Streams Of Silver (18 page)

But Drizzt had one more message to send before he would turn his back on the riders. In one blinding movement, he spun the bow from his back, pulled an arrow from his quiver, and sent it whistling through the air. It knocked into the would-be bowman’s leather cap, parting his hair down the middle, and stuck in a tree immediately behind, its shaft quivering a clear warning.

“Your misguided insults, I accept, even expect,” Drizzt explained to the horrified horsemen. “But I’ll brook no attempts to injure my friends, and I will defend myself. Be warned, and only once warned: if you make another move against us, you will die.” He turned abruptly and moved down to the bridge without looking back.

The stunned riders certainly had no intention of hindering the drow’s party any further. The would-be bowman hadn’t even looked for his cap.

Drizzt smiled at the irony of his inability to clear himself of the legends of his heritage. Though he was shunned and threatened on the one hand, the mysterious aura surrounding the black elves also gave him a bluff powerful enough to dissuade most potential enemies.

Regis joined them at the bridge, bouncing a small rock in his hand. “Had them lined up,” he explained of his impromptu weapon. He flicked the stone into the river. “If it began, I would have had the first shot.”

“If it began,” Bruenor corrected, “ye’d have soiled the hole ye hid in!”

Wulfgar considered the rider’s warning of their path. “Trollmoors,” he echoed somberly, looking up the slope across the way to the blasted land before them. Harkle had told them of the place. The burned-out land and bottomless bogs. The trolls and even worse horrors that had no names.

“Save us a day and more!” Bruerior repeated stubbornly.

Wulfgar wasn’t convinced.

“You are dismissed,” Dendybar told the specter.

As the flames reformed in the brazier, stripping him of his material form, Morkai considered this second meeting. How
often would Dendybar be calling upon him? he wondered. The mottled wizard had not yet fully recovered from their last encounter, but had dared to summon him again so soon. Dendybar’s business with the dwarf’s party must be urgent indeed! That assumption only made Morkai despise his role as the mottled wizard’s spy even more.

Alone in the room again, Dendybar stretched out from his meditative position and grinned wickedly as he considered the image Morkai had shown him. The companions had lost their mounts and were marching into the foulest area in all the North. Another day or so would put his own party, flying on the hooves of his magical steeds, even with them, though thirty miles to the north.

Sydney would get to Silverymoon long before the drow.

he ride from Luskan was swift indeed. Entreri and his cohorts appeared to any curious onlookers as no more than a shimmering blur in the night wind. The magical mounts left no trail of their passing, and no living creature could have overtaken them. The golem, as always, lumbered tirelessly behind with great stiff-legged strides.

So smooth and easy were the seats atop Dendybar’s conjured steeds that the party was able to keep up its run past the dawn and throughout the entire next day with only short rests for food. Thus, when they set their camp after the sunset of the first full day on the road, they had already put the crags behind them.

Catti-brie fought an inner battle that first day. She had no doubt that Entreri and the new alliance would overtake Bruenor. As the situation stood now, Catti-brie would be only a detriment to her friends, a pawn for Entreri to play at his convenience.

She could do little to remedy the problem, unless she found
some way to diminish, if not overcome, the grip of terror that the assassin held on her. That first day she spent in concentration, blocking out her surroundings as much as she could and searching her inner spirit for the strength and courage she would need.

Bruenor had given her many tools over the years to wage such a battle, skills of discipline and self-confidence that had seen her through many difficult situations. On the second day of the ride, then, more confident and comfortable with her situation, Catti-brie was able to focus on her captors. Most interesting were the glares that Jierdan and Entreri shot each other. The proud soldier had obviously not forgotten the humiliation he had suffered the night of their first meeting on the field outside of Luskan. Entreri, keenly aware of the grudge, even fueling it in his willingness to bring the issue to confrontation, kept an untrusting eye on the man.

This growing rivalry may prove to be her most promising— perhaps her only—hope of escaping, Catti-brie thought. She conceded that Bok was an indestructible, mindless destroying machine, beyond any manipulation she might try to lay upon it, and she learned quickly that Sydney offered nothing.

Catti-brie had tried to engage the young mage in conversation that second day, but Sydney’s focus was too narrow for any diversions. She would be neither side-tracked nor persuaded from her obsession in any way. She didn’t even acknowledge Catti-brie’s greeting when they sat down for their midday meal. And when Catti-brie pestered her further, Sydney instructed Entreri to “keep the whore away.”

Even in the failed attempt, though, the aloof mage had aided Catti-brie in a way that neither of them could foresee. Sydney’s open contempt and insults came as a slap in Catti-brie’s face and instilled in her another tool that would help to overcome the paralysis of her terror: anger.

They passed the halfway point of their journey on the second day, the landscape rolling surrealistically by them as they sped along, and camped in the small hills northeast of Nesmé, with the city of Luskan now fully two hundred miles behind them.

Campfires twinkled in the distance, a patrol from Nesmé, Sydney theorized.

“We should go there and learn what we may,” Entreri suggested, anxious for news of his target.

“You and I,” Sydney agreed. “We can get there and back before half the night is through.”

Entreri looked at Catti-brie. “What of her?” he asked the mage. “I would not leave her with Jierdan.”

“You think that the soldier would take advantage of the girl?” Sydney replied. “I assure you that he is honorable.”

“That is not my concern,” Entreri smirked. “I fear not for the daughter of Bruenor Battlehammer. She would dispose of your honorable soldier and be gone into the night before we ever returned.”

Catti-brie didn’t welcome the compliment. She understood that Entreri’s comment was more of an insult to Jierdan, who was off gathering firewood, than any recognition of her own prowess, but the assassin’s unexpected respect for her would make her task doubly difficult. She didn’t want Entreri thinking of her as dangerous, even resourceful, for that would keep him too alert for her to move.

Sydney looked to Bok. “I go,” she told the golem, purposely loud enough for Catti-brie to easily hear. “If the prisoner tries to flee, run her down and kill her!” She shot Entreri an evil grin. “Are you content?”

He returned her smile and swung his arm out in the direction of the distant camp.

Jierdan returned then, and Sydney told him of their plans. The soldier didn’t seem overjoyed to have Sydney and Entreri
running off together, though he said nothing to dissuade the mage. Catti-brie watched him closely and knew the truth. Being left alone with her and the golem didn’t bother him, she surmised, but he feared any budding friendship between his two road-mates. Catti-brie understood and even expected this, for Jierdan was in the weakest position of the three—subservient to Sydney and afraid of Entreri. An alliance between those two, perhaps even a pact excluding Dendybar and the Hosttower altogether, would at the least put him out, and more probably spell his end.

“Suren the nature of their dark business works against them,” Catti-brie whispered as Sydney and Entreri left the camp, speaking the words aloud to reinforce her growing confidence.

“I could help ye with that,” she offered to Jierdan as he worked to complete the campsite.

The soldier glared at her. “Help?” he scoffed. “I should make you do all of it by yourself.”

“Yer anger is known to me,” Catti-brie countered sympathetically. “I meself have suffered at Entreri’s foul hands.”

Her pity enraged the proud soldier. He rushed at her threateningly, but she held her composure and did not flinch. “This work is below yer station.”

Jierdan stopped suddenly, his anger diffused by his intrigue at the compliment. An obvious ploy, but to Jierdan’s wounded ego, the young woman’s respect came as too welcome to be ignored.

“What could you know of my station?” he asked.

“I know ye are a soldier of Luskan,” Catti-brie replied. “Of a group that’s feared throughout all the northland. Ye should not do the grovel work while the mage and the shadow-chaser are off playing in the night.”

“You’re making trouble!” Jierdan growled, but he paused to
consider the point. “You set the camp,” he ordered at length, regaining a measure of his own self-respect by displaying his superiority over her. Catti-brie didn’t mind, though. She went about the work at once, playing her subservient role without complaint. A plan began to take definite shape in her mind now, and this phase demanded that she make an ally among her enemies, or at least put herself in a position to plant the seeds of jealousy in Jierdan’s mind.

She listened, satisfied, as the soldier moved away, muttering under his breath.

Before Entreri and Sydney even got close enough for a good view of the encampment, ritualistic chanting told them that this was no caravan from Nesmé. They inched in more cautiously to confirm their suspicions.

Long-haired barbarians, dark and tall, and dressed in ceremonial feathered garb, danced a circle around a wooden griffon totem.

“Uthgardt,” Sydney explained. “The Griffon tribe. We are near to Shining White, their ancestral mound.” She edged away from the glow of the camp. “Come,” she whispered. “We will learn nothing of value here.”

Entreri followed her back toward their own campsite. “Should we ride now?” he asked when they were safely away. “Gain more distance from the barbarians?”

“Unnecessary,” Sydney replied. “The Uthgardt will dance the night through. All the tribe partakes of the ritual; I doubt that they even have sentries posted.”

“You know much about them,” the assassin remarked in an accusing tone, a hint to his sudden suspicions that there might be some ulterior plot controlling the events around them.

“I prepared myself for this journey,” Sydney countered. “The Uthgardt keep few secrets; their ways are generally known and documented. Travelers in the northland would do well to understand these people.”

“I am fortunate to have such a learned road companion,” Entreri said, bowing in sarcastic apology.

Sydney, her eyes straight ahead, did not respond.

But Entreri would not let the conversation die so easily. There was method in his leading line of suspicions. He had consciously chosen this time to play out his hand and reveal his distrust even before they had learned the nature of the encampment. For the first time the two were alone, without Catti-brie or Jierdan to complicate the confrontation, and Entreri meant to put an end to his concerns, or put an end to the mage.

“When am I to die?” he asked bluntly.

Sydney didn’t miss a step. “When the fates decree it, as with us all.”

“Let me ask the question a different way,” Entreri continued, grabbing her by the arm and turning her to face him. “When are you instructed to try to kill me?

“Why else would Dendybar have sent the golem?” Entreri reasoned. “The wizard puts no store in pacts and honor. He does what he must to accomplish his goals in the most expedient way, and then eliminates those he no longer needs. When my value to you is ended, I am to be slain. A task you may find more difficult than you presume.”

“You are perceptive,” Sydney replied coolly. “You have judged Dendybar’s character well. He would have killed you simply to avoid any possible complications. But you have not considered my own role in this. On my insistence, Dendybar put the decision of your fate into my hands.” She paused a moment to let Entreri weigh her words. He could easily kill her right now, they both knew that, so the candor of her calm
admission of a plot to murder him halted any immediate actions and forced him to hear her out.

“I am convinced that we seek different ends to our confrontation with the dwarf’s party,” Sydney explained, “and thus I have no intention of destroying a present, and potentially future, ally.”

In spite of his ever-suspicious nature, Entreri fully understood the logic in her line of reasoning. He recognized many of his own characteristics in Sydney. Ruthless, she let nothing get in the way of her chosen path, but she did not stray from that path for any diversion, no matter how strong her feelings. He released her arm. “But the golem travels with us,” he said absently, turning into the empty night. “Does Dendybar believe that we will need it to defeat the dwarf and his companions?”

“My master leaves little to chance,” Sydney answered. “Bok was sent to seal Dendybar’s claim on that which he desires. Protection against unexpected trouble from the companions. And against you.”

Entreri carried her line of thinking a step farther. “The object the wizard desires must be powerful indeed,” he reasoned.

Sydney nodded.

“Tempting for a younger mage, perhaps.”

“What do you imply?” Sydney demanded, angry that Entreri would question her loyalty to Dendybar.

The assassin’s assured smile made her squirm uncomfortably. “The golem’s purpose is to protect Dendybar against unexpected trouble … from you!”

Sydney stammered but could not find the words to reply. She hadn’t considered that possibility. She tried logically to dismiss Entreri’s outlandish conclusion, but the assassin’s next remark clouded her ability to think.