“Where’s Deudermont?” Catti-brie asked of Harkle when the wizard stumbled into a small side room where the young woman was sitting with Drizzt.
“Oh, out and about, out and about,” the distracted Harpell replied. There were two chairs in the room, both set before a large window that looked out over the majestic Snowflakes. Drizzt and Catti-brie occupied these, half-facing each other and half-looking out to the beautiful view. The dark elf reclined, his feet up on the window’s wide sill. Harkle considered the scene for just a moment, then seemed to collect his wits and moved right between the two. He motioned Drizzt to take his feet away, then hopped up to sit on the window sill.
“Do join us,” Catti-brie said with obvious sarcasm-obvious to Drizzt at least, for Harkle smiled dumbly.
“You were discussing the poem, of course,” the wizard reasoned. It was partially true. Drizzt and Catti-brie were talking as much about the news that Bruenor had left Mithril Hall as about the all-important poem.
“Of course you were,” Harkle said. “That is why I have come.”
“Have you deciphered any more of the verse?” Drizzt asked, not too hopeful. The drow liked Harkle, but had learned not to expect too much from the wizard. Above all else, Harkle and his kin were unpredictable sorts, oftentimes of great help, as in the fight for Mithril Hall, and at other times more a detriment than an advantage.
Harkle recognized the drow’s ambivalent tone, and he found that he wanted to prove himself at that moment, wanted to tell the drow all of the information in his magical journal, to recite the poem word by word, exactly as the seer had told it. Harkle bit back the words, though, fearful of the limitations of his spell and the potential consequences.
“We’re thinking it’s Baenre,” Catti-brie said. “Whoever’s holding the Baenre throne, I mean. ‘Given to Lloth and by Lloth given,’ is what she said, and who better than the one sitting on Baenre’s throne for the Spider Queen to give such a gift?”
Harkle nodded, letting Drizzt take up the thought, but believing that they were slipping off track.
“Catti-brie thinks that it is Baenre, but the seer spoke of the Abyss, and that makes me believe that Lloth has engaged a handmaiden,” said Drizzt.
Harkle bit hard on his lip and nodded unconvincingly.
“Cadderly has an informant in the Abyss,” Catti-brie added. “An imp, or something akin to that. He’ll summon the beastie and try to find us a name.”
“But I fear that my road ...” Drizzt began.
“Our road,” Catti-brie corrected, so firmly that Drizzt had to concede the point.
“I fear that our road will once again lead to Menzoberranzan,” Drizzt said with a sigh. He didn’t want to go back there, that much was obvious, but it was clear also that the ranger would charge headlong into the accursed city for the sake of a friend.
“Why there?” Harkle asked, his voice almost frantic. The wizard saw where the seer’s poem had guided Drizzt, and knew that the second line, the one concerning Drizzt’s father’s ghost, had forced the ranger to think of Menzoberranzan as the source of it all. There were references in the poem to Menzoberranzan, but there was one word in particular that led Harkle to believe that the drow city was not their ultimate goal.
“We have already discussed that,” Drizzt replied. “Menzoberranzan would seem to be the dark road the seer spoke of.”
“You think it is a handmaiden?” Harkle asked Drizzt.
The drow half-nodded, half-shrugged.
“And you agree?” Harkle questioned Catti-brie.
“Might be that it is,” Catti-brie replied. “Or might be a matron mother. That’d be me own guess.”
“Aren’t handmaidens female?” Harkle’s question seemed irrelevant.
“All of Lloth’s closest minions are female,” Catti-brie replied. “That’s why the Spider Queen’s one to be fearin’,” she added with a wink, trying to break some of the tension.
“As are all of the matron mothers,” Harkle reasoned.
Drizzt looked to Catti-brie, neither of them quite understanding what the unpredictable wizard might be getting at.
Harkle flapped his arms suddenly, looking as if he was about to burst. He hopped down from the window, nearly overturning Drizzt in his chair. “She said he!” the flustered wizard cried. “The blind hag said he! ‘The traitor to Lloth is sought by he who hates him most!’ “ Harkle stopped and gave a great, exasperated sigh. Then there came a hissing sound and a line of gray smoke began wafting out of his pocket.
“Oh, by the gods,” the wizard moaned.
Drizzt and Catti-brie both jumped to their feet, more because of the wizard’s surprisingly acute reasoning than because of the present smoky spectacle.
“What foe, Drizzt?” Harkle pressed with all urgency, the wizard suddenly suspecting that his time was short.
“He,” Catti-brie echoed over and over, trying to jog her memory. “Jarlaxle?”
“ ‘Who is most unshriven,’ “ Harkle reminded her.
“Not the mercenary, then,” said Drizzt, for he had come to the conclusion that Jarlaxle was not as evil as many. “Berg’inyon Baenre, perhaps. He has hated me since our days in the Academy.”
“Think! Think! Think!” Harkle shouted as a great gout of smoke rose up from his pocket.
“What are you burning?” Catti-brie demanded, trying to pull the Harpell around so that she could better see. To her surprise and horror, her hand went right through the wizard’s suddenly-less-than-corporeal form.
“Never mind that!” Harkle snapped at her. “Think, Drizzt
Do’Urden. What foe, who is most unshriven, who festers in the swirl of Abyss and hates you above all? What beast must be freed, that only you can free?” Harkle’s voice seem to trail away as his form began to fade.
“I have exceeded the limits of my spell,” the wizard tried to explain to his horrified companions. “And so I am out of it, I fear, sent away ...”
Harkle’s voice came back strong, unexpectedly. “What beast, Drizzt? What foe?” And then he was gone, simply gone, leaving Drizzt and Catti-brie standing and staring blankly in the small room.
That last call, as Harkle faded from view, reminded Drizzt of another time when he had heard such a distant cry.
“Errtu,” the drow whispered breathlessly. He shook his head even as he spoke the obvious answer, for, though Harkle’s reasoning seemed sound, it didn’t make sense to Drizzt, not in the context of the poem.
“Errtu,” Catti-brie echoed. “Suren that one’s hating ye above all, and Lloth’d likely know him, or know of him.”
Drizzt shook his head. “It cannot be, for never did I meet the tanar’ri in Menzoberranzan, as the blind seer declared.”
Catti-brie thought on that one for a moment. “She never said Menzoberranzan,” the woman replied. “Not once.”
“In the home that was . . .” Drizzt began to recite, but he nearly gagged on the words, on the sudden realization that his interpretation of their meaning might not be correct.
Catti-brie caught it, too. “Ye never called that place yer home,” she said. “And ye often telled me that yer first home was ...”
“Icewind Dale,” Drizzt said.
“And it was there that ye met Errtu, and made o’ him an enemy,” Catti-brie reasoned, and Harkle Harpell seemed a wise man indeed at that moment.
Drizzt winced, remembering well the power and wickedness of the evil balor. It pained the ranger to think of Zaknafein in Errtu’s clutches.
* * * * *
Harkle Harpell lifted his head from his huge desk and stretched with a great yawn.
“Oh, yes,” he said, recognizing the pile of parchments spread on the desk before him. “I was working on my spell.”
Harkle sorted them out and studied them more closely.
“My new spell!” he cried in glee. “Oh, it is finally completed, the fog of fate! Oh, joy, oh happy day!” The wizard leaped up from his chair and twirled about the room, his voluminous robes flying wide. After so many months of exhausting research, his new spell was finally complete. The possibilities rolled through Harkle’s mind. Perhaps the fog of fate would take him to Calimshan, on an adventure with a pasha, perhaps to Anauroch, the great desert, or perhaps even to the wastelands of Vaasa. Yes, Harkle would like to go to Vaasa and the rugged Galena Mountains.
“I will have to learn more of the Galenas and have them fully in mind when I cast the spell,” he told himself. “Yes, yes, that’s the trick.” With a snap of his fingers, the wizard rushed to his desk, carefully sorted and arranged the many parchments of the long and complicated spell and placed them in a drawer. Then he rushed out, heading for the library of the Ivy Mansion, to gather information on Vaasa and neighboring Damara, the famed Bloodstone Lands. He could hardly keep his balance, so excited was he about what he believed to be the initial casting of his new spell, the culmination of months of labor.
For Harkle had no recollection of the true initial casting. All of the last few weeks had been erased from his mind as surely as the pages of the enchanted journal that accompanied the spell were now blank once more. As far as Harkle knew, Drizzt and Catti-brie were sailing off the coast of Waterdeep, in a pirate hunting ship whose name he did not know.
*****
Drizzt stood beside Cadderly in a square room, gorgeously decorated, though not a single piece of furniture was in it. The walls were all of polished black stone, bare, except for twisted iron wall sconces, one set in the exact center of each wall. The torches in these were not burning, not in the conventional sense. They were made of black metal, not wood, each with a crystal ball set at its top. The light-it seemed that Cadderly could conjure whatever colored light he chose-emanated from the balls. One was glowing red now, another yellow, and two green, giving the room a strange texture of colors and depth, with some hues seeming to penetrate more deeply into the glassy surface of the polished walls than others.
All of that held Drizzt’s attention for a while, an impressive spectacle indeed, but it was the floor that most amazed the dark elf, who had seen so many amazing sights in his seven decades of life. The perimeter of the floor was black and glassy, like the walls, but the bulk of the floor area was taken up by a mosaic, a double-lined circle. The area between the lines, about a foot wide, was filled with arcane runes. A sign was etched inside, its star-like tips touching the innermost circle. All of these designs had been cut into the floor, and were filled with crushed gemstones of various colors. There was an emerald rune beside a ruby star, both of which were between the twin diamond lines of the outer circles.
Drizzt had seen rooms like this in Menzoberranzan, though certainly not as fabulously made. He knew its function. Somehow it seemed out of place to him in this most goodly of structures, for the twin circles and the sign were used for summoning otherworldly creatures, and because those runes that decorated the edges were of power and protection, the creatures summoned were not likely of a goodly weal.
“Few are allowed to enter this place,” Cadderly explained, his voice grave. “Just myself, Danica, and Brother Chaunticleer among the residents of the library. Any guests that require the services of this place must pass the highest of scrutiny.”
Drizzt understood that he had just been highly complimented, but that did not dissuade the many questions that bobbed about in his thoughts.
“There are reasons for such callings,” Cadderly went on, as if reading the drow’s mind. “Sometimes the cause of good can be furthered only by dealing with the agents of evil.”
“Is not the summoning of a tanar’ri, or even a minor fiend, in itself an act of evil?” Drizzt asked bluntly.
“No,” Cadderly replied. “Not in here. This room is perfect in design and blessed by Deneir himself. A fiend called is a fiend trapped, no more a threat in here than if the beast had remained in the Abyss. As with all questions of good and evil, the intent of the calling is what determines its value. In this case, we have discovered that a soul undeserving of such torture has fallen into the hands of a fiend. We may retrieve that soul only by dealing with the fiend. What better place and better way?”
Drizzt could accept that, especially now, when the stakes were so high and so personal.
“It is Errtu,” the drow announced with confidence. “A balor.”
Cadderly nodded, not disagreeing. When Drizzt had informed him of his new suspicions given his talk with Harkle Harpell, Cadderly had called upon a minor fiend, a wicked imp, and had sent it on a mission seeking confirmation of the drow’s suspicions. Now he meant to call back the imp and get his answers.
“Brother Chaunticleer communed with an agent of Deneir this day,” Cadderly remarked.
“And the answer?” the ranger asked, though Drizzt was a bit surprised by the apparent route Chaunticleer had taken.
“No agent of Deneir could give such an answer,” Cadderly replied at once, seeing that the drow’s reasoning was off course. “No, no, Chaunticleer desired information about our missing wizard friend. Fear not, for Harkle Harpell, it seems, is back at the Ivy Mansion in Longsaddle. We have ways of contacting him, even of retrieving him, if you so desire.”
“No!” Drizzt blurted, and he looked away, a bit embarrassed by his sudden outburst. “No,” he repeated more quietly. “Harkle Harpell has certainly done enough already. I would not endanger him in this issue that does not truly concern him.”
Cadderly nodded and smiled, understanding the truth of the drow’s hesitance. “Shall I call now to Druzil, that we might get our answer?” he asked, though he didn’t even wait for a response. With a word to each sconce, Cadderly turned all the lights in the room to a velvety purple hue. A second chant made the designs in the floor glow eerily.
Drizzt held his breath, never comfortable in the midst of such a ceremony. He hardly listened as Cadderly began a soft, rhythmic chant, rather he focused on the glowing runes, concentrated on his suspicions and on the possibilities the future might hold.
After several minutes there came a sharp hissing sound in the middle of the circles, and then an instant of blackness as the fabric of the planes tore asunder. A sharp crackle ended both the hissing and the tear, leaving a very angry looking bat-winged and dog-faced imp sitting on the floor, cursing and spitting.
“Well, greetings my dear Druzil,” Cadderly said cheerily, which of course made the wicked imp, the unwilling servant, grumble all the more. Druzil hopped to his feet, his small horns hardly reaching the height of Drizzt’s knee, and folded his leathery wings about him.
“I wanted you to meet my friend,” Cadderly said casually. “I haven’t yet decided whether or not I will have him cut you into little pieces with those fine blades of his.”
The evil gaze from Druzil’s black eyes locked onto Drizzt’s lavender orbs. “Drizzt Do’Urden,” the imp spat. “Traitor to the Spider Queen.”
“Ah, good,” Cadderly said, and his tone told the imp that he had unwittingly offered up a bit of information by admitting his recognition of the drow. “You know of him, thus you have spoken with some fiend who knows the truth.”
“You desired a specific answer, and only one,” Druzil rasped. “And promised a year of peace from you in return!”
“So I did,” Cadderly admitted. “And have you my answer?”
“I pity you, foolish drow,” Druzil said, staring again intently at Drizzt. “I pity you and laugh at you. Foolish drow. The Spider Queen cares little for you now, because she has given out your punishment as a reward to one who helped her in the Time of Troubles.”
Drizzt pulled his gaze from Druzil to regard Cadderly, the old priest standing perfectly calm and collected.
“I pity any who so invokes the rage of a balor,” Druzil went on, giving a wicked little laugh.
Cadderly saw that the imp’s attitude was difficult for Drizzt, who was under such intense stress from this all. “The balor’s name!” the priest demanded.
“Errtu!” Druzil barked. “Mark it well, Drizzt Do’Urden!”
Fires simmered behind Drizzt’s lavender eyes, and Druzil could not bear their scrutiny.
The imp snapped his evil gaze over Cadderly instead. “A year of peace, you promised,” he rasped.
“Years are measured in different ways,” Cadderly growled back at him.
“What treachery-” Druzil started to say, but Cadderly slapped his hands together, uttering a single word, and two black lines, rifts in the fabric of the planes, appeared, one on either side of the imp, and came together as forcefully as Cadderly’s hands came together. With a boom of thunder and a waft of smoke, Druzil was gone.
Cadderly immediately brightened the light in the room, and remained quiet for some time, regarding Drizzt, who stood with his head bowed, digesting the confirmation.
“You should utterly destroy that one,” the drow said at length.
Cadderly smiled widely. “Not so easy a task,” he admitted. “Druzil is a manifestation of evil, a type more than an actual being. I could tear apart his corporeal body, but that merely sends him back to the Abyss. Only there, in his smoking home, could I truly destroy Druzil, and I have little desire to visit the Abyss!” Cadderly shrugged, as if it really mattered very little. “Druzil is harmless enough,” the priest explained, “because I know him, know of him, know where to find him, and know how to make his miserable life more miserable still if the need arises.”
“And now we know that it is truly Errtu,” Drizzt said.
“A balor,” Cadderly replied. “A mighty foe.”
“A foe in the Abyss,” said Drizzt. “A place where I also have no desire to ever go.”
“We still need answers,” Cadderly reminded. “Answers that Druzil would not be able to provide.”
“Who, then?”
“You know,” Cadderly answered quietly.
Drizzt did know, but the thought of summoning in the fiend Errtu was not a pleasant one to Drizzt.
“The circle will hold the balor,” Cadderly assured him. “You do not have to be here when I call to Errtu.”
Drizzt waved that notion away before Cadderly ever finished the sentence. He would be there to face the one who hated him most, and who apparently held captive a friend.
Drizzt gave a deep sigh. “I believe that the prisoner the hag spoke of is Zaknafein, my father,” he confided to the priest, for he found that he truly trusted Cadderly. “I am not yet certain of how I feel about that.”
“Surely it torments you to think your father in such foul hands,” Cadderly replied. “And surely it thrills you to think that you might meet with Zaknafein once more.”
Drizzt nodded. “It is more than that,” he said.
“Are you ambivalent?” Cadderly asked, and Drizzt, caught off his guard by the direct question, cocked his head and studied the old priest. “Did you close that part of your life, Drizzt Do’Urden? And now are you afraid because it might again be opened?”
Drizzt shook his head without hesitation, but it was an unconvincing movement. He paused a long while, then sighed deeply. “I am disappointed,” the drow admitted. “In myself, for my selfishness. I want to see Zaknafein again, to stand beside him and learn from him and listen to his words.” Drizzt looked up at Cadderly, his expression truly serene. “But I remember the last time I saw him,” he said, and he told Cadderly then of that final meeting.
Zaknafein’s corpse had been animated by Matron Malice, Drizzt’s mother, and then imbued with the dead drow’s spirit. Bound in servitude to evil Malice, working as her assassin, Zaknafein had then gone out into the Underdark in search of Drizzt. At the critical moment, the true Zaknafein had broken through the evil matron mother’s will for a fleeting moment, had shone forth once again and spoken to his beloved son. In that moment of victory, Zaknafein’s spirit had proclaimed its peace, and Zaknafein had destroyed his own animated corpse instead, freeing Drizzt and freeing himself from the grasp of evil Malice Do’Urden.
“When I heard the blind hag’s words and spent the time to consider them, I was truly sorry,” Drizzt finished. “I believed that Zaknafein was free of them now, free of Lloth and all the evil, and sitting in a place of just rewards for the truth that was always in his soul.”
Cadderly put a hand on Drizzt’s shoulder.
“To think that they had captured him once again ...”
“But that may not be the case,” Cadderly said. “And if it is true, then hope is not lost. Your father needs your help.”
Drizzt set his jaw firmly and nodded. “And Catti-brie’s help,” he replied. “She will be here when we call to Errtu.”