The Halfling’s Gem frid-3

by Robert Anthony Salvatore

And those who didn’t know better learned quickly.

  No, Pook couldn’t argue about the benefits of having Rassiter and his fellows around. But the guildmaster had no love for the wretched lycanthropes, human by day and something beastly, half rat and half man, by night. And he wasn’t fond of the way they handled their business.

  “Enough of him,” Pook said, dropping his hands to the velvety black tablecloth. “I am certain that I shall need a dozen hours in the harem to get over our meeting!” His grin showed that the thought did not displease him. “But what did you want?”

  A wide smile spread over the wizard’s face. “I have spoken with Oberon in Baldur’s Gate this day,” he said with some pride. “I have learned of something that may make you forget all about your discussion with Rassiter.”

  Pook waited curiously, allowing LaValle to play out his dramatics. The wizard was a fine and loyal aide, the closest thing the guildmaster had to a friend.

  “Your assassin returns!” LaValle proclaimed suddenly.

  It took Pook a few moments to think through the meaning and implications of the wizard’s words. But then it hit him, and he sprang up from the table. “Entreri?” he gasped, barely finding his breath.

  LaValle nodded and nearly laughed out loud.

  Pook ran his hand through his hair. Three years. Entreri, deadliest of the deadly, was returning to him after three long years. He looked curiously at the wizard.

  “He has the halfling,” LaValle answered to his unspoken question. Pook’s face lit up in a broad smile. He leaned forward eagerly, his golden teeth shining in the candlelight.

  Truly LaValle was glad to please his guildmaster, to give him the news he had waited so very long to hear. “And the ruby pendant!” the wizard proclaimed, banging a fist on the table.

  “Yes!” Pook snarled, exploding into laughter. His gem, his most prized possession. With its hypnotic powers, he could rise to even greater heights of prosperity and power. Not only would he dominate all he met, but he would make them glad for the experience. “Ah, Rassiter,” Pook muttered, suddenly thinking of the upper hand he could gain on his associate. “Our relationship is about to change, my rodent friend.”

  “How much will you still need him?” LaValle asked.

  Pook shrugged and looked to the side of the room, to a small curtain.

  The Taros Hoop.

  LaValle blanched at the thought of the thing. The Taros Hoop was a mighty relic capable of displacing its owner, or his enemies, through the very planes of existence. But the power of this item was not without price. Thoroughly evil it was, and every one of the few times LaValle had used it, he had felt a part of himself drain away, as though the Taros Hoop gained its power by stealing his life force. LaValle hated Rassiter, but he hoped that the guildmaster would find a better solution than the Taros Hoop.

  The wizard looked back to find Pook staring at him. “Tell me more!” Pook insisted eagerly.

  LaValle shrugged helplessly and put his hand on the crystal ball. “I have not been able to glimpse them myself,” he said. “Ever has Artemis Entreri been able to dodge my scrying. But by Oberon’s words, they are not too far. Sailing the waters north of Calimshan, if not already within the borders. And they fly on a swift wind, Master. A week or two, no more.”

  “And Regis is with him?” Pook asked.

  “He is.”

  “Alive?”

  “Very much alive,” said the wizard.

  “Good!” Pook sneered. How he longed to see the treacherous halfling again! To have his plump hands around Regis’s little neck! The guild had fallen on tough times after Regis had run off with the magical pendant. In truth, the problems had come mostly from Pook’s own insecurity in dealing with people without the gem, so long had he been using it, and from the guildmaster’s obsessive—and expensive—hunt to find the halfling. But to Pook, the blame fell squarely upon Regis. He even blamed the halfling for the alliance with the wererats’ guild, for certainly he wouldn’t have needed Rassiter if he had had his pendant.

  But now everything would work out for the best, Pook knew. Possessing the pendant and dominating the wererats, perhaps he could even think of expanding his power outside Calimport, with charmed associates and lyncanthrope allies heading guilds throughout the southland.

  LaValle seemed more serious when Pook looked back at him. “How do you believe Entreri will feel about our new associates?” he asked grimly.

  “Ah, he does not know,” said Pook, realizing the implications. “He has been gone too long.” He thought for a moment then shrugged. “They are in the same business, after all. Entreri should accept them.”

  “Rassiter disturbs everyone he meets,” the wizard reminded him. “Suppose that he crosses Entreri?”

  Pook laughed at the thought. “I can assure you that Rassiter will cross Artemis Entreri only once, my friend.”

  “And then you shall make arrangements with the new head of the wererats,” LaValle snickered.

  Pook clapped him on the shoulder and headed for the door. “Learn what you can,” he instructed the wizard. “If you can find them in your crystal ball, call to me. I cannot wait to glimpse the face of Regis the halfling again. So much I owe to that one.”

  “And you shall be?”

  “In the harem,” Pook answered with a wink. “Tension, you know.”

  LaValle slumped back in his chair when Pook had gone and considered again the return of his principal rival. He had gained much in the years since Entreri had left, even rising to this room on the third level as Pook’s chief assistant.

  This room, Entreri’s room.

  But the wizard never had any problems with the assassin. They had been comfortable associates, if not friends, and had helped each other many times in the past. LaValle couldn’t count the number of times he had shown Entreri the quickest route to a target.

  And there was that nasty situation with Mancas Tiveros, a fellow mage. “Mancas the Mighty,” the other wizards of Calimport had called him, and they had pitied LaValle when he and Mancas fell into dispute concerning the origins of a particular spell. Both had claimed credit for the discovery, and everyone waited for an expected war of magic to erupt. But Mancas suddenly and unexplainedly went away, leaving a note disclaiming his role in the spell’s creation and giving full credit to LaValle. Mancas had never been seen again—in Calimport or anywhere else.

  “Ah, well,” LaValle sighed, turning back to his crystal ball. Artemis Entreri had his uses.

  The door to the room opened, and Pook stuck his head back in. “Send a messenger to the carpenter’s guild,” he said to LaValle. “Tell them that we shall need several skilled men immediately.”

  LaValle tilted his head in disbelief.

  “The harem and treasury are to stay,” Pook said emphatically, feigning frustration over his wizard’s inability to see the logic. “And certainly I am not conceding my chamber!”

  LaValle frowned as he thought he began to understand.

  “Nor am I about to tell Artemis Entreri that he cannot have his own room back,” said Pook. “Not after he has performed his mission so excellently!”

  “I understand,” said the wizard glumly, thinking himself relegated once again to the lower levels.

  “So a sixth room must be built,” laughed Pook, enjoying his little game. “Between Entreri’s and the harem.” He winked again at his valued assistant. “You may design it yourself, my dear LaValle. And spare no expense!” He shut the door and was gone.

  The wizard wiped the moisture from his eyes. Pook always surprised him, but never disappointed him. “You are a generous master, my Pasha Pook,” he whispered to the empty room.

  And truly Pasha Pook was a masterful leader as well, for LaValle turned back to his crystal ball, his teeth gritted in determination. He would find Entreri and the halfling. He wouldn’t disappoint his generous master.

  9. Fiery Riddles

  Now running with the currents of the Chionthar, and with the breeze at enough of an
angle from the north for the sails to catch a bit of a push, the Sea Sprite cruised away from Baldur’s Gate at a tremendous rate, spitting a white spray despite the concurrent movement of the water.

  “The Sword Coast by midafternoon,” Deudermont said to Drizzt and Wulfgar. “And off the coast, with no land in sight until we make Asavir’s Channel. Then a southern journey around the edge of the world and back east to Calimport.

  “Calimport,” he said again, indicating a new pennant making its way up the mast of the Sea Sprite, a golden field crossed by slanted blue lines.

  Drizzt looked at Deudermont suspiciously, knowing that this was not an ordinary practice of sailing vessels.

  “We run Waterdeep’s flag north of Baldur’s Gate,” the captain explained. “Calimport’s south.”

  “An acceptable practice?” Drizzt asked.

  “For those who know the price,” chuckled Deudermont. “Waterdeep and Calimport are rivals, and stubborn in their feud. They desire trade with each other—they can only profit from it but do not always allow ships flying the other’s flag to dock in their harbors.”

  “A foolish pride,” Wulfgar remarked, painfully reminded of some similar traditions his own clannish people had practiced only a few years before.

  “Politics,” Deudermont said with a shrug. “But the lords of both cities secretly desire the trade, and a few dozen ships have made the connections to keep business moving. The Sea Sprite has two ports to call home, and everyone profits from the arrangement.”

  “Two markets for Captain Deudermont,” Drizzt remarked slyly. “Practical.”

  “And it makes good sailing sense as well,” Deudermont continued, his smile still wide. “Pirates running the waters north of Baldur’s Gate respect the banner of Waterdeep above all others, and those south of here take care not to rouse the anger of Calimport and her massive armada. The pirates along Asavir’s Channel have many merchant ships to pick from in the straights, and they are more likely to raid one that carries a flag of less weight.”

  “And you are never bothered?” Wulfgar couldn’t help but ask, his voice tentative and almost sarcastic, as though he hadn’t yet figured out if he approved of the practice.

  “Never?” echoed Deudermont. “Not ‘never,’ but rarely. And on those occasions that pirates come at us, we fill our sails and run. Few ships can catch the Sea Sprite when her sails are full of wind.”

  “And if they do catch you?” asked Wulfgar.

  “That is where you two can earn your passage,” Deadermont laughed. “My guess is that those weapons you carry might soften a looting pirate’s desire to continue the pursuit.”

  Wulfgar brought Aegis-fang up in front of him. “I pray that I have learned the movements of a ship well enough for such a battle,” he said. “An errant swing might send me over the rail!”

  “Then swim to the side of the pirate ship,” Drizzt mused, “and tip her over!”

  * * *

  From a darkened chamber in his tower in Baldur’s Gate, the wizard Oberon watched the Sea Sprite sail out. He probed deeper into the crystal ball to scry the elf and huge barbarian standing beside the ship’s captain on the deck. They were not from these parts, the wizard knew. By his dress and his coloring, the barbarian was more likely from one of those distant tribes far to the north, beyond even Luskan and around the Spine of the World mountains, in that desolate stretch of land known as Icewind Dale. How far he was from home, and how unusual to see one of his kind sailing the open sea!

  “What part could these two play in the return of Pasha Pook’s gem?” Oberon wondered aloud, truly intrigued. Had Entreri gone all the way to that distant strip of tundra in search of the halfling? Were these two pursuing him south?

  But it was not the wizard’s affair. Oberon was just glad that Entreri had called in the debt with so easy a favor. The assassin had killed for Oberon—more than once—several years ago, and though Entreri had never mentioned the favors in his many visits to Oberon’s tower, the wizard had always felt as if the assassin held a heavy chain around his neck. But this very night, the long-standing debt would be cleared in the puff of a simple signal.

  Oberon’s curiosity kept him tuned to the departing Sea Sprite a bit longer. He focused upon the elf—Drizzt Do’Urden, as Pellman, the harbormaster, had called him. To the wizard’s experienced eye, something seemed amiss about this elf. Not out of place, as the barbarian seemed. Rather something in the way Drizzt carried himself or looked about with those unique, lavender orbs.

  Those eyes just did not seem to fit the overall persona of that elf, Drizzt Do’Urden.

  An enchantment, perhaps, Oberon guessed. Some magical disguise. The curious wizard wished that he had more information to report to Pasha Pook. He considered the possibilities of whisking himself away to the deck of the ship to investigate further, but he hadn’t the proper spells prepared for such an undertaking. Besides, he reminded himself again, this was not his affair.

  And he did not want to cross Artemis Entreri.

  * * *

  That same night, Oberon flew out of his tower and climbed into the night sky, a wand in hand. Hundreds of feet above the city, he loosed the proper sequence of fireballs.

  * * *

  Riding the decks of a Calimport ship named Devil Dancer, two hundred miles to the south, Artemis Entreri watched the display. “By sea,” he muttered, noting the sequence of the bursts. He turned to the halfling standing beside him.

  “Your friends pursue us by sea,” he said. “And less than a week behind! They have done well.”

  Regis’s eyes did not flicker in hope at the news. The climate change was very evident now, every day and every night. They had left the winter far behind, and the hot winds of the southern Realms had settled uneasily on the halfling’s spirits. The trip to Calimport would not be interrupted by any other stops, and no ship—even one less than a week behind—could hope to catch the speedy Devil Dancer.

  Regis wrestled against an inner dilemma, trying to come to terms with the inevitability of his meeting with his old guildmaster.

  Pasha Pook was not a forgiving man. Regis had personally witnessed Pook dealing out severe punishments to those thieves who dared to steal from other members of the guild. And Regis had gone even a step further than that; he had stolen from the guildmaster himself. And the item he had plucked, the magical ruby pendant, was Pook’s most treasured possession. Defeated and despairing, Regis put his head down and walked slowly back toward his cabin.

  The halfling’s somber mood did nothing to quell the tingle running through Entreri’s spine. Pook would get the gem and the halfling, and Entreri would be paid well for the service. But in the assassin’s mind, Pook’s gold was not the true reward for his efforts.

  Entreri wanted Drizzt Do’Urden.

  * * *

  Drizzt and Wulfgar also watched the fireworks over Baldur’s Gate that night. Back in the open sea, but still more than a hundred and fifty miles north of the Devil Dancer, they could only guess at the display’s significance.

  “A wizard,” Deudermont remarked, coming over to join the two. “Perhaps he does battle with some great aerial beast,” the captain offered, trying to draw up some entertaining story. “A dragon or some other monster of the sky!” Drizzt squinted to gain a closer look at the fiery bursts. He saw no dark forms weaving around the flares, nor any hint that they were aimed at a particular target. But possibly the Sea Sprite was simply too far away for him to discern such detail.

  “Not a fight—a signal,” Wulfgar blurted, recognizing a pattern to the explosions. “Three and one. Three and one.

  “It seems a bit of trouble for a simple signal,” Wulfgar added. “Would not a rider carrying a note serve better?”

  “Unless it is meant as a signal to a ship,” offered Deudermont.

  Drizzt had already entertained that very thought, and he was becoming more than a little suspicious of the display’s source, and of its purpose.

  Deudermont studied the display
a moment longer. “Perhaps it is a signal,” he conceded, recognizing the accuracy of Wulfgar’s observations of a pattern. “Many ships put in to and out of Baldur’s Gate each day. A wizard greeting some friends or saying farewell in grand fashion.”

  “Or relaying information,” Drizzt added, glancing up at Wulfgar. Wulfgar did not miss the drow’s point; Drizzt could tell by the barbarian’s scowl that Wulfgar was entertaining similar suspicions.

  “But for us, a show and nothing more,” Deudermont said, bidding them good night with a pat on the shoulder. “An amusement to be enjoyed.”

  Drizzt and Wulfgar looked at each other, seriously doubting Deudermont’s assessment.

  * * *

  “What game does Artemis Entreri play?” Pook asked rhetorically, speaking his thoughts aloud.

  Oberon, the wizard in the crystal ball, shrugged. “Never have I pretended to understand the motives of Artemis Entreri.”

  Pook nodded his accord and continued to pace behind LaValle’s chair.

  “Yet I would guess that these two have little to do with your pendant,” said Oberon.

  “Some personal vendetta Entreri acquired along his travels,” agreed Pook.

  “Friends of the halfling?” wondered Oberon. “Then why would Entreri lead them in the right direction?”

  “Whoever they may be, they can only bring trouble,” said LaValle, seated between his guildmaster and the scrying device.

  “Perhaps Entreri plans to lay an ambush for them,” Pook suggested to Oberon. “That would explain his need for your signal.”

  “Entreri instructed the harbormaster to tell them that he would meet them in Calimport,” Oberon reminded Pook.

  “To throw them off,” said LaValle. “To make them believe that the way would be clear until they arrived in the southern port.”

  “That is not the way of Artemis Entreri,” said Oberon, and Pook was thinking the same thing. “I have never known the assassin to use such obvious tricks to gain the upper hand in a contest. It is Entreri’s deepest pleasure to meet and crush challengers face to face.”