The Halfling’s Gem (45 page)

She pulled Taulmaril away at the last second in absolute shock.

“Regis!” she cried.

The halfling ended his half-speed plummet, plopping with a soft puff into the smoke of a second bridge a dozen yards across the emptiness from friends. He stood and managed to hold his ground against a wave of dizziness and disorientation.

“Regis!” Catti-brie cried again. “How did ye get yerself here?”

“I saw you in that awful hoop,”’ the halfling explained. “Thought you might need my help.”

“Bah! More that ye got yerself thrown here, Rumblebelly,” Bruenor replied.

“Good to see you, too,” Regis shot back, “but this time you are mistaken. I came of my own choice.” He held the pearl-tipped scepter up for them to see. “To bring you this.”

Truly Bruenor had been glad to see his little friend even before Regis had refuted his suspicion. He admitted his error by bowing low to Regis, his beard dipping under the smoky swirl.

Another demodand rose up, this one across the way, on the same bridge as Regis. The halfling showed his friends the scepter again. “Catch it,” he begged, winding up to throw. “This is your only chance to get out of here!” He mustered up his nerve—there would only be one chance—and heaved the scepter as powerfully as he could. It spun end over end, tantalizingly slow in its journey toward the three sets of outstretched hands.

It could not cut a swift enough path through the heavy air, though, and it lost its speed short of the bridge.

“No!” Bruenor cried, seeing their hopes falling away.

Catti-brie growled in denial, unhitching her laden belt and dropping Taulmaril in a single movement.

She dived for the scepter.

Bruenor dropped flat to his chest desperately to grab her ankles, but she was too far out. A contented look came over her as she caught the scepter. She twisted about in midair and threw it back to Bruenor’s waiting hands, then she plummeted from sight without a word of complaint.

LaValle studied the mirror with trembling hands. The image of the friends and the plane of Tarterus had faded into a dark blur when Regis had jumped through with the scepter. But that was the least of the wizard’s concerns now. A thin crack, detectable only at close inspection, slowly etched its way down the center of the Taros Hoop.

LaValle spun on Pook, charging his master and grabbing at the walking stick. Too surprised to fight the wizard off, Pook surrendered the cane and stepped back curiously.

LaValle rushed back to the mirror. “We must destroy its magic!” he screamed and he smashed the cane into the glassy image.

The wooden stick, sundered by the device’s power, splintered in his hands, and LaValle was thrown across the room. “Break it! Break it!” he begged Pook, his voice a pitiful whine.

“Get the halfling back!” Pook retorted, still more concerned with Regis and the statuette.

“You do not understand!” LaValle cried. “The halfling has the scepter! The portal cannot be closed from the other side !”

Pook’s expression shifted from curiosity to concern as the gravity of his wizard’s fears descended over him. “My dear
LaValle,” he began calmly, “are you saying that we have an open door to Tarterus in my living quarters?”

LaValle nodded meekly.

“Break it! Break it!” Pook screamed at the eunuchs standing beside him. “Heed the wizard’s words! Smash that infernal hoop to pieces!”

Pook picked up the broken end of his walking stick, the silver-shod, meticulously crafted cane he had been given personally by the Pasha of Calimshan.

The morning sun was still low in the eastern sky, but already the guildmaster knew that it would not be a good day.

Drizzt, trembling with anguish and anger, roared toward the demodand, his every thrust aimed at a critical spot. The creature, agile and experienced, dodged the initial assault, but it could not stay the enraged drow. Twinkle cut a blocking arm off at the elbow, and the other blade dived into the demodand’s heart. Drizzt felt a surge of power run through his arm as his scimitar sucked the life-force out of the wretched creature, but the drow contained the strength, burying it within his own rage, and held on stubbornly.

When the thing lay lifeless, Drizzt turned to his companions.

“I did not …” Regis stammered from across the chasm. “She … I …”

Neither Bruenor nor Wulfgar could answer him. They stood frozen, staring into the empty darkness below.

“Run!” Drizzt called, seeing a demodand closing in behind the halfling. “We shall get to you!”

Regis tore his eyes from the chasm and surveyed the situation. “No need!” he shouted back. He pulled out the statuette
and held it up for Drizzt to see. “Guenhwyvar will get me out of here, or perhaps the cat could aid—”

“No!” Drizzt cut him short, knowing what he was about to suggest. “Summon the panther and be gone!”

“We will meet again in a better place,” Regis offered, his voice breaking in sniffles. He placed the statuette down before him and called out softly.

Drizzt took the scepter from Bruenor and put a comforting hand on his friend’s shoulder. He then held the magic item to his chest, attuning his thoughts to its magical emanations.

His guess was confirmed; the scepter was indeed the key to the portal back to their own plane, a gate that Drizzt sensed was still open. He scooped up Taulmaril and Catti-brie’s belt. “Come,” he told his two friends, still staring at the darkness. He pushed them along the bridge, gently but firmly.

Guenhwyvar sensed the presence of Drizzt Do’Urden as soon as it came into the plane of Tarterus. The great cat moved with hesitancy when Regis asked it to take him away, but the halfling now possessed the statuette and Guenhwyvar had always known Regis as a friend. Soon Regis found himself in the swirling tunnel of blackness, drifting toward the distant light that marked Guenhwyvar’s home plane.

Then the halfling knew his error.

The onyx statuette, the link to Guenhwyvar, still lay on the smoky bridge in Tarterus.

Regis turned himself about, struggling against the pull of the planar tunnel’s currents. He saw the darkness at the back end of the tunnel and could guess the risks of reaching through. He could not leave the statuette, not only for fear of losing his
magnificent feline friend, but in revulsion at the thought of some foul beast of the lower planes gaining control over Guenhwyvar. Bravely he poked his three-fingered hand through the closing portal.

All of his senses jumbled. Overwhelming bursts of signals and images from two planes rushed at him in a nauseating wave. He blocked them away, using his hand as a focal point and concentrating all of his thoughts and energies on the sensations of that hand.

Then his hand dropped upon something hard, something vividly tangible. It resisted his tug, as though it were not meant to pass through such a gate.

Regis was fully stretched now, his feet held straight down the tunnel by the incessant pull, and his hand stubbornly latched to the statuette he would not leave behind. With a final heave, with all the strength the little halfling had ever summoned—and just a tiny bit more—he pulled the statuette through the gate.

The smooth ride of the planar tunnel transformed into a nightmarish bounce and skip, with Regis hurtling head over heels and deflecting off the walls, which twisted suddenly, as if to deny him passage. Through it all, Regis clutched at only one thought: keep the statuette in his grasp.

He felt he would surely die. He could not survive the beating, the dizzying swirl.

Then it died away as abruptly as it had begun, and Regis, still holding the statuette, found himself sitting beside Guenhwyvar with his back to an astral tree. He blinked and looked around, hardly believing his fortune.

“Do not worry,” he told the panther. “Your master and the others will get back to their world.” He looked down at the statuette, his only link to the Prime Material Plane. “But how shall I?”

While Regis floundered in despair, Guenhwyvar reacted
differently. The panther spun about in a complete circuit and roared mightily into the starry vastness of the plane. Regis watched the cat’s actions in amazement as Guenhwyvar leaped about and roared again, then bounded away into the astral nothingness.

Regis, more confused than ever, looked down at the statuette. One thought, one hope overrode all others at that moment.

Guenhwyvar knew something.

With Drizzt taking a ferocious lead, the three friends charged along, cutting down everything that dared to rise in their path. Bruenor and Wulfgar fought wildly, thinking that the drow was leading them to Catti-brie.

The bridge wound along a curving and rising route, and when Bruenor realized its ascending grade, he grew concerned. He was about to protest, to remind the drow that Catti-brie had fallen below them, but when he looked back, he saw that the area they had started from was clearly above them. Bruenor was a dwarf accustomed to lightless tunnels, and he could detect the slightest grade unerringly.

They were going up, more steeply now than before, and the area they had left continued to rise above them.

“How, elf?” he cried. “Up and up we go, but down by what me eyes be telling me.”

Drizzt looked back and quickly understood what Bruenor was talking about. The drow didn’t have time for philosophical inquiries; he was merely following the emanations of the scepter that would surely lead them to a gate. Drizzt did pause, though, to consider one possible quirk of the directionless, and apparently circular, plane.

Another demodand rose up before them, but Wulfgar swatted it from the bridge before it could even ready a strike. Blind rage drove the barbarian now, a third burst of adrenaline that denied his wounds and his weariness. He paused every few steps to look about, searching for something vile to hit, then he rushed back to the front, beside Drizzt, to get the first whack at anything trying to block their path.

The swirling smoke parted before them suddenly, and they faced a lighted image, blurry, but clearly of their own plane.

“The gate,” Drizzt said. “The scepter has kept it open. Bruenor will pass through first.”

Bruenor looked at Drizzt in blank amazement. “Leave?” he asked breathlessly. “How can ye ask me to leave, elf? Me girl’s here.”