This was the better route, and one she intended to make much more enjoyable.
She drained her mug and hoisted a second one, empty, up high, waving for the barmaid to bring another pitcher to the table.
The McWindingbrooks were paying, after all.
Hours later, two dwarves bobbed out of the tavern, walking shakily, laughing heartily, grabbing generously and both obviously quite drunk.
“That one?” Tiago asked his companions.
“That one,” Saribel Xorlarrin replied, nodding. “Ambergris, by name. She sailed with Drizzt, and rode with him to Luskan from Port Llast.”
The dwarves shambled past, not even noticing the dark figures in the deeper shadows of the alleyway.
“Here ’ere for swimmin’ with bowlegged women!” the male said.
“And to sailin’ with tall-masted lads!” the female lewdly added, and they rolled along, laughing and groping liberally. So enmeshed and enamored with each other were they that they clearly didn’t even notice the three forms moving out of the darkness behind them.
Ravel glanced around, and seeing few others, began casting a spell. Tiago, Saribel right behind him, hoisted Orbcress, his spider web shield, and quick-stepped to close the gap.
“Ah, but ye do me well, me lady-” the male started to say, but he cut it short and began spitting instead, for he had walked into some sort of cobweb, the filaments filling his mouth. Indeed, both had walked into Ravel’s web, the female more fully than he, and the magical creation, stretching from the building to their left to the street post to their right, grabbed on stubbornly.
Still spitting, the male dwarf pulled back and broke free, turning as he stumbled, and only then taking note of the fast-approaching dark elf warrior.
With a yelp of surprise, the dwarf drew a long and wicked knife from his belt. Having sailed the Sword Coast for most of his life, and having been trained by his father from childhood, Stuvie McWindingbrook was surely no novice to battle. He saw the approaching drow and his thoughts cleared immediately-almost, at least. He instinctively reached behind him with his free hand and shoved Windy defensively back, and thus, further into the web.
Then Stuvie executed a wonderful forward dive and roll, popping up to his feet and striking hard and fast and true.
The long knife struck the drow’s shield, but if did not scrap or chime as it would have against a metal buckler, nor did it make a thunk sound as if it had knocked against wood. Rather, a muffled sound came forth, as if he had struck a thick blanket.
Stuvie hadn’t expected the first strike to win out, but wanted to use it to merely bring that shield out to the side a bit, and in that regard, he succeeded. He retracted fast … or tried to.
His knife stuck to that curious shield.
“What?” the dwarf asked incredulously, and he yanked with all of his considerable strength, and did indeed tug free the blade. But as he fell back, he felt the bite of a fine drow sword.
It wasn’t a mortal wound, surely, but still a painful one, a burning cut across his left shoulder.
Painful and burning.
Burning with poison.
Vidrinath, Tiago’s sword was called, or Lullaby in the Common Tongue, for it was infused with the infamous drow sleep poison. The dwarf spun away. He called for his companion to flee, but his words were slurred. He lifted his long knife to defend or to strike, but his movement proved sluggish.
Tiago bull-rushed, shield leading, and the dwarf swung desperately. At the last moment, the drow leaped up high, but kept his shield down low, picking off the feeble stab. Up in the air, the drow reversed his hold on Lullaby and plunged the sword straight down as he descended.
The fine blade, nearly translucent, but sparkling with the power of inner diamonds and flashing reflections of the street lamps, drove home just beside the dwarf sailor’s neck, clicking off his collarbone and sinking deeper, easily piercing muscle and gristle.
Down the street, having plowed through the thin webs of Ravel’s spell, Ambergris shrieked in horror and ran off.
“Get her,” Tiago scolded his companions. “Stop her!”
He tore out his sword as the dwarf crumpled to the cobblestones and didn’t even bother to wipe the bloody blade as he took up the chase.
Vidrinath didn’t need cleaning, for the fine blade would suffer no stains from the blood of a mortal. Swinging easily at Tiago’s side, the blade began to smoke, the thick dwarf blood wafting away on the night air, as the life-force of the creature dissipated into the ether.
Ambergris turned down a side street and fell back against the building to catch her breath. She paused to listen, but then remembered the identity of her pursuers. She wouldn’t hear the approach of dark elves!
She slipped quietly away from the street, her back still to the wall.
Then she was falling into blackness as the wall somehow disappeared behind her.
She found herself in a lightless bubble, an area of nothingness. She tried to retrace her steps but there was only blackness and a velvety wall before her and floor below her, with nothing to hold onto or to climb. She jumped and reached as high as she could, but there was nothing. Just a hole.
“Well, damn ye then!” she shouted. “Show yer miserable selfs and be done with it!”
Nothing.
The dwarf walked back a few steps, then bull rushed back at the wall slamming it full force. It gave before her, just enough to absorb her blow.
Nothing.
She took up Skullbreaker and went into a frenzy, swinging in the empty air and slapping at the walls. In short order, she put her hands on her hips, leaning her mace against her waist, huffing and puffing, and she realized that the drow were probably hoping for exactly this, that she would exhaust herself before they ever began the fight.
“Bah, ye fool,” she scolded herself at last, and she cursed the whiskey, then focused and tried to remember the words to a simple spell.
Her magical light filled the small room, black-walled and ten feet square.
“They should be gone soon,” came a voice from behind her, and Ambergris nearly hopped out of her boots. She whirled around, taking up her mace, to see a dark elf seated comfortably in the corner. He wore a blousy purple shirt under a sharply cut black vest and tucked neatly into fine black pants. An eyepatch adorned his face as he peeked out from under the brim of one of the largest hats Ambergris had ever seen, a great affair with one side pinned up tight and holding an enormous purple feather.
He seemed unconcerned at her aggressive stance and huge weapon, and he casually stood up, bowed gracefully, and said, “Jarlaxle, at your service, lovely dwarf.”
The name sounded familiar to her. Had Drizzt mentioned this one? Or Entreri, perhaps?
“Ah, but who’s Jarlaxle to be, and where’s me Stuvie?”
“Stuvie? The dwarf who accompanied you out of the tavern?” Jarlaxle responded, and he shrugged. “Likely slain. The trio in pursuit of you are not known to be a merciful bunch.”
“And what is Jarlaxle to them?”
“An enigma.” He bowed again. “As I like it to be. And you are Amber Gristle O’Maul, of the Adbar O’Mauls, correct?”
“Windy,” Ambergris corrected after foolishly and instinctively nodding.
Jarlaxle sighed and laughed and took a step toward her, and Ambergris lifted Skullbreaker higher.
“You traveled with Drizzt Do’Urden,” Jarlaxle said, “a friend of mine. And with Artemis Entreri, who once was a friend, but now would likely kill me.”
“Ye need not be worryin’ about that,” Ambergris said.
Jarlaxle looked at her curiously. “Come,” he said a moment later and he took off his hat and waved it and the black walls around them dropped, simply folding to the ground to reveal that they were inside a windowless room. Ambergris looked at the wall near to her with puzzlement, thinking that it must have been the alleyway wall she was crouching along when she fell into this … whatever it might be.
“Do step aside,�
� Jarlaxle bade her, and he motioned to the clear section of floor and followed her that way. Then he grabbed the edge of the “room” they had been in, which seemed more like a large bed sheet then, or perhaps a black tablecloth. The drow snapped his wrists and the whole of it seemed to shrink, and he repeated the motion a dozen times, lifted the small black cloth and spun it atop a raised finger, then tucked it neatly into his great hat.
“Why don’t I need to worry about Artemis Entreri?” Jarlaxle asked.
“He’s dead,” Ambergris replied. “And so’s Dahlia and me monk friend Afafrenfere.” She could clearly see the crestfallen expression worn by Jarlaxle, and she knew it to be an honest reflection of shock and grief.
“And Drizzt?”
Ambergris shrugged.
“You will give me a complete recounting,” Jarlaxle declared.
“And if not?”
“Oh, you will,” the drow said, his tone suddenly changing.
The room’s single door banged open then and a fearsome-looking black-bearded dwarf crashed into the room, a pair of adamantine morningstars strapped diagonally across his back, their heavy balls bouncing around his shoulders.
“Way’s clear,” he said. “Them dark elfs moved off.”
“Clear all the way to Illusk?”
The dwarf nodded. “Come on, then, pretty lady,” he said to Ambergris. “Let’s get ye safe.”
“Indeed,” Jarlaxle agreed. “Safely in a place where you will tell me your tale.”
Ambergris stared at him suspiciously.
“You will,” Jarlaxle assured her, his tone deathly even, every syllable and inflection fully in control and brimming with confidence. “One way or another.”
Ambergris swallowed hard, but eased her mace down to the ground. This one, or these two, had saved her life, no doubt, and she already understood that starting a fight with them might not be the smartest thing she ever did.
They were out across the town in short order, moving to the haunted region of Luskan known as Illusk. From ground level, it seemed no more than an ancient graveyard and ruin, but within those graves were secret tunnels that led to a subterranean section of the city that few knew of. Bregan D’aerthe had appropriated this place of late, turning the underground chambers into their hideout.
“Don’t ye be worryin’,” the rough-looking dwarf assured Ambergris a short while later when they walked around those chambers, dark elves all around, watching them curiously. “Ye’re with Jarlaxle now, and none’ll move against ye.”
“So says …?” Ambergris asked him leadingly.
“Athrogate o’ Adbar at yer service, pretty lady,” he said, dipping a bow.
“Adbar?”
“A long time ago,” Athrogate explained. “Long afore yerself was born. I’ll tell ye me tale, if ye’re interested, but it’ll be waitin’ a bit, until Jarlaxle’s done with ye.”
“If I’m still alive, ye mean.”
“Oh, but ye’ll be alive, don’t ye doubt, bwahahaha!” Athrogate roared. “Jarlaxle’s a fierce enemy, but he’s a fiercer friend, and he’s been namin’ Drizzt and Entreri among his friends for a century and more.”
“He said Entreri wants to kill him.”
“Bah, but a misunderstandin’,” Athrogate assured her.
They came into a lavishly-furnished chamber, full of comfortable pillows and a grand hearth and a grander desk and chair. Jarlaxle waited as the dwarves passed him by, then shut the door.
“Every detail,” he said to Ambergris. “And you can start by telling me why you went to the Shadowfell in the first place.”
“To get the cat.”
“The cat?”
“A friend o’ Drizzt, ye call yerself?” Ambergris asked suspiciously.
“Ah, Guenhwyvar,” Jarlaxle replied knowingly, but then he shook his head as if that made no sense at all to him, which of course, it did not. “All five of you went to rescue-”
“Six,” Ambergris interrupted. “Effron the tiefling led us. Twas himself who telled us that Lord Draygo had Drizzt’s cat.”
Jarlaxle’s eyes widened, and Ambergris could see that he had found some significance in that notion, though what it might be, she did not understand.
The dwarf took a deep breath and got right to the point. “They looked into the eye o’ the beast,” Ambergris began, and she took her time and duly recounted that dark day in the Shadowfell. She noted the wince of this most curious drow when she told him of the medusa and the fate of three of her companions, particularly that of Artemis Entreri, and it seemed an honest reaction of grief.
“So what of Drizzt and this young tiefling, Effron?” Jarlaxle asked when she was finished, and after he had taken a long while to compose himself. “They fell through a trap in the floor, and then?”
Ambergris shrugged. “Out o’ me sight and I was runnin’ for me life.”
“But did you hear from them? Were they crying out below?”
“Nay, I can’no say I did, but the fight was on in full and so I wouldn’t’ve, even if they were screaming from just below the floor. Not that it’s matterin’,” she added, shaking her head. “Lord Draygo’s not one to play with. I seen enough o’ that one in me time with Cavus Dun-” She paused at that slip-up, and at the intrigue it brought to the drow’s handsome face.
“You will tell me about that, as well,” Jarlaxle assured her.
“Aye,” the dwarf said with a nod.
“But first, finish your tale. Why do you say it doesn’t matter?”
“Lord Draygo ain’t known for mercy.”
Jarlaxle nodded. “But as far as you know, they were alive when you fled the castle?”
“Aye,” Ambergris replied. She lowered her eyes. When he put it that way, she sounded like quite the coward.
Jarlaxle nodded, his expression pensive.
“What’re ye thinking?” Athrogate asked.
That broke the drow’s contemplation. He stood up, and nodded. “See to her needs,” he instructed Athrogate, then to Ambergris, he said, “You have done well, fine lady. In surviving that which few might, and you have done well in trusting me. Your words are most appreciated. We will speak again, and soon.”
“And I’m yer prisoner?” she asked.
“You should remain here,” Jarlaxle said. “In fact, I insist upon it. Those three who pursued you will be relentless, I assure you, and you cannot defeat them.”
“So ye’re askin’ me to stay here?” Ambergris asked incredulously. “They’re drow, ye’re drow-”
“They won’t come here,” Jarlaxle assured her. “Even if they do, they’ll not know that you’re here, and surely would not move against you in this place, in any case.”
“Others saw me come in.”
“Trust him,” Athrogate told her, patting her arm.
Jarlaxle nodded at his dwarf sidekick, then tipped his hat to Ambergris and sped out of the room.
“Parise Ulfbinder asked about Drizzt specifically,” Jarlaxle said to Kimmuriel sometime later, in a different room but still in the bowels of Illusk. “This is more than a coincidence.”
“Even so,” Kimmuriel replied, allowing his skepticism to show through. Jarlaxle had presented him with quite a bit of information in the last few moments, and with a proposal that seemed quite risky-and risky to more than Jarlaxle!
“This is bigger than Drizzt,” Jarlaxle reminded him. “The lords of Netheril suspect something of great significance, and they seem to be interested in those they believe favored by the gods, and suspect that Drizzt might be among that group, as a chosen disciple of Lady Lolth.”
Kimmuriel laughed aloud-a rare event for him indeed-at that notion.
“I know you think it preposterous,” Jarlaxle said. “Surely it would seem so, but then, wouldn’t Drizzt Do’Urden prove to be the perfect instigator of that which Lolth most dearly craves? He brought a great share of chaos to Menzoberranzan, after all.
“Nor is it even important whether or not this particular theory of Drizzt i
s true,” Jarlaxle added. “All that matters is that the Shadovar believe it might be true, and given the movements of the Spider Queen of late, we would be remiss to let this pass.”
“By that reasoning, if you go and find that Drizzt is alive, and somehow manage to bring him back, would we not be bound to turn him over to Tiago Baenre, or to your sister who rules Menzoberranzan?”
“Even if we were so bound, I would not,” Jarlaxle replied honestly and bluntly. “Nor would I allow you to do so.”
“Yet you ask so much of me and of Bregan D’aerthe.”
“Yes,” Jarlaxle answered evenly.
“You are mad. The cost will be enormous-are you willing to pay that for iblith?”
“Yes-to both, and I assure you that I am mad in both meanings of the word.”
“Then I should relieve you of any command.”
“Nay, you should grant me this, with the full force of Bregan D’aerthe.”
“And how will House Baenre and the ruling council of Menzoberranzan view such an action?” Kimmuriel asked.
“Draygo Quick has him because he believes Drizzt to be the Chosen of Lolth. What good citizens of Menzoberranzan might Bregan D’aerthe be if we allowed that to stand?”
Kimmuriel could only laugh again at the unrelenting stubbornness of Jarlaxle.
“Send me to Gromph, I beg,” Jarlaxle said.
Kimmuriel looked at him skeptically. “What you seek from your brother is outside the boundaries of your argument.”
“I demand,” Jarlaxle clarified. “And I will pay my dear brother with my own coin.”
“And any risk this addition entails will be borne by Jarlaxle alone.”
Jarlaxle nodded in agreement, and Kimmuriel closed his eyes, summoning the psionic powers to do as Jarlaxle had requested.
Jarlaxle awaited the magical gate eagerly-indeed, as eagerly as he had looked forward to anything since he had traveled back to the pit in Gauntlgrym with Drizzt, Bruenor, Dahlia, and Athrogate to put the fire primordial back in its magical prison. Jarlaxle felt alive once more.
He understood the odds, and the likelihood that he was far too late for the sake of any of those who had gone to the lair of Draygo Quick.
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