Entreri nodded his reluctant approval of the plan. “Did you hear?” he hissed at Catti-brie. “You have three more days to live, unless your friends arrive. If they are dead in the moors, we have no need of you.”
Catti-brie showed no emotion throughout the entire conversation, determined not to let Entreri gain any advantage by learning of her weakness, or strength. She had faith that her friends were not dead. The likes of Bruenor Battlehammer and Drizzt Do’Urden were not destined to die in an unmarked grave in some desolate fen. And Catti-brie would never accept that Wulfgar was dead until the proof was irrefutable. Holding to her faith, her duty to her friends was to maintain a blank facade. She knew that she was winning her personal battle, that the paralyzing fear Entreri held over her lessened every day. She would be ready to act when the time came. She just had to make certain that Entreri and Sydney didn’t realize it.
She had noted that the labors of the road, and his new companions, were affecting the assassin. Entreri revealed more emotion, more desperation, every day to get this job over and done. Was it possible that he might make a mistake?
“It has come!” echoed a cry from the hallway, and all three started reflexively, then recognized the voice as Jierdan’s, who had been watching the Vault of Sages. A second later, the door burst in and the soldier scrambled into the room, his breathing ragged.
“The dwarf?” Sydney asked, grabbing Jierdan to steady him.
“No!” Jierdan cried. “The golem! Bok has entered Silvery-moon! They have it trapped down by the west gate. A wizard was summoned.”
“Damn!” Sydney spat and she started from the room. Entreri moved to follow her, grabbing Jierdan’s arm and yanking him around, bringing them face to face.
“Stay with the girl,” the assassin ordered.
Jierdan glared at him. “She is your problem.”
Entreri easily could have killed the soldier right there, Catti-brie noted, hoping that Jierdan had read the assassin’s deadly look as clearly as she.
“Do as you are told!” Sydney screamed at Jierdan, ending further argument. She and Entreri left, the assassin slamming the door behind them.
“He would have killed you,” Catti-brie told Jierdan when Entreri and Sydney had gone. “You know that.”
“Silence,” Jierdan growled. “I’ve had enough of your vile words!” He approached her threateningly, fists clenched at his sides.
“Strike me, then,” Catti-brie challenged, knowing that even if he did, his code as a soldier would not allow him to continue such an assault on a helpless foe. “Though in truth I be yer only friend on this cursed road!”
Jierdan stopped his advance. “Friend?” he balked.
“As close as ye’ll find out here,” Catti-brie replied. “Ye’re a prisoner here suren as I be.” She recognized the vulnerability of this proud man, who had been reduced to servitude by the arrogance of Sydney and Entreri, and drove her point home hard. “They mean to kill ye, ye know that now, and even if ye escape the blade, ye’ll have nowhere to go. Ye’ve abandoned yer fellows in Luskan, and the wizard in the tower’d put ye to a bad end if ye ever went back there, anyway!”
Jierdan tensed in frustrated rage, but did not lash out.
“Me friends are close by,” Catti-brie continued despite the warning signs. “They be living still, I know, and we’ll be meeting them any day. That’ll be our time, soldier, to live or to die. For meself, I see a chance. Whether me friends win or I be bargained over, me life’ll be me own. But for yerself, the road looks dark indeed! If me friends win, they’ll cut ye down, and if yer mates win …” She let the grim possibilities hang unspoken for a few moments to let Jierdan weigh them fully.
“When they get what they seek, they’ll need ye no more,” she said grimly. She noted his trembling, not of fear, but of rage, and pushed him past the edge of control. “They may let ye live,” she said, snidely. “Might that they be needin’ a lackey!”
He did strike her then, just once, and recoiled.
Catti-brie accepted the blow without complaint, even smiling through the pain, though she was careful to hide her satisfaction. Jierdan’s loss of selfrestraint proved to her that the continual disrespect Sydney, and especially Entreri, had shown for him had fueled the flames of discontent to the verge of explosion.
She knew, too, that when Entreri returned and saw the bruise Jierdan had given her, those fires would burn even brighter.
Sydney and Entreri rushed through the streets of Silvery-moon, following the obvious sounds of commotion. When they reached the wall, they found Bok encapsulated in a sphere of glowing green lights. Riderless horses paced about to the groans of a dozen injured soldiers, and one old man, the wizard, stood before the globe of light, scratching his beard and studying the trapped golem. A Knight of Silver of considerable rank stood impatiently beside him, twitching nervously and clasping the pommel of his sheathed sword tightly.
“Destroy the thing and be done with it,” Sydney heard the knight say to the wizard.
“Oh, no!” exclaimed the wizard. “But it is marvelous!”
“Do you mean to hold it here forever?” the knight snapped back. “Just look around—”
“Your pardon, good sirs,” Sydney interrupted. “I am Sydney, of the Hosttower of the Arcane in Luskan. Perhaps I may be of some help.”
“Well met,” said the wizard. “I am Mizzen of the Second School of Knowledge. Know you the possessor of this magnificent creature?”
“Bok is mine,” she admitted.
The knight stared at her, amazed that a woman, or anyone for that matter, controlled the monster that had knocked aside some of his finest warriors and taken down a section of the city wall. “The price shall be high, Sydney of Luskan,” he snarled.
“The Hosttower shall make amends,” she agreed. “Now would you release the golem to my control?” she asked the wizard. “Bok will obey me.”
“Nay!” snapped the knight. “I’ll not have the thing turned loose again.”
“Calm, Gavin,” Mizzen said to him. He turned to Sydney. “I should like to study the golem, if I may. Truly the finest construction I have ever witnessed, with strength beyond the expectations of the books of creation.”
“I am sorry,” Sydney answered, “but my time is short. I have many roads yet to travel. Name the price of the damage wrought by the golem and I shall relay it to my master, on my word as a member of the Hosttower.”
“You’ll pay now,” argued the guard.
Again Mizzen silenced him. “Excuse Gavin’s anger,” he said to Sydney. He surveyed the area. “Perhaps we might strike a bargain. None seem to have been seriously injured.”
“Three men have been carried away!” Gavin rebutted. “And at least one horse is lame and will have to be destroyed!”
Mizzen waved his hand as if to belittle the claims. “They will heal,” he said. “They will heal. And the wall needed repairs anyway.” He looked at Sydney and scratched his beard again. “Here is my offer, and a fairer one you’ll not hear! Give me the golem for one night, just one, and I shall amend the damage it has wreaked. Just one night.”
“And you’ll not disassemble Bok,” Sydney stated.
“Not even the head?” Mizzen begged.
“Not even the head,” Sydney insisted. “And I shall come for the golem at the first light of dawn.”
Mizzen scratched his beard again. “A marvellous work,” he mumbled, peering into the magical prison. “Agreed!”
“If that monster—” Gavin began angrily.
“Oh, where is your sense of adventure, Gavin?” Mizzen shot back before the knight could even finish his warning. “Remember the precepts of our town, man. We are here to learn. If you only understood the potential of such a creation!”
They started away from Sydney, paying her no more mind, the wizard still rambling into Gavin’s ear. Entreri slipped from the shadows of a nearby building to Sydney’s side.
“Why did the thing come?” he asked her.
She shook her head. “There can be only one answer.”
’The drow?”
“Yes,” she said. “Bok must have followed them into the city.”
“Unlikely,” reasoned Entreri, “though the golem might have seen them. If Bok came crashing through behind the drow and his valiant friends, they would have been down here at the battle, helping to fend it off.”
“Then they might be out there still.”
“Or perhaps they were leaving the city when Bok saw them,” said Entreri. “I will make inquiries with the guards at the gate. Fear not, our prey is close at hand!”
They arrived back at the room a couple of hours later. From the guards at the gate they had learned of the drow’s party being turned away and now they were anxious to retrieve Bok and be on their way.
Sydney started a string of instructions to Jierdan concerning their departure in the morning, but what grabbed Entreri’s immediate attention was Catti-brie’s bruised eye. He moved over to check her bonds and satisfied that they were intact, spun on Jierdan with his dagger drawn.
Sydney, quickly surmising the situation, cut him off. “Not now!” she demanded. “Our rewards are at hand. We cannot afford this!”
Entreri chuckled evilly and slid the dagger away. “We will yet discuss this,” he promised Jierdan with a snarl. “Do not touch the girl again.”
Perfect, Catti-brie thought. From Jierdan’s perspective, the assassin might as well have said outright that he meant to kill him.
More fuel for the flames.
When she retrieved the golem from Mizzen the next morning, Sydney’s suspicions that Bok had seen the drow’s party were confirmed. They set out from Silverymoon at once, Bok leading them down the same trail Bruenor and his friends had taken the morning before
Like the previous party, they, too, were watched.
Alustriel brushed her flowing hair from her fair face, catching the morning sun in her green eyes as she looked down upon the band with growing curiosity. The lady had learned from the gatekeepers that someone had been inquiring about the dark elf.
She couldn’t yet figure out what part this new group leaving Silverymoon played in the quest, but she suspected that they were up to no good. Alustriel had sated her own thirst for adventure many years before, but she wished now that she could somehow aid the drow and his friends on their noble mission. Affairs of state pressed in on her, though, and she had no time for such diversions. She considered for a moment dispatching a patrol to capture this second party, so that she could learn its intentions.
Then she turned back to her city, reminding herself that she was just a minor player in the search for Mithral Hall. She could only trust in the abilities of Drizzt Do’Urden and his friends.
TRAILS Anew
n my travels on the surface, I once met a man who wore his religious beliefs like a badge of honor upon the sleeves of his tunic. “I am a Gondsman!” he proudly told me as we sat beside each other at a tavern bar, I sipping my wine, and he, I fear, partaking a bit too much of his more potent drink. He went on to explain the premise of his religion, his very reason for being, that all things were based in science, in mechanics, and in discovery. He even asked if he could take a piece of my flesh, that he might study it to determine why the skin of the drow elf is black. “What element is missing,” he wondered, “that makes your race different from your surface kin?”
I think that the Gondsman honestly believed his claim that if he could merely find the various elements that comprised the drow skin, he might affect a change in that pigmentation to make the dark elves become more akin to their surface relatives, and given his devotion, almost fanaticism, it seemed to me as if he felt he could affect a change in more than physical appearance.
Because, in his view of the world, all things could be so explained and corrected.
How could I even begin to enlighten him to the complexity? How could I show him the variations between drow and surface elf in the very view of the world resulting from eons of walking widely disparate roads?
To a Gondsman fanatic, everything can be broken down, taken apart and put back together. Even a wizard’s magic might be no more than a way of conveying universal energies—and that, too, might one day be replicated. My Gondsman companion promised me that he and his fellow inventor priests would one day replicate every spell in any wizard’s repertoire, using natural elements in the proper combinations.
But there was no mention of the discipline any wizard must attain as he perfects his craft. There was no mention of the fact that powerful wizardly magic is not given to anyone, but rather, is earned, day by day, year by year, and decade by decade. It is a lifelong pursuit with a gradual increase in power, as mystical as it is secular.
So it is with the warrior. The Gondsman spoke of some weapon called an arquebus, a tubular missile thrower with many times the power of the strongest crossbow.
Such a weapon strikes terror into the heart of the true warrior, and not because he fears that he will fall victim to it, or even that he fears that it will one day replace him. Such weapons offend because the true warrior understands that while one is learning how to use a sword, one should also be learning why and when to use a sword. To grant the power of a weapon master to anyone at all, without effort, without training and proof that the lessons have taken hold, is to deny the responsibility that comes with such power.
Of course, there are wizards and warriors who perfect their craft without learning the level of emotional discipline to accompany it, and certainly there are those who attain great prowess in either profession to the detriment of all the world—Artemis Entreri seems a perfect example—but these individuals are, thankfully, rare, and mostly because their emotional lacking will be revealed early in their careers, and it often brings about a fairly abrupt downfall. But if the Gondsman has his way, if his errant view of paradise should come to fruition, then all the years of training will mean little. Any fool could pick up an arquebus or some other powerful weapon and summarily destroy a skilled warrior. Or any child could utilize a Gondsman’s magic machine and replicate a fireball, perhaps, and burn down half a city.
When I pointed out some of my fears to the Gondsman, he seemed shocked— not at the devastating possibilities, but rather, at my, as he put it, arrogance. “The inventions of the Priests of Gond will make all equal!” he declared. “We will lift up the lowly peasant.”
Hardly. All that the Gondsman and his cronies would do is ensure death and destruction at a level heretofore unknown across the Realms.
There was nothing more to be said, for I knew that the man would never hear my words. He thought me, or, for that matter, anyone who achieved a level of skill in the fighting or magic arts, arrogant, because he could not appreciate the sacrifice and dedication necessary for such achievement.
Arrogant? If the Gondsman’s so-called lowly peasant came to me with a desire to learn the fighting arts, I would gladly teach him. I would revel in his successes as much as in my own, but I would demand, always I would demand, a sense of humility, dedication and an understanding of this power I was teaching, an appreciation of the potential for destruction. I would teach no one who did not continue to display an appropriate level of compassion and community. To learn how to use a sword, one must first master when to use a sword.
There is one other error in the Gondsman’s line of reasoning, I believe, on a purely emotional level. If machines replace achievement, then to what will people aspire? And who are we, truly, without such goals?
Beware the engineers of society, I say, who would make everyone in all the world equal. Opportunity should be equal, must be equal, but achievement must remain individual.
—Drizzt Do’Urden
squat stone tower stood in a small dell against the facing of a steep hill. Because it was ivy covered and overgrown, a casual passer-by would not even have noticed the structure.
But the Companions of the Hall were not casual in their search. This was the Herald’s Hold
fast, possibly the solution to their entire search.
“Are you certain that this is the place?” Regis asked Drizzt as they peered over a small bluff. Truly the ancient tower appeared more a ruin. Not a thing stirred anywhere nearby, not even animals, as though an eerie, reverent hush surrounded the place.
“I am sure,” Drizzt replied. “Feel the age of the tower. It has stood for many centuries. Many centuries.”
“And how long has it been empty?” Bruenor asked, thus far disappointed in the place that had been described to him as the brightest promise to his goal.
“It is not empty,” Drizzt replied. “Unless the information I received was in err.”
Bruenor jumped to his feet and stormed over the bluff. “Probably right,” he grumbled. “Some troll or scab yeti’s inside the door watching us right now, I’ll wager, drooling for us to come in! Let’s be on with it, then! Sundabar’s a day more away than when we left!”
The dwarf’s three friends joined him on the remnants of the overgrown path that had once been a walkway to the tower’s door. They approached the ancient stone door cautiously, with weapons drawn.
Moss-covered and worn to a smooth finish by the toll of time, apparently it hadn’t been opened in many, many years.
“Use yer arms, boy,” Bruenor told Wulfgar. “If any man can get this thing opened, it’s yerself!”
Wulfgar leaned Aegis-fang against the wall and moved before the huge door. He set his feet as best he could and ran his hands across the stone in search of a good niche to push against.
But as soon as he applied the slightest pressure to the stone portal, it swung inward, silently and without effort.
A cool breeze wafted out of the still darkness within, carrying a blend of unfamiliar scents and an aura of great age. The friends sensed the place as otherworldly, belonging to a different time, perhaps, and it was not without a degree of trepidation that Drizzt led them in.