Robert Salvatore - The Halfling’s Gem

It was wretched Memnon on a grander scale, with the divisions of wealth so blatantly obvious that Calimport cried out as ultimately perverted to the four friends. Elaborate houses, monuments to excess and hinting at wealth beyond imagination, dotted the cityscape. Yet, right beside those palaces loomed lane after lane of decrepit shanties of crumbling clay or ragged skins. The friends couldn’t guess how many people roamed the place—certainly more than Waterdeep and Memnon combined!—and they knew at once that in Calimport, as in Memnon, no one had ever bothered to count.

Sali Dalib dismounted, bidding the others do likewise, and led them down a final hill and into the unwalled city. The friends found the sights of Calimport no better up close. Naked children, their bellies bloated from lack of food, scrambled out of the way or were simply trampled as gilded, slave-drawn carts rushed through the streets. Worse still were the sides of those avenues, ditches mostly, serving as open sewers in the city’s poorest sections. There were thrown the bodies of the impoverished, who had fallen to the roadside at the end of their miserable days.

“Suren Rumblebelly never told of such sights when he spoke of home,” Bruenor grumbled, pulling his cloak over his face to deflect the awful stench. “Past me guessing why he’d long for this place!”

“De greatest city in de world, dis be!” Sali Dalib spouted, lifting his arms to enhance his praise.

Wulfgar, Bruenor and Catti-brie shot him incredulous stares. Hordes of people begging and starving was not their idea of greatness. Drizzt paid the merchant no heed, though. He was busy making the inevitable comparison between Calimport and another city he had known, Menzoberranzan. Truly there were similarities, and death was no less common in Menzoberranzan, but Calimport somehow seemed fouler than the city of the drow. Even the weakest of the dark elves had the means to protect himself, with strong family ties and deadly innate abilities. The pitiful peasants of Calimport, though, and more so their children, seemed helpless and hopeless indeed.

In Menzoberranzan, those on the lowest rungs of the power ladder could fight their way to a better standing. For the majority of Calimport’s multitude, though, there would only be poverty, a day-to-day squalid existence until they landed on the piles of buzzard-pecked bodies in the ditches.

“Take us to the guildhouse of Pasha Pook,” Drizzt said, getting to the point, wanting to be done with his business and out of Calimport, “then you are dismissed.”

Sali Dalib paled at the request. “Pasha Poop?” he stammered. “Who is dis?”

“Bah!” Bruenor snorted, moving dangerously close to the merchant. “He knows him.”

“Suren he does,” Catti-brie observed, “and fears him.”

“Sali Dalib not—” the merchant began.

Twinkle came out of its sheath and slipped to a stop under the merchant’s chin, silencing the man instantly. Drizzt let his mask slip a bit, reminding Sali Dalib of the drow’s heritage. Once again, his suddenly grim demeanor unnerved even his own friends. “I think of my friend,” Drizzt said in a calm, low tone, his lavender eyes absently staring into the city, “tortured even as we delay.”

He snapped his scowl at Sali Dalib. “As you delay! You will take us to the guildhouse of Pasha Pook,” he reiterated, more insistently, “and then you are dismissed.”

“Pook? Oh, Pook,” the merchant beamed. “Sali Dalib know dis man, yes, yes. Everybody know Pook. Yes, yes, I take you dere, den I go.”

Drizzt replaced the mask but kept the stern visage. “If you or your little companion try to flee,” he promised so calmly that neither the merchant nor his assistant doubted his words for a moment, “I will hunt you down and kill you.”

The drow’s three friends exchanged confused shrugs and concerned glances. They felt confident that they knew Drizzt to his soul, but so grim was his tone that even they wondered how much of his promise was an idle threat.

It took more than an hour for them to twist and wind their way through the maze that was Calimport, to the dismay of the friends, who wanted nothing more than to be off the streets and away from the fetid stench. Finally, to their relief, Sali Dalib turned a final corner, to Rogues Circle, and pointed to the unremarkable wooden structure at its end: Pasha Pook’s guildhouse.

“Dere be de Pook,” Sali Dalib said. “Now, Sali Dalib take his camels and be gone, back to Memnon.”

The friends were not so quick to be rid of the wily merchant. “More to me guessin’ that Sali Dalib be heading for Pook to sell some tales o’ four friends,” Bruenor growled.

“Well, we’ve a way beyond that,” said Catti-brie. She shot Drizzt a sly wink, then moved up to the curious and frightened merchant, reaching into her pack as she went.

Her look went suddenly grim, so wickedly intense that Sali Dalib jerked back when her hand came up to his forehead. “Hold yer place!” Catti-brie snapped at him harshly, and he had no resistance to the power of her tone. She had a powder, a flourlike substance, in her pack. Reciting some gibberish that sounded like an arcane chant, she traced a scimitar on Sali Dalib’s forehead. The merchant tried to protest but couldn’t find his tongue for his terror.

“Now, for the little one,” Catti-brie said, turning to Sali Dalib’s goblin assistant. The goblin squeaked and tried to dash away, but Wulfgar caught it in one hand and held it out to Catti-brie, squeezing tighter and tighter until the thing stopped wiggling.

Catti-brie performed the ceremony again then turned to Drizzt. “They be linked to yer spirit now,” she said. “Do ye feel them?”

Drizzt, understanding the bluff, nodded grimly and slowly drew his two scimitars.

Sali Dalib paled and nearly toppled over, but Bruenor, moving closer to watch his daughter’s games, was quick to prop the terrified man up.

“Ah, let them go, then. Me witchin’s through,” Catti-brie told both Wulfgar and Bruenor. “The drow’ll feel yer presence now,” she hissed at Sali Dalib and his goblin. “He’ll know when ye’re about and when ye’ve gone. If ye stay in the city, and if ye’ve thoughts o’ going to Pook, the drow’ll know, and he’ll follow yer feel—hunt ye down.” She paused a moment, wanting the two to fully comprehend the horror they faced.

“And he’ll kill ye slow.”

“Take yer lumpy horses, then, and be gone!” Bruenor roared. “If I be seein’ yer stinkin’ faces again, the drow’ll have to get in line for his cuts!”

Before the dwarf had even finished, Sali Dalib and the goblin had collected their camels and were off, away from Rogues Circle and back toward the northern end of the city.

“Them two’re for the desert,” Bruenor laughed when they had gone. “Fine tricks, me girl.”

Drizzt pointed to the sign of an inn, the Spitting Camel, halfway down the lane. “Get us rooms,” he told his friends. “I will follow them to make certain they do indeed leave the city.”

“Wastin’ yer time,” Bruenor called after him. “The girl’s got ‘em running, or I’m a bearded gnome!”

Drizzt had already started padding silently into the maze of Caliport’s streets.

Wulfgar, caught unawares by her uncharacteristic trickery and still not quite sure what had just happened, eyed Catti-brie carefully. Bruenor didn’t miss his apprehensive look.

“Take note, boy,” the dwarf taunted. “Suren the girl’s got herself a nasty streak ye’ll not want turned on yerself!”

Playing through for the sake of Bruenor’s enjoyment, Catti-brie glared at the big barbarian and narrowed her eyes, causing Wulfgar to back off a cautious step. “Witchin’ magic,” she cackled. “Tells me when yer eyes be filled with the likings of another woman!” She turned slowly, not releasing him from her stare until she had taken three steps down the lane toward the inn Drizzt had indicated.