Robert Salvatore: The Silent Blade

Right there, Drizzt Do'Urden. Entreri looked back at Jarlaxle and nodded.

The mercenary, hardly surprised, merely smiled.

Regis squirmed and groaned, resisting Catti-brie's attempts with the pendant this time, for as the emergency had dictated, she had not begun the charming process until after Drizzt's fingers were already working furiously inside the halfling's torn shoulder.

Bruenor, his axe right beside him, did well to hold the halfling steady, but Drizzt kept growling and shaking his head in frustration. The wound had reopened, and badly, and this time the nimble-fingered drow could not possibly close it.

"Take the damned arm!" Drizzt finally cried in ultimate frustration, falling back, his own arm soaked in blood. The four dwarves behind him gave a unified groan, but Bruenor, always steady and reliable, understood the truth and moved methodically for his axe.

Catti-brie continued to talk to Regis, but he was no longer listening to her or to anything, his consciousness long flown.

Bruenor leveled the axe, lining up the stroke. Catti-brie, having no logical arguments, understanding that they had to stem the bleeding even if that meant cut-ting off the arm and cauterizing the wound with fire, hesitantly extended the torn arm.

"Take it," Drizzt instructed, and the four dwarves groaned again.

Bruenor spat in his hands and took up the axe, but doubt crossed his face as he looked down at his poor little friend.

"Take it!" Drizzt demanded.

Bruenor lifted the axe and brought it down again slowly, lining up the hit.

"Take it!" Catti-brie said.

"Do not!" came a voice from the side, and all the friends turned to see two men walking toward them.

"Cadderly!" Catti-brie cried, and so it seemed to be. So surprised and pleased was she, and was Drizzt, that neither noticed that the man seemed older than the last time they had seen him, though they knew the priest was not aging, but was rather growing more youthful as his health returned. The great effort of raising the magical Spirit Soaring library from the rubble had taken its toll on the young man.

Cadderly nodded to his companion, who rushed over to Regis. "Good it is that beside you we arrived," the other priest said, a curious comment and in a dialect that none of the others had heard before.

They didn't question him about it, though, not with their friend Cadderly standing beside him, and certainly not while he bent over and began a quiet chant over the prone halfling.

"My associate, Arrabel, will see to the wound," Cadderly explained. "Truly I am surprised to see you out here so far from home."

"Coming to see yerself," Bruenor explained.

"Well, turn about," Baeltimazifas, in the guise of Cadderly, said dramatically, exactly as Jarlaxle had instructed. "I will welcome you indeed in a grand manner,

when you arrive at the Spirit Soaring, but your road now is in the other direction, for you've a friend in dire need."

"Wulfgar," Catti-brie breathed, and the others were surely thinking the same.

Cadderly nodded. "He tried to follow your course, it would seem, and has come into a small hamlet east of Baldur's Gate. The downstream currents will take you there quickly."

"What hamlet?" Bumpo asked.

The doppleganger shrugged, having no name. "Four buildings behind a bluff and trees. I know not its name."

"That'd be Yogerville," Donat insisted, and Bumpo nodded his agreement.

"Get ye there in a day," the dwarf captain told Drizzt.

The drow looked questioningly to Cadderly.

"It would take me a day to pray for such a spell of transport," the phony priest explained. "And even then I could take but one of you along."

Regis groaned then, drawing the attention of all, and to the companions' amazement and absolute joy the halfling sat up, looking much better already, and even managed to flex the fingers at the end of his torn arm.

Beside him, Rai'gy, in the uncomfortable mantle of a human, smiled and silently thanked Lady Lolth for being so very understanding.

"He can travel, and immediately," the doppleganger explained. "Now be off. Your friend is in dire need. It would seem that his temper has angered the farmers, and they have him prisoner and plan to hang him. You have time to save him, for they'll not act until their leader returns, but be off at once."

Drizzt nodded, then reached down and took his pouch from Regis's belt. "Will you join us?" he asked, and even then, eager Catti-brie, Bruenor, Regis, and the dwarves began readying the boat for departure. Drizzt and Cadderly's associate moved out of the craft to join the priest.

"No," the doppleganger replied, perfectly mimicking Cadderly's voice, according to the imp who had supplied the strange, creature with most of the details and insights. "You'll not need me, and I have other urgent matters to attend."

Drizzt nodded and handed the pouch over. "Take care with it," he explained. "It has the ability to call in would-be allies."

"I will be back in the Spirit Soaring in a matter of minutes," the doppleganger replied.

Drizzt paused at that curious comment-hadn't Cadderly just proclaimed that he needed a day to memorize a spell of transport?

"Word of recall," Rai'gy, picking up the uneasiness, put in quickly. "Get us home to the Spirit Soaring will the spell, but not to any other place."

"Come on, elf!" Bruenor cried. "Me boy's waiting."

"Go," Cadderly bade Drizzt, taking the pouch and in the same movement, putting his hand on Drizzt's shoulder and turning him back to the boat, pushing him gently along. "Go at once. You've not a moment to spare."

Silent alarms continued to ring out in Drizzt's head, but

he had no time then to stop and consider them. Bottom Feeder was already sliding back out into the river, the four crew working to turn her about. With a nimble leap Drizzt joined them, then turned back to see Cadderly waving and smiling, his associate already in the throes of spellcasting. Before the craft had gone very far the friends watched the pair dissipate into the wind.

"Why didn't the durned fool just take one of us to me boy now?" Bruenor asked.

"Why not, indeed?" Drizzt replied, staring back at the empty spot and wondering.

Wondering.

Bright and early the next morning, Bottom Feeder put in against the bank a couple hundred yards short of Yogerville and the four friends, including Regis, who was feeling much better, leaped ashore.

They had all agreed that the dwarves would remain with the boat, and also, on the suggestion of Drizzt, had decided that Bruenor, Regis, and Catti-brie would go in to speak with the townsfolk alone while the ranger circumvented the hamlet, getting a full lay of the region.

The three were greeted by friendly farm folk, by wide smiles, and then, when asked about Wulfgar, by expressions of confusion.

"Ye thinking that we'd forget one of that description?" one old woman asked with a cackle.

The three friends looked at each other with confusion.

"Donat picked the wrong town," Bruenor said with a great sigh.

Drizzt harbored troubling thoughts. A magical spell had obviously brought Cadderly to him and his companions, but if Wulfgar was in such dire need, why hadn't the cleric just gone to him first instead? He could explain it, of course, considering that Regis was in more dire peril, but why hadn't Cadderly gone to one, while his associate went to the other? Again, logical explanations were there. Perhaps the priests had only one spell that could bring them to one place and had been forced to choose. Yet there was something else nagging at Drizzt, and he simply could not place it.

But then he understood his inner turmoil. How had Cadderly even known to look for Wulfgar, a man he had never met and had only heard about briefly?

"Just good fortune," he told himself, trying logically to trace Cadderly's process, one that had obviously brought him onto Drizzt's trail, and there he had discovered Wulfgar, not so far behind. Luck alone had informed the priest of whom this great man might be.