The Halfling’s Gem frid-3

by Robert Anthony Salvatore

  “My guild fights mighty enemies this night,” Rassiter stammered. “They…we have not been able…the fight is not yet lost!”

  “Perhaps you should see to it that your rats fare better,” Pook said calmly, and Rassiter did not miss the command’s—the threat’s—tone. He bowed low and rushed out of the chamber, slamming the door behind him.

  Even the demanding guildmaster could not hold the wererats wholly responsible for the disaster at hand.

  “Magnificent,” he muttered as Drizzt fought off two simultaneous thrusts and sliced down both wererats with individual, yet mystically intertwined counters. “Never have I seen such grace with a blade.” He paused for a moment to consider that thought. “Perhaps once.”

  Surprised at the revelation, Pook looked at LaValle, who nodded in accord.

  “Entreri,” LaValle inferred. “The resemblance is unmistakable. We know now why the assassin coaxed this group to the south.”

  “To fight the drow?” Pook mused. “At last, a challenge for the man without peer?”

  “So it would seem.”

  “But, where is he, then? Why has he not made his appearance?”

  “Perhaps he already has,” LaValle replied grimly.

  Pook paused to consider the words for a long moment; they were too unconscionable for him to believe. “Entreri beaten?” He gasped. “Entreri dead?”

  The words rang like sweet music to Regis, who had watched the rivalry between the assassin and Drizzt with horror from its inception. All along, Regis had suspected that those two would fall into a duel that only one could survive. And all along, the halfling had feared for his drow friend.

  The thought of Entreri gone put a new perspective on the battle at hand for Pasha Pook. Suddenly he needed Rassiter and his cohorts again; suddenly the carnage he watched through the Taros Hoop had a more direct impact on his guild’s immediate power.

  He leaped from his seat and ambled over to the evil device. “We must stop this,” he snarled at LaValle. “Send them away to a dark place!”

  The wizard grinned wickedly and shuffled off to retrieve a huge book, bound in black leather. Opening it to a marked page, LaValle walked before the Taros Hoop and began the initial chantings of an ominous incantation.

  * * *

  Bruenor was first out of the room, searching for a likely route to Regis—and for more wererats to chop down. He stormed along a short corridor and kicked open a door, finding, not wererats, but two very surprised human thieves. Holding a measure of mercy in his battle-hardened heart—after all, he was the invader—Bruenor held back his twitching axe hand and shield-slammed the two rogues to the ground. He then rushed back out into the corridor and fell in line with the rest of his friends.

  “Watch yer right!” Catti-brie cried out, noting some movement behind a tapestry near the front of the line, beside Wulfgar. The barbarian pulled the heavy tapestry down with a single heave, revealing a tiny man, barely more than a halfling, crouched and poised to spring. Exposed, the little thief quickly lost his heart for the fight and just shrugged apologetically as Wulfgar slapped his puny dagger away.

  Wulfgar caught him up by the back of the neck, hoisting the little man into the air and putting his nose to the thief’s. “What manner are you?” Wulfgar scowled. “Man or rat?”

  “Not a rat!” the terrified thief shrieked. He spat on the ground to emphasize his point. “Not a rat!”

  “Regis?” Wulfgar demanded. “You know of him?”

  The thief nodded eagerly.

  “Where can I find Regis?” Wulfgar roared, his bellow draining the blood from the thief’s face.

  “Up,” the little man squeaked. “Pook’s rooms. All the way up.” Acting solely on instinct for survival, and having no real intentions to do anything but get away from the monstrous barbarian, the thief slipped one hand to a hidden dagger tucked in the back of his belt.

  Bad judgment.

  Drizzt slapped a scimitar against the thief’s arm, exposing the move to Wulfgar.

  Wulfgar used the little man to open the next door.

  Again the chase was on. Wererats darted in and out of the shadows to the sides of the four companions, but few stood to face them. Those that did wound up in their path more often by accident than design!

  More doors splintered and more rooms emptied, and a few minutes later, a stairway came into view. Broad and lavishly carpeted, with ornate banisters of shining hardwood, it could only be the ascent to the chambers of Pasha Pook.

  Bruenor roared in glee and charged on. Wulfgar and Catti-brie eagerly followed. Drizzt hesitated and looked around, suddenly fearful.

  Drow elves were magical creatures by nature, and Drizzt now sensed a strange and dangerous tingle, the beginnings of a spell aimed at him. He saw the walls and floor around him waver suddenly, as if they had become somehow less tangible.

  Then he understood. He had traveled the Planes before, as companion to Guenhwyvar, his magical cat, and he knew now that someone, or something, was pulling him from his place on the Prime Material Plane. He looked ahead to see Bruenor and the others now similarly confused.

  “Join hands!” the drow cried, rushing to get to his friends before the dweomer banished them all.

  * * *

  In hopeless horror, Regis watched his friends huddle together. Then the scene in the Taros hoop shifted from the lower levels of the guildhouse to a darker place, a place of smoke and shadows, of ghouls and demons.

  A place where no sun shined.

  “No!” the halfling cried out, realizing the wizard’s intent. LaValle paid him no heed, and Pook only snickered at him. Seconds later, Regis saw his friends in their huddle again, this time in the swirling smoke of the dark plane.

  Pook leaned heavily on his walking stick and laughed. “How I love to foil hopes!” he said to his wizard. “Once more you prove your inestimable worth to me, my precious LaValle!”

  Regis watched as his friends turned back to back in a pitiful attempt at defense. Already, dark shapes swooped about them or hovered over them, beings of great power and great evil.

  Regis dropped his eyes, unable to watch.

  “Oh, do not look away, little thief,” Pook laughed at him. “Watch their deaths and be happy for them, for I assure you that the pain they are about to suffer will not compare to the torments I have planned for you.”

  Regis, hating the man and hating himself for putting his friends in such a predicament, snapped a vile glare at Pook. They had come for him. They had crossed the world for him. They had battled Artemis Entreri and a host of were-rats, and most probably many other adversaries. All of it had been for him.

  “Damn you,” Regis spat, suddenly no longer afraid. He swung himself down and bit the eunuch hard on the inner thigh. The giant shrieked in pain and loosened his grip, dropping Regis to the floor.

  The halfling hit the ground running. He crossed before Pook, kicking out the walking stick the guildmaster was using for support, while very deftly slipping a hand into Pook’s pocket to retrieve a certain statuette. He then went on to LaValle.

  The wizard had more time to react and had already begun a quick spell when Regis came at him, but the halfling proved the quicker. He leaped up, putting two fingers into La Valle’s eyes, disrupting the spell, and sending the wizard stumbling backward.

  As the wizard struggled to hold his balance, Regis jerked the pearl-tipped scepter away and ran up to the front of the Taros Hoop. He glanced around at the room a final time, wondering if he might find an easier way.

  Pook dominated the vision. His face blood red and locked into a grimace, the guildmaster had recovered from the attack and now twirled his walking stick as a weapon, which Regis knew from experience to be deadly.

  “Please give me this one,” Regis whispered to whatever god might be listening. He gritted his teeth and ducked his head, lurching forward and letting the scepter lead him into the Taros Hoop.

  22. The Rift

  Smoke, emanating from the very ground
they stood upon, wafted by drearily and rolled around their feet. By the angle of its roll, the way it fell away below them only a foot or two off to either side, only to rise again in another cloud, the friends saw that they were on a narrow ledge, a bridge across some endless chasm.

  Similar bridges, none more than a few feet wide, criss-crossed above and below them, and for what they could see, those were the only walkways in the entire plane. No solid land mass showed itself in any direction, only the twisting, spiraling bridges.

  The friends’ movements were slow, dreamlike, fighting against the weight of the air. The place itself, a dim, oppressive world of foul smells and anguished cries, exuded evil. Vile, misshapen monsters swooped over their heads and around the gloomy emptiness, crying out in glee at the unexpected appearance of such tasty morsels. The four friends, so indomitable against the perils of their own world, found themselves without courage.

  “The Nine Hells?” Catti-brie whispered in a tiny voice, afraid that her words might shatter the temporary inaction of the multitudes gathering in the ever-present shadows.

  “Hades,” Drizzt guessed, more schooled in the known planes. “The domain of Chaos.” Though he was standing right beside his friends, his words rang out as distant, as had Catti-brie’s.

  Bruenor started to growl out a retort, but his voice faded away when he looked at Catti-brie and Wulfgar, his children, or so he considered them. Now there was nothing he could possibly do to help them.

  Wulfgar looked to Drizzt for answers. “How can we escape?” he pressed bluntly. “Is there a door? A window back to our own world?”

  Drizzt shook his head. He wanted to reassure them, to keep their spirits up in the face of the danger. This time, though, the drow had no answers for them. He could see no escape, no hope.

  A bat-winged creature, doglike, but with a face grotesquely and unmistakably human, dove at Wulfgar, putting a filthy talon in line with the barbarian’s shoulder.

  “Drop!” Catti-brie yelled to Wulfgar at the last possible second. The barbarian didn’t question the command. He fell to his face, and the creature missed its mark. It swerved around in a loop and hung in midair for a split second as it made a tight turn, then it came back again, hungry for living flesh.

  Catti-brie was ready for it this time, though, and as it neared the group, she loosed an arrow. It reached out lazily toward the monster, cutting a dull gray streak instead of the usual silver. The magic arrow blasted in with the customary strength, though, scorching a wicked hole in the dog fur and unbalancing the monster’s flight. It rolled in just above them, trying to right itself, and Bruenor chopped it down, dropping it in a spiraling descent into the gloom below them.

  The friends could hardly be pleased with the minor victory. A hundred similar beasts flitted in and out of their vision above, below, and to the sides, many of them ten times larger than the one Bruenor and Catti-brie had felled.

  “We can’t be staying here,” Bruenor muttered. “Where do we go, elf?”

  Drizzt would have been just as content staying where they were, but he knew that marching out a course would comfort his friends and give them at least some feeling that they were making progress against their dilemma. Only the drow understood the depth of the horror they now faced. Only Drizzt knew that wherever they might travel on the dark plane, the situation would prove to be the same: no escape.

  “This way,” he said after a moment of mock contemplation. “If there is a door, I sense that it is this way.” He took a step down the narrow bridge but stopped abruptly as the smoke heaved and swirled before him.

  Then it rose in front of him.

  Humanoid in shape, it was tall and slender, with a bulbous, froglike head and long, three-fingered hands that ended in claws. Taller even than Wulfgar, it towered over Drizzt. “Chaos, dark elf?” it lisped in a guttural, foreign voice. “Hades?”

  Twinkle glowed eagerly in Drizzt’s hand, but his other blade, the one forged with ice-magic, nearly leaped out at the monster.

  “Err, you do,” the creature croaked.

  Bruenor rushed up beside Drizzt. “Get yerself back, demon,” he growled.

  “Not demon,” said Drizzt, understanding the creature’s references and remembering more of the many lessons he had been taught about the Planes during his years in the city of drow. “Demodand.”

  Bruenor looked up at him curiously.

  “And not Hades,” Drizzt explained. “Tarterus.”

  “Good, dark elf,” croaked the demodand. “Knowing of the lower planes are your people.”

  “Then you understand of the power of my people,” Drizzt bluffed, “and you know how we repay even demon lords who cross us.”

  The demodand laughed, if that’s what it was, for it sounded more like the dying gurgle of a drowning man. “Dead drow avenge do not. Far from home are you!” It reached a lazy hand toward Drizzt.

  Bruenor rushed by his friend. “Moradin!” he cried, and he swiped at the demodand with his mithril axe. The demodand was faster than the dwarf had expected, though, and it easily dodged the blow, countering with a clubbing blow of its arm that sent Bruenor skidding on his face farther down the bridge.

  The demodand reached down at the passing dwarf with its wicked claws.

  Twinkle cut the hand in half before it ever reached Bruenor.

  The demodand turned on Drizzt in amazement. “Hurt me you did, dark elf,” it croaked, though no hint of pain rang out in its voice, “but better you must do!” It snapped the wounded hand out at Drizzt, and as he reflexively dodged it, the demodand sent its second hand out to finish the task of the first, cutting a triple line of gashes down the sprawled dwarf’s shoulder.

  “Blast and bebother!” Bruenor roared, getting back to his knees. “Ye filthy, slime-covered…” he grumbled, launching a second unsuccessful attack.

  Behind Drizzt, Catti-brie bobbed and ducked, trying to get a clear shot with Taulmaril. Beside her, Wulfgar stood at the ready, having no room on the narrow bridge to move up beside the drow.

  Drizzt moved sluggishly, his scimitars awkwardly twisting through an uneven sequence. Perhaps it was because of the weariness of a long night of fighting or the unusual weight of the air in the plane, but Catti-brie, looking on curiously, had never seen the drow so lackluster in his efforts.

  Still on his knees farther down the bridge, Bruenor swiped more with frustration than his customary lust for battle.

  Catti-brie understood. It wasn’t weariness or the heavy air. Hopelessness had befallen the friends.

  She looked to Wulfgar, to beg him to intervene, but the sight of the barbarian beside her gave her no comfort. His wounded arm hung limply at his side, and the heavy head of Aegis-fang dipped below the low-riding smoke. How many more battles could he fight? How many of these wretched demodand would he be able to put down before he met his end?

  And what end would a victory bring in a plane of unending battles? she wondered.

  Drizzt felt the despair most keenly. For all the trials of his hard life, the drow had held faith for ultimate justice. He had believed, though he never dared to admit it, that his unyielding faith in his precious principles would bring him the reward he deserved. Now, there was this, a struggle that could only end in death, where one victory brought only more conflict.

  “Damn ye all!” Catti-brie cried. She didn’t have a safe shot, but she fired anyway. Her arrow razed a line of blood across Drizzt’s arm, but then exploded into the demodand, rocking it back and giving Bruenor the chance to scramble back to Drizzt’s side.

  “Have ye lost yer fight, then?” Catti-brie scolded them.

  “Easy, girl,” Bruenor replied somberly, cutting low at the demodand’s knees. The creature hopped over the blade gingerly and started another attack, which Drizzt deflected.

  “Easy yerself, Bruenor Battlehammer!” Catti-brie shouted. “Ye’ve the gall to call yerself king o’ yer clan. Ha! Garumn’d be tossin’ in his grave to see ye fightin’ so!”

  Bruenor turne
d a wicked glare on Catti-brie, his throat too choked for him to spit out a reply.

  Drizzt tried to smile. He knew what the young woman, that wonderful young woman, was up to. His lavender eyes lit up with the inner fire. “Go to Wulfgar,” he told Bruenor. “Secure our backs and watch for attacks from above.”

  Drizzt eyed the demodand, who had noted his sudden change in demeanor.

  “Come, farastu,” the drow said evenly, remembering the name given to that particular type of creature. “Farastu,” he taunted, “the least of the demodand kind. Come and feel the cut of a drow’s blade.”

  Bruenor backed away from Drizzt, almost laughing. Part of him wanted to say, “What’s the point?” but a bigger part, the side of him that Catti-brie had awakened with her biting references to his proud history, had a different message to speak. “Come on and fight, then!” he roared into the shadows of the endless chasm. “We’ve enough for the whole damn world of ye!”

  In seconds, Drizzt was fully in command. His movements remained slowed with the heaviness of the plane, but they were no less magnificent. He feinted and cut, sliced and parried, in harmony to offset every move the demodand made.

  Instinctively Wulfgar and Bruenor started in to help him, but stopped to watch the display.

  Catti-brie turned her gaze outward, plucking off a bowshot whenever a foul form flew from the hanging smoke. She took a quick bead on one body as it dropped from the darkness high above.

  She pulled Taulmaril away at the last second in absolute shock.

  “Regis!” she cried.

  The halfling ended his half-speed plummet, plopping with a soft puff into the smoke of a second bridge a dozen yards across the emptiness from his friends. He stood and managed to hold his ground against a wave of dizziness and disorientation.

  “Regis!” Catti-brie cried again. “How did ye get yerself here?”

  “I saw you in that awful hoop,” the halfling explained. “Thought you might need my help.”