Starlight Enclave

by R. A. Salvatore

  He saw then another flame coming his way, a smaller one, a pea of fire.

  When the massive fireball erupted a moment later, the creature croaked in victory, then snarled at Catti-brie. “We will be back for you,” it promised in that same ancient dialect, only now croaking and trilling like a frog around the edges of the words.

  Then, with a flash, it disappeared, and Catti-brie saw Artemis Entreri standing right behind where it had been, two hands on the hilt of his powerful sword as he thrust it forward to where the monster had been standing.

  To where the monster was still standing, invisibly, she realized as the beast came back into view, now with the gleaming red blade of Charon’s Claw sticking out of its chest.

  Entreri retracted the sword with a great tug that brought it back up and over his shoulder, and wasted no time in striking again, a roundhouse swing that cut down across the monster’s back with such power that it sent the beast flipping sidelong and to the ground, where it hissed and sputtered, and expired.

  Catti-brie fell over from her tugging as the magical hand blinked out of existence. She looked to Jarlaxle, fearing that the fireball had destroyed him, for the heat of the blast had reddened her face, she was sure, even though she was well out of the killing radius.

  “Jarlaxle!” she called, and Entreri followed suit, running forward, pausing only for a heartbeat to plunge his dagger deep into the monster’s frog eye.

  Chapter 11

  The Overlight

  “Look at it, Brie, always,” Drizzt said, his daughter sitting on his crooked forearm up against his chest and shoulder, her eyes, like his, lifted skyward.

  “Tahs,” she said, pointing up. “Tahs.”

  Drizzt smiled at the simple joy of hearing the toddler pronouncing her new words, often mangling the first sound or forgetting it altogether.

  “Stars, my little love,” he said. “A million, million stars. Always remember to find time to look at them. They will show you the truth.”

  He paused and grinned. “Do you agree, Kimmuriel?”

  The drow psionicist came out from behind a large bush and a pair of close-growing trees.

  “I was not hiding,” he said. “I simply did not wish to disturb you and your child in that moment.”

  “I don’t mind the company,” Drizzt assured him.

  “Tahs,” Brie said to the newcomer.

  Kimmuriel looked at her sidelong, then to Drizzt.

  “Stars,” he explained.

  “Ah, yes, the tiny sparkles of light.”

  “Not so tiny,” Drizzt replied. “Just far away.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Look up. How do you not know?”

  Kimmuriel’s smile gave him away.

  “Have you ever wondered about going there?” Drizzt asked. “I have been to the Astral Plane with Guenhwyvar. I had thought that I might walk among those lights.”

  “But it wasn’t that,” Kimmuriel stated more than asked.

  “No, it was quite strange, but it wasn’t that. And that disappointed me. But only for a moment, until I considered the vastness of it all and the sheer beauty and power of such a creation.”

  The two stood in silence for a long while, broken only by Brie’s reminder of “Tahs,” and the call of a wolf, to which the little girl replied, “Woofie.”

  “Do you always remember to find time to look at them, Drizzt, as you counseled your child?”

  “I try. I spent many a night upon Kelvin’s Cairn in Icewind Dale looking up at the night sky, even sometimes feeling as if I were floating up among the stars, and thinking, ‘Wouldn’t that be grand?’”

  Kimmuriel almost smiled and almost nodded, he noted.

  “But yes,” Drizzt went on. “I do not enjoy the dark nights when the clouds steal my pleasure of the starlit sky.”

  “Or the sunrise or the sunset, from what Jarlaxle has told me.”

  Drizzt nodded, his eyes remaining heavenward.

  “Why?”

  “Perspective,” the ranger replied. “A reminder of the vastness of the multiverse around me, and that I am only one small man, after all. No, I don’t find that diminishing,” he answered Kimmuriel’s predictable next question. “I find it properly humbling, and hopeful, for I would love to see them all, to walk everything that is in between and all that there is, and so I know that that journey will be everlasting.”

  “But you are a mortal man.”

  “That’s not my hope.”

  “But if it is?”

  Drizzt shrugged. “I don’t believe that.”

  “But neither do you believe in the gods.”

  “I never said that. I only said that it does not matter.” He looked down to stare the psionicist in the eye. “Because it does not. I believe there is more than this existence.”

  “And that is?”

  “Understanding.”

  “Of?”

  “Everything,” Drizzt replied. He looked to Brie, who had put her head down on his shoulder, her eyes already closing. “But no,” he said, “I am not impatient for that journey, because I have many roads left here that I wish to walk.”

  When he turned back to Kimmuriel, he jolted a bit, for the drow was looking up once again. It wasn’t the direction of Kimmuriel’s gaze that had caught him off guard, but the look of pure serenity upon the psionicist’s face.

  “It is beautiful,” Kimmuriel said softly.

  Heartbeats later, the psionicist finally turned away from the sky. “I had wished to speak with you, but it can wait. I will leave you to your night with your chil— with your daughter,” he said, and bowed, and quietly left.

  Drizzt rocked slowly, feeling Brie melting into his shoulder and watching the surprising Kimmuriel walk back the way he had come. His gaze lingered long after the psionicist had vanished into the night.

  It was a mystery to Drizzt, like the sky above him, how such a simple but unexpected conversation could bring him such peace.

  He knew that he would remember this night for a long time.

  He knew that Kimmuriel would as well.

  A magical hole appeared on the floor where Jarlaxle had been standing. “It’s quite deep,” he said. “I could use a hand, or a rope to help me out of here, if you please. Or a ladder . . . oh, wait.”

  Catti-brie and Entreri paused, hearing some scuffling from within that hole, and then, sure enough, the top of a wooden ladder appeared above one edge and Jarlaxle came walking up easily, patting at his sleeves, which were still smoking.

  “Potent blast,” he said. “Are you all well?”

  “All but Zaknafein,” Catti-brie replied. “My healing has helped, but his wounds are deep and stubborn.”

  “What was that thing?” Entreri asked.

  “Good question. And I’m afraid I know.” Jarlaxle walked over to the dead frog-like humanoid and bent low, inspecting. “Slaad,” he said, standing to face the others. “A green slaad, specifically.”

  Entreri and Catti-brie exchanged confused glances.

  “From another plane of existence, I believe, although who can tell, since the gods seem to jumble the multiverse at a whim?” said Jarlaxle. “But yes, this corpse is that of a slaad, and they are quite intelligent, quite formidable, and rarely alone.”

  “Then we should be moving,” Entreri said.

  Jarlaxle paused and at first seemed doubtful, but then nodded. “Where is the panther?”

  Catti-brie’s expression went grim. “If it is as I suspect, she’ll not be with us for several days to come.”

  “Do these slaad travel in packs? Or are there entire colonies of them?” Entreri asked.

  “Slaadi, when more than one, I believe. I know little about them,” Jarlaxle said, and that rare admission from the seasoned mercenary set both Entreri and Catti-brie back on their heels. “Only that there are several versions of them, all quite deadly, some with potent magic, all with brute force.” He looked to the green slaad as he spoke, they all did, and the size of its maw and claws a
nd the sheer muscle of the huge creature made his point all the more acutely.

  “Let’s get packed and get out of here,” Catti-brie offered.

  “He doesn’t look fit to travel,” Jarlaxle said, looking to Zak.

  “Then summon your hellsteeds.”

  “The magic is limited,” Entreri replied. “Much more than with Drizzt’s unicorn. How long did it take to get us here? Hours, you said.”

  “Several,” Jarlaxle confirmed. “The mounts did not move well upon the hillside, creating ice with every fiery step. We had to fly them more than once to get off that mountain, and use their levitational powers repeatedly, and that drains the magic even more.”

  “Let us just hike out of here, then, and now,” Entreri offered. “If we need the nightmares to flee pursuit, then we’ll call them.”

  “You feel well enough to travel, my friend? We thought you dead when we pulled you from the snow pile.”

  “She helped.” He pointed his chin toward Catti-brie.

  “But I’m not sure how much I can help again,” Catti-brie admitted. “This place remains strange to me, and to my spells. Almost as if they are fainter, or perhaps as if I am farther from my goddess.” She turned her gaze toward Zak. “There is an energy in this land. Or lack of energy, perhaps. Dimmer, like the sunlight. Regardless, we have to go. Let us gather our things. Don’t dismiss your ladder, Jarlaxle. We’ll use it as a litter.”

  “I don’t need one,” Zak said, surprising them. Grunting and growling with every movement, his left arm still hanging at his side, the weapon master stubbornly tried to get up.

  “Giant,” he said when he was up, leaning heavily on the wall. “Maybe a frost giant—I am not well acquainted with the type.”

  “Where? With that thing?” Catti-brie asked.

  “I don’t know what that is or where it came from,” Zak answered.

  “From the looks of your wound, I would think it knows of you. The claw rake is clear to be seen.”

  “I fought a giant,” Zak said. He paused and remembered what had sent him spinning out from the wall. “Maybe,” he admitted. “Wait, there was another. Yes.” He nodded toward the dead slaad.

  “A giant. A green slaad. Hmm,” Jarlaxle murmured. He pulled the ladder from the hole, then lifted an edge of the hole itself and turned it back into a small, circular piece of black cloth, which he tucked into his hat, tapping the brim to Catti-brie, who was now over by the dead slaad.

  “How did you do that?” Catti-brie asked him. “How did you get that hole out fast enough to escape the fireball?”

  “I didn’t really escape it,” Jarlaxle said, looking at his still-smoking shoulder.

  “Enough so,” Catti-brie retorted. She kneeled and bent low, examining the terrible claws of the beast and its frog-like maw.

  “You don’t really think I’d bow to a slaad, do you?” Jarlaxle answered.

  “But how did you know it was a slaad?”

  “I know everything. I’m Jarlaxle.”

  Catti-brie huffed and quietly cast a spell of detection, one that would show her any poison or disease on or about the slaad corpse.

  “You know little about the slaadi, so you said,” Entreri put in, throwing Jarlaxle’s own words against him.

  “Eggs,” Zak said before Jarlaxle could retort.

  “Eggs?” Jarlaxle and Entreri asked together.

  Catti-brie shook her head, finding no poison or disease at all. She looked at the claws again and figured that this monstrous creature didn’t need it!

  “They have eggs,” Zak explained. “Dozens of eggs. Huge eggs.”

  “Lovely,” Entreri remarked. “We’re in a nest.”

  “A nest of what? Slaadi?” asked Entreri.

  “Huge eggs,” Zak answered. “Like the eggs of a dragon.”

  “We should definitely leave,” Catti-brie declared. “Now.”

  No one argued.

  They packed and departed the cave. Zak walked for a long while, then accepted the litter of the magical ladder, which Jarlaxle pulled out and unfolded from a seemingly simple block of wood that fit in the palm of his hand—only this time, it was only half the twelve-foot length Jarlaxle had utilized to get out of his portable hole.

  “How much time do we have before sunset?” Entreri asked when he took up the front of the litter, following Jarlaxle and with Catti-brie bringing up the rear. The day had grown a bit darker, the sun now behind the mountain at the backs of the companions.

  Jarlaxle looked to what he thought was the east, then turned to the south, then to Catti-brie.

  “If we were in Luskan, we would be long into the night already,” she answered. “Or even into tomorrow.”

  “That is my thinking as well,” Jarlaxle replied. He directed Entreri’s gaze to the brightest point behind the mountains, a position that seemed to be south-southeast. “If night doesn’t fall soon, I’m not sure there will be one, as I believe the sun will be climbing from the horizon again when it moves out from behind the mountain wall.”

  “No night?” Entreri asked skeptically.

  “The overlight,” Zak chimed in. “The anti-Underdark.”

  “I just don’t know,” Jarlaxle admitted. “But if that’s the case, we should consider it our good fortune. Even with our magical protection, you can feel how cold it is when the sun is up. What might a deep night bring?”

  “We’re still going to need to rest,” Entreri reminded him. “And to find shelter.”

  Again, no argument was offered there, and the troop trudged on, all three walking and taking turns dragging the litter. Every time they changed positions, Zak promised that he would be walking beside them soon, but on each such occasion, the weapon master sounded weaker, not stronger.

  The third time, when Entreri went back to pulling the litter, Jarlaxle took Catti-brie aside.

  “I know,” she said before he began to explain his concern. “I have expended most of my healing spells this day on him, but they seem to have had only minimal effect.”

  “Perhaps the wound is infected, or maybe the claw carried poison or a disease.”

  Catti-brie shook her head. “I checked. The slaad showed no signs of any such thing. And if that were the case with Zaknafein, then it is like nothing I have ever seen or heard tell of before,” the priestess of Mielikki explained. “More likely, those claws went in deep and the wound was, or would have been had I not used the healing spells, mortal. I think our friend only barely escaped death, Jarlaxle.”

  “You saw the slaad,” Jarlaxle said, and he curled up his hand as if mimicking its great claws.

  Catti-brie nodded and had no answers other than to assure her friend, “I will prepare powerful healing spells tomorrow.”

  “If we cannot fully heal him, then perhaps you should use your recall magic and take him back to Luskan.”

  “Longsaddle,” she corrected, for that was where her spell had been pre-aimed. “I am bound there. It is my home, and Drizzt’s and Brie’s . . . and Guen’s. My spell is anchored in the Ivy Mansion. And if I go, I take all of us.”

  “I’m here for a reason.”

  “And you’ll need me to use the sword to point you toward that reason; so you told me when you asked me to come along.”

  Jarlaxle’s expression seemed a bit off to her, but for only a moment. She thought about that slight revelation, and dismissed it as merely a manifestation of Jarlaxle’s concern for Zaknafein. At least, that’s what she tried to tell herself.

  “When do you wish me to hold Khazid’hea?” she asked. “Are we even going in the right direction?”

  “Right now, we’re just trying to find a place to shelter. And we’re following the only course Doum’wielle could have taken after landing through the portal.”

  Initially, Catti-brie thought, but didn’t say. “Doum’wielle went through that gate four years ago,” she reminded.

  “And she survived, I am sure, and so she went the right way.”

  That made little sense to Catti-
brie, but she let it go.

  They found another cave soon after, this one shallow and without another exit, something they carefully checked once, twice, and again.

  They made a strong fire and ate a good meal, both the firewood and the food brought forth from Jarlaxle’s magical pouch of holding, which seemed to be working, at least. Fed, Catti-brie took one last look at Zaknafein, who seemed a bit better, and gave to him the remainder of her healing magic. Then she went to her bedroll and crawled in for a much-needed rest. She couldn’t fall asleep for a long while, though, for her conversation with Jarlaxle regarding Doum’wielle continued to nag at her, creating a stubborn suspicion that Jarlaxle hadn’t come up here simply for the wayward half-elf, half-drow woman and whatever her return might offer him with regard to the war brewing in Menzoberranzan, and certainly not for some ridiculous scheme to cleanse Khazid’hea so that it would be a more suitable weapon for Zaknafein, who could never be dominated by it in any case.

  No, there was something more, she thought, though of course with Jarlaxle, that could mean nothing more than his simple lust for adventure. He had taken Artemis Entreri halfway around Faerun, after all, simply for the joy of it. So maybe that was the true purpose, the true reason Jarlaxle had decided to bring them to the top of the world.

  She found herself hoping that was it.

  She found herself doubting that hope.

  The sheer futility of trying to unravel the mystery of Jarlaxle allowed her to move far enough past that concern to finally drift off, for who could ever hope to unwind the schemes of the enigmatic rogue?

  When she awoke, and she knew it to be a long while later, she first noted Zaknafein sitting beside the small fire, slowly eating from a bowl of porridge. She crawled over to sit beside him, trying to gauge his health. He smiled, but it was strained and Catti-brie knew that he was no better than he had been before she had slept.

  “You snore like a dwarf,” Entreri remarked to her from the side. “Bruenor would be proud.”

  “How long was I asleep?”

  “Long time. I fell asleep well after you and when I woke up, you were still snoring.”

  She looked to the cave opening.