The Halfling’s Gem frid-3

by Robert Anthony Salvatore

  But Wulfgar was too close. The barbarian grabbed the crossbow as it swung about and tore it from the wererat’s hands with such ferocity that it broke apart when it slammed into the wall. The wererat meant to flee, but the sheer intensity of Wulfgar’s glare froze him in place. He watched, horrified, as Wulfgar clasped Aegis-fang in both hands.

  Wulfgar’s strike was impossibly fast. The wererat never comprehended that the death blow had even begun. He only felt a sudden explosion on top of his head.

  The ground rushed up to meet him; he was dead before he ever splatted into the muck. Wulfgar, his eyes rimmed with tears, hammered on the wretched creature viciously until its body was no more than a lump of undefinable waste.

  Spattered with blood and muck and black water, Wulfgar finally slumped back against the wall. As he released himself from the consuming rage, he heard the fighting behind and spun to find Bruenor beating back two of the ratmen, with several more lined up behind them.

  And behind the dwarf, Catti-brie lay still against the wall. The sight refueled Wulfgar’s fire. “Tempus!” he roared to his god of battle, and he pounded through the muck, back down the tunnel. The wererats facing Bruenor tripped over themselves trying to get away, giving the dwarf the opportunity to cut down two more of them—he was happy to oblige. They fled back into the maze of tunnels.

  Wulfgar meant to pursue them, to hunt each of them down and vent his vengeance, but Catti-brie rose to intercept him. She leaped into his chest as he skidded in surprise, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him more passionately than he had ever imagined he could be kissed.

  He held her at arm’s length, gawking and stuttering in confusion until a joyful smile spread wide and took all other emotions out of his face. Then he hugged her back for another kiss.

  Bruenor pulled them apart. “The elf?” he reminded them. He scooped up the torch, now half-covered with mud and burning low, and led them off down the tunnel.

  They didn’t dare turn into one of the many side passages, for fear of getting lost. The main corridor was the swiftest route, wherever it might take them, and they could only hope to catch a glimpse or hear a sound that would direct them to Drizzt.

  Instead they found a door.

  “The guild?” Catti-brie whispered.

  “What else could it be?” Wulfgar replied. “Only a thieves’ house would keep a door to the sewers.”

  * * *

  Above the door, in a secret cubby, Entreri eyed the three friends curiously. He had known that something was amiss when the wererats had begun to gather in the sewers earlier that night. Entreri had hoped they would move out into the city, but it had soon become apparent that the wererats meant to stay.

  Then these three showed up at the door without the drow.

  Entreri put his chin in his palm and considered his next course of action.

  * * *

  Bruenor studied the door curiously. On it, at about eye level for a human, was nailed a small wooden box. Having no time to play with riddles, the dwarf boldly reached up and tore the box free, bringing it down and peeking over its rim.

  The dwarf’s face twisted with even more confusion when he saw inside. He shrugged and held the box out to Wulfgar and Catti-brie.

  Wulfgar was not so confused. He had seen a similar item before, back on the docks of Baldur’s Gate. Another gift from Artemis Entreri—another halfling’s finger.

  “Assassin!” he roared, and he slammed his shoulder into the door. It broke free of its hinges, and Wulfgar stumbled into the room beyond, holding the door out in front of him. Before he could even toss it aside, he heard the crash behind him and realized how foolish the move had been. He had fallen right into Entreri’s trap.

  A portcullis had dropped in the entranceway, separating him from Bruenor and Catti-brie.

  * * *

  The tips of long spears led the wererats back through Drizzt’s globe of darkness. The drow still managed to take one of the lead ratmen down, but he was backed up by the press of the group that followed. He gave ground freely, fighting off their thrusts and jabs with defensive swordwork. Whenever he saw an opening, he was quick enough to strike a blade home.

  Then a singular odor overwhelmed even the stench of the sewer. A syrupy sweet smell that rekindled distant memories in the drow. The ratmen pressed him on even harder, as if the scent had renewed their desire to fight.

  Drizzt remembered. In Menzoberranzan, the city of his birth, some drow elves had kept as pets creatures that exuded such an odor. Sundews, these monstrous beasts were called, lumpy masses of raglike, sticky tendrils that simply engulfed and dissolved anything that came too near.

  Now Drizzt fought for every step. He had indeed been herded, to face a horrid death or perhaps to be captured, for the sundew devoured its victims so very slowly, and certain liquids could break its hold.

  Drizzt felt a flutter and glanced back over his shoulder. The sundew was barely ten feet away, already reaching out with a hundred sticky fingers.

  Drizzt’s scimitars weaved and dove, spun and cut, in as magnificent a dance as he had ever fought. One wererat was hit fifteen times before it even realized that the first blow had struck home.

  But there were simply too many of the ratmen for Drizzt to hold his ground, and the sight of the sundew urged them on bravely.

  Drizzt felt the tickle of the flicking tendrils only inches from his back. He had no room to maneuver now; the spears would surely drive him into the monster.

  Drizzt smiled, and the eager fires burned brighter in his eyes. “Is this how it ends?” he whispered aloud. The sudden burst of his laughter startled the wererats.

  With Twinkle leading the way, Drizzt spun on his heels and dove at the heart of the sundew.

  19. Tricks and Traps

  Wulfgar found himself in a square, unadorned room of worked stone. Two torches burned low in wall sconces, revealing another door before him, across from the portcullis. He tossed aside the broken door and turned back to his friends. “Guard my back,” he told Catti-brie, but she had already figured her part out and had brought her bow up level with the door across the room.

  Wulfgar rubbed his hands together in preparation for his attempt to lift the portcullis. It was a massive piece indeed, but the barbarian did not think it beyond his strength. He grasped the iron, then fell back, dismayed, even before he had attempted to lift.

  The bars had been greased.

  “Entreri, or I’m a bearded gnome,” Bruenor grumbled. “Ye put yer face in deep, boy.”

  “How are we to get him out?” Catti-brie asked.

  Wulfgar looked back over his shoulder at the unopened door. He knew that they could accomplish nothing by standing there, and he feared that the noise of the dropping portcullis must have attracted some attention—attention that could only mean danger for his friends.

  “Ye can’t be thinking to go deeper,” Catti-brie protested.

  “What choice have I?” Wulfgar replied. “Perhaps there is a crank in there.”

  “More likely an assassin,” Bruenor retorted, “but ye have to try it.”

  Catti-brie pulled her bowstring tight as Wulfgar moved to the door. He tried the handle but found it locked. He looked back to his friends and shrugged, then spun and kicked with his heavy boot. The wood shivered and split apart, revealing yet another room, this one dark.

  “Get a torch,” Bruenor told him.

  Wulfgar hesitated. Something didn’t feel right, or smell right. His sixth sense, that warrior instinct, told him he would not find the second room as empty as the first, but with no other place to go, he moved for one of the torches.

  Intent on the situation within the room, Bruenor and Catti-brie did not notice the dark figure drop from the concealed cubby on the wall a short distance down the tunnel. Entreri considered the two of them for a moment. He could take them out easily, and perhaps quietly, but the assassin turned away and disappeared into the darkness.

  He had already picked his target.

/>   * * *

  Rassiter stooped over the two bodies lying in front of the side passage. Reverting halfway through the transformation between rat and human, they had died in the excruciating agony that only a lycanthrope could know. Just like the ones farther back down the main tunnel, these had been slashed and nipped with expert precision, and if the line of bodies didn’t mark the path clearly enough, the globe of darkness hanging in the side passage certainly did. It appeared to Rassiter that his trap had worked, though the price had certainly been high.

  He dropped to the lower corner of the wall and crept along, nearly tripping over still more bodies of his guild-mates as he came through the other side.

  The wererat shook his head in disbelief as he moved down the tunnel, stepping over a wererat corpse every few feet. How many had the master swordsman killed?

  “A drow!” Rassiter balked in sudden understanding as he turned the final bend. Bodies of his comrades were piled deep there, but Rassiter looked beyond them. He would willingly pay such a price for the prize he saw before him, for now he had the dark warrior in hand, a drow elf for a prisoner! He would gain Pasha Pook’s favor and rise above Artemis Entreri once and for all.

  At the end of the passage, Drizzt leaned silently against the sundew, draped by a thousand tendrils. He still held his two scimitars, but his arms hung limply at his sides and his head drooped down, his lavender eyes closed.

  The wererat moved down the passage cautiously, hoping the drow was not already dead. He inspected his waterskin, filled with vinegar, and hoped he had brought enough to dissolve the sundew’s hold and free the drow. Rassiter dearly wanted this trophy alive.

  Pook would appreciate the present more that way.

  The wererat reached out with his sword to prod at the drow, but recoiled in pain as a dagger flashed by, slicing across his arm. He spun back around to see Artemis Entreri, his saber drawn and a murderous look in his dark eyes.

  Rassiter found himself caught in his own trap; there was no other escape from the passage. He fell flat against the wall, clutching his bleeding arm, and started inching his way back up the passage.

  Entreri followed the ratman’s progress without a blink.

  “Pook would never forgive you,” Rassiter warned.

  “Pook would never know,” Entreri hissed back.

  Terrified, Rassiter darted past the assassin, expecting a sword in his side as he passed. But Entreri cared nothing about Rassiter; his eyes had shifted down the passage to the specter of Drizzt Do’Urden, helpless and defeated.

  Entreri moved to recover his jeweled dagger, undecided as to whether to cut the drow free or let him die a slow death in the sundew’s clutches.

  “And so you die,” he whispered at length, wiping the slime from his dagger.

  * * *

  With a torch out before him, Wulfgar gingerly stepped into the second room. Like the first, it was square and unadorned, but one side was blocked halfway across by a floor-to-ceiling screen. Wulfgar knew that danger lurked behind the screen, knew it to be a part of the trap Entreri had set out and into which he had blindly rushed.

  He didn’t have the time to berate himself for his lack of judgment. He positioned himself in the center of the room, still in sight of his friends, and laid the torch at his feet, clutching Aegis-fang in both hands.

  But when the thing rushed out, the barbarian still found himself gawking, amazed.

  Eight serpentlike heads interwove in a tantalizing dance, like the needles of frenzied women knitting at a single garment. Wulfgar saw no humor in the moment, though, for each mouth was filled with row upon row of razor-sharp teeth.

  Catti-brie and Bruenor understood that Wulfgar was in trouble when they saw him shuffle back a step. They expected Entreri, or a host of soldiers, to confront him. Then the hydra crossed the open doorway.

  “Wulfgar!” Catti-brie cried in dismay, loosing an arrow. The silver bolt blasted a deep hole into a serpentine neck, and the hydra roared in pain and turned one head to consider the stinging attackers from the side.

  Seven other heads struck out at Wulfgar.

  * * *

  “You disappoint me, drow,” Entreri continued. “I had thought you my equal, or nearly so. The bother, and risks, I took to guide you here so we could decide whose life was the lie! To prove to you that those emotions you cling to so dearly have no place in the heart of a true warrior.

  “But now I see that I have wasted my efforts,” the assassin lamented. “The question has already been decided, if it ever was a question. Never would I have fallen into such a trap!”

  Drizzt peeked out from one half-opened eye and raised his head to meet Entreri’s gaze. “Nor would I,” he said, shrugging off the limp tendrils of the dead sundew. “Nor would I!”

  The wound became apparent in the monster when Drizzt moved out. With a single thrust, the drow had killed the sundew.

  A smile burst across Entreri’s face. “Well done!” he cried, readying his blades. “Magnificent!”

  “Where is the halfling?” Drizzt snarled.

  “This does not concern the halfling,” Entreri replied, “or your silly toy, the panther.”

  Drizzt quickly sublimated the anger that twisted his face.

  “Oh, they are alive,” Entreri taunted, hoping to distract his enemy with anger. “Perhaps, though perhaps not.”

  Unbridled rage often aided warriors against lesser foes, but in an equal battle of skilled swordsmen, thrusts had to be measured and defenses could not be let down.

  Drizzt came in with both blades thrusting. Entreri deflected them aside with his saber and countered with a jab of his dagger.

  Drizzt twirled out of danger’s way, coming around a full circle and slicing down with Twinkle. Entreri caught the weapon with his saber, so that the blades locked hilt to hilt and brought the combatants close.

  “Did you receive my gift in Baldur’s Gate?” the assassin chuckled.

  Drizzt did not flinch. Regis and Guenhwyvar were out of his thoughts now. His focus was Artemis Entreri.

  Only Artemis Entreri.

  The assassin pressed on. “A mask?” he questioned with a wide smirk. “Put it on, drow. Pretend you are what you are not!”

  Drizzt heaved suddenly, throwing Entreri back.

  The assassin went with the move, just as happy to continue the battle from a distance. But when Entreri tried to catch himself, his foot hit a mud-slicked depression in the tunnel floor and he slipped to one knee.

  Drizzt was on him in a flash, both scimitars wailing away. Entreri’s hands moved equally fast, dagger and saber twisting and turning to parry and deflect. His head and shoulders bobbed wildly, and remarkably, he worked his foot back under him.

  Drizzt knew that he had lost the advantage. Worse, the assault had left him in an awkward position with one shoulder too close to the wall. As Entreri started to rise, Drizzt jumped back.

  “So easy?” Entreri asked him as they squared off again. “Do you think that I sought this fight for so long, only to die in its opening exchanges?”

  “I do not figure anything where Artemis Entreri is concerned,” Drizzt came back. “You are too foreign to me, assassin. I do not pretend to understand your motives, nor do I have any desire to learn of them.”

  “Motives?” Entreri balked. “I am a fighter—purely a fighter. I do not mix the calling of my life with lies of gentleness and love.” He held the saber and dagger out before him. “These are my only friends, and with them—”

  “You are nothing,” Drizzt cut in. “Your life is a wasted lie.”

  “A lie?” Entreri shot back. “You are the one who wears the mask, drow. You are the one who must hide.”

  Drizzt accepted the words with a smile. Only a few days before, they might have stung him, but now, after the insight Catti-brie had given him, they rang hollowly in Drizzt’s ears. “You are the lie, Entreri,” he replied calmly. “You are no more than a loaded crossbow, an unfeeling weapon, that will never know life.” He started
walking toward the assassin, jaw firm in the knowledge of what he must do.

  Entreri strode in with equal confidence.

  “Come and die, drow,” he spat.

  * * *

  Wulfgar backed quickly, snapping his war hammer back and forth in front of him to parry the hydra’s dizzying attacks. He knew that he couldn’t hold the incessant thing off for long. He had to find a way to strike back against its offensive fury.

  But against the seven snapping maws, weaving a hypnotic dance and lunging out singly or all together, Wulfgar had no time to prepare an attack sequence.

  With her bow, beyond the range of the heads, Catti-brie had more success. Tears rimmed her eyes in fear for Wulfgar, but she held them back with a grim determination not to surrender. Another arrow blasted into the lone head that had turned her way, scorching a hole right between the eyes. The head shuddered and jerked back, then dropped to the floor with a thud, quite dead.

  The attack, or the pain from it, seemed to paralyze the rest of the hydra for just a second, and the desperate barbarian did not miss the opportunity. He rushed forward a step and slammed Aegis-fang with all of his might into the snout of another head, snapping it back. It, too, dropped lifelessly to the floor.

  “Keep it in front of the door!” Bruenor called. “And don’t ye be coming through without a shout. Suren the girl’d cut ye down!”

  If the hydra was a stupid beast, it at least understood hunting tactics. It turned its body at an angle to the open door, preventing any chance for Wulfgar to get by. Two heads were down, and another silver arrow, and then another, sizzled in, this time catching the bulk of the hydra’s body. Wulfgar, working frantically and just finished with the furious battle against the wererats, was beginning to tire.