Passage to Dawn tlotd-4

by Robert Salvatore

  Drizzt had seen rooms like this in Menzoberranzan, though certainly not as fabulously made. He knew its function. Somehow it seemed out of place to him in this most goodly of structures, for the twin circles and the sign were used for summoning otherworldly creatures, and because those runes that decorated the edges were of power and protection, the creatures summoned were not likely of a goodly weal.

  "Few are allowed to enter this place," Cadderly explained, his voice grave. "Just myself, Danica, and Brother Chaunticleer among the residents of the library. Any guests that require the services of this place must pass the highest of scrutiny."

  Drizzt understood that he had just been highly complimented, but that did not dissuade the many questions that bobbed about in his thoughts.

  "There are reasons for such callings," Cadderly went on, as if reading the drow's mind. "Sometimes the cause of good can be furthered only by dealing with the agents of evil."

  "Is not the summoning of a tanar'ri, or even a minor fiend, in itself an act of evil?" Drizzt asked bluntly.

  "No," Cadderly replied. "Not in here. This room is perfect in design and blessed by Deneir himself. A fiend called is a fiend trapped, no more a threat in here than if the beast had remained in the Abyss. As with all questions of good and evil, the intent of the calling is what determines its value. In this case, we have discovered that a soul undeserving of such torture has fallen into

  the hands of a fiend. We may retrieve that soul only by dealing with the fiend. What better place and better way?"

  Drizzt could accept that, especially now, when the stakes were so high and so personal.

  "It is Errtu," the drow announced with confidence. "A balor."

  Cadderly nodded, not disagreeing. When Drizzt had informed him of his new suspicions given his talk with Harkle Harpell, Cadderly had called upon a minor fiend, a wicked imp, and had sent it on a mission seeking confirmation of the drow's suspicions. Now he meant to call back the imp and get his answers.

  "Brother Chaunticleer communed with an agent of Deneir this day," Cadderly remarked.

  "And the answer?" the ranger asked, though Drizzt was a bit surprised by the apparent route Chaunticleer had taken.

  "No agent of Deneir could give such an answer," Cadderly replied at once, seeing that the drow's reasoning was off course. "No, no, Chaunticleer desired information about our missing wizard friend. Fear not, for Harkle Harpell, it seems, is back at the Ivy Mansion in Longsaddle. We have ways of contacting him, even of retrieving him, if you so desire."

  "No!" Drizzt blurted, and he looked away, a bit embarrassed by his sudden outburst. "No," he repeated more quietly. "Harkle Harpell has certainly done enough already. I would not endanger him in this issue that does not truly concern him."

  Cadderly nodded and smiled, understanding the truth of the drow's hesitance. "Shall I call now to Druzil, that we might get our answer?" he asked, though he didn't even wait for a response. With a word to each sconce, Cadderly turned all the lights in the room to a velvety purple hue. A second chant made the designs in the floor glow eerily.

  Drizzt held his breath, never comfortable in the midst of such a ceremony. He hardly listened as Cadderly began a soft, rhythmic chant, rather he focused on the glowing runes, concentrated on his suspicions and on the possibilities the future might hold.

  After several minutes there came a sharp hissing sound in the middle of the circles, and then an instant of blackness as the fabric of the planes tore asunder. A sharp crackle ended both the hissing and the tear, leaving a very angry looking bat-winged and dog-faced imp sitting on the floor, cursing and spitting.

  "Well, greetings my dear Druzil," Cadderly said cheerily, which

  of course made the wicked imp, the unwilling servant, grumble all the more. Druzil hopped to his feet, his small horns hardly reaching the height of Drizzt's knee, and folded his leathery wings about him.

  "I wanted you to meet my friend," Cadderly said casually. "I haven't yet decided whether or not I will have him cut you into little pieces with those fine blades of his."

  The evil gaze from Druzil's black eyes locked onto Drizzt's lavender orbs. "Drizzt Do'Urden," the imp spat. "Traitor to the Spider Queen."

  "Ah, good," Cadderly said, and his tone told the imp that he had unwittingly offered up a bit of information by admitting his recognition of the drow. "You know of him, thus you have spoken with some fiend who knows the truth."

  "You desired a specific answer, and only one," Druzil rasped. "And promised a year of peace from you in return!"

  "So I did," Cadderly admitted. "And have you my answer?"

  "I pity you, foolish drow," Druzil said, staring again intently at Drizzt. "I pity you and laugh at you. Foolish drow. The Spider Queen cares little for you now, because she has given out your punishment as a reward to one who helped her in the Time of Troubles."

  Drizzt pulled his gaze from Druzil to regard Cadderly, the old priest standing perfectly calm and collected.

  "I pity any who so invokes the rage of a balor," Druzil went on, giving a wicked little laugh.

  Cadderly saw that the imp's attitude was difficult for Drizzt, who was under such intense stress from this all. "The balor's name!" the priest demanded.

  "Errtu!" Druzil barked. "Mark it well, Drizzt Do'Urden!"

  Fires simmered behind Drizzt's lavender eyes, and Druzil could not bear their scrutiny.

  The imp snapped his evil gaze over Cadderly instead. "A year of peace, you promised," he rasped.

  "Years are measured in different ways," Cadderly growled back at him.

  "What treachery-" Druzil started to say, but Cadderly slapped his hands together, uttering a single word, and two black lines, rifts in the fabric of the planes, appeared, one on either side of the imp, and came together as forcefully as Cadderly's hands

  came together. With a boom of thunder and a waft of smoke, Druzil was gone.

  Cadderly immediately brightened the light in the room, and remained quiet for some time, regarding Drizzt, who stood with his head bowed, digesting the confirmation.

  "You should utterly destroy that one," the drow said at length.

  Cadderly smiled widely. "Not so easy a task," he admitted. "Druzil is a manifestation of evil, a type more than an actual being. I could tear apart his corporeal body, but that merely sends him back to the Abyss. Only there, in his smoking home, could I truly destroy Druzil, and I have little desire to visit the Abyss!" Cadderly shrugged, as if it really mattered very little. "Druzil is harmless enough," the priest explained, "because I know him, know of him, know where to find him, and know how to make his miserable life more miserable still if the need arises."

  "And now we know that it is truly Errtu," Drizzt said.

  "A balor," Cadderly replied. "A mighty foe."

  "A foe in the Abyss," said Drizzt. "A place where I also have no desire to ever go."

  "We still need answers," Cadderly reminded. "Answers that Druzil would not be able to provide."

  "Who, then?"

  "You know," Cadderly answered quietly.

  Drizzt did know, but the thought of summoning in the fiend Errtu was not a pleasant one to Drizzt.

  "The circle will hold the balor," Cadderly assured him. "You do not have to be here when I call to Errtu."

  Drizzt waved that notion away before Cadderly ever finished the sentence. He would be there to face the one who hated him most, and who apparently held captive a friend.

  Drizzt gave a deep sigh. "I believe that the prisoner the hag spoke of is Zaknafein, my father," he confided to the priest, for he found that he truly trusted Cadderly. "I am not yet certain of how I feel about that."

  "Surely it torments you to think your father in such foul hands," Cadderly replied. "And surely it thrills you to think that you might meet with Zaknafein once more."

  Drizzt nodded. "It is more than that," he said.

  "Are you ambivalent?" Cadderly asked, and Drizzt, caught off his guard by the direct question, cocked his head and stu
died the

  old priest. "Did you close that part of your life, Drizzt Do'Urden? And now are you afraid because it might again be opened?"

  Drizzt shook his head without hesitation, but it was an unconvincing movement. He paused a long while, then sighed deeply. "I am disappointed," the drow admitted. "In myself, for my selfishness. I want to see Zaknafein again, to stand beside him and learn from him and listen to his words." Drizzt looked up at Cadderly, his expression truly serene. "But I remember the last time I saw him," he said, and he told Cadderly then of that final meeting.

  Zaknafein's corpse had been animated by Matron Malice, Drizzt's mother, and then imbued with the dead drow's spirit. Bound in servitude to evil Malice, working as her assassin, Zaknafein had then gone out into the Underdark in search of Drizzt. At the critical moment, the true Zaknafein had broken through the evil matron mother's will for a fleeting moment, had shone forth once again and spoken to his beloved son. In that moment of victory, Zaknafein's spirit had proclaimed its peace, and Zaknafein had destroyed his own animated corpse instead, freeing Drizzt and freeing himself from the grasp of evil Malice Do'Urden.

  "When I heard the blind hag's words and spent the time to consider them, I was truly sorry," Drizzt finished. "I believed that Zaknafein was free of them now, free of Lloth and all the evil, and sitting in a place of just rewards for the truth that was always in his soul."

  Cadderly put a hand on Drizzt's shoulder.

  "To think that they had captured him once again …"

  "But that may not be the case," Cadderly said. "And if it is true, then hope is not lost. Your father needs your help."

  Drizzt set his jaw firmly and nodded. "And Catti-brie's help," he replied. "She will be here when we call to Errtu."

  Chapter 15 DARKNESS INCARNATE

  His smoking bulk nearly filled the circle. His great leathery wings could not extend to their fullest, else they would have crossed the boundary line where the fiend could not pass. Errtu clawed at the stone and issued a guttural growl, threw back his huge and ugly head and laughed maniacally. Then the balor suddenly calmed, and looked forward, his knowing eyes boring into the gaze of Drizzt Do'Urden. Many years had passed since Drizzt had looked upon mighty Errtu, but the ranger surely recognized the fiend. His ugly face seemed a cross between a dog and an ape, and his eyes-especially those eyes-were black pits of evil, sometimes wide with outrage and red with flame, sometimes narrowed, slanted, intense slits promising hellish tortures. Yes, Drizzt remembered Errtu well, remembered their desperate fight on the side of Kelvin's Cairn those years before.

  The ranger's scimitar, the one he had taken from the white dragon's lair, seemed to remember the fiend, too, for Drizzt felt it calling to him, urging him to draw it forth and strike at the balor again that it might feed upon Errtu's fiery heart. That blade had

  been forged to battle creatures of fire, and seemed particularly eager for the smoking flesh of a fiend.

  Catti-brie had never seen such a beast, darkness incarnate, evil embodied, the most foul of the foul. She wanted to take up Taulmaril and shoot an arrow into the beast's ugly face, and yet she feared that to do so would loose wicked Errtu upon them, something the young woman most certainly did not desire.

  Errtu continued to chuckle, then with terrifying speed, the great fiend lashed out toward Drizzt with its many-thonged whip. The weapon snapped forward, then stopped fast in midair, as though it had hit a wall, and indeed it had.

  "You cannot send your weapons, your flesh, or your magic through the barrier, Errtu," Cadderly said calmly-the old priest seemed not shaken in the least by the true tanar'ri.

  Errtu's eyes narrowed wickedly as the balor dropped his gaze over Cadderly, knowing that it was the priest who had dared to summon the balor. Again came that rumbling chuckle and flames erupted at Errtu's huge, clawed feet, burning white and hot, blazing so high that they nearly blocked the companions' view of the balor. The three friends squinted against the intense, stinging heat. At last, Catti-brie fell away with a shout of warning, and Drizzt heeded that call, went with her. Cadderly remained in place, though, standing impassively, confident that the rune-etched circles would stop the fires. Sweat beaded on his face, droplets falling from his nose.

  "Desist!" Cadderly yelled above the crackle. Then he recited a string of words in a language that neither Drizzt nor Catti-brie had ever heard before, an arcane phrase that ended with the name of Errtu, spoken emphatically.

  The balor roared as if in pain, and the fire walls fell away to nothingness.

  "I will remember you, old man," the great balor promised. "When I walk again on the plane that is your world."

  "Do pay me a visit," Cadderly replied evenly. "It would be my pleasure to banish you back to the filth where you truly belong."

  Errtu said no more, but growled and focused once more upon the renegade drow, the most-hated Drizzt Do'Urden.

  "I have him, drow," the fiend teased. "In the Abyss."

  "Who?" Drizzt demanded, but the balor's response was yet another burst of maniacal laughter.

  "Who do you have, Errtu?" Cadderly asked firmly.

  "No questions must I answer," the balor reminded the priest. "I have him, that you know, and the one way you have of getting him back is to end my banishment. I will take him to this, your land, Drizzt Do'Urden, and if you want him, then you must come and get him!"

  "I will speak with Zaknafein!" Drizzt yelled, his hand going to the hilt of his hungry scimitar. Errtu mocked him, laughed at him, thoroughly enjoying the spectacle of Drizzt's frustration. It was just the beginning of the drow's torment.

  "Free me!" the fiend roared, silencing the questions. "Free me now! Each day is an eternity of torture for my prisoner, your beloved fa-" Errtu stopped abruptly, letting the teasing word hang in the air. The balor waggled a finger at Cadderly. "Have I been tricked?" Errtu said, feigning horror. "Almost did I answer a question, something that is not required of me."

  Cadderly looked to Drizzt, understanding the ranger's dilemma. The priest knew that Drizzt would willingly leap into the circle and fight Errtu here and now for the sake of his lost father, of a friend, or of any goodly person, but to free the fiend seemed a desperate and dangerous act to the noble drow, a selfish act for the sake of his father that might jeopardize so many others.

  "Free me!" roared the balor, his thunderous voice echoing about the chamber.

  Drizzt relaxed suddenly. "That I cannot do, foul beast," he said quietly, shaking his head, seeming to gain confidence in his decision with every passing second.

  "You fool!" Errtu roared. "I will flail the skin from his bones! I will eat his fingers! And I will keep him alive, I promise, alive and conscious through it all, telling him before each torture that you refused to help him, that you caused his doom!"

  Drizzt looked away, relaxed no more, his breathing coming in hard, angry gasps. He knew the truth of Zaknafein, though, understood his father's heart, and knew that the weaponmaster would not wish Drizzt to free Errtu, whatever the cost.

  Catti-brie took Drizzt's hand, as did Cadderly.

  "I'll not tell you what to do, good drow," the old priest offered, "but if the fiend imprisons a soul undeserving of such a fate, then it is our responsibility to save …"

  "But at what price?" Drizzt said desperately. "At what cost to the world?"

  Errtu was laughing again, wildly. Cadderly turned to quiet the fiend, but Errtu spoke first. "You know, priest," the fiend accused. "You know!"

  "What does the ugly thing mean?" Catti-brie asked.

  "Tell them," Errtu bade Cadderly, who seemed uncomfortable for the first time.

  Cadderly looked at Drizzt and Catti-brie and shook his head.

  "Then I shall tell them!" Errtu shouted, the balor's tremendous, throaty voice echoing again about the stone room, paining their ears.

  "You shall be gone!" Cadderly promised, and he began a chant. Errtu jerked suddenly, violently, then seemed smaller, seemed as if he was falling back in on himself.
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  "I am free now!" the balor proclaimed.

  "Wait," Drizzt bade Cadderly, and the priest obeyed.

  "I shall go where I please, foolish Drizzt Do'Urden! By your will I have touched the ground of the Prime Material Plane, and thus my banishment is at its end. I can return to the call of any!"

  Cadderly began his chant again, more urgently, and Errtu began to fade away.

  "Come to me, Drizzt Do'Urden," the balor's now-distant voice beckoned. "If you would see him again. I'll not come for you."

  Then the fiend was gone, leaving the three companions exhausted in the empty room. Most weary among them was Drizzt, who slumped back against the wall, and it seemed to the others as if the solid stone was the only thing keeping the weary ranger on his feet.

  "Ye didn't know," Catti-brie reasoned, understanding the guilt that so weighed on her friend's shoulders. She looked to the old priest who hardly seemed bothered by the revelations.

  "Is it true?" Drizzt asked Cadderly.

  "I cannot be certain," the priest replied. "But I believe that our summoning of Errtu to the Prime Material Plane might have indeed ended the balor's banishment."

  "And ye knew it all along," Catti-brie said in accusing tones.

  "I suspected," Cadderly admitted.

  "Then why did you let me call to the beast?" Drizzt asked, completely surprised. He would never have figured that Cadderly

  would end the banishment of such an evil monster. When he looked at the old priest now, though, it seemed to Drizzt as if Cadderly wasn't bothered in the least.