The Sentinels

by R. A. Salvatore

  Her expression soured. “You would need permission,” she said. “A sponsor from among those the library trusts would be your best bet.”

  “I don’t know anyone in Silverymoon,” I said.

  “Then you’re out of luck.”

  “Well, maybe you can help me here, then,” I said. “I’m looking for information on something.”

  “If it’s in the public rooms, I can help you find it,” she said.

  I pondered for a long moment whether I should trust this woman, but decided I had no real choice. And after all, this was a library in one of the great cities of the North, a city with a well-earned reputation as dedicated to study, to learning. I doubted she’d have some nefarious motive.

  “I’m looking for information on the Stone of Tymora,” I said.

  Joen cast me a doubtful glance. Apparently she’d been thinking the same thing I had, though perhaps she’d come to a different conclusion on the wisdom of trusting the librarian.

  The woman, for her part, seemed unfazed. “That’s an unusual request,” she said. “But any information on artifacts, assuming we have such information, would be in the restricted section. I’m sorry.” She once again looked down to her tomes.

  At a loss, I turned and slunk out of the building. Joen followed.

  “Well, we tried, eh?” she said, putting her hand on my shoulder.

  “We failed,” I answered. The beautiful plaza in front of the library seemed so out of place, given my foul mood.

  “They might not even have anything, you know?”

  “But they might, and I can’t even try.”

  “Well, we can try to find a sponsor, then.” I could tell she was just trying to cheer me up, that she didn’t really think it particularly plausible, at least for now. She would rather we give up and move on.

  I unfettered Haze from the post I’d tied her to outside the library. “Come,” I said. “Let’s find a room for the evening. We can head back west in the morning.”

  “Oi, you’re giving up?” she asked, shocked.

  “Isn’t that what you want?”

  “Well, um, sort of, I guess,” Joen stuttered. “I mean, I want to travel and all, and I … I don’t know. I don’t like seeing you so down, you know?”

  I climbed onto the horse and helped Joen up behind me.

  I smiled at her. “Well, then you’ll be happy to know I’m not done quite yet. I want to go back to the Tower of Twilight. I bet Malchor can get us into the library.”

  “If he could, why didn’t he send word ahead?” she asked.

  I shrugged.

  “Oi,” Joen said after a moment. “What about that elf?”

  “What elf?” I asked.

  “The one who pointed you to Malchor in the first place. The dark elf.”

  I pulled the reins sharply, bringing Haze to a halt. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

  “Hey, you there, guard,” I called to a passing man in silver armor.

  “Move along, citizen. I’m very busy,” the guard answered, continuing on his way. I kicked Haze into a slow walk beside him.

  “I’m looking for someone,” I said.

  “Best of luck finding him,” he replied. “Or her, as the case may be.”

  “Do you know Drizzt Do’Urden?”

  The guard stopped and stared at me. “Course,” he said. “All the guards here know him. We’ve been told specifically to let him pass and not bother him. Only one of his kind I know gets that sort of treatment in Silverymoon.”

  “Is he here now?” I asked. “Is he in the city?”

  “Last I heard, aye. He was visiting with the Lady.”

  “The Lady?” Joen asked.

  “Lady Alustriel,” the guard said, and he looked confused when we looked confused. “Our protector and greatest heroine, Lady Alustriel of Silverymoon? One of Mystra’s blessed Chosen?”

  I had indeed heard of the Chosen of the goddess of magic, nearly godlike beings themselves. Drizzt truly had powerful friends.

  “Do you know where I could find him?” I asked.

  “Ask around,” the guard advised with a shrug. “He’ll get wind of it soon enough, and find you. But a word of advice …”

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “If you mean him any harm,” the guard warned, “I’d give up now and save yourself a couple scimitars to the belly.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  We managed to find a clean stable for Haze, then set out into the glorious city in search of Drizzt. By the time night fell, we’d been kicked out of every tavern and inn in town. Almost everyone had seemed to know the drow—they knew of him, at least. But everybody had looked at us as though we were crazy or just a couple of irritating kids. The best we had gotten out of anyone was, “If I run into him, I’ll let him know a couple of kids’re lookin’ for him.” We got that about a quarter of the time. The rest of the time was more like, “Get outta here. This ain’t no place for kids!”

  As we wandered down a particularly dark, winding thoroughfare, Joen asked me, “Well, what now?”

  “I think there’s another tavern up the street here,” I replied. “Maybe if we ask people going in or coming out—”

  “No,” she interrupted me. “I’m getting tired. We need to find someplace to sleep.”

  I shrugged but didn’t answer. I was too busy being frustrated to be tired.

  “I’d be happy to curl up in the hay next to Haze,” Joen said, nudging me with her elbow.

  I sighed and nodded. “I guess we can try again in the morning.”

  The stables were the other way, so we stopped in the empty street and turned around. When we did, we seemed to startle a pair of men a few yards behind us on the street. They recovered quickly, but there was something about their manner that worried me, so I nudged Joen again and used my eyes to indicate the two shadowy figures. We’d both spent enough time in the rough and tumble cities of the Sword Coast to be wary of strangers on the street at night, and though we stayed calm, we were ready for anything as we passed.

  The two men stopped walking and one leaned against a building. I could tell they were looking at us as we passed, and though they whispered quietly to each other, I was sure I heard one of them say, “… the stone and be done with it.”

  My hand went to my sword, which startled Joen. She stepped away from me and reached for her daggers. On cue, the two men threw back the heavy, black, hooded cloaks they wore and drew wicked slim-bladed daggers of their own.

  “Good ears, boy,” one of them said.

  I brought my cutlass up to protect myself, and Joen did the same with her daggers.

  “We don’t want any trouble, mates,” she said.

  The other man smiled, showing a few missing teeth, and said, “Well, girlie, seems as trouble wants you.”

  I didn’t recognize either of them, but their intentions were plain to both of us. When they came on, we were ready. And the closer they got, the better I could see them. The symbols of Beshaba, the goddess of bad luck, that both of them wore glinted in the dim moonlight.

  “Who sent y—,” I started to ask, but was cut off by a lunging stab from one of the cultists. I knocked his blade away and twisted my sword around and down in the manner of Master Kheene, author of The Well-Tempered Bladesman. That three-hundred-year-old advice had stood me in good stead—my blade nicked the man’s hand and he hissed and stepped back, bumping into his friend enough that the second man’s lunge at Joen was ruined.

  Joen skipped back three quick steps and spun her daggers in her hand, faking as if to throw. Both of the cultists dodged the expected attack, but it never came. Instead, the one I’d nicked leaned in to my follow-up attack, and the tip of my cutlass plunged two inches deep into his right biceps. He shouted a word I’d never heard before, and I’d heard a lot of words like it from the sailors of the Sword Coast.

  He stepped back, twisting away from me so fast he stumbled. But his friend recovered and lunged at Joen, who slipped to one side fast—but not fas
t enough. Though she was out of reach of the cultist’s knife, the man spun in a fast and sudden kick that hit Joen on the shoulder and drove her to the street.

  “Joen!” I called.

  “We were to take yer stone, boy,” the man I’d stabbed growled at me. “But now I think I’ll have to kill you too.”

  By the cold look on his face, that idea didn’t seem to bother him at all, and he slashed at me, running in to try to get too close to me for my cutlass to be of any use.

  He succeeded, and had Malchor not drilled us for a full tenday on how to stretch our necks to one side, he would have stabbed me in the eye. Instead, he overreached and I brought my knee up between his legs.

  He doubled over with a pained grunt and almost went down to one knee. I pushed against him, trying to knock him down, but he was too heavy.

  “Maimun!” Joen called. When I looked up, my blood ran cold. The other man held her right wrist in his free hand and had his dagger at her throat.

  “Drop ’em, little sister,” the cultist said, and Joen looked at me for a cue as to what to do next.

  I hesitated just long enough—barely a heartbeat—for the man I’d kneed to stand up, fast, and bowl me right over. He must have been twice as heavy as I. I grunted when I hit the cobblestones, then gasped when my cutlass clattered out of my hand.

  “Now,” the man who held Joen said. The other man advanced on me with murder in his eyes, then he lay down on the ground.

  I blinked. What just happened?

  He screamed, but the sound stopped short, replaced by a feral growl. I blinked again, not sure what I was seeing. It was as though a mammoth shadow had materialized out of the dark night air to press the cultist to the ground.

  The man holding Joen said another harsh word, one the crewmen of Sea Sprite used to say when Captain Deudermont wasn’t around.

  “Holy—!” Joen started to say, but stopped with a gasp when the man holding her wrist, holding a dagger to her throat, was yanked away from her and into the impenetrable darkness at the side of the street. There was the sound of a ruckus somewhere out in the darkness, a grunt, and a sound like a heavy bag of rice or flower dropping to the ground.

  Joen stepped back from both shadows, confused and frightened, while I scrambled to my feet, backing away from the shadow that still held the cultist to the ground. It wasn’t a shadow, but an immense black cat unlike anything I’d seen before.

  The man had fainted, or maybe the weight of the terrifying beast that sat on him had rendered him unconscious, making him as helpless as a baby.

  “Thank you, Guen,” a familiar voice sounded, echoing in the otherwise empty street.

  Drizzt Do’Urden emerged from the darkness as the great panther backed away and seemed to merge with the shadows.

  Joen let out a startled gasp. “Dr-drow!” she stuttered. She stumbled back and landed in a roll but recovered, coming to her feet gracefully, in perfect balance, daggers in her hands.

  “Hold,” I said. “He’s a friend. This is Drizzt.”

  Joen looked at me as though she wasn’t sure she should believe me.

  “Please, put your blades away, young lady,” the drow said, his tone gentle but forceful enough to make it clear that he wasn’t joking around.

  “Please,” I said. “He can be trusted.”

  Joen shifted uncomfortably, even took another step back. She put her daggers back in their sheaths, though her hands stayed on their hilts, and a scowl remained on her face.

  I moved to shake Drizzt’s hand, and he clasped my wrist firmly.

  “Maimun,” Drizzt said. “I understand you’ve been looking for me.”

  “People actually told you?” I puffed up a bit, excited at the prospect that I had been recognized. “I was sure they were just shining us on.”

  “A youth, perhaps fourteen, riding a beautiful white mare, wearing a blue cloak,” Drizzt said. “Not the typical look for a traveler. And I must admit, I’m surprised to find you so far from the coast. I thought you’d found what you were looking for out there.”

  “I’m surprised to find you again at all,” I answered. “And I did find the stone.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, but I wasn’t referring to the stone. You found a place, a home with Captain Deudermont and his crew, did you not?”

  I shook my head. “Captain Deudermont …” I wanted to tell him everything that had happened, but Deudermont was Drizzt’s friend and had been before I ever met the dark elf. “I loved my time at sea, but it was never home,” I answered instead.

  He nodded in understanding. As I stared into his piercing lavender eyes, I figured he understood more than I’d said—perhaps even more than I myself understood. He motioned down the street and said, “Let’s be on our way. You little friends here will be cross with us when they awaken.”

  I glanced down at the unconscious cultist laying on the street, and followed Drizzt in a leisurely walk. He behaved as though battling evil cultists in the middle of the street was a nightly occurrence. For him, I suppose, I could imagine it might be.

  “Well, now you’re looking for me,” Drizzt said when we were far enough from the unconscious man that if he did awaken, he wouldn’t hear us. “What do you need?”

  “Why are you here in Silverymoon?” I asked, not yet comfortable enough to ask for his help.

  “Visiting a friend. And you?”

  “Your friend, she’s Lady Alustriel?”

  “Lady Alustriel of Silverymoon, yes. You’ve not met her, but you’ve seen her work before.”

  “I have?”

  “Think flaming chariots. They’re a specialty of hers.” Drizzt and I both smiled at the memory of the first battle I’d witnessed aboard Sea Sprite. After all, it’s not often one sees a red-bearded dwarf crash a flying chariot of fire onto the deck of a pirate ship.

  “Come, my friend, you have a favor to ask. So ask it.”

  I blew out a long sigh and said, “I need access to the library here in Silverymoon.”

  “It’s open to all,” Drizzt replied.

  “Not all of it, and what I need is in the restricted collections.”

  “You seek information on that artifact of yours,” Drizzt guessed. “And you’ve already seen Malchor Harpell?”

  “I want to know how to destroy it,” I said, resigned.

  Drizzt looked at me curiously. “Is it not an artifact of good fortune?”

  “So I’m told, but it always seems to bring me bad luck,” I said. “Demons and dragons and druids who tried to take it from me or to kill me for it—every bad thing that’s ever happened to me has been because of this stone.”

  “Like our friends back there?” Drizzt said. “But what of all the good things?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You grew up in the High Forest with a druid, did you not?”

  I nodded. “You remember my story,” I said.

  “Much of it. And you later traveled the land with a wandering bard, your mentor. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would they have taken you under their wing if you weren’t connected to the stone?”

  “No,” I said sharply, “because my parents never would have been murdered by someone looking for it!”

  “Perhaps,” Drizzt replied. “But do you regret your time in the forest or on the road?”

  I hesitated. “No,” I answered.

  “We must take the good with the bad,” he said.

  “So you’re saying I shouldn’t destroy the stone?”

  “That is not my business, as you’ve pointed out. But what I am saying is, think long and hard about your path. About the path you choose. Before, your road had often been chosen for you, but now you make your own way.”

  “I have thought long on it,” I replied.

  “All right, then. I’m on my way to the palace. I’ll speak with Lady Alustriel, and she’ll arrange that you get a look at the books you need. In the meantime, go find a place for the night and stay off the streets
before more of those gentlemen, let alone demons and dragons, come looking for you again.”

  “Thank you,” I said, shaking the dark elf’s hand once more.

  Drizzt offered Joen a curt nod as he departed. Her scowl had lessened somewhat, but her hands remained on the hilts of her weapons until long after he’d gone out of sight.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “It should be right over here,” the librarian said. She was much friendlier the second time we’d met her. Receiving instructions from the Lady of Silverymoon to allow us in would do that to a person, I supposed.

  She led us down a narrow aisle between two tall bookshelves. Whereas the library was airy and beautiful in the public areas outside, here it more resembled a dungeon. A maze of shelves, tightly packed and full of tomes and scrolls, filled chamber after chamber. There was no organization system that I could discern—though, following the surprisingly fleet-footed librarian, I didn’t have time to really try to figure it out. She seemed to know exactly where she was going, though, so Joen and I followed without question.

  “And here we are,” she said, coming to a halt before an utterly nondescript bookshelf. “Everything on the stones of Tymora and Beshaba are right there.” She pointed to a group of tomes and scrolls on the seventh shelf up from the floor.

  “How are we supposed to get—?” I started to ask, but the woman was already gone.

  Joen and I looked at each other and shrugged.

  I looked up at the shelf, which was easily fifteen feet above the floor. We searched around for a ladder, then anything we could make into a ladder, but short of making a precarious pile of valuable tomes, we came up with nothing.

  “Oi, I could climb it,” Joen offered.

  “But if this thing isn’t anchored to the floor, it’ll fall right over on top of you.”

  Joen shrugged that off and said, “All right, then, let’s just give up and go back to Waterdeep and see if we can sign on to a ship.”

  I didn’t bother to answer that. The twinkle in her eye was enough for me.

  “I’ll climb it,” I said, but before I could grab the first shelf, Joen had already clambered halfway up—and the whole bookcase started to sway.