The Pirate King

A million, million changes—uncountable changes! — every day, every heartbeat of every day. That is the nature of things, of the world, with every decision a crossroad, every drop of rain an instrument both of destruction and creation, every animal hunting and every animal eaten changing the present just a bit.

On a larger level, it’s hardly and rarely noticeable, but those multitude of pieces that comprise every image are not constants, nor, necessarily, are constant in the way we view them.

My friends and I are not the norm for the folk of Faerûn. We have traveled half the world, for me both under and above. Most people will never see the wider world outside of their town, or even the more distant parts of the cities of their births. Theirs is a small and familiar existence, a place of comfort and routine, parochial in their church, selective in their lifelong friends.

I could not suffer such an existence. Boredom builds like smothering walls, and the tiny changes of everyday existence would never cut large enough windows in those opaque barriers.

Of my companions, I think Regis could most accept such a life, so long as the food was plentiful and not bland and he was given some manner of contact with the goings-on of the wider world outside. I have often wondered how many hours a halfling might lie on the same spot on the shore of the same lake with the same un-baited line tied to his toe.

Has Wulfgar moved back to a similar existence? Has he shrunk his world, recoiling from the harder truths of reality? It’s possible for him, with his deep emotional scars, but never would it be possible for Catti-brie to go with him to such a life of steadfast routine. Of that I’m most certain. The wanderlust grips her as it grips me, forcing us along the road—even apart along our sepa rate roads, and confident in the love we share and the eventual reunions.

And Bruenor, as I witness daily, battles the smallness of his existence with growls and grumbles. He is the king of Mithral Hall, with riches untold at his fingertips. His every wish can be granted by a host of subjects loyal to him unto death. He accepts the responsibilities of his lineage, and fits that throne well, but it galls him every day as surely as if he was tied to his kingly seat. He has often found and will often find again excuses to get himself out of the hall on some mission or other, whatever the danger.

He knows, as Catti-brie and I know, that stasis is boredom and boredom is a wee piece of death itself.

For we measure our lives by the changes, by the moments of the unusual. Perhaps that manifests itself in the first glimpse of a new city, or the first breath of air on a tall mountain, a swim in a river cold from the melt or a frenzied battle in the shadows of Kelvin’s Cairn. The unusual experiences are those that create the memories, and a tenday of memories is more life than a year of routine. I remember my first sail aboard Sea Sprite, for example, as keenly as my first kiss from Catti-brie, and though that journey lasted mere tendays in a life more than three-quarters of the way through a century, the memories of that voyage play out more vividly than some of the years I spent in House Do’Urden, trapped in the routine of a drow boy’s repetitive duties.

It’s true that many of the wealthier folk I have known, lords of Waterdeep even, will open their purses wide for a journey to a far off place of respite. Even if a particular journey does not go as anticipated for them, with unpleasant weather or unpleasant company, or foul food or even minor illnesses, to a one, the lords would claim the trip worth the effort and the gold. What they valued most for their trouble and treasure was not the actual journey, but the memory of it that remained behind, the memory of it that they will carry to their graves. Life is in the experiencing, to be sure, but it’s just as much in the recollection and in the telling!

Contrastingly, I see in Mithral Hall many dwarves, particularly older folk, who revel in the routine, whose every step mirrors those of the day before. Every meal, every hour of work, every chop with the pick or bang with the hammer follows the pattern ingrained throughout the years. There is a game of delusion at work here, I know, though I wouldn’t say it aloud. It’s an unspoken and internal logic that drives them ever on in the same place. It’s even chanted in an old dwarven song:

For this I did on yesterday

And not to Moradin’s Hall did I fly

So’s to do it again’ll keep me well

And today I sha’not die.

The logic is simple and straightforward, and the trap is easily set, for if I did these things the day before and do these same things today, I can reasonably assume that the result will not change.

And the result is that I will be alive tomorrow to do these things yet again.

Thus do the mundane and the routine become the—false—assurance of continued life, but I have to wonder, even if the premise were true, even if doing the same thing daily would ensure immortality, would a year of such existence not already be the same as the most troubling possibility of death?

From my perspective, this ill-fated logic ensures the opposite of that delusional promise! To live a decade in such a state is to ensure the swiftest path to death, for it is to ensure the swiftest passage of the decade, an unremarkable recollection that will flitter by without a pause, the years of mere existence. For in those hours and heartbeats and passing days, there is no variance, no outstanding memory, no first kiss.

To seek the road and embrace change could well lead to a shorter life in these dangerous times in Faerûn. But in those hours, days, years, whatever the measure, I will have lived a longer life by far than the smith who ever taps the same hammer to the same familiar spot on the same familiar metal.

For life is experience, and longevity is, in the end, measured by memory, and those with a thousand tales to tell have indeed lived longer than any who embrace the mundane.

— Drizzt Do’Urden

CHAPTER 1 FAIR WINDS AND FOLLOWING SEAS

S ails billowing, timbers creaking, water spraying high from her prow, Thrice Lucky leaped across the swells with the grace of a dancer. All the multitude of sounds blended together in a musical chorus, both invigorating and inspiring, and it occurred to young Captain Maimun that if he had hired a band of musicians to rouse his crew, their work would add little to the natural music all around them.

The chase was on, and every man and woman aboard felt it, and heard it.

Maimun stood forward and starboard, holding fast to a guide rope, his brown hair waving in the wind, his black shirt half unbuttoned and flapping refreshingly and noisily, bouncing out enough to show a tar-black scar across the left side of his chest.

“They are close,” came a woman’s voice from behind him, and Maimun half-turned to regard Overwizard Arabeth Raurym, Mistress of the South Tower.

“Your magic tells you so?”

“Can’t you feel it?” the woman answered, and gave a coy toss of her head so that her waist-length red hair caught the wind and flipped back behind her. Her blouse was as open as Maimun’s shirt, and the young man couldn’t help but look admiringly at the alluring creature.

He thought of the previous night, and the night before that, and before that as well—of the whole enjoyable journey. Arabeth had promised him a wonderful and exciting sail in addition to the rather large sum she’d offered for her passage, and Maimun couldn’t honestly say that she’d disappointed him. She was around his age, just past thirty, intelligent, attractive, sometimes brazen, sometimes coy, and just enough of each to keep Maimun and every other man around her off-balance and keenly interested in pursuing her. Arabeth knew her power well, and Maimun knew that she knew it, but still, he couldn’t shake himself free of her.

Arabeth stepped up beside him and playfully brushed her fingers through his thick hair. He glanced around quickly, hoping none of the crew had seen, for the action only accentuated that he was quite young to be captaining a ship, and that he looked even younger. His build was slight, wiry yet strong, his features boyish and his eyes a delicate light blue. While his hands were calloused, like those of any honest seaman, his skin had not yet taken on the weathered, leathery look of a man too much under the sparkling sun.

Arabeth dared to run her hand under the open fold of his shirt, her fingers dancing across his smooth skin to the rougher place where skin and tar had melded together, and it occurred to Maimun that he typically kept his shirt open just a bit more for exactly the reason of revealing a hint of that scar, that badge of honor, that reminder to all around that he had spent most of his life with a blade in his hand.

“You are a paradox,” Arabeth remarked, and Maimun merely smiled. “Gentle and strong, soft and rough, kind and merciless, an artist and a warrior. With your lute in hand, you sing with the voice of the sirens, and with your sword in hand, you fight with the tenacity of a drow weapons master.”

“You find this off-putting?”

Arabeth laughed. “I would drag you to your cabin right now,” she replied, “but they are close.”

As if on cue—and Maimun was certain Arabeth had used some magic to confirm her prediction before she’d offered it—a crewman from the crow’s nest shouted down, “Sails! Sails on the horizon!”

“Two ships,” Arabeth said to Maimun.

“Two ships!” the man in the nest called down.

“Sea Sprite and Quelch’s Folly,” said Arabeth. “As I told you when we left Luskan.”

Maimun could only chuckle helplessly at the manipulative wizard. He reminded himself of the pleasures of the journey, and of the hefty bag of gold awaiting its completion.

He thought, too, in terms bitter and sweet, of Sea Sprite and Deudermont, his old ship, his old captain.

“Aye, Captain, that’s Argus Retch or I’m the son of a barbarian king and an orc queen,” Waillan Micanty said. He winced as he finished, reminding himself of the cultured man he served. He scanned Deudermont head to toe, from his neatly trimmed beard and hair to his tall and spotless black boots. The captain showed more gray in his hair, but still not much for a man of more than fifty years, and that only made him appear more regal and impressive.

“A bottle of the finest wine for Dhomas Sheeringvale, then,” Deudermont said in a light tone that put Micanty back at ease. “Against all of my doubts, the information you garnered from him was correct and we’ve finally got that filthy pirate before us.” He clapped Micanty on the back and glanced back over his shoulder and up to Sea Sprite’s wizard, who sat on the edge of the poop deck, his skinny legs dangling under his heavy robes. “And soon in range of our catapult,” Deudermont added loudly, catching the attention of the mage, Robillard, “if our resident wizard there can get the sails straining.”

“Cheat to win,” Robillard replied, and with a dramatic flourish he waggled his fingers, the ring that allowed him control over a fickle air elemental sending forth another mighty gust of wind that made Sea Sprite’s timbers creak.

“I grow weary of the chase,” Deudermont retorted, his way of saying that he was eager to finally confront the beastly pirate he pursued.

“Less so than I,” the wizard replied.

Deudermont didn’t argue that point, and he knew that the benefit of Robillard’s magic filling the sails was mitigated by the strong following winds. In calmer seas, Sea Sprite could still rush along, propelled by the wizard and his ring, while their quarry would typically flee at a crawl. The captain clapped Micanty on the shoulder and led him to the side, in view of Sea Sprite’s new and greatly improved catapult. Heavily banded in metal strapping, the dwarven weapon could heave a larger payload. The throwing arm and basket strained under the weight of many lengths of chain, laid out for maximum extension by gunners rich in experience.

“How long?” Deudermont asked the sighting officer, who stood beside the catapult, spyglass in hand.

“We could hit her now with a ball of pitch, mighten be, but getting the chains up high enough to shred her sails…That’ll take another fifty yards closing.”

“One yard for every gust,” Deudermont said with a sigh of feigned resignation. “We need a stronger wizard.”

“You’d be looking for Elminster himself, then,” Robillard shot back. “And he’d probably burn your sails in some demented attempt at a colorful flourish. But please, hire him on. I would enjoy a holiday, and would enjoy more the sight of you swimming back to Luskan.”

This time Deudermont’s sigh was real.

So was Robillard’s grin.

Sea Sprite’s timbers creaked again, forward-leaning masts driving the prow hard against the dark water.

Soon after, everyone on the deck, even the seemingly-dispassionate wizard, waited with breath held for the barked command, “Tack starboard!”

Sea Sprite bent over in a water-swirling hard turn, bending her masts out of the way for the aft catapult to let fly. And let fly she did, the dwarven siege engine screeching and creaking, hurling several hundred pounds of wrapped metal through the air. The chains burst open to near full length as they soared, and whipped in above the deck of Quelch’s Folly, slashing her sails.

As the wounded pirate ship slowed, Sea Sprite tacked hard back to port. A flurry of activity on the pirate’s deck showed her archers preparing for the fight, and Sea Sprite’s crack crew responded in kind, aligning themselves along the port rail, composite bows in hand.

But it was Robillard who, by design, struck first. In addition to constructing the necessary spells to defend against magical attacks, the wizard used an enchanted censer and brought forth a denizen from the Elemental Plane of Air. It appeared like a waterspout, but with hints of a human form, a roiling of air powerful enough to suck up and hold water within it to better define its dimensions. Loyal and obedient because of the ring Robillard wore, the cloudlike pet all but invisibly floated over the rail of Sea Sprite and glided toward Quelch’s Folly.

Captain Deudermont lifted his hand high and looked to Robillard for guidance. “Alongside her fast and straight,” he instructed the helmsman.

“Not to rake?” Waillan Micanty asked, echoing perfectly the sentiments of the helmsman, for normally Sea Sprite would cripple her opponent and come in broadside to the pirate’s taffrail, giving Sea Sprite’s archers greater latitude and mobility.

Robillard had convinced Deudermont of a new plan for the ruffians of Quelch’s Folly, a plan more straightforward and more devastating to a crew deserving of no quarter.

Sea Sprite closed—archers on both decks lifted their bows.

“Hold for me,” Deudermont called along his line, his hand still high in the air.

More than one man on Sea Sprite’s deck rubbed his arm against his sweating face; more than one rolled eager fingers over his drawn bowstring. Deudermont was asking them to cede the initiative, to let the pirates shoot first.

Trained, seasoned, and trusting in their captain, they obliged.

And so Argus’s crew let fly…right into the suddenly howling winds of Robillard’s air elemental.

The creature rose up above the dark water and began to spin with such suddenness and velocity that by the time the arrows of Argus’s archers cleared their bows, they were soaring straight into a growing tornado, a water spout. Robillard willed the creature right to the side ofQuelch’s Folly, its winds so strong that they deterred any attempt to reload the bows.

Then, with only a few yards separating Sea Sprite from the pirate, the wizard nodded to Deudermont, who counted down from three—precisely the time Robillard needed to simply dismiss his elemental and the winds with it. Argus’s crew, mistakenly thinking the wind to be as much a defense as a deterrent to their own attacks, had barely moved for cover when the volley crossed deck to deck.

“They are good,” Arabeth remarked to Maimun as the two stared into a scrying bowl she had empowered to give them a close-up view of the distant battle. Following the barrage of arrows, a second catapult shot sent hundreds of small stones raking the deck of Quelch’s Folly. With brutal efficiency, Sea Sprite sidled up to the pirate ship, grapnels and boarding planks flying.

“It will be all but over before we get there,” Maimun said.

“Before you get there, you mean,” Arabeth said with a wink. She cast a quick spell and faded from sight. “Put up your proper pennant, elseSea Sprite sinks you beside her.”

Maimun laughed at the disembodied voice of the invisible mage and started to respond, but a flash out on the water told him that Arabeth had already created a dimensional portal to rush away.

“Up Luskan’s dock flag!” Maimun called to his crew.

Thrice Lucky was in a wonderful position, for she had no outstanding crimes or warrants against her. With a flag of Luskan’s wharf above her, stating a clear intent to side with Deudermont, she would be well-received.

And of course Maimun would side with Deudermont against Argus Retch. Though Maimun, too, was considered a “pirate” of sorts, he was nothing akin to the wretched Retch—whose last name had been taken with pride, albeit misspelled. Retch was a murderer, and took great pleasure in torturing and killing even helpless civilians.

Maimun wouldn’t abide that, and part of the reason he had agreed to take Arabeth out was to see, at long last, the downfall of the dreadful pirate. He realized he was leaning over the rail. His greatest pleasure would be crossing swords with Retch himself.

But Maimun knew Deudermont too well to believe that the battle would last that long.

“Take up a song,” the young captain, who was also a renowned bard, commanded, and his crew did just that, singing rousing praises toThrice Lucky, warning her enemies, “Beware or be swimming!”

Maimun shook his thick brown locks from his face, his light blue eyes—orbs that made him look much younger than his twenty-nine years—squinting as he measured the fast-closing distance.

Deudermont’s men were already on the deck.

Robillard found himself quickly bored. He had expected better out of Argus Retch, though he’d wondered for a long time if the man’s impressive reputation had been exaggerated by the ruthlessness of his tactics. Robillard, formerly of the Hosttower of the Arcane, had known many such men, rather ordinary in terms of conventional intelligence or prowess, but seeming above that because they were unbounded by morality.

“Sails port and aft!” the man in the crow’s nest shouted down. Robillard waved his hand, casting a spell to enhance his vision, his gaze locking on the pennant climbing the new ship’s rigging.

“Thrice Lucky,” he muttered, noting young Captain Maimun standing mid-rail. “Go home, boy.”

With a disgusted sigh, Robillard dismissed Maimun and his boat and turned his attention to the fight at hand.

He brought his pet air elemental back to him then used his ring to enact a spell of levitation. On his command, the elemental shoved him across the expanse toward Quelch’s Folly. He visually scoured the deck as he glided in, seeking her wizard. Deudermont and his crack crew weren’t to be outdone with swords, he well knew, and so the only potential damage would be wrought by magic.

He floated over the pirate’s rail, caught a rope to halt his drift, and calmly reached out to tap a nearby pirate, releasing a shock of electrical magic as he did. That man hopped weirdly once or twice, his long hair dancing crazily, then he fell over, twitching.

Robillard didn’t watch it. He glanced from battle to battle, and anywhere it seemed as though a pirate was getting the best of one of Deudermont’s men, he flicked his finger in that direction, sending forth a stream of magical missiles that laid the pirate low.

But where was her wizard? And where was Retch?

“Cowering in the hold, no doubt,” Robillard muttered to himself.

He released the levitation spell and began calmly striding across the deck. A pirate rushed at him from the side and slashed his saber hard against the wizard, but of course Robillard had well-prepared his defenses for any such crude attempts. The saber hit his skin and would have done no more against solid rock, a magical barrier blocking it fully.

Then the pirate went up into the air, caught by Robillard’s elemental. He flew out over the rail, flailing insanely, to splash into the cold ocean waters.

A favor for an old friend? Came a magical whisper in Robillard’s ear, and in a voice he surely recognized.

“Arabeth Raurym?” he mouthed in disbelief, and in sadness, for what might that promising young lass be doing at sea with the likes of Argus Retch?

Robillard sighed again, dropped another pair of pirates with a missile volley, loosed his air elemental on yet another group, and moved to the hatch. He glanced around then “removed” the hatch with a mighty gust of wind. Using his ring again to buoy him, for he didn’t want to bother with a ladder, the wizard floated down belowdecks.

What little fight remained in Argus Retch’s crew dissipated at the approach of the second ship, for Thrice Lucky had declared her allegiance with Deudermont. With expert handling, Maimun’s crew brought their vessel up alongside Quelch’s Folly, opposite Sea Sprite, and quickly set their boarding planks.

Maimun led the way, but he didn’t get two steps from his own deck before Deudermont himself appeared at the other end of the plank, staring at him with what seemed a mixture of curiosity and disdain.

“Sail past,” Sea Sprite’s captain said.

“We fly Luskan’s banner,” Maimun replied.

Deudermont didn’t blink.

“Have we come to this, then, my captain?” Maimun asked.

“The choice was yours.”

“‘The choice,’” Maimun echoed. “Was it to be made only with your approval?” He kept approaching as he spoke, and dared hop down to the deck beside Deudermont. He looked back at his hesitant crew, and waved them forward.

“Come now, my old captain,” Maimun said, “there is no reason we cannot share an ocean so large, a coast so long.”

“And yet, in such a large ocean, you somehow find your way to my side.”

“For old times’ sake,” Maimun said with a disarming chuckle, and despite himself, Deudermont couldn’t suppress his smile.

“Have you killed the wretched Retch?” Maimun asked.

“We will have him soon enough.”

“You and I, perhaps, if we’re clever,” Maimun offered, and when Deudermont looked at him curiously, he added a knowing wink.

Maimun motioned Deudermont to follow and led him toward the captain’s quarters, though the door had already been ripped open and the anteroom appeared empty.

“Retch is rumored to always have a means of escape,” Maimun explained as they crossed the threshold into the private room, exactly as Arabeth had instructed Maimun to do.

“All pirates do,” Deudermont replied. “Where is yours?”

Maimun stopped and regarded Deudermont out of the corner of his eye for a few moments, but otherwise let the jab pass.

“Or are you implying that you have an idea where Retch’s escape might be found?” Deudermont asked when his joke flattened.

Maimun led the captain through a secret door and into Retch’s private quarters. The room was gaudily adorned with booty from a variety of places and with a variety of designs, rarely complimentary. Glass mixed with metal-work, fancy-edge and block, and a rainbow of colors left onlookers more dizzy than impressed. Of course, anyone who knew Captain Argus Retch, with his red-and-white striped shirt, wide green sash, and bright blue pants, would have thought the room perfectly within the wide parameters of the man’s curious sensibilities.

The moment of quiet distraction also brought a revelation to the two—one that Maimun had expected. A conversation from below drifted through a small grate in the corner of the room, and the sound of a cultured woman’s voice fully captured Deudermont’s attention.

“I care nothing for the likes of Argus Retch,” the woman said. “He is an ugly and ill-tempered dog, who should be put down.”

“Yet you are here,” a man’s voice—Robillard’s voice—answered.

“Because I fear Arklem Greeth more than I fear Sea Sprite, or any of the other pretend pirate hunters sailing the Sword Coast.”

“Pretend? Is this not a pirate? Is it not caught?”

“You know Sea Sprite is a show,” the woman argued. “You are a facade offered by the high captains so the peasants believe they’re being protected.”

“So the high captains approve of piracy?” asked an obviously doubting Robillard.

The woman laughed. “The Arcane Brotherhood operates the pirate trade, to great profit. Whether the high captains approve or disapprove is not important, because they don’t dare oppose Arklem Greeth. Feign not your ignorance of this, Brother Robillard. You served at the Hosttower for years.”

“It was a different time.”

“Indeed,” the woman agreed. “But now is as now is, and now is the time of Arklem Greeth.”

“You fear him?”

“I’m terrified of him, and horrified of what he is,” the woman answered without the slightest hesitation. “And I pray that someone will rise up and rid the Hosttower of him and his many minions. But I’m not that person. I take pride in my prowess as an overwizard and in my heritage as daughter of the marchion of Mirabar.”

“Arabeth Raurym,” Deudermont mouthed in recognition.

“But I wouldn’t involve my father in this, for he is already entangled with the brotherhood’s designs on the Silver Marches. Luskan would be well-served by being rid of Arklem Greeth—even Prisoner’s Carnival might then be brought back under lawful and orderly control. But he will outlive my children’s children’s children—or out-exist them, I mean, since he long ago stopped drawing breath.”

“Lich,” Robillard said quietly. “It’s true, then.”

“I am gone,” Arabeth answered. “Do you intend to stop me?”

“I would be well within my province to arrest you here and now.”

“But will you?”

Robillard sighed, and up above, Deudermont and Maimun heard a quick chant and the sizzle of magical release as Arabeth spirited away.

The implications of her revelations—rumors made true before Deudermont’s very ears—hung silently in the air between Deudermont and Maimun.

“I don’t serve Arklem Greeth, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Maimun said. “But then, I am no pirate.”

“Indeed,” replied an obviously unconvinced Deudermont.

“As a soldier is no murderer,” said Maimun.

“Soldiers can be murderers,” Deudermont deadpanned.

“So can lords and ladies, high captains and archmages, pirates and pirate hunters alike.”

“You forgot peasants,” said Deudermont. “And chickens. Chickens can kill, I’ve been told.”

Maimun tipped his fingers against his forehead in salute and surrender.

“Retch’s escape?” Deudermont asked, and Maimun moved to the back of the cabin. He fumbled about a small set of shelves there, moving trinkets and statues and books alike, until finally he smiled and tugged a hidden lever.

The wall pulled open, revealing an empty shaft.

“An escape boat,” Maimun reasoned, and Deudermont started for the door.

“If he knew it was Sea Sprite pursuing him, he is long gone,” Maimun said, and Deudermont stopped. “Retch is no fool, nor is he loyal enough to follow his ship and crew to the depths. He no doubt recognized that it was Sea Sprite chasing him, and relieved himself of his command quietly and quickly. These escape boats are clever things; some submerge for many hours and are possessed of magical propulsion that can return them to a designed point of recall. You can take pride, though, for the escape boats are often referred to as ‘Deuderboats.’”

Deudermont’s eyes narrowed.

“It’s something, at least,” Maimun offered.

Deudermont’s handsome face soured and he headed through the door.

“You won’t catch him,” Maimun called after him. The young man—bard, pirate, captain—sighed and chuckled helplessly, knowing full well that Retch was likely already back in Luskan, and knowing the ways of Kensidan, his employer, he wondered if the notorious pirate wasn’t already being compensated for sacrificing his ship.

Arabeth had come out there for a reason, to have that conversation with Robillard within earshot of Captain Deudermont. It all started to come together for clever Maimun. Kensidan was soon to be a high captain, and the ambitious warlord was working hard to change the very definition of that title.

Despite his deep resentment, Maimun found himself glancing at the door through which Deudermont had exited. Despite his falling out with his former captain, he felt uneasy about the prospect of this too-noble man being used as a pawn.

And Arabeth Raurym had just seen to that.

“She was a good ship—best I ever had,” Argus Retch protested.

“Best of a bad lot, then,” Kensidan replied. He sat—he was always sitting, it seemed—before the blustering, gaudy pirate, his dark and somber clothing so in contrast to Argus Retch’s display of mismatched colors.

“Salt in your throat, ye damned Crow!” Retch cursed. “And lost me a good crew, too!”

“Most of your crew never left Luskan. You used a band of wharf-rats and a few of your own you wished to be rid of. Captain Retch, don’t play me for a fool.”

“W-well…well,” Retch stammered. “Well, good enough, then! But still a crew, and still workin’ for me. And I lost Folly! Don’t you forget that.”

“Why would I forget that which I ordered? And why would I forget that for which you were compensated?”

“Compensated?” the pirate blustered.

Kensidan looked at Retch’s hip, where the bag of gold hung.

“Gold’s all well and fine,” Retch said, “but I need a ship, and I’m not for finding one with any ease. Who’d sell to Argus Retch, knowing that Deudermont got his last and is after him?”

“In good time,” said Kensidan. “Spend your gold on delicacies. Patience. Patience.”

“I’m a man of the sea!”

Kensidan shifted in his seat, planting one elbow on the arm of the chair, forearm up. He pointed his index finger and rested his temple against it, staring at Retch pensively, and with obvious annoyance. “I can put you back to sea this very day.”

“Good!”

“I doubt you’ll think so.”

The deadpan clued Retch in to Kensidan’s true meaning. Rumors had been filtering around Luskan that several of Kensidan’s enemies had been dropped into the deep waters outside the harbor.

“Well, I can be a bit patient, no doubt.”

“No doubt,” Kensidan echoed. “And it will be well worth your time, I assure you.”

“You’ll get me a good ship?”

Kensidan gave a little chuckle. “Would Sea Sprite suffice?”

Argus Retch’s bloodshot eyes popped open wide and the man seemed to simply freeze in place. He stayed like that for a very long time—so long that Kensidan simply looked past him to several of Rethnor’s lieutenants who stood against the walls of the room.

“I’m sure it will,” Kensidan said, and the men laughed. To Retch, he added, “Go and play,” and he waved the man away.

As Retch exited through one door, Suljack came in through another.

“Do you think that wise?” the high captain asked.

The Crow shrugged and smirked as if it hardly mattered.

“You intend to give him Sea Sprite?”

“We’re a long way from having Sea Sprite.”

“Agreed,” said Suljack. “But you just promised…”

“Nothing at all,” said Kensidan. “I asked if he thought Sea Sprite would suffice, nothing more.”

“Not to his ears.”

Kensidan chuckled as he reached over the side of his seat to retrieve his glass of whiskey, along with a bag of potent leaves and shoots. He downed the drink in one gulp and brought the leaves up below his nose, inhaling deeply of their powerful aroma.

“He’ll brag,” Suljack warned.

“With Deudermont looking for him? He’ll hide.”

Suljack’s shake of his head revealed his doubts, but Kensidan brought his herbs up beneath his nose again and seemed not to care.

Seemed not to care because he didn’t. His plans were flowing exactly as he had predicted.

“Nyphithys is in the east?”

Kensidan merely chuckled.

CHAPTER 2 DEFYING EXPECTATIONS

T he large moonstone hanging around Catti-brie’s neck glowed suddenly and fiercely, and she brought a hand up to clench it.

“Devils,” said Drizzt Do’Urden. “So Marchion Elastul’s emissary wasn’t lying.”

“Telled ye as much,” said the dwarf Torgar Hammerstriker, who had been of Elastul’s court only a few short years before. “Elastul’s a shooting pain in a dwarf’s arse, but he’s not so much the liar, and he’s wanting the trade. Always the trade.”

“Been more than five years since we went through Mirabar on our road that bringed us home,” King Bruenor Battlehammer added. “Elastul lost a lot to our passing, and his nobles ain’t been happy with him for a long time. He’s reachin’ out to us.”

“And to him,” Drizzt added, nodding down in the direction of Obould, master of the newly formed Kingdom of Many-Arrows.

“The world’s gone Gutbuster,” Bruenor muttered, a phrase referring to his wildest guardsmen and which Bruenor had aptly appropriated as a synonym for “crazy.”

“Better world, then,” Thibbledorf Pwent, leader of said guardsmen, was quick to respond.

“When we’re done with this, ye’re going back to Mirabar,” Bruenor said to Torgar. Torgar’s eyes widened and he blanched at the notion. “As me own emissary. Elastul done good and we’re needing to tell him he done good. And not one’s better for telling him that than Torgar Hammerstriker.”

Torgar seemed less than convinced, to be sure, but he nodded. He had pledged his loyalty to King Bruenor and would follow his king’s commands without complaint.

“Business here first, I’m thinking,” Bruenor said.

The dwarf king looked at Catti-brie, who had turned to stare off in the direction the gemstone amulet indicated. The westering sun backlit her, reflecting off the red and purple blouse she wore, a shirt that had once been the magical robes of a gnome wizard. Bruenor’s adopted daughter was in her late thirties—not old in the counting of a dwarf, but near middle-aged for a human. And though she still had that luminescence, a beauty that radiated from within, luster to her auburn hair and the sparkle of youth in her large blue eyes, Bruenor could see the changes that had come over her.

She had Taulmaril the Heartseeker, her deadly bow, slung over one shoulder, though of late, Drizzt was the one with that bow in hand. Catti-brie had become a wizard, and one with a tutor as fine as any in the land. Alustriel herself, the Lady of Silverymoon and of the famed Seven Sisters, had taken Catti-brie in as a student shortly after the stalemated war between Bruenor’s dwarves and King Obould’s orcs. Other than the bow, Catti-brie carried only a small dagger, one that seemed hardly used as it sat on her hip. An assortment of wands lined her belt, though, and she wore a pair of powerfully enchanted rings, including one that she claimed could bring the stars themselves down from the sky upon her enemies.

“They’re not far,” she said in a voice still melodic and filled with wonder.

“They?” asked Drizzt.

“Such a creature would not travel alone—certainly not for a meeting with an orc of Obould’s ferocious reputation.” Catti-brie reminded him.

“But escorted by other devils, not a more common guard?”

Catti-brie shrugged, tightened her grip on the amulet, and concentrated for a few moments then nodded.

“A bold move,” said Drizzt, “even when dealing with an orc. How confident must the Arcane Brotherhood be to allow devils to openly walk the land?”

“Less confident tomorrow than today’s all I’m knowing,” muttered Bruenor. He moved down to the side of the stony hill that afforded him the best view of Obould’s encampment.

“Indeed,” Drizzt agreed, throwing a wink at Catti-brie before moving down beside the dwarf. “For never would they have calculated that King Bruenor Battlehammer would rush to the aid of an orc.”

“Just shut yer mouth, elf,” Bruenor grumbled, and Drizzt and Catti-brie shared a smile.

Regis glanced around nervously. The agreement was for Obould to come out with a small contingent, but it was clear to the halfling that the orc had unilaterally changed that plan. Scores of orc warriors and shamans had been set around the main camp, hiding behind rocks or in crevices, cunningly concealed and prepared for swift egress.

As soon as Elastul’s emissaries had delivered the word that the Arcane Brotherhood meant to move on the Silver Marches, and that enlisting Obould would be their first endeavor, the orc king’s every maneuver had been aggressive.

Too aggressive? Regis wondered.

Lady Alustriel and Bruenor had reached out to Obould, but so too had Obould begun to reach out to them. In the four years since the treaty of Garumn’s Gorge, there hadn’t been all that much contact between the various kingdoms, dwarf and orc, and indeed, most of that contact had come in the form of skirmishes along disputed boundaries.

But they had come to join in their first common mission since Bruenor and his friends, Regis among them, had traveled north to help Obould stave off a coup attempt by a vicious tribe of half-ogre orcs.

Or had they? The question nagged at Regis as he continued to glance around. Ostensibly, they had agreed to come together to meet the brotherhood’s emissaries with a show of united force, but a disturbing possibility nagged at the halfling. Suppose Obould instead planned to use his overwhelming numbers in support of the fiendish emissary and against Regis and his friends?

“You wouldn’t have me risk the lives of King Bruenor and his princess Catti-brie, student of Alustriel, would you?” came Obould’s voice from behind, shattering the halfling’s train of thought.

Regis sheepishly turned to regard the massive humanoid, dressed in his overlapping black armor with its abundant and imposing spikes, and with that tremendous greatsword strapped across his back.

“I–I know not what you mean,” Regis stammered, feeling naked under the knowing gaze of the unusually perceptive orc.

Obould laughed at him and turned away, leaving the halfling less than assured.

Several of the forward sentries began calling then, announcing the arrival of the outsiders. Regis rushed forward and to the side to get a good look, and when he did spy the newcomers a few moments later, his heart leaped into his throat.

A trio of beautiful, barely-dressed women led the way up the path. One stepped proudly in front, flanked left and right by her entourage. Tall, statuesque, with beautiful skin, they seemed almost angelic to Regis, for from behind their strong but delicate shoulders, they each sprouted a pair of shining white feathered wings. Everything about them spoke of otherworldliness, from their natural—or supernatural! — charms, like hair too lustrous and eyes too shining, to their adornments such as the fine swords and delicate rope, all magically glowing in a rainbow of hues, carried on belts twined of shining gold and silver fibers that sparkled with enchantments.

It would have been easy to confuse these women with the goodly celestials, had it not been for their escort. For behind them came a mob of gruesome and beastly warriors, the barbazu. Each carried a saw-toothed glaive, great tips waving in the light as the hunched, green-skinned creatures shuffled behind their leaders. Barbazu were also known as “bearded devils” because of a shock of facial hair that ran ear to ear down under their jawline, beneath a toothy mouth far too wide for their otherwise emaciated-looking faces. Scattered amongst their ranks were their pets, the lemure, oozing, fleshy creatures that had no more definable shape than that of a lump of molten stone, continually rolling, spreading, and contracting to propel themselves forward.

The group, nearly two score by Regis’s count, moved steadily up the rock path toward Obould, who had climbed to the top to directly intercept them. Just a dozen paces before him the leading trio motioned for their shock troops to hold and came forward as a group, again with the same one, a most striking and alluring creature with stunning too-red hair, too-red eyes, and too-red lips, taking the point.

“You are Obould, I am sure,” the erinyes purred, striding forward to stand right before the imposing orc, and though he was more than half a foot taller than her and twice her weight, she didn’t seem diminished before him.

“Nyphithys, I assume,” Obould replied.

The she-devil smiled, showing teeth blindingly white and dangerously sharp.

“We’re honored to speak with King Obould Many-Arrows,” the devil said, her red eyes twinkling coyly. “Your reputation has spread across Faerûn. Your kingdom brings hope to all orcs.”

“And hope to the Arcane Brotherhood, it would seem,” Obould said, as Nyphithys’s gaze drifted over to the side, where Regis remained half-hidden by a large rock. The erinyes grinned again—and Regis felt his knees go weak—before finally, mercifully, looking back to the imposing orc king.

“We make no secret of our wishes to expand our influence,” she admitted. “Not to those with whom we wish to ally, at least. To others….” Her voice trailed off as she again looked Regis’s way.

“He is a useful infiltrator,” Obould remarked. “One whose loyalty is to whoever pays him the most gold. I have much gold.”

Nyphithys’s accepting nod seemed less than convinced.

“Your army is mighty, by all accounts,” said the devil. “Your healers capable. Where you fail is in the Art, which leaves you dangerously vulnerable to the mages that are so prevalent in Silverymoon.”

“And this is what the Arcane Brotherhood offers,” Obould reasoned.

“We can more than match Alustriel’s power.”

“And so with you behind me, the Kingdom of Many-Arrows will overrun the Silver Marches.”

Regis’s knees went weak again at Obould’s proclamation. The halfling’s thoughts screamed of double-cross, and with his friends so dangerously exposed—and with himself so obviously doomed!

“It would be a beautiful coupling,” the erinyes said, and ran her delicate hand across Obould’s massive chest.

“A coupling is a temporary arrangement.”

“A marriage, then,” said Nyphithys.

“Or an enslavement.”

The erinyes stepped back and looked at him curiously.

“I would provide you the fodder to absorb the spears and spells of your enemies,” Obould explained. “My orcs would become to you as those barbezu.”

“You misunderstand.”

“Do I, Nyphithys?” Obould said, and it was his turn to offer a toothy grin.

“The brotherhood seeks to enhance trade and cooperation.”

“Then why do you approach me under the cloak of secrecy? All the kingdoms of the Silver Marches value trade.”

“Surely you don’t consider yourself kin and kind with the dwarves of Mithral Hall, or with Alustriel and her delicate creatures. You are a god among orcs. Gruumsh adores you—I know this, as I have spoken with him.”

Regis, who was growing confident again at Obould’s strong rebuke, winced as surely as did Obould himself when Nyphithys made that particular reference.

“Gruumsh has guided the vision that is Many-Arrows,” Obould replied after a moment of collecting himself. “I know his will.”

Nyphithys beamed. “My master will be pleased. We will send…”

Obould’s mocking laughter stopped her, and she looked at him with both curiosity and skepticism.

“War brought us to this, our home,” Obould explained, “but peace sustains us.”

“Peace with dwarves?” the devil asked.

Obould stood firm and didn’t bother to reply.

“My master will not be pleased.”

“He will exact punishment upon me?”

“Be careful what you wish for, king of orcs,” the devil warned. “Your puny kingdom is no match for the magic of the Arcane Brotherhood.”

“Who ally with devils and will send forth a horde of barbezu to entangle my armies while their overwizards rain death upon us?” Obould asked, and it was Nyphithys’s turn to stand firm.

“While my own allies support my ranks with elven arrows, dwarven war machines, and Lady Alustriel’s own knights and wizards,” the orc said and drew out his greatsword, willing its massive blade to erupt with fire as it came free of its sheath.

To Nyphithys and her two erinyes companions, none of whom were smiling, he yelled, “Let us see how my orc fodder fares against your barbezu and flesh beasts!”

From all around, orcs leaped out of hiding. Brandishing swords and spears, axes and flails, they howled and rushed forward, and the devils, ever eager for battle, fanned out and met the charge.

“Fool orc,” Nyphithys said. She pulled out her own sword, a wicked, straight-edged blade, blood red in color, and took her strange rope from her belt as well, as did her sister erinyes devils. “Our promise to you was of greater power than you will ever know!”

To the sides of the principals, orcs and lesser devils crashed together in a sudden torrent of howls and shrieks.

Obould came forward with frightening speed, his sword driving for the hollow between Nyphithys’s breasts. He roared with victory, thinking the kill assured.

But Nyphithys was gone—just gone, magically disappeared, and so were her sisters.

“Fool orc,” she called down to him from above, and Obould whirled and looked up to see the three devils some twenty feet off the ground, their feathered wings beating easily, holding them aloft and steady against the wind.

A bearded devil rushed at the seemingly distracted orc king, but Obould swept around at the last moment, his flaming greatsword cutting a devastating arc, and the creature fell away…in pieces.

As he turned back to regard Nyphithys, though, a rope slapped down around him. A magical rope, he quickly discerned, as it began to entwine him of its own accord, wrapping with blinding speed and the strength of a giant constrictor snake around his torso and limbs. Before he even began sorting that out, a second rope hit him and began to enwrap him, as each of Nyphithys’s fellow erinyes, flanking their alluring leader, caught him in their extended magical grasp.

“Destroy them all!” Nyphithys called down to her horde. “They are only orcs!”

“Only orcs!” a bearded devil echoed, or tried to, for it came out “only or-glul,” as a spike blasted through the devil’s spine and lungs, exploding out its chest with a spray of blood and gore.

“Yeah, ye keep tellin’ yerself that,” said Thibbledorf Pwent, who had leaped down from a rocky abutment head first—helmet spike first—upon the unsuspecting creature. Pwent pulled himself to his feet, yanking the flailing, dying devil up over his head as he went. With a powerful jerk and twitch, he sent the creature flying away. “It’ll make ye feel better,” he said after it then he howled and charged at the next enemy he could find.

“Slow down, ye durned stoneheaded pile o’ road apples!” Bruenor, who was more gingerly making his way down the same abutment, called after Pwent, to no avail. “So much for formations,” the dwarf king grumbled to Drizzt, who rushed by with a fluid gait, leaping down ledge to ledge as easily as if he were running across flat tundra.

The drow hit the ground running. He darted off to the side and fell into a sidelong roll over a smooth boulder, landing solidly on his feet and with his scimitars already weaving a deadly pattern before him. Oozing lemures bubbled and popped under the slashes of those blades as Drizzt fell fully into his dance. He stopped, and whirled around just in time to double-parry the incoming glaive of a barbezu. Not wanting to fully engage the saw-toothed weapon, Drizzt instead slapped it with a series of shortened strikes, deflecting its thrust out wide.

His magical anklets enhancing his strides, the drow rushed in behind the glaive, Icingdeath and Twinkle, his trusted blades, making short work of the bearded devil.

“I got to get me a fast pony,” Bruenor grumbled.

“War pig,” one of the other dwarves coming down, another Gutbuster, corrected.

“Whatever’s about,” Bruenor agreed. “Anything to get me in the fight afore them two steal all the fun.”

As if on cue, Pwent roared, “Come on, me boys! There’s blood for spillin’!” and all the Gutbusters gave a great cheer and began raining down around Bruenor. They leaped from the stones and crashed down hard, caring not at all, and rolled off as one with all the frenzy of a tornado in an open market.

Bruenor sighed and looked at Torgar, the only other one left beside him at the base of the abutment, who couldn’t suppress a chuckle of his own.

“They do it because they love their king,” the Mirabarran dwarf remarked.

“They do it because they want to hit things,” Bruenor muttered. He glanced over his shoulder, back up the rocks, to Catti-brie, who was crouched low, using a stone to steady her aim.

She looked down at Bruenor and winked then nodded forward, leading the dwarf’s gaze to the three flying erinyes.

A dozen orc missiles reached up at Nyphithys and her sisters in the few moments Bruenor regarded them, but not one got close to penetrating the skin of the devils, who had enacted magical shields to prevent just such an attack.

Bruenor looked back to Catti-brie, who winked again and drew back far on her powerfully enchanted bow. She let fly a sizzling, lightning-like arrow that flashed brilliantly, cutting the air.

Nyphithys’s magical shield sparked in protest as the missile slashed in, and to the devil’s credit, the protection did deflect Catti-brie’s arrow—just enough to turn it from the side of Nyphithys’s chest to her wings. White feathers flew in a burst as the missile exploded through one wing then the other. The devil, her face a mask of surprise and agony, began to twist in a downward spiral.

“Good shot,” Torgar remarked.

“Wasting her time with that stupid wizard stuff….” Bruenor replied.

A cacophony of metallic clangs turned them both to the side, to see Drizzt backing furiously, skipping up to the top of rocks, leaping from one to another, always just ahead of one or another of a multitude of glaives slashing at him.

“Who’s wasting time?” the dark elf asked between desperate parries.

Bruenor and Torgar took the not-so-subtle hint, hoisted their weapons, and ran in support.

From on high, another arrow flashed, splitting the air just to the side of Drizzt and splitting the face of the bearded devil standing before him.

Bruenor’s old, notched axe took out the devil chasing the drow from the other side, and Torgar rushed past the drow, shield-blocking another glaive aside, and as he passed, Drizzt sprinted in behind him to slash out the surprised devil’s throat.

“We kill more than Pwent and his boys do, and I’m buying the ale for a year and a day,” Bruenor cried, charging in beside his companions.

“Ten o’ them, three of us,” Torgar reminded his king as another arrow from Taulmaril blasted a lemure that roiled toward them.

“Four of us,” Bruenor corrected with a wink back at Catti-brie, “and I’m thinking I’ll make that bet!”

Either unaware or uncaring for the fall of Nyphithys, the other erinyes tightened their pressure and focus on Obould. Their magical ropes had wrapped him tightly and the devils pulled with all their otherworldly might in opposing directions to wrench and tear the orc king and lift him from the ground.

But they weren’t the only ones possessed of otherworldly strength.

Obould let the ropes tighten around his waist, and locked his abdominal muscles to prevent them from doing any real damage. He dropped his greatsword to the ground, slapped his hands on the ropes running diagonally from him, and flipped them over and around once to secure his grasp. While almost any other creature would have tried to free itself from the grasp of two devils, Obould welcomed it. As soon as he was satisfied with his grip, his every muscle corded against the tightening rope and the pull of the erinyes, the orc began a series of sudden and brutal downward tugs.

Despite their powerful wings, despite their devilish power, the erinyes couldn’t resist the pull of the mighty orc, and each tug reeled them down. Working like a fisherman, Obould’s every muscle jerked in synch, and he let go of the ropes at precisely the right moment to grasp them higher up.

Around him the battle raged and Obould knew that he was vulnerable, but rage drove him on. Even as a barbezu approached him, he continued his work against the erinyes.

The barbezu howled, thinking it had found an opening, and leaped forward, but a series of small flashes of silver whipped past Obould’s side. The barbezu jerked and gyrated, trying to avoid or deflect the stream of daggers. Obould managed a glance back to see the halfling friend of Bruenor shrugging, almost apologetically, as he loosed the last of his missiles.

That barrage wasn’t about to stop a barbezu, of course, but it did deter the devil long enough. Another form, lithe and fast, rushed past Regis and Obould. Drizzt leaped high as he neared the surprised bearded devil, too high for the creature to lift its saw-toothed glaive to intercept. Drizzt managed to stamp down on the flat of its heavy blade as he descended, and he skipped right past the barbezu, launching a knee into its face for good measure as he soared by. That knee was more to slow his progress than to defeat the creature, though it caught the devil off guard. The real attack came from behind, Drizzt spinning around and putting his scimitars to deadly work before the devil could counter with any semblance of a defense.

The wounded barbezu, flailing crazily, looked around for support, but all around it, its comrades were crumbling. The orcs, the Gutbusters, and Bruenor’s small group simply overwhelmed them.

Obould saw it, too, and he gave another huge tug, pulling down the erinyes. Barely a dozen feet from the ground, the devils recognized their doom. As one, they unfastened their respective ropes in an attempt to soar away, but before they could even get free of their own entanglement, a barrage of spears, stones, knives, and axes whipped up at them. Then came a devastating missile at the devil fluttering to Obould’s left. A pair of dwarves, hands locked between them, made a platform from which jumped one Thibbledorf Pwent. He went up high enough to wrap the devil in a great hug, and the wild dwarf immediately went into his frenzied gyrations, his ridged armor biting deep and hard.

The erinyes screamed in protest, and Pwent punched a spiked gauntlet right through her face.

The two fell like a stone. Pwent expertly twisted to put the devil under him before they landed.

“You know not what you do, drow,” Nyphithys said as Drizzt, fresh from his kill of the barbezu, approached. The devil’s wings hung bloody and useless behind her, but she stood steadily, and seemed more angry than hurt. She held her sword in her left hand, her enchanted rope, coiled like a whip, in her right.

“I have battled and defeated a marilith and a balor,” Drizzt replied, though the erinyes laughed at him. “I do not tremble.”

“Even should you beat me, you will be making enemies more dangerous than you could ever imagine!” Nyphithys warned, and it was Drizzt’s turn to laugh.

“You don’t know my history,” he said dryly.

“The Arcane Brotherhood—”

Drizzt cut her short. “Would be a minor House in the city of Menzoberranzan, where all the families looked long to see the end of me. I do not tremble, Nyphithys of Stygia, who calls Luskan her home.”

The devil’s eyes flashed.

“Yes, we know your name,” Drizzt assured her. “And we know who sent you.”

“Arabeth,” Nyphithys mouthed with a hiss.

The name meant nothing to Drizzt, though if she had added Arabeth’s surname, Raurym, he would have made the connection to Marchion Elastul Raurym, who had indeed tipped them off.

“At least I will see the end of you before I am banished to the Nine Hells,” Nyphithys declared, and she raised her right arm, letting free several lengths of rope, and snapped it like a whip at Drizzt.

He moved before she ever came forward, turning sidelong to the snapping rope. He slashed at it with Icingdeath, his right-hand blade, turned fully to strike it higher up with a backhanded uppercut of Twinkle in his left hand, then came around again with Icingdeath, slashing harder.

And around he went again, and again, turning three circles that had the rope out wide, and shortened its length with every powerful slash.

As he came around the fourth time, he met Nyphithys’s thrusting sword with a slashing backhand parry.

The devil was ready for it, though, and she easily rolled her blade over the scimitar and thrust again for Drizzt’s belly as he continued his turn.

Drizzt was ready for her to be ready for it, though, and Icingdeath came up under the long sword, catching it with its curved back edge. The dark elf completed the upward movement, rotating his arm up and out, throwing Nyphithys’s blade far and high to his right.

Before the devil could extract her blade, Drizzt did a three-way movement of perfect coordination, bringing Twinkle snapping up and across to replace its companion blade in keeping the devil’s sword out of the way, stepping forward and snapping his right down and ahead, its edge coming in tight against the devil’s throat.

He had her helpless.

But she kept smiling.

And she was gone—just gone—vanished from his sight.

Drizzt whirled around and fell into a defensive roll, but relaxed somewhat when he spotted the devil, some thirty feet away on an island of rock a few feet up from his level.

“Fool drow,” she scolded. “Fools, all of you. My masters will melt your land to ash and molten stone!”

A movement to the side turned her, to see Obould stalking her way.

“And you are the biggest fool of all,” she roared at him. “We promised you power beyond anything you could ever imagine.”

The orc took three sudden and furious strides then leaped as only Obould could leap, a greater leap than any orc would even attempt, a leap that seemed more akin to magical flight.

Nyphithys didn’t anticipate it. Drizzt didn’t, either. And neither did Bruenor or Catti-brie, who was readying an arrow to try to finish off the devil. She quickly deduced that there was no need for it, when Obould cleared the remaining distance and went high enough to land beside Nyphithys. He delivered his answer by transferring all of his momentum into a swing of his powerful greatsword.

Drizzt winced, for he had seen that play before. He thought of Tarathiel, his fallen friend, and pictured the elf in Nyphithys’s place as she was shorn in half by the orc’s mighty, fiery blade.

The devil fell to the stone, in two pieces.

“By Moradin’s own mug,” said Thibbledorf Pwent, standing between Bruenor and Regis. “I’m knowin’ he’s an orc, but I’m likin’ this one.”

Bruenor smirked at his battlerager escort, but his gaze went right back to Obould, who seemed almost godlike standing up on that stone, his foe, vanquished, at his feet.

Realizing that he had to react, Bruenor stalked the orc’s way. “She’d have made a fine prisoner,” he reminded Obould.

“She makes a better trophy,” the orc king insisted, and he and Bruenor locked their typically angry stares, the two always seeming on the verge of battle.

“Don’t ye forget that we came to help ye,” said Bruenor.

“Don’t you forget that I let you,” Obould countered, and they continued to stare.

Over to the side, Drizzt found his way to Catti-brie. “Been four years,” the woman lamented, watching the two rival kings and their unending growling at each other. “I wonder if I will live long enough to see them change.”

“They’re staring, not fighting,” Drizzt replied. “You already have.”

CHAPTER 3 TO DARE TO DREAM

A few years earlier, Sea Sprite would have just sent Quelch’s Folly to the ocean floor and sailed on her way in search of more pirates. AndSea Sprite would have found other pirates to destroy before she needed to sail back into port. Sea Sprite could catch and destroy and hunt again with near impunity. She was faster, she was stronger, and she was possessed of tremendous advantages over those she hunted in terms of information.

A catch, though, was becoming increasingly rare, though pirates were plentiful.

A troubled Deudermont paced the deck of his beloved pirate hunter, occasionally glancing back at the damaged ship he had put in tow. He needed the assurance. Like an aging gladiator, Deudermont understood that time was fast passing him by, that his enemies had caught up to his tactics. The ship in tow alleviated those fears somewhat, of course, like a swordsman’s win in the arena. And it would bring a fine payoff in Waterdeep, he knew.

“For months now I have wondered….” Deudermont remarked to Robillard when he walked near the wizard, seated on his customary throne behind the mainmast, a dozen feet up from the deck. “Now I know.”

“Know what, my captain?” Robillard asked with obviously feigned interest.

“Why we don’t find them.”

“We found one.”

“Why we don’t more readily find them,” the captain retorted to his wizard’s unending dry humor.

“Pray tell.” As he spoke, Robillard apparently caught on to the intensity of Deudermont’s gaze, and he didn’t look away.

“I heard your conversation with Arabeth Raurym,” Deudermont said.

Robillard replaced his shock with an amused grin. “Indeed. She is an interesting little creature.”

“A pirate who escaped our grasp,” Deudermont remarked.

“You would have had me put her in chains?” the wizard asked. “You are aware of her lineage, I presume.”

Deudermont didn’t blink.

“And her power,” Robillard added. “She is an overwizard of the Hosttower of the Arcane. Had I tried to detain her, she would have blown the ship out from under our boarding party, yourself included.”

“Isn’t that exactly the circumstance for which you were hired?”

Robillard smirked and let the quip pass.

“I don’t like that she escaped,” Deudermont said. He paused and directed Robillard’s gaze to starboard.

The sun dipped below the ocean horizon, turning a distant line of clouds fiery orange, red, and pink. The sun was setting, but at least it was a beautiful sight. Deudermont couldn’t dismiss the symbolism of the sunset, given his feelings as he considered the relative inefficiency of Sea Sprite of late, those nagging suspicions that his tactics had been successfully countered by the many pirates running wild along the Sword Coast.

He stared at the sunset.

“The Arcane Brotherhood meddles where they should not,” he said quietly, as much to himself as to Robillard.

“You would expect differently?” came the wizard’s response.

Deudermont managed to tear his eyes from the natural spectacle to regard Robillard.

“They have always been meddlesome,” Robillard explained. “Some, at least. There are those—I counted myself among them—who simply wanted to be left alone to our studies and experiments. We viewed the Hosttower as a refuge for the brilliant. Sadly, others wish to use that brilliance for gain or for dominance.”

“This Arklem Greeth creature.”

“Creature? Yes, a fitting description.”

“You left the Hosttower before he arrived?” Deudermont asked.

“I was still among its members as he rose to prominence, sadly.”

“Do you count his rise among your reasons for leaving?”

Robillard considered that for a moment then shrugged. “I don’t believe Greeth alone was the catalyst for the changes in the tower, he was more a symptom. But perhaps the fatal blow to whatever honor remained at the Hosttower.”

“Now he supports the pirates.”

“Likely the least of his crimes. He is an indecent creature.”

Deudermont rubbed his tired eyes and looked back to the sunset.

Three days later, Sea Sprite and Quelch’s Folly—whose name had been purposely marred beyond recognition—put into Waterdeep Harbor. They were met by eager wharf hands and the harbormaster himself, who also served as auctioneer for the captured pirate ships Deudermont and a very few others brought in.

“Argus Retch’s ship,” he said to Deudermont when the captain walked down from Sea Sprite. “Tell me ye got him in yer hold, and me day’ll be brighter.”

Deudermont shook his head and looked past the harbormaster, to a young friend of his, Lord Brambleberry of the East Waterdeep nobility. The man moved swiftly, with a boyish spring still in his step. He had passed the age of twenty, but barely, and while Deudermont admired his youth and vigor, and indeed believed that he was looking at a kindred spirit—Brambleberry so reminded him of himself at that age—he sometimes found the young man too eager and anxious to make a name for himself. Such rushed ambition could lead to a premature visit to the Fugue Plane, Deudermont knew.

“Ye killed him, then, did ye?” the harbormaster asked.

“He was not aboard when we boarded,” Deudermont explained. “But we’ve a score of pirate prisoners for your gaolers.”

“Bah, but I’d trade the lot of them for Argus Retch’s ugly head,” the man said and spat. Deudermont nodded quickly and walked by him.

“I heard that your sails had been sighted, and was hoping that you would put in this day,” Lord Brambleberry said as the captain neared. He extended his hand, which Deudermont grasped in a firm shake.

“You wish to get in an early bid on Retch’s ship?” Deudermont asked.

“I may,” the young nobleman replied. He was taller than most men—as tall as Deudermont—with hair the color of wheat in a bright sun and eyes that darted to and fro with inquisitiveness and not wariness, as if there was too much of the world yet to be seen. He had thin and handsome features, again so much like Deudermont, and unblemished skin and clean fingernails bespeaking his noble birthright.

“May?” asked Deudermont. “I had thought you intended to construct a fleet of pirate hunters.”

“You know I do,” the young lord replied. “Or did. I fear that the pirates have learned to evade such tactics.” He glanced at Quelch’s Folly and added, “Usually.”

“A fleet of escort ships, then,” said Deudermont.

“A prudent adjustment, Captain,” Brambleberry replied, and led Deudermont away to his waiting coach.

They let the unpleasant talk of pirates abate during their ride across the fabulous city of Waterdeep. The city was bustling that fine day, and too noisy for them to speak and be heard without shouting.

A cobblestone drive led up to Brambleberry’s estate. The coach rolled under an awning and the attendants were fast to open the door and help the lord and his guest climb out. Inside the palatial dwelling, Brambleberry went first to the wine rack, a fine stock of elven vintages. Deudermont watched him reach to the lower rack and pull forth one bottle, then another, examining the label and brushing away the dust.

Brambleberry was retrieving the finest of his stock, Deudermont realized and smiled in appreciation, and also in recognizing that the Lord Brambleberry must have some important revelations waiting for him if he was reaching so deep into his liquid treasure trove.

They moved up to a comfortable sitting room, where a hearth blazed and fine treats had been set out on a small wooden table set between two plush chairs.

“I have wondered if we should turn to defensive measures, protecting the merchant ships, instead of our aggressive pirate hunts,” Brambleberry said almost as soon as Deudermont took his seat.

“It’s no duty I would wish.”

“There is nothing exciting about it—particularly not for Sea Sprite,” Brambleberry agreed. “Since any pirates spying such an escort would simply raise sail and flee long before any engagement. The price of fame,” he said, and lifted his glass in toast.

Deudermont tapped the glass and took a sip, and indeed the young lord had provided him with a good vintage.

“And what has been the result of your pondering?” Deudermont asked. “Are you and the other lords convinced of the wisdom of escorts? It does sound like a costly proposition, given the number of merchant ships sailing out of your harbor every day.”

“Prohibitive,” the lord agreed. “And surely unproductive. The pirates adjust, cleverly and with…assistance.”

“They have friends,” Deudermont agreed.

“Powerful friends,” said Lord Brambleberry.

Deudermont started the next toast, and after his sip asked, “Are we to dance around in circles, or are you to tell me what you know or what you suspect?”

Brambleberry’s eyes flashed with amusement and he grinned smugly. “Rumors—perhaps merely rumors,” he said. “It’s whispered that the pirates have found allies in the greater powers of Luskan.”

“The high captains, to a one, once shared their dishonorable profession, to some degree or another,” said Deudermont.

“Not them,” said the still elusive Brambleberry. “Though it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that one or another of the high captains had an interest, perhaps financial, with a pirate or two. Nay, my friend, I speak of a more intimate and powerful arrangement.”

“If not the high captains, then….”

“The Hosttower,” said Brambleberry.

Deudermont’s expression showed his increased interest.

“I know it’s surprising, Captain,” Brambleberry remarked, “but I have heard whispers, from reliable places, that the Hosttower is indeed involved in the increasing piracy of late—which would explain your more limited successes, and those of every other authority trying to track down and rid the waters of the scum.”

Deudermont rubbed his chin, trying to put it all in perspective.

“You don’t believe me?” Brambleberry asked.

“Quite the contrary,” the captain replied. “Your words only confirm similar information I have recently received.”

With a wide smile, Brambleberry reached again for his wineglass, but he paused as he lifted it, and stared at it intently.

“These were quite expensive,” he said.

“Their quality is obvious.”

“And the wine contained within them is many times more precious.” He looked up at Deudermont.

“What would you have me say?” the captain asked. “I’m grateful to share in such luxury as this.”

“That is my whole point,” Brambleberry said, and Deudermont’s face screwed up with confusion.

“Look around you,” the Waterdhavian nobleman bade him. “Wealth—unbelievable wealth. All mine by birthright. I know that you have been well-rewarded for your efforts these years, good Captain Deudermont, but if you were to collect all of your earnings combined, I doubt you could afford that single rack of wine from which I pulled our present drink.”

Deudermont set his glass down, not quite knowing how to respond, or how Brambleberry wanted him to respond. He easily suppressed his nagging, prideful anger and bade the man to continue.

“You sail out and bring down Argus Retch, through great effort and at great risk,” Brambleberry went on. “And you come here with his ship, which I might purchase at a whim, with a snap of my fingers, and at a cost to my fortune that wouldn’t be noticed by any but the most nitpicking of coin-counters.”

“We all have our places,” Deudermont replied, finally catching on to where the man was heading.

“Even if those places are not attained through effort or justice,” said Brambleberry. He gave a self-deprecating chuckle. “I feel that I’m living a good life and the life of a good man, Captain. I treat my servants well, and seek to serve the people.”

“You are a well-respected lord, and for good reason.”

“And you are a hero, in Luskan and in Waterdeep.”

“And a villain to many others,” the captain said with a grin.

“A villain to villains, perhaps, and to no others. I envy you. And I salute you and look up to you,” he added, and lifted his glass in toast, finally. “And I would trade places with you.”

“Tell your staff and I will tell my crew,” Deudermont said with a laugh.

“I jest with you not at all,” Brambleberry replied. “Would that it were so simple. But we know it’s not, and I know that to follow in your footsteps will be a journey of deeds, not of birthright. And not of purchases. I would have the people speak of me, one day, as they now speak of Captain Deudermont.”

To Deudermont’s surprise, Brambleberry threw his wineglass against the hearth, shattering it.

“I have earned none of this, other than by the good fortune of my birth. And so you see, Captain, I’m determined to put this good fortune to work. Yes, I will purchase Argus Retch’s ship from you, to make three in my fleet, and I will sail them, crewed by mercenaries, to Luskan—beside you if you’ll join me—and deal such a blow to those pirates sailing the Sword Coast as they have never before known. And when we’re done, I will turn my fleet loose to the seas, hunting as Sea Sprite hunts, until the scourge of piracy is removed from the waters.”

Deudermont let the proclamation hang in the air for a long while, trying to wind his thoughts along the many potential paths, most of them seeming quite disastrous.

“If you mean to wage war on the Hosttower, you will be facing a formidable foe—and a foe no doubt supported by the five high captains of Luskan,” he finally replied. “Do you mean to start a war between Waterdeep and the City of Sails?”

“No, of course not,” said Brambleberry. “We can be quieter than that.”

“A small force to unseat Arklem Greeth and his overwizards?” Deudermont asked.

“Not just any small force,” Brambleberry promised. “Waterdeep knows no shortage of individuals of considerable personal power.”

Deudermont sat there staring as the heartbeats slipped past.

“Consider the possibilities, Captain Deudermont,” Brambleberry begged.

“Are you not being too anxious to make your coveted mark, my young friend?”

“Or am I offering you the opportunity to truly finish that which you started so many years ago?” Brambleberry countered. “To deal a blow such as this would ensure that all of your efforts these years were far more than a temporary alleviation of misery for the merchants sailing the Sword Coast.”

Captain Deudermont sat back in his chair and lifted his glass before him to drink. He paused, though, seeing the flickering fire in the hearth twisting through the facets of the crystal.

He couldn’t deny the sense of challenge, and the hope of true accomplishment.

CHAPTER 4 FISHING FOR MEMORIES

I t was a prime example of the good that can come through cooperation,” Drizzt remarked, and his smirk told Regis that he was making the lofty statement more to irk Bruenor than to make any profound philosophical point.

“Bah, I had to choose between orcs and demons…”

“Devils,” the halfling corrected and Bruenor glared at him.

“Between orcs and devils,” the dwarf king conceded. “I picked the ones what smelled better.”

“You were bound to do so,” Regis dared say, and it was his turn to toss a clever wink Drizzt’s way.

“Bah, the Nine Hells I was!”

“Shall I retrieve the Treaty of Garumn’s Gorge that we might review the responsibilities of the signatories?” Drizzt asked.

“Yerself winks at him and I put me fist into yer eye, then I toss Rumblebelly down the hallway,” Bruenor warned.

“You cannot blame them for being surprised that King Bruenor would go to the aid of an orc,” came a voice from the door, and the three turned as one to watch Catti-brie enter the room.

“Don’t ye join them,” Bruenor warned.

Catti-brie bowed with respect. “Fear not,” she said. “I’ve come for my husband, that he can see me on my way.”

“Back to Silverymoon for more lessons with Alustriel?” Regis asked.

“Beyond that,” Drizzt answered for her as he walked across to take her arm. “Lady Alustriel has promised Catti-brie a journey that will span half the continent and several planes of existence.” He looked at his wife and smiled with obvious envy.

“And how long’s that to take?” Bruenor demanded. He had made it no secret to Catti-brie that her prolonged absences from Mithral Hall had created extra work for him, though in truth, the woman and everyone else who had heard the dwarf’s grumbling had understood it to be his way of admitting that he sorely missed Catti-brie without actually saying the words.

“She gets to escape another Mithral Hall winter,” Regis said. “Have you room for a short but stout companion?”

“Only if she turns you into a toad,” Drizzt answered and led Catti-brie away.

Later that same day, Regis walked outside of Mithral Hall to the banks of the River Surbrin. His remark about winter had reminded him that the unfriendly season was not so far away, and indeed, though the day was glorious, the wind swept down from the north, blustery and cold, and the leaves on the many trees across the river were beginning to show the colors of autumn.

Something in the air that day, the wind or the smell of the changing season, reminded Regis of his old home in Icewind Dale. He had more to call his own in Mithral Hall, and security—for where could be safer than inside the dwarven hall? — but the things he’d gained did little to alleviate the halfling’s sense of loss for what had been. He had known a good life in Icewind Dale. He’d spent his days fishing for knucklehead trout from the banks of Maer Dualdon. The lake had given him all he needed and more, with water and food—he knew a hundred good recipes for cooking the delicious fish. And few could carve their skulls more wonderfully than Regis. His trinkets, statues, and paperweights had earned him a fine reputation among the local merchants.

Best of all, of course, was the fact that his “work” consisted mostly of lying on the banks of the lake, a fishing line tied to his toe.

With that in mind, Regis spent a long time walking along the riverbank, north of the bridge, in search of the perfect spot. He finally settled on a small patch of grass, somewhat sheltered from the north wind by a rounded gray stone, but one not high enough to shade him at all. He took great care in getting his line out to just the right spot, a quieter pool around the edge of a stony jut in the dark water. He used a heavy weight, but even that wouldn’t hold if he put the line into the main flow of the river; the strong currents would wash it far downstream.

He waited a few moments, and confident that his location would hold steady, he removed a shoe, looped the line around his big toe, and dropped his pack to use as a pillow. He had barely settled down and closed his eyes when a noise from the north startled him.

He recognized the source before he even sat up to look beyond the rounded stone.

Orcs.

Several young ones had gathered at the water’s edge. They argued noisily—why were orcs always so boisterous? — about fishing lines and fishing nets and where to cast and how to cast.

Regis almost laughed aloud at himself for his bubbling annoyance, for he understood his anger even as he felt it. They were orcs, and so he was angry. They were orcs, and so he was impatient. They were orcs, and so his first reaction had to be negative.

Old feelings died hard.

Regis thought back to another time and another place, recalling when a group of boys and girls had begun a noisy splash fight not far from where he had cast his line in Maer Dualdon. Regis had scolded them that day, but only briefly.

As he thought of it, he couldn’t help grin, remembering how he had then spent a wonderful afternoon showing those youngsters how to fish, how to play a hooked knucklehead, and how to skin a catch. Indeed, that long-ago night, the group of youngsters had arrived at Regis’s front door, at his invitation, to see some of his carvings and to enjoy a meal of trout prepared only as Regis knew how.

Among so many uneventful days on the banks of Maer Dualdon, that one stood out in Regis’s memory.

He considered the noisy orc youngsters again, and laughed as he watched them try to throw a net—and wind up netting one young orc girl instead.

He almost got up, thinking to go and offer lessons as he had on that long ago day in Icewind Dale. But he stopped when he noticed the boundary marker between his spot and the orcs. Where the mountain spilled down to the Surbrin marked the end of Mithral Hall and the beginning of the Kingdom of Many-Arrows, and across that line, Regis could not go.

The orcs noticed him, then, just as he scowled. He lifted a hand to wave, and they did likewise, though more than a little tentatively.

Regis settled back behind the stone, not wanting to upset the group. One day, he thought, he might be able to go up there and show them how to throw a net or cast a line. One day soon, perhaps, given the relative peace of the past four years and the recent cooperative ambush that had destroyed a potential threat to the Silver Marches.

Or maybe he would one day wage war against those very orc youngsters, kill one with his mace or be taken in the gut by another’s spear. He could picture Drizzt dancing through that group then and there, his scimitars striking with brilliant precision, leaving the lot of them squirming and bleeding on the rocks.

A shudder coursed the halfling’s spine, and he shook away those dark thoughts.

They were building something there, Regis had to believe. Despite Bruenor’s stubbornness and Obould’s heritage, the uneasy truce had already become an accepted if still uneasy peace, and it was Regis’s greatest hope that every day that passed without incident made the prospect of another dwarf-orc war a bit more remote.

A tug on the line had him sitting up, and once he had the line in hand, he scrambled to his feet, working the line expertly. Understanding that he had an audience, he took his time landing the fish, a fine, foot-long ice perch.

When at last he landed it, he held it up to show the young orcs, who applauded and waved enthusiastically.

“One day I will teach you,” Regis said, though they were too far away—and upwind and with a noisy river bubbling by—and could not hear. “One day.”

Then he paused and listened to his own words and realized that he was musing about orcs. Orcs. He had killed orcs, and with hardly a care. A moment of uncomfortable regret seized the halfling, followed quickly by a sense of complete confusion. He suppressed all of that, but only momentarily, by going back to work on his line, putting it back out in the calmer waters of the pool.

Orcs.

Orcs!

Orcs?

“Bruenor wishes to speak with you?” Catti-brie asked Drizzt when he returned to their suite of rooms late one night, only to be met by Bruenor’s page with a quiet request. A tenday had passed since the fight with the devils and the situation had calmed considerably.

“He is trying to sort through the confusion of our recent adventure.”

“He wants you to go to Mirabar with Torgar Hammerstriker,” Catti-brie reasoned.

“It does seem ridiculous,” Drizzt replied, agreeing with Catti-brie’s incredulous tone. “In the best of times, and the most secure, Marchion Elastul would not grant me entrance.”

“A long way to hike to camp out on the cold ground,” Catti-brie quipped.

Drizzt moved up to her, grinning wickedly. “Not so unwelcome an event if I bring along the right bedroll,” he said, his hands sliding around the woman’s waist as he moved even closer.

Catti-brie laughed and responded to his kiss. “I would enjoy that.”

“But you cannot go,” Drizzt said, moving back. “You have a grand adventure before you, and one you would not wisely avoid.”

“If you ask me to go with you, I will.”

Drizzt stepped back, shaking his head. “A fine husband I would be to do so! I have heard hints of some of the wonders Alustriel has planned for you throughout the next few months, I could not deny you that for the sake of my own desires.”

“Ah, but don’t you understand how alluring it is to know that your desires for me overwhelm that absolute sense of right and wrong that is so deeply engrained into your heart and soul?”

Drizzt fell back at that and stared at Catti-brie, blinking repeatedly. He tried to respond several times, but nothing decipherable came forth.

Catti-brie let her laughter flow. “You are insufferable,” she said, and danced across the room from Drizzt. “You spend so much time wondering how you should feel that you rarely ever simply do feel.”

Knowing he was being mocked, Drizzt crossed his arms over his chest and turned his confused stare into a glare.

“I admire your judgment, all the while being frustrated by it,” Catti-brie said. “I remember when you went into Biggrin’s cave those many years ago, Wulfgar at your side. It was not a wise choice, but you followed your emotions instead of your reason. What has happened to that Drizzt Do’Urden?”

“He has grown older and wiser.”

“Wiser? Or more cautious?” she asked with a sly grin.

“Are they not one and the same?”

“In battle, perhaps,” Catti-brie replied. “And since that is the only arena in which you have ever been willing to take a chance….”

Drizzt blew a helpless sigh.

“A span of a few heartbeats can make for a greater memory than the sum of a mundane year,” Catti-brie continued.

Drizzt nodded his concession. “There are still risks to be had.” He started for the door, saying, “I will try to be brief, though I suspect your father will wish to talk this through over and over again.” He glanced back as he grabbed the handle and pulled the door open, shaking his head and smiling.

His expression changed when he considered his wife.

She had unfastened the top two buttons of her colorful shirt and stood looking at him with a sly and inviting expression. She gave a little grin and shrug, and chewed her bottom lip teasingly.

“It wouldn’t be a wise choice to keep the king waiting,” she said in a voice far too innocent.

Drizzt nodded, paused, and slammed and locked the door. “I’m his son by marriage now,” he explained, gliding across the room, his sword belt falling to the floor as he went. “The king will forgive me.”

“Not if he knew what you were doing to his daughter,” Catti-brie said as Drizzt wrapped her in a hug and tumbled down to the bed with her.

“If Marchion Elastul will not grant me entrance, I will walk past his gates and along my road,” Drizzt was saying when Catti-brie entered Bruenor’s chambers later on that night.

Regis was there as well, along with Torgar Hammerstriker and his Mirabarran companion, Shingles McRuff.

“He’s a stubborn one,” Shingles agreed with Drizzt after giving a nod to Catti-brie. “But ye’ve a longer road by far.”

“Oh?” Catti-brie asked.

“He’s for Icewind Dale,” Bruenor explained. “Him and Rumblebelly.”

Catti-brie stepped back at the surprising news and looked to Drizzt for an explanation.

“Me own decision,” Bruenor said. “We’re hearing that Wulfgar’s settled back there, so I’m thinking that Drizzt and Rumblebelly might be looking in on him.”

Catti-brie considered it for a few moments then nodded her agreement. She and Drizzt had discussed a journey to Icewind Dale to see their old friend. Word had come to Mithral Hall not long after the signing of the Treaty of Garumn’s Gorge that Wulfgar was well and back in Icewind Dale, and Catti-brie and Drizzt had immediately begun plotting how they might go to him.

But they had delayed, for Wulfgar’s sake. He didn’t need to see them together. He had left Mithral Hall to start anew, and it wouldn’t be fair for them to remind him of the life he could have had with Catti-brie.

“I will be back in Mithral Hall before your return,” Drizzt promised her.

“Maybe,” Catti-brie replied, but with an accepting smile.

“Both of our roads are fraught with adventure,” Drizzt said.

“And neither of us would have it any other way,” Catti-brie agreed. “I expect that’s why we’re in love.”

“Ye’re knowing that other people are in the room, I’m guessin’,” Bruenor said rather gruffly, and the two looked at the dwarf to see him shaking his head and rolling his eyes.

CHAPTER 5 THE GREATER OF TWO EVILS

W ith a sigh, Bellany Tundash rolled over to the side, away from her lover. You ask too many questions, and always at the wrong moments,” she complained.

The small man, Morik by name, scrambled over to sit beside her on the edge of the bed. They looked like two cut of the same cloth, petite and dark-haired, only Bellany’s eyes shone with a mischievousness and luster that had been lacking from Morik’s dark orbs of late. “I take an interest in your life,” he explained. “I find the Hosttower of the Arcane…fascinating.”

“You’re looking for a way to rob it, you mean.”

Morik laughed, paused and considered the possibility, then shook his head at the absurdity of the thought and remembered why he was there. “I can undo any trap ever made,” he boasted. “Except those of trickster wizards. Those traps, I leave alone.”

“Well, every door has one,” Bellany teased, and she poked Morik hard in the chest. “Ones that would freeze you, ones that would melt you…”

“Ah, so if I just open two doors simultaneously….”

“Ones that would jolt you so forcefully you would bite out that feisty tongue!” Bellany was quick to add.

In response, Morik leaned over, nibbled her ear and gave her a little lick, drawing a soft moan.

“Then do tell me all the knowledge that I need to keep it,” he whispered.

Bellany laughed and pulled away. “This is not about you at all,” she replied. “This is about that smelly dwarf. Everything seems to be about him of late.”

Morik rested back on his elbows. “He is insistent,” he admitted.

“Then kill him.”

Morik’s laugh was one of incredulity.

“Then I will kill him—or get one of the overwizards to do it. Valindra…Yes, she hates ugly things and hates dwarves most of all. She will kill the little fellow.”

Morik’s expression grew deadly serious, so much so that Bellany didn’t chuckle at her own clever remark and instead quieted and looked back at him in all seriousness.

“The dwarf is not the problem,” Morik explained, “though I’ve heard he’s devastating in battle.”

“More boast than display, I wager,” said Bellany. “Has he even fought anyone since his arrival in Luskan?”

Again Morik stopped her with a serious frown. “I know who it is he serves,” he said. “And know that he wouldn’t serve them if his exploits and proficiency were anything less than his reputation. I warn you because I care for you. The dwarf and his masters are not to be taken lightly, not to be threatened, and not to be ignored.”

“It sounds as if I should indeed inform Valindra,” said Bellany.

“If you do, I will be dead in short order. And so will you.”

“And so will Valindra, I suppose, if you’re correct in your terror-filled assessment. Do you really believe the high captains, any or all together, are of more than a pittance of concern to the Hosttower?”

“This has nothing to do with the high captains,” Morik assured her.

“The dwarf has been seen with the son of Rethnor.”

Morik shook his head.

“Then who?” she demanded. “Who are these mysterious ringleaders who seek information about the Hosttower? And if they are a threat, then why should I answer any of your questions?”

“Enemies of some within the tower, I would guess,” Morik calmly answered. “Though not necessarily enemies of the tower, if you can see the distinction.”

“Enemies of mine, perhaps.”

“No,” Morik answered. “Be glad you have my ear, and I yours.” As he said it, Morik leaned in and bit Bellany on the ear softly. “I will warn you if anything is to come of this.”

“Enemies of my friends,” the woman said, pulling away forcefully, and for the first time, there seemed no playfulness in her tone.

“You have few friends in the Hosttower,” Morik reminded her. “That’s why you come down here so often.”

“Perhaps down here, I simply feel superior.”

“To me?” Morik asked with feigned pain. “Am I just an object of lust for you?”

“In your prayers.”

Morik nodded and smiled lewdly.

“But you still haven’t given me any reason to help you,” Bellany replied. “Other than to forestall your own impending death, I mean.”

“You wound me with every word.”

“It’s a talent. Now answer.”

“Because the Hosttower does not recruit from outside the Hosttower, other than acolytes,” said Morik. “Think about it. You have spent the better part of a decade in the Hosttower, and yet you are very low in the hierarchy.”

“Wizards tend to stay for many, many years. We’re a patient lot, else we would not be wizards.”

“True, and those who come in with some heritage of power behind their name—Dornegal of Baldur’s Gate, Raurym of Mirabar—tend to fill all the vacancies that arise higher up the chain of power. But were the Hosttower to suffer many losses all at once….”

Bellany smirked at him, but her sour expression couldn’t hide the sparkle of intrigue in her dark eyes.

“Besides, you’ll help me because I know the truth of Montague Gale, who didn’t die in an accident of alchemy.”

Bellany narrowed her eyes. “Perhaps I should have eliminated the only witness,” she said, but there was no real threat in her voice. She and Morik competed on many levels—in their lovemaking most of all—but try as either might to deny the truth of their relationship, they both knew they were more than lovers; they were in love.

“And in so doing eliminate the finest lover you’ve ever known?” Morik asked. “I think not.”

Bellany had no immediate answer, but after a pause, she said in all seriousness, “I don’t like that dwarf.”

“You would like his masters even less, I assure you.”

“Who are they?”

“I care too much about you to tell you. Just get what I need and get far out of the way when I tell you to.”

After another pause, Bellany nodded.

They called him “the general” because among all the mid-level battle-mages at the Hosttower, Dondom Maealik was considered the finest. His repertoire was dominated by evocations, of course, and he could throw lightning bolts and fireballs more intense than any but the overwizards and the Archmage Arcane Arklem Greeth himself. And Dondom sprinkled in just enough defensive spells—transmutations that could blink him away to safety, an abjuration to make his skin like stone, various protection auras and misdirection dweomers—so that on a battlefield, he always seemed one step ahead of any adversary. Some of his maneuvers were the stuff of growing legend at the Hosttower, like the time he executed a dimensional retreat at the last second to escape a mob of orc warriors, who were left swinging at empty air before Dondom engulfed them in a conflagration that melted them to a one.

This night, though, because of information passed through a pair of petite, dark-haired lovers, Dondom’s adversaries knew exactly what spells he had remaining in his daily repertoire, and had already put in place a plethora of countermeasures.

He came out of a tavern that dark night, after having tipped a few too many to end off a day of hard work at the Hosttower—a day when he had exhausted all but a few of his available spells.

The dwarf came out of an alleyway two doors down and fell into cadence with the walking wizard. He made no attempt to cover his heavy footsteps, and Dondom glanced back, though still he tried to hide the fact that he knew he was being followed. The wizard picked up his pace and the dwarf did likewise.

“Idiot,” Dondom muttered under his breath, for he knew that it was the same dwarf who’d been heckling him inside the tavern earlier that night. The unpleasant fellow had professed vengeance when he’d been escorted out, but Dondom was surprised—pleasantly so! — to learn that there was more than bluster to the ugly little fellow.

Dondom considered his remaining spells and nodded to himself. As he neared the next alleyway, he broke into a run, propelling himself around the corner where he pulled up fast and traced a line on the ground. He had only a few heartbeats, and his head buzzed from too much liquor, but Dondom knew the incantation well, for most of his research occurred on distant planes.

The line on the ground glowed in the darkness. Both ends of it rolled into the center, then climbed into the air, drawing a column taller than Dondom by well over a foot. That vertical slice of energy cut through the planar continuum, splitting to two and moving out from each other. In between loomed a darkness more profound than the already black shadows.

But the dwarf wouldn’t notice, Dondom knew.

The wizard settled his portal into place, and nodded as the glowing lines fast disappeared. Then Dondom ran down the alley, hoping he would hear the dwarf’s screams.

Another form came out of the shadows as soon as the wizard had departed. With equal deftness, the lithe creature created a second magical gate, right in front of Dondom’s, and dismissed the original as soon as the second was secure.

A dark hand waved on the street, motioning the dwarf to continue.

The dwarf had to take a deep breath. He trusted his boss—well, as much as anyone could trust a creature of that particular…persuasion, but traveling to the lower planes didn’t come with many assurances, no matter who was doing the assuring.

But he was a good soldier, and besides, what worse could happen to him than all that had already transpired? He picked up his pace and came around the alleyway entrance in full run, yelling so that the clever wizard would know he’d gone through the gate.

“Ruffian,” Dondom muttered as he strolled back to review his handiwork—and to dismiss the gate so that the obstinate and ugly dwarf—or one of the foul denizens of the Abyss—didn’t somehow figure out how to get back through. The last thing Dondom wanted was to feel the wrath of Arklem Greeth for loosing demons onto the streets of Luskan. Or it was the next to the last thing he wanted, Dondom realized as he walked around and waved his hand to dispel his magic.

The gate didn’t close.

The dwarf walked calmly back out onto the street and said, “Hate those places.”

“H-how did you…” Dondom stuttered.

“Just went in to get me dog,” said the dwarf. “Every dwarf’s needin’ a dog, don’t ya know.” He shoved his thumb and index finger against his lips and blew a shrill whistle.

Dondom more forcefully willed his gate to close—but it wasn’t his gate. “You fool!” he cried at the dwarf. “What have you done?”

The dwarf pointed at his own chest. “Me?”

With a strange shriek, half roar of outrage, half squeal of fear, Dondom launched into spellcasting, determined to blow the vile creature into nothingness.

He stammered, though, as a second creature came forth from the blackness of the gate. It stepped out bent way over, for that was the only way it could fit through the man-sized portal, its horned head leading the way. Even in the dark of night, the bluish hue of its skin was apparent, and when it stood to full height, some twelve feet, Dondom nearly fainted.

“A—a glabrezu,” he whispered, his gaze locked on the demon’s lower arms—it sported two sets—that ended in large pincers.

“I just call him ‘Poochie,’” said the dwarf. “We play a game.”

With a howl, Dondom spun around and ran.

“Yeah, that’s it!” cried the dwarf. To the demon, he commanded, “Fetch.”

A fine sight greeted those revelers exiting the many taverns on Whiskey Row at that moment of the evening. Out of an alleyway came a wizard of the Hosttower, flailing his arms, screaming indecipherably. With his long and voluminous sleeves he looked rather like a frantic, wounded bird.

Behind him came the dwarf’s dog, a twelve-foot, bipedal, four-armed, blue-skinned demon, taking one stride for the wizard’s three and gaining ground easily.

“Teleport! Teleport!” Dondom shrieked. “Yes I must! Or blink…phase in and out…find a way.”

That last word came out in a long, rolling syllable, covering several octaves, as one of the demon’s pincers clamped around his waist and easily lifted him off the ground. He looked like a wounded bird that had gained a bit of altitude, except that he was moving backward, back into the alley.

And into the gate.

“I could’ve just smacked him in the skull,” the dwarf said to his master’s friend, a strange one who wasn’t really a wizard but could do so many wizardly things.

“You bore me,” came the reply he always got from that one.

“Haha!”

The gate blinked out, and the lithe, dark creature moved into the shadows—and probably blinked out, too. The dwarf walked along his merry way, the heads of his glassteel morningstars bouncing at the ends of their chains behind his shoulders.

He found himself smiling more often these days. There might not have been enough bloodletting for his tastes, but life was good.

“He wasn’t a bad sort,” Morik said to Kensidan. He tried to look the man in the eye as he spoke, but he always had trouble doing that with the Crow.

Morik held a deep-seated, nagging fear that Kensidan was possessed of some magical charming power, that his gaze would set even his most determined adversary whimpering at his feet. That skinny little man with soft arms and knobby knees that he always kept crossed, that shrinking runt who had done nothing noteworthy in his entire life, held such power over all those around him…and that was a group, Morik knew, that included several notorious killers. They all served the Crow. Morik didn’t understand it, and yet he, too, found himself thoroughly intimidated every time he stood in the room, before that chair, looking down at a knobby knee.

Kensidan was more than the son of Rethnor. He was the brains behind Rethnor’s captaincy. Too smart, too clever, too much the sava master. Imposing as he seemed when he sat, when he stood up and walked that awkward gait, his cloak collar up high, his black boots laced tightly halfway up his skinny shins, Kensidan appeared even more intimidating. It made no logical sense, but somehow that frailty played off as the exact opposite, an unfathomable and ultimately deadly strength.

Behind the chair, the dwarf stood quietly, picking at his teeth as if all was right in the world. Bellany didn’t like the dwarf, which was no surprise to Morik, who wondered if anyone had ever liked that particular dwarf.

“Dondom was a dangerous sort, by your own word,” the Crow answered in those quiet, even, too controlled tones that he had long-ago perfected—probably in the cradle, Morik mused. “Too loyal to Arklem Greeth and a dear friend to three of the tower’s four overwizards.”

“You feared that if Dondom allied with Arklem Greeth then his friends who might otherwise stay out of the way would intervene on behalf of the archmage arcane,” Morik reasoned, nodding then finally looking Kensidan in the eye.

To find a disapproving stare.

“You twist and turn into designs of which you have no knowledge, and no capacity to comprehend,” Kensidan said. “Do as you are bid, Morik the Rogue, and no more.”

“I’m not just some unthinking lackey.”

“Truly?”

Morik couldn’t match the stare and couldn’t hold the line of defiance, either. Even if he somehow summoned the courage to deny the terrible Crow and run free of him, there was the not-so-little matter of those other puppeteers….

“You have no one to blame for your discomfort but yourself,” Kensidan remarked, seeming quite amused by it all. “Was it not you who planted the seeds?”

Morik closed his eyes and cursed the day he’d ever met Wulfgar, son of Beornegar.

“And now your garden grows,” said Kensidan. “And if the fragrance is not to your liking…well, you cannot pull the flowers, for they have thorns. Thorns that make you sleep. Deadly thorns.”

Morik’s eyes darted to and fro as he scanned the room for an escape route. He didn’t like where the conversation was leading; he didn’t like the smile that had creased the face of the dangerous dwarf standing behind Kensidan.

“But you need not fear those thorns,” Kensidan said, startling the distracted rogue. “All you need to do is continue feeding them.”

“And they feast on information,” Morik managed to quip.

“Your lady Bellany is a fine chef,” Kensidan remarked. “She will enjoy her ascent when the garden is in full bloom.”

That put Morik a bit more at ease. He had been commanded to Kensidan’s court by one he dared not refuse, but the tasks he had been assigned the last few months had come with promises of great rewards. And it wasn’t so difficult a job, either. All he had to do was continue his love affair with Bellany, which was reward enough in itself.

“You need to protect her,” he blurted as his thoughts shifted to the woman. “Now, I mean.”

“She is not in jeopardy,” the Crow replied.

“You’ve used the information she passed to the detriment of several powerful wizards of the Hosttower.”

Kensidan considered that for a moment then smiled again, wickedly. “If you wish to describe being carried through a gate to the Abyss in the clutches of a glabrezu as ‘detrimental,’ so be it. I might have used a different word.”

“Without Bellany—” Morik started to say, but Kensidan finished for him.

“The end result would be a battle far more bloody and far more dangerous for everyone who lives in Luskan. Think not that you are instrumental to my designs, Morik the Rogue. You are a convenience, nothing more, and would do well to keep it that way.”

Morik started to reply several times, but found no proper retort, looking all the while, as he was, at the evilly grinning dwarf.

Kensidan waved him away and turned to an aide, striking up a conversation on an entirely different subject. He paused after only a few words, shot Morik a warning glare, and waved him away again.

Back out on the street, walking briskly and cursing under his breath, Morik the Rogue again damned the day he’d met the barbarian from Icewind Dale. All the while, though, he secretly hoped he would soon be blessing that day, for as terrified as he was of his masters, their promises of rewards were neither inconsequential nor hollow. Or so he hoped.

CHAPTER 6 EXPEDIENCE

B ruenor is still angry with him,” Regis said to Drizzt. Torgar and Shingles had moved out ahead of them to look for familiar trails, for the dwarves believed they were nearing their old home city of Mirabar.

“No.”

“He holds grudges for a long, long time.”

“And he loves his adopted children,” Drizzt reminded the halfling. “Both of them. True, he was angry when first he learned that Wulfgar had left, and at a time when the world seemed dark indeed.”

“We all were,” said Regis.

Drizzt nodded and didn’t disagree, though he knew the halfling was wrong. Wulfgar’s departure had saddened him, but hadn’t angered him, for he understood it all too well. Carrying the grief of a dead wife, one he had let down terribly by missing all her signs of misery, had bowed his shoulders. Following that, Wulfgar had to watch Catti-brie, the woman he had once dearly loved, wed his best friend. Circumstance had not been kind to Wulfgar, and had wounded him profoundly.

But not mortally, Drizzt knew, and he smiled despite the unpleasant memories. Wulfgar had come to accept the failures of his past and bore nothing but love for the other Companions of the Hall. But he had decided to look forward, to find his place, his wife, his family, among his ancient people.

So when Wulfgar departed for the east, Drizzt harbored no anger, and when word had arrived back in Mithral Hall that following autumn that Wulfgar was back in Icewind Dale, the news lifted Drizzt’s heart.

He couldn’t believe that four years had passed. It seemed like only a day, and yet, when he thought of Wulfgar, it seemed as though he hadn’t been beside his friend in a hundred years.

“I hope he is well,” Regis stated, and Drizzt nodded.

“I hope he is alive,” Regis added, and Drizzt patted his friend on the shoulder.

“Today,” Torgar Hammerstriker announced, coming up over a rocky rise. He pointed back behind him and to the left. “Two miles for a bird, four for a dwarf.” He paused and grinned. “Five for a fat halfling.”

“Who ate too much of last night’s rations,” Shingles McRuff added, moving up to join his old friend.

“Then let us be quick to the gates,” Drizzt remarked, stealing the mirth with his serious tone. “I wish to be long away before the fall of night if Marchion Elastul holds true to his former ways.”

The two dwarves exchanged concerned looks, their excitement at returning to their former home tempered by the grim reminder that they had left under less than ideal circumstances those years before. They, along with many of their kin, more than half the dwarves of Mirabar, had deserted Elastul and his city over a dispute concerning King Bruenor. Over the last three years, many more Mirabarran dwarves, Delzoundwarves, had come to Mithral Hall to join them, and not all of the hundreds formerly of Mirabar that called Bruenor their king had agreed with Torgar’s decision to trust the emissary and return.

More than one had warned that Elastul would throw Torgar and Shingles in chains.

“He won’t make ye walk away,” Torgar said with determination. “Elastul’s a stubborn one, but he’s no fool. He’s wanting his eastern trade route back. He never thinked that Silverymoon and Sundabar would side with Mithral Hall.”

“We shall see,” was all Drizzt would concede, and off they went at a swift pace.

They passed through the front gates of Mirabar soon after, hustled in by excited guards both dwarf and human. They were greeted by cheers—even Drizzt, who had been denied entrance just a few short years earlier when King Bruenor had returned to Mithral Hall. Before any of the companions could even digest the pleasant surprise the four found themselves before Elastul himself, a highly unusual circumstance.

“Torgar Hammerstriker, never did I expect to see you again,” the old marchion—and indeed, he seemed much, much older than when Torgar had left—said with a tone as warm as the dancing licks of faerie fire.

Torgar, ever mindful of his place, bowed low, as did Shingles. “We come to ye as emissaries of King Bruenor Battlehammer of Mithral Hall, both in appreciation of your warning to us and in reply to yer request for an audience.”

“Yes, and I hear that went quite well,” said Elastul. “With the emissary of the Arcane Brotherhood, I mean.”

“Devil feathers all over the field,” Torgar assured him.

“You were there?” asked Elastul, and Torgar nodded. “Holding up the pride of Mirabar, I hope.”

“Don’t ye go there,” the dwarf replied, and Regis sucked in his breath. “Was one day I’d get me to the Nine Hells and back, singing for Mirabar all the while. Me axe’s for Bruenor now and Mithral Hall, and ye’re knowin’ as much and knowin’ it’s not to change.”

For a brief moment, Elastul seemed as if he were about to shout at Torgar, but he suppressed his anger. “Mirabar is not the city you left, my old friend,” he said instead, and again Drizzt sensed that the sweetness of his tone was tearing the old marchion apart behind his facade. “We have grown, in understanding if not in size. Witness your dark-skinned friend, here, standing before my very throne.”

Torgar snickered. “If ye was any more generous, Moradin himself’d drop down and kiss ye.”

Elastul’s expression soured at the dwarf’s sarcasm, but he worked hard to bring himself back to a neutral posture.

“I’m serious in my offer, Torgar Hammerstriker,” he said. “Full amnesty for you and any of the others who went over to Mithral Hall. You may return to your previous status—indeed, I will grant you a commendation and promotion within the ranks of the Shield of Mirabar, because it was your courageous determination that forced me to look beyond my own walls and beyond the limitations of a view too parochial.”

Torgar bowed again. “Then thank me and me boys by accepting what is, and what’s going to be,” he said. “I come for Bruenor, me king and me friend. And all hopes o’ Mithral Hall are that we’re both for lettin’ past…unpleasantness, pass. The orcs’re tamed well enough and the route’s an easy one for yer own trade east and ours back west.”

Elastul slumped back in his throne and seemed quite deflated, again on the verge of screaming. He looked at Drizzt instead and said, “Welcome to Mirabar, Drizzt Do’Urden. It’s far past time that you enjoyed the splendors of my most remarkable city.”

Drizzt bowed and replied, “I have heard of them often, and am honored.”

“You have unfettered access, of course,” Elastul said. “All of you. And I will prepare a treaty for King Bruenor that you may take and deliver before the blows of the northern winds bury those easy routes under deep snows.”

He motioned for them to go and they were more than happy to oblige, with Torgar muttering to Drizzt as they walked out of the audience chamber’s door, “He’s needing the trade…badly.”

The city’s reaction to Torgar and Shingles proved to be as mixed as the structures of the half above-ground, half below-ground city. For every two smiling dwarves, the former Mirabarrans found the scowl of another obviously harboring feelings of betrayal, and few of the many humans in the upper sections even looked at Torgar, though their eyes surely weighed uncomfortably on the shoulders of a certain dark elf.

“It was all a ruse,” Regis remarked after one old woman spat on the winding road as Drizzt passed her by.

“Not all of it,” Drizzt answered, though Shingles was nodding and Torgar wore a disgusted look.

“They expected we would come, and practiced for it,” Regis argued. “They hustled us right in to see Elastul, not because he was so thrilled at our arrival, but because he wanted to greet us before we knew the extent of Mirabar’s grudge.”

“He let us in, and most o’ me kin’ll be glad for it,” Torgar said. “The pain’s raw. When me and me boys left, we cut open a wound long festerin’ in the town.”

“Uppity dwarves, huzzah,” Shingles deadpanned.

“The wound will heal,” said Drizzt. “In time. Elastul has placed a salve on it now by greeting us so warmly.” As he finished, he gave a slight bow and salute to a couple of elderly men who glared at him with open contempt. His disarming greeting brought a harrumph of disgust from the pair, and they turned away in a huff.

“The voice of experience,” Regis dryly observed.

“I’m no stranger to scorn,” Drizzt agreed. “Though my charm wins them over every time.”

“Or yer blades cut them low,” said Torgar.

Drizzt let it go with a chuckle. He knew already that it would be the last laugh the four would share for some time. The reception in Mirabar, Elastul’s promise of hospitality notwithstanding, would fast prove counterproductive to Bruenor’s designs.

Very soon after the group descended the great lift to the town’s lower reaches, where the dwarves proved no less scornful of Drizzt than had the humans above. The drow had seen enough.

“We’ve a long road and a short season remaining,” Drizzt said to Torgar and Shingles. “Your city is as wondrous as you’ve oft told me, but I fear that my presence here hinders your desire to bring good will from Mithral Hall.”

“Bah, but they’ll shut their mouths!” Torgar insisted, and he seemed to be winding himself into a froth. Drizzt put a hand on his shoulder.

“This is for King Bruenor, not for you and not for me,” the drow explained. “And my reason is not false. The trail to Icewind Dale fast closes, often before winter proper, and I would see my old and dear friend before the spring melt.”

“We’re leaving already?” Regis put in. “I’ve been promised a good meal.”

“And so ye’re to get one,” said Torgar, and he steered them toward the nearest tavern.

But Drizzt grabbed him by the arm and pulled him up short, and Torgar turned to see the drow shaking his head. “There’s likely to be a commotion that will do none of us any good.”

“Getting dark outside,” Torgar argued.

“It has been dark every night since we left Mithral Hall, as expected,” the drow replied with a disarming grin. “I don’t fear the night. Many call it the time of the drow, and I am, after all….”

“But I’m not, and I’m hungry,” Regis argued.

“Our packs are half full!”

“With dry bread and salted meat. Nothing juicy and tender and…”

“He’ll moan all the way to Icewind Dale,” Torgar warned.

“Long road,” Shingles added.

Drizzt knew he was defeated, so he followed the dwarves into the common room. It was as expected, with every eye turning on Drizzt the moment he walked through the door. The tavernkeeper gave a great sigh of resignation; word had gone out from Elastul that the drow must be served, Drizzt realized.

He didn’t argue, nor did he press the point, allowing Torgar and Shingles to go to the bar to get the food while he and Regis settled at the most remote table. The four spent the whole of their meal suffering the glares of a dozen other patrons. If it bothered Regis at all, he didn’t show it, for he never looked up from his plate, other than to scout out the next helping.

It was no leisurely meal, to be sure. The tavernkeeper and his serving lady showed great efficiency in producing the meal and cleaning the empty plates.

That suited Drizzt, and when the last of the bones and crumbs were removed and Regis pulled out his pipe and began tapping it on the table, the drow put his hand atop it, holding it still. He held still, too, the halfling’s gaze.

“It’s time to go,” he said.

“Mirabar won’t open her gates at this hour,” Torgar protested.

“I’m betting they will,” Drizzt replied, “to let a dark elf leave.”

Torgar was wise enough to refuse that bet, and as the gates of the city above swung open, Drizzt and Regis said farewell to their two dwarf companions and went out into the night.

“That bothers me more than it bothers you, doesn’t it?” Regis asked as the city receded into the darkness behind them.

“Only because it costs you a soft bed and good food.”

“No,” the halfling said, in all seriousness.

Drizzt shrugged as if it didn’t matter, and of course, to him it didn’t. He had found similar receptions in so many surface communities, particularly during his first years on the World Above, before his reputation had spread before him. The mood of Mirabar, though the folk harbored resentment against the dwarves and Mithral Hall as well, had been light compared to Drizzt’s early days—days when he dared not even approach a city’s gates without an expectation of mortal peril.

“I wonder if Ten-Towns is different now,” Regis remarked some time later, as they set their camp in a sheltered dell.

“Different?”

“Bigger, perhaps. More people.”

Drizzt shook his head, thinking that unlikely. “It’s a difficult journey through lands not easily tamed. We will find Luskan a larger place, no doubt, unless plague or war has visited it, but Icewind Dale is a land barely touched by the passage of time. It is now as it has been for centuries, with small communities surviving on the banks of the three lakes and various tribes of Wulfgar’s people following the caribou, as they have beyond memory.”

“Unless war or a plague has left them empty.”

Drizzt shook his head again. “If any or all of the ten towns of Icewind Dale were destroyed, they would be rebuilt in short order and the cycle of life and death there is returned to balance.”

“You sound certain.”

That brought a smile to the drow’s face. There was indeed something comforting about the perpetuity of a land like Icewind Dale, some solace and a sense of belonging in a place where traditions reached back through the generations, where the rhythms of nature ruled supreme, where the seasons were the only timepiece that really mattered.

“The world is grounded in places like Icewind Dale,” Drizzt said, as much to himself as to Regis. “And all the tumult of Luskan and Waterdeep, prey to the petty whims of transient, short-lived rulers, cannot take root there. Icewind Dale serves no ruler, unless it be Toril herself, and Toril is a patient mistress.” He looked at Regis and grinned to lighten the mood. “Perhaps a thousand years from now, a halfling fishing the banks of Maer Dualdon will happen upon a piece of ancient scrimshaw, and will see the mark of Regis upon it.”

“Keep talking, friend,” Regis replied, “and Bruenor and your wife will wonder, years hence, why we didn’t return.”

CHAPTER 7 FAITH IN THE BETTER ANGELS

W e go with the rising sun and the morning tide,” Lord Brambleberry said to the gathering in the great room of his estate, “to deal a blow to the pirates as never before!”

The guests, lords and ladies all, lifted their crystal goblets high in response, but only after a moment of whispering and shrugging, for Brambleberry’s invitation had mentioned nothing about any grand adventure. Those shrugs fast turned to nods as the news settled in, however, for rumors had been growing around “impatient Lord Brambleberry” for many months. He had made no secret of his desire to transform good fortune into great deed.

Up to that point, though, his blather had been considered the typical boasting of almost any young lord of Waterdeep, a game to impress the ladies, to create stature where before had been only finery. Many in the room carried reputations as worthy heroes, after all, though some of them had never set foot outside of Waterdeep, except traveling in luxury and surrounded by an army of private guards. Some other lords with actual battlefield credentials to their names had gained such notoriety over the bodies of hired warriors, only arriving on the scene of a victory after the fact for the heroic pose to be captured on a painter’s canvas.

There were real heroes in the room, to be sure. Morus Brokengulf the Younger, paladin of great renown and well-earned reputation, had just returned to Waterdeep to inherit his family’s vast holdings. He stood talking to Rhiist Majarra, considered the greatest bard of the city, perhaps of the entire Sword Coast, though he’d barely passed his twentieth year. Across the way from them, the ranger Aluar Zendos, “who could track a shadow at midnight,” and the famous Captain Rulathon tapped glasses of fine wine and commiserated of great adventures and heroic deeds. These men, usually the least boastful of the crowd, knew the difference between the posers and the doers, and often relished in such gossip, and up to that moment they had been evenly split on which camp the striking young Lord Brambleberry would ultimately inhabit.

It was hard not to take him seriously at that moment, however, for standing beside the young Brambleberry was Captain Deudermont of Sea Sprite, well known in Waterdeep and very highly considered among the nobility. If Brambleberry sailed with Deudermont, his adventure would be no ruse. Those true heroes in the room offered solemn nods of approval to each other, but quietly, for they didn’t want to spoil the excited and humorously inane conversations erupting all across the hall, squealed in the corners under cover of the rousing symphony or whispered on the dance floor.

Roaming the floor, Deudermont and Robillard took it all in; the wizard even cast an enchantment of clairaudience so that they could better spy on the amusing exchanges.

“He’s not satisfied with wealth and wine,” one lady of court whispered. She stood in the corner near a table full of tallglasses, which she not-so-gracefully imbibed one after another.

“He’ll add the word ‘hero’ to his title or they’ll put him in the cold ground for trying,” said her friend, with hair bound up in a woven mound that climbed more than a foot above her head.

“To get such fine skin dirty at the feet of an ogre….” another decried.

“Or bloody at the end of a pirate’s sword,” yet another lamented. “So much the pity.”

They all stopped chattering at once, all eyes going to Brambleberry, who swept across their field of view on the dance floor, gracefully twirling a pretty young thing. That brought a collective sigh from the four, and the first remarked, “One would expect the older and wiser lords to temper this one. So much a waste!”

“So much to lose.”

“The young fool.”

“If he is in need of physical adventure….” the last said, ending in a lewd smile, and the others burst out in ridiculous tittering.

The wizard waved his hand to dismiss the clairaudience dweomer, having heard more than enough.

“Their attitude makes it difficult to take the young lord’s desires seriously,” Robillard remarked to Deudermont.

“Or easier to believe that our young friend needs more than this emptiness to sustain him,” the captain answered. “Obviously he needs no further laurels to be invited to any of their beds. Which is a blessing, I say, for there is nothing more dangerous than a young man trying to hero himself into a lady’s arms.”

Robillard narrowed his eyes as he turned to his companion. “Spoken like a young man I knew in Luskan, so many years ago, when the world was calmer and my life held a steady cadence.”

“Steady and boring,” Deudermont replied without hesitation. “You remember that young man well because of the joy he has brought to you, stubborn though you have been through it all.”

“Or perhaps I just felt pity for the fool.”

With a helpless chuckle, Deudermont lifted his tallglass, and Robillard tapped it with his own.

Without fanfare, the four ships glided out of Waterdeep Harbor to the wider waters of the Sea of Swords the next morning. No trumpets heralded their departure, no crowds gathered on the docks to bid them farewell, and even the Chaplain Blessing for favorable winds and gentle swells was kept quiet, held aboard each ship instead of the common prayer on the wharves with sailors and dockhands alike.

From the deck of Sea Sprite, Robillard and Deudermont regarded the skill and discipline, or lack thereof, of Brambleberry’s three ships as they tried to form a tight squadron. At one point, all three nearly collided. The quick recovery left Brambleberry’s flagship, formerly Quelch’s Folly,and since lettered with the additional “—Justice,” with tangled rigging. Brambleberry had wanted to rename the ship entirely, but Deudermont had dissuaded him. Such practices were considered bad luck, after all.

“Keep us well back,” Deudermont ordered his helmsman. “And to port. Always in the deeper water.”

“Afraid that we might have to dodge their wreckage?” Robillard quipped.

“They are warriors, not seamen,” Deudermont replied.

“If they fight as well as they sail, they’ll be corpses,” Robillard said and looked out to sea, leaning on the rail. He added, “Probably will be anyway,” under his breath, but loudly enough so that Deudermont heard.

“This adventure troubles you,” said Deudermont. “More than usual, I mean. Do you fear Arklem Greeth and your former associates so much?”

Robillard shrugged and let the question hang in the air for a few heartbeats before replying, “Perhaps I fear the absence of Arklem Greeth.”

“How so? We know now what we have suspected for some time. Surely the people of the Sword Coast will be better off without such treachery.”

“Things are not always as simple as they seem.”

“I ask again, how so?”

Robillard merely shrugged.

“Or is it that you hold some affinity for your former peer?”

Robillard turned to look at the captain and said, “He is a beast…a lich, an abomination.”

“But you fear his power.”

“He is not a foe to be taken lightly, nor are his minions,” the wizard replied. “But I’m assured that our young Lord Brambleberry there has assembled a capable and potent force, and, well, you have me beside you, after all.”

“Then what? What do you mean when you say that you fear the absence of Greeth? What do you know, my friend?”

“I know that Arklem Greeth is the absolute ruler of Luskan. He has established his boundaries.”

“Yes, and extended them to pirates running wild along the Sword Coast.”

“Not so wild,” said Robillard. “And need I remind you that the five high captains who appear to rule Luskan once skirted similar boundaries?”

“Shall we explain to the next shipwrecked and miserable victims we happen across, good and decent folk who just watched family and friends murdered, that the pirates who scuttled them were operating within acceptable boundaries?” asked Deudermont. “Are we to tolerate such injustice and malevolence out of some fear of an unknown future?”

“Things are not always as simple as they seem,” Robillard said again. “The Hosttower of the Arcane, the Arcane Brotherhood itself, might not be the most just and deserving rulers of Luskan, but we have seen the result of their rule: Peace in the city, if not in the seas beyond. Are you so confident that without them, Luskan can steer better course?”

“Yes,” Deudermont declared. “Yes, indeed.”

“I would expect such surety from Brambleberry.”

“I have lived my life trying to do right,” said Deudermont. “And it’s not for fear of any god or goddess, nor of the law and its enforcers. I follow that course because I believe that doing good will bring about good results.”

“The wide world is not so easily controlled.”

“Indeed, but do you not agree that the better angels of man will win out? The world moves forward to better times, times of peace and justice. It’s the nature of humanity.”

“But it’s not a straight road.”

“I grant you that,” said Deudermont. “And the twists and turns, the steps backward to strife, are ever facilitated by creatures like Arklem Greeth, by those who hold power but should not. They drive us to darkness when men do nothing, when bravery and honor is in short supply. They are a suffocating pall on the land, and only when brave men lift that pall can the better angels of men stride forward.”

“It’s a good theory, a goodly philosophy,” said Robillard.

“Brave men must act of their heart!” Deudermont declared.

“And of their reason,” Robillard warned. “Strides on ice are wisely tempered.”

“The bold man reaches the mountaintop!”

Robillard thought, but didn’t say, or falls to his death.

“You will fight beside me, beside Lord Brambleberry, against your former brother wizards?”

“Against those who don’t willingly come over to us, yes,” Robillard answered. “My oath of loyalty is to you, and to Sea Sprite. I have spent too many years saving you from your own foolishness to let you die so ingloriously now.”

Deudermont clapped his dearest friend on the shoulder and moved to the rail beside him, leading Robillard’s gaze back out to the open sea. “I do fear that you may be right,” he conceded. “When we defeat Arklem Greeth and end the pirate scourge, the unintended consequences might include the retirement of Sea Sprite. We’ll have nothing left to hunt, after all.”

“You know the world better than that. There were pirates before Arklem Greeth, there are pirates in the time of Greeth, and there will be pirates when his name is lost to the ashes of history. Better angels, you say, and on the whole, I believe—or at least I pray—that you are correct. But it’s never the whole that troubles us, is it? It’s but a tiny piece of humanity who sail the Sword Coast as pirates.”

“A tiny piece magnified by the powers of the Hosttower.”

“You may well be right,” said Robillard. “And you may well be wrong, and that, my friend, is my fear.”

Deudermont held fast to the rail and kept his gaze to the horizon, unblinking though the sun had broken through and reflected brilliantly off the rolling waters. It was a good man’s place to act for the cause of justice. It was a brave man’s place to battle those who would oppress and do harm to helpless innocents. It was a leader’s place to act in concert with his principles and trust enough in those principles to believe that they would lead him and those who followed him to a better place.

Those were the things Deudermont believed, and he recited them in his mind as he stared at the brilliant reflections on the waters he loved so dearly. He had lived his life, had shaped his own code of conduct, through his faith in the dictums of a good and brave leader, and they had served him well as he in turn had served so well the people of Luskan, Waterdeep, and Baldur’s Gate.

Robillard knew the Hosttower and the ways of the Arcane Brotherhood, and so Deudermont would indeed defer to him on the specifics of their present enemy.

But Captain Deudermont would not shy from the duty he saw before him, not with the opportunity of having eager Lord Brambleberry and his considerable resources sailing beside him.

He had to believe that he was right.

CHAPTER 8 SMOTHERED BY A SECURITY BLANKET

P erhaps I’m just getting older and harder to impress,” Regis said to Drizzt as they walked across a wide fields of grass. “She’s not so great a city, not near the beauty of Mithral Hall—and surely not Silverymoon—but I’m glad they let you in through the gates, at least. Folk are stubborn, but it gives me hope that they can learn.”

“I was no more impressed by Mirabar than you were,” Drizzt replied, tossing a sidelong glance at his halfling friend. “I had long heard of her wonders, but I agree they’re lacking beside Mithral Hall. Or maybe it’s just that I like the folk who live in Mithral Hall better.”

“It’s a warmer place,” Regis decided. “From the king on down. But still, you must be glad of your acceptance in Mirabar.”

Drizzt shrugged as though it didn’t matter, and of course, it didn’t. Not to him, anyway; he could not deny his hope that Marchion Elastul would truly make peace with Mithral Hall and his lost dwarves. That development could only bode well for the North, particularly with an orc kingdom settled on Mithral Hall’s northern border.

“I’m more glad that Bruenor found the courage to go to Obould’s aid for a cause of common good,” the drow remarked. “We’ve seen a great change in the world.”

“Or a temporary reprieve.”

Again Drizzt shrugged, but the gesture was accompanied by a look of helpless resignation. “Every day Obould holds the peace is a day of greater security than we could have expected. When his hordes rushed down from the mountains, I believed we would know nothing but war for years on end. When they surrounded Mithral Hall, I feared we would be driven from the place forever more. Even in the first months of stalemate, I, like everyone else, expected that it would surely descend into war and misery.”

“I still expect it.”

Drizzt’s smile showed that he didn’t necessarily disagree. “We stay vigilant for good reason. But every passing day makes that future just a bit less certain. And that’s a good thing.”

“Or is every passing day nothing more than another day Obould prepares to finish his conquest?” Regis asked.

Drizzt draped his arm over the halfling’s shoulders.

“Am I too cynical for fearing such?” Regis asked.

“If you are, then so am I, and so is Bruenor—and Alustriel, who has spies working all through the Kingdom of Many-Arrows. Our experience with the orcs is long and bitter, full of treachery and war. To think that all we’ve known to be true is not necessarily an absolute is unsettling and almost incomprehensible, and so to walk the road of acceptance and peace often takes more courage than the way of the warrior.”

“It always is more complicated than it seems, isn’t it?” Regis asked with a wry grin. “Like you, for example.”

“Or like a halfling friend of mine who fishes with one foot and flees with the other, fights with a mace in his right hand and pickpockets an unsuspecting fool with his left, and all the while manages to keep his belly full.”

“I have a reputation to uphold,” Regis answered, and handed Drizzt back the purse he’d just lifted from the drow’s belt.

“Very good,” Drizzt congratulated. “You almost had it off my belt before I felt your hand.” As he took the purse, he handed Regis back the unicorn-headed mace he’d deftly slid from the halfling’s belt as the rogue was lifting his purse.

Regis shrugged innocently. “If we steal one-for-one, I will end up with the more valuable items of magic.”

Drizzt looked across the halfling and out to the north, leading Regis’s gaze to a huge black panther moving their way. Drizzt had summoned Guenhwyvar from her Astral home that afternoon and let her go to run a perimeter around them. He hadn’t brought the panther forth much of late, not needing her in the halls of King Bruenor and not wanting to spark some tragic incident with any of the orcs in Obould’s kingdom, who might react to such a sight as Guenhwyvar with a volley of spears and arrows.

“It’s good to be on the road again,” Regis declared as Guenhwyvar loped up beside him, opposite Drizzt. He ruffled the fur on the back of the great cat’s neck and Guenhwyvar tilted her head and her eyes narrowed to contented slits of approval.

“And you are complicated, as I said,” Drizzt remarked, viewing this rarely seen side of his comfort-loving friend.

“I believe I was the one to say that,” Regis corrected. “You just applied it to me. And it’s not that I’m a complicated sort. It’s just that I ever keep my enemies confused.”

“And your friends.”

“I use you for practice,” said the halfling, and as he gave a rather vigorous rub of Guenhwyvar’s neck, the panther let out a low growl of approval that resonated across the dales and widened the eyes of every deer within range.

The fields of tall grass and wild flowers gave way to cultivated land as the sun neared the horizon before them. In the waning twilight, with farmhouses and barns dotting both sides, the path had become a road. The companions spotted a familiar hill in the distance, one sporting the zigzagging silhouette of a house magnificent and curious, with many towers tall and thin, and many more short and squat. Lights burned in every window.

“Ah, but what mysteries might the Harpells have in store for us this visit?” Drizzt asked.

“Mysteries for themselves as well, no doubt,” said Regis. “If they haven’t all killed each other by accident by now.”

As lighthearted as the quip was meant to be, it held an undeniable ring of truth for them both. They’d known the eccentric family of wizards for many years, and never had visited, or been visited by, any of the clan, particularly one Harkle Harpell, without witnessing some strange occurrence. But the Harpells were good friends of Mithral Hall. They had come to the call of Bruenor when the drow of Menzoberranzan assaulted his kingdom, and had fought valiantly among the dwarven ranks. Their magic lacked predictability, to be sure, but there was no shortage of power behind it.

“We should go straight to the Ivy Mansion,” Drizzt said as darkness closed in on the small town of Longsaddle. Even as he finished speaking, almost in response, it seemed, a shout of anger erupted in the stillness, followed by an answering bellow and a cry of pain. Without hesitation, the drow and halfling turned and headed that way, Guenhwyvar trotting beside them. Drizzt’s hands stayed near his sheathed scimitars, but he didn’t draw them.

Another shout, words too distant to be decipherable, followed by a cheer, followed by a cacophony of shouted protests…

Drizzt sprinted out ahead of Regis. He scrambled down a long embankment, picking a careful route over fallen branches and between the tightly-packed trees. He broke out of the copse and skidded to a stop, surprised.

“What is it?” Regis asked, stumbling down past him, and the halfling would have gone headlong into a small pond had Drizzt not caught him by the shoulder and held him back.

“I don’t remember this pond,” Drizzt said, and glanced back in the general direction of the Ivy Mansion to try to get his bearings. “I don’t believe it was here the last time I came through, though it was only a couple of years back.”

“A couple of years is an eternity where the Harpells are concerned,” Regis reminded him. “Had we come here and found a deep hole where the town had once stood, would you have been surprised? Truly?”

Drizzt was only half listening. He moved to a clear, flat space and noted the dark outline of a forested island and the light of a larger fire showing through breaks in the thick foliage.

Another ruckus of arguing sounded from the island.

Cheers came from the right bank, the protests from the left, both groups hidden from Drizzt’s view by thick foliage, with only a few campfire lights twinkling through the leaves.

“What?” the perplexed Regis asked, a simple question that accurately reflected Drizzt’s confusion as well. The halfling poked Drizzt’s arm and pointed back to the left, to the outline of a boat dock with several craft bobbing nearby.

“Be gone, Guenhwyvar,” Drizzt commanded his panther companion. “But be ready to return to me.”

The cat began to pace in a tight circle, moving faster and faster, and dissipating into a thick gray smoke as she returned to her extraplanar home. Drizzt replaced her small onyx likeness in his belt pouch and rushed to join Regis at the dock. The halfling already had a small rowboat unmoored and was readying the oars.

“A spell gone awry?” Regis asked as yet another yell of pain sounded from the island.

Drizzt didn’t answer, but for some reason, didn’t think that to be the case. He motioned Regis aside and took up the oars himself, pulling strongly.

Then they heard more than bickering and screams. Whimpers filled in the gaps between the arguing, along with feral snarls that prompted Regis to ask, “Wolves?”

It was not a large lake and Regis soon spotted a dock at the island. Drizzt worked to keep the boat in line with it. They glided in unnoticed and scrambled onto the wharf. A path wound up from it between trees, rocks, and thick brush, which rustled almost constantly from some small animals rushing to and fro. Drizzt caught sight of a fluffy white rabbit hopping away.

He dismissed the animal with a shake of his head and pressed onward, and once over a short rise, he and Regis finally saw the source of the commotion.

And neither understood a bit of it.

A man, stripped to the waist, stood in a cage constructed of vertical posts wrapped with horizontal ropes. Three men dressed in blue robes sat behind him and to the left, with three in red robes similarly seated, only behind and to the right. Directly before the caged man stood a beast, half man and half wolf, he seemed, with a canine snout but eyes distinctly human. He jumped about, appearing on the very edge of control, snarling, growling, and chomping his fangs right in front of the wide eyes of the terrified prisoner.

“Bidderdoo?” Drizzt asked.

“Has to be,” said Regis, and he stepped forward—or tried to, for Drizzt held him back.

“No guards,” the drow warned. “The area is likely magically warded.”

The werewolf roared in the poor prisoner’s face, and the man recoiled and pleaded pathetically.

“You did!” the werewolf growled.

“He had to!” shouted one of the blue-robed men.

“Murderer!” argued one wearing red robes.

Bidderdoo whirled and howled, ending the conversation abruptly. The Harpell werewolf spun back to the prisoner and began chanting and waving his arms.

The man cried out in alarm and protest.

“What…?” Regis asked, but Drizzt had no answer.

The prisoner’s babbling began to twist into indecipherable grunts and groans, pain interspersed with protest. His body began to shake and quiver, his bones crackling.

“Bidderdoo!” Drizzt yelled, and all eyes save those of the squirming, tortured man and the concentrating Harpell wizard, snapped the drow’s way.

“Dark elf!” yelled one of the blue-robed onlookers, and all of them fell back, one right off his seat to land unceremoniously on the ground.

“Drow! Drow!” they yelled.

Drizzt hardly heard them, his lavender eyes popping open wide as he watched the prisoner crumble before him, limbs transforming, fur sprouting.

“No stew will ever be the same,” Regis muttered helplessly, for no man remained in the wood and rope prison.

The rabbit, white and fluffy, yipped and yammered, as if trying to form words that would not come. Then it leaped away, easily passing through the wide ropes as it scurried for the safety of the underbrush.

Spell completed, the werewolf snarled and howled as it spun on the intruders. But the creature quickly calmed, and in a voice too cultured for such a hairy and wild mein said, “Drizzt Do’Urden! Well met!”

“I want to go home,” Regis mumbled at Drizzt’s side.

A warm fire burned in the hearth, and there was no denying the comfort of the overstuffed chair and divan set before it, but Drizzt didn’t recline or even sit, and felt little of the room’s warmth.

They had been ushered into the Ivy Mansion, accompanied by the almost continual flash of lightning bolts, searing the darkness with hot white light on either side of the pond below. Shouts of protest dissipated under the magical explosions, and the howl of a lone wolf—a lonewerewolf—silenced them even more completely.

The people of Longsaddle had come to understand the dire implications of that howl, apparently.

For some time, Drizzt and Regis paced or sat in the room, with only an occasional visit by a maid asking if they wanted more to eat or drink, to which Regis always eagerly nodded.

“That seemed very un-Harpell-like,” he mentioned to Drizzt between bites. “I knew Bidderdoo was a fierce one—he killed Uthegental of House Barrison Del’Armgo, after all—but that was simply tor—”

“Justice,” interrupted a voice from the door, and the pair turned to see Bidderdoo Harpell enter from the hallway. He no longer looked the werewolf, but rather like a man who had seen much of life—too much, perhaps. He stood in a lanky pose that made him look taller than his six-foot frame, and his hair, all gray, stood out wildly in every conceivable direction, giving the impression that it had not been combed or even finger-brushed in a long, long time. Strangely, though, he was meticulously clean-shaven.

Regis seemed to have no answer as he looked at Drizzt.

“Harsher justice than we would expect to find at the hands of the goodly Harpells,” Drizzt explained for him.

“The prisoner meant to start a war,” Bidderdoo explained. “I prevented it.”

Drizzt and Regis exchanged expressions full of doubt.

“Fanaticism requires extreme measures,” the Harpell werewolf—a curse of his own doing due to a badly botched polymorph experiment—explained.

“This is not the Longsaddle I have known,” said Drizzt.

“It changed quickly,” Bidderdoo was fast to agree.

“Longsaddle, or the Harpells?” Regis asked, crossing his arms over his chest and tapping his foot impatiently.

The answer, “Both,” came from the hallway, and even the outraged halfling couldn’t hold his dour posture and expression at the sound of the familiar voice. “One after the other, of course,” Harkle Harpell explained, bounding in through the door.

The lanky wizard was dressed all in robes, three shades of blue, ruffled and wrinkled, with sleeves so long they covered his hands. He wore a white beret topped by a blue button that matched the darkest hue of his robes, as did his dyed beard, which had grown—with magical assistance, no doubt—to outrageous proportions. One long braid ran down from Harkle’s chin to his belt, flanked by two short, thick scruffs of wiry hair hanging below each jowl. The hair on his head had gone gray, but his eyes held the same luster and eagerness the friends had seen flash so many times in years gone by—usually right before some Harkle-precipitated disaster had befallen them all.

“The town changed first,” Regis remarked.

“Of course!” said Harpell. “You don’t think we enjoy this, do you?” He bounded over to Drizzt and took the drow’s hand in a great shake—or started to before wrapping Drizzt in a powerful embrace that nearly lifted him off the ground.

“It’s grand to see you, my old pirate-hunting companion!” Harkle boomed.

“Bidderdoo seemed to enjoy his work,” Regis said, cutting Harkle’s turn toward him short.

“You come to pass judgment after so short a time?” Bidderdoo replied.

“I know what I saw,” said the halfling, not backing down an inch.

“What you saw without context, you mean,” said Bidderdoo.

Regis glared at him then turned his judgment upon Harkle.

“You understand, of course,” Harkle said to Drizzt, seeking support. But he found little in the drow’s rigid expression.

Harkle rolled his eyes and sighed then nearly fell over as one of his orbs kept on rolling, over and over, in its socket. After a few moments, the discombobulated wizard slapped himself hard on the side of the head, and the eye steadied into place.

“My orbs have never been the same since I went to look in on Bruenor,” he quipped with an exaggerated wink, referring, of course, to the time he’d accidentally teleported just his eyes to Mithral Hall to roll around on Bruenor’s audience chamber floor.

“Indeed,” said Regis, “and Bruenor bids you to never do so in such a manner ever again.”

Harkle looked at him curiously for a few moments then burst out laughing. Apparently thinking the tension gone, the wizard moved to wrap Regis in a tight hug.

The halfling stopped him with an upraised hand. “We make peace with orcs while the Harpells torture humans.”

“Justice, not torture,” Harkle corrected. “Torture? Hardly that!”

“I know what I saw,” said the halfling, “And I saw it with both of my eyes in my head and neither of them rolling around in circles.”

“There are a lot of rabbits on that small island,” Drizzt added.

“And do you know what you would have seen if we hadn’t dealt harshly with men like that priest Ganibo?”

“Priest?” both Drizzt and Regis said together.

“Aren’t they all and aren’t they always?” Bidderdoo answered with obvious disgust.

“More than our share of them, to be sure,” Harkle agreed. “We’re a tolerant bunch here in Longsaddle, as you know.”

“As we knew,” said Regis, and it was Bidderdoo who rolled his eyes, though having never botched a teleportation like his bumbling cousin, his eyes didn’t keep rolling.

“Our acceptance of…strangeness…” Harkle started.

“Embrace of strangeness, you mean,” said Drizzt.

“What?” the wizard asked, and looked curiously at Bidderdoo before catching on and giving a burst of laughter. “Indeed, yes!” he said. “We who so play in the extremes of Mystra’s Weave are not so fast to judge others. Which invited trouble to Longsaddle.”

“You are aware of the disposition of Malarites in general, yes?” Bidderdoo clarified.

“Malarites?” Drizzt asked.

“The worshipers of Malar?” asked the more surface-worldly Regis.

“A battle of gods?” Drizzt asked.

“Worse,” said Harkle. “A battle of followers.”

Drizzt and Regis looked at him curiously.

“Different sects of the same god,” Harkle explained. “Same god with different edicts, depending on which side you ask—and oh, but they’ll kill you if you disagree with their narrow interpretations of their beast god’s will! And how these Malarites always disagree, with each other and with everyone else. One group built a chapel on the eastern bank of Pavlel. The other on the western bank.”

“Pavlel? The lake?”

“We named it after him,” said Harkle.

“In memoriam, no doubt,” Regis said.

“Well, we don’t really know,” Harkle replied. “Since he and the mountain flew off together.”

“Of course,” said the halfling who knew he shouldn’t be surprised.

“The blue-robed and red-robed onlookers at the…punishment,” said Drizzt.

“Priests of Malar all,” Bidderdoo replied. “One side witnessing justice, the other accepting consequences. It’s important that we make a display of such punishment to deter future acts.”

“He burned down a house,” Harkle explained. “With a family inside.”

“And so he was punished,” Bidderdoo added.

“By being polymorphed into a rabbit?” asked Regis.

“At least they can’t hurt anyone in that state,” said Bidderdoo.

“Except for that one,” Harkle corrected. “The one with the big teeth, who could jump so high!”

“Ah, him,” Bidderdoo agreed. “That rabbit was smokepowder! It seemed as if he was possessed of the edge of a vorpal weapon, that one, giving nasty bites!” He turned to Drizzt. “Can I borrow your cat?”

“No,” the drow replied.

Regis growled with frustration. “You turned him into a rabbit!” he shouted, as if there could be no suitable reply.

Bidderdoo shook his head solemnly. “He remains happy and with bountiful leaves, brush, and flowers on the island.”

“Happy? Is he man or rabbit? Where is his mind?”

“Somewhere in between, at this point, I would expect,” Bidderdoo admitted.

“That’s ghastly!” Regis protested.

“Time’s passage will align his thoughts with his new body.”

“To live as a rabbit,” said Regis.

Bidderdoo and Harkle exchanged concerned, and guilty, glances.

“You killed him!” Regis shouted.

“He is very much alive!” Harkle protested.

“How can you say that?”

Drizzt put a hand on the halfling’s shoulder, and when he looked up to meet the drow’s gaze, Drizzt shook his head slowly, backing him down.

“Would that we could simply obliterate them all, that Longsaddle would know her days of old,” Bidderdoo mumbled and left the room.

“The task that has befallen us is not a pleasant one,” Harkle said. “But you don’t understand…”

Drizzt motioned for him to stop, needing no further elaboration, for indeed, the drow did understand the untenable situation that had descended upon his friends, the Harpells. A foul taste filled his throat and he wanted to scream in protest of it all, but he didn’t. Truly there was nothing to say, and nothing left for him to see in Longsaddle.

He informed Harkle, “We’re traveling down the road to Luskan and from there to Icewind Dale.”

“Ah, Luskan!” said Harkle. “I was to apprentice there once, long ago, but for some reason, they wouldn’t let me into the famed Hosttower. A pity.” He sighed profoundly and shook his head, but brightened immediately, as Harkle always did. “I can get you there in an instant,” he said, snapping his fingers in such dramatic fashion, waving his hand with such zest, that he knocked over a lamp.

Or would have, except that Drizzt, his speed enhanced by magical anklets, darted forward in a blur, caught the lamp, and righted it.

“We prefer to walk,” the drow said. “It’s not so far and the weather is clear and kind. It’s not the destination that matters most, after all, but the journey.”

“True, I suppose,” Harkle muttered, seeming disappointed for just a moment before again brightening. “But then, we could not have draggedSea Sprite across the miles to Carradoon, could we?”

“Fog of fate?” Regis asked Drizzt, recalling the tale of how Drizzt and Catti-brie wound up in a landlocked lake with Captain Deudermont and his oceangoing pirate hunter. Harkle Harpell had created a new enchantment, which, as expected, had gone terribly awry, transporting the ship and all aboard her to a landlocked lake in the Snowflake Mountains.

“I have a new one!” Harkle squealed. Regis blanched and fell back, and Drizzt waved his hands to shut down the wizard before he could fully launch into spellcasting.

“We will walk,” the drow said again. He looked down at Regis and added, “At once,” which brought a curious expression from the halfling.

They were out of Longsaddle soon after, hustling down the road to the west, and despite Drizzt’s determined stride, Regis kept pausing and glancing left and right, as if expecting the drow to turn.

“What is it?” Drizzt finally asked him.

“Are we really leaving?”

“That was our plan.”

“I thought you meant to come out of town then circle back in to better view the situation.”

Drizzt gave a helpless little chuckle. “To what end?”

“We could go to the island.”

“And rescue rabbits?” came the drow’s sarcastic reply. “Do not underestimate Harpell magic—their silliness belies the strength of their enchantments. For all the folly of Fog of Fate, not many wizards in the world could have so warped Mystra’s Weave to teleport an entire ship and crew. We go and collect the rabbits, but then what? Seek audience of Elminster, who perhaps alone might undue the dweomer?”

Regis stammered, logically cornered.

“And to what end?” Drizzt asked. “Should we, new to the scene, interject ourselves in the Longsaddle’s justice?” Regis started to argue, but Drizzt cut him short. “What might Bruenor do to one who burned a family inside a house?” the drow asked. “Do you think his justice would be less harsh than the polymorph? I think it might come at the end of a many-notched axe!”

“This is different,” Regis said, shaking his head in obvious frustration. Clearly the sight of a man violently transformed into a rabbit had unnerved the halfling profoundly. “You cannot…that’s not what the Harpells…Longsaddle shouldn’t…” Regis stammered, looking for a focus for his frustration.

“It’s not what I expected, and no, I’m not pleased by it.”

“But you will accept it?”

“It’s not my choice to make.”

“The people of Longsaddle call out to you,” Regis said.

The drow stopped walking and moved to a boulder resting on the side of the trail, where he sat down, gazing back the way they’d come.

“These situations are more complicated than they appear,” he said. “You grew up among the pashas of Calimport, with their personal armies and thuggish ways.”

“Of course, but that doesn’t mean I accept the same thing from the Harpells.”

Drizzt shook his head. “That’s not my point. In their respective neighborhoods, how were the pashas viewed?”

“As heroes,” Regis said.

“Why?”

Regis leaned back against a stone, a perplexed look on his face.

“In the lawless streets of Calimport, why were thugs like Pasha Pook seen as heroes?”

“Because without them, it would have been worse,” Regis said, and caught on.

“The Harpells have no answer to the fanaticism of the battling priests, and so they respond with a heavy hand.”

“You agree with that?”

“It’s not my place to agree or disagree,” said Drizzt. “The Harpells are the lid on a boiling cauldron. I don’t know if their choice of justice is the correct one, but I suspect from what we were told that without that lid, Longsaddle would know strife beyond anything you or I can imagine. Sects of opposing gods battling for supremacy can be terrifying indeed, but when the fight is between two interpretations of the same god, the misery can reach new proportions. I saw this intimately in my youth, my friend. You cannot imagine the fury of opposing matron mothers, each convinced that she, and not her enemy, spoke the will of Lolth!

“You would have me descend upon Longsaddle and use my influence, even my blades, to somehow alter the situation. But what would that, even if I could accomplish anything, which I strongly doubt, loose upon the common folk of Longsaddle?”

“Better to let Bidderdoo continue his brutality?” Regis asked.

“Better to let the people with a stake in the outcome determine their own fate,” Drizzt answered. “We’ve not the standing or the forces to better the situation in Longsaddle.”

“We don’t even know what that situation really is.”

Drizzt took a deep, steadying breath, and said, “I know enough to recognize that if the problems in Longsaddle are not as profound as I—as we—fear, then the Harpells will find their way out of it. And if it is as dangerous then there’s nothing we can do to help. However we intervene, one or even both sides will see us as meddling. Better that we go on our way. I think we are both unnerved by the unusual nature of the Harpells’ justice, but I have to say that there is a temperate manner to it.”

“Drizzt!”

“It is not a permanent punishment, for Bidderdoo can undo that which he has enacted,” the drow explained. “He is neutering the warring offenders by rendering them harmless—unless, of course, he is turning the other side into carrots.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I know,” Drizzt admitted with an upraised hand and a smirk. “But who are we to intervene, and haven’t the Harpells earned our trust?”

“You trust in what you saw?”

“I trust that if the situation alters and calls for a recanting of the justice delivered, the Harpells will undo the transformations and return the no-doubt shaken and hopefully repentant men to their respective places. Easier that than the dwarves of Mithral Hall sewing a head back on a criminal there.”

Regis sighed and seemed to let it all go. “Can we stop back here on our return to Mithral Hall?”

“Do you want to?”

“I don’t know,” Regis answered honestly, and he too looked back toward the distant town, profound disappointment on his normally cheery face. “It’s like Obould Many-Arrows,” Regis mumbled.

Drizzt looked at him curiously.

“Everything is like Obould lately,” the halfling went on. “Always the best of a bad choice.”

“I will be certain to relay your feelings to Bruenor.”

Regis stared blankly for just a moment then a grin widened and widened until it was followed by a belly-laugh, both heartfelt and sadly resigned.

“Come along,” Drizzt bade him. “Let us go and see if we can save the rest of the world.”

And so the two friends lightened their steps and headed down the western trail, oblivious to the prophecy embedded in Drizzt Do’Urden’s joke.

CHAPTER 9 THE CITY OF SAILS

P ymian Loodran burst out the tavern door, arms flailing with terror. He fell as he turned, tearing the skin on one knee, but he hardly slowed. Scrambling, rolling, and finally getting back to his feet, he sprinted down the way. Behind him, out of the tavern, came a pair of men dressed in the familiar robes of the Hosttower of the Arcane, white with broad red trim, talking as if nothing was amiss.

“You don’t believe he’s fool enough to enter his own house,” one said.

“You accepted the bet,” the other reminded.

“He will flee for the gate and the wider road beyond,” the first insisted, but even as he finished the other pointed down the road to a three-story building. The terrified man ascended an outside stairway on all fours, grabbing and pulling at the steps.

The first wizard, defeated, handed over the wand. “May I open the door, at least?” he asked.

“I would be an unappreciative victor to deny you at least some enjoyment,” his friend replied.

They made their way without rushing, even though the stairway moved back along an alleyway and away from the main road, so the hunted man had passed out of sight.

“He resides on the second floor?” the first wizard asked.

“Does it matter?” said the second, to which the first nodded and smiled.

As they reached the alleyway, they came in sight of the second story door. The first wizard pulled out a tiny metal rod and began to mutter the first words of a spell.

“High Captain Kurth’s man,” his companion interrupted. He motioned with his chin across to the other side of the street where a large-framed thug had exited a building and taken a particular interest in the two wizards.

“Very fortunate,” the first replied. “It’s always good to give a reminder to the high captains.” And he went right back to his spellcasting.

A few heartbeats later, a sizzling lightning bolt rent the air between the wizard and the door, blasting the flimsy wooden portal from its hinges and sending splinters flying into the flat.

The second wizard, already deep in chanting to activate the wand, took careful aim and sent a small globe of orange fire leaping up to the opening. It disappeared into the flat and a blood-curdling, delicious scream told both wizards that the fool knew it for what it was.

A fireball.

A moment later, one that no doubt seemed like an eternity to the fugitive in the flat—and his wife and children, too, judging from the chorus of screams coming forth from the building—the spell burst to life. Flames roared out the open door, and out every window and every unsealed crack in the wall as well. Though not a concussive blast, the magical fire did its work hungrily, biting at the dry wood of the old building, engulfing the entire second floor and roaring upward to quickly engulf the third.

As the wizards admired their handiwork, a young boy appeared on the third story balcony, his back and hair burning. Out of his mind with pain and terror, he leaped without hesitation, thumping down with bone-cracking force against the alleyway cobblestones.

He lay moaning, broken, and probably dying.

“A pity,” said the first wizard.

“It’s the fault of Pymian Loodran,” the second replied, referring to the fugitive who had had the audacity to steal the purse of a lower-ranking acolyte from the Hosttower. The young mage had indulged too liberally of potent drink, making him easy prey, and the rogue Loodran had apparently been unable to resist.

Normally, Loodran’s offense would have gotten him arrested and dragged to Prisoner’s Carnival, where he likely would have survived, though probably without all of his fingers. But Arklem Greeth had decided that it was time for a show of force in the streets. The peasants were becoming a bit more bold of late, and worse, the high captains seemed to be thinking of themselves as the true rulers of the city.

The two wizards turned back to regard Kurth’s scout, but he had already melted into the shadows, no doubt to run screaming to his master.

Arklem Greeth would be pleased.

“This work invigorates and wearies me at the same time,” the second said to the first, handing him back his wand. “I do love putting all of my practice into true action.” He glanced down the alley, where the boy lay unmoving, though still quietly groaning. “But…”

“Take heart, brother,” the other said, leading him away. “The greater purpose is served and Luskan is at peace.”

The fire burned through the night, engulfing three other structures before the area residents finally contained it. In the morning, they dug out eleven bodies, including that of Pymian Loodran, who had been so proud the day before when he had brought a chicken and fresh fruit home to his hungry family. A real chicken! A real meal, their first that was not just moldy bread and old vegetables in more than a year.

The first real meal his young daughter had ever known.

And the last.

“If I wanted to speak with Rethnor’s brat, I’d’ve come here looking for him!” said Duragoe, a ranking captain in the Ship of High Captain Baram. He finished his rant and moved as if to strike the Ship Rethnor soldier who had tried to divert him to Kensidan’s audience chamber, but held the slap when he noted the dreaded Crow himself entering the small antechamber with a look on his face that showed he’d heard every word.

“My father has passed the daily business onto my shoulders,” Kensidan said calmly. In the other room, out of sight of Duragoe, High Captain Suljack quietly snickered. “If you wish to speak with Ship Rethnor, your discussion is with me.”

“Me orders from High Captain Baram are to speak with Rethnor hisself. Ye’d deny a high captain a direct audience with another of his ilk, would ye?”

“But you are not a high captain.”

“I’m his appointed speaker.”

“As am I, to my father.”

That seemed to fluster the brutish Duragoe a bit, but he shook his head vigorously—so much so that Kensidan almost expected to see bugs flying out of his ears—and brought one of his huge hands up to rub his ruddy face. “And yerself’ll take me words to Rethnor, so he’s getting it second-hand…” he tried to argue.

“Third-hand, if your words are Baram’s words relayed to you.”

“Bah yerself,” Duragoe fumed. “I’m to say them exactly as Baram told me to say them!”

“Then say them.”

“But I’m not for liking that ye’re to then take them to yer father that we might get something done!”

“If anything is to be done due to your request, good Duragoe, the action will be at my command, not my father’s.”

“Are ye calling yerself a high captain, then?”

“I have done no such thing,” Kensidan was wise to reply. “I handle my father’s daily business, which includes speaking to the likes of you. If you wish to deliver High Captain Baram’s concerns, then please do so, and now. I have much else to do this day.”

Duragoe looked around and rubbed his grizzled and ruddy face again. “In there,” he demanded, pointing to the room behind the young Kensidan.

Kensidan held up a hand to keep the man at bay and walked back just inside the audience chamber’s door. “Be gone. We have private matters to discuss,” he called, ostensibly to the guards within, but also to give Suljack the time he needed to move to the next room, from which he could eavesdrop on the whole conversation.

He motioned for Duragoe to follow him into the audience chamber and took his seat on the unremarkable, but tallest, chair in the room.

“Ye smell the smoke?” Duragoe asked.

A thin smile creased Kensidan’s face, purposely tipping his hand that he was pleased to see that another of the high captains had taken note of the devastation the two Hosttower enforcers had rained upon a section of Luskan the previous night.

“Not a funny thing!” Duragoe growled.

“High Captain Baram told you to say that?” Kensidan asked.

Duragoe’s eyes widened and his nostrils flared as if he was on the verge of catastrophe. “My captain lost a valuable merchant in that blaze,” Duragoe insisted.

“And what would you ask Rethnor to do about that?”

“We’re looking to find out which high captain the crook who brought the fires of justice down was working for,” Duragoe explained. “Pymian Loodran’s his name.”

“I’m certain that I have never heard that name before,” said Kensidan.

“And yer father’s to say the same?” a skeptical Duragoe asked.

“Yes,” came the even response. “And why would you care? Pymian Loodran is dead, correct?”

“And how would ye be knowing that if ye don’t know the name?” the suspicious Duragoe asked.

“Because I was told that a pair of wizards burned down a house into which had fled a man who had angered the Hosttower of the Arcane,” came the reply. “I assume the target of their devastation didn’t escape, though I care not whether he did or not. Is it recompense you seek from the high captain who employed this Loodran fool, if indeed any high captain did so?”

“We’re looking to find out what happened.”

“That you can file a grievance at the Council of Five, and no doubt attach a weight of gold to repair your mercantile losses?”

“Only be fair….” Duragoe said.

“‘Fair’ would be for you to take up your grievance with the Hosttower of the Arcane and Arklem Greeth,” said Kensidan. The Crow smiled again as the tough Duragoe shrank at the mere mention of the mighty archmage arcane.

“The events of last night, the manner and extent of the punishment exacted, were decided by Arklem Greeth or his enforcers,” Kensidan reasoned. He sat back comfortably and crossed his thin legs at the knee, and even though Duragoe remained standing, he seemed diminished by the casual, dismissive posture of the acting high captain. “Whatever this fool—what did you name him? Loodran? — did to exact the ire of the Hosttower is another matter all together. Perhaps Arklem Greeth has a case to present against one of the high captains, should it be discovered that this fool indeed was in the employ of one, though I doubt that to be the case. Still, from the perspective of High Captain Baram, the perpetrator of his loss was none other than Arklem Greeth.”

“We don’t see it that way,” Duragoe said with amusing vigor—amusing only because it reinforced the man’s abject terror at the thought of bringing his bluster to the feet of the archmage arcane.

Kensidan shrugged. “You have no claim with Ship Rethnor,” he said. “I know not of this fool, Loodran, nor does my father.”

“Ye haven’t even asked him,” Duragoe said with a growl and an accusatory point of his thick finger.

Kensidan brought his hands up before his face, tapped his fingertips a couple of times, then folded the hands together, staring all the while at Duragoe, and without the slightest hint of a blink.

Duragoe shrank back even more, as if he had realized for the first time that he might be in enemy territory, and that he might be wise to take greater care before throwing forth his accusations. He glanced left and right nervously, sweat showing at his temples, and his breathing became noticeably faster.

“Go and tell High Captain Baram that he has no business with Ship Rethnor regarding this matter,” Kensidan explained. “We know nothing of it beyond the whispers filtering through the streets. That is my last word on the subject.”

Duragoe started to respond, but Kensidan cut him short with a sharp and loud, “Ever.”

The thug straightened and tried to regain a bit of his dignity. He looked around again, left and right, to see Ship Rethnor soldiers entering the room, having heard Kensidan’s declaration that their discussion was at its end.

“And pray do tell High Captain Baram that if he wishes to discuss any matters with Ship Rethnor in the future, then Kensidan will be pleased to host him,” Kensidan said.

Before the flustered Duragoe could respond, the Crow turned to a pair of guards and motioned them to escort the visitor away.

As soon as Duragoe had exited the room, High Captain Suljack came back in through a side door. “Good fortune to us that Arklem Greeth overplayed his hand, and that this man, Loodran, happened to intersect with one of Baram’s merchants,” he said. “Baram’s not an easy one to bring to our side. A favorable coincidence with favorable timing.”

“Only a fool would leave necessary good fortune to coincidence at a critical time,” Kensidan not-so-cryptically replied.

Behind him, the tough dwarf with the morningstars giggled, drawing a concerned look from High Captain Suljack, who had long ago realized that the son of Rethnor was many steps ahead of his every move.

“Sea Sprite will put in today at high tide,” Kensidan said, trying not to grin as Suljack tried hard not to look surprised, “along with Lord Brambleberry of Waterdeep and his fleet.”

“Int’resting times,” High Captain Suljack managed to sputter.

“We could have gone straight to Icewind Dale,” Regis remarked as he and Drizzt passed through the heavily guarded gate of Luskan. The halfling looked back over his shoulder as he spoke, eyeing the guards with contempt. Their greeting at the gate had not been warm, but condescending and full of suspicion regarding Regis’s dark-skinned companion.

Drizzt didn’t look back, and if he was bothered at all by the icy reception, he didn’t show it.

“I never would have believed that my friend Regis would choose a hard trail over a comfortable bed in a city full of indulgences,” the drow said.

“I’m weary from the comments, always the comments,” Regis said. “And the looks of derision. How can you ignore it? How many times do you have to prove your worth and value?”

“Why should the ignorance of a pair of guards in a city that is not my home concern me at all?” Drizzt replied. “Had they not allowed us through, as with Mirabar when we ventured through there with Bruenor on our way to Mithral Hall, then their actions affect me and my friends, and so yes, that is a concern. But we’re past the gate, after all. Their stares at my back don’t invade my body, and wouldn’t even if I were not wearing this fine mithral shirt.”

“But you have been nothing other than a friend and ally to Luskan!” Regis protested. “You sailed with Sea Sprite for years, to their benefit. And that was not so long ago.”

“I knew neither of the sentries.”

“But they had to know you—your reputation at least.”

“If they believed I was who I said I was.”

Regis shook his head in frustration.

“I don’t have to prove my worth and value to any but those I love,” Drizzt said to him, dropping his arm across the halfling’s shoulders. “And that I do by being who I am, with confidence that those I love appreciate the good and accept the bad. Does anything else really matter? Do the looks of guards I don’t know and who don’t know me truly affect the pleasures, the triumphs, and the failings of my life?”

“I just get angry…”

Drizzt pulled him close and laughed, appreciating the support. “If I ever get such a scornful look from you, Bruenor, or Catti-brie, then I will fret,” the drow said.

“Or from Wulfgar,” Regis remarked, and indeed that did put a bit of weight into Drizzt’s stride, for he didn’t truly know what to expect when he glanced upon his barbarian friend again.

“Come,” he said, veering down the first side street. “Let us enjoy the comforts of the Cutlass and prepare for the road beyond.”

“Drizzt Do’Urden! Huzzah!” a man on the opposite side of the road cheered, recognizing the drow who had served so well with the hero Captain Deudermont. Drizzt returned his wave and smile.

“And does that affect you more than the scornful looks from the guards?” Regis slyly asked.

Drizzt considered his answer for a few heartbeats, recognizing the trap of inconsistency and hypocrisy Regis had lain before him. If nothing really mattered other than the opinions of his friends, then such logic and insistence would need to include the positive receptions as well as the negative.

“Only because I allow it to,” the drow answered.

“Because of vanity?”

Drizzt shrugged and laughed. “Indeed.”

Soon after, they went into the Cutlass, a rather unremarkable tavern serving the docks of Luskan, particularly the returning or visiting merchant crews. So close to the harbor, it was not hard to understand the moniker given to Luskan: the City of Sails. Many tall ships were tied beside her long wharves, and many more sat at anchor out in the deeper waters—so many, it seemed to Drizzt, that the whole of the city could just up and sail away.

“I have never had the wanderlust for ocean voyages,” Regis said, and when Drizzt tore his eyes from the spectacle of the harbor, he found the halfling staring up at him knowingly.

Drizzt merely smiled in reply and led his friend into the tavern.

More than one mug lifted to toast the pair, particularly Drizzt, who had a long history there. Still, most of the many patrons of the bustling place gave no more than a casual glance at the unusual pair, for few in the Cutlass were not considered unusual elsewhere.

“Drizzt Do’Urden, in the black flesh,” the portly proprietor said as the drow came up to the bar. “What brings you back to Luskan after these long years?” He extended a hand, which Drizzt grasped and shook warmly.

“Well met, Arumn Gardpeck,” he replied. “Perhaps I have returned merely to see if you continued to ply your trade—I take comfort that some things ever remain the same.”

“What else would an old fool like me do?” Arumn replied. “Have you sailed in with Deudermont, then?”

“Deudermont? Is Sea Sprite in port?”

“Aye, and with a trio of ships of a Waterdhavian lord beside her,” Arumn replied.

“And spoiling for a fight,” said one of the patrons, a thin and weasely little man leaning heavily on the bar, as if needing its support.

“You remember Josi Puddles,” Arumn said as Drizzt turned to regard the speaker.

“Yes,” Drizzt politely replied, though he wasn’t so sure he did remember. To Josi, he added, “If Captain Deudermont is indeed seeking a battle, then why has he come ashore?”

“Not a fight with pirates this time,” Josi replied, despite Arumn shaking his head for the man to shut up, and nodding his chin in the direction of various patrons who seemed to be listening a bit too intently. “Deudermont is looking for a bigger prize!” Josi ended with a laugh, until he finally noticed Arumn’s scowl, whereupon he shrugged innocently.

“There’s talk of a fight coming in Luskan,” Arumn explained quietly, leaning in close so that only Drizzt and Regis—and Josi, who similarly leaned in—could hear. “Deudermont sailed in with an army, and there’s talk that he’s come here with purpose.”

“His army’s not one for fighting on the open seas,” Josi said more loudly, drawing a hush from Arumn.

The two quieted as Drizzt and Regis exchanged glances, neither knowing what to make of the news.

“We’re going north, straightaway,” Regis reminded Drizzt, and though the drow nodded, albeit half-heartedly, the halfling suddenly wasn’t so sure of his claim.

“Deudermont will be glad to see you,” Arumn said. “Thrilled, I’d bet.”

“And if he sees you, you will stay and fight beside him,” Regis said with obvious resignation. “I’d bet.”

Drizzt chuckled but held quiet.

He and Regis left the Cutlass early the next morning, supposedly for Icewind Dale, but on a route that took them down by Luskan’s docks, where Sea Sprite sat in her customary, honorary berth.

Drizzt met with Captain Deudermont and the brash young Lord Brambleberry before noon.

And the two companions from Mithral Hall didn’t leave the City of Sails that day.