"It was just a fireball," Jarlaxle said with a grin.
Entreri nodded and returned that grin, wondering if there was anything, anything at all, that Jarlaxle was not prepared for.
Chapter 20
BALANCING PRUDENCE AND DESIRE
Gord Abrix gasped and fell over as the small globe of fire soared past him, through the doorway, and into the tavern. As soon as it went through, Kimmuriel dropped the dimensional door. Gord Abrix had seen fireballs cast before and could well imagine the devastation back in the tavern. He knew he had just lost nearly a score of his loyal wererat soldiers.
He came up unsteadily, glancing around at his three dark elf companions, unsure, as he always seemed to be with this group, of what they might do next.
"You and your soldiers performed admirably," Rai-guy remarked.
"You killed them," Gord Abrix dared to say, though certainly not in any accusatory tone.
"A necessary sacrifice," Rai-guy replied. "You did not believe that they would have any chance of defeating Artemis Entreri and Jarlaxle, did you?"
"Then why send them?" the frustrated wererat leader started to ask, but his voice died away as the question left his mouth, the reasoning dissipated by his own internal reminders of who these creatures truly were. Gord Abrix and his henchmen had been sent in for just the diversion they provided, to occupy Entreri and Jarlaxle while Rai-guy and Kimmuriel prepared their little finish.
Kimmuriel opened the dimensional door then, showing the devastated tavern, charred bodies laying all about and not a creature stirring. The drow's lip curled up in a wicked smile as he surveyed the grisly scene, and a shudder coursed Gord Abrix's spine as he realized the fate he had only barely escaped.
Berg'inyon Baenre went through the door, into what remained of the tavern room, which was more outdoors than indoors now, and returned a moment later.
"A couple of wererats still stir but barely," the drow warrior informed his companions.
"What of our friends?" Rai-guy asked.
Berg'inyon shrugged. "I saw neither Jarlaxle nor Entreri," he explained. "They could be among the wreckage or could be burned beyond immediate recognition."
Rai-guy considered it for a moment, and motioned for Berg'inyon and Gord Abrix to go back to the tavern and snoop around.
"What of my soldiers?" the wererat asked.
"If they can be saved, pull them back through," Rai-guy replied. "Lady Lolth will grant me the power to healing them… should I choose to do so."
Gord Abrix started for the dimensional doorway, and paused and glanced back curiously at the obscure and dangerous drow, not sure how to sort through the wizard- cleric's words.
"Do you believe our prey are still in there?" Kimmuriel asked Rai-guy, using the drow tongue to exclude the wererat leader.
Berg'inyon answered from the doorway. "They are not," he said with confidence, though it was obvious he hadn't found the time yet to scour the ruins. "It would take more than a diversion and a simple wizard's spell to bring down that pair."
Rai-guy's eyes narrowed at the affront to his spell- casting, but in truth, he couldn't really disagree with the assessment. He had been hoping he could catch his prey easily and tidily, but he knew better in his heart, knew that Jarlaxle would prove a difficult and cagey quarry.
"Search quickly," Kimmuriel ordered.
Berg'inyon and Gord Abrix ran off, poking through the smoldering ruins.
"They are not in there," Rai-guy said to his psionicist friend a moment later.
"You agree with Berg'inyon's reasoning?" Kimmuriel asked.
"I hear the call of the Crystal Shard," Rai-guy explained with a snarl, for he did indeed hear the renewed call of the artifact, the prisoner of stubborn Artemis Entreri. "That call comes not from the tavern."
"Then where?" Kimmuriel asked.
Rai-guy could only shake his head in frustration. Where indeed. He heard the pleas, but there was no location attached to them, just an insistent call.
"Bring our henchmen back to us," the wizard instructed, and Kimmuriel went through the doorway, returning a moment later with Berg'inyon, Gord Abrix, and a pair of horribly burned, but still very much alive, wererats.
"Help them," Gord Abrix pleaded, dragging his torched friends to Rai-guy. "This is Poweeno, a close advisor and friend."
Rai-guy closed his eyes and began to chant, and opened his eyes and held his hand out toward the prone and squirming Poweeno. He finished his spell by waggling his fingers and uttering another line of arcane words, and a sharp spark crackled from his fingertips, jolting the unfortunate wererat. The creature cried out and jerked spasmodically, howling in agony as smoking blood and gore began to ooze from its layers of horrible wounds.
A few moments later, Poweeno lay very still, quite dead.
"What… what have you done?" Gord Abrix demanded of Rai-guy, the wizard already into spellcasting once more.
When Rai-guy didn't answer, Gord Abrix made a move toward him, or at least tried to. He found his feet stuck to the floor, as if he was standing in some powerful glue. He glanced about, his gaze settling on Kimmuriel. He recognized from the drow's satisfied expression that it was indeed the psionicist holding him fast in place.
"You failed me," Rai-guy explained opening his eyes and holding one hand out toward the other wounded wererat.
"You just said we performed admirably," Gord Abrix protested.
"That was before I knew that Jarlaxle and Artemis Entreri had escaped," Rai-guy explained.
He finished his spell, releasing a tremendous bolt of lightning into the other wounded wererat. The creature flipped over weirdly, then rolling into a fetal position, fast following its companion to the grave.
Gord Abrix howled and drew forth his sword, but Berg'inyon was there, smashing the blade away with his own, fine drow weapon. The warrior looked to his two drow companions. On a nod from Rai-guy, he slashed Gord Abrix across the throat.
The wererat, his feet still stuck fast, sank to the floor, staring helplessly and pleadingly at Rai-guy.
"I do not accept failure," the drow wizard said coldly.
"King Elbereth has sent the word out wide to our scouts," the elf Shayleigh assured Ivan and Pikel when the two dwarven emissaries arrived in Shilmista Forest to the west of the Snowflake Mountains. Cadderly had sent the dwarves straight out to their elf friends, confident that anyone approaching would surely be noticed by King Elbereth's wide network of scouts.
Pikel gave a sound then, which seemed to Ivan to be more one of trepidation than one of hope, though Shayleigh had just given them the assurances they had come here to get.
Or had she?
Ivan Bouldershoulder studied the elf maiden carefully. With her violet eyes and thick golden hair hanging far below her shoulders, she was undeniably beautiful, even to the thinking of a dwarf whose tastes usually ran to shorter, thicker, and more heavily bearded females. There was something else about Shayleigh's posture and attitude, though, about the subtle undertone of her melodious voice.
"Ye're not to kill 'em, ye know," Ivan remarked bluntly.
Shayleigh's posture did not change very much. "You yourself have named them as ultimately dangerous," she replied, "an assassin and a drow."
Ivan noted that the ominous flavor of her voice increased when she named the dark elf, as if the creature's mere race offended her more than the profession of his traveling companion.
"Cadderly's needin' to talk to 'em," Ivan grumbled.
"Can he not speak to the dead?"
"Ooo," said Pikel and he hopped away suddenly, disappearing briefly into the underbrush, and reemerging with one hand behind his back. He hopped up to stand before Shayleigh, a disarming grin on his face. "Drizzit," he reminded, and he pulled his hand around, revealing a delicate flower he had just picked for her.