Jarlaxle considered the question for a moment, then nodded.
“Your sister?”
He nodded again, and wasn’t sure whether to be angry or concerned.
“Which means that the archmage of the city is your brother.”
“You speak of centuries long past,” Jarlaxle reiterated.
“Indeed,” Parise admitted. And please do forgive my forwardness-perhaps I am treading into places uninvited.”
Jarlaxle again offered his noncommittal shrug. “Is there a point to your banter?” he asked. “Beyond our blooming friendship, I mean.”
Parise managed a smile at that, but it did not last, for he assumed a more serious expression and looked the drow directly in the eye. “You serve Lady Lolth?”
Jarlaxle didn’t answer, other than to chuckle.
“Very well, then,” Parise redirected, obviously realizing that he was stepping into unwanted territory. “You are knowledgeable in the desires of the Spider Queen, at least as would be expressed by your sister?”
“I haven’t seen my sister in years, and that is not long enough, I fear,” Jarlaxle replied coldly. “You overestimate my relationship with the First House of Menzoberranzan-greatly.”
“Ah, but do I overestimate your ability to garner information from Menzoberranzan?” Parise asked, and Jarlaxle suddenly became more intrigued than anything else.
“Our desire to trade through the channels you have offered is genuine,” Parise went on. “To our mutual benefit. But I also barter in knowledge, and in that regard, is there a better trading partner than Jarlaxle Bae-Jarlaxle of Bregan D’aerthe?” he asked, the slip of his tongue clearly intentional.
“Probably not,” the drow dryly replied.
“I admit to being fascinated by the possibilities,” Parise said. “You are surely no professed follower of Lady Lolth, and yet, you are tolerated by her highest-ranking mortal. Is that due to familial bonds?”
“Quenthel? Her House benefits from Bregan D’aerthe. You need look no further for the solution to your riddle than that simple pragmatism.”
“And Lolth would not punish her for … well, for not punishing you?”
“Lolth’s city benefits from Bregan D’aerthe, whatever the love between us.”
“So the drow are pragmatic above all else?”
“Every society that has stood and will stand is pragmatic above all else.”
Parise nodded. “Then explain Drizzt Do’Urden.”
It took everything Jarlaxle could muster for him to hide his surprise at the mention of Drizzt. When he thought about it, though, it did make sense that the Netherese would have taken notice-Drizzt had played a major role in the events of Neverwinter, after all, and more than a few Netherese had died there, including a budding warlord of great repute.
He feared for a moment that Parise was going to ask him to help pay back the troublesome rogue, and in that event, Jarlaxle expected that he would be plotting the demise of Parise in short order, and finding some reason to coerce Kimmuriel into helping him facilitate that very murder.
“Drizzt Do’Urden?”
“Do not even pretend that you are ignorant of that one!” Parise huffed.
“I know him well.”
“Why is he allowed to live?”
“Because he kills anyone who tries to kill him, I expect.”
“No,” Parise said, leaning forward now eagerly. “It is more than that.”
“Do tell, as you seem to know more about it than I do.”
“Lady Lolth has not demanded his death,” said Parise.
Jarlaxle shrugged yet again.
“Why?” Parise pressed.
“Why?” Jarlaxle echoed. “Does he wage war upon her minions? You have never journeyed to Menzoberranzan, that much is obvious,” he added with a snort. “There is more than enough intrigue there, and more than enough enemies, to keep Lolth’s agents busily murdering drow without traveling to the surface to hunt for Drizzt Do’Urden.”
“It is more than that!” Parise pressed again.
“Then do tell,” Jarlaxle replied. He handed his empty glass across to the Netherese lord, and added, “As you refill my glass. Such fireside tales always sound better when thrown against a muddled mind.”
Parise took the glass and moved for the bottle, laughing as he replied, “Jarlaxle’s mind is never muddled.”
The drow merely shrugged yet again.
“Where is this going?” Jarlaxle asked. “Have you a vendetta against Drizzt Do’Urden, and fear to invoke the wrath of House Baenre?”
“Surely not!” his host replied emphatically-and to his surprise, Jarlaxle found that he believed the man.
“But I’m truly intrigued by this interesting Drizzt creature, and his relationship with the drow goddess.”
Jarlaxle’s blank expression aptly reflected the confusion in his mind at that most curious comment.
“Do you think it possible that she favors him, secretly?” Parise asked. “She feeds on chaos, after all, and he seems to create it-or surely he once did in the city of Menzoberranzan.”
Jarlaxle drained his glass in a single swallow and considered the words, and the potential implications of his forthcoming answer.
“I have heard this suggestion before, many times,” he said.
“He is given deference by the priestesses,” Parise suggested.
Jarlaxle offered another shrug. “In not hunting him down, in not demanding such of me and my band, then perhaps there is merit in that notion. And yes, that of course means that the goddess hasn’t instructed my sister and her peers to find him and properly punish him.”
He found himself nodding as he spoke, then looked Parise directly in the eye and finished, “Your thesis is quite likely correct. I have often thought it so. Drizzt would be an unwitting instrument of Lolth, to be sure, but then again, would that not be her typically cryptic way?”
The Netherese lord seemed quite pleased by that answer, and he couldn’t hide the fact behind his lifted glass of brandy.
From Jarlaxle’s perspective, the more important matter was whether or not such an outlandish claim would protect Drizzt from any revenge the Netherese might be planning.
Chapter 18
The shadows served as an ally, but none of the six companions felt particularly comforted by that reality. They crouched in the colorless brush in a copse of trees, looking up at a formidable structure: a grand house with a soaring tower, surrounded by an enormous stone wall, twenty feet or more in height. The castle of Lord Draygo Quick.
Drizzt’s heart sank as the time slipped past. When he had learned of Guenhwyvar’s imprisonment, his course seemed clear and direct. She was there, so there he must go, and let no obstacle prevent him from bringing her to freedom once more. But now that choice had met with a harsh reality, for what were they six to do against the formidability of this castle before them? Were they to storm the place and leave a wake of death and destruction on their way to the panther?
That seemed a foolish choice, for Effron had repeatedly reminded them that Draygo Quick could likely defeat all of them singlehandedly. And within Lord Draygo’s tower, the young tiefling had also warned, loomed many lesser warlocks training under the great lord, and a menagerie of dangerous pets Draygo could unleash upon them.
“Now what?” Artemis Entreri asked after so many uneasy moments had slipped past. Their trials through the swamp had been considerable, but compared to the obstacle standing before them, those seemed minor indeed. Pointedly, Entreri had asked the question mostly to Effron, and his tone showed that he was not pleased with the young warlock.
“I was asked to take you to Guenhwyvar, and so I have,” Effron replied.
“Then point her out,” the assassin replied coolly.
Effron lifted his hand toward the tower, angling it to point about two-thirds of the way up the seventy-foot structure.
“Is there a side door? A kitchen or servants’ entrance, perhaps, or even a waste chute?” Drizzt asked, and he desperately wanted to keep the conversation on point at that time. He hadn’t come this far to turn back, whatever the challenge before them, and they had known-though surely the formidability of Draygo Quick’s castle had put an exclamation point to the severity of the task-that retrieving Guenhwyvar would be no easy task.