The Halfling’s Gem (4 page)

But reality had allowed no breaks. Entreri had Regis in his clutches, and Drizzt and Wulfgar were their halfling friend’s only hope. In Longsaddle, they had come to the end of one road but had found the beginning of an even longer one.

Drizzt could deal with his own weariness, but Wulfgar seemed cloaked in gloom, always running on the edge of danger. He was a young man out of Icewind Dale—the land that had
been his only home—for the first time in his life. Now that sheltered strip of tundra, where the eternal wind blew, was far to the north.

But Calimport was much farther still, to the south.

Drizzt lay back on his pillow, reminding himself that Wulfgar had chosen to come along. Drizzt couldn’t have stopped him, even if he had tried.

The drow closed his eyes. The best thing that he could do, for himself and for Wulfgar, was to sleep and be ready for whatever the next dawn would bring.

Malchor’s student awakened them—silently—a few hours later and led them to the dining room, where the wizard waited. A fine breakfast was brought out before them.

“Your course is south, by my cousin’s words,” Malchor said to them. “Chasing a man who holds your friend, this halfling, Regis, captive.”

“His name is Entreri,” Drizzt replied, “and we will find him a hard catch, by my measure of him. He flies for Calimport.”

“Harder still,” Wulfgar added, “we had him placed on the road.” He explained to Malchor, though Drizzt knew the words to be aimed at him, “Now we shall have to hope that he did not turn from its course.”

“There was no secret to his path,” argued Drizzt. “He made for Waterdeep, on the coast. He may have passed by there already.”

“Then he is out to sea,” reasoned Malchor.

Wulfgar nearly choked on his food. He hadn’t even considered that possibility.

“That is my fear,” said Drizzt. “And I had thought to do the same.”

“It is a dangerous and costly course,” said MaIchor. “The pirates gather for the last runs to the south as the summer draws to an end, and if one has not made the proper arrangements …” He let the words hang ominously before them.

“But you have little choice,” the wizard continued. “A horse cannot match the speed of a sailing ship, and the sea route is straighter than the road. So take to the sea, is my advice. Perhaps I can make some arrangements to speed your accommodations. My student has already set the enchanted shoes on your mounts, and with their aid, you may get to the great port in short days.”

“And how long shall we sail?” Wulfgar asked, dismayed and hardly believing that Drizzt would go along with the wizard’s suggestion.

“Your young friend does not understand the breadth of this journey,” Malchor said to Drizzt. The wizard laid his fork on the table and another a few inches from it. “Here is Icewind Dale,” he explained to Wulfgar, pointing to the first fork. “And this other, the Tower of Twilight, where you now sit. A distance of nearly four hundred miles lies between.”

He tossed a third fork to Drizzt, who laid it out in front of him, about three feet from the fork representing their present position.

“It is a journey you would travel five times to equal the road ahead of you,” Malchor told Wulfgar, “for that last fork is Calimport, two thousand miles and several kingdoms to the south.”

“Then we are defeated,” moaned Wulfgar, unable to comprehend such a distance.

“Not so,” said Malchor. “For you shall ride with sails full of the northern wind, and beat the first snows of winter. You will find the land and the people more accommodating to the south.”

“We shall see,” said the dark elf, unconvinced. To Drizzt, people had ever spelled trouble.

“Ah,” agreed Malchor, realizing the hardships a drow elf would surely find among the dwellers of the surface world. “But I have one more gift to give to you: a map to a treasure that you can recover this very day.”

“Another delay,” said Wulfgar.

“A small price to pay,” replied Malchor, “and this short trip shall save you many days in the populated South, where a drow elf may walk only in the night. Of this I am certain.”

Drizzt was intrigued that Malchor so clearly understood his dilemma and was apparently hinting at an alternative. Drizzt would not be welcome anywhere in the South. Cities that would grant the foul Entreri free passage would throw chains upon the dark elf if he tried to cross through, for the drow had long ago earned their reputation as ultimately evil and unspeakably vile. Few in all the Realms would be quick to recognize Drizzt Do’Urden as the exception to the rule.

“Just to the west of here, down a dark path in Neverwinter Wood and in a cave of trees, dwells a monster that the local farmers have named Agatha,” said Malchor. “Once an elf, I believe, and a fair mage in her own right, according to legend, this wretched thing lives on after death and calls the night her time.”

Drizzt knew the sinister legends of such creatures, and he knew their name. “A banshee?” he asked.

Malchor nodded. “To her lair you should go, if you are brave enough, for the banshee has collected a fair hoard of treasure, including one item that would prove invaluable to you, Drizzt Do’Urden.”

He saw that he had the drow’s full attention. Drizzt leaned forward over the table and weighed Malchor’s every word.

“A mask,” the wizard explained. “An enchanted mask that will allow you to hide your heritage and walk freely as a surface elf—or as a man, if that suits you.”

Drizzt slumped back, a bit unnerved at the threat to his very identity.

“I understand your hesitancy,” Malchor said to him. “It is not easy to hide from those who accuse you unjustly, to give credibility to their false perceptions. But think of your captive friend and know that I make this suggestion only for his sake. You may get through the southlands as you are, dark elf, but not unhindered.”

Wulfgar bit his lip and said nothing, knowing this to be Drizzt’s own decision. He knew that even his concerns about further delay could not weigh into such a personal discussion.

“We will go to this lair in the wood,” Drizzt said at last, “and I shall wear such a mask if I must.” He looked at Wulfgar. “Our only concern must be Regis.”

Drizzt and Wulfgar sat atop their mounts outside the Tower of Twilight, with Malchor standing beside them.

“Be wary of the thing,” Malchor said, handing Drizzt the map to the banshee’s lair and another parchment that generally showed their course to the far South. “Her touch is deathly cold, and the legends say that to hear her keen is to die.”

“Her keen?” asked Wulfgar.

“An unearthly wail too terrible for mortal ears to bear,” said Malchor. “Take all care!”

“We shall,” Drizzt assured him.

“We will not forget the hospitality or the gifts of Malchor Harpell,” added Wulfgar.

“Nor the lesson, I hope,” the wizard replied with a wink, drawing an embarrassed smile from Wulfgar.

Drizzt was pleased that his friend had shaken at least some of his surliness.

Dawn came upon them then, and the tower quickly faded into nothingness.

“The tower is gone, yet the wizard remains,” remarked Wulfgar.

“The tower is gone, yet the door inside remains,” Malchor corrected. He took a few steps back and stretched his arm out, his hand disappearing from sight.

Wulfgar jerked in bewilderment.

“For those who know how to find it,” Malchor added. “For those who have trained their minds to the properties of magic.” He stepped through the extradimensional portal and was gone from sight, but his voice came back to them one last time. “Discipline!” he called, and Wulfgar knew himself to be the target of Malchor’s final statement.

Drizzt kicked his horse into motion, unrolling the map as he started away. “Harpell?” be asked over his shoulder, imitating Wulfgar’s derisive tone of the previous night.

“Would that all of the Harpells were like Malchor!” Wulfgar replied. He sat staring at the emptiness that had been the Tower of Twilight, fully understanding that the wizard had taught him two valuable lessons in a single night: one of prejudice and one of humility.

From inside the hidden dimension of his home, Malchor watched them go. He wished that he could join them, to travel along the road of adventure as he had so often in his youth,
finding a just course and following it against any odds. Harkle had judged the principles of those two correctly, Malchor knew, and had been right in asking Malchor to help them.

The wizard leaned against the door to his home. Alas, his days of adventure, his days of carrying the crusade of justice on his shoulders, were fading behind him.

But Malchor took heart in the events of the last day. If the drow and his barbarian friend were any indication, he had just helped to pass the torch into able hands.

he assassin, mesmerized, watched as the ruby turned slowly in the candlelight, catching the dance of the flame in a thousand thousand perfect miniatures—too many reflections; no gem could have facets so small and so flawless.

And yet the procession was there to be seen, a swirl of tiny candles drawing him deeper into the redness of the stone. No jeweler had cut it; its precision went beyond a level attainable with an instrument. This was an artifact of magic, a deliberate creation designed, he reminded himself cautiously, to pull a viewer into that descending swirl, into the serenity of the reddened depths of the stone.