Entreri’s look gave the wizard the impression that he was not so certain.
“Pook will forget it,” LaValle assured him.
“Those who pursued me should not so easily be forgotten,” Entreri replied.
“Pook called upon Pinochet to complete the task,” said LaValle. “The pirate has never failed.”
“The pirate has never faced such foes,” Entreri answered. He looked to the table and LaValle’s crystal ball. “We should be certain.”
LaValle thought for a moment, then nodded his accord. He had intended to do some scrying anyway. “Watch the ball,” he instructed Entreri. “I shall see if I can summon the image of Pinochet.”
The crystal ball remained dark for a few moments, then filled with smoke. LaValle had not dealt often with Pinochet, but he knew enough of the pirate for a simple scrying. A few seconds later, the image of a docked ship came into view—not a pirate vessel, but a merchant ship. Immediately Entreri suspected something amiss.
Then the crystal probed deeper, beyond the hull of the ship, and the assassin’s guess was confirmed, for in a sectioned corner of the hold sat the proud pirate captain, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, shackled to the wall.
LaValle, stunned, looked to Entreri, but the assassin was too intent on the image to offer any explanations. A rare smile had found its way onto Entreri’s face.
LaValle cast an enhancing spell at the crystal ball. “Pinochet,” he called softly.
The pirate lifted his head and looked around.
“Where are you?” LaValle asked.
“Oberon?” Pinochet asked. “Is that you, wizard?”
“Nay, I am LaValle, Pook’s sorcerer in Calimport. Where are you?”
“Memnon,” the pirate answered. “Can you get me out?”
“What of the elf and the barbarian?” Entreri asked LaValle, but Pinochet heard the question directly.
“I had them!” the pirate hissed. “Trapped in a channel with no escape. But then a dwarf appeared, driving the reins of a flying chariot of fire, and with him a woman archer—a deadly archer.” He paused, fighting off his distaste as he remembered the encounter.
“To what outcome?” LaValle prompted, amazed at the development.
“One ship went running, one ship—my ship—sank, and the third was captured,” groaned Pinochet. He locked his face into a grimace and asked again, more emphatically, “Can you get me out?”
LaValle looked helplessly to Entreri, who now stood tall over the crystal ball, absorbing every word. “Where are they?” the assassin growled, his patience worn away.
“Gone,” answered Pinochet. “Gone with the girl and the dwarf into Memnon.”
“How long?”
“Three days.”
Entreri signaled to LaValle that he had heard enough.
“I will have Pasha Pook send word to Memnon immediately,” LaValle assured the pirate. “You shall be released.”
Pinochet sank into his original, despondent position. Of course he would be released; that had already been arranged. He had hoped that LaValle could somehow magically get him out of the Sea Sprite’s hold, thereby releasing him from any pledges he would be forced to make to Deudermont when the captain set him free.
“Three days,” LaValle said to Entreri as the crystal darkened. “They could be halfway here by now.”
Entreri seemed amused at the notion. “Pasha Pook is to know nothing of this,” he said suddenly.
LaValle sank back in his chair. “He must be told.”
“No!” Entreri snapped. “This is none of his affair.”
“The guild may be in danger,” LaValle replied.
“You do not trust that I am capable of handling this?” Entreri asked in a low, grim tone. LaValle felt the assassin’s callous eyes looking through him, as though he had suddenly become just another barrier to be overcome.
But Entreri softened his glare and grinned. “You know of Pasha Pook’s weakness for hunting cats,” he said, reaching into his pouch. “Give him this. Tell him you made it for him.”
He tossed a small black object across the table to the wizard. LaValle caught it, his eyes widening as soon as he realized what it was.
Guenhwyvar.
* * *
On a distant plane, the great cat stirred at the wizard’s touch upon the statuette and wondered if its master meant to summon it, finally, to his side.
But, after a moment, the sensation faded, and the cat put its head down to rest.
So much time had gone by.
* * *
“It holds an entity,” the wizard gasped, sensing the strength in the onyx statuette.
“A powerful entity,” Entreri assured him. “When you learn to control it, you will have brought a new ally to the guild.”
“How can I thank—” LaValle began, but he stopped as he realized that he had already been told the price of the panther. “Why trouble Pook with details that do not concern him?” The wizard laughed, tossing a cloth over his crystal ball.
Entreri clapped LaValle on the shoulder as he passed toward the door. Three years had done nothing to diminish the understanding the two men had shared.
But with Drizzt and his friends approaching, Entreri had more pressing business. He had to go to the Cells of Nine and pay a visit to Regis.
The assassin needed another gift.
Book 3.
Desert Empires
16. Never a Fouler Place
Entreri slipped through the shadows of Calimport’s bowels as quietly as an owl glided through a forest at twilight. This was his home, the place he knew best, and all the street people of the city would mark the day when Artemis Entreri again walked beside them or behind them.
Entreri couldn’t help but smile slightly whenever the hushed whispers commenced in his wake—the more experienced rogues telling the newcomers that the king had returned. Entreri never let the legend of his reputation—no matter how well earned—interfere with the constant state of readiness that had kept him alive through the years. In the streets, a reputation of power only marked a man as a target for ambitious second-rates seeking reputations of their own.
Thus, Entreri’s first task in the city, outside of his responsibilities to Pasha Pook, was to re-establish the network of informants and associates that entrenched him in his station. He already had an important job for one of them, with Drizzt and company fast approaching, and he knew which one.
“I had heard you were back,” squeaked a diminutive chap appearing as a human boy not yet into adolescence when Entreri ducked and entered his abode. “I guess most have.”
Entreri took the compliment with a nod. “What has changed, my halfling friend?”
“Little,” replied Dondon, “and lots.” He moved to the table in the darkest corner of his small quarters, the side room, facing the ally, in a cheap inn called the Coiled Snake. “The rules of the street do not change, but the players do.” Dondon looked up from the table’s unlit lamp to catch Entreri’s eyes with his own.
“Artemis Entreri was gone, after all,” the halfling explained, wanting to make sure that Entreri fully understood his previous statement. “The royal suite had a vacancy.”
Entreri nodded his accord, causing the halfling to relax and sigh audibly.
“Pook still controls the merchants and the docks,” said Entreri. “Who owns the streets?”
“Pook, still,” replied Dondon, “at least in name. He found another agent in your stead. A whole horde of agents.” Dondon paused for a moment to think. Again he had to be careful to weigh every word before he spoke it. “Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Pasha Pook does not control the streets, but rather that he still has the streets controlled.”
Entreri knew, even before asking, what the little halfling was leading to. “Rassiter,” he said grimly.
“There is much to be said about that one and his crew,” Dondon chuckled, resuming his efforts to light the lantern.
“Pook
loosens his reins on the wererats, and the ruffians of the street take care to stay out of the guild’s way,” Entreri reasoned.
“Rassiter and his kind play hard.”
“And fall hard.”
The chill of Entreri’s tone brought Dondon’s eyes back up from the lantern, and for the first time, the halfling truly recognized the old Artemis Entreri, the human street fighter who had built his shadowy empire one ally at a time. An involuntary shudder rippled up Dondon’s spine, and he shifted uncomfortably on his feet.
Entreri saw the effect and quickly switched the subject. “Enough of this,” he said. “Let it not concern you, little one. I have a job for you that is more in line with your talents.”
Dondon finally got the lantern’s wick to take, and he pulled up a chair, eager to please his old boss.
They talked for more than an hour, until the lantern became a solitary defense against the insistent blackness of the night. Then Entreri took his leave, through the window and into the alley. He didn’t believe that Rassiter would be so foolish as to strike before taking full measure of the assassin, before the wererat could even begin to understand the dimensions of his enemy.
Then again, Entreri didn’t mark Rassiter high on any intelligence scale.
Perhaps it was Entreri, though, who didn’t truly understand his enemy, or how completely Rassiter and his wretched minions had come to dominate the streets over the last three years. Less than five minutes after Entreri had gone, Dondon’s door swung open again.
And Rassiter stepped through.
“What did he want?” the swaggering fighter asked, plopping comfortably into a chair at the table.
Dondon moved away uneasily, noticing two more of Rassiter’s cronies standing guard in the hall. After more than a year, the halfling still felt uncomfortable around Rassiter.
“Come, come now,” Rassiter prompted. He asked again, his tone more grim, “What did he want?”
The last thing Dondon wanted was to get caught in a crossfire between the wererats and the assassin, but he had little choice but to answer Rassiter. If Entreri ever learned of the double-cross, Dondon knew that his days swiftly end.
Yet, if he didn’t spill out to Rassiter, his demise would be no less certain, and the method less swift.
He sighed at the lack of options and spilled his story, detail by detail, to Rassiter.
Rassiter gave no countermands to Entreri’s instructions. He would let Dondon play out the scenario exactly as Entreri had devised it. Apparently, the wererat believed he could twist it into his own gains. He sat quietly for a long moment, scratching his hairless chin and savoring the anticipation of the easy victory, his broken teeth gleaming even a deeper yellow in the lamplight.
“You will run with us this night?” he asked the halfling, satisfied that the assassin business was completed. “The moon will be bright.” He squeezed one of Dondon’s cherublike cheeks. “The fur will be thick, eh?”
Dondon pulled away from the grasp. “Not this night,” he replied, a bit too sharply.
Rassiter cocked his head, studying Dondon curiously. He always had suspected that the halfling was not comfortable with his new station. Might this defiance be linked to the return of his old boss? Rassiter wondered.
“Tease him and die,” Dondon replied, drawing an even more curious look from the wererat.
“You have not begun to understand this man you face,” Dondon continued, unshaken. “Artemis Entreri is not to be toyed with—not by the wise. He knows everything. If a half-sized rat is seen running with the pack, then my life is forfeit and your plans are ruined.” He moved right up, in spite of his revulsion for the man, and set a grave visage barely an inch from Rassiter’s nose.
“Forfeit,” he reiterated, “at the least.”
Rassiter spun out of the chair, sending it bouncing across the room. He had heard too much about Artemis Entreri in a single day for his liking. Everywhere he turned, trembling lips uttered the assassin’s name.
Don’t they know? he told himself once again as he strode angrily to the door. It is Rassiter they should fear!
He felt the telltale itching on his chin, then the crawling sensation of tingling growth swept through his body. Dondon backed away and averted his eyes, never comfortable with the spectacle.
Rassiter kicked off his boots and loosened his shirt and pants. The hair was visible now, rushing out of his skin in scraggly patches and clumps. He fell back against the wall as the fever took him completely. His skin bubbled and bulged, particularly around his face. He sublimated his scream as his snout elongated, though the wash of agony was no less intense this time—perhaps the thousandth time—than it had been during his very first transformation.
He stood then before Dondon on two legs, as a man, but whiskered and furred and with a long pink tail that ran out the back of his trousers, as a rodent.
“Join me?” he asked the halfling.
Hiding his revulsion, Dondon quickly declined. Looking at the ratman, the halfling wondered how he had ever allowed Rassiter to bite him, infecting him with his lycanthropic nightmare. “It will bring you power!” Rassiter had promised.
But at what cost? Dondon thought. To look and smell like a rat? No blessing this, but a disease.
Rassiter guessed at the halfling’s distaste, and he curled his rat snout back in a threatening hiss, then turned for the door.
He spun back on Dondon before exiting the room. “Keep away from this!” he warned the halfling. “Do as you were bid and hide away!”
“No doubt to that,” Dondon whispered as the door slammed shut.
* * *
The aura that distinguished Calimport as home to so very many Calishites came across as foul to the strangers from the North. Truly, Drizzt, Wulfgar, Bruenor, and Catti-brie were weary of the Calim Desert when their five-day trek came to an end, but looking down on the city of Calimport made them want to turn around and take to the sands once again.
It was wretched Memnon on a grander scale, with the divisions of wealth so blatantly obvious that Calimport cried out as ultimately perverted to the four friends. Elaborate houses, monuments to excess and hinting at wealth beyond imagination, dotted the cityscape. Yet, right beside those palaces loomed lane after lane of decrepit shanties of crumbling clay or ragged skins. The friends couldn’t guess how many people roamed the place—certainly more than Waterdeep and Memnon combined!—and they knew at once that in Calimport, as in Memnon, no one had ever bothered to count.
Sali Dalib dismounted, bidding the others do likewise, and led them down a final hill and into the unwalled city. The friends found the sights of Calimport no better up close. Naked children, their bellies bloated from lack of food, scrambled out of the way or were simply trampled as gilded, slave-drawn carts rushed through the streets. Worse still were the sides of those avenues, ditches mostly, serving as open sewers in the city’s poorest sections. There were thrown the bodies of the impoverished, who had fallen to the roadside at the end of their miserable days.
“Suren Rumblebelly never told of such sights when he spoke of home,” Bruenor grumbled, pulling his cloak over his face to deflect the awful stench. “Past me guessing why he’d long for this place!”
“De greatest city in de world, dis be!” Sali Dalib spouted, lifting his arms to enhance his praise.
Wulfgar, Bruenor and Catti-brie shot him incredulous stares. Hordes of people begging and starving was not their idea of greatness. Drizzt paid the merchant no heed, though. He was busy making the inevitable comparison between Calimport and another city he had known, Menzoberranzan. Truly there were similarities, and death was no less common in Menzoberranzan, but Calimport somehow seemed fouler than the city of the drow. Even the weakest of the dark elves had the means to protect himself, with strong family ties and deadly innate abilities. The pitiful peasants of Calimport, though, and more so their children, seemed helpless and hopeless indeed.
In Menzoberranzan, those on the lowest rungs of the power ladde
r could fight their way to a better standing. For the majority of Calimport’s multitude, though, there would only be poverty, a day-to-day squalid existence until they landed on the piles of buzzard-pecked bodies in the ditches.
“Take us to the guildhouse of Pasha Pook,” Drizzt said, getting to the point, wanting to be done with his business and out of Calimport, “then you are dismissed.”
Sali Dalib paled at the request. “Pasha Poop?” he stammered. “Who is dis?”
“Bah!” Bruenor snorted, moving dangerously close to the merchant. “He knows him.”
“Suren he does,” Catti-brie observed, “and fears him.”
“Sali Dalib not—” the merchant began.
Twinkle came out of its sheath and slipped to a stop under the merchant’s chin, silencing the man instantly. Drizzt let his mask slip a bit, reminding Sali Dalib of the drow’s heritage. Once again, his suddenly grim demeanor unnerved even his own friends. “I think of my friend,” Drizzt said in a calm, low tone, his lavender eyes absently staring into the city, “tortured even as we delay.”
He snapped his scowl at Sali Dalib. “As you delay! You will take us to the guildhouse of Pasha Pook,” he reiterated, more insistently, “and then you are dismissed.”
“Pook? Oh, Pook,” the merchant beamed. “Sali Dalib know dis man, yes, yes. Everybody know Pook. Yes, yes, I take you dere, den I go.”
Drizzt replaced the mask but kept the stern visage. “If you or your little companion try to flee,” he promised so calmly that neither the merchant nor his assistant doubted his words for a moment, “I will hunt you down and kill you.”
The drow’s three friends exchanged confused shrugs and concerned glances. They felt confident that they knew Drizzt to his soul, but so grim was his tone that even they wondered how much of his promise was an idle threat.
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