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 dis
approving 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 know
in’ 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.”
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