“The extra payment insures confidentiality?” Le'lorinel asked.
E'kressa regarded the elf as if that was a foolish question indeed. “Why would I inform this Drizzt character if ever I met him?” he asked. “And why would I ever meet him, with him being halfway across the world?”
“Then you have already spied him out?”
E'kressa picked up the cue that was the eagerness in the elf’s voice, and that anxious pitch made him straighten his shoulders and puff out his chest with pride. “Might that I have,” he said. “Might that I have.”
Le'lorinel answered with a determined stride, moving to the crystal ball directly opposite the gnome. “Find him.”
E'kressa began his casting. His little arms waved in high circles above his head while strange utterances in a language Le'lorinel did not know, and in a voice that hardly seemed familiar, came out of his mouth.
The gray eyes popped open. E'kressa bent forward intently. “Drizzt Do'Urden,” he said quietly, but firmly. “The doomed drow, for there can be but one outcome of such tedious and careful planning.
“Drizzt Do'Urden,” the gnome said again, the name running off his lips as rhythmically and enchantingly as had the arcane words of his spell. “I see … I see … I see. .”
E'kressa paused and gave a “Hmm,” then stood straighter. “I see the distorted face of an overeager bald-headed ridiculously masked elf,” he explained, bending to peer around the crystal ball and into Le'lorinel's wide-eyed face. “Do you think you might step back a bit?”
Le'lorinel's shoulders sagged, and a great sigh came forth, but the elf did as requested.
E'kressa rubbed his plump little hands together and muttered a continuance of the spell, then bent back in. “I see,” he said again. “Winter blows and deep, deep snows, I hear wind. . yes, yes, I hear wind in my ears and the running hooves of deers.”
“Deers?” Le'lorinel interrupted.
E'kressa stood up straight and glared at the elf.
“Deers?” Le'lorinel said again. “Rhymes with 'ears, right?”
“You are a troublesome one.”
“And you are somewhat annoying,” the elf replied. “Why must you speak in rhymes as soon as you fall into your divining? Is that a seer's rule, or something?”
“Or a preference!” the flustered gnome answered, again stamping his hard boot on the carpeted floor.
“I am no peasant to be impressed,” Le'lorinel explained. “Save yourself the trouble and the silly words, for you'll get no extra coins for atmosphere, visual or audible.”
E'kressa muttered a couple of curses under his breath and bent back down.
“Deers,” Le'lorinel said again, with a snort.
“Mock me one more time and I will send you hunting Drizzt in the Abyss itself,” the gnome warned.
“And from that place, too, I shall return, to repay you your favor,” Le'lorinel replied without missing a beat. “And I assure you, I know an illusion from an enemy, a guard of manipulated light from that of substance, and possess a manner of secrecy that will escape your eyes.”
“Ah, but I see all, foolish son of a foolish son!” E'kressa protested.
Le'lorinel merely laughed at that statement, and that proved to be as vigorous a response as any the elf might have offered, though E'kressa, of course, had no idea of the depth of irony in his boast.
Both elf and gnome sighed then, equally tired of the useless exchange, and with a shrug the gnome bent forward and peered again into the crystal ball.
“Word has been heard that Gandalug Battlehammer is not well,” Le'lorinel offered.
E'kressa muttered some arcane phrases and waggled his little arms about the curve of the sphere.
“To Mithral Hall seeing eyes go roaming, to throne and curtained bed, shrouded in gloaming,” the gnome began, but he stopped, hearing the impatient clearing of Le'lorinel's throat.
E'kressa stood up straight and regarded the elf. “Gandalug lays ill,” the gnome confirmed, losing both the mysterious voice and the aggravating rhymes. “Aye, and dying at that.”
“Priests in attendance?”
“Dwarf priests, yes,” the gnome answered. “Which is to say, little of any healing powers that might be offered to the dying king. No gentle hands there.
“Nor would it matter,” E'kressa went on, bending again to study the images, to absorb the feel of the scene as much as the actual display. “It is no wound, save the ravages of time, I fear, and no illness, save the one that fells all if nothing kills him sooner.” E'kressa stood straight again and blew a fluffy eyebrow up from in front of one gray eye.
“Old age,” the gnome explained. “The Ninth King of Mithral Hall is dying of old age.”
Le'lorinel nodded, having heard as much. “And Bruenor Battlehammer?” the elf asked.
“The Ninth King lies on a bed of sorrow,” the gnome said dramatically. “The Tenth King rises with the sun of the morrow!”
Le'lorinel crossed arms and assumed an irritated posture.
“Had to be said,” the gnome explained.
“Better by you, then,” the elf replied. “If it had to be.”
“It did,” said E'kressa, needing to get in the last word.
“Bruenor Battlehammer?” the elf asked.
The gnome spent a long time studying the scene in the crystal ball then, murmuring to himself, even at one point putting his ear flat against the smooth surface to better hear the events transpiring in the distant dwarf kingdom.
“He is not there,” E'kressa said with some confidence soon after. “Good enough for you, too, for if he had returned, with the dark elf beside him, would you think to penetrate a dwarven stronghold?”
“I will do as I must,” came the quiet and steady response.
E'kressa started to chuckle but stopped short when he saw the grim countenance worn by Le'lorinel.
“Better for you, then,” the gnome said, waving away the images in the scrying ball and enacting another spell of divination. He closed his eyes, not bothering with the ball, as he continued the chant—the call to an otherworldly being for some sign, some guidance.
A curious image entered his thoughts, burning like glowing metal. Two symbols showed clearly, images that he knew, though he had never seen them thus entwined.
“Dumathoin and Clangeddin,” he mumbled. “Dumathoin and Moradin.”
“Three dwarf gods?” Le'lorinel asked, but E'kressa, standing very still, eyes fluttering, didn't seem to hear.
“But how?” the gnome asked quietly.
Before Le'lorinel could inquire as to what the seer might be speaking of, E'kressa's gray eyes popped open wide. “To find Drizzt, you must indeed find Bruenor,” the gnome announced.
“To Mithral Hall, then,” Le'lorinel reasoned.
“Not so!” shrieked the gnome. “For there is a place more urgent in the eyes of the dwarf, a place as a father and not a king.”
“Riddles?”
E'kressa shook his hairy head vehemently. “Find the dwarfs most prized creation of his hands,” the gnome explained, “to find the dwarfs most prized creation of the flesh—well, one of two, but it sounded better that way,” the gnome admitted.
Le'lorinel's expression could not have been more puzzled.
“Bruenor Battlehammer made something once, something powerful and magical beyond his abilities as a craftsman,” E'kressa explained. “He crafted it for someone he treasured greatly. That creation of metal will bring the dwarf more certainly than will the void on Mithral Hall's stone throne. And more, that creation will bring the dark elf running.”
“What is it?” Le'lorinel asked, eagerness now evident. “Where is it?”
E'kressa bounded to his small desk and pulled forth a piece of parchment. With Le'lorinel rushing to join him, he enacted another spell, this one transforming the image that his previous spell had just burned into his thoughts to the parchment. He held up his handiwork, a perfect representation of the jumbled symbols of the dwarven gods.
“Find this mark, Le'lorinel, and you will find the end of your long road,” he explained.