Streams Of Silver (7 page)

Dendybar’s relief was immediate. Though he still had to concentrate to keep the gate to the planes in place, the pull against his will and the drain on his power lessened considerably when the spirit had gone. Morkai’s will power had nearly broken him during their encounter, and Dendybar shook his head in disbelief that the old master could reach out from the grave so mightily. A shudder ran up his spine as he pondered his wisdom in plotting against one so powerful. Every time he summoned Morkai, he was reminded that his own day of reckoning would surely come.

Morkai had little trouble in learning about the four adventurers. In fact, the specter already knew much about them. He had taken a great interest in Ten-Towns during his reign as Master of the North Spire, and his curiosity had not died with his body. Even now, he often looked in on the doings in Icewind Dale, and anyone who concerned himself with Ten-Towns in recent months knew something of the four heroes.

Morkai’s continued interest in the world he had left behind was not an uncommon trait in the spirit world. Death altered the ambitions of the soul, replacing the love of material or social gains with an eternal hunger for knowledge. Some spirits had looked down upon the Realms for centuries untold, simply collecting information and watching the living go about their lives. Perhaps it was envy for the physical sensations they could no
longer feel. But whatever the reason, the wealth of knowledge in a single spirit often outweighed the collected works in all of the libraries in the Realms combined.

Morkai learned much in the two hours Dendybar had allotted him. His turn now came to choose his words carefully. He was compelled to satisfy the summoner’s request, but he intended to answer in as cryptic and ambiguous a manner as he possibly could.

Dendybar’s eyes glinted when he saw the brazier’s flames begin their telltale dance once again. Had it been two hours already? he wondered, for his rest seemed much shorter, and he felt that he had not fully recovered from his first encounter with the specter. He could not refute the dance of the flames, though. He straightened himself and tucked his ankles in closer, tightening and securing his cross-legged, meditative position.

The ball of fire puffed in its climactic throes and Morkai appeared before him. The specter stood back obediently, not offering any information until Dendybar specifically asked for it. The complete story behind the visit of the four friends to Luskan remained sketchy to Morkai, but he had learned much of their quest, and more than he wanted Dendybar to find out about. He still hadn’t discerned the true intentions behind the mottled wizard’s inquiries, but felt certain that Dendybar was up to no good, whatever his goals.

“What is the purpose of the visit?” Dendybar demanded, angry at Morkai’s stalling tactics.

“You yourself have summoned me,” Morkai responded slyly. “I am compelled to appear.”

“No games!” growled the mottled wizard. He glared at the specter, fingering the scroll of torment in open threat. Notorious for answering literally, beings from other planes often flustered their conjurors by distorting the connotative meaning of a question’s exact wording.

Dendybar smiled in concession to the specter’s simple logic and clarified the question. “What is the purpose of the visit to Luskan by the four travelers from Icewind Dale?”

“Varied reasons,” Morkai replied. “One has come in search of the homeland of his father, and his father before him.”

“The drow?” Dendybar asked, trying to find some way to link his suspicions that Drizzt planned to return to the underworld of his birth with the Crystal Shard. Perhaps an uprising by the dark elves, using the power of the shard? “Is it the drow who seeks his homeland?”

“Nay,” replied the specter, pleased that Dendybar had fallen off on a tangent, delaying the more specific, and more dangerous line of questioning. The passing minutes would soon begin to dissipate Dendybar’s hold upon the specter, and Morkai hoped that he could find a way to get free of the mottled wizard before revealing too much about Bruenor’s company. “Drizzt Do’Urden has forsaken his homeland altogether. He shall never return to the bowels of the world, and certainly not with his dearest friends in tow!”

“Then who?”

“Another of the four flees from danger at his back,” Morkai offered, twisting the line of inquiry.

“Who seeks his homeland?” Dendybar demanded more emphatically.

“The dwarf, Bruenor Battlehammer,” replied Morkai, compelled to obey. “He seeks his birthplace, Mithral Hall, and his friends have joined in his quest. Why does this interest you? The companions have no connection to Luskan, and pose no threat to the Hosttower.”

I did not summon you here to answer your questions!” Dendybar scolded. “Now tell me who is running from danger. And what is the danger?”

“Behold,” the specter instructed. With a wave of his hand,
Morkai imparted an image upon the mind of the mottled wizard, a picture of a black-cloaked rider wildly charging across the tundra. The horse’s bridle was white with lather, but the rider pressed the beast onward relentlessly.

“The halfling flees from this man,” Morkai explained, “though the rider’s purpose remains a mystery to me.” Telling Dendybar even this much angered the specter, but Morkai could not yet resist the commands of his nemesis. He felt the bonds of the wizard’s will loosening, though, and suspected that the summoning neared its end.

Dendybar paused to consider the information.

Nothing of what Morkai had told him gave any direct link to the Crystal Shard, but he had learned, at least, that the four friends did not mean to stay in Luskan for very long. And he had discovered a potential ally, a further source of information. The black-cloaked rider must be mighty indeed to have set the halfling’s formidable troupe fleeing down the road.

Dendybar was beginning to formulate his next moves, when a sudden insistent pull of Morkai’s stubborn resistance broke his concentration. Enraged, he shot a threatening glare back at the specter and began unrolling the parchment. “Impudent!” he growled, and though he could have stretched out his hold on the specter a bit longer if he had put his energies into a battle of wills, he started reciting the scroll.

Morkai recoiled, though he had consciously provoked Dendybar to this point. The specter could accept the racking, for it signaled the end of the inquisition. And Morkai was glad that Dendybar hadn’t forced him to reveal the events even farther from Luskan, back in the dale just beyond the borders of Ten-Towns.

As Dendybar’s recitations twanged discordantly on the harmony of his soul, Morkai removed the focal point of his concentration across hundreds of miles, back to the image of
the merchant caravan now one day out from Bremen, the closest of the Ten-Towns, and to the image of the brave young woman who had joined up with the traders. The specter took comfort in the knowledge that she had, for a while at least, escaped the probings of the mottled wizard.

Not that Morkai was altruistic; he had never been accused of an abundance of that trait. He simply took great satisfaction in hindering in any way he could the knave who had arranged his murder.

Catti-brie’s red-brown locks tossed about her shoulders. She sat high up on the lead wagon of the merchant caravan that had set out from Ten-Towns on the previous day, bound for Luskan. Unbothered by the chill breeze, she kept her eyes on the road ahead, searching for some sign that the assassin had passed that way. She had relayed information about Entreri to Cassius, and he would pass it along to the dwarves. Catti-brie wondered now if she had been justified in sneaking away with the merchant caravan before Clan Battlehammer could organize its own chase.

But only she had seen the assassin at work. She knew well that if the dwarves went after him in a frontal assault, their caution wiped away in their lust of revenge for Fender and Grollo, many more of the clan would die.

Selfishly, perhaps, Catti-brie had determined that the assassin was her own business. He had unnerved her, had stripped away years of training and discipline and reduced her to the quivering semblance of a frightened child. But she was a young woman now, no more a girl. She had to personally respond to that emotional humiliation, or the scars from it would haunt her to her grave, forever paralyzing her along her path to discover her true potential in life.

She would find her friends in Luskan and warn them of the danger at their backs, and then together they would take care of Artemis Entreri.

“We make a strong pace,” the lead driver assured her, sympathetic to her desire for haste.

Catti-brie did not look at him; her eyes rooted on the flat horizon before her. “Me heart tells me ’tisn’t strong enough,” she lamented.

The driver looked at her curiously, but had learned better than to press her on the point. She had made it clear to them from the start that her business was private. And being the adopted daughter of Bruenor Battlehammer, and reputedly a fine fighter in her own right, the merchants had counted themselves lucky to have her along and had respected her desire for privacy. Besides, as one of the drivers had so eloquently argued during their informal meeting before the journey, “The notion of staring at an ox’s ass for near to three-hunnerd miles makes the thought o’ having that girl along for company sit well with me!”

They had even moved up their departure date to accommodate her.

“Do not worry, Catti-brie,” the driver assured her, “we’ll get you there!”

Catti-brie shook her blowing hair out of her face and looked into the sun as it set on the horizon before her. “But can it be in time?” she asked softly and rhetorically, knowing that her whisper would break apart in the wind as soon as it passed her lips.

rizzt took the lead as the four companions jogged along the banks of the river Mirar, putting as much ground between themselves and Luskan as possible. Though they hadn’t slept in many hours, their encounters in the City of Sails had sent a burst of adrenaline through their veins and none of them was weary.

Something magical hung in the air that night, a crispy tingling that would have made the most exhausted traveler lament closing his eyes to it. The river, rushing swiftly and high from the spring melt, sparkled in the evening glow, its whitecaps catching the starlight and throwing it back into the air in a spray of bejeweled droplets.

Normally cautious, the friends could not help but let their guard down. They felt no danger lurking near, felt nothing but the sharp, refreshing chill of the spring night and the mysterious pull of the heavens. Bruenor lost himself in dreams of Mithral Hall; Regis in memories of Calimport;
even Wulfgar, so despondent about his ill-fated encounter with civilization, felt his spirits soar. He thought of similar nights on the open tundra, when he had dreamed of what lay beyond the horizons of his world. Now, out beyond those horizons, Wulfgar found only one element missing. To his surprise, and against the adventuring instincts that denied such comfortable thoughts, he wished that Catti-brie, the woman he had grown to cherish, was with him now to share the beauty of this night.

If the others had not been so preoccupied with their own enjoyment of the evening, they would have noticed an extra bounce in Drizzt Do’Urden’s graceful step as well. To the drow, these magical nights, when the heavenly dome reached down below the horizon, bolstered his confidence in the most important and difficult decision he had ever made, the choice to forsake his people and his homeland. No stars sparkled above Menzoberranzan, the dark city of the black elves. No unexplainable allure tugged at the heartstrings from the cold stone of the immense cavern’s lightless ceiling.

“How much my people have lost by walking in darkness,” Drizzt whispered into the night. The pull of the mysteries of the endless sky carried the joy of his spirit beyond its normal boundaries and opened his mind to the unanswerable questions of the multiverse. He was an elf, and though his skin was black, there remained in his soul a semblance of the harmonic joy of his surface cousins. He wondered how general these feelings truly ran among his people. Did they remain in the hearts of all drow? Or had eons of sublimation extinguished the spiritual flames? To Drizzt’s reckoning, perhaps the greatest loss that his people had suffered when they retreated to the depths of the world was the loss of the ability to ponder the spirituality of existence simply for the sake of thought.

The crystalline sheen of the Mirar gradually dulled as the
lightening dawn dimmed the stars. It came as an unspoken disappointment to the friends as they set their camp in a sheltered spot near the banks of the river.

“Be knowin’ that nights like that are few,” Bruenor observed as the first ray of light crept over the eastern horizon. A glimmer edged his eye, a hint of the wondrous fantasizing that the normally practical dwarf rarely enjoyed.

Drizzt noted the dwarf’s dreamy glow and thought of the nights that he and Bruenor had spent on Bruenor’s Climb, their special meeting place, back in the dwarf’s valley in Ten-Towns. “Too few,” he agreed.

With a resigned sigh, they set to work, Drizzt and Wulfgar starting breakfast while Bruenor and Regis examined the map they had obtained in Luskan.

For all of his grumbling and teasing about the halfling, Bruenor had pressured him to come along for a very definite reason, aside from their friendship, and though the dwarf had masked his emotions well, he was truly overjoyed when Regis had come up huffing and puffing on the road out of Ten-Towns in a last-minute plea to join the quest.

Regis knew the land south of the Spine of the World better than any of them. Bruenor himself hadn’t been out of Icewind Dale in nearly two centuries, and then he had been just an unbearded dwarf-child. Wulfgar had never left the dale, and Drizzt’s only trek across the world’s surface had been a nighttime adventure, skipping from shadow to shadow and avoiding many of the places the companions would need to search out, if they were ever to find Mithral Hall.

Regis ran his fingers across the map, excitedly recalling to Bruenor his experiences in each of the places listed, particularly Mirabar, the mining city of great wealth to the north, and Waterdeep, true to its name as the City of Splendors, down the coast to the south.

Bruenor slipped his finger across the map, studying the physical features of the terrain. “Mirabar’d be more to me liking,” he said at length, tapping the mark of the city tucked within the southern slopes of the Spine of the World. “Mithral Hall’s in mountains, that much I know, and not aside the sea.”

Regis considered the dwarf’s observations for just a moment, then plunked his finger down on yet another spot, by the scale of the map a hundred miles and more inland from Luskan. “Longsaddle,” he said. “Halfway to Silverymoon, and halfway between Mirabar and Waterdeep. A good place to search out our course.”

“A city?” Bruenor asked, for the mark on the map was no more than a small black dot.

“A village,” Regis corrected. “There are not many people there, but a family of wizards, the Harpells, have lived there for many years and know the northland as well as any. They would be happy to help us.”

Bruenor scratched his chin and nodded. “A fair hike. What might we be seeing along the way?”

“The crags,” Regis admitted, a bit disheartened as he remembered the place. “Wild and orc-filled. I wish we had another road, but Longsaddle still seems the best choice.”

“All roads in the north hold danger,” Bruenor reminded him.

They continued their scrutiny of the map, Regis recalling more and more as they went. A series of unusual and unidentified markings—three in particular, running in an almost straight line due east of Luskan to the river network south of Lurkwood—caught Bruenor’s eye.

“Ancestral mounds,” Regis explained. “Holy places of the Uthgardt.”

“Uthgardt?”

“Barbarians,” answered Regis grimly. “Like those in the dale. More wise to the ways of civilization, perhaps, but no less fierce. Their separate tribes are all about the northland, wandering the wilds.”

Bruenor groaned in understanding of the halfling’s dismay, all too familiar himself with the savage ways and fighting prowess of barbarians. Orcs would prove much less formidable foes.

By the time the two had finished their discussion, Drizzt was stretching out in the cool shade of a tree overhanging the river and Wulfgar was halfway through his third helping of breakfast.

“Yer jaw still dances for food, I see!” Bruenor called as he noted the meager portions left on the skillet.

“A night filled with adventure,” Wulfgar replied gaily, and his friends were glad to observe that the brawl had apparently left no scars upon his attitude. “A fine meal and a fine sleep, and I shall be ready for the road once more!”

“Well don’t ye get too comfortable yet!” Bruenor ordered. “Ye’ve a third of a watch to keep this day!”

Regis looked about, perplexed, always quick to recognize an increase in his workload. “A third?” he asked. “Why not a fourth?”

“The elf’s eyes are for the night,” Bruenor explained. “Let him be ready to find our way when the day’s flown.”

“And where is our way?” Drizzt asked from his mossy bed. “Have you come to a decision for our next destination?”

“Longsaddle,” Regis replied. “Two hundred miles east and south, around Neverwinter Wood and across the crags.”

“The name is unknown to me,” Drizzt replied.

“Home of the Harpells,” Regis explained. “A family of wizards reknowned for their good-natured hospitality. I spent some time there on my way to Ten-Towns.”

Wulfgar balked at the idea. The barbarians of Icewind Dale despised wizards, considering the black arts a power employed only by cowards. “I have no desire to view this place,” he stated flatly.

“Who asked ye?” growled Bruenor, and Wulfgar found himself backing down from his resolve, like a son refusing to hold a stubborn argument in the face of a scolding by his father.

“You will enjoy Longsaddle,” Regis assured him. “The Harpells have truly earned their hospitable reputation, and the wonders of Longsaddle will show you a side of magic you never expected. They will even accept …” He found his hand involuntarily pointing to Drizzt, and he cut short the statement in embarrassment.

But the stoic drow just smiled. “Fear not, my friend,” he consoled Regis. “Your words ring of truth, and I have come to accept my station in your world.” He paused and looked individually into each uncomfortable stare that was upon him. “I know my friends, and I dismiss my enemies,” he stated with a finality that dismissed their worries.

“With a blade, ye do,” Bruenor added with a soft chuckle, though Drizzt’s keen ears caught the whisper.

“If I must,” the drow agreed, smiling. Then he rolled over to get some sleep, fully trusting in his friends’ abilities to keep him safe.

They passed a lazy day in the shade beside the river. Late in the afternoon, Drizzt and Bruenor ate a meal and discussed their course, leaving Wulfgar and Regis soundly asleep, at least until they had eaten their own fill.

“We’ll stay with the river for a night more,” Bruenor said. “Then southeast across the open ground. That’d clear us of the wood and lay open a straight path ’fore us.”

“Perhaps it would be better if we traveled only by night for a
few days,” Drizzt suggested. “We know not what eyes follow us out of the City of Sails.”

“Agreed,” replied Bruenor. “Let’s be off, then. A long road before us, and a longer one after that!”

“Too long,” murmured Regis, opening a lazy eye.

Bruenor shot him a dangerous glare. He was nervous about this trek and about bringing his friends on a dangerous road, and in an emotional defense, he took all complaints about the adventure personally.

“To walk, I mean,” Regis quickly explained. “There are farmhouses in this area, so there must be some horses about.”

“Horses’d bring too a high price in these parts,” replied Bruenor.

“Maybe …” said the halfling slyly, and his friends could easily guess what he was thinking. Their frowns reflected a general disapproval.

“The crags stand before us!” Regis argued. “Horses might outrun orcs, but without them, we shall surely fight for every mile of our hike! Besides, it would only be a loan. We could return the beasts when we were through with them.”

Drizzt and Bruenor did not approve of the halfling’s proposed trickery, but could not refute his logic. Horses would certainly aid them at this point of the journey.

“Wake the boy,” Bruenor growled.

“And about my plan?” asked Regis.

“We’ll make the choice when we find the opportunity!”

Regis was contented, confident that his friends would opt for the horses. He ate his fill, then scraped together the supper’s meager remnants and went to wake Wulfgar.

They were on the trail again soon after, and a short time after that, they saw the lights of a small settlement in the distance.

“Take us there,” Bruenor told Drizzt. “Mighten be that Rumblebelly’s plan’s worth a try.”

Wulfgar, having missed the conversation at the camp, didn’t understand, but offered no argument, or even questioned the dwarf. After the disaster at the Cutlass, he had resigned himself to a more passive role on the trip, letting the other three decide which trails they were to take. He would follow without complaint, keeping his hammer ready for when it became needed.

They moved inland away from the river for a few miles, then came upon several farms clustered together inside a stout wooden fence.

“There are dogs about,” Drizzt noted, sensing them with his exceptional hearing.

“Then Rumblebelly goes in alone,” said Bruenor.

Wulfgar’s face twisted in confusion, especially since the halfling’s look indicated that he wasn’t thrilled with the idea. “That I cannot allow,” the barbarian spouted. “If any among us needs protection, it is the little one. I’ll not hide here in the dark while he walks alone into danger!”