The Halfling’s Gem (7 page)

Drizzt looked to Wulfgar. “Nay,” the barbarian said. “We shall visit Agatha and settle our business with her. But be assured that we’ll not harm her.

“Tell us the way,” Drizzt asked.

The two men at the corner looked at each other and hesitated.

“Now!” Wulfgar roared at the man on the ground.

“To the tangle of birch!” the man replied immediately. “The path’s right there, running back to the east! Twists and turns, it does, but clear of brush!”

“Farewell, Conyberry,” Drizzt said politely, bowing low. “Would that we could remain a while and dispel your fears of us, but we have much to do and a long road ahead.” He and Wulfgar hopped into their saddles and spun their mounts away.

“But wait!” the old woman called after them. Their mounts reared as Drizzt and Wulfgar looked back over their shoulders. “Tell us, ye fearless—or ye stupid—warriors,” she implored them, “who might ye be?”

“Wulfgar, son of Beornegar!” the barbarian shouted back, trying to keep an air of humility, though his chest puffed out in pride. “And Drizzt Do’Urden!”

“Names I have heard!” one of the farmers cried out in sudden recognition.

“And names you shall hear again!” Wulfgar promised. He paused a moment as Drizzt moved on, then turned to catch his friend.

Drizzt wasn’t sure that it was wise to be proclaiming their identities, and consequently revealing their location, with Artemis Entreri looking back for them. But when he saw the broad and proud smile on Wulfgar’s face, he kept his concerns to himself and let Wulfgar have his fun.

Soon after the lights of Conyberry had faded to dots behind them, Wulfgar turned more serious “They did not seem evil,” he said to Drizzt, “yet they protect the banshee, and have even named the thing! We may have left a darkness behind us!”

“Not a darkness,” Drizzt replied. “Conyberry is as it appears: a humble farming village of good and honest folk.”

“But Agatha,” Wulfgar protested.

“A hundred similar villages line this countryside,” Drizzt explained. “Many unnamed, and all unnoticed by the lords of the land. Yet all of the villages, and even the Lords of Waterdeep, I would guess, have heard of Conyberry and the ghost of Neverwinter Wood.”

“Agatha brings them fame,” WuIfgar concluded.

“And a measure of protection, no doubt,” added Drizzt.

“For what bandit would lay out along the road to Conyberry with a ghost haunting the land?” Wulfgar laughed. “Still,
it seems a strange marriage.”

“But not our business,” Drizzt said, stopping his horse. “The tangle the man spoke of.” He pointed to a copse of twisted birch trees. Behind it, Neverwinter Wood loomed dark and mysterious.

Wulfgar’s horse flattened its ears. “We are close,” the barbarian said, slipping from the saddle. They tethered their mounts and started into the tangle, Drizzt as silent as a cat, but Wulfgar, too big for the tightness of the trees, crunching with every step.

“Do you mean to kill the thing?” he asked Drizzt.

“Only if we must,” the drow replied. “We are here for the mask alone, and we have given our word to the people of Conyberry.”

“I do not believe that Agatha will willingly hand us her treasures,” Wulfgar reminded Drizzt. He broke through the last line of birch trees and stood beside the drow at the dark entrance to the thick oaks of the forest.

“Be silent now,” Drizzt whispered. He drew Twinkle and let its quiet blue gleam lead them into the gloom.

The trees seemed to close in about them; the dead hush of the wood only made them more concerned with the resounding noise of their own footfalls. Even Drizzt, who had spent centuries in the deepest of caverns, felt the weight of this darkest corner of Neverwinter on his shoulders. Evil brooded here, and if either he or Wulfgar had any doubts about the legend of the banshee, they knew better now. Drizzt pulled a thin candle from his belt pouch and broke it in half, handing a piece to Wulfgar.

“Stuff your ears,” he explained in a breathless whisper, reiterating Malchor’s warning. “To hear her keen is to die.”

The path was easy to follow, even in the deep darkness, for the aura of evil rolled down heavier on their shoulders with every
step. A few hundred paces brought the light of a fire into sight. Instinctively they both dropped to a defensive crouch to survey the area.

Before them lay a dome of branches, a cave of trees that was the banshee’s lair. Its single entrance was a small hole, barely large enough for a man to crawl through. The thought of going into the lighted area within while on their hands and knees did not thrill either of them. Wulfgar held Aegis-fang before him and indicated that he would open a bigger door. Boldly he strode toward the dome.

Drizzt crept up beside him, uncertain of the practicality of Wulfgar’s idea. Drizzt had the feeling that a creature who had survived so successfully for so very long would be protected against such obvious tactics. But the drow didn’t have any better ideas at the moment, so he dropped back a step as Wulfgar hoisted the warhammer above his head.

Wulfgar spread his feet wide for balance and took a steadying breath, then slammed Aegis-fang home with all his strength. The dome shuddered under the blow; wood splintered and went flying, but the drow’s concerns soon came to light. For as the wooden shell broke away, Wulfgar’s hammer drove down into a concealed mesh of netting. Before the barbarian could reverse the blow, Aegis-fang and his arms were fully entangled.

Drizzt saw a shadow move across the firelight inside, and recognizing his companion’s vulnerability, he didn’t hesitate. He dived through Wulfgar’s legs and into the lair, his scimitars nipping and jabbing wildly as he came. Twinkle nicked into something for just a split second, something less than tangible, and Drizzt knew that he had hit the creature of the nether world. But dazed by the sudden intensity of the light as he came into the lair, Drizzt had trouble finding his footing. He kept his head well enough to discern that the banshee had scampered into the
shadows off to the other side. He rolled up to a wall, put his back against it for support, and scrambled to his feet, deftly slicing through Wulfgar’s bonds with Twinkle.

Then came the wail.

It cut through the feeble protection of the candle wax with bone-shivering intensity, sapping into Drizzt’s and Wulfgar’s strength and dropping a dizzying blackness over them. Drizzt slumped heavily against the wall, and Wulfgar, finally able to tug free of the stubborn netting, stumbled backward into the black night and toppled onto his back.

Drizzt, alone inside, knew that he was in deep trouble. He battled against the dizzying blur and the stinging pain in his head and tried to focus on the firelight.

But he saw two dozen fires dancing before his eyes, lights he could not shake away. He believed that he had come out of the keen’s effects, and it took him a moment to realize the truth of the place.

A magical creature was Agatha, and magical protections, confusing illusions of mirror images, guarded her home. Suddenly Drizzt was confronted on more than twenty fronts by the twisted visage of a long-dead elven maiden, her skin withered and stretched along her hollowed face and her eyes bereft of color or any spark of life.

But those orbs could see more clearly than any other in this deceptive maze. And Drizzt understood that Agatha knew exactly where he was. She waved her arms in circular motions and smirked at her intended victim.

Drizzt recognized the banshee’s movements as the beginnings of a spell. Still caught in the web of her illusions, the drow had only one chance. Calling on the innate abilities of his dark race—and desperately hoping that he had correctly guessed which was the real fire—he placed a globe of darkness over the
flames. The inside of the tree cave went pitch black, and Drizzt fell to his belly.

A blue bolt of lightning cut through the darkness, thundering just above the lying drow and through the wall. The air sizzled around him; his stark white hair danced on its ends.

Bursting out into the dark forest, Agatha’s ferocious bolt shook Wulfgar from his stupor. “Drizzt,” he groaned, forcing himself to his feet. His friend was probably already dead, and beyond the entrance was a blackness too deep for human eyes. But fearlessly, without a thought for his own safety, Wulfgar stumbled back toward the dome.

Drizzt crept around the black perimeter, using the heat of the fire as his guide. He brought a scimitar to bear with every step, but caught nothing with his cuts but air and the side of the tree cave.

Then, suddenly, his darkness was no more, leaving him exposed along the middle of the wall to the left of the door. And the leering image of Agatha was all about him, already beginning yet another spell. Drizzt glanced around for an escape route, but realized that Agatha didn’t seem to be looking at him.

Across the room, in what must have been a real mirror, Drizzt caught sight of another image: Wulfgar crawling in defenselessly through the low entrance.

Again Drizzt could not afford to hesitate. He was beginning to understand the layout of the illusion maze and could guess at the general direction of the banshee. He dropped to one knee and scooped up a handful of dirt, splaying it in a wide arc across the room.

All of the images reacted the same way, giving Drizzt no clue as to which was his foe. But the real Agatha, wherever she was, was spitting dirt; Drizzt had disrupted her spell.

Wulfgar regained his feet and immediately smashed his hammer through the wall to the right side of the door, then reversed his swing and heaved Aegis-fang at the image across from the door, directly over the fire. Again Aegis-fang crashed into the wall, knocking open a hole to the nighttime forest.

Drizzt, firing his dagger futilely at yet another image across the way, caught a telltale flicker in the area where he had seen the reflection of Wulfgar. As Aegis-fang magically returned to Wulfgar’s hands, Drizzt sprinted for the back of the chamber. “Lead me!” he cried, hoping his voice was loud enough for Wulfgar to hear.

Wulfgar understood. Bellowing “Tempus!” to warn the drow of his throw, he launched Aegis-fang again.

Drizzt dived into a roll, and the hammer whistled over his back, exploding into the mirror. Half of the images in the room disappeared, and Agatha screamed in rage. But Drizzt didn’t even slow. He sprang over the broken mirror stand and the remaining chunks of glass.

Right into Agatha’s treasure room.

The banshee’s scream became a keen, and the killing waves of sound dropped over Drizzt and Wulfgar once again. They had expected the blast this time, though, and they pushed its force away more easily. Drizzt scrambled to the treasure hoard, scooping baubles and gold into a sack. Wulfgar, enraged, stormed about the dome in a destructive frenzy. Soon kindling lined the area where walls had stood, and scratches dripping tiny streams of blood crisscrossed Wulfgar’s huge forearms. But the barbarian felt no pain, only the savage fury.

His sack nearly full, Drizzt was about to turn and flee when one other item caught his eye: He had been almost relieved that he hadn’t found it, and a big part of him wished that it wasn’t here, that such an item did not exist. Yet here it lay, an
unremarkable mask of bland features, with a single cord to hold it in place over a wearer’s face. Drizzt knew that, as plain as it seemed, it must be the item Malchor had spoken of, and if he had any thoughts of ignoring it now, they were quickly gone. Regis needed him, and to get to Regis quickly, Drizzt needed the mask. Still, the drow could not belay his sigh when he lifted it from the treasure hoard, sensing its tingling power. Without another thought, he put it in his sack.

Agatha would not so easily surrender her treasures, and the specter that confronted Drizzt when he hopped back over the broken mirror was all too real. Twinkle gleamed wickedly as Drizzt parried away Agatha’s frantic blows.

Wulfgar suspected that Drizzt needed him now, and he dismissed his savage fury, realizing that a clear head was necessary in this predicament. He scanned the room slowly, hoisting Aegis-fang for another throw. But the barbarian found that he had not yet sorted out the pattern of the illusionary spells, and the confusion of a dozen images, and the fear of hitting Drizzt, held him in check.

Effortlessly Drizzt danced around the crazed banshee and backed her up toward the treasure room. He could have struck her several times, but he had given his word to the farmers of Conyberry.

Then he had her in position. He thrust Twinkle out before him and waded in with two steps. Spitting and cursing, Agatha retreated, tripping over the broken mirror stand and falling back into the gloom. Drizzt spun toward the door.

Watching the real Agatha, and the other images, disappear from sight, Wulfgar followed the sound of her grunt and finally sorted out the layout of the dome. He readied Aegis-fang for the killing throw.

“Let it end!” Drizzt shouted at him as he passed, slapping
Wulfgar on the backside with the flat of Twinkle to remind him of their mission and their promise.

Wulfgar turned to look at him, but the agile drow was already out into the dark night. Wulfgar turned back to see Agatha, her teeth bared and hands clenched, rise up on her feet.