room.'
'Back to your searching, then,' Jarlaxle said.
'But are we not to visit a guild this very night?' Rai'gy asked.
'You will not be needed,' Jarlaxle replied. 'Minor guilds alone will meet this night.'
'Even minor guilds would be wise to employ wizards,' the wizard-priest remarked.
'The wizard of this one is a friend of Entreri,' Jarlaxle explained with a laugh that made it sound as if it were all too easy. 'And the other guild is naught but halflings, hardly versed in the ways of magic. Tomorrow night you will be needed, perhaps. This night continue your examination of Drizzt Do'Urden. In the end he will likely prove the most important cog of all.'
'Because of the magical item?' Kimmuriel asked.
'Because of Entreri's lack of interest,' Jarlaxle replied.
The wizard-priest shook his head. 'We offer him power and riches beyond his comprehension,' he said. 'And yet he leads us onward as if he were going into hopeless battle against the Spider Queen herself.'
'He cannot appreciate the power or the riches until he has resolved an inner conflict,' explained Jarlaxle, whose greatest gift of all was the ability to get into the minds of enemies and friends alike, and not with prying powers, such as Kimmuriel Oblodra might use, but with simple empathy and understanding. 'But fear not his present lack of motivation. I know Artemis Entreri well enough to understand that he will prove more than effective whether his heart is in the fight or not. As humans go I have never met one more dangerous or more devious.'
'A pity his skin is so light,' Kimmuriel remarked.
Jarlaxle only smiled. He knew well enough that if Artemis
Entreri had been born drow in Menzoberranzan the man would have been among the greatest of weapon masters, or perhaps he would have even exceeded that claim. Perhaps he would have been a rival to Jarlaxle for control of Bregan D'aerthe.
'We will speak in the comfortable darkness of the tunnels when the shining hellfire rises into the too-high sky,' he said to Rai'gy. 'Have more answers for me.'
'Fare well with the guilds,' Rai'gy answered, and with a bow he turned and left.
Jarlaxle turned to Kimmuriel and nodded. It was time to go hunting.
With their cherubic faces, halflings were regarded by the other races as creatures with large eyes, but how much wider those eyes became for the four in the room with Dwahvel when a magical portal opened right before them (despite the usual precautions against such magical intrusion), and Artemis Entreri stepped into the room. The assassin cut an impressive figure in a layered black coat and a black bolero, banded about the base of its riser in blacker silk.
Entreri assumed a strong, hands-on-hips pose just as Kimmuriel had taught him, holding steady against the waves of disorientation that always accompanied such psionic dimensional travel.
Behind him, in the chamber on the other side of the door, a room lightless save that spilling in through the gate from Dwahvel's chamber, huddled a few dark shapes. When one of the halfling soldiers moved to meet the intruder, one of those dark shapes shifted slightly, and the halfling, with hardly a squeak, toppled to the floor.
'He is sleeping and otherwise unharmed,' Entreri quickly explained, not wanting a fight with the others, who were scrambling about for weapons. 'I did not come here for a fight, I assure you, but I can leave all of you dead in my wake if you insist upon one.'
'You could have used the front door,' Dwahvel, the only one appearing unshaken, remarked dryly.
'I did not wish to be seen entering your establishment,' the assassin, fully oriented once more, explained. 'For your protection.'
'And what form of entrance is this?' Dwahvel asked. 'Magical and unbidden, yet none of my wards-and I paid well for them, I assure you-offered resistance.'
'No magic that will concern you,' Entreri replied, 'but that will surely concern my enemies. Know that I did not return to Calimport to lurk in shadows at the bidding of others. I have traveled the Realms extensively and have brought back with me that which I have learned.'
'So Artemis Entreri returns as the conqueror,' Dwahvel remarked. Beside her the soldiers bristled, but Dwahvel did well to hold them in check. Now that Entreri was among them, to fight him would cost her dearly, she realized.
Very dearly.
'Perhaps,' Entreri conceded. 'We shall see how it goes.'
'It will take more than a display of teleportation to
convince me to throw the weight of my guild behind you,' Dwahvel said calmly. 'To choose wrongly in such a war would prove fatal.'
'I do not wish you to choose at all,' Entreri assured her.
Dwahvel eyed him suspiciously, then turned to each of her trusted guards. They, too, wore doubting expressions.
'Then why bother to come to me?' she asked.
'To inform you that a war is about to begin,' Entreri answered. 'I owe you that much, at least.'
'And perhaps you wish for me to open wide my ears that you may learn how goes the fight,' the sly halfling reasoned.
'As you wish,' Entreri replied. 'When this is finished, and I have found control, I will not forget all that you have already done for me.'
'And if you lose?'
Entreri laughed. 'Be wary,' he said. 'And, for your health, Dwahvel Tiggerwillies, be neutral. I owe you and see our friendship as to the benefit of both, but if I learn that you betray me by word or by deed, I will bring your house down around you.' With that, he gave a polite bow, a tip of the black bolero and slipped back through the portal.
One globe of darkness after another filled Dwahvel's chamber, forcing her and the three standing soldiers to crawl about helplessly until one found the normal exit and called the others to him.
Finally the darkness abated, and the halflings dared to re-enter, to find their sleeping companion snoring contentedly, and then to find, upon searching the body, a small dart stuck into his shoulder.
'Entreri has friends,' one of them remarked.
Dwahvel merely nodded, not surprised and glad indeed at that moment that she had previously chosen to help the outcast assassin. He was not a man Dwahvel Tiggerwillies wished for an enemy.
'Ah, but you make my life so dangerous,' LaValle said with an exaggerated sigh when Entreri, unannounced and uninvited, walked from thin air, it seemed, into LaValle's private room.
'Well done-on your escape from Kadran Gordeon, I mean,' LaValle went on when Entreri didn't immediately respond. The wizard was trying hard to appear collected. Hadn't Entreri slipped into his guarded room twice before, after all? But this time— and the assassin recognized it splayed on LaValle's face-he had truly surprised the wizard. Bodeau had sharpened up the defenses of his guild house amazingly well against both magical and physical intrusion. As much as he respected Entreri, LaValle had obviously not expected the assassin to get through so easily.
'Not so difficult a task, I assure you,' the assassin replied, keeping his voice steady so that his words sounded as simple fact and not a boast. 'I have traveled the world, and under the world and have witnessed powers very different from anything experienced in Calimport. Powers that will
bring me that which I desire.'
LaValle sat on an old and comfortable chair, planting one elbow on the worn arm and dropping his head sidelong against his open palm. What was it about this man, he wondered, that so mocked all the ordinary trappings of power? He looked all around at his room, at the many carved statues, gargoyles, and exotic birds, at the assortment of finely carved staves, some magical, some not, at the three skulls grinning from the cubbies atop his desk, at the crystal ball set upon the small table across the way. These were his items of power, items gained through a lifetime of work, items that he could use to destroy or at least to defend against, any single man he had ever met.
Except for one. What was it about this one? The way he stood? The way he moved? The simple aura of power that surrounded him, as tangible as the gray cloak and black bolero he now wore?
