He knew the smell of wererats.
Entreri had his feet firmly planted, ready for Drizzt as he came up through the open grate. When the drow’s form began to exit onto the street, the assassin cut down viciously with his saber.
Drizzt, running up the iron rungs in perfect balance, had his hands free, however. Expecting such a move, he had crossed his scimitars up over his head as he came through.
He caught Entreri’s saber in the wedge and pushed it harmlessly aside.
Then they were faced off on the open street.
The first hints of dawn cracked over the eastern horizon, the temperature had already begun to soar, and the lazy city awakened around them.
Entreri came in with a rush, and Drizzt fought him back with wicked counters and sheer strength. The drow did not blink, his features locked in a determined grimace. Methodically he moved at the assassin, both scimitars cutting with even, solid strokes.
His left arm useless and his left eye seeing no more than a blur, Entreri knew that he could not hope to win. Drizzt saw it, too, and he picked up the tempo, slapping again and again at the slowing saber in an effort to further weary Entreri’s only defense.
But as Drizzt pressed into the battle, his magical mask once again loosened and dropped from his face.
Entreri smirked, knowing that he had once again dodged certain death. He saw his out.
“Caught in a lie?” he whispered wickedly.
Drizzt understood.
“A drow!” Entreri shrieked to the multitude of people he knew to be watching the battle from nearby shadows. “From the Forest of Mir! A scout, a prelude to an army! A drow!”
Curiosity now pulled a throng from their concealments. The battle had been interesting enough before, but now the street people had to come closer to verify Entreri’s claims. Gradually a circle began to form around the combatants, and Drizzt and Entreri heard the ring of swords coming free of scabbards.
“Good-bye, Drizzt Do’Urden,” Entreri whispered under the growing tumult and the cries of “Drow!” springing up throughout the area. Drizzt could not deny the effectiveness of the assassin’s ploy. He glanced around nervously, expecting an attack from behind at any moment.
Entreri had the distraction he needed. As Drizzt looked to the side again, he broke away and stumbled off through the crowd, shouting, “Kill the drow! Kill him!”
Drizzt swung around, blades ready, as the anxious mob cautiously moved in. Catti-brie and Bruenor came up onto the street then and saw at once what had happened, and what was about to happen. Bruenor rushed to Drizzt’s side and Catti-brie notched an arrow.
“Back away!” the dwarf grumbled. “Suren there be no evil here, except for the one ye fools just let get away!”
One man approached boldly, his spear leading the way.
A silver explosion caught the weapon’s shaft, severing its tip. Horrified, the man dropped the broken spear and looked to the side, to where Catti-brie had already notched another arrow.
“Get away,” she growled at him. “Leave the elf in peace, or me next shot won’t be lookin’ for yer weapon!”
The man backed away, and the crowd seemed to lose its heart for the fight as quickly as it had found it. None of them ever really wanted to tangle with a drow elf anyway, and they were more than happy now to believe the dwarf’s words, that this one wasn’t evil.
Then a commotion down the lane turned all heads. Two of the guards posing as bums outside the thieves’ guild pulled open the door—to the sound of fighting—and charged inside, slamming the door behind them.
“Wulfgar!” shouted Bruenor, roaring down the road. Catti-brie started to follow but turned back to consider Drizzt.
The drow stood as if torn, looking one way, to the guild, and the other, to where the assassin had run. He had Entreri beaten; the injured man could not possibly stand up against him.
How could he just let Entreri go?
“Yer friends need ye,” Catti-brie reminded him. “If not for Regis, then for Wulfgar.”
Drizzt shook his head in self-reproach. How could he even have considered abandoning his friends at that critical moment? He rushed past Catti-brie, chasing Bruenor down the road.
Above Rogues Circle, the dawn’s light had already found Pasha Pook’s lavish chambers. LaValle moved cautiously toward the curtain at the side of his room and pushed it aside. Even he, a practiced wizard, would not dare to approach the device of unspeakable evil before the sun had risen, the Taros Hoop, his most powerful—and frightening—device.
He grasped its iron frame and slid it out of the tiny closet. On its stand and rollers, it was taller than he, with the worked hoop, large enough for a man to walk through, fully a foot off the floor. Pook had remarked that it was similar to the hoop the trainer of his great cats had used.
But any lion jumping through the Taros Hoop would hardly land safely on the other side.
LaValle turned the hoop to the side and faced it fully, examining the symmetrical spider web that filled its interior. So fragile the webbing appeared, but LaValle knew the strength in its strands, a magical power that transcended the very planes of existence.
LaValle slipped the instrument’s trigger, a thin scepter capped with an enormous black pearl, into his belt and wheeled the Taros Hoop out into the central room of the level. He wished that he had the time to test his plan, for he certainly didn’t want to disappoint his master again, but the sun was nearly full in the eastern sky and Pook would not be pleased with any delay.
Still in his nightshirt, Pook dragged himself out into the central chamber at LaValle’s call. The guildmaster’s eyes lit up at the sight of the Taros Hoop, which he, not a wizard and not understanding the dangers involved with such an item, thought a simply wonderful toy.
LaValle, holding the scepter in one hand and the onyx figurine of Guenhwyvar in the other, stood before the device. “Hold this,” he said to Pook, tossing him the statuette. “We can get the cat later; I’ll not need the beast for the task at hand.”
Pook absently dropped the statuette into a pocket.
“I have scoured the planes of existence,” the wizard explained. “I knew the cat to be of the Astral Plane, but I wasn’t certain that the halfling would remain there—if he could find his way out. And, of course, the Astral Plane is very extensive.”
“Enough!” ordered Pook. “Be on with it! What have you to show me?”
“Only this,” LaValle replied, waving the scepter in front of the Taros Hoop. The webbing tingled with power and lit up in tiny flashes of lightning. Gradually the light became more constant, filling in the area between strands, and the image of the webbing disappeared into the background of cloudy blue.
LaValle spoke a command word, and the hoop focused in on a bright, well-lit grayness, a scene in the Astral Plane. There sat Regis, leaning comfortably against the limned image of a tree, a starlight sketch of an oak, with his hands tucked behind his head and his feet crossed out in front of him.
Pook shook the grogginess from his head. “Get him,” he coughed. “How can we get him?”
Before LaValle could answer, the door burst open and Rassiter stumbled into the room. “Fighting, Pook,” he gasped, out of breath, “in the lower levels. A giant barbarian.”
“You promised me that you would handle it,” Pook growled at him.
“The assassin’s friends—” Rassiter began, but Pook had no time for explanations. Not now.
“Shut the door,” he said to Rassiter.
Rassiter quieted and did as he was told. Pook was going to be angry enough with him when he learned of the disaster in the sewers—no need to press the point.