She decided that her best course would be simply to sit tight and let the creatures pass. Catti-brie had never experienced the strangeness of infravision, though, and she did not hilly appreciate that, sitting among the cool stalagmites, her body temperature fully thirty degrees warmer than the stone, she was practically glowing to the svirfnebli's heat-seeing eyes.
Even as the young woman crouched and waited, deep gnomes fanned out in the tunnels around her, trying to discern if this drow (for Catti-brie still wore the magical mask) was alone or part of a larger band. A few minutes slipped by; Catti-brie looked down to her hand, thinking that she felt something in the stone, a slight vibration, perhaps. The young woman continued to stare at her tingling hand curiously. She did not know that deep gnomes communicated in a method that was part telepathy and part psychokinesis, sending their thought patterns to each other through the stone, and that a sensitive hand could sense the vibrations.
She did not know that the minute tingling was the confirmation from the deep gnome scouts that this drow crouching in the stalagmite cluster was indeed alone.
One of the svirfnebli ahead suddenly burst into motion, chanting a few words that Catti-brie did not understand and hurling a rock her way. She dipped lower behind the stones for cover and tried to decide whether to call out a surrender or take out her bow and try to frighten the creatures away.
The stone bounced harmlessly short and shattered, its flecks spreading in a small area before the stalagmite cluster. Those flecks began to smoke and sizzle, and the ground began to tremble.
Before Catti-brie knew what was happening, the stones before her rose up like a gigantic bubble, then took on the shape of a giant fifteen-foot-tall humanoid, its girth practically filling the corridor. The creature had huge, rocky arms that could smash a building to pieces. Two of the front stalagmites had been caught up in the monstrous formation and now served as dangerous spikes protruding from the front of the monster's massive chest.
Down the passage, the deep gnomes let out battle cries—calls that echoed in corridors all about the frightened woman.
Catti-brie scrambled backward as a gigantic hand swooped in and took the top from one stalagmite. She dropped the onyx figuring and called frantically for Guenhwyvar, all the while fitting an arrow to her bowstring.
The earth elemental shifted forward, its bulky legs melding with, slipping right through, the stony stalagmites in its way. It moved again to grab the woman, but a silver-streaking arrow ripped through its rock face, blowing a clean crevice between the monster's eyes.
The elemental straightened and reeled, then used its hands to push its halved head back into one piece. It looked back to the cluster and saw not the female drow, but a huge cat, tamping down its hind legs.
Catti-brie came out the back of the cluster, thinking to flee, but found deep gnomes coming down every side passage. She ran along the main corridor, cutting from mound to mound for cover, not daring to glance back at Guenhwy-var and the elemental. Then something hard banged against her shin, tripping her, and she sprawled headlong. She squirmed about to see another of the svirfnebli rising from behind one mound, a pickaxe still angled out as it had been placed to trip her.
Catti-brie pulled her bow around and shifted into a sitting position, but the weapon was batted away. She instinctively rolled to the side, but heard shuffling feet as three gnomes kept pace with her, heavy mauls lifted high to squash her.
Guenhwyvar snarled and soared, thinking to fly right past the behemoth and turn it about. The elemental was faster than the panther suspected, though, and a great rocky hand shot out, catching the cat in midflight and pulling it to its massive chest. Guenhwyvar shrieked as a stalagmite spike dug into a shoulder, and the deep gnomes, running up beside their champion, shrieked as well, in glee that the drow and her unexpected ally were apparently soon to be finished.
A maul descended toward Catti-brie's head. She snapped out her short sword and caught it at the joint between handle and head, deflecting it enough so that it banged loudly off the floor. The young woman scampered and parried, trying to get far enough from the gnomes to regain her footing, but they paced her, every which way, banging their mauls with shortened, measured strokes so that this fast-tiring dark elf had no opportunities for clear counterstrikes.
The sight of the marvelous panther, soon to be fully impaled and crushed, brought victorious thrills to a handful of the trailing svirfhebli, but brought only confusion to two others. Those two, Seldig and Pumkato by name, had played with such a panther as fledglings, and since Drizzt Do'Urden, the drow renegade they had played beside almost thirty years before, had just passed through Bling-denstone, they felt the panther's appearance could not be coincidence.
"Guenhwyvar!" Seldig cried, and the panther roared in reply.
The name, so perfectly spoken, struck Catti-brie profoundly and made those three deep gnomes about her hesitate as well.
Pumkato, who had summoned the elemental in the first place, called for the monster to hold steady, and Seldig quickly used his pickaxe to scale partway up the behemoth. "Guenhwyvar?" he asked, just a few feet from the panther's face. The trapped caf s ears came up, and it put a plaintive look on the somewhat familiar gnome.
"Who is that?" Pumkato demanded, pointing to Catti-brie.
Although she did not understand any of the svirfneblin's words, Catti-brie realized that she would never find a better opportunity. She dropped her sword to the stone, reached up with her free hand and pulled off the magical mask, her features immediately reverting to those of a young human woman. The three deep gnomes near her cried out and fell back, regarding her with less-than-complimentary sour expressions, as though her new appearance was quite ugly by their standards.
Pumkato mustered the courage to shuffle over to her, and he stood right in front of her.
He had known one name, Catti-brie realized, and she hoped that he would recognize another. She pointed to herself, then held her arms out wide and pulled them in as if hugging someone. "Drizzt Do'Urden?" she asked.
Pumkato's gray eyes widened, then he nodded, as though he should not have been surprised. Hiding his disgust at the human's appearance, the gnome extended one hand and helped Catti-brie to her feet.
Catti-brie moved slowly, obviously, as she took out the figurine and dismissed Guenhwyvar. Pumkato, likewise, sent his elemental back into the stone.
"Kolsen'shea orbb," Jarlaxle whispered, an arcane phrase rarely uttered in Menzoberranzan that roughly translated to "pull the legs off a spider."
The seemingly plain wall before the mercenary reacted to the passwords. It shifted and twisted into a spiderweb, then rotated outward, its strands tucked together, to leave a hole for the mercenary and his human escort to climb through.
Even Jarlaxle, usually one step ahead of other drow, was somewhat surprised—pleasantly surprised—to find Triel Baenre waiting for him in the small office beyond, the private chambers of Gromph Baenre at Sorcere, the school of magic in the drow Academy. Jarlaxle had hoped that Gromph would be about, to witness the return, but Triel was an even better witness.
Entreri came in behind the mercenary and wisely stayed behind at the sight of volatile Triel. The assassin eyed the intriguing room, perpetually bathed in soft-glowing bluish light, as was most of the wizards' tower. Parchments lay everywhere, on the desk, on the three chairs, and on the floor. The walls were lined with shelves that held dozens of large, capped bottles and smaller, hourglass-shaped containers, their tops off and with sealed packets lying next to them. A hundred other curious items, too strange for the surface dweller to even guess at what they might do, lay amid the jumble.