Streams Of Silver (24 page)

He did strike her then, just once, and recoiled.

Catti-brie accepted the blow without complaint, even
smiling through the pain, though she was careful to hide her satisfaction. Jierdan’s loss of selfrestraint proved to her that the continual disrespect Sydney, and especially Entreri, had shown for him had fueled the flames of discontent to the verge of explosion.

She knew, too, that when Entreri returned and saw the bruise Jierdan had given her, those fires would burn even brighter.

Sydney and Entreri rushed through the streets of Silvery-moon, following the obvious sounds of commotion. When they reached the wall, they found Bok encapsulated in a sphere of glowing green lights. Riderless horses paced about to the groans of a dozen injured soldiers, and one old man, the wizard, stood before the globe of light, scratching his beard and studying the trapped golem. A Knight of Silver of considerable rank stood impatiently beside him, twitching nervously and clasping the pommel of his sheathed sword tightly.

“Destroy the thing and be done with it,” Sydney heard the knight say to the wizard.

“Oh, no!” exclaimed the wizard. “But it is marvelous!”

“Do you mean to hold it here forever?” the knight snapped back. “Just look around—”

“Your pardon, good sirs,” Sydney interrupted. “I am Sydney, of the Hosttower of the Arcane in Luskan. Perhaps I may be of some help.”

“Well met,” said the wizard. “I am Mizzen of the Second School of Knowledge. Know you the possessor of this magnificent creature?”

“Bok is mine,” she admitted.

The knight stared at her, amazed that a woman, or anyone for that matter, controlled the monster that had knocked aside some of his finest warriors and taken down a section of the city wall. “The price shall be high, Sydney of Luskan,” he snarled.

“The Hosttower shall make amends,” she agreed. “Now
would you release the golem to my control?” she asked the wizard. “Bok will obey me.”

“Nay!” snapped the knight. “I’ll not have the thing turned loose again.”

“Calm, Gavin,” Mizzen said to him. He turned to Sydney. “I should like to study the golem, if I may. Truly the finest construction I have ever witnessed, with strength beyond the expectations of the books of creation.”

“I am sorry,” Sydney answered, “but my time is short. I have many roads yet to travel. Name the price of the damage wrought by the golem and I shall relay it to my master, on my word as a member of the Hosttower.”

“You’ll pay now,” argued the guard.

Again Mizzen silenced him. “Excuse Gavin’s anger,” he said to Sydney. He surveyed the area. “Perhaps we might strike a bargain. None seem to have been seriously injured.”

“Three men have been carried away!” Gavin rebutted. “And at least one horse is lame and will have to be destroyed!”

Mizzen waved his hand as if to belittle the claims. “They will heal,” he said. “They will heal. And the wall needed repairs anyway.” He looked at Sydney and scratched his beard again. “Here is my offer, and a fairer one you’ll not hear! Give me the golem for one night, just one, and I shall amend the damage it has wreaked. Just one night.”

“And you’ll not disassemble Bok,” Sydney stated.

“Not even the head?” Mizzen begged.

“Not even the head,” Sydney insisted. “And I shall come for the golem at the first light of dawn.”

Mizzen scratched his beard again. “A marvellous work,” he mumbled, peering into the magical prison. “Agreed!”

“If that monster—” Gavin began angrily.

“Oh, where is your sense of adventure, Gavin?” Mizzen shot back before the knight could even finish his warning.
“Remember the precepts of our town, man. We are here to learn. If you only understood the potential of such a creation!”

They started away from Sydney, paying her no more mind, the wizard still rambling into Gavin’s ear. Entreri slipped from the shadows of a nearby building to Sydney’s side.

“Why did the thing come?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “There can be only one answer.”

’The drow?”

“Yes,” she said. “Bok must have followed them into the city.”

“Unlikely,” reasoned Entreri, “though the golem might have seen them. If Bok came crashing through behind the drow and his valiant friends, they would have been down here at the battle, helping to fend it off.”

“Then they might be out there still.”

“Or perhaps they were leaving the city when Bok saw them,” said Entreri. “I will make inquiries with the guards at the gate. Fear not, our prey is close at hand!”

They arrived back at the room a couple of hours later. From the guards at the gate they had learned of the drow’s party being turned away and now they were anxious to retrieve Bok and be on their way.

Sydney started a string of instructions to Jierdan concerning their departure in the morning, but what grabbed Entreri’s immediate attention was Catti-brie’s bruised eye. He moved over to check her bonds and satisfied that they were intact, spun on Jierdan with his dagger drawn.

Sydney, quickly surmising the situation, cut him off. “Not now!” she demanded. “Our rewards are at hand. We cannot afford this!”

Entreri chuckled evilly and slid the dagger away. “We will yet discuss this,” he promised Jierdan with a snarl. “Do not touch the girl again.”

Perfect, Catti-brie thought. From Jierdan’s perspective, the assassin might as well have said outright that he meant to kill him.

More fuel for the flames.

When she retrieved the golem from Mizzen the next morning, Sydney’s suspicions that Bok had seen the drow’s party were confirmed. They set out from Silverymoon at once, Bok leading them down the same trail Bruenor and his friends had taken the morning before

Like the previous party, they, too, were watched.

Alustriel brushed her flowing hair from her fair face, catching the morning sun in her green eyes as she looked down upon the band with growing curiosity. The lady had learned from the gatekeepers that someone had been inquiring about the dark elf.

She couldn’t yet figure out what part this new group leaving Silverymoon played in the quest, but she suspected that they were up to no good. Alustriel had sated her own thirst for adventure many years before, but she wished now that she could somehow aid the drow and his friends on their noble mission. Affairs of state pressed in on her, though, and she had no time for such diversions. She considered for a moment dispatching a patrol to capture this second party, so that she could learn its intentions.

Then she turned back to her city, reminding herself that she was just a minor player in the search for Mithral Hall. She could only trust in the abilities of Drizzt Do’Urden and his friends.

T
RAILS
A
new

n my travels on the surface, I once met a man who wore his religious beliefs like a badge of honor upon the sleeves of his tunic. “I am a Gondsman!” he proudly told me as we sat beside each other at a tavern bar, I sipping my wine, and he, I fear, partaking a bit too much of his more potent drink. He went on to explain the premise of his religion, his very reason for being, that all things were based in science, in mechanics, and in discovery. He even asked if he could take a piece of my flesh, that he might study it to determine why the skin of the drow elf is black. “What element is missing,” he
wondered, “that makes your race different from your surface kin?”

I think that the Gondsman honestly believed his claim that if he could merely find the various elements that comprised the drow skin, he might affect a change in that pigmentation to make the dark elves become more akin to their surface relatives, and given his devotion, almost fanaticism, it seemed to me as if he felt he could affect a change in more than physical appearance.

Because, in his view of the world, all things could be so explained and corrected.

How could I even begin to enlighten him to the complexity? How could I show him the variations between drow and surface elf in the very view of the world resulting from eons of walking widely disparate roads?

To a Gondsman fanatic, everything can be broken down, taken apart and put back together. Even a wizard’s magic might be no more than a way of conveying universal energies—and that, too, might one day be replicated. My Gondsman companion promised me that he and his fellow inventor priests would one day replicate every spell in any wizard’s repertoire, using natural elements in the proper combinations.

But there was no mention of the
discipline any wizard must attain as he perfects his craft. There was no mention of the fact that powerful wizardly magic is not given to anyone, but rather, is earned, day by day, year by year, and decade by decade. It is a lifelong pursuit with a gradual increase in power, as mystical as it is secular.

So it is with the warrior. The Gondsman spoke of some weapon called an arquebus, a tubular missile thrower with many times the power of the strongest crossbow.

Such a weapon strikes terror into the heart of the true warrior, and not because he fears that he will fall victim to it, or even that he fears that it will one day replace him. Such weapons offend because the true warrior understands that while one is learning how to use a sword, one should also be learning why and when to use a sword. To grant the power of a weapon master to anyone at all, without effort, without training and proof that the lessons have taken hold, is to deny the responsibility that comes with such power.

Of course, there are wizards and warriors who perfect their craft without learning the level of emotional discipline to accompany it, and certainly there are those who attain great prowess in either profession to the detriment of
all the world—Artemis Entreri seems a perfect example—but these individuals are, thankfully, rare, and mostly because their emotional lacking will be revealed early in their careers, and it often brings about a fairly abrupt downfall. But if the Gondsman has his way, if his errant view of paradise should come to fruition, then all the years of training will mean little. Any fool could pick up an arquebus or some other powerful weapon and summarily destroy a skilled warrior. Or any child could utilize a Gondsman’s magic machine and replicate a fireball, perhaps, and burn down half a city.

When I pointed out some of my fears to the Gondsman, he seemed shocked— not at the devastating possibilities, but rather, at my, as he put it, arrogance. “The inventions of the Priests of Gond will make all equal!” he declared. “We will lift up the lowly peasant.”

Hardly. All that the Gondsman and his cronies would do is ensure death and destruction at a level heretofore unknown across the Realms.

There was nothing more to be said, for I knew that the man would never hear my words. He thought me, or, for that matter, anyone who achieved a level of skill in the fighting or magic arts, arrogant, because he could not
appreciate the sacrifice and dedication necessary for such achievement.

Arrogant? If the Gondsman’s so-called lowly peasant came to me with a desire to learn the fighting arts, I would gladly teach him. I would revel in his successes as much as in my own, but I would demand, always I would demand, a sense of humility, dedication and an understanding of this power I was teaching, an appreciation of the potential for destruction. I would teach no one who did not continue to display an appropriate level of compassion and community. To learn how to use a sword, one must first master when to use a sword.

There is one other error in the Gondsman’s line of reasoning, I believe, on a purely emotional level. If machines replace achievement, then to what will people aspire? And who are we, truly, without such goals?

Beware the engineers of society, I say, who would make everyone in all the world equal. Opportunity should be equal, must be equal, but achievement must remain individual.

—Drizzt Do’Urden