TO THE SOUL OF THE MATTER

Jarlaxle had his back to Entreri, pretending to look out the shack's front door at the early morning street. Athrogate snored contentedly in the corner of the room, his breathing interrupted at irregular intervals - Jarlaxle amused himself by imagining spiders climbing into the dwarf's open mouth.

Entreri sat at the table, his face tight and angry - the expression he had worn for most of the years he and Jarlaxle had spent together, one that Jarlaxle had hoped to replace forever with the use of Idalia's flute.

So much progress they had made, the drow silently lamented, but then that foolish woman had betrayed Entreri and torn a hole in his opened heart. And worst of all, what the drow knew but Entreri did not was that Calihye hadn't even wanted to attack him. Emotionally torn, confused by her loyalties and frightened of leaving the Bloodstone Lands, the woman had acted purely on impulse. Her strike was not wrought of malice toward Artemis Entreri, as it would have been in the early days of their relationship, but rather, was propelled by terror and grief and an anguish she could not overcome.

Jarlaxle hoped that someday Artemis Entreri might know that, but he doubted it strongly. Still, with Calihye safely under the control of Bregan D'aerthe, the drow knew better than to say "never."

The more pressing problem, of course, surrounded them in the hellish city of Memnon. Entreri had come home, though what that meant, Jarlaxle could not be sure. He glanced back at the grim man, who seemed not to notice him at all, not to notice anything. Entreri sat upright and his eyes were open, but he was no more aware, Jarlaxle reasoned, than was the sputtering dwarf in the corner.

His hands moving slowly and surely, Jarlaxle retrieved one of the small potion vials from his belt pouch. He stared at it for a long while, hating himself for having to so manipulate his friend yet again.

That thought surprised the drow; when in his entire life had he ever felt such a twang? In his betrayal of Zaknafein those centuries before, perhaps?

He looked at Entreri again, and he felt as if he was staring at his old drow companion.

I needed to do this, he reminded himself, and for Entreri most of all.

He quaffed the potion.

Jarlaxle closed his eyes as the magic settled in his body and in his mind, as he began to "hear" the thoughts of the other people in the room. He considered the life of Kimmuriel, who was always in such a state of heightened perception, and for an instant, he truly pitied the psionicist.

He shook his head and gave a great sigh, reminding himself that he had no time for such distractions. The potion wouldn't last long.

"So are you going to tell me where you went yesterday?" he said, turning to face the human.

Entreri looked up at him. "No."

But he was already telling Jarlaxle much more, for the question had elicited memories of the previous day's events: images of the street they had visited, of an old man lying on the floor holding in his spilling guts, of another man.

His father! No, the man he had thought his father, had known as his father for all his life.

"You have come here to find your mother. That much I know," Jarlaxle dared to say, though Entreri's expression grew more threatening from the moment he mentioned the lost woman.

An image flashed in Jarlaxle's mind, not of a woman, but of a view.

"You know, too, that I have told you that none of this is your affair," Entreri said.

"Why would you push an ally away?" Jarlaxle asked.

"You cannot help me in this."

"Of course I can."

"No!"

Jarlaxle straightened, assailed suddenly by a wall of red. He felt Entreri's anger more keenly than ever before, a razor edge that bordered on murderous rage. Images flashed too quickly for him to sort them and grasp them. He noted many of priests, of the great Protector's House, of the lines for indulgences playing out in the square.

Then just hatred.

Jarlaxle held up his hand defensively without even realizing it, though Entreri had made no move from the table.

The drow shook his head, to see the man staring at him curiously.

"What are you about?" the obviously suspicious Entreri asked.

"About tall enough to put me face between a woman's bosoms!" came a roar from the side, and Jarlaxle was truly relieved for the interruption at that particular moment.

Entreri cast a glance at Athrogate, then stood up quickly, his chair sliding out behind him. He stalked around the table, and never taking his stare off Jarlaxle, left the house.

"What's tyin' that one's armpit hair in knots?" Athrogate asked.

Jarlaxle merely smiled, glad that the potion's effects were already fading. The last thing he wanted was to be bombarded by the images that flitted through the mind of Athrogate!

* * * * *

Little life showed on the facings of the wind-swept brown rocks footing the mountains south of Memnon. There were a few lizards, though, sunning themselves or scampering from ledge to ledge, and so Jarlaxle knew that beneath the surface, deep in cracks or in caves formed by the incongruity of stone on stone, life found a way.

It always did - under the desert sun, or in the pits of the Underdark, where no stars shone.

A crude stone stair wound up the hundred feet or so around a large jut of rock, but Jarlaxle didn't use it. He moved off to the side, where the jag would keep him covered from view, and tipped his great hat to enact its levitation properties. He half-walked and half-floated up the sheer face. As he neared the top, he paused and glanced back behind him to view the distant harbor, and nodded with recognition in confirming that it was the same view he had seen in Entreri's thoughts when he had used the mind-reading potion.

Certain that Entreri was on the other side of the stone, Jarlaxle crept low as he went to the top.

Behind it was a flat patch of sandy ground, wider than the drow had expected. Many small and weathered stones littered the place - ancient gravestones, Jarlaxle realized. Across the sandy field directly south of his position, the drow noted a tarp-covered mound.

Bodies awaiting burial.

Entreri was indeed up there, walking among the stones, looking down at the sand and apparently lost in contemplation. Only one other man was about, a priest of Selune, who stood at the westernmost edge, looking down at the harbor through a break in the brown stones.

It was a paupers' graveyard, where Entreri's mother was likely buried, Jarlaxle surmised. He retreated a bit over the far side of the rock and rested his back against it, considering it all. His friend was in turmoil, clearly. In breaking through Entreri's emotional wall, Jarlaxle had opened him to those painful memories.

He crawled back up and took one last look at Entreri, wondering what might result.

He floated back down carrying more than a little guilt on his slender shoulders.

* * * * *

"You'll not find any names on those stones," the priest said to Entreri as the assassin puttered about, coincidentally moving nearer to the man.

Entreri looked up and noticed the priest - the same one who had been collecting indulgences in the square that day - for the first time, really, so absorbed had he been in pondering the dirt and the many souls buried beneath it. He noted the man's defensive posture, and understood that the priest felt threatened.

He offered a helpless shrug and walked off a bit.

"It's not often that a man of your obvious means would come here," the priest persisted.

Entreri turned and regarded him again.

"I mean, these wretches don't get much in the manner of visitors," the priest went on. "Mostly unknown, unloved, and unwanted..." He ended with a condescending chuckle, which disappeared abruptly in light of Entreri's ensuing scowl.

"Yet you write their names on your scrolls when they give you their coins in the square," the assassin remarked. "Are you up here to pray for them, then? To fulfill the indulgences they purchased at your table?"

The priest cleared his throat and said, "I am Devout Gositek."

"You've confused me with someone who cares."

"I am a priest of Selune," the man protested.

"You are a charlatan who sells false hope."

Gositek steadied himself and straightened his robes. "Beware your words..." he said, inquiring of Entreri's name with his expression and inflection.

Entreri didn't blink, and at first didn't respond at all. It was all he could do to keep from leaping across the ten feet that separated him from Gositek and throwing the fool from the cliff.

Entreri reminded himself to do nothing so rash. The young man was barely half his age and could not have been involved with his mother in any way.

"As I said, I am Devout Gositek," the man said again, apparently drawing strength from Entreri's snub. "A favored scribe of Principal Cleric Yozumian Dudui Yinochek, the Blessed Voice Proper, himself. Speak ill to me at your peril. We rule the Protector's House. We are the hope and prayers of Memnon."

He babbled on for a bit, but Entreri hardly heard him, for that name, Yinochek, sparked memory in him.

"How old is he?" Entreri asked, interrupting the fool.

"What? Who?"

"This man, this Blessed Voice Proper?"

"Yinochek?"

"How old is he?"

"Why, I don't know his exact - "

"How old is he?"

"Sixty years, perhaps?" Gositek asked as much as answered.

Entreri nodded as memories came back to him of a young and fiery priest, an oratory prodigy, a blessed voice proper, who had often delivered powerful homilies from the balcony of the Protector's House. He remembered viewing some of those beside his young mother, her eyes upturned, her heart uplifted.

"And this man has been at the Protector's House for many years?" Entreri asked. "And he has been known as Blessed Voice Proper..."

"From the beginning," Gositek confirmed. "And yes, he was a young man when first he came to join the priests of Selune. Why? Do you know of him?"

Entreri turned and walked away.

"You used to live here," Gositek called after him, but Entreri didn't stop.

"What was her name?" the perceptive priest asked.

Entreri stopped, and turned to regard the man.

"The woman you seek here," Gositek explained. "It was a woman, yes? What was her name?"

"She had no name," Entreri replied. "None that you would remember. Look around you for your answers. Look at all their names, for they are etched on every stone."

Gositek straightened.

Entreri walked out of the graveyard.

* * * * *

Entreri hardly glanced at Jarlaxle as he took the bag of gold.

"You are welcome," the drow said, with more amusement than sarcasm.

"I know," was all he got in return.

The man's mood hardly surprised Jarlaxle. "I see that you are wearing your hat this day," he said, trying to lighten the mood, and referring to a thin-brimmed black top hat he had provided to Entreri, one with many magical properties - though not as many as Jarlaxle's great hat, of course! "I have not seen it on your head in many days."

Entreri stared at him. The hat was tightly form-fitted, owing to a thin wire beneath its band. Entreri reached up and found the magical-mechanical clip, set just above his left temple. With a flick of his fingers, he disengaged it, and with a turn of his wrist, he removed the hat, tossing it to Jarlaxle, as if the reminder of where he had gotten the hat somehow sullied his desire to wear it.

That wasn't it at all, of course, as Jarlaxle clearly understood. Entreri had gotten exactly what he wanted from the hat, for it held much less rigidity, absent the wire. The idea of snubbing Jarlaxle had simply been an added bonus.

Entreri held stares with him for a moment longer, then hoisted the small sack of gold and walked out of the house.

"Must've had a bug crawl up his bum last night," said Athrogate, pulling himself up from the floor and stretching the aches from his knotty old muscles.

Still watching the departing man, and rolling the discarded hat in his hands, Jarlaxle answered, "No, my hirsute friend, it goes far deeper than that. Artemis has been forced to remember his past, and so now he has to confront the truth of who he is. Witness your own mood when speaking of Citadel Felbarr."

"I telled ye I don't want to be talkin' about that."

"Exactly. Only Artemis isn't talking about anything. He's living it, in his heart. We did that to him, I fear, when he was given the flute." Finally, the drow turned to regard the dwarf. "And now we have to help him through this."

"We? Ye're pretty good with throwing around that word, elf. Course, if I knew what ye was talking about, I might be inclined to agree. Then again, I'm thinking that agreeing with ye is just going to get meself in trouble."

"Probably."

"Bwahaha!"

Jarlaxle knew that he could depend upon that one.

* * * * *

The scene at the square that morning was much as it had been when Entreri and Jarlaxle had first looked upon it, as it was almost every morning. The cobblestones could hardly be seen beneath the hordes of squatting peasants, and the long lines leading to the two tables flanking the Protector's House's great doors.

When they arrived, Jarlaxle and Athrogate had little trouble picking Artemis Entreri out from that ragamuffin crowd. He stood in the line at the farthest table, which struck Jarlaxle as odd until he noted the priest seated there, the same one he had seen in the pauper's graveyard the previous day. Entreri wondered if he had made a connection with the man.

Athrogate in tow, the drow cut through the first line of peasants and weaved across the way to move beside his companion. Those immediately behind Entreri protested the cut - or started to, until Athrogate barked at them. With his morningstars so prevalent, and a face scarred by a hundred years of battle, Athrogate had little trouble suppressing the protests of the paupers.

"Go away," Entreri said to Jarlaxle.

"I would be remiss - "

"Go away," the assassin said again, turning his head to look the elf in the eye. Jarlaxle held that stare for a few moments, long enough so that the line had time to thin ahead of them and when he disengaged the stare, Entreri was practically at the table. Entreri snorted at him dismissively, but Jarlaxle did not back off more than a couple of steps.

"First at a graveyard and now here," the priest, Gositek, said when Entreri's turn arrived. "You are truly a man of surprises."

"More than you can imagine," Entreri replied and he hoisted the sack of gold onto the table, which shook under its weight. As the bag settled, the top slipped open a bit, revealing the shiny yellow metal, and a collective gasp erupted from the peasants behind Entreri, and before, from the priest whose eyes widened so much that they seemed as if they might roll out onto the pile.

The guards behind Gositek came forward to hold back the pressing crowd, and Gositek finally sputtered, "Are you trying to incite a riot?" And it seemed as if he could hardly find breath for his voice.

"I am buying an indulgence," Entreri replied.

"The graveyard - "

"For a name long-forgotten by the priests of Selune, their promises be damned."

"Wh-what do you mean?" Gositek stammered, and he worked to tighten the drawstring and hide away the gold before it could cause a stampede. As he moved to pull the sack toward him, though, Entreri's hand clamped hard and fast around his wrist, an iron grip that halted the man.

"Yes, the n-n-name..." Gositek stuttered, turning to his scribe, who sat with his mouth agape, staring stupidly. "Record the name - and a great indulgence it will - "

"Not from you," Entreri instructed.

Gositek stared at him blankly.

"I will purchase this indulgence from the blessed voice proper alone," Entreri explained. "He will receive the gold personally, will record the name personally, and recite the prayers personally."

"But that is not - "

"It is that, or it is nothing," said Entreri. "Would you go to your blessed voice proper after I have left with my gold, and explain to him why you could not allow me to see him?"

Gositek shifted nervously, rubbed a hand across his face, and licked his thin lips.

"I haven't the authority," the priest managed to say.

"Then go and find it."

The priest looked to his scribe and to the guards, all of them shaking their heads helplessly. Finally, Gositek managed to tell one of the guards to go, and the man ran off.

The line grew restless behind Entreri, but he wasn't moving for the short while it took before the guard returned. He pulled Gositek aside and whispered to him, and the devout came back to the table and sat down.

"You are fortunate," he said, "for the blessed voice proper is in his audience hall at this very time, and with a calendar that is not full. For the sake of an extreme indulgence - "

"For a sack of gold coins," Entreri corrected, and Gositek cleared his throat and did not argue the point.

"He will see you."

Entreri lifted the bag and stepped beyond the table, moving for the door, but the guards blocked his way.

"You cannot bring weapons inside the Protector's House," Gositek explained, rising again and moving to the side of Entreri. "Nor any magical items. I am sorry, but the safety of..."

Entreri unhitched his weapon belt and handed it back to Jarlaxle, who moved over, Athrogate still in tow - and with the dwarf still facing the crowd, holding them back with his snarling visage.

"Shall I strip naked here?" Entreri asked, pulling his piwafwi from his shoulders.

Gositek fumbled on that one. "Just inside," he said, motioning for the guard to open the door. Entreri went in with the priest, Jarlaxle, and Athrogate close behind.

"Your belt," Gositek instructed. "And your boots."

Entreri untied his belt and handed it to the drow, then pulled off his boots while Gositek began casting a spell. When finished, the priest scanned Entreri head to toe, and bade him to open his shirt. A nod from the priest to a burly guard had the man up close to Entreri, patting him down.

A few moments later, wearing nothing but his pants and shirt and holding a sack of gold, Entreri was escorted by yet another pair of armored soldiers through the next set of doors, disappearing into the Protector's House. In the anteroom, Jarlaxle bagged his belongings.

Gositek motioned for the elf and the dwarf to head back outside.

"There are many more bags of gold where that one came from," Jarlaxle said to the poor, stuttering priest. Noting Gositek's obvious interest, Jarlaxle gingerly reached back and pushed the door closed. "Let me explain," he said sweetly.

Some moments later, the crowd shifted uneasily as Devout Gositek walked out of the building. "Take care of their needs," he instructed the scribe and the two guards.

A flurry of protests erupted from the peasants, but the man held up his hand and cast a stern look at them to silence them. Then he disappeared back into the structure.

* * * * *

As the two sentries, their heavy armor clanking noisily, led him through the palace known as the Protector's House, Artemis Entreri's thoughts kept going back to his days in Calimport, serving the notorious Pasha Basadoni. For only there had Entreri seen so much gold and silver lining, and platinum artifacts and tapestries woven by the day's greatest artists. Only there had Entreri witnessed such grandeur, and hoarding of wealth. He was hardly surprised by the ostentatious decorations. Fabulous paintings and sculptures were each individually worth more coin than half the people gathered in the square could make in their lifetimes, even if they pooled all their wealth together.

Entreri knew the scene all too well. The wealth always flowed uphill and into the hands of a few. It was the way of the world, and whether it was facilitated by the threats and intimidation of the pashas of Calimport, or priests with their more subtle and insidious extortions, he had long ago ceased being surprised by it. Nor did he really care, except...

Except that part of the wealth that particular sect had taken from his mother had involved the most personal property of all. And she had since lay forgotten, in an unremarkable patch of sandy ground, hidden from the view of the city.

He looked at the sentries flanking him. It would would be his last walk, he knew, his last day.

So be it.

He came into a grand hall, with a ceiling that stretched up two score feet, and gigantic columns all carved and decorated with gold leaf standing in two rows, front to back. Between them lay a long and narrow bright red carpet, flanked every few feet by a soldier of the church in shining plate mail and with a halberd planted solidly at his side, its tip twice his height from the floor and tied with the banners of the principal cleric and his god, Selune.

At the end of the carpet, perhaps thirty strides away, sat Principal Cleric Yinochek, the Blessed Voice Proper of Selune, in a throne of polished hardwood, fashioned with white pillows shot with lines of pink and red. He wore voluminous robes, stitched with gold, and a crown of fabulous jewels rested on his head. He was indeed sixty or more, Entreri saw, though his eyes were still bright and his physique still hard and muscular. He even imagined that he saw a bit of his own features in the man, but he quickly dismissed that uncomfortable notion.

Before the throne stood three priests, two to the right and one to the left, and all half-turned to regard the approach of the man with his sack of gold.

Entreri felt the weight of their stares, their suspicions clear upon their faces, and for the flash of an instant, he believed himself too obvious, his intentions too clear. The wire of the hat band pressed in on him, and he nearly forgot himself and reached up to adjust it under his black hair.

But he stopped himself, then laughed at himself as he shook his head and glanced around, remembering who he was. He was not the bastard pauper child from the dirty streets - that was who he had been.

"I have come to purchase an indulgence," he said.

"We were told as much by Devout Gositek," one of the priests before the throne replied, but Entreri dismissed him with a wave of his hand.

"I have come to purchase an indulgence," he said again, his eyes set on, and his finger pointing at, the principal cleric, the blessed voice proper, who sat on the throne.

The four priests exchanged glances - more than one seemed out of sorts and seething.

"So we have been informed," Principal Cleric Yinochek replied. "And so we have welcomed you into our home, a place few people outside of the clergy ever see. And you speak directly to me, Principal Cleric Yinochek, as you requested." He motioned to the bag of gold. "Devout Tyre here will record the name of the person for whom you desire prayer."

"You will pray for her personally?" Entreri asked.

"Your indulgence is worthy of such, so I have been told," Yinochek replied. "Pray you leave the bag and offer the name. Then be gone in the comfort of knowing that the Blessed Voice Proper of Selune prays for this woman."

Entreri shook his head and held the bag of gold close to his chest. "It is more than that."

"More?"

"Her name is - was, Shanali," said Entreri, and he paused and stared hard at the man, seeking a flash of recognition.

Yinochek wouldn't give him that satisfaction. If the principal cleric knew the name at all, he hid it completely, and when Entreri rationally considered the passage of thirty years and the reality of it all, he could only silently berate himself. Did the man even ask the names of the women he bedded? Even if he had, Yinochek couldn't likely remember them, the multitudes, if what the old woman had told Entreri was indeed the truth of it - and he knew in his heart that it was.

"She was my mother," Entreri said.

The looks that came back at him were of boredom, not interest.

"And she is deceased?" Yinochek asked. "As is my own mother, I assure you. That is the way of - "

"She has been dead for thirty years," Entreri interrupted, and Yinochek flashed a scowl and the other three priests and several of the guards bristled that the man would dare cut short the Blessed Voice Proper of Selune.

But Entreri persisted. "She was a young girl - less than half my current age."

"It was a long time ago," Yinochek stated.

"I have been gone a long time," said Entreri. "Shanali - do you know the name?"

The man held his hands out helplessly and looked around at his similarly confused fellow priests. "Should I?"

"She was known among the priests of the Protector's House, so I am told."

"A noblewoman?" asked Yinochek. "But I was informed that you were at the cemetery on the rise - "

"Nobler than any in this room today," Entreri again interrupted. "She did what she had to do to survive, and to provide for me, her only child. I consider that noble."

"Of course," Yinochek replied, and he did well - better, at least - than the other three priests at hiding his amusement at the proclamation.

"Even if that meant whoring herself to priests in the Protector's House," Entreri said, and their mirth disappeared in the blink of an eye. "But you don't remember her, of course, though you were surely here at the time."

Yinochek didn't answer, other than to stare hard at the man, for a long, long time. "She has been dead for many, many years," he said finally. "Likely she has passed through the Fugue Plane in any case. Spare your indulgence for yourself, impertinent child, I pray you."

Entreri snorted. "Prayers to a god who would allow priests, even a blessed voice proper, to steal the dignity of the women of their flock?" he asked. "Prayers to Selune, whose priests fornicate with starving young girls? Do you believe that I would wish such prayers? Better to pray to Lady Lolth, who at least admits the truth of her vile clergy."

Yinochek trembled with rage. At either side of Entreri, the guards stepped forward, weapons coming ready.

"Leave your gold and begone!" the blessed voice proper demanded. "It will purchase your life, and nothing more. And be glad that I am in a generous mood!"

"Go to your balcony," Entreri retorted. "Look out over them, Foul Voice Improper. How many are of your seed? Like myself, perhaps?"

"Remove him!" one of the priests before the throne yelled, but Yinochek stood up suddenly and shouted above them all, "Enough!"

"You have tried my patience to its limits," he went on. "What is your..."

Entreri's scalp itched. He glanced around, measuring his strides, calculating the time his movements might bring. He stopped, as did Yinochek, as the door behind him banged open, forcefully, as if it had been kicked from up high.

"Wait! Your pardon and one moment, Blessed Voice Proper," said Devout Gositek, scrambling into the room. He held a wide-brimmed, feathered hat - Jarlaxle's hat.

"There is much more to this than our friend here, who consorts with elves who are much more than they seem," the man went on. As he finished he pulled something - a black fabric disk - from out of the great hat. "Much more than they seem," he said again.

Entreri's jaw dropped open at the reference, at the clue. He had his distraction.

Yinochek sat back down. "How dare you intrude, Devout Gositek?" he asked.

Gositek held up the disk of fabric, eliciting many curious stares.

Entreri leaped out to the side and smashed the guard across the face plate of his helmet with the sack of gold, launching the man to the floor. As he fell away, Entreri yanked the guard's halberd free, half turned, and launched it into the gut of the guard opposite, bending him double. His feet already moving, the assassin charged the throne, and when one of the three priests managed to react quickly enough to block his way, he threw the bag of gold into the man's face. Coins flew, and blood, and the priest fell back - even harder as Entreri planted a bare foot on his chest and leaped across.

He covered the distance to the throne in one stride, reaching up and pulling the slip-knot in the wire set under his hair. He swung it around as he went, catching the free end with his other hand, and with his fists outstretched before him, bore down on his prey. Yinochek lifted both hands defensively, but Entreri leaped headlong above the attempt to block him, snapped his hands down when they were behind the priest's defenses, then rolled over Yinochek's shoulder. Somersaulting and twisting as he went, Entreri brought his arm up and over his head so that as he descended he was back-to-back with the priest, the wire - the garrote - tight across Yinochek's throat.

Entreri used his momentum to yank the man away from the throne, hoping to snap his neck cleanly and be done with it.

But Yinochek was more stubborn and quicker than that, and he managed to come around with the flow of momentum. When it untangled, he remained very much alive, though Entreri was right behind him, tugging hard on the vicious wire, digging it into Yinochek's throat.

It would take too long, Entreri feared, expecting the guards and the priests to rush over him.

When he looked back, however, he pressed on with determination and hope that it would end then and there.

* * * * *

Even as Entreri had first started his move, even as he had lunged to the right at the guard, the man on the carpet behind him, Devout Gositek by all appearances, flicked the oblong piece of fabric through the air. It elongated as it twirled, widening to several feet in diameter, and slapped against the side of one of the immense pillars lining the hall.

And it was no longer a piece of fabric at all, but a magical, portable hole, a dimensional pocket. From within it, almost as soon as it hit the wall, there came a tumult and a shout.

"Snort!"

The guards nearest the hole fell back as flames erupted from the blackness, and out leaped a red war pig, snorting fire, and with a hairy and no less fiery dwarf astride it. He passed between the nearest guards, morningstars whirling left and right, and landed a solid hit on both, launching them aside.

All across the room, guards and priests finally moved to respond, and yet another surprise caught them and held them momentarily, as Devout Gositek reached a hand under his chin and tore off the magical mask, revealing himself in all of his ebon-skinned glory.

Jarlaxle threw his hat to the floor, plucking free and tossing the magical feather as he did. His hands went into a rolling spin, summoning daggers into them from his enchanted bracers and launching them out in a steady line at the nearest guard. Even with those movements, the drow kept his wits about him enough to glance across the way, where Entreri knelt behind the blessed voice proper, who sat on the floor and clawed furiously at the assassin and at the wire that dug into his throat.

With but a thought, Jarlaxle summoned his innate drow magical abilities and brought a globe of darkness over the pair.

The armor worn by soldiers of the Protector's House was beautifully crafted and with few vulnerable areas, and so Jarlaxle's barrage did little real damage to the man. As that finally dawned on the sentry, he roared and lowered his halberd.

Jarlaxle snapped his wrists alternately, elongated daggers into swords, and even as one came into being, he parried across, turning the halberd, and leaped forward and to the side, right past the stumbling man.

The drow executed a perfect spin, and launched a backhanded uppercut that brought his fine blade under the rim of the guard's great helm, driving up into his skull.

Jarlaxle retracted it almost immediately and leaped away, gaining some time by finding Athrogate's swath of destruction, as the sentry went to the floor, flailing furiously and grabbing at the vicious wound.

* * * * *

Artemis Entreri understood Jarlaxle's tactical meaning in summoning the globe of darkness, of course, but it didn't suit him.

Not then.

He wanted to see Yinochek's face.

He rolled his legs under him and heaved backward, dragging the man out of the globe. As he came through the back limit of the darkness, he saw one of the priests, Devout Tyre, following his every move, the man's hands waving in spellcasting. Very familiar with clerical magic, Entreri knew what was coming, and he was not caught the least bit off guard as waves of compelling magical energy washed over him, an enchantment that could hold a man fast in place as surely as any paralysis.

Indeed, Entreri felt his arms go rigid, felt his body begin to deceive him.

But he conjured an image of Shanali, that last sight he had of her, and he imagined the man before him atop her, rutting like an animal, and thinking her no more than that.

His arms crossed more powerfully and Yinochek gave a pathetic wheeze.

But on came the other three priests and a pair of guards, and behind them lumbered... a gigantic bird?

* * * * *

Snort stomped and flames rolled out in a perfect circle, distracting the sentries, who were then swatted away by the wild Athrogate. His mighty legs clamping and twisting, he turned the boar at the next bunch to repeat the maneuver.

But the guards, well-trained men all, accepted the burst of flames and held their lowered halberds steady. Athrogate managed to drive one aside, but the other jabbed in at him, catching him just above the side seam in his metal breastplate. The fine tip drove through the leather under-padding and into the dwarf's armpit, and he had to throw himself back, letting Snort run right out from under him.

He fell hard to the floor, snapping the shaft of the halberd, but arched his small back and jerked his muscles in a single sudden spasm that propelled him back to his feet to meet the charge. Athrogate took some hope in the fact that the man's halberd had snapped, but it was short lived as the sentry, in one fluid motion, pulled a sword and slid a shield from his back. The man closed as if to run the dwarf right over.

From the other side came the second sentry, who similarly dropped his long weapon for sword and shield.

And Athrogate found he could hardly lift his right arm, blood running freely down his side.

* * * * *

Metal rang against metal as one long note across the way, closer to the door, as a pair of guards engaged the drow, and two more rushed in to join. Fighting defensively, diving into sudden rolls and using his lighter armor and better agility to keep ahead of the lunging men, Jarlaxle had little hope of scoring any solid hits against four skilled opponents. His swords whipped about every which way, seemingly randomly, but almost always deflecting a strike or forcing an attacker back.

Out in the hall behind him came many shouts, and the guards took heart.

So did the drow. And he rolled again, making sure that the approaching reinforcements could properly view the battle from the outside hall, and that they could see him, a drow, clearly. He wanted to hold their attention. He didn't want them to notice what was above the door jamb.

The release of fire, the breath of a red dragon, shook the structure with its sheer intensity as the leading guard passed under the archway. That man avoided most of the flames, but still came into the audience hall on fire, flailing. Behind him, for Jarlaxle had been sure to set the silver statuette with its little maw facing backward, the dozen men charging after him were not so fortunate, and were not about to rush through the tremendous force of that conflagration.

Fire rolled on for what seemed like many heartbeats, immolating the screaming sentries, ending any hopes of reinforcements and igniting tapestries, benches, carpeting, and the wooden beams of the structure.

Around Jarlaxle, the four sentries stared in disbelief - and though the distraction lasted for no more than perhaps two seconds, that was a second longer than Jarlaxle needed.

The drow came up from his roll, planted his feet, and propelled himself back the other way, into their midst. Out to the left slashed one blade, chopping hard on a sword arm and driving the weapon from the man's grasp. Out to the right stabbed the second sword, through a seam in armor and into the side of a man.

Out to the left leaped the drow, planting his feet on the chest of one guard and shoving off, launching the man to the floor and himself back and to the right, where he got up and over the blade of the fourth, turning as he went so that he was almost sitting on the man's shoulders. Jarlaxle dropped his bloody blades in a cross before the man's throat and slashed them out to their respective sides as he back-rolled over that shoulder, gracefully gaining his feet and spinning away.

The sentry grasped at his throat and sank to his knees.

* * * * *

"For Selune!" the guard cried, thinking his victory at hand.

And under the cover of his shout, Athrogate called to his right-hand morningstar, enabling its magic, bringing forth explosive oil from its prongs. The dwarf snapped himself around, launching the head of the weapon at the guard's blocking shield. His arm was a limp thing, and there was no weight behind the strike, but when it connected with that shield, the oil exploded, shattering both the shield and the arm that held it and throwing the man back to the floor.

Athrogate fell off to the left, swiping across with his second weapon, one coated with the magically-duplicated ooze of a creature known to strike fear in the hearts of the greatest warriors: a rust monster. The initial contact of morningstar against shield did little to dissuade the oblivious attacker, who shield-rushed the dwarf and crashed his sword down hard on Athrogate's shoulder.

Roaring in pain, the dwarf sent his left arm in furious pumps, spinning the morningstar head in horizontal twirls, each connecting with the shield. So furious was his attack that the guard had to backtrack.

But the man seemed unconcerned, was even mocking the dwarf, as, bloody and battered, Athrogate turned to square up with him.

On he charged, and the dwarf spun left, his right arm swinging, his morningstar coming at the shield with little power behind it.

It needed none, however, for the shield had turned to rust, and the impact blew it apart, red dust flying all over them both.

The guard paused in surprise, and Athrogate roared and spun the rest of the way around more furiously, his left coming across in a mighty backhand. His shield ruined, the guard had no choice but to spin away from the blow.

And Athrogate, leaping in that final turn, planted his leading left foot solidly and stepped into perfect balance with his right, halting his momentum with brutal efficiency. He stepped forward with his left foot, swinging his weapon, smashing the guard in the back in mid-turn, and sending him staggering forward.

Athrogate was with him, every stride, his left arm working left-to-right and down, then reversing right-to-left and over, the ball smashing against the man's back repeatedly, driving him forward in a stumbling run. Again and again the pursuing dwarf hit him, as if guiding him with the morningstar.

Headlong, face-first, into a stone pillar.

The guard's arms reflexively went around the thing as he slid down, though he was hardly conscious of the movement.

Athrogate whacked him again, just because.

* * * * *

Entreri snapped his arms left and right as he drove up to his feet, dragging the poor Yinochek with him. He tried to break the man's neck, but had no leverage to do so, nor did he have the time to complete the strangulation. Reluctantly, angrily, he released the priest and shoved him forward at the nearest man, another priest, then rushed in hard behind and shoulder-blocked another aside. He spun out to the right in a dead run, hoping to get ahead of the stab of another man.

He wouldn't have made it, except that suddenly, instead of stabbing, the man was flying forward, launched by the powerful peck of Jarlaxle's diatryma. Entreri ran right by the giant bird as it plowed forward, trampling the fallen defender.

On Entreri sprinted, his bare feet slapping the stone floor. He cut and veered as guards closed in on him from both sides, but with a sudden burst, he got beyond them, diving into a headlong roll over the fallen chair. He came back to his feet with three men in close pursuit.

He noted Jarlaxle's sudden flurry, saw men falling every which way, and marked the fires raging out beyond the room, thick smoke starting to come in the door. None of it would help him, he knew.

He had to anticipate Jarlaxle, had to think like his drow companion.

He went straight for the extra-dimensional hole hanging on the side of the pillar.

With halberds reaching out just behind him, Entreri dived in and disappeared from sight.

He felt a body in there, one that moved and groaned, and he slugged the man across the face, laying him low. As he scrambled around, his hand closed on a pommel.

Kill them! came a message in his mind, one of eagerness.

Entreri wasn't about to disappoint the blade.

The three guards stood before the hole, rightly hesitating and tentative. Out came Entreri in a great leap, red-bladed sword in one hand, jeweled dagger in the other. He smashed Charon's Claw down atop the nearest halberd, to his right and before him, and drove the weapon down, but then rolled his sword underneath it as he landed and quick-stepped forward. He swung his arm back up and over his shoulder, taking the long, spearlike weapon with it, and swinging it out to intercept the thrusting sword of the next man in line.

At the same time, the assassin executed a reverse backhand parry with his dagger, driving the sword on his left out behind him. He turned as he did to face the man holding the sword, and lifted his left arm high, taking the sword with it, then thrust across with Charon's Claw, stabbing the man in the chest. As that one fell away, freeing up his dagger hand, Entreri threw himself backward and under the swipe of the cumbersome halberd. He fell into a sitting position, but kept turning, driving his jeweled dagger into the spearman's knee then rolling around as the man howled, tearing his dagger free. He slashed across with Charon's Claw, taking the man's legs out and toppling him to the ground. Entreri used the falling man as a shield, leaping back to his feet, but he needn't have, he realized, for the third had turned to run off.

Entreri leaped into pursuit, but pulled up short, his attention drawn across the room, where the three priests escorted the blessed voice proper out a back door.

"No!" Entreri yelled charging that way, though he knew he'd never get there in time to stop the escape. It couldn't happen like this! Not after all his effort, not after all the memories of Shanali had assaulted him.

Devout Tyre, in the lead, pulled open the door; Entreri did the only thing he could and launched his sword like a great spear.

* * * * *

"Ah, but ye're a good pig," Athrogate said to Snort. He leaned heavily on the boar, nearly collapsing from loss of blood, and directed the creature to the extra-dimensional pocket. As he neared the black hole, the dwarf noted a man crawling out.

Devout Gositek turned to him pitifully.

Athrogate slugged him hard, knocking him out, so that he was hanging by the waist over the lip of the hole, the fingers of his extended arms just brushing the floor.

On a word from the dwarf, Snort leaped back into the hole. Athrogate looked to Jarlaxle and saluted, though the drow hardly seemed to notice. Then the dwarf hopped into a sitting position on the rim of the dimensional pocket, grabbed Gositek by the scruff of his neck, and rolled back out of sight, taking the battered priest with him.

* * * * *

Out of the corner of his eye, Devout Tyre saw the missile coming. He fell back with a yelp, knocking his fellows into a stumble, with Blessed Voice Proper Yinochek, still gasping for breath, falling back against the wall. The red-bladed sword rushed past Tyre and hit the wood, the weight of the missile closing the door hard, and leaving the sword stuck there, quivering.

"Get him out!" Tyre commanded the other two, turning toward the charging Entreri. "I will finish this one."

With a snarl of defiance, the priest grabbed Charon's Claw and yanked it from the door.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion for Devout Tyre. He stumbled away from the door as one of his companions, Devout Premmy, tugged the portal back open. He saw the man Entreri, screaming in protest, still thirty feet or more away. He watched the man change hands with his remaining weapon, saw him leap high and far, planting his left foot as he came down.

Entreri's hips rotated to square with the door. His left arm swung out wide as he rolled his right shoulder forward, arm coming up and over in a mighty throw.

Tyre hardly registered the movement, the silver flickers of the missile, but he knew somehow exactly where it was heading. He tried to scream a warning, but his voice came out as a high-pitched shriek.

He hardly heard that, but instead heard Entreri's seemingly elongated cry of "Shanali!"

And as though with the snap of some unseen wizard's fingers, time sped up and the silver missile flashed past him. Devout Tyre turned and saw his Blessed Voice Proper, the Principal Cleric of the Protector's House, with his arms out before him, quivering, his face a mask of exquisite pain, the jeweled hilt of a dagger protruding from his chest.

And Tyre saw... white. Just hot white, as his sensibilities finally registered the excruciating pain that burned throughout his body and soul. He screamed again - or tried to, but his lips curled up over his teeth, and rolled back even farther as if melting away. Somewhere deep inside him, Tyre knew that he should drop the evil sword.

But his sensibilities were long gone by then, his thoughts no longer connecting to his body. Pain controlled him, and nothing more, as he felt a million stinging needles, a million burning bites, a fire within him as profound and devastating as the one that had exploded in the corridor across the way.

He fell to the floor but never knew it. He lay there trembling, his skin smoldering and crackling into charred bits as Charon's Claw ate him.

* * * * *

The throw - both of them - had come from somewhere so deep inside of him that Artemis Entreri had hardly even realized his actions. He had seen nothing but Shanali, frail and dying in the dust. He had felt nothing but his rage, his absolute fury that the vile priest would escape him.

The moment his dagger thudded into Principal Cleric Yinochek's heart, the spell was broken, and Entreri, running at the four priests, felt a flood of angry satisfaction.

He slowed his pace, noting movement from the side, then watched as two of the priests deserted Yinochek and rushed out the door, Jarlaxle's diatryma in close pursuit. There were soldiers coming toward the room down the hall beyond, he saw, but how they changed their attitude and their direction when that giant bird crashed out through the doorway.

Entreri rushed up and pushed the door closed. He glanced at the dying Tyre but paid him no more heed than that, moving instead to stand before the principal cleric.

"Do you know how many lives you have ruined?" he asked the man.

Trembling, sputtering, his eyes wide with horror, Yinochek's lips moved but no words came forth.

"Yes," Entreri noted. "You know. You understand it all. You know the wretchedness of your actions as you steal the coin of the peasants and the innocence of the girls. You know, and so you are afraid." He reached up and grabbed the dagger hilt, and Yinochek stiffened.

Entreri thought to obliterate the man's soul with his magical weapon, but he shook his head and dismissed the notion.

"Selune is a goodly god, so I've heard," he said, "and thus will have nothing to do with the likes of you. I call you a fraud, and there is nowhere left for you to hide."

The man's eyes rolled back into his head, and he slumped to the floor.

"A better way to go than that one," Jarlaxle said, and only then did Entreri realize that the drow had come to his side. Jarlaxle's gaze led Entreri's to what remained of Devout Tyre, who lay on his back shaking wildly, his robes smoking and his face showing more bone than flesh.

With a growl, Entreri stomped hard on the man's forearm, crushing the burnt skin and bone, and the recoil lifted Charon's Claw into the air, where Entreri easily caught it.

He looked back at Jarlaxle as the drow settled the fabric patch back into his great hat.

The building shook violently, and across the room, a gout of flames rushed in.

"Come," Jarlaxle bade him, putting on his magical mask. "We must be away."

Entreri looked back at the blessed voice proper, sitting against the wall, his chest covered in blood, his eyes white.

He thought of Shanali one last time. He took a brief moment to consider the long and dirty road of his miserable life, which had ultimately brought him to that awful place.