You cannot presume that this creature is natural, in any sense of the word,” the dark-skinned Shadovar woman known as the Shifter told the old graybeard. “She is perversion incarnate.”

The old druid Erlindir shuffled his sandal-clad feet and gave a great “harrumph!”

“Incarnate, I tell you.” The Shifter tapped her finger against the old druid’s temple and ran it delicately down under his eye and across his cheek to touch his crooked nose.

“So, you’re really in front of me this time,” Erlindir cackled, referring to the fact that when one addressed the Shifter, typically one was actually addressing a projected image, a phantasm, of the most elusive enchantress.

“I told you that you could trust me, Birdcaller,” she replied, using a nickname she’d given him when she had met him at his grove many months before.

“If I didn’t believe you, would I have come to this place?” He looked around at the dark images of the Shadowfell, his gaze settling on the twisted keep and tower before him, with its many spires and multiple-likely animated-gargoyles, all leering at him and smiling hungrily. They had just journeyed through a most unpleasant swamp, reeking of death and decay and populated by undead monstrosities. This castle was not much of an improvement.

“Why, Erlindir, you flatter me so,” the Shifter teased, and she grabbed him by the chin and directed his gaze back to her face. Her spell wouldn’t last forever, she knew, and she didn’t want any of the unnatural images to shake the druid from his stupor. Erlindir was of the old school, after all, a disciple of the nature goddess Mielikki. “But remember why you are here.”

“Yes, yes,” he replied, “this unnatural cat. You would have me destroy it, then?”

“Oh, no, not that!” the Shifter exclaimed.

Erlindir looked at her curiously.

“My friend Lord Draygo has the panther,” the Shifter explained. “He is a warl-mage of great renown and tremendous power.” She paused to watch the druid’s reaction, fearing that her near slip-up might clue the old one into her ruse. There was a reason that swamp teemed with undead creatures. No druid, charmed or not, would be so eager to help a warlock.

“Lord Draygo fears that the cat’s master is crafting other … abominations,” she lied. “I would like you to grant him affinity to the cat, that he might see through her eyes when she is summoned home, and cut her bindings to the Astral Plane and anchor her here instead.”

Erlindir looked at her suspiciously.

“Only for a short time,” she assured him. “We will destroy the cat when we’re sure that her master is not perverting nature for his ill intent. And destroy him, too, if needed.”

“I would rather that you bring him to me, that I might learn the damage he has already caused,” Erlindir said.

“So be it,” the enchantress readily agreed, since lies came so easily to her lips.

Dark clouds roiled overhead, but every now and then, the moonlight broke through the overcast and shined softly through the room’s window, splashing on Dahlia’s smooth shoulder. She slept on her side, facing away from Drizzt.

The drow propped himself up on his elbow and looked at her in the moonlight. Her sleep was restful now, her breathing rhythmic and even, but shortly before she had flailed about in some nightmare, crying out, “No!”

She seemed to be reaching out with her hands, to catch something perhaps or maybe to pull something back.

Drizzt couldn’t decipher the details, of course. It reminded him that this companion of his was truly unknown to him. What demons did Dahlia carry on those smooth shoulders?

Drizzt’s gaze lifted from her to the window, and to the wide world beyond. What was he doing here, back in the city of Neverwinter? Biding time?

They had returned to Neverwinter after a dangerous journey to Gauntlgrym, and on that journey had found many surprises, and a pair of new companions, dwarf and human. Entreri had survived unexpectedly, for the sword, which he had been convinced was the cause of his longevity, had been destroyed.

Indeed, when Drizzt had tossed Charon’s Claw over the rim of the primordial pit, he had done so with the near certainty that Artemis Entreri would be destroyed along with the blade. And yet, Entreri had survived.

They’d ventured into the darkness and had come out victorious, yet neither Drizzt nor Dahlia had relished the adventure, or could now savor in the victory. For Drizzt, there remained lingering resentment and jealousy, because Dahlia and Entreri had shared much over the last days, an intimacy, he feared, even deeper than that which he knew with Dahlia. Drizzt was her lover, Entreri had merely kissed her-and that, when Entreri was certain that he was about to die. Yet it seemed to Drizzt that Dahlia had emotionally opened herself to Entreri more than she ever had to him.

Drizzt glanced back at Dahlia.

Was he here in Neverwinter distracting himself? Had his life become nothing more than a series of distractions until at long last he would find his own grave?

Many times in his past, Drizzt had given himself to the Hunter, to the fighter inside seeking battle and blood. The Hunter smothered pain. Many times in the past, the Hunter had kept Drizzt safe from his torn heart as the days passed and the wounds mended a bit, at least.

Was that what he was doing now, Drizzt wondered? The notion seemed obscene to him, but was he, in fact, using Dahlia the way he had used battlefield enemies in times past?

No, it was more than that, he told himself. He cared for Dahlia. There was an attraction based on more than sexuality and more than a need for companionship. The many layers of this elf woman teased him and intrigued him. There was something within her, hidden-even from her, it seemed-that Drizzt found undeniably appealing.

But as his gaze again lifted toward the window and the wider world, Drizzt had to admit that he was indeed doing nothing more than biding his time-to let the sting of the final dissolution of the Companions of the Hall fade away. Or likely it went even deeper.

He was afraid, terrified even.

He was afraid that his life had been a lie, that his dedication to community and his insistence that there was a common good worth fighting for was a fool’s errand in a world too full of selfishness and evil. The weight of darkness seemed to mock him.

What was the point of it all?

He rolled to the side of the bed and sat up. He thought of Luskan and Captain Deudermont’s terrible fall. He thought of Farmer Stuyles and his band of highwaymen, and the gray mist in which they lived, caught somewhere between morality and necessity, between the law and the basic rights of any living man. He thought of the Treaty of Garumn’s Gorge, which had established an orc kingdom on the doorstep of the dwarven homeland-had that been King Bruenor’s greatest achievement or his greatest folly?

Or worse, did it even matter?

For many heartbeats, that question spun in the air before him, out of reach. Had his life been no more than a fool’s errand?

“No!” Dahlia said again and rolled around.

The denial rang out within Drizzt even as it reached his ear. Drizzt glanced back over his shoulder. She lay on her back, at peace in slumber again, the moonlight splashing across her face, bright enough to hint at her blue woad tattoo.

No! Drizzt heard again inside his heart and soul, and instead of the failures and the losses, he forced himself to remember the victories and the joys. He thought of young Wulfgar, under his and Bruenor’s tutelage, who grew straight and strong and who brought together the barbarian tribes and the folk of Ten-Towns in peace and common cause.

Surely that had been no pyrrhic victory!

He thought of Deudermont again, not of the final defeat, but of the many victories the man had known at sea, bringing justice to tides run wild with merciless pirates. The final outcome of Luskan could not erase those efforts and good deeds, and how many innocents had been saved by the good captain and crew of Sea Sprite?

“What a fool I’ve been,” Drizzt whispered.

He threw aside his indecision, threw aside his personal pain, threw aside the darkness.

He rose and dressed and moved to the door. He looked back at Dahlia, then walked back to her side, bent low, and kissed her on the forehead. She didn’t stir, and Drizzt quietly left the room, and for the first time since the fall of King Bruenor, he walked with confidence.

Down the hall, he knocked on a door. When there came no immediate response, he knocked again, loudly.

Wearing only his pants, his hair a mess, Artemis Entreri pulled the door open wide. “What?” he asked, his tone filled with annoyance, but also a measure of concern.

“Come with me,” Drizzt said.

Entreri looked at him incredulously.

“Not now,” Drizzt explained. “Not this night. But come with me when I leave the city of Neverwinter behind. I have an idea, a … reason, but I need your help.”

“What are you plotting, drow?”

Drizzt shook his head. “I cannot explain it, but I’ll show you.”

“A ship sails for the south in two days. I plan to be on it.”

“I ask you to reconsider.”

“You said I didn’t owe you anything.”

“You don’t.”

“Then why should I follow you?”

Drizzt took a deep breath again the incessant cynicism. Why was everyone around him always asking “what’s in it for me?”

“Because I ask this of you.”

“Do better,” said Entreri.

Drizzt stared at him plaintively. Entreri started to close the door.

“I know where to find your dagger,” Drizzt blurted out. He hadn’t intended to say it, indeed he’d never planned to help Entreri retrieve it.

Entreri seemed to lean forward just a bit. “My dagger?”

“I know where it is. I’ve seen it recently.”

“Do tell.”

“Say you’ll come with me,” Drizzt said. “The road will lead us there soon enough.” He paused for a moment, then had to add, for his own sake if not for Entreri’s, “Come with me no matter what, setting aside the dagger or anything else you might gain. You need this journey, my old enemy, as much as I do.” Drizzt believed that claim, for though the plan formulating in his thoughts would take him on an important personal journey, the approach might prove even more important to Artemis Entreri.

This conflicted and deeply scarred man standing before him might well be the measure of it all, Drizzt thought.

Would the journey of Artemis Entreri vindicate him, or make a greater lie of his life?

Entreri seemed to be trying to unwind that last sentence when Drizzt turned his focus back to him once more.

“Any road is as good to me as any other,” Entreri replied with a shrug.

Drizzt smiled.

“At first light?” Entreri asked.

“There is something I must do first,” Drizzt explained. “I will need a day, perhaps two, and then we will go.”

“To retrieve my dagger,” Entreri said.

“To find more than that,” Drizzt replied, and as Entreri swung the door closed, he added under his breath, “for both of us.”

Drizzt’s stride was much lighter as he returned to Dahlia’s side. Outside, the night continued to clear, the moon shining brighter.

That seemed fitting to Drizzt as he glanced out the window, for he looked out at the world now with a new light and a new hope.

Suddenly.

The young tiefling crept through Draygo Quick’s residence. He knew that the Netherese lord was out at a gathering of his peers, but having lived in the residence for all of these years, Effron also understood that Draygo didn’t have to be here to keep the place well-guarded, both with magical wards and with capable and dangerous underlings.

He fell against a wall and held his breath, hearing the conversation of a pair of warlocks. He recognized the voices and knew these two as his peers in age, though surely not in ability. If it came down to a fight, Effron was confident that he could defeat both with little trouble.

But where would that leave him with Draygo Quick?

Panicked by that thought, the young warlock glanced around for some hiding place or avenue of escape. But he was in a long and bending corridor with few side rooms, all private chambers, and thus all likely locked or warded. Fleeing back the way he had come would cost him too much time.

His indecision made the choice for him, as he came to realize that trying to scamper away now wouldn’t get him far enough ahead to remain out of sight. The warlocks were too close.

So he stepped out and openly approached them, as if nothing were amiss.

They both nodded and continued their conversation, one pausing in his discussion to remark to Effron, “Lord Draygo is not in residence.”

“Ah,” Effron replied “Do you know when he will return?”

The two looked to each other and shrugged in unison.

“I will leave him a note,” Effron said. “If you see him, pray tell him that I wish to speak with him.”

They nodded and continued on their way, and Effron breathed a sigh of relief. Obviously, Draygo Quick had not informed the residents of the falling out, or of Draygo’s dismissal of Effron from his tutelage.

His relief was short-lived, though, for his instructions to the young apprentices would of course reveal to Draygo Quick that he had been in the residence. He could likely talk his way out of that indiscretion if Draygo Quick confronted him, but he had come here to steal something, after all, and now that plan seemed perfectly suicidal.

He pressed on anyway, trying to sort it out as he went, rushing through the main room of the keep, a vast foyer with a checkerboard black-and-white tiled floor. He crossed from there into the main library, a room of potions and an alchemical workbench and a distillery, and from there to the wide curving stairs encircling the castle’s main tower.

Many steps later, Effron paused at Draygo Quick’s private door. He knew the password to get safely beyond the magical wards, but knew, too, that if Draygo Quick had bothered to change that password, the glyphs would almost surely burn through all of the magical defenses Effron had erected upon himself. How meager his counter-measures would be against the bared power of Draygo Quick!

He almost threw up his hands in defeat then, but just growled out the expected password and stubbornly pushed through the door.

He didn’t melt.

Surprised, relieved, shocked even, Effron collected his thoughts and closed the door behind him, then rushed into the adjoining room, Draygo Quick’s vaunted menagerie.

The cage was in place upon the pedestal, under the silken cloth, as he had expected, but the bars were not glowing with power and the cage was empty.

Effron bent low and peered around the bars, unable to comprehend the sight before him. Had the panther escaped? How could that be?

And who might have released the magical bindings of the cage?

Effron held his breath and stood up fast, spinning, his broken arm flying around him like a scarf in a gale. He expected to see a six-hundred-pound, angry black panther standing right behind him.

It took him many minutes of scanning the room, his gaze piercing the shadows, before he was able to relax in the confidence that he was indeed alone. He moved to one of the grand cabinets along the wall and gingerly opened it, brushing aside the mist and examining the many bottles on the shelves within. Each contained a tiny representation of some powerful monster, which were, in fact, the bodies of those actual creatures in miniaturized stasis. Effron himself had sorted these items and kept them cleaned, as per his duties for Draygo Quick, and so he recognized immediately that nothing was amiss and no new additions had been made.

He closed the cabinet and turned back to the empty cage, soberly now, and tried to wrap his thoughts around this unexpected turn. Where had the cat gone? A myriad of possibilities rushed through Effron’s mind, but only two seemed plausible: Either the panther had been handed back to Drizzt Do’Urden in some bargain concocted by Draygo Quick, or the cat had been slain, or had died of its own accord, perhaps due to the severance of the connection to the Astral Plane.

It took him many heartbeats to steel himself against the implications of both of those possibilities. Either way, he had likely forever lost a valuable tool in his quest to confront and kill his mother.

He thought back to the previous day, when he had watched the Shifter approach Draygo’s residence with an elderly Toril man in tow. He had thought then that the visit concerned the panther, and this seemed to confirm it.

“A druid,” he muttered under his breath, considering again the dress of the human accompanying the Shifter.

He looked at the empty cage. So what, exactly, had this druid done?

Effron realized then that he had to move quickly. Draygo Quick would learn of his visit, obviously, and the withered old warlock wasn’t known for his merciful tendencies. The tiefling was out of the castle in short order, not even bothering to hide from any of the other residents he passed along the way. When he crossed the courtyard and exited the great gates surrounding Castle Quick, Effron couldn’t deny the wave of relief that washed over him. He had called this place his home for many years, but now it brought him only dread.

But where to go? He thought that perhaps he should just head to Toril, out of the realm of shadows, and begin the hunt, though he had certainly counted upon having the panther as a bargaining tool. Should he just try anyway, without the cat, and pretend as if none of this mattered?

As with his choices regarding the two approaching warlocks in the hallway, and because of that very encounter, it came clear to him that the decision had already been made.

Draygo Quick would find him, wherever he chose to go.

Information alone would save him, Effron decided, so he set out with all speed to find that most elusive of Shadovar.

She was waiting for him, sitting on a bench set out in front of her modest home, amid her black-petal roses and dull flox. A small fountain sat off to the side of her, the water playing a rather entrancing tune.

Effron didn’t ever remember hearing the water song before and wondered if this was an added guard or deception put forth by the Shifter.

He looked at her-at the image of her that was probably not her-as he approached.

“It took you longer than I expected,” she greeted him. “Draygo Quick’s home is not so far, after all.”

“Draygo Quick’s home?”

“You just came from there,” the Shifter answered smugly.

Effron started to protest, but the woman’s smirk mocked him to silence.

“Were you going to steal her, or simply try to harm her that you might harm Lord Draygo by extension?”

“I do not know of what you speak.”

“And I am sure that you do. So where does that leave us? At the end of our conversation, I expect, so please leave.”

Effron felt as if the ground was rising up about him to swallow him where he stood. He desperately needed to speak to the Shifter, but her tone had left little room for debate.

“Where is the panther?” he pressed.

“I just told you to leave,” came her voice from the side, and the image before him shimmered to nothingness, a not-so-subtle reminder that she could strike at him from any angle she chose.

Effron brought his good hand to his face, feeling so very small and so very over his head at that terrible moment. He had thought himself clever, and daring even, for going into Draygo Quick’s private residence uninvited, and yet even this person watching from the side had him all figured out. If that was the case, how could he possibly avoid the falling axe of Draygo Quick’s judgment?

“You are still here,” the Shifter remarked, now from the other side.

“To steal her,” Effron admitted. A long silence ensued. Effron dared not speak further, and dared not move.

“Say that again,” the Shifter demanded, and Effron looked up to see her sitting comfortably on the bench once more.

“To steal her,” he admitted.

“You would dare to so betray Draygo Quick?”

“I had no choice,” Effron replied, his voice taking on a tone of desperation. “I have to get to her-do you not understand? — and I cannot hope to fight my way through her growing number of allies!”

The image of the Shifter looked over to Effron’s left, and he turned his head just in time to see a pouch flying through the air, moving back behind him. He spun with it, to see the Shifter, now appearing behind him, catch the purse. Effron spun back around to see her sitting on the bench once more, jingling the coins.

“You had every choice,” Draygo Quick remarked, coming out of the brush to the left, first in wraithform, then quickly becoming fully three-dimensional.

“Master,” Effron breathed and he bowed his head. He thought that he should fall to his knees and beg for mercy then, though it would surely prove futile. He was caught, by his own admission, and there seemed no road to freedom before him.

“Thank you,” Draygo Quick said to the Shifter.

“My work is done here?” she asked.

Draygo nodded.

“Then please get this broken creature far from my home,” the Shifter said.

Effron looked at her, his expression revealing that he was truly wounded by her harsh words. For he had hired her and paid her well, after all, even when she had failed him.

She returned the look with a helpless shrug, then simply vanished.

“Walk with me,” Draygo Quick bade him, and the old warlock started along the swampy road toward his home.

Effron fell in line, obediently behind him, until Draygo Quick waved him up.

“You actually believed that you could walk into my house and steal something as valuable as Guenhwyvar?”

“Borrow, not steal,” Effron replied.

“You would trade her to the drow to get him away from Dahlia,” Draygo Quick reasoned.

“I meant to threaten the drow with her destruction if he did not move aside and remain aside,” Effron replied.

“Did not the Shifter do exactly that in the tunnel outside of Gauntlgrym?” asked the old warlock. “And to no avail?”

“It would be different, I expect, if the one holding the cat had the means and intent to kill her before Drizzt Do’Urden’s very eyes.”

“So that was your plan?”

Effron nodded and Draygo Quick laughed at him.

“You do not understand this Drizzt Do’Urden creature.”

“I have to try.”

“Guenhwyvar is beside him at this time,” Draygo Quick explained.

Effron’s eyes went wide. “You gave her back to him? He murdered my father! He and his friends defeated us at Gauntlgrym! And before that, in Neverwinter! They destroyed the sword! You would reward an avowed enemy of the Empire of Netheril?”

“You presume much.”

The calm tenor of Draygo Quick’s voice stole Effron’s bluster.

The old warlock stopped and turned to face his former student directly. “The panther is my spy within Drizzt’s group,” he said. “I should like that to continue. In fact, I insist upon it.”

“Spy?”

“I know that you intend to go after Dahlia. I cannot stop that, foolish as it seems, but perhaps I was too hard on you. There are forces at play within your heart that are beyond my comprehension, and so I forgive you this transgression.”

Effron nearly fell over with relief, and shock.

“But I tell you this in strictest confidence, and on penalty of a most horrible death should you ever reveal a word of it,” Draygo Quick said. “Drizzt Do’Urden is a curiosity, and perhaps much more than that, and I intend to find out. He among others might well provide us with clues to important events that will affect the whole of the empire, and indeed, of the Shadowfell itself. I offer you one more chance, foolish young warlock. Abandon your quest to find your revenge against Dahlia at this time-perhaps in the future, if she separates from Drizzt Do’Urden, I will even assist you in destroying her. But not now. The issue before us is too important for petty personal struggles.”

“You gave me permission to hunt her,” Effron quietly protested.

“I dismissed you out of hand, and cared not,” Draygo Quick replied without hesitation. “And now I have more information, and so I rescind that dismissal. You are my understudy once more. I should expect some gratitude that I have forgiven you.”

Effron wanted to scream at him, or just yell out in unfocused frustration. He wanted to deny the old wretch and demand that he would no longer serve in Draygo Quick’s residence.

He wanted to, but he hadn’t the heart or the courage. In that event, he had little doubt that Draygo Quick would obliterate him then and there.

Furthering that sense of dread, Draygo Quick stared at him with that intense, withering glare, and Effron bowed his head and said, “Thank you, Master.”

The warlock chuckled victoriously, each wheezing laugh mocking Effron. “Come back and to your work,” he said. “You have much to do to regain my respect.”

That alone stung profoundly, but then Draygo Quick grabbed him roughly by the chin and forced Effron to look him directly in the eye-and how wild those eyes looked to Effron!

“Understand me in no uncertain terms, young and foolish Effron Alegni: If you harm the drow ranger in any way, I will completely and utterly destroy you, and I will do so in such a manner that you will beg me for your death for many tendays before I finally allow it.”

Effron didn’t begin to try to pull away, as painful as Draygo Quick’s surprisingly strong grip proved, for he could well imagine a plethora of things Draygo Quick might do to make him hurt a lot worse.

“This is too important for petty personal issues,” the old warlock reiterated. “You do understand me, and are we agreed?”

“Yes, Master,” Effron squeaked.

Draygo Quick let him go and began walking again, but when Effron started out beside him, the old warlock held out his arm and pushed Effron back.

Two steps behind.

Drizzt held the statuette up before his eyes, staring at it with trepidation. He hadn’t wanted to dismiss Guenhwyvar the previous night, fearing that her arrival had been an anomaly, and one not to be repeated. But the cat had appeared haggard to him, and she had needed rest.

The sun had not yet risen outside the window of his room in Neverwinter, and he had dismissed the cat long after sundown the previous day.

But despite the short time, he had to try to call her again.

“Guenhwyvar,” he whispered.

On the bed behind him, Dahlia stirred but did not awaken.

“Guenhwyvar.”

Even in the darkened room, Drizzt could see the gray mist rising around him, and could feel the presence of Guenhwyvar growing. In the span a few heartbeats, though it seemed like a long while to Drizzt, she was there again, right beside him. The drow wrapped her in a hug, overjoyed. He needed her now, perhaps more than at any time since he’d walked with her out of Menzoberranzan those many decades before.

He hugged her closer, his head against her flank.

He noted her ragged breathing.

Too soon, he realized, and he silently berated himself for his impatience. “Be gone,” he whispered into her ear. “I will call you again soon.”

The cat obeyed, pacing in a circle and diminishing fast to insubstantial mist, then to nothing at all.

Drizzt started for the bed where Dahlia lay, but changed his mind and went to the window instead. He took a seat and looked out over the city of Neverwinter, still a shadow of what it had been. But the settlers were industrious and determined to rebuild Neverwinter from the ashes of the cataclysm.

Drizzt fed off that thought, determined to rebuild his own life. He reflexively glanced at Dahlia as he considered that. Would she be a part of that? She was an elf, and young, and surely would outlive Drizzt unless an enemy’s blade cut her down. Would she walk beside Drizzt for the rest of his days?

He couldn’t know.

He turned back to the darkened city and thought of his other three companions, and he couldn’t help but consider them in light of the four friends he once traveled beside.

Would any of this group measure up to the standards, the character, of any of the Companions of the Hall?

The question stung the drow. Surely in terms of skill, with blade or fist or even magic, the group around him had proven their capabilities. Were these four to battle the previous four companions he had known, the victor would be long in doubt.

But that hardly mattered, Drizzt understood, for the more important measurement was one of morality, of purpose.

In that regard …

Drizzt sighed and began to rise, thinking to return to his bed and Dahlia’s side. He changed his mind and remained at the window instead. He fell asleep in the chair, staring out at the city of Neverwinter, rising from the ashes, for the sight brought him comfort and hope.

The change in perspective was quite disorienting for Draygo Quick. First he was standing in his room, watching the panther turn to mist, then he was traveling the ether, swirling and spinning, his sensibilities secretly carried along with Guenhwyvar.

Soon he was beside the drow ranger and Dahlia on Toril, but low to the ground, stalking. He could hear the pair but he couldn’t turn to regard them. Not having command over the cat’s muscles, but rather just seeing, hearing, smelling, and feeling through her created a strange, out-of-body, and more importantly, out-of-control, experience for the old warlock.

An altered reality, actually, for the panther’s eyes did not view the world as a human would. Everything seemed elongated, with distances more clearly defined. The crystal clarity led to a dizzying, almost magnifying effect on the grasses and branches and fallen leaves, as if a hundred mirrors had taken the sunlight and magnified it many times over to completely alter the color of the world.

Sounds filled Draygo Quick’s mind-some were soft, like the call of a distant bird, then became suddenly loud as the panther turned her ears. In that turn, other sounds were muted. It seemed to Draygo that the cat could lock her hearing directionally, this way or that, amplifying regions of sound almost to the exclusion of other areas.

She was moving then, swiftly, in pursuit of something, and the ground and low brush sped by so wildly that Draygo reflexively closed his own eyes to try to block it out. But he could not close Guenhwyvar’s eyes and so his actions had no effect. He almost broke the connection, but then Guenhwyvar’s prey suddenly came into view.

Humans and tieflings-Ashmadai zealots-scrambled in alarm, gathering up their war scepters, shoving each other aside.

A blinding flash ripped the air above him, and an Ashmadai man went flying away.

Then the warlock felt as if he were flying, too, as Guenhwyvar leaped. He saw a woman dive aside, another turn and shriek, and he flew past them both, crashing hard against the chest of a burly tiefling warrior. Draygo Quick felt the impact as that warrior tried to bang his scepter against the panther’s flank, but more keenly, Draygo Quick tasted the sweat and flesh as Guenhwyvar bit down. His vision failed him. The cat had closed her eyes, but he heard, keenly, the tearing of flesh and the crunch of bone, and the smell-oh the smell! — overwhelmed him. Coppery and warm.

The scent of gushing blood.

He felt as if he were flying again, and his vision returned suddenly. He saw the drow spinning by, scimitars humming through the air. Dahlia vaulted past and he heard a grunt and a groan and the slapping of her staff against the skull of a woman. The panther crashed into another man, tackling him to the ground, breaking branches and flattening the brush. As soon as they landed, Guenhwyvar spun around and sprang away. Draygo Quick didn’t even realize that he was pawing and clawing the air reflexively to mimic the feeling of Guenhwyvar’s claws ripping the flesh from the man.

Back into the sprint they went, an Ashmadai spinning down before them. A scimitar flashed out, right before Draygo Quick’s vision, and he shouted and threw his arms across his face, trying desperately to retreat from the overwhelming sights, sounds, and smells.

He felt as if he were falling, falling, into a vast and dark hole.

“… it led us here because there was something here.” Drizzt’s voice reached out to him, drawing him from the darkness and back into the senses of the panther. “Something powerful …”

The last word faded away as Guenhwyvar turned her ears to focus on a distant shout. Had some of the Ashmadai band escaped?

“… working with the vampire?” Dahlia asked.

The cat sprang away, running up the side of a tree, and all Draygo Quick could catch of Drizzt’s response was, “… it’s much worse than that.”

Oh, go back, you idiot cat! the warlock’s mind screamed futilely.

The elf and the drow continued to talk below, but the panther focused off into the distance, and Draygo Quick heard the breathing of a fleeing Ashmadai warrior more keenly than he heard their voices. His thoughts pleaded with Guenhwyvar, but of course, the panther could not hear them.

The panther jumped down from the tree, and Draygo Quick cried out in horror to see the ground rushing up at him. The sheer shock broke his connection with Guenhwyvar, but as his consciousness returned to his room in the Shadowfell, he heard the voice of Drizzt saying, “What do we know of the fate of Valindra Shadowmantle?”

At Drizzt’s insistence, the five companions left Neverwinter early the next morning. Though he had not slept at all the night before, Drizzt was determined to be on his way. Many times did he glance to the east, to the forest where he had found the cursed Thibbledorf Pwent, and many times did that sad reality throw him back in time, to the fall of Pwent and Bruenor.

He kept shaking the darkness away, and moved with purpose now, leading the five companions up the coastline before the onslaught of winter, which came early and hit hard, burying the land around the forest in deep snows and bringing sheets of dangerous ice all along the northern Sword Coast. Many times during their short journey Dahlia asked Drizzt what he was planning, and many times Entreri inquired about his dagger, but the drow remained quiet and wore a calm and contented grin.

“Port Llast?” Entreri asked when their destination became obvious, for they turned onto a trail that led down from the rocky cliffs to the quiet seaside town. Once a thriving quarry and port city, Port Llast hardly resembled anything that could be called a village any longer.

“Ye slurring yer words for a reason?” Ambergris asked.

“Not a slur,” said Drizzt. “That is the town’s name. Port Llast. Two Ls.”

“Similar to the Hells,” muttered the ever-sarcastic Entreri.

“I’m not knowin’ the place,” the dwarf replied, and Afafrenfere shrugged in accord.

“A thriving city, a century ago,” Drizzt explained. “These cliffs provided many of the stones for the greatest buildings of Waterdeep, Luskan, and Neverwinter, and towns all along the Sword Coast.”

“And what happened?” Ambergris asked, glancing around. “Looks like good stone to me, and can ye ever really run short o’ the stuff?”

“Orcs … bandits …” Drizzt explained.

“Luskan,” Entreri put in, and Drizzt winced reflexively, though he was fairly certain that Entreri had no idea of Drizzt’s role in the catastrophe that had taken place in the City of Sails, which was just a few days’ ride farther up the coast.

“Port Llast was overrun and worn down,” Drizzt explained. “It went from a city of nearly twenty thousand to just a few hundred, and in short order.”

“Still substantial, then,” said Afafrenfere. “A few hundred, and that in a port city?”

“That was before the Spellplague,” Entreri said. He looked at Drizzt and added, “Tell them of our paradise destination.”

“Land rose up out there,” Drizzt said, pointing to the west, to the open sea. “Some effect of the Spellplague, it is rumored, though whatever the cause, the land is surely there. This new island changed the tides, which ruined the harbor and finished off any remaining hopes for the city.”

“Finished?” asked the dwarf.

“We circumvented this place several times,” Dahlia said, confused. “There are people there still.”

“Some, but not many,” Drizzt explained.

“It’s Umberlee’s town,” Entreri said, referring to an evil sea goddess with a reputation of sending in horrid sea monster minions to wreak havoc along the coasts of Faerun.

“And still, the people hold on and fight back,” Drizzt countered.

“Noble,” said Afafrenfere.

“Stubborn,” said Ambergris.

“Stupid,” Entreri insisted, with such clarity and confidence that he drew the looks of the other four. “Hold on to what? They’ve no harbor, they’ve no quarry. All they’ve got are memories of a time lost, and one that’s not coming back.”

“There’s honor in defendin’ yer home,” Ambergris argued.

Entreri laughed at her. “Without hope?” he said. “How many villagers remain, drow? Three hundred? Two? And less each year, as some give up and move away and others are slain by the devils of Umberlee, or the orcs and bandits that dominate this region. They’ve no chance of defending their home. They’ve nothing of value to lure new settlers, and no reinforcements for their diminishing ranks.”

Dahlia wore a knowing smirk as she looked at Drizzt. “They have us, apparently.”

Entreri stared hard at Drizzt, and asked incredulously, “Truly?”

“Let’s see what we might learn of the place,” Drizzt answered. “The winter will be no more dangerous for us here than anywhere else.”

Entreri shook his head, more in abject disbelief than in resignation, but said no more. His look at Drizzt spoke volumes, though, mostly in reminding Drizzt that Entreri had only come along for the sake of retrieving his prized dagger.

The trail wove down through high walls of dark stone. Several carved plateaus showed the ruins of old catapults, all trained on the harbor far below. After a myriad of angled hairpin turns down the steep decline, the five companions came at last to the city’s southern gate, to find it closed and well-guarded.

“Halt and hail!” a soldier called down from the rampart. “And what a strange band of deckhands to be knocking at our door. A drow elf in front and a motley crew behind.” The man shook his head and called back. Another pair of soldiers joined him at the wall, their eyes going wide.

And not surprisingly, for not only was a drow leading the party, but he sat astride a unicorn, and with a man behind him astride a nightmare of the lower planes!

“Not a sight ye’d see every day, eh?” Ambergris called up at them.

“Well met,” Drizzt said. “And pray tell, does Port Llast still name Dovos Dothwintyl as First Captain?”

“You know him, then?” the guard replied.

“Not so well. Better did I know Haeromos Dothwintyl, in days long past, when I sailed with Deudermont and Sea Sprite.”

That had the three speaking amongst themselves, and when they turned back, a second guard, a woman, called down, “Who would you be, dark elf? A fellow by the name of Drizzt, perhaps?”

“At your service,” Drizzt said, and he bowed a bit, constrained as he was upon Andahar’s back.

“Passing through?” she asked. Drizzt noted a bit of an edge to her voice, and he understood, for when Captain Deudermont had overstepped the bounds of reason and tried to tame wicked Luskan, the resulting revolution had put evil men in charge of the City of Sails and that in turn had cast a long shadow over the struggling town of Port Llast. Drizzt had been part of Deudermont’s failure, so went the common lore, and the fact that he had tried to turn the captain from his dangerous ambitions long before the catastrophic events wasn’t widely known.

Drizzt had been through Port Llast a couple of times over the last decades, but had not found a particularly warm welcome there since the debacle in Luskan. More often, he avoided the city in his travels north and south.

“We hope to winter in your fair town,” he replied.

Two of the guards disappeared, the third turning around, apparently to join in a conversation the companions couldn’t make out from below. Before they ever got a verbal reply, the gates creaked open.

“Well met to you, then,” the guard who had been third up on the wall said with a nod as they passed by. “There’s an inn, Stonecutter’s Solace, under the shadow of the east cliffs. You’ll find good accommodation there, would be my guess. Be smart, and stay east, and go nowhere near the docks.”

Drizzt nodded and slid down from his seat, then dismissed Andahar. The guard’s eyes widened as the powerful unicorn leaped away and seemed to diminish to half its size. A second stride halved it again, and again a third and fourth time, where Andahar simply vanished into nothingness.

“You’ve been to Neverwinter of late?” the guard asked, trying to appear calm, though he was obviously awestricken. “How does she fare?”

“Growing strong,” Drizzt replied. “The immediate and greatest threats to the city have been driven off.”

The man nodded and seemed quite pleased by that news, and Drizzt understood the reaction well. Port Llast needed a strong and secure Neverwinter to help keep the pirates of Luskan away, and perhaps to bolster them in their continuing tribulations against the creatures of Umberlee’s ocean domain. The City of Sails would have little trouble in overwhelming this once thriving, but now nearly abandoned city, and Drizzt was keenly reminded of that when he looked to the sheltered harbor, where but a dozen or so small ships bobbed in the tides, and several of that meager fleet hardly appeared seaworthy. Catapults set on the eastern cliffs overlooking the city, still operational and manned, were a more imposing sight. But slinging a stone at a moving ship was no easy task. If the high captains of Luskan came calling, Port Llast would almost surely fall with barely a whimper.

“Doesn’t seem a friendly place,” Afafrenfere remarked as the five wound their way down the road past the dilapidated stone houses and shops. Indeed, most of the shutters were pulled tight, and others banged closed as the unusual troupe passed.

“These are troubled lands of wild things,” Drizzt replied. “The citizens are cautious, and for good reason.”

“I expect that simply by walking in here, we have doubled their defenses,” Dahlia quipped.

“I expect that you underestimate the strength of settlers,” Artemis Entreri unexpectedly put in, and the other four turned to regard him, still astride his nightmare. “They survive here, and that alone is no small thing.”

“Well said,” Drizzt remarked, and started off once more. “This will be a fine place to spend the winter.”

“Why?” the assassin asked, and when Drizzt stopped and turned back, he added, “Do you ever plan to tell us?”

“Tonight,” Drizzt promised, and on he went.

The road forked, but the left way was blocked by a stone wall manned by a trio of guards. That road led to the lower reaches of the city, the harbor and coast, and scanning around, the five could see that many new walls had been erected, virtually cutting the city in half, east and west. The right-hand fork led almost directly east, toward the cliffs and the higher sections of the city, and even from this distance, the companions could easily spot their destination, a newly constructed central building, free of moss and of stones not yet weathered to dark gray.

The common room at Stonecutter’s Solace was wide and deep and well-attended, with several hearths burning brightly and dozens of townsfolk sitting about the circular tables that filled the floor before a grand bar. A half wall behind it revealed the bustling kitchen.

“I might be gettin’ used to this place,” Ambergris offered at the promising sight. She sauntered by the nearest table, flashing a smile at the trio sitting there, a man and two dwarves, all three with faces weathered under a seaside sun, hands calloused by digging stones and arms thick with muscles.

“Well met,” Ambergris said to them.

“Aye, lassie, and sit with us, why don’t ye?” one of the dwarves replied.

Ambergris skidded to a stop, looked back to her four companions, winked, and then did just that.

“No fighting,” Drizzt remarked to Afafrenfere as they walked past the table. “I’ll not have us thrown from this inn or this bar.”

“Never my choice,” the monk replied. “Ambergris always wants her coins jiggling as she walks, you see.”

“I see and I saw, and I’ll have none of it now,” Drizzt answered. “We have important work to do here.”

“Perhaps you’ll tell us sometime soon,” Afafrenfere replied rather harshly, and he moved toward the bar.

Drizzt stopped and turned to Dahlia. “Stay with him,” he bade her quietly, glancing back at the distracted dwarf. “Get to know our monk companion. I need to understand his demeanor and loyalty.”

“He can fight,” Dahlia remarked.

“But does he know when to fight, and against whom?”

“He’ll do what the dwarf tells him,” Entreri said.

Drizzt glanced over at the table, where Ambergris was putting back shots of potent liquor with her three new friends.

“You think you know her?” Entreri remarked. “You’re putting Bruenor’s face on her. Take care with that.”

“Artemis Entreri warning me about those I choose to walk beside,” Drizzt muttered. “The world has gone mad.”

Dahlia laughed at that as she skipped away, following Afafrenfere to the bar. Drizzt and Entreri, meanwhile, found an empty table in the corner opposite the door.

“This is a doomed town,” the assassin said as soon as they took their seats. “Why are we wasting our time here?” He considered those words for just a heartbeat before changing them subtly. “Why are you wasting my time here?”

“Not doomed,” Drizzt replied. “Not unless we give up on it.”

“And you haven’t,” Entreri surmised.

Drizzt shrugged. “There is a chance for us to do good here,” he explained, and he stopped abruptly when a serving girl came over to offer drinks.

“Do good here?” Entreri echoed doubtfully when she had gone.

“The people of Port Llast deserve the chance,” Drizzt said. “They have held on against all odds.”

“Because they are stupid,” Entreri interrupted. “I thought we had already settled on this.”

“Spare me your sour jokes,” Drizzt replied. “I am being serious here. You have lived a … questionable life. Does that not itch at your conscience?”

“Now you pretend to lecture me?”

Drizzt looked at him earnestly and shook his head. “I’m asking. Honestly.”

The serving girl, a young and pretty brunette of no more than fifteen years, returned with their drinks, set them down, and scampered away to the call from another table.

“Sounds like you’re lecturing,” Entreri replied after a long swallow of Baldur’s Gate Red Ale.

“Then I apologize, and again, I ask, do you feel no regret?”

“None.”

The two stared at each other for a long while, and Drizzt didn’t believe the answer but found little room for debate in Entreri’s steadfast tone. “Have you ever done anything for someone simply because it was the right thing to do?” he asked. “Need there always be a reward for you at the end of the task?”

Entreri just stared at him and took another drink.

“Have you ever tried it?”

“I came north with you because you promised me my dagger.”

“In time,” Drizzt said dismissively. “But for now, I would know, have you?”

“Do you have a point to make?”

“We have a chance to do some good here, for many people,” Drizzt explained. “There is a level of satisfaction in that exercise I doubt you’ve ever known.”

Entreri scoffed at him and stared incredulously. “Is this how you heal your wounds?” he asked. When Drizzt looked at him in puzzlement, he continued, “If you can reform me, then you need not feel so guilty about letting me escape your blades in the past, yes? You could have killed me on more than one occasion, but didn’t, and now you question that mercy. How many innocents died because you hadn’t the courage to strike me down?”

“No,” Drizzt said quietly, shaking his head.

“Or is it something else?” Entreri asked, clearly enjoying this conversation. “I once met a paladin king-in his dungeon, actually, where I was his guest. Oh, how he loathed me, because he saw in me a dark reflection of his own heart. Is that it? Are you afraid that we two are not so different?”

Drizzt considered that for a moment, then returned Entreri’s confident look with one of his own. “I hope that we are not.”

Entreri’s expression quickly changed. “And so you must redeem me so that you can feel your own life justified?” Little certainty rang out in his tone.

“No,” Drizzt answered. “Our paths have crossed so many times. I don’t call you a friend-”

“Nor I, you.”

Drizzt nodded. “But a companion … of circumstance, perhaps, but a companion nonetheless. Let me lead you down this road. Consider it a chance to see the world through a different perspective. What do you have to lose?”

Entreri’s expression hardened. “You promised me my dagger.”

“And you will get it, or at least, I will show you where it is.”

“If I indulge you here?” he asked with a sarcastic edge.

Drizzt took a deep breath and tried to let the assassin’s stubborn ripostes fall off his shoulders. “Whether you indulge me or not. I didn’t offer you a bargain, but merely suggested a road.”

“Then why would I help you?”

Drizzt was about to argue, but he caught something, in the background of Entreri’s callous question, that clued him in to the truth of this discussion. He smiled knowingly at his old nemesis.

Entreri drained his mug and banged it on the table, signaling for another.

“You’re paying,” he informed the drow.

“You’ll owe me, then,” said Drizzt.

“What? A few silver coins?”

“Not for the ale,” Drizzt answered.

Entreri tried to look as if this whole conversation had bored him and annoyed him, and perhaps there was some truth in that. But Drizzt couldn’t contain his grin, for he knew, too, that he had intrigued his old nemesis.

That grin disappeared a moment later, though, as the common room’s main door banged open and a group of citizens burst in. A woman and a male elf flanked a man, and indeed held him up, his arms across their shoulders, his head lolling about uncontrollably.

“Help here!” the woman cried. “Fetch a priest!”

They came in nearly sideways to fit through the door. When they straightened out, the problem was clear for Drizzt and everyone else to see. The man’s shirt was torn and soaked in blood, a line of wounds stretching from hip to ribs.

“Get ’im here!” Ambergris yelled, as others ran for the door, one heading out and crying for a cleric. Ambergris swept her table clear of drinks, mugs splashing to the floor, and the three with her jumped back and started to protest until they saw the dwarf pull forth her holy symbol and lift her broad hands in supplication, whispering the name of Dumathoin as she did.

Drizzt, Entreri, Dahlia, and Afafrenfere all got to the table about the same time as the wounded man’s companions laid him down atop it. The monk, quite familiar with the dwarf’s work, rushed beside Ambergris and bent low, holding the wounded man still.

All about them, questions filled the air, along with shouts of “Sea devils!” and curses at the wicked god Umberlee. In the midst of that turmoil, Drizzt pulled the elf aside. He followed after a short hesitation, surely confused by the sight of a drow in Port Llast.

“How did this happen?” Drizzt asked.

“As they are claiming,” the elf replied, and he continued to look at Drizzt suspiciously.

“I am no enemy,” Drizzt assured him. “I’m Drizzt Do’Urden, friend of-”

He didn’t have to finish, for the name sparked recognition in the elf, revealed his welcoming smile and nod. “I’m Dorwyllan of Baldur’s Gate,” he said.

“Well met.”

“Sea devils,” Dorwyllan explained. “Sahuagin, the scourge of Port Llast.”

Drizzt knew the name, and the monster, for he had battled the evil fish-men on several occasions during his years riding Sea Sprite with Captain Deudermont. He glanced at the wounded man-Afafrenfere had pulled his torn shirt aside and others had splashed water on it to clear the excess blood. The drow saw the wounds clearly now: three deep punctures, as if a trio of javelins had hit him in a straight line. He could well imagine the trident, a preferred weapon of the sahuagin, that had stabbed the poor fellow.

“Where?”

Others were asking the same question.

“The northern boat house,” Dorwyllan answered.

“And so it begins,” Dahlia mumbled at his side.

The elf looked at her and started as he came to fully appreciate this female elf standing before him, her beauty and that curious pattern of bluish dots that adorned her face.

“Good fortune that we arrived this day,” Drizzt said.

“Bah, but this sight’s more days than it ain’t!” one of the dwarves who had been sitting with Ambergris explained. “Sea devils thrice a tenday, or it ain’t Port Llast, don’t ye know?”

Many began filing out of Stonecutter’s Solace then, and shouts for a posse filled the air outside the tavern.

Drizzt looked to Dahlia and Entreri and the three moved to follow, but Dorwyllan grabbed Drizzt by the arm. “No need,” he explained when Drizzt looked back at him. “The sea devils have fled to their watery sanctuary, no doubt, for they know that we got over the wall in our retreat. The folk will go down in a great show of force, lining the docks, lobbing rocks into the dark waters, just to let the creatures know that Port Llast remains vigilant. And the sahuagin will hear the splashes above, safe in their watery homes and ready to return. It has become almost a sad game.”

“Then why were you three down there alone?”

“They are not often ashore in the daytime,” Dorwyllan replied.

“But at night?” Artemis Entreri asked from the side before Drizzt could get the question out.

“They slither from the tide,” Dorwyllan answered. “They near the wall and throw taunts and stones and spears. They are testing us, looking for a moment of weakness that they might raid the upper city and feast on man-flesh. And each day, we send down patrols.” He nodded at the woman and wounded man with whom he had entered the inn. “The sea devils are building defenses in preparation for the coming battle. We go down each day and try to find these barricades and tear them down.”

“But at night?” Drizzt asked leadingly.

“We avoid the docks at night,” Dorwyllan answered. “We man the wall, heavily, but we don’t cross beyond it. We don’t have enough folk with the ability to see in the dark, and carrying a torch makes one a fine target.”

“Then I assume the sea devils come ashore at night, each night.”

Dorwyllan nodded. Drizzt grinned and glanced over at Entreri, who wore a grim expression, understanding exactly where this might be leading.

“Are you almost done with your work, Amber?” Drizzt asked.

“Aye, and he’ll live, but not to be drinkin’ for a bit or he’s suren to leak,” the dwarf answered as she wiped her bloody hands.

“Get your own drinking done early,” Drizzt advised. “Tonight, we work.”

He took a step away, but again Dorwyllan held him by the arm, turning him back. “They will be out in force,” he warned.

“I’m counting on it,” Drizzt replied.

Drizzt gathered the five soon after, and limited their drinking, though they were soon to enjoy a grand meal, it seemed, as the proprietor of the Stonecutter’s Solace wanted to repay Ambergris for her fine healing work on his wounded friend.

“You have enough magic left to help us through a difficult night?” Drizzt asked the dwarf.

“Got plenty. What’d’ye got in mind, elf? And it better be good if ye’re thinking to keep the ale from me lips.”

“The darkness won’t bother you?” Drizzt asked Entreri.

“Long ago, I was given the gift of darkvision.”

“By Jarlaxle,” Drizzt said, for he recalled that fact from long ago.

“Don’t mention his name,” the assassin said.

“So only Afafrenfere will be hindered by the night,” Drizzt reasoned.

The monk snorted as if the reasoning was preposterous.

“Won’t be,” Ambergris explained. “That one’s trained to fight blind, and been living in the Shadowfell for years. Not quite a full shade yet, but he got close enough, don’t ye doubt. Yer night’s a shining beacon aside the Shadowfell day.”

“Perfect,” Drizzt said.

“We’re going over the wall,” Dahlia reasoned. “You’ve made some deal to save this town.”

“We’re going over the wall because it’s the right thing to do,” Drizzt corrected. “We’re going to strike hard at those sahuagin, and maybe convince them to stay away long enough for Port Llast to rally.”

“Sea devils are formidable foes,” Ambergris solemnly warned.

“So are we.” As he made the declaration, Drizzt looked to Entreri, whom he thought would be the most likely to reject the plan. But the assassin seemed quite at ease, leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest. He offered no objections.

“We’ll let the moon come up,” Drizzt explained.

“Not much of one this night,” said Dahlia.

“I’m thinkin’ that’ll help us,” said the dwarf.

Drizzt nodded and said no more, as the staff of the Stonecutter’s Solace came over in a line, each bearing a tray piled with fine morsels. And it was food all the more precious because it had been collected under duress, Drizzt and the others realized. The trays were full of fish and clams, seaweed salad and huge red lobsters, which had once been considered the greatest delicacy of the Sword Coast North. Few in Luskan trapped them now, and of course, any venture to the seaside in and around Port Llast was fraught with danger.

“We get down to the sea for our fishing,” said the proprietor, a tall and thin man who walked with legs set in a permanent bow, and a face so leathery it looked like it could be cut from his head and used for armor. “One day soon, I’m serving sea devil, and here’s hoping the foul things taste better than they behave!”

That brought a round of “huzzah” from all about the tavern, and it reached a second crescendo when the man who had taken the trident propped himself up on his elbows and joined in with relish.

“Huzzah for Amber Gristle O’Maul,” they cheered.

“Of the Adbar O’Mauls!” the three who had been sitting with her before the disturbance added.

“A fine meal,” Ambergris said and belched a short while later.

“Last meals usually are,” Entreri said.

Drizzt and the others looked sourly at the man.

“What?” he said innocently, looking up, and holding a lobster claw in each hand.

“Ye always so full o’ hope?” the dwarf asked.

“I don’t fear for myself,” Entreri explained innocently. “I know I can outrun you, dwarf. And that one,” he added, pointing a claw at Drizzt, “is sure to stay behind, valiantly fighting to the bitter end so that his companions can escape.”

Afafrenfere and Ambergris both turned curiously to Drizzt at that statement, and Entreri added, “Why else would I remain beside the fool?”

Drizzt couldn’t even begin to answer, so stupefied was he to think that the levity of Artemis Entreri would help to settle his nerves before a dangerous endeavor.

The cheering followed the five companions all the way back to Stonecutter’s Solace, and even inside the tavern, where their table was visited repeatedly by proud Port Llast villagers, clapping their backs and promising that their gold would never be good in the seaside town.

“They’ve been starved for such a night as we have given them,” Drizzt remarked in one of the few moments when the five found themselves alone. “And starved for a bit of hope. For too long, this town has been in retreat, the minions of Umberlee in advance.”

“Bah, but won’t it go right back to that?” Ambergris asked.

“Only if we allow it,” Afafrenfere interjected before Drizzt could, and the drow nodded and smiled at the monk in agreement and appreciation.

Others came over to them then, each bearing a fistful of foamy, spilling mugs, and the conversation widened to swallow the many notes of “huzzah” being thrown their way. The dwarf took it all in with a gap-toothed smile, enjoying the accolades, but not as much as she enjoyed the ale.

Afafrenfere, too, reveled in the glory, though he wouldn’t partake of alcohol, pushing the mugs placed in front of him to the dwarf, which of course only made Ambergris all the happier.

Truly, Drizzt enjoyed watching his companions’ reaction to the celebration more than the joy of the townsfolk, which he found satisfying, and the libations, of which he would only modestly partake. It did his heart good to watch Ambergris, who reminded him of so many old friends he had known in his decades in Mithral Hall, and Afafrenfere, who appeared to be validating the dwarf’s belief in the goodly bent of his disposition. What warmed Drizzt most of all, though, was the reaction, the sincere smile, of Dahlia. She deserved that smile, he thought.

The journey to Gauntlgrym had battered this woman. Even attaining her most desired victory in killing Herzgo Alegni had taken more from her than it had given, Drizzt knew. On the road to Gauntlgrym, before they had known that Alegni had survived the fight at the winged bridge, Entreri had posited that perhaps the expectation of revenge had sated Dahlia’s unrelenting anger better than the realization of that revenge. The way Entreri had explained it to Drizzt was that a person could always pretend that some future event would solve many more problems than the realization of such an event could ever bring.

Drizzt winced slightly as he watched the young elf woman now, and weighed that image against the sight of Dahlia mercilessly pounding dead Herzgo Alegni’s head with her wildly-spinning flails. The tears, the horror, the unrelenting anger … no, not anger, for that word hardly sufficed to describe the emotions pouring forth from the outraged Dahlia.

Drizzt had come to understand that rage, of course, for Dahlia had painted for him a very dark scene indeed. Herzgo Alegni had murdered her mother, and that after he had raped her, though she was barely more than a child at the time.

And now, in addition to the complicated emotions swirling within Dahlia due to her exacting revenge, there came a second rub, an even deeper, or at least, an even more confusing and conflicting issue: that of the twisted tiefling warlock, Dahlia’s son. What turmoil must be coursing within that deceivingly delicate frame, Drizzt wondered? What questions, unanswerable, and what deep regrets?

Drizzt could only imagine. He could equate nothing in his past to the storm swirling within Dahlia. While he had faced his own trials and trauma, even the betrayals of his own family seemed to pale compared to that which this young elf had faced-and indeed, that only reminded Drizzt that she was barely the age he had been when he had left House Do’Urden to serve his time in Melee-Magthere.

He wanted to empathize, to understand and to offer some advice and comfort, but he knew that any words he might say would surely sound hollow.

He couldn’t truly understand.

Which had him turning his head toward someone who, apparently, could. Bound by trauma, Artemis Entreri and Dahlia had found comfort in each other. That much seemed undeniable to Drizzt. He understood now their quiet words, and what a fool he felt himself to be given his irrational jealousy and anger. True, the wicked Charon’s Claw had magnified his response, and had prodded him incessantly with images of the two entwined in passion, but still it felt to Drizzt as if, blinded by his own needs and pride, he had failed an important test in his relationship with Dahlia.

And where he had failed, this man Entreri had succeeded.

He watched the assassin now, sitting calmly, accepting the drinks, and even pats on the back, but with a distant, detached expression.

Drizzt leaned over and whispered to Entreri when he found a break in the stream of congratulations, “You must admit some satisfaction in what we have done this night, in the good we have wrought.”

Artemis Entreri looked back at him as though he were the offspring of an ettin. “Actually,” he corrected, “the way I see it, we helped them and they threw rocks at us.”

“They didn’t know it was you on the roof,” Drizzt argued.

“Still hurts.”

But even Entreri’s unrelenting sarcasm couldn’t dull the night for Drizzt. He had led his companions to this place hoping for exactly this situation and outcome. No, that description didn’t fit, the drow thought, for this night exceeded his wildest hopes for their venture to Port Llast.

And it was only the beginning, Drizzt Do’Urden vowed, lifting a mug in toast to Artemis Entreri.

The assassin didn’t respond, but Ambergris did, heartily, and Dahlia joined in, and even Afafrenfere put aside his aversion to alcohol and lifted a mug.

“Only the beginning,” Drizzt mouthed silently between foamy lips.

"You don’t like what you see?” the drow said to his dwarf companion.

The sturdy dwarf, his black beard wrapped into two dung-tipped braids down the front of his muscled chest, his powerful morningstars strapped diagonally across his back with their adamantine heads bouncing at the ends of their chains around his shoulders, had to take a deep breath and stroke his hairy face. He couldn’t quite find his voice. Athrogate didn’t hate the dark elves the way most Delzoun dwarves would-his closest friend in the world was one, after all, and standing right beside him. And indeed, Athrogate was now a formal member of Bregan D’aerthe, a mercenary band from the dark elf city of Menzoberranzan-the clerics of that almost exclusively drow organization had nursed him back to health after his near-fatal fall in Gauntlgrym.

Still, the dwarf couldn’t quite find his voice to respond, given the sights around him. The battle-hardened dwarf had been close to death before in his long, long life, but never in the manner he had found in this dark place, and never against an enemy so completely overpowering. He had fallen over the rim of the primordial pit, plummeting for the fiery maw of the preternatural and unstoppable beast. Good luck alone had landed him on a ledge, and his companion, Jarlaxle, had saved him, pushing him to the back of a cubby and summoning water elementals to ward off the biting flames of the primordial. Even still, Athrogate had nearly died and had known pain beyond anything he had ever imagined, his burned skin slipping off his bones.

And more than anything else, brave and mighty Athrogate had felt … insignificant and helpless. These were not emotions that sat well with the proud dwarf.

Now they were in Gauntlgrym again, descending a great spiral stairway to the lower levels of the complex, a stairway that had recently been repaired, and by craftsmen with a different and more delicate style than the original dwarven work.

They knew what they would find in the ancient complex, for they had been sent here-Jarlaxle had been sent here-by Kimmuriel Oblodra, the acting head of Bregan D’aerthe, executing an order from a much more powerful entity, the matron mother of Menzoberranzan’s ruling House.

“Well?” Jarlaxle prodded as they continued down, crossing from the newer drow work to the remnants of the original dwarven stair. “Speak honestly. I’ll take no offense, I promise.”

Athrogate was almost always blunt, and particularly so concerning issues of dwarven importance, and certainly the disposition of Gauntlgrym fit that description. But the dwarf could only grunt and shake his hairy head as images of his fall to the ledge and memories of profound agony filled his thoughts.

And now his emotions were even more roiled. He didn’t like these developments. Not at all. The aura and aroma of this drow settlement seemed an absolute desecration of Gauntlgrym. It didn’t confound him on a logical level. It made perfect sense, after all. Why wouldn’t the drow, or some other race, come back to this place and try to rebuild it?

And better the drow than goblins, he tried to tell himself.

But in his gut, the notion of a drow city growing amidst the ruins of the most ancient dwarven homeland seemed like a tragic loss, or a great theft, for and from his people-even though his people had long-ago rejected him and the dark elves had taken him in.

Jarlaxle patted him on the shoulder, and when he looked up, the drow winked at him with his one eye that wasn’t covered by that strange magical eyepatch, signaling that he truly understood the turmoil swirling within Athrogate.

“You would do well to keep your doubts well-hidden,” Jarlaxle quietly advised as they moved lower on the stair, low enough now to see that a group of drow astride subterranean lizards awaited them on the floor below. “House Xorlarrin is here, whether you or I or anyone else likes it or not, and if they perceive your distaste as a threat, they will deal with it in their particularly efficient and permanent fashion.”

“Bah, but ain’t that what I got Bregan D’aerthe backing me for?” Athrogate replied.

“Do you see the one astride the largest lizard, with the glowing shield on his arm?” Jarlaxle asked, motioning his chin toward the floor. Following that movement, Athrogate easily discerned the indicated drow.

“He is a Baenre,” Jarlaxle explained. “A very well-loved and important Baenre.”

“The First House?”

“If House Baenre objects to your attitude, Bregan D’aerthe cannot help you. In truth, we would deliver you to Matron Mother Quenthel as quickly as possible to avoid any complicity in your idiocy.”

Athrogate smiled widely at the threat for he knew that Jarlaxle would do no such thing. Kimmuriel would, of course, and so would the rest of the Bregan D’aerthe crew. But Jarlaxle wouldn’t, and indeed, Jarlaxle admitted as much implicitly when he returned the dwarf’s knowing smile.

“At last, Jarlaxle,” greeted the drow astride the great lizard. “It has been far too long since last I saw you.”

“Were I to know your name, I am sure I would return the compliment,” Jarlaxle replied with a gracious bow.

The rider, Tiago Baenre, bristled and glanced to his companions, left and right, an older weapons master Jarlaxle knew as Jearth Baenre, and a younger Xorlarrin wizard. Jarlaxle actually knew the Baenre, of course, and by name, for this was a name often spoken of late, in no small part because of the shield Tiago wore and the sword he carried on his hip, both wondrous new creations of old magic. Jarlaxle tried hard not to gawk when looking at that round shield now, for it appeared to be a truly remarkable item. It was nearly translucent, as if made of ice, and with diamond sparkles within. Despite his feigned indifference, Jarlaxle couldn’t help but look more closely, for within that glassteel were lines, connecting in a definite pattern. For all intents and purposes, it looked as if a brilliantly symmetrical spider web had been trapped within the ice.

Magnificent, Jarlaxle thought but did not say. It hardly mattered, though. His expression had revealed his feelings, he realized, when he tore his gaze away and looked at Tiago to find the young warrior brimming with pride.

“You have curious taste in companions,” Tiago said, noting Athrogate.

“Aye, but I can handle the smell,” the dwarf quipped.

Tiago’s eyes flared with anger. Jarlaxle wanted to silence his friend. He also wanted to laugh out loud. Neither seemed possible at that moment.

“I am Tiago Baenre,” the young warrior proclaimed. “Grandnephew of Matron Mother Quenthel and Grandson of Weapons Master Dantrag.”

“I knew him well,” Jarlaxle replied.

“You understand why we requested this meeting with Kimmuriel,” said the spellspinner, and the mere fact that he had dared to speak without being bade so by Tiago Baenre tipped Jarlaxle off to his identity. This was young Ravel Xorlarrin then, the mage credited with leading the expedition to Gauntlgrym.

The spellspinner whom Jarlaxle’s brother Gromph had coerced into “discovering” Gauntlgrym with information Gromph had garnered from the skull gem Jarlaxle had given him.

“We have many enterprises on the surface now, and this new … settlement is a likely way station between those enterprises and Menzoberranzan,” Jarlaxle replied. “Bregan D’aerthe would have reached out to you in any case.”

“Would have?” Tiago asked slyly. “Or already have?”

“Well, I am here now,” Jarlaxle replied, not understanding the cryptic reference.

“What about the trio from Bregan D’aerthe who were here previously? Just a few tendays ago, when first we ventured to Gauntlgrym?”

Jarlaxle held up his hands as if he had no idea what they might be talking about, and in truth, he did not. “I was asked to come and greet you, and so here I am.”

“There were three here earlier who claimed to be of Bregan D’aerthe, including one darthiir who named herself your mistress,” Ravel said, using the drow word for surface elves.

“Truly?” Jarlaxle tapped a finger to his lips. “Was she lovely?”

“Darthiir!” Tiago scolded. “That is disgusting.”

Jarlaxle laughed aloud. “Not the word I would use, but for a parochial sort who has rarely traveled outside of Menzoberranzan, such might be the belief.”

“Spare me your condescension,” said Tiago.

“Condescension?” Jarlaxle echoed with feigned innocence. “More relief than condescension. With so many of my kin sharing your expressed viewpoint regarding any who are not drow, there are more delicacies for me to enjoy.”

“She was with a drow, and a human, a small and gray-skinned man,” Ravel interjected, trying to keep the discussion on track.

“A human who came to Menzoberranzan beside you long ago, so claimed Berellip Xorlarrin,” Jearth put in.

Jarlaxle tried to hide his surprise, but unsuccessfully, he feared, and even if he had managed to do so, Athrogate gasped beside him.

“So you do know this human,” Tiago remarked.

“If it is who you say, he should be long dead,” said Jarlaxle. “Did you garner his name, any of their names?” he asked, though he thought he already knew the answer. But how Artemis Entreri, if it was indeed the assassin, came to be with Drizzt and Dahlia once more was quite beyond his understanding.

“Masoj Oblodra,” Tiago replied.

“Oblodra?”

“The drow,” the young Baenre clarified. “Kin to Kimmuriel, I expect. That was the name he used, at least.”

The way he said it revealed as much as the words themselves, Jarlaxle knew. Masoj, after all, had been the mage from whom Drizzt had taken Guenhwyvar many decades before, though Masoj was surely no Oblodran. He knew now, beyond any doubt that these fools had run up against Drizzt without even realizing it.

Tiago’s dead grandfather, dead by Drizzt’s hand, surely was somewhere in the Demonweb Pits, groaning in frustration!

“We did not care enough to ask the names of the other two,” Tiago added.

“Were they or were they not of Bregan D’aerthe?” Ravel asked pointedly.

“Who can say?” Jarlaxle bluffed, and he used a bit of magic from his eyepatch to carry some weight behind the words. “We have many independent agents moving along the Sword Coast. It is possible that one or another-”

“You would know if it was your consort, as was claimed, would you not?” Tiago asked, the sharp edge of his voice showing that he believed Jarlaxle to be cornered.

“One of how many dozen?” the sly mercenary shot right back. “As I told you, the fact that so many of my brethren are too foolish to appreciate physical beauty widens my garden of lovelies. Indeed, there are many in this area who could make that claim!”

Athrogate snorted.

“Where are these three of whom you speak?” Jarlaxle asked.

“Long gone,” said Jearth, “as are the Netherese they battled.”

“Then it is a discussion for another day,” Jarlaxle decided. “My time is short, and if these three are of no consequence-”

“They killed a Xorlarrin noble,” Tiago interrupted.

Jarlaxle nodded and spent a moment digesting the implications. “Then I will inform Kimmuriel and we will put all efforts into determining who they are and if there is any actual connection to our humble organization.” He bowed again, and in the movement, cast a private glance at Athrogate to warn the dwarf that their business here had just grown very serious.

“Are we to discuss our preliminary business arrangements here, among this small group?” Jarlaxle asked.

“It would be premature to formalize anything,” said the spellspinner. “But let us show you our efforts, and perhaps there are services and items Bregan D’aerthe can supply to us that will foster those later arrangements. Materials, for example, and formulas.” He looked right at Athrogate as he finished, “We have the Forge.”

“Lead on,” Jarlaxle bade, and he and Athrogate stepped forward.

“Not him,” Tiago insisted, pointing to the dwarf.

“He works for me.”

“Not him.” There was no room for debate in Tiago’s tone, and Jarlaxle was surprised that the brash young warrior was so openly challenging him. Given that, it wasn’t an argument Jarlaxle thought prudent to have, and besides, he knew that he could facilitate his own escape if necessary, but wouldn’t likely be able to help Athrogate get safely away. He turned to the dwarf and whispered, “Up above,” and Athrogate nodded his agreement and understanding. At the top of the ladder, Jarlaxle had enacted an enchantment from his wide-brimmed, hugely-plumed hat to create an extra-dimensional room as a safe haven.

Jarlaxle summoned his nightmare and rode off with the three lizard-riders, and Athrogate was fast indeed up the long stairwell to the safety of that secret room. Athrogate never shied from a fight, but these were, after all, dark elves.

Effron didn’t much like the snow, and the Sword Coast was seeing more than its share of the wintry precipitation as the turn to the Year of the Six-armed Elf neared. He had returned to check in on the progress or retreat of the Thayans, as his master had demanded. Lord Draygo had told him to be thorough and not anxious, and the old warlock’s insistence that this mission was important had resonated with Effron, all the more so because he knew that showing his loyalty to Draygo Quick and his competence in carrying out these demands would likely be rewarded.

For all of his desperation to pay back Dahlia, Effron understood that he couldn’t manage any such thing alone. She was surrounded by powerful allies, and he would need a powerful response. The resources and personal power of Lord Draygo Quick would more than suffice.

So Effron had faithfully gone into Neverwinter Wood once again, and had thoroughly scouted and spied upon the remnants of the Thayan force, particularly the lich known as Valindra Shadowmantle. The Ashmadai were scattered and leaderless, posing no threat at all to the city or to any of Draygo Quick’s ambitions in this area, if he held any. It didn’t take Effron very long to realize that his previous report to Lord Draygo had been correct, for he saw nothing of Valindra Shadowmantle to indicate anything other than sheer insanity. The lich wandered out from her treelike tower on occasion and meandered through the forest paths calling for Arklem Greeth or Dor’crae, and rarely speaking either name correctly and without some insane stutter, wailing and keening, and occasionally throwing a bolt of purplish-black necromantic energy at a tree or a bird for no reason whatsoever.

Effron figured that she would be caught by the citizen garrison of Neverwinter soon enough and properly dispatched.

He turned his eyes away from Valindra and the Thayans then, but lurked around the forest. Now he looked toward Neverwinter. Every time he noted activity near the city gates, he peered closely and anxiously, as if he expected Dahlia to walk into view. And what would he do if that came to pass, he had to ask himself?

Would he hold to his promise to Draygo Quick of restraint and patience?

He told himself that he would, that he had to be careful with his father Herzgo Alegni gone. More than once, though, he wondered if he was lying to himself.

On the morning he had determined to be his last day near the city, Effron walked a perimeter outside the wall, finding empty regions by which he could travel deeper into the place with his wraith form and other various methods of magical invisibility.

By late morning, he had covered most of the perimeter, and had ventured into the city four separate times, and with still a lot of wall yet to scout. He almost quit and simply took to the north road, growing convinced that Dahlia had indeed departed, as Lord Draygo had hinted.

“I would never have thought you foolish enough to return here, unless it was at the head of an army,” a voice whispered from behind him barely a few heartbeats after he had convinced himself to continue his last look around.

Effron froze in place, plotting spell combinations and contingencies, either to get away or to strike out hard, for he knew that voice, and more importantly, he knew the diabolical truth behind it.

“Come now, young tiefling, we need not be enemies,” the red-haired woman said.

“Yet I remember your presence in the ranks of my enemies in the square near the bridge that day,” Effron reminded her.

“Well, I didn’t say I would let you conquer my city,” the woman replied. “Have you returned with such intentions? If so, please do tell that I might be done with you now.”

“You underestimate my skills.”

“You know the truth of mine,” she replied.

Effron spun around to regard her. She seemed so plain and calm, nondescript, even. She exuded motherhood at that moment, and it occurred to Effron that he wished he had been blessed with such a mother. Warm and comforting, someone to hold him close and tell him that everything would turn out well …

The twisted warlock laughed at himself and shook that notion away. This was Arunika. Arunika was a devil, a succubus from the Nine Hells, wearing the mantle of a simple and gentle red-haired woman with a slightly freckled face. An ordinary citizen of Neverwinter, just going about her daily chores as any good human might.

“You are hunting Barrabus and that sword,” Arunika remarked.

It occurred to Effron that perhaps she didn’t know everything after all.

“What do you know of him?” Effron asked. “And of his companions?” he quickly added, trying not to sound too obvious.

“Why would I tell you?”

Effron ran his good hand between his horns and scratched at his purple hair. It was a good question, he had to admit.

“I have information you will wish to hear,” Effron offered a few moments later.

“Do tell.”

“Well, that is the whole point, isn’t it?”

Arunika laughed at him. “I’ve already established that I know that you know.”

“Not that, devil.”

“I should kill you for torturing my imp,” Arunika remarked. “Not for the sake of the imp, of course, but because of the breach of protocol. Invidoo is my property, and so I demand recompense. Tell me your secret, twisted warlock.”

“I will,” Effron promised. “And you tell me of Barrabus.”

“I owe you nothing.”

“But what harm in telling me? Surely you don’t hold any loyalty to Barrabus the Gray, and certainly not to his companion, this drow ranger. Indeed, should Drizzt learn the truth of Arunika, he would chase you from the land.”

Her expression revealed her unpleasant surprise at that thinly veiled threat. “Then I should make sure I destroy anyone else who might betray that secret. Is that your point?”

Now Effron laughed, but it was an uncomfortable ploy.

“I would not tell him … anything,” the twisted warlock said. “Nor Barrabus and the other, Dahlia. You witnessed the fight on the bridge when Herzgo Alegni was driven from this land. Effron is no friend to those three, I assure you. But I have mentioned the truth of Arunika to others among my Netherese brethren, including several lords who would not take well your threats against me. Beware, succubus, else you tempt the wrath of Netheril.”

Arunika stared at him hard, and yet, even in that look, there remained something so very appealing about this creature.

“But there is no need for any of this,” Effron insisted. “We are not enemies, or should not be. Netheril will not return to Neverwinter. We have no reason to care, with the Thayan threat destroyed.”

“Netheril was here before there was a Thayan threat to Neverwinter,” Arunika reminded him.

“True enough,” Effron admitted. “Our work was in the forest, and indeed, we may return to that place, but with no designs on ruling the city. It is not our place. It brings unwanted attention. So there, that is my secret, offered in friendship.”

“And offered before you exacted your demand.”

“All I ask is for you to guide me along the proper road to find Barrabus and his companions,” Effron replied. “And why would you not? Should they return to Neverwinter, they’ll not befriend Arunika, and should they ever determine the truth of your identity, they will seek to destroy you. So what do I ask of you that will not benefit you?”

Arunika laughed again. “I do so enjoy the play of mortals,” she said. “With their foolish impatience as they scramble to make a legacy that will not last, no matter how many they kill.”

Effron started to respond to that confusing statement, but Arunika waved him to silence.

“There is a band of highwaymen along the road just a few days north of here. If you make yourself conspicuous enough, they will likely find you.”

“Would that be a good thing?” he asked after considering Arunika’s words, and considering why she might have spoken them.

Arunika smiled sweetly-too sweetly. “Find the highwaymen and you will learn much of Barrabus and his friends,” she said.

Effron thought of going back to the Shadowfell and letting Draygo Quick guide him to a more advantageous location back on Toril, but part of his mission, likely the most important part, was to learn the lay of the land around their prey.

So off he went. He had enough supplies for a tenday, at least. He had gone through almost half of those supplies before he came upon another person, a score of miles and more north of Neverwinter.

“Halt and be counted,” the woman demanded, stepping out into the snow-covered trail before him, two large men at her side.

“If you are a guard, pray tell from what town?” Effron replied innocently. Arunika’s words echoed in his thoughts. “I am not familiar with this region.”

“If you were, you wouldn’t be foolish enough to be traveling the roads alone,” the woman replied with a rather sinister grin. She nodded to the thugs flanking her and both began a steady advance.

Effron didn’t flinch, and even smiled, which had the two men, both much larger than he, glancing at each other.

“Then the only question that remains,” the small warlock remarked, “is whether I should sting you and chase you away, or simply kill you and be done with it.” He shrugged and let his useless arm swing weirdly behind him, using it to further press the idea that he wasn’t the least bit intimidated.

An arrow whipped out of the trees to the side of the road, speeding straight for the warlock, but Effron was, of course, magically defended against such attacks and his shield of magical energy deflected the arrow enough so that it whipped just a hair’s breadth from his face-and had he not instinctively turned aside, the missile would have likely taken a bit of his nose with it.

“The latter, I think,” he calmly stated.

With the sun high in the sky, Dorwyllan watched the long procession winding down the road below his perch on the side of a steep hill. Ramshackle carts pulled by haggard donkeys and painfully thin horses and cows bobbed by on uneven, wobbly wheels.

More women than men drove those carts, and more elderly folk than young-except for the very young. Children raced around from cart to cart, wagon to wagon, playing fanciful games of great imagined adventures. Looking at the sullen faces of the drivers, Dorwyllan understood that their parents desperately hoped that any such adventures remained imagined.

They answered the call of good farmer Stuyles, and several of his agents were among the caravan ranks. Winter was letting go finally, the roads clearing, and Stuyles had sent wagons north to the farmlands outside of Luskan, spreading the word for the folk to join in the tenday-long journey to Port Llast, to a new home.

And indeed, Port Llast was thriving, compared to the previous autumn. With the help of Drizzt and his friends, and the reinforcements from the band of highwaymen, the citizens had reclaimed the city all the way to the sea, and a new wall was nearly complete, one battered more by the high tide than by any sahuagin activity. The catapults along the cliff faces had been repaired and were well-manned … or well half-ogred, as the case might be. And best of all, a dozen boats were now seaworthy once more, and a plentiful harvest was to be found within the harbor, within the protection offered by the grenadiers on the wall.

Just a couple of months before, Dorwyllan had explained to Drizzt that he had remained in the dying town of Port Llast merely out of loyalty to the stubborn and stoic townsfolk, and his answer had clearly shown his sincere belief that the town was in her last days. But now the recollection of that answer, of those doubts, almost embarrassed the elf.

And here before him came new citizens, and the bustle of children playing would once again fill the lanes of Port Llast, and truly that was a sound Dorwyllan had never expected would return to the battle-scarred, bloodstained city.

“If they get there,” the elf reminded himself, and scolded himself as he turned his attention back to the winding road north of the procession. They had many days before them, but none would be more dangerous than these first steps, Dorwyllan feared. He put his hand over his eyes and squinted to the north, imagining the uneven skyline of Luskan. The high captains of that city had abandoned these people, it was true, but Dorwyllan doubted that those same high captains would tolerate reciprocal treatment.

The elf let the procession get beyond his position, rolling down to the south, then took up his bow and moved out to the north, scouting the road.

Before the sun had fallen halfway to the horizon, he had his bow out and leveled at a group of four riders, Luskar garrison, trotting their horses easily to the south.

Dorwyllan chewed his lip, unsure. Did they know of the quiet exodus? If so, had they sent word back to the north?

He put up his bow when another group of riders approached, galloping down from the north. They met and exchanged some words, and the elf understood when the combined group, now ten strong, moved off swiftly to the south.

Dorwyllan shadowed them, running along the high ground, a straighter path than the winding road.

When the sun dipped below the western horizon, the winter’s twilight settled deep, and several campfires appeared far to the south. Dorwyllan doubted that the riders on the road below could see those, as they, too, paused and lit torches of their own.

Dorwyllan put his horn to his lips and blew a long and mournful note.

A few heartbeats later, that call was answered from the south.

The elf looked to the road, where the Luskar patrol milled around, some pointing up in his general direction. He wasn’t overly worried, though, for these seafaring deck-swabbers would never find him in the forest night.

Nor did they care to try, apparently, and Dorwyllan took that as a hopeful sign that the pirate fools had no idea that the horn exchange had been a warning to the caravan of their approach, that one note had spoken of less than ten soldiers, and that the people of the caravan would be quite ready for their arrival.

Minnow Skipper glided out of Luskan’s harbor, turning about Closeguard Isle to slip out into the strong spring currents. Standing at her prow, holding the guide rope, Drizzt watched the familiar sights drift past, for this was the skyline he had viewed for years and years on end in his younger days. All that was missing was the strange, treelike structure of the Hosttower of the Arcane, with its seemingly organic, spreading limbs.

Drizzt wasn’t pleased with any view of Luskan now, though. He had never been overly fond of the harsh and often lawless place, particularly since the fall of Captain Deudermont, but for several years, he had called this port home. That had all been shattered, of course, but somehow, out here on the water, that most unpleasant memory, Deudermont’s death to Kensidan the Crow of Ship Rethnor, seemed to fade to a distant blur. Drizzt’s thoughts cascaded back beyond those darkest days to the years when he and Catti-brie had sailed with Deudermont aboard Sea Sprite out of this very harbor.

A smile spread on the drow’s face as he remembered the thrill of the chase as Sea Sprite hunted down a pirate. He would stand ready on her deck, scimitars in hand, Catti-brie beside him with Taulmaril the Heartseeker, ready to rake the pirate’s deck and set the stage for Drizzt and Guenhwyvar to lead the boarding charge.

The drow closed his eyes and let the wind and the brine rush about him, slowly turning his head this way and that to catch the thicker scents and better feel the heavier salty gusts. On one such movement, he opened his eyes briefly, enough to see the tip of the mast of an old wreck that had been driven up against the rocks in the south harbor.

Sea Sprite.

It was her mainmast, Drizzt knew, trailing down under the dark waters to the shattered hull of the destroyed ship. That any sizable portion of the schooner remained at all intact in the rough waters around Luskan was a testament to her wondrous design and workmanship, but that hardly comforted Drizzt as he stood at the rail, looking at the lost glory of Captain Deudermont.

And Robillard, he recalled, the crusty ship’s wizard, a mage of considerable power and possessed of a tongue as sharp as his frequent lightning bolts. Robillard long served as Deudermont’s trump card at sea, for no wizard was more adept at splitting the beams of an enemy ship right at the waterline, or at filling sails with wind to speed Sea Sprite along.

Robillard would likely be long dead now, Drizzt knew, and he wondered if the man had left this world in a blaze of fireballs and the hail of ice storms, slicking the deck of a pirate ship. That thought brought a grin back to Drizzt, as he remembered when Robillard had used that very tactic on one pirate vessel in heavy seas. How the pirate archers had pitched and tumbled, and nearly half the crew had slid into the open ocean, making for an easy catch.

He thought of Thrice Lucky then, young Maimun’s ship.

“Young Maimun?” Drizzt whispered aloud, for surely that one, too, was long gone from this world. He had taken up Deudermont’s mantle as the greatest pirate hunter of the Sword Coast, Drizzt had heard, after the fall of Luskan to the five high captains, and for years afterward, Drizzt had often heard the name Thrice Lucky whispered in taverns up and down the Sword Coast, most often in gratitude and with raised mugs from those abiding the law, and accompanied by curses from those who walked a less seemly road.

Drizzt locked his gaze on Sea Sprite’s mast, showing in the low wake clearly whenever the waves rolled past.

He gave a solemn nod to the proud vessel, to the noble crew and captain who had taken her so far for so long. It was a good memory, he decided. Good times with good friends doing good deeds.

And the excitement, always that, with a pirate sail on every horizon, it seemed, and a crew ever ready and eager to take up the chase.

“The finest ship to ever sail the Sword Coast,” Drizzt remarked when Dahlia walked up beside him, to find him still staring at the mast.

“Not any more, it would seem,” she said flippantly.

“Aye, a long tale, and one worth telling,” Drizzt replied. “And no better place to tell it than on a ship’s deck on the open waters, under the stars and with the lull of the ocean nodding truth to every word.”

Dahlia draped her arms around Drizzt and he tensed up for just a moment, then forced himself to relax. Somehow that touch didn’t seem right to him. Not out here. Not on these same waters he had so often sailed with Catti-brie.

“We’ve no private cabin, but we can find a private place,” the elf woman whispered into his ear. “Do you think the ocean will nod about that?”

Drizzt didn’t answer, other than to offer a chuckle, a half-hearted one, and he understood that Dahlia had recognized it as such when she unwrapped her arms and stepped back from him. He turned to her, trying to find some way to soothe that unintentional sting, but he diverted it instead, seeing their three other companions moving to join them.

“I’m not for knowin’ how these bowleggers take to this pitchin’ and rollin’ days on end,” Ambergris grumbled. She planted her feet wide and square, but even then the slightest pitches of Minnow Skipper had her stumbling side-to-side. That just made her dig her heels in harder, but to little positive effect.

“You take the sea’s roll with your belly,” Afafrenfere explained to her, and he tapped his hard abdomen.

“Ah, shut up afore I spray me breakfast all about ye,” said the dwarf.

“You will get used to the motion of the sea,” Drizzt promised. “And when we put in to port, you’ll find your legs unsteady once more.”

That brought a laugh from Afafrenfere, and from the dwarf, but Dahlia just stared at Drizzt, seeming more than a little wounded by his rebuff, and Artemis Entreri looked as dour as ever as he walked past Drizzt to the rail.

“That one’s been sailin’ afore,” Ambergris muttered, shaking her head at Entreri’s smooth gait, for he didn’t miss a stride even when Minnow Skipper pitched unexpectedly under the roll of one heavier wave.

“Often, yes?” Drizzt asked, turning to face the man.

“Too often,” said Entreri.

“Then you know Baldur’s Gate?”

“Every street.”

“Good,” said Drizzt. “I know not how long we’ll dock there, but you’ll be our guide.”

Entreri turned to look at him, to offer him a smirk. “Just long enough for Luskan to destroy Port Llast, I would expect. So not long at all.”

That had the other four crowding in closer.

“What’d’ye know?” Ambergris asked.

“It merely occurs to me that Beniago conveniently arranged to get the five best fighters out of Port Llast all at the same time,” Entreri mused.

“Ooo,” Ambergris groaned, apparently having not thought of that before.

But Drizzt had. “Beniago asked only that I go in the deal for your dagger,” he said. “He could not have foreseen that I would bring you four along with me.”

“But he knows now,” said Entreri.

Drizzt snorted the uncomfortable thought away. “Luskan’s high captains cannot agree on which dock to use for a visiting lord without a street battle to settle it,” he said. “They couldn’t muster any sizeable force and march or sail on Port Llast in the few tendays we will be away. Nor would they begin to understand the level of power within the city any time soon, with or without us there.”

Entreri looked at him and chuckled softly, his expression practically screaming the word “simpleton.” But he said nothing and walked away, back to the hatch and into the hold.

“For my benefit alone,” Drizzt said to the remaining three, shaking his head dismissively at the departing man. He believed the truth of his hypothesis. Ever was Artemis Entreri trying to throw doubts into Drizzt; indeed, he seemed to derive some strange pleasure from doing so.

Drizzt turned back to the sea, gave a last glance at Sea Sprite’s mast, then turned his gaze out to the wide-spreading waters before him. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, inhaling the briny smell and letting it take him back to better days and-he tried unsuccessfully to exclude Dahlia from the thought as it formed-to better company.

Effronpaced the vast docks of Baldur’s Gate as he had every morning for more than a month now. He found himself at a loss-the boat should have been in to port soon after his arrival. Every day he came down here; every day he asked every dockhand he could find who would take a few moments to speak with him.

Nothing.

No word of Minnow Skipper, and looking out at the vast, dark water rolling before him this rainy day, it was not hard for Effron to imagine that the boat had been lost to this inhospitable environ known as the Sword Coast. In fact, this particularly dreary morning, the warlock was certain of it.

The ocean had taken her, and all aboard, likely, or some sea devils or a great shark or whale or kraken even, had splintered her hull and pulled her under to feast on the crew.

If he was right, then his mother was dead, and his purpose in life had run into an abrupt end.

Or maybe his mood was a result of the weather and not some reasonable conclusion. The air felt heavy this day, though spring fast raced toward summer.

Effron dismissed that superficial notion. The weather might not be helping, but this was not nearly as abrupt an ending as it seemed. This morning came as a logical conclusion of his building dread. For two tendays now, Effron had been fighting a nagging feeling that they were gone, swallowed by the sea, and that his perspective on life-on his own life-was about to dramatically shift.

He had wanted her dead. He had wanted to kill her.

Now he was an orphan. Now his dream had been realized, but the taste, so suddenly, seemed not so sweet.

“Damn you,” he whispered under his breath as he paced the massive quayside of this impressive port city. Those were the only words he spoke, not even bothering to inquire of the dockhands if any had seen or heard a whisper of Minnow Skipper’s approach.

There was no point.

And perhaps, he feared, there was no point to much of anything, any more than asking empty questions of dockhands in Baldur’s Gate.

He walked slowly, his dead arm a pendulum behind his back. The moisture around his eyes was more than the drizzle of the heavy and humid day.

For so many years, he had tried to prove himself to his father. He could never become the warrior Herzgo Alegni would have preferred, obviously, with his shoulder and arm useless and a dozen other less obvious or garish infirmities wreaking his fragile form. But still he had tried, every day and in every plausible way. Was there a warlock in the Shadowfell of his power anywhere near his age? He had overheard comments that not even Draygo Quick had been as advanced as Effron was now until he had passed his fortieth birthday, though Effron was barely half that age.

He had lived his life with daring and discipline, and even the lords of Netheril had taken note of him at times.

Had any of that made Herzgo Alegni proud?

Effron honestly didn’t know. If so, his brutish tiefling father had never revealed it, and even on those few occasions when a word or glance from Herzgo Alegni might have been taken as fatherly pride, hard experience had taught Effron to view them more as manipulation than anything else, as if the self-absorbed Herzgo Alegni was boosting Effron’s morale because he wanted to get something more out of him.

Effron considered the possibility that he had no deeper feelings for Herzgo than he had for Dahlia.

Ah, Dahlia. For Effron, she was the rub, the ultimate pain, the desperate question, the ever-nagging doubt.

She had thrown him from a cliff.

His mother had rejected him, utterly, and had thrown him from a cliff.

How could she do that?

How he hated her!

How he desired to murder her!

How he needed her.

He could not wrap his thoughts comfortably around the emotions assailing him from every direction that dreary day. Now, on these docks this morning, he accepted the reality that she was gone, and the waves coming at him from opposite directions rolled and rose, crested and collided in the middle of his consciousness.

“Ha!” came a cry as he walked past one pair of older men, one with a mop, the other wearing a pair of hand gaffs for unloading sacks of grain.

“I told ye today’d be the day the ugly one didn’t ask!” continued the gaff-armed gaffer, and he let loose a squeal of laughter.

“Are you mocking me?” the dour Effron asked.

“Nah, devil-boy, he’s just laughing at his own prognostication,” the man with the swab replied. “He said yerself wouldn’t ask about Minnow Skipper today.”

“And pray tell how he would know that?”

“Because today’s the day word’s come in,” said the gaffer, and he laughed again, though it sounded more like a cackling cough. “She’s out there, north and west. Tide’s bad and wind’s wrong, but her sails might dot the horizon before sun’s to setting. Either way, she’ll slide in tomorrow.”

Effron tried to hold steady, but he knew that he was shaking, for he could feel the increasing movement of his dead arm. “How do you know? Tell me. Tell me!”

The other fellow lifted his mop and pointed it at a boat that had just come in, obviously, for her crew was still at work and hadn’t come ashore. “They seen her trailing these last three days. Flying Kurth’s flag. Luskan boat, that one there, and they’re knowing Minnow Skipper.”

Effron looked blankly at the other boat, but inside, his mind cascaded along avenues thought lost. Dahlia. Likely aboard, and almost surely alive.

Dahlia, who had the answers to the questions Effron most feared and most needed to hear.

Only then did it occur to him that his impatience, which had brought him to the docks these last days, might now dearly cost him.

“Listen to me,” he said intently to the pair. “There’s coin in this for you. Gold coin.”

“Keep talking,” said the man with the mop.

“I would know who comes off that boat,” Effron explained. “And I would not have them know that I have asked.”

“Gold coin?” asked the gaffer.

“Gold coins,” Effron assured him. “More coins than the fingers of both your hands and both his hands.

“Look for a dark elf, and a female elf beside him,” Effron explained.

“Female drow?”

“No, just the male.”

“Lots of elves about. How’re we to know it’s her?”

“You’ll know,” Effron promised, his gaze inexorably drifting back to the empty waters to the northwest, as if expecting the sails to appear at any moment. “You’ll know.”

Effron was in a foul mood as he moved to Baldur’s Gate’s docks that next morning, in no small part because of his disgust with his mother and her bed-hopping. And with Artemis Entreri — Barrabus the Gray, no less-a man Effron had come to profoundly dislike in the time they had fought together under the command of Herzgo Alegni.

The man who had leaped in and foiled Effron’s best attempt to catch Dahlia, and had cost the young tiefling greatly in both coin and reputation by stifling Cavus Dun’s ambush.

He kept repeating Draygo Quick’s orders as a reminder of the clear boundaries the dangerous Netherese lord had enacted around him. But every recital came with a sneer.

He moved down to the docks and found his informants. As always, it seemed, they appeared to be busy, both swabbing with mops this day, and it didn’t take Effron long to recognize that they weren’t actually accomplishing anything, again, as always with these two.

The old gaffer nudged his partner when he noted Effron’s approach.

“When?” Effron asked, moving up, and having no intention of remaining out there in the open for any length of time. After these two had reported to him on the disposition of Drizzt and Dahlia, he had tasked them with a simple question, and so he wanted a simple answer.

But both men wore wide smiles, hinting at something more.

“A tenday before she’s out, we’re hearing,” said the younger man.

“Was supposed to be but three, but her Captain Cannavara delayed her,” added the older.

Effron nodded and tossed a small pouch to the man, but both the old gaffer and his partner kept grinning slyly.

“What more do you know?” Effron asked.

“Ah, but that’s worth gold to ye,” said the old gaffer. “More than the first ye give us.”

“Ah, then to you, it’s probably worth continuing to breathe,” Effron replied without the slightest hesitation, for he was in no mood for any nonsense from these two fools this day. He narrowed his eyes into a glare and with a low and even tone slowly repeated, “What more do you know?”

The gaffer started a wheezing laugh, but his partner swallowed hard and patted him to silence, staring at Effron all the while-staring and obviously understanding that there was nothing overstated in the dangerous young tiefling’s threat.

“They’re not back for Luskan,” the middle-aged swabby replied.

“Who? Minnow Skipper?” Effron asked.

“Aye, Memnon’s her next port of call, and then Calimport beyond that, if the season’s not too late. Won’t be putting in to Luskan until the first winter winds’re blowing hard from the Spine o’ the World.”

The news knocked Effron back a step, his thoughts spinning. “How do you know this?” he managed to ask.

“We got friends on the boat. Course we do,” said the old gaffer. “On all the boats.” He continued on to explain that he knew Minnow Skipper’s first mate and had crewed with the man many times over the years. He had asked about working his way back to Luskan, and was told of the upcoming southern journey.

Effron was hardly listening, knocked fully off-balance by the surprising turn. Memnon? Calimport? He wasn’t even sure exactly where those places might be, but the one thing that certainly had come through to him was that once Minnow Skipper put out of Baldur’s Gate, his trail to Dahlia might fast grow very cold.

He absently reached into his pouch and grabbed a handful of coins, some gold, some silver, and handed them over without even counting them, then stumbled back along the wharves and into the city proper.

He thought again of Draygo Quick’s warning regarding this band, but the orders didn’t resonate. Not then, not with his mother on the verge of slipping away, perhaps forever.

He had wondered if it would come to this, of course. He slipped his hand inside his robes and felt the scroll tube he had stolen from Draygo Quick.

Dare he?

"Well then find her,” Captain Cannavara said to Entreri.

“Aye, or we’ll be leavin’ ye here, and won’t that be better for us?” added Mister Sikkal. He stood at Cannavara’s side, bobbing up and down on his bowed legs so that his head bounced stupidly. How Artemis Entreri wanted to put his recovered dagger to good use at that moment!

“I only came to tell you that we cannot find her,” Entreri remarked, addressing the captain directly, but throwing one warning glance at Sikkal as he did to keep the fool’s mouth shut. “Not to be lectured by either of you.”

“Then you four will be aboard when we sail?” the captain asked.

“No,” Entreri replied without the slightest hesitation-and he was surprised at his own certainty, though as he considered it, he couldn’t deny the truth. He would not leave Dahlia behind, would not leave Baldur’s Gate until he learned what had happened to her.

“Minnow Skipper sails on the morning tide,” Cannavara declared.

“Then you will explain to Beniago and High Captain Kurth why my friends and I returned to Luskan before you. You are on to Memnon, are you not?”

The expression on Cannavara’s face, and on Sikkal’s as well, spoke volumes to Entreri before either had uttered a word-if either had been able to speak at that moment. As far as Cannavara knew, clearly, they had told no one of their course change, and from Sikkal’s point of view, likely he had done some whispering that might get him thrown to the sharks.

“You think you know all the strands of the web,” the assassin quietly said. “That is a dangerous belief when dealing with … my associates.”

His tone left little doubt in the two men as to whom he might be referring. Bregan D’aerthe or Ship Kurth, the two men facing him obviously assumed, given the blood then draining from their respective faces.

Entreri used that moment to pull back his cloak and put a hand to the hilt of his fabulous dagger. Cannavara let out a little gasp at that, obviously recognizing it and remembering for the first time where he had seen that particular blade before.

With a dismissive snort, Artemis Entreri turned and walked back down the gangplank.

By the time he stepped onto the wharf, he had put the two men out of his thoughts, focusing again on the missing Dahlia. Half the night and half the day now, and not a sign of her.

This was more than petulance, he knew.

He was afraid.

The gentle curvature of the watery horizon greeted every view from Minnow Skipper’s crow’s nest. Three days out of Baldur’s Gate, the ship found fair winds and following seas, and no land in sight and none wanted.

None that Drizzt wanted, at least. He sat far above the deck, losing himself in the rolling waters, letting them take him gently into his own thoughts.

He wanted to help Dahlia. He wanted to comfort her, to guide her through these days, but in truth, he had no idea what to say that would make any difference to the emotionally battered woman, particularly not with Effron tied to a chair in a sectioned-off part of the hold.

Dahlia seemed a different person to Drizzt after Afafrenfere’s gallant rescue, and Effron seemed a different enemy. Neither showed much sign of life, the young warlock not offering anything in terms of resistance, the elf warrior not offering much of anything at all. Dahlia’s capture by her son and their long meetings had drained both of all energy, it seemed.

Drizzt figured that if pirates boarded Minnow Skipper, both would simply surrender without lifting a hand to fight, and he could well imagine the shrug either might offer on the last steps off the plank.

That notion had the drow glancing down at the deck. Dahlia was there among the crew, by the starboard rail, ostensibly stitching a torn sail, though at the rate she was going, a finger’s length tear might occupy her for the rest of the journey to Memnon.

Drizzt’s gaze drifted farther aft, to the open bulkhead, where Ambergris had just appeared. The dwarf reached back and bent low, grabbing hold on Effron and helping him up into the open air, with Afafrenfere closely following.

Amidships, Dahlia glanced back to look at the young tiefling, but she quickly looked down and went back to her task.

Making busy work, Drizzt could see, trying to pretend that Effron wasn’t on the deck, or that he wasn’t on the boat at all.

But Drizzt could see even that wouldn’t prove enough emotional insulation for Dahlia. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, then gathered up her things and moved to the forward bulkhead, never looking back.

Never looking back at Effron.

“Effron,” Drizzt whispered from on high, and then it hit him, the simplest answer to the questions and doubts that had been pounding him for these many days. This wasn’t about the relationship he had with Dahlia, whatever that might be. This wasn’t about him at all. It was about that twisted tiefling leaning over the taffrail of Minnow Skipper.

Drizzt couldn’t begin to decipher the many emotions that must be running through Effron and Dahlia, wrenched from hidden corners of their hearts by circumstance and the abrupt turn of events. But in this moment, finally, the drow came to realize that it was all right that he couldn’t understand.

Because this wasn’t about him.

Drizzt hopped out from his seat, catching a handhold and wrapping his ankles around the guide rope, then half sliding, half hand-walking his way quickly to the deck. With a last glance at the bulkhead through which Dahlia had gone-and brushing away his certainty that she was belowdecks speaking with, or at least sitting with, Artemis Entreri-Drizzt moved aft along the deck.

“Hey now!” Mister Sikkal yelled at him. “Get yerself back at the lookout!”

Drizzt didn’t even turn to regard the old first mate. He moved easily around the captain’s quarters and to the back, where the dwarf called a greeting to him.

“Take my place at the crow’s nest,” he said to Afafrenfere when the monk also turned to greet him. “I won’t be long.”

Afafrenfere glanced at Effron, who hadn’t even turned away from the sizzling foam in Minnow Skipper’s wake, who hadn’t even shown the slightest interest in anything other than the empty dark water. With a nod, the monk moved past Drizzt.

“You can go with him,” the drow said to Ambergris.

“I ain’t for climbin’ no durned dead tree pole!” the dwarf insisted.

“Stay at the mast’s base, then.”

Ambergris offered him a little grin. “Our deal with Cannavara says two’re to be with this Effron boy at all times, including meself and me silencing spells.”

Drizzt motioned with his head in the direction Afafrenfere had gone.

“I’ll be just around the corner, then,” the stubborn dwarf replied, and she walked past Drizzt and around the edge of the captain’s cabin, but there plopped down noisily and made a point of beginning a song, an old dwarf ballad of deep mines, thick silver veins, and a host of goblins in need of a bit of dwarf-style relocation.

Drizzt moved up to Effron, but faced back at the captain’s cabin as he leaned against the taffrail.

“Where will this go?” Drizzt asked Effron-asked his back, actually, since the tiefling was still leaning out over the taffrail, staring at the empty sea.

“Do you know or do you care?” Drizzt pressed when Effron didn’t respond.

“Why do you care?” came the curt reply.

“Because I care for Dah … I care for your mother,” Drizzt replied, deciding to go there with Effron, straight to the relationship that was obviously causing him so much pain.

The young tiefling’s response came as a derisive snort, which was not quite what Drizzt had expected.

“Why would you doubt that?” Drizzt asked, still trying to remain calm and reasonable, trying honestly to coax Effron from his defensive shell. “Dahlia and I have been traveling together for many months now.”

“Traveling and coupling, you mean,” Effron said, still not turning around.

“That is our business.”

“Is it Artemis Entreri’s?” the young tiefling asked, and now he did turn around, an unsettling grin spreading wickedly across his face.

Drizzt couldn’t quite find the words to respond, not sure where Effron was going with this, yet afraid of where that might be.

“The night I caught Dahlia, she had just left him,” Effron explained.

Drizzt shrugged and wanted nothing more than to turn this conversation back to the more important topic, that of Effron and Dahlia.

“She had just left his bed,” Effron pressed, and he seemed quite pleased with himself. “She stank of him.”

It took all the self-control he could muster for Drizzt not to simply reach out and push the nasty young warlock over that taffrail and be done with him. Effron’s every word hit him like a dagger, and more pointedly so because he had known this truth already, though he hadn’t been able to admit it to himself.

“I don’t understand why you and Entreri bothered to rent two rooms,” Effron continued. “You would save coin and time renting just one, don’t you think, with Dahlia lying between you?”

He bit off his last word, and quite nearly a piece of his tongue, when Drizzt lost control for just the blink of an eye-long enough for Drizzt to deliver a stinging slap across Effron’s face.

“Concern yourself more with your own predicament,” the drow advised. “Where will this all go? How will it end?”

“Badly,” Effron spat back.

“That is one choice, but only that, a choice.”

“I’ll see her dead.”

“Then you’re a fool.”

“You don’t know-” Effron started, but Drizzt cut him short.

“It won’t free you of your burden,” Drizzt calmly assured him. “Your satisfaction will prove short-lived, and ever longer will your misery grow. This I know. Whatever else, whatever other details you think yourself privy to that I am not, matter not at all. Because this I know.”

Effron stared at him hard.

“Where will this all go?” Drizzt asked again, and he started off. And he knew that Ambergris has been listening to every word when she came around the corner before Drizzt had reached it.

And he knew it by the look on the dwarf’s face, an expression of sympathy aimed at him.

“Ask yerself the same,” the dwarf advised in a whisper as Drizzt walked by.

Many eyes settled on Minnow Skipper as she rode the tide into Luskan’s sheltered harbor.

From the balcony of Ship Kurth’s command tower on Closeguard Isle, Kurth and Beniago regarded the incoming ship with very different perspectives, though High Captain Kurth didn’t know it, as he didn’t know that the tall and lean red-haired man standing beside him was actually a dark elf serving Bregan D’aerthe.

To High Captain Kurth, Minnow Skipper carried the promise of power for his ship beyond Luskan’s wall. With Drizzt and Dahlia and their companions in service to Ship Kurth, he would have the inside route to trade with Port Llast, and would have greater influence than his four competitors over events in the region surrounding Luskan.

For Beniago, all of that was of secondary concern, if of concern at all. He had done as Kimmuriel had asked, but would the passage of a few months prove enough to throw Beniago’s cousin Tiago off of Drizzt’s trail?

Unlikely, the drow-in-disguise realized, knowing Tiago as he did. Certainly things were going to play out between Tiago and Drizzt whatever Bregan D’aerthe tried to do, but the point, Beniago knew, was to delay that inevitable confrontation as long as possible so that Bregan D’aerthe could better influence it, and better decide on the direction in which they wanted to influence it. House Xorlarrin was making great progress in Gauntlgrym, by all accounts, and what that meant to the ever-logical and pragmatic Kimmuriel most of all was opportunity.

The best course to exploit that opportunity, the fine line between the potentially dramatic conflux of interests, was, of course, the entire purpose of the mercenary and mercantile guild, Bregan D’aerthe. And it was their salvation, for in their successes, so too did they find respite from the priestesses of the Spider Queen. But in going after Drizzt, Tiago might well be going against the wishes of Matron Mother Quenthel, and against the wishes of Lady Lolth herself, and if Drizzt killed Tiago, would Quenthel hold Bregan D’aerthe responsible, since Bregan D’aerthe knew of the hunt?

At that moment, Minnow Skipper in clear view, Beniago was glad that these choices fell to Kimmuriel and Jarlaxle, and not upon his own shoulders.

There would be drow blood spilled over this, he knew.

And he hoped, privately, that more than a bit of it would spill from the brash young Tiago.

" I can feel her,” Drizzt remarked, and he held the statuette before his eyes. He looked to the side, to Effron, who nodded soberly.

“Don’t try to summon her,” the tiefling warned, “else you will alert Lord Draygo to our designs. Even here, perhaps especially here, he will see through Guenhwyvar’s eyes.”

Drizzt nodded and slipped the figurine safely away.

Dahlia watched the drow’s every move, recognizing the pragmatism that drove him. If it was pragmatism, she reconsidered, and not some moral code too stringent to ever let his emotions find some freedom. She had teased those emotions from him on occasion, though not recently, of course, and had lured him into places where he had allowed himself to live in the moment and to be free of whatever nagging little voice constantly held him back.

She wanted that again, she realized, and in her mind, she replayed the conversation with Artemis Entreri, where he had accused her of loving Drizzt.

Dahlia’s face grew tight as she pushed that unsettling thought aside and focused again on the drow’s actions and expressions. He wanted to call Guenhwyvar, she could see that. He knew there might be some chance that in this place, such a summons would break the panther free of the bonds Draygo Quick had enacted upon her.

But he wouldn’t. He would be patient. Too much was at stake for the disciplined Drizzt Do’Urden to let his desperation destroy it all. That was ever his strength, Dahlia knew, and his weakness.

“How far?” he asked.

Effron looked around, shaking his head. “The problem with utilizing a gate is location, for I dared not open one anywhere near to Gloomwrought or Lord Draygo’s castle. The worlds are aligned, but not perfectly.” He pointed to the far horizon. “Lord Draygo’s residence is outside of the city of Gloomwrought, and for that, we should be thankful. I would not walk the ways of Prince Rolan’s domain with this group.”

“We’re not for liking being seen with yerself, either,” said Ambergris, but she offered a playful wink with the retort.

“But nor can we walk the road approaching the city,” Effron went on. “Not with these two.” He pointed to the dwarf and the monk.

“Cavus Dun watches the road,” Afafrenfere agreed, and Effron nodded.

“A powerful troupe are they, and one with a vendetta.”

“Then how?” Drizzt asked.

Effron pointed farther to the south. “Roundabout, and through a swamp. There are lesser, little used roads, but travel will be difficult and dangerous.”

“How long?” Dahlia pressed.

“Three days?” Effron replied hesitantly.

“We have mounts,” Entreri reminded, but Effron shook his head.

“If you summon your nightmare here, you will likely lose control of the beast, and the same for the unicorn you ride. This is not the place for such toys, I warn.”

“So, three days walking,” said Drizzt.

Effron nodded. “That measures the actual time, but I warn you, it may seem a month to you, for you’re not acclimated to the realities of the Shadowfell.”

“Meself’s acclimated, and it’s seemin’ like a month already!” Ambergris said. “By the gods, I hate this place.” She looked at Afafrenfere. “To think that ye chose to be here them years,” she said, shaking her head.

“Now that I have been away, I begin to agree,” Afafrenfere answered, and the dwarf’s eyes popped open wide.

Dahlia regarded the two, and particularly focused on their appearance. When she had first encountered them, she had thought them shades, with dark hair and gray skin, but subtly, both had shifted in that appearance, in almost the reverse manner that a farmer’s skin might darken in the first tendays of spring. Still ruddy, as with most dwarves, it seemed as if a pall had been lifting from Ambergris of late, and even her hair had changed color, showing more reddish tints now. And Dahlia realized that for Afafrenfere, the reversion to something more fully human had been even more dramatic.

Dahlia only noted that now, for the change had been so gradual, but in this place of perpetual gloom, the monk appeared again much as he had when Dahlia had first seen him, and the abrupt reversion so clearly revealed the extent of the change.

“Every journey begins with a step, then,” said Drizzt, and he started off in the direction Effron had indicated.

Effron caught him by the arm quickly, though. “I would have you on the flank,” he explained. “And you,” he added, indicating Entreri, “on the other. This place is the stuff of nightmares, and it earns its name, I assure you.”

“Aye, and tell ’em why,” Ambergris said, and when Effron didn’t immediately respond, other than to look at the dwarf, she added, “The swamp’s full o’ dead things that won’t stay quiet. And they’re always hungry.”

Dahlia, Drizzt, and Entreri looked to Effron, who could only shrug. The drow nodded and moved out to the left flank, Entreri similarly moving out to the right. Effron took up the lead, Dahlia beside him, the dwarf and monk some distance behind.

“Why are you doing this?” Dahlia asked quietly when she was alone with her son.

Effron’s face grew very tight. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Is it hatred for this Lord Draygo?”

“No,” Effron answered even before thinking about it. It was true enough, though. “Draygo Quick has shown me more friendship than.…” He let it end there, hanging in the air between them.

“Don’t try to hurt him,” Effron warned. “Do not insinuate me into a fight between you and Lord Draygo.”

“Because you will side with him?”

“I don’t know,” came the answer once more.

Clearly uncomfortable, Effron pressed on faster, and Dahlia, after considering it for a moment, didn’t try to keep up.

She couldn’t begin to imagine the pain and confusion Effron was suffering at that time. His life’s journey was twisting and turning rapidly, and not entirely, if at all, of his own volition. Dahlia considered her own life’s road then, going from Szass Tam to this new horizon. She had faced a crisis in Gauntlgrym, a stark ethical and moral choice that would have broken her had she chosen differently. If she had pulled that lever to release the fire primordial and wreak devastation upon the land, then she would have succumbed wholly to the darkness that had followed her since that day Alegni had ravaged her, and more particularly since that subsequent date when she had thrown her son from the cliff. The dark wings of her own guilt would have enveloped her forever more, making her no better a creature than the loathsome Szass Tam himself.

How different her new road. But, indeed, it was now a journey of her choosing.

Could Effron say the same?

“A copper for yer thoughts,” Ambergris remarked, and Dahlia realized that lost in her internal dialogue, she had slowed her pace.

“They will cost you a bag of gold, a chest of jewels and gems, and a swift journey to a place of sunlight,” she replied.

“A ransom no good dwarf’d e’er pay!” Ambergris replied with a laugh.

Afafrenfere, coming up on the other side of Dahlia, joined in, but Dahlia could only manage a polite chuckle, her gaze remaining straight ahead, at the crooked back of the physically frail creature who led the way.

Athrogate plopped his hairy feet down on the large pillow before the Bedine serving girl, who immediately began pressing her thumbs into the pressure points on his wide, flat soles.

“Meself, ha! I’m thinkin’ I might be gettin’ used to this life,” he said for the tenth time that day, which meant that he was almost halfway to his average daily usage of the remark. Being guests of a Netherese lord in Shade Enclave was not a difficult job, the dwarf and Jarlaxle had learned. A century before, this region had been a huge and inhospitable desert, but it had not been totally barren. Sparsely inhabited, indeed, but inhabited nonetheless. The Spellplague had changed all that, the great desert of Anauroch, itself a magical construct, had been transformed. And here, the Empire of Netheril had created their principle city on Toril.

For the indigenous people of Anauroch, the nomadic Bedine, the transformation had proved neither fruitful nor favorable, for they were now the servants of the Netherese, particularly in the region immediately around Shade Enclave. Along some of the farther reaches of Anauroch, Bedine tribes held fast to their old desert nomad ways, but these people had not prospered. The tribes held few alliances outside of Anauroch and they were no match for the mighty Empire of Netheril, and thus, many now served that empire as slaves, even as gladiators.

For Jarlaxle and Athrogate, their extended stay in the House of Ulfbinder had been a journey in pleasure and luxury, their every need attended by a horde of servants. For his part, the dwarf had never looked better. His beard had been trimmed just a bit, and the dung tips at the end of his beard braids had been replaced by strings of shining opals. His dirty traveling clothes and armor had been meticulously stitched and cleaned, but he wasn’t wearing it much anyway, preferring the thick and soft robes Lord Parise Ulfbinder had provided.

“It will grow tedious soon enough,” Jarlaxle replied to the dwarf, as he usually did when Athrogate fell into his swoon of luxury. Jarlaxle was, of course, no stranger to the finer things in life. “There is a world of adventure out there,” he added.

“Bah!” Athrogate shot back, and he bit off the expression and winced as the Bedine girl found a particularly sensitive spot on his foot. “Felt pain a hunnerd times,” he said when he caught his breath. “But it ain’t e’er felt so good! Bwahahaha!”

Jarlaxle just laughed and sipped his wine.

“The pleasure’s great, the food’s so fine, don’t ye make the deal, friend, take yer time!” Athrogate half-said, half-sung, ending with another great “Bwahahaha!”

Jarlaxle smiled and lifted his glass to toast the dwarf’s sentiment, but he wasn’t so sure that he agreed. They had been here a long time, months, on a trade mission that shouldn’t have taken more than a couple of tendays at the most. Jarlaxle and Kimmuriel had spoken at length about it in an ongoing conversation, for the psionicist could initiate communication with Jarlaxle from great distances, and undetected even by a Netherese lord, and the two had come to the conclusion that something else was at play here with the Netherese, with Parise Ulfbinder and his closest cohorts at least.

But what that something might be was only beginning to shine through. In their last negotiations, Parise had spent a lot of time discussing Menzoberranzan and the customs of drow society in service to the Spider Queen. Jarlaxle had explained that Bregan D’aerthe operated outside of Menzoberranzan, and that much of the proposed trade they could facilitate with Shade Enclave would originate or terminate far from the shadows of the Underdark.

Parise had politely followed that discussion thereafter, but on more than one occasion he had tried to push it back to Menzoberranzan. Jarlaxle was too savvy and clever a negotiating adversary to miss such a facade.

“Know that I’ll be distractin’ ye around that table this day!” Athrogate assured him, and the dwarf winced again at the talented Bedine girl’s next press. “Bwahahaha!”

Jarlaxle waved that thought away. “You stay here today.”

“I’m yer second.”

“Today is a formality and nothing more,” Jarlaxle assured him. “Lord Ulfbinder wishes to introduce me to one of his compatriots who resides in the Shadowfell.”

“Ye’re going into the shadows?” Athrogate said and he sat so quickly that he nearly knocked over the poor Bedine girl.

Jarlaxle laughed and waved for him to settle back. “We will utilize a scrying device,” he explained. “Nothing more.”

“Ah,” Athrogate said, slumping back and nodding an apology to the startled girl. “And ye’re not wantin’ me face in the crystal ball, I see. Fearin’ I’ll embarrass ye, eh? Bwahahaha! Thought that was me job!”

“If so, then know that there is no amount of treasure I could bestow upon you to properly compensate you for your efforts.”

Athrogate thought about that for a few moments then let loose another, “Bwahahaha!”

Jarlaxle sighed.

“Stay here,” he instructed. “And do bathe.”

Athrogate sniffed at his armpit, crinkled his long nose, shrugged, and nodded.

Jarlaxle poured himself another glass of wine, working hard to keep the grin off his face. He couldn’t deny it: he had grown very fond of his competent and ferocious companion. When he had thought Athrogate dead in Gauntlgrym, the notion had terrified him. Obviously, by heritage and breeding, the two could not be more disparate, but those were the things that made the passing centuries interesting for Jarlaxle.

He thought back to his time with Artemis Entreri as he sipped his next glass of fine wine. He chuckled out loud as he recalled Entreri’s short tenure as King of Vaasa, a disastrous farce that had landed Entreri in the dungeons of the legendary Damarran King Gareth Dragonsbane.

He thought of the dragon sisters, and that notion had him reflexively tapping his waistcoat, and a secret slot along its side stitching where he kept the reconstituted Idalia’s Flute. He had almost freed Artemis Entreri from the emotional trappings of his sordid past with that magical instrument.

Almost.

He looked over at Athrogate, the dwarf now with his hands behind his head, eyes closed, thoroughly relaxing under the press of the foot massage. Jarlaxle pictured the two of them on the open road, hunting adventure and changing the course of kingdoms, and with Artemis and Drizzt beside them.

It was not an unpleasant thought.

But for now, he was Jarlaxle of Bregan D’aerthe, and he drained his glass and went to dress for his next meeting with Lord Parise Ulfbinder.

“Your dwarf friend will not be joining us today?” Parise Ulfbinder said when Jarlaxle was announced in the Netherese lord’s lavish private quarters a short while later.

“I can go and retrieve him if you so desire.”

Parise laughed at the thought. “He is your foil, not mine,” he willingly admitted. “Have you become so comfortable here that you no longer need your bodyguard?” He paused and looked at the drow with a coy expression. “Or has Jarlaxle ever needed a bodyguard?”

The drow removed his wide-brimmed hat and sat down in a comfortable chair.

“Or is Jarlaxle ever without a bodyguard?” Parise asked, and he moved to offer Jarlaxle a glass of brandy.

“That is the more pertinent question,” Jarlaxle replied.

“And the answer?”

“Is known only to me.”

Parise laughed and took a seat opposite the drow.

“Are we to peer into your crystal ball this day?” Jarlaxle asked.

Parise shook his head. “My fellow lord is … otherwise engaged,” he said, and Jarlaxle clearly registered a measure of weight behind that word choice. Something important was going on, likely in the Shadowfell, where this other lord, Draygo Quick, resided.

“Do we have further business, then?” the drow asked. “Or is this to be a social gathering?”

“Are you so eager to leave?”

“Not at all,” Jarlaxle cheerily replied, and he rested back and lifted his brandy in a toast to his host.

Parise, too, settled back. “If our bargain is approved by your compatriot Kimmuriel and by my peers, then I suspect that you and I will find many such occasions to sip brandy and simply discuss the events of the day. You have given me your assurances, after all, that you will personally see to many of the exchanges.”

Jarlaxle nodded. “Perhaps we will become great friends in the years to come.” The way he spoke the sentence made clear that he recognized something was going on here, in the greater scheme of things.

“Perhaps,” Parise agreed, and his tone showed that he understood Jarlaxle’s inflection, and didn’t seem to wish to disavow Jarlaxle of his suspicions.

There was more to all of this than a trade agreement, Jarlaxle believed. That agreement had, after all, been fairly settled in the first days of Jarlaxle’s visit, and most of the “concerns” and “issues” that held back the inevitable handshake had appeared to him as nothing more than delaying tactics.

Jarlaxle had seen this type of negotiating many times before, in his early years in Menzoberranzan, and almost always before a traumatic change-a House war, typically.

The Netherese lord refilled his cup and Jarlaxle’s.

“Do you miss the Underdark?” he asked. “Or do you venture there often?”

“I have come to prefer the surface,” Jarlaxle admitted. “Likely, it is more interesting to me because it is not as familiar as deep caverns.”

“I have not been to the Shadowfell in a year,” Parise admitted with an assenting nod.

“Well, you and yours have done a grand job of bringing the darkness here, after all.”

That brought a chuckle.

“We did not facilitate the Spellplague,” Parise said more seriously, and Jarlaxle perked up. “Nor the link between the Shadowfell and the sunlight of Toril.”

Jarlaxle thought he heard an admission there, that perhaps the celestial alignments and the fall of the Weave were not as permanent or controllable as some had postulated, and he tried to put the curious remark in the context of the earlier conversation regarding the years to come.

He didn’t respond, though. He let Parise’s words hang in the air for a long while.

“You are not as you pretend,” Parise finally said, as he moved for the third glass of brandy for both of them.

Jarlaxle looked at him curiously.

“An emissary of Bregan D’aerthe?” Parise clarified.

“Truly.”

“More than that.”

“How so?”

“I have been told that the band is yours to control.”

“It’s far more complicated than that,” Jarlaxle admitted. “I abdicated my leadership a century ago to pursue other interests.”

“Such as?”

Jarlaxle shrugged as if it hardly mattered.

“You are more than a servant of Kimmuriel.”

“I am not a servant of Kimmuriel,” Jarlaxle was quick to correct. “As I said, it is complicated.” He took a sip of his drink, his one eye that was not covered by the ever-present eyepatch staring at Parise unblinkingly. “Yet I am here in service to Bregan D’aerthe.”

“Why you and not Kimmuriel?”

Jarlaxle took his time digesting that question, and indeed, this entire line of questioning, for this was the first time such matters had come up so blatantly.

“Trust me when I tell you that you would prefer me as a houseguest to that one,” Jarlaxle said. “He is more comfortable in a hive of illithids than in the good graces of a cultured Netherese lord.”

Parise managed a laugh at that. “And your ties to Menzoberranzan go beyond your leadership of the mercenary band, yes?” he asked.

“I lived there for most of my life.”

“With which House?”

“None.”

“But surely you were born into a House-one of the more prominent ones, likely, given your stature in the society of that hierarchical city.”

Jarlaxle tried not to reveal his growing annoyance.

“Why did you not tell me?”

“Tell you?”

“That you were a son of House Baenre.”

Jarlaxle stared at him hard, and put down his glass of brandy.

“I am not without resources, of course,” the Netherese lord reminded him.

“You speak of centuries past. Long past.”

“But you still have the ear of Menzoberranzan’s matron mother?”

Jarlaxle considered the question for a moment, then nodded.

“Your sister?”

He nodded again, and wasn’t sure whether to be angry or concerned.

“Which means that the archmage of the city is your brother.”

“You speak of centuries long past,” Jarlaxle reiterated.

“Indeed,” Parise admitted. And please do forgive my forwardness-perhaps I am treading into places uninvited.”

Jarlaxle again offered his noncommittal shrug. “Is there a point to your banter?” he asked. “Beyond our blooming friendship, I mean.”

Parise managed a smile at that, but it did not last, for he assumed a more serious expression and looked the drow directly in the eye. “You serve Lady Lolth?”

Jarlaxle didn’t answer, other than to chuckle.

“Very well, then,” Parise redirected, obviously realizing that he was stepping into unwanted territory. “You are knowledgeable in the desires of the Spider Queen, at least as would be expressed by your sister?”

“I haven’t seen my sister in years, and that is not long enough, I fear,” Jarlaxle replied coldly. “You overestimate my relationship with the First House of Menzoberranzan-greatly.”

“Ah, but do I overestimate your ability to garner information from Menzoberranzan?” Parise asked, and Jarlaxle suddenly became more intrigued than anything else.

“Our desire to trade through the channels you have offered is genuine,” Parise went on. “To our mutual benefit. But I also barter in knowledge, and in that regard, is there a better trading partner than Jarlaxle Bae-Jarlaxle of Bregan D’aerthe?” he asked, the slip of his tongue clearly intentional.

“Probably not,” the drow dryly replied.

“I admit to being fascinated by the possibilities,” Parise said. “You are surely no professed follower of Lady Lolth, and yet, you are tolerated by her highest-ranking mortal. Is that due to familial bonds?”

“Quenthel? Her House benefits from Bregan D’aerthe. You need look no further for the solution to your riddle than that simple pragmatism.”

“And Lolth would not punish her for … well, for not punishing you?”

“Lolth’s city benefits from Bregan D’aerthe, whatever the love between us.”

“So the drow are pragmatic above all else?”

“Every society that has stood and will stand is pragmatic above all else.”

Parise nodded. “Then explain Drizzt Do’Urden.”

It took everything Jarlaxle could muster for him to hide his surprise at the mention of Drizzt. When he thought about it, though, it did make sense that the Netherese would have taken notice-Drizzt had played a major role in the events of Neverwinter, after all, and more than a few Netherese had died there, including a budding warlord of great repute.

He feared for a moment that Parise was going to ask him to help pay back the troublesome rogue, and in that event, Jarlaxle expected that he would be plotting the demise of Parise in short order, and finding some reason to coerce Kimmuriel into helping him facilitate that very murder.

“Drizzt Do’Urden?”

“Do not even pretend that you are ignorant of that one!” Parise huffed.

“I know him well.”

“Why is he allowed to live?”

“Because he kills anyone who tries to kill him, I expect.”

“No,” Parise said, leaning forward now eagerly. “It is more than that.”

“Do tell, as you seem to know more about it than I do.”

“Lady Lolth has not demanded his death,” said Parise.

Jarlaxle shrugged yet again.

“Why?” Parise pressed.

“Why?” Jarlaxle echoed. “Does he wage war upon her minions? You have never journeyed to Menzoberranzan, that much is obvious,” he added with a snort. “There is more than enough intrigue there, and more than enough enemies, to keep Lolth’s agents busily murdering drow without traveling to the surface to hunt for Drizzt Do’Urden.”

“It is more than that!” Parise pressed again.

“Then do tell,” Jarlaxle replied. He handed his empty glass across to the Netherese lord, and added, “As you refill my glass. Such fireside tales always sound better when thrown against a muddled mind.”

Parise took the glass and moved for the bottle, laughing as he replied, “Jarlaxle’s mind is never muddled.”

The drow merely shrugged yet again.

“Where is this going?” Jarlaxle asked. “Have you a vendetta against Drizzt Do’Urden, and fear to invoke the wrath of House Baenre?”

“Surely not!” his host replied emphatically-and to his surprise, Jarlaxle found that he believed the man.

“But I’m truly intrigued by this interesting Drizzt creature, and his relationship with the drow goddess.”

Jarlaxle’s blank expression aptly reflected the confusion in his mind at that most curious comment.

“Do you think it possible that she favors him, secretly?” Parise asked. “She feeds on chaos, after all, and he seems to create it-or surely he once did in the city of Menzoberranzan.”

Jarlaxle drained his glass in a single swallow and considered the words, and the potential implications of his forthcoming answer.

“I have heard this suggestion before, many times,” he said.

“He is given deference by the priestesses,” Parise suggested.

Jarlaxle offered another shrug. “In not hunting him down, in not demanding such of me and my band, then perhaps there is merit in that notion. And yes, that of course means that the goddess hasn’t instructed my sister and her peers to find him and properly punish him.”

He found himself nodding as he spoke, then looked Parise directly in the eye and finished, “Your thesis is quite likely correct. I have often thought it so. Drizzt would be an unwitting instrument of Lolth, to be sure, but then again, would that not be her typically cryptic way?”

The Netherese lord seemed quite pleased by that answer, and he couldn’t hide the fact behind his lifted glass of brandy.

From Jarlaxle’s perspective, the more important matter was whether or not such an outlandish claim would protect Drizzt from any revenge the Netherese might be planning.

The shadows served as an ally, but none of the six companions felt particularly comforted by that reality. They crouched in the colorless brush in a copse of trees, looking up at a formidable structure: a grand house with a soaring tower, surrounded by an enormous stone wall, twenty feet or more in height. The castle of Lord Draygo Quick.

Drizzt’s heart sank as the time slipped past. When he had learned of Guenhwyvar’s imprisonment, his course seemed clear and direct. She was there, so there he must go, and let no obstacle prevent him from bringing her to freedom once more. But now that choice had met with a harsh reality, for what were they six to do against the formidability of this castle before them? Were they to storm the place and leave a wake of death and destruction on their way to the panther?

That seemed a foolish choice, for Effron had repeatedly reminded them that Draygo Quick could likely defeat all of them singlehandedly. And within Lord Draygo’s tower, the young tiefling had also warned, loomed many lesser warlocks training under the great lord, and a menagerie of dangerous pets Draygo could unleash upon them.

“Now what?” Artemis Entreri asked after so many uneasy moments had slipped past. Their trials through the swamp had been considerable, but compared to the obstacle standing before them, those seemed minor indeed. Pointedly, Entreri had asked the question mostly to Effron, and his tone showed that he was not pleased with the young warlock.

“I was asked to take you to Guenhwyvar, and so I have,” Effron replied.

“Then point her out,” the assassin replied coolly.

Effron lifted his hand toward the tower, angling it to point about two-thirds of the way up the seventy-foot structure.

“Is there a side door? A kitchen or servants’ entrance, perhaps, or even a waste chute?” Drizzt asked, and he desperately wanted to keep the conversation on point at that time. He hadn’t come this far to turn back, whatever the challenge before them, and they had known-though surely the formidability of Draygo Quick’s castle had put an exclamation point to the severity of the task-that retrieving Guenhwyvar would be no easy task.

“Inside the wall,” Effron replied. “But the only entrance to the grounds lies through the front gate.”

“Or over the wall,” said Drizzt.

“I wouldn’t recommend that.”

“Do tell,” Entreri said sarcastically, but he seemed to back off at the end of his dour remark, for now he had drawn the scowl not only of Drizzt, but of Dahlia.

Drizzt noted the assassin’s retreat, and the apparent source. Entreri hadn’t come along for Drizzt’s sake, he realized, but for Dahlia’s.

Once again, it occurred to Drizzt that he was not bothered by this.

Whatever the reason, he was glad that Entreri and Dahlia were here.

“The walls of many of the great estates of this region were created by the same masons and sorcerers,” Effron explained, his casual tone offering no satisfaction to Entreri’s attempt at sarcasm. “They are heavily enchanted to prevent such access.”

“Glyphs can be removed,” Ambergris said, but without much conviction.

“Lord Draygo’s castle is lined with gargoyles and other sentries,” Effron explained. “If we go over that wall, they will awaken.”

“A fight in the courtyard,” Dahlia remarked.

“With a mighty warlock looking down upon us, untouchable, from his secure chambers,” Effron added.

“I may be able to get through the gate,” Effron said. “I’m not even certain that Lord Draygo knows that I have joined forces with you. He may think me still in his employ, and if that is the case, I will not be turned away. I know where Guenhwyvar is, and could perhaps find a way to break her connection to the magical prison, that you might retrieve her and be gone.”

“It would seem a great risk,” said Drizzt.

“No!” Dahlia stated at the same time, with vehemence enough to surprise all of them, including, clearly, Dahlia herself.

“Not alone,” she quickly clarified, and she seemed to be improvising as she added, “Pretend we are your prisoners, then. Or take us in for an audience with Lord Draygo-yes, go to him and explain that we wish to parlay.”

“He’ll have nothing to say to you,” Effron replied directly to her. “He will simply kill you as punishment for the death of Herzgo Alegni and the destruction of Charon’s Claw-indeed, he’ll hold that second crime even higher above you! And above you,” he added, indicating Entreri. “You two carry a high price on your heads from Cavus Dun for your betrayal, the dwarf at least,” he said to Ambergris and Afafrenfere.

“So we go in as your prisoners,” said Drizzt.

They discussed the plan at length, then, trying to find some fake magical prison they might fashion to create at least the plausibility of such a ruse, but they seemed to be going in circles. Draygo Quick knew well Effron’s capabilities, and knew, too, those of the other five.

“You have tricked us into speaking with him, then,” Drizzt offered some time later. “We have come to barter for Guenhwyvar, but you will relate to your former master that it is all a ruse you facilitated to bring us to his feet.”

“Ridiculous,” Artemis Entreri replied, but in a resigned tone, he finished, “but probably the best chance we’re going to get.”

Drizzt studied the assassin closely. The risk for Entreri was truly great, and yet he had come. Perhaps not for Drizzt’s benefit, but still, he had come.

The discussion went down that road of possibility, trying to come up with some plausible explanation as to why they would simply walk into the spider’s web in such a manner. Their conversation was cut short, though, and dramatically, as the front gates of Lord Draygo’s grand residence banged open and a black coach rushed forth, pulled by a team of four black horses already lathered in sweat as they charged off down the road.

“Lord Draygo,” Effron breathed, watching the coach depart.

“His coach?” Dahlia asked.

“Him,” Effron assured them. “No one but Lord Draygo would ride in that coach, and it is never used unless it is to take him on one of his errands.”

“Then we have to go in now,” Entreri said.

“It is still guarded,” Effron started, but he was overrun by the others, all scrambling to prepare for their assault. By the time Effron had spoken his warning, Drizzt was already moving for the closing gate, the speedy Afafrenfere pacing him, and Ambergris, holy symbol in hand and a magical enchantment of dispelling glyphs and wards on her lips, moving right behind.

They simply couldn’t miss this opportunity, Dahlia explained, she and Entreri sweeping up Effron in their passage.

"Why’re ye walkin’?”Athrogate asked. “back and forth and back again. If ye’re meaning to dig a trench in the floor, get me a pick!”

“There’s something afoot,” Jarlaxle answered Athrogate.

“Well, have out with it, then,” Athrogate replied, waggling his fat toes as he placed his feet comfortably on the ottoman, grinning as if that movement was directly in response to Jarlaxle’s terminology.

“It will not much concern us,” Jarlaxle replied. “Other than the trade agreement, which seems secured now.”

“Eh?” Athrogate clearly hadn’t expected that answer.

“It is an interesting time,” Jarlaxle clarified. “I envy these Netherese lords in their endeavors and grand searches. Would that I had the time to join them!”

“Eh?” an even more confused Athrogate asked.

“Indeed,” said Jarlaxle. “And I know that if we remain here any longer, I will surely be drawn into Parise Ulfbinder’s work far more than I can afford. We will take our leave this very night.”

“Eh?” Athrogate asked again, now seeming alarmed and not very happy.

“Indeed,” was all that Jarlaxle would answer.

And that very night, Jarlaxle and Athrogate rode across the rolling ground of the region that had once been the great desert of Anauroch, Jarlaxle on his nightmare, Athrogate on his hellboar. Jarlaxle rejected Athrogate’s desire to find a proper shelter, and instead camped out on the open plain. The two sat across an open fire, Athrogate cooking some fine stew, their magical mounts standing around as sentries.

“Could’ve stayed,” Athrogate mumbled. He had been silent, but clearly annoyed, throughout the ride.

“There is something afoot,” Jarlaxle replied. “Something important.”

“Yeah, yeah, and it’d keep ye too busy and all that rot ye already said.”

“You understand that Parise Ulfbinder was watching us in our room, of course,” the drow replied.

“Eh?”

“That again? Yes, I assure you,” Jarlaxle said, and he tapped his eyepatch to reinforce the strength of his claim, for that magical item was well-known to protect against telepathic or clairvoyant intrusions. “Something important is afoot. Something connected to the Spellplague and the fall of the Weave.”

“Spellplague,” Athrogate muttered. “I keep hearing that name, but I ain’t much knowing what ye’re talkin’ about.”

“As subtle as the darkness,” the drow explained. “As quiet as the shadow. For some reason, with the fall of the Weave, we are bound to the Shadowfell and her dark minions.”

“Aye, seen too many o’ the damn shadow things. So what’re ye thinking’s happening, then?”

Jarlaxle shook his head. “Our friends of Shade Enclave might be making a move at domination.”

“Of?”

“Everything?” Jarlaxle asked as much as stated. “They are spending great energy in examining the old gods. Parise asked me if Drizzt might perhaps be a Chosen of Lolth.”

“Aye, he asked me a few things about that one, as well.”

That news surprised Jarlaxle. “When did you speak-?” he started to ask.

“When yerself went to him th’other day,” Athrogate answered. “He come to me right before yerself returned, wantin’ to know about that damned ranger.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“Unicorn lady, Mylickin’ or something-”

“Mielikki,” Jarlaxle corrected.

“Aye, that’s me thinking. Heard Drizzt claim as much.”

Jarlaxle nodded, but remained intrigued by the other theory, that Lolth secretly considered Drizzt her champion of chaos, and indeed, that rogue had lived up to the billing as far as the city of Menzoberranzan was concerned.

“So ye’re thinkin’ that them shadow lords’re studying the gods and them Chosen such to find some plan o’ attack against us all?”

Jarlaxle was impressed that Athrogate had gone so quickly to that reasoning, and he reminded himself that this particular dwarf was no fool, despite his nonsensical rhyming and frivolous laughter, particularly in matters of battle strategies.

“Be interestin’ to see where we might fit into such plans of domination, eh?” the dwarf added, and Jarlaxle nodded.

Interesting indeed.

The moments became an hour, the hours became a day, and Drizzt and Effron had nowhere to go. They broke out their packs in the small square of the magical cell, each side of which was no longer than a tall man’s height.

In their packs, they had food and water for several more days, but their inability to get anything beyond the magical bars had the cell smelling rank, but soon enough, even that faded into the background of monotony, as did the low humming sound of the lightning magic infusing the bars.

After one night, or perhaps it was a day, of fitful sleep, Effron awakened to find Drizzt inspecting the bars. Icingdeath in his hand, Drizzt eyed the joints where the bars met the ceiling and the floor, and he even dared prod at one.

The shock sent him flying backward, to crash into the opposite bars, which sparked angrily and threw him aside. Sitting on the ground, his long white hair dancing wildly with the charge, Drizzt took a series of deep breaths, trying to recover his sensibilities.

“Not very bright,” said Effron. “Amusing to watch, however.”

“There must be a way out of here.”

“Must there be?” the young tiefling asked. “Draygo Quick is a master in matters of imprisonment, I assure you. His menagerie is vast. I know of none who have escaped, humanoid or monster, and that includes your wondrous panther.”

“We are not in stasis,” Drizzt countered. “Are you so quick to surrender?”

That statement had Effron narrowing his gaze in anger. “You know nothing of me,” he said in a low and threatening tone. “Were I quick to surrender, I would have done so as soon as I knew who I was-and what I was! Do you know what it is to be an outcast, Drizzt Do’Urden? Do you know what it is to not belong, anywhere?”

Drizzt broke out in laughter and Effron couldn’t begin to sort out what the drow had found so funny. The tiefling watched as Drizzt crawled over to sit right in front of him.

“We seem to have time,” Drizzt said. “Likely quite a bit of time, unless your mother and the rest can find us.”

Effron studied the drow carefully, not sure what to make of him.

“Perhaps it is time we came to understand each other, for your mother’s sake,” Drizzt explained. “Let me tell you what I know of not belonging in my own home, or, as I thought for so many years, even in my own skin.”

Drizzt told him a story then, one that began two centuries before in an Underdark city called Menzoberranzan. At first Effron scoffed at the seemingly meager attempt to create a bond-what did he need with this drow, anyway? — but soon, the young tiefling found himself scoffing less and listening more.

He marveled at the drow’s descriptions of this decadent place, Menzoberranzan, and descriptions of his family in House Do’Urden, which seemed to Effron not so unlike life at Draygo Quick’s castle. Drizzt told of the drow schools of study-martial, divine, and arcane-and the inevitable accompanying indoctrination they entailed. Effron found himself so drawn into the winding ways of Menzoberranzan, his imagination walking those shadowy streets, that it took him a long while to realize that Drizzt had stopped talking.

He looked up at the drow, staring into those lavender eyes, reflecting back at him in the dim bluish light of the glowing bars.

Drizzt told him another story, one of a surface raid where his companions had slaughtered an elf clan. He described saving a young elf child by smearing her with her own dead mother’s blood.

Clearly affected by the memory, Drizzt’s voice grew very low, so he was obviously startled, straightening quickly, when Effron angrily interjected, “Would that you had been there before Dahlia threw me from the cliff!”

An uncomfortable silence followed.

“You have not made peace with her,” Drizzt said. “I had thought-”

“More so than my comment and tone would indicate,” Effron replied, and he meant it. He lowered his gaze and shook his head and admitted, “It is hard.”

“She’s a difficult person sometimes, I know,” said Drizzt.

“She loves you.”

Effron noted Drizzt’s wince, and came to think that perhaps the feeling wasn’t mutual-which explained a lot regarding Drizzt’s acceptance of Dahlia’s dalliance with Artemis Entreri, after all.

“I was much like you when I left Menzoberranzan,” Drizzt said, quickly regaining Effron’s attention. “It took me many years to learn to trust, and some time after that to recognize the beauty and love such trust can bring.”

He launched back into his story then, completing the tale of Menzoberranzan and completing, too, the tale of his own father and Zaknafein’s ultimate victory over the miserable priestesses of Lolth. He detailed his journey through the Underdark, the road that led him, at last, to the surface world.

By that time, growling stomachs interrupted the tales, and the two went to their stocks. But Effron bade Drizzt to continue his tale through the meal, and all the way until they lay down once more for sleep-where Drizzt left Effron’s imagination on the side of a cold mountain known as Kelvin’s Cairn, with a promise to tell him of the greatest friends anyone could ever hope to know.

And they had plenty of time for Drizzt to finish his stories, as the days drifted past and no one, not Draygo Quick or his minions, nor Dahlia and the others, came to see them.

Then it was a tenday, and Effron, too, had shared his own tales of growing up in the shadow of Herzgo Alegni, and under the harsh tutelage of Lord Draygo Quick.

And they ran out of food and water, and still they sat, in their own waste, and both came to wonder if Draygo had just sent them to this place to be forgotten and to die in the near darkness and the monotonous hum.

“Our friends were likely victorious, but they haven’t found us yet,” Effron posited at one point, his voice barely a whisper, for he had no strength for anything louder. “Lord Draygo would not just leave me here to die.”

Drizzt, lying on his back, wore his skepticism on his face.

“You were too important to him,” Effron explained, echoing what he had told Drizzt on Minnow Skipper’s return journey to Luskan. “He wouldn’t …”

Those were the last words Effron spoke to Drizzt in that cell, or at least, the last Drizzt heard.

Beniago’s eyes in the city were considerable, of course, but Luskan was a large place, with many thousands of citizens and hundreds, at least, of visitors, particularly this time of year when the weather favored the sailing ships and the merchant trade was in full swing.

The reports filtering back to him over the last few days had caused concern for the Bregan D’aerthe agent. Drizzt had not been located, but other drow had-several, in fact. So many, in fact, that Beniago had come to wonder if Tiago and his Xorlarrin friends hadn’t created some minor invasion, or if Bregan D’aerthe had started to operate more openly, and without informing him.

After eliminating that second possibility simply by asking Jarlaxle, Beniago had gone searching for answers.

The first he found, at least, had proved somewhat confusing, but somewhat comforting as well.

“They are not allied with Tiago,” he reported to Jarlaxle.

“The group at the inn?”

Beniago nodded.

“The Xorlarrins, then,” Jarlaxle reasoned, for they already knew that there were a couple of males among the group, and of the arcane persuasion, it seemed.

But Beniago shook his head. “These are not Xorlarrins, nor from Menzoberranzan at all.”

“Then why are they here?”

“I walk in the guise of a human,” Beniago replied. “Would you have me go and ask them? And after I do, would you bury me properly back in Menzoberranzan?”

“Sarcasm,” Jarlaxle replied with a chuckle. “At last I have come to understand why I supported your ascent.”

“Our next move?”

“I will deal with these unknown dark elves presently,” Jarlaxle said. “I have word that Tiago is not in Gauntlgrym, nor are his ever-present companions, Ravel and Saribel Xorlarrin.”

“You have spies in Gauntlgrym now? I am impressed.” Beniago dipped a sarcastic bow.

“They are out hunting,” Jarlaxle explained.

“On the surface hunting Drizzt, then.”

“It would seem.”

Beniago bowed again, more seriously now, understanding his role.

“Tiago carries his new sword and shield, no doubt,” Jarlaxle said. “And is undisguised, I believe.”

“He is too vain to wrap such magnificent items, particularly since they sing of his station,” Beniago agreed.

“So find him.”

Beniago nodded and left to do just that.

"Tell me of your Goddess,” Draygo Quick bade Drizzt one morning as they sat for a shared breakfast. “This one you name Mielikki.”

“Are you asking me to proselytize?”

Draygo Quick shrugged. “Perhaps you will convert me. Do you think she would have me?”

Drizzt sat back and stared at Lord Draygo for a long while. “I believe that god is that which you find in your heart,” he answered finally. “Were you to find Mielikki in your heart, were her tenets to sing to you as truth, then it wouldn’t be within the power of any god to have you or reject you. Were you to come to believe those tenets, then you would be of Mielikki.”

“You act as though the gods are no more than names for that which is in your heart.”

Drizzt smiled and nodded, and went back to his food.

“You truly believe that?” Draygo Quick asked, sliding his chair back from the table.

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters!”

“Why?” Drizzt asked calmly. He realized that he was perturbing the old warlock, and he found that he quite enjoyed it.

“How can it not?” Draygo Quick replied. “Are you positing that, were I to discover these tenets of Mielikki, I would become one of her flock no matter my past?”

“If you found the truth of her tenets, then your past would be a trial of your own conscience, or a matter of justice in retribution for any crimes, but nothing to the goddess.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Then what do her tenets matter?” Drizzt asked. “If a god, any god, is deemed to represent the universal and divine truth, then once one finds and truly embraces that truth, he becomes in harmony with the god. To hold it any other way is to attribute to supposed gods petty failings like jealousy or bitterness. If that is the case, then why would I pronounce the ultimate goodness of any such being? And worse, then why would I hold forth a name embodying that which is in my heart when doing so would only reduce a truth I call divine to a level of mortal frailty?”

Draygo Quick, too, slid back his chair and leaned back, scrutinizing the drow. “Well played,” he congratulated.

“It’s not a game.”

“Because your goddess is supreme?”

“Because reason lies in harmony with truth, else truth is a lie.”

“Hmm,” Draygo Quick muttered. “It seems a shame that you focused your training on the martial arts.”

“I will take that as a compliment.”

“Oh, it was,” Draygo Quick replied. “Or a lament.”

“Are you now to ask me to proselytize the glories of the Spider Queen?” Drizzt asked. “That might prove a more interesting conversation.”

Draygo Quick laughed at the sarcasm. “Nay,” he answered. “Consider this talk over our breakfast as one last angle I pursued in order to wrest from Drizzt Do’Urden the truth of Drizzt Do’Urden. I had thought that truth a marvelous irony, and perhaps it is, but more likely, I fear, you’re as boring as your preferred goddess.”

It was Drizzt’s turn to laugh-at Draygo Quick. “As boring as the sunrise and the sunset,” Drizzt said quietly. “As boring as the movements of the moon, the planets, and the sparkles of the stars. As boring as the food chain and the place of every living creature within the interlocking hands that so bind them. As boring as birth and death, the ultimate tenet of this reason and morality I hold as Mielikki.”

“I’m a warlock-do you forget? Perhaps I do consider death a lie.”

“Because you can pervert it?”

Draygo Quick sighed and stood up. “It matters not,” he announced, “for I grow weary of this conversation. Indeed, I find that I have lost interest in all of our conversations.”

“Then let me go.”

The old warlock laughed at him, and ended abruptly with, “No.”

“Then kill me and be done with it.”

“Again, no,” Draygo Quick replied. “You’re wrong about the gods of Toril, Drizzt. They are very real, and much more than mere embodiments of this or that tenet or truth.”

“That does not change that which is in my heart.”

“Or your fealty to Mielikki?

“My fealty to the truth and justice I know, which have been named to me as Mielikki. That is not a subtle difference.”

Draygo Quick waved his hands frantically to silence Drizzt and end the conversation. “I have reason to believe the coming years will bring great events in flux,” he said. “As great as those that brought Toril and Abeir together. I believe that, and I fear it. As great as the Spellplague and the advent of shadow. And I believe that you may have a place in these coming changes.”

“I will sharpen my blades,” the drow said with unrelenting sarcasm.

“Your blades are irrelevant. But your gods are not.”

“I don’t recognize gods-”

“I know, I know,” Draygo Quick said, patting his hands once more. “You know truths, and those truths were given a name.”

Drizzt resisted the urge to poke Draygo Quick once more by reminding him that he, after all, had brought it up again.

“You tell me of the path you follow, of the signposts of truth that guide you,” Draygo Quick offered as a parting shot. “And I believe your sincerity. But I know more in matters of the world than you do, Drizzt Do’Urden, and I expect that this road you walk is a deceptive circle that will serve that which you reject more than that which you embrace.

“There, Drizzt Do’Urden, is your pathetic truth. I listened to the tales, your tale, that you told Effron in the cell when you were first captured. It comforts you to believe that your precious Mielikki carried away your wife and the halfling to some place of divine justice. Perhaps they are with her now!” He cackled wickedly and finished, “Or perhaps that was the greatest deception of all from a demon queen admired for deception.”

He paused there, on the edge of leaving, and Drizzt knew that Draygo sought a reaction from him, and for a reason beyond any simplistic personal satisfaction. The best tests of character and commitment always came in moments of great stress and the most revealing moments often came in times when a person was pushed to anger.

“I know only that which is in my heart,” Drizzt answered, evenly, refusing to take Draygo Quick’s emotional bait. “When I do not fail, that is all that I follow.”

The warlock left in a huff.

Drizzt sat in the room for a long while, chewing on that most-curious conversation. He didn’t believe that he was any kind of Chosen, or anything significant at all-to Mielikki or to the Spider Queen, not in any positive way, at least, regarding the awful Lolth.

But Lord Draygo, a shade of no small accomplishment or power, thought otherwise, and that gave Drizzt pause. Mielikki had taken Catti-brie and Regis in a profound and strange way, after all, riding their ghosts out of Mithral Hall on the back of a spectral unicorn, ending their insane misery. And it was Mielikki who had done that, and no deception of Lolth, Drizzt had to believe.

But wouldn’t Lolth be more than gleeful to so deceive him?

He shook the thought away. Had it been the doing of Lolth, then surely one or another of her minions would have revealed the ruse to Drizzt to torment him all the more. Indeed, if Drizzt was as special to Lady Lolth as Draygo Quick had insinuated, then why hadn’t the priestesses of House Xorlarrin discovered his true identity when he had been captured by them in the bowels of Gauntlgrym?

It made no sense-none of this did-to Drizzt.

But whether he accepted Draygo Quick’s premise or not seemed a moot point, for in either case, he wasn’t going anywhere any time soon, absent Draygo Quick’s blessing. There was no escape.

And even if there were, where might Drizzt escape to?

"You should just let him go,”Jarlaxle said to Lord Draygo, the two standing in the checkerboard entry hall.

Draygo Quick put on an amused expression. He had just bid Jarlaxle farewell, after informing the drow that they had nothing further to discuss.

“You will better find your answers in that case,” Jarlaxle continued. “And truly, if Drizzt is so favored by one god or another, what gain to you to keep him prisoner?”

“You presume much,” Draygo Quick replied, a phrase he had thrown Jarlaxle’s way on several occasions. Indeed, in their hours together, the Netherese lord had never admitted that Drizzt was within his castle.

But Jarlaxle knew better, for Kimmuriel had found Drizzt, and the young tiefling warlock, as well, in separate locked rooms in the western wing of the castle. Kimmuriel had found the others, statues all, as well, in a room not far from this very spot.

“If I am errant in my suspicions, then of course-” Jarlaxle started.

“And you annoy me even more,” Draygo Quick continued. “Do be on your way, Jarlaxle, before I am tempted to speak with Lord Ulfbinder and nullify our agreement. Do not come to me again unless you are invited, or unless your request to pay a visit is accepted. Now, if you’ll excuse me, or even if you will not, I have much work to do.”

Jarlaxle bowed low. Draygo Quick acknowledged him with just a curt nod, and walked off across the floor to the doorway that would lead him to his tower and private quarters. Jarlaxle watched him, then glanced back at the sweeping stairwell in the rear of the hall, climbing up twenty feet and breaking left and right behind decorated railings.

No shortage of Shadovar guards stood up there, looking back at him, including one holding Taulmaril and another, amazingly, standing at the top of the staircase with one of Drizzt’s scimitars strapped to his hip.

He is taunting me, Jarlaxle thought, and in his mind, he could sense Kimmuriel’s discomfort as clearly as if the psionicist were standing beside him and groaning. Tell me when, Jarlaxle bade as Draygo Quick exited the room.

There are guards at the door in front of you, and more outside as well, Kimmuriel silently warned.

Jarlaxle bowed to the stern-faced sentries on the balcony, conveniently sweeping off his hat as he did.

Do not kill the lord, Kimmuriel telepathically cried.

Then guide my opening salvos properly, Jarlaxle replied. His hand slipped inconspicuously inside the hat, gripping the edge of the portable hole.

“I’ll not be using your door,” Jarlaxle announced to the guards as he turned back as if to exit the castle. “I have my own gate available.”

“Just be gone, as Lord Draygo instructed,” the guard commander on the stairs, the one with Drizzt’s scimitar, shouted down.

Jarlaxle smiled and pulled forth the portable hole, set his hat back on his bald head, and flipped the spinning and elongating hole in the general direction of the guards flanking the castle exit. The two widened their eyes in unison and hustled aside in fear, but the hole plopped down on the floor short of them without any overtly ill effects, and now seemed no more than an actual hole in the castle floor.

With the obvious distraction demanding the attention of all in the grand hall, Jarlaxle slipped his hand into a pouch and produced a small cube-and reminded himself that his brother Gromph had promised him all sorts of pain if he ruined this particular device.

Draygo is safely ascending his tower, Kimmuriel imparted.

Jarlaxle was already grinning, seeing the door sentries edging over to the curious pit, unable to resist the urge to peek in. The mercenary tossed the cube toward the door where Draygo Quick had exited, and turned back to the guards on the balcony.

“ ‘With abacus, by architect, by carpenter, and mason,’ ” he recited, sweeping his arm out with dramatic flourish, and at the same time tapping his House insignia to enact a spell of levitation and lift himself conveniently and prudently from the castle floor, he reiterated and elaborated his song:

With all the tools and knowledge of structural design,

“For shelter most beloved, for love of hearth and home

“To build your private castle, to whom would you consign?”

Act now, you peacock! Kimmuriel screamed in his thoughts, which only made Jarlaxle smile all the wider.

“Might I suggest that all the tools

“The mundane numbers and physical rules

“For the truly brilliant must remain

“No more than province of common fools.”

“A castle, and warmth, a true abode,

“For when one truly seeks a home,

“The wise call upon the greater souls

“Who wile their days with a nose in a tome.”

“What foolishness is this?” the guard on the stairs demanded.

“Foolishness?” Jarlaxle echoed as if wounded. “My friend, this is no such thing.” A yelp from behind him told Jarlaxle that the door guards had reached the edge of his pit and had glanced in. “Nay, this … this is Caer Gromph!”

Caer Gromph, the last two words of the incantation, rang with a different resonance than the playful mercenary’s chanting verse, for they spoke not to the audience, but to the magical cube Jarlaxle had tossed. Upon absorbing those command words, spoken in that manner, the magic of the cube awakened. The ground beneath their feet began to tremble, though of course the floating Jarlaxle remained unperturbed above it, and Castle Draygo began to shake as Caer Gromph’s roots reached into the floor, as the cube transformed into an adamantine tower, designed to resemble the stalagmite towers of the drow Houses of Menzoberranzan.

Up it rose, and widened, crushing and splintering the floor and substructure of Castle Draygo with its roots, blowing out the wall and prodding up under the balcony as its unyielding walls stretched, its adamantine tip piercing the ceiling of the grand room nearly thirty feet above the floor. The Shadovar guards lurched and tumbled under the thunder of the magical creation. One of the pair peeked over the lip of the portable hole and tumbled in, and the other soon followed as a yochlol-like tentacle reached up and aided him in his descent, accompanied by a shriek from the guard and a hearty “bwahaha” from the supposed handmaiden.

A thing of beauty was Caer Gromph. Lined with balconies and a circular stair running its length, top-to-bottom, and edged in faerie fire accents of purple, red, and blue, it seemed as much a work of abstract art as a fortress. But a fortress it was, complete with lines of arrow slits and a magical gate inside, and the moment the construct expanded, Bregan D’aerthe archers poured through the magical portal inside and to their protected posts. Before the many Shadovar had even pinpointed the source of the earthquake, crossbow quarrels flew forth from those arrow slits, coated with that insidious drow poison.

One who was not cut down by either the shaking or the volley was the guard holding Taulmaril, and indeed, because of the way the balcony had buckled, the male shade found himself protected from the hidden drow archers. Regaining his footing, he leveled the powerful bow and took deadly aim at Jarlaxle, who floated in place hovering just above the floor below and watched the swordsman on the now-tilted stairs.

He would never see the enchanted arrow coming, the archer knew, and he pulled back and let fly, the arrow flying true to the hollow in Jarlaxle’s breast.

Drizzt waited, crouched defensively, unsure of his situation. The room had shaken violently-the drow couldn’t imagine what had caused such a rumble. His thoughts shot back to the cataclysm that had flattened the city of Neverwinter, the volcano that had thrown him from his feet with its incredible shockwave.

Was this, then, some similar natural, or primordial, disaster?

Drizzt stayed on his toes, listening, watching, knowing that he might have to spring away on an instant’s notice. Perhaps another earthquake would split the wall asunder and drop the ceiling. Would he be quick enough to get free of the crash? And perhaps such a leap and sprint would garner him his freedom beyond Draygo Quick’s crumbling walls.

But then what?

Soon after, the drow heard running outside his door, and shouts of protest, followed swiftly by grunts and groans and the all-too familiar thud of a body collapsing to the hard floor.

“An attack,” he whispered, and no sooner had the words escaped his lips than his room’s door swung in.

Drizzt tensed, ready to attack. Then he gasped, his thoughts spinning in a jumbled swirl, so much so that he tried to speak out a name, but barely made a squeak.

“Wonderful to see you again, as well,” Jarlaxle replied with a wry grin. “I have missed you, my old friend.”

“What? How?” Drizzt sputtered. Aside from all the implications of this unexpected encounter, Drizzt had thought Jarlaxle killed in Gauntlgrym. The sight of this one, another tie to a long-lost time, overwhelmed him and he simply could not contain his relief. He leaped across and wrapped Jarlaxle in a great hug.

“Ambergris,” Jarlaxle explained. “She alone escaped the castle of Draygo Quick, and she guided me back to this place.”

“But you died in Gauntlgrym!”

“I did?” Jarlaxle stepped back and looked at his arms and torso. “I fear I must disagree.”

Now Drizzt eyed him suspiciously. “This is a trick of Draygo Qui-”

Jarlaxle’s laughter cut him short. “My suspicious friend, be at ease. Recall the day of your escape from Menzoberranzan those decades ago, after you and Catti-brie dropped a stalactite through the roof of House Baenre’s chapel. Did I not show you then that I am a friend full of surprises? I will tell you all about the events of Gauntlgrym and beyond, but at another time. For now, let us leave this place.”

Drizzt mulled that over for a few moments and knew then that this was indeed Jarlaxle, the real, living Jarlaxle, come to rescue him.

“The earthquake? You caused it?”

“You will see, soon enough,” Jarlaxle promised. “But here.” He pulled a pouch from his belt and upended it, and all sorts of items-a bow and quiver, a pair of scimitars and a belt to hold them, boots, a mithral shirt, a unicorn pendant, a pair of magical bracers-tumbled forth, though few of those could have even fit in the small belt pouch had it not been powerfully enchanted. “I believe this is all of your gear, but my many companions are searching in case we have missed anything.”

Drizzt looked at the pile incredulously, but knew with only that cursory glance, of course, that something was indeed missing.

“And there is this,” Jarlaxle said, and Drizzt snapped his gaze back up, to see the drow mercenary holding forth the ring fashioned of pure ruby that Drizzt had taken from the Xorlarrin wizard. “Do you know what this is?”

“A mage’s bauble, I would expect.”

Jarlaxle nodded. “And of no small power. Keep it safe.” He flipped it to Drizzt, who caught it and slipped it upon his finger.

“And this,” Jarlaxle added, and when Drizzt looked up, the smiling mercenary held that which he wanted above all else, the onyx figurine of Guenhwyvar. He handed it over to Drizzt’s trembling hands.

“She is free now,” Jarlaxle explained. “Draygo Quick’s bondage of her to this plane is no more, and she rests comfortably in her Astral home, recovering, and awaiting your call.”

Drizzt felt his knees going weak beneath him, and he stumbled back and fell into a chair, thoroughly overwhelmed. “Thank you,” he mouthed, over and over again.

“We’re not done,” Jarlaxle explained. “We must be gone from this place.”

“Effron-” Drizzt started to reply.

“Our next stop,” Jarlaxle assured him, patting a pouch on his other hip, one similar to that which had held Drizzt’s possessions. “Gather your gear and come along. Dress as we go and be prepared for battle, for the fight might not yet be fully won.”

By the time the pair reached Effron’s room, which was guarded now by Bregan D’aerthe warriors, Drizzt had his bow in hand, and all of his gear back in place. It was all he could manage to resist blowing the whistle to summon Andahar, so badly did he wish to see his unicorn steed once more. A sense of normalcy leaped at his heart and mind, and yet, at the same time, it all seemed even more strange now, like knowing the roads that would lead to a place where you had once lived, only to discover that it is no longer your home.

He just wasn’t sure. More than anything, he wanted to bring in Guenhwyvar, wanted to find the constancy of her thick fur and muscular flank, but he knew that he should not. He recalled the last time he had seen her, so haggard and appearing near death, and decided that he would let a tenday pass, or more even, before he called to her.

He glanced up at the sound of a crash, and saw Effron’s gear lying on the floor before the obviously-startled tiefling warlock.

“You killed Draygo Quick?” Effron breathlessly asked.

“You would like that?” Jarlaxle replied.

Effron looked at him curiously for just a moment, then admitted, “No.”

Jarlaxle’s smile and nod caught Drizzt by surprise, making him suspect that the drow’s question might have been some kind of test. He let it go, however, for they obviously had more to do.

And indeed, Jarlaxle led them off immediately, back the way he had come, and soon to enter the grand entry hall. Drizzt and Effron could only stare in disbelief at the new addition of an adamantine tower, standing amidst the crumbled floor and wall as if some giant had thrown it like a spear into the structure.

“Well met again, elf!” Athrogate the dwarf roared, bounding over to properly greet Drizzt.

“You fell into the pit, in Gauntlgrym,” Drizzt said. “Both of you.”

“Aye, and taked me a year to grow back me beard, durned fire beast, bwahahaha!” Athrogate replied.

“I foresee many nights about the hearth, drink in hand,” Jarlaxle said. “But those are for another world, not this one.” He swept his arm out toward the open tower door. “Athrogate will show you to the gate.”

“Gate?” Effron asked.

“To Luskan,” Jarlaxle explained, and he pushed Drizzt and Effron along. “Keep beside them,” he instructed Athrogate. “I will be along presently.”

“Only if the elf puts in a good word for meself with that pretty young Ambergris,” Athrogate said, and he tossed an exaggerated wink Drizzt’s way.

Overwhelmed again-or still, actually-Drizzt could only nod stupidly and follow along. He put his hand on his own belt pouch then slipped it inside, needing to feel the contours of the Guenhwyvar figurine and the promise of a true friend recovered.

"Ere ye go, elf,” Athrogate said to Drizzt as they walked the streets of Luskan. He handed over a folded cloak, which Drizzt immediately identified as a drow piwafwi, a most useful garment for concealment and protection. “Jarlaxle telled me to give it to ye, and to tell ye to use it.”

“Use it?”

“Aye,” Athrogate said. “Ye got some powerful enemies huntin’ ye, I’m hearin’. So use it, and get yerself long gone from Luskan in short order.”

Drizzt stopped and turned to regard the dwarf directly. By his side, Effron, too, paused at that news.

“Where?” Effron asked.

Athrogate shrugged. “Back to Mithral Hall, mayhaps?”

Effron looked to Drizzt.

“Jarlaxle thinks I … we, should be gone from Luskan?” Drizzt asked the dwarf.

“Good advice,” Athrogate replied. “Ye met some drow in Gauntlgrym, and them drow’ve figured out who ye be.”

Drizzt sucked in his breath. “House Baenre,” he muttered.

“What does it mean?” Effron asked.

“It means that you and I should part ways here, for your own sake,” said Drizzt.

“Nah,” Athrogate interjected. “They’re knowin’ yer friends, and they’ll be findin’ yer friends if not yerself. Jarlaxle tells me to tell ye to stick together, all of ye.” As he finished, he nodded his hairy chin beyond Drizzt, who turned around to see Ambergris bounding toward him, her whole face smiling. She rushed up and threw a great hug over Drizzt, then gave one to Effron as well.

Then she embraced Athrogate, and it was apparent to the other two that these two had come to know each other quite well, and quite intimately. They broke the hug and shared a tremendous kiss, all sloppy and loud, full of fun and full of lust, as only dwarves could do.

“Ye got the caravan schedules?” Athrogate asked when they broke the embrace.

“Aye, north, south, and east, and a boat or two putting out soon enough,” Ambergris replied, looking to her two returned friends as she spoke.

“A boat might be a fine choice,” Athrogate offered with a shrug.

But Drizzt shook his head. “Caravans north?” he asked Ambergris, then added, “Icewind Dale?”

“Aye,” Ambergris said, “that’d be the place north the drivers been speakin’ of.”

Drizzt looked to Athrogate. “Jarlaxle is sure of this pursuit?”

“Get ye gone, elf,” the dwarf warned.

Drizzt nodded and tried to make sense of these sudden changes that had found him so unexpectedly. He had resigned himself to a life as Draygo Quick’s prisoner, and likely to die there in the Shadowfell, in the room that had become his own world. And now he was free, and Guenhwyvar was returned to him.

But was he really free? House Baenre might soon make him wish that he was back in Draygo Quick’s custody!

“Icewind Dale,” he decided, for somehow it seemed the right choice to him, the place where he belonged. Few knew the ways of that tundra land better than Drizzt Do’Urden, though he hadn’t been there for any length of time in a century and more. But yes, Icewind Dale. He felt a twinge of nostalgia at the thought, and felt at that moment as if he were going home.

Though Drizzt knew in his heart that no place without Catti-brie, Bruenor, Regis, and Wulfgar could ever truly be his home.

“Good ’nough, then,” said Ambergris. “Wagons for Icewind Dale rolling with the dawn, and I’m thinkin’ they’ll be glad to take along the four o’ us for guarding.”

“The three of ye,” Athrogate corrected. “I got me duties here in Luskan. But aye, they’ll take ye, and they’ll be glad of it.” He reached into a side pocket of his vest and produced several parchments, then riffled through them and handed the appropriate writ to Drizzt. “Ship Kurth’s recommending ye,” he explained with a wink. “Whether ye take a boat or a wagon, we got yer imprimatur. Now put on yer durned cloak and get ye gone!”

There really was little more to say, Drizzt realized. “Extend my gratitude to Jarlaxle,” he told the dwarf. “I had surrendered hope and he gave it back to me, and that is no small thing. Tell him that I hope our paths cross again, and not too many tendays from now. I would hear the tale of how you both survived the fall in Gauntlgrym, and I am confident that Jarlaxle has a hundred more tales to tell me of your exploits since that long-ago day.”

“A hunnerd?” Athrogate said incredulously. “Nah, elf, a thousand! A thousand thousand, I tell ye! Bwahahaha!”

For some reason, given what Drizzt knew of Jarlaxle, that didn’t sound like much of an exaggeration.

The beer, the ale, and the honey mead flowed freely in the ball-room hall of Clan Battlehammer, beneath the rocks of Kelvin’s Cairn. Dain Stokely Silverstream led the toasts, one after another, for Drizzt and the others of the drow’s band, and so ridiculously effusive were the compliments that it didn’t take long for the companions to recognize that they were as much an excuse as a reason for drinking.

Other than Drizzt, long a friend of the clan, Amber Gristle O’Maul got the bulk of the attention and praise, and truly, the female dwarf hadn’t felt so welcomed in a long, long while.

Nor had she often found herself among so many peers in matters of holding one’s liquor.

The celebration went on for many days, and both Drizzt and Dahlia were repeatedly pressed to recount their story of Gauntlgrym, describing the primordial, and most important of all, the fall of King Bruenor Battlehammer, patriarch and hero of the clan. The openness of Stokely and the others about the true identity of the dwarf who had gone by the name of Bonnego Battleaxe surprised Drizzt, and pleasantly so. The official story among the Battlehammer dwarves was that King Bruenor had died in Mithral Hall, decades before his actual demise, but this outpost of Battlehammers knew better, for they had been there, led by Thibbledorf Pwent, when King Bruenor, infused with the power of dwarf gods, had valiantly saved the day, heroically giving his own life in the process.

They knew the truth of Bonnego, and Mithral Hall almost surely knew as well-and thus, knew too that the cairn in Mithral Hall marking the grave of King Bruenor was an empty pile of rocks. But they’d never publicly admit it.

The absurdity of the open duplicity was surely not lost on Drizzt, but he found that he approved of the winks and nods, and that the Battlehammers celebrated the ultimate victory that had marked his dearest friend’s demise came as a sincere and warm comfort to him.

“So how long’re ye for the dale?” Stokely asked Drizzt a tenday later, when the two found a private moment outside the mining complex on the lower trails of Kelvin’s Cairn.

“Perhaps forever,” Drizzt answered, and he noted Stokely’s approving nod and grin. “I’ve nowhere else to go that I can fathom, for nowhere else feels so much like home.”

“Sure that meself’s one to understand that! But I’m not thinkin’ yer friends’re of like mind. Amber, likely, and that monk fellow, but not so much th’other three, mostly that broken fellow.”

“Are you so certain of that, or is it, perhaps, your own wishes to have Effron away?” Drizzt asked, and Stokely stiffened at the remark.

“Well, he is demon spawn, or devil spawn, or whatever durned tieflings be,” the dwarf said uncomfortably.

“And I am drow spawn,” Drizzt reminded.

Stokely could only shrug. “We ain’t for kickin’ him out,” he said.

Drizzt laughed. “We’ll not be staying here for long.”

“Ye just said forever.”

“Here at Kelvin’s Cairn,” Drizzt clarified. “Perhaps we’ll set up in Bryn Shander, or maybe Lonelywood would be more to our liking. Dahlia and Entreri aren’t overly comfortable with your tunnels.”

Stokely narrowed his eyes.

“Inviting as you’ve made them,” Drizzt quickly added, and he bowed to diffuse Stokely’s growing scowl. “Dahlia is an elf, after all, and Entreri-”

“Not always a friend of the Battlehammers, eh?” Stokely interjected.

“Though no longer an enemy, else I would never have brought him here. Indeed, were that the case, I would not be traveling with him.”

“Well, ye go where ye’re needin’ to go,” Stokely said. “But if ye’re staying in the dale, then ye best be visitin’ me and me boys.”

“Oftentimes,” Drizzt assured him.

The six companions moved out of Bryn Shander’s eastern gate the next morning, traveling the Eastway, a fairly smooth and straight cobblestoned road running from the main city of Ten-Towns to the easternmost of the area’s communities, aptly named Easthaven. Ambergris drove the small wagon they had rented, Afafrenfere and Effron on the bench seat at her side, while Drizzt led the way upon Andahar, with Entreri and, notably, Dahlia following astride Entreri’s nightmare.

They anticipated an easy day’s ride to Easthaven, some dozen miles away, and understood that their road would grow more perilous and difficult after that, after they forded the swollen channel that ran between the two lakes of Lac Dinneshere and Redwaters. They wouldn’t take the wagon past Easthaven, for the tundra beyond would undoubtedly prove too muddy, and Drizzt even hinted that Andahar and the nightmare might not fare well plodding around the unstable ground.

They spent only one very short night in the town of Easthaven, renting just a single room where they could store their supplies and take a short nap. They’d learned in that town that there was a ferry to take them from the town docks to the banks of Lac Dinneshere opposite the river, but alas, the captain would only offer the service before dawn.

“Too much fishin’ to get done early in the morning,” he explained.

So they were out before the dawn, the dark mound of Kelvin’s Cairn looming before them as they boarded the wide and shallow boat tied to Easthaven’s dock. The mountain shifted behind Drizzt’s left shoulder as the ferry caught the morning breeze and glided to the east. The morning sun was just beginning to peek over the flat plain stretching before them when the ferry dropped its long gangplank, and the six companions walked off the boat to the eastern bank of Lac Dinneshere.

“We’re going all the way to them mountains?” Ambergris asked, pointing to the south, to the Spine of the World range, the snow-capped peaks shining brilliantly in the dawn’s light.

“Eventually,” said Drizzt, and that surprising answer had all eyes turning his way. The drow guided those looks the other way, to the north along the large lake’s shoreline.

“The Tribe of the Elk?” Dahlia asked. “Were you not seeking them to keep your pretty dreams of Catti-brie alive?”

Her tone had Entreri rolling his eyes, Afafrenfere and Effron looking on incredulously, and Ambergris sucking in her breath as if expecting an outburst to follow.

“Aye, and they be in the foothills, so ye said,” the dwarf added, and she put a bit of jollity in her voice, something that was not lost on Drizzt.

He smiled appreciatively at the dwarf and nodded. “They will be in or around the foothills for a month or more,” he explained. “But we seek them to confirm rumors, or their place in those rumors, at least.” He looked back to the north again and nodded. “We can confirm a lot more in a day or so.”

“Yer forest is up there?”

“So he hopes,” Dahlia muttered.

Drizzt started off to the north along the shore, Ambergris and Afafrenfere moving close behind. Effron lingered, staying within earshot of Entreri and Dahlia.

“Why are we following him, then?” Entreri asked. “Let him chase his ghosts while we figure out if this place, Ten-Towns, is worth the trouble of getting here. Good enough to hide out with the drow chasing us, perhaps, but how long a wait-”

“No,” Dahlia interrupted, and she started north along the shore as well. “I want to witness this. I want to see Drizzt find his ghosts, or surrender his hope. He owes me that much at least.”

“Ah, true love,” Entreri said wistfully to Effron as he walked past the twisted warlock.

Effron stood there staring for some time, trying to figure out what was happening, before he set off in pursuit.

"Hail and well met,” Tiago Baenre said to the group of guards who had come running when the young warrior and his three dark elf companions approached Bryn Shander’s western gate. He smiled as he spoke, attempting to be disarming here, but the group surely didn’t relax in light of his tone and posture, for surely few cut a more impressive and imposing figure than Tiago Baenre. He wore black leather armor, studded with mithral and accented in swirling designs of platinum leaf. His belt was a cord of woven gold, tied at the hip and hanging down the side of his leg, like a tassel. His fine piwafwi was perfectly black, so rich in hue that it seemed as if the fabric had great depth, like peering hopelessly into a deep Underdark cavern.

But aside from the obvious fit and quality of his clothing, two other items quite clearly marked this drow as someone to be feared. Set in his belt, not in a scabbard but simply through a loop-for who would hide such magnificence as Vidrinath inside a sheath? — rested his amazing sword, its semi-translucent glassteel blade sparkling with the power of the inset diamonds, its curled hilt’s green spider eyes staring at the guards as if it served as some sentient guardian familiar to Tiago. Set on Tiago’s back, Orbcress was sized at that moment to be no more than a small buckler. Whatever its size, the shield spoke of powerful enchantments, for it seemed as if it were fashioned from a block of ice, and closer inspection revealed what seemed to be an intricate spider web encased within.

“Be at ease,” he told the guard more directly with his halting command of the common language of the surface. “I have come in search of a friend, and am no enemy to the folk of Ten-Towns.”

“Drizzt Do’Urden?” one of the guards asked, speaking more to her companions than to the visitors, but Tiago heard, and truly, no words had ever rung sweeter in his ears.

“He is here?”

“Was,” a different guard replied. “Went out to Easthaven a few days ago, and meant to move out east from there, from what I heard.”

“To where?” Tiago asked, and he tried hard not to let his disappointment show-and particularly not in the form of the anger that was suddenly bubbling up inside of him.

The guard shrugged and looked to his fellows, who similarly shook their heads or shrugged, having no answer.

“Not far, and not for long, likely,” replied the woman who had first spoken Drizzt’s name. “Might be to see the barbarian tribes, or might be to hunt. But he’s sure to return soon enough. Nowhere to go east of Ten-Towns.”

That calmed Tiago greatly. “Easthaven?” he asked as sweetly as he could manage.

“A day’s ride down the Eastway,” the woman answered.

Tiago turned to his companions, Ravel, Saribel, and Jearth, and all four wore perplexed expressions.

“To the east,” another guard explained, and he turned back and pointed down the boulevard straight into the heart of the city. “Straight through and straight out Bryn Shander’s eastern gate, to the east.”

“Night is upon us,” the woman explained. “You’ll be wanting lodging.”

Tiago shook his head. “I have arrangements elsewhere. This road, the Eastway, runs out from the other end of this city?”

“Aye,” several answered.

Tiago turned and started back the way he had come, the other three drow moving in his wake, not one of them offered a parting word, or looking back, except for Jearth, whose duty it was to keep the rear guard watch.

“Drizzt Do’Urden,” an excited Tiago whispered when they were out of earshot of the guards.

“Only days ahead of us,” Ravel agreed.

“With nowhere to run,” Saribel remarked, and all four dreamed of the glory they would soon know.

Moonlight.

A distinct beam reached down to the sleeping drow, penetrating the veil of his slumber, beckoning him back to consciousness. Lying flat on his back, Drizzt opened his eyes and focused on the pale orb high in the sky above him, peeking at him through a tangle of scraggly, leafless branches. He had slept for many hours, he realized, though it made little sense to him. For he had fallen asleep in the early evening, and judging by the moon, the night couldn’t be more than half over.

Gradually the memories came drifting to him: the sound of sweet music, the return of Artemis Entreri to the camp, the overwhelming desire to lie back down and go to sleep.

The starlight stolen by the heavy canopy above … but now that blanketing canopy was no more.

Drizzt felt the thick grass at his side. But when he propped himself up on his elbows, he realized this immediate area was the only remaining hint of the lush forest in which he had previously awakened. He blinked and shook his head, trying to make sense of the scene before him. His five companions lay around him, their rhythmic breathing, the snoring of Ambergris, showing them to be fast asleep. This one area, perhaps ten strides in diameter, seemed exactly as it had been in the “dream,” but everything else, everything beyond this tiny patch, was as it had been when first the six had come to this spot. No small, well-kept house. No pond. Exactly as it had been before his dream.

No, not exactly, for the snow lay thick on the ground immediately beyond the enchanted bedroom, but there had been no snow, nor any sign of an approaching storm, when they had come out from Easthaven.

Drizzt stood up and walked to the edge of the grassy anomaly. The moonlight was bright enough to give him a clear view as he inspected the snowpack, and from its formation, it seemed to him that the lower levels of snowpack, compacted and icy, had been in place for many tendays. He looked up at the clear sky, sorting the constellations.

Late winter?

But they had come out here from Easthaven just two days before, and in the early autumn.

Drizzt tried to sort it all out. Had it all been a dream? Only then did he realize that he still held an object in his hand, and he lifted it up before his eyes and confirmed the scrimshaw statuette of Catti-brie and Taulmaril.

“Entreri,” he whispered and nudged the assassin with his foot. The dangerous man, ever a light sleeper, awakened immediately and bolted upright, as if expecting an attack and already prepared to defend against it.

And in an instant, the assassin wore the same expression, Drizzt knew, as was upon the drow’s own face. He blinked repeatedly, face contorted with confusion, as he glanced around at the curious, impossible sight.

“The music?” Entreri asked quietly. “The forest?”

Drizzt shrugged, having no answers.

“A dream then,” said Entreri.

“If so, then a common one,” Drizzt replied, and showed him the scrimshaw. “And look around! Our encampment is in summertime, it seems, but the rest of the world is not.”

They let the others sleep, both going out and breaking branches from the scraggly trees around the area so they could start a fire if winter closed in. They noticed, too, that the camp remained warm, summertime warm, but the air outside that small cluster proved wickedly cold, and a strong wind swept across the lake from the northwest. But that wind, like the winter itself, did not penetrate the magically protected area, almost as if that small patch of summertime grass existed in a different plane.

Drizzt started a fire and began preparing breakfast just before the dawn, and the others awakened, and each wore the same expression and remembered the sweet music in the summertime forest and asked the same questions and lacked the same answers. None of this made any sense, of course.

Any thoughts they might entertain of spending more time in this enchanted spot, to see if the forest returned, were lost with the break of dawn, for the daylight broke the enchantment fully, and the wind howled in at them, blowing snow stealing their summertime beds.

Drizzt alone heard the music again, then, but it was a different song, or at least, the closing notes to the previous song.

The closing notes, the end. A sense of finality engulfed him, for he knew that he was watching this forest, Iruladoon, die away, lost to the ages forevermore.

“Across the frozen lake?” Ambergris asked, breaking the drow’s contemplation.

Drizzt considered the words, then shook his head. He wasn’t sure of the exact month, but he knew it to be late in the winter season, or early in the spring, and he had no idea how thick the ice might be.

“The same path that took us here,” he replied, and he started to the south, moving down toward the even ground of the lake bed. “To Easthaven.”

“Ye plannin’ to tell us what’s what?” Ambergris asked.

“If I had any idea what might be happening, I would,” Drizzt replied.

“Well, ye seem to be knowin’ our path,” the dwarf protested.

“I know where our path is not,” Drizzt clarified. “And it is not straight across the lake, with no cover from the wind, and where the ice might prove too thin to support us.”

The dwarf shrugged, satisfied with that, and off they went, trudging through the snowpack, pulling their inadequate cloaks tight around them. Drizzt couldn’t begin to sort out any of this mystery, but he was glad indeed that they hadn’t awakened in midwinter, or surely they would have soon perished.

They were still moving along the lake bed, their progress slow, when the sun began to dip off to their right-hand side.

“We need to find a cave or a sheltered dell,” Drizzt explained, turning from the lake and into the small foothills that lined the western shore of Lac Dinneshere. As the daylight began to fade, he moved to the top of one small hill, trying to get his bearings. To the south, he saw the lights of Easthaven, still many hours of walking away, but he noted, too, an encampment much nearer, nestled in the foothills. A barbarian tribe, he knew, and judging from the location and the estimated time of year, likely the Tribe of the Elk, Wulfgar’s people, who knew the legend of Drizzt well.

He left his five friends in a sheltered vale near to the barbarian fires and moved in alone, breathing a sigh of relief when he determined that it was indeed the Tribe of the Elk. He entered with his hands upraised, unthreatening, and introduced himself clearly as many suspicious looks came his way.

One large barbarian wearing the garb of the chieftain stepped forward and paced right up to the drow, staring down at him from barely a hand’s breadth away. “Drizzt Do’Urden?” he asked, and he seemed less than convinced. He lifted his weapon, a very familiar and magnificent warhammer, Drizzt’s way. “What ghost are you?”

“Aegis-fang,” Drizzt breathed, for surely it was indeed the warhammer Bruenor had crafted for Wulfgar a century before, and truly it did Drizzt’s heart good to see the hammer in the hands of the leader of this barbarian tribe, a proper legacy for a great man of Icewind Dale.

“No ghost,” he assured the man. He looked around, trying to find some face he might recognize, though he had not seen any of the tribe for some time. He spotted one large young man, barely more than a teenager with blond hair and sparkling blue eyes, one who immediately sparked some note of recognition in the drow.

But no, Drizzt realized. He was surely confused, and conflating this one with a barbarian he had known so many years before. The sight of Aegis-fang, the smell of Icewind Dale, the sound of the wind in his ears once more-it all seemed enough to transport Drizzt back those many decades.

“I have friends nearby, just five,” Drizzt explained. “We’re bound for Easthaven, but ill-equipped for the season. If we could spend the night …”

The chieftain looked around at his people, then back at the drow. “Drizzt Do’Urden?” he asked again, seeming unconvinced. “Drizzt Do’Urden is long lost to the world, they say, taken by the tundra many years ago.”

“If they say that, then they are wrong. I passed through Easthaven only recently, coming out to find … well, you or some other tribe, to investigate rumors of a forest on the banks of Lac Dinneshere.”

“Why would you seek us?”

“I was told that three of your tribesmen spoke of such a forest.”

“I know of no such rumors,” said the chieftain and he seemed to stiffen at the suggestion.

“I have heard this talk,” interjected one of the others, an older woman. “But not for many years.”

Drizzt glanced at her, but found his gaze drawn instead to the young man who reminded Drizzt so much of young Wulfgar, who, Drizzt suspected, might be a descendant of his friend, so strong, uncanny even, seemed the resemblance. The young man shied away from his glance.

“You are Drizzt Do’Urden?” the chieftain asked him directly.

“As surely as your hammer was forged by King Bruenor Battlehammer for Wulfgar, son of Beornegar,” Drizzt answered. “A hammer named Aegis-fang, and etched upon its mithral head with the intertwined symbols of the three dwarf gods, Moradin, Dumathoin, and Clangeddin. I was there when it was forged, and there when it was given to Wulfgar-and indeed, with Wulfgar did I travel to the lair of Ingeloakastamizilian, Icingdeath, the white dragon, and there where I came upon this very weapon.” As he finished, he drew out his diamond-edged scimitar, which he had named after the slain dragon, and held it up before the chieftain, letting the firelight catch the brilliant edge. He rolled it over in his hand to display the black adamantine handle shaped as the head of a hunting cat.

“Gather your friends,” the chieftain said, nodding in recognition of the distinctive scimitar and smiling widely, for as Drizzt had hoped, the legend of Drizzt and particularly of Wulfgar, remained strong in the oral tradition of the Tribe of the Elk. “Share our fire and our food, and we will dress you warmly for the road to Easthaven.”

Ambergris stood with her hands on her hips, looking this way and that, fully perplexed. She turned to Afafrenfere, who could only shrug.

They saw the blood, the signs of the tumble, the signs of the fight, as Entreri had explained to them when he had returned to the camp, a thoroughly shaken Dahlia in his grasp.

But Drizzt was not here.

His leg was broken, Entreri had said, and his head bleeding badly, and indeed, the three of them, the dwarf, the monk, and Effron, easily located the spot where Drizzt had last stood against Dahlia simply by the amount of blood on the ground.

But he wasn’t there, and there was no trail leading from that place, not a line of blood nor drag marks one would expect from a person with a shattered leg.

“Someone found him first,” Effron offered.

“Someone flying, then,” Afafrenfere replied, holding up his hands helplessly as he stood near the lone set of tracks in the snow leading from this place, the path of Entreri and Dahlia that had so easily led them out from their camp.

All three looked up, as if expecting a great bird or a dragon to descend upon them.

“Not hurtin’ as bad as Entreri thinked,” Ambergris surmised. “He’s a ranger, then, and with no small skill.”

“But where would he go?” asked Effron.

“To the Battlehammer dwarves,” Afafrenfere said, and the others nodded.

“We’ll go by there and see,” Ambergris declared.

“Entreri said we were to leave directly, and before the dawn,” Effron reminded them, “to the east and south and out of the dale.”

“Entreri’s wrong, then,” the monk said. “Drizzt wouldn’t leave a friend in such a state, nor will I.”

“Aye,” the dwarf agreed.

Effron glanced back toward their camp, where Dahlia and Entreri were packing up the bedrolls, and couldn’t suppress a wince. He was caught in the middle between his mother and the drow, and while he didn’t want to go against Dahlia in these tentative beginnings of their relationship, he couldn’t disagree with the reasoning of the dwarf and monk. Drizzt had been a loyal companion to him, had welcomed him after his “conversion,” and indeed had become more than a mere companion to Effron. In the Shadowfell, in those days when they sat starving side-by-side, Drizzt had been Effron’s friend.

And it wasn’t a self-serving friendship, the likes of which had dominated every aspect of Effron’s previous existence under the suffrage of Draygo Quick and Herzgo Alegni, but rather, an honest compassion, and welcome.

“To Stokely Silverstream and Clan Battlehammer, then,” the tiefling agreed. “We owe Drizzt that much at least.”

“Perhaps we’re not to part with him, then,” Afafrenfere said obstinately, and he, too, looked back toward the encampment, clearly uncomfortable with the report Artemis Entreri had delivered, clearly upset with the breaking of their band.

“Whole world’s out there,” Ambergris was quick to remind them, however. “Meself ain’t one to stay in this place, not with all roads open. And it’s been many years-who might be knowin’ what we’ll find out there?”

Afafrenfere looked to the dwarf, then back at the camp, and reluctantly nodded.

They did convince Entreri to veer northeast around the base of the mountain to the Battlehammer tunnels.

But the five would leave Icewind Dale, crossing through the Spine of the World pass and coming once more to see the skyline of Luskan a tenday later, with no word of Drizzt Do’Urden.

He had melted into the night, and they knew no more.