Maestro

by R. A. Salvatore

  Drizzt felt as if his heart would explode at that moment. He pulled Catti-brie tight, so tight. He wanted to join with her then, as if he could somehow merge their souls into one brighter being, and he held her for a long, long while.

  He stepped back after a few moments, recalling another issue, and an important one. “Here,” he said, pulling the magical necklace with the unicorn head and golden horn over his head and handing it to her. “I’ll have no need of Andahar in the Underdark, and not in Menzoberranzan, where the brilliant essence of a unicorn would surely announce my arrival.”

  Catti-brie took the gift and nodded. She slipped it over her head, her hand touching the beautiful sculpture hanging upon her chest.

  “And here,” Drizzt added, reaching into his pouch to bring forth the onyx figurine of the panther Guenhwyvar.

  Catti-brie’s eyes widened in shock. “I’m thinkin’ ye’ll be needin’ that one!” she argued, holding forth her palm in denial of the gift.

  “I’ve thought long on this,” Drizzt assured her. “I am not bringing Guenhwyvar back to Menzoberranzan. She was created in Myth Drannor, so says the tale, but she was long in the city of drow. Many know of her and many coveted her, including the family of those from whom I took her. I cannot risk it.”

  Catti-brie started to protest, but Drizzt put his finger over her lips to silence her.

  “If I am to die, then so be it,” he said. “This is the life I have chosen and the code of behavior that I must follow. I can accept that. But I cannot accept Guenhwyvar in the hands of a dark elf. I cannot reduce my dear companion to an existence as a tool of murder and chaos. She deserves better. If I am to die, then she deserves nothing less than you.”

  “I’m thinkin’ ye’re more likely to die without her at yer side!”

  Drizzt didn’t disagree, but neither did he retract his hand. “I am with fine allies. Worthy fighters, both, and Jarlaxle with a million tricks I have not yet witnessed. If we are captured, he may be able to somehow buy us out of our dilemma, but never would we be allowed to take the precious Guenhwyvar with us.”

  He motioned the figurine toward her.

  “I cannot.”

  “You must. I go with a heavy heart, but I accept that because I must do this. And because I know that if I am to perish in the City of Spiders, then so be it, because I say with all hope and faith that my friends are safe and thriving without me, that Bruenor will sit on his throne and you will secure that seat. That Wulfgar and Regis have found adventure and enjoyment in the distant land of Delthuntle, and that Guenhwyvar … Aye, there’s the rub. I cannot accept that my grand risk might condemn her to such an existence.” He pushed the figurine at Catti-brie again and nodded more than once until she at last took it from him.

  “Keep her safe,” he said.

  “If I have to come get you, then know that Guenhwyvar will be by my side,” Catti-brie said, a clear reference to the last time Drizzt had walked into Menzoberranzan.

  “With ten thousand dwarves around you, I hope.”

  “Aye,” she replied with a grin.

  He offered her his hand and started away, but Catti-brie tugged back hard, halting him.

  “One more thing,” she said when Drizzt turned back to regard her curiously.

  She paused and he shrugged, confused.

  “Taulmaril,” she said.

  Drizzt looked at her curiously.

  She held up her free hand and beckoned with it. “The bow. It is a hindrance to you as you flee about the tunnels. It was mine. I took it in Mithral Hall and so Bruenor, and so you all, gave it to me then. I would like it now.”

  Drizzt stared at her incredulously, but she just smiled calmly and beckoned again.

  Drizzt let go of her hand and stepped back. “The bow … has been of great help to me … in the tunnels,” he stammered.

  “And I will have it,” Catti-brie demanded. She motioned to the bow with her hand again. “You said you were with fine allies.”

  “And better to keep enemies at bay,” Drizzt argued.

  “And so I shall, if it comes to that,” the woman said evenly. “And Jarlaxle will do the same for you, no doubt.”

  “You would take …” Drizzt stammered and stuttered and shook his head when he found he had no response. He pulled Taulmaril over his shoulder. “I have used this in my adventures against the demons in the lower tunnels off of Mithral Hall,” he explained again.

  “Aye, and you used Guenhwyvar, too.”

  “Not the same …” the confused drow ranger replied. “Are you trying to dissuade …?”

  “No!” Catti-brie said with finality, then more gently, “No.”

  The woman beckoned again. “Trust me.”

  Now Drizzt’s expression turned to one of curiosity, as he caught on that she had something in mind. He handed over Taulmaril then reached around and removed the magical quiver that would afford him an endless supply of arrows to be enchanted and loosed by the magic of the great bow.

  Catti-brie nodded and slung the bow and quiver over her shoulder.

  They said no more then. There was nothing more to say. She would trust him as he trusted her. That was their unspoken agreement,. They did not inhibit each other’s journey, but rather trusted and encouraged those choices.

  But Drizzt knew there remained a loaded weight in that level of trust. It implied that he would make his choices well. And on the surface, this particular choice to travel beside Jarlaxle to Menzoberranzan could not seem a wise decision. Even for the sake of Dahlia.

  And still, Drizzt knew that he was walking the right road. There was something more, something nagging at his very soul, some whispering notion that this road would prove an important part of his own journey, a measure of closure that he needed so that he could honestly go on with his life as planned.

  This was fated, he felt, though Drizzt had never been one to believe in fate, or in the pre-planning of the gods, or any other such notions. He believed in free will and reason above all—he lived his life by that credo. Even in matters of faith, Drizzt placed his moral compass above any external edicts, and indeed, Mielikki was merely a name to what he knew was in his heart—though he had come to doubt that label of late.

  Still, this offer of adventure Jarlaxle had placed before him felt to him more like some road to lasting peace. If he succeeded, he suspected he would finally and forever put Menzoberranzan behind him, or at least lock his awful experiences in that dark cavern into proper perspective.

  And yes, it was a great risk.

  Perhaps he would be slain, perhaps turned into a drider, perhaps sent into the Abyss to serve as a slave to Lolth forevermore.

  But even in the face of those grim possibilities, he had to do this.

  He and Catti-brie spent a long time alone then, expressing their love and respect as if it might be the last time.

  They went together, and found Jarlaxle to bring along, to tell King Bruenor, whose excited response was, of course, perfectly predictable.

  “Call out the boys!” the dwarf proclaimed. “Oh, but we’ll march with ye, elf, all of us, and we’ll tear down every drow House and put a blade up every ugly, skinny drow bum!” He paused in his rant and looked at Jarlaxle. “Well, exceptin’ those ye tell us to let be, and then we’ll be lettin’ ’em be only if they keep them skinny bums out o’ our way!”

  “Bruenor, no,” Drizzt was finally able to say, and forcefully enough to halt the dwarf’s momentum. Standing on the Throne of the Dwarven Gods then, King Bruenor looked at Drizzt curiously and said, “Huh?”

  “You have your work here,” Drizzt said. “No less important. The tunnels are full of demons, the drow may return to Gauntlgrym, and the Hosttower must be rebuilt or it is all for naught anyway.”

  “Bah! But ye think I’m to let ye walk off along to Menzoburysomedrow?”

  The play on the name gave Drizzt pause, enough for Jarlaxle to verbally wade into the conversation with, “Yes, that is exactly what we think, and what we demand.”r />
  All around the group, dwarves gasped at the dark elf visitor’s impertinence, especially with King Bruenor standing atop the throne.

  “Were you to empty your halls, indeed all the halls of the Silver Marches, you’d not win a fight with Menzoberranzan, good dwarf,” Jarlaxle explained. “Not there, not where all the Houses would unite against you. You’d not get near to our goal.”

  “Trust them, me Da,” Catti-brie said. She looked over at Drizzt and nodded. “They will not fail in this.”

  Bruenor was clearly unable to come up with any answer that satisfied him or assuaged his all-too-obvious fears. He slowly melted back into the throne and heaved a great sigh.

  “We’re almost there, elf,” he said quietly. “Can ye no feel it?”

  “I do,” Drizzt said. “And we are. To that place we’ve talked of since our days together on Kelvin’s Cairn. Almost there. The winding road shows the end straightaway.”

  “The door to home’s in sight,” Bruenor said.

  Many hugs later, Drizzt and Jarlaxle walked together into the Underdark, side-by-side. Oftentimes, Jarlaxle lifted a hand to put it comfortingly on Drizzt’s shoulder, and more than once, the mercenary whispered Bruenor’s last words, “The door to home’s in sight.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Amber Eyes

  WITH A THOUSAND DWARVES MARCHING BEHIND HER, CATTI-BRIE, astride the mighty unicorn Andahar, led the way to the gates of Luskan. Athrogate and Ambergris rode at her side, the two of them assigned by Bruenor to serve as her personal bodyguards. Many threatening looks came at the woman, and particularly at her entourage, from the scalawags serving as gate guards—rogues in the service of one or another of the five competing Captains of Luskan. But Jarlaxle’s hold on the city was so powerful not a single word was spoken, not even a request for the leaders to identify the approaching army.

  The gates were pulled open without a word, and Catti-brie led the way into the city.

  “Take me to the Hosttower,” she ordered one of the nearby guards, a woman so dark from the sun and dirty from the streets she looked as if she had the shadow of a beard.

  Still without a word of response, she escorted them up Reaver’s Run, the main boulevard that led all the way to the city’s main market. Beyond that lay the bridge to Closeguard Island, which housed the Ship of High Captain Kurth, who was of course Jarlaxle’s lieutenant, Beniago.

  Indeed, Beniago waited at the far end of the bridge, bidding the newcomers to cross. He took up beside Catti-brie and led the way to the next bridge, from Closeguard to Cutlass Island, where once had stood the Hosttower of the Arcane. Large tents had already been constructed all around the ruins of that once-grand structure.

  “Food will be brought to you daily,” Beniago assured Catti-brie.

  “Enough to keep me belly fat?” Athrogate demanded.

  Beniago, who knew Athrogate well, merely laughed and nodded.

  “Aye, better be,” the dwarf grunted.

  Catti-brie moved over to the roots of the ruined structure as the dwarves settled in. The devastation had been so complete that she could look down into what had once been the basement of the tower, and even below that broken stone and metal to the deep roots trailing down into the Underdark. These were the roots that ran to Gauntlgrym, delivering seawater to the elementals that held the fire primordial in its pit.

  She looked up at the darkening sky. The sun had slipped below the horizon, but only recently. The clouds to the west flared pink and orange in the dying light. The wind was off the water, wet and chill in her face, and Catti-brie pulled her black cloak—the cloak Jarlaxle had given her—tighter about her.

  “A daunting task,” Gromph Baenre said and the woman jumped—and nearly transformed into a raven and flew away. The drow was suddenly there, out of nowhere it seemed, standing perfectly calm beside her.

  She gave him an incredulous look, and he returned a smile that reminded her of their respective powers. She knew Gromph’s appearance and demeanor was meant to intimidate her so she calmed herself quickly and presented herself more forcefully.

  She did a good job of hiding the winding line of terror that continued to twist inside her. Catti-brie trusted in her powers and her relationship with Mielikki. She had returned to this world with clear goals, and that guiding purpose had dominated her existence over the more than two decades of her second life. She had trained with powerful wizards, studied in the extensive library of the Harpells, communed closely with a goddess …

  But this was Gromph Baenre, recently the Archmage of Menzoberranzan. He had magically appeared right beside her without a hint of warning or a tingle that anything was amiss.

  Catti-brie understood that he could very likely destroy her just as easily and unexpectedly.

  “I have examined pieces of the fallen tower already,” Gromph explained. “All the materials are available. We have paintings and have uncovered design sketches of the tower in the bowels of Illusk, below this city. The dwarves should have no trouble replicating the physical structure.”

  “That is the easy part,” Catti-brie said.

  Gromph stared at the hole in the ground and nodded.

  “Why are you doing this?” Catti-brie asked bluntly, and he looked up to match her blue eyes with his amber orbs, the two locking stares intently.

  “If I wished you to know—”

  “Amuse me,” she heard herself saying, and couldn’t believe the words as they came forth.

  Gromph was the one who seemed amused, and he looked back to the hole.

  “You intend to inhabit the tower when it is rebuilt,” Catti-brie said in a voice that sounded far too accusatory.

  “If it suits me,” Gromph answered. “I intend to live wherever I desire to live. Would you wish to try to stop me?”

  “In this city, run by drow?”

  Gromph looked up at her again and flashed a wicked smile. “Here or anywhere,” he clarified.

  Catti-brie swallowed hard, but she did not allow herself to blink and did not look away.

  “You fear for the dwarves,” Gromph surmised. “You fear that if I am in control of the new Hosttower, I might use that position against the magic that preserves Gauntlgrym.”

  Catti-brie saw no need to answer.

  “It is a reasonable fear, of course,” said Gromph. “Or it would be, except for two important matters. First, the magic of the Hosttower isn’t enacted like that of a wand. I will not call upon the tower to fuel the elementals enslaving the primordial any more than I can tell the tower not to do so. I expect you will understand this as we go through the process. Surely no instrument of such power would have ever been left to the whims of whomever happened to be serving as the leader of the Hosttower at any particular time in its millennia of existence, particularly not since the dwarves helped build the original tower, from all that I can tell.

  “And second, I am not a simple and capricious murderer. What reason would I have to destroy Gauntlgrym, even if that was within my power?”

  “Why did the drow attack Mithral Hall? Why does Tiago pursue Drizzt? Why—?”

  “Gauntlgrym in the hands of a dwarf king serves me well at this time,” Gromph stated.

  “And if that changes?”

  “I assure you, human woman, I am not one you wish to anger. And I do not need a Hosttower beneath my feet to rain destruction, wherever I choose.”

  “You say such things and expect me to trust you in this most important endeavor?”

  “I speak the simple truth, and know that you have no choice in the matter. If you believe that you can reconstruct the Hosttower of the Arcane without my aid, then you prove the drow matron mothers correct when they proclaim the stupidity of humans.”

  Catti-brie was very relieved at that moment when Beniago walked up to stand beside her. Jarlaxle and his many henchmen would protect them all from the wrath of Gromph.

  “Braelin Janquay has returned to serve in House Do’Urden?” Gromph asked in the drow tongue, and Catti-brie w
as glad to learn that she could still understand the language well enough to keep up with the fast-speaking wizard.

  A mixed blessing, she realized, when Beniago answered in perfect drow, “Yes, uncle.”

  Uncle.

  The web around her was daunting. Catti-brie walked away, to a tent she had taken as her own. As she neared the closed flap, she shut her eyes and pictured again the hole in the ground that had been the grand and wondrous Hosttower of the Arcane. She tried again to picture that magnificent structure with its branching tendrils—it seemed as much a living thing as something built by elves and dwarves.

  The image proved fleeting, replaced by something else, something that surprised Catti-brie: the amber eyes of Gromph Baenre, staring at her, measuring her, devouring her.

  She glanced back to find Gromph looking back at her from the base of the Hosttower.

  Shaken, the woman retired to her tent.

  “IGNORE THE GHOSTS,” Jarlaxle told Drizzt as they wound their way through ancient, cobweb-filled halls and corridors, many with stone statues and bas reliefs so covered by the dust of centuries that they had become unrecognizable.

  Still, Drizzt understood the design of the place and the architecture and statues enough to suspect that he and Jarlaxle had come into Illusk in their underground meandering.

  “The spirits have been rendered benign by my associates,” Jarlaxle explained. “At least, benign to those strong enough of mind and will to ignore them—I would expect you are among that group. Such creatures feed and strengthen on fear.”

  Several of the specters appeared, their faces stretched and elongated as if frozen in some exaggerated, truly horrified scream. The long-dead of Illusk floated about the sides of the wide hall Drizzt and Jarlaxle traversed. They leered at them from every shadow, it seemed. And they whispered in Drizzt’s mind, telling him to flee, offering him images of some gruesome impending feast upon his warm flesh.

  Drizzt looked at his companion, then steeled himself against his budding terror. Trust Jarlaxle, he silently reminded himself. The drow mercenary’s casual gait comforted him, reminding him that he was traveling with one of the most capable people Faerûn had ever known.