The Servant of the Shard Page 3

  “Perhaps you are slowing down, my friend,” Jarlaxle remarked.

  “What a pity that would be. It is good that you defeated your avowed enemy when you did, for Drizzt Do’Urden has many centuries of youthful speed left in him.”

  Entreri scoffed at the words, though in truth, the thought gnawed at him. He had lived his entire life on the very edge of perfection and preparedness. Even now, in the middle years of his life, he was confident that he could defeat almost any foe—with pure skill or by out-thinking any enemy, by properly preparing any battlefield—but Entreri didn’t want to slow down. He didn’t want to lose that edge of fighting brilliance that had so marked his life.

  He wanted to deny Jarlaxle’s words, but he could not, for he knew in his heart that he had truly lost that fight with Drizzt, that if Kimmuriel Oblodra had not intervened with his psionic powers, then Drizzt would have been declared the victor.

  “You did not outmatch me with speed,” the assassin started to argue, shaking his head.

  Jarlaxle came forward, his glowing eyes narrowing dangerously— a threatening expression, a look of rage, that the assassin rarely saw upon the handsome face of the always-in-control dark elf mercenary leader.

  “I have this!” Jarlaxle announced, pulling wide his cloak and showing Entreri the tip of the artifact, Crenshinibon, the Crystal Shard, tucked neatly into one pocket. “Never forget that. Without it, I could likely still defeat you, though you are good, my friend— better than any human I have ever known. But with this in my possession … you are but a mere mortal. Joined in Crenshinibon, I can destroy you with but a thought. Never forget that.”

  Entreri lowered his gaze, digesting the words and the tone, sharpening that image of the uncharacteristic expression on Jarlaxle’s always smiling face. Joined in Crenshinibon? … but a mere mortal? What in the Nine Hells did that mean? Never forget that, Jarlaxle had said, and indeed, this was a lesson that Artemis Entreri would not soon dismiss.

  When he looked back up again, Entreri saw Jarlaxle wearing his typical expression, that sly, slightly amused look that conferred to all who saw it that this cunning drow knew more than he did, knew more than he possibly could.

  Seeing Jarlaxle relaxed again also reminded Entreri of the novelty of these sparring events. The mercenary leader would not spar with any other. Rai-guy was stunned when Jarlaxle had told him that he meant to battle Entreri on a regular basis.

  Entreri understood the logic behind that thinking. Jarlaxle survived, in part, by remaining mysterious, even to those around him. No one could ever really get a good look at the mercenary leader. He kept allies and opponents alike off-balance and wondering, always wondering, and yet, here he was, revealing so much to Artemis Entreri.

  “Those daggers,” Entreri said, coming back at ease and putting on his own sly expression. “They were merely illusions.”

  “In your mind, perhaps,” the dark elf replied in his typically cryptic manner.

  “They were,” the assassin pressed. “You could not possibly carry so many, nor could any magic create them that quickly.”

  “As you say,” Jarlaxle replied. “Though you heard the clang as your own weapons connected with them and felt the weight as they punctured your cloak.”

  “I thought I heard the clang,” Entreri corrected, wondering if he had at last found a chink in the mercenary’s never-ending guessing game.

  “Is that not the same thing?” Jarlaxle replied with a laugh, but it seemed to Entreri as if there was a darker side to that chuckle.

  Entreri lifted that cloak, to see several of the daggers—solid metal daggers—still sticking in its fabric folds, and to find several more holes in the cloth. “Some were illusions, then,” he argued unconvincingly.

  Jarlaxle merely shrugged, never willing to give anything away.

  With an exasperated sigh, Entreri started out of the room.

  “Do keep ever present in your thoughts, my friend, that an illusion can kill you if you believe in it,” Jarlaxle called after him.

  Entreri paused and glanced back, his expression grim. He wasn’t used to being so openly warned or threatened, but he knew that with this one particular companion, the threats were never, ever idle.

  “And the real thing can kill you whether you believe in it or not,” Entreri replied, and he turned back for the door.

  The assassin departed with a shake of his head, frustrated and yet intrigued. That was always the way with Jarlaxle, Entreri mused, and what surprised him even more was that he found that aspect of the clever drow mercenary particularly compelling.

  That is the one, Kimmuriel Oblodra signaled to his two companions, Rai-guy and Berg’inyon Baenre, the most recent addition to the surface army of Bregan D’aerthe.

  The favored son of the most powerful house in Menzoberranzan, Berg’inyon had grown up with all the drow world open before him—to the level that a drow male in Menzoberranzan could achieve, at least—but his mother, the powerful Matron Baenre, had led a disastrous assault on a dwarven kingdom, ending in her death and throwing all the great drow city into utter chaos. In that time of ultimate confusion and apprehension, Berg’inyon had thrown his hand in with Jarlaxle and the ever elusive mercenary band of Bregan D’aerthe. Among the finest of fighters in all the city, and with familial connections to still-mighty House Baenre, Berg’inyon was welcomed openly and quickly promoted, elevated to the status of high lieutenant. Thus, he was not here now serving Rai-guy and Kimmuriel, but as their peer, taken out on a sort of training mission.

  He considered the human Kimmuriel had targeted, a shapely woman posing in the dress of a common street whore.

  You have read her thoughts? Rai-guy signaled back, his fingers weaving an intricate pattern, perfectly complementing the various expressions and contortions of his handsome and angular drow features.

  Raker spy, Kimmuriel silently assured his companion. The coordinator of their group. All pass her by, reporting their finds.

  Berg’inyon shifted nervously from foot to foot, uncomfortable around the revelations of the strange and strangely powerful Kimmuriel. He hoped that Kimmuriel wasn’t reading his thoughts at that moment, for he was wondering how Jarlaxle could ever feel safe with this one about. Kimmuriel could walk into someone’s mind, it seemed, as easily as Berg’inyon could walk through an open doorway. He chuckled then but disguised it as a cough, when he considered that clever Jarlaxle likely had that doorway somehow trapped. Berg’inyon decided that he’d have to learn the technique, if there was one, to keep Kimmuriel at bay.

  Do we know where the others might be? Berg’inyon’s hands silently asked.

  Would the show be complete if we did not? came Rai-guy’s responding gestures. The wizard smiled widely, and soon all three of the dark elves wore sly, hungry expressions.

  Kimmuriel closed his eyes and steadied himself with long, slow breaths.

  Rai-guy took the cue, pulling an eyelash encased in a bit of gum arabic out of one of his several belt pouches. He turned to Berg’inyon and began waggling his fingers. The drow warrior flinched reflexively—as most sane people would do when a drow wizard began casting in their direction.

  The first spell went off, and Berg’inyon, rendered invisible, faded from view. Rai-guy went right back to work, now aiming a spell designed mentally to grab at the target, to hold the spy fast.

  The woman flinched and seemed to hold for a second, but shook out of it and glanced around nervously, now obviously on her guard.

  Rai-guy growled and went at the spell again. Invisible Berg’inyon stared at him with an almost mocking smile—yes, there were advantages to being invisible! Rai-guy continually demeaned humans, called them every drow name for offal and carrion. On the one hand, he was obviously surprised that this one had resisted the hold spell—no easy mental task—but on the other, Berg’inyon noted, the blustery wizard had prepared more than one of the spells. One, without any resistance, should have been enough.

  This time, the woman took one step, and hel
d fast in her walking pose.

  Go! Kimmuriel’s fingers waved. Even as he gestured, the powers of his mind opened the doorway between the three drow and the woman. Suddenly she was there, though she was still on the street, but only a couple of strides away. Berg’inyon leaped out and grabbed the woman, tugging her hard into the extra-dimensional space, and Kimmuriel shut the door.

  It had happened so fast that to any watching on the street, it would have seemed as if the woman had simply disappeared.

  The psionicist raised his delicate black hand up to the victim’s forehead, melding with her mentally. He could feel the horror in there, for though her physical body had been locked in Rai-guy’s stasis, her mind was working and she knew indeed that she now stood before dark elves.

  Kimmuriel took just a moment to bask in that terror, thoroughly enjoying the spectacle. Then he imparted psionic energies to her. He built around her an armor of absorbing kinetic energy, using a technique he had perfected in Entreri’s battle with Drizzt Do’Urden.

  When it was done, he nodded.

  Berg’inyon became visible again almost immediately, as his fine drow sword slashed across the woman’s throat, the offensive strike dispelling the defensive magic of Rai’guy’s invisibility spell. The drow warrior went into a fast dance, slashing and thrusting with both of his fine swords, stabbing hard, even chopping once with both blades, a heavy drop down onto the woman’s head.

  But no blood spewed forth, no groans of pain came from the woman, for Kimmuriel’s armor accepted each blow, catching and holding the tremendous energy offered by the drow warrior’s brutal dance.

  It went on and on for several minutes, until Rai-guy warned that the spell of holding was nearing its end. Berg’inyon backed away, and Kimmuriel closed his eyes again as Rai-guy began yet another casting.

  Both onlookers, Kimmuriel and Berg’inyon, smiled wickedly as Rai-guy produced a tiny ball of bat guano that held a sulfuric aroma and shoved it, along with his finger into the woman’s mouth, releasing his spell. A flash of fiery light appeared in the back of the woman’s mouth, disappearing as it slid down her throat.

  The sidewalk was there again, very close, as Kimmuriel opened a second dimension portal to the same spot on the street, and Rai-guy roughly shoved the woman back out.

  Kimmuriel shut the door, and they watched, amused.

  The hold spell released first, and the woman staggered. She tried to call out, but coughed roughly from the burn in her throat. A strange expression came over her, one of absolute horror.

  She feels the energy contained in the kinetic barrier, Kimmuriel explained. I hold it no longer—only her own will prevents its release.

  How long? a concerned Rai-guy asked, but Kimmuriel only smiled and motioned for them to watch and enjoy.

  The woman broke into a run. The three drow noted other people moving about her, some closing cautiously—other spies, likely—and others seeming merely curious. Still others grew alarmed and tried to stay away from her.

  All the while, she tried to scream out, but just kept hacking from the continuing burn in her throat. Her eyes were wide, so horrifyingly and satisfyingly wide! She could feel the tremendous energies within her, begging release, and she had no idea how she might accomplish that.

  She couldn’t hold the kinetic barrier, and her initial realization of the problem transformed from horror into confusion. All of Berg’inyon’s terrible beating came out then, so suddenly. All of the slashes and the stabs, the great chop and the twisting heart thrust, burst over the helpless woman. To those watching, it seemed almost as if she simply fell apart, gallons of blood erupting about her face, head, and chest.

  She went down almost immediately, but before anyone could even begin to react, could run away or charge to her aid, Rai-guy’s last spell, a delayed fireball, went off, immolating the already dead woman and many of those around her.

  Outside the blast, wide-eyed stares came at the charred corpse from comrade and ignorant onlooker alike, expressions of the sheerest terror that surely pleased the three merciless dark elves.

  A fine display. Worthy indeed.

  For Berg’inyon, the spectacle served a second purpose, a clear reminder to him to take care around these fellow lieutenants himself. Even taking into consideration the high drow standards for torture and murder, these two were particularly adept, true masters of the craft.

  CHAPTER

  A HUMBLING ENCOUNTER

  3

  He had his old room back. He even had his name back. The memories of the authorities in Luskan were not as long as they claimed.

  The previous year, Morik the Rogue had been accused of attempting to murder the honorable Captain Deudermont of the good ship Sea Sprite, a famous pirate hunter. Since in Luskan accusation and conviction were pretty much the same thing, Morik had faced the prospect of a horrible death in the public spectacle of Prisoner’s Carnival. He had actually been in the process of realizing that ultimate torture when Captain Deudermont, horrified by the gruesome scene, had offered a pardon.

  Pardoned or not, Morik had been forever banned from Luskan on pain of death. He had returned anyway, of course, the following year. At first he’d taken on an assumed identity, but gradually he had regained his old trappings, his true mannerisms, his connections on the streets, his apartment, and, finally, his name and the reputation it carried. The authorities knew it too, but having plenty of other thugs to torture to death, they didn’t seem to care.

  Morik could look back on that awful day at Prisoner’s Carnival with a sense of humor now. He thought it perfectly ironic that he had been tortured for a crime that he hadn’t even committed when there were so many crimes of which he could be rightly convicted.

  It was all a memory now, the memory of a whirlwind of intrigue and danger by the name of Wulfgar. He was Morik the Rogue once more, and all was as it had once been … almost.

  For now there was another element, an intriguing and also terrifying element, that had come into Morik’s life. He walked up to the door of his room cautiously, glancing all about the narrow hallway, studying the shadows. When he was confident that he was alone, he walked up tight to the door, shielding it from any magically prying eyes, and began the process of undoing nearly a dozen deadly traps, top to bottom along both sides of the jamb. That done, he took out a ring of keys and undid the locks—one, two, three—then he clicked open the door. He disarmed yet another trap—this one explosive—then entered, closing and securing the door and resetting all the traps. The complete process took him more than ten minutes, yet he performed this ritual every time he came home. The dark elves had come into Morik’s life, unannounced and uninvited. While they had promised him the treasure of a king if he performed their tasks, they had also promised him and had shown him the flip side of that golden coin as well.

  Morik checked the small pedestal at the side of the door next. He nodded, satisfied to see that the orb was still in place in the wide vase. The vessel was coated with contact poison and maintained a sensitive pressure release trap. He had paid dearly for that particular orb—an enormous amount of gold that would take him a year of hard thievery to retrieve—but in Morik’s fearful eyes, the item was well worth the price. It was enchanted with a powerful anti-magic dweomer that would prevent dimensional doors from opening in his room, that would prevent wizards from strolling in on the other side of a teleportation spell.

  Never again did Morik the Rogue wish to be awakened by a dark elf standing at the side of his bed, looming over him.

  All of his locks were in place, his orb rested in its protected vessel, and yet some subtle signal, an intangible breeze, a tickling on the hairs at the back of his neck, told Morik that something was out of place. He glanced all around, from shadow to shadow, to the drapes that still hung over the window he had long ago bricked up. He looked to his bed, to the tightly tucked sheets, with no blankets hanging below the edge. Bending just a bit, Morik saw right through the bottom of the bed. There was no one hiding under
there.

  The drapes, then, he thought, and he moved in that general direction but took a circuitous route so that he wouldn’t force any action from the intruder. A sudden shift and quick-step brought him there, dagger revealed, and he pulled the drapes aside and struck hard, catching only air.

  Morik laughed in relief and at his own paranoia. How different his world had become since the arrival of the dark elves. Always now he was on the edge of his nerves. He had seen the drow a total of only five times, including their initial encounter way back when Wulfgar was new to the city and they, for some reason that Morik still did not completely understand, wanted him to keep an eye on the huge barbarian.

  He was always on his edge, always wary, but he reminded himself of the potential gains his alliance with the drow would bring. Part of the reason that he was Morik the Rogue again, from what he had been able to deduce, had to do with a visit to a particular authority by one of Jarlaxle’s henchmen.

  He gave a sigh of relief and let the drapes swing back, then froze in surprise and fear as a hand clamped over his mouth and the fine edge of a dagger came tight against his throat.

  “You have the jewels?” a voice whispered in his ear, a voice showing incredible strength and calm despite its quiet tone. The hand slipped off of his mouth and up to his forehead, forcing his head back just enough to remind him of how vulnerable and open his throat was.

  Morik didn’t answer, his mind racing through many possibilities— the least likely of which seeming to be his potential escape, for that hand holding him revealed frightening strength and the hand holding the dagger at his throat was too, too steady. Whoever his attacker might be, Morik understood immediately that he was overmatched.

  “I ask one more time; then I end my frustration,” came the whisper.

  “You are not drow,” Morik replied, as much to buy some time as to ensure that this man—and he knew that it was a man and certainly no dark elf—would not act rashly.