Starless Night

 

This the place?" the battlerager asked, shouting so that his gruff voice could be heard over the whipping wind. He had come out of Mithril Hall with Regis and Brue  nor, had forced the halfling to take him out, actually,  in search of the body of Artemis Entreri. "Ye find the clues where ye find them, " Pwent had said in typically cryptic explanation.



Regis pulled the cowl of his oversized cloak low to ward off the wind's sting. They were in a narrow valley, a gully, the sides of which seemed to focus the considerable wind into a torrent. "It was around here, " Regis said, shrugging his shoulders to indicate that he could not be sure. When he had come out to find the battered Entreri, he had taken a higher route, along the top of the ravine and other ledges. He was certain that he was in the general region, but things looked too different from this perspective to be sure.



"We'll find him, me king, " Thibbledorf assured Bruenor.



"For what that's worth, " the dejected Bruenor grumbled.



Regis winced at the dwarf's deflated tones. He recognized clearly that Bruenor was slipping back into despair. The dwarves had found no way through the maze of tunnels beneath Mithril Hall, though a thousand were searching, and word from the east was not promising, if Catti-brie and Drizzt had gone to Silvery  moon, they were long past that place now. Bruenor was coming to realize the futility of it all. Weeks had passed and he had not found a way out of Mithril Hall that would take him anywhere near his friends. The dwarf was losing hope.



"But, me king!" Pwent roared. "He knows the way."



"He's dead, " Bruenor reminded the battlerager.



"Not to worry!" bellowed Pwent. "Priests can talk to the dead,  and he might have a map. Oh, we'll find our way to this drow city, I tell ye, and there I'll go, for me king! I'll kill every stinking drow,  except that ranger fellow, " he added, throwing a wink at Regis, ",  and bring yer girl back home!"



Bruenor just sighed and motioned for Pwent to get on with the hunt. Despite all the complaining, though, the dwarf king privately hoped that he might find some satisfaction in seeing Entreri's bro  ken body.



They moved on for a short while, Regis constantly peeking out from his cowl, trying to get his bearings. Finally, the halfling spotted a high outcropping, a branchlike jag of rock.



"There, " he said, pointing the way. "That must be it."



Pwent looked up, then followed a direct line to the ravine's bot  tom. He began scrambling around on all fours, sniffing the ground as if trying to pick up the corpse's scent.



Regis watched him, amused, then turned to Bruenor, who stood against the gully's wall, his hand on the stone, shaking his head.



"What is it?" Regis asked, walking over. Hearing the question and noticing his king, Pwent scampered to join them.



When he got close, Regis noticed something along the stone wall, something gray and matted. He peered closer as Bruenor pulled a bit of the substance from the stone and held it out.



"What is it?" Regis asked again, daring to touch it. A stringy fil  ament came away with his retracting finger, and it took some effort to shake the gooey stuff free.



Bruenor had to swallow hard several times. Pwent ran off, sniff  ing at the wall, then across the ravine to consider the stone on the other side.



"It's what's left of a web, " the dwarf king answered grimly.



Both Bruenor and Regis looked up to the jutting rock and silently considered the implications of a web strung below the falling assassin.



Fingers flashed too quickly for him to follow, conveying some instructions that the assassin did not understand. He shook his head furiously, and the flustered drow clapped his ebon skinned hands together, uttered, "Iblith, " and walked away.



Iblith, Artemis Entreri echoed silently in his thoughts. The drow word for offal, it was the word he had heard the most since Jarlaxle had taken him to this wretched place. What could that drow soldier have expected from him? He was only beginning to learn the intri  cate drow hand code, its finger movements so precise and detailed that Entreri doubted that one in twenty humans could even begin to manage it. And he was trying desperately to learn the drow spoken language as well. He knew a few words and had a basic under  standing of drow sentence structure, so he could put simple ideas together.



And he knew the word iblith all too well.



The assassin leaned back against the wall of the small cave, this week's base of operations for Bregan D'aerthe. He felt smaller, more insignificant, than ever. When Jarlaxle had first revived him, in a cave in the ravine outside of Mithril Hall, he had thought the merce  nary's offer (actually more of a command, Entreri now realized) to take him to Menzoberranzan a wonderful thing, a grand adventure.



This was no adventure; this was living hell. Entreri was colnbluth, non drow, living in the midst of twenty thousand of the less than tolerant race. They didn't particularly hate humans, no more than they hated everybody else, but because he was colnbluth,  non drow, the once powerful assassin found himself beneath the lowest ranks of Bregan D'aerthe's drow force. No matter what he did, no matter who he killed, in Menzoberranzan, Artemis Entreri could never rank higher than twenty thousand and first.



And the spiders! Entreri hated spiders, and the crawly things were everywhere in the drow city. They were bred into larger, more poisonous varieties, and were kept as pets. And to kill a spider was a crime carrying the punishment of jivvin quui'elghinn, torture until death. In the great cavern's eastern end, the moss bed and mush  room grove near the lake of Donigarten, where Entreri was often put to work herding goblin slaves, spiders crawled about by the thousands. They crawled around him, crawled on him, hung down in strands, dangling inches from the tormented man's face.



The assassin drew his green gleaming sword and held its wicked edge before his eyes. At least there was more light now in the city; for some reason that Entreri did not know, magical lights and flickering torches had become much more common in Menzo  berranzan.



"It would not be wise to stain so marvelous a weapon with drow blood, " came a familiar voice from the doorway, easily speak  ing the Common tongue. Entreri didn't take his gaze from the blade as Jarlaxle entered the small room.



"You presume that I would find the strength to harm one of the mighty drow, " the assassin replied. "How could I, the iblith, . . ." he started to ask, but Jarlaxle's laughter mocked his self pity. Entreri glanced over at the mercenary and saw the drow holding his wide  brimmed hat in his hand, fiddling with the diatryma feather.



"I have never underestimated your prowess, assassin, " Jarlaxle said. "You have survived several fights against Drizzt Do'Urden,  and few in Menzoberranzan will ever make that claim."



"I was his fighting equal, " Entreri said through gritted teeth. Simply uttering the words stung him. He had battled Drizzt several times, but only twice had they fought without a premature interrup  tion. On both those occasions, Entreri had lost. Entreri wanted des  perately to even the score, to prove himself the better fighter. Still,  he had to admit, to himself, at least, that in his heart he did not desire another fight with Drizzt. After the first time he had lost to Drizzt, in the muddy sewers and streets of Calimport, Entreri had lived every day plotting revenge, had shaped his life around one event, his rematch with Drizzt. But after his second loss, the one in which he had wound up hanging, broken and miserable, from a jag of rock in a windswept ravine...



But what? Entreri wondered. Why did he no longer wish to battle that renegade drow? Had the point been proven, the decision rendered? Or was he simply too afraid? The emotions were unset  tling to Artemis Entreri, as out of place within him as he was in the city of drow.



"I was his fighting equal, " he whispered again, with as much conviction as he could muster.



"I would not state that openly if I were you, " the mercenary replied. "Dantrag Baenre and Uthegental Armgo would fight one another simply to determine which of them got to kill you first."



Entreri did not blink; his sword flared, as if reflecting his sim  mering pride and anger.



Jarlaxle laughed again. "To determine which would get to fight you first, " the mercenary corrected, and he swept a low and apolo  getic bow.



Still the out of place assassin didn't blink. Might he regain a measure of pride by killing one of these legendary drow warriors? he wondered. Or would he lose again, and, worse than being killed,  be forced to live with that fact?



Entreri snapped the sword down and slipped it into its scab  bard. He had never been so hesitant, so unsure. Even as a young boy, surviving on the brutal streets of Calimshan's crowded cities,  Entreri had brimmed with confidence, and had used that confidence to advantage. But not here, not in this place.



"Your soldiers taunt me, " he snapped suddenly, transferring his frustration the mercenary's way.



Jarlaxle laughed and put his hat back on his bald head. "Kill a few, " he offered, and Entreri couldn't tell if the cold, calculating drow was kidding or not. "The rest will then leave you alone."



Entreri spat on the floor. Leave him alone? The rest would wait until he was asleep, then cut him into little pieces to feed to the spi  ders of Donigarten. That thought broke the assassin's narrow eyed concentration, forced him to wince. He had killed a female (which,  in Menzoberranzan, was much worse than killing a male), and some house in the city might be starving their spiders right now in antici  pation of a human feast.



"Ah, but you are so crude, " the mercenary said, as though he pitied the man. Entreri sighed and looked away, bringing a hand up to rub his saliva wetted lips. What was he becoming? In Calimport,  in the guilds, even among the pashas and those others that called themselves his masters, he had been in control. He was a killer hired by the most treacherous, double dealing thieves in all the Realms,  and yet, not one had ever tried to cross Artemis Entreri. How he longed to see the pale sky of Calimport again!



"Fear not, my abbil, " Jarlaxle said, using the drow word for trusted friend. "You will again see the sunrise." The mercenary smiled widely at Entreri's expression, apparently understanding that he had just read the assassin's very thoughts. "You and I will watch the dawn from the doorstep of Mithril Hall."



They were going back after Drizzt, Entreri realized. This time,  judging from the lights in Menzoberranzan, which he now came to understand, Clan Battlehammer itself would be crushed!



"That is, " Jarlaxle continued teasingly, "unless House Horlbar takes the time to discover that it was you who slew one of its matron mothers. ~



With a click of his boot and a tip of his hat, Jarlaxle spun out of the room.



Jarlaxle knew! And the female had been a matron mother! Feel  ing perfectly miserable, Entreri leaned heavily against the wall. How was he to know that the wicked beast in the alley was a damned matron mother?



The walls seemed to close in on the man, suffocating him. Cold sweat beaded on his normally cool brow, and he labored to draw breath. All his thoughts centered on possible escape, but they inevitably slammed against unyielding stone walls. He was caught by logistics as much as by drow blades.



He had tried to escape once, had run out of Menzoberranzan through the eastern exit, beyond Donigarten. But where could he go? The Underdark was a maze of dangerous tunnels and deep holes filled with monsters the assassin did not know how to fight. Entreri was a creature of the very different surface world. He did not understand the wild Underdark, could not hope to survive there for long. Certainly he would never find his own way back to the surface. He was trapped, caged, stripped of his pride and his dig  nity, and, sooner or later, he was going to be horribly killed.