STARLESS NIGHT tlotd-2 Page 14

  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, skidding 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 happened, she was back to the floor, back to one knee. She felt a coldness 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. Knowing 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 convulsions, 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 sinking 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 dose 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 daws dug into the goblin's sloping forehead.

  Guenhwyvar snapped the creature backward with sudden, savage 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 caf 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 considered, 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 weakness. 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 Caf 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 considered 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, shimmering purple and black. Her boots had blackened, their tips curling 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.

  Part 3 SHADOWS

  There are no shadows in the Underdark.

  Only after years on the surface have I come to understand the significance of that seemingly minute fact, the significance 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 ore or a goblin? Or might a hidden treasure, as magnificent 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 for fanciful 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 uxll blind a person 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 imagination in the Underdark. It is a place for alertness, but not aliveness, a place with no room for hopes and dreams.

  Chapter 13 HUNGRY GODDESS

  Councilor Firble of Blingdenstone normally enjoyed his journeys out of the deep gnome city, but not this day. The little gnome stood in a small chamber, but its dimensions seemed huge to him, for he felt quite vulnerable. He kicked his hard boots about the rocks on the otherwise smooth floor, twiddled his stubby fingers behind his back, and every so often ran a hand over his almost-bald head, wiping away lines of sweat.

  A dozen tunnels ran into this chamber, and Firble took some comfort in the knowledge that two score svirfhebli warriors stood ready to rush to his aid, including several shamans with enchanted stones that could summon elemental giants from the plane of earth. Firble understood the drow of Menzoberranzan, forty-five miles to the east of Blingdenstone, better than any of his kin, though, and even his armed escort's presence did not allow him to relax. The gnome councilor knew well that if the dark elves had set this up as an ambush, then all the gnomes and all the magic of Blingdenstone might not be enough.

  A familiar clicking sounded from the tunnel directly across the small chamber and, a moment later, in swept Jarlaxle, the extraordinary drow mercenary, his wide-brimmed hat festooned with a giant diatryma feather, his vest cut high to reveal rolling lines of muscles across his abdomen. He strode before the gnome, glanced about a couple of times to take in the whole scene, then dipped into a low bow, brushing his hat across the floor with an outstretched hand.

  "My greetings!" Jarlaxle said heartily as he came back upright, crooking his arm above him so that the hat tucked against his elbow. A snap of the arm sent the hat into a short spin, to land perfectly atop the swaggering mercenary's shaved head.

  "High soar your spirits this day," Firble remarked.

  "And why not?" the drow asked. "If s another glorious day in the Underdark! A day to be enjoyed."

  Firble did not seem convinced, but he was amazed, as always, by the conniving draw's command of the Svirfneblin language. Jarlaxle spoke the tongue as easily and fluidly as any of Blingdenstone's deep gnome inhabitants, though the mercenary used the sentence structure more common to the draw language and not the inverted form favored by many of the gnomes.

  "Many svirfneblin mining parties have been assaulted," Firble said, his tone verging on that of an accusation. "Svirfneblin parties working west of Blingdenstone."

  Jarlaxle smiled coyly and held his hands out wide. "Ched Nasad?" he asked innocently, implicating the next nearest drow city.

  "Menzoberranzan!" Firble asserted. Ched Nasad was many weeks away. "One dark elf wore the emblem of a Menzoberranzan house."

  "Rogue parties," Jarlaxle reasoned. "Young fighters out for pleasure."

  Firble's thin lips almost disappeared with his ensuing scowl. Both he and Jarlaxle knew better than to think that the raiding drow were simple young rowdies. The attacks had been coordinated and executed perfectly, and many svirfnebli had been slain.

  "What am I to say?" Jarlaxle asked innocently. "I am but a pawn to the events about me."

  Firble snorted.

  "I thank you for your confidence in my position," the mercenary said without missing a beat. "But, really, dear Firble, we have been over this before. The events are quite out of my hands this time."

  "What events?" Firble demanded. He and Jarlaxle had met twice before over the last two months, discussing this very issue, for the drow activity near the svirfneblin city had increased dramatically. At each meeting Jarlaxle had slyly eluded to some great events, but never had he come out and actually told Firble anything.

  "Have we come to banter this same issue?" the mercenary asked wearily. "Really, dear Firble, I grow tired of your—"

  "A drow we have captured," Firble interrupted, crossing his short
but burly arms over his chest, as though that news should cany some weight.

  Jarlaxle's expression turned incredulous and he held his hands out wide again, as if to ask, "So?"

  "We believe this drow is a native of Menzoberranzan," Firble went on.

  "A female?" Jarlaxle asked, thinking that the gnome, apparently viewing his information as vital, must be referring to a high priestess. The mercenary hadn't heard of any missing high priestesses (except, of course, Jerlys Horlbar, and she wasn't really missing).

  "A male," Firble replied, and again the mercenary's expression turned dubious.

  "Then execute him," the pragmatic Jarlaxle reasoned.

  Firble tightened his arms across his chest and began tap-tapping his foot impatiently on the stone.

  "Really, Firble, do you believe that a male drow prisoner gives your city some bargaining power?" the mercenary asked. "Do you expect me to run back to Menzoberranzan, pleading for this one male? Do you expect that the ruling matron mothers will demand that all activity in this area be ceased for his sake?"

  "Then you admit sanctioned activity in this area!" the svirfneblin retorted, pointing a stubby finger Jarlaxle's way and thinking he had caught the mercenary in a lie.

  "I speak merely hypothetically," Jarlaxle corrected. "I was granting you your presumption so that I might correctly mirror your intentions."

  "My intentions you do not know, Jarlaxle," Firble assured. It was clear to Jarlaxle, though, that the gnome was growing agitated by the mercenary's cool demeanor. It was always that way with Jarlaxle. Firble met with the drow only when the situation was critical to Blingdenstone, and often his meetings cost him dearly in precious gems or other treasures.

  "Name your price, then," the gnome went on.

  "My price?"

  "Imperiled is my city," Firble said sharply. "And Jarlaxle knows why!"