Gauntlgrym

Page 39

They were gone.
The horrified dwarf looked to the forest and the rustling brush. He scrambled up to his feet and flung himself forward in pursuit, but as soon as he caught a glimpse of the thief, his heart sank and his legs slowed. It was a dark elf, and one he couldn’t hope to catch.
“Elf!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, and he took up the chase anyway, trying at least to keep in sight of the fleeing drow. “Call yer damned cat, elf!” Bruenor yelled. “Call yer cat!”
He continued the chase over a ridge and down into a tree-filled dell, and he kept on running right up the far ridge, though he had lost all sight of the thief. Over that ridge, the underbrush was light, the field of view clear, but the thief was nowhere to be seen.
Bruenor skidded to a stop, hopping about, craning his stocky neck, but with the growing realization that he had lost his treasured maps. Gasping for breath, he ran back the way he’d come, veering to the right, the southeast, hoping against hope that he could make that ridge and catch sight of the thief once more.
He didn’t.
Bruenor howled for Drizzt again, repeatedly, as he ran to the western ridge then back to the north and to the east, and finally to the west once more.
Some time later, Bruenor caught a sign of movement to one side of his camp. He took up his axe, hoping the thief had returned, but the dark form showed herself more clearly. Guenhwyvar bounded up to him, her ears flattened, her lips curled back.
“Find him, cat!” Bruenor implored her. “A damned drow elf stole me maps!”
Guenhwyvar’s ears came up and she turned her head left and right, taking in the wider view.
“Go! Go!” the dwarf yelled at her, and with a roar that reverberated all around them, Guenhwyvar leaped away, straight to the west.
Moments later, with Bruenor nodding enthusiastically at the departing panther, Drizzt rushed up beside him, scimitars in hand.
“An elf took me maps!” Bruenor cried at him. “Drow elf!”
“Where did he run?”
The dwarf glanced all around, but threw his axe down, sticking it into the ground, and helplessly lifted his empty, trembling hands.
“Which way?” Drizzt prompted.
Bruenor waved his hands and head in despair.
“Where were you when he struck?” Drizzt asked, and for a moment, the flustered dwarf even seemed to be confused about that.
Finally, Bruenor collected himself enough to lead Drizzt back to the mossy patch. The darkness enchantment was gone by then, revealing the pile of stones, a few of them scattered about on the moss. But no maps were to be seen, nor the pack Bruenor had used to carry them.
“He put a damned darkness globe over me,” Bruenor grumbled, stamping his foot in outrage. “Blinded me and hit me with …”
Drizzt leaned in, prompting the dwarf to explain in detail, but all Bruenor could offer was, “Bees.”
“Bees?”
“Felt like bees,” Bruenor tried to explain. “Bitin’ at me, stingin’ me. Something …” He shook his hairy head and held forth one arm, and indeed, between his heavy bracer and short sleeve, his bare skin showed many small welts. “Kept me back while he swooped through, taking me maps.”
“You’re sure it was a drow?”
“I seen him when I came out o’ the darkness,” Bruenor asserted.
“Where?”
Bruenor led him to the spot and pointed to the ridge leading back to the dell, and Drizzt dropped to his knees, examining the shrubs and the dirt. An expert tracker, Drizzt easily found the trail—surprisingly easily, given Bruenor’s description of the robber as a dark elf. He followed that trail into the dell, and there it got far more confusing, for any tracks or bent fronds had been muddled by the tumultuous traffic the low ground had seen, a dwarf running back and forth.
Finally, though, Drizzt did rediscover the trail, and found it to lead out to the northwest. He and Bruenor ascended the ridge there, peering out.
“The road is that way,” Drizzt remarked.
“Road?”
“The road to Port Llast.”
Bruenor turned his eyes to the west more directly. “Cat went that way. She might’ve found him.”
Off they went, Drizzt easily following the trail—again, too easily.
They had barely gone a hundred yards when they heard a growl up ahead.
“Damned good cat!” Bruenor yelped and charged on, expecting to find Guenhwyvar standing atop the thief.
They did find Guenhwyvar, standing in a small lea, her fur all rumpled, teeth bared, growling angrily.
“Well?” the dwarf called out. “Where in the Nine Hells …?”
Drizzt put a hand on the dwarf’s shoulder to silence him. “The ground,” he said softly, walking past the dwarf toward the cat.
“Eh?”
Bruenor soon understood.
Guenhwyvar was standing in the grass, but the ground beneath the grass was not dark like soil, but white. The cat’s muscles flexed and she leaned to the side, trying to pull up her paw, but alas, she was fully stuck in place.
“Like fly glue,” Drizzt remarked, coming to the edge of the strange, magical patch. “Guen?”
The panther growled unhappily in reply.
“He sticked her to the ground?” Bruenor asked, coming up to Drizzt’s side. “He catched yer cat?”
Drizzt had no answer, other than a concerned sigh. He took out the onyx figurine and bade the cat to be gone. She couldn’t pace, as she usually did when she was slipping from her corporeal form into the gray mist that ushered her to her home on the Astral Plane, but she did diminish to nothingness soon after, leaving Drizzt and Bruenor standing in the lea.
“He got me maps, elf,” the dejected dwarf remarked.
“We’ll find him,” Drizzt promised.
He didn’t tell his friend that the path the drow thief had left was too clear to miss, that it had to have been purposely left, but he decided not to. They were being led for a reason, and Drizzt was fairly confident of where they were being led and who was leading them.
The drow flipped the satchel off his shoulder, dropping it on the table between himself and Jarlaxle.
“I think I got them all,” he said.
“Ye’re not sure?” Athrogate asked from the side of the room. “We’re talkin’ important work here, and ye think ye got ’em?”
Jarlaxle flashed a disarming smile at the dwarf then turned back to Valas Hune, one of his most experienced scouts. “I’m sure you liberated the important ones.”
“Bruenor was laying them out on the ground,” Valas answered. “All of those are in there, and what the dwarf had not yet removed from the satchel. Perhaps he has other maps hidden elsewhere. I cannot be certain—”
“Ain’t ye a scout?”
“Forgive my friend,” Jarlaxle remarked. “This mission has special importance to him.”
“Since he is the one who freed the primordial, you mean?” Valas said, offering a sly look at Athrogate.
His words caught the dwarf by surprise, for who knew of that journey to Gauntlgrym those years before? But then again, Jarlaxle didn’t seem the least bit surprised. Athrogate fixed a suspicious, you-told-them glare on Jarlaxle.
“There is little that escapes the notice of Valas Hune, my friend,” Jarlaxle explained to Athrogate. “Rest assured that he is among a very few who know of the disturbing events in Gauntlgrym.”
“Then why didn’t he make sure he got all the damned maps?”
“King Bruenor is not alone,” Valas Hune reminded. “I have little desire to try to explain my presence lurking about the camp to Drizzt Do’Urden.”
“He is a reasonable fellow,” Jarlaxle said.
“More than a few dead drow wouldn’t agree with that assessment,” Valas replied. “Besides, my friend, you know little of Drizzt of late. I have explored his exploits and talked to those who have traveled beside him, and ‘reasonable’ is not a word I often hear.”
Jarlaxle’s eyebrows betrayed a bit of surprise at that, but he quickly dismissed the look. “You could get to know him better, should you decide to accompany us to Gauntlgrym,” he reminded the scout.
Valas was shaking his head before Jarlaxle ever finished the thought. “A primordial?” he said. “Perhaps we can instead travel to a different plane to do battle with a true god, though I doubt we’d notice the difference in the few heartbeats of life we would have left.”
“I have no intention of doing battle with the primordial.”
“I’d be more concerned with its intentions, were I you. Which I am not, thankfully.” He motioned to the satchel. “There, you have your maps, as you asked.”
“And you have your gold, well-earned,” Jarlaxle replied, tossing him a small bag.
“There’s more,” said Valas Hune. “For no extra cost,” he added, seeing Jarlaxle’s suspicious look.
“They’re on your trail?”
“If not, then Drizzt is not nearly the tracker you claim him to be.”
“And?”
“There is much stirring in the south. The Netherese all but wage war with the Thayans in Neverwinter Wood.”
“Yes, yes, over the Dread Ring.”
“And more than that, the folk of the land grow alert to the awakening of the primordial, if that is what is indeed happening.”
“Folks should be scared!” Athrogate said. “Ground’s shakin’!”
“Some welcome it,” Valas Hune replied.
“And some want to stop it,” said Jarlaxle. “And those who would welcome it will no doubt try to stop those who mean to stop it.”
“There is always that possibility,” said the scout. “And to that point, a band entered Luskan only hours before me. They came into the city in small groups, but my contacts at the gate assure me that they were of singular purpose and origin. They wore the clothes of ordinary merchants, but my contacts are quite perceptive, and more than one of these newcomers, I’m told, hid an identical burn scar—a brand—under a collar, cloak, or whatnot.”
“Ashmadai,” Jarlaxle remarked.
“No small number,” Valas confirmed. “And there was a particular surface elf woman among them, stylish and alluring, and carrying a metal walking stick.”
Jarlaxle nodded, his expression showing that Valas need not continue. It made sense, of course, that the Thayans would send an expedition their way—as far as they knew, Luskan was the entrance to Gauntlgrym, and the likely starting point of any who would try to prevent the catastrophe that was no doubt well on its way.
“You have scouts in the city, monitoring them?” Jarlaxle asked.
“Some.”
“The usual crew?”
Valas nodded. “And they know to report directly to you, through our friend at the Cutlass.”
“Ye sound like ye’re leavin’,” Athrogate remarked.
“I am summoned to the Underdark, good dwarf. There are more troubles in the world than those before you.”
Athrogate started to protest, but Jarlaxle stopped him short with an upraised hand. The simple truth of the matter was that Bregan D’aerthe and Kimmuriel had lessened their presence in Luskan greatly in the last few years, and with good reason. With the fall of Neverwinter, Luskan had become far less profitable for the band, and indeed, while Jarlaxle had a vested personal interest in the endeavor, mostly out of spite against that witch Sylora Salm and her treachery, it was personal, not professional. A large part of the reason Jarlaxle had elevated Kimmuriel to a position nearly equal to his own was to allow them both to keep such things separate. Thus, Jarlaxle had hired Valas Hune and Gromph with his own funds, and had asked for no support from Kimmuriel and Bregan D’aerthe. The primordial, the Dread Ring, the skirmish between Thay and Netheril … none of that was of financial importance to Bregan D’aerthe, and Bregan D’aerthe remained, first and foremost, a for-profit enterprise.