“It feels g-g-good to speak again, though the language is not my own,” the creature said after a while. “It feels as if I have f-found again a part of what I once wow-was.”
With his own similar experiences so clear in his mind, Drizzt understood the sentiments completely.
“How long have you been this way?” Belwar asked.
The hook horror shrugged, its huge chest and shoulders rattling through the movement. “Weeks, m-months,” it said. “I cannot remember. The time is l-lost to me.”
Drizzt put his face in his hands and exhaled a deep sigh, in full empathy and sympathy with the unfortunate creature. Drizzt, too, had felt so lost and alone out in the wilds. He, too, knew the grim truth of such a fate. Belwar patted the drow softly with his hammer-hand.
“And where now are you going?” the burrow-warden asked the hook horror. “Or where were you coming from?”
“Chasing the w-w-w-” the hook horror replied, fumbling helplessly over that last word as though the mere mention of the evil wizard pained the creature greatly. “But so much is l-lost to me. I would find him with l-little effort if I was still p-p-pech. The stones would tell me where to l-look. But I cannot talk to them very often anymore.” The monster rose from its seat on the stone. “I will go.” it said determinedly. “You are not safe with me around.”
“You will stay,” Drizzt said suddenly and with a tone of finality that could not be denied.
“I c-cannot control,” the hook horror tried to explain.
“You’ve no need to worry,” said Belwar. He pointed to the doorway up on the ledge at the side of the cavern. “Our home is up there, with a door too small for you to get through. Down here by the lake you must rest until we all decide our best course of action.”
The hook horror was exhausted, and the svirfneblin’s reasoning seemed sound enough. The monster dropped heavily back to the stone and curled up as much as its bulky body would allow. Drizzt and Belwar took their leave, glancing back at their strange new companion with every step.
“Clacker,” Belwar said suddenly, stopping Drizzt beside him. With great effort, the hook horror rolled over to consider the deep gnome, understanding that Belwar had uttered the word in its direction.
“That is what we shall call you, if you have no objections.” the svirfneblin explained to the creature and to Drizzt.
“Clacker.”
“A fitting name,” Drizzt remarked.
“It is a g-good name,” agreed the hook horror, but silently the creature wished that it could remember its pech name, the name that rolled on and on like a rounded boulder in a sloping passage and spoke prayers to the stone with each growling syllable.
“We will widen the door,” Drizzt said when he and Belwar got inside their cave complex. “So that Clacker may enter and rest beside us in safety.”
“No, dark elf,” argued the burrow-warden. “That we shall not do.”
“He is not safe out there beside the water,” Drizzt replied. “Monsters will find him.”
“Safe enough he is!” snorted Belwar. “What monster would willingly attack a hook horror?” Belwar understood Drizzt’s sincere concern, but he understood, too, the danger in Drizzt’s suggestion. “I have witnessed such spells,” the svirfneblin said somberly. “They are called polymorph. Immediately comes the change of the body, but the change of the mind can take time.”
“What are you saying?” Drizzt’s voice edged on panic.
“Clacker is still a pech,” replied Belwar, “trapped though he is in the body of a hook horror. But soon, I fear, Clacker will be a pech no more. A hook horror he will become, mind and body, and however friendly we might be, Clacker will come to think of us as no more than another meal.”
Drizzt started to argue, but Belwar silenced him with one sobering thought. “Would you enjoy having to kill him, dark elf?”
Drizzt turned away. “His tale is familiar to me.”
“Not as much as you believe,” replied Belwar.
“I, too, was lost,” Drizzt reminded the burrow-warden.
“So you believe,” Belwar answered. “But that which was essentially Drizzt Do’Urden remained within you, my friend. You were as you had to be, as the situation around you forced you to be. This is different. Not just in body, but in very essence will Clacker become a hook horror. His thoughts will be the thoughts of a hook horror and, magga cammara, he will not return your grant of mercy when you are the one on the ground.”
Drizzt could not be satisfied, though he could not refute the deep gnome’s blunt logic. He moved into the complex’s left-hand chamber, the one he had claimed as his bedroom, and fell into his hammock.
“Alas for you, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Belwar mumbled under his breath as he watched the drow’s heavy movements, laden with sorrow. “And alas for our doomed pech friend.” The burrow-warden went into his own chamber and crawled into his hammock, feeling terrible about the whole situation but determined to remain coldly logical and practical, whatever the pain. For Belwar understood that Drizzt felt a kinship to the unfortunate creature, a potentially fatal bond founded in empathy for Clacker’s loss of self.
Later that night, an excited Drizzt shook the svirfneblin from his slumber. “We must help him,” Drizzt whispered harshly.
Belwar wiped an arm across his face and tried to orient himself. His sleep had been uneasy, filled with dreams in which he had cried ‘Bivrip’ in an impossibly loud voice, then had proceeded to bash the life out of his newest companion.
“We must help him!” Drizzt said again, even more forcefully. Belwar could tell by the drow’s haggard appearance that Drizzt had found no sleep this night.
“I am no wizard,” the burrow-warden said. “Neither are―”
“Then we will find one!” Drizzt growled. “We will find the human who cursed Clacker and force him to reverse the dweomer! We saw him by the stream only a few days ago. He cannot be so far away!”
“A mage capable of such magic will prove no easy foe,” Belwar was quick to reply. “Have you so quickly forgotten the fireball?” Belwar glanced to the wall, to where his scorched leather jack hung on a peg, as if to convince himself. “The wizard is beyond us, I fear,” Belwar mumbled, but Drizzt could see the lack of conviction in the burrow-warden’s expression as he spoke the words.
“Are you so quick to condemn Clacker?” Drizzt asked bluntly. A wide smile began to spread over Drizzt’s face as he saw the svirfneblin weakening. “Is this the same Belwar Dissengulp who took in a lost drow? That most honored burrow-warden who would not give up hope for a dark elf that everyone else considered dangerous and beyond help?”
“Go to sleep, dark elf,” Belwar retorted, pushing Drizzt away with his hammer-hand.
“Wise advice, my friend,” said Drizzt. “And you sleep well. We may have a long road ahead of us.”
“Magga cammara,” huffed the taciturn svirfneblin, stubbornly holding to his facade of gruff practicality. He rolled away from Drizzt and soon was snoring.
Drizzt noted that Belwar’s snores now sounded from the depths of a deep and contented sleep.
Clacker beat against the wall with his clawed hands, taptapping the stone relentlessly.
“Not again,” a flustered Belwar whispered to Drizzt. “Not out here!”
Drizzt sped along the winding corridor, homing in on the monotonous sound. “Clacker!” he called softly when the hook horror was in sight.
The hook horror turned to face the approaching drow, clawed hands wide and ready and a growling hiss slipping through his great beak. A moment later, Clacker realized what he was doing and abruptly stopped.