Halfling's Gem Page 8

  But he had no time to think of the pain. With a growl, he grabbed another leg and snapped it apart.

  Then they were falling.

  The spider—stupid thing—curled up as best it could and released its hold on the dwarf. Bruenor felt the rush of air and the closeness of the wall as they sped along. He could only hope that the shaft was straight enough to keep them clear of any sharp edges. He climbed as far over the spider as he could, putting the bulk of its body between himself and the coming impact.

  They landed in a great splat. The air blasted from Bruenor’s lungs, but with the wet explosion of the spider beneath him, he sustained no serious wounds. He still could not see, but he realized that he must again be on the floor level of the undercity, though luckily—for he heard no cries of alarm—in a less busy section. Dazed but undaunted, the stubborn dwarf picked himself up and wiped the spider fluid from his hands.

  “Sure to be a mother’s mother of a rainstorm tomorrow,” he muttered, remembering an old dwarven superstition against killing spiders. And he started back up the shaft, dismissing the pain in his hands, the ache in his ribs and foot, and the poisoned burn of his forearm.

  And any thoughts of more spiders lurking up ahead.

  He climbed for hours, stubbornly putting one hand over the other and pulling himself up. The insidious spider venom swept through him with waves of nausea and sapped the strength from his arms. But Bruenor was tougher than mountain stone. He might die from his wound, but he was determined that it would happen outside, in the free air, under the stars or the sun.

  He would escape Mithral Hall.

  A cold blast of wind shook the exhaustion from him. He looked up hopefully but still could not see—perhaps it was nighttime outside. He studied the whistle of the wind for a moment and knew that he was only yards from his goal. A burst of adrenaline carried him to the chimney’s exit—and the iron grate that blocked it.

  “Damn ye by Moradin’s hammer!” Bruenor spat. He leaped from the walls and grasped the bars of the grate with his bloodied fingers. The bars bent under his weight but held fast.

  “Wulfgar could break it,” Bruenor said, half in exhausted delirium. “Lend me yer strength, me big friend,” he called out to the darkness as he began tugging and twisting.

  Hundreds of miles away, caught up in nightmares of his lost mentor, Bruenor, Wulfgar tossed uneasily in his bunk on the Sea Sprite. Perhaps the spirit of the young barbarian did come to Bruenor’s aid at that desperate moment, but more likely the dwarf’s unyielding stubbornness proved stronger than the iron. A bar of the grate bent low enough to slip out of the stone wall, and Bruenor held it free.

  Hanging by one hand, Bruenor dropped the bar into the emptiness below him. With a wicked smile he hoped that some duergar scum might, at that instant, be at the bottom of the chimney, inspecting the dead spider and looking upward to find the cause.

  Bruenor pulled himself halfway through the small hole he had opened, but had not the strength to squeeze his hips and belt through. Thoroughly drained, he accepted the perch, though his legs were dangling freely over a thousand-foot drop.

  He put his head on the iron bars and knew no more.

  o de rail! To de rail!” cried one voice.

  “Toss ’em over!” agreed another. The mob of sailors crowded closer, brandishing curved swords and clubs.

  Entreri stood calmly in the midst of the storm, Regis nervously beside him. The assassin did not understand the crew’s sudden fit of anger, but he guessed that the sneaky halfling was somehow behind it. He hadn’t drawn weapons; he knew he could have his saber and dagger readied whenever he needed them, and none of the sailors, for all their bluster and threats, had yet come within ten feet of him.

  The captain of the ship, a squat, waddling man with stiff gray bristles, pearly white teeth, and eyes lightened in a perpetual squint, made his wav out from his cabin to investigate the ruckus.

  “To me, Redeye,” he beckoned the grimy sailor who had first brought to his ears the rumor that the passengers were infected with a horrible disease—and who had obviously spread the tale to the other members of the crew. Redeye obeyed at once, following his captain through the parting mob to stand before Entreri and Regis.

  The captain slowly took out his pipe and tamped down the weed, his eyes never releasing Entreri’s from a penetrating gaze.

  “Send ’em over!” came an occasional cry, but each time, the captain silenced the speaker with a wave of his hand. He wanted a full measure of these strangers before he acted, and he patiently let the moments pass as he lit the pipe and took a long drag.

  Entreri never blinked and never looked away from the captain. He brought his cloak back behind the scabbards on his belt and crossed his arms, the calm and confident action conveniently putting each of his hands in position barely an inch from the hilts of his weapons.

  “Ye should have told me, sir,” the captain said at length.

  “Your words are as unexpected as the actions of your crew,” Entreri replied evenly.

  “Indeed,” the captain answered, drawing another puff.

  Some of the crew were not as patient as their skipper. One barrel-chested man, his arms heavily muscled and tattooed, grew weary of the drama. He boldly stepped behind the assassin, meaning to toss him overboard and be done with him.

  Just as the sailor started to reach out for the assassin’s slender shoulders, Entreri exploded into motion, spinning and returning to his cross-armed pose so quickly that the sailors watching him tried to blink the sun out of their eyes and figure out whether he had moved at all.

  The barrel-chested man slumped to his knees and fell facedown on the deck, for in that blink of an eye, a heel had smashed his kneecap, and even more insidious, a jeweled dagger had come out of its sheath, poked his heart, and returned to rest on the assassin’s hip.

  “Your reputation precedes you,” the captain said, not flinching.

  “I pray that I do it justice,” Entreri replied with a sarcastic bow.

  “Indeed,” said the captain. He motioned to the fallen man. “Might his friends see to his aid?”

  “He is already dead,” Entreri assured the captain. “If any of his friends truly wish to go to him, let them, too, step forward.”

  “They are scared,” the captain explained. “They have witnessed many terrible diseases in ports up and down the Sword Coast.”

  “Disease?” Entreri echoed.

  “Your companion let on to it,” said the captain.

  A smile widened across Entreri’s face as it all came clear to him. Lightning quick, he tore the cloak from Regis and caught the halfling’s bare wrist, pulling him up off his feet and shooting a glare into the halfling’s terror-filled eyes that promised a slow and painful death. Immediately Entreri noticed the scars on Regis’s arm.

  “Burns?” He gawked.

  “Aye, that’s how the little one says it happens,” Redeye shouted, sinking back behind his captain when Entreri’s glare settled upon him. “Burns from the inside, it does!”

  “Burns from a candle, more likely,” Entreri retorted. “Inspect the wounds for yourself,” he said to the captain. “There is no disease here, just the desperate tricks of a cornered thief.” He dropped Regis to the deck with a thud.

  Regis lay very still, not even daring to breathe. The situation had not evolved quite as he had hoped.

  “Toss ’em over!” cried an anonymous voice.

  “Not fer chancin’!” yelled another

  “How many do you need to sail your ship?” Entreri asked the captain. “How many can you afford to lose?”

  The captain, having seen the assassin in action and knowing the man’s reputation, did not for a moment consider the simple questions as idle threats. Furthermore, the stare Entreri now fixed upon him told him without doubt that he would be the initial target if his crew moved against the assassin.

  “I will trust in your word,” he said commandingly, silencing the grumbles of his nervous crew. “No need
to inspect the wounds but disease or no, our deal is ended.” He looked pointedly to his dead crewman.

  “I do not mean to swim to Calimport,” Entreri said in a hiss.

  “Indeed,” replied the captain. “We put in at Baldur’s Gate in two days. You shall find other passage there.”

  “And you shall repay me,” Entreri said calmly, “every gold piece.”

  The captain drew another long drag from his pipe. This was not a battle he would choose to fight. “Indeed,” he said with equal calm. He turned toward his cabin and ordered his crew back to their stations as he went.

  He remembered the lazy summer days on the banks of Maer Dualdon in Icewind Dale. How many hours he had spent there, fishing for the elusive knucklehead trout, or just basking in the rare warmth of Icewind Dale’s summer sun. Looking back on his years in Ten-Towns, Regis could hardly believe the course fate had laid out for him.

  He thought he had found his niche, a comfortable existence— more comfortable still with the aid of the stolen ruby pendant—in a lucrative career as a scrimshander, carving the ivorylike bone of the knucklehead into marvelous little trinkets. But then came that fateful day, when Artemis Entreri showed up in Bryn Shander, the town Regis had come to call home, and sent the halfling scampering down the road to adventure with his friends.

  But even Drizzt, Bruenor, Catti-brie, and Wulfgar had not been able to protect him from Entreri.

  The memories provided small comfort to him as several grueling hours of solitude in the locked cabin slipped by. Regis would have liked to hide away in pleasant recollections of his past, but invariably his thoughts led back to the awful present, and he found himself wondering how he would be punished for his failed deception. Entreri had been composed, even amused, after the incident on the deck, leading Regis down to the cabin and then disappearing without a word.

  Too composed, Regis thought.

  But that was part of the assassin’s mystique. No man knew Artemis Entreri well enough to call him friend, and no enemy could figure the man out well enough to gain an even footing against him.

  Regis shrank back against the wall when Entreri at last arrived, sweeping through the door and over to the room’s table without so much as a sidelong glance at the halfling. The assassin sat, brushing back his ink-black hair and eyeing the single candle burning on the table.

  “A candle,” he muttered, obviously amused. He looked at Regis. “You have a trick or two, halfling,” he chuckled.

  Regis was not smiling. No sudden warmth had come into Entreri’s heart, he knew, and he’d be damned if he let the assassin’s jovial facade take his guard down.

  “A worthy ploy,” Entreri continued. “And effective. It may take us a tenday to gain passage south from Baldur’s Gate. An extra tenday for your friends to close the distance. I had not expected you to be so daring.”

  The smile left his face suddenly, and his tone was noticeably more grim when he added, “I did not believe that you would be so ready to suffer the consequences.”

  Regis cocked his head to study the man’s every movement. “Here it comes,” he whispered under his breath.

  “Of course there are consequences, little fool. I commend your attempt—I hope you will give me more excitement on this tedious journey! But I cannot belay punishment. Doing so would take the dare, and thus the excitement, out of your trickery.”

  He slipped up from his seat and started around the table. Regis sublimated his scream and closed his eyes; he knew that he had no escape.

  The last thing he saw was the jeweled dagger turning over slowly in the assassin’s hand.

  They made the River Chionthar the next afternoon and bucked the currents with a strong sea breeze filling their sails. By nightfall, the upper tiers of the city of Baldur’s Gate lined the eastern horizon, and when the last hints of daylight disappeared from the sky, the lights of the great port marked their course as a beacon. But the city did not allow access to the docks after sunset, and the ship dropped anchor a half-mile out.

  Regis, finding sleep impossible, heard Entreri stir much later that night. The halfling shut his eyes tightly and forced himself into a rhythm of slow, heavy breathing. He had no idea of Entreri’s intent, but whatever the assassin was about, Regis didn’t want him even suspecting that he was awake.

  Entreri didn’t give him a second thought. As silent as a cat—as silent as death—the assassin slipped through the cabin door. Twenty-five crewmen manned the ship, but after the long day’s sail, and with Baldur’s Gate awaiting the first light of dawn, only four of them would likely be awake.

  The assassin slipped through the crew’s barracks, following the light of a single candle at the rear of the ship. In the galley, the cook busily prepared the morning’s breakfast of thick soup in a huge cauldron. Singing as he always did when he was at work, the cook paid no attention to his surroundings. But even if he had been quiet and alert, he probably would not have heard the slight footfalls behind him.

  He died with his face in the soup.

  Entreri moved back through the barracks, where twenty more died without a sound. Then he went up to the deck.

  The moon hung full in the sky that night, but even a sliver of a shadow was sufficient for the skilled assassin, and Entreri knew well the routines of the watch. He had spent many nights studying the movements of the lookouts, preparing himself, as always, for the worst possible scenario. Timing the steps of the two watchmen on deck, he slithered up the mainmast, his jeweled dagger in his teeth.

  An easy spring of his taut muscles brought him into the crow’s nest.

  Then there were two.

  Back down on deck, Entreri moved calmly and openly to the rail. “A ship!” he called, pointing into the gloom. “Closing on us!”

  Instinctively the two remaining watchmen rushed to the assassin’s side and strained their eyes to see the peril in the dark —until the flash of a dagger told them of the deception.

  Only the captain remained.

  Entreri could easily have picked the lock on his cabin door and killed the man in his sleep, but the assassin wanted a more dramatic ending to his work; he wanted the captain to fully understand the doom that had befallen his ship that night. Entreri moved to the door, which opened onto the deck, and took out his tools and a length of fine wire.

  A few minutes later, he was back at his own cabin, rousing Regis. “One sound, and I’ll take your tongue,” he warned the halfling.

  Regis now understood what was happening. If the crew got to the docks at Baldur’s Gate, they would no doubt spread the rumors of the deadly killer and his “diseased” friend, making Entreri’s search for passage south impossible to fulfill.

  The assassin wouldn’t allow that at any cost, and Regis could not help but feel responsible for the carnage that night.

  He moved quietly, helplessly, beside Entreri through the barracks, noting the absence of snores, and the quiet of the galley beyond. Surely the dawn was approaching; surely the cook would be hard at work preparing the morning meal. But no singing floated through the half-closed galley door.

  The ship had stocked enough oil in Waterdeep to last the entire journey to Calimport, and kegs of the stuff still remained in the hold. Entreri pulled open the trap door and hoisted out two of the heavy barrels. He broke the seal on one and kicked it into a roll through the barracks, spewing oil as it went. Then he carried the other—and half-carried Regis, who was limp with fear and revulsion—topside, spreading the oil out more quietly and concentrating the spill in a tight arc around the captain’s door.

  “Get in,” he told Regis, indicating the single rowboat hanging in a jigger off the starboard side of the ship. “And carry this.” He handed the halfling a tiny pouch.

  Bile rose in Regis’s throat when he thought of what was inside the bag, but he took the pouch anyway and held it securely, knowing that if he lost it, Entreri would only get another.

  The assassin sprang lightly across the deck, preparing a torch as he went. Regis wat
ched him in horror, shuddering at the cold appearance of his shadowed face as he tossed the torch down the ladder to the oil-soaked barracks. Grimly satisfied as the flames roared to life, Entreri raced back across the deck to the captain’s door.

  “Good-bye!” was the only explanation he offered as he banged on the door. Two strides took him to the rowboat.

  The captain leaped from his bed, fighting to orient himself. The ship was strangely calm, except for a telltale crackle and a wisp of smoke that slipped up through the floorboards.

  Sword in hand, the captain threw the bolt back and pulled open the door. He looked around desperately and called for his crew. The flames had not reached the deck yet, but it was obvious to him—and should have been to his lookouts—that the ship was on fire. Beginning to suspect the awful truth, the captain rushed out, clad only in his nightshift.

  He felt the tug of the trip-wire, then grimaced in further understanding as the wire noose bit deeply into his bare ankle. He sprawled face down, his sword dropping out in front of him. An aroma filled his nostrils, and he fully realized the deadly implications of the slick fluid drenching his nightshirt. He stretched out for his sword’s hilt and clawed futilelv at the wooden deck until his fingers bled.

  A lick of flame jumped through the floorboards.

  Sounds rolled eerily across the open expanse of water, especially in the empty dark of night. One sound filled the ears of Entreri and Regis as the assassin pulled the little rowboat against the currents of the Chionthar. It even cut through the din of the taverns lining the docks of Baldur’s Gate, a half-mile away.

  As if enhanced by the unspoken cries of protest of the dead crew—and by the dying ship itself—a singular, agonized voice screamed for all of them.

  Then there was only the crackle of fire.