"There's two of them things?" Dunkin asked.
"Same cat," Catti-brie explained. "Something sent Guen home."
Drizzt nodded and looked to Deudermont. "Something that Guenhwyvar could find again," he reasoned.
Off they went, through the tangle, following Guenhwyvar's lead. Soon they came to the northern slopes of the cone, and behind a curtain of thick hanging moss, they found a dark opening. Drizzt motioned to Guenhwyvar, but the panther would not go in.
Drizzt eyed her curiously.
"I'm going back to the boat," Dunkin remarked. He took a step away, but Robillard, tired of the man's foolishness, drew out a wand and pointed it right between Dunkin's eyes. The wizard said not a word, he didn't have to.
Dunkin turned back to the cave.
Drizzt crouched near to the panther. Guenhwyvar would not enter the cave, and the drow had no idea of why that might be. He knew that Guenhwyvar was not afraid. Might there be an enchantment on the area that prevented the panther from entering?
Satisfied with that explanation, Drizzt drew out Twinkle, the fine scimitar glowing its customary blue, and motioned for his friends to wait. He slipped past the mossy curtain, waited a moment so that his eyes could adjust to the deeper gloom, then moved in.
Twinkle's light went away. Drizzt ducked to the side, behind the protection of a boulder. He realized that he was not moving as quickly as expected, his enchanted anklets were not aiding him.
"No magic," he reasoned, and then it seemed perfectly clear to him why Guenhwyvar would not enter. The drow turned to go back out, but found his impatient friends already slipping in behind him. Both Harkle and Robillard wore curious expressions. Catti-brie squinted into the gloom, one hand fiddling with the suddenly useless cat's eye pendant strapped to her forehead.
"I have forgotten all of my spells," Harkle said loudly, his voice echoing off the bare wall of the large cave. Robillard slapped his hand over Harkle's mouth.
"Ssssh!" the calmer wizard hissed. When he thought about what Harkle had said, though, Robillard had his own outburst. "As have I!" he roared, and then he slapped his hand over his own mouth.
"No magic in here," Drizzt told them. "That is why Guenhwyvar could not enter."
"Might be that is what sent the cat home," Catti-brie added.
The discussion ended abruptly, and all heads swung about to regard Waillan as the light of a makeshift torch flared brightly.
"I'll not walk in blindly," the young sailor explained, holding high the burning branches he had strapped together.
None of them could argue. Just the few feet they had gone past the cave's entrance had stolen most of the light, and their senses hinted to them that this was no small place. The cave felt deep, and cool. It seemed as if the sticky humidity of the island air had been left behind outside.
As they moved in a bit farther, the torchlight showed them that their senses were telling the truth. The cave was large and roughly oval in shape, perhaps a hundred feet across at its longest point. It was uneven, with several different levels across its broken floor and gigantic stalactites leering down at them.
Drizzt was about to suggest a systematic exploration, when a voice cut the stillness.
"Who would seek my sight?" came a cackle from the rear of the cave, where there appeared to be a rocky tier a dozen feet above the party's present level. All of the group squinted through the gloom. Catti-brie tightened her grip on Taulmaril, wondering how effective the bow might be without its magic.
Dunkin turned back for the door, and out came Robillard's wand, though the wizard's gaze was firmly set ahead, upon the tier of boulders. The small man hesitated, then realized that Robillard had no power against him, not in here.
"Who would seek my sight?" came the cackling question again.
Dunkin bolted out through the moss.
As one, the group looked back to the exit.
"Let him go," Deudermont said. The captain took the torch from Waillan and moved forward slowly, the other five following
in his wake. Drizzt, ever cautious, moved to the shadows offered by the side wall of the cave.
The question came a third time, in rehearsed tones as though the witch was not unaccustomed to visits by sailors. She showed herself to them then, moving out between a tumble of boulders. The hag was old, ancient, wearing a tattered black shift and leaning heavily on a short and polished staff. Her mouth was open-she seemed to be gasping for breath-showing off a single, yellow tooth. Her eyes, appearing dull even from a distance, did not blink.
"Who will bear the burden of knowledge?" she asked. She kept her head turned in the general direction of the five for a short while, then broke into cackling laughter.
Deudermont held his hand up, motioning for the others to halt, then boldly stepped forward. "I will," he announced. "I am Deudermont of the Sea Sprite, come to Caerwich …"
"Go back!" the hag yelled at him so forcefully that the captain took a step backward before he realized what he was doing. Catti-brie bent her bow a bit more, but kept it low and unthreatening.
"This is not for you, not for any man!" the hag explained. All eyes shifted to regard Catti-brie.
"It is for two, and only two," the hag went on, her croaking voice rhythmic, as though she was reciting a heroic poem. "Not for any man, or any male whose skin browns under the light of the sun."
The obvious reference sent Drizzt's shoulders slumping. He came out of the shadows a moment later, and looked to Catti-brie, who seemed as crestfallen as he in the sudden realization that this was, after all, about Drizzt once more. Deudermont had almost been killed in Waterdeep, and that the Sea Sprite and her crew were in peril, a thousand miles from their usual waters, because of his legacy.
Drizzt sheathed his blades and walked over to Catti-brie, and together they moved past the startled captain, and out in front to face the blind witch.
"My greetings, renegade of Daermon N'a'shezbaernon," the blind witch said, referring to Drizzt's ancient family name, a name that few outside of Menzoberranzan would know. "And to you, daughter of a dwarf, who hurled the mightiest of spears!"
That last sentence caught the pair off guard, and confused them for just a moment, until they realized the reference. The witch must be speaking of the stalactite that Catti-brie had dropped, the great «spear» that drove through the dome of House Baenre's chapel! This was about them, about Drizzt's past, and the enemies they thought they had left behind.
The blind hag motioned for them to come closer, and so they did, walking with as much heart as they could muster. They were barely ten feet from the ugly woman when they stopped. They were several feet below her as well, a fact that made her-someone who knew what she should not have known-seem all the more imposing. The crone pulled herself up as high as she could, showing great effort in trying to straighten her bowed shoulders, and aligned her sightless orbs straight with those of Drizzt Do'Urden.
Then she recited, quietly and quickly, the verse Errtu had given her:
No path by chance but by plot,
Further steps along the road of his father's ghost.
The traitor to Lloth is sought
By he who hates him most.
The fall of a house, the fall of a spear,
Puncture the Spider Queen's pride as a dart.
And now a needle for Drizzt Do'Urden to wear
'Neath the folds of his cloak, so deep in his heart.
A challenge, renegade of renegade's seed,
A golden ring thee cannot resist!
Reach, but only when the beast is freed