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 dove 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."
"She is gone, my friend," Drizzt said softly.
"Bah!" Bruenor snorted, though it sounded as more of a sniffle. "Don't ye be
so quick to make such a claim!"
Drizzt looked upon him with sincere sympathy, but refused to relinquish the
point or change his course.
"And if she were gone, I'd stay as well," Bruenor proclaimed, "to find her
body and carry it from this eternal hell!"
Drizzt grabbed the dwarf by the shoulders and squared up to face him. "Go,
Bruenor, back to where we all belong," he said. "Do not diminish the sacrifice
that Catti-brie has made for us. Do not steal the meaning from her fall."
"How can ye ask me to leave?" Bruenor said with a sniffle that he did not
mask. Wetness glistened the edges of his gray eyes. "How can ye-"
"Think not of what has passed!" Drizzt said sharply. "Beyond that gate is
the wizard that sent us here, the wizard that sent Catti-brie here!"
It was all Bruenor Battlehammer needed to hear. Fire replaced the tears in
his eyes, and with a roar of anger he dove through the portal, his axe leading
the way.
"Now-" Drizzt began, but Wulfgar cut him short.
"You go, Drizzt," the barbarian replied. "Avenge Catti-brie and Regis.
Finish the quest we undertook together. For myself, there will be no rest. My
emptiness will not fade."
"She is gone," Drizzt said again.
Wulfgar nodded. "As am I," he said quietly.
Drizzt searched for some way to refute the argument, but truly Wulfgar's
grief seemed too profound for him to ever recover.
Then Wulfgar's gaze shot up, and his mouth gaped in horrified - and elated -
disbelief. Drizzt spun about, not as surprised, but still overwhelmed, by the
sight before him.
Catti-brie fell limply and slowly from the dark sky above them.
It was a circular plane.
Wulfgar and Drizzt leaned together for support. They could not determine if
Catti-brie was alive or dead. She was wounded gravely, at the least, and even as
they watched, a winged demodand swooped down and grabbed at her leg with its
huge talons.
Before a conscious thought had time to register in Wulfgar's mind, Drizzt
had Taulmaril bent and sent a silver arrow into flight. It thundered into the
side of the demodand's head just as the creature took hold of the young woman,
blasting the thing from life.
"Go!" Wulfgar yelled at Drizzt, taking one stride. "I see my quest now! I
know what I must do!"
Drizzt had other ideas. He slipped a foot through Wulfgar's legs and dropped
in a spin, driving his other leg into the back of the barbarian's knees and
tripping Wulfgar down to the side, toward the portal. Wulfgar understood the
drow's intentions at once, and he scrambled to regain his balance.
Again Drizzt was the quicker. The point of a scimitar nicked in under
Wulfgar's cheekbone, keeping him moving in the desired direction. As he neared
the portal, just when
Drizzt expected him to try some desperate maneuver, the drow drove a boot
under his shoulder and kicked him hard.
Betrayed, Wulfgar tumbled into Pasha Pook's central chamber. He ignored his
surroundings, grabbed at the Taros Hoop and shook it with all his strength.
"Traitor!" he yelled. "Never will I forget this, cursed drow!"
"Take your place!" Drizzt yelled back at him from across the planes. "Only
Wulfgar has the strength to hold the gate open and secure. Only Wulfgar! Hold
it, son of Beornegar. If you care for Drizzt Do'Urden, and if ever you loved
Catti-brie, hold the gate!"
Drizzt could only pray that he had appealed to the small part of rationale
accessible in the enraged barbarian. The Drow turned from the portal, tucking
the scepter into his belt and slinging Taulmaril over his shoulder. Catti-brie
was below him now, still falling, still unmoving.
Drizzt drew out both his scimitars. How long would it take him to pull
Catti-brie to a bridge and find his way back to the portal? he wondered. Or
would he, too, be caught in an endless, doomed, fall?
And how long could Wulfgar hold the gate open?
He brushed away the questions. He had no time to speculate on their answers.
The fires gleamed in his lavender eyes, Twinkle glowed in one hand, and he
felt the urgings of his other blade, pleading for a demodand's heart to bite.
With all the courage that had marked Drizzt Do'Urden's existence coursing
through his veins, and with all the fury of his perceptions of injustice focused
on the fate of that beautiful and broken woman falling endlessly in a hopeless
void, he dove into the gloom.
23
If Ever You Loved Catti-brie
Bruenor had come into Pook's chambers cursing and swinging, and by the time
his initial momentum had worn away, he was far across the room from the Taros
Hoop and from the two hill giant eunuchs that Pook had on guard. The guildmaster
was closest to the raging dwarf, looking at him more in curiosity than terror.
Bruenor paid Pook no mind whatsoever. He looked beyond the plump man, to a
robed form sitting against a wall: the wizard who had banished Catti-brie to
Tarterus.
Recognizing the murderous hate in the red-bearded dwarf's eyes, LaValle
rolled to his feet and scrambled through the door to his own room. His racing
heart calmed when he heard the click of the door behind him, for it was a magic
doorway with several holding and warding spells in place. He was safe - or so he
thought.
Often wizards were blinded by their own considerable strength to other -
less sophisticated, perhaps, but equally strong - forms of power. LaValle could
not know the boiling cauldron that was Bruenor Battlehammer, and could not
anticipate the brutality of the dwarf's rage.
His surprise was complete when a mithril axe, like a bolt of his own
lightning, sundered his magically barred door to kindling and the wild dwarf
stormed in.
* * *
Wulfgar, oblivious to the surroundings and wanting only to return to
Tarterus and Catti-brie, came through the Taros Hoop just as Bruenor exited the
room. Drizzt's call from across the planes, though, begging him to hold the
portal open, could not be ignored. However the barbarian felt at that moment,
for Catti-brie or Drizzt, he could not deny that his place was in guarding the
