Goblin slaves, he knew by their movements, by their slumped posture, for only slaves carried such a weight of broken resignation.
Drizzt continued to watch silently for a while, trying to spot the herding drow. There were at least four score goblins in this cavern, lining the edge of a small pond that the drow called Heldaeyn's Pool, scooping water up under their low-pulled cowls as though they had not drunk in many days.
They probably had not. Drizzt spotted a couple of rothe, small Underdark cattle, milling nearby, and he realized that this group probably was out of the city in search of the missing creatures. On such trips, slaves were given little or nothing to eat, though they carried quite a bit of supplies! The accompanying drow guards, though, ate handsomely, usually right in front of their starving slaves.
The crack of a whip brought the goblins back to their feet and shuffling back from the pool's edge. Two drow soldiers, one male, one female, came into Drizzt's view. They talked casually, the female every so often cracking her whip.
Another drow called out some commands from the other side of the cavern, and the goblins began to fall into a rough line, more of an elongated huddle than any organized formation.
Drizzt knew that the most opportune moment was upon him. Slavers were among the least organized and least regimented of Menzoberranzan's extracity bands. Any slaver contingent usually comprised dark elves from several different houses and a complement of young drow students from each of the Academy's three schools.
Drizzt quietly slipped down from the ledge and walked around the jutting wall, flashing the customary hand signal greetings (though his fingers felt awkward going through the intricate routine) to the drow in the cavern.
The female pushed her male escort forward and stepped to the side behind him. Immediately the male's hand came up, holding one of the typical drow hand-crossbows, its dart coated, most likely, with a powerful sleeping potion.
Who are you? the female's hand asked over the male's shoulder.
"All that is left of a patrol group that ventured near Blingdenstone," Drizzt answered.
"You should go in near Tier Breche, then," the female answered aloud. Hearing her voice, so typical of drow females, voices that could be incredibly melodic or incredibly shrill, sent Drizzt's thoughts cascading back to those long years past. He realized then, fully, that he was just a few hundred yards from Menzoberranzan.
"I do not wish to 'go in' at all," Drizzt answered. "At least, not announced." The reasoning made perfect sense, Drizzt knew. If he had indeed been the only survivor of a lost patrol, he would have been vigorously interrogated at the drow Academy, probably even tortured until the masters were certain that he played no treacherous role in the patrol's fate, or until he died, whichever came first.
"Who is the first house?" the female asked, her eyes locked on Drizzt's lavender-glowing orbs.
"Baenre," Drizzt answered immediately, expecting the test. Spying dark elves from rival cities were not unknown in Menzoberranzan.
"Their youngest son?" the female asked slyly. She curled her lips up in a lewd and hungry smile, Drizzt realized as she continued to stare deeply into his unusual eyes.
By fortunate coincidence, Drizzt had attended the Academy in the same class as House Baenre's youngest son—as long as ancient Matron Baenre had not reared another child in the three decades Drizzt had been gone.
"Berg'inyon," he answered confidently, dropping his hands in a cocky cross at his belt (and putting them near his scimitars).
"Who are you?" the female asked again, and she licked her lips, obviously intrigued.
"No one who matters," Drizzt replied, and he matched her smile and the intensity of her stare.
The female patted her blocking male on the shoulder and her fingers motioned for him to go.
Am I to be off this miserable duty? he responded silently with his hands, a hopeful expression on his face.
"The bol will take your place this day," the female purred, labeling Drizzt with the drow word that described something mysterious or intriguing.
The male smiled widely and moved to put his hand-crossbow away. Noticing that it was cocked and ready, and looking up to take note that a whole herd of goblins stood nearby, he widened his smile instead and lifted the weapon to fire.
Drizzt offered no reaction, though it pained him to see even goblins treated so miserably.
"No," the female said, putting her hand over the male's wrist. She reached up and removed the dart from the hand-crossbow, then replaced it with another. "Yours would put the creature to sleep," she explained, and she cackled in laughter.
The male considered her for just a moment, then apparently caught on. He took aim at a goblin loitering near the water's edge and fired. The goblin jerked as the small dart jabbed into its back. It started to turn about, but toppled instead, into the pool.
Drizzt gnawed at his lips, understanding, by the goblin's futile flopping, that the dart the female had supplied was coated with a paralyzing potion, one that left the doomed creature fully conscious. The goblin had little control of its limbs and would surely drown, and, worse, it would know its cruel fate. It managed to arch its back enough so that its face came above the water level, but Drizzt knew that it would tire long before the wicked potion expired.
The male laughed heartily, replaced the hand-crossbow in its small holster, which lay diagonally across his lower chest, and walked off down the tunnel to Drizzt's left. Before he had gone even a dozen steps, the female began cracking her whip and called for the few drow guards to get the caravan moving, down the runnel to the right.
After a moment, she turned a cold glare on Drizzt.
"Why are you standing there?" she demanded.
Drizzt pointed to the goblin in the pool, floundering badly now, barely able to keep its mouth out of the water. He managed a laugh, as if he was enjoying the macabre spectacle, but he seriously considered rushing over and cutting the evil female down at that moment.
All the way out of the small cavern, Drizzt looked for opportunities to get over to the goblin, to pull the creature out of the water so that it would have a chance to get away. The female drow never stopped eyeing him, though, not for an instant, and Drizzt understood that she had more on her mind than simply including him in the slave caravan. After all, why hadn't she taken the break when the new slaver unexpectedly arrived?
The dying goblin's last splashes followed Drizzt out of that place. The renegade drow swallowed hard and fought away his revulsion. No matter how many times he witnessed it, he would never get used to the brutality of his kin.
Chapter 15 MASKS
Catti-brie had never seen such creatures. They somewhat resembled gnomes, at least in stature, being about three feet tall, but they had no hair on their lumpy, ruddy heads, and their skin, in the starlight afforded her by the magical circlet, showed grayish. They were quite stout, nearly as muscular as dwarves, and judging from the fine tools they carried and the well-fitting metal armor they wore, they were, like dwarves, adept at mining and crafting.
Drizzt had told Catti-brie of the svirfnebli, the deep gnomes, and that is what she presumed she was looking upon. She couldn't be sure, though, and was afraid that this might be some offshoot of the evil duergar, gray dwarves.
She crouched amid a cluster of tall, thin stalagmites in an area of many crisscrossing corridors. The deep gnomes, if that's what they were, had come down the opposite way, and were now milling about one wide, flat section of corridor, talking among themselves and paying little heed of the stalagmite cluster twenty feet away.
Catti-brie was not sure of how she should proceed. If these were svirfnebli, and she was fairly sure of that, they could prove to be valuable allies, but how might she approach them? They certainly did not speak the same language and probably were as unfamiliar with humans as she was with them.