Surely I feel a physical attraction to Catti-brie as well. She is possessed of a combination of innocence and a playful wickedness. For all her sympathy and empathy and compassion, there is an edge to Catti-brie that makes potential enemies tremble in fear and potential lovers tremble in anticipation. I believe that she feels similarly toward me, and yet we both understand the dangers of this uncharted territory, dangers more frightening than any physical enemy we have ever known. I am drow, and young, and with the dawn and twilight of several centuries ahead of me. She is human and, though young, with merely decades of life ahead of her. Of course, Catti-brie's life is complicated enough merely having a drow elf as a traveling companion and friend. What troubles might she find if she and I were more than that? And what might the world think of our children, if ever that path we walked? Would any society in all the world accept them?
I know how I feel when I look upon her, though, and believe that I understand her feelings as well. On that level, it seems such an obvious thing, and yet, alas, it becomes so very complicated.
— Drizzt Do'Urden
Chapter 13 SECRET WEAPON
You have found the rogue?" Jarlaxle asked Rai'gy Bondalek. Kimmuriel Oblodra stood beside the mercenary leader, the psionicist appearing unarmed and unarmored, seeming perfectly defenseless to one who did not understand the powers of his mind.
"He is with a dwarf, a woman, and a halfling," Rai'gy answered. "And sometimes they are joined by a great black cat."
"Guenhwyvar," Jarlaxle explained. "Once the property of Masoj Hun'ette. A powerful magical item indeed."
"But not the greatest magic that they carry," Rai'gy informed. "There is another, stored in a pouch on the rogue's belt, that radiates magic stronger than all their other magics combined. Even through the distance of my scrying it beckoned to me, almost as if it were asking me to retrieve it from its present unworthy owner."
"What could it be?" the always opportunistic mercenary asked.
Rai'gy shook his head, his shock of white hair flying
from side to side. "Like no dweomer I have seen before," he admitted.
"Is that not the way of magic?" Kimmuriel Oblodra put in with obvious distaste. "Unknown and uncontrollable."
Rai'gy shot the psionicist an angry glare, but Jarlaxle, more than willing to utilize both magic and psionics, merely smiled. "Learn more about it and about them," he instructed the wizard-priest. "If it beckons to us, then perhaps we would be wise to heed its call. How far are they, and how fast can we get to them?"
"Very," Rai'gy answered. "And very. They had begun an overland route but were accosted by giantkind and goblinkin at every bend in the path."
"Perhaps the magical item is not particular about who it calls for a new owner," Kimmuriel remarked with obvious sarcasm.
"They turned about and took ship," Rai'gy went on, ignoring the comment. "Out of the great northern city of Waterdeep, I believe, far, far up the Sword Coast."
"But sailing south?" Jarlaxle asked hopefully.
"I believe," Rai'gy answered. "It does not matter. There are magics, of course, and mind powers," he added, nodding deferentially to Kimmuriel, "that can get us to them as easily as if they were standing in the next room."
"Back to your searching, then," Jarlaxle said.
"But are we not to visit a guild this very night?" Rai'gy asked.
"You will not be needed," Jarlaxle replied. "Minor guilds alone will meet this night."
"Even minor guilds would be wise to employ wizards," the wizard-priest remarked.
"The wizard of this one is a friend of Entreri," Jarlaxle explained with a laugh that made it sound as if it were all too easy. "And the other guild is naught but halflings, hardly versed in the ways of magic. Tomorrow night you will be needed, perhaps. This night continue your examination of Drizzt Do'Urden. In the end he will likely prove the most important cog of all."
"Because of the magical item?" Kimmuriel asked.
"Because of Entreri's lack of interest," Jarlaxle replied.
The wizard-priest shook his head. "We offer him power and riches beyond his comprehension," he said. "And yet he leads us onward as if he were going into hopeless battle against the Spider Queen herself."
"He cannot appreciate the power or the riches until he has resolved an inner conflict," explained Jarlaxle, whose greatest gift of all was the ability to get into the minds of enemies and friends alike, and not with prying powers, such as Kimmuriel Oblodra might use, but with simple empathy and understanding. "But fear not his present lack of motivation. I know Artemis Entreri well enough to understand that he will prove more than effective whether his heart is in the fight or not. As humans go I have never met one more dangerous or more devious."
"A pity his skin is so light," Kimmuriel remarked.
Jarlaxle only smiled. He knew well enough that if Artemis
Entreri had been born drow in Menzoberranzan the man would have been among the greatest of weapon masters, or perhaps he would have even exceeded that claim. Perhaps he would have been a rival to Jarlaxle for control of Bregan D'aerthe.
"We will speak in the comfortable darkness of the tunnels when the shining hellfire rises into the too-high sky," he said to Rai'gy. "Have more answers for me."
"Fare well with the guilds," Rai'gy answered, and with a bow he turned and left.
Jarlaxle turned to Kimmuriel and nodded. It was time to go hunting.
With their cherubic faces, halflings were regarded by the other races as creatures with large eyes, but how much wider those eyes became for the four in the room with Dwahvel when a magical portal opened right before them (despite the usual precautions against such magical intrusion), and Artemis Entreri stepped into the room. The assassin cut an impressive figure in a layered black coat and a black bolero, banded about the base of its riser in blacker silk.
Entreri assumed a strong, hands-on-hips pose just as Kimmuriel had taught him, holding steady against the waves of disorientation that always accompanied such psionic dimensional travel.
Behind him, in the chamber on the other side of the door, a room lightless save that spilling in through the gate from Dwahvel's chamber, huddled a few dark shapes. When one of the halfling soldiers moved to meet the intruder, one of those dark shapes shifted slightly, and the halfling, with hardly a squeak, toppled to the floor.
"He is sleeping and otherwise unharmed," Entreri quickly explained, not wanting a fight with the others, who were scrambling about for weapons. "I did not come here for a fight, I assure you, but I can leave all of you dead in my wake if you insist upon one."
"You could have used the front door," Dwahvel, the only one appearing unshaken, remarked dryly.
"I did not wish to be seen entering your establishment," the assassin, fully oriented once more, explained. "For your protection."
"And what form of entrance is this?" Dwahvel asked. "Magical and unbidden, yet none of my wards-and I paid well for them, I assure you-offered resistance."
"No magic that will concern you," Entreri replied, "but that will surely concern my enemies. Know that I did not return to Calimport to lurk in shadows at the bidding of others. I have traveled the Realms extensively and have brought back with me that which I have learned."