“And the other,” Ilnezhara remarked. “Young and full of mischief.”
“Young and ambitious, you mean,” Tazmikella corrected. “Seeking the favor of his or her vicious father, and in Arauthator’s own lands.”
Jarlaxle noted the dragon’s incredulous tone, and understood that such an event was not common. White dragons were not as gregarious as some of the other dragonkind, he knew, and, given Tazmikella’s tone, this Arauthator was solitary even beyond that reputation.
“Both ambitious, it would seem,” Tazmikella said.
“They seek the favor of that five-headed abomination,” agreed her sister.
It wasn’t often that anything shocked Jarlaxle, who had lived many centuries and had seen most of what the world could offer, so he believed, but as he digested Ilnezhara’s words, and recognized the being to which she referred, his jaw did droop open.
“If they gather enough treasure, they believe they can bring it all back,” Tazmikella explained to him, with his stunned expression.
“They?”
“Our chromatic cousins,” Ilnezhara said with clear distaste.
Jarlaxle was not very well-versed in dragonkind, but he knew enough to understand the delineation. There were many different kinds and flavors of dragons in Faerûn, but they fell into two distinct types: chromatic and metallic, with five major variations of each: black, white, blue, green, and the great red dragons for the former; bronze, brass, silver, gold and, like the sisters before him, copper, for the latter—though the drow had heard rumors of strange hybrid offspring between the ten primary forms.
“It all?” Jarlaxle weakly prompted.
Ilnezhara and Tazmikella looked at him and sighed.
“Tiamat?” he asked in a whisper. Indeed, he could hardly speak the name. Tiamat was the hurricane, the earthquake, the volcano, the blizzard, and the poison. The goddess of dragons, who could unmake the world, or lay it all to waste, at least!
“Perhaps we should investigate this, sister,” Ilnezhara remarked.
“We have our lives here,” Tazmikella argued. “We have barely returned for this new adventure in Heliogabalus …”
“Helgabal,” Jarlaxle corrected, drawing stern looks from the both of them.
“But already they are suspicious,” Ilnezhara reminded. “Frostmantle is a weasely king, but not without his resources, you must admit. Were he to determine the truth of us, he would use every warrior at his disposal to strike at us, for if he could slay us, or even drive us from his city, then he would better fit the crown of Dragonsbane.”
“Dragonsbane was no enemy to us.”
“Dragonsbane tolerated us when he learned the truth, and nothing more,” Ilnezhara scoffed. “And only because he needed us to help him keep a watchful eye on Vaasa in the late years of his life. Why, he even refused your offer to bed him.”
“Fool!” Jarlaxle interrupted loudly, again drawing stern glances, but this time, he merely grinned and tipped his hat in honest salute to the sisters.
“Jarlaxle thinks himself charming,” Tazmikella said, turning back to her sister.
“He is,” said Ilnezhara.
“He hopes to charm us now, perhaps to be rewarded for his flattery.”
“Oh, he will be,” Ilnezhara replied, and she tossed a wink at the drow, who sat back and folded his hands behind his head.
“Except,” Ilnezhara went on as soon as Jarlaxle got comfortable—perhaps a bit too comfortable.
“Yes,” her sister prompted.
“It is an amazing coincidence, is it not, that Jarlaxle comes back to us at precisely the moment that King Frostmantle’s guards grow curious?”
“Oh, I had not thought of that, sister,” Tazmikella agreed, though of course, she had, and both swiveled their heads, very reptile-like, to regard the drow.
“A fortunate break for both of us,” Jarlaxle said with a grin.
“Do tell,” they said together.
“The fates have found for you a path out of here, and to greater adventure and more important duties, apparently, and just at a time when perhaps you should be taking leave of this miserable city and her miserable king.”
“Oh, good fortune indeed,” they both said together, with dripping sarcasm.
Jarlaxle shrugged and smiled.
He knew they wouldn’t kill him.
He hoped they would reward him.
“Are ye to pray the whole o’ the day then?” Ambergris asked her friend when she caught up to him in the garden on the flat roof of one of the side wings of the grand monastery. She had to ask him four times before he opened an eye and seemed to register that she was even there.
“Not prayer,” he replied, coming slowly from his trance. “I am meditating on the teachings of my order.”
“Readin’ yer own mind, are ye?” the dwarf asked, and laughed heartily.
“You wager on me when I am fighting,” the monk reminded.
“Seems a good bet.”
“I wage those battles a thousand times in my mind for every one I fight,” Afafrenfere explained. “I see the movements of my enemies. I see my responses and put them into my arms and legs as surely as if I were waging physical battle instead of mental.”
Ambergris shrugged. “Well, whate’er ye’re doing, it works, I admit. But what’s it about now? Since ye met with them masters, ye’ve not been much seen.”
Afafrenfere held up his hand to stop her, and she quieted and regarded him curiously.
“I prepare myself,” he replied. “I will depart this place when Jarlaxle returns, to take to the road with you once more.”
“Heigh-ho!” Ambergris blurted and she clapped her thick hands together loudly. “We’ll find a road o’ profit and adventure, don’t ye doubt.”
“Adventure,” Afafrenfere agreed.
Ambergris looked at him curiously. “Ah, but ye’re one of them robe-wearers takin’ a vow o’ poverty, are ye?” She paused and nodded, then smiled toothily. “Well good. More for Ambergris. Haha!”
Afafrenfere closed his eyes and let her voice fade away as he fell once more into his thoughts to prepare himself for the road ahead.
You are not alone, young brother, he heard in his head, the comforting thoughts of Grandmaster Kane, and the diamond pressed against his forehead glowed with warmth.
BEST OF BAD CHOICES
THE HORDE CAME ON AGAIN, ROARING WITH GLEE AS THE ARCHERS AND wizards of Nesmé cut them down by the score. Every day, the carnage repeated, and yet, despite the mounds of bodies blackening the fields on every side of the city, the orc ranks did not greatly thin.
Indeed, now the trolls and bog blokes had joined in, and Nesmé was as often pressed from the moors of the south as from the north and east. Inside the city wall, however, attrition mounted.
Drizzt, Catti-brie, and the others relaxed together in the shadow of the southern gate tower during one of the few true respites.
“Nesmé’s a dead town if none’re coming to help,” Bruenor lamented.
“Hold until the first snows and th’orcs’ll be running away,” Athrogate replied.
“Eleasis’s turned to Eleint,” Bruenor reminded, referring to the eighth and ninth months of the year. “Another month at least, more likely two, afore we’re seeing the first o’ the snows, and another month after that when the turn to winter’s enough to chase the hungry dogs away.”
“Pray for an early winter then,” said Regis.
“Even a month might be too long for Nesmé,” Wulfgar added. “All the priests in the city are busy with folk already wounded, day and night, and more join those ranks with every attack. More are laying down than standing up, I fear.”
“Help’ll come,” Bruenor said determinedly, and he looked to the north, the direction of Mithral Hall, they all knew.
“That doesn’t look promising,” Regis remarked, and they all turned to him, then followed his gaze and nod across the courtyard, to First Speaker Jolen Firth and one of the wizards who had stood with Catti-brie in t
he first assault, the older woman so proficient with the spell of digging. The grim expressions on the faces of the pair explained Regis’s words, surely.
“What news?” Drizzt asked as they approached.
Jolen Firth turned to the mage.
“I have gone out this day with spells of far-seeing,” the old woman explained. “Won’t be no help coming, to be sure.”
“The dwarves remain in their holes,” said the First Speaker. “And each with an army camped about their gates. Is there no end to the number of orcs in the world?”
“One’s too many for me own tastes,” Bruenor muttered, and Drizzt noted an accusatory look coming his way from his dwarf friend. That treaty, Drizzt understood, continued to play hard on poor Bruenor in these difficult days.
“Silverymoon is sorely pressed, and has suffered greatly.” Jolen Firth went on. “And Sundabar …” He paused and swallowed hard and the companions understood the gravity of what might come next by the moisture apparent in the proud man’s eyes.
“Sundabar has fallen,” he said. “The city is burning, the walls destroyed. I know not how many thousands have perished—many took refuge in the great citadel that centers the city, it is rumored.”
“Aye, I’ve seen them in there, with thousands of orcs all around, just outside the place,” said the old woman. “They’re not to get out.”
“They will abandon the citadel in short order, no doubt,” Jolen Firth explained, “for the Everfire Caverns below. They cannot hold long, and now that Many-Arrows has taken the city about them, the winter will not drive the orcs away.”
“And so the orcs will gain the citadel,” Regis reasoned.
“Aye, and so we’ve a new orc fortress in our midst,” said Bruenor, and he kicked at the ground.
“We might break out to the west,” Regis offered.
“To the Uthgardt tribes, out from under this unnatural darkness,” Wulfgar added.
“Surrender Nesmé?” Jolen Firth asked, his voice full of doubt, even hints of outrage.
“How long can you hold?” Regis asked. “And even if winter brings respite, with Sundabar …”
“No,” Jolen Firth replied evenly and with finality. “We would die here, to a man, before we would surrender.”
“When Obould first came, the city was abandoned,” Drizzt reminded.
“A different time,” Jolen Firth immediately argued. “And in that time, Silverymoon could come to our aid, and so the city would be retaken in short order.”
“Nesmé was but a town in those days,” the old mage added. “With barely a wall to speak of. Ah, but we didn’t go and build the fortress just to run away.”
“Well, we can’t all be sitting still and hopin’ for snow,” Bruenor decided. “We got to go, elf.” He looked about to his friends, and to Athrogate. “We’ll fight our way to Mithral Hall and help King Connerad shake off th’orc stench. Then we’ll hit them orcs, and hard, and each town freed will add to our numbers.”
“A fine plan,” said Jolen Firth.
“You’ll not get near to Mithral Hall if you take the whole of Nesmé with you,” the old woman said. “In my spells, I have seen that place, too, and the orcs are thick about it. Thousands and thousands! Many march south to Silverymoon, but many more come back from the front lines to settle about the halls of the dwarves. Nay, you’ll get nowhere near those gates, and the dwarves wouldn’t open them if you did.”
Bruenor looked to Drizzt.
“West,” Drizzt said, to Bruenor and to Jolen Firth. “It seems the only way.”
The First Speaker was about to argue once more, his expression growing angry, when Regis interjected, “We can get to Mithral Hall.”
All eyes turned on him, and he seemed surprised by the revelation he had just shared.
“You can, perhaps, in disguise,” said Drizzt. “Will a goblin shaman make the trek? Perhaps with a drow escort?”
“They’d not open the doors,” Bruenor and Jolen Firth said together.
“No, the five of us,” Regis said, and he looked around at his friends and corrected it to “six,” as he noted Athrogate. “We can get there, but it won’t be easy. Do you remember the orc encampment?”
Drizzt shrugged. He hadn’t even really entered the place, but had seen it from afar.
“There is a boulder tumble and a deep cave,” Regis explained.
“How deep?” Drizzt asked, and he was beginning to understand.
“The goblin tribes and the ogres who reinforced that orc assault came to the camp through the tunnels,” Regis explained. “They tap into the Underdark. I know this to be true, for I was in them.”
Drizzt looked to Bruenor. “We ain’t but fifty miles from Mithral Hall, elf,” he said hopefully.
“As a bird flies,” Drizzt replied. “In the winding ways of the Underdark …”
“She’s straight north,” Bruenor argued.
Drizzt spent a long time considering it. The Underdark was no safe journey, of course, but with his powerful friends about him, surely they could survive a tenday in the upper tunnels.
“It is worth a try,” Jolen Firth remarked.
“We might even find a back door for me kin to break out,” said Bruenor. “The Battlehammer boys sneak out and crush these dogs about Nesmé, then Nesmé comes north and helps Mithral Hall clear her gates.”
He looked to Jolen Firth, who nodded—but noncommittally, Drizzt understood, and so too did Bruenor recognize that hesitance, likely, given the history between Mithral Hall and Nesmé. If the siege of Nesmé was broken, the Riders would turn east, no doubt, to go to the aid of Silverymoon.
Still, their prospects here were nothing but dark, Drizzt understood. He doubted that Nesmé would hold until the winter, and if Jolen Firth refused to attempt to break out to the west—and even that would likely prove disastrous, then the thousands here would surely die.
“We can get there,” Regis said again.
Drizzt looked to Catti-brie, who nodded her agreement.
“It is a desperate plan,” the drow said.
“Ye got better, elf?” asked Bruenor.
“No, and so we go.”
The orc reclined against the boulder, staring up at the clouds, fantasizing about the spurting blood of some human.
Ah, yes, the walls of Nesmé would fall, and then the people of Nesmé would fall to jagged blades!
The beast came out of its trance when a deerskin boot appeared on the stone beside its ear, and then another on the other side of its head. The orc arched its back a bit to look up and behind, to see a huge man standing there, straddling its head, and with his arms up high.
The orc started to leap up, but the warhammer came down faster, the barbarian chopping down as if he was splitting wood.
The orc’s arms shot out to the sides, fingers waggling, as Aegis-fang collapsed its chest. Its eyes bulged as if they would fly from the sockets, and its life-force did fly, straightaway, from the blasted corpse.
Wulfgar glanced to the side and nodded, and Regis and Drizzt sprinted out from around another boulder, leaving the three orcs they had just slain, and darted into the small cave within the boulder tumble.
The barbarian turned around and waved the all clear to Bruenor, then Catti-brie, then Athrogate, who had taken perimeter positions around the boulder tumble.
A commotion drew Wulfgar’s attention and he glanced back down before him to see a goblin rushing out of the tunnel in full flight. He hoisted his warhammer to throw, but hesitated.
“Regis?” he called.
Out of the hole came the halfling. “Real one,” he explained, pointing to the fleeing monster.
Aegis-fang went spinning out and the goblin went spinning down.
“Bwahaha!” Athrogate roared with delight, coming in fast from the side upon Snort, for he too had noted the fleeing goblin. “Full o’ bluster, humans be, all boast’n’bluster’n’yammer, but this one here, ogre tall and giant strong, sure can throw a hammer.”
Wulf
gar jumped down from the stone, Aegis-fang returning to his grasp. He stared at Athrogate incredulously, which made the dwarf laugh all the harder.
“He is easily amused,” Regis remarked.
“Might be because I’m smarter than the rest of ye, eh?” Athrogate said, walking by the pair to join Drizzt in the cave. “Make yer laughs where ye can, little one, because yer tears’ll chase ye and catch ye where they will.”
Regis started to respond, but held back and found himself nodding instead.
“A lesson worth learning,” Wulfgar remarked, and tossed a wink the halfling’s way, then started into the cave. “A pity, then, that the dirty dwarf’s songs aren’t more entertaining.”
“Bah!” Athrogate snorted.
Drizzt led the way down the hole into the tunnels below, and a series of large chambers that were now abandoned, but had been full of goblins and orcs very recently, judging by the debris and waste.
“They’re probably off attacking Nesmé again,” Regis remarked, and the others nodded.
“Relentless,” Catti-brie agreed.
“I telled ye, elf,” the dwarf said to Drizzt. “They been wanting a war, and so war they’re getting!” He looked around, nodding, but none of the others, except perhaps Athrogate, seemed to be sharing his obvious enthusiasm at that moment. “Bah, but it’s the way o’ things,” Bruenor said.
“With all speed to Mithral Hall, then,” said Catti-brie. “The sooner we get to the dwarves, the better Nesmé’s chances of survival.” She took an arrow from Drizzt’s quiver and cast a quick spell, and the head of the missile lit up with a light as strong as a torch, and indeed, Catti-brie held it forth as if it was just that.
She looked to Drizzt, they all did, and the drow nodded and moved about the chambers, peering into the tunnels to try to discern the most northerly route. They started along one, but after some hours of walking, Drizzt paused and shook his head.
“What do ye know?” Bruenor asked.
Drizzt waved the dwarf up beside him and sniffed the air. Bruenor did likewise.
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