It was the first time Catti-brie had ever seen the stoic dwarf truly cry. Bruenor didn’t care and couldn’t have done a thing to prevent the scene anyway. “Me prayers, too,” he whispered to his beloved daughter, the human child he had taken in as his own more than a decade and a half before.
“If we’d have known,” Catti-brie began, but Bruenor put a gentle finger to her lips to silence her. It was not important; Bruenor knew that Catti-brie and the others would never have left him if they had even suspected that he might be alive.
“Suren I know not why I lived,” the dwarf replied. “None o’ the fire found me skin.” He shuddered at the memories of his weeks alone in the mines of Mithril Hall. “No more talk o’ the place,” he begged. “Behind me it is. Behind me to stay!”
Catti-brie, knowing of the approach of armies to reclaim the dwarven homeland, started to shake her head, but Bruenor didn’t catch the motion.
“Me friends?” he asked the young woman. “Drow eyes I saw as I fell.”
“Drizzt lives,” Catti-brie answered, “as does the assassin that chased Regis. He came up to the ledge just as ye fell and carried the little one away.”
“Rumblebelly?” Bruenor gasped.
“Aye, and the drow’s cat as well.”
“Not dead…”
“Nay, not to me guess,” Catti-brie was quick to respond. “Not yet. Drizzt and Wulfgar have chased the fiend to the south, knowing his goal to be Calimport.”
“A long run,” Bruenor muttered. He looked to Catti-brie, confused. “But I’d have thought ye’d be with them.”
“I have me own course,” Catti-brie replied, her face suddenly stern. “A debt for repaying.”
Bruenor understood at once. “Mithril Hall?” he choked out. “Ye figured to return, avengin’ meself?”
Catti-brie nodded, unblinking.
“Ye’re bats, girl!” Bruenor said. “And the drow would let ye go alone?”
“Alone?” Catti-brie echoed. It was time for the rightful king to know. “Nay, nor would I so foolishly end me life. A hundred kin make their way from the north and west,” she explained. “And a fair number of Wulfgar’s folk beside ‘em.”
“Not enough,” Bruenor replied. “An army of duergar scum holds the halls.”
“And eight-thousand more from Citadel Adbar to the north and east,” Catti-brie continued grimly, not slowing a beat. “King Harbromme of the dwarves of Adbar says he’ll see the halls free again! Even the Harpells have promised their aid.”
Bruenor drew a mental image of the approaching armies—wizards, barbarians, and a rolling wall of dwarves—and with Catti-brie at their lead. A thin smile cut the frown from his face. He looked upon his daughter with even more than the considerable respect he had always shown her, his eyes wet with tears once more.
“They wouldn’t beat me,” Catti-brie growled. “I meant to see yer face carved in the Hall of Kings, and meant to put yer name in its proper place o’ glory!”
Bruenor grabbed her close and squeezed with all his strength. Of all the mantles and laurels he had found in the years gone by, or might find in the years ahead, none fit as well or blessed him as much as “Father.”
Bruenor stood solemnly on the southern slope of Harpell Hill that evening, watching the last colors fade out of the western sky and the emptiness of the rolling plain to the south. His thoughts were on his friends, particularly Regis—Rumblebelly—the bothersome halfling that had undeniably found a soft corner in the dwarf’s stone heart.
Drizzt would be okay—Drizzt was always okay—and with mighty Wulfgar walking beside him, it would take an army to bring them down.
But Regis.
Bruenor never had doubted that the halfling’s carefree manner of living, stepping on toes with a half-apologetic and half-amused shrug, would eventually get him in mud too deep for his little legs to carry him through. Rumblebelly had been a fool to steal the guildmaster’s ruby pendant.
But “just deserts” did nothing to dispel the dwarf’s pity at his halfling friend’s dilemma, nor Bruenor’s anger at his own inability to help. By his station, his place was here, and he would lead the gathering armies to victory and glory, crushing the duergar and bringing a level of prosperity back to Mithril Hall. His new kingdom would be the envy of the North, with crafted items that rivaled the works of the ancient days flowing out into the trade routes all across the Realms.
It had been his dream, the goal of his life since that terrible day nearly two centuries before, when Clan Battlehammer had been nearly wiped out and those few who had survived, mostly children, had been chased out of their homeland to the meager mines of Icewind Dale.
Bruenor’s lifelong dream was to return, but how hollow it seemed to him now, with his friends caught in a desperate chase across the southland.
The last light left the sky, and the stars blinked to life. Nighttime, Bruenor thought with a bit of comfort.
The time of the drow.
The first hints of his smile dissipated, though, as soon as they began, as Bruenor suddenly came to view the deepening gloom in a different perspective. “Nighttime,” he whispered aloud.
The time of the assassin.
8. A Plain Brown Wrapper
The simple wooden structure at the end of Rogues Circle seemed understated even for the decrepit side of the sprawling southern city of Calimport. The building had few windows, all boarded or barred, and not a terrace or balcony to speak of. Similarly, no lettering identified the building, not even a number on the door to place it. But everyone in the city knew the house and marked it well, for beyond either of its iron-bound doors, the scene changed—dramatically. Where the outside showed only the weathered brown of old wood, the inside displayed a myriad of bright colors and tapestries, thickly woven carpets, and statues of solid gold. This was the thieves’ guild, rivaling the palace of Calimshan’s ruler himself in riches and decor.
It rose three floors from the street level, with two more levels hidden below. The highest level was the finest, with five rooms—an octagonal central hall and four antechambers off it—all designed for the comfort and convenience of one man: Pasha Pook. He was the guildmaster, the architect of an intricate thieving network. And he made certain that he was the first to enjoy the spoils of his guild’s handiwork.
Pook paced the highest level’s central hall, his audience chamber, stopping every circuit to stroke the shining coat of the leopard that lay beside his great chair. An uncharacteristic anxiety was etched upon the guildmaster’s round face, and he twiddled his fingers nervously when he was not petting his exotic pet.
His clothes were of the finest silk, but other than the brooch that fastened his wrappings, he wore none of the abundant jewelry customary among others of his station—though his teeth did gleam of solid gold. In truth, Pook seemed a half-sized version of one of the four hill giant eunuchs that lined the hall, an inconspicuous appearance for a silver-tongued guildmaster who had brought sultans to their knees and whose name sent the sturdiest of the ruffian street dwellers scurrying for dark holes.
Pook nearly jumped when a loud knock resounded off the room’s main door, the one to the lower levels. He hesitated for a long moment, assuring himself that he would make the other man squirm for waiting—though he really needed the time to compose himself. Then he absently motioned to one of the eunuchs and moved to the overstuffed throne on the raised platform opposite the door and dropped a hand again to his pampered cat.
A lanky fighter entered, his thin rapier dancing to the swagger of his stride. He wore a black cape that floated behind him and was bunched at his neck. His thick brown hair curled into and around it. His clothes were dark and plain but crisscrossed by straps and belts, each with a pouch or sheathed dagger or some other unusual weapon hanging from it. His high leather boots, worn beyond any creases, made no sound other than the timed clump of his agile stride.