Which only aided Drizzt’s aim.

Arrows flew at the creature in rapid succession. A second skull exploded, the monster’s crown falling to the swampy ground.

Effron shifted his magical attack, cold starlight lancing down from above to bite at the staggering creature.

“Now, Ambergris!” he managed to yell between assaults. Back at the camp, he heard the dwarf invoke again the name of Dumathoin, and now, with the countervailing force of the skull lord destroyed, to even greater effect. So powerful was the dwarf’s call that several ghouls before her were reduced to dust, and even the wights could not stand in the face of her divine call.

Before Effron, the skull lord crumbled to the muck.

More explosions turned him to see Drizzt fending a group of ravenous ghouls. Only then did Effron truly see the beauty of Drizzt’s dance, for the drow dropped his bow and drew his blades so quickly that Effron could barely follow the movement.

Drizzt leaped forward, double-stabbing the ghoul before him, then tore his blades out to the side, reversed momentum, and brought them scissoring across to decapitate the creature. Hardly slowing, the drow flipped his grip on the hilts and stabbed out to either side with devastating backhanded thrusts, skewering a pair of ghouls simultaneously. He retracted almost as fast as he had stabbed, and back-flipped into a fast retreat, but landed leaning forward and in a sudden rush that brought him in against the wounded ghouls for a devastating finishing barrage.

Hardly slowing, the drow leaped upon the felled warrior wight, blades pounding away, ensuring that it would not rise again.

Seeing the battle ended, the warlock rushed to claim his prizes, lifting the crown in trembling hands. He wouldn’t dare wield it, or wear it, until further study, of course, but he took no such precautions with the staff, eagerly scooping it into his grasp. It was as tall as he, fashioned of three leg bones fused as one, and with a tiny humanoid skull up near its tip. The blue lightning was gone now, but the young warlock easily recovered it, finding a magical communion with the powerful item, and by the time Drizzt joined him, bluish-black flashes had begun anew, flickering from the eyes of the staff’s skull-headed top.

Drizzt looked at him suspiciously.

“Magic is neither good nor evil,” Effron explained in response to that curious expression. “It merely is.”

Drizzt’s expression didn’t shift much, retaining his edge of skepticism, but he said nothing and followed Effron back to the others. The fight there had ended as well, bodies piled before the four companions. Afafrenfere was the worst off, obviously, and Ambergris tended to his wounded shoulder and bloodied hands.

“Well fought,” Drizzt said.

“Better if one of us hadn’t run off,” Dahlia scolded, staring at him, “and another hadn’t followed.”

Drizzt laughed and shook his head, owing no apologies, and even Artemis Entreri chuckled at the absurdity of Dahlia’s remarks.

“Were these enemies directed against us?” Entreri asked. “By Draygo Quick?”

Effron shook his head. “Such roving bands are not uncommon in the marshes around Gloomwrought,” he explained. “Though this one was particularly powerful.” He looked at his new weapon as he spoke, and smiled, feeling the powers contained within the bone staff.

If undead monsters came at them again the next day, he knew, more than a few of them would be fighting on his side.

Chapter 17: The Chosen

ATHROGATE PLOPPED HIS HAIRY FEET DOWN ON THE LARGE PILLOW BEFORE the Bedine serving girl, who immediately began pressing her thumbs into the pressure points on his wide, flat soles.

“Meself, ha! I’m thinkin’ I might be gettin’ used to this life,” he said for the tenth time that day, which meant that he was almost halfway to his average daily usage of the remark. Being guests of a Netherese lord in Shade Enclave was not a difficult job, the dwarf and Jarlaxle had learned. A century before, this region had been a huge and inhospitable desert, but it had not been totally barren. Sparsely inhabited, indeed, but inhabited nonetheless. The Spellplague had changed all that, the great desert of Anauroch, itself a magical construct, had been transformed. And here, the Empire of Netheril had created their principle city on Toril.

For the indigenous people of Anauroch, the nomadic Bedine, the transformation had proved neither fruitful nor favorable, for they were now the servants of the Netherese, particularly in the region immediately around Shade Enclave. Along some of the farther reaches of Anauroch, Bedine tribes held fast to their old desert nomad ways, but these people had not prospered. The tribes held few alliances outside of Anauroch and they were no match for the mighty Empire of Netheril, and thus, many now served that empire as slaves, even as gladiators.

For Jarlaxle and Athrogate, their extended stay in the House of Ulfbinder had been a journey in pleasure and luxury, their every need attended by a horde of servants. For his part, the dwarf had never looked better. His beard had been trimmed just a bit, and the dung tips at the end of his beard braids had been replaced by strings of shining opals. His dirty traveling clothes and armor had been meticulously stitched and cleaned, but he wasn’t wearing it much anyway, preferring the thick and soft robes Lord Parise Ulfbinder had provided.

“It will grow tedious soon enough,” Jarlaxle replied to the dwarf, as he usually did when Athrogate fell into his swoon of luxury. Jarlaxle was, of course, no stranger to the finer things in life. “There is a world of adventure out there,” he added.

“Bah!” Athrogate shot back, and he bit off the expression and winced as the Bedine girl found a particularly sensitive spot on his foot. “Felt pain a hunnerd times,” he said when he caught his breath. “But it ain’t e’er felt so good! Bwahahaha!”

Jarlaxle just laughed and sipped his wine.

“The pleasure’s great, the food’s so fine, don’t ye make the deal, friend, take yer time!” Athrogate half-said, half-sung, ending with another great “Bwahahaha!”

Jarlaxle smiled and lifted his glass to toast the dwarf’s sentiment, but he wasn’t so sure that he agreed. They had been here a long time, months, on a trade mission that shouldn’t have taken more than a couple of tendays at the most. Jarlaxle and Kimmuriel had spoken at length about it in an ongoing conversation, for the psionicist could initiate communication with Jarlaxle from great distances, and undetected even by a Netherese lord, and the two had come to the conclusion that something else was at play here with the Netherese, with Parise Ulfbinder and his closest cohorts at least.

But what that something might be was only beginning to shine through. In their last negotiations, Parise had spent a lot of time discussing Menzoberranzan and the customs of drow society in service to the Spider Queen. Jarlaxle had explained that Bregan D’aerthe operated outside of Menzoberranzan, and that much of the proposed trade they could facilitate with Shade Enclave would originate or terminate far from the shadows of the Underdark.

Parise had politely followed that discussion thereafter, but on more than one occasion he had tried to push it back to Menzoberranzan. Jarlaxle was too savvy and clever a negotiating adversary to miss such a façade.

“Know that I’ll be distractin’ ye around that table this day!” Athrogate assured him, and the dwarf winced again at the talented Bedine girl’s next press. “Bwahahaha!”

Jarlaxle waved that thought away. “You stay here today.”

“I’m yer second.”

“Today is a formality and nothing more,” Jarlaxle assured him. “Lord Ulfbinder wishes to introduce me to one of his compatriots who resides in the Shadowfell.”

“Ye’re going into the shadows?” Athrogate said and he sat so quickly that he nearly knocked over the poor Bedine girl.

Jarlaxle laughed and waved for him to settle back. “We will utilize a scrying device,” he explained. “Nothing more.”

“Ah,” Athrogate said, slumping back and nodding an apology to the startled girl. “And ye’re not wantin’ me face in the crystal ball, I see. Fearin’ I’ll embarrass ye, eh? Bwahahaha! Thought that was me job!”

“If so, then know that there is no amount of treasure I could bestow upon you to properly compensate you for your efforts.”

Athrogate thought about that for a few moments then let loose another, “Bwahahaha!”

Jarlaxle sighed.

“Stay here,” he instructed. “And do bathe.”

Athrogate sniffed at his armpit, crinkled his long nose, shrugged, and nodded.

Jarlaxle poured himself another glass of wine, working hard to keep the grin off his face. He couldn’t deny it: he had grown very fond of his competent and ferocious companion. When he had thought Athrogate dead in Gauntlgrym, the notion had terrified him. Obviously, by heritage and breeding, the two could not be more disparate, but those were the things that made the passing centuries interesting for Jarlaxle.

He thought back to his time with Artemis Entreri as he sipped his next glass of fine wine. He chuckled out loud as he recalled Entreri’s short tenure as King of Vaasa, a disastrous farce that had landed Entreri in the dungeons of the legendary Damarran King Gareth Dragonsbane.

He thought of the dragon sisters, and that notion had him reflexively tapping his waistcoat, and a secret slot along its side stitching where he kept the reconstituted Idalia’s Flute. He had almost freed Artemis Entreri from the emotional trappings of his sordid past with that magical instrument.

Almost.

He looked over at Athrogate, the dwarf now with his hands behind his head, eyes closed, thoroughly relaxing under the press of the foot massage. Jarlaxle pictured the two of them on the open road, hunting adventure and changing the course of kingdoms, and with Artemis and Drizzt beside them.

It was not an unpleasant thought.

But for now, he was Jarlaxle of Bregan D’aerthe, and he drained his glass and went to dress for his next meeting with Lord Parise Ulfbinder.

“Your dwarf friend will not be joining us today?” Parise Ulfbinder said when Jarlaxle was announced in the Netherese lord’s lavish private quarters a short while later.

“I can go and retrieve him if you so desire.”

Parise laughed at the thought. “He is your foil, not mine,” he willingly admitted. “Have you become so comfortable here that you no longer need your bodyguard?” He paused and looked at the drow with a coy expression. “Or has Jarlaxle ever needed a bodyguard?”

The drow removed his wide-brimmed hat and sat down in a comfortable chair.

“Or is Jarlaxle ever without a bodyguard?” Parise asked, and he moved to offer Jarlaxle a glass of brandy.

“That is the more pertinent question,” Jarlaxle replied.

“And the answer?”

“Is known only to me.”

Parise laughed and took a seat opposite the drow.

“Are we to peer into your crystal ball this day?” Jarlaxle asked.

Parise shook his head. “My fellow lord is … otherwise engaged,” he said, and Jarlaxle clearly registered a measure of weight behind that word choice. Something important was going on, likely in the Shadowfell, where this other lord, Draygo Quick, resided.