The Halfling’s Gem frid-3

by Robert Anthony Salvatore

  “Bah! More that ye got yerself thrown here, Rumblebelly,” Bruenor replied.

  “Good to see you, too,” Regis shot back, “but this time you are mistaken. I came of my own choice.” He held the pearltipped scepter up for them to see. “To bring you this.”

  Truly Bruenor had been glad to see his little friend even before Regis had refuted his suspicion. He admitted his error by bowing low to Regis, his beard dipping under the smoky swirl.

  Another demodand rose up, this one across the way, on the same bridge as Regis. The halfling showed his friends the scepter again. “Catch it,” he begged, winding up to throw. “This is your only chance to get out of here!” He mustered up his nerve—there would only be one chance—and heaved the scepter as powerfully as he could. It spun end over end, tantalizingly slow in its journey toward the three sets of outstretched hands.

  It could not cut a swift enough path through the heavy air, though, and it lost its speed short of the bridge.

  “No!” Bruenor cried, seeing their hopes falling away.

  Catti-brie growled in denial, unhitching her laden belt and dropping Taulmaril in a single movement.

  She dove for the scepter.

  Bruenor dropped flat to his chest desperately to grab her ankles, but she was too far out. A contented look came over her as she caught the scepter. She twisted about in midair and threw it back to Bruenor’s waiting hands, then she plummeted from sight without a word of complaint.

  * * *

  LaValle studied the mirror with trembling hands. The image of the friends and the plane of Tarterus had faded into a dark blur when Regis had jumped through with the scepter. But that was the least of the wizard’s concerns now. A thin crack, detectable only at close inspection, slowly etched its way down the center of the Taros Hoop.

  LaValle spun on Pook, charging his master and grabbing at the walking stick. Too surprised to fight the wizard off, Pook surrendered the cane and stepped back curiously.

  LaValle rushed back to the mirror. “We must destroy its magic!” he screamed and he smashed the cane into the glassy image.

  The wooden stick, sundered by the device’s power, splintered in his hands, and LaValle was thrown across the room. “Break it! Break it!” he begged Pook, his voice a pitiful whine.

  “Get the halfling back!” Pook retorted, still more concerned with Regis and the statuette.

  “You do not understand!” LaValle cried. “The halfling has the scepter! The portal cannot be closed from the other side!”

  Pook’s expression shifted from curiosity to concern as the gravity of his wizard’s fears descended over him. “My dear LaValle,” he began calmly, “are you saying that we have an open door to Tarterus in my living quarters?”

  LaValle nodded meekly.

  “Break it! Break it!” Pook screamed at the eunuchs standing beside him. “Heed the wizard’s words! Smash that infernal hoop to pieces!”

  Pook picked up the broken end of his walking stick, the silver-shod, meticulously crafted cane he had been given personally by the Pasha of Calimshan.

  The morning sun was still low in the eastern sky, but already the guildmaster knew that it would not be a good day.

  * * *

  Drizzt, trembling with anguish and anger, roared toward the demodand, his every thrust aimed at a critical spot. The creature, agile and experienced, dodged the initial assault, but it could not stay the enraged drow. Twinkle cut a blocking arm off at the elbow, and the other blade dove into the demodand’s heart. Drizzt felt a surge of power run through his arm as his scimitar sucked the life-force out of the wretched creature, but the drow contained the strength, burying it within his own rage, and held on stubbornly.

  When the thing lay lifeless, Drizzt turned to his companions.

  “I did not…” Regis stammered from across the chasm. “She…I…”

  Neither Bruenor nor Wulfgar could answer him. They stood frozen, staring into the empty darkness below.

  “Run!” Drizzt called, seeing a demodand closing in behind the halfling. “We shall get to you!”

  Regis tore his eyes from the chasm and surveyed the situation. “No need!” he shouted back. He pulled out the statuette and held it up for Drizzt to see. “Guenhwyvar will get me out of here, or perhaps the cat could aid—”

  “No!” Drizzt cut him short, knowing what he was about to suggest. “Summon the panther and be gone!”

  “We will meet again in a better place,” Regis offered, his voice breaking in sniffles. He placed the statuette down before him and called out softly.

  Drizzt took the scepter from Bruenor and put a comforting hand on his friend’s shoulder. He then held the magic item to his chest, attuning his thoughts to its magical emanations.

  His guess was confirmed; the scepter was indeed the key to the portal back to their own plane, a gate that Drizzt sensed was still open. He scooped up Taulmaril and Catti-brie’s belt. “Come,” he told his two friends, still staring at the darkness. He pushed them along the bridge, gently but firmly.

  * * *

  Guenhwyvar sensed the presence of Drizzt Do’Urden as soon as it came into the plane of Tarterus. The great cat moved with hesitancy when Regis asked it to take him away, but the halfling now possessed the statuette and Guenhwyvar had always known Regis as a friend. Soon Regis found himself in the swirling tunnel of blackness, drifting toward the distant light that marked Guenhwyvar’s home plane.

  Then the halfling knew his error.

  The onyx statuette, the link to Guenhwyvar, still lay on the smoky bridge in Tarterus.

  Regis turned himself about, struggling against the pull of the planar tunnel’s currents. He saw the darkness at the back end of the tunnel and could guess the risks of reaching through. He could not leave the statuette, not only for fear of losing his magnificent feline friend, but in revulsion at the thought of some foul beast of the lower planes gaining control over Guenhwyvar. Bravely he poked his three-fingered hand through the closing portal.

  All of his senses jumbled. Overwhelming bursts of signals and images from two planes rushed at him in a nauseating wave. He blocked them away, using his hand as a focal point and concentrating all of his thoughts and energies on the sensations of that hand.

  Then his hand dropped upon something hard, something vividly tangible. It resisted his tug, as though it were not meant to pass through such a gate.

  Regis was fully stretched now, his feet held straight down the tunnel by the incessant pull, and his hand stubbornly latched to the statuette he would not leave behind. With a final heave, with all the strength the little halfling had ever summoned—and just a tiny bit more—he pulled the statuette through the gate.

  The smooth ride of the planar tunnel transformed into a nightmarish bounce and skip, with Regis hurtling head over heels and deflecting off the walls, which twisted suddenly, as if to deny him passage. Through it all, Regis clutched at only one thought: keep the statuette in his grasp.

  He felt he would surely die. He could not survive the beating, the dizzying swirl.

  Then it died away as abruptly as it had begun, and Regis, still holding the statuette, found himself sitting beside Guenhwyvar with his back to an astral tree. He blinked and looked around, hardly believing his fortune.

  “Do not worry,” he told the panther. “Your master and the others will get back to their world.” He looked down at the statuette, his only link to the Prime Material Plane. “But how shall I?”

  While Regis floundered in despair, Guenhwyvar reacted differently. The panther spun about in a complete circuit and roared mightily into the starry vastness of the plane. Regis watched the cat’s actions in amazement as Guenhwyvar leaped about and roared again, then bounded away into the astral nothingness.

  Regis, more confused than ever, looked down at the statuette. One thought, one hope, overrode all others at that moment.

  Guenhwyvar knew something.

  * * *

  With Drizzt taking a ferocious lead, the three frie
nds charged along, cutting down everything that dared to rise in their path. Bruenor and Wulfgar fought wildly, thinking that the drow was leading them to Catti-brie.

  The bridge wound along a curving and rising route, and when Bruenor realized its ascending grade, he grew concerned. He was about to protest, to remind the drow that Catti-brie had fallen below them, but when he looked back, he saw that the area they had started from was clearly above them. Bruenor was a dwarf accustomed to lightless tunnels, and he could detect the slightest grade unerringly. They were going up, more steeply now than before, and the area they had left continued to rise above them.

  “How, elf?” he cried. “Up and up we go, but down by what me eyes be telling me!”

  Drizzt looked back and quickly understood what Bruenor was talking about. The drow didn’t have time for philosophical inquiries; he was merely following the emanations of the scepter that would surely lead them to a gate. Drizzt did pause, though, to consider one possible quirk of the directionless, and apparently circular, plane.

  Another demodand rose up before them, but Wulfgar swatted it from the bridge before it could even ready a strike. Blind rage drove the barbarian now, a third burst of adrenaline that denied his wounds and his weariness. He paused every few steps to look about, searching for something vile to hit, then he rushed back to the front, beside Drizzt, to get the first whack at anything trying to block their path.

  The swirling smoke parted before them suddenly, and they faced a lighted image, blurry, but clearly of their own plane.

  “The gate,” Drizzt said. “The scepter has kept it open. Bruenor will pass through first.”

  Bruenor looked at Drizzt in blank amazement. “Leave?” he asked breathlessly. “How can ye ask me to leave, elf? Me girl’s here.”

  “She is gone, my friend,” Drizzt said softly.

  “Bah!” Bruenor snorted, though it sounded as more of a sniffle. “Don’t ye be so quick to make such a claim!”

  Drizzt looked upon him with sincere sympathy, but refused to relinquish the point or change his course.

  “And if she were gone, I’d stay as well,” Bruenor proclaimed, “to find her body and carry it from this eternal hell!”

  Drizzt grabbed the dwarf by the shoulders and squared up to face him. “Go, Bruenor, back to where we all belong,” he said. “Do not diminish the sacrifice that Catti-brie has made for us. Do not steal the meaning from her fall.”

  “How can ye ask me to leave?” Bruenor said with a sniffle that he did not mask. Wetness glistened the edges of his gray eyes. “How can ye—”

  “Think not of what has passed!” Drizzt said sharply. “Beyond that gate is the wizard that sent us here, the wizard that sent Catti-brie here!”

  It was all Bruenor Battlehammer needed to hear. Fire replaced the tears in his eyes, and with a roar of anger he dove through the portal, his axe leading the way.

  “Now—” Drizzt began, but Wulfgar cut him short.

  “You go, Drizzt,” the barbarian replied. “Avenge Catti-brie and Regis. Finish the quest we undertook together. For myself, there will be no rest. My emptiness will not fade.”

  “She is gone,” Drizzt said again.

  Wulfgar nodded. “As am I,” he said quietly.

  Drizzt searched for some way to refute the argument, but truly Wulfgar’s grief seemed too profound for him to ever recover.

  Then Wulfgar’s gaze shot up, and his mouth gaped in horrified—and elated—disbelief. Drizzt spun about, not as surprised, but still overwhelmed, by the sight before him.

  Catti-brie fell limply and slowly from the dark sky above them.

  It was a circular plane.

  Wulfgar and Drizzt leaned together for support. They could not determine if Catti-brie was alive or dead. She was wounded gravely, at the least, and even as they watched, a winged demodand swooped down and grabbed at her leg with its huge talons.

  Before a conscious thought had time to register in Wulfgar’s mind, Drizzt had Taulmaril bent and sent a silver arrow into flight. It thundered into the side of the demodand’s head just as the creature took hold of the young woman, blasting the thing from life.

  “Go!” Wulfgar yelled at Drizzt, taking one stride. “I see my quest now! I know what I must do!”

  Drizzt had other ideas. He slipped a foot through Wulfgar’s legs and dropped in a spin, driving his other leg into the back of the barbarian’s knees and tripping Wulfgar down to the side, toward the portal. Wulfgar understood the drow’s intentions at once, and he scrambled to regain his balance.

  Again Drizzt was the quicker. The point of a scimitar nicked in under Wulfgar’s cheekbone, keeping him moving in the desired direction. As he neared the portal, just when Drizzt expected him to try some desperate maneuver, the drow drove a boot under his shoulder and kicked him hard.

  Betrayed, Wulfgar tumbled into Pasha Pook’s central chamber. He ignored his surroundings, grabbed at the Taros Hoop and shook it with all his strength.

  “Traitor!” he yelled. “Never will I forget this, cursed drow!”

  “Take your place!” Drizzt yelled back at him from across the planes. “Only Wulfgar has the strength to hold the gate open and secure. Only Wulfgar! Hold it, son of Beornegar. If you care for Drizzt Do’Urden, and if ever you loved Catti-brie, hold the gate!”

  Drizzt could only pray that he had appealed to the small part of rationale accessible in the enraged barbarian. The drow turned from the portal, tucking the scepter into his belt and slinging Taulmaril over his shoulder. Catti-brie was below him now, still falling, still unmoving.

  Drizzt drew out both his scimitars. How long would it take him to pull Catti-brie to a bridge and find his way back to the portal? he wondered. Or would he, too, be caught in an endless, doomed, fall?

  And how long could Wulfgar hold the gate open?

  He brushed away the questions. He had no time to speculate on their answers.

  The fires gleamed in his lavender eyes, Twinkle glowed in one hand, and he felt the urgings of his other blade, pleading for a demodand’s heart to bite.

  With all the courage that had marked Drizzt Do’Urden’s existence coursing through his veins, and with all the fury of his perceptions of injustice focused on the fate of that beautiful and broken woman falling endlessly in a hopeless void, he dove into the gloom.

  23. If Ever You Loved Catti-brie

  Bruenor had come into Pook’s chambers cursing and swinging, and by the time his initial momentum had worn away, he was far across the room from the Taros Hoop and from the two hill giant eunuchs that Pook had on guard. The guildmaster was closest to the raging dwarf, looking at him more in curiosity than terror.

  Bruenor paid Pook no mind whatsoever. He looked beyond the plump man, to a robed form sitting against a wall: the wizard who had banished Catti-brie to Tarterus.

  Recognizing the murderous hate in the red-bearded dwarf’s eyes, LaValle rolled to his feet and scrambled through the door to his own room. His racing heart calmed when he heard the click of the door behind him, for it was a magic doorway with several holding and warding spells in place. He was safe—or so he thought.

  Often wizards were blinded by their own considerable strength to other—less sophisticated, perhaps, but equally strong—forms of power. LaValle could not know the boiling cauldron that was Bruenor Battlehammer, and could not anticipate the brutality of the dwarf’s rage.

  His surprise was complete when a mithril axe, like a bolt of his own lightning, sundered his magically barred door to kindling and the wild dwarf stormed in.

  * * *

  Wulfgar, oblivious to the surroundings and wanting only to return to Tarterus and Catti-brie, came through the Taros Hoop just as Bruenor exited the room. Drizzt’s call from across the planes, though, begging him to hold the portal open, could not be ignored. However the barbarian felt at that moment, for Catti-brie or Drizzt, he could not deny that his place was in guarding the mirror.

  Still, the image of Catti-brie falling through the eterna
l gloom of that horrid place burned at his heart, and he wanted to spring right back through the Taros Hoop to rush to her aid.

  Before the barbarian could decide whether to follow his heart or his thoughts, a huge fist slammed into the side of his head, dropping him to the floor. He flopped facedown between the tree trunk legs of two of Pook’s hill giants. It was a difficult way to enter a fight, but Wulfgar’s rage was every bit as intense as Bruenor’s.

  The giants tried to drop their heavy feet on Wulfgar, but he was too agile for such a clumsy maneuver. He sprang up between them and slammed one square in the face with a huge fist. The giant stared blankly at Wulfgar for a long moment, disbelieving that a human could deliver such a punch, then it hopped backward weirdly and dropped limply to the floor.

  Wulfgar spun on the other, shattering its nose with the butt end of Aegis-fang. The giant clutched its face in both hands and reeled. For it, the fight was already over.

  Wulfgar couldn’t take the time to ask. He kicked the giant in the chest, launching it halfway across the room.

  “Now, there is only me,” came a voice. Wulfgar looked across the room to the huge chair that served as the guildmaster’s throne, and to Pasha Pook, standing behind it.

  Pook reached down behind the chair and pulled out a neatly concealed heavy crossbow, loaded and ready. “And I may be fat like those two,” Pook chuckled, “but I am not stupid.” He leveled the crossbow on the back of the chair.

  Wulfgar glanced around. He was caught, fully, with no chance to dodge away.

  But maybe he didn’t have to.

  Wulfgar firmed his jaw and puffed out his chest. “Right here, then,” he said without flinching, tapping his finger over his heart. “Shoot me down.” He cast a glance over his shoulder, to where the image in the Taros Hoop now showed the shadows of gathering demodands. “And you defend the entrance to the plane of Tarterus.”

  Pook eased his finger off the trigger.