The Halfling’s Gem frid-3

by Robert Anthony Salvatore

  He knew the smell of wererats.

  * * *

  Entreri had his feet firmly planted, ready for Drizzt as he came up through the open grate. When the drow’s form began to exit onto the street, the assassin cut down viciously with his saber.

  Drizzt, running up the iron rungs in perfect balance, had his hands free, however. Expecting such a move, he had crossed his scimitars up over his head as he came through.

  He caught Entreri’s saber in the wedge and pushed it harmlessly aside.

  Then they were faced off on the open street.

  The first hints of dawn cracked over the eastern horizon, the temperature had already begun to soar, and the lazy city awakened around them.

  Entreri came in with a rush, and Drizzt fought him back with wicked counters and sheer strength. The drow did not blink, his features locked in a determined grimace. Methodically he moved at the assassin, both scimitars cutting with even, solid strokes.

  His left arm useless and his left eye seeing no more than a blur, Entreri knew that he could not hope to win. Drizzt saw it, too, and he picked up the tempo, slapping again and again at the slowing saber in an effort to further weary Entreri’s only defense.

  But as Drizzt pressed into the battle, his magical mask once again loosened and dropped from his face.

  Entreri smirked, knowing that he had once again dodged certain death. He saw his out.

  “Caught in a lie?” he whispered wickedly.

  Drizzt understood.

  “A drow!” Entreri shrieked to the multitude of people he knew to be watching the battle from nearby shadows. “From the Forest of Mir! A scout, a prelude to an army! A drow!”

  Curiosity now pulled a throng from their concealments. The battle had been interesting enough before, but now the street people had to come closer to verify Entreri’s claims. Gradually a circle began to form around the combatants, and Drizzt and Entreri heard the ring of swords coming free of scabbards.

  “Good-bye, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Entreri whispered under the growing tumult and the cries of “Drow!” springing up throughout the area. Drizzt could not deny the effectiveness of the assassin’s ploy. He glanced around nervously, expecting an attack from behind at any moment.

  Entreri had the distraction he needed. As Drizzt looked to the side again, he broke away and stumbled off through the crowd, shouting, “Kill the drow! Kill him!”

  Drizzt swung around, blades ready, as the anxious mob cautiously moved in. Catti-brie and Bruenor came up onto the street then and saw at once what had happened, and what was about to happen. Bruenor rushed to Drizzt’s side and Catti-brie notched an arrow.

  “Back away!” the dwarf grumbled. “Suren there be no evil here, except for the one ye fools just let get away!”

  One man approached boldly, his spear leading the way.

  A silver explosion caught the weapon’s shaft, severing its tip. Horrified, the man dropped the broken spear and looked to the side, to where Catti-brie had already notched another arrow.

  “Get away,” she growled at him. “Leave the elf in peace, or me next shot won’t be lookin’ for yer weapon!”

  The man backed away, and the crowd seemed to lose its heart for the fight as quickly as it had found it. None of them ever really wanted to tangle with a drow elf anyway, and they were more than happy now to believe the dwarf’s words, that this one wasn’t evil.

  Then a commotion down the lane turned all heads. Two of the guards posing as bums outside the thieves’ guild pulled open the door—to the sound of fighting—and charged inside, slamming the door behind them.

  “Wulfgar!” shouted Bruenor, roaring down the road. Catti-brie started to follow but turned back to consider Drizzt.

  The drow stood as if torn, looking one way, to the guild, and the other, to where the assassin had run. He had Entreri beaten; the injured man could not possibly stand up against him.

  How could he just let Entreri go?

  “Yer friends need ye,” Catti-brie reminded him. “If not for Regis, then for Wulfgar.”

  Drizzt shook his head in self-reproach. How could he even have considered abandoning his friends at that critical moment? He rushed past Catti-brie, chasing Bruenor down the road.

  * * *

  Above Rogues Circle, the dawn’s light had already found Pasha Pook’s lavish chambers. LaValle moved cautiously toward the curtain at the side of his room and pushed it aside. Even he, a practiced wizard, would not dare to approach the device of unspeakable evil before the sun had risen, the Taros Hoop, his most powerful—and frightening—device.

  He grasped its iron frame and slid it out of the tiny closet. On its stand and rollers, it was taller than he, with the worked hoop, large enough for a man to walk through, fully a foot off the floor. Pook had remarked that it was similar to the hoop the trainer of his great cats had used.

  But any lion jumping through the Taros Hoop would hardly land safely on the other side.

  LaValle turned the hoop to the side and faced it fully, examining the symmetrical spider web that filled its interior. So fragile the webbing appeared, but LaValle knew the strength in its strands, a magical power that transcended the very planes of existence.

  LaValle slipped the instrument’s trigger, a thin scepter capped with an enormous black pearl, into his belt and wheeled the Taros Hoop out into the central room of the level. He wished that he had the time to test his plan, for he certainly didn’t want to disappoint his master again, but the sun was nearly full in the eastern sky and Pook would not be pleased with any delay.

  Still in his nightshirt, Pook dragged himself out into the central chamber at LaValle’s call. The guildmaster’s eyes lit up at the sight of the Taros Hoop, which he, not a wizard and not understanding the dangers involved with such an item, thought a simply wonderful toy.

  LaValle, holding the scepter in one hand and the onyx figurine of Guenhwyvar in the other, stood before the device. “Hold this,” he said to Pook, tossing him the statuette. “We can get the cat later; I’ll not need the beast for the task at hand.”

  Pook absently dropped the statuette into a pocket.

  “I have scoured the planes of existence,” the wizard explained. “I knew the cat to be of the Astral Plane, but I wasn’t certain that the halfling would remain there—if he could find his way out. And, of course, the Astral Plane is very extensive.”

  “Enough!” ordered Pook. “Be on with it! What have you to show me?”

  “Only this,” LaValle replied, waving the scepter in front of the Taros Hoop. The webbing tingled with power and lit up in tiny flashes of lightning. Gradually the light became more constant, filling in the area between strands, and the image of the webbing disappeared into the background of cloudy blue.

  LaValle spoke a command word, and the hoop focused in on a bright, well-lit grayness, a scene in the Astral Plane. There sat Regis, leaning comfortably against the limned image of a tree, a starlight sketch of an oak, with his hands tucked behind his head and his feet crossed out in front of him.

  Pook shook the grogginess from his head. “Get him,” he coughed. “How can we get him?”

  Before LaValle could answer, the door burst open and Rassiter stumbled into the room. “Fighting, Pook,” he gasped, out of breath, “in the lower levels. A giant barbarian.”

  “You promised me that you would handle it,” Pook growled at him.

  “The assassin’s friends—” Rassiter began, but Pook had no time for explanations. Not now.

  “Shut the door,” he said to Rassiter.

  Rassiter quieted and did as he was told. Pook was going to be angry enough with him when he learned of the disaster in the sewers—no need to press the point.

  The guildmaster turned back to LaValle, this time not asking. “Get him,” he said.

  LaValle chanted softly and waved the scepter in front of the Taros Hoop again, then he reached through the glassy curtain separating the planes and caught the sleepy Regis by the hair.

  “Guenhw
yvar!” Regis managed to shout, but then LaValle tugged him through the portal and he tumbled on the floor, rolling right up to the feet of Pasha Pook.

  “Uh…hello,” he stammered, looking up at Pook apologetically. “Can we talk about this?”

  Pook kicked him hard in the ribs and planted the butt of his walking stick on Regis’s chest. “You will cry out for death a thousand times before I release you from this world,” the guildmaster promised.

  Regis did not doubt a word of it.

  21. Where No Sun Shines

  Wulfgar dodged and ducked, slipping into the midst of lines of statues or behind heavy tapestries as he went. There were simply too many of the wererats, closing in all about him, for him to even hope to escape.

  He passed one corridor and saw a group of three ratmen rushing down toward him. Feigning terror, the barbarian sprinted beyond the opening, then pulled up short and put his back tight against the corner. When the ratmen rushed into the room, Wulfgar smashed them down with quick chops of Aegis-fang.

  He then retraced their steps back down the passage, hoping that he might confuse the rest of his pursuers.

  He came into a wide room with rows of chairs and a high ceiling—a stage area for Pook’s private showings by performing troupes. A massive chandelier, thousands of candles burning within its sconces, hung above the center of the room, and marble pillars, delicately carved into the likenesses of famed heroes and exotic monsters, lined the walls. Again Wulfgar had no time to admire the decorations. He noticed only one feature in the chamber: a short staircase along one side that led up to a balcony.

  Ratmen poured in from the room’s numerous entrances. Wulfgar looked back over his shoulder, down the passage, but saw that it, too, was blocked. He shrugged and sprinted up the stairs, figuring that that route would at least allow him to fight off his attackers in a line rather than a crowd.

  Two wererats rushed up right on his heels, but when Wulfgar made the landing and turned on them, they realized their disadvantage. The barbarian would have towered over them on even footing. Now, three steps up, his knees ran level with their eyes.

  It wasn’t such a bad position for offense; the wererats could poke at Wulfgar’s unprotected legs. But when Aegis-fang descended in that tremendous arc, neither of the rat men could possibly slow its momentum. And on the stairs, they didn’t have much room to move out of the way.

  The war hammer cracked onto the skull of one ratman with enough force to break his ankles, and the other, blanching under his brown fur, leaped over the side of the staircase.

  Wulfgar nearly laughed aloud. Then he saw the spears being readied.

  He rushed into the balcony for the cover the railings and the chairs might provide and hoping for another exit. The wererats flooded onto the staircase in pursuit.

  Wulfgar found no other doors. He shook his head, realizing that he was trapped, and slapped Aegis-fang to the ready.

  What was it that Drizzt had told him about luck? That a true warrior always seemed to find the proper route—the one open path that casual observers might consider lucky?

  Now Wulfgar did laugh out loud. He had killed a dragon once by dislodging an icicle above its back. He wondered what a huge chandelier with a thousand burning candles might do to a room full of ratmen.

  “Tempus!” the barbarian roared to his battle god, seeking a measure of deity-inspired luck to aid his way—Drizzt did not know everything, after all! He launched Aegis-fang with all his strength, breaking into a dead run after the war hammer.

  Aegis-fang twirled across the room as precisely as every throw Wulfgar had ever made with it. It blasted through the chandelier’s supports, bringing a fair measure of the ceiling down with it. Ratmen scrambled and dove off to the side as the massive ball of crystal and flames exploded onto the floor.

  Wulfgar, still in stride, planted a foot atop the balcony railing and leaped.

  * * *

  Bruenor growled and brought his axe up over his head, meaning to chop the door to the guildhouse down in a single stroke, but as the dwarf pounded through the final strides to the place, an arrow whistled over his shoulder, scorching a hole around the latch, and the door swung free.

  Unable to break his momentum, Bruenor barreled through the opening and tumbled head over heels down the stairs inside, taking the two surprised guards along with him.

  Dazed, Bruenor pulled himself to his knees and looked back up the stairs, to see Drizzt sprinting down five steps at a stride and Catti-brie just cresting the top to follow.

  “Durn ye, girl!” the dwarf roared. “I told ye to tell me when ye was meaning to do that!”

  “No time,” Drizzt interrupted. He leaped the last seven steps—and clear over the kneeling dwarf—to intercept two wererats coming in on Bruenor’s back.

  Bruenor scooped up his helmet, plopped it back in place, and turned to join the fun, but the two wererats were long dead before the dwarf ever got back to his feet, and Drizzt was rushing away to the sounds of a larger battle farther in the complex. Bruenor offered Catti-brie his arm as she came charging past, so that he could profit from her momentum in the pursuit.

  * * *

  Wulfgar’s huge legs brought him clear over the mess of the chandelier, and he tucked his head under his arms as he dropped into a group of ratmen, knocking them every which way. Dazed but still coherent enough to mark his direction, Wulfgar barreled through a door and stumbled into another wide chamber. An open door loomed before him, leading into yet another maze of chambers and corridors.

  But Wulfgar couldn’t hope to get there with a score of wererats blocking his way. He slipped over to the side of the room and put his back to a wall.

  Thinking him unarmed, the ratmen rushed in, shrieking in glee. Then Aegis-fang magically returned to Wulfgar’s hands and he swatted the first two aside. He looked around, searching for another dose of luck.

  Not this time.

  Wererats hissed at him from every side, nipping with their ravaging teeth. They didn’t need Rassiter to explain the power such a giant—a wererat giant—could add to their guild.

  The barbarian suddenly felt naked in his sleeveless tunic as each bite narrowly missed its mark. Wulfgar had heard enough legends concerning such creatures to understand the horrid implications of a lycanthrope’s bite, and he fought with every ounce of strength he could muster.

  Even with his adrenaline pumping in his terror, the big man had spent half the night in battle and had suffered many wounds, most notably the gash on his arm from the hydra, opened again by his leap from the balcony. His swipes were beginning to slow.

  Normally Wulfgar would have fought to the end with a song on his lips as he racked up a pile of dead enemies at his feet and smiled in the knowledge that he had died a true warrior. But, now, knowing his cause to be hopeless, with implications much worse than death, he scanned the room for a certain method of killing himself.

  Escape was impossible. Victory even more so. Wulfgar’s only thought and desire at that moment was to be spared the indignity and anguish of lycanthropy.

  Then Drizzt entered the room.

  He came in on the back of the wererat ranks like a sudden tornado dropping onto an unprepared village. His scimitars flashed blood red in seconds, and patches of fur flew about the room. Those few ratmen in his path who managed to escape put their tails between themselves and the killer drow and fled from the room.

  One wererat turned and got his sword up to parry, but Drizzt lopped off his arm at the elbow and drove a second blade through the beast’s chest. Then the drow was beside his giant friend, and his appearance gave Wulfgar renewed courage and strength. Wulfgar grunted in exhilaration, catching one attacker full in the chest with Aegis-fang and driving the wretched beast right through a wall. The ratman lay, quite dead, on his back in one room, but his legs, looped at the knees through the room’s newest window, twitched grotesquely for his comrades to witness.

  The ratmen glanced nervously at each other for support and came at the
two warriors tentatively.

  If their morale was sinking, it flew away altogether a moment later, when the roaring dwarf pounded into the room, led by a volley of silver-streaking arrows that cut the rats down with unerring accuracy. For the ratmen, it was the sewer scenario all over again, where they had lost more than two-dozen of their comrades earlier that same night. They had no heart to face the four friends united, and those that could flee, did.

  Those that remained had a difficult choice: hammer, blade, axe, or arrow.

  * * *

  Pook sat back in his great chair, watching the destruction through an image in the Taros Hoop. It did not pain the guildmaster to see wererats dying—a few well-placed bites out in the streets could replenish the supply of the wretched things—but Pook knew that the heroes cutting their way through his guild would eventually wind up in his face.

  Regis, held off the ground by the seat of his pants by one of Pook’s hill giant eunuchs, watched, too. The mere sight of Bruenor, whom Regis had believed killed in Mithril Hall, brought tears to the halfling’s eyes. And the thought that his dearest friends had traveled the breadth of the Realms to rescue him and were now fighting for his sake as mightily as he had ever witnessed, overwhelmed him. All of them bore wounds, particularly Catti-brie and Drizzt, but all of them ignored the pain as they tore into Pook’s militia. Watching them felling foes with every cut and thrust, Regis had little doubt that they would win through to get to him.

  Then the halfling looked to the side of the Taros Hoop, where LaValle stood, unconcerned, his arms crossed over his chest and his pearl-tipped scepter tapping on one shoulder.

  “Your followers do not fare so well, Rassiter,” the guildmaster remarked. “One might even note their cowardice.”

  Rassiter shuffled uneasily from one foot to the other.

  “Is it that you cannot hold to your part of our arrangement?”