R. Salvatore - Night of the Hunter

She tried to thrash around, but the spiders had done their work well and the filaments held her in place, standing there, arms out wide as if staked.

Helpless.

At some point, she lost consciousness, overwhelmed by the intrusion, the horror, the confusion.

“There!” Regis said triumphantly, holding forth a small piece of pottery he had created, like a tiny soup bowl.

Wulfgar stared at the item for a few moments, then let his gaze drift past it to the elaborate set-up of smoking vials, metal tubing, and a small fire pit. Then he looked to Regis, his expression blank.

“Magnificent, is it not?” the halfling teased.

“It is not,” Wulfgar remarked. “I have seen old women fire clay with half the trouble, to create bowls one might actually use.”

“Ah, because you do not understand. This is no ordinary pot.”

“Perhaps for a chipmunk.”

Regis sighed and returned the stare, and Wulfgar merely shrugged. Sitting at the side of the small room, Catti-brie gave a little chuckle, enjoying their banter.

“Come and see,” Regis bade her.

“See what?” Wulfgar asked him. “All this effort for a chipmunk bowl?”

“On what item did you place your enchantment of light?” the halfling asked when Catti-brie had come over. After the goblin fight, the woman had lit up the area with a great light spell, and kept it with them now, in this room, allowing Regis to more easily practice his alchemy.

“My ring,” she explained, holding up her hand to show the ruby band Drizzt had given to her.

“Place it on the table,” Regis instructed, and Catti-brie pulled off the band and set it down.

“Notice that the light is not blocked by the table,” Regis explained. The others knew that, of course, but they reflexively looked down at the floor beneath the table. There was a bit of a shadow, but not much, for such was the dweomer of magical light spells that they didn’t actually emanate from the target source, but rather, they encompassed an area.

“Of course,” Catti-brie said.

Regis’s smile went wide at that prompt and he upended the small bowl and placed it over the ring. The room was still lit, but the bowl remained dark, clearly blocking the magical light.

“Like the hood of a lantern!” Regis announced.

Catti-brie was nodding, obviously trying to sort through the implications and possibilities, though Wulfgar seemed at a loss.

“How did you do that?” Catti-brie asked.

“The lichen,” Regis explained. “I noticed when harvesting it that it emanated its own light, of course, but was not translucent to the light, any light, even yours. I’ve read about this,” he explained and nodded to his alchemy book, “but I didn’t think I could properly distill the essence.”

“A trick, but to what end?” asked Wulfgar.

Smiling even wider, Regis scooped up a second tiny ceramic bowl, then gathered the first and the ring it held and put the two together, forming a ball. The room darkened a bit, but the magic still leaked through the seam of the two joined cups. Regis moved to a tray at his still, and dipped his finger in some of the material that had not yet hardened. He held up his finger for the others to see, showing them the dark brown stain of the material there, then ran it along the seam between the halves of the ball, smearing it with his concoction.

The room darkened immediately, and would have been pitch black except for the small flame of the still and a bit of greenish-white light from the glowing lichen along the edge of the room.

“You blocked the light,” Wulfgar remarked, his tone showing him to be thoroughly unimpressed.

“No,” Catti-brie corrected, her voice filled with awe. “You blocked the magic.”

“Yes,” Regis replied.

“What does that mean?” Wulfgar asked at the same time.

“When I wore that ring, if I put my hand under the folds of my robes, the light around us would not have diminished,” Catti-brie explained. “It would take a thick wall of dense material to truly defeat magical light, yet Regis has done it with a small piece of ceramic.”

In the dim light, Regis noted Wulfgar’s conciliatory shrug, but the barbarian still wasn’t quite catching on here as to how powerful a tool Regis had just crafted, as was obvious when Wulfgar pointedly asked, “To what end?”

“The ceramic is brittle,” Regis explained. “What do you think might happen if I threw the ball against the stone floor, or wall?”

Wulfgar paused for a few heartbeats, then laughed. “I think our enemies would be surprised.”

“Particularly drow enemies,” Regis remarked, “who prefer the darkness.”

“What ho!” came a cry as the door banged open and torchlight flooded the room. Under that orange flicker loomed the shadowy and scowling face of Bruenor Battlehammer, battle-axe up and ready for a fight.

“Bruenor!” Regis and Catti-brie called together to calm him.

“We thought you were in trouble,” came a whispered explanation in the voice of Drizzt who was, somehow, standing right among the trio.

And all three nearly jumped out of their boots.

“The absence of light,” Drizzt explained. “I thought the drow had come and countered your spell.”

Regis crushed the ceramic ball in his hand and the room brightened immediately.

“Our halfling friend has created valuable tools for us as we travel deeper,” Catti-brie explained, taking the ring back from Regis and slipping it on her hand.

“Several, I hope,” Regis agreed. “If you can cast the spells.”

“Tomorrow,” Catti-brie promised.

“And antivenin,” Regis added, moving to his still. “I have become quite adept at making it since I brew poisons for my hand crossbow and often prick my fingers on the darts. I cannot tell you how many times I have fallen into a deep slumber when I should have been working!”

“Aye, and he’s thinkin’ we’re to be surprised by that,” Bruenor dryly replied.

Regis gave him a smirk, then held up one of a handful of glass vials, each filled with a milky liquid. “Specifically to counter the drow poison,” he explained. “If we draw near to them, drink one of these and you should fend the insidious sleep of their hand crossbow quarrels for half the day.”

“Good,” Drizzt congratulated. “And we will draw near to them, I expect. Bruenor and I went all the way to the great stair-it is down, but that should not prove too great a challenge.” He glanced to Catti-brie, who returned his look with an assuring nod.

“The better news is that the room below was empty,” Drizzt went on. “Gauntlgrym is not as thick with drow as we feared, it would seem.”

“But if that is so, then perhaps they have gone with their prisoners,” Wulfgar remarked.

“Let us take our rest and take it quickly,” Drizzt said, and he didn’t add, but they all knew and feared that they might be traveling deeper into the Underdark in pursuit of the dark elves.

Dahlia awakened many hours later to discover that she was lying once more before the three hanging cages in the hot Forge. She glanced over at dead Brother Afafrenfere, and felt only a fleeting moment of pity.

She turned her head to regard Artemis Entreri, hanging limply within his cage, his face pressed against the bar. Was he, too, dead? A stab of fear struck her.

Yes, fear, and that instinctive reaction reminded Dahlia of who she was, triggered the identity she had known as her own. With great effort, she forced herself to a sitting position, and she sighed in relief as Entreri opened his eyes to consider her.

But like her pity for the monk, it was a fleeting blip of consciousness, for other thoughts crowded in at her then, and a sly smile came over her as she thought about how delicious it would be to gather up a hot poker and stick Entreri with it.