her hands behind her so that her robes rode high on her shapely legs.
Drizzt winced as though slapped. The last thing Khareesa had on her mind was speaking. He couldn't deny that she was beautiful, with sculpted features, a thick mane of well-groomed hair, and a finely toned body. But in his years among the drow, Drizzt Do'Urden had learned to look beyond physical beauty and physical attraction. Drizzt did not separate the physical from the emotional. He was a superb fighter because he fought with his heart and would no sooner battle merely for the sake of battle than he would mate for the sake of the physical act.
'Later,' Khareesa said once more, glancing back over her delicate, perfectly squared shoulder.
'When worms eat your bones,' Drizzt whispered through a phony smile. For some reason, he thought of Catti-brie then, and the warmth of that image pushed away the chill of this hungry drow female.
Blingdenstone charmed Catti-brie, despite her obvious predicament and the fact that the svirfnebli did not treat her as a long-lost friend. Stripped of her weapons, armor, jewelry, and even her boots, she was taken into the city in just her basic clothes. The gnome escorts did not abuse her, but neither were they gentle. They tightly clasped her arms at the elbows and hoisted her and pulled her around the narrow, rocky ways of the city's defensible anterooms.
When they had taken the circlet from the woman's head, the gnomes had easily come to guess its function, and as soon as the anterooms were past, they gave the precious item back to Catti-brie. Drizzt had told her of this place, of the deep gnomes' natural blending with their environment, but she had never pictured that the drow's words would ring so true. Dwarves were miners, the best in all the world, but the deep gnomes went beyond that description. They were part of the rock, it seemed, burrowing creatures wholly at one with the stone. Their houses could have been the randomly rumbled boulders of a long-past volcanic eruption, their corridors, the winding ways of an ancient river.
A hundred sets of eyes followed Catti-brie's every step as she was led across the city proper. She realized that she was probably the first human the svirfnebli had ever seen, and she did not mind the attention, for she was no less enchanted by the svirfnebli. Their features, seeming so gray and dour out in the wild tunnels, appeared softer now, gentler. She wondered what a smile would look like on the face of a svirfneblin, and she wanted to see it. These were Drizzt's friends, she kept reminding herself, and she took comfort in the drow ranger's judgment.
She was brought into a small, round room. A guard motioned for her to sit in one of three stone chairs. Catti-brie did so hesitantly, for she recalled a tale that Drizzt had told her, of a svirfneblin chair that had magically shackled him and held him fast.
No such thing happened now, though, and a moment later, a very unusual deep gnome entered the room, dangling the magical locket with Drizzt's picture from the end of a hand that was crafted into a mithril pickaxe.
'Belwar,' Catti-brie stated, for there could not be two gnomes who so perfectly fit Drizzt's description of his dear svirfneblin friend.
The Most Honored Burrow Warden stopped in his tracks and eyed the woman suspiciously, obviously caught off guard by her recognition.
'Drizzt… Belwar,' Catti-brie said, again wrapping her arms about her, as though hugging someone. She pointed to herself and said, 'Catti-brie. . Drizzt,' and repeated the motion.
They could not speak two words of each other's language, but, in a short time, using hand and body language, Catti-brie had won over the burrow warden, had even explained to him that she was searching for Drizzt.
She did not like the grave face Belwar wore at that remark, and his explanation, a single common name, the name of a drow city, was not reassuring; Drizzt had gone into Menzoberranzan.
She was given a meal of cooked mushrooms and other plantlike growths that she did not recognize, then she was given back her items, including the locket and the onyx panther, but not the magical mask.
She then was left alone, for hours it seemed, sitting in the starlit darkness, silently blessing Alustriel for her precious gift and thinking how perfectly miserable the trek would have been without the Cat's Eye. She would not even have seen Belwar to recognize him!
Her thoughts were still on Belwar when he at last returned, along with two other gnomes wearing long, soft robes, very unlike the rough, leatherlike, metal-plated outfits typical of the race. Catti-brie figured that these two must be important, perhaps councilors.
'Firble,' Belwar explained, pointing to one of the svirfnebli, one that did not look happy.
Catti-brie figured out why a moment later, when Belwar pointed to her, then to Firble, then to the door and spoke a long sentence, the only word of which Catti-brie caught was, 'Menzoberranzan.'
Firble motioned for her to follow him, apparently anxious to be on their way, and Catti-brie, though she would have loved to stay in Blingdenstone and learn more about the intriguing svirfnebli, thoroughly agreed. Drizzt was too far ahead of her already. She rose from the chair and started out, but was caught at the arm by Belwar's pickaxe hand and turned about to face the burrow warden.
He pulled the magical mask from his belt and lifted it to her. 'Drizzt,' he said, pointing his hammer hand at her face. 'Drizzt.'
Catti-brie nodded, understanding that the burrow warden thought it would be wise of her to walk as a drow. She turned to leave, but, on a sudden impulse, turned back and gave Belwar a peck on the cheek. Smiling appreciatively, the young woman walked from the house, and, with Firble leading the way, strode from Blingdenstone.
'How did you get Firble to agree to take her into the drow city?' the remaining gnome councilor asked the burrow warden when they were alone.
'Bivrip!' Belwar bellowed. He clapped his mithril hands together and immediately sparks and arcing lines of energy ran along his crafted hands. He put a wry look on the councilor, who merely laughed in a squeaky svirfneblin way. Poor Firble.
Drizzt was glad to escort a group of orcs from the isle back to the mainland, if only so that he could avoid the eager Khareesa. She watched him go from the shore, her expression caught somewhere between a pout and anticipation, as if to say that Drizzt might have escaped, but only for now.
With the isle behind him, Drizzt put all thoughts of Khareesa from his mind. His task, and dangers, lay ahead, in the city proper, and he honestly did not know where he would begin looking for answers. He feared that it would all come down to his surrender, that he would have to give himself over to protect the friends that he had left behind.
He thought of Zak'nafein, his father and friend, who had been sacrificed to the evil Spider Queen in his stead. He thought of Wulfgar, his lost friend, and memories of the young barbarian strengthened Drizzt's resolve.
He offered no explanation to the surprised slavers awaiting the craft on the beach. His expression alone told them not to question him as he walked past their encampment, away from Donigarten.
Soon he moved easily, warily, along the winding ways of Menzoberranzan. He passed close by several dark elves, under the more-than-curious eyes of dozens of house guards, standing watch from their parapets along the sides of hollowed stalactites. Drizzt carried with him an irrational notion that he might be recognized, and had to tell himself many times that he had been out of Menzoberranzan for more than thirty years, that Drizzt Do'Urden, even House Do'Urden, was now part of Menzoberranzan's history.
But, if that were true, why was he here, in this place where he did not want to be?
Drizzt wished that he had a piwafwi, the black cloak typical of drow outerwear. His forest-green cloak, thick and warm, was more suited to the environs of the surface world and might connect him, in the eyes of onlookers, to that rarely seen place. He kept the hood up, the cowl low, and pushed on. This would be one of many excursions into the city proper, he believed, as he familiarized himself once more with the winding avenues and the dark ways.
The flicker of light around a bend surprised him, stung his heat-seeing eyes, and he moved tightly against the wall of a stalagmite, one hand under his cloak, grasping Twinkle's hilt.
A group of four drow males came around the bend, talking easily, paying Drizzt no heed. They wore the symbol of House Baenre, Drizzt noted as his vision shifted back to the normal spectrum, and one of them carried a torch!
Little that Drizzt had witnessed in all his life seemed so out of place to him. Why? he asked himself repeatedly, and he felt that this all was somehow related to him. Were the drow preparing an offensive against some surface location?
