Streams of Silver

8. To the Peril of Low-Flying Birds

The companions broke out of the twists and dips of the crags later in the afternoon, to their absolute relief. It had taken them some time to round up their mounts after the encounter with the Pegasus, particularly the halfling’s pony, which had bolted early in the fight when Regis had gone down. In truth, the pony would not be ridden again, anyway; it was too skittish and Regis was in no condition to ride. But Drizzt had insisted that both horses and both ponies be found, reminding his companions of their responsibility to the farmers, especially considering the way they had appropriated the beasts.

Regis now sat before Wulfgar on the barbarian’s stallion, leading the way with his pony tied behind and Drizzt and Bruenor a short distance back, guarding the rear. Wulfgar kept his great arms close around the halfling, his protective hold secure enough to allow Regis some much-needed sleep.

“Keep the setting sun at our backs,” Drizzt instructed the barbarian.

Wulfgar called out his acknowledgement and looked back to confirm his bearings.

“Rumblebelly couldn’t find a safer place in all the Realms,” Bruenor remarked to the drow.

Drizzt smiled. “Wulfgar has done well.”

“Aye,” the dwarf agreed, obviously pleased. “Although I be wondering how much longer I can keep to callin’ him a boy! Ye should have seen the Cutlass, elf,” the dwarf chuckled. “A boatload of pirates who’d been seeing naught but the sea for a year and a day couldn’t’ve done more wrecking!”

“When we left the dale, I worried if Wulfgar was ready for the many societies of this wide world,” replied Drizzt. “Now I worry that the world may not be ready for him. You should be proud.”

“Ye’ve had as much a hand in him as meself,” said Bruenor. “He’s me boy, elf, surer’n if I’d sired him meself. Not a thought to his own fears on the field back there. Ne’er have I viewed such courage in a human as when ye’d gone to the other plane. He waited—he hoped, I tell ye!—for the wretched beast to come back so he could get a good swing in to avenge the hurt to meself and the halfling.”

Drizzt enjoyed this rare moment of vulnerability from the dwarf. A few times before, he had seen Bruenor drop his callous facade, back on the climb in Icewind Dale when the dwarf thought of Mithril Hall and the wondrous memories of his childhood.

“Aye, I’m proud,” Bruenor continued. “And I’m finding meself willing to follow his lead and trust in his choices.”

Drizzt could only agree, having come to the same conclusions many months before, when Wulfgar had united the peoples of Icewind Dale, barbarian and Ten-Towner alike, in a common defense against the harsh tundra winter. He still worried about bringing the young warrior into situations like the dockside of Luskan, for he knew that many of the finest persons in the Realms had paid dearly for their first encounters with the guilds and underground power structures of a city, and that Wulfgar’s deep compassion and unwavering code of honor could be manipulated against him.

But on the road, in the wild, Drizzt knew that he would never find a more valuable companion.

They encountered no further problems that day or night, and the next morning came upon the main road, the trading route from Waterdeep to Mirabar and passing Longsaddle on the way. No landmarks stood out to guide them, as Drizzt had anticipated, but because of his plan in keeping more to the east than the straight line southeast, their direction from here was clearly south.

Regis seemed much better this day and was anxious to see Longsaddle. He alone of the group had been to the home of the magic-using Harpell family and he looked forward to viewing the strange, and often outrageous, place again.

His excited chatting only heightened Wulfgar’s trepidations, though, for the barbarian’s distrust of the dark arts ran deep. Among Wulfgar’s people, wizards were viewed as cowards and evil tricksters.

“How long must we remain in this place?” he asked Bruenor and Drizzt, who, with the crags safely behind them, had come up to ride beside him on the wide road.

“Until we get some answers,” Bruenor answered. “Or until we figure a better place to go.” Wulfgar had to be satisfied with the answer.

Soon they passed some of the outlying farms, drawing curious stares from the men in the fields who leaned on their hoes and rakes to study the party. Shortly after the first of these encounters, they were met on the road by five armed men called Longriders, representing the outer watch of the town.

“Greetings, travelers,” said one politely. “Might we ask your intentions in these parts?”

“Ye might…” started Bruenor, but Drizzt stopped his sarcastic remark with an outstretched hand.

“We have come to see the Harpells,” Regis replied. “Our business does not concern your town, though we seek the wise counsel of the family in the mansion.”

“Well met, then,” answered the Longrider. “The hill of the Ivy Mansion is just a few miles farther down the road, before Longsaddle proper.” He stopped suddenly, noticing the drow. “We could escort you if you desire,” he offered, clearing his throat in an effort to politely hide his gawking at the black elf.

“It is not necessary,” said Drizzt. “I assure you that we can find the way, and that we mean no ill toward any of the people of Longsaddle.”

“Very well.” The Longrider stepped his mount aside and the companions continued on.

“Keep to the road, though,” he called after them. “Some of the farmers get anxious about people near the boundaries of their land.”

“They are kindly folk,” Regis explained to his companions as they moved down the road, “and they trust in their wizards.”

“Kindly, but wary,” Drizzt retorted, motioning to a distant field where the silhouette of a mounted man was barely visible on the far tree line. “We are being watched.”

“But not bothered,” Said Bruenor. “And that’s more than we can say about anywhere we’ve been yet!”

The hill of the Ivy Mansion comprised a small hillock sporting three buildings, two that resembled the low, wooden design of farmhouses. The third, though, was unlike anything the four companions had ever seen. Its walls turned at sharp angles every few feet, creating niches within niches, and dozens and dozens of spires sprouted from its many-angled roof, no two alike. A thousand windows were visible from this direction alone, some huge, others no bigger than an arrow slit.

No one design, no overall architectural plan or style, could be found here. The Harpells’ mansion was a collage of independent ideas and experiments in magical creation. But there was truly a beauty within the chaos, a sense of freedom that defied the term “structure” and carried with it a feeling of welcome.

A rail fence surrounded the hillock and the four friends approached curiously, if not excitedly. There was no gate, just an opening and the road continuing through. Seated on a stool inside the fence, staring blankly at the sky, was a fat, bearded man in a carmine robe.

He noticed their arrival with a start. “Who are you and what do you want?” he demanded bluntly, angered at the interruption of his meditation.

“Weary travelers,” replied Regis, “come to seek the wisdom of the reknowned Harpells.”

The man seemed unimpressed. “And?” he prompted.

Regis turned helplessly to Drizzt and Bruenor, but they could only answer him with shrugs of their own, not understanding what more was required of them. Bruenor started to move his pony out in front to reiterate the group’s intentions when another robed man came shuffling out of the mansion to join the first.

He had a few quiet words with the fat mage, then turned to the road. “Greetings,” he offered the companions. “Excuse poor Regweld, here—” he patted the fat mage’s shoulder “—for he has had an incredible run of bad luck with some experimenting—not that things will not turn out, mind you. They just might take some time.

“Regweld is really a fine wizard,” he continued, patting the shoulder again. “And his ideas for crossbreeding a horse and a frog are not without merit; never mind the explosion! Alchemy shops can be replaced!”

The friends sat atop their mounts, biting back their amazement at the rambling discourse. “Why, think of the advantages for crossing rivers!” the robed man cried. “But enough of that. I am Harkle. How might I assist you?”

“Harkle Harpell?” Regis snickered. The man bowed.

“Bruenor of Icewind Dale, I be,” Bruenor proclaimed when he had found his voice. “Me friends and meself have come hundreds of miles seeking the words of the wizards of Longsaddle…” He noticed that Harkle, distracted by the drow, wasn’t paying any attention to him. Drizzt had let his cowl slip back purposely to judge the reaction of the reputedly learned men of Longsaddle. The Longrider back on the road had been surprised, but not outraged, and Drizzt had to learn if the town in general would be more tolerant of his heritage.

“Fantastic,” muttered Harkle. “Simply unbelievable!” Regweld, too, had now noticed the black elf and seemed interested for the first time since the party had arrived.

“Are we to be allowed passage?” Drizzt asked.

“Oh, yes, please do come in,” replied Harkle, trying unsuccessfully to mask his excitement for the sake of etiquette.

Striding his horse out in front, Wulfgar started them up the road.

“Not that way,” said Harkle. “Not the road; of course, it is not really a road. Or it is, but you cannot get through.”

Wulfgar stopped his mount. “Be done with your foolery, wizard!” he demanded angrily, his years of distrust for practitioners of the magic arts boiling over in his frustration. “May we enter, or not?”

“There is no foolery, I assure you,” said Harkle, hoping to keep the meeting amiable. But Regweld cut in.

“One of those,” the fat mage said accusingly, rising from his stool.

Wulfgar glared at him curiously.

“A barbarian,” Regweld explained. “A warrior trained to hate that which he cannot comprehend. Go ahead, warrior, take that big hammer off of your back.”

Wulfgar hesitated, seeing his own unreasonable anger, and looked to his friends for support. He didn’t want to spoil Bruenor’s plans for the sake of his own pettiness.

“Go ahead,” Regweld insisted, moving to the center of the road. “Take up your hammer and throw it at me. Satisfy your heartfelt desire to expose the foolery of a wizard! And strike one down in the process! A bargain if ever I heard one!” He pointed to his chin. “Right here,” he chided.

“Regweld,” sighed Harkle, shaking his head. “Please oblige him, warrior. Bring a smile to his downcast face.”

Wulfgar looked once more to his friends, but again they had no answers. Regweld settled it for him.

“Bastard son of a caribou.”

Aegis-fang was out and twirling through the air before the fat mage had finished the insult, bearing straight in on its mark. Regweld didn’t flinch, and just before Aegis-fang would have crossed over the fence line, it smacked into something invisible, but as tangible as stone. Resounding like a ceremonial gong, the transparent wall shuddered and waves rolled out along it, visible to the astounded onlookers as mere distortions of the images behind the wall. The friends noticed for the first time that the rail fencing was not real, rather a painting on the surface of the transparent wall.

Aegis-fang dropped to the dust, as though all power had been drained from it, taking a long moment to reappear in Wulfgar’s grasp.

Regweld’s laughter was more of victory than of humor, but Harkle shook his head. “Always at the expense of others,” he scolded. “You had no right to do that.”

“He’s better for the lesson,” Regweld retorted. “Humility is also a valuable commodity for a fighter.”

Regis had bitten his lip for as long as he could. He had known about the invisible wall all along, and now his laughter burst out. Drizzt and Bruenor could not help but follow the halfling’s lead, and even Wulfgar, after he had recovered from the shock, smirked at his own “foolery.”

Of course, Harkle had no choice but to stop his scolding and join in. “Do come in,” he begged the friends. “The third post is real; you can find the gate there. But first, dismount and unsaddle your horses.”

Wulfgar’s suspicions came back suddenly, his scowl burying the smile. “Explain,” he requested of Harkle.

“Do it!” Regis ordered, “or you shall find a bigger surprise than the last one.”

Drizzt and Bruenor had already slipped from their saddles, intrigued, but not the least bit fearful of the hospitable Harkle Harpell. Wulfgar threw his arms out helplessly and followed, pulling the gear from the roan and leading the beast, and Regis’s pony, after the others.

Regis found the entrance easily and swung it open for his friends. They came in without fear, but were suddenly assailed by blinding flashes of light.

When their eyes cleared again, they found that the horses and ponies had been reduced to the size of cats!

“What?” blurted Bruenor, but Regis was laughing again and Harkle acted as though nothing unusual had happened.

“Pick them up and come along,” he instructed. “It is nearly time to sup, and the meal at The Fuzzy Quarterstaff is particularly delicious this night!”

He led them around the side of the weird mansion to a bridge crossing the center of the hillock. Bruenor and Wulfgar felt ridiculous carrying their mounts, but Drizzt accepted it with a smile and Regis thoroughly enjoyed the whole outrageous spectacle, having learned on his first visit that Longsaddle was a place to be taken lightly, appreciating the idiosyncrasies and unique ways of the Harpells purely for the sake of amusement.

The high-arcing bridge before them, Regis knew, would serve as yet another example. Though its span across the small stream was not great, it was apparently unsupported, and its narrow planks were completely unadorned, even without handrails.

Another robed Harpell, this one incredibly old, sat on a stool, his chin in his hand, mumbling to himself and seemingly taking no notice of the strangers whatsoever.

When Wulfgar, in the front beside Harkle, neared the bank of the stream, he jumped back, gasping and stuttering. Regis snickered, knowing what the big man had seen, and Drizzt and Bruenor soon understood.

The stream flowed UP the side of the hill, then vanished just before the top, though the companions could hear that water was indeed rushing along before them. Then the stream reappeared over the hill’s crest, flowing down the other side.

The old man sprang up suddenly and rushed over to Wulfgar. “What can it mean?” he cried desperately. “How can it be?” He banged on the barbarian’s massive chest in frustration.

Wulfgar looked around for an escape, not wanting to even grab the old man in restraint for fear of breaking his frail form. Just as abruptly as he had come, the old man dashed back to the stool and resumed his silent pose.

“Alas, poor Chardin,” Harkle said somberly. “He was mighty in his day. It was he who turned the stream up the hill. But near a score of years now he has been obsessed with finding the secret of the invisibility under the bridge.”

“Why is the stream so different from the wall?” wondered Drizzt. “Certainly this dweomer is not unknown among the wizard community.”

“Ah, but there is a difference,” Harkle was quick to reply, excited at finding someone outside the Ivy Mansion apparently interested in their works. “An invisible object is not so rare, but a field of invisibility …” He swept his hand to the stream. “Anything that enters the river there takes on the property,” he explained. “But only for as long as it remains in the field. And to a person in the enchanted area—I know because I have done this test myself—everything beyond the field is unseen, though the water and fish within appear normal. It defies our knowledge of the properties of invisibility and may actually reflect a tear into the fabric of a wholly unknown plane of existence!” He saw that his excitement had gone beyond the comprehension or interest of the drow’s companions some time ago, so he calmed himself and politely changed the subject.

“The housing for your horses is in that building,” he said, pointing to one of the low, wooden structures. “The underbridge will get you there. I must attend to another matter now. Perhaps we can meet later in the tavern.”

Wulfgar, not completely understanding Harkle’s directions, stepped lightly onto the first wooden planks of the bridge, and was promptly thrown backward by some unseen force.

“I said the underbridge,” cried Harkle, pointing under the bridge. “You cannot cross the river this way by the overbridge; that is used for the way back! Stops any arguments in crossing.” he explained.

Wulfgar had his doubts about a bridge he could not see, but he didn’t want to appear cowardly before his friends and the wizard. He moved beside the bridge’s ascending arc and gingerly moved his foot out under the wooden structure, feeling for the invisible crossing. There was only the air, and the unseen rush of water just below his foot, and he hesitated.

“Go on,” coaxed Harkle.

Wulfgar plunged ahead, setting himself for a fall into the water. But to his absolute surprise, he did not fall down.

He fell up!

“Whoa!” the barbarian cried out as he thunked into the bottom of the bridge, headfirst. He lay there for a long moment, unable to get his bearings, flat on his back against the bottom of the bridge, looking down instead of up.

“You see!” screeched the wizard. “The underbridge!”

Drizzt moved next, leaping into the enchanted area with an easy tumble, and landing lightly on his feet beside his friend.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“The road, my friend,” groaned Wulfgar. “I long for the road, and the orcs. It is safer.”

Drizzt helped him struggle to his feet, for the barbarian’s mind argued every inch of the way against standing upside-down under a bridge, with an invisible stream rushing above his head.

Bruenor, too, had his reservations, but a taunt from the halfling moved him along, and soon the companions rolled back onto the grass of the natural world on the other bank of the stream. Two buildings stood before them, and they moved to the smaller, the one Harkle had indicated.

A blue-robed woman met them at the door. “Four?” she asked rhetorically. “You really should have sent word ahead.”

“Harkle sent us,” Regis explained. “We are not from these lands. Forgive our ignorance of your customs.”

“Very well, then,” huffed the woman. “Come along in. We are actually unusually unbusy for this time of the year. I am sure that I have room for your horses.” She led them into the structure’s main room, a square chamber. All four walls were lined, floor to ceiling, with small cages, just big enough for a cat-sized horse to stretch its legs. Many were occupied, their nameplates indicating that they were reserved for particular members of the Harpell clan, but the woman found four empty ones all together and put the companions’ horses inside.

“You may get them whenever you desire,” she explained, handing each of them a key to the cage of his particular mount. She paused when she got to Drizzt, studying his handsome features. “Who have we here?” she asked, not losing her calm monotone. “I had not heard of your arrival, but I am sure that many will desire an audience with you before you go! We have never seen one of your kind.”

Drizzt nodded and did not reply, growing increasingly uncomfortable with this new type of attention. Somehow it seemed to degrade him even more than the threats of ignorant peasants. He understood the curiosity, though, and figured that he owed the wizards a few hours of conversation, at least.

The Fuzzy Quarterstaff, on the back side of the Ivy Mansion, filled a circular chamber. The bar sat in the middle, like the hub of a wheel, and inside its wide perimeter was another room, an enclosed kitchen area. A hairy man with huge arms and a bald head wiped his rag endlessly along the shiny surface of the bar, more to pass the time than to clean any spills.

Off to the rear, on a raised stage, musical instruments played themselves, guided by the jerking gyrations of a white-haired, wand-wielding wizard in black pants and a black waistcoat. Whenever the instruments hit a crescendo, the wizard pointed his wand and snapped the fingers of his free hand, and a burst of colored sparks erupted from each of the four corners of the stage.

The companions took a table within sight of the entertaining wizard. They had their pick of location, for as far as they could tell, they were the only patrons in the room. The tables, too, were circular, made of fine wood and sporting a many-faceted, huge green gemstone on a silver pedestal as a centerpiece.

“A stranger place I never heared of,” grumbled Bruenor, uncomfortable since the underbridge, but resigned to the necessity of speaking with the Harpells.

“Nor I,” said the barbarian. “And may we leave it soon.”

“You are both stuck in the small chambers of your minds,” Regis scolded. “This is a place to enjoy—and you know that no danger lurks here.” He winked as his gaze fell upon Wulfgar. “Nothing serious, anyway.”

“Longsaddle offers us a much needed rest,” Drizzt added. “Here, we can lay the course of our next trek in safety and take back to the road refreshed. It was two weeks from the dale to Luskan, and nearly another to here, without reprieve. Weariness draws away the edge and takes the advantage from a skilled warrior.” He looked particularly at Wulfgar as he finished the thought. “A tired man will make mistakes. And mistakes in the wild are, more often than not, fatal.”

“So let us relax arid enjoy the hospitality of the Harpells,” said Regis.

“Agreed,” said Bruenor, glancing around, “but just a short rest. And where in the nine hells might the barmaid be, or do ye have to get to it yerself for food and drink?”

“If you want something, then just ask,” came a voice from the center of the table. Wulfgar and Bruenor both leaped to their feet, on guard. Drizzt noted the flare of light within the green gem and studied the object, immediately guessing the setup. He looked back over his shoulder at the barkeep, who stood beside a similar gemstone.

“A scrying device,” the drow explained to his friends, though they, by now, had come to the same understanding and felt very foolish standing in the middle of an empty tavern with their weapons in their hands.

Regis had his head down, his shoulders rolling with his sobs of laughter.

“Bah! Ye knew all along!” Bruenor growled at him. “Ye’ve been takin’ a bit of fun at our cost, Rumblebelly,” the dwarf warned. “For meself, I’m wondering how much longer our road holds room for ye.”

Regis looked up at the glare of his dwarven friend, matching it suddenly with a firm stare of his own. “We have walked and ridden more than four hundred miles together!” he retorted. “Through cold winds and orc raids, brawls and battles with ghosts. Allow me my pleasure for a short while, good dwarf. If you and Wulfgar would loosen the straps of your packs and see this place for what it is, you might find an equal share of laughter yourself!”

Wulfgar did smile. Then, all at once, he jerked back his head and roared, throwing away all of his anger and prejudice, so that he might take the halfling’s advice and view Longsaddle with an open mind. Even the musical wizard stopped his playing to observe the spectacle of the barbarian’s soul-cleansing scream.

And when he had finished, Wulfgar laughed. Not an amused chuckle, but a thunderous roll of laughter that flowed up from his belly and exploded out his widethrown mouth.

“Ale!” Bruenor called into the gemstone. Almost immediately, a floating disk of blue light slipped over the bar, bearing to them enough strong ale to last the night. A few minutes later, all traces of the tensions of the road had flown, and they toasted and quaffed their mugs with enthusiasm.

Only Drizzt kept his reserve, sipping his drink and staying alert to his surroundings. He felt no direct danger here, but he wanted to keep control against the wizards’ inevitable probing.

Shortly, the Harpells and their friends began to make a steady stream into The Fuzzy Quarterstaff. The companions were the only newcomers in town this night, and all of the diners pulled their tables close by, trading stories of the road and toasts of lasting friendship over fine meals, and later, beside a warm hearth. Many, led by Harkle, concerned themselves with Drizzt and their interest in the dark cities of his people, and he had few reservations about answering their questions.

Then came the probing about the journey that had brought the companions so far. Bruenor actually initiated it, jumping up onto his table and proclaiming, “Mithril Hall, home of me fathers, ye shall be mine again!”

Drizzt grew concerned. Judging by the inquisitive reaction of the gathering, the name of Bruenor’s ancient homeland was known here, at least in legend. The drow didn’t fear any malicious actions by the Harpells, but he simply did not want the purpose of the adventure following, and possibly even preceding, him and his friends on the next leg of the journey. Others might well be interested in learning the location of an ancient dwarven stronghold, a place referred to in tales as, “the mines where silver rivers run.”

Drizzt took Harkle aside. “The night grows long. Are there rooms available in the village beyond?”

“Nonsense,” huffed Harkle. “You are my guests and shall remain here. The rooms have already been prepared.”

“And the price for all of this?”

Harkle pushed Drizzt’s purse away. “The price in the Ivy Mansion is a good tale or two, and bringing some interest into our existence. You and your friends have paid for a year and more!”

“Our thanks,” replied Drizzt. “I think that it is time for my companions to rest. We have had a long ride, with much more before us.”

“Concerning the road before you,” said Harkle. “I have arranged for a meeting with DelRoy, the eldest of the Harpells now in Longsaddle. He, more than any of us, might be able to help steer your way.”

“Very good,” said Regis, leaning over to hear the conversation.

“This meeting holds a small price,” Harkle told Drizzt. “DelRoy desires a private audience with you. He has sought knowledge of the drow for many years, but little is available to us.”

“Agreed,” replied Drizzt. “Now, it is time for us to find our beds.”

“I shall show you the way.”

“What time are we to meet with DelRoy?” asked Regis.

“Morning,” replied Harkle.

Regis laughed, then leaned over to the other side of the table where Bruenor sat holding a mug motionless in his gnarled hands, his eyes unblinking. Regis gave the dwarf a little shove and Bruenor toppled, thudding into the floor without even a groan of protest. “Evening would be better,” the halfling remarked, pointing across the room to another table.

Wulfgar was underneath it.

Harkle looked at Drizzt. “Evening,” he agreed. “I shall speak to DelRoy.”

The four friends spent the next day recuperating and enjoying the endless marvels of the Ivy Mansion. Drizzt was called away early for a meeting with DelRoy, while the others were guided by Harkle on a tour through the great house, passing through a dozen alchemy shops, scrying rooms, meditation chambers, and several secured rooms specifically designed for conjuring otherworldly beings. A statue of one Matherly Harpell was of particular interest, since the statue was actually the wizard himself. An unsuccessful mix of potions had left him stoned, literally.

Then there was Bidderdoo, the family dog, who had once been Harkle’s second cousin—again, a bad potion mix.

Harkle kept no secrets from his guests, recounting the history of his clan, its achievements, and its often disastrous failures. And he told them of the lands around Longsaddle, of the Uthgardt barbarians, the Sky Ponies, they had encountered, and of other tribes they might yet meet along their way.

Bruenor was glad that their relaxation carried a measure of valuable information. His goal pressed in on him every minute of every day, and when he spent any time without making any gains toward Mithril Hall, even if he simply needed to rest, he felt pangs of guilt. “Ye have to want it with all yer heart,” he often scolded himself.

But Harkle had provided him with an important orientation to this land that would no doubt aid his cause in the days ahead, and he was satisfied when he sat down for supper at The Fuzzy Quarterstaff. Drizzt rejoined them there, sullen and quiet, and he wouldn’t say much when questioned about his discussion with DelRoy.

“Think to the meeting ahead,” was the drow’s answer to Bruenor’s probing. “DelRoy is very old and learned. He may prove to be our best hope of ever finding the road to Mithril Hall.”

Bruenor was indeed thinking to the meeting ahead.

And Drizzt sat back quietly throughout the meal, considering the tales and the images of his homeland that he had imparted to DelRoy, remembering the unique beauty of Menzoberranzan.

And the malicious hearts that had despoiled it.

A short time later, Harkle took Drizzt, Bruenor, and Wulfgar to see the old mage—Regis had begged out of the meeting in lieu of another party at the tavern. They met DelRoy in a small, torchlit, and shadowy chamber, the flickerings of light heightening the mystery in the aged wizard’s face. Bruenor and Wulfgar came at once to agree with Drizzt’s observations of DelRoy, for decades of experience and untold adventures were etched visibly into the features of his leathery brown skin. His body was failing him now, they could see, but the sheen of his pale eyes told of inner life and left little doubt about the sharp edge of his mind.

Bruenor spread his map out on the room’s circular table, beside the books and scrolls that DelRoy had brought. The old mage studied it carefully for a few seconds, tracing the line that had brought the companions to Longsaddle. “What do you recall of the ancient halls, dwarf?” he asked. “Landmarks or neighboring peoples?”

Bruenor shook his head. “The pictures in me head show the deep halls and workplaces, the ringing sound of iron on the anvil. The flight of me clan started in mountains; that’s all I know.”

“The northland is a wide country,” Harkle remarked. “Many long ranges could harbor such a stronghold.”

“That is why Mithril Hall, for all of its reputed wealth, has never been found,” replied DelRoy.

“And thus our dilemma,” said Drizzt. “Deciding where to even begin to look.”

“Ah, but you have already begun,” answered DelRoy. “You have chosen well to come inland; most of the legends of Mithril Hall stem from the lands east of here, even farther from the coast. It seems likely that your goal lies between Longsaddle and the great desert, though north or south, I cannot guess. You have done well.”

Drizzt nodded and broke off the conversation as the old mage fell back into his silent examination of Bruenor’s map, marking strategic points and referring often to the stack of books he had piled beside the table. Bruenor hovered beside DelRoy, anxious for any advice or revelations that might be forthcoming. Dwarves were patient folk, though, a trait that allowed their crafting to outshine the work of the other races, and Bruenor kept his calm as best he could, not wanting to press the wizard.

Some time later, when DelRoy was satisfied that his sorting of all the pertinent information was complete, he spoke again. “Where would you go next,” he asked Bruenor, “if no advice were offered here?”

The dwarf looked back to his map, Drizzt peering over his shoulder, and traced a line east with his stubby finger. He looked to Drizzt for consent when he had reached a certain point that they had discussed earlier on the road. The drow nodded. “Citadel Adbar,” Bruenor declared, tapping his finger on the map.

“The dwarven stronghold,” said DelRoy, not too surprised. “A fine choice. King Harbromm and his dwarves may be able to aid you greatly. They have been there, in the Mithril Mountains, for centuries uncounted. Certainly Adbar was old even in the days when the hammers of Mithril Hall rang out in dwarven song.”

“Is Citadel Adbar your advice to us, then?” Drizzt asked.

“It is your own choice, but as good a destination as I can offer,” replied DelRoy. “But the way is long, five weeks at the least if all goes well. And on the east road beyond Sundabar, that is unlikely. Still, you may get there before the first colds of winter, though I doubt that you would be able to take Harbromm’s information and resume your journey before the next spring.”

“Then the choice seems clear,” declared Bruenor. “To Adbar!”

“There is more you should know,” said DelRoy. “And this is the true advice that I shall give to you: Do not be blinded to the possibilities along the road by the hopeful vision at the road’s end. Your course so far has followed straight runs, first from Icewind Dale to Luskan, then from Luskan to here. There is little, other than monsters, along either of those roads to give a rider cause to turn aside. But on the journey to Adbar, you shall pass Silverymoon, city of wisdom and legacy, and the Lady Alustriel, and the Vault of Sages, as fine a library as exists in all the northland. Many in that fair city may be able to offer more aid to your quest than I, or even than King Harbromm. And beyond Silverymoon you shall find Sundabar, itself an ancient dwarven stronghold, where Helm, reknowned dwarf-friend, rules. His ties to your race run deep, Bruenor, tracing back many generations. Ties, perhaps, even to your own people.”

“Possibilities!” beamed Harkle.

“We shall heed your wise advice, DelRoy,” said Drizzt.

“Aye,” agreed the dwarf, his spirits high. “When we left the dale, I had no idea beyond Luskan. Me hopes were to follow a road of guesses, expectin’ half and more to be nothing of value. The halfling was wise in guiding us to this spot, for we’ve found a trail of clues! And clues to lead to more clues!” He looked around at the excited group, Drizzt, Harkle, and DelRoy, and then noticed Wulfgar, still sitting quietly in his chair, his huge arms crossed on his chest, watching without any apparent emotion. “What of yerself, boy?” Bruenor demanded. “Have ye a notion to share?”

Wulfgar leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “Neither my quest, nor my land,” he explained. “I follow you, confident in any path you choose.

“And I am glad of your mirth and excitement,” he added quietly.

Bruenor took the explanation as complete, and turned back to DelRoy and Harkle for some specific information on the road ahead. Drizzt, though, unconvinced of the sincerity of Wulfgar’s last statement, let his gaze linger on the young barbarian, noting the expression in his eyes as he watched Bruenor.

Sorrow?

They spent two more restful days in the Ivy Mansion, though Drizzt was hounded constantly by curious Harpells who wanted more information about his rarely seen race. He took the questions politely, understanding their good intentions, and answered as best he could. When Harkle came to escort them out on the fifth morning, they were refreshed and ready to get on with their business. Harkle promised to arrange for the return of the horses to their rightful owners, saying that it was the least he could do for the strangers who had brought so much interest to the town.

But in truth, the friends had benefited more for the stay. DelRoy and Harkle had given them valuable information and, perhaps even more importantly, had restored their hope in the quest. Bruenor was up and about before dawn that last morning, his adrenaline pumping at the thought of returning to the road now that he had somewhere to go.

They moved out from the mansion throwing many good-byes and lamenting looks over their shoulders, even from Wulfgar, who had come in so steadfast in his antipathy toward wizards.

They crossed the overbridge, saying farewell to Chardin, who was too lost in his meditations of the stream to even notice, and soon discovered that the structure beside the miniature stable was an experimental farm. “It will change the face of the world!” Harkle assured them as he veered them toward the building for a closer look. Drizzt guessed his meaning even before they entered, as soon as he heard the high-pitched bleating and cricketlike chirping. Like the stable, the farm was one room, though part of it had no roof and was actually a field within walls. Cat-sized cows and sheep mulled about, while chickens the size of field mice dodged around the animals’ tiny feet.

“Of course, this is the first season and we have not seen results yet,” explained Harkle, “but we expect a high yield considering the small amount of resources involved.”

“Efficiency,” laughed Regis. “Less feed, less space, and you can blow them back up when you want to eat them!”

“Precisely!” said Harkle.

They next went to the stable, where Harkle picked out fine mounts for them, two horses and two ponies. These were gifts, Harkle explained, only to be returned at the companions’ leisure. “It’s the least we could do to aid such a noble quest,” Harkle said with a low bow to stop any protests from Bruenor and Drizzt.

The road meandered, continuing on down the back of the hill. Harkle stood for a moment scratching his chin, a puzzled expression on his face. “The sixth post,” he told himself, “but to the left or the right?”

A man working on a ladder (another amusing curiosity—to see a ladder rise up above the phony rails of the fence and come to rest in mid-air against the top of the invisible wall) came to their aid. “Forgot again?” he chuckled at Harkle. “He pointed to the railing off to one side. “Sixth post to your left!”

Harkle shrugged away his embarrassment and moved on.

The companions watched the workman curiously as they passed from the hill, their mounts still tucked under their arms. He had a bucket and some rags and was rubbing several reddish-brown spots from the invisible wall.

“Low-flying birds,” Harkle explained apologetically. “But have no fear, Regweld is working on the problem even as we speak.

“Now we have come to the end of our meeting, though many years shall pass before you are forgotten in the Ivy Mansion! The road takes you right through the village of Longsaddle. You can restock your supplies there—it has all been arranged.”

“Me deepest regards to yerself and yer kin,” said Bruenor, bowing low. “Suren Longsaddle has been a bright spot on a bleary road!” The others were quick to agree.

“Farewell then, Companions of the Hall,” sighed Harkle. “The Harpells expect to see a small token when you at last find Mithril Hall and start the ancient forges burning again!”

“A king’s treasure!” Bruenor assured him as they moved away.

They were back on the road beyond Longsaddle’s borders before noon, their mounts trotting along easily with fully stuffed packs.

“Well, which do ye prefer, elf,” Bruenor asked later that day, “the jabs of a mad soldier’s spear, or the pokings of a wonderin’ wizard’s nose?”

Drizzt chuckled defensively as he thought about the question. Longsaddle had been so different from anywhere he had ever been, and yet, so much the same. In either case, his color singled him out as an oddity, and it wasn’t so much the hostility of his usual treatment that bothered him, as the embarrassing reminders that he would ever be different.

Only Wulfgar, riding beside him, caught his mumbled reply.

“The road.”

9. There is No Honor

“Why do you approach the city before the light of dawn?” the Nightkeeper of the North Gate asked the emissary for the merchant caravan that had pulled up outside Luskan’s wall. Jierdan, in his post beside the Nightkeeper, watched with special interest, certain that this troupe had come from Ten-Towns.

“We would not impose upon the regulations of the city if our business were not urgent,” answered the spokesman. “We have not rested for two days.” Another man emerged from the cluster of wagons, a body limp across his shoulders.

“Murdered on the road,” explained the spokesman. “And another of the party taken. Catti-brie, daughter of Bruenor Battlehammer himself!”

“A dwarf-maid?” Jierdan blurted out, suspecting otherwise, but masking his excitement for fear that it might implicate him.

“Nay, no dwarf. A woman,” lamented the spokeman. “Fairest in all the dale, maybe in all the north. The dwarf took her in as an orphaned child and claimed her as his own.”

“Orcs?” asked the Nightkeeper, more concerned with potential hazards on the road than with the fate of a single woman.

“This was not the work of orcs,” replied the spokesman. “Stealth and cunning took Catti-brie from us and killed the driver. We did not even discover the foul deed until the next morn.”

Jierdan needed no further information, not even a more complete description of Catti-brie, to put the pieces together. Her connection to Bruenor explained Entreri’s interest in her. Jierdan looked to the eastern horizon and the first rays of the coming dawn, anxious to be cleared of his duties on the wall so that he could go report his findings to Dendybar. This little piece of news should help to alleviate the mottled wizard’s anger at him for losing the drow’s trail on the docks.

“He has not found them?” Dendybar hissed at Sydney.

“He has found nothing but a cold trail,” the younger mage replied. “If they are on the docks yet, they are well disguised.”

Dendybar paused to consider his apprentice’s report. Something was out of place with this scenario. Four distinctive characters simply could not have vanished. “Have you learned anything of the assassin, then, or of his companion?”

“The vagabonds in the alleys fear him. Even the ruffians give him a respectfully wide berth.”

“So our friend is known among the bowel-dwellers,” Dendybar mused.

“A hired killer, I would guess,” reasoned Sydney. “Probably from the south—Waterdeep, perhaps, though we should have heard more of him if that were the case. Perhaps even farther south, from the lands beyond our vision.”

“Interesting,” replied Dendybar, trying to formulate some theory to satisfy all the variables. “And the girl?”

Sydney shrugged. “I do not believe that she follows him willingly, though she has made no move to be free of him. And when you saw him in Morkai’s vision, he was riding alone.”

“He acquired her,” came an unexpected reply from the doorway. Jierdan entered the room.

“What? Unannounced?” sneered Dendybar.

“I have news—it could not wait,” Jierdan replied boldly.

“Have they left the city?” Sydney prompted, voicing her suspicions to heighten the anger she read on the mottled wizard’s pallid face. Sydney well understood the dangers and the difficulties of the docks, and almost pitied Jierdan for incurring the wrath of the merciless Dendybar in a situation beyond his control. But Jierdan remained her competition for the mottled wizard’s favor, and she wouldn’t let sympathy stand in the way of her ambitions.

“No,” Jierdan snapped at her. “My news does not concern the drow’s party.” He looked back to Dendybar. “A caravan arrived in Luskan today—in search of the woman.”

“Who is she?” asked Dendybar, suddenly very interested and forgetting his anger at the intrusion.

“The adopted daughter of Bruenor Battlehamer,” Jierdan replied. “Cat—”

“Catti-brie! Of course!” hissed Dendybar, himself familiar with most of the prominent people in Ten-Towns. “I should have guessed!” He turned to Sydney. “My respect for our mysterious rider grows each day. Find him and bring him back to me!”

Sydney nodded, though she feared that Dendybar’s request would prove more difficult than the mottled wizard believed, probably even beyond her skills altogether.

She spent that night, until the early hours of the following morning, searching the alleyways and meeting places of the dockside area. But even using her contacts on the docks and all the magical tricks at her disposal, she found no sign of Entreri and Catti-brie, and no one willing or able to pass along any information that might help her in her search.

Tired and frustrated, she returned to the Hosttower the next day, passing the corridor to Dendybar’s room, even though he had ordered her to report to him directly upon her return. Sydney was in no mood to listen to the mottled wizard’s ranting about her failure.

She entered her small room, just off the main trunk of the Hosttower on the northern branch, below the rooms of the Master of the North Spire, and bolted the doors, further sealing them against unwelcomed intrusion with a magical spell.

She had barely fallen into her bed when the surface of her coveted scrying mirror began to swirl and glow. “Damn you, Dendybar,” she growled, assuming that the disturbance was her master’s doing. Dragging her weary body to the mirror, she stared deeply into it, attuning her mind to the swirl to bring the image clearer. It was not Dendybar that she faced, to her relief, but a wizard from a distant town, a would-be suitor that the passionless Sydney kept dangling by a thread of hope so that she could manipulate him as she needed.

“Greetings, fair Sydney,” the mage said. “I pray I did not disturb your sleep, but I have exciting news!”

Normally, Sydney would have tactfully listened to the mage, feigned interest in the story, and politely excused herself from the encounter. But now, with Dendybar’s pressing demands lying squarely across her shoulders, she had no patience for distractions. “This is not the time!” she snapped.

The mage, so caught up in his own news, seemed not to notice her definitive tone. “The most marvelous thing has happened in our town,” he rambled.

“Harkle!” Sydney cried to break his babbling momentum.

The mage halted, crestfallen. “But, Sydney,” he said.

“Another time,” she insisted.

“But how often in this day does one actually see and speak with a drow elf?” Harkle persisted.

“I cannot—” Sydney stopped short, digesting Harkle’s last words. “A drow elf?” she stammered.

“Yes,” Harkle beamed proudly, thrilled that his news had apparently impressed his beloved Sydney. “Drizzt Do’Urden, by name. He left Longsaddle just two days ago. I would have told you earlier, but the mansion has just been astir about the whole thing!”

“Tell me more, dear Harkle,” Sydney purred enticingly. “Do tell me everything.”

“I am in need of information.”

Whisper froze at the sound of the unexpected voice, guessing the speaker immediately. She knew that he was in town, and knew, too, that he was the only one who could have slipped through her defenses to get into her secret chambers.

“Information,” Entreri said again, moving out from the shadows behind a dressing screen.

Whisper slid the jar of healing unguent into her pocket and took a good measure of the man. Rumors spoke of him as the deadliest of assassins, and she, all too familiar with killers, knew at once that the rumors rang with truth. She sensed Entreri’s power, and the easy coordination of his movements. “Men do not come to my room uninvited,” she warned bravely.

Entreri moved to a better vantage point to study the bold woman. He had heard of her as well, a survivor of the rough streets, beautiful and deadly. But apparently Whisper had lost an encounter. Her nose was broken and disjointed, splayed across her cheek.

Whisper understood the scrutiny. She squared her shoulders and threw her head back proudly. “An unfortunate accident,” she hissed.

“It is not my concern,” Entreri came back. “I have come for information.”

Whisper turned away to go about her routine, trying to appear unbothered. “My price is high,” she said coolly.

She turned back to Entreri, the intense but frighteningly calm look on his face telling her beyond doubt that her life would be the only reward for cooperation.

“I seek four companions,” said Entreri. “A dwarf, a drow, a young man, and a halfling.”

Whisper was unused to such situations. No crossbows supported her now, no bodyguards waited for her signal behind a nearby secret door. She tried to remain calm, but Entreri knew the depth of her fear. She chuckled and pointed to her broken nose. “I have met your dwarf, and your drow, Artemis Entreri.” She emphasized his name as she spoke it, hoping that her recognition would put him back on the defensive.

“Where are they?” Entreri asked, still in control. “And what did they request of you?”

Whisper shrugged. “If they remain in Luskan, I do not know where. Most probably they are gone; the dwarf has a map of the northland.”

Entreri considered the words. “Your reputation speaks more highly of you,” he said sarcastically. “You accept such a wound and let them slip through your grasp?”

Whisper’s eyes narrowed in anger. “I choose my fights carefully,” she hissed. “The four are too dangerous for actions of frivolous vengeance. Let them go where they will. I want no business with them again.”

Entreri’s calm visage sagged a bit. He had already been to the Cutlass and heard of Wulfgar’s exploits. And now this. A woman like Whisper was not easily cowed. Perhaps he should indeed re-evaluate the strength of his opponents.

“Fearless is the dwarf,” Whisper offered, sensing his dismay and taking pleasure in furthering his discomfort. “And ware the drow, Artemis Entreri,” she hissed pointedly, attempting to relegate him to a similar level of respect for the companions with the grimness of her tone. “He walks in shadows that we cannot see, and strikes from the darkness. He conjures a demon in the form of a great cat and—”

Entreri turned and started away, having no intention of allowing Whisper to gain any more of an advantage.

Reveling in her victory, Whisper couldn’t resist the temptation to throw one final dart. “Men do not come to my room uninvited,” she said again. Entreri passed into an adjoining room and Whisper heard the door to the alley close.

“I choose my fights carefully,” she whispered to the emptiness of the room, regaining a measure of her pride with the threat.

She turned back to a small dressing table and took out the jar of unguent, quite pleased with herself. She examined her wound in the table’s mirror. Not too bad. The salve would erase it as it had erased so many scars from the trials of her profession.

She understood her stupidity when she saw the shadow slip past her reflection in the mirror, and felt the brush of air at her back. Her business allowed no tolerance for errors, and offered no second chance. For the first and last time in her life, Whisper had let her pride rise above her judgment.

A final groan escaped her as the jeweled dagger sunk deeply into her back.

“I, too, choose my fights with care,” Entreri whispered into her ear.

The next morning found Entreri outside a place he did not want to enter: the Hosttower of the Arcane. He knew that he was running out of options. Convinced now that the companions had long since left Luskan, the assassin needed some magical assistance to heat up the trail again. It had taken him nearly two years to sniff out the halfling in Ten-Towns, and his patience was wearing thin.

Catti-brie reluctantly but obediently at his side, he approached the structure, and was promptly escorted to Dendybar’s audience hall, where the mottled wizard and Sydney waited to greet him.

“They have left the city,” Entreri said bluntly, before any exchange of greetings.

Dendybar smiled to show Entreri that he had the upper hand this time. “As long as a week ago,” he replied calmly.

“And you know where they are,” Entreri reasoned.

Dendybar nodded, the smile still curling into his hollow cheeks.

The assassin didn’t enjoy the game. He spent a long moment measuring his counterpart, searching for some hint of the wizard’s intentions. Dendybar did likewise, still very much interested in an alliance with the formidable killer—but only on favorable terms.

“The price of the information?” Entreri asked.

“I do not even know your name,” was Dendybar’s reply.

Fair enough, the assassin thought. He bowed low. “Artemis Entreri,” he said, confident enough to speak truthfully.

“And why do you seek the companions, carrying the dwarf’s daughter in tow?” Dendybar pressed, playing his hand out to give the cocky assassin something to worry about.

“That is my own care,” hissed Entreri, the narrowing of his eyes the only indication that Dendybar’s knowledge had perturbed him.

“It is mine, as well, if we are to be allies in this!” shouted Dendybar, rising to stand tall and ominous and intimidate Entreri.

The assassin, though, cared little for the wizard’s continuing antics, too engrossed in assessing the value of such an alliance. “I ask nothing of your business with them,” Entreri replied at length. “Tell me only which one of the four it concerns.”

It was Dendybar’s turn to ponder. He wanted Entreri in his court, if for no other reason than he feared having the assassin working against him. And he liked the notion that he would not have to disclose anything about the artifact that he sought to this very dangerous man. “The drow has something of mine, or knowledge of where I can find it,” he said. “I want it back.”

“And the halfling is mine,” Entreri demanded. “Where are they?”

Dendybar motioned to Sydney. “They have passed through Longsaddle,” she said. “And are headed to Silverymoon, more than two weeks to the east.”

The names were unknown to Catti-brie, but she was glad that her friends had a good lead. She needed time to sort out a plan, though she wondered how effective she could be surrounded by such powerful captors.

“And what do you propose?” Entreri asked.

“An alliance,” replied Dendybar.

“But I have the information I need,” Entreri laughed. “What do I gain in an alliance with you?”

“My powers can get you to them, and can aid in defeating them. They are not a weak force. Consider it of mutual benefit.”

“You and I on the road? You seem more fitted to a book and a desk, wizard.”

Dendybar locked an unblinking glare on the arrogant assassin. “I assure you that I can get wherever I desire more effectively than you ever could imagine,” he growled. He let go of his anger quickly, though, being more interested in completing business. “But I shall remain here. Sydney will go in my stead, and Jierdan, the soldier, will be her escort.”

Entreri did not like the idea of traveling with Jierdan, but he decided not to press the point. It might be interesting, and helpful, in sharing the hunt with the Hosttower of the Arcane. He agreed to the terms.

“And what of her?” Sydney asked, pointing to Catti-brie.

“She goes with me,” Entreri was quick to answer.

“Of course,” agreed Dendybar. “No purpose in wasting such a valuable hostage.”

“We are three against five,” Sydney reasoned. “If things do not work out as easily as the two of you seem to expect, the girl may prove to be our downfall.”

“She goes!” demanded Entreri.

Dendybar had the solution already worked out. He turned a wry smile at Sydney. “Take Bok,” he chuckled.

Sydney’s face drooped, at the suggestion, as though Dendybar’s command had stolen her desire for the hunt.

Entreri wasn’t sure if he liked this new development or not.

Sensing the assassin’s discomfort, Dendybar motioned Sydney to a curtained closet at the side of the room. “Bok,” she called softly when she got there, the hint of a tremble in her voice.

It stepped through the curtain. Fully eight feet tall and three wide at the shoulders, the monster strode stiffly to the woman’s side. A huge man, it seemed, and indeed the wizard had used pieces of human bodies for many of its parts. Bok was bigger and more square than any man living, nearly the size of a giant, and had been magically empowered with strength beyond the measures of the natural world.

“A golem,” Dendybar proudly explained. “My own creation. Bok could kill us all right now. Even your fell blade would be of little use against it, Artemis Entreri.”

The assassin wasn’t so convinced, but he could not completely mask his intimidation. Dendybar had obviously tipped the scales of their partnership in his own favor, but Entreri knew that if he backed away from the bargain now he would be aligning the mottled wizard and his minions against him, and in direct competition with him for the dwarf’s party. Furthermore, it would take him weeks, perhaps even months to catch the travelers by normal means and he did not doubt that Dendybar could get there faster.

Catti-brie shared the same uncomfortable thoughts. She had no desire to travel with the gruesome monster, but she wondered what carnage she would find when she finally caught up to Bruenor and the others if Entreri decided to break away from the alliance.

“Fear not,” Dendybar comforted. “Bok is harmless, incapable of any independent thought, for, you see, Bok has no mind. The golem answers to my commands, or to Sydney’s, and would walk into a fire to be consumed if we merely asked it to do so!”

“I have business to finish in the city,” Entreri said, not doubting Dendybar’s words and having little desire to hear any more about the golem. “When do we depart?”

“Night would be best,” reasoned Dendybar. “Come back to the green outside the Hosttower when the sun is down. We shall meet there and get you on your way.”

Alone in his chamber, save for Bok, Dendybar stroked the golem’s muscled shoulders with deep affection. Bok was his hidden trump, his protection against the resistance of the companions, or the treachery of Artemis Entreri. But Dendybar did not part with the monster easily, for it played a powerful role, as well, in protecting him from would-be successors in the Hosttower. Dendybar had subtly but definitely passed along the warning to other wizards that any of them striking against him would have to deal with Bok, even if Dendybar were dead.

But the road ahead might be long, and the Master of the North Spire could not forsake his duties and expect to hold his title. Especially not with the Archmage just looking for any excuse to be rid of him, understanding the dangers of Dendybar’s outspoken aspirations to the central tower.

“Nothing can stop you, my pet,” Dendybar told the monster. In truth, he was simply reaffirming his own fears about his choice to send the inexperienced mage in his stead. He didn’t doubt her loyalty, nor Jierdan’s, but Entreri and the heroes from Icewind Dale were not to be taken lightly.

“I have given you the hunting power,” Dendybar explained, as he tossed the scroll tube and the now-useless parchment to the floor. “The drow is your purpose and you can now sense his presence from any distance. Find him! Do not return to me without Drizzt Do’Urden!”

A guttural roar issued from Bok’s blue lips, the only sound the unthinking instrument was capable of uttering.

Entreri and Catti-brie found the wizard’s party already assembled when they arrived at the Hosttower later that night.

Jierdan stood alone, off to the side, apparently none too thrilled about partaking in the adventure, but having little choice. The soldier feared the golem, and had no love, or trust, for Entreri. He feared Dendybar more, though, and his uneasiness about the potential dangers on the road did not measure up against the certain dangers he would face at the hands of the mottled wizard if he refused to go.

Sydney broke away from Bok and Dendybar and walked across the way to meet her companions. “Greetings,” she offered, more interested in appeasement now than competition with her formidable partner. “Dendybar prepares our mounts. The ride to Silverymoon shall be swift indeed!”

Entreri and Catti-brie looked to the mottled wizard. Bok stood beside him, holding an unrolled parchment out in view while Dendybar poured a smoky liquid from a beaker over a white feather and chanted the runes of the spell.

A mist grew at the wizard’s feet, swirling and thickening into something with a definite shape. Dendybar left it to its transformation and moved to repeat the ritual a short way off. By the time the first magical horse had appeared, the wizard was creating the fourth and final one.

Entreri raised his brow. “Four?” he asked Sydney. “We are now five.”

“Bok could not ride,” she replied, amused at the notion. “It will run.” She turned and headed back toward Dendybar, leaving Entreri with the thought.

“Of course,” Entreri muttered to himself, somehow less thrilled than ever about the presence of the unnatural thing.

But Catti-brie had begun to view things a bit differently. Dendybar had obviously sent Bok along more to gain an advantage over Entreri than to ensure victory over her friends. Entreri must have known it, too.

Without realizing it, the wizard had set up just the type of nervous environment that Catti-brie hoped for, a tense situation that she might find a way to exploit.

10. Bonds of Reputation

The sun beamed brightly on the morning of the first day out from Longsaddle. The companions, refreshed by their visit with the Harpells, rode at a strong pace, but still managed to enjoy the clear weather and the clear road. The land was flat and unmarked, not a tree or hill anywhere near.

“Three days to Nesme, maybe four,” Regis told them.

“More to three if the weather holds,” said Wulfgar.

Drizzt shifted under his cowl. However pleasant the morning might seem to them, he knew they were still in the wilds. Three days could prove to be a long ride indeed.

“What do ye know of this place, Nesme?” Bruenor asked Regis.

“Just what Harkle told us,” Regis replied. “A fair-sized city, trading folk. But a careful place. I have never been there, but tales of the brave people living on the edge of the Evermoors reach far across the northland.”

“I am intrigued by the Evermoors,” said Wulfgar. “Harkle would say little of the place, just shake his head and shiver whenever I asked of it.”

“Not to doubt, a place with a name beyond truth,” Bruenor said, laughing, unimpressed by reputations. “Could it be worse than the dale?”

Regis shrugged, not fully convinced by the dwarf’s argument. “The tales of the Trollmoors, for that is the name given to those lands, may be exaggerated, but they are always foreboding. Every city in the north salutes the bravery of the people of Nesme for keeping the trading route along the Surbrin open in the face of such trials.”

Bruenor laughed again. “Might it be that the tales be coming from Nesme, to paint them stronger than what they are?”

Regis did not argue.

By the time they broke for lunch, a high haze veiled the sunshine. Away to the north, a black line of clouds had appeared, rushing their way. Drizzt had expected as much. In the wild, even the weather proved an enemy.

That afternoon the squall line rolled over them, carrying sheets of rain and hailstones that clinked off of Bruenor’s dented helm. Sudden cuts of lightning sliced the darkened sky and the thunder nearly knocked them from their mounts. But they plodded on through the deepening mud.

“This is the true test of the road!” Drizzt yelled to them through the howling wind. “Many more travelers are defeated by storms than by orcs, because they do not anticipate the dangers when they begin their journey!”

“Bah! A summer rain is all!” Bruenor snorted defiantly.

As if in prideful reply, a lightning bolt exploded just a few yards to the side of the riders. The horses jumped and kicked. Bruenor’s pony went down, stumbling split-legged into the mud and nearly crushing the stunned dwarf in its scramble.

His own mount out of control, Regis managed to dive from the saddle and roll away.

Bruenor got to his knees and wiped the mud from his eyes, cursing all the while. “Damn!” he spat, studying the pony’s movements. “The thing’s lame!”

Wulfgar steadied his own horse and tried to start after Regis’s bolting pony, but the hailstones, driven by the wind, pelted him, blinded him, and stung his horse, and again he found himself fighting to hold his seat.

Another lightning bolt thundered in. And another.

Drizzt, whispering softly and covering his horse’s head with his cloak to calm it, moved slowly beside the dwarf. “Lame!” Bruenor shouted again, although Drizzt could barely hear him.

Drizzt only shook his head helplessly and pointed to Bruenor’s axe.

More lightning came, and another blast of wind. Drizzt rolled to the side of his mount to shield himself, aware that he could not keep the beast calm much longer.

The hailstones began to come larger, striking with the force of slung bullets.

Drizzt’s terrified horse jerked him to the ground and, bucked away, trying to flee beyond the reach of the punishing storm.

Drizzt was up quickly beside Bruenor, but any emergency plans the two might have had were immediately deterred, for then Wulfgar stumbled back toward them.

He was walking—barely—leaning against the wind’s push, using it to hold him upright. His eyes seemed droopy, his jaw twitched, and blood mixed with the rain on his cheek. He looked at his friends blankly, as if he had no comprehension of what had happened to him.

Then he fell, face down, into the mud at their feet.

A shrill whistle cut through the blunt wall of wind, a singular point of hope against the storm’s mounting power. Drizzt’s keen ears caught it as he and Bruenor hoisted their young friend’s face from the muck. So far away the whistle seemed, but Drizzt understood how storms could distort one’s perceptions.

“What?” Bruenor asked of the noise, noticing the drow’s sudden reaction, for Bruenor had not heard the call.

“Regis!” Drizzt answered. He started dragging Wulfgar in the direction of the whistle, Bruenor following his lead. They didn’t have time to discern if the young man was even alive.

The quick-thinking halfling saved them that day. Fully aware of the killing potential of squalls rolling down from the Spine of the World, Regis had crawled around in search of some shelter in the empty land. He stumbled across a hole in the side of a small ridge, an old wolf den perhaps, empty now.

Following the beacon of his whistles, Drizzt and Bruenor soon found him.

“It’ll fill with the rain and we’ll be drowned!” Bruenor yelled, but he helped Drizzt drag Wulfgar inside and prop him up against the rear wall of the cave, then took his place beside his friends as they worked to build a barrier of dirt and their remaining packs against the feared flood.

A groan from Wulfgar sent Regis scurrying to his side.

“He’s alive!” the halfling proclaimed. “And his wounds don’t seem too bad!”

“Tougher’n a badger in a corner,” Bruenor remarked.

Soon they had their den tolerable, if not comfortable, and even Bruenor stopped his complaining.

“The true test of the road,” Drizzt said again to Regis, trying to cheer up his thoroughly miserable friend as they sat in the mud and rode out the night, the incessant booming of the thunder and pounding of the hail a constant reminder of the small margin of safety.

In reply, Regis poured a stream of water out of his boot.

“How many miles do ye reckon we made?” Bruenor grumbled at Drizzt.

“Ten, perhaps,” the drow answered.

“Two weeks to Nesme, at this rate!” Bruenor muttered, folding his arms across his chest.

“The storm will pass,” Drizzt offered hopefully, but the dwarf was no longer listening.

The next day began without rain, though thick gray clouds hung low in the sky. Wulfgar was fine by morning, but he still did not understand what had happened to him. Bruenor insisted that they start out at once, though Regis would have preferred that they remain in their hole until they were certain the storm had passed.

“Most of the provisions are lost,” Drizzt reminded the halfling. “You might not find another meal beyond a pittance of dried bread until we reach Nesme.”

Regis was the first one out of the hole.

Unbearable humidity and muddy ground kept the pace slow, and the friends soon found their knees aching from the constant twisting and sloshing. Their sodden clothes clung to them uncomfortably and weighed on their every step.

They came upon Wulfgar’s horse, a burned and smoking form half-buried in the mud. “Lightning,” Regis observed.

The three looked at their barbarian friend, amazed that he could have survived such a hit. Wulfgar, too, stared in shock, realizing what had dropped him from his mount in the night.

“Tougher’n a badger!” Bruenor hailed again to Drizzt.

Sunshine teasingly found a crack in the overcast now and then. The sunlight was nothing substantial, though, and by noon, the day had actually grown darker. Distant thunder foretold a dismal afternoon.

The storm had already spent its killing might, but that night they found no shelter beyond their wet clothes, and whenever the crackle of lightning lit up the sky, four hunched forms could be seen sitting in the mud, their heads downcast as they accepted their fate in helpless resignation.

For two more days they lumbered on through the rain and wind, having little choice and nowhere to go but forward. Wulfgar proved to be the savior of the party’s morale at this low time. He scooped Regis up from the sodden ground, tossing the halfling easily onto his back, and explaining that he needed the extra weight for balance. By sparing the halfling’s pride this way, the barbarian even managed to convince the surly dwarf to ride for a short time. And always, Wulfgar was indomitable. “A blessing, I tell you,” he kept crying at the gray heavens. “The storm keeps the insects and the orcs out of our faces! And how many months shall it be before we want for water?”

He worked hard to keep their spirits high. At one point, he watched the lightning closely, timing the delay between the flash and the ensuing thunder. As they neared the blackened skeleton of a long-dead tree, the lightning flashed and Wulfgar pulled his trick. Yelling “Tempus!” he heaved his warhammer so that it smashed into, and leveled, the trunk at precisely the moment the thunder exploded around them. His amused friends looked back to him only to find him standing proud, arms and eyes uplifted to the gods as though they had personally answered his call.

Drizzt, accepting this whole ordeal with his customary stoicism, silently applauded his young friend and knew again, even more than before, that they had made a wise decision in bringing him along. The drow understood that his own duty in these rough times was to continue his role as sentry, keeping his diligent guard despite the barbarian’s proclamation of safety.

Finally, the storm was blown away by the same brisk wind that had ushered it in. The bright sunshine and clear blue skies of the subsequent dawn lightened the companions’ mood immeasurably and allowed them to think again of what lay ahead.

Especially Bruenor. The dwarf leaned forward in his pressing march, just as he had when they had first begun their journey back in Icewind Dale.

Red beard wagging with the intensity of his pumping stride, Bruenor found his narrow focus once again. He fell back into the dreams of his homeland, seeing the flickering shadows of the torchlight against the silver-streamed walls and the wondrous artifacts of his people’s meticulous labors. His heightened concentration on Mithril Hall over the last few months had sparked clearer, and new, memories in him, and on the road now he remembered, for the first time in more than a century, the Hall of Dumathoin.

The dwarves of Mithril Hall had made a fine living in the trade of their crafted items, but they always kept their very finest pieces, and the most precious gifts bestowed upon them from outsiders, to themselves. In a large and decorated chamber that opened wide the eyes of every visitor, the legacy of Bruenor’s ancestors sat in open display, serving as inspiration for the clan’s future artists.

Bruenor chuckled softly at the memory of the wondrous hall and the marvelous pieces, mostly weapons and armor. He looked at Wulfgar striding beside him, and at the mighty warhammer he had crafted the year before. Aegis-fang might have hung in the Hall of Dumathoin if Bruenor’s clan still ruled Mithril Hall, sealing Bruenor’s immortality in the legacy of his people.

But watching Wulfgar handling the hammer, swinging it as easily as he would swing his own arm, Bruenor had no regrets.

The next day brought more good news. Shortly after they broke camp, the friends discovered that they had traveled farther than they had anticipated during the trials of the storm, for as they marched, the landscape around them went through subtle but definite transformations. Where before the ground had been sparsely overgrown with thin patches of scraggly weeds, a virtual sea of mud under the torrent of rain, they now found lush grasses and scattered copses of tall elms. Cresting a final ridge confirmed their suspicions, for before them lay the Dessarin Valley. A few miles ahead, swollen from the spring melt and the recent storm, and clearly visible from their high perch, the arm of the great river rolled steadily along its southbound trek.

The long winter dominated this land, but when they finally bloomed, the plants here made up for their short season with a vibrancy unmatched in all the world. Rich colors of spring surrounded the friends as they made their way down the slope to the river. The carpet of grass was so thick that they took off their boots and walked barefoot through the spongy softness. The vitality here was truly obvious, and contagious.

“Ye should see the halls,” Bruenor remarked on sudden impulse. “Veins of purest mithril wider than yer hand! Streams of silver, they be, and bested in beauty only by what a dwarf’s hand makes of ‘em.”

“The want of such a sight keeps our path running straight through the hardships,” Drizzt replied.

“Bah!” Bruenor snorted good-heartedly. “Ye’re here because I tricked ye into being here, elf. Ye had run outa reasons for holding back me adventure anymore!”

Wulfgar had to chuckle. He had been in on the deception that had duped Drizzt into agreeing to make this journey. After the great battle in Ten-Towns with Akar Kessell, Bruenor had feigned mortal injury, and on his apparent deathbed had begged the drow to journey with him to his ancient homeland. Thinking the dwarf about to expire, Drizzt could not refuse.

“And yerself!” Bruenor roared at Wulfgar. “I see why ye’ve come, even if ye’re skull’s too thick for ye to know!”

“Pray tell me,” Wulfgar replied with a smile.

“Ye’re running! But ye can’t get away!” the dwarf cried. Wulfgar’s mirth shifted to confusion.

“The girl’s spooked him, elf,” Bruenor explained to Drizzt. “Catti-brie’s caught him in a net his muscles can no’ break!”

Wulfgar laughed along with Bruenor’s blunt conclusions, taking no offense. But in the images triggered by Bruenor’s allusions to Catti-brie, memories of a sunset view on the face of Kelvin’s Cairn, or of hours spent talking on the rise of rocks called Bruenor’s Climb, the young barbarian found a disturbing element of truth in the dwarf’s observations.

“And what of Regis?” Drizzt asked Bruenor. “Have you discerned his motive for coming along? Might it be his love of ankle-deep mud that sucks his little legs in to the knees?”

Bruenor stopped laughing and studied the halfling’s reaction to the drow’s questions. “Nay, I have not,” he replied seriously after a few unrevealing moments. “This alone I know: If Rumblebelly chooses the road, it means only that the mud and the orcs measure up better than what he’s leaving behind.” Bruenor kept his eyes upon his little friend, again seeking some revelations in the halfling’s response.

Regis kept his head bowed, watching his furry feet, visible below the diminishing roll of his belly for the first times in many months, as they plowed through the thick waves of green. The assassin, Entreri, was a world away, he thought. And he had no intention of dwelling on a danger that had been avoided.

A few miles up the bank they came upon the first major fork in the river, where the Surbrin, from the northeast, emptied into the main flow of the northern arm of the great river network.

The friends looked for a way to cross the larger river, the Dessarin, and get into the small valley between it and the Surbrin. Nesme, their next, and final stopover before Silverymoon, was farther up the Surbrin, and though the city was actually on the east bank of the river, the friends, taking the advice of Harkle Harpell, had decided to travel up the west bank and avoid the lurking dangers of the Evermoors.

They crossed the Dessarin without too much trouble, thanks to the incredible agility of the drow, who ran out over the river along an overhanging tree limb and leaped to a similar perch on the branch of a tree on the opposite bank. Soon after, they were all easily plodding along the Surbrin, enjoying the sunshine, the warm breeze, and the endless song of the river. Drizzt even managed to fell a deer with his bow, promising a fine supper of venison and restocked packs for the road ahead.

They camped right down by the water, under starshine for the first time in four nights, sitting around a fire and listening to Bruenor’s tales of the silvery halls and the wonders they would find at the end of their road.

The serenity of the night did not carry over into the morning, though, for the friends were awakened by the sounds of battle. Wulfgar immediately scrambled up a nearby tree to learn who the combatants were.

“Riders!” he yelled, leaping and drawing out his warhammer even before he hit the ground. “Some are down! They do battle with monsters I do not know!” He was off and running to the north, Bruenor on his heels, and Drizzt circling to their flank down along the river. Less enthusiastic, Regis hung back, pulling out his small mace but hardly preparing for open battle.

Wulfgar was first on the scene. Seven riders were still up, trying vainly to maneuver their mounts into some form of a defensive line. The creatures they battled were quick and had no fear of running under stamping legs to trip up the horses. The monsters were only about three feet high, with arms twice that length. They resembled little trees, though undeniably animated, running about wildly, whacking with their clublike arms or, as another unfortunate rider discovered just as Wulfgar entered the fray, winding their pliable limbs around their foes to pull them from their mounts.

Wulfgar barreled between two creatures, knocking them aside, and bore down on the one that had just taken down the rider. The barbarian underestimated the monsters, though, for their rootlike toes found balance quickly and their long arms caught him from behind before he had gone two steps, grappling him on either side and stopping him in his tracks.

Bruenor charged in right behind. The dwarf’s axe chopped through one of the monsters, splitting it down the middle like firewood, and then cut in wickedly on the other, sending a great chunk of its torso flying away.

Drizzt came up even with the battle, anxious but tempered, as always, by the overruling sensibility that had kept him alive through hundreds of encounters. He moved down to the side, below the drop of the bank, where he discovered a ramshackle bridge of logs spanning the Surbrin. The monsters had built it, Drizzt knew; apparently they weren’t unthinking beasts.

Drizzt peered over the bank. The riders had rallied around the unexpected reinforcements, but one right before him had been wrapped by a monster and was being dragged from his horse. Seeing the treelike nature of their weird foes, Drizzt understood why the riders all wielded axes, and wondered how effective his slender scimitars would prove.

But he had to act. Springing from his concealment, he thrust both his scimitars at the creature. They nicked into the mark, having no more effect than if Drizzt had stabbed a tree.

Even so, the drow’s attempt had saved the rider. The monster clubbed its victim one last time to keep him dazed, then released its hold to face Drizzt. Thinking quickly, the drow went to an alternate attack, using his ineffective blades to parry the clubbing limbs. Then, as the creature rushed in on him, he dove at its feet, uprooting it, and rolled it back over him toward the riverbank. He poked his scimitars into the barklike skin and pushed off, sending the monster tumbling toward the Surbrin. It caught a hold before it went into the water, but Drizzt was on it again. A flurry of well-placed kicks put the monster into the flow and the river carried it away.

The rider, by this time, had regained his seat and his wits. He stepped his horse to the bank to thank his rescuer.

Then he saw the black skin.

“Drow!” he screamed, and his axeblade cut down.

Drizzt was caught off guard. His keen reflexes got one blade up enough to deflect the edge of the axe, but the flat of the weapon struck his head and sent him reeling. He dove with the momentum of the hit and rolled, trying to put as much ground between himself and the rider as he could, realizing that the man would kill him before he could recover.

“Wulfgar!” Regis screamed from his own concealment a short way back on the bank. The barbarian finished off one of the monsters with a thunderous smack that sent cracks all along its length, and turned just as the rider was bringing his horse about to get at Drizzt.

Wulfgar roared in rage and bolted from his own fight, grabbing the horse’s bridle while it was still in its turn and heaving with all his strength. Horse and rider toppled to the ground. The horse was up again at once, shaking its head and nervously trotting about, but the rider stayed down, his leg crushed under his mount’s weight in the fall.

The remaining five riders worked in unison now, charging into groups of monsters and scattering them. Bruenor’s wicked axe cut away, the dwarf all the while singing a woodchopper’s song that he had learned as a boy.

“Go split the wood for the fire, me son,

Heat up the kettle and the meal’s begun!”

he sang out as he methodically cut down one monster after another.

Wulfgar defensively straddled Drizzt’s form, his mighty hammer shattering, with a single strike, any of the monsters that ventured too near.

The rout was on, and in seconds the few surviving creatures scampered in terror across the bridge over the Surbrin.

Three riders were down and dead, a fourth leaned heavily against his horse, nearly overcome by his wounds, and the one Wulfgar had dropped had fainted away for his agony. But the five remaining astride did not go to their wounded. They formed a semi-circle around Wulfgar and Drizzt, who was just now getting back to his feet, and kept the two pinned against the riverbank with axes ready.

“This is how ye welcome yer rescuers?” Bruenor barked at them, slapping aside one horse so that he could join his friends. “Me bet’s that the same folk don’t come to yer aid twice!”

“Foul company you keep, dwarf!” one of the riders retorted.

“Your friend would be dead if it were not for that foul company!” Wulfgar replied, indicating the rider lying off to the side. “And he repays the drow with a blade!”

“We are the Riders of Nesme,” the rider explained. “Our lot is to die on the field, protecting our kin. We accept this fate willingly.”

“Step yer horse one more foot and ye’ll get yer wish,” Bruenor warned.

“But you judge us unfairly,” Wulfgar argued. “Nesme is our destination. We come in peace and friendship.”

“You’ll not get in—not with him!” spat the rider. “The ways of the foul drow elves are known to all. You ask us to welcome him?”

“Bah, yer a fool and so’s yer mother,” Bruenor growled.

“Ware your words, dwarf,” the rider warned. “We are five to three, and mounted.”

“Try yer threat, then,” Bruenor shot back. “The buzzards won’t get much eatin’ with those dancing trees.” He ran his finger along the edge of his axe. “Let’s give ‘em something better to peck at.”

Wulfgar swung Aegis-fang easily, back and forth at the end of one arm. Drizzt made no move toward his weapons, and his steady calm was perhaps the most unnerving action of all to the riders.

Their speaker seemed less cocksure after the failure of his threat, but he held to a facade of advantage. “But we are not ungrateful for your assistance. We shall allow you to walk away. Be gone and never return to our lands.”

“We go where we choose,” snarled Bruenor.

“And we choose not to fight,” Drizzt added. “It is not our purpose, nor our desire, to lay injury to you or to your town, Riders of Nesme. We shall pass, keeping our own business to ourselves and leaving yours to you.”

“You shan’t go anywhere near my town, black elf!” another rider cried. “You may cut us down on the field, but there are a hundred more behind us, and thrice that behind them! Now be gone!” His companions seemed to regain their courage at his bold words, their horses stepping nervously at the sudden tensing of the bridles.

“We have our course,” Wulfgar insisted.

“Damn ‘em!” Bruenor roared suddenly. “I’ve seen too much of this band already! Damn their town. May the river wash it away!” He turned to his friends. “They do us a favor. A day and more we`ll save by going straight through to Silverymoon, instead of around with the river.”

“Straight through?” questioned Drizzt. “The Evermoors?”

“Can it be worse than the dale?” Bruenor replied. He spun back on the riders. “Keep yer town, and yer heads, for now,” he said. “We’re to cross the bridge here and be rid of yerselves and all of Nesme!”

“Fouler things than bog blokes roam the Trollmoors, foolish dwarf,” the rider replied with a grin. “We have come to destroy this bridge. It will be burned behind you.”

Bruenor nodded and returned the grin.

“Keep your course to the east,” the rider warned. “Word will go out to all the riders. If you are sighted near Nesme, you will be killed.”

“Take your vile friend and be gone,” another rider taunted, “before my axe bathes in the blood of a black elf! Although I would then have to throw the tainted weapon away!” All the riders joined in the ensuing laughter.

Drizzt hadn’t even heard it. He was concentrating on a rider in the back of the group, a quiet one who could use his obscurity in the conversation to gain an unnoticed advantage. The rider had slipped a bow off of his shoulder and was inching his hand, ever so slowly, toward his quiver.

Bruenor was done talking. He and Wulfgar turned away from the riders and started to the bridge. “Come on, elf,” he said to Drizzt as he passed. “Me sleep’ll come better when we’re far away from these orc-sired dogs.”

But Drizzt had one more message to send before he would turn his back on the riders. In one blinding movement, he spun the bow from his back, pulled an arrow from his quiver, and sent it whistling through the air. It knocked into the would-be bowman’s leather cap, parting his hair down the middle, and stuck in a tree immediately behind, its shaft quivering a clear warning.

“Your misguided insults, I accept, even expect,” Drizzt explained to the horrified horsemen. “But I’ll brook no attempts to injure my friends, and I will defend myself. Be warned, and only once warned: If you make another move against us, you will die.” He turned abruptly and moved down to the bridge without looking back.

The stunned riders certainly had no intention of hindering the drow’s party any further. The would-be bowman hadn’t even looked for his cap.

Drizzt smiled at the irony of his inability to clear himself of the legends of his heritage. Though he was shunned and threatened on the one hand, the mysterious aura surrounding the black elves also gave him a bluff powerful enough to dissuade most potential enemies.

Regis joined them at the bridge, bouncing a small rock in his hand. “Had them lined up,” he explained of his impromptu weapon. He flicked the stone into the river. “If it began, I would have had the first shot.”

“If it began,” Bruenor corrected, “ye’d have soiled the hole ye hid in!”

Wulfgar considered the rider’s warning of their path. “Trollmoors,” he echoed somberly, looking up the slope across the way to the blasted land before them. Harkle had told them of the place. The burned-out land and bottomless bogs. The trolls and even worse horrors that had no names.

“Save us a day and more!” Bruenor repeated stubbornly. Wulfgar wasn’t convinced.

“You are dismissed,” Dendybar told the specter.

As the flames reformed in the brazier, stripping him of his material form, Morkai considered this second meeting. How often would Dendybar be calling upon him? He wondered. The mottled wizard had not yet fully recovered from their last encounter, but had dared to summon him again so soon. Dendybar’s business with the dwarf’s party must be urgent indeed! That assumption only made Morkai despise his role as the mottled wizard’s spy even more.

Alone in the room again, Dendybar stretched out from his meditative position and grinned wickedly as he considered the image Morkai had shown him. The companions had lost their mounts. and were marching into the foulest area in all the North. Another day or so would put his own party, flying on the hooves of his magical steeds, even with them, though thirty miles to the north.

Sydney would get to Silverymoon long before the Drow.

11. Silverymoon

The ride from Luskan was swift indeed. Entreri and his cohorts appeared to any curious onlookers as no more than a shimmering blur in the night wind. The magical mounts left no trail of their passing, and no living creature could have overtaken them. The golem, as always, lumbered tirelessly behind with great stiff-legged strides.

So smooth and easy were the seats atop Dendybar’s conjured steeds that the party was able to keep up its run past the dawn and throughout the entire next day with only short rests for food. Thus, when they set their camp after the sunset of the first full day on the road, they had already put the crags behind them.

Catti-brie fought an inner battle that first day. She had no doubt that Entreri and the new alliance would overtake Bruenor. As the situation stood now, Catti-brie would be only a detriment to her friends, a pawn for Entreri to play at his convenience.

She could do little to remedy the problem, unless she found some way to diminish, if not overcome, the grip of terror that the assassin held on her. That first day she spent in concentration, blocking out her surroundings as much as she could and searching her inner spirit for the strength and courage she would need.

Bruenor had given her many tools over the years to wage such a battle, skills of discipline and self-confidence that had seen her through many difficult situations. On the second day of the ride, then, more confident and comfortable with her situation, Catti-brie was able to focus on her captors. Most interesting were the glares that Jierdan and Entreri shot each other. The proud soldier had obviously not forgotten the humiliation he had suffered the night of their first meeting on the field outside of Luskan. Entreri, keenly aware of the grudge, even fueling it in his willingness to bring the issue to confrontation, kept an untrusting eye on the man.

This growing rivalry may prove to be her most promising—perhaps her only—hope of escaping, Catti-brie thought. She conceded that Bok was an indestructible, mindless destroying machine, beyond any manipulation she might try to lay upon it, and she learned quickly that Sydney offered nothing.

Catti-brie had tried to engage the young mage in conversation that second day, but Sydney’s focus was too narrow for any diversions. She would be neither side-tracked nor persuaded from her obsession in any way. She didn’t even acknowledge Catti-brie’s greeting when they sat down for their midday meal. And when Catti-brie pestered her further, Sydney instructed Entreri to “keep the whore away.”

Even in the failed attempt, though, the aloof mage had aided Catti-brie in a way that neither of them could foresee. Sydney’s open contempt and insults came as a slap in Catti-brie’s face and instilled in her another tool that would help to overcome the paralysis of her terror: anger.

They passed the halfway point of their journey on the second day, the landscape rolling surrealistically by them as they sped along, and camped in the small hills northeast of Nesme, with the city of Luskan now fully two hundred miles behind them.

Campfires twinkled in the distance, a patrol from Nesme, Sydney theorized.

“We should go there and learn what we may,” Entreri suggested, anxious for news of his target.

“You and I,” Sydney agreed. “We can get there and back before half the night is through.”

Entreri looked at Catti-brie. “What of her?” he asked the mage. “I would not leave her with Jierdan.”

“You think that the soldier would take advantage of the girl?” Sydney replied. “I assure you that he is honorable.”

“That is not my concern,” Entreri smirked. “I fear not for the daughter of Bruenor Battlehammer. She would dispose of your honorable soldier and be gone into the night before we ever returned.”

Catti-brie didn’t welcome the compliment. She understood that Entreri’s comment was more of an insult to Jierdan, who was off gathering firewood, than any recognition of her own prowess, but the assassin’s unexpected respect for her would make her task doubly difficult. She didn’t want Entreri thinking of her as dangerous, even resourceful, for that would keep him too alert for her to move.

Sydney looked to Bok. “I go,” she told the golem, purposely loud enough for Catti-brie to easily hear. “If the prisoner tries to flee, run her down and kill her!” She shot Entreri an evil grin. “Are you content?”

He returned her smile and swung his arm out in the direction of the distant camp.

Jierdan returned then, and Sydney told him of their plans. The soldier didn’t seem overjoyed to have Sydney and Entreri running off together, though he said nothing to dissuade the mage. Catti-brie watched him closely and knew the truth. Being left alone with her and the golem didn’t bother him, she surmised, but he feared any budding friendship between his two road-mates. Catti-brie understood and even expected this, for Jierdan was in the weakest position of the three—subservient to Sydney and afraid of Entreri. An alliance between those two, perhaps even a pact excluding Dendybar and the Hosttower altogether, would at the least put him out, and more probably spell his end.

“Suren the nature of their dark business works against them,” Catti-brie whispered as Sydney and Entreri left the camp, speaking the words aloud to reinforce her growing confidence.

“I could help ye with that,” she offered to Jierdan as he worked to complete the campsite.

The soldier glared at her. “Help?” he scoffed. “I should make you do all of it by yourself.”

“Yer anger is known to me,” Catti-brie countered sympathetically. “I meself have suffered at Entreri’s foul hands.”

Her pity enraged the proud soldier. He rushed at her threateningly, but she held her composure and did not flinch. “This work is below yer station.”

Jierdan stopped suddenly, his anger diffused by his intrigue at the compliment. An obvious ploy, but to Jierdan’s wounded ego, the young woman’s respect came as too welcome to be ignored.

“What could you know of my station?” he asked.

“I know ye are a soldier of Luskan,” Catti-brie replied. “Of a group that’s feared throughout all the northland. Ye should not do the grovel work while the mage and the shadow-chaser are off playing in the night.”

“You’re making trouble!” Jierdan growled, but he paused to consider the point. “You set the camp,” he ordered at length, regaining a measure of his own selfrespect by displaying his superiority over her. Catti-brie didn’t mind, though. She went about the work at once, playing her subservient role without complaint. A plan began to take definite shape in her mind now, and this phase demanded that she make an ally among her enemies, or at least put herself in a position to plant the seeds of jealousy in Jierdan’s mind.

She listened, satisfied, as the soldier moved away, muttering under his breath.

Before Entreri and Sydney even got close enough for a good view of the encampment, ritualistic chanting told them that this was no caravan from Nesme. They inched in more cautiously to confirm their suspicions.

Long-haired barbarians, dark and tall, and dressed in ceremonial feathered garb, danced a circle around a wooden griffon totem.

“Uthgardt,” Sydney explained. “The Griffon tribe. We are near to Shining White, their ancestral mound.” She edged away from the glow of the camp. “Come,” she whispered. “We will learn nothing of value here.”

Entreri followed her back toward their own campsite. “Should we ride now?” he asked when they were safely away. “Gain more distance from the barbarians?”

“Unnecessary,” Sydney replied. “The Uthgardt will dance the night through. All the tribe partakes of the ritual; I doubt that they even have sentries posted.”

“You know much about them,” the assassin remarked in an accusing tone, a hint to his sudden suspicions that there might be some ulterior plot controlling the events around them.

“I prepared myself for this journey,” Sydney countered. “The Uthgardt keep few secrets; their ways are generally known and documented. Travelers in the northland would do well to understand these people.”

“I am fortunate to have such a learned road companion,” Entreri said, bowing in sarcastic apology.

Sydney, her eyes straight ahead, did not respond.

But Entreri would not let the conversation die so easily. There was method in his leading line of suspicions. He had consciously chosen this time to play out his hand and reveal his distrust even before they had learned the nature of the encampment. For the first time the two were alone, without Catti-brie or Jierdan to complicate the confrontation, and Entreri meant to put an end to his concerns, or put an end to the mage.

“When am I to die?” he asked bluntly.

Sydney didn’t miss a step. “When the fates decree it, as with us all.”

“Let me ask the question a different way,” Entreri continued, grabbing her by the arm and turning her to face him. “When are you instructed to try to kill me?”

“Why else would Dendybar have sent the golem?” Entreri reasoned. “The wizard puts no store in pacts and honor. He does what he must to accomplish his goals in the most expedient way, and then eliminates those he no longer needs. When my value to you is ended, I am to be slain. A task you may find more difficult than you presume.”

“You are perceptive,” Sydney replied coolly. “You have judged Dendybar’s character well. He would have killed you simply to avoid any possible complications. But you have not considered my own role in this. On my insistence, Dendybar put the decision of your fate into my hands.” She paused a moment to let Entreri weigh her words. He could easily kill her right now, they both knew that, so the candor of her calm admission of a plot to murder him halted any immediate actions and forced him to hear her out.

“I am convinced that we seek different ends to our confrontation with the dwarf’s party,” Sydney explained, “and thus I have no intention of destroying a present, and potentially future, ally.”

In spite of his ever-suspicious nature, Entreri fully understood the logic in her line of reasoning. He recognized many of his own characteristics in Sydney. Ruthless, she let nothing get in the way of her chosen path, but she did not stray from that path for any diversion, no matter how strong her feelings. He released her arm. “But the golem travels with us,” he said absently, turning into the empty night. “Does Dendybar believe that we will need it to defeat the dwarf and his companions?”

“My master leaves little to chance,” Sydney answered. “Bok was sent to seal Dendybar’s claim on that which he desires. Protection against unexpected trouble from the companions. And against you.”

Entreri carried her line of thinking a step farther. “The object the wizard desires must be powerful indeed,” he reasoned.

Sydney nodded.

“Tempting for a younger mage, perhaps.”

“What do you imply?” Sydney demanded, angry that Entreri would question her loyalty to Dendybar.

The assassin’s assured smile made her squirm uncomfortably. “The golem’s purpose is to protect Dendybar against unexpected trouble…from you.”

Sydney stammered but could not find the words to reply. She hadn’t considered that possibility. She tried logically to dismiss Entreri’s outlandish conclusion, but the assassin’s next remark clouded her ability to think.

“Simply to avoid any possible complications,” he said grimly, echoing her earlier words.

The logic of his assumptions slapped her in the face. How could she think herself above Dendybar’s malicious plotting? The revelation sent shivers through her, but she had no intention of searching for the answer with Entreri standing next to her. “We must trust in each other,” she said to him. “We must understand that we both benefit from the alliance, and that it costs neither of us anything.”

“Send the golem away then,” Entreri replied.

An alarm went off in Sydney’s mind. Was Entreri trying to instill doubt in her merely to gain an advantage in their relationship?

“We do not need the thing,” he said. “We have the girl. And even if the companions refuse our demands, we have the strength to take what we want.” He returned the mage’s suspicious look. “You speak of trust?”

Sydney did not reply, and started again for their camp. Perhaps she should send Bok away. The act would satisfy Entreri’s doubts about her, though it certainly would give him the upper hand against her if any trouble did come to pass. But dismissing the golem might also answer some of the even more disturbing questions that weighed upon her, the questions about Dendybar.

The next day was the quietest, and the most productive, of the ride. Sydney fought with her turmoil about the reasons for the golem’s presence. She had come to the conclusion that she should send Bok away, if for no better reason than to prove to herself her master’s trust.

Entreri watched the telltale signs of her struggle with interest, knowing that he had weakened the bond between Sydney and Dendybar enough to strengthen his own position with the young mage. Now he simply had to wait and watch for his next chance to realign his companions.

Likewise, Catti-brie kept her eye out for more opportunities to cultivate the seeds she had planted in Jierdan’s thoughts. The snarls that she saw the soldier hide from Entreri, and from Sydney, told her that her plan was off to a grand start.

They made Silverymoon shortly after noon on the following day. If Entreri had any doubts left about his decision to join the Hosttower’s party, they were dismissed when he considered the enormity of their accomplishment. With the tireless magical steeds, they had covered nearly five hundred miles in four days. And in the effortless ride, the absolute ease in guiding their mounts, they were hardly worn when they arrived in the foothills of the mountains just west of the enchanted city.

“The river Rauvin,” Jierdan, at the front of the party, called back to them. “And a guard post.”

“Pass it by,” Entreri replied.

“No,” Sydney said. “These are the guides across the Moonbridge. They will let us pass, and their aid will make our journey into the city much easier.”

Entreri looked back to Bok, lumbering up the trail behind them. “All of us?” he asked incredulously.

Sydney hadn’t forgotten the golem. “Bok,” she said when the golem had caught up to them, “you are no longer needed. Return to Dendybar and tell him that all goes well.”

Catti-brie’s eyes lit up at the thought of sending the monster back, and Jierdan, startled, looked back with growing anxiety. Watching him, Catti-brie saw another advantage to this unexpected turn. By dismissing the golem, Sydney gave more credence to the fears of an alliance between Sydney and Entreri that Catti-brie had planted upon the soldier.

The golem did not move.

“I said go!” Sydney demanded. She saw Entreri’s unsurprised stare from the corner of her eye. “Damn you,” she whispered to herself. Still, Bok did not move.

“You are indeed perceptive,” she snarled at Entreri.

“Remain here, then,” she hissed at the golem. “We shall stay in the city for several days.” She slipped down from her seat and stomped away, humbled by the assassin’s wry smile at her back.

“What of the mounts?” Jierdan asked.

“They were created to get us to Silverymoon, no more,” Sydney replied, and even as the four walked away down the path, the shimmering lights that were the horses faded into a soft blue glow, then were gone altogether.

They had little trouble getting through the guard post, especially when Sydney identified herself as a representative of the Hosttower of the Arcane. Unlike most cities in the hostile northland, bordering on paranoia in their fears of outsiders, Silverymoon did not keep itself hemmed within foreboding walls and lines of wary soldiers. The people of this city looked upon visitors as an enhancement to their culture, not as a threat to their way of life.

One of the Knights of Silver, the guardsmen at the post on the Rauvin, led the four travelers to the entrance of the Moonbridge, an arcing, invisible structure that spanned the river before the main gate of the city. The strangers crossed tentatively, uncomfortable for the lack of visible material under their feet. But soon enough they found themselves strolling down the meandering roadways of the magical city. Their pace unconsciously slowed, caught under the infectious laziness, the relaxed, contemplative atmosphere that dissipated even Entreri’s narrow-visioned intensity.

Tall, twisting towers and strangely shaped structures greeted them at every turn. No single architectural style dominated Silverymoon, unless it was the freedom of a builder to exercise his or her personal creativity without fear of judgement or scorn. The result was a city of endless splendors, not rich in counted treasures, as were Waterdeep and Mirabar, its two mightiest neighbors, but unrivaled in aesthetic beauty. A throwback to the earliest days of the Realms, when elves and dwarves and humans had enough room to roam under the sun and stars without fear of crossing some invisible borderline of a hostile kingdom, Silverymoon existed in open defiance of the conquerors and tyrants of the world, a place where no one held claim over another.

People of all the good races walked freely here and without fear, down every road and alleyway on the darkest of nights, and if the travelers passed by someone and were not greeted with a welcoming word, it was only because the person was too profoundly engaged in meditative contemplation.

“The dwarf’s party, is less than a week out of Longsaddle,” Sydney mentioned as they moved through the city. “We may have several days of wait.”

“Where do we go?” Entreri asked, feeling out of place. The values that obviously took precedence in Silverymoon were unlike those of any city he had ever encountered, and were completely foreign to his own perceptions of the greedy, lusting world.

“Countless inns line the streets,” Sydney answered. “Guests are plentiful here, and are welcomed openly.”

“Then our task in finding the companions, once they arrive, shall prove difficult indeed,” Jierdan groaned.

“Not so,” Sydney replied wryly. “The dwarf comes to Silverymoon in search of information. Soon after they arrive, Bruenor and his friends will make their way to the Vault of Sages, the most reknowned library in all the north.”

Entreri squinted his eyes, and said, “And we will be there to greet them.”

12. The Trollmoors

This was a land of blackened earth and misted bogs, where decay and an imposing sensation of peril overruled even the sunniest of skies. The landscape climbed and dropped continually, and the crest of each rise, mounted in hopes of an end to the place by any traveler here, brought only despair and more of the same unchanging scenes.

The brave Riders of Nesme ventured into the moors each spring to set long lines of fires and drive the monsters of the hostile land far from the borders of their town. The season was late and several weeks had passed since the last burning, but even now the low dells lay heavy with smoke and the waves of heat from the great fires still shimmered in the air around the thickest of the charred piles of wood.

Bruenor had led his friends into the Trollmoors in stubborn defiance of the riders, and was determined to pound his way through to Silverymoon. But after only the first day’s travel, even he began to doubt the decision. The place demanded a constant state of alertness, and each copse of burned-out trees they passed made them pause, the black, leafless stumps and fallen logs bearing an uncomfortable resemblance to bog blokes. More than once, the spongy ground beneath their feet suddenly became a deep pit of mud, and only the quick reactions of a nearby companion kept them from finding out how deep any of the pits actually were.

A continual breeze blew across the moors, fueled by the contrasting patches of hot ground and cool bogs, and carrying an odor more foul than the smoke and soot of the fires, a sickly sweet smell disturbingly familiar to Drizzt Do’Urden—the stench of trolls.

This was their domain, and all the rumors about the Evermoors the companions had heard, and had laughed away in the comfort of The Fuzzy Quarterstaff, could not have prepared them for the reality that suddenly descended upon them when they entered the place.

Bruenor had estimated that their party could clear the moors in five days if they kept a strong pace. That first day, they actually covered the necessary distance, but the dwarf had not foreseen the continual backtracking they would have to do to avoid the bogs. While they had marched for more than twenty miles that day, they were less than ten from where they started into the moors.

Still, they encountered no trolls, nor any other kind of fiend, and they set their camp that night under a guise of quiet optimism.

“Ye’ll keep to the guard?” Bruenor asked Drizzt, aware that the Drow alone had the heightened senses they would need to survive the night.

Drizzt nodded. “The night through,” he replied, and Bruenor didn’t argue. The dwarf knew that none of them would get any sleep that night, whether on guard, or not.

Darkness came suddenly and completely. Bruenor, Regis, and Wulfgar couldn’t see their own hands if they held them inches from their faces. With the blackness came the sounds of an awakening nightmare. Sucking, sloshing footsteps closed in all about them. Smoke mixed with the nighttime fog and rolled in around the trunks of the leafless trees. The wind did not increase, but the intensity of its foul stench did, and it carried now the groans of the tormented spirits of the moors’ wretched dwellers.

“Gather your gear,” Drizzt whispered to his friends.

“What do ye see, then?” Bruenor asked softly.

“Nothing directly,” came the reply. “But I feel them about, as do you all. We cannot let them find us sitting. We must move among them to keep them from gathering about us.”

“My legs ache,” complained Regis. “And my feet have swelled. I don’t even know if I can get my boots back on!”

“Help him, boy,” Bruenor told Wulfgar. “The elf’s right. We’ll carry ye if we must, Rumblebelly, but we’re not staying!”

Drizzt took the lead, and at times he had to hold Bruenor’s hand behind him, and so on down the line to Wulfgar in the rear, to keep his companions from stumbling from the path he had picked.

They could all sense the dark shapes moving around them, smell the foulness of the wretched trolls. Clearly viewing the host gathering about them, Drizzt alone understood just how precarious their position was, and he pulled his friends as fast as he could.

Luck was with them, for the moon came up then, transforming the fog into a ghostly silver blanket, and revealing to all the friends the pressing danger. Now with the movement visible on every side, the friends ran.

Lanky, lurching forms loomed up in the mist beside them, clawed fingers stretching out to snag at them as they rushed past. Wulfgar moved up to Drizzt’s side, swatting the trolls aside with great sweeps of Aegis-fang, while the drow concentrated on keeping them going in the right direction.

For hours they ran, and still the trolls came on. Beyond all feelings of exhaustion, past the ache, and then the numbness in their limbs, the friends ran with the knowledge of the certain horrible death that would befall them if they faltered for even a second, their fear overruling their bodies’ cries of defeat. Even Regis, too fat and soft, and with legs too short for the road, matched the pace and pushed those before him to greater speeds.

Drizzt understood the futility of their course. Wulfgar’s hammer invariably slowed, and they all stumbled more and more with each minute that passed. The night had many hours more, and even the dawn did not guarantee an end to the pursuit. How many miles could they run? When would they turn down a path that ended in a bottomless bog, with a hundred trolls at their backs?

Drizzt changed his strategy. No longer seeking only to flee, he began looking for a defensible piece of ground. He spied a small mound, ten feet high perhaps, with a steep, almost sheer, grade on the three sides he could see from his angle. A solitary sapling grew up its face. He pointed the place out to Wulfgar, who understood the plan immediately and veered in. Two trolls loomed up to block their way, but Wulfgar, snarling in rage, charged to meet them. Aegis-fang slammed down in furious succession again and again, and the other three companions were able to slip behind the barbarian and make it to the mound.

Wulfgar spun away and rushed to join them, the stubborn trolls close in pursuit and now joined by a long line of their wretched kin.

Surprisingly nimble, even despite his belly, Regis scampered up the tree to the top of the mound. Bruenor, though, not built for such climbing, struggled for every inch.

“Help him!” Drizzt, his back to the tree and scimitars readied, cried to Wulfgar. “Then you get up! I shall hold them.”

Wulfgar’s breath came in labored gasps, and a line of bright blood was etched across his forehead. He stumbled into the tree and started up behind the dwarf. Roots pulled away under their combined weight, and they seemed to lose an inch for every one they gained. Finally, Regis was able to clasp Bruenor’s hand and help him over the top, and Wulfgar, with the way clear before him, moved to join them. With their own immediate safety assured, they looked back in concern for their friend.

Drizzt battled three of the monsters, and more piled in behind. Wulfgar considered dropping back from his perch halfway up the tree and dying at the drow’s side, but Drizzt, periodically looking back over his shoulder to check his friends’ progress, noted the barbarian’s hesitation and read his mind. “Go!” he shouted. “Your delay does not help!”

Wulfgar had to pause and consider the source of the command. His trust of, and respect for, Drizzt overcame his instinctive desire to rush back into the fray, and he grudgingly pulled himself up to join Regis and Bruenor on the small plateau.

Trolls moved to flank the drow, their filthy claws reaching out at him from every side. He heard his friends, all three, imploring him to break away and join them, but knew that the monsters had already slipped in behind to cut off his retreat.

A smile widened across his face. The light in his eyes flared.

He rushed into the main host of trolls, away from the unattainable mound and his horrified friends.

The three companions had little time to dwell on the drow’s fortunes, however, for they soon found themselves assailed from every side as the trolls came relentlessly on, scratching to get at them.

Each friend stood to defend his own side. Luckily, the climb up the back of the mound proved even steeper, at some places inverted, and the trolls could not effectively get at them from behind.

Wulfgar was most deadly, knocking a troll from the mound’s side with each smack of his mighty hammer. But before he could even catch his breath, another had taken its place.

Regis, slapping with his little mace, was less effective. He banged with all his strength on fingers, elbows, even heads as the trolls edged in closer, but he could not dislodge the clutching monsters from their perch. Invariably, as each one crested the mound, either Wulfgar or Bruenor had to twist away from his own fight and swat the beast away.

They knew that the first time they failed with a single stroke, they would find a troll up and ready beside them on the top of the mound.

Disaster struck after only a few minutes. Bruenor spun to aid Regis as yet another monster pulled its torso over the top. The dwarf’s axe cut in cleanly.

Too cleanly. It sliced into the troll’s neck and drove right through, beheading the beast. But though the head flew from the mound, the body kept coming. Regis fell back, too horrified to react.

“Wulfgar!” Bruenor cried out.

The barbarian spun, not slowing long enough to gape at the headless foe, and slammed Aegis-fang into the thing’s chest, blasting it from the mound.

Two more hands grabbed at the lip. From Wulfgar’s side, another troll had crawled more than halfway over the crest. And behind them, where Bruenor had been, a third was up and straddling the helpless halfling.

They didn’t know where to start. The mound was lost. Wulfgar even considered leaping down into the throng below to die as a true warrior by killing as many of his enemies as he could, and also so that he would not have to watch as his two friends were torn to pieces.

But suddenly, the troll above the halfling struggled with its balance, as though something was pulling it from behind. One of its legs buckled and then it fell backward into the night.

Drizzt Do’Urden pulled his blade from the thing’s calf as it went over him, then deftly rolled to the top of the mound, regaining his feet right beside the startled halfling. His cloak streamed in tatters, and lines of blood darkened his clothing in many places.

But he still wore his smile, and the fire in his lavender eyes told his friends that he was far from finished. He darted by the gaping dwarf and barbarian and hacked at the next troll, quickly dispatching it from the side.

“How?” Bruenor asked, gawking, though he knew as he rushed back to Regis that no answer would be forth-coming from the busy drow.

Drizzt’s daring move down below had gained him an advantage over his enemies. Trolls were twice his size, and those behind the ones he fought had no idea that he was coming through. He knew that he had done little lasting damage to the beasts—the stab wounds he drove in as he passed would quickly heal, and the limbs he severed would grow back—but the daring maneuver gained him the time he needed to clear the rushing horde and circle out into the darkness. Once free in the black night, he had picked his path back to the mound, cutting through the distracted trolls with the same blazing intensity. His agility alone had saved him when he got to the base, for he virtually ran up the mound’s side, even over the back of a climbing troll, too quickly for the surprised monsters to grasp him.

The defense of the mound solidified now. With Bruenor’s wicked axe, Wulfgar’s pounding hammer, and Drizzt’s whirring scimitars each holding a side, the climbing trolls had no easy route to the top. Regis stayed in the middle of the small plateau, alternately darting in to help his friends whenever a troll got too close to gaining a hold.

Still the trolls came on, the throng below growing with every minute. The friends understood clearly the inevitable outcome of this encounter. The only chance lay in breaking the gathering of monsters below to give them a route of escape, but they were too engaged in simply beating back their latest opponents to search for the solution.

Except for Regis.

It happened almost by accident. A writhing arm, severed by one of Drizzt’s blades, crawled into the center of their defenses. Regis, utterly revolted, whacked at the thing wildly with his mace. “It won’t die!” he screamed as the thing kept wriggling and grabbing at the little weapon. “It won’t die! Someone hit it! Someone cut it! Someone burn it!”

The other three were too busy to react to the halfling’s desperate pleas, but Regis’s last statement, cried out in dismay, brought an idea into his own head. He jumped upon the writhing limb, pinning it down for a moment while he fumbled in his pack for his tinderbox and flint.

His shaking hands could hardly strike the stone, but the tiniest spark did its killing work. The troll arm ignited and crackled into a crisp ball. Not about to miss the opportunity before him, Regis scooped up the fiery limb and ran over to Bruenor. He held back the dwarf’s axe, telling Bruenor to let his latest opponent get above the line of the ridge.

When the troll hoisted itself up, Regis put the fire in its face. The head virtually exploded into flame and, screaming in agony, the troll dropped from the mound bringing the killing fire to its own companions.

Trolls did not fear the blade or the hammer. Wounds inflicted by these weapons healed quickly, and even a severed head would soon grow back. Such encounters actually helped propagate the wretched species, for a troll would regrow a severed arm, and a severed arm would regrow another troll! More than one hunting cat or wolf had feasted upon a troll carcass only to bring its own horrible demise when a new monster grew in its belly.

But even trolls were not completely without fear. Fire was their bane, and the trolls of Evermoor were more than familiar with it. Burns could not regenerate and a troll killed by flames was dead forever. Almost as if it were purposely in the gods’ design, fire clung to a troll’s dry skin as readily as to dry kindling.

The monsters on Bruenor’s side of the mound fled away or fell in charred lumps. Bruenor patted the halfling on the back as he observed the welcomed spectacle, hope returning to his weary eyes.

“Wood” reasoned Regis. “We need wood.”

Bruenor slipped his pack off his back. “Ye’ll get yer wood, Rumblebelly,” he laughed, pointing at the sapling running up the side of the mound before him. “And there’s oil in me pouch!” He ran across to Wulfgar. “The tree, boy! Help the halfling,” was the only explanation he gave as he moved in front of the barbarian.

As soon as Wulfgar turned around and saw Regis fumbling with a flask of oil, he understood his part in the plan. No trolls as yet had returned to that side of the mound, and the stench of the burned flesh at the base was nearly overwhelming. With a single heave, the muscled barbarian tore the sapling from its roots and brought it up to Regis. Then he went back and relieved the dwarf, allowing Bruenor to put his axe to use in slicing up the wood.

Soon flaming missiles lit the sky all about the mound and fell into the troll horde with killing sparks popping all about. Regis ran to the lip of the mound with another flask of oil and sprinkled it down on the closest trolls, sending them into a terrified frenzy. The rout was on, and between the stampede and the quick spread of flames, the area below the mound was cleared in minutes, and not another movement did the friends see for the few remaining hours of the night, save the pitiful writhing of the mass of limbs, and the twitchings of burned torsos. Fascinated, Drizzt wondered how long the things would survive with their cauterized wounds that would not regenerate.

As exhausted as they were, none of the companions managed any sleep that night. With the breaking of dawn, and no sign of trolls around them, though the filthy smoke hung heavily in the air, Drizzt insisted that they move along.

They left their fortress and walked, because they had no other choice, and because they refused to yield where others might have faltered. They encountered nothing immediately, but could sense the eyes of the moors upon them still, a hushed silence that foretold disaster.

Later that morning, as they plodded along on the mossy turf, Wulfgar stopped suddenly and heaved Aegis-fang into a small copse of blackened trees. The bog bloke, for that is what the barbarian’s target truly was, crossed its arms defensively before it, but the magical warhammer hit with enough power to split the monster down the middle. Its frightened companions, nearly a dozen, fled their similar positions and disappeared into the moors.

“How could you know?” Regis asked, for he was certain that the barbarian had barely considered the clump of trees.

Wulfgar shook his head, honestly not knowing what had compelled him. Drizzt and Bruenor both understood, and approved. They were all operating on instinct now, their exhaustion rendering their minds long past the point of consistent, rational thought. Wulfgar’s reflexes remained at their level of fine precision. He might have caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, so minuscule that his conscious mind hadn’t even registered it. But his instinct for survival had reacted. The dwarf and the drow looked to each other for confirmation, not too surprised this time at the barbarian’s continued show of maturity as a warrior.

The day became unbearably hot, adding to their discomfort. All they wanted to do was fall down and let their weariness overcome them.

But Drizzt pulled them onward, searching for another defensible spot, though he doubted that he could find one as well-designed as the last. Still, they had enough oil remaining to get them through another night if they could hold a small line long enough to put the flames to their best advantage. Any hillock, perhaps even a copse of tree, would suffice.

What they found instead was another bog, this one stretching as far as they could see in every direction, miles perhaps. “We could turn to the north,” Drizzt suggested to Bruenor. “We may have come far enough east by now to break clear of the moors beyond the influence of Nesme.”

“The night’ll catch us along the bank,” Bruenor observed grimly.

“We could cross,” Wulfgar suggested.

“Trolls take to water?” Bruenor asked Drizzt, intrigued by the possibilities. The drow shrugged.

“Worth a try, then!” Bruenor proclaimed.

“Gather some logs,” instructed Drizzt. “Take no time to bind them together—we can do that out on the water, if we must.”

Floating the logs as buoys by their sides, they slipped out into the cold, still waters of the huge bog.

Though they weren’t thrilled with the sucking, muddy sensation that pulled at them with each step, Drizzt and Wulfgar found that they could walk in many places, propelling the makeshift raft steadily along. Regis and Bruenor, too short for the water, lay across the logs. Eventually they grew more comfortable with the eerie hush of the bog, and accepted the water route as a quiet rest.

The return to reality was rude indeed.

The water around them exploded, and three troll-like forms hit them in sudden ambush. Regis, nearly asleep across his log, was thrown off it and into the water. Wulfgar took a hit in the chest before he could ready Aegis-fang, but he was no halfling, and even the considerable strength of the monster could not move him backward. The one that rose before the ever-alert Drow found two scimitars at work on its face before its head even cleared the water.

The battle proved as fast and furious as its abrupt beginning. Enraged by the continued demands of the relentless moors, the friends reacted to the assault with a counterattack of unmatched fury. The drow’s troll was sliced apart before it even stood straight, and Bruenor had enough time to prepare himself to get at the monster that had dropped Regis.

Wulfgar’s troll, though it landed a second blow behind the first, was hit with a savage flurry that it could not have expected. Not an intelligent creature, its limited reasoning and battle experience led it to believe that its foe should not have remained standing and ready to retaliate after it had squarely landed two heavy blows.

Its realization, though, served as little comfort as Aegis-fang pummeled the monster back under the surface.

Regis bobbed back to the surface then and slung an arm over the log. One side of his face was bright with a welt and a painful-looking scrape.

“What were they?” Wulfgar asked the drow.

“Some manner of troll,” Drizzt reasoned, still stabbing at the unmoving form lying under the water before him.

Wulfgar and Bruenor understood the reason for his continued attacks. In sudden fright, they took up whacking at the forms lying beside them, hoping to mutilate the corpses enough so that they might be miles gone before the things rose to life once again.

Beneath the bog’s surface, in the swirlless solitude of the dark waters, the severe thumping of axe and hammer disturbed the slumber of other denizens. One in particular had slept away a decade and more, unbothered by any of the potential dangers that lurked nearby, safe in its knowledge of supremacy.

Dazed and drained from the hit he had taken, as if the unexpected ambush had bent his spirit beyond its breaking point, Regis slumped helplessly over the log and wondered if he had any fight left in him. He didn’t notice when the log began to drift slightly in the hot moors’ breeze. It hooked around the exposed roots of a small line of trees and floated free into the lily-pad-covered waters of a quiet lagoon.

Regis stretched out lazily, only half aware of the change in his surroundings. He could still hear the conversation of his friends faintly in the background.

He cursed his carelessness and struggled against the stubborn hold of his lethargy, though, when the water began to churn before him. A purplish, leathery form broke the surface, and then he saw the huge circular maw with its cruel rows of daggerlike teeth.

Regis, up now, did not cry out or react in any way, fascinated by the specter of his own death looming before him.

A giant worm.

“I thought the water would offer us some protection from the foul things, at least,” Wulfgar groaned, giving one final smack at the troll corpse that lay submerged beside him.

“At least the moving’s easier,” Bruenor put in. “Get the logs together, and let’s move along. No figuring how many kin these three have stalking the area.”

“I have no desire to stay and count,” replied Wulfgar. He looked around, puzzled, and asked, “Where is Regis?”

It was the first time in the confusion of the fight that any of them noticed that the halfling had floated off. Bruenor started to call out, but Drizzt slapped a hand across his mouth.

“Listen,” he said.

The dwarf and Wulfgar held very still and listened in the direction that the drow was now intently staring. After a moment of adjustment, they heard the halfling’s quivering voice.

“…really is a beautiful stone,” they heard, and knew at once that Regis was using the pendant to get himself out of trouble.

The seriousness of the situation came clear immediately, for Drizzt had sorted out the blur of images that he saw through a line of trees, perhaps a hundred feet to the west. “Worm!” he whispered to his companions. “Huge beyond anything I have ever seen!” He indicated a tall tree to Wulfgar, then started on a flanking course around to the south, pulling the onyx statue out of his pack as he went, and calling for Guenhwyvar. They would need all the help they could get with this beast.

Dipping low in the water, Wulfgar eased his way up to the tree line and started shinning up a tree, the scene now clear before him. Bruenor followed him, but slipped between the trees, going even deeper into the bog, and came into position on the other side.

“There are more, too,” Regis bargained in a louder voice, hoping that his friends would hear and rescue him. He kept the hypnotizing ruby spinning on its chain. He didn’t think for a moment that the primitive monster understood him, but it seemed perplexed enough by the gem’s sparkles to refrain from gobbling him up, at least for the present. In truth, the magic of the ruby did little against the creature. Giant worms had no minds to speak of, and charms had no effect on them at all. But the huge worm, not really hungry and mesmerized by the dance of the light, allowed Regis to play through his game.

Drizzt came into position farther down the tree line, his bow now in hand, while Guenhwyvar stealthily slipped even farther around to the monster’s rear. Drizzt could see Wulfgar poised, high in the tree above Regis and ready to leap into action. The drow couldn’t see Bruenor, but he knew that the crafty dwarf would find a way to be effective.

Finally the worm tired of its game with the halfling and his spinning gem. A sudden sucking of air sizzled with acidic drool.

Recognizing the danger, Drizzt acted first, conjuring a globe of darkness around the halfling’s log. Regis, at first, thought the sudden blackness signified the end of his life, but when the cold water hit his face and then swallowed him up as he rolled limply from the log, he understood.

The globe confused the monster for a moment, but the beast spat a stream of its killing acid anyway, the wicked stuff sizzling as it hit the water and setting the log ablaze.

Wulfgar sprang from his high perch, launching himself through the air fearlessly and screaming, “Tempus!” his legs flung wide, but his arm cocked with the warhammer fully under control and ready to strike.

The worm lolled its head to the side to move away from the barbarian, but it didn’t react quite fast enough. Aegis-fang crunched through the side of its face, tearing through the purplish hide and twisting the outer rim of its maw, snapping through teeth and bone. Wulfgar had given all that he possibly could in that one mighty blow, and he could not imagine the enormity of his success as he slapped belly-first into the cold water, beneath the drow’s darkness.

Enraged by pain and suddenly more injured than it had ever been, the great worm issued a roar that split trees asunder and sent creatures of the moors scurrying for cover miles away. It rolled an arch along its fifty-foot length, up and down, in a continual splash that sent bursts of water high into the air.

Drizzt opened up, his fourth arrow nocked and ready before the first even reached its mark. The worm roared again in agony and spun on the drow, releasing a second stream of acid.

But the agile elf was gone long before the acid sizzled into the water where he had been standing.

Bruenor, meanwhile, had completely gone under the water, blindly stumbling toward the beast. Nearly ground into the mud by the worm’s frenzied gyrations, he came up just behind the curl of the monster. The breadth of its massive torso measured fully twice his height, but the dwarf didn’t hesitate, smacking his axe against the tough hide.

Guenhwyvar then sprang upon the monster’s back and ran up its length, finding a perch on its head. The cat’s clawed paws dug into the worm’s eyes before it even had time to react to the new attackers.

Drizzt plucked away, his quiver nearly empty and a dozen feathered shafts protruding from the worm’s maw and head. The beast decided to concentrate on Bruenor next, his vicious axe inflicting the most severe wounds. But before it could roll over onto the dwarf, Wulfgar emerged from the darkness and heaved his warhammer. Aegis-fang thudded into the maw again and the weakened bone cracked apart. Acidic blobs of blood and bone hissed into the bog and the worm roared a third time in agony and protest.

The friends did not relent. The drow’s arrows stung home in a continuous line. The cat’s claws raked deeper and deeper into the flesh. The dwarf’s axe chopped and hacked, sending pieces of hide floating away. And Wulfgar pounded away.

The giant worm reeled. It could not retaliate. In the wave of dizzying darkness that fast descended upon it, it was too busy merely holding to its stubborn balance. Its maw was broken wide open and one eye was out. The relentless beating of the dwarf and barbarian had blasted through its protective hide, and Bruenor growled in savage pleasure when his axe at last sank deep into exposed flesh.

A sudden spasm from the monster sent Guenhwyvar flying into the bog and knocked Bruenor and Wulfgar away. The friends didn’t even try to get back, aware that their task was completed. The worm trembled and twitched in its last efforts of life.

Then it toppled into the bog in a sleep that would outlast any it had ever known—the endless sleep of death.

13. The Last Run

The dissipating globe of darkness found Regis once again clinging to his log, which was now little more than a black cinder, and shaking his head. “We are beyond ourselves,” he sighed. “We cannot make it through.”

“Faith, Rumblebelly,” Bruenor comforted, sloshing through the water to join the halfling. “Tales we be making, for telling to our children’s children, and for others to tell when we’re no more!”

“You mean today, then?” Regis snipped. “Or perhaps we’ll live this day and be no more tomorrow.”

Bruenor laughed and grabbed hold of the log. “Not yet, me friend,” he assured Regis with an adventurous smile. “Not till me business is done!”

Drizzt, moving to retrieve his arrows, noted how heavily Wulfgar leaned upon the worm’s body. From a distance, he thought that the young barbarian was simply exhausted, but when he drew near, he began to suspect something more serious. Wulfgar clearly favored one leg in his pose, as though it, or perhaps his lower back, had been injured.

When Wulfgar saw the drow’s concerned look, he straightened stoically. “Let us move on,” he suggested, moving away toward Bruenor and Regis and doing his best to hide a limp.

Drizzt didn’t question him about it. The young man was made of stuff as hard as the tundra in midwinter, and too altruistic and proud to admit an injury when nothing could be gained by the admission. His friends couldn’t stop to wait for him to heal, and they certainly couldn’t carry him, so he would grimace away the pain and plod on.

But Wulfgar truly was injured. When he splashed into the water after his fall from the tree, he had wickedly twisted his back. In the heat of the battle, his adrenaline pumping, he hadn’t felt the wrenching pain. But now each step came hard.

Drizzt saw it as clearly as he saw the despair upon Regis’s normally cheerful face, and as clearly as the exhaustion that kept the dwarf’s axe swinging low, despite Bruenor’s optimistic boasting. He looked all about at the moors, which seemed to stretch forever in every direction, and wondered for the first time if he and his companions had indeed gone beyond themselves.

Guenhwyvar hadn’t been injured in the battle, just a bit shaken up, but Drizzt, recognizing the cat’s limited range of movement in the bog, sent it back to its own plane. He would have liked to keep the wary panther at their point. But the water was too deep for the cat, and the only way Guenhwyvar could have kept moving would have been by springing from tree to tree. Drizzt knew it wouldn’t work; he and his friends would have to go on alone.

Reaching deep within themselves to reinforce their resolve, the companions kept to their work, the drow inspecting the worm’s head to salvage any of the score of arrows that he had fired, knowing all too well that he would probably need them again before they saw the end of the moors, while the other three retrieved the rest of the logs and provisions.

Soon after, the friends drifted through the bog with as little physical effort as they could manage, fighting every minute to keep their minds alert to the dangerous surroundings. With the heat of the day, though—the hottest one yet—and the gentle rocking of the logs on the quiet water, all but Drizzt dropped off, one by one, to sleep.

The drow kept the makeshift raft moving, and remained vigilant, they couldn’t afford any delay, or any lapses. Luckily, the water opened up beyond the lagoon, and there were few obstructions for Drizzt to deal with. The bog became a great blur to him after a while, his tired eyes recording little detail, just general outlines and any sudden movements in the reeds.

He was a warrior, though, with lightning reflexes and uncanny discipline. The water trolls hit again, and the tiny flicker of consciousness that Drizzt Do’Urden had remaining summoned him back to reality in time to deny the monsters’ advantage of surprise.

Wulfgar, and Bruenor, too, sprang from their slumber at the instant of his call, weapons in hand. Only two trolls rose to meet them this time and the three dispatched them in a few short seconds.

Regis slept through the whole affair.

The cool night came, mercifully dissipating the waves of heat. Bruenor made the decision to keep moving, two of them up and pushing at all times, and two of them at rest.

“Regis cannot push,” Drizzt reasoned. “He is too short for the bog.”

“Then let him sit and keep guard while I push,” Wulfgar offered stoically. “I need no help.”

“Then the two of ye take the first shift,” said Bruenor. “Rumblebelly’s slept the whole day away. He should be good for an hour or two!”

Drizzt climbed up on the logs for the first time that day and put his head down on his pack. He did not close his eyes, though. Bruenor’s plan of working in turns sounded fair, but impractical. In the black night, only he could guide them and keep any kind of lookout for approaching danger. More than a few times while Wulfgar and Regis took their shift, the drow lifted his head and gave the halfling some insight about their surroundings and some advice about their best direction.

There would be no sleep for Drizzt again this night. He vowed to rest in the morning, but when dawn at last broke, he found the trees and reeds again hunched in around them. The anxiety of the moors itself closed upon them, as though it were a single, sentient being watching over them and plotting against their passage.

The wide water actually proved of benefit to the companions. The ride on its glassy surface was easier than hiking, and despite the crouching perils, they encountered nothing hostile after their second rout of the water trolls. When their path finally returned to blackened land after days and nights of gliding, they suspected that they might have covered most of the distance to the other side of the Evermoors. Sending Regis up the tallest tree they could find, for the halfling was the only one light enough to get to the highest branches (especially since the journey had all but dissipated the roundness of his belly), their hopes were confirmed. Far on the eastern horizon, but no more than a day or two away, Regis saw trees—not the small copses of birch or the moss-covered swamp trees of the moors, but a thick forest of oak and elm.

They moved forward with a renewed spring in their step, despite their exhaustion. They walked upon solid ground again, and knew that they would have to camp one more time with the hordes of wandering trolls lurking near, but they now also carried the knowledge that the ordeal of the Evermoors was almost at an end. They had no intention of letting its foul inhabitants defeat them on this last leg of the journey.

“We should end our trek this day,” Drizzt suggested, though the sun was more than an hour from the western horizon. The drow had already sensed the gathering presence, as the trolls awakened from their daytime rest and caught the strange scents of the visitors to the moors. “We must pick our campsite carefully. The moors have not yet freed us of their grasp.”

“We’ll lose an hour and more,” Bruenor stated, more to open up the negative side of the plan than to argue. The dwarf remembered the horrible battle at the mound all too well, and had no desire to repeat that colossal effort.

“We shall gain the time back tomorrow,” reasoned Drizzt. “Our need at present is to stay alive.”

Wulfgar wholly agreed. “The smell of the foul beasts grows stronger each step,” he said, “from every side. We cannot run away from them. So let us fight.”

“But on our own terms,” Drizzt added.

“Over there,” Regis suggested, pointing to a heavily overgrown ridge off to their left.

“Too open,” said Bruenor. “Trolls’d climb it as easily as we, and too many at a time for us to stop them!”

“Not while it’s burning,” Regis countered with a sneaky smile, and his companions came to agree with the simple logic.

They spent the rest of the daylight preparing their defenses. Wulfgar and Bruenor carried in as much dead wood as they could find, placing it in strategic lines to lengthen the diameter of the targeted area, while Regis cleared a firebreak at the top of the ridge and Drizzt kept a cautious lookout. Their defense plan was simple: let the trolls come at them, then set the entire ridge outside their camp ablaze.

Drizzt alone recognized the weakness of the plan, though he had nothing better to offer. He had fought trolls before they had ever come to these moors, and he understood the stubbornness of the wretched beasts. When the flames of their ambush finally died away—long before the dawning of the new day—he and his friends would be wide open to the remaining trolls. They could only hope that the carnage of the fires would dissuade any further enemies.

Wulfgar and Bruenor would have liked to do more, the memories of the mound too vivid for them to be satisfied with any defenses constructed against the moors. But when dusk came, it brought hungry eyes upon them. They joined Regis and Drizzt at the camp on top of the ridge and crouched low in anxious wait.

An hour passed, seeming like ten to the friends, and the night deepened.

“Where are they?” Bruenor demanded, his axe slapping nervously against his hand, belying uncharacteristic impatience from the veteran fighter.

“Why don’t they come on?” Regis agreed, his anxiety bordering on panic.

“Be patient and be glad,” Drizzt offered. “The more of the night we put behind us before we do battle, the better our chance to see the dawn. They may not have yet found us.”

“More like they be gathering to rush us all at once, Bruenor said grimly.

“That is good,” said Wulfgar, comfortably crouched and peering into the gloom. “Let the fire taste as much of the foul blood as it may!”

Drizzt took note of the settling effect the big man’s strength and resolve had upon Regis and Bruenor. The dwarf’s axe stopped its nervous bounce and came to rest calmly at Bruenor’s side, poised for the task ahead. Even Regis, the most reluctant warrior, took up his small mace with a snarl, his knuckles whitening under his grip.

Another long hour passed.

The delay did not at all ease the companions’ guard. They knew that danger was very near now—they could smell the stench gathering in the mist and darkness beyond their view.

“Strike up the torches,” Drizzt told Regis.

“We’ll bring the beasts upon us from miles around!” Bruenor argued.

“They have found us already,” answered Drizzt, pointing down the ridge, though the trolls he saw shuffling in the darkness were beyond the limited night vision of his friends. “The sight of the torches may keep them back and grant us more time.”

As he spoke, however, the first troll ambled up the ridge. Bruenor and Wulfgar waited in their crouch until the monster was nearly upon them, then sprang out with sudden fury, axe and warhammer leading the way in a brutal flurry of well-placed blows. The monster went down at once.

Regis had one of the torches lit. He threw it to Wulfgar and the barbarian set the writhing body of the fallen troll ablaze. Two other trolls that had come to the bottom of the ridge rushed back into the mist at the sight of the hated flames.

“Ah, ye pulled the trick too soon!” Bruenor groaned. “We’re naught to catch a one with the torches in plain sight!”

“If the torches keep them back, then the fires have served us well,” Drizzt insisted, though he knew better than to hope for such an occurrence.

Suddenly, as if the very moors had spit their venom at them, a huge host of trolls lined the entire base of the ridge. They came on tentatively, not thrilled by the presence of fire. But they came on relentlessly, stalking up the hill with drooling desire.

“Patience,” Drizzt told his companions, sensing their eagerness. “Keep them behind the firebreak, but let as many as will get within the rings of kindling.”

Wulfgar rushed out to the edge of the ring, waving his torch menacingly.

Bruenor stood back up, his last two flasks of oil in his hands, oil-soaked rags hanging from their spouts, and a wild smile across his face. “Season’s a bit green for burning,” he said to Drizzt with a wink. “Might need a little help in getting the thing going!”

Trolls swarmed on the ridge all around them, the slavering horde coming on determinedly, their ranks swelling with each step.

Drizzt moved first. Torch in hand, he ran to the kindling and set it burning. Wulfgar and Regis joined in right behind, putting as many fires as they could between them and the advancing trolls. Bruenor threw his torch over the first ranks of the monsters, hoping to get them in the middle of two blazes, then heaved his oil flasks into the most heavily concentrated groups.

Flames leaped up into the night sky, lightening the immediate area, but deepening the blackness beyond their influence. Crowded in so tightly, the trolls could not easily turn and flee, and the fire, as if it understood this, descended upon them methodically.

When one began to burn, its frenzied dance spread the light even farther down the ridge line.

All across the vast moors, creatures stopped their nightly actions and took notice of the growing pillar of flame and the wind-carried shrieks of dying trolls.

Huddled close at the top of the ridge, the companions found themselves nearly overcome by the great heat. But the fire peaked quickly with its feast of volatile troll flesh, and started to diminish, leaving a revulsive stench in the air and yet another blackened scar of carnage on the Evermoors.

The companions readied more torches for their flight from the ridge. Many trolls stood to do battle, even after the fire, and the friends could not hope to hold their ground with the fuel of their fires consumed. At Drizzt’s insistence, they awaited the first clear escape route down the eastern side of the ridge, and when it opened, they charged into the night, bursting through the initial groups of unsuspecting trolls with a sudden assault that scattered the monsters and left several burning.

Into the night they ran, blindly rushing through mud and bramble, hoping that luck alone would keep them from being sucked in by some bottomless bog. So complete was their surprise at the ridge that for many minutes they heard no signs of pursuit.

But it didn’t take the moors long to respond. Groans and shrieks soon echoed all about them.

Drizzt took the lead. Relying on his instincts as much as his vision, he swerved his friends left and right, through the areas of least apparent resistance, while keeping their course generally east. Hoping to play upon the monsters’ single fear, they torched anything that would burn as they passed.

They encountered nothing directly as the night wore on, but the groans and sucking footsteps just yards behind them did not relent. They soon began to suspect a collective intelligence working against them, for though they were obviously outdistancing the trolls that were behind them and to their sides, more were always waiting to take up the chase. Something evil permeated the land, as though the Evermoors themselves were the true enemies. Trolls were all about, and that was the immediate danger, but even if all the trolls and other denizens of the moors were slain or driven away, the friends suspected that this would remain a foul place.

Dawn broke, but it brought no relief. “We’ve angered the moors themselves!” Bruenor cried when he realized that the chase would not end as easily this time. “We be finding no rest until her foul borders are behind us!”

Onward they charged, seeing the lanky forms lurching out at them as they weaved their way, and those running parallel to them or right behind, grimly visible and just waiting for someone to trip up. Heavy fogs closed in on them, preventing them from holding their bearings, further evidence for their fears that the moors themselves had risen against them.

Past all thinking, past all hope, they kept on, pushing themselves beyond their physical and emotional limits for lack of any alternatives.

Barely conscious of his actions, Regis stumbled and went down. His torch rolled away, though he didn’t notice—he couldn’t even figure how to get back up, or that he was down at all! Hungry mouths descended toward him, a feast assured.

The ravenous monster was foiled, though, as Wulfgar came by and scooped the halfling into his great arms. The huge barbarian slammed into the troll, knocking it aside, but held his own footing and continued past.

Drizzt abandoned all tactics of finesse now, understanding the situation that was fast developing behind him. More than once he had to slow for Bruenor’s stumbling and he doubted Wulfgar’s ability to continue while carrying the halfling. The exhausted barbarian obviously couldn’t hope to raise Aegis-fang to defend himself. Their only chance was straight flight to the border. A wide bog would defeat them, a box gully would entrap them, and even if no natural barriers blocked their way, they had little hope of keeping free of the trolls for much longer. Drizzt feared the difficult decision he saw forthcoming: flee to his own safety, for he alone seemed to have the possibility of escape, or stand beside his doomed friends in a battle they could not win.

They continued on, and made solid progress for another hour, but time itself began to affect them. Drizzt heard Bruenor mumbling behind him, lost in some delusion of his childhood days in Mithril Hall. Wulfgar, with the unconscious halfling, ambled along behind, reciting a prayer to one of his gods, using the rhythm of his chants to keep his feet steadily pumping.

Then Bruenor fell, smacked down by a troll that had veered in on them uncontested.

The fateful decision came easily to Drizzt. He swung back around, scimitars ready. He couldn’t possibly carry the stout dwarf, nor could he defeat the horde of trolls that even now closed in. “And so our tale ends, Bruenor Battlehammer!” he cried out. “In battle, as it should!”

Wulfgar, dazed and gasping, did not consciously choose his next move. It was simply a reaction to the scene before him, a maneuver perpetrated by the stubborn instincts of a man who refused to surrender. He stumbled over to the fallen dwarf, who by this time had struggled back to his hands and knees, and scooped him up with his free arm. Two trolls had them trapped.

Drizzt Do’Urden was close by, and the young barbarian’s heroic act inspired the drow. Seething flames danced again within his lavender eyes, and his blades whirred into their own dance of death.

The two trolls reached out to claw their helpless prey, but after a single lightning pass by Drizzt, the monsters had no arms left with which to grab.

“Run on!” Drizzt called, guarding the party’s rear and spurring Wulfgar on with a constant stream of rousing words. All weariness flew from the drow in this final burst of battle lust. He leaped all about and shouted challenge to the trolls. Any that came too near found the sting of his blades.

Grunting with every painful step, his eyes burning from his sweat, Wulfgar charged blindly ahead. He didn’t think about how long he could keep up the pace with his load. He didn’t think about the certain, horrible death that shadowed him on every side, and had probably cut off his route as well. He didn’t think about the wrenching pain in his injured back, or about the new sting that he keenly felt on the back of his knee. He concentrated only on putting one heavy boot in front of the other.

They crunched through some brambles, swung down one rise and around another. Their hearts both leaped and fell, for before them loomed the clean forest that Regis had spied, the end of the Evermoors. But between them and the wood waited a solid line of trolls, standing three deep.

The Evermoors’ grasp was not so easily broken.

“Keep on,” Drizzt said into Wulfgar’s ear in a quiet whisper, as though he feared that the moors might be listening. “I have one more trick left to play.”

Wulfgar saw the line before him, but even in his present state, his trust in Drizzt overruled any objections of his common sense. Heaving Bruenor and Regis into a more comfortable hold, he put his head low and roared at the beasts, crying out in frenzied rage.

When he had almost reached them, with Drizzt a few steps behind, and the trolls drooling and huddled to stop his momentum, the drow played his final card.

Magical flames sprouted from the barbarian. They had no power to burn, either Wulfgar or the trolls, but to the monsters, the specter of the huge, flame-enshrouded wild man bearing down upon them shot terror into their normally fearless hearts.

Drizzt timed the spell perfectly, allowing the trolls only a split second to react to their imposing foe. Like water before the prow of a high-riding ship they parted, and Wulfgar, nearly overbalancing for his expectations of impact, lumbered through, Drizzt dancing at his heels.

By the time the trolls regrouped to pursue, their prey was already climbing the last rise out of the Evermoors and into the forest—a wood under the protective eye of Lady Alustriel and the gallant Knights of Silver.

Drizzt turned under the boughs of the first tree to watch for signs of pursuit. Heavy fog swirled back down at the moors, as though the foul land had slammed its door behind them. No trolls came through.

The drow sank back against the tree, too drained to smile.

14. Star Light, Star Bright

Wulfgar set Regis and Bruenor down on a mossy bed in a small clearing deeper in the wood, then toppled over in pain. Drizzt caught up to him a few minutes later.

“We must camp here,” the drow was saying, “though I wish we could put more distance…” He stopped when he saw his young friend writhing on the ground and grasping at his injured leg, nearly overcome by the pain. Drizzt rushed over to examine the knee, his eyes widening in shock and disgust.

A troll’s hand, probably from one of those he had hacked apart when Wulfgar rescued Bruenor, had latched on to the barbarian as he ran, finding a niche in the back of his knee. One clawed finger had already buried itself deep into the leg, and two others were even now boring in.

“Do not look,” Drizzt advised Wulfgar. He reached into his pack for his tinderbox and set a small stick burring, then used it to prod the wretched hand. As soon as the thing began to smoke and wriggle about, Drizzt slid it from the leg and threw it to the ground. It tried to scurry away, but Drizzt sprang upon it, pinning it with one of his scimitars and lighting it fully with the burning stick.

He looked back to Wulfgar, amazed at the sheer determination that had allowed the barbarian to continue with so wicked a wound. But now their flight was ended, and Wulfgar had already succumbed to the pain and the exhaustion. He lay sprawled unconscious on the ground beside Bruenor and Regis.

“Sleep well,” Drizzt said softly to the three of them. “You have earned the right.” He moved to each of them to make sure they were not too badly hurt. Then, satisfied that they would all recover, he set to his vigilant watch.

Even the valiant drow, though, had overstepped the bounds of his stamina during the rush through the Evermoors, and soon he too nodded his head and joined his friends in slumber.

Late the next morning Bruenor’s grumbling roused them. “Ye forgot me axe!” the dwarf shouted angrily. “I can’t be cutting stinkin’ trolls without me axe!”

Drizzt stretched out comfortably, somewhat refreshed, but still far from recovered. “I told you to take the axe,” he said to Wulfgar, who was similarly shaking off his sound slumber.

“I said it clearly,” Drizzt scolded mockingly. “Take the axe and leave the ungrateful dwarf.”

“‘Twas the nose that confused me,” Wulfgar replied. “More akin to an axe-head than to any nose I have ever seen!”

Bruenor unconsciously looked down his long snout. “Bah!” he growled, “I’ll find me a club!” and he tromped off into the forest.

“Some quiet, if you will!” Regis snapped as the last hint of his pleasant dreams flitted away. Disgusted at being awakened so early, he rolled back over and covered his head with his cloak.

They could have made Silverymoon that very day, but a single night’s rest would not erase the weariness of the days they had spent in the Evermoors, and on a tough road before that. Wulfgar, for one, with his injured leg and back, had to use a walking stick, and the sleep that Drizzt had found the night before had been his first, in nearly a week. Unlike the moors, this forest seemed quite wholesome. And though they knew that they were still in the wild lands, they felt safe enough to stretch out the road to the city and enjoy, for the first time since they had left Ten-Towns, a leisurely walk.

They broke out of the forest by noon of the next day and covered the last few miles to Silverymoon. Before sunset, they came over the final climb, and looked down upon the River Rauvin and the countless spires of the enchanted city.

They all felt the sensation of hope and relief when they glanced down upon that magnificent sight, but none felt it more keenly than Drizzt Do’Urden. The drow had hoped from the earliest planning of their adventure that its path would take him through Silverymoon, though he had done nothing to sway Bruenor’s decision in choosing a course. Drizzt had heard of Silverymoon after his arrival in Ten-Towns, and were it not for the fact that he had found some measure of tolerance in the rugged frontier community, he would have set back at once for the place. Reknowned for their acceptance of all who came in search of knowledge, regardless of race, the people of Silverymoon offered the renegade black elf a true opportunity to find a home.

Many times he had considered traveling to the place, but something within him, perhaps the fear of false hope and unfulfilled expectations, kept him within the security of Icewind Dale. Thus, when the decision had been made in Longsaddle that Silverymoon would be their next destination, Drizzt had found himself squarely facing the fantasy he had never dared to dream. Looking down now on his one hope for true acceptance in the surface world, he courageously forced his apprehensions away.

“The Moonbridge,” Bruenor remarked when a wagon below crossed the Rauvin, seemingly floating in mid-air. Bruenor had heard of the invisible structure as a boy, but had never seen it firsthand.

Wulfgar and Regis watched the spectacle of the flying wagon in blank amazement. The barbarian had overcome many of his fear’s of magic during his stay in Longsaddle, and he was truly looking forward to exploring this legendary city. Regis had been here once before, but his familiarity with the place did nothing to lessen his excitement.

They approached the guard post on the Rauvin eagerly, despite their weariness, the same post that Entreri’s party had passed four days before, with the same guards who had allowed the evil group to enter the city.

“Greetings,” Bruenor offered in a tone that could be considered jovial for the dour dwarf. “And know ye that the sight of yer fair city has bringed new life into me weary heart!”

The guards hardly heard him, intent upon the drow, who had pulled back his cowl. They seemed curious, for they had never actually seen a black elf, but, they didn’t appear too surprised by Drizzt’s arrival.

“May we be escorted to the Moonbridge now?” Regis asked after a period of silence that grew increasingly uncomfortable. “You cannot guess how anxious we are to view Silverymoon. So much we have heard!”

Drizzt suspected what was forthcoming. An angry lump welled in his throat.

“Go away,” the guard said quietly. “You may not pass.”

Bruenor’s face reddened in rage, but Regis cut off his explosion. “Surely we have done nothing to cause such a harsh judgement,” the halfling protested calmly. “We are simple travelers, seeking no trouble.” His hand went to his jacket, and to the hypnotic ruby, but a scowl from Drizzt halted his plan.

“Your reputation seems to outweigh your actions,” Wulfgar remarked to the guards.

“I am sorry,” replied one, “but I have my duties, and I see them through.”

“Us, or the drow?” Bruenor demanded.

“The drow,” answered the guard. “The rest of you may go to the city, but the drow may not pass.”

Drizzt felt the walls of hope crumbling around him. His hands trembled at his sides. Never before had he experienced such pain, for never before had he come to a place without the expectation of rejection. Still, he managed to sublimate his immediate anger and remind himself that this was Bruenor’s quest, not his own, for good or for ill.

“Ye dogs!” Bruenor cried. “Th’ elf’s worth a dozen of ye, and more! I owe him me life a hundred times, and ye think to say that he’s not good enough for yer stinking city! How many trolls be layin’ dead for the work of yer sword?”

“Be calm, my friend,” Drizzt interrupted, fully in control of himself. “I expect as much. They cannot know Drizzt Do’Urden. Just the reputation of my people. And they cannot be blamed. You go in, then. I will await your return.”

“No!” Bruenor declared in a tone that brooked no debate. “If ye can’t go in, then none of us will!”

“Think of our goal, stubborn dwarf,” Drizzt scolded. “The Vault of Sages is in the city. Perhaps our only hope.”

“Bah!” Bruenor snorted. “To the Abyss with this cursed city and all who live here! Sundabar sits less than a week’s walking. Helm, the dwarf-friend, will be more inviting, or I’m a bearded gnome!”

“You should enter,” Wulfgar said. “Let not our anger defeat our purpose. But I remain with Drizzt. Where he cannot go, Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, refuses to go!”

But the determined stomps of Bruenor’s stocky legs were already carrying him down the road back out from the city. Regis shrugged at the other two and started after, as loyal to the drow as any of them.

“Choose your camp as you wish, and without fear,” the guard offered, almost apologetically. “The Knights of Silver will not disturb you, nor will they let any monsters near the borders of Silverymoon.”

Drizzt nodded, for though the sting of the rejection had not diminished, he understood that the guard had been helpless to change the unfortunate situation. He started slowly away, the disturbing questions that he had avoided for so many years already beginning to press in upon him.

Wulfgar was not so forgiving. “You have wronged him,” he said to the guard when Drizzt moved away. “Never has he raised sword against any who did not deserve it, and this world, yours and mine, is better off for having Drizzt Do’Urden about!”

The guard looked away, unable to answer the justifiable scolding.

“And I question the honor of one who heeds to unjust commands,” Wulfgar declared.

The guard snapped an angry glare on the barbarian. “The Lady’s reasons are not asked,” he answered, hand on sword hilt. He sympathized with the anger of the travelers, but would accept no criticism of the Lady Alustriel, his beloved leader. “Her commands follow a righteous course, and are beyond the wisdom of me, or you!” he growled.

Wulfgar did not justify the threat with any show of concern. He turned away and started down the road after his friends.

Bruenor purposely positioned their camp just a few hundred yards down the Rauvin, in clear sight of the guard post. He had sensed the guard’s discomfort at turning them away and he wanted to play upon that guilt as strongly as he could.

“Sundabar’ll show us the way,” he kept saying after they had supped, trying to convince himself as much as the others that their failure at Silverymoon would not hurt the quest. “And beyond that lies Citadel Adbar. If any in all the Realms know of Mithril Hall, it be Harbromm and the dwarves of Adbar!”

“A long way,” Regis commented. “Summer may run out before we ever reach the fortress of King Harbromm.”

“Sundabar,” Bruenor reiterated stubbornly. “And Adbar if we must!”

The two went back and forth with the conversation for a while. Wulfgar didn’t join in, too intent on the drow, who had moved a short distance away from the camp right after the meal—which Drizzt had hardly touched and stood silently staring at the city up the Rauvin.

Presently, Bruenor and Regis settled themselves off to sleep, angry still, but secure enough in the safety of the camp to succumb to their weariness. Wulfgar moved to join the drow.

“We shall find Mithril Hall,” he offered in comfort, though he knew that Drizzt’s lament did not concern their current objective.

Drizzt nodded, but did not reply.

“Their rejection hurt you,” Wulfgar observed. “I thought that you had accepted your fate willingly. Why is this time so different?”

Again the drow made no move to answer.

Wulfgar respected his privacy. “Take heart, Drizzt Do’Urden, noble ranger and trusted friend. Have faith that those who know you would die willingly for you or beside you.” He put a hand on Drizzt’s shoulder as he turned to leave.

Drizzt said nothing, though he truly appreciated Wulfgar’s concern. Their friendship had gone far beyond the need for spoken thanks, though, and Wulfgar only hoped that he had given his friend some comfort as he returned to the camp, leaving Drizzt to his thoughts.

The stars came out and, found the drow still standing alone beside the Rauvin. Drizzt had made himself vulnerable for the first time since his initial days on the surface, and the disappointment he now felt triggered the same doubts that he had believed resolved years ago, before he had ever left Menzoberranzan, the city of the black elves. How could he ever hope to find any normalcy in the daylight world of the fair-skinned elves? In Ten-Towns, where murderers and thieves often rose to positions of respect and leadership, he was barely tolerated. In Longsaddle, where prejudice was secondary to the fanatical curiosity of the unsinkable Harpells, he had been placed on display like some mutated farm animal, mentally poked and prodded. And though the wizards meant him no harm, they lacked any compassion or respect for him as anything other than an oddity to be observed.

Now Silverymoon, a city founded and structured on tenets of individuality and fairness, where peoples of all races found welcome if they came in goodwill, had shunned him. All races, it seemed, except for the dark elves.

The inevitability of Drizzt’s life as an outcast had never before been so clearly laid out before him. No other city, not even a remote village, in all the Realms could offer him a home, or an existence anywhere but on the fringes of its civilization. The severe limitations of his options, and even moreso, of his future hopes for change, appalled him.

He stood now under the stars, looking up at them with the same profound level of love and awe as any of his surface cousins had ever felt, but sincerely reconsidering his decision to leave the underworld.

Had he gone against a divine plan, crossed the boundaries of some natural order? Perhaps he should have accepted his lot in life and remained in the dark city, among his own kind.

A twinkle in the night sky brought him out of his introspection. A star above him pulsed and grew, already beyond normal proportions. Its light bathed the area around Drizzt in a soft glow, and still the star pulsed.

Then the enchanting light was gone, and standing before Drizzt was a woman, her hair shining silver and her sparkling eyes holding years of experience and wisdom within the luster of eternal youth. She was tall, taller than Drizzt, and straight, wearing a gown of the finest silk and a high crown of gold and gems.

She looked upon him with sincere sympathy, as if she could read his every thought and understood completely the jumble of emotions that he himself had yet to sort through.

“Peace, Drizzt Do’Urden,” she said in a voice that chimed like sweet music. “I am Alustriel, High Lady of Silverymoon.”

Drizzt studied her more closely, though her manner and beauty left him no doubts as to her claim. “You know of me?” he asked.

“Many by now have heard of the Companions of the Hall, for that is the name Harkle Harpell has put upon your troupe. A dwarf in search of his ancient home is not so rare in the Realms, but a drow elf walking beside him certainly catches the notice of all those he passes.”

She swallowed hard and looked deeply into his lavender eyes. “It was I who denied you passage into the city,” she admitted.

“Then why come to me now?” Drizzt asked, more in curiosity than in anger, unable to reconcile that act of rejection with the person who now stood before him. Alustriel’s fairness and tolerance were well known throughout the northland, though Drizzt had begun to wonder how exaggerated the stories must be after his encounter at the guard post. But now that he saw the high lady, wearing her honest compassion openly, he could not disbelieve the tales.

“I felt I must explain,” she replied.

“You need not justify your decision.”

“But I must,” said Alustriel. “For myself and my home as much as for you. The rejection has hurt you more than you admit.” She moved closer to him.

“It pained me as well,” she said softly.

“Then why?” Drizzt demanded, his anger slipping through his calm facade. “If you know of me, then you know as well that I carry no threat to your people.”

She ran her cool hand across his cheek. “Perceptions,” she explained. “There are elements at work in the north that make perceptions vital at this time, sometimes even overruling what is just. A sacrifice has been forced upon you.”

“A sacrifice that has become all too familiar to me.”

“I know,” Alustriel whispered. “We learned from Nesme that you had been turned away, a scenario that you commonly face.”

“I expect it,” Drizzt said coldly.

“But not here,” Alustriel retorted. “You did not expect it from Silverymoon, nor should you have.”

Her sensitivity touched Drizzt. His anger died away as he awaited her explanation, certain now that the woman had good cause for her actions.

“There are many forces at work here that do not concern you, and should not,” she began. “Threats of war and secret alliances; rumors and suspicions that have no basis in fact, nor would make any sense to reasonable people. I am no great friend to the merchants, though they freely pass through Silverymoon. They fear our ideas and ideals as a threat to their structures of power, as well they should. They are very powerful, and would see Silverymoon more akin to their own views.

“But enough of this talk. As I said, it does not concern you. All that I ask you to understand is that, as leader of my city, I am forced at times to act for the overall good, whatever the cost to an individual.”

“You fear the lies and suspicions that might befall you if a black elf walks freely in Silverymoon?” Drizzt sighed incredulously. “Simply allowing a drow to walk among your people would implicate you in some devious alliance with the underworld?”

“You are not just any drow elf,” Alustriel explained. “You are Drizzt Do’Urden, a name that is destined to be heard throughout the Realms. For now, though, you are a drow who is fast becoming visible to the northern rulers, and, initially at least, they will not understand that you have forsaken your people.

“And this tale gets more complicated, it seems,” Alustriel continued. “Know you that I have two sisters?”

Drizzt shook his head.

“Storm, a bard of reknown, and Dove Falconhand, a ranger. Both have taken an interest in the name of Drizzt Do’Urden—Storm as a growing legend in need of proper song, and Dove…I have yet to discern her motives. You have become a hero to her, I think, the epitome of those qualities that she, as a fellow ranger, strives to perfect. She came into the city just this morn, and knew of your impending arrival.

“Dove is many years younger than I,” Alustriel went on. “And not so wise in the politics of the world.”

“She might have sought me out,” Drizzt reasoned, seeing the implications that Alustriel feared.

“She will, eventually,” the lady answered. “But I cannot allow it now, not in Silverymoon.” Alustriel stared at him intently, her gaze hinting at deeper and more personal emotions. “And moreso, I myself would have sought audience with you, as I do now.”

The implications of such a meeting within the city seemed obvious to Drizzt in light of the political struggles that Alustriel had hinted at. “Another time, another place perhaps,” he queried. “Would it bother you so much?”

She replied with a smile. “Not at all.”

Satisfaction and trepidation descended upon Drizzt all at once. He looked back to the stars, wondering if he would ever completely discover the truth about his decision to come to the surface world, or if his life would forever remain a tumult of dangled hope and shattered expectations.

They stood in silence for several moments before Alustriel spoke again.

“You came for the Vault of Sages,” she said, “to discover if anything in there spoke of Mithril Hall.”

“I urged the dwarf to go in,” Drizzt answered. “But he is a stubborn one.”

“I assumed as much,” laughed Alustriel. “But I did not want my actions to interfere with your most noble quest. I have perused the vault myself. You cannot imagine its size! You would not have known where to begin your search of the thousands of volumes that line the walls. But I know the vault as well as anyone alive. I have learned things that would have taken you and your friends weeks to find. But truthfully, very little has been written about Mithril Hall, and nothing at all that gives more than a passing hint about the general area where it lies.”

“Then perhaps we are the better for being turned away.”

Alustriel blushed in embarrassment, though Drizzt meant no sarcasm in his observation. “My guards have informed me that you plan to move on to Sundabar,” the lady said.

“True,” answered Drizzt, “and from there to Citadel Adbar if need be.”

“I advise you against this course,” said Alustriel. “From everything that I could find in the vault, and from my own knowledge of the legends of the days when treasures flowed from Mithril Hall, my guess is that it lies in the west, not the east.”

“We have come from the west, and our trail, seeking those with knowledge of the silvery halls, has led us continually eastward,” Drizzt countered. “Beyond Silverymoon, the only hopes we have are Helm and Harbromm, both in the east.”

“Helm may have something to tell you,” Alustriel agreed. “But you will learn little from King Harbromm and the dwarves of Adbar. They themselves undertook the quest to find the ancient homeland of Bruenor’s kin just a few years ago, and they passed through Silverymoon on their journey—heading west. But they never found the place, and returned home convinced that it was either destroyed and buried deep in some unmarked mountain, or that it had never existed and was simply the ruse of southern merchants dealing their goods in the northland.”

“You do not offer much hope,” Drizzt remarked.

“But I do,” Alustriel countered. “To the west of here, less than a day’s march, along an unmarked path running north from the Rauvin, lies the Herald’s Holdfast, an ancient bastion of accumulated knowledge. The herald, Old Night, can guide you, if anyone can in this day. I have informed him of your coming and he has agreed to sit with you, though he has not entertained visitors for decades, other than myself and a few select scholars.”

“We are in your debt,” said Drizzt, bowing low.

“Do not hope for too much,” Alustriel warned. “Mithril Hall came and went in the knowledge of this world in the flash of an eye. Barely three generations of dwarves ever mined the place, though I grant you that a dwarven generation is a considerable amount of time, and they were not so open with their trade. Only rarely did they allow anyone to their mines, if the tales are true. They brought out their works in the dark of night and fed them through a secret and intricate chain of dwarven agents to be brought to market.”

“They protected themselves well from the greed of the outside world,” Drizzt observed.

“But their demise came from within the mines,” said Alustriel. “An unknown danger that may lurk there still, you are aware.”

Drizzt nodded.

“And still you choose to go?”

“I care not for the treasures, though if they are indeed as splendid as Bruenor describes, then I would wish to look upon them. But this is the dwarf’s search, his great adventure, and I would be a sorry friend indeed if I did not help him to see it through.”

“Hardly could that label be mantled upon your neck, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Alustriel said. She pulled a small vial from a fold in her gown. “Take this with you,” she instructed.

“What is it?”

“A potion of remembrance,” Alustriel explained. “Give it to the dwarf when the answers to your search seem near at hand. But beware, its powers are strong! Bruenor will walk for a time in the memories of his distant past as well as the experiences of his present.

“And these,” she said, producing a small pouch from the same fold and handing it to Drizzt, “are for all of you. Unguent to help wounds to heal, and biscuits that refresh a weary traveler.”

“My thanks and the thanks of my friends,” said Drizzt.

“In light of the terrible injustice that I have forced upon you, they are little recompense.”

“But the concern of their giver was no small gift,” Drizzt replied. He looked straight into her eyes, holding her with his intensity. “You have renewed my hope, Lady of Silverymoon. You have reminded me that there is indeed reward for those who follow the path of conscience, a treasure far greater than the material baubles that too often come to unjust men.”

“There is, indeed,” she agreed. “And your future will show you many more, proud ranger. But now the night is half gone and you must rest. Fear not, for you are watched this night. Farewell, Drizzt Do’Urden, and may the road before you be swift and clear.”

With a wave of her hand, she faded into the starlight, leaving Drizzt to wonder if he had dreamed the whole encounter. But then her final words drifted down to him on the gentle breeze. “Farewell, and keep heart, Drizzt Do’Urden. Your honor and courage do not go unnoticed!”

Drizzt stood silently for a long while. He bent low and picked a wildflower from the riverbank, rolling it over between his fingers and wondering if he and the Lady of Silverymoon might indeed meet again on more accommodating terms. And where such a meeting might lead.

Then he tossed the flower into the Rauvin.

“Let events take their own course,” he said resolutely, looking back to the camp and his closest friends. “I need no fantasies to belittle the great treasures that I already possess.” He took a deep breath to blow away the remnants of his self-pity.

And with his faith restored, the stoic ranger went to sleep.

15. The Golem’s Eyes

Drizzt had little trouble convincing Bruenor to reverse their course and head back to the west. While the dwarf was anxious to get to Sundabar and find out what Helm might know, the possibility of valuable information less than a day away set him off and running.

As to how he had come by the information, Drizzt offered little explanation, saying only that he had met up with a lone traveler on the road to Silverymoon during the night. Though the story sounded contrived to them, his friends, respecting his privacy and trusting him fully, did not question him about it. When they ate breakfast, though, Regis hoped that more information would be forthcoming, for the biscuits that this traveler had given to Drizzt were truly delicious and incredibly refreshing. After only a few bites, the halfling felt as if he had spent a week at rest. And the magic salve immediately healed Wulfgar’s injured leg and back, and he walked without a cane for the first time since they had left the Evermoors.

Wulfgar suspected that Drizzt’s encounter had involved someone of great importance long before the drow revealed the marvelous gifts. For the drow’s inner glow of optimism, the knowing sparkle in his eyes that reflected the indomitable spirit that had kept him going through trials that would have crushed most men, had returned, fully and dramatically. The barbarian didn’t need to know the identity of the person; he was just glad that his friend had come through the depression.

When they moved out later that morning, they seemed more a party just beginning an adventure than a road-weary band. Whistling and talking, they followed the flow of the Rauvin on its westerly course. For all of the close calls, they had come through the brutal march relatively unscathed and, it appeared, had made good progress toward their goal. The summer sun shone down upon them and all the pieces of the puzzle of Mithril Hall seemed to be within their grasp.

They could not have guessed that murderous eyes were upon them.

From the foothills north of the Rauvin, high above the travelers, the golem sensed the drow elf’s passing. Following the tug of magic spells of seeking that Dendybar had bestowed upon it, Bok soon looked down upon the band as they moved across the trail. Without hesitation the monster obeyed its directives and started out to find Sydney.

Bok tossed aside a boulder that lay in its path, then climbed over another that was too big to move, not understanding the advantages of simply walking around the stones. Bok’s path was clearly set and the monster refused to deviate from that course by an inch.

“He is a big one!” chuckled one of the guards at the post on the Rauvin when he saw Bok across the clearing. Even as the words left his mouth, though, the guard realized the impending danger—that this was no ordinary traveler!

Courageously, he rushed out to meet the golem headon, his sword drawn and his companion close behind.

Transfixed by his goal, Bok paid no heed to their warnings.

“Hold where you are!” the soldier commanded one final time as Bok covered the last few feet between them.

The golem did not know emotion, so it bore no anger toward the guards as they struck. They stood to block the way, though, and Bok swatted them aside without a second thought, the incredible force of its magically strong arms blasting through their parrying defenses and launching them through the air. Without even a pause, the golem continued on to the river and did not slow, disappearing under the rushing waters.

Alarms rang out in the city, for the soldiers at the gate across the river saw the spectacle at the guard post. The huge gates were drawn tight and secured as the Knights of Silver watched the Rauvin for the reappearance of the monster.

Bok kept its line straight across the bottom of the river, plowing through the silt and mud and easily holding its course against the mighty push of the currents. When the monster re-emerged directly across from the guard post, the knights lining the city gate gasped in disbelief but held their stations, grim-faced and weapons ready.

The gate was farther up the Rauvin from the angle of Bok’s chosen path. The golem continued on to the city wall, but didn’t alter its course to bring it to the gate.

It punched a hole in the wall and walked right through.

Entreri paced anxiously in his room at the Inn of the Wayward Sages, near the center of the city. “They should have come by now,” he snapped at Sydney, sitting on the bed and tightening the bonds that held Catti-brie.

Before Sydney could respond, a ball of flame appeared in the center of the room, not a real fire, but the image of flames, illusionary, like something burning in that particular spot on another plane. The fires writhed and transformed into the apparition of a robed man.

“Morkai!” Sydney gasped.

“My greetings,” replied the specter. “And the greetings of Dendybar the Mottled.”

Entreri slipped back into the corner of the room, wary of the thing. Catti-brie, helpless in her bonds, sat very still.

Sydney, versed in the subtleties of conjuring, knew that the otherworldly being was under Dendybar’s control, and she was not afraid. “Why has my master bid you to come here?” she asked boldly.

“I bear news,” replied the specter. “The party you seek was turned into the Evermoors a week ago, to the south of Nesme.”

Sydney bit her lip in anticipation of the specter’s next revelation, but Morkai fell silent and waited as well.

“And where are they now?” Sydney pressed impatiently.

Morkai smiled. “Twice I have been asked, but not yet compelled!” The flames puffed again and the specter was gone.

“The Evermoors,” said Entreri. “That would explain their delay.”

Sydney nodded her agreement absently, for she had other things on her mind. “Not yet compelled,” she whispered to herself, echoing the specter’s parting words. Disturbing questions nagged at her. Why had Dendybar waited a week to send Morkai with the news? And why couldn’t the wizard have forced the specter to reveal more recent activity of the drow’s party? Sydney knew the dangers and limitations of summoning, and understood the tremendous drain of the act on a wizard’s power. Dendybar had conjured Morkai at least three times recently—once when the drow’s party had first entered Luskan, and at least twice since she and her companions had set out in pursuit. Had Dendybar abandoned all caution in his obsession with the Crystal Shard? Sydney sensed that the mottled wizard’s hold over Morkai had lessened greatly, and she hoped that Dendybar would be prudent with any future summonings, at least until he had fully rested.

“Weeks could pass before they arrive!” Entreri spat, considering the news. “If ever they do.”

“You may be right,” agreed Sydney. “They might have fallen in the moors.”

“And if they have?”

“Then we go in after them,” Sydney said without hesitation.

Entreri studied her for a few moments. “The prize you seek must be great indeed,” he said.

“I have my duty, and I shall not fail my master,” she replied sharply. “Bok will find them even if they lay at the bottom of the deepest bog!”

“We must decide our course soon,” Entreri insisted. He turned his evil glare on Catti-brie. “I grow weary of watching this one.”

“Nor do I trust her,” Sydney agreed. “Although she shall prove useful when we meet with the dwarf. Three more days we will wait. After that we go back to Nesme, and into the Evermoors if we must.”

Entreri nodded his reluctant approval of the plan. “Did you hear?” he hissed at Catti-brie. “You have three more days to live, unless your friends arrive. If they are dead in the moors, we have no need of you.”

Catti-brie showed no emotion throughout the entire conversation, determined not to let Entreri gain any advantage by learning of her weakness, or strength. She had faith that her friends were not dead. The likes of Bruenor Battlehammer and Drizzt Do’Urden were not destined to die in an unmarked grave in some desolate fen. And Catti-brie would never accept that Wulfgar was dead until the proof was irrefutable. Holding to her faith, her duty to her friends was to maintain a blank facade. She knew that she was winning her personal battle, that the paralyzing fear Entreri held over her lessened every day. She would be ready to act when the time came. She just had to make certain that Entreri and Sydney didn’t realize it.

She had noted that the labors of the road, and his new companions, were affecting the assassin. Entreri revealed more emotion, more desperation, every day to get this job over and done. Was it possible that he might make a mistake?

“It has come!” echoed a cry from the hallway, and all three started reflexively, then recognized the voice as Jierdan’s, who had been watching the Vault of Sages. A second later, the door burst in and the soldier scrambled into the room, his breathing ragged.

“The dwarf?” Sydney asked, grabbing Jierdan to steady him.

“No!” Jierdan cried. “The golem! Bok has entered Silverymoon! They have it trapped down by the west gate. A wizard was summoned.”

“Damn!” Sydney spat and she started from the room. Entreri moved to follow her, grabbing Jierdan’s arm and yanking him around, bringing them face to face.

“Stay with the girl,” the assassin ordered.

Jierdan glared at him. “She is your problem.”

Entreri easily could have killed the soldier right there, Catti-brie noted, hoping that Jierdan had read the assassin’s deadly look as clearly as she.

“Do as you are told!” Sydney screamed at Jierdan, ending further argument. She and Entreri left, the assassin slamming the door behind them.

“He would have killed you,” Catti-brie told Jierdan when Entreri and Sydney had gone. “You know that.”

“Silence,” Jierdan growled. “I’ve had enough of your vile words!” He approached her threateningly, fists clenched at his sides.

“Strike me, then,” Catti-brie challenged, knowing that even if he did, his code as a soldier would not allow him to continue such an assault on a helpless foe. “Although in truth I be yer only friend on this cursed road!”

Jierdan stopped his advance. “Friend?” he balked.

“As close as ye’ll find out here,” Catti-brie replied. “Ye’re a prisoner here suren as I be.” She recognized the vulnerability of this proud man, who had been reduced to servitude by the arrogance of Sydney and Entreri, and drove her point home hard. “They mean to kill ye, ye know that now, and even if ye escape the blade, yell have nowhere to go. Ye’ve abandoned yer fellows in Luskan, and the wizard in the tower’d put ye to a bad end if ye ever went back there, anyway!”

Jierdan tensed in frustrated rage, but did not lash out.

“Me friends are close by,” Catti-brie continued despite the warning signs. “They be living still, I know, and we’ll be meeting them any day. That’ll be our time, soldier, to live or to die. For meself, I see a chance. Whether me friends win or I be bargained over, me life’ll be me own. But for yerself, the road looks dark indeed! If me friends win, they’ll cut ye down, and if yer mates win…” She let the grim possibilities hang unspoken for a few moments to let Jierdan weigh them fully.

“When they get what they seek, they’ll need ye no more,” she said grimly. She noted his trembling, not of fear, but of rage, and pushed him past the edge of control. “They may let ye live,” she said, snidely. “Might that they be needin’ a lackey!”

He did strike her then, just once, and recoiled.

Catti-brie accepted the blow without complaint, even smiling through the pain, though she was careful to hide her satisfaction. Jierdan’s loss of self-restraint proved to her that the continual disrespect Sydney, and especially Entreri, had shown for him had fueled the flames of discontent to the verge of explosion.

She knew, too, that when Entreri returned and saw the bruise Jierdan had given her, those fires would burn even brighter.

Sydney and Entreri rushed through the streets of Silverymoon, following the obvious sounds of commotion. When they reached the wall, they found Bok encapsulated in a sphere of glowing green lights. Riderless horses paced about to the groans of a dozen injured soldiers, and one old man, the wizard, stood before the globe of light, scratching his beard and studying the trapped golem. A Knight of Silver of considerable rank stood impatiently beside him, twitching nervously and clasping the pommel of his sheathed sword tightly.

“Destroy the thing and be done with it,” Sydney heard the knight say to the wizard.

“Oh, no!” exclaimed the wizard. “But it is marvelous!”

“Do you mean to hold it here forever?” the knight snapped back. “Just look around—”

“Your pardon, good sirs,” Sydney interrupted. “I am Sydney, of the Hosttower of the Arcane in Luskan. Perhaps I may be of some help.”

“Well met,” said the wizard. “I am Mizzen of the Second School of Knowledge. Know you the possessor of this magnificent creature?”

“Bok is mine,” she admitted.

The knight stared at her, amazed that a woman, or anyone for that matter, controlled the monster that had knocked aside some of his finest warriors and taken down a section of the city wall. “The price shall be high, Sydney of Luskan,” he snarled.

“The Hosttower shall make amends,” she agreed. “Now would you release the golem to my control?” she asked the wizard. “Bok will obey me.”

“Nay!” snapped the knight. “I’ll not have the thing turned loose again.”

“Calm, Gavin,” Mizzen said to him. He turned to Sydney. “I should like to study the golem, if I may. Truly the finest construction I have ever witnessed, with strength beyond the expectations of the books of creation.”

“I am sorry,” Sydney answered, “but my time is short. I have many roads yet to travel. Name the price of the damage wrought by the golem and I shall relay it to my master, on my word as a member of the Hosttower.”

“You’ll pay now,” argued the guard.

Again Mizzen silenced him. “Excuse Gavin’s anger,” he said to Sydney. He surveyed the area. “Perhaps we might strike a bargain. None seem to have been seriously injured.”

“Three men have been carried away!” Gavin rebutted. “And at least one horse is lame and will have to be destroyed!”

Mizzen waved his hand as if to belittle the claims. “They will heal,” he said. “They will heal. And the wall needed repairs anyway.” He looked at Sydney and scratched his beard again. “Here is my offer, and a fairer one you’ll not hear! Give me the golem for one night, just one, and I shall amend the damage it has wreaked. Just one night.”

“And you’ll not disassemble Bok,” Sydney stated.

“Not even the head?” Mizzen begged.

“Not even the head,” Sydney insisted. “And I shall come for the golem at the first light of dawn.”

Mizzen scratched his beard again. “A marvellous work,” he mumbled, peering into the magical prison. “Agreed!”

“If that monster—” Gavin began angrily.

“Oh, where is your sense of adventure, Gavin?” Mizzen shot back before the knight could even finish his warning. “Remember the precepts of our town, man. We are here to learn. If you only understood the potential of such a creation!”

They started away from Sydney, paying her no more mind, the wizard still rambling into Gavin’s ear. Entreri slipped from the shadows of a nearby building to Sydney’s side.

“Why did the thing come?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “There can be only one answer.”

“The drow?”

“Yes,” she said. “Bok must have followed them into the city.”

“Unlikely,” reasoned Entreri, “though the golem might have seen them. If Bok came crashing through behind the drow and his valiant friends, they would have been down here at the battle, helping to fend it off.”

“Then they might be out there still.”

“Or perhaps they were leaving the city when Bok saw them,” said Entreri. “I will make inquiries with the guards at the gate. Fear not, our prey is close at hand!”

They arrived back at the room a couple of hours later. From the guards at the gate they had learned of the drow’s party being turned away and now they were anxious to retrieve Bok and be on their way.

Sydney started a string of instructions to Jierdan concerning their departure in the morning, but what grabbed Entreri’s immediate attention was Catti-brie’s bruised eye. He moved over to check her bonds and, satisfied that they were intact, spun on Jierdan with his dagger drawn.

Sydney, quickly surmising the situation, cut him off. “Not now!” she demanded. “Our rewards are at hand. We cannot afford this!”

Entreri chuckled evilly and slid the dagger away. “We will yet discuss this,” he promised Jierdan with a snarl. “Do not touch the girl again.”

Perfect, Catti-brie thought. From Jierdan’s perspective, the assassin might as well have said outright that he meant to kill him.

More fuel for the flames.

When she retrieved the golem from Mizzen the next morning, Sydney’s suspicions that Bok had seen the drow’s party were confirmed. They set out from Silverymoon at once, Bok leading them down the same trail Bruenor and his friends had taken the morning before.

Like the previous party, they, too, were watched.

Alustriel, brushed her flowing hair from her fair face, catching the morning sun in her green eyes as she looked down upon the band with growing curiosity. The lady had learned from the gatekeepers that someone had been inquiring about the dark elf.

She couldn’t yet figure out what part this new group leaving Silverymoon played in the quest, but she suspected that they were up to no good. Alustriel had sated her own thirst for adventure many years before, but she wished now that she could somehow aid the drow and his friends on their noble mission. Affairs of state pressed in on her, though, and she had no time for such diversions. She considered for a moment dispatching a patrol to capture this second party, so that she could learn its intentions. Then she turned back to her city, reminding herself that she was just a minor player in the search for Mithril Hall. She could only trust in the abilities of Drizzt Do’Urden and his friends.