The Halfling’s Gem frid-3

by Robert Anthony Salvatore

  Any fears he had of anxious restlessness were washed away in the serenity of exhausted sleep only minutes after he had finished the meal. Alustriel watched over him until contented snores resounded throughout the magical shelter.

  Satisfied that only a healthy sleeper could roar so loudly, the Lady of Silverymoon leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes.

  It had been a long three days.

  * * *

  Bruenor watched in amazement as the structure faded around him with the first light of dawn, as if the dark of night had somehow lent the place the tangible material for its construction. He turned to say something to Alustriel but saw her in the midst of casting a spell, facing the pinkening sky and reaching out as though trying to grab the rays of light.

  She clenched her hands and brought them to her mouth, whispering the enchantment into them. Then she flung the captured light out before her, crying out the final words of the dweomer, “Equine aflame!” A glowing ball of red struck the stone and burst into a shower of fire, forming almost instantly into a flaming chariot and two horses. Their images danced with the fire that gave them shape, but they did not burn the ground.

  “Gather your things,” the lady instructed Bruenor. “It is time we leave.”

  Bruenor stood motionless a moment longer. He had never come to appreciate magic, only the magic that strengthened weapons and armor, but neither did he ever deny its usefulness. He collected his equipment, not bothering to don armor or shield, and joined Alustriel behind the chariot. He followed her onto it, somewhat reluctantly, but it did not burn and it felt as tangible as wood.

  Alustriel took a fiery rein in her slender hand and called to the team. A single bound lifted them into the morning sky, and they shot away, west around the bulk of the mountain and then south.

  The stunned dwarf dropped his equipment to his feet—his chin to his chest—and clutched the side of the chariot. Mountains rolled out below him; he noted the ruins of Settlestone, the ancient dwarven city, now far below, and only a second later, far behind. The chariot roared over the open grassland and skimmed westward along the northern edge of the Trollmoors. Bruenor had relaxed enough to spit a curse as they soared over the town of Nesme, remembering the less-than-hospitable treatment he and his friends had received at the hands of a patrol from the place. They passed over the Dessarin River network, a shining snake writhing through the fields, and Bruenor saw a large encampment of barbarians far to the north.

  Alustriel swung the fiery chariot south again, and only a few minutes later, the famed Ivy Mansion of Harpell Hill, Longsaddle, came into view.

  A crowd of curious wizards gathered atop the hill to watch the chariot’s approach, cheering somberly—trying to maintain a distinguished air—as they always did when Lady Alustriel graced them with her presence. One face in the crowd blanched to white when the red beard, pointed nose, and one-horned helm of Bruenor Battlehammer came into view.

  “But…you…uh…dead…fell,” stammered Harkle Harpell as Bruenor jumped from the back of the chariot.

  “Nice to see yerself, too,” Bruenor replied, clad only in his nightshirt and helm. He scooped his equipment from the chariot and dropped the pile at Harkle’s feet. “Where’s me girl?”

  “Yes, yes…the girl…Catti-brie…oh, where? Oh, there,” he rambled, the fingers of one hand nervously bouncing on his lower lip. “Do come, yes do!” He grabbed Bruenor’s hand and whisked the dwarf off to the Ivy Mansion.

  They intercepted Catti-brie, barely out of bed and wearing a fluffy robe, shuffling down a long hall. The young woman’s eyes popped wide when she spotted Bruenor rushing at her, and she dropped the towel she was holding, her arms falling limply to her side. Bruenor buried his face into her, hugging her around the waist so tightly that he forced the air from her lungs. As soon as she recovered from her shock, she returned the hug tenfold.

  “Me prayers,” she stammered, her voice quaking with sobs. “By the gods, I’d thought ye dead!”

  Bruenor didn’t answer, trying to hold himself steady. His tears were soaking the front of Catti-brie’s robe, and he felt the eyes of a crowd of Harpells behind him. Embarrassed, he pushed open a door to his side, surprising a half-clad Harpell who stood naked to the waist.

  “Excuse—” the wizard began, but Bruenor grabbed his shoulder and pulled him out into the hall, at the same time leading Catti-brie into the room. The door slammed in the wizard’s face as he turned back to his chamber. He looked helplessly to his gathered kin, but their wide smiles and erupting laughter told him that they would be of no assistance. With a shrug, the wizard moved on about his morning business as though nothing unusual had happened.

  It was the first time Catti-brie had ever seen the stoic dwarf truly cry. Bruenor didn’t care and couldn’t have done a thing to prevent the scene anyway. “Me prayers, too,” he whispered to his beloved daughter, the human child he had taken in as his own more than a decade and a half before.

  “If we’d have known,” Catti-brie began, but Bruenor put a gentle finger to her lips to silence her. It was not important; Bruenor knew that Catti-brie and the others would never have left him if they had even suspected that he might be alive.

  “Suren I know not why I lived,” the dwarf replied. “None o’ the fire found me skin.” He shuddered at the memories of his weeks alone in the mines of Mithril Hall. “No more talk o’ the place,” he begged. “Behind me it is. Behind me to stay!”

  Catti-brie, knowing of the approach of armies to reclaim the dwarven homeland, started to shake her head, but Bruenor didn’t catch the motion.

  “Me friends?” he asked the young woman. “Drow eyes I saw as I fell.”

  “Drizzt lives,” Catti-brie answered, “as does the assassin that chased Regis. He came up to the ledge just as ye fell and carried the little one away.”

  “Rumblebelly?” Bruenor gasped.

  “Aye, and the drow’s cat as well.”

  “Not dead…”

  “Nay, not to me guess,” Catti-brie was quick to respond. “Not yet. Drizzt and Wulfgar have chased the fiend to the south, knowing his goal to be Calimport.”

  “A long run,” Bruenor muttered. He looked to Catti-brie, confused. “But I’d have thought ye’d be with them.”

  “I have me own course,” Catti-brie replied, her face suddenly stern. “A debt for repaying.”

  Bruenor understood at once. “Mithril Hall?” he choked out. “Ye figured to return, avengin’ meself?”

  Catti-brie nodded, unblinking.

  “Ye’re bats, girl!” Bruenor said. “And the drow would let ye go alone?”

  “Alone?” Catti-brie echoed. It was time for the rightful king to know. “Nay, nor would I so foolishly end me life. A hundred kin make their way from the north and west,” she explained. “And a fair number of Wulfgar’s folk beside ‘em.”

  “Not enough,” Bruenor replied. “An army of duergar scum holds the halls.”

  “And eight-thousand more from Citadel Adbar to the north and east,” Catti-brie continued grimly, not slowing a beat. “King Harbromme of the dwarves of Adbar says he’ll see the halls free again! Even the Harpells have promised their aid.”

  Bruenor drew a mental image of the approaching armies—wizards, barbarians, and a rolling wall of dwarves—and with Catti-brie at their lead. A thin smile cut the frown from his face. He looked upon his daughter with even more than the considerable respect he had always shown her, his eyes wet with tears once more.

  “They wouldn’t beat me,” Catti-brie growled. “I meant to see yer face carved in the Hall of Kings, and meant to put yer name in its proper place o’ glory!”

  Bruenor grabbed her close and squeezed with all his strength. Of all the mantles and laurels he had found in the years gone by, or might find in the years ahead, none fit as well or blessed him as much as “Father.”

  * * *

  Bruenor stood solemnly on the southern slope of Harpell Hill that evening, watching the last colors fade out of the w
estern sky and the emptiness of the rolling plain to the south. His thoughts were on his friends, particularly Regis—Rumblebelly—the bothersome halfling that had undeniably found a soft corner in the dwarf’s stone heart.

  Drizzt would be okay—Drizzt was always okay—and with mighty Wulfgar walking beside him, it would take an army to bring them down.

  But Regis.

  Bruenor never had doubted that the halfling’s carefree manner of living, stepping on toes with a half-apologetic and half-amused shrug, would eventually get him in mud too deep for his little legs to carry him through. Rumblebelly had been a fool to steal the guildmaster’s ruby pendant.

  But “just deserts” did nothing to dispel the dwarf’s pity at his halfling friend’s dilemma, nor Bruenor’s anger at his own inability to help. By his station, his place was here, and he would lead the gathering armies to victory and glory, crushing the duergar and bringing a level of prosperity back to Mithril Hall. His new kingdom would be the envy of the North, with crafted items that rivaled the works of the ancient days flowing out into the trade routes all across the Realms.

  It had been his dream, the goal of his life since that terrible day nearly two centuries before, when Clan Battlehammer had been nearly wiped out and those few who had survived, mostly children, had been chased out of their homeland to the meager mines of Icewind Dale.

  Bruenor’s lifelong dream was to return, but how hollow it seemed to him now, with his friends caught in a desperate chase across the southland.

  The last light left the sky, and the stars blinked to life. Nighttime, Bruenor thought with a bit of comfort.

  The time of the drow.

  The first hints of his smile dissipated, though, as soon as they began, as Bruenor suddenly came to view the deepening gloom in a different perspective. “Nighttime,” he whispered aloud.

  The time of the assassin.

  8. A Plain Brown Wrapper

  The simple wooden structure at the end of Rogues Circle seemed understated even for the decrepit side of the sprawling southern city of Calimport. The building had few windows, all boarded or barred, and not a terrace or balcony to speak of. Similarly, no lettering identified the building, not even a number on the door to place it. But everyone in the city knew the house and marked it well, for beyond either of its iron-bound doors, the scene changed—dramatically. Where the outside showed only the weathered brown of old wood, the inside displayed a myriad of bright colors and tapestries, thickly woven carpets, and statues of solid gold. This was the thieves’ guild, rivaling the palace of Calimshan’s ruler himself in riches and decor.

  It rose three floors from the street level, with two more levels hidden below. The highest level was the finest, with five rooms—an octagonal central hall and four antechambers off it—all designed for the comfort and convenience of one man: Pasha Pook. He was the guildmaster, the architect of an intricate thieving network. And he made certain that he was the first to enjoy the spoils of his guild’s handiwork.

  Pook paced the highest level’s central hall, his audience chamber, stopping every circuit to stroke the shining coat of the leopard that lay beside his great chair. An uncharacteristic anxiety was etched upon the guildmaster’s round face, and he twiddled his fingers nervously when he was not petting his exotic pet.

  His clothes were of the finest silk, but other than the brooch that fastened his wrappings, he wore none of the abundant jewelry customary among others of his station—though his teeth did gleam of solid gold. In truth, Pook seemed a half-sized version of one of the four hill giant eunuchs that lined the hall, an inconspicuous appearance for a silver-tongued guildmaster who had brought sultans to their knees and whose name sent the sturdiest of the ruffian street dwellers scurrying for dark holes.

  Pook nearly jumped when a loud knock resounded off the room’s main door, the one to the lower levels. He hesitated for a long moment, assuring himself that he would make the other man squirm for waiting—though he really needed the time to compose himself. Then he absently motioned to one of the eunuchs and moved to the overstuffed throne on the raised platform opposite the door and dropped a hand again to his pampered cat.

  A lanky fighter entered, his thin rapier dancing to the swagger of his stride. He wore a black cape that floated behind him and was bunched at his neck. His thick brown hair curled into and around it. His clothes were dark and plain but crisscrossed by straps and belts, each with a pouch or sheathed dagger or some other unusual weapon hanging from it. His high leather boots, worn beyond any creases, made no sound other than the timed clump of his agile stride.

  “Greetings, Pook,” he said informally.

  Pook’s eyes narrowed immediately at the sight of the man. “Rassiter,” he replied to the wererat.

  Rassiter walked up to the throne and bowed halfheartedly, throwing the reclining leopard a distasteful glance. Flashing a rotted smile that revealed his lowly heritage, he put one foot upon the chair and bent low to let the guildmaster feel the heat of his breath.

  Pook glanced at the dirty boot on his beautiful chair, then back at the man with a smile that even the uncouth Rassiter noticed was a bit too disarming. Figuring that he might be taking his familiarity with his partner a bit too far, Rassiter removed his foot from its perch and shuffled back a step.

  Pook’s smile faded, but he was satisfied. “It is done?” he asked the man.

  Rassiter danced a circle and nearly laughed out loud. “Of course,” he answered, and he pulled a pearl necklace from his pouch.

  Pook frowned at the sight, just the expression the sly fighter had expected. “Must you kill them all?” the guildmaster said in a hiss.

  Rassiter shrugged and replaced the necklace. “You said you wanted her removed. She is removed.”

  Pook’s hands clutched the arms of the throne. “I said I wanted her taken from the streets until the job was completed!”

  “She knew too much,” Rassiter replied, examining his fingernails.

  “She was a valuable wench,” Pook said, back in control now. Few men could anger Pasha Pook as did Rassiter, and fewer still would have left the chamber alive.

  “One of a thousand,” chuckled the lanky fighter.

  Another door opened, and an older man entered, his purple robes embroidered with golden stars and quartermoons and a huge diamond fastening his high turban. “I must see—”

  Pook cast him a sidelong glance. “Not now, LaValle.”

  “But Master—”

  Pook’s eyes went dangerously thin again, nearly matching the lines of his lipless grimace. The old man bowed apologetically and disappeared back through the door, closing it carefully and silently behind him.

  Rassiter laughed at the spectacle. “Well done!”

  “You should learn LaValle’s manners,” Pook said to him.

  “Come, Pook, we are partners,” Rassiter replied. He skipped over to one of the room’s two windows, the one that looked south to the docks and the wide ocean. “The moon will be full tonight,” he said excitedly, spinning back on Pook. “You should join us, Pasha! A grand feasting there will be!”

  Pook shuddered to think of the macabre table that Rassiter and his fellow wererats planned to set. Perhaps the wench was not yet dead…

  He shook away such thoughts. “I am afraid I must decline,” he said quietly.

  Rassiter understood—and had purposely enticed—Pook’s disgust. He danced back over and put his foot on the throne, again showing Pook that foul smile. “You do not know what you are missing,” he said. “But the choice is yours; that was our deal.” He spun away and bowed low. “And you are the master.”

  “An arrangement that does well by you and yours,” Pook reminded him.

  Rassiter turned his palms out in concession, then clapped his hands together. “I cannot argue that my guild fares better since you brought us in.” He bowed again. “Forgive my insolence, my dear friend, but I can hardly contain the mirth of my fortunes. And tonight the moon will be full!”

 
“Then go to your feast, Rassiter.”

  The lanky man bowed again, cast one more glare at the leopard, and skipped from the room.

  When the door had closed, Pook ran his fingers over his brow and down through the stylishly matted remains of what once had been a thick tousle of black hair. Then he dropped his chin helplessly into a plump palm and chuckled at his own discomfort in dealing with Rassiter, the wererat.

  He looked to the harem door, wondering if he might take his mind off his associate. But he remembered LaValle. The wizard would not have disturbed him, certainly not with Rassiter in the room, unless his news was important.

  He gave his pet a final scratch on the chin and moved through the chamber’s southeast door, into the wizard’s dimly lit quarters. LaValle, staring intently into his crystal ball, did not notice him as he entered. Not wanting to disturb the wizard, Pook quietly took the seat across the small table and waited, amusing himself with the curious distortions of LaValle’s scraggly gray beard through the crystal ball as the wizard moved this way and that.

  Finally LaValle looked up. He could clearly see the lines of tension still on Pook’s face, not unexpected after a visit from the wererat. “They have killed her, then?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

  “I despise him,” said Pook.

  LaValle nodded in agreement. “But you cannot dismiss the power that Rassiter has brought you.”

  The wizard spoke the truth. In the two years since Pook had allied himself with the wererats, his guild had become the most prominent and powerful in the city. He could live well simply from the tithes that the dockside merchants paid him for protection—from his own guild. Even the captains of many of the visiting merchant ships knew enough not to turn away Pook’s collector when he met them on the docks.