Servant of the Shard ts-1 Read online

  While Berg'inyon and his army had a strong idea of what they would encounter in the house above them, the humans could not understand the monumental doom that lay below them.

  You have outlined to the group commanders all routes of retreat? Berg'inyon's fingers and facial gestures asked. He made it clear from the fact that he signaled retreat with his left hand that he was referring to any possible avenues their enemies might take to run away.

  The wizards are positioned accordingly, one scout silently replied.

  The lead hunters have been given their courses, another added.

  Berg'inyon nodded, flashed the signal for commencing the operation, then moved to join his assault group. His would be the last group to enter the building, but they were the ones who would cut the fastest path to the very top.

  There were two wizards in Berg'inyon's group. One stood with his eyes closed, ready to convey the signal. The other positioned himself accordingly, his eyes and hands pointed up at the ceiling, a pinch of seeds from the Under-dark selussi fungus in one hand.

  It is time, came a magical whisper, one that seeped through the walls and to the ears of all the drow.

  The magic-user eyeing the ceiling began his spell- casting, weaving his hands as if tracing joining semicircles with each, thumbs touching, little fingers touching, back and forth, back and forth, chanting quietly all the while.

  He finished with a chant that sounded more like a hiss, and reached his outstretched fingers to the ceiling.

  That part of the stone ceiling began to ripple, as if the wizard had stabbed his fingers into clear water. The wizard held the pose for many seconds. The rippling increased until the stone became an indistinct blur.

  The stone above the wizard disappeared-was just gone. In its place was an upward reaching corridor that cut through several feet of stone to end at the ground floor of the Raker house.

  One unfortunate Raker had been caught by surprise, his heels right over the edge of the suddenly appearing hole. His arms worked great circles as he tried to maintain his balance. The drow warriors shifted into position under the hole and leaped. Enacting their innate drow levitation abilities, they floated up, up.

  The first dark elf floating up beside the falling Raker grabbed him by the collar and yanked him backward, tumbling him into the hole. The human managed to land in a controlled manner, feet first, then buckling his legs and tumbling to the side to absorb the shock. He came up with equal grace, drawing a dagger.

  His face blanched when he saw the truth about him: dark elves-drow! — were floating up into his guild house. Another drow, handsome and strong, holding the finest-edged blade the Raker could ever have imagined, faced him.

  Maybe he tried to reason with the dark elf, offering his surrender, but while his mouth worked in a logical, hide- saving manner, his body, paralyzed by stark terror, did not. He still held his knife out before him as he spoke, and since Berg'inyon did not understand well the language of the surface dwellers, he had no way of understanding the Raker's intent.

  Nor was the drow about to pause to figure it out. His fine sword stabbed forward and slashed down, taking the dagger and the hand that held it. A quick retraction re- gathered his balance and power, and out went the sword again. Straight and sure, it tore through flesh and sliced rib, biting hard at the foolish man's heart.

  The man fell, quite dead, and still wearing that curious, stunned expression.

  Berg'inyon didn't pause long enough to wipe his blade. He crouched, sprang straight up, and levitated fast into the house. His encounter had delayed him no more than a span of a few heartbeats, and yet, the floor of the room and the corridor beyond the open door was already littered with human corpses.

  Berg'inyon's team exited the room soon after, before the wizard's initial passwall spell had even expired. Not a drow had been more than slightly injured and not a human remained alive. The Raker house held no treasure when they were done- not even the few coins several of the guildsmen had secretly tucked under loose floorboards-and even the furniture was gone. Magical fires had consumed every foot of flooring and all of the partitioning walls. From the outside, the house seemed quiet and secure. Inside, it was no more than a charred and empty husk.

  Bregan D'aerthe had spoken.

  * * * * *

  "I accept no accolades," Berg'inyon Baenre remarked when he met up with Rai-guy, Kimmuriel, and Sharlotta. It was a common drow saying, with clear implications that the vanquished opponent was not worthy enough for the victor to take any pride in having defeated him.

  Kimmuriel gave a wry smile. "The house was effectively purged," he said. "None escaped. You performed as was required. There is no glory in that, but there is acceptance."

  As he had done all day, Rai-guy continued his scrutiny of Sharlotta Vespers. Was the human woman even comprehending the sincerity of Kimmuriel's words, and if so, did that allow her any insight into the true power that had come to Calimport? For any guild to so completely annihilate one of another's houses was no small feat- unless the attacking guild happened to be comprised of drow warriors who understood the complexities of inter-house warfare better than any race in all the world. Did Sharlotta recognize this? And if she did, would she be foolish enough to try to use it to her advantage?

  Her expression now was mostly stone-faced, but with just a trace of intrigue, a hint to Rai-guy that the answer would be yes, to both questions. The drow wizard smiled at that, a confirmation that Sharlotta Vespers was walking onto very dangerous ground. Quiensin ful biezz coppon quangolth cree, a drow, went the old saying in Menzoberranzan, and elsewhere in the drow world. Doomed are those who believe they understand the designs of the drow.

  "What did Jarlaxle learn to change his course so?" Berg'inyon asked.

  "Jarlaxle has learned nothing of yet," Rai-guy replied. "He chose to remain behind. The operation was mine to wage."

  Berg'inyon started to redirect his question to Rai-guy then, but he stopped in midsentence and merely offered a bow to the appointed leader.

  "Perhaps later you will explain to me the source of your decision, that I will better understand our enemies," he said respectfully.

  Rai-guy gave a slight nod.

  There is the matter of explaining to Jarlaxle," Sharlotta remarked, in her surprising command of the drow tongue. "He will not accept your course with a mere bow."

  Rai-guy's gaze darted over at Berg'inyon as she finished, quickly enough to catch the moment of anger flash through his red-glowing eyes. Sharlotta's observations were correct, of course, but coming from a non-drow, an iblith- which was also the drow word for excrement- they intrinsically cast an insulting reflection upon Berg'inyon, who had so accepted the offered explanation. It was a minor mistake, but a few more quips like that against the young Baenre, Rai-guy knew, and there would remain too little of Sharlotta Vespers for anyone ever to make a proper identification of the pieces.

  "We must tell Jarlaxle," the drow wizard put in, moving the conversation forward. "To us out here, the course change was obviously required, but he has secluded himself, too much so perhaps, to view things that way."

  Kimmuriel and Berg'inyon both looked at him curiously- why would he speak so plainly in front of Sharlotta, after all? — but Rai-guy gave them a quick and quiet signal to follow along.

  "We could implicate Domo and the wererats," Kimmuriel put in, obviously catching on. "Though I fear that we will then have to waste our time in slaughtering them." He looked to Sharlotta. "Much of this will fall to you."

  "The Basadoni soldiers were the first to leave the fight," Rai-guy added. "And they will be the ones to return without blood on their blades." Now all three gazes fell upon Sharlotta.

  The woman held her outward calm quite well. "Domo and the wererats, then," she agreed, thinking things through, obviously, as she went. "We will implicate them without faulting them. Yes, that is the way. Perhaps they did not know of our plans and coincidentally hired on with Pasha Da'Daclan to guard the sewers. As we did not wi
sh to reveal ourselves fully to the coward Domo, we held to the unguarded regions, mostly around the eighth position."

  The three drow exchanged looks, and nodded for her to continue.

  "Yes," Sharlotta went on, gathering momentum and confidence. "I can turn this into an advantage with Pasha Da'Daclan as well. He felt the press of impending doom, no doubt, and that fear will only heighten when word of the utterly destroyed outer house reaches him. Perhaps he will come to believe that Domo is much more powerful than any of us believed, and that he was in league with the Basadonis, and that only House Basadoni's former dealings with the Rakers cut short the assault."

  "But will that not implicate House Basadoni clearly in the one executed attack?" asked Kimmuriel, playing the role of Rai-guy's mouthpiece, drawing Sharlotta in even deeper. "Not that we played a role, but only that we allowed it to happen," Sharlotta reasoned. "A turn of our heads in response to their increased spying efforts against our guild. Yes, and if this is conveyed properly, it will only serve to make Domo seem even more powerful. If we make the Rakers believe that they were on the edge of complete disaster, they will behave more reasonably, and Jarlaxle will find his victory." She smiled as she finished, and the three dark elves returned the look.

  "Begin," Rai-guy offered, waving his hand toward the ladder leading out of their sewer quarters.

  Sharlotta smiled again, the ignorant fool, and left them.

  "Her deception against Pasha Da'Daclan will necessarily extend, to some level, to Jarlaxle," Kimmuriel remarked, clearly envisioning the web Sharlotta was foolishly weaving about herself.

  "You have come to fear that something is not right with Jarlaxle," Berg'inyon bluntly remarked, for it was obvious that these two would not normally act so independently of their leader.

  "His views have changed," Kimmuriel responded. "You did not wish to come to the surface," Berg'inyon said with a wry smile that seemed to question the motives of his companions' reasoning.

  "No, and glad will we be to see the heat of Narbondel again," Rai-guy agreed, speaking of the great glowing clock of Menzoberranzan, a pillar that revealed its measurements with heat to the dark elves, who viewed the Underdark world in the infrared spectrum of light. "You have not been up here long enough to appreciate the ridiculousness of this place. Your heart will call you home soon enough."

  "Already," Berg'inyon replied. "I have no taste for this world, nor do I like the sight or smell of any I have seen up here, Sharlotta Vespers least of all."

  "Her and the fool Entreri," said Rai-guy. "Yet Jarlaxle favors them both."

  "His tenure in Bregan D'aerthe may be nearing its end," said Kimmuriel, and both Berg'inyon and Rai-guy opened their eyes wide at such a bold proclamation.

  In truth, though, both were harboring the exact same sentiments. Jarlaxle had reached far in merely bringing them to the surface. Perhaps he'd reached too far for the rogue band to continue to hold much favor among their former associates, including most of the great houses back in Menzoberranzan. It was a gamble, and one that might indeed pay off, especially as the flow of exotic and desirable goods increased to the city.

  The plan, however, had been for a short stay, only long enough to establish a few agents to properly facilitate the flow of trade. Jarlaxle had stepped in more deeply then, conquering House Basadoni and renewing his ties with the dangerous Entreri. Then, seemingly for his own amusement, Jarlaxle had gone after the most hated rogue, Drizzt Do'Urden. After completing his business with the outcast and stealing the mighty artifact Crenshinibon, he had let Drizzt walk away, had even forced Rai-guy to use a Lolth-bestowed spell of healing to save the miserable renegade's life.

  And now this, a more overt grab for not profit but power, and in a place where none of Bregan D'aerthe other than Jarlaxle wished to remain.

  Jarlaxle had taken small steps along this course, but he had put a long and winding road behind him. He brought all of Bregan D'aerthe further and further from their continuing mission, from the allure that had brought most of the members, Rai-guy, Kimmuriel, and Berg'inyon among them, into the organization in the first place.

  "What of Sharlotta Vespers?" Kimmuriel asked.

  "Jarlaxle will eliminate that problem for us," Rai-guy replied.

  "Jarlaxle favors her," Berg'inyon reminded.

  "She just entered into a deception against him," Rai-guy replied with all confidence. "We know this, and she knows that we know, though she has not yet considered

  the potentially devastating implications. She will follow our commands from this point forward."

  The drow wizard smiled as he considered his own words. He always enjoyed seeing an iblith fall into the web of drow society, learning piece by piece that the sticky strands were layered many levels deep.

  "I know of your hunger, for I share in it," Jarlaxle remarked. "This is not as I had envisioned, but perhaps it was not yet time."

  Perhaps you place too much faith in your lieutenants, the voice in his head replied.

  "No, they saw something that we, in our hunger, did not," Jarlaxle reasoned. "They are troublesome, often annoying, and not to be trusted when their personal gain is at odds with their given mission, but that was not the case here. I must examine this more carefully. Perhaps there are better avenues toward our desired goal."

  The voice started to respond, but the drow mercenary cut short the dialogue, shutting it out.

  The abruptness of that dismissal reminded Crenshinibon that its respect for the dark elf was well-placed. This Jarlaxle was as strong of will and as difficult to beguile as any wielder the ancient sentient artifact had ever known, even counting the great demon lords who had often joined with Crenshinibon through the centuries.

  In truth, the only wielder the artifact had ever known who could so readily and completely shut out its call had been the immediate predecessor to Jarlaxle, another drow, Drizzt Do'Urden. That one's mental barrier had been constructed of morals. Crenshinibon would have been no better off in the hands of a goodly priest or a paladin, fools all and blind to the need to attain the greatest levels of power.

  All that only made Jarlaxle's continued resistance even more impressive, for the artifact understood that this one held no such conscience-based mores. There was no intrinsic understanding within Jarlaxle that Crenshinibon was some evil creation and thus to be avoided out of hand. No, to Crenshinibon's reasoning, Jarlaxle viewed everyone and everything he encountered as tools, as vehicles to carry him along his desired road.

  The artifact could build forks along that road, and perhaps even sharper turns as Jarlaxle wandered farther and farther from the path, but there would be no abrupt change in direction at this time.

  Crenshinibon, the Crystal Shard, did not even consider seeking a new wielder, as it had often done when confronting obstacles in the past. While it sensed resistance in Jarlaxle, that resistance did not implicate danger or even inactivity. To the sentient artifact, Jarlaxle was powerful and intriguing, and full of the promise of the greatest levels of power Crenshinibon had ever known.

  The fact that this drow was not a simple instrument of chaos and destruction, as were so many of the demon lords, or an easily duped human-perhaps the most redundant thought the artifact had ever considered-only made him more interesting.

  They had a long way to go together, Crenshinibon believed.

  The artifact would find its greatest level of power. The world would suffer greatly.

  Chapter 5

  THE FIRST THREADS ON A GRAND TAPESTRY

  Others have tried, and some have even come close," said Dwahvel Tiggerwillies, the halfling entrepreneur and leader of the only real halfling guild in all the city, a collection of pickpockets and informants who regularly congregated at Dwahvel's Copper Ante. "Some have even supposedly gotten their hands on the cursed thing."

  "Cursed?" Entreri asked, resting back comfortably in his chair-a pose Artemis Entreri rarely assumed.

  So unusual was the posture, that it jogged Entreri's own thoughts about
this place. It was no accident that this was the only room in all the city in which Artemis Entreri had ever partaken of liquor-and even that only in moderate amounts. He had been coming here often of late-ever since he had killed his former associate, the pitiful Dondon Tiggerwillies, in the room next door. Dwahvel was Dondon's cousin, and she knew of the murder but knew, too, that Entreri had, in some respects, done the wretch a favor. Whatever ill will Dwahvel harbored over that incident couldn't hold anyway, not when her pragmatism surfaced.

  Entreri knew that and knew that he was welcomed here by Dwahvel and all of her associates. Also, he knew that the Copper Ante was likely the most secure house in all of the city. No, its defenses were not formidable- Jarlaxle could flatten the place with a small fraction of the power he had brought to Calimport-but its safeguards against prying eyes were as fine as those of a wizards' guild. That was the area, as opposed to physical defenses, where Dwahvel utilized most of her resources. Also, the Copper Ante was known as a place to purchase information, so others had a reason to keep it secure. In many ways, Dwahvel and her comrades survived as Sha'lazzi Ozoule survived, by proving of use to all potential enemies.

  Entreri didn't like the comparison. Sha'lazzi was a street profiteer, loyal to no one other than Sha'lazzi. He was no more than a middleman, collecting information with his purse and not his wits, and auctioning it away to the highest bidder. He did no work other than that of salesman, and in that regard, the man was very good. He was not a contributor, just a leech, and Entreri suspected that Sha'lazzi would one day be found murdered in an alley, and that no one would care.

  Dwahvel Tiggerwillies might find a similar fate, Entreri realized, but if she did, her murderer would find many out to avenge her.

  Perhaps Artemis Entreri would be among them.

  "Cursed," Dwahvel decided after some consideration.

  "To those who feel its bite."

  "To those who feel it at all," Dwahvel insisted.

  Entreri shifted to the side and tilted his head, studying his surprising little friend.