The Collected Stories, The Legend of Drizzt (forgotten realms)

by R. A. Salvatore

  It quickly became a game of nerves. Entreri and Theebles locked gazes, and for the first time, Theebles saw the depth of his young adversary. At that moment Theebles began to appreciate the pure cunning of merciless Artemis Entreri. Still, he was unafraid and remained composed enough to note the subtle shift of Entreri’s eye, the hint that the young man was quietly watching the spinning glasses more intently than he was letting on.

  Entreri caught a minute flicker, a subtle flash of reflected light from the table, then a second. Long before Theebles had come to visit, he had chipped the rim of one of the glasses ever so slightly. Entreri had then painstakingly aligned the table and the seat he’d chosen. With every rotation, the tiny chip in the glass would flicker a reflection of the torch burning in the nearest wall sconce-but to his eyes only.

  Entreri silently counted the elapsed time between flickers, measuring the table’s speed.

  “Why would you take such a risk?” wary Theebles asked, verbally prodding the young man’s concentration. “Have you come to hate me so much in a few short tendays?”

  “Long months,” Entreri corrected. “But it has been longer than that. My fight in the street was no coincidence. It was a set-up, a test, between myself and the man I had to kill. And you are the one who arranged it.”

  The way that Entreri described his adversary, “the man I had to kill,” tipped Theebles off to the young rogue’s motivation. The stranger in the dusty street had likely been Artemis Entreri’s first kill. The lieutenant smiled to himself. Some weaklings found murder a difficult thing to accept; either the first kill, or the inevitable path it had set the young man on, was not to Entreri’s liking.

  “I had to know if you were worthy,” Theebles said, admitting his complicity. But Entreri was no longer listening. The young rogue had gone back to his subtle study of the spinning glasses.

  Theebles eased his brake, slowing the rotation considerably. The hub was well greased-some even claimed there was a bit of magic about it-so the top did not need much momentum to keep spinning at a nearly constant rate.

  Entreri showed no sign of distress at the unexpected speed change. He kept completely composed and began silently counting once more. The marked glass flickered exactly an eighth of the circumference from Theebles’s chair. Entreri adjusted his cadence to make each complete rotation take a count of eight.

  He saw the flicker; he counted and as he hit nine, abruptly pulled the brake.

  The tabletop came to a sudden stop, liquid sloshing back and forth inside the glasses, droplets of it splattering to the table and the floor.

  Theebles eyed the glass in front of him. He thought to remark that the young rogue didn’t understand the proper protocol of the quarter table challenge, for the brakes were supposed to be applied slowly, alternately between the opponents, and the challenged party would make the final stop. The fat lieutenant decided not to make an issue of it. He knew that he had been taken, but didn’t really care. He’d been expecting this challenge for almost a tenday and had enough antivenin in his blood to defeat the poison of a hundred Thesali vipers. He lifted his glass. Entreri did likewise, and together they drank deeply.

  Five seconds passed. Ten.

  “Well,” Theebles began. “It would seem that neither of us found the unfortunate quarter this day.” He pulled his huge form from the chair. “Of course, your insolence will be reported in full to Pasha Basadoni.”

  Entreri showed no expression, didn’t blink. Theebles suspected that the young rogue was hiding his surprise, or that he was fuming or trying to figure out how he might escape this unexpected disaster. As the seconds passed, the young man’s continued calm began to bother the fat lieutenant.

  “You have had your one challenge,” Theebles snapped suddenly, loudly. “I am alive, thus you have lost. Expect to pay dearly for your impertinence!”

  Entreri didn’t blink.

  Good enough for the young upstart, the fat lieutenant decided with a snap of his fingers. As he departed, he thought of many ways that he might properly punish Entreri.

  How delicious that torture would be, for Basadoni could not stop Theebles this time. The guildmaster, who by Theebles’s estimation had become much too soft in his old age, had intervened many times on behalf of Entreri, calming Theebles whenever he learned that the fat lieutenant was planning a brutal punishment for the young upstart. Not this time, though. This time, Basadoni could not intervene. This time, Entreri had certainly earned the punishment.

  The first place Theebles went when he returned to his lavish private quarters was the well-stocked cupboard. The antivenin to Thesali viper poison was known to cause great hunger after the poison was introduced, and Theebles had never been one to need much prompting toward food. He pulled out a two-layered cake, a gigantic, sugar-speckled arrangement, decorated with the sweetest of fruits.

  He took up a knife to cut a slice, then shrugged and decided to eat the whole thing. With both hands, he lifted the cake to his mouth.

  “Oh, clever lad!” Theebles congratulated, returning the cake to the table. “Sly upon sly, a feint within a feint! Of course you knew the effects of Thesali antivenin. Of course you knew that I would run back here to my personal cupboard! And you have had the time, haven’t you, Artemis Entreri? Clever lad!”

  Theebles looked to the window and thought to throw the cake out into the street. Let the homeless waifs find its crumbs and eat them, and all fall down dead! But the cake, the beautiful cake. He couldn’t bear to be done with it, and he was so, so famished.

  Instead, he moved across the room to his private desk. He carefully unlocked the trapped drawers, checked the wax seal to be certain that no one had been here before him, to be certain that Entreri could not have tampered with this supply. Satisfied that all was as it should be, Theebles opened a secret compartment at the bottom of the drawer and removed a very valuable vial. It contained an amber-colored liquid, a magic potion that would neutralize any poison a man might imbibe. Theebles looked back to the cake. Would Entreri be as clever as he believed? Would the young rogue really understand the concept of sly upon sly?

  Theebles sighed and decided Entreri just might be that clever. The vial of universal antidote was very expensive, but the cake looked so very delicious!

  “I will make Artemis Entreri pay for another vial,” the now-famished lieutenant decided as he swallowed the antidote. Then he romped across the room and took a tiny bit off the edge of the cake, testing its flavor. It was indeed poisoned. Experienced Theebles knew that at once from the barely perceptible sour edge among the sweetness.

  The antidote would defeat it, the lieutenant knew, and he would not let the young upstart cheat him out of so fine a meal. He rubbed his plump hands together and took up the cake, gorging himself, swallowing huge chunks at a time, wiping the silver serving platter clean.

  Theebles died that night, horribly, waking from a sound sleep into sheer agony. It was as if his insides were on fire. He tried to call out, but his voice was drowned by his own blood.

  His attendant found him early the next morning, his mouth full of gore, his pillowcase spotted with brownish red spots, and his abdomen covered with angry blue welts. Many in the guild had heard Dancer speak of the previous day’s challenge, and so the connection to young Artemis Entreri was not a hard one to make.

  The young assassin was caught on the streets of Calimport a tenday later, after giving Pasha Basadoni’s powerful spy network a fine run. He was more resigned than afraid as two burly, older killers led him roughly back to the guild hall.

  Entreri believed Basadoni would punish him, perhaps even kill him, for his actions; it was worth it just to know that Theebles Royuset had died horribly.

  He had never been in the uppermost chambers of the guild hall before, never imagined what riches lay within. Beautiful women, covered in glittering jewels, roamed through every room. Great cushiony couches and pillows were heaped everywhere, and behind every third archway was a steaming tub of scented water.


  This entire floor of the hall was devoted to purely hedonistic pursuits, a place dedicated to every imaginable pleasure. Yet to Entreri, it appeared more dangerous than enticing. His goal was perfection, not pleasure, and this was a place where a man would grow soft.

  He was somewhat surprised, then, when he at last came to stand before Pasha Basadoni, the first time Entreri had actually met the man. Basadoni’s small office was the only room on this floor of the guild hall not fitted for comfort. Its furnishings were few and simple-a single wooden desk and three unremarkable chairs.

  The pasha fit the office. He was a smallish man, old but stately. His gaze, like his posture, was perfectly straight. His gray hair was neatly groomed, his clothes unpretentious.

  After only a couple moments of scrutiny, Entreri understood that this was a man to be respected, even feared. Looking at the pasha, Entreri considered again how out of place a slug like Theebles Royuset had been. He guessed at once that Basadoni must have hated Theebles profoundly. That notion alone gave him hope.

  “So you admit you cheated at the quarter challenge?” Basadoni asked after a long and deliberate pause, after studying young Entreri at least as intently as Entreri was studying him.

  “Isn’t that part of the challenge?” Entreri was quick to reply.

  Basadoni chuckled and nodded.

  “Theebles expected I would cheat,” Entreri went on. “A vial of universal antidote was found emptied within his room.”

  “And you tampered with it?”

  “I did not,” Entreri answered honestly.

  Basadoni’s quizzical expression prompted the young rogue to continue.

  “The vial worked as expected, and the cake was indeed conventionally poisoned,” Entreri admitted.

  “But …” Basadoni said.

  “But no antidote in Calimshan can defeat the effects of crushed glass.”

  Basadoni shook his head. “Sly upon sly within sly,” he said. “A feint within a feint within a feint.” He looked curiously at the clever young lad. “Theebles was capable of thinking to the third level of deception,” he reasoned.

  “But he did not believe that I was,” Entreri quickly countered. “He underestimated his opponent.”

  “And so he deserved to die,” Basadoni decided after a short pause.

  “The challenge was willingly accepted,” Entreri quickly noted, to remind the old pasha that any punishment would surely, by the rules of the guild, be unjustified.

  Basadoni leaned back in his chair, tapping the tips of his fingers together. He stared at Entreri long and hard. The young assassin’s reasoning was sound, but he almost ordered Entreri killed anyway, seeing clearly the cruelty, the absolute lack of compassion, within this one’s black heart. He understood that he could never truly trust Artemis Entreri, but he realized, too, that young Entreri would not likely strike against him, an old man and a potentially valuable mentor, unless he forced the issue. And Basadoni knew, too, how valuable an asset a clever and cold rogue like Artemis Entreri might be-especially with five other ambitious lieutenants scrambling to position themselves in the hope that he would soon die.

  Perhaps I will outlive those five, after all, the pasha thought with a slight smile. To Entreri he merely said, “I will exact no punishment.”

  Entreri showed no emotion.

  “Truly you are a cold-hearted wretch,” Basadoni went on with a helpless snicker, his voice honestly sympathetic. “Leave me, Lieutenant Entreri.” He waved his age-spotted hand as if the whole affair left a sour taste in his mouth.

  Entreri turned to go, but stopped and glanced back, realizing only then the significance of how Basadoni had addressed him.

  The two burly escorts at the newest lieutenant’s side caught it, too. One of them bristled anxiously, glaring at the young man. Lieutenant Artemis Entreri? the man’s dour expression seemed to say in disbelief. The boy, half his size, had only been in the guild for a few months. He was only fourteen years old!

  “Perhaps my first duty will be to see to your continued training,” Entreri said, staring coldly into the muscular man’s face. “You must learn to mask your feelings better.”

  The man’s moment of anger was replaced by a feeling of sheer dread as he, too, stared into those callous and calculating dark eyes, eyes too filled with evil for one of Artemis Entreri’s tender age.

  Later that afternoon, Artemis Entreri walked out of the Basadoni guild hall on a short journey that was long overdue. He went back to his street, the territory he had carved out amidst Calimport’s squalor.

  A dusty orange sunset marked the end of another hot day as Entreri turned a corner and entered that territory-the same corner the thug had turned just before Entreri had killed him.

  Entreri shook his head, feeling more than a little overwhelmed by it all. He had survived these streets, the challenge Theebles Royuset had thrown his way, and the counter-challenge he had offered in response. He had survived, and he had thrived, and was now a full lieutenant in the Basadoni Cabal.

  Slowly, Entreri walked the length of the muddy lane, his gaze stalking from left to right and back again, just as he had done when he was the master here. When these had been his streets, life had been simple. Now his course was set out before him, among his own treacherous kind. Ever after would he need to walk with his back close to a wall-a solid wall that he had already checked for deadly traps and secret portals.

  It had all happened so fast, in the course of just a few months. Street waif to lieutenant in the Basadoni Cabal, one of the most powerful thieves’ guilds in Calimport.

  Yet as he looked back over the road that had brought him from Memnon to Calimport, from this muddy alley to the polished marble halls of the thieves’ guild, Artemis Entreri began to wonder if, perhaps, the change was somewhat less miraculous. Nothing really happened so quickly; he’d been led to this seemingly remarkable state by years spent honing his street skills, years spent challenging and conquering brutal men like Theebles, or the old lecher in the caravan, or his father.…

  A noise from the side drew Entreri’s attention to a wide alley where a group of boys came rambling past. Half the grimy mob tossed a small stone back and forth while the other half tried to get it away.

  It came as a shock to Entreri when he realized that they were his own age, perhaps even a bit older. And the shock carried with it more than a little pain.

  The boys soon disappeared behind the next shack, laughing and shouting, a cloud of dust in their wake. Entreri summarily dismissed them, thinking again of what he had accomplished and what heights of glory and power might still lay before him. After all, he had purchased the right to dream such dark dreams at the cost of his youth and innocence, coins whose value he did not recognize until they were spent.

  Guenhwyvar

  Josidiah Starym skipped wistfully down the streets of Cormanthor, the usually stern and somber elf a bit giddy this day, both for the beautiful weather and the recent developments in his most precious and enchanted city. Josidiah was a bladesinger, a joining of sword and magic, protector of the elvish ways and the elvish folk. And in Cormanthor, in this year 253, many elves were in need of protecting. Goblinkin were abundant, and even worse, the emotional turmoil within the city, the strife among the noble families-the Starym included-threatened to tear apart all that Coronal Eltargrim had put together, all that the elves had built in Cormanthor, greatest city in all the world.

  Those were not troubles for this day, though, not in the spring sunshine, with a light north breeze blowing. Even Josidiah’s kin were in good spirits this day; Taleisin, his uncle, had promised the bladesinger that he would venture to Eltargrim’s court to see if some of their disputes might perhaps be worked out.

  Josidiah prayed that the elven court would come back together, for he, perhaps above all others in the city, had the most to lose. He was a bladesinger, the epitome of what it meant to be an elf, and yet, in this curious age, those definitions seemed not so clear. This was an age of change, of grea
t magics, of monumental decisions. This was an age when the humans, the gnomes, the halflings, even the bearded dwarves ventured down the winding ways of Cormanthor, past the needle-pointed spires of the free-flowing elven structures. For all of Josidiah’s previous one hundred and fifty years, the precepts of elvenkind seemed fairly defined and rigid; but now, because of their Coronal, wise and gentle Eltargrim, there was much dispute about what it meant to be an elf, and, more importantly, what relationships elves should foster with the other goodly races.

  “Merry morn, Josidiah,” came the call of a female elf, the young and beautiful maiden niece of Eltargrim himself. She stood on a balcony overlooking a high garden whose buds were not yet in bloom, with the avenue beyond that.

  Josidiah stopped in mid stride, leaped high into the air in a complete spin, and landed perfectly on bended knee, his long golden hair whipping across his face and then flying out wide again so that his eyes, the brightest of blue, flashed. “And the merriest of morns to you, good Felicity,” the bladesinger responded. “Would that I held at my sides flowers befitting your beauty instead of these blades made for war.”

  “Blades as beautiful as any flower ever I have seen,” Felicity replied teasingly, “especially when wielded by Josidiah Starym at dawn’s break, on the flat rock atop Berenguil’s Peak.”

  The bladesinger felt the hot blood rushing to his face. He had suspected that someone had been spying on him at his morning rituals-a dance with his magnificent swords, performed nude-and now he had his confirmation. “Perhaps Felicity should join me on the morrow’s dawn,” he replied, catching his breath and his dignity, “that I might properly reward her for her spying.”

  The young female laughed heartily and spun back into her house, and Josidiah shook his head and skipped along. He entertained thoughts of how he might properly “reward” the mischievous female, though he feared that, given Felicity’s beauty and station, any such attempts might lead to something much more, something Josidiah could not become involved in-not now, not after Eltargrim’s proclamation and the drastic changes.