Hero Page 13

  Only two left on the deck were standing, or kneeling, and Wulfgar ordered them to tend the wounded. One went to the pair tangled with the archer who had taken the hit from Aegis-fang—that man was certainly beyond any help—and began tearing his shirt to make some quick bandages, while the other went to extract the unconscious woman from the mainsail.

  Wulfgar kept a close eye on them as he moved to the taffrail and the man back there, who had been choked to unconsciousness. The pirate was still alive, but didn’t seem to be much of a threat.

  “A hand, please,” he heard from behind, and he glanced over to see Regis, already back and with a sleeping, half-drowned pirate in tow. Wulfgar reached down and grabbed the pirate by the shoulder, easily hoisting her aboard. He noted the hand crossbow dart in the back of her neck as he brought her in. He nodded to Regis and said, “Fine aim.”

  “Of course,” Regis replied with a shrug, as if nothing less should be expected, which tipped Wulfgar off to the truth that the shot had probably been more luck than skill. Wulfgar couldn’t deny his friend’s valor, though, and was impressed by Regis’s willingness to board a boat full of enemies alone.

  The two heard a splash, then, and recognized the sound of an oar hitting the water.

  “Our boat!’ Wulfgar said, rising and turning, but he paused when he noted the grin on Regis’s face.

  The halfling drew forth his hand crossbow. Holding the rail with one hand, he deftly set a quarrel and cocked the weapon with his other.

  “I will be right back,” he promised, then he dropped into the water.

  He soon swam up alongside the sloop with the rowboat, rowed by the pirate Wulfgar had swept from the deck with Aegis-fang. Another pirate, the man Wulfgar had thrown from the deck, slept peacefully under the effect of drow poison.

  So in the end, only two of the eleven-pirate crew were lost. The archer Wulfgar had hit with Aegis-fang, the same one who had put an arrow through Wulfgar’s shoulder, was too broken for any of the healing potions Regis produced from his magical belt pouch, and the man who had been violently yanked overboard by Regis’s first garrote was never to be seen again.

  The other nine, Regis determined, would live or die on the word of Donnola Topolino.

  “YOU SHOULD NOT have brought them here,” Wigglefingers scolded Wulfgar and Regis.

  The three of them, along with Donnola and another halfling woman who went by the name of Parvaneh, were gathered in a secret chamber far below Morada Topolino. From there tunnels stretched all the way to a small seaside cave, which now contained both the rowboat Wulfgar and Regis had taken out to gather oysters and the small pirate sloop—though that one had to be slipped into a side berth where the cave roof remained high enough to accommodate the mast, and that only at low tide.

  “Where would you have us bring them?” Regis asked, not hiding his surprise at the scowling tone of this meeting. In his previous life at Morada Topolino, acquiring goods like boats and treasure, and even potential recruits in these scalawags he and Wulfgar had taken prisoner, was considered a grand achievement.

  “You should have just left them at sea, or killed them all and sank their damned boat on top of them,” the wizard replied.

  Regis’s eyes widened, and Wulfgar laughed out loud.

  “Just sail them to the harbormaster and be done with them,” Parvaneh explained. “And offer no hint of any tie to Morada Topolino, either for you or them.”

  “So do it now,” Regis offered. “The tide will come in soon after midday and the sloop has to be put out before then, in any case.”

  “They’ve been here now,” Wigglefingers reminded them all. “We are known to them.”

  “You’re not killing them,” Regis bluntly replied, a clear threat that brought a scowl from the wizard.

  “Enough, both of you,” said Donnola. “This is my fault, and mine alone. Regis cannot be blamed for not understanding the changes that have come over Morada Topolino in the years of his absence. His—and his large friend’s—actions were commendable and heroic in the old ways of Grandfather Pericolo.”

  “They should have rowed off into the dark to avoid the fight,” Wigglefingers had to put in.

  “Of course,” Donnola answered. “But in the days of Grandfather Pericolo, we would be lifting glasses of fine wine in toast to this great victory and gathered treasure.”

  “My friend has spoken of you every day since we were rejoined,” Wulfgar said to Donnola. “And always with the highest of praise, both in his love for you and in his belief that you would take House Topolino to greater heights even than the great Pericolo had achieved.”

  “And she has,” Parvaneh quickly replied, before Donnola could respond. “Only in a different direction.”

  “I do miss the old days,” Wigglefingers mumbled, and Donnola looked his way sympathetically.

  “What has changed?” Regis asked soberly, rising and moving to stand right in front of Donnola. “What has happened here?”

  “Chaos,” the woman replied. “The floods, the rise of enemies, the rise of heroes …”

  “So many damned heroes,” Wigglefingers remarked, drawing a grin from Donnola.

  “I cannot deny the aggravation of that,” she said.

  “Vigilante bands?” Regis asked.

  “Too many to buy off,” Donnola explained. “And too many eyes watching too many … unsavory transactions.”

  “What does that mean?” Wulfgar asked.

  “It means that killing people is dangerous in Delthuntle now,” Regis replied.

  “We have become more of an errand house,” Donnola explained, “and a merchant of information.”

  Regis nodded, not really surprised when he considered it more deeply. Donnola’s value to Morada Topolino during the reign of Grandfather Pericolo had been mostly as an infiltrator. The woman was a social butterfly, always invited, always welcomed, and revered by the aristocracy of the city. She could do the dirty work when necessary, of course, but Grandfather Pericolo had always tried to keep her somewhat removed from that nasty reality of life along the wild streets of Delthuntle, and of Aglarond in general.

  “So, errand boys,” Regis said.

  “And girls,” Parvaneh was quick to add, and Regis nodded.

  “I do miss the old days,” Wigglefingers mumbled again.

  “So you’ve taken Morada Topolino to a safer place,” Regis said, and he cast a sly sidelong glance at the wizard. “Safer, if a bit less exciting.”

  “Boom,” said Wigglefingers, and he brought his hands up and out, fingers waggling as if in some magical explosion.

  Regis laughed, and nodded. “I understand. So what do we do with the nine and their boat?”

  “I will take care of that,” Donnola assured him.

  Regis looked at her skeptically.

  “I’ll not kill them,” she answered that look. “But please, I pray you, bring home no more strays.”

  “But more pearls!” the wizard said, and it seemed as if Wigglefingers’s mood had greatly improved. “The market is bare.”

  “Yes, more pearls,” Donnola agreed, and, in a very un-grandmother-of-assassins way, she went up on her tiptoes and leaned in to give Regis a quick kiss on the lips.

  “Any gem you want, my love,” the beaming Regis replied.

  CHAPTER 8

  Kimmuriel’s Sigh

  LET DOWN YOUR GUARD,” KIMMURIEL SAID TO DRIZZT.

  “I didn’t know it was up,” the broken drow said, his voice showing his resignation. He had attacked Catti-brie! He had almost killed the person he most loved in all the world.

  But no, it wasn’t her, he reminded himself. It was a demon, a trick of Lolth—all of this was a grand deception, played out to break him.

  And so it had, even before the inevitable reveal.

  “Surely you feel my quiet intrusions, and your own revulsion to them.”

  “Perhaps everything about … you, revolts me,” the defiant Drizzt retorted with as much conviction as he could muster. He fo
cused on his larger issues and tried not to make it personal, reminding himself continually that this was all a ruse, all a lie.

  If Kimmuriel was insulted in any way, he certainly didn’t show it, but then Drizzt couldn’t remember ever seeing any emotion from this one, positive or negative. His dealings with Kimmuriel Oblodra had been few, though, and fewer still when he only counted those he knew—or believed so, for what did he know, after all?—had occurred before the great deception of Lolth had been put into effect.

  “What do you fear?” Kimmuriel asked, or maybe he wasn’t even talking—so delicate and smooth were the communications of the master psionicist that Drizzt couldn’t be sure. “Tell me your fears, Drizzt Do’Urden and let down your guard that I can help you.”

  “Help me?” Drizzt scoffed, and when he felt Kimmuriel’s thoughts penetrating his mind once more, he threw a wall of anger up in instinctive defiance. “How do you know that you won’t be the one needing help?”

  Kimmuriel chuckled, but it was a mirthless thing, and more designed, Drizzt understood, to convey his pity for the petty insect that was Drizzt than out of any honest amusement. “That is why there are no weapons in this room, of course. And why Jarlaxle and Gromph are just outside. Perhaps you are powerful with your bare hands—you do spend your days in close combat, fool that you are. But I am in no danger here, so please, dismiss your threats and let us both be done with this insipid exercise so that Jarlaxle will grant me my time alone.”

  Drizzt made a sudden move, just to see if he could elicit a reaction from Kimmuriel.

  He did, but it wasn’t what he was expecting. A wave of discombobulating energy blasted into his mind, mixing up every signal coming in from his senses and twisting every command going back out from his thoughts to his limbs. What was supposed to be a sudden and short movement became an awkward mix of mismatched moves that had Drizzt stuttering and swaying, and quickly tumbling to the floor.

  He fought it off, bit by bit, forcing Kimmuriel’s mental blast away and eventually rolling back to his knees. But by that time, Kimmuriel was across the room, staring at him hard.

  “I am not some weak-minded human woman who will be caught off guard by your charms,” Kimmuriel assured him.

  “What do you want from me?” Drizzt demanded.

  “I already told you,” the calm psionicist replied.

  “Go to the Nine Hells—nay, back to the Abyss where you belong!” Drizzt told him. “Back to the foul Spider Queen and tell her that I know. Oh, how I know!”

  “Know? What do you know?”

  “Liar!” Drizzt accused. “All of it. Everything! You, my friends—aha, my long dead friends, miraculously restored to me! Lolth’s plan is flawed, for I have been warned of this diabolical game before!”

  Kimmuriel came forward and sat once more in his chair facing Drizzt, who managed to get back to his feet and was leaning on his own seat, directly across and not far away.

  “Your friends are liars?”

  “My friends are dead,” Drizzt insisted.

  “They are down the hall—”

  “No!” the ranger shouted. “No! Your doppelgangers are known to me. Your trap will not break me.”

  Kimmuriel paused and cocked his head. “Drizzt Do’Urden,” he stated calmly, and with a hint of amusement, “you are already broken.”

  Drizzt shook his head.

  “You attacked Catti-brie, but then stopped yourself,” Kimmuriel reminded him. “You could have killed her with that unexpected strike—and quite easily, by her own words—and yet you did not. Because you do not know—”

  “Liar!”

  “Perhaps I am. Perhaps not. You do not know.”

  “And you will enter my thoughts to tell me, and convince me that all is aright,” Drizzt reasoned, and he laughed because it all came clear to him then. “I see now.” His laughter had Kimmuriel looking at him ever more closely, he noted. “It’s not working—Lolth knows that it’s not working.”

  “What?”

  “Shut up,” said Drizzt. “She cannot break me because I know, and so you will come into my thoughts and make it so that I don’t know, and so when the blow falls, the great and terrible revelation, I will break. Aye! But nay! You’ll not find your way to my thoughts, fool drow!”

  “Amazing,” said Kimmuriel. “You think this whole thing is a deception? All of it? The return of your friends, of your wife? What of your battle with Demogorgon? Was that, too, but an illusion?”

  Drizzt stared at him hard and hatefully.

  “Amazing,” Kimmuriel said. “Such trouble the Demon Queen of Spiders would go to over … you. Your arrogance is beyond even my low opinion of you. Your friends have been back for years. You fought a war—”

  “I believe we fought a war.”

  “How many memories become reality, then?” the psionicist asked. “If life is merely a delusion, then at what point is such delusion simply a reality?”

  Drizzt started to respond, but just fell back and glared.

  “Then why not let me in?” Kimmuriel asked. “If this is your fear, then to what end and to what point do you keep me at bay?”

  “Because you will convince me that I am not convinced!”

  Kimmuriel laughed at him. It caught Drizzt off guard because it was an actual laugh, even if one obvious of pity.

  “So you will be stubborn and strong in your misery because you fear greater misery?” Kimmuriel said, and he paused and chuckled. “And if you are wrong?”

  Drizzt didn’t have an answer.

  “How long, Drizzt Do’Urden?” Kimmuriel asked. “And if you strike down Catti-brie and you are wrong, then what for you? Or if you force this woman, who so greatly professes her love for you, to kill you? What would that do to her, or to Mielikki, who has chosen her?

  “And if you are right, and this is the grandest lie, then where is your goddess to intervene?” Kimmuriel said when no response was forthcoming. “Why has Mielikki abandoned you?”

  “Because I will not kill the babies!” Drizzt growled, and he was back then, mentally replaying that awful conversation with Catti-brie soon after she had returned from the place she called Iruladoon. They were all evil, she had said, all the goblinkin, and so he must kill them all when he found them, including the babies. That thought assaulted his sensibilities—he had known a goblin who did not seem evil at all. He and Bruenor had found the ruins of a city where orcs and dwarves had lived in unison and apparent harmony The town of Palishchuck in Vaasa was full of half-orcs and was not at war with any of the goodly folk of the region—far from it!

  And the Treaty of Garumn’s Gorge had failed, but that did not dismiss the good work done by many orcs, the true followers of Obould, who strove for decades to hold the peace.

  Or was all of that, too, nothing more than a grand deception, this long plan, laid out and worked brilliantly to seem like the passage of centuries in the broken mind of Drizzt?

  Had he ever even actually gotten out of Menzoberranzan in what he perceived to be a century and more before, when Zaknafein had died that he could be free?

  “How far back?” he asked, tears flowing down his cheeks. He fell into his chair, more lying down than sitting, feeling as if all the strength had been sucked out of his body.

  “You tell me,” Kimmuriel replied.

  “You tell me!” Drizzt demanded, and he was sobbing then, feeling as if he had walked not out of Menzoberranzan but into the lair of Lolth, who had punished him with all of these false memories, a life never actually lived, and all done by the wretched Spider Queen for the single point of tormenting him beyond anything he could ever imagine.

  He heard Kimmuriel clearly then, and had no response to offer, for indeed, he had hit the lowest point of all.

  “Let us find out together,” the psionicist offered, and Drizzt could only cry, and offered no resistance as Kimmuriel’s fingers came lightly against his forehead.

  And into Drizzt’s mind went Kimmuriel, into the twisted dreams and burgeoni
ng fears and the shifting sands of perception of a broken drow who had lost all sense of where reality stopped and deceit began.

  The psionicist searched deeper, guiding Drizzt’s thoughts and holding fast to them on their speeding and winding journey. Kimmuriel looked for an anchor to reality, a solid raft of reality that he could bring to the forefront, a not-subtle demarcation between perception and truth upon which the drifting Drizzt could cling.

  Kimmuriel’s confidence waned as the moments slipped past, as each reality he discovered became, to Drizzt, a lie, as each truth became, to Drizzt, demonic deception.

  And how could he disagree, Kimmuriel came to wonder? Perhaps he was the one in the wrong here, and Drizzt had found, after all, the awful truth of existence. Kimmuriel, above all others, should of course recognize the power of mental deception.

  The shape of reality was molded in no small part by the conniving of godly figures.

  Kimmuriel Oblodra cried out and fell back. He sat staring at the sobbing Drizzt with an expression of abject horror. He heard the door bang open behind him, but he didn’t react, couldn’t react, and instead sat staring at his counterpart with confusion and fear—fear inspired by a near break from all that he once held as truth.

  “What is it?” Jarlaxle demanded, rushing up beside his Bregan D’aerthe comrade.

  “Did he strike at you?” Gromph demanded, his voice dripping with his hopes that Kimmuriel would answer in the affirmative and thus give Gromph an excuse to obliterate Drizzt, just because he thought it would be a pleasing experience.

  They both knew the truth before Kimmuriel began to answer, though, for it was obvious that this broken creature sitting in front of them, immersed in pathetic sobs and with his violet eyes looking nowhere but inward, had done no such thing.

  “Come,” Kimmuriel told them both, and he hustled from the room, dragging them along, and was quick to close and secure the door behind them.

  “What have you learned?” Jarlaxle demanded.

  “Demarcation,” said Kimmuriel in a very somber voice.