ended," the dark elf announced.

The captain's doubting expression melted as the schooner's mainsail dropped, the ship's prow also dropping instantly, deeper into the sea. Her back beam swung out wide, turning the triangular back sail. She leaned far to the side, turning her prow back toward the east, back toward the far-distant shore.

Through the spyglass, Catti-brie saw a woman kneeling over the dead man while another man cradled his head. An emptiness settled in Catti-brie's breast, for she never enjoyed such an action, never wanted to kill anyone.

But that man had been the antagonist, the driving force behind a battle that would have left many innocents on the schooner dead. Better that he pay for his failings with his own life alone than with the lives of others.

She told herself that repeatedly. It helped but a little.

Certain that the fight had indeed been avoided, Drizzt looked down at the crystal shard once more with utter contempt. A single call to a single man had nearly brought ruin to so many.

He could not wait to be rid of the thing.

Chapter 16 BROTHERS OF MIND AND MAGIC

The dark elf leaned back in a chair, settling comfortably, as he always seemed to do, and listening I with more than a passing amusement. Jarlaxle had planted a device of clairaudience on the magnificent wizard's robe he had given to Rai'gy Bondalek, one of many enchanted gemstones sewn into the black cloth. This one had a clever aura, deceiving any who would detect it into thinking it was a stone the wizard wearing the robe could use to cast the clairaudience spell. And indeed it was, but it possessed another power, one with a matching stone that Jarlaxle kept, allowing the mercenary to listen in at will upon Rai'gy's conversations.

"The replica was well made and holds much of the original's dweomer," Rai'gy was saying, obviously referring to the magical, Drizzt-seeking locket.

"Then you should have no trouble in locating the rogue again and again," came the reply, the voice of Kimmuriel Oblodra.

"They are still aboard the ship," Rai'gy explained. "And from what I have heard they mean to be aboard for many more days."

"Jarlaxle demands more information," the Oblodran psionicist said, "else he will turn the duties over to me."

"Ah, yes, given to my principal adversary," the wizard said in mock seriousness.

In that distant room, Jarlaxle chuckled. The two thought it important to keep him believing that they were rivals and thus no threat to him, though in truth they had forged a tight and trusted friendship. Jarlaxle didn't mind that-in

fact, he rather preferred it-because he understood that even together the psionicist and the wizard, dark elves of considerable magical talents and powers but little understanding of the motivations and nature of reasoning beings, would never move against him. They feared not so much that he would defeat them, but rather that they would prove victorious and then be forced to shoulder the responsibility for the entire volatile band.

"The best method to discern more about the rogue would be to go to him in disguise and listen to his words," Rai'gy went on. "Already I have learned much of his present course and previous events."

Jarlaxle came forward in his chair, listening intently as Rai'gy began a chant. He recognized enough of the words to understand that the wizard-priest was enacting a scrying spell, a reflective pool.

"That one there," Rai'gy said a few moments later.

"The young boy?" came Kimmuriel's response. "Yes, he would be an easy target. Humans do not prepare their children well, as do the drow."

"You could take his mind?" Rai'gy asked.

"Easily."

"Through the scrying pool?"

There came a long pause. "I do not know that it has ever been done," Kimmuriel admitted, and his tone told Jarlaxle that he was not afraid of the prospect, but rather intrigued.

"Then our eyes and ears would be right beside the outcast," Rai'gy went on. "In a form Drizzt Do'Urden would not think to distrust. A curious child, one who would love to hear his many tales of adventure."

Jarlaxle took his hand from the gemstone, and the clairaudience spell went away. He settled back into his chair and smiled widely, taking comfort in the ingenuity of his underlings.

That was the truth of his power, he realized, the ability to delegate responsibility and allow others to rightfully take their credit. The strength of Jarlaxle lay not in Jarlaxle, though even alone he could be formidable indeed, but in the competent soldiers with whom the mercenary surrounded himself. To battle Jarlaxle was to battle Bregan D'aerthe, an organization of free-thinking, amazingly competent drow warriors.

To battle Jarlaxle was to lose.

The guilds of Calimport would soon recognize that truth, the drow leader knew, and so would Drizzt Do'Urden.

"I have contacted another plane of existence and from the creatures there, beings great and wise, beings who can see into the humble affairs of the drow with hardly a thought, I have learned of the outcast and his friends, of where they have been and where they mean to go," Rai'gy Bondalek proclaimed to Jarlaxle the next day.

Jarlaxle nodded and accepted the lie, seeing Rai'gy's proclamation of some otherworldly and mysterious source as inconsequential.

"Inland, as I earlier told you," Rai'gy explained. "They took to a ship-the Quester, it is called-in Waterdeep, and now sail south for a city called Baldur's Gate, which they should reach in a matter of three days."

"Then back to land?"

"Briefly," Rai'gy answered, for indeed, Kimmuriel had learned much in his half day as a cabin boy. "They will take to ship again, a smaller craft, to travel along a river that will bring them far from the great water they call the Sword Coast. Then they will take to land travel again, to a place called the Snowflake Mountains and a structure called the Spirit Soaring, wherein dwells a mighty priest named Cadderly. They go to destroy an artifact of great power," he went on, adding details that he and not Kimmuriel had learned through use of the reflecting pool. "This artifact is Crenshinibon by name, though often referred to as the crystal shard."

Jarlaxle's eyes narrowed at the mention. He had heard of Crenshinibon before in a story concerning a mighty demon and Drizzt Do'Urden. Pieces began to fall into place then, the beginnings of a cunning plan creeping into the corners of his mind. "So that is where they shall go," he said. "As important, where have they been?"

"They came from Icewind Dale, they say," Rai'gy reported. "A land of cold ice and blowing wind. And they left behind one named Wulfgar, a mighty warrior. They believe him to be in the city of Luskan, north of Water-deep along the same seacoast."

"Why did he not accompany them?"

Rai'gy shook his head. "He is troubled, I believe, though I know not why. Perhaps he has lost something or has found tragedy."

"Speculation," Jarlaxle said. "Mere assumptions. And such things will lead to mistakes that we can ill afford."

"What part plays Wulfgar?" Rai'gy asked with some surprise.

"Perhaps no part, perhaps a vital one," Jarlaxle answered. "I cannot decide until I know more of him. If you cannot learn more, then perhaps it is time I go to Kimmuriel for answers." He noted the way the wizard-priest stiffened at his words, as though Jarlaxle had slapped him.

"Do you wish to learn more of the outcast or of this Wulfgar?" Rai'gy asked, his voice sharp.

"More of Cadderly," Jarlaxle replied, drawing a frustrated sigh from his off-balance companion. Rai'gy didn't even move to answer. He just turned about, threw his hands up in the air and walked away.

Jarlaxle was finished with him anyway. The names of Crenshinibon and Wulfgar had him deep in thought. He had heard of both; of Wulfgar, given by a handmaiden to Lolth and from Lolth to Errtu, the demon who sought the Crystal Shard. Perhaps it was time for the mercenary leader to go and pay a visit to Errtu, though truly he hated dealing with the unpredictable and ultimately dangerous creatures of the Abyss. Jarlaxle survived by understanding the motivations of his enemies, but demons rarely held any definite motivations and could certainly alter their desires moment by moment.

But there were other ways with other allies. The mercenary drew out a slender wand and with a thought teleported his body back to Menzoberranzan.

His newest lieutenant, once a proud member of the ruling house, was waiting for him.

"Go to your brother Gromph," Jarlaxle instructed. "Tell him that I wish to learn of the story of the human named Wulfgar, the demon Errtu, and the artifact known as Crenshinibon."

"Wulfgar was taken in the first raid on Mithral Hall, the realm of Clan Battlehammer," Berg'inyon Baenre answered, for he knew well the tale. "By a handmaiden, and given to Lolth."

"But where from there?" Jarlaxle asked. "He is back on our plane of existence, it would seem, on the surface."

Berg'inyon's expression showed his surprise at that. Few ever escaped the clutches of the Spider Queen. But then, he admitted silently, nothing about Drizzt Do'Urden had ever been predictable. "I will find my brother this day," he assured Jarlaxle.

"Tell him that I wish to know of a mighty priest named Cadderly," Jarlaxle added, and he tossed Berg'inyon a small amulet. "It is imbued with the emanations of my location," he explained, "that your brother might find me or send a messenger."

Again Berg'inyon nodded.

"All is well?" Jarlaxle asked.

"The city remains quiet," the lieutenant reported, and Jarlaxle was not surprised. Ever since the last assault upon Mithral Hall several years before, when Matron Baenre, the figurehead of Menzoberranzan for centuries, had been killed, the city had been outwardly quiet above the tumult of private planning. To her credit, Triel Baenre, Matron Baenre's oldest daughter, had done a credible job of holding the house together. But despite her efforts it seemed likely that the city would soon know interhouse wars beyond the scope of anything previously experienced. Jarlaxle had decided to strike out for the surface, to extend his grasp, thus making his mercenary band invaluable to any house with aspirations for greater power.

The key to it all now, Jarlaxle understood, was to keep everyone on his side even as they waged war with each other. It was a line he had learned to walk with perfection centuries before.

"Go to Gromph quickly," he instructed. "This is of utmost importance. I must have my answers before Narbondel brightens a hands' pillars," he explained, using a common expression to mean before five days had passed. The expression "hands' pillars" represented the five fingers on one hand.

Berg'inyon departed, and with a silent mental instruction to his wand Jarlaxle was back in Calimport. As quickly as his body moved, so too moved his thoughts to another pressing issue. Berg'inyon would not fail him, nor would Gromph, nor would Rai'gy and Kimmuriel. He knew that with all confidence, and that knowledge allowed him to focus on this very night's work: the takeover of the Basadoni Guild.

"Who is there?" came the old voice, a voice full of calmness despite the apparent danger.

Entreri, having just stepped through one of Kimmuriel Oblodra's dimensional portals, heard it as if from far, far away, as the assassin fought to orient himself to his new surroundings. He was in Pasha Basadoni's private room, behind a lavish dressing screen. Finally finding his center of balance and consciousness, the assassin spent a moment studying his surroundings, his ears pricked for the slightest of sounds: breathing or the steady footfalls of a practiced killer.

But of course he and Kimmuriel had properly scouted the room and the whereabouts of the pasha's lieutenants, and they knew that the old and helpless man was quite alone.

"Who is there?" came another call.

Entreri walked out around the screen and into the candlelight, shifting his bolero back on his head that the old man might see him clearly, and that the assassin might gaze upon Basadoni.

How pitiful the old man looked, a hollow shell of his former self, his former glory. Once Pasha Basadoni had been the most powerful guildmaster in Calimport, but now he was just an old man, a figurehead, a puppet whose strings could be pulled by several different people at once.

Entreri, despite himself, hated those string pullers.

"You should not have come," Basadoni rasped at him. "Flee the city, for you cannot live here. Too many, too many."

"You have spent two decades underestimating me," Entreri replied lightly, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. "When will you learn the truth?"

That brought a phlegm-filled chuckle from Basadoni, and Entreri flashed a rare smile.

"I have known the truth of Artemis Entreri since he was a street urchin killing intruders with sharpened stones," the old man reminded him.

"Intruders you sent," said Entreri.

Basadoni conceded the point with a grin. "I had to test you."

"And have I passed, Pasha?" Entreri considered his own tone as he spoke the words. The two were speaking like old Mends, and in a manner they were indeed. But now, because of the actions of Basadoni's lieutenants, they were also mortal enemies. Still the pasha seemed quite at ease here, alone and helpless with Entreri. At first, the assassin had thought that the man might be better prepared than he had assumed, but after carefully inspecting the room and the partially upright bed that held the old man, he was secure in the fact that Basadoni had no tricks to play. Entreri was in control, and that didn't seem to bother Pasha Basadoni as much as it should.

"Always, always," Basadoni replied, but then his smile dissipated into a grimace. "Until now. Now you have failed, and at a task too easy."

Entreri shrugged as if it did not matter. "The targeted man was pitiful," he explained. "Truly. Am I, the assassin who passed all of your tests, who ascended to sit beside you though I was still but a young man, to murder wretched peasants who owe a debt that a novice pickpocket could cover in half a day's work?"

"That was not the point," Basadoni insisted. "I let you back in, but you have been gone a long time, and thus you had to prove yourself. Not to me," the pasha quickly added, seeing the assassin's frown.

"No, to your foolish lieutenants," Entreri reasoned.

"They have earned their positions."

"That is my fear."

"Now it is Artemis Entreri who underestimates," Pasha Basadoni insisted. "Each of the three have their place and serve me well."

"Well enough to keep me out of your house?" Entreri asked.

Pasha Basadoni gave a great sigh. "Have you come to kill me?" he asked, and then he laughed again. "No, not that. You would not kill me, because you have no reason to. You know, of course, that if you somehow succeed against Kadran Gordeon and the others, I will take you back in."

"Another test?" Entreri asked dryly.

"If so, then one you created."

"By sparing the life of a wretch who likely would have preferred death?" Entreri said, shaking his head as if the whole notion was purely ridiculous.

A flicker of understanding sharpened Basadoni's old gray eyes. "So it was not sympathy," he said, grinning.

"Sympathy?"

"For the wretch," the old man explained. "No, you care nothing for him, care not that he was subsequently murdered. No, no, and I should have understood. It was not sympathy that stayed the hand of Artemis Entreri. Never that! It was pride, simple, foolish pride. You would not lower yourself to the level of street enforcer, and thus you started a war you cannot win. Oh, fool!"

"Cannot win?" Entreri echoed. "You assume much." He studied the old man for a long moment, locking gazes. "Tell me, Pasha, who do you wish to win?" he asked.

"Pride again," Basadoni replied with a flourish of his skinny arms that stole much of his strength and left him gasping. "But the point," he continued a moment later, "in any case, is moot. What you truly ask is if I still care for you, and of course I do. I remember well your ascent through my guild, as well as any father recalls the growth of his son. I do not wish you ill in this war you have begun, though you understand that there is little I can do to prevent these events that you and Kadran, prideful fools both, have put in order. And of course, as I said before, you cannot win."

"You do not understand everything."

"Enough," the old man said. "I know that you have no allegiance among the other guilds, not even with Dwahvel and her little ones or Quentin Bodeau and his meager band. Oh, they swear neutrality-we would have it no other way-but they will not aid you in your fight, and neither will any of the other truly powerful guilds. And thus are you doomed."

"And you know of every guild?" Entreri asked slyly.

"Even the wretched wererats of the sewers," Pasha Basadoni said with confidence, but Entreri noted a hint at the edges of his tone that showed he was not as smug as he outwardly pretended. There was a sadness here, Entreri knew,

a weariness and, obviously, a lack of control. The lieutenants ran the guild.

"I tell you this out of admission for all that you did for me," the assassin said, and he was not surprised to see the wise old pasha's eyes narrow warily. "Call it loyalty, call it a last debt repaid," Entreri went on, and he was sincere-about the forewarning, at least-"you do not know all, and your lieutenants shall not prevail against me."

"Ever the confident one," the pasha said with another phlegm-filled laugh.

"And never wrong," Entreri added, and he tipped his bolero and walked behind the dressing screen, back to the waiting dimensional portal.

"You have made every defense?" Pasha Basadoni asked with true concern, for the old man knew enough about Artemis Entreri to take the assassin's warning seriously. As soon as Entreri had left him, Basadoni had gathered his lieutenants. He didn't tell them of his visitor, but he wanted to ensure that they were ready. The time was near, he knew, very near.

Sharlotta, Hand, and Gordeon all nodded-somewhat condescendingly, Basadoni noted. "They will come this night," he announced. Before any of the three could question where he might have garnered that information, he added, "I can feel their eyes upon us."

"Of course, my Pasha," purred Sharlotta, bending low to kiss the old man's forehead.

Basadoni laughed at her and laughed all the louder when a guard shouted from the hallway that the house had been breached.

"In the sub-cellar!" the man cried. "From the sewers!"

"The wererat guild?" Kadran Gordeon asked incredulously. "Domo Quillilo assured us that he would not-"

"Domo Quillilo stayed out of Entreri's way, then," Basadoni interrupted.

"Entreri has not come alone," Kadran reasoned.

"Then he will not die alone," Sharlotta said, seeming unconcerned. "A pity."

Kadran nodded, drew his sword, and turned to leave. Basadoni, with great effort, grabbed his arm. "Entreri will come in separately from his allies," the old man warned. "For you."

"More to my pleasure, then," Kadran growled in reply. "Go lead our defenses," he told Hand. "And when Entreri is dead, I will bring his head to you that we may show it to those stupid enough to join with him."

Hand had barely exited the room when he was nearly run over by a soldier coming up from the cellars. "Kobolds!" the man cried, his expression showing that he hardly believed the claim as he spoke it. "Entreri's allies are smelly rat kobolds."

"Lead on, then," said Hand, much more confidently. Against the power of the guild house, with two wizards and two hundred soldiers, kobolds— even if they poured in by the thousands-would prove no more than a minor inconvenience.

Back in the room, the other two lieutenants heard the claim and stared at each other in disbelief, then broke into wide smiles.

Pasha Basadoni, lying on the bed and watching them, didn't share that mirth. Entreri was up to something, he knew, something big, and kobolds would hardly be the worst of it.

Kobolds indeed led the way into the Basadoni guild house, up from the sewers where frightened were-rats-as per their agreement with Entreri-stayed hidden in shadows, out of the way. Jarlaxle had brought a considerable number of the smelly little creatures with him from Menzoberranzan. Bregan D'aerthe was housed primarily along the rim of the great Clawrift that rent the drow city, and in there the kobolds bred and bred, thousands and thousands of the things. Three hundred had accompanied the forty drow to Calimport, and they now led the charge, running wildly through all the lower corridors of the guild house, inadvertently setting off the traps, both mechanical and magical, and marking the locations of the Basadoni soldiers.

Behind them came the drow host, silent as death.

Kimmuriel Oblodra, Jarlaxle, and Entreri moved up one slanting corridor, flanked by a foursome of drow warriors holding hand crossbows readied with poison-tipped darts. Up ahead the corridor opened into a wide room, and a group of kobolds scrambled across, chased by a threesome of archers.

"Click, click, click," went the crossbows, and the three archers stumbled, staggered, and slumped to the floor, deep in sleep.

An explosion to the side sent the kobolds, half the previous number, scrambling back the other way.

"Not a magical blast," Kimmuriel remarked.

Jarlaxle sent a pair of his soldiers out wide the other way, flanking the human position. Kimmuriel took a more direct route, opening a dimensional door diagonally across the wide floor to the open edge of the corridor from which the explosion had come. As soon as the door appeared, leading into another long, ascending corridor, he and Entreri spotted the bombers. There was a group of men rushing behind a barricade, flanked by several large kegs.

"Drow elf!" one of the men shouted, pointing to the open door. Kimmuriel stood across the dimensional space behind the other door.

"Light it! Light it!" cried another man. A third brought a torch over to light the long rag hanging off the top of one keg.

Kimmuriel reached into his mind yet again, focusing on the keg, on the latent energy within the wood planking. He touched that energy, exciting it. Before the men could even begin to roll the barrel out from behind the barricade it blew apart, then exploded again as the burning wick hit the oil.

A flaming man tumbled out from the barricade, rolling frantically down the corridor, trying to douse the flames. A

second, less injured, staggered into the open, and one of the remaining drow soldiers put a hand crossbow dart into his face.

Kimmuriel dropped the dimensional door-better to run through the room-and the group set off, rushing past the burning corpse and the sleeping and badly injured man, past the third victim of the explosion, curled in death in a fetal position in the corner of the small cubby, then down a side passage. There they found three more men, two asleep and a third lying dead before the feet of the two soldiers Jarlaxle had sent out to flank.

And so it went throughout the lower levels, with the dark elves overrunning all obstacles. Jarlaxle had taken only his finest warriors with him to the surface: renegade, houseless dark elves who had once belonged to noble houses, who had trained for decades, centuries even, for just this kind of close-quartered, room-to-room, tunnel-to-tunnel combat. A brigade of knights in shining mail and with wizard supporters might prove a credible enemy to the dark elves on an open field of battle. These street thugs, though, with their small daggers, short swords, and minor magics, and with no foreknowledge of the enemy that had come against them, fell systematically to Jarlaxle's steadily moving band. Basadoni's men surrendered position after position, retreating higher and higher into the guild house proper.

Jarlaxle found Rai'gy Bondalek and half a dozen warriors moving along the street level of the house.

"They had two wizards," the wizard-priest explained. "I put them in a globe of silence and-"

"Pray tell me you did not destroy them," said the mercenary leader, who knew well the value of wizards.

"We hit them with darts," Rai'gy explained. "But one had a stoneskin enchantment about him and had to be destroyed."

Jarlaxle could accept that. "Finish the business at hand," he said to Rai'gy. "I will take Entreri to claim his place in the higher rooms."

"And him?" Rai'gy asked sourly, motioning toward Kimmuriel.

Knowing their little secret, Jarlaxle did well to hide his smile. "Lead on," he instructed Entreri.

They encountered another group of heavily armed soldiers, but Jarlaxle used one of his many wands to entrap them all within globs of goo. Another one did slip away-or would have, except that Artemis Entreri knew well the tactics of such men. He saw the shadow lengthening against the wall and directed the shot well.

Kadran Gordeon's eyes widened when Hand stumbled into the room, gasping and clutching at his hip. "Dark elves," the man explained, slumping in the arms of his comrade. "Entreri. The bastard brought dark elves!"

Hand slipped to the floor, fast asleep.

Kadran Gordeon let him fall and ran on, out the back door of the room, across the wide ballroom of the second floor, and up the sweeping staircase.

Entreri and his friends noted every movement.

"That is the one?" Jarlaxle asked.

Entreri nodded. "I will kill him," he promised, starting away, but Jarlaxle grabbed his shoulder. Entreri turned to see the mercenary leader looking slyly at Kimmuriel.

"Would you like to fully humiliate the man?" Jarlaxle asked.

Before Entreri could respond, Kimmuriel came up to stand right before him. "Join with me," the drow psionicist said, lifting his fingers for Entreri's forehead.

The ever-wary assassin brushed the reaching hand away.

Kimmuriel tried to explain, but Entreri knew only the basics of drow language, not the subtleties. The psionicist's words sounded more like the joining of lovers than anything Entreri understood. Frustrated, Kimmuriel turned to Jarlaxle and started talking so fast that it seemed to Entreri as if he was saying one long word.

"He has a trick for you to play," Jarlaxle explained in the common surface tongue. "He wishes to get into your mind, but only briefly, to enact a kinetic barrier and show you how to maintain it."

"A kinetic barrier?" the confused assassin asked.

"Trust him this one time," Jarlaxle bade. "Kimmuriel Oblodra is among the greatest practitioners of the rare and powerful psionic magic and is so skilled with it that he can often lend some of his power to another, albeit briefly."

"He will teach me?" Entreri asked skeptically.

Kimmuriel laughed at the absurd notion.

"The mind magic is a gift, a rare gift, and not a lesson to be taught," Jarlaxle explained. "But Kimmuriel can lend you a bit of the power, enough to humiliate Kadran Gordeon."

Entreri's expression showed that he wasn't so sure of any of this.

"We could kill you at any time by more conventional means if we so decided," Jarlaxle reminded him. He nodded to Kimmuriel, and Artemis Entreri did not back away.

And so Entreri got his first personal understanding of psionics and walked up the sweeping staircase unafraid. Across the way a concealed archer let fly, and Entreri took the arrow right in the back-or would have, except that the kinetic barrier stopped the arrow's flight, fully absorbing its energy.

Sharlotta heard the ruckus in the outer rooms of the royal complex and figured that Gordeon had returned. She still had no idea of the rout in the lower halls, though, and so she decided to move quickly, to use this opportunity well. From one of the long sleeves of her alluring gown she drew out a slender knife, moving with purpose for the door that would lead into a larger room, with the door of Pasha Basadoni across the way.

Finally she would be done with the man, and it would look as if Entreri or one of his associates had completed the assassination.

Sharlotta paused at the door, hearing another slam beyond

and the sound of running feet. Gordeon was on the move, as was another.

Had Entreri gained this level?

The thought assaulted her but did not dissuade her. There were other ways, more secret ways, though the route would be longer. She went to the back of her room, removed a specific book from her bookshelf, then slipped into the corridor that opened behind the case.

Entreri caught up to Kadran Gordeon soon after in a complex of many small rooms. The man rushed out the side, sword slashing. He hit Entreri a dozen times at least and the assassin, focusing his thoughts with supreme concentration, didn't even try to block. Instead he just took them and stole their energy, feeling the power building, building within him.

Eyes wide, mouth agape, Kadran Gordeon back-pedaled. "What manner of demon are you?" the man gasped, falling back through a door into the room where Sharlotta, small dagger in hand, had just come out of another concealed passage, standing along a wall to the side of Pasha Basadoni's bed.

Entreri, brimming with confidence, strode in.

On came Gordeon again, sword slashing. This time Entreri drew the sword Jarlaxle had given him and countered, parrying each slash perfectly. He felt his mental concentration waning and knew that he had to react soon or be consumed by the pent-up energy, so when Gordeon came with a sidelong slash, Entreri dipped the tip of his blade below the angle of the cut, then brought it up and over quickly, stepping under, turning about, and rolling his sword around. He took Gordeon off balance and crashed into the man, knocking him to the floor and coming down atop him, weapon pinning weapon.

Sharlotta lifted her arm to throw her knife into Basadoni but then shifted, seeing the too-tempting target of Artemis Entreri's back as the man went down atop Kadran Gordeon.

But then she shifted again as another, darker form entered the room. She cocked to throw, but the drow was quicker. A dagger sliced her wrist, pinning her arm to the wall. Another dagger stuck in the wall to the right of her head, then another to the left. Another grazed the side of her chest, and then another as Jarlaxle pumped his arm rapidly, sending a seemingly endless stream of steel her way.

Gordeon punched Entreri in the face.

That, too, was absorbed.

"I do grow tired of your foolishness," said Entreri, putting his hand on Gordeon's chest, ignoring the man's free hand as it pumped punch after punch at his face.

With a thought Entreri released the energy, all of it, the arrow, the many sword hits, the many punches. His hand sank into Gordeon's chest, melting the skin and ribs below it. A rolling fountain of blood erupted, spewing into the air and falling back on Gordeon's surprised expression, filling his mouth as he tried to scream in horror.

And then he was dead.

Entreri got up to see Sharlotta standing against the

wall, hands in the air-one pinned to the wall-facing Jarlaxle, who had yet another dagger ready. Several other drow, including Kimmuriel and Rai'gy, had come into the room behind their leader. The assassin quickly moved between her and Basadoni, noting the dagger Sharlotta had obviously dropped on the floor right beside the bed. He turned his sly gaze on the dangerous woman.

"It would seem that I arrived just in time, Pasha," Entreri explained, picking up the weapon. "Sharlotta, thinking the guild house secure, had apparently decided to use the battle to her advantage, finally ridding herself of you."

Both Entreri and Basadoni looked at Sharlotta. She stood impassive, obviously caught, though she finally managed to extract the material of her sleeve from the sticking dagger.

"She did not know the truth of her enemies," Jaraxle explained.

Entreri looked at him and nodded. The dark elves all stepped back, allowing the assassin his moment.

"Should I kill her?" Entreri asked Basadoni.

"Why ask my permission?" the pasha replied, obviously none too pleased. "Am I then to credit you for this? For bringing dark elves to my house?"

"I acted as I needed to survive," Entreri replied. "Most of the house survives, neutralized but not killed. Kadran Gordeon is dead-never could I have trusted that one-but Hand survives. And so we will go on under the same arrangement as before, with three Lieutenants and one guildmaster." He looked to Jarlaxle, then back to Sharlotta. "Of course, my friend Jarlaxle desires a position of lieutenant," he said. "One well-earned, and that I cannot deny."

Sharlotta stiffened, expecting then to die, for she could do simple math.

Indeed Entreri did originally mean to kill her, but when he glanced back to Basadoni, when he looked again upon the feeble old man, such a shadow of his former glory, he reversed the direction of his sword and put it through Pasha Basadoni's heart instead.

"Three lieutenants," he said to the stunned Sharlotta. "Hand, Jarlaxle, and you."

"So Entreri is guildmaster," the woman remarked with a crooked grin. "You said you could not trust Kadran Gordeon, yet you recognize that I am more honorable," she said seductively, coming forward a step.

Entreri's sword came out and about too fast for her to follow, its tip stopping against the tender flesh of her throat. "Trust you?" the assassin balked. "No, but neither do I fear you. Do as you are instructed, and you will live." He shifted the angle of his blade slightly so that it tucked under her chin, and he nicked her there. "Exactly as instructed," he warned, "else I will take your pretty face from you, one cut at a time."

Entreri turned to Jarlaxle.

"The house will be secured within the hour," the dark elf assured him. "Then you and your human lieutenants can decide the fate of those taken and put out on the streets whatever word suits you as guildmaster."

Entreri had thought that this moment would bring some measure of satisfaction. He was glad that Kadran Gordeon was dead and glad that the old wretch Basadoni had been given a well-deserved rest.

"As you wish, my Pasha," Sharlotta purred from the side.

The title turned his stomach.

Chapter 17 EXORCISING DEMONS

There was indeed something appealing about the fighting, about the feeling of superiority and the element of control. Between the fact that the fights were not lethal-though more than a few patrons were badly injured-and the conscience-dulling drinks, no guilt accompanied each thunderous punch.

Just satisfaction and control, an edge that had been too long absent.

Had he stopped to think about it, Wulfgar might have realized that he was substituting each new challenger for one particular nemesis, one he could not defeat alone, one who had tormented him all those years.

He didn't bother with contemplation, though. He simply enjoyed the sensation of his fist colliding with the chest of this latest troublemaker, sending the tall, thin man reeling back in a hopping, staggering, stumbling quickstep, finally to fall backward over a bench some twenty feet from the barbarian.

Wulfgar methodically waded in, grabbing the decked man by the collar (and taking out more than a few chest hairs in the process) and the groin (and similarly extracting hair). With one jerk the barbarian brought the horizontal man level with his waist. Then a rolling motion snapped the man up high over his head.

"I just fixed that window," Arumn Gardpeck said dryly, helplessly, seeing the barbarian's aim.

The man flew through it to bounce across Half Moon Street.

"Then fix it again," Wulfgar replied, casting a glare over Arumn that the barkeep did not dare to question.

Arumn just shook his head and went back to wiping his bar, reminding himself that, by keeping such complete order in the place Wulfgar was attracting customers-many of them. Folk now came looking for a safe haven in which to waste a night, and then there were those interested in the awesome displays of power. These came both as challengers to the mighty barbarian or, more often, merely as spectators. Never had the Cutlass seen so many patrons, and never had Arumn Gardpeck's purse been so full.

But how much more full it would be, he knew, if he didn't have to keep fixing the place.

"Shouldn't've done that," a man near the bar remarked to Arumn. "That's Rossie Doone, he throwed, a soldier."

"Not wearing any uniform," Arumn remarked.

"Came in unofficial," the man explained. "Wanted to see this Wulfgar thug."

"He saw him," Arumn replied in the same resigned and dry tones.

"And he'll be seein' him again," the man promised. "Only next time with friends."

Arumn sighed and shook his head, not out of any fear for Wulfgar, but because of the expenses he anticipated if a whole crew of soldiers came in to fight the barbarian.

Wulfgar spent that night-half the night-in Delly Curtie's room again, taking a bottle with him from the bar, then grabbing another one on his way outside. He went down to the docks and sat on the edge of a long wharf, watching the sparkles grow on the water as the sun rose behind him.

Josi Puddles saw them first, entering the Cutlass the very next night, a half-dozen grim-faced men including the one the patron had identified as Rossie Doone. They moved to the far side of the room, evicting several patrons from tables, then pulling three of the benches together so they could all sit side by side with their backs to the wall.

"Full moon tonight," Josi remarked.

Arumn knew what that meant. Every time the moon was full the crowd was a bit rowdier. And what a crowd had come in this evening, every sort of rogue and thug Arumn could imagine.

"Been the talk of the street all the day," Josi said quietly.

"The moon?" Arumn asked.

"Not the moon," Josi replied. "Wulfgar and that Rossie fellow. All have been talking of a coming brawl."

"Six against one," Arumn remarked.

"Poor soldiers," Josi said with a snicker.

Arumn nodded to the side then, to Wulfgar, who, sitting with a foaming mug in hand, seemed well aware of the group that had come in. The look on the barbarian's face, so calm and yet so cold, sent a shiver along Arumn's spine. It was going to be a long night.

On the other side of the room, in a corner opposite where sat the six soldiers, another man, quiet and unassuming, also noted the tension and the prospective combatants with more than a passing interest. The man's name was well known on the streets of Luskan, though his face was not. He was a shadow stalker by trade, a man cloaked in secrecy, but a man whose reputation brought trembles to the hardiest of thugs.

Morik the Rogue had been hearing quite a bit about Arumn Gardpeck's new strong-arm; too much, in fact. Story after story had come to him about the man's incredible feats of strength. About how he had been hit squarely in the face with a heavy club and had shaken it away seemingly without care. About how he lifted two men high into the air, smashed their heads together, then simultaneously tossed them through opposite walls of the tavern. About how he had thrown one man out into the street, then rushed out and blocked a team of two horses with his bare chest to stop the wagon from running down the prone drunk. .

Morik had been living among the street people long enough to understand the exaggerated nonsense in most of these tales. Each storyteller tried to outdo the previous one. But he couldn't deny the impressive stature of this man Wulfgar. Nor could he deny the many wounds showing about the head of Rossie Doone, a soldier Morik knew well and whom he had always respected as a solid fighter.

Of course Morik, his ears so attuned to the streets and alleyways, had heard of Rossie's intention to return with his friends and settle the score. Of course Morik had also heard of another's intention to put this newcomer squarely in his place. And so Morik had come in to watch, and nothing more, to measure this huge northerner, to see if he had the strength, the skills, and the temperament to survive and become a true threat.

Never taking his gaze off Wulfgar, the quiet man sipped his wine and waited.

As soon as he saw Delly moving near to the six men, Wulfgar drained his beer in a single swallow and tightened his grip on the table. He saw it coming, and how predictable it was, as one of Rossie Doone's sidekicks reached out and grabbed Delly's bottom as she moved past.

Wulfgar came up in a rush, storming in right before the offender, and right beside Delly.

"Oh, but 'tis nothing," the woman said, pooh-poohing Wulfgar away. He grabbed her by the shoulders, lifted her, and turned, depositing her behind him. He turned back, glaring at the offender, then at Rossie Doone, the true perpetrator.

Rossie remained seated, laughing still, seeming completely relaxed with three burly fighters on his right, two more on his left.

"A bit of fun," Wulfgar stated. "A cloth to cover your wounds, deepest of all the wound to your pride."

Rossie stopped laughing and stared hard at the man.

"We have not yet fixed the window," Wulfgar said. "Do you prefer to leave by that route once more?"

The man next to Rossie bristled, but Rossie held him back. "In truth, northman, I prefer to stay," he answered. "In my own eyes it's yourself who should be leaving."

Wulfgar didn't blink. "I ask you a second time, and a last time, to leave of your own accord," he said.

The man farthest from Rossie, down to Wulfgar's left, stood up and stretched languidly. "Think I'll get me a bit o' drink," he said calmly to the man seated beside him, and then, as if going to the bar, he took a step Wulfgar's way.

The barbarian, already a seasoned veteran of barroom brawls, saw it coming. He understood that the man would grab at him to hold and slow him so that Rossie and the others could pummel him. He kept his apparent focus directly on Rossie and waited. Then, as the man came within two steps, as his hands started coming up to grab at Wulfgar, the barbarian spun suddenly, stepping inside the other's reach. The barbarian snapped his back muscles, launching his forehead

into the man's face, crushing his nose and sending him staggering backward.

Wulfgar turned back fast, fist flying, and caught Rossie across the jaw as he started to rise, slamming the man back against the wall. Hardly slowing, Wulfgar grabbed the stunned Rossie by the shoulders and yanked him hard to the side, flipping him to the left to deflect the coming rush of the two men remaining there. Then around went the barbarian again, growling, fists flying, to swap heavy punches with the two men leaping at him from that direction.

A knee came up for his groin, but Wulfgar recognized the move and reacted fast. He turned his leg in to catch the blow with his thigh, then reached down under the bent leg. The attacker instinctively grabbed at Wulfgar, catching shoulder and hair, trying to use him for balance. But the powerful barbarian, simply too strong, drove on, heaving him up and over his shoulder, turning as he went to again deflect the attack from the two men coming in at his back.

The movement cost Wulfgar several punches from the man who had been standing next to the latest human missile. Wulfgar accepted them stoically, hardly seeming to care. He came back hard, legs pumping, to drive the puncher into the wall, wrestling him around.

The desperate soldier grabbed on with all his strength, and the man's friends fast approached from behind. A roar, a wriggle, and a stunning punch extracted Wulfgar from the man's grasp. He skittered back away from the wall and the pursuers, instinctively ducking a punch as he went and grabbing a table by the leg.

Wulfgar spun back, facing the group, and halted the swinging momentum of the table so fully that the item snapped apart. The bulk of the table flew into the chest of the closest man, leaving Wulfgar standing with a wooden table leg in hand, a club he wasted no time in putting to good use. The barbarian smacked it below the table at the exposed legs of the man he had hit with the missile, cracking the side of the soldier's knee once and then again. The man howled in pain and shoved the table back out at Wulfgar, but he accepted the missile strike with merely a shrug, concentrating instead on turning the club in line and jabbing the man in the eye with its narrow end.

A half turn and full swing caught another across the side of the head, splitting the club apart and dropping the attacker like a sack of ground meal. Wulfgar ran right over him as he fell-the barbarian understood that mobility was his only defense against so many. He barreled into the next man in line, carrying him halfway across the room to slam into a wall, a journey that ended with a wild flurry of fists from both. Wulfgar took a dozen blows and gave a like number, but his were by far the heavier, and the dazed and defeated man crumbled to the floor-or would have, had not Wulfgar grabbed him as he slumped. The barbarian turned about fast and let his latest human missile fly, spinning him in low across the ankles of the closest pursuer, who tripped headlong, both arms reaching out to grab the barbarian. Wulfgar, still in his turn, using the momentum of that spin, dived forward, punch leading, stretching right between those arms. His force combined with the momentum of the stumbling man, and he felt his fist sink deep into the man's face, snapping his head back violently.

That man, too, went down hard.

Wulfgar stood straight, facing Rossie and his one standing ally, who had blood rolling freely from his nose. Another man holding his torn eye tried to stand beside them, but his broken knee wouldn't support his weight. He stumbled away to the side to slam into a wall and sink there into a sitting position.

In the first truly coordinated attack since the chaos had begun, Rossie and his companion came in slow and then leaped together atop Wulfgar, thinking to bear him down. But though the two were both large men, Wulfgar didn't fall, didn't stumble in the least. The barbarian caught them as they soared in and held his footing. His thrashing had them both holding on for dear life. Rossie slipped away, and Wulfgar managed to get both arms on the other, dragging the clutching man horizontally across in front of his face. The man's arms flailed about Wulfgar's head, but the angle of attack was all wrong, and the blows proved ineffectual.

Wulfgar roared again and bit the man's stomach hard, then started a full-out, blind run across the tavern floor. Gauging the distance, Wulfgar dipped his head at the last moment to put his powerful neck muscles in proper alignment, then rammed full force into the wall. He bounced back, holding the man with just one arm hooked under his shoulder, and kept it there long enough to allow the man to come down on his feet.

The man stood, against the wall, watching in confusion as Wulfgar ran back a few steps, and then his eyes widened indeed when the huge barbarian turned about, roared, and charged, dipping his shoulder as he came.

The man put his arms up, but that hardly mattered, for Wulfgar shoulder-drove him against the planking— right into the planking, which cracked apart. Louder than the splitting wood came the sound of a groan and a sigh from resigned Arumn Gardpeck.

Wulfgar bounced back again but leaned in fast, slamming left and right repeatedly, each thunderous blow driving the man deeper into the wall. The poor man, crumbled and bloody, splinters deep in his back, his nose already broken and half his body feeling the same way, held up a feeble arm to show that he had had enough.

Wulfgar smashed him again, a vicious left hook that came in over the upraised arm and shattered his jaw, throwing him into oblivion. He would have fallen except that the broken wall held him fast in place.

Wulfgar didn't even notice, for he had turned around to face Rossie, the lone enemy still showing any ability to fight. One of the others, the man Wulfgar had traded blows with against the wall, crawled about on hands and knees, seeming as if he didn't even know where he was. Another, the side of his head split wide by the vicious club swing, kept trying to stand and kept falling over, while a third still sat against the wall, clutching his torn eye and broken knee. The fourth of Rossie's companions, the one Wulfgar had hit

with the single, devastating punch, lay very still with no sign of consciousness.

"Gather your friends and be gone," a tired Wulfgar offered to Rossie. "And do not return."

In answer, the outraged man reached down to his boot and drew out a long knife. "But I want to play," Rossie said wickedly, approaching a step.

"Wulfgar!" came Belly's cry from across the way, from behind the bar, and both Wulfgar and Rossie turned to see the woman throwing Aegis-fang out toward her friend, though she couldn't get the heavy warhammer half the distance.

That hardly mattered, though, for Wulfgar reached for it with his arm and with his mind, telepathically calling to the hammer.

The hammer vanished, then reappeared in the barbarian's waiting grasp. "So do I," Wulfgar said to an astonished and horrified Rossie. To accentuate his point, he swung Aegis-fang, one armed, out behind him. The swing hit and split a beam, which drew another profound groan from Arumn.

Rossie, his eager expression long gone, glanced about and backed away liked a trapped animal. He wanted to back out, to find some way to flee-that much was apparent to everybody in the room.

And then the outside door banged open, turning all heads-those that weren't broken open-Rossie Doone's and Wulfgar's included, and in strode the largest human, if he was indeed a human, that Wulfgar had ever seen. He was a giant man, taller than Wulfgar by a foot at least, and almost as wide, weighing perhaps twice the barbarian's three hundred pounds. Even more impressive was the fact that very little of the giant's bulk jiggled as he stormed in. He was all muscle, and gristle, and bone.

He stopped inside the suddenly hushed tavern, his huge head turning slowly to scan the room. His gaze finally settled on Wulfgar. He brought his arms out slowly from under the front folds of his cloak to reveal that he held a heavy length of chain in one hand and a spiked club in the other.

"Ye too tired for me, Wulfgar the dead?" Tree Block Breaker asked, spittle flying with each word. He finished with a growl, then brought his arm across powerfully, slamming the length of chain across the top of the nearest table and splitting the thing neatly down the middle. The three patrons sitting at that particular table didn't scamper away. They didn't dare to move at all.

A smile widened across Wulfgar's face. He flipped Aegis-fang into the air, a single spin, to catch it again by the handle.

Arumn Gardpeck groaned all the louder; this would be an expensive night.

Rossie Doone and those of his friends who could still move scrambled across the room, out of harm's way, leaving the path between Wulfgar and Tree Block Breaker clear.

In the shadows across the room, Morik the Rogue took another sip of wine. This was the fight he had come to see.

"Well, ye give me no answer," Tree Block Breaker said, whipping his chain across again. This time it did not connect solidly but whipped about one angled leg of the fallen table.

Then, after slapping the leg of one sitting man, its tip got a hold on the man's chair. With a great roar, Tree Block yanked the chain back, sending table and chair flying across the room and dropping the unfortunate patron on his bum.

"Tavern etiquette and my employer require that I give you the opportunity to leave quietly," Wulfgar calmly replied, reciting Arumn's creed.

On came Tree Block Breaker, a great, roaring monster, a giant gone wild. His chain flailed back and forth before him, his club raised high to strike.

Wulfgar realized that he could have taken the giant out with a well-aimed throw of Aegis-fang before Tree

Block had gone two steps, but he let the creature come on, relishing the challenge. To everyone's surprise he dropped Aegis-fang to the floor as Tree Block closed. When the chain swished for his head, he dropped into a sudden squat but held his arm vertically above him.

The chain hooked around, and Wulfgar reached over it and grabbed on, giving a great tug that only increased Tree Block's charge. The huge man swung with his club, but he was too close and still coming. Wulfgar went down low, driving his shoulder against the man's legs. Tree Block's momentum carried his bulk across the bent barbarian's back.

Amazingly, stunningly, Wulfgar stood up straight, bringing Tree Block up above him. Then, to the astonished gasps of all watching, he bent at the knees quickly and jerked back up straight. Pushing with all his strength, he lifted Tree Block into the air above his head.

Before the huge man could wriggle about and bring his club to bear, Wulfgar ran back the way Tree Block had charged, and with a great roar of his own, threw the man right through the door, taking it and the jamb out completely and depositing the huge man in a jumble of kindling outside the Cutlass. His arm still enwrapped by the chain, Wulfgar gave a huge tug that sent Tree Block spinning about in the pile of wood before he surrendered the chain altogether.

The stubborn giant thrashed about, finally extricating himself from the wood heap. He stood roaring, his face and neck cut in a dozen places, his club whirling about wildly.

"Turn and leave," Wulfgar warned. The barbarian reached behind him and with a thought brought Aegis-fang back to his hand.

If Tree Block even heard the warning, he showed no indication. He smacked his club against the ground and came forward in a rush, snarling.

And then he was dead. Just like that, caught by surprise as the barbarian's arm came forward, as the mighty warhammer twirled out, too fast for his attempted deflection with the club, too powerfully for Tree Block's massive chest to absorb the hit.

He stumbled backward and went down with more a whisper than a bang and lay very still.

Tree Block Breaker was the first man Wulfgar had killed in his tenure at Arumn Gardpeck's bar, the first man killed in the Cutlass in many, many months. All the tavern, Delly and Josi, Rossie Doone and his thugs, seemed to stop in pure amazement. The place went perfectly silent.

Wulfgar, Aegis-fang returned to his grasp, calmly turned about and walked over to the bar, paying no heed to the dangerous Rossie Doone. He placed Aegis-fang on the bar before Arumn, indicating that the bar-keep should replace it on the shelves behind the counter, then casually remarked, "You should fix the door, Arumn, and quickly, else someone walks in and steals your stock."

And then, as if nothing had happened, Wulfgar walked back across the room, seemingly oblivious to the silence and the open-mouthed stares that followed his every stride.

Arumn Gardpeck shook his head and lifted the warhammer, then stopped as a shadowy figure came up opposite him.

"A fine warrior you have there, Master Gardpeck," the man said. Arumn recognized the voice, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

"And Half Moon Street is a better place without that bully Tree Block running about," Morik went on. "I'll not lament his demise."

"I have never asked for any quarrel," Arumn said. "Not with Tree Block and not with you."

"Nor will you find one," Morik assured the innkeeper as Wulfgar, noting the conversation, came up beside the man-as did Josi Puddles and Delly, though they kept a more respectful distance from the dangerous rogue.

"Well fought, Wulfgar, son of Beornegar," Morik said. He slid a glass of drink along the bar before Wulfgar, who looked down at it, then back at Morik suspiciously. After all, how could Morik know his full name, one he had not used since his entry into Luskan, one that he had purposely left far, far behind.

Delly slipped in between the two, calling for Arumn to fetch her a couple of drinks for other patrons, and while the two stood staring at each other, she slyly swapped the drink Morik had placed with one from her tray. Then she moved out of the way, rolling back behind Wulfgar, wanting the security of his massive form between her and the dangerous man.

"Nor will you find one," Morik said again to Arumn. He tapped his forehead in salute and walked away, out of the Cutlass.

Wulfgar eyed him curiously, recognizing the balanced gait of a warrior, then moved to follow, pausing only long enough to lift and drain the glass.

"Morik the Rogue," Josi Puddles remarked to Arumn and Delly, moving opposite the barkeep. Both he and Arumn noted that Delly was holding the glass Morik had offered to Wulfgar.

"And likely this'd kill a fair-sized minotaur," she said, reaching over to dump the contents into a basin.

Despite Morik's assurances, Arumn Gardpeck did not disagree. Wulfgar had solidified his reputation a hundred times over this night, first by absolutely humbling Rossie Doone and his crowd-there would be no more trouble from them-and then by downing-and oh, so easily-the toughest fighter Half Moon Street had known in years.

But with such fame came danger, all three knew. To be in the eyes of Morik the Rogue was to be in the sights of his deadly weapons. Perhaps the man would keep his promise and

let things lay low for a time, but eventually Wulfgar's reputation would grow to become a distraction, and then, perhaps, a threat.

Wulfgar seemed oblivious to it all. He finished his night's work with hardly another word, not even to Rossie Doone and his companions, who chose to stay— mostly because several of them needed quite a bit of potent drink to dull the pain of their wounds-but quietly so. And then, as was his growing custom, he took two bottles of potent liquor, took Delly by the arm, and retired to her room for half the night.

When that half a night had passed he, the remaining bottle in hand, went to the docks to watch the reflection of the sunrise.

To bask in the present, care nothing about the future, and forget the past.

Chapter 18 OF IMPS AND PRIESTS AND A GREAT QUEST

Your name and reputation have preceded you," Captain Vaines explained to Drizzt as he led the drow and his companions to the boarding plank. Before them loomed the broken skyline of Baldur's Gate, the great port city halfway between Waterdeep and Calimport. Many structures lined the impressive dock areas, from low warehouses to taller buildings set with armaments and lookout positions, giving the region an uneven, jagged feel.

"My man found little trouble in gaining you passage on a river runner," Vaines went on.

"Discerning folk who'd take a drow," Bruenor said dryly.

"Less so if they'd take a dwarf," Drizzt replied without the slightest hesitation.

"Captained and crewed by dwarves," Vaines explained. That brought a groan from Drizzt and a chuckle from Bruenor. "Captain Bumpo Thunderpuncher and his brother, Donat, and their two cousins thrice removed on their mother's side."

"Ye know them well," Catti-brie remarked.

"All who meet Bumpo meet his crew, and admittedly they are a hard foursome to forget," Vaines said. "My man had little trouble in gaining your passage, as I said, for the dwarves know well the tale of Bruenor Battlehammer and the reclamation of Mithral Hall. And of his companions, including the dark elf."

"Bet ye'd never see the day when ye'd become a hero to a bunch o' dwarves," Bruenor remarked to Drizzt.

"Bet I'd never see the day when I'd want to," the ranger replied.

The group came to the rail then, and Vaines moved aside, holding his arm out toward the plank. "Farewell, and may your journey return you safely to your home," he said. "If I am in port or nearby when you return to Baldur's Gate, perhaps we will sail together again."

"Perhaps," Regis politely replied, but he, like all the others, understood that, if they did get to Cadderly and get rid of the Crystal Shard, they meant to ask for Cadderly's help in bringing them magically to Luskan. They had

approximately another two weeks of travel before them if they moved swiftly, but Cadderly could wind walk all the way back to Luskan in a matter of minutes. So said Drizzt and Catti-brie, who had taken such a walk with the powerful priest before. Then they could get on with the pressing business of finding Wulfgar.

They entered Baldur's Gate without incident, and though Drizzt felt many stares following him, they were not ominous glares but looks of curiosity. The drow couldn't help contrast this experience with his other visit to the city, when he'd gone in pursuit of Regis who had been whisked away to Calimport by Artemis Entreri. On that occasion, Drizzt, with Wulfgar beside him, had entered the city under the disguise of a magical mask that had allowed him to appear as a surface elf.

"Not much like the last time ye came through?" Catti-brie, who knew well the tale of the first visit asked, seeing Drizzt's gaze.

"Always I wished to walk freely in the cities of the Sword Coast," Drizzt replied. "It appears that our work with Captain Deudermont has granted me that privilege. Reputation has freed me from some of the pains of my heritage."

"Ye thinking that's a good thing?" the so perceptive woman asked, for she had noted clearly the slight wince at the corner of Drizzt's eye when he made the claim.

"I do not know," Drizzt admitted. "I like that I can walk freely now in most places without persecution."

"But it pains ye to think that ye had to earn the right," Catti-brie finished perfectly. "Ye look at me, a human, and know that I had to earn no such thing. And at Bruenor and Regis, dwarf and halfling, and know that they can walk anywhere without earnin' a thing."

"I do not begrudge any of you that," Drizzt replied. "But see their gazes?" He looked around at the many people walking the streets of Baldur's Gate, almost every one turning to regard the drow curiously, some with admiration in their eyes, some with disbelief.

"So even though ye're walking free, ye're not walking free," the woman observed, and her nod told Drizzt that she understood then. Given the choice between facing the hatred of prejudice or the similarly ignorant looks of those viewing him as a curiosity piece, the latter seemed the better by far. But both were traps, both prisons, jailing Drizzt within the confines of the preceding reputation of a drow elf, of any drow elf, and thus limiting Drizzt to his heritage.

"Bah, they're just a stupid lot," Bruenor interrupted.

"Those who know you, know better," Regis added.

Drizzt took it all in stride, all with a smile. Long ago he had abandoned any futile hopes of truly fitting in among the surface-dwellers-his kinfolk's well-earned reputation for treachery and catastrophe would always prevent that-and had learned instead to focus his energy on those closest to him, on those who had learned to see him beyond his physical trappings. And now here he was with three of his most trusted and beloved friends, walking freely, easily booking passage, and presenting no problems to them other than those created by the relic they had to carry. That was truly what Drizzt

Do'Urden had desired from the time he had come to know Catti-brie and Bruenor and Regis, and with them beside him how could the stares, be they of hatred or of ignorant curiosity, bother him?

No, his smile was sincere; if Wulfgar was beside them, then all the world would be right for the drow, the king's treasure at the end of his long and difficult road.

Rai'gy rubbed his black hands together as the smallish creature began to form in the center of the magical circle he had drawn. He didn't know Gromph Baenre by anything more than reputation, but despite Jarlaxle's insistence that the archmage would be trustworthy on this issue, the mere fact that Gromph was drow and of the ruling house of Menzoberranzan worried Rai'gy profoundly. The name Gromph had given him was supposedly of a minor denizen, easily controlled, but Rai'gy couldn't know for certain until the creature appeared before him.

A bit of treachery from Gromph could have had him opening a gate to a major demon, to Demogorgon himself, and the impromptu magical circle Rai'gy had drawn here in the sewers of Calimport would hardly prove sufficient protection.

The wizard-priest relaxed a bit as the creature took shape-the shape, as Gromph had promised, of an imp. Even without the magical circle, a wizard-priest as powerful as Rai'gy would have little trouble in handling a mere imp.

"Who is it that calls my name?" asked the imp in the guttural language of the Abyss, obviously more than a little perturbed and, both Rai'gy and Jarlaxle noted, a bit trepidatious-and even more so when he noted that his summoners were drow elves. "You should not bother Druzil. No, no, for he serves a great master," Druzil went on, speaking fluently in the drow tongue.

"Silence!" Rai'gy commanded, and the little imp was compelled to obey. The wizard-priest looked to Jarlaxle.

"Why do you protest?" Jarlaxle asked Druzil. "Is it not the desire of your kind to find access to this world?"

Druzil tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, a pensive yet still apprehensive pose.

"Ah, yes," the mercenary leader went on. "But of late, you have been summoned not by friends, but by enemies, so I have been told. By Cadderly of Caradoon."

Druzil bared his pointy teeth and hissed at the mention of the priest. That brought a smile to the faces of both dark elves. Gromph Baenre, it seemed, had not steered them wrong.

"We would like to pain Cadderly," Jarlaxle explained with a wicked grin. "Would Druzil like to help?"

"Tell me how," the imp eagerly replied.

"We need to know everything about the human," Jarlaxle explained. "His appearance and demeanor, his history and present place. We were told that Druzil, above all others in the Abyss, knows the man."

"Hates the man," the imp corrected, and he seemed eager indeed. But suddenly he backed off, staring suspiciously at the two. "I tell you, and then you dismiss me," he remarked.

Jarlaxle looked to Rai'gy, for they had anticipated such a reaction. The wizard-priest stood up, walked to the side in the tiny room, and pulled aside a screen, revealing a small

kettle, bubbling and boiling.

"I am without a familiar," Rai'gy explained. "An imp would serve me well."

Druzil's coal black eyes flared with red fires. "Then we can pain Cadderly and so many other humans together," the imp reasoned.

"Does Druzil agree?" Jarlaxle asked.

"Does Druzil have a choice?" the imp retorted sarcastically.

"As to serving Rai'gy, yes," the drow replied, and the imp was obviously surprised, as was Rai'gy. "As to revealing all that you know about Cadderly, no. It is too important, and if we must torment you for a hundred years, we shall."

"Then Cadderly would be dead," Druzil said dryly.

"The torment would remain pleasurable to me," Jarlaxle was quick to respond, and Druzil knew enough about dark elves to understand that this was no idle threat.

"Druzil wishes to pain Cadderly," the imp admitted, dark eyes sparkling.

"Then tell us," Jarlaxle said. "Everything."

Later on that day, while Druzil and Rai'gy worked the magic spells that would bind them as master and familiar, Jarlaxle sat alone in the room he had taken in the sub-basement of House Basadoni. He had indeed learned much from the imp, most important of all that he had no desire to bring his band anywhere near the one named Cadderly Bonaduce. This was to Druzil's ultimate dismay. The leader of the Spirit Soaring, armed with magic far beyond even Rai'gy and Kimmuriel, might prove too great a foe. Even worse, Cadderly was apparently rebuilding an order of priests, surrounding himself with young and strong acolytes, enthusiastic idealists.

"The worst kind," Jarlaxle said as Entreri entered the room. "Idealists," he explained to the assassin's perplexed expression. "Above all else, I hate idealists."

"They are blind fools," Entreri agreed.

"They are unpredictable fanatics," Jarlaxle explained. "Blind to danger and blind to fear as long as they think their path is according to the tenets of their particular god-figure."

"And the leader of this other guild is an idealist?" a confused Entreri asked, for he thought he had been summoned to discuss his upcoming meeting with the remaining guilds of Calimport, to stop a war before it ever began.

"No, no, it is another matter," Jarlaxle explained, waving his hand dismissively. "One that concerns my activities in Menzoberranzan and not here in Calimport. Let it not trouble you, for you have business more important by far."

And Jarlaxle, too, put it out of his mind then, focusing on the more immediate problem. He had been surprised by Druzil's accounting of Cadderly, never imagining that this human would present such a problem. Though he held firm to his determination to keep his minions away from Cadderly, he was not dismayed, for he understood that Drizzt and his friends were still a long way from the great library known as the Spirit Soaring.

It was a place Jarlaxle had no intention of ever allowing them to see.

"Yes, a pleasure meetin' ye! Oh, a pleasure, King Bruenor, and to yer kin, me blessin's," Bumpo Thun-derpuncher, a rotund and short little dwarf with a fiery orange beard and a huge and flat nose that was pushed over to one side of his ruddy face, said to Bruenor for perhaps the tenth time since Bottom Feeder had put out of Baldur's Gate. The dwarven vessel was a square-bottomed, shallow twenty-footer with two banks of oars-though only one was normally in use-and a long aft pole for steering and for pushing off the bottom, Bumpo and his equally rotund and bumbling brother Donat had fallen all over themselves at the sight of the Eighth King of Mithral Hall. Bruenor had seemed honestly surprised that his name had grown to such proportions, even among his own race.

Now, though, that surprise was turning to mere annoyance, as Bumpo and Donat and their two oar-pulling cousins, Yipper and Quipper Fishsquisher, continued to rain compliments, promises of fealty, and general slobber all over him.

Sitting back from the dwarves, Drizzt and Catti-brie smiled. The ranger alternated his looks between Catti-brie-how he loved to gaze upon her when she wasn't looking-and the tumult of the dwarves. Then Regis— who was lying on his belly at the prow, head hanging over the front of the boat, his hands drawing pictures in the water-and back behind them to the diminishing skyline of Baldur's Gate.

Again he thought about his passage through the city, as easy a time of it as the drow had ever known, including those occasions when he had worn the magical mask. He had earned this peace; they all had. Once this mission was completed and the crystal shard was safely in the hands of Cadderly, and once they had recovered Wulfgar and helped him through his darkness, then perhaps they could journey the wide world again, for no better reason than to see what lay over the next horizon and with no troubles beyond the fawning of bumbling dwarves.

Truly Drizzt wore a contented smile, finding hope again, for Wulfgar and for them all. He could never have dreamed that he would ever find such a life on that day decades before when he had walked out of Menzoberranzan.

It occurred to him then that his father, Zaknafein, who had died to give him this chance, was watching him at that moment from another plane, a goodly place for one as deserving as Zak.

Watching him and smiling.