Streams of Silver frid-2

by Robert Anthony Salvatore

  Streams of Silver

  ( Forgotten Realms: Icewind Dale - 2 )

  Robert Anthony Salvatore

  “Yer eyes’ll shine when ye see the rivers runnin’ silver in Mithril Hall!”

  Bruenor the dwarf, Wulfgar the barbarian, Regis the halfling, and Drizzt the dark elf fight monsters and magic on their way to Mithril Hall, centuries-old birthplace of Bruenor and his dwarven ancestors.

  Faced with racism, Drizzt contemplates returning to the lightless underworld city andmurderous lifestyle he abandoned. Wulfgar begins to overcome his tribe’s aversion for magic. And Regis runs from a deadly assassin, who, allied with evil wizards, is bent on the companions’ destruction. All of Bruenor’s dreams, and the survival of his party, hinge upon the actions of one brave young woman.

  R.A. Salvatore

  Streams of Silver

  We’ve dug our holes and hallowed caves

  Put goblin foes in shallow graves

  This day our work is just begun

  In the mines where silver rivers run

  Beneath the stone the metal gleams

  Torches shine on silver streams

  Beyond the eyes of the spying sun

  In the mines where silver rivers run

  The hammers chime on Mithril pure

  As dwarven mines in days of yore

  A craftsman’s work is never done

  In the mines where silver rivers run

  To dwarven gods we sing our praise

  Put another orc in a shallow grave

  We know our work has just begun

  In the land where silver rivers run

  As with everything I do,

  To my wife, Diane

  And to the most important people

  in our lives

  Bryan, Geno, and Caitlin

  Prelude

  On a dark throne in a dark place perched the dragon of shadow: Not a very large worm, but foulest of the foul, its mere presence, blackness; its talons, swords worn from a thousand thousand kills; its maw ever warm with the blood of victims; its black breath, despair.

  A raven’s coat was its tested scales, so rich in their blackness that they shimmered in colors, a scintillating facade of beauty for a soulless monster. Its minions named it Shimmergloom and paid it all honor.

  Gathering its strength over the course of centuries, as dragons do, Shimmergloom kept its wings folded back and moved not at all, except to swallow a sacrifice or to punish an insolent underling. It had done its part to secure this place, routing the bulk of the dwarven army that stood to face its allies.

  How well the dragon had eaten that day! The hides of dwarves were tough and muscled, but a razor-toothed maw was well suited to such a meal.

  And now the dragon’s many slaves did all the work, bringing it food and heeding to its every desire. The day would come when they would need the power of the dragon again, and Shimmergloom would be ready. The huge mound of plundered treasures beneath it fueled the dragon’s strength, and in this respect, Shimmergloom was surpassed by none of its kind, possessing a hoard beyond the imagination of the richest kings.

  And a host of loyal minions, willing slaves to the dragon of darkness.

  * * *

  The chill wind that gave Icewind Dale its name whistled across their ears, its incessant groan eliminating the casual conversation the four friends usually enjoyed. They moved west across the barren tundra, and the wind, as always, came from the east, behind them, quickening their already strong pace.

  Their posture and the determined drive of their strides reflected the eagerness of a newly begun quest, but the set of each adventurer’s face revealed a different perspective of the journey.

  The dwarf, Bruenor Battlehammer, leaned forward from his waist, his stocky legs pumping mightily beneath him, and his pointed nose, poking out above the shag of his wagging red beard, led the way. He seemed set in stone, apart from his legs and beard, with his many-notched axe held firmly before him in his gnarled hands, his shield, emblazoned with the standard of the foaming mug, strapped tightly on the back of his overstuffed pack, and his head, adorned in a many-dented horned helm, never turning to either side. Neither did his eyes deviate from the path and rarely did they blink. Bruenor had initiated this journey to find the ancient homeland of Clan Battlehammer, and though he fully realized that the silvery halls of his childhood were hundreds of miles away, he stomped along with the fervor of one whose long-awaited goal is clearly in sight.

  Beside Bruenor, the huge barbarian, too, was anxious. Wulfgar loped along smoothly, the great strides of his long legs easily matching the dwarf’s rolling pace. There was a sense of urgency about him, like a spirited horse on a short rein. Fires hungry for adventure burned in his pale eyes as clearly as in Bruenor’s, but unlike the dwarf, Wulfgar’s gaze was not fixed upon the straight road before them. He was a young man out to view the wide world for the first time and he continually looked about, soaking up every sight and sensation that the landscape had to offer.

  He had come along to aid his friends on their adventure, but he had come, as well, to expand the horizons of his own world. The entirety of his young life had been spent within the isolating natural boundaries of Icewind Dale, limiting his experiences to the ancient ways of his fellow barbarian tribesmen and the frontier peoples of Ten-Towns.

  There was more out there, Wulfgar knew, and he was determined to grasp as much of it as he possibly could.

  Less interested was Drizzt Do’Urden, the cloaked figure trotting easily beside Wulfgar. His floating gait showed him to be of elven heritage, but the shadows of his low-pulled cowl suggested something else. Drizzt was a drow, a black elf, denizen of the lightless underworld. He had spent several years on the surface, denying his heritage, yet had found that he could not escape the aversion to the sun inherent in his people.

  And so he sunk low within the shadow of his cowl, his stride nonchalant, even resigned, this trip being merely a continuation of his existence, another adventure in a life-long string of adventures. Forsaking his people in the dark city of Menzoberranzan, Drizzt Do’Urden had willingly embarked upon the road of the nomad. He knew that he would never be truly accepted anywhere on the surface; perceptions of his people were too vile (and rightly so) for even the most tolerant of communities to take him in. The road was his home now, he was always traveling to avoid the inevitable heartache of being forced from a place that he might have come to love.

  Ten-Towns had been a temporary sanctuary. The forlorn wilderness settlement housed a large proportion of rogues and outcasts and, though Drizzt wasn’t openly welcomed, his hard-earned reputation as a guardian of the towns’ borders had granted him a small measure of respect and tolerance from many of the settlers. Bruenor named him a true friend, though, and Drizzt had willingly set out beside the dwarf on the trek, despite his apprehension that once he moved out beyond the influence of his reputation, the treatment he received would be less than civil.

  Every so often, Drizzt dropped back the dozen yards or so to check on the fourth member of the party. Huffing and puffing, Regis the halfling brought up the rear of the troupe (and not by choice) with a belly too round for the road and legs too short to match the pumping strides of the dwarf. Paying now for the months of luxury he had enjoyed in the palatial house in Bryn Shander, Regis cursed the turn of luck that had forced him to the road. His greatest love was comfort and he worked at perfecting the arts of eating and sleeping as diligently as a young lad with dreams of heroic deeds swung his first sword. His friends were truly surprised when he joined them on the road, but they were happy to have him along, and even Bruenor, so desperate to see his ancient homeland again, took care not to set the pace too far beyond Regi
s’s ability to keep up.

  Certainly Regis pushed himself to his physical limits, and without his customary complaining. Unlike his companions, though, whose eyes looked to the road up ahead, he kept glancing back over his shoulder, back toward Ten-Towns and the home he had so mysteriously abandoned to join in the journey.

  Drizzt noted this with some concern.

  Regis was running away from something.

  * * *

  The companions kept their westerly course for several days. To their south, the snow-capped peaks of the jagged mountains, the Spine of the World, paralleled their journey. This range marked the southern boundary to Icewind Dale and the companions kept an eye out for its end. When the westernmost peaks died away to flat ground, they would turn south, down the pass between the mountains and the sea, running out of the dale altogether and down the last hundred mile stretch to the coastal city of Luskan.

  Out on the trail each morning before the sun rose at their backs, they continued running into the last pink lines of sunset, stopping to make camp at the very last opportunity before the chill wind took on its icy nighttime demeanor.

  Then they were back on the trail again before dawn, each running within the solitude of his own perspectives and fears.

  A silent journey, save the endless murmur of the eastern wind.

  Book 1.

  Searches

  1. A Dagger at Their Backs

  He kept his cloak pulled tightly about him, though little light seeped in through the curtained windows, for this was his existence, secretive and alone. The way of the assassin.

  While other people went about their lives basking in the pleasures of the sunlight and the welcomed visibility of their neighbors, Artemis Entreri kept to the shadows, the dilated orbs of his eyes focused on the narrow path he must take to accomplish his latest mission.

  He truly was a professional, possibly the finest in the entire realms at his dark craft, and when he sniffed out the trail of his prey, the victim never escaped. So the assassin was unbothered by the empty house that he found in Bryn Shander, the principal city of the ten settlements in the wasteland of Icewind Dale. Entreri had suspected that the halfling had slipped out of Ten-Towns. But no matter; if this was indeed the same halfling that he had sought all the way from Calimport, a thousand miles and more to the south, he had made better progress than he ever could have hoped. His mark had no more than a two-week head start and the trail would be fresh indeed.

  Entreri moved through the house silently and calmly, seeking hints of the halfling’s life here that would give him the edge in their inevitable confrontation. Clutter greeted him in every room—the halfling had left in a hurry, probably aware that the assassin was closing in. Entreri considered this a good sign, further heightening his suspicions that this halfling, Regis, was the same Regis who had served the Pasha Pook those years ago in the distant southern city.

  The assassin smiled evilly at the thought that the halfling knew he was being stalked, adding to the challenge of the hunt as Entreri pitted his stalking prowess against his intended victim’s hiding ability. But the end result was predictable, Entreri knew, for a frightened person invariably made a fatal mistake.

  The assassin found what he was looking for in a desk drawer in the master bedroom. Fleeing in haste, Regis had neglected to take precautions to conceal his true identity. Entreri held the small ring up before his gleaming eyes, studying the inscription that clearly identified Regis as a member of Pasha Pook’s thieves’ guild in Calimport. Entreri closed his fist about the signet, the evil smile widening across his face.

  “I have found you, little thief,” he laughed into the emptiness of the room. “Your fate is sealed. There is nowhere for you to run!”

  His expression changed abruptly to one of alertness as the sound of a key, in the palatial house’s front door echoed up the hallway of the grand staircase. He dropped the ring into his belt pouch and slipped, as silent as death, to the shadows of the top posts of the stairway’s heavy banister.

  The large double doors swung open, and a man and a young woman stepped in from the porch ahead of two dwarves. Entreri knew the man, Cassius, the spokesman of Bryn Shander. This had been his home once, but he had relinquished it several months earlier to Regis, after the halfling’s heroic actions in the town’s battle against the evil wizard, Akar Kessell, and his goblin minions.

  Entreri had seen the other human before, as well, though he hadn’t yet discovered her connection to Regis. Beautiful women were a rarity in this remote setting, and this young woman was indeed the exception. Shiny auburn locks danced gaily about her shoulders, the intense sparkle of her dark blue eyes enough to bind any man hopelessly within their depths.

  Her name, the assassin had learned, was Catti-brie. She lived with the dwarves in their valley north of the city, particularly with the leader of the dwarven clan, Bruenor, who had adopted her as his own a dozen years before when a goblin raid had left her orphaned.

  This could prove a valuable meeting, Entreri mused. He cocked an ear through the banister poles to hear the discussion below.

  “He’s been gone but a week!” Catti-brie argued.

  “A week with no word,” snapped Cassius, obviously upset. “With my beautiful house empty and unguarded. Why, the front door was unlocked when I came by a few days ago!”

  “Ye gave the house to Regis,” Catti-brie reminded the man.

  “Loaned!” Cassius roared, though in truth the house had indeed been a gift. The spokesman had quickly regretted turning over to Regis the key to this palace, the grandest house north of Mirabar. In retrospect, Cassius understood that he had been caught up in the fervor of that tremendous victory over the goblins, and he suspected that Regis had lifted his emotions even a step further by using the reputed hypnotic powers of the ruby pendant.

  Like others who had been duped by the persuasive halfling, Cassius had come to a very different perspective on the events that had transpired, a perspective that painted Regis unfavorably.

  “No matter the name ye call it,” Catti-brie conceded, “ye should not be so hasty to decide that Regis has forsaken the house.”

  The spokesman’s face reddened in fury. “Everything out today!” he demanded. “You have my list. I want all of the halfling’s belongings out of my house! Any that remain when I return tomorrow shall become my own by the rights of possession! And I warn you, I shall be compensated dearly if any of my property is missing or damaged!” He turned on his heel and stormed out the doors.

  “He’s got his hair up about this one,” chuckled Fender Mallot, one of the dwarves. “Never have I seen one whose friends swing from loyalty to hatred more than Regis!”

  Catti-brie nodded in agreement of Fender’s observation. She knew that Regis played with magical charms, and she figured that his paradoxical relationships with those around him were an unfortunate side effect of his dabblings.

  “Do ye suppose he’s off with Drizzt and Bruenor?” Fender asked. Up the stairs, Entreri shifted anxiously.

  “Not to doubt,” Catti-brie answered. “All winter they’ve been asking him to join in the quest for Mithril Hall, an’ to be sure, Wulfgar’s joining added to the pressure.”

  “Then the little one’s halfway to Luskan, or more,” reasoned Fender. “And Cassius is right in wantin’ his house back.”

  “Then let us get to packing,” said Catti-brie. “Cassius has enough o’ his own without adding to the hoard from Regis’s goods.”

  Entreri leaned back against the banister. The name of Mithril Hall was unknown to him, but he knew the way to Luskan well enough. He grinned again, wondering if he might catch them before they ever reached the port city.

  First, though, he knew that there still might be some valuable information to be garnered here. Catti-brie and the dwarves set about the task of collecting the halfling’s belongings, and as they moved from room to room, the black shadow of Artemis Entreri, as silent as death, hovered about them. They never suspected his presence,
never would have guessed that the gentle ripple in the drapes was anything more than a draft flowing in from the edges of the window, or that the shadow behind a chair was disproportionately long.

  He managed to stay close enough to hear nearly all of their conversation, and Catti-brie and the dwarves spoke of little else than the four adventurers and their journey to Mithril Hall. But Entreri learned little for his efforts. He already knew of the halfling’s famed companions—everyone in Ten-Towns spoke of them often: of Drizzt Do’Urden, the renegade drow elf, who had forsaken his dark-skinned people in the bowels of the Realms and roamed the borders of Ten-Towns as a solitary guardian against the intrusions of the wilderness of Icewind Dale; of Bruenor Battlehammer, the rowdy leader of the dwarven clan that lived in the valley near Kelvin’s Cairn; and most of all, of Wulfgar, the mighty barbarian, who was captured and raised to adulthood by Bruenor, returned with the savage tribes of the dale to defend Ten-Towns against the goblin army, then struck up a truce between all the peoples of Icewind Dale. A bargain that had salvaged, and promised to enrich, the lives of all involved.

  “It seems that you have surrounded yourself with formidable allies, halfling,” Entreri mused, leaning against the back of a large chair, as Catti-brie and the dwarves moved into an adjoining room. “Little help they will offer. You are mine!”

  Catti-brie and the dwarves worked for about an hour, filling two large sacks, primarily with clothes. Catti-brie was astounded with the stock of possessions Regis had collected since his reputed heroics against Kessell and the goblins—mostly gifts from grateful citizens. Well aware of the halfling’s love of comfort, she could not understand what had possessed him to run off down the road after the others. But what truly amazed her was that Regis hadn’t hired porters to bring along at least a few of his belongings. And the more of his treasures that she discovered as she moved through the palace, the more this whole scenario of haste and impulse bothered her. It was too out of character for Regis. There had to be another factor, some missing element, that she hadn’t yet weighed.