Boundless

by R. A. Salvatore

  Branches bent to swat at demons; grasses wrapped the ankles of the manes, slowing some, stopping others. Hope blossomed, but only for a moment, for then a hulking demon put an end to the dwarven druid’s spell. A mighty balor demon, the greatest of demonkind other than the demon lords themselves, had come. All darkness and fire, the powerful creature stamped its foot, sending rolling flames outward to punish the grass and shrubs that dared try to grasp it, and it moved determinedly for the lone dwarf, its whip of fire rolling high, snapping forward and spewing deadly flames.

  It cracked right above the dwarf, Pikel Bouldershoulder, who melted downward below it, and the whip spat forth a tremendous fireball.

  Though it was far away, the heat of the blast washed over Doregardo. He strained to see through the smoke, to catch sight of the dwarf.

  But no. He had to consider that Pikel, the sommelier of Bleeding Vines, the druid green-thumb who had fostered the wonderful vineyard, had been killed.

  And Doregardo knew that he couldn’t go to Pikel, or to his body. They were out of time. He called for his group to turn, shouted a general retreat, and galloped back toward the tram station. Other diamond groups linked up with them, and they shifted their formation accordingly, riding tight, fighting defensively, a host of spears and swords lifting to fend off any chasme that got too near. Back by the trams, the battleragers leaped and spun, throwing themselves upon demons and simply shaking the beasts to shreds under the ridges of their sharpened armor so effectively that Queen Mallabritches had nearly half of her contingent up with crossbows again, while the rest gathered up the fallen—more than a dozen—and dragged them for the tram.

  Away went that train, and yet another came up, and more dwarves joined the fight, and there, in a semicircle right before the tram station, the halflings and the dwarves made their stand as the last of Bleeding Vines’s civilians, including Lady Donnola herself, rode that tram away.

  “Now we die,” Doregardo told his soldiers, “so die well,” and he shared a grim nod with Queen Mallabritches.

  “You should go, good queen,” he told her.

  “Me sister’ll be givin’ Bruenor his heirs,” she replied with a smile and a wink, and she banged her warhammer hard against her shield.

  In came the manes, and the halflings and dwarves cut them down twenty to one—but there were enough of the wretched beasts to accept those losses and still prevail.

  Another tram rolled up, though with few dwarves aboard this time, for Gauntlgrym was obviously calling for a full retreat.

  “Ponies!” Doregardo yelled, and it was echoed down the line. In such close quarters, the ponies would become a liability, but of course there wasn’t a Grinning Pony or a Kneebreaker who would not sacrifice his or her own life for their beloved mounts. So they dismounted—many already had—and started to usher their horses toward the tram.

  But loading a pony on a tram was no easy task in calm times, and with the battle raging all around, such an action seemed more dangerous than fighting a demon.

  He had no easy answers, and lamented that his beloved mount was likely doomed. Even as those melancholy thoughts threatened to crash over him, a piping melody filled the air above the din of battle, the clashing weapons, and the demonic shrieks, and the halfling watched in amazement as a dwarf, the one and only Pikel Bouldershoulder, stepped out from a tree—not from beside a tree, but out of a tree!—playing the pipes with surprising adeptness. The music from those pipes calmed the ponies, and they boarded the tram placidly as Pikel ran up and down the line, kicking the cart doors closed as each filled.

  Away went the tram, and Doregardo took heart that his beloved pony might survive this awful day. He then turned back and launched himself at a demon mane, fully expecting that he would not.

  The demon responded with a word of its own, a croaking, grating combination of hard syllables that sounded to Regis like a porcupine being rubbed across the flesh of a giant frog.

  He thought to taunt the demon, but then, so suddenly, his only thought was to try, futilely, to hold on to his weapon as the stunning magic of the infernal beast’s word of power slapped his consciousness.

  Dazed, he nearly fell. Dazed, Rumblebelly stumbled sideways.

  The dog-faced demon grinned wickedly and came forward a step—

  Then thrashed, as the air before it suddenly filled with spinning magical blades, a wall of whirring weapons, cutting and biting at demon flesh. The demon’s pincers snapped and swatted, and the floating magical swords clicked and sparked and some flew wide, dissipating to nothingness. Some struck true, though, and lines of blood erupted about the glabrezu, but it didn’t back down, stubbornly fighting the blades, clearly diminishing them, picking them out of this wall of summoned fury one at a time.

  Regis didn’t know what to make of it, didn’t know how this powerful dweomer might have come to be. He knew it to be a temporary reprieve, though, and could only hope that the demon would be more severely wounded by the time it got through the wall of bladed mayhem. He looked around to find an avenue of escape, and he saw her.

  She came out of the trees behind him, behind his pony, startling the halfling so terribly that he nearly fell from his seat yet again. She was beautiful and terrible and powerful, but mostly, to Regis, she was beautiful.

  For he knew this young woman, this powerful drow named Yvonnel, daughter of Gromph, friend of Drizzt, and relief flooded through him. He was certain he couldn’t beat a glabrezu.

  But Yvonnel probably could.

  She walked past him without acknowledging him, her gaze locked on the demon, who stared back at her hatefully as it slapped aside the last of the magical blades. Its skin hung in tatters, one pincer chipped short, both hands bloody.

  It did not seem as if it would be falling over dead anytime soon, however.

  Regardless, Yvonnel did not falter in her approach. “Ecanti’tu Rethnorel, desper nosferat,” she said, then repeated.

  The glabrezu growled.

  “Ecanti’tu Rethnorel, desper nosferat.”

  Regis didn’t understand the words, and didn’t even believe them to be the language of the drow, but he could sense their power.

  The demon growled again, but came up straight, out of its aggressive crouch, almost leaning back.

  Yvonnel kept her determined and steady approach.

  “Ecanti’tu Rethnorel, desper nosferat,” she recited, and Regis’s eyes went wide as he realized the strength in those words, as if Yvonnel’s breath, blowing them out, was that of a magical dragon, one designed specifically against the life force of a demon. Rethnorel sounded like a name to him—the demon’s name, he decided.

  “Ecanti’tu Rethnorel, desper nosferat.”

  The halfling noticed black shadows flowing backward from the glabrezu, as if Yvonnel’s words had created a killing wind that struck at its corporeal form and blew back the demonic essence animating that physical body. Every syllable hit Rethnorel the way the flowing breath of a speaker might make the flame of a candle blow back.

  Yvonnel was quite literally blowing out the life force of this monstrous fiend.

  “Ecanti’tu Rethnorel, desper nosferat,” she continued, her voice growing more powerful still. She was close enough for the glabrezu to reach out with its pincer arms and cut her in half. But somehow, it could not. The fiend simply stood very still, leaning back from the drow, and it appeared to take all of Rethnorel’s willpower and strength just to hold that pose.

  Yvonnel recited the words of power again, then pursed her lips, leaned forward, and blew, and such a gust of wind came forth that the branches of all the trees before her shook as if in a hurricane, and the black shadows of the demon stretched back many strides from its form. Then, as if its entire life force exited with those shadows, the hulking creature lifted off the ground and flapped weirdly, like clothing hung out to dry in that same hurricane. It wobbled, it flew away, it disappeared.

  Yvonnel stopped. She stood very still, clearly trying to compose herself and re
gain her strength.

  Finally she lifted her head, nodded at her handiwork, then looked back to regard Regis.

  He nearly fell to his knees under the supernatural weight of that stare, not in gratitude but in worship.

  He tried to speak his thanks, but his shivering mouth would not form words.

  Doregardo came back to consciousness as he tumbled over some small wall, landing hard despite a myriad of hands trying to catch him. It took him a moment to realize he had been pulled into one of the tram carts, and the hands grabbing at him belonged to a pair of dwarves and many of his own Grinning Ponies riders. He looked to them, but they didn’t return the stare, all instead looking past him, and with open horror on their faces. Doregardo pulled himself up and managed to glance back, and then he understood, for there stood the greatest demon of the field, the mighty balor of fire and darkness.

  Doregardo’s thoughts whirled as he tried to remember how he had become unconscious. Had the balor thrown him into the cart?

  But no, he realized as the tram rolled away, speeding as it turned down the steeply descending tunnel, for in that moment, another form had revealed itself: the lean body of a drow, and one he knew.

  Standing on the raised platform. Not in a cart.

  It was him, Doregardo thought. The halfling had been hoisted over the back wall of the last cart of the last tram by Drizzt Do’Urden. Who was still out there. Doregardo heard a whistle, clear and smooth, but didn’t understand the significance in that moment of confusion and fear. For Drizzt was out there.

  With the demons.

  With the balor.

  And then the cart made another turn, and the drow warrior was lost to Doregardo’s view.

  Part 1

  The Daggers of Bregan D’aerthe

  Jarlaxle has spent many hours of late—since the resurrection of Zaknafein—relating to me tales of his early days beside my father in Menzoberranzan. His purpose, I expect, is to help me better get to know this man who was so important to me in my early years, a man whose past has remained mostly a mystery until now. Perhaps Jarlaxle sees this as a way to bridge the divide that I have unexpectedly found separating me from my father, to soften the edges of Zaknafein’s attitudes toward any who are not drow.

  What I have found most of all, however, is that Jarlaxle’s stories have told me more about Jarlaxle than they have about Zaknafein, most especially of the evolution of Jarlaxle and his mercenary band of Bregan D’aerthe. I view this evolution with great optimism, as it seems to me a smaller example of that which I hope might come about within the drow culture as a whole.

  When he started his band of outcasts, Jarlaxle did so simply to keep himself alive. He was a houseless rogue, a reality that in Menzoberranzan typically ensured one a difficult and short existence. But clever Jarlaxle collected others in similar straits and brought them together, and made of these individuals a powerful force that offered value to the ruling matrons without threatening them. That band, though, was not the same as the Bregan D’aerthe that now controls the city of Luskan, and the distinction is not subtle, though I’m not sure if Jarlaxle himself is even conscious of it.

  Bregan D’aerthe is a very different troupe now, but the change, I expect, has been gradual across the centuries. Jarlaxle, too, must be different.

  And so, dare I hope that Zaknafein will find his way as well?

  In the beginning, the Bregan D’aerthe reflected the savage culture of Menzoberranzan’s houses, and in many ways exploited the schisms within Menzoberranzan, both interhouse and intrahouse. Great indeed were those treacheries! My own life was spared the sacrificial blade only because my brother Dinin murdered my brother Nalfein on the day of my birth. Everyone knew the truth of it, including our mother, Matron Malice, and yet there was no punishment to Dinin. Rather, there was only gain because of the clever manner in which he had executed Nalfein, away from obvious witnesses. Similarly, I would guess that nearly half the matrons serving as the heads of drow houses arrived at their station by killing (or at least by helping to facilitate the death of) their own mothers. This is the way of Lolth and so this is the way of the drow and so this was the way of Bregan D’aerthe.

  As such, Jarlaxle gave his underlings free rein and little guidance as they tried to climb the hierarchy of Bregan D’aerthe. His only rule, from what I can fathom, was that members take care of the cost that any of their actions might incur upon him. His underlings would fight and cheat, steal and kill, and Jarlaxle did not care enough to get involved. A murdered associate would have to be properly replaced at the expense of the murderer, I suppose, but Jarlaxle imposed no moral code upon his underlings.

  I sometimes wonder if he was then possessed of such a code himself.

  I ask that honestly, for while I do not doubt that he has always held some code of honor, that is not necessarily the same thing as a moral center. Artemis Entreri held on to some misplaced sense of honor, too, but it is only in very recent times that he has allowed simple morality to even seep into his decisions.

  But then, Artemis Entreri viewed the human societies in much the same way that Jarlaxle—and Zaknafein—viewed the drow: irredeemable and wretched and worthy of his extreme scorn and ultimate judgment.

  What a sad waste is such an outlook!

  When Jarlaxle relates those early stories of his band of not-brothers, he doesn’t even seem aware of the stark differences that are representative of Bregan D’aerthe today. Then, the secret society survived by strength alone, by Jarlaxle’s ability to will the disparate and rivalrous troupe through the tasks put before him by the matrons, particularly Matron Mother Baenre. From all that I can extrapolate through these stories, Jarlaxle lost more foot soldiers to Bregan D’aerthe blades than to those of enemies.

  Now, though, I witness a much different structure within Bregan D’aerthe, and one very much more powerful.

  For Jarlaxle has given to his followers something truly special among the Lolth-serving drow: an element of trust.

  And he does so by example. Jarlaxle has entrusted Kimmuriel Oblodra with the very leadership of the band on those many occasions when he, Jarlaxle, is out on some adventure or other. He has even tasked Kimmuriel with reining in his own worst excesses—with keeping Jarlaxle himself in line!

  Jarlaxle has given great latitude to Beniago in his role as High Captain Kurth, overseeing the city of Luskan. Beniago does not consult with Jarlaxle about his every move, and yet Jarlaxle trusts in him to operate the city smoothly, profitably, and, I am led to believe, with some measure of the general welfare and common good of the citizens in mind.

  Perhaps most telling of all is the manner in which Jarlaxle has accepted the mighty former archmage. Gromph Baenre is not a full member of Bregan D’aerthe, from all that I can tell, but he resides in Luskan as the ultimate archmage of the Hosttower of the Arcane, and does so at the sufferance of Jarlaxle. The Hosttower itself could not have been rebuilt if not for Jarlaxle’s approval, for Gromph would never have been able to go against the whole of Bregan D’aerthe and would have found no support from King Bruenor, and certainly no help in the construction from Catti-brie.

  Jarlaxle granted Gromph this greatest of wizard towers, a force as singularly powerful as any castle I have ever known, even that of King Gareth Dragonsbane in Damara, or of Sorcere, the drow school of wizards in Menzoberranzan. The collection of magic, and of those who can expertly wield such magic, now residing in the Hosttower could unleash unimaginable devastation.

  But it won’t. Jarlaxle knows it won’t. Gromph’s acceptance into Bregan D’aerthe, and into the city controlled by Bregan D’aerthe, was highly conditional. His leash is short, and yet a large part of that leash lies in the realm of trust.

  And that’s all possible because Bregan D’aerthe has grown, has evolved. As their leader goes, they go.

  And that gives me hope.

  So I dare. Dare hope that Jarlaxle’s influence and example will find their way into Zaknafein’s heart.

  Even still, I
fear that Zaknafein’s transformation will not come in time to earn friendship, even familial love, from Catti-brie or from our child, and in that instance, it will not be in time to earn the love of Drizzt Do’Urden.

  I hope that is not the case.

  But he is my family by blood. And she is my family by choice.

  I have come to learn that the latter is a stronger bond.

  —Drizzt Do’Urden

  Chapter 1

  Running Free

  The Year of the False Bargain

  Dalereckoning 1118

  “Your mood is foul, friend,” Jarlaxle said to Arathis Hune in the tavern known as the Oozing Myconid one remarkable night.

  “My road has been long,” the weary and wary assassin replied. “And soon will be again, I am told. Every third year, it seems, someone in Ched Nasad is in need of being murdered.”

  “You’re good at it,” Jarlaxle said, lifting a glass of powerful mushroom bourbon in a toast.

  “Tell it to the one who fills my purse,” Arathis Hune dryly replied, and Jarlaxle returned a grin at the assassin’s quip . . . as Jarlaxle was the one who filled Arathis Hune’s purse.

  “Nothing has been decided regarding the City of Shimmering Webs,” Jarlaxle replied, after calling for a drink for his associate.

  “No movement from Matron Mother Baenre?”

  “None. I doubt she even cares enough to remember that she wanted to kill somebody there. Or, more likely, she put forth the whispers of dispatching assassins, and that alone was enough to elicit the behavioral change she desired. Surely, she—we have killed enough people there so that even a Baenre whisper—”

  “I,” Arathis Hune corrected. “I have killed enough people. It hasn’t been ‘we’ in decades regarding anything to do with Ched Nasad.”