In spite of his uneasiness, though, Drizzt felt comforted by the presence of his svirfneblin friend. He remembered other encounters of the last years, battles he had been forced to fight alone. Then, like now, the hunter had welled within him, had come to the fore and guided the deadly strikes of his blades. But there was a difference this time that Drizzt could not deny. Before, when he was alone, the hunter did not so readily depart. Now, with Belwar by his side, Drizzt was fully back in control.
Drizzt shook his thick white mane, trying to dismiss any last remnants of the hunter. He thought himself foolish now for the way he had begun the battle against the bird-men, slapping with the flat of his blades. He and Belwar might be in the cavern still if Drizzt’s instinctive side had not emerged, if he had not learned of Guenhwyvar’s fall.
He looked at Belwar suddenly, remembering the inspiration of his anger. “The statuette!” he cried. “You have it.”
Belwar scooped the item out of his pocket. “Magga cammara!” Belwar exclaimed, his round-toned voice edged with panic. “Might the panther be wounded? What effect would the acid have against Guenhwyvar? Might the panther have escaped to the Astral Plane?”
Drizzt took the figurine and examined it in trembling hands, taking comfort in the fact that it was not marred in any way. Drizzt believed that he should wait before calling Guenhwyvar; if the panther was injured, it surely would heal better at rest in its own plane of existence. But Drizzt could not wait to learn of Guenhwyvar’s fate. He placed the figurine down on the ground at his feet and called out softly.
Both the drow and the svirfneblin sighed audibly when the mist began to swirl around the onyx statue. Belwar took out his enchanted brooch to better observe the cat.
A dreadful sight awaited them. Obediently, faithfully, Guenhwyvar came to Drizzt’s summons, but as soon as the drow saw the panther, he knew that he should have left Guenhwyvar alone so that it might lick its wounds. Guenhwyvar’s silken black coat was burned and showing more patches of scalded skin than fur. Once-sleek muscles hung ragged, burned from the bone, and one eye remained closed and horribly scarred.
Guenhwyvar stumbled, trying to get to Drizzt’s side. Drizzt rushed to Guenhwyvar instead, dropping to his knees and throwing a gentle hug around the panther’s huge neck. “Guen,” he mumbled.
“Will it heal?” Belwar asked softly, his voice nearly breaking apart on every word.
Drizzt shook his head, at a loss. Really, he knew very little about the panther beyond its abilities as his companion. Drizzt had seen Guenhwyvar wounded before, but never seriously. Now he could only hope that the magical extraplanar properties would allow Guenhwyvar to recover fully.
“Go back home.” Drizzt said. “Rest and get well, my friend. I will call for you in a few days.”
“Perhaps we can give some aid now,” Belwar offered.
Drizzt knew the futility of that suggestion. “Guenhwyvar will better heal at rest,” he explained as the cat dissipated into the mist again. “We can do nothing for Guenhwyvar that will carry over to the other plane. Being here in our world taxes the panther’s strength. Every minute takes a toll.”
Guenhwyvar was gone and only the figurine remained. Drizzt picked it up and studied it for a very long time before he could bear to drop it back into a pocket.
A sword flicked the bedroll up into the air, then slashed and cut beside its sister blade until the blanket was no more than a tattered rag. Zaknafein glanced down at the silver coins on the floor. Such an obvious dupe, but the camp, and the prospect of Drizzt returning to it, had kept Zaknafein at bay for several days!
Drizzt Do’Urden was gone, and he had taken great pains to announce his departure from Blingdenstone. The spirit-wraith paused to consider this new bit of information, and the necessity of thought, of tapping into the rational being that Zaknafein had been on more than an instinctive level, brought the inevitable conflict between this undead animation and the spirit of the being it held captive.
Back in her anteroom, Matron Malice Do’Urden felt the struggle within her creation. In Zin-carla, control of the spirit-wraith remained the responsibility of the matron mother that the Spider Queen graced with the gift. Malice had to work hard at the appointed task, had to spit off a succession of chants and spells to insinuate herself between the thought processes of the spirit-wraith and the emotions and soul of Zaknafein Do’Urden.
The spirit-wraith lurched as he felt the intrusions of Malice’s powerful will. It proved to be no contest; in barely a second, the spirit-wraith was studying the small chamber Drizzt and one other being, probably a deep gnome, had disguised as a campsite. They were gone now, weeks out, and no doubt moving away from Blingdenstone with all speed. Probably, the spirit-wraith reasoned, moving away from Menzoberranzan as well.
Zaknafein moved outside the chamber into the main tunnel. He sniffed one way, back east toward Menzoberranzan, then turned and dropped to a crouch and sniffed again. The location spells Malice had imbued upon Zaknafein could not cover such distances, but the minute sensations the spirit-wraith received from his inspection only confirmed his suspicions. Drizzt had gone west.
Zaknafein walked off down the tunnel, not the slightest limp evident from the wound he had received at the end of a goblin’s spear, a wound that would have crippled a mortal being. He was more than a week behind Drizzt, maybe two, but the spirit-wraith was not concerned. His prey had to sleep, had to rest and eat. His prey was flesh, and mortal and weak.
“What manner of being is it?” Drizzt whispered to Belwar as they watched the curious bipedal creature filling buckets in a fast-running stream. This entire area of the tunnels was magically lighted, but Drizzt and Belwar felt safe enough in the shadows of a rocky outcropping a few dozen yards from the stooping robed figure.
“A man,” Belwar replied. “Human, from the surface.”
“He is a long way from home,” Drizzt remarked. “Yet he seems comfortable in his surroundings. I would not believe that a surface-dweller could survive in the Underdark. It goes against the teachings I received in the Academy.”
“Probably a wizard,” Belwar reasoned. “That would account for the light in this region. And it would account for his being here.”
Drizzt looked at the svirfneblin curiously.
“A strange lot are wizards,” Belwar explained, as though the truth was self-evident. “Human wizards, even more than any others, so I’ve heard tell. Drow wizards practice for power. Svirfneblin wizards practice the arts to better know the stone. But human wizards,” the deep gnome went on, obvious disdain in his tone. “Magga cammara, dark elf, human wizards are a different lot altogether!”
“Why do human wizards practice the art of magic at all?” Drizzt asked.
Belwar shook his head. “I do not believe that any scholars have yet discovered the reason,” he replied in all sincerity. “A strange and dangerously unpredictable race are the humans, and better to be left alone.”
“You have met some?”
“A few.” Belwar shuddered, as though the memory was not a pleasant one. “Traders from the surface. Ugly things, and arrogant. The whole of the world is only for them, by their thinking.”
The resonant voice rang out a bit more loudly than Belwar had intended, and the robed figure by the stream cocked his head in the companions’ direction.
“Comen out, leetle rodents,” the human called in a language that the companions could not understand. The wizard reiterated the request in another tongue, then in drow, and then in two more unknown tongues, and then in svirfneblin. He continued on for many minutes, Drizzt and Belwar looking at each other in disbelief.