that he could profit from her momentum in the pursuit.
* * *
Wulfgar's huge legs brought him clear over the mess of the chandelier, and
he tucked his head under his arms as he dropped into a group of ratmen, knocking
them every which way. Dazed but still coherent enough to mark his direction,
Wulfgar barreled through a door and stumbled into another wide chamber. An open
door loomed before him, leading into yet another maze of chambers and corridors.
But Wulfgar couldn't hope to get there with a score of wererats blocking his
way. He slipped over to the side of the room and put his back to a wall.
Thinking him unarmed, the ratmen rushed in, shrieking in glee. Then
Aegis-fang magically returned to Wulfgar's hands and he swatted the first two
aside. He looked around, searching for another dose of luck.
Not this time.
Wererats hissed at him from every side, nipping with their ravaging teeth.
They didn't need Rassiter to explain the power such a giant a wererat giant -
could add to their guild.
The barbarian suddenly felt naked in his sleeveless tunic as each bite
narrowly missed its mark. Wulfgar had heard enough legends concerning such
creatures to understand the horrid implications of a lycanthrope's bite, and he
fought with every ounce of strength he could muster.
Even with his adrenaline pumping in his terror, the big man had spent half
the night in battle and had suffered many wounds, most notably the gash on his
arm from the hydra, opened again by his leap from the balcony. His swipes were
beginning to slow.
Normally Wulfgar would have fought to the end with a song on his lips as he
racked up a pile of dead enemies at his feet and smiled in the knowledge that he
had died a true warrior. But, now, knowing his cause to be hopeless, with
implications much worse than death, he scanned the room for a certain method of
killing himself.
Escape was impossible. Victory even more so. Wulfgar's only thought and
desire at that moment was to be spared the indignity and anguish of lycanthropy.
Then Drizzt entered the room.
He came in on the back of the wererat ranks like a sudden tornado dropping
onto an unprepared village. His scimitars flashed blood red in seconds, and
patches of fur flew about the room. Those few ratmen in his path who managed to
escape put their tails between themselves and the killer drow and fled from the
room.
One wererat turned and got his sword up to parry, but Drizzt lopped off his
arm at the elbow and drove a second blade through the beast's chest. Then the
drow was beside his giant friend, and his appearance gave Wulfgar renewed
courage and strength. Wulfgar grunted in exhilaration, catching one attacker
full in the chest with Aegis-fang and driving the wretched beast right through a
wall. The ratman lay, quite dead, on his back in one room, but his legs, looped
at the knees through the room's newest window, twitched grotesquely for his
comrades to witness.
The ratmen glanced nervously at each other for support and came at the two
warriors tentatively.
If their morale was sinking, it flew away altogether a moment later, when
the roaring dwarf pounded into the room, led by a volley of silver-streaking
arrows that cut the rats down with unerring accuracy. For the ratmen, it was the
sewer scenario all over again, where they had lost more than two-dozen of their
comrades earlier that same night. They had no heart to face the four friends
united, and those that could flee, did.
Those that remained had a difficult choice: hammer, blade, axe, or arrow.
* * *
Pook sat back in his great chair, watching the destruction through an image
in the Taros Hoop. It did not pain the guildmaster to see wererats dying - a few
well-placed bites out in the streets could replenish the supply of the wretched
things - but Pook knew that the heroes cutting their way through his guild would
eventually wind up in his face.
Regis, held off the ground by the seat of his pants by one of Pook's hill
giant eunuchs, watched, too. The mere sight of Bruenor, whom Regis had believed
killed in Mithril Hall, brought tears to the halfling's eyes. And the thought
that his dearest friends had traveled the breadth of the Realms to rescue him
and were now fighting for his sake as mightily as he had ever witnessed,
overwhelmed him. All of them bore wounds, particularly Catti-brie and Drizzt,
but all of them ignored the pain as they tore into Pook's militia. Watching them
felling foes with every cut and thrust, Regis had little doubt that they would
win through to get to him.
Then the halfling looked to the side of the Taros Hoop, where LaValle stood,
unconcerned, his arms crossed over his chest and his pearl-tipped scepter
tapping on one shoulder.
"Your followers do not fare so well, Rassiter," the guildmaster remarked.
"One might even note their cowardice."
Rassiter shuffled uneasily from one foot to the other.
"Is it that you cannot hold to your part of our arrangement?"
"My guild fights mighty enemies this night," Rassiter stammered. "They . . .
we have not been able . . . the fight is not yet lost!"
"Perhaps you should see to it that your rats fare better," Pook said calmly,
and Rassiter did not miss the command's - the threat's tone. He bowed low and
rushed out of the chamber, slamming the door behind him.
Even the demanding guildmaster could not hold the wererats wholly
responsible for the disaster at hand.
"Magnificent," he muttered as Drizzt fought off two simultaneous thrusts and
sliced down both wererats with individual, yet mystically intertwined counters.
"Never have I seen such grace with a blade." He paused for a moment to consider
that thought. "Perhaps once."
Surprised at the revelation, Pook looked at LaValle, who nodded in accord.
"Entreri," LaValle inferred. "The resemblance is unmistakable. We know now
why the assassin coaxed this group to the south."
"To fight the drow?" Pook mused. "At last, a challenge for the man without
peer?"
"So it would seem."
"But, where is he, then? Why has he not made his appearance?"
"Perhaps he already has," LaValle replied grimly.
Pook paused to consider the words for a long moment; they were too
unconscionable for him to believe. "Entreri beaten?" He gasped. "Entreri dead?"
The words rang like sweet music to Regis, who had watched the rivalry
between the assassin and Drizzt with horror from its inception. All along, Regis
had suspected that those two would fall into a duel that only one could survive.
And all along, the halfling had feared for his drow friend.
The thought of Entreri gone put a new perspective on the battle at hand for
Pasha Pook. Suddenly he needed Rassiter and his cohorts again; suddenly the
carnage he watched through the Taros Hoop had a more direct impact on his
guild's immediate power.
He leaped from his seat and ambled over to the evil device. "We must stop
this," he snarled at LaValle. "Send them away to a dark place!"
The wizard grinned wickedly and shuffled off to retrieve a huge book, bound
in black leather. Opening it to a marked page, LaValle walked before the Taros
Hoop and began the initial chantings of an ominous incantation.
* * *
Bruenor was first out of the room, searching for a likely route to Regis -
and for more wererats to chop down. He stormed along a short corridor and kicked
open a door, finding, not wererats, but two very surprised human thieves.
Holding a measure of mercy in his battle-hardened heart - after all, he was the
invader - Bruenor held back his twitching axe hand and shield-slammed the two
rogues to the ground. He then rushed back out into the corridor and fell in line
with the rest of his friends.
"Watch yer right!" Catti-brie cried out, noting some movement behind a
tapestry near the front of the line, beside Wulfgar. The barbarian pulled the
heavy tapestry down with a single heave, revealing a tiny man, barely more than
a halfling, crouched and poised to spring. Exposed, the little thief quickly
lost his heart for the fight and just shrugged apologetically as Wulfgar slapped
his puny dagger away.
Wulfgar caught him up by the back of the neck, hoisting the little man into
the air and putting his nose to the thief's. "What manner are you?" Wulfgar
scowled. "Man or rat?"
"Not a rat!" the terrified thief shrieked. He spat on the ground to
emphasize his point. "Not a rat!"
"Regis?" Wulfgar demanded. "You know of him?"
The thief nodded eagerly.
"Where can I find Regis?" Wulfgar roared, his bellow draining the blood from
the thief's face.
"Up," the little man squeaked. "Pook's rooms. All the way up." Acting solely
on instinct for survival, and having no real intentions to do anything but get
away from the monstrous barbarian, the thief slipped one hand to a hidden dagger
tucked in the back of his belt.
Bad judgment.
Drizzt slapped a scimitar against the thief's arm, exposing the move to
Wulfgar.
Wulfgar used the little man to open the next door.
Again the chase was on. Wererats darted in and out of the shadows to the
sides of the four companions, but few stood to face them. Those that did wound
up in their path more often by accident than design!
More doors splintered and more rooms emptied, and a few minutes later, a
stairway came into view. Broad and lavishly carpeted, with ornate banisters of
shining hardwood, it could only be the ascent to the chambers of Pasha Pook.
Bruenor roared in glee and charged on. Wulfgar and Catti-brie eagerly
followed. Drizzt hesitated and looked around, suddenly fearful.
Drow elves were magical creatures by nature, and Drizzt now sensed a strange
and dangerous tingle, the beginnings of a spell aimed at him. He saw the walls
and floor around him waver suddenly, as if they had become somehow less
tangible.
Then he understood. He had traveled the Planes before, as companion to
Guenhwyvar, his magical cat, and he knew now that someone, or something, was
pulling him from his place on the Prime Material Plane. He looked ahead to see
Bruenor and the others now similarly confused.
"Join hands!" the drow cried, rushing to get to his friends before the
dweomer banished them all.
* * *
In hopeless horror, Regis watched his friends huddle together. Then the
scene in the Taros hoop shifted from the lower levels of the guildhouse to a
darker place, a place of smoke and shadows, of ghouls and demons.
A place where no sun shined.
"No!" the halfling cried out, realizing the wizard's intent. LaValle paid
him no heed, and Pook only snickered at him. Seconds later, Regis saw his
friends in their huddle again, this time in the swirling smoke of the dark
plane.
Pook leaned heavily on his walking stick and laughed. "How I love to foil
hopes!" he said to his wizard. "Once more you prove your inestimable worth to
me, my precious LaValle!"
Regis watched as his friends turned back to back in a pitiful attempt at
defense. Already, dark shapes swooped about them or hovered over them beings of
great power and great evil.
Regis dropped his eyes, unable to watch.
"Oh, do not look away, little thief," Pook laughed at him. "Watch their
deaths and be happy for them, for I assure you that the pain they are about to
suffer will not compare to the torments I have planned for you."
Regis, hating the man and hating himself for putting his friends in such a
predicament, snapped a vile glare at Pook. They had come for him. They had
crossed the world for him. They had battled Artemis Entreri and a host of
were-rats, and most probably many other adversaries. All of it had been for him.
"Damn you," Regis spat, suddenly no longer afraid. He swung himself down and
bit the eunuch hard on the inner thigh. The giant shrieked in pain and loosened
his grip, dropping Regis to the floor.
The halfling hit the ground running. He crossed before Pook, kicking out the
walking stick the guildmaster was using for support, while very deftly slipping
a hand into Pook's pocket to retrieve a certain statuette. He then went on to
LaValle.
The wizard had more time to react and had already begun a quick spell when
Regis came at him, but the halfling proved the quicker. He leaped up, putting
two fingers into La Valle's eyes, disrupting the spell, and sending the wizard
stumbling backward.
As the wizard struggled to hold his balance, Regis jerked the pearl-tipped
scepter away and ran up to the front of the Taros Hoop. He glanced around at the
room a final time, wondering if he might find an easier way.
Pook dominated the vision. His face blood red and locked into a grimace, the
guildmaster had recovered from the attack and now twirled his walking stick as a
weapon, which Regis knew from experience to be deadly.
"Please give me this one," Regis whispered to whatever god might be
listening. He gritted his teeth and ducked his head, lurching forward and
letting the scepter lead him into the Taros Hoop.
22
The Rift
Smoke, emanating from the very ground they stood upon, wafted by drearily
and rolled around their feet. By the angle of its roll, the way it fell away
below them only a foot or two off to either side, only to rise again in another
