“Ye’re looking for the merchant, ye remember?” Catti-brie reminded him.
“I am looking!” Wulfgar assured her.
“Then be lookin’ for the one lined in purple!” Catti-brie shot back.
Wulfgar, his eyes freed with the expectation of another smack, noticed the single horn of a helmet poking out of the water at his side. Frantically he plunged his hand under, catching Bruenor by the scruff of the neck and hoisting him out of the bath. The not-too-happy dwarf came up with his arms crossed over his chest and shaking his head in disbelief once again.
Drizzt got out the back door of the bathhouse and found himself in an empty alley, the only unpopulated stretch he had seen since entering Memnon. Seeking a better vantage, the drow scaled the side of the bathhouse and jogged along the roof.
Sali Dalib slowed his pace, thinking he had slipped the pursuit. The drow’s purple fire died away, further adding to the merchant’s sense of security. He wound his way through the back-alley maze. Not even the usual drunks leaned against the walls to inform his pursuers. He moved a hundred twisting yards, then two, and finally down an alley that he knew would turn onto the largest marketplace in Memnon, where anyone could become invisible in the blink of an eye.
As Sali Dalib approached the end of the alley, however, an elven form dropped in front of him and two scimitars flashed out of their sheaths, crossing before the stunned merchant, coming to rest on his collarbones, then drawing lines on either side of his neck.
When the four friends returned to the merchant’s tent with their prisoner, they found, to their relief, the little goblin lying where Drizzt had bopped him. Bruenor none too gently pulled the unfortunate creature up behind Sali Dalib and tied the two back to back. Wulfgar moved to help and wound up hooking a loop of the rope over Bruenor’s forearm. The dwarf wiggled free and pushed the barbarian away.
“Should’ve stayed in Mithril Hall,” Bruenor grumbled. “Safer with the gray ones than beside yerself and the girl!”
Wulfgar and Catti-brie looked to Drizzt for support, but the drow just smiled and moved to the side of the tent.
“Ha ha ha ha ha,” Sali Dalib giggled nervously. “No problem here. We deal? Many riches, I have. What you need—”
“Shut yer mouth!” Bruenor snapped at him. The dwarf winked at Drizzt, indicating that he meant to play the bad guy role in the encounter.
“I don’t be lookin’ for riches from one what’s tricked me,” Bruenor growled. “Me heart’s for revenge!” He looked around at his friends. “Ye all saw his face when he thought me dead. Suren was him that put the riding bandits on us.”
“Sali Dalib never—” the merchant stammered.
“I said, ‘shut yer mouth!’“ Bruenor shouted in his face, cowing him. The dwarf brought his axe up and ready on his shoulder.
The merchant looked to Drizzt, confused, for the drow had replaced the mask and now appeared as a surface elf once again. Sali Dalib guessed the truth of Drizzt’s identity, figuring the black skin to be more fitting on the deadly elf, and he did not even think of begging for mercy from Drizzt.
“Wait on it, then,” Catti-brie said suddenly, grabbing the handle of Bruenor’s weapon. “May that there be a way for this dog to save his neck.”
“Bah! What would we want o’ him?” Bruenor shot back, winking at Catti-brie for playing her part to perfection.
“He’ll get us to Calimport,” Catti-brie replied. She cast a steely gaze at Sali Dalib, warning him that her mercy was not easily gotten. “Suren this time he’ll take us down the true bestest road.”
“Yes, yes, ha ha ha ha ha,” Sali Dalib blurted. “Sali Dalib show you de way!”
“Show?” balked Wulfgar, not to be left out. “You will lead us all the way to Calimport.”
“Very long way,” grumbled the merchant. “Five days or more. Sali Dalib cannot—”
Bruenor raised his axe.
“Yes, yes, of course,” the merchant erupted. “Sali Dalib take you there. Take you right to de gate…through de gate,” he corrected quickly. “Sali Dalib even get de water. We must catch de caravan.”
“No caravan,” Drizzt interrupted, surprising even his friends. “We will travel alone.”
“Dangerous,” Sali Dalib replied. “Very, very. De Calim Desert be very full of monsters. Dragons and bandits.”
“No caravan,” Drizzt said again in a tone that none of them dared question. “Untie them, and let them get things ready.”
Bruenor nodded, then put his face barely an inch from Sali Dalib’s. “And I mean to be watchin’ them meself,” he said to Drizzt, though he sent the message more pointedly to Sali Dalib and the little goblin. “One trick and I’ll cut ‘em in half!” Less than an hour later, five camels moved out of southern Memnon and into the Calim Desert with ceramic water jugs clunking on their sides. Drizzt and Bruenor led the way, following the signposts of the Trade Way. The drow wore his mask, but kept the cowl of his cloak as low as he could, for the sizzling sunlight on the white sands burned at his eyes, which had once been accustomed to the absolute blackness of the underworld.
Sali Dalib, his assistant sitting on the camel in front of him, came in the middle, with Wulfgar and Catti-brie bringing up the rear. Catti-brie kept Taulmaril across her lap, a silver arrow notched as a continual reminder to the sneaky merchant.
The day grew hotter than anything the friends had ever experienced, except for Drizzt, who had lived in the very bowels of the world. Not a cloud hindered the sun’s brutal rays, and not a wisp of a breeze came to offer any relief. Sali Dalib, more used to the heat, knew the lack of wind to be a blessing, for wind in the desert meant blowing and blinding sand, the most dangerous killer of the Calim.
The night was better, with the temperature dropping comfortably and a full moon turning the endless line of dunes into a silvery dreamscape, like the rolling waves of the ocean. The friends set a camp for a few hours, taking turns watching over their reluctant guides.
Catti-brie awoke sometime after midnight. She sat and stretched, figuring it to be her turn on watch. She saw Drizzt, standing on the edge of the firelight, staring into the starry heavens.
Hadn’t Drizzt taken the first watch? she wondered.
Catti-brie studied the moon’s position to make certain of the hour. There could be no doubt; the night grew long.
“Trouble?” she asked softly, going to Drizzt’s side. A loud snore from Bruenor answered the question for Drizzt.
“Might I spell ye, then?” she asked. “Even a drow elf needs to sleep.”
“I can find my rest under the cowl of my cloak,” Drizzt replied, turning to meet her concerned gaze with his lavender eyes, “when the sun is high.”
“Might I join ye, then?” Catti-brie asked. “Suren a wondrous night.”
Drizzt smiled and turned his gaze back to the heavens, to the allure of the evening sky with a mystical longing in his heart as profound as any surface elf had ever experienced.
Catti-brie slipped her slender fingers around his and stood quietly by his side, not wanting to disturb his enchantment further, sharing more than mere words with her dearest of friends.
The heat was worse the next day, and even worse the following, but the camels plodded on effortlessly, and the four friends, who had come through so many hardships, accepted the brutal trek as just one more obstacle on the journey they had to complete.
They saw no other signs of life and considered that a blessing, for anything living in that desolate region could only be hostile. The heat was enemy enough, and they felt as if their skin would simply shrivel and crack away.
Whenever one of them felt like quitting, like the relentless sun and burning sand and heat were simply too much to bear, he or she just thought of Regis.
What terrible tortures was the halfling now enduring at the hands of his former master?