19

Tricks and Traps

Wulfgar found himself in a square, unadorned room of worked stone. Two torches burned low in wall sconces, revealing another door before him, across from the portcullis. He tossed aside the broken door and turned back to his friends. "Guard my back," he told Catti-brie, but she had already figured her part out and had brought her bow up level with the door across the room.

Wulfgar rubbed his hands together in preparation for his attempt to lift the portcullis. It was a massive piece indeed, but the barbarian did not think it beyond his strength. He grasped the iron, then fell back, dismayed, even before he had attempted to lift.

The bars had been greased.

"Entreri, or I'm a bearded gnome," Bruenor grumbled. "Ye put yer face in deep, boy."

"How are we to get him out?" Catti-brie asked.

Wulfgar looked back over his shoulder at the unopened door. He knew that they could accomplish nothing by standing there, and he feared that the noise of the dropping portcullis must have attracted some attention - attention that could only mean danger for his friends.

"Ye can't be thinking to go deeper," Catti-brie protested.

"What choice have I?" Wulfgar replied. "Perhaps there is a crank in there."

"More likely an assassin," Bruenor retorted, "but ye have to try it."

Catti-brie pulled her bowstring tight as Wulfgar moved to the door. He tried the handle but found it locked. He looked back to his friends and shrugged, then spun and kicked with his heavy boot. The wood shivered and split apart, revealing yet another room, this one dark.

"Get a torch," Bruenor told him.

Wulfgar hesitated. Something didn't feel right, or smell right. His sixth sense, that warrior instinct, told him he would not find the second room as empty as the first, but with no other place to go, he moved for one of the torches.

Intent on the situation within the room, Bruenor and Catti-brie did not notice the dark figure drop from the concealed cubby on the wall a short distance down the tunnel. Entreri considered the two of them for a moment. He could take them out easily, and perhaps quietly, but the assassin turned away and disappeared into the darkness.

He had already picked his target.

* * * * *

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Rassiter stooped over the two bodies lying in front of the side passage. Reverting halfway through the transformation between rat and human, they had died in the excruciating agony that only a lycanthrope could know. Just like the ones farther back down the main tunnel, these had been slashed and nipped with expert precision, and if the line of bodies didn't mark the path clearly enough, the globe of darkness hanging in the side passage certainly did. It appeared to Rassiter that his trap had worked, though the price had certainly been high.

He dropped to the lower corner of the wall and crept along, nearly tripping over still more bodies of his guild-mates as he came through the other side.

The wererat shook his head in disbelief as he moved down the tunnel, stepping over a wererat corpse every few feet. How many had the master swordsman killed?

"A drow!" Rassiter balked in sudden understanding as he turned the final bend.

Bodies of his comrades were piled deep there, but Rassiter looked beyond them. He would willingly pay such a price for the prize he saw before him, for now he had the dark warrior in hand, a drow elf for a prisoner! He would gain Pasha Pook's favor and rise above Artemis Entreri once and for all.

At the end of the passage, Drizzt leaned silently against the sundew, draped by a thousand tendrils. He still held his two scimitars, but his arms hung limply at his sides and his head drooped down, his lavender eyes closed.

The wererat moved down the passage cautiously, hoping the drow was not already dead. He inspected his waterskin, filled with vinegar, and hoped he had brought enough to dissolve the sundew's hold and free the drow. Rassiter dearly wanted this trophy alive.

Pook would appreciate the present more that way.

The wererat reached out with his sword to prod at the drow, but recoiled in pain as a dagger flashed by, slicing across his arm. He spun back around to see Artemis Entreri, his saber drawn and a murderous look in his dark eyes.

Rassiter found himself caught in his own trap; there was no other escape from the passage. He fell flat against the wall, clutching his bleeding arm, and started inching his way back up the passage.

Entreri followed the ratman's progress without a blink.

"Pook would never forgive you," Rassiter warned.

"Pook would never know," Entreri hissed back.

Terrified, Rassiter darted past the assassin, expecting a sword in his side as he passed. But Entreri cared nothing about Rassiter; his eyes had shifted down the passage to the specter of Drizzt Do'Urden, helpless and defeated.

Entreri moved to recover his jeweled dagger, undecided as to whether to cut the drow free or let him die a slow death in the sundew's clutches.

"And so you die," he whispered at length, wiping the slime from his dagger.

* * * * *

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With a torch out before him, Wulfgar gingerly stepped into the second room. Like the first, it was square and unadorned, but one side was blocked halfway across by a floor-to-ceiling screen. Wulfgar knew that danger lurked behind the screen, knew it to be a part of the trap Entreri had set out and into which he had blindly rushed.

He didn't have the time to berate himself for his lack of judgment. He positioned himself in the center of the room, still in sight of his friends, and laid the torch at his feet, clutching Aegis-fang in both hands.

But when the thing rushed out, the barbarian still found himself gawking, amazed.

Eight serpentlike heads interwove in a tantalizing dance, like the needles of frenzied women knitting at a single garment. Wulfgar saw no humor in the moment, though, for each mouth was filled with row upon row of razor-sharp teeth.

Catti-brie and Bruenor understood that Wulfgar was in trouble when they saw him shuffle back a step. They expected Entreri, or a host of soldiers, to confront him.

Then the hydra crossed the open doorway.

"Wulfgar!" Catti-brie cried in dismay, loosing an arrow. The silver bolt blasted a deep hole into a serpentine neck, and the hydra roared in pain and turned one head to consider the stinging attackers from the side.

Seven other heads struck out at Wulfgar.

* * * * *

"You disappoint me, drow," Entreri continued. "I had thought you my equal, or nearly so. The bother, and risks, I took to guide you here so we could decide whose life was the lie! To prove to you that those emotions you cling to so dearly have no place in the heart of a true warrior."

"But now I see that I have wasted my efforts," the assassin lamented. "The question has already been decided, if it ever was a question. Never would I have fallen into such a trap!" Drizzt peeked out from one half-opened eye and raised his head to meet Entreri's gaze. "Nor would I," he said, shrugging off the limp tendrils of the dead sundew. "Nor would I!"

The wound became apparent in the monster when Drizzt moved out. With a single thrust, the drow had killed the sundew.

A smile burst across Entreri's face. "Well done!" he cried, readying his blades.

"Magnificent!"

"Where is the halfling?" Drizzt snarled.

"This does not concern the halfling," Entreri replied, "or your silly toy, the panther."

Drizzt quickly sublimated the anger that twisted his face.

"Oh, they are alive," Entreri taunted, hoping to distract his enemy with anger.

"Perhaps, though perhaps not."

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Unbridled rage often aided warriors against lesser foes, but in an equal battle of skilled swordsmen, thrusts had to be measured and defenses could not be let down.

Drizzt came in with both blades thrusting. Entreri deflected them aside with his saber and countered with a jab of his dagger.

Drizzt twirled out of danger's way, coming around a full circle and slicing down with Twinkle. Entreri caught the weapon with his saber, so that the blades locked hilt to hilt and brought the combatants close.

"Did you receive my gift in Baldur's Gate?" the assassin chuckled.

Drizzt did not flinch. Regis and Guenhwyvar were out of his thoughts now. His focus was Artemis Entreri.

Only Artemis Entreri.

The assassin pressed on. "A mask?" he questioned with a wide smirk. "Put it on, drow. Pretend you are what you are not!"

Drizzt heaved suddenly, throwing Entreri back.

The assassin went with the move, just as happy to continue the battle from a distance. But when Entreri tried to catch himself, his foot hit a mud-slicked depression in the tunnel floor and he slipped to one knee.

Drizzt was on him in a flash, both scimitars wailing away. Entreri's hands moved equally fast, dagger and saber twisting and turning to parry and deflect. His head and shoulders bobbed wildly, and remarkably, he worked his foot back under him.

Drizzt knew that he had lost the advantage. Worse, the assault had left him in an awkward position with one shoulder too close to the wall. As Entreri started to rise, Drizzt jumped back.

"So easy?" Entreri asked him as they squared off again. "Do you think that I sought this fight for so long, only to die in its opening exchanges?"

"I do not figure anything where Artemis Entreri is concerned," Drizzt came back. "You are too foreign to me, assassin. I do not pretend to understand your motives, nor do I have any desire to learn of them."

"Motives?" Entreri balked. "I am a fighter - purely a fighter. I do not mix the calling of my life with lies of gentleness and love." He held the saber and dagger out before him. "These are my only friends, and with them - "

"You are nothing," Drizzt cut in. "Your life is a wasted lie."

"A lie?" Entreri shot back. "You are the one who wears the mask, drow. You are the one who must hide."

Drizzt accepted the words with a smile. Only a few days before, they might have stung him, but now, after the insight Catti-brie had given him, they rang hollowly in Drizzt's ears. "You are the lie, Entreri," he replied calmly. "You are no more than a loaded crossbow, an unfeeling weapon, that will never know life." He started walking toward the assassin, jaw firm in the knowledge of what he must do.

Entreri strode in with equal confidence.

"Come and die, drow," he spat.

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* * * * *

Wulfgar backed quickly, snapping his war hammer back and forth in front of him to parry the hydra's dizzying attacks. He knew that he couldn't hold the incessant thing off for long. He had to find a way to strike back against its offensive fury.

But against the seven snapping maws, weaving a hypnotic dance and lunging out singly or all together, Wulfgar had no time to prepare an attack sequence.

With her bow, beyond the range of the heads, Catti-brie had more success. Tears rimmed her eyes in fear for Wulfgar, but she held them back with a grim determination not to surrender. Another arrow blasted into the lone head that had turned her way, scorching a hole right between the eyes. The head shuddered and jerked back, then dropped to the floor with a thud, quite dead.

The attack, or the pain from it, seemed to paralyze the rest of the hydra for just a second, and the desperate barbarian did not miss the opportunity. He rushed forward a step and slammed Aegis-fang with all of his might into the snout of another head, snapping it back. It, too, dropped lifelessly to the floor.

"Keep it in front of the door!" Bruenor called. "And don't ye be coming through without a shout. Suren the girl'd cut ye down!"

If the hydra was a stupid beast, it at least understood hunting tactics. It turned its body at an angle to the open door, preventing any chance for Wulfgar to get by. Two heads were down, and another silver arrow, and then another, sizzled in, this time catching the bulk of the hydra's body. Wulfgar, working frantically and just finished with the furious battle against the wererats, was beginning to tire.

He missed the parry as one head came in, and powerful jaws closed around his arm, cutting gashes just below his shoulder.

The hydra attempted to shake its neck and tear the man's arm off, its usual tactic, but it had never encountered one of Wulfgar's strength before. The barbarian locked his arm tight against his side, grimacing away the pain, and held the hydra in place.

With his free hand Wulfgar grasped Aegis-fang just under the hammer's head and jabbed the butt end into the hydra's eye. The beast loosened its grip and Wulfgar tore himself free and fell back, just in time to avoid five other snapping attacks.

He could still fight, but the wound would slow him even more.

"Wulfgar!" Catti-brie cried again, hearing his groan.

"Get out o' there, boy!" Bruenor yelled.

Wulfgar was already moving. He dove toward the back wall and rolled around the hydra. The two closest heads followed his movement and dipped in to snap him up.

Wulfgar rolled right to his feet and reversed his momentum, splitting one jaw wide open with a mighty chop. Catti-brie, witnessing Wulfgar's desperate flight, put an arrow into the other head's eye.

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The hydra roared in agony and rage and spun about, now having four lifeless heads bouncing across the floor.

Wulfgar, backing across to the other side of the room, got an angle to see what lay behind the screen. "Another door!" he cried to his friends.

Catti-brie got in one more shot as the hydra crossed over to pursue Wulfgar. She and Bruenor heard the crack as the door split free of its hinges, then a sliding bang as yet another portcullis dropped behind the big man.

* * * * *

Entreri carried the latest attack, whipping his saber across at Drizzt's neck while simultaneously thrusting low with his dagger. A daring move, and if the assassin had not been so skilled with his weapons, Drizzt would surely have found an opening to drive a blade through Entreri's heart. The drow had all he could handle, though, just raising one scimitar to block the saber and lowering the other to push the dagger aside.

Entreri went through a series of similar double attack routines, and Drizzt turned him away each time, showing only one small cut on the shoulder before Entreri finally was forced to back away.

"First blood is mine," the assassin crowed. He ran a finger down the blade of his saber, pointedly showing the drow the red stain.

"Last blood counts for more," Drizzt retorted as he came in with blades leading.

The scimitars cut at the assassin from impossible angles, one dipping at a shoulder, the other rising to find the ridge under the rib cage.

Entreri, like Drizzt, foiled the attacks with perfect parries.

* * * * *

"Are ye alive, boy?" Bruenor called. The dwarf heard the renewed fighting back behind him in the corridors, to his relief, for the sound told him that Drizzt was still alive.

"I am safe," Wulfgar replied, looking around the new room he had entered. It was furnished with several chairs and one table which had been recently used, it appeared, for gambling. Wulfgar had no doubt now that he was under a building, most probably the thieves' guildhouse.

"The path is closed behind me," he called to his friends. "Find Drizzt and get back to the street. I will find my way to meet you there!"

"I'll not leave ye!" Catti-brie replied.

"I shall leave you," Wulfgar shot back.

Catti-brie glared at Bruenor. "Help him," she begged.

Bruenor's look was equally stern.

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"We have no hope in staying where we are," Wulfgar called. "Surely I could not retrace my steps, even if I managed to lift this portcullis and defeat the hydra. Go, my love, and take heart that we shall meet again!"

"Listen to the boy," Bruenor said. "Yer heart's telling ye to stay, but ye'll be doing no favors for Wulfgar if ye follow that course. Ye have to trust in him."

Grease mixed with the blood on Catti-brie's head as she leaned heavily on the bars before her. Another demolished door sounded from deeper within the complex of rooms, like a hammer driving a stake into her heart. Bruenor grabbed her elbow gently. "Come, girl," he whispered. "The drow's afoot and needin' our help. Trust in Wulfgar."

Catti-brie pulled herself away and followed Bruenor down the tunnel.

* * * * *

Drizzt pressed the attack, studying the assassin's face as he went. He had succeeding in sublimating his hatred of the assassin, heeding Catti-brie's words and remembering the priorities of the adventure. Entreri became to him just another obstacle in the path to freeing Regis. With a cool head, Drizzt focused on the business at hand, reacting to his opponent's thrusts and counters as calmly as if he were in a practice gym in Menzoberranzan.

The visage of Entreri, the man who proclaimed superiority as a fighter because of his lack of emotions, often twisted violently, bordering on explosive rage. Truly Entreri hated Drizzt. For all of the warmth and friendships the drow had found in his life, he had attained perfection with his weapons. Every time Drizzt foiled Entreri's attack routine and countered with an equally skilled sequence, he exposed the emptiness of the assassin's existence.

Drizzt recognized the boiling anger in Entreri and sought a way to exploit it. He launched another deceptive sequence but was again deterred.

Then he came in a straight double-thrust, his scimitars side by side and only an inch apart.

Entreri blew them both off to the side with a sweeping saber parry, grinning at Drizzt's apparent mistake. Growling wickedly, Entreri launched his dagger arm through the opening, toward the drow's heart.

But Drizzt had anticipated the move - had even set the assassin up. He dipped and angled his front scimitar even as the saber came in to parry it, sliding it under Entreri's blade and cutting back a reverse swipe. Entreri's dagger arm came thrusting out right in the scimitar's path, and before the assassin could poke his blade into Drizzt's heart, Drizzt's scimitar gashed into the back of his elbow.

The dagger dropped to the muck. Entreri grabbed his wounded arm, grimaced in pain, and rushed back from the battle. His eyes narrowed on Drizzt, angry and confused.

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"Your hunger blurs your ability," Drizzt said to him, taking a step forward. "We have both looked into a mirror this night. Perhaps you did not enjoy the sight it showed to you."

Entreri fumed but had no retort. "You have not won yet," he spat defiantly, but he knew that the drow had gained an overwhelming advantage.

"Perhaps not," Drizzt shrugged, "but you lost many years ago."

Entreri smiled evilly and bowed low, then took flight back through the passage.

Drizzt was quick to pursue, stopping short, though, when he reached the edge of the globe of blackness. He heard shuffling on the other side and braced himself. Too loud for Entreri, he reasoned, and he suspected that some wererat had returned.

"Are ye there, elf?" came a familiar voice.

Drizzt dashed through the blackness and side-stepped his astonished friends.

"Entreri?" he asked, hoping that the wounded assassin had not escaped unseen.

Bruenor and Catti-brie shrugged curiously and turned to follow as Drizzt ran off into the darkness.

181

20

Black and White

Wulfgar, nearly overcome by exhaustion and by the pain in his arm, leaned heavily against the smooth wall of an upward-sloping passage. He clutched the wound tightly, hoping to stem the flow of his lifeblood.

How alone he felt.

He knew that he had been right in sending his friends away. They could have done little to help him, and standing there, in the open of the main corridor right in front of the very spot Entreri had chosen for his trap, left them too vulnerable.

Wulfgar now had to move along by himself, probably into the heart of the infamous thieves' guild.

He released his grip on his biceps and examined the wound. The hydra had bitten him deeply, but he found that he could still move his arm. Gingerly he took a few swings with Aegis-fang.

He then leaned back against the wall once more, trying to figure a course of action in a cause that seemed truly hopeless.

* * * * *

Drizzt slipped from tunnel to tunnel, sometimes slowing his pace to listen for faint sounds that would aid his pursuit. He didn't really expect to hear anything; Entreri could move as silently as he. And the assassin, like Drizzt, moved along without a torch, or even a candle.

But Drizzt felt confident in the turns he took, as if he were being led along by the same reasoning that guided Entreri. He felt the assassin's presence, knew the man better than he cared to admit, and Entreri could no more escape him than he could Entreri. Their battle had begun in Mithril Hall months before - or perhaps theirs was only the present embodiment in the continuation of a greater struggle that was spawned at the dawn of time - but, for Drizzt and Entreri, two pawns in the timeless struggle of principles, this chapter of the war could not end until one claimed victory.

Drizzt noted a glimmer down to the side - not the flickering yellow of a torch, but a constant silvery stream. He moved cautiously and found an open grate, with the moonlight streaming in and highlighting the wet iron rungs of a ladder bolted into the sewer wall. Drizzt glanced around quickly - too quickly - and rushed to the ladder.

The shadows to his left exploded into motion, and Drizzt caught the telltale shine of a blade just in time to turn his back from the angle of the blow. He staggered forward, feeling a burning across his shoulder blades and then the wetness of his blood rolling down under his cloak.

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Drizzt ignored the pain, knowing that any hesitation would surely result in his death, and spun around, slamming his back into the wall and sending the curved blades of both his scimitars into a defensive spin before him.

Entreri issued no taunts this time. He came in furiously, cutting and slicing with his saber, knowing that he had to finish Drizzt before the shock of the ambush wore off. Viciousness replaced finesse, engulfing the injured assassin in a frenzy of hatred.

He leaped into Drizzt, locking one of the drow's arms under his own wounded limb and trying to use brute strength to drive his saber into his opponent's neck.

Drizzt steadied himself quickly enough to control the initial assault. He surrendered his one arm to the assassin's hold, concentrating solely on getting his free scimitar up to block the strike. The blade's hilt again locked with that of Entreri's saber, holding it motionless in midswing halfway between the combatants.

Behind their respective blades, Drizzt and Entreri eyeballed each other with open hatred, their grimaces only inches apart.

"How many crimes shall I punish you for, assassin?" Drizzt growled. Reinforced by his own proclamation, Drizzt pushed the saber back an inch, shifting the angle of his own deadly blade down more threateningly toward Entreri.

Entreri did not answer, nor did he seem alarmed at the slight shift in the blades'

momentum. A wild, exhilarated look came into his eyes, and his thin lips widened into an evil grin.

Drizzt knew that the killer had another trick to play.

Before the drow could figure the game, Entreri spat a mouthful of filthy sewer water into his lavender eyes.

* * * * *

The sound of renewed fighting led Bruenor and Catti-brie along the tunnels. They caught sight of the moonlit forms struggling just as Entreri played his wicked card.

"Drizzt!" Catti-brie shouted, knowing that she couldn't get to him, even get her bow up, in time to stop Entreri. Bruenor growled and bolted forward with only one thought on his mind: If Entreri killed Drizzt, he would cut the dog in half!

* * * * *

The sting and shock of the water broke Drizzt's concentration, and his strength, for only a split second, but he knew that even a split second was too long against Artemis Entreri. He jerked his head to the side desperately.

Entreri snapped his saber down, slicing a gash across Drizzt's forehead and crushing the drow's thumb between the twisting hilts. "I have you!" he squealed, hardly believing the sudden turn of events.

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At that horrible moment, Drizzt could not disagree with the observation, but the drow's next move came more on instinct than on any calculations, and with agility that surprised even Drizzt. In the instant of a single, tiny hop, Drizzt snapped one foot behind Entreri's ankle and tucked the other under him against the wall. He pushed away and twisted as he went. On the slick floor, Entreri had no chance to dodge the trip, and he toppled backward into the murky stream, Drizzt splashing down on top of him.

The weight of Drizzt's heavy fall jammed the crosspiece of his scimitar into Entreri's eye. Drizzt recovered from the surprise of his own movement faster than Entreri, and he did not miss the opportunity. He spun his hand over on the hilt and reversed the flow of the blade, pulling it free of Entreri's and swinging a short cut back and down, with the tip of the scimitar diving in at the assassin's ribs. In grim satisfaction, Drizzt felt it begin to cut in.

It was Entreri's turn for a move wrought of desperation. Having no time to bring his saber to bear, the assassin punched straight out, slamming Drizzt's face with the butt of his weapon. Drizzt's nose splattered onto his cheek, flashes of color exploded before his eyes, and he felt himself lifted and dropped off to the side before his scimitar could finish its work.

Entreri scrambled out of reach and pulled himself from the murky water. Drizzt, too, rolled away, struggling against the dizziness to regain his feet. When he did, he found himself facing Entreri once again, the assassin even worse off than he.

Entreri looked over the drow's shoulder, to the tunnel and the charging dwarf and to Catti-brie and her killer bow, coming up level with his face. He jumped to the side, to the iron rungs, and started up to the street.

Catti-brie followed his motion in a fluid movement, keeping him dead in her sights. No one, not even Artemis Entreri, could escape once she had him cleanly targeted.

"Get him, girl!" Bruenor yelled.

Drizzt had been so involved in the battle that he hadn't even noticed the arrival of his friends. He spun around to see Bruenor rolling in, and Catti-brie just about to loose her arrow.

"Hold!" Drizzt growled in a tone that froze Bruenor in his tracks and sent a shiver through Catti-brie's spine. They both gawked, open-mouthed, at Drizzt.

"He is mine!" the drow told them.

Entreri didn't hesitate to consider his good fortune. Out in the open streets, his streets, he might find his sanctuary.

With no retort forthcoming from either of his unnerved friends, Drizzt slapped the magical mask up over his face and was just as quick to follow.

* * * * *

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The realization that his delay might bring danger to his friends - for they had gone rushing off to search for some way to meet him back on the street - spurred Wulfgar to action. He clasped Aegis-fang tightly in the hand of his wounded arm, forcing the injured muscles to respond to his commands.

Then he thought of Drizzt, of that quality his friend possessed to completely sublimate fear in the face of impossible odds and replace it with pointed fury.

This time, it was Wulfgar's eyes that burned with an inner fire. He stood wide-legged in the corridor, his breath rasping out as low growls, and his muscles flexing and relaxing in a rhythmic pattern that honed them to fighting perfection.

The thieves' guild, the strongest house in Calimport, he thought.

A smile spread over the barbarian's face. The pain was gone now, and the weariness had flown from his bones. His smile became a heartfelt laugh as he rushed off.

Time to fight.

He took note of the ascending slope of the tunnel as he jogged along and knew that the next door he went through would be at or near street level. He soon came upon, not one, but three doors: one at the end of the tunnel and one on either side.

Wulfgar hardly slowed, figuring the direction he was traveling to be as good as any, and barreled through the door at the corridor's end, crashing into an octagonal-shaped guard room complete with four very surprised guards.

"Hey!" the one in the middle of the room blurted as Wulfgar's huge fist slammed him to the floor. The barbarian spotted another door directly across from the one he had entered, and cut a beeline for it, hoping to get through the room without a drawn-out fight.

One of the guards, a puny, dark-haired little rogue, proved the quickest. He darted to the door, inserted a key, and flipped the lock, then he turned to face Wulfgar, holding the key out before him and grinning a broken-toothed smile.

"Key," he whispered, tossing the device to one of his comrades to the side.

Wulfgar's huge hand grabbed his shirt, taking out more than a few chest hairs, and the little rogue felt his feet leave the floor.

With one arm, Wulfgar threw him through the door.

"Key," the barbarian said, stepping over the kindling-and-thief pile.

Wulfgar hadn't nearly outrun the danger, though. The next room was a great meeting hall, with dozens of chambers directly off it. Cries of alarm followed the barbarian as he sprinted through, and a well-rehearsed defense plan went into execution all around him. The human thieves, Pook's original guild members, fled for the shadows and the safety of their rooms, for they had been relieved of the responsibilities of dealing with intruders more than a year before - since Rassiter and his crew had joined the guild.

Wulfgar rushed to a short flight of stairs and leaped up them in a single bound, smashing through the door at the top. A maze of corridors and open chambers 185

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loomed before him, a treasury of artworks - statues, paintings, and tapestries - beyond any collection the barbarian had ever imagined. Wulfgar had little time to appreciate the artwork. He saw the forms chasing him. He saw them off to the side and gathering down the corridors before him to cut him off. He knew what they were; he had just been in their sewers.

He knew the smell of wererats.

* * * * *

Entreri had his feet firmly planted, ready for Drizzt as he came up through the open grate. When the drow's form began to exit onto the street, the assassin cut down viciously with his saber.

Drizzt, running up the iron rungs in perfect balance, had his hands free, however.

Expecting such a move, he had crossed his scimitars up over his head as he came through.

He caught Entreri's saber in the wedge and pushed it harmlessly aside.

Then they were faced off on the open street.

The first hints of dawn cracked over the eastern horizon, the temperature had already begun to soar, and the lazy city awakened around them.

Entreri came in with a rush, and Drizzt fought him back with wicked counters and sheer strength. The drow did not blink, his features locked in a determined grimace. Methodically he moved at the assassin, both scimitars cutting with even, solid strokes.

His left arm useless and his left eye seeing no more than a blur, Entreri knew that he could not hope to win. Drizzt saw it, too, and he picked up the tempo, slapping again and again at the slowing saber in an effort to further weary Entreri's only defense.

But as Drizzt pressed into the battle, his magical mask once again loosened and dropped from his face.

Entreri smirked, knowing that he had once again dodged certain death. He saw his out.

"Caught in a lie?" he whispered wickedly.

Drizzt understood.

"A drow!" Entreri shrieked to the multitude of people he knew to be watching the battle from nearby shadows. "From the Forest of Mir! A scout, a prelude to an army! A drow!"

Curiosity now pulled a throng from their concealments. The battle had been interesting enough before, but now the street people had to come closer to verify Entreri's claims. Gradually a circle began to form around the combatants, and Drizzt and Entreri heard the ring of swords coming free of scabbards.

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"Good-bye, Drizzt Do'Urden," Entreri whispered under the growing tumult and the cries of "Drow!" springing up throughout the area. Drizzt could not deny the effectiveness of the assassin's ploy. He glanced around nervously, expecting an attack from behind at any moment.

Entreri had the distraction he needed. As Drizzt looked to the side again, he broke away and stumbled off through the crowd, shouting, "Kill the drow! Kill him!"

Drizzt swung around, blades ready, as the anxious mob cautiously moved in.

Catti-brie and Bruenor came up onto the street then and saw at once what had happened, and what was about to happen. Bruenor rushed to Drizzt's side and Catti-brie notched an arrow.

"Back away!" the dwarf grumbled. "Suren there be no evil here, except for the one ye fools just let get away!"

One man approached boldly, his spear leading the way.

A silver explosion caught the weapon's shaft, severing its tip. Horrified, the man dropped the broken spear and looked to the side, to where Catti-brie had already notched another arrow.

"Get away," she growled at him. "Leave the elf in peace, or me next shot won't be lookin' for yer weapon!"

The man backed away, and the crowd seemed to lose its heart for the fight as quickly as it had found it. None of them ever really wanted to tangle with a drow elf anyway, and they were more than happy now to believe the dwarf's words, that this one wasn't evil.

Then a commotion down the lane turned all heads. Two of the guards posing as bums outside the thieves' guild pulled open the door - to the sound of fighting - and charged inside, slamming the door behind them.

"Wulfgar!" shouted Bruenor, roaring down the road. Catti-brie started to follow but turned back to consider Drizzt.

The drow stood as if torn, looking one way, to the guild, and the other, to where the assassin had run. He had Entreri beaten; the injured man could not possibly stand up against him.

How could he just let Entreri go?

"Yer friends need ye," Catti-brie reminded him. "If not for Regis, then for Wulfgar."

Drizzt shook his head in self-reproach. How could he even have considered abandoning his friends at that critical moment? He rushed past Catti-brie, chasing Bruenor down the road.

* * * * *

Above Rogues Circle, the dawn's light had already found Pasha Pook's lavish chambers. LaValle moved cautiously toward the curtain at the side of his room and 187

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pushed it aside. Even he, a practiced wizard, would not dare to approach the device of unspeakable evil before the sun had risen, the Taros Hoop, his most powerful - and frightening - device.

He grasped its iron frame and slid it out of the tiny closet. On its stand and rollers, it was taller than he, with the worked hoop, large enough for a man to walk through, fully a foot off the floor. Pook had remarked that it was similar to the hoop the trainer of his great cats had used.

But any lion jumping through the Taros Hoop would hardly land safely on the other side.

LaValle turned the hoop to the side and faced it fully, examining the symmetrical spider web that filled its interior. So fragile the webbing appeared, but LaValle knew the strength in its strands, a magical power that transcended the very planes of existence.

LaValle slipped the instrument's trigger, a thin scepter capped with an enormous black pearl, into his belt and wheeled the Taros Hoop out into the central room of the level. He wished that he had the time to test his plan, for he certainly didn't want to disappoint his master again, but the sun was nearly full in the eastern sky and Pook would not be pleased with any delay.

Still in his nightshirt, Pook dragged himself out into the central chamber at LaValle's call. The guildmaster's eyes lit up at the sight of the Taros Hoop, which he, not a wizard and not understanding the dangers involved with such an item, thought a simply wonderful toy.

LaValle, holding the scepter in one hand and the onyx figurine of Guenhwyvar in the other, stood before the device. "Hold this," he said to Pook, tossing him the statuette. "We can get the cat later; I'll not need the beast for the task at hand."

Pook absently dropped the statuette into a pocket.

"I have scoured the planes of existence," the wizard explained. "I knew the cat to be of the Astral Plane, but I wasn't certain that the halfling would remain there - if he could find his way out. And, of course, the Astral Plane is very extensive."

"Enough!" ordered Pook. "Be on with it! What have you to show me?"

"Only this," LaValle replied, waving the scepter in front of the Taros Hoop. The webbing tingled with power and lit up in tiny flashes of lightning. Gradually the light became more constant, filling in the area between strands, and the image of the webbing disappeared into the background of cloudy blue.

LaValle spoke a command word, and the hoop focused in on a bright, well-lit grayness, a scene in the Astral Plane. There sat Regis, leaning comfortably against the limned image of a tree, a starlight sketch of an oak, with his hands tucked behind his head and his feet crossed out in front of him.

Pook shook the grogginess from his head. "Get him," he coughed. "How can we get him?"

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Before LaValle could answer, the door burst open and Rassiter stumbled into the room. "Fighting, Pook," he gasped, out of breath, "in the lower levels. A giant barbarian."

"You promised me that you would handle it," Pook growled at him.

"The assassin's friends -" Rassiter began, but Pook had no time for explanations.

Not now.

"Shut the door," he said to Rassiter.

Rassiter quieted and did as he was told. Pook was going to be angry enough with him when he learned of the disaster in the sewers - no need to press the point.

The guildmaster turned back to LaValle, this time not asking. "Get him," he said.

LaValle chanted softly and waved the scepter in front of the Taros Hoop again, then he reached through the glassy curtain separating the planes and caught the sleepy Regis by the hair.

"Guenhwyvar!" Regis managed to shout, but then LaValle tugged him through the portal and he tumbled on the floor, rolling right up to the feet of Pasha Pook.

"Uh... hello," he stammered, looking up at Pook apologetically. "Can we talk about this?"

Pook kicked him hard in the ribs and planted the butt of his walking stick on Regis's chest. "You will cry out for death a thousand times before I release you from this world," the guildmaster promised.

Regis did not doubt a word of it.

189

21

Where No Sun Shines

Wulfgar dodged and ducked, slipping into the midst of lines of statues or behind heavy tapestries as he went. There were simply too many of the wererats, closing in all about him, for him to even hope to escape.

He passed one corridor and saw a group of three ratmen rushing down toward him. Feigning terror, the barbarian sprinted beyond the opening, then pulled up short and put his back tight against the corner. When the ratmen rushed into the room, Wulfgar smashed them down with quick chops of Aegis-fang.

He then retraced their steps back down the passage, hoping that he might confuse the rest of his pursuers.

He came into a wide room with rows of chairs and a high ceiling - a stage area for Pook's private showings by performing troupes. A massive chandelier, thousands of candles burning within its sconces, hung above the center of the room, and marble pillars, delicately carved into the likenesses of famed heroes and exotic monsters, lined the walls. Again Wulfgar had no time to admire the decorations. He noticed only one feature in the chamber: a short staircase along one side that led up to a balcony.

Ratmen poured in from the room's numerous entrances. Wulfgar looked back over his shoulder, down the passage, but saw that it, too, was blocked. He shrugged and sprinted up the stairs, figuring that that route would at least allow him to fight off his attackers in a line rather than a crowd.

Two wererats rushed up right on his heels, but when Wulfgar made the landing and turned on them, they realized their disadvantage. The barbarian would have towered over them on even footing. Now, three steps up, his knees ran level with their eyes.

It wasn't such a bad position for offense; the wererats could poke at Wulfgar's unprotected legs. But when Aegis-fang descended in that tremendous arc, neither of the rat men could possibly slow its momentum. And on the stairs, they didn't have much room to move out of the way.

The war hammer cracked onto the skull of one ratman with enough force to break his ankles, and the other, blanching under his brown fur, leaped over the side of the staircase.

Wulfgar nearly laughed aloud. Then he saw the spears being readied.

He rushed into the balcony for the cover the railings and the chairs might provide and hoping for another exit. The wererats flooded onto the staircase in pursuit.

Wulfgar found no other doors. He shook his head, realizing that he was trapped, and slapped Aegis-fang to the ready.

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What was it that Drizzt had told him about luck? That a true warrior always seemed to find the proper route - the one open path that casual observers might consider lucky?

Now Wulfgar did laugh out loud. He had killed a dragon once by dislodging an icicle above its back. He wondered what a huge chandelier with a thousand burning candles might do to a room full of ratmen.

"Tempus!" the barbarian roared to his battle god, seeking a measure of deity-inspired luck to aid his way - Drizzt did not know everything, after all! He launched Aegis-fang with all his strength, breaking into a dead run after the war hammer.

Aegis-fang twirled across the room as precisely as every throw Wulfgar had ever made with it. It blasted through the the chandelier's supports, bringing a fair measure of the ceiling down with it. Ratmen scrambled and dove off to the side as the massive ball of crystal and flames exploded onto the floor.

Wulfgar, still in stride, planted a foot atop the balcony railing and leaped.

* * * * *

Bruenor growled and brought his axe up over his head, meaning to chop the door to the guildhouse down in a single stroke, but as the dwarf pounded through the final strides to the place, an arrow whistled over his shoulder, scorching a hole around the latch, and the door swung free.

Unable to break his momentum, Bruenor barreled through the opening and tumbled head over heels down the stairs inside, taking the two surprised guards along with him.

Dazed, Bruenor pulled himself to his knees and looked back up the stairs, to see Drizzt sprinting down five steps at a stride and Catti-brie just cresting the top to follow.

"Durn ye, girl!" the dwarf roared. "I told ye to tell me when ye was meaning to do that!"

"No time," Drizzt interrupted. He leaped the last seven steps - and clear over the kneeling dwarf - to intercept two wererats coming in on Bruenor's back.

Bruenor scooped up his helmet, plopped it back in place, and turned to join the fun, but the two wererats were long dead before the dwarf ever got back to his feet, and Drizzt was rushing away to the sounds of a larger battle farther in the complex.

Bruenor offered Catti-brie his arm as she came charging past, so that he could profit from her momentum in the pursuit.

* * * * *

Wulfgar's huge legs brought him clear over the mess of the chandelier, and he tucked his head under his arms as he dropped into a group of ratmen, knocking them every 191

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which way. Dazed but still coherent enough to mark his direction, Wulfgar barreled through a door and stumbled into another wide chamber. An open door loomed before him, leading into yet another maze of chambers and corridors.

But Wulfgar couldn't hope to get there with a score of wererats blocking his way.

He slipped over to the side of the room and put his back to a wall.

Thinking him unarmed, the ratmen rushed in, shrieking in glee. Then Aegis-fang magically returned to Wulfgar's hands and he swatted the first two aside. He looked around, searching for another dose of luck.

Not this time.

Wererats hissed at him from every side, nipping with their ravaging teeth. They didn't need Rassiter to explain the power such a giant - a wererat giant - could add to their guild.

The barbarian suddenly felt naked in his sleeveless tunic as each bite narrowly missed its mark. Wulfgar had heard enough legends concerning such creatures to understand the horrid implications of a lycanthrope's bite, and he fought with every ounce of strength he could muster.

Even with his adrenaline pumping in his terror, the big man had spent half the night in battle and had suffered many wounds, most notably the gash on his arm from the hydra, opened again by his leap from the balcony. His swipes were beginning to slow.

Normally Wulfgar would have fought to the end with a song on his lips as he racked up a pile of dead enemies at his feet and smiled in the knowledge that he had died a true warrior. But, now, knowing his cause to be hopeless, with implications much worse than death, he scanned the room for a certain method of killing himself.

Escape was impossible. Victory even more so. Wulfgar's only thought and desire at that moment was to be spared the indignity and anguish of lycanthropy.

Then Drizzt entered the room.

He came in on the back of the wererat ranks like a sudden tornado dropping onto an unprepared village. His scimitars flashed blood red in seconds, and patches of fur flew about the room. Those few ratmen in his path who managed to escape put their tails between themselves and the killer drow and fled from the room.

One wererat turned and got his sword up to parry, but Drizzt lopped off his arm at the elbow and drove a second blade through the beast's chest. Then the drow was beside his giant friend, and his appearance gave Wulfgar renewed courage and strength. Wulfgar grunted in exhilaration, catching one attacker full in the chest with Aegis-fang and driving the wretched beast right through a wall. The ratman lay, quite dead, on his back in one room, but his legs, looped at the knees through the room's newest window, twitched grotesquely for his comrades to witness.

The ratmen glanced nervously at each other for support and came at the two warriors tentatively.

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If their morale was sinking, it flew away altogether a moment later, when the roaring dwarf pounded into the room, led by a volley of silver-streaking arrows that cut the rats down with unerring accuracy. For the ratmen, it was the sewer scenario all over again, where they had lost more than two-dozen of their comrades earlier that same night. They had no heart to face the four friends united, and those that could flee, did.

Those that remained had a difficult choice: hammer, blade, axe, or arrow.

* * * * *

Pook sat back in his great chair, watching the destruction through an image in the Taros Hoop. It did not pain the guildmaster to see wererats dying - a few well-placed bites out in the streets could replenish the supply of the wretched things - but Pook knew that the heroes cutting their way through his guild would eventually wind up in his face.

Regis, held off the ground by the seat of his pants by one of Pook's hill giant eunuchs, watched, too. The mere sight of Bruenor, whom Regis had believed killed in Mithril Hall, brought tears to the halfling's eyes. And the thought that his dearest friends had traveled the breadth of the Realms to rescue him and were now fighting for his sake as mightily as he had ever witnessed, overwhelmed him. All of them bore wounds, particularly Catti-brie and Drizzt, but all of them ignored the pain as they tore into Pook's militia. Watching them felling foes with every cut and thrust, Regis had little doubt that they would win through to get to him.

Then the halfling looked to the side of the Taros Hoop, where LaValle stood, unconcerned, his arms crossed over his chest and his pearl-tipped scepter tapping on one shoulder.

"Your followers do not fare so well, Rassiter," the guildmaster remarked. "One might even note their cowardice."

Rassiter shuffled uneasily from one foot to the other.

"Is it that you cannot hold to your part of our arrangement?"

"My guild fights mighty enemies this night," Rassiter stammered. "They... we have not been able... the fight is not yet lost!"

"Perhaps you should see to it that your rats fare better," Pook said calmly, and Rassiter did not miss the command's - the threat's - tone. He bowed low and rushed out of the chamber, slamming the door behind him.

Even the demanding guildmaster could not hold the wererats wholly responsible for the disaster at hand.

"Magnificent," he muttered as Drizzt fought off two simultaneous thrusts and sliced down both wererats with individual, yet mystically intertwined counters. "Never have I seen such grace with a blade." He paused for a moment to consider that thought. "Perhaps once."

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Surprised at the revelation, Pook looked at LaValle, who nodded in accord.

"Entreri," LaValle inferred. "The resemblance is unmistakable. We know now why the assassin coaxed this group to the south."

"To fight the drow?" Pook mused. "At last, a challenge for the man without peer?"

"So it would seem."

"But, where is he, then? Why has he not made his appearance?"

"Perhaps he already has," LaValle replied grimly.

Pook paused to consider the words for a long moment; they were too unconscionable for him to believe. "Entreri beaten?" He gasped. "Entreri dead?"

The words rang like sweet music to Regis, who had watched the rivalry between the assassin and Drizzt with horror from its inception. All along, Regis had suspected that those two would fall into a duel that only one could survive. And all along, the halfling had feared for his drow friend.

The thought of Entreri gone put a new perspective on the battle at hand for Pasha Pook. Suddenly he needed Rassiter and his cohorts again; suddenly the carnage he watched through the Taros Hoop had a more direct impact on his guild's immediate power.

He leaped from his seat and ambled over to the evil device. "We must stop this,"

he snarled at LaValle. "Send them away to a dark place!"

The wizard grinned wickedly and shuffled off to retrieve a huge book, bound in black leather. Opening it to a marked page, LaValle walked before the Taros Hoop and began the initial chantings of an ominous incantation.

* * * * *

Bruenor was first out of the room, searching for a likely route to Regis - and for more wererats to chop down. He stormed along a short corridor and kicked open a door, finding, not wererats, but two very surprised human thieves. Holding a measure of mercy in his battle-hardened heart - after all, he was the invader - Bruenor held back his twitching axe hand and shield-slammed the two rogues to the ground. He then rushed back out into the corridor and fell in line with the rest of his friends.

"Watch yer right!" Catti-brie cried out, noting some movement behind a tapestry near the front of the line, beside Wulfgar. The barbarian pulled the heavy tapestry down with a single heave, revealing a tiny man, barely more than a halfling, crouched and poised to spring. Exposed, the little thief quickly lost his heart for the fight and just shrugged apologetically as Wulfgar slapped his puny dagger away.

Wulfgar caught him up by the back of the neck, hoisting the little man into the air and putting his nose to the thief's. "What manner are you?" Wulfgar scowled. "Man or rat?"

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"Not a rat!" the terrified thief shrieked. He spat on the ground to emphasize his point. "Not a rat!"

"Regis?" Wulfgar demanded. "You know of him?"

The thief nodded eagerly.

"Where can I find Regis?" Wulfgar roared, his bellow draining the blood from the thief's face.

"Up," the little man squeaked. "Pook's rooms. All the way up." Acting solely on instinct for survival, and having no real intentions to do anything but get away from the monstrous barbarian, the thief slipped one hand to a hidden dagger tucked in the back of his belt.

Bad judgment.

Drizzt slapped a scimitar against the thief's arm, exposing the move to Wulfgar.

Wulfgar used the little man to open the next door.

Again the chase was on. Wererats darted in and out of the shadows to the sides of the four companions, but few stood to face them. Those that did wound up in their path more often by accident than design!

More doors splintered and more rooms emptied, and a few minutes later, a stairway came into view. Broad and lavishly carpeted, with ornate banisters of shining hardwood, it could only be the ascent to the chambers of Pasha Pook.

Bruenor roared in glee and charged on. Wulfgar and Catti-brie eagerly followed.

Drizzt hesitated and looked around, suddenly fearful.

Drow elves were magical creatures by nature, and Drizzt now sensed a strange and dangerous tingle, the beginnings of a spell aimed at him. He saw the walls and floor around him waver suddenly, as if they had become somehow less tangible.

Then he understood. He had traveled the Planes before, as companion to Guenhwyvar, his magical cat, and he knew now that someone, or something, was pulling him from his place on the Prime Material Plane. He looked ahead to see Bruenor and the others now similarly confused.

"Join hands!" the drow cried, rushing to get to his friends before the dweomer banished them all.

* * * * *

In hopeless horror, Regis watched his friends huddle together. Then the scene in the Taros hoop shifted from the lower levels of the guildhouse to a darker place, a place of smoke and shadows, of ghouls and demons.

A place where no sun shined.

"No!" the halfling cried out, realizing the wizard's intent. LaValle paid him no heed, and Pook only snickered at him. Seconds later, Regis saw his friends in their huddle again, this time in the swirling smoke of the dark plane.

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Pook leaned heavily on his walking stick and laughed. "How I love to foil hopes!"

he said to his wizard. "Once more you prove your inestimable worth to me, my precious LaValle!"

Regis watched as his friends turned back to back in a pitiful attempt at defense.

Already, dark shapes swooped about them or hovered over them beings of great power and great evil.

Regis dropped his eyes, unable to watch.

"Oh, do not look away, little thief," Pook laughed at him. "Watch their deaths and be happy for them, for I assure you that the pain they are about to suffer will not compare to the torments I have planned for you."

Regis, hating the man and hating himself for putting his friends in such a predicament, snapped a vile glare at Pook. They had come for him. They had crossed the world for him. They had battled Artemis Entreri and a host of were-rats, and most probably many other adversaries. All of it had been for him.

"Damn you," Regis spat, suddenly no longer afraid. He swung himself down and bit the eunuch hard on the inner thigh. The giant shrieked in pain and loosened his grip, dropping Regis to the floor.

The halfling hit the ground running. He crossed before Pook, kicking out the walking stick the guildmaster was using for support, while very deftly slipping a hand into Pook's pocket to retrieve a certain statuette. He then went on to LaValle.

The wizard had more time to react and had already begun a quick spell when Regis came at him, but the halfling proved the quicker. He leaped up, putting two fingers into La Valle's eyes, disrupting the spell, and sending the wizard stumbling backward.

As the wizard struggled to hold his balance, Regis jerked the pearl-tipped scepter away and ran up to the front of the Taros Hoop. He glanced around at the room a final time, wondering if he might find an easier way.

Pook dominated the vision. His face blood red and locked into a grimace, the guildmaster had recovered from the attack and now twirled his walking stick as a weapon, which Regis knew from experience to be deadly.

"Please give me this one," Regis whispered to whatever god might be listening.

He gritted his teeth and ducked his head, lurching forward and letting the scepter lead him into the Taros Hoop.

196

22

The Rift

Smoke, emanating from the very ground they stood upon, wafted by drearily and rolled around their feet. By the angle of its roll, the way it fell away below them only a foot or two off to either side, only to rise again in another cloud, the friends saw that they were on a narrow ledge, a bridge across some endless chasm.

Similar bridges, none more than a few feet wide, criss-crossed above and below them, and for what they could see, those were the only walkways in the entire plane.

No solid land mass showed itself in any direction, only the twisting, spiraling bridges.

The friends' movements were slow, dreamlike, fighting against the weight of the air. The place itself, a dim, oppressive world of foul smells and anguished cries, exuded evil. Vile, misshapen monsters swooped over their heads and around the gloomy emptiness, crying out in glee at the unexpected appearance of such tasty morsels. The four friends, so indomitable against the perils of their own world, found themselves without courage.

"The Nine Hells?" Catti-brie whispered in a tiny voice, afraid that her words might shatter the temporary inaction of the multitudes gathering in the ever-present shadows.

"Hades," Drizzt guessed, more schooled in the known planes. "The domain of Chaos." Though he was standing right beside his friends, his words rang out as distant, as had Catti-brie's.

Bruenor started to growl out a retort, but his voice faded away when he looked at Catti-brie and Wulfgar, his children, or so he considered them. Now there was nothing he could possibly do to help them.

Wulfgar looked to Drizzt for answers. "How can we escape?" he pressed bluntly.

"Is there a door? A window back to our own world?"

Drizzt shook his head. He wanted to reassure them, to keep their spirits up in the face of the danger. This time, though, the drow had no answers for them. He could see no escape, no hope.

A bat-winged creature, doglike, but with a face grotesquely and unmistakably human, dove at Wulfgar, putting a filthy talon in line with the barbarian's shoulder.

"Drop!" Catti-brie yelled to Wulfgar at the last possible second. The barbarian didn't question the command. He fell to his face, and the creature missed its mark. It swerved around in a loop and hung in midair for a split second as it made a tight turn, then it came back again, hungry for living flesh.

Catti-brie was ready for it this time, though, and as it neared the group, she loosed an arrow. It reached out lazily toward the monster, cutting a dull gray streak instead of the usual silver. The magic arrow blasted in with the customary strength, 197

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though, scorching a wicked hole in the dog fur and unbalancing the monster's flight. It rolled in just above them, trying to right itself, and Bruenor chopped it down, dropping it in a spiraling descent into the gloom below them.

The friends could hardly be pleased with the minor victory. A hundred similar beasts flitted in and out of their vision above, below, and to the sides, many of them ten times larger than the one Bruenor and Catti-brie had felled.

"We can't be staying here," Bruenor muttered. "Where do we go, elf?"

Drizzt would have been just as content staying where they were, but he knew that marching out a course would comfort his friends and give them at least some feeling that they were making progress against their dilemma. Only the drow understood the depth of the horror they now faced. Only Drizzt knew that wherever they might travel on the dark plane, the situation would prove to be the same: no escape.

"This way," he said after a moment of mock contemplation. "If there is a door, I sense that it is this way." He took a step down the narrow bridge but stopped abruptly as the smoke heaved and swirled before him.

Then it rose in front of him.

Humanoid in shape, it was tall and slender, with a bulbous, froglike head and long, three-fingered hands that ended in claws. Taller even than Wulfgar, it towered over Drizzt. "Chaos, dark elf?" it lisped in a guttural, foreign voice. "Hades?"

Twinkle glowed eagerly in Drizzt's hand, but his other blade, the one forged with ice-magic, nearly leaped out at the monster.

"Err, you do," the creature croaked.

Bruenor rushed up beside Drizzt. "Get yerself back, demon," he growled.

"Not demon," said Drizzt, understanding the creature's references and remembering more of the many lessons he had been taught about the Planes during his years in the city of drow. "Demodand."

Bruenor looked up at him curiously.

"And not Hades," Drizzt explained. "Tarterus."

"Good, dark elf," croaked the demodand. "Knowing of the lower planes are your people."

"Then you understand of the power of my people," Drizzt bluffed, "and you know how we repay even demon lords who cross us."

The demodand laughed, if that's what it was, for it sounded more like the dying gurgle of a drowning man. "Dead drow avenge do not. Far from home are you!" It reached a lazy hand toward Drizzt.

Bruenor rushed by his friend. "Moradin!" he cried, and he swiped at the demodand with his mithril axe. The demodand was faster than the dwarf had expected, though, and it easily dodged the blow, countering with a clubbing blow of its arm that sent Bruenor skidding on his face farther down the bridge.

The demodand reached down at the passing dwarf with its wicked claws.

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Twinkle cut the hand in half before it ever reached Bruenor.

The demodand turned on Drizzt in amazement. "Hurt me you did, dark elf," it croaked, though no hint of pain rang out in its voice, "but better you must do!" It snapped the wounded hand out at Drizzt, and as he reflexively dodged it, the demodand sent its second hand out to finish the task of the first, cutting a triple line of gashes down the sprawled dwarf's shoulder.

"Blast and bebother!" Bruenor roared, getting back to his knees. "Ye filthy, slime-covered..." he grumbled, launching a second unsuccessful attack.

Behind Drizzt, Catti-brie bobbed and ducked, trying to get a clear shot with Taulmaril. Beside her, Wulfgar stood at the ready, having no room on the narrow bridge to move up beside the drow.

Drizzt moved sluggishly, his scimitars awkwardly twisting through an uneven sequence. Perhaps it was because of the weariness of a long night of fighting or the unusual weight of the air in the plane, but Catti-brie, looking on curiously, had never seen the drow so lackluster in his efforts.

Still on his knees farther down the bridge, Bruenor swiped more with frustration than his customary lust for battle.

Catti-brie understood. It wasn't weariness or the heavy air. Hopelessness had befallen the friends.

She looked to Wulfgar, to beg him to intervene, but the sight of the barbarian beside her gave her no comfort. His wounded arm hung limply at his side, and the heavy head of Aegis-fang dipped below the low-riding smoke. How many more battles could he fight? How many of these wretched demodand would he be able to put down before he met his end?

And what end would a victory bring in a plane of unending battles? she wondered.

Drizzt felt the despair most keenly. For all the trials of his hard life, the drow had held faith for ultimate justice. He had believed, though he never dared to admit it, that his unyielding faith in his precious principles would bring him the reward he deserved.

Now, there was this, a struggle that could only end in death, where one victory brought only more conflict.

"Damn ye all!" Catti-brie cried. She didn't have a safe shot, but she fired anyway.

Her arrow razed a line of blood across Drizzt's arm, but then exploded into the demodand, rocking it back and giving Bruenor the chance to scramble back to Drizzt's side.

"Have ye lost yer fight, then?" Catti-brie scolded them.

"Easy, girl," Bruenor replied somberly, cutting low at the demodand's knees. The creature hopped over the blade gingerly and started another attack, which Drizzt deflected.

"Easy yerself, Bruenor Battlehammer!" Catti-brie shouted. "Ye've the gall to call yerself king o' yer clan. Ha! Garumn'd be tossin' in his grave to see ye fightin' so!"

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Bruenor turned a wicked glare on Catti-brie, his throat too choked for him to spit out a reply.

Drizzt tried to smile. He knew what the young woman, that wonderful young woman, was up to. His lavender eyes lit up with the inner fire. "Go to Wulfgar," he told Bruenor. "Secure our backs and watch for attacks from above."

Drizzt eyed the demodand, who had noted his sudden change in demeanor.

"Come, farastu," the drow said evenly, remembering the name given to that particular type of creature. "Farastu," he taunted, "the least of the demodand kind.

Come and feel the cut of a drow's blade."

Bruenor backed away from Drizzt, almost laughing. Part of him wanted to say,

"What's the point?" but a bigger part, the side of him that Catti-brie had awakened with her biting references to his proud history, had a different message to speak.

"Come on and fight, then!" he roared into the shadows of the endless chasm. "We've enough for the whole damn world of ye!"

In seconds, Drizzt was fully in command. His movements remained slowed with the heaviness of the plane, but they were no less magnificent. He feinted and cut, sliced and parried, in harmony to offset every move the demodand made.

Instinctively Wulfgar and Bruenor started in to help him, but stopped to watch the display.

Catti-brie turned her gaze outward, plucking off a bowshot whenever a foul form flew from the hanging smoke. She took a quick bead on one body as it dropped from the darkness high above.

She pulled Taulmaril away at the last second in absolute shock.

"Regis!" she cried.

The halfling ended his half-speed plummet, plopping with a soft puff into the smoke of a second bridge a dozen yards across the emptiness from his friends. He stood and managed to hold his ground against a wave of dizziness and disorientation.

"Regis!" Catti-brie cried again. "How did ye get yerself here?"

"I saw you in that awful hoop," the halfling explained. "Thought you might need my help."

"Bah! More that ye got yerself thrown here, Rumblebelly," Bruenor replied.

"Good to see you, too," Regis shot back, "but this time you are mistaken. I came of my own choice." He held the pearltipped scepter up for them to see. "To bring you this."

Truly Bruenor had been glad to see his little friend even before Regis had refuted his suspicion. He admitted his error by bowing low to Regis, his beard dipping under the smoky swirl.

Another demodand rose up, this one across the way, on the same bridge as Regis. The halfling showed his friends the scepter again. "Catch it," he begged, winding up to throw. "This is your only chance to get out of here!" He mustered up his nerve - there would only be one chance - and heaved the scepter as powerfully as 200

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he could. It spun end over end, tantalizingly slow in its journey toward the three sets of outstretched hands.

It could not cut a swift enough path through the heavy air, though, and it lost its speed short of the bridge.

"No!" Bruenor cried, seeing their hopes falling away.

Catti-brie growled in denial, unhitching her laden belt and dropping Taulmaril in a single movement.

She dove for the scepter.

Bruenor dropped flat to his chest desperately to grab her ankles, but she was too far out. A contented look came over her as she caught the scepter. She twisted about in midair and threw it back to Bruenor's waiting hands, then she plummeted from sight without a word of complaint.

* * * * *

LaValle studied the mirror with trembling hands. The image of the friends and the plane of Tarterus had faded into a dark blur when Regis had jumped through with the scepter. But that was the least of the wizard's concerns now. A thin crack, detectable only at close inspection, slowly etched its way down the center of the Taros Hoop.

LaValle spun on Pook, charging his master and grabbing at the walking stick.

Too surprised to fight the wizard off, Pook surrendered the cane and stepped back curiously.

LaValle rushed back to the mirror. "We must destroy its magic!" he screamed and he smashed the cane into the glassy image.

The wooden stick, sundered by the device's power, splintered in his hands, and LaValle was thrown across the room. "Break it! Break it!" he begged Pook, his voice a pitiful whine. "Get the halfling back!" Pook retorted, still more concerned with Regis and the statuette.

"You do not understand!" LaValle cried. "The halfling has the scepter! The portal cannot be closed from the other side!"

Pook's expression shifted from curiosity to concern as the gravity of his wizard's fears descended over him. "My dear LaValle," he began calmly, "are you saying that we have an open door to Tarterus in my living quarters?"

LaValle nodded meekly.

"Break it! Break it!" Pook screamed at the eunuchs standing beside him. "Heed the wizard's words! Smash that infernal hoop to pieces!"

Pook picked up the broken end of his walking stick, the silver-shod, meticulously crafted cane he had been given personally by the Pasha of Calimshan.

The morning sun was still low in the eastern sky, but already the guildmaster knew that it would not be a good day.

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* * * * *

Drizzt, trembling with anguish and anger, roared toward the demodand, his every thrust aimed at a critical spot. The creature, agile and experienced, dodged the initial assault, but it could not stay the enraged drow. Twinkle cut a blocking arm off at the elbow, and the other blade dove into the demodand's heart. Drizzt felt a surge of power run through his arm as his scimitar sucked the life-force out of the wretched creature, but the drow contained the strength, burying it within his own rage, and held on stubbornly.

When the thing lay lifeless, Drizzt turned to his companions.

"I did not..." Regis stammered from across the chasm. "She... I..."

Neither Bruenor nor Wulfgar could answer him. They stood frozen, staring into the empty darkness below.

"Run!" Drizzt called, seeing a demodand closing in behind the halfling. "We shall get to you!"

Regis tore his eyes from the chasm and surveyed the situation. "No need!" he shouted back. He pulled out the statuette and held it up for Drizzt to see.

"Guenhwyvar will get me out of here, or perhaps the cat could aid -"

"No!" Drizzt cut him short, knowing what he was about to suggest. "Summon the panther and be gone!"

"We will meet again in a better place," Regis offered, his voice breaking in sniffles. He placed the statuette down before him and called out softly.

Drizzt took the scepter from Bruenor and put a comforting hand on his friend's shoulder. He then held the magic item to his chest, attuning his thoughts to its magical emanations.

His guess was confirmed; the scepter was indeed the key to the portal back to their own plane, a gate that Drizzt sensed was still open. He scooped up Taulmaril and Catti-brie's belt. "Come," he told his two friends, still staring at the darkness. He pushed them along the bridge, gently but firmly.

* * * * *

Guenhwyvar sensed the presence of Drizzt Do'Urden as soon as it came into the plane of Tarterus. The great cat moved with hesitancy when Regis asked it to take him away, but the halfling now possessed the statuette and Guenhwyvar had always known Regis as a friend. Soon Regis found himself in the swirling tunnel of blackness, drifting toward the distant light that marked Guenhwyvar's home plane.

Then the halfling knew his error.

The onyx statuette, the link to Guenhwyvar, still lay on the smoky bridge in Tarterus.

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Regis turned himself about, struggling against the pull of the planar tunnel's currents. He saw the darkness at the back end of the tunnel and could guess the risks of reaching through. He could not leave the statuette, not only for fear of losing his magnificent feline friend, but in revulsion at the thought of some foul beast of the lower planes gaining control over Guenhwyvar. Bravely he poked his three-fingered hand through the closing portal.

All of his senses jumbled. Overwhelming bursts of signals and images from two planes rushed at him in a nauseating wave. He blocked them away, using his hand as a focal point and concentrating all of his thoughts and energies on the sensations of that hand.

Then his hand dropped upon something hard, something vividly tangible. It resisted his tug, as though it were not meant to pass through such a gate.

Regis was fully stretched now, his feet held straight down the tunnel by the incessant pull, and his hand stubbornly latched to the statuette he would not leave behind. With a final heave, with all the strength the little halfling had ever summoned -

and just a tiny bit more he pulled the statuette through the gate.

The smooth ride of the planar tunnel transformed into a nightmarish bounce and skip, with Regis hurtling head over heels and deflecting off the walls, which twisted suddenly, as if to deny him passage. Through it all, Regis clutched at only one thought: keep the statuette in his grasp.

He felt he would surely, die. He could not survive the beating, the dizzying swirl.

Then it died away as abruptly as it had begun, and Regis, still holding the statuette, found himself sitting beside Guenhwyvar with his back to an astral tree. He blinked and looked around, hardly believing his fortune.

"Do not worry," he told the panther. "Your master and the others will get back to their world." He looked down at the statuette, his only link to the Prime Material Plane. "But how shall I?"

While Regis floundered in despair, Guenhwyvar reacted differently. The panther spun about in a complete circuit and roared mightily into the starry vastness of the plane. Regis watched the cat's actions in amazement as Guenhwyvar leaped about and roared again, then bounded away into the astral nothingness.

Regis, more confused than ever, looked down at the statuette. One thought, one hope, overrode all others at that moment.

Guenhwyvar knew something.

* * * * *

With Drizzt taking a ferocious lead, the three friends charged along, cutting down everything that dared to rise in their path. Bruenor and Wulfgar fought wildly, thinking that the drow was leading them to Catti-brie.

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The bridge wound along a curving and rising route, and when Bruenor realized its ascending grade, he grew concerned. He was about to protest, to remind the drow that Catti-brie had fallen below them, but when he looked back, he saw that the area they had started from was clearly above them. Bruenor was a dwarf accustomed to lightless tunnels, and he could detect the slightest grade unerringly. They were going up, more steeply now than before, and the area they had left continued to rise above them.

"How, elf?" he cried. "Up and up we go, but down by what me eyes be telling me!"

Drizzt looked back and quickly understood what Bruenor was talking about. The drow didn't have time for philosophical inquiries; he was merely following the emanations of the scepter that would surely lead them to a gate. Drizzt did pause, though, to consider one possible quirk of the directionless, and apparently circular, plane.

Another demodand rose up before them, but Wulfgar swatted it from the bridge before it could even ready a strike. Blind rage drove the barbarian now, a third burst of adrenaline that denied his wounds and his weariness. He paused every few steps to look about, searching for something vile to hit, then he rushed back to the front, beside Drizzt, to get the first whack at anything trying to block their path.

The swirling smoke parted before them suddenly, and they faced a lighted image, blurry, but clearly of their own plane.

"The gate," Drizzt said. "The scepter has kept it open. Bruenor will pass through first."

Bruenor looked at Drizzt in blank amazement. "Leave?" he asked breathlessly.

"How can ye ask me to leave, elf? Me girl's here."

"She is gone, my friend," Drizzt said softly.

"Bah!" Bruenor snorted, though it sounded as more of a sniffle. "Don't ye be so quick to make such a claim!"

Drizzt looked upon him with sincere sympathy, but refused to relinquish the point or change his course.

"And if she were gone, I'd stay as well," Bruenor proclaimed, "to find her body and carry it from this eternal hell!"

Drizzt grabbed the dwarf by the shoulders and squared up to face him. "Go, Bruenor, back to where we all belong," he said. "Do not diminish the sacrifice that Catti-brie has made for us. Do not steal the meaning from her fall."

"How can ye ask me to leave?" Bruenor said with a sniffle that he did not mask.

Wetness glistened the edges of his gray eyes. "How can ye -"

"Think not of what has passed!" Drizzt said sharply. "Beyond that gate is the wizard that sent us here, the wizard that sent Catti-brie here!"

It was all Bruenor Battlehammer needed to hear. Fire replaced the tears in his eyes, and with a roar of anger he dove through the portal, his axe leading the way.

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"Now -" Drizzt began, but Wulfgar cut him short.

"You go, Drizzt," the barbarian replied. "Avenge Catti-brie and Regis. Finish the quest we undertook together. For myself, there will be no rest. My emptiness will not fade."

"She is gone," Drizzt said again.

Wulfgar nodded. "As am I," he said quietly.

Drizzt searched for some way to refute the argument, but truly Wulfgar's grief seemed too profound for him to ever recover.

Then Wulfgar's gaze shot up, and his mouth gaped in horrified - and elated -

disbelief. Drizzt spun about, not as surprised, but still overwhelmed, by the sight before him.

Catti-brie fell limply and slowly from the dark sky above them.

It was a circular plane.

Wulfgar and Drizzt leaned together for support. They could not determine if Catti-brie was alive or dead. She was wounded gravely, at the least, and even as they watched, a winged demodand swooped down and grabbed at her leg with its huge talons.

Before a conscious thought had time to register in Wulfgar's mind, Drizzt had Taulmaril bent and sent a silver arrow into flight. It thundered into the side of the demodand's head just as the creature took hold of the young woman, blasting the thing from life.

"Go!" Wulfgar yelled at Drizzt, taking one stride. "I see my quest now! I know what I must do!"

Drizzt had other ideas. He slipped a foot through Wulfgar's legs and dropped in a spin, driving his other leg into the back of the barbarian's knees and tripping Wulfgar down to the side, toward the portal. Wulfgar understood the drow's intentions at once, and he scrambled to regain his balance.

Again Drizzt was the quicker. The point of a scimitar nicked in under Wulfgar's cheekbone, keeping him moving in the desired direction. As he neared the portal, just when Drizzt expected him to try some desperate maneuver, the drow drove a boot under his shoulder and kicked him hard.

Betrayed, Wulfgar tumbled into Pasha Pook's central chamber. He ignored his surroundings, grabbed at the Taros Hoop and shook it with all his strength.

"Traitor!" he yelled. "Never will I forget this, cursed drow!"

"Take your place!" Drizzt yelled back at him from across the planes. "Only Wulfgar has the strength to hold the gate open and secure. Only Wulfgar! Hold it, son of Beornegar. If you care for Drizzt Do'Urden, and if ever you loved Catti-brie, hold the gate!"

Drizzt could only pray that he had appealed to the small part of rationale accessible in the enraged barbarian. The Drow turned from the portal, tucking the 205

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scepter into his belt and slinging Taulmaril over his shoulder. Catti-brie was below him now, still falling, still unmoving.

Drizzt drew out both his scimitars. How long would it take him to pull Catti-brie to a bridge and find his way back to the portal? he wondered. Or would he, too, be caught in an endless, doomed, fall?

And how long could Wulfgar hold the gate open?

He brushed away the questions. He had no time to speculate on their answers.

The fires gleamed in his lavender eyes, Twinkle glowed in one hand, and he felt the urgings of his other blade, pleading for a demodand's heart to bite.

With all the courage that had marked Drizzt Do'Urden's existence coursing through his veins, and with all the fury of his perceptions of injustice focused on the fate of that beautiful and broken woman falling endlessly in a hopeless void, he dove into the gloom.

206

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Bruenor had come into Pook's chambers cursing and swinging, and by the time his initial momentum had worn away, he was far across the room from the Taros Hoop and from the two hill giant eunuchs that Pook had on guard. The guildmaster was closest to the raging dwarf, looking at him more in curiosity than terror.

Bruenor paid Pook no mind whatsoever. He looked beyond the plump man, to a robed form sitting against a wall: the wizard who had banished Catti-brie to Tarterus.

Recognizing the murderous hate in the red-bearded dwarf's eyes, LaValle rolled to his feet and scrambled through the door to his own room. His racing heart calmed when he heard the click of the door behind him, for it was a magic doorway with several holding and warding spells in place. He was safe - or so he thought.

Often wizards were blinded by their own considerable strength to other - less sophisticated, perhaps, but equally strong - forms of power. LaValle could not know the boiling cauldron that was Bruenor Battlehammer, and could not anticipate the brutality of the dwarf's rage.

His surprise was complete when a mithril axe, like a bolt of his own lightning, sundered his magically barred door to kindling and the wild dwarf stormed in.

* * * * *

Wulfgar, oblivious to the surroundings and wanting only to return to Tarterus and Catti-brie, came through the Taros Hoop just as Bruenor exited the room. Drizzt's call from across the planes, though, begging him to hold the portal open, could not be ignored. However the barbarian felt at that moment, for Catti-brie or Drizzt, he could not deny that his place was in guarding the mirror.

Still, the image of Catti-brie falling through the eternal gloom of that horrid place burned at his heart, and he wanted to spring right back through the Taros Hoop to rush to her aid.

Before the barbarian could decide whether to follow his heart or his thoughts, a huge fist slammed into the side of his head, dropping him to the floor. He flopped facedown between the tree trunk legs of two of Pook's hill giants. It was a difficult way to enter a fight, but Wulfgar's rage was every bit as intense as Bruenor's.

The giants tried to drop their heavy feet on Wulfgar, but he was too agile for such a clumsy maneuver. He sprang up between them and slammed one square in the face with a huge fist. The giant stared blankly at Wulfgar for a long moment, disbelieving that a human could deliver such a punch, then it hopped backward weirdly and dropped limply to the floor.

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Wulfgar spun on the other, shattering its nose with the butt end of Aegis-fang.

The giant clutched its face in both hands and reeled. For it, the fight was already over.

Wulfgar couldn't take the time to ask. He kicked the giant in the chest, launching it halfway across the room.

"Now, there is only me," came a voice. Wulfgar looked across the room to the huge chair that served as the guildmaster's throne, and to Pasha Pook, standing behind it.

Pook reached down behind the chair and pulled out a neatly concealed heavy crossbow, loaded and ready. "And I may be fat like those two," Pook chuckled, "but I am not stupid." He leveled the crossbow on the back of the chair.

Wulfgar glanced around. He was caught, fully, with no chance to dodge away.

But maybe he didn't have to.

Wulfgar firmed his jaw and puffed out his chest. "Right here, then," he said without flinching, tapping his finger over his heart. "Shoot me down." He cast a glance over his shoulder, to where the image in the Taros Hoop now showed the shadows of gathering demodands. "And you defend the entrance to the plane of Tarterus."

Pook eased his finger off the trigger.

If Wulfgar's point had made an impression, it was driven home a second later when the clawed hand of a demodand reached through the portal and latched onto Wulfgar's shoulder.

* * * * *

Drizzt moved as if swimming in his descent through the gloom, the pumping actions gaining him ground on Catti-brie. He was vulnerable, though, and he knew it.

So did a winged demodand watching him fall by.

The wretched creature hopped off its perch as soon as Drizzt had passed, flapping its wings at an awkward angle to gain momentum in its dive. Soon it was overtaking the drow, and it reached out its razor-sharp claws to tear at him as it passed.

Drizzt noticed the beast at the last moment. He twisted over wildly and spun about, trying to get out of the diving thing's path and struggling to ready his scimitars.

He should have had no chance. It was the demodand's environment, and it was a winged creature, more at home in flight than on the ground.

But Drizzt Do'Urden never played the odds.

The demodand strafed past, its wicked talons ripping yet another tear in Drizzt's fine cloak. Twinkle, as steady as ever even in midfall, lopped off one of the creature's wings. The demodand fluttered helplessly to the side and continued down in a tumble.

It had no heart left for battle against the drow elf, and no wing left to catch him anyway.

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Drizzt paid it no heed. His goal was in reach.

He caught Catti-brie in his arms, locking her tightly against his chest. She was cold, he noted grimly, but he knew that he had too far to go to even think about that.

He wasn't certain if the planar gate was still open, and he had no idea of how he could stop his eternal fall.

A solution came to him in the form of another winged demodand, one that cut an intercepting path at him and Catti-brie. The creature did not mean to attack yet, Drizzt could see; its route seemed more of a flyby, where it would pass under them to better inspect its foe.

Drizzt didn't let the chance go. As the creature passed under, the dark elf snapped himself downward, extending to his limit with one blade-wielding hand. Not aimed to kill, the scimitar found its mark, digging into the creature's backside. The demodand shrieked and dove away, pulling free of the blade.

Its momentum, though, had tugged Drizzt and Catti-brie along, angling their descent enough to line them up with one of the intersecting smoky bridges.

Drizzt twisted and turned to keep them in line, holding out his cloak with his free arm to catch a draft, or tucking it in tightly to lessen the drag. At the last moment, he spun himself under Catti-brie to shield her from the impact. With a heavy thud and a whoosh of smoke, they landed.

Drizzt crawled out and forced himself to his knees, trying to find his breath.

Catti-brie lay below him, pale and torn, a dozen wounds visible, most vividly the gash from the wererat's quarrel. Blood soaked much of her clothing and matted her hair, but Drizzt's heart did not drop at the gruesome sight, for he had noted one other event when they had plopped down.

Catti-brie had groaned.

* * * * *

LaValle scrambled behind his little table. "Keep you back, dwarf," he warned. "I am a wizard of great powers."

Bruenor's terror was not apparent. He drove his axe through the table, and a blinding explosion of smoke and sparks filled the room.

When LaValle recovered his sight a moment later, he found himself facing Bruenor, the dwarf's hands and beard trailing wisps of gray smoke, the little table broken flat, and his crystal ball severed clean in half.

"That the best ye got?" Bruenor asked.

LaValle couldn't get any words past the lump in his throat.

Bruenor wanted to cut him down, to drive his axe right between the man's bushy eyebrows, but it was Catti-brie, his beautiful daughter, who truly abhorred killing with all of her heart, who he meant to avenge. Bruenor would not dishonor her memory.

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"Drats!" he groaned, slamming his forehead into LaValle's face. The wizard thumped up against the wall and stayed there, dazed and motionless, until Bruenor closed a hand on his chest, tearing out a few hairs for good measure, and threw him facedown on the floor. "Me friends might be needin' yer help, wizard," the dwarf growled, "so crawl! And know in yer heart that if ye make one turn I don't be liking, me axe'll cleave yer head down the middle!"

In his semiconscious state, LaValle hardly heard the words, but he fathomed the dwarf's meaning well enough and forced himself to his hands and knees.

* * * * *

Wulfgar braced his feet against the iron stand of the Taros Hoop and locked his own iron grip onto the demodand's elbow, matching the creature's mighty pull. In his other hand the barbarian held Aegis-fang ready, not wanting to swing through the planar portal but hoping for something more vulnerable than an arm to come through to his world.

The demodand's claws cut deep wounds in his shoulder, filthy wounds that would be long in healing, but Wulfgar shrugged away the pain. Drizzt had told him to hold the gate if ever he had loved Catti-brie.

He would hold the gate.

Another second passed and Wulfgar saw his hand slipping dangerously close to the portal. He could match the demodand's strength, but the demodand's power was magical, not physical, and Wulfgar would grow weary long before his foe.

Another inch, and his hand would cross through to Tarterus, where other hungry demodands no doubt waited.

A memory flashed in Wulfgar's mind, the final image of Catti-brie, torn and falling. "No!" he growled, and he forced his hand back, pulling savagely until he and the demodand were back to where they had started. Then Wulfgar dropped his shoulder suddenly, tugging the demodand down instead of out.

The gamble worked. The demodand lost its momentum altogether and stumbled down, its head poking through the Taros Hoop and into the Prime Material Plane for just a second, long enough for Aegis-fang to shatter its skull.

Wulfgar jumped back a step and slapped his war hammer into both hands.

Another demodand started through, but the barbarian blasted it back into Tarterus with a powerful swipe.

Pook watched it all from behind his throne, his crossbow still aimed to kill. Even the guildmaster found himself mesmerized by the sheer strength of the giant man, and when one of his eunuchs recovered and stood up, Pook waved it away from Wulfgar, not wanting to disturb the spectacle before him.

A shuffle off to the side forced him to look away, though, as LaValle came crawling out of his room, the axe-wielding dwarf walking right behind.

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Bruenor saw at once the perilous predicament that Wulfgar faced, and knew that the wizard would only complicate things. He grabbed LaValle by the hair and pulled him up to his knees, walking around to face the man.

"Good day for sleepin'," the dwarf commented, and he slammed his forehead again into the wizard's, knocking LaValle into blackness. He heard a click behind him as the wizard slumped, and he reflexively swung his shield between himself and the noise, just in time to catch Pook's crossbow quarrel. The wicked dart drove a hole through the foaming mug standard and barely missed Bruenor's arm as it poked through the other side.

Bruenor peeked over the rim of his treasured shield, stared at the bolt, and then looked dangerously at Pook. "Ye shouldn't be hurtin' me shield!" he growled, and he started forward.

The hill giant was quick to intercept.

Wulfgar caught the action out of the corner of his eye, and would have loved to join in especially with Pook busy reloading his heavy crossbow - but the barbarian had troubles of his own. A winged demodand swooped through the gate in a sudden rush and flashed by Wulfgar.

Fine-tuned reflexes saved the barbarian, for he snapped a hand out and caught the demodand by a leg. The monster's momentum staggered Wulfgar backward, but he managed to hold on. He slammed the demodand down beside him and drove it into the floor with a single chop of his war hammer.

Several arms reached through the Taros Hoop, shoulders and heads poked through, and Wulfgar, swinging Aegis-fang furiously, had all he could handle simply keeping the wretched things at bay.

* * * * *

Drizzt ran along the smoky bridge, Catti-brie draped limply over one shoulder. He met no further resistance for many minutes and understood why when he at last reached the planar gate.

Huddled around it, and blocking his passage, was a score of demodands.

The drow, dismayed, dropped to one knee and laid Catti-brie gently beside him.

He considered putting Taulmaril to use, but realized that if he missed, if an arrow somehow found its way through the horde, it would pass through the gate and into the room where Wulfgar stood. He couldn't take that chance.

"So close," he whispered helplessly, looking down to Catti-brie. He held her tightly in his arms and brushed a slender hand across her face. How cool she seemed.

Drizzt leaned low over her, meaning only to discern the rhythm of her breathing, but he found himself too close to her, and before he even realized his actions, his lips were to hers in a tender kiss. Catti-brie stirred but did not open her eyes.

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Her movement brought new courage to Drizzt. "Too close," he muttered grimly,

"and you'll not die in this foul place!" He scooped Catti-brie up over his shoulder, wrapping his cloak tightly around her to secure her to him. Then he took up his scimitars in tight grips, rubbing his sensitive fingers across the intricate craftings of their hilts, becoming one with his weapons, making them the killing extensions of his black arms. He took a deep breath and set his visage.

He charged, as silently as only a drow elf could be, at the back of the wretched horde.

* * * * *

Regis rose uncomfortably as the black silhouettes of hunting cats darted in and out of the starlight surrounding him. They did not seem to threaten him - not yet - but they were gathering. He knew beyond doubt that he was their focal point.

Then Guenhwyvar bounded up and stood before him, the great cat's head level with his own.

"You know something," Regis said, reading the excitement in the panther's dark eyes. Regis held up the statuette and examined it, noting the cat's tenseness at the sight of the figurine.

"We can get back with this," the halfling said in sudden revelation. "This is the key to the journey, and with it, we can go wherever we desire!" He glanced around and considered some very interesting possibilities. "All of us?"

If cats could smile, Guenhwyvar did.

212

24

Interplanar Goo

"Outa me way, ye overstuffed bag o' blubber!" Bruenor roared.

The giant eunuch planted its legs wide apart and reached down at the dwarf with a huge hand - which Bruenor promptly bit.

"They never listen," he grumbled. He stooped low and dashed between the giant's legs, then straightened quickly, the single horn on his helmet putting the poor eunuch up on its toes. For the second time that day, its eyes crossed and it tumbled, this time its hands low to hold its newest wound.

A killing rage evident in his gray eyes, Bruenor turned back to Pook. The guildmaster, though, seemed unconcerned, and in truth, the dwarf hardly noticed the man. He concentrated instead on the crossbow again, which was loaded and leveled at him.

* * * * *

Drizzt's single emotion as he came in was anger, anger at the pain the wretched creatures of Tarterus had caused to Catti-brie.

His goal, too, was singular: the little patch of light in the gloom, the planar gate back to his own world.

His scimitars led the way, and Drizzt grinned at the thought of tearing through the demodand flesh, but the drow slowed as he came in, his anger tempered by the sight of his goal. He could whirl in on the demodand horde in an attacking frenzy and probably manage to slip through the gate, but could Catti-brie take the punishment the mighty creatures would surely inflict before Drizzt got her through?

The drow saw another way. As he inched in on the back of the demodand line, he reached out wide to either side with his blades, tapping the back two demodands on their outside shoulders. As the creatures reflexively turned to look back over their shoulders, Drizzt darted between them.

The drow's blades became a whirring prow, nicking away the hands of any other demodands that tried to catch him. He felt a tug on Catti-brie and whirled quickly, his rage doubled. He couldn't see his target, but he knew that he had connected on something when he brought Twinkle down and heard a demodand shriek.

A heavy arm clubbed him on the side of the head, a blow that should have felled him, but Drizzt spun back again and saw the light of the gate only a few feet ahead -

and the silhouette of a single demodand, standing to block his passage.

The dark tunnel of demodand flesh began to close about him. Another large arm wheeled in, but Drizzt was able to duck beneath its arc.

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If the demodand delayed him a single second, he would be caught and slaughtered.

Again it was instinct, faster than thought, that carried Drizzt through. He slapped the demodand's arms wide apart with his scimitars and ducked his head, slamming into the demodand's chest, his momentum forcing the creature backward through the gate.

* * * * *

The dark head and shoulders came through into Wulfgar's sights, and he hammered Aegis-fang home. The mighty blow snapped the demodand's backbone and jolted Drizzt, who pushed from the other side.

The demodand fell dead, half in and half out of the Taros Hoop, and the stunned drow rolled limply to the side and out, tumbling into Pook's room, beneath Catti-brie.

Wulfgar paled at the sight and hesitated, but Drizzt, realizing that more creatures would soon rush through, managed to lift his weary head from the floor. "Close the gate," he gasped.

Wulfgar had already discerned that he could not shatter the glassy image within the hoop striking at it only sent his war hammer's head into Tarterus. Wulfgar started to drop Aegis-fang to his side.

Then he noticed the action across the room.

* * * * *

"Are you quick enough with that shield?" Pook teased, wiggling the crossbow.

Intent on the weapon, Bruenor hadn't even noticed Drizzt and Catti-brie's grand entrance. "So ye've one shot to kill me, dog," he spat back, unafraid of death, "and one alone." He took a determined step forward.

Pook shrugged. He was an expert marksman, and his crossbow was as enchanted as any weapon in the Realms. One shot would be enough.

But he never got it off.

A twirling war hammer exploded into the throne, knocking the huge chair over into the guildmaster and sending him sprawling heavily into the wall.

Bruenor turned with a grim smile to thank his barbarian friend, but his smile washed away and the words died in his throat when he saw Drizzt - and Catti-brie! -

lying beside the Taros Hoop.

The dwarf stood as if turned to stone, his eyes not blinking, his lungs not drawing breath. The strength went out of his legs, and he fell to his knees. He dropped his axe and shield and scrambled, on all fours, to his daughter's side.

Wulfgar clasped the iron edges of the Taros Hoop in his hands and tried to force them together. His entire upper body flushed red, and the veins and sinewy muscles 214

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stood out like iron cords in his huge arms. But if there was any movement in the gate, it was slight.

A demodand arm reached through the portal to prevent the closing, but the sight of it only spurred Wulfgar on. He roared to Tempus and pushed with all his strength, driving his hands together, bending the edges of hoop in to meet each other.

The glassy image bowed with the planar shift, and the demodand's arm dropped to the floor, cleanly severed. Likewise, the demodand that lay dead at Wulfgar's feet, with half its body still inside the gate, twitched and turned.

Wulfgar averted his eyes at the horrid spectacle of a winged demodand caught within the warping planar tunnel, bent and bowed until its skin began to rip apart.

The magic of the Taros Hoop was strong, and Wulfgar, for all of his strength, could not hope to bend the thing far enough to complete the job. He had the gate warped and blocked, but for how long? When he tired, and the Taros Hoop returned to its normal shape, the portal would open once again. Stubbornly the barbarian roared and drove on, turning his head to the side in anticipation of the shattering of the glassy surface.

* * * * *

How pale she seemed, her lips almost blue and her skin dry and chill. Her wounds were vicious, Bruenor saw, but the dwarf sensed that the most telling injury was neither cut nor bruise. Rather, his precious girl seemed to have lost her spirit, as though she'd given up her desire for life when she had fallen into the darkness.

She now lay limp, cold, and pale in his arms. On the floor. Drizzt instinctively recognized the dangers. He lolled over to the side, pulling his cloak out wide, shielding Bruenor, who was quite oblivious to his surroundings, and Catti-brie with his own body.

Across the room, LaValle stirred, shaking the grogginess out of his head. He rose to his knees and surveyed the room, immediately recognizing Wulfgar's attempt to close the gate.

"Kill them," Pook whispered to the wizard but not daring to crawl out from under the overturned chair.

LaValle wasn't listening; he had already begun a spell.

* * * * *

For the first time in his life, Wulfgar found his strength inadequate. "I cannot!" he grunted in dismay, looking to Drizzt - as he always looked to Drizzt - for an answer.

The wounded drow was barely coherent.

Wulfgar wanted to surrender. His arm burned from the gashes of the hydra bite; his legs seemed barely able to hold him; his friends were helpless on the floor.

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And his strength was not enough!

He shot his gaze to and fro, searching for some alternate method. The hoop, however powerful, had to have a weakness. Or, at least, to hold out any hope, Wulfgar had to believe that it did.

Regis had gotten through it, had found a way to circumvent its power.

Regis.

Wulfgar found his answer.

He gave a final heave on the Taros Hoop, then released it quickly, sending the portal into a momentary wobble. Wulfgar didn't hesitate to watch the eerie spectacle.

He dove down and snatched the pearl-tipped scepter from Drizzt's belt, then leaped up straight and slammed the fragile device onto the top of the Taros Hoop, shattering the black pearl into a thousand tiny shards.

At that same moment, LaValle uttered the last syllable of his spell, releasing a mighty bolt of energy. It ripped past Wulfgar, searing the hairs on his arm, and blasted into the center of the Taros Hoop. The glassy image, cracked into the circular design of a spider's web by Wulfgar's cunning strike, broke apart altogether.

The ensuing explosion rocked the foundations of the guildhouse.

Thick patches of darkness swirled about the room; the onlookers perceived the whole place to be spinning, and a sudden wind whistled and howled in their ears, as though they had all been caught in the tumult of a rift in the very planes of existence.

Black smoke and fumes rushed in upon them. The darkness became total.

Then, as quickly as it had begun, it passed away and daylight returned to the battered room. Drizzt and Bruenor were the first to their feet, studying the damage and the survivors.

The Taros Hoop lay twisted and shattered, a bent frame of worthless iron with a sticky, weblike substance clinging stubbornly in torn patches. A winged demodand lay dead on the floor, the severed arm of another creature beside it, and half the body of yet another beside that, still twitching in death, with thick, dark fluids spilling onto the floor.

A dozen feet back sat Wulfgar, propped up on his elbows and looking perplexed, one arm bright red from LaValle's energy bolt, his face blackened by the rush of smoke, and his entire frame matted in the gooey webbing. A hundred little dots of blood dotted the barbarian's body. Apparently the glassy image of the planar portal had been more than just an image.

Wulfgar looked at his friends distantly, blinked his eyes a few times, and dropped flat on his back.

LaValle groaned, catching the notice of Drizzt and Bruenor. The wizard started to struggle back to his knees, but realized that he would only be exposing himself to the victorious invaders. He slumped back to the floor and lay very still.

Drizzt and Bruenor looked at each other, wondering what to do next.

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"Fine to see the light again," came a soft voice below them. They looked down to meet the gaze of Catti-brie, her deep blue eyes opened once again.

Bruenor, in tears, dropped to his knees and huddled over her. Drizzt started to follow the dwarf's lead, but sensed that theirs should be a private moment. He gave a comforting pat on Bruenor's shoulder and walked away to make sure that Wulfgar was alright.

A sudden burst of movement interrupted him as he knelt over his barbarian friend. The great throne, torn and scorched against the wall, toppled forward. Drizzt held it away easily, but while he was engaged, he saw Pasha Pook dart out from behind the object and bolt for the room's main door.

"Bruenor!" Drizzt called, but he knew even as he said it that the dwarf was too caught up with his daughter to be bothered. Drizzt pushed the great chair away and pulled Taulmaril off his back, stringing it as he started in pursuit.

Pook rushed through the door, swinging around to slam it behind him. "Rassit -"

he started to yell as he turned back toward the stairs, but the word stuck in his throat when he saw Regis, arms crossed, standing before him at the top of the stairway.

"You!" Pook roared, his face twisting and his hands clenching in rage.

"No, him," Regis corrected, pointing a finger above as a sleek black form leaped over him.

To the stunned Pook, Guenhwyvar appeared as no more than a flying ball of big teeth and claws.

By the time Drizzt got through the door, Pook's reign as guildmaster had come to a crashing end.

"Guenhwyvar!" the drow called, within reach of his treasured companion for the first time in many weeks. The big panther loped over to Drizzt and nuzzled him warmly, every bit as happy with the reunion.

Other sights and sounds kept the meeting short, however. First there was Regis, reclining comfortably on the decorated banister, his hands locked behind his head and his furry feet crossed. Drizzt was glad to see Regis again, as well, but more disturbing to the drow were the sounds echoing up the stairs: screams of terror and throaty growls.

Bruenor heard them, too, and he came out of the room to investigate.

"Rumblebelly!" he hailed Regis, following Drizzt to the halfling's side.

They looked down the great stairway at the battles below. Every now and then, a wererat crossed by, pursued by a panther. One group of ratmen formed a defensive circle, their blades flashing about to deter Guenhwyvar's feline friends, right below the friends, but a wave of black fur and gleaming teeth buried them where they stood.

"Cats?" Bruenor gawked at Regis. "Ye brought cats?"

Regis smiled and shifted his head in his hands. "You know a better way to get rid of mice?"

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Bruenor shook his head and couldn't hide his own smile. He looked back at the body of the man who had fled the room. "Dead, too," he remarked grimly.

"That was Pook," Regis told them, though they had already guessed the guildmaster's identity. "Now he is gone, and so, I believe, will his wererats associates be."

Regis looked at Drizzt, knowing an explanation to be necessary. "Guenhwyvar's friends are only hunting the ratmen," he said. "And him, of course." He pointed to Pook. "The regular thieves are hiding in their rooms - if they're smart - but the panthers wouldn't hurt them anyway."

Drizzt nodded his approval at the discretion Regis and Guenhwyvar had chosen.

Guenhwyvar was not a vigilante.

"We all came through the statue," Regis continued. "I kept it with me when I went out of Tarterus with Guenhwyvar. The cats can go back through it to their own plane when their work is done." He tossed the figurine back to its rightful owner.

A curious look came over the halfling's face. He snapped his fingers and hopped down from the banister, as if his last action had given him an idea. He ran to Pook, rolled the former guildmaster's head to the side-trying to ignore the very conspicuous wound in Pook's neck - and lifted off the ruby pendant that had started the whole adventure. Satisfied, Regis turned to the very curious stares of his two friends.

"Time to make some allies," the halfling explained, and he darted off down the stairs.

Bruenor and Drizzt looked at each other in disbelief.

"He'll own the guild," Bruenor assured the drow.

Drizzt didn't argue the point.

* * * * *

From an alley on Rogues Circle, Rassiter, again in his human form, heard the dying screams of his fellow ratmen. He had been smart enough to understand that the guild was overmatched by the heroes from the North, and when Pook sent him down to rally the fight, he had slipped instead back into the protection of the sewers.

Now he could only listen to the cries and wonder how many of his lycanthrope kin would survive the dark day. "I will build a new guild," he vowed to himself, though he fully understood the enormity of the task, especially now that he had achieved such notoriety in Calimport. Perhaps he could travel to another city - Memnon or Baldur's Gate - farther up the coast.

His ponderings came to an abrupt end as the flat of a curving blade came to rest on his shoulder, the razor edge cutting a tiny line across the side of his neck.

Rassiter held up a jeweled dagger. "This is yours, I believe," he said, trying to sound calm. The saber slipped away and Rassiter turned to face Artemis Entreri.

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Entreri reached out with a bandaged arm to pull the dagger away, at the same time slipping the saber back into its scabbard.

"I knew you had been beaten," Rassiter said boldly. "I feared you dead."

"Feared?" Entreri grinned. "Or hoped?"

"It is true that you and I started as rivals," Rassiter began.

Entreri laughed again. He had never figured the ratman worthy enough to be considered a rival.

Rassiter took the insult in stride. "But we then served the same master." He looked to the guildhouse, where the screaming had finally begun to fade. "I think Pook is dead, or at least thrown from power."

"If he faced the drow, he is dead," Entreri spat, the mere thought of Drizzt Do'Urden filling his throat with bile.

"Then the streets are open," Rassiter reasoned. He gave Entreri a sly wink. "For the taking."

"You and I?" Entreri mused.

Rassiter shrugged. "Few in Calimport would oppose you," the wererat said, "and with my infectious bite, I can breed a host of loyal followers in mere weeks. Certainly none would dare stand against us in the night."

Entreri moved beside him, joining him in his scan of the guildhouse. "Yes, my ravenous friend," he said quietly, "but there remain two problems."

"Two?"

"Two," Entreri reiterated. "First, I work alone."

Rassiter's body jolted straight as a dagger blade cut into his spine.

"And second," Entreri continued, without missing a breath, "you are dead." He jerked the bloody dagger out and held it vertical, to wipe the blade on Rassiter's cloak as the wererat fell lifeless to the ground.

Entreri surveyed his handiwork and the bandages on his wounded elbow.

"Stronger already," he muttered to himself, and he slipped away to find a dark hole.

The morning was full and bright now, and the assassin, still with much healing to do, was not ready to face the challenges he might come across on the daytime streets.

219

25

A Walk in the Sun

Bruenor knocked lightly on the door, not expecting a response. As usual, no reply came back.

This time, though, the stubborn dwarf did not walk away. He turned the latch and entered the darkened room.

Stripped to the waist and running his slender fingers through his thick mane of white hair, Drizzt sat on his bed with his back to Bruenor. Even in the dimness, Bruenor could clearly see the scab line sliced across the drow's back. The dwarf shuddered, never imagining in those wild hours of battle that Drizzt had been so viciously wounded by Artemis Entreri.

"Five days, elf," Bruenor said quietly. "Do ye mean to live yer life in here?"

Drizzt turned slowly to face his dwarven friend. "Where else would I go?" he replied.

Bruenor studied the lavender eyes, twinkling to reflect the light of the hallway beyond the open door. The left one had opened again, the dwarf noted hopefully.

Bruenor had feared that the demodand's blow had forever closed Drizzt's eye.

Clearly it was healing, but still those marvelous orbs worried Bruenor. They seemed to him to have lost a good bit of their luster.

"How is Catti-brie?" Drizzt asked, sincerely concerned about the young woman, but also wanting to change the subject.

Bruenor smiled. "Not for walkin' yet," he replied, "but her fighting's back and she's not caring for lyin' quiet in a bed!" He chuckled, recalling the scene earlier in the day, when one attendant had tried to primp his daughter's pillow. Catti-brie's glare alone had drained the blood from the man's face. "Cuts her servants down with her blade of a tongue when they fuss over her."

Drizzt's smile seemed strained. "And Wulfgar?"

"The boy's better," Bruenor replied. "Took four hours scraping the spider gook off him, and he'll be wearin' wrappings on his arm for a month to come, but more'n that's needed to bring that boy down! Tough as a mountain, and nearen as big!"

They watched each other until the smiles faded and the silence grew uncomfortable. "The halfling's feast is about to begin," Bruenor said. "Ye going? With a belly so round, me guess is that Rumblebelly will set a fine table."

Drizzt shrugged noncommittally.

"Bah!" Bruenor snorted. "Ye can't be living yer life between dark walls!" He paused as a thought suddenly popped into his head. "Or are ye out at night?" he asked slyly.

"Out?"

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"Hunting," explained Bruenor. "Are ye out hunting Entreri?"

Now, Drizzt did laugh - at the notion that Bruenor linked his desire for solitude to some obsession with the assassin.

"Ye're burning for him," Bruenor reasoned, "and he for yerself if he's still for drawing breath."

"Come," Drizzt said, pulling a loose shirt over his head. He picked up the magical mask as he started around the bed, but stopped to consider the item. He rolled it over in his hands, then dropped it back to the dressing table. "Let us not be late for the feast."

Bruenor's guess about Regis had not missed the mark; the table awaiting the two friends was splendidly adorned with shining silver and porcelain, and the aromas of delicacies had them unconsciously licking their lips as they moved to their appointed seats.

Regis sat at the long table's head, the thousand gemstones he had sewn into his tunic catching the candlelight in a glittering burst every time he shifted in his seat.

Behind him stood the two hill giant eunuchs who had guarded Pook at the bitter end, their faces bruised and bandaged.

At the halfling's right sat LaValle, to Bruenor's distaste, and at his left, a narrow-eyed halfling and a chubby young man, the chief lieutenants in the new guild.

Farther down the table sat Wulfgar and Catti-brie, side by side, their hands clasped between them, which, Drizzt guessed - by the pale and weary looks of the two

- was as much for mutual support as genuine affection.

As weary as they were, though, their faces lit with smiles, as did Regis's, when they saw Drizzt enter the room, the first time any of them had seen the drow in nearly a week.

"Welcome, welcome!" Regis said happily. "It would have been a shallow feast if you could not join us!"

Drizzt slid into the chair beside LaValle, drawing a concerned look from the timid wizard. The guild's lieutenants, too, shifted uneasily at the thought of dining with a drow elf.

Drizzt smiled away the weight of their discomfort; it was their problem, not his.

"I have been busy," he told Regis.

"Brooding," Bruenor wanted to say as he sat next to Drizzt, but he tactfully held his tongue.

Wulfgar and Catti-brie stared at their black friend from across the table.

"You swore to kill me," the drow said calmly to Wulfgar, causing the big man to sag back in his chair.

Wulfgar flushed a deep red and tightened his grip on Catti-brie's hand.

"Only the strength of Wulfgar could have held that gate," Drizzt explained. The edges of his mouth turned up in a wistful smile.

"But, I -" Wulfgar began, but Catti-brie cut him short.

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"Enough said about it, then," the young woman insisted, banging her fist into Wulfgar's thigh. "Let us not be talking about troubles we've past. Too much remains before us!"

"Me girl's right," spouted Bruenor. "The days walk by us as we sit and heal!

Another week, and we might be missing a war."

"I am ready to go," declared Wulfgar.

"Ye're not," retorted Catti-brie. "Nor am I. The desert'd stop us afore we ever got on the long road beyond."

"Ahem," Regis began, drawing their attention. "About your departure..." He stopped to consider their stares, nervous about presenting his offer in just the right way. "I... uh... thought that... I mean..."

"Spit it," demanded Bruenor, guessing what his little friend had in mind.

"Well, I have built a place for myself here," Regis continued.

"And ye're to stay," reasoned Catti-brie. "We'll not blame ye, though we're sure to be missing ye!"

"Yes," said Regis, "and no. There is room here, and wealth. With the four of you by my side..."

Bruenor halted him with an upraised hand. "A fine offer," he said, "but me home's in the North."

"We've armies waiting on our return," added Catti-brie.

Regis realized the finality of Bruenor's refusal, and he knew that Wulfgar would certainly follow Catti-brie - back to Tarterus if she so chose. So the halfling turned his sights on Drizzt, who had become an unreadable puzzle to them all in the last few days.

Drizzt sat back and considered the proposition, his hesitancy to deny the offer drawing concerned stares from Bruenor, Wulfgar, and, particularly, Catti-brie. Perhaps life in Calimport would not be so bad, and certainly the drow had the tools to thrive in the shadowy realm Regis planned to operate within. He looked Regis square in the eye.

"No," he said. He turned at the audible sigh from Catti-brie across the table, and their eyes locked. "I have walked through too many shadows already," he explained.

"A noble quest stands before me, and a noble throne awaits its rightful king."

Regis relaxed back in his chair and shrugged. He had expected as much. "If you are all so determined to go back to a war, then I would be a sorry friend if I did not aid your quest."

The others eyed him curiously, never amazed at the surprises the little one could pull.

"To that end," Regis continued, "one of my agents reported the arrival of an important person - from the tales Bruenor has told me of your journey south - in Calimport this morning." He snapped his fingers, and a young attendant entered from a side curtain, leading Captain Deudermont.

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The captain bowed low to Regis, and lower still to the dear friends he had made on the perilous journey from Waterdeep. "The wind was at our backs," he explained,

"and the Sea Sprite runs swifter than ever. We can depart on the morrow's dawn; surely the gentle rock of a boat is a fine place to mend weary bones!"

"But the trade," said Drizzt. "The market is here in Calimport. And the season.

You did not plan to leave before spring!"

"I may not be able to get you all the way to Waterdeep," said Deudermont. "The winds and ice will tell. But you surely will find yourself closer to your goal when you take to land once again." He looked over at Regis, then back to Drizzt. "For my losses in trade, accommodations have been made."

Regis tucked his thumbs into his jeweled belt. "I owed you that, at the least!"

"Bah!" snorted Bruenor, an adventurous gleam in his eye. "Ten times more, Rumblebelly, ten times more!"

* * * * *

Drizzt looked out of his room's single window at the dark streets of Calimport. They seemed quieter this night, hushed in suspicion and intrigue, anticipating the power struggle that would inevitably follow the downfall of a guildmaster as powerful as Pasha Pook.

Drizzt knew that there were other eyes out there, looking back at him, at the guildhouse, waiting for word of the drow elf - waiting for a second chance to battle Drizzt Do'Urden.

The night passed lazily, and Drizzt, unmoving from his window, watched it drift into dawn. Again, Bruenor was the first to his room.

"Ye ready, elf?" the eager dwarf asked, closing the door behind him as he entered.

"Patience, good dwarf," Drizzt replied. "We cannot leave until the tide is right, and Captain Deudermont assured me that we had the bulk of the morning to wait."

Bruenor plopped down on the bed. "Better," he said at length. "Gives me more time to speak with the little one."

"You fear for Regis," observed Drizzt.

"Ayuh," Bruenor admitted. "The little one's done well by me." He pointed to the onyx statuette on the dressing table. "And by yerself. Rumblebelly said it himself: There's wealth to be taken here. Pook's gone, and it's to be grab-as-grab-can. And that Entreri's about - that's not to me likin'. And more of them ratmen, not to doubt, looking to pay the little one back for their pain. And that wizard! Rumblebelly says he's got him by the gemstones, if ye get me meaning, but it seems off to me that a wizard's caught by such a charm."

"To me, as well," Drizzt agreed.

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"I don't like him, and I don't trust him!" Bruenor declared. "Rumblebelly's got him standing right by his side."

"Perhaps you and I should pay LaValle a visit this morning," Drizzt offered,

"that we might judge where he stands."

* * * * *

Bruenor's knocking technique shifted subtly when they arrived at the wizard's door, from the gentle tapping he had laid on Drizzt's door, to a battering-ram crescendo of heavy slugs. LaValle jumped from his bed and rushed to see what was the matter, and who was beating upon his brand new door.

"Morning, wizard," Bruenor grumbled, pushing into the room as soon as the door cracked open.

"So I guessed," muttered LaValle, looking to the hearth and beside it to the pile of kindling that was once his old door.

"Greetings, good dwarf," he said as politely as he could muster. "And Master Do'Urden," he added quickly when he noticed Drizzt slipping in behind. "Were you not to be gone by this late hour?"

"We have time," said Drizzt.

"And we're not for leaving till we've seen to the safety of Rumblebelly," Bruenor explained.

"Rumblebelly?" echoed LaValle.

"The halfling!" roared Bruenor. "Yer master."

"Ah, yes, Master Regis," said LaValle wistfully, his hands going together over his chest and his eyes taking on a distant, glossy look.

Drizzt shut the door and glared, suspicious, at him.

LaValle's faraway trance faded back to normal when he considered the unblinking drow. He scratched his chin, looking for somewhere to run. He couldn't fool the drow, he realized. The dwarf, perhaps, the halfling, certainly, but not this one.

Those lavender eyes burned holes right through his facade. "You do not believe that your little friend has cast his enchantment over me," he said.

"Wizards avoid wizards' traps," Drizzt replied.

"Fair enough," said LaValle, slipping into a chair.

"Bah! Then ye're a liar, too!" growled Bruenor, his hand going to the axe on his belt. Drizzt stopped him.

"If you doubt the enchantment," said LaValle, "do not doubt my loyalty. I am a practical man who has served many masters in my long life. Pook was the greatest of these, but Pook is gone. LaValle lives on to serve again."

"Or mighten be that he sees a chance to make the top," Bruenor remarked, expecting an angry response from LaValle.

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Instead, the wizard laughed heartily. "I have my craft," he said. "It is all that I care for. I live in comfort and am free to go as I please. I need not the challenges and dangers of a guildmaster." He looked to Drizzt as the more reasonable of the two. "I will serve the halfling, and if Regis is thrown down, I will serve he that takes the halfling's place."

The logic satisfied Drizzt, and convinced him of the wizard's loyalty beyond any enchantment the ruby could have induced. "Let us take our leave," he said to Bruenor, and he started out the door.

Bruenor could trust Drizzt's judgment, but he couldn't resist one final threat. "Ye crossed me, wizard," he growled from the doorway. "Ye nearen killed me girl. If me friend comes to a bad end, ye'll pay with yer head."

LaValle nodded but said nothing.

"Keep him well," the dwarf finished with a wink, and he slammed the door with a bang.

"He hates my door," the wizard lamented.

* * * * *

The troupe gathered inside the guildhouse's main entrance an hour later, Drizzt, Bruenor, Wulfgar, and Catti-brie outfitted again in their adventuring gear, and Drizzt with the magical mask hanging loose around his neck.

Regis, with attendants in tow, joined them. He would make the trip to the Sea Sprite beside his formidable friends. Let his enemies see his allies in all their splendor, the sly new guildmaster figured, particularly a drow elf!

"A final offer before we go," Regis proclaimed.

"We're not for staying," Bruenor retorted.

"Not to you," Regis said. He turned squarely to Drizzt. "To you."

Drizzt waited patiently for the pitch as the halfling rubbed his eager hands together.

"Fifty thousand gold pieces," Regis said at length, "for your cat."

Drizzt's eyes widened to double their size.

"Guenhwyvar will be well cared for, I assure -"

Catti-brie slapped Regis on the back of the head. "Find yer shame," she scolded.

"Ye know the drow better than that!"

Drizzt calmed her with a smile. "A treasure for a treasure?" he said to Regis.

"You know I must decline. Guenhwyvar cannot be bought, however good your intentions may be."

"Fifty thousand," Bruenor huffed. "If we wanted it, we'd take it afore we left!"

Regis then realized the absurdity of the offer, and he blushed in embarrassment.

"Are you so certain that we came across the world to your aid?" Wulfgar asked him. Regis looked at the barbarian, confused.

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"Perhaps 'twas the cat we came after," Wulfgar continued seriously.

The stunned look on Regis's face proved more than any of them could bear, and a burst of laughter like none of them had enjoyed in many months erupted, infecting even Regis.

"Here," Drizzt offered when things had quieted once again. "Take this instead,"

He pulled the magical mask off his head and tossed it to the halfling.

"Should ye keep it until we get to the boat?" Bruenor asked.

Drizzt looked to Catti-brie for an answer, and her smile of approval and admiration cast away any remaining doubts he might have had.

"No," he said. "Let the Calishites judge me for what they will." He swung open the doors, allowing the morning sun to sparkle in his lavender eyes.

"Let the wide world judge me for what it will," he said, his look one of genuine contentment as he dropped his gaze alternately into the eyes of each of his four friends.

"You know who I am."

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Epilogue

The Sea Sprite cut a difficult course northward up the Sword Coast, into the wintry winds, but Captain Deudermont and his grateful crew were determined to see the four friends safely and swiftly back to Waterdeep.

Stunned expressions from every face on the docks greeted the resilient vessel as it put into Waterdeep Harbor, dodging the breakers and the ice floes as it went.

Mustering all the skill he had gained through years of experience, Deudermont docked the Sea Sprite safely.

The four friends had recovered much of their health, and their humor, during those two months at sea, despite the rough voyage. All had turned out well in the end

- even Catti-brie's wounds appeared as if they would fully heal.

But if the sea voyage back to the North was difficult, the trek across the frozen lands was even worse. Winter was on the wane but still thick in the land, and the friends could not afford to wait for the snows to melt. They said their goodbyes to Deudermont and the men of the Sea Sprite, tightened heavy cloaks and boots, and trudged off through Waterdeep's gate along the Trade Way on the northeastern course to Longsaddle.

Blizzards and wolves reared up to stop them. The path of the road, its plentiful markings buried under a year's worth of snow, became no more than the guess of a drow elf reading the stars and the sun.

Somehow they made it, though, and they stormed into Longsaddle, ready to retake Mithril Hall. Bruenor's kin from Icewind Dale were there to greet them, along with five hundred of Wulfgar's people. Less than two weeks later, General Dagnabit of Citadel Adbar led his eight thousand dwarven troops to Bruenor's side.

Battle plans were drawn and redrawn. Drizzt and Bruenor put their memories of the undercity and mine caverns together to create models of the place and estimate the number of duergar the army would face.

Then, with spring defeating the last blows of winter, and only a few days before the army was to set out to the mountains, two more groups of allies came in, quite unexpectedly: contingents of archers from Silverymoon and Nesme. Bruenor at first wanted to turn the warriors from Nesme away, remembering the treatment he and his friends had received at the hands of a Nesme patrol on their initial journey to Mithril Hall, and also because the dwarf wondered how much of the show of allegiance was motivated in the hopes of friendship, and how much in the hopes of profit!

But, as usual, Bruenor's friends kept him on a wise course. The dwarves would have to deal extensively with Nesme, the closest settlement to Mithril Hall, once the mines were reopened, and a smart leader would patch the bad feelings there and then.

* * * * *

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Their numbers were overwhelming, their determination unrivaled, and their leaders magnificent. Bruenor and Dagnabit led the main assault force of battle-hardened dwarves and wild barbarians, sweeping out room after room of the duergar scum.

Catti-brie, with her bow, the few Harpells who had made the journey, and the archers from the two cities, cleared the side passages along the main force's thrust.

Drizzt, Wulfgar, and Guenhwyvar, as they had so often in the past, forged out alone, scouting the areas ahead of and below the army, taking out more than their share of duergar along the way.

In three days, the top level was cleared. In two weeks, the undercity. By the time spring had settled fully onto the northland, less than a month after the army had set out from Longsaddle, the hammers of Clan Battlehammer began their smithing song in the ancient halls once again.

And the rightful king took his throne.

* * * * *

Drizzt looked down from the mountains to the distant lights of the enchanted city of Silverymoon. He had been turned away from that city once before - a painful rejection

- but not this time.

He could walk the land as he chose, now, with his head held high and the cowl of his cloak thrown back. Most of the world did not treat him any differently; few knew the name of Drizzt Do'Urden. But Drizzt knew now that he owed no apologies, or excuses, for his black skin, and to those who placed unfair judgment upon him, he offered none.

The weight of the world's prejudice would still fall upon him heavily, but Drizzt had learned, by the insights of Catti-brie, to stand against it.

What a wonderful friend she was to him. Drizzt had watched her grow into a special young woman, and he was warmed now by the knowledge that she had found her home.

The thought of her with Wulfgar, and standing beside Bruenor, touched the dark elf, who had never experienced the closeness of family.

"How much we all have changed," the drow whispered to the empty mountain wind.

His words were not a lament.

* * * * *

The autumn saw the first crafted goods flow from Mithril Hall to Silverymoon, and by the time winter turned again to spring, the trade was in full force, with the barbarians from Icewind Dale working as market bearers for the dwarven goods.

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That spring, too, a carving was begun in the Hall of Kings: the likeness of Bruenor Battlehammer.

To the dwarf who had wandered so far from his home and had seen so many -

marvelous and horrible - sights, the reopening of the mines, and even the carving of his bust, seemed of minor importance when weighed against another event planned for that year.

"I told ye he'd be back," Bruenor said to Wulfgar and Catti-brie, who both sat beside him in his audience hall. "Th'elf'd not be missing such a thing as yer wedding!"

General Dagnabit - who, with blessings from King Harbromme of Citadel Adbar, had stayed on with two thousand other dwarves, swearing allegiance to Bruenor - entered the room, escorting a figure who had become less and less noticeable in Mithril Hall over the last few months.

"Greetings," said Drizzt, moving up to his friends.

"So ye made it," Catti-brie said absently, feigning disinterest.

"We had not planned for this," added Wulfgar in the same casual tone. "I pray that there may be an extra seat at the table."

Drizzt only smiled and bowed low in apology. He had been absent quite often -

for weeks at a time - lately. Personal invitations to visit the Lady of Silverymoon and her enchanted realm were not so easily refused.

"Bah!" Bruenor snorted. "I told ye he'd come back! And back to stay, this time!"

Drizzt shook his head.

Bruenor cocked his in return, wondering what was getting into his friend. "Ye hunting for that assassin, elf?" he could not help but ask.

Drizzt grinned and shook his head again. "I've no desire to meet that one again,"

he replied. He looked at Catti-brie - she understood - then back to Bruenor. "There are many sights in the wide world, dear dwarf, that cannot be seen from the shadows.

Many sounds more pleasant than the ring of steel, and many smells preferable to the stench of death."

"Cook another feast," Bruenor grumbled. "Suren the elf has his eyes fixed on another wedding!"

Drizzt let it go at that. Maybe there was a ring of truth in Bruenor's words, for some distant date. No longer did Drizzt limit his hopes and desires. He would see the world as he could and draw his choices from his wishes, not from limitations he might impose upon himself. For now, though, Drizzt had found something too personal to be shared.

For the first time in his life, the drow had found peace.

Another dwarf entered the room and scurried up to Dagnabit. They both took their leave, but Dagnabit returned a few moments later. "What is it?" Bruenor asked him, confused by all the bustle. "Another guest," Dagnabit explained, but before he could launch a proper introduction, a halfling figure slipped into the room. "Regis!"

Catti-brie cried. She and Wulfgar rushed to meet their old friend.

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"Rumblebelly!" Bruenor yelled. "What in the Nine Hells -"

"Did you believe that I would miss this occasion?" Regis huffed. "The wedding of two of my dearest friends?"

"How'd ye know?" Bruenor asked.

"You underestimate your fame, King Bruenor," Regis said, dropping into a graceful bow. Drizzt studied the halfling curiously. He wore his gemstudded jacket and more jewelry, including the ruby pendant, than the drow had ever seen in one place. And the pouches hanging low on Regis's belt were sure to be filled with gold and gems.

"Might ye be staying long?" Catti-brie asked.

Regis shrugged. "I am in no hurry," he replied. Drizzt cocked an eyebrow. A master of a thieves' guild did not often leave his place of power; too many were usually ready to steal it out from under him.

Catti-brie seemed happy with the answer and happy with the timing of the halfling's return. Wulfgar's people were soon to rebuild the city of Settlestone, at the base of the mountains. She and Wulfgar, though, planned to remain in Mithril Hall, at Bruenor's side. After the wedding, they planned to do a bit of traveling they'd had in mind, maybe back to Icewind Dale, maybe along with Captain Deudermont later in the year, when the Sea Sprite sailed back to the southlands.

Catti-brie dreaded telling Bruenor that they would be leaving, if only for a few months. With Drizzt so often on the road, she feared that the dwarf would be miserable. But if Regis planned to stay on for a while...

"Might I have a room," Regis asked, "to put my things and to rest away the weariness of a long road?"

"We'll see to it," Catti-brie offered.

"And for your attendants?" Bruenor asked.

"Oh," stammered Regis, searching for a reply. "I... came alone. The southerners do not take well to the chill of a northern spring, you know."

"Well, off with ye, then," said Bruenor. "Suren it be me turn to set out a feast for the pleasure of yer belly."

Regis rubbed his hands together eagerly and left with Wulfgar and Catti-brie, the three of them breaking into tales of their latest adventures before they had even left the room.

"Suren few folk in Calimport have ever heared o' me name, elf," Bruenor said to Drizzt after the others had gone. "And who south o' Longsaddle would be knowing of the wedding?" He turned a sly eye on his dark friend. "Suren the little one brings a bit of his treasure along with him, eh?"

Drizzt had come to the same conclusion the moment Regis had entered the room. "He is running."

230