OUT THE GAUNTLET
Bah, ye're listenin' to the way I babble and ye're thinking I'm a stupid one, ain't ye, elf?"
"I?" Jarlaxle replied with mock innocence. He grabbed Athrogate's arm as the dwarf reached his hand into a pocket and produced some coin for the waiting serving girl.
Athrogate looked down at the drow's hand, tight around his wrist, then lifted his gaze to consider Jarlaxle eye-to-eye.
"Ye're asking me to go, ain't ye?"
"It is an offer of adventure."
Athrogate snorted. "Yer friend's tied Knellict's butt hairs in a knot and now yerself's flicking yer finger under the nose o' Kane hisself. Adventure, ye say? I'm thinking ye built yerself two walls o' iron, Jarlaxle, and now they're both to fall atop ye. Only question is, which'll flatten ye first?"
"Ah, but if they fall together, might they not impede each other's progress?" He held his hands up before him, fingers together and skyward, then dropped them in toward each other until the fingers tapped together, forming an inverted V. "There is room left between them, is there not?"
"Ye're bats."
Jarlaxle could only laugh at that observation, and really, when he thought about it, there wasn't much point in disagreeing.
"Ain't far enough in all the world to run from them," Athrogate said more solemnly, preempting the drow's forthcoming repeat of the offer. "So ye're to run from Heliogabalus, and a good choice that'll be - best ye got, anyway, though I'm not saying much in that!"
"Come with us."
"Ah, but ye're a stubborn one." The dwarf planted his hands on his hips, paused for just a moment, then shook his hairy head. "Can't be doing that."
Jarlaxle knew that he was beaten, and he couldn't rightly blame the pragmatic dwarf. "Well, then," he said, patting Athrogate's strong shoulder. "Take heart in my assurance that your tab here is paid the winter through." He turned to the tavernkeeper standing behind the bar and the man nodded, having obviously overheard. "Drink yourself into oblivion until the snows have receded and you return to the Vaasan Gate. Compliments of Jarlaxle. And visit baker Piter as you wish. Your coin will not be welcomed there, but your appetite surely will."
Athrogate pursed his lips and nodded his appreciation. Whether he wanted to get entangled with Jarlaxle or not, the dwarf wasn't about to turn down those offers!
"Eat well and drink well, good Athrogate, my friend," Jarlaxle finished, and he bowed.
Athrogate grabbed him hard by the arm before he could straighten, though, and pulled his ear close. "Don't ye be calling me that, ye durned elf. Least not when ears're perked our way."
Satisfied that they understood each other, Jarlaxle straightened, nodded in deference to the dwarf's demands, and left the tavern. He didn't look back because he didn't want Athrogate to see the sting of disappointment on his face.
He went out into the street and spent a moment surveying his surroundings. He tried to remain confident in his decisions even in the face of Athrogate's doubts. The dwarf knew the region well, of course, but Jarlaxle brushed it off as the dwarf underestimating him.
At least, he tried to tell himself that.
"You heard?" the drow asked the shadows, using the language of his Underdark home.
"Of course," came a reply in the same strange tongue.
"It is as I told you."
"As dangerous as I told you," the voice of Kimmuriel Oblodra replied.
"As promising as I told you."
No answer drifted to Jarlaxle's ears.
"One enemy is manageable," Jarlaxle whispered. "The other need not be our enemy."
"We shall see," was all Kimmuriel would offer.
"You are ready when the opportunity presents itself?"
"I am always ready, Jarlaxle. Is that not why you appointed me?"
Jarlaxle smiled and took comfort in those confident words. Kimmuriel was thinking ahead, of course. The brilliant psionicist had thrived on the treachery of Menzoberranzan, and so to him the games of humans were child's play. Entreri and Jarlaxle had become targets of the Citadel of Assassins and curiosities of Spysong. Those two groups would battle around the duo as much or more than they would battle with the duo. And that would present opportunities. The citadel was the less formidable, by far, and so it followed that they could be used to keep Spysong at bay.
Jarlaxle sensed that Kimmuriel was gone - preparing the battlefield, no doubt - so Jarlaxle made his way through Heliogabalus's streets. Lights burned on many corners, but they flickered in the wind and were dulled by the fog that had come up, so typical of that time of the year, where the temperature varied so greatly day to night. The drow pulled his cloak tighter and willed his magical boots to silence. Perhaps it was better that he blend in with his surroundings just then.
Perfectly silent, nearly invisible in his drow cloak, Jarlaxle had little trouble not only getting back to the stairs leading to his apartment in the unremarkable building, but he managed to do a circuit or three of the surrounding area, noting others who did not notice him.
A tip of the right side of his great hat lifted Jarlaxle's feet off the ground and he glided up the rickety, creaky staircase silently. He went inside, into the hallway, and moved up to his door in complete darkness.
Complete darkness for a surface dweller, but not for Jarlaxle. Still, he could barely make out the little dragon statuette trap set above the apartment door. He couldn't tell the color of its eyes, though.
He had told Entreri to keep it set at white, but was he to trust that?
Not wanting to bring up any light to alert the many suspicious characters he had noted outside, the drow reached into his hat and pulled forth from under its top a disk of black felt. A couple of roundabout swings elongated it enough and Jarlaxle tossed it against the wall beside the door.
It stuck, and its magic created a hole in the wall, revealing dim candlelight from within.
Jarlaxle stepped through to see Entreri standing in the shadows of the corner, at an angle that allowed him to peer out through the narrow slot between the dark shade and the window's wooden edge.
Entreri acknowledged him with a nod, but never took his eyes off the street outside.
"We have visitors gathering," the assassin whispered.
"More than you know," Jarlaxle replied. He reached up and pulled his disk through, eliminating the hole and leaving the wall as it had been before.
"Are you going to berate me again for angering Knellict? Are you going to ask me again what I have done?"
"Some of our visitors are Knellict's men, no doubt."
"Some?"
"Spysong has taken an interest," Jarlaxle explained.
"Spysong? King Gareth's group?"
"I suspect they've deduced that the fights with the gargoyles and the dracolich were not the only battles at the castle. After all, of the four who fell, two were to the same blade."
"So again, I am to blame?"
Jarlaxle laughed. "Hardly. If there is even blame to be had, by Gareth's reckoning."
Entreri moved closer to the window, slipped the tip of his dagger under the edge of the shade and dared to retract it just a bit to widen the viewing space.
"I do not like this," the assassin said. "They know we're in here, and could strike - "
"Then let us not be in here," Jarlaxle interrupted.
Entreri let the shade slip back into place and stepped to the side of the window, eyeing his friend. "To the dragons?" he asked.
Jarlaxle shook his head. "They will have nothing to do with this. Gareth's friends unnerve them, I think."
"Wonderful."
"Bah, they are only dragons."
Entreri crinkled his face at that, but wasn't about to ask for clarification. "Where, then?"
"Nowhere in the city will be safe. Indeed, I expect that we will find strong tendrils of both our enemies throughout all of Damara."
Entreri's face grew tight. He knew, obviously, what the drow had in mind.
"There is a castle where we might find welcome," Jarlaxle confirmed.
"Welcome? Or refuge?"
"One man's prison is another man's home."
"Another drow's home," Entreri corrected, eliciting a burst of laughter from Jarlaxle.
"Lead on," the assassin bade his black-skinned companion a moment later, when a sound from outside reminded them that it might not be the time for philosophical rambling.
Jarlaxle turned for the door. "White as we agreed?" he asked.
"Yes."
The drow opened the door then paused and glanced back. Holding the door wide, he stepped aside and motioned for Entreri to go first into the hallway.
Entreri walked by, over the threshold. "Blue," he said, and reached up to retrieve the dragon statuette.
Jarlaxle laughed all the louder.
"It's Gareth's boys, I tell ya," Bosun Bruiseberry said to his companion. An incredibly thin and wiry little rat, Bosun seemed to move through the tightest of alleyways and partitions as easily as if they were broad avenues - which of course only frustrated his hunting partner, Remilar the Bold, a young wizard whose regard for himself greatly exceeded that of his peers and masters at the citadel of Assassins.
"So Spysong, too, has taken an interest in this Artemis Entreri creature," Remilar replied. He bit the words off short, nearly tripping as his rich blue robes caught on the jagged edge of a loose board on the side of Entreri's apartment building.
"Or an interest in us," Bosun said. "Seems that group across the street're watching Burgey's boys in the back alley off to the left."
"Competing interests," Remilar answered in a disinterested drawl. "Very well then, let us be quick about our task, and about our departure. I did not interrupt my all-important research to leave without that bounty."
"This one's dangerous, by all accounts, and his drow friend's worse."
Remilar gave a disgusted sigh and brushed past his cautious companion. He moved to the end of the alley, the front corner of the building, and glanced out at the street beyond.
Bosun moved up very close behind, even put a hand on Remilar's back, which made the mage straighten and offer another heavy and disgusted sigh.
"Quickly, then," he said to the young assassin.
"I can slip in and get behind the rat Entreri," Bosun offered. "Yerself'll distract them and me blades'll do the dirty task. I'll be taking his ear for proof."
If Remilar was impressed, his expression certainly didn't show it. "We've no time for your legendary stealth," he replied, and had Bosun been a brighter chap, he'd have caught the sarcastic tone in the adjective. "You are the decoy in this one. Right in through the front door you go. Draw him out - or them, if the drow is at home - and show him your blades. You need keep his thoughts and actions occupied for but a few seconds and I will lay him low with a blast of lightning and a burst of missiles to still his twitching. Be sharp and fast with your blade to retrieve the trophy - his head, if you will - and with a snap of my fingers, we will depart this place, teleporting back to the hills outside the citadel."
Bosun wore a stupid look as he digested all of that. He began to question the plan, but Remilar grabbed him by the front of the tunic and pulled him past, out into the street.
"You wish to do battle with Spysong, or to lose Entreri to other bounty-claimers?" the wizard asked.
A yell went up from a nearby building, and the pair knew they were out of time for their planning. Bosun stumbled to the door and reached up for the handle.
But the door exploded before his surprised face, torn from its hinges as out charged Entreri astride a tall, gaunt black stallion that snorted ebon smoke and wore cuffs of orange fire around its thundering hooves. The mount, a hellish nightmare, apparently didn't distinguish between barriers, for it treated the frozen-with-surprise Bosun in the exact same manner as it had the door.
Down he went under a sudden and vicious barrage of hooves. He hit the ground and squirmed, and good fortune turned him inside the thundering back hooves as the nightmare charged over him. That good fortune didn't hold, however, as the second nightmare exited the building, the dark elf astride. Poor Bosun lifted his head just enough to get it clipped, and to get his scalp torn away, by the fiery hooves of the second mount.
To the side, still in the shadows of the alley, Remilar the More-Smart-Than-Bold improvised, casting the third of his planned spells first.
Her hands trembled as she opened the small chest, for it was the first time she had dared to lift that cover since returning from Palishchuk. She had kept herself busy during her short stopover before going to Bloodstone Village for the ceremony, and mostly so that she could avoid that very thing. The task, necessary and painful, was something that Calihye could hardly bear.
Inside the small chest were trinkets and a necklace, and a rolled-up parchment with a sketch done by one of the merchants of a caravan that had spent some time on the Fugue. The artist had done a sketch of Calihye and Parissus, arm-in-arm. She looked at it and felt tears welling behind her blue eyes. The likeness was strong enough to elicit memories of her dear Parissus.
Calihye ran the fingers of one hand gently over the image. The pose was so natural for the pair, so typical. The taller Parissus stood firm, with Calihye's head resting on her shoulder. Calihye lifted a scarf with her free hand and brought it to her face. She closed her eyes, the image in the sketch firmly rooted in her thoughts, and breathed deeply, taking in the scent of her lost companion.
Her shoulders bobbed with sobs, tears wetted the scarf.
A few moments later, Calihye sorted herself out with a deep and steadying breath. Her lips grew very tight as she put both scarf and sketch off to the side. More trinkets came out: some jewelry, a pair of medals given to the duo by one of the former undercommanders at the Vaasan Gate, a necklace of varied gemstones. The woman paused then pulled forth a fake beard and a cap of brown leather, a disguise that Parissus had often worn when she and Calihye had gone out tavern-hopping. Parissus impersonated a man quite well, Calihye thought, and she heard in her mind the husky voice her friend could assume at will. How they had played with the sensibilities of folks across the Bloodstone Lands and beyond!
The woman finally arrived at the item she had gone there to retrieve: a small crystal vial filled with blood: Calihye's and Parissus's, mixed and mingled, a reminder of their shared pledge.
"In life and beyond," she recited quietly. She looked at her dagger, which she had placed on a small table to the side, and continued as if addressing it, "Not yet."
Calihye produced a small silver chain from her pouch, an item she had purchased in Bloodstone Village upon her departure. She held the vial up before her eyes, turning it slowly so that she could see the tiny golden eyelet set in the back. With the fingers of an accomplished thief, Calihye threaded the chain through the eyelet then brought it up and set the unusual necklace around her delicate elf's neck.
She lifted her hand to cover the crystal vial then touched the scarf to her face once more and inhaled the scent of Parissus.
She did not cry again and when she removed the scarf, her face was devoid emotion.
Remilar nearly lost his train of thought, and his spell, when he noted Bosun crawling his way, blood streaming down his forehead. The garishly wounded man reached out a trembling hand Remilar's way, his look plaintive, confused, dazed.
In the midst of the spell, and unwilling to let it go, Remilar nodded furiously at the man, bidding him to hurry.
Somehow Bosun found a burst of energy, scrambling along, but he wouldn't get there in time, Remilar knew.
Across the street, agents of the Citadel of Assassins came out of the shadows to give chase and fire arrows and spells at the retreating duo. But to Remilar's horror, others came out of the shadows as well, and it only took the mage a moment to understand the identity of the second force.
Spysong!
Had the Citadel of Assassins been baited with Entreri and Jarlaxle? Had Entreri's treachery been nothing more than a ruse to lure the network into Spysong's deadly sights?
Remilar shook the thoughts from his head, and realized that he had lost his spell, as well. He motioned more vigorously to the crawling Bosun and began casting again.
Bosun got there in time, falling at Remilar's feet and hooking his arms around the mage's ankles. Remilar even reached down and grabbed the man's shoulder as his spell released, transporting them across space to a rocky hillside in southern Vaasa, a score of miles east of the Vaasan Gate.
"Come along, then," Remilar said to his prone companion. "It's two hundred yards uphill to the citadel, and I'm not about to carry you." He reached down and tugged at the man, and shook his head when he looked into Bosun's eyes, for the man seemed hardly conscious of his surroundings.
And indeed, Bosun was not even there behind that vacant gaze. He was lost in a swirl of gray mists and flashing, sharp lights, the confusion of the psionicist's mind attack as Kimmuriel Oblodra possessed his corporeal body.
The nightmares pounded down the cobblestones, smoke and gouts of flame flying from their otherworldly hooves. Jarlaxle led Entreri around one tight corner - too tight! - and his coal black, hellish steed brushed a cart of fresh fish. Patrons ran every which way and the vendor threw his arms defensively over the open cart. The look upon the middle-aged man's bloodless, open-jawed, wide-eyed face was one Artemis Entreri would not forget for many tendays to come.
The market parted before the charging pair, people scrambling, tripping, calling out for one god or another, even crying in terror. Mothers grabbed their children and hugged them close, rocking and cooing as if Death himself had arrived on the street that day.
Jarlaxle seemed to be enjoying it all, Entreri noted. The drow even pulled off his hat at one point and waved it around, all the while expertly weaving his mount through the dodging crowds.
Entreri spurred his steed past the drow and took the lead, then led Jarlaxle down a sharp corner to a quieter street.
"The peasants are cover for our escape!" Jarlaxle protested.
Entreri didn't answer. He just put his head down and spurred his nightmare on faster. They crossed several blocks, turning often and fast, frightening every horse and every person who viewed their fiery-hoofed nightmares. Pursuit rang out behind them, from the back and the sides, but they were moving too quickly and too erratically, and they had left too much confusion back at the initial scene, for anyone to properly organize to cut them off.
"We've got to make it through the gate," Entreri said as Jarlaxle pulled up even with him on one wide and nearly deserted avenue.
"And then my own," Jarlaxle replied.
Entreri glanced at him curiously, not understanding. He hadn't the time to contemplate it then, however, for as they came around the next corner, leaning hard and turning harder, they came in sight of Heliogabalus's northern gate. It was open, as always, but more than a few guards were already turning their way.
The reactions of those guards, sudden frantic running and screaming, led both riders to guess that the massive portcullis would soon lower, and the heavy iron gates would begin their swing.
Jarlaxle put his head down and kicked hard at the nightmare's sides, and the coal black horse accelerated, its hooves crackling sparks off the cobblestones. Rather than pace his friend, Entreri fell into line behind him, and similarly spurred on his mount. Jarlaxle waved his arms, and a globe of darkness appeared on the sheltered parapet above the open gates. The drow's arm went out to the side and Entreri saw that Jarlaxle held a thin wand.
"Wonderful," the assassin muttered, expecting that his reckless friend would set off a fireball or some other destructive magic that would bring a retaliatory hail of arrows down upon them.
Jarlaxle leveled the wand and spoke a command word. A glob of green goo burst forth from the item's tip and leaped out ahead of the riders, soaring toward a man who worked a crank at the side of the gate. Jarlaxle adjusted his sights and launched a second glob at the gates themselves, then spurred his nightmare on even faster.
The man working the crank fell back and cried out, pulling free the crank's setting pin as he went. The crank began to spin, and the portcullis started to drop.
But the magical glob slapped hard against the mechanism, filling the gears with the sticky substance. The spin became a crawl and the crank creaked to a halt, leaving the portcullis only slightly closed, with enough room for the ducking riders to get through.
The second glob struck its target as well, slapping into place at the hinge of the right-hand gate, filling the wedge and holding back the guards who tried to pull the gates closed. One of them turned for the glob, but then all of them cried out and scrambled aside as the riders and their hellish steeds bore down upon them.
Jarlaxle was far from finished, and Entreri was reminded quite clearly why he still followed that unusual dark elf. The wand went away and the drow switched the reins to his right hand. He brought his left hand out with a snap, and a golden hoop bracelet appeared from beneath the cuff on the sleeve of his fine shirt. That hoop went right over his palm, and he grabbed it and brought it in before his face.
An arrow arced out at the pair, follow by a second.
Jarlaxle blew through the hoop, and its magic magnified his puff a thousand-thousand times over, creating a barrier of wind before him that sent the arrows flying harmlessly wide.
"Stay right on my tail!" the drow shouted to Entreri, and to Entreri's horror, Jarlaxle summoned a second globe of darkness in the clearing between the narrowly opened gates.
Jarlaxle put his head down, and three powerful strides brought him under the creaking portcullis, straining against the strength of the goo. He plunged into the darkness, and Entreri, teeth gritted in abject horror, rushed in behind.
Then it was light again, or relatively so, as the normal night was as compared to Jarlaxle's summoned globes, and the pair galloped off down the road north of Heliogabalus. A couple of arrows reached for them from behind - one even managed to clip Entreri's horse - but the nightmares were not slowed, carrying their riders far, far away.
Some time later, the city lost in the foggy night behind them, Jarlaxle pulled up short and clip-clopped his nightmare off the road.
"We've no time for your games," Entreri chastised him.
"You would ride straight to the Vaasan Gate?"
"To anywhere that is not here."
"And Knellict, or one of Gareth's wizards, or perhaps both, will enact a spell and land before us, as happened on the road south of Palishchuk upon our return from the castle."
The drow dismounted, and as soon as he hit the ground he dismissed his nightmare then reached down and picked up the obsidian statuette and placed it safely in his pouch.
Entreri sat astride his horse, making no move to follow suit.
Seemingly unperturbed, Jarlaxle drew another wand out of a loop inside his cloak, one of several wands set in a line there. He held it up before him and offered a questioning look at his companion. "Are you meaning to join me?"
Entreri looked around at the drizzly, dark night, then sighed and dropped from his saddle. He spoke the command, reducing his nightmare to a tiny statuette, then scooped it up and shuffled toward the drow.
Jarlaxle held out his free hand and Entreri took it, and a moment later, colorful swirls began to fill the air around the pair. Streaks of yellow and shocks of blinding blue flashed all around, followed by a sudden and disorienting distortion of visual perception, as if all the light, stars and moon, began to warp and bend.
A sudden blackness fell over the pair, a thump of nothingness as profound as the moment of death itself.
Gradually, Entreri reoriented himself to his new surroundings, the nook where a great, man-made wall joined a natural wall of towering mountain stone. They had arrived at the westernmost edge of the Vaasan Gate, he realized as he got his bearings and noticed the tent city set upon the plain known as the Fugue.
"Why didn't you do that from the beginning?" the flustered assassin asked.
"It would not have been as dramatic."
Entreri started to respond, but bit it back, recognizing the pragmatism behind Jarlaxle's decision. Had the drow used his magic wand to whisk them out of the city, the remnants of the spell would have been recognized by their enemies, who might have quickly surmised the destination. Riding out of town so visibly, they might have bought themselves at least a little time.
"We should ride out to the north with all speed," Jarlaxle informed him.
"To hide in the castle?"
"You forget the powers of Zhengyi's construct. We won't be hiding, I assure you."
"You sound as if you've already put things in motion," Entreri remarked, and he knew, of course, that that was indeed the case. "I need some time here."
"Will you bring the half-elf along?" Jarlaxle asked, catching Entreri off his guard. "She might lack the common sense of Athrogate, after all, and out of misplaced loyalty to you decide that she should join us."
"And you think that would be foolish? Does that mean that you're not as confident as you pretend?"
Jarlaxle laughed at him. "She is not implicated in any of this. Not by Knellict and not by Gareth, whatever either side might know of your relationship with her. We would do well to put her at arms' length for a short time. Once we are established in the northland, Calihye can ride in openly. Until that time, she might prove more valuable to us, and will certainly remain safer, if there is distance between you two. Of course, I am presuming that you can suffer the pain in your loins...."
Entreri narrowed his eyes and tightened his jaw, and Jarlaxle merely chuckled again.
"As you will," the drow said with a great flourish, and he walked off along the wall.
Entreri remained there in the shadows for a short time, considering his options. He knew where he would find Calihye, and soon enough, he decided on what he would say to her.
Her fingers trembled as she traced the delicate outline of Parissus's face in the precious portrait. Calihye closed her eyes and could feel again the smoothness of Parissus's cheeks, the softness of her skin above the hard and strong tension of her muscles.
She would never replace that feel, Calihye knew, and moistness came into her blue eyes once more.
She sniffed it away, dropped the portrait, and spun when her door opened. Artemis Entreri stepped into the room.
"I knocked," the man explained. "I did not mean to surprise you."
Calihye, so skilled and clear-thinking, forced herself up quickly and closed the ground to her lover. "I did not expect you," she said, hoping she hadn't too obviously exaggerated her excitement. She wrapped her arms around the man's neck and kissed him deeply.
Entreri was more than glad to reciprocate. "My plans have changed," he said after lingering about the woman's lips for a long while. "Again I find myself at the center of a storm named Jarlaxle."
"You were chased out of Heliogabalus?"
Entreri chuckled.
"By Knellict or Gareth?"
"Yes," Entreri replied, and he smiled widely and kissed Calihye again.
But the woman would have none of it. She pulled back to arms' length. "What will you do? Where will we go?"
"Not 'we, " Entreri corrected. "I will go out to the north, straightaway. To the castle north of Palishchuk."
Calihye shook her head, her face crinkling with confusion.
"It will all sort out," Entreri promised her. "And quickly."
"Then I will go with you."
Entreri was shaking his head before she ever finished the thought. "No," he replied. "I need you here. It may well be that you will serve as my eyes, but that is not possible if you are known to be an associate."
"We have been seen together," the woman reminded him.
"Such liaisons are not uncommon, not unexpected, and not indicative of anything more."
"Is that how you feel?" the woman asked, a hard edge coming to her voice.
Entreri grinned at her. "How I feel isn't the point, is it? It is how we are, or will easily be, perceived, and that is all that matters. We engaged in a brief and intense affair, but we parted ways in Bloodstone Village and went on with our separate lives."
Calihye considered his words, considered all of it for a few moments, then shook her head. "Better that I come with you," she insisted, and she pulled away and turned for the rack that held her traveling gear.
"No," Entreri stated, his tone leaving no room for debate.
The woman was glad that her back was to him, else he would have seen her sudden scowl.
"It is not wise, and I'll not put you in such danger," Entreri explained. "Nor will I willingly relinquish the advantage I have with you as a secret ally."
"Advantage?" Calihye spat, turning to face him. "Is that the goal of your life, then? To seek advantage? You would forego pleasure for the sake of tactical advantage that you likely will not even need?"
"When you put it that way," Entreri replied, "yes."
Calihye straightened as if she had been struck.
"I'll not allow either my loins or my heart to bring us both to disaster," the assassin told her. "The road before me is dark, but I believe it is a short one." His voice changed, growing husky and serious, but no longer harsh and grave. "I'll not lead you to your doom out of selfishness," he explained. "We will not be apart for long - perhaps no longer than we had originally intended."
"Or you will die out in the northland, without me."
"In that instance, I would be doubly grateful that I did not allow you beside me.
Calihye tried to understand her own feelings well enough to respond. Should she be angry with him? Should she be insulted? Should she thank him for thinking of her above his own desires?
She felt like she was wrapping herself into winding webs, where even her emotions had to execute a feint within a feint.
"I did not come here to argue with you," Entreri said, his voice growing steady once more.
"Then why did you come? To have me one last time before you ride out of my life?"
"A pity, but I haven't the time," he answered. "And I am not riding out of your life. This is temporary. I owed it to you to keep you abreast of my travels."
"You owe it to me to tell me that you'll likely die by someone else's hand?" Calihye asked, and in a moment of particular wickedness, she wondered how Entreri might appear if he recognized the double meaning in her words.
He didn't, obviously, for he began shaking his head and slowly approached.
Calihye noted his belt and the dagger set there on his hip.
But the door opened then and Jarlaxle poked his head into the room. "Ah, good, you remain upright," he said with an exaggerated wink.
"You said I had time," a frustrated Entreri growled at him, turning to face him.
"I fear I underestimated the cleverness of our enemies," the drow admitted. "Kiss the girl farewell and let us be gone. Some time ago would have been preferable."
Entreri turned back to Calihye. He didn't kiss her again, but merely took her hands in his own and shrugged. "Not long," he promised, and he followed the dark elf.
Calihye stood there for a long time after the door had closed behind the departing pair, her emotions swirling from confusion to fear to anger and back again. She looked back at the portrait of her lost friend, then, and wondered if Entreri too would be lost to her in the Vaasan wasteland.
She found no options, though. She could only clench her fists and jaw in helpless frustration.
PART TWO
BY BLOOD OR BY DEED
I am not a king. Not in temperament, nor by desire, nor heritage, nor popular demand. I am a small player in the events of a small region in a large world. When my day is past, I will be remembered, I hope, by those whose lives I've touched. When my day is past, I will be remembered, I hope, fondly.
Perhaps those who have known me, or who have been affected by the battles I've waged and the work I've done, will tell the tales of Drizzt Do'Urden to their children. Perhaps not. But likely, beyond that possible second generation, my name and my deeds are destined to the dusty corners of forgotten history. That thought does not sadden me, for I measure my success in life by the added value my presence brought to those whom I loved, and who loved me. I am not suited for the fame of a king, or the grandiose reputation of a giant among men - like Elminster, who reshapes the world in ways that will affect generations yet to come.
Kings, like my friend Bruenor, add to their society in ways that define the lives of their descendants, and so one such as he will live on in name and deed for as long as Clan Battlehammer survives - for millennia, likely, and hopefully.
So, often do I ponder the ways of the king, the thoughts of the ruler, the pride and the magnanimity, the selfishness and the service.
There is a quality that separates a clan leader such as Bruenor from a man who presides over an entire kingdom. For Bruenor, surrounded by the dwarves who claim membership in his clan, kin and kind are one and the same. Bruenor holds a vested interest, truly a friendship, with every dwarf every human, every drow, every elf, every halfling, every gnome who resides in Mithral Hall. Their wounds are his wounds, their joys his joys. There isn't one he does not know by name, and not one he does not love as family.
The same cannot be true for the king who rules a larger nation. However good his intent, however true his heart, for a king who presides over thousands, tens of thousands, there is an emotional distance of necessity, and the greater the number of his subjects, the greater the distance, and the more the subjects will be reduced to something less than people, to mere numbers.
Ten thousand live in this city, a king will know. Five thousand reside in that one, and only fifty in that village.
They are not family, nor friends, nor faces he would recognize. He cannot know their hopes and dreams in any particular way, and so, should he care, he must assume and pray that there are indeed common dreams and common needs and common hopes. A good king will understand this shared humanity and will work to uplift all in his wake. This ruler accepts the responsibilities of his position and follows the noble cause of service. Perhaps it is selfishness, the need to be loved and respected, that drives him, but the motivation matters not. A king who wishes to be remembered fondly by serving the best interests of his subjects rules wisely.
Conversely, the leader who rules by fear, whether it be of him or of some enemy he exaggerates to use as a weapon of control, is not a man or woman of good heart. Such was the case in Menzoberranzan, where the matron mothers kept their subjects in a continual state of tension and terror, both of them and their spider goddess, and of a multitude of enemies, some real, some purposefully constructed or nurtured for the sole reason of solidifying the matron mother's hold on the fearful. Who will ever remember a matron mother fondly, I wonder, except for those who were brought to power by such a vile creature?
In the matter of making war, the king will find his greatest legacy - and is this not a sadness that has plagued the reasoning races for all of time? In this, too, perhaps particularly in this, the worth of a king can be clearly measured. No king can feel the pain of a soldier's particular wound, but a good king will fear that wound, for it will sting him as profoundly as it stings the man upon whom it was inflicted.
In considering the "numbers" who are his subjects, a good king will never forget the most important number: one. If a general cries victory and exclaims that only ten men died, the good king will temper his celebration with the sorrow for each, one alone repeated, one alone adding weight to his heart.
Only then will he measure his future choices correctly. Only then will he understand the full weight of those choices, not just on the kingdom, but on the one, or ten, or five hundred, who will die or be maimed in his name and for his holdings and their common interest. A king who feels the pain of every man's wounds, or the hunger in every child's belly, or the sorrow in every destitute parent's soul, is one who will place country above crown and community above self. Absent that empathy, any king, even a man of previously stellar temperament, will prove to be no more than a tyrant.
Would that the people chose their kings'. Would that they could measure the hearts of those who wish to lead them!
For if that choice was honest, if the representation of the would-be king was a clear and true portrayal of his hopes and dreams for the flock and not a pandering appeal to the worst instincts of those who would choose, then all the folk would grow with the kingdom, or share the pains and losses. Like family, or groups of true friends, or dwarf clans, the folk would celebrate their common hopes and dreams in their every action.
But the people do not choose anywhere that I know of in Faerun. By blood or by deed, the lines are set, and so we hope, each in our own nation, that a man or woman of empathy will ascend, that whoever will come to rule us will do so with an understanding of the pain of a single soldier's wound.
There is beside Mithral Hall now a burgeoning kingdom of unusual composition. For this land, the Kingdom of Many-Arrows, is ruled by a single orc. Obould is his name, and he has crawled free of every cupboard of expectation that I or Bruenor or any of the others have tried to construct about him. Nay, not crawled, but has shattered the walls to kindling and strode forward as something beyond the limitations of his race.
Is that my guess or my observation, truly?
My hope, I must admit, for J cannot yet know.
And so my interpretation of Obould's actions to this point is limited by my vantage, and skewed by the risk of optimism. But Obould did not press the attack, as we all expected he certainly would, when doing so would have condemned thousands of his subjects to a grisly death.
Perhaps it was mere pragmatism; the orc king wisely recognized that his gains could not be compounded, and so he looked down and went into a defensive posture to secure those gains. Perhaps when he has done so, beyond any threat of invasion by the outlying kingdoms, he will regroup and press the attack again. I pray that this is not the case; I pray that the orc king is possessed of more empathy - or even of more selfishness in his need to be revered as well as feared - than would be typical of his warlike race. I can only hope that Obould's ambitions were tempered by a recognition of the price the commoner pays for the folly or false pride of the ruler.
I cannot know. And when I consider that such empathy would place this orc above many leaders of the goodly races, then I realize that I am being foolhardy in even entertaining these fantasies. I fear that Obould stopped simply because he knew that he could not continue, else he might well lose all that he had gained and more. Pragmatism, not empathy, ground Obould's war machine to a stop, it would seem.
If that is the case, then so be it. Even in that simple measure of practicality, this orc stands far beyond others of his heritage. If pragmatism alone forces the halt of invasion and the settling of a kingdom, then perhaps such pragmatism is the first step in moving the orcs toward civilization.
Is it all a process, then, a movement toward a better and better way that will lead to the highest form of kingdom? That is my hope. It will not be a straight-line ascent, to be sure. For every stride forward, as with Lady Alustriel's wondrous city of Silverymoon for example, there will be back-steps.
Perhaps the world will end before the goodly races enjoy the peace and prosperity of the perfect realm.
So be it, for it is the journey that matters most.
That is my hope, at least, but the flip of that hope is my fear that it is all a game, and one played most prominently by those who value self above community. The ascent to kingship is a road of battle, and not one walked by the gentle man or woman. The person who values community will oft be deceived and destroyed by the knave whose heart lies in selfish ambitions.
For those who walk that road to the end, for those who feel the weight of leadership upon their shoulders, the only hope lies in the realm of conscience.
Feel the pain of your soldiers, you kings.
Feel the sorrow of your subjects.
Nay, I am not a king. Not by temperament nor by desire. The death of a single subject soldier would slay the heart of King Drizzt Do'Urden. I do not envy the goodly rulers, but I do fear the ones who do not understand that their numbers have names, or that the greatest gain to the self lies in the cheers and the love fostered by the common good.