“Elf, I got something!” Bruenor yelled, his voice echoing off the uneven stones of the cave complex’s walls. So that by the time it reached Drizzt’s ears, it sounded only as “Elf elf elf elf elf elf elf…”
The drow ranger lowered his torch and looked to the main corridor just outside the small side chamber in which he was working. He stepped out into the corridor as the dwarf called to him again. Drizzt smiled, recognizing from the tone that his friend wasn’t in any trouble. But looking at the catacombs in front of him, he realized he had no idea how to even begin looking for Bruenor.
He smiled again, thinking that maybe he did have a way. He pulled an onyx figurine from his belt pouch and called out, “Guenhwyvar.”
There was no insistence nor urgency, and barely any volume to his call, but he knew it had been heard even before gray mist began to swirl around him and take the shape of a great feline. It coagulated even more distinctly and darkened in hue, then Guenhwyvar stood beside him, as she had for more than a century.
“Bruenor’s in the caves, Guen,” the drow explained. “Go and find him.”
The black panther looked back at him, gave a little growl, and padded away.
“And sit on him when you do,” Drizzt called after her as he followed. “Make sure he doesn’t wander away before I arrive.”
Guenhwyvar’s next growl came a bit louder, and she picked up her pace, apparently more eager in her hunt because of the added instructions.
Down the main tunnel, Guenhwyvar froze in place, ears twitching as Bruenor’s next shout echoed. The panther moved to one side passage, sniffed the air, and darted to a different one. After only a brief pause, she leaped away.
Drizzt tried to keep up, but Guenhwyvar moved swiftly and sure-footedly, darting under overhangs the drow had to crouch to pass through and springing down side passages with confidence. The lagging Drizzt was left to guess at her choices.
They moved deeper into the narrow, crisscrossing tunnels, and when Drizzt next heard Bruenor’s yell, so full of outrage, he knew that Guenhwyvar had caught her prey.
“Ye durned elf!” Bruenor griped when Drizzt entered a sizable though low-ceilinged chamber, roughly square in shape and showing signs of some workmanship, as opposed to the natural cave tunnels that dominated the complex.
In the far corner, beside a dropped, low-burning torch, lay Guenhwyvar, calmly licking her paw, and Drizzt could just make out a pair of dwarven boots protruding from under her.
“A hunnerd years and ye still think it’s funny,” Bruenor said from the other side of the cat, and Drizzt could only guess that the dwarf’s head was wedged into a corner somewhere over there.
“I haven’t been able to keep up with you since the Tribe of Fifty Spears directed us to this place,” Drizzt replied.
“Ye think ye might send the cat away?”
“I welcome her company.”
“Then ye think ye might get the damn thing off o’ me?”
Drizzt motioned to Guenhwyvar, who stood up at once and headed his way, growling with every stride.
“Ye pointy-eared devil,” Bruenor grumbled, pulling himself to his knees.
He gathered up his one-horned helm and hopped to his feet, his horn nearly scraping the ceiling. Hands on hips, he turned and glared at the drow then muttered some more curses as he retrieved his torch.
“You moved more deeply in than we had agreed,” Drizzt remarked, dropping to sit cross-legged on the floor, rather than crouching low under the ceiling. “Deeper than we’d previously-”
“Bah, nothing’s in here,” said the dwarf. “Nothing big, anyway.”
“These tunnels are very old, and long unused,” Drizzt agreed and scolded all at once. “An old trap or a weak floor might have dropped you to the Middledark. I have warned you many times, my friend, do not underestimate the dangers of the Underdark.”
“Ye thinking there might be more tunnels below, are ye?”
“The possibility has entered my mind,” said Drizzt.
“Good!” said Bruenor, his face brightening. “Keep it there, and know it’s more than a possibility.” As he finished, he stepped aside and pointed to a crease in the apparently worked stone of the corner where he’d been working.
“More levels,” Bruenor said, pride clear in his tone. He reached over and pressed on the stone just to the side of the crease, and a sharp click came back in reply. As the dwarf moved his hand back, that portion of the wall popped out a bit, enough for Bruenor to grasp its edge and slide it farther out.
Drizzt crawled over, lifting his torch in front of him as he peered into the secret chamber. It wasn’t a large room, less than half the size of the outer one, and its floor was dominated by a small circle of rectangular stones-bricks?-forming a lip around a dark hole.
“Ye know what I be thinking,” Bruenor said.
“It’s not proof of anything more than… a well?” Drizzt replied.
“Something made that wall, made this room, and made that well,” said the dwarf.
“Something indeed, and there are many possibilities.”
“It’s dwarf work,” Bruenor insisted.
“And still that leaves many possibilities.”
“Bah!” Bruenor snorted and waved his hand dismissively at Drizzt.
Guenhwyvar jumped to her feet again and issued a long and low growl.
“Oh, shut yer maw!” Bruenor replied. “And don’t ye be threatenin’ me! Tell yer cat to shu-”
“Be silent!” Drizzt interrupted, waving his free hand, his eyes locked on Guenhwyvar, who continued to growl.
Bruenor glanced from drow to panther. “What d’ye know, elf?”
It arrived suddenly, a sharp roll of the floor, walls shaking, dust falling all around them.
“Quake!” Bruenor yelled, his voice tiny within the earthy rumble of grinding stones and falling blocks, and worse.
A second roll of the floor threw all of them into the air, Drizzt smacking hard against the doorjamb and Bruenor falling over backward.
“Come on, elf!” Bruenor yelled.
Drizzt was face down in the dirt and dust, his torch fallen aside. He started to pull himself to his hands and knees, but the blocks above him broke apart and tumbled down across his shoulders, laying him low.
Barrabus the Gray fished through the bag, tossing aside the various implements Herzgo Alegni had given him to “aid” in his craft. The assassin had to admit that the tiefling had some powerful friends and did indeed manage to gather many useful items-like the cloak Barrabus even then wore. Fine elven handiwork and enchantment were woven into every thread, and its dweomer aided in keeping the already stealthy Barrabus hidden from view. The same was true of the elven boots he wore and his ability to step silently in them, even through a field of dry leaves.
And of course, the belt-buckle dagger showed the very finest craftsmanship and enchantment. Never once had it failed to spring open to Barrabus’s command. Its poison delivery system, real human veins etched along the five-inch blade that pumped poison to the edges and the point, was one of the more remarkable weapons the assassin had ever carried. All Barrabus had to do was fill the “heart” of the knife, set in the hilt, and with the slightest of pressure, he could make that poison flow to its deadly blade.
Still, to Barrabus’s thinking, there was a danger to so many enhancements. His art, assassination, remained a test of skill, wisdom, and discipline. Reliance on too many magical aids could bring sloppiness, and sloppiness, he knew, would mean failure. Thus he had never worn the spider-climbing slippers Alegni had once offered him, nor the hat that allowed him to disguise himself nearly at will. And of course he had pushed aside the gender-altering girdle with a derisive snort.
He brought forth from the trunk a small coffer. The poisons inside it he had purchased himself; Barrabus would never allow a third party to deliver his most critical tools. He used only one poison merchant, an alchemist in Memnon he had known for many years, and who personally extracted the various toxins from desert snakes, spiders, lizards, and scorpions.