they should save their light sources.
They went on, in the quiet, in the dark, with only the soft glow of Twinkle to mark their passing. To the drow it seemed like old times, traversing the Underdark with his feline companion, his senses heightened in the knowledge that danger might well lurk around any bend.
The disk is warm?' Jarlaxle asked, seeing Vierna's pleasurable expression as she rubbed her delicate fingers across the metallic surface. She sat atop the drider, her mount for the journey, Dinin's bloated face expressionless and unblinking.
'My brother is not far,' the priestess replied, her eyes closed in concentration.
The mercenary leaned against the wall, peering down the long tunnel filled with flattened goblin corpses. All about him dark forms, his quiet band of killers, slipped silently about their way.
'Can we know that Drizzt is here at all?' the mercenary dared to ask, though he was not anxious to dispel volatile Vierna's anticipation-especially not with the priestess sitting atop so poignant a reminder of her wrath.
'He is here,' Vierna replied calmly.
'And you are sure our friend will not kill him before we find him?' the mercenary asked.
'We can trust this ally,' Vierna replied calmly, her tone a relief to the edgy mercenary leader. 'Lloth has assured me.'
So ends any debate, Jarlaxle told himself, though he hardly felt secure in trusting any human, particularly the wicked one to whom Vierna had led him. He looked back to the tunnel, back to the shifting forms as the mercenary band cautiously made its way.
What Jarlaxle did trust was his soldiers, drow-for-drow as fine a force as any in the dark elf world. If Drizzt Do'Urden was indeed wandering about these tunnels, the skilled killers of Bregan D'aerthe would get him.
'Should I dispatch the Baenre force?' the mercenary asked Vierna.
Vierna considered the words for a moment, then shook her head, her indecision revealing to Jarlaxle that she was not as certain of her brother's whereabouts as she claimed. 'Keep them close a while longer,' she instructed. 'When we have found my brother, they will serve to cover our departure.'
Jarlaxle was all too glad to comply. Even if Drizzt was down here, as Vierna believed, they did not know how many of his friends might have accompanied him. With fifty drow soldiers about them, the mercenary was not too worried.
He did wonder, though, how Triel Baenre might welcome the news that her soldiers, even if they were only males, had been used as no more than fodder.
'These tunnels are endless,' Regis moaned after two more hours of unremarkable twists and turns in the goblin-enhanced natural passageways. Drizzt allowed a break for supper-even lit a torch-and the two friends sat in a small natural chamber on a flat rock, surrounded by leering stalactites and monsterlike mounds of piled stone.
Drizzt understood just how unintentionally perceptive the half ling's words might prove. They were far underground, several miles, and the caverns continued aimlessly, connecting chambers large and small and meeting with dozens of side passages. Regis had been in the dwarven mines before, but he had never entered that next lower realm, the dreaded Underdark, wherein lived the drow elves, wherein Drizzt Do'Urden had been born.
The stifling air and inevitable realizations of thousands of tons of rock over his head inevitably led the dark elf to thoughts of his past life, of the days when he had lived in Menzoberranzan, or walked with Guenhwyvar in the seemingly endless tunnels of Toril's subterranean world.
'We'll get lost, just like the dwarves,' Regis grumbled, munching a biscuit. He took tiny bites and chewed them a thousand times to savor each precious crumb.
Drizzt's smile didn't seem to comfort him, but the ranger was confident that he and, more particularly, Guenhwyvar knew exactly where they were, making a systematic circuit with the chamber of the main goblin battle as their hub. He pointed behind Regis, his motion prompting the halfling to half-turn in his rocky seat.
'If we went back through that tunnel and branched at the first right-hand passage, we would come, in a matter of minutes, to the large chamber where Bruenor defeated the goblins,' Drizzt explained. 'We were not so far from this spot when we met Cobble.'
'Seems like farther, that's all,' Regis mumbled under his breath.
Drizzt did not press the point, glad to have Regis along, even if the halfling was in a particularly grumpy mood. Drizzt hadn't seen much of Regis in the weeks since he had returned to Mithril Hall; no one had, actually, except perhaps the dwarven cooking staff in the communal dining halls.
'Why have you returned?' Drizzt asked suddenly, his question making Regis choke on a piece of biscuit. The halfling stared at him incredulously.
'We are glad to have you back,' Drizzt continued, clarifying the intentions of his rather blunt question. 'And certainly all of us are hoping you will stay here for a long time to come. But, why, my friend?'
'The wedding…' Regis stammered.
'A fine reason, but hardly the only one,' Drizzt replied with a knowing smile. 'When last we saw you, you were a guildmaster and all of Calimport was yours for the taking.'
Regis looked away, ran his fingers through his curly brown hair, fiddled with several rings, and slipped his hand down to tug at his one dangling earring.
'That is the life the Regis I know always desired,' Drizzt remarked.
'Then maybe you really didn't understand Regis,' the halfling replied.
'Perhaps,' Drizzt admitted, 'but there is more to it than that. I know you well enough to understand that you would go to great lengths to avoid a fight. Yet, when the goblin battle came, you remained beside me.'
'Where safer than with Drizzt Do'Urden?'
'In the higher complex, in the dining halls,' the drow replied without hesitation. Drizzt's smile was one of friendship; the luster in his lavender eyes showed no animosity for the halfling, whatever falsehoods Regis might be playing. 'Whatever the reason you have come, be sure that we are all glad you are here,' Drizzt said honestly. 'Bruenor more than any, perhaps. But if you have found some trouble, some danger, you would be well advised to state it openly, that we might battle it together. We are your friends and will stand beside you, without blame, against whatever odds we are offered. By my experience, those odds are always better when I know the enemy.'
'I lost the guild,' Regis admitted, 'just two weeks after you left Calimport.'
The news did not surprise the drow.
'Artemis Entreri,' Regis said grimly, lifting his cherubic face to stare at Drizzt directly, studying the drow's every movement.
'Entreri took the guild?' Drizzt asked.
Regis nodded. 'He didn't have such a hard time of that. His network reached to my most trusted colleagues.'
'You should have expected as much from the assassin,' Drizzt replied, and he gave a small laugh, which made Regis's eyes widen with apparent surprise.
'You find this funny?'
'The guild is better in Entreri's hands,' Drizzt replied, to the halfling's continued surprise. 'He is suited for the double-dealing ways of miserable Calimport.'
'I thought you…' Regis began. 'I mean, don't you want to go and…'
'Kill Entreri?' Drizzt asked with a soft chuckle. 'My battle with the assassin is ended,' he added when Regis's eager nod confirmed his guess.
'Entreri might not think so,' Regis said grimly.
Drizzt shrugged-and noticed that his casual attitude seemed to bother the halfling more than a little. 'As long as Entreri remains in the southland, he is of no concern to me.' Drizzt knew that Regis didn't expect Entreri to remain in the south. Perhaps that was why Regis would not stay in the upper levels during the goblin fight, Drizzt thought. Perhaps Regis feared that Entreri might sneak into Mithril Hall. If the assassin found both Drizzt and Regis, he probably would go after Drizzt first.
'You hurt him, you know,' Regis went on, 'in your fight, I mean. He's not the type to forgive something like that.'
Drizzt's look became suddenly grave; Regis shifted back, putting more distance between himself and the fires in the drow's lavender eyes. 'Do you believe he has followed you north?' Drizzt asked bluntly.
