Ulgulu had changed all of that. The barghest army offered protection and companionship, and Ulgulu, always scheming for new and more devious kills, had provided Tephanis with unending important missions.
Now the quickling had to walk away from it all, for Ulgulu was dead and Kempfana was dead, and nothing Tephanis could do would change those simple facts.
“Lagerbottoms?” the quickling asked himself suddenly. He thought that the hill giant, the only member missing from the lair, might prove a fine companion. Tephanis saw the giant’s tracks clearly enough, heading away from the cave area and out into the deeper mountains. He clapped his hands excitedly, perhaps a hundred times in the next second, then was off, speeding away to find a new friend.
Far up in the mountains, Drizzt Do’Urden looked upon the lights of Maldobar for the last time. Since he had come down from the high peaks after his unpleasant encounter with the skunk, the drow had found a world of savagery nearly equal to the dark realm he had left behind. Whatever hopes Drizzt had realized in his days watching the farming family were lost to him now, buried under the weight of guilt and the awful images of carnage that he knew would haunt him forever.
The drow’s physical pain had lessened a bit; he could draw his breath fully now, though the effort sorely stung, and the cuts on his arms and legs had closed. He would survive.
Looking down at Maldobar, another place that he could never call home, Drizzt wondered if that might be a good thing.
9. The Chase
“What is it?” Fret asked, cautiously moving behind the folds of Dove’s forest-green cape.
Dove, and even Roddy, also moved tentatively, for while the creature seemed dead, they had never seen anything quite like it. It appeared to be some strange, giant-sized mutation between a goblin and a wolf.
They gained in courage as they neared the body, convinced that it was truly dead. Dove bent low and tapped it with her sword.
“It has been dead for more than a day, by my guess,” she announced.
“But what is it?” Fret asked again.
“Half-breed,” Roddy muttered.
Dove closely inspected the creature’s strange joints. She noted, too, the many wounds inflicted upon the thing-tearing wounds, like those caused by the scratching of a great cat.
“Shape-changer,” guessed Gabriel, keeping watch at the side of the rocky area.
Dove nodded. “Killed halfway through.”
“I never heared of any goblin wizards,” Roddy protested.
“Oh, yes,” Fret began, smoothing the sleeves of his soft-clothed tunic. “There was, of course, Grubby the Wiseless, pretended archmage, who…”
A whistle from high above stopped the dwarf. Up on the ledge stood Kellindil, the elven archer, waving his arms about. “More up here,” the elf called when he had their attention. “Two goblins and a red-skinned giant, the likes of which I have never seen!”
Dove scanned the cliff. She figured that she could scale it, but one look at poor Fret told her that they would have to go back to the trail, a journey of more than a mile. “You remain here,” she said to Gabriel. The stern-faced man nodded and moved off to a defensive position among some boulders, while Dove, Roddy, and Fret headed back along the ravine.
Halfway up the single winding path that moved along the cliff, they met Darda, the remaining fighter of the troupe. A short and heavily muscled man, he scratched his stubbly beard and examined what looked to be a plowshare.
“That’s Thistledown’s!” Roddy cried. “I seen it out back of his farm, set for fixing!”
“Why is it up here?” Dove asked.
“And why might it be bloodied?” added Darda, showing them the stains on the concave side. The fighter looked over the ledge into the ravine, then back to the plowshare. “Some unfortunate creature hit this hard,” Darda mused, “then probably went into the ravine.”
All eyes focused on Dove as the ranger pulled her thick hair back from her face, put her chin in her delicate but calloused hand, and tried to sort through this newest puzzle. The clues were too few, though, and a moment later, Dove threw her hands up in exasperation and headed off along the trail. The path wound in and left the cliff as it leveled near the top, but Dove walked back over to the edge, right above where they had left Gabriel. The fighter spotted her immediately and his wave told the ranger that all was calm below.
“Come,” Kellindil bade them, and he led the group into the cave. Some answers came clear to Dove as soon as she glanced upon the carnage in the inner room.
“Barghest whelp!” exclaimed Fret, looking upon the scarlet-skinned, giant corpse.
“Barghest?” Roddy asked, perplexed.
“Of course,” piped in Fret. “That does explain the wolf-giant in the gorge.”
“Caught in the change,” Darda reasoned. “Its many wounds and the stone floor took it before it could complete the transition.”
“Barghest?” Roddy asked again, this time angrily, not appreciating being left out of a discussion he could not understand.
“A creature from another plane of existence,” Fret explained. “Gehenna, it is rumored. Barghests send their whelps to other planes, sometimes to our own, to feed and to grow.” He paused a moment in thought. “To feed,” he said again, his tone leading the others. “The woman in the barn!” Dove said evenly.
The members of Dove’s troupe nodded their heads at the sudden revelation, but grim-faced McGristle held stubbornly to his original theory. “Drow killed ‘em!” he growled.
“Have you the broken scimitar?” Dove asked. Roddy produced the weapon from beneath one of the many folds in his layered skin garments.
Dove took the weapon and bent low to examine the dead barghest. The blade unmistakably matched the beast’s wounds, especially the fatal wound in the barghest’s throat. “You said that the drow wielded two of these,” Dove remarked to Roddy as she held up the scimitar.
“The mayor said that,” Roddy corrected, “on account of the story Thistledown’s son told. When I seen the drow—” He took back the weapon—”he had just the one—the one he used to kill the Thistledown clan!” Roddy purposely didn’t mention that the drow, while wielding just the one weapon, had scabbards for two scimitars on his belt.
Dove shook her head, doubting the theory, “The drow killed this barghest,” she said. “The wounds match the blade, the sister blade to the one you hold, I would guess. And if you check the goblins in the front room, you will find that their throats were slashed by a similar curving scimitar.”
“Like the wounds on the Thistledowns!” Roddy snarled. Dove thought it best to keep her budding hypothesis quiet, but Fret, disliking the big man, echoed the thoughts of all but McGristle. “Killed by the barghest,” the dwarf proclaimed, remembering the two sets of footprints at the farmyard. “In the form of the drow!”
Roddy glowered at him and Dove cast Fret a leading look, wanting the dwarf to remain silent. Fret misinterpreted the ranger’s stare, though, thinking it astonishment of his reasoning power, and he proudly continued. “That explains the two sets of tracks, the heavier, earlier set for the bar—”
“But what of the creature in the gorge?” Darda asked Dove, understanding his leader’s desire to shut Fret up. “Might its wounds, too, match the curving blade?”
Dove thought for a moment and managed to subtly nod her thanks to Darda. “Some, perhaps,” she answered. “More likely, that barghest was killed by the panther—” She looked directly at Roddy—”the cat you claimed the drow kept as a pet.”
Roddy kicked the dead barghest. “Drow killed the Thistledown clan!” he growled. Roddy had lost a dog and an ear to the dark elf and would not accept any conclusions that lessened his chances of claiming the two thousand gold piece bounty that the mayor had levied.