R. Salvatore - The Collected Stories, The Legend of Drizzt

“The hat?” he asked. He brought his free hand up to the short and stiff brim of his bolero.

“Tip it down and to the left with your left hand and it will shield you from prying eyes.”

Entreri did as the drow instructed and an immediate chill washed over him, bringing a shudder.

“There,” Jarlaxle announced. “When you feel warm again, just tip the hat.”

“I feel like a corpse.”

“Better to feel like one than to be one.”

Entreri tipped his hat in agreement, and shuddered again, then went back to his work on the window, this time popping the cut circle of glass free.

“Tight fit,” Jarlaxle said dryly.

The assassin tossed him a smirk and gingerly reached through the glass, moving his hand slowly and gently, so gently, about the pane in search of a trap.

“Seems like a lot of work,” said Jarlaxle.

He reached up to his huge hat and pulled forth a small black piece of cloth. Seeing it, Entreri just lowered his head and sighed, for he knew what was coming.

Jarlaxle spun the cloth about and it elongated, grew larger and larger. The drow threw it against the wall, and the whole area of the structure that the black circle covered simply disappeared. The typical portable hole, a rare and valuable item, created an extra-dimensional pocket, but, as with most of his items, Jarlaxle’s device was far from typical. Depending upon which side the drow threw down, the portable hole would either create the pocket, or simply put a temporary hole in whatever surface it had struck. Jarlaxle casually stepped into the room, and pulled his hole in behind him, securing the wall once more.

So flustered was Entreri that he almost moved too quickly across the trapped part of the window pane, feeling the slight lump that indicated a pressure trap. Regaining his wits, the man’s hand worked with perfect movements, and in seconds, he had the trap disarmed, and even opened, revealing a small needle, no doubt poisoned.

He had it free and safely stuck through his cuff in a few more seconds, then finished his check of the window, clicked the lock, and entered the room.

“At least I put the wall back,” Jarlaxle quipped, indicating the circle of glass in Entreri’s hand.

A flick of the assassin’s wrist sent the glass piece crashing to the floor.

“So much for secrecy,” said Jarlaxle.

“Maybe I’m in the mood to kill someone,” Entreri replied, staring hard at the frustrating dark elf.

Jarlaxle shrugged.

Entreri scanned the room. A door was set in the wall across from the window, in the corner to the left, with an open closet beside it. Halfway down the wall to the right of the window stood a chest of drawers, as high as Entreri’s shoulder. A bed and night table across from the bureau completed the furnishings. Entreri went for the chest of drawers as Jarlaxle moved to the closet.

“Poor taste,” he heard the dark elf say, and turned to see Jarlaxle rifling through the hanging clothes, most of them drab and gray.

Entreri shook his head and pulled open the bottom drawer, finding some linens, and under them, a small pouch of coins, which disappeared into his pocket. The next drawer was much the same, and the third one up held assorted toiletry items, including a beautiful bone comb, its handle made of pearl. He took that, too.

The top drawer held the most curious items: a couple of jars of salves and a trio of potion bottles, each filled with a different colored liquid. Entreri nodded knowingly, and looked back to the window, then he shut the drawer and moved along to check the bed.

“Ah, a secret compartment,” Jarlaxle said from the closet.

“Let me inspect it for traps.”

“No need,” said the dark elf.

He stepped back and produced a silver whistle, hung about his neck on a chain. Two short blows and there came a pop and a flash as the secret compartment magically opened.

“You have an answer for everything,” Entreri remarked.

“Keeps me alive. Ah, yes, and look what we have here.”

A moment later, Jarlaxle walked out of the closet carrying a small statuette, a curious figurine of a muscular man, half white, half black.

“Back to the inn and our reward?” Jarlaxle asked.

In response, the statue began laughing at him. “Doubtful you will be going anywhere, Artemis Entreri!” it said, and the fact that it was addressing Entreri and not Jarlaxle tipped both off that the speech had been pre-programmed, and with foreknowledge of the assassin.

“Um …” Entreri remarked.

The door to the room opened then, and Jarlaxle fell back toward the window. Entreri stayed to his left, over by the bed. In stepped a muscular, dark-skinned man dressed in long and ragged-edged black robes, a many-crested helm on his head. Behind him loomed a horde of huge gray and black dogs, blending in and out of the shadows in the hallway as if they were made of the same indistinct stuff as those patches of blackness.

Entreri felt a pull from his belt, from Charon’s Claw, his magnificent sword. It didn’t feel to him as if the sword was relating its eagerness for battle, though, as it usually did, but rather, almost as if it was greeting an old friend.

“I take it you were expecting us,” Jarlaxle calmly stated, and he presented the statue as his proof.

“If you give it over without a struggle, you may find us to be important allies,” the large man said.

“Well, I am not endeared to it just yet,” Jarlaxle replied with a grin. “We could discuss price-”

“Not that worthless idol!”

“The sword,” Entreri reasoned.

“And the gauntlet,” the man confirmed.

Entreri scoffed at him. “But they are better allies to me than you could ever be.”

“Ah, yes, but are they as terrible foes as we?”

“Us? We?” Jarlaxle cut in. “Who are you? And I mean that in the plural sense, not the singular.”

Both the dark man and Entreri looked at the drow curiously.

“The sword your friend carries does not belong to him,” the dark man said to Jarlaxle.

The drow looked to Entreri and asked, “Did you kill the former owner?”

“What do you think?”

Jarlaxle nodded and looked back to the dark man. “It is his.”

“It is Netherese!”

Entreri didn’t quite know what that meant, but when he looked to Jarlaxle and saw the drow’s eyes opened very wide, as wide as they had been when the pair had encountered the dragon to destroy the Crystal Shard, he knew that there might be a bit of trouble.

“Netherese?” the drow echoed. “A people long gone.”

“A people soon to be returned,” the dark man assured him. “A people seeking their former glory, and their former possessions.”

“Well, there is the best news the world has heard in a millennium,” Jarlaxle said sarcastically, to which the dark man only laughed.

“I have been sent to retrieve the sword,” he explained. “I could have killed you outright, and without question, but it occurred to me that two companions such as yourselves might prove to be very valuable allies to Sh-my people, as we shall be to you.”

“How valuable?” asked Jarlaxle, obviously intrigued.

“And if I ally with you, then I get to keep the sword?” Entreri asked.

“No,” the dark man answered Entreri.

“Then no,” Entreri answered back.

“Let us not be hasty,” said the deal-maker drow.

“Seems pretty simple to me,” said Entreri.

“Then to me, as well,” said the dark man. “The hard way, then. As you wish!”

As he finished, he stepped aside, and the pack of great dogs charged into the room, howling madly, their white teeth gleaming in stark contrast against the blackness of them.

Entreri fell into a crouch, ready to spring aside, but Jarlaxle took matters under control, tossing out before the dogs the same portable hole he had used to enter the room.