He was somewhat surprised, then, when he at last came to stand before Pasha Basadoni, the first time Entreri had actually met the man. Basadoni’s small office was the only room on this floor of the guild hall not fitted for comfort. Its furnishings were few and simple—a single wooden desk and three unremarkable chairs.
The pasha fit the office. He was a smallish man, old but stately. His gaze, like his posture, was perfectly straight. His gray hair was neatly groomed, his clothes unpretentious.
After only a couple moments of scrutiny, Entreri understood that this was a man to be respected, even feared. Looking at the pasha, Entreri considered again how out of place a slug like Theebles Royuset had been. He guessed at once that Basadoni must have hated Theebles profoundly. That notion alone gave him hope.
“So you admit you cheated at the quarter challenge?” Basadoni asked after a long and deliberate pause, after studying young Entreri at least as intently as Entreri was studying him.
“Isn’t that part of the challenge?” Entreri was quick to reply.
Basadoni chuckled and nodded.
“Theebles expected I would cheat,” Entreri went on. “A vial of universal antidote was found emptied within his room.”
“And you tampered with it?”
“I did not,” Entreri answered honestly.
Basadoni’s quizzical expression prompted the young rogue to continue.
“The vial worked as expected, and the cake was indeed conventionally poisoned,” Entreri admitted.
“But …” Basadoni said.
“But no antidote in Calimshan can defeat the effects of crushed glass.”
Basadoni shook his head. “Sly upon sly within sly,” he said. “A feint within a feint within a feint.” He looked curiously at the clever young lad. “Theebles was capable of thinking to the third level of deception,” he reasoned.
“But he did not believe that I was,” Entreri quickly countered. “He underestimated his opponent.”
“And so he deserved to die,” Basadoni decided after a short pause.
“The challenge was willingly accepted,” Entreri quickly noted, to remind the old pasha that any punishment would surely, by the rules of the guild, be unjustified.
Basadoni leaned back in his chair, tapping the tips of his fingers together. He stared at Entreri long and hard. The young assassin’s reasoning was sound, but he almost ordered Entreri killed anyway, seeing clearly the cruelty, the absolute lack of compassion, within this one’s black heart. He understood that he could never truly trust Artemis Entreri, but he realized, too, that young Entreri would not likely strike against him, an old man and a potentially valuable mentor, unless he forced the issue. And Basadoni knew, too, how valuable an asset a clever and cold rogue like Artemis Entreri might be—especially with five other ambitious lieutenants scrambling to position themselves in the hope that he would soon die.
Perhaps I will outlive those five, after all, the pasha thought with a slight smile. To Entreri he merely said, “I will exact no punishment.”
Entreri showed no emotion.
“Truly you are a cold-hearted wretch,” Basadoni went on with a helpless snicker, his voice honestly sympathetic. “Leave me, Lieutenant Entreri.” He waved his age-spotted hand as if the whole affair left a sour taste in his mouth.
Entreri turned to go, but stopped and glanced back, realizing only then the significance of how Basadoni had addressed him.
The two burly escorts at the newest lieutenant’s side caught it, too. One of them bristled anxiously, glaring at the young man. Lieutenant Artemis Entreri? the man’s dour expression seemed to say in disbelief. The boy, half his size, had only been in the guild for a few months. He was only fourteen years old!
“Perhaps my first duty will be to see to your continued training,” Entreri said, staring coldly into the muscular man’s face. “You must learn to mask your feelings better.”
The man’s moment of anger was replaced by a feeling of sheer dread as he, too, stared into those callous and calculating dark eyes, eyes too filled with evil for one of Artemis Entreri’s tender age.
Later that afternoon, Artemis Entreri walked out of the Basadoni guild hall on a short journey that was long overdue. He went back to his street, the territory he had carved out amidst Calimport’s squalor.
A dusty orange sunset marked the end of another hot day as Entreri turned a corner and entered that territory—the same corner the thug had turned just before Entreri had killed him.
Entreri shook his head, feeling more than a little overwhelmed by it all. He had survived these streets, the challenge Theebles Royuset had thrown his way, and the counter-challenge he had offered in response. He had survived, and he had thrived, and was now a full lieutenant in the Basadoni Cabal.
Slowly, Entreri walked the length of the muddy lane, his gaze stalking from left to right and back again, just as he had done when he was the master here. When these had been his streets, life had been simple. Now his course was set out before him, among his own treacherous kind. Ever after would he need to walk with his back close to a wall—a solid wall that he had already checked for deadly traps and secret portals.
It had all happened so fast, in the course of just a few months. Street waif to lieutenant in the Basadoni Cabal, one of the most powerful thieves’ guilds in Calimport.
Yet as he looked back over the road that had brought him from Memnon to Calimport, from this muddy alley to the polished marble halls of the thieves’ guild, Artemis Entreri began to wonder if, perhaps, the change was somewhat less miraculous. Nothing really happened so quickly; he’d been led to this seemingly remarkable state by years spent honing his street skills, years spent challenging and conquering brutal men like Theebles, or the old lecher in the caravan, or his father.…
A noise from the side drew Entreri’s attention to a wide alley where a group of boys came rambling past. Half the grimy mob tossed a small stone back and forth while the other half tried to get it away.
It came as a shock to Entreri when he realized that they were his own age, perhaps even a bit older. And the shock carried with it more than a little pain.
The boys soon disappeared behind the next shack, laughing and shouting, a cloud of dust in their wake. Entreri summarily dismissed them, thinking again of what he had accomplished and what heights of glory and power might still lay before him. After all, he had purchased the right to dream such dark dreams at the cost of his youth and innocence, coins whose value he did not recognize until they were spent.
h, Guen, where to begin? I’ve been a pet lover for all of my life, and spent many a day sitting alone with a dog or a cat talking through my anxieties and hopes. I know how good a friend such a companion can be, and so when I considered Drizzt’s predicament, being a drow elf on a surface world that didn’t much care for his ilk, giving him a magical animal companion was an easy choice.
Let me state here that I am not a “happy” short story writer. I don’t particularly like the format, the restrictions, the forced imposition of hook or story over character development. Every now and then, though, I like having a short story to explore something off to the side of the novels, like the history of the mysterious Guen. This story gave me the chance to have some fun with quite a few concepts. Myth Drannor has always intrigued me as the purest place in Ed Greenwood’s Realms vision. And at the time I wrote this, I was intrigued by the “bladesinger” concept that had come forth in the AD&D 2nd Edition game. At last, a true battle mage!
And finally, with this story, I could put to rest once and for all the inadvertent confusion of Guen’s gender—or so I hoped. Let me explain something: Guenhwyvar was always a “she.” Always. I first encountered the name, a variation of Arthur’s queen, in Mary Stewart’s outrageously fantastic Arthurian series. “Guenhwyvar” is Celtic or Gaelic for Jennifer or Gwenivere, depending on whom you ask. Stewart claimed it to mean “shadow,” which perfectly fit the panther companion of Drizzt.
In any case, when I wrot
e The Crystal Shard, I was told not to assign a gender to the panther. Magical items in the AD&D game were not given a gender, was the simple explanation. I argued, but to no avail. Then, to my horror, when the book came out, I discovered that someone, likely a copy-editor, had smoothed out some of my scenes by replacing some of the awkward variations of “it” with a male pronoun. I have subsequently answered hundreds of letters explaining the confusion here, because I went right back to the female pronouns. Guen is a she!
I wrote this story as a precursor to an idea I had for a Drizzt-related Forgotten Realms trilogy. The catch was to use my cleric Cadderly to magically explore the magical panther’s long memory, and through Guen, with Cadderly narrating, relate the story of her first companion, Josidiah Starym. I held out hope for doing that story for several years, until I found out that someone else had taken my character, Josidiah, and created an entire history around him, including his death. Ah, the tribulations of working in a shared world!
That said, this story more than any other is a celebration of the Dungeons and Dragons game. From the bladesinger to Myth Drannor to the many D&D “toys” involved, looking back at “Guenhwyvar,” I can see that I was particularly excited about the game and game world at this time.
osidiah Starym skipped wistfully down the streets of Cormanthor, the usually stern and somber elf a bit giddy this day, both for the beautiful weather and the recent developments in his most precious and enchanted city. Josidiah was a bladesinger, a joining of sword and magic, protector of the elvish ways and the elvish folk. And in Cormanthor, in this year 253, many elves were in need of protecting. Goblinkin were abundant, and even worse, the emotional turmoil within the city, the strife among the noble families—the Starym included—threatened to tear apart all that Coronal Eltargrim had put together, all that the elves had built in Cormanthor, greatest city in all the world.
Those were not troubles for this day, though, not in the spring sunshine, with a light north breeze blowing. Even Josidiah’s kin were in good spirits this day; Taleisin, his uncle, had promised the bladesinger that he would venture to Eltargrim’s court to see if some of their disputes might perhaps be worked out.
Josidiah prayed that the elven court would come back together, for he, perhaps above all others in the city, had the most to lose. He was a bladesinger, the epitome of what it meant to be an elf, and yet, in this curious age, those definitions seemed not so clear. This was an age of change, of great magics, of monumental decisions. This was an age when the humans, the gnomes, the halflings, even the bearded dwarves ventured down the winding ways of Cormanthor, past the needle-pointed spires of the free-flowing elven structures. For all of Josidiah’s previous one hundred and fifty years, the precepts of elvenkind seemed fairly defined and rigid; but now, because of their Coronal, wise and gentle Eltargrim, there was much dispute about what it meant to be an elf, and, more importantly, what relationships elves should foster with the other goodly races.
“Merry morn, Josidiah,” came the call of a female elf, the young and beautiful maiden niece of Eltargrim himself. She stood on a balcony overlooking a high garden whose buds were not yet in bloom, with the avenue beyond that.
Josidiah stopped in mid stride, leaped high into the air in a complete spin, and landed perfectly on bended knee, his long golden hair whipping across his face and then flying out wide again so that his eyes, the brightest of blue, flashed. “And the merriest of morns to you, good Felicity,” the bladesinger responded. “Would that I held at my sides flowers befitting your beauty instead of these blades made for war.”
“Blades as beautiful as any flower ever I have seen,” Felicity replied teasingly, “especially when wielded by Josidiah Starym at dawn’s break, on the flat rock atop Berenguil’s Peak.”
The bladesinger felt the hot blood rushing to his face. He had suspected that someone had been spying on him at his morning rituals—a dance with his magnificent swords, performed nude—and now he had his confirmation. “Perhaps Felicity should join me on the morrow’s dawn,” he replied, catching his breath and his dignity, “that I might properly reward her for her spying.”
The young female laughed heartily and spun back into her house, and Josidiah shook his head and skipped along. He entertained thoughts of how he might properly “reward” the mischievous female, though he feared that, given Felicity’s beauty and station, any such attempts might lead to something much more, something Josidiah could not become involved in—not now, not after Eltargrim’s proclamation and the drastic changes.
The bladesinger shook away all such notions; it was too fine a day for any dark musing, and other thoughts of Felicity were too distracting for the meeting at hand. Josidiah went out of Cormanthor’s west gate, the guards posted there offering no more than a respectful bow as he passed, and into the open air. Truly Josidiah loved this city, but he loved the land outside of it even more. Out here he was truly free of all the worries and all the petty squabbles, and out here there was ever a sense of danger—might a goblin be watching him even now, its crude spear ready to take him down?—that kept the formidable elf on his highest guard.
Out here, too, was a friend, a human friend, a ranger-turned-wizard by the name of Anders Beltgarden, whom Josidiah had known for the better part of four decades. Anders did not venture into Cormanthor, even given Eltargrim’s proclamation to open the gates to nonelves. He lived far from the normal, oft-traveled paths, in a squat tower of excellent construction, guarded by magical wards and deceptions of his own making. Even the forest about his home was full of misdirections, spells of illusion and confusion. So secretive was Beltgarden Home that few elves of nearby Cormanthor even knew of it, and even fewer had ever seen it. And of those, none save Josidiah could find his way back to it without Anders’s help.
And Josidiah held no illusions about it—if Anders wanted to hide the paths to the tower even from him, the cagey old wizard would have little trouble doing so.
This wonderful day, however, it seemed to Josidiah that the winding paths to Beltgarden Home were easier to follow than usual, and when he arrived at the structure, he found the door unlocked.
“Anders,” he called, peering into the darkened hallway beyond the portal, which always smelled as if a dozen candles had just been extinguished within it. “Old fool, are you about?”
A feral growl put the bladesinger on his guard; his swords were in his hands in a movement too swift for an observer to follow.
“Anders?” he called again, quietly, as he picked his way along the corridor, his feet moving in perfect balance, soft boots gently touching the stone, quiet as a hunting cat.
The growl came again, and that is exactly when Josidiah knew what he was up against: a hunting cat. A big one, the bladesinger recognized, for the deep growl resonated along the stone of the hallway.
He passed by the first doors, opposite each other in the hall, and then passed the second on his left.
The third—he knew—the sound came from within the third. That knowledge gave the bladesinger some hope that this situation was under control, for that particular door led to Anders’s alchemy shop, a place well guarded by the old wizard.
Josidiah cursed himself for not being better prepared magically. He had studied few spells that day, thinking it too fine and not wanting to waste a moment of it with his face buried in spellbooks.
If only he had some spell that might get him into the room more quickly, through a magical gate, or even a spell that would send his probing vision through the stone wall, into the room before him.
He had his swords, at least, and with them, Josidiah Starym was far from helpless. He put his back against the wall near to the door and took a deep steadying breath. Then, without delay—old Anders might be in serious trouble—the bladesinger spun about and crashed into the room.
He felt the arcs of electricity surging into him as he crossed the warded portal, and then he was flying, hurled through the air, to land crashing at the base of a huge oaken table. Anders Bel
tgarden stood calmly at the side of the table, working with something atop it, hardly bothering to look down at the stunned bladesinger.
“You might have knocked,” the old mage said dryly.
Josidiah pulled himself up unceremoniously from the floor, his muscles not quite working correctly just yet. Convinced that there was no danger near, Josidiah let his gaze linger on the human, as he often did. The bladesinger hadn’t seen many humans in his life—humans were a recent addition on the north side of the Sea of Fallen Stars, and were not present in great numbers in or about Cormanthor.
This one was the most curious human of all, with his leathery, wrinkled face and his wild gray beard. One of Anders’s eyes had been ruined in a fight, and it appeared quite dead now, a gray film over the lustrous green it had once held. Yes, Josidiah could stare at old Anders for hours on end, seeing the tales of a lifetime in his scars and wrinkles. Most of the elves, Josidiah’s own kinfolk included, would have thought the old man an ugly thing; elves did not wrinkle and weather so, but aged beautifully, appearing at the end of several centuries as they had when they had seen but twenty or fifty winters.
Josidiah did not think Anders an ugly sight, not at all. Even those few crooked teeth remaining in the man’s mouth complemented this creature he had become, this aged and wise creature, this sculptured monument to years under the sun and in the face of storms, to seasons battling goblinkin and giantkind. Truly it seemed ridiculous to Josidiah that he was twice this man’s age; he wished he might carry a few wrinkles as testament to his experiences.
“You had to know it would be warded,” Anders laughed. “Of course you did! Ha ha, just putting on a show, then. Giving an old man one good laugh before he dies!”
“You will outlive me, I fear, old man,” said the bladesinger.
“Indeed, that is a distinct possibility if you keep crossing my doors unannounced.”
“I feared for you,” Josidiah explained, looking around the huge room—too huge, it seemed, to fit inside the tower, even if it had consumed an entire level. The bladesinger suspected some extradimensional magic to be at work here, but he had never been able to detect it, and the frustrating Anders certainly wasn’t letting on.
The Collected Stories, The Legend of Drizzt Page 8
