Servant of the Shard: The Sellswords Read online

  “A new rival for Entreri?” Jarlaxle remarked when the four had gone. “A replacement for Drizzt, perhaps?”

  “Hardly,” Entreri replied.

  “She is not worthy, then?”

  The assassin only shrugged, not caring enough to try to determine whether she was or not.

  Jarlaxle’s laugh brought him from his contemplation. “Growth,” the drow remarked.

  “I warn you that I’ll tolerate little of your judgments,” Entreri replied.

  Jarlaxle laughed all the harder. “Then you plan to remain with me.”

  Entreri looked at him hard, stealing the mirth, considering a question that he could not immediately answer.

  “Very well, then,” Jarlaxle said lightheartedly, as if he took the silence as confirmation. “But I warn you, if you cross me, I will have to kill you.”

  “That will be difficult to do from beyond the grave,” Entreri promised.

  Jarlaxle laughed once more. “When I was young,” he began, “a friend of mine, a weapon master whose ultimate frustration was that he believed I was the better fighter—though in truth, the one time I bested him was more good fortune than superior skill—remarked to me that at last he had found one who would grow to be at least my equal, and perhaps my superior, a child, really, who showed more promise as a warrior than any before.

  “That weapon master’s name was Zaknafein—you may have heard of him,” Jarlaxle went on.

  Entreri shook his head.

  “The young warrior he spoke of was none other than Drizzt Do’Urden,” Jarlaxle explained with a grin.

  Entreri tried hard to show no emotion, but his inner feelings at the surprise betrayed him a tiny bit, and certainly enough for Jarlaxle to note it. “And did the prophecy of Zaknafein come true?” Entreri asked.

  “If it did, does that hold any revelation for Artemis Entreri?” Jarlaxle asked slyly. “For would discovering the relative strength of Drizzt and Jarlaxle tell Entreri anything pertinent? How does Artemis Entreri believe he measures up against Drizzt Do’Urden?” Then the critical question: “Does Entreri believe he truly defeated Drizzt?”

  Entreri looked at Jarlaxle long and hard, but as he stared, his expression inevitably softened. “Does it matter?” he answered, and that indeed was the answer that Jarlaxle most wanted to hear from his new, and, to his way of thinking, long-term companion.

  “We are not yet done here,” Jarlaxle announced then, changing the subject abruptly. “There is one group lingering about, fearful and angry. Their leader has decided that he cannot leave yet, not with things as they stand.”

  Entreri didn’t ask, but just followed Jarlaxle as the dark elf made his way around the outcroppings of mountain stone. The assassin fell back a few steps when he saw the group Jarlaxle had spoken of: four dark elves led by a dangerous psionicist. Entreri put his hands immediately to the hilt of his deadly dagger and sword. A short distance away, Jarlaxle and Kimmuriel spoke in the drow tongue, but Entreri could make out most of their words.

  “Do we battle now?” Kimmuriel Oblodra asked when Jarlaxle neared.

  “Rai-guy is dead, the Crystal Shard destroyed,” Jarlaxle replied. “What would be the purpose?”

  Entreri noted that Kimmuriel did not wince at either proclamation.

  “Ah, but I guess that you have tasted the sweetness of power, yes?” Jarlaxle asked with a chuckle. “You are seated at the head of Bregan D’aerthe now, it would seem, and you suppose all by yourself. You have little desire to relinquish your garnered position?”

  Kimmuriel started to shake his head—it was obvious to Entreri that he was about to try to make peace here with Jarlaxle—but the surprising Jarlaxle cut short Kimmuriel’s response. “Very well then!” Jarlaxle said dramatically. “I have little desire for yet another fight, Kimmuriel, and I accept and understand that my actions of late have likely earned me too many enemies within the ranks of Bregan D’aerthe for my return as leader.”

  “You are surrendering?” Kimmuriel asked doubtfully, and he seemed even more on his guard then, as did the foot-soldiers standing behind him.

  “Hardly,” Jarlaxle replied with another chuckle. “And I warn you, if you continue to do battle with me, or even to pursue me and track my whereabouts, I will indeed challenge you for the position you have rightly earned.”

  Entreri listened intently, shaking his head, certain that he must be getting some of the words, at least, very wrong.

  Kimmuriel started to respond, but stuttered over a few words, and just gave up with a great sigh.

  “Do well with Bregan D’aerthe,” Jarlaxle warned. “I will rejoin you one day and will demand of you that we share the leadership. I expect to find a band of mercenaries as strong as the one I now willingly leave behind.” He looked to the other three. “Serve him with honor.”

  “Any reunion between us will not be in Calimport,” Kimmuriel assured him, “nor anywhere else on the cursed surface. I am bound for home, Jarlaxle, back to the caverns that are our true domain.”

  Jarlaxle nodded, as did the three foot-soldiers.

  “And you?” Kimmuriel asked.

  The former mercenary leader only shrugged and smiled again. “I cannot know where I most wish to be because I have not seen all that there is.”

  Again, Kimmuriel could only stare at his former leader curiously.

  In the end, he merely nodded and, with a snap of his fingers and a thought, opened a dimensional portal through which he and his three minions passed.

  “Why?” Entreri asked, moving up beside his unexpected companion.

  “Why?” Jarlaxle echoed.

  “You could have returned with them,” the assassin clarified, “though I’d have never gone with you. You chose not to go, not to resume control of your band. Why would you give that up to remain out here, to remain beside me?”

  Jarlaxle thought it over for a few moments. Then, using words that Entreri himself had used before, he said with a laugh, “Perhaps I hate drow more than I hate humans.”

  In that instant, Artemis Entreri could have been blown over by a gentle breeze. He didn’t even want to know how Jarlaxle had known to say that.

  EPILOGUE

  For days, Entreri and Jarlaxle wandered the region, at last happening upon a town where the folk had heard of Drizzt Do’Urden and seemed, at least, to accept the imposter Jarlaxle’s presence.

  In the nondescript and ramshackle little common house that served as a tavern, Artemis Entreri discovered a posting that he found, in light of his present situation, somewhat promising.

  “Bounty hunters?” Jarlaxle asked with surprise when Entreri presented the posting to him. The drow was sitting in a corner, sipping wine and with his back to the corner. “A call by the forces of justice for bounty hunters?”

  “A call by someone,” Entreri corrected, sliding into a chair across the table. “Whether it begets justice or not seems of little consequence.”

  Jarlaxle looked at him with a wry grin. “Does it?” he said, seeming less than convinced. “And what gain did you derive, then, from carrying Danica from the tunnels?”

  “The gain of keeping a powerful priest from becoming an enemy,” the pragmatic Entreri answered coldly.

  “Or perhaps there was more,” said Jarlaxle. “Perhaps Artemis Entreri had not the heart to let the woman die alone in the darkness.”

  Entreri shrugged as if it did not matter.

  “How many of Artemis Entreri’s victims would be surprised?” Jarlaxle asked, pressing the point.

  “How many of Artemis Entreri’s victims deserved better than they found?” the assassin retorted.

  There it was, Jarlaxle knew, the justification for a life lived in the shadows. To a degree, the drow, who had survived among shadows darker than anything Entreri had ever known, couldn’t rightfully disagree. Perhaps, in that context, there was more to the measure of Artemis Entreri. Still, the transformation of this killer to the side of justice seemed a curious and odd occurrence.

 
“Artemis the Compassionate?” he had to ask.

  Entreri sat perfectly still for a moment, digesting the words. “Perhaps,” he said with a nod. “And perhaps if you keep saying foolish things, I will show you some compassion and kill you quickly. Then again, perhaps not.”

  Jarlaxle enjoyed a great laugh at that, at the absurdity of it all, of the newfound life that loomed before him. He understood Entreri well enough to take the man’s threats seriously, but in truth, the dark elf trusted Entreri the way he would trust one of his own brothers.

  However, Jarlaxle Baenre, the third son of Matron Baenre, once sacrificed to Lady Lolth by his mother and his siblings, knew better than to trust his own brother.

  R.A. SALVATORE

  R.A. Salvatore was born in Massachusetts in 1959. His love affair with fantasy, and with literature in general, began during his sophomore year of college when he was given a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings as a Christmas gift. He promptly changed his major from computer science to journalism. He received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Communications in 1981, then returned for the degree he always cherished, the Bachelor of Arts in English. He began writing seriously in 1982, penning the manuscript that would become Echoes of the Fourth Magic.

  His first published novel was The Crystal Shard from TSR in 1988 and he is still best known as the creator of the dark elf Drizzt, one of fantasy’s most beloved characters.

  His novel The Silent Blade won the Origins Award, and in the fall of 1997, his letters, manuscripts, and other professional papers were donated to the R.A. Salvatore Library at his alma mater, Fitchburg State College in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.

  The Sellswords, Book I

  Servant of the Shard

  © 2000 Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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  Distributed in the United States by Holtzbrinck Publishing. Distributed in Canada by Fenn Ltd.

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  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2004116898

  eISBN: 978-0-7869-5468-1

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