The cage holding Guenhwyvar was not the only such implement Draygo Quick possessed, though surely it was the most elaborate. Guenhwyvar’s cage, after all, not only had to shrink and hold the cat, but had to prevent her from returning to her Astral home.
These other jails were not nearly as elaborate, and indeed, appeared as no more than simple jars behind the closed doors of another cabinet.
Effron opened those doors and waved his hand to part the perpetual magical mist that kept the contents of the cabinet intact and in a state of stasis. Beyond the mist, Effron glanced upon Draygo Quick’s menagerie, and it was not one that would make a little girl dreaming of puppies and kittens jealous. More likely, such a collection would make any child of any race flee in terror, or tumble to the ground, paralyzed in the deepest pits of fear.
For none of the creatures in those many jars were alive. True to Draygo Quick’s necromantic leanings, these were dead things, or rather, undead things, in various stages of decay, and with a couple of magical constructs, golems, as well. Effron removed the newest jar and marveled at the tiny umber hulk within. Draygo Quick had taken this corpse from the streets of Neverwinter only recently.
Just a few moments removed from the cabinet, the tiny umber hulk stirred and unsteadily stood up, seeming to regard Effron. It was tiny only because of the jar, and if he dumped the zombie out, it would quickly regain its twelve-foot stature.
Yes, he might need such a shock trooper against these formidable enemies. He slid the jar into his pouch.
He hadn’t come here for that one, however, but for another, for a creature he had created on Draygo Quick’s command, using an ancient Manual of Golems his master had provided. This had been one of Effron’s greatest tests, and greatest achievements. It, perhaps more than anything else-except his heritage-had gained him great stature within the ranks of Lord Draygo’s underlings.
He removed the jar from the cabinet. Inside was a snake skeleton no longer than Effron’s middle finger. It stirred and coiled, then lifted up and began to sway, a dance that had Effron forgetting himself for a moment even though the golem was within a jar and reduced to a fraction of its actual length, which was more than twice the height of a tall human man.
Effron looked more closely at it, marveling at his long-ago handiwork. The golem, a necrophidius, had a head fashioned from a human skull, but with a serpent’s fangs.
“My death worm,” Effron whispered, using the more common name for such a creation. “Are you ready to hunt?”
Afafrenfere watched curiously as his sidekick danced and melodically chanted, waving a censer that filtered an aromatic smoke throughout their room at Stonecutter’s Solace. Ambergris had bought the room rather than renting it, though at a bargain price, given the good feelings toward the companions after their victory against the sea devils.
“What are you doing?” the monk asked, but the dwarf just kept up her dance and chant and didn’t answer.
Afafrenfere crossed his arms over his chest and sighed heavily.
A long while later, the dwarf finally stopped. She looked around and smiled, clearly pleased with herself.
“Well?” the monk prompted.
Ambergris winked at him. “Me sanctuary now,” she answered. “The place I’m callin’ home.”
“You intend to reside here?”
“We’re staying through the winter,” the dwarf answered with apparent confidence.
“And then?”
Ambergris shrugged as if it didn’t matter.
“Seems a foolish exercise, then,” Afafrenfere remarked, and he started out of the room for their breakfast.
Ambergris merely smiled and did not bother to explain. What she knew that Afafrenfere did not was the significance of the word “sanctuary.” When she had set out to the Shadowfell as a spy for Citadel Adbar, Ambergris had been given a special brooch, one containing a single enchantment, a dweomer that would recall her to the designated sanctuary in the blink of an eye.
She followed Afafrenfere out of the room-almost, for she stopped at the door and turned back to regard the remnants of the incense filtering around the corners of the sanctuary. Only then did the significance of this action come clear to her. Her previous sanctuary was in Citadel Adbar, in the home of her birth, and never before had she given a thought to changing the location.
But now it had seemed a perfectly obvious choice.
Ambergris wore a sincere smile. She had found a new sanctuary because she had found a new home, and had found a new home, so unexpectedly, because she had found, in effect, a new family.
She had done it with hardly a thought, and simply in an attempt to be pragmatic about her current situation. But now, looking back at the room, the dwarf understood well the deeper implications, the subconscious hopes and emotions that had taken her to this dramatic action. She closed the door and followed Afafrenfere to the common room with a decided spring in her step.
The days became a month and the winter snows began to fall, and still the companions remained in Port Llast. They went out from the defensive wall often to seek out sahuagin, and each encounter proved quicker than the previous as the sea devils learned that the sooner they fled from this powerful band, the fewer losses they would suffer.
The more important work, though, went on behind Port Llast’s impromptu wall. For what Drizzt and his four companions had brought to the beleaguered villagers most of all was a sense of hope, and in that new light, Dorwyllan and the people of the town regrouped and rearranged their forces into efficient attack patrols. Drizzt and the others trained them, and often one or more of the companions accompanied the townsfolk on their ventures to the more dangerous reaches.
They took great care in those endeavors; never was a patrol beyond the wall without a line of support all the way back to the settlement.
For too long, the night in Port Llast had belonged to the sea devils, but all who knew the dark elves understood differently. In Port Llast now, the night belonged to the drow, and more importantly, to his willing followers.
“Winning the battles is just the first step,” Drizzt explained to the townsfolk at one gathering of all three hundred. “Winning and holding ground will be more difficult.”
“Beyond the wall, near impossible,” one voice came back at him.
“Then move the wall,” Artemis Entreri offered.
Drizzt looked the assassin over carefully. Little had changed in their relationship in the passing tendays. Entreri remained dour and cynical and ready to criticize anything and everything Drizzt tried to do here. Despite that outward hard armor, though, the man’s actions spoke louder. He hadn’t left Port Llast for a more accommodating city, though Neverwinter was an easy ride away on his nightmare mount, and he went out to fight without hesitation, if not without complaint. Perhaps Artemis Entreri was actually coming to enjoy this new role he had found.
But he was also constantly nagging Drizzt about retrieving his dagger, and Entreri held that practical gain up as the sole reason for his compliance. Whether Drizzt believed that or not, whether there was some other reason for Entreri’s assistance that went beyond any tangible gain, seemed irrelevant, in fact, since the road to Luskan and a man named Beniago had been promised, and in the near future.
By the second month, the second wall was well under construction. They started along the cliffs in the north, building out almost halfway from the current wall to the sea. At first the task perplexed them: How might they build a wall and leave it to the sea devils when they retreated back behind the first each night?
Ambergris provided the answer, by designing a portable wall section that could be angled out from the first wall to the end of the unfinished second wall each night. And so, as the stonecutters and masons worked on the second wall, another crew created access doors along the corresponding sections of the first wall behind it, and a third crew finished the box by securing the portable wall Ambergris had designed from the first to the new end of the second wall.