Starless Night

Chapter 12 RISING TO THE OCCASION

 
We can drop this whole section, " General Dagna re  marked as he poked a stubby finger against the map spread on the table.
"Drop it?" bellowed the battlerager. "If ye drop it,  then how're we to kill the stinking drow?"
Regis, who had arranged this meeting, looked incredulously to Dagna and the other three dwarven commanders huddled about the table. Then he looked back to Pwent. "The ceiling will kill the stink  ing drow/' he explained.
"Bah, sandstone!" huffed the battlerager. "What fun do ye call that? I got to grease up me armor with some drow blood, I do, but with yer stupid plan, I'll have to do a month's digging just to find a body to rub against."
"Lead the charge down here, " Dagna offered, pointing to another section of open corridors on the map. "The rest of us'll give ye a hunnerd foot head start."
Regis put a sour look on the general and moved it, in turn, to each of the other dwarves, who were all bobbing their heads in agreement. Dagna was only half kidding, Regis knew. More than a few of Clan Battlehammer would not be teary eyed if obnoxious Thibbledorf Pwent happened to be among the fallen in the potential fight against the dark elves.
"Drop the tunnel, " Regis said to get them back on track. "We'll need strong defenses here and here, " he added, pointing to two open areas in the otherwise tight lower tunnels. "I'm meeting later this day with Berkthgar of Settlestone."
"Ye're bringin' the smelly humans in?" Pwent asked.
•Even the dwarves, who favored the strong smells of soot  covered, sweaty bodies, twisted their faces at the remark. In Mithril Hall, it was said that Pwent's armpit could curl a hardy flower at fifty yards.
"I don't know what I'm doing with the humans, " Regis answered. "I haven't even told them my suspicions of a drow raid yet. If they agree to join our cause, and I have no reason to believe that they won't, I suspect that we would be wise to keep them out of the lower tunnels, even though we plan to light those tunnels."
Dagna nodded his agreement. "A wise choice indeed, " he said. "The tall men are better suited to fighting along the mountainsides. Me own guess is that the drow'll come in around the mountain as well as through it."
"The men of Settlestone will meet them, " added another dwarf.
From the shadows of a partly closed door at the side of the room, Bruenor Battlehammer looked on curiously. He was amazed at how quickly Regis had taken things into his control, especially given the fact that the halfling did not wear his hypnotic ruby pendant. After scolding Bruenor for not acting quickly and deci  sively, for falling back into a mire of self pity with the trails to Catti  brie and Drizzt apparently closed, the halfling, with Pwent in tow,  had gone straight to General Dagna and the other war commanders.
What amazed Bruenor now was not the fact that the dwarves had gone eagerly into preparations for war, but the fact that Regis seemed to be leading them. Of course, the halfling had concocted a lie to assume that role. Using Bruenor's resumed indifference, the halfling was faking meetings with the dwarf king, then going to Dagna and the others pretending that he was bringing word straight from Bruenor.
When he first discovered the ruse, Bruenor wanted to throttle the halfling, but Regis had stood up to him, and had offered, more than sincerely, to step aside if Bruenor wanted to take over.
Bruenor wished that he could, desperately wanted to find that level of energy once more, but any thought of warfare inevitably led him to memories of his recent past battles, most of them beside Drizzt, Catti-brie, and Wulfgar. Paralyzed by those painful memo  ries, Bruenor had simply dismissed Regis and allowed the halfling to go on with his facade.
Dagna was as fine a strategist as any, but his experience was rather limited regarding races other than dwarves or stupid goblins. Regis was among Drizzt's best friends, had sat and listened to Drizzt's tales of his homeland and his kin hundreds of times. Regis had also been among Wulfgar's best friends, and so he understood the barbarians, whom the dwarves would need as allies should the war come to pass.
Still, Dagna had never been fond of anyone who wasn't a dwarf,  and the fact that he wholeheartedly accepted the advice of a half  ling, and one not known for bravery!, surprised Bruenor more than a little.
It stung the king as well. Bruenor knew of the dark elves and the barbarians at least as well as Regis, and he understood dwarven tactics better than anyone. He should be at that table, pointing out the sections on the map; he should be the one, with Regis beside him, to meet with Berkthgar the Bold.
Bruenor dropped his gaze to the floor, rubbed a hand over his brow and down his grotesque scar. He felt an ache in the hollow socket. Hollow, too, was his heart, empty with the loss of Wulfgar,  and breaking apart at the thought that Drizzt and his precious Catti  brie had gone off into danger.
The events about him had gone beyond his responsibilities as king of Mithril Hall. Bruenor 's first dedication was to his children,  one lost, the other missing, and to his friends. Their fates were beyond him now; he could only hope that they would win out,  would survive and come back to him, for Bruenor had no way to get to Catti-brie and Drizzt.
Bruenor could never get back to Wulfgar.
The dwarf king sighed and turned away, walking slowly back toward his empty room, not even noticing that the meeting had adjourned.
Regis watched Bruenor silently from the doorway, wishing that he had his ruby pendant, if for no other reason than to try to re  kindle the fires in the broken dwarf.
Catti-brie eyed the wide corridor ahead suspiciously, trying to make out distinct shapes among the many stalagmite mounds. She had come into a region where mud mixed with stone, and she had seen the tracks clearly enough, goblin tracks, she knew, and recent.
Ahead loomed the perfect place for an ambush. Catti-brie took an arrow from the quiver strapped behind her hip, then held Taul  maril the Heartseeker, her magical bow, ready in her hands. Tucked under one arm, ready to be dropped, was the panther figurine. She silently debated whether or not she should summon Guenhwyvar from the Astral Plane. She had no real proof that the goblins were about, all the mounds in the corridor seemed natural and benign,  but she felt the hairs on the back of her neck tingle.
She decided to hold off calling the cat, her logic overruling her instincts. She fell against the left hand wall and slowly started for  ward, wincing every time the mud sloshed around her lifting boot.
With a dozen stalagmite mounds behind her, the wall still tightly to her left, the young woman paused and listened once more. All seemed perfectly quiet, but she couldn't shake the feeling that her every step was being monitored, that some monster was poised not far away, waiting to spring out and throttle her. Would it be like this all the way through the Underdark? she wondered. Would she drive herself insane with imagined dangers? Or worse, would the false alarms of her misguided instincts take her off guard on that one occasion when danger really did rise against her?
Catti-brie shook her head to clear the thoughts and squinted her eyes to peer into the magically starlit gloom. Another benefit of Lady Alustriel's gift was that Catti-brie's eyes did not glow with the telltale red of infravision. The young woman, though, inexperienced in such matters, didn't know that; she knew only that the shapes ahead seemed ominous indeed. The ground and walls were not firmly set, as in other parts of the tunnels. Mud and open water flowed freely in different areas. Many of the stalagmites seemed to have appendages, goblin arms, perhaps, holding wicked weapons.
Again Catti-brie forced away the unwanted thoughts, and she started forward, but froze immediately. She had caught a sound, a slight scraping, like that of a weapon tip brushing against stone. She waited a long while but heard nothing more, so she again told her  self not to let her imagination carry her away.
But had those goblin tracks been part of her imagination? she asked herself as she took another step forward.
Catti-brie dropped the figurine and swung about, her bow com  ing to bear. Around the nearest stalagmite charged a goblin, its ugly,  flat face seeming broader for the wide grin it wore and its rusting and jagged sword held high above its head.
Catti-brie fired, point blank, and the silver streaking arrow had barely cleared the bow when the monster's head exploded in a shower of multicolored sparks. The arrow blasted right through,  sparking again as it sliced a chunk off the stalagmite mound.
"Guenhwyvar!" Catti-brie called, and she readied the bow. She knew she had to get moving, that this area had been clearly marked by the spark shower. She considered the gray mist that had begun to swirl about her, and, knowing the summoning was complete,  scooped up the figurine and ran away from the wall. She hopped the dead goblin's body and cut around the nearest stalagmite, then slipped between two others. Out of the corner of her eye she saw another four foot tall huddled shape. An arrow streaked off in pur  suit, its silvery trail stealing the darkness, and scored another hit. Catti-brie did not smile, though, for the flash of light revealed a dozen more of the ugly humanoids, slinking and crawling about the mounds.
They screamed and hooted and began their charge.
Over by the wall, gray mist gave way to the powerful panther's tangible form. Guenhwyvar had recognized the urgency of the call and was on the alert immediately, ears flattened and shining green eyes peering about, taking full measure of the scene. Quieter than the night, the cat loped off.
Catti-brie circled farther out from the wall, taking a roundabout course to flank the approaching group. Every time she came past another blocking mound, she let fly an arrow, as often hitting stone as goblins. She knew that confusion was her ally here, that she had to keep the creatures from organizing, or they would surround her.
Another arrow streaked away, and in its illumination Catti-brie saw a closer target, a goblin crouched right behind the mound she would soon pass. She went behind the mound, skidded to a stop,  and came back out the same way, desperately working to fit an arrow.
The goblin swung around the mound and rushed in, sword leading. Catti-brie batted with her bow, barely knocking the weapon aside. She heard a sucking sound behind her, then a hiss, and instinctively dropped to her knees.
A goblin pitched over her suddenly low form and crashed into its surprised ally. The two were up quickly, though, as quickly as Catti-brie. The woman worked her bow out in front to keep them at bay, tried to get her free hand down to grab at the jeweled dagger on her belt.
Sensing their advantage, the goblins charged, then went tum  bling away along with six hundred pounds of flying panther.
"Guen, " Catti-brie mouthed in silent appreciation, and she piv  oted about, pulling an arrow from her quiver. As she expected, gob  lins were fast closing from behind.
Taulmaril twanged once, again, and then a third time, Catti-brie blasting holes in the ranks. She used the sudden and deadly explo  sions of streaking lines and sparks as cover and ran, not away, as she knew the goblins would expect, but straight ahead, backtracking along her original route.
She had them fooled as she ducked behind another mound,  wide and thick, and nearly giggled when a goblin leaped out behind her, rubbing its light shmg eyes and looking back the other way.
Just five feet behind the stupid thing, Catti-brie let fly, the arrow blasting into the goblin's back, snaring on a bone, and sending the creature flying through the air.
Catti-brie spun and ran on, around the back side of the wide mound. She heard a roar from Guenhwyvar, followed by the pro  found screams of another group of goblins. Ahead, a huddled form was running away from her, and she lifted her bow, ready to clear the path.
Something jolted her on the hip. She released the bowstring,  and the arrow zipped wide of the mark, scorching a hole in the wall.
Catti-brie stumbled off balance, startled and hurt. She banged her shin against a jutting stone and nearly pitched headlong, skid  ding to a stop down on one knee. As she reached down to get another arrow from her quiver, she felt the wet warmth of her lifeblood pouring generously from a deep gash in her hip. Only then did stunned Catti-brie realize the hot waves of agony.
She kept her wits about her and turned as she fitted the arrow.
The goblin was right above her, its breath coming hot and smelly through pointed yellow teeth. Its sword was high above its head.
Catti-brie let fly. The goblin jerked up into the air, but came back to its feet. Behind it, another goblin caught the arrow under the chin,  the powerful bolt blowing the back of its skull off.
Catti-brie thought she was dead. How could she have missed? Did the arrow slip under the goblin's arm as it jumped in fright? It made no sense to her, but she could hardly stop to think it over. The moment of death was upon her, she was sure, for she could not maneuver her bow quickly enough to parry the goblin's next strike. She could not block the descending sword.
But the sword did not descend. The goblin simply stopped, held perfectly still for what seemed to Catti-brie an interminable time. Its sword then clanged to the stone; a wheeze issued from the center of its rib cage, followed by a thick line of blood. The monster toppled to the side, dead.
Catti-brie realized that her arrow had indeed hit the mark, had driven cleanly through the first goblin to kill the second.
Catti-brie forced herself to her feet. She tried to run on, but waves rolled over her, and before she understood what had hap  pened, she was back to the floor, back to one knee. She felt a cold  ness up her side, a swirling nausea in her stomach, and, to her horror, saw yet another of the miserable goblins fast closing, waving a spiked club.
Summoning all of her strength, Catti-brie Waited until the very last moment and whipped her bow across in front of her. The goblin shrieked and fell backward, avoiding the hit, but its sudden retreat gave Catti-brie the time to draw her short sword and the jeweled dagger.
She stood, forcing down the pain and the sick feeling.
The goblin uttered something in its annoying, high pitched voice, something threatening, Catti-brie knew, though it sounded like a typical goblin whine. The wretched creature came at her all of a sudden, whipping the club to and fro, and Catti-brie leaped back.
A jolting flare of agony rushed up her side, nearly costing her her balance. On came the goblin, crouched and balanced, sensing victory.
It continued to talk to her, taunt her, though she could not understand its language. It chuckled and pointed to her wounded leg.
Catti-brie was confident that she could defeat the goblin, but she feared that it would be to no avail. Even if she and Guenhwyvar won out, killed all the goblins or sent them fleeing, what might come next? Her leg would barely support her, certainly she could not continue her quest, and she doubted that she could properly clean and dress the wound. The goblins might not kill her, but they had stopped her, and the waves of pain continued unabated.
Catti-brie's eyes rolled back and she started to sway.
Her eyes blinked open and she steadied herself as the goblin took the bait and charged. When it realized the ruse, it tried to stop,  but skidded in the slippery mud.
The goblin whipped its club across frantically, but Catti-brie's short sword intercepted it, locking against one of the spikes. Know  ing that she had not the strength to force the club aside, she pressed forward, into the goblin, tucking her sword arm in close as she went, forcing the goblin's arm to hook about her as she turned.
All the while, the jeweled dagger led the way, reaching for the creature's belly. The goblin got its free arm up to block, and only the dagger's tip slipped through its skin.
Catti-brie did not know how long she could hold the clinch. Her strength was draining; she wanted nothing more than to curl up in a little ball and faint away.
Then, to her surprise, the goblin cried out in agony. It whipped its head back and forth, shook its whole body wildly in an effort to get away. Catti-brie, barely holding the dangerous club at bay, had to keep pace with it.
A burst of energy pulsed through the dagger and coursed up her arm.
The young woman didn't know what to make of it, didn't know what was happening, as the goblin went into a series of violent con  vulsions, each one sending another pulse of energy flowing into its foe.
The creature fell back against a stone, its blocking arm limp, and Catti-brie's momentum carried her closer, the wicked dagger sink  ing in to the hilt. The next pulse of energy nearly knocked Catti-brie away, and her eyes widened in horror as she realized that Artemis Entreri's weapon was literally eating away at the goblin's life force and transferring it to her!
The goblin sprawled over the arcing edge of the stalagmite mound, its eyes open and unblinking, its body twitching in death spasms.
Catti-brie fell back, taking the bloodied dagger with her. She worked hard to draw breath, gasping in disbelief and eyeing the blade with sheer revulsion.
A roar from Guenhwyvar reminded her that the battle was not ended. She replaced the dagger on her belt and turned, thinking that she had to find her bow. She had gone two running steps before she even realized that her leg was easily supporting her now.
From somewhere in the shadows, a goblin heaved a spear,  which skipped off the stone just behind the running woman and stole her train of thought. Catti-brie skidded down in the mud and scooped up her bow as she slid past. She looked down to her quiver,  saw its powerful magic already at work replacing the spent arrows.
She saw, too, that no more blood was coming from her wound. Gingerly, the young woman ran a hand over it, felt a thick scab already in place. She shook her head in disbelief, took up her bow,  and began firing.
Only one more goblin got close to Catti-brie. It sneaked around the back side of the thick mound. The young woman started to drop her bow and draw out her weapons for melee, but she stopped (and so did the goblin!) when a great panther's paw slapped down atop the creature's head and long claws dug into the goblin's sloping forehead.
Guenhwyvar snapped the creature backward with sudden, sav  age force such that one of the monster's shoddy boots remained where it had been standing. Catti-brie looked away, back to the area behind them, as Guenhwyvar's powerful maw closed over the stunned goblin's throat and began to squeeze.
Catti-brie saw no targets, but let fly another arrow to brighten the end of the corridor. Half a dozen goblins were in full flight, and Catti-brie sent a shower of arrows trailing them, chasing them, and cutting them down.
She was still firing a minute later, her enchanted quiver would never run short of arrows, when Guenhwyvar padded over to her and bumped against her, demanding a pat. Catti-brie sighed deeply and dropped a hand to the cat's muscled flank, her eyes falling to the jeweled dagger, sitting impassively on her belt.
She had seen Entreri wield that dagger, had once had its blade against her own throat. The young woman shuddered as she recalled that awful moment, more awful now that she understood the cruel weapon's properties.
Guenhwyvar growled and pushed against her, prodding her to motion. Catti-brie understood the panther's urgency; according to Drizzt's tales, goblins rarely traveled in the Underdark in secluded bands. If there were twenty here, there were likely two hundred somewhere nearby.
Catti-brie looked to the tunnel behind them, the tunnel from which she had come and down which the goblins had fled. She con  sidered, briefly, going that way, fighting through the fleeing few and running back to the surface world, where she belonged.
It was a fleeting thought for her, an excusable instant of weak  ness. She knew that she must go on, but how? Catti-brie looked down to her belt once more and smiled as she untied the magical mask. She lifted it before her face, unsure of how it even worked.
With a shrug to Guenhwyvar, the young woman pressed the mask against her face.
Nothing happened.
Holding it tight, she thought of Drizzt, imagined herself with ebony skin and the fine chiseled features of a drow.
Biting tingles of magic nipped at her every pore. In a moment,  she moved her hand away from her face, the mask holding fast of its own accord. Catti-brie blinked many times, for in the magical starlight afforded her by the Cat's Eye, she saw her receding hand shining perfectly black, her fingers more slender and delicate than she remembered them.
How easy it had been!
Catti-brie wished that she had a mirror so that she could check the disguise, though she felt in her heart that it was true. She consid  ered how perfectly Entreri had mimicked Regis when he had come back to Mithril Hall, right down to the halfling's equipment. With that thought, the young woman looked to her own rather drab garb. She considered Drizzt's tales of his homeland, of the fabulous and evil high priestesses of Lloth.
Catti-brie's worn traveling cloak had become a rich robe, shim  mering purple and black. Her boots had blackened, their tips curl  ing up delicately. Her weapons remained the same, though, and it seemed to Catti-brie, in this attire, that Entreri's jeweled dagger was the most fitting.
Again the young woman focused her thoughts on that wicked blade. A part of her wanted to drop it in the mud, to bury it where no one could ever find it. She even went so far as to close her fingers over its hilt.
But she released the dagger immediately, strengthened her resolve, and smoothed her drowlike robes. The blade had helped her; without it she would be crippled and lost, if not dead. It was a weapon, like her bow, and, though its brutal tactics assaulted her sensibilities, Catti-brie came, in that moment, to accept them. She carried the dagger more easily as the days turned into a week, and then two.
This was the Underdark, where the savage survived.
Part 3 SHADOWS here are no shadows in the Underdark.
Only after years on the surface have I come to under  stand the sign ficance of that seemingly minute fact, the sig  nificance of the contrast between lightness and darkness. There are no shadows in the Underdark, no areas of mystery where only the imagination can go.
What a marvelous thing is a shadow! I have seen my own silhouette walk under me as the sun rode high; I have seen a gopher grow to the size of a large bear, the light low behind him, spreading his ominous silhouette far across the ground. I have walked through the woods at twilight, my gaze alternating between the lighter areas catching the last rays of day, leafy green slipping to gray, and those darkening patches, those areas where only my mind's eye could go. Might a monster be there? An orc or a goblin? Or might a hidden treasure, as magn~ficent as a lost, enchanted sword or as simple as a fox's den, lay within the sheltering gloom?
When I walk the woods at twilight, my imagination walks beside me,  heightens my senses, opens my mind to any possibilities. But there are no shadows in the Underdark, and there is no room forfanciful imagining. All, everywhere, is gripped in a brooding, continual, predatory hush and a very real, ever present danger.
To imagine a crouched enemy, or a hidden treasure, is an exercise in enjoyment, a conjured state of alertness, of aliveness. But when that enemy is too often real and not imagined, when every jag in the stone, every potential hiding place, becomes a source of tension, then the game is not so much fun.
One cannot walk the corridors of the Underdark with his imagination beside him. To imagine an enemy behind one stone might well blind a per  son to the very real enemy behind another. To slip into a daydream is to lose that edge of readiness, and in the Underdark, to be unwary is to die.
This proved the most difficult transition for me when I went back into those lightless corridors. I had to again become the primal hunter, had to survive, every moment, on that instinctual edge, a state of nervous energy that kept my muscles always taut, always ready to spring. Every step of the way, the present was all that mattered, the search for potential hiding places of potential enemies. I could not afford to imagine those enemies. I had to wait for them and watch for them, react to any movements.
There are no shadows in the Underdark. There is no room for imagina  tion in the Underdark. It is a place for alertness, but not aliveness, a place with no room for hopes and dreams.